The Sun now stands in its fall, in the seventh house of the Wheel. This is the Descendant, the western point of the heavens, aligned with the sign of Libra. The direction we call the West was named in Latin occidens, from the verb occidere: ob meaning “down” or “toward”, and cadere meaning “to fall”. It marks the region where the Sun sets and the day declines. The English West comes from the Proto-Germanic wes-, from the Indo-European root wes-, meaning “to go down” or “to set”. Both words speak of the same motion; the light descending toward shadow.
At this point of the zodiac, the Sun reaches its lowest dignity. Libra is a masculine, diurnal sign, but the Sun holds no rulership by triplicity in the element of air. Its fire finds neither kinship nor support here. The solar principle, accustomed to command, must yield to measure. Its fall is the test of proportion; the lesson that light, when untempered, cannot sustain balance. The will learns to become relational, to see itself through the face of another.
This moment of descent corresponds, in geomancy, to the figure known as Fortuna Minor, the small fortune. It is the image of the Sun in decline, still shining but resting upon form. Through it the mystery of the western gate unfolds: strength sustained through harmony and light that endures by accepting the weight of the world.
I. The Figure of the Setting Sun
Among the sixteen figures of geomancy, Fortuna Minor bears the shape of the declining Sun. Two points above, four below; a flame upheld by matter. It is the light that endures through structure, the power that persists through alliance. Here the fire of the Spirit lowers its crown and leans on the world for support. Its virtue is continuity rather than conquest. It represents the western current of the soul, the passage from assertion to communion. The light turns horizontal – listening, receiving, reflecting. The pattern itself resembles a vessel; a chalice that holds the last beam before the night. Within this figure the solar principle accepts the necessity of form and finds grace in limitation.
II. The Western Gate
In the old temples the main door stood in the West, the direction of the setting Sun. The faithful entered from the dusk of the world and advanced toward the altar in the East. The West was the gate of death and renewal, the portal through which the light returns to the invisible. In the celestial architecture, this gate corresponds to the Descendant, the seventh house, facing the Ascendant by opposition. The Ascendant gives birth to being; the Descendant receives it back into reflection. Libra rules this point because justice governs all exchange. It is the balance between self and other, day and night, Spirit and body. The soul that crosses this horizon transforms itself through relation. The Sun declines there to measure its own glory, learning that harmony is a form of sacrifice, a luminous surrender to proportion.
III. The Solar Weighing
The Sun is now moving through the second decan of Libra, dominion of Saturn. And Saturn is precisely exalted in Libra because time finds symmetry in cardinal air. The decan is tied to the Three of Swords, Binah in the World of Formation, where understanding is born through separation. The swords divide in order to clarify and the resulting wound becomes the eye of truth. The solar will is in this chamber, submiting itself to the discipline of time and space.
Saturn carves the form of love into law. Through this restraint the Sun learns endurance and its decline becomes wisdom. The mystery of Fortuna Minor is here revealed again; strength preserved through humility and radiance tempered by structure. The Sun is moving through the western gate of the Temple, being weighed, judged, and refined. The great fortune yields to the small one and in that yielding the fire remains pure.
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