Lost Item Horary

You know, I've said I'm not that good at lost item horaries, but then a very nice question comes along and proves me wrong! Here it is!

Question: Where is the lost salt?
Time Question Received & Understood: 4:12 pm CST December 17, 2013
Place Question Received & Understood: Iowa City, IA 41 N 39 91 W 31

The meaning of the astrological factors are fully explained in the analysis below.

Astrological Factors Considered:

In this chart 21 Gemini rises and it is Moon hour. The chart is not radical/rooted, but we can get an accurate answer from it.

As Gemini rises the querent is signified by Mercury who is in detriment and going to combustion conjunct the 7th house cusp.

The ruler of the 2nd house of moveable objects is the Moon, who signifies the sale. The Moon, rules salty tastes, says Agrippa TBOP BK I ch 24 and Al-Biruni

The Moon is dignified by sign in the 1st house.

The Moon squares Mars. Mercury the significator of the querent conjoins the Sun.

Analysis:

Mercury natural ruler of thought is afflicted and going to combustion. The querent is not thinking clearly and not seeing clearly.

The Moon, ruler of the 2nd naturally rules salt which is appropriate. The Moon is highly dignified, so the salt container is not damaged, but in perfect condition. The Moon is in the 1st an angular house so in the querent’s house and very near by. The Moon makes an antiscion to the Ascendant, a sign of recovery.

Results:

About 10 minutes after hearing the horary, the querent realized that the salt was in a different container from the one they remembered and found the actual container, very nearby and in perfect condition.

Comments:

It really never ceases to amaze me how perfectly horaries can both fit and reveal the situation. This one was spot on and I was relaxed enough with the chart to really nail the reading!

What is It about Elections?

What is it about elections that drives so many clients crazy! I just had an electional client demand a refund because I didn't write in my e-mail, "Dear [Name of Client]" and end the e-mail with "Sincerely yours" This, and my boilerplate electional disclaimer was simply unacceptable!!!!

Yes, indeedy! This certainly strikes me as bizarre since I am fairly old fashioned in my e-mails and do tend to write full sentences, capitalize and use commas and periods. I am accustomed to getting e-mails in "texting" style with no caps, no punctuation and all lower case, but it usually doesn't send me into a rage.

No, it just must be something about elections. I think I am going to do a video about elections, but it's going to be tough, I'd estimate that I have problems with electional customers or they have problems with me about 50-70% of the time. For horary or natal the problems are perhaps 5% of the time, so it's not just me with Mars in Leo.

Let me see if I can identify some of the problems:

(1) Excessively high expectations of the results of an election

Many clients have the expectation that if they can just find the exact, perfect election that anything can be accomplished. Certainly much of modern advertising and indeed the modern ego based outlook does buy into the idea that you can have anything you want and in fact have a constitutional right to whatever you want. The idea of Fate is downright upsetting to moderns.

But in traditional astrology we recognize that an election, a choice of time for an activity, is perhaps the lowest and least powerful cycle of fate in operation. If we chose a good time for money, we must also consider money in our natal chart, our personal life time fate. We need to consider the fate of our family, and our social standing. Lilly says that if the son of a king and the son of a peasant have the same birth chart, that the son of the king becomes a king, but the son of a peasant becomes a big man in his neighborhood. We need to consider the fate of the economy, an otherwise great election during the Great Depression, wouldn't do as well as a similar election in a bull market. We also need to consider the fate of our country and the world as a whole. I've often thought that if you had a good natal chart and good election in Poland in 1939 you get to be a refugee rather than being dead!

So in traditional astrology Fate exists and we operate within the limits that it sets at various levels. Electional astrology is like gardening, if we wisely chose within the options presented to us, we can reap our harvest. We cannot overthrow Fate, just play the cards that have been dealt us well.

This makes sense. If I have the greatest election of the century, will I as a 5'6" 50 year old be able to play professional basketball? If I have a great election will I be elected President of the US? No matter how good the election, these are impossible for me, given my situation.

(2) NO ELECTION IS PERFECT!

The next problem is that electional customers feel that having paid, they have a right to, if not a perfect election, then an election with no problem areas.

This is like asking for a whole day with no problems. Even on the best day of my life there were moments of unhappiness and difficulty. No matter what time you chose there will be some astrological problems with it. It simply is impossible to avoid all problems. The secret of electional is minimizing the problems as much as possible. It is always possible to find the best election over any given date and time range, while this election may not be that great, it does have the inestimable advantage of avoiding the really terrible times.

Still many electional customers are unhappy that there are problems in their election, not realizing that this is inevitable.

(3) Modern versus Traditional Astrology

Most electional clients know a little bit about modern natal astrology, thus are an excellent example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing since I use traditional electional astrological techniques.

Even in traditional there are significant differences between natal and electional astrology, for example the difference in use of separating and applying aspects, or the fact that in natal astrology the whole chart is significant while in electional only particular factors are relevant.

Furthermore, there really isn't any established standard modern electional technique, every modern astrologer who does electional seems to do it differently.

This leads to many misunderstandings and unhappy customers. What they consider to be a problem, may not be in traditional astrology and what they consider to be vital, also may not be in traditional methodology.

So it is not really surprising that there are lots of problems with electional customers. It's really not their fault that they don't understand the process and have unreasonable expectations, it's just a continuing problem that I need to keep working on. Still it may be unsolvable, we shall see.

The Incredible Pull of Nothing

Recently I came across this very interesting definition of what was referred to as extreme scientific empirical materialism:

“we're all nothing but matter and energy and eventually the universe is going to die as if we never existed, so what's the point in trying to hope and fantasize in a world full of suffering and destruction where morality is dictated by force. Your consciousness is merely an electrochemical reaction inside a dying chemical reactor called the brain which, out of animalistic instincts to protect itself from pain, creates the illusion of meaning and significance in a reality that has none. Good, evil, morality and thought are nothing but illusions, with no absolute standard in the universe by which to prove their absolute existence as immutable physical laws.”

I would argue that this is a worldview that most of us are familiar with, I might even say it haunts us. In fact, we could distill the whole paragraph down to “we’re all nothing” and “Good, evil, morality and thought are nothing” Or this quote from a book review on a recent popular philosophy book, “which tackles one of the oldest and most profound questions that humans have asked; ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’” What I find fascinating is that it is so easy to accept the existence of nothing and in fact nothing is the default setting, of which there can be no doubt, while the existence of something, anything is questionable. Properly speaking this is nihilism, but of course nihilism has a bad reputation

Sometimes we talk about worldview like fish swimming in the sea of a belief or attitude, but for moderns the belief in nothing is more than simply a concept, it is a philosophical black hole. Please don’t take this as simply pejorative, as just name calling. I’m trying to make a more exact point. A black hole is so dense that even light cannot escape, it has such incredible mass that it exerts an irresistible gravitational pull if you are within range, everything within a vast distance of the black hole is affected by its great power.

The despair and hopelessness that is a natural result of this nihilistic fusion of materialism and existentialism is simply part of our worldview. The antidote is often a Promethean myth of the hero, who despite the ever presence and inevitability of nothing, strives bravely and self creates, ala Ayn Rand.

For every society except the modern, the idea of “nothing” seems rather odd. After all can you show me nothing? Your hand appears to be empty, but it is full of air and electrical and magnetic fields, chi and prana, etc., etc. Further, once we posit it, once we describe it, once it has qualities, nothing is a something.

Why is this even important? Faith in nothing has incredibly diverse consequences, particularly in ethics, but even in our day to day lives. If nothing matters, if there are no consequences, then there is no real need for limits.

I suppose there are nihilistic mages and astrologers, but since most modern nihilism relies on the sort of extreme scientific materialism noted above this poses a problem. How can we practice spiritual arts if there is no spirit?

Ultimately, for me, while I like the material boosts I have had with magic, and the ability to predict with astrology, perhaps the most important effect of my astrological and magical practice has been to slowly move me out of the gravitational pull of nothing.