Well, I'll be jabberwockied.
800 years, huh?
I can't believe I've been doing this wrong for the past 800 years.
OK, for all you Hottentots that insist on the New Revised Version of Strict Traditionalist Dogma, here's the latest skinny:
IN ARIES Saturn is in his fall. But "debility does not save from peregrine." Except for being in his own terms from the 27th through 30th degree inclusive, Saturn has no rescue. He is peregrine with no essential dignity. His terms can do no more than soften the effects of fall. The 29th degree is both deep and light. I'll leave it to heads woollier than mine to discuss the interpretation of these degrees. Judging from all this, Saturn is peregrine throughout the sign of Aries. While in his own terms, we might compare the peregrine Saturn to a wandering Korean exile who for a time finds himself in the Korean quarter of London, and while still a wanderer at least has some familiarity with the neighborhood.
IN LEO Saturn finds himself in detriment. He is in his exile in this sign. He is in his own terms in the first six degrees of the sign but otherwise has no dignity. Again, I don't think being in his terms saves him, but the strict constructionist will say that he does hold essential dignity in his terms and therefore is not peregrine. If we assume that my point of view is the correct one, something which is beyond dispute, then Saturn is peregrine throughout the sign of Leo.
Saturn IN SAGITTARIUS has neither dignity nor debility. But Saturn can’t be too comfortable in this Jupiter-ruled sign of expansion, prescience, buoyancy, flexibility...it’s just not his nature. The last ten degrees of the sign are his face, the weakest of the essential dignities, and his terms fall from the 20th through the 25th degrees of the sign, inclusive. Saturn is peregrine when found in the first two decanates of Sagittarius.
Fall and Exile are essential detriments of a higher order than peregrination. Since distinct conditions, such as fall and peregrination, do not cancel each other out but instead act each independently while contributing sympathetically to the whole, the stronger will overshadow the weaker.
This brings us full circle to our beginning proposition that essential detriments overshadow peregrination. Even if we allow peregrination, exile and fall continue to exert their influence, which is much stronger than that of peregrination.
One horn of our dilemma is Dogma; the other is Common Sense. The dogma was changed 800 years ago. Why fix something that wasn’t broke? This change happened during the times of the Moorish expulsion, and I wonder if it wasn’t somehow connected to that. The libraries at Toledo were overflowing with the knowledge of antiquity and the seed that blossomed in the period of the Enlightenment was planted. At the same time, some things thought to have been concocted by the Arabs were discarded or revised. The fact that the parameters for determining a peregrine condition could be changed with hardly a ripple leads one to conclude that said condition must not be a very powerful one. I vote for Common Sense, using astrology as the system of thought that it is at the root of astrology.