Introducing ... the Sunshine House System

by Bob Makransky

A call to Western practitioners to reject attempts to turn astrology into a rational science (in vain pursuit of respectability) and listen once again to the “astrology spirits”. And their advice for better forecasting and helping us activate our latent intuition? That we embrace a new house system that is already available on certain software programs.

Most of us astrologers have at one time or another wondered why astrology doesn’t work as well as it’s ‘supposed’ to. Although adamant in defence of astrology when confronted by sceptics, we nonetheless agonise in our innermost souls as to whether the ancient astrologers were lying; or whether astrology just doesn’t function as well in this decadent age; or whether – horror of horrors! – we may just be fooling ourselves.

No, no, it can’t be that. After all, that prediction we made about cousin Tillie’s boyfriend was right on the button! So why then, if astrology does work so well sometimes, do we find it so hard to make it work consistently? Where does the fault lie, dear Brutus – with astrology, or with ourselves?

Actually, the problem is not with astrology per se, but with how we modern, Western astrologers have been practising it (or better said: conceptualising it) for the past several centuries. Ever since astrology and astronomy parted company three centuries ago, both branches of the Uranian science have gone astray. They’ve lost contact with their true roots – the astrology spirits who, from time immemorial, have guided astrologers and helped them to make accurate judgments.

The Hindu astrologers never lost contact with the astrology spirits, and hence they haven’t gone through the crisis of confidence experienced in the West. The Hindu astrologers respect the astrology spirits (heed their counsel); they respect their craft; they respect themselves; and therefore, they are respected in turn by their community. We occidental astrologers – in our endeavour to turn astrology into a ‘reasonable’ and ‘rational’ (hence ‘respectable’) science (which it isn’t) – have turned our backs on the astrology spirits, have prostituted our craft and ourselves, and thus justly deserve the opprobrium which mainstream society heaps upon us. If we were delivering up accurate predictions, you can be sure they’d be singing a different tune.

To the astrology spirits, all statistical research is hooey. It may be interesting and even illuminating, but even if it did score little points before the Rationalist-Materialistic (academic pseudo-science) Inquisition (which it doesn’t), it has nothing whatsoever to do with astrology. Astrology is not a matter of mind nor of logic.
The aphorisms of the ancient astrologers were not meant to be taken as rules in the modern sense, but rather as examples of how to interpret charts by the Spirit (by intuition). We Western astrologers have our rules – e.g., that Moon in the 2nd house means such-and-such, or that Mars square Saturn means thus-and-so, etc. – and then we try to deduce meanings by using logical deduction (reasoning).

Rather, the thing should be done by feeling, not by thinking. The ancient astrologers and the Hindus did it that way. We don’t need astrology spirits to interpret horoscopes; we can do that with our own feelings once we’ve learned how to get our intuition flowing. What the spirits want to do at this time is to teach (or reteach) us Western astrologers HOW: give us concrete tools to work with.

Of course, there are some astrologers out there right now who are already doing this as a matter of course; and practically every astrologer has done it now and again (made an astoundingly accurate prediction without knowing quite how he or she did it). What the spirits want to do is to show us how to do it all the time – consistently give our clients specific, exact information rather than vague generalities such as those which are cranked out by computers.

To start with, the astrology spirits recommend changing the manner in which we calculate horoscopes. This is not because there’s anything wrong with traditional house systems per se; after all, the ancient astrologers got good results from them. Rather, by misusing these horoscopes – by treating astrology and its guardians with disrespect – we Western astrologers have put bad vibes over these horoscopes, and so have rendered them inoperative.

The spirits recommend abandoning all current house systems and using instead a system of 24 half-houses which are precisely analogous to the planetary hours. (For more info, see the appendix of my book Planetary Hours.)The exact details on how horoscopes should be interpreted in this system have yet to be worked out.

In the meantime, the spirits recommend using a system of twelve houses in which the houses have the usual meanings (1st = personality, 2nd = money, etc.), but which are calculated as follows.

To obtain the houses above the horizon (12th to 7th), the Sun’s diurnal (declination) arc (the length of time from sunrise to sunset) is divided into six parts; to obtain the houses beneath the horizon (6th to 1st) the Sun’s nocturnal arc (the length of time from sunset to sunrise) is divided into six parts. Then these twelve division points are projected onto the ecliptic with house circles. (House circles are great circles on the celestial sphere which pass through the north and south points on the horizon. The Campanus and Regiomontanus systems also project with house circles, but the former divides the prime vertical into twelve parts, and the latter divides the celestial equator into twelve parts.)

Because this new house system results from a division of the Sun’s diurnal circle, we call it the Sunshine House System. Although we are trying to get away from logic, a moment’s reflection will show that the Sun’s diurnal circle is indeed the most logical circle to divide to produce mundane houses. If the houses are to be considered analogous to the signs and if the signs result from a division of the Sun’s yearly path (the ecliptic), then it follows that the houses should result from a division of the Sun’s daily path – its diurnal or declination circle i.e., the small circle parallel to the celestial equator which passes through the natal Sun.

Since the analogy requires that the angles be house cusps (or in any event, the spirits require it), projection of these twelve division points must needs be with house circles, since only a projection with house circles retains both the Ascendant and Midheaven as house cusps.

The Sunshine House System has two unusual features:

1. Three parameters (Sidereal Time, Latitude, and Declination of natal Sun) are required to compute house cusps, rather than only two (ST and Latitude) as required by all other house systems. This feature precludes a table of houses for the Sunshine House System, but in this age of computers this is not really a problem.
2. Opposite house cusps (except for the four angles: ASC, IC, DESC, and MC) do not lie opposite in the zodiac. In fact, it is common to find intercepted pairs of signs which do not lie opposite in the zodiac. This is an odd feature, but certainly not an objectionable one.

When I began recalculating the horoscopes in my files using the Sunshine House System, the first experiment I tried was secondary progressions to intermediate house cusps. I had always regarded secondary progressions to intermediate house cusps to be the acid test of proof for a house system (transits, because of retrogradation, are too uncertain to use as a test for timing). I had never seen secondary progressions to intermediate house cusps work in any of the half-dozen other house systems in which I’d tried them.

I found that – like most astrological techniques – progressions to the intermediate Sunshine House cusps work better in some charts than others; but when they do work, they are amazingly accurate.  For example, in my own horoscope:

However, my most interesting discovery occurred when I took a vacation and found myself in the (for me) unusual position of doing a lot of face-to-face natal consultations for complete strangers. I calculated all these new charts with the Sunshine House System, and I discovered the following.

Using the Sunshine House System and the traditional house symbolism (e.g., 7th = marriage, 8th = death, 9th = journeys/religion, etc.) I found that I obtained much clearer psychic impressions than I’d ever experienced in the 20 years I’d then been studying astrology. My astrology mysteriously reached an altogether new level. I’d be looking at some feature in a chart, and then suddenly I’d just know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, precisely what happened to that guy at age six; or what he’ll be doing in 20 years; or what’s bothering him right now.

When I use the Sunshine House System, it sometimes happens that an actual picture pops up before my mind’s eye; but more often it’s just a feeling of something known – like reaching out for a memory of something which you know but can’t quite put your finger on – which horoscope symbols help you pin down or express in words. The impressions definitely come from the native, not the horoscope. Nonetheless the horoscope is intrinsic to the process. All feelings take off from symbols in the horoscope; also, the horoscope serves as a focus or way of conceptualising feelings which are in the air. It can’t be done without the horoscope (at least I can’t do it without the horoscope).

Although you can use intuition with everyone, the clearest impressions come from natives who are themselves psychic, or who are at least open-hearted and straightforward people. The guy who sits there with his arms crossed and with an “I dare you!” look on his face can effectively block any attempts to psychically probe him. You have to break down such a native’s screen of thought forms (penetrate his defences) before you can give him his money’s worth. I can usually get an antagonistic or dubious client to loosen up by starting (in a friendly and easy manner – I have Jupiter rising, and Moon in Aquarius) with his or her current progressions and transits. I get clients used to the sound of my voice; I let them know that I’m not threatening nor judging them; and then, when they’re relaxed, I can start pulling impressions out of them. The point is that if you’re going to be an intuitive astrologer, you have to be open to the native (rather than defending some sort of ego trip of your own). This means respecting the native and respecting yourself; it means giving the person emotional space, and at the same time, not permitting him or her to encroach upon yours.

There is really no other way of being able to give specific information to a client except through intuition. That’s the only way to cut through all the innumerable possibilities of what the symbols could mean logically, to arrive at what they do mean in a particular case. The materialistic astrologers who believe that astrology should be based upon reason rather than intuition are only promulgating an astrology of distrust: distrust in the Spirit, distrust in their own abundant inner knowledge, and distrust in the craft of astrology. We are not advocating ‘blind faith’ in astrology here; we’re talking about concrete results that we can each validate for ourselves in our own practice.

The Sunshine House System is a link given to us by the astrology spirits, to help us activate and utilise our latent intuition. If you use a house-based astrology in your practice, I highly recommend your giving the Sunshine House System a whirl. I think you will be surprised and gratified to find how such a simple adjustment as changing the house system you use can produce such an amazing difference in the specificity and accuracy of your predictions.

You can obtain free Sunshine House cusp calculations from astroapp.com and astro.com. (Specify that you want Sunshine House System charts – on astro.com it’s at the bottom of the house system drop-down list.) Or, better yet, download the excellent free PlanetDance software from https://www.jcremers.com/.

A good place to begin trying the Sunshine House System out is by looking at the Charubel symbols for the zodiacal degrees occupied by the Sunshine House cusps. Of the various systems of (usually channelled) symbols for the 360 zodiacal degrees which are available, I have found in practice that the Charubel symbols work the best most of the time, with the Sabian symbols (Dr. Marc Edmund Jones’ version – not Dane Rudhyar’s version) also suggestive and worth looking into.

You can download Charubel’s book The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolized as a pdf for free from any number of online sources [Google the title and author]. The pdf at uploady.com contains many other systems of degree symbolism besides that of Charubel if you want to experiment. The story on degree symbols is like the story of the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead: when they’re good, they’re very, very good; and when they’re bad, they’re horrid (in which case you just don’t use them – but that may be a reason to suspect the birth time/ascending degree). When they do work, they can provide a check on a rectification obtained by other means (e.g., primary and secondary directions to angles), or help to decide which is the correct one between two adjacent rising degrees.

Generally speaking, the symbol for the rising degree (ASC) describes who the person is; and the symbol for the culminating degree (MC) describes what they do, and how they do it. The other (10) degree symbols don’t always relate directly to the particular houses to which they correspond; rather, taken together they often ‘tell a little story’ or describe the tone of the person’s life.  I’ve found that in my own case – and those of people whom I know well whose birth times I have rectified exactly by other means – the Charubel symbols for the Sunshine House cusps are often remarkable in the depth and exactitude with which they pinpoint major issues, attitudes, strengths, difficulties, talents, areas of denial, etc. in people’s lives.  In my own horoscope this set of symbols has been both a comfort to me and a source of hope and guidance.

Adolf Hitler

Here we will use Adolf Hitler’s horoscope as the example (see my note* on birth information at the end of this piece). Most of Hitler’s Sunshine House cusp Charubel symbols are pretty nasty; but they do tend to run to a type. This is often the case: that the collection of Charubel symbols for the Sunshine House cusps of a horoscope, as a group, evoke a consistent mood or flavour which describes how the people make their way in the world (for example, by being hard and mean, or gentle and wistful, or direct and forthright, or visionary and spiritual, or confused and clueless, or whatever). Although most of the Charubel symbols for Hitler’s Sunshine house cusps are of the hard and mean variety, a few are indicative of his tremendous personal charm (having Venus sole dispositor) which endeared him to his intimates, such as his best friend Ernst Röhm, his niece and true love Geli Raubal, and his mistress Eva Braun (at least until he murdered them). Note the striking symbolism of Hitler’s rising degree; and consider that the Charubel symbols were first published in 1898, long before the swastika assumed its present sinister import.

Table of Charubel Symbols for Adolf Hitler’s Sunshine House Cusps

 

Author's note: Per the horoscope for Adolf Hitler calculated by Wilhelm Wulff (Heinrich Himmler’s personal astrologer – see below), Hitler was born at 6:03:53 p.m. GDT (5:56:01 p.m. LMT) on 20 April 1889 in Branau am Inn, Austria (13°E02’, 48°N15’); which here was rectified by Dr. Rumen Kolev to 6:03:27 p.m. via the primary direction Saturn conjunct MC mundane direct (Cardanus key = 59'12"/year) = 21 December 1907, the date of his mother’s death, and two months before he failed the entrance examination for the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which destroyed his ambition to become an architect.  See Rumen Kolev’s Primary Directions I, Astro-Research Center Zenith, Varna Bulgaria 1996 (available from http://www.babylonianastrology.com) for details. 
Anyone who wishes to delve into the house division question is advised to read my book on primary directions and celestial sphere geometry (and the mathematical basis of the Sunshine House System), available as a free download from:
dropbox.com/l/scl/AADAM79RJoyiAuaiL1cBL7iiXTx4ZKfBvBw
dropbox.com/l/scl/AACqoT8RC-qRUQB14ztImNgetUqX3-TGrdU
dropbox.com/l/scl/AACzLtDlnnPfTuFtJU7zOHnGk8zeXi11aNo
Secondary progressions to Sunshine House cusps (see chart) in Hitler’s chart aren’t very revealing; there are only three, two of which occurred in his youth (before biographers tracked him), and the last one (prog. MA 9th = spring 1934) occurred the year after he assumed dictatorship of Germany while he was in the midst of consolidating his power (and eliminating rivals).

Image sources:
Sunset: Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Published by: The Astrological Journal, Jun/Jul 2021

Author:
Bob Makransky is a systems analyst, programmer and professional astrologer. For the past 45 years he has lived on a farm in highland Guatemala where he studied Mayan astrology and shamanism with his teacher, don Abel Yat, until don Abel’s death in 2009. Bob’s books on horoscope interpretation and the practice of magic are available on Amazon. His horoscope readings are available from magicalalmanac@yahoo.com.

© Bob Makransky, 2021

All articles at  a glance