Labour in the chart: The 1st House
January 09, ‘24
Capitalism defines labour as the production of goods and services. Yet this doesn’t account for the other kinds of labour that exist such as housework. Capitalism posits monetized labour as the only valid form of labour as it ensures our survival. Yet life requires all kinds of labour to sustain our being. We can use the houses in the chart to recognise this by mapping out different kinds of labour through each house topic. It’s useful to reflect on what kind of labour we naturally gravitate towards and where we encounter difficulty. So, we can bring awareness to how we navigate our own lives and build agency through this by conscious choice. With this blueprint of labour by each house, we can begin to examine our relation to the work we do that is seen or unseen. This blueprint can work as a base for you to overlay your planetary positions. These positions can ask questions about whether that work is something expected, admired, required, unacknowledged, overburdening or neglected?
The 1st House:
The first house is the beginning where we meet the world. Where our mother labours so we can draw our first breath. Where the Eastern horizon lays so the sun can meet the morning sky. This is one of the most laborious houses, as it is an angular house meaning that it contains a lot of dynamic energy.
This house is considered to be one of the most important houses as it contains the Ascendant line, the most personal point in the chart. It is described as the self by most astrologers. To an extent this reflects our emphasis on individualism in western society. In popular culture people are told to use astrology to think about themselves rather than the world around them.
The 1st house is an area of generation. Its labour is the production of ideas in a capitalist world. These ideas are supposed to be original and reflect our individuality. The 1st house also reflects the capacity to know ourselves. Capitalism filters this capacity into a promise of self-improvement, self-worth, ego and selling ourselves as the product. Influencer culture is a branding of self.
But knowing yourself truly and deeply can also make it harder for you to be oppressed. When we truly know ourselves, we can recognise which self-beliefs have come from patriarchal colonialism - the trauma and shame bound up in that - and which come from our spirit. Knowing yourself is a state of love and capitalism also knows this and so tries to monetize it to control it. But you can always love yourself for free, for the good in itself, for no purpose of capital gain.
When you move to meet the world, you engage in a creative act of self. The 1st house is the place where we hold the greatest agency. Although not an active body in the chart, it is a place of being.