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Every planet has a sign where it is honored, and one degree inside that sign where the honor is counted exact. The Moon’s degree is three of Taurus, and she crosses it this evening by UTC, a few hours after entering the sign at 14:41. Taurus is her exaltation. It is the first essential dignity she has held since the sixth of September, three weeks of moving through signs that gave her nothing or worse.
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The scheme assigns each of the seven a sign and a number. The Sun is exalted at nineteen degrees of Aries, Mercury at fifteen of Virgo, Venus at twenty seven of Pisces, Mars at twenty eight of Capricorn, Jupiter at fifteen of Cancer, Saturn at twenty one of Libra. The list appears in Ptolemy, in second century Alexandria, and it survives almost unaltered into the seventeenth century handbooks. The degrees themselves are older than the Greek sources that record them, and where they came from has never been settled.
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Exaltation is not ownership. Domicile is: a planet in its own sign acts on its own authority, answerable to nobody. Exaltation is nearer to being a guest of rank, credited with more standing than the guest strictly holds, which is why some of the older writers treated an exalted planet as overpraised rather than simply strong. The Moon in Taurus was read as steady, retentive, slow to shift position. She keeps the sign until Wednesday afternoon, which is two days of being credited with rather more than she owns.
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