A Scheme of Heaven by Alexander Boxer

Author:Alexander Boxer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

THE HOUSES OF HEAVEN

As a practical matter, computing the stars’ judgments requires that last group of astrological elements which we’ve yet to properly introduce: the Houses of Heaven. These are astrology’s system of local coordinates—the astrological analog to the modern-day quantities of azimuth and elevation. Very simply, the Houses of Heaven divide your local sky into twelve sectors. The First House is positioned at your eastern horizon; the Tenth House is directly above your head; the Seventh House is at your western horizon; and the Fourth House is the region of sky on the other side of the globe directly beneath your feet. The remaining eight Houses fill in the gaps. In our schemes of heaven, these twelve sectors are labeled with small numerals, 1 through 12.

I’ve refrained from describing the Houses of Heaven up until now mainly because astrology is complicated enough without them. But this shouldn’t be taken to imply that they were less important to astrologers of earlier ages. On the contrary, the Houses of Heaven were integral to the earliest Greco-Roman astrological systems described by Marcus Manilius, Claudius Ptolemy, and Vettius Valens. More assertively, we can regard the Houses of Heaven as the defining elements of astrology itself, because, unlike the zodiac, the Houses of Heaven are not mentioned in the older Mesopotamian rites of celestial divination. And whatever the astral arts of ancient Babylon may have been, it’s not strictly correct to call them astrology, since this is, properly, a Greek name for a Greek science.

The Houses of Heaven were more than just sectors of the sky. Each House was believed to be connected to specific aspects of human life, such as health, money, or children. As the sky’s revolution carried the planets through each of the twelve Houses once per day, the nature of their significations thus changed hour by hour. Of the twelve Houses, the most powerful were at the four “cardinal” or “angular” points defined by your horizon: the First House (east); the Tenth House (up); the Seventh House (west); and the Fourth House (down). Next came Houses Two, Five, Eight, and Eleven; these were called “upcoming” or “succedent” Houses, since the sky’s daily revolution would carry any celestial body within them into one of the angular Houses within the next hour or two. Houses Three, Six, Nine, and Twelve were called “falling” or “cadent” Houses. The bodies in these Houses had recently exited an angular House and, consequently, were seen as weak and unlucky.

Latin authors like Bonatti tended to refer to the Houses simply by their numbers, but in the older Greek tradition they were given mystically outlandish names. Of course, we’re already familiar with one of them: the First House, in Greek, was the horoscope. The rest of the system is sketched out in table 8.1.

Table 8.1: The Houses of Heaven

House

Classical Name

Type

Signification

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