Chapter 2 - Getting Your Precise Horoscope: The Old Way versus the Easy Way

In This Chapter

• Assembling your birth information
• Creating your chart with piles of paper, tables, and dusty old books
• Surfing the Internet to get your chart
• Probing your psyche and glimpsing the future with astrological software

What could be more fabulously arcane than an astrological chart? Well, lots of things: Alchemical sigils, kabalistic diagrams, magic spells - you name it. But this blog isn't about them. It's about astrology, which only seems strange. That's because an astrological chart, with all its mysteriouslooking symbols, has nothing mystical about it. It's a representation of the real world, and it isn't peculiar at all. An astrological chart is a picture, in streamlined form, of the solar system at the time of your birth. It's that simple.

To visualize the cosmos as it was then, imagine standing on the Earth at the precise moment of your birth. Imagine, too, that you're facing south and looking at a gigantic clock face that has been superimposed on the sky. To your left, in the nine o'clock position, is the eastern horizon. That's your Ascendant. If you were born around dawn, that's also where your Sun is. The twelve o'clock position is high in the sky in front of you. That's where your Sun is if you were a lunchtime delivery. To your right, in the three o'clock position, is the western horizon. If you were born around dusk, your Sun is there. And if you snuck into this world around midnight, when the Sun was illuminating the other side of the planet, your Sun is in the six o'clock spot.

If you know the phase of the Moon at your birth, you can locate it in a similar way. Were you born under a new moon? Then your Moon and Sun are in roughly the same place. Born under a full moon? Then the Sun and Moon are opposite each other - 180° apart. If one is rising, the other is setting.

The point is this: The horoscope is neither a metaphysical construct nor a mystical symbol nor a psychological portrait. It's a map. Your horoscope shows the position of the Sun, Moon, and planets at the moment of your birth. The astrologer's task is to look at that map and figure out its meaning. But first you have to get your hands on the map. In this chapter, I tell you how to do just that.