Almaverith (Inheritance from the Dead)
Definition
Almaverith is the Latinized form of an Arabic term for inheritance, derived from mawārith / mīrāth (heritage), which Bonatti reports from Alchabitius as a signification of the eighth house. It covers everything passed to heirs after a death, whether from kin or from those unrelated, together with goods and dowries that come by way of women. Bonatti groups it with the eighth house's other meanings of death and the close of life after old age, treating the inherited estate as a distinct topic judged from that house rather than a by-product of the death signification.
In Tradition
The Arabic authorities Bonatti compiles treat the eighth house as the seat of what one receives from the dead, alongside death itself. In Alezdegoz's scheme the three triplicity rulers of the eighth divide its topics, with the third ruler specifically taking the inheritance. The estate is therefore read from the condition of the eighth house and its rulers, not from a single significator, and is weighed together with the eighth's death and partnership meanings.
In Practice
When a chart or a question raises an inheritance, turn to the eighth house and judge it as the place of goods received from the dead. Take the eighth's sign, the planets in it, and above all the planet ruling its cusp, reading that ruler's dignity, sect, and freedom from combustion for the size and security of what is inherited. Apply the triplicity-ruler division if you want to refine the timing: the first ruler of the eighth's triplicity speaks to death, the second to ancient or ancestral goods, and the third to the inheritance proper, with each ruler weighted by where it falls in the natal chart. Include the dowries and goods that come through women, which Bonatti adds in his own voice. Affliction of the eighth or its ruler by Saturn or Mars points to a contested, diminished, or troubled estate; benefic testimony points to an estate gained cleanly. Always read the inheritance alongside the eighth house's death meanings rather than in isolation.
Historical Origin
The term and its eighth-house signification are recorded by Bonatti in Liber Astronomiae, citing Alchabitius (al-Qabisi) and the per-triplicity scheme of Alezdegoz, with Zahel also assigning "whatever is inherited from the dead" to the eighth. Bonatti adds the dowries-and-goods-of-women signification in his own first person, a rare interpolation in his per-house chapters.