Question of the Hour 11*07*05

A friend asked: "Should we buy a vacation home in Mexico?"

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November 5 2005
10:17:23 am PST
San Francisco, CA
27 Sagittarius rises

First issue: is the chart "radical"? That is, can we see that the chart is appropriate to the question? The friend has a strong Sagittarius birth chart, so with Sag rising in this question I say yes.

The questioner is represented by Jupiter, ruler of the 1st, and the Moon. The home is 4th house, the house of lands. If this purchase is positive, we would see something beneficial happening in the chart, especially with these rulers. If not, then the contrary.

What planet represents the home in Mexico? This is a key question. With Aries on the cusp of the 4th, we generally look to Mars. However, Mars is currently retrograde and in such cases the exalted ruler of Aries, the Sun, often fills in. I notice that 1) the Sun is in Scorpio, a southern sign, while Mars is in a northern sign; 2) the Sun is in the southern hemisphere of the chart, while Mars is in the northern; and 3) the Sun is approaching the South Scale of the constellation Libra. All these give testimony to taking the Sun as the ruler of the 4th. The clincher is that the exact degree of the 4th house cusp is the exaltation degree of the Sun. This means of all the degrees in the zodiac, the Sun likes 18.0-18.59 Aries the most. The Sun rules the 4th in this question.

What is the big deal here? Why not look at both? Well if we look at Mars, there is a very good relationship between Moon (the querent) and the home via mutual reception by exaltation, so our answer would be Yes. However, this would be wrong and bad advice.

When we look as the Sun, we see a few interesting things. It is in the 11th house of hopes and wishes. So this idea of a dream house in Mexico is not all bad. But the Sun separates from Jupiter (the people asking the question). Indeed the people asking the question had been in Mexico several weeks ago. But for a new purchase we'd rather see an applying aspect. What is happening in the future as the chart unfolds?

Still looking at the Sun, we see that it squares the part of fortune in the 2nd house. As squares go this is a particularly bad one since the Sun doesn't like Aquarius, its sign of detriment. This is confirmed by the antiscion position of the Sun at 16 Aquarius. And for those who include the outers, tough to ignore that Neptune on the part of fortune either! So this home purchase might be nice and we see the attraction, but it is a bad financial idea right now. 

In all questions we look to the Moon as representing the flow of action and the inner motivations of the querent. The Moon is in Capricorn together with Venus. Venus rules the 5th house of fun and pleasure. This is what they want - a vacation home. From the pleasure side of things this house is looking good! But again we see some problems. The first aspect the Moon makes is to Jupiter. We might think, Moon sextile Jupiter, great. But Jupiter is in the very worst degree of the entire zodiac for the Moon, so although this looks positive it really isn't. What might this be? Jupiter rules the 1st, representing the people asking the question, but it also rules the 12th of secret enemies. Our first read on this is: seems like they are acting against their best interest. Also, who is in the house of secret enemies? Mercury, which rules the 6th house of employees and 7th house of the seller. So something might be amiss with the seller, or work that needs to be done on the home, and hence future relationships with contractors, will cause more outlays than they are expecting.

My advice: Don't buy this one, but since the idea has some positive qualities (Sun in 11th, Moon conj Venus) revisit the issue in about 9 weeks time. I am getting 9 weeks because this is the different in degrees from the Sun to the part of real estate; it is also about the difference in degrees between Jupiter and the 11th cusp; and I also know that Mars will resume forward motion in December at 8 Taurus, and there is 8 degrees between the Moon and this position. Between the 3, about 9 weeks.

The result: 2 days after asking the question the person found out the seller was not a person who had built the house but someone who just repainted it and was trying to flip it at an inflated price. We saw problems with the seller in the question, since the planet indicating the seller was in the house of secret enemies. Mercury is in detriment in Sag; the seller was harming the client by inflating the price.

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