Rose's Astro Academy | An Astrology Podcast

E21 *Topic* The Four Branches of Astrology Part 2: Inceptional and Horary

• Rose Potts • Episode 21

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In this episode of Rose's Astro Academy, we continue our exploration of the four main branches of astrology, diving into the lesser-known realms of electional and horary astrology. If you missed last week’s episode, where we covered natal and mundane astrology, be sure to catch up after this one! Today, we’ll uncover how electional astrology helps pinpoint the best moments to begin important ventures, such as marriages or business launches, to align with favorable planetary influences. We’ll also delve into horary astrology, which offers a unique method of answering specific questions by casting a chart for the moment the question is asked.  

Throughout the episode, we’ll share stories and examples of how these branches of astrology can be applied, offering a deeper understanding of how they work in practice. While electional astrology can give you an edge by aligning with positive energies, horary astrology provides direct answers to life’s pressing questions—though not every question is meant to be asked lightly! Whether you’re curious about timing events or seeking clarity through horary, this episode will introduce you to these fascinating, predictive branches of astrology.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to episode 21 of Rose's Astro Academy, where we demystify the system of astrology piece by piece For our topic talk. This week we are doing the second part of a two-part series looking at the four main branches of astrology. If you missed last week, I recommend you go and listen to that one after this. But don't worry, they do not need to be listened to in order. There are four branches of astrology, which are natal, mundane, electional and horary astrology. Today we will be looking at electional and horary, which are the two more obscure or less widely known branches of astrology, and they're a little more surprising for people who haven't heard of them before. When you first learn about these branches of astrology, it's kind of one of those things where you go wait, astrology can do what. So we're going to get into those today, but first a quick refresh from last week. Natal astrology is the casting of a birth chart for the moment that someone is born and then using that chart to speak to the unfolding of their fate, destiny, karmic patterns that they navigate in life circumstances, personality, etc. Mundane astrology is looking at the transiting planets to speak to collective events, cultural shifts, the current zeitgeist and things like that. So, to start off with electional astrology, last week when I announced part two I did call it inceptional astrology, and the two terms are pretty similar and somewhat used interchangeably, but there is a difference and we'll get into that. Both electional and inceptional astrology kind of fall under its own branch as two offshoots of the same branch. Electional astrology is focused on finding the most auspicious times to undertake certain activities or events, like getting married, launching a business, things like that Big undertakings that we want to turn out successfully. So we can use electional astrology to try to find a time and a date which will result in the most preferable outcome for the event. It's kind of like using astrology to have luck and fortune on your side rather than working against you. So the question is how can astrology possibly do this? That's a really great question and where we start getting into the inceptional side of this branch.

Speaker 1:

Just as individuals have a birth chart which is cast for the moment that they're born, every other thing or occurrence also has a birth chart as well. So a marriage has a birth chart, a business has a birth chart, even a country has a birth chart. A business has a birth chart, even a country has a birth chart. And just like a birth chart for an individual speaks to the unfolding of fate and karma in this person's life, the birth chart for something like a marriage will do the same. So that's inception astrology, inception being about the beginning of something. So the casting of a chart for the beginning of a thing to find out about the beginning of something. So the casting of a chart for the beginning of a thing to find out about the nature of the thing, how successful it will be, how things will turn out.

Speaker 1:

Electional astrology is when we plan the timing of the beginning of something in terms of what looks most auspicious for that venture. It's a very common practice in India, for example, for couples to consult with an astrologer to choose an auspicious date for their wedding. In the Western world, the oldest astrological text that we can find that mentions electional astrology is from an astrologer named Dorotheus who lived in the first century AD. So this branch of astrology does go all the way back to ancient Hellenistic times, though the practice does become much more prominent in the medieval era.

Speaker 1:

It's important to note that electing an auspicious date can help give you an edge. Let's say, like fortune is now smiling down on your venture, whether that's buying a house, signing a contract, getting married or whatever that may be but doing so is not going to override the fate that's say written in your birth chart. Or let's say a couple has a toxic relationship. Electing an auspicious date for their wedding isn't going to magically fix their relationship for them or make it turn out successfully. Or if you launch a business on an auspiciously chosen date, you still have to put in the work necessary to get it off the ground. So there's a lot of limitations to this. It's not a magic fix, but a lot of people believe that electing an auspicious date will help things go more favorably for you and that it will come along with more of the feeling of working with the tide and things just generally being easier.

Speaker 1:

I'll give you a really good example of how this can look in concrete terms. So I heard this from an astrologer and I think I remember who, but I forget exactly so I won't name any names. But that astrologer was getting married and consulted an electional astrologer to choose the best date. The electional astrologer came back with a very specific two-hour window on a specific day. So they went with that and on the day of their wedding it was raining, but right before their actual ceremony the sky cleared up and they actually got married with bright, sunny skies. And then, once the ceremony was done, it started raining again. So that two-hour window that the electional astrologer chose actually ended up to be pretty perfect. So choosing the date and time isn't meant to just speak to how the actual marriage ceremony is going to go. It's supposed to speak to the actual success of the marriage itself. But nonetheless, it's a neat little anecdote to show how maybe working with this type of astrology can help fortune smile down on us more and help things go more smoothly.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk a little bit about some considerations that an electional astrologer would use when electing a date and time. The most important factors are the ruling planet of the rising sign and the moon. Both of those should be in prominent places and well placed in the chart, not receiving any harsh aspects, things like that. And then, other than that, it's a lot of contextual factors based on the specific context that you're looking for. But I'll give you one example that if you're electing a date for a wedding, for example, you don't want Mars to be, say, right at the midheaven line in the place of most prominence. The midheaven line would represent where the sun is at high noon, so a very prominent place, and Mars being the ruler of cutting and severing, and this being a marriage, you really don't want that symbol to be in prominence for that type of event. So, anyways, just a couple of examples of how the electional astrologer would go about choosing the right chart.

Speaker 1:

I haven't personally felt drawn to working with electional astrology. Who knows, maybe in the future, when I'm choosing an important date for something, then I will go ahead and do that. But I do think the idea of inceptional astrology is really amazing that basically anything with a definite beginning has a birth chart and that the birth chart for that thing speaks to the unfolding of it, the future of it, the hardships that they may come along and the actual timing of those hardships as well. I think that's super interesting, especially when applied to the study of the birth chart of countries. That's like a whole rabbit hole that I would love to go down in a future topic episode. So if it's the first time that you're hearing about the birth chart of things, I think it's a pretty cool realization to come to in general about astrology and I encourage you to. You know.

Speaker 1:

Go and look up the birth chart of things, but do so with a big note of caution. Especially if you're newer to analyzing charts and also want to look up important charts like the birth chart for your relationship, try not to read too much into it. Some astrologers are mixed in the opinion that they think that if you have not elected a chart for the beginning beforehand, then going back retroactively and looking at that chart for the beginning won't actually tell you anything of importance. And the way that my teacher described this is that you have to consult the oracle about it from the get-go. You can't kind of retroactively go back and consult the oracle. But then there's a whole thing of Inceptional Astrology where it's not like a date for the birth of the United States was elected but nonetheless the birth chart of the United States greatly, greatly speaks to the unfolding of events that take place culturally, politically, for the nation.

Speaker 1:

So I personally am still of a mixed opinion. I haven't really made up my mind on the matter. I do prefer not to go back and consult a chart retroactively, like I didn't cast a chart for the birth of this podcast. Quite frankly, I don't want to look at the chart because what if it says something that I don't want to know right?

Speaker 1:

I think that when we're feeling like going back and looking at charts for the beginning of things retroactively, at its heart we're trying to answer a question, and that question is will this thing turn out well, things like that. And that brings us to our fourth and final branch of astrology, which is Hori astrology, and that is actually the astrology of questions. So I think that a question such as will it turn out well when applied retroactively to something that's already been started is much better applied as a Hori question. So Hori is actually our youngest branch of astrology. It's believed to have come about in the medieval era, though there are some hints of much older texts hinting at Hori astrology being practiced much earlier than that. And this is where a chart is cast for the moment, a question is asked and the chart is used to provide an answer for that question.

Speaker 1:

I'm a lot more familiar with Hori astrology than I am with electional astrology. I've actually taken a one-year course in it, and it is something that I choose to incorporate into my practice from time to time, mostly as it comes up and as it feels right in the moment, but it's not something that I advertise. It's a tool that I bring in when the situation specifically calls for it and it's a tool that I still use with a large degree of caution because it is quite an art form. Horary questions can get pretty weighty pretty fast when used with clients, because clients will come in and ask really big questions, really big life-changing forks in the road, such as should I get a divorce, what's the condition of this house that I'm about to buy, and things where, if we as the astrologer give them a direct answer and answer that incorrectly, then that can carry a lot of weight. So it's something that I approach with a lot of caution and respect at this point. So don't be coming to me right now expecting horary questions to be answered. I will answer them if it does feel right to do so, but right now I'm still mostly in my practicing phase for this type of astrology. I see it as a branch of astrology that should be taken very seriously, and that's by both the astrologer and the client.

Speaker 1:

Asking a hori question is a weighty thing because you may not get the answer that you're looking for and before a hori astrologer is consulted and the question is asked, the client really has to sit down with themselves and know that if they receive the answer that they don't want to hear, will they be okay or will they be absolutely crushed by that? And if the answer is that they will be absolutely crushed by the answer that they don't want to hear, then they should not ask the question that they don't want to hear, then they should not ask the question. There's a lot of horror questions that I will never pose myself. For example, I love to write fiction and I hope that one day I can write a book that will be somewhat successful, and I could ask that question, but I would be absolutely crushed if the answer was no, so I will not ask that question. Crushed if the answer was no, so I will not ask that question.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing is learning what to ask. Also, there's a lot of nuance with asking the question. It can't answer all types of questions. For example, it's not designed to answer should I questions very well, it's good at answering specific questions like will I get this job? Will I begin a relationship with this person? Will option A or option B turn out better for me? Will I be accepted to the school that I've applied to Things like that. So for the client, there is a lot of learning what specifically to ask. And then the astrologer also has to be very clear about the actual question being asked, because quite often there is a hidden question veiled within another question, such as a question about should I move to place A or place B? But the hidden question within that is the stipulation that oh well, if I move to this other place, then that involves me leaving my marriage. So the question is really about should I end my marriage? And it's very important that the astrologer is clear on what that actual question being asked is, or they can read the chart incorrectly.

Speaker 1:

Also, in this tradition of astrology, the client was asked to pray for a day and a night for the right answer before posing the question to the astrologer. It was not something to be used frivolously or spontaneously, without thought or intention prior. It's like in the ancient days when you consulted an oracle. Often they would live removed from society in some way. Perhaps they would be high on a mountaintop in a temple and you would have to spend an entire day journeying up to their abode in order to ask them a question. So hori astrology should be approached with that frame of mind. There's a lot of thought and care that goes into the asking of a question from the client side, and that's another reason why I don't particularly feel comfortable at this point with taking questions from clients online who I don't know if they've put that amount of thought and care into their question. Anyways, that's my little spiel on how this art form should be taken seriously, but let's get more into the nuts and bolts of how it actually works.

Speaker 1:

So a chart is cast for the moment that a question is asked and then there's a series of considerations that the astrologer goes through in answering the question. For each different type of question there's basically like a different protocol of considerations that the astrologer will go through, but some factors that always remain the same is that the person asking is called the querent and they're going to be assigned signifiers which would be planets in the chart, and those planets are typically always going to be the planet that rules the rising sign and the moon. And then the thing being asked about will also be assigned planetary signifiers, and that changes based on the type of question being asked, and so we have two, three, sometimes up to four planets representing the querent, the person asking and the thing being asked about. And then the relationships between the planets are examined, especially aspects, upcoming aspects or separations when the planets are leaving, aspect with one another, or house placement or dignity. All of these normal astrological factors are then taken and applied to kind of reading a story in the chart that answers the question. So I'll give you more of a concrete example, because that can sound really confusing and wishy-washy. But what I like about Hori is that the judgments are usually quite specific. So I'll give you a concrete example for how a horary question could actually be answered by the chart. So I'll give you a relationship example.

Speaker 1:

Say that a woman comes to an astrologer and is inquiring about her partner, who is a man, and asks the question will we break up? And that means you know not, will we ever break up? But will we break up in, say, the imminent future? And so the woman in the reading, the person asking, gets assigned the planet that rules the first house as well as Venus and the moon, and her partner gets assigned the ruler of the seventh house as well, the sun. And there's some factors that limit that. But we won't get into that right now, just for simplicity's sake.

Speaker 1:

And with the questions about will they break up. It's very important to see if their planets are separating from aspect with one another or doing so imminently, and that is a very good indication that, yes, a breakup will be likely to occur. And then there's a lot of other factors as well. For example, reception between the planets is really important, and especially with breakup questions, big changes, big imminent changes in receptions say that you know she's her planets are about to move into the detriment of his planets. That's a really bad sign as well. And then there's a whole list of considerations. It gets quite complex, but that's just to give you an example of how a chart can possibly go about answering questions.

Speaker 1:

And that also brings me to an important point is that there's different ways to practice Hori astrology, and so if you go to online forums and start looking up Hori astrology, you can find people fighting quite often about what the right techniques are, and what my teacher taught me is that it's very lineage-based, so he was taught by his teacher to work a specific way, and so that's what he passed on to his students, myself included and so it's about staying within that framework of your lineage and not dabbling all over the place with different tools and techniques, because it is really about entrainment to a system, and then if you follow these standardized rules every time when you answer a question, then you're working with the oracle of astrology in that way, rather than if the oracle has no idea how the astrologer is going to go about answering the question, then things fall apart a system of reading their cards a certain way and that might look different from other tarot readers, but for them they stay within this coherent system so that they're able to answer questions. And so this can bring us to all sorts of questions like okay, so if I have a query question that I want to ask and I ask different astrologers, is my answer going to be different depending on the astrologer that I go to? The answer is potentially yes, but also remember that in Hori astrology a chart is cast for the moment a question is asked, and now that is what is called a divinatory moment, and so it's kind of like the hands of fate and etc. Have chosen this specific moment for the asking of the question, because it is this moment that has the answer that you need. There is a spark within the person asking, an inner urgency that arises to press this question forwards. And so there's this triad that takes place between the person asking and the astrologer and the stars in the answering of the questions. So it's quite complex and I would not recommend that you try this out by going and approaching two different astrologers at the same time and asking them the same question. Never, ever, ask the same horary question twice For one. You should always accept the answer that's given and not try to ask again, and astrology is ruled by Mercury, the trickster, so if you start to try to trick astrology in this way, it's going to trick you right back. So just be careful with how you approach this type of stuff.

Speaker 1:

Anyways, we're almost done for the day, but I thought I would finish by telling you a fun anecdotal story about me using Hori Astrology to answer one of my own questions and how it went course. So I was eager to put my skills to work and wanted to cast a chart to see the condition of the used car that I wanted to buy, which is a big use case in horary astrology that we went over quite often in class. So I felt pretty confident about my ability to answer this question and I was really stuck on getting a Toyota Corolla. That was the car that I really wanted. I basically wasn't going to settle for anything else and at the time I was an hour bus ride from my work and I was urgently needing to get a car as soon as possible because the commute was too much. So after a couple weeks of looking, I found the Toyota Corolla that I wanted and I just fell in love with it. And then I cast a chart to see its condition and I saw that the planet symbolizing the car was in its detriment. So this was basically the chart saying there's something wrong with the car. You probably shouldn't get it. And I was like, oh okay, well, let me see. So I went and I test drove the car and I took it to a mechanic to get assessed and the mechanic said that it was perfectly sound. In fact, the mechanic said this car is such a beauty, it's a gem. Like the mechanic loved this car. So I decided you know what, I'm going to get it. It has low mileage, it's in my price range, it's exactly the car that I want. And the mechanic said it was in great condition. So I bought it and the car has been okay for the most part.

Speaker 1:

Mechanically, the car has been pretty much great, but there's been a number of little things that keep happening since I got the car. The biggest thing was the windshield wiper. Transmission went like a month in having it and that cost me $500. But also there's, like this engine shield under the front and that just started falling off and scraping the ground within no time at all and even like the front spoiler or whatever it's called, started falling out and needed to be secured. The car was advertised as being completely rest free, but then it turns out that there's little rust starting in a number of areas all over the car. There's a slow leak in one of the tires, which I know is pretty common, but then it turns out that the tire pressure monitoring system is faulty. The radio never gets a clear signal, the air coming out, the vents is musky smelling, the trunk doesn't lock, oh, and it also might be haunted, because one night I was sitting in it and the inside light just turned on by itself.

Speaker 1:

So, anyways, I could go on about this, and it's really nothing major, but it's a lot of minor things. So should I have listened to the horary chart and not gotten this car? Potentially, there's definitely a lot wrong with it that I was not aware of before I bought it, and that's basically what was indicated by the ruler being in the sign of its detriment. And it was a really great teaching moment for me as well, because I think that I might have judged the chart like oh, there must be something very mechanically off with this car and that's what the detriment means. But there can actually be a lot more nuance to that answer, where, okay, the car is actually mechanically sound, everything that matters is in great condition, but all of these little things are going to go wrong. That can still be represented by the planet being in detriment. In a way, though, I'm almost relieved to see how this played out, because when the chart gave me the indication that there was something wrong with the car, but the mechanics said that it was fine and in fact, it was actually a gem that made me question horary astrology I was like the chart is wrong and I just did this one-year course on horary and it's not giving me the right answer, and it was a really existential moment for me where I was like is this entire branch of astrology just wrong? So, in a way, I'm relieved that the chart turned out to be correct and I'm also relieved that the car is mechanically sound in the ways that matter. It just has a lot of quirks.

Speaker 1:

I don't regret buying the car. I still love it, even if it's a little finicky. To me it's just such a great example of the shades of gray in the practice of horror and that if I had been trying to answer that question for a client, I might have just told them hey, don't buy this car. But you know, I don't regret buying this car. I'm so glad that I bought it. I do love it. So I guess it's a lesson for me also in hedging my bets and answering the question like hey, you know what? I'm not going to tell you to buy the car or not, but just so you know, there's a bit of a red flag here that there might be more wrong with the car than you at first assume there will be. So not getting caught up in the black and white yes or no, thinking of horary is definitely an art form and something that I'm still developing my skills in.

Speaker 1:

Anyways, I thought you would enjoy my little story, and it's a great example too, of why an astrologer should consult other astrologers, because we can be notoriously bad at reading our own charts because we're quite biased when it comes to ourselves. So this has been my talk on Inceptional and Hori Astrology Not at all meant to be an exhaustive treatment, but just more mini intros introducing these concepts for people if you've never heard of them before or heard about them and weren't really clear about what they were. I remember that the first time I learned that everything has a birth chart, even countries, it was quite a radical idea for me and felt pretty cool, and it's pretty fun to start looking up the inception charts for things. I hope you enjoyed this talk. If it raised any questions for you, feel free to email them to rosesastroacademy at gmailcom. If you want to book a reading with me, you can do that on my website, rosesastroacademycom.

Speaker 1:

And just so you know if you're new to the podcast, new episodes air every Monday and Wednesday. Know if you're new to the podcast. New episodes air every Monday and Wednesday. On Mondays we typically do a transit talk where we talk about a big transit for the week, and on Wednesday we do a topic episode such as this, diving into a new layer of this fascinating system. You can also follow along on my Instagram at rosesastroacademy. And if you enjoyed this podcast and haven't done so already, I would really, really appreciate you hitting the follow button so you can stay in the loop, and also leaving a review of the podcast. Well, that's all I have for you. See you soon for a new episode.