Part of Fortune Calculator
The Part of Fortune is a point computed from your Ascendant, Sun and Moon, read in astrology as where things come easily and how your circumstances take shape. Find its sign, degree and house, and see the formula worked with your own chart.
- The formula worked with your own degrees
- Your Lot of Spirit, its counterpart
What is the Part of Fortune?
It is the best known of the lots: points that are not bodies in the sky but distances between other points, measured off from the Ascendant. Hellenistic astrologers used it two thousand years ago, and medieval astrologers writing in Arabic used so many lots that they are still often called Arabic parts. Its glyph is a circle with a cross through it, ⊗.
Because it is built from the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant, the three points that astrology has always treated as the core of a chart, Fortune is read as a summary of how they combine: the light of the day, the light of the night, and the moment you arrived.
How the Part of Fortune is calculated
Take the distance from one light to the other, and measure it off from the Ascendant.
By day the arc runs from the Sun to the Moon: Part of Fortune = Ascendant + Moon − Sun. By night it runs the other way, from the Moon to the Sun: Part of Fortune = Ascendant + Sun − Moon. In both, the answer is taken round the zodiac, so a result above 360° has 360° taken off it.
Ptolemy used the day formula for every chart, and some software still does. Most Hellenistic astrologers reversed it at night, and so do astro-seek and ChartNova. If another site gives you a different sign for a night birth, a day-only formula is the likeliest reason; for a day birth the two methods agree.
The calculator shows the formula worked with your own Ascendant, Sun and Moon, so you can check it on paper.
Day chart or night chart?
A day chart is one with the Sun above the horizon at birth: in the top half of the wheel, the 7th to the 12th houses. A night chart has the Sun below the horizon, in the 1st to the 6th. This is the chart's sect, and in traditional astrology it decides more than Fortune: which planets are strongest, and which lots reverse.
The change happens at sunrise and sunset as the chart draws them, when the Sun crosses the Ascendant or the Descendant. Born within a few minutes of either, check your birth time carefully: the formula, and with it Fortune's sign, can turn on it.
Fortune and the Moon's phase
Fortune keeps the same distance from the Ascendant that the Moon keeps from the Sun. That makes it a picture of the lunar phase you were born under, laid out from the horizon.
Born at a new Moon, with the Sun and Moon together, your Part of Fortune sits on your Ascendant, by day or by night. Born at a full Moon, with the two opposite, it sits on your Descendant. In between, it moves round the chart with the phase: by day ahead of the Ascendant in zodiac order, by night behind it.
The Part of Fortune in each sign
A first line for each sign. The calculator gives the full reading for yours, with its house and the ruler of Fortune.
♈︎ Aries
Fortune through initiative: acting first, on your own terms.
♉︎ Taurus
Fortune through steadiness: building slowly, looking after resources.
♊︎ Gemini
Fortune through ideas and people: conversation, learning, trade.
♋︎ Cancer
Fortune through belonging: home, family, a place to be rooted.
♌︎ Leo
Fortune through being seen: creativity, generosity, confidence.
♍︎ Virgo
Fortune through usefulness: skill, routine, work done well.
♎︎ Libra
Fortune through others: partnership, fairness, good company.
♏︎ Scorpio
Fortune beneath the surface: depth, trust, shared resources.
♐︎ Sagittarius
Fortune through wide horizons: travel, study, belief.
♑︎ Capricorn
Fortune built over time: patience, structure, responsibility.
♒︎ Aquarius
Fortune through groups: friends, networks, causes.
♓︎ Pisces
Fortune through trust: intuition, imagination, generosity.
The Part of Fortune in the houses
Fortune's house is read as the area of life where circumstances turn most readily in your favour. In the 1st it sits near the Ascendant and ties fortune to your own body and presence; in the 2nd to resources; in the 10th to career and standing; in the 11th, traditionally the house of good spirits and benefactors, to friends and allies.
Because of how it is built, the house also tells you something about your birth. Fortune in the 1st house means you were born close to a new Moon, and in the 7th close to a full Moon. The calculator gives the reading for your house beside the one for your sign.
The ruler of Fortune
In the tradition the lots come from, a lot is read largely through the planet that rules its sign. Where that planet sits by sign and house, and how well placed it is, describes how Fortune's promise is delivered. A Part of Fortune in Taurus is read through Venus; in Capricorn through Saturn.
Since the method is traditional, the calculator names the traditional ruler first, and adds the modern one for Scorpio, Aquarius and Pisces (Pluto, Uranus and Neptune) with its own placement.
The Lot of Spirit
The Part of Fortune has a counterpart, the Lot of Spirit, computed with the arc reversed: Ascendant + Sun − Moon by day, Ascendant + Moon − Sun by night. The two always lie the same distance either side of the Ascendant.
Hellenistic astrologers paired them as body and mind: Fortune for what happens to you, your health and material circumstances; Spirit for what you choose to do, your intentions and your work. The calculator gives your Lot of Spirit's sign, degree and house beside your Part of Fortune.
Why your birth time matters
Fortune moves with the Ascendant, through the whole zodiac every day, about a sign every two hours on average. A birth time out by an hour can change its sign, and its house even more readily.
It also jumps. At sunrise and sunset the formula turns over, and Fortune leaps by twice the Moon's distance from the Sun, so a birth near either is especially sensitive to the time. Without a birth time the calculator does not guess from noon: it lists every sign Fortune held on the day you were born, with the local clock times for each.
How to use the Part of Fortune calculator
- 1Enter your birth date, time and placePick your birth city from the list and the time zone is found for you. The birth time decides Fortune's sign and house, so use the most exact one you have.
- 2Read your Fortune, its house and its rulerThe result gives the sign, degree and house of your Part of Fortune with the reading for each, the formula worked with your own degrees, the ruler of Fortune and your Lot of Spirit.
- 3Check it against another calculatorWith the same birth data and day and night formulas, the degree should match astro-seek's. If a site uses the day formula for every chart, a night birth will differ.
Fortune is one point in your chart
The free birth chart shows it with every planet, house and aspect, to the minute.