Whole signs or Placidus?

If we had no computers, when I do a “spontaneous reading” - which is my most affordable offer - I would definitely use the whole house system.

To draw a chart manually, you need the ephemeris, and a table of houses  to calculate where the Ascendant, Midheaven and all the house cusps fall. You need to make time consuming calculations. You may hate that. 

For the whole house system, you only need to know the sign of the Ascendant, what a relief!  Houses are superimposed to the signs, it’s as simple as it can get. 

When you’re consulting your table of houses looking for the Ascendant, you find the exact degree - provided you’re sure of the exact time of birth. Not everyone knows. But if your client does, you can use the Equal House system: all houses are equal in size - 30 degrees starting from the Ascendant. That’s the second easiest system. 

If the client has a bit more money to spend, you can also calculate the degree of the Midheaven, and use “Porphyry”. (Porphyry was a friend and disciple of Plotinus, who lived in the third century BC)

Once you know the positions of the Ascendant and the MC, you draw the four quadrants and divide them each in three equal sections. That’s quick enough! 

Now, if the client is well off, knows their precise birth time and is prepared to pay,  you can use Placidus, Regiomontanus or another of these systems. If you hate calculations you may have to ask a colleague more skilled in celestial geometry than you are and share the money.

Since the Renaissance, we know how to print books. A table of houses, along with paper and pen was really affordable in the twentieth century. In Hellenistic and medieval times it may not have been so convenient. 

As for knowing the precise time of birth, they had sundials and water clocks. If it was night time you could have a look towards the Eastern horizon and check what constellation was rising. The signs and constellations were aligned at that time.

Chris Brennan argues that the whole house system was predominantly used in Hellenistic times: the great majority of papyri with astrological data known from that period mentions only the Ascendant sign along with the positions of the planets.  

This certainly suggests that the whole house system has interpretative value. Being the simplest and most convenient doesn’t make it wrong. We know... Well, Chris Brennan knows, that astrologers in Hellenistic times kept using the the whole house system along with quadrant systems when they used them. Its value certainly doesn't boil down to be a simple but gross approximation.

However, I think that if this simple system had given complete satisfaction, there would have been no urge to come up with more complex ones. I'm not a historian, I'm just guessing!

Astrology is an art of interpretation. My opinion is that if it was a complete illusion, it wouldn’t have existed throughout all the great cultures of the world and stood the test of time. 

However, if it worked perfectly, there would have been no room for scepticism. If you drop a stone, it falls onto the ground. It works every time. There are no sceptics. 

If astrology and the whole house system were perfect, there would be no other systems. 

Astrology is like a guitar. The guitar alone is not sufficient to play good music. Only talented musicians can prove it’s possible.

If astrology was a science in the modern sense of the word, anyone should be able to look at a chart and draw the same conclusions. However, it’s not a science, it’s an art of interpretation. In spite of all the techniques, at the core, it's divination. That's my opinion.

Could we think of the whole house system as a good enough guitar, and to more complex systems as various attempts to create better instruments? It would make sense...

 

I am using Placidus because that was the house system I used before knowing there were other house systems. I decided to keep using Placidus because my astrology heroes, Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas, use this one. Steven Arroyo uses Koch. Not every guitarist chooses Gibson. 

I am also using Placidus because it’s a quadrant system: the Ascendant and Descendant, the Midheaven and IC are the four pillars. Ascendant is East, Descendant is West, Midheaven is South in the Northern Hemisphere and North in the Southern, and vice versa with the IC. 

The Midheaven is not exactly the same thing as South, as it is up in the sky when South, as a direction, doesn’t point upwards.

Still, in quadrant systems, the essential structure is aligned with the four directions.  

East, South, West and North are so fundamental! In the morning, the Sun rises in the East, at noon it is South, in the evening it sets in the West. When we watch it, North has our back.

How couldn't they be the pivots of the house system, like Soltices and Equinoxes are the pivots of the zodiac?

Thus, I vote for quadrant systems, and specifically for Placidus! 

Still, it’s worth keeping an eye on the whole house system when looking at a chart. 

Each sign is an energy field. 

It makes sense to think that all planets (and other points) sitting in the same sign are vibrating on the same wavelength. 

When a transiting planet enters a sign, if the Ascendant is in this sign, even if the planet is still transiting through the twelfth house in a quadrant system, it becomes attuned with the vibration of the Ascendant.

 

When the transiting planet will leave the sign, there will be the vibe of what naturally comes next, even if the planet is still transiting through the first house of the natal chart, in a quadrant system. 

So even though I keep preferring Placidus, I keep an eye on Whole House, and it works well enough for my interpretations. But I am sure there are other respectable approaches… 

That how I think about the question...

Jean-Marc Pierson

https://www.jeanmarcpierson.com/

I learned psychology before astrology. I find the evolutionary lens particularly relevant (what do you bring from past lives and how you keep more or less calm and carry on). 

“What’s the life story?”