The Origin of the Houses Part 2

fig. 1

In our previous article on the origin of the astrological houses, we found out that they are derived from actual movements in the sky over the course of a day. Here’s a link to that article if you need a quick refresher. Just to recap though, the rising sign or ascendant is the sign that was rising up over the eastern horizon as you were born. The exact degree of that sign that was coming up is the degree of your rising and, depending on the house system you use, could delineate your first house. Ancient astrologers, however, used whole sign houses and for the ease of illustration, we’re going to do the same here. In a whole sign house system, the entire sign of your ascendant would constitute the first house, while the ascendant (AC) itself would be a sensitive point floating around in it. The same thing would be true for the midheaven (MC), descendant (DC), and imum coeli (IC). The MC and IC can float around between the houses in their respective hemispheres of the chart.

These 4 points are also related to the 4 cardinal directions: east for AC, south for MC, west for DC, and north for IC. Each of these sectors of the sky has a different view or angle and affects the visibility of celestial objects. If you take the time, you can watch the sun, moon, planets, and stars just start to become visible as they begin their rise over the eastern horizon, reach their highest or most visible point when they are directly above you, then decline from visibility as they descend to the western horizon, before disappearing and eventually reaching their lowest point which is the other side of the earth, relative to you. Those same cardinal directions divide the chart up into hemispheres or halves along two different axes, east/west and north/south. These hemispheres were a wonderful way for ancient philosophers to illustrate their love of duality. The eastern hemisphere is the left side of the chart, where one is independent and self-initiating, while the western hemisphere is on the right, where one is more interdependent and socially aware. The north is the bottom half and indicates the material life or things pertaining to the body, while the south is the top half and indicates matters dealing with the mind or spirit.

You may also recall from Part 1 that your chart is a reproduction of the view of the sky when and where you were born. That’s your horizon! Our ancestors recognized symbolism in these primary regions of the sky, and they became metaphorical for a human life. The eastern horizon was known as the Place of Rising and became associated with beginnings and birth, being that is where objects first rose into visibility (Chris Brennan, The Astrology Podcast). The high noon or zenith point in the southern sky was where planets and constellations were their most visible or prominent. It is literally the high point. Then, the western sky was called the Place of Setting, since celestial objects would descend and seem to disappear below the earth (ibid.). Lastly, we have the midnight point, where passing objects are midway in their invisibility between having set and rising once again. This apparent rising of objects in the east, reaching their peak at high 12, and setting in the west is called diurnal motion or primary motion (see first image above).

Do you notice the proto significations of the angular houses in there? Well done if you do! Yes, the Place of Rising became the associated with you, the individual, while high noon highlighted what is most visible about you, what you are known for or what you do. Then, the Place of Setting, opposite the rising, took on the role of the other, since it’s opposite you. The sun then descends below the horizon and reaches its deepest darkest point at midnight before starting its apparent upward arc again. This place has the least visibility so it was eventually associated with what is least visible about you, or where you come from. You can see the primary significations for the angular houses right there, first, tenth, seventh, and fourth in that order! In, fact astrologer, Austin Coppock, says that angular houses answer the 4 basic questions about someone, “what are you like, what do you do, who are you with, and where do you come from?”

We’ve already described how angular houses are associated with the cardinal points, so they are kind of a big deal. In fact, planets or objects placed in them will have a global impact on the whole chart. For example, I’m a Gemini sun with Taurus Mercury conjunct my IC, so in the fourth house in whole sign. You may think, oh her Mercury must be super hidden, that sucks for a Gemini, and you’d be partially right. That same Mercury, though, influences and impacts everything else in the chart and one could even ironically argue it takes on extra prominence by being in the most hidden place. Angular houses, yes even the fourth house, bring in cardinal or peak energy.

What about the other types of houses though? What’s their energy like? If the angular houses are the most prominent and energetic, then that suggests the adjacent houses are either rising to or falling from that prominence, right? Yes! This is where our cadent and succedent houses come in! They flank the angular houses on either side, creating what is called an angular triad. Each triad represents a rising towards prominence in the succedent houses and decline from prominence in the cadent houses. The succedent houses are the second, eight, fifth, and eleventh. Cadent are third, ninth, sixth, and twelfth. As succedent houses are said to be rising, they tended to be increasing in energy and therefore more benefic in meaning, while the cadent houses are in decline, have a decreasing energy and a more malefic meaning. fig. 2

If you’re slightly confused right now, don’t worry. So was I when I was trying to understand how angular triads work. It all seemed backwards to me, so I started looking up where these words came from. You see succedent comes from the Latin root for subsequent or succeeding, which made sense, since they seem to come right after each angular house (Wikipedia). The second comes after the first, the fifth comes after the fourth, the eighth comes after the seventh, and the eleventh comes after the tenth. How would objects in those houses be rising to prominence in the angular ones, as ancient astrological texts describe? Aren’t they going the other way? Moreover, the Greeks called the cadent houses, apoklima, which means to decline or fall way (Wikipedia). My Taurus Mercury had a hard time understanding why our ancestors considered cadent houses as falling away from the angular ones since to me, it looked like they preceded them.

fig. 3

That’s when I realized they were going by the diurnal or primary motion, which appears to move clockwise across the sky from east to west over the course of a day, "backwards" through the signs and houses, as opposed to the counterclockwise or secondary motion of the regular transits over multiple days. Please refer to fig. 1, fig. 3, and fig. 4. You see we have 2 types of motion that affect our view of the sky: the tilted earth spinning on its axis gives us the diurnal motion we observe over a 24 hour period. This also gives us the apparent the movements of planets around the earth, while actually orbiting the sun. It's their orbit around the sun that causes the secondary motion of the planets around the zodiac. When viewed from this angle, objects would appear from earth to be rising to prominence through the eleventh house before reaching their highest point in the tenth house and eventually declining in the ninth house. Each of the triads follows the same pattern. This cycle of objects rising, reaching their height, falling away or declining, as well as which hemisphere they occupied they chart, and their relationship to the first house, gave us many of the early significations of the other houses. fig. 4

For example, take the fifth House. It is succedent, meaning it’s rising to prominence and therefore is mostly beneficent, but it is in the northern, or material hemisphere, and also has to do with the body. Hence, fifth house's early signification was pleasurable things having to do with the body, which eventually came to be associated with sex and children and hence creativity (Chris Brennan, The Astrology Podcast). In a whole sign house system, the fifth house is also trine to the rising and hence would be in the same element, which is a harmonious relationship. We discussed these relationships in the article on Aspect Relations (yes, it’s all interconnected). If you imagine your chart in whole sign, the other houses making either a trine or a sextile were invested with beneficent or good meanings. Those would be the third and the eleventh, which are sextile, and the fifth and the ninth, which are trine. The angular houses are of course square, except the seventh, which is opposite. Those are the power houses. The ones that do not actually aspect the first House are the second, the twelfth, the eighth, and the sixth. You’ll notice that these houses get the negative significations, except the second. Aspect relations were said to be based on sight, that is, the planet or house’s ability to see or make a favorable angle to the others. Therefore, those houses that weren’t in the direct line of sight from the AC received more malefic meanings.

fig. 5

So the houses got their meanings from a combination of diurnal motion, the hemisphere they fall in, and the relationship to the AC. But wait… Didn’t houses get their meanings from the signs? Like, isn’t the first House associated with Aries, second with Taurus, third with Gemini, and so on?

No… I repeat… No.

I struggled with this too. I spent a lot of time early on not really using the houses properly. I kept thinking, “this is stupid. Why would we replicate the zodiac in the houses?” It was a completely natural thing to think. When I bought Liz Greene’s amazing book Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil, it was organized by equating signs with houses, i.e. “Saturn in Aries or the First House,” etc. I wondered if I should just ignore the signs with the slower moving planets and just read their houses. When I first heard Chris Brennan say, “signs don’t equal houses,” I was like “wait what?” It turns out, though, that there was also a commercial motive in equating signs with houses. Publishers get to save significantly on paper when they repeat meanings between signs and houses. I was excited to find this out, but didn’t fully understand why. I had to first unlearn that habit of pulling zodiacal meanings out of my hat for the houses. Astrology came alive again for me like new.

Understanding where the house significations came from also helped me understand the planetary joys. For example, Jupiter, the lord of philosophy and wisdom, finds his joy in the eleventh House, which is the succedent house in the hemisphere of spirit or mind, and sextile to the AC. Therefore, these would be people in the native’s life who support their goals and aspirations. Jupiter is also very inclusive and would of course find joy among friends. The sixth House on the other hand is cadent, so declining, in the hemisphere of matter or the body, and not in aspect to the AC. It took on more malefic meanings, so bad fortune pertaining to the body became associated with illness, obligations, and servitude. Mars finds his joy in the sixth house, which would make sense in the context of summoning the energy to address health issues and habits. The cadent houses tend to dissipate our energy so it would make sense that only the most energetic planet would find his joy in the sixth House (Austin Coppock, The Astrology Podcast).

Venus finds her joy in the fifth House and this would make sense that the planet of pleasure would be most happy in the house of things that feel good. Mercury finds his joy in the first house, which is associated with you, the mind, who hopefully governs most of your body. The moon finds her joy in the third house, which was originally known as the House of the Goddess and the phases of the moon are often associated with Goddess worship and fertility. The sun finds his joy in the ninth house, the house of God, and the solar orb has often been a symbol of deity in many ancient cultures. Finally, Saturn finds his joy in the twelfth house, the house that’s most out of sight to the native. Perhaps that's why he’s so happy there, because we can’t see what he’s up to!

We won’t go into the actual significations of the houses here. We’ll save that for Part 3. What I really wanted to do here though was illustrate where the actual house significations came from. They don’t come from the qualities associated with zodiacal signs. They come from observable astronomy, from actual points in the sky related to celestial visibility and from angular relationships. It’s part of our history, your history. Your ancestors looked up at the sky thousands of years ago and noticed correspondences with their lives on earth. Those correspondences were the basis of ancient religion and we exploit those same sacred patterns now for selfishness, rather than to connect ourselves with the rest of existence. Some of the subsequent generations have extended the idea, that celestial movements correlate with terrestrial events, developed it, and realized deeper connections. Others inserted noise, errors, and further obscured astrology by perpetuating misconceptions. One of those, as we saw, was that signs equal houses and that their meanings were interchangeable. By researching where the houses and their meanings came from, I found out this was wrong and not the intention of early astrologers. I struggled with this and it was confusing at first, but once I puzzled it out for myself, new possibilities emerged. I wanted to share that same discovery with you, and I hope it helps you a bit in your own astrological practice. More to come!