We were discussing sign interceptions the other day. I was just doing some research for Friday’s horoscope and was visiting the site of Martha Lang Wescott, my beloved colleague. I found this page on interceptions. She takes a psychological approach to the subject. She is suggesting that interceptions describe where and how we let the needs of others creep up on our own need for wholeness. The house that is ‘trapped’ in the interception is the place we cannot access.
I will say this: in the many discussions of house systems I have heard, I have never heard mentioned the issue of where the interceptions fall, if they do. In my chart I get interceptions of Aries/Libra in Koch houses (in 4th 10th) and Gemini/Sagg in Placidus/Topocentric houses (in 6th 12th). I personally prefer Koch (for other reasons, most of them intuitive) and I would say that Martha’s ideas hold up pretty well; I am in a helping profession and that means making room for the material of a lot of people, in both my public and private lives (4th/10th). So her idea passes the first sniff test.
The interesting thing is that when I cast a chart where the interceptions fall along 6th 12th, they tell a similar story of work/profession (6th house) and private affairs (12th house). This is one of many demonstrations of how shifting methods gives a similar message.
To work out the theme of an interception, she suggests that you cast a chart including a full set of minor planets and pay attention to the planets immediately before and after the interception and see what story that tells. These are the energies that guard the “room within the room” that the interception represents. I’ll try it in my chart and let’s see if it makes sense.
In Koch houses we would need to look at 10th house:
Last planet in Pisces = Kassandra/Urania conjunction
First planet in Aries = Pandora
Last planet in Aries = Phaethon
First planet in Taurus = Ceto/Photographica conjunction
and 4th house
Last planet in Virgo = Apollo (asteroid) or Apollon (uranian point)
First planet in Libra = Klotho
Last planet in Libra = Ixion
First planet in Scorpio = Memoria
Now, I have to think about this for a while and tell you what I come up with.
I learned something about interceptions from Barbara Hand Clow as well. She suggested that you ask the client to make a list of “my worst failures,” and when they do that, ask them to cross off the title and call it “my greatest successes.” That will tell you the story of the interception. I never found that method to fail — not once. It’s a great counseling method that qualifies as positive reinforcement, shifting perspectives and claiming one’s victories.
Thank you Eric! I’ll be reading more about this as I have Sun-Mercury-Venus and many asteroids in my 7th house intercepted, opposing a Moon intercepted in my 1st house! Now I just discovered that my friend has a total of 4 intercepted signs, with all his signs intercepted!!!
hmmmmmm…….what I wouldn’t give to be in a classroom, facing a chalkboard…or something like that.
I am trying not to overreact to this theory of interceptions, mainly because it looks like my Libra/Aries in 5th/11th are intercepted……and I got a whole lot of planets in 5th Libra and Chiron over there in the 11th.
Is it too much to ask for something simple and pure and perfect in one’s chart?? 🙂
🙁
Martha Wescott’s words really hit home, but feeling a little discouraged by the implications……and also like it explains a whole heck of a lot.
This idea that those planets involved have to ” try harder “…….
Hmmmmmmm…………..
Thank you Eric, I love when you give us mini lessons.
z
well, I like old things…like manual focus lenses and cast iron frying pans…and my dutch oven…but I like new house systems. That’s not a great reason. As I use any house sytem I am continually watching the whole sign house placement for added layers of information — the oldest house system. I see house cusps as being sensitive points added over whole sign houses. Another time I’ll explain the real definition of “cusp” which means peak of energy _within the whole sign house system_.
Koch
A rather more complicated version of the Placidus system, built on equal increments of Right Ascension for each quadrant. The Koch system was developed by the German astrologer Walter Koch (1895-1970) and is defined only for latitudes between 66°N and 66°S. This system is popular among research astrologers in the U.S. and among German speakers, but in Central Europe lost some popularity to the Krusiński house system.
Topocentric
This is a recent system, invented in Argentina, that its creators claim has been determined empirically, i.e. by observing events in people’s lives and assessing the geometry of a house system that would fit. The house cusps are always within a degree of those given in the Placidus system. The geometry is somewhat complicated and the reader is referred to this site for an explanation and this one too. The topocentric system can also be described as an approximation algorithm for the Placidus system. Topocentric houses are also called Polich-Page, after the names of the house system creators, Wendel Polich and A. Page Nelson.
This is a lot to think about, but I am enjoying the conversation. I missed earlier posts/discussions about interceptions, and so it’s all new to me.
But Eric, I am almost more interested in your use of the Koch house-placement system, because I have had a hard time finding a good discussion of how systems differ (aside from geometrically) and why people use different ones. I fear sometimes that because Placidus is a default on a lot of programs and on astro.com that people just “default” to that without thinking much about other systems. The first natal chart of my own that I really worked with (cast by the much-missed Rockie Gardiner) was in Koch, and so I am never sure if I am just used to it, or if for some reason it speaks to me in better ways than other systems do. I am swayed by its use of the 3/9 houses, how they are the larger/dominant houses…I think because they are receptive houses where we get all of the info that we then chart out to other areas…but that’s a very unrefined idea I have about Koch. Will welcome any further posts or blogs/audios where you might go into what you think about the systems.
Meanwhile, until I add minor planets/asteroids, my intercepted signs (Leo/Aquarius, 9/3 respectively) are empty. Add smaller bits, and Leo is still empty (aside from Part of Fortune, which sometimes I understand and sometimes I don’t, and so I kind of ignore it mostly), but I do have Pallas, Juno, and Pholus in Aquarius. Interesting given the idea of how to chart a narrative for the interceptions: the last planet before my Aquarius interception is way back in Scorpio, where Neptune is in my 12th house. That alone almost feels like too much to make sense of.
I re-read what typed and it feels a little “babbly” (just got up after no sleep – they were filming helecopters on Warner Bros backlot (whichis)a block away until 2AM ugh).
Anyway – summary:
Beings and Objects (signs) live inside rooms (houses)
Those rooms are hidden away as the doorways into them are small and inconvenient (the house cusps on either side of the sign). I have only a degree or two doorway into each of my intercepted signs. (Kind of like you have to be Alice in Wonderland to fit through)
Then, take a look at the “information” inside those rooms aka interpreting the meaning of the planets there and the house cusps that surround them an the things one would traditionally look at.
Keeping i mind the ideas that Martha Wescot mentions, which is when I hit a home-run with this whole things last night.
For ME this intercepted sign situation is vitally important – it totally tells my whole back-story such that I can pull it out once and for all.
I would consider that when intercepted signs seem to have no importance that the “back-story” is so hidden that there is no connection to it…..and perhaps if one sits with the information for awhile (or at a time when the doorways are “lit up” by transits) then some aspects of a persons background (back to Martha) may enter awareness and be useful for healing.
xo
OK….description:
Libra and Pisces are Intercepted in my chart. My way of remembering which way ’round things to (signs in houses or houses in signs ) I went a bit further with an example Eric gave and decided to visualize the astrological signs as BEINGs or OBJECTs (Aries is a Ram, Libra is a scales).
Then I visualize the houses as rooms or spaces. The Beings or Objects live in a room just as we would. That way it’s like real life and not lost in being esoteric.
OK. So first I took a look at the basics of my interception situation;
Libra is floating inside of my 3rd and 4th house cusps….so I looked at that information.
And for the other side of the coin, Aries floats inside my 9th and 10th house cusps – so I looked to information about 9th and 10th houses.
Of course, these are the personal picture and political picture of the same issues – two sides of the coin.
Then I looked at who lives inside of those rooms. I’ve been wondering for awhile what Quaoar and Ixion were doing down there in my otherwise empty room called Libra (which is floating between the 3rd and 4th house doorways or cusps) and now I know!
And those ladies populating Aries as well – Vesta, Sedna, Eris, Moon, Lilith all cooped up there inside the Mars’ room Aries with a doorway at the 9th and 10th house cusps.
For me then, the information in Martha Wescott’s article was the missing link to “getting it” – Especially with the transits currently going on, I felt that these rooms were being “lit up” by powerful forces and that I needed so badly to understand how to see what is there. (that is, all the Big T’s transits are hitting my 3rd and 9th house cusps, thus “lighting up” my otherwise dark little Mars and Venus rooms aka Aries and Libra.)
With my natal Mars at 13 Cap (now being transited by True Node) I’m guessing that I’ve got a golden opportunity to get those old buried family issues (power struggles) out into my consciousness once and for all and keep them in the light where I can work with healing them over the long haul.
AND release the tension of them that I’ve been holding inside those dark little intercepted room thus allowing myself to breathe and live (and realize my own dreams).
-Hope that offers something to anyone else trying to pull things out of the mire and into awareness. – – and I totally welcome anything further especially if I have made any glaring mis-interpretations of the siutation/s.
xo
Maybe the key to the locked rooms is in a process like ‘my worst failures’ –> ‘my greatest successes’.
(P.S. Jupiter is ‘opposing’ as for the house, not the sign, in fact it is in Capricorn).
Thank you!
Wow, in this case I have Leo (8th house) and Acquarius (2nd) as ‘locked rooms’. But the fact is that I have the majority of my planets there, I mean in Leo and 8th house…
And, opposing, there is Jupiter in 2nd (very near to Saturn).
Very interesting. Many things that MW says apply… like the last planet before the interception as the event that made a child ‘shut down’…
and the tendency to be too open or sensitive to other’s problems. Very very actual right in these days.
Where is the key to the locked rooms?????!!!
For the purposes of this conversation — let’s assume the interception is A SIGN WITHOUT A HOUSE CUSP GOING THROUGH IT. The sign “floats” in the middle of a house. There is no cusp through the sign, so the sign is like a locked room. The house cusp “opens the way into the sign.” Without a cusp there is the sense that the sign exists without an entrance.
It would help if other readers gave their description of the phenomenon, so we can have it in different language and get across to more people.
Thanks Eric, I think I was precisely lacking an understanding of how the logic of this system works. Now I do see!
I keep reading Eric’s article, the comments and Martha Wescott’s page but I can’t get clear if an intecepted house means a house whose cusp is in the preceeding sign, and whose next house cusp is in the following sign, OR a sign that has two cusps in it.
MW says:
7. The matters and rulers of the double-ruled houses help to spell out what the problem was (that had the family rubber-necked in that direction—and made the child’s development less of a priority.) Let’s say you have Leo on two house cusps (and therefore, Aquarius on two.) You have then Sun-Uranus “issues” that kept the childhood situation in an uproar. Maybe father was erratic, abrupt, or volatile… etc.
She says ‘Leo on two house cusps’…??
Holy Smokes!
Martha Wescott says:
‘an adult with interceptions often makes too much room in his or her life for “the problems of others.” They can put themselves and their own needs and wholeness on a back burner because, just as their early life situation showed, “others are in crisis–or have an ongoing problem.” ‘
There are so many major planets contained within my intercepted Virgo contained within my 6th House Placidus, and only the delightfully disruptive Chiron in my 12th in intercepted Pisces. So very much to think about. A whole new way of looking at my chart that relates entirely to my last two years work in therapy dealing with what Martha Westcott describes as:
‘their early lives have held “such a problem” that they (as children) were basically second to that. It’s as though the parents were saying (although often not in words:) “Can’t you see what a problem we’re having?” In effect, the child is told to “Stifle it” and not add to the crush of difficulties. ‘
For me, these intercepted houses are also directly connected to the architecture of my natal yod, with Jupiter Rx in Aries, in tight sextile to Saturn Rx in Aquarius, this sextile also neatly containing Pisces of course, both quincunx the Moon at the midpoint of Virgo.
Zowie. Thanks Eric. As with others, off to meditate on this one.
“prevalent for certain geographic locations”
The houses themselves are local affairs. They depend on the coordinates for their particular shape, and they represent issues that are local, or at least, environmental. Houses all represent environments, physical locations, physical circumstances, actual things. The “certain geographic location” of the chart determines the ascendant and the rest of the houses are based on that ascendant.
In astrology the Earth is placed at the center. This is not because the Earth is the center of the solar system but because we are on the Earth and therefore it is the center of our experience. And the houses grow out of that concept.
if you are suspicious of the whole house thing, and some astrologers are, just use whole sign houses: if you’re Virgo rising, Virgo is the 1st house, Libra is the 2nd house, Scorpio is the 3rd house, and so on. That works fine and it simplifies the issues you’re concerned with. It’s an older house system, indeed the original one. And it does not contradict the use of other houses systems — there are ways to interpret both at once, but it takes experience.
All of this takes experience and if you want to be an astrologer, you need to start collecting that on real, live people, and the way you do that and not hurt them is you don’t read their chart. You sit there and ask them about their lives and see how their chart describes their experience. Then you will see the game in motion and it will all start to make sense.
Sam — use logic here. The 7th house begins at the 7th cusp. Virgo is intercepted within your 6th house, because your 7th house begins at 12 degrees of Libra. Virgo is the room within the room of your 6th house and Pisces is the room within the room of the 12th house.
Hi all,
Honestly, I keep getting a bit confused about how to read these interceptions. I’ll just give an example from my own chart, and if someone could explain, I’d be really grateful. For example: My 6th house cusp is at Leo 25 and my 7th house is at Libra 12. Does that mean whatever planets are in Virgo as contained as a hidden room within my 6th house or within my 7th?
And what if a house cups falls very late in a sign and the next cusp falls very late in the next sign? For example, let’s say there is a planet at 1 Leo while the 5th house cusp is at 27 Cancer and the 6th house cusp isn’t until 25 Leo as I mentioned above. Does the planet abide in the 5th house or in the 6th house?
Perhaps these are extremely elementary questions which could be looked up elsewhere on the internet, but I enjoy getting information through more or less direct dialogue when possible 🙂 Thank you very much if you can offer that!!
This is great enrichment to your past enlightenments on house intercpetion, and they all theoretically make a lot of sense to me astrologically. Though the addition of the asteroids do admit for much contemplation….
But I still have this lingering doubt that intercepted houses have meaning when they seem to be most prevalent and usually prevalent for certain geographic locations, And that seems problematic.
Can you speak to this? Is my understanding incorrect? Should we only consider intercepted houses as they affirm or confirm other things in the chart? Am I asking to many questions? 🙁
Wow.
There it is.
It’s all there (having read the page you linked to, Eric.)
The most precise explaination of why my most cherished goals “hurt”. And why I tend to put them away in the closet in favor of pouring my energy into supporting other peoples “cherished goals” (even though I desperately need to manifest my own.)
There too, is the perceived unworthiness of the little girl who hid inside of her closet after dad’s emotionallly and spiritually (and irregularly regular) berating rages.
Well, it’s easier to repair a leak when you know where it is.
Thanks, Eric, this is one important post.
– I’m off now; got some work to do.
xo
“ask the client to make a list of ‘my worst failures,’ and when they do that, ask them to cross off the title and call it ‘my greatest successes.”
so true
Love this Eric,
It immediately resonated with me- like wow bang- something I have not thought
deeply about with my chart…. concerning 1/7 house – pisces /virgo
I am off to meditate on this now
thanks so much
chrysanne