Traveling

The house tradition splits travel in two, and the split is by kind rather than by distance measured out. The third house takes short journeys, the ones a person makes inside a world they already know: to the neighbouring town, on an errand, among kindred and neighbours. The ninth takes long journeys, voyages and travel abroad, and it takes them in the same breath as religion, philosophy, learning, dreams and the church.

That second grouping is the more revealing of the two. The ninth is not the house of distance. It is the house of what lies beyond the native's own frame of reference, and a foreign country, a foreign god and a difficult book are all instances of one thing. Lilly's ninth carries long voyages and religion together for that reason, and a reading that separates them loses the logic that put them there.

The planetary significators follow from the signs those houses are natural to. Gemini is the third sign and Mercury rules it, so Mercury carries the errand, the message and the road. Sagittarius is the ninth sign and Jupiter rules it, so Jupiter carries the pilgrimage, the voyage and the foreign teacher. These are derivations from the order of the signs rather than assignments made in their own right, which is why the sources state them with less authority than the house significations they follow from.

Ptolemy gives foreign travel a chapter of its own in the fourth book, reading it from where the luminaries fall relative to the angles of the chart.

Sources Christian AstrologyWilliam Lilly with TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Natal astrology asks whether a person will travel. Electional astrology, the older branch the Greek sources call katarchic, asks when to leave, and it is in the electional literature that travel gets its most detailed handling.

Dorotheus of Sidon devotes the fifth book of the Carmen Astrologicum to inceptions, the charts of beginnings, and journeys are among its recurring subjects. The technique is consistent across the tradition that follows him. Set the chart for the moment of departure, put the significators of the journey in good condition, and above all watch the Moon, which is the fastest of the seven and therefore fixes the character of a short interval most exactly. A Moon applying to a benefic, in a sign that suits the kind of travel, and out of the way of Mars and Saturn, is the basic requirement.

Two further rules recur often enough to name. The ascendant and its lord stand for the traveller, so they are kept clear of affliction. The fourth house, being the end of the matter, is watched for what the journey will come to rather than how it will start.

Election makes the strongest practical claim of any branch of astrology and is the branch modern practice uses least. It is described here because it is where the tradition's material on ordinary activities actually lives. A natal chart says what a life contains. An electional chart is where astrologers wrote down what they thought a good moment looked like.