Everything goes in cycles, even astrology.

There are periods when one type of approach to the subject becomes popular and then that wanes to be followed by another one.

If we had a natal chart for astrology itself I’m sure we could track these by looking at transits.

Maybe Uranus sign position can say something about it.

Uranus has a lot to do with how people think, it’s passage through the signs can often show the political viewpoint that seems to take a hold at the time. 

Since it’s been in Taurus it’s no coincidence that right wing thinking has become much more prevalent. 

After all the last time Uranus was in the sign was 1935 – 42 coinciding with the rise of fascism in Europe, led by Adolf Hitler whose Sun is 0 Taurus. 

The same kind of thing occurs in the world of astrology.

Perhaps Uranus’ current transit through the conservative sign Taurus relates to the recent increase in interest in Hellenistic Astrology. 

If this is true maybe it’s progress into Gemini will align with people dropping a certain “ house system “ and focusing on more modern approaches.

We might expect more information and communication, maybe a more varied approach with perhaps greater use of asteroids, midpoints, harmonics, different zodiacs etc.

For many people Astrology would be spread more thinly and would naturally lose some of its depth, but would be a good tool for gossiping about others.

As a triple Capricorn this kind of approach wouldn’t suit me but then again my role seems to play the sceptic for whatever trend is popular at the time.

No doubt in Gemini I will have to direct my ascerbic observations onto the trend to fill charts with any piece of rock or space junk that happens to be floating up there. 

Some modern astrologers will pick whatever minor aspect, harmonic, asteroid or midpoint backs up what they want to say without taking into account that they would also use any other one as well, therefore making any deductions they come to utterly meaningless.

But Uranus is still in Taurus so the traditionalists are fair game at the moment.

I am not against any astrologer using any technique they like. I just like to test them all to see if they actually work in practice. 

But my biggest problem with traditional astrologers is with something that they by and large seem to think is admirable.

This is “ importing a traditional mindset “ to the issues of the present day.

Astrology is essentially a spiritual view of the world and you can’t really understand the subject, if you insist on denying that fact.

For astrology to work or even exist at all there is an assumption of cosmic order – and that is the very definition of the spiritual view of the Universe.

However as humans we have always imposed our own limited vision on spirituality.

For a few people religion is the complete dissolution of the experience of the self and a union with the whole.

For others religion is an excuse to kill everybody else.

And naturally there are many different views in between those two extremes.

The biggest misunderstanding that seems to be held in a vicelike grip by most of the world’s major organised religions is the binary one.

That there is heaven and hell, good and bad, right and wrong, up and down. 

The natural subtext to this is whatever “ we “ say is right and whatever “ they “ say is wrong. 

So if you want to go to heaven rather than hell you better do what we say and believe what we do.

Astrology more than any other discipline teaches us that this binary concept is absurd.

Every single moment brings a different combination of planets and placements and each is as good or right as any other. 

As long as humans recognise this simple fact and accept each other with all our different characters and life themes then we will be able to get along ok.

But the binary concept of good and bad leads only one way – straight to hell because we are already trying to divide ourselves and other people into good bits and bad bits with the implied view that we should try very hard to be on our “ good “ side and repress the “ bad “ side 

If as people say the road to hell is paved with good intentions this is exactly what they mean.

One thing that amazes me about traditional astrologers and their reverie for the past is that they don’t seem to acknowledge that natal astrology was not the main work of their predecessors.

This is for the simple fact that few people in those days knew their birth times or had any access to records detailing them. In many cases this even applied to the actual birthdates.

So while astrologers of yore might have included the horoscopes of some notable people in their writings, the vast majority of their day to day clients would have not been interested even if they had known their birthdata.

In those days, people went to an astrologer not to gain insight into their own psychology but looking for answers to specific questions about what was going to happen to them.

So astrology was a tool for divination and the main method used was horary.

The great interest in psychological astrology and natal charts was mostly a 20th century phenomenon.

This development has like all others brought pluses and losses.

An expansion of the psychological approach to the subject has been a great gift to humanity, however it has been accompanied by a dilution of some of astrology’s predictive capacity.

With anything, the further one goes from the source the wider the impact but the more disperse it becomes

The focus on Sun signs, whilst bringing astrology to the masses has brought with it a dissolution of much of the essence of the subject.

As a consequence of this trend, the last 40 years have brought an increasing interest in and concentration on traditional approaches and methods.

This is an admirable trend but it has also brought its own problems because many practitioners try to incorporate principles that belong to ancient divinatory systems into modern psychological astrology without seeing the essential difference between horary and natal.

In fact this confusion of horary and natal astrology principles makes me question whether the people doing it truly understand either.

Horary is divination.

Natal astrology is about attempting to understand the complexities of personality and life themes.

In a natal chart all the planets represent parts of that person’s complexes. 

The sensible approach is one of synthesis.

In horary each planet can represent a different person involved in the question being asked. 

We have to divide them and see them as essentially different because the querent symbolised by the Ascendant ruler wants to know if the other ones are advantageously placed relative to them or not. 

The planets in horary have to be regarded as separate entities and therefore we need to find a way of assessing them to see if they are on the client’s side.

Rulership is the only method available to choose which planet to signify these different people.

The 12 houses represent the different areas of life. Every possible question that could be asked by anyone can be attributed to one of these houses.

So how to judge such a question ?

If it is about a querent’s health should we choose any planets in the 1st house to represent them and ones in the 6th to cover their health ?

In any chart there are only 10 possible planets and 3 of them ( Sun, Mercury and Venus ) are always going to be close together so there will invariably be 3 or more empty houses.

This means that the chances of either the 1st house or the 6th being empty are almost even, so this method obviously won’t do.

Also a planet in the 1st house will never make a major aspect to one in the 6th so health questions could never be answered. Ditto 2nd, 8th and 12th house questions.

So using house placements to judge a horary could never work.

Which leaves us with rulerships. If we allow the five ancient planets to rule two signs each with the Sun and Moon covering one, then all the houses are catered for.

Because they can be anywhere in a chart, the concern about any question not having a possible answer never arises. So dignities are essential in horary.

Planetary dignity is not essential or even needed in natal astrology.

Planets in houses and their aspects to other ones are sufficient to describe the themes of a person’s life.

If the native has the Sun in the 10th house in trine to Jupiter in the 2nd we know they will have a successful career and do well financially.

The sign that the Sun is in will probably give us some idea as to what type of career that would be. If it’s in Cancer, maybe they would become a wealthy estate agent or property developer.

Knowing that the Sun would also rule the 11th house is of no help whatsoever.

Would someone with a 10th house Cancer Sun find their career is always helped by their friends whereas someone with a Pisces Sun there would always receive aid from their siblings ( Leo would be on the cusp of the 3rd house ) ?

The same rulerships that are essential to horary are meaningless in natal.

Notions of detriment, exaltation and fall are also extremely helpful in horary because they give us a way to assess the character of the person who the question is about.

If a querent is asking whether it’s a good idea to do business with another person represented in the chart by Venus, it’s important to know if it’s in Taurus ( dignity ) or Scorpio ( detriment ) because that simple fact could make the difference between making a sound investment or falling for a con. 

But you can’t apply that kind of thinking to natal astrology.

Having Venus in Taurus doesn’t mean someone is a good person any more than in Scorpio makes them a baddie. But when you look at some traditional interpretations of natal charts you could easily be fooled into thinking that on some level they are. 

Each planetary placement has its own range of behaviour and expression.

The natal astrologer faced with either one of these would want to encourage the client to accept their natal placement and focus their energies on looking to express the higher areas of the ranges available to them.

Hence Venus in Taurus would be encouraged towards more artistic expression and away from an overly materialistic approach to life.

Venus in Scorpio would be encouraged towards deep personal transformation and overcoming baser emotions rather than wallowing in them.

Traditional astrology is rife with this kind of binary thinking.

Fire and Air signs are called positive, Earth and Water – negative .

This smacks of old time religion which equates the masculine with nobility and godliness, the feminine is somehow unclean and to be subjugated and hidden.

I don’t know whether people have noticed but a lot of the “ leaders “ in the field of both traditional astrology and religion are men.

“ Modern astrology “ seems to have more women at the helm.

The same goes for the absurd division into day and night charts. 

If you were born in the daytime you are somehow favoured, if at night you are suspect and there’s something wrong with you.

The traditional obsession with planetary dignities is an attempt to drag the subject back to the dark ages.

Who can say that Mercury in Virgo is somehow better than in Pisces ?

They both view the world differently and each is a useful contributor.

The same goes for the Sun in Leo versus Aquarius or Aries versus Libra.

In a horary we need to recognise the different planets as being other people involved in the question. They are separate entities from the querent.

If we even begin to treat planets in a nativity in this way we are doing the client a great disservice. They will only grow by coming to terms with all of the placements in their chart as an expression of themselves.

A great example of this is when dealing with opposition aspects.

If someone for example has Mars in the 1st house opposite Saturn in the 7th, it is very easy for them to project the Saturn onto other people, most particularly those who they are in relationship with.

They may well feel that their marriage partner is trying to control and even suppress them and frustrate their desire for independence.

What they need to do is see both ends of the opposition as an important part of themselves rather than trying to identify with one end only.

In actual fact it is very likely that this person needs some form of Saturnian restraint, discipline, direction and focus and is unable to provide that for themselves so looks for the type of partner that would supply that experience for them.

So far from separating planets in a natal chart, growth can only happen if we seek to synthesise and unify them.

And traditional notions of good and bad can only be a hindrance in this dimension.

Once you acknowledge that the main reason for someone to use astrology in traditional times was for divination through horary rather than psychological understanding of their own life themes through natal, its easy to see why the system of planetary dignities was integral to the reading of a chart.

It also figures that with a modern focus on psychology and natal charts, rulerships lose that meaning and are not required or even helpful.

Although the main theme of this article is about the futility of using horary concepts in natal charting, the other side of that coin is just as foolish.

I see many followers of astrology trying to come to grips with a horary by using the same basic method that they apply to their own birth chart.

They try to answer the question without first stopping to consider which planets signify which of the people or situations involved in the question and try to wing it on their ” feel for ” astrology.

This soon gets them into difficulty because most horary questions require a yes or no answer – will I catch this plague that’s going round or will I receive an inheritance from my uncle ?

If there exists an applying aspect between the rulers of the 1st and 6th houses the answer to both questions would be yes because the 6th house is also the 3rd ( brother ) from the 4th ( parent ).

You can’t get that simple accurate answer from using natal methods.

We can think of an astrological chart as the expression of the divinity in that moment.

A horary seeks to divide that divinity in order to answer a specific problem.

A natal chart knows that you can’t and shouldn’t divide. Your client’s wellbeing and understanding depend on it.

In natal astrology you can’t divide the divine. 

Natal and horary – never the twain shall mix. Maybe people will understand this simple fact once Uranus moves into Gemini.

Posted on 19th March 2023

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