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Considerations Before Judgment in Horary Astrology
Considerations before judgment are a handful of sanity checks Lilly ran before trusting a horary chart at all -- most famously, whether the Ascendant's degree is too early or too late, and whether the Moon is void of course. They don't replace the judgment itself; they flag whether the chart, or the question, is even ready to be judged.
Horary astrology is a traditional, rule-based symbolic practice with no empirical scientific basis -- treat this page, and Querens itself, as entertainment and a genuinely interesting historical system, not fact.
What Lilly says
Christian Astrology, p.121 (1647 ed.)
Lilly devotes a section explicitly titled "Considerations before Judgment" to these checks -- among them an Ascendant under 3° or past 27° of its sign, which he reads as the question being asked too soon or too late relative to the matter already being decided.
How Querens reads this
Querens runs two of Lilly's considerations on every chart: the Ascendant-degree check (triggered under 3° or past 27° of the rising sign) and the Moon void-of-course check (see the void of course Moon page). Both are computed the same deterministic way every time and shown in the Full Judgment panel's Considerations section -- but unlike Lilly's own practice, Querens treats a triggered consideration as context to weigh, not an automatic disqualification of the chart. The panel shows exactly which considerations fired and why, so nothing is hidden.
See it in a real chart
Frequently asked questions
- What are considerations before judgment in horary astrology?
- A set of sanity checks Lilly recommends running before trusting a chart at all -- chiefly an early or late Ascendant degree and a void-of-course Moon.
- Does a triggered consideration mean the chart can't be judged?
- Historically Lilly could treat some considerations as grounds to refuse judgment outright. Querens instead shows them as context alongside the rest of the reading rather than an automatic disqualification.
- What is the Ascendant-degree consideration?
- An Ascendant under 3° of its sign is read as too early -- the matter not yet fully formed; past 27° is read as too late -- the matter already decided.