← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 118/235
Perfection
Perfection is the horary word for an aspect completing: the moment an applying aspect between two significators becomes exact. Because the significators stand for the person asking and the thing asked about, their meeting stands for the matter coming to pass — the job offered, the meeting held, the lost thing found. Lilly's judgements turn on one question before all others: will the significators perfect, and if so, how?
A horary chart can show a perfection without promising a happy outcome. Perfection says the matter comes about; the nature of the aspect, the planets and their condition say how it feels when it does.
The four ways to perfect
Lilly names four routes by which a matter is brought to perfection:
- By conjunction — the two significators meet in the same degree. The most direct promise.
- By aspect — they come to an exact sextile, square, trine or opposition. A trine or sextile is read as easy; a square as achieved with effort or delay; an opposition as achieved with regret, or in a way the querent may later wish undone.
- By translation of light — a faster planet carries the light from one significator to the other.
- By collection of light — both significators apply to a slower planet that gathers them.
Mutual reception strengthens any of these and, for many authorities, can bring a matter about even when the aspect is a hard one. Many practitioners also give weight to the Moon, co-significator of every question: her next aspect, especially to the ruler of the matter, is often read as the next thing that happens.
How long it takes
The distance still to travel suggests the timing. Lilly counts the degrees the faster significator must move to perfection and turns them into units of time by the nature of the signs and houses involved: moveable (cardinal) signs and angular houses give the shortest units (days), common (mutable) signs and succedent houses middling ones (weeks), fixed signs and cadent houses the longest (months or years). Five degrees to go in a cardinal sign, angular, might be read as about five days. These are conventions to be read with judgement, not a clock.
What prevents it
The tradition is as interested in how a promise fails as in how it is kept. Lilly's main impediments, briefly:
- Prohibition — before the two significators perfect, a third planet reaches one of them first, by body or by aspect, and gets in the way. Something or someone intervenes.
- Refranation — one of the significators turns retrograde at a station before the aspect completes, and draws back. deVore: the matter "will not be brought to a successful conclusion"; often read as someone changing their mind.
- Frustration — the slower significator, before the faster can reach it, perfects an aspect with another planet instead. The matter goes elsewhere. Writers use frustration and prohibition loosely and sometimes interchangeably; both describe a third planet arriving first.
Other conditions weaken a promise without cancelling it outright. Many horary astrologers, though not all, hold that an aspect which perfects only after one of the planets has changed sign does not count, the planet having "left the room". A significator combust or a void-of-course Moon may also argue that the matter does not proceed, or that "nothing comes of it".
Beyond horary
In electional astrology the same idea guides choosing a moment: an applying aspect between the significators of the undertaking, perfecting soon, with no prohibition on the way, is the classic sign of a well-chosen start. Some modern astrologers speak of a natal or transit aspect "perfecting" when it reaches exact, which is the same mechanics without the horary verdict.
In a reading here
Horary readings here ask first whether the significators perfect — directly, by translation or collection, or by the Moon's application to the ruler of the matter — then step the real sky forward to see whether the promise is kept or broken by a change of sign, a refranation or a prohibiting planet, and give the timing from the degrees still to travel. The picture headed "The road to perfection" on a horary reading shows each promise closing towards exact, and marks where one breaks.