The Sixth (6th) House
House of Service
KEY CONCEPTS
- Health and Illness
- Accidents
- Jobs
- Servitude
- Service to others
- Routine duties
- Injuries
- Daily Routine
- Servants
- Pets
SIXTH HOUSE SPECIFICS
Personal fulfillment through skill that is of value to others.
Succesfully Navigated: Fulfillment through the development of a personally meaningful skill that is of value to others.
Unsuccessfully Navigated: Endless busyness at tasks that have no personal meaning;drudgery, wage slavery. Humiliatingly subordinate roles in key relationships.
Illness, Disease, Infirmity
“Ancient sources are clear that the first house and its lord signify bodily strength, vitality , and constitution, while the sixth house and its lord denote illness, disease and infirmity. The ill health, accidents and injuries that occur in this unfortunate house render a person inactive. These afflictions to the life force and well-being were understood as misfortunes of life resulting in weakness and incapacitation. However, a sixth-house planet was thought to be rendered more active if it cast a trine ray within three degrees to the exact degree of the Midheaven or to a planet in the tenth house. If a sixth house planet is in good condition and of the sect, it is capable of suppressing some of the difficulties of the house. A well-placed benefic, for instance, has the potential to transform the misfortune into fortune.”
Service, Servitude, Servants.
“Service, servitude, servants. Work, employees. Sickness. Hygiene, nutrition. Small animals.
Servitude and work are matters that deny the individual imediate gratification in favor of an immediate necessity. Even as the fifth was a house of self-expression, the sixth can be thought of as a house of self-denial insofar as the ego wishes something for itself right now. The sixth pertains to all activities pursued not for their own sake (as in the fifth), but for the sake of something else. “
Robert Hand Horoscope Symbols P.283
Bodymind Connection
The 6th house follows the 5th and reminds us of our natural boundaries and the nneed for clearer self-definition. Like the philosophy of Zen, the 6th house asks that we respect and regain the ‘perfection of our original nature’ that we become what we alone are (no more, no less) and that we live this in our everyday lives. Our true vocation is to be ourselves. Reality has both a “within’ and a “without’ The 6th house explores the relationship between what we are inside and what surrounds us on the outside the correlation between the inner world of mind and feelings and the outer world of form and the body. The traditional 6th house labels, ‘health, work, service, and adjustment to necessity’, al stem from this bodymind connection.
Resources: (#associate links)
Forrest, Steven. (1982). The Inner Sky. 2012. Borrego Springs, CA: Seven Paws Press, Inc.
Hamaker-Zondag, Karen. (1986). The House Connection. 1994. York Beach, Maine: Weiser.
Hand, Robert. (1981). Horoscope Symbols. 1981.PA: Whitford Press.
https://www.hellenisticastrology.com/the-planetary-joys.
Newberg, Enid. (2010)Natal Astrology: An Introduction to Astrological Symbolism. 2010. Seattle Washington: Kepler College.
