The Paradigm of Planetary Rulership
Rulerships for DA
In Western conventional astrology, as well as in all other systems including Jyotish (Vedic astrology), the concept of rulership is a factory installation of the system. It comes with the rools and rules. The basic algorithm is: planet/sign. Each planet “rules” a sign. By contrast, in Celestics no planet/asset in the manifold systematically rules any constellation. Vedic astrology uses a sidereal format (of sorts) and so it applies rulership of specific planets to certain constellations. This is misleading, not only because the Vedic zodiacal format does not match the real-sky constellations, but also due to the way it confounds the syntax of sign and constellation.
I don’t believe that anyone has ever explained, or can explain, how, when, where, why and by whom the paradigm of planetary rulerships was established. It certainly was not the work of one person in one era only. It had to have developed over centuries. In the classical canon of Ptolemy (C 150 CE), the seven planets known to the ancients ruled the twelve starless ecliptic signs. More precisely, the five planets and the two luminaries, Sun and Moon.
Mercury : Gemini and Virgo
Mars : Aries and Scorpio
From The Course (Oct ’82 – July ’83, Santa Fe), TS 11/13, MS p. 428
The traditional paradigm:
1 Sun Leo
Mercury Gemini
Venus Taurus
Moon Cancer
Earth Libra
Mars Scorpio
Jupiter Sagittarius
Saturn Capricorn
Uranus Aquarius
Neptune Pisces
Pluto Aries
The variable:
Planet X Virgo
Two cases :
1. Planet X is the same as the ruler of the Sun sign. For a Sag, Jupiter rules Virgo, for a Capricorn Saturn, for a Scorpio, Mars, etc. The ruler of Virgo is variable in all horoscopes.
2. Or, if the Sun is in Virgo, Planet X defaults to the Moon. For all Virgoans, the Moon rules both that sign and its traditional sign, Cancer.
Over many years of practice with tropical, sun-sign astrology, I was able to see that making the 12/12 match was not merely a gimmick or something I felt compelled to do due to excessive pariedolia, the skill of pattern-finding. Initially, I included Earth in the horoscope. This gives an 11/12 match of planet and sign. It troubled me that there was one item missing short of a full 12/12 match. I wonder how it might be supplied.
Fine, but how did I come to designate Virgo as the sign to be ruled by the 12th variable, Planet X? Today, I don’t have a clue. It’s likely that I used inductive reasoning, going from individual cases to a general scheme or proposition. I must have drawn upon the data in the horoscopes of friends and clients, not to mention my own: Jupiter ruler of sun sign Sagittarius also rules Virgo. I must have examined various options and decided that Virgo made sense for me.
In pre-DA tropical astrology, looking at optional rulers for any sign was like playing the one-armed bandit in Las Vegas. For instance, if I pulled Aquarius into a window, tentatively taking it the sign ruled by Planet X, the other two windows showed the sign and facet of Uranus and then I looked at how that correlation worked in the personality profile on the whole. Pulling the handle again, if I made Taurus the sign ruled by Planet X, I got a different sign/facet readout in the other two windows. Over time by assessing enough personal horoscopes, something must have convinced me that Virgo was the sign with variable rulership according to the traditional paradigm which I called Karma-bound.
My case:
Planet X matches the prime of the Sun sign, traditionally Jupiter. So Jupiter rules both Virgo and Sagittarius.
Simple, huh. Yeah, but it does not end there. The three-factor permutations in many horoscopes must have suggested to me that the sign ruled by Planet X changes as the individual develops. I replaced the term ruler by prime: Saturn is the prime of Capricorn, and Capricorn is the primary style setting for Saturn. To prime is to initiate lead-off, as when priming a pump with water before it draws from the well. Any planet in the sign it rules is at its prime, its most congenial, comfortable, effective, and appropriate setting. It leads off best in that sign.
I called the second level of primes Self-evolving. They come into play when the individual becomes more self-aware and adept at management of personal expression using the planetary skills. At the Self-evolving level, Planet X matches the ruler/prime of the ASC, the rising sign, not the Sun sign. The ASC focusses “the morphology of the emergent self.” The two cases are:
Planet X, matching the prime of the rising sign, rules Gemini.
If Gemini is the rising sign, Planet X is Venus.
At the Self-evolving level, the prime of Gemini is same at the prime of the ASC, but hold on. this rules does not follow the same set of rulerships seen in the Karma-bound set of primes. Yes, all the signs at the Self-evolving level have primes that differ from the traditional set. You have to use a one-armed bandit with a different calibration.
My case: Planet X is the same as prime of the sign on the ASC, Cancer, but at the Self-evolving level the prime of Cancer is Jupiter, not the Moon.
I called the third level, Karma-free. It also has a unique set of primes for each sign. At this level the rule is: Planet X is the same as the prime of the sign where the earth is located. At that level, the earth rules Sagittarius. If the earth is in Sagitarrius, the default prime is Saturn.
My case: Planet X is the same as the prime of the sign where the earth is located, Gemini. And the prime of Gemini at the Karma-free level is Jupiter.
Now, if you sum it all up for yours truthfully, the readout on the three windows of the one-armed bandits with three different calibrations look like this:
Karma-bound Self-evolving Karma-free
X matches prime of sun sign X matches prime of ASC X matches prime of earth sign
Sagittarius Cancer Gemini
= Jupiter = Jupiter = Jupiter
That is a three-cherry event. I leave it to you to figure out if I rigged it to turn out that way, and you will probably say, yes, for sure, the tricky terton is exposed. But wait a second. To do so, I would have had to know in advance that only those permutations of the three sets of rulerships would give this result for my horoscope, uniquely. Either I knew that and rigged the game, or — or what? Or, perhaps, does the three-cherry event for the astrologer who revised the system of rulerships prove that the system is valid for all cases? The exception proves the rule. Yes, that is so, but the odds also allow for other instances of a three-cherry event with Jupiter or any other planet. It is exceptional, but not exclusive to my case. Or any single case. The paradigm is comprehensive.
So figure it. If I rigged it, I must have been — for years — in a pareidolic fugue of immense magnitude. How else could I have set up that result without steering the planet/sign algorithms toward it, deliberately? If I did not rig it, it’s plausible that the optimal innate pattern for primes and Planet X variables at all three levels is consistent, complete, and correct. It is the comprehensive paradigm, and I merely discovered the master scheme by arduous and meticulous examination of many natal templates.
In Latin, the verb invenire means both to discover and invent.