23rd Feb 2009
Planets In Astrology
The planets have “favorite” places in the sky where they exude and give off their best qualities. They also have “worst” places where the zodiac signs they’re in completely hinder them from letting their true nature come forth. This concept is referred to as essential dignity.
The best way to explain this without getting into a bunch of dry dissertation is to take a zodiac sign and see which planets do best in it and which have some trouble. So let’s take the zodiac sign of Taurus to start our review.
Taurus is ruled by the planet Venus. So right off the bat, we know that when Venus is in Taurus, she will be very happy. Why is this so important to know? In astrology, the ability to know the strength of a planet is crucial to know how well we may have a talent or ability as it relates to our birth chart. If you are looking to answer a particular question for someone (studying the astrological signs in this way is called horary astrology - an extremely useful and practical way to find answers to pertinent questions), one has to know how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ a particular planet may be. Because that planet may be representing an important person relating to the question and thus will help to provide the answer or the true meaning behind the question.
So to lay out all the types of essential dignity, there is rulership as we saw above. There is exaltation, then triplicity, term, and face. Basically this goes from “best” to “honored” to “lucky, pretty good” to “eh, ok” to “well, better than nothing.” These are all forms of “good”.
Then there’s also the negative parts of essential dignity. They are called detriment and fall. Detriment is “very bad”, fall is “pretty bad”. Each planet has its signs and parts of zodiac signs where they are “pretty good” , “better than nothing”, or whole signs where they are “very bad”. You can search in good astrology books and on other website for a chart that lists the specific zodiac signs for all of these places. It’s quite interesting and there are many articles and whole books which go into fascinating detail on why the planets are considered good or bad in each sign.
As a starter, you can know that if a planet is the “best” in one sign, like Venus in Taurus, then it will be the “worst” in the astrology sign exactly opposite that. So for Venus, she has the hardest time or the worst time in expressing herself the way she’d like in Scorpio. The zodiac sign Scorpio is exactly opposite Taurus.