"Measured Points" versus Planets

I'm using the Ascendant as a sign-ruler. I'm also blending signs at their cusps. Both of these practices are "heretical", the first more so than the latter. Aside from the tired old "that's just NOT how it's done", can anyone come up with any LOGICAL reasons why either one of these practices is fundamentally in error? Arguably, the Ascendant is the most important factor in a Chart. In fact, the word "horoscope" itself is a direct reference to the Asc. Which is why it's a misnomer to label a Sun-sign-only column, as seen in newspapers, as a "horoscope", because it excludes the Asc. from consideration.
Not expecting to convince anyone of anything, just looking for a friendly, logical discussion.

Could you explain more about what you mean when you say " using the Ascendant as a sign-ruler."

It sounds interesting but am not sure what it means.

Yes. I'm bringing a "12/12" pattern into my readings, which requires a single "Native-ruler" for each individual Sign. Instead of bringing in two other celestial objects, I'm bringing in two EXTREMELY important measured points, the Ascendant and the Age-indicator. But, there's a "rulership-group" for each Sign, with different types of rulership involved. The Native-ruler of Sagittarius is the Ascendant. But, it's "Regulator" is Jupiter, and its "Motivator" is Mars. This pattern is based on the Direct sequence of Sign transitions from one to the next, matching up Elements and Modalities.

david starling said:

Yes. I'm bringing a "12/12" pattern into my readings, which requires a single "Native-ruler" for each individual Sign. Instead of bringing in two other celestial objects, I'm bringing in two EXTREMELY important measured points, the Ascendant and the Age-indicator. But, there's a "rulership-group" for each Sign, with different types of rulership involved. The Native-ruler of Sagittarius is the Ascendant. But, it's "Regulator" is Jupiter, and its "Motivator" is Mars. This pattern is based on the Direct sequence of Sign transitions from one to the next, matching up Elements and Modalities.

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The Native-ruler of Sagittarius is the Ascendant.

So does that mean, instead of Jupiter ruling Sag, the Ascendant rules Sag?

katydid said:

The Native-ruler of Sagittarius is the Ascendant.

So does that mean, instead of Jupiter ruling Sag, the Ascendant rules Sag?

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There are different types of rulers. It's not a one-ruler-fits-all system. For example, as Native-ruler, the Ascendant is Domicled in Sagittarius; Regulating-ruler Jupiter in Sagittarius imparts a Sense of Direction; and Motivational-ruler Mars in Sagittarius provides a Sense of Purpose. There's more, and it's going to require a table of some sort, which I haven't put together yet.
The reason for this thread is to see just how much of a problem using the Ascendant as a Sign-ruler is for individual astrologers. I'm sure some will say it's unthinkable, whereas others may be amenable to it. Sounds like you're at least willing to entertain the possibility.
Btw, if Jupiter HADN'T turned out to be a type of ruler for Sagittarius based on this 12/12 pattern, I would have rejected it myself!

Scorpio--

Native-ruler, Pluto
Regulator, the Sun
Motivator, Neptune

Scorpio is in service to Mars, which is therefore "Honored-ruler"*
Scorpio's "Benefactor" is Mercury

* I'm using "Honored" in place of the term "Exalted", to avoid confusion with the Table of Dignities. Still using Domiciled though.

Pisces--

Native-ruler, Neptune.
*Regulating-ruler, Ascendant.
Motivating-ruler, Moon.

Pisces is in service to the Sun, which is therefore Honored-ruler.
Benefactor for Pisces, Venus.


*Imagine being regulated by a ruler that changes Signs every 2 hours, and runs through the entire zodiac each day!

I'm pretty open-minded, and I find your system interesting, but I do have problems with ascendant being a ruler. In my mind, the ascendant is a point that lies within a house, just like any other degree in the chart. It doesn't have a character of its own. It doesn't have qualities. Only physical bodies have character and qualities to my mind. You ask why? Well, why would a point in space that never stays the same have a quality? It only exists as a point because of the physical objects it connects mathematically.

Age is more problematic for me because I don't even really know what it is.

The question for me becomes why these points? Why not MC or IC, one of the lunar nodes, the descendant, or something else? It feels arbitrary, and therefore, not convincing. The other question is other than a lot of complexity, what does it add to have three types of rulers for each sign?

Edit: I need to add that other than objects, times can have characters and qualities for me. Daybreak is a completely different vibe than dusk. I feel more attached to the time of day I was born, and that connection to ascendant, than to the sign it happened in.

Unless the Moon and Planets are precisely at their nodes, we're using measured points, where the lines of Celestial Longitude intersect the Ecliptic, to ascertain their astrological postions.
The Ascendant is the leading point of a triangle formed by Asc, M.C., and Desc. These are all points involving sunlight, and the Asc is where the Sun's path intersects the eastern horizon, and is the exact point of sunrise. It sets the 1st House in most, if not all, of the various House systems. The word "horoscope" itself ("Watcher of the Hour") refers to the Ascendant.
We're also using measured points to locate the Sign-boundaries. So, the Aspects and the Sign-qualities are all from measured points.

Witchyone, thank you for your honest response. The Ages were considered to be of enormous importance by important people for about 50 years, but "does a fish know it's wet?" An Age sets the context for the entire Zodiac, and is in the same Sign for so many centuries that it's easy to take the current Age conditions for granted, not realizing that the Earth, herself, is communicating an overriding astrological effect on our psyches. The Age Indicator describes this effect, in the Chart, and in combination with the other Chart-placements. So, how we each respond to the Age is an individual affair.

As far as what I get out of what I consider a solid pattern, rather than an arbitrary add-on, it's like an added dimension. It specifies the various rulership effects beyond strength in the Chart. And, ruler-Sign relationships beyond Aspects (which I also use, along with the Houses as "areas of life").

david starling said:

Unless the Moon and Planets are precisely at their nodes, we're using measured points, where the lines of Celestial Longitude intersect the Ecliptic, to ascertain their astrological postions.
The Ascendant is the leading point of a triangle formed by Asc, M.C., and Desc. These are all points involving sunlight, and the Asc is where the Sun's path intersects the eastern horizon, and is the exact point of sunrise. It sets the 1st House in most, if not all, of the various House systems. The word "horoscope" itself ("Watcher of the Hour") refers to the Ascendant.
We're also using measured points to locate the Sign-boundaries. So, the Aspects and the Sign-qualities are all from measured points.

Witchyone, thank you for your honest response. The Ages were considered to be of enormous importance by important people for about 50 years, but "does a fish know it's wet?" An Age sets the context for the entire Zodiac, and is in the same Sign for so many centuries that it's easy to take the current Age conditions for granted, not realizing that the Earth, herself, is communicating an overriding astrological effect on our psyches. The Age Indicator describes this effect, in the Chart, and in combination with the other Chart-placements. So, how we each respond to the Age is an individual affair.

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In my view, houses are areas of life, as you say. The house is the location. Sign is the backdrop (the how, the flavor, associated with the constellation.) Planets represent gods and humans: us or parts of us. Planets act and move and express depending on the house and sign where they are located. Signs and houses do not. That is why in my way of thinking a planet can rule something, and a house, sign, or point cannot. It would take understanding this in a completely different way for me to use your system.

All movement is relative to what is being held fixed by the observer making the measurements. I use the Signs as being fixed in place. You can't logically hold both the Houses AND the Signs in place. Since the tropical Signs are derived from the fixed-star Constellations, I see them as stationary. It's convenient to draw the Chart in a fixed-House way, because that enables us to know at a glance where everything is, relative to the eastern horizon, in any given location. But I don't see the Signs as rotating through the Houses, so for me, the Ascendant is the fastest moving indicator in the Chart, matching up with the Mutable-Fire Sign. Also, the glyph for Sagittarius might as well be the glyph for the Ascendant, with a horizontal line representing the eastern horizon, and the arrow showing the movement of the Sun rising from below to above, to where it becomes visible ("seeing" is the key word for Sagittarius). It even slants from east to west, in the direction the Sun will move. The Ascendant is easily linked to Apollo, god of Solar light and god of archery, so I do have a major Greco-Roman deity associated with it, and what I believe are good reasons for it to rule Sagittarius.
Btw, I'm not trying to "convert" you, just showing you my reasoning as to why I feel justified in using the Ascendant as a full-fledged Sign-ruler.

Apollo's Ascendant sets the Houses, and objectively, moves due the Earth's rotation. But, from our vantage point here on Earth, it's Solar--the point of Sunrise each day--just as the Sun is Heliocentrically stationary, but travels around the zodiac in Geocentric coordinates.
So, the Earth is involved in both the Ascendant's movement through the Signs (Earth's rotation), and the Sun's movement (Earth's orbit). The Greco-Romans had two Solar gods, Apollo, "god of Day", who appeared at Sunrise, and Helios/Sol, who was the personification of the physical Sun, itself. For this reason, both Apollo's Ascendant and the Sun should rule Fire-signs. The fixed position of the Sun in heliocentric coordinates explains why it rules Fixed-Fire Leo, and the extremely rapid movement of Apollo's Ascendant through the Signs geocentrically matches up with Mutable-Fire.

Apollo, "most Greek of the gods", worshipped by the Romans under the same name: Solar god of archery, healing, prophecy, music and the 9 Muses (including Urania, goddess of the Heavens and Muse of Astrology), shepherds, and Light.
We can't draw complete Charts without Apollo's Ascendant!

Ancient Egypt also had two Solar gods, Horus and Ra.
Horus, from which the Greeks derived Apollo, was about Sunrise and the horizon--the words "Horoscope", "Horizon", and "Horizontal" as well, were all derived from Horus. Horus was worshipped at Sunrise, at Solar Midheaven, and at Sundown. Ra personified the Sun, like Helios/Sol.

In this 12/12 pattern I'm deciphering, each Sign has a Regulating-ruler as well as a Native-ruler. For Sagittarius, Apollo's Ascendant is Native-ruler, Jupiter is Regulating-ruler.
Because Mutable-Fire is so volatile and changes so quickly, the Regulator in this case slows it down, and gives it stability. The Olympic rings, still important in modern times, have two of Zeus' city-state Olympiad Games containing the more personal and sacred Apollo's Pythian Games in the center. Hot-headed Apollo needed his father's calming influence. It was a father/son relationship.
So, Jupiter still rules Sagittarius, as its very necessary Regulator. And Apollo, with all his attributes, is welcomed into the pantheon of Major astrological rulers.

david starling said:

All movement is relative to what is being held fixed by the observer making the measurements. I use the Signs as being fixed in place. You can't logically hold both the Houses AND the Signs in place. Since the tropical Signs are derived from the fixed-star Constellations, I see them as stationary.

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The houses and the constellations aren't the same type of entities. Constellations are real and made up of apparently fixed stars. They only have their shapes because of our vantage point, and they only seemed fixed because they are so far away we can't see their movement, but yes, I think of them as relatively stable and fixed for astrological purposes.

Houses, on the other hand, are imaginary. They are Platonic ideals that we create and lay over a person's birth chart. They do not exist in reality. They're just a way to conceptualize areas of life in the chart, which is why we can come up with different house systems and argue about them.

Planets, our sun, the moon, and asteroids are also real objects in space that happen to a be a lot closer to us, so we can see and easily measure them moving across the sky from our point of view (less so with the outer planets, which require technology to see and record-keeping to track movement.) These are the bodies that inspired the ancients to conceptualize the gods as being from the heavens.

It's convenient to draw the Chart in a fixed-House way, because that enables us to know at a glance where everything is, relative to the eastern horizon, in any given location. But I don't see the Signs as rotating through the Houses,

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How do you see the signs and houses working together then if they aren't both fixed (and I certainly do not think they are) but the signs aren't moving through the houses either (I do think they are)?

so for me, the Ascendant is the fastest moving indicator in the Chart, matching up with the Mutable-Fire Sign. Also, the glyph for Sagittarius might as well be the glyph for the Ascendant, with a horizontal line representing the eastern horizon, and the arrow showing the movement of the Sun rising from below to above, to where it becomes visible ("seeing" is the key word for Sagittarius). It even slants from east to west, in the direction the Sun will move. The Ascendant is easily linked to Apollo, god of Solar light and god of archery, so I do have a major Greco-Roman deity associated with it, and what I believe are good reasons for it to rule Sagittarius.
Btw, I'm not trying to "convert" you, just showing you my reasoning as to why I feel justified in using the Ascendant as a full-fledged Sign-ruler.

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Why is it necessary that Apollo have a rulership? Artemis/Diana, Demeter/Ceres, Hera/Juno, Athena/Minerva, and Hephaestus/Vulcan do not have rulerships either.

Do you associate a goddess with moon?

No worries about trying to convert. You can stop answering my Devil's Advocate questions if they're annoying. lol

Witchyone said:

The houses and the constellations aren't the same type of entities. Constellations are real and made up of apparently fixed stars. They only have their shapes because of our vantage point, and they only seemed fixed because they are so far away we can't see their movement, but yes, I think of them as relatively stable and fixed for astrological purposes.

Houses, on the other hand, are imaginary. They are Platonic ideals that we create and lay over a person's birth chart. They do not exist in reality. They're just a way to conceptualize areas of life in the chart, which is why we can come up with different house systems and argue about them.

Planets, our sun, the moon, and asteroids are also real objects in space that happen to a be a lot closer to us, so we can see and easily measure them moving across the sky from our point of view (less so with the outer planets, which require technology to see and record-keeping to track movement.) These are the bodies that inspired the ancients to conceptualize the gods as being from the heavens.



How do you see the signs and houses working together then if they aren't both fixed (and I certainly do not think they are) but the signs aren't moving through the houses either (I do think they are)?



Why is it necessary that Apollo have a rulership? Artemis/Diana, Demeter/Ceres, Hera/Juno, Athena/Minerva, and Hephaestus/Vulcan do not have rulerships either.

Do you associate a goddess with moon?

No worries about trying to convert. You can stop answering my Devil's Advocate questions if they're annoying. lol

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I'm loving your questions, and I respect your opinions!

It's because the Ascendant is of such great importance, as was Apollo, the "Most Greek of the Gods".
There were 2 Solar gods in both Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece, and Horus and Apollo were immensely important. These were both gods of solar light and sunrise. Ra and Helios personified the physical nature of the Sun, Horus and Apollo represented its spiritual nature, and were much more personal.
I don't believe that astrological influences are physical (which explains why materialistic modern-science can't accept astrology as "real", since it deals only with the physical). So, I don't require physical entities as Sign-rulers. If physicality was required, the Lunar Nodes would be of no effect.

The Moon has a god associated with it in Ancient Sumeria and Babylonia, and 3 goddesses in Ancient Greece: Selene/Luna who personified the Moon, as Helios/Sol personified the Sun; Artemis/Diana and Hecate represented the Moon in a spiritual way, and Artemis/Diana was a daughter of Zeus/Jupiter, and devoted sister to Apollo. "Brother Sun, Sister Moon".

david starling said:

I'm loving your questions, and I respect your opinions!

It's because the Ascendant is of such great importance, as was Apollo, the "Most Greek of the Gods".
There were 2 Solar gods in both Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece, and Horus and Apollo were immensely important. These were both gods of solar light and sunrise. Ra and Helios personified the physical nature of the Sun, Horus and Apollo represented its spiritual nature, and were much more personal.
I don't believe that astrological influences are physical (which explains why materialistic modern-science can't accept astrology as "real", since it deals only with the physical). So, I don't require physical entities as Sign-rulers. If physicality was required, the Lunar Nodes would be of no effect.

The Moon has a god associated with it in Ancient Sumeria and Babylonia, and 3 goddesses in Ancient Greece: Selene/Luna who personified the Moon, as Helios/Sol personified the Sun; Artemis/Diana and Hecate represented the Moon in a spiritual way, and Artemis/Diana was a daughter of Zeus/Jupiter, and devoted sister to Apollo. "Brother Sun, Sister Moon".

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Thanks for being such a great sport as I poke at your ideas.

I agree that Apollo is probably the most important god who isn't already clearly associated with a ruling planet, but it's annoying that of the goddesses of the main pantheon only Aphrodite is represented. Athena is nearly as important as Apollo, and Artemis happens to be my favorite.

Witchyone said:

Thanks for being such a great sport as I poke at your ideas.

I agree that Apollo is probably the most important god who isn't already clearly associated with a ruling planet, but it's annoying that of the goddesses of the main pantheon only Aphrodite is represented. Athena is nearly as important as Apollo, and Artemis happens to be my favorite.

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As I see it, the Moon is Artemis, Apollo's sister and an archer, when it's on the Ascendant especially, but also when it's Aspected to the Ascendant. I include Athena as representing the Sign, Virgo, since she was the foremost Virgin goddess of Crete and ALL of the Greek city-states, even though Athens was especially devoted to her. She was a sky-goddess, originally winged, but even after she was unwinged, she had a winged messenger, Nike.
Here's a big one for me--Urania as the feminine version of Aquarian rulership. This goes back to Ancient Egypt, which had Nuit as goddess of the Heavens. That makes the Planet now known as Uranus (an incorrect spelling and pronunciation of the Greek god of the Heavens, Ouranos), as representing the Muse of Astrology, and goddess of the Heavens in her own right. So, I use both Ouranos and Urania as names for .

if it bothers you to picture the Sign Virgo as a Greek goddess, note that two Signs already have deities as symbols: Capricorn was the Babylonian god Ea, pictured in the constellation as the Goat-fish; and the Greek constellation, Sagittarius, is the immortal Greek Centaur-archer, Chiron (now more famous as a huge comet). Apollo was Chiron's mentor, so that's another connection between Apollo's Ascendant and the Sign pictured as a Centaur. It appears that astrologers in general still haven't realized that astronomers have taken it upon themselves to tag a random comet with the same identity as the ancient constellational image of Sagittarius!
Astronomers have also randomly named minor asteroids for Apollo, and for Urania, Muse of both Astrology and Astronomy! Unbelievable!