Last month I received a question from a woman who asked, “Will my baby be born at the birth center and when?” When I asked for clarification, she explained that her birth date was imminent and that she ideally wanted to deliver at the birth center, but was waiting to see if the baby would come on her own in the next two weeks. After two weeks, the querent would have to be induced at the hospital. So I understood her question to mean both “Can I do what I want,” i.e. deliver at the birth center, and “When will the baby be born?” She gave me permission to post her questions and my reply here.

When will my baby arrive?

(Chart data: 22 Dec 2009, 6:22 am EST, Arlington Massachusetts USA. 18 Sagittarius rising, Moon 5 Pisces.)

First, it’s sweet to see Lord 5, the baby, inside the first house. A perfect description of pregnancy: baby inside mother.

Lord 1 is Jupiter, dignified in its term, so the querent has some power (essential dignity) to do what she wants. This is a limited sort of dignity. She’s not in her rulership, she can’t control everything about her situation, but she does have some say in the matter. So my answer to “Can I do what I want?” is “Yes, to some extent.”

How can we know when the baby will make her entrance? I looked at two different factors to judge that. First, with the Ascendant at 18 Sagittarius and Lord 5 Venus at 25 Sagittarius, the baby is just 7 degrees of arc away from rising in the east . That is, she’s leaving the first house (i.e. the querent) and emerging into the light. But would the 7 degrees translate into 7 hours or 7 days? I suggested days.

My other thought was to look at what the Moon was doing as a general indication of what would happen next. In this chart, the Moon has 15 degrees to travel before its next traditional (Ptolemaic) aspect, which is the sextile to Mercury. Fifteen degrees is a long distance to go unaspected. It’s almost like being void of course, in that there’s not much impetus to take any action. This suggested to me that the baby would happily stay put for the full two weeks (15 degrees/15 days), and that the querent would have to be induced. But the nature of that applying sextile bothered me, because it’s between Moon in Mercury’s detriment and Mercury in Moon’s detriment: whatever the Moon was about to encounter, it wouldn’t be good for either party. I concluded that the querent would be better off taking some action before the two weeks had passed.

So that was my judgment: the baby was likely to arrive in a week, and in any case the querent shouldn’t wait the full two weeks before doing something about the situation. I hope everything went well, but I haven’t heard back from the querent. It’s been a month since I studied this chart, and I hope she is busy with her new baby girl by now.

Quick one: John Frawley has been publishing extracts from his new book on his Facebook fan page. Fixed stars, and very compelling stuff it is. Have a look.

My husband misplaced the TV remote control last night. Oh horrors! How can this happen, how will we ever turn up the volume or change the channel? After 20 or 25 minutes of fruitlessly searching sofa cushions, unlikely dresser drawers, and piles of laundry, it finally dawned on me to cast a horary chart. I like how this one shows the answer – but as with all lost-object horary charts, you still have to try several combinations of what the symbols might mean before the lock springs open.

Where is the remote?

In this chart, Aquarius rises, so my significator is Saturn, its traditional ruler. I was glad to see that the Moon’s next aspect is the sextile to Saturn. This suggests success – not quite the easy success of a trine, but a positive outcome nonetheless.

What is a remote control for? Correctly or not, I reasoned that it is something that gives power. So I decided to look at the Sun to determine where the remote could be.

The Sun is in the 6th house in Cancer. Also, the Moon happens to be right on the 6th house cusp. I thought this might be significant, but I didn’t know how. A planet on a cusp in a horary chart really wants you to notice it.

First, I reasoned that the 6th house is a utility room or storage closet, and that the water sign indicated, not something wet, but something comfortable or soft. So I looked in our coat closet and our bedroom closet, hunting through laundry and checking shelves where my husband, changing clothes after work, might have absently set the remote down. No success.

Then I thought about another meaning of the 6th house: the house of small animals – or where my pets spend their time. Something 6th house and soft must be the cat’s bed, right? I went back upstairs, picked up the two cat beds in our bedroom, and shook them out. No remote.

Finally, I considered that Moon sitting on the 6th house cusp. And it struck me: I should look where the cat currently was. Kobe, our black and white cat, had been napping on an armchair in the living room while my husband and I were searching every other piece of furniture. I patted gently around the cat, and there was the remote, wedged in the chair where he was curled up.

Something finally clicked for me this week about why theft belongs in the 7th house and psychic attacks go in the 12th in horary charts. I used to think an unknown thief must be a secret attacker, and therefore goes in the 12th. That’s not correct, though. These attacks aren’t assigned to houses based on who the attacker is; they’re about the nature of the actual attack.

Theft is a 7th-house matter. You might not know who the thief is, but the harm done to you is obvious: your car stereo is missing, your bank account has been drained. That’s an open attack, so it is associated with the house opposite the first.

Psychic attacks and the like are 12th-house matters. You may be quite certain you know who is sticking pins in your effigy, but the attack itself is covert.

Among the aphorisms of Jerome Cardan is this piece of instruction to would-be astrologers:

He that would truly promote Art must insist as much on the confutation of false opinions delivered by others, as in the declaration of truth.

With that charge in mind, and realizing I’m preaching to the choir, I must say there are some statements out there in the astrology blogosphere that surely must raise doubts even in the minds of those who make them. This week I read a post by a woman who hopes to conceive with her new husband, but they’re timing their lovemaking carefully, because

we don’t want to conceive a child with Saturn retrograde, which would inevitably furnish our youngster with inferiority feelings resulting from a challenging or distant relationship with its father.*

Never mind the child’s inferiority feelings, what about poor Saturn’s feelings after reading a slur like that? It’s not Saturn’s fault a child has a difficult relationship with its father. Truly, the planets don’t stand in line like the good and the shunned fairies at the babe’s birth, waving wands and furnishing it with an inferiority complex and a parent who spends too much time at the office. The planets don’t cause anything, any more than the weatherman causes the weather.

And talk about your self-fulfilling prophecies. I can just see the scene in the maternity ward: “Don’t you want to hold the baby, George?” “What’s the use? He’s got Saturn retrograde, he probably hates me. See, he’s already crying.”

The novice astrology student can easily determine for herself whether the generalization she’s parroting about Saturn retrograde holds true. All it takes is a simple two-question poll, asked of as many people as she can round up. Question 1: what’s your birth date? (You don’t even need a time or place for this. Saturn is retrograde for more than four months of the year. Just look up the birth date in an ephemeris.) Question 2: True or false? “I had a difficult or distant relationship with my father.” Then see how the answers line up with Saturn’s direction for each person.

No one symbol in the chart means the same thing for all births. No one astrological combination is a jail sentence carved in stone.

* Paraphrased. The web is so easy to search, and my intention is to critique the astrology, not the writer.

As Above, So Below - Ellen Driscoll

There’s more to look at in Grand Central Station than your train timetable. Mosaic artist Ellen Driscoll created cosmically-inspired art for the passageways of Grand Central Terminal North, featuring stories of the heavens and the underworld from five continents. I love these great horoscope wheels – the larger one features the 12 zodiac glyphs around the edge, the smaller one shows the planetary spheres in their proper traditional order, from Luna to Saturnus. Driscoll’s art is publicly accessible and free to view.

Don’t forget, when in the main terminal hall, to look straight up: the robin’s-egg-blue ceiling is painted with the zodiac constellations of the autumn sky.

Update: See Robbie Rosenfeld’s photos of the Grand Central murals.

Okay, I don’t know anyone (besides hungry astrologers) who would bother to ask a horary question about  lunch. But I love the section in Bonatti’s Book of Astronomy when he talks about horary questions about banquets. If you’ve been invited to a banquet, he says, and want to know what’s being served, look at the planet the Moon is joined to. (By “joined” I believe he means by conjunction OR by aspect, not only by conjunction.)

Moon with Saturn: unfit and unclean foods, poorly prepared and displayed, not tasting like themselves. “He who has gone will repent of those tastes; whence it is better that he not go to the banquet.”

Moon with Jupiter: good feasting, foods of good flavor, sweets and delicacies. “There will be foods there made with laughter and the like, and you will be honored there.” (I want a recipe for food made with laughter.)

Moon with Mars: don’t go. Bitter foods, and fights break out among the guests. (He also says Moon/Mars can indicate “hot foods and roasted meat.”)

Moon with Sun: foods of good flavor, seasoned with pepper or mustard, country foods, “and similarly-flavored things that are good to taste, and received with foresight, and appropriate.”

Moon with Venus: delicious foods and diverse drinks, or rich and oily foods. “Gladness, and games, and many delights which will please you.”

Moon with Mercury: many diverse types of foods and drinks. Pungent flavors. “Good words will be said there… and believable and unbelievable things will be recited.”

Wherever you are, whenever you read this, at whatever level you practice or study, whenever you have time, I would love to know:

Why do you practice astrology? What’s your goal? How do you know when a reading has been successful?

Snippets and paraphrases, parked here mostly for my own reference as I study Ben Dykes’ translation of Bonatti’s Book of Astronomy.

#16 – Bonatti refers to Sahl: “after the malefic planet were to transit the planet whom it was impeding, by one full degree, the planet is said to be freed from the malefic. But to me it seems that after the malefic has transited him by 1 minute of arc, the planet may be said to be free, and to have escaped, because [the malefic] cannot introduce anything after that unless it is fear.” So: in a horary question, if there’s a conjunction or aspect to a key significator by a malefic AND it is just separating, even by as little as 1 minute of arc, it indicates fear, but not the failure of the endeavor.

#17 – Same thing in reverse for separating aspects from benefics. “After [the benefic] has transited [the significator] by 1 minute of arc, it is not perfected, nor does the matter send anything to him but hope…. And the hope which the benefic gives is such that the querent believes that the matter will be perfected for him.” Again: if the desired aspect by the benefic is separating, even by just a minute, at the time of the question, it brings hope but not help.

#9 – “The Moon is always to be put as a significatrix of every matter and every beginning, and every nativity;… And it is her virtue alone, and only her power, that even if the Lord of the Ascendant or another significator of some matter were impeded, indeed so that it could not do or perfect what it ought, and she were found to be strong, nevertheless the matter will be perfected.” So even when Lord 1 is weak, look to the Moon, and if she’s strong enough, what you ask about can still come to pass.

#64 – “Look to see whether the Moon is in Cancer, or in Taurus, or in Sagittarius, or in Pisces:… nor does voiding of course harm her in this case as much in those places as much  as in others, provided that she is not combust.” Note that these signs are dignities of Moon or Jupiter (or in one case, both).

#31 – “A corporal conjunction will prohibit an aspect, and cuts it off, but an aspect will neither prohibit nor cut off a corporal conjunction.” I just used this one the other day, but couldn’t remember where I’d seen it.

Spotted on writehandedleftie.blogspot.com: an astrologer’s lament. Here’s my response from the client’s point of view.

Sir, I pray, if I am fated
Never to be truly mated,
Tell me how I might reverse
This my solitary curse.

Is there not a lucky mantra
For my happy-ever-after?
Will I need to wear a jewel?
Fight a tiger in a duel?

Tell me and I shall obey
What the planets have to say.
Money’s not a thing to me.
Wait, what? How much will that be?