Horary 0099: Will I Be Sworn in as an Attorney?
Overview
The querent had taken the bar exam the prior week. The licensing process involves a fitness and character element, and it takes about three months to hear back and be sworn in as an attorney. The querent wanted to know if they would be sworn in and if there would be any delays or holdups.
This was a tricky one that required me to suppress a lot of formulaic rule-following interpretations, and while I may have introduced confusion by mentioning the trickiness, I did make the correct prediction by overriding those instincts.
Judgment
I gave the querent the ascendant ruler, Jupiter, and the Moon. I immediately observed their striking configuration in an applying grand trine with Mars, the malefic contrary to the sect. Mars, ruling the 5th and 12th houses, does not clearly signify any topic that could indicate a “yes” to the question himself.
I couldn’t overlook this malefic prohibition, but it was also imminent, and the quesited event had a known timeframe of three months away. I wasn’t ready to call it yet, so using the logic of horary timing rules, I looked ahead to Jupiter’s next aspects after this one forming right away and saw two that seemed relevant, positive, and in the correct timeframe.
Jupiter’s first aspect after Mars is with the Sun, ruler of the 9th house of the academy and sciences and authority-conferring institutions. That aspect would perfect in about 7º in a fixed sign (long) and succedent house (medium), giving us a seven-week timeframe. This seemed a reasonable duration in which some decision could be made about whether the querent had passed their exam. After that, Jupiter makes contact with a dignified Mercury, ruler of the 10th house of career, a good significator of the ultimate question of being sworn in as an attorney. This happens in 12º in a mutable sign (medium) in a cadent house (short), or 12 weeks, exactly the amount of time in which the querent expected a result.
Mercury’s application to Jupiter is also prohibited by an opposition with Saturn, but that’s also too soon. I just wasn’t prepared to tell this surely qualified person they would not be sworn in as an attorney on the basis of these early troubles, given that their significator makes contact with two very reasonable significators of success in the correct sequence in the correct timeframe. By contrast, the event signified by the Mars contacts from the querent’s significators would take place within a week or two: too soon.
I decided to give the querent the judgment that there would be some kind of interim difficulty, but that it would not delay the process, and they would ultimately be sworn in.
I couldn’t not mention the Mars thing, but it also wasn’t clear what it signified. I gave them some options about what topics it could signify and offered to look at their natal chart data to see if that would clarify. Because of the potency of this grand trine with both significators, it did seem to be an event of more of the Big Omen type than any kind of specific problem in the process. And with Mars ruling the 12th house and currently configured with the querent’s significators, I proposed that Mars could simply signify the psychological difficulty of being stuck in limbo waiting for an outcome.
Outcome
The querent found out they had passed the bar 10 weeks from the question and were sworn in after 15 weeks, well within tolerances of wiggly horary timing and paralleling the multiple events in the chart perfectly well.
Whatever Mars signified was not clear to the querent. They mentioned some health issues and romantic relationship drama in the interim, but their own anxiety was the only clear hit.
Analysis
I’d say “anxiety” is good enough for the Mars signification, given that this aspect was nearly fully formed when they came to an astrologer for a sign, though the aspects signifying the outcome showed success forming within the correct timeframe weeks away. They did not offer their birth chart to let me take a closer look.
The important thing is, it didn’t affect the outcome, and I am glad I went with my gut instead of blindly following rules.
