Part of Exaltation

The Lot of Exaltation, also called the Lot of Honour, is anchored not to a planet but to a fixed degree: the nineteenth degree of Aries, which is the degree of the Sun's exaltation in the classical scheme, from which the Sun's own position is subtracted and the result projected from the Ascendant. That construction makes it the clearest surviving link between the lots and the doctrine of exaltations, a scheme of dignities in which each of the seven planets has one sign, and in the more precise version one degree, of particular strength: the Sun in 19 Aries, the Moon in 3 Taurus, Jupiter in 15 Cancer, Mercury in 15 Virgo, Saturn in 21 Libra, Mars in 28 Capricorn and Venus in 27 Pisces. The exaltation degrees are attested in Babylonian material well before the Hellenistic period and are among the oldest elements in the whole system, though the reason for the particular choices is not known.

The exaltation degrees also carry a structural oddity that the lot inherits. Each of the seven is a single degree rather than a span, so the doctrine asserts a precision the rest of the dignity scheme does not: rulership belongs to a whole sign, the terms to spans of several degrees, and the exaltation to one degree in three hundred and sixty. Nothing in the surviving sources explains how those particular degrees were arrived at, and the Babylonian material that attests them earliest gives the positions without the reasoning. A lot anchored to one of them is therefore anchored to the oldest and least explained element in the tradition, which is part of what makes it interesting and part of what makes it impossible to argue about on the merits.

The formula stored for this lot is Ascendant plus 19 degrees of Aries minus the Sun. Nineteen Aries is the exaltation degree of the Sun in the classical scheme, and it is a fixed point, not a body. No other lot in this atlas has a term that does not move.

That produces a property none of the others share. Change the zodiacal reference frame, from tropical to sidereal or between one ayanamsha and another, and every planetary longitude and the Ascendant shift by the same amount. In a lot of the ordinary form, Ascendant plus one body minus another, the two positive terms each gain the shift and the negative term loses it, so the lot shifts with everything else and its position relative to the chart is unchanged. Here the fixed 19 Aries does not shift, so the shift on the Ascendant and the shift on the Sun cancel and the lot stays where it was. Relative to the rest of the chart, the Lot of Exaltation moves when the zodiac is changed and the others do not.

Its motion in time is otherwise unremarkable: the Ascendant's full circle less the Sun's 59 minutes a day, so about one degree every four minutes and one sign in two hours.

Anyone comparing an Exaltation lot cast in a tropical chart with one cast in a sidereal chart is comparing two different points, and the difference is the ayanamsha itself, currently around 24 degrees.