The Lot 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.