Recently, as in over the past 6 months or so, I have been having difficulty staying motivated in my current job. There are aspects of my job that involve gross mismanagement and frankly I am getting bored. I work in a restaurant and serving people dinner night after night after night is starting to become way too routine. I love how the people change every night or at least every few days, so at least I am meeting new folk, but even for them it is service as usual.
My work in food and beverage has some advantages: my current job provides great benefits – health and dental insurance, 401K plan, decent tips. But the management has been working under the philosophy that “we can expect people to work more, we can pay them less and we can have less staff and things will be just fine.” To me, that is a horrible strategy. In fact I detest it. I heard that someone wrote an anonymous letter to the board or something, and I completely support the need for that to happen!
With all that in mind, yesterday I spent the entire day with two Tibetan language professors. They are great teachers – patient and skillful and knowledgeable. Over the course of the day, my Tibetan language skills started to return. I have been very lazy and lax in practicing Tibetan. Therefore, my Tibetan language has become about as rusty as possible. I have forgotten more than I currently remember!
But, they invited me to participate in weekly conversations with their students which will happen on Friday evenings. Unfortunately, I work every Friday evening. So my mind is just going through all the possibilities: can I find a new job? Should I cut back my current job? Should I try to see more bodywork clients? Should I stick with my job as it stands and attempt to practice Tibetan one morning a week?
The pros and cons are about evenly balanced with things tipping toward keeping my job for at least another 6 to 8 months (and then nursing school will resume with a vengeance and I will have to cut back anyway). Those benefits and the steady income are really hard to beat. I could easily stir up four or five clients per week, but I would need a few more to make it profitable to quit my job and do more bodywork.
Therefore, I had the notion to check my astrology chart or better yet, to cast a horary astrology chart about this question: should I quit my job in favor doing more of what feeds my soul? Studying Tibetan, seeing more bodywork clients, treating more babies. So I jotted down the exact time I had that question and set about creating the chart.
I used my astrology software (because hey, I spent $250 on it years ago, so I might as well put it to good use!) and came up with the chart for 11:26 pm on 6/9/16 for Charlottesville, VA.
It has a 3′ 37″ Aquarius rising, 24′ Leo Moon, 19′ Gemini Sun, 26′ Taurus Mercury, 20′ Gemini Venus, 25′ Scorpio Mars (retrograde), 14′ Virgo Jupiter, 12′ Sagittarius Saturn (retrograde), a 23′ Aries Uranus, 12′ Pisces Neptune and a 16′ Capricorn Pluto.
The first and most important and most challenging task is determining the primary significators in a horary example. Normally, the 7th house has to do with the astrologer doing the horary astrology, unless they are doing it for themselves, which negates that issue. So I don’t need to worry about that. Generally speaking, the rising sign represents native (the querent – person asking the question) and with an Aquarius rising, Saturn (we use traditional rulerships) is the Lord of the Chart. Therefore Saturn is one of the primary significators. Determining the next significator is the challenge.
This question has to do with 10th house issues of career and profession, but it has to do a little with 6th house work environment issues and it definitely has to do with 9th house philosophy, foreign language and higher learning. So which do we choose? We are allowed to have one or two secondary significators if we must, so let’s just assign the primary significator as the ruler of the 10th house. Scorpio is on the 10th house, so we go with Mars. Then the ruler of the 9th house can be our secondary significator – with Libra on that house cusp, Venus is our choice.
“Should I quit my job in favor of doing more of what feeds my soul?” That is our question. Saturn rules the querent (me) and Mars rules the quesited – the question.
Now is this chart valid or radical? There are several things that make a horary astrology chart null and void, including having the Ascendant be between 0 and 3′ (too early to tell) and 27 and 0′ (too late to do anything about it). The 3′ 37″ Ascendant is mighty close to being too premature to tell. So that tells me that this issue or this question is very young, and that more information may be forthcoming. It is almost worth stopping right there and saying, let’s wait a week and see what unfolds.
However, because I am a stubborn astrologer, I continue. Saturn is not in the first house, so we can continue. Saturn is not in the 7th house (even though I am acting as my own astrologer). The Ascendant or the Moon are not located in the via combusta (15 Libra to 15 Scorpio) in fact nothing is presently tenanting that region of the chart. The Moon is not yet void of course (she still will meet Mercury by square and Rx Mars by square. And finally, the asteroid Fortuna is at 23′ of Aquarius.
Therefore this chart is technically radical – we could interpret it if we wanted to. However I notice right off the bat several things that are probably indicative of difficulty or obstacles.
First, both of my significators (Saturn and Mars) are retrograde. This is telling me that I am going against my natural inclination of playing it safe and sticking with what is practical. I abandoned taking leaps of faith years ago when I got in trouble attempting to merely run a bodywork / astrology business without any other forms of income. And both of these significators are indicating that my thinking might be a little backward (retrograde). That is not to say don’t quit my job! But let’s see what else the chart says.
The asteroid Fortuna is in the first house (23′ Aquarius) but the Moon has just opposed it and is separating by one degree. The opposition means that my heart and my sense of luck (good or bad) are opposed to each other – which does not sound too good. Fortunately it is separating, but it is still pretty intense. I could say that my fortune has not been good as of late (and sure enough, the number of customers at work have been declining significantly over the past couple of years and the past 2 weeks were very low tips) but that it will start improving each day the Moon moves away from the opposition.
Just from these two phenomenon – the two significators being Retrograde and having the Moon oppose Fortuna, I am going to say that quitting my job to follow my heart (at this time), would bring great difficulty. Sure I can look at Saturn and Mars more closely and see if anything would bring about their perfection (success in this matter). They are not moving swiftly and only Mars is in a strong sign (it rules Scorpio). Considering they are both moving backward (retrograde) and they are 18 degrees apart in different signs, I can say with certainty that by the time they become conjunct in this chart (which looks to be around August 24th, 2016), many other planets will have made Hard aspects to both. These hard aspects are indicative of potential obstacles.
It is interesting though that this date comes up. I am planning to attend a long workshop in Canada between the dates of August 21st and Sept 4th and I intend to take 2 and a half weeks off of work (whether they want me to or not!). So it sounds like August will definitely see the resolution of this question, even though I want it to be sooner!
It is fascinating to see other nuances in this chart however. As I mentioned, this is the beginning of this quandary and the chart reflects that with the 3′ Aquarius rising (this issue is premature or just starting out). The underlying issue around my question is: “will I have enough money if I back off my present work schedule or quit my job outright?” And look at the positions of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. They are making a huge T-square. Jupiter is in the 8th house nearly conjunct the North Node – which indicates that I would have success regarding other people’s money (maybe I would make a lot of money by seeing more bodywork clients). But it is opposite Neptune in the 2nd house, indicating that this issue about money is fuzzy at best and that I might be deceiving myself in some regard. Neptune is in Pisces which is one of the mute signs (along with Mars in mute Scorpio), so that makes me wonder if there are any secrets around this topic (which I might not be sharing with you, my readers or are there secrets that even I don’t know about yet?). And finally Saturn is at the end of the 10th house, being the stern practical structured advisor saying, “you should not leave your job until you have a guaranteed source of income.” This is wise, practical, pragmatic advise!
The secondary significator of Venus is Combust (close to the Sun) but it is separating. This reflects my total lack of confidence in leaving my job or provoking a discussion about taking Friday evenings off which is sure to ruffle some feathers. With that said however, Venus is in its Term (it has a little bit of strength) and it is in Mutual Reception with Mercury – Mercury is in Taurus and Venus is in Gemini – they are in each other’s signs which grants additional strength to both planets. Therefore, my mindset around studying Tibetan is clear – I will get great joy and benefit from doing so. But the primary significators indicate that this is not the right time to quit my job or to provoke certain discussions.
Because this chart was nearly premature, I plan to ask this question again in about a week. In the meantime, I will bide my time and see how things go at work and I will inquire about potential clients to see if seeing more clients would be feasible. Maybe a change is in the works!
Thanks for bearing with me as I navigated the rocky terrain that is horary astrology!
If you or anyone you know has a pressing question, I would love to look at the horary astrology about it! I would even give a discount for the first few charts. Let me know if you are interested.
~Kirby
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