Lately I have been devoting attention to horary astrology. One of the first questions I received came from a lawyer who wished to know whether one of her clients would return to her.
The Ascendant was at 8 degrees of Gemini, a position which, although still early, does not invalidate the judgement. Very early degrees (0–3) often indicate that the matter is premature, but at 8 degrees the situation is simply recent. The querent had just experienced the client’s withdrawal and the Moon, found in the final degrees of Scorpio, confirmed that the story was already drawing to a close. With Gemini rising, Mercury became the significator of the lawyer, and it was placed in Capricorn in the 8th house, combust by the Sun, only five degrees away and applying, which shows that the combustion is worsening. This is one of the weakest states a planet can occupy: deprived of light, deprived of strength, and subjected to greater powers. The 8th house only adds further connotations of loss, anxiety, and helplessness before events that cannot be controlled.
The client, on the other hand, is represented by the 7th house, Sagittarius, and therefore ruled by Jupiter. Jupiter is in Cancer, exalted but retrograde, in the 2nd house. This essential strength portrays a man self-contained, focused upon his own values and needs. Retrogradation can imply a degree of inner revision, but not a return, since Jupiter is applying by opposition to Mercury. In horary, an opposition between the two main significators is almost always a denial of the matter. The application of a weak planet to a stronger one by opposition signifies separation and divergent intentions. Also, Mercury is in Capricorn, the zodiacal fall of Jupiter, which further emphasises the lack of sympathy and distance between them: he does not receive her well, nor perceives in her anything that may draw him back or sustain the connection.
Moreover, the axis of opposition itself, with Jupiter retrograde and exalted in the 2nd, facing Mercury combust in the 8th, clearly adds a financial undertone to the question. The 2nd house concerns the querent’s own resources and security, while the 8th rules loss, fear, and anxiety. It therefore reflects not only the client’s preoccupation with his own affairs but also the querent’s anxiety about material consequences or potential loss stemming from the client’s withdrawal. The opposition operates on relational and existential planes: separation of will, and the tension between self-sufficiency and fear of deprivation.
Waning and fallen in the final degrees of Scorpio, and lodged in the 6th house, a cadent and afflicted place associated with servitude and decay, the co-significator Moon reinforces this image of ending. The Moon is doubly weakened: by sign, in her fall, and by house, in one of the most unfortunate regions of the chart, where planets lose power to act. It has just separated from a trine with Jupiter (a past contact) and is now applying to a trine with Saturn in Pisces in the 11th house. There is no translation of light here, and the sequence is plain: the link is broken, and the next movement is toward the malefic Saturn, planet of limit, closure, and crystallisation. The lunar aspect to Saturn is the acceptance of what cannot be changed, the quiet settling of a matter that has reached its natural end.
There is another significant technical detail: Mercury is also enclosed by Venus and Mars, both also combust or about to move under the beams, all of them under the Sun’s authority in Capricorn. Venus, weakened, is unable to mediate or reconcile; Mars, exalted but blinded by the Sun’s light, expressed hardness and severance. This solar and saturnine cluster in Capricorn expresses an atmosphere of constriction, in which Mercury (the lawyer) is crushed by forces of decision, authority, and conclusion.
The conclusion is obvious: the lawyer, represented by a burned and oppressed Mercury, lost her agency; the client, signified by an exalted but retrograde Jupiter, follows his own course in direct opposition to her. The Moon confirms the closure as it moves toward Saturn, and the Ascendant at 8° reveals a story still fresh but already decided. Everything in Capricorn and Cancer, two Cardinal signs, speaks of hardness, boundaries, and finality. With almost clinical precision, the chart describes a definitive separation and the natural closure of a cycle that, although recent, has already run its course in the cosmos.
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