Horary 0077: Will I Get the Job?
Overview
The querent had found an exciting job opportunity in a new field, was preparing to interview, and wanted to know if they would receive an offer and whether it would be favorable enough to accept.
Judgment
I gave the querent the Sun, ruler of the ascendant, and the Moon. I gave the job Venus, ruler of the midheaven.
Venus (the job) is in the Sun’s sign — the job does have affinity for the querent, the querent does have what the job is looking for — but she is past the ascendant and so not inclined to action. Moreover, there is no hiring event; the querent’s significators are making no aspect to Venus.
I also pointed out Mars on the ascendant as a negative sign, especially given the Moon immediately separating their conjunction, which was just after her past conjunction with Venus. This seemed a clear indication of a negative result for the querent.
However, the Moon’s immediate application to a sextile with Mercury seemed worth pointing out. Mercury is not only the natural ruler of technology and business — relevant topics to the querent’s job search — they rule the sign after the one on the 10th house cusp, which can be taken in queries about a job to signify the job after the quesited job.
I have already become skeptical of the usefulness of this teaching, so I didn’t want to carelessly delineate it as “you will definitely get the very next job you apply for after this one.” My sense is that this significator is only available for this use in a question that is explicitly about “this job” vs. “the next job,” such as a case in which someone with a job is deciding whether to leave it for a new opportunity they have been offered and asks, “Will I like the new job better than my current job?”
In this question, I am giving L10 the quesited job because the question does not concern the querent’s current job. The question is, “Will I get this job?”, and so the job for which they are applying is the one with the power in the situation, and so it gets the ruler of the midheaven, and as we have already seen, the answer to that question is “no.”
But the immediacy of the Moon’s application to Mercury, such a descriptive natural ruler of the topics in question, called me to delineate it somehow. What I said was, “You’ll bounce back from this quickly and see that the space you’re in has options for you.”
After sending this judgment, I followed up by text to add one more take on the Mercury thing. I pointed out that the Moon makes contact with Mercury from within the Sun’s domicile and house, i.e. internal to the querent’s own conditions and concerns. Her next aspect, with the Sun, comes from Mercury’s exalted domain in Virgo, ruler of the 2nd house, the querent’s financial resources.
I described this as a near-future condition following the event described by the Moon/Mercury contact in which the querent “[becomes] more Mercury than you are now,” and that this would be a material change in the way the querent is prepared and presents themself in this job market.
Outcome
The querent wrote back about a month later to inform me that they did not get the quesited job, and that the market appeared tough. They are content to remain in their current job for now and will look for a future opportune moment to start searching again.
Analysis
This was a pretty solid judgment, but I might have wandered a bit far from the question with the Mercury thing. I tried to couch it as much as possible, but I’m concerned I made it sound too much like a concrete job opportunity that would immediately make up for the one in question.
The follow-up was good, but in a comparable future situation, if I were to delineate Mercury at all, I wouldn’t do it without including those 2nd house significations, showing that it’s about the querent’s own resources, so as not to make it sound too much like an outside entity. But then again, this is Mercury we’re talking about. They’ve always got something up their sleeve.
