The Third House: Every day is magic.

I thought it’d be easier to talk about the third house, as someone with their own Moon sign in this area. But I’ve been sitting here, wracking my brain, thinking of ways to coherently explain such a particular experience. I realized that the third house is compromised of two very different topics some may think are not compatible: mundane life, and magic. How could these two ever co-exist, when magic isn’t real? Oh. But isn’t it?

My mom and my aunts have a group chat together called “Mujercitas” (Ladies). They love to try new restaurants together, and they especially like trying to new coffee shops; they are all obsessed with coffee. They’ll sit for long hours into the night, like teenagers without a curfew, playing rounds, and rounds of Mahjong. They talk, and gossip, and worry about each other. My aunt Victoria will even read their tarot cards, which she only does for family and friends. They take deep care into listening, and confiding with one another, giving each other curated advice. If my mom’s phone is ringing, it’s probably one of them calling to see if they’d like to hang out. They are each other’s secret keepers. When I think about the third house, I think about my tías.

The third house is a physical house in the sense that it represents your immediate community. It is a relational house, because the third house is where we come to relate. The third can equally be as mundane as it is full of magic. It is out in the open, in the way that a neighbor can look straight into the window of your home as they take their walk outside, but as private, and covert as the rituals you undertake in the morning before you go to work that no one knows about. The third house is a physical house, and it shapes you as much as you shape it, as said by astrologer, Alice Sparkly Kat. The third house is where we grew up, and where we grow up, as well. 

If the first house is when we were born and the conditions of our births, and the second house is where we discover we are separate entities from our mothers, and thus have our own specific needs. Then the third house rules siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles, because the first people, as you grew up, that you interacted with were your extended family. The third house rules neighborhoods, parks, and your local elementary school, because these were some of the first places your parents took you out into the world, on a stroller or a walk. The third house rules travelers, because back in Ancient Greece, there existed Xenia, the concept of hospitality where it was a moral obligation to receive foreigners, and guests into your home. The third house is called the house of the Goddess, where the Moons finds it joy. The joy schema is a form of accidental dignity, where planets happen to be in houses where it best suits their natural characteristics. Here, the Moon finds the most comfort in the third house, the fastest moving planet in the traditional line-up of planets, in the house where the fastest of our growth occurs. 

In modern astrology, the third house gets the rep of being the house of communication, or writing. This argument isn’t wrong, but it isn’t entirely accurate either. Astrologer, Chris Brennan, says that the third house wasn’t traditionally associated with writing, only by “public places where documents are inscribed” (aka, like your local public library or government building!). Meanwhile this seems to change around the 8th century, around the medieval tradition when people more commonly start to send letters by horse. Now here we have the modern day text. It seems like the third house is associated with communication, not just literally as in the act of communicating, but communication with the purpose of relating to others. People used to send messengers on horse to stay connected to towns nearby, in the same way my aunts call each other on the phone just to chat. The third house is then relational, continuous, always moving, and changing; hence, the idea of it being a “physical” house, and one where we experience a lot of movement. We grow up by interacting with our ever changing, immediate environment. 

Now, how does this all relate to magic? If the third house is the house of the Goddess, then the opposing house, the ninth, is the house of God, where organized religion, and higher educational institutions, such as the university, reside. If the third house is the neighborhood, then the ninth is the foreign country. If the third house is the traveler, then the ninth house is traveling. If the ninth house represents the overt faith of the church, then the third house represents the covert faith of the rosary or lucky charm hidden underneath your clothes, and that you wear everywhere. The third house brings down the magic of the ether, of God and the Universe, into the mundane vicinity of our lives, and hides it somewhere only we can access. We see this happening in our own personalized rituals, like owning a pair of lucky socks or taking salt baths during New Moons. Magic is about relating ourselves to the Universe, and what best way to do that, but by relating to your immediate environment. Through your vicinities, you can have immediate access to the Universe, for example, by walks in your neighborhood, where people go to seek clarity, or listen to God. In this house, our intuition gets some well deserved exercise. 

If the ninth house is overt, then the third house is covert. The third house is associated with ritual magic, in the same way the Moon adheres to her own rituals through her respective lunar cycles. If the ninth house seeks God through overt means such as publicly attending a church, then the third house seeks the Universe through covert rituals, such as lighting incense and praying to ancestors. Even writing in a secret diary is a covert ritualistic process of relating to yourself. Having third house planets is about being able to relate to others, and to the Universe; to be so interconnected with your immediate surroundings, that you can turn lead into gold just through your perspective of what’s really going on around you.

One of my favourite examples of someone with a rejoicing Moon in the third house is Princess Diana, with Moon in Aquarius. She was called the “people’s princess,” because of how deeply down to Earth she was, despite being a royal. She knew how to interact with the people around her. She was caring, never afraid to hug, or to touch, or to show affection. She told jokes, and she laughed loudly, and listened even more intently. The royal family disliked her because she brought a level of magic to mundane life, that stole the attention away from traditional royal protocol. Everybody loved her because you could relate to her. That’s the third house charm. 

If you have Saturn in this house, maybe you find it a little hard to relate to your surroundings, preferring to build walls around your vicinity, for protection. But walls of protection are still walls, at the end of the day. If you have Mars in this house, do your surroundings feel like a check list? Does life always have to be moving so fast? Is enjoyment, pleasure, and the simple act of being still a possibility in your environment? Do you literally feel “cut off” from the people around you? If Venus resides in this house, do you need to show love or be shown love on a daily basis to feel connected to others? Are you the type of person who likes to text loved ones at least once a day, just to say hello? Just to remind them that you’re there, and that you love them. To feel present with them? (If no planets reside here, please check the ruler of the house. The domicile planet of your third house will tell you the conditions of how you relate to others, and how you relate to your vicinity.)

This is where the ritual magic people reside. Here, we find the writers, the bloggers, the gossips, and the people who write really long Instagram captions. The modern day witches who prepare lotions filled with the luck of Venus…and they do work! The people who own a lucky shirt, or piece of lucky jewellery they can never take off. This is the house where the people with a bajillion hobbies exist, always eager to relate to the world by attempting another past-time. The third house is where our closest friends reside, because these are the people who surpass our relation as friends, and become like-siblings. This is the house your actual siblings reside in, because they were the first people you were ever related to. The third house is where we apply ourselves, and relate to our surroundings in a way that expresses (sextile to the fifth house) who we are (sextile to the first house), whether it be with people, or just between you, and the ether.