Whole Sign or Placidus for correct House placement?

MoonMeow

Member
(Not sure if this is the right category to ask this question in)

Is there a way to determine the accurate houses for the Signs?
Is it by using Placidus or Whole Signs?
Or is it just depending on the person in which they want to use?

In Placidus my Sun is in the 11th House
But in Whole Signs my Sun is in the 12th House

So which house is it really in?

Or does it depend on what I'm trying to interpret?

I'm trying to interpret my chart but I don't know which to use Placidus or Whole Signs
 

Vyri

Banned
Closest to the way the heaven's are about the (personal choice) celestial belt and fixed stars is the system Rigomontaneous.
 

AstroLogical

Well-known member
The Houses are timeless.
They hold the past present and future all within the same moment.
Within the 12 Houses all life's experiences can be accounted for.
All it takes is for the actors to enter and the play begins.
Within each chart all Houses exist as a potential for experience.
So, no matter where we draw lines/cusps, the realm of experience awaits.
But it is not quite like going from one room of a building, through a door into another room. Experience is fluid and like blue turning into green or green to yellow, there is most often a morphing from one to the other as we make our way around the rainbow-wheel of the chart.

I do think there is something to the idea of "Resonance."
One House System may work well for some and not so much for others.
Therefore, each must experiment and find which system resonates for them. And of course, different systems may work better in different forms of astrology. Most recognize that.

Recently, in another post, JUPITERASC posted a link to a long interview with Robert Hand, one of the most well known contributors to astrology in our time. Hand went so far as to write a book on the merits of the Whole House System... he believes in it that much! His rational makes sense—to the degree I understand it.

And at the same time I believe a chart is sort of a "cosmic tuner/receiver" that enables a good astrologer to derive meaning from the information in a chart regardless of the placement of a few bisecting lines. Part of the art is in the math and part is in the sensitivity of the astrologer to tune in and understand the person or event the chart represents.

Of course, Houses are only one consideration when looking at a chart. If two astrologers were to only examine aspects, for example, they would very likely arrive at many of the same observations, even though they maybe using different House systems. So the emphasis on House Systems must be kept in perspective to the whole analysis. They are a layer of investigation.

Don't underestimate the human tendency to want to compartmentalize things. Our automatic inclination to put things into this category or that—with definite lines between—is very strong. A planet that lands right on a House Cusp can really rock the boat if an astrologer is looking for sharp, defined, black and white categories.
It's for this reason I like to use the 40+ shades of gray approach... ;-)

House cusps should not be as rigid and defined as we would want them to be... regardless of which House System we use.
If you want to use House Cusps, recognize them, give them some weight but not a critical amount.
Then, just be flexible and let the chart speak to you.
 

Oddity

Well-known member
I think this one really comes down to a matter of personal choice. I use Whole Signs for some things (Fortuna charts, looking at triplicity rulers), and just getting an idea of the house placements by whole sign, because for some folks they're very descriptive.

But I use Alchabitius for most of my work, and if I'm helping someone interpret a chart they drew up, I use the house system they drew it up in. I have not noticed glaring errors in interpretation doing this.

Placidus is neat because it brings planetary hours into focus, and it's been used for at least a thousand years. Ibn Ezra used Placidus, and he's one of my astrological heroes. William Lilly used Regiomontanus houses exclusively (that's about the only table of houses that would have been available to him), and he was a brilliant astrologer. And you could go on and on, with people who used those or whole signs, or different house systems to that.

So play with some house systems if you're not decided yet. And if you are decided then use what seems best to you and don't worry about it. It's not cast in stone, especially today you can look at many different house systems.
 
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