Al-Qata'

al-kah-TAH

Definition

Al-qata' (Arabic for "cutting") is the horary term for a particular way a question fails. Two planets are slowly moving toward an aspect that would settle the matter, when a third planet completes its own aspect to one of them first — "cutting off" the light that was carrying the connection, so the matter never finishes. The Latin equivalents are abscissio and prohibitio, which English horary renders as "cutting off the light" and "prohibition"; the Arabic word puts the stress on the cutting itself.

In Tradition

In Arabic and medieval Latin horary work, al-qata' is read as one of the main things that stop a question from "perfecting" — coming to completion — alongside refranation (one of the two key planets turns retrograde) and frustration (the slower planet finishes an aspect elsewhere first). Sahl, Masha'allah, Bonatti, and Lilly treat the cutting event as a clear "no," not as a vague signal: the astrologer judges that the matter will not come about along the path the chart first indicated.

In Practice

First you identify the two significators — the ruler of the Ascendant standing for the person asking, the ruler of the topic's house standing for the thing asked about — and confirm they are applying toward an aspect. Then you look for any faster planet whose own aspect to one of them will complete before that aspect does. If one exists, the cut-off is set: the question is judged void, or redirected by the planet that interfered. The cutting planet's house rulership, dignity, and sect point to the person or circumstance behind the obstruction — a malefic in poor shape reads as a hard block, while a benefic in its own sect may mean only a soft delay that later resolves through translation of light (a third planet ferrying the connection across). Al-qata' is weighed against reception, exaltation rescue, and translation of light before any final judgment, and it is told apart from refranation and frustration by where the obstruction comes from.

Historical Origin

The doctrine runs down the Arabic-Latin horary chain — Sahl ibn Bishr, Masha'allah, Abu Ma'shar, and Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae (13th c., Vol XI Part III, Ch XII on "Return of the Light and its Abscission") — into William Lilly's Christian Astrology (1647). Bonatti's worked Sun-Saturn-Jupiter example sets the technique out in full.

Further Reading