Origin 200 BCE to 200 CE
The Nadir, more usually called the Imum Coeli, has no glyph and is written as the abbreviation IC, from the Latin imum coeli, the lowest part of the heaven. It is the point where the ecliptic crosses the local meridian beneath the horizon, directly opposite the Midheaven, and in most house systems it begins the fourth house. Strictly the astronomical nadir is the point beneath the observer's feet and is not identical to the IC, and the two names are often conflated in astrological usage; the chart point meant here is the lower meridian. Being the deepest and least visible point of the circle, it is read for everything private and foundational: home, family, ancestry, the inherited past, the conditions of early life, and the ground a person stands on and returns to at the end.
Facts
Form
Type of SymbolMathematical or scribal notation 1 Geometric FormWritten as an abbreviation (IC) rather than a pictorial glyph. 1 Origins
Origin Period Place of OriginThe Hellenistic Greco-Roman world. 1 Learn More
An Angle of the Horoscope
The astrological Nadir, more properly the Imum Coeli, is the lowest point of the ecliptic in a chart, the point where the ecliptic crosses the celestial meridian on its lower, subterranean branch, directly opposite the Midheaven. It is the cusp of the fourth house and one of the four angles.
The Latin imum coeli means "bottom of the sky," mirroring medium coeli, "middle of the sky," for its opposite point, both terms describing where the meridian, the great circle through the north and south horizon points and the zenith, meets the ecliptic. Because it lies at the meridian's lower culmination, always below the horizon at the chart's own moment, the Imum Coeli was described in some Hellenistic sources as the point farthest from the visible, rising part of the sky, and associated for that reason with the underworld, even though quadrant based house division, of the kind Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and later systems use, treats it as the ordinary cusp of the fourth house rather than a purely symbolic point. The everyday English word "nadir," for the lowest point of anything, actually derives from a separate Arabic term for the point opposite the zenith and is only loosely applied here; the properly astrological term for this angle has always been Imum Coeli.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Symbol Of
Nadir, Planets The symbol's own cited description identifies its glyph as that of this planet.
Sources
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