The 1st House
The 1st house provides most of the information about your outer personality, appearance, and approach to life. It also indicates how you’re perceived by others, immediate conscious reactions, and the general impact that you make on everybody. In fact, this area powerfully influences everything that surrounds you, and it holds the key to the immediacy of your expression on the surface. It is probably more accurate to say that it reflects the way in which you view things and hence becomes the filter for all of your experiences. In other words, all that happens to you must first pass through this point of the chart, and only then will you’ll begin to internalize it. Now, with all of this being said, it is important to remember that whilst this part of your chart is great for analyzing character, it does not say anything about all of your other personality traits. In other words, it may not reflect much of who you are beneath, meaning, you can’t always judge a book by its cover.
Have you ever had a friend who was Miss Congeniality – until you got to know her? Did you ever encounter anyone who seemed standoffish and cold at first but warmed up later on? Do you know anyone whose devil-may-care light-hearted attitude masks a calculating, manipulative mind? And have you ever wondered how you strike other people, especially when they don’t know you well. Your horoscope provides the answer. While your Sun sign may not be apparent to people, they definitely notice your Ascendant. It’s your image, your façade, your surface personality. Whether it clashes or harmonizes with your Sun sign, it describes the way people see you and the impression that you make. Astrology For Dummies
Most astrology books have a section detailing how the 1st house represents the face you show strangers, acquaintances, and people you meet for the first time. More commonly, it is called the ‘mask’ or persona you wear and it often hides your inner personality. In psychology, persona means the personality you will project to others; the term derives from the Latin word referring to masks worn by Etruscan actors. Bluntly put, the world is a masked ball in which people are hiding more and more of their true selves.
The Ascendant (or “Rising Sign”) is almost impossible to sum up. It is many things at one: a symbol of how one acts in the world, the “mask” or “image of the personality” that others see, and a spontaneous energy and attitude toward life that pervades the entire being. Although in some people it is quite obvious, the Ascendant can also be, as Dane Rudyhar wrote, “the most elusive and hard-to-know factor in the birth chart.”