Rationale Behind Twelve Houses
Babylonians started observing natural phenomena connected with ascending and culminating of the heavenly bodies. This evolved into 12 division system of houses before the discovery of the ecliptic. Later (around V c. bce) ecliptic was discovered (Schmidt&Hand "On the invariance of tropical Zodiac" and "Early house divisions in the Hellenistic era"). At the beginning this early zodiac it has no sign divisions, and only 18 bright stars were used as markers to measure planet positions. Later in Alexandria astrologers introduced the twelve signs to fit the number and probably meanings of the houses, and named constellations after them. Nowadays, practising astrologers use a 12 house division. Most theoreticians attribute 8 fold division for misinterpretation of old texts only, but one theoretician Patrice Guinard has argued, contrary to that prevailing opinion, that there is a basis for an 8 house division. One prominent astrologer, Marc Penfield, uses 8 houses - dividing each quadrant using the same technique as in Koch & Placidus. Michel Gauquelin divided Placidus houses into 36 (instead of 12) "decans" and marked beginning of the 36th "decan" (the first before ascendant) as the starting point.
Read more about this topic: House (astrology)
Famous quotes containing the words twelve and/or houses:
“I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 12:7.