Ancient Titles (Names) of the 12 Houses of the Horoscope

Preliminary NOTE: prior to approximately the late 5th/early 6th centuries CE, the term "House" referred exclusively to SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC AS "DWELLINGS" OF THE PLANETS (the term was never used in reference to the houses of the horoscopic chart as we know them today) Thus....
the House of the Sun was Leo
the House of the Moon was Cancer
-the day house of Mercury was Virgo, the night house of Mercury was Gemini
-the day house of Venus was Libra, the night house of Venus was Taurus
-the day house of Mars was Scorpio, the night house of Mars was Aries
-the day house of Jupiter was Sagittarius, its night house was Pisces
-the day house of Saturn was Capricorn, its night house was Aquarius

Titles of Houses of the Horoscope

What we call "houses of the horoscope" today, were originally referred to as "PLACES" (loci) by astrologers prior to the early 6th century CE. Manilius (circa 14 CE) also frequently referred to the "Places" of the horoscopic chart as "Temples"-however, other astrologers of this period (BCE - 6th century CE) did not use that word.

Each "Place" of the horoscopic chart was given a name. Most of these names were derived from a mixure of Greek mythology combined with Greco-Roman religo-philosophical concepts, and each name was a kind of mnemonic shorthand representing a complex of symbolic ideas, understood by the astrologers using them.

-the 1st PLACE (contianing the ascending degree), was usually simply referred to as "the horoscope", although it was also know as "Stilbon", or as the "Place of Life"

-the 2nd PLACE was called the "Abode of Typhon"; and was also referred to as the "Gate of Pluto" or as the "Portal of Hades"

-the 3rd Place was called "Dea" (the goddess), and was also referred to as "the Place of the Moon Goddess"

-the 4th Place was called "Daemon"-note that the meaning was Greek (a "daemon" meant a spiritual creature intermediate between the Divine world and the world of humans, plants and animals) and had nothing to do with the later meaning of the word "demon"

-the 5th Place was called "Bona Fortuna" (good fortune)

-the 6th Place was called "Mala Fortuna" (bad fortune) and was also referred to as "the Gate of Toil"

-the 7th Place as titled "Ditis Janua"

-the 8th Place was called the "Abode of Typhon", "Gate of Pluto" or "Portal of Hades"-same titles as for the 2nd Place

-the 9th Place was called "Deus" (the god), and was also referred to as "the Place of the Sun God"

-the 10h Place was called "Fortuna" (fortune)

-the 11th Place was called "Felix Fortuna" (sweet fortune) it was also referred to as"Bonus Daemon" (the place of the Good Spirit)

-the 12th Place was called "Malus Daemon" (place of the Evil Spirit) and was also referred to as "the Gate of Toil" (same title as the 6th Place)


Many of these "Places" were considered to be the "natural dwellings" of certain planets: thus:
-the 1st Place was the natural abode of Mercury
-the 3rd Place was the natural abode of the Moon
-the 4th Place was the natural abode of Saturn (this was switched a couple hundred years after Manilius, to the 12th Place)
-the 6th Place was the natural abode of Mars
-the 9th Place was the natural abode of the Sun
-the 10th Place was the natural abode of Venus
-the 11th Place was the natural abode of Jupiter

All of these titles (together with their related concepts) fell by the wayside after the fall of the Classical world and the political triumph of the Christian Churches (Rome and Byzantium)-the names (and their symbolic meanings) were dropped during the transitional time of Arabic astrology, and were never taken up again in Western astrology...

dr. farr said:

-the 4th Place was the natural abode of Saturn (this was switched a couple hundred years after Manilius, to the 12th Place)

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Regarding this, do you think Manilius was justified in making this switch?

Dr. Farr, thanks for posting this.

I believe in the latter part of your post on "natural abodes" you are referring to the planetary joys. I note how the planets appear in opposing or complimentary pairs: sun/moon (the luminaries,) Mars/Saturn (the malefics,) Venus-Jupiter (the benefics) with Mercury being alone.

Hellenistic astrologer Chris Brennan has a theory about them http://www.hellenisticastrology.com/the-planetary-joys.pdf but my own belief is that the houses are originally Egyptian in origin, modified to fit the new Hellenistic astrology. The Babylonians didn't use houses, which first appear in Hellenized Egypt.

I've done some work on this, but not enough to make a complete case for the following theory:

"Typhon" the Greek god of storms was a Hellenized version of the Egyptian god Seth, who was the god of sandstorms and disorder. Saturn's association with misfortune seems clear.

Venus in the 5th refers to her cognate Egyptian goddess Hathor, who presided over joy, sexual love, and childbirth.

The Egyptian sun god Ra (also Horus) was Hellenized as Phoebus, and later as Apollo. Apollo ruled prophecy, which belongs to the 9th house today.

Stilbon was an ancient Greek name for the planet Mercury. The Greek god Hermes became assimilated to the Egyptian Thoth, the Ibis scribe god, who was initially a moon god. Hence the association of the 3rd house with writing. Having put Thoth as an Egyptian version of Hermes/Mercury, the Hellenists substituted Selene, their full moon goddess.

Mars I'm shaky on. The Hellenist prototype was the Babylonian god Nergal, who was associated with drought, war, and pestilence; the latter relating to the 6th house and ill health.

With the 11th as the house of the good spirit, one could hardly do better than Jupiter. I haven't yet worked out an Egyptian prototype. Zeus/Jupiter had his origins as a rain god, which wouldn't have been so critical in Egypt. Possibly the Egyptian prototype was the Nile flood god Hapi, who was described as a beneficial father-figure.

waybread said:

Hellenistic astrologer Chris Brennan has a theory about them http://www.hellenisticastrology.com/the-planetary-joys.pdf but my own belief is that the houses are originally Egyptian in origin, modified to fit the new Hellenistic astrology. The Babylonians didn't use houses, which first appear in Hellenized Egypt.

Click to expand...

This is quite an interesting theory, thnx for posting it

Hello Dr. Farr!

I wanted to ask what is the source for this diurnal/nocturnal division?

dr. farr said:

Preliminary NOTE: prior to approximately the late 5th/early 6th centuries CE, the term "House" referred exclusively to SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC AS "DWELLINGS" OF THE PLANETS (the term was never used in reference to the houses of the horoscopic chart as we know them today) Thus....
the House of the Sun was Leo
the House of the Moon was Cancer
-the day house of Mercury was Virgo, the night house of Mercury was Gemini
-the day house of Venus was Libra, the night house of Venus was Taurus
-the day house of Mars was Scorpio, the night house of Mars was Aries
-the day house of Jupiter was Sagittarius, its night house was Pisces
-the day house of Saturn was Capricorn, its night house was Aquarius

Click to expand...

Because, diurnal/nocturnal division I am accustomed with and have been practicing for years can be traced all the way back to Ptolemy. In Tetrabiblos he wrote:

"Again, in the same way they assigned six of the signs to the masculine and
diurnal nature and an equal number to the feminine and nocturnal. An
alternating order was assigned to them because day is always yoked to
night and close to it, and female to male. Now as Aries is taken as the
starting-point for the reasons we have mentioned, and as the male
likewise rules and holds first place, since also the active is always superior
to the passive in power, the signs of Aries and Libra were thought to be
masculine and diurnal, an additional reason being that the equinoctial
circle which is drawn through them completes the primary and most
powerful movement of the whole universe. The signs in succession after
them correspond, as we said, in alternating order."

Thus the qualities of signs masculine, diurnal and active go together as opposed to feminine, nocturnal and passive.

In this way, we get the following distribution:

Mercury - diurnal house Gemini - nocturnal house Virgo
Venus - diurnal house Libra - nocturnal house Taurus
Mars - diurnal house Aries - nocturnal house Scorpio
Jupiter - diurnal house Sagittarius - nocturnal house Pisces
Saturn - diurnal house Aquarius - nocturnal house Capricorn

@Cap: Not Dr. Farr (and don't know the source) but I presume it is a division due to the solar and lunar halves of the zodiac - rather than what is essentially an elemental division.

i.e. From Leo we move back to Capricorn as the solar division ruled by the sun and from Aquarius to Cancer is the half ruled by the moon. Thus the signs in the solar division are diurnal and those in the lunar division are nocturnal.

This division and assignment of planetary rulers relates to signs' temporal distance from the summer solstice, and planets' distance from the sun and moon.

Cap said:

Hello Dr. Farr!

I wanted to ask what is the source for this diurnal/nocturnal division?



Because, diurnal/nocturnal division I am accustomed with and have been practicing for years can be traced all the way back to Ptolemy. In Tetrabiblos he wrote:

"Again, in the same way they assigned six of the signs to the masculine and
diurnal nature and an equal number to the feminine and nocturnal. An
alternating order was assigned to them because day is always yoked to
night and close to it, and female to male. Now as Aries is taken as the
starting-point for the reasons we have mentioned, and as the male
likewise rules and holds first place, since also the active is always superior
to the passive in power, the signs of Aries and Libra were thought to be
masculine and diurnal, an additional reason being that the equinoctial
circle which is drawn through them completes the primary and most
powerful movement of the whole universe. The signs in succession after
them correspond, as we said, in alternating order."

Thus the qualities of signs masculine, diurnal and active go together as opposed to feminine, nocturnal and passive.

In this way, we get the following distribution:

Mercury - diurnal house Gemini - nocturnal house Virgo
Venus - diurnal house Libra - nocturnal house Taurus
Mars - diurnal house Aries - nocturnal house Scorpio
Jupiter - diurnal house Sagittarius - nocturnal house Pisces
Saturn - diurnal house Aquarius - nocturnal house Capricorn

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Sources which I used were primarily Manilius (14 AD)-the diurnal/nocturnal house allocations changed under Ptolemy from the earlier tradition, and this change continued through the later Greek and following Arabic transitional times-in practice I use the Ptolemaic based day/night house allocations.

conspiracy theorist said:

Regarding this, do you think Manilius was justified in making this switch?

Click to expand...

Manilius (14 CE) reflected the outlook (Saturn's abode being the 4th place) of the earliest Greco-Roman practice; Saturn's "abode" was switched to the 12th Place by later Greco-Roman authors (so too was Venus switched from the 10th Place to the 5th Place, and Jupiter switched from the 11th Place to the 10th Place)
I continue to use the "joys of the planets" according to the Manilius allocations.

dr. farr said:

Preliminary NOTE: prior to approximately the late 5th/early 6th centuries CE, the term "House" referred exclusively to SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC AS "DWELLINGS" OF THE PLANETS (the term was never used in reference to the houses of the horoscopic chart as we know them today) Thus....
the House of the Sun was Leo

Click to expand...

The nature of the Sun is to select.

dr. farr said:

the House of the Moon was Cancer

Click to expand...

The nature of the Moon is to gather and include.

dr. farr said:

-the day house of Mercury was Virgo, the night house of Mercury was Gemini

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It is impossible for Mercury to be in Gemini when the Sun is in Leo, hence the designation of Virgo as Mercury's day house. The nature of Mercury is to contest and destabalize. Virgo is in aversion to Leo.

dr. farr said:

-the day house of Venus was Libra, the night house of Venus was Taurus

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Same goes for Venus, if the Sun is in Leo even at her maximum elongation she cannot be in Taurus. Libra sextiles Leo, and the nature of the sextile is that of Venus, to reconcile and unify.

dr. farr said:

-the day house of Mars was Scorpio, the night house of Mars was Aries

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Keep your malefics tamed. The rulerships were assigned based on the Thema Mundi, and aspects to the lights (which derrives the understanding of the aspects), but Mars is preferable in Scorpio because the cold and moist tempers his nature. In Aries, the cooling of the night tempers his nature. Also, Scorpio as a feminine sign is receiving, not emitting. And Scorpio squares Leo. The nature of the square is that of Mars; to sever and separate.

dr. farr said:

-the day house of Jupiter was Sagittarius, its night house was Pisces

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Sagittarius trines Leo, and the trine, the most benefic aspect, carries the nature of Jupiter; to confirm and stabalize.

dr. farr said:

-the day house of Saturn was Capricorn, its night house was Aquarius

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This is the one I struggle with the most. Aquarius opposes Leo, and this gives us the nature of the opposition as that of Saturn, to reject and exclude. Capricorn is a feminine earth sign, cold and dry, agreeing with the nature of Saturn as an excessively cold and dry planet. It's modality is cardinal, which means that it has the ability to initiate. Makes me think of (jeez, I can't remember offhand if it was Paulus or Ezra, but I'd bet my hat without digging out the texts that it was Ezra) who referred to Saturn as feminine.

The interesting thing, following my logic through all of this, is that Capricorn is in aversion to the Leo, and aversion at 150* is more similar to "reject and exclude" than the opposition, which can be contest or compromise. Perhaps Saturn, in his dual role ruling the two signs that oppose both lights, defines both the opposition and what is modernly known as the quincunx?

dr. farr said:

All of these titles (together with their related concepts) fell by the wayside after the fall of the Classical world and the political triumph of the Christian Churches (Rome and Byzantium)-the names (and their symbolic meanings) were dropped during the transitional time of Arabic astrology, and were never taken up again in Western astrology...

Click to expand...

I wouldn't go quite so far as to say they fell by the wayside. Perhaps for a while, but nothing you describe here as to the meanings of the places and their names contridicts what I have learned...

An interesting side note is to remember to consider the places as lunar and solar. The lunar houses/places (above the horizon) cover the topics that the native chooses, or those that happen because of him/her. The lunar, or those below the horizon, pertain to the areas of life the native has little control over.

Here is Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 1:17 on the "houses" (i. e., signs) of the planets. Ever the rationalist:

"Since of the twelve signs the most northern, which are closer to the others than our zenith and therefore most productive of heat and of warmth are Cancer and Leo, they assigned these to the greatest and most powerful heavenly bodies, that is, to the luminaries, as houses [signs]. Leo, which is masculine, to the sun and Cancer, feminine, to the moon. In keeping with this they assumed the semicircle from Leo to Capricorn to be solar and that from Aquarius to be Cancer to be lunar, so that in each of the semi-circles one sign might be assigned to each of the five planets as its own, one bearing aspect to the sun and the other to the moon, consistently with the spheres of their motion and the peculiarities of their natures."

I would read the solar vs. lunar hemispheres here to be what we would call diurnal or nocturnal.

So Saturn, with the highest orbit from a geocentric perspective, rules the two signs furthest from the luminaries: in the northern hemisphere at the coldest part of the year. They have opposing relationships to the luminaries.

Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius and Pisces form beneficial trine relationships to the sun and moon, respectively.

Mars, as a destructive planet, forms a square relationship to the luminaries via Scorpio and Aries.

Venus is "beneath" Mars in terms of its orbit. It has a harmonious sextile to the sun via Libra and to the moon via Taurus. Venus is within two signs of the sun.

Mercury is "beneath" the other planets and is closest to the sun, so it rules Gemini and Virgo, as the signs closest to Leo and Cancer.

It's unclear who are the "they" who first worked out this scheme, but presumably astrologers who pre-dated Ptolemy in 150 CE.

The exaltations are much older than planetary sign rulerships. Depending on the academic source, their origin is traced to Babylon or ancient Egypt. There is another aspect relationship between rulerships and exaltations. These are favourable, with the exception of Mercury.

Moon is exalted in Taurus (sextile Cancer.)
Sun is exalted in Aries (trine Leo)
Mercury is exalted in Virgo (square Gemini-- the only hard aspect.)
Venus is exalted in Pisces (sextile Taurus)
Mars is exalted in Capricorn (sextile Scorpio)
Jupiter is exalted in Cancer (trine Pisces)
Saturn is exalted in Libra (trine Aquarius)

The idea that Venus has extra strength in Taurus goes back to Babylon.

waybread said:

The idea that Venus has extra strength in Taurus goes back to Babylon.

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Think on it though. Each of the planets aside from the lights (and I bet dr. farr or Odds has the source that the lights are fully familiar with each other's signs) was given two signs to rule. Venus in her phases is either the warrior or the reconciler. Goddess or devil. That which brings love, or that which brings war. W, you've studied the mythology more than I have. Comments about Venus in her phases?

tsmall said:

Think on it though. Each of the planets aside from the lights (and I bet dr. farr or Odds has the source that the lights are fully familiar with each other's signs) was given two signs to rule. Venus in her phases is either the warrior or the reconciler. Goddess or devil. That which brings love, or that which brings war. W, you've studied the mythology more than I have. Comments about Venus in her phases?

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It's pretty obvious. Venus as Morning Star is Goddess of Justice, holding the sword of battle for truth and righteousness, and the Libran balance-scale, weighing good against evil. Evening Star Venus is the Goddess of Love. Goes back to Inanna/Ishtar and the Egyptian versions, Maat and Hathor.

tsmall said:

Think on it though. Each of the planets aside from the lights
(and I bet dr. farr or Odds has the source that the lights are fully familiar with each other's signs)
was given two signs to rule.
Venus in her phases is either the warrior or the reconciler.
Goddess or devil.
That which brings love, or that which brings war.
W, you've studied the mythology more than I have.
Comments about Venus in her phases?

Click to expand...

david starling said:

It's pretty obvious. Venus as Morning Star is Goddess of Justice, holding the sword of battle for truth and righteousness,
and the Libran balance-scale, weighing good against evil.
Evening Star Venus is the Goddess of Love.
Goes back to Inanna/Ishtar and the Egyptian versions, Maat and Hathor.

Click to expand...

As Venus travels around the sun inside the Earth's orbit
it alternates regularly from evening to morning sky and back.
It typically spends about 9 1/2 months as an "evening star" and about the same length of time as a "morning star."
Some ancient astronomers actually thought they were seeing two different celestial bodies.
They named the morning star after Phosphorus, the harbinger of light
and the evening star for Hesperus, the son of Atlas.
It was the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras
who first realized that Phosphorus and Hesperus was one and the same object.

However, there's more to Venus phases

tsmall said:

Comments about Venus in her phases?

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Phases of Venus revealed
To the ancients, Venus behavior was puzzling and was not really understood
until the time of the famed 17th century astronomy Galileo Galilee.
After moving to Pisa in the autumn of 1610, Galileo started observing Venus through his crude telescope.
One evening he noticed that a small slice seemed to be missing from Venus' disk http://www.space.com/23495-venus-planet-phases-explained.html

After several more months, Venus appeared in the shape of a crescent
in other words, it seemed to display the same behavior as the phases of the moon.
This was a major discovery
which ultimately helped to deliver a deathblow to the long-held concept of an Earth-centered universe.

Meanwhile back at Mayan HQ VENUS PHASES were noted long before Pythagoras

for more than 120 years
experts have been analysing the Venus Table of the Dresden Codex
- that's an ancient Mayan document on their astronomical data -
and found that it contains accurate observations
and even calculations of a leap year.
In a new paper from UC Santa Barbara's Gerardo Aldana
a professor of anthropology and of Chicana and Chicano studies
looks at how

Mayan hieroglyphics (epigraphy) in the ancient text
tracks the observable phases of Venus.

According to Mr Aldana, the document contains mathematical calculations about

Venus’s irregular cycle around the sun
which the Mayan’s accurately discovered took 583.92 days.

Mr Aldana explained:

"So that means if you do anything on a calendar that's based on days as a basic unit
there is going to be an error that accrues.
They’re using Venus not just to strictly chart when it was going to appear
but they were using it for their ritual cycles.
They had ritual activities when the whole city would come together
and they would do certain events based on the observation of Venus.”

tsmall said:

Think on it though. Each of the planets aside from the lights (and I bet dr. farr or Odds has the source that the lights are fully familiar with each other's signs) was given two signs to rule. Venus in her phases is either the warrior or the reconciler. Goddess or devil. That which brings love, or that which brings war. W, you've studied the mythology more than I have. Comments about Venus in her phases?

Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't understand what I am supposed to "think on."

The Mesopotamians invented astrology, and passed it along to the Greeks ca. 300 BCE. The Greeks and the Egyptians had their own more ancient star lore, but it wasn't Hellenistic astrology. Astrology proper in Egypt may have had two independent introductions, via the Babylonians, or via the Greeks; although the latter seems to have more evidence. Then you get a huge amalgamation of these different traditions in what became Hermeticism and Hellenistic astrology.

The idea of rulerships is more recent than the idea of exaltations. The only debate is whether the origins of exaltations go back thousands of years in ancient Egypt (according to Joanne Conman) or less anciently in Babylon (though still preceding Hellenistic astrology.) But it's noteworthy that Ptolemy was aware of both traditions in his discussion of Egyptian and Babylonian terms.

http://www.academia.edu/418596/The_Egyptian_Origins_of_Planetary_Hypsomata

http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001114.php

I've got a bunch of academic sources on this, but am not sure when I'll have time to scrounge through them.

For all their faults, Vettius Valens "Anthologies" was the great compiler of different traditions on signs and houses, and you will find a range of house names in his work. Ptolemy was the great systematizer. He actually had little use for houses. He names them only once, incompletely, and only in association with a particular technique.

My theory is that Ptolemy, probably basing his schema on the work of earlier astrologers like Hipparchus, set out to Hellenize what he knew of the essentially religious traditions of Babylonian omen literature and genethliacal astrology; and Egyptian star lore, which was more heavily based in timing religious observances, magic, and the soul's passage through the after-life. Ptolemy's proto science drew heavily from Aristotle.

That the square peg of religion in the round hole of proto-science was not always a good fit is evidenced by the discrepancies we find in the early sources about planet, sign, and house meanings. As this became standardized, the earlier religious schematics were lost or downplayed. (See, for example, Firmicus Maternus, who clearly knew far more about astrology's religious origins than he felt at leave to express.)

Which is a roundabout way of saying that Ptolemy's rulership "tree" isn't the whole story, but a sanitized, Hellenized version.

Re: Venus. It look the Mesopotamians a while to figure out that Venus and Mercury as morning vs. evening stars were actually the same planets. A feminized Venus was OK following the sun as the evening star, but as the morning star Venus became demonized as the Old Testament Lucifer. Mercury also has a dual nature, depending upon its position relative to the sun.

Probably dating from the time of the spring equinox in Taurus, the Mesopotamians believed that Venus as their Ishtar (Innana) had particularly associated with this constellation. Ishtar was a goddess of both sexual love and war, with several other Near Eastern cognate goddesses who shared this dual role, like Anat of Lebanon and Syria.

https://maas.museum/observations/20...of-heaven-in-mesopotamian-myth-and-astronomy/

That Babylonian astrology was based upon religion and mythology, not upon "scientific" empirical observation, is well attested by the research of scholars of the ancient Near East. Mars, for example, brings pestilence (now joying in the 6th house) and warfare-- not because ancient star-gazers observed this to be so, but because this was the nature of their god Nergal (Romanized as Mars.)

The MUL APIN tablets
showed that Babylonian astronomers
observed seven planets always move within a belt
through the same groupings of fixed stars
and that there were seventeen such groupings (constellations).

Twelve of those constellations make up what we know today as the zodiac, or "circle of animals":

MUL APIN TEXT NAME .........TRANSLATION ........GREEK ZODIAC NAME
Mul Lu Hung Ga3 ................The "Hired Man" .......Aries (the Ram)
Mul Gud An Na ....................The "Bull of Heaven" .......Taurus (the Bull)
Mul Mash Tab Ba Gal Ga.......The "Great Twins" .......Gemini (the Twins)
Mul Al Lul ............................The "Crab" ...............Cancer (the Crab)
Mul Ur Gu La .......................The "Lion" .............. Leo (the Lion)
Mul Ab Sin ..........................The "Furrow" ............. Virgo (the Virgin)
Mul Zi Ba Ni Tum ................The "Scales of Heaven" ....... Libra (the Scales)
Mul Gir Tab ........................The "Scorpion" ............ Scorpio (the Scorpion)
Mul Pa Bil Sag ...................The "Grandfather" ........ Sagittarius (the Archer)
Mul Suhur Mashû ...............The "Goat Fish" ..........Capricorn (the Goat)
Mul Gu La .......................... The "Great One" .........Aquarius (the Water-Carrier)
Mul Sim Mah ........................The "Swallow" ............Pisces (the Fish)


The Mul Apin text included two other star paths
- the "path of Anu," and the "path of Ea."
Anu was the Babylonian "God of the Sky,"
Ea was the "God of the Ocean,"
Enlil was "Lord of the Wind,"
the fixed stars (forming the paths of Enlil, Anu, and Ea)
were first and foremost seen by the Babylonians as the abode of divine beings


It is striking how ancient Babylonians gave almost exactly the same names
to the zodiacal constellations
as did the Greeks.