why are the houses different sizes...

I had a couple charts drawn up on alabe.com and it seems the houses are not all the same size. E.g. the one I'm studying now (and comparing to others) has very large houses 1-3, and 7-8, but 4-6 and 10 -12 are very skinny.

Why is that? Does it tell me something about when or where a person was born? Does it mean anything? Or is a glitch?

Similia ~

There are different systems of Houses, but essentially I think there are always 12 (except maybe in Vedic astronomy?).

The most common are Placidus and Koch. Perhaps sometimes they may be enlarged on particular charts if there are a lot of planets in the House (so they can fit them all in) but I am not sure of that.

Houses are fields of human experience in astrological charts. I think they are more figurative than real.

Why not do asearch on the Internet? You'll find a lot of information there as well.

Don't worry ..... you can't be houseless!

Moongold

Each house in the zodiac covers thirty degrees in the sky. The constellations that symbolize these areas are the best fit found, some smaller and some larger.

I don't know about Koch, but Placidus has unequal house size due to the tilt of the earth...

The MC you'll notice has a growing tilt in charts the further you move from the equator - that's b/c of the dif b/w it and the ASC.

The ASC is where the eastern horizon intersects the ecliptic (the "sun's orbit" around the earth - quotations b/c the sun doesn't actually orbit around the earth). As you move away from the equator, the angles move away from 90 degrees, getting closer together or further apart depending on the season. However, the ASC is always traditionally shown as a flat line, so it's the MC that's tilted.

Minderwiz's explanation is probably better - take note, my first explanation is incorrect! http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=46576&highlight=tilt

If you don't like the uneven houses, you can always use the equal house system where each house is a perfect 30 degrees. I've never used it myself, but I know Minderwiz has w/good results.

What houses really are

Houses are zones of the local space sky that are divided in a variety of ways into, typically but not always, 12 zones. The manner of division is usually based on dividing the arcs between the angles, again mostly the MC and ASC but not always. The division process can be based on the time, on distance or on a simple tri-section of the zodiac distance.

In most cases the houses are defined relative to the MC and the ASC but some systems utilize other approaches. There have been discussions here before about the types of house systems and I have even written twice about which house system is more appropriate depending upon what type of chart reading you are doing -- very few astrologers change the house system relative to the work they are doing, probably out of habit or ignorance.

So, in summary, you have time based house systems, distance based house systems, the equal house system, and a smattering of highly specialized types of house systems. Dave

House systems are one of the most contentious issues within Astrology - how do you divide up the 360 degrees of the Zodiac?

The original method of division was probably to calculate the position of the Ascendant and assign the first house to the Sign in which the Ascendant lies. Thus, using myself as an example, my Ascendant is at 21 degrees of Leo - so the WHOLE sign of Leo becomes my first House, All Virgo becomes my second, through to the whole of Cancer as my twelfth. All these houses are exactly one sign wide - so I have equal houses and no 'skinny' ones.

However, the MC does not form the cusp of the tenth House under this system - it's somewhere between the eighth and the twelfth, though ninth to eleventh are the most likely positions.

When the idea grew that the MC should be a house cusp, problems arose. As Dave says above there are different ways of dividing up equally the space between the Ascendant and the MC (which is likely to be more or less than 90 degrees for most latitudes). One way is to trisect the angle, so if there is 120 degrees between the two point each of the houses from 12 to 10 becomes 40 degrees wide (with the same corresponding widths in houses 4 through to 6 inclusive). The other six houses must nescessarily be 20 degrees wide to complet the circle. However even this is open to problems because it is not clear where you measure the angle between Ascendant and MC - which is a 3 dimensional angle and how you project that onto a two dimensional surface - the horoscope. So the division of space can actually give different results depending on how you measure the angle.

Even worse space could be divided not inot equal amounts of 'distance' but into equal amounts of time - the time taken for one the Ascendant degree to 'travel' up to the MC. Each of houses 12 and 11 thus marks a third of the time.

There also is a modern version of the ancient whole sign approach to houses, this takes the Ascendant degree (such as my 21 Leo) and measures the houses in 30 degree increments - so my second house is 21 Virgo and so on till my twelfth is 21 Cancer.

Whichever system is used - it's very possible that a planet could change houses if the system is changed, altering it's meaning, possibly quite significantly. I tend to use Placidus houses, for natal work and the earlier Regiomontanus for horary work (both of which are variants of triesecting space) but recently I've been experimenting with the easier whole sign approach.