I think you mean the 1960s, cos that's when I started. Margaret Hone's
Modern Textbook of Astrology figured heavily into it as she gave wonderfully clear explanations of how to construct a chart, determine planetary positions, use logarithmic tables, and houses. Thank you, Mrs Hone!
Tools: ephemeris, books of longitude and latitude, books of time changes, tables of houses, logarithmic tables, paper, pen or pencil, and compass.
It'd take a couple of hours to do up a chart in those days, and a knowledge of maths and astronomy, so the barrier to entry, so to speak, was considerably higher than it is today.
What we didn't have were traditional texts. There was some research in that field going on, but the writings tended to be scholarly critical editions that ended up in university libraries, usually in Latin, at a cost of several hundred dollars per volume.
So I was stuck with modern astrology. Some of which made sense, and some of which seemed like 'okay, this is right, this is right, this bit looks like it's papered over, but it doesn't fit and I don't know what does'. And Jung. I can't say what I think of his work here without getting banned, but I'm not a fan. 'Synthesising' a chart was a big deal, and I'm not sure anyone ever managed to do it, because I don't think it's possible, and I'm not sure it even means anything. People's lives tend to be a whole lot messier than that, and astrology is NOT primarily a psychological pursuit.
Horary and mundane were virtually unheard of, as were elections, so it was birth charts, solar and lunar returns, and progressions, and the progressions never worked. And way too much emphasis on the outer planets (that hasn't changed).
I persevered for reasons that would offend the non- religious and that I don't care to share here, but I knew there was something more to it, though by the 1980s I was pretty disillusioned. Luckily, the trad renewal was starting to happen. Luckily, I lived quite near to Robert Zoller.
Stuff finally started making sense.
Software is great. While I don't use Solar Fire anymore, that was the first comprehensive astrology programme to hit the market. My registration number was - 93.
Oddity,
May care to share your experience as an astrologer in the 80s before software era. How can you generated birth chart back then? Must be using ephimeris, no?
Thanks
R