Rulership

The idea

Each sign of the zodiac has a planet that rules it — that is at home there, its domicile — and in the old language, that is its "lord". Rulership is what lets a chart be read as one connected whole: nothing in a sign stands alone, because it answers in part to the ruler of that sign, wherever that ruler happens to be.

The traditional scheme

Lilly states the classical arrangement in a sentence: "Every Planet hath two signs for his House, except Sol and Luna, they but one apiece." The Sun rules Leo and the Moon Cancer, the two signs of high summer. Then, moving outward from that pair in both directions, each planet takes one sign on either side in order of its distance and speed:

Of each planet's two signs, one is its diurnal house and one its nocturnal, the masculine sign by day and the feminine by night. The result is a symmetrical pattern: Saturn, slowest and coldest, rules the two signs opposite the lights.

Modern rulers

When Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were discovered, astrologers asked where they belonged. The usual modern answer gives Uranus to Aquarius, Neptune to Pisces and Pluto to Scorpio, either replacing Saturn, Jupiter and Mars or sharing with them as co-rulers. Steven Forrest is frank that none of these questions has been fully settled, and astrologers remain divided. Traditional astrology keeps the seven-planet scheme, partly because the rest of the dignity system — exaltations, triplicities, terms and faces — is built on it and has no place for the newer planets.

Ruler of a sign, lord of a house

deVore points out that, strictly, only a sign has a ruler; some older writers kept the word lord for the planet in charge of a house. In practice:

• House rulers. The planet ruling the sign on a house's cusp rules that house. With Leo on the 7th, the Sun is lord of the 7th, and the Sun's sign, house and condition say a good deal about partnerships. An empty house is read entirely this way.
• The chart ruler. The ruler of the sign rising on the Ascendant is the chart ruler — the lord of the whole nativity in many traditions, and in horary the person asking.
• Dispositors. A planet in a sign is "disposed of" by that sign's ruler: Venus in Aries is disposed of by Mars. Following each planet to its ruler, and that ruler to its own, gives a chain; when every chain ends at one planet in its own sign, that planet is the final dispositor.
• Mutual reception. Two planets each in the other's sign — Venus in Aries, Mars in Libra — are in mutual reception, each hosting the other, and are read as able to help one another.

Other kinds of rulership

Rulership by domicile is the strongest of several. Each degree also has an exaltation lord in some signs, a triplicity lord, a term lord and a face lord: the full set is the subject of essential dignity. Separately, the tradition gives each planet a long list of things it rules — colours, plants, trades, parts of the body — which is a different use of the same word.

Modern books also speak of the natural ruler of a house: Mars for the 1st, because Aries is the first sign; Venus for the 2nd; and so on. That is a teaching analogy between signs and houses, not the house's ruler in a given chart, which is always the ruler of the sign actually on its cusp.

How rulership is shown here

The charts here use the traditional rulers, so that a ruler's own dignity can be judged. In the Essential Dignities table, the Ruler column names the planet that rules the sign each planet is in — its dispositor. The structured report on a birth chart gives, for each house, its cusp sign and the planet that rules it, with that ruler's own sign and house, and it traces mutual receptions and any final dispositor. A planet's weight in the Planets table counts rulership too: ruling the rising sign adds most, ruling the Sun's or the Moon's sign a little less (see prominence).

Related

• Domicile
• Chart ruler
• Dispositor
• Mutual reception
• Essential dignity
• Detriment
• Signs
• Houses