Whole Sign Houses & Equal Houses in polar regions

Drsendero

Well-known member
I’ve been really delving into house systems lately and I’ve always read that Equal House and Whole Sign Houses “work” at all latitudes. But, when I read Michael Wackford’s series The Polar Horoscope (you can read it on Skyscript - the link is on the left on the home page) he talks about a complication with Equal House. It seems that this complication would apply to WSH also, although he doesn’t say so. These systems still produce nice 30 degree houses in the polar regions, but there is an ambiguity at certain times and I'd like to see how people would handle it.

The ambiguity comes up during times of “retrograde ascendant” when the ascendant is rising backwards in the east. This seems hard to understand, so I decided to take a look at the ascendant activity in high latitudes to see what was going on. I used Riyal software to create tables of houses for 70 N latitude. I chose 70 N because that seems to be where the northernmost cities tend to lie (for example, Murmansk, Russia is at 69, Point Barrow, Alaska at 71 and a few Scandinavian communities in the same parallels - there isn’t much in the way of permanent settlements north of 70 degrees latitude according to Wikipedia, so I figured it was a latitude that one could conceivably have to erect a chart for). It was interesting to see what happens.

At 70 N latitude, 29 Scorpio rises, but 0 degrees Sagittarius through 29 Capricorn never rise - they stay below the horizon, so after 29 Scorpio rises, right at the southern meridian horizon point, it sets in the west and so 29 Taurus is then the ascendant on the eastern horizon just east of the northern meridian. But, Taurus rises backwards; after 29 Taurus, 28 Taurus comes up, then 27, then 26, etc., all the way through Aries, Pisces and Aquarius in that order until 0 Aquarius rises. (Of course, the opposite degrees are setting backwards in the west simultaneously.) Since Capricorn and Sagittarius never cross the horizon at this latitude, 29 Capricorn can't rise when 0 Aquarius crosses the meridian at the horizon and moves to the western horizon so in the east the ascendant jumps up at 0 Leo and Leo rises “normally” (for us in temperate and tropical latitudes) and things proceed smoothly until 29 Scorpio rises again. It’s weird, but if you keep in mind that (at 70N) Sag, Capricorn, Gemini, and Cancer never cross the horizon, so when it would be the turn for these signs to rise/set, something else has to rise/set. And those that rise/set instead, rise/set backwards; in retrograde motion.

So, my question is, if say 10 Taurus is rising retrograde, which sign is the second house in? Is it Aries which is below the horizon where we normally consider the second house to be, or is it Gemini which is above the horizon but next in line in the way we normally think of the natural sequence of the signs/houses? In other words, in WSH (and Equal) do the houses follow the natural sequence of the zodiac, just like we normally think of them doing, even though this might put houses 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 above the horizon? Or, should we think of these houses as always below the horizon and thus have backwards-rising Taurus as the first house, Aries as the 2nd, Pisces as the 3rd, Aquarius as the 4th, etc.? I’ve never seen a chart in WSH during retrograde ascendant time, so I'm curious what an astrologer would do.

Drsendero
 

dr. farr

Well-known member
With the whole sign model, it is (or was originally) conceived as a "chain" of signs thrown out, in order, from the all-important key, ie from the ascendant. Regardless of the order of rising, once an ascending degree is occuring all the rest of the chain of signs in order are "thrown out" in the circle of 12: if 10 Taurus is rising, then Taurus is the entire 1st house and the other 11 signs in the chain are automatically thrown out into the circle in order: Gemini 2nd house, Cancer 3rd house etc, etc, until the end of the chain-Aries in this case, as the 12th house-is reached.
The entire chain of signs is embryonic in each and every sign-when that sign is "activated" by RISING (as the ascendant) then the ENTIRE CHAIN OF SIGNS IN THEIR ORDER "unfurls" to complete the circle around it (around the ascendant).
With these considerations, it is clear that the whole sign house format is ultimately SYMBOLIC in its essential nature (at least it seems so to me)...
 

Drsendero

Well-known member
Thanks (again) Dr. Farr for a clear explanation. WSH are definitely a paradigm shift from quadrant systems where the position in the sky (dependent upon a wide variety of systems and how one defines a house). I'm still curious as to how Equal house handles that same ambiguity - I can see it going both ways.

If anyone can weigh in on how Equal handles that ambiguity, I'd appreciate it.

Drsendero
 
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