How Horary Astrology Helps Us Say Goodbye

March 27, 2019Leave a comment

I’ve wanted to write this chart up for a while because it’s not a horary with a super sexy happy ending like some of the other ones I’ve written up. That said, it is a stupendous example of horary “working.”

It’s awesome when horary gives you a satisfying resolution, but I’ve discovered that part of the power in this art is found when the chart gives you a negative answer.

This is the magic moment where horary transitions from being a neat astrological lifehack to becoming a therapeutic intervention. Several charts have come across my laptop where people have been wondering whether a person would recover from an illness or not, or whether a treasured item would be recovered. Not all of them have been positive.

When delivering a negative answer to these questions, the astrologer’s role as a technical wizard diminishes. Circumstance asks them to become a chaplain for their client in that moment, with a non-anxious presence large enough and strong enough to hold the client’s experience of loss and to empathize with them. Anyone studying astrology with the goal of helping people needs to grapple with this—particularly people studying horary. That said, being able to sit with people in their grief is an essential skill of being human, and tragically it’s a skill that not a lot of people have.

Yikes, this is a bit of a downer, isn’t it?

But it’s crucial that anyone in helping fields be able to go to these places. It’s doubly important for astrologers to get the symbolism in their judgment correct without trying to engineer a positive answer out of a negative situation. To give you an example of a chart like this, I want to share the chart of a question I asked on my own behalf.

On the morning of the last day of the SOTA conference in Buffalo this past fall, I got a text message from my mom saying that my grandma (my dad’s mother) had fallen and broken her hip. I’ve been around long enough to know that complications from falls are one of the primary causes of death for elderly people after a certain age, and my grandmother had just turned 92.

When I got the text the grief-wave immediately began yanking on my solar plexus, so I excused myself to the restroom to cry. I had the thought to draw a chart at that moment to ask whether she would recover but I determined that I needed to sit on it before asking the question.

Bonatti writes:

The 2nd consideration is (what we hinted at before) the method or manner everyone ought to observe that enquires of an Astrologer; which is, that when he intends to take an artist’s judgment of things past, present, or to come, he should, first, with a devout spirit, pray unto the Lord, from whom proceeds the success of every lawful enterprise, that he would grant him the knowledge of those things of the truth of which he would be resolved; and then let him apply himself to the astrologer with a serious intent of being satisfied in some certain and particular doubt, and this not on trifling occasions, or light sudden emotions, much less on matters base or unlawful, as many ignorant people used to do; but in matters of honest importance, and such as have possessed and disturbed his mind for the space of a day and night or longer; unless in sudden accidents which admit not of delay.

– Guido Bonatti, 146 Considerations as translated by William Lilly

So, I sat on it all day.

When my flight began its descent into Lexington later that night, I determined that I had thought about the question long enough to be able to ask it and draw the chart. And namely, I realized that I was prepared to accept a “no” answer, which was the crucial moment. The moment when you feel in your bones that you’re ready to accept whatever the chart has to offer is the moment that it’s right to ask a question.

horary chart - 9:40pm, 22 October 2018, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

Will grandma recover? – 22 October 2018, 9:40pm, Lexington, KY

The very first thing I noticed in the chart was that the ascendant degree of the horary chart was conjoined my dad’s natal ascendant degree and his Jupiter. Considering this was my dad’s mom I was asking about, that confirmed that the question was asked at precisely the right time; I’m not a walking ephemeris, so I couldn’t have planned that any better.

The next problem in this is assigning the significators here. Since this is a question about someone absent, “whether they live or die” as Lilly would say it, we can take the ascendant, its ruler, and the Moon as significators. In my estimation I think there’s also an argument that we can use the ruler of the 4th as a general significator for ancestry here, since my grandma was my last living grandparent at the time. But the Sun is also important as the significator of legacy here, what some texts refer to as “the end of the matter.” I try to avoid that phrase because often it’s a red herring, but when we’re looking at charts with this kind of gravity, it becomes important.

So in this case we’ll take Mercury and the Moon as my grandma’s primary significators, as well as the Sun as the 4th ruler for an additional component of the story (and you’ll see why this becomes important).

Before we jump into judging significators, let’s look quickly at the angles to see if there are any planets or prominent fixed stars that we need to draw into the interpretation. I see immediately that Saturn is strong in the 7th as the 8th and 9th ruler. Even though he’s not directly related to the question in terms of signification, his position here is coloring the outcome. Consider what “recovery” means: it means that my grandma will continue living forward. With Saturn in the 7th here, forward motion is stymied. We’re not off to a great start here.

Sidebar: yes, I’m aware that Saturn in 7 is a consideration prior to judgment. Whenever I see it, the story it tells is one of “don’t get your hopes up;” he calls for aggressive realism, and where astrologers go awry is usually when they try to engineer a positive answer despite Saturn in 7.

Now to the significators: the ascendant ruler Mercury is placed at 19 Scorpio 14 in the 6th house, moving towards a conjunction with Jupiter. The application to Jupiter is promising—it’s within Jupiter’s orb, moving fast, but my concern is that both planets are cadent, and Jupiter is peregrine. Being in Scorpio, this is a Jupiter who will probably promise quite a bit that they can’t follow through on, and since Jupiter is the 7th ruler here, he signifies the medical team caring for my grandma.

Likewise, because of Mercury’s placement in a moist sign (Scorpio) and in the 6th house, separating from the square of Mars in Aquarius (an air sign), there’s a solid indication that pneumonia (or something like it) is within the realm of possibilities.

Finally we turn to the Moon, in Aries in the 11th house: she separates from the square of the 8th ruler Saturn and applies to the sextile of Mars with reception. Again, Mars is the 6th ruler here, so this by and large a negative indication. Because of the Moon’s placement in the 11th house, there’s certainly hope of recovery, but the next contact is to a malefic, after which she opposes the Sun. Symbolically, hard aspects between the Moon and the Sun are typically indicators of damage or otherwise challenging circumstances.

Remember what I said about the Sun being the 4th ruler: not only does it rule the concept of ancestry here, it also rules the concept of legacy and the story that will be told as this chart unfolds. It also rules the grave.

We’ve got a clear story here: the promise of recovery frustrated, illness sets in, and she will die. Because the Moon passes 20 degrees until its opposition with the Sun, I surmised she would likely pass within 20 days.

As it happened, grandma died 16 days later. Look at the Moon here.

Grandma died – 7 November 2018, 11:38am, Burlington, NC

It’s quite stunning; she passed away in the very moments in which the Moon conjoined the Sun, and while the horary 8th house cusp was passing over the ascendant, drawing together the most powerful indications in the horary chart in a real-time transit.

Astrologers start to develop weird grief processes after a certain point, I think. If something tragic is affirmed by a chart, whether it’s a horary chart or a weird transit or direction happening in someone’s nativity, we’ll sometimes go to astrology as a buffer against our feelings.

The power, though, is in allowing ourselves to sink into the reality that we, and all those we love, are buoyed up in a story that has its origin and its ending in the cosmos. The gift of blessed perspective can assist us, and those we serve, in expanding our souls enough to contain our grief as those stories become woven into the fabric of who we are. And we, in turn, move in more subtle sync with the Love that moves the Sun and other stars.

featured image by Joy Real via Unsplash

How I Found My Husband’s Wallet Using Astrology

March 13, 2019February 15, 2023Leave a comment

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.

Horary Chart: 12 March 2019, 7:32pm, Lexington, KY, USA

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)_/¯

Need help finding something or making a decision? Horary astrology can deliver results, today!

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Horary Adventures: My Coworker Vanished!

August 11, 2018February 15, 2023Leave a comment

It’s a little too easy to write horary astrology off as “telling the future” because that seems to be the way it’s been cast in the astrological world. Now, that’s not necessarily incorrect at all—a skilled practitioner working with a radical chart can read a series of unfolding events like a book. But what seems to be one of horary’s better-kept secrets is that it can be used for locating missing possessions, pets, and persons. That’s because horary is not so much as a predictive art but rather an apocalyptic art: it “pulls away the veil” (in Greek, apocalypsis) to show what’s really happening in the present moment.

To this end, I want to give an example of a chart I read for a friend that offers a fantastic insight into the way that horary can give powerful and accurate descriptions of unfolding events, and how it can help find missing people.

On July 11th, one of my friends (who was also one of my roommates at UAC) sent along a chart that he had drawn to locate a missing coworker. Since my friend had asked the question and already drawn the chart, the chart had already been “called into being” so there was no reason for me to draw my own chart. Otherwise I would have done so, using my location at that moment to orient the chart. This judgment happened in real time on a Discord server, which made it even more exciting.

First off we see that there’s no agreement between the planetary hour and the ascendant ruler, but as the question is somewhat pressing and none of the angles are afflicted by a malefic, it’s appropriate to move forward with judgment. Since this question is being asked in a general way about someone who is absent, we are going to take the first house to represent the quesited. Lilly writes in book one of Christian Astrology,

“If a question be demanded of one absent in a general way, and the querent hath no relation to the party; then the first house, the lord of that house and the Moon shall signify the absent party; the lord of the eighth house or planet posited in the house or within five degrees of the cusp of the eighth house shall show his death or its quality” (151).

That gives us Mars as the primary significator of the quesited, as Mars rules the ascendant degree (19º Scorpio 43′). We also take the Moon as a co-significator of the question, which we immediately see is in the eighth house, having just ingressed into her home base of Cancer, separating from the sextile of the Sun and applying to the sextile of Venus. When we see the moon having just changed signs, we know that there has been a recent event that has changed circumstances, and since this is a cardinal sign, it is a very recent event.

When I initially looked at the chart, I saw the Moon-Saturn opposition almost immediately (because I’m somewhat macabre by nature), as this would have been a signification of some harm having come to the quesited, as Mars is in one of Saturn’s signs—but this ended up being a red herring.

Speaking of Venus, it should be noted that Venus here is the only angular traditional planet. She is conjunct the midheaven, in the most elevated position of the chart, and receives the counsel of the Moon from her dignities of triplicity and face; note that here I’m using Dorothean triplicities and Egyptian terms. It’s interesting that the Moon separates from a planet that rules no sign and applies to the planet who serves as ruler of the 7th, the 11th, and the 12th—Venus here signifies overt enemies and sources of sorrow or isolation, but she also signifies friends (hold onto this). So there are multiple layers of meaning that can be sussed out of this, but to spend too much time on that may cause us to chase rabbit trails of symbolism that don’t bear fruit. So, I’ll put a pin in this. We also must consider that Venus is in the sign of her fall in a very powerful place, like an incompetent middle manager given charge of an entire branch of a company.

Since the coworker disappeared from work, I wondered whether this had something to do with the boss. We see that the ruler of the midheaven, who would signify bosses, is Mercury, is near maximum elongation at the north node, yet peregrine in Leo. It also happens that Mercury’s last aspect, barring contacts with the Moon, was an opposition to Mars, which applied mutually with Mars retrograde. Since Mercury is in Leo and Mars is in Aquarius, I judged that one of the precipitating events for the coworker’s disappearance was a conflict with the boss that had been slow-burning for a long time (both planets are in fixed and cadent houses). Thematic in this judgment is a conflict between a wordy, braggadocious, egotistical manager, and an employee who is ready to fight sideways and whose will is utterly fixed leading up to this point.

Let’s return to our quesited’s significator, Mars. I judged the person in question to be middling height tending tall, strongly built, sharp angular features, probably with some notable scars or burns, and someone who tends to get in fights about inane things. Grant confirmed this to be true, writing, “he is a fairly tall, slim but well-built former professional BMX racer, handsome angular face (boss nicknamed him “mcSteamy” ew), with significant tattooing all over his arms and chest.”

Notice what my friend said the boss nicknamed the quesited, and consider, one, Mercury in Leo signfying the boss, and two, Venus in her fall conjoined the midheaven, influencing how the boss is going to behave. Venus in fall is given to, well, wantonness and disregard for appropriate boundaries. Because of Venus’ angularity, that’s going to figure significantly into the overall flavor of this chart.

Mars is retrograde and peregrine in a cadent house, conjunct the south node. I judged that the coworker was probably still alive, since there are no applying contacts between Mars and the eighth ruler Mercury, but he’s probably not coming back.

An additional consideration on the “is he alive” question is the fact that the Sun is applying directly to the trine of the Ascendant, which is a very positive sign, not only for the status of the quesited but it likewise testifies that they will be found. Because the Moon was applying to Venus from a cardinal sign, I suggested he might reach out to a friend presently. This is one of the challenges of horary—determining which layer of symbolism to use when there are several different possible directions to judge, but I happened to land on the correct one here because the quesited’s friends had already begun reaching out to attempt to get in touch with him.

So, to sum the judgment up: he’s alive, he got mad, he left, he hates the boss, he’s not coming back, and he’ll reach out to a friend after a short while but it’ll be when he’s ready to; we’re not going to “find” him on our own. I supposed at the time that he was somewhere in a high elevation frequented by people but somewhat inaccessible (Mars in Aquarius in a cadent house).

The outcome: it happened that at 9:52PM local time that same evening, the quesited contacted a mutual friend and reported that, indeed, he had simply walked out because he hated both the boss and the manager, and that the pay was too low to drive a malfunctioning truck. Mars has natural rulership of vehicles with combustion engines, and in this case, Mars is retrograde, peregrine, and cadent—meaning that the last straw in the querent’s decision to abruptly leave was the malfunctioning truck, which was unreliable despite having been repaired. Fantastic!

My friend explained a few weeks after the fact, “[my coworker] was hired to do local deliveries in the company truck. The week before, it had suffered a somewhat severe breakdown when a cable snapped, causing it to be stuck in reverse. The vehicle had been repaired over the weekend and he was supposed to be taking it out on the road when he left it parked outside the building and vanished with no communication.”

Bonus round: I want to show you something very cool, and it’s moments like the following where horary gets really weird and magical: let’s take a look at the chart for 9:52PM, the moment that the coworker reached out to a mutual friend.

Look at the Moon. At the moment that the missing coworker made contact to a friend, the Moon had just perfected the square to the cusp of the 11th house in the original horary chart to the degree (4º Libra 07′).* Moreover, the Moon’s opposition to Saturn perfects at the same moment, who is placed in the event chart 11th house and ruling the event chart’s ascendant. The quesited’s message to the friend cemented the finality of the situation in a Saturn-in-Capricorn fashion: he ain’t coming back to that job, full stop.

If you have something going on in your life that you’re interested in approaching with horary, now that you’ve seen how precise and to-the-point it can be, I encourage you to get in touch!

Featured image by Allef Vinicius via Unsplash.

*This little dollop of magic illustrates why I do not use the increasingly popular whole sign house system in horary astrology.

Horary Adventures: Where’s our roommate?

June 23, 2018February 15, 2023Leave a comment

On Saturday night at UAC, I was hanging out with two of my roommates, one of whom is especially keen-of-insight, and she had a sudden wonder as to where in the world our fourth roommate had been as we hadn’t heard from her in some time and it didn’t seem that messages were going through to her phone. Naturally, with a horary specialist in the room, casting a chart was the most obvious solution.

Since this is a missing person question and, by extension, a question as to whether someone is dead or alive, we are going to judge the chart from the first, per Lilly’s instructions on first house judgments. It’s not a missing object we’re after, so judging from the second doesn’t work here, and the question is being asked generally, not in relationship to a querent, so we wouldn’t use the 7th. We are asking this question as a group—we were all concerned for our friend’s safety, being in an unfamiliar city past midnight. Lilly writes on p. 154 of Christian Astrology,

“If a question be demanded of one absent in a general way, and the querent hath no relation to the party; then the first house, the lord of that house and the Moon shall signify the absent party; the lord of the eighth house or planet posited in the house or within five degrees of the cusp of the eighth house shall show his death or its quality.”

He continues,

“In judging this question, see first whether the lord of the ascendant, the Moon and the lord of the eighth house or planet in the eighth house be corporally joined together; or that the Moon, lord of the ascendant and the lord of the eighth are in opposition either in the eighth and second, or twelfth and sixth, for these are arguments the party is deceased, or sick, and very near death.”

Let’s look at a few considerations prior to judging this chart. We see first off that an early degree is rising, which means we might not know the full extent of the story and it is too early to do anything. We also see that the Moon will not complete her next aspect, a square to Mars, until she has changed signs from Libra to Scorpio. Perhaps this suggests that the situation was not “fully cooked” enough to bother asking it, either. But there is agreement between the hour ruler and the ascendant ruler—both are Saturn—which demonstrates that this question is, indeed, radical, meaning that the question emerges from a place of genuine concern for the wellbeing of our roommate.

Looking immediately at the list of “they’re probably dead if…” considerations Lilly gives in the passage above, we see that there is no contact between the eighth ruler and the ascendant ruler. The first-ruler Saturn is not placed under the earth, nor is he on the other end of any hostile contact from the other malefic, Mars. So, she’s probably fine.

Lilly says to start by looking at the first house and any planets placed there, the first-ruler, and the moon. We have a super-fun peregrine Mars immediately on the ascendant, from whom the Sun separates from a trine. Luminaries contacting the significators of the quesited person or item by helpful aspects, whether sextile or trine, are arguments for recovery in “where is x?” charts. Now, since this is a separating trine and not an applying one, it stands to reason that there is little that can be done where we stand now.

However! Lilly’s method is to stack up the collections of testimonies and judge from the overall weight of the chart. If they are equal, defer judgment. We don’t know whether these testimonies are equal. Consider that the Sun angular is an argument of recovery in a missing person case—even if that angle is the 4th, while the placement of the Sun under the earth is one of the traditional testimonies against recovery.

Saturn’s dignities and placement will give us both the description of the quesited and a clue as to her location, because Saturn is the ruler of the ascendant degree, 2º Aquarius. Consider what a dignified Saturn represents in terms of the quesited’s appearance and personality: someone who is older and in a position of responsibility (our missing roommate was the oldest of our bunch, a mother, with quite a wealth of wisdom accrued through her practice). Saturn’s oriental position (he rises before the Sun) describes someone who is taller and, barring my 6’2” frame, our roommate was the tallest among us.

Likewise the contact which Venus is making to Saturn at the time of the chart further describes her—the quesited was the founder of Beautiful Astrology and someone who works to render charts into visual-spatial representations on the human body through color and shape associations. Venus softens some of the Saturnine characteristics we would expect to find—Saturn gives a long face, severity of features, and lusterless hair, yet I knew precisely what the quesited looked like and this was only partly true. She has a fair complexion, not quite “pale” in the sense we would expect to see with Saturn ruling the ascendant, and has a more standard stature and frame than the “skinny legend” Saturn would otherwise suggest.

Saturn’s being dignified in Capricorn further confirms what we knew to be true about our roommate’s disposition: she is studious and attentive, responsible, mature, patient, and fully possessed of herself. Her being “missing,” I judged, is due to her own choice to be “missing” or inaccessible.

A further remarkable point bears mentioning: Uranus’ placement on the 3rd cusp indicates some kind of disruptive influence insofar as communication is concerned. We already knew that messages weren’t going through to her phone, and I assumed from the chart that this was likely due to the phone being dead or out of range of a decent signal (the third ruler being peregrine, as well as Uranus’ presence on the 3rd indicating general malfunction). That the ascendant ruler was in the 12th, and we could assume that the quesited had her phone on her at the time, suggested that perhaps the phone might not have been dead but was rather with the quesited in a place with no signal.

The question remains, where is she? Earth signs in general, and Capricorn in particular, indicate a “down” orientation—Earth tends downward, as the heaviest of the elements—and low to the ground. Cardinal signs indicate places of activity and action, but the placement of Saturn in a cadent house suggests isolation even within a place of activity. Capricorn also indicates places that are low, dark, and near thresholds—think of its ruler Saturn’s natural rulership of borders and boundaries, and this makes sense at once. So, putting it all together: I expected our roommate to be found in a place with a lot of activity, low to the ground, in a Saturnine location—perhaps a leather chair—and off to the side, out of the main flow of activity. Armed with this information, I set off to find her.

After riding the elevator down 33 floors (“low to the ground”), I emerged and immediately turned into the lobby, which was still vibrating with activity, alcohol, and the conversations of several dozen astrologers even at 12:30am. The lobby was surrounded by several seating alcoves off the beaten path, and sure enough, in a tan leather chair by the glass entrance to the hotel lobby, sat our roommate, talking to someone and obviously having a great time. As it happens, her phone, for whatever reason, had not been receiving our texts despite being turned on and having a connection (ah, the vagaries of iMessage). I returned upstairs to share the report, assuaging all our concerns and putting another notch in the horary astrology belt.

Do you have a burning question you’d like to resolve with horary astrology? Get in touch today!

Featured image by Murray Campbell.

Horary Adventures: Can He Grow?

January 16, 2018January 16, 2018Leave a comment

A client wrote to me earlier this month with the following query regarding her partner of several months. As they were approaching the first Sun square of their nascent relationship, naturally conflicts and questions about quality and trajectory had begun to arise.

The client noted that, while the Quesited, who is on the tail end of a somewhat recent divorce, was quite capable of being a boyfriend, she is more in need of a partner in the deepest sense of that word, and suspected that he has the capacity to become one but the level of work that he will need to do in order to become so is manifold. The client likewise explained that she and her partner had an open relationship, but there was some tacit disagreement between them as to where the line between consensual openness and infidelity lay. The Quesited was giving her radio silence at the time of the question.

Her question, which I have truncated for brevity’s sake, is thus:

Is he able to heal fast enough (so I don’t get burned out trying to fix my triggers all on my own) and level up to the communication/level of presence I need, or do I need to rule him out as serious partner material for a while until he’s recovered himself post-divorce?

The chart is drawn for 8:29PM on January 7th, 2018, in Lexington, Kentucky.

My response was thus:

“I’m glad I don’t have to write another “dump his ass” judgment, and, I’m really glad this particular chart is extremely easy to read. The symbolism is all clear.”

The Querent is represented by the Sun, at 17 degrees Capricorn in the 5th house. The Quesited is represented by Saturn, at 2 degrees Capricorn, also in the 5th house. The Sun presages a mature woman with light hair, full of body, robust, and of ruddy complexion, confident, humane, and deliberate at risk of haughtiness or being overbearing or demanding. Likewise Saturn: the Quesited is older than the Querent, with long and dark hair, pale, with a broad and high forehead, someone of patience and responsibility but with a share of discontent or emotional repression.

Now, there is no aspect joining these two planets at the moment, but they are in the same sign, and as a matter of fact the Sun is in the sign of Saturn so Saturn is setting his agenda for him while he is there. As this is not a “will we get together” question I am less concerned about finding a contact point.

I identified that the Querent felt, for better or for worse, at the mercy of the Quesited’s emotive state in the midst of this question. However, the Sun is peregrine where he is in Capricorn, meaning that he doesn’t have the ability to shine as brightly or act as clearly as he would normally. Likewise, the Querent doesn’t quite know what to do right now and feels like she’s floundering. A peregrine Sun is not a good place to be making final decisions from.

Saturn (the Quesited) on the other hand, is in his element in Capricorn; he is in a sign of structure and discipline and slow growth through boundary setting and rigor, which are all things that Saturn presages. However, Saturn has only just come home to Capricorn over the last couple of weeks, and we see in the chart that he is still freshly there.

Saturn has everything he could possibly need right now, but it’s as though he’s just walked in the door from a hellacious trip and is still standing in the foyer taking his boots off and getting his coat hung up and his shit put together so that he can be home and enjoy it. I reminded my client: you know what Saturn is bad at sometimes? Communicating. But you know what Saturn is really good at, when he has space and time to do so in his own sign of Capricorn? Embodying maturity.

Venus is applying by conjunction to the Sun. She is a planet of healing and peacemaking, but I notice that she also is coming between the Sun and Saturn. Saturn sees this and thinks, “hmm, well, the Sun’s not as accessible because Venus is in the way.” The Querent had mentioned an issue surrounding the openness in their relationship having happened on the 28th of December and the superior Venus/Sun conjunction speaks to this.

The Querent did not consider her actions to be unfaithful within the boundaries they had set for openness in their relationship; in fact, Venus in this position is extremely weak as she is fully consumed in the Sun, so the Querent has more of a solid handle on the situation, but from Saturn’s perspective, all he can see is the Sun consuming Venus in fire and wondering if the Querent do that to him too.

It’s as though Saturn has walked into his own house to see this whole situation unfolding and he’s wondering what the hell is going on. Pluto is right there, too, and, while we don’t read a lot into Pluto in traditional horary, his presence is worth noting—he is the bringer of deep and irreversible change. Let the reader beware.

Another prominent thing I see when I look at this chart is the newly-separating conjunction of Mars and Jupiter being directly on the cusp of the fourth house in Scorpio, which is very much a sort of deep “real talk” energy, the kind that brings epiphanies and healing — although not necessarily easy epiphanies and healing. This energy is coloring the entire chart because of the strong position of these two powerhouses.

The Sun is applying by sextile to both of those planets at the moment of the chart, and Mars is more like to receive him than Jupiter — there’s a sense to which the Querent’s approach to this question is much more conflicted than necessarily needs to be, and Mars is receiving the Sun’s energy and running with it, sowing conflict at home. Jupiter’s beneficence can’t shine as brightly in Scorpio so the penetrating conversations which the Querent’s thoughts and actions are leading into with the Quesited are going to have a more Martial feel—conflictual, even if they are not actually conflict.

Now, let’s look at the Moon: she is in Libra, the sign of Saturn’s exaltation, and has recently pinged him with a tense square aspect. This is another testimony to the Querent’s recent interactions with the Quesited having been cause for concern; she feels so strongly about him and he is ready to have her, but he hasn’t been as able to give her what she needs because he has been in a place of debility, as I mentioned.

The next thing the Moon will do, before she leaves Libra, is to hit Venus and the Sun with a square aspect as well, meaning there will probably be a couple more pings of conflict over the next couple of days (even if they are just internalized conflicts). After that, she will cross over into Scorpio, passing the newly separated Jupiter and Mars in a few days. At that point she’ll be tying the energies of Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and the Sun all together, making for a powerful time to have a conversation that, I think, will ultimately be about healing.

The other thing to mention about this chart is that the whole pileup of Sun, Venus, and Saturn, while they are in the Querent’s fifth house, are placed in the Quesited’s turned 11th house, which is associated with hopes, dreams, restoration, healing, and growth.

Here’s the skinny: in my estimation, the Quesited is 5000% percent able to mature to the level the Querent needs him to be, but he will likely not be able to mature on her timeframe because he is represented by Saturn, who is the slowest of visible planets and who does not do anything unless it’s worth taking a long time to do.

I advised the Querent, if she valued his partnership, to utilize the energy of the next couple of days not to set ultimatums with him but instead to have some heart-to-heart conversations about the things she needs in a true partnership with him. It’s as though the Cosmos is asking her to step up to an elevated level of commitment with him, and saying “I’ll walk with you through the next few steps,” while it’s not marriage, might be the level of commitment that would help him grow in such a way as to enable both of them to be the best versions of themselves in partnership.

The Querent contacted me several hours after I sent her the judgment (at about 11:39PM local time) to inform me that she had just had a lengthy conversation with the Quesited that ameliorated many of the issues that had been raised, if not totally resolving them, and she mentioned that the Quesited had done a lot of emotional work during his period of radio silence and thanked her for provoking him into doing the work and asking for what she needed. I’m excited to follow up with her and see how this is continuing to unfold!

This judgment was shared with the permission of the Querent.

Nate Craddock, Astrologian

astral medicine for engaged earthlings

Category: Horary Judgments