Reddit mentions of The Houses - Temples of the Sky

I'm glad that this post found its way to r/astrology. I think it's important to be able talk about the houses and their interpretations, but this article steers people the wrong way about many of its points.

The article is correct about empty houses. Just because no planet resides in a house doesn't mean it's any less active, but that's because the matters of a house emanate from the ruler of the house.

>So, if the Cusp of the 3rd House is on 16° Leo, we have to take that very point to define the basic nature of The House of Learning and Communication of the person we are examining, and we have to do that even if on the Cusp there are no Planets and even if there are no planets on the rest of the House’s area, because Houses are the true projection of the personality.

This idea of combining the characteristics of a sign with the significations of the house is only correct within a limited sense. Having Leo on the cusp of the third is more likely to suggest that the native has few siblings, not that they communicate in a Leonine way. What you're really supposed to do when you have an empty house (and even when you don't) is to look to the ruler of the house. The planet that rules a house is always responsible for maintaining and executing the affairs of that house and every house will always have a ruler.

Furthermore, the entire second half of the article that attempts to make the case (actually it really doesn't, it just offers it up to us and expects the reader to accept it on face value) that houses aren't just "sectors of life" but are "reflections of the psyche" is, in my professional opinion, incorrect. I think it's important to point out that this idea became very popular after the publication of Howard Sasportas's book The Twelve Houses in which he put forth the idea that the houses are a psychological "cycle of life". This book was published in 1985 and completely disregarded the historical and traditional ways the houses were handled, conceptualized, and interpreted (Sasportas's "cycle" even goes the wrong way). Sasportas isn't completely responsible for this change, but his book definitely became a cornerstone in the foundation of a reinvented astrology separated from its past.

The best book out there about the houses, their history, meaning, and even calculation is Deborah Houlding's Temples of the Sky. It's a great, short read and contains so much information. Until you can get that book, I have a couple of pointers about houses

1. Planets in a house are more immediately felt than the planet that rules the house
   
2. The ruler of a house is responsible for manifesting the affairs of the house. Always look to it.
   
3. Planets placed in houses link the matters of the houses together. Make sure to consider what it might mean that the Lord of the Seventh House is placed in the Ninth House and how that links together the topics of those houses.
   
4. Any article that suggests planets, houses, and signs are interchangeable should be ignored. The eleventh house has nothing to do with Aquarius and definitely nothing to do with Uranus or Saturn. This was a really popular theory as to the origins of the meanings of the houses in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, but our scholarship has improved a lot since then and we know that that isn't the case. As a result, most professional astrologers have moved away from this system and I normally only encounter this idea in blogs or older modern books. Houses, signs, and planets have very different philosophical and technical ideas that go into their meaning. There are often interwoven, but none completely rely on any of the others to give them meaning.
   
   

Houlding's book is required reading and if you find it useful you should purchase a copy. I'm pretty sour on stealing other people's work.

I'm going to piggyback onto your comment because per usual it's the most useful in the thread. The theme that recurs in all the houses is how adequately they access the light of the ascendant and where the planets/luminaries appear in the sky based on their placement. A lot of the nonsense that's sprung up with houses has to do with a wrong conception of the chart as a pie chart of life that has no connexion with/conception of the chart as a literal picture of where the objects are in the sky. You can't blame people when major population centres blot out the night sky such that they can't witness for themselves the drama that unfolds, but astrology without astronomy has caprice as it's foundation.

If I had to pick one word to describe the 12th it's restriction. There is no access to the light of the ascendant by aspect, the ascendant does not "see" the 12th (or the 8th, 6th, & 2nd) and of the unfortunate it's the worst. Everything that exerts effort here is ineffectual, as the celestial objects enter the 12th house their light is subject to distortion by the atmosphere and, as Ptolemy said, afflicted by the miasmatic exhalations of the earth (it's misty n shit over yonder). By nature of its physical location in the sky the free expression/light of the object is obscured and it is only through toil that it succeeds to the 11th where it shines without obstruction and gains momentum towards the 10th.

Manilius says anything in the 12th is "doomed to climb" and I understand this as a Sisyphean sort of effort. As Houlding observes the 6th/12th axis has as a theme servility, small animals like dogs are in the sixth but anything large enough to be ridden in the sense of a "beast of burden" is in the 12th. Domestic servitude is in the sixth but slavery is in the 12th. 6th is "You do as I say" (Sit, doggo!) and implies a degree of freedom and choice in performing labor, usually for recompense (employees), whereas 12th is a chain gang in a mine or the hobbled horse who performs a task for no reason other than to avoid the bite of the whip.

It's self-undoing, if we were to take some of your posts as an example while you have useful contributions you express them in a way that's exclusionary, derisive, and divisive. It's also the worst sort of addiction, it's not the pleasurable merry-making of wine bibbing and good food of the 5th but a hunger that cannot be denied, it is practically compulsory and as in the case of Mr. Creosote very likely leads to our demise but usually not in such spectacular fashion. It's spending ourselves into the slavery of debt.

I've read that "God" is attributed to the 12th in modern astrology and agree with Houlding that this is misguided but if we're to consider Moore's work Facing the Dragon he makes a compelling argument that the roots of our self-undoing is mistaking "made in the image of God" as self-as-God which leads to a poisonous pride and grandiosity. This is another facet of the restriction of the 12th, self-as-God is a restriction of the divine principle insofar as it fuels our narcissism and self-importance in contrast to submission to God which recognizes individuals as co-equal in the body of God producing an wholesome humility. The 12th only represents God in this negative aspect.

The personal positive or, more accurately, remedial message of the twelfth is that of the myth of Sisyphus. This requires some more astronomy because it is the difference between secondary and primary motion. Primary motion being the clockwise motion of the sphere of the fixed stars that sweeps up all the celestial objects in their daily traversal of the sky from east to west while secondary motion is the counterclockwise struggle/progression of the celestial objects through the belt of the zodiac. The sphere of fixed stars being most superior and closest to the Prime Mover/Unmoved Mover/God/whatevs you want to call it aspires to its motion (primary, east to west) and despite the backwards motion of the celestial objects (secondary, west to east) the celestial objects are carried up out of the 12th by its aid.

So like Sisyphus who was only freed from his labors by Ares we are only freed from our own self-undoing and the restriction it imposes on us by a power outside of ourselves. We are powerless in the 12th and oddly enough 12 step programs got this right save I would revise the first step to "we are powerless over the 12th", that is we must recognize the ways in which we restrict ourselves and accept the help of others to liberate us out of this area so our light can shine unobstructed.