Absolute degree

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The absolute degree of a chart point is its degree position in the chart expressed not as a zodiacal position with reference to astrological signs, but instead, as a number from 0° to 360°.

Horoscopic points are scarcely ever spoken of as, for instance, "Sun at 289°". Instead, people simply say the zodiacal sign position, "Sun at 19° Capricorn".

But when one is calculating things like aspects or Arabic Parts by hand, absolute degrees can be useful. They also simplify such things as seeing whether 26° Scorpio is in any aspect to 11° Cancer, because one can subtract 101° (the absolute degree of 11° Cancer) from 236° (the absolute degree of 26° Scorpio) to get 135°, which is a sesquisquare aspect. The coding and internal calculations of astrology software are necessarily carried out in absolute degrees.

Converting an absolute degree to a zodiacal position

To find the zodiacal sign position of an absolute degree, subtract the highest multiple of 30° which leaves a positive remainder less than 30°. In other words, write the absolute degree modulo 30 degrees.

In the following example the zodiacal sign position of the absolute degree 243° is calculated:

The highest multiple of 30 which will leave a positive remainder when subtracted from 243 is 8 x 30 = 240. The factor 8 signifies that the first 240 of the 243 degrees belong to eight signs preceeding the target sign, which is therefore the ninth sign or Sagittarius. Since 243 - 240 = 3, the desired result is 3° Sagittarius.

It is useful to memorize the beginning degrees of every sign, which can be found in the table hereunder. Then one knows that, e.g., 243° is in Sagittarius, and it is a simple matter to arrive at the sign position of 3°.

Converting a zodiacal position to an absolute degree

See zodiacal position.

The signs and their absolute degrees

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