Talk:Horary astrology

Confusing phrase

"As a metaphor, consider an actor who breaks his leg on opening night; essential good, accidentally debilitated. The converse is true." Am I the only one who finds it confusing?

Essential dignity has to do with the sign placement of the planet--for example, if Mercury was in Gemini, the sign that he rules, he would be essentially dignified--this would describe the actor as being in his element--on the stage during opening night. But supposing that same Mercury was in the 9th House--his house of detriment--the actor is wild with excitement, got ahead of himself, and tripped and broke his leg. That is accidental detriment. Accidental refers to the house placement. 'The converse' refers to what follows in the article, where a planet is essentially detriment(in its least powerful sign placement) but strongly placed by house(accidentally dignified). Astroswift (talk) 22:11, 29 August 2010 (UTC)astroswift

I agree, it's a confusing metaphor to use and I would argue that it is not even one that is appropriate in the first place. However, I also disagree with your suggestion that Accidental deals with (just) the house placement. An example of an accidental debility could be to be slow moving or retrograde - the house is irrelevant to this debility. The article as it stands allows for this richer interpretation and mentions combustion etc. It links to an article on accidental dignity which also needs amending (imho), as it also only focuses on house position.

A better metaphor: Essential dignity refers to how good in nature a significator is. Accidental dignity refers to the significator's power to act. Eg A good person in a bad situation could be signified by the a planet being full of essential dignity (a good person) but with accidental debility (in a bad situation). (Xpaulk (talk) 13:52, 31 August 2010 (UTC))

I've removed the example of an actor breaking his leg and replaced it with an example of a lost valuable ring, the essential dignity of which is good, but whose accidental dignity is poor. Hopefully this should illustrate the differences in accidental and essential dignity more readily. (Xpaulk (talk) 14:15, 7 September 2010 (UTC))