Rhys Calloway, electional astrology and knowing when

How I read a chart

I work with timing. The branch is called electional astrology, and it is the least mystical corner of the subject: you are not asking what a day means, you are asking when inside it something is possible.

The Moon does most of the work. It moves faster than anything else, roughly its own width every hour, so it is the hand on the clock. When it makes a contact with another planet, that contact has an exact moment, and the hours around it have a different texture from the hours that follow. When it finishes its last contact in a sign and has not yet entered the next one, astrologers call it void of course, and the old advice is that things begun in that window tend not to develop. Make of that what you like. I have found it a good time to finish things and a poor time to start them.

The rest is aspects and their timing. Two planets approaching a contact behave differently from two that have already made it and are separating. Approaching is a build. Separating is an aftermath. Most of what I do is work out which of those you are standing in.

Why I write about pace

Because timing advice is only useful if it fits a real day. Most people do not choose their hours. If you drive a route, stock a warehouse overnight or work a twelve-hour shift, being told that late morning is your window is worthless. So I write about where the give is in a day, wherever yours happens to fall, and about being allowed to stop.

I am thirty-four and I live in Galway. I sailed professionally before this.