✶ Stellium
✶ Stellium
Subfolder of: Aspect Patterns · Aspects
Definition: Three or more bodies (many authors require four, or three excluding the Moon’s nodes and points) clustered in one sign or one house, usually linked by conjunctions.
📐 Geometry
- Bodies a, b, c … all within one sign (or within ≈ 8–10° of each other)
- Links: Conjunction chains
Arithmetic test: Count bodies per sign/house; a stellium exists when the count ≥ 3 (state the rule used). Every leg must be within its own aspect orb (see the linked aspect notes).
🧭 Reading (modern Western usage)
In modern practice this configuration is read as concentration of the chart’s energy in one sign/house; the sign’s ruler (dispositor) becomes a key planet. Within Astrology Arith(m)etic, read each leg with the book method — body × aspect × body, coloured by sign and house — and then read the figure as a whole.
🔗 Used in
Sources
- Bil Tierney, Dynamics of Aspect Analysis (CRCS, 1983) — aspect configurations
- Robert Hand, Horoscope Symbols (Whitford, 1981) — aspects and configurations
- Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos (2nd c. CE), Book I — trans. F. E. Robbins, Loeb Classical Library 435 (1940), public-domain text at LacusCurtius: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Ptolemy/Tetrabiblos/home.html