Part I

The Seven Planets

Natures of the wandering stars

The seven wandering stars are the active causes of the nativity, and each carries a fixed nature. They do not take their meaning from where they fall; they arrive with their own temper, and the sign, the place and the configuration show only how that nature is delivered, cleanly or in distortion. To read a chart is first to know these seven natures, and then to weigh how each one stands.

The doctrine of sect

Before any single planet is judged, the chart is divided into day and night, its sect. The chart is diurnal when the Sun stands above the horizon at birth, nocturnal when it is below. By day the Sun (), Jupiter () and Saturn () keep their own sect and act most favourably; by night the Moon (), Venus () and Mars () keep theirs. Mercury () takes the sect of the half of the sky it is found in. A planet that keeps the sect of its chart is steadied and tempered; the same planet out of sect grows erratic or obstructed.

A malefic out of sect is at its most harmful, Mars by day, or Saturn by night, brings its cutting or its constriction with the least restraint; an in-sect malefic does its hard work with discipline. A benefic out of sect gives less than it promises. The sect light, the Sun by day, the Moon by night, is the chief significator of the life and is weighed before all else. This is why sect is read first: it is not one testimony among many but the frame within which every other testimony is measured.

The four qualities

Every planet's nature is built from the four primary qualities, hot and cold, moist and dry: the physical causes by which the heavens act on the sublunar world. Heat generates and separates; cold binds and condenses; moisture softens and joins; dryness hardens and divides. From these mixtures follow benefic and malefic. The two benefics, Jupiter and Venus, are temperately warm and moist, and so preserve and bestow; the two malefics, Saturn and Mars, hold an excess of cold or of heat joined to a parching dryness, and so constrain and destroy. Yet the verdict is never absolute: a well-conditioned malefic builds and disciplines, and an afflicted benefic indulges and dissipates. Mercury is mixed by definition, benefic with the benefics, malefic with the malefics.

The seven natures

The Sun (), hot and moderately dry, the diurnal luminary and source of the life-giving heat. It signifies honour, rank and the governing principle of the life, and the father. Well dignified and in sect it confers natural authority and visible achievement; afflicted or in its fall, a dimmed light, recognition struggled for or authority misused. Because it also burns, a planet drawn within about eight degrees is rendered combust, its significations obscured.

The Moon (), cold and moist, the nocturnal luminary, significator of the body, the feelings, the mother and the early years. Strong by phase and sign it gives a sound constitution and a feeling nature in harmony with its circumstances; afflicted or waning to nothing, an unsettled inner life and a body prone to flux. As the swiftest body it gathers the light of every planet it applies to, and so threads the whole figure together.

Saturn (), cold and dry in the extreme, the greater malefic; of the day sect, doing least harm by day and most by night. It contracts, delays and binds, and signifies time, limit, labour and endurance. Well conditioned and in sect it gives gravity, patience and structural mastery, the capacity to build slowly and hold what is built; debilitated or out of sect, heaviness, fear, isolation and want.

Jupiter (), temperately hot and moist, the most balanced mixture and the greater benefic; most generous by day. It enlarges, preserves and bestows, and signifies increase, fortune, patronage, faith and higher learning. Well placed it confers good fortune and breadth of vision; out of sect or in its fall it overreaches, a reach exceeding its grasp, abundance turned to extravagance.

Mars (), hot and dry in the extreme, the lesser malefic; of the night sect, doing least harm by night. It cuts, divides and forces, and signifies strife, courage, iron and desire. In sect it gives decisive courage and drive, violence disciplined into useful force; out of sect or in its fall, rashness, reckless haste, the cutting that wounds where it should heal.

Venus (), moist and temperately warm, gentle and joining, the lesser benefic; most graceful by night. She joins, softens and adorns, and signifies love, beauty, concord and pleasure. Well dignified she confers a gift for harmony and attachment and the favour of others; afflicted, difficulty with attachment and pleasure pursued to no profit.

Mercury (), dry but variable, the one planet without a fixed temper, taking the nature of whatever it is joined to; its sect likewise mixed. It governs reason, speech and exchange, the rational soul, judgement, language and commerce. Well dignified and clear of the beams it gives keen reasoning and clean communication; combust or debilitated, a mind sharp but ill-governed. Because it is never far from the Sun, it is the planet most often hidden under the beams.

Part II

The Signs & the Houses

The zodiac and the twelve places

If the seven planets are the actors, the zodiac is the stage on which they move and the twelve places are the scenes into which it is divided. A planet takes its quality from the sign it occupies and its topic from the place it falls into. The sign tells how a planet behaves; the place tells where its working is felt.

The tropical zodiac

The zodiac is divided into twelve signs of thirty degrees, completing the circle of 360. Ptolemy measures these not from the fixed stars but from the moving points of the seasons: the first degree of Aries is set at the vernal equinox, where day first equals night. This is the tropical zodiac, anchored to the turning-points of the Sun's annual path, the zodiac this app computes. The sign names a thirty-degree quality of season rather than a picture in the stars.

The four elements & triplicities

The twelve signs are distributed among the four elements; because each element claims three signs spaced four apart, each set of three is a triplicity whose signs stand in trine. Each is governed by a college of rulers, a day lord, a night lord and a participating co-ruler, and which is in office depends on the sect of the chart. The triplicity lords show the support a matter draws across the three thirds of life; a significator holding its own triplicity is granted a steady, structural strength even where it lacks domicile or exaltation.

• Fire, Aries, Leo, Sagittarius: hot and dry, vehement, of the choleric humour.
• Earth, Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn: cold and dry, dense and retentive, of the melancholic humour.
• Air, Gemini, Libra, Aquarius: hot and moist, light and communicative, of the sanguine humour.
• Water, Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces: cold and moist, yielding and receptive, of the phlegmatic humour.

The three modes

Crossing the four elements is a division into three modes, each claiming four signs. Where the triplicity gives a sign its substance, the mode gives it its manner of action. Cardinal (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) initiate, the signs on which the seasons turn. Fixed (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius) consolidate, the height of each season, holding and making durable. Mutable (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces) adapt, each season's close, partaking of two natures at once. Every sign is read as a marriage of the two divisions: Aries is cardinal fire, quick to begin; Scorpio is fixed water, unyielding in purpose.

The ruler is the sign's domicile lord, most at home there and most able to act on its own authority; the exaltation names the planet honoured there as an esteemed guest, raised to act with heightened, though borrowed, dignity. These rulerships are the first and strongest of the essential dignities, treated in Part III.

The twelve places

The twelve places are fixed to the local horizon and counted by whole sign from the Ascendant: the whole sign rising is the first place, the next sign in order the second, and so on, each place coinciding with one entire sign. They differ first in strength by their relation to the angles. The angular places (1st, 10th, 7th, 4th) are the most powerful and bring their matters to pass soonest; the succedent (2nd, 5th, 8th, 11th) hold and consolidate; the cadent (3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th) fall away from the angles and are weakest. Each planet also owns one place where it most rejoices, its house of joy.

Ptolemy himself reads many topics chiefly from the planetary significators and the angles, wealth through the Lot of Fortune, rank through the lights and the Midheaven. The full twelve-place topical grid above is the common-Hellenistic synthesis later authors built on that foundation. The app honours both: the place names its topic, while the significators and the lord of the place carry the verdict.

Part III

Aspects, Lots & Dignity

Configurations, parts, and condition

Three instruments weigh a nativity once the planets, signs and places are set. Configuration, how the planets see one another across the wheel. Essential dignity, how strongly each stands to act on its own authority. And the Lots, derived points read like the degree of a planet. Aspect, dignity and Lot together turn a list of positions into a judgement.

The five configurations

Ptolemy admits four figures by which one part of the zodiac beholds another, and the tradition adds the conjunction for five in all. Each is taken by whole sign: it is the signs that see, and the planets within them that deliver the seeing. Two planets in signs joined by no figure cannot reach each other, a condition called aversion, the negation of aspect.

• Conjunction (), 0°, same sign. Neutral; takes its quality wholly from what is joined. Benefic with benefic doubles the fortune; malefic with malefic doubles the damage.
• Sextile (), 60°, two signs, complementary elements. The lesser harmonious figure: mild, supporting, the aspect of cultivated skill and opportunity that must be taken up.
• Square (), 90°, three signs, contrary quality and sex. The more active of the harsh figures: friction, effort, action carried under strain.
• Trine (), 120°, four signs, one element. The most favourable: benefit flowing without contest; its very ease is its weakness.
• Opposition (), 180°, six signs. The most openly discordant: contention and division, the matter brought fully to light, often by an outward force.

The classical aspects, worked in full — each configuration with its figure, its classical reading and its modern sense, plus reception and the light between planets →

Application, separation & orbs

An aspect is a regime with a past and a future, read from the motion of the swifter planet toward the slower. While the faster planet approaches the exact degree the contact is applying, rising in force; once past, it is separating, spent. A tight applying aspect outweighs a wide one of the same figure. An aspect exact to the degree is partile; one within the allowed margin but not exact is platic. That margin is the orb, and it belongs to the planets themselves: each carries its own, and the half of it, the moiety, is what it contributes to a contact. The Sun's orb is widest at 17°, the Moon's 12½°, Jupiter's 12°, Saturn's 10°, Venus's 8°, Mars and Mercury 7½° each.

Combustion, cazimi & under the beams

The Sun's nearness is a power apart from aspect. A planet within about eight degrees of the Sun is combust, burned by the solar ray, its signification obscured and suppressed. Yet at the very centre the rule reverses: a planet within seventeen minutes of the Sun's exact degree is cazimi, in the heart of the Sun, fortified and made to act with kingly authority, the strongest accidental dignity a planet may receive. Between the two lies under the beams (within about 15°): weakened and dimmed, able to act but not freely. The heliacal doctrine is Ptolemy's; the precise orbs are refinements of the later Arabic tradition.

Essential dignity

Where aspect shows which planets a significator talks to, dignity shows how strongly it stands to act on its own authority in the sign it occupies. Ptolemy sets down five essential dignities in descending grade, and the tradition assigns each a weight so a planet's total strength may be summed. Against these stand the debilities: detriment, the sign opposite domicile; fall, the sign opposite exaltation. A planet holding none of the five and neither debility is peregrine, a wanderer without authority. Where several dignities gather on one planet it rides in its chariot; by summing grades across the Ascendant, the lights and the Lot of Fortune, the tradition finds the almuten of a place.

The Egyptian terms

The terms, or bounds, divide each sign not into equal parts but into five unequal segments, each governed by one of the five non-luminous planets, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury. The Sun and Moon never rule a term. Sixty bounds in all divide the zodiac, and a planet within its own bound earns the +2 wherever else it stands. The app follows the Egyptian set of terms, the scheme Ptolemy reports in his chapter on the disposition of the terms, and a deliberate, recorded departure from Ptolemy's own table. In Aries: Jupiter rules 0°–6°, Venus 6°–12°, Mercury 12°–20°, Mars 20°–25°, Saturn 25°–30°. The other eleven signs each carry their own ordering, no two alike.

The Lots, Fortune & Spirit

The Lots, called by the Arabs the Parts, are sensitive points constructed by measuring the arc between two significators and projecting it onward from the Ascendant. They are not bodies but calculated places, read by the sign that holds them, the place they fall in, and above all the condition of the Lot's lord. The chief is the Lot of Fortune (): by day the arc from the Sun to the Moon laid off from the Ascendant, Fortune = Asc + Moon − Sun, and reversed by night. Fortune is the Lot of the body and the material life: the fortune one is given rather than chosen. Its mirror is the Lot of Spirit (), the same arc reversed, the soul in action, the works one sets in motion. Fortune and Spirit divide the life into what is given and what is undertaken.