Labour in the chart: The 3rd house
March 13, ‘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 3rd house:
If the second house is where we resource ourself then the third is how we can put this to use for the benefit of others.
The third house is a funny one, it's hard to pin down. It somehow feels a little less singular in principle and more of a collation of associations.
Astrologers put siblings, neighbours, and school in the third house. In traditional astrology the moon has her joy here. The lunar calendar has historically brought people together through ritual.
The commonality between all these things is community. The labour of the third house is the labour we do for the community.
Sometimes this is the labour we do for an institution. In traditional astrology this place is known as the house of the goddess. It's the local temple where people gather. In this age this can manifest as a local system of power such as a council in the UK.
It can also be the labour we do for communities of our own choosing. Because community is diverse this can look like many different things. Organising events for specific groups of people, starting creative collectives, roadside gardening, lobbying a local issue, setting up or inhabiting a space, starting an online reading group, and so on.
So the third house contains the labour we do to grow and maintain these networks. This labour is a collective action rather than an individual one. It's what we produce together.
This house is a cadent house. This means it releases energy. It is the mutual releasing of our energy to work together and collaborate. The second house is where we fill our cup, so we can pour it out in the third.
Because this labour is a collaborative effort it can wax and wane with people's capacity levels. The necessity of community reminds us that our third house labour must be sustainable, with periods of cultivation and rest.
Maintaing networks often functions through dissemination of information. This is one of the moon's main activities as the fastest moving planet. She receives and transmits the rays of the other planets as she travels round the chart. Transmitting and receiving information requires us to be very organised as we need to keep information accurate and up to date.
The third house makes me think of mycellium networks, the labour of it is not the network itself (hyphae) but the electrical impulses that signal the availability of resources.
These networks are what sustain life. These networks, themselves, are alive.