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8th – 11th century · Baghdad, Balkh, Khwārazm

Perso-Arabic

Inherited the Greek and Persian material and systematised it — degrees of dignity scored, aspects weighed by applying and separating, every judgement built up from parts that can be named. The most procedural of the five.

Who wrote it down

The authors are long out of copyright. Almost every English text of them is not — a modern translation is a living work of scholarship owned by its translator. So Jade paraphrases and names the chapter, and quotes directly only where an English text is itself in the public domain. Two of the nineteen sources are.

  • Abū Maʿshar al-Balkhī

    787 – 886

    Kitāb al-Madkhal al-Kabīr · Arabic

    Turned inherited doctrine into a reasoned system, and through its Latin translation set the terms for four centuries of European astrology.

    paraphrase only

  • Māshāʾallāh ibn Atharī

    c. 740 – 815

    On Reception, and the astrological works · Arabic

    The clearest early writer on reception — what it means when two planets are in each other’s places rather than merely looking at each other.

    paraphrase only

  • Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī

    973 – 1048

    Kitāb al-Tafhīm · Arabic

    A sceptic writing a textbook: states each doctrine precisely and then says which authorities disagree, which is why it is the best single index of the tradition.

    paraphrase only

What each planet meant

Three answers for each: what this tradition took the planet to be, what it takes the planet to do, and what it makes of somebody born with it strongly placed. The third is the one that differs most between traditions, and the one a reading is built from.

  • Sun

    is
    The king of the planets, whose nearness burns and whose place confers rank on whatever stands there.
    does
    Dignifies, and consumes. A planet close to it is combust — present in the chart and unable to act.
    in a nativity
    Abū Maʿshar reads the Sun for standing granted rather than standing claimed, and weighs it against the lord of the rising sign: strong Sun with a weak ruler is somebody with authority they cannot actually spend.

  • Moon

    is
    The quickest significator, and the one the tradition watches most closely because it is the one that arrives first.
    does
    Applies and separates. Its next contact is read as what happens next, and the one it just left as what has just been settled.
    in a nativity
    Read for the body’s temper and for what it applies to next — the tradition’s clearest single idea. What the Moon is moving toward describes what somebody is about to do, which is not the same as what they are.

  • Saturn

    is
    The greater infortune, cold and dry, significator of age, of depth, of land, and of everything slow.
    does
    Withholds and delays — and confers, on whatever survives the delay.
    in a nativity
    Cold, dry and slow, and the Arabic writers give it the long view: what Saturn signifies arrives at the end of a process. A strong Saturn is not an easy life, it is a life whose late part is the substantial one.

  • Jupiter

    is
    The greater fortune, and the significator of law, of teaching, and of the kind of wealth that arrives through other people’s good opinion.
    does
    Prospers whatever it receives, in proportion to how well it is placed to do so.
    in a nativity
    The most generous significator and the one the tradition warns about hardest, because enlargement without judgement is just excess. Strong Jupiter means somebody is trusted; whether that trust is warranted is read elsewhere.

  • Mars

    is
    The lesser infortune, hot and dry, strong in its own places and dangerous chiefly when it has no dignity at all.
    does
    Cuts, and takes by force what is not given.
    in a nativity
    Hot and dry, and the Arabic material cares less whether that is bad than whether the chart can absorb it. Mars with somewhere to work is craft; Mars with nowhere to work is the same force turned inward.

  • Venus

    is
    The lesser fortune, governing ornament, music, agreement and the pleasant forms of exchange.
    does
    Reconciles. It makes parties willing.
    in a nativity
    Read for concord — what somebody can hold together, including people who would not otherwise be in the same room. Strained, the same faculty becomes an inability to let a disagreement stay a disagreement.

  • Mercury

    is
    The scribe, taking the nature of its companions and of the sign it stands in more completely than any other planet.
    does
    Transmits, and alters slightly in transmitting.
    in a nativity
    Takes the complexion of whatever it stands beside, so the tradition weighs it last, after everything else is settled. The intelligence is real; its direction is borrowed from the strongest testimony near it.

  • Rahu

    is
    The Head of the Dragon — where the Moon crosses north over the ecliptic, and where eclipses happen.
    does
    Increases whatever it joins, without discrimination and without a limit of its own.
    in a nativity
    The ascending node, taken as an amplifier that adds no judgement of its own. The counsel is to establish what it is amplifying before asking whether the amplification is welcome.

  • Ketu

    is
    The Tail of the Dragon, the southern crossing — the other end of the same axis.
    does
    Diminishes and detaches.
    in a nativity
    The descending node, read as separation and as expertise arrived at by subtraction — somebody is unusually good at a thing they have stopped wanting credit for.