The Second House your money and possessions, the things that you value, including your sense of self worth.

The Second House shows the state of your money and possessions, the things that you value, including your sense of self worth.


SECOND HOUSE: This is the House of
RESOURCES and VALUES...
what your personal resources are:
your talents, your inner strength and determination,
your personal possessions & wealth & income,
your tools & mentors & advisors & supporters;
what your personal values are:
your ethics, your morals, your integrity, your priorities, what you "value", what is "valuable" to you;
what you "stand for";
what influences your choices in life, what guides your conscious actions.



The 2nd rules both what money can buy (possessions and material resources) and what it can't buy (talents, self-esteem, and values).


Your 2nd house ground must be worked. You have to transform what you find there. As an infant, this house was a veritable Garden of Eden. Everything you needed—toes, food, and teddy bears--was magically supplied. Yet as you grew, you learned that gardens must be maintained. Vines need pruning, fruit trees must be planted, flowers have to be fertilized. Earth is a paradise, but it's also full of reality. Pests can destroy your garden, predators can steal your crops. If you don't learn how to increase your garden's yield, your needs won't be met, your desires can't be satisfied. If you wait for manna to drop from the heavens, you'll starve.


In other words, you have to get real in this house. You must learn how to use, protect, and manage its resources, or you'll suffer a fall from grace. Anyone who has a problem with money is just plain naive about that.


riting about the 2nd house, Dane Rudhyar makes an important point: We must transform this territory to suit our individual purpose and destiny. (3) If we don't, we're merely servants of the past, agents of ghosts, our lives being lived by our ancestors. Possessions must be used, says Rudhyar. This means impressing them with the rhythm of our individuality--—whether that's material possessions, our natural gifts, or the money we spend. We need to lead in the 2nd house and give its holdings a personal significance (which is how the 2nd truly supports the 1st). Rudhyar advises we dedicate what we have to who we are, for it's being that gives meaning to having. “Nothing is more futile and spiritually empty than having without being, and this is true of all kinds of possessing.” (4)

Using our possessions, including material goods, to maximum advantage is also within the realm of the Second House. Our possessions should enhance our lives and those of others, and foster a general sense of well-being. This brings forth the concept of value, which is key to the Second House. What do we value, both tangibly and intangibly? Why do we value it? Who do we value? What do we really own? What do we want to own? Why? Our effective resolution of these questions is a large part of what the Second House is all about.

Specific possessions covered by the Second House include earned income and our ability to influence it, investments and moveable property (cars, clothing, jewelry and the like). Debt is also part of the equation here, since we own the responsibility to pay our bills. How we view money, the acquisition of wealth (and debt), financial reversals, savings, budgeting and financial status are all ruled by the Second House.

The 2nd house is often described as the house of talents and resources, and planets in the 2nd symbolize those natural gifts which, welded into concrete forms, provide one with a living at the same time as a sense of personal value. Neptune in the 2nd can manage this as well as any other planet, while retaining its necessary contact with the oceanic realm; one does not have remain poor to do it. Neptune speaks to the redemptive longing in all of us. Translated into form, Neptune in the 2nd can reflect a capacity to develop self-worth and material independence through the practical expression of the imagination and the sense of unity with life. The creative capacities of the Hindu goddess Maya - the shaping of “stuff” into forms of beauty - are often innate with Neptune in the 2nd. The eroticism and sensitivity of Neptune may find its way into such talents as music and dance, and Neptune’s idealism may be best expressed through work which betters the lives of others. But the Venusian earth of personal value must be weighed against Neptune’s global vision; otherwise one remains a gifted baby in need of a caretaker, and willing caretakers may be in short supply. The discipline of Saturn is also essential to balance a 2nd house Neptune. How can a musician make music, if he or she can not be bothered to learn the notes, the scales, arpeggios, and the development of an individual style?