Mutual reception

Meaning

A planet receives the planets that stand in its signs. Mars receives a planet in Aries, as a host receives a guest. In a mutual reception the hospitality runs both ways: each of two planets stands in a sign of the other. The Sun in Aries and Mars in Leo are an example, the Sun in Mars’s sign and Mars in the Sun’s.

Tradition reads the two planets as bound to help each other. Each holds the keys to the other’s house. They can cooperate, cover for each other, and in a sense trade places. A planet that is weak where it stands, in detriment, in fall or peregrine, is read as much relieved. Its host is also its guest.

Receptions come in kinds. By domicile, each planet is in a sign the other rules. By exaltation, each is in the other’s sign of exaltation. Mixed, one is in the other’s domicile and the other in the first one’s exaltation. Reception by domicile is read as the strongest bond.

In practice

• By domicile. Venus in Aries and Mars in Libra are both in detriment, yet each sits in the other’s home. Tradition reads two difficult placements made workable by a mutual arrangement.
• By exaltation. The Moon in Cancer and Jupiter in Taurus: the Moon stands in Jupiter’s exaltation and Jupiter in the Moon’s.
• Mixed. Venus in Cancer and the Moon in Pisces: Venus is in the Moon’s sign, the Moon in Venus’s exaltation.
• With or without an aspect. Older practice wanted the two planets joined by an aspect for the reception to act fully. Many astrologers today count the exchange of signs on its own.
• In a chain of dispositors, two planets in reception by domicile dispose of each other and close a loop: see dispositor.

Across traditions

• Indian astrology calls an exchange of signs between two planets parivartana yoga. It reads the two planets as linking the matters of the houses they rule and occupy.
• Medieval astrology also spoke of one-way reception: a planet received by the planet in whose dignity it stands, when the two are joined by aspect.

Origin and history

Reception is above all a medieval idea. Masha’allah, an astrologer of the 8th century writing in Arabic, devoted a short book to it, known in Latin as On Reception. For him, a planet is received when it stands in another planet’s domicile or exaltation and is joined to it by aspect. The idea ran through medieval horary astrology, where reception could show that a matter would be granted or helped.

William Lilly, in Christian Astrology (1647), uses reception throughout his horary judgements. He counts mutual reception among the conditions that strengthen a planet. Modern astrology has kept mostly the simplest form, the exchange of signs by domicile.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune looks for mutual receptions among the seven traditional planets, with the traditional rulers. It checks every pair and finds three kinds. By domicile, each is in the other’s sign. By exaltation, each is in the other’s exaltation. Mixed, one is in the other’s sign and the other in the first one’s exaltation. Receptions by triplicity, term or face are not counted.

No aspect is required: the signs alone decide. The Dignities table lists each reception with its kind and where each planet stands, or says that there is none. The wheel’s receptions overlay draws only the receptions by domicile. Without a birth time, a reception is marked ~ when either planet could change sign during the day.

Correspondences