I've always been interested in astrology, and strangely enough it's an area where even some of my sceptical friends admit to a furtive interest. It's a vast area, and the brief introduction I've given here is just to give a flavour of astrology. If you are interested in learning more, there are lots of good books to get you started - click on the bibliography button above, or click on the WWW links button for some useful web links too. If you are interested in astrology, I would definitely recommend joining a local group; although I'd read lots of books on astrology, it wasn’t until I started studying it formally (at the Bristol School of Astrology, where I am now a teacher) that my understanding really took off - in fact, in just the first year of the course I learned far more than in twenty years of reading books.

If you would like your birth chart done, I provide a chart, interpretation and two-year forecast by e-mail or post for a cost of twenty-five UK pounds, and can accept credit card payments. See my astrology web site for details - and for more astrology articles and information about learning astrology.

As the sun appears to move through the sky, it traces a path - rising in the east (roughly), round to the south (if you live in the northern hemisphere), setting in the west (roughly). This path of the sun through the sky is called the "ecliptic". At night, when you look at the stars, there are of course constellations all around - most people in the northern hemisphere will recognise The Plough (or Big Dipper in the US), and probably Orion. In the southern hemisphere, most people will recognise the Southern Cross, and also Orion.

This diagram (which shows just a small segment of the night sky) shows some familiar constellations: Orion, towards the bottom of the picture with the famous "Orion's Belt" of three stars; the Plough (labelled "Ursa Major" towards the top left, and the sickle of Leo towards the left of the diagram. There is a dashed line labelled "Ecliptic", and you'll notice that Leo lies roughly on this line. So do Cancer, Gemini, Taurus and Aries. In fact, all twelve of the "zodiac" constellations lie on or around the ecliptic - and these are the constellations that play the most important part in astrology.

The ancients divided the ecliptic into 12 segments, and identified a key constellation within each segment - for instance, near Orion is a reddish star called Aldebaran, and a few other stars around it. If you imagine that Aldebaran is an "eye", two of the stars above it look like they could be horns, so it's possible to "join the dots" and make out a pattern of a bull - that's the constellation Taurus. Every 30 degree segment of sky has a particular zodiac pattern in it (astrologers work in strict 30 degree segments - some constellations actually sprawl more than this, and others less than this; some even overlap a bit).

When someone says that they have "Moon in Taurus", this should mean that at the moment when they were born, if you looked out of the window and saw the moon, you'd see that it was roughly in the area of the constellation of Taurus. If someone says that they have "Sun in Taurus", it should mean that if you could somehow blot out the brightness of the sun (like during a total eclipse), you would see that the Sun is roughly in that constellation. This is done for all the planets (Mars, Jupiter and so on). All the planets do lie roughly on the ecliptic - so you never see Mars or the Moon very much higher than the zodiac constellations, nor very much lower.

This idea is then extended, to say "at the moment you were born, what sign of the zodiac was coming up over the eastern horizon?" The answer to that question is your "rising sign" or "Ascendant". It's also why birth TIMES are important in astrology. If you only know your date of birth, you can look at the position of the planets, Sun and Moon at midday, and most of them (maybe not the Moon, as it moves fast) will be correct. However, you can only calculate your Ascendant if you know your time of birth, since during a 24-hour day each sign of the zodiac will "rise" once.

That's the theory. However, there's a slight problem. If you looked out of your window on a clear night in early October 2000, you would have seen a bright "star" near Aldebaran, in the constellation of Taurus; that's actually Jupiter (a planet, not a star). So, if someone was born on, say, 6 October 2000, they must have Jupiter in Taurus, right? Nice theory, but in fact an astrologer would look up that date in an "ephemeris" (a book of positions), or use a computer program, which would tell them that anyone born on that date has Jupiter at 11 degrees of Gemini (in other words, nearly half-way through Gemini). This is because the Earth "wobbles" on its axis once roughly every 26,000 years, so the positions of the constellations shift gradually over the millennia (this behaviour is known as "precession"). If the Earth hadn't wobbled, Jupiter would not only look as though it's in Taurus, but the astrological calculations would agree too. However, both astrologers and astronomers use this weird convention where they have an arbitrary starting point (analogous to the Greenwich Meridian Line) called the "Zero point of Aries", which was at the beginning of Aries around 4000 years ago, but is now almost in Aquarius (hence the term "The Age of Aquarius"). So, in our time it's not feasible to look up at the sky when someone's born and say "yes, Jupiter is in Taurus, Cancer is rising..." - we have to use an ephemeris, a computer program or perform some tricky celestial mechanics to find out! (To be fair, the ancient astrologers didn't simply look at the sky, either, because that technique doesn't work if it's daylight, and anyway, not all of the planets are visible at the same time).

So, what does it all mean?

Well, it's often said that your Ascendant is your "public face", the way you first come across to people, and what you're basically about. Your Sun sign is the way you express yourself creatively and your Moon sign the way you initially respond to situations, and how you nuture. That's a very, very simplistic guideline of course. Each sign has characteristics - Aries is bold and daring, Cancer is home loving and so on. So someone with a Sun in Aries and a Cancer Moon might be adventurous, but be very serious about building a home life and caring for family.

When you have the positions of all the planets (the term "planet" in astrology includes the Sun and the Moon, too), you can plot them on a "chart wheel" - a circle divided into 12 segments, each segment labelled with a sign of the zodiac. You can then immediately see which planet is in which sign. You can also divide the wheel into twelve parts in a different way, starting with the position of the Ascendant. These subdivisions are called "houses" - so if your Ascendant is 10 degrees of Gemini, then your first house will be that part of the zodiac from 10 degrees Gemini through to 10 degrees Cancer, the second house 10 Cancer to 10 Leo and so on. There are other "house systems" which don't use equal divisions - most astrology software will cope with a number of different systems. Each "house" corresponds to a certain area of life; for instance, the 3rd house is to do with communication and local travel. So if your chart has Mars in Aries in the third house, you may communicate in a very forthright manner.

Finally, looking at the positions of planets in your chart, the "angles" between them are significant. If two planets are very close to each other, they are in "conjunction" and their energies work together. If they are almost opposite each other, they are in "opposition", and their energies will raise issues with the person dealing with them. Planets at right angles ("square") present challenges, and planets at 120 degrees apart ("trine") have energies that flow freely and are "easy" in the person's life and so don't present an issue in the person's life. These angles only apply over a small range (called an "orb") - a bit like focusing a camera - so an angle of 88 degrees or 92 degrees is still considered "square", but an angle of 80 degrees is not.

Each of the signs of the zodiac can be grouped into one of four elements - Fire, Earth, Air and Water. The zodiac signs, in order, are: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Aries is Fire, Taurus is Earth, Gemini is Air and Cancer is Water. Then the cycle repeats: FEAWFEAWFEAW for the twelve signs. These signs correspond to different personality types - Aries, Leo and Sagittarius have "fiery" personalities, for example.

Also, the zodiac can be divided into three groups - Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable. The Cardinal signs are Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, because these signs usher in each new season (Aries for Spring, etc). The Mutable signs are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces, because these signs occur at a time when the season is "mutating" into the next one (Pisces is about to usher in Spring). The Fixed signs are the ones in the middle - Taurus (middle of Spring, corresponding to the ancient festival of Beltane), Leo (middle of Summer, festival of Lughnasad), Scorpio (middle of Autumn, festival of Samhain) and Aquarius (middle of Winter, festival of Imbolc). Again, these correspond to personality types - Cardinal signs like to initiate, they need to create what they want, motivate action and trigger the next phase. Fixed signs hold on to the status quo and preserve what is valued, they are focused and determined. Mutable signs reflect the processes of adaptation and dispersal; they move beyond what exists, adjust plans, and redesign. Their attitude is flexible and exploratory.

Each zodiac sign thus has a unique combination of element (Fire, Earth, Air, Water) and Cardinal / Fixed / Mutable - for example, Leo is Fixed Fire, and so has a fixed outlook and a "fiery" (extrovert and sunny) personality; Pisces is Mutable Water, and so is adaptable and has a "watery" (emotional and sensitive) personality.

Calculating a chart used to be a very time-consuming process; the advent of computers has now made this a doddle. There are several excellent commercial astrology packages on the market, but the one I'm recommending - for beginners at any rate - is an excellent piece of freeware called Astrolog. This is not shareware - it is genuine freeware; you don't have to register and it doesn't cost a penny. My chart is shown below - it was produced using Astrolog. Click on the WWW Links above for a link to the Astrolog site.