Cat & Mouse

We all know one of the most popular American cartoons of the last century - 'Tom and Jerry'. The mischievous mouse who always pisses off the cat Thomas, who wants to catch and eat the rascal at any cost. Almost always Jerry wins, or everything ends in a semblance of friendship, which Tom is only temporarily willing to accept, and then endlessly chases the annoying little rodent again. It's great fun to watch from television screens. However, if this fiction suddenly became our reality, few people would want to have such a destructive mouse at home, stealing cheese, always looking in the fridge, destroying dishes and furniture, setting fire to carpets and maiming poor Thomas. Perhaps we'd prefer to get rid of him, by all means. But this is the trick of cartoonists, who are able to present reality in a different way and make us laugh and sometimes even cause love for what, perhaps, in someone causes rejection. That is the unconditional power of creativity. And yet, life is life, and you can't hide from it.

We often hear that an astrologer should not deal with trivial, to the human eye, questions. As a rule, we hear this from people who are not able to notice the beauty and uniqueness in the simplest things, as well as to think about the causes of certain issues that arise in each of us. Of course, we are not talking about such questions as: what jumper will he wear on a date? We are talking about questions that seem to be the most banal. The arrival of a plumber is no less important to someone than investing in a new project or buying a car; the return of a beloved cat is more exciting to most people than the result of a political election; and the arrival of a mouse in the house does not evoke the same cheerful feelings as watching another episode of Tom and Jerry.

When our acquaintance approached us with one of such trivial problems, we immediately realised that we were waiting for a very interesting, even funny and amusing, chart of the question, which otherwise, if we had a negligent attitude to such questions, might not have appeared at all. But horary astrology, first of all, is given to help ordinary people, with their everyday worries and aspirations, not only ‘chosen ones’ of this world, who believe that their economic and political questions cause indescribable joy at their appearance, not boredom.

As our acquaintance explained to us, for several days she had been hearing distinctive scraping and what she thought were squeaks in the corner of one of the rooms. She lived in a panel house, on the fourth floor, so it seemed a bit strange to write it all off to another little Jerry, who suddenly decided to set up a new penthouse to live in. There had never been a problem like this before. Her husband thought the squeaks were nothing more than her own fantasies, inspired by the over-sensitivity of her delicate nature. Nevertheless, he checked the corners of the rooms and found no holes or burrows in the wall or floor. Even her three cats behaved as usual and did not show any meaningful attention to anything strange. Still, our acquaintance was sure that these were not her fantasies, and so she decided to contact us with the question of whether there was a mouse in her flat?

Is there a mouse in our flat? If so, where exactly is it?

These kinds of questions always make the astrologer think about how to consider them. After all, to determine the planet, which in the chart represents a mouse - is simple. But how to determine from the chart of the question, whether it is really in the flat, and not to confuse it with your own fantasies. Because one of the main peculiarities of horary astrology is that the answer can be checked quite quickly. And if the astrologer is wrong, it is his fault, not the free will of a mouse that decided to suddenly evaporate as if by magic of a psychological wand. We repeat it time and time again - astrologers' answers must be verified, because it is accurate, time-tested answers that are the essence of horary astrology. If someone claims otherwise, you can rest assured that he or she knows nothing.

02.05.2020 11:07 (GMT +3), RIGA, LATVIA

So, the first thing we have to do is to identify our Jerry in the chart. The mouse is a small mammal, and therefore belongs to the 6th house, which is responsible for all small animals (‘smaller than a goat’ as astrologers of the past used to say), be they dogs, rodents or even insects. As we can see, the 6th house is ruled by Saturn, as it has Capricorn on its cusp. Thus, Saturn is the mouse in the question chart. It makes no difference that it is Saturn and not another planet that represents him. It could have been Jupiter or the Moon or any other planet. But the question chart always assigns roles to the planets so that we can find the answer. That's why every chart is unique, and you won't find rigid patterns in horary astrology, as in modern astrology. This makes traditional astrology more flexible and universal, if you think about it, more unique and alive and true.

We must always remember that in horary astrology, as in traditional astrology in general, we are only dealing with the seven major planets - Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon. Uranus, Pluto and Neptune are considered by analogy with the fixed stars, in their position on the cusps of significant houses of the question or in conjunction with querent's or quesited's planet - the rest of the time they should be ignored, as they will not say anything significant. We can say the same about the other planets.

Imagine Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet'. Let's imagine ourselves for a moment in the kingdom of Denmark, and feel like the court astrologer to whom Hamlet comes to ask: if Claudius is the murderer? We cast the chart of question and see Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia, Polonius, Horatio, Gertrude and of course the late king. The main characters of Shakespeare's play. Each of these characters is represented by one of the seven planets. But... we're only interested in Claudius, because that's who the question is about. His conjunction with the late king's planet will be an affirmative Yes, while the absence of aspects may (or may not) be evidence that the king is innocent. And even if he is a notorious scoundrel, that does not make him a murderer. A question chart can answer differently to similar questions, and that is the beauty of our predictive Art. At the same time, the roles of other characters remain as if offstage, even though Ophelia's tragedy, Polonius's death, and Hamlet's own torment. Although we may consider several characters in a single chart, the issue usually involves only one or two, rarely more. In addition, the astrologer always has other ways of looking at issues where more than one character in the astrological play is affected up his sleeve.

Thus, we always endeavour to emphasise the main thing in the chart of the question, and discard everything secondary. The peculiarity of horary astrology is the specifically given direction of the question which is answered by the astrologer. This gives less variations for idle chatter, on the one hand, but on the other hand - makes the answer as accurate and time-checked as possible. But let's get back to the question chart.

So we found our Jerry. It's Saturn. So how do we know if he's in the flat or not? To do this, we will represent the entire chart as the house of the querent. On the one hand, Saturn being in a particular house can be a concrete indication of where we should look for the mouse. On the other hand, it can be misleading, because planets are always in one house or another. Does this mean that the default answer to such questions is always Yes? Of course not. First of all, we must separate the angular houses - 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th - from all the other houses in the chart. The corner houses not only show, each, a certain place in the house, but they signify my home in general. As if, if a planet is in any angular house, in this kind of question context, or on its cusp, it means that the mouse is in the house. But this is only one way, which is perfectly suited to the case. Of course, the answer could be shown in other ways, such as the conjunction of the querent's planet with the planet of the mouse, or querent's and mouse planets being in the same house (any) or sign (in one and same), or in some other way.

And what do we see? Saturn is on the cusp of the angular 7th house. Saturn is separated from the cusp by less than four degrees, which makes Saturn belong to the 7th house, because it is in the same sign as its cusp. If some other planet were in the angular house or on its cusp, we could ignore it, but it is Saturn - the mouse. As stated above, it is always important for us to separate the major from the minor - Saturn, from all the other planets, in this case. After all, the Sun and Mercury are also in an angular 10th house, but they do not play major roles in this matter, and therefore their position can be ignored.

Next, the most interesting part of the consideration. Notice this amazing symbolism: Saturn has just left the earth sign of Capricorn, and has entered the air sign of Aquarius, conjunct the cusp. It's as if someone got out from under the floor (earth sign) to the outside, to the air - into the querent's flat upstairs. Had the mouse been represented by a different planet in this chart, we would not have seen it. It is an unsolvable mystery how the question of the querent always reflects the realities of life. Perhaps this shows us that the Cosmos is not something mechanical, but a living consciousness.

Having determined that the mouse is indeed in the house of the querent, we need to understand where exactly. And this is where the 7th house takes on its direct meaning. It can mean either the spouse's room or the bedroom. But as we have learnt, the spouse does not have a separate room, so the bedroom is the most suitable option. Further, we have surmised that Saturn's position on the cusp can mean near a door, or on the border of two rooms, or simply and literally near the corner of a room. Saturn's position below the horizon, of course, means below, which would otherwise be the case if it were above the horizon, for elementary common sense tells us that it is unlikely that a mouse has chewed through the middle of a wall, though that too can happen.

Such were our assumptions, based on the question chart. Our acquaintance was particularly surprised by the fact that we had specified the bedroom, as that was where she had heard the squeaks. After our response, she had her husband check the corners of the bedroom again, and this time, she said, he was more thorough. He decided to move the bedroom wardrobe away, and it was only then that they saw the baseboard gnawed through, right near the corner of the room. As the acquaintance told us, her husband filled the hole with cement and replaced the skirting board, and since then Jerry has not appeared again, apparently having gone to look for other apartments on other floors. She had only one question, but not for us or her husband, but for her cats, who had been resting peacefully on the sofas and armchairs all those days.

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