The Twelve Houses: An Astrology Inspired Tarot Spread
Celebrating Birthdays with a Touch of Magic
Our birthdays present us with the perfect time to perform a self-care ritual, to take an oft needed moment of pause and reflection. We can use our birthdays to reminisce on the journey our lives took and how we, as well as our spiritual practice, have grown over the past year. We can use our birthdays as a time to consider all the knowledge and lessons we’ve learned, the experiences we’ve lived through. Then, we can distill all the varying facets of ourselves and our lives into the beginning of a new solar cycle.
In astrology, one’s true birthday is marked as the moment that the Sun occupies the same degree in the sky as it did on the day of one’s birth. This is referred to as the ‘Solar Return’ recalling the divine moment of synchronicity when our very first breath was mapped onto the cosmos.
My Solar Return was this past weekend, and for five years now, I’ve used my birthday as a mile marker for my spiritual practice. It has been amazing to see how much progress I’ve made, how much I’ve learned, and how my perspective on mysticism, tarot, astrology, and spirituality have all evolved in just half a decade.
Creating the Perfect Solar Return Ritual
Each year, I create a birthday ritual to honor my progress, to have that moment of pause and reflection, and to have something to look back on as the year goes by, an anchor, so to speak; something that I can use to ground myself back onto my mystic path whenever I feel lost or disconnected.
My rituals have always involved the Tarot, of course. Over the years, I’ve been developing and iterating upon a birthday Tarot spread. What was originally a shorter spread based on the four elements soon grew to a larger spread based on the eight pagan sabbats, and it has only kept evolving.
This latest iteration is a twelve card spread based on the twelve astrological houses, each of which represents a unique area of human experience.
Astrology is something I’ve spent this past year slowly integrating into my practice. I’ve always been highly skeptical, yet interested in the mythological stories cultures projected onto the planets, and how they weaved together stars to form constellations to remember their stories.
This year I dedicated myself to spiritual learning and education. I had the opportunity to take two remarkably inspiring and informative classes: The Archetypal Tarot School by Mariana Louis and The Divine Art of Astrology by Cristina Farella, both of whom have become my Sorror(s) Mystica, and have emboldened and reaffirmed my love for the mystical.
Now, I present my newest birthday Tarot Spread. One that integrates Astrology with Tarot; macrocosm with microcosm; the ‘as above’, with the ‘so below’.
The Twelve Houses: A Tarot Spread for Your Solar Return
The Twelve Houses in Astrology each represent a different area of life. Together they make up a complete portrait of the collective human experience as lived by the individual soul. In our natal charts the houses describe our attitudes towards these various parts of life, including our skills, talents, opportunities, and shortcomings.
By drawing a tarot card for each of these twelve houses, especially on a day like our solar return, we can paint a picture of our own lives, adding a narrative and a poetic mythology that we can use to work mindfully towards self growth and actualization.
Birthdays are not the only use for this spread, however. The Twelve Houses Tarot Spread aims to paint a comprehensive picture of the querent’s life and can be useful when seeking a broader perspective or when there is no definitive question in mind.
Above is the layout of the spread and keywords for each of the twelve houses. If you’d like to dive deeper, below are more comprehensive descriptions for each houses and how they color the meanings of the cards drawn.
Dive deeper still by looking at the astrological associations of the cards you draw. Each of the Major Arcana is associated with either a planet, zodiac sign, or element. The Minor Arcana are each associated with one of the 36 decans in Astrology, and the Court Cards are each combinations of the four elements. Use these associations in combination with the twelve houses to further explore the meaning of the cards.
The Twelve Houses In Depth:
Card 1 - The House of Identity - represents the aspect of you that is embodied as the traveller that journeys throughout the upcoming year.
This card speaks to your sense of ego identity; how you operate in the world, how you make your needs known, how you consciously react to stimuli; the impression you leave on your environment.
The House of Identity illuminates the outer-most and most visible aspect of your personality, as well as how you regard and identify with yourself.
Card 2 - The House ofValues - speaks to how you express your need for material and physical security. It highlights your perspective and attitude towards wealth, prosperity, and satisfaction.
This card speaks to the skills and abilities you possess to preserve your existence, to have your physiological needs met, to maintain your quality of life, and to accumulate the money and objects that offer you a sense of peace and security.
The House of Values can also represent the quality of your values: what you value and why, how you need to go about attaining the things you value, and the feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction that arise from having and losing the things you value.
Card 3 - The House of Exchange - speaks to your ability to think practically and critically, to intellectualize, analyze, dissect and discern, but most importantly, your ability to communicate your thoughts; to understand and to be understood.
This card speaks to how you relate to and interact with your local environment through spoken and written communication, trade, craft, exchange, and news. It speaks to how you connect with people and things you interact with on a most regular basis: family, friends, acquaintances, and local populaces.
The House of Exchange can also represent your intellectual life. Our own learning, teaching, and communication styles, and how you can work to support your intellect and intuition.
Card 4 - The House of The Home - is where you go to recharge. Where you find a sense of peace. Where you can be your most authentic Self. Where you are surrounded by the people and the things that bring you the most satisfaction, comfort, and happiness.
This card speaks to who you are when you are at home, and how you can support your inner-most private life that none, or few, are ever able to see.
The House of the Home speaks to your attitudes towards emotional comfort and emotional security. It represents your personal oasis, your inner emotional basis. It can also speak to the qualities of your family life, including how you relate to your ancestry, culture, and learned traditions.
Card 5 - The House of Joy - is where you engage with the things that bring you enjoyment. Simple pleasures, creative endeavors, and newfound delights through pursuing your own joy.
This card speaks to how you can better express yourself. It is the desire to be yourself, and the need to be seen and appreciated for being yourself. It speaks to creative expression, doing something for the sake of it, being productive for your own enjoyment, and the creative drive found in love and art.
The House of Joy can also speak to your attitudes towards your inner child. It can illuminate childhood wounds that prevent you from freely expressing yourself and childhood dreams that were stifled long ago. It can also point to your relationship with your own children, or to the way your parents raised you as a child and how those attitudes and behaviors are carried on.
Card 6 - The House of Wellness - represents all things health - Mental health, physical health, spiritual health, and hygiene - the things that you need to do to maintain your mind and body.
This card speaks to your attitudes towards caring for yourself in the most mundane way: through the menial, routine, boring, uninteresting, but ultimately necessary parts of life. It emphasizes your bond with your own physical and mental health, and your approach to self-care, self-accountability, and self-obligation.
The House of Wellness can also speak to your relationship towards work and how you handle responsibility and obligation towards others.
Card 7 - The House of Partnerships - is how you approach your relationship to the ‘other’. It can speak to forming intimate and close bonds with friends, finding our role within your partnerships, relationships, and marriage, as well as what you seek out of such partnerships.
This card speaks to your attitudes towards ‘the other’, your expectations of other people, the boundaries you form around yourself to protect you from others, the things you project onto other people, and most importantly, how you seek to establish harmony and cohesion with others.
The House of Partnerships can show how you hold space for others, how you collaborate, network, reach out, communicate, and how to express yourself through the dynamics of a relationship.
Card 8 - The House of Depths - is the realm of the psychological shadow. It underscores the inner dynamics of sex and power, projection and repression, the things that you must ultimately grapple with as part of life’s obligation. It represents the unconscious attitudes, the anxieties, and the feelings of insecurity that come from asserting yourself in the world, and how we make peace with those parts of yourself.
This Card speaks to our need to understand your own shadow, to explore your psychology, and learn who we are at the deepest part of your being. It is a quest for inner truth, the desire to understand things through intense scrutiny, and by getting to the root of the issue.
The House of Depths can also highlight the more esoteric and occult areas of life you are attracted to. The niche interests and subjects that you seek to explore deeply and thoroughly.
Card 9 - The House of Heights - is where you pursue higher learning and find a connection with something greater. It is a place of philosophy, religion, spirituality, and education, representing how you engage with such formal institutions.
This card speaks to how you find inspiration and passion in the wider world. It is what enriches you, gives you perspective, and connects you with something much greater than yourself. It asks what fulfills the spiritual dimension of your life and how you pursue the spiritual.
The House of Heights highlights your need for growth and expansion, the desire to be more, do more, say more, to be more known and knowledgeable. It can also speak to your attitudes towards embracing travel, new journeys and adventure.
Card 10 - The House of Eminence - is how you publicly distinguish ourselves from others. It is the picture of yourself that you carefully paint and present to the outer world in pursuit of recognition, status, importance, and fame; the impression you create through your highest public expression.
This card represents the conscious mask you wear throughout your public life in order to feel comfortable operating in the outside world. It represents your desire to carve out your niche, to define yourself, and to make an impression on others. It is the neat taxonomies you pigeonhole yourself into so that everyone knows your role and your place.
The House of Eminence as the most public part of yourself can also speak to career. Ultimately, it is the reputation you gain and the legacy you will leave behind.
Card 11 - The House of The Collective - shows the groups, societies, political parties, and allies you align yourself with in order to make an impact on the world-at-large. It is how you pursue your highest aims and ideals through associating, collaborating, and conferring with like-minded people.
This card shows how you establish an intentional community of people that support and uplift each other, and that work together to achieve something greater than any of its parts. This card can show you relate to like-minded people but also how you can break through rigid societal boundaries to better understand people as equals.
The House of the Collective can also speak to how you utilize collective resources and technology for community aims. It shows the resources you have at your disposal that can be implemented to connect, to inspire, and to make a difference in the lives of many.
Card 12 - The House of The Hidden - shows you your blind spots. It is full of the things that go ignored, repressed, or just simply aren’t perceived. It is the hidden fears, anxieties, inhibitions, and unconscious contents that can be crippling for to deal with, but that are also your biggest catalyst for self growth.
This card shows how we connect to the innermost mystic and spiritual dimensions of life: the collective unconscious. It is your need to seek a more profound feeling of union with life through religion, mysticism, art and storytelling. It highlights the role of dreams, mythology, and symbolism, all offering some deeper meaning to discern.
The House of the Hidden navigates you to a more profound understanding of the human experience. It shows how to confront everything that is toiling away in the unconscious, right under your nose, yet kept from view.
