The Placidus house system at high latitudes

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In the thread ''Polar houses'' I had a discussion with Paul about many things related to problems in the polar regions and house systems in general. The posts are quite long and sometimes a bit experimental and perhaps difficult to follow for a new reader.
It seemed a good idea to reformulate many things that were said in a new way, with one idea to start off: Placidus houses at high latitudes. I'll try to delve deeper into this new territory than already has been done by Michael Wackford in his series of articles on this website. Many of the ideas I learned on this subject come from the work of Michael Wackford.
In the following text I first raise questions and move on to deeper questions that need answering first. Then I'll try wrapping things up at the end.

So here goes:
Some astrologers have written that Placidus houses break down or even become undefined beyond the arctic and antarctic circles. Many more astrologers have repeated this 'fact' when writing about the Placidus system. However, I haven't found a sound theoretical basis for this assertion, or an explanation why this is so, except that the trigonometric formula used for calculation breaks down, which is indeed the case. But this trigonometric formula was created only to provide a quick and convenient way of calculating the intermediate cusps. If the formula breaks down, the whole system doesn't break down as a consequence. You just need to become more creative in your calculation methods.

It is my opinion that the Placidus system of houses not only survives in the arctic, but that it is the only quadrant house system that does NOT break down in the arctic and that can be taken to its ultimate extreme: Placidus is in fact the only quadarant system of houses (using the ascendant and midheaven) that is defined all the way up to the pole, 24 hours of sidereal time.

What most people refer to when they say Placidus houses break down, is the strange behavior of this system at higher latitudes. Especially when the midheaven is close to, or below the horizon the Placidus intermediate cusps may form a pattern that is completely unrecognisable. At these times it cannot be used to make a normal division of twelve houses that astrologers are accustomed to. Houses may duplicate themselves to up to three different sectors, other houses may disappear altogether, at times there are no intermediate cusps at all, houses may run retrograde in one part and direct in another part of the zodiac, one house may extend to more than 160 degrees while another is only a couple of arcseconds wide, part of the tenth house can exist totally disconnected from the midheaven, etc. etc.

I can understand that an astrologer confronted with such a bizar house division in an arctic chart will conclude very quickly that the system is of no use at these latitudes. For example, it is absurd to say that a person can never have money or things of value, just because the second house is nowhere to be seen in his or her chart. But does this mean that the system itself is actually breaking down? Or is it just the application of the system, because the twelve-fold pie shape the astrologer wants to see isn't happening?

Another problem in the arctic and antarctic is the circumpolar sky. At all latitudes, except on the geographic equator, parts of the sky are circumpolar. These parts of the sky never cross the horizon and will be above or below the horizon at all times. In the arctic and antarctic regions of the earth, these circumpolar parts of the sky have become so large that parts of the ecliptic become circumpolar and will therefore never be on the ascendant or descendant. If the Sun is in such a circumpolar part of the ecliptic, we can observe the phenomena of the midnight sun in summer and the (ant)arctic night in winter. These are times that the Sun does not cross the horizon for days or months.

Placidus house cusps that end up in the circumpolar sky are indeed undefined if you try to calculate them in the normal way. Later I will explain why a slightly different way of calculating the Placidus system in the circumpolar sky is justified and follows directly from its core definition.
To say that Placidus houses break down because of the circumpolar sky is unfair, because you can say with the same justification that other house systems (like Campanus, Regiomontanus, Alcabitius) are irrelevant because they gloss over the phenomenon of the circumpolar sky altogether and are therefore unable to describe the local sky accurately.
Both positions are too polarising and extreme, I think, and probably not true.

The core of the problem is understanding what Placidus houses really are. For that we need a fundamental definition of the system, a concise description of what it is, from which everything follows logically.
This is already a very difficult thing to do for most house systems. When I studied descriptions of house systems that I found on the internet, invariably these decriptions or 'definitions' were operational in nature. For example, the quadrant systems are usually described in the following manner: ''trisect quadrants in a particular way and project the trisected points onto the ecliptic using some other method.'' Those are decriptions of what you must do to get the desired result, the operations necessary for constructing the system, not a fundamental description of what it is.

Astrologers who defend their prefered system produce lots of arguments why the particular setup of their system is astrologicaly relevant and maybe even superior to other systems, however, they fail to produce a fundamental definition of the system, at least as far as I'm aware of.

But why is a fundamental definition relevant and necessary? It may look like a requirement that is so theoretical or technical that it has no connection to the art and practice of astrology.
My answer to that question is: if you don't have a fundamental definition of a system, if you don't know what it really is, then you don't know what the particular perspective and use of the system is. In other words, if you don't know what a system really is astronomically, you also have no way of knowing what it means astrologically.

Some people may object and say: ''A house system is a house system: it calculates the twelve houses of the horoscope, period.'' But does it really? How do you know? Because the inventor said so? Because a lot of succesful astrologers use it and also say so?

It is my firm belief that the kind of system you use in your astrological work is like a lens you put on a camera. A camera can record light, but it needs a lens to make sharp pictures, otherwise you're going to see just one big blur. And the type of lens, the technical specifications of it, will determine what and how you are going to see things.
A similar thing is going on with the geocentric and heliocentric perspectives in astrology and the tropical and sidereal perspectives of the zodiac. Each 'lens' gives you a different picture. And it is my belief that each point of view, or each way of picturing things has its own astrological use, its own proper strengths and limitations.

Each house system also originates from a completely different point of view. Some house systems are so different from each other that the only thing they have in common is that they divide the ecliptic in twelve parts. It is my opinion that there is no 'true' system that explains all, but that there are several house systems that we need to take into account, each with their own points of view and their own strengths and limitations.
There is not one correct point of view or calculation system that shows all there is to see in astrology. However, this last opinion was held by many 19th and 20th century astrologers, who sought to explain all life experiences by only using their prefered astrological systems.

And if you don't know what a system really is about technically, if you don't have a definition, then you don't know what its special point of view is in interpretation and what its limitations are in use. I resist the idea that it doesn't fundamentally matter which house system you use and that you can use it for all puposes and all approaches in the astrological interpretation. There must be a meaningful congruence between technique and interpretation in my opinion.

to be continued...
Last edited by Ruud66 on Thu Mar 22, 2018 9:29 am, edited 18 times in total.

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continuing...

Let us have a deeper look at the system of houses advocated and popularised by Placido de Titi.
The Placidus system works with the semi-arcs. Semi-arcs are functions of the parallel circles of declination.
These circles run parallel to the celestial equator, which is the base circle of the earth's rotation around its axis. They are called declination circles, because each individual circle has the same declination to the equator all around.
Only the celestial equator is a great circle in the system of declination circles, because only the plain of the equator runs throught the centre of the Earth, all other circles of declination are lesser circles that become smaller and smaller as they approach the celestial poles.
The semi-arcs are functions of the parallel circles of declination in relation to the local horizon.

There are four types of semi-arcs:
1. Ascending and nocturnal. Points on the celestial sphere move in relation to the horizon along their parallel circles in such a way that they move up, their altitudes increase and because they are below the horizon, it means that they move up toward the horizon in the east. This is the first quadrant in the horoscope.
2. Ascending and diurnal. Points on the celestial sphere move in relation to the horizon along their parallel circles in such a way that they move up, their altitudes increase and because they are above the horizon, it means that they move up in the sky away from the horizon. This is the fourth quadrant of the horoscope.
3. Descending and diurnal. Points on the celestial sphere move in relation to the horizon along their parallel circles in such a way that they move down, their altitudes decrease and because they are above the horizon, it means that they move down in the sky toward the horizon in the west. This is the third quadrant of the horoscope.
4. Descending and nocturnal. Points on the celestial sphere move in relation to the horizon along their parallel circles in such a way that they move down, their altitudes decrease and because they are below the horizon, it means that they move down away from the horizon, deeper under the earth. This is the second quadrant in the horoscope.

Of course the above description of the semi-arcs is actually a detailed description of the primary motion, the Primum Mobile, or motions of the sky due to the rotation of the Earth around its axis. Note that the above is true for all points on the celestial sphere, not only for points on the ecliptic.

The Placidus system examines every possible semi-arc in the whole sky and divides each one in three equal arcs, creating two trisection points on each semi-arc. Connecting all the different trisection points of all the possible semi-arcs creates a curve for each Placidus cusp. These curves can be drawn in two dimensions on the dome of the sky and always result in twelve sectors of perfectly equal area, six above and six below the horizon. These sector boundaries or house curves of the placidean system never move or change shape in the course of time, in the same way that the horizon is always in the same location in relation to us.
After this procedure is finished, astrologers want to know how the ecliptic runs through this two-dimensional system. The intersections of the house curves with the ecliptic, finally, give the twelve house cusps of the horoscope as we find them in the Placidus table of houses.

There are a few important things to note and make clear here.
In describing the Placidus system, I needed only two circles: the celestial equator and its parallels, describing the rotation of the Earth, and the horizon, at the centre of which is the location of the native or event. I didn't need any other circles, not the local meridian, not the prime vertical, not some artificial system of house circles that I might need in other house systems.
The ecliptic (of course also a circle) comes in after the system was finished. It technically doesn't belong to the Placidus system at all, it's just there because we astrologers insist on using it as our circle of reference.
Another important notion is that I didn't need the actual events of rising and setting over the horizon and culminating and anti-culminating at the local meridian to describe the system in a satisfactory way. These mundane events are special cases and are not necessary parts of the definition of the system.

So what did we learn? All of the above is still geometries, operations and calculations. What can we say about what Placidus really is about?
We can say that:
・ it describes the daily motions of the sky in relation to the horizon.
・ it uses the concept of ASCENSION to achieve this (and it does so in a highly integrated and effective way.)

Therefore, the house sectors of the Placidus system, although in themselves spatial in nature, do not describe space or time, but MOTION.
The Placidus system is 100% mundane in nature and the ecliptic does not play a structural role. The ecliptic is just another set of points on the celestial (mundane) sphere that can be examined using the measuring rod of ascension (and descension.)
This is therefore precisely the strength and weakness of the Placidus system!

From this realisation, it is possible to interpret the flavor of the astrological meaning of house placements in the Placidus system. There is not an emphasis on fixed qualities (like the first house is the house of life and vitality, the second of possessions, etc.), but on motion and the relative stage in a great cycle of motion. Exactly how Placidus envisioned it in the 17th century: life as a stream of consciousness and energy in motion and positioned on meaningful phases in a larger cycle of motion.

This also means that you should use another house system to understand more of the qualities associated with the twelve houses as they express themselves in the horoscope, which is an approach that is much less based on motion and more in line with the meaning of the twelve signs of the zodiac. For this purpose I use the Equal houses. Others may use Whole Signs or some other ecliptic-based house system.
This is just one example of how different house systems can lead to a different approach in the interpretation of the houses. And on a more practical note: if there are no intermediate Placidus cusps in an arctic chart, for example, the house positions in the Placidus system are still meaningful, but the house lords can be derived from another, more ecliptic-based system.

One more technical thing about Placidus houses and the circumpolar sky. There is an argument that Placidus houses may not be completely undefined beyond the polar circles, but that they are really undefined in the circumpolar sky, because it is not possible there to measure the relationship between rising over the eastern horizon and culminating at the local meridian. For this reason and for the reason that the Placidus house curves make sharp angles at the boundary of the circumpolar sky, it is not logical to extrapolate Placidus house curves into the circumpolar sky, where they are reduced to simple meridian arcs to the celestial pole. Rüdiger Plantiko is an advocate of this approach.
My approach is as I explained above: the mundane events of rising, culminating, setting and anti-culminating are special cases of the cycle of ascension and descension.
To put it in another way: it is true that points in the circumpolar sky do not rise and set, but that does not mean that they don't have a cyclical relationship with the local horizon. Circumpolar points do ascend and descend in relation to the horizon and the Placidus system can be defined in a way that includes that process aswell.

This is not just an opinion or preference of mine, but an approach that stems directly from the core defintion of the Placidus system that I formulated and that I also use to assess the qualities, strengths and limitations of this system.

There is an important lesson hidden here: the above mentioned sharp angles in the house curves are a geometrical clue of how to approach the circumpolar sky. There is almost a change in phase there: like a substance going from a liquid to a gas. This change is most noticeable if you follow the midheaven: when it is below the horizon, everything changes: the ascendant moves in retrograde motion through the zodiac and the midheaven is no longer the cusp between the 9th and the 10th houses, but it is the cusp between the 6th and 1st houses CIRCUMPOLAR. I would even go so far as to say that in those circumstances the midheaven is not the midheaven anymore, but a point below the horizon where the ecliptic culminates.
This means that planets and points in the circumpolar sky have a different quality, almost like out of bounds, but different. They have a different interpretation than they would have in the non-circumpolar sky.

I'm curious if all this makes any sense. Or if people have a different opinion (I know Paul probably has...)
Last edited by Ruud66 on Thu Mar 22, 2018 9:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Thank you, Ruud66, for your scholarly attempt to explain the limitations of the Placidus system of house division at very high latitudes, especially to those of us void of a degree in astro physics, astronomy, and or mathematics.

I once lived in Canada's far north (59 degrees North) for a period of several years and it was an adventure, indeed. In addition to my media work, I also worked as a professional astrologer and I found that doing the natal charts for the locals who were born in the North brought unique challenges.

First of all, I use Placidus houses, only, and have done so for over 40 years. I have also used Koch and Equal houses, as well, but I always end up returning to Placidus.

I have never used whole signed houses, btw.

When you cast a natal chart or horary chart up at those altitudes, using Placidus, there is typically a multitude of intercepted houses (and planets), typically the first, second, seventh, but sometimes, the 6th and 12th houses.

However, strangely enough, those interceptions actually describe the realities of living in splendid isolation in a small northern town.

Life up there is NOT easy !

The isolation, (1st house) the cold weather, 19 hours of darkness, daily, during the winter (12th house), all takes its toll. The Sun would rise at 11 am and set at 1 pm during the winter, the cost of living and price of food is challenging (2nd and 8th houses intercepted), and the innate shortage of dating partners is apparent, if you are single (7th house intercepted).

However, people up there are very kind, much kinder that those living in larger urban centers and that was important to me.

I am not that interested in drugs or booze, but many of the people, up north, are seriously addicted to those things, in part, as a form of escapism, especially amongst the aboriginal young people, and alcoholism is a serious problem.

There are unique astronomical phenomena that goes on in the north. For example, you can often see the Sun and Moon in the same sky, during the winter.

In the summer, the Sun sets at 11 pm, but it never completely goes away and it rises again at 2:00 am.

The Aurora Borealis (northern lights) is spectacular and it never gets boring.

The Placidus system has served us, very, very well. If it doesn't work 100 percent everywhere on Earth (which happens to be an egg-shaped, elliptical planet and certainly not a "flat" Earth), I can live with that.


S.
website: www.rj-smith.ca

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Sabumnim,
It is wonderful to hear from you what it's like up north and about your experiences with the people's charts. This aspect of how things actually work for people born up north, is one of the things that I feel is lacking most in the work that I've done up to this point.

I tried to find example charts of people born north of the arctic circle, but that turned out to be much harder than I thought! And I'm not planning to emigrate to the north, what you have done for some years (chapeau!)
sabumnim wrote:The Placidus system has served us, very, very well. If it doesn't work 100 percent everywhere on Earth (which happens to be an egg-shaped, elliptical planet and certainly not a "flat" Earth), I can live with that.
Actually, I tried to explain why Placidus works 100 procent all of the time and everywhere on Earth. It doesn't work everywhere in the way astrologers want it to work, but that's another matter altogether.

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Ruud66 wrote:Sabumnim,
It is wonderful to hear from you what it's like up north and about your experiences with the people's charts. This aspect of how things actually work for people born up north, is one of the things that I feel is lacking most in the work that I've done up to this point.

I tried to find example charts of people born north of the arctic circle, but that turned out to be much harder than I thought! And I'm not planning to emigrate to the north, what you have done for some years (chapeau!)
sabumnim wrote:The Placidus system has served us, very, very well. If it doesn't work 100 percent everywhere on Earth (which happens to be an egg-shaped, elliptical planet and certainly not a "flat" Earth), I can live with that.
Actually, I tried to explain why Placidus works 100 procent all of the time and everywhere on Earth. It doesn't work everywhere in the way astrologers want it to work, but that's another matter altogether.
Thanks, Ruud66. I am part Dutch, btw. My step mother was also Dutch.

Incidentally, astrology does quite well up in Canada's north. There are many believers and I did lots of readings up there. It is also apparent that Canada's native people who habitate the North have their own system of astrology and they interpret the planets, differently, than white people.

For example, the Sun is the ruler of women, in Inuit culture, while men are ruled by the Moon.

This would suggest a Moon ruled culture, would it not.

Also, the Inuit explanation of how the Earth began is rather fascinating, but is similar to Darwin's theory of evolution, in that they believed that mankind initially evolved from animals. The fixed stars are viewed differently, however.

Anyhow, these snippets of information are in line with what historians believe, that every civilization on Earth invented its own system of astrology.

http://astro-canada.ca/le_ciel_des_inui ... it_sky-eng


cheers,


S.
website: www.rj-smith.ca

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Ruud

I made an attempt to reply to you and lost it when my internet connection died, so here I go, I'm trying to summarise the points I made in my lost reply. Then I'll hopefully get to go back over some of your points in more detail.

Of course I'm completely in agreement with you regarding the problem really not being one of the modelling of the mundane sphere per se but more to do with how the ecliptic interacts with that. However, I do think it's necessary to perhaps separate the house system's arcs with the actual house system itself - because only when those arcs interact with the ecliptic, for good or bad, do we have an astrological house system.

You present a solution which, if I follow it right, is the same or similar to what Michael Wackford presents of Otto A. Ludwig's solution to the problem which isn't, as you rightly highlight, necessarily to do with dividing up the mundane sphere, but rather dealing with the ecliptic's obliquity at the poles. However, to play devil's advocate, if what we're doing with the houses is astrological, and if that astrology focuses upon where the arcs hit the ecliptic, then any 'weirdness' at the ecliptic has to be considered as part of the house system itself.

In other words, all the equal, whole and porphyry house system users must surely, they think, avoid this problem because the only circle they care about is the ecliptic and if Placidus has problems with the ecliptic then Placidus has problems full stop. In the other thread, which I'll link to here so people can follow it later on, what I try to do is expose that myth. This isn't a problem of Placidus, this is a problem which *all* the house systems, including equal, porphyry and whole have to deal with, and they all make assumptions in how to do that.

http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9618

Another focus you have is the 'problem' of placidus houses as being chiefly a problem of calculation - the problem is that the 'normal' way of calculating the houses breaks the house system model we expect and so something has to be done. Of course when it comes time to do that "something" we have to make assumptions about the MC, but, in following your posts, we also have to imagine that Placidus arcs are the most important part of the house system - but I think it's arguable to also imagine that actually the only important part where it comes to astrological use is where the cusps interact with the ecliptic. The houses, as we use them, are not defined along the space defined by the house arcs - in other words if a house arc comes slanting in at some angle to the house cusp, say at 60% or something, we completely ignore that, and then imagine the houses as being perpendicular to that point, as though it were drawing a new arc from that point to the pole of the ecliptic.

Of course you know all this, I'm just highlighting the point that the Placidus arcs are all but forgotten or ignore the moment we intersect with the ecliptic - at least in regards how we currently tend to use the houses. It may be a whole other debate as to whether or not we should be doing that in the first place.

With that in mind though I think the focus shouldn't be on the house arcs and their calculation, but rather in what we're expecting from the houses and we think they're modelling or attempting to model - even if that model becomes abstracted or imagined as an idealised model. With that in mind, I think we ought to really be focusing on what we think the houses are doing and then finding a computational solution.

I think this is important, because if part of your definition, and indeed symbolic landscape, astrologically speaking, is to imagine the MC as being the culminating point of a planet, then that would lead to one way of calculating the MC and the houses which could be quite different from if you imagine the MC as chiefly the culminating point above the horizon, or if it's the most southerly (or northerly in the southern hemisphere) point etc.

Why you might care would be if your astrological interpretations tie into that kind of symbolism.

What this means, for me, at least, is that for the quadrant houses, you may have multiple variants of the house, so there isn't *a* Placidus House System, but rather Placidus House Systems plural.

This of course is quite an abhorrent thing to imagine and quite against perhaps our natural instincts - it would make things complex and difficult to use, but perhaps it is the most truthful to an astrologer's toolkit.

However, as I argue on the other thread, to some degree what I really believe is that none of this actually matters in the sense that actually a fixation or focus on calculation masks a much bigger problem to do with astrological interpretation. If we imagine the MC carries connotations of visibility and acclaim and recognition, then how does that gel with any house system that allows the 'MC' to be the most hidden part of the sky and completely unrecognisable etc.

That's the real problem for me, and everything else is something of a distraction and it's a problem that nobody really seems to want to focus on very often, but I'll save all those arguments for the other thread.

I'm hoping to get time to reply more fully to your posts in more detail soon, but wanted to make a start.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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sabumnim, as a fellow Canadian, I appreciate your comments about the Far North. One thing I wonder, though, is what happens to a native of the Far North when s/he moves south, and lives a life more consistent with nativities in the temperate latitudes. Presumably a relocation chart would answer the question, but then a natal chart is still that basic blue print.

The residential school legacy is still casting a long shadow through the generations of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit.

As you know, there has been a long exodus of First Nations people to the big cities like Montreal. The city of Toronto estimates 70,000 aboriginal people. In general, this experience hasn't gone well for many of them, so it would be interesting to see whether problems encountered on the mean streets are those that the natal chart would predict.

Ruud, you may recall that I'm a big admirer of your work on the problem of high latitude charts. I don't have the math background to analyze your posts. I do wonder how appropriate the entire concept of houses is for nativities north of, or just south of the Arctic Circle; for example, in a place that gets only a couple of hours of daylight or darkness around the solstices. Or no light or darkness.

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waybread wrote:I do wonder how appropriate the entire concept of houses is for nativities north of, or just south of the Arctic Circle; for example, in a place that gets only a couple of hours of daylight or darkness around the solstices. Or no light or darkness.
Hello Waybread,
This is indeed the question that I'm discussing with Paul. My formulation of the question is more: in what way does the arctic sky affect our methods of modelling the primary motion. Or in other words: how can we do justice astrologically to all those people that were born in the far north.

If you question the entire concept of the houses in the arctic, then it sounds like you also doubt the role of the Ascendant in the high north, maybe because the Ascendant starts behaving in strange ways and the ecliptic moves very little in the way that we can recognize as rising and setting. What to do with a stationary Ascendant for example?
If someone doubts the role of the Ascendant, then I would urge him/her to look at the chart and the pictures of Marie Ahnighito Peary, born at 77°40' northern latitude:

https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Peary,_Marie
http://www.une.edu/mwwc/research/featur ... -1893-1978

Just look at her face: is she a Pisces rising, or is she a Pisces rising?

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Ruud66 wrote:
waybread wrote:I do wonder how appropriate the entire concept of houses is for nativities north of, or just south of the Arctic Circle; for example, in a place that gets only a couple of hours of daylight or darkness around the solstices. Or no light or darkness.
Hello Waybread,
This is indeed the question that I'm discussing with Paul. My formulation of the question is more: in what way does the arctic sky affect our methods of modelling the primary motion. Or in other words: how can we do justice astrologically to all those people that were born in the far north.
My concern is that we cannot do justice to people born in the far North, at least not at certain times of year.
If you question the entire concept of the houses in the arctic, then it sounds like you also doubt the role of the Ascendant in the high north, maybe because the Ascendant starts behaving in strange ways and the ecliptic moves very little in the way that we can recognize as rising and setting. What to do with a stationary Ascendant for example?
I think the ascendant makes sense in places and times where the sun actually rises and sets. I'm less clear about places/times with >24 hours sunlight or darkness. This has to do with the meanings of the horizon, as the place where the sun rises (AS) and sets (DC).
If someone doubts the role of the Ascendant, then I would urge him/her to look at the chart and the pictures of Marie Ahnighito Peary, born at 77°40' northern latitude:

https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Peary,_Marie
http://www.une.edu/mwwc/research/featur ... -1893-1978

Just look at her face: is she a Pisces rising, or is she a Pisces rising?
Well, I dunno. Have astrologers ever worked out how much of someone's physical appearance is due to genetics? And sadly, a certain amount of ethnic bias in descriptions of facial characteristics persists in typing rising signs. If you looked at Inuit faces, could you pick out the Pisces rising? Try googling Inuit people, and see if facial typing works in reverse.

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waybread wrote:My concern is that we cannot do justice to people born in the far North, at least not at certain times of year.
That remains to be seen. I'm not so pessimistic.
waybread wrote:I think the ascendant makes sense in places and times where the sun actually rises and sets. I'm less clear about places/times with >24 hours sunlight or darkness. This has to do with the meanings of the horizon, as the place where the sun rises (AS) and sets (DC).
If the Sun doesn't rise during an arctic winter, there will still be an Ascendant at all times. All those Ascendants are indeed symbolic of a sunrise, because it would be sunrise, really, if the Sun would be placed in that zodiac degree (which would, of course, happen on some other day of the year.)
waybread wrote:Have astrologers ever worked out how much of someone's physical appearance is due to genetics? And sadly, a certain amount of ethnic bias in descriptions of facial characteristics persists in typing rising signs. If you looked at Inuit faces, could you pick out the Pisces rising? Try googling Inuit people, and see if facial typing works in reverse.
I was actually quite satisfied with Marie's facial features, looking at all her horoscope factors. I agree that it is just one observation and not a study that I did more or less scientifically. And I'm not used to observing Inuit faces, so I wouldn't know what to look for. I just thought Marie's case was a nice illustration.
Last edited by Ruud66 on Mon Jun 04, 2018 6:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Good luck with your efforts, Ruud. I'm not trying to detract from them. Just probing a bit.

I don't have a lot of faith in physical appearance as indicative of the rising sign, as the delineations usually are based on northern European facial features and complexions. Oftentimes in a nativity there's a planet in the first house or making a hard aspect to the ascendant which can modify the classic descriptions quite a bit.

Are you familiar with this site? http://www.astrofaces.com/astrofaces/index.html

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Actually I was born up at the arctic circle and I believe you as astrologers need to open up your minds to the fact that our lives are not defined by 12th & 6th house and the extreme house division as seen in Placidus. Try looking at the Azimuth system or whole signs.

I remember also reading about research into this and there was a point called the orient point that was closer to the east point and was used as an angle. It fits better with the Azimuth system.

Another point of mine is that when I cast the charts for people up there the Asc sign does not seem to fit as 1st, but east point sign may fit perfectly to describe facial features and appearances.