The Arabic Parts

The Arabic Parts

Each Lot provides a kind of script, a lens through which an important feature of fate can be perceived. How do we gain wealth? Fame? Happiness? Love and devotion? These are the questions of fate, and each horoscope details its inexorable inner workings, providing a summary of fate if we could only but read what is written.

– Antoine Garth

The Arabic Parts have an honourable history in Astrology stretching far back into antiquity, yet they have been largely lost to modern astrologers since the seventeenth century. The parts (also known as "Lots") enable an examination of the "inner" meaning of the horoscope, which goes beyond the "outer" evaluations stimulated by the arrangement of the planets, signs and houses.

The doctrine of parts is based squarely on the numerical relationships between factors of the horoscope. There are a large number of these parts, the best known today perhaps being the Part of Fortune (Part of the Moon), which has survived because it is the strongest of the parts, due to its employment of the Ascendant, Sun and Moon. The Part of Fortune (in Latin: Pars Fortunæ) is not a planet, but a sensitive, calculated point in the horoscope that shows in effect where the Moon would be if you were born at sunrise. Interested astrologers can use our traditional Table to Calculate the Value of the Part of Fortune for use in chart delineation.

Many other parts, however, are distinctly useful in predictive astrology and are regularly used in natal, horary and mundane figures. Robert Zoller's The Lost Key to Prediction: The Arabic Parts in Astrology presents a valuable and illuminating insight into the Arabic Parts, their history, construction and usage. The table at the end of this article lists the seven main planetary parts, according to Zoller's scholarly translation of Bonatti, but there are many, many others. Parts are extracted according to the strength of the planets concerned, i.e., a nocturnal planet is stronger in a nocturnal figure than a diurnal and vice versa.

As with the modern employment of planetary midpoints, the usage of parts should be secondary to an understanding of the major chart factors (planets, signs and house cusps). Use the part to clarify or illustrate any features that need to emphasized. One reason for the decline of parts in modern times may have been their seemingly limitless proliferation and substitution for clear planetary relationships; another is that the mediæval worldview that they imply can be quite difficult for modern astrologers to appreciate. Nevertheless, experience shows that the directions and transits to the parts (especially Pars Fortunæ) have a definite effect with regard to the matters ruled by the house occupied by the part.

One very valuable function of the Parts, especially the Part of Fortune, is to establish shades of meaning to the whole nativity by using the Part as the ascendant, then delineating the chart again with the realm of the particular Part in mind. This is the sort of thing that Indian astrologers have been doing for centuries—and recent scholarship has shown that it was also employed in the Western tradition, especially in Hellenistic times.

According to Bonatti, the significance for good or ill of the part should be judged by the conjunction of the part in question, or that of its planetary lord, with the planets, but he also allows the use of other aspects (such as opposition, square etc). According to Valens, the planetary rulers of the Parts are the most important, more so than the aspects to the Parts themselves.

• To find the positions of various Arabic Parts in your chart, use this neat on-line Arabic Parts Generator.

The Primary Arabic Parts

Part of Fortune (Pars Fortunæ)

Part of Things to Come (Pars Futurorum)

Part of Love and Concord (Pars Veneris)

The Part of Love is the Part of Venus, signifying pleasures, desires, relationships and lovemaking in general. Take the distance in a diurnal chart between the Part of Fortune and the Part of Things to Come (and the reverse in a nocturnal chart) and project it from the ascendant.

"The pars veneris signifies pleasures, desires, and wants in venereal things and in the culture of them both licit and illicit, and the things which venereal people love and which the soul desires, unions and all things which pertain to the inclination of coitus and pleasure from games and joys and delights."

- Bonatti, from Zoller: The Lost Key to Prediction
Inner Traditions, NY 1980

Part of Daring (Pars Martis)

The Part of Daring is the Part of Mars, signifying dynamic action and all warlike things, especially those involving courage and bravado, plus the sexual relations taking the forms of conquest and overcoming resistance. Take the distance in a diurnal chart between Mars and the Part of Fortune (and the reverse in a nocturnal chart) and project it from the ascendant.

"The pars martis signifies the disposition of armies, of wars and battles, and the worth and sharpness of the soul, also resolution, anticipation and greatness of heart with impulse and haste; it also signifies lascivious incest with cunning and seductions."

- Bonatti, from Zoller: The Lost Key to Prediction
Inner Traditions, NY 1980

Part of Happiness (Pars Iovis)

The Part of Happiness is the Part of Jupiter, signifying happiness and assistance, the attainment of good things, wisdome, fortune, honour and position, religious and legal matters. Take the distance in a diurnal chart between the Part of Things to Come and Jupiter (and the reverse in a nocturnal chart) and project it from the ascendant.

"Its significance is concerning honor and the attainment of things, victory and assistance and happiness and goodness... belief in God... justice... good works... wisdom ... trust... faith..."

- Bonatti, from Zoller: The Lost Key to Prediction
Inner Traditions, NY 1980

The Heavy Part (Pars Saturni)

The Heavy Part is the Part of Saturn, signifying serious and weighty matters, deep thought, karma, old age, incarceration, land management, inheritances, death and matters to do with the dead, structure, consistency, time, faith and religion. Take the distance in a diurnal chart between Saturn and the Part of Fortune (and the reverse in a nocturnal chart) and project it from the ascendant.

"Its signifies memory and profundity of mind and counsel... a matter which has perished or been lost... condition of the dead... by what death the native may die... old age and time.. praise and disgrace... "

- Bonatti, from Zoller: The Lost Key to Prediction
Inner Traditions, NY 1980

Part of Poverty and Ordinary Intellect (Pars Mercurii)

The Part of Poverty and Ordinary Intellect is the Part of Mercury, signifying negotiation, buying and selling, ordinary mental activity, meanness of intelligence and intellect, writings, science, contention and enmity. Take the distance in a diurnal chart between the Part of Things to Come and the Part of Fortune (and the reverse in a nocturnal chart) and project it from the ascendant.

"Its signifies poverty and meanness of intelligence and intellect... war, fear, hatred, contentions, injuries... negotiations... diverse sciences. "

- Bonatti, from Zoller: The Lost Key to Prediction
Inner Traditions, NY 1980