#87 | The First House | Crossing the Threshold

When I first learned the houses , it was really through cookbook style astrology texts that would talk about the houses being fairly much synonymous with the signs . So first house is Aries , second house is Taurus and third house is Gemini . That was really good for the simplification of astrology and a great way to learn the reality of the houses .

I think much deeper than that . If we think about the houses imaginatively as places of the soul , about the houses imaginably as places of the soul , we can picture them as 12 actual locations or temples . You walk a path and you arrive at each house . You enter , look around

and discover something essential about life . Each one holds a different arena of experience . So that's what we're doing here a house , house exploration , not just technical astrology , but a soul guided journey through the terrain of our lives . If you're expecting a debate about house systems , we won't go far into that .

For this series I'll be using placidus , because that's how I imagine the chart . The ascendant is the cusp of the first house . The ic , the descendant and the mc sit on the fourth , seventh and tenth . If you use a different house system , that's fine , come along for the ride anyway . This is about the imagination more than the technique .

Here we are , we're going to start this journey , coming upon a path and we see this particular house because it's the first house . It's like that original threshold , it's essentially the first house . Or the c it's the first house .

It's like that original threshold , it's essentially the first house , or the cusp of the first house , which is the ascendant , is what is ascending at the very moment we're born . So maybe we can take ourselves back all the way to our own birth and we can take ourselves back to that moment , which obviously was a very significant moment in our lives .

We'd spent all that time in the womb something like nine months , depending on which womb you were in and how long you wanted to stay , maybe less or more , but either way , once you actually came out and took your first breath , something was happening in the sky .

Astrology's base assumption is that that thing that was happening in the sky was happening as you began to happen in this world , and that correspondence between the sky and your birth is a significant thing . That's really the main statement that astrology makes .

If we could stand up at the moment of our birth , like Hermes does at the moment of his birth which we'll get to him a little bit later and you looked out into the eastern horizon . Whatever's there on the eastern horizon , as you're rising into this earth plane , that is the sign that is rising with you and that is the ascendant .

And so , as we're wandering along this path , we see this house . Now , what kind of a house is that ? What kind of a house was your birth house ? Was it a little hut in the forest ? Was it a grand mansion ? Was it a sort of a temple ? Was it perhaps not a house at all , but a cave ?

Maybe it's on the top of an enormous hill , maybe it's in a gully somewhere , maybe it's in the forest . Maybe it's in a gully somewhere . Maybe it's in the forest , maybe it's in the jungle , maybe it's in the middle of the city , maybe it's an apartment or a condo . Whatever that is is just for your imagination to take hold of .

Now we walk up to that house and there's a door and there's something written on that door . And what's written on the door is your ascendant . So this is the sign that tells us what kind of a house we're moving into the ascendant . So we pay attention to that sign that's written on this door .

But we know that it's just a sign and we might find other things inside of the house .

Now , when we walk inside of the house , we'll probably find the planets in that house , if you have any , and we might also find the ruler of your ascendant and whereabouts it is in your chart , and then what aspects that makes and what aspects the things in your first house make as well .

So that's a sense , if you're familiar with your chart , you might be able to gather that up and have a look at that . But if you're're familiar with your chart , you might be able to gather that up and have a look at that .

But if you're not familiar with your chart , almost even better , because we're really going to be able to let the imagination , therefore , just run free , and then you can check that out later . As this is the first house , this is really the first threshold .

You know , in the ancient times , underneath the threshold , underneath the doorway , was the limen and this is where we get that word liminal . To cross over that first doorway is to cross past a liminal space and really there's nothing quite so liminal in all of our lives as leaving behind our entire world .

That was our life in the womb , basically all we knew in our existence so far . Leaving behind the womb and entering this earth plane and taking our first breath , losing our umbilical cord one way or another and coming into the hands of somebody who has been delivering us and then given , essentially to our parents or the ones nearby .

So yes , this very moment is the beginning of it all and it actually reminds me of . He's a craniosacral therapist and did some amazing work out of Ojai in California . His name was Ray Castellino and I had the pleasure and the privilege one day to get involved in what he called a womb surround workshop .

It's somewhere mixed between like craniosacral therapy mixed in with like constellations work , and we all had pretty much our turn , moving back into the moment that you were born and experiencing what that was like through the field . It was quite a magical thing .

If you're in the room and experiencing it , you you felt the pure reality of what you were doing , that you were really re-entering that birth moment and essentially that to me is the first house , because that is where we just start afresh and start anew and enter into this life

. According to the Greeks , and then later the Romans , we're not really born alone . We're born with this other self , like the golden self . So the Greeks would call that the daimon , and that was later translated into Latin as the genius , and it was the one that was born with you . So we think about genius these days as like someone with an immense talent .

But actually the genius was originally like a genie , thought to be the one that is born with you , and then part of the task of life was to make a relationship to this one .

So I think entering through the first house and maybe that ascendant is also maybe the first way that you can see like who is this genius , who is this daimon that is also born with me , that is wanting to come through and that is wanting to find also its own place in the world .

The most common word associated with the ascendant and therefore the first house is this word persona , which is the Latin word meaning mask . That rising sign in that first house is the mask that you learn to wear in your childhood .

It's like the mask that you pick up is maybe the mask given to you and it's the one that you craft and work on and in some ways it offers you a certain barrier between you and the world , but also you want to interact with the world through this particular mask . If you break down persona in Latin , there's two words there per and then sonar .

Per is through and sonar , as you can imagine , is like sound . This persona is where the sound comes through . So this is how we interact with the world and where the sound comes through .

So it's kind of like our voice , our way of expressing ourselves and our way of showing up and maybe the clothes we wear , the style we have , the way we talk and the way we are with the world . That is our ascendant or our persona . So this idea of where the sound comes through actually came through in plays .

In ancient Greece and ancient Rome People would wear these masks that had something built in there to amplify the voice . So in a way , that's also the persona or the ascendant or the mask that we wear . It helps us to amplify the voice .

It may not be the voice itself , but it's an amplification of the sound that we have , and so we can see the importance of this particular placement in the chart . We can see also the importance of this mask that we wear .

I think acknowledging that it's a mask , acknowledging that we all need a mask in order to interact with the world , is a very healthy move , because then we can understand that we've worked on our persona for a lot of our lives , but also understand that shouldn't be mistaken for the self .

I think of the self in astrology much more like the sun and maybe the moon and these other parts of you that could be anywhere in this wheel of 360 degrees . But the way that that sun or moon or other parts come through well , it's got to come through this particular persona or mask , and making sure we don't mix those two things up is really important .

Otherwise we might find we have such a strong persona that we can't get it off , like it attaches itself to us and we just can't get this thing off . With this image . Maybe we just ask the question what is your persona ? What is the mask that you wear ?

One way to think about it is it's often what you were rewarded for when you were young , and so you realize , when you acted this particular way , there were certain rewards in it , and when you didn't act that way , there were maybe some punishments to it . So have a think about that . You know , what is this mask that I wear ? Do I have a purchase on it ?

Can I take it off sometimes ? Can I put different ones on ? And maybe even thinking about , like , as you've evolved in your lifetime , as you've grown , as you've changed , and as you've gone in your lifetime , as you've grown , as you've changed and as you've gone through all these phases of maturity and growth , how has that mask perhaps changed ?

What happens when the chips are down and things aren't so good ? Do you revert to an earlier mask ? How are you able to sort of see the evolution of this mask over time ? Do you still use this mask to soothe people around you , or to people please ? Or do you use this mask to get your way or get your uh will across , or how do you use it ?

So that's the uh . That's the question . The other way to think of the ascendant is to think of it as the great I am . So the first house is the I am . But it also creates this tension point with the seventh house , so its opposition also comes into this as well . So , while this is the I am , the seventh house could either be the you are , so

something someone's told you that you are , or even the I am not . So you can see that the persona , just by existing , creates a shadow , and that's what we'll be looking at when we get to the seventh house . We'll look at the descendant , and the descendant tends to be what comes through in relationship , what we otherize .

It can be the shadow or parts of the persona that we disown . This first house really does come back to our , our birth and our first breath , you know , our first moment of taking in something in this world and breathing it back out , and and that's something to really spend some time with about what is this really signaling ?

And so if we go to that threshold , maybe we can just stare at the Ascender that's written on the doorway and take a little bit of time breathing in and then gently opening the door with the inhale and walking through with the exhale , and then we can have a bit of a look around . What is in this house , what is it that we might see in there ?

And one of the images that might help us with . That is the fool in the tarot card , the number zero card . He's a friendly minstrel . He's wandering along , he has a flower in one hand , he looks like he might be about to walk off a cliff and then join the big river of life . And that's how , essentially , every journey begins .

So the full is very much resonant with first house themes . Another way to think of the ascendant is let's say , there's a party on tonight and you're getting ready to go out . So what kind of clothes are you intending to wear ? What kind of way do you want to show to go out ? So what kind of clothes are you intending to wear ?

What kind of way do you want to show up ? So there's this kind of preparation that happens beforehand . And then when you show up to the party , how do you show up ? Are you entering with confidence or are you a bit fearful of who might be there or what might happen ? Do you make a big scene ? Do you kind of slink in ? Do you skip in ?

Do you dance in ? Do you make a big announcement ? Do you sing a little song ? Basically , we think of the Ascended as how you enter the room .

Now , one of the things I mentioned in the episode last week was the idea of different planets having their joy in different houses , and I found it very interesting that , even though the first house is related to Aries , and therefore Mars , it's in fact Mercury who has his joy in this house , and so let's have a little think about why that would be .

Well , mercury is the trickster and Mercury is born at dawn , so that does relate him immediately to the Ascendant . His own son is right there in the first house on the Ascendant , although he's just a little baby , so he's vulnerable . Anything could happen to him . He stands up and gets straight to work .

I've talked about this story many times , but the first move is that he breaks out of his crib . He goes to the door of his cave . He opens the door , sees a tortoise . The tortoise makes him laugh because he's thinking about how a turtle could be this far away from the ocean , and that's just so funny to him .

He lures the tortoise into the cave , telling him it's dangerous out in the world , and then picks him up , turns him around , kills him and then creates the world's first musical instrument and starts singing the world's first song .

So we can hear even in this story how much Mercury or Hermes may indeed be in his joy in the first house , because the first house is really the house with the most potential . It's just the start of the day , the start of the journey , and he loves coming into those threshold moments . Either way , he loves coming into those threshold moments .

Either way , he loves threshold . So in some ways he loves the first house , but I can also imagine him delighting in the seventh house as well as the sun sets .

After all , when the sun set , that was the time that he stole apollo's cattle , and so you can imagine him getting up to all sorts of mischief at any time , kind of twilight time and also , given that we have this sense of persona being the , the way that the sound gets through . Of course , mercury is that in astrology as well .

He's our voice and he's our way that the sound gets out into the world , and so there may be a link here between mercury and your ascendant . If you have mercury in the first house , maybe this is a way . This is a time to to just rest into that and to have a think about that . How is my mercury showing up and has it been able to be in its joy ?

Have I enjoyed having mercury in the first house ? Or has the trickster gotten me into sort of some kind of trouble ? Because , remember , it's mercury that enjoys it . It may not be us that enjoys mercury being there . Birth myths tell us a lot about a character . For instance , hermes was born at dawn , stood up in his cradle and was stealing Apollo's cattle .

By sunset , artemis was born and immediately turned around to midwife . The birth of her twin , apollo Chiron , was born monstrous and abandoned . Pan's mother

also abandoned him and ran away when she saw him , but his father , hermes , adored him . Asclepius was cut from his dying mother's womb and became the god of healing . So whilst we've taken in all of these images of the gods , again go back to your own birth . Do you know about your birth story ? Have you talked to your parents about your birth story ?

Are you aware of what happened then , or other family members or people who might know ? Are you aware of the weather at the time or what was going on at the time ? I remember a very potent moment when my niece was born and I and I was driving in to see her and the sky was this magical pink color .

The sunrise was happening and it was such a stunning sky and I remember that and I've always remembered like I've got to make sure that my niece knows that about her birth moment . So what do the storytellers of your family know about your birth ? What stories do they tell about how you were born and how you came into this world ?

That's always a great piece of information even by itself , but it'll likely tell you something about that first house and that ascendant , how you ascended into this world out of the womb , out of the ocean . The other question to ask is does your name , the name that you were given , does that name feel like it's your name ?

Because obviously , for all of us us that name was given to us by somebody else . So that's where the you are comes into the ascendant as well . But does this name , uh , really resonate with you ? Do you feel it inside of your bones ? And , if not , is there another name that may have been born with you ?

Like just hearing , hearing it in a whisper , like what's your true name ? But regardless that name that we were given , that that becomes that persona or it becomes that first house , it becomes what we present to the world and maybe we have an idea of who we really are inside of that .

So I'm going to do a little sidecar episode for each of these houses where I just explore a single fairy tale or myth just to help elaborate on some of these themes . What I'll be exploring and sending out next week is the story of Rumpelstiltskin .

In the beginning of this story there's a miller and he starts bragging to the king that his daughter , she , can spin straw into gold . And the king's like , oh , oh , really then okay .

So he , uh , he locks her up in a in a room and asks her to to spin this straw big , big mound of straw into gold , and if she can't do it she's going to lose her life .

We don't even know this girl's name , but we know that her father has thrust something golden upon her that she hasn't earned yet or she hasn't done yet , and so she has to do this kind of fast alchemy of trying to turn straw into gold , which of course she can't do . But this little man comes along and helps her to do it .

So in the morning the straw is turned to gold . This happens three times . But on the third time the little man says I'll do that for you if , when you have your firstborn child , I can take him off you . And so this is the story of Rumpelstiltskin .

She agrees to that because of course she's in a panic for her life , and this is often what we do also within the Ascendant is we agree to that persona and we agree that that is who we are , even though that's not really who we are at the deep down , it's really just our mask .

And by the end of this story , the whole task is that she has to name this little man and if she can name this little man , then he won't take her child , and if she cannot name him , then her child is lost . So this is kind of like the name we have and also naming the daimon or naming the shadow as well . So what is it in a name ?

What is the power of a name ? And this is a very first house topic naming and unnaming but we'll go into that more deeply next week when we get into Rumpelstiltskin . So there's a few things when considering this first house .

And if you've come down the road and you've come to the doorway , and you've come to the doorway and you've seen what's written on the ascent , and then you've entered and crossed the threshold with the help of Hermes , what did you find in this house of your identity , this house of the self , but there's also this house of the mask , this house of our armor

and how we interact with the world , this house of the voice , this house of amplification of who we are into the world . What did you find there ? You know , if we have a good look around , what is there ? Is it dusty ? Have you not taken care of it for a while ? Is it a bit old ?

Are there some old masks lying around that you used to wear that maybe don't work now ? Or maybe there's a few masks lying around that you wouldn't mind trying on again just to see if that would work . Maybe it needs a little cleanup or maybe maybe it's sparkling clean . Maybe you need to light some incense or get some new flavors going on in there .

Maybe you need to smudge and , you know , do a bit of shamanic ritual in there to clear it out . Maybe you need to decorate , maybe you need to rest in there and , and like goldilocks , go and try out the beds and see where you can really relax and rest . And a few questions to sit with is what is your rising sign ?

And I've put a link in the show notes for astrocom , so if you're not sure , you can always put in your birth details and you'll find out , as long as you know your time of birth For your rising sign . Do you feel that as your rising sign or is there a resistance to it ?

Do you not want to be that rising sign or are you proud of that particular persona that you have been given ? Another question would be what voice inside of you

longs to be heard ? How do you want to be seen ? And then , finally , what name do you carry ? What is your name and does it feel like your name ? Or , if not , what name would you choose now to carry ? And that might be a hint of the name of your daimon , that other worldly creature that was born along with you ?

So , yes , we , we began with breath , with the spark of presence and with the first house , which is the moment of I am . But once we actually arrive , what then ?

Well , of course , we're going to reach for something solid , and that's when the second house is going to come in , that's when we're going to go to the doorstep of the second , and that's when the self , which at the moment is kind of this ethereal concept , meets substance , and that's when we can ask what is mine and what is stable , what do I value and what

do I hold on to when the winds of life blow . So , whilst the first house is the arrival , the second house is the rooting and that's where we'll go next . I look forward to that .

Meanwhile , before we get into the second house , next week I'll have my little sidecar episode on Rumpelstiltskin , and the week after that I'm delighted to be joined by a special friend of the podcast , someone I really love and admire , who's helped me throughout the years in extraordinary ways Brian Clark .

He's gonna come in and we're gonna talk about the houses from a seasoned astrologer who's been at it a long time and very much mythic , poetic and a beautiful soul , someone that we really enjoy Joining us on the podcast and helping us to extend our understanding of the houses and the house system . Thank you for listening to On the Soul's Terms podcast .

To support the show , please consider leaving a five-star review , sharing with friends or becoming a patron at patreoncom . Slash onthesoulsterms Until next time . The finding of your beauty In the center of my mind . In the center of my mind .