The body, temperament and manner of entering situations.
A house does not have a fixed zodiac sign or planetary ruler in this reference. Those popular correspondences collapse two different twelvefold systems and are not needed to read an actual cusp.
3 sourced claims:3traditional
Reading this house
Lilly's topics below tell you what kinds of question this place was used to answer in seventeenth-century astrology. Its position in the wheel is a different piece of information. For an actual chart, read the sign on the cusp, its ruler, any planets here and their aspects together; do not substitute the 1st zodiac sign for the 1st house. The historical medical or social judgements in Lilly are evidence of his practice, not present-day advice.
Lilly starts with the person asking the question, or the person whose birth is being judged: life, stature, appearance and immediate bodily condition. In a mundane figure he shifts the same place to the condition of the common people. His claims about scars and complexion are seventeenth-century judgements, not reliable medical or physical predictions. The lasting distinction is simpler: this is the person present in the figure, before the figure asks about their money, kin or partner.
Paraphrased from Lilly's 1647 list; the period's social and medical vocabulary is documented, not treated as exhaustive or clinically reliable.
Sources (1)
Christian Astrology — Book I, chapter VII, ‘Of the Twelve Houses of Heaven’ (1st house)
The first cusp is the Ascendant, the eastern horizon where a point of the zodiac rises into view. Lilly calls it an angle and gives Mercury a joy here because he connects the head with speech, imagination and memory. A planet in the first house is therefore read in relation to the person and their immediate manner; its sign and aspects still matter. The first house is not automatically Aries: Aries is only on this cusp if it was rising at the particular time and place.
Spatial structure and interpretive distinctions derived from Lilly's angular, succedent and cadent account; these sentences are not his verbatim wording.
Opinions, not this study's and not findings. These were published around 1900 by astrologers writing for a Theosophical readership, and most English astrology since has been reading them. They are quoted rather than restated so the distance stays visible, and each one names its astrologer and its page.
Sun in the first house
The Sun in the first house gives honour, glory, and long life; in the second much riches, but great extravagance; in the third good brethren and fortunate journeys;
Rosa Baughan, The Influence of the Stars,
p. 267 — T. Fisher Unwin, London, fourth edition, 1889
· Project Gutenberg, ebook 42889
Mercury in the first house
Mercury in the first house gives noble thoughts, graceful elocution, and love of art and science; in the second profit by intellectual work; in the third mathematical skill, swift and prosperous journeys;
Rosa Baughan, The Influence of the Stars,
p. 267 — T. Fisher Unwin, London, fourth edition, 1889
· Project Gutenberg, ebook 42889
Venus in the first house
Venus in the first house gives good health, but sensuality as regards the opposite sex;
Rosa Baughan, The Influence of the Stars,
p. 267 — T. Fisher Unwin, London, fourth edition, 1889
· Project Gutenberg, ebook 42889
Mars in the first house
Mars in the first house shows shortness of life and scars on the head or face; in the second poverty and troubles;
Rosa Baughan, The Influence of the Stars,
p. 267 — T. Fisher Unwin, London, fourth edition, 1889
· Project Gutenberg, ebook 42889
Jupiter in the first house
Jupiter in the first house gives a good, happy and long life; in the second riches; in the third family affection and fortunate short journeys;
Rosa Baughan, The Influence of the Stars,
p. 267 — T. Fisher Unwin, London, fourth edition, 1889
· Project Gutenberg, ebook 42889
Saturn in the first house
Saturn in the first house, or ascendant, shows melancholy and many sorrows, and if near the ascendant probability of early death; in the second house pecuniary troubles;
Rosa Baughan, The Influence of the Stars,
p. 267 — T. Fisher Unwin, London, fourth edition, 1889
· Project Gutenberg, ebook 42889
A planet missing from this list is one Leo does not delineate in this house, or one whose passage did not survive its own scan.
Who is quoted here, and who is not
Two astrologers, both writing around 1900:
Alan Leo, whose How to Judge a Nativity is the only
one of these books arranged as a lookup table — a paragraph per planet per
house — which is why everybody copied it; and Sepharial, who
arranged the same material by the question a reader brings rather than by
placement, so only a few of his judgements stand alone well enough to quote.
William Lilly is not here, and not because he was not asked.
Christian Astrology (1647) is the most important book in English on
the subject and this study holds it as a text already — but every scan of it is
long-s blackletter, and the OCR renders the title of its own first book as
“An Introduci ion to Aftrologje”. There is
nothing in it a reader could trust a quotation from. Ripley's
Compound of Alchymy and Anderson's Constitutions get
the same answer elsewhere in this study, for the same reason.