The Hermetic Lots

What it is

A Lot, or Part, is not a body you could point to in the sky. It is a calculated point, a mark on the zodiac found by measuring the arc between two places in the chart and laying that same arc off from a third.

The method never changes. Take the distance, counted in the order of the signs, that separates one planet from another. Then cast that distance forward from a starting point, almost always the Ascendant. Where the count lands is the Lot. Because it is built from three places at once, a Lot gathers what those three signify into a single sensitive degree.

The oldest and weightiest is the Lot of Fortune. It carries the whole matter of the body and livelihood: health, wealth, and the circumstances a person is simply given. It was reckoned so important that it stands among the places able to sustain life, which is why the tradition calls it a second Ascendant.

How the tradition computes it

Fortune measures the arc from the Sun to the Moon and projects it from the Ascendant. In plain words, the Lot stands as far ahead of the Ascendant as the Moon stands ahead of the Sun.

Fortune (day) = Ascendant + Moon - Sun

The Lot of Spirit is its mirror. Spirit reflects Fortune across the axis of the Ascendant, Sun, and Moon, so it reverses the two luminaries: it measures from the Sun to the Moon instead, cast from the same Ascendant.

Spirit (day) = Ascendant + Sun - Moon

Where Fortune governs the body and its fortunes, Spirit governs the mind, the will, and what a person sets out to do. Beyond these two the engine computes a set of further Hermetic Lots, after Paulus Alexandrinus, each cast on the same principle from its own chosen pair of places:

Every Lot has a lord: the planet that rules the sign the Lot falls in. Its luminaries and the Ascendant are read once, but its whole meaning is coloured by that lord and the state the lord is in.

What it signifies

A Lot is read in three steps, exactly as any planet or place is read. First its sign, which lends the Lot its own quality: a Lot in a hot and dry fiery sign runs quick and combustible, one in a cold and moist watery sign runs slow and yielding. Second its place, the whole-sign house it occupies, which tells the field of life where its matters play out. Third, and most decisively, its lord and the condition of that lord.

The lord carries the verdict. If it is strong, in its own domicile or exaltation, angular, in sect, and moving direct, the Lot's affairs are well supported and prosper. If it is weak, in detriment or fall, cadent, retrograde, or hemmed by the malefics Mars and Saturn, the same matters are obstructed, delayed, or spoiled. A benefic lord warms and eases; a malefic lord chills, dries, or cuts.

Fortune deserves its own weight. Because it is a second Ascendant, a second life-giving point, its house and its lord describe the whole material fortune of the native, and the tradition counts it among the places able to prorogate, to hand out the years of life. Read Fortune first among the Lots, then Spirit for the cast of the mind, then the rest for their narrower themes.

Where the app departs

Seen in a real chart

In the chart of Marcus Aurelius, a night birth with Pisces rising, the app applies Ptolemy's non-reversed formula and places the Lot of Fortune at 1 degree 33 minutes of Sagittarius, in the tenth house.

Fortune's sign is ruled by Jupiter, so Jupiter is the lord of Fortune, and its condition sets the tone. Here Jupiter sits in Scorpio holding only its term, a slight essential dignity of +2. It is cadent in the ninth house and retrograde. So the native's material fortune is lodged at the very peak of the chart, the tenth of standing and career, a naturally prominent seat; but the planet that governs that fortune is modest in strength, turned back in its motion, and fallen away from the angle. The reading is of high public place whose support is real but qualified: a benefic lord that helps without commanding, its help delayed and inward-turned by the retrogradation.

The Lot of Spirit, the mirror of Fortune, falls in Gemini in the fourth house. Its lord is Mercury, peregrine in Taurus in the third house. Mercury holds no essential dignity where it stands, so the mind and its undertakings are given no special strength or weakness by their lord, and take their colour instead from the planets that configure it.

How to read it in the app

Open the natal reading and find the Lots panel: each Lot is printed with its sign, degree, and whole-sign house, followed by its lord and that lord's dignity and accidental state, so you can read sign, place, and lord in a single line. A footnote cites Tetrabiblos IV.2 for the Lot of Fortune and names Paulus Alexandrinus and Valens for Spirit and the further Lots, and it discloses whether the non-reversed formula or the opt-in Valens form produced the figure.

Sources