On the First House
birth stories + the contradictions of the ascendant
Floor-to-ceiling east-facing windows flanked the OR where Theo was born. As the doctor cut through old surgery scars to find the top of my uterus, I turned my head toward the light on the glass, tracking the progress of the rising sun, enjoying the numbness and expectation of my lower half, wondering when my son’s cry would mark this cold January morning as his own.
When the morning would mark him, too.
It was snowing the day I was born, shadowed and sunless, the first good day of goose-hunting season, and so in the hours after my 4 am birth, my mother found herself reassuring my dad it was OK to leave her for his gun, his dogs, and the birds. It was OK to leave me for the hunt. The snow was soft and quiet, and I was there with her, and I imagine there were family visitors enough to keep my mom occupied while my dad headed out to the James River, a camouflaged jon boat, wearing his hip-waders against the cold.
I have always been the kind of girl who prays for winter, who can’t stand the sun, who’s never been any good at sticking around for heat, idle small talk, big crowds. I want to be alone, and I want to be alone in my own way, especially in moments where the circumstances require my presence. This, I’ve come to think I’ve inherited from the circumstances of my birth, my father’s slipped-away role of the good ole boy hunter during my body’s first hours. My mother never tried to escape motherhood, except in the moments where my dad’s personality demanded it—demanded her over and beyond her children, an equation that didn’t usually work.
But that wouldn’t come until later, and if we’re talking about the First House of things, we’re talking about those first moments of breathing in a world of light and shadow, away from the womb, away from the woman who bore you out and up and over the c-section curtain.
The First House in the natal chart is the most personal of houses because it begins here: the body brought into the world at an exact time that is your time, at an exact moment that, so the tradition goes, codes itself into your body and soul, an unshakeable part of you. Called the höroskopos, or the hour-marker, by hellenistic astrologers, The First House heralds some essential, embodied part of you, the strongest expression of who “you” is, was, and will be. As Demetra George writes in her introduction to this place in the chart:
“The first house is considered the strongest house in terms of angularity, and the best house in terms of favorability because it signifies the triumph of indefatigable life over death. It signifies zōë, the physical life of the body. In the chronological ages of the houses, it represents birth and youth. The first house forms the main reference point and foundation for the entire chart because it signifies the life of the native in terms of both body and character.”
Modern psychology astrology, concerned as it is with the post-modern fracture of the self and questions of whether wholeness or integration is really possible in a “self sense,” has long equated the First House—and the ascendant ruler of the chart—as the mask the person presents to the world, the contours of the personality that sometimes necessarily hide the deeper fabric of conflicting selves, the ambiguity of selfhood at all.
I don’t actually think the idea of the First House as mask and the First House as the strong light of zōë are incompatible. Or if they are, they offer contradiction in the richest of ways: we are at our most intimate with others when we are performing who “we” “are” for them, mask and reality in a dance together, all Windex and Sunrise in an east-facing operating room.
When I read charts for people, I look to the First House for how they patch body and whatever it is they conceive of as “soul” together in a material way. My Capricorn rising clients and loved ones are always rooting around for the right schedule to guide them toward courage and heartfelt action, for example, while my Gemini rising clients are always dipping in and out of conversations, spaces, and experiences as they seek dualities to parse, pattern out, and tattoo on the “I” of their lives.
We make a lot of the sign that spans the First House, but we learn more from the placement of the ruler of that sign in a chart: My son Theo has Saturn, the ruler of his Capricorn First House, in the first itself. From infancy, he knew what he wanted, how to demand it, even if his parents couldn’t necessarily read the messages of his body. My husband Kiernan has Saturn, the ruler of his Capricorn First House, in the Twelfth, meaning that there’s something about his ability to communicate his embodied needs, his soulful personality that’s wrapped in shrouds, occulted by the shadowiest of houses. People meet him and feel they’ve touched a cloud.
As for me, I like recounting and hearing about birth origin stories in light of the First House. I like imagining the imprint of the first moments of life, how they herald us, how we seek to throw them off, too.
Happy Winter Solstice, everyone! Wishing you light, comfort, delicious food, so much joy.
How To Analyze the First in Your Own Chart
Just as you did in your prior house analyses, start by locating the sign spanning your First House (in Whole Sign Houses, which is the house system I use, this will always be just one sign). The zodiacal sign tells you the style through which you experience the topics of the First House—the embodied self, the soul incarnate, the personality mask we wear in public. We’d expect a person with Capricorn in their First House, for example, to experience their sense of the embodied, true self through the lens of time, structure, responsibility, and climbing. Perhaps they’d work with their hands, turning plaster into sculpture. Perhaps the themes of time, the past, and striving would become personality touchstones for them, obvious fonts of creativity and generativity. Because Capricorn is a cardinal earth sign, we’d say that there is a generative or self-starting material quality to this person’s First House experiences and topics.
Next, find the ruler of your First sign, as well as where that planet is located in your chart. In our example above, let’s say the person has Saturn (Capricorn’s ruler) in the First House itself. This gives us information in a couple of ways. First, by considering the traditional and mythic associations of Saturn—it’s the slowest planet, the farthest one away from earth that we can still see with our own eyesight, it’s cold, dry, associated with limitations and duty—we can learn something about the person’s relationship to their First House topics. Secondly, by finding that planet’s placement in the chart, we also discover which other areas of the person’s life are looped into their experiences of personality, embodiment, and selfhood. With our example, we’d probably say something about how this person’s sense of their growth into “who ‘I’ am” takes time, or perhaps the body grows slowly or gets better with age, both Saturnian attributes. We’d also maybe say that this person could experience a tension between the rules of the personality and the expansiveness of selfhood.
Next, check to see which, if any, planets live in your First House natally. If the zodiacal sign gives us the energetic flavor of the First and the ruler gives us an archetype that the house must answer to, for better or worse, the planets that live there show us the concrete and metaphysical dimensions of our relationship with these topics. If, in our example, the person had their Mars in the First, we would say that they experience the significations of Mars in particularly obvious or embodied ways—think broken bones, inflammation, sudden conflicts. We might say their personality takes on martial qualities, and much more.
This is all base-level stuff! If you want to go deeper, message me to set up a reading or for referrals to an astrologer I know and trust.