Tag: horary astrology

When the stars give you spoilers: why I love horary astrology

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I’m often asked by folks—my ever-patient husband among them—why I favor horary astrology over the practice of something more well-known like natal astrology. My reasons aren’t overly complicated, but to get there I’d like to mention the difference between modalities of astrology.

Think about intelligence for a minute. The psychologist Howard Gardner delineated a theory of multiple intelligences in his 1983 book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. In short, Gardner proposed that the bigger concept of intelligence was better conceived of as subsisting in eight specific modalities, to include such things as verbal-linguistic intelligence (what you use when speaking or writing), logical-mathematical intelligence (what you use when solving logical or arithmetical problems), or intrapersonal intelligence (what you access when you are reflecting on your own interior emotional and cognitive life).

Gardner’s theory supposes that there’s not one overarching construction of intelligence, but rather, different people have different strengths and weaknesses in terms of the facility they have with each of these modalities.

So, by way of parallel, we can talk about astrology is an alternative means of knowing that has different modalities. If astrology is an intelligence, a language of symbolically meaningful correlations that we can utilize to tell stories about the way our lives shake out, then I would suggest that we can look at horary and natal astrology as being two different “modalities” of astrology that have a lot of overlap but necessarily deal with different things. The same set of rules that governs natal astrology also governs horary, more or less (especially if you’re a traditional astrologer), but they have wildly different applications.

So why do I prefer this particular modality of astrology to natal—especially since I also practice natal astrology?

One: horary astrology is results-driven. Either the horary astrologer gets the judgment right, or they don’t. At the end of the day, what drives a person to seek out the assistance of an astrologer is a specific precipitating event that has driven them to a crisis. And I think “crisis” is the right word here, because the Greek word from which we get our word “crisis” means “judgment,” which is what a horary consultation endeavors to do. We get the chart of the crisis (in the form of a question) and judge what will become of it.

Two: horary astrology is a powerful intervention tool. Because of the nature of some of the questions that horary astrologers encounter in their practice, it is often bringing us face to face with the challenging realities of people’s individual emotional, relational, vocational, and financial crises (or otherwise). The astrologer, then, has the sacred responsibility to treat the client’s question or concern with the patience and unconditional positive regard such a situation may demand. The astrologer then has the opportunity to speak directly into the client’s crisis, using the wisdom of the chart.

In my practice I’ve found that the very process of working with a client to massage a question into something that is clear and answerable with a horary consultation is illuminating both for the astrologer and for the client, who may have some unspoken challenges or matters which they are not addressing in the question but are critical for understanding how to move forward from the consultation space; these matters make themselves readily apparent in the chart of the question.

Three: horary astrology is concise and accessible.Dr. Lee Lehman, one of the biggest names in the traditional astrology world and one of my mentors by way of the STA, said something in an interview with Chris Brennan on the Astrology Podcast that has stayed with me for quite some time: “We have our entire lives to work out our natal charts.” Natal consultations are hard because we really are speaking about an entire lifetime of subjective and objective experiences and trying to make sense of the story that is underpinning all of them, which, if we’re not focused in how we’re approaching the natal chart, can cause us to become lost in a forest of subplots and details that don’t further the client’s understanding of their life station.

Meanwhile, a horary judgment is zeroed in on one specific issue or concern, and it’s not something that we need to spend the rest of our lives puzzling about it. As well, despite the complex nature of the rules that govern the practice of horary astrology, a story can be told clearly and concisely to the point that the practitioner need not make recourse to any astrological terminology.

A joiner to this: the best horary charts have strong connections to the querent’s natal chart for sure, and I have seen this come to bear in my own life even as recently as this week.

Four: horary astrology is rules-driven and rooted in tradition. The whole practice of horary astrology works because of the tight rules that govern the interpretation of horary charts which have been handed down from the ancient near east through medieval Europe and ultimately, through the rediscovery of William Lilly by Olivia Barclay and her successors in the traditional astrological revival of the late 1980s and following.

The rules of horary follow a clear, logical order, and because of that, they are straightforward to learn and use systematically to all manner of charts. There are a lot of rules, though, so there’s a little bit of a barrier to entry for folks who haven’t exercised their memorization chops in a while, but all the same, this art can be learned and taught effectively precisely because of the clarity of the rules.

I especially love it because all of the symbolism in the chart comes out of following these rules; for example, Mars and Venus coming to a conjunction in Scorpio is going to tell a vastly different story than Mars and Venus coming to a conjunction in Libra. The best practitioners are those whose attention to the rules are joined to intuition in a way that supports the clear and precise interpretation of the chart.

Five: my personal experience has validated the power of horary. I put this one towards the bottom of the list because I was already deeply attracted to and invested in my study of horary by the time I had any remarkable experience of it in my own life. It wasn’t until I was wrapping up my studies in the practitioner’s level course at the STA that I asked and judged a question for myself, a career matter that is still playing out in ways that are, frankly, uncanny (which I won’t get into here). The chart spoke concisely and directly to a decision I was making and, two months ahead of time, predicted a new and important collaborative partnership that would emerge in my day job that necessitated me remaining deeply rooted therein.

So, yeah, it works.

In sum, I love this art simply because when questions are asked with sincerity and openness to whatever it is the Divine has to say about the matter, it works, and it gives the kind of clear, direct, and constructive feedback to which modern life has grown accustomed. And, honestly, I think it’s for everyone; yes, the rules are arcane and require lengthy investment of time and energy to learn and deploy well, but the number of astrologers who have the knack for this is growing and the art is becoming more available to people who otherwise wouldn’t know that they have recourse to the heavens.

Do you have a pressing, personal question that you would like to address with horary astrology? Send me an email today!

Cover photo by Steven Hille

Horary Adventures: Can He Grow?

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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.

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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.

Horary adventures: “Am I being cheated on?”

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Since I’m currently a student in the School of Traditional Astrology‘s Horary Practitioner’s Course, I thought it would be a good idea to start posting horary judgments so that y’all can see, one, how the process works, and two (and more importantly), how the practice of horary astrology is directly applicable to modern life.

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I got a phone call back in November from a former coworker and good friend who has had some fairly poor luck in relationships over the past few years. She is a successful vocational counselor for adults with disabilities and a competitive fitness model of Iranian ancestry and holds dual USA/Canadian citizenship, all qualities which are signified by Sagittarius and its ruler, Jupiter.

She has been in an on-again, off-again thing over the course of about seven months with someone she met at her gym. She has finally broken things off because her boyfriend was caught lying several times and was being generally duplicitous and emotionally manipulative. My friend suspected several times that he was cheating on her but wanted to give him the benefit of a doubt. He never did come clean with her and she’s not having any contact with him at this point, but she’s looking for some kind of closure and asked me, based on what she had told me, whether I thought he had been cheating on her or not. So, I cast a chart!

The chart is radical because my friend has been worrying about this for a long time and has been losing sleep over the whole situation. This is confirmed by the planetary hour agreeing with the ruler of the Ascendant. She needs an answer to the question just to assuage her own fears.

My friend, the querent, is represented by Jupiter in the 11th rising toward the 10th house (Sagittarius on the ascendant). She has a birthmark on her neck (Taurus on the 6th house cusp). She is indeed Jupiterian; she really wants this relationship to have worked out, perhaps over-much. Jupiter is peregrine in the 11th house and applying to a trine with Neptune. Jupiter is also under the beams, leading to my friend not being able to exercise sound judgment or discernment; and yet, because of the quality of Scorpio, I have the suspicion that deep down my friend already knows the truth.

The quesited, her ex-boyfriend, is represented by Mercury in the 12th, right on the border between Scorpio and Sagittarius. Woof. The quesited has being duplicitous and overtly lying to the querent about where he’s been going, what he’s been up to, etc., just generally being a sneaky boy—such is the signification of the 12th house placement, where we look to find enemies lurking in the shadows and the causes of our suffering. He has been engaging in behaviors to make my friend feel like their relationship troubles have been her fault, not his. My thought is that his behavior is making him feel guilty and incapable of feeling connected to the querent, such that he’s over feeling sorry for himself in the 12th with no real desire to stand up and make an upright decision. Mercury in Sagittarius can’t make good decisions.

The Moon—traditionally a female image—is in 7, right on the angle, and in the domicile of the quesited. Another woman in the quesited’s home, huh? HMM. She applies to an opposition with Saturn in 1, who rules 2 and 3. We saw this same configuration in the relationship chart this last week; my friend makes decent money and is self sufficient and as the ruler of her ex’s derived 2nd, the Moon applying to Saturn makes it look like her ex was after her money (from her report, he had ongoing financial troubles during this time too).

Mercury has just changed signs to the sign on the first house cusp, so he is waffling in the midst of his own duplicity: since he is in Jupiter’s domicile and terms he’s interested again but this is a fresh development and is more of a passing feeling than any real intent to reconcile. He is in his own face, so he perhaps imagines that there is something that he can actively do to try to get back with my friend, but his being in detriment overpowers any shred of good intention he might have and overall he doesn’t have a strong sense of what he’s doing. Moreover, he’s coming to this position from his connection to Gemini as the sign on the 7th house cusp, a waffling sign if there ever was one. Sagittarius is too a double-bodied sign, just as Gemini is, so there’s another testament to his not being able to make up his mind. He’s quite literally out of his element here!

We have Mars in detriment in Libra near the MC (though not super close, still in an angular house), ruling the 4th, the 11th, and the 12th houses. This relationship began quite suddenly and had a lot of energy at the beginning but that energy seems to be waning; Mars is not making any aspects, and is just generally being destructive as his power is unfocused in his sign of detriment; anything can set him off. From what my friend told me, several major fights had occurred between her and her ex in the weeks preceding the asking of this question.

Now, in regard to the actual question of whether the guy was cheating, I want to get to a third party somehow; the guy’s significator is in the querent’s 12th, so he’s been duplicitous at best, and the Moon being angular in Mercury’s domicile (though having now separated from her opposition to Mercury) is a strong testament that there has been another woman in his affairs just recently.

My judgment is that, yes, my friend was being cheated on, and she made the right decision to cut things off because her ex couldn’t make up his mind as to what he wanted, nor were his intentions entirely pure.

Now, this question was asked just over a month ago; as it turns out, just recently we’ve confirmed that this was indeed the case! My friend made the right call.

Do you have a burning, personal question that you think might be right for a horary reading? Get in touch!