Intro to the first house

The first house is supposed to be you. This confuses people because the entire chart is also you. It confuses people because the Sun is also you and so is the Moon.

I’ve found that it can be clarifying to explain the first house not just as “you,” but as the conditions of your birth. There are a lot of conditions involved when it comes to birthing someone. There’s the question of where you are born, of when you are born, and by whom you are born. That’s what the ascendant, which is always included in the first house unless you are using the M-house system, maps. It’s the horizon. It maps the exact time and location of your incarnation in the historical moment that you were born into.

Because historical moments don’t feel the same everywhere and for everyone. There are slower moving planets in astrology that show you what your age group is reckoning with and resolving. The meanings of the planets really only make sense when they are located within a house.

As the eastern horizon, the first house begins the chart and, in doing so, places all of your other houses. All of the houses in your chart, including any planets in them, are only recognizable when they are read in relation to the first house. Every Virgo rising will have a Capricorn fifth house and every Taurus rising a Virgo fifth house.

Any planets in the first house are experienced in a very physical way. People with Moon in the first house feel their ears heat up when they get flustered. They can’t not show the thing that they are feeling. People with Sun in the first house feel exposed. They feel like they need to reconcile their abstract identity into their physical appearance.

The first house changes

The first house changes. Before the first Saturn return, the first house is a matter of family. Malefic saddled first house people, whether that is a malefic placed in the first house or ruling it, had to survive their families of origin. The first house is about the social and political lens through which you are forced to look at the world through—it’s the identities that you are born into. It’s how your body feels when you must reckon with being identifiable.

After the first Saturn return, the first house is supported by the secondary triplicity ruler of the house. It changes. Sometimes, it becomes your experience of illness. Sometimes, it’s about your representation of identities that you had to become more comfortable with in your youth. A Moon ruled first house person commits to taking care of needs that they denied in their youth. A malefic ruled first house person might find that they are able to acknowledge shame that they used to deal with through alcohol. The second Saturn return changes the first house again. It asks you to integrate what the first house meant to you in the first third of your life and the second. This is because the houses are ruled by the cooperating triplicity ruler in the last phase of life.

The nature of the chart ruler, which is the planet that rules the ascendent, is important. If you have a chart ruler in detriment, you might be dealing with discomfort in your physical body. You might feel like it’s heresy to accept yourself. If your chart ruler is domicile, you might have trouble integrating failure into your identity.

Saturn and Mercury

The first house is also related to both Mercury and Saturn. Saturn is the co-significator of the first house while Mercury finds joy in the first. Saturn binds you to the world but it’s Mercury who shows you joy. There’s an Italo Calvino quote where he says, “I am a Saturn who dreams of being a Mercury, and everything I write reflects these two impulses.” This is from an essay on quickness that he wrote near the end of his life.

He also writes:

“Mercury represents syntony, or participation in the world around us; Vulcan, Jocalization or constructive concentration. Mercury and Vulcan are both sons of Jupiter, whose realm is that of the consciousness, individual and social. But on his mother's side Mercury is a descendant of Uranus, whose kingdom was that of the “cyclophrenic” age of undifferentiated continuity. And Vulcan is descended from Saturn, whose realm was that of the “schizophrenic” era of egocentric isolation.”

I’m not surprised that Calvino wrote this in the last years of his life. When you get older, time moves faster. An unbearably long hour as a child feels fine as a youth and then too fast as an adult. You blink and miss the hour after a certain age. Seasons that felt like exiles into the cold are suddenly conquerable when you enter your thirties. Calvino wrote about quickness in the last few years of his life because quickness comes when you’re old and gray.

Saturn begins the first house—you’re trapped in your body. Trapped in it! It’s something that, you supposedly, cannot change. Transitioning the body is always a matter of great patience and healing. The body is scarred. And, from there on, you start to find Mercury. You start to find a means of communicating the body’s experience. You start to learn how to make yourself up.

Working with the first house

Working with the first house means accepting the conditions of your birth. It means, recognizing your different needs even when they look very different from those of your family members. It means recognizing the pain of dismissing those needs or avoiding them. It means walking into a room where you feel your entire body freeze in terror and reminding yourself “I am allowed to exist.”

Saturn is co-significator of the first house. Issues around existence are laborious. Our bodies are not things that we command but what commands us. Physicality is tiresome. It takes so long to walk to the grocery store and bringing a bag of apples and squash and milk home hurts the hands. It is tiresome to be perceived—to walk into a room and know that you are there. It is exhausting to fight for survival.

Mercury rejoices in the first house. The first house rejoices Mercury. There’s the joy of talking about who we are, the joy of telling stories about things that we never thought we would have words for when we were younger, and the joy of feeling what used to sit as obstacle finally fucking move. There’s the joy of change. Mercury in the first house people crave change. They know that they will find the pleasure of it, no matter what happens. They don’t care what happens, as long as things change.

The first house is where Saturn aspires towards Mercury. It’s where incarnation aspires towards change. Working with the first house means that you accept that your body will not only be around for a while but that it won’t stay the same. It’s where you accept your changes, where you accept that you’re a thing that will always change, that your body will break down and that you won’t be around forever. It’s where you realize that you won’t always use the same words to talk about yourself and where you understand where you are coming from. Working with the first house means that you accept who you are, that you are here, and that you will never look the same as you do today.