Elections for love and marriage are often requested,
but almost always quite challenging. The 17th century English astrologer
William Ramesey sets forth numerous
rules for marriage, including rules
for the first, fourth, seventh and tenth houses, their rulers, their aspects, the Moon,
Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, the sign on the Ascendant and the sign of the Moon.
Getting all these factors in a positive state without any negative influences is not
possible in any individual chart. Instead we must rank our factors in importance and
decide what is good enough and what can be dispensed with.
Generally I try to make sure first that
Venus, the natural ruler of love is well fortified. Then
the rulers of the first and seventh houses, representing the potential spouses. I
then try to have the ruler of the first and seventh applying to a positive aspect.
Just these four conditions can be very hard to satisfy, particularly when the elector
wants to get married on Saturday at 2 p.m. in June!
One of the nice things, however, about stumbling on a
good marriage election is that it is so useful for a variety of purposes because the
first house always represents the elector and the 7th signifies so many things. Thus
a marriage election, as shown below, is good not only for marriage, but love, partnership,
closing a business deal, getting tenants or renting an apartment, etc.
The elected time and date is
April 14, 2003 at 1:14 pm EST (+5) at Cleveland Park, a
Washington, D.C. neighborhood, 38 N 56 77 W 03,
Venus is dignified by exaltation and triplicity and is conjunct the 9th house cusp.
The ruler of the first is the Sun,
who is dignified by triplicity and exaltation and is
conjunct the Midheaven.
He is also almuten of the 10th house. This is
helpful as the 10th house shows how the couple will get along after marriage.
The ruler of the seventh is Saturn, dignified by triplicity
and term in the 11th of hopes and dreams. The Sun is in a partile applying sextile of
Saturn. Not bad!
Now we do note that the Moon has just separated from a
square of Saturn and she is peregrine. She moves to trine Mars, not well placed in the
sixth, but highly dignified and positive as the ruler of the 10th.
