Electional astrology: choosing the moment

Electional astrology chooses the moment for an undertaking — a journey, a signature, an opening. It is the most practical branch of astrology, and the one where the tradition has left the clearest rules.

The basic rule

The chart of the beginning describes the course of the matter. Anyone who can choose the beginning is choosing the conditions along with it — as far as the stretch of time on offer allows.

From this the most important limit follows at once: a choice works with what is there. Three available days allow less than three months do, and no choice turns a bad undertaking into a good one.

How the choice is made

First: identifying the house of the matter. A journey belongs to the third house (short) or the ninth (long); a contract to the seventh; an opening to the tenth. This house and its ruler should stand well.

Second: the ascendant and its ruler. They describe the undertaking as a whole and the person acting.

Third: the Moon. In an election it is the single most important factor, because it carries the course of events. What is avoided:

• a void-of-course Moon — the matter never gets going;
• a Moon applying to a malefic;
• a waning Moon for anything that is meant to grow;
• the Moon in the degrees held to be the “combust way”, between the last degrees of Libra and the first of Scorpio.

Fourth: keeping the malefics off the angles. What stands on an angle makes itself felt — and a malefic on the cusp of the house at issue is the very thing a choice is meant to prevent.

For a journey

The classic case, and it shows well how tight the rules are. What is wanted: a strong ruler of the ascendant, a waxing and undisturbed Moon, the third or the ninth house well placed according to the distance — and, for a sea voyage, particular attention to the water signs and to the Moon, which rules over water.

What is avoided is Mars on an angle, and a Moon square or opposite a malefic.

What a choice does not do

It does not change the undertaking and it undoes no carelessness. A well-chosen moment for a badly prepared journey yields a badly prepared journey.

And its precedence runs downwards only: the tradition agrees that an election does not overrule the natal chart of the person acting. No chosen moment brings forth what is not laid down there.

See also: horary astrology — the same technique, with the question running the other way.