Astrologers: Pluto's Recently Discovered Moons Need Your Help!

Just for fun...

Voting is underway to name the two recently discovered moons of Pluto (quick--can you name the other three?). One of their discoverers, Mark Showalter, is accepting suggestions via online voting, which will then be tallied and presented to the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Help Us Name the Moons of Pluto!

Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2011 and 2012 revealed two previously unknown moons of Pluto. So far, we have been calling them "P4" and "P5", but the time has come to give them permanent names. If it were up to you, what would you choose?

By tradition, the names of Pluto's moons come from Greek and Roman mythology, and are related to the ancient tales about Hades and the Underworld. Please pick your favorites on the ballot below. 

Go to http://www.plutorocks.com/home and vote early and vote often, because voting ends at Noon EST on Mon., Feb 25, 2013. And then read this to find out the names of Pluto's three other moons. Not because there's a quiz, or because you should use them in your charts, but because the more you know and understand the solar system, the better an astrologer you'll be.

For what it's worth, the two names I voted for because they made the most symbolic sense for Pluto were the two top vote-getters at the time I voted. Great minds (astronomical and astrological) think alike? :)
------------------
UPDATE 2/25/2013: No fair! William Shatner skewed the vote with his Twitter lobbying! The fix is in! :) 

Here's the official results, from the plutorocks.com homepage:

Meanwhile, take this 10-question Pluto quiz on Space.com's coverage of the naming contest results (scroll to the bottom of the article for the quiz. If you go 10-for-10 like I did, send me a screenshot of your results, and I'll pick a random winner on March 15th for a free copy of Open Source Modern Horary Astrology.

Modern Electional Astrology 101: A Perfectly Engineered Fundraising Chart

A querent needed to raise funds for a charity and wanted to know the best time to make the funding request public. The only caveat was that she only had 30 days to raise the funds. She needed astrological help because she knew that early in a new year was the worst time to fundraise, as people are tapped out financially from the holidays, and not so willing to open their wallets.

Electional charts are reverse-engineered from a horary chart (where you take what you get at the time you ask the question), because the intent of electional astrology is to put the planets in the best possible houses and relationships with each other at a particular time to achieve a successful outcome.

Using the methodology as outlined in Chapter 7 of Open Source Modern Horary Astrology, the first step was to peruse the ephemeris to find favorable Moon aspects. In this case, the Moon aspects chosen were excellent:

Next, choosing strong significators for the querent (ASC) and quesited (8th house) was sought. The best-case scenario in electional astrology is to have the Moon, querent, and quesited all in harmony with each other (or more realistically, as much as possible). In this chart, the Moon, Venus, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are the strongest planets in strong placement in the chart, so there's a lot to work with. Here is what was chosen, and why:

The Moon double-represents the querent, as it is ruler of the ASC, and the Moon in horary/electional charts is ALWAYS the querent's co-ruler. The early degree rising shows the beginning phases of the project, rather than traditional horary's prematurity or a stricture against judgment, which modern horary ignores to great success. 

Saturn rules the 8th house of the quesited, since the 8th house rules other people's money, and Venus represents personal finance. With Venus applying to conjoin Pluto in the angular 7th house of other people (also ruled by Saturn with Capricorn on the cusp of the 7th), and with Pluto mutually recepting Venus' dispositor, Saturn/quesited, people would rally to the cause and open their wallets. However, it would only be in measured or limited small amounts (Venus in Capricorn), rather than large and generous donations. This was okay, because the amount of money she was trying to raise was only a four figure sum, not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So the significators of Moon, Saturn, and Venus, are all nicely and harmoniously bound together by dispositor or mutual reception, and applying aspects of the Moon. Electional charts are rarely this easy.

The Moon was placed in the angular 10th house for a visible public appeal. Moon in Pisces, dispositing to Neptune (which it recently conjoined), as well as Chiron, showed it was a charitable cause to help the less fortunate. Note the applying Moon (querent) trine to Saturn (quesited), with the Moon 3 degrees away from partile. This gives an idea of timing in the chart, and due to the Moon in a mutable sign, and succeedent, fixed Saturn, three weeks seemed far more likely than three days to come up with the amount. She reached the funding goal in exactly 22 days; three weeks and one day after the project launched as timed by the election chart.

With Uranus and Mars mutually recepted and ruling the 9th and 11th houses, the project received widespread news coverage via the assistance of a sympathetic reporter (Mars in the 9th; 9th house cusp in Aquarius), as well as significant and unexpected support from her friends (11th house ruled by Aries). The message truly got across, as the Sun, in the 8th house of the quesited, rules the 3rd house of communications, and the Moon's last aspect is a sextile to the Sun before going void-of-course.

A key point to remember to be successful in electional astrology (and horary for that matter) is to focus on the noun and not the adjectives of the subject at hand. A beginner would have made the mistake of focusing on what the funding was for (charity/11th and 12th houses), rather than the fact that the subject was fundraising, period (Pluto, Venus, 8th house), regardless of the type or cause.