How to Interpret Aspects in Astrology

February 26, 2019August 4, 20213 Comments

One of the places I got completely stuck when I was first learning astrology was the issue of aspects. Probably because when I first drew my chart it looked something like this:

To which I said,

via GIPHY

That’s quite the knot to untangle, even for a visual-spatial learner like yours truly. I had an inkling of what to do with a planet in a given sign and was even starting to get into issues related to houses—but when it came to getting my head around the aspects in my birth chart, I was up the creek. I wasn’t going to give up that easily though.

The astrology bug bites hard.

In this post, I’m not only going to explain how to interpret aspects, but I’m also going to give you a starting place into understanding the “why” of astrological aspects so you can begin to get your head around the “how!”

What is an Aspect in astrology, anyway

To put it as simply as possible, aspects are how we describe the relationship between planets. Understanding aspects in your chart gives you a window into the dynamic stories that are playing out in your life.

An aspect in astrology occurs when a planet is at a certain number of degrees away from another planet or point in the chart. For example, when two planets are around 90° from one another, we say that they’re in a “square” aspect (a square has four 90° angles).

What that means is this: those two planets are in a relationship with the character of a “square.” Think of the language we use in English that describes squares: “squaring up” before a fight. “Squaring off.” “Square peg in a round hole.” That should tell us that there’s something adversarial about a square: something tense, a real “can I speak to the manager” situation.

If you’re like me, you want to know where this concept comes from; keep reading. If you’re not like me and you just want to know what aspects signify what kinds of relationships… well, scroll on down 😉

To give aspects in astrology their due, we must take a detour into classical optical theory, because the word “aspect” literally means “look at” (Latin ad, “at, to” + spectō, “I look”). I just heard half of you slam your head on the desk. “I just wanna know when I’ll meet my soulmate!” I see you, I hear you, but stay with me!

It’s important to remember that the ancients conceived of the planets as active agents, not as passive on a cosmic timepiece. We start off with the idea that, in the astrological ball of wax, planets interact with each other by casting glances at one another. Kind of like this:

via GIPHY

If we’re looking at something, what we are doing is bearing “witness” to that which we are observing, and many of the ways traditional texts talk about aspects include descriptions of planets “witnessing” each other. The astrologer Chris Brennan discusses this at length in his game-changing book, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, beginning on page 292 (that’s an affiliate link; I get a kickback if you purchase a copy). If you’re serious about astrology at all, that’s a book to have on your shelf.

These glances in the ancient world were conceived of as an exchange of energy. The short version is that people imagined that the human eye was emitting ethereal light called “lumen,” which was invisible but illuminated anything it fell on. Anything that this lumen hit was “illuminated,” and returned visible light, called “lux,” to the beholder.

We see this reflected in literature of the day, including the New Testament (Matthew 6.22-23, NRSV):

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Lux. Lumen. Lewks. They make aspects work. Got it?

In modern astrology, we’ve lost the connection to optical theory and now it’s more to do with vibrations, from the ways I’ve heard it explained. It’s as though the planets “resonate” with each other at certain angles, creating consonant or dissonant harmonies. This vibes well with the way many new age folks talk about vibrational frequencies. But even that has some ancient roots!

Aspects and Musical Harmony

There are five main aspects described by Ptolemy and agreed upon in general by the astrologers of the ancient world up through the renaissance and early modern era.

These five aspects are as follows: the conjunction (0º), the opposition (180º), the trine (120º), the square (90º), and the sextile (60º).

Ptolemy explains that these divisions of a circle are important precisely because they represent the primary divisions of the octave in music (cf. Tetrabiblos I.13). Each division correlates to a harmonic interval: correlate to the unison (conjunction), the octave (opposition), the fifth (trine), and the major third (sextile).

You’ll notice that I skipped over the square.

If you play the note exactly halfway between the top and bottom notes of an octave, the interval that results is actually the most dissonant interval in music, the tritone (also known as a diminished fifth or augmented fourth). This musical interval corresponds to the astrological square: halfway between the conjunction and the opposition.

This is whence the language of “harmonious trine” and “tense square” emerges historically, but I don’t think this is commonly known (although I can’t imagine astrologer-musicians throughout history Rudhyar or Ficino would have overlooked this, but I haven’t read enough of them to have the sources on hand).

For those keeping score at home, the modern equally tempered octave has twelve notes in it—but, the zodiac preceded the chromatic scale. Greek music used tetrachords: 4-note scales!

Okay, so what? How do I actually interpret aspects in my chart?

To interpret an aspect in your birth chart, you’ve got to take the aspect apart first by asking yourself several questions:

Which planets are involved?
What aspect is involved
Which planet is faster?
What houses do the planets rule?
What houses are the planets in?

It gets complicated quickly, but if you get used to doing this over and over, it becomes second-nature! It’s like learning your scales and arpeggios, to continue the musical metaphor. Let’s break this down!

Suppose you’ve got Mars sextile Jupiter in your birth chart, and say that you’ve got Aries rising, and that you were born at night. If you were to look at the sky at the moment of your birth (and it was nighttime) you’d see Mars rising bright over the eastern horizon. Drawn on a chart, it looks like this:

As a rule, planets in astrology can see things in the sign where they’re at. Planets also emit seven “rays” of lumen to the degrees that they can see by the aspects we talked about above. So, Mars is hitting a certain collection of signs with his lewks, and so we say he can behold those signs. From Aquarius, Mars can behold Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius. Really, anything in Aquarius can see anything in those other seven signs—there can be an aspect there.

Now, Mars cannot behold anything in Pisces, Cancer, Virgo, or Capricorn from where he sits in Aquarius. So, we say that anything in those signs is “averse” or “in aversion” to Mars, and likewise we can say that Aquarius is “averse” or “in aversion” to those signs. We can spend a lot of time on that, but here’s a visual reminder:

Say that a planet is in any of the signs that Mars can behold from where he sits in Aquarius, so, let’s say it’s Jupiter in Sagittarius. That means Mars and Jupiter are in aspect by sign. So, right now, Mars and Jupiter can see each other because they are in signs that can behold one another. We call this a “sign-based aspect.”

If two planets are in sign-based aspects, they can interact with one another. The nature of their interaction, whether friendly or hostile, is determined by the nature of aspect. Here’s the juice:

Conjunction: two planets are working together according to their natures (e.g., Venus helps, Mars hurts, etc.)
Sextile: gently supportive and easy, but not very dynamic
Square: tense and combative, but sometimes passive aggressive
Trine: flowing, makes things happen, but not necessarily always “good” in a strict sense
Opposition: well, it’s in the name. Overt fighting, explosive, a blow-out!

Sign-based aspects describe the overall tenor of planets’ relationships with each other. But planets don’t interact directly with one another until they come to a degree-based aspect within a sign. That would mean that when Mars advances to a later degree of Aquarius, to meet the square that Jupiter is casting there, which activates whatever this relationship signifies.

Let’s put the story together!

Mars moves faster than Jupiter (usually, unless Mars is retrograde), so Mars will be the one who is approaching Jupiter here. Because it’s a sextile aspect, Mars and Jupiter are in a supportive relationship with one another. Think of it like this: Mars is approaching Jupiter as a friendly acquaintance and asking him for help with something. Since Jupiter is, by nature, a friendly guy, and since he’s in his own sign of Sagittarius and has access to his own resources, Jupiter’s happy to share out of his abundance with Mars.

Good so far?

The last step is to figure out what parts of life the aspect is describing, and you figure this out by looking at which houses the planets involved rule. So in this example, with Aries rising, Mars rules the first house of your basic personality, body, health, vitality, appearance, and overall circumstances, as well as the eighth house of the unavoidables: fear, death, and taxes. Jupiter, meanwhile, rules the ninth house of education, spirituality, and travel, as well as the twelfth house of limitations, sorrow, and the unconscious. Mars is placed in the eleventh house of friends and groups, and Jupiter is placed in the ninth house, which I already described.

Let’s plug everything into this formula:

[Faster planet] representing [material of houses ruled by faster planet] approaches [slower planet] who rules [material of houses ruled by slower planet] in a [character of aspect] way and this creates [positive/negative based on the nature of the aspects and the planets involved] impacts in the area of [house where the faster planet is].

That gives us:

Mars, representing the native’s body, health, appearance, basic personality, approaches Jupiter, who rules philosophy, religion, travel, and education, in a gently supportive way and this creates positive impacts involving the native’s friends and associations.

Then you see where that takes you. In this example, we can see how the native’s personal circumstances can be improved by making efforts to connect with people who share their beliefs, philosophies, and values. Doing so serves them quite well and has the ability to improve their social standing. That’s just a very basic interpretation, but we can dive deeper into how this aspect plays out within the life of the native by looking at their unique context. That’s what we’d do within an astrological consultation.

I’m still lost!

It takes quite a bit of time to learn how to interpret aspects in this way, and I didn’t even get into the difference between applying and separating aspects! But if you take the time to get this rhythm into your bones, you’ll be able to interpret aspects in your birth chart with more ease.

Remember that astrology is a long apprenticeship, too! It’s always helpful to get another set of eyes on your chart, and I’d love to be able to help you out with that.

Get your aspects untangled—book now!

If you want to practice interpreting aspects on your own, great! I’ve made an aspects worksheet PDF for you that has all the information on aspects and houses you need to get used to the rhythm of interpreting aspects (plus some extra stuff on applying and separating aspects). To get your copy, all I need you to do is to sign up for my email list here.

Was this helpful to you? What questions do you still have? Let me know in the comments!

Three Ways to Work with Saturn

February 21, 2019February 23, 20192 Comments

There comes a time when you first start learning astrology that you learn about Saturn. Nobody really likes to deal with him, if we’re being perfectly honest; we would much rather spend our time cozying up with Venus and partying with Jupiter. They’re better company.

But the reality is that everyone must deal with Saturn. We can’t escape it. But, we can learn to become friends with Saturn—well, maybe not BFFs, but we can get on better terms with him.

And the truth is that I honestly love Saturn. But that hasn’t always been the case!

In our birth charts, Saturn represents the places that box us in. We all have a pinch point in our life where we seem to get stuck, an area which demands discipline, diligence, and structure. In those spots, he says “no” to something in our birth chart. He says to us, “this is where your hardest work will be.”

A part of our life that challenges us to learn how to say “no”—sometimes it even challenges us to learn how to say “no” to ourselves. Even with that being the case, we can embrace the hard work that Saturn demands. Saturn stands ready to give us what we need to thrive when we make that hard choice.

Some of us have Saturn in our eleventh house, where he makes it harder for us to find community and kindred spirits. Some of us have Saturn in our fourth house, where he can make our home life feel like a prison. Some of us even have Saturn in our first house, where he demands that we learn how to say “no” to ourselves.

Saying “no” to yourself isn’t necessarily a fun Saturday activity.

Let me put a pin in that real quick, though: think about the gift of Saturday. Each of the days of the week has a planetary ruler, and Saturday is no different. Naturally, the day is Saturn’s own.

But in other languages, especially those deeply connected to the Jewish diaspora, Saturday is still called “the Sabbath.” Sabado. Samedi. In Russian, Subbota.

The ancient stories of the Jewish tradition suggest that it was on Saturday that the Divine said “no” to further creation so that the Divine could rest.

And likewise, for millions of people throughout history, Saturday has been the day where Jewish people have learned to say “no” to work and to fear in order to say “yes” to the richer things of life that neither labor nor money can procure. Things like family, community, rest, relaxation, feasting—aspects of life that empower us to live with soulfulness and depth.

These aspects of life need a container. And what Saturn does is that he hollows out a space in our lives through teaching us to say “no” so that we can contain a life that’s rich with fullness and depth.

Wherever Saturn is in your birth chart, there is an opportunity for you to experience the boon of “sabbath.” You have the chance to say “no” to something to make space for what can grow there.

So how do I work with Saturn?

One: Know What You’re Up Against

The first step is knowing which house Saturn falls in, which is easy to do if you know how to run your birth chart on astro.com or another service. Whichever house Saturn falls in is the area that demands that hard work of hollowing out space by saying “no” in order to say “yes.”

For a brief refresher, here are the life domains that each house represents:

First house: the self, the body, physical appearance, physical health & vitality, circumstances
Second house: our own resources, whether financial or energetic
Third house: our siblings, our local communities & neighborhoods, short trips, commonplace things, communication
Fourth house: our upbringing, our parents, our home, and the things that we inherit
Fifth house: fun, creativity, enjoyment, pleasure, children, and anything we do to create more of ourselves
Sixth house: hard work, duty, responsibility, and the people and creatures for which we are responsible (employees and pets)
Seventh house: partners in love and conflict, coalitions
Eighth house: other people’s resources, whether financial or energetic; other fearful things, like death and debt
Ninth house: expansion of perspective & knowledge, teachers, mentors, religion, spirituality, philosophy, long voyages
Tenth house: the legacy we leave, our career and public status, what we are remembered for
Eleventh house: our friends, associations, and fidelity to others
Twelfth house: that which imprisons us and limits us, isolation, retreat, sorrow, the unconscious

For example, let’s look at the chart of the famous choreographer and dancer, Martha Graham.

We see that Saturn is in Libra in her fifth house. So, in her life, Saturn demanded her to apply diligence, structure, and shape to her artistic pursuits. If you’re familiar with Martha Graham’s choreography, you know that diligence, structure, and shape are perfect descriptors for her approach! By doing so, her artistic vision radically influenced dance in the 20th century (notice also that her midheaven degree is in Aquarius, which is traditionally ruled by Saturn!)

Oh, by the way, a fun astrology history fact: the important 20th-century astrologer Dane Rudhyar was, for a time, Martha Graham’s rehearsal pianist!

Whichever house Saturn occupies in your birth chart is the area of life that Saturn is asking you to structure, organize, and say “no” to certain factors so that you can say “yes” to the gifts that will be planted there.

Ask yourself these questions, and spend time answering them honestly:

“What part of this area do I need to say no to? What does it look like for me to put some sweat into tilling this earth? What can I cultivate here after I do that?”

Two: Look Inward with Compassion

The problem with Saturn work is that, if you haven’t given it a lot of thought before, it can be a rude awakening. You might feel like you’re being read for filth. You’re not filth. But Saturn is reading you for sure; it’s what he does.

Gentle reminder: you’re not alone.

If the process of looking at the Saturn part of your life raises some difficult questions for you, it’s crucial that you give yourself the gift of looking at that area with compassion. If you can’t learn to look at that area of your life and see it with the same eyes that those who love you most see you, then you’ll stay stuck on this Saturn piece. It’ll make dealing with your Saturn return even harder, too.

But Saturn thoughts don’t have to be the destructive emotions that we so often make them out to be. (I hope I’ve hammered this point home!)

One of the most helpful resources in my journey with learning to look at myself with compassion was a book given to me by my therapist, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion by Dr. Christopher Germer. This work is a fabulous introduction to the basics of mindfulness meditation. But it’s not only that. You’re learning how to do mindfulness meditation with techniques and visualizations specifically geared to learn how compassion feels in your body. I return to his “soften, allow, heal” technique all the time.

If you’ve got any interest in meditation practice at all, it’s a fantastic starting place, and his accompanying website has free tutorial recordings that you can access. Do yourself a favor and get a copy (this is an affiliate link, full disclosure).

Get Your Copy of The Mindful Path to Self Compassion

Real talk? As long as looking at this Saturn-filled part of your life causes you to cringe and run away, you won’t be able to do the necessary work of softening it, allowing it to be, and letting it heal. It’s a necessary step on the journey.

Three: Attune Yourself with Saturn’s Spirit

Here’s where we get a little bit woo, but I’m trying not to go too hard here. Stay with me!

The idea is that each of us have a little bit of Saturn in us, and we can attune ourselves to that piece of the sky that’s lodged in our souls through prayer and mediation on its principles and properties.

This is what some astrologers call a “remediation,” and essentially it’s a way of balancing out a planet that’s too active or not active enough by making that planet more a part of our conscious experience. So how do you go about this?

In the Vedic tradition, there are mantras for each planet, and you can easily find a Saturn mantra to utilize in this way. Kelly Surtees features a wonderful write-up on this practice on her site that serves as fantastic angle of approach. We can dip into other traditions, too. Here’s one that I especially like for Saturn from the Greek Orthodox tradition:

“O Lord and Master of my life, grant me not a spirit of sloth, meddling, love of power, and idle talk, but give to me, your servant, a spirit of prudence, humility, patience, and love. Yes, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother, since you are blessed to eternity.”

Any prayer or affirmation that focuses on themes like prudence, humility, patience, and self-assessment is great for Saturn. If you can’t find one that you like, you can even write your own in words that feel right for you! There’s not a wrong way to do this.

Essentially, you take whichever mantra you want to use that encapsulates a planet’s principles, and you pray with it repeatedly until it sinks into your bones. Over and over again, breathing the prayer in and out as you go. There’s a reason that the earth’s major spiritual traditions each have some sort of prayer beads: this meditative repetition entrains your subconscious to the wisdom contained in the prayer.

It’s basically like reprogramming your brain’s circuitry so that it runs more harmoniously with the planets within!

For extra oomph, try doing this on a Saturday just after sunrise, or on a Tuesday night just after sunset.

What else can I do?

Even if you know what you’re working with, you’ve learned how to look at it compassionately, and you’re working on attuning yourself with Saturn, that doesn’t magically make everything go easier. (Well, it might. A little.)

The reality is that there’s a lot that you can do. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, though; if you’re interested in how to manage and nurture your unique Saturn situation, the best thing you can do is reach out to an astrologer who’s on good terms with Saturn and let them help you develop a strategy for working with Saturn that is tailored to you!

(I happen to know a guy.)

Help me figure out my Saturn stuff!

Lastly, if you’re dealing with Saturn stuff it’s important that you have people around who can help you carry the load he puts across your shoulders. And if you’re engaging in this process, I want to hear about it! Shoot me a note to let me know how your Saturn story is going. We’re in this together!

Disclaimer: this post contains an affiliate link. If you buy a copy of Dr. Germer’s book through the link above, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

How to Maximize Missing Elements in your Birth Chart

February 19, 2019February 20, 20193 Comments

It’s finally happened—you’ve gotten your birth chart calculated on astro.com, you’ve learned which signs are what element, you’ve gone through and read where each of your planets are, and you’re finally getting a handle on this whole astrology thing.

Then it hits you.

You don’t have any planets in water signs.

You start frantically Googling: “missing element in birth chart!” “No planets in water!” “Am I emotionally handicapped!?” You start to spiral. You start to second guess your career in helping professions. You bring it up to your therapist!

Step one: hit the brakes.

This is exactly what happened to me when I first got into astrology. Besides Pluto and my North Node, I have zero visible planets in water signs in my birth chart.

It happens to the best of us, you know. Because of the way the clockwork of our solar system works, many people are missing an element in their birth chart.

Many modern approaches to astrology look at elemental deficiencies, as they’re called, as areas where we have more work to do in our lives. That’s a valid interpretation, but I want to offer another way to look at it.

This is something I learned from the inimitable Dr. Jenn Zahrt in a late night conversation at this past fall’s SOTA Astrology conference in Buffalo.

Amid all the campy dance parties and late night soul conversations, I learned a little bit of astrology, and this is one of the things I have seen flip a switch in my clients whenever I bring it up to them.

You can see their eyes light up when they get this insight!

What Dr. JZ explained to me was something she got from another astrologer a few years earlier at another conference (and I bring that up because lineage and citing your sources is important in doing good astrology).

This is the idea of elemental mastery.

It’s an absurdly simple idea in essence: if you’re missing an element in your birth chart, the stuff signified by that element is not something that you need to work on in this lifetime.

Easy, right? Almost a little too easy.

Missing water in your birth chart? Great. Water stuff is easy for you in this lifetime.

But I’ve played around with this idea both with my own chart and with the charts of my loved ones and clients, and it bears out in practice.

Are you an elemental master? Let’s find out?

See, every zodiac sign has an element, right? Elements in the birth chart are like four different teams, or Hogwarts houses. A planet has to deal with the stuff related to the team that a given zodiac sign is in.

Just to remind you:

The fire team includes Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius. This team deals with the self in matters of ego security and identity: obtaining it (Aries), expressing it (Leo), adapting and expanding it (Sagittarius).

The earth team includes Capricorn, Taurus, and Virgo. This team deals with the physical world through matters of material security: obtaining and storing it (Capricorn), maintaining it (Taurus), and applying it to concrete situations to improve circumstances (Virgo).

The air team includes Libra, Aquarius, and Gemini. This team deals with intellectual security, social connections, and ideas: creating them through social structures (Libra), maintaining them through social responsibility (Aquarius), and adapting them through gathering incoming information (Gemini).

Lastly, the water team includes Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces. This team deals with emotional security and bonding with others, and again, the pattern is obtaining emotional security and nurture (Cancer), sustaining and defending those bonds (Scorpio), and expanding and releasing our bonds with others as we grow (Pisces).

Step two: what element is your birth chart missing?

If you’ve already figured this out, you’re a step ahead.

But if not, here’s a great exercise in getting familiar with your birth chart. Maybe it’s not something you’ve given any thought to! By the way, this approach works best when you’re working only with visible planets, and maybe the North Node.

Go get your chart wheel from astro.com and look at each of the visible planets in your birth chart: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. Note which signs each planet is in. See if there are any missing elements. Got it figured out? Perfect!

Step three: what does that missing element mean?

Now that we know what that missing element in your birth chart is, we know what to do with this information. It’s simple: whichever team, or element, is missing, is an area of life that you don’t need to spend time working on during this lifetime, because it comes easily to you. Remember, all of these are just starting places—different factors can make these statements more or less true for you!

If you’re missing fire in your birth chart, you’ve got a strong sense of who you are and don’t need to spend a gap year in the Maldives finding yourself.

If you’re missing earth in your birth chart, you’ve got financial and material security down pat, and don’t need to overthink how you’ll get money or take care of your bills. You just do it.

If you’re missing air in your birth chart, your mental and social powers are something that don’t require thought; you know what you know, what you don’t know, and where to get the connections and data you need.

If you’re missing water in your birth chart, your emotional powers are dialed up, and you are skilled at riding the waves of human emotions. Showing up for people with empathy and vulnerability comes easily to you.

Here’s an example: the chart of the famous opera singer, Kathleen Battle.

As we look around the zodiac wheel in her birth chart, we see that there are exactly zero visible planets in Earth signs here.

We can spend a lot of time talking about how the huge amount of fire planets in her chart made her live up to her last name—she was a legendary diva in every sense of the word. But Miss Battle does not want for anything, at least as far as money or financial security was concerned.

Step four: now what?

Relax! Just because you’re missing an element in your chart doesn’t mean your life is going to fall apart at that particular seam.

It does mean that your temperament is skewed away from whatever element is missing. But temperament is a more complicated beast; it impacts your personality and your physical health, too.

What you can focus on now is where most of your planets are stacked. If there is more of an element than others in your chart, that’s where your attention should be! It’s what will require more work, since more of your planets have to express through the parts of life governed by that team.

Looking back at Miss Battle’s birth chart, her chart is stacked heavily towards fire: five visible planets in fire signs! So she will need to spend time working on knowing who she is and balancing how she goes about expressing it in healthy ways.

The good news is that you’re not alone in this. As an astrologer, I can help you identify where the elements in your birth chart lie and help you develop strategies to deal with them, as well as the other important factors in astrology, in a birth chart consultation. I’d absolutely love to work with you on this, and I’m excited to jailbreak your stars with you!

Book a Consultation Now!

Getting Started with Horary Astrology

October 4, 2018October 4, 20181 Comment

If you’ve been here long you know that horary astrology is my bread and butter. I absolutely love utilizing it as a means of getting the “lay of the land,” so to speak, on given situations and challenges, and the level of insight it can provide even to budding practitioner can be mind-bending. So I’d like to offer a couple of thoughts on how to get started learning horary astrology for those new to the practice.

In addition to continuing my own advanced studies of horary astrology, I’m also in the process of skilling up by learning software development (the full web dev stack, including HTML, CSS, and Javascript, for those to whom that means anything). As I’m engaging in this project, I’m noticing a lot of similarities between the process of learning computer programming and the process of learning—and mastering—horary astrology.

One, as with coding, learning horary is a long apprenticeship. Even at the end of the STA practitioner’s level course, you are at a position where you know enough to be dangerous—and you also know enough to continue your learning process. I suppose this is the case with any profession; you’re able to practice, but you have to be open to constant evaluation and growth. That to say, just as is the case with natal astrology, one can’t expect a single article, book, or course to give them full subject mastery. It’s a discipline that you live with long enough for it to become part of your DNA, in a manner of speaking.

Two, just as with coding, you need to have a certain level of facility with the various moving parts that go into reading and judging a horary chart before you can soldier on by receiving questions and casting charts willy-nilly. This includes, in addition to the ability to draw a chart and navigate it, a solid understanding of house rulerships, the natural significations of planets and signs and aspects, and some decent knowledge of planetary motion (e.g., knowing that if Mars and Jupiter are coming to a conjunction and one of them is retrograde, the other is probably retrograde too, since they’re both superior planets and have similarly structured synodic cycles).

I don’t say any of this to be discouraging; quite to the contrary, learning horary is one of the best ways to level up your competency and skill in astrological practice. And even if you are a modern natal astrology practitioner, you can safely “sandbox” horary practice away from your natal practice without a need to reconfigure your entire astrological schema out of the gate (though that’s liable to happen the longer you spend with Mr. Lilly). Which brings me to my third point: as with coding, in horary, one must learn by doing. It will not do simply to take a class or to read a book without having a living practice of attempting to judge charts and get feedback on their interpretations—which is the express reason why I commend everyone to the STA’s horary practitioner course as a starting point.

So where do I start?

The equivalent of the print(“Hello, World!”) code in horary, I suppose, would be to be able to determine the houses germane to the question itself, and then to identify the ruler of those houses. That’s to say, in order to be able to render the most basic of judgments, you need to know first off what places of the chart of the question you’re going to look at in order to determine who the players in this scene are—and there are a LOT of shades of nuance and “exceptions to the rule” to be kept in mind here, but we can start very simply. The players in the scene are determined by the planets that rule the houses in question in the topic.

By way of summary, here are the most basic significations of the houses. If you’re familiar with the houses in natal astrology, many of these will feel familiar:

First House (Ascendant): the querent, their health, status, livelihood, state of mind, etc.
Second House: the querent’s financial, physical, and sometimes emotional resources
Third House: the querent’s siblings; communication, short journeys; the common people & the neighborhood
Fourth House: the querent’s home, parents, land, and legacy
Fifth House: the querent’s children; the querent’s paramours (in a question where there is also a spouse); sex, games, luxury, fun, feasting
Sixth House: the querent’s diseases, distress, burdens, employees, and pets
Seventh House: the querent’s love interest, spousal partner, business partner, open enemies; the place to which a querent wants to move in a relocation chart
Eighth House: the querent’s debts, inheritance, or the other person’s (7th house) money; death, fear, suffering
Ninth House: philosophy, spirituality, religion; teachers, clergy, lawyers, advocates; distant travel
Tenth House: jobs, bosses, careers, honors, awards, judges
Eleventh House: friends, “the company you keep,” good fortune, hopes, dreams, recovery
Twelfth House: sorrow, isolation, suffering, ascesis; jails, prisons, hospitals; hidden enemies, secrets, sabotage

For further reading on the houses, get thee to Amazon and buy a copy of Deborah Houlding’s book Houses: Temples of the Sky, and take a look at William Lilly’s description of each of the houses in Christian Astrology, pages 50-56.

Suppose we have a client come to us with a question about a love interest: is my person cheating on me? After verifying that they’re being sincere in asking you the question—and the mechanics of asking questions is another article in its own right!—we know that we are looking at the 1st house as the querent and the 7th house as the “quesited,” what the querent is asking about. We are also always, always, always going to look at the Moon and her condition, aspects, speed, and placement, as the Moon is the co-ruler of all questions and will have a lot to say about the origin and the trajectory of the unfolding question itself.

Let’s take as an example a chart I judged for a friend of mine last autumn. I’ve written it up before, but this time, I’m going to slow my judgment down to walk you through it. She came to me with a concern that her boyfriend of several months was lying to her and wanted to know if she was being cheated on and whether there was any significant future in their relationship to one another.

So, right off, we are looking at a 1st and 7th chart, with the Moon being part of the story as well. Notice in this chart the Moon’s placement immediately on the 7th cusp: this tells me that the question itself is focused intensely on this other person.

Once you’ve identified the houses involved, you then figure out which planets are involved in those houses. As it happens, the Anglo-Italo-Arabic tradition of horary doesn’t work as well with whole sign houses. You need mundane house cusps for this branch of astrology as it is practiced in the tradition*; most quadrants system will do, but Lilly used Regiomontanus. I use Placidus in my own practice. Look at where the cusp of the house falls; the planet that rules the sign in which the cusp falls is the ruler of that house.

A sidebar on house systems.

*My friend Gabriel Rosas makes the compelling argument that quadrant house cusps are inextricable from horary because they are part of the mantic system described in the tradition of horary astrology. I am aware of some practitioners who have experimented with using whole sign houses to judge or to reverse engineer horaries in some instances, including Rob Hand, with varying results. I’m also aware of the use of whole sign or equal sign-adjacent house systems in the Vedic horary tradition (prajna), but, again, that’s not what we’re dealing with here.

My own theory is that the mundane house cusps generated when the chart is drawn are the points of power that are semantically relevant for the astrologer’s judgment and vantage point. These cusps have a meaning that is more than just the definition of the beginning of one house and the end of another; they are to be considered points of power, not boundaries proper. In the Anglo-Italo-Arabic tradition, a planet within five degrees of either side of a cusp is extremely significant to the matters signified by that house, because that planet is on the seat where the power to signify lies.

Please don’t email me to start a house system fight; I don’t understand the question and I won’t respond to it.

In our example chart, we have 15º Sagittarius 08’ on the ascendant (1st house), and 15º Gemini 08’ on the descendant (7th house). So, that means the significator for the querent, who has asked the question, will be Jupiter, because Jupiter rules Sagittarius; likewise the significator for her boyfriend, the quesited, will be Mercury, who rules Gemini.

Next, we look at where the planets involved are placed. See that the 1st ruler Jupiter is on the cusp of the 11th house: friends, groups, allegiances, but also “hopes and dreams” in that kind of optimistic sense. Because the significator here is Jupiter, the natural significations of Jupiter are in play—everything that Jupiter naturally is: magnanimous, trusting, generous. Put a pin in that.

Mercury, on the other hand, is in the 12th house, the house of sorrow, isolation, sadness, and also secrets and deceit (since the 1st house cannot make an aspect with the 12th house). So right away, we have some indication that something fishy is going on: a planet in the 12th can be constructive but it’s going to be the kind of constructive that is good for cross purposes. For example, if we asked a question about a fugitive and their significator were in the 12th, it’s great for the fugitive—they’re not going to get caught. They’re gone.

Now, we can do one of two things, that both need to be done as we’re approaching an answer to our question: we need to ascertain the condition of each planet, and likewise we need to look at the aspects that are being made by and to the planets involved. To keep it simple, let’s first look to the aspects. To the point of the question, we first want to see if there is any motion that is bringing Mercury or Jupiter together at all. With Mercury at 1º Sagittarius 10’ and Jupiter at 5º Scorpio 53’, there’s no possible way they can make an aspect with each other. Is all lost? In this case, yes.

There are a couple of special cases that can happen in a horary where an intervening planet can either help or hurt the situation. For example, it can happen in a horary that a faster moving planet is bringing two planets together that ordinarily wouldn’t have a chance to interact with one another. The Moon is the only planet faster than Mercury, so we must look to her to see if she is able to catch up with Mercury and “transfer light” from Mercury to Jupiter. In this instance, that’s a no; at 17º Gemini, the Moon is quite far separated from Mercury and nowhere near Jupiter (as Gemini and Scorpio are averse to one another anyway—they don’t make an aspect).

If, however, the Moon were at, say, 4º Pisces, this would be a different story. The Moon would then be transferring light from Mercury via square to Jupiter via trine, which would promise a different outcome for my client (for a number of reasons I won’t get into here). Dr. Lee Lehman refers to this as the “Yente Effect,” whereby a third party brings two together in a match—if this were the case, you would even hear her calling “Oh Zeitl! Oh Zeitl! Have I got a match for you!”

But on that Yiddische note, we remember that we haven’t yet judged the condition of the planets involved in this arrangement yet, either. I would much rather Yente be bringing to my querent’s significator Jupiter the light of a Mercury in Virgo in the ninth house versus a Mercury in Sagittarius in the twelfth. I’d also rather that Mars in Libra in the midheaven not be having so much say over the whole situation. Why is that?

The answer is the delicious mélange of symbolism we get when we consider essential dignity and accidental fortitude, which are an absolute sine qua non of the Anglo-Italo-Arabic tradition, and indeed, the Hellenistic tradition whence they come. You must learn the dignities, debilities, fortitudes, and enfeeblements in order to draw a picture for your querent that is richly accurate.

So, let’s touch base on what we can get by way of planetary motion and house placement considered alone, as this is how you get the “skeleton” of a horary judgment: Mercury is in a bad house and we can suspect that something shady is going on, Jupiter is in a good house. There’s no applying aspect between them and there’s no planet bridging them by translating or collecting their light. To the point of, “is there a future here,” the answer is simply no. But that’s just the very beginning of what we can do with a horary judgment. The real meaty magic is in the significations of the planets’ condition and the signs in which they are.

In the next part of this series, I’ll address the matter of essential dignities and accidental fortitudes and how they flesh out in spectacular detail the very basic significations that this chart has presented. I’ll also look at the other planets involved in this configuration so that we can continue to peel back the layers on my client’s conundrum.

Recommended Sources for Horary Neophytes

Deborah Houlding, Houses: The Temples of the Sky
Dr. J. Lee Lehman, The Martial Art of Horary Astrology
ibid., Learning Classical Horary Astrology: Examples and Workbook
Helena Avelar & Luis Ribeiro, On the Heavenly Spheres: A Treatise on Traditional Astrology
Dr. Benjamin Dykes, Traditional Astrology for Today
Anything and Everything on Skyscript, to include Deborah Houlding’s own free introductory articles

What I would not necessarily recommend for the beginner to horary is starting right off with Christian Astrology because of the nature of Lilly’s 17th Century English that requires about as much work to understand as the material itself—but it must eventually make its way to your library anyway. The re-typed editions available on Amazon are well-produced.

And because you are all dear to me, I have uploaded a 1.5 hour lecture on the material I’ve touched on above, as well as some of the philosophical underpinning of the horary process, for your viewing pleasure on Vimeo.

Stellar Spoilers: An Introduction to Horary Astrology from NR Caradog on Vimeo.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Nate Craddock, Astrologian

astral medicine for engaged earthlings

Category: Learning Astrology