Combustion · astaṅgata

Combustion is what the tradition calls astaṅgata, “gone to setting.” When a planet comes within a short span of the Sun it is said to be burned, its own light lost in the Sun’s glare the way a candle disappears in daylight. How near counts as combust differs by planet and by source, so the codex reports the principle rather than fixing one set of degrees. Mercury and Venus, which never travel far from the Sun, are the planets most often found in this state.

Classically a combust planet is read as weakened for its outward, public results. It still sits in its sign and rules its houses, but its capacity to show itself in the world is dimmed. The reading is measured, not a ruin: the significations turn quiet or interior rather than failing outright.

The light is not destroyed. It is folded back into the Sun.

One reading is held open against the other. A very tight conjunction, the planet close to the Sun’s exact degree, is treated by some as intensification instead of loss, the graha fused with the Sun and carried by it. The codex keeps both: burned for outward results, yet capable of concentration when the meeting is exact.