The Ritual Power of Electional Astrology
by April Elliott Kent

I recently had an accidental match-making success.  We were visited by a former student and client who was in town on business.  She is married, but in the process of an acrimonious divorce.  On a whim, I invited a close friend to dinner on the night she was coming to town.  Having seen both their charts and noting the striking correlation between certain key placements I thought, “Well, these two ought to have something to say to one another.” Did they ever!  They disappeared outside together about an hour into the evening and we didn’t see them again for hours. 

I didn’t exactly set them up, but on the other hand they probably wouldn’t have even met without my interference.  Having unwittingly brought them together, I began scrambling to distance myself from the situation lest I interfere further in their lives!  And frankly, this is something of my attitude toward electional astrology --the astrology of choosing advantageous moments to initiate action -- as well:  that perhaps in plying this ancient art, I’m messing around in matters that would work out just fine, perhaps better, without my interference.

I’ve been on sabbatical from offering astrology readings since last year, but somehow I’ve found a comfortable niche choosing wedding dates with electional astrology.  And I’ve found I absolutely love this work, which is perfect for the Virgo side of my nature.  Counseling was the part of astrology readings that I found most draining, and electional work requires a minimum of in-depth counseling.  Electing wedding dates is an almost purely intellectual exercise, its dry syntactic borders as logical and comforting as a crossword puzzle. 

But while I mostly enjoy the intellectual workout of electional astrology, a two-fold concern gives me pause about the wisdom of “electing” wedding dates with astrology.  First, I continually question the usefulness of prediction, and a strong argument could be made that electional astrology is prediction’s cousin: When you elect a date for a wedding or other event, you’re basically predicting that, based on the wonderful date you’ve chosen, the venture will ultimately prove successful.

The other problem I have with electing wedding dates is that the longer I do it and the more wedding charts I look at, the more I am convinced the traditional rules for wedding electionals are at best unreliable, at worst just plain wrong.  In the course of reviewing literally hundreds of wedding charts in preparation for a recent lecture on the subject, I saw many, many charts of happy, long lasting marriages, charts that break all the rules of electional astrology.  I saw just as many wedding charts that were astrologically admirable but which resulted nevertheless in failed or unhappy marriages. 

For instance, the Moon in its rulership of mundane daily affairs looms large in the symbolism of electional astrology.  Its position by sign, house, and aspect are considered a microcosm that describes how an action, however large or small, will unfold and ultimately resolve.  Marrying with the Moon in Scorpio or Capricorn, the signs of its detriment and fall, is considered tantamount to astrological suicide.  Likewise, a void of course moon, or the moon applying to difficult aspects with other planets, is to be strenuously avoided. 

Dutifully, when choosing wedding dates I’ve scrupulously avoided days when the moon was debilitated in these ways. But in the past year I’ve seen far too many exceptions to not question the rule.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, for example, had a long and famously close marriage, yet their wedding chart ¹ is astrologically horrible, with a void of course moon and late degree Venus square Pluto.  And recently I looked at the wedding chart for my aunt and uncle, who had been married 49 years when she died two years ago.  The chart is an astrological nightmare, featuring a void of course Scorpio moon square Pluto, as well as Mercury retrograde and a host of other horrors.  True, in the course of their marriage they suffered the loss of a child, an industrial accident that almost killed my uncle, and my aunt’s deteriorating health.  But there was enduring fondness between them until the day my aunt died, her husband at her bedside, so bereft that we put him on an informal suicide watch for a week.  The love between them, and the strength and endurance of that marriage despite great trials, is a testament to the positive potential of Scorpio that belies the kneejerk naysaying of the astrological tradition.

Hard-line advocates of electional astrology would propose that had they married on a different day, all the difficulties my aunt and uncle endured together could have been avoided.  But how about the woman I unwittingly introduced to my friend, in the story at the beginning of this article – a woman whose wedding date I personally elected, a woman who was divorcing her husband after only a year of marriage? That was a pretty sweet chart, but it didn’t make the marriage any happier or more enduring.

I suspect, actually, that electional astrology is irrelevant to the outcome of matters large or small.  In fact, I think using astrology in an attempt to influence anything actually minimizes its power in an attempt to increase our own. But doesn’t it stand to reason that if there is indeed “a time to every purpose under heaven,” that it would make sense to try to align your activities with this purpose?  If astrology isn’t any good for this, what is it good for?  Perhaps as a tool to lead to better understanding of the real forces that influence our lives, influences such as upbringing and social conditioning and our own freedom to make choices.

Besides, the mysterious truth is that trying to squeeze an unhappy relationship into a happy marriage chart is doomed to failure. I’ve chosen wedding dates for many, many couples, and I can tell you without hesitation that wedding dates can rarely be chosen by an astrologer.  Oh, I can and do propose astrologically near-perfect moments for a couple to wed, but if they are not themselves perfectly ready to wed, “something” will prevent the marriage from taking place at the most favorable time. The location they want to use will be unavailable, a key relative will be unable to attend at that time, or one of them will have an aversion to marrying on a Sunday.  The couple will come back to me and gradually, unconsciously, through the process of elimination, negotiate their way to the date and time that perfectly reveals the most important issues they must face together, and then ask for my astrological blessing.  Stubborness?  I prefer to think that the influence at work is the wise moon, perfect as she is in any sign or aspect, guiding this couple as she has so many others to the starting gate that’s exactly right for them -- however forbidding it may look to us.

We can approach astrology forcefully and nonorganically, as a way to bend life to some abstract ideal.  Or we can approach it with the wisdom of the moon, respecting its mystery.  We can use it to analyze the moments we spontaneously gravitate toward -- just as we spontaneously gravitated toward the moment of our birth, with all its potential for pain and glory -- to see what secrets those moments can reveal to us.  And we can use the traditional rules of electional astrology as would candles or any other ritual device, not as an innoculation against life but as an invocation to align ourselves with a greater wisdom.  And that’s not such a bad use for astrology.

1 Duke and Duchess of Windsor married 3rd June 1937 at 12 midday at Monts, France.