Lots of folks don’t realize that astrology isn’t only a handy tool for personality analysis. It can also be employed for real-world problem solving!

One of the ways I do this regularly for myself and for my clients is through the practice of horary astrology. I’ve written about horary at length on my blog here, and I use it day in and day out for myself and for my clients to derive answers to sticky situations and determine courses of action whenever life throws us a curve ball.

If you don’t know what horary astrology is, it’s the practice of drawing an astrological chart for the time a question is posed and using the data provided in the chart to determine an answer. Simple, right? Mine and my clients’ results with horary astrology create a pretty strong case for its utility, but my husband, God love him, remains skeptical.

When his wallet went missing yesterday and he asked me to help find it, I of course leapt into action and immediately drew a chart.

If you’ve never encountered a horary chart before, there are some standard steps in approaching the question, especially in questions like this where we’re dealing with lost objects.

Before we get into where the wallet is, though, we need to look to see if we’ll actually be able to find the wallet. In astro-speak we would call these factors “testimonies of recovery.” In a lost object chart it’s helpful to do this before jumping ahead and trying to figure out where the item is. Ultimately, we want to see good stuff happening on the angles of the chart (first, tenth, seventh, and fourth houses), as well as with the Moon itself.

If we look at those four houses, the first thing I see is that we’ve got Mercury and the Sun mutually applying right on the descendant, but as it happens, both planets are applying to Jupiter in this pileup called a “collection of light.” Jupiter is the slowest planet in this mix. The Sun and Mercury are both moving towards 23 degrees of Pisces, forming a square to Jupiter at 23 Sagittarius—you may be thinking that this is a square so it’s not as good of a sign, but remember that Jupiter in Sagittarius is no villain, and on the 4th house cusp he’s in a position where he can make a final call.

Let’s also look at what the Moon is doing: her last aspect was the sextile to retrograde Mercury in Pisces while she was transiting the last few degrees of Taurus. She’s in the 9th house, which is a cadent house, in Gemini. The Moon’s next application is the trine to Venus, a benefic, who isn’t in the best shape she can be in, but it’s not awful. But it’s still a benefic, so I’ll take it!

So we’ve got Jupiter at a power point bundling together the light of the Sun and Mercury, and we’ve got the Moon applying to Venus. This makes for a great situation! At this point I’m confident the wallet will be recovered.

Now, let’s figure out where to look!

We need to determine what happened first, though. We’ll take the ruler of the ascendant to signify my husband, since he’s the one asking the question. That gives us Mercury in Pisces in rotten shape: detriment, fall, retrograde, and combust. Michael’s not going to be the one to find the wallet. Fair enough reasoning, right?

We can look to the ascendant ruler’s last aspect and the Moon’s last aspect to tell us how this situation came to pass, and it happens that the Moon’s last aspect was the sextile to Mercury. This tells me that Michael’s wallet fell (Moon in a cadent house) when he wasn’t paying attention to it (Moon’s separation from combust/retrograde/peregrine/detriment/fall Mercury). The story’s writing itself.

We’ll also take Venus as one of the significators of the missing wallet, since Venus is the ruler of the 2nd house (the 2nd house cusp is at 16 Libra). Because we see that Venus is in a Saturn ruled sign, this confirms the description of what we’re looking for: Michael’s wallet is old-ish, worn, and leather, as he’s had it since before we met. Old, worn, leather, and valuable: that’s the symbolism of Saturn and Venus mixed together, so we know we’re on the right track. So where is it?

In lost object charts I’ve found it a little more helpful to start with the Moon for figuring out the location of the object if the placement of the 2nd ruler doesn’t make sense right off the bat. Venus in Aquarius in 5 isn’t telling me anything, and the last contact the 1st ruler had was to the Moon, so it makes more sense to start there anyway.

The Moon is placed in the 9th. But Michael hasn’t been on any distant trips or in any places of worship recently, and we knew he had the wallet on his person that day—we had gone to lunch and to the pet supply store to get flea treatment for our dog, and Michael gave me his debit card to buy it.

Naturally we thought the wallet was somewhere in my car, but he had already looked and didn’t find it, nor did he find it near the mailbox; he had gotten out of the car to get the mail on the way into our apartment complex. At this point, he was thinking it was gone completely.

This is calling for extra insight. Enter turning the chart.

If you turn the chart to read it to read where the Moon is relative to me (since I’m the 7th house/ruler here), the Moon is placed in my 3rd house. Based on that alone I was convinced that the wallet had disappeared somewhere between the pet supply store and our parking lot, but for added measure, look at the planet right on the 9th cusp: Mars in Taurus.

Mars naturally rules anything with a combustion engine, and the 3rd is related to short trips or means of transportation. For added flavor, I drive a bright red Scion XB, which is shaped like a box. Taurus = boxy, Mars = red, 3rd house = car, it’s all lining up.

So then, where was the wallet? The Moon is in a mutable air sign. Air signs indicate places off the ground, so it was unlikely that the wallet had fallen to the ground and was picked up by someone else. Mutable signs (Gemini especially) indicate spaces within spaces, or places where two things join, like the eaves of a house (wall meets roof).

Based on this I was almost positive that the wallet would be stuck down somewhere and hard to find in my car, and because of Jupiter being the 7th ruler here and collecting the light of the Sun and Mercury, I knew I would be the one to find it.

I threw on my flip-flops, went down to the parking lot, opened the passenger side door of my car and shoved my hand down into the bottomless abyss between my center console and the passenger’s seat. My hand fell right on the wallet.

I then texted Michael, who is patiently skeptical of this nonsense, that I had just found his wallet using astrology. He thanked me but withheld further comment.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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