The Mid-heaven's direction affects the position and career of the native.
If the directions are to good aspects of benevolent planets, they signify prosperity both of mind and body, cheerfulness and all manner of earthly happiness; but if the horoscope should have directions to the ill aspects of the malefics, Mars or Saturn, then evil is to be expected of the nature given by the malevolent star. If directed to the good aspects, such as the trine or sextile of these evil planets, the misfortune is not so great, and even in some instances good may be predicted. As, for example, the horoscope directed to the trine or sextile of Mars gives preferment by arms; the same aspects towards Saturn would indicate success in building or in mines, or some calling connected with metals.
The occasional differences in the life, tastes, health, marriage and pecuniary affairs of twins, born within ten or twenty minutes of each other, are accounted for by the fact that at the birth of the first child the last degree of a sign may ascend with planets therein, or a planet in the 2nd house at 5 p.m. may be in the 1st at 5.15 p.m. and the early degrees of another sign may be exactly on the ascendant at the birth of the second child.
A planet may reach the M.C., or any other of the four cardinal points at, say, 10 p.m. and ten minutes later have passed off, when its powers would have greatly diminished. Though the signs rise and set at the rate of 15° per hour, in our latitude from 50° to 60° North, it often happens that 30° will ascend in fifty-two minutes.
Horary questions are questions asked at a certain time when a person feels anxious concerning any undertaking or impending event. A figure or map of the heavens, like that erected for a nativity, is drawn out for the minute in which the question is asked; and, if the astrologer be skilful, and the querist sincere—that is, not putting the question from frivolous motives—the answer will, in general, be true, for the whole is the effect of that sympathy which pervades all nature and which is the keynote of all divination under whatsoever form it is practised.
In horary questions the sign ascending and its lord represent the querent, and to these the Moon is added and must be considered with the lord of the ascendant.
The house to which the thing belongs—about which enquiry is made—is the significator of that person and thing, and every other house and its lord are to be considered according to their respective significations, so as to indicate the means and persons by which the event, about which the enquiries are made, will be accelerated or retarded.
The dates of events are regulated by the signs and angles. For example, should the significator of the event be in a movable sign and an angle the event will come to pass in the same number of days as there are degrees between the significator's aspect and the star to which it is directed if the aspect be by application; if by separation, the thing will not take place at all. In one of the succedent houses movable signs give months, common signs years and fixed signs bring about the event, after much delay, and when all hopes of it are past.
Significators in any of the cadent houses seldom do anything and, should they bring about an event at all, they do so after much waiting and with much trouble and vexation.
The matter of horary questions is very well treated in Lilly's Grammar of Astrology, published in 1647, and, by way of explaining the manner in which this branch of astrology is worked, we give a fac-simile of a map of a horary question to be found in this book, with (verbatim) Lilly's method of dealing with that particular question.