Intercepted sign
A sign lying wholly inside a house, with no cusp in it, which unequal houses produce more often the further a birth is from the equator.
Meaning
A sign is intercepted when it lies wholly inside one house, from its first degree to its last, without any house cusp falling in it. The house that holds it is wider than a sign, so it opens in one sign, passes through the whole of a second, and closes in a third.
It happens because many house systems make houses of unequal size. The zodiac crosses the sky at a slant, so some signs rise quickly and others slowly. A system that divides time or the local sky turns this into houses of 20° next to houses of 40°. A house wider than 30° can swallow a sign; a narrow one can leave the same sign on two cusps in a row.
Interceptions come in pairs. Opposite cusps are always 180° apart in these systems, so when a house holds an intercepted sign, the opposite house holds the opposite sign. Two other signs, also opposite, then sit on two cusps each. With Equal houses and Whole sign houses, every house is exactly 30° wide and no sign is ever intercepted.
Modern astrologers often read an intercepted sign as a quality that is present but harder to reach. Its themes are not shown at the door of any house, so they tend to be found later, through experience, and to grow with use. Tradition reads this as a slower path, not a missing one.
In practice
- Planets in an intercepted sign are often read as working quietly, inside the field of their house, until they are claimed. Venus intercepted in the 4th can be read as an affection that shows first at home.
- The ruler of an intercepted sign rules no cusp of its own; astrologers still follow it, as a link between that sign’s themes and the house it occupies.
- A sign on two cusps colours both houses. With Leo on the 10th and 11th cusps, for example, career and friendships share one style.
- Transits through an intercepted sign are watched as times when its themes come forward.
- Changing the house system can make an interception appear or vanish. Astrologers who give it weight usually read it in the system they always use.
Origin and history
The interception follows from quadrant houses. Once houses were measured by time or by circles of the sky rather than by signs, some charts had signs with no cusp. Reading an intercepted sign as a latent, slowly opened part of life belongs to modern, psychological astrology. Hellenistic astrologers, who counted the houses sign by sign, never met the question.
The further a birth is from the equator, the more unequal the quadrant houses become, and the more often signs are intercepted. Even on the equator they can occur, because the zodiac is tilted against it. Morinus houses, which do not depend on latitude at all, produce them equally everywhere.
How Ulune calculates it
Ulune marks as intercepted any sign that holds none of the twelve cusps, and places it in the house that contains its middle degree, 15° of the sign. A sign that holds two cusps is noted too. Both follow the chart’s own house system: Placidus by default, or Porphyry inside the polar circles when Placidus or Koch was chosen. Equal and Whole sign houses never have any.
The table lists an intercepted sign under the cusp of its house, and a sign on two cusps in the rows of both houses it opens. On the wheel, the sign’s glyph sits in a small dashed box beside the house number, in the colour of its element. The wheel leaves this mark out when the birth time is unknown, since the houses are then only a noon stand-in. The reading of the house says which sign it holds and what that adds, and the chart summary lists the intercepted signs.
Correspondences
| House system | Intercepted signs |
|---|---|
| Whole sign | Never |
| Equal houses | Never |
| Porphyry, Placidus, Koch and the other quadrant systems | Sometimes, more often far from the equator |
| Morinus | Sometimes, at any latitude |
Related
- House systemThe method that divides the sky into the twelve houses, from Placidus and Koch to Whole Sign and Equal houses, each drawing the cusps its own way.
- HouseOne of the twelve sectors of the sky at the time and place of birth, counted from the Ascendant, each standing for a field of life.
- PlacidusThe time-based house system named after Placidus de Titis, which divides the time each degree takes to rise and set, and Ulune’s default.
- Equal housesTwelve houses of exactly 30° each, counted along the zodiac from the degree of the Ascendant, the same at every latitude.
- Whole signThe oldest way of counting houses, in which the rising sign is the whole 1st house and each following sign is the next house.
- SignOne of the twelve 30° divisions of the zodiac, counted from the March equinox and read as the style in which a planet or point acts.
Sources
- Deborah Houlding, The Houses: Temples of the Sky, 1998
- Dieter Koch and Alois Treindl, Swiss Ephemeris, 1997