posted March 29, 2013 09:40 PM            

Strictures Against Judgment

These are the traditional strictures against judgment, meaning that there is some element present that causes the chart to be invalid. Modern astrologers differ in their adherence to these strictures and may read the chart, considering the strictures as precautions only. I hold to them to arrive at the correct answer, but also observe the remaining chart features. The Strictures are:

Moon in the Via Combusta: The last stricture is if the Moon is in the Via Combusta; 15 degrees of Libra to 15 degrees of Scorpio. Traditionally, this portion of the zodiac contained several malevolent fixed stars that debilitated a planet.

posted March 29, 2013 09:43 PM            

This is a relatively modern name for an ancient idea – that horary has a way of protecting astrologer, client, and the repute of astrology itself by warning the astrologer not to give judgment when certain symbols appear. It is important that strictures are heeded wherever a yes/no judgment may lead to a significant decision being taken by a client on the basis of the astrologer’s advice.

In the style of practice adopted and taught by the Company of Astrologers, we limit the strictures to the rules given above and we treat them as entirely ritualistic. They encourage discretion and they are the means by which the guiding intelligence at work in horary (however we might conceive it) is able to directly communicate a warning where serious consequences might arise from a judgment. Some modern horary astrologers ignore the strictures, but in our view the penalty they risk incurring by voicing judgment to clients in the face of a stricture is decreasingly radical or even futile horaries

A beginner in horary will frequently get several frustrating strictures in succession in otherwise highly ‘radical’ (= symbolically apt) horaries early in his or her practice. This appears to be something of a test.

As observed by Lilly, the stricture of the late degree is frequent where the astrologer is being tricked or tested, or the question is otherwise not sincere. Lilly is somewhat variable in his observation of the strictures, and sometimes judges with the Moon void (especially in Cancer, Taurus and Sagittarius); but then his astrology is generally a model of discretion and he is perhaps innately ‘guided’ in a way few of us moderns are. The Moon void is an interesting test of the strictures – some moderns simply say ‘nothing comes of the matter’, but the truer understanding is actually ‘nothing useful comes of doing a horary judgment in this matter’.

A very experienced horary astrologer may choose to read through the stricture, but then only when their judgment takes up fully the probable reason for the stricture having been given in the first place.