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 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. ( )

One of the best books dealing with astrological houses I have encountered. ( )

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 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 ( )