Publisher's Synopsis
The Idea of Hosts:
Many past astrologers of antiquity have hinted toward the Lord of the Host as the supreme power over the cosmos and the ruler over all of the planets and the luminaries. Guido Bonatti is an example of one of these astrologers whose methods and techniques have gained in popularity today. Bonatti was a medieval Italian astrologer born circa AD 1207. He was an astrologer that guided a querent to: "prey to the Lord upon requesting his assistance in a question of the future events or the outcome of events that were happening in the present." Bonatti was a court astrologer for several Italian rulers including the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. If you came to him in the most serious of desire to understand a challenging point in your life, Bonatti would have many considerations in which to judge this. He would send you on your way if he and his colleagues did not think that you were devout in your beliefs.
"The 2nd consideration is (what we hinted at before) the method or manner everyone ought to observe that enquires of an Astrologer; which is, that when he intends to take an artist's judgment of things past, present, or to come, he should, first, with a devout spirit, pray unto the Lord, from whom proceeds the success of every lawful enterprise, that he would grant him the knowledge of those things of the truth of which he would be resolved; and then let him apply himself to the astrologer with a serious intent of being satisfied in some certain and particular doubt, and this not on trifling occasions, or light sudden emotions, much less on matters base or unlawful, as many ignorant people used to do; but in matters of honest importance, and such as have possessed and disturbed his mind for the space of a day and night or longer; unless in sudden accidents which admit not of delay." (Bonatti)
It is the job of the artist to judge the relationships the planets exhibit with each other. Reception is the relationship that the Lord of the Hosts has chosen for the light dignity or the quality of light that the planets are reflecting toward the earth. After all, astrology is the study of the planet's light quality as seen from the earth, a geocentric point of view. Astronomy is quite different. Astronomy is the study of the placement of the planets around the sun as seen from a heliocentric point of view or as seen from a point using the sun as the center from which the cosmos orients itself.
The ever-changing positions of the planets are seen from the earth as if they were mirrors in the sky bouncing light reflections from one end of the galaxy to the other. The light that is seen from the planets of the cosmos is a light quality that is very different from each other and is ever-changing. Mirrors in the sky (as a satellite) can only reflect the sun's light. The planets operate quite differently than that of a mirror in that they change the light quality into something different than just a reflection of the sun. It is as if the planets are just energized by the sun's light but reflect sunlight in different tones in a language too ancient for any to understand. Just like a man can only measure electricity (but cannot say in words what it is), this light reflected from each of the planets is quantified by a system called dignity.
Dignity is man's attempt to measure the quality of the reflection of light that is ever-changing and never the same at any given time. The system called dignity has been measured and changed by man over centuries of watching planetary movement in the sky. Dignity is only a quantization of observation from the earth and not from a satellite in space (which is astronomy.) Astronomy is a system of mathematics that only uses the physical attributes of the planets and uses celestial mechanics to track their movement. Astronomy assigns a number to all of the stars and categorizes them in a library-like system of ordinances.
