Almuten of the Ascendant: the weight behind the title

The word comes from the Arabic al-mubtazz, "the one who prevails". Arabic-language astrologers, and later William Lilly in the 17th century, used it to decide between several claimants to the rulership of a degree. The scale AstralPro uses is Lilly's; al-Biruni, in the 11th century, gave the same values but put the term (3) ahead of the triplicity (2), while noting that the astrologers of his day did the reverse:

• domicile: 5 points
• exaltation: 4 points
• triplicity: 3 points
• term: 2 points
• face: 1 point

The arithmetic that matters: exaltation and triplicity together make 7 points, more than domicile alone. A planet that is exalted and rules the sign's triplicity can therefore beat the ruler. In case of a tie, the planet holding the highest rank wins: this single criterion is enough to settle every case.

The terms are the Egyptian terms, the ones AstralPro uses everywhere. They know only five planets, so the Sun and the Moon top out at 13 points where the others can reach 15: that is the table as it has come down to us. Triplicity follows AstralPro's day and night table, without a participating ruler.

The face, for its part, calls for attention. It is the Chaldean decan: the cycle Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, repeated over the thirty-six decans from the start of Aries. It is not the decan you read in your report, calculated by element, whose sub-ruler is the modern ruler of a sign of the same element. The two tables differ on the vast majority of decans; they do not answer the same question, and only the Chaldean face enters the almuten.

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto enter no almuten. When a sign's domicile belongs to a modern planet, that rank stays empty, and triplicity takes over: by night, Scorpio gives Mars, its traditional ruler, without any traditional rulership being written anywhere.

The almuten is calculated for the Ascendant alone. Not for the houses: your report applies the rule "one house, one ruler", that of the sign on the cusp, and twelve almutens would contradict several of them. Not for each planet either: the dispositors already answer the question of who rules the sign it sits in.

The almuten of the Ascendant is only mentioned if all these conditions are met:

• the chart's sect is known (triplicity depends on day or night);
• the Ascendant is in one of the nine signs with a traditional ruler;
• the almuten differs from the sign's ruler.

This concerns about 9 to 16% of charts. The word "almuten" never appears in the prose, nor do points, face, term or triplicity. The mention takes a single sentence, in the portrait of your Ascendant and nowhere else, in a precise register: a de facto authority, an arbiter, a second signature. The ruler keeps its title; the almuten says who weighs most on that degree, without ever taking the title away.

The almuten removes no one. The ruler of your Ascendant remains the one named in your cusps table, and your report keeps calling it that everywhere. The rule "one house, one ruler" is untouched, and the dispositors keep their role. The almuten adds a nuance in a single place: on this precise degree, another planet has its say, alongside the holder of the title.

Tradition went further. Lilly also defines an almuten for each house, the planet with the most dignities in the sign on its cusp, and an almuten of the figure, the most powerful planet in the whole chart by essential and accidental dignities. AstralPro does none of this: these uses would multiply the disagreements with the rulers printed in your report. The engine keeps the most telling case, the one where the weight of a degree parts ways with the title of the sign.

The Ascendant of Camille Morel, AstralPro's example chart (fictional data), is at 15°59' Scorpio, in a nocturnal chart. Its ruler, under modern rulerships, is Pluto, which her report presents as the ruler of house 1.

The almuten calculation would give, at this degree: Mars, 3 points (night ruler of the Water triplicity), Mercury, 2 points (the term from 11° to 19° Scorpio), the Sun, 1 point (the face of the second decan). Pluto, a modern planet, does not enter the count. The almuten would therefore be Mars, different from Pluto.

And yet her report says nothing about it, and that is the rule. Scorpio is one of the three signs with a modern ruler. In these signs, the almuten differs from the ruler on every degree, by construction, and only finds the traditional ruler again: Mars for Scorpio. Letting it speak would contradict the dignity line printed two pages earlier and set two doctrines against each other without telling you anything about your degree. Here, silence is the exact reading.