Flipping and Rotating the Birth Chart

I'm always experimenting with the houses in astrology, looking at them from every angle, and trying to make sense out of them, and I instinctively use the whole sign house system when doing so.

At one point I decided to "flip" the chart so that the 2nd house sign becomes the 12th house sign, the 3rd becomes the 11th, and the 4th becomes the 10th, and so on, with only the 1st and 7th signs(and planets therein) remaing unchanged(see diagram below). The houses retain the same values in both charts.


(note: this is a random chart for someone born in 1988)

Then I proceeded to interpret (my) chart and was amazed at some of the results. Certain aspects of my life were clearly revealed which the standard chart house order did not. At the same time, certain other house placements remained a puzzle. This can explain, for example, why the 10th house has 4th house connotations and vice versa.

This also told me what I always suspected all along -that the houses are not really houses in our modern understanding of them, but are instead aspects to the ascendant. There are 7 possible sign aspects when using whole signs, and every planet(except when conjuncting or opposing) has two ways of facing your ascendant. In other words, a planet in the 5th house can also have a 9th house influence(both are trines).

Then I went one step further and decided to "rotate" the chart so that east became west and my 1st house sign became my 7th house sign and the 2nd became the 6th, the 3rd became the 5th, and so on(using a transparency makes this easier), but I found that this did not work as well as the first method - best to always leave the 1st house unchanged.

So try "flipping" your chart's signs and planets north to south and see if their new house positions make sense to you.

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