What are the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of Daimon, and how did Valens calculate them?

Valens finds two Lots from the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant. He calls the first Fortune and ties it to the Moon, the body and the work of the hands. He calls the second Daimon and ties it to the Sun, to spiritual and intellectual matters, and to giving and receiving. His Greek word is δαίμων (daimōn). Riley keeps it as Daimon. Schmidt (as quoted by Brennan), Brennan and George translate it “Spirit”, and the Lot is often called the Lot of Spirit today.

Valens mostly writes just “the Lot” for Fortune and “Daimon” for the second (Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology, p. 316, n. 50). Where he is more explicit he calls Fortune “the archetypal lot” (Anthology II 13, trans. Riley, p. 58) and the other “the Second Fortune (the one called Daimon)” (II 15, trans. Riley, p. 59). The full name “Lot of Daimon”, ὁ τοῦ Δαίμονος κλῆρος, is how Paulus and his commentator Olympiodorus write it (Greenbaum, p. 297). So in Greek the second Lot is the Lot of the Daimon, a word with a long history before astrology. Greenbaum’s book follows it from Plato into the charts (p. 304), and a later article here will follow it as well.

For each Lot he gives a day calculation and a night calculation, and the night calculation is where the sources disagree with one another. This piece sets out what Valens says, sets Ptolemy, Dorotheus and Lilly beside him, and then looks at how the two Lots belong together.

I use whole-sign houses for natal charts, and I count the places from a Lot by sign in the same way. Valens’s examples that I checked name signs and not degrees, so they do not show how he counted.

What each Lot is for

Valens calls the Lot of Fortune “the most influential and most potent place” (Valens, Anthology II 3, trans. Riley, p. 52). In II 20 he separates the two Lots by subject: “The former gives information about matters concerning the body and concerning the work of hands. Daimon and its ruler give information about spiritual and intellectual matters and about the activities of giving and receiving.” (Valens, Anthology II 20, trans. Riley, p. 68).

In IV 4 he says the two Lots “signify the Moon and the Sun”. The Lot of Fortune goes with bodily existence, and for employment or rank he begins from Daimon (Valens, Anthology IV 4, trans. Riley, p. 148). In IV 7 he keeps the same division of subjects: some people’s activities are bodily, such as handicrafts or physical toil, and others’ are in speech, knowledge or mental effort, and the type of activity is shown by the place “to whichever place, Fortune or Daimon, the majority of stars incline” (Valens, Anthology IV 7, trans. Riley, p. 154). In IV 25 he names four Lots, Fortune, Daimon, Love and Necessity, and describes what each brings in the timing method he teaches in Book IV. I leave the workings of that method aside here, and with it the Lots of Love and Necessity.

In II 18 Valens reads the Lot of Fortune as a second Ascendant: “The Lot itself will be equivalent to the Ascendant and will mean ‘Life;’ the tenth place from it will be equivalent to the Midheaven and will mean ‘Rank’” (Valens, Anthology II 18, trans. Riley, p. 67). In II 20 he looks at where the ruler of Daimon stands in relation to the Lot of Fortune, and counts it best at the Lot of Fortune or at its tenth place.

The same word names another thing in Valens. Riley’s chapter titles in Book II include “The <XII> Place of the Bad Daimon” and “The <XI> Place of the Good Daimon”, the twelfth and eleventh places of the chart. The Lot of Daimon is a different thing from the Good Daimon place.

The calculations

The table gives Valens’s calculations as he words them. “Distance from A to B” is his phrase. The standard reading, which I follow, counts that distance forward in the order of the signs and then lays the same distance off forward from the Ascendant. Ptolemy’s wording in III.10 supports it: the distance “extends to an equal distance from the horoscope in the order of the following signs” (Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos III.10, trans. Robbins, p. 275). Dorotheus I.26 says to “add to it the degrees of the ascendent”.

In plain terms: for a day birth, Fortune is the distance from the Sun to the Moon, laid off from the Ascendant, and Daimon is the distance from the Moon to the Sun, laid off from the Ascendant. For a night birth the two swap.

For Fortune, Valens writes: “To me it seems best to locate the Lot by determining the distance from the Sun to the Moon, then counting that distance from the Ascendant—for day births.” For night births he gives the two cases in the table (Valens, Anthology III 11, trans. Riley, p. 142). He introduces it with “There are a variety of opinions about this notion.” For Daimon he writes that “for day births, this Lot is found by determining the distance from the Moon to the Sun (for night births, from the Sun to the Moon), then counting this distance from the Ascendant” (Valens, Anthology II 23, trans. Riley, p. 76).

II 23 gives Daimon a plain reversal by night, with no split by the Moon’s position. Only the night rule for Fortune in III 11 is split by whether the Moon is above the Earth. Brennan says that in Valens’s later example charts he does not seem to use that split and uses the plain day or night count (Hellenistic Astrology, p. 520). One of his examples shows it. In II 22 (Riley, pp. 73–74) a night birth has the Sun in Taurus, the Moon in Aquarius and the Ascendant in Sagittarius, so the Moon is below the Earth. The III 11 rule would count Sun to Moon, which lands in Virgo. Valens puts the Lot of Fortune in Pisces, which is Moon to Sun.

In II 23 he also adds a third point, which he calls the Lot of Basis. It is found from the distance between Fortune and Daimon, counted from the Ascendant. Riley supplies the day and night labels for it in angle brackets (from Fortune to Daimon for day births, from Daimon to Fortune for night births), so they are his insertions and not Valens’s words.

A worked example from Valens

Valens’s own example charts name the sign each planet is in and the sign of the Lot, not degrees. I know of none in the Anthology that gives degrees together with a Lot, so the count below is by sign. Both examples are from II 22.

A night birth (Riley, p. 70). Valens gives the Sun in Scorpio, the Moon in Cancer and the Ascendant in Libra, says the birth was at night, and finds the Lot of Fortune in Aquarius.

• For a night birth Fortune is counted from the Moon to the Sun: Cancer to Scorpio is four signs.

• Four signs forward from the Ascendant, Libra, is Aquarius. That is where Valens puts it.

• Ptolemy’s single count, Sun to Moon, would be Scorpio to Cancer, eight signs. Eight signs forward from Libra is Gemini. So the same chart gives two different Lots of Fortune, depending on whose rule is used.

A day birth (Riley, p. 72). Valens gives the Sun and Mercury in Capricorn, the Moon and Venus in Sagittarius, Saturn in Scorpio, Jupiter in Libra, Mars in Aquarius, the Ascendant in Taurus, and the Lot of Fortune in Aries. He does not say day or night. The Sun is in the ninth sign from the Ascendant, above the horizon, so I take it as a day birth.

• Fortune is counted from the Sun to the Moon: Capricorn to Sagittarius is eleven signs.

• Eleven signs forward from Taurus is Aries. That is where Valens puts it.

• Daimon is the reverse, from the Moon to the Sun: Sagittarius to Capricorn is one sign, and one sign forward from Taurus is Gemini. Riley writes “Daimon <Gemini>” in the same example, with the sign in angle brackets, so the sign is his reading of Valens. Mercury rules Gemini, and Valens speaks of the ruler of Daimon standing with the Sun at the Midheaven from Fortune, which fits, since Capricorn is the tenth sign from Aries.

A count by sign cannot say where in the sign a Lot falls. That needs degrees, which these examples do not give.

Petosiris

In IX 2 Valens quotes Petosiris, from the Terms. Riley’s translation reads: “Whether you measure from the Sun to the Moon and take that distance from the Ascendant, or from the Moon to the Sun and do likewise, you will find it <the Lot> located at the same point <!>” (Valens, Anthology IX 2, trans. Riley, p. 328). Riley marks the phrase with <!> and does not say why in anything I found. Read literally, the two counts land on different points unless the Sun and Moon are together or opposite, so the sentence looks wrong as translated. Greenbaum, following Stephan Heilen’s reading of the Greek, takes Petosiris to mean that the two points lie at the same distance from the Ascendant, one on each side of it, and that they are the Lots of Fortune and Daimon (The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology, p. 334). She notes that her reading depends on a reconstruction of the Greek (p. 333, n. 92). I follow her reading, but this line is unclear and I do not rest anything on it.

Two remarks of Nechepso’s, the King, in Valens are in the same area. Riley renders one in II 3 as measuring “in the opposite direction”, and one in IX 2 as “in the reverse direction (some count forward)”. Greenbaum, agreeing with Heilen, now reads the Greek word behind them as “again” and not as a direction (p. 334, n. 92). I have not checked the Greek myself and I leave these two remarks aside.

Where the sources differ

Ptolemy uses one calculation for day and night. In III.10 he writes: “Take as the Lot of Fortune always the amount of the number of degrees, both by night and by day, which is the distance from the sun to the moon” (Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos III.10, trans. Robbins, p. 275). In IV.2 he says the same of “both diurnal and nocturnal nativities” (Robbins, pp. 373–375). He says the Moon then bears to the Lot the same relation the Sun bears to the Ascendant, “as it were a lunar horoscope” (p. 277). He does not call the Lot Daimon or Spirit, and he gives no second Lot. Camerarius’s edition and some manuscripts add a passage to III.10 that keys on whether the Moon follows or precedes the Sun, and only its closing “perhaps” sentence makes it a rule for night births. Robbins judges the first part not genuine, since it contradicts Ptolemy’s directions, and the last part a scholion (note 61). By night his one calculation gives the point that Valens, Dorotheus and Paulus call Daimon. Rhetorius makes the same remark: he says, in Greenbaum’s translation, that Ptolemy’s Lot of Fortune is in fact the Lot of Daimon, especially in a night birth (Greenbaum, p. 330, quoting Rhetorius; CCAG VIII/4, 121.7–11). Brennan notes that most later Hellenistic and medieval astrologers did not follow Ptolemy here, and that his approach became popular again in the Renaissance (Hellenistic Astrology, p. 520).

Lilly follows Ptolemy and names the other practice. In Christian Astrology, Book II, chapter XXIII, he writes: “Whether your Figure be by day or night, observe this Method; for how many degrees the Sun is distant from the Moon, so many is the Part of Fortune from the Ascendant…” And: “Some have used to take the Part of Fortune in the night from the Moon to the Sun; which if you do, you must then make the place of your Sun your first place, and add the Ascendant as in the former method. Ptolemy, day and night takes it as above directed, with whom all practitioners at this day consent.” (William Lilly, Christian Astrology (1647), Book II ch. XXIII, 1647 p. 144, the chapter beginning on p. 143; Houlding’s 2022 edition p. 68; the signs for Sun, Moon and Part of Fortune are written out here).

Dorotheus. In I.26 he gives the Lot of Fortune: “whose birth is in the day count from the Sun to the Moon and add to it the degrees of the ascendent, and in a nocturnal nativity the opposite of this” (Dorotheus, Carmen Astrologicum I.26, trans. Pingree, Teubner p. 191). That is Sun to Moon by day and a reversal by night, counted from the Ascendant. The chapter is on “the magnitude of fortune and property”, and brings in the Lot when the lords of both luminaries stand badly. In I.13, I.14, I.19 and I.21 he changes the count by night for the Lots of the father, the mother, the brothers and the number of siblings, each in its own way: by swapping the two bodies, by adding the result to the Ascendant or subtracting it, or both. He mentions “the lot of fortune and the lot of the demon” together in I.9 (Dorotheus, Carmen Astrologicum I.9, trans. Pingree). “Demon” is Pingree’s word, probably for the same Lot that Valens calls Daimon.

Paulus. I have not read Paulus. As Greenbaum sets out his calculations (p. 297, Table 8.2), Fortune is the distance from the Sun to the Moon by day and from the Moon to the Sun by night, and Daimon is the reverse, as in Valens. George gives the same table and cites Paulus, Introduction 23 (Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice, Vol. 2, pp. 992–994).

Modern practice. George writes that Ptolemy’s single formula “made its way into the modern tradition”, and that many astrologers now use both formulas again since the Hellenistic authors were rediscovered (Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice, Vol. 2, p. 1002).

Across these texts, Valens and Dorotheus both change the calculation of Fortune by night, Valens by the Moon’s position in his one rule and Dorotheus by a plain reversal. Ptolemy and Lilly use one calculation, and Lilly says plainly that two practices existed.

Why the two Lots reverse by sect

Brennan asks what stays the same when the count reverses. In a day chart Fortune is counted from the Sun to the Moon, and in a night chart from the Moon to the Sun. Either way the count starts at the light of the sect, the light that is shining at that hour, and ends at the other light, the one that is darkened at that hour. So the direction is constant even though the two bodies swap: Fortune always counts from light into darkness. Daimon is the reverse and always counts from darkness into light (Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology, p. 522).

Brennan links this to the subjects Valens gives them. Fortune has the body, and Daimon the soul and the intellect (Brennan, p. 521, quoting Valens II 20). He takes the pairing of light with mind and soul, and darkness with the body, to be the idea behind the calculations, and he is careful to say that this seems to be so and not that it is stated (pp. 521–522). It sits beside the link to the two lights themselves: Greenbaum notes that the Moon is tied to the body and the Sun to the mind, and that the two Lots gained these ties from them (The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology, p. 305, citing Valens IV 4.2). It applies only to the reversed counts. Ptolemy’s single count has no reversal to explain.

One constitution, read in two directions

Both Lots are made from the same three things, the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant, and each is the other reflected across the Ascendant. For a day birth, with the positions as degrees, Fortune is the Ascendant plus the Moon minus the Sun, and Daimon is the Ascendant plus the Sun minus the Moon (Brennan, p. 512, gives the formula for Fortune). Each lies the same distance from the Ascendant as the other, on opposite sides of it. Greenbaum calls them “mirror images of each other in the chart”, and says this entwinement may bear on what they mean (p. 303).

When the Moon is new or full, the two meet. The Moon’s distance from the Sun is then 0° or 180°, and the two formulas give the same point, which is the Ascendant at a new Moon and the Descendant at a full Moon. Valens says the same in IV 4: for nativities at a new or full Moon the two Lots fall in the same sign, in the Ascendant at the new Moon and in the Descendant at the full (Valens, Anthology IV 4, trans. Riley, p. 149). At the first and last quarters, when the Moon is 90° or 270° from the Sun, they stand opposite each other (Riley, p. 149). In between, the two Lots are separated by twice the Moon’s distance from the Sun, counted round the circle.

I read the pair as one constitution taken in two directions. Fortune is that constitution as it is given into the body and into circumstance, and Daimon is the same constitution rising into mind and action. That reading is mine and the sources do not state it, although it follows the shape of the calculation. It is not a split between fate on one side and choice on the other, since both Lots come from the same lights and the same horizon.

A Lot has no body

A Lot is a point worked out by arithmetic. Brennan calls the Lots “mathematical points” (p. 511). It is not a planet or a star, and it has no body, so it cannot push anything. It can only signify. I find the Lots the clearest case of the difference between a sign and a cause, and I will come back to that difference in a longer piece.

Mistaking one for the other

With this pair there are two easy mistakes. One takes circumstance for identity, so that what befalls a person, and the body it befalls, is read as who they are. The other takes choice for something without limits, as if what a person does came from nowhere and met nothing in the way. Reading Fortune and Daimon side by side keeps both in view. It is the same thought as the line on the Home page, Know fate so you don’t mistake it for yourself.

Ptolemy’s defense of foreknowledge in Tetrabiblos I.3 bears on this. He says that events which will happen in any case are apt, when unexpected, to cause “excessive panic and delirious joy”, “while foreknowledge accustoms and calms the soul by experience of distant events as though they were present, and prepares it to greet with calm and steadiness whatever comes” (Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos I.3, trans. Robbins, p. 23). He also denies that events come to each person “as if they had been originally ordained for each person by some irrevocable divine command” (p. 23), and he sorts events into those that must happen and those that can be turned aside (pp. 23–25). For him, to know what is given is a way of meeting it more steadily, and it does not take away what the person does with it.

How I use this

I use whole-sign houses, so I look first at the sign a Lot falls in.

Valens teaches a method, known today as zodiacal releasing, that starts from the sign of Fortune or of Daimon and divides a life into long chapters with shorter ones inside them (Valens, Anthology IV 4, trans. Riley, pp. 148–150; Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology, pp. 553 and 558). He starts from Fortune for matters of the body and from Daimon for employment and rank (Riley, p. 149). Riley’s translation calls the periods chronocratorships and does not use the word “releasing”.

I use it mostly to look back over the long chapters of a life that has already happened, and to ask what each one was about. When I look ahead with it, I hold what comes as a question, such as what a long chapter of building asks of me, and not as a verdict. I treat a forecast from the Lots as a device for reflection. Brennan himself notes that the precision of the method raises philosophical and ethical issues for anyone who uses it (p. 553), and Ptolemy’s point above is the one I keep in mind: to meet what comes with a steadier mind.

What this does not cover

This piece gives Valens’s calculations and what he says each Lot is for. It does not teach Valens’s timing methods that use the Lots beyond the short note above, and it does not cover the later Arabic Lots, the Lots of Love and Necessity, or any software setting. It does not judge a chart or forecast anything; I treat the Lots as something to think with, not as law.