The diverse third house

Version en Español aqui. Gracias, Señor Shaman!

The third astrological house covers many areas of life that span across diverse fields. It has Giel as its angel and you can work with him with respect to activities related to the third house and you can use Asteria as a guide for that with respect to finding auspicious astrological times for that work. You can also ask him to help you uncover more particularities about this house:

The third house is a cadent one, meaning it covers areas of life the native has less control over. It is also an Air house based on the universal attribution, thus being a house which calls for one to use their intellect. Unlike the ninth house opposed to it, the third house manifests a shallower form of intellect. In this house one expresses their thoughts into words as a means of communicating, but this form of communication concerns day to day activities and in many cases it can be trivial, compared to the ninth house in which advanced intellectual concepts are developed and analyzed. 

But communication means more than talking so many other forms of communication are represented by the third house, such as writing, sign and body language and so on - we have seen how telepathy calls for higher mental faculties. If the ninth house is the house of the higher mind, then the third is the house of the "lower mind" in a sense that it expresses a form of consciousness people experience most of the time. That form of consciousness is not altered (trance state, dreams, etc.), people being their own conscious self (first house). Not that the ninth house constantly manifests an altered state of consciousness, but it is the house that allows the person to experience those states.

Therefore, the third house is where the individual expresses him or herself in the world most of the time and not just by communicating. They can also move around from place to place, which is why this house is also that of travel and commuting. In the case of this house, distances under 200 miles are considered by many as being the higher threshold with respect to travel, anything above that being considered the domain of the ninth house. I have addressed this convention and its relativity in the article on the ninth house. Truth be told, this should not be of any concern for anyone and I believe most people don't give a damn about it. It only becomes important in divinatory practices such as astrology and geomancy, the latter borrowing elements of the former, where increased precision in terms of attribution is needed in order to discern more accurate answers. 

When it comes to distance, the third house can be very flexible if you think about it, since it is also the house of immediate surroundings that gradually become familiar (fourth house) to the native. After a baby is born their conscious mind is somewhat blurry for the most part and their brain starts shifting into operating on Beta waves gradually. The Beta waves are associated with normal waking consciousness, but if I'm not mistaking people run mostly on Alpha (and Theta) waves up to a certain age. This is probably why you will see babies looking as if they are high even if they are fully awake. 

Communication also occurs over distance, which in the distant past was covered by making use of foot-power (one's body - first house). It arrived to its destination in the form of news, the people there being informed of something they were not aware of. Therefore, news in general is covered by this house, regardless of whether they reflect reality more or less, so rumors also fall in this house. This is also the house of lies, since communication is not always frank and people have their motives for truncating the truth. Theft is also covered by this house, since it is the next after the second and thus the area most likely to attract people who envy the person who has more and who want to take things from them. 

Neighbors in general are more familiar with those within their neighborhood, so they are usually prime suspects for theft or for tipping thieves off. There is also the case where thieves steal from places other than their neighborhood, but those who are not idiots know to familiarize themselves with the target and their surroundings before doing "the job" (sixth house). The third house is square the twelfth (unknown and hidden things, secrets) and sixth house opposes it, with the third and sixth squaring each other as well. The tensions between these houses make theft very perilous for the thieves themselves because there is always a possibility someone does not keep the job a secret, they are discovered, etc. 

Getting back to communications, people started using animals as a means of faster transportation over greater distances and we have seen that such animals (such as horses) are attributed to the twelfth house. The invention of transportation vehicles such as cars saw them in turn be allocated to the twelfth house. The invention of writing made it possible for letters to be sent, something attributed to the third house, and news also became generally available in the form of newspapers and magazines. Technological evolution allowed for the invention of the telegraph, then the telephone and radio, ending up with television and then internet. Besides being a means of providing entertainment (fifth house), (the radio) television and the internet (especially) also provide almost instant news from across the world. Phone calls and emails are also third house, as well as video calls and all that. 

Anyway, when you are a baby your immediate surroundings are what you can see in front of you and this is something which, if I'm not mistaking, is not quite much for a certain time after birth. This is because, if I remember correctly, a baby can only see clearly up to a certain number of centimeters in front of them for some time after birth and then their vision gradually starts to adjust to the environment and their brain is able to process more information of what the eyes capture. So your immediate surroundings start from your diapers and pacifier and gradually increase to your baby crib and the fluffy objects (toys - fifth house) you might have received (gift - fifth house), then to the room in which your crib is located and other rooms of the home. You cannot walk yet so it is likely you will crawl your way throughout the room and into other rooms too. This is you experiencing your third house inside your home (fourth house). 

Your parents will start taking you outside and then your third house expands because you will experience your home from an outside perspective, the alleyway leading up to it and into the street. You are likely to see other houses (be they apartment buildings) around or if you live inside an apartment building you will see the doors of other apartments. And gradually you will come across the people living around you, albeit in homes different than your own. These are your neighbors and they too are a third house theme. 

The older you become, the more likely it is you will explore around your home until you eventually become familiar with your entire neighborhood. You can very well start exploring beyond that until you finally become familiar with your entire town or city (or a large part of it) and so one's hometown is also their fourth house - this changes if they change residence in another town, but they will have to become familiar with that town as well. It is also likely you will exit your hometown at least once, like for example when your parents take you with them on holiday. You can go off to the beach, the mountains, the countryside, or even to another town, but from your perspective you have left your home(town) behind and are exploring different whereabouts. And this is also the third house. 

There is no actual real-life spacial delimitation between territories except for borders and state lines and even in that case no actual fence or line on the ground runs across the entire border in order to mark the boundaries where the third house ends and the ninth begins. It is only the different culture of the other country and the legal (or illegal) truth you have entered another country that counts as crossing that boundary. Yet there are cases when the ninth house comes to your third (and fourth) and that happens, for example, if foreign artists perform a show in your hometown (even in your neighborhood) or if people from another country come as guests into your home. These ninth house elements can become permanent, like Chinatown for example.

But there is more to one's immediate surroundings than places. There are also people involved and they add another layer of diversity to the third house. I have briefly mentioned neighbors and people usually interact with them in one form or another. The third house is trine the seventh and eleventh, something which greatly facilitates these interactions. Neighbors can be friendly (eleventh house) or otherwise (seventh house), including situations where they become enemies due to various circumstances. Someone like Señor Shaman and I know these things very well and I'm sure many of you are aware of them at least to some degree.

As mentioned before, neighbors form neighborhoods and these can be grouped into several kinds based on the interactions between the people who compose them. These interactions depend on various social (eleventh house), economic (second house), cultural and religious (ninth house) conditions, not to mention realestate (fourth house) ones. All of these conditions blend and influence each other, resulting in different types of neighborhoods. I will not go into details surrounding this, but I'm sure you are aware there is a difference between those communities (eleventh house) in which people are more crowded and others in which people have greater intimacy (Imum Coeli, and eighth house according to modern astrologers). In the first case neighbors can interact more closely in general and gossip and small talk (both third house themes) are usually favorite pastime activities (fifth house), whereas in the second case not so much. 

This is not to say people in the second group do not practice gossip and small talk with their neighbors, but that it is likely they don't do it so openly as the ones in the first group. Regardless of this, all neighborhoods are their own communities and they can be more united or divided. In many cases neighborhoods stand out from one another, each generating their unique social and even cultural micro-climate - ninth house among the third house, within the fourth house?!

Anyway, as you go about exploring your neighborhood you come across its particularities and become familiarized with them, while they become your immediate environment which expands the more you explore. This also takes place within your family as there are many cases when a baby realizes there is another child or other children inside the house and he or she will learn to consider them siblings - another third house theme. Or the child will get to see at least one other child appearing inside the home and staying for good - their brother or sister. This also applies in cases where the parents adopt one or more children who will become their own child's step-siblings. 

There are also cases someone is a single child, yet at least one of their parents has at least one sibling and that person has at least one child. Cousins are also attributed to this house, as well as relatives other than the parents and grandparents (aunts, uncles, etc.) yet this is also debatable. I am saying this because people who practice horary astrology and many who practice geomancy apply stricter considerations for attributing relatives to houses in a more precise manner. I think you will be able to find out more about that in Lord Manticore's book about rubbing dice (geomancy) he will publish soon. But people are free to rub their dice anyway they want so I see nothing wrong with that. 

Another thing children will become familiar with is education. It is true there are cases where people are illiterate, having never attended school, but those are specific particularities. In general, children start school from a certain age and in many cases they also attend kindergarten. We have seen how the ninth house covers higher education, college and university level, so the third house covers school up to that level, from kindergarten to high school, included. This form of education is considered basic because (in theory) it offers the child enough knowledge they can use later on in life in order to survive (first house) and have at least a decent living (second house). It also offers them a diploma required in many cases if one wants to get hired (sixth house).   

From the perspective of children, school can be thought of as being a job and the square between the third and sixth houses can make things difficult for them. The same applies to classmates who can be seen as being coworkers and the tensed aspect between the two houses applies in this case as well. Not everyone enjoys school and not everyone is good in learning what they are taught in school. Some even abandon school. Likewise, not everyone get along with their classmates. From an horary astrology perspective though, the sixth house is the fourth from the third and so the school would be seen as the child's home away from home, but in many cases that might not apply, while the sixth house from the third is the eighth and it's hard to imagine children "working" with death, unless they're some kind of necromancers. The sixth from the fifth is the tenth, but children aren't allowed into politics despite many would probably be better than most politicians.

Whether in close proximity to their home or at school, children are likely to come across other children, some of them becoming their friends (eleventh house). They are likely to have quite a few activities together, most of them including a form of play (fifth house). The sextile between the third and the fifth house allows that, albeit with a bit of effort, probably because (unfortunately for children) life is not all about playing. Playing is not important for children simply for the fun factor, although it is likely they do not realize it at the time (and unfortunately neither do most parents), but it also plays a great role in learning. Depending on the games they play, children can develop both their mental and physical abilities, something which can prove very helpful later on in life. 

In general, the third house is where people learn the basic elements for pretty much anything, even in the form of play, and what they learn can be useful in areas of life covered by many other houses. 

And by the way, Asteria has the South Node in the ninth house and the North Node in the third house, which is super fitting for a book that seeks to explain advanced notions in a simpler, easier to understand form! 

Edit: I think the throat chakra is strongly connected to this house, if only for reasons relating to communication.

Hate on, dum-dums!

The Great Gazoo