Have you seen the astrology memes on social media that describes a person based on their personality like a Scorpio Sun is very intense? Most students of astrology start studying modern psychology astrology using the Placidus house system and the first house system students encounter. Modern psychological astrology emerged in the 20th century which places a great emphasis on psychological analysis including personality and character analysis, personal growth and self-improvement which is heavily influenced by astrologers Dane Rudhyar, Liz Greene, Stephen Arroyo and psychologist Carl Jung.
Modern psychological astrologers mostly use quadrant based house systems such as the Placidus house system which divides the zodiac into 12 unequal segments based on the time and location of an individual’s birth. The Placidus house system has been widely used in modern astrology because it is believed to provide greater accuracy in interpreting the individual’s chart as it’s a time based system that calculates the planet’s movement over time on the ecliptic. The Placidus house system is also the default house system in most astrology software programs today which is the reason for common usage.
The Placidus house system wasn’t the original house system, but became widely used starting in the 17th century by English speaking astrologers when Placidus tried to reconstruct the house division system described in the works of Ptolemy. It’s theorized that the Placidus house became popular because it was viewed as modernizing astrology compared to the Whole Sign House system which some may viewed as simplistic.
Project Hindsight was formed in the early 1990s by a group of astrologers (Robert Schmidt, Ellen Black, Robert Zoller and Robert Hand) who were interested in the traditional techniques and practices of traditional Hellenistic astrology. Project Hindsight aimed to translate and publish the works of ancient astrologers from ancient Greek, Classical Latin and Arabic into modern English so that the knowledge of traditional astrology could be more widely accessible to modern astrologers. A team of translators and researchers involved in Project Hindsight worked to locate, translate and analyze the original works of ancient astrologers such as Ptolemy, Vettius Valens and Firmicus Maternus with the goal of understanding the traditional techniques and practices of astrology. Project Hindsight developed a subscription plan with books, workshops and to teach these techniques to modern astrologers with a focus on practical application in modern contexts.
Traditional Hellenistic astrology uses the Whole Sign House system which is the oldest form of house divisions that assigns which each sign of the zodiac to a house with the first sign representing the first house, the second sign representing the second house, and so on. The Whole Sign House system was the dominant house system for centuries which uses the rising sign as the first house and the rest of the houses are assigned to each of the signs in zodiacal order.
At the beginning of 2023, there has been is a lot of debate and discussion around around astrology house systems. I currently use Whole Sign House system exclusively today and for an astrologer transitioning from modern psychological astrology using Placidus system to traditional Hellenistic astrology using the Whole Sign House system it can be challenge requiring rethinking of our modern house meanings.
There are a lot of misconceptions about astrology and I’ve highlighted some misconceptions about astrology.