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A Sāyana Lesson · Horary, in full

Timing the Answer

A horary figure answers not only whether, but when. Count the degrees to perfection, read the unit the figure itself sets, and mark the planetary hour — the matter keeps its own clock.
☉︎ Three movements ☿︎ ~11 min · the clock ◎ Degrees · the unit · the planetary hour ✦ Read the clock on the present sky
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Movement I the doctrine

The Doctrine — measuring the when

A figure that says yes almost always carries a when folded inside it. Horary reads it from the same meeting that promised the matter: the perfecting aspect. Count the degrees still wanting between the two significators (or between the Moon and her next aspect) — each degree is one unit of time.

But one degree is not always one day. The size of the unit is set by the figure itself — by the house-class of the matter and the mode of its sign. Angular and movable is the swiftest corner of the table — each degree a day; cadent and fixed the slowest — a long, uncertain span. The grid below is the whole of it.

Fig. 1 · the timing table — each degree reads as …
Movable
Common
Fixed
Angular
days
weeks
months
Succedent
weeks
months
years
Cadent
months
years
a long, uncertain time
Fig. 1 — the house-class of the matter (down) against the mode of its sign (across) names the unit. Multiply by the degrees still wanting to the perfecting aspect: five degrees in an angular, movable figure ≈ five days.
the day and its hours

Beside the degree-count runs an older clock: the planetary hours. Each day belongs to a planet — Sunday to the Sun, Monday to the Moon, and so on — and its hours pass in turn to the seven planets in their Chaldean order, beginning at dawn with the day's own lord. An hour ruled by a significator of the matter, or by a benefic, is a fair time to act; the matter often perfects as its hour comes round.

All of this is a measure, not a promise. Horary times a tendency; it names about when, not the hour on the clock. When the figure is unsettled, let the sky move and ask once more.

Movement II the practice

The Practice — read the clock

Here is the sky cast for the present moment. Turn the clock of the planetary hours at left; choose the house your question falls in, and the figure names when the matter perfects — the unit it sets, and the degrees still wanting.

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Pick a day to change its lord and re-cast the ring (today is ringed in gold); click an hour to choose it — the card at right judges whether that hour suits your matter.
The lord of the day
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The hour you have chosen
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hour {{ hourNum }} from dawn
When the matter perfects · house {{ selNum }}
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Is this a good hour to act? · {{ hvName }}

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The working · the astrologer

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Cast for the present sky over a fixed teaching place. The planetary hours use equal hours from a nominal dawn — a teaching clock, close enough to read the lord, not to set a watch by.
Movement III the casebook

The Casebook — name the timing

Read the figure's house-class and the mode of its sign, and name the unit — or, where the degrees are given, the span. No score is kept; the timing table is your only tool.

The casebook · figure {{ caseNum }} of {{ caseTotal }} ↻ Shuffle
The figure —

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Read it — {{ caseAnsName }}.

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Not {{ casePickName }} — it is {{ caseAnsName }}.

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now take a real question to the wheel
प्रश्न · the living figure
See your own answer timed.

Take a real matter to the living Praśnāvalī. It weighs the testimonies, and where the matter perfects it counts the degrees to the aspect and names about when — in the very units of the table you have just read.

Open the Praśnāvalī →
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Sit with it

Take the question circling in you. If it perfects, how far are the two lights from their aspect — and is the matter angular and swift, or cadent and far off? Name the unit the figure would set, and about when you would look for the answer. Write it down, and mark whether it came near the time.

Toward the synthesis समन्वय

Whether, and when.

To read a time from the sky — to count the degrees and name the unit — is the craft both skies share. The Jyotiṣa reader of a praśna times the matter by the daśā and the transit, and by the very horā that gives us the planetary hour. The measures differ; the discipline is one — say when, but hold it as a measure, not a decree.

“Count the degrees, name the unit — and leave the last word to the sky.”

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