Rethinking the Houses

[sdi]

When I last wrote about the houses, I conceived them as starting with the querent and working outward in distance as we went around the chart. That worked well enough, but I've been starting to properly study astrology and it occurs to me that I really missed the obvious. (Well, maybe not so obvious to us moderns; but at least literal.)

A horoscope is constructed of two main axes, the horizontal and the vertical. In astrology, this is quite literal: the horizontal axis is the ground, and the vertical axis stretches from heaven above to the underworld below, with earth sitting on the horizon itself. So the upper houses of the horoscope (VIII through XII) are literally spiritual (where everything happens but has no form), while the lower houses of the horoscope (II through VI) are literally material (where nothing happens but everything has form), and we human beings live on the boundary between the two. What's more, the earth is constantly rotating, and this causes the ascendant (and therefore the houses) to rotate as well: so the eastern houses (I, II, III, XI, XII) are rising—in a sense, coming towards you, and consequently near—while the western houses (V through IX) are setting—in a sense, going away from you, and consequently far away. These all relate to oppositions: going 180° around the chart, you flip from material to spiritual and from near to far (or vice versa).

That gives us the angles, but what about the rest of the houses? Well, astrology is also intimately tied to aspect: the III, V, IX, and XI are in aspect (trine or sextile, as the case may be) to the ascendant, and so are considered to be working with the querent and therefore good; while the II, VI, VIII, and XII are not in aspect to the ascendant, and so are considered to be working at cross purposes to the querent and therefore bad.

So when you add all these up, what do you get?

1. Here
2. Material, near, bad
3. Material, near, good
4. Below
5. Material, far, good
6. Material, far, bad
7. Across
8. Spiritual, far, bad
9. Spiritual, far, good
10. Above
11. Spiritual, near, good
12. Spiritual, near, bad

[EDIT: These thoughts are continued here.]

Comments

[tunesmyth]

You're making some solid insights here, SDI. May I ask, though, why you didn't make IV, VII, and X "bad", and II, VI, VIII, and XII "indifferent"? From what I understand, that's what those aspects as aspects normally represent. I guess I can understand not considering the other poles as negative so much as structural counterbalances, is that why you don't count them as "bad", and assigning the "indifferent" ones to fill the "bad" role? (Or was it that you were looking for a scheme that fit the usual understandings of VIII and XII being the most difficult houses?)

By the way, I'm curious if you saw my recent comment in Magic Monday about the 8th house (and its opposition to the 2nd house). Those thoughts are very much in line with these-- and respect where it's due, my views are definitely influenced by your prior explorations.

[sdi]

May I ask, though, why you didn't make IV, VII, and X "bad", and II, VI, VIII, and XII "indifferent"?

Great question. There's a few answers to it, though I'm afraid none of them are entirely satisfactory:

• The angles are "primary" and sort of neutral-by-definition, so I treated them as locked in place. So with four neutral houses and four good houses, the remaining would need to be bad to balance out the symmetry.
  
• I definitely had the sixth, eighth, and twelfth houses in mind here, which are traditionally "bad."
  
• Thinking of the sixth house, which generally signifies disease... the diseases aren't trying to harm you, they're just trying to live their own lives and do their own thing, but it just so happens that them doing their own thing is extremely harmful to one's body! So I sort of ran with this intuition across the board.
  
• A lot of this is based upon Chris Brennan's discussion of the planetary joys in Hellenistic Astrology. (It's not exactly the same, but he covers a lot of similar ground in this essay.) I'll cover this more in an upcoming post, but Brennan notes (citing Firmicus) that "the luminaries, benefics, and Mercury all rejoice in one of the so-called 'good houses' that are configured to the rising sign through one of the classical aspects (i.e. conjunction, sextile, square, trine, opposition), while the two malefics rejoice in two of the 'bad houses' which are not configured to the rising sign." So I was sorta following this, though I suppose I didn't consider the angles as "good houses" in my own discussion.
  
• In my experience, "indifferent" and "actively hostile" aren't readily distinguishable, though I do have a pretty powerful stellium in my natal twelfth house and therefore a lot of "secret enemies," so that may just be one of my many idiosyncrasies.
  
• It just "felt right."

Regardless, I agree this is one of the shakier parts of the theory. I could have rested the logic on top of the joys system, but for simplicity I wanted to try and keep it separate and self-contained... still, this should be considered "experimental" and pretty firmly in "wild theorycrafting" territory, so if it pans out in testing, then I'll try to shore up the theory as I go. :)


I'm curious if you saw my recent comment in Magic Monday about the 8th house

Oh, I hadn't, so thanks for pointing it out! For whatever it's worth, I'd put EG's house in the fourth house as well... he hasn't lost it yet! So it still fills the "real estate" role in his life, rather than the "I wish I still had that" role. (Hopefully it stays that way...)

I agree that the personal factor is essential, though. As I've said many times, divination is communication, and we're not all communicating with the same people! So as long as you and your spirits understand each other, so much the better. (In fact, sometimes I worry about how idiosyncratic my understanding of geomancy is getting, since while it makes it easier for me to divine, it makes it harder to discuss with others!)

I thought JMG's comment about the eighth "always pertaining to magic" was pretty funny. I have a couple crowded houses, too! In case it's of interest, I usually see my spiritual contacts or the influences of the stars in the eighth house in daily charts, though I've frequently used that house for lost or forgotten things in questions (with success).