Electional astrology and the principle of reality

I was thinking about the problems that always arise on the subject of electional astrology.

From all the fields of astrology, electional is likely to be one of the most confused ones, with a lot of nonsense ideas floating around the internet. The problem is that the nonsense doesn´t come, as usual, from lack of technique, but most worrying, from lack of care, to sit down and figure things through.

So I am listing the main problems with electional astrology as it is practiced today. I believe that they come mainly from the non acceptance by astrologers of what I call “the principle of reality”.

Problem 1 – You can´t be elected the Queen of England.

Astrologers always said that you can´t elect anything that is not promised in the natal chart. I would go a step before: “you can´t elect anything that is impossible to happen”

(or at least very very unlikely)

I believe that there is a reality that is beyond and before any electional astrology can exist. The kind of results that we expect are determined by this reality.

If you throw a stone, it will always fall, because of gravity, doesn´t matter the moment that you chose to throw it.

The same way, you can´t elect anything that is not at least likely to happen:

• you can´t elect a proper time for a job that you don´t have the minimum qualification (e.g, president of US, CEO of Microsoft, etc).
• you can´t elect a proper time for marrying a person that hates you and is marrying you because of a contract/pregnancy/visa, etc
• you can´t elect a proper time to begin a treatment for a disease that doesn´t have a cure.

Usually in astrology you have to fight at every instance with the “free will” maniacs. But in electional they seem to quickly turn into deterministics. How many times I have seen people analyse failed marriages, business, etc, only based on the electional chart?

If two people are complete wrong for each other, futile and lack responsibility and commitment, what are the chances of a good election to really bring a good marriage?

I think that we should look at an electional chart the same way that Augoiedes looks at the “probability shift” that spells and magic should cause:

One of the challenges in putting together the operant field model of magick was devising a scale by which the strength of magical spells could be evaluated. The solution I arrived at was to conceptualize the strength of a spell based on the probability shift that it produces, much as Peter Carroll outlines in Liber Kaos but with some additional variables. This yields a simple numerical formula by which different spells can be compared and analyzed. On my scale a value of 1 represents pure chance, which is the result that would be expected without any magical effect, and the scale can increase arbitrarily as the probability shift increases. A spell that causes an event with a probability of .10 (10%) is rated at 10, a spell that causes an event with a probability of .01 (1%) is rated at 100, and so forth. With this scale the vagueries of “magical power” can be calculated using two variables, the likelihood of the event in question and whether or not the spell succeeded or failed.

I believe that this model makes things easy: you can´t be elected president of US, because the probability of you doing so is almost zero, unless you are already a very public figure in the States. If you were not born on the US, like Schwarzenegger, your chances dropped to complete zero.

But, if you are applying for a job to which you are qualified, a good time for an interview is always a good thing to have. Raising the bar from 70% to 80% is a lot more useful than raising it from 7% to 8%. The amount of “power” is the same, but the base results will determine if you can or cannot reach your goal.

If John already has some feelings for mary, a good time for a first date is more likely to help, but if she thinks he is an ogre, your elective will come to nothing.

The origin of the problem

I think that the origin of this problem, why do people forget so easily the principle of reality is because of a single phrase.

What phrase is that? It is a very powerful but simple phrase: “electional is the exact opposite of horary astrology”.

I know, many important teachers say that, but is a lie, sorry.

Think that way: horary is a divination technique, so the time you cast the charts is mythical by nature. It really IS divine time. Because it is divine time, it can show us the reality of circunstances.

So, if I am ask about my boss, and the ruler of MC is venus in virgo, squared by saturn, I can really say that my boss is no great thing. The divination makes that the ruler of MC represents my boss as he really is.

But the same principle obviously doesn´t work for electional charts! We can see several examples in books about electional astrology, where we read things like “well, we see by the MC ruler that your boss is a dumb-a$$”.

Really? Can the chart of the moment a person starts his job can make the boss an idiot, and two hours later makes it a saint? In other words, can the electional moment change what already is? I would say no.

That´s why is so stupid to try to “change” the horary chart, like people who wait until the moon is no longer void of course so they can ask a horary. Do you want a positive answer, or you want an accurate one?

One further example is from the book by Lee Lehman, the “martial art of horary astrology”. In one example, she uses a technique from horary to see if a married man really told the true, that he had never slept around. In this technique we see if the moon and mercury are afflicted, if the angles are fixed, etc.

But she uses the time he made that statement, not a time for an horary.

Sometimes the difference between an horary and an event can be blurry, but it is important to see that this technique only works for horary… if this technique could work for any single and simple piece of time, the logical conclusion would be that, at some particular times, no one would be allowed to lie. There would be hours and hours with the angles fixed, and moon and mercury in excellent state, where no one could say a lie!

Of course every politician or news caster who tried to make a speech during these miracle times would have choke to death. It would be a nicer world, but I don´t think that is our world.

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Horary Test – Will I get the job

This is a horary “mystery chart”. You can put your answer in the comments. I will give the result friday at night.

Question – Will I get the job?

Background – A colleague from my course said that there was an opening in their department at the university. I had an interview with a few coordinators booked in a few days.

Did I get the job?

19/Jun/07
13h39
Bogota Colombia

Note: the houses are in Alchabitius, but you can use whatever system that you want.

Edited: the answer is below, in the commentaries session.

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Mars in Aries

Mars entered into Aries this 22 april of 2009, his sign of rulership.

Electional astrology

Mars in the fiery soldier in his fiery domicile, so the general indication is to do haste, energetic, physical things.

The secret of electional astrology is that we usually do things at random or according to the official calendar, which is arbitrary. “Oh, I will start a diet on monday”. Why monday, the lazy day of the moon, and not on a tuesday, day of mars?

Why to start going to the gym on the 1st of the new month? Start now that mars in his warrior-like appearance!

It doesn´t seem like a good time to start relationships! Mars and venus are chasing eachother without ever catching up! Unless you like a “forbid love” or “doomed loved” story, like Romeo and Juliet, etc, I wouldn´t advise this as the proper moment to start a relationship or having a first date.

Of course, these are only preliminary considerations… even when the general significators are in bad shape is always possible to find a non-awful election to do the job.

Natal astrology

Mars is a medium velocity planet, and its transits take about two months at each sign. So, if you have one of the important points in your chart (ASC, MC, Sun or moon) in Aries or Libra, you probably should have a look at it.

Don´t expect great things, transits are only good to trigger other higher scale unfolding of the natal chart (like primary directions, firdar and profections). And yes, I am also including the transits of the modern three Stooges. By themselves they usually only show changes of mood.

But, in our everyday lives, changes of mood also can be important, so keep a look at mars. Usually a planet has his “peak” when he is close to the point that he is transiting, but pay attention to any changes you felt the day that mars entered aries. This can give clues to his influence.

Horary astrology

Be prepared for horary charts of doomed love, were querent is represented by either mars or venus. Venus is  usually faster than mars, but right now mars has the advantage. Venus is speeding up, but she won´t be able to catch up with mars untill he get out of aries, frustrating most of the love horaries with asc in taurus, scorpio, aries and libra of this period!

In fact, mars and venus will stand close together for the next few months! So this promises to be a hard journey for lovers, as first venus will be exiled in aries, and then when she changes to taurus, it will be mars turn to be exiled!

Mundane Astrology

Venus had her station in 29 Pisces, where she was conjoined by Mars.  Besides that, this conjunction was watched by the moon, who transited this conjunction. This in mundane astrology is usually a very good sign that something will happen. Besides that, there is also the conjunction with star Scheat.

Soon after the conjunction, government of Mexico City decided to take hard actions against the Influenza Porcine, or swine flu. All schools, from kindergarten through universities, are closed, and so are museuns, theaters, etc. At least 15% of the city is closed since friday. People are advised to stay in home, to wash hands often, and to avoid any contact as hand shakes or kisses on the face.

Could this infection be showed by the conjunction of mars and venus in 29th of pisces? If it is I really don´t know. Although when I saw the conjunction I said to myself “hmmm, this will not be good”, but I would never thought in influenza.

We will have other clues depending of the behavior of the virus and comparing it with the movement of venus and mars in the next days and weeks.

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Nehran Magazine

As I said before, about the Obama´s inauguration, some rumors were around the internet that because the chart of the inauguration had a moon void of course (the moon was not void really, but that is besides the point), that this was a sign of Obama´s assassination. Well, as Rodney Smith showed, there is no relationship between the death of an american president and the void moon!

But I tried to do a further study and, as I was invited to write an article by Mai, it is now published in the March issue of Nehran magazine, an english-arabic magazine of astrology.

It is just a look between the inauguration charts were a president died (not only by assassination) and the others were a president didn´t. As it is obvious, this is far from a definitive technique. My goal was to look in all inauguration charts available and try to see if there is any real “red flags” that we can use to see if a president will end his term in the U.S.

You can see other images from the magazine here:

http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4258

You can download the magazine directly here:

www.nehran.com/EngMar09.pdf

This copy is for mobile phones and pocket PCs

www.nehran.com/EngMar09Mob.pdf

And, if anyone is interested, you can also download the arabic version:

www.nehran.com/AraMar09.pdf

The editor said that my article was very well received in the arabic version, so one reason to be glad.

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House and double blind

I was watching House the other day. Thirteen was beginning her clinical trial with a new medication, and Cartman discovers that she is taking the Placebo and not the real medicine.

One day I will do a comparation between the methods of CSI and House, but for now, let´s focus on this example

The Experimental Method

One of the great combat horses of the empirical science is the experimental method. It is a very simple thing, but with very good results: you focus on one or two variables, and you keep changing this variables (otherwise they would be names constants). E.g. you have a carbon resistor and you let a electric current go through it. You measure the ohms of the resistor. Then you go and, by instance, change the temperature a little bit, and measure again, and change it again, and again, etc, etc.

It is a very simple method and it is very elegant. In physics. Unfortunately it hardly works in anything else.

Seriously. I have a degree in chemistry. We love science. We love experimentation. We love the “experimental method”. But it really don´t work. Chemical combinations that says in the book that should work, often don´t. Even in chemistry, which is one of the “hardest” sciences, there is a huge degree of art and luck. No two chemical reactions are completely equal, although they often are very similar. In physics an experiment can always be repeated by other physics with the same amount of money. In chemistry we need the money and somebody who have enough experience to make the damn things to work as they should !

If this is how things work in chemistry, is not a huge mystery why, when people tried to use the “experimental method” to everything in life, results were less than impressive. Try to do experimentation in administration, sociology, economy, medicine, and why not, astrology, often shows a lack of knowledge of the limitations of the method, as well as the characteristics of the science in which the experimental method is being applied to. Usually, our “brilliant scientist” is trying to use methods from other sciences, like physics, in another field of knowledge, like education, without minimum regard for the particular conditions, theories and “state of the art” of this discipline.

This “importation” usually is done by a matter of status. It may be done by administrators, educators, astrologers, etc, who want to be seen as “real serious scientists”. So, they think that using the same method as physics, they will one day also get the Nobel prize. As I have a masters in business administration and another in education, well, I can say that I have seen it all !

Clinical trials and control groups

When using the experimental method in medicine, or other sciences, we can´t do the same as we did in our example with the resistor. We don´t have the power to really shift the variables back and forth. What we do instead is to use several subjects and apply the same condition to subjects with different, but known, traits, or to apply different conditions to subjects with the same known trait.

Clinical trials are usually of the second kind. We use a group of people with a known trait (usually the trait is having a disease) and we give them different conditions, by instance, placebo for one  group and medicine for another. The placebo effect is one of those things that is so repeated that we think that we “understood” placebo… but the simple truth that the mind can heal if tricked to do so, was never fully investigated.

In the case of Thirteen and Cartman, as it is a work of fiction, there are obviously a lot of mistakes. In the episode, the nurse tells Cartman that Thirteen is in the Placebo group because her medicine has no smell. Well, to a study to be “double-blinded” means that no one knows what each pacient is taking ! You can´t have the nurses knowing what pacients are in the placebo group because their attitudes toward the patients can hugely affect the placebo effect ! Not only that, but there will be effects on the patients as well. I remember that the first tests with anti-HIV medication were greatly criticized: it was discovered that desperate pacients would exchange medication between each other, in the hope of being given at least 50% of the true medicine !

In reality is unethical to give placebo to patients with life threatening diseases, and I don´t think this kind of study is done anymore. What is done instead is to give to one group the new drug, and to the control group (not placebo group) a regular drug, used as the standard for the treatment of the disease.  This makes it hard to prove the “pure effect” of the drug, but in the long run we are only interested in proving that the new drug is better than the standard treatment. No need to give water to patients to prove that !

Control groups and astrology

Astrologers who think that “one day astrology will be recognized as a science” usually do statistical research looking for “signatures”. But you see few to no researches using control groups.

The reason is obvious. Astrologers are usually so worried about finding the yes, that will hardly bother to look for the “no” as well.

I will first focus on case studies with a control group, then will say a little word about control groups in statistical research.

A good example would be http://www.astrology-reading.com.au/USA_Presidents_who_died_in_office.html. He predicted a few months ago, the somewhat unlikely prediction that Bush would be killed in october (who would care to kill Bush in october of his last term is beyond me).

Note that I am not claiming that his astrology is “bad” or in any way analyzing his astrological reasoning. What I ask you to see is his method, in which he looks for:

• transits of the outer planets to the angles of the chart of the US (the one he uses) for the times the US presidents died in office
• uses the solar return to the chart of the US for the times the US presidents died in office
• aparently uses other factors, like eclipses, also for the times the US presidents died in office

Well, you probably already know to where I am going… we see no indication that he ever bothered to create a control group ! There are 8 presidents who died in office, but almost 40 who didn´t!

Our goal is not to see what configurations were present in the death of the presidents, but to see which configurations were present when they died which weren´t present in the control group! Without this knowledge, we could as well use the moon in taurus as an important factor to know when a president will die !

I remember a “study” about suicide, in which the “researcher” concluded that uranus in scorpio was a significant factor to suicide. As his sample was composed by people in their middle twenties to thirties, I was not surprised by this brilliant conclusion ! If he bothered to have used a control group, he would have seen that several people who were born during the 7 years that Uranus stood in scorpio didn´t bother to kill themselves.

Statistical research and control groups.

There are two cases in statistical research.

One of them is the comprovation of hypothesis. You have a clear and concrete hypothesis that you want to see if it is rejected or not (a hypothesis can never be proved!). E.g. “do people who commit suicide have more probability of having an angular mars in their natal charts?”).

You take a very large group of people and then compare it to a control group. Then you say yes or no. This is serious research, and most often than not, very frustrating.

The second type of research is the “go fishing” approach. You thrown the line and wait to something to bite. Anything at all. No a priori hypothesis of any kind. This is messy and usually shows very poor research.

As the researcher will accept absolutely ANYTHING that has a significant difference between the test and control group, then he is bound to find something ! He will accept a mars angular, but also a pluto angular, a quiron sextile fortuna, ceres biquintile Cupid, absolutely anything can be found.

In this kind of research the researcher will always be happy because he made “several important discoveries”. Astrologers who use this method, don´t feel bad about yourselves. This is quickly becoming the standard in social sciences research for researchers who don´t care about their research but wants to publish something with not so much of an effort!

If you are using a “go fishing” approach, I would suggest a 20-80 approach. You take both your test group and your control group and divide them into a two parts. One part have the two 80% splits. You use them to find your “go fishing” rules. You can´t use any data of the 20% split.

AFTER you have generated a rule, you then go and try to use this rule in the 20% split (remember that the 20% split is formed by 20% of the test group and 20% of the control group). Then you can test your rule in this fresh sample, because it wasn´t used to create your rule.

But be prepared to cry when all your beautiful correlations suddenly starts to colapse and vanish !

Ethics

Astrology, unlike medicine or sociology, has no presumption of causality. So, if relationship is such a difficult thing to prove through experimentation, even more so in astrology.

No matter how many events you have in your sample, you can never be totally sure that the event will repeat itself !

I have a coming article about the death of US presidents based on the inauguration charts. I can´t claim that it can work for foresight untill I have tested this method for, I don´t know, possibly centuries, as we don´t know when another death will happen.

So it is always sound advice to tell your readers that only because your research showed this and this, it doesn´t mean that will happen in the future ever again.

Or, in the case of the author of the article quoted, he removed the article in which he predicted Bush´s death. For some coincidence, it seems to just have vanished. Luckily, I was kind of expecting that, so I saved his article if anyone is interested.

Some years waaaay back, I wrongly predicted that Queen Elizabeth would die. Well, Queen is strong and alive. But my prediction is still open in the same forum for the world to see. There is no shame in getting it wrong, if you learn from your mistakes.

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Firdar

I was answering a question about Firdar, and because of the problems in space, I thought that it would better to transform my answer into an proper post.

The Firdar is a method of “time lords”. What it does is to cut your life into little “slices” of time, each of these slices are ruled by a different planet, and so this planet, in his rulership, will colour this period of time with his own matters, problems and idiosyncrasies.

There are two different sets of Firdar – the natal one and the mundane (for countries, religions, etc). They are not even remotely similar, so one shouldn´t try to mix things up.

I have seem some strange remarks about Firdar being an “misinterpretation” from Hellenistic concepts. With all do respect to the greeks, some things, like whole signs houses, are now fashionable, and people are using as the next big thing, without concern of the proper context. Firdar appear in the writings of the arabic era, and were probably created in the persian astrology. The greeks had their own methods to establish time-lords, like aphesis from fortuna.

How to calculate the firdaria

There is a good explanation in the Firdaria Calculator. What is important to notice is that there are two sub-sets of firdaria: one for day charts and another for night charts. Just that. There is not a great deal of differentiation here. I was born during the day, and so my firdaria sequence will be the same as everybody who was also born during the day.

The planets share the rulership of the time according to the Chaldean order. For days charts we start with the sun, then venus, mercury, etc. After all the planets have had their rulership, then we have the north node, and the south node, and if the person is still alive (75 years old), the cycle starts again. Night charts start with the moon, then Saturn, jupiter, etc. There is also a sub-ruler to the period. During a period of rulership, let´s say of Jupiter, all the seven planets will be sub-rulers, starting with the ruler, in this case Jupiter, then the planets again in the chaldean order: Jupiter-jupiter, jupiter-mars, jupiter-sun, etc.

Warning: there is a problem with the nocturnal firdaria. In the day firdaria there is no problems, all authors says the same. Abu Mashar and the arabic astrologers said that the nodes comes after all the planets, ending the firdaria. Bonatti says that the nodes should be put after mars, in the nocturnal firdaria. I favor the firdaria from Abu Mashar, because I consider that what happened was probably a problem of translation. If you want to use my recommendation, it is listed in Janus as “Al Biruni”. Firdaria calculator uses the Bonatti firdaria, so I don´t recommend its use for night charts.

You can see in this article of Robert Hand that the majority of authors give preference to the nodes in the ending of the sequence.

How to use Firdaria

First familiarize yourself with the firdaria, to avoid committing simple errors. One example would be saying “my boyfriend is in the firdaria of mars, that´s why he got fired”. Everybody with the same age of your boyfriend (and born in the same day/night period) is also in the firdaria of mars and they are not all getting fired.

That is the main point against using the general signification of the planets, e.g., the firdaria of venus for marriage, etc. Don´t use it this way ! Remember that prediction always has to be done after careful delineation of the chart ! What is (are) the ruler of marriage ? What is the state of relationships ? How many times will the native marry? Only after that you can even begin to think in using the firdar to see if a marriage is promised.

Careful examination of the planet which rule the firdar, in the natal chart, should be done. The astrologer should see both the essencial and accidental states of the planet in the chart. Is he dignified or exiled ? Is he on a malefic house ? Is he suffering afflictions from malefics ? Also don´t forget to see sect, quadrants, if he is oriental or occidental to the sun, combustion, etc. The houses and arabic parts ruled by this planet will come into focus in this period.

Real life and firdaria

Let´s say for example that your client have an Aries ascendant. Now you have an descendant in libra, with her ruler venus. Now we see that the native will begin his venus firdar. Venus rules marriage both by essencial and accidental signification (she rules the 7th house). Wow, the native will marry !

Hmmm, not exactly. See that the venus period, for a day birth, is from his 10 to 18 birthday! In the occidental world, people from middle classes will not marry untill they are approaching their 30s. So, this probably will not bring a marriage ! Maybe it will bring lots of boyfriends/girlfriends ? Again, remember that everybody who was born with an ascendant in aries will not have the same life ! You have to see the promises in the nativity. In the particular case of social life, I think that temperament is a much better indicator of luck to attract sex than the state of the 7th house.

The same way goes in reverse. Let´s imagine a culture where every girl marries when they turn 13 years old. Well, it doesn´t matter their natal chart, they will marry at 13, with or without a natal promise (unless of course that there is other factors that will leave our native to be an old maiden). For a more practical example, you shouldn´t look in your natal chart for indications of “going to university” – because most people of average class will just go on with their schedule program of studies, according to their class and social status.

So, in some countries you go to school at 17, and in another at 19, but this is, again, more of a cultural and social effect. In the case of marriage, our society prohibits a marriage at 11, but demands an education at 19. None of this is determined by the natal chart, only by our own culture.

So, if the ruler of your 10th house is given time rulership, and you 7, it can make you a famous children, but most probably will not result in nothing, because you are too young to use the opportunity. So, the firdaria will probably focus on things with your mother.

Sub-ruler

Let´s say that your ruler of the times is awful condition, like in the chart of a fellow astrologer – mercury in pisces and in the 12th house, close to antiscia to mars (in libra!), and disposed by a Jupiter in the 8th house ! Oh, this person will have an awful mercury period !

Well, that I know it, no he didn´t. He had the usual things in life, problems, good things, college, relationships, break-ups, etc. If you see, the ruler have a extended period of time in its hands. You can´t expect that the life of our friend would be awful for the entire period of 13 years !!!!

Sub-rulers are more useful to predict based in either their natural or accidental significations. So, the firdar of the moon can bring the beginning or the ending of a phase of your life (moon is the general significator of beginnings and endings). Or it can bring a marriage for a man (it is the natural significator of “wife” in a man´s chart) or pregnancy for a woman.

Significations are much stronger if the planet has accidental signification too, or if ruler and sub ruler share the same signification. If your client is a married woman who wants children, and in the next year she will enter into the firdar of the Jupiter, sub-firdar of moon, and she has cancer on the 5th house, it is a good bet that in the next year a pregnancy may come. Both moon and jupiter are planets naturally fertile, and with powers over the 5th.

Ruler and sub-rulers

How to combine both ? Well, there are several possibilities, but I will give my suggestions to beginners:

Steven Birchfield suggests that you can think of the ruler as a “president” which creates the agenda, and the sub-ruler as an administrator, which will put that in practical use. Let´s see Clinton´s, Bush´s and Obama´s administration. Very different presidents, but if the same person is administrating an office, like FEMA, well, we expect that he will interpret the president´s directions in his own way. The same with planets.

If the firdar is ruled by a strong Jupiter in the 9th, one of the themes that arise may be religion. But if the sub-ruler is mars, he will probably bring conflicts and break up from religion and values. Mars administrates the matter that he receives from Jupiter in his own way.

Always see if the two planets share some signification, e.g, if  Jupiter rules the 12th, and mars rules the 6th, they both have some saying about diseases, enemies and troubles. If they are in bad state,they will bring unfortune.

In the case of my fellow astrologer, with mercury in the 12th, his life went by ok, untill he entered the sub-firdar of mars, in detriment in libra, in the 6th house, retrograde, and in antiscia with mercury. Two months after that, he broke a leg, and is still recovering from a series of operations and infections.

Notice also if the planets have special configurations in the chart, specially aspects. Two planets that are in opposition are less likely to run things smoothly when they are sharing a firdar.

Most of things that I learned from Firdar are from discussions with Steven Birchfield… rest assure that the good points of this article are from his, and any mistake is mine

The firdar is an important technique, but I think it should be used with care. Don´t forget that none of the ancient´s techniques were meant to be used as  “stand alone”… they were meant to be used in combination: firdaria, profections, primary directions and solar revolutions.

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Oscar season

This sunday, 22 February, we will have again the Oscars, with the 81st Academy Awards.

Astrology is always working. All the time. Even during the Oscars, or football´s games. So, if we look at the heavens, we can look at what is bring to our attention.

It is always an interesting exercise to look for correlations between the stars and current events. So let´s try to do it, just for the fun of it.

The sky in the day of the Oscars: we will have Saturn in Virgo, Venus in Aries, Sun in Pisces, and mercury, mars, moon and jupiter will all be in aquarius.

So let´s see each one of the nominee for best picture this year

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

A man is born old and starts to grow younger as time passes. What does this reminds you?

So, I get Saturn (old age) going backwards (as he is retrograde) to young (he is in the sign of mercury, the child).

Very simple indeed. Let´s see another one.

Milk:

the first gay man to be elected to a public office is murdered. Hmmm, maybe venus in aries.

Frost/Nixon

Interviews with a president who renounced in disgrace, and now is recovering from a ilness in La Casa Pacifica in California, taking a break. I think the best fit is Sun in pisces.

Slumdog Millionaire and The Reader

A litte more difficult. We have in one case moon conj. mars, and in the other mercury conj. Jupiter, both conjunctions in Aquarius. Hard to know which one is which.

I think the answer is slumdog (mercury) goes to a millionaire show thanks to strokes of luck (jupiter) and a young man (mars) having an affair with an older woman (moon).

Of course, several other combinations are possible, but I think for now that these ones make sense. But I haven´t seen any of the movies, so people who have actually saw them can see elements that are not obvious to me!

And the winner is…

Based on the last oscars, I believe the winner will be The curious history of Benjamin Button. Yes, I know, you are all saying “big deal”.

In oddschecker.com, Slumdog is listed as favorite, 1.17, against Ben Button (5), Milk (26), Frost/nixon (34) and the Reader (41).

So if anyone is willing to place a bet, send a 10% fee to your beloved astrologer.

What is the house of…?

I have noticed a trend of asking “What is the house of …” in several forums, for example:

• What is the house for the ex-wife?
• What is the house of redundancy?
• What is the house of diets?
• What house rules secrets?
• What is the house of Mantras?
• What house rules jealously?

Notice that there is not anything wrong in asking this questions. Every one of these things are “ruled” by something in astrology, but not always by a house.

But taken as a whole, so many similar questions,  I have grown worried that maybe there is an underline problem.

I think that these questions are proliferating over time because of three factors:

The first one is that horary astrologers are getting to addicted to assign every possible matter over the world to a house.

The second  is the to discover what is the real matter asked about.

The final factor is language and the role of the astrologer.

Is there a house for everything ?

I think that astrologers are getting addicted to the idea that you can assign every thing to a house. What is the house of computers, and cell phones, and cotton candy, and nails, and ribs, and my poodle´s tail?

The problem probably raises because, when we are students, we learn horary in the very simple scheme of “well, see the lord of first house. Now look for the ruler of the house you want, let´s say it´s a lover, than it is house 7″. Yes, this is true in 85% of the time, but it is not always, so I think that astrologers should be prepared to give up of this “crutch” over time.

If in 85% of the time we are worried about the ruler of a house, what do we look for in the other 15% ? Generally we are looking for essencial significations. For instance, if I am looking for a lost object, generally I will look for the ruler of 2nd house, or the 4th house. But if I am looking for a very specific object, generally the essencial signification is more important. E.g., if I am looking for a really old object, saturn, or if I am looking for my rifle, mars, etc.

Another familiar example that horary astrologers seem to have a hard time to teach their students is in the problem of the lover, or ex-wife. I am the querent, so I get the first house. S/he is the 7th house ruler. But the lover/husband-wife, what house does s/he get? We can´t give him/her the 7th from the 7th, because it would go back to the first !

This is a clear example that not everything should be seen through the eyes of “houses”. The damn husband that ruins our dreams of dating her can be seen as bad, bad Saturn. Our wives´s lover can be seen as young mars conjunct her planet.

If s/he is leaving the partner and coming to show us a little love, we will probably a separation with a planet (no matter what house it rules) and an application to our significator. So, many times, we will not look for significators a priori, we will wait to the chart to tell us what it want us to know.

So, there is no reason for you to look for a house “to rule diets”. You want to loose weight, so maybe your significator is getting out of a sign of water (need, gluttony) and going for a sign of air (light, intellectual, thin). Maybe is separating from Jupiter (candy tooth) and going to Saturn (bulimic supermodel).

What is the real matter ?

As I wrote in a different post, the more important problem in horary astrology is that clients usually don´t tell the whole true, or don´t know exactly what to ask. So, in many ocasions we have a problem of what is the real and true matter of the question, the “radix” of the question. It is like a play, where we need to see what are the main actors from the supporting cast.

Let´s use the example above of a lover. Husband thinks that the wife was a lover, the question, “does my wife have a lover?” can mean so many different things…

1 – husband is afraid she will leave him. She may or may not have a lover and still leave him ! Look for separations between the significators of husband and wife, independent of evidence of lovers.

2- husband is focused only on the matter of treason. Some astrologers would rid the querent completely out of the picture, and give the ascendant house to the wife (the “main actor” in the question), seeing if she is doing anything suspicious.

In the same way, many, many times, when astrologers are asking “what is the house of…” I have this feeling that the real radix question is not being asked. For example, in the “what is the house of the secrets?” question, what the astrologer really wanted was how to know if a person was a secret enemy. In the question about envy, what the person really wanted was to locate her secret enemies (who are obviously in the 12th). Notice that a secret enemy doesn´t have to, necessarily, envy of us! There are many reasons why people are secret enemies, for example, the simple love of treachery! There is a whole lot of assumptions that are unnecessary when you assume that your enemies are “envy” of you.

In the case of Mantras, I would have to ask, why are you asking? Do you care about the material results of the mantra, like luck? Or the spiritual doors you want to open with them? If the mantras are the mean to an end, what is the end? For instance, if querent is doing mantras to get more money, sometimes the question “will I get more money?” would be more important than the mantra´s one: people can get money from different ways and sources and reasons, magic being only one of them. Or maybe the person has had several headaches and is thinking, “hey, maybe this mantra stuff is doing something wrong to me!”, that would be a completely different case, because we want to look at the condition of the mantra in relationship to you.

In this particular case, one should be aware of the danger of  the question ending up being too metaphysic “are mantras useful for relieving my karma?”. I always decline this kind of horaries. Astrologers should never use horary to answer metaphysic questions. Even because you will never know if your answer was right or wrong, and astrologers should always have the burden of potential failure! Astrologers need accountability! After all, without mistakes there is no learning.

Language and the role of astrologers

The final factor that sometimes makes me worried is the problem of Language. Clients, almost 99% of the time, are not astrologers. So they don´t know and they don´t need to know the astrological language. Neither they need to understand our techniques, how they work,  or their requirements. So it is obvious that we are the ones that will have to translate their questions into astrology.

The most general mistake that I see is trying to get too literal with the question, as discussed above, not trying to find the “root” question. A very common version of this mistake are the questions of “Will I receive an email/phone call/letter from X?”

It seems very simple and straightforward to look for a contact between the ruler of the third house (email/phone call) and the first house (querent). In practice, I don´t remember a single horary where the answer was given by this aspect. Why ? Because what the person is really asking if there will be any contact between querent and quesited (generally a 7th house contact).  Generally this means that the contact is the root of the question, not the way the contact will occur. Maybe there will be no phone call, but a real live contact will be enough!

So if we translate the words as they were spoken, we will get the wrong answer! We should listen for what the heart says, even if their words shout exactly the opposite.

Note: at least one time an astrologer argued with me that their querent really wanted to know only about the email, and not about any other form of contact with the person. That the querent´s question was “just that”. My answer is that, if that is true, the astrologers should raise his/her fees. Many astrologers say that we don´t have the right to judge querents questions. Of course we have, or god wouldn´t give us a head to put weight on the shoulders. But is a wonder how many important questions suddenly disappears as the astrologers start to collect a fair fee.
So, I think that many times astrologers are not concentrating in their role of translation, of adapting the real world to astrological language. For example, in natal astrology we see people often doing the exact opposite… trying to bend astrology to fit their concepts, words and ideology!

Example: “Oh, my ex-boyfriend is very jealous, what is the house of jealously”. They are trying to fit a believe, a concept that is not from astrology, and make the astrology fit this bed of Procrustes. Jealously may seem like a pretty innocent example, but I have seen things like “how do we see  Bipolarity/ADD?”.

Well, a concept like Bipolar depression is NOT originally from the universe that astrology was born and raised. Is a technical term, that doesn´t need to be mirrored in the astrological reality! As the multiple “diseases” that are “discovered” each and every day. Unless you want to create your own “asteroid of bipolarity”, there will be no fast and easy equivalence between concepts found on astrology with the concepts used in other fields that are completely alien to it, like sociology, medicine and psychology!

We should be aware that the astrological language exists for more than two thousand years. Traditional astrologers are well aware of the dangers of trying to “bend” the language to fit ones preconceptions of the world. This is a danger that has to be avoided in our horaries for a very simple reason: this are the kind of horaries that the feedback usually starts with

“Oh, I thought that it was a yes, but…”

Again, my ramblings are not mean to be criticism against the ones who asked these  questions. Every honest question should have the right to be asked! In reality, this article should be read as advice to the ones that answer those questions, as things that one should keep in mind, before addressing the question: that these questions usually are not as simple as they sound.

PS:

I promised a full study on the inauguration charts of the Presidents of U.S. A preliminary study will be published in Nehran´s magazine, in march. When the electronic magazine get published, I will put a note over here.

Eclipse 26 January

The last eclipse that we had was in 26 January. You can see in the map above that his shadow crossed through south of Africa, Australia, and the south-east portion of Asia, including parts of India and China.

One of the first rules of eclipses is that they focus on the places where they are visible. But I have seen so many exceptions that I really don´t trust this rule.

Another method is looking for the country that has a relationship with the sign. For instance, an eclipse in Aquarius can affect countries as different as Egypt, Iran, Iraq or Ethiopia (according to ancient astrology) or Finland and Russia (modern astrology). The number of affected countries is  very big, and we don´t have a clue of what is the proper method to know the choreography of a country. So, we don´t know if Peru is virgo or Sagittarius, or if  U.S is  Gemini, Scorpio, or whatever.

So, usually, I have used connections to other charts and to ecliptic points.

We will have a quick look to the US, and see if we can find influences. The last eclipse in august 2008 was exactly in the ASC of Washington, and the US was hit very hard by the economic crisis. There were several astrological factors, but I believe that this eclipse also had its share of blame. Below we have the chart of eclipse:

Jupiter is ruler of the ASC for the eclipse in the US. In the mundane traditional chart for the US (aries Ingress of 1789) we see that the 2Sag degree is inside the fist house, second sign (in another sign, but real close to the ASC which is 29Scorpio). So, the eclipse have a saying over the living of the general population. We see that Jupiter is combust in the 3rd house, in aquarius, very close to the degree of the eclipse. So, the people of the US will be affected in a very negative way by the eclipse.

Besides that, the eclipse is in the 2nd house (3rd sign) which affect the financial market (besides that, the eclipse is close to the part of Fortune of the beginning chart). The dispositor of the eclipse is Saturn, in aversion to the eclipse point, and in mutual reception with mercury. They are both applying, but mars will conjunct with mercury first. All of this planets drive the action again back to the second house. As saturn also represents Obama, and Saturn is retrograde, I believe he will have a hard start (as is also shown by the news and other mundane techniques).

Now we compare the ruler of ASC of eclipse, Jupiter, and the ruler of the eclipse, Saturn, in the solar ingress. Why ? Because it seems that it was the ancients doctrine to judge the chart of the conjunction of the luminaries to know what was the promise of the eclipse (or Great Conjunction, Little conjunction, etc). As the we are already in the middle of february, I think we have to see the previous ingress (in Libra) and also the next one (in Aries) as I think the influence of the eclipse is strong for some months at least (Ptolemy talked about years, but I believe that it is shorter). As the US profection is in Aquarius untill March 20, I think the effects of the eclipse will be felt very strongly. But when the next Aries ingress comes, so will the profection also change away from the sign of the eclipse.

In the Libra Ingress of 2008, we have again the repetition of the same themes, with Jupiter again in the second house, trining Saturn, again in the 10th.

After march the aries ingress will take in. First the profection will change to pisces, and so the eclipse influence may lessen in effect. Unfortunately, in the aries ingress, we have two malefics, mars and mercury in pisces, and Saturn in opposition, so this factor is probably not the main one. Second, we have Jupiter, the asc ruler of the eclipse, in a situation much better than in the eclipse. He will be in hayz, in a masculine sign, a masculine quadrant, and above the earth in a day chart, oriental to the sun, very potent indeed. So I think the worst effects of this eclipse will be felt untill march, and after the 20th they will lessen in effect.

Of course, this is only a preliminary research, an exercise on application of the ancient´s rules… I have to see some dozens or hundreds of charts before I am sure of any technique, so I ask the reader not to read too much of it.

What is traditional astrology ?

It seems likethat there should exist a very simple and straightforward answer to that question. But I am not so sure there is.

The history of astrology

In a very, very brief abstract of the history of astrology, we could say that there are four great periods in western astrology.

1- Babilonic origins.

Everything in the period babilonic is very speculative. Yes, we have some tables, but this is very far away from saying that we really can understand what the priest did just based on them. What we know is that they didn´t have the signs, and worked mainly with the night sky, with a astrology mainly based on omens.

Everything in this period, including the astrology of the egyptians, etc, is basically a question mark and a lot of guesses.

2 – The horoscopic revolution.

The greeks created the first great revolution in astrology, with the creation of horoscopic astrology. A lot of things that we are so used now were the creation of the greeks, attributed to a few mystic holy men like Hermes Trimegistus:

• The division of the ecliptic in 12 equal parts (the signs), with no relation to the constellations (which are irregular)
• The general symbolism of the 7 planets
• The division of topoi (themes) to each one of the signs, counting them from the ascendent (the whole houses)
• Several of the “arabic lots” are really helenistic, the main ones being the part of Fortune, Spirit, Exaltation, Basis, Nemesis, Eros, Victory, Necessity and Courage.

It is important to note that Ptolemy was not an example of this astrology. In fact, his astrology is very unique, and is very likely that he didn´t read a lot of other works, and that none of the other authors have read ptolemy. You can see interesting comments on this theme in this interview with James Holden.

3 – The Arabic revolution

When the greek civilization start to fade, the ones who preserve it were the Muslims. Although many of these books were not from the arabic culture or religion, they preserved the books with great care. Au contraire of the westerns, who even today like to burn books that we disagree with, e.g., Harry Potter.

In this period, we had the combination of the Greek, Indian and Persian astrology. Concepts merged, techniques flourished. Names like Abu Mashar, Mashalah, Ali-Khayat, Sahl Ibn Bishr, etc, wrote important works that were transfered to Europe in the Medieval Period. Some parts of the works of later european astrologers, from Bonatti to Ramesey, are almost verbatim extracts of this arabic work.

4 – Renaissance

The renaissance astrologers created another revolution, but for different reasons. After so many centuries of conflicts with the Islam, prejudice against arabic astrology was very high. Besides that, renaissance astrologers were also very affected by the new culture of science and capitalistic revolution.

Then when renaissance astrologers rediscovered Ptolemy, many concluded that the “original” astrology was that from the Tetrabiblos, and that everything that was not in the tetrabiblos was an invention from the arabs. So, many things, from the arabic parts, to horary astrology, start to being rejected.

And later, with the scientific revolutions, astrologers like Kepler and John Dee started to invent their own interpretation of astrology, creating their own rules as they wrote.

4-20th Century

From 18th to 19th century, astrology almost disappeared as a knowledge. It were removed from colleges and was no longer a field of study to the educated elites, just a superstition. Even the “astrologers” didn´t have any real knowledge of their field.

Besides other authors like Raphael and Sepharial, it is Alan Leo that established many of the concepts that we now recognize as modern astrology. But, even in a book from Alan Leo, the reader can recognize a level of technical depth that is very rare in today´s books of astrology.

Some of the characteristics of modern astrology that arose in this time:

• The focus changed from prediction to “psychological assessment” (even because there were several laws against fortune telling)
• Some concepts were simplified for massive consumption (like the “astrological alphabet”)
• People didn´t have any of the older texts. For the great majority of astrologers in the 20th century, authors from the 19th century were already considered like “ancients”.
• You can invent what you want. You don´t have to read anything before you, because astrology is a “language”.

So, what is traditional astrology ?

Traditional astrology is a very loose term to identify astrology before the 19-20th centuries. But, in general, I think it is better to identify the time period of the concept/technique you are using. A technique like temperament may have had several modifications through the centuries.

Was there a golden age?

By this little abstract you can see that Astrology changed through time because of several factors. Translation problems, cultural differences, mix of techniques. But was this an evolution or a decaying of traditional astrology, similar to what happened in the 20th century?

I defend that many of the things were a evolution. For example the arabs took several things from the greeks, and modified some. Some astrologers defend that they “misunderstand” the greeks. I don´t think so.

• Unlike the 20th century astrologers, the arabs studied the ancient with great care, and were very respectful before changing anything. You can read in Abu Mashar several considerations that came from Valens.
• Many claim that the arabs didn´t have the complete texts, but we really don´t have any clue what kind of oral knowledge was available to them. Valens explains the use of profections but he doesn´t claim to be their inventor, but to have learned them from an astrologer from egypt/persia. Even today jyiotish astrology is more based on oral tradition from teacher to student.
• They created new techniques and concepts that were not available in earlier times. Most of mundane astrology were created in this time, using some common foundations from the greeks.

So, in the 8th century we have a very different situation in the astrological revolution than we have today. Astrologers were working within the tradition, they were not inventing their way to search for some ego trip or to sell a book. Astrologers had a deep knowledge of their tradition before trying to create anything. There is an “astrologer” who wrote an article defending that William Lilly based his profections on the tarot cards! This just say about the incredible level of lazyness, lack of technical knowledge, intellectual honesty and even lack of character, of several members of the astrology community.

My point is that it is possible to work within the tradition to create new knowledge that is, by essence, traditional astrology, even if constructed by contemporary hands. The history of astrology show that this was the way of great part of our tradition! But how to do that, and not to create horrible chimeras, like in the example of the “tarot” profections, it is to be discussed in a later time.