Table of Dignities

Definition

A table of dignities is a reference chart that lists, for every degree of the zodiac, which planet holds each of the five essential dignities — domicile (the sign a planet rules), exaltation, triplicity (which varies by day or night chart), bound or term (Ptolemaic, Egyptian, or Chaldean), and face or decan. It lets you see at a glance how dignified any planet is at any degree, and makes it easy to find the almuten — the most-dignified planet — of any point. Lilly's Christian Astrology (1647) gives the standard printed table; Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae carries the medieval Latin version.

In Tradition

Across the Hellenistic, medieval Arabic, and early-modern Latin traditions, the five-fold dignity table is the basic reference for reading a chart the traditional way. Bonatti, Lilly, and the Project Hindsight translations of Hellenistic sources treat it as the everyday working tool of horary, electional, and birth-chart practice. Modern Western traditional-revival authors — Lehman, Brennan, Crane, Hand — keep the table; modern psychological practice consults it less directly but acknowledges how foundational it is.

In Practice

In horary or traditional birth-chart work, you look up any planet at its degree and read off its essential-dignity score. A planet in its own domicile or exaltation is read as carrying out what it stands for strongly and well; a planet in detriment or fall is read as struggling to deliver. Bonatti's scaled scoring — 5-4-3-2-1 for domicile, exaltation, triplicity, term, and face, drawn from Alchabitius — adds up to give an almuten figure. Whether you use the day/night triplicity version (three rulers per element, split between day and night) and which term table you pick — Ptolemaic, Egyptian, or Chaldean — varies from one practitioner to the next. Even astrologers who use whole-sign houses still turn to the same dignity table to read what a planet's sign means.

Historical Origin

The five-fold essential-dignity scheme is canonical in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos I (2nd century CE), formalized in Dorotheus's Carmen Astrologicum, and carried through the Arabic-Latin tradition — Albumasar, Alchabitius, and Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae (Tractate II, Part II) all give per-sign tables of the five dignities. Lilly's Christian Astrology (1647) prints the standard English table that later Western practitioners have used; Lee Lehman's Essential Dignities (1989) and Brennan's Hellenistic Astrology restore the doctrine to modern Western practice.

Further Reading

  • William Lilly, Christian Astrology Book I (1647)
  • Guido Bonatti, Liber Astronomiae (Project Hindsight Vols VII-VIII)
  • Lee Lehman, Essential Dignities