You know the signs of your Big Three—Sun, Moon and Ascendant. You might even check in on an app for your daily or monthly horoscope outlook for big-picture questions about love and career. But, if you really want to hone in on a practical use for astrology, focus on your job and your finances.
Financial astrology applies familiar astrological techniques and principles to questions that involve money and finances. For example, financial astrology can help with understanding the natal promise in the horoscope chart for both wealth and career—even when you might expect to have peak earnings or make a job change. When to buy or sell real estate is another good use for financial astrology.
Financial astrology also is helpful on the job, where it’s timing capabilities can steer you toward successful meetings, product launches and email sends. If you’re in marketing, your company’s incorporation chart provides a valuable branding resource for identity and keywords, as well as fodder for the annual SWOT analysis.
Mercury is Key
The planet Mercury plays a key role in timing everything you might want to do at your company because it rules communications and commerce. Communications covers business development and marketing, while commerce covers sales and contracts. So, pretty much everything.
Focusing on Mercury gets tricky, though, because it retrogrades about three times a year for about three weeks at a time—equal to nine weeks, or more than two months. That means Mercury is not working up to snuff about 17 percent of each year.
Whatever you do for your company, you probably aren’t getting nine weeks of vacation annually like Mercury does. So, you’ll have to learn to work with Mercury to accomplish your goals the best you can. And, although I like to stick with “never say never,” I am adamant about never launching a new website while Mercury is retrograde. There is just too much opportunity for mistakes in getting the right content onto the right servers and having it all work out just right.
When Mercury is Retrograde
The upside of a Mercury retrograde—like it is from April 1-25, 2024—is that it rewards reviewing previous ideas and initiatives. Use the retrograde to evaluate results and consider what changes to make once Mercury is moving forward again.
Reaching out to potential new clients never stops, no matter which direction Mercury is moving. But, there are great ways to use the review strength of the retrograde to keep your marketing plans moving forward.
- Target former clients
- Target previous responders who have yet to convert into clients
- Revive a previous campaign or offer
- Do a “renew” campaign for current clients
Mercury is retrograde twice more in 2024, so mark your calendars now for August 5-28 and November 25-December 15.
Easing in to Financial Astrology and Investing
One of the most popular (and potentially lucrative) applications of financial astrology is trying to forecast future price movement in the stock or commodity markets. This includes stock indexes like the Standard & Poor’s 500, individual stocks and my specialty, the commodity markets, such as gold, crude oil and soybeans.
Start by picking a stock or market you like. (Odds are that your two horoscope charts are connected in significant ways.) Then, just watch how prices behave when the Sun and other planets enter new zodiac signs; add the Moon if you like to be really granular.
In particular, watch the year’s equinox and solstice points (when the Sun enters Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn), which can portend a shift in the market’s prevailing trend. Also note what prices do in your market when planets station retrograde or direct. Finally, you might find interesting shifts at new moons, full moons and eclipses.
To really go for it, find when your favorite market opened for trading on the exchange where it is listed so you have its first-trade (aka natal) horoscope chart. The investor relations area of the company’s website probably has the date when the stock launched, but I always doublecheck with an online search about the company and the price chart itself, available at financial information websites or data providers. You’re looking for when prices first began moving, which is not the same as the initial public offering (IPO), when stock is extended to big firms at a certain price.
With the first-trade chart, watch in particular how planets in the sky affect prices as they connect by transit with the stock’s Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars (typically the most sensitive). Also go backward in time with a price chart and your ephemeris to see how prices responded to certain planetary connections. One of the more prominent ones is likely when the transiting Sun (every year) or Jupiter (every 12 years) conjoin the market’s first-trade Sun, often in a burst of optimism and higher prices.
To use astrology with a financial bent in either business or investing, just remember that companies have birth charts just like people do. So, their horoscope charts can provide clues to how best the use the available planetary energy from the transiting planets to your advantage.