Vocation, reputation, what you are known for.
The tenth house begins at the Midheaven — the point where the ecliptic crosses the meridian, the highest it reaches from the place of birth. Like the Ascendant it is an astronomical fact rather than a convention.
It is also the one angle that does not depend on latitude. The Midheaven is fixed by sidereal time alone; the Ascendant needs the observer's latitude as well. Two people born the same minute in Oslo and Nairobi share a Midheaven and have quite different Ascendants.
Angular, and the most visible of the four. Vocation, reputation, standing — the tenth is the public record of a life, and it is read against the fourth, which is the private one.
Angular, which is the houses' cardinal
Houses 1, 4, 7 and 10 — the four that begin at an angle of the chart. They are where a chart meets the world, and they carry the most weight in every tradition that weighs houses at all.
The parallel with the signs is exact rather than a metaphor. Cardinal signs sit three apart in the zodiac; angular houses sit three apart in the wheel. Both divisions are the circle cut into three, and both put the opening term at the point where something begins — an equinox or solstice for the signs, an angle of the chart for the houses. This house shares its class with the first, fourth and seventh.
How wide it really is
Placidus and the other quadrant systems divide time, not arc, so a house's width in the zodiac depends on which degree happens to be rising — and that changes through the day and with the latitude of the birthplace. Sampled every ten minutes across a full rotation, here is how far the tenth house stretches:
| Latitude | Narrowest | Widest | Mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0° | 27.6° | 32.6° | 30.0° |
| 20° | 24.9° | 33.8° | 30.0° |
| 40° | 21.1° | 36.6° | 30.0° |
| 55° | 15.9° | 41.4° | 30.0° |
| 65° | 6.6° | 50.8° | 30.0° |
The mean is 30° at every latitude, and that is not a coincidence or an artefact of the sampling: over a full rotation each house passes across the entire zodiac, so twelve houses sharing 360° must average exactly thirty. All of the inequality is in the spread, which is why an averaged figure tells you nothing and the range tells you everything. The fourth house has an identical span in every chart, since its cusps are exactly 180° from this one.
Traditionally attributed
Calling, standing, and the public record of a life.
Listed because it is what the tradition says, not because this site can check it. Everything above this line is geometry; everything in it is convention.