the-astrology-book

Horary Astrology
again flourished. The foremost practitioner of this period, who still influences horary,
was William Lilly (1602–1681). His 854-page masterwork, Christian Astrology (1647),
is one of the most significant works on the subject. What made Lilly’s work both great
and enduring was that he not only covered the theory, but he also provided sufficient
examples so that the reader could really work through his method.
By the time of Lilly’s death, unfortunately, horary astrology had gone increasingly
out of fashion. Lilly had been involved in producing political propaganda in the
form of almanacs and broadsides for the Parliamentary faction in the English Civil
War. While that side “won” the war in the sense that they ousted (and beheaded) the
king, after a relatively short period, the monarchy was restored. In this new social climate,
prophesy that could have religious and political implications was frowned upon.
In addition, the “new” scientific (i.e., secular) paradigm had asserted itself, and all
forms of the occult became suspect. Astrology went into decline.
Fortunately, astrology was revived in the eighteenth century. Ebenezer Sibly’s
large work in 1817 on astrology, which went to many editions both before and after
his death, included a substantial section on horary technique with his own chart
examples. Sibly’s technique was on a par with late-seventeenth-century astrologers, an
observation that unfortunately does not hold true for the next generations. The nineteenth-century
environment in which astrology again flourished was one in which
matters of the occult generally had become increasingly popular, in part as a reaction
to excessive reason in the century prior.
Zadkiel (Richard James Morrison, 1795–1874) is today the best known of the
nineteenth-century horary cohort. Zadkiel thought highly enough of Lilly to produce
an abridged version with his own material tacked on, a work that still confuses modern
horary astrologers, who often mistake it for the original Christian Astrology. Zadkiel
and his contemporary Raphael (Robert Cross Smith, 1795–1832) both substantially
simplified the astrology of their ancestors, with Zadkiel going in a “scientific”
direction that would have been frankly unrecognizable to Lilly.
Many, if not most, astrologers dabbled with horary, even if it was not the bulk
of their practice. For example, The Astrologer’s Magazine featured a regular horary column
by “E. Casael.” This magazine was published by Alan Leo and his wife Bessie.
In the early part of the twentieth century, Leo substantially changed his astrological
method to emphasize character analysis over predictive technique. It was from
these changes that both psychological astrology and esoteric astrology were ultimately
based.
In the wake of these new forms of astrology, it is not surprising that one of the
major trends of twentieth-century horary was to add natal methods to horary delineation,
and to combine horary with natal method.
Among the significant twentieth-century horary astrologers were:
Marc Edmund Jones (1888–1980): While Jones’s method is often
opaque, in great part because of a lack of examples, his philosophical
discussion of “Phrasing the Question” and “Locating the Question” are
useful reading even to classicists.
THE ASTROLOGY BOOK
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