Turned Houses

Definition

Turned houses is a technique, used in horary and traditional natal astrology, for asking a chart about someone other than the querent. You take any house of the original (radical) chart, treat it as a fresh first house, and count the twelve houses onward from there — so the chart yields sub-topics belonging to whoever that house stands for. It is also called "derived houses." The seventh becomes the partner's first house, the tenth the employer's first, the fifth the child's first, and so on, with the ruler of each derived house acting as the significator for that derived matter.

In Tradition

In Arabic-Latin and English horary practice, turning the houses is the standard way a single radical chart can answer questions about other people — the querent's partner, child, parent, employer — without casting a new chart. Lilly and Bonatti read the derived rulers and aspects as governing the derived topic in just the same terms as the main reading, with the usual adjustments for sect (whether a planet suits a day or a night chart), dignity, and reception.

In Practice

The astrologer first works out whose chart is really being read and which radical house stands for that person: the seventh for a partner, the fourth for the father, the fifth for children, the tenth for an employer (or the mother, in some authorities), the eleventh for friends. That house becomes the new first house. Counting forward by topic gives the derived positions: the partner's money is the second from the seventh, which is the eighth radical house; the child's health is the sixth from the fifth, which is the tenth radical; the father's end-of-matter is the fourth from the fourth, which is the seventh radical. The ruler of each derived house then carries the same diagnostic weight — essential and accidental dignity, sect, aspects, overall condition — as a main house ruler. You can chain several turnings for grandchildren, an employer's business partner, and so on, though most authorities warn that the signal grows fainter the further you move from the radical chart.

Historical Origin

The technique is documented across the medieval Arabic-Latin horary chain — Sahl, Masha'allah, Abu Ma'shar, and Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae (13th century) — and consolidated for English readers in William Lilly's Christian Astrology (1647), where it underlies the example judgments throughout Books II and III. The 20th-century horary revival in Frawley, Louis, and Houlding preserves the same protocol.

Etymology

Origin: Latin. Meaning: From the metaphor of "turning" or rotating the chart wheel so a different house occupies the 1st-house position. Also called "derived houses" from Latin derivare (to draw off, to lead away from a source)..

Further Reading