Ruling planets - sigh

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I have two absurdly naive questions.

1) Is the ruling planet that which rules the sun sign or the ascendant?

Every source I look at seems to have a different opinion. Are the people who refer to the Sun sign ruler simply being 'sloppy'?

2) What EXACTLY does 'ruling planet' mean (apart from the obvious)?

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Hi Fish,

Sometimes the jargon gets in the way of the thinking and sometimes English doesn't quite convey the original meanings. Astrology jargon needs to be approached with care.

1) Is the ruling planet that which rules the sun sign or the ascendant?
Depends on what it rules. In traditional astrology there are five essential dignities, domicile (also called "rulership"), exaltation, triplicity, term, and face. Each planet is assigned to one or more of those dignities for a variety of reasons that I won't get into. So The Moon is the ruler, or, more correctly, the domicile ruler of Cancer, Jupiter is the exaltation ruler of Cancer. Depending on whether the chart is a day chart or a night chart, Venus or the Moon is the triplicity ruler of Cancer. Term and face depend on degrees.

If Cancer is on the ASC, the the Moon is the "ruling planet" of the ASC. Jupiter is the exaltation ruler of the ASC, etc.

The word "rulership" is also used frequently when "dispositor" is more accurate. So if Venus is in Cancer, some would use the phrase, "Venus is ruled by the Moon." Actually Venus is disposited by the Moon, i.e. Venus is influenced by the Moon. She is not necessarily dominated by it This is what I mean when I say that jargon gets in the way of thinking.
2) What EXACTLY does 'ruling planet' mean (apart from the obvious)?
If Jupiter is in Aries, Mars rules Jupiter or disposits it. It means that Mars has influence over Jupiter in that chart. Since modern astrologers rarely use essential dignities other than domicile rulership, this is as far as it usually goes. A traditional astrologer would also take into consideration the Sun, the exaltation ruler of Aries, when determining what it is that Jupiter is doing in that chart particularly if Jupiter is in aspect to the Sun.

Jupiter in Aries is different than Jupiter in Taurus because Mars is different than Venus. Jupiter in Sagittarius is about as Jupiterian as he can get and he is therefore free to be himself as other influences will be minimal. A planet in domicile is often referred to as "independent."

Finally the more dignities of its own it is in, the more a planet is like itself. Jupiter is generous and noble in Sagittarius whereas in Aries he is somewhat more self centered as this is a Mars characteristic. He's still Jupiter, but he's not all he could be.

I hope this helps.

Tom

Ruler of the horoscope

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Hi all,

I can add some information here, using my 25 yrs of experience as a "natal" astrologer. I will present the radix of a client of mine some weeks ago. I corrected her horoscope using 32 events in life and they correspond to within some days difference in the calculations, using secondary progressions according to the minut-1-system.
Image
The indicated squares are the "ruler" here. Most of the time the ruler is not simply 1 planet. Usually it is the planet that is (a) strongest in the horoscope or (b) having the greatest influence.

(a) strongest, you can determine this by using the essential and accidental dignities for each planet.
(b) greatest influence, you can determine by counting all aspect that each planet makes, not forgeting parallels of declination, like here below of the same client:
Image
In BLUE there is the sum of all aspects each planet makes.

Then you look at the horoscope and see if the planet with the greatest number of aspects is also dignified. Most of the time you can determine the ruler of the complete horoscope that way.

Here in this case, I had a two hours talk with the client using the progressions of the last 10 years. Each time something important happened, one or more of those 5 planets were involved and here is the surprise.....
All bad things were mostly indicated by the so-called "good" aspects, like trine or sextile. Why?
Because Mars is working extremely negative squaring all those 4 planets in the cardinal 4th house, having great influence on her family life, and the relationwith her husband who betrayed her.
Too much details of course for the discussion here, this only 1 example of using a "constellation" as ruler of the horoscope.

Good luck to you all. - John

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Hi to everyone

I am new to the forum. I think this thread seems to be related to a question I wanted to ask. I know a little about astrology but have recently found out about the almuten figure in a natal chart. Is this more important than the chart ruler as is is stronger? In my chart it is Saturn at 8 degrees Aquarius in the fourth house, my IC is in Capricorn. I have never been able to identify with rather negative interpretation of Capricorn 4th house cusp or Saturn in the fourth so my question is: Does the fact that a planet scores high in dignities (in my own chart 8 essential and 17 accidental using Lilly) make a big difference to how one experiences a planet's energy in the chart?

Thanks Marilu

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Hi All,

I think that just the determination of the almuten is not enough. It sure is an indication of the "strength" of the planet in the horoscope, but you must always look at all the contacts that planet is making through the aspects with other planets. It is the only way the planet can express his energy or "share" his energy with other planets.
An almuten with a "high score" but with no aspects at all is useless. It is just like a perfect singer in a band but without any audience to hear him, without any record label to do something for him. He can only "live on his own" so for the native this will be a useless planet.

The more contacts a planet has, the more he can perform for the native, and also the more he can destroy, depending on the kind of aspect and house placement.

Good luck here..... John

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I know a little about astrology but have recently found out about the almuten figure in a natal chart. Is this more important than the chart ruler as is is stronger? In my chart it is Saturn at 8 degrees Aquarius in the fourth house, my IC is in Capricorn. I have never been able to identify with rather negative interpretation of Capricorn 4th house cusp or Saturn in the fourth so my question is: Does the fact that a planet scores high in dignities (in my own chart 8 essential and 17 accidental using Lilly) make a big difference to how one experiences a planet's energy in the chart?
Planetary strength and almuten aren't related. Let's start with the definitions.

The almuten is the planet that has the most essential dignities (using a generally accepted point system) in a particular degree of the zodiac. In most cases this is the same as the domicile ruler of the sign we are examining. But it is not always the case particularly in Libra. So at 8 degrees Aquarius, Saturn will be the almuten as well as the domicile ruler as he has dignity by domicile rulership and in a day chart he will also have rulership by triplicity. No planet is stronger at 8 Aquarius than Saturn. I don't think any planet other than Saturn can be almuten of anything in Aquarius; although Mercury can be very influential

Let's look at day chart at 5 Libra. Venus is the domicile ruler, but Saturn is the exaltation ruler, triplicity ruler and term ruler. He has more dignities than Venus, so he is almuten of this degree.

Notice two things: one, this has nothing to do with accidental dignity, and two, it tells us nothing of the strength of the planet in the chart. Saturn may be almuten of the ASC, but if he is retrograde in Aries, he is very, very weak.

Essential planetary strength means the planet can "act" like itself. Saturn in Aquarius is very Saturnine. In Aries he is way out place with all that fire and cannot act in the deliberate manner in which he functions best. If in Aries he has lots of accidental dignity, such as he's located on the MC, it only means he can do lots of damage in that area of life, if the native isn't careful.

Medieval Arab astrologers are the ones who came up with this idea. They loved to play with numbers. I suppose it has some merit, but I've never had a satisfactory answer to the question, OK so now we know its the almuten of this or that house, what do we do with it?

An almuten with a "high score" but with no aspects at all is useless. It is just like a perfect singer in a band but without any audience to hear him, without any record label to do something for him. He can only "live on his own" so for the native this will be a useless planet.
Sounds like a Noel Tylism. [I have to retract this. Tyl teaches that unaspected planets are very influential in the chart. This is the concept he used to hijack the term "peregrine"]I have a hard time believing that, say Jupiter in Sagittarius in the first is useless, if he makes no aspects. I know modern astrologers place a great deal of importance on aspects, but planets can and do have enormous effects on houses, for good or for ill, with or without aspects.

One example: Author Jack London had an unaspected Mercury in Aquarius in the 9th. It would be hard to argue that he had no audience.

Tom

Jack London

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Hi there,

If one takes a closer look at the horoscope of Jack London (12-01-1876; 2pm; San Francisco) you will be surprised to see this:
Image
This is absolutely no unaspected Mercury in H9. Furthermore there is a highly strong trine to his gemini Ascendant, so the ruler of his Ascendant is supporting with a trine!

If you take a look at the aspects, you will see:
Image
There are two important parallels of declination to his Sun and his Ascendant which stronly support his faculties. This makes a total of 5 aspects for Mercury.

One can hardly say this is an unaspected Mercury.

John

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The Ascendant, Moon's nodes and Part of Fortune are mathematically derived points. They aren't physical bodies, so they only receive aspects rather than make them. With Mercury square ASC the ASC is receiving the aspect of Mercury, but Mercury gets nothing from the ASC. In delineation that means that Mercury influences the ASC, but the ASC does not influence Mercury. And certainly a semi-sextile to the Part of Fortune is stretching things concerning what could possibly be meaningful in a chart! The use of the semi-sextile only goes to show that you will rarely find an unaspected planet if all the aspects mankind has thought up are used. And the whole thing fluctuates with the orbs you use. There are better ways to use one's astrological time.

About Neptune: there are those of us who treat the invisible outers differently ? or ignore them completely. Another reason why the matter of unaspected planets is a potential waste of time. It all depends on the planets ? or Chiron, or asteroids ? you use.

And ?useless? planets? They are in the chart, so they have their job to do. A planet ruling the ASC and located in the ASC or MC is definitely busy. Even a planet ruling the cadent 3rd house and located in the cadent 6th has tasks to do and probably manages to do them at least somewhat.

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My post concerned the last remark of Tom the Jack London about the "unaspected Mercury" in H9 which clearly isn't true to my opinion.
We are here in "Nativities & General Astrology", not in traditional astrology, nor in Horary Astrology.
So the use of Neptune isn't strange here and also the use of some minor aspects isn't strange if you allow a reasonable conservative orb of 1-2 degrees for those minors.

So for me, all aspects of Mercury are valid in this example, although we could argue about the orb to the ASC of 6 degrees which is on the edge of what we can allow, regarding Mercury in a cadent house.

The discussion was never about "unaspected" planets here, the original question was about the ruling planet for which I gave just an example and I argued that for a planet to be a "ruler" of the horoscope, that planet must always have aspects with other planets in order to give or share its energy. The more aspects the better, even with bad aspects.

Regards... John