Horary 0139: Is Pluto the Cat Going to Make It?
Overview
When my kitten, Pluto, got really sick, I cast this chart to see if he would get better. If I could do this over, would I cast the chart again? Definitely not. This chart seemed so clear that he would die that it made it difficult for me to feel hope. It was sort of like the situation I put myself in with Horary 0010: Will My Team Win the Game?, only a million times worse. I pitted astrology and the outcomes I wanted against each other.
We decided to fight for him anyway. We had a really hard week and spent a lot of money. It was a total emotional rollercoaster. There were some moments of hope, and when they happened, I tried to find fault in my delineation of this chart. The attempt I made to make it show good news is nonsensical; I won’t even publish it here. But could I say to my wife, “We shouldn’t do this. We shouldn’t try. The horary says he’s going to die.”? Of course I couldn’t. It seemed spiritually destructive to me to even believe that myself.
The thing is, the process of Pluto’s death was an extraordinarily deep spiritual experience for our entire family. The astrology actively detracted from it. I keep learning this lesson and not taking it to heart, and the demonstrations are getting increasingly harsh. It’s time to start taking the widespread advice not to cast horary charts for oneself.
Judgment
The chart shows Pluto’s impending death in two ways. The Moon, which had just risen when I cast the chart, is applying to connect with exiled Venus in Scorpio, ruler of the 8th, significator of death. Secondly, somehow I got yet another cat horary with Leo on the 6th, making the Sun the significator of the small animal. The Sun is on the midheaven — Pluto is hanging on for now — but he recently made contact with painful Mars, and he has just entered Mars’ term at the end of the sign of Sagittarius. Soon, he will go into Capricorn — Saturn’s realm, the beginning of winter, the darkest moment of the year — worsening in condition, and make contact with retrograde Mercury, ruler of the 4th and the 7th, the other two houses that have traditionally been associated with death. The Sun and Mercury are in antiscia at the time of the chart, showing their connection in the underworld.
I immediately judged that Pluto would die.
Outcome
Though we hung in there and felt glimmers of hope over the next several days, Pluto did not recover, and we had to put him down. We buried him in the backyard at the moment of sunset on the Winter Solstice, and remembering him will be our family’s practice on that day from now on.
Analysis
I don’t usually investigate horaries for natal significations for the parties involved, but I have Pluto’s birth chart, and I knew I must have collected our cats’ birth times for a reason. The transits were pretty remarkable. Here’s Pluto’s nativity:
You can see Pluto on the midheaven, which is of course how the cat got his name. Pluto was born in that brief first flash of Pluto in Aquarius. Just like Pluto the world, Pluto the cat barely got to see that new reality into which he had just arrived.
Mercury is retrograde on the ascendant, exactly sextile a fallen Mars. By the time Mars and the Sun made it around to his natal 8th house of death, a Mercury retrograde phase would be a significator of his death. Pluto was a Taurus rising and Taurus Sun, Venus-ruled, but Venus — as well as the Moon, his body — were both ruled by that retrograde Mercury. Venus in exile in Scorpio — ruled by Mars, with whom Mercury was sextile at his birth — would be the other significator of his death. Moreover, he was born in the midst of eclipses, with the nodes on the horizon at his birth and the Sun exactly on them. Pluto’s life would cast a brief shadow on the world.
It’s beautiful. But it’s also awful. I wish that I had hired someone else to tell me this, so I wouldn’t have had to wrestle with myself about it. I would take this horary question if someone I didn’t know came to me with it. But if this were the chart I saw, I would present far more than just the information it conveys. I would talk about the process, the grieving, the praying for mercy, all of the things that my family and I needed to do in order to make it through this. I didn’t get that. I just got cold hard cosmic facts. So I won’t be casting such charts for myself anymore, and if you ask me such a question, I promise I’ll be able to take much better care of you than I was able to offer myself.
