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After one conquers learning the wheel, an astrologer must decide on what house system to use, and there are many. This is a series of posts on the many house systems there are and why they exist. In each one we highlight one of the Celestiology notables, put up a chart of the highlighted house system, and then one of our default Morinus system and finally the Koch system because it is one of the most popular used formats in the world. In the United States, it runs second after the Placidian.
Why the Meridian System?
The Australian Astrologer, David Cope, who worked under the magical name of Zariel, created the Meridian House System in the early 1900s. His intention was to fix the problems he found in the Morinus System, by replacing the equatorial calculations with the meridians, as that is more stable. He kept the idea of Jean Baptiste Morin of separating the ascendant from the first house, though.
Janus software has the Meridian System, both its European name (Meridian) and its Australia (Zariel), probably because they are in New Zealand.
Alfred Witte and the Hamburg school used this one before abandoning the house system entirely. Astrometrologist Carl Payne Tobey & Sydney Omarr were also fans of the Meridian, though I have never seen a published post with it; all that are in the Equal House format, but they mention it favorably.
Greta Garbo & the Meridian House System
For this example, we are using is Swedish-American 1930s screen star, Greta Garbo. Because neither system pegs the Ascendant to the first house, that is moves under the two methods does not matter. See the red arrow at the first house. The second arrow shows that while the Midheaven did not change, the house cusp of the tenth house did; a minor detail.
What does change is the position of the Moon. In the Morinus system, the Moon is in the seventh house of other people and opportunities presented by them, while in the Meridian, only Jupiter is in the seventh and the Moon is now in the sixth house of work and service.
The third chart is the reference chart using the Walter Koch System, originally titled the Birthday System. The Ascendant in that system is tied to the traditional first house and here Garbo’s third house has an intercepted Capricorn with Uranus; neither the Morinus nor the Meridian has any interceptions and Uranus is in the second.
Notes:
You have to be wondering why I am doing this a third time. I know I am. The reason is when I changed the name of the site from Sabian Earth to Celestiology I lost a lot of posts; I believe about 70, and I have yet to figure out how to restore one domain name to another. I guess upon reflection, that is BoldGrid problem since I use their Total Backup.
You can download the three charts here:
