Feral

Definition

A planet is feral when, in the sign it occupies, it receives no Ptolemaic aspect — no conjunction, sextile, square, trine, or opposition — from any other planet. The Latin words for it are agrestis ("rustic") and ferinus ("wild"). The medieval Arabic-Latin tradition keeps this condition separate from void of course, because a feral planet may still have just left an aspect behind, or be moving toward one, across a sign-boundary.

In Tradition

In Western traditional and horary practice, a feral planet is read as noticeably weakened: with none of the connecting threads that aspects provide, it cannot talk to the rest of the chart and reads as isolated, idiosyncratic, or unable to bring its themes into useful contact with the other signifying planets. Astrologers agree the condition is a real handicap; they differ on whether to count only the Ptolemaic aspects or the minor aspects too.

In Practice

To find a feral planet, you check each planet's aspects within its sign-boundaries: if no other planet aspects it through the five Ptolemaic configurations within the accepted orb, the planet is flagged as feral. In a horary question, a feral significator is read as unable to move the matter forward through the usual connecting channels. In a birth chart, a feral planet is read as expressing its themes in a self-contained, sometimes idiosyncratic way — someone with this placement may find that planet's themes harder to fold into ordinary give-and-take with other people. The condition matters most for the Moon and for planets acting as the main significators.

Historical Origin

The doctrine appears in the medieval Arabic-Latin tradition: Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae (Vol XI Tract III) preserves Alchabitius's definition that a planet alone in its sign and unaspected is "Feral or Rustic" (agrestis), and Al-Biruni's Tafhim §504-511 carries the parallel "field is empty" framing. Lilly fixed the doctrine for the English horary tradition in Christian Astrology (1647), and modern traditional revival keeps it through Frawley and Louis.

Etymology

Origin: Latin. Meaning: From ferus (wild, untamed) — the planet runs wild, unconnected to its companions.

Further Reading