Horary 0024: Where and How Can I Find My Wedding Ring?
Overview
The querent, an experienced and well-known astrologer, had lost their wedding ring, described as “yellow gold… with a braid of yellow and white gold down the middle of it.” In accordance with their level of experience, the description of the possibilities was exhaustive and quite detailed. This was also, I should note, my third paid chart ever. I was nervous.
I provided accordingly exhaustive delineations, trying to respond to every possibility the querent described. Some of my specific delineations were distractingly incorrect, but none of them were framed as exclusive of the correct ones. However, the core delineation of the ring’s location and condition was so startlingly accurate that the querent and I agreed this judgment should be ruled correct once the ring was finally found.
The initial inquiry said there was a “great deal of strong circumstantial evidence” the ring was in the house — which has three floors, the floor plan of which he described — or in the driveway or path outside the house. He thought it “likely” that it slipped off, rather than being deliberately removed, and he was “worried” he might have lost it in the bathroom.
Judgment
The gold ring was loudly signified by the Sun as ruler of the 2nd house (the querent’s possession) newly exalted in Aries in the 9th house. Off the bat, I became preoccupied with the querent’s talk about the bathroom because the cusp of the 8th house (the bathroom) was in Pisces, a wet place. The Aries 9th house thus resembled a dry place outside the wet place, and the Sun had just left the wet place for the dry one. Specifically, what I wrote was that the Sun’s ingress into his exaltation suggested “a warm and dry place where the ring is quite comfortable.”
I then noted the Moon, the querent’s significator, also in Aries, applying immediately to Jupiter, ruler of the 8th, saying that this suggested “going back [to the bathroom] to look.” If I could do it over again, I would have also described this imminent conjunction with the greater benefic as simply a positive sign, but surely this querent recognized that on their own.
I pointed out that the Moon would have to travel quite a ways before making an aspect with the Sun, but the Sun would make no other aspects in that time, which I described as a “good (if slow) sign” of recovery.
I then went into more possibilities about which other rooms in the querent’s complete floor plan could be described by the 9th house. I pointed to the library, which the querent had said was in the basement, saying that it was a “distant second” for me because the 9th house didn’t match the spatial description very well; the bathroom is upstairs — and the 9th house is a fairly high place in the sky — whereas the library is downstairs. “But,” I continued, “lots of my 9th-house lost objects have been in absurdly traditionally signified places like ‘the meditation room,’ so I want to make sure to mention it.”
I concluded by advising the client to look in “warm places near the bathroom, including transitional or auxiliary spaces upstairs.” I reiterated that the querent should not “be surprised if it takes a while.” My parting words were, “The reassuring thing is, the ring is very comfortable where it is.” (Bolded in the original.)
Outcome
Four months later, the querent wrote to tell me the ring was found during their birthday party sometime around midnight. A group had broken off from the main party and gone down to the basement. One participant, who was sitting on a fuzzy rug, slipped their hand under a pile of blankets on the rug underneath a futon they were leaning against, they brushed something with their hand, and there it was.
The futon frame was the querent’s former meditation seat. They had removed the ring to move the futon frame, and it must have fallen out then. The blankets were only dropped there the day before the party, making the ring even cozier than it was before.
The querent reported that a lot of stuff had been moved around recently in that room because — after this horary was completed — the bathroom upstairs leaked and “dumped a lot of water into this basement room.”
Analysis
The lesson I take from this judgment is that a lost object chart probably leans one way or the other in terms of whether the house significations are spatial or topical, and it’s important to figure out which one it is. Because of the querent’s detailed floor plan, I got caught up in delineating these houses spatially, when really it was the throwaway line about the 9th house relating to meditation that could have sealed the deal, since the querent used to meditate on the futon they were moving when they lost the ring.
That wouldn’t do it alone, especially since the querent has other 9th-house contemplative spaces now, but there are two more factors that seem to me to add up to a very specific and correct description. Fortunately, I nailed one of them: The ring was clearly “warm” and “cozy” and “comfortable;” it was literally snuggled up between fuzzy rugs and blankets. The other one was sort of there, too; I was preoccupied with the upstairs location of the bathroom itself for some reason, which I could not have known at the time was because the bathroom would leak into the basement room the ring was in after I judged the chart!!!
There’s one more radical factor I might have been able to delineate initially but didn’t, which is the significance of Jupiter. Jupiter doesn’t just rule the 8th house (bathroom), he also rules the 5th house… parties! The Moon/Jupiter conjunction is a succinct way of saying, “You’ll find it at a party in a room downstream of the bathroom.” Add that together with the “cozy” thing and the “meditation” thing, and that seems like a rather good lost-object horary to me.
