I know I have spent a ton of time of the 1st house or ascendant. It is a really important house, OK? However, there are other houses in the sky as they say. The second house is one easy to misinterpret. The traditional assignment given it is that it is the house of resources and money. Oh, have a strong second house and you will put Bill Gates in the poor house. Wrong! As is typical for much of Western Astrology that explanation is too pat, too compact, too trite.
The second house resonates to survival. More specifically it resonates to that which we need to ensure our survival…material goods upon which we rely to keep going. Yes, there is an aspect of money especially in a capitalistic society such as ours. Someone with a strong, well aspected second house is going to want more, as George Carlin would say, “stuff.” A person whose second house is badly aspected may fall into squandering money or even hoarding things. However, it is not all about money.
What resides in the second house is the question, “what do I need to keep me satisfied and comfortable?”
A heavily Aquarian second house is going to make a person really not concerned at all with wall paintings and McMansions. A car will have four wheels and an engine, of sorts. Work will be done for the pleasure of work or for the social good it will do and there will be little worries about building a pension. Top off the house with a strong Capricorn influence and that person will be toiling day and night perhaps in a job they hate to have the ability to buy what they want and to save up for old age. If Taurus alights there then hours will be spent a Neiman Marcus and Dolce and Gabana.
Each one of the latter two people will argue until death that all of things around them are totally necessary for them to survive. They don’t do it for the “stuff”. They do it for that inner feeling of peace of survival those goods bring them. That is the key to the second house.
With my Saturn in the second house I hated being a consultant because the paychecks were sporadic and the contract could be canceled at any time. (Saturn is ruled by Capricorn.) I had to build a business – steady and reliable. Now friends tell me to give up all other sources of income and rely solely on astrology. The picture is romantic – living in a small house with few financial responsibilities surrounded by my charts. But Saturn keeps screaming at me – are you nuts, you need money coming in regularly, you need security, and you need to save for your even older age? The idea threatens me at the level of basic survival and I shudder at that thought.
That is what the second house does to us. Pretty important little guy, No?