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When the Chart Will Not Speak: Bonatti's 144th Consideration
The 144th Consideration is, To observe in Questions Nativities, or Elections, when the Significators shall not clearly show thee what thou wouldst know but the signification remains dubious, so that the mind is in suspense, take the place of the Lord of the Ascendant, and the place of the Lord of the House of the Moon, and see the distance of degrees between them, beginning from Aries, of which make signs, and add the degree of the sign ascending ; and project from the Ascendant as well by day as night, and where the number falls, the Lord of that House shall be Significator and from him take the signification of the business enquired, for according to his disposition thou mayest judge.
Bonatti, Anima Astrologiae (146 Considerations), Henry Coley tr., London 1676 (Redway 1886 reprint), p. 71. View the original page
Every horary astrologer meets the chart that will not commit. The querent's significator is neither strong nor ruined, the Moon applies to nothing decisive, and the testimonies sit level on both sides of the scale. Bonatti's 144th Consideration, in the collection known as the Anima Astrologiae, addresses exactly that suspended state — not only in horary questions but in nativities and elections too. His remedy is not to guess, but to calculate.
The procedure is a lot, built the way the Arabic parts are built. Take the zodiacal position of the lord of the Ascendant and the position of the lord of the sign the Moon occupies (her dispositor), each measured in degrees counted from the beginning of Aries. Take the distance between them, express it as signs and degrees, add the degree of the ascending sign, and project that total forward from the Ascendant. Bonatti specifies that the formula is not reversed by night, as many lots are; it is cast the same way for day and night charts. Wherever the resulting degree falls, the lord of that house is adopted as significator, and its condition — its dignity, its aspects, its reception, whether it is free or afflicted — is read for the matter enquired after.
A worked example: a question arrives with 10° Gemini rising, so Mercury is lord of the Ascendant, and suppose he stands at 5° Leo, which is 125° from Aries. The Moon is in Pisces, dispositor Jupiter, at 20° Libra, or 200° from Aries. The distance is 75°, that is, two signs and fifteen degrees. Adding the ten degrees of the ascending sign gives two signs and twenty-five degrees; counted from the beginning of Gemini, the rising sign, that lands at 25° Leo (the same point as counting 75° onward from the Ascendant itself). If that degree falls within the fourth house, the lord of the fourth is taken up and examined, and its state supplies the testimony the original significators withheld.
Two qualifications belong to the tradition, and omitting them would misrepresent it. First, a dubious chart is not the same as an unfit one. Bonatti and the later English writers are firm that certain configurations — an Ascendant in the earliest or latest degrees, Saturn in the seventh or as lord of the Ascendant, and similar warnings — mark a figure that should not be judged at all, and no lot repairs that. Second, lots in the traditional practice are confirmatory rather than sovereign. This point is a tiebreaker for a genuinely balanced chart, not a device for overturning significators that have already spoken clearly.
Used in that spirit, the 144th Consideration is a piece of honest craftsmanship: an admission that charts are sometimes mute, and a disciplined method for listening again rather than filling the silence with wishful reading.