Stuck in a Conundrum!

SniperBomber328

Well-known member
See my mystery is this. Why is the 12th House more debilitated than the 6th House in Traditional Astrology? I understand why the 8th, 6th and 12th are debilitated in a sense, but can anyone help me with the above question?

I've been thinking about this in a logical manner and I came too the conclusion that I am stuck in a conundrum! Trad. Astrology indicates that since the 6th House is Injunct the AC (despite being under-the-earth) and the 12th House is in a Semi-Sextile (therefore Combust) from the AC (despite being over-the-earth), the 12th House is more debilitated than the 6th. Seems a good reason sure, but then I look at the 8th House and the 2nd House and see the opposite happening, yet the 2nd is stronger than the 8th (too most Trad Astrologers).

Yet the 8th is NOT Semi-Sextile the AC (therefore not combust) and over-the-earth. The 2nd House (succeedent like the 8th) is under-the-earth and combust the AC. In the logic from the first paragraph, shouldn't the 2nd be more debilitated than the 8th?

Many can argue that under-the-earth houses aren't as badly affected by the sun therefore resulting in the 2nd and 6th being less debilitated than the over-the-earth houses i.e. 8th and 12th. In that logic as well, then assuming the 5th and 11th houses, shouldn't the 5th be stronger than the 11th house (assuming we are using the above logic...so don't get hyper and try to justify the otherwise, I know already).

Of course this is all theory and irrelevant to current astrology. It's just my way of trying to make sense of things (not trying to start an astrological revolution or anything)! If anyone could help me with this puzzle, I would greatly appreciated!
 
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dr. farr

Well-known member
Actually if we look at earlier astrology's grading system for houses, the 6th does get the lowest grade (followed by the 12th) in Hellenist and transitional-era Islamic astrological sources; this continues to be the attitude of Vedic astrology to the present day, ie, the 6th house is the "lowest" grade house.
 

SniperBomber328

Well-known member
Actually if we look at earlier astrology's grading system for houses, the 6th does get the lowest grade (followed by the 12th) in Hellenist and transitional-era Islamic astrological sources; this continues to be the attitude of Vedic astrology to the present day, ie, the 6th house is the "lowest" grade house.


I like your quick response Dr. Farr thanks! A great answer as well, considering my above post put me in a roller-coaster. Glad too know it was at least considered through the ages. I wonder why it was never kept that way? Perhaps the ancients saw the 12th House more debilitated cause of the people who had planets there....another mystery!
 

Carris

Well-known member
See my mystery is this. Why is the 12th House more debilitated than the 6th House in Traditional Astrology? I understand why the 8th, 6th and 12th are debilitated in a sense, but can anyone help me with the above question?

I've been thinking about this in a logical manner and I came too the conclusion that I am stuck in a conundrum! Trad. Astrology indicates that since the 6th House is Injunct the AC (despite being under-the-earth) and the 12th House is in a Semi-Sextile (therefore Combust) from the AC (despite being over-the-earth), the 12th House is more debilitated than the 6th. Seems a good reason sure, but then I look at the 8th House and the 2nd House and see the opposite happening, yet the 2nd is stronger than the 8th (too most Trad Astrologers).

Yet the 8th is NOT Semi-Sextile the AC (therefore not combust) and over-the-earth. The 2nd House (succeedent like the 8th) is under-the-earth and combust the AC. In the logic from the first paragraph, shouldn't the 2nd be more debilitated than the 8th?

Many can argue that under-the-earth houses aren't as badly affected by the sun therefore resulting in the 2nd and 6th being less debilitated than the over-the-earth houses i.e. 8th and 12th. In that logic as well, then assuming the 5th and 11th houses, shouldn't the 5th be stronger than the 11th house (assuming we are using the above logic...so don't get hyper and try to justify the otherwise, I know already).

Of course this is all theory and irrelevant to current astrology. It's just my way of trying to make sense of things (not trying to start an astrological revolution or anything)! If anyone could help me with this puzzle, I would greatly appreciated!
I think I may know why traditional astrologers viewed 12th as negative.

Its about the 6th-12th axis - "In the 6th house there is a strong desire to develop practical skills and areas of personal expertise that can be put to use. In the 12th is the desire to dedicate our practical skills and talents in the service of something greater than ourselves."

So imagine a materialistic person's thinking: "What?! After I spent all this time, money and effort to acquire my practical skills, now you want me to just selflessly give it away in service to others? Heavens protect me from such evil!"

They would be shocked beyond belief that anyone could suggest such a thing. They would not be able to understand that spirituality and selfless service does not mean starving yourself - but rather love, compassion, kindness. A kind word can be more nurturing, strentghening and rejuvenating than all the food in the world.

Not just in ancient times, when there was a desperate struggle for survival, but even in the times of oliver twist, when there was such poverty, hunger and desperation - everyone must have been fully occupied in just getting a square meal a day. No one must have had the time, energy or resources to provide any kind of "selfless service" to others. And yet, people with 12th placements must have had had the strong overwhelming desire to do so - and thus went "crazy" ending up in an institution or worse. The illiteracy and lack of information, communication and knowledge would have made things worse - I know because knowledge is what saved me.

So those ancient astrologers were just very materialistic people with an elitist frame of mind - "selflessness" was what they found "obscure and mysterious" - nothing else.
 
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dr. farr

Well-known member
I do believe that many of ancient astrologers were often very literalistic and materialistic in their outlook and in the meanings they ascribed to various astrological considerations. Waybread, in other threads, has made a similar point. This is not to denigrate them, but rather to try to understand the "mind set" many of them had.
 

Lin

Well-known member
I'm going to answer you in a non-specific way.

The cadent houses, 3,6,9,12 are mutable houses as they are connected to the cadent signs. the are not "debilitated" unless they have difficult planetary aspects connected to them (or their cusp ruler.)

They are not houses of "action" or "identity" but of thought and reflection. They have limited physical power. But they do have power, their own type of power.

the 12th house is the hardest to understand and there are whole books written about it. It's important to study the 12th house if you are studying astrology.

Books about the 12th are available. Ask others who have studied the 12th who they have read. I like Donna Cunningham, she has written a good book on the 12th. But there are manyothers.
LIN
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
Hellenistically, the 12th house is 'cadent', a translation from 'apoklima' which literally means "falling" or "declining" - that's because cadent houses were viewed as falling away from the strength of the angular houses. Angular houses were considered the most influential because of their relationship to the Ascendant therefore Cadent houses were considered to lack influence. For those reasons, cadent houses are considered by astrologers as less fertile aka 'productive' places than either angular or succedent houses and therefore generally less powerful and/or comfortable places for planets

An example from ancient sources is Paulus Alexandrinus who remarks of cadent houses: "stars found in these zoidia (3, 6, 9 and 12) become inharmonious. And sometimes they bring about hostile conditions, sometimes separations and banishments..."


BUT there are conditions when a planet in a cadent house can be brought up to its full strength - for example, by a reasonably close trine to a benefic planet, such as Jupiter


The idea of cadent houses being somehow weak and ineffective persists in medieval and Renaissance astrologers such as Guido Bonatti and William Lilly, who describe cadent houses as being "poor and of little efficacy.”

re: your question as to why the 12th is considered worse than the 6th... fwiw


1. A planet in 6th (although cadent) can trine the MC BUT a planet in 12th can only sextile the MC.

2. Although a planet in 12th house can trine IC the MC is considered more powerful than the IC
:smile:
 

Carris

Well-known member
And yet the Gauquelin research found that planets in 12th and 9th indicated career or vocation of the person. Not in 1st or 10th.

For example, saturn and mars were found the most in 12th and 9th in charts of prominent scientists and doctors.
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
And yet the Gauquelin research found that planets in 12th and 9th indicated career or vocation of the person. Not in 1st or 10th.

For example, saturn and mars were found the most in 12th and 9th in charts of prominent scientists and doctors.
The reliability of the birth times of the Gauquelin research has been questioned... if time of birth inaccurate then the results are questionable :smile:
 

Carris

Well-known member
The reliability of the birth times of the Gauquelin research has been questioned... if time of birth inaccurate then the results are questionable :smile:
Then I would also question the reliability of ancient astrologers who made all these assumptions about planets in 12th not being able to "aspect" the ascendent.

What rigourous large scale research did they do? No one could afford clocks and watches in those times - how accurate were their birth times? How could they make these postulations and theories and claims without any statistical evidence or research?
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
Then I would also question the reliability of ancient astrologers who made all these assumptions about planets in 12th not being able to "aspect" the ascendent.

What rigourous large scale research did they do? No one could afford clocks and watches in those times - how accurate were their birth times? How could they make these postulations and theories and claims without any statistical evidence or research?
Good idea to question everything :smile:
 

Carris

Well-known member
Hellenistically, the 12th house is 'cadent', a translation from 'apoklima' which literally means "falling" or "declining" - that's because cadent houses were viewed as falling away from the strength of the angular houses. Angular houses were considered the most influential because of their relationship to the Ascendant therefore Cadent houses were considered to lack influence. For those reasons, cadent houses are considered by astrologers as less fertile aka 'productive' places than either angular or succedent houses and therefore generally less powerful and/or comfortable places for planets

An example from ancient sources is Paulus Alexandrinus who remarks of cadent houses: "stars found in these zoidia (3, 6, 9 and 12) become inharmonious. And sometimes they bring about hostile conditions, sometimes separations and banishments..."

BUT there are conditions when a planet in a cadent house can be brought up to its full strength - for example, by a reasonably close trine to a benefic planet, such as Jupiter

The idea of cadent houses being somehow weak and ineffective persists in medieval and Renaissance astrologers such as Guido Bonatti and William Lilly, who describe cadent houses as being "poor and of little efficacy.”

re: your question as to why the 12th is considered worse than the 6th... fwiw

1. A planet in 6th (although cadent) can trine the MC BUT a planet in 12th can only sextile the MC.

2. Although a planet in 12th house can trine IC the MC is considered more powerful than the IC :smile:

But when people confidently quote ancient astrology and denigrate and question Gauquelin's work - they make it sound like the ancient theories and conjectures are somehow better and more authoritative than modern research. Which is completely untrue.

And these ancient books are just theories and conjectures - for example why is a 60 degree angle considered more harmonious than a 90 degree angle? How did the idea of triplicities and quadruplicities come up? Were they just sitting around playing with geometry? Were these just psychological tricks to be played upon people - by telling them that they are unlucky it would become a self fulfilling prophecy.
 

dr. farr

Well-known member
I would have to point out the parameters regarding houses involved in the Gauquelin research vs the parameters used by the ancients: that is, the Gauquelin research looked at quadrant house systems only, whereas the ancients (prior to the 8th century AD) used non-quadrant whole sign houses: in MANY instances, planets which are in the quadrant-systems 12th house (and often too, the 9th house) in WHOLE SIGN, are instead in the 1st house (or 10th house)
For me, the real question is, not the value of the Gauqelin research, but rather the ramifications of this very different understanding of what constitutes the first house (and the 10th house) existing between early whole sign format astrology and the later quadrant house systems (universally used in Western astrology after the 8th century AD) which were EXCLUSIVELY studied in the 20th century Gauqelin research work.

(As I have mentioned in a post on another thread about Gauqelin sectors, the Gauqelins did not know that such a thing as whole sign format ever even existed; nor did Western astrology know this, during that time period, except for a very few academic researchers; I shall also note that the non-quadrant Equal house format, which was known during that time, does NOT yield the same house results as whole sign does, and actually pretty much gives results similar to the quadrant house formats)
 
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Carris

Well-known member
I would have to point out the parameters regarding houses involved in the Gauquelin research vs the parameters used by the ancients: that is, the Gauquelin research looked at quadrant house systems only, whereas the ancients (prior to the 8th century AD) used non-quadrant whole sign houses: in MANY instances, planets which are in the quadrant-systems 12th house (and often too, the 9th house) in WHOLE SIGN, are instead in the 1st house (or 10th house)
For me, the real question is, not the value of the Gauqelin research, but rather the ramifications of this very different understanding of what constitutes the first house (and the 10th house) existing between early whole sign format astrology and the later quadrant house systems (universally used in Western astrology after the 8th century AD) which were EXCLUSIVELY studied in the 20th century Gauqelin research work.

(As I have mentioned in a post on another thread about Gauqelin sectors, the Gauqelins did not know that such a thing as whole sign format ever even existed; nor did Western astrology know this, during that time period, except for a very few academic researchers; I shall also note that the non-quadrant Equal house format, which was known during that time, does NOT yield the same house results as whole sign does, and actually pretty much gives results similar to the quadrant house formats)

But Dr Farr - What if the gauquelin planets were still in 12th and 9th even with whole house systems? Like my saturn is in gemini in 12th whereas my ascendant is cancer - in both placidus and whole it is in the 12th - even the ancients would say that my saturn is in the 12th. If you see the gauquelin statistical mapping diagram it is very clear that the planets are in 12th and 9th.

And Gauquelin found that zodiac signs have no statistical significance at all! So whole house system does not really make sense.

Quote:

"Gauquelin's own conclusions were subject to change throughout the course of his life due to his research over several decades, and in the beginning after his initial studies he was very critical of certain widely accepted beliefs in astrology, particularly the zodiacal signs, which he extensively tested without finding results:
"It is now quite certain that the signs in the sky which presided over our births have no power whatever to decide our fates, to affect our hereditary characteristics, or to play any part, however humble, in the totality of effects, random or otherwise, which form the fabric of our lives and mould our impulses to action." (The Scientific Basis for Astrology, 1970)"

Who came up with the idea of 12 equal zodiac signs or constellations around the sky? When there is actually no such thing?
 
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tsmall

Premium Member
Trad. Astrology indicates that since the 6th House is Injunct the AC (despite being under-the-earth) and the 12th House is in a Semi-Sextile (therefore Combust) from the AC (despite being over-the-earth), the 12th House is more debilitated than the 6th.

Just a couple of notes here. Traditional astrology doesn't use the semi-sextile (30*) aspect. So planets in the 12th are in aversion to the ASC. Also, there is not to my knowlege any way for anything to be "combust" the ASC. Unless someone here has read something about this? Combustion I think only happens with the Sun. The ASC is a point. It casts no rays.
 

Moog

Well-known member
But when people confidently quote ancient astrology and denigrate and question Gauquelin's work - they make it sound like the ancient theories and conjectures are somehow better and more authoritative than modern research. Which is completely untrue.

And these ancient books are just theories and conjectures - for example why is a 60 degree angle considered more harmonious than a 90 degree angle? How did the idea of triplicities and quadruplicities come up? Were they just sitting around playing with geometry? Were these just psychological tricks to be played upon people - by telling them that they are unlucky it would become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Good questions. Finding the answers can be a long difficult struggle.

Gauquelin was using data which appears to have been rounded off quite significantly, seems to be to the nearest hour.

Muhammad Ali is one person that I've seen given as an example of the Mars effect, as his tropical chart (with placidus houses) has Mars in the 9th.

What's interesting is that, looked at sidereally in the whole sign format, he actually has Mars in the 10th and in Aries, which would seem a lot more appropriate for a world famous sports champion. A Ruchaka yoga

This correlates with what the ancients observed and described.
 

Anachiel

Well-known member
Who came up with the idea of 12 equal zodiac signs or constellations
around the sky? When there is actually no such thing?

A brief look at history will answer this question for you. Briefly, the origins of the signs go back at least to the Chaldeans, the Egyptians...etc.

Also, the type of research the Gauquelins did, did not find use for the signs. That does not mean universally they have no use.

Also, as most astrologers for three centuries now have been changing and modernizing astrological precepts and further removing them from their traditional roots, the use and meaning of the signs has been vastly distorted.

One cannot blame any one thing right off the bat without researching the reasons that things came to this point of mis-understanding. Otherwise, why do astrology if one feels it is simply bogus?
 

sandstone

Banned
interesting conversation!

good questions snipebomber and best to keep an open mind on all avenues of astrology. i like the lao tze saying 'the further you go, the less you know'.. the other option is arrogance or some place in-between..

as tsmall pointed out, (i think) combust is an idea associated with a planet within a certain distance of the sun whereby it is considered less effective.. you can read up on this term here for a better understanding..

as for your question on the 12/6 houses and why the 12th gets such a bad rap, even more then the 6th, dr farr pointed out something i was unaware of historically, and carris has offered some worthwhile ideas that challenge some long held theories too.. my understanding is that the ascendant is always considered the most important angle to the chart, followed closely by the midheaven with the ascendant more personal and subjective in nature.. the ascendant makes me think of a place of intimacy or personal uniqueness which represents the person in some special way that no other part of the chart describes. i suppose one could think of it like window where the perspective gotten in this position has great bearing on the way the person will interact in the world and how they perceive themselves within it.. the 12th house seems to describe what is hidden, having fallen away from the ascendant in a way where the energy is obscured or removed from the main thrust, or one's perception whereby the energy comes out in less obvious and potentially problematic ways..

this idea of what the ascendant does or doesn't see plays into this.. the old astrologers believed that the traditional aspects were capable of projecting, or seeing another position of the chart based on whether the house was in some sort of 'aspectual' relationship to the ascendant or not.. this would assume that houses in certain types of relationships to the ascendant were capable of acting out in connection with the ascendant, whereas other ones were not.. these houses that could not connect to the ascendant - 12/6 and 8 where therefore viewed less 'favourably'.. that is my understanding of the theory up to that point.. why the 12th got an especially bad rap might have to do with the primacy of the ascendant.. the only reason the 2nd wouldn't get the same rap is that it is in a process of moving up towards the ascendant into this same position of primacy.. however so would the 12th be moving towards the midheaven, so this type of thinking seems to have limited value.. debroah houlding wrote a good book on the 12 houses called 'temples of the sky' that you might want to check out.. here's an article on donna cunninghams site, a well known astrologer lin pointed out up above on the 12th house.

on a different note, moog - how do you explain joe fraziers chart if you use the method for muhammed ali's as you have above?

as for the origins of the zodiac, it seems to me it was a type of ancient clock, prior to the invention of the clock much later.. at least that is how they seemed to be using it.

i think it is easy to pick apart the work of the guaguelin's, as it is so much more recent and they have been very public about it trying to legitimize the idea of astrology within some type of scientific framework.. i don't think the scientific or astro community would be as willing to challenge many of the theories and ideas from astro authors from centuries ago for the simple reason it is harder to know where to begin and for what reason! at least with the gauguelins, they introduced statistical analysis to there work, something that valens or ptolemy never tried to do! nor did valens or ptolemy to my knowledge, have to contend with a scientific or astro community that were determined to dismantle and break apart their astro views and theories.. we see a wee bit of this today, at the same time we see a veneration - perhaps unreasonable and unfounded for all things from the deep past of astrological nature being highly regarded without much critical thinking as i see it.. back to my original thought - it is really helpful to keep an open mind on everything presented in astrology..
 

Moog

Well-known member
I agree with you that Gauquelin's work is good and valuable and interesting.

I appreciate that it was performed, and I've had an interest in his work since about as long as I've had an interest in Astrology.

I don't think it is easy to 'pick it apart' though. Understanding what it means is very complicated.

I think picking it apart is a great idea, so we can understand it.
 
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