SAVol7Dec09WesternCo.. - Saptarishis Astrology

How To Beat TimeByJohn Frawley, PolandJohn Frawley is the editor of The Astrologer's Apprentice magazine,and tutor of the Apprenticeship Courses in Horary, Electional andTraditional Natal Astrology. John's first book, The Real Astrology,was awarded the Spica Award for International Astrology Book ofthe Year in 2001. His follow up book, Real Astrology Applied, SportsAstrology & The Horary Textbook are now available. For details ofJohn's work, publications, appearances and courses, visit hiswebsite at http://www.johnfrawley.com.Aclient entered the workshop one day, gorgeously arrayed and carrying a plumpchicken for payment. "What I would like to know," he asked, as I sat him down inour consulting room, "is, will I die?"I had barely finished rubbing my hands together with glee in order to set the chart when, tomy disappointment, I woke up. For it is ever the reality of horary that clients want not justpredictions, but timed predictions. There, alas, is the rub.Finding the event itself is usually the easy bit; the timing is more difficult, as a close readingof William Lilly makes plain. We see him over and again fumbling towards a plausibleanswer, with the aid either of inside information or a querent sat before him so suggestionscan be bounced back and forth until a feasible result is hammered out. The spectacularanswer, where the timing announces itself in trumpet tones of indisputable clarity, doesoccur; but more often than not, the exact timing of a specific event in horary is hedgedaround with cautions and probabilities.This is both salutary and inevitable. On the one hand it keeps the burgeoning egos ofjourneyman astrologers in check; on the other, as when we look at time we are looking at thevery stuff of which our astrology is made - looking, as it were, not so much at the face of theclock, where the events that mark time are displayed, but into the workings of the clockitself - the fathoming of time is bound to be harder than the mere tracking of events.The conclusions about the nature of time to which the practice of an accurate, verifiableastrology directs us are not the least of the benefits of directing our attention to the celestialscience. Two key works to which I might direct the curious reader are 'Plato's Myth of Er',at the end of his Republic, and Iain Mackenzie's The Anachronism of Time (Norwich, 1994),which is hard work, but which, with a tight logic, clarifies the concepts with which we mustwork. But we direct our attention here away from our prison bars to the more immediatelypractical purpose of finding the answer in the chart.124