Part of Sickness

The Lot of Sickness is taken from Mars and Saturn, the two planets the classical tradition counts as malefic, and it belongs to the medical astrology that formed a major branch of the art from antiquity until the seventeenth century. Physicians in medieval and Renaissance Europe were commonly trained in it: the timing of bleeding and purging by the Moon's sign, the decumbiture chart cast for the moment a patient took to bed, and the melothesia that assigns parts of the body to the signs were all standard practice, and William Lilly devotes a substantial part of Christian Astrology to medical questions. That history is worth recording as history. It is also worth stating plainly that astrological diagnosis has no evidential support and that this material is preserved here as part of the record of medicine and of astrology, not as guidance about health.

Mars and Saturn are the two planets the whole classical tradition, not only the theory of lots, counts as malefic by nature, and their pairing for the Lot of Sickness follows the same logic of natural significators used throughout the family and topical lots: the planets whose nature most resembles the matter in question are combined to locate it in the chart. Because both contributing planets are malefic, some medieval sources treat the Lot of Sickness as needing no sect reversal at all, on the reasoning that a lot built from two planets of the same basic nature has no obvious "worse" or "better" arrangement to preserve by reversing the day and night terms, unlike lots such as Fortune or Spirit that combine one luminary of each sect.

The day formula stored for this lot is Ascendant plus Mars minus Saturn, the two classical malefics set against each other and projected from the horizon.

Neither planetary term moves quickly. Mars covers about 31 minutes of arc a day at mean motion and much less near a station, and Saturn about two minutes, so the pair contribute roughly half a degree a day between them. The lot therefore travels with the Ascendant, one degree every four minutes and one sign every two hours, and it needs a birth time recorded to the minute before its degree is worth quoting.

The construction is the point of interest. The arc from Saturn to Mars is the elongation between the two bodies the tradition holds responsible for affliction of different kinds, Saturn for the chronic, cold and obstructive and Mars for the acute, hot and violent. The lot marks that arc out from the horizon, so it is not a lot of either malefic but of the distance between them.

Because Mars can be retrograde for roughly two months in every twenty six, and because Saturn is retrograde for about four and a half months a year, the elongation does not advance steadily and can hold nearly still or reverse for weeks at a time. For a group of people born within such a period the planetary component of the lot is effectively frozen, and the whole difference between their lots is the difference in what was rising.