Speed was a strength in Lilly’s table of fortitudes, and today the Moon has it.
Astro Notes: a just-waning Moon on a navy star chart, 22° Taurus, waning gibbous, 97% lit
The record for 27 October 2026
22° Taurus
Waning, a day past full.
0h · 6h · 12h · 18h
Sign
Taurus, twenty-two degrees
Phase
Waning gibbous
Condition
Her exaltation
The word to know today
Swift in motion
A planet moving faster than its average daily pace. Lilly counted it among the accidental fortitudes, strengths a planet gains from its circumstances rather than from its sign.
In 1647, William Lilly counted a planet’s pace among the conditions that strengthened or weakened it. This morning the Moon is at twenty-two degrees of Taurus, still in her exaltation, a waning gibbous just past full, and moving at close to fifteen degrees a day.
Her average is a little over thirteen degrees a day, and her pace swings more than any other planet’s over a single month. A week ago, on the 20th, she was covering just over twelve. Lilly’s table of fortitudes scored a planet swift in motion as strengthened and one slow in motion as weakened, two points either way.
These were accidental conditions, gained from circumstance, as distinct from the essential dignity a planet takes from its sign. The same table took two points from a Moon decreasing in light, so today her speed and her waning cancel, and Taurus is left to carry her.
The pace carries her through the sign quickly. Her last aspect in Taurus is a square to Jupiter at 14:51 UTC, the two bodies a quarter of the circle apart. From that moment she is void of course: she makes no further aspect before she leaves the sign. The void runs a little over ten hours, until she enters Gemini at 01:01 UTC on Wednesday.
At this speed she crosses all of Gemini in a little over two days.
From the shelf
William Lilly, Christian Astrology
1647 London, whose table of fortitudes and debilities scored a planet swift in motion as strengthened and one slow in motion as weakened.
Six short letters and one long one, every week
Read the record each morning.
Monday to Saturday, the Moon's sign today and what the old texts made of it. On Sunday, the week ahead for all twelve signs. Free.
