Perhaps the most important part ofhorary judgement is done before we even cast the chart. This is the determining of what question is really being asked.
Questions often come swathed in clouds of irrelevant detail. There is a skill in cutting through these swathes toreach the bones of the issue. You have probably had the experience while watching a film of suddenly realising, 'Hey - this is
Romeo andJuliet, dressed up!' or 'This is Snow White set in modern New York!'
You have noticed that beneath its disguise the bones of the plot are those of
Romeo andJuliet or Snow White. So it is with horary: there are certain standard
questions which recur again and again in different guises.
* Does she love me?
*
Will I get the job?* Will I win?
* Am I bewitched?
* Will the king be deposed?
* Will I get the gift from the king?
*
Can we do the deal?Keep your ears open and you will quickly recognise them when you hear them. Allow yourselfto be sidetracked by irrelevant details and you will end up answering a question that has not been asked.
Similarly, the fact of who is asking the question is not always as clear as it might seem. There are direct questions posed by the person concerned. There are direct questions asked by someone about somebody else. So far so simple.
Then there are questions asked by someone acting as mouthpiece for someone else. Suppose Erika wishesto ask me a question, but we do not have a common
language. She has a friend who speaks English, so she asks the friend to ask the question on her behalf. The friend is not asking her own question about Erika; she is relaying Erika's question to me. I must ignore the friend, treating this exactly as if Erika herself were asking me, so Erika will be given the 1st house as querent.
Be clear on the distinction:
* the friend asks her own question, 'Is my friend Erika going to marry Rudolph?'
*
the friend relays Erika's own question, 'Will I marry Rudolph?'In the first example, Erika would be given the nth house; in the second, she would be given the 1st.
Then there are questions that arise in conversation, it being unclear who is really asking. I am chatting with my friend about his work prospects. The question comes up, 'When will I get a better job?' But who is really asking it? Is it my friend, is it me, or is my friend articulating the question that I am forcing into his mouth? Be wary of such situations, especially when you are eagerly press- ing everyone you know for horaries so you can practice your skills. This is one advantage of professional practice: the fee changing hands makes it quite clear who is the querent.
There are those who would rigorously limit the scope of horary enquiry. 'You can't ask that: it's too trivial'. 'You can't ask that: it's too important.' Between what is trivial and what is important, precious little survives.
With a very few small restrictions, you can ask anything. Trivial? So who am I to tell you that your concerns are trivial, and apply a cosmic veto to them? Maybe in the great scheme of things 'Who will be president?' is of more moment than 'Where is the cat?' but in fact it is my bystander's curiosity in the former of these that is trivial; the whereabouts of Puss most certainly is not. Compared to the rise and fall of empires, our grandest concerns are as nothing - and yet salvation is gained or lost in an instant, so the matter of any instant cannot be trivial.
Itis claimed that we cannot ask 'important' questions, such as 'Who will win the election?' because so many people are asking this same question and the same question cannot be asked more than once. Let us consider this statement, 'The same question cannot be asked more than once'.
It is true; but it is not true in the way in which it is meant. Fundamental to astrology is the fact that every instant is different.THIS instant is different from
WHAT IS THE QUESTION AND WHO IS ASKING IT? 139
instant. Take this away and we have no astrology. So it is not undesirable to ask the same question twice - it is impossible. Even if the question has the same words, it is not the same question.
Nor is there any reason why someone should not ask the same question of more than one astrologer. Doctors can give second opinions; so can astrologers. Truth is a stutdy beast; it does not run away if more than one person looks at it. Each separate question on the same subject is like a cross-section of the same situation, as a zoologist might take cross-sections of a worm to put under the microscope. Different cross-sections, but still the same worm, so still the same answer. If fifty or five hundred people ask 'Who will win the next election?' the cosmos, which is an infinitely subtle mechanism, will find fifty or five hundred ways of showing the same answer. No matter how many people examine individual stills from Gone
with the Wind, Rhett Butler always leaves at the end of the story.
A querent will ask what is apparently the same question at different stages of a situation. Common is 'Should I throw him out?' followed by 'Should I really throw him out?' and 'Will I be OK if! throw him out?' These consequent charts can be seen to relate to each other in exactly the same ways as birthcharts of family members relate to each other. The same patterns OCCut, and usually, in question after question, the que rent edges towards a position from which she feels able to make a decision one way or the other.
Other querents will ask similar questions about different situations. 'Will I get a job from this audition?' 'Will I get a job from tomorrow's audition?' The first few of these will have clear results. After a while, however, the charts become more and more vapid, almost as if the cosmos is losing interest in the situation and saying, 'If you haven't taken the hint by now, I'm not going to keep perform- ing for you'. Typically, these charts will start showing minor events that are going to occur on that day ('Oh look, your father's coming to visit you') but say little of significance about the job situation. Itis possible that this reflects either querent or astrologer losing interest in the repeated questions, or the nature of the true question changing as the querent despairs of having a successful audition. In the latter case, the querent is not so much asking for information as hoping that the consultation will work magic. Itwill not.
Questions like this verge on the mechanical, and the mechanical is one real limit to what can be asked. There must be some spark of genuine interest in the question, even if the question is a 'trivial' one and hardly oflife-changing signifi- cance. There is no such spark of genuine interest in, for instance, 'Will 1 come up on this week's lottery?' 'Will 2 come up on this week's lottery?' etc.
Then there are such products of the fourth-form as 'Is horary true?' and 'Is the Bible the word of God?' A moment's reflection should make clear why these cannot be asked.
Supplementary questions are fine. 'When will I marry? Will we have children? Will he get along with my family? Will he have a good job?' These can all be judged from the same chart. But it is best to discourage questions on different issues: 'When will I marry? When will I get a better job? Where is the cat?' Sometimes querents will have two or three issues weighing on them, so if neces- sary these questions can be answered from the same chart. But the asking of many unrelated questions suggests that none of them is the real issue. Itis better
toask the querenttoreflect on what is most important and then ask that.