The 2nd House + the Psyche of the Body

Today’s world puts social media, technology, entrepreneurship, and identity at the forefront of daily human experience, things all virtually attainable with the help of the Internet. Where once we visited stores in person, we may punctuate our busy days placing endless Amazon orders. The COVID-19 Pandemic has sequestered us even more. Traditional ways of living across all cultural and industrial fields are being traded in for newer models and methodologies and culture continues to creep away from the past, into an unknown future, one gripped with anxiety and dreams of automation. Consequently, we live in an age of deteriorating relationship to physical space and tactile experience. We tend to pay this price in our mental health. In tandem with this modernity creep, we find rising rates of mental illness, suicide, and a general sense of dis-ease with society and its structures. All of this is reflected in Pluto’s journey through Capricorn and the Great Conjunction’s entry into its air cycle — these days it’s impossible to have an astro-cultural conversation without touching on those. But to look closer, I’d like to take some time to observe Uranus in Taurus, with its reminder of organic disruption, the importance of earth, and through this lens, the 2nd house. In these times it is perhaps essential that the astrologer and astrology enthusiast take a closer look at the earthy 2nd house and what it can teach us about our most direct link to existence: the body.

The 1st house shows us physical traits and characteristics, such as body shape, size, height, what physical activity we do or don’t, our eating habits, automatic mannerisms and ways of being in a physical space. The Moon likewise shows us these attributes. But all of these things aren’t necessarily within the conscious experience of the native. Sure, I can sit down and look at my natal chart, or visit the doctor, or read an article that prompts me to consider my own body as a container. But these actions aren’t necessarily bringing about a relationship to my body. In the rare moment I do bring psychological attention to my body, there is usually a complex undercurrent to recognizing my experience as a living, breathing entity. I am living inside myself; in the same way that I don’t know what my face looks like because my eyes are inside it, I similarly can’t experience the rest of my body wholly. I can hold my hand out in front of me. I can turn my torso any which way, and watch the contours twist and adjust with my movements, following my bones. But I am still attached. I am still connected, only able to know my body from within my mind. And it can be startling, much like staring into the bathroom mirror, suddenly realizing I’m looking back. There’s a person in there. This is the feeling the 2nd house can bring — there’s a body around me. 

Astrologer Clare Martin states in her book Mapping the Psyche: Planetary Aspects and the Houses of the Horoscope Volume 2, “The second house is the house of physical and material substance, of incorporation, our first experience of which is our relationship to our body, what we feel about our body, whether we can trust it, whether we value it or not, and how safe and secure it feels. This will often be a reflection of the way our bodies were - or were not - valued, respected, nourished, affirmed and protected by our primary carers. This extends to our relationship to our possessions, our personal resources and to what we feel we are worth.” Security, accumulation, value, and the body are intrinsically linked. Modern therapeutic methods such as CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) can attest to the fact that living too much in our minds prevents us from living in our bodies, and those consequences are most keenly felt through physical ailment, psychological illness, and an inability to live with awareness for our own experience or environment. When we aren’t in touch with our body, it becomes increasingly difficult to stay in touch with what we ‘do for a living’, how hard we work, how we provide for ourselves — a general sense of meaning in life; the feeling that we’re working toward something.

Astrologer Darby Costello demonstrates in her book The Astrological Elements: Earth & Air that earth signs and houses, such as Taurus and the 2nd house [which share some qualities], are intertwined with the organic stuff of human history, of the Earth’s history, the lineage of people, places and things: “We are such a young species on the planet, and during the last hundred years our interest in our earlier selves has been stimulated by archaeology and the development of new forms of dating. We are continually discovering a whole world of knowledge about our very ancient ancestors from all over the Earth. Through studying bone, stone and ivory tools and artifacts, through studying drawings on cave walls, we are acquiring new notions about ourselves as a developing species.” Where water shows memory, blood lineage, and emotional history, earth shows the more corporeal whispers of evolution and time, especially within the lush forests of Taurus, the earth sign most connected to nature, and connected to the 2nd house. Procreation is how human beings continue their physical presence on the planet, and it is through the sensual, productive, and tactile lens of Taurus that we as humans physically unite to continue life; working our way through the story of the zodiac, Aries, the first sign of the astrological wheel, perhaps plants the seeds of animal instinct and attraction, but it is through the second sign, Taurus, that the act becomes meaningful in a deeper way. It is through the lens of Taurus that we find food not only absolutely necessary, but sumptuous and religious. Food in itself, as an aphrodisiac, becomes a contributor to this Taurean dance of reproduction. It is through the lens of Taurus that we find within our shelter not just a shelter, but the place where we reflect upon the body experiencing its environment. The 1st house gives the body literalism, but the 2nd house gives it meaning and purpose.

With today’s circumstances, it is no wonder that mindfulness, yoga, and self-help techniques, cliche though they’ve become, have gripped the western world as it attempts to hold onto anything organic left to it. Consider observing the 2nd house an exercise in reconnecting the individual to the greater Universe, and the earthiness of corporeal existence. I urge you to pry your eyes away from the screen, reflect upon the conditions of your own 2nd house*, reach out, and touch something, or some one. The simple act of touching a shoulder, or eating a raisin with care, or truly listening to each layer of a musical composition, can put you in contact with something far more ancient and rhythmic than what we tend to interface with in our daily lives. If one can be mindful, perhaps the mind will feel less full. It's possible that Uranus’ transit of Taurus will guide us toward a more physical existence, or at least serve as a reminder of it as air takes the cosmic stage for a time. For now, change might start with the individual before it merges with the collective. And within each individual, we find the 2nd house.

*What to look for in assessing your own 2nd house: Consider planets that fall in your 2nd house [their signs + aspects], the sign that rules your 2nd house cusp, and the condition of the planet ruling that sign.