Almagest

The library · The dignities

Domicile

a planet standing in the sign or signs it rules

What the tradition reads

Domicile, also called rulership, is the strongest of the five essential dignities the classical astrologers recognised, the condition of a planet standing in a sign it is itself said to govern. Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos sets out the domicile of each of the five visible planets as one solar and one lunar sign, arranged outward on either side of Cancer and Leo, the two signs given whole to the Sun and the Moon; Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn each keep two. Lilly's later scoring in Christian Astrology, recorded in the standard tables of essential dignity, gives domicile the highest weight of the five classical dignities, ahead of exaltation, triplicity, term and face, since a planet at home is read as acting on its own authority rather than as a guest borrowing another's manners. The tradition reads such a placement as that planet's nature least obstructed: its ordinary business conducted plainly, without the strain of a foreign sign or the disgrace of a hostile one. Where a chart shows only one planet so placed, the astrologers read that planet as carrying the clearest and least compromised voice in the whole map, its counsel the one most worth trusting when the rest of the chart is mixed or silent.

The story

The domicile scheme's own logic is set out directly in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos. Cancer and Leo, the two signs nearest the zenith of that latitude and so the warmest, are given whole to the Moon and the Sun, and the solar and lunar semicircles that run from Leo to Capricorn and from Aquarius to Cancer are arranged so that each of the five remaining planets holds one sign in each semicircle, one house configured with the Sun's and one with the Moon's. Those five are then given their signs outward from Cancer and Leo in the order of their spheres: Saturn, cold and furthest from the luminaries, takes the two signs directly opposite them, an opposition Ptolemy says cannot co-operate toward good; Jupiter, beneath Saturn's sphere, takes the next two signs, harmonised by their trine distance; Mars, beneath Jupiter's, takes signs whose distance from the luminaries is injurious and discordant; Venus, beneath Mars, takes fruitful signs in harmonious sextile and is never more than two signs from the Sun; and Mercury, beneath all the rest, is placed nearest both luminaries and is never more than one sign from the Sun. Read this way, a domicile placement is less a reward given from outside than the working out, sign by sign, of a planet's own place in the order of the heavens as the ancients understood it, part of why Lilly's later scoring keeps domicile the single highest of the five essential dignities.

Written from

Corpus key dignity:domicile.