This is part 3 of a five-part series on John Partridge’s teachings concerning wealth, riches, and the second house. In this section, Partridge sets out how the birth chart reveals whether a person will be rich or poor. The text is drawn from Chapter 5, “Of Wealth and Riches, the Judgment of the second House,”[1] pages 107–112, of his 1692 work Mikropanastron, Or, an Astrological VADE MECUM.
PROP II.
By what means shall the Native be Rich or Poor?
Once it has been determined by the preceding rules whether the native will be rich or poor, the next matter is to discover by what means he will improve or diminish his estate.
In this inquiry, attention must be paid to the significators already mentioned: which planets afflict them, whether they are essentially weak, which stars favor them, and whether they are essentially strong. Then observe the house in which the promising or afflicting planet is located, or over which it rules, as well as the things and persons that planet signifies. The following table sets these out.
The Nature of Each Planet as Significator of Riches, Divided into Things and Persons
Saturn signifies:
| Things: | Husbandry, fruits of the earth, mines, metals, treasures, buildings, misers, inheritances from the dead, prisons, debt, and all unclean labor. |
| Persons: | Old men, husbandmen, diggers of metals, masons, tanners, Jews, Jesuits, Moors; careless, envious, solitary, deceitful persons. |
Jupiter signifies:
| Things: | Ecclesiastical dignities, religion, rule and authority in the church, honesty, and virtue. |
| Persons: | Prelates, bishops, lawyers, judges, advocates, noble and rich men, senators or members of parliament, and all civilians in general. |
Mars signifies:
| Things: | Contention, discord, war, victory, valiant acts, smiths, chemistry, and all works belonging to fire; tyranny and all manner of violence. |
| Persons: | Treacherous, seditious, cruel, confident, quarrelsome persons; also surgeons, captains and great commanders of armies, all who work in fire, gunners, cutlers, etc. |
Sun signifies:
| Things: | Kingdoms, commonwealths, nobility, dignity, renown, rule, honor, and all illustrious actions. |
| Persons: | Kings, princes, dukes, nobles, famous and circumspect persons, lovers and desirers of honors, etc.; ambitious persons. |
Venus signifies:
| Things: | Love, pity, fellowship, beauty, gifts of friends and women, marriage, dowry in marriage; all fine ornaments for the body, sensuality, excess in carnal pleasures. |
| Persons: | Gentlefolk, those trim in apparel, dancers, wooers, lovers of women, desirers of delights and banquets, musicians, poets, painters, etc. |
Mercury signifies:
| Things: | Bargains, business, arts, exercise of the wit, study, inventors of new arts and fancies, searchers after curiosities. |
| Persons: | Professors of philosophy, mathematicians, arithmeticians, accountants, notaries, merchants, engravers, ingenious artificers of all sorts, crafty and unstable persons. |
Moon signifies:
| Things: | All things that abound in moisture, the sea, rivers, study of histories, embassies, navigations, peregrinations, etc. |
| Persons: | Queens, widows, common people, mariners, lackeys, ambassadors, messengers, fishermen, vagabonds, etc. |
The signification of the twelve houses has already been explained at length in the eighth chapter of the first part, so no further mention will be made here; the reader is referred to that proper place.
Now to return to the question just proposed—by what means, etc.—and to develop this doctrine further.
Therefore, if you would judge by what means gain or loss of estate shall come to the native, observe the significators as directed in the first proposition and see whether they are fortunate or unfortunate. If all the significators are fortunate (which is very rare), judge that the estate or riches will come through the persons and things signified by those planets and by the house in which they are located, as well as by the planets that aspect them with good rays and the house or houses over which those planets rule. On the contrary, if the significators are unfortunate, judge loss of estate, or that the native will be kept poor by the persons and things signified by those planets and houses.
For Example
Suppose Mars is lord of the second house, strong in the second, in trine or sextile with reception from Jupiter or Venus in the eleventh house. Then the native shall have very honorable friends, and such as will vigorously endeavor to advance his interest, and the native shall be employed as a steward or treasurer to some prince or nobleman; or, in a more inferior birth, as a paymaster or receiver in some office, etc. But if the Pars fortunae is in conjunction with Mars, and both are in square to their dispositor, and that dispositor is Venus in the fifth house, then the estate is consumed by drinking and whoring and such like. If, however, the affliction comes with Saturn, and he is in the sixth house, then loss comes through melancholic diseases, bad servants, and loss of small cattle if the native is a countryman. And so with the rest of the significators: if you find them fortunate, judge wealth and riches; if unfortunate, poverty. But the time when these things shall happen must be known from the good or bad directions of the five hylegicals to their several promittors, especially of the Part of Fortune, and take good notice of that directional body or aspect which falls in the second house; for whether the significator is the ascendant, the Sun, the Moon, or the Part of Fortune, it shall have great signification in the estate of the native, according to its quality, whether good or bad.
Sometimes also it happens that the significators are equally balanced in terms of good and bad. In such a case, the native shall live struggling with his fortune all his days: sometimes under a good direction he shall get something, and presently, under a bad one, he shall lose it all again.
