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Ptolemy, writing in second century Alexandria, explains why each planet holds the signs it holds. The Moon spends this morning in Capricorn and crosses into Aquarius at 17:15 UTC, which means she changes address today without leaving the same landlord, and that arrangement is what his account exists to explain. The two lights take one sign each, Cancer for her and Leo for the Sun. The other five take two apiece, working outward. Saturn, farthest from both, ends with the pair standing directly opposite the lights.
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The pairing was never symmetrical. Each planet’s two signs are split by sect, and of Saturn’s two, Aquarius is the day house and Capricorn the night. So at 17:15 UTC a nocturnal planet leaves a nocturnal sign belonging to a diurnal one and enters that same diurnal planet’s day house. The Moon has been inside Saturn’s territory since Saturday morning. She does not leave it until Thursday.
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Sect settled a great deal before an astrologer reached any particular judgment. Whether a chart was cast by day or by night changed which of the two benefics he read as the more helpful, which of the two malefics he treated as the more dangerous, and how much weight the Moon carried at all. Vettius Valens, in the second century, turns on the question constantly. A short void of course runs from 14:31 UTC until she leaves Capricorn, the gap after her last exact aspect in the sign. Aquarius gives her nothing of her own when she arrives.
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