Deborah Houlding's Ascella Press specialises in invaluable reprints of the classic texts from astrology's illustrious past. Now Deborah Houlding has taken up the pen to shed a clear light on the murky world of house meanings.

This may seem elementary, but brief reflection shows how thick a mist has enveloped this subject as layer after layer of successive theories have tangled and entwined among themselves. By going back to the earliest authors and tracing from there the developing understanding of the houses, Deborah is able to clarify exactly which meanings belong where in the horoscope.

Anyone striving for any degree of precision in their reading of the chart will find this information essential. Deborah's account is clear and uncomplicated, listing and explaining the various meanings of the houses and the reasoning behind them in all the main branches of astrology: natal, electional, horary, medical and mundane. This is followed with an enlightening review of the perennial debate on which house system is to be preferred, and an interesting essay pointing the debt that modern astrology owes to the ancient Egyptians.

There are few books with so much information packed into so small a space. Whether for the interested amateur or the practising astrologer, this is a book to be kept handy and referred to constantly, destined to become as much a classic as any of the ancient texts that Ascella has reprinted.

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