Essential dignities

Essential dignity asks whether a planet stands in a part of the zodiac it rules. Five kinds are counted, from strongest to weakest: domicile, the sign it rules; exaltation; triplicity, rulership of an element shared by day or by night; term, a band of a few degrees within the sign; and face, one of three ten-degree decans. Detriment and fall are the signs opposite domicile and exaltation.

A common way to total them is William Lilly's: five points for domicile, four for exaltation, three for triplicity, two for term, one for face, minus five for detriment and minus four for fall. A planet holding none of the five is called peregrine.

Authors disagree on details. Aspicio uses Egyptian terms, Dorothean triplicities and Chaldean faces by default, with Ptolemy's terms and triplicities one switch away, and names the tables beside every score.