How it all works (if this sounds to technical for you, please ignore it and just enjoy the show)

First, if you purchase one of our astrological chart analysis reports, read the appendix that’s included with the report. It can be very helpful in understanding your chart and astrology in general.

Secondly, if you purchase our Horoscope software, it has a great Help section that will teach you everything you need to know about how to use the software and how to interpret astrological charts and (there’s more!), the Help menu has a link to a large set (22) of instructional video tutorials to teach you how to use the Horoscope software and interpret astrological charts.

How does astrology work?

OK, so getting to the nitty gritty, you must first understand that there are no real scientific studies that prove (or disprove) astrology although Elbert Benjamine (aka C. C. Zain - Brotherhood of Light lessons) made a stab at it as did Michel Gauquelin. While you might find this disappointing, astrology can be great fun and very useful. It has one of the best symbolic languages for classifying human character traits and human events.

In fact, scientists will be quick to tell you that astrology is just superstition. Now, in all fairness, they don’t really know anything about astrology and can point to no studies that prove their point. In 1975 they (our scientific friends) published a little booklet entitled "Objections to Astrology" edited by Bart J. Bok and Lawrence E. Jerome. The booklet was signed by 192 scientists. Famously, one of the great scientists and astronomers, Car Sagan, would not sign it. He said that there was no science in it. In fact, all they do is criticize one of the greatest astronomers and mathematician of all time, the Greek Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in 2nd century AD Alexandria. Ptolemy codified all of the astrological knowledge developed by the Chaldeans and the Greeks. The basic premise of "Objections to Astrology" was that at that time, people, including Ptolemy, believed that the Sun and planets revolved around the Earth thus astrology must be complete nonsense. What our scientific friends failed to understand is that Ptolemy's astrology was based on the "apparent positions" of the planets. Even today, the planetary positions used by astronomers and astrologers are apparent positions, in which case it does not make any difference what revolves around what. We do believe our scientific friends are well-meaning and just don’t want you to fall into a pit of misinformation, and we certainly agree with that. Caveat emptor.

[At this point, if this is TL;DR, at least read the last paragraph.]

The “standard” astrology we have today has evolved over 2500 years.

Stars and planets have no physical influence over animals including humans.

The planets of our solar system, along with the apparent motion of the Sun and Moon, move along a common path called the ecliptic. The beginning of the ecliptic, or 0° Aries, is the vernal equinox and the ecliptic is divided into twelve 30° sections which are the signs of the zodiac.

The constellations through which the planets also move, being trillions of miles away (the closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, 4.24 light-years away or 40 trillion kilometers), have no physical influence over us humans, but in fact are pictographs that the ancients used to describe stories about the signs of the zodiac and their influence on human affairs and character.

Thus, it is the position along the ecliptic that determines what astrological sign the Sun, Moon, or planet is in, not the star constellations.

When astrology was coming of age between 500 BC and 300 AD, the zodiacal constellations coincided with the astrological signs along the ecliptic. Due to a phenomenon called precession, the ecliptic has rotated backward through the constellations so that the vernal equinox, or 0° Aries, instead of pointing at the beginning of the constellation Aries, now points to the beginning of the constellation Aquarius, and so people refer to the current period as the Aquarian Age.

Since scientists will, no doubt correctly, tell you that the planets, Sun, and Moon have no physical influence over us, except of course some very small gravitational effect, (gravitation is the weakest force in the universe). Then, if there is any validity to astrology, the influence of the planets in the various astrological signs (divisions of the ecliptic) must therefore come through some non-physical means.

There is, of course, the school of thought referred to as synchronicity (also associated with post-industrial thought), that everything in the universe is somehow related and thus it might follow that the movements of the Sun, Moon, and planets correspond in some way to the manifestation of character and events here on earth. That does sound like they just could not come up with anything better. There are some other theories that you might find interesting, e.g. see the Brotherhood of Light Lessons by C. C. Zain (mentioned above.)

In any event, there are some very important considerations to keep in mind when studying astrology:

• If you’re not well versed in the art of “critical thinking” and well understand the phenomenon of “confirmation bias”, we suggest you also investigate these concepts.
• Astrology can be fun and even useful. It provides a symbolic language that is arguably one of the best systems for describing human behavior. Just don’t fall overboard.