Horary 0068: Will I Get Either of These Jobs?
Overview
The querent wanted to know if they would get offers from either of two jobs for which they were interviewing. They were both in the insurance industry. One was a close fit with their background and experience, while the other was less familiar but something they were excited to explore.
Spoiler alert: There turned out to be a trick to this question. I will describe how I judged it using the information I had above, and then I’ll reveal the plot twist leading to my incorrect judgment and how I have accounted for it.
Judgment
I assigned the querent Mars (the ascendant ruler) and the Moon. Mars is exactly on the MC in the chart, which I delineated to the querent as a sign that they were in a dominant position over the 10th house, i.e. career matters: “You’ve got this.”
I noted the Sun’s rulership of the midheaven, making it the significator of career, and given the Sun’s position in the double-bodied sign of Gemini, I decided to leave it open-ended at first as to whether the Sun signified one job or both jobs.
With the Moon — the querent’s other significator — applying a sextile to the Sun, I quickly judged the chart a yes. I then moved on to trying to identify which job the querent would get if not both.
I judged the Sun’s position in the 8th house of debts, legacies, and “other people’s money” as a radical topical description of a job in insurance, though that did not help distinguish between the jobs.
The key seemed to lie in the triplicities (elements) of the signs of the significators, especially since insurance deals with the four elements — fire, earth, air, water — in such literal ways.
I first pointed out that Mars is in a fire sign, and the Sun is in an air sign, meaning they are of different natures but closer to each other — as the warm and diurnal elements — than they are to either earth or water. I said, “If one job is about more material or practical things, or involves earthquakes or buildings or other concrete risks (earth) — or if one will involve more emotional or intuitional wisdom, or involves floods or storms (water), that is not the job being indicated here.”
I then made distinctions between the natures of fire and air, saying, “If the job you’re more experienced with is of the nature of fire — involves visibility, motivation, leadership, is a central role around which others gather (or it involves fires) — that’s because Mars is in the fire sign, and so that would mean you’re getting the other job with which you have less familiarity.”
This would be because the significator of the job, the Sun, is in an air sign. I described that job like so: “The job(s) signified by the Sun in Gemini is about information, mobility, translation, lots of moving parts, lots of talking to people, not a lot of focusing on one thing at a time — or it involves wind or the sky!”
I told the querent that if this air description favored one job over the other, they would be offered that one, and if it describes them equally well and better than all the others, they would get both offers.
In their response, the querent said both jobs had a similar mix of fire and air significations, but that the team in one of the interviews described the work of that job in very “adversarial” terms involving “offense” and “defense,” which the querent quite rightly observed was very Mars-like. This was the one that felt more like a stretch, and it was more specialized, whereas the job that was a closer fit was more of a generalist role.
Given that description, I leaned slightly towards the stretch job, as the Sun is in the bound of Mars. But in giving my final judgment, I said it was too 50/50 for me to tell for sure, so I hedged slightly, saying all I could say for sure was, “Yes, you will get an offer from at least one of the jobs.” I said I would give myself bonus points if it was just the stretch job, due to the delineation of minor dignities; full credit if it was both jobs, since I didn’t see a clear distinction between them or second significator, and the Sun was in a double-bodied sign; and 51% credit if it was the safe job only.
Outcome
The querent wrote back some time later to say they got neither job.
At that point, they told me that they had already gotten a job offer from a different job (not in insurance) before they asked their question, which I did not know while judging the chart.
So, my client is fine, which I am happy about. My judgment of this chart, however, was not fine.
Analysis
It took me a long time to come up with a solution to this chart. At first, the new information about the job they were offered before asking the question didn’t seem to matter. It was clear they were asking about jobs that had not been offered yet, so what difference did that make? But as I looked at it over and over, and as no way to make imminent Moon/L10 contact result in a “no” was forthcoming, I softened my gaze a little until I noticed — as I have in many charts before — that the lots were pointing the way.
The Lot of Fortune — signifying what befalls the querent — is in the 10th with Mars, but in the next sign, Virgo. The Lot of Eros — signifying the querent’s desire — is right on Mercury in Gemini. With the Sun in Gemini also, this was so much Mercury that Mercury themself had to be relevant here.
Then I began to wonder about Mars on the midheaven again. I delineated that as “you’ve got this” before. But what if it literally meant, “You already got the job signified by the Sun” — especially since Mars and the Sun were separating from an aspect about a week prior — and then the upcoming Moon/Sun contact showed the querent accepting that job? This is something I could not have delineated when I didn’t know about the other offer, but would it make sense now?
In a horary about a querent’s current job, the sign after the one on the 10th can signify their next job. It did not seem like a stretch to me to use the same logic to take the sign on the 10th — Leo, ruled by the Sun — as the current job offer and the sign after — Virgo, ruled by Mercury — as the next job offers. Add to that the Lot of Fortune in Virgo — as if to say, “This is the one whose fate we are considering” — and the Lot of Eros on Mercury — saying, “This is the one you really want” — and it begins to look quite radical.
Virgo is also a double-bodied sign, and Mercury is the ambi-everything planet who rules it. If anybody can signify two jobs at once, Mercury can. Neither Mars nor the Moon makes contact with Mercury in any reasonable amount of time, so taking Mercury as the significator of the jobs in question, the querent would not be offered either. Instead, the querent will take the job they were already offered, as shown by Mars’ dominant position on the midheaven and the Moon’s contact with its ruler.
For good measure, throw in the fact that Mercury has descended into the 7th house, which is the place that signifies me, the astrologer in the querent’s question. Tricky Mercury tricked me!
I was quite relieved to have found a solution, as that meant the incorrect judgment was my fault, not astrology’s fault. But my confidence was a little shaken, so I decided to roll the astrodice to ask whether I had figured it out. The roll was a quite improbable and resounding yes: ♀ ♉︎ 5.
For those not fluent in astrodice, Venus is a benefic planet who rules Taurus and rejoices in the 5th house, meaning these three 1 out of 12 chances go together about as harmoniously as an astrodice role possibly can. And to make it even more unlikely, Taurus is on the descendant of the chart, meaning that Venus and Taurus are my significators in this reading; Mercury just snuck in their little bit of Gemini at the end of the house.
I took all this as satisfactory confirmation that I had worked out the correct delineation of this chart.
Now, what are we to make of this situation going forward? I think this is just how it goes in this business. It’s not the querent’s fault they withheld that information; they surely thought they were making my job easier by keeping it simple, as it was already a fairly complex question about two different outcomes at once. And for my part, I simply didn’t have a precedent for looking at that extremely angular Mars and going, “Hey, did you already get a job by any chance?” But now I do!
This is exactly why I love the charts I get wrong. This horary has taken my discernment to the next level.
