I get receptions just not dignities.
If you get reception, you can get dignities, because they are the same in a way.
As you already understand,
reception is a planet's response to the sign on another planet.
It is about how the planet
receives the other planet.
For example,
Mars receives Venus in Capricorn well, by exaltation.
Mars receives Venus in Taurus unfavorably, by detriment.
There are a whole array of lesser receptions beyond dignity/detriment and exaltation/fall: triplicity, term/bound and face/decanate.
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Dignity is how a planet feels about the sign that
it is in.
So paralleling the reception example above, here are some dignities for Mars:
Mars in Capricorn is in its exaltation.
Mars in Taurus is in its detriment.
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You ask good questions about horary practice and are doing good work with reception and, soon, digniity. It takes a while, [for me, a pretty
long while] not to get the concept, but to be able to read the Table of Essential Dignities. I had to look at it for a long time to figure out how to read it. But once you get it, and you will
, then it all comes together and you see that it is really pretty simple.
And what about Venus being in Cancer? Doesn't that count if all horaries use Moon as the weightier sig?
This goes a bit off into the weeds for me, as I am not quite sure what you are asking. In general I would say, Venus in Cancer means that Venus will be well received by Moon in a horary chart. But if Venus is not a significator in the horary, and Moon and Venus do not aspect, then Venus in Cancer doesn't matter much in that horary.
If we want to look at Venus in Cancer's dignity, here, just for some practice with the concept of dignity, then if Venus were in the low degrees of Cancer, say 6 degrees, and in a day chart, it would be dignified by triplicity, term and face. But none of that would matter either if Venus was not a significator or aspecting the Moon.