Last month (October 2019), I had a conversation with an old paternal family friend, Leah. She appeared unusually anxious and distracted. It transpired that her adult daughter, Ella, had been suffering from recurrent abdominal and flank pain. Ella had sought appropriate medical advice and attended A&E on several occasions. Unfortunately, there appeared to be little consensus regarding either the cause of her symptoms or their treatment.

Leah was aware that I had an interest in divination and fortune-telling. We discussed the matter, and I explained that such methods could not properly be employed for the purposes of diagnosis or treatment. Leah understood this perfectly well but sought a measure of reassurance, and I agreed to examine the question.

As circumstances did not permit the use of cards, I turned instead to horary astrology. We noted the time, and I cast the chart for that moment.

Here follows the chart, recast using Delphic Oracle¹.

With 15° Pisces rising and the planetary hour ruled by Jupiter, there was no traditional consideration² of judgement that constituted a strict prohibition against judging the chart.

The ascendant is the point of incarnation and therefore represents the vital spark of life. The sign in which it falls pertains to the self. Consequently, it is the first house that relates to health, rather than the sixth, which is the house of illness.

In horary astrology, the rising sign and its ruler denote the querent. Accordingly, Pisces and its ruler, Jupiter, signify Leah. As Leah was enquiring about her daughter, however, we must turn to the fifth house, the house of children. The fifth sign from Pisces is Cancer.

Cancer is ruled by the Moon, which also has natural rulership over the stomach. We find the Moon in Sagittarius, a hot and mutable sign. Such heat is uncongenial to the Moon’s nature, whilst the mutable quality reflects the intermittent and recurring nature of the symptoms described. Counting Cancer as the first house, the Moon falls in the sixth derived house, indicating sickness and disorder. Thus, there is little difficulty in seeing that Ella’s constitution was disturbed.

The next question concerns causation. Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, who was then traversing Scorpio. Scorpio is in aversion to Sagittarius and therefore unable to behold it. Jupiter also rules Pisces, and his position neatly reflects Leah’s uncertainty and perplexity. Yet this alone does not explain Ella’s condition.

The Moon’s last aspect was a sextile to Venus. Venus both rules and occupies Libra, the eighth sign from Pisces, which pertains to death. The separating aspect is therefore reassuring. However, the Moon is applying to a conjunction with Saturn. At 1° Libra, Venus is in Saturn’s exaltation, triplicity and bounds. Saturn therefore predominates over Venus and may properly be considered her almuten. This is rather less reassuring.

Before reaching Saturn, however, the Moon first perfects a square with Mars at 6° Virgo. Mars, being in Virgo, occupies the tenth sign from the Moon and therefore overcomes her. Overcoming, particularly by a malefic planet, constitutes a significant affliction. It is also noteworthy that Mars is conjoined with the Sun, ruler of the sixth house and of the diurnal eastern triplicity. Furthermore, Mars has his twelfth-part conjunct Jupiter in Scorpio, one of Mars’s own domiciles.

Physically, Virgo governs the abdomen, though the stomach belongs primarily to the Moon. As the third sign from Cancer, Virgo would ordinarily carry associations with the shoulders, arms and hands. Sagittarius, as the sixth sign from Cancer, has connections with the lower abdomen and entrails, whilst Jupiter has traditional associations with the liver and the blood.

We therefore find a notable correspondence with Ella’s symptoms. Mars is under the Sun’s beams and consequently invisible, aptly reflecting the prevailing uncertainty: clearly something was wrong, yet no one seemed able to identify the cause.

Turning to Richard Saunders’s The Astrological Judgement and Practice of Physick³, we find the following description of Mars in Virgo:

Mars in the next 18 degrees of Virgo is cold in the second, and dry in the third degree, causing oppilations (obstructions) and stoppings of the liver; melancholy and red choler, faeculent and thick; melancholy predominating, causing stoppings and swellings of the milt (spleen), pains and gripings in the belly, the wind colick and strangury (painful and incomplete urination), the stone in the bladder; and Mars with Saturn, the piles and haemorrhoids.

The Astrological Judgement and Practice of the Physick, Richard Saunders p. 171

Mars is closely associated with choler, or yellow bile, an excessively hot humour that consumes and agitates throughout the digestive and eliminative processes. Looking at the chart as a whole, my impression was that the martial influence was inflaming the liver—ruled by Jupiter and traditionally associated with the production of yellow bile—and that this was contributing to the gastric discomfort.

Using John Frawley’s⁴ timing method, we considered the previous aspect between the Moon and Venus. The symbolism suggested that the symptoms had begun in earnest approximately four weeks earlier, using the convention of one degree equalling one week. The Moon would perfect her square to Mars in less than one degree, indicating that a significant development should occur within the following week. Leah mentioned that Ella had a further medical appointment later that week.

Mars would emerge from under the Sun’s beams at approximately 12° Virgo (the Sun being at 27° Virgo), which I took to indicate the eventual revelation of the diagnosis⁵. This pointed to a period of rather more than five weeks.

I told Leah that I would review my findings when I returned home, as I do not generally carry an ephemeris—or copies of Saunders and Culpeper—about my person.

Leah did not contact me again until late October. By then, Ella had undergone blood tests, which revealed elevated bilirubin and alanine transaminase levels. The consulting physician referred her to a hepatologist and, following ultrasound and FibroScan examinations, she was diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

The diagnosis brought Leah considerable relief and, one hopes, marked the beginning of an improvement in Ella’s health.

References

1. The chart was cast using the Krishnamurti ayanāṃśa then employed in my work. Since that time, I have adopted a different sidereal framework, utilising an ayanāṃśa that places Aldebaran (α Tauri) at 15° Taurus. The interpretative principles discussed herein remain unchanged. The article first appeared on my old blog in 2019. ↩︎
2. Lilly, W. (1985). Christian Astrology. London: Regulus. ↩︎
3. Saunders, R. (2004). The Astrological Judgement and Practice of Physick. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing. ↩︎
4. Frawley, J. (2005). The Horary Textbook. London: Apprentice Books. ↩︎
5. Barclay, O. (1997). Horary Astrology Rediscovered. Whitford Press. ↩︎