II · Gate of Hades | The Sky

II · The Second House

The second lies deep beneath the earth, at the bottom of the sky. Counted second from your rising sign.

The Second House

The House of Livelihood

What the hands gather and the household keeps.

The second house governs possessions, money, and the means of livelihood, everything the native owns and earns. Its stark old name, the Gate of Hades, marks it as a place that does not behold the Ascendant, sunk below the horizon and turned away from the rising light. The tradition softened this over time into the plain house of substance and gain.

Classical nameGate of Hades

QualitySuccedent, the houses that follow and hold

Kin by analogy Second of twelve, as Taurus is second of the signs

What the house holds

money and movable goodslivelihood and earningspersonal propertywhat is kept in storeprofit and loss in trade

When a planet stands here

Jupiter here is said to increase substance and open the hand.

Saturn here counsels thrift, holding wealth slowly and with effort.

Hadou pyle in Greek. The infernal name reflects its aversion to the Ascendant in the aspect doctrine, not a judgment of doom; medieval sources simply call it the house of substance.

A house is personal. It exists only in a birth chart, cast from your own horizon at your own hour; the sky holds no second house until someone is born under it. The kinship with Taurus is an analogy of order, not an identity.

Kin by analogy to Taurus ›

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