How they feel about you
How they feel about you
Fixing the moment
Casting this moment
- 01Fixing the moment
- 02Finding the two of you
- 03Reading the ground each of you stands on
How this works
One planet stands for you, taken from the sign on the first house. Another stands for the person you named. The tool then reads the ground each planet is standing on: if your planet sits in a place the other planet rules, the other planet is the host, and in traditional practice a guest in your own house is a guest you welcome. That is reception, and it runs in each direction independently — which is why the two answers above can disagree, and why disagreeing is the most useful thing they do.
The method
Reception by essential dignity — William Lilly, Christian Astrology (1647), Book 1, the table of essential dignities
The ranking is traditional: Lilly’s own table puts domicile and exaltation above triplicity, and term and face below it, with detriment and fall as the debilities. The feeling words we put on that ranking — “deeply at home”, “on a pedestal”, “looks down on” — are ours, not his. Lilly writes that a received planet is welcomed and strengthened; he does not gloss the dignities as emotions, and we are not going to put words in his mouth.
An example
Venus receives Mars by triplicity and face → there is real warmth there, comfortable and easy.
What it does not do
- One horary chart, cast for the moment you ask. This is not a birth-chart comparison and not a compatibility score.
- It describes the connection. It does not say whether anything will come of it — that is a judgment, and a judgment needs the whole chart.
- It reads regard only. Whether the two planets actually meet, and what stands in the way, is not in this version.
Questions
What is reception?
A planet is received when it stands in a place another planet rules. The tradition reads that as the ruling planet being well disposed toward the visitor — it is in its own territory, and the guest is welcome there. When the visitor stands in a place where the ruler is instead ruined, in its detriment or its fall, it is received into debility, and the reading turns the other way.
Why two answers?
Because reception runs in each direction on its own. Your planet can be welcome in theirs while theirs is unwelcome in yours. Most tools flatten that into one number; the tradition does not, and neither do we — an uneven pair is the honest picture of a great many relationships.
Will it tell me whether we get back together?
No, and that is deliberate. This is the most loaded question anybody brings us, and a free anonymous screen is not the place to answer it — not without the classification, the caveats and the care a full reading carries. This tool shows you what the chart says about how each of you stands. The answer is a separate thing.
Why is a lover read from the same house as a partner?
Because the tradition puts every romantic party in the seventh — spouse, partner, lover alike. A friend is the eleventh. The fifth is sometimes offered for a lover in modern practice, but we could not source it, and our own rules already correct a romance question from the fifth to the seventh. So the two romantic cards read the same chart; only the wording follows what you told us.
Does reception need an aspect?
Some authorities say yes. We follow Lilly, who writes of an application “by square or opposition, and with reception” — two conditions joined by and, which would be redundant if one entailed the other. So a reception without an aspect still counts here. Where the two planets do aspect each other, we say so, because a reception reinforced by an aspect is the stronger one.