Horary 0010: Will My Team Win the Game?

Overview

The chart is for the outcome of a soccer game, and in a stunning reversal from my overly exuberant proclamation last time, I doubt I will be doing this kind of horary for myself anymore.

The thing about contest horaries — according to my tradition, which may even have made up doing horaries for this, as far as I know — is that you can only cast a radical chart if the querent is invested in the outcome. There’s no “objective” assignment of significators for such a chart; it has to be “us” vs. “them.”

In my first two soccer charts, I judged my team to win, and in the one in which my judgment was correct, that was very exciting. In the first one, which I judged incorrectly, I was fairly distraught when the match was a draw, however I was able to see my mistake in the chart and ended up learning something incredibly valuable about this practice from it.

This third soccer horary went differently, and many disturbing emotions have resulted. This time, I judged my team would lose, and it ended up ruining the entire experience, even though I got to attend this match in person, which was awesome. My astrological judgment prevented me from enjoying my own team’s spectacular performance.

The happiest moment of the match for me was when the visiting side seemed to score right away, within two minutes of play. The play was reviewed and reversed, and I felt myself disappointed. That’s not cool.

So that’s the overriding concern, and these unpleasant feelings, and the undesirable situation in which this put me, must have confounded things metaphysically, because I followed a clear principle given by both my teacher and my teacher’s teacher in judging the chart, and yet the judgment was incorrect.

Judgment

The ascendant for this chart is in the first degree of Libra. I noted this immediately as a consideration, because according to William Lilly — the 17th-century English astrologer whose work is widely credited for reviving and preserving horary astrology for, you know, English speakers — it is one of the Considerations Before Judgment™.

On page 122 of his seminal and euphemistically named Christian Astrology, Lilly writes:

“When either 0 degrees, or the first or second degrees of a Sign ascend (especially in Signs of short ascensions, viz. ♑︎ ♒︎ ♓︎ ♈︎ ♉︎ ♊︎), you may not venture judgement, unless the Querent be very young, and his corporature, complexion and moles or scars of his body agree with the quality of the Sign ascending.”

Not being “very young,” I am technically in violation of this consideration by judging this chart (although it is perhaps worth noting that this ascendant is closely applying to the natal degree of the South Lunar Node in my nativity, which may be a version of my “corporature… agree[ing] with the quality of the Sign ascending”).

The rationale given for this consideration is that it is “too early” to render judgment on this matter.

However, my teacher’s teacher — John Frawley, on whose textbook I relied almost entirely for my judgment of this chart — completely dismisses Lilly’s considerations before judgment, describing all of them except the consideration of early or late ascendants as “empty excuse[s] capable of impressing ignorant monarchs” for astrologers to use to get out of incorrect judgments.

As for the ascendant one, he notes that this was an issue in olden days, when there were no computers to precisely time the chart, as you could easily get the wrong rising sign when casting the chart by hand if you were off by a minute or five. Nowadays, these things are precisely calculated, so Frawley concludes, “the one consideration that is more than an excuse is no longer current.”

My own teacher, and many of my more seasoned contemporaries, are slightly more interested in why Lilly may have committed these considerations to paper, but basically, I don’t sweat the considerations before judgment unless the chart is also obscure about what it says, and this one is not — according to what I was taught, at least.

Furthermore, as I have gotten in the habit of doing, I rolled my astro dice to see if it was time to cast the chart and got ☽ ♈︎ 2. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant but interpreted it as a “go” signal, and when I cast the chart, not only was the Moon in a Mars-ruled sign (albeit the other one), Aries was in the 7th and thus clearly implicated in the judgment, and the Moon was just minutes inside the cusp of the second house. Seemed radical enough to me.

So with the ascendant at 00º Libra, I assigned my team Venus and the opponent Mars. I noted Venus in the Aries 7th and Mars falling from the MC in Gemini in the 9th. The two were separating a recent sextile. Initially, as I documented on Twitter, I judged Venus (my team) to win because it was more angular.

I’ve also been interested the whole time Venus has been in Aries by its mutual reception by exaltation with the Sun in Pisces. According to my studies, exaltation is very important in sports horaries, and though this is sort of an indirect indication, it’s worth considering as one possible explanation for why I got this wrong. If any seasoned astrologers out there see that and go, “Oh yeah, that’s it,” please write to me and let me know. It seemed like a minor testimony to me, but if it’s actually an overridingly important one, that would really clean things up for me here.

Anyway, after posting “Atlanta wins” on Twitter, I felt a little uneasy, and as I checked my work, I remembered that both Frawley and Adam, referring to Frawley, delineate one significator being in its opponent’s house but far from the angle as “a sign of defeat.” Neither makes it sound like a guarantee, but it certainly sounds strong enough to be the main consideration in judging this chart. So I overrode my first judgment and declared this chart for Portland.

I also saw Jupiter, the benefic of sect, sitting closer to the angle in the 7th, and thought that seemed like a blessing of bounty for the opponent — just a little additional testimony so I wasn’t relying on a single rule with which I had no direct experience.

The one other factor in my notes is that the Moon was in its fall in Scorpio, applying to a watery square with Saturn (which was also Venus’ next aspect, but not for a while). My notes refer to the Moon as in “bad shape.” Now, of course, I look at that dice roll and this chart and wonder whether this isn’t the indication of me ending up in bad shape as a result of this horary.

Outcome

Not only did my team (signified by Venus) win, it won 5-1. The home team fans (including my brother and parents, with whom I attended) were partying raucously, and I was unable to summon the emotion to join them because of how fucked I had made the situation using astrology. It stung especially badly because I overrode my instinct to just use natural angularity to judge the chart in favor of a formula from a textbook, and the formula — at least in this chart — is plainly wrong.

Analysis

I hope you’ve seen by now that I am completely happy to be wrong in public as long as I’m the one who made the mistake. Here, though, I followed my teachers faithfully, and it seems the judgment they would instruct me to make here simply is not correct.

In fact, as I racked my brain and class notes for some way this chart could indicate a win for my team, I actually found an example from Adam’s class that indicated another way to judge this chart for Portland! Venus is separating from Mars and applying to Saturn, which is known as a malefic enclosure. Sounds bad, right? Well, it is, and in one of Adam’s sports horary examples, that was an indication he missed that caused him to judge a team would win, but it lost! So now there are two delineations from my teachers that this chart contradicts!

Was this chart “too early”? Is Lilly’s consideration before judgment applicable here? Again, Frawley says those are BS. I know the ascendant was correct for the time I cast the chart. Perhaps Frawley’s wrong about the spiritual significance of Lilly’s considerations? That, combined with the busted Moon, might describe why I got a bad chart here.

The importance of the querent’s investment in the contest outcome, and the horrible feelings that resulted from me getting tangled up this way when I should have been enjoying the match and the massive victory, might be what’s indicated by this. This could be a chart that says, “It’s not good astrology to make yourself have a bad time for no reason.”

Or this ♈︎♀/♓︎☉ mutual reception by exaltation thing could be the whole ballgame, and this should be taught more explicitly as a factor. I don’t know. Astrologers, please weigh in.

Another possibility, though it doesn’t align with the horary question as asked, has been pointed out to me by both @saul_mondriaan and @sadalsvvd, which is that the chart remains radical if I interpret “my team” not to be the soccer team I was rooting for, but me. It is after all a fundamental principle of all astrology that the ascendant ruler signifies the self — or in the case of horary, the querent — and the principle of delineating a contest horary like this is identifying the querent with the side for which they are rooting. In my contest with an unfathomably complex universe here, I certainly did lose. So that’s another way out of this mess.

Jupiter is my time lord by annual profection, it’s my Jupiter return, I have ascribed the whole sudden emergence of my desire to follow soccer this year as a delineation of my Jupiter return, and Jupiter in Aries is the most angular planet in this chart. I conclude that it’s more important for me to enjoy this soccer season than to spend every match preoccupied about whether astrology is going to work.

I have some doubt about whether it’s even spiritually proper to cast horary charts for oneself at all, but in this case it certainly wasn’t. I will continue to cast contest horaries for other people who are invested in the outcome, but I’m probably not going to do it for myself anymore, at least not for every match of the season. I’d rather enjoy the game.