This is the house involved with acquiring and learning to use language. We send text messages, make phone calls, write letters, protest injustices, use hand gestures, make faces, send looks…all for the purpose of getting our message across. On the receiving end, we listen, we nod, we smile, we grimace, we get angry, we get happy, sometimes we cry…all because of someone else’s message.

It takes a tremendous effort to learn what all of those signals are and what they mean. We start learning them as soon as we’re born. From our first interactions with mother, we expand our world to interact with father, then on to brothers and sisters, and then into the world of school.

School! That is the world of the third house. It is a place of being exposed to new information and gaining an understanding of it. We have to exercise our brains to get it. We have to study and memorize all those words and facts. It’s hard work! Eventually, it just becomes natural. We do it without even thinking.

The focus of the third house is the need for mental stimulation from our immediate environment. It is how we keep our minds alive. In the third house, we don’t venture all that far from home or for very long. But these short travels still serve to open new doors. They let us test the waters of new ideas with the safety of our familiar surroundings still within reach.