Essential Dignities
Not every planet is equally able to act. Dignity is the traditional account of which ones can, and how.
Read inside a cast chart: you will find it in the Dignities panel, once a natal chart is cast.
What you get
- All five essential dignities per planet: domicile, exaltation, triplicity, term and decan
- Accidental dignity as well — house position, speed, and relationship to the Sun
- Mutual receptions found automatically, including by lesser dignities
- Dignity rings drawn inside the zodiac band, each toggled independently
- Debilities too: detriment, fall, and peregrine planets
How it works
A planet in its own sign is at home and can do as it likes. In the opposite sign it is in detriment, working against the grain. Exaltation is being an honoured guest; fall is the reverse. A planet with no dignity anywhere is peregrine — a wanderer, with no standing of its own.
Beneath those sit the subtler dignities: triplicity by element and sect, the Egyptian terms dividing each sign into five unequal portions, and the decans dividing it into three. A planet with no domicile or exaltation may still hold its own term, and that is a real, if quieter, strength.
Reception is where dignity becomes relational rather than static. If Mars sits in a sign Venus rules while Venus sits in a sign Mars rules, they receive each other, and the two planets can cooperate across an aspect that would otherwise read as friction.
The Egyptian terms, and triplicity rulers assigned by sect.