minefield of astrology software etc

[knickers]

say you want to learn all,about astrology how to create and understand your own charts, where do you start?

I've looked into software etc but its just seems oh so confusing and as some of you guys are already doing it I thought this might be a good sticky subject for those beginners out there.

I do tarot and would like to extend my repertoire

[KEishin]

There are two kind sof software. Free and Non.

Free:
1. Astrolog32. The absolute best out there for free. uk.geocities.com/astrolog32 (http://uk.geocities.com/astrolog32/). I use it right now to do all my charts
2. Astrodienst. You can do nearly any chart type you can think of here, plus they have ephemerides and other goodies. www.astro.com (http://www.astro.com)

Non-gratis
1. SolarFire - lots of features and fully customizable
2.Kepler - close second fiddle to SolarFire. Some versions come with astrology lessons
3.Win*Star - designed for beginners to astrology

[knickers]

how do you interprete what your chart says though, like with tarot we have pictures and meanings to help us interprete what we are looking at, how do you do that with a chart?

I downloaded astrolog and when i double click on it , its says it cant find the configuration file do you want to configure now and i'm like "ayeeeeeeee" I dowloaded something swedish and went back to find out if i had put it in the right place but the site keeps going over its badnwidth which is driving me bananas.

so how about thems that have been using this program doing a short get to know atrolog instruction. The manual is very hard to follow when you havent a clue what your doing lol.

[Fluffmeister]

how do you interprete what your chart says though, like with tarot we have pictures and meanings to help us interprete what we are looking at, how do you do that with a chart?

I downloaded astrolog and when i double click on it , its says it cant find the configuration file do you want to configure now and i'm like "ayeeeeeeee" I dowloaded something swedish and went back to find out if i had put it in the right place but the site keeps going over its badnwidth which is driving me bananas.

so how about thems that have been using this program doing a short get to know atrolog instruction. The manual is very hard to follow when you havent a clue what your doing lol.Yes, it can be a pain! There *is* an instruction manual for Astrolog, but unfortunately it's only in French - it's very good though, if you can read French: http://philipeau.free.fr/astro/mode_emploi_astrolog32.pdf

Now - don't worry about the configuration file. Astrolog32 will still work without it - but it would be neat if every time you launch Astrolog it gives you a chart for "here and now". Thing is, it doesn't know where "here" is. It knows when "now" is from your computer's clock - but doesn't know what time zone you're in, or whether daylight savings time is in operation.

So say "yes" when Astrolog asks you that, and enter your location, latitude and longitude. For instance, my location is Bristol, my latitude is 51N27 and longitude is 2W36. The time zone for the UK must *always* be entered as "GMT" (when we're on BST, next week, it counts as GMT with Daylight Saving).

Then when you've done this, just click on File then Save Current Settings. It comes up with a file selection box, and wants to call your config file astrolog32.dat - that's fine. Just say Yes. If it says the file already exists and do you want to overwrite it, say yes.

Now, to do a birth chart - click on Edit then Enter/Edit Main Chart Data. Here's a screen filled in for someone born in Cheltenham on 18 August 1972 at 13:26 British Summer Time. Points to note:

1. I've put in the time zone as "GMT" even though it's BST. BST means "Brazilian Standard Time" (I think) - so don't put that! We tell Astrolog it's summer time by setting "Daylight Saving" to "Yes". So for the UK, *always* put in GMT as the time zone - and set "Daylight saving" to "No" for GMT, "Yes" for BST. The time zone defaults (I think) to 0:00, which is the same as GMT. If you put in something like "EST" (US Eastern Standard Time), when you look at the screen again it's changed "EST" to "5:00". This just means 5 hours behind GMT. There's no agreement about whether + and - means behind or in front of GMT. Astrolog uses -1:00 to mean 1 hour ahead of GMT (in other words, GMT is -1 from this time zone). Other software uses other conventions. That's why I prefer to spell out the time zone - GMT, EST and so on.

2. I've entered the latitude as 51N54 because it's easier to type than 51:54:00N. However, if you go back in to edit the data, Astrolog will display this as 51:54:00N. It doesn't matter which format you use.

3. Astrolog doesn't really have an atlas facility (they're putting one into it right now, but it's not quite there yet). I had to look up the latitude and longitude for Cheltenham somewhere else - www.astro.com (http://www.astro.com/) is a good bet if you don't have an atlas to hand.

4. Name and location are "free text" fields. I put in "Cheltenham" for the town, but I could have put in "Cheltenham, Glos" or "Chelt, UK" or anything else. It's purely for my benefit, and doesn't change the calculation.

When I click on OK, it will draw me the chart.

It won't really give you any decent interpretations. Like tarot, astrology is a language of symbols. Everyone knows their Sun sign, but every planet is in a particular sign. The planets are the players in your chart, the signs their behaviours, and the houses the areas where these behaviours play out. Some planets are all bunched together, so their energy merges. Some make interesting angles to each other (Mars may be at right-angles to Neptune, for instance), and these "aspects" tell us how the various energies of the planets interact.

Kadynas runs a free online astrology class here at Mystic Wicks in the Circle of Teaching - that's a good place to start if you want to learn to interpret charts.

[knickers]

WOW thats great thanks for all the info hun