House Division in Ancient Astrology: Origins of the Different Systems

A talk on the different forms of house division in ancient astrology, explaining how the different approaches dividing a chart into twelve houses emerged in Hellenistic astrology, presented by astrologer Chris Brennan.

The three main forms of house division that were used in ancient astrology were whole sign houses, equal houses, and quadrant houses.

The premise of the discussion is that we know as modern astrologers that there are many different forms of house division today, but how did this come to be the case? We can understand the issue better by going back to the beginning of the tradition and seeing how it started, and this may also provide us with some tools for resolving the problem today.

In this talk I try to answer some questions such as:

1. Which systems of house division were used in antiquity?
2. Were some approaches to house division more popular than others?
3. How did ancient astrologers reconcile different approaches to house division?

This episode partially results from a series of debates and discussions that have occurred over the past few years regarding the issue of house division in ancient astrology, beginning with episode 52 of The Astrology Podcast titled Whole Sign Houses: The Best System of House Division, which was then followed by episode 54 with Deborah Houlding titled The Debate About Ancient Systems of House Division. The debate with Houlding then prompted Robert Schmidt to release his own audio recording on the house division issue in June of 2016.

In the summer of 2016 I was in the process of finishing my book on ancient astrology, and I ended up writing a longer and more detailed treatment of the house division issue than I originally intended, which became chapter 11 of my book Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune:

http://hellenisticastrology.com/brenn...

I subsequently presented a summarized version of that chapter in two lectures, first at the Northwest Astrology Conference in Seattle in May of 2017, and then at the United Astrology Conference in Chicago in May of 2018.

This podcast is a slightly expanded version of the same lecture, which is essentially a summary of chapter 11 of my book. For those that are interested in going further into this topic, I would highly recommend reading that chapter of my book, since I was able to go into more detail and give more references in writing than I could in this lecture.

My goal in releasing this lecture is that, together with the chapter I wrote on the subject in my book, this fully outlines my current understanding of how the house division issue developed, as well as much of the evidence that those views are based on.

My hope is that this will help to set a new foundation for some of the discussions about house division in the future, and perhaps suggest some possible paths forward for reconciling the different approaches.

To listen to the audio version of this episode see the podcast website:

http://theastrologypodcast.com/2019/1...

#TheAstrologyPodcast

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:07 Questions about house division
00:03:44 Debates on house division
00:12:30 The origins of western astrology
00:23:08 The three main forms of house division
00:26:08 Whole sign house system
00:30:21 The use of Lots
00:35:07 Equal house system
00:39:00 Quadrant house system
00:49:48 The surviving evidence for house division usage in Greco-Roman astrology
00:50:50 Charts from the Hellenistic tradition
01:12:12 The three categories of surviving charts
01:18:40 Conclusions drawn from standalone charts
01:23:36 Literary charts from textbooks
01:35:10 Conclusions drawn from literary charts
01:42:10 Firmicus Maternus on the founders of Hellenistic astrology
01:43:22 Three foundational texts
01:47:46 Twelve-Place system of Hermes
02:01:00 Olympiodorus on angularity
02:06:15 Hermes on the Advantageous Places
02:12:03 The Ascelpius text
02:23:23 Valens drawing on the Asclepius text in discussing equal houses
02:27:28 Origins of equal house MC in culminating decan?
02:28:53 Hephaestio on the Salmeschoiniaka
02:37:17 The Nechepso-Petosiris text
02:46:12 Quadrant houses for dynamic strength
02:48:05 Differing interpretations of source text
02:57:26 Whole sign for topics, quadrant houses for planetary strength
03:00:18 Floating MC and IC points
03:02:24 Valens on the MC
03:14:31 Later Hellenistic synthesis and transmission
03:18:10 Rhetorius delineating planets in houses by sign and degree
03:21:53 Antiochus/Porphyry on using both sign-based and degree-based aspects
03:28:30 Later transmission
03:32:14 Turning point in 9th century that set precedent for prioritising quadrant houses
03:36:22 Why quadrant houses became dominant in the 20th century
03:37:28 Recognizing the symbolic importance of each approach
03:47:50 Conclusion and Chris' book