Hour ruler agreement

A recent conversation on this thread

http://www.astrologyweekly.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66844

Led to questions about whether or not the necessity of hour ruler agreement is the one and only thing that prevents a chart from being read, or if it is just another warning as to how the astrologer may err. Any opinions or thoughts?

tsmall said:

Ilenek said:

Perhaps someone with greater experience will come along and find an error in my Ruler of the Chart evaluation. But if not, then I must retract my delineation and suggest that if the question is truly a pressing, considered and meaningful concern to you, please re-ask it at a later time.

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Well I'm no expert either but I think you are correct re hour ruler not being in agreement. That said, after all the debate on another thread(s) about a late ASC, I wonder if a non-radical chart really can't be read?

BobZemco said:

How odd is it that the one and only thing that actually, really, truly does prevent a chart from being read is an incongruous Hour Ruler....

Here's a great analogy....

Three men are brutally beating and raping a woman...and you all stand there screaming at a small child who dropped his ice cream cone on the ground.

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That thread evolved into a discussion on the strictures or considerations when judging charts, and it seemed pretty clear that a non radical chart was the only one not fit to be judged at all. Except

BobZemco said:

When does Bonatti say the chart is invalid?

He never once says so.
I'm quoting Bob because those two ideas seem incongruous.

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What is the hour ruler, and why is agreement important? The hour ruler is the hour watcher, and there are an awful lot of things to watch in an hour. So it seems to me that if there is no agreement between the ASC ruler and the Hour ruler it would be because the hour ruler is watching something else.

Which for me at least absolutely begs the questions...why does this render the chart unreadable, and can we tell from the chart what the hour ruler is watching, if it isn't the question posed? Is this just another warning for the astrologer that there is something else going on with the chart?

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Use of the agreement of the hour ruler as a criteria for judging the likelihood of the reliability of the astrological influences at the time of the asking of the horary question, does not appear among the horary authors prior to the great Guido Bonatti: now, it might well be that this was an important discovery of Bonatti's, and that by taking this into account, the practitioner would have an improved chance of correctly delineating the horary chart! Simply because the pioneers of Western horary diden't mention it, does NOT necessarily mean that the consideration might not be an improvement in practice!

...however, I have not used this criterion (hour ruler agreement) as a stricture or qualifying consideration in horary, and in my experience I do not feel that my results would have been improved if I HAD used it, so I disregard this consideration (but then I disregard a number of standard horary doctrines, so take what I say bearing that in mind!) For me (as for Gerard of Cremona and Agrippa) the only real stricture vs the likely reliability of the cosmic influences operative at the time of a horary question, is finding the South Node (Dragon's Tail) in the ascending sign of the horary chart...