I had a question about the different house systems, particularly how to picture them when I look up at the sky.

I just was curious just about Regiomontanus and Placidus because those are the two I use.

I know that Regiomontanus uses equal divisions of 30 degrees on the equator to delineate the houses, but where do they draw the lines to? If say you have 0 degrees of Aries on the horizon, then you go to the celestial equator on the horizon, add 30 degrees to it, and then what? Do you imagine a line that runs from that point on the equator up to the North Pole? And is the house cusp the point on the ecliptic where that line intersects it?

And I know that Placidus uses equal divisions of the path of the Sun across the sky for that day. Once you divided the diurnal path of the Sun into 6 sections, do you then draw an imaginary line that goes north-south until it hits the ecliptic?

I really wish I could see this drawn out, it would make is so much easier. Does anyone know a website that shows that?

Mark,

If you haven't already done so, you might like to read the excerpt from Deb's book 'Houses' reproduced online. It really is one of the best explanations of the different house systems I've seen.

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/temples/9.html

Cheers
Sue

I bought Deb's book last year and I loved it. I have read it over and over again. I think it nailed down the underlying reasoning behind the meanings of the houses in a way that makes it easier to apply to horary. It's from her book that I came to understand how a Regiomontanus chart is drawn up. But my conception of it is still tied to the words, and I can't quite picture what it looks like drawn out onto the real sky.

I wish I had a globe because I think it can be done on a globe, but it's hard on flat map.

This is not exactly an earth-shatteringly critical problem, but I always think its good for us to get away from the books, charts, and the computer to remember that it's all out there above us day or night. I've been always thought it was funny and kind of irritating to meet people who claim to know astrology but who will mistake Jupiter for Venus, and then act surprised when told that Venus can't appear overhead at midnight. And I am hardly better. I've never seen Mercury, not even once. Years ago there was a night when Mercury was supposed to be easily seen and I made the mistake of going up to the top of the Washington Monument under the mistaken impression that it would provide a good view. Wrong! I was blinded by the high power lights that are trained on it. Then there was the time I was attacked by an armadillo while looking at Haley's comet, but that's a whole other post.

For our European friends, here's what an armadillo is:

Armadillos
Nine-Banded Armadillo
Armadillo Central

They are not dangerous except when cornered.

I do know what you mean. It's one thing to read something in a book but another to really understand it on a practical level. Most of us are far more ignorant than we should be as astrologers of what is around us. I don't know if this will help but one nifty little program that is available online can plot all sorts of interesting things in the sky. It can be programmed so that you can watch the progression of the planets across the sky or see where something is at any given time or watch the Sun cross over the equator at the ecliptic back into the Northern Hemisphere on March 21st to mark the Aries ingress. Watching these things in animated form adds another persective. It even goes back to 6000BCE and ahead to 10,000CE. I've often spent hours playing around with it for no particular reason other than it is fun (and a fantastic work avoidance technique ).

The link is

http://www.skyviewcafe.com/index.php

One thing I heard at a talk the other day that intrigued me is that, on Mars, Earth becomes the morning and evening star. It just reminded me of how we are only seeing the universe from one very small perspective.

And how those NASA pictures of Mars show it to be a place that looks something like earth. They just released a great panorama the other day.

About the houses, I want to see what an intercepted house looks like, and get a feeling for why one house would span across several signs.

For our European friends, here's what an armadillo is:

Armadillos
Nine-Banded Armadillo
Armadillo Central

They are not dangerous except when cornered.

Or if they think you prefer Halley's comet to them, apparently...