17
Oh how interesting! I did not know that Luna could be treated as retrograde when she was slow of motion. That does make a certain amount of sense, although sometimes I do think we need to be a bit cautious about approaching things in too formulaic of a manner, particularly when judging Nativity charts.

I think that it makes good sense to treat horaries and electional charts a bit differently than Nativities. Actually, I think we need to treat horaries and electionals differently from each other as well.

With a Nativity chart, you are looking at a chart for a person's entire life. People have Free Will, which means that they have choices as to how they express their charts. Difficult or debilitated planets in a chart certainly make the expression of the planetary principles more difficult, but I think that part of the role of a good astrologer is to help people work with their charts, even the difficult parts of the chart.

I think that for this reason, I would be reluctant to treat a slow of motion Luna as if it were retrograde in a Nativity. When judging Nativity charts, I tend to be more qualitative than quantitative. I would be very detailed in looking at every debility and dignity separately. I tend not to really use "point systems" with Nativities, unless I am calculating an Almuten, or other such point in a chart.

In a horary, one is generally looking at a chart for the answer to a specific question. I understand that Mr. Lilly did use horaries in place of nativity charts for clients who did not have birth information. I have not tried that, so I do not know how I feel about that or how that would work. On the other hand, mostly with a horary, one is really only looking at a particular question or a specific answer. For this reason, I think that formulas make a lot more sense in this context. We are trying to come up with a specific answer in order to help someone make a decision, so one needs to be a lot more definite in approach. In this case, treating a slow of motion Luna as if she were retrograde makes more sense.

On the other hand, Luna plays *such* an important role with horaries. Does anyone know if the treatment of Luna as retrograde when slow of motion is limited to when she is the signifactor of the question, or if that usage is general, for all the ways Luna is used in horary.

I am not so sure about a formulaic approach for electionals. It seems to me that electionals are somewhat in between Nativities and horaries in this regard. On the other hand I can see the wisdom of treating a slow of motion Luna as retrograde in an Electional. I would imagine that whether this was good or bad would depend on what one was trying to do. If one wanted an event to be something *very* lasting, I suppose a slow of motion Luna in a fixed sign might do the trick, although, it may be something unpleasant that lasts.

Anyways, thank you for your indulgence with my bit of rambling. This is quite interesting, though.