More than Money: what the 2nd House is really about
The Vocational Houses (2nd, 6th, and 10th) are related to livelihood, work, and reputation respectively, so they are the most prone to being skewed by capitalistic thinking. What you do for work is who you are and how you survive.
If you search online for 2nd house significations, you’ll likely see many articles about how it is related to wealth, possessions, and personal finances (assets, money, property). This is partially true but it often presented in a way that reinforces consumerist ideals about what success looks like.
However, it wasn’t always like that. In Hellenistic Astrology, the 2nd house indicates what the native needs to survive and meet their needs in the material world, as well as giving and charity. (p. 154 in Hellenistic Astrology by Chris Brennan)
So what does the 2nd house mean today? Values
This term “values” gets tossed around a lot, but what does it actually mean? Your values are an internal guide to what matters most to you. When you imagine a life well-lived for yourself - what does that include? What do you feel is at the core of who you are and who you want to be? Those are your values.
What you value drives the decisions you make about how you use your resources, including your time*. Just as the Hellenistic astrologers recognized, the 2nd house is not just about what you receive but also what you have to give to to others.
*I want to acknowledge here that not everyone has the agency to make decisions with aligned their values all the time because of the way capitalism is intertwined with other systems of power like white supremacy and patriarchy.
Living under capitalism it can be difficult to discern your own values apart from what the over culture says you should value. Which is why I recommend doing a periodic values inventory to determine your core values.
I did my first values inventory during the 2020 Venus retrograde (Venus is the planet associated with values) and it elucidated where I was misaligned in my life leading me to make some significant changes.
There are several ways to go about doing a values inventory. You can set a timer for 10min and free write to see what comes up or use one of these worksheets:
https://positive.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/Core-Values-Worksheet.pdf
https://bhmt.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/BHMT_CC_Life-Values_Inventory.pdf
Once you have a list of your values, look at the 2nd house in your chart. Are there any planets there? What sign is it in? Where in your chart is the planet that rules that sign? These are the astrological clues to your values. How do they match up with your inventory?
For example: someone with Mars in Cancer in the 2nd house and Moon in Aries in the 11th may value being physically active which shows up as playing team sports or leading exercise classes (the Moon, ruler of the 2nd in the 11th house indicates that they enact their values in community or with friends). Or they could value cooking so they make large meals for folks experiencing food scarcity.
If you’re interested in exploring how your values show up in your chart, you can book a reading with me or purchase a Vocational Discovery package where we spend 3 sessions going into depth on each of the vocational houses, starting with the 2nd house.
