Besieged

Definition

A planet is besieged when it is hemmed in within one sign, caught between two other planets by degree. Most often the two flanking planets are the malefics — the harsh planets — Saturn and Mars; Bonatti calls this "evil-besieging," obsidio mala in his Latin. It can also happen between the two benefics, the gentle planets Jupiter and Venus, which Bonatti names "good-besieging," or veneratio. Either way the reading depends on sign-context: both flanking planets and the trapped planet must share the same sign.

In Tradition

In Western traditional and horary practice, besiegement is treated as a condition of position-strength that sits alongside a planet's essential dignity. Bonatti separates evil-besieging — between two malefics, a weakening that hems in how the trapped planet can express itself — from good-besieging, or veneration, between two benefics, a fortifying enclosure. Lilly fixed the doctrine for the English horary tradition, reading malefic besiegement as the mark of a planet held under continuous adverse pressure.

In Practice

To find the besieged condition, you check whether the trapped planet sits in the same sign as both flanking planets and falls between them by degree, with no other planet wedged in between. When Saturn and Mars besiege the Moon, the ruler of the Ascendant, or the planet signifying the question, a horary astrologer treats it as a serious affliction; the same setup in a birth chart marks themes of constraint or hard circumstance around whatever that planet signifies. The reverse holds for Jupiter and Venus: their besiegement of a planet is read as a favourable enclosure that helps the matter turn out well.

Historical Origin

The doctrine is set out in the medieval Arabic-Latin tradition by Bonatti (Liber Astronomiae, 13th century — Vol XI Tractate III, on Veneration as good-besiegement and Evil-Besieging as bad-besiegement, in the Project Hindsight / Robert Hand translation line). Lilly's Christian Astrology (1647) preserves it in English and remains the standard reference for horary practitioners. Modern traditional-revival authors, Frawley and Louis among them, carry the framing forward.

Further Reading