Meaning
Fortuna Major is lasting success, won from within. Agrippa's table of 1651 glosses it "Greater aid" and "Safe-guard entering"; Hartmann calls it "success, interior aid and protection" and "a very good sign"; the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's handbook finds it good where a person hopes to win. The tradition reads it as favourable to almost any question, contests above all, though what it brings may come slowly. As the Judge it is the tradition's plain yes, reached by the asker's own means rather than by chance.
In the shield
Fortuna Major has six points and can be Judge, for one casting in eight. Cattan calls it a figure "fixed entring in": more points above than below make it an entering figure, and entering figures are good. Turned upside down it becomes Fortuna Minor, and with every point swapped it becomes Fortuna Minor too, so the two mirror each other both ways. In the sample casting on the Geomancy page it is the Right Witness. Its head line is double, so as Judge it has no Way of the Point under the single-point rule.
The Sun, Dante, and the signs
The 1655 Of Geomancy gives both Fortunes to the Sun, Fortuna Major as the Sun "diurnal, posited in his dignities", by day and in his strength; Cattan's table makes it the Sun direct. At the opening of Purgatorio XIX Dante's geomancers see their Maggior Fortuna rise in the east before dawn, the figure's points read among the stars. In Gerard's scheme it is Aquarius, as in Agrippa and Cattan's own table; the Golden Dawn gives it Leo, the Sun's sign, and Cattan's page 63 gives Aries.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Planet
- Sun, in every source checked (Cattan, Agrippa, the 1655 text, Hartmann, Crowley, Fludd) sourced
- Direct or retrograde (Cattan, p. 54)
- Sun direct sourced
- Sign, Gerard's scheme (ours)
- Aquarius sourced
- Sign, other schemes
- Agrippa (1651): Aquarius; Cattan's table (p. 56): Aquarius; Cattan's “Gerard Cremon” (p. 63): Aries; the Golden Dawn (1909): Leo disputed
- Quality (Cattan's rule)
- Entering, and good (pp. 62, 215) sourced
- Lines
- Single, active: Water (body) and Earth (feet); double, passive: Fire (head) and Air (neck) sourced
- In Dante
- The geomancers' Maggior Fortuna, seen rising before dawn (Purgatorio XIX, 1 to 6) sourced
- Our keywords
- Lasting success, inner strength, help from within our construction
How the schools read it
- Cattan (1591)
- Calls it “the great fortune”; entering, and good (pp. 62, 215).
- Agrippa (1651)
- Glosses it “Great fortune”, “Greater aid”, “Safe-guard entering”.
- *Of Geomancy* (1655)
- The Sun diurnal, posited in his dignities (the Sun by day, in his strength).
- Hartmann (1889)
- “Fortuna major, Great Fortune, success, interior aid and protection, is a very good sign.”
- The Golden Dawn (Crowley, 1909)
- “Good for gain in things where a person has hopes to win”
- Modern practice (Greer, as reported)
- Calls it stable, the modern word for an entering figure.
- EsoTerrier
- Lasting success, inner strength, help from within (our one-line reading in the chart).
Claims about it
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Fortuna Major is a figure a person is born under, worked out from a name and a birth date.
falseWhat the record shows: No source makes a geomantic figure from birth data; every casting is for a question. Our own app did this until October 2026, and the method was retired.
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Fortuna Major has one zodiac sign.
disputedWhat the record shows: Gerard's scheme gives Aquarius, the Golden Dawn Leo, Cattan's page 63 Aries. At least six schemes exist; we always name the one we use.
-
Fortuna Major has an element of its own.
disputedWhat the record shows: The sources give the figures at least six different sets of elements. We show only the four line elements, never an element for the whole figure.
