Part of Children

Definition

The Part of Children is one of the Arabic Parts — calculated points, also called Lots — that classical and medieval astrologers used to look at fertility, the number and welfare of children, and the relationship with offspring. Its most-cited version builds the Lot from Jupiter, Saturn, and the Ascendant: Asc + Jupiter − Saturn by day, with the order reversed by night. Bonatti and Lilly catalogue several competing child-Lots — for general fertility, the number of children, the sex of an unborn child, child survival — and traditional practice tests several side by side. It is read together with the 5th house and its ruler.

In Tradition

In medieval Arabic-Persian and Latin practice the Part of Children is the leading precision-significator for 5th-house matters — it sharpens the broader reading you already get from the 5th house and Jupiter. Bonatti, drawing on the Sahl-Masha'allah-'Umar chain of sources, treats it as one of a whole cluster of child-related Lots. The day/night reversal keeps the natural pairing intact: Jupiter, the day benefic of fruitfulness, set against Saturn, the day malefic of barrenness and constraint.

In Practice

You compute the Lot by formula, then read its sign, house, ruling planet, and the aspects to it. That ruler's essential and accidental dignity (its inborn strength and its strength of placement), together with the condition of the birth Jupiter, signal the fertility prospects; the house of the Lot shows the life-context where child themes surface; aspects from benefics suggest ease, aspects from malefics suggest obstruction or loss. The Lot is consulted alongside the 5th house and its ruler, and in horary practice for questions of conception, pregnancy, and a child's welfare. Because the tradition holds several formulas — Bonatti, Tractate II Pars II, catalogues a number of them — practitioners usually read the cluster as a whole rather than leaning on one canonical Lot.

Historical Origin

The Part of Children is recorded in Dorotheus of Sidon's Carmen Astrologicum II.10 (1st century CE) and developed at length in the Arabic transmission through 'Umar al-Tabari, Abu Ma'shar, and Sahl. Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae (c. 1277, Tractate II Pars II Nativities) catalogues the cluster of child-related Lots, and William Lilly's Christian Astrology (1647) preserves the medieval formulae for the early-modern English horary tradition.

Further Reading