Whole sign houses and the MC

byjove said:

I also see that floating MC in the 12th as contradictory or as slightly disjunct from how the rest of the chart has been created. In this instance, I consider this as one possible point against whole sign; if as mentioned above, northern (and southern) civilisations weren't considered when whole sign dominated, they to me it's on a fast-track to obsoletion for those of us whose charts are significantly affected.

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Yes. In essence the 'floating MC' in equal or whole house systems is still given it's traditional and known signification. However, the equal or whole houses system is adding another level of interpretation to the MC depending on where it falls in a whole or equal house system.

However, and someone correct me if I am wrong here but, although we have traditional examples of a 'floating MC' we don't have really have any traditional examples of it being delineated in this format.

Anachiel said:

However, and someone correct me if I am wrong here but, although we have traditional examples of a 'floating MC' we don't have really have any traditional examples of it being delineated in this format.

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Yes, I'd love to see that, anyone got an example? How would someone interpret the MC in the 12th?

Hey, thanks, tsmall. I'm glad I am not merely annoying anyone whose interests in which house system to use aren't so historical; let alone the infinetly patient Dr. Farr.

Dr. Farr, you are one seriously Good Guy.

I did some sleuthing at Astrodienst's Astro-DataBank for charts of people born in Finland, as I was alerted to the problem of people with high-latitude births potentially having incredibly skewed angles in any house system. I previously posted the chart of a former prime minister of Finland, born at 64 degrees north latitude. (The Arctic Circle is at about 66 degrees.) Here he is again. Apparently he was a successful politician who held several cabinet posts, but he had a serious drinking problem which eventually led to his resigning from office. I don't know any more about him than that.

A lot of how one would interpret this whole sign chart depends upon whether you do traditional or modern astrology. Let me try it with the latter, blended with some Hellenistic astrology ideas.

1. From a topic-based definition of houses, the ancients viewed the 12th house as really misfortunate. This was the "house of secret enemies and all kinds of misfortunes.

2. From a "dynamic" definition of houses, the 12th doesn't fare any better, because the MC was normally construed as approximately synonymous with the 10th house, even if it landed in a different whole sign house. Houses decline in power with distance from the angles; though not uniformly so.

3. Houses also decline in power in terms of whether the signs are in a major aspect relationship with the AC/first house. These aspects would be the opposition, trine, square, or sextile. The 12th, 6th, and 8th houses got a bad rap because the ancient astrologers didn't see a semi-sextile (12th) or quincunx (6th and 8th) relationship with the first house as a valid aspect. Having a 6th house focus, for example, was seen as truly misfortunate.

4. So we might consider that the MC is in kind of a rotten place in the 12th house. Conversely, the Hellenistic astrologers were aware of cases where the MC fell in the 11th or 9th, but this was OK because these were seen as fortunate houses. The 11th was the house of "the good spirit" and the 9th was even called "the house of god" (hence its relationship to theology and prophecy.)

5. If we look at aspects in the modern sense, AK's MC conjuncts Jupiter which is good. It squares his sun-part of fortune. This isn't necessarily bad, because it would give him a lot of ambition (however stressful) to identify with (sun) his career or vocation (MC.) I would use outer planets, and note that MC-Jupiter square to Neptune. He may have been inclined to excess. ("If a little is good, a lot is better.")

6. The house cusp ruler with Scorpio on the 12th cusp is Mars (traditional) and Pluto (modern.) Mars is strongly placed in its own sign of Aries. Either way (modern) we have a Mars-Pluto square involving Chiron. This looks to me like a lot of power struggles, as well as painful experiences from them (Chiron.)

7. Mars trine moon/ASC in the Jupiter-ruled sign of Sagittarius looks helpful, however.

8. Alcoholism does seem to show up in charts of people with Neptune in a tough aspect to a personal planet, and we do see sun opposite Neptune. We might also recall a name for the 12th as the "house of self-undoing."

9. The 10th house is ruled by Mercury, which shows a square to Saturn. Pessimistic thinking or even depression? Saturn is the father or authority figure. It has even been nicknamed "the prime minister". It is strongly placed in Libra, but the square suggests tension rather than an easy flow of energy.

So a real mixture-- a man who rose to the pinnacle of his career, but who had some personal demons that eventually got him.

Anyway, y'all--what is your take on it?

waybread, quick (noob) question...isn't the MC an angle? Though if it's in the 12th, that puts it pretty close to the ASC, also an angle. Not sure where I'm going with this, but thought it might be worth considering.

Yes, the MC is an angle. In a "quadrant" system like Placidus, it also marks the beginning of the 10th house cusp. In a whole sign or equal house method, it is not the same as the 10th house cusp. Sometimes their meaning is the same, but sometimes it varies, depending upon which source you cite. For example, you might do a calculation based on the MC position regardless of where it was located.

High-latitude births are an interesting problem, because all systems except the equal house system (that I'm aware of) can end up with a really skewed MC/IC axis, depending on the birth date. I could be mistaken, but I think this corresponds to the problem of the sun appearing so far north in the summer and so far south in the winter, and really different numbers of hours of daylight and darkness.

But even with whole signs, I think the traditional astrologers didn't always calculate the MC in the same way. Firmicus Maternus (Matheseos Libri VIII, book 2, xv) says you just find the ascendant, and then count 270 degrees from that to locate your MC. Well, no problem for those Scandinavians and Alaskans. Others (like Manilius) seemed to define a "natural" MC as the high point on the ecliptic at the moment of birth.

Regardless, you would interpret the 10th house and its cusp in the usual way.

waybread said:

So a real mixture-- a man who rose to the pinnacle of his career, but who had some personal demons that eventually got him.

Anyway, y'all--what is your take on it?

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Wow, Venus opposition Pluto
Sun opposition Neptune
Mars opposite Saturn

Yes, that's plenty of personal, negative contact to drive them to serious problems. It's sad to see they toppled him though. I wouldn't yet know how to spot that this person definitely had a downfall or that it was alcohol-related.

(this is the first chart I've seen with a natal Sun-Saturn trine, exact, like me...I thought that was amongst the most sober aspects in the gamut; a ward against alcoholism. oops )

waybread said:

But even with whole signs, I think the traditional astrologers didn't always calculate the MC in the same way. Firmicus Maternus (Matheseos Libri VIII, book 2, xv) says you just find the ascendant, and then count 270 degrees from that to locate your MC. Well, no problem for those Scandinavians and Alaskans. Others (like Manilius) seemed to define a "natural" MC as the high point on the ecliptic at the moment of birth.

Regardless, you would interpret the 10th house and its cusp in the usual way.

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MC on the ecliptic, would that appear as the 10 house cusp? Forgive me, I get a little confused with some of the more technical parts.

First analysys ever, but nothing ventured, nothing gained...

Sun is in detriment squaring MC/Jupiter ruled (traditionally) by Mars. Mars is in domicile in Aries, but inconjunct by sign Jupiter and MC, so of no help. Sun trines and is ruled by Saturn, exalted in Libra, but in the place of the Sun's fall. So this trine probably isn't as supportive as it looks. Maybe friends (11th) attempt to help Sun but can't? Valens seems to imply that benefics in 12th are also not able to offer support

...benefics in tis Place will not bestow their benefits

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What I think though, is that the ruler of the 10th (and 7th), Mercury, is in critical degree. Cafe Astrology says this

If a natal planet is found at 29 degrees of any sign, also known as the Anaretic degree, there can be some real issues with decision-making in that part of the personality represented by the energies of the planet.

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http://www.cafeastrology.com/criticaldegrees.html

Mercury in 2nd house, could mean that the native has trouble making decisions about what he values?

Actually I just found a Wikipedia entry with photograph re: the Finnish politician's chart-- Ahti Karljalainen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahti_Karjalainen . Kind of a strange-looking man! tsmall, see what you think. By any standards, he made a success of his career in politics and banking until his drinking got the better of him.

tsmall, I think you've done a super job of showing some problems in Mr. K's life: what do you think would account for his success?

Byjove-- hopefully you can see how, with a whole sign system, the MC probably wouldn't be the 10th house cusp; although oftentimes it would be in the 10th house. A quadrant-based system like Placidus, Prophyry, Koch, and several others would put the MC as the 10th house cusp.

You would always, either way, interpret the 10th house as saying something about the person's vocation or calling (hence our concept of career vs. "just a job",) and public image.

Then some traditional authors really seemed to peg the MC to the high point on the ecliptic at the birth moment; whereas in Maternus, mentioned above) the MC is simply pegged to the same degree as the ascendant.

I've posted Mr. K's chart using Porphyry houses. Porphyry lived in the 3rd century, but the system named for him is probably older. So this is another Hellenistic system, but not one much in use today. It is a quadrant system, meaning that the angles start the 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th house cusps. We still get that MC in Scorpio, but but this system symply divides the quadrants into 3 equal pie-slices each. With such a far northern birth, we still get a skewed MC/IC axis, intercepted signs, and some huge and some tiny houses. Then the sign on the house cusp and its planetary ruler may vary from whole signs.

So if we take Mr. K to have reached the peak of a political career (prime minister) and the depths of disgrace (public alcoholism)--does this chart show him better?

Dunno. However, now Jupiter moves to the (favourable) 9th house, still conjunct the MC. The bank director career may show up with the sun and part of fortune in the 2nd house. The ruler of the 8th house of "shared resources" (i.e., investments) is also now in the 2nd house (sun.) The moon moves into the 12th (bad) but Venus in the first (good) can indicate an attractive personality--very helpful for a politician.

He's still got that strong Mars in Aries as his traditional MC ruler, but now with Pisces on Mars's house cusp, the traditional ruler is beneficial Jupiter, conjunct his MC.

As a modern astrologer I would also note that domiciled Mars quintiling Mr. K's Mars-ruled MC. This probably gave him a lot of talent and ambition (quintile) to pursue his career (MC) in a very assertive, energetic way (Mars.)

Dr Farr, if you've got a moment, I'd love to see your take on this horoscope.

Anachiel:
Robert Hand delineates the influences of the MC as a cardinal point, posited in a high latitude chart in the 12th whole sign house, for Lenin, and the MC in the 12th in Lenin's chart (as delineated by Hand) makes a great deal of sense (see Hand's "Whole Sign" booklet) See also Hand's delineation of King Edward VIIth in his booklet (King Edward also has the MC in the 12th whole sign house of his chart)

Byjove:
The MC as a cardinal point (not as the "house of the midheaven", which would always be the place of the 10th sign from the ascending sign) floats among houses in both Equal house and in Whole sign: Whole sign preserves house relationships best whether in the extreme north or the extreme south, all of the quadrant house systems yielding sometimes grotesue distortions in the extreme latitudes (except a 20th century modification of Placidus called "topocentric", which preserves the houses quite well, but certainly not any better than the ancient Whole sign format does) Also note that at 70 degrees north latitude (like in Iceland), the MC as a cardinal point can cut the ecliptic in half, meaning that the MC point can be in the first house of the ascendant! But with the ancient concept of cardinal points merely being horoscopic points carrying their own meanings, the MC in the 1st house would merely connect the MC attributes (basically, the MC as a cardinal point indicates "what one does") with the qualities of the sign on the first house and closely connect "what one does" with "what one is" (the essential attribute of the ascending degree, ie, the ascending cardinal point)

Waybread:
From my readings, the Hellenist authors all calculated the cardinal points AS POINTS in the same way; but we find a variety of expressions, some of which applied to the cardinal POINTS, and similar expressions applying to PLACES in the circle of the signs/houses: again, checking with the Latin used as opposed to how some of those words were translated into English, sometimes we see a conflict: Maternus in using the term "midheaven" in your example was referring to the PLACE ("house") in the middle of the heavens within the context of the circle of the 12 signs/houses; he was NOT using this in relation to the cardinal POINT "midheaven" (the MC as we understand it today as a cardinal point) Manilius too first describes the cardinal POINTS and their meanings as POINTS (horoscopic points), and then in another section describes the "temples" (places) of the sky, ie, the dodecatrops, and in that description does not make a direct tie-in (this is pointed out in the Introduction by both the translator Gould and Gould's reference to Houseman's comments regarding a previous translation of the "Astronomica")
Again, we SEEM to see that the early Hellenists looked at the cardinal POINTS as horoscopic points with meaning, but did not tie domification directly to these points, or use these points as the BEGINNINGS OF ("cusps" we say today) of their 12 places ("houses")

Will take a look at the Finnish chart soon.

Honestly? (and heretically, I know) These two charts make more sense to me with what this person accomplished. I don't have a lot of time right now, so hope to look more thouroughly tomorrow, but...

Sun and Mercury (free of combustion) in Capricorn = strong business orientiation? Mercury in mutual reception with Saturn, and in 1st angular house (porphyry chart) as well as in joy. Mercury is also parallel in declination with both Moon and Jupiter, now in Libra along with MC. MC ruler is now Venus, in Sagittarius (ruled by Jupiter conjunct MC), strong in 1st Pophyry house, and posited in second whole sign house. Isn't Venus associated with banking/investments, and now found in the second house of money? MC in Libra = diplomatic/political career? I don't know what traditionally would show alcoholism in a chart (now on month 4 of learning), but MC in twelve suggests something hidden could/would destroy career...feel free to point out mistakes. I am dying to learn!

His older photo is more attractive, the younger one is definatly hawkish looking.

(ps, never, ever attempt to organize your thoughts when trying to resurface kitchen cabinets and send three little ones off to bed. )

tsmall-- I hear you. My two children are grown up now, but it was hard to find the time when they were young and I was first learning astrology to deal (responsibly) with family life, my very 10th-house career, and a few home renos on top of it.

Dr. Farr, In this and the other whole-sign thread, I've put in what I think are some counters to the whole-sign system, and you've put in some counters to my counters as well as your own readings. I sometimes feel you haven't addressed my specific points, but probably they were in your attempted posts that wiped out..... I am not sure where it has gotten us so far.

Maybe we could take one author at a time--specifically citing chapter and verse. So we can literally get on the same page. I've got print copies of Manilius, Dorotheus, Ptolemy, Valens, and Maternus. If there's anyone else from that time period (pre-late antiquity) available on-line, I'm happy to look at them, as well.

I understand from Robert Schmidt's article that the above are actually most of the early Hellenistic sources extant in the original in readily available English translation, although these authors cite other astrologers whose work has not survived. ("Catalogue of Hellenistic Astrologers and their Writings" www.projecthindsight.com/reference/catalog.html )

Also, let me know if you feel the ground rules of this discussion are something other than: (1) debating the near ubiquity of the whole sign system before late antiquity. (Maybe we should define "late.") (2) I think another ground rule has to be that an early source is an early source, regardless of whether we regard him as ideosyncratic or mainstream. Schmidt's project seemed to be to build a Hellenistic astrology for today; but I am coming at the problem more from the point of view of historical accuracy. (3) Hopefully we can all discuss a few related issues.

As indicated previously, I don't have a copy of Hand's book on whole signs yet. However, I wonder why he used Lenin's chart as an example of the MC in the 12th, unless he had a different birth time than the one posted in the Astrodienst Astro-DataBank. Their birth time puts Lenin's MC in the 11th; although at 5 degrees from the whole signs 12th house cusp, many astrologers would read it as affecting the 12th house. Here is Lenin's chart using whole signs:

TSMALL:
I didn't know you use sidereal for natal charts (don't get me wrong, I have nothing against that!)

WAYBREAD:
-Hand used a different birth time (will check it out) for Lenin*
-yes, I agree our discussion is about the issue of universality or not of whole sign in the period from the first remaining document (Manilius) to the time of Olympiodorus (who first mentions some using quadrant house domification), that is, from 14 AD to the end of the 5th century AD (so as far as I am concerned, the limit would be the beginning of the 6th century) also, since unlike Schmidt I am not interested in re-creating a neo-Hellenistic system for today, I agree that all authors from those times, and foreign authors from then who talk about Greek and Roman astrology (ie, several classical Vedic authors) should be included. As supportive evidence for my "universal whole sign in the early Greco/Roman period" belief, I would also feel free to quote the first generation Islamic authors who brought the Greco/Roman astrological tradition into the rising Islamic civilization (around 8th/early 9th centuries)
I would eliminate Dorotheus from our discussion for reasons I gave in an earlier post on the other thread, viz, that there are numerous interpolations in "Carmen Astrologicum" by the Arabic translator, from the latter 9th century (when Alchabitius' adaptation-of the Rhetorius quadrant tool-to the purpose of chart domification, was sweeping the astrological world of the West during that time)

*Hand used the Blackwell Database, using April 22 LMT 00:00 AM (20:46:24 UT April 21, 1872) Source of the information from an official Soviet government biography of Lenin published in USSR in 1976. If there is a question about the Lenin MC in the 12th whole sign house, one can also read the whole sign delineation in Hand of King Edward VII which also has the MC posited in the 12th whole sign house of that chart.

i would also like to thank the folks here in this conversation for addressing a few challenging concepts.. i 2nd dr. farr's comments on robert hands book on whole signs being a good book to get a 'hand'le on some of these concepts as presented by robert hand..

i would also like to point out a discrepancy in the location for the finnish politicians birth location or hyrynsalmi verses hirvensalmi which is what wikipedia lists his birthplace as.. perhaps astrodienst has it correct, but it conflicts with the data as offered for him on wikipedia.. the hirvensalmi coordinates will put jupiter about dead on his midheaven while the moon position has a 10 degree orb to his ascendant which is somewhat different then what is gotten using the hyrynsalmi location..

james

Yikes, James! Thanks for keeping us honest. Dunno which is correct. Jupiter smack on the MC would seem nice for a politician who twice reached the highest political office of his country. If the moon remains in the 12th, it might suggest some emotional difficulties leading to AK's alcoholism.

Dr. Farr, you're on. But one question. Why turf out Dorotheus on the grounds that his work was essentially contaminated by an Arab translator, while deciding that (other?) Muslim authors who discuss Graeco-Roman astrology are reliable?

Moreover, all of the classical authors got copied and translated multiple times before coming down to us in English translation. Who can say how faithful even the Greek and Latin versions were that came down to us of the most "kosher" sources?

One other question... what is your take on houses (and forgive me if you stated this previously) in terms of whether they essentially measure space or distance on the ecliptic, or whether they measure time? I think they do both, depending upon the technique being used or question being asked about the chart. Obviously they indicate topics and planetary strength, but I am thinking of the sun's passage along the ecliptic. It covers a certain distance in an hour, as well as a certain amount of time as it traverses the degrees of the house.

This has a lot to do with which house system would be most sensible to use.

Actually, in our anticipated look at 1st to 5th century original authors, I am leaving out the Islamic era authors altogether, even though I could quote some who use whole sign house, as supportive evidence relating to Greco/Roman practice. Of the early authors, we are going on their works translated directly from the Greek or Latin originals (or non-interpolated copies of those originals), whereas with "Carmen Astrologicum" what we have is an English translation of an interpolated Arabic translation of a Pahlavi translation of a copy of a Greek original-to me, this is not a sufficiently "pure" source relative to the issue we are specifically looking at, ie, the specific question of whether or not Hellenist authors from the 1st to 5th centuries likely used several methods/approaches to domification. Further, we KNOW (from its editors) that the Dorotheus material was interpolated with later (Islamic era) material; in the other Hellenist materials we have in English, no interpolations from times later than the 6th century have been noted by the translators (interpolation is noted in Manilius by Gould and Houseman, but the interpolations appear to date from the Hellenistic time period, not from a substatianlly later era, as in the situation involving the "Carmen Astrologicum" Islamic-era interpolations)

My take on houses? It is that they are places/positions of a relative nature and signification, and in one context can measure space, and in another context can measure time; and relative to the focus we are concentrating upon, a specific place/position relative to the focal point can have one signification, and, changing the focus, can have another signification (we see a hint of this kind of outlook in Manilius regarding the significations of the places of the dodecatropos, and the different significations of the places when using the Part of Fortune-rather than the ascendant-as the point of focus, in his "Circle of the Athla")

Thanks, Dr. Farr. In preparation for our discussion to-be, I spent a good part of today reading some research by Francesca Rochberg, an authority on Babylonian astrology (and a true scholar-- at UC-Berkeley.) Her monograph Babylonian Horoscopes is on-line & I also accessed an academic paper she wrote on Babylonian influences on Hellenistic astrology. The monograph is a study of the extant horoscopes and horoscopic writings, from ca 410 to 69 BC. I wanted to see if there were any Babylonian influences on the Hellenistic house system that might inform the earliest Greek and Roman mentions of houses in our current sense.

She says not.

I did glean some interesting information, however, about the ancient use of the word "house" for "sign." The Akkadian (ancient Babylonian) word for "sign" is bit or bitu (sorry I have to leave out the accent marks.) literally meaning "house." This has to be a cognate of the Hebrew word for "house", which is "bet" (various spellings like bayt, beit.) At least in Hebrew, bet means a bricks and morter house, but it also has a sense of belonging to a lineage, as in "the house of David."

The Babylonians did use 30-degree signs with a sidereal zodiac at the period for which the horoscopes exist.

Rochberg argues that the Babylonians invented the Hellenistic system of planets in exaltation or fall in various signs. Firmicus Maternus (2:3, 6) thought so, as well.

However, the big difference was that the Babylonians viewed astrology basically as a system of omens through which the gods' workings could be glimpsed; not as a sort of physical science in the way Ptolemy wrote about it, or as a collection of stellar influences on human experience..

I also learned that the Babylonians had several ways of dividing time (hence my question to you.) They had a monthly calendar, whose names and soli-lunar months seem much like the Hebrew calendar. They had a sort of diurnal quadrant system, in which planets could be located with respect to sunrise, mid-day, sunset, and midnight. They divided the night into 3 "watches": post-sun-set, night proper, and pre-dawn.

The really interesting thing to me was that the Babylonians were aware of signs (and even dwads) having different time-periods for rising, depending on the latitude and time of year. How they handled this was through 24 "seasonal hours." These were not even 60-minute periods, but were divided into 12 equal daytime and 12 equal night-time periods. And they were of varying length. So the Babylonians understood that in the winter in a higher latitude, the 12 night-time hours would be of longer duration than the 12 daytime hours, even though we still divide the circle in half.

This is what I was trying to get at previously on the other whole signs thread (remember Hypsicles?) as an argument against whole sign houses. But actually,I realized that the problem of different time periods for signs to rise and varying hours of daylight and darkness would be an argument against any house system that I know of, so long as the AC and DC have to correspond to the points where the sun rises and sets on the horizon.

However, with the seasonal hours, the Babylonians seemed to have a time-keeping system that accounts for different periods of daylight and dark. I'd like to look for any evidence of it in the Hellenistic system--I think Manilius has some of it. Rochberg (p. 38) says it does show up in Ptolemy's Almagest, and is attributed there to a 3rd century B.C. author. Whether seasonal hours translate at all into houses, I don't know; but at least it is a system of unequal divisions of time along the ecliptic.

But onto the Romans and Greeks.

Should we start with the easy one first, Dr. Farr? Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos? I think that he's got next-to-nothing on houses. So the basis upon which anyone could assert he used the whole sign system is problematic because the evidence simply isn't there either way. I would also refer interested readers to Deborah Houlding's book, The Houses: Temples of the Sky and her chapter on Ptolemy.

Interesting about the Babylonian use of the word "house" for "sign"; we find this same usage of "house" referring to sign (NOT to place) throughout the Greco/Roman period (and extending even to early Islamic transitional times), ie the "house" of Mars is Aries, Pisces is the "house of Jupiter", and so on. Actually that is the principal usage of the term "house" by the ancients, ie, as connected with the signs, NOT with the PLACES of the signs (which they simply called places/positions, although Manilius did use the term "temple" almost as frequently as he used the term "place/position", in the "Astronomica")

One thing (and perhaps I am wrong here) but to my understanding the Babylonians based their astrological system UPON THE EQUATOR (I know the Sumerians and the ancient Egyptians did; and the Chinese did from ancient times right until the present) When you do that-base your astrological constructs on the equator-then you base everything upon invariant planes: wherever you go on earth, the horizon points are the same and the zenith and nadir are the same (ie, they have the same relationship to each other at all times) But when you change your focus from the "Red Path" (the path of the stars as the Chinese call it, ie, the equator) to the "Yellow Path"( the path of our star, the Sun, ie, the ecliptic) then things change, cause now you have a 23 degree tilt: not the horizons (asc/desc points), but there is no longer a zenith, it becomes a midheaven (MC) and there is no longer a nadir, this becomes an IC (bottom of the heavens) AND YOU BECOME COMPLETELY LATITUDE SENSITIVE in whatever you try to "construct" on the ecliptic model. Sumerians, Egyptains, Chinese and (to my understanding) Babylonians by using the equator as their focus, did not have such a problem; but when the Greeks gave their focus to the ecliptic circle (rather than to the equator) then latitude sensitivity entered the picture. Might the earliest Greeks have taken the equator as the basis of their calculations regarding domification, possibly from the Babylonians and Egyptians, and then around the time of Hipparchus (2nd century BC), might they (possibly under the direction of Hipparchus himself, who redrew the constellations during that time) shifted their focus to the ecliptic circle (and dropped the equator) with its anomalies (not encountered when using the equator) regarding domification, due to the effects on the geometry connected with latitude?

I think you might be right regarding the implications of variations in rising times of signs as an argument against ANY type of SIGN-based domification system; perhaps the early Greeks, translating Babylonian astrological concepts to their own sphere, simply settled that problem by deciding that the signs themselves would = the "houses" (places), and did not create an a priori, spherical astronomy-based system of houses for the signs to "fit into" at all, instead they simply said, let the positions of the signs in relation to each other define our "houses"? Actually, this is pretty much what Hand believed to be the case.

We can look at Ptolemy, I'll outline Hand's take on the few important remarks made by Ptolemy which have led some to speculate that he used equal house, and others to claim that he used a Placidus-like quadrant method in domification.

from what i have read it sounds as though ptolemy wasn't a practicing astrologer.. i am not sure if that matters, but it is an interesting consideration with regard to what he is known for with his written work

dr. farr some of what you state sounds like there is an element of locational astrology to it.. i have read steve cossi and martin davis's work and i believe they both mention how locational astrology is an old form of astrology with different ways of referencing the surroundings not being based off the ecliptic... perhaps you would like to comment on this angle if you feel so inclined..

Yes, its something we can trace back to Manilius (14 AD) and that is the quality of locations being associated with the various zodiac signs: these were not based on any kind of rising/setting/house/ecliptic connections whatsoever, but rather with the quality (we would call it the subtle energetics) of places being similar to the quality of various signs. These ancient allocations varied with different authors, but we can speculate that at one time there might well have been a definite 12 fold division of the Earth into regions energetically associated with the qualities of the 12 signs.
The Earth can be divided into 12 equal sections consisting of 30 degrees of longitude each, and also into 12 equal sections consisting of 15 degrees of latitude each...