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Choosing a House System · Astrology for Beginners

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone!
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Astrology for Beginners podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host Stefanie Kate Boucher and I am so happy to have you here.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is the podcast for you if you have ever wanted to learn how to read a natal chart or were kind of interested in astrology and wished that you understood more about it but you didn't know where to begin or it seemed too complicated and you didn't have the time or the resources to invest in learning it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: My goal is to break things down for you episode by episode in the most simplified way that I can so that you can learn to speak the language of the stars.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome and thank you for sharing your time with me.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode is going to be just a bit different than the last few.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've spent the last three weeks or so talking about the signs, the energy that each of them represents, and how the zodiac is laid out according to the seasons and their elements and modes and things like that.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And soon we'll be covering the planets and the energies they represent and how they function in your natal chart and in your life.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: But before we go there, I want to jump back a few episodes to our discussion on houses.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to give you a little something more to think about there.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned in that last
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: House Episode.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Having an understanding of the 12 houses and what they represent is a really important part of interpreting your chart.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I very much encourage you to go back and do that before listening to this episode.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I would spend our time today briefly discussing house systems, or at least the idea of house systems.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not So Much the Nitty Gritty Specifics of Each One.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know what I mean when I say house systems, and if you don't know what I mean when I say house systems because you haven't heard that term before, that's okay.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll explain shortly.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now I wasn't even sure initially that I wanted to talk about house systems.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: At least not yet because house systems can be a complicated thing for people to wrap their minds around and a lot of differing opinions exist about you know which one is most useful or accurate and I didn't want to create any unnecessary confusion this early on where there didn't really need to be any.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I changed my mind and decided to cover it here anyway because it occurred to me that if anyone listening has ever had a reading or used an astrology app or has ever seen their chart presented differently to what they are now pulling up using one of the birth chart calculators I've discussed, you might already be confused because what you're seeing now might not be what you were seeing then.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: and I want to speak to that.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So what's a house system?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially when we're talking about houses there are different ways that people have created over the millennia to divide them up and calculate how many degrees or how much space in the sky each house will take up.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: In other words how big the wedge or the slice of pizza for a given house will be.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because in some systems, each house won't be equal in size.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the different ways that exist for calculating how the houses are divided up in terms of space or the different methods for doing that are called house systems.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there are many.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: and each house system has a different name now of course you're probably wondering why is this even a thing why would there be different ways to divide up the houses if the sky or the you know the sky all around the earth or your chart is a circle or 360 degrees and there are 12 houses why wouldn't every house just always take up 30 degrees like the way it is with the 12 signs
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: and the reason is that the sky and the parts of the sky that you can see differ depending on where on the globe you are and the time of year that it is and things like that so let's think about it this way for a second I think this can maybe help you visualize things better if you're in Alaska which is at a pretty far northern latitude
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: In January, then it's going to be pretty dark most of the time.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think they only get about four or five hours of daylight in a 24 hour period at that time of year.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And even that might not be full daylight for some of that time.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I could be off by a bit, but I think that's pretty close probably.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: In July, the opposite would be true and they'd get only a few hours without daylight.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: So someone in Fairbanks, Alaska isn't getting the same view of the sky on a daily basis as compared to someone in, let's say, Mexico City, which is at a lower latitude
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: much closer to the equator than Alaska is and the amount of daylight or darkness is much closer to being equal throughout the year and these things are due to the way the earth rotates around the Sun and the tilt of the earth and the way that the seasons affect our view of the sky from a particular place
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'll emphasize this is a really simplistic and not very scientific way of describing this concept and that's because I am not a scientist but I am just trying to keep the language as basic as I can and try to give you a way to visualize how things can be different based on place and time.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't want to get too complicated because I don't want to scare anyone away at this point by making you think you need to understand all the more technical concepts in order to move forward.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: You do not.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Suffice it to say that what each part of the globe can see in the sky is different at different times so from your vantage point some houses or wedges in the sky might actually look like little slivers of space while other houses are large chunks.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so some house systems are meant to reflect that reality and work with it while others err on the side of keeping things balanced.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the thinking there might be that just because you can't see something or it looks different from your vantage point doesn't necessarily mean that it's not there.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's talk about some specific house systems.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Before we begin this segment, I do want to point out that I did create a handout for today that shows you an example of the same person's birth chart using three different house systems.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in a space where you can do so, now would be a good time to hit pause and
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Astrology for Beginners.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: you pulled up a birth chart on one of the natal chart calculators available online such as astro.com or astro-seek or something like that and you did not specifically go in and change the settings then the house system you have been looking at is one called Placidus
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And Placidus is the most commonly used house system in modern Western Astrology.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the default house system for most online calculators.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've been dabbling in this stuff for any length of time, you've most certainly been exposed to Placidus.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds like we're talking about a disease, but I'm not.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what do you need to know about Placidus?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a pretty old system.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was created during the Renaissance era, but it wasn't until the 20th century that it really gained a lot of traction and took over as the most widely used house system.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: This system is based on timing.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Placidus is a time-based method for measuring the houses.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the cusp or the beginning of the first house in a person's chart
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: At Their Ascendant Line.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that the ascendant line is the exact degree of the sign that was on the eastern horizon at the time of birth.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the beginning of the entire chart.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And from there, each house is delineated by tracking where that person's ascendant line would have been every two hours after birth.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone's ascendant is at 11 degrees of Sagittarius then two hours after birth you'd see where 11 degrees of Sagittarius would have been and that would be the cusp of the 12th house.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Two hours after that
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: 11 Degrees of Sagittarius would mark the cusp of the 11th house and so forth.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now this is one of the systems out there that is going to create houses that are not all the same size because of the reasons we talked about earlier and these variations in size that occur
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Will Be More Pronounced the Farther Away from the Equator You Get.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And hey, some people could be fine with that.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: There doesn't have to be anything inherently wrong about having certain houses that are bigger or smaller.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some people embrace that imbalance and might even apply meaning to it when interpreting a chart.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is it an accident that a person was born in a time and place that would create a skinny 12 house and a skinny six house like what you can see in chart number one of the handout?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's useful information about a person's experience.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now if you look at the sample Placidus chart I included in the handout, that's the one on the first page,
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's an example of a chart that could feel kind of imbalanced using this system.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the houses look comparatively small while others look enormous.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: The second eighth house axis in particular looks huge compared to some of the others and in the next two charts on pages two and three we'll see how
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: some of the other house systems create a more balanced view of things.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: For those who can live with the disproportionality or for those like me who don't have any significant disproportions in their chart when they use this system because not everyone does, Placidus can provide a really interesting way to look at a chart because there's a lot of nuance that you can look at.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: for example in this chart this chart on page one you'll see that you're looking at the chart of a Sagittarius rising because the ascendant line or the cusp of the first house is at 11 degrees of Sagittarius and you can see that well roughly half of the first house is in the sign of Sagittarius
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: the second half of the first house is in Capricorn so even though this person is a Sagittarius rising and they're going to have primarily all the traits of a Sagittarius rising there could be some Capricorn energy that bleeds through in this person's persona too because it's roughly half of the first house
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: I find that this concept tracks really well in my own chart because I have every single house like this where half the house is sitting in the sign that's ruling it but then the other half is sitting in the next sign and for me that blending of energies feels really true and like a really accurate depiction of the way I experience my life.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Placidus in a Nutshell.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: There are other things
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna talk about
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Astrology for Beginners.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Astrology for Beginners
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: But for today I just want this to be a very simple overview so that you know what's out there and you're not thrown off balance as you come into contact with these things or this information in other places.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now if you turn out to be one of the people who don't like using Placidus there are other systems that use houses of equal size.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Two in particular are pretty widely used and those are the Equal House System and the Whole Sign House System.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Equal House System is a little bit like Placidus in the sense that your ascendant line becomes the cusp of your first house and the place where your chart begins.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of using time to count forward and mark the other house cusps,
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: All of the houses are measured out in 30 degree increments from the ascendant line.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if you now want to move on to the second chart on page two, again, this person has their ascendant at 11 degrees of Sagittarius and that's where their first house begins.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: From there, because we're starting at 11 degrees of Sagittarius, the second house will then begin at 11 degrees of Capricorn because that's the next sign.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Astrology for Beginners.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: and again there are other details involved in this system but that's the basic idea.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: This system is a popular choice with a lot of people who like the idea of seeing some of the nuances that Placidus can provide like whether or not there's more than one sign occupying a house and if so how much but who don't want that disproportionate feel.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Before we move on to the final house system that we're going to cover today, I do want to point out that when we shifted house systems here from Placidus to Equal Sign houses, we changed the house placement of some of the planets.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: The signs the planets were in didn't change, of course, but a few of the houses did.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes this happens.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it doesn't.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on the person.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't talked about the planets yet, but once we do and you have a better understanding of how each of the planets shows up in your life, you might just feel things out to see what feels true for you.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: The person with this chart, for instance, could ask themselves,
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do I Feel Like More of a Saturn in the Second House Person or a Saturn in the Third House Person?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Which of those seems more relevant in my life?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for me, personally, I find that whenever I have a planet that changes houses by system, it's typically the case that both of those things feel true for me.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that planet straddles both houses.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: My natal Venus, for example, my chart ruler.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Does This?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: and shifts between the 11th and the 12th houses depending on the house system I'm using.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I find for sure that both of those interpretations feel accurate.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas my natal Saturn, which doesn't change houses no matter which system I use, does feel pretty solidly grounded in the house that it's in.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Placing it in the adjacent houses just wouldn't make sense to me.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now the last system that I'm going to cover today is the whole sign house system and this one is also really widely used at the moment and it's especially popular among astrologers who have a larger social media presence or even a traditional media presence.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of magazines and online publications use this one in part because it's so streamlined
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the oldest house system, the original house system in Western Astrology.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: It dates all the way back to ancient Greece and it was the primary house system used for centuries until Placidus overtook it more recently.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it's really had kind of a resurgence in the 21st century.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how whole sign astrology works and I now recommend that you look at the chart on page three of the handout.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: you look at the sign that the ascendant line is in and whatever sign the ascendant is in now in the sample person we've been using here that's Sagittarius and that sign all 30 degrees of it becomes the entire first house the ascendant line the line itself is still in the same spot so this ascendant is still at 11 degrees of Sagittarius but the first house itself
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: is perfectly aligned with the sign that it's in the sign that comes after your ascendant sign all 30 degrees of it becomes the second house and so on and so forth so again for the person in our handout with their ascendant at 11 degrees of Sagittarius their first house starts at zero degrees of Sagittarius and their second house starts at zero zero degrees of Capricorn
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: and their third at zero degrees of Aquarius.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: In this system, every house is equal in size and perfectly matched up and aligned with a ruling sign.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: This creates a really elegant looking chart
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Astrology for Beginners.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Astrology for Beginners.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: after they've been using Placidus or one of the other systems for a long time because they simply really enjoy the flow of it and how it works and it does work it really does in my observation it's also the case that
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Some astrologers might use different house systems for different things.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I really like using Placidus for natal charts because I like being able to see all those extra bits of information it provides, but
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: I prefer whole sign astrology for transit charts and have found this system to be a bit more useful for me there.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's just how I like to do it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I've heard of other people who say they do something similar.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, personal preference really is key here, folks.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: This question of house systems is really going to be about recognizing what resonates most for you.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your natal chart belongs to you.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a reflection of you and your life experience and you get to figure out what's most useful and accurate.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: There is no house system that is universally recognized as the best one or the most accurate one.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: All of the house systems are valid.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can't stress that enough.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Each one just provides a slightly different way of telling the same story.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about a camera for a minute, imagine you're a photographer and you've got a very fancy camera that you can attach all of these different types of lenses to.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know a ton about photography, but you might have a 35mm lens, a wide angle lens, a zoom lens, and you can use each one of those lenses to take a picture of the exact same thing.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the picture might look a little different depending on the lens you choose, right?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: But is any one of those lenses wrong?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Are Any of Those Pictures Wrong?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: or Does Each One Just Provide a Different Perspective?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think house systems are like that.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of this show, Astrology for Beginners, it's not going to matter so much which house system you're using.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you've already started looking at your chart using Placidus because it's the default, you can totally stick with that.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's what I like to use for natal charts.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or if
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can take a look at the ones we talked about today and just pick whichever one you're vibing on the most.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever you end up doing or whichever one you pick I would probably just stick with that one for now without trying to toggle back and forth.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to toggle back and forth down the road once you've gotten super comfortable interpreting a chart
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Great!
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: But while you're learning, I think it's a lot easier to just stick with one.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many other things to learn in astrology that matter more than house systems, so I'd just focus on getting really super comfortable with everything else.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you do decide that you want to look at your chart using the three different systems we talked about today, you can do that with most birth chart calculators.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you go to astro-seek.com, then you can pull up the birth chart calculator and put in your birth info.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then right below the button that says Calculate Chart, there's an option that says Extended Settings, House Systems, Aspects, and Orbs.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: You'll click on that.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some options will pop up below and there's a drop down menu on the far left hand side that says House System.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: When you pull that down, you'll see that there are well over a dozen there to choose from, including the three that we discussed here today.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you prefer Astro.com, there's also an option on the main dropdown menu under Free Horoscopes.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: You'll select Horoscope Drawings and Data, and then you'll click on Extended Chart Selection.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: You'll put in your birth data and in the options below your birth data you'll click on Zodiac and Houses and then you should see a drop down menu under House System.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Actually I'll see if I can include some screenshots of each of these websites in the handout so that you can navigate this more easily because I realize there are a lot of steps there.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's going to be it for today.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Have I thoroughly confused you with this one?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really hope not.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you do have other questions about this topic, please do feel free to ping me.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: I welcome the chance to hear from you always.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: the next episode will be much more straightforward I think we're going to start talking about the planets or maybe we'll start with your big three that being your sun moon and ascendant signs I'm not totally sure yet how I want to proceed but I'll have to see how things play out in
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: the meantime if you've been listening to Astrology for Beginners and you're enjoying the show thank you so much first of all and second I would love it if you could take just a second to hit subscribe on whatever app you're listening on it will work better for you because you'll never miss an episode and it will help the show immensely
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can also follow Astrology for Beginners and me, Stefanie Kate Boucher, on Substack.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely free.
• 25:56
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• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And also, over time, you'll be getting some extra bonus materials related to the show.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for now.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening and have a good week, everyone.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you next time.