Musings on Houses

One of the background stimuli for the creation of Arcana Stones was my dissatisfaction with my various attempts to read using an astrological houses spread (sometimes known as a horoscope spread).  Readings based on one card for each house didn’t gel for me.  They seemed so disjointed as to be pretty much meaningless.

 

With Arcana Stones, we read only the houses that stones land in.  That immediately removes the disjointedness of considering every house no matter what the question is or where the questioner is coming from.  And considering which houses seems most apropos to the question or concern before dropping the stones gives another layer to the reading.  Did stones land in the applicable houses or not?  What does that imply?

 

In keeping with the desire to make houses readings more clear-cut and pertinent to the questioner’s concern, I thought it was important to keep my house interpretations close to the “fortune telling” style of traditional astrology. 

 

Besides, I was always intrigued by the topics listed for various houses that I’ve seen around the internet, including (my favorite!) small animals and large animals (Sixth and Twelfth Houses), not to mention allies, public enemies, and private enemies (Second, Seventh, and Twelfth Houses).  If you’re also intrigued, check out the great Renaissance Astrology site, which has lots of astrology primary sources.  (Here’s the houses page:  http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/houses.html.)  And/or check out On the Heavenly Spheres:  A Treatise on Traditional Astrology, by Helena Avelar & Luis Ribeiro, published by the American Federation of Astrologers in 2010, for fascinating and useful information on classical, medieval, and Renaissance astrological methods.

 

In addition to the mundane-psychological split between traditional and modern (20th century) astrological thought, another difference traditional astrologers are quick to point out is that that many modern astrologers are apt to mix up the houses with the signs.  While there is some correlation in attributes (see the Renaissance source at the link above), houses and signs refer to different phenomena.  An astrological chart is like a snapshot of the solar system at a moment in time.  Signs in a chart refer to space divisions of the sky; houses refer to time divisions of a day.  (I’m not 100 percent master of this information yet.  I’m still trying to get solid understanding of it, but I think I’m not leading you astray here . . .)

 

The biggest traditional-modern houses controversy is the attribution of fathers and mothers.  Traditionally, fathers are attributed to the Fourth House, mothers to the Tenth.  Some (most?) modern astrologers have taken the liberty of switching them.  Correlating the Fourth House with the fourth sign, Cancer, a water sign ruled by the moon, has led them to think that it is a more logical place for emotional, feminine mothers.  Similarly, the Tenth House and the tenth sign, Capricorn, which speak of ambition and public life, seem to be logical places for modern fathers.  Oceans of ink have been spilled on this controversy, but ultimately, as with all things divinational, we have to decide for ourselves!

 

In the Arcana Stones booklet, I’ve tried to combine the mundane and psychological aspects of the houses just enough to make them as useful as possible for readings.  (I even came up with a theory to justify using the traditional houses for fathers and mothers!) 

 

And those are my musings on houses!

 

I’m going to give myself an assignment here so you can hold me to it:  As an experiment, I’m going to do a houses reading using only the astrological attributions of the stones (not the tarot meanings) and traditional astrological interpretations straight from the texts.  So each stone will be either a planet in a house or a sign on a house cusp.  (I’ll have to figure out what to do if one of the element stones turns up!)  I’m no kind of astrologer, so it’ll be interesting if nothing else!  Wish me luck!