Horary 0117: Will I Attend the Retreat?
Overview
The querent had planned to attend a professional retreat overseas that was a couple weeks away at the time. They had delayed buying their plane ticket and had a nagging sense that either the retreat would be canceled or something would impede their attendance of it. They wanted to know if this sense was founded or if they should just buy the ticket and go.
Judgment
I gave the querent Mars, ruler of the ascendant, and the Moon. Mars is in his antithesis in Libra, but a mutual reception by face and a harmonious aspect with the Moon alleviates his condition somewhat here. Both significators are also strong by accidental dignity, with Mars in the 10th just past the 11th house cusp and the Moon in the 7th.
I took Mars’ position on the cusp of the 11th house of friends and networks with his ruler, Venus, seeing him by sextile to be a good indication of a retreat with colleagues. Given all these positive signs, I took Mars’ position opposite his domicile as a sign of long-distance travel, adding to this signification the Moon in the 7th house of the Other and their positions in air signs (air travel being part of the question).
I needed an applying aspect to show the actual event of traveling to the retreat. Mars was not applying any aspects in a reasonable timeframe, but the Moon was applying three in rapid succession. These would have to be disentangled and identified to judge the chart.
I took the Sun, as ruler of the 9th house of both travel and learning, as the significator of the retreat itself. This is actually the last of the three aspects the Moon makes, but because all three of them are within 2º — barely over three hours of the Moon’s travel time — and with the Moon and Sun both angular, it seemed wrong to delineate the preceding two contacts as prohibitions. We needed to figure out specifically what the preceding two contacts — first Venus, then Mercury — would represent in order to know how they would affect the travel.
I left the manifestations of these contacts up to the querent to describe, as they are intermediate steps to the ultimate outcome I was judging, but I offered some possible interpretations of them that were narrowed down by the outcome I expected.
I noted that the contact with Venus is by sextile, making it a pleasant interaction, and Venus rules the 11th house of friends and the 7th house of counterparts. I gave myself as one possible signification of this first contact, as the descendant ruler can signify the astrologer, the querent and I are friends (11th house), and Venus is in the 9th house, which, while it clearly relates to the travel and the retreat in this chart, is also the place of divination. By the time I judged the chart just a little while after it came in, the Moon/Venus contact had already occurred, which I proposed could be a real-time signification of me providing the astrological support they needed to begin the journey.
The next intermediate contact was a square with Mercury just 29 arc minutes before the square with the Sun that would signify taking the trip. Mercury rules the 8th and 10th houses of the chart, is moving retrograde but well dignified in Virgo, and many (including myself) would say they are protected from combustion by the Sun in this dignified state, though of course still optically invisible.
Given the nature of the querent’s work and practice, I delineated possible occult/invisible 8th house significations for Mercury in combination with their position in the most visible 10th house. I take the 8th house to be a preparatory place, as it succeeds to the descendant, the point of commitment from which there is no turning back. One possibility I gave was that this signified making magical preparations (8th house) for the professional visibility (10th house) before making the trip (9th house).
I also delineated the specific entities the 10th house could represent, such as government/passport agencies, companies, whoever is “in charge” of this process. The signification by retrograde Mercury makes this seem like some sort of bureaucratic communication friction in between the querent and their trip, though the immediate transit of the Moon from Mercury to the significator of the trip — with all of them in Mercury’s signs — makes it clear this hold-up will pass.
I concluded that while the querent would have to navigate a couple things first, they would indeed make the trip.
Outcome
The querent went ahead and bought the tickets, then made some pre-retreat travel plans that had to change because the friend they were going to visit got sick. They ended up spending some of the pre-retreat time with a different friend who happens to be a Leo rising with their natal Venus in Libra (noteworthy because the first aspect in the horary is with Venus in Leo, Venus signifies friends because the 11th house cusp is in Libra, and Mars, the querent’s main significator, is also in Libra).
This change of plans required the querent to make phone calls to booking companies to modify their flights, which they were able to do for a small fee. They also double-checked their passport and ID status before travel, which was a wise retrograde Virgo Mercury in the 10th thing to do.
The querent did indeed make it to the retreat.
Analysis
This was a subtle chart and a good test of my instincts.
There are so many on-paper instructions in the horary tradition which indicate that aspects intervening between the key significators should be taken as prohibitions, but also so many foundational principles about how to judge them case by case. In this case, the contacts were just so quick — and also clearly supportive of the outcome — that I knew they were going to resolve without preventing the trip.
