Horary 0066: Will I Get the Grant?
Overview
The querent was applying for a large grant to fund an unconventional project in the tech industry and wanted to know if they would receive it.
My incorrect judgment here is a good example of overcomplicating a yes-or-no question. It also features some helpful tests of well known but often oversimplified horary techniques such as considerations before judgment and harmony of the lights.
Judgment
I assigned the querent the Sun, the ascendant ruler, and the Moon. I noted the very early ascendant, which is a consideration before judgment that it may be too soon to tell, but the chart appeared radical, so I continued. I observed the applying Moon/Sun aspect and considered that a harmony of the lights, though I continued looking for further support.
I noted the presence of Mars and Venus — signifying the grant-making institution (Mars, 10th house ruler) and its money/the grant (Venus, 2nd from the 10th/11th house ruler) — angular in the 1st house. I actually judged this with proper care; I delineated the 1st house to the querent as “your condition” and these planets approaching the ascendant as “in your corner,” rather than judging it as an affirmative event.
I even followed that by saying, “To really judge a yes/no question, we’d like to see an impending aspect between a significator of the money and a significator of you.” The error was in letting all these other good signs add up to “yes” by stretching the significators too far. I took the application of Venus (the grant) to Jupiter as a grant to the querent by delineating Jupiter, ruler of the 9th house, as “your knowledge or your idea,” and I let the Moon’s proximity to the 9th house cusp count as support for that.
I told the querent they would receive the grant.
Outcome
The querent did not receive the grant.
Analysis
The big mistake was allowing the 9th house to signify something belonging to the querent to an extent that contact with its ruler counted as a yes. I felt comfortable doing this because I had learned to delineate the 9th as “your idea” in questions of profit from knowledge or creativity. But that’s only useful in judging the essential quality of the idea or another party’s affinity for it in terms of dignity and reception.
An idea is not an entity who can receive money. The querent themself is. Even contact with L2, the querent’s money, would suffice, although in this chart, that’s also the Sun. There are no applying aspects between the Sun or Moon and any significators of the grant. It was a mistake to take the Moon’s proximity to the 9th house cusp as support for the idea that L9 belonged to the querent. Though the materials I have studied sometimes seem to consider close proximity to a house cusp on either side in the same way, it has been my experience that when a planet is past the cusp — as the Moon is here — it has lost control over that topic.
As for the harmony of the lights, I think I got to a place where I had been sufficiently owned by not prioritizing Moon/Sun aspects as overriding signs of harmony that I began to judge them as “any ol’ Moon/Sun aspect will do,” rather than considering them in context. A waning square between L1 and L12, both signifying the querent themself, neither making any contact with relevant significators of success, is not such a glorious omen that it should override the simple absence of a “yes” by aspect according to the basic procedure for judging such a chart.
It’s pretty easy in retrospect to reinterpret the 00º ascendant as indicating not that it was too soon to judge the question — as I do still find the chart radical — but that I would arrive at a judgment too soon and would have done well to go over it again carefully. I feel like this is just what “consideration before judgment” literally means, and I certainly did not do it.
I will next time!
