Turned Houses – Twisting the Sky

Now that the house meanings have been covered, there’s another useful trick to houses that is used in interpretation, it’s called turning them.

Turning the houses is a practiced that is based off of the idea that any house can be a First house, describing whatever person or thing falls into that house, but also that the rest of the chart can be considered the something numbered house from that new First house to make new houses.  Sounds complicated, right?  It’s really easier to do than explained above.  The best example of this is the Eighth house.  This house is the house that is said to rule the goods of others, but what does that mean?  Is it because the Eighth house just looked cool to be dubbed this?  No.  What happens here is the Seventh house is counted as the First, then the Eighth house is counted as the Second.  It’s here that the rule is applied to the Eighth house as it does to the Second; the house of goods.  

Another example would be if you were concerned about a sibling.  Siblings are a Third house object, so asking anything about one would automatically call in this house.  So, the chart’s Third house is the sibling’s First house, and you count it as such.  The Fourth house is the Second house from the Third, so when you turn the chart, the Fourth house takes over as the goods of the sibling.  Continuing this pattern, the Fifth house is the Third house from the Third, the Sixth house is the Fourth from the Third, the Seventh is the Fifth from the Third, the Eighth is the Sixth from the Third, the Ninth is the Seventh from the Third, the Tenth is the Eighth from the Third, the Eleventh is the Ninth from the Third, the Twelfth is the Tenth from the Third, the First is the Eleventh from the Third, and finally, the Second is the Twelfth from the Third.  This same pattern is applied to any house, just assign that house the First position and the following house the Second and so on through the entirety of the house chart.

How is this seemingly complicated practice useful?  Going back to the example with the  long-lost sibling, if we were to ask what that sibling had been up to recently and noticed their significator in the Twelfth house, we might be very worried because that could mean they had been arrested and placed in prison.  However, upon closer examination we would discover that the Twelfth house is really the Tenth from the Third, so it’s not saying they’re in prison, but they had been concentrating on their career and perhaps obtained a promotion.  By turning the houses we’re able to look at the situation through other people’s eyes, and perhaps find a way to utilize this information in a way that benefits all parties involved.