Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I’m your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I’m an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I’m going to give you your weekly horoscope and no bullshit, mystical advice for living your very best life.

I am so excited to tell you about the two live events I’m doing this very week, and I hope you’ll join me at both of them. The first one is on May 3rd at 3 p.m., Pacific time. Join me from anywhere in the world. We will be doing a Venus Retrograde AMA. I want you to ask me all your questions about astrology and your life themed on Venus Retrograde stuff—that’s self-esteem, money, and, of course, relationships. I hope you’ll join me there. 

Also, on June 1st, I’m so excited to tell you that I am teaming up with Rachel Budde of Fat in the Moon. She is an amazing herbalist, and the two of us will explore Saturn, in particular, Saturn’s move through Aquarius. She will be sharing plant allies to support us through this transit, and, of course, I will be talking about astrology. It’s June 1st at 4 p.m., Pacific time. Again, join us from anywhere in the world online. Sign up for both of these events on my website at LoveLanyadoo.com/events. Link in show notes.

Welcome back to another week of Astrology Hot Takes on Ghost of a Podcast. This week I’m doing something really different. I wanted to explain to you the different house systems. What is the difference between Campanus houses that I use and whole sign houses, Placidus houses. So I pulled in my dear friend and excellent astrologer, Tony Howard, to help break it down. And he does an excellent job.

Jessica: Okay. So, Tony Howard, the creator of Astrology University, the charmer of my heart.

Tony Howard: You’re the charmer of my heart.

Jessica: Well, this is why we have a couple of charmed hearts over here. You are the first and only astrologer that I am having on Ghost of a Podcast. Because I am an asshole who loves Campanus house systems, and people ask me all the time about why I like Campanus house systems. They know a lot about whole sign houses because they’ve been popularized in recent years, and people ask me about how to explain them, what’s good. 

And I want everyone to be an independent thinker, and I also want everyone to just do what I say and listen to me—Campanus is the best. And, so, I thought, okay. Okay. It’s time to face facts. I’m never going to be able to explain it well. But you, my friend, are amazing at explaining house systems. So can you share with me and the Ghost of a Podcast audience what’s the difference between house systems, what are house systems—break it down for those of us who need to know, which is every one of us. 

Tony Howard: Oh, sure thing. I’m happy to, and I love this subject. We actually just taught a whole course on it at Astrology University, so this is great timing. 

But the houses actually are the thing in astrology that make your chart personal. Without the houses we wouldn’t have a way to sort of draw the planets’ energies down to earth. The houses allow astrologers to see your unique individual nature. While interpreting a planetary aspect is powerful and also crucial to good chart interpretation, let’s be honest, the houses show us where those planets are most impacting specific areas of our lives. 

So is our career or mission highlighted, or is it raising children? Is higher education the area of life that drives us and where our creative gifts most shine, or is it another area of life? Without using the houses, we can’t really make those kinds of determinations.

Jessica: That’s right.

Tony Howard: So that’s kind of what the houses are about. The planets describe drives and impulses, psychological dynamics, problems, as well as talents and gifts, but as the late astrologer, Howard Sasportas wrote, the houses bring the chart down to Earth. In other words, they tell us something about what makes us unique from another person who was born at maybe just a different time on the same day that we were born.

Jessica: See, this is why I asked you to come on because the way I describe houses is they are like slices of a pizza, and the way you describe houses is way more effective. And this is a beautiful thing. So—

Tony Howard: Well, I use the pizza slices too. I mean, when you’re looking at the chart, that’s a great reference point, yeah. And pizza is just awesome.

Jessica: It is. Delightful.

Tony Howard: Vegan pizza for me, but it’s still pizza.

Jessica: Hey, we don’t even need the—no need to contextualize. Pizza is pizza. 

Tony Howard: Right.

Jessica: We will talk about it more later. So, okay.

Tony Howard: So you know the signs, right—you know the 12 signs. Those signs are projections onto space. So get into—to get into a little bit more of the technical here, we have assigned each sign its own part of the sky. And we equally divided those into 12 parts along what we call the ecliptic. And the ecliptic is just a fancy name for the path that the Sun follows in the Earth sky from our point of view, so from our frame of reference on Earth. Which makes sense that we would look at things from that frame of reference.

Jessica: We’re that kind of animal.

Tony Howard: We are.

Jessica: We’re that kind of animal. It’s like where I stand is the most important place, right.

Tony Howard: Exactly. 

Jessica: Yes. Yeah, well played. Yes.

Tony Howard: So in contrast, the houses have to do with the Earth’s rotation, so the spinning globe. And since the Earth is constantly rotating, the houses shift minute by minute from one person’s perspective on Earth. 

So if you have a twin, and you’re born say even five minutes apart, your houses will shift a little bit, and it’s even possible to have totally different houses and a different Ascendent sign than your twin. And that, in part, can describe some of your uniqueness from each other. So, again, the houses are what really make us unique. 

The houses are also showing a relationship to your specific location on Earth when you’re born. And this is an important thing to remember as we talk about why Campanus houses are awesome.

Jessica: Thank you. Thank you.

Tony Howard: Because Campanus houses have a lot to do—they really consider the space that you’re in and try to take in the whole relationship to the Earth. 

But before I get into more geeky stuff, you mentioned that houses are contentious in astrology; they lead to heated discussions, disagreements, and even fights, and they also confuse students. And another thing I like talking about is houses lead to a disillusionment experience for people who first discover that there is more than one house system. 

And if you’re studying astrology, it can be a crisis of confidence in the whole set of astrological teachings when students learn there are different ways of calculating the house systems, and that as a community, we’re not all in agreement. But for those of you listening to the podcast, just do what Jessica says; she’s always right.

Jessica: Thank you, Ton-, see this is why he’s on the show, see. But also, I will just share that this is like also a little bit about our individual nature as individual people astrologers. Because I am such a Capricorn, and I was taught originally by a Capricorn, and my Capricorn teacher said, “Figure out what works best and stick with it forever and never look back.” And I was like, “Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me.” But you have a million planets in Virgo, so you’re like, I will learn all the systems and kind of work with what works, right. Because you work with multiple house systems, don’t you?

Tony Howard: In my own practice, I call myself house system agnostic. When I’m talking to my clients, it’s not like I run the charts in seven house systems. I just run them in a quadrant house system, and then also whole sign houses, and I look at both. And then I ask my clients really educated questions about their chart to determine which house system is really operative in the case that we’re discussing. Because people come to me to talk about a specific issue, and so, we’re looking at that issue in the context of their chart. And I’m always able to find the system that appears to work, and I just go with that. So the client guides me, and I trust the client the most in that determination.

Jessica: And I’ll just throw in there that I am completely different, and we’re both good astrologers, and we also both love each other, and yeah, I use the same system over and over again. 

If someone comes to me, and they say, “I only work with my birth chart in Placidus or in whole sign,” I say, “Cool. But you’re consulting with me now, and I work with Campanus.” And, so, there’s not a right or a wrong. It has to do with the personality and the kind of work approach of the individual astrologer. And you get to kind of determine for yourself who you are in that and what that means.

Tony Howard: True story. And I always recommend to my students that they don’t work the way I do because it’s a little crazy making.

Jessica: Yeah, it’s crazy making.

Tony Howard: I invite my students to choose a house system and just go with that, so I think your approach is great. And I work with many great astrologers, and they pretty much all work the same way you just described. They just tell people, I’m using this house system, and that’s what we’re going to do because that’s how I do astrology. 

Jessica: Yeah.

Tony Howard: One thing I want to say though about that, if you’re already feeling a little bit like, “Wait, what? There’s more than one house system, and isn’t there a right one?” And that you’re already starting to feel disillusioned, or if you run your chart in whole sign houses, and it changes everything, or if you run your house chart in Campanus, and it changes everything, and then you start to have to this break down identity crisis, and, “Astrology doesn’t know what it’s doing. Oh, my God,” I will just point out that there’s no difference in any other field. 

In every field there are different techniques, different schools of thought, and as a whole, that community will not agree. So if you go to—let’s say you have Cancer, and you go to get treated, and you get three different opinions; you’re very likely to get three different opinions about how to be treated. 

That’s why we have this phenomenon called the second opinion, right. Doctor’s don’t always agree about a course of treatment. Astrologers are no different. We have different techniques and different methods that we favor for different reasons—sometimes subjective, sometimes objective. So it doesn’t mean astrology is lame just because of this house system debate. It’s just a debate. It’s a work in progress. 

Jessica: Mmm, yeah. And I think it’s great to have different systems for different humans. Because we all know we are a diverse group of human people.

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Jessica: So I want to ask you, and this is a big ask, and everyone who’s listening should know that what Tony is endeavoring to do in 15 minutes or less is a very big ask. Can you explain the differences between the major house systems?

Tony Howard: Sure. No problem. One thing I want to say really quickly before I do is that as you’re kind of ruminating on what we’re about to say and ruminating on the different house systems, the thing I always start with my students when I’m teaching the house system conundrum is remember that the Earth is a globe, and it’s spinning, and it’s tipped on its axis, and it wobbles. 

So when we create a birth chart, we’re trying to translate something about our location on that irregular spinning globe onto a perfect circle on a flat piece of paper. That’s just going to be imperfect from the moment that we try to do that. So important to keep in mind. 

But house systems in general are broken down into three different groups. There are the ecliptic systems. There’s the space-based systems, and the time-based systems. And those three definitions just refer to how the house system is calculated. Now, I’m not going to bore you with any of the math.

Jessica: Thank you.

Tony Howard: But—yes—or myself, or myself. Yeah.

Jessica: It’s really boring.

Tony Howard: It’s really boring.

Jessica: It’s deeply boring.

Tony Howard: It’s deeply boring. That’s why we have computers.

Jessica: Yep. Exactly. Exactly.

Tony Howard: Back in the old day, we had to calculate them by hand, and that’s why people use one house system.

Jessica: Yeah. That’s exactly right. It is tragically difficult to calculate a birth chart. Yes.

Tony Howard: Okay. So the ecliptic systems, these include the equal house system and the whole sign house system. They’re called ecliptic systems because they’re based on that measurement we were talking about of the Sun’s apparent path around the Earth from our perspective. 

So the whole sign house system, it’s one of the simplest house systems to calculate. You start with the Ascendent sign, and the whole sign of the Ascendent. So if you have Capricorn Rising, like somebody I know and love.

Jessica: Me, moi. Thank you.

Tony Howard: Then Capricorn would be your whole first house. And then the rest of the houses and signs follow around the zodiac. So each sign has its own house. 

The equal house system, on the other hand is, again, calculated from the degree of the Ascendent, but from there, the houses are divided equally into 30-degree increments. So your Ascendent degree is going to mark the start of the first house, and then 30 degrees later you have the second house, and 30 degrees after that, the third house etc. 

Equal houses are popular in the UK because of a school there that popularized their use, and they’re preferred, in part, and they got popular because when you get into higher latitudes, some of the quadrant systems start to break down. In other words, they can’t really calculate the houses based on the position of the Earth because it’s a globe, and you’re higher up on globe and because of that tilt and everything else I was saying. 

So without getting into the detail, the short version is that equal houses kind of level the playing field, so to speak. They don’t get into any of that problematic math, and the reason why some of the house systems break down at high latitudes, and you can be born at a really high latitude and still have all of the houses equally spaced apart. Now is that the right way or the valid way? All these questions are—

Jessica: —No. Sorry. I thought you were asking me, and my answer is emphatic. But don’t listen to me; this is why I brought on Tony. Don’t listen to me.

Tony Howard: No, no. No, wait. You’re representing an important point of view, which is that you do have to choose the house system that works for you. So you might find that this system, equal house system is—you check it out, and you’re like, “Wait. No. No, that’s not cool.” 

One feature I’ll point out about both of these systems is what’s unique about them is that the MC and IC—the Midheaven and the point opposite can float, which means they’re not necessarily the start of the tenth house, and that throws people for a loop. That’s one of the unique features about these two systems is that you can have the MC, which is a career point in terms of signification, you could have that in the eleventh house or the twelfth house or the ninth house or even the eighth house.

Jessica: It’s enough to drive a Jessica bonkers.

Tony Howard: Totally. So next we have the space-based systems. And the space-based systems are called space-based systems because the math is about dividing the space. So that’s as geeky as I’m going to get on that. And those systems include Campanus.

Jessica: Woo!

Tony Howard: Yeah. Yeah, we need to play like—where’s the clapping track? Woo!

Jessica: There’s no clapping track. It was just me. It was just me. It was just me.

Tony Howard: We have Regiomontanus and Morinus. And Regiomontanus and Morinus, you will probably never hear about, unless you come across a modern astrologer who’s really into medieval astrology, in which case you might find someone using Regiomontanus. And you probably won’t find anybody using Morinus. 

But I want to tell you a little bit more about the Campanus system. Now, the Campanus system has an interesting kind of lineage or heritage because it was much beloved by the well known and amazing and influential astrologer, Dane Rudhyar, who ultimately developed a style of astrology called humanistic astrology. Which, although Jessica probably doesn’t call herself a humanistic astrologer, she’s probably influenced by that line of thinking. And it’s kind of like what it sounds like—we’re considering the human at the center of the chart, among other things. 

You’ll read that it was developed in the thirteenth century by a fellow named Johannes Campanus, and it was actually used by Persian astrologers even before that and called the System of Hermes, which suggests that it has an even earlier origin. 

A lot of these house systems are named for a dude that was using them, but he’s not usually the dude that created the system. 

But the Campanus system emphasizes the planets position in relation to the horizon and meridian, so at the place of birth. So the houses aren’t simply projected onto the zodiac, but rather the zodiac is viewed through the houses as determined by your position in local space. So it’s really trying to take in more of the space into its math. 

The system—if the system does have a weakness, it has to do with undermining the role of the ecliptic. So it’s less focused on the ecliptic than some of the other systems. But one of its gifts or advantages or improvements is that it’s trying to take in more of the whole picture in space. And I can’t really explain what I mean by that more without really geeking out, so I’m going to just table that for now.

Jessica: Oh, it gets so boring to listen to. You did a great job explaining that succinctly.

Tony Howard: Beautiful. Awesome. So the other two houses, Regiomontanus is a bit less sensitive to house distortion than Campanus is. And what I mean by house distortion is one of the things that Jessica loves about Campanus, which is you can get really big houses and really tiny houses, and you can have a lot more interception. 

So Regiomontanus does the math a little bit differently so that has less of that distortion, and it puts a bit more emphasis in terms of the math on the Earth’s daily rotation rather than the Earth’s movement around the Sun. 

Regiomontanus is popular with some Horary astrologers, especially those,  like I said, that are influenced by medieval astrologers like William Lilly, who was a very well-known Horary astrologer, and his book is still referenced and used today. 

So now we’re down to the time-based systems. And in the time-based systems the house cusps are created by dividing the time it takes for one point to travel to another point. So it’s kind of like you’re sitting there watching the Earth spin and watching your watch, and you’re going, “Okay, draw a line here and now here,” based on the time elapsing. It’s not exactly like that, but that is the layman’s definition.

Jessica: That’s all we are here. That’s all we want. Yes. Yes.

Tony Howard: And people do get really nerd out on calling these times-based systems because, at the end of the day, you’re still slicing up space—yes, it’s true. So if we want to be really accurate maybe we call them space time systems.

Jessica: Well, with astrology, it’s really very hard to not have it be at least a little influenced by space. But these systems that you’re about to name were the most popular ones when I was first learning about astrology in the early 1990s. I don’t know if they still are. I think they are, but I’m not quite sure.

Tony Howard: What I’m noticing is that—the first one is Placidus, which we’ll talk about. Placidus came into popular use around the seventeenth century, and it’s one of the most popular house systems used among modern astrologers today. It’s widely used among psychological astrologers, astrologers like Lynn Bell, Karen Hamaker-Zondag, Liz Greene, Brian Clark—all these astrologers use Placidus. 

And it’s said that Placidus only grew in popularity because its tables were widely distributed before we had computer programs, so it was easy to get the chart.

Jessica: That makes a lot of sense, based on all the data I had when I was first learning. 

Tony Howard: Definitely. Some people dispute that point and argue that it’s actually the merits of the system that have just as much to do with it. 

But it’s named after a Benedictine monk who popularized its use but didn’t invent the method, and it was developed quite a bit earlier. So it’s been around a while, since probably at least the 12th century.

And my sense about popularity is that whole sign houses are definitely the trendy house system right now. A lot of younger people, especially people studying traditional astrology, are using whole sign house systems. 

But there are definitely a lot of astrologers—a lot of your favorite astrologers are still using quadrant-based systems. So, and a lot of astrologers and people are still used to seeing—they’re probably used to seeing their chart in a quadrant-based system for many, many years.

Jessica: I fear that I interrupted you before you actually named what all the quadrant-based systems are for the people.

Tony Howard: No worries. So Placidus, Alcabitius, Topocentric, and Koch. 

Jessica: Really?

Tony Howard: I have been told that I’m pronouncing that right. The last one is a German word, and it is sometimes pronounced ‘Koke’—that is incorrect. 

Jessica: I call it ‘Kotch.’

Tony Howard: ‘Kotch’ is also incorrect. 

So let’s see, the house cusps in Placidus are calculated by dividing the time needed for the Sun to cover the space between the quadrants. That’s a little nerdy, so I won’t go much further than that. 

Koch was developed—it’s actually one of the newer house systems, developed in the 20th century. It was popular with many German and American astrologers over the last half of that century, including a fellow named Ebertin and also one named Huber. And it was introduced in the 1960s. It’s also a time-based system, calculated by dividing the space between the angles based on the time taken for the degree of the Ascendant to move to the Midheaven. 

This other system I mentioned here, named Alcabitius, also starts with that same calculation, but they just use different projections onto the ecliptic. And that’s where it starts to get really confusing to explain, and you don’t need to know any of this. But definitely just know that there are different calculations, and people really nerd out on this stuff.

Jessica: And I should insert at this moment that if you find all of this really exciting, and you want more of it, you can study under Tony Howard, the Great and Present Tony Howard and Astrology University. And links to his—all his stuff is going to be in the show notes, so look him up, study all this nerdy wonderful stuff with him.

Tony Howard: Thank you for that very kind plug. 

So our last house system to mention to today is called Topocentric. It’s also not super popular, but it’s really interesting. This system wasn’t designed theoretically. It’s also a newer house system. The people who re-worked the math for that were thinking how can we get a more accurate picture of this person’s spot on the globe, like how can we get the math to be even more accurate and take in more of all the measurements. 

Instead, Topocentric was developed by using a study of the timing of events that happened to people, and then the house cusps were determined by plotting the primary directions which related to key events of the study subjects. 

So by primary directions, we’re thinking of solar arcs, if you know that technique. It’s a timing technique. Howard Sasportas teaches that the founders discovered that the cusps of the houses were on a plane passing through the location of birth and not one of those great circles I reference, which are things like the ecliptic or also the celestial equator, which is just a projection of the equator onto space. 

So this system is interesting because it has fewer problems in high latitudes. But also what makes it interesting is that is was actually tested and verified by some other highbrow astrologers, Geoffrey Cornelius and Chester Kemp in England. And some astrologers think that it’s a more accurate system for the timing of events.

At the end of the day, the Topocentric houses are very close to the Placidus houses, so it’s not that different. It’s really splitting hairs.

Jessica: Honestly, I’ve never heard of them until this very moment.

Tony Howard: Yeah, it’s not widely used. But it’s an interesting one, and its story is interesting. And that is as nerdy as we’re going to get today.

Jessica: I mean, the people don’t know how nerdy you and I get when we’re together, so don’t be so quick. 

But I really—I cannot thank you enough for explaining houses. And also, I learnt a lot because there is a bunch a stuff that you said that I didn’t know. And, honestly, I’d forgotten a lot of it already because I have a terrible brain for these kinds of details now that I’ve decided on Campanus. 

Tony Howard: Right.

Jessica: I cannot thank you enough for coming onto Ghost of a Podcast to break this down for me and the Ghost Babies.

So I do want to tell the people who are listening that if you enjoy our conversation, not only can you study with Tony at Astrology University, but also, on Saturday May 30th, 2020, you can join us for an Ask Me Anything astrology—Venus Retrograde themed. It’s real fun when we do these Ask Me Anything’s. Tony’s always there with me, and also, we do our damn thing. So hopefully you’ll join us.

Tony Howard: Thanks so much for having me on the show, Jessica. It was a pleasure.

Jessica: Oh, my God. Thank you. I thank you, sir.