Latin Names:
- Amissio: Loss · Losing · Loss of Possession · Forfeiture · Deprivation · Dispossession · Letting Go · Release · Abandonment · Relinquishment · Giving Up · Letting Slip · Missing · Misplacing · Dropping · Waste · Squandering · Spending · Expense · Giving Away · Donation · Sacrifice;
- Comprehensum Foris/Extra: Outward Grasping · External Grasping · Outward Comprehension · External Comprehension · Holding Outside · Held Outside · Possession Outside the Hand · Goods Outside One’s Possession · Seized Externally · External Possession · External Claim · Alienation · One’s Goods in Another’s Hand · Being Taken · Being Caught · Being Found Out · Exposure · Discovery.
Greek Name: Exit of Money · Money Going Out · Outgoing Money · Outflow of Money · Departure of Money · Expenditure · Spending · Outflow of Goods · Goods Going Out · Property Going Out · Outgoing Wealth · Wealth Leaving Possession · Loss of Goods · Loss of Property (εξοδος των χρηματων — Exodos tōn Chrēmatōn).
Arabic Name: Outward Grasp · External Grasping · Outward Seizing · Taking Outside · Taking Out of the Hand · Carrying Outward · Giving Outward · Giving Away · Letting Go from the Hand · Release from Possession · Goods Going Out · Possession Passing Outside · External Loss · External Seizure · Being Taken Away · Being Seized Outside · Being Given Away · Being Removed from One’s Possession (القبض الخارج — al-Qabd al-Kharij).
Hebrew Name: Outgoing Wealth · Money Going Out · Wealth Going Out · Wealth Leaving · Monetary Fortune Exiting · Money Leaving Possession · Wealth Leaving Possession · Property Going Out · Possessions Going Out · Capital Outflow · Financial Outflow · Expenditure · Spending · Payment · Loss of Wealth · Loss of Money · Loss of Property (ממון יוצא — Mamon Yotze).
Alternative Names: Grasping Externally · Outer Wealth · Something Escaped or Lost.
Image: a bag held mouth downward, letting the contents fall out.
Element: 🜃 earth.
Planet: C Venus, especially in its nocturnal expression.
Zodiac Sign: b Taurus.
Natural Property: mobile, unstable, and weak.
Inversion: Acquisitio.
Complement: Acquisitio.
Sense: hearing.
Body System: urinary system (sometimes Via).
Anatomy: mouth, tongue, jaw, chin, neck, throat.
Human Significations: loser, giver.
The Master Signification of Amissio
Loss, Release, and Going Out
Amissio means loss, losing, expenditure, giving, release, and going out of possession. It is one of the most direct figures in geomancy: something leaves. Money goes out of the hand. An object disappears from possession. Strength is spent. A person goes away. An advantage is lost. A bond is broken. A condition is no longer held.
In material questions, Amissio is usually unfavorable, because material questions usually seek acquisition, preservation, or increase. The querent wants to receive money, keep property, win a dispute, hold a position, recover an object, strengthen his standing, or secure a result. Amissio moves in the opposite direction. It shows loss, expense, failure of expectation, loss of advantage, disappearance of the thing, or the passage of a good from inward possession to the outside.
In lawsuits, contests, disputes, elections, sports, competitions, and struggles for office, Amissio often shows defeat. It does not describe the glory of the victor. It shows the side that loses the chance, prize, judgment, place, advantage, or result.
Yet Amissio should not be reduced to evil. It is a figure of loss, and loss can be desirable. If a person wishes to lose illness, fear, excess weight, guilt, addiction, a harmful habit, an enemy, a painful attachment, a curse, an inward burden, or an evil condition, Amissio may become favorable. It shows that the unwanted thing goes away.
The basic rule is simple: Amissio is bad when the desired thing should come, but good when the harmful thing should go.
Therefore Amissio must always be judged according to the nature of the question. In a question about profit, Amissio shows loss. In a question about deliverance, it may show release. In a question about buying, it is bad, because the thing does not enter the hand. In a question about selling, it may be good, because the thing is supposed to leave the hand. In a question about illness, it is bad if the body loses strength, but good if the illness loses its hold over the body.
Amissio also signifies absence, distance, transience, and whatever lies outside the querent’s sight. What was near becomes inaccessible. What was in the hand goes outward. What seemed secure proves able to slip away. This is not always destruction; often it is simply the condition of having left possession.
The figure may also signify final loss when the question and chart concern death, serious illness, or a missing person. In such cases, Amissio may show that the person is no longer present, or is lost forever.
At its deepest level, Amissio teaches the law of outgoing things. Money leaves. Desire passes. Beauty fades. Objects break. Bodies change. Relationships end. Fear may disappear. Sin may be confessed and released. A burden may be laid down. In the material world, nothing remains in the hand forever.
Amissio is the figure of loss, but also the figure of liberation through loss.
The Bag, the Hand, and Outward Grasping
The image of Amissio is a bag held mouth downward. Its contents fall out. This is the exact opposite of Acquisitio, where the bag is held upward and ready to receive.
The image explains the nature of the figure. What was inside is no longer held. The vessel does not preserve its contents. The hand does not close around the thing. What belonged to the person’s inward circle moves outside it. The thing falls, leaks, spills, is lost, is given away, or becomes inaccessible.
The Latin name Comprehensum Foris or Comprehensum Extra gives the meaning more precision. Acquisitio has Comprehensum Intus—an inward grasping, a holding within, a taking into the hand. Amissio gives the opposite: outward grasping. The thing may still be “grasped,” but no longer inside the querent’s hand. It is grasped outside. It may be in another person’s hand, under external control, out of sight, out of reach, or outside its former possession.
Therefore Amissio does not always mean that the thing has been destroyed. More often, it means that the thing has gone out of inward possession and now stands outside. It may be lost, given away, stolen, seized, carried off, squandered, missed, or simply placed where the querent can no longer command it. Final destruction is more strongly shown when the figure passes into the Eighth House: the thing is dead.
The Arabic al-Qabd al-Kharij speaks of outward grasping. The Greek Exodos tōn Chrēmatōn speaks of the exit of money, goods, and possessions. The Hebrew Mamon Yotze speaks of outgoing wealth. All the names point in one direction: something does not enter, but leaves.
This also explains hearing as the sense of Amissio. Hearing grasps an external sound. The sound comes from outside, touches the person, and disappears. It cannot be held like an object. It can only be received by the ear and lost in the next moment. For this reason, hearing suits Amissio as the sense of the external, the fleeting, and the elusive.
Amissio and Acquisitio: Giver and Receiver
The inversion of Amissio is Acquisitio. The complementary figure of Amissio is also Acquisitio. This is one of the clearest mirror-pairs in geomancy. However we turn Amissio or exchange its points, it leads back to Acquisitio. Loss and acquisition are not accidentally related; they are two sides of one movement.
Amissio gives outward; Acquisitio receives inward. Amissio loses; Acquisitio gains. Amissio is the defeated side; Acquisitio is the victor. Amissio is the giver; Acquisitio is the receiver.
This pair is especially important in questions about receiving gifts, charity, theft, contests, sacrifice, and victory. In questions about receiving a gift, Acquisitio signifies the recipient, while Amissio signifies the one who gives. In charity, Amissio may be noble, because the good leaves one hand for the benefit of another. In theft, Amissio shows the owner’s loss, while Acquisitio may show the one who now holds the stolen thing. In contests, Amissio shows the loser, while Acquisitio shows the winner.
Therefore Amissio should not be moralized too quickly. Loss may be foolish, forced, generous, saving, destructive, or voluntary. The figure first describes direction: out of the hand, out of possession, out of the former condition.
Acquisitio says, “This comes to me.” Amissio says, “This leaves me.”
Venus in Taurus: Strong Venus, Strong Loss
Amissio corresponds to C Venus in b Taurus. This matters because Amissio is not weak merely because it signifies loss. It belongs to Venus, the Lesser Benefic, and may therefore be favorable when the desired result is giving, release, pleasure, reconciliation, or the loss of something harmful.
But the strength of Venus does not cancel the meaning of the figure itself. Amissio remains loss. It may give generosity, softness, desire, pleasure, and an open hand, but it still shows something going out of possession. In material questions, this is usually harmful; in questions of release, it may be useful.
In love questions, Amissio may show losing the heart. In questions of passion, it may show losing the head. In questions of generosity, it shows an open hand. In questions of pleasure, expenditure. In questions of liberation, release.
Amissio can release both the good and the harmful. If the good leaves, the figure is often unfavorable. If illness, fear, guilt, addiction, or heaviness leaves, the figure may be healing.
Elemental Structure: Fire, Water, and Evaporation
In Amissio, Fire and Water are active, while Air and Earth are passive. This is the opposite of Acquisitio, where Air and Earth are active.
Fire is hot and dry. Water is cold and moist. These elements are opposite in both primary qualities. Fire dries, consumes, rises, and burns. Water moistens, dissolves, washes, and carries away. When both are active, but Earth is passive, form is poorly held. When Air is passive, there is no clear order, calculation, connection, or measure.
For this reason, Amissio rarely gives a durable result in material matters. There is not enough active Earth to fix the thing, hold the boundary, and preserve the form. There is not enough active Air to distribute, connect, negotiate, calculate, or direct properly. What remains is expenditure and dissolution: strength goes out, money is spent, the thing disappears from possession, the bond is loosened, the condition loses stability.
A good image here is steam. Fire and Water meet, and the matter does not remain in the hand. It evaporates, rises, disappears, and becomes difficult to grasp. In the same way, under Amissio, money may be spent, strength exhausted, an object lost, a bond dissolved, an advantage missed.
This does not necessarily signify literal fire or literal water. The principle is loss of retention: holding weakens, form loses density, and what should have remained passes out of possession.
In a good sense, active Fire and Water may cleanse. Fire burns away what is excessive. Water washes away what is impure. Thus Amissio may show the departure of illness, the dissolution of fear, cleansing from guilt, the expulsion of waste, the end of a harmful bond, or freedom from an inward burden.
The elemental logic of Amissio is simple: it is bad for holding form, but may be good for removing what should not remain.
Benefic Loss, Sacrifice, Ransom, and Redemption
Amissio may be beneficial when loss itself is the desired or proper result. This does not mean that every loss is good. But sometimes a thing must leave so that the condition may improve.
Money paid to discharge a debt or obligation is money lost, but it also frees the person. A ransom loses wealth, but may recover a person or liberty. A sacrifice gives up something valuable, but may restore order, cleanse guilt, or open a sacred path. A donation leaves the donor’s hand, but benefits another. Repentance may require the loss of pride, pleasure, secrecy, or attachment. Forgiveness may require the loss of revenge.
In spiritual and moral questions, Amissio may become especially favorable. It can show the release of sin, freedom from guilt, loss of fear, abandonment of vice, the end of a harmful bond, refusal of destructive desire, or the cleansing of the soul from what corrupts it.
In this sense, Amissio may become a figure of redemption. Something must leave so that the person may become free.
The Psychology of Loss, Spending, and Giving
Psychologically, Amissio shows not only the outer fact of loss, but the person’s relation to what is leaving. One person loses and is freed. Another loses and feels robbed. A third gives willingly. A fourth gives out of fear. A fifth spends in order to feel pleasure, attention, or temporary relief.
In its healthy form, Amissio gives the ability to let go. The person does not cling to what is dead, does not hold onto what destroys him, does not turn property, love, status, or memory into a prison. He can pay, donate, forgive, give, finish, leave, release, and become free.
In its damaged form, Amissio becomes leakage. The person cannot hold his own good. He gives out of fear, spends for approval, buys love, fears refusal, loses himself in other people’s desires, or allows external demands to open his bag again and again.
There is another damaged form of Amissio: enjoyment of expenditure itself. The person spends not because the thing is needed, but because the act of spending gives release. Money goes out, tension briefly decreases, and there is a feeling of movement or pleasure. Then emptiness returns, and another expenditure is needed.
Measureless self-sacrifice belongs here as well. A person gives, helps, rescues, pays for others, and carries other people’s burdens—not from free virtue, but from fear of being unloved. Then Amissio is no longer charity, but self-waste.
Therefore Amissio requires a distinction between healthy release and unhealthy leakage. An open hand may be a sign of nobility. It may also be a sign that a person cannot hold his own life.
Illness, Healing, and the Loss of What Should Go
In health questions, Amissio must be judged by the aim of the question. If the matter concerns vitality, preservation of substance, strengthening of the body, or continuation of life, Amissio may be troubling. It can show wasting, leakage, loss of strength, loss of bodily substance, or the departure of what should remain.
But if the question asks whether illness, pain, swelling, fever, fear, excess weight, a harmful habit, or a destructive condition will go away, Amissio may be favorable. It shows the loss of the affliction. The disease leaves. Excess decreases. The burden is released. The harmful thing is no longer retained.
The rule is simple: Amissio is bad when the body loses what it needs, but good when the body loses what harms it.
The connection with the urinary system is also natural. This system removes from the body what is no longer needed. In this sense, it is a bodily image of Amissio: the organism preserves health because it knows how to release waste.
Melancholy, Fixation, and the Shadow of Loss
Amissio belongs to Venus, but its sign is Taurus, an earth sign. In traditional elemental medicine, Earth is cold and dry, and is associated with black bile, melancholy, heaviness, and fixation.
This gives Amissio an important inner shadow. A thing may leave outwardly, while the person keeps the loss inwardly. Money is gone, the person has left, the opportunity has passed, the object is missing—but the wound remains fixed in memory.
Here Amissio becomes paradoxical. Outwardly, the good is lost. Inwardly, the loss is retained. This is no longer healthy release, but fixed loss: the person loses the same thing again and again in memory.
Because Taurus is a fixed sign, this process may be slow, stubborn, and difficult to move. In questions of illness, fixed signs point to stable, settled, and difficult-to-change conditions. In psychological questions, the same symbolism may show grief, heaviness, brooding over the past, and attachment to what has already gone.
The cure of Amissio is not always acquisition. Sometimes the cure of Amissio is true loss: allowing the lost thing finally to be lost.
Feelings, Love, and Losing the Heart
In love questions, Amissio is not simply negative. It belongs to Venus and may signify attraction, desire, pleasure, giving, and losing the heart.
The best expression here is “to lose one’s heart.” It is broad, natural, and directly Venusian. In a more passionate form, Amissio may show “losing one’s head,” but this is more dangerous: desire becomes stronger than measure.
Amissio may be good when love requires openness, softness, giving, yielding, sacrifice, or gifts. The person is willing to give something, share something, sacrifice something—and this becomes a sign of love.
But Amissio is harmful if the person loses dignity, money, freedom, self-command, or the beloved person himself.
Puella shows Venus as beauty, harmony, agreement, and relational softness. Amissio shows Venus as giving, pleasure, expenditure, surrender, and loss.
Sometimes this is love opening the hand. Sometimes it is love emptying the hand.
Amissio and Puella: Strong Venus and Beautiful Venus
Amissio and Puella both belong to Venus, but they show different sides of the Venusian nature.
Puella is Venus in Libra: beauty, harmony, agreement, adornment, attractiveness, peace, relationship, social softness, and elegance of form.
Amissio is Venus in Taurus: giving, pleasure, spending, bodily attachment, losing the heart, the open hand, the gift, expenditure, and departure from possession.
From the standpoint of planetary strength, Amissio is stronger than Puella, because Venus is a nocturnal planet and Taurus is a nocturnal and feminine sign. Puella belongs to Venus in Libra, but Libra is a diurnal and masculine sign. Therefore Puella may be more pleasant, beautiful, and harmonious, while Amissio agrees more deeply with the nocturnal and bodily nature of Venus.
Yet stronger does not mean better in every question. Amissio is strong precisely as loss, giving, release, desire, expenditure, and letting something out of the hand. Puella is better suited to peace, beauty, adornment, reconciliation, love as harmony, and relationship as agreement.
Puella is Venusian beauty. Amissio is Venusian release.
Amissio in Spiritual Questions
In spiritual questions, Amissio may be much better than it appears. The spiritual path often requires not acquisition, but loss: the loss of pride, fear, addiction, hidden sin, bad habit, false attachment, the desire to control, or painful memory.
Where Acquisitio fills the bag, Amissio may empty it. This is favorable for renunciation, repentance, purification, liberation, forgiveness, sacrifice, almsgiving, ransom, healing from addiction, and the end of a harmful cycle.
Amissio shows that a person may not only lose a good, but also be freed from evil.
Its spiritual formula is simple: not everything that leaves was your good.
The Person of Amissio
A person signified by Amissio should be judged through Venus and Taurus. The body is often strong, full, thick, solid, or broad rather than delicate. The height may be short to medium, though some descriptions allow a taller body. The build may be large-boned, heavy, fleshy, substantial, or noticeably physical.
Taurus often gives a strong neck, broad shoulders, a large head or face, a large mouth, thick lips, strong hands, and an impression of bodily weight or density. The face may be round or broad; the eyes may be attractive; the complexion may be healthy, ruddy, dark, or full in color. The hair may be thick, dark, curling, or abundant. In men, facial hair may be noticeable; in women, the hair may be long or full.
Taurus is the place of the Moon’s exaltation. This does not make Amissio a lunar figure, but it helps explain why bodily descriptions may emphasize fullness of face, roundness, thickness, bodily mass, a powerful neck, and a heavy animal solidity of form.
Older descriptions may also give a scar, bodily mark, lameness, defect, disproportion, or injury to some part of the body. This is not the central meaning of Amissio, but it can be considered when the chart already points to bodily damage or a marked appearance. The reason may also lie in Taurus itself: Taurus belongs to the maimed signs, because the image of the sign shows only the front half of the bull, while the hind part and legs are cut off. Together with the fixed nature of the sign, this may suggest bodily immobility, difficulty in movement, lameness, or injury to the limbs.
The character is usually direct and easy to read. Such a person is often not subtle in manner. One usually knows where one stands with him. He may be warm, affectionate, generous, and loyal toward those he likes, but stubborn, blunt, and difficult toward those he dislikes.
Taurus gives fixity. Anger may rise slowly, but once established it is hard to appease. The person may speak plainly, sometimes too plainly, and may not notice when frankness becomes tactlessness. He may care strongly about honor, dignity, respect, and proper rules, while not always following the same rules himself.
In manners, the figure may give a heavy bodily quality. The person may eat like a bull: taking large bites, swallowing too quickly, chewing poorly, and acting more from appetite than measure. This is not merely a humorous image. In cattle, such feeding behavior can lead to esophageal obstruction and dangerous bloat; symbolically, it shows appetite taking in too much, too roughly, and without sufficient measure.
In a dignified form, the person of Amissio may be pleasant, earthy, warm, generous, affectionate, and materially capable. In a corrupted form, this becomes laziness, sensual excess, lust, waste, stubbornness, deceit, hypocrisy, or a life governed too strongly by appetite.
Because the sign is earthy and fixed, such a person may also be brooding, heavy, and slow to release what has already gone. The outer life may be sensual, while the inner mood remains melancholic.
General Judgment
Amissio is the figure of loss, release, expenditure, outgoing wealth, defeat, disappearance, and liberation through departure. It shows that something goes out of the hand, leaves possession, passes out of control, or is no longer held.
In material questions, it is usually unfavorable. It may show loss of money, property, goods, office, victory, profit, stability, or advantage. It is difficult for buying, recovering what is lost, and any matter in which the desired result is acquisition.
But Amissio may be highly favorable where the desired result is loss. It may show the end of illness, fear, guilt, excess weight, painful attachment, hidden enemies, harmful habits, imprisonment, sorrow, or any condition that should be removed. It is good for selling, giving away, donation, sacrifice, payment, renunciation, purification, and release.
This is a strong Venusian figure because it belongs to Venus in Taurus: nocturnal Venus in a nocturnal and feminine sign. It is stronger than Puella in density, body, appetite, and material force, though less graceful, social, and harmonious. Its strength is not always pleasant. It can strongly give, strongly spend, strongly desire, strongly release, or strongly lose.
Its elemental structure—active Fire and Water with passive Air and Earth—explains why the figure is unstable in material affairs. Fire consumes; Water dissolves. Without active Earth to hold form and active Air to order connection, the good does not remain easily. Yet the same structure may cleanse, soften, dissolve, and remove what should no longer stay.
Amissio must be read precisely. It is not simply evil. It is not simply good. It is the law of the open hand.
When the question is, “Will I receive this?” Amissio usually says no.
When the question is, “Will this go away?” Amissio may say yes. And sometimes that yes is a blessing.
