Munchies for Astro-Thought: Moving/Changing House Systems

Munchies © 2015 by Joyce Mason

 

 Cut each of these pieces in half and

you’ve got the 12 houses of the zodi-yum.

This munchie follows the last one on Chart Tinkering like a tag team. It involves a form of chart tinkering, too—changing house systems.

If you haven’t tinkered lately with a different system from the one you normally use, put out the For Sale sign and move from wherever you are to a different house: Placidus, Koch, Porphyry, Whole Signs or Equal Houses. Better yet, "move" to another country (India) and check out your chart in the Vedic system which will shift it about 23-degrees.

As usual, I’m going to do a self-demo here because I don’t have to ask permission or worry about anyone’s privacy but my own. And the best part is that I can learn or relearn along with you.

But first, a bit of Astro-bio. I started out my astrology studies with the wrong chart. As a Virgo, I was horror stricken to discovery this inaccuracy! I found out that I was born during an era where Illinois births, by law, were required to be recorded in Standard time even though Daylight Savings was on the clock. My discovery was so long ago (the early 1980s) that I was still hand drawing charts from a complex formula using a calculator, taught to me by my first teacher, Gavin Carruthers. (Meet Gavin on his website or low on the sidebar of this blog.) Even my first foray into casting charts by computer was not helpful, as the software I used did not prompt for this wrinkle. I don’t remember how I found out the truth about my birth time. Originally ignorant, since Daylight Savings Time was on the clock, I calculated my 7:31 PM birth time in Central Daylight Time (CDT). It looked like this in Placidus, also the original chart system I used.

Click to enlarge

As you’ll see, it has Aries Rising, a crowded 6^th House and Moon on the Midheaven. I think the original hand calculations were a little off on the house cusps, compared to today’s very precise software, as I seem to recall the Moon pushed a bit past the MC into the 10^th itself.

When we finally uncovered the time zone truth, I rechecked my birth certificate and found out it said, literally, CST—Standard time. To complicate the issue, not all hospitals followed the rule about recording in Standard. I was lucky to have verification that mine was recorded as though Daylight Savings Time did not exist. Here was my new chart:

Click to enlarge

Note I actually have Taurus Rising, still a crowded 6^th but Moon clearly in the the 9^th rather than the 10^th House. This made a big difference. Explains my bent for philosophy, publishing and love of travel.

Oddly enough, both charts worked at a certain level. Gavin had a theory that still resonates for me. We sometimes get the “wrong” chart to learn things about ourselves that the “right” chart doesn’t illuminate. It sure made sense to me. I’m a real doer and starter, so Aries Rising worked for me—but I look much more like a Taurus Rising, and I’m clearly a Venus Girl, not very Marsy in many other ways. I chalked up people seeing a lot of fire in me that doesn’t exist to a great degree in my chart—and also my tendency toward action and starting new things—to my dominant Cardinal modality.

I won’t bore you with the details of each new chart, but I had an astrologer I much admired for a while who used Equal Houses. This put Moon in the 8^th and also explained a lot in terms of losing my original family by adoption and a boatload of other abandonment issues. (Of course, that theme was found elsewhere in the chart, too.)

But it was when an astrologer I admired swore by the Koch house system that I converted to it because I loved the results: Sun and Venus conjunct in the 5^th, not the 6^th House. This was the only thing that ever explained my constant creativity and how I totally live to create things. It also explained something else—how I’d rather be a typical behind-the-scenes  Virgo, but life keeps putting me front and center on stage in front of God and Everyone. I have kept Koch for that reason, because it feels most like the real me …

… but I’m always willing to look at a new system. The older I get, the more my Vedic chart makes sense. It’s back to Aries Rising—but get this—a Sag Moon in the 9th! People are forever guessing that I have a lot of Aquarius and Sagittarius in my chart. With Sun square Uranus and a very prominent Jupiter (trine Mars and conjunct the South Node), the flavor is there from another angle.

And that’s just it. Chart systems just allow us to see ourselves from another angle. I always think of horoscopes as pizzas. Some Virgo types cut their pizzas into perfectly even proportions, others are more freestyle with the cutter wheel and you might get more pepperoni on some pieces and not enough olives on others. Imagine how salty the pieces with a lot of Spanish olives would be compared to those with a few or none.

That’s the idea. Taste your astrological data in different ways and be amazed at what you learn about yourself. I just don’t believe there’s one true house system, but I do believe you’ll know the one that explains you best to you … which is why we started this star stuff, isn’t it?

And once you’ve figured yourself out a little bit better, once more, I hope you’ll share what you find out.

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Photo Credit: © Lukas Gojda - Fotolia.com