the 6th house
The 6th house is a “bad” house. It’s also called “the house of bad fortune.” The 6th is a place of illness and injury. It’s a place of labor and to-do lists. It’s a place of maintenance and entropy. It’s the routines you don’t pick, the schedule you must keep, the job you do whether or not you like it. It’s inconvenient. It’s not what you want. Here, Mars rejoices, maybe because Mars loves a job and there are so many jobs to do in the 6th house.
(This is going to get more positive, I promise.)
the 6th house and creativity?
I asked online which house people have the hardest time linking to creativity and one of the top picks was the 6th. You can see why that might be. But if you leave the 6th house out of your understanding of your creative life, you’ll miss out on a lot. The 6th house articulates our mundane responsibilities and limitations, and those absolutely impact our creativity. Understanding your 6th house can help you be realistic and gentle with yourself about what’s actually possible.
Is it that you are out of ideas or are you just extremely tired? Is it that you’re not a real artist or is it that you can’t expect yourself to have the same output now that you’re caretaking a child or an elder? Is it that you’re not good enough or is it that the healthcare system is punishing and impossible, and so is capitalism, and you have a chronic illness?
As Jeanna says in our lecture, it’s all too common to internalize institutional cruelty as personal flaws and the 6th is where we do that internalizing. The 6th is also where we can see the truth.
6th-house attuned creatives tend to take up these topics in their own work. Maybe they are interested in the body, with all its wonders and abject terrors. Maybe they make work that encourages us to be gentler with ourselves because shit is hard. Maybe they make art that helps us yell and rebel and refuse wherever we can, removing ableist shame and replacing it with fury at the systems that hurt not only us but so, so many others.
The 6th house has a ton to do with creativity even though it doesn’t seem that way at first. Every single house does.
If you’d like to see what I mean, I have excellent news for you.
creativity through the houses is here!
Creativity Through The Houses is a 4-hour pre-recorded presentation by Jeanna Kadlec and yours truly. We are both astrologers who specialize in counseling artists and creatives of all stripes, and this lecture shares a lot of what we’ve learned over the years. We walk you through all 12 houses in detail, offer 5 example charts, and 36+ journal prompts.
some very early praise ☺️
who is this for / why we made it
if any combination of these bulletpoints speak to you, you’re gonna want Creativity Through The Houses.
if you are creative, which is to say if you’re alive, and you like thinking about things with the help of astrology, this is for you.
if you want to see how your whole chart speaks to how creativity works in your life: the specific shape your struggles take, what topics or themes may be most appealing to you in your work, what moves you to make shit in the first place, and more.
if you’re not sure if you see yourself as a “creative person” but wish you were and want to see how that might actually be really true, just not in the way you’ve thought before.
if Stephen King’s On Writing and other writing/creative “how-to” books fucked you up (or, if they helped, but only kind of).
if you’ve ever witnessed how astrology can help you let go of some shitty narratives about how you “should” do things and you’d like to see that happen around creativity. this lecture’s going to do that for you.
if you find the houses kind of confusing or abstract. we’re covering every single one, with example charts, and I promise you that seeing every house through a specific, practical lens is going to make them clearer to you.
if you’re an astrologer who see clients in creative fields and you want to see how creative practices show up in perhaps surprising parts of the chart
if you enjoy learning things with some structure (we’ve got slides!) but also prefer it to be pretty conversational. we have a lot to share with you and we planned it out but this lecture is also two friends talk about a thing we’re passionate about.
if you love a prompt! we have over 36 journal prompts, 3-4 for every house, so you can apply what you’re learning to your own chart.
if you love example charts! we’ve got 5 to help ground what we’re describing and drive it home.
if you loved the finding fulfillment workshop and/or guidebook but wanted to see how the other houses in your chart impact your creative life.
if you have gotten a 5th and/or 11th house reading with me and loved it.
if you have gotten a 3rd house reading with Jeanna and loved it.
who we are
Jeanna Kadlec is the creator of the longest-running astrology newsletter on Substack, Astrology for Writers. She specializes in counseling artists because she is one herself — she’s the author of the hybrid memoir Heretic (HarperCollins, 2022) as well as a yet-to-be announced forthcoming astrology title (!). In her past career life, she founded a lingerie boutique, Bluestockings, that was geared to the LGBTQIA+ community. She's an Aquarius rising with a first house Venus dedicated to doing art (and artistic community) differently.
If you’re here, you probably know me but hey, you could be new so I’ll include my little bio too. Maeg Keane is an astrologer, herbalist, and writer. Maeg is most well-known for their Dionysian 5th House Reading, which focuses on play, pleasure, joy, and the part of us that wants to make things. Maeg aims to facilitate vibrant, thrumming human-planet relationships that support creativity and survival. You can find Maeg writing about plants, planets, and fixed stars over on their Substack, The Gleaming Feast. They also have a forthcoming book, co-written with Sasha Ravitch, about desire and the Hydra constellation to be published through Revelore Press.
That’s us! That’s the lecture! We’re so happy it is in the world. Get it and tell us what you think! Do you understand the houses better? Do you get your chart more? What did you learn about your own creative practices and what might work best for you? Which chart example really stuck out to you? What’d you think of the journal prompts? We want to know!
i would also think that 6th house creativity is like…. you gotta fill those sketchbooks! you gotta do warm-up drawings! you gotta stretch before you dance! you gotta practice chords until your fingers feel like they’re gonna fall off! you gotta throw a hundred shitty pots before you can consistently make good ones!
As a person with Mars in a Capricorn 6H AND Saturn in the 5H, this post and lecture kind of feels like it's just for me 😜