Whole Sign Houses Now Available on Astro.com

Many of the younger and newer generations of astrologers that have recently entered into the field in the past decade or so are aware of the importance of Astrodienst (www.astro.com).

For many people, such as myself, Astrodienst has played a pivotal role in facilitating the study of astrology through the many services that the company offers through their website. This includes stuff like offering informative articles, ephemerides, high quality delineations, and, perhaps most importantly, free chart calculation services.  For people who are just getting into the study of horoscopic astrology, or even those who only have a passing interest, being able to get an accurate copy of your birth chart is an incredibly important step.

Thanks to the guys at Astrodienst, the ability to do this is actually something that many of us take for granted at this point, since they have been offering free chart calculations to the public for well over a decade now. This simple service has actually had a profound effect on hundreds of astrologers, because there are many people whose study of astrology would not be possible, or which would be hindered significantly if not for the service that they offer.

Several years ago I joined the growing number of astrologers who have made the switch to using whole sign houses as our primary form of house division. Since I have already discussed the benefits and history behind this approach in previous articles I won’t go into it here. Needless to say, after making the switch and becoming an advocate of whole sign houses I was somewhat disappointed that astro.com didn’t offer this as an option for house division in its extended chart selection on their website. That is to say, you couldn’t get a normal copy of a chart from astro.com that displayed the positions using whole sign houses.

I brought the issue up with the guys at astro.com a couple of times over the past few years, and even pointed out that Rob Hand, whose delineations form the backbone of their personal daily horoscope transit delineations, is one of the major contemporary proponents of whole sign houses. Earlier this year I even contemplated starting a petition in order to try to show that there are indeed a growing number of astrologers who prefer this approach. This was to no avail though, until recently.

The United Astrological Conference took place a couple of months ago in Denver in May, and due to a strange twist of events I ended up filling in for Robert Schmidt as a core presenter on the history track, giving two two lectures on Hellenistic astrology. During the first lecture on an intro to Hellenistic astrology I noticed one person in the audience who I sort of recognized, but I couldn’t quite figure out who it was. At one point after the lecture I was walking out of a coffee shop and I ran into the same guy again, and after noticing his name tag I immediately realized who he was. It was Alois Treindl, the founder and director of Astrodienst, and he was surrounded by a number of other important people from astro.com.

For me this was the equivalent of being in the presence of rock stars, and I had this very surreal moment of realizing that the guys who had been so pivotal in my own early studies of astrology had attended my lecture at UAC. As we talked Alois said that I had finally convinced them to integrate whole sign houses into astro.com, and they had been discussing the technical details of how to do it after sitting in on my first lecture. I was ecstatic, in a very geeky sort of way. This was definitely one of the main high points of the conference for me because it was something that I had been hoping that they would do for several years, and I was pleased to have been able to present a compelling enough case to them in person in order to make it happen.

Recently I noticed that they have indeed integrated whole sign houses into the extended chart selection on astro.com, and I am pleased to announce that whole sign houses are now an official option on astro.com! Hellenistic, Medieval and Indian astrologers around the world are dancing in the streets, no longer oppressed by the tyranny of Placidus houses. Please join me in thanking the Astrodienst team!