Howard Sasportas (1948–1992)

Giving this 3.5 stars. Greene and Sasportas really do have a knack for getting to the planets' essence, Liz even more so. I particularly liked her Venus seminars, because I didn't understand the mysterious links between pleasure, enjoyment and values and she helped to flesh that out.

This, like their other seminars, is a mish-mash of stuff. The main part of the book is split into the mythological and symbolic representations of the planets, their aspects and how they behave in the houses. show more Some example charts are also given, to illustrate how the planets work in tandem. And, as again, there are tidbits scattered everywhere. A few examples include the explanation of the Yod aspect pattern, the archetypal meaning of Uranus, how Venus and Mars are expressed in men and women.

What got on my nerves, however, was some of Greene's psychological perspectives, especially those concerning sexuality. I maintain a cynical ambivalence with regards to the understanding of our sexuality, since we seem to think that we understand everything (for which history has consistently shown to be untrue) but reading about penis envy in 2019 only provoked ludicrous laughter from me, not illumination. Having said that - if there's an updated version of this book, I would be very interested in re-reading it. show less

This book consists of three transcripts of seminars given by Howard Sasportas in the early 1990's. The first seminar is on finding vocational indicators in the birth chart, the second is about the lunar nodes, and the third is about astrological signatures commonly found in the charts of people drawn to the healing professions. Being transcripts of live teaching sessions is both the strength and the weakness of this book: it's far more lively and readable than many textbooks are, but using show more it as a reference may be more of a challenge since it's not as formally organized as a textbook would be. I found all three seminars to be interesting, but I think I'll get the most use out of the vocational seminar and the lunar nodes. I especially like that Sasportas dodged the easy "North Node: good, South Node: bad" mindset, stressing the need to integrate the strengths of both nodes into our lives. Despite being about twenty years old now, the material doesn't feel out-of-date. Overall, this is a fine work of psychological/archetypal astrology. show less

The Twelve Houses is a comprehensive guide on the astrological houses, covering not only the planets in houses but also Chiron and the Moon's Nodes. Sasportas has an undeniably excellent feeling for the houses and knows how to find the balance between teaching and challenging the reader. My only complaint is that Sasportas uses the theory of associating houses with the signs (as in, first house is associated with Aries), which is a theory I personally disagree with. I also felt he could've show more elaborated more on the second house in the 'cookbook' part of the book. Apart from that, I thoroughly enjoyed Sasportas' insights and I'll definitely go back to this book often when interpreting a chart. show less

Generally, this is a good description of the astrological houses from a psychological point of view. Sasportas takes the time to describe each house thoroughly and to look at relationships between the houses. He also details the effects of each planet through the houses as well as the Moon's nodes and some tentative delineations of Chiron in the houses.

The book is a bit uneven when it comes to descriptions of signs on the house cusps. While Sasportas maintains that the signs are similar in show more effect to their ruling planets, he does spell out possible effects of Gemini and Virgo (for Mercury) and Taurus and Libra (for Venus) on each house cusp. But for the other signs, he may only describe them separately when they fall on the Midheaven/IC axis or perhaps just throw in a sentence saying that they're like their planets. Even if they are quite similar, they're not absolutely identical, and I would have appreciated being able to read more of his fine delineations for the other signs.

Also, when I first read this book years ago, I'd only learned psychological astrology—The Twelve Houses is an excellent example of this approach. This time around, having studied the classical approach as well, I found the attitude that only psychological ramifications of the houses "mattered" to be a bit annoying.

The 2007 edition includes a selection of essays written by other astrologers in honor of Sasportas who died in 1992. These essays will not teach you any astrology to speak of, but they do help the reader get a better feel for what Howard Sasportas was like as a person show less