Signs as Houses in Ancient Astrology

Abstract 

Previous work in the study of ancient horoscopes (Neugebauer, van Hoesen, North et al.) has suggested that ancient writers were deficient in their computations of horoscopes regarding the computation of the Midheaven degree and the cusps of ‘places’ or ‘houses’. This paper suggests that such was not necessarily the case and that these sources used the zodiacal signs, themselves, as ‘places’ and did not (with a few late exceptions) even try to compute the second twelve-fold division independent of the signs. The charts included in Neugebauer and van Hoesen’s Greek Horoscopes, and in Jones’ Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus (which include the bulk, if not all of, our surviving collection of ancient charts) are used as the basis of this research. Ptolemy and Julius Firmicus Maternus are also discussed for their apparent views on ‘places’. Examples are provided that suggest that this practice survived into the medieval Arabic tradition. 

The Problem 

It is generally known that in ancient, medieval, and modern astrology, a properly constructed astrological chart divides the ecliptic into twelve zones in two different ways. In modern astrology the first method of di-viding into the twelve zones creates the signs of the zodiac; the second method creates what are called, in modern astrology at least, the houses. But in ancient and also in much of medieval astrology what we now call ‘houses’ were called ‘places’ (Greek τόποι, Latin loci).¹ The term ‘house’ (Greek οἴκος, Latin domus) at that time was used to designate a sign whenever that sign was referred to in relation to the one or more planets that were believed to ‘dispose of’, in some way rule or govern, or merely be at home in that sign. Such a planet was called ‘ruler’ or ‘lord’ of the sign (Greek οἰκοδεσπότης, Latin dominus). 

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