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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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

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.

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