ELECTIONS IN A BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
by Mary Downing

We hear "elections" and immediately think "politics." More connections than you'd think: both are the arts of the possible. We can only elect to do what can be done. Quite a few astrologers err in selecting charts that attempt to make a terrestrial silk purse from a celestial sow's ear. You can't. What you can do is enhance the good and diminish the bad.

Does it help at all? Can we really preempt fate? Oddly, the astrologers who argue the hardest against any hint of predestination also sniff at elections. Isn't that a lack of faith? When we cook an election we are helping ourselves. We are embracing hope and eschewing temporal martyrdom.

Electing presupposes a certain world view: One must believe it can be done. You willfully contract a future, both pleasant and thorny---with eyes wide open. And, since you nay well get exactly what you bargained for, you need to thoroughly understand all the caveats implicit in your selection. Time simply rolls on, we're both the recipients and interpreters of "good" and "bad," appropriate and inappropriate/ Benefit is strictly in the eye of the beholder; but in business applications, you may be beholden to multiple beholders.

I Have a Client

The client has a natal chart, dizzy with transits and directions. So does any/every corporate entity or partnership with which he happens to be involved. This client is a sold proprietor, professional, or a one-man corporation that's the case---at least in part anyway.

Example # 1:

Doctors, dentists, chiropractors are often incorporating. Suppose Dr. Dugood wants to open a second office. The corporation, which is a legal construct---a worldly golem, either holds all the real property or signs the office lease. It's perfectly possible to have a marvelous "corporate" lease, but have the new location resonate unfavorably with out human client for some alternative and personally specific reason. Both must be good.

Example #2:

My client is a Public Relations consultant with a small agency. She is doing a simple press conference. She must:

A. Attract the proper publications, i.e. get out the press

B. Please her client

C. Look good publicly---there are, after all, other potential clients out there. There must be a good outcome for the event, for the client and herself.

Example #3:

Suppose my client is an employee or a corporate agent. He might be an advertising corporate agent who not only works for Sacchi & Saachi, but it doing an ad campaign for Hilton Hotels.

In this circumstance, I have, for all intents and purposes, three clients, and perhaps more: because there is an ever expanding nested influence. The bottom line: He, she or they---all want to achieve a favorable outcome---and furthermore there is a future time-line implicit in and hinging on what starts today.

The outcome may be individual: individual + corporate; or individual corporate + thing. A product launch would be the 'birth" of public acceptance/rejection for the launchee. This now public product will forevermore be in juxtaposition with my client and its corporate parents, in just the relationship my elected even established, as though it were an either delightful or troublesome child.

Lets return to Example #2. My one woman PR firm is introducing a new hair color line. She is staging a trendy club party cum show to debut this item for NYC beauty editors.

Checklist:

We want an overall good outcome---4th house. This is a product launch. It is the overall public-acceptance "birthday" for the product. What every new product wants is to be desires and make money: Mars + Venus, and Mars + Jupiter. Fashion being what it is, if it survives age five, we're happy. We need the Moon (both the Public and our tine-line guide) and Mercury (communication) to be in good shape.

Mars + Venus aspects and midpoints, even traditionally negative ones, make the product desirable. So would Venus + Pluto or Neptune. (Wanna bet Obsession is Venus/Pluto?) Jupiter will make it money, so will Venus, but trines will not give it the pizzazz to get things off the ground. Squares and semisquares sizzle. My public connections are Moon, MC, Nodes and the Aries point.

Defensive Planning:

We want to make the day and time "fit" the planned event as well as we're able. If we're stuck with Uranus aspects, we make the event almost outré and emphasize this in press releases. In short, we absorb what could be negative into a descriptive mode to at least neutralize, maybe even create positives. If an aspect pattern or placement describes the event, it is defused. Pluto could be 'restorative' (or models in black leather); and Neptune is the glamorous, deceptive cosmetic industry anyway. Saturn rules the skin, hair, teeth and aging. See? Bring it to the foreground.

We want our client to have a personally favorable outcome. We pick a date where she'll look great after the event. All her troubles should be over once the house lights dim. If her chart is unavoidably stressed during the event, she can hire a stage manager with a better set of transits. Again we want some Jupiter (preferably to Mercury, Node or MC/Asc) hard aspects. We don't want people to think nice thoughts about her, we want them to blab a little. We also want the parent corporation to be happy. The can have the nice tries and sextiles. We particularly want to avoid anything that could reflect negativity afterwards.

Getting the Appropriate Charts:

You can't do decent business elections without the chart of our client and company. If for some reason he doesn't or isn't motivated to discover it, use noon. This is a "public" position. It is a good idea to check noon angles on a chart, anyway---for the simple reason that the planet/house positions will show you the person's "public image" potential. For corporations use noon. It's the natural mundane position for a corporation or municipality.

Relocate all charts as an adjunct to natal charts. The relocated angles and new house positions are worth noting. Do you really want your client to open his new McDonald's franchise with his relocated MC conjunct transiting Saturn?

Use natal planets as 'diurnals' on the election chart. If your client's Jupiter is in the 4th house, that's a good outcome for him. If his Venus is on the Midheaven, great! But---if his Neptune is rising, will they even notice him at all, or even worse---misunderstand his message?

Checking for Future Fallout:

Elections use applying and partile aspects only. Separating aspects are "history," informative in explaining motivations, but useless for predicting outcomes or timing responses.

Timing is a three-flavor dish. The simplest is transits to the event chart itself, followed by symbolic timing: i.e., applying aspects that will complete within a specific number of degrees, minutes and seconds. Convert these into years, months, days in whichever time frame is appropriate. Thirdly, direct and/or progress the chart, always keeping in mind how long a life is natural, given the nature of the beast.

But Can't It Wait?

No, it can't. Contracts are signed and magazines printed on Mercury Retrograde. It happens. The work-a-day world is only middling able to rearrange its affairs to fit the heavens. Since economic life will go on, we must learn the meaning of "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade." You must tell your client what can go wrong, because it most likely will. And if you don't---why dose he need you? If you prepare him he can, like our PR gal, somehow absorb the influence and dissipate the negative effects. This is one branch of astrology where undue optimism car wreak havoc.

Business elections are mainly the art of using available aspect patterns and cycles to manage their repetitious evens in mercantile life. Advertising is done before the buying cycle show upward potential. Dangerous equipment is purchased sans accident indicators. Retrogrades are deliberately uses for there revision potential. Void of Course (VOC) Moons are opportunities for "singular" events that are ends in themselves, never to repeat and with no future commitments.

While our human clients are complex individuals, and as such, often subject to subtle and conflicting motivations, corporations are likely to act in the most primitive, basic manner to transits and progressions; motivation is survival and acquisition, stay alive and eat. What we gain from playing in this sandbox is a raw view of planetary influence without a civilizing varnish---and whatever we know really, at the core, by experience, benefits us in any arena.

Aspects Magazine Winter 1997 Vol22 No4 
Elections In A Business Environment © Aspects Magazine 1997 all rights reserved