Free Witnessing (Testimony) Calculator

In Hellenistic astrology, a planet bears witness to another planet or point when it regards that placement by sextile, square, trine, or opposition. Copresence in the same sign counts here too, read alongside the four configurations that cast rays across signs. A benefic witness affirms what the placement signifies. A malefic witness works differently depending on the configuration it arrives by, which is why a Mars trine and a Mars square are read as separate cases.

The Greek term is epimartyria, and it shares a root with martureo, the verb for bearing witness, giving evidence, testifying to what you have seen. That visual sense drives the whole doctrine. The old astrologers thought of aspects as planets seeing or failing to see each other, borrowed from Greek optical theory where rays travel between the eye and the thing observed. The modern word keeps the image: "aspect" comes from the Latin aspectus, a look. A planet looks at another point and testifies to what it sees.

Configuration starts with the signs. Two planets are configured when their signs hold one of these relationships, and that holds whether they sit two degrees apart or twenty-eight. Degree closes the distance afterwards. The two layers answer different questions, and the report reads both whenever the birth data supports it.

The signs a planet cannot see are in aversion, turned away: the second, sixth, eighth, and twelfth signs from it. A planet sitting there has no configuration to work with, so it never appears in that placement's witness list. This is why the semisextile and the quincunx were never aspects in the tradition. A planet in aversion can still rule the sign, and rulership is its own line of testimony.

An applying contact within three degrees is an engagement, and an applying conjunction is an adherence. Porphyry gives the Moon thirteen degrees, matching its daily motion. Application means the two are closing on exact, so nearness alone will not do it, and the calculator reads both planets' speeds before it says so. Exact contacts get their own label. The partile aspects and applying and separating aspects calculators go deeper on the degree picture.

Every planet has a right side and a left side. The signs it has already passed, the ones earlier in zodiacal order, sit on its right; the signs it is moving toward sit on its left. Porphyry puts the superior position on the right, so the planet standing on another's right side overcomes it. Renaissance astrologers kept the distinction under the Latin dexter and sinister.

To find it in a chart, count forward from the placement receiving the testimony. A witness in its ninth, tenth, or eleventh sign overcomes it. A witness in its third, fourth, or fifth sign speaks from the inferior position. Retrograde motion changes nothing here, since the geometry is by sign. The Greek is kathuperteresis, from a word for having the upper hand.

Jupiter in Taurus overcomes Mars in Leo by square. Taurus is the tenth sign from Leo, so this is also domination, or epidekateia, the strongest form of overcoming. Swap the two planets and Mars dominates Jupiter instead, and the same square reads very differently. The direction says who sets the terms; the nature of the planet says what it does with them.

Hurling a ray is testimony from the inferior position. Striking with a ray is the tighter condition: an inferior square within three degrees of exact, applying or separating, which bonifies from a benefic and maltreats from a malefic. An applying engagement qualifies as well, with the Moon's wider range. So a separating lunar square eight degrees off exact stays ordinary support or pressure.

The benefics, Jupiter and Venus, affirm what a planet signifies. The malefics, Saturn and Mars, cut against it. Bonification and maltreatment are the named conditions through which that happens, and this report reads the direct ones: the superior square, the benefic trine, the malefic opposition, the close ray strike, and the close applying conjunction. The related bonification and maltreatment calculator scores planetary condition on a wider basis.

The volume is set by sect, the split between day and night charts. Mars contrary to sect by day and Saturn contrary to sect by night do their harshest work. Jupiter by day and Venus by night give their strongest help. So the same Mars square lands harder in a day chart than in a night one, and the calculator weights every row accordingly rather than treating Mars as Mars and Saturn as Saturn. Sect colors each row here; the configuration decides it.

The domicile ruler's house sits alongside the witnesses as context, counteraction included, where a planet's ruler works against it from one of the bad places. It stays context and never flips a badge. Enclosure is not computed on this page. The besieged planet calculator handles it, by sign and by degree.

Reception runs on the guest and host model: the ruler of a sign is the host, and any planet visiting that sign is its guest. When two configured planets stand in that relationship, the report flags reception, and a hard contact between host and guest usually reads as more workable than the geometry alone suggests. How much help the host can actually give depends on its own condition, so check that before leaning on it.

In mutual reception, each planet sits in the other's domicile, and the calculator flags that exchange whenever the two are configured. The Ascendant and the Lot of Fortune have domicile lords as well, but a calculated point is nobody's guest. Their rows say the lord bears witness and leave reception and adherence to the planets.

This technique earns its keep on the chart's loaded points: the Sun, the Moon, the Ascendant, and the Lot of Fortune. Benefic testimony to Fortune and the lights was one of the marks the Hellenistic astrologers read for a flourishing life, and malefic testimony to the same points marked where difficulty gathered. The report includes the Ascendant and Fortune whenever a birth time is supplied, and calls them supported, pressured, mixed, or neutral. Bonification and maltreatment stay reserved for the planets.

Without a birth time the report falls back to noon positions and drops the Ascendant, Fortune, sect, houses, and every degree judgment. The Moon covers about thirteen degrees a day, so its sign is the first thing an unknown time puts at risk. An approximate time gives all of it back, with the caveat that a different time gives a different chart. Read it as the ancients did: a record of who in the chart is watching, and what each one has the standing to say.

The framework is Chris Brennan's Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune(2017): chapter 9, pages 299 to 304, on copresence and applying contacts; chapter 14, pages 472 to 493, on the conditions of bonification and maltreatment; and chapter 15, page 506, on a copresence that never reaches adherence. Those chapters carry the definitions attributed to Antiochus and preserved in Porphyry's Introduction. The benign reading of malefic sextiles and trines comes from Porphyry's chapter 8.

The calculator works from whole-sign relationships among the seven traditional planets. It treats the Sun, Moon, and Mercury as neutral witnesses. Mercury takes its nature from the company it keeps, and this report does not reconstruct that swing. Application comes from the changing separation between two bodies, so both need a valid speed before the calculator will call a contact applying.

Each planet's badge records whether its witnesses meet the direct bonification conditions, the direct maltreatment conditions, both, or neither. The numeric weights order the rows and nothing more; no ancient text supplies them, and each badge describes the contacts listed under it and nothing wider. Ruler context and reception explain a contact without erasing the configuration underneath it.