Horary 0031: Will K Find a Stable Place to Live in Time?
Overview
The client asked whether someone identified only as K would find a stable place to live in a particular city within three weeks of the question.
I responded, “In order to identify K in the chart, I need to know their relationship to you (friend, sibling, child, neighbor, coworker, etc). Please let me know when you can!”
The querent replied simply, “Friend.”
I relate the above because this would end up being a textbook-perfect and concise education in why the astrologer’s most important job is assigning significators, which means DEEPLY understanding the client’s situation before judging.
In this case, I did not.
Judgment
Using Mercury, ruler of the 11th house, to signify a “friend,” I found two testimonies that the friend would find a place to live in time.
The first was Mercury emerging from combustion and applying to Jupiter in the 5th house. The 4th house signifies the home, and the next sign after the 4th house cusp, in this case Pisces, gives the signifier of the next home, so Mercury applying to Jupiter shows a positive testimony for the friend finding the next home. Jupiter also rules the 2nd house, which is 4th from the 11th, another way of signifying the friend’s home. This applying conjunction would perfect in just over 4º, giving us timing of four weeks.
Lest the above seem like mixed up technique — using Jupiter as the sign ruler after the radical 4th (“next home”) as well as the turned 4th (“friend’s home”), there is a second testimony that covers both significations from the other side.
The Moon — which is often given secondarily to the querent but can be used as a testimony for the general flow of events in a question — is immediately applying a square to Saturn, with about 1º to go. Saturn rules the radical 3rd (neighborhood) and 4th (home) houses, as well as the sign following the 2nd house cusp, or the turned 4th. That means the “next home” indication is found from the 11th house significator in this event as well.
Using the timing from both testimonies to give a range of 1–4 weeks, I felt this to be a strong signal for the client’s three-week timeframe.
I judged that the friend would certainly find a place to live in time.
Outcome
After what sounded like an agonizing process that long exceeded the timeframe, a place that was found within the timing window did not work out. It was a clear no.
Analysis
Sitting with this chart, I just did not see what the problem was at first. Sure, the significators were a little sloppy, but there were two of them, and I certainly didn’t see any no indicators. There were aspects forming, they could all be said to signify good news, my lineage tends to err on the liberal side on scary questions like “will someone have a place to live,” I felt I had done it right. Then it occurred to me to write back and ask the querent to describe their relationship with the friend in more detail.
What they described was, in my view, certainly not an 11th-house relationship. Their response began with an admission that they had trouble classifying the relationship themselves, and already I knew this was the problem. But what they went on to describe was a relationship of having been “partners in a financial redistribution scheme,” an earlier phase in which they switched off mentoring each other, they used the word “partner” twice in the description… it was a 7th house question, not an 11th house question.
When I look at L7, Venus, I see her dignified in Taurus but in the grinding and unpleasant 6th house, with Uranus, god of disruption, hounding the descendant which she signifies. This much more radically describes the quesited person’s tumultuous situation.
Furthermore, Venus has no aspect with the Sun, ruler of the turned 4th, or Mercury, ruler of the sign after the turned 4th, or Saturn OR Jupiter, the radix significators.
I could pick on my sloppy house choices, but obviously the real mistake was simply asking the client to pick from a list of single words to describe their relationship with the person, rather than asking them in an open-ended way to tell me about their relationship. If I had done that, I unquestionably would have chosen the descendant ruler, Venus, given the face-to-face transactional partnership nature of the relationship. And the testimony of that significator is a perfectly clear no.
This is on me. Understanding the client’s situation before rendering judgment is my entire job. It’s my job to know all the intricate symbolic nuances of what the houses signify, so the client doesn’t have to. I thought I was being helpful by giving the client a list of keywords to pick from, but what this is taught me is that I should instead ask them to tell me everything they can about the players in a scenario if they’re asking about someone else.
As ever, I am grateful to the Oracle for showing me exactly what I need to know.
