"Mars and Saturn are giving me the sandpaper treatment right now"

Protect the Ass, that's all I'm going to say on this one..

Mantis,

here is more stuff about the Ascendant in polar regions:

Ascendant in Polar Regions

As we move closer to the polar regions the time lengths of long and short ascensions become more extreme.

At the Arctic circle at 66.56° north, at local sidereal time 18h 00m 00s, when 0° Capricorn is on the midheaven the ecliptic become flush with the horizon with the ascendant effectively subsumed into the horizon circle in it entirety. That is, the intersection of the ecliptic with the horizon that defines the ascendant ceases to exist, eliminating all houses at that instant. There are no signs that are rising or setting. There is no ascendant or descendant. The spherical geometry that generates them fails and "zeros" them out of existence.

In the instant after this, as diurnal motion continues, the ecliptic “lifts” from the horizon and the ascendant resumes its identity providing space for the resumption of the intermediate houses.

As we move beyond the Arctic circle most house systems break down and are inoperable for parts of the day. Ever-increasing sections of the ecliptic remain permanently below and above the horizon and can not be ascendants. For example, at 75° latitude Sagittarius, Capricorn and parts of Scorpio and Aquarius are permanently below the horizon while Gemini, Cancer and parts of Taurus and Leo and are permanently above the horizon. These can never be ascendants.

Furthermore the ascendant exhibits other strange behaviour. At latitude 75 at sidereal time 21h 20m 00s the midheaven and ascendant merge and become conjunct confounding their separate definitions! In this instance all intermediate houses are zeroed out except for house 12 and 6. In the instant after this the ascendant crosses over the meridian to the west and instantaneously becomes the descendant, but with its degrees rising instead of setting , while the descendant crosses the meridian to the east and becomes an ascendant with its degree setting rather than rising. That is the ascendant is goes retrograde! This continues until the ascendant once again crosses the meridian where upon they flip back resuming their conventional identities – until local sidereal time 2h 25m 00s when the situation flips again with all houses but 1 and 7 “zeroed” out.

As we reach the north pole itself more of the ecliptic is unavailable for rising and setting until at the precise position of the north geographic pole half of the zodiac - Aries to Virgo - is permanently above the horizon while the other half - Libra to Pisces are permanently below the horizon. That is, the first degrees of Aries and Libra permanently ride around on the horizon due to diurnal motion - never rising nor setting. At the north pole there can be no midheaven. Every direction away from you is south, so every direction is a midheaven rending the midheaven meaningless by definition.

Polar astrology raises questions about the validity or nature of houses in general and personality delineations are limited by which sign can rise and rulerships become almost impossible to apply.


Effects of Polar Astrology

There are more than 4 million people living in the Arctic region of which 12% are of indigenous birth (have charts). [1] So the problem for astrology is not trivial. Many of them will have houses missing or no houses in the their charts. Yet they must live lives that accommodate the matters ascribed to astrological houses such as "finances", "relationships", "health" etc that can be missing in their horoscopes. Ascendants of births in this region can be characterized by the proportion of ascendants that only can rise. This furthermore restricts personalty deliniations.

Murmansk at 68.97° north is in this astrological problem zone. With a population of 300,000 and annual birth rate of 9.8/1000 [2]there is a substantial a portion of the population that falls into the zone of missing houses and rising signs.

On the other hand one could dispense with houses or even signs all together. As with the method of Cosmobiology, signs and houses are either ignored or relegated as incidental. Along with planets, their mutual aspects and aspects to the ascendant and midheaven, as well as their midpoints there are still plenty of factors that incorporates a unique moment of birth for a comprehensive
delineation while avoiding the polar “crash” of classical house systems and signs.

It's obvious that the familiar house systems of classical astrology were invented in the non-problem mid latitudes in an era when population centres were more parochial. The house-system inventors were mathematically competent astrologers and they must have been aware of the polar problem but likely considered it irrelevant as they may have never had to cast a polar chart.

astrology.astrozoom.com/index.php

oh the other hand, there is the possibility of not using any house system. Just assessing the AC and MC's aspects to the planets should be enough...

Right. And for those latitudes it may make much more sense.

But I don't believe that a one-size-fits all system is necessary for validity, especially when it matches less what one experiences. If it matches better ~ fine. But that is not the case for me. There need not be only one point of view of something for there to be truth, so I don't think it is necessary to follow just one system or to ask any one system to be consistent regardless of the circumstances. It is a little like physics ~ on one level, phenomena follow classical physical laws, but on the quantum level, they do not. Neither system is more or less valid than the other ~ it just depends on what you are looking at.

"These are charts that I would feel uneasy to look at "

Yes. For that reason I use Equal House. I've tried Whole and also Equal, and have personally found Equal the superior of the two, however many who champion Koch and Placidus would argue that the extreme latitudes bring with it extremes in life which would account for the extremes in house size.