A client contacted me wondering if she should submit to a certain prestigious contest. She is a mid-career artist still working to establish herself in her field. A lovely woman , well described by Venus in her first house and Saturn in chariot in the first house. She’s smart and capable and she knows how critical timing can be when putting yourself and the product of your creative expression “out there” for judgment, particularly when there is a generous prize at stake.
After casting the horary chart and analyzing it, I encouraged her to submit her work for the following testimonies.
Lord of the Ascendant, Saturn, is strong and picking up a powerful dexter applying sextile from the Sun/Mercury conjunction from the 11th house, the house of good tidings and network. Mercury is Cazimi, in the throne of the king. Spiritual cleansing and reborn in expansive Sagittarius.
The Lord of the fifth house of creative expression is Venus, emplaced in her first house. Now is an opportune time to share her artistic output actively, to advocate for herself through applying.
The moon is in the eighth house of other people’s money in Virgo separating from an earthy trine with Venus and applying to a trine with Pluto. The moon is translating the light from Venus to Pluto, an action that supports the applying conjunction of Venus to Pluto.
The MC, or the outcome of the situation, has Scorpio on the cusp of the 10th, a fixed and fertile sign, and Lord of the 10th , Mars in Scorpio, in partile sextile to Venus.
The cusp of the tenth house forms a sextile with the ASC degree.
All in all, the testimonies trended toward the positive, so I advised my client to go for it!
What happened?
The artist submitted her work to the jury and within a month found out that she had been accepted to show her work in the group exhibit, which was great news, though she was not awarded the prize money. She felt empowered by the acceptance to the juried show and said that she didn’t really expect to win first place, as she was still in “mechanic mode.”