Cazimi, Combust and Under the Beams: Planets Close to the Sun

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Traditional astrology pays special attention to a planet that sits close to the Sun. It has three names for that situation, depending on how close the planet is. A planet almost exactly on the Sun's degree is cazimi, an old word usually rendered "in the heart of the Sun", and traditional authors treated it as strengthened. A planet a little further away is combust, "burnt", and was treated as weakened, its light overpowered by the Sun's. A planet further out again is under the beams, a milder form of the same weakness. Beyond that range a planet is free of the beams.

All three are measured by one number: how far the planet is from the Sun along the zodiac. This page explains the three conditions, gives the convention it uses for that distance, shows how to measure it from your own chart, and works through five example charts.

About the calculator. Cazimi, combust and under the beams are traditional astrological concepts that Astrologist.com explains; they are not features of the site. The free birth chart does not flag any of them. It does print every planet's sign, degree and minutes, Sun included, so you can measure a planet's distance from the Sun yourself with the method below. The Astrologist chat is not a combustion calculator. The figures on this page were worked out offline with the same calculation routines as the free chart.

The three conditions and this page's convention

The distance used here is the separation in zodiac longitude between the planet and the Sun, taken the shorter way round the circle, so it is never more than 180°. This page uses the following bands:

This is the page's educational working convention, not the single historically correct definition. Traditional sources do not agree on the limits. Some give 16′ rather than 17′ for cazimi, and some earlier authors allowed about a whole degree. For under the beams, limits of 12°, 15° and 17° all occur. The page uses one consistent set so that every worked example can be checked against the same lines; another astrologer using another set may classify the same planet differently, and neither result is a mistake.

Distance, not sign. On this page the classification is by distance regardless of sign: a planet 6° from the Sun counts as combust even if it is in the neighbouring sign. That keeps the hand method reproducible and matches the way the site measures aspects in degrees rather than signs. Not every traditional author agreed. William Lilly, in Christian Astrology (1647, p. 113), described a planet as combust when it is in the same sign as the Sun and within 8°30′ of it, gave 17° for being under the Sun beams and 17′ for cazimi. Lotte's chart below shows where the two rules part company.

Longitude only. The free chart prints positions in zodiac longitude, so this page measures in longitude only. Some traditional authorities used a stricter condition for cazimi, in which the planet's body must also be close to the Sun's in latitude, north or south of the Sun's path. This page does not calculate latitude, and a longitude-only cazimi should not be read as the universal definition.

Approaching or leaving. This page does not distinguish a planet moving toward the Sun from one moving away from it, and the calculator does not either.

Which bodies it applies to

The traditional scheme covers the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The Sun itself cannot be combust, since the condition describes another body's relation to the Sun.

The Moon is close to the Sun only around the New Moon, so a combust Moon belongs to births near that phase; the waning Moon phases describe the run-up to it. Because the Moon moves about 12° a day relative to the Sun, its condition needs a reliable birth time.

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Lunar Nodes and Chiron are outside the historical scheme. Some modern astrologers extend the terms to them, but this page sets no rule for those bodies and gives them no classification.

Why the Sun

The underlying picture is visibility. A planet close to the Sun in the sky can be lost in the Sun's glare, and traditional astrology treated such a planet as hidden by the Sun's beams, turning that observation into a judgement about the planet's condition. The traditional bands are conventions, not a physical visibility cutoff: whether a planet can actually be seen also depends on the body, its brightness and the viewing conditions. Planets reach the Sun's degree at different points in their cycles. Mercury and Venus pass it twice in each cycle, once on the far side of the Sun and once between Earth and the Sun; when either is retrograde near the Sun it is near that second, inferior conjunction. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn meet the Sun only on the far side, never while retrograde. Retrograde planets and the Sun explains that geometry, and stationary planets at birth covers the turning points either side of it.

Combust is not the same as a conjunction

The free chart uses an 8° orb for a natal conjunction, the site's example orb for that aspect (see aspect orbs). The 8°30′ limit for combustion is a separate traditional convention, and the two should not be merged. A planet more than 8°00′ and up to 8°30′ from the Sun is combust under this page's convention but outside the site's conjunction orb, and a planet under the beams, more than 8°30′ and up to 17° away, is not in any of the site's aspects to the Sun at all. Nothing about the site's aspect orbs changes because of these conditions.

The aspect itself has its own pages: Sun conjunct Mercury and Sun conjunct Venus cover how a close Sun contact is read as an aspect.

How to check your own chart

1. Read the two positions. Open your free birth chart and note the Sun and the planet you want to check from the table under the wheel, with degrees and minutes.
2. Convert to 0° to 360°. Add 0° for Aries, 30° for Taurus, 60° for Gemini and so on, 30° per sign, up to 330° for Pisces. Comparing two charts by degree shows this step in detail.
3. Subtract and take the shorter arc. Subtract the smaller value from the larger. If the result is more than 180°, subtract it from 360°.
4. Compare with the table. 0°17′ or less is cazimi; up to 8°30′ combust; up to 17°00′ under the beams; beyond that, free of the beams.
5. Note the sign. If the planet is in a different sign from the Sun, a same-sign rule such as Lilly's would not call it combust.
6. Check the precision. The table prints whole minutes, cut from a position the calculator rounds to a hundredth of a degree, so a hand result can differ from the calculator's own value by up to about a minute. If your result lands within about 1′ of 0°17′, 8°30′ or 17°00′, treat the planet as boundary-sensitive: deciding which side it falls on needs higher-precision positions than the free chart prints.
7. Without a birth time, see the section on unknown times below before you settle on a condition.

Worked examples

The charts below are the site's fixed example charts, used unchanged from other pages, plus one cazimi chart chosen by a fixed rule. Lotte, Ruben and Noor are fictional. All figures were recalculated with the routines behind the free chart. Distances are worked from the displayed minutes, the way you would do it by hand.

Every other traditional body in these charts is more than 17° from the Sun.

Lotte: combust across a sign line. Lotte's Sun is at 3°26′ Virgo, and Venus and Jupiter sit at the end of Leo, under 7° away. By this page's distance-only convention both are combust. By Lilly's same-sign rule neither is, because they are in Leo and the Sun is in Virgo, though both are still well inside the 17° range he gave for being under the Sun beams. The calculator's own values put Venus at 6.86° (6°51.6′) and Jupiter at 6.90°, so the hand figures above are within a minute of them, and both are far from any boundary. Her Mercury, retrograde at 24°18′ Leo, is 9°08′ away: beyond 8°30′, so under the beams rather than combust, and beyond the 8° conjunction orb too.

Ruben: under the beams in the same sign. Ruben's Mercury at 4°25′ Capricorn is 10°45′ behind his Sun at 15°10′ Capricorn. It shares the Sun's sign but is too far for combustion: under the beams on this page's convention.

The Sun conjunct Mercury example: close, but not cazimi. The chart used on the Sun conjunct Mercury page, noon in London on 8 September 1990, has retrograde Mercury at 14°58′ Virgo and the Sun at 15°32′ Virgo: 0°34′ apart. That is combust, not cazimi, under this page's 17′ convention. Under the wider definition of about a degree used by some earlier authors it would count as cazimi, which is why the convention has to be stated. Venus, at 1°22′ Virgo, is 14°10′ from the Sun and under the beams.

A cazimi chart, chosen by rule. None of the fixed charts has a cazimi planet, so one was picked by a rule set in advance: the first conjunction of the Sun and Mercury after 1 January 2000 at which the calculator's separation falls inside 17′. That is the conjunction of 16 January 2000, with London used only as the display location. The calculator's separation reaches its smallest value, 0.00°, from 01:02 to 01:36 GMT; at 01:02 the Sun and Mercury are both at 25°11′ Capricorn, with Mercury direct, on the far side of the Sun. The chart is a date and place picked to show the measurement; it says nothing about anyone born then.

Noor: the control. Noor's nearest traditional body to the Sun is Mercury at 22°24′ Scorpio, 18°31′ from her Sun at 10°55′ Sagittarius. Nothing in her chart is cazimi, combust or under the beams.

When the birth time is unknown

The Sun and the planets keep moving through a birth date, so a condition read at one time may not hold at another. Checking only the start and end of a date is a first screen, not proof: a planet can cross a band and come back, and its distance from the Sun need not change steadily. For the examples on this page the calculation was run at every minute of the local birth date.

• Stable all day: Lotte's Venus (6°25′ to 7°58′) and Jupiter (6°41′ to 7°26′) stay combust, and her Mercury (8°42′ to 10°10′) stays under the beams. Ruben's Mercury stays under the beams (10°29′ to 11°01′). Noor's Mercury stays free of the beams (17°46′ to 18°36′). On the 1990 date Venus stays under the beams (14°01′ to 14°18′).
• Time-sensitive: 8 September 1990. Mercury is combust at noon, but earlier that day it was much closer. It came within 17′ of the Sun from about 01:30 to about 08:30 BST, closest around 05:00, and was combust before and after. Without a birth time, Mercury's condition on that date is time-sensitive and cannot be settled. Around both changeover times there is also a stretch of roughly half an hour in which the distance is within a minute of 17′, so those times are boundary-sensitive as well.
• Time-sensitive: 16 January 2000. Mercury is within 17′ of the Sun from the start of the day until close to noon GMT and combust for the rest of the day, about 0°37′ from the Sun by 23:59. From about 11:10 to 12:55 the distance is within a minute of 17′. At noon the free chart prints the Sun at 25°39′ Capricorn and Mercury at 25°56′ Capricorn, exactly 17′ apart by hand: boundary-sensitive, so this page would not call it either cazimi or combust from those figures alone.
• The Moon. None of the example Moons comes near the Sun on its date, but in general the Moon's distance from the Sun changes by about 12° over a day, so a Moon condition should not be assigned without a reliable time.

The free chart's noon reference for an unknown time is only a reference, not a birth time. A birth chart without a birth time explains what can still be read, and how accurate a birth time needs to be shows how to test a time window.

How the conditions were read

In traditional astrology these are statements about the condition of the planet, part of a wider set of judgements about how well placed a planet is. A cazimi planet was described as strengthened, as if seated with the Sun. A combust planet was described as weakened or overpowered, its significations hidden by the Sun. A planet under the beams was described as weakened to a lesser degree. This is the same family of ideas as planetary dignities, which judge a planet by its sign, and sect, which judges it by the kind of chart; this page does not score planets or combine those judgements.

These are historical technical labels. A combust planet does not mean a person is lacking in anything that planet stands for, and a cazimi planet does not mark anyone as lucky or gifted. They say nothing about talent, health, success or events. Modern astrologers vary in whether and how they use these traditional conditions.

Check your own chart

Open your free birth chart, note the Sun and the six traditional bodies with their minutes, and work out each distance with the steps above. The methodology page sets out how positions are calculated, and you can ask the Astrologist about a planet near your Sun, bringing the degrees and the condition you measured.

Related articles

• Sun Conjunct Mercury
• Sun Conjunct Venus
• Retrograde Planets and the Sun
• Planetary Dignities Explained
• Day and Night Charts
• Aspect Orbs in Astrology
• Stationary Planets at Birth