House Cusps and Planetary Tables

Planetary and cuspal tables

A planetary table identifies each planet's longitude, sign, occupied house, motion, star lord and sub-lord. A cuspal table identifies the corresponding information for the twelve cusp positions. The cusp is a coordinate point; its sub-lord is the planet ruling the sub containing that point.

Occupation and ownership

In the adopted KP presentation a house runs from its own cusp to the next cusp in zodiac order. Planetary occupation is assigned from those boundaries. House ownership is assigned from the ruler of the sign containing the cusp.

Consider an illustrative interval with the second cusp at Taurus 25 degrees and the third at Gemini 20 degrees. A planet at Gemini 5 degrees occupies the second-house interval. Mercury rules its sign, while Venus owns the second house because the second cusp is in Taurus.

Unequal house spans

Duplicated cusp signs and intercepted signs arise from the house system. They do not remove a sign from the zodiac. When a cusp appears close to a stellar boundary, its unrounded longitude is needed to identify the correct lord.

Display precision

Rounding is appropriate for readable presentation, but the original numeric longitude should determine the star and sub-lord. A value printed as 3 degrees may lie slightly before or after that boundary in the underlying calculation.