What is a Lot?

Lots (also sometimes referred to as ‘Arabic Parts’) are a seemingly vestigial component of astrology as we know them today. They are quite easy to describe: abstract points in a natal chart that are found by taking the distance between two points and projecting that distance from a third point. The most important example of a lot is the one that nearly every author mentions throughout the tradition, the Lot of Fortune. Many of the manuals that we have detail how one should calculate the position of the Lot of Fortune in a chart and that one should focus intently upon it. It is said to describe many things in the life of the native, namely things concerning their livelihood, health, general expectations for life, etc. The name Fortune applies here in just about every sense of the word.

It seems straightforward enough, but here we have already found ourselves knee-deep in ambiguity. Why does this abstract mathematical formula equate to something so broad and profound as the fortune in one’s life? Why is it formulated the way that it is? How does it actually work? These questions cut to the heart of what it means to be a lot and by extension the mechanism of astrology and how it is practiced. These are the questions I hope to propose an answer to throughout this work. This is what I have dubbed the problem of lots, that every astrologer knows how to calculate them but nobody knows what to do with them aside from blanket statements on its sign position and aspectual relationships.

No Really, What is a Lot?

A fruitful starting point for getting our bearings is to first define what a lot even is. Not the astrological definition, but the actual definition of a lot in real life. The term ‘lot’ is a translation of a Greek word, κλῆρος /kleros/. This fairly everyday word has uncertain origins but its usage is clear enough from what we know. κλῆρος is the term for an allotment, something that is inherited or, something that is gained through the process of casting lots. It can also refer to ‘lot’ in the sense of a plot of land (e.g. a parking lot). I will refer heavily to these notions as we move forward, especially to the broadest sense of the word, which is an apportionment.

This sense of apportionment is perhaps the most fundamental statement I can make on the lots, and as we will see throughout this work, viewing them as such provides a clear yet nuanced study of the workings of fate in the life of a human being. This is worth further exploration and serves as a prelude to what will culminate hereafter.

Apportionment

So, I must devote some thought to the concept of apportionment as is relevant to astrology. It is stated throughout the Hermetic corpus and discussed in the works of Platonists that the fate of an individual is apportioned to them by a higher divine power (normally called God or The One). This fate that is apportioned to someone is known as their εἱμαρμένη /heimarmene/, and it is the duty of the planets to administer heimarmene. The first text of the Corpus Hermeticum, Poimandres, calls the interweaving motions of the planets a government, and states that their government is called fate (heimarmene). The famous three Fates are known as the Moirai, a word which we will soon see means portion. So the idea of apportionment is clearly bound up philosophically with the ideas of fate and of an individual’s fate. Essentially, a person’s fate has been apportioned to them. They can choose to use their apportionment for one purpose or another, but a human cannot change what has been apportioned.

I bring up the idea of apportionment because (not so) coincidentally, terminology related to it is rife in astrological technical jargon. The first and easiest example is the term for a degree of the zodiac (i.e. a degree of ecliptic longitude), which is μοῖρα /moira/. This term literally has the meaning “portion” or “part”. If fate is what is apportioned to us, and the degrees of the zodiac are portions, it begs the question: are the degrees of the zodiac apportioned for us in the same way that our fate is? I claim that the conceit of astrology is to answer this question in the affirmative. That being the case, I will follow this logic through to (hopefully) its conclusion in this article.

One last piece of groundwork that I ought to lay before continuing is to specifically mention the Myth of Er, as elaborated by Plato’s Republic. In the Republic, a soldier named Er recounts his brief journey postmortem to the afterlife and describes what he saw. Er relates to us that he saw a gathering of souls, in front of which spoke a prophet, who bade them to cast lots to determine the order in which they would queue. The souls, now randomly put into sequence, each step up and choose from an assortment of lives. There are more lives available than there are souls, so every soul gets a choice in what life they live. Once they pick a life to live, they are given a spirit or δαίμων /daimon/ whose duty it is to guide the soul through the life that they chose. Thus, they are led into incarnation by their daimon into the life, and are born.

Fortune and Spirit

The two lots that are most frequently referenced are the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of Spirit. I will be giving these special attention, and you will quickly realize why. Let us focus first on just the names alone of these two points. The Lot of Fortune is the κλῆρος τῠ́χης /kleros tyches/, the kleros of tyche. We have discussed the meaning of kleros as an allotment, so the question we tackle now is that of tyche. Tyche is a word that means fortune, chance, fate, the act of a god or human, and in general it encompasses agents or causes in one’s life that are beyond one’s control, or that seem to occur spontaneously from the perspective of one’s life.

Contrast this with the Lot of Spirit, which is κλῆρος δαίμονος /kleros daimonos/, the kleros of the daimon. We touched on the notion of the daimon in the Myth of Er, but let us return to it so that we may display it with respect to tyche. The daimon is the entity responsible for guiding a person through their life; it is often said Hermetically that it cooperates with the soul, inciting passions within it such that the soul will do what was apportioned to it. There’s the concurrent idea that attaining a peer relationship with one’s daimon allows one to become more fully realized, as the daimon can let go of the reins of fate once the soul itself takes over. So there is an element of choice that is present with the daimon: a soul can let the daimon make decisions, or the soul can make decisions with the help of the daimon. This introduces something akin to free will, still constrained by what has been apportioned to the life of the soul in question.

The distinction between tyche and daimon in the life of a person becomes clearer, then. The tyche in one’s life manifests as all those activities over which one has little control, accidents of fate that one may react to but not fully predict or influence. The daimon in one’s life is the other side of the coin, those things that one can step into controlling or effecting. Broadly, you will see that this is reflected in the descriptions given for the meanings of these two lots. According to Roman astrologer Paulus Alexandrinus, the Lot of Fortune is “body, possessions, reputation, privilege” and the Lot of Spirit is “soul, temper, mindfulness, every faculty”.

One last note on the daimon in particular, that presumably applies to tyche as well: in the Hermetic corpus (specifically CH 16.13), it is stated that energy is the essence of a daimon. It is tempting to personify and deify the daimon, and I do not dissuade you from doing so. Yet, the daimon’s core essence is effect. It is not a person or even a separate soul per se, it is the influence of the higher cosmic mind upon you. The daimon can be seen manifest in the life of anyone, if at any point they become energized to do something of seemingly their own accord. Its explicit function is to rouse and energize the soul, to prod and poke it into doing what has been apportioned.

The Issues of Calculation

Calculations and the Algebra of Lots

Now we can get more directly into the meat of the lots: how they are found, and why. As a starting point, I will convey the canonical interpretation of how to calculate the position of these two most relevant lots:

From the Source?

While we do not have direct access to most of the foundational astrological texts in the Hellenistic period, we do have some fragments and quotations and paraphrases extant throughout some author’s works. I will focus on Vettius Valens, insofar as he quotes and relays to us the thoughts of Nechepso and Petosiris, two Egyptian astrologers that are quoted (by numerous ancient astrologers) as having written defining astrological texts. In Book 2.3 of the Anthologies, Valens says:

“Just as the King [Nechepso] has mystically revealed in the beginning of his XIIIth Book: “Next in order, it will be necessary (for day nativities) to count accurately the distance from the Sun to the Moon, then to measure off in the opposite direction an equal distance from the Ascendant, and to inspect the resulting place: which star is its ruler and which star or stars are at this point and all the square or trine asterisms of this place. From this study/combination of the places, make a clear determination of the natives’ affairs.” /60K/ In his book, The Terms, Petosiris explains this place in the same way.”

This provides us a very good starting point, as we are essentially being given the information straight from the source. To back this up, in Book 9.2, Valens again quotes the duo:

“Petosiris did not speak irrelevantly about the sympathy of the Sun and Moon in his book Oroi <Factors>: “Whether you measure from the Sun to the Moon and take that distance from the Ascendant, or from the Moon to the Sun and do likewise, you will find it <the Lot> located at the same point <!>. The Lot controlling the matter in question is seen there, the Lot with reference to which everything happens and occurs.” The King also said in the beginning of his <XIII> Book: “Next in order, it will be necessary to count the distance from the Sun to the Moon, then to measure off an equal distance in the reverse direction (some count forward) from the /333K/ Ascendant, and to inspect the ruling place that has been determined: which star is its ruler and which stars are in that place. From the interpretation of these places make a clear determination of the native’s affairs.””

These quotations seem to illustrate a formula for the Lot of Fortune that differs from what we have come to believe. Namely, to take the distance from the Sun to the Moon, and then cast that in the opposite direction from the Ascendant. The algebraic formula would look like this:

Note that the text is sort of vague about this; it refers to “the Lot” but does not specify which lot they’re talking about. Valens says it is about the Lot of Fortune but there’s a possibility that is wrong. Nechepso’s explicit mention of some astrologers calculating it forwards instead of backwards is of great import here: it shows that this was a sticking point even back then. It also points to the possibility of a kind of interchangeability of the two lots—one that is echoed by Serapio’s complicated exposition on swapping the formulas. But, this at least gives us an understanding that these quantities are the ones we are meant to be working with in determining these important lots.

Contradictory Calculations

Relying on Valens proves to be trickier than one would expect. Throughout the Anthologies, Valens provides other descriptions of how the lots should be calculated. In discussion of reversing the formulas in Book 3.14, Valens states that

“To me it seems best to locate the Lot by determining the distance from the Sun to the Moon, then counting that distance from the Ascendant—for day births. For night births <1> if the Moon is above the earth, i.e. until the time it sets, determine the distance from it to the Sun, then count that distance from the Ascendant. <2> After the Moon has set, determine the distance from the Sun to it.”

Not only does this contradict the simple rule as laid out in the previous passages from Nechepso and Petosiris, it also contradicts Valens’s own chart examples throughout the Anthologies.

Further, in Book 9.8 of the Anthologies, Valens discusses a few ways to ‘reverse engineer’ the ascendant in a chart. One of the methods he covers involves the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of Spirit. His method basically amounts to using the formula for the lot backwards. But notice the curious way it unfolds:

“Another procedure: each of the Lots, by itself, shows the degree-position of the Ascendant. For example, if the Lot of Fortune is located within a sign and if the degree-position of the Moon is known, count the degrees from the Moon to the Sun, then count the resulting number upwards starting from the Lot. The Ascendant will be where the count stops. Daimon will be similarly useful for day and night births: when compared <with the Lot of Fortune it gives the result> by sign; when used with the Sun, <it gives results> to the degree. For day births, count from the Sun to the Moon /343K/ and take an equal number of degrees upwards from Daimon. For night births, count from the Moon to the Sun and take an equal number in the order of signs from Daimon. (Or from the Sun to the Moon and the same number upwards from Daimon—both procedures will have the result coming at the same point.) This degree position will be considered operative.”

This once again contradicts his own statement. Curiously though, this does match the formulas as given by Nechepso and Petosiris in the previous passages. To me, this serves as an indicator that the calculation of the lots is not as straightforward as the static algebraic formula presented earlier would suggest. Even if we take one interpretation as correct, there’s still the matter of reversing said formulas and why. Until we can return to the matter of reversal, I think it is best to leave it there.

The Hermetic Lots

Paulus’s Panaretus

Paulus Alexandrinus discusses in his work, Introductory Matters, that there are seven primary lots to study, and he cites a work called the Panaretus, allegedly written by Hermes Trismegistus. I will not belabor these points, as Paulus systematically states the calculations for each, the associated planet, and the meanings of each. I have summarized this in the table below.

Schmidt’s Recapitulation

Robert Schmidt, one of the founders of Project Hindsight, dedicated effort to the passage from Paulus that I mentioned above. It doesn’t take much algebra to come to the same conclusions that Schmidt did: the formulas for the planetary lots seem very asymmetric and odd when you simplify them down (via substituting the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of Spirit for their formulas). One (either the day or night) calculation will yield a very neat formula composed of three planets —the Sun, the Moon, and the relevant planet. The other formula reduces down to a somewhat clunkier expression where the ascendant is counted twice and there are more terms. Simply follow the algebra from the definitions given by Paulus:

Paulus’s Hermetic Lots, Simplified
Planet	Lot	Formula Reductions
		Day	Night
Mercury	Necessity
Venus	Eros
Mars	Courage
Jupiter	Victory
Saturn	Nemesis

It is for that reason that Schmidt pursued a different interpretation of that chapter in Paulus. With some support from differing manuscript traditions, he managed to provide some evidence that the planetary lots could have an alternate formula, one in which they simplify by day and night to the more elegant combination of Sun, Moon, and planet. I demonstrate his reframed formulas below:

Schmidt’s Hermetic Lots
Planet	Lot	Formula
Mercury	Necessity
Venus	Eros
Mars	Courage
Jupiter	Victory
Saturn	Nemesis

Ma’shar’s Heretical Formulas

The last treatment of the Hermetic lots that I will cover here is that of the Persian astrologer, Abu Ma’shar. In his Great Introduction, there is an entire book dedicated to the definition and study of lots. In Book VIII.3, Ma’shar explains the formulas for the Hermetic lots. He provides variant formulas for the lots of Venus and Mercury, which I will not digress into at this moment. He includes an interesting section immediately after his discussion of the planetary lots:

“But some of those who are very ignorant about the natures of the planets have said—concerning the Lots of the five wandering stars—that one takes by day and night what is between the Sun up to the Moon, and [that] is cast out from the position of that planet whose Lot one wants to derive; and wherever it comes to an end, there is the Lot of that wandering star. So as for the Lot of the Sun (and it is the Lot of [Spirit]), they said it is taken by day and night from the Moon to the Sun, and is cast out from the place of the Sun, so wherever it comes to an end, there is the Lot of the Sun. And as for the Lot of the Moon (and it is the Lot of Fortune), they say it is taken by day and night from the Sun to the Moon, and then that is cast out from the position of the Moon, so wherever it comes to an end, there is the Lot of the Moon”.

While this may seem cut and dry, and Ma’shar is explicitly denying their validity, these variant formulas that he describes are shockingly similar to the ones that Schmidt discusses above. Ma’shar uses the example of the lot of the Sun and the lot of the Moon to demonstrate that these formulas are incorrect, but what if he was mistaken or cheekily misdirecting us here? This is the last piece we shall need in order to make a more grandiose statement on the lots and my proposal on how to view them.

A New Approach

Apportionment Redux

Let us return to the notion of apportionment. We have caught glimpses of it already since our last discussion. For example, in the way that Paulus describes the calculation of the lots as he presents them. Paulus is careful to talk about counting up from the portion of one point to the other’s portion, and then to count down just as many portions from the portion of the ascendant. As Schmidt mentions in a footnote to the section immediately before Paulus’s Hermetic Lots,

“We seem to be dealing with a special arithmetic of ‘portions.’ Greek mathematical thinking is very concrete, and never deals with “abstract” units in the modern sense. (Plato talks of  “apple numbers” and “bowl numbers.”) The arithmetical operations must likewise be thought of in relation to the ‘units’ being calculated. These operations seem to be conceptualized in terms of a spinning/ sewing motif. Might this not be because this was what the three Fates–the Moirai–did with man’s fate, his portion (moira)?”

It seems agreeable to me that Paulus is employing a unique understanding of the arithmetic here, at least different from the formulaic way that we conceive of it now.

The imagery present in the passage discussing the lots seems somewhat clear. Paulus describes the calculation of the lots as though you are walking along the ecliptic, collecting the degrees as if you were picking up a stick or stone for each you pass, and then you walk once more from the ascendant and drop those stones to mark how far out you must go. This strikes an important note, that space as we know it is not just measurable, it is graspable. The degrees of the zodiac are portions that have been laid out and can be picked up and laid out once again.

So, a tempting reframing of the process for calculating lots can be understood as follows. The process of measuring the distance between the two relevant points is seen as the apportionment from one planet to the other. That is, the portions between the two are the portions from one to the other. The “projection” of this distance from the ascendant (or other point) is then the apportionment of that same amount from the ascendant. This, in essence, allows us to discover where this apportionment lands in the chart, as cast by the native’s soul as it enters the life through the ascendant.

Reframing the Formulas

This leads to one of the more important realizations about the lots discussed up until this point. They all, in some shape or form, include the distance between the Sun and the Moon. In a Hermetic framework, the Sun is the source of light (which it also is materially). Likewise, the Moon captures that light and transmits it to the sublunary sphere, to us mortals. Biologically and spiritually, energies derive from the Sun. And in all cases, the energies shone forth from the Sun reach the Moon.

As the soul descends into the material realm, it is said in Poimandres to pass through the spheres of every planet. So then, this distance between the Sun and the Moon has much deeper symbolic meaning than a simple distance. It is one and the same with the distance that the soul travels in order to incarnate—the soul emerges from the light of the Sun and is molded into a body by the Moon after receiving every planet’s attributions. So to answer the question, why do we take the distance between the Sun and the Moon for these lots? The answer seems to be that it’s because that distance is equivalent to the apportionment of incarnation. This same amount is then apportioned by the ascendant to show us where our allotted Fortune and Spirit are. And in the case of the planetary lots, the same amount is apportioned by each planet to show us where their influence lands.

The Mystery of Forward and Reverse

In Book 3.14, Valens quotes a passage from Nechepso that he says “makes a great mystery of [the lot’s] ‘forward and reverse’”. This mystery is the next thing we must attempt to clarify. Valens quotes Nechepso as saying

“The Sun, starting in the dawn and declining to his western arc, opens <to us> the vault of the cosmos, as can be seen. When night arrives, the Moon will not always become the Lightbringer, but sometimes /155K/ it appears in the West, setting, sometimes it stays in the heavens for quite a while, at other times it travels the entire night. As a result, the whole circle <of the zodiac> has rightly /147P/ been entrusted to the Sun’s care.”

Valens takes this to mean that for day births one applies the formula one way, and by night it depends on the position of the Moon. But, we have other attestations from Valens himself about the calculation of the Lot of Fortune (as previously discussed). To me, it seems Valens has misinterpreted this passage. Nechepso and Petosiris seem to be stating that the Sun is primary over the Moon, even by night. If you supplement this with the understanding that the lunisolar arc is our path of incarnation as discussed above, it begins to make even less sense to simply reverse the Sun and Moon as astrologers canonically have.

But still, we must come to grips with the concept of reversal, since it is seemingly an important distinction. The fact that there are two lots (Fortune and Spirit) that are the same aside from their reversal demands addressing. To start things, an algebraically equivalent way of writing the different formulas for Fortune and Spirit are:

This changes the variable that we need to contend with. Now, instead of reversing the direction of measurement for the lunisolar arc, we are reversing the direction of projection from the ascendant. Why would one cast the lot from the ascendant backwards versus forwards? That question should sound glaringly familiar. Could this be the very same mystery of the forward and the reverse that Valens points out as confounding to Nechepso and Petosiris’s readers? If we presume it is, then how can we account for it?

If we refer back to Book 9.8 of the Anthologies, Valens describes going “upwards” from the lot in question, in stark contrast with going in the direction of zodiacal motion. This implies at the very least that this mode of handling the geometry of the chart is not foreign, and perhaps lends credence to the possibility that one lot is cast in one direction while the other is cast in the opposite.

Are the Heretical Formulas Actually Hermetic-al?

As we had discussed before, Abu Ma’shar writes about formulas for the planetary lots that he cites as only being used by astrologers that are ignorant of the nature of the planets. But the formulas, as noted, are eerily familiar to the formulas given by Paulus, after reducing them. In fact, here is a comparison of them side by side:

Ma’shar’s Alternative Lots vs. Schmidt’s Lots
Lot	“Ignorant” Lot	Schmidt’s Lot
Fortune
Spirit
Necessity
Eros
Courage
Victory
Nemesis

Let us notice the fact that the only real differing formulas are those of the lots of the Sun and the Moon as opposed to the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of Spirit. But this notion of casting out the lunisolar arc should make us ask, why did Ma’shar, in his demonstration of the incorrect formulas, make one go in the reverse direction? If we broaden our scope and check what all of the possible combinations could’ve been for the lots of the Sun and the Moon, we end up with Ma’shar’s provided formulas and their reversals:

Extending Ma’shar’s Formulas

To no mathematician’s surprise, using the Sun and Moon in these calculations ends with the Sun and Moon getting canceled out within the different combinations. What is surprising though, is that applying a reversal to the Sun’s lot simply returns the position of the Moon. Similarly, the reversal of the Moon’s lot returns one to the position of the Sun. The reason this is intriguing is that we have stumbled upon an operation by which the Sun becomes the Moon, and by which the Moon becomes the Sun.

So, the fundamental questions we should be able to answer are: why would this calculation do such a thing? What kind of calculation is it that maps the Sun onto the Moon or vice versa? Even though Ma’shar rejects these formulas, by his own logic these are valid lots (just not the Lot of Fortune or Spirit).

Tychic and Daimonic Transformations

This is the heart of my proposal on how to view the lots. We may not have a clear answer on whether Fortune and Spirit’s formulas should be reversed by night, but we can follow this thread simply by its own logic. Below is a diagram summarizing what I discussed in the previous section that we will be using to guide our thoughts:

Notice how adding the lunisolar arc moves you down the chain, and subtracting it moves you upwards. My proposal is embedded in this fact. That is, moving by the lunisolar arc in one direction is an operation which makes something more tychic or fortune-like, and in the opposite direction makes something more daimonic or spirit-like.

To grasp this concept, let us focus on the arrows between the Sun and the Moon. What is the relationship between the Sun and the Moon? Valens describes the Sun as the all-seeing, fiery, intellectual light of the cosmos, and the Moon as a counterfeiter of that light. In Hermetic terms, the Sun is the νόος /noos/ and the Moon is the body. That is, the mind of the cosmos compared with the earthly container of mind. Since the lunisolar arc is what transforms one into the other, I deem this operation to be either a tychic transformation or a daimonic transformation. A tychic transform applied to the Sun results in the Moon; a daimonic transform applied to the Moon results in the Sun. You can also phrase this as either daimonization or tychization of the Moon and Sun, respectively. For the Sun can be said to be the daimon of the Moon, and the Moon can be said to be the tyche of the Sun. Together, the luminaries thus form a duality that is reflected throughout other lot calculations.

So, what of the supposed lot of the Sun and lot of the Moon? By the diagram above, the lot of the Sun would be a daimonic transform applied to the Sun, and the lot of the Moon a tychic transform applied to the Moon. To understand their relevance, one simply must ask the question, what is the daimon of the Sun? And what is the tyche of the Moon? This is a difficult question to answer, as one could say that God is the daimon of the Sun, and that the entire material realm is the tyche of the Moon. Thus, these lots seem useless on the face of things, at least to me; it is pointless to try to predict the location of God in a nativity, since God explicitly envelops everything in the cosmos. Likewise, the fortune of the material world is pointless to search for in a chart, since the birth of the native doesn’t have much to do with that.

Pulling it together, these inverse transformations use the operation of apportionment of the divine lunisolar arc in order to describe, astrologically, a concept similar to emanation to and from the heavens. The daimonic brings you closer to heaven; the tychic brings you closer to earth.

Returning to the Forward and Reverse

The aforementioned Platonic Myth of Er describes yet another helpful concept for this inquiry. In describing the celestial spheres, nine nested spheres in total are accounted for. In order from outside to inside there is: the sphere of the fixed stars, the spheres of the planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Sun, then Moon as Plato orders them), and finally the sublunary sphere, innermost and central.

Plato explains the difference between diurnal and zodiacal motion through the rotation of these spheres. Diurnal motion is the rotation of the outermost sphere of fixed stars, and one complete rotation is what we call 24 hours or an entire day. Since the other spheres are nested inside of this one, all of the planets are also carried along in this motion, which causes them to rise, culminate, set, and anticulminate.

Each of the planetary spheres also rotates in the direction opposite to diurnal motion, albeit much more slowly. This is what we call zodiacal motion, and each planet has a unique period of zodiacal motion, ranging from ~30 years for Saturn to just a month for the Moon. So, even while being carried by the diurnal motion of the fixed stars, the planets also slowly move against that rotation.

This is the same dichotomy of directions that we face with the lots. Casting backwards means traversing in the direction of diurnal motion, while casting forward in the order of signs means traversing in the direction of zodiacal motion. In our case, the direction of diurnal motion makes a daimonic transform, and the direction of zodiacal motion makes a tychic one.

This is indeed a great mystery. Why should moving in one direction be daimonic and the other tychic? Now, I don’t have a totally satisfying answer at the moment. You could say that being carried by diurnal motion means one is closer aligned with the rushing motion of the heavens, meaning it’s closer to godliness. Going in the order of signs then would mean you are going against the heavenly rotation and in the direction of the material, the Other, the differentiated.

There’s something to that idea, since the daimon is supposed to help guide the native to fulfill the life that they chose. A tychic spirit is not mentioned by Plato in the Myth of Er, which leaves an unsatisfying gap. But we can infer that the tyche in one’s life is responsible for arranging the coincidental events that nevertheless affect the native.

One last thing about this. The assignment of tyche to the forward and daimon to the backward is also conceivable when compared to the functions of the fates within the Myth of Er. Clotho is the entity that keeps the diurnal motion going, spinning the sphere diligently. She represents the present time in her song as she works, much like how the daimon is associated with our ability to choose and to make decisions in the present moment. Atropos, responsible for spinning the spheres of the planets in the zodiacal direction, represents the future in her song. This is much like tyche, the possibilities and chances that we can encounter, just as the future is made up entirely of possibility and is still carried along with or impelled by present occurrence.

Applying Transforms to the Ascendant

With the revelation of the lunisolar arc as a transformative quantity, we can now begin to unpack the calculations for the lots discussed hitherto. We may start first and foremost with what we can now more confidently call a true Lot of Fortune:

And now, we have the means of explaining just how the Lot of Fortune comes to mean what it is claimed to mean. Notice, by adding the lunisolar arc to the ascendant, we are applying what I have termed a tychic transform to the ascendant. To derive significations for the Lot of Fortune, then, we ask what is the tyche of the ascendant? It is exactly as the ancients have elaborated: the ascendant is the point of life and the soul, so the tyche of the ascendant is the tyche of the life and soul. So this point represents all of the fortune-based aspects of the life that the soul shall encounter. So, the Lot of Fortune is a tychic ascendant.

To rephrase using the language of apportionment, the Lot of Fortune is found by apportioning the mystical lunisolar arc from the ascendant. That is, the Lot of Fortune is that which has been apportioned by the soul in the direction of tyche. The personal tyche that the soul chose as it stood at the front of the queue has manifested into the chart in a thorough and methodical manner.

And in a similar fashion, we now derive the Lot of Spirit by applying a daimonic transform to the ascendant:

The significance of which should also be clear now. The Lot of Spirit is the daimonic ascendant, or more precisely, the daimon of the ascendant and the native. Since the daimon of the native is responsible for guiding them through their life, this point gives information about the character and temperament and actions required to fulfill the chosen fate. In a separate work, I plan to cover more fully the connection between daimon and character as I believe it should be understood. In the language of apportionment, the Lot of Spirit is where the soul has apportioned the lunisolar arc, in the direction of the daimonic. Or equivalently, the ascendant is where the Lot of Spirit would apportion the lunisolar arc.

This way, we have discovered in the chart the dispensation of these two primary, personal deities. Remember that the lot itself is not the deity in question. It is what the native inherits or is allotted by that deity. So we can read the effect of the daimon and tyche, but the chart does not interface you with them directly. That’s because the daimon and the tyche are living with you, inside of you or your life.

That clarifies the role of these two astrological points. They provide information on what the native inherits or is allotted by their daimon and tyche. It may be helpful to think of the lot of tyche as a passive inheritance from one’s tyche, whereas the lot of daimon is an allotment that the native has more say in using a certain way. This is why the Lot of Fortune and Daimon provide the information that they do. The character and occupation are the same thing as what the daimon guides you to do to fulfill your allotment. The fortune and luck of the native are the same thing as what is inherited from tyche.

Only Seven?

We can apply these transforms to other points in the chart, namely the other five planets. Applying them results in the now-familiar formulas that Schmidt derived:

Transforms of the Planets vs. Schmidt’s Lots
Planet	Lot	Tychic/Daimonic Transforms	Schmidt’s Lot
Mercury	Necessity
Venus	Eros
Mars	Courage
Jupiter	Victory
Saturn	Nemesis

But, a question lingers here. Why are there only seven Hermetic lots? Why are some of them found using a tychic transform and others are found using a daimonic transform? In theory, we could have ten Hermetic lots, a tychic lot and a daimonic lot for each non-luminary. So, there must be some sort of selection principle at work here, at least if we are to believe Paulus that these are the only ones expounded in the alleged Panaretus. Is it not odd that instead of having five extra lots, they’ve been combined into one lot each that reverses by day or night?

This question is one that I believe to be open-ended, requiring further investigation. Perhaps there is a rationale that can tie together the day/night distinction with the logic I’ve described here. One could posit that for a certain planet by day, only the tychic transform could be active, whereas by night, only the daimonic, or vice versa. It could also be that there was more to the Panaretus that Paulus could not transmit, whether it came to him as a fragment, he misinterpreted it, or he was unwilling to transmit more.

In any case, I see three cases to be investigated in the future:

1. There ought to be two lots per planet—one tychic, one daimonic.
   1. This dovetails nicely with the notion of the Lot of Fortune as a “Lunar ascendant” as it is sometimes called. One could imagine three charts per native, the natal chart accompanied by the daimonic chart and tychic chart (where Spirit and Fortune, respectively, would be the ascendant).
2. There is a rationale for why each planet is only able to have one lot (either tychic or daimonic) in a given chart.
   1. This presents a good opportunity for applying the logic of tyche versus daimon to each planet and conceptually connecting it with sect, since a thorough investigation therein would illuminate more of the mystery of the forward and reverse.
3. The framework is incorrect as-is.

Obviously, saving option #3 as a last resort.

What I am starting to believe is that Schmidt was wrong about the need to simplify the Hermetic lots and adjust them accordingly. I do, however, think he was right that the sect variation is effectively meaningless in the calculation. Using the language of apportionment, we can study the Paulus passage with a bit more clarity.

Take for instance the Lot of Eros. I will focus on the diurnal formula as I believe the position of the resulting lot should not change by day or night. So, the formula he provided is as follows:

In terms of apportionment, this is saying the following: what the native inherits from or is allotted by Eros is the same as what the Lot of Daimon apportions to Venus, cast from the ascendant. That is to say, a certain amount of the daimon’s allotment is apportioned to Venus, and then much like the archetypal lots, this same amount is cast out from the ascendant.

This means that part of the daimon’s allotted portion goes to Venus, and it’s that same thing apportioned to Eros by the ascendant. Or in other words, Eros is to the native what Venus is to the daimon; what the daimon allots to Venus is what the life breath allots to Eros. This same relationship applies to the Lot of Victory. The daimon apportions some of its own to Jupiter, and that’s the same that the native apportions to Victory. For this reason, you can call these two lots Daimon lots.

Now let’s examine the other type of Hermetic lot, the Fortune lots. Their formulas are different. Take the diurnal formula for the Lot of Courage:

In terms of apportionment, this formula is saying that what Courage inherits from the native is the same as what the Lot of Fortune inherits from Mars. In this case, Mars is the one giving out some of its lot to Fortune. And that same apportionment is given by the ascendant to Courage. This is also the relationship that the Lot of Necessity and the Lot of Nemesis have.

So we have two classes of Hermetic lots and two corresponding groups of planets that interact with Fortune and Daimon to produce those. Jupiter and Venus are given a share by the daimon and that is what’s mirrored by the ascendant giving to Victory and Eros. Saturn, Mars, and Mercury give a share to the tyche and that is what’s mirrored by the ascendant giving to Nemesis, Courage, and Necessity.

Daimon Lots vs. Tyche Lots

The obvious questions are: why is it those groups of planets? And why is it that the daimon allots to planets while tyche inherits from them? To answer these, let’s start by analyzing the groupings of planets. Jupiter and Venus receive from the daimon, while Saturn, Mars, and Mercury allot to the tyche.

So what are the differences between Jupiter and Venus as a group and the other three? The most glaring answer is that Jupiter and Venus are benefic planets, while the rest are not. But why should that make a difference here?

Let’s break down what it means to be benefic. The term itself just means “good-doer” in the Greek texts. But we must ask ourselves what it means for a planet, a governor of fate, to be a good-doer. Venus is associated with attaining our desires, getting help and being bestowed beautiful things by beautiful people. Jupiter is associated with our hopes and dreams, making those a reality, and achieving greatness. These do indeed sound very good, but in what sense are they good?

A cynical answer is that material success is what is considered “good” here, as if the best things in life are what we can show off. I believe the true answer is a little more nuanced. In the Myth of Er, the souls that are choosing a life to have are described as all having varied desires and hopes for what the life will be like, some wanting to be tyrants and be powerful, some desiring humble lives, and all variations between.

Since souls choose the desirable and glorious things that they want out of a life, and the daimon is the guide to fulfilling that choice, we have our answer. Part of what the daimon allots to life is what the soul desires, and part of it is what the soul hopes for. These are the good things that one can encounter in life, the things that Venus and Jupiter signify. So, to be a “good-doer” is to fulfill the chosen parts of the life.

Contrasting that, planets that are not good-doers will bring about things that the soul either did not expect, did not think through, or did not want. Since these things were not chosen by the soul, they are not part of the daimon’s duty, and they are simply consequences of the choice. So it does not make sense for the daimon to allot any of its portion to those things.

This is where the tyche comes in. Contrary to the daimon, the tyche is not the guardian and fulfiller of the soul’s choice of life. The tyche of one’s life is essentially the guardian of things that just happen, separate but related to the choice of the soul. It makes things happen that are either neutral to or detract from the soul’s choice. Consider the names of the Fortune lots: Nemesis, the enemies one makes; Courage, the difficult things that one must deal with; Necessity, the necessary consequences of actions and decisions.

We can see now why planets apportion to tyche, and why it is Saturn, Mars, and Mercury that do so. These three planets are not good-doers, they do not signify the fulfillment of desires and goals of the native’s life. And since these things are not part of the soul’s choice, they must be apportioned to the tyche of one’s life.

We can also note now that there is an interesting relationship between the daimon and tyche of one’s life. The daimon is the guide, inciting the native to act out, live out, and navigate the life they chose; tyche is the terrain that the native must navigate.

Inheritances and Allotments

Now we can dig deeper into what exactly the lots mean. Recall that the word ‘lot’ simply refers to what has been allotted or inherited. Therefore in a chart, the lots as a class of objects are simply referring to what is inherited by the life of the native. I don’t mean this in a material way; it’s not about the inheritance money you got from your dead relative. These are the events, people, themes that we inherit as a result of the life we chose to live out.

Take the lot of Daimon. As I said before, this point in the chart does not represent the daimon in itself. It does represent what is allotted to the daimon. You can think of it as the things that the daimon is guiding you to do, what the daimon has inherited as its duty to fulfill within your life.

The other lots function similarly. The lot of Tyche is what the tyche has inherited as its duty to fulfill within your life. And so on, so forth with the others. One thing that might prove tricky to think about in application is the role of these spirits (daimon, tyche, and the names of the other Hermetic lots are spirits assigned to our life). They are the shapers of our fate, so this requires careful attention.

These spirits are not external to you. As you can tell from the calculations, the very life breath (the ascendant) that is within the native has been divvied up to each one. That means that these spirits are inside of you, they exist within the tunic that your soul has put on in order to fit comfortably in the body. They motivate and rouse us to do certain things and live out the life we have been allotted.

This means they are also entirely personal. Every entity has its own array of spirits that drive that entity to fulfill its fate. This gets to the heart of why astrology works the way that it does: heavenly decree sets in place what can occur in our life, and we act that out by agreeing and cooperating with the spirits of bodily fate, who were placed there and were dictated by the heavens.

Other Lots

Studying other lots besides the Hermetic lots is also made easier with the framework provided. Most lots don’t use a tychic or daimonic transform of any kind, which is why they are more specific and less generally powerful. They are, however, quite useful for investigations into specific topics.

Lot of Mother

Let’s apply the logic of apportionment to another lot. We will study the Lot of the Mother, as described by the astrologer Dorotheus of Sidon. He provides the following formulas for a night chart:

By night, the Lot of the Mother is calculated by taking the portions from the Moon to Venus, and then casting that from the ascendant. By day, it is reversed (either by counting from Venus to the Moon, or casting the portions from the ascendant in the opposite direction).

I find it notable that Dorotheus lists the nocturnal calculation first, so let’s focus our attention on that formula. In the language of apportionment, the Moon is giving a certain amount of its portion to Venus. Then, the same apportionment is distributed from the ascendant. The Moon signifies life, the fortune of the universe, the bodily fate and its influences, and the mother in itself. Venus signifies beauty, nursing, benefits from women, and also the mother in itself.

The Moon’s apportionment to Venus is then the beautiful parts of the body and things in life that come from the beneficence of women: the mother is responsible for the formation of the body and the nursing of the child. So it is fitting that the native’s inherited mother would be studied through what the Moon allots to Venus.

I still contend that the formula itself should not change for a diurnal chart. The nocturnal calculation seems to contain the rationale itself. You might ask why we cast the lot in zodiacal order from the ascendant, and that seems to be related to the previous discussion of the direction of the Same and of the Other from the Myth of Er. Zodiacal order is related to the minutiae and differentiating aspects of life, like how the mother is specific to the person.

This would mean that there’s a lot to mirror the Lot of the Mother, that would cast upwards from the ascendant that same arc from the Moon to Venus. Both would be necessary to study in order to understand the topic of the mother. I can’t say for sure what the specific significance of it would be, but we can understand it partially through analogy to the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of Spirit.

The formula which casts in zodiacal order would then be akin to the tyche, while the other would be akin to daimon. This allotment’s tyche is the literal mother in your life, the parental figure that nourishes you. This allotment’s daimon contains the underlying incitement and character of that figure.

Lot of Father

Let’s look at the other parental lot, that of the father. Dorotheus states that by day, this lot is calculated as follows:

That is, the Sun apportions to Saturn, and that same dispensation is apportioned by the ascendant. This follows a very similar logic as the previous lot. That is, the Sun is the life-giver and the king of life. It signifies the vital breath as well as the mind, arousal to action, and the father. Saturn signifies the bonds and fetters of the past, and much like Kronos of myth, is the predecessor and also signifies the father in its own right.

The calculation of the lot then makes sense. The life-giver allots a portion to the aged one, producing the allotment of the native’s father.

Comparing Lots

Let’s compare some lots that have similar formulas, differing only by reversal.

Siblings vs. Children

The lot of siblings is found using this formula, according to Dorotheus:

The lot of children is found using this:

Comparing these two lots, we can get a better understanding of what effect the order of measurement has. The apportionment from Saturn to Jupiter results in information about the siblings of the native, while the apportionment from Jupiter to Saturn results in information about the children.

So we must ask, why is this the case? Saturn is the ruler of Necessity, and Jupiter is the ruler of reproduction. Jupiter’s role is quite clear, since both siblings and children are a result of reproduction. Saturn is generally used for lots that involve family members, possibly because the bonds of family are like unbreakable links.

We can ask this question a bit more concretely though, since we have the comparison. Reversal of the formula is the exact difference between siblings and children. In what way are the siblings and children “opposites” of each other? In one case the parents reproduce, in the other the native. In both cases, children (of the native’s parents or of the native) are signified.

In the lot of siblings, Saturn apportions to Jupiter. So a portion of necessity is given to reproduction. What kinds of things would necessity apportion to reproduction? Necessity has under its domain the unbreakable laws of the universe, the rules of consequence, cause and effect, and the inevitable. What portions of its domain can it give to reproduction?

A portion of Hope is allotted to Necessity. The Necessity of Hope is that there is a future to count on and build on what exists. Children, among other things, are the necessary part of having hope. There needs to be a future to rely on in order for Hope to exist.

A portion of Necessity is allotted to Hope. The Hope or Peace of Necessity is that there must be people who are on your side, just as there must be people against you. Siblings are the peaceful part of necessity, peers that you grow up with.

Substance vs. Friends

Firmicus Maternus describes these two lots in the Mathesis. The lot of Substance and Possessions is calculated as follows:

The lot of Friends is calculated as follows:

Let’s see if we can untangle the logic behind these. Now that we have worked out an example, this one should be much easier. Jupiter signifies peace, brotherhood, prosperity, affluence. Mercury signifies friendship, trust, contests, currency, commerce, calculation.

The lot of Substance and Possessions can be thought of in the following way. Mercury, signifying currency and all that is common to exchange, apportions some of its lot to Jupiter. Jupiter, being the arbiter of peace and prosperity, is apportioned those things that can be said to be in one’s possession, the substance that one has accumulated and can rely on.

The lot of Friends can be thought of similarly. Jupiter, signifying peace and brotherhood, apportions some of its lot to Mercury. Mercury, being the planet of contest, trust, and friendship, is apportioned those people that are one’s brothers despite not sharing blood ties. That is to say, friends.

Authority vs. Enemies

Olympiodorus gives us a lot of Authority. It is calculated as shown here:

The reverse of this lot is a fascinating one, because this is a lot that many authors give varying names to. Olympiodorus calls it the lot of Enemies, but at another point uses it as a lot of Dignity. He also at one point uses it as a lot of Homeland. Valens calls it the lot of Deceit. Firmicus dubs it the lot of Travel. Laurentianus calls it the lot of Sowing (or Conception). That’s not even to mention the Islamicate astrologers that used it for various other things.

This gives us an entirely new problem to chew on, but thankfully one that isn’t too hard to reconcile. There’s a reason I’ve only been referencing somewhat generic significations for each planet in the course of these examples. Planets signify a lot of things (no pun intended), and they are practically infinitely multivalent.

You may have been asking yourself why we focused on just a few significations of Mercury and Jupiter in the comparison of the lot of Friends and the lot of Substance. The truth seems to be that each lot does not mean only one thing. For instance, the lot of Substance from Firmicus is referred to as the lot of Contracts by Olympiodorus. It is tempting to chalk this up to variance between authors, but as noted above, it can vary even within one author’s work.

The reason is hopefully readily visible. The significations from which a planet apportions to another are infinite and variable. The significations of the planet being apportioned to is the same. So it is partially up to the astrologer to logically deduce how to calculate the relevant lot for the topic under investigation. Obviously, we can still rely on already proven formulas, but there can’t be a rigid, bijective mapping from formulas to topics.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way and justified the various meanings of the lots, we can return to the example at hand. I will focus on this lot as the lot of Enemies, but the reader can and is encouraged to test this logic against the other meanings of the lot. The lot of Enemies is calculated as:

The lot of Authority shows us the apportionment from Mars to the Sun. Mars has under its purview strife, audacity, hubris, courage, strength. The Sun has light, fortune, will, kingship, visibility. Mars apportions some of its own to the Sun, and the visible portion of hubris is Authority.

The lot of Enemies is the apportionment from the Sun to Mars. The Sun apportions some of its own to Mars. The audacious, strifeful, quarrelsome portion of visibility is that it alerts enemies to your stance.

Authority vs. Craft

I also want to take a moment to compare the same lot of Authority with what Olympiodorus gives as a lot of Craft. The lot of Craft is calculated using this formula:

Notice that this is like the lot of Authority, but with the Moon instead of the Sun. Instead of Mars apportioning to the Sun, it apportions to the Moon in this instance. The Moon signifies the body, travels, messages, rumors, form, increase and decrease. The increasing and decreasing portion of work or labor is in fact the Craft that one is engaged in.

Comparative Study

That should be enough to give us a grasp on the individual calculations. I encourage the reader to pick a lot from the sources and apply this logic. I think you will find that it is handy for understanding how to generate lot formulas and their associated meanings.

Now we can move to a broader view of lots. Here I will attempt to compile and organize lot calculations by the apportioning planet, so that we can see in a tabular form that our logic makes sense. For convenience, I will only list lots that are projected from the ascendant.

Apportionments of Saturn
Apportioning Planet	Planet Apportioned To	Associated Lot(s)
Saturn	Jupiter	Siblings, Contracts, Death of the Father, Earth, Eros, Homeland, Judgment, Knowledge and Meditation, Reason and Depth of Thought, Reward
	Mars	Being in a Foreign Land, Enemies, Eros, Exile, Grief, Illness, Imprisonment, Injury, Judgment, Accusation
	Sun	Grief, Imprisonment, Opportunity, Wealth
	Venus	Dreams, Farming, Hope, Inheritance, Life, Marriage, Rulership, Sons in law
	Mercury	Debt, Debtor, Dreams, Enemies, Entanglement and Hardship, Estates, Homeland, Illness, Judgment, Ship owning, the Creditor
	Moon	Authority and Work, Death, Dwelling, Military Expedition, Real Estate

Apportionments of Jupiter
Apportioning Planet	Planet Apportioned To	Associated Lot(s)
Jupiter	Saturn	Business, Children, Friends, Life
	Mars	Business
	Sun	Accomplishment, Dignity, Male Children, Wealth
	Venus	Activity, Association, Desire, Fame/Glory, Farming, Female Children, Friends, Lovers, Marriage, Rulership
	Mercury	Children, Civil Office, Friends, Inheritance, Male Children
	Moon	Longevity, A Woman’s Lover

Apportionments of Mars
Apportioning Planet	Planet Apportioned To	Associated Lot(s)
Mars	Saturn	Accusation, Clouds, Damage, Death, Injury, Soldiers and Policemen
	Jupiter	Contentions and Contenders, Father, Judgment, Military Service, Time of Children
	Sun	Authority, Military Service, Punishment
	Venus	Adultery, Purchase, Husband, Underground Things
	Mercury	Destruction, Enemies, Lawsuit, Slaves
	Moon	Craft, Exile, Rulership and Authority, Slaves, War

Apportionments of the Sun
Apportioning Planet	Planet Apportioned To	Associated Lot(s)
Sun	Saturn	Authority and Aid and Conquering, Father, Grandfathers, Power, Time Occupied by Action
	Jupiter	Activity, Authority and Aid and Conquering, Father, Male Children, Successful Issue, Tales and Knowledge of Rumors and Superstitions, Time for Action, Work Which Must be Done
	Mars	Conquest, Deceit/Treachery, Dignity, Enemies, Fire, Homeland, Lost Animal, Sowing/Conception, Travel
	Venus	Marriage (for Men)
	Mercury	Slaves/Servants
	Moon	Fortune, Marriage, Parents

Apportionments of Venus
Apportioning Planet	Planet Apportioned To	Associated Lot(s)
Venus	Saturn	Agriculture, Life, Livelihood, Marriage (for Women), Sisters, Underground Things, Waters
	Jupiter	Boy-Lover of a Man
	Mars	Adultery, Purchase, Sale, Underground Things, Victory
	Sun	The Master
	Mercury	Basis, Enemies, Purchase, Reward
	Moon	Livelihood, Mistress of a Woman, Mother

Apportionments of Mercury
Apportioning Planet	Planet Apportioned To	Associated Lot(s)
Mercury	Saturn	Children, Cold, Loans, Number of Siblings, Punishment/Justice
	Jupiter	Association, Contract, Kinship, Real Estate, Number of Siblings, Substance and Possessions
	Mars	Activity, Illness, Logic and Reason, Military Service, The Fugitive, Theft, Work of Truth
	Sun	Freedom, Siblings, Soul’s Freedom, Those Honored and Known Among People
	Venus	Association, Children, Found Wealth, Friends, Manual Workers and Commercial Activities, Purchase, Reward
	Moon	Rumors (Whether True or False), Sale, Slaves

Apportionments of the Moon
Apportioning Planet	Planet Apportioned To	Associated Lot(s)
Moon	Saturn	Burial, Death, Faults and Lusts, Male Children
	Jupiter	Knowledge of the King, Male Children, Mistress of a Man, Strength of the Body
	Mars	Life or Death of Absent Person, Marriage (for Women)
	Sun	Spirit
	Venus	Female Children, Indecency and Lust, Life, Water, Women’s Abstinence
	Mercury	Friends, Peace Among Soldiers/Concord, Plenty and Abundance of Good in Home, Religion/Piety

As you can see, there are a lot of repeats. This is either due to different authors providing a different formula, or because an author describes a conditional calculation usually due to the other calculation “failing”. For example, Dorotheus describes the lot of the Father as the apportionment from the Sun to Saturn. But if Saturn is under the beams of the Sun, he says to instead take the apportionment from Mars to Jupiter. Many of the duplicates are some variation of this.

My hope is that the reader uses these tables not just as a reference, but as a tool for understanding the lot formulas. For example, you might notice some common themes among each table. Lots in which Saturn is the apportioning planet all have to do with Saturnian topics, for instance. This is my point, that if you add up all of those significations with whatever Saturn would attribute to itself, you’d get the entirety of what Saturn has as its portion.

So in short, the lots are an astrological tool. They allow us as astrologers to distribute the significations of one planet to another, in effect narrowing down their significations. That distribution is then replicated from the ascendant to put it in the frame of reference of the native. Something I have not touched on here is that you can cast lots from points other than the ascendant. Typically, you either cast from an angle of the chart or from a planet, less frequently from a house.

Something else I have not touched upon much is that some authors calculate lots that are not just measured between two planets. This broadens the usage of lots by a wide margin, allowing the astrologer to cast many, many lots. There are also a few lots that use a degree of the zodiac as a component of the lot, which makes the possibilities even more endless. As we saw with the Hermetic lots, it’s also possible to use other lots within a lot calculation.

A Final Commentary on the Forward and Reverse

We should address the matter of reversal, briefly, to close this. Performing a tychic transform is the same as casting the Sun’s apportionment to the Moon, in the direction of the zodiac. Performing a daimonic transform is the same as casting the Moon’s apportionment to the Sun, in the direction of the zodiac.

Essentially, reversing the direction of apportionment for the first measurement is the same as reversing the direction of apportionment for the second measurement. The question at the heart of the mystery is why this is the case. Let’s use the logic of apportionment to gain insight into this matter.

The first half of the lot calculations should make perfect sense on its own now: one planet apportions some of its own to another planet. The second half I’ve left somewhat vague up until this point. The portions previously calculated are now cast out from the ascendant, or some other point.

Let’s rearrange the formulas to make this comparison easier. I’ll focus on the lot of Spirit.

This arrangement of the lot formula is the formal reason why we can understand the ascendant as apportioning to the lots. But remember, we are interested in the effects of reversal. Using the reversed formula (i.e., reversing both sides of the equation):

We end up with the Sun apportioning to the Moon and the lot apportioning to the ascendant. These are mathematically the exact same formulas, so in some sense they must be equivalent. That is, they must be equal expressions of the same thing. The relationship is clear, then, that the ascendant is to the lot of Spirit as the Moon is to the Sun. Or in general, the lot of Spirit and the ascendant have the same relationship that the Sun and Moon do.

So in general, we can say that since the Sun is the image which the Moon imitates, the ascendant is imitating the image of the lot of Spirit. Put another way, the Sun apportions the image to the Moon, and the lot of Spirit apportions the same to the ascendant. The reversed formula states similarly that the Moon apportions godhead to the Sun, and the ascendant does the same to the lot of Spirit.

We can arrive at a similar understanding with the lot of Fortune. The relationship is of course flipped:

That is, what the Moon apportions to the Sun is the same as what the lot of Fortune apportions to the ascendant. The lot of Fortune gives the ascendant mastery and control, albeit subject to the ups and downs of fortune. The ascendant apportions to the lot of Fortune the imitated growth and decay of its own image. That is, one’s own fortune and material life.

So, the takeaway: the matter of reversal is evidence that the relationship between the apportioner and the apportionee are symmetrical. The apportionment of one to the other implies, in a mirrored way, the apportionment of the latter to the former.

Returning to Transforms

This is important as it relates to the notion of the tychic and daimonic transforms discussed earlier. While that is a way to conceptualize the two actions, note that the transforms are reversals of one another; they are inverses. The lot of Fortune and the lot of Spirit are indeed reversals of each other, and so in that sense are equivalent statements of the same fundamental relationship. To put it algebraically, notice that you can add the formulas for these lots and end up with the following:

Notice that they are inversely related to the ascendant. We can use the language of apportionment here again to track this conceptually. What the ascendant apportions to the lot of Spirit is the same as what the lot of Fortune apportions to the ascendant, and vice versa. They are both dealing in the same quantity (the lunisolar arc), they just differ in which is giving the apportionment. To put it another way, what the lot of Spirit apportions to the ascendant, the ascendant apportions to the lot of Fortune; what the lot of Fortune apportions to the ascendant, the ascendant apportions to the lot of Spirit.

This is reminiscent of that chain-like diagram from the discussion on transforms. Being apportioned to by the lot is the same as casting in diurnal order, that is, a daimonic transform. The ascendant apportioning to the lot is the same as casting in zodiacal order, that is, a tychic transform. So we can distinguish between two types of lots, daimonic and tychic lots. They are symmetrical to each other and which one is which depends on which you consider first, due to the symmetrical nature of apportionment. We will come back to that momentarily, but for now remember that they always come in the same pair.

For example, the lot of Siblings and the lot of Children from earlier. Since they are reversals of each other, they share the same relationship that the lot of Fortune and the lot of Spirit do. That is, one could describe a sort of child-ish transform and a sibling-ish transform that are inverse to one another. We already discussed why these two could be conceptualized as reverses of each other, so let’s focus on how to graft the tyche vs daimon relationship onto this one.

Since the daimonic is associated with higher powers and the tychic is associated with the material, the convention I will establish is this: within a pair of lots, the one in which the measurement is taken from the higher planet to the lower planet (in the order of the spheres as according to the Myth of Er) and is cast in zodiacal direction shall be dubbed the tychic lot of the two. The other shall be the daimonic lot. Note that this is because this aligns with the lot of Spirit and the lot of Fortune themselves. That is, the lot of Fortune is measured from the Sun to the Moon and cast in zodiacal order, so it is the tychic lot.

In our example of the lot of Children and the lot of Siblings, note that the lot of Children would be considered the tychic lot of the pair, and the lot of Siblings would be the daimonic. That is because the lot of Children is measured from Saturn to Jupiter, and cast in zodiacal order. This gives us an interesting interpretation of the difference between the daimonic and tychic, that the daimonic is in a sense prior to the life whereas the tychic is a result of life. We can see this because the tychic lot of this pair is the native’s own offspring, whereas the daimonic lot is the offspring which the native is surrounded by of necessity, not their own choice.

This notion applies to the lot of Spirit and the lot of Fortune as well. The lot of Spirit represents that daimonic influence that was assigned to a person based on the life they chose to live. The lot of Fortune is the resulting life that they will carry out and the affairs that are produced within that life. If we liken life to a garden, the daimonic is what drives you to tend the garden, and the tychic is what actually grows or happens in your garden.

One can apply this relationship fairly straightforwardly to the rest of the lots listed in the tables above. I will leave these as exercises for the reader. Simply pick any pair of lots that are the same aside from reversal and then follow the same logic. What I do want to focus on next is a generalization of the relationship. If we rearrange the formulas that equate the lots and the ascendant, the result is this:

This is rather evident if you simply look at the two lots in relationship to the ascendant in a given chart. The ascendant will always be halfway between the two lots by mathematical necessity. But what is of note here is that this relationship would hold for any other pair of lots that differ only by reversal. We can then create a generalized statement of this relationship:

In other words, for every pair of lots, the ascendant is the midpoint or average between them. To put the final pin into this, I want to return to a statement made by Paulus Alexandrinus: “And the Hour-marker acts as a mediating judge of these [Hermetic lots], becoming the basis of the entire cosmos. […] Basis, which is the Hour-marker, becomes a contributing cause of life and breath, since at the time of being born everything that is born tears away the breath of life from the living air in the turning point of the water-clock’s hour, which is set at birth. This is indicative of one’s all.” Since all of these lots are connected by having the ascendant halfway between them, the ascendant is acting as the mediating judge between these two extremes. So the ascendant is handing out or divvying itself up in all of these polarities, between tyche and daimon.

In Conclusion

Finally we can wrap this discussion up. To reiterate, the main point that I want to convey is that lots can be thought of in terms of apportionment. A point apportions some of its allotment to another point, and then that same portion is cast from another point. This works by a kind of analogy, that the apportionment from one planet to another can be counted out and retain its relative meaning.

We also saw the importance of the Sun and the Moon in these calculations. Since they are the rulers of all, their apportionments to each other hold special significance. We dubbed the addition or subtraction of their apportionment to be the tychic and daimonic transform, respectively. But we also saw that the categorization into tychic and daimonic is widespread throughout the lots and can be applied to just about every pair of them.

As a final word, I want to discuss something implied by the Neoplatonist Iamblichus. In the Letter to Anebo, he states that “And indeed the evidence that you adduce concerning daimons presiding over various parts of the body which attend to their health and condition, and then a single overseer established over all in common, this you may take as an indication of the supervisory role granted to a single daimon over everything that concerns us; do not therefore make a distinction between one daimon concerned with the body, another with the soul, and another with the intellect.” Here Iamblichus is implying that astrologers are given to approaching the life as infested with many daimons, each concerned with their own portion of the body or the life. This is fundamental to our understanding of the lots, that every daimon can be found in the chart, as the emanation of energies from the planets and distributed amongst the life breath. So, every lot is a daimon’s, and the sum of all daimon’s is one’s all.