learning astrology

research is an important and critical part of it!

my motive here is to offer a few ideas that might be of some practical value to those who are just starting out learning astrology or have been dabbling with it for a few years and want to learn more and go further..


i was reminded of my own situation when i first started out, by reading a thread earlier today.. my mom told me the time i was born.. a few years later i paid 25$ to the hospital i was born at for the record and there was around 1/2 hour difference... spend the money for the record.. it might not be accurate, but there's a good chance it will be more accurate then what your parents remember(ed).. your own chart is the first place to begin to understand astrology and how it works better.. a more accurate birth time will be helpful in this regard.. while rectification is a great study in itself, most astrologers note it isn't an easy study in itself and i would recommend staying away from doing it until you have a good grounding in astrology.


if you can't afford astro software that is being used by professionals today, find some free software and learn how to use it.. just the other day mark made a post here at ac for linux users and free astro software.. i got this free astro software - morinus - just the other day and it works quite well, especially for traditional astrology features that some here are interested in.. find a friend to help you get it going, if you don't feel you have the computer skills to make it happen.. i think it's essential to have astro software to learn more about astrology today. i wouldn't discourage someone from learning how to do charts by hand, and i think this would be a good exercise too, but very few seem motivated in this direction.

http://sites.google.com/site/pymorinus/#TOC-Programming

if you're planning on taking your interest in astrology to a higher level, consider enrolling in an online course, or going to a school for astrology if you can.

it is very helpful to have an astro diary that would include important events in yours, or those close to you, who you hopefully have accurate charts for..consider paying for there birth records too if they are family members for example.. if i was to point to one thing i wish i had have done when first starting out in astrology it would be this.. keeping dates of important moves, or relationships, businesses, or work and education start or end times.. dynamics with parents, brothers and sisters and etc. etc.. health issues.. all of these issues have important events often associated with them that have specific times to go with the event.. this will be extremely helpful when you try out the different predictive techniques and more generally any techniques for understanding your own, or those close to you - charts.. your approach to astrology may change, but these events dates won't change and it is a beautiful and direct way for you to learn more about these predictive tools by going back and seeing whether they have relevancy or not..


read as much as you can, although be aware that there are many different approaches to astrology and they won't all appeal to you.. find an area you are interested in and go for it.. i think it is more challenging to learn working with the sidereal zodiac then the tropical, but if you are determined, it doesn't really matter.. you will find the learning materials you need to go to the next step..

ask questions.. try different methods that challenge some of the assumptions you may have already built up too, depending on how long you have been at it.. find a friend who is keenly into astrology as well and bounce ideas back and forth with them when you can.. it is fun and often you will listen to a friend better then a stranger. i suppose that is why this board is such a valuable learning experience for all of us too, no matter what level one finds themselves at..

there is a wealth of information to assist in learning astrology on the net...it wasn't the case when i first started to learn.. folks today have some real advantages.. determination and discipline will help build confidence in your abilities.. have fun!

sandstone, this is a wonderful post. I looked at the morinus software but am hesitant to download it. Did you need any additional apps to be able to run it? The system requirements were pretty vague.

sandstone said:

research is an important and critical part of it!
my motive here is to offer a few ideas that might be of some practical value to those who are just starting out learning astrology or have been dabbling with it for a few years and want to learn more and go further..

i was reminded of my own situation when i first started out, by reading a thread earlier today.. my mom told me the time i was born.. a few years later i paid 25$ to the hospital i was born at for the record and there was around 1/2 hour difference... spend the money for the record.. it might not be accurate, but there's a good chance it will be more accurate then what your parents remember(ed).. your own chart is the first place to begin to understand astrology and how it works better.. a more accurate birth time will be helpful in this regard.. while rectification is a great study in itself, most astrologers note it isn't an easy study in itself and i would recommend staying away from doing it until you have a good grounding in astrology........... have fun!

Click to expand...

I find your post very interesting sandstone and would like to ask you a question regarding the 1/2 hour difference: was the time the hospital noted a half hour before or a half hour after the time your mom told you she remembered?

My reason for asking is that hospitals are notorious for 'rounding' times to the nearest hour, half hour or quarter of an hour. Not only that, but by the time a time of birth was written some considerable time had elapsed since the physical birth.

The newborn is in need of washing, dressing, weighing and so on and so forth, so the birth time written in hospital records is very likely a recollection of an approximate time and not necessarily all that accurate! Perhaps your Mom's recollection was not so hazy after all!

Nevertheless I would agree that written hospital records are an excellent validation and a beginning to use to calculate an initial ascendant which one can then "fine tune" using profections, transits and so on and so forth.

Morinus is a great program - I have that as well as Zet and a few others

Your advice is good, well balanced advice with which I think most would agree, and many thanks for it

hi tamara and jupiter asc

thanks!
tamara - my friend who is into computers and open source and very knowledge helped me.. i was able to do it with his help via the phone as he doesn't live here in the same town.. the software has some very nice features and it nice to look at.. the only thing i wish it was able to do is to convert all the data onto a 90 or 45 degree dial, but other then that, i like it.. being able to see the primary direction data is very valuable as i want to be able to examine this more often and find the solarfire prog i have makes it a bit more awkward.. perhaps this is due the fact that everything else is so easy and i am able to superimpose predictive charts over natal charts - 2 charts, or more - while throwing it into a 90 degree dial too! this probably sounds more complicated then it is, but regardless the morinus program is really quite nice.. find a friend to help you if you can't do it yourself.. cheers!

jupiter asc - my mom's time was a 1/2 later then the actual birth cert time and it was not rounded off to the hour.. i think different countries and possibly even regions of countries are more or less vague sometimes with keeping accurate records for birth times.. i think it depends on the region one is from.. i don't think all hospitals are the same with their record keeping.. i think it is worth the 25 or however many $ to find out regardless of where you live.. i agree with everything you say in your post as well.. thanks for your kind words jupiter asc!

happy new year to you both!

i neglected to mention a very important consideration for learning astrology in my first post, so i am going to mention it here, and edit my orginal post to include this idea..

it is very helpful to have an astro diary that would include important events in yours, or those close to you, who you hopefully have accurate charts for..consider paying for there birth records too if they are family members for example.. if i was to point to one thing i wish i had have done when first starting out in astrology it would be this.. keeping dates of important moves, or relationships, businesses, or work and education start or end times.. dynamics with parents, brothers and sisters and etc. etc.. health issues.. all of these issues have important events often associated with them that have specific times to go with the event.. this will be extremely helpful when you try out the different predictive techniques and more generally any techniques for understanding your own, or those close to you - charts.. your approach to astrology may change, but these events dates won't change and it is a beautiful and direct way for you to learn more about these predictive tools by going back and seeing whether they have relevancy or not..

sandstone: I agree that this is a good practice for many, but I must also say that concern for so many personal charts and/or an astro-diary should be put off for some years. Novices will want to collect all that information quickly because that's the easy part. They'll collect it and then try to read it over and over for practice. I say it should be put off for some years because no novice has the ability to properly interpret the relationships. Trying to do so too quickly will direct the novice to lots of bad conclusions, causing much confusion and some losses. Many mistakes about the nature of astrology have been made simply because a novice jumped too quickly into the first meaning they find in their charts. For a novice, the first conclusion is rarely correct.

Recording dates and times of important events is a good idea. It just takes an experienced mind to derive meaning from the data. So, while it's a good idea to record these events, they shouldn't be analysed until the astrologer has been "broken in" a bit.

thanks for your feedback mark.. i agree with your conclusions.. perhaps the best approach is not taking a hard and fast position on anything one learns in astrology, as it might be subject to being viewed differently at a later date.. we all think we see things in a chart, but that might not be the case.. i was just reading on the idea of interception, and then i thought about whole sign houses which does away with the idea.. what can properly explain this other then that those who use the idea of interception and consider it important - lilly, and etc, might not be persuaded by whole sign houses...

Astrology is a one type of relation between human and stars, sun, planets and moon. Astrology is a process of knowing the future of someone by watching the position of start, sun, planet and moon at the time of someone's birth.