A missing object horary astrology reading:

Where are my daughter's patches?

I’ve been meaning to do a post about a hoary chart reading because I really love this form of astrology, which is much less widely known than modern Western natal astrology.

In a nutshell, hoary astrology is a chart cast to answer a pressing question. I say “pressing” here because it is important that the querent (i.e. person asking the question) has an emotional investment in the answer. In other words, if you just applied for a job and are anxious to find out if you’ll get it in the end, this is the perfect time to cast a hoary chart and seek an answer.

On the other hand, unless you happen to be a player in the game, hoary is NOT good for asking questions like, Will the Vikings win the game tomorrow? I guess this is probably because there is no real emotional investment in such a question, except perhaps greed if you placed a large bet on the game. Or maybe the universe just doesn’t want hoary astrologers to be in on a secret that could get them rich off gambling. Thanks universe…

Seriously though, this technique is incredibly helpful and such a delicious, complex and sometimes challenging puzzle. But once you manage to tune in and see the narrative unfolding in the chart, it’s truly is a beautiful – and very useful – thing.

The “bad” news?

Hoary takes time to master and you need advanced skills in traditional astrology to get there (“bad” in quotes because there’s basically nothing better than studying astrology. I’ve been at it over 20 years and I still have so much more to learn!). I took the Practioner’s Level Hoary course at STA last year and passed the course, but I still consider myself very much an apprentice in the art.

But enough of me blabbering on. Let’s go on to the real juice in this post: the reading itself.

Where are my daughter’s patches?

A missing object hoary reading

When I was passing through Geneva, Switzerland after going to a writer’s retreat in France, I bought my older daughter two unusual iron on patches for her upcoming birthday on April 7th. One patch was of a dragon and the other of a tiger, just the kind of individual touch I knew she would love to add to her clothes.

She loved the patches and enjoyed a nice family birthday on the 7th and went out with a few friends the next day. However, when she came home in the evening of the 8th, she noticed the patches were missing from her bookshelf. Distraught, she was sure they had been stolen either by a friend who came to her house for the first time that day who she apparently didn’t trust completely or by her younger sister.

I didn’t really know the friend and her sister swore she didn’t take them. But both girls do sometimes steal from each other (the bane of having two teenager daughters so close in age!) so I couldn’t be completely sure she was telling the truth. My older daughter can be absentminded, especially when she’s tired like she was, so I assumed she had probably misplaced them.

Either way, the patches were missing and my daughter was very agitated. To help calm her down, I asked her if she would like me to cast a hoary chart to see if it could help us find the patches, and she said yes.

Here is the chart I cast.

My daughter in the chart

In the chart, my daughter could either be signified by the first house, which represents the querent or the 5th house, which is the house of children. However, in this case, choosing between these houses doesn’t really make a difference: both the first house and the fifth house have a Mars-ruled sign on the cusp (Scorpio on the first and Aries on the fifth), so my daughter is definitely represented by Mars in Aquarius in the 3rd house.

What is striking about this chart is that Mars is the weakest planet. Every other visible planet in this chart is in the sign of its rulership or exaltation, but Mars only has a minor dignity (in its own terms). It’s separating from a conjunction to Saturn and weakly placed in the third house. When I looked at this, I thought here is someone is really worn out. Saturn could indicate the loss was due to forgetfulness which has caused rage and impatience (Mars). With the south node directly on the ascendant, which also suggests depletion of energy, this image is reenforced. Since my daughter was indeed exhausted after her birthday party, agitated and not thinking very clearly, this hoary looked like it was going to provide an accurate reading.

I then moved on to determine whether the patches had been stolen.

Were the patches stolen?

To see if someone had stolen the patches, I looked at the 7th house, which stands for other people. The 7th house has Taurus on the cusp, which is ruled by Venus. Venus is in the third house in Pisces, the sign of her exaltation. This is a very friendly, loving, well-intentioned Venus, and definitely not someone who would grab a couple iron-on patches off of someone’s shelf on a malicious whim. Since the 11th house (house of friends) also has Venus-ruled Libra on the cusp, it looked like the friend was off the hook.

My other daughter is represented by Saturn because Aquarius is on the cusp of the third house (house of siblings). Although Saturn is a naturally malefic planet, he’s much more likely to be honorable and upstanding in his own sign (Aquarius). Saturn also is not connected with the planet signifying the missing object. All of this information made it clear that its was extremely unlikely the patches were stolen. As I suspected in the beginning, they appeared to be missing because of my daughter’s forgetfulness and agitation.

Can the patches be found?

Before I tried to determine where the patches were I initially looked if they could be recovered. After all, if the chart clearly says the missing object can’t be found, it doesn’t make much sense to search further, so you should always answer this question first.

Moveable objects are always signified by the second house, which has Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius on the cusp. Jupiter is strong in its own sign (Pisces) in the 4th house. This indicates that the patches were likely unharmed, which is good. But the 4th house (also called the IC) is the darkest and most hidden part of the chart. Jupiter is also conjunct Neptune, a planet that likes to obscure things. This in itself indicates that the patches have fallen somewhere out of the way and will perhaps be difficult to find.

Next I looked at the sun and the moon. Known as the luminaries, these two “planets” are vitally important in missing object/person charts because they literally bring things to light. The sun is in Aries below the horizon. Since this is a darker place in the chart, it would be better testimony to have the sun above the horizon if the object were to be found. However, the sun is in the fortunate 5th house in its sign of exaltation (Aries) and separating from a trine to the second house. This is a positive testimony that the patches can be found.

The moon is in the 8th house in Cancer, its sign of rulership. Although the 8th house is considered an unfortunate house of loss, it is still positive that the moon is above the horizon. Better yet, it is applying to Jupiter (after making a square to the sun) in a positive received trine since Cancer is the sign of Jupiter’s exaltation.

These two positive testimonies seemed to suggest that the patches would be found, although perhaps not right away since both the sun and moon were both rather slow in speed.

So where they heck are they?

Now that I had determined the patches could likely be found, it was time to look and see if I could figure out where the heck they were. According to the rules of hoary astrology, the clues I could determine were as follows:

• Since the planet (Jupiter) signifying the missing patches is in an angular house (the 4th), they were likely close by.

• Since Jupiter is in a mutable sign (Pisces), they may be hidden inside of something (i.e. a box inside a box). This is further emphasized by the presence of Neptune, which tends to obscure.

• Pisces suggests they are North by West and the 4th house suggests they are North, so two testimonies pointing us North.

• Water signs (Pisces and the moon in Cancer) suggest they may be somewhere near water or in a moist place in the room.

• Jupiter suggests they are near a wardrobe or things made of Oak in general

Each of these clues made a lot of sense. My daughter’s bookshelf is indeed right next to a wardrobe made of Oak, so the first place we looked was underneath the wardrobe to see if they had fallen there. She also has a fish tank in her room, and all that water (plus Neptune, the god of the sea no less!) seemed to suggest that she may have laid them somewhere near the tank. We looked there too, and underneath her bed which was located North West from the bookshelf.

But no luck. The patches were still nowhere to be found. At this point my daughter was beyond exhausted. I assured her that we would look again in the morning and that I still felt confident we could find them. She finally went to bed.

The end of the story

The next day, I went into my daughter’s room to look for the patches. She had gone out with a friend again, so she wasn’t there.

After looking around for a few minutes, I finally found them: They were on the shelf above where she thought she had put them, hidden inside a book.

In retrospect, several aspects were quite telling. First, as is often the case with objects signified by mutable signs, they were hidden inside of something else. They were also located indeed North from where she had last seen them (although from the shelf itself) and quite close by.

Unfortunately I don’t know the exact time because I didn’t write it down, I do know the patches showed up when both the sun and Jupiter were above the horizon near the MC, the most visible point in the chart.

Time for a shameless plug…

I completed my hoary training at the end of 2021 and am currently offering readings here.

Since I’m still in the process of gaining experience, the price for a hoary reading is half the rate I will charge once I’ve got my chops, so take advantage of the lower rate and ask your pressing questions soon! :)