Sentence:  He often stood there in a muse until dusk fell, and then darkness, while once in a while the moon, ‘in her <WSD>exaltation</WSD>' as the astrologers say, rose to remind him that such worldly musings meant nothing to the hostile universe without. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  That placement of a planet in the zodiac in which it is deemed to exert its strongest influence.