Rethinking Whole Sign Houses

It's interesting that I've had something of an epiphany regarding Whole Sign Houses, not from directly re-examining my natal chart, but from doing the tarot-and-astrology exercise over on the Tarot side of the forum. In order to fit the Golden Dawn system of astrological correspondences seamlessly around my natal chart, I had to convert from Placidus to WSH to get rid of my interception. I've always considered myslf an 8th-House Sun/Mercury/Venus type, with Mars culminating on the MC and conjunct it. But in retirement, now that I have the time to stretch out in my esoteric studies, I'm finding that the 9th House - 3rd House Sun/Mercury/Venus opposition to Moon seems more representative. Although Mars on the MC in the 10th always strongly defined my career path, it's still conjunct the MC but is now in the WSH 11th House; that one I need to think about a bit more. My old view was primarily a psychological one rather than a more pragmatic one, which I've been moving away from as I explore traditional methods like temperament. Time to fully embrace the new paradigm, I think.

That's interesting!!

I always used Regiomontanus from the time that I started doing horary. I had this picture of nasty Saturn and Mars in my twelfth house causing all sorts of trouble in the background - though Saturn was close enough to the Ascendant to be regarded as First House. When I started Chris Brennan's Hellenistic Astrology course, we had to deal with Whole Sign Houses and so I started to use them regularly. Suddenly Mars was shifted into my First House, Saturn was clearly First House and my Moon was clearly Seventh house. The switch from the 'background to the foreground made a lot of sense when I look at my life.

Mars rules my ninth house of Astrology and interest the spiritual side of life, which was ever to the fore now made that connection so explicit. My MC didn't shift, it's still in the tenth sign of Taurus. Mars and Venus are in a very tight square, though there is Reception, as Venus is in Scorpio. That showed explicitly the difficulties I had in reconciling my interests in Astrology with my career. I had a two attempts to take up Astrology, which failed because I hadn't got the free time to devote to it. Mars also rules my fourth of Scorpio, again I had a real conflict between the demands of work and the demands of family through much of my working life.

I now routinely use WSH, but I don't think it works unless it's coupled with use of the classical sign rulers as the relevant house rulers and then for topical readings - that is the natal chart can be read but if we wish to direct it, then it's likely that we have to use quadrant systems.

Minderwiz said:

That's interesting!!

I always used Regiomontanus from the time that I started doing horary. I had this picture of nasty Saturn and Mars in my twelfth house causing all sorts of trouble in the background - though Saturn was close enough to the Ascendant to be regarded as First House. When I started Chris Brennan's Hellenistic Astrology course, we had to deal with Whole Sign Houses and so I started to use them regularly. Suddenly Mars was shifted into my First House, Saturn was clearly First House and my Moon was clearly Seventh house. The switch from the 'background to the foreground made a lot of sense when I look at my life.

Mars rules my ninth house of Astrology and interest the spiritual side of life, which was ever to the fore now made that connection so explicit. My MC didn't shift, it's still in the tenth sign of Taurus. Mars and Venus are in a very tight square, though there is Reception, as Venus is in Scorpio. That showed explicitly the difficulties I had in reconciling my interests in Astrology with my career. I had a two attempts to take up Astrology, which failed because I hadn't got the free time to devote to it. Mars also rules my fourth of Scorpio, again I had a real conflict between the demands of work and the demands of family through much of my working life.

I now routinely use WSH, but I don't think it works unless it's coupled with use of the classical sign rulers as the relevant house rulers and then for topical readings - that is the natal chart can be read but if we wish to direct it, then it's likely that we have to use quadrant systems.

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I started using classical sign rulers some time ago. What convinced me was the elegant symmetry of the model: going clockwise from Cancer you have Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn; going counter-clockwise from Leo you have Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. It perfecly explained why Saturn rules two adjacent signs. The argument that Uranus, Neptune and Pluto have been more-or-less forced into their roles as sign rulers, even though the match was somewhat contrived, had something to do with it too. I finally gave up on them as co-rulers as well.

I'm still using Regiomontanus for horary work, and experimenting with WSH for natal charts.

Lilly was a bit late in the day for me! I feel like an anachronism here.

I use Alchabitius houses for most things, but when I'm looking at triplicity rulers and cadency from the ascendant, I go by sign. Ditto with most lots, and a few other calculations.

I like the idea of whole signs, it's neat, but I have not found it to describe my life accurately - I desperately wish I had that 11th house Jupiter and 4th house Venus that I've got by whole sign, but events have not borne that out.

For some people, whole signs seem to describe them quite well. For some, they don't. Morin railed against whole signs for pretty much the same reasons I do. Not that I always agree with him, but in this case, yes.

Since things never play out quite the same in any two charts, if it's a chart for someone else, I look at both, and if I don't know the person well, I may ask some questions to determine which house system seems to work better. I don't even like saying that, because it reeks of 'it works for me', which is a fairly pallid reason for anything astrological. But house systems can be perplexing. Maybe that's why there's been so much disagreement about them over the years.

Selectivity

You are your whole chart. You can emphasize different parts of it at differing times to suit your own life-style and decisions. You run your chart, your life. Don't worry about using the chart differently at this stage of life. You are doing it right. Dave

I've not been using WSH long enough to give a categorical answer, and I certainly wouldn't drop quadrant houses entirely. The original Hellenistic system had both, just as it had aspects by sign and by degree. As far as I can tell, all Hellenistic Astrologers used a version of quadrant houses, Porphyry early on and Alcabitius towards the end to forecast the length of life, and this in turn developed into the medieval Primary Directions. So it can never be a one or the other, from a traditional standpoint.

To what extent the 'changes' that both Barleywine and I have pointed to, are due to a 'better' reading of our charts using WSH or can be accounted for by Directions or even Time Lords is something that could be explored. I don't like over dwelling on my chart, it leads to a presumption that things can't be changed and therefore a self fulfilling prophesy. I like the illusion of more freedom, or as Dave would put it, I don't like my decision making being ruled by Astrology LOL.

I do know that since I started using WSH my horary reading has improved a little and I've found it very useful in natal analysis. It's a system that I'm likely to retain but still use quadrant houses for a number of forecasting measures. If I were using Dave's system of Solar Returns, I would use quadrant houses, because it's a Directed system throughout the year. I don't think it would work with WSH. But then Dave doesn't read a SR chart in the way he reads a natal chart. Hellenistic Astrologers didn't read a length of life chart in the same way they read a natal chart. It depends on what you are doing.

To be honest, I wasn't intentionally looking for a justification for applying Whole Sign Houses to my natal chart; I had looked at them before and had reservations. But when I transformed my chart into a tarot model using the Golden Dawn system, having zero degrees on the house cusps allowed the 36 Chaldean decan cards to line up perfectly with the twelve 30-degree houses, just shifted to match my Scorpio ascendant. In that case, the first decan of Aries starts on the 6th House cusp. (This also got rid of the 2nd-8th House intercept that would have made the model unworkable.) Here's the photo of what I came up with. It has little to do with formal astrology, but does make a nice personal mandala, and astrological tarot spread matrix. The cards overlaying the 3rd decans of Scorpio and Taurus, and the 1st decans of Virgo and Pisces show where the actual chart axes fall. The large-size Thoth cards represent the signs on the cusps. I've included Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in the model as well, using post-GD attributions. The rest should be obvious (if you can see it, that is). All of this got me thinking it would be worthwhile to revisit WSH as a useful astrological option.

ETA: Note that WSH moves Saturn (and Pluto) out of the "background" (9th House) and into the "foreground" (10th House), while shifting Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus (as well as Neptune) into cadent houses. I've often wondered whether Saturn and Pluto widely conjunct in Leo in the 10th would be a better signature for my 30+ year career in commercial nuclear power than Mars in Virgo in the 10th was.