The 2nd house is typically approached in a fairly capitalistic way, and yes, it is in fact your money and your possessions (and tbh, I could argue that it’s also your work itself, not just the money you make from it, but I’m not 100% ready to commit to this observation). Interestingly, the god Hades is also known as Pluto and Pluto may even have etymological roots in the Greek name Ploutōn, the god of wealth. But there are several deeper layers to the 2nd house. Here, we will focus on the 2nd house as exit strategy.
The 2nd house was traditionally called The Gate of Hades. To understand the Gate of Hades, we first have to see the chart as what it actually is: a map of the sky. Stick with me here.
In modern day, the chart is typically depicted as a circle, mirroring the roundness of the Earth. It is basically a pie chart and the houses are equal, 30º slices of pie that we superimpose on the sky. Throughout each day, every single planet passes through each of the 12 houses. The planets travel clockwise through the chart, as you can see in the video below.
The descendant, which always falls in the 7th house, is the western horizon in the actual physical sky. When the sun is setting, it’s in the 7th house. When only half of the sun is still visible in the sky, that’s when the sun is exactly conjunct the descendant, the western horizon line. After the sun (or any planet) sets, it moves into the 6th house, then the 5th, then the 4th, and so on.
The ascendant or rising sign, which always falls in the 1st house, is the eastern horizon. It is what is literally rising into view in the sky. At sunrise, the sun is in the 1st house. After passing through the 1st house & rising into view, planets will then enter the 12th house, then the 11th, then the 10th, and so on.
When planets are above the ascendant and descendant, they are visible in the sky where you are. When planets sit below the ascendant-descendant axis – in the bottom half of the chart – they are physically not visible in the sky; they are only visible on the other side of the Earth. They are essentially in the “underworld,” in “Hades.” In fact, while the etymological origin of the word Hades is uncertain, it’s speculated to mean “the invisible one.”
The 2nd house sits just below the first house, so the 2nd house is the last house that planets and signs pass through before they rise into view again. This is why it’s called the Gate of Hades: it is the gate between the visible & the invisible. The 2nd house is the gate OUT OF Hades.
What does this symbolically mean?