23.02.2006, Warszawa, Poland ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome, After more than 10 years after publishing house tables for new house system (1995), I release to public domain source code in C to calculate it (as patch to SwissEphemeris TM), accompanied with some remarks that seem still important after more than decade of its practical use. It's definition is as follows: "House system where great circle is passing through ascendant and zenith ('Medium Coeli'). This circle is divided into 12 equal parts (1st cusp is ascendent, 10th cusp is zenith), then resulting points are projected to ecliptic through meridian circles." In this definition: - 'Medium Coeli' is assumed in its' original pre-ecliptic definition as point directly overhead, located upper square from ascendant, in modern times in astronomy called 'zenith'; - 'Meridian' is assumed as great circle passing through the north and south celestial poles in equatorial coordinates (perpendicular to equator). Further background of this discovery: In astrological literature and practice use of house systems is mostly limited (with the exception of equal house system) to those house systems where both 1st house on ecliptic coincides with Ascendant, and 10th house cusp on ecliptic coincides with MC. So it is widely assumed that Asc and MC are basis for house system formulation and it's correctness must be judged with conformation to this constraint. Rectangular coordinate systems are widely taught at schools, and sadly spherical are not. That's why it is diffcult to grasp even for person well educated in mathematics that Thales of Miletus' theorem about "two parallel lines cut with two more lines" from rectangular coordinate systems do not exist in spherical coordinate systems. And more, forcing its use in spherical coordinates leads to drastic errors. Like composite MC from midpoint MC when someone first wanted it from RAMC but assumed that both will be the same... and because there is no Thales' theorem here, they are not the same. The same rule applies to house system formulation. Mathematics strictly applied postulates that from point of view of such a constraint, if great circle is not running through all four house cardinal points, then house cusps projected into ecliptic could have at most only four mathematical points on such circle correct, all the others are wrong. So as any house system is correct from its own point of view, only one correct great circle can exist when we apply constraint that two chosen cardinal points are to be the base for its formulation. But when using 'Medium Coeli' as point on ecliptic there is no such great circle, where two cardinal axes would be always 90 degrees apart. I resolved this difficulty by returning to original definition of "Middle of Heaven" as point directly overhead, located always 90 degrees from any point on horizon, so from ascendant too. For projecting house cusp onto ecliptic I could find only one possible way. As discovery of Van Allen's belts and later exploration of near space proved, two main types of magnetic lines of field (as it suggest also other fields can follow this pattern) are connected with two planes - ecliptic and equator. So I followed the equatorial path for houses. Contrary to former house system formulation attempts, I do not follow path "simple astronomical coordinate system". Why? For ecliptic, when we account for parallax to center of coordinate system (sun) even on Earth's poles declination is about few arc seconds - so it always could be perfectly approximated with simple coordinate system - ecliptic. When we switch to Earth rotation coordinate system, since it's center is in the center of Earth, declination can be in full range of <-90,90> degrees. So definitely these two systems - ecliptic and houses - are quite different, and the second must be viewed as related to equatorial coordinates. But as astrology postulates that also relation to ecliptic must be included in house system 'somehow', two rotations from view of the equator must be applied, as is the case in formulation of this new house system. From statistical comparison this house system is in the same group as Placidus/Topocentric, Regiomontanus, Koch and Pophyry. On ~5000 charts from my database it differs on average by 2 planets per chart from Koch and 2,5 per chart from Placidus/Topocentric and Regiomontanus. Campanus is 'in the other league' here because it differs by considerably more planets per chart from those four systems. From limited number of charts I've found that gives useful clues, their owners quite often choose this house system that fits him best where its hosue cusps are closest on discussed positions to the one in system presented here. But in literature I found only one printed example, from Robert Hand's 'Horoscope symbols'. He has chosen there, with no suprise, the house system which had discussed cusps - in range 1-2 degrees - from positions in this new one. But number of such charts is very limited and they are hard to find. It's not suprising, since a chart has about 30-40 main elements, and on average only 2.5 planets in different houses (from comparision of 5000 charts) constitutes about 5-8% of the average chart. But usually two astrologers from two different schools agree at best on 50% percent on the same chart. So resolution with such usage is usually lower than needed to positively differentiate two house systems applied for the same chart. So later in my reserach I switched to studying the effect of ecliptic transits to house positions. As tropical transits work as arcs from equinox to planet, so on historical charts neglecting equinoctical shifts (on 1000 years as great as 15 degrees) yields the best results. So neglecting longer arcs should also be workable. And in this way natal planet's house position can be compared with ecliptic tropical transits. As side effect (when you rectify asc to +- 1/4 degree), the resolution increases about sixty times compared to traditional "planet in house" method, and average difference between position of the same planet in two hosue systems grow to about 10 degrees for Placidus and Koch both compared to themselves and to this new hosue system. So with this technique it becomes much easer to make research which hosue systems work best. Anynone who has extensive notes from rectfication can do it in short time. And my research shows this is the first house system where its' ten planet points deliver positive results in studying former events and making new forecasts from ecliptical transits. I publish modified sources for Swisseph v. 1.67, so it can be added to any software that is using this library, and anyone can by herself/himself conduct easily such a research. You can get all files as single archive at http://www.urania.pl/sehouses/sehouses.zip or you can download them as individual files http://www.urania.pl/sehouses Source (swehouse.c) was tested on MS Visual C++ 2003 Std, BDS 2006 Pro and gcc 3.3.3 under Cygwin. Modified 'swetest.exe' utility with compiled in this new house system is also included for quick start. Description of files: swehouse.c - modified source of Swisseph v. 1.67 with added Krusinski houses, either traditionally as points on ecliptic or as exact planet house positions swehousediff.c - differences only as to be applied to original file with description where to put them in original file swehouse167.c - original source saved for reference swetest.exe - compiled utility with new house system inluded, its code letter is 'u' h.bat, hp.bat - examples how to call swetest.exe to get 'Krusinski' ('u') houses with ecliptic house cusps (h.bat) and exact planet's house position (hp.bat) Original Swissephemris can be downloaded at http://www.astro.com/swisseph --- Best regards Bogdan Krusiński bogdan@astrologia.pl http://www.astrologia.pl --------------------------------