The anaretic degree
Every sign spans 30 degrees, numbered 0 to 29. The anaretic degree is the last of them, 29°: a planet there has almost finished its passage through the sign. Astrologers read it as urgency and intensity, the feeling of a chapter closing, and a push to master what the sign asks before moving on. The name comes from a Greek word for a destroyer, and the degree has a reputation as a crisis point; most astrologers today read it as pressure that builds skill. A planet at 29° often shows something of the next sign too.
The critical degrees
A second, older list marks the critical degrees, where a planet is read as more prominent than its sign alone suggests. It comes from the 28 lunar mansions and depends on the sign's modality:
| Signs | Critical degrees |
|---|---|
| Cardinal: Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn | 0°, 13°, 26° |
| Fixed: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius | 8°, 9°, 21°, 22° |
| Mutable: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces | 4°, 17° |
How common they are
In 3,000 random birth charts from 1950 to 2009, with birth times, 31% had a planet, the Ascendant or the Midheaven at 29°, and 15% had one of the personal planets (the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus or Mars) there. Critical degrees are commoner still: 71% of charts had at least one planet or angle on one. So a single critical degree is ordinary, and something at 29° turns up in about one chart in three.
The slow outer planets stay at 29° of a sign for months, across their retrograde loops, so everyone born in that stretch shares the placement: astrologers read those as a generation's, not a person's.
Reading a planet at 29°
Start with the planet: the Sun or Moon at 29° is read as central to the personality, the outer planets as generational. Then the sign it is leaving and the one it is about to enter. Then its house, which shows where the urgency plays out. The calculator gives a reading for each planet or angle it finds at 29°, and lists any on critical degrees.
How it is worked out
The planets come from the site's own ephemeris, the same one behind every chart here, rounded to the minute as the birth chart shows them, so a planet at 28°59.7′ counts as 29°00′, as it appears. A degree means the whole degree: 29° runs from 29°00′ to 29°59′. Without a birth time the Moon, the Ascendant and the Midheaven are left out. Your details stay in your browser.