Cadent Houses

While angular houses generate energy and succedent houses concentrate energy, the cadent houses distribute and reorganize energy. In each cadent house, we reconsider, readjust or reorientate ourselves on the basis of what we have previously experienced in the preceeding succedent house.

Sasportas establishes the defining functional logic of cadent houses as distributors and reorganizers of energy, positioning them as phases of reflective reorientation within the house cycle.

Sasportas, Howard, The Twelve Houses: An Introduction to the Houses in Astrological Interpretation, 1985thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Although a cadent house, and therefore considered by tradition to be ‘weak’, the cadent houses are the birthplaces of thought and the expression of a meaningful life.

Greene challenges the classical deprecation of cadent houses, recasting them as the originating locus of thought and meaningful inner life within a depth-psychological framework.

Liz Greene, Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil, 1976thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The second earth house is the 6th, which is also a cadent house. Therefore, the 6th house adjusts and reconsiders the earth principle. In this house, our resources and skills are compared to other people’s resources and skills.

Sasportas applies the cadent principle specifically to the sixth house, framing it as the domain where material resources and bodily capacities are refined and readjusted through comparison.

Sasportas, Howard, The Twelve Houses: An Introduction to the Houses in Astrological Interpretation, 1985supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

In the third water house, the cadent 12th, we progress from union with a select few (8th) to a sense of unity with all life. We acknowledge the collective unconscious, the collective sea out of which we all emerge.

Sasportas identifies the twelfth as the cadent water house whose function is dissolution of individual boundaries into collective unconscious depths, linking cadency to transpersonal psychological experience.

Sasportas, Howard, The Twelve Houses: An Introduction to the Houses in Astrological Interpretation, 1985supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The subsequent broadening, reawakening, and re-visioning of the self is shown by the 9th house. In Quadrant IV (houses 10-12) the main concern is the expanding or transcending of the boundaries of the self.

Sasportas situates the ninth house’s reorienting function within the quadrant model, underscoring cadent houses as stages of self-expansion and visionary reconfiguration.

Sasportas, Howard, The Twelve Houses: An Introduction to the Houses in Astrological Interpretation, 1985supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

With squares between the 12th and 3rd, the capacity for making decisions or the ability to clearly perceive life may be distorted by deep-rooted unconscious complexes. These need to be examined and cleaned up through a conscious analysis (3rd) of the images and fantasies lurking beneath the surface level of the psyche (12th).

Sasportas illustrates how tense configurations between two cadent houses — the third and twelfth — can distort perception and decision-making through unconscious complexes, requiring analytic reflection for resolution.

Sasportas, Howard, The Twelve Houses: An Introduction to the Houses in Astrological Interpretation, 1985aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →