Lets talk about Whole Sign houses, their application to modern astrology, their historical basis, and what this means to the astrological community as a whole.

First off, what are Whole Signs Houses? The Whole Sign house system was the original means of dividing up the chart into a separate, twelve fold division in order to determine which area of life a planet had influence over. Modern astrologers are familiar with this concept, and can chose from a wide variety of systems, which divide the four quadrants by various calculations, the most popular today being the Placidus method of house division. Whole Sign Houses are really not a system of houses at all per se, but rather you use the signs as houses, instead of creating a separate 12-fold division of the zodiac. In this system, you find the ascendant, and the sign that the ascendant falls in designates the entire first house, from 0 to 30 degrees of that sign, regardless of where the ascendant falls in that sign. From there you count each sign after that initial sign as one whole house. In this system, the Ascendant and the Midheaven do not act as the cusps of the houses, they both merely act as horoscopic points in the chart, like the part of fortune, or the vertex for example. While the word ‘horoscope’ has come to mean the entire chart itself in modern times, Rob Hand points out in his work on Whole Sign Houses that the Greek word for horoscope was originally more specifically defined as a point in the chart. Thus the ascendant, midheaven, and the Lots (aka Arabic Parts) could all be generally defined under the category of ‘horoscopic points’. One especially crucial aspect of the Whole Sign house system is that the midheaven does not designate the cusp of the 10th house, it just acts as a point of focus, and can land in the 8th 9th 10th 11th or 12th house depending on ones location on the earth. Also, while the ascendant acts as a horoscopic point, which designates the sign in which the first house falls, it does not necessarily designate the ‘cusp’, or starting point of the first house, but merely as a point of focus or heightened activity, because in fact the first house really begins at the beginning of the sign in which the ascendant falls, no matter how late in whatever particular sign it is found. So, in order to find the houses in a chart, every sign counted counterclockwise after the first ‘place’ or sign that contains the ascendant is taken to be the house next in order, because both the signs and the houses coincide with one another, although each retains its own distinct meaning.

This is the oldest form of house division, which was used during the Hellenistic era by our astrological forbearers during the time of horoscopic astrology’s creation. It has only been recently rediscovered over the past decade or so, due to the newly translated works of the Hellenistic astrologers. It has been shown that the house systems that the vast majority of modern astrologers use today, is not what the founders had originally intended, and in fact it all started due a misinterpretation of several fundamental Hellenistic texts during the transmission of western astrology to the Arabs presumably in the 7th and 8th centuries.

The system of house division that is used today by most astrologers was originally devised by the Greeks as a way of measuring planetary 'activity', or perhaps strength. This system of ‘dynamic division’, where you take the Ascendant and Midheaven as starting points, and then divide the quadrants accordingly, which is similar to our modern idea of house division, is clearly explained by several of the Hellenistic astrologers, including Ptolemy who was not a practicing astrologer, but they were careful to explain that this was a ‘dynamical’ division intended to gauge how “busy” a planet is, as opposed to the ‘topical’ division of the chart which designates the actual areas, or ‘houses’ of the chart.


Vettius Valens explains a type of ‘dynamical’ division, which would be the equivalent to Porphyry, where the first third of each quadrant, from each of the four angular points, (i.e. the Asc/Dsc., MC/IC) known in modern house division as the angular ‘houses’ (1st, 4th, 7th, 10th) are the most ‘busy’ or active ’houses’. The following third of the quadrant (i.e. 2nd, 5th, 8th, 11th) is only 'moderately active’. And the last third of each quadrant (i.e. 3, 6, 9, 12) is the 'least active' of all the divisions. So. This is called a 'dynamical' division of the chart, because it is a way to gauge planetary activity, or strength, BUT it does not delegate, or signify the areas of life affected by the planetary placements. That’s what the 'topical' division of the chart is for, i.e. Whole Sign houses, because that shows what area of life is effected.

So essentially what happened is that when horoscopic astrology was passed to the Arabs through the Greek writings in the 7th and 8th centuries, the original understanding of how the houses were divided was lost, and through scribal error, and misinterpretations they ended up passing astrology back to the West during the Renaissance with a form of house division that was not intended for what it was being used for. Some of the Arab astrologers such as Masha’allah correctly understood how the Greeks divided the houses, and in his work and several other Arab astrologers works from that period you can see them clearly using Whole Signs, but sadly much of their work was not available by the time astrology made it back to the west, and what little was available, was misunderstood.

Another interesting dimension to this saga is that Vedic astrology, which was heavily influenced by the Hellenistic astrologers, still uses Whole Sign houses to this day because they didn’t have the problems that western astrology had with it being transmitted from culture to culture, and misinterpreted and such. Their astrology is still essentially the same as it was 2,000 years ago, and they employ many of the same techniques as the Hellenistic astrologers did, even the same house system- Whole Sign Houses, but for some reason, we lost connection with our roots.

So my point with all of this is to try and alert you all that there is a change afoot. This simple, yet remarkably important facet of astrology has been rediscovered and could really go a long way in solving some of the simplest problems (i.e. intercepted houses, multiple systems of house division, etc.) that have plagued us for hundreds of years now. Many modern astrologers view Sun-Sign astrology distastefully, almost as a de-evolution of the art, but in this case its funny, because the tables may be turned, because they have been using Whole Signs all along.

At least give it a try and go through a few old charts of people who you know and see if it resonates or elucidates certain areas which had always been a mystery before. Many of the charts may not even change at all, but for the ones that do, be sure to pay attention to planets changing houses, house rulership, and which sign the Midheaven falls in.

Questions? Comments? Death threats?

Chris Brennan