Electing a launch date: what an election can and cannot buy
Choosing a moment for a product launch is a textbook electional problem, and it illustrates the two constraints that decide whether an election is worth doing at all.
First constraint: the election cannot outrun the venture
An election works within the limits of the enterprise it belongs to. A well-chosen moment improves the circumstances of a launch; it does not create the fortune of the company making it.
In practice this means the founding or announcement chart of the venture is consulted first. A first announcement made with a dignified lord of the Ascendant conjunct the Midheaven, and a benefic fixed star on the rising degree, describes something that had considerable momentum before any astrologer was involved. A later release, elected or not, plays against that background.
The corollary is uncomfortable and needs saying to clients: where the enterprise is weak, the best available moment produces a slightly better version of a poor outcome.
Second constraint: significators have to fit the matter
For a communication device, Mercury is the natural significator, and its state is the first thing to look at. But condition is a balance sheet, not a verdict.
Mercury retrograde and combust looks like a disqualifying pair of afflictions. It reads differently when Mercury is in its own sign, and differently again when the Sun doing the combusting is the lord of the Ascendant — because the tradition treats that as the querent's own matter being taken in hand, not as an external harm. Mercury in its own sign disposits the Sun, and a planet that disposits the one afflicting it is not simply a victim.
None of which makes the affliction disappear. The honest judgement is the mixed one: setbacks in the thing itself, considerable visibility for the event that presents it.
The malefics are not automatic vetoes
A Mars conjunct the Ascendant in an announcement chart is not a good omen in the abstract, but elections are not read in the abstract. Mars on the Ascendant gives an announcement a bold and aggressive character, which for a launch is close to what is wanted. If Mars also rules the ninth, and the announcement's substance is international availability, then the malefic is describing the matter accurately — and a planet that describes the matter is doing its job.
The discipline here is to decide in advance which testimonies would count against the election, rather than to reinterpret each one favourably as it arrives.
The problem no election solves: there is no single moment
A worldwide release has no chart, because it does not happen at one time. It happens across a day, sign by sign, as each time zone arrives.
This is not a technicality. Over twenty-four hours the Moon may change sign, an angular planet may leave a dignity, and a benefic fixed star on the eastern horizon in one part of the world is nowhere near it in another. The first purchases, in the eastern time zones, may occur under a Moon in a benefic sign conjunct a favourable star; by the time Europe and the Americas arrive, the Moon has moved on.
What an astrologer can honestly offer for such a launch is:
- a judgement of the first moment, in the easternmost zone, as the chart of the thing beginning;
- a warning about the configurations the later zones will meet;
- and, if the date is still open, a different date — because the single most useful thing an election can do is avoid a day that is plainly unsuitable.
A launch set on the exact day of a Mars–Saturn conjunction is the kind of thing an election exists to prevent, and no amount of favourable detail elsewhere compensates for it.
Elections are taught in Constructing the perfect chart, and there is a worked example among the consultation samples.