Whole houses system

Hi Mattias,

Before studying Vedic Astrology with Ernst, I studied Western Astrology. Three of the teachers that I took formal courses with swore by the whole house system. In retrospect, my impression is that it was the new fad in the Western Astrology world.

While I didn't practice professionally at the time, I analyzed charts on forums on a regular basis and always asked for feedback on what had been correct/incorrect, which, luckily, almost everyone was willing to provide.

At the time, I mostly focused on transits, which house the lord of a house was in natally, and reading the Nodes including "skipped steps" as taught by Steven Forrest.

I found that in the charts in which the house cusps neatly fell into one sign (i. e. "natural whole house") these principles worked well. However, when this wasn't the case and the cusp would have fallen in different signs if calculated by a different house system, I wasn't getting great results with whole house readings. I felt like I often got the Nodes wrong with the whole house system. As you already mentioned, I had the "worst" results with this system with people who were born at a high latitude.

The whole house system also doesn't ring true to me personally. In my own chart the cusps and signs don't line up neatly. I got a reading from one of my former teachers who uses the whole house system and briefly studied with Ernst, but isn't on his recommended list, and it did not ring true at all ☹ . I had written to her beforehand explaining my concrete and long-term issues in the career area in detail (Rahu in the 10th). She went on to tell me I needed to develop the 9th house and that I was meant to be an inspirational figure etc. I listened to that reading again half a year ago and, sadly, none of her predictions came true either.

This system also did not make sense in the charts of people I knew really well who where born further North (I don't know anyone who was born on the Southern Hemisphere, unfortunately). The concrete struggles they had been dealing with for years seemed to always ligned up best with the house the Campanus cusp fell in (which I only found out after switching to that system).

In terms of the outer planets transiting people's houses, I also didn't find the whole house system working well. I was having such a hard time with it and found it to be so inaccurate in my personal experience and with the charts I was reading, that, after two years of intense study, I thought it might all just be bogus and was ready to give up on Astrology. When I found this website and starting using Campanus, things finally fell into place for me and starting making sense in the charts I had.

Whole house system work well for the techniques that require whole house system. 

Its caught onto western astrology because those people lead by Robert Hand who have been investigating ancient greek astrology were open minded and actually tried thing that were debatable. They tried sidereal and tropical, they thought tropical was more accurate. They tried house cusps and full sign rasi chart style and they liked full sign better. But this is because when it comes to placement in the way that placements are most often used, whole sign is correct, in my opinion. But, we have to use the cusps in respect to the manifest things but placement works better as far as what place from lagna with whole signs than putting in a house using house cusps. HOWEVER, that may be because we are not knowing where the cusp fits in. What i mean by that, in west they say the cusp is the begging of the house. In India they say its the middle of the house. Hmm, what about the third option, the cusp is the END of the house. Astronomically this makes the most sense to me. Think about it, what moves faster, the cusps or the planets? The Cusps. The way astrologers look at it is that the cusps are these static things that the planets move through, so when the planet moves into a cusp, the cusp is the beginning of the house. HOWEVER, the reality is, the planets do not move into a house, rather, the cusps move backwards towards the planets. compared to the house cusps, the planet's are relatively stationary, so we need to think about what is happening in the context of the houses moving in relationship to the planets. In that context, the planet would begin to be in the house after the house cusp passes it, which means, the house cusp is the end of the house. I have programmed this into the new kala and been experimenting with it. Look at bush jr. SUn and saturn in the 12th? or sun and saturn in the first? which is more likely to be pres, first and 7th in 12th or first? he has jupiter and moon, thats a wealth combo, is it in 3rd, then wealth would be from own efforts. haha, right, in 4th with cusp at the end of the house, it comes from family, it comes easily from rich parents. 

I use whole signs for placements. I use cusps to analyze things just as I show in the charts but I don't make placements based on cusps. 

Even with tropical Vedic astrology, yogas are difficult and complicated to qualify with regard to how tangibly and how often their effects will occur. Tropical Vedic astrologers have whole courses on the difficulties and intricacies of qualifying yogas.

But in the earlier periods of astrology in India when yogas were actually all being studied and identified, all this was done in areas of the world where each campanus cusp is equally distributed across each sign. India, and for that matter, Persia and Hellenistic Egypt are all close enough to the equator for each sign in the birth chart to have each single consecutive cusp.

So maybe all those yogas involving signs and sign lords and their exchanges only clearly manifest verifiably in charts close enough to the equator. And that's why it showed so clearly to the Indian astrologers who discovered them and were not so hard to qualify as they are now with international birth charts closer to the poles?

Maybe yogas that don't involve evenly matching house cusps are more of an astral or energetic entanglement that occur at a different level than what would other wise manifest clearly, tangibly, and simply when closer to the equator.

S.