Cadent houses

In astrology, a cadent house is the last house of each quadrant of the zodiac. A quadrant begins with a Cardinal house, (the house in which a chart angle lies) proceeds to a Succedent house and ends with a Cadent house. There are four quadrants in an astrological chart, providing four Cardinal, four Succedent, and four Cadent houses.

The Greeks called the cadent houses apoklima, which literally means "falling" or "decline," because the houses were seen to be falling away from the strength of the angular houses, which were considered to be most influential because of their perpendicular and oppositive relationships to the Ascendant. The word apoklima also carries a denotation of degeneration and decline. Our English word "cadent" comes from the Latin translation of apoklima and is the source of our word "cadet," which originally meant a lesser branch of the family, or the younger son.

Cadent houses are therefore usually considered by astrologers as less fertile and productive places by their nature than either angular or succedent houses, and the planets located in them are seen as generally less powerful and comfortable. This view of cadency is universally found in ancient sources. For example, Paulus Alexandrinus says of cadent houses: "stars [ed: i.e., planets] found in these zoidia [ed: i.e., houses] (3, 6, 9 and 12) become inharmonious. And sometimes they bring about hostile conditions, sometimes separations and banishments...". (However, there are conditions when a planet in a cadent house can be brought up to its full strength, for example, by a reasonably close trine to a benefic planet, such as Jupiter).

The notion of cadent houses as weak and ineffective also persists in medieval and Renaissance astrologers such as Guido Bonatti and William Lilly, who labeled cadent houses "poor and of little efficacy."

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