Using Astrology To Choose A Wedding Date
A cautionary tale
One of my favourite branches of astrology is what's called Electional Astrology. That's where you choose the date time and place of "birth" for something mundane, like opening a business or to begin a new workout routine.
Done properly, electional astrology can get great results. Of course you also have to check out things outside of the birth chart. For example, no matter how good the election chart is, you're not likely to turn a huge profit exporting sand to Saudi Arabia.
Case in point: when one uses electional astrology to choose a date time and place for a couple to get married. An excellent chart doesn't guarantee a successful relationship, and a relatively bad chart doesn't guarantee doom -- but in my personal experience, a bad chart for a wedding or anything else is going to represent an impediment.
Here are some general guidelines for picking an election chart for a wedding ceremony. Like most things in astrology there’s lot more to it, but there are books out there for that.
-keep the grumpier planets off of the angles. Having Mars, Saturn, and or Uranus on the ascendant, descendant, IC, and MC tend to suggest that the marriage may end up breaking up over matters concerning sex, violence, limitation, boredom, or cheating... Or something. Humans can be treacherous creatures once they are in a committed relationship. I should know, because I've been married twice..
-try to have the happy planets on the angles. Venus and Jupiter are natural choices to have on one of the four angles, and sometimes Neptune (but Neptune is kind of a wild card. In my experience a well-placed and aspect to Neptune can be a real boost)
-avoid having the ceremony during a Void of Course Moon.
Now having said all that, let me tell you a personal story about an excellent wedding chart the resulted in a horrible marriage.
I was living in New York City for a while with a woman there. Eventually she insisted on getting married.
(Side note. Most people usually end up insisting that their ex is crazy or evil or a cheater or whatever. I'm not here to dis my ex, and thank God for therapist/client confidentiality, otherwise I might be tempted to have her write a guest column for me about my marriage)
Anyway, I had a friend and fellow astrologer choose an optimum date and time for the marriage ceremony. Does this friend know what she's doing? Yes she does. When it comes to picking out election charts for weddings, she literally wrote the book.
Long story short? A relationship that had been bad since Day One still managed to last a whole nine months. Nine brutal months.
When it comes to Electional Astrology, as with so many other things in life... be careful what you wish for.
Astrology is not a turd polisher. Can anything do that?
When I insisted that my verbally abusive astrologer manfriend marry me, he cast the chart for 5:30Am. All the while he was saying that there were no good dates that year and it would be best to wait. But I was adamant. I had not learned Astrology at that time and I was still clueless as to my own sensibilities. Beginning.
So 5:30AM, it was. It took one year until I bailed. The relationship was my powerful initiation into metaphysics. It had Scorpio rising with Pluto conjunct Mercury in the first. It also had chiron conjunct the MC opposite Saturn in 4, square the ASC. Talk about those angular mistakes! Or was it kismet? I spent that year crying, baking roast beefs, and reading every Astrology book in his library.