Fw: Whole sign houses or Placidus ?

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- del iver

samva

Thursday, May 19, 2005 4:56 AM

Whole sign houses or Placidus ?

interesting article

this write-up from an interview by The Mountain Astrologer with astrologer Rob Hand:

http://www.lightworks.com/MonthlyAspectarian/2001/July/conversation.htm

 

.....TMA: It's real interesting to listen to astrologers argue about things. For

instance, if I catch two astrologers arguing about house cusp systems, I take

them outside and point at the sky and say, "Show me lines."

RH: I have an interesting answer to that. In our work in Greek astrology at

Project Hindsight, we made a rather interesting discovery. All of the Greeks

did houses in the same way that the Hindus do, which is whole sign houses. What

they did was, they counted the rising signs. Not the degree, the sign. So the

first house was the rising sign, the second house was in exile, and so forth.

So the houses were actually functions performed by the signs of the zodiac. Now

we call these whole sign houses. I've actually switched to it because I've found

that it gives a more objectively accurate description of the life. The

circumstances of the life show up much more clearly.

The main reason we thought it was a good idea to switch is that it worked

better. But a theoretical reason was when we discovered how modern houses came

into existence. The idea of trisecting the arc between the ascendant and the

midheaven was used fairly early, by the second century at the very latest. But

it was used only to determine whether a planet was strong, medium or weak or

angular, succeedent or cadent. It was not used to tell what the planet

signified. Nobody among the Greeks used it for this purpose. They used the

modern type houses, mainly Porphyry and later on, Alcabitius, only for

determining strength. They would use the signs for telling what the planet

signified.

The one that first we thought was an exception, apparently is the exception, was

due to a mistranslation. Now the problem is, there's a passage in Ptolemy where

he tells you how to calculate the planet that is later called the Giver of

Life. As he describes it, it sounds like he's describing equal houses. The

problem is, he isn't describing houses, he's talking about places where you can

find this planet. There's a particularly critical passage where the whole thing

depends on a couple of two-letter words in Greek, and the manuscripts differ on

which ones they are. So at that point, we don't know what he actually said. To

make matters worse, people looked at this and said, "Well, it shouldn't be done

this way, it should be done this way" and began tinkering with houses. But

again, not for signification. It wasn't until the Arabs that we find

modern-type houses used for signification. By that time, the house cusp

controversy was on full blast....

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