|
There are five essential dignities, not two, and the difference is the whole of today. The Moon holds Leo for the entire day, eleven degrees along it by midday UTC, and she holds none of the five. Nine percent of her face is lit.
|
|
Domicile and exaltation are the two most people meet first. Beneath them sit three more. Triplicity assigns rulers to the elements rather than to the signs. Bound divides a single sign into unequal stretches, each with a ruler of its own. Face cuts it into three equal sections of ten degrees. A planet holding any one of the five has some standing to trade on. A planet holding none of them is peregrine, and that word means nothing more dramatic than a column of zeroes.
|
|
Triplicity is the odd one out, because it depends on whether it is day or night. Each element was given three rulers, a diurnal one, a nocturnal one, and a third participating in both, so the same planet in the same sign can be dignified at midnight and not at noon. Water belongs to the Moon by night. Leo is fire. Abu Ma’shar, working in ninth century Baghdad, is among the writers who set these tables out in full.
|
|
The point of the ladder was arithmetic. You added up what a planet held and subtracted what worked against it, and the number told you how much weight to give whatever it signified. Which is how the tradition could call a planet weak without saying a word about whether the outcome would be good. She is at zero today, in fire, in the other light’s house, with a ninth of her light left. Three nights from the dark.
|
|
