Ask the HourMarker: Two Ships Smashing
Hello Rowan,
Your column is an excellent idea and one of the best things I've seen in a while. I look forward to reading more of your interpretations!
I consider myself to be very confident and motivated. However, whenever I decide to go for something or something, it seems to never work in my favour. I have recently been turned down a few times for a few job promotions. It has been pretty discouraging, but I try to keep a positive "a better opportunity will come" attitude about it.
I find myself struggling to move up in my career without the help of other people's influences. The same goes for dating. I'm very sociable and everybody seems to like me! But I rarely come across anybody who has actually wanted to date (even if just for fun). Making these types of connections seems to get tougher and tougher over time.
I have recently re-acquainted myself with somebody and am curious to see if it will lead anywhere. We had crossed paths in the past over 10 years ago, but never spoke to each other. We are acquainted with people in the same circles, but only just found out that we even knew one another existed. We've both expressed attraction to one another and have recently gone on our first date. Will a romantic relationship develop? Or will we be like ships passing in the night?
Thank you!
- sincerely yours,
hopeless romantic
Hi helpless romantic,
Wow thank you so much for your kind words, I’m so glad you are enjoying it!
Something I love about horary is teasing out the unstated questions from the chart. Oftentimes, it’s not so much the questions people ask, but rather the question surrounding or underneath the question they ask. Here, the question is “will we get together?” That’s a relatively straightforward question with a pretty clear answer, but before we get into that lets go poking around at the question underneath, and see if it leads us to any interesting insights.
In most questions I take, I will usually look at the 12th part of the ascendant as one of the indicators of the unstated question. In this case, the 12th part of the ascendant falls at 25°Taurus in the 8th house, the idle place, and is conjunct Mars and square Saturn, which is pretty much that feeling of being trapped. The whole picture this paints reminds me of the story of Sisyphus, pushing up a boulder only to have it eternally roll back down. But unlike eternity, the 8th house is a place of change, where the sun is about to set, and then nightfall after that, then the sunrise the following morning. In the succedent 8th house, the idleness is an illusion, change is happening even if you can’t see it. But just like you can’t change the pace of the sun by yelling at it, in the 8th house you need to wait, agonizingly, for change to occur on the timeline of the Fates. I think here, you’ve found the limits of individual effort and will, and it might be time to explore other ways of thinking about success and accomplishment. In this chart, Venus rules the ascendant and is placed in the 11th house. And while the 11th house is the place of hopes, desires, striving, and acquisition, it’s also the house of friendships and alliances, of soul companions. I think this says a lot about acquisition and happiness, that true happiness, joy, and success comes from sharing your life with others. There’s this sense in the medieval Islamicate astrology and cosmology that our individual souls were made from a collective soul, and that we yearn to reconnect and return with the one.1 Ultimately, we live an existence that, for better or for worse, is dependent on other people. But that reliance on other people is also what it means to be human.
Now for the question you actually asked! Frankly, this is one of the better horary charts I’ve seen in a while, and I think its safe to say that yes, you two will start a relationship! We have Venus ruling the ascendant and placed in the 11th house of hopes and acquisition, already a really good sign. Since Jupiter is in the 7th house, we can look at Jupiter as the specific person and mars ruling the 7th and placed in the 8th house as your love life in general. Looking at mars in the 8th, we see that the moon translates the light between Venus and Mars. Mars is struggling here— in its fall in Taurus, having just passed the square with Saturn, and in the 8th house, the idle place. So not a whole lot going on. But the moon has swooped in, and moves you from the idle place to the place of hope and accomplishment.
If we look at Jupiter signifying the person, we get an even clearer answer. Jupiter is retrograde in this chart, which can signify returning back to something or revisiting, and that seems to be what’s happening with this person. You mentioned that it was over 10 years ago that you first crossed paths with them, and that makes me think of Jupiter’s cycle, which takes around 12 years to complete its path through the zodiac. This might be something to check out on your own, if there’s some sort of Jupiter connection from the first time you encountered each other, either with this horary or with your natal chart, it’s a really good sign that this will turn into something more. But besides that hypothetical connection, we have Venus applying to a lovely trine with Jupiter, and in fact, Jupiter and Venus are in each other’s bounds. This is a pretty rare form of mutual reception, and it indicates that both of you are definitely into each other. And with all of this happening out of favorable and powerful houses, there is attraction, chemistry, and the desire to actually make this thing happen on both sides! The moon applies to conjoin Jupiter and trine Venus, which feels like the cherry on top. Not only is there interest between the two of you, but the situation itself is moving towards a relationship.
So, to close this out I think it’s helpful to look at Venus here, both for the stated and unstated question. Venus in Leo without any particular dignity, and the word for this (peregrine) is interesting, it literally means “to wander” or to be foreign. While planets in domicile can do what they want, there’s a sense with peregrine planets that they need to rely on the help of others, and I think a lot of us can relate to that reality. Unless you are Bezos rich and can buy your own dick rocket, we need the support of others— friends, coworkers, lovers, acquaintances, strangers— to feed ourselves, to have a job, to have fun, or just generally to live. No one is truly self sustaining, and relying on others is just part of the deal in this existence. And even the super rich are sustained by their workers— if everyone under them stopped working, they couldn’t maintain their lifestyles or power. And if you think about it, you necessarily want to live a life that only relies on yourself! Take relationships, a relationship with someone where you have all the power and make all the decisions is no fun at all (not to mention problematic). Both parties need to rely on each other, there is an interconnectedness and interdependence that needs to happen, otherwise it’s not fulfilling for either one. And I think that’s true of life in general.
I think that sometimes things just happen, whether good or bad, that are outside of our direct control, and all we can do is ride the current. But that doesn’t mean we need to ride alone, and in fact if we have good friends and allies, it makes the joys sweeter and the storms easier to weather. So I would say, don’t look down on the fact that you need to rely on others to accomplish something! But instead, lean into the fact that you are part of an ecosystem, one small manifestation of a collective soul.
Amore Fati,
-Rowan Aubrey Sloane
Thank you all for reading! To submit a question, email me at sloaneastro@gmail.com, with the subject line “ask the hourmarker.”
For more on the fascinating topic of the soul in medieval Islamicate astrology, go to Ali A Olomi’s Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/headonhistory/