house systems?

[banondraig]

which house system do you usually use, and do you use others as well? i recently discovered that the ancient method apparently was to use the sign the ascendant was in as the first house, without reference to degree. this would make my chart somewhat wildly different.

thoughts, comments?

[Kadynas]

I use Koch... no real reason except that it seems to work better for me... I have a couple planets, namely Venus and Pluto that change houses in other systems, and the Koch just seemed to fit me better so I went with it. :) I also end up with two intercepted signs in my Koch chart, and while I'm no expert on what that means, it seems to be appropriate those areas of my life in my 5th and 11th houses to have that much space. :lol:

[banondraig]

Koch is the big one i haven't tried before. it divides things up by the curvature of the earth, is that right? it has something to do with location, iirc.

i think the intercepted signs are supposed to get lost in the shuffle, as it were. :hehehehe: i'm not real sure about that, though.

according to placidus i have 5 planets in the 3rd. i don't know about all that.

[KEishin]

Koch works by dividing the arc of the AC onto the ecliptic. All house systems work by your location - it's inherent in the system itself.

All systems except for Equal (and a few other lesser known ones) will have intercepted houses. The reason you get interceptions is the based on the distortion of the Earth's surface as you get closer to the poles. The more extreme the latitude, the more likely you are to see intercepted houses and signs.

I personally use Placidus, for the simple reason that it puts my Mars in the 3rd house, while Koch puts it in the 2nd. Being that I'm so much more Mars in the 3rd than Mars in 2nd, I use Placidus. But it really doesn't matter. Many astrologers (me included) will interpret a planet in both houses if it's within 3 degrees of a cusp to see which "fits" better. :)

[punxzen]

i use porphyry, but i cant recall why exactly.

there was this excellent run-down of the house systems and how each works in the humanistic astrologers handbook (i think that is the title), by an author who's name wont come to me

[KEishin]

Are you thinking of "A Handbook of Humanistic Astrology" by Michael R. Meyers?

[punxzen]

Are you thinking of "A Handbook of Humanistic Astrology" by Michael R. Meyers?

ahh yes!

thank you keishin, that was exactly the book i was thinking of

i read it while i was floating around in Austin and thought it was quite good. have you read it?

[Kadynas]

I think that's what Jeffrey Wolf Green uses too... Have you read the Measuring the Night books yet punxzen? :)

[KEishin]

I have read it, but its been a few years. I shied away from Rudhyar (finding him hard to understand), but some of the more modern humanists are better. I have the book on my bookshelf still though . . . :)

[punxzen]

nah i hadnt heard of those books til just now, kadynas

i have had trouble with jeff green in the past, but im not sure why so i think ill give him another shot if i come accross his books again

as far as rudhyar goes, im reading his book called The Lunation Cycle at the moment and am finding it incredibly insightful. his writing is extremely rich with meaning and i find that if i read more than a few paragraphs a day on average it all goes over my head.

back to the topic at hand... do you happen to know anything about the porphyry system, keishin? anyone else know anything about it?

[banondraig]

i've heard of the porphyry system, but i don't remember any specifics about it. :(

[Fluffmeister]

which house system do you usually use, and do you use others as well? i recently discovered that the ancient method apparently was to use the sign the ascendant was in as the first house, without reference to degree. this would make my chart somewhat wildly different.

thoughts, comments?

I use Placidus out of sheer laziness, and when I'm teaching astrology I use Equal House. I'm also doing a medieval course which sometimes uses the house system you're referring to - "whole sign houses". For instance, my Ascendant is 28 Leo. In most systems, most of my first house is in Virgo - but in the ancient method my entire first house would be Leo, second Virgo and so on.

It's probably this technique that led to the idea that house boundaries are "fuzzy" - so a planet a few degrees away from a house cusp can sometimes be thought of as in that house.

The absolute reference guide to what house systems are all about is Michael Munkasey's excellent article here: http://www.geocosmic.org/articles/astrohouse.php?fileref=includes/housemain.shtml

[banondraig]

wow . . . thanks, Fluffmeister!

[Temair]

Porphyry is a very simple system. The Asc is the start of the first house, the Midheaven is the start of the 10th house. The other cusps are simply found by dividing the distance from MC to AC and from AC to 4th cusp into 3 equal parts.

If I remember correctly, Porphyry did not invent the system. I believe Vettius Valens mentions it in his Anthology.