Learning the technique of “turning the chart” to find derived houses can be a gamechanger if you’re looking to pull very specific information from the natal chart, going beyond the basic meanings of the 12 houses. Fundamentally, turning the chart shows the relationships between different parts of our lives, rather than being stuck with each theme isolated in its own house. It may seem like a more advanced technique, but hopefully I’ll simplify the process of working with it for those who are still trying to understand the houses in the first place.
Briefly on The Houses
The houses tell us in what part of our life a particular zodiacal energy will come out, and which basic life themes will be the stage for the action of the planets. Check out my quick list of the significations of the 12 houses here, and profiles of the planets here. If you’re unsure which house your planets are in, look at the numbers on the outside of the wheel of your natal chart, starting at 1 on the left side and moving counterclockwise around the chart to 12. If you’re using whole sign houses as I recommend, each house will also match up with a full sign of the zodiac.
Pick one planet in your chart (look at the meanings of the planet linked above if you need to) and then see where the energy and primary significations of that planet come out in your life by checking what house the planet is in. For example, whatever house Mars occupies in your chart is the arena of life where you’ll learn about confrontation, self-assertion, aggression, and motivation. Is it in the 2nd house, and the arena of money & personal possessions is where you’ll encounter Mars? Is it in the 3rd house of siblings? Is it in the 9th, and you’ll battle with the energy of Mars in university, or when you travel abroad? You can apply the layer of the sign as well, of course, if you’re comfortable doing so.
If you’re more familiar with the signs than the planets, you can do the same thing with them. In what area of life do you experience Gemini, Aries, or Pisces? Who in your life takes on the archetype of a particular sign for you; do you experience the sensuality of Taurus in your partners (the 7th house) or the rawness and profundity of Scorpio with your friends (11th house)?
Derived Houses: How to Turn the Chart
Once you have a basic grasp on the houses, you can start turning the chart to gain more and more specific information, and develop complex webs of connections and relationships. This is how you do it:
1) Looking at the natal chart, choose any house theme. It may be easiest to start with a person: 3rd house for siblings, 4th for parents, 5th for children, 7th for romantic partner, 10th for your boss, 11th for friends. Now, (mentally or physically) turn the chart so that the house you chose is in the position of the ascendent, the 1st house.
2) Renumber the houses with your chosen house as number 1, moving counterclockwise to 12. Now you can find out about any of the house topics for the person (or theme) that you have moved to the ascendent. So, if you want to know about your children’s romantic partner (current or future), you would turn the chart so the 5th house (children) is the 1st house, and then the 7th house from the 5th house—the 11th—signifies the partner of your children.
(Remember, your chosen house is now number 1, so the 2nd house from the chosen house is the next sign. The 2nd from the 2nd is the 3rd, the 2nd from the 3rd is the 4th, etc. The 4th from the 2nd is the 5th, the 4th from the 3rd is the 6th, the 4th from the 4th is the 7th, etc.)
The first image below is just a natal chart. Note the house numbers on the outside of the ring, increasing in counter-clockwise order:
Now look at the examples below. The first shows the same chart turned to the 3rd house and the second image is it turned to the 7th house. You'll still see the natal house numbers (but I've put the derived houses for that topic in red).
Let’s do another example (sticking with people). What house is the house of grandchildren? Well, grandchildren are your children’s children. You’ll want to find the 5th house from your 5th house. Turning the 5th house to the ascendant, what house is now in the 5th house position? This sign and house shows you your relationship to grandchildren (will you have any? will you meet them? what is your relationship to them if you already have grandkids? what can they teach you that you can only learn from them?) Remember that no planets doesn't mean you don't have any of that topic in your life! That energy just needs to come out through the position of it's ruling planet (a whole other rant).
This technique works for every house topic (not just chains of relationship between people). What if you want to understand your partner’s relationship to money and personal property (without just asking them for their chart of course)? Money is the 2nd house, so you’ll want to identify the 2nd house from your 7th house. Turn the chart so the 7th house is the ascendent. The next house—the 8th—is the derived 2nd house, and the sign and planets there (and the ruler of that sign) will reveal what you want to know about your partner’s money. This aligns with the core meanings of the 8th house—other people’s money that you have access to.
Say you want to know about your siblings’ state of health, whether they are likely to experience illness or accidents (6th house). The derived house you need is the 6th from your 3rd house (i.e. the 8th house).
Some of you may be asking an important question right now: if you have more than one sibling, they are going to have totally different health concerns, sometimes opposite ones. This brings us to one of the most useful ways to use the technique.You can turn the chart in order to dig more into the same topic rather than connect two different topics. For example, in the case of multiple siblings, to find your 2nd oldest sibling, you want to find the sibling of your sibling. Start at the 3rd house, this is your oldest sibling. Now the 3rd house from the 3rd house is your 2nd sibling: the 5th house. Your 3rd sibling would be the 3rd from the 3rd from the 3rd (your sibling’s sibling’s sibling) so your relationship to them is shown by the 7th house.
I wanted to check quickly if this works for me since I have 2 siblings. While the illness or accidents of siblings would be the 6th house from the 3rd house (i.e the 8th), the health of my 2nd sibling (5th house) would be the 10th house (the 6th from the 5th). My second brother had a major car accident when he was young, so I looked for some indicator of this in the derived houses. It turns out both my 2nd brother (the 5th house) and his health (the 10th) are ruled by Mars in my chart (Scorpio and Aries respectively). Mars represents both cars and accidents; furthermore, Mars in my natal chart is in Taurus, the sun sign of my 2nd brother, and the sign most closely connected to his accident in that it happened on his birthday directly following an eclipse.
You can continue turning the chart like this ad infinitum. In this way, derived houses are one of the best tools we have for investigating highly specific topics in life.
Just to do an exaggerated example: how I could investigate my boss's mother-in-law's financial situation? By looking to the 10th (my boss), then the 7th from the 10th (the 4th) my bosses partner, then her mother would be the 4th house from the 4th, i.e. my natal 7th house.
You’ll start to notice that several different layers of meaning get grafted onto each house. There are subtle insights to be gleaned from the different derived meanings of a given house relative to another one in the chart. For example, when Vittius Valens is giving delineations for the houses in book 9 of the Anthology, he points out how the 2nd house of money and personal possessions has the opposite derived meaning relative to the house of siblings and the house of parents:
“Relative to the III Place of Brothers [the second house) is the Bad Daimon and the Place of Slaves and Enemies and of afflicting crises. Relative to the IV Place of Parents it is the Good Daimon and the Place of Friends.”
So the 2nd house is the 11th house from the 4th house of parents (the 11th house, called Good Daimon by the ancient astrologers, is considered one of the most positive in the chart, associated with friendship, abundance, and generosity), but the 2nd house is the 12th house (i.e. Bad Daimon) from the 3rd house of siblings. The idea that your personal money and private property (2nd house) has a positive relationship to parents, but a negative relationship to siblings tracks with the reality that money (and specifically uneven distribution of the money from parents) is one of the most likely causes of division between siblings. This was particularly true in the Hellenistic period in which the first male sibling would be the heir to the father’s estate, an obvious source of enmity between brothers and even fratricide (one of the core meanings of the 12th house is hidden enemies).
Seeing that Valens and other ancient astrologers use the derived house meanings to actually further define and ascribe core significations to the houses is a testament to how central the technique is to the astrological tradition. Even without going too deeply into it, I think it can be a fun way to find out more about yourself and the people in your life just by turning your natal chart. Give it a try and see what you can find out! I’d love to hear about anything interesting you come across. If you want to understand the houses or turning the chart in much greater depth, I also do one-off tutoring sessions on particular topics (and, of course, I always take this into account in my natal readings), so feel free to reach out.