The House Wars, Part II — Witte’s Perspective

Not wanting to get caught up in the current vitriol in the astrology community, I’m a bit reluctant to post this since it could be perceived as taking sides or attacking a colleague. In truth I have great respect for both Deb Houlding and Chris Brennan, and I have learned a lot from each of them. Nonetheless, I’d like to comment astrologically, not as a partisan of either camp, about the war that is being raged online.

Although unrest had been brewing for a long time, it seems to me that the war broke out when Deb posted her video which was openly and provocatively critical of the Chris’s teachings about Whole Sign Houses. A study of the chart for that moment ought to be instructive. The data is 4 February 2023 at 8:31 PM (according to Deb’s site) and I believe the location was Mansfield, UK.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with the astrology of Alfred Witte, of which I’ve been skeptical for years because of the use of hypothetic planets which have never been shown to exist. In addition, there are so many combinations of planets that form planetary pictures that each degree of the zodiac has reference to a large number of the planets and points used in Witte’s system, so you will always hit on something that is relevant — kind of like using 1000 asteroids in a 360-degree wheel.

On the other hand, Witte’s specific planetary pictures are often on target in an uncanny way. Partly to test Witte’s ideas, I cast the chart for the debut of Deb’s video to the entire online community with Witte’s Transneptunians included. My hypothesis was that, if Witte is correct, then this chart should show the outbreak of open conflict related to an ideological viewpoint. In “Uranian” terms, the factors Uranus, Zeus, Poseidon, the Earth Point, etc., should be prominent. I also looked up Witte’s planetary picture for ardent belief or religious zeal and found it to be Venus + Poseidon – Mars, which makes sense given the nature of these three “planets” — love, ideology, and assertive energy (Venus, Poseidon, Mars). Here is the chart cast as a 360 degree dial.

360-dial for the moment that Deb posted the video of her criticism of whole sign houses for public viewing on the internet. The Pointer is set as Witte’s planetary picture related to religious zeal.

Witte’s Picture for ardent beliefs in this chart is intimately connected by hard aspect to the Sun, Poseidon, Uranus, Zeus, 0 degrees of the cardinal signs. To me, this was impressive for many reasons.

The planetary picture for ardent belief is tightly connected to the Sun at the moment the video was posted.

Zeus connected to Uranus is associated with the outbreak of war, and when connected with the Sun can represent a military leader who takes a strong stance.

Zeus plus Poseidon connected to the cardinal axis is interpreted as meaning that the world in general “must witness something [bear witness to something], must prove something, must show its conviction.”

Uranus connected to Poseidon is associated with both enlightenment and propaganda, as well as with the general public becoming highly excited by an idea. In combination with Zeus, Uranus/Poseidon signifies the expenditure of great energy toward one point.

This chart from the perspective of Alfred Witte does seem to describe the moment quite accurately. That said, it would be interesting to know what an experienced Uranian astrologer would make of this chart, since I’m a novice at this branch of astrology.