The Problem of Houses

I've been meaning to make another post about the astrological houses for some time now but I've had difficulty finding the focus. Before starting I'll link to an earlier blog about house division above the Arctic Circle in which I looked at the topocentric house system.

The trouble with houses is that there's a temptation to view them in the same way as one does the signs. A planet is either in the fifth house or it's not. However, because there's a variety of house systems, this means that a planet might be the fifth house using one system but in the sixth using another. This problem doesn't exist using the tropical zodiac, where a planet's longitude places it definitely in one sign or another. For example, my natal Saturn is in 0°01' of Virgo but it is nonetheless in Virgo and not in some grey area between the two signs.

The confusion arises from having to project the circle of the celestial equator onto the circle of the tropical zodiac and then deciding how to divide up the projection of the former. A radical solution is to abandon the use of the celestial equator altogether and to simply use what is known as a whole house system. In this system, the sign in which the Ascendant is located becomes the first house and subsequent signs become the houses. Figure 1 shows the situation in my own chart:

Figure 1: showing Whole Houses for my natal chart

I have the 25th degree of Aries rising and, while this is marked on the chart along with the MC (27th degree of Capricorn), these two points do not represent the start of the 1st and 10th houses respectively. Instead 0° Aries and 0° Capricorn form the starting points. Some astrologers highly recommend this system but in my own case it just doesn't fit. Using Koch houses, my chart is shown in Figure 2:

Figure 2: showing Koch houses for my natal chart

I've always felt that my Aries planets manifest through the twelfth house. Finding out what's really going on behind the scenes has always interested me and the placement of these planets in the first house doesn't fit me. Another approach, called in Astrolog the Vedic house system, places the Ascendant in the middle of the 1st house, so that my chart now appears as in Figure 3:

Figure 3: showing Vedic houses for my natal chart

This is more acceptable and the MC in this system falls where it will, in my case around the middle of the 10th house. It's essentially the equal house system except that the Ascendant does not mark the beginning of the 1st house. Figure 4 shows my chart as it appears in the equal house system:

Figure 4: showing equal houses for my natal chart

In my case, the difference between my Koch chart and my equal house chart is only slight because of the latitude and time of year. I like the Vedic house system except that I'm so used to the Ascendant - Descendant axis marking the horizontal and dividing what's above the horizon from what's below. I'd prefer it to look more like that shown, very roughly, in Figure 5:

Figure 5: Vedic chart rotated so that
Ascendant-Descendant axis is roughly horizontal

With the Vedic house system, my Pluto moves from the middle of the 4th house to the beginning of the 5th house. Neptune, in the middle of the 6th, moves to the beginning of the 7th. Mercury remains in the 12th while my Venus-Mars lies right on the 1st house cusp and the Sun moves a little into the 1st. Chiron is on the cusp of the 9th, having moved from the 8th house. 

I certainly don't think that the division between the houses should be as distinct as that between the zodiacal signs. With the Vedic system, it's more that the centre of gravity of the house shifts to the halfway point within that house. It's something I need to explore further in my own chart and in the chart of others. No decisions are being made in this post! I'm just exploring possibilities.