the 12 ecosystems: a crash course on the houses & answering anon

Jun 24

12 min read

This is the first Q&A series I've done on the newsletter and you guys didn't hold back with the hard hitters!! I appreciate the critical thinking and curiosity, it's been such a pleasure to put together answers for you.

I still have more in the queue to respond to, but the Q&A forum is still open! I encourage you all to keep sending in your questions as they come up– it is completely anonymous, I am unable to see who is submitting.

I'd love to continue answering these in future issues, but I wanted to take the time to answer this particular question in great detail as it highlights the main dilemma that most people have when it comes to the study of astrology:

ask a question

ANSWERING ANON

Everything about this question tells me that you are a skeptic. That’s not a criticism either, the best astrologers start out as skeptics. I was one.

Richard Tarnas was a skeptic and then went on to write Cosmos & Psyche and Prometheus: The Awakener. One serves as a highly respected and comprehensive guide on outer planet contacts, the other created a modern framework for the now, standard, interpretation of the planet Uranus.

Liz Greene started studying astrology because someone had an intense reaction to her chart and refused to read it for her. She became fluent so that she could understand what was so terrible about her chart, and in finding nothing all that terrible after all, she went on to write prolifically and co-founded the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London.

These are just two stories off the top of my head of the many skeptics turned groundbreaking, well researched astrologers.

Rarely anyone starts out as an astrologer. First they are very serious psychologists or philosophers or historians. Or maybe they are first lovesick adolescents wanting to understand their star sign compatibility with their crush– love, in my opinion, is actually a very powerful doorway and motivator for higher learning and should not be mocked or dismissed. Curiosity only needs a hook and love is the most powerful hook of all.

Yes, astrology can point to the Where, How, and Who and also When and sometimes even Why. Although to quote Tarnas himself, “Astrology is archetypally predictive, not concretely predictive.” It will tell you the archetype of these things but it's often not completely obvious until it appears.

I knew, for example, that I would be experiencing some intense health and work issues in Spring of 2025 a year before it happened. I didn’t know what kind of issues, only that they would have to do with the Saturn in Aries archetype, inflammation that would likely restrict my independence.

Then, in Spring of 2025, I broke my ankle at work and couldn’t do anything independently for quite some time. The planets didn't just help me anticipate the experience, they helped me reflect on the actions that led to the injury and metabolize it afterward, changing my future actions as a result.

So, while astrology didn't tell me exactly what would happen (you will slip and fall at work on the 20th of March), instead it accurately described the archetype of the experience (overworking has physical consequences). Astrology, from my view, is a powerful tool to help us understand what life has to teach us and why the lesson is coming at a particular moment.

Though in all of this, you are asking me something that is ultimately unanswerable. The question of “trusting” astrology is completely up to you. Of course you’re conflicted! You’re trying to trust and “believe” in something that I don’t think is really a belief system at all (though that conversation gets pretty complicated).

It’s not concrete enough to be considered a science by modern standards but it is tangible enough to be collected and observed. For all intents and purposes, it's just a system that operates on pattern recognition.

I do not know why early societies noticed the movement of the planets correlated with events down on Earth and I do not know why they correlate anymore than we know what happens after we die, or why we dream, or how humans came to be on a floating rock in space. It's unknowable. I do, however, know that I have been able to predict and make meaning out of my experiences by observing the planetary movements. I don't think trust is necessary, but study and observation is.

If you are wanting to understand how to read your chart to make sense of these big questions, I would start treating astrology as something worth investigating seriously, and that means learning from people who have spent years studying it. It certainly doesn’t have to be me, there are plenty of good astrologers out there. You don’t have to adopt their framework or answers as your own, but let it be data.

As far as understanding the actual techniques and chart mechanics (houses, planets, degrees, etc.), it’s tough. You’re essentially learning a new language. That’s all astrology is, a language for our experiences.

I started learning astrology when I was 16 years old, first on astro twitter, and then I read every astrological book I could get my hands on, listened to every podcast within orbit, and signed up for multiple newsletters. I immersed myself in it because I genuinely couldn’t get enough of it. I collected charts from everyone around me and documented my observations as I went. I copied the planetary symbols and aspects into my journal. But your experience and learning style may be different from mine. Maybe you’d benefit from taking a course or going to a formal astrological institution.

All of this to say, I don’t think you should just take someone’s word for it and believe whatever you hear. I think we should all be deeply skeptical and question everything.

Not every astrologer is pure in their information and it’s not necessarily because they have some nefarious intent either, this is a highly interpretive and misunderstood field of work that has been evolving since ancient civilization; we should all have grace for each other when making delineations.

Ultimately, astrology can only go as deeply as you desire to, but the planets will help you if you ask for it.

A CRASH COURSE ON THE HOUSES: THE ECOSYSTEMS

To get you started though, I suggest learning about the houses. This allows you to read personal transits and to experience astrology instead of only reading about it. I think this is much more helpful in the pursuit of understanding astrology than attempting to read the natal planets and aspects right away.

Pro tip: start with the Moon! There are plenty of lunar apps out there that will notify you every time it changes signs, you can then observe what you experience as the Moon changes signs and houses. You may notice that when the Moon is in your 3rd house, you're suddenly running errands around town or when it's in the 11th house, you're seeing a friend or contributing to a community. The Moon is responsible for our most immediate bodily and environmental experiences, it also acts as a trigger for the other planets.

The houses are highly google-able (and youtube-able) with hundreds of explanations better than mine, but essentially, we can understand each of the 12 houses as ecosystems. Each of these ecosystems represent general areas of life that the planets then travel through and activate. They “house” our fundamental life themes.

these are the general themes of the 12 houses, this was the first image i found on google- you can search the planets and find plenty of amazing graphics with descriptions for those too!

Just like we might sit “in transit” on a train, the planets are the moving vehicle that take us through a specific territory. The “territory” or “ecosystem” is the house the planet transits through. Knowing what the planets and houses mean can tell us what kind of experience we're moving through symbolically, where it may emerge, who it may involve, and why it might matter.

I like to think of them as ecosystems because each house contains a network of related experiences, people, objects, places, and behaviors that interact with one another.

For example, the 5th house rules romance, creativity, children, pleasure, etc. but these are just buzzwords to describe real life experiences.

A non living thing belonging to the 5th house might be: a paint brush, a wine glass, a game board, glitter

While a living thing belonging to the 5th house might be: a baby, a lover, a musician, your younger self

All of these things supposedly provoke feelings of pleasure, fun, passion, or creativity– depending on what planets are transiting or belong there natally.

Then there are things that belong to multiple ecosystems, just like an amphibian. A party, for example, might belong to the 5th house because its purpose is pleasure, but it also belongs to the 11th house because a party is typically made up of a large group of people and requires planning in advance. Depending on what kind of party it is, maybe instead of the party centering around 11th house connections, it's more siblings, neighbors, childhood friends, cousins, aunts, uncles– that's a 3rd house party. It's local, familiar.

The planets, the bodies that are leading us through these ecosystems, allow us to be even more specific.

When I had Saturn transiting through my 5th house, I did attend quite a few events and parties, but a lot of them felt more like an obligation. Saturn rules over the things we feel responsible for, our duties, and that can suck the fun out of the 5th house. Saturn also imposes consequences and limitations– I had quite a few gnarly hangovers with this transit. Meanwhile, Venus finds its joy in the 5th, she rejoices in an environment that is suited to her relational nature. Venus at the party would look a lot less like obligation and more like flirtatiousness, adorning yourself beautifully, or dancing the night away because your desires are better supported. The 5th isn't just about parties, but this is one way the planets clearly express their differences.

The planet that takes you through a particular house is responsible for driving the experience. What would it be like to travel with Mars through the house of pleasure and creativity? It could be that there's a greater motivation to find a new hobby, it might indicate a higher libido, or maybe Mars wants to show you what happens when passion turns into a spirited argument. This all depends on what sign the planet is in, what it's aspecting, what it's currently ruled by. This is how we can get specific about what the planet wants when it enters a particular house.

silly but this is literally the visual i hold in my mind for "transits" /imagine the planets as vehicles that are taking you through each house. Here we have the Moon in the 2nd house and Venus in the 5th.

The rising (ascendant) sign starts the 1st house as the place of the personality, the body, the self. The 2nd house follows the next sign after the rising in order.

The 12 signs are: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. They always go in order in the standard whole sign house system, which we’ll use for simplicity’s sake.

So if you have a Gemini rising, the 1st house would be in Gemini and the 2nd house in Cancer, the 3rd house in Leo, etc. in the order of the zodiacal wheel. If you have Aquarius rising, the 2nd house is in Pisces, and then the zodiacal wheel starts over with the 3rd house in Aries, 4th in Taurus, and so on.

It’s a 360º wheel, made up of 12 ecosystems that correlate to the 12 zodiac signs. This creates your arena for life. This is why it’s said that we are all of the signs, because we do have all of the signs in our charts, it’s just that different ones are emphasized in different areas of our lives.

HOW TO READ BASIC HOUSE TRANSITS

If you’re a Sagittarius rising, we know that your 5th house is in Aries. We can see that Saturn in the transiting sky is currently in Aries, we can find this either through an ephemeris and now, thanks to modern technology, we can easily look up the current transits online or through an app.

Sagittarius risings are experiencing a 5th house Saturn in Aries transit. That gives us the formula for a language that we can work with and interpret.

The 5th house = pleasure, dating, creativity, childhood, and any other specific buzzword that may support this ecosystem archetypally.

Saturn = the planet of limitation, delay, longevity, consequences, and maturity

Aries = independence, innovation, initiation, beginnings, impulse, action, the yang principle

So we can say that Sagittarius risings are going through a 3 year period (as this is the length of Saturn’s transit through one sign) where they must reassess this 5th house ecosystem in a way that brings maturity and structure long term.

During this transit, there may be consequences for actions that are premature, we can find childish and immature behaviors in the 5th house as it shows the full range of children as a concept. This could also be a time that requires revisiting the past and childhood, wounds from those early years and how that pertains to creativity and expression now.

Saturn tends to require slow, thoughtful work, while the houses that we have Aries tend to be where we dive in without thinking at all. Sagittarius risings often do this in their dating lives or with anything that brings enjoyment. They are able to easily innovate new creative works as a result of this, sparks fly! But if Saturn is transiting, then it’s time to grow up a little, to learn how to create a long lasting fire without smothering that initial spark.

This may manifest in having a child or becoming a “parent” to a serious creative project that requires Sag risings to limit the energy they put into short term gratification because it would ultimately sabotage their long term objective: not only keeping the baby (or project) alive, but ensuring that it will thrive for a long time.

Or maybe this transit brings a string of people in their dating life that promise love too quickly in the heat of the moment but leave when reality hits. This requires the ability to stay realistic (Saturn) even when possibility burns bright (Aries) or when casual fun beckons (5th house). Do you see how symbolic this language is?

These are just a few of the ways that a 5th house Saturn transit might manifest and realistically, within a 3 year transit, we're likely to experience a range of themes instead of just one. This may sound broad, but we can get even more specific if we know what personal planets this might aspect or what other influences are occurring in the solar return or progressed chart.

ADVANCED: TRANSITS TO NATAL PLANETS

Let’s say that this particular Sag rising is currently experiencing a 5th house Saturn transit square their own natal Moon in Cancer in the 8th house. We can see that above with Saturn on the outer wheel making a 90º angle to the Moon on the inner wheel.

The 8th house = other people’s resources, this might include: money, time, energy, or emotional support. This is the house of investment, intimacy, attachment, and dependency. Compared to the 5th house, it's less party, more business loan. Less causal fling, more living with your partner.

The Moon = nourishment, needs, home, the body, cycles, emotion as a messaging system

Cancer = though there is nuance, this sign is ruled by the Moon and is therefore deeply tied to the significations of the Moon

Square aspect (90º angle) = tension, friction, a confrontation that creates movement

Let's piece it together:

The Moon, a symbol of nourishment, can either be supported or starved by Saturn. If the Moon were sextile (60º away) or trine (120º away from) Saturn, it’s easier for the Moon to feel supported by Saturn’s sense of responsibility and maturity, it would show up as something that nourishes the Moon.

But since the Moon is being squared by transiting Saturn, this marks a time where the Moon feels the tension and confrontation of Saturn’s push for responsibility. Sometimes Moon square Saturn is quite depressing because it highlights all of the ways that the Moon is not already nourished, instead, the Moon feels insecure and unsupported for the purpose of creating necessary change.

So, in the earlier example, if this Sagittarius rising is experiencing Saturn in the 5th house as an encounter with romance that seems promising at first, only to burn out quickly once reality hits– it’s the square to the Moon that adds context.

Knowing that this person has an 8th house Moon, we might be able to deduce that this is someone who feels nourished specifically through emotional investment and care. This might manifest as sharing deep, emotional truths as a way to create relational intimacy but Saturn in Aries says, whoa! It’s way too soon to be sharing something so vulnerable about yourself with someone whom you have no foundation with. There are emotional consequences for opening up to just anybody you meet on Hinge.

Or say this intimacy is reciprocated, but it escalates the relationship before you know if you’re even compatible in a more practical, surface level kind of way. You can both understand each other’s childhood traumas, but if it turns out that this person isn’t even looking for the same kind of relationship that you are, now there's a heavier attachment than there needed to be.

So this brings out the core of Saturn in Aries: A need for a solid foundation that can maintain after the initial sparks wear off.

Until this 8th house Cancer Moon learns to not rely on others for emotional nourishment immediately and that this is something that needs to be invested in over a long period of time, Saturn will keep pumping out rejection until the message is received.

The planets cannot speak to us literally, so they have to speak to us symbolically. Usually through other people or specific circumstances that call us back to a repeating archetype or truth. If the Moon is involved, it’s safe to say that this is a childhood pattern and a personal nourishment problem that this mythical person would need to unpack.