Whole Sign Houses

[anela]

Matthew Currie reminded me of Whole sign houses, when I mentioned that I never know whether to use Placidus or Equal. 

Using that, my chart shifts like this:

Uranus moves to my 1st house, still conjunct ascendant.
Mars moves to the 5th house.
Jupiter moves to the 6th.
Moon/Venus/SN definitely move to the 8th.
Pluto moves to the 12th. 

I'm just wondering how my MC is still at 14*Leo. I thought it would shift to 0*Leo, but my ascendant is still listed as 2*56 Scorpio, as well. 

[lumina]

ASC and MC are not changing ever, in whole sign system/ equal MC is simply not the same as the 10th house cusp.
And in whole sign system ASC is not equal to the 1st house cusp. 

[glaucus]

Actually

In Whole sign house system, the house cusps were originally points and not the borders of houses.
The whole sign house system actually had the same house cusps as equal house system.


I thought the cusps were the sensitive points in houses and based on the Ascendant and the same as cusps that are used in Equal House system. If my Ascendant is 13'27 Virgo, then all cusps are 13'27.
There are other astrologers that told me that Whole Sign House cusps are the beginning of houses. Therefore, all my cusps are 0'00.
But it seems that Robert Hand did have the view of the former and not the latter.

from his book, Whole Sign Houses The Oldest House system:
The Whole-Sign House "Cusps"
One last issue we turn to some examples: What are the "cusps" of Whole-Sign houses? Are they the beginnings of the signs or something else? Unfortunately we do not have definite evidence as to what the practice actually was. And there are Lots where this becomes an issue. For example, the Lot of Death has the formula Lot = Saturn + 8th Cusp - Moon, both by day and by night. What is the 8th house cusp? We have no examples of this or similar Lots being computed in a sample chart with Whole-Sign houses. However, this and other similar Lot were used in the days of Whole-Sign houses.
Previously I felt that reading between the lines, one might get the impression that what I am about to describe may have been the practice. And, the passages from Maternus cited previously have very much reinforced my view that the "cusps" of Whole-Sign houses were as follows:

In each sign, the degree that Ascendant occupies in the 1st sign is the degree of the cusp. This means that the Whole-Sign "cusps" are the same as the Equal House system cusps. The difference is that in the Whole-Sign system, the "cusps" are not the beginning of houses. But wait! Aren't cusps supposed to be beginnings by definition? No. In fact, the word 'cusp' means 'point'. Remember that 'bicuspid' teeth are teeth with two points and not two beginnings. The cusp is the point where the symbolism of the house is expressed most intensely. Even in classic Equal Houses and in medieval sources all other systems as well, the cusp is supposed to be five or approximately five degrees into the house, not at the beginning. The Hindus place the cusp in the middle of the house. In Whole Signs, the cusp is free to float about the house and be anywhere at all, even while the place or topos coincides with the full extent of the sign.