In jyotish (Indian astrology) the meaning of houses are often close to the original Hellenistic meanings, and the 6th is the house of enemies there. To be more exact it signifies the ability to fight your enemies, and that's why malefics, especially Mars, are considered good in the 6th house - they give you the ability to fight. I've noted the fighters, combatants, boxers, etc. often have emphasis in the 6th house (especially in the 6th whole sign) which you wouldn't really expect unless you knew a bit jyotish.

Note how the 12th signifies enemies (you can see this in other parts of the book too) [The Judgment of Nativites by Abu 'Ali Al-Khayyat], but the 6th signifies the ability to fight your enemies - and perhaps also the ability to fight against inner enemies = illnesses! The 6th house would then your resistance and immunity. Ben Dykes has noted in his then active blog that - if I remember correctly - in Arabic world the servants of the 6th house meant the men and horses you were able to send in a war when the king told you so, that is, your own personal troops. Perhaps that is the core meaning of the 6th house.

Olivia wrote:

I remember Rob Hand saying that somewhere in the ancient world the house meanings were a little different, and one of the ones assigned to the sixth was 'people who are out to destroy you' - as opposed to the 'opponents' concept of the seventh.

Gjiada wrote:well, I think that if things would be so clear everybody would write the same and this is not the case.

MarkC wrote:Yes we have texts. But how do we interpret them? The issue of what house system Ptolemy may have been alluding to has been a subject of considerable debate and will no doubt continue to exercise astrologers for decades to come.

Well, I think your premise is incorrect. People do write and say all sorts of things that are quite obviously wrong, on various subjects, and they do so for all sorts of reasons -- sometimes by honest mistakes, sometimes from what we may term ideological motives.

Gjiada wrote:If learned people and astrologers and astronomers during centuries were unsure about Ptolemy's house division method it means to me that the answer is not so obvious as you telling me.

I'm not defending anybody but why Giuseppe Bezza who teaches in the Italian University History of Ancient Navigation using Sacrobosco Sphera and Medieval arab texts should insist on Placidus if manifestly wrong?
Evidently he has some reason to do this.

Now I don't want to tell you he is surely right - I don't know- but evidently in Ptolemy text there is a lot of space for doubts.

Well, why should Martin Gansten who teaches at several Scandinavian universities and writes learned articles on astrological history insist on something else? We all have reasons for what we do, but that doesn't make us all right every time -- not even if we are professors.

Martin Gansten wrote: [...] there is no mention (that I have been able to find, at least) of house division in the Almagest, and almost none in the Tetrabiblos. There isn't much to interpret, other than silence.

BogdanKr wrote:[...] but beeing the one bearing meanings for the astrologer, may be that for some house systems thsese two books are full of writings on them.

the simple fact is that there is no mention (that I have been able to find, at least) of house division in the Almagest, and almost none in the Tetrabiblos. There isn't much to interpret, other than silence.

Oh, undoubtedly. But we were discussing what meaning they had to Ptolemy, who wrote them. As the Almagest shows, he clearly had the mathematical tools to devise most or all of the quadrant systems we know today. And yet, as the Tetrabiblos shows, he didn't. 'Mikes you fink, don' it?

Clearly Ptolemy regarded the houses with some irrelevance but the question of which method of house construction he was referring to has still managed to provoke great debate. His constant overlapping of the words 'place' and 'sign', and the way in which he refers to the midheaven as 'the culminating sign' has been used to suggest that he considered the 'places' to be defined by the signs of the zodiac.

There remains, however, one highly significant passage in which he offers a definition of the houses. It is contained within his method of determining length of life and Ptolemy explains that for a matter of such importance, the planets from which we draw judgement must be located in the powerful places, which he describes as follows:


"In the first place we must consider those places .... in which the planet must be that is to receive the lordship of the prorogation; namely, the twelfth part of the zodiac surrounding the horoscope, from 5? above the actual horizon up to the 25? that remains, which is rising in succession to the horizon [ie., 1st house]; the part sextile dexter to these thirty degrees, called the House of the Good Daemon [11th house]; the part in quartile, the midheaven [10th house]; the part in trine, called the House of the God [9th house]; and the part opposite, the Occident [7th house]". (Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, English translation by F.E. Robbins, Harvard University Press, Loeb Edition, 1980, p.273-275)

First we should be clear that this is all that Ptolemy has to say on the technical basis of the houses. In assessing its importance, the introductory comment on the 1st house is the one that is most pertinent: the twelfth part of the zodiac surrounding the horoscope, from 5? above the actual horizon up to the 25? that remains, which is rising in succession to the horizon. The 5? misplacement from the ascendant has caused much debate, the only sensible explanation is that the virtue of each house has been assigned a 5? influence before the cusp, as in traditional use. The same approach is used today by astrologers schooled in traditional techniques, so that if a planet is within 5 degrees of the next house cusp, it is considered to have its influence within the context of that house. But on the basis of Ptolemy's comment here, some authorities have sought to formally recognize a new house construction method, the Classical house system, which is generally said to follow Alcabitius, but with the subtraction of 5 degrees from the Ascendant to find the 1st-house cusp. This definition is misleading, because it is clear that the principle of recognising the five degrees preceding a house cusp is written into traditional technique, regardless of the house method in use, so this should be considered a principle of house interpretation rather than a method of division.

The reference to the "twelfth part" of the zodiac appears confusing because we are accustomed to numbering the signs from the ascendant in an anti-clockwise direction following the numerical order of the houses, although the reason the houses are so numbered is because this is the order in which they rise through diurnal motion. Neither Ptolemy nor Manilius attributed numbers to the houses but described them instead by their names and aspectual relationship to the ascendant. The fact that he makes a distinction between the places of heaven and the parts of the zodiac, and that he introduces this numeration here (though not for the houses), suggests that he recognised them as two discrete frames of reference which were not dependant upon each other, even if in practice they were often associated. His further comment, that the first house is counted from 5? above the horizon up to the 25? remaining again shows that the principle of his house system was not based upon a simple association with the signs, as in the whole-sign method, although he was clearly seeking to perceive the houses as equal divisions which would easily compliment their use.

MarkC wrote:As Gjiada has already suggested not everyone who has studied Ptolemy would accept your conclusion that that he makes no reference that could be construed as indicating his use of houses.

There remains, however, one highly significant passage in which he offers a definition of the houses.

we should be clear that this is all that Ptolemy has to say on the technical basis of the houses. [...] he was clearly seeking to perceive the houses as equal divisions which would easily compliment their use.

I didn't quite say that. I said that there is nothing that can be construed as any quadrant house system (Placidus et al.) in either text, and that the one slight hint Ptolemy gives with regard to houses in the TB points rather to an equal division.

Almagest II contains no discussion of house systems, and Tetrabiblos very little -- just that snippet in III.10 about various houses being in aspect to the ascendant, which suggests equal houses.

MarkC wrote: Still for the benefit of Skyscript readers I do think its helpful to see the specific reference you have referred to rather just than accept your assessment. I find it hardly surprising that the Almagest contains no astrological houses. It was after all a work purely devoted to astronomy.

MarkC wrote:Still for the benefit of Skyscript readers I do think its helpful to see the specific reference you have referred to rather just than accept your assessment.

I find it hardly surprising that the Almagest contains no astrological houses. It was after all a work purely devoted to astronomy.