Rachel Stuart-Haas - The House Your Stars Built: A Guide to the Twelve Astrological Houses and Your Place in the Universe

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Text copyright 2021 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Illustrations copyright 2021 by Rachel Stuart-Haas

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First Tiller Press hardcover edition March 2021

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Interior design by Matthew Ryan

Halfmoon symbol, star symbol, and degree lines by Shutterstock

Cover design by Patrick Sullivan

Texture by Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stuart-Haas, Rachel, author.

Title: The house your stars built : a guide to the twelve astrological houses and your place in the universe / Rachel Stuart-Haas.

Description: New York : Tiller Press, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020044790 (print) | LCCN 2020044791 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982164867 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982164874 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Birth charts. | Zodiac. | Astrology.

Classification: LCC BF1719 .S77 2021 (print) | LCC BF1719 (ebook) | DDC 133.5--dc23

ISBN 978-1-9821-6486-7

ISBN 978-1-9821-6487-4 (ebook)

INTRODUCTION

H ello!

Buckle up (keep your hands, arms, feet, and legs inside the ride at all times) because were off on a journey into the fascinatingand lets face itrather intimidating field of astrology. But never fear, Ill be here as a guide to make this trip way less mysterious, and hopefully a lot of fun. By the time youve finished reading, not only will you have acquired the skills to read your own chart (and have a great party trick up your sleeve to impress your friends and family), but youll have learned a heck of a lot about yourselffrom how you love to what you long for, to career fulfillment to the most nurturing forms of self-care. Our stars invite us to pause, turn inward, and see what paths the universe is nudging us to follow.

I dont need to tell you that these are stressful times. We compare ourselves to high standards set by perfectly curated Instagram feeds and glossy magazine pages. Workplaces are rarely secure and turnover is commonplace. Articles about climate change, social inequality, political bad behavior, disease, and natural disaster dominate the headlines and keep us from falling asleep at night. Technology is evolving at a dizzying pace. While we are more globally connected than at any other point in human history, we often feel lonely. It can often seem impossible to build meaningful, deep connections in a right swipe society.

Negative stress affects our lives almost daily. It can impact our physical and mental health in so many ways and has become so prevalent, that we tend to just accept it as a normal everyday part of life. We all have ways to get through the day, to keep our heads and hopes high. Besides getting more sleep, taking some deep breaths, and eating a few pieces of chocolate, Ive got another tool to keep in your self-care toolkit, a way to find solace and a guide to living your best life: the Stars.

Yep, good old-fashioned astrology.

To practice astrology is to have a huge advantage when it comes to facing fears or periods of uncertainty, creating goals, and shaping your future. Forewarned is forearmed, and trust me on this, gaining insight on how the universe affects you can be a rewarding emotional process. Studying astrology brings greater self-knowledge and affirms not only who you are, but who you are evolving into. Most people find reading their charts not just insightful but also deeply therapeutic.

Astrology can point you toward the best time to go for that raise, to take a chance on love, or to simply make time for yourself. You always have free will, of course, but aligning yourself with the energy of the cosmos will give you a leg up on life decisions big or small. Perhaps even more importantly and profoundly, it will help you get to know yourself better. You spend every one of your trips around the sun with yourself. Self-reflection. Self-acceptance. Self-improvement. These are valuable gifts. The gifts of the stars.

So, what exactly is astrology? Quite simply, astrology is the study of planets, stars, and seasons and their impact on humans here on earth. Learning to interpret this information is a lot like learning another language, and it can feel overwhelming at first. But as you learn to decode the astral codes, a door opens up, granting you a backstage pass to the profound influence of the universe on our earthly lives. Instead of learning how to conjugate verbs or say Where is the bathroom, this ancient language will help you take part in the primordial conversation between the stars, moon, and planets of our universe. Our goal in practicing astrology is to become fluent in the way celestial bodies interact with one another, so that we can interpret how these synergies shape major events in history and our personal journeys.

As far as we can tell, humans have always searched for meaning in the night sky. As evidenced by early cave drawings, even ancient civilizations recognized cycles in the stars and planets and used those patterns to help with quotidian tasks like farming and navigation, as well as guides for spiritual expression. But the roots of modern astrology can be found in ancient Babylonia. Those clever Babylonians noodled out that the constellations appear to move and that these movements worked well as a celestial time gauge if divided into distinguishable and equal segments. Even better, they gave each segment a memorable name. Can we say early branding?

Then the Greeks, who were always a little extra, took the foundation provided by the Babylonians and built on it. One of their contributions was providing us with the term for the ring of constellations first identified by the Babylonians which they labeled zodiakos kyklos or literally animal circle.

ZODIAC: Think of the zodiac as a belt around the heavens. It extends a little bit north and south of the path the sun appears to take around the earth over the course of the year. The stars (and constellations) contained within this belt are divided into twelve segments and compose the twelve signs.

While the Greeks were instrumental in helping define the zodiac, over in Egypt, a mathematician named Ptolemy published a book called Tetrabiblos which basically took all the cool things people were learning about the stars and their impact on human life (including planets, zodiac signs, houses, and aspects) and put it on paper or shall we say papyrus? The Romans, never ones to resist putting their own stamps on things, gave the names to the zodiac houses (Capricorn, Taurus, Cancer, and so on) we still use today.