Contemporary astrological practice and scholarship suffer from neglect of horoscopic method. If horoscopic astrology is to be a reliable and legitimate art that reveals defining realities of earthly life and enables accurate predictions of future events, method must take its rightful place as the cornerstone of theory and practice.
Jean Baptiste Morin de Villefranche (1583−1656), the preeminent 17th-century French astrologer, provides a unique example of one who looked deeply into geocentric cosmology, astrological theory and horoscopic method. His magnum opus, the 26-volume Astrologia Gallica (published posthumously in 1661), is the principal source for his astrological work. Book 21 of the treatise offers the most comprehensive articulation of the theory of astrological signification and method of determination that together form the foundation of Morin’s work.
Art & Method
A method is a means to an end. The word combines the Greek metá (“after, in pursuit of)” with hodós (“way, manner”). Aristotle used the Greek methodos (“scientific inquiry, method of inquiry, investigation”) to refer to systematic investigations. The Latin methodus is a “way of proceeding.”
An art, from the Indo-European root ar- (“to fit together, to join”) is the skilled assembly of parts into a coherent whole. An art requires a way to accomplish the purposes for which it is designed. It requires a method. More precisely, an art is its method.
Every legitimate art that engages with realities of the world we inhabit depends for its efficacy on strict adherence to method. This holds true for mathematics, engineering, meteorology, modern medical diagnosis, and the experimental art that establishes the findings of modern physical science. It holds true as well for traditional disciplines such as Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and Tai Chi. These and other vital arts retain their integrity precisely because practitioners conform to the requirements of the art’s method. In contrast, many contemporary astrologers employ astrological symbols and techniques, or a chosen and shifting set of them, with little regard for method. Yet astrology is no exception to the methodological imperative. It demands the same rigorous fidelity to method as any other serious art.
Earth, Sky & the Geocentric Model of Cosmos
To grasp horoscopic method, we begin with the art’s most fundamental premise: Celestial configurations illuminate earthly occurrences. This simple and foundational reality requires that astrologers reliably connect the Sky’s configurations to Earth and earthly things.
Faced with a complex system, the human mind requires a model that represents observed phenomena in a manner adequate to the model’s purposes. Astrology begins with observation of the visible heavens. These are, most notably, the Sky apparently rotating around Earth, the planets wandering through fields of fixed stars, the constellations of fixed stars, and the changes in the rising times of stars throughout the year. From these observations, astrologers have built a working model. The model is the geocentric Cosmos. It is the World centered on earthly life whose structure, motions, and mathematics horoscopic charts represent.
The traditional geocentric model divides the World most fundamentally into two realms. Above lies the celestial realm, beginning at the Moon’s sphere and extending upward and outward through nested spheres to the outermost boundary of the manifest World. Below lies the sublunary realm—the elemental and earthly realm bound by the Moon’s orbit. In the model, the celestial sphere spins daily around the stationary mundane sphere that encompasses the space that surrounds the stationary and central Earth.
To make suitable and effective use of the model of the World on which horoscopic astrology depends, and to give proper place to its fundamental divide between the celestial and terrestrial realms, this divide must take a foundational place in astrological theory and method. The divide between Earth and Sky itself suggests a way—a method—by which astrologers can meaningfully connect these diverse yet meaningfully and effectively related realms.
Astrological Signification & Horoscopic Method
To establish sound horoscopic method, Morin developed a theory of astrological signification and a method to determine—define, limit, particularize—the earthly things celestial configurations signify. According to the theory, a celestial body signifies only those earthly things that its placement among the houses of a horoscopic chart determines it to signify. The method provides the determinations that the theory of signification requires. According to the method, the houses of a horoscopic chart that a celestial body influences, together with the sublunary receiver of celestial influence, determine a planet’s particular, or accidental, significations.
The method of determination follows logically from the theory of signification. Both rest on the geocentric divide between the celestial and terrestrial realms. The configurations of celestial bodies, which send their influence to Earth, constitute the Sky. The houses of a horoscopic figure, which receive and determine celestial influence, represent Earth and earthly things. The relationship between Earth and Sky in a horoscopic chart, therefore, is the relationship between the Sky’s configurations and the houses.
Astrologers have long agreed, for the most part, on the natural significations of the individual celestial bodies and on the matters that the individual houses of a horoscopic figure represent. Morin, for the most part, joins in this agreement. He takes issue, however, with astrologers’ failure to properly investigate the relationship between the celestial bodies and the houses, and the failure to make fitting and systematic use of the relationship between those astrological fundamentals. His theory of astrological signification and his statement of horoscopic method, grounded in the geocentric model, rectify these errors.
Horoscopic method as Morin describes it is a method of determination. It is the means to identify what the celestial bodies actually signify in a horoscopic figure. As Morin says:
Nor does any Planet cause or signify anything in the natal figure except that to which it is determined by this method.[1]
Universal & Particular Significators
Morin, like astrologers in general, recognizes that by its essential nature each planet inherently governs an entire class of sublunary things with which it has a natural analogy. Yet by its essential nature alone, no planet signifies one of the things with which it has an analogy any more than it signifies another.
The Sun, for example, has a natural analogy with all things of a solar nature and is a universal significator of them all. Those things include honors, kings, the father, the heart, gold, lions, and all other solar phenomena. With the powerful method of determination Morin explains, astrologers can move beyond each planet’s numerous universal significations to see each in a chart as a significator of particular and identifiable earthly things.
Nature, Celestial State & Terrestrial State, & the Receiver of Celestial Influence
Morin teaches that what a planet signifies and can do in a chart depends on four factors: (1) its essential nature; (2) its celestial state; (3) its terrestrial state; and (4) the receiver of the planet’s influence.
A planet’s essential nature is what the planet is in itself. Each planet pours out without cessation or variation its formal virtue, which is the power that expresses its unique nature. Yet on Earth, we never receive a planet’s simple and unconditioned virtue. We always receive a planet’s influence conditioned by its celestial state.
In Morin’s terms, a planet’s celestial state comprises all the factors that define its placement in the Sky. Those factors include the sign a planet occupies and its relationship with that sign, its relationship with other planets by disposition, aspect and antiscion, its relationship with fixed stars, and its own position and motion in the Sky. These celestial conditions determine the quality of a planet’s influence.
. A planet’s nature and celestial state reveal the nature and quality of its influence. But taken only by its nature and celestial state, a planet remains a universal significator. It remains in the Sky, untethered to Earth. By its nature, and from its placement in the Sky’s configuration, a planet still pours out its influence alike over all the Earth and onto all sublunary things. Without more, a planet’s particular significations remain undefined.
A planet’s terrestrial state—also called its local determinations—is its placement among the houses of a horoscopic chart. From a planet’s local determinations we know its particular significations. The houses a planet influences in a chart identify the earthly things a planet signifies and on which it acts. Nature and celestial state provide, in effect, the adjectives of an astrological statement. Terrestrial state provides the noun.
The ways a planet influences a house, and the modes by which the houses determine the influence, are: (1) location in a house; (2) rulership over a house; (3) aspect or antiscion with a house cusp, a planet in a house, or a house ruler; and (4) location in the opposite house. The two most powerful forms of influence and determination, in order of power, are location and rulership.
For example, a planet becomes determined to 1st house meanings if, and only if, it influences the 1st house in one or more of these four specified ways. With that determination, a planet becomes a particular significator of the native’s life, character, temperament, physical constitution, and health. Without at least one of these determinations, a planet has no 1st house significations. The same is true of all the houses and the planets that influence them.
Those subject to celestial influence also receive and determine it. For instance, when the same generative influence falls in the same way on a horse as on a human being, the horse determines it to generate a horse, the human being to generate a human.[2] The principle that different receivers give differing determinations to the same celestial influence identically delivered applies across species and across the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, to groups within any species, and to individuals within those groups. Among humans, it applies to differences in gender, age, cultural and religious background, socio-economic position, and other life circumstances. And it applies to the same person at different times and under different circumstances. As Morin says in somewhat varied terms in several places in Astrologia Gallica: “The same Sun melts wax and hardens clay.”
To know what a planet signifies and can effect in a chart, astrologers must take into account the planet’s nature, celestial state and local determinations, and must know on whom or on what its influence falls.
The Abuse of Universal Significators
As important and powerful as are the planets’ natural analogies, astrologers misuse them when they try to force them to do a job they cannot do. Following the approach Claudius Ptolemy set out in the Tetrabiblos, astrologers have often treated a planet’s natural analogies or universal significations as though they can be used as its particular significations in a chart. For example, because the Sun has an analogy to the father and the Moon to the mother, Ptolemy took these planets as the particular significators of the parents in any diurnal nativity without regard to their local determinations.
Morin agrees that the Sun has an analogy to the father and the Moon to the mother. But, as explained above, when we consider only a planet’s natural analogies, even taken with its celestial state, we remain ignorant of the particular things it actually signifies in a chart. On the other hand, to claim a planet signifies all the things to which it is analogous leads to absurd results. Morin cites and quotes Jerome Cardan’s devastating critique of Ptolemy’s approach:
Cardanus himself is seen to ridicule this doctrine,…[saying] that Ptolemy imposed a new confusion when he gave many significations to one significator, and posited the Moon as signifying the body, then the habits of mind, then life, and wife, and mother, and maidservants, and daughters, and sisters: How then (says Cardanus) will the Moon be disposed for him whose wife dies in childbirth and he himself of long life? and his many daughters unharmed? and the maidservants fugitives? and the mother soon dead, and the body healthy, and the understanding inconstant and bad?[3]
Thus, an undetermined significator can be taken to signify neither some particular analogous earthly thing nor all analogous things.
Morin further argues that use of the Sun as the significator of the father in every diurnal nativity would require the unrealistic conclusion that, throughout the time a particular solar configuration persists, every native’s father would have the same fortunes. As he says, this conclusion, which necessarily follows from the described abuse of universal significators, flatly contradicts experience.[4] The same argument applies to taking in every chart the Moon for the mother, Jupiter for wealth, Venus for the female love interest, Mercury for intelligence, and so on.
These arguments are powerful, even decisive, against the misuse of universal significators and the attempt to force them to signify particular earthly things.
Method, System & Technique
As the term is used here, method is broader than system, and very much broader than technique. In Morin’s view, horoscopic method is singular. That is, in his view the method he describes is the methodologically essential foundation on which all proper practice must rest. A system of practice is a structured application of method. It comprises a set of governing principles and a contained set of techniques with rules for their use. Techniques are tools used within a system in accord with method and the system’s governing principles and rules.
Morin’s system assigns priority and greatest weight to the most basic considerations and techniques. These apply in every chart and give the clearest and most universally reliable results in the most economical manner.[5] In Book 21, and in other books of Astrologia Gallica, Morin provides comprehensive, well-reasoned, theoretically consistent and systematic rules for use of all the most fundamental and most powerful techniques.
In addition to its use of the meanings of houses, signs, planets, fixed stars and aspects, and in addition to giving each its proper function, Morin’s system begins with recognition of the primacy of the Ascendant and 1st house.[6] It then accords the Midheaven and 10th house a place second only to the 1st.[7]
One of the system’s most powerful techniques, and one that follows logically from the method of determination Morin explains, is that of house combinations. A house combination occurs through the ruler of one house in another,[8] through conjunctions and aspects,[9] and by other means.[10] With assessment of the effect of the ruler of one house in another, one can see matters of one house as causes of matters of another house. Through other forms of house combination, one sees powerful and determining connections of matters of multiple houses. Combinations in which the 1st house or a 1st ruler participate are subject to special rules, and they become especially and fundamentally determinative. Morin is unique in that he gives house combinations an especially important and powerful role in delineation, treats them in a thorough, systematic and well-reasoned manner, and sets out detailed rules for their use.
Morin’s system also gives analogy, and counter-analogy, a fundamental, powerful and decidedly determinative role in chart delineation.[11] Analogy and counter-analogy are essential to determine the nature, likelihood and power of realizations in the houses where these considerations come into play.
Morin’s economy and systematic rigor extend to predictive techniques. Those techniques begin with the nativity, and include primary directions, solar and lunar revolutions, directions taken in the revolutions, and transits. In his highly instructive Textbook of Predictive Astrology,[12] Alexey Borealis has shown that Morin’s system enables reliable prediction of major life events and the precise forecast of the date of their occurrence.
One of the great virtues of Morin’s system is its parsimony. It excludes nothing essential and admits nothing unnecessary. Because the system’s techniques are entirely adequate to purpose, additional techniques serve no useful function. When sound method governs practice, the proliferation of techniques becomes a distraction rather than an asset. Superfluous techniques can draw attention away from method, and away from the most economical and effective means to realize the art’s aims.
A Plea for Horoscopic Method
Disregard for method vitiates and impoverishes the horoscopic art. It leaves astrology’s practice adrift, its theory unmoored, and its integrity compromised. Morin’s theory of astrological signification and method of determination provide an indispensable foundation for the investigation and use of astrological theory and method, for the assessment of individual systems and particular techniques, and for the design of valid astrological research. For those committed to astrology’s revival as a rigorous and coherent art, serious engagement with Morin’s theory, method and system of practice is essential for the great traditional art’s power, integrity and preservation.
With thanks to The APAI Chronycle, Volume 2, Issue 3 (September 2025) for permission to post this.
[1] Morin’s Book 21: Of the Active Determination of the Celestial Bodies & the Passive Determination of Sublunary Things, translator Penelope Sitter. Swanage, England: The Wessex Astrologer, 2024, Preface, pp. 1-2. See also Section 2, Chapter 1, pp. 50-51.
[2] Morin’s Book 21, Section 1, Chapter 4, p. 27. And see Section 1, Chapter 5, p. 30.
[3] Morin’s Book 21, Section 1, Chapter 3, pp. 15-16.
[4] Morin’s Book 21, Section 1, Chapter 3, p. 16.
[5] See Morin’s Book 21, Section 2, Chapter 12 for a summary of the system’s fundamental considerations.
[6] Morin’s Book 21, Section 2, Chapter 4, p. 76.
[7] Morin’s Book 21, Section 2, Chapter 12, pp. 122-23.
[8] Morin’s Book 21, Section 2, Chapters 4 & 5; Section 2, Chapter 2, pp. 65-66.
[9] Morin’s Book 21, Section 2, Chapter 5, p. 89. And see generally, Section 2, Chapters 10 & 11.
[10] See Morin’s Book 21, Section 2, Chapter 3, p. 71 & Section 2, Chapter 5, pp. 84-85 (the dispositor of one or more planets in one house located in another); Section 2, Chapter 5, p. 83 (houses in the same triplicity of houses); Section 2, Chapter 6, p. 92 (a single planet ruling more than one house); Book 18, translator Anthony Louis LaBruzza. Tempe, AZ: American Federation of Astrologers, Inc., 2004, Section 2, Chapter 15, pp. 105-112 (a planet late in one house conjoining the cusp of the following house, or a planet late or early in one house conjoining a planet in the following or preceding house); Book 18, Section 2, Chapter 15, pp. 113-117 (a planet formally in one Regiomontanus house but accidentally in another house by signs counted from the Ascendant).
[11] Morin explains the effects of analogies and counter-analogies in numerous places in Book 21, Section 2, Chapters 2-7 & Chapter 12.
[12]. Alexey Borealis, Textbook of Predictive Astrology: Mastering Forecasting. Swanage, England: The Wessex Astrologer, October 2025.