Astrology glossary

The vocabulary of the tradition, explained in the same language Efémeris uses in its readings.

Angular / succedent / cadent: Houses 1, 4, 7, and 10 are angular: what happens there is visible and carries weight. Succedent houses (2, 5, 8, 11) sustain; cadent houses (3, 6, 9, 12) prepare and remain less prominent.
Applying / separating: An aspect is applying while it is still forming and moving toward exactness; it is separating once exactness has passed. Applying aspects generally carry more weight because they describe what is approaching.
Ascendant: The sign rising over the eastern horizon when you were born. It begins the first house and acts as the helm of the chart: how you enter the world. It changes roughly every two hours, which is why birth time matters.
Aspect: The angle between two celestial bodies: conjunction (0°), sextile (60°), square (90°), trine (120°), or opposition (180°). It describes how they regard one another—in agreement, in tension, or joined together.
Domicile: The sign a planet rules: its own home. Mars in Aries is in domicile, able to act on familiar ground with its full resources.
Exaltation: The sign where a planet is treated as an honored guest. It is not the planet's home, but it receives an especially favorable place: the Sun is exalted in Aries and the Moon in Taurus.
Fixed star: Actual stars such as Regulus, Spica, and Antares, which move very little compared with the planets. When a point in the chart falls upon one, the tradition lends it that star's brilliance or edge.
Houses: Twelve sectors of the local sky counted from the Ascendant. They are the places of life: body, possessions, relationships, and work. Planets describe what is acting; houses describe where.
Lord of the year: The ruler of the house activated by annual profection. It carries particular weight until the next birthday: when a transit contacts that planet, the year's topics are more likely to be activated.
Lot of Spirit: A point calculated from the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant. It concerns what you do with your life—agency and vocation. Its counterpart, the Lot of Fortune, concerns what happens to you.
Luminaries: The Sun and Moon, the two lights. They are not classed with the wandering planets: they are the eyes of the chart. The Sun rules the day and the Moon rules the night.
Lunation: The Moon's cycle with the Sun: new, waxing, full, and waning. Its roughly 29.5-day rhythm marks the movement from beginning and growth to culmination and release.
Orb: The allowed margin around an aspect. A trine need not be exactly 120°: a few degrees before or after still count, and the smaller the orb, the stronger the contact.
Profection: An ancient timing technique in which the chart advances one house from the Ascendant for each year of life. The activated house describes the year's topic, and its ruler becomes the lord of the year.
Retrograde: When a planet appears to move backward from our viewpoint. It does not truly reverse direction; the motion is an effect of perspective. The tradition associates it with review, delay, and a second pass.
Ruler: The planet that governs a sign. Because every house falls in a sign, that sign's ruler administers the house; its placement shows how well the house can carry out its affairs.
Sect: A daytime birth produces a diurnal chart led by the Sun; a nighttime birth produces a nocturnal chart led by the Moon. Each sect has its own benefic—Jupiter by day, Venus by night—and a malefic whose severity is moderated.
Solar return: The exact moment each year when the Sun returns to the degree it occupied at birth. The chart for that instant is a portrait of the new astrological year.
Thema Mundi: The mythical chart for the birth of the world, with Cancer rising. Its arrangement underlies the order of planetary domiciles, unfolding outward from the Sun and Moon.
Transit: A planet in the present sky contacting a point in the natal chart. The sky keeps moving over the snapshot of birth; these contacts are what the dashboard reads each day.
Void of course: The Moon is void of course after making its final aspect in a sign and before entering the next one. The tradition avoids beginning important matters then because what starts may fail to take hold.
Zodiacal releasing: A Hellenistic timing technique that divides a life into chapters from the Lot of Spirit. Level 1 (L1) is the broad chapter, lasting years, and its sign colors the whole period.