Horary 0040: Will the Farm Fields Flood This Spring?
Overview
The querent has worked on a farm for the past few years a few kilometers east of a river on the south side of a major flood basin. In the spring of last year, the fields were totally underwater for weeks.
This year had lower snowfall, but temperatures were unusually cold in early spring. Though it was too soon to make predictions based on temperature and river flow, the querent wanted to inquire of the sky.
“We hope for a ‘normal’ year,” they wrote, “though it seems ‘normal’ does not exist.”
I admit to having been somewhat intimidated by this question, but I brushed up on my weather horary and decided to give it a shot.
Judgment
I immediately noticed the ascendant was as late as can be. While it seemed an important consideration before judgment, I found it radical to the question. While a late ascendant would often be understood to mean it’s too late to ask the question, the querent had stated it was “too soon” to make predictions from environmental factors, and I saw indications that this ascendant in the final degree of its sign meant that the period in question had not started yet.
The first indication was the condition of Venus, ruler of that late ascendant. It was fundamentally strong, in domicile in Taurus and angular in the 7th house — “we hope for a ‘normal’ year” — but in the term and face of cold Saturn (temperatures were “unusually cold for spring”). The ascendant ruler quite accurately described current conditions, and the question was about the upcoming season.
My eyes were further drawn across the sign boundary into Scorpio by the imminent rising of the degree of the South Lunar Node. This struck me as related to the south side of the flood basin where the farm is located.
While the South Node is a sign of reduction, its position in the 1st house is not describing the conditions at the farm but rather the conditions for the querent themself. The question is about weather that diminishes their livelihood. To diagnose the weather conditions surrounding the querent, I looked to the planet ruling that sign, Mars.
Mars is the highest planet in the sky in this chart, meaning it is in the southern sky. That second indication of the direction of the region in question locked it in for me that this chart was radical.
Mars is in its fall, but its malefic nature is more under control in this nighttime chart. It is in the wet, Moon-ruled water sign of Cancer, which I noted for the querent is a deeply ancient place of fertility — the rising sign of the Thema Mundi, the chart for the creation of the world. Cancer — the sign of the summer solstice — is associated with the flooding of the Nile Delta in early summer (at the appearance of the star Sirius), which is believed to be a reason Cancer is rising in the Thema Mundi. In ancient days, it marked the beginning of the agricultural cycle.
So, interesting flood omen. But this is an omen of good flooding. Does it help answer the question at hand?
As we’ve seen, Venus is technically the ascendant ruler, describing the querent’s current condition. I have taken Mars, ruler of the sign less than a degree before the ascendant, as a significator of the querent’s next condition, which is the matter in question. In a weather horary according to my tradition, Cancer would describe the place where we’re asking about the weather: a wet, fertile place.
Yes, but how wet??
For that we take one more step and examine the condition of Cancer’s ruler, the Moon. The Moon is applying the friction of a square aspect back to Mars from Libra, favoring Venus (the querent). Libra is an air sign, moistening but warming. This seemed like almost enough to judge the chart favorably. It might be windy and rainy, but it doesn’t say “destructive flooding.”
I saw one more testimony that drove it home for me. As mentioned above, Venus is in multiple minor dignities of Saturn, which I associated with the unusual cold that prompted this question. Saturn itself is in Pisces, another cold water sign, and it is the malefic contrary to sect in this chart. Mars — significator of the querent in the upcoming season — is separating from an aspect of Saturn, which I judged to be about last year’s experience: Mars’ last experience was ruin (Saturn) by water (Pisces). Its next experience is this warming contact from the airy Moon, which is less severe.
While this sure felt like some big astrology for me to tackle at this point in my career, the chart rang clear as a bell to me. I told the querent to expect some intense weather, but the farm would not flood this spring.
Outcome
A week into June — a year to the day after the first day of soggy planting after last year’s flood — the querent wrote to tell me “things are looking goooood. We’ve had plants in the ground for over a month and harvested first crops in late May.”
The river did flood, requiring intervention from the nearby city. The querent passed ditches filled to road level and fields partially underwater on their way to work at the farm. But their farm was “totally unbothered.”
In May, the weather went from unusually cold to unusually hot. There wasn’t a lot of rain — two good rains in May, the querent reported — though the regional flooding brought more than plenty of water in some places. But not the querent’s farm!
Analysis
Wow. When I took this chart, I fully expected to write a post that said, “Obviously astrology — let alone horary astrology from a different place — can’t predict the weather, but hey, I knew how to do it, so I gave it a shot, and here’s how it works if you’re curious.”
Instead… it worked.
I feel like the success of this horary owes a lot to the almost archetypal beauty of the question and the querent’s situation. I am really grateful I got to practice weather horary on a question as classic as, “Will the fields at the farm I work on flood this spring?” Like, that could be a chart in a Hellenistic text from 2,000 years ago. No wonder it was radical.
I will definitely attempt more weather astrology going forward, but I’m not going to do so profligately. The question will need to have a certain… I dunno… epic-ness, like this one has.
