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What the 6th house means
The 6th house in your birth chart governs work, workplace relationships, and health. It describes your relationships with employees, colleagues, and bosses, as well as your place on the team: how much you're valued and respected, and so on. The sixth house has another meaning, too: it reveals your predisposition to illness and recommends a particular lifestyle or the diet you need.
If your 6th house is empty
The natural ruler of the 6th house is Mercury; the house is traditionally associated with Virgo. Even without planets here, this area of life isn't switched off. You read it through the position of Mercury in your chart.
This also means that qualities associated with Mercury will show through in work and health. Mercury is the planet of intellect, learning ability, ways of thinking, and logic, as well as all forms of intellectual connection and communication between people. And, of course, enterprise. Mercury's motto is "I'm curious!"
In the 6th house, Mercury awakens your curiosity about your work and your desire to keep improving your skills and learning new things. It also makes you open to discussion, business contacts, useful connections, and new acquaintances.
If several planets occupy your 6th house
When you feel the urge to work, lie down and the ridiculous notion will pass on its own. You've followed this strategy since childhood, and it has never let you down. Overexertion is bad for the body, and whenever there's a rush to meet a deadline, a good dozen ailments flare up. You learned early in life that a couch is a person's best friend. You've spent your whole life avoiding responsibility and have become a master of the art. These days, it's easier for the boss to do everything personally than to rope you in. And to catch you at your desk, they'd have to stake it out for the entire shift. Behavior like this can't go unnoticed for long. You've become a company legend: people tell instructive stories about you, and the younger generation looks up to you.
You're an excellent mentor, capable of turning the most diligent intern into a complete slacker. In record time, too. Your talent for organizing is considerable: you can be trusted with any party. Then again, the fun tends to start all by itself whenever you're around.
You have no trouble with discipline, since you have no idea what the word means. Clocks stop in your presence, vehicles crash, and old ladies run into the street in herds, so you make it to work around lunchtime. The only way to get you to work is to put you in charge.
Planets in the 6th house
Explore each planet's placement in this house: how its particular energy expresses itself in this part of your life.
What if someone else's planets fall in this house? Then you're reading a relationship between two charts. The 6th house shows which part of your life that person has entered and what they bring to it.
See Also
Marta Winter · Astrologer
Birth chart interpretations and explanations of planets, houses, aspects, and rising signs by Marta Winter.
Put it together in your birth chart
Find your planets, houses, rising sign, and aspects using your birth date, time, and city.