Degrees Which Increase Fortune
Definition
The degrees which increase fortune are a per-sign list of single benefic degrees, the favourable counterpart to the azemene degrees that mark chronic disease. When a significator — typically the lord of the house in question, the Moon, or the Lot of Fortune — falls on one of these catalogued degrees, the matter it signifies is strengthened or turned to the good. Bonatti gives the doctrine as a sign-by-sign table, attributes it to the same authorities he cites for the azemene degrees, and treats it as a small degree-level overlay, not a judgment on its own.
In Tradition
In the medieval Arabic-mediated Latin tradition, these degrees work as a fine positive marker layered on top of the usual sign, house, and dignity reading: a significator landing on a fortunate degree augments the affair it governs, just as the inverse azemene degrees mark it for bodily harm. The list is paired explicitly with the azemene table as its opposite, and is meant to be weighed alongside other testimonies rather than read alone.
In Practice
When you judge a topic, first identify the significator for it — the lord of the relevant house, the Moon as a general indicator, or the Lot of Fortune. Find that planet's exact degree within its sign, then check it against the per-sign table of fortunate degrees: Taurus 3, 15, 27; Cancer 1, 2, 3; Leo 2, 5, 7, 19; Scorpio 7, 18, 20; Capricorn 12, 13, 17; Pisces 13, 20, and the like across the remaining signs. If the significator sits on one of its sign's listed degrees, read the affair as augmented or favourably emphasized. Treat the marker as one supporting testimony, set against the significator's wider condition — its dignity, sect, aspects, and house — and against the inverse azemene degrees, so that a single fortunate degree neither overrules a badly afflicted significator nor settles the judgment by itself.
Historical Origin
The doctrine is set out in Guido Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae (c. 1277, Tractate II), where it follows the chapter on the azemene degrees and is attributed to the same authorities Bonatti names there. It is preserved in Robert Hand's Project Hindsight English edition, whose apparatus cross-references William Lilly's Christian Astrology (1647) as continuing the same per-sign benefic-degree list in 17th-century English horary.