Free Doryphory (Spear-Bearer) Calculator

Doryphory (Greek doryphoria, "spear-bearing") is the Hellenistic technique that finds the planets acting as bodyguards to the Sun and Moon. Like the armed escort around a king, these attendant planets were read as testimonies of rank and protection. This tool follows Demetra George's reconstruction of three transmitted types.

The image is military and it is literal. A doryphoros carried a spear and walked in the entourage of someone important. Hellenistic authors borrowed the picture to describe planets that flank the luminaries: a front line that goes before, a rear guard that follows. When the guard is strong, sect-correct, and dignified, the older texts read it as the mark of a notable birth. Antiochus and Porphyry catalogued the forms, Ptolemy folded it into his chapter on rank (the "Fortune of Rank" in Tetrabiblos Book IV), and Valens worked it through rulership and the casting of rays.

Read a qualifying configuration alongside the rest of the chart. Spear-bearing describes a traditional testimony of protection; personal fame remains a broader question.

George's first step is angularity: if no planet is angular, stop. Every type requires the guarded planet to be angular. This tool uses whole-sign houses and checks the Sun and Moon as guarded planets. A high attendance score alone cannot earn the rank label.

1. George Type I. The guarded planet must occupy the 1st, 4th, 7th, or 10th house and be in its own domicile or exaltation. The guard must also be in its own domicile or exaltation and cast an aspect ray into earlier degrees of the guarded planet's sign. The guard may belong to either sect.
2. George Type II. The Sun or Moon must occupy the 1st or 10th house, in any sign. A planet of the chart's sect must cast a ray that lands ahead of the Sun or behind the Moon. The ray's landing degree decides this condition, rather than the guard's bodily position.
3. George Type III. A planet in the 1st or 10th house may be guarded by a planet of the chart's sect. Each light counts only as the sect light. The Sun qualifies only in a day chart, with the guard 15 to 120 degrees ahead of it. The Moon qualifies only in a night chart, with the guard more than zero and at most 7 degrees behind it. Other planets follow the day and night convention: by day the guard rises before the guarded planet, and by night it follows.
4. Declared conventions. George leaves some intervals and the effect of intervention open. This tool uses whole-sign aspect rays without an added degree orb for Types I and II. Where Type III leaves an interval unspecified, it retains the existing limit of 120 degrees by day or 7 degrees by night. It does not add an intervention veto. Mercury's sect follows its morning or evening relation to the Sun.

Source: Demetra George, Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice, Volume I (2019), chapter 52, especially pages 503 to 505 and Exercise 38 on pages 508 to 509. George describes the criteria as uncertain in some details. These results identify the reconstruction and conventions used here.

The calculator lists the spear-bearers of the Sun and of the Moon separately and names every qualifying George type. Only a qualifying type earns "spear-bearer of rank." The other labels describe attendance under the scorecard, without establishing rank eligibility.

The Augurine attendance score is this site's measure of attendance strength, from 0 to 100. It adds points for sect and bodily direction, form of attendance, dignity over the luminary, and angularity. Dignity contributions include domicile, exaltation, triplicity, and bound. The 15-degree bodily category and its points belong to this scorecard. Every contribution is visible in the result. This numerical measure is Augurine's convention rather than a score given by George.

One case deserves care. A malefic contrary to the sect, sitting close to the sect light, registers as a guard by position while behaving like a hostile escort, a soldier in the procession who does not answer to the king. The tool flags this as a contrary guard so you do not misread a threat as protection. When the guard's loyalty is in question, the bonification and maltreatment picture tells you whether a benefic is stepping in to vouch for it.

These three get tangled because they share parts, so here is where each one lives. Bonification and maltreatment ask whether a given planet is being helped or harmed by the benefics and malefics around it. Doryphory asks who escorts the luminaries and how high the chart's rank can climb. They use overlapping mechanics, aspect and sect and reception, but a bonified planet is not automatically a spear-bearer, and a spear-bearer of the Sun might itself be maltreated.

Heliacal phase helps establish bodily direction. Whether a planet rises before or after the Sun is a fact you can compute on its own. Doryphory takes that fact, the direction rule, and adds sect, angularity, and dignity. A bodily guard of the Sun stands within 15 degrees of it, inside the Sun's beams, so the closest solar guards are exactly the planets touched by the combustion question. This tool scores the guard and leaves visibility to the combust reading. If you want the eminence question from the other direction, by which single planet has the most authority over the whole nativity, that is the almuten and the chart ruler, which pair naturally with the spear-bearer reading.

Take a day chart with the Sun at 20 degrees Leo in the 10th whole-sign house and Jupiter at 15 degrees Gemini. Jupiter belongs to the diurnal sect. Its sextile ray lands at 15 degrees Leo, ahead of the Sun, so George Type II qualifies. Jupiter also rises 65 degrees ahead of the Sun, within the Type III interval.

Jupiter's nature suggests a reading through patronage or support from people with authority. The named types establish the traditional configuration; the attendance score describes its counted conditions.

Compare a day chart with the Sun at 10 degrees Leo and Saturn at 5 degrees Leo, both in the 9th whole-sign house. Their attendance score is 78 before any optional dignity credit. Neither Type II nor Type III can qualify in that house, and the Sun also fails Type I's angularity requirement. The rank label is withheld.