“The long unmeasured pulse of time moves everything. There is nothing hidden that it cannot bring to light, nothing once known that may not become unknown. Nothing is impossible.” Sophocles

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On March 23rd of 2023, I received a message from my brother.

Sent from a travelling ambulance while he accompanied my mother to the hospital, this Horary explores the exact moment I received that call and the story that subsequently unfolded.

For the last ten years, my mother’s mobility had been hampered by a stroke, but her general health had seemed ok; a very active and outdoorsy woman for the vast majority of her life, this sudden turn of events came like a bolt out of the blue, and I was anxious to get some insight. As soon as I returned home, I cast a chart, using the time I received the message as my reference.   

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I am represented in the chart by a Cancer ascendant and its ruler, the Moon, peregrine and travelling fast through the 11th house in the sign of Aries, falling in an exact opposition with my mother’s natal Sun. The angles of this chart closely reflect my own nativity, emphasising its importance and the need to pay close attention. 

My mother, who is represented by the 10th house, is given to the sign of Pisces and its ruler Jupiter, which is under the Sun’s beams, peregrine in Aries and placed in the 11th. Saturn is conjoined to the MC in this chart, adding to my mother’s signification and also mirroring my own Saturn placement; in fact, my second Saturn return was about to perfect the next day. 

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My mother’s illness is represented by the turned 6th from the 10th, the radical 3rd, which is given to Leo and its ruler, the Sun, strongly placed in exaltation in Aries on the cusp of the 11th house. Being the ruler of the third house, the Sun is also the significator for my brother, which reassured me he was very capable of taking care of the situation; the signification of the Sun as my brother, or SON, was not lost on me!

The sign of Cancer has long been associated with vehicles; this message was sent from an ambulance, a fact which is further described by Mars, the ruler of the radical 6th house of sickness, rising in the 12th (hospitals) in Gemini, which seemed a very accurate portrayal of a message sent whilst on an emergency journey to the hospital. All the planets except Mars are fast in motion, a fact which, coupled with the strong cardinal emphasis of the stellium in Aries and the Cancer ascendant, gives an overall impression of speed and movement; I judged that I was looking at a rapidly developing situation. 

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The Judgement. 

As well as the angles of the chart reflecting my own nativity, the day ruler, Jupiter and the hour ruler, Mercury, clearly describe a message about my mother, and I looked further to assess the degree of her illness.

I noted that the exalted Sun in Aries, ruler of the turned 6th house of sickness, was moving closer to Jupiter (my mother) and that Venus in Taurus, dignified by rulership, triplicity and term, was the strongest planet in the chart. Venus rules my mother’s turned 8th house of death, in this chart, and the only other two planets that have any dignity are the two malefics, Mars & Saturn, who rule the radical 6th house of sickness and the radical 8th house of death, respectively. Both of these planets are angular, with Mars applying to a tight trine with Saturn, which perfects as Mars moves into its fall in Cancer; Pluto also resides in the radical 8th. 

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The Moon separates from Jupiter, my mother, applying firstly to a square with Pluto in the 8th, then to a conjunction with the turned 8th ruler, Venus. Lily writes in his book Christian Astrology: “The application of the Moon to a planet in the eighth is always dangerous” and “The Moon transferring the light and influence of the Lord of the ascendant to the Lord of the eighth, brings usually death”

The New Moon, at zero degrees Aries, had occurred a few days previously, opposing my mother’s natal Moon, whilst the 2nd New Moon in Aries, a solar eclipse at 29 degrees, was due in a month, and fell in opposition to my mother’s natal Sun. Historically, eclipses are deemed malefic, and although we had no diagnosis yet, the indications of illness and even death were stacking up so strongly that I feared my mother was very seriously ill and that she may have little time remaining.  

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What Happened

Over the next few days, as the transiting Moon conjoined the turned 8th ruler Venus, and Saturn returned to its natal position at the very top of my nativity, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and given months, not years, to live.

The subsequent days passed in a blur of phone calls, flights and visits, and I kept returning to the chart, the progress of the exalted Sun, the significator of my mother’s illness. Day by day, it subjected the other significators in the chart to combustion as it travelled towards Venus, the ruler of the turned 8th. I eventually gathered the courage to tell my brother that matters were likely to develop far more quickly than the doctors were saying, and although he is not an astrologer, he respects my insights and called our remaining aunts & uncles to come and visit their sister, and to come sooner rather than later.

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Transiting Mars, which had by now moved into Cancer, the sign of its fall, and which rules the house of my mother’s death in my own nativity, was edging closer to its return; I was to experience a Mars return at the Solar Eclipse on April 20th and was expecting bad news to accompany it. At the point of the eclipse, between 4 and 5 a.m., my mother collapsed, and the transits to the horary chart that day paint a clear picture. 

The Sun, the significator of her illness, and the Moon, the general significator of the body and all things connected, both move out of Aries and into Taurus, suggesting a move from potential to manifestation. Mercury, ruling Virgo on the turned 7th house (the radical 4th) shows my mother’s doctors, stationed retrograde, portraying a reversal in any action towards a cure, descriptive of the fact that she had a DNR in place, so only palliative care was admissible. Within a day or so of being admitted, as the Moon conjoined the evil fixed star Algol and travelled into the 12th house of the horary, my mother went into a coma. 

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On April 25th, 33 days after the message, my mother’s life here came to an end. 

You can see the chart for her time of death in the centre of the bi-wheel, with the original horary chart on the outside. The significator for my mother’s disease, the Sun, strong in his sign of exaltation, took 33 days to reach the North Node of the horary chart and was closely applying to Venus, the significator for her death. Jupiter (my mother) had transited to a partile conjunction with the horary Moon, which at the time of her passing was setting on the cusp of the 7th house, often referred to as The Gates of Death and was in direct opposition to my mother’s natal Sun, which was to be found rising in Libra in the 12th. Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, was on guard at the nadir, which represents the end of all things, whilst the transiting Moon was applying to Mars, the dispositor of much of the original horary chart.   

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The Medical Diagnosis

In this horary chart, the significator of disease is the Sun, which Lily describes as associated with the heart, and in addition, she is signified by Jupiter in Aries, both of which are described by Lily as being related to stroke, or apoplexy as he calls it. In 2011, on her 70th birthday, as transiting Saturn conjoined her natal Sun, my mother suffered a severe stroke which left her partly disabled; although she never gave up trying to continue on, her very physically active life and strong community involvement were severely curtailed. So in 2023, the astrological signification of illnesses both past and present are clearly described in this chart, with the current diagnosis of lung cancer, reflected in the Cancer ascendant. The location of the cancer was predominantly in the lower lungs, with pain experienced predominantly in the ribs and the back. Leo, ruling the turned 6th house, describes  all these areas: “All sicknesses in the ribs and sides….weaknesses of the heart…” 

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Although her original diagnosis was cancer, my mother ultimately died from a combination of severe blood loss due to prescribed blood thinners, and a desire not to be further treated; note Saturn, the treatment (ruler of the turned 10th) in conjunction with my mother’s ascendant (radical 10th). Her signification of Jupiter and Saturn accurately portrays the blood clots in her lungs for which the thinners were prescribed, and also her desire not to be resuscitated. 

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There are strong connections between the chart of her death, and the solar return of 2011, the day she had the stroke. In the Solar Return chart, relocated to Male, we see Mars, signifying accidents, rising in Leo, applying to the 6th ruler Saturn, exalted in Libra. The Moon separates from an opposition to Pluto, reflecting that the stroke had already occurred some hours before, on her actual birthday date, the 18th. Jupiter, the ruler of the 8th, positioned in the 9th brings the potential for a fatality occurring on holiday. Venus, the significator for treatment, the 10th house, is in fall in Scorpio, and applies to a received square with angular Mars, and accurately describes the fact that it was many hours before she was able to get to a hospital. 

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The magical connections between past and present charts in any given situation are not new to me, a constant reminder for this astrologer that we are all part of a wider web of unseen threads, all responding to movements beyond our awareness and control. Interestingly, my mother gained a further 11 ½  years of life after her stroke, the average of the solar sunspot cycle, and 11 ½ degrees between the Sun in her solar return chart and the exact opposition with the SR 8th house ruler Jupiter, whose degree is echoed by the 8th ruler Venus in the horary chart and the degree of the Sun in the chart of her death.

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Looking at the 11th house emphasis in the horary chart, I am left with a sense that she was grateful for those extra years, seeing her grandchildren grow a little more, and continuing to be a valued part of the community she loved and to which she had devoted so much of her life. It seemed to me that when the time came, she was ready to go, was tired of the physical struggle, the fight to keep going, and relinquished her life speedily as the Sun powered through the 11th house, burning all in its path as she bravely embraced the release and freedom that was offered. The fact that, as I write this article, the Moon is once again passing over the horary Moon comes as no surprise, for I have come to understand that we live in a universe filled with patterns and that the movements of the planets beat time with the vibrations of the stars, as we dance through this creation we call time.

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“Whether the universe is a concourse of atoms, or nature is a system, let this first be established: that I am a part of the whole that is governed by nature; next, that I stand in some intimate connection with other kindred parts.”

Marcus Aurelius (Meditations – Book X, 167 A.C.E.)