Horary Astrology Reading: Is the Vanished Air France Flight Okay?
June 1, 2009 by Nina Gryphon
I read about the Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic this morning, and my immediate thought was: “Are the Air France plane and its passengers okay?” I am sure that being an optimist is somewhat laughable in the situation, but I do think that good things can happen, and perhaps the passengers and crew escaped the worst. I cast a horary chart for my question, below, because I genuinely want to know what became of the Air France flight.
I used William Lilly’s horary criteria from Chapter 26 of Christian Astrology: “Of a Ship, and Whatever Are in Her, Her Safety or Destruction.” This should apply to more modern conveyances as well, and an airplane would certainly be very similar to a ship in this situation.
As I discussed elsewhere, for horary questions that don’t directly concern me, I like to doublecheck the radicality of the question, and make sure that it is appropriate. Here, we have a horary question about transportation by air, with Mercury ruling the hour, and Gemini rises, so because of the planet-sign agreement, we have a very radical horoscope.
- Because in this horary question, I identify with the flight and the people on it, and am concerned for their well-being, we must give the plane the Ascendant, its ruler, and the Moon.
- Mercury is in its second station in the 12th house in Taurus, on the malefic fixed star Algol.
- The Moon is just inside the fifth house in Virgo, within orb of a trine to Sun in Gemini. Its last aspect was a trine to Mercury.
- The Ascendant is with the fixed star Aldebaran, which is of the nature of Mars and therefore malefic. The Sun is just inside the first house, and therefore will be important to our judgment. It rules the fourth house.
Lilly says that if we find out the Lord of the Ascendant in the eighth house, in any “ill configuration” with Lord 8, 12, 4, 6, or the Moon combust or under the Earth, the ship is lost and the men drowned, unless there is mutual reception. If there is reception, the ship was wrecked, but some of the men escaped.
Here, Mercury is in the 12th house, which is bad, and it is square Jupiter, ruler of the seventh and 11th houses, and it is also trine Saturn. The connection to Jupiter might indicate that some hope still remains, but more likely it might indicate that the plane had encountered some winds, because Jupiter is in the 10th house in an air sign.. The trine to Saturn in the fourth house, which is particularly malevolent in these types of questions, is rather disconcerting. Mercury receives Saturn by domicile and exaltation, but what we really care about is whether Mercury is received by Saturn, and being at 22 Taurus, it is not. With no reception, Saturn will not spare Mercury, and therefore, the Air France plane is not in good shape. Mercury is essentially motionless in second station, and in a fixed sign, indicating that this plane is not going anywhere.
The Moon under the Earth is a bad sign, and the fact that it had been void of course shows that no news had been available from the plane. The Sun is kind of a secondary significator in this chart, because it is placed in the first house. It, too, aspects Saturn, but by a square. Neither of them receives the other, which makes the situation serious.
The fixed stars in this chart look pretty grim, with Mercury on Algol and Aldebaran rising.
Lilly has a handy chart of parts of the ship assigned to the different astrological signs, and since we see Saturn in aspect to the Ascendant, the Sun, and Mercury; essentially all of our main significators, we can see that it is the “belly” of the plane that will have been affected, as that is the part of the ship associated with Virgo. It could be that the plane smacked down on the ground or water and broke from the bottom.
The Moon will aspect the Sun in about 13°, indicating that some news will be heard of the Air France plane in 13 hours or days from this chart (which was cast 6 AM Pacific time on June 1).
This is one of the charts where I sincerely hope I am wrong, but the testimonies look pretty serious indeed.
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