The advanced birth chart adds the twelve houses, which are the areas of life where each planet acts, and it shows the stage where the cast of the intermediate chart comes into play: the body, money, home, love, work, public life. The houses can be understood through history, through calculation and through three numbers we measured.

The intermediate chart says who the inner figures are. The advanced one says where they meet the world. The houses divide the sky, from the horizon of the place and the time of birth, into twelve sectors, and each one is an area of life: the first speaks of identity and body; the second, of resources; the third, of communication and siblings; the fourth, of home and roots; the fifth, of pleasure, creation and children; the sixth, of routine, work and health; the seventh, of partnerships; the eighth, of shared resources and transformation; the ninth, of beliefs and long journeys; the tenth, of vocation and public life; the eleventh, of friends and collective projects; the twelfth, of what is not seen and of retreat. The sign at the entrance of each house says with what archetypal attitude a person enters it.

The idea has a long history. The Hellenistic astrologers called the houses “places” and counted each whole sign as a house, starting from the Ascendant. The systems that divide the sky into houses of different sizes, such as Placidus, named after Placidus de Titis, in the seventeenth century, are the most used today, and each system shifts some houses. This text and the measurement below use Placidus. The astrological house and The twelve areas of life describe each house.

The houses depend on the time and place of birth, and the reason shows up in a measurement. The Ascendant, the sign that was rising on the eastern horizon when you came into the world, changes sign about every two hours. In São Paulo (latitude 23.55° south), we calculated how long each sign stays on the Ascendant: Virgo and Libra, 1 h 31 min each; Leo and Scorpio, 1 h 43; Cancer and Sagittarius, 2 h 02; Aries and Pisces, 2 h 11; Gemini and Capricorn, 2 h 15; Taurus and Aquarius, 2 h 16. On average, the Ascendant moves 1 degree every 4 minutes, and so a time that is off by half an hour can change the sign and the whole chart of houses.

The second measurement undoes a common fear. In 586 charts calculated with Placidus for São Paulo, at varied hours, a chart has on average 5.6 empty houses out of 12; 83.4% have five or more, and none had fewer than three. An empty house is the rule, not a sign of an empty life: the tradition reads the house through the planet that rules the sign at its entrance, and its subject develops by that path. Planets tend to gather in a few houses, and the houses that gather several planets tell what occupies the attention.

What human question lives here? Perhaps how much we are our circumstances. Ortega y Gasset wrote in Meditations on Quixote: “I am myself and my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I do not save myself.” The houses are a list of the circumstances that astrology recognizes as ours: the body, the home, the craft, the bonds. We can ask in which of them we feel at home and in which we are still visitors.

The limits. No study shows that a house determines what happens in an area of life, and the reading is a way of organizing questions. House systems disagree, and a person may have a planet in different houses depending on the system. Without the birth time, the houses cannot be read, and it is better to say so than to invent a time.

One question helps to begin: in which house does the planet that occupies me most today fall, and what does that area of life ask for? The empty house, which many people discard, deserves a second look: who rules its entrance, and where does that planet live in the chart?

If you want to see the twelve areas of your life, the Advanced birth chart shows where your planets reveal patterns, talents and challenges. To go further, the Complete birth chart adds the relations between planets, houses and aspects, and the 12 Houses Chart dedicates the whole reading to the areas of life.

The question that remains is: in which area of your life do you already feel at home, and in which are you still a visitor?

Some questions that usually come up about the advanced birth chart and the houses: