Traditional Approaches to Astrology

Minderwiz

Which House?

Whilst the querent alwats gets the first house (unless they are asking on behalf of a third party), the Astrologer has to choose which house to use for the quesited. Lilly lists the following types of question as common for each house (based on his practice):

First House – Health, length of life, best place to live, future events, whether the personasked about is at home. Ships at sea.

Second House – Wealth, how and when it is attained and whether it will last

Third House – brothers, sisters, short journeys rumours and places where someone asked about may be.

Fourth House – Parents, Land, Cities, Towns, Villages, Manors, Castles, Treasure Trove anything buried or hidden underground.

Fifth House – Children and pregnancy. Ambassadors and messengers

Sixth House – Sickness, disease, servants, small cattle.

Seventh House – Marriage, open enemies, law suits, controversies, contracts, bargains, wars, fugitives, thefts.

Eighth House – Death, Dowry, Substance of the Wife.

Ninth House – Long journeys, religion, pilgrimage, dreams

Tenth House - Government, dignity, preferment, any place of command or trust, whether attainable or not

Eleventh House – Friends, Hope, substance or riches of Kings

Twelfth House – imprisonment, witchery, private enemies, banished men [and women] great cattle.

These seem to be the typical sort of questions Lilly regularly dealt with. And whilst we don’t all have castles, or seek the preferment of Kings, most of these are still in a more modern form, the sort of questions which we still get.

There is some variation amongst modern Astrologers on some of these. Lehman includes romantic relationships under fifth House , whereas Frawley uses the Seventh (arguing that whilst romance is a fifth house topic, it is the concept of romance, not the other person in a relationship). Lehman also looks at the fifth for gambling and hence gambling winnings. She is also willing to treat stock market gains as gambling winnings and so includes them too. More controversially still she seems to treat the housing market as a gamble and so house sales too may come under it.

Both Frawley and Lehman also uses the seventh for sporting contests (a modern type of battle?) Frawley uses the second for lost, stolen and strayed (pets) items, Lehman uses the fourth if lost at home and Lilly uses the seventh for stolen items, and will look at the second and fourth if there is doubt about it being a theft rather than a loss (Lilly can use his chart to distinguish between the two). He does use the seventh to find a lost dog, though.

I tend to follow Frawley on lost items, and use the sixth for pets (whatever the concern). Incidentally the dividing line seems to be if it’s smaller than a goat it’s sixth house, otherwise it’s twelfth house (and horses would be classed as ‘cattle’ by Lilly).

Clearly I can’t do a horary example for every house, so I’ve decided to look at two horaries I have done in the past. One didn’t work (and the chart explains why) and one did. That will be the subject of my next post.
If there’s real interest in horary, I might start a separate thread in which we can try to answer some questions. However, as I’m not a professional, please don’t expect marvellous results.
 

Minderwiz

A Tale of Two Saturns

These two horaries were done within ten days of each other and at the same time of day (a time of day separation of twenty minutes). The first one worked, the second did not. I hope that I can show why the second one was doomed to failure and why the first was a valid chart with a good outcome.

Chart 1 - Rio

The first chart relates to an injury to one of our pet cats. He was still not fully grown and one day we were calling him for his tea and he didn't come. Sometime later he did show up but was clearly seriously injured, not being able to walk properly. We rushed him to the vets, who diagnosed a broken pelvis. After some days hospitalisation he was released, but had to spend virtually all his time in a hospital cage for a period of around three months. The chart (Rio .jpg) was cast while we were not sure whether he would make a recovery or not.

The chart has Aquarius rising, so my significator is Saturn. Saturn is a reasonable descriptor of me, as I'm of mature years, I also have Saturn on my natal Ascendant and have the Moon in Aquarius, conjunct my Descendant. The Hour Lord is also Saturn, so I have very good agreement on the first 'consideration'. Using the sixth for the cat (Rio) I find the Cancer on the cusp of the sixth so the Moon is his significator. The Moon is in the third House (he was on a short journey when he was injured) but is in exaltation in Taurus. This is the first good sign about his condition.

However there is one seemingly serious problem. Saturn is in the Seventh, and according to Lilly and others, this may mean that the Astrologer's (my) judgement will be 'corrupted'. So is this a valid chart? I decided that it could be, because Saturn was my significator (it has a prime role) and I was also the Astrologer - so it described what I was doing at the time - being an Astrologer. Saturn is in Virgo, but has mutual receptions with Mercury, Venus and Jupiter - Saturn is in the triplicity of Venus and the terms of Jupiter. So I take that as good news. Saturn is actually the most dignified planet in the chart in terms of essential dignity and well positioned. So both I and Rio are in good shape, My good shape means that I can care for him very well.

Returning to the Moon, it is in an applying trine to the Sun, ruler of the Seventh and will then go on to trine the Part of Fortune, It's possible that I should also give the seventh to the Vet, as the cat's 'physician', the role of Astrologer being rather passive. So these two aspects seem very favourable.

Using a medical approach, the tenth house would say something about the treatment and it's likely outcome. The tenth is ruled by Jupiter, and looking for Jupiter I find him in the twelfth house in Capricorn. Initially this looks very bad, however the twelfth is the house of imprisonment and Rio's treatment is to be kept in a cage for three months - literally he is imprisoned and the chart clearly shows it!

Given these indicators, I took the chart to be radical and judged the outcome to be very favourable. As I typed this, Rio jumped up onto my lap to see what I was doing and then ran off at top speed. He is fully recovered and no one would ever know by looking at him how serious the injury was.

Chart 2 - My GCE Certificates

When I cast this chart, I was a serving teacher, though I had reduced my hours following a move into semi-retirement. The College in its wisdom decided that all teachers should have minimum qualifications in Maths and English - the equivalent of good school leaving grades. I had indeed achieved that level but the College had no record of actually seeing the certificates, which I had achieved some 45 years earlier!! The intention was to have a pay differential for those who achieved, so a failure to produce could threaten my status and salary.

I cast a chart to help try and find them (I had absolutely no idea where they might be). The chart is attached as Certificates'jpg. In this case Pisces is rising and so my significator is Jupiter. The Hour Lord is the Sun, both Jupiter and the Sun are diurnal planets and rulers in the fire Triplicity (Sun by day and Jupiter by night) so that seems to give agreement. There is just short of five degrees of Pisces on the Ascendant, enough to satisfy the 'considerations' but still indicating things might be a bit early (which did not seem to make sense).

Again, Saturn is in the Seventh and this time it is not my significator as querent. So does this show an impairment in my judgement? I decided to press on. The Certificates are moveable property so I decided they should be Second House (following Frawley) Venus is the second House ruler and is located in the Seventh in Scorpio, where it is in detriment - suggesting that the certificates are not in good condition, though a mutual reception with Mars, offers some hope that they will be presentable. But where are they?

The Seventh suggests either in a Westerly direction, or in my wifes stuff (most likely her filing cabinet drawers. A major search produced nothing and I gave up. Now if I'd used the rulers of the fourth or seventh as alternatives, I would have been faced with Mercury (ruler of both fourth and Seventh) and it was in the Seventh along with Venus, so I didn't go any further down that route. Scorpio suggested that it would be in a damp place fairly low down. No help there. However if I had taken Mercury more seriously, I would have noted that it was in Libra, an Air sign and would be high up somewhere.

If I was going to recover the Certificates I would have expected some contact between my significator (Jupiter) and the certificates (Venus). There is no aspect between the two. Venus is in the Terms of Jupiter, which shows my interest in the certificates. Jupiter is in the Triplicity of Venus, which shows that the certificates like being owned by me, so there is an outside chance that we will be reunited.

Two years later, after I had fully retired, I found the certificates in the loft, during a clear out. They were in a bag along with my wife's certificates!!!

I like to think of this as an example of the seventh House Saturn 'corrupting' my judgement. The Moon is also slow in the chart,combust and peregrine. Nothing like as strong as in the previous chart and a weak Moon suggests that there will not be a satisfactory outcome - or at least not one in a reasonable time frame.
 

Attachments

  • Certificates.jpg
    Certificates.jpg
    98.1 KB · Views: 126
  • Rio.jpg
    Rio.jpg
    93.4 KB · Views: 115

214red

seriously indepth, i cant even start to fathom horary because i am still stuck on transits etc, but the information is extensive, thanks Minderwiz
 

sapienza

Some great info here, thanks.

Minderwiz said:
If there’s real interest in horary, I might start a separate thread in which we can try to answer some questions. However, as I’m not a professional, please don’t expect marvellous results.
I'm certainly interested in horary, but I've still got to get my head around a lot of elements of traditional astrology. If you do start a thread though I'd definitely be interested in looking at the process of answering questions using this method. Not sure how much I can contribute that would be of any use though. :)
 

Minderwiz

sapienza said:
Some great info here, thanks.


I'm certainly interested in horary, but I've still got to get my head around a lot of elements of traditional astrology. If you do start a thread though I'd definitely be interested in looking at the process of answering questions using this method. Not sure how much I can contribute that would be of any use though. :)

Well seeing horary in action is a great learning process, I'd do the readings but with explanations and dealing with any points raised. What I need is a supply of questions LOL. They must be serious and of personal importance - though they can be trivial in the general scheme of things.

214red said:
seriously indepth, i cant even start to fathom horary because i am still stuck on transits etc, but the information is extensive, thanks Minderwiz

In the old days (i.e. Lilly and earlier) the student of Astrology learned his (sorry it was almost exclusively male in those days - which was a seriously bad thing) art through starting on horary and things like transits and natal came much later, and I think maybe that is the best way to learn. Indeed I did think of doing it that way but the dominance of natal is so strong now that it's difficult to establish the context of horary without some natal coverage.

I understood intellectually that horary and natal were connected in the tradition but it's only in the last twelve months or so, that I've realised just how closely they are linked i and that learning horary provides a really good grounding for traditional practice. In part that was because Louis and others treat horary as something special and totally different. Louis uses the outer planets in his normal Astrology and he is a practising psychiatrist, so for him there appear to be strong barriers against applying traditional methods to natal work. He seems to believe that the methods only work for horary and even uses different house systems for horary.

Whilst you can, of course, use traditional methods for horary and modern methods for natal, why would you want to? Horary is not some aberation but an integral branch of Astrology and has been for all it's existence but for the last 200 years, or so. I use Regiomontanus houses for all my work, except for those occasions where I try to apply Greek methods.
 

Minderwiz

Where do we go from here?

I will go ahead and start a thread on horary, - a thread designed to answer questions and illustrate the methods and approaches.

I still have a couple of areas that I want to add to this thread - some medical stuff and also event Astrology and Electional Astrology (that is choosing a time to start an enterprise of some sort, not who will win the forthcoming UK General Election, or the November US elections). I don't want to overload readers though, so I'll take a break for a week or so. In the meantime I'll turn my attention to the horary thread and also doing Nik's predictions for 2010-2011.
 

DarkElectric

Hi Minderwiz,
you can always use me as an experiment for horary, that 'issue' is ongoing, and perhaps there might be something new to learn?
 

Scion

Minderwiz!

I just stumbled onto this thread and almost DIED of JOY. What a resource for the AT community; and finally I have a place to which I can refer some of the questioons I get when people are reading my crazy Decan document...

Thank you thank you for taking the time to post so beautifully, persuasively, and robustly on what is one of my favorite topics, and one that gets such short shrift in so many quarters. I am deeply grateful.
 

Scion

Minderwiz said:
Thanks alec, I hadn't thought of doing it as a book but you've definitely given me an idea there LOL, There just doesn't appear to be an introductory textbook for the newbie.
Not only would I buy it, I'd buy it to give to other people. There is a massive gap in the literature in terms of a beginner-friendly text that doesn't lobotomize the topic.

Please consider it, Minderwiz!
 

Professor X

Excellent thread Minderwiz. Very very very informative.