Considerations Before Judgment: 0 Degrees Rising

On pages 121-3 of Christian Astrology, the most illustrious practitioner of our art, William Lilly, sets forth a list of what he calls "Considerations before Judgment" These are a list of factors, mostly negative, that he states affect the astrologer's ability to read a horary chart.

The considerations, aka the "strictures" are a great bugbear of modern horary practice. My experience and the experience of my horary teacher, Lee Lehman, is that the considerations are mostly negative, but very useful information. Most importantly they do not stop you from judging a chart, in most cases and charts with considerations present will give accurate results. I refer those interested to Warnock's Horary Case Book, e.g., pages 14 and 24 which are examples of 29 degrees, i.e., late degrees rising, which still gave perfectly accurate readings.

One consideration that I do apply, however, is 0 degrees rising. I do apply this rule exactly however, judging charts with 1, 2 & 3 degrees rising, eg pages 26 & 38 of Warnock's Horary Case Book. It is only charts that actually have 0 degrees rising that I don't judge.

However, 0 degrees rising still gives us very useful information, even if we don't judge the chart itself. For my practice only, and I am not attempting to promulgate this always true for all astrologers, 0 degrees rising indicates two possibilities.

(1) The situation has not jelled sufficiently to judge it, we are still in the early stages of the question. I somewhat flippantly call this the "Magic 8 ball says 'ask again later!'" The solution is to wait, at least a few hours and ask again. My recommendation to clients is to ask again based on their emotional state. "Ask the question" I say, "when you are just dying to know the answer"

(2) The querent has not asked the root question. This is the most interesting indication presented by 0 degrees rising.

What do I mean by root question? Well, I had a very interesting example of this in the past week. A querent asked, "Should I get treatment A locally?" We got 0 degrees rising. I explained about 0 degrees indicating that the querent has not asked the root question and specifically asked the querent, "have you considered whether you should get the treatment at all?" They were amazed because they had strongly considered asking this, but decided to ask about the location of treatment instead.

Another example of 0 degrees = not root question involved moving. A querent asked, "Should I move to Los Angeles?" chart was 0 degrees rising. "Is this the root question?" I asked, "Oh, should we even move from Denver?" Chart of this question said no, stay in Denver.

These examples are extremely interesting because we are basically engaged in this ongoing dialogue with the chart, really with the situation itself. The chart is talking to us! It is easy as an astrologer to get caught up with the more "scientific" aspects of astrology, the charts produced by computer, the complex technique and forget that we are engaged in divination. As astrologers we are not simply executing algorithms, we are peering into the deep underlying patterns of reality itself. That these patterns can actually act like personalities and can be interacted with is somewhat surprising, but my experience shows just that!

Here is more on Horary Astrology and Warnock's Horary Case Book