While Venus finds its ‘joy’ in the Fifth House, Mars has its ‘joy’ in the 6th house. I see this as a natural development from inspiration, creativity, and the pleasures of the Fifth to the doing the work, creating its systems, and the daily sweat of how we earn daily bread. Mars needs to feel ’employed,’ and the Sixth House is an excellent place to start. In this article, we’ll reexamine the importance of how we live our daily life and do our work.
I also think of the combination of the Fifth & Sixth Houses. In the Fifth, you create the ‘next great American novel,’ but in the Sixth, you edit, proofread and make the necessary adaptations to get it ready for publication. For every great writer, there’s an editor – the Sixth House.
As one of the Houses of Substance, along with the Second and the Tenth house, the Sixth is linked to the systems and routines that enable us to do the world’s work. It’s our coworkers, team members, employees, and how we treat our workspace. Think about your work routine: from how you organize your desk and how your desktop looks to your natural flow and routines you like to perform while working. It’s also your commute and how you engage with team members and coworkers. It’s how you deal with the software you use in your work and the systems and methods you have to do what you need to do.
A place of service
Sixth House is also a place of SERVICE. It’s how we treat those who serve us or us as the ones serving our employers. There’s an inherent hierarchical power position in this placement in the chart. At its deeper etymological roots, service is linked to slavery, and in ancient times, the Sixth House informed us of our relationship to either the slaves owned or the masters, in case we were the slaves. But digging deeper, there’s a further connection from Etruscan times that linked service with GUARD and SHEPHERD. Reflecting on this, we can see how this area of the birth chart illuminates how we ‘herd the cattle’ of our ideas and all that is up in the air in a way that can be cohesive and moves from one place to another – a final destination. I like this idea of pivoting service to how do I SHEPHERD and GUARD the parts of my life that help me achieve what I need?
But if we expand our idea around service, we also see how we ‘service’ (tend to) our bodies, its health and wellness, and our homes, revealing how we tend to all that helps us stay alive and active in this life. There’s an element of getting ‘things done about the Sixth House, even if all that we managed was to fold the laundry by the end of the day.
Having a framework to help us, anchor, in life
When coaching clients come with the presenting issues around time management, organization, and implementation of new ideas and plans, or wanting to be healthier and want to exercise more or eat better – we’re navigating the realm of the Sixth House. Here we need to break things down to a framework, a methodology, and the small iterative steps we can do daily or incorporate into our routine.
A daily activity that opens and closes our days. An easy way to see this is our relationship with brushing our teeth. We do it daily, often without thinking and half asleep. But if we didn’t do it daily, there would be a hefty price to play at the dentist. So while this isn’t a loud and sexy area of our birth chart, the Sixth House has a Virgoan nature to it, where it helps us keep things running in our lives, and disruptions in this area have cascading effects on the rest of our life. When you fall sick – all is interrupted, and the running of your life and work has to be redirected and refocused.
This is the area of our physical health, how we tend to our hygiene (think of the dental cleaning appointment!), our diet, and the habits that we need to cultivate or break so that we stay healthy. This is the Sixth House realm for those fans of ‘life hacks.’ How can I do this or that, eat this or that, so that it helps me feel more efficient, healthy, charged up, and running well? The work in this realm is never finished. It’s the place where we’re in constant self-development and tending. I link this realm to the second part of the maxim, “after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’
Looking under the hood
Career or relationships struggling? Sixth House reveals what we need to do to destress ourselves and what we need to heal ourselves. At times we need to look under the hood of the Sixth House to see how we can improve our daily rituals and routines and focus on health. We may need to sleep more and eat better, and perhaps in doing so, we can show up to our work and relationships less crumpy and stressed.
For highly creative, entrepreneurial, and ‘live in their minds/imagination’ type of folks, the Sixth House can be felt like a prison or at least a real slog. Think of the archetype of the ‘absent-minded professor – that’s an example of a challenging relationship or perhaps a resistance to the realm of Sixth House. The grounding and anchoring aspects of its demands are experienced as a ‘holding back’ from getting to where they want to go. It’s no wonder many rather forgo paying attention to their health and wellness or the framework and methodology that is needed to achieve what they want.
The idea of the ‘daily grind’ stems from this part of the chart, and for a culture that has been nurtured on the thought that ‘the kingdom of heaven is where it’s at, it’s no wonder that we’re so challenged to find value in the foundational simplicity of better understanding why we do the daily rituals that we do, or what type of work system and environment would be most helpful. Plus, a more creatively affirming look at our habits with less destigmatization.
The sacred in the everyday and work as a pilgrimage of Self
In a culture that has commodified our relation to the physical world, it’s hard to reimagine how we are anchoring every day, our relationship with our bodies and our work to moving from a transaction that is to be made, hacked, or forced to an experience of respect, curious reverence and a building of trust.
We approach our health as something that needs to be fixed instead of trying to understand the underlying meaning of our symptoms at an emotional and spiritual level. We want to ‘time manage our day instead of connecting to the archetype of time differently. We see our routines as something to be ‘hacked’ and fixed into a tight recipe, thus missing out on the different types of time (i.e., Kairos & Chronological) and the numinous that we encounter every day if we choose to notice. As for work, we need to move away from seeing it as a path towards ideals of success but as a pilgrimage of self-discovery and unearthing our more profound gifts.
Sixth House: I’m anchored in this world
On a practical level, which is a dimension of the Sixth House, when it comes to examining the link between our purpose and livelihood, we need to understand how this area of our birth charts sheds light on the natural qualities, attitudes, needs, and approaches we bring to our work and how we can best use them towards crafting a meaningful professional life.
If you’re a solopreneur/entrepreneur understanding your Sixth House helps you see what types of systems and framework you need to have in your business and the methodology to teach your team and employees.
I like to think of the Second House as the inner seed that shows us the inherent talents and resources we have to bring to our livelihood journey. The Sixth House is the foundational structure behind the visible reputation we express in the world, as exemplified by our Tenth House.
Lastly, as the last house from the ‘bottom’ of the birth chart, before we cross the threshold to bring forth our gifts into the world, the Sixth House has a preparatory element of putting all the ducks in a row, clearing the clutter, getting your process down, and focusing on what is genuine service. In the Sixth House, we rehearse and prep for the more significant unveiling of the Seventh House, where we face the Other and share what we’ve got and learned.
Photo Credits:
Main image: Ian Dooley
Subsequent images: Merakist, Emma Simpson, Caroline LM, Eutah Mizushima, and JD Mason Via Unsplash
