Monday, October 25, 2010

Learning Astrology 02 - You Have Your Chart, Now What?

This post assumes you have your astrology chart from Astrodienst printed and available to you as you continue reading.  If not, go back to the first post and get your account set up, chart info entered, and your chart printed out.  I'll be happy to wait for you. 

So you have your chart in hand; what are you looking at?  You are looking at a story, told through symbols and data. Let's look at the middle of the circle and work our way outward.  The X in the middle of the circle represents you at the location and time of your birth on Earth.  Image a three dimensional projection/hologram of our solar system where the earth is about the size of a beach ball and you are standing in the middle of the hologram.  All the planets are moving and you have a hand held device that will allow you to enter your birth data (time, location, date).  Once entered the hologram moves all the planets into position using that data.  A little red dot appears and blinks on Earth where you were born.  If you were to draw lines from your point of birth to each planet, the Moon, and the Sun and extend that line through the planets to the constellations behind the planets, you would have the angle of degree each planet, the Sun, and the Moon in relation to a zodiac constellation.  So, if you were born between March 22 and April 22, the line would pass through the Sun and hit a degree of the Zodiac sign Aries.  In my case, being born April 12, my Sun is at 23d of Aries.

In our imaginary holographic planetarium, you want to leave with a print out of your solar system birth moment, so you hit the print button on the hand held device and everything that is 3 dimensional gets compressed down into 2 dimensions and printed out in the form you see the chart you got from Astrodienst.  The blinking red light is replaced by the X and Earth is replaced by the hub circle in the middle with 12 spokes coming out.  The 12 spokes make up 12 pie pieces, which are numbered 1 to 12 starting from left, going down, and around counterclockwise.  In the Whole Sign system, the each house is occupied by one sign (as well as the Equal house system);  in other house systems houses and signs are irregular and signs will overlap from one house to the next.  If you are interested in a detailed explanation of house systems, feel free to visit the wiki page.  For purposes of getting started, I've chosen the Whole Sign system as described by Demetra George in her book Astrology and the Authentic Self: Integrating Traditional and Modern Astrology to Uncover the Essence of the Birth Chart, which you should immediately purchase!  There will be several other books to buy.  The study of is astrology is nothing if not a source of many book purchases.

In each, but not necessarily all of the pie pieces, you will see symbols representing the Sun, the Moon, planets, asteroids, and calculated points.  Collectively I refer to these symbols as Energy Points.  I do not sloppily refer to everything as planets because they are the most abundant of the astronomical  bodies symbolized.  The Sun is a star and the Moon a satellite.  Ceres has been upgraded to dwarf planet  (from an asteroid) and Pluto downgraded to 134340 (an asteroid number, from a full planet).  Other points in the chart are calculated and do not represent a body in space, such as the Part of Fortune or the Ascendant (when the Sun crossed the horizon at birth).  In an astrology chart, in the narrative of the symbolized story, each point exerts energy on the chart and the individual; they interact energetically through angular relationships known as Aspects.  The Aspects are shown by red and blue lines, which as a whole, make up your personal  Cosmic Circuit Board.  The moment of your birth is frozen as a snapshot of the location of all the energy points in your chart, and you will see I use quite a few more than the traditional base 12 that make up classical chart interpretations after the discovery of Pluto (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Ascendant, and the Midheaven).  It is especially the addition of Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta that bring into balance the old masculine dominated system (where only the Moon and Venus represented the feminine).

If you track your eyes away from the chart circle down to the left bottom of the chart page, you will see a legend that identifies all the symbols with the Energy Point they represent.  The legend also includes symbols for each Aspect relationship between Energy Points; the most obvious to point out quickly are the blue triangles for Trines, which are Energy Points approximately 115 to 125 degrees apart, and the red squares for, yes, Squares, which are Energy Points approximately 85 to 95 degrees apart.  These energetic relationships have a host of knowledge and interpretation, which will unfold in discussion further into the blog entries.  If you want to explore aspecting now in greater detail, visit the wiki page.  You now have 3 of the 5 elements of astrological interpretation: Energy Points, Houses, and Aspects.

The 4th element which you see on the outer rim of each pie piece includes the symbols for the Signs.  Astrodienst nicely color codes the Signs to match with their elemental signature.  Aries, the first Sign of the Zodiac is red (for Fire) and looks like a fancy V, which symbolizes the horns of the Ram.  Next to Aries going counterclockwise is a green symbol that represents Taurus (an Earth sign) with a circle and two tips on the top to represent the horns of a bull.  The signs move around the circle in a procession of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water.  In a default chart, not cast for a person, Aries rules the First House, Taurus rules the Second, Gemini rules the third and so on.  Rulership simply means that the Sign and the House go together energetically; Aries is a Fire Sign and the First House is a Fire House.  Most charts do not have Aries filling the First House.  In the case of my chart, Scorpio fills the First House.  In your chart, which Sign fills the First House?

So now you have 4 of the 5 elements that make up the Astrology Chart, so what is the Fifth Element (besides a pretty fun movie with Bruce Willis)?  The Fifth Element is Free Will or Spirit or Soul or Consciousness.  It is the part of the Astrology reading that is made of the person or people "looking at" the chart through a pair of eyes and interpreting with a Mind.  It is also the most important and powerful element.  Astrology is not deterministic in a Grand Sense, which is to say, no free will exists and all we are left to do as human beings is react to Fate.  However, Astrology does provide us with boundaries and some things that are determined, in the same way that being born male or female gives us certain determinations or being born in American or Japan, being tall or short, and so on.  Even with these "determined" aspects to our lives we still make choices and some are guided as easier or harder depending on these determinations.  If you will allow me a bit of play, you will have to be very "determined" if you are female and want to play football in the NFL in the US. 

With certain energies in certain places in your Astrology Chart, you will have inclinations, limits, boundaries, encouragement, and so on with regard to spiritual and behavioral matters.  Some of us resonate strongly with "relationship energy" and others resonate with "career" energy; all of us have some blend or another.  We can embrace our energy or "rail" against it; that's the choice of consciousness.  The Astrology Chart is your Cosmic Circuit Board that shows how energy flows in your body and life.  Once you can read your chart you can determine better your choices and understand better how the world interacts with you, including people, places, and individual situations.

Recap

So, to recap, the chart you are looking at is made up of the 5 following components:

  1. Signs (12 in all)
  2. Houses (12 in all)
  3. Energy Points (We will be using 20 primary points and a few extra secondary points)
  4. Aspects (Angular relationships between energy points - basically, the conjunction, sextile, square, trine, inconjunct and opposition)
  5. Free Will

To learn Astrology you will need to put all of these components into deep memory so you can recall meanings without having to look them up each time, which will we will begin working on in the next blog entry.

1 comment:

  1. wow, what a solution and teaching. nice tutorial.
    I am also learning astrology from this site.

    Indian Astrology

    ReplyDelete