On Infuriating Astrological Timings

Wow, what a title; some background, perhaps.

On Monday morning I'll be making a call, half asking for payment on a past promise, and half asking for a favor. A good outcome will permanently solidify my career path and relieve months of anxiety on my part. A bad outcome leave a huge amount of uncertainty and hard work over the next 4 to 9 months, without the certainty of a silver lining. Magic is in order, naturally. To the charts!

Lets see, Levanah (the Moon) will be peaking it's fullness (an excellent time for bringing things to completion) on this Friday night, the day of Nogah (Venus, ruling over the magic of Favors). But furthermore, it's coming into exact fullness within minutes of the exact center of the planetary hour of Nogah, giving me an absolutely wonderful half-hour window in which to preform a ritual to garner the favors of the person of power that I'll be calling.

Great! Lets go prep the ritual gear. Except wait, what's that you say? Levanah's void-of-course runs right over the entirety of my "perfect window"? Everything I start during that period will fail spectacularly? Great. *Hastily stuffs the gear away* And Levanah's next Void may or may not run right over the time I'd scheduled for this call? *Sigh* Perhaps I should push it to around 2 p.m. on Monday, just in case. I can still appear professional without ringing someone at 10 in the morning, right? (The person I'm calling is not expecting the call, so I have a bit of leeway here).

But wait! There's always more. I'd forgotten that Nogah went retrograde on the 8th of this month. Sonofabitch. Is this such a bad thing? I'm not astrologically savvy enough to tell. It seems to be stirring up trouble in Akrab (Scorpio), causing fits of vindictive jealousy, but also a sense of intense loyalty. Since my original plan was to clearly but subtly show my loyalty to the organization in question in hopes of inspiring the same from them, and since the person I'm calling has no real reason to feel jealousy towards me, perhaps this is actually a good time to be making this particular call. But when to do the magic?

I do work late on Saturday (Shabbathai's day), but with the aid of a few beverages of choice and some patience, I do have a good Void-free shot at each planet's hour (two shots for most) in which to do some bindings. Perhaps as follows:

• A binding of the career path that this institution can offer me to myself during the hour of Shabbathai (Saturn); perhaps also some reversal magic for the bad luck that got me into this situation to begin with.
• A binding of the two main individuals of power involved (one of whom is the one I'll be calling) to show mercy unto me during the hour of Tzedek (Jupiter).
• A binding of these same individuals' senses of enthusiasm and protection to the proposition I'll be making during the hour of Madim (Mars).
• A binding to make my success and happiness a matter of pride to them during the hour of Shemesh (the Sun).
• A binding for the fulfillment of the individual promises made to me by these two individuals made some months back during the hour of Nogah (Venus); perhaps also a binding of their emotions to make them emotionally sympathetic to my situation.
• A binding upon their intellect, so that fulfilling their promises seems the only logical choice, during the hour of Kokab (Mercury).
• And last but certainly not least, a binding upon them to enact the changes in situation that must be made during the hour of Levanah (the Moon).

Depending on how late I'm up doing this, I might collapse into a chair in the back yard to watch the sun rise and start my Sunday off right with a round of invocations and meditations. Or maybe just the collapsing bit.

If I weren't in a financially tough situation at the moment, I'd pay for some good Electionary Astrology in a heartbeat, to see when the best time to make this call would be. But as it is, given the short time span, slinging bindings left and right and trying my hardest not to swim upstream will have to do.

On a side note, I'm debating waiting to publish this article until after I make the call mentioned above, what with silence being so important to some people's magic. But fuck it, I've spent the past few hours being careful, and this way I can get a good slap on the head if someone notices a mistake in my stargazing (or rather, webpage-about-stargazing-gazing).

On Practicing During Illness

So, despite my early flu shot and my daily mountain of herbal immune boosters, I still managed to come down with the flu (or something equally nasty) last week. Hurray for working in the health industry.

Generally I handle discomfort pretty well. Bike gear through my leg? Meh. Giant gash that I have to stitch myself? Bring it on. Fever of 102? Cue me curled up and waiting to die. Thank god a few Motrin will put me back at 100% for a few hours.

But I surprised myself a bit during those NSAID-induced moments of wellness. I was totally up for adventure; parties, sex, going out to new places, you name it (as long as I carried my precious fever-reducers with me). But as soon as the thought of magic popped into my head? "Fuck that, can't you see I'm sick?"

Meditation? Oh no, I'd cough too much. Offerings? I should be conserving energy. Energy work? I'd burn myself out. Prayers? I can't concentrate.

Clearly, these are all terrible excuses, but for a good 5 or 6 days this is where my mind was firmly planted. It did serve to pique my interest, though, so as a general point of interest I'm asking the masses, what practices do you keep or give up when nature gives you a sucker punch? Inquiring minds want to know!