comparing natal and horary charts

As you probably know, these are quite different:

1. Natal charts go by the birth moment. Horary goes by the moment of the question.

2. A thorough natal chart reading says a lot about the native's personality and potential. A horary chart is cast for a specific question only.

Our boards keep the two quite separate. Yet there are times when it is useful to compare the querent's natal chart with the horary chart. The best examples I can think of are medical astrology and advice to the lovelorn.

A horary question might read, "Is it colon cancer?" or "Why am I 40 and still single?"

Chances are that the natal chart would have a lot of useful infill.

I first learned about the benefits of chart comparison from Karen Hamaker-Zondag's Handbook of Horary Astrology. She talked about how a given degree in a horary might be really significance in the person's natal chart as an aid to interpretation.

However, I think the value of the 2-chart comparison is even more obvious. A horary question-- as a moment in time-- basically maps onto the natal chart as transits.

In comparing the two charts, we can get a much clearer picture of why the question was asked-- what was going on in the person's life at that moment.

For example, a love & romance horary may show "he loves me," but the birth chart may show some stiff opposition from natal Saturn to the querent's significator.

I wonder if you like to compare natal and horary charts, and with what results..

A very interesting and creative idea

Thanks.

I think there are several reasons why the chart comparison works.

1. Assuming the horary question is about a burning issue for the querent, we should be able to see it in the natal, because the moment of the horary shows up as transits to the natal chart.

2. A medical horary can, ideally, give some good insights, but a natal chart will often indicate a predisposition to a certain type of illness or injury.

3. I think degrees in a radical horary chart can show up in the natal chart in ways that offer more explanation. Basically one can do a synastry comparison between the two charts.

I'll give an example. They say, you never forget your first love. I went through high school with an emotionally painful unrequited crush on another student. Many years later, even long after I learned horary, I asked, "Did he love me?"

The answer was a "yes," but the affections were apparently much more on my side than his. With my horary significator Mercury in 3 degrees Pisces, I was the faster-moving planet, applying to a nice trine to Jupiter (him) with the moon translating. I received his Jupiter, but it wasn't reciprocal.

He was possibly put off by the problem that my (strict) parents found him wildly unsuitable. May father was terribly rude to him on one occasion. As a woman with a night birth, Saturn in my nativity symbolizes Dad. My natal Saturn at 3 degrees Virgo opposed my horary significator within 30'.

The horary Saturn squared my natal sun within the degree.

Sadly I have no way, these decades later, of accessing this man's birth chart, but I suspect a long-ago long-term painful obsession on my part relates to Pluto in some fashion. However, the vertex is an indicator of a "fateful encounter" with another person. It turns out that the horary chart's 7th house cusp conjuncts my natal vertex within 1.5 degrees.

I don't normally save my horary charts. I just look on-line at the chart of the moment, and let it go at that. But I'll see if I can come up with another example.

If I practiced horary astrology (I don't, beyond sticking a toe in here and there), I'd probably compare with the natal chart in most cases, if a natal chart were available. My understanding is that it's a good way to see if the horary chart is radical: if it is, there will be a resonance between the horary chart and the querent's natal chart. For example, the horary ascendant being on their moon, or something like that.

But that's a technique that really only works in the hands of a knowledgeable astrologer. On an amateur forum like this, most people don't know that technique well enough to use it competently, if they even know it at all, and we often (as in, maybe every month or so) get people posting in the horary section who aren't even clear on what kind of chart to post. Under these circumstances, it would be too confusing and chaotic to allow both kinds of charts in the same section.

Outside of this forum, I'd be all for it.

Osamenor, I've started this thread on the Research and Development board, so I assume that a discussion of natal and horary chart comparisons is legitimate here.

The stated purpose of this board is:

"...for applying scientific methods and understanding to all approaches of astrology, cooperative formulation and testing of new ideas, re-examination of known methods of delineation and interpretation, and the exploration of new astrological methods of all kinds."

There are some really good horary astrologers on this forum who certainly can distinguish different horoscope types. I don't know that the unknowledgeable querents can be policed in any fashion-- but they can be educated by more knowledgeable members of the community. Plenty of teaching moments!

Which makes me think that another fruitful thread topic would be "hybrid astrology." Examples would be combining chart types that normally aren't compared; or combining modern, western traditional, and/or Vedic methods. There's a fair bit of the latter going around, as well.

waybread said:

Osamenor, I've started this thread on the Research and Development board, so I assume that a discussion of natal and horary chart comparisons is legitimate here.

Click to expand...

It certainly is. I was just addressing your comment that "our boards keep the two quite separate."

For the purpose of people asking for chart readings, on this forum, separation is necessary. For learning purposes, of course you may discuss natal and horary chart comparisons.

You might be interested in the following method:

Yeah, I remember it was one of the very few horary books even somewhat available in the early 1960’s; I think the first one I looked at was Zadkiel’s, around 1964 or 65.

Note; off topic, but it is an interesting historical fact that Evangeline Adams most famous astrological textbooks-“astrology your place in the sun“ & “astrology your place among the stars“-were both entirely ghost-written by none other than Aleister Crowley!

Thanks, Sinh-- it makes me wonder how many other astrological methods got lost over time as each new orthodoxy insisted on its own methods.