waybread
Well-known member
Dr. Farr, thanks for your impressive history of house systems!
But watch whom you are calling a barbarian! I've visited Germany a few times, and it was interesting to see the positive interpretation that their museums and popular histories give the "Teutonic hordes" invading Rome; and how Roman colonists appear as the nasty occupiers. Then during the Renaissance, German universities had astrology departments--in some cases for centuries after Italy closed theirs.
MSO, looking for agreement amongst astrologers is a bad job. It didn't happen throughout astrology's history. Even Ptolemy in Tetrabiblos gives both Babylonian and Egyptian systems for certain practices, because the two branches didn't agree.
Internal diisagreements about the best house system, in early modern times, was a major criticism of astrology's detractors. (For anyone interested in the history of astrology, I highly recommend Nicholas Campion's two-volume work.)
As has been said previously, at some level an astrologer simply has to see which house system works best for him. There is nothing objective about which house system to use. If there were, we wouldn't expect expert astrologers to produce accurate readings using different house systems, and yet they do.
Australian astrologer Alice Portman www.aliceportman.com argues that different individuals respond differently to different house systems; and one way to determine the best one for somebody is to time the passage of Uranus over house cusps. Since it "rules" sudden change, we should see a shift in the individual's experience from matters related to one house over to the next one as Uranus transits.
Part of the problem with the whole sign system for me (although I sometimes use it as a supplementary technique; notably when the birth time is an estimate) is that you can end up with the MC seriously out of the 10th and into a neighbouring house. The 9th just doesn't seem to indicate one's public image, vocation, or destiny to me unless you have the ruler of the 10th in the 9th. (For an example, see Vincent Van Gogh's chart.) If someone's MC is at 29 degrees of the 10th house sign, many astrologers would see it as affecting 11th house matters. Some of my family members' MCs are seriously into the 11th house with a whole sign system. The other angles can also be way off their house cusps.
And once more, with feeling: there are many differences between modern and traditional astrology, and attributing the cleavage merely to the outer planets does a disservice to both traditions.
There is no reason why, again, why Uranus couldn't rule electricity or computers without feeling the need to assign it a detriment, fall, terms, faces, or whatnot.
But watch whom you are calling a barbarian! I've visited Germany a few times, and it was interesting to see the positive interpretation that their museums and popular histories give the "Teutonic hordes" invading Rome; and how Roman colonists appear as the nasty occupiers. Then during the Renaissance, German universities had astrology departments--in some cases for centuries after Italy closed theirs.
MSO, looking for agreement amongst astrologers is a bad job. It didn't happen throughout astrology's history. Even Ptolemy in Tetrabiblos gives both Babylonian and Egyptian systems for certain practices, because the two branches didn't agree.
Internal diisagreements about the best house system, in early modern times, was a major criticism of astrology's detractors. (For anyone interested in the history of astrology, I highly recommend Nicholas Campion's two-volume work.)
As has been said previously, at some level an astrologer simply has to see which house system works best for him. There is nothing objective about which house system to use. If there were, we wouldn't expect expert astrologers to produce accurate readings using different house systems, and yet they do.
Australian astrologer Alice Portman www.aliceportman.com argues that different individuals respond differently to different house systems; and one way to determine the best one for somebody is to time the passage of Uranus over house cusps. Since it "rules" sudden change, we should see a shift in the individual's experience from matters related to one house over to the next one as Uranus transits.
Part of the problem with the whole sign system for me (although I sometimes use it as a supplementary technique; notably when the birth time is an estimate) is that you can end up with the MC seriously out of the 10th and into a neighbouring house. The 9th just doesn't seem to indicate one's public image, vocation, or destiny to me unless you have the ruler of the 10th in the 9th. (For an example, see Vincent Van Gogh's chart.) If someone's MC is at 29 degrees of the 10th house sign, many astrologers would see it as affecting 11th house matters. Some of my family members' MCs are seriously into the 11th house with a whole sign system. The other angles can also be way off their house cusps.
And once more, with feeling: there are many differences between modern and traditional astrology, and attributing the cleavage merely to the outer planets does a disservice to both traditions.
There is no reason why, again, why Uranus couldn't rule electricity or computers without feeling the need to assign it a detriment, fall, terms, faces, or whatnot.
Last edited: