Triplicity

Meaning

The twelve signs fall into four triangles, one for each element. Signs four apart, in trine to one another, share an element: Aries, Leo and Sagittarius are fire, for example. Each triangle is a triplicity, and each has three planets as its rulers.

One ruler leads by day, one by night, and the third participates in both. For fire, the Sun rules by day, Jupiter by night, and Saturn participates. A planet standing in a sign of an element it rules is in its own triplicity, the third of the five essential dignities.

Triplicity is a looser bond than domicile. A planet does not own the place, but it belongs there, like someone among their own people. Tradition reads it as supported and at ease, able to act with the backing of kin rather than the authority of an owner. William Lilly gives it three points.

Which ruler counts most depends on sect: whether the chart is by day, with the Sun above the horizon, or by night. Venus rules the earth signs by day and the Moon by night. In a day chart Venus is the earth sign’s leading ruler; in a night chart the Moon takes the lead.

In practice

• Saturn in an air sign by day is in its own triplicity: tradition reads its patience and judgement as well supported. By night, Mercury leads the air signs instead.
• Jupiter in a fire sign by night holds its triplicity; by day the Sun leads, and Jupiter’s role there is secondary.
• Dorotheus read the course of a life through the triplicity rulers of the sect light: the Sun by day, the Moon by night. The first ruler spoke for the earlier part of life, the second for the later part, and the participating ruler for both.
• A planet with no other dignity but its triplicity is not peregrine: it still has allies where it stands.

Across traditions

• Ptolemy gave a simpler set. William Lilly followed his table, and it differs from Dorotheus most for the water signs, which Lilly gives to Mars both by day and by night.
• Modern astrology keeps the four elements as temperaments, the subject of the element pages, but has mostly let the triplicity rulers go.

Origin and history

The Greek trigōnon, triangle, named the four groups. Dorotheus of Sidon set out the three rulers of each in his astrological poem of the 1st century. It survives mainly through an Arabic translation, and it shaped Persian and Arabic astrology. Vettius Valens, in the 2nd century, used the same rulers.

Ptolemy, in the Tetrabiblos, gave his own, shorter list of rulers. Many medieval authors kept the three rulers of Dorotheus. Lilly, in Christian Astrology (1647), printed a table of dignities after Ptolemy and scored triplicity at three points.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune uses the Dorothean rulers: fire, Sun, Jupiter, Saturn; earth, Venus, Moon, Mars; air, Saturn, Mercury, Jupiter; water, Venus, Mars, Moon. The Dignities table lists all three for each planet’s degree and marks which one is scored.

Only the ruler of the chart’s sect is scored: the day ruler in a day chart, the night ruler in a night chart. That planet earns three of Lilly’s points. The other two roles are shown but bring no points. A chart is by day when the Sun stands above the horizon at the time and place of birth, worked out from its altitude.

Without a birth time, the sect is unknown and the scores that hang on it are marked ~. Ulune pairs Dorotheus’s rulers with Lilly’s points, although Lilly himself scored the Ptolemaic rulers.

Correspondences