The twelve houses
The Sixth House
Work, routine and health. How do I work, and how do I keep myself well?
- Sphere of life
- the daily grind and the body's upkeep
- Natural sign
- Virgo
- Natural ruler
- Mercury
- Type
- Cadent
- Keywords
- routine, service, health, colleagues
The sixth house is ordinary time: the job rather than the career, daily habits, diet, illness and recovery, pets, and the people you work alongside.
Houses are not signs. The signs describe how something happens; the houses describe where in a life it happens. The sixth house is the the daily grind and the body's upkeep — and every chart has one, whether or not a planet is sitting in it.
Angular, succedent or cadent
Cadent houses (3, 6, 9, 12) prepare, learn and adapt; their work is quieter and often internal. The sixth house is cadent.
A planet in the sixth house
A planet here lands in your working day and your body's routines — for better or for strain.
An empty sixth house
An empty sixth house is common in busy lives; the cusp sign describes your relationship to routine. Most charts have several empty houses — there are only ten or so bodies for twelve rooms, so emptiness is the norm and means nothing bad.
Why the natural sign matters
Each house has a sign that belongs to it by nature — here, Virgo, ruled by Mercury. That association is where the house's reputation comes from: Mutable earth: the sign of refinement. But the sign on your sixth cusp is set by your birth time, and it is the one that describes how this part of your life actually behaves.
Your sixth house sign
Find the sign on your own cusp in the birth chart report, then read what it does there: