Void of Course

The fuller picture

The test is simple, and it isn't about orbs. Look at where the Moon is, count the degrees left before she crosses into the next sign, and ask whether she reaches an exact aspect to any of the other traditional planets in that span. If she doesn't, she's void of course. She may be sitting a few degrees from a trine that will never quite arrive, and she's still void: what matters is whether the aspect completes while she's still in this sign, not whether it's nearly close enough to feel.

Underneath the rule sits a much broader axiom, and it's the one to learn first: no aspect means no action. Two planets that never make contact never bring anything about between them. Void of course is that axiom applied to a single planet running out of room. When it's the Moon, whose job in a horary chart is to carry the story of how things unfold, the reading is that the surrounding conditions are inert — there can be a great deal of talk and worry and circling, and no event.

Two things it is not. It is not an absolute: Lilly writes that all manner of matters go hardly on when the Moon is void of course, "except the principall significators be very strong" — a stated exception, not a politeness, so the reading is that the matter goes heavily, not that the world stops. And it has no fixed polarity. Whether a matter going nowhere is a disappointment or a relief depends on what was hoped for. On "will the promotion come through?" a void Moon is bleak. On "am I about to be made redundant?" the same void Moon is the reassuring answer, because the thing feared is also a thing that doesn't happen. A reading that treats every void Moon as bad news has stopped reading the question.

It isn't a Moon-only condition either, which surprises people. Any planet standing for something in the chart can run out of aspects before it runs out of sign, and the reading carries over: the matter that planet signifies goes nowhere. In practice this often comes down to a single aspect a few arcminutes from exact — the difference between a significator that still has something to do and one that doesn't. Which bodies count as rescuers is genuinely disputed: the strict traditional test admits only the seven visible planets, while some modern practice will accept an aspect to one of the outer planets and says so openly rather than smuggling it in.

Two distinctions to keep straight. A void Moon isn't the same as a feral Moon: feral means she makes no aspect at all for the whole time she's in the sign, first degree to last, and it's worse. And a void Moon isn't a refusal to read the chart. The older name for conditions like this was "considerations before judgment", and somewhere in the twentieth century they hardened into "strictures against judgment" — a rule that the astrologer should hand the question back. That's not the position taken here. If a chart can be cast it can be read; a void Moon is a discouraging answer, not a refusal to give one. The tradition does allow one softening: a void Moon in Cancer, Taurus, Sagittarius or Pisces is held to be less severe, and of all the exception-sets attached to this rule it's the one with a real attested source behind it.