Using Astronomy Software

bleudiamond

Is there a method to calculate astrology using astronomy software? I just looked up the sky on the day/time of my birth and found pretty much everything in different constellations from most systems except sidereal, and even sidereal seems a bit off. Is there a system that adds the necessary constellations and considers "exactly" how the sky looked at birth?

lol I don't think I could except a system that says my Mercury is in Cancer when in my "birthsky" is it smack center of Gemini.

Also, how would one adapt astrology for someone who is born on Mars? How do you make up the significance of the planet that is lost by being born on it? And what would Earth mean in their chart? Sorry, thinking of ways that one could approach astrology that is both malleable enough to work in the future (or other solar systems even) and based on actual bodies in the sky.
 

Minderwiz

Is there a method to calculate astrology using astronomy software? I just looked up the sky on the day/time of my birth and found pretty much everything in different constellations from most systems except sidereal, and even sidereal seems a bit off. Is there a system that adds the necessary constellations and considers "exactly" how the sky looked at birth?

lol I don't think I could except a system that says my Mercury is in Cancer when in my "birthsky" is it smack center of Gemini.

Whilst it might be possible, I doubt it's worth the effort :)

The reason for this is that Astrology deals in signs and for most Western Astrology the starting point (0 Aries) is the Vernal Equinox (Northern Hemisphere). Against the constellations, that point appears to shift backwards by approximately 1 degree every 72 years - a phenomenon know as the precession of the equinoxes.

As you say, that means that using a sidereal zodiac will give you something more like what was there at the time. Most Astrology programs will calculate a correction to give you the sidereal zodiac at your date of birth. However there are still two problems. Even the sidereal zodiac is a zodiac of signs, not constellations. Each sign is 30 degrees wide, whereas constellations insist on being much more haphazard and even have none zodiac constellations poking in here and there. Ophiuchus is the main one quoted by Astronomers who try to use it to prove Astrology is wrong. They clearly haven't read the small print about the difference between signs and constellations.

The second problem is that there's no agreement about where the sidereal zodiac starts, other than it's somewhere in the constellation of Aries (or near it). Thus you will find a whole raft of competing 'ayanamsas,which try to calculate the offset between the tropical and sidereal zodiac. They only produce relatively small differences but that can still shift planets into different signs.

There are some Western Astrologers who use the sidereal zodiac but the main users are those who practice Jyotish (or Vedic Astrology) so you could consult a Jyotish practitioner and you'd get a chart more to your liking. That being said the nature of the signs is partly determined by their relationship to the equinoxes and Astrology's origins lie in attempts to predict seasonal change.

bleudiamond said:
Also, how would one adapt astrology for someone who is born on Mars? How do you make up the significance of the planet that is lost by being born on it? And what would Earth mean in their chart? Sorry, thinking of ways that one could approach astrology that is both malleable enough to work in the future (or other solar systems even) and based on actual bodies in the sky.

There's always a lot of discussion around that one. What follows is a personal opinion but I might have to address the issue more closely when that actually happens.

Astrology is geocentric - it deals with people and events here on Earth and it was obviously never intended to be portable, in the sense that it could be carried around the universe. It's not just a matter of the exchange of planets but there's the viewing perspective. Astronomy, despite it's attempt to be detached, has just as much of a Geocentric measuring system as Astrology, so could any Geocentric system be used as a frame of reference on Mars? The Sun would appear to take about twice as long to complete its 'annual' trip around the zodiac. Given that the martian day is approximately the same as an Earth day, the combination of rising signs and 'sun' signs would be different.

That would seem to call for a major investment of time and energy in developing a unique system of Martian Astrology - by don't ask me what it would look like :)