Diurnal Chart

dy-ER-nuhl

Definition

A diurnal chart is a day chart — one where the Sun was above the horizon when you were born. In practice that means the Sun sits in one of the six houses above the horizon line (houses 7 through 12 when you count by whole signs). Its opposite is the nocturnal chart, where the Sun is below the horizon. This day-or-night split is called sect (Greek hairesis, "choice" or "faction").

In Tradition

In Hellenistic astrology, a chart's sect sorts the planets into those that are in-sect (better supported) and those that are out-of-sect. In a day chart the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn are in sect; the Moon, Venus, and Mars are out of sect; Mercury follows its phase, joining the day side when it is a morning star. A day chart treats Jupiter as the favoured helpful planet, and Mars — being out of sect — as the harder of the two difficult ones.

In Practice

Astrologers usually settle a chart's sect first, before weighing any planet, because sect colours nearly everything that comes after — which planets rule the elements (triplicity rulership), the formula for the Lot of Fortune (which flips by sect), how help and harm between planets are read, and the overall reading of the helpful and difficult planets. In a day chart the Sun leads as the daytime light; Jupiter, the in-sect helpful planet, gives its gifts more freely; Saturn, though a difficult planet, is "in sect" and reads as more orderly than destructive; and Mars, the out-of-sect difficult planet, usually shows up as the more disruptive of the two. Sect also matters for timing techniques: the day sequence of the firdaria, a planetary-period method, opens with the Sun, and the day order of the triplicity rulers is the one used for element-based calculations.

Historical Origin

The day/night distinction is among the oldest pieces of the Hellenistic system, covered in Dorotheus of Sidon's Carmen Astrologicum (1st century CE), Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos (2nd century CE), and Valens' Anthologiae (c. 145-175 CE). The Arabic astrologers preserved it; it gradually faded in later Western practice, then was recovered in the late-20th-century traditional revival.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading