QUESTION: Should I hire this man?
Timing: March 1, 1996 8:24 A.M. TZ 5W West Hartford, CT
I had just stepped into my office on March 1, when one of my business clients phoned. He had interviewed a man for a sales job the evening before. He had told the prospective employee to come back in the morning to fill out the proper employment papers to be entered on the payroll. My client’s natal chart shows that he has a Moon in Pisces and he is quite intuitive. He woke up on March 1 confused and feeling uneasy about hiring this man. He phoned me at 8:24 A.M. wondering if he had made the right decision about hiring this man.
I took a look at the chart and saw that it broke every rule in horary astrology. As you look at the chart you, too, will notice that the degree on the Ascendant is less than three degrees and the Moon is Void of Course. As I have mentioned in other articles I feel that every chart, no matter what’s contained in it, presents all the answers for the question asked. The houses involved in this question are the Ascendant, ruling the Querent, and the 6th house, ruling employees. Of course, we have to keep an eye on the 10th house which signifies my client’s business.
A couple of things seem to pop up from this chart. The planet Venus, ruler of the Querent, is in his 12th house of fear, self-undoing and private enemies. Venus squares the planets Neptune and Uranus in his 10th house of business. In horary you must always pay close attention to a hard aspect between the Querent’s ruler and Neptune, which is just what is happening in this chart.
In fact, in this chart Venus is applying a square to Neptune in his 10th house of business. The configuration in the chart that really caught my eye is the interception of the 6th and 12th houses with Venus, the Querent’s ruler, falling in that interception. That puts my client at a disadvantage. It means that he would have no control over his employees and would be hemmed in by this particular employee.
The interception in the 6th house of employees also indicates that there are two sides to this prospective employee. He easily could have two natures, two personalities, and two significantly different views. It could mean that his intentions are split in two different directions. His first intention is ruled by the planet Mercury and the other by Venus. The apparent personality is described by Mercury in Aquarius in his 6th house of work. The sign Aquarius would tell us that he is a creative, free thinker, self motivated and unattached. Mercury, situated in his own 6th house of responsibilities, shows that he is a hard worker and serious about his work. Venus rules the hidden personality. Remember, Venus squares Neptune and Uranus. The square to Neptune warns us of possible shady activities and the square to Uranus indicates that the person will do what he wants, even if he knows it’s wrong, as long as he is doing his “own thing.”
On first inspection my response would be to hire this interviewee. Why? Because the planet Mercury, the Quesited’s ruler, is applying a sextile to the Querent’s ruler. Just that aspect alone, according to any horary rule, would give an answer, “Yes, hire him!” And this is where the horary rule that says “Do not read a chart because” comes from. It is said that three degrees or less on the Ascendant will yield a chart from which it is too early to give an answer. From my 30+ years of reading horary charts for clients all that means is that we don’t yet know enough about the question to give an intelligent answer. Don’t discard the chart…instead you need to pry deeper into the chart. The Void of Course Moon always signals that the answer to question lies somewhere in this chart. Examine all the past aspects of the Moon carefully to unfold the truth. The last aspect of the Moon before it went Void of Course is the most important and revealing aspect of all.
In this chart the Moon’s last aspect before going Void of Course was an opposition to Neptune, which rules his house of partners and partnerships. This speaks to me as saying that somehow perhaps he and a partner were involved in some sort of deceitful or sneaky acts and he might have been caught red-handed which is the tenth from the sixth. The prospective employee told my client that he quit his last job because he had to travel too far to go to work.
Let’s look at his last job and see if this is true. His previous job is ruled by the 3rd house (the tenth from the sixth). Saturn makes a sharp square to the 3rd house indicating a recent, unhappy, forced termination or separation from his job. With his intercepted ruler (Venus) squaring Neptune we certainly have a right to wonder if he is telling the truth. This intercepted aspect would strongly indicate that he is hiding something. The Sun, ruler of his 12th house of shady dealings, conjuncts Mars and both are in close opposition to the cusp of the 6th house, which is the prospective employee’s Ascendant. It ties Mars (action) with the employee‘s 12th and 1st houses, spelling shady actions.
Despite all this, I suggested that my client follow through with his offer and hire this man. I cautioned him about what I saw with all the Neptune and told him I was really curious to know what had happened on his last job. A couple of days later, my client called me back with the real story. It seems that his new employee had been a salesman who did the bidding of prices for jobs for the ABC construction company. After he negotiated a price and got the contract for ABC he would send his business partner (they owned their own construction company together) the information on the deal, and the partner would then undercut the original price bid so that his company would get the contract instead. The president of ABC caught him in the act and terminated him on the spot. My client was also in the construction business so I assume that this employee had intentions of pulling this same scam. This chart is a perfect case in point where, as a professional astrologer, you have to be very careful to avoid the trappings of the old rules set forth in the astrology books which tell you “Never to read a chart if….” Remember, for every question there is an answer, and no matter where the planets are in the chart or what they are doing, the chart will never hold back an answer from you.