Drawing the chart yourself

inanna_tarot

Hi everyone :)

Does anyone know of any good/helpful websites, videos or books that can help with learning how to draw charts yourself? I know I can apps/programs to do this for me, but for my astrology course I need to be able to draw charts from scratch for myself.

At the moment I'm just sitting here going 'er.... wow, thats a lot of numbers'.

Any help/advice?
 

Barleywine

Hi everyone :)

Does anyone know of any good/helpful websites, videos or books that can help with learning how to draw charts yourself? I know I can apps/programs to do this for me, but for my astrology course I need to be able to draw charts from scratch for myself.

At the moment I'm just sitting here going 'er.... wow, thats a lot of numbers'.

Any help/advice?

I think all of the really good books that show all of the technical intricacies are fairly old. There are all kinds of subtleties like "acceleration on the interval" that come into play to produce a really precise chart. Of course you don't have to use them all, but you will at least need several resources, like an ephemeris, an atlas showing longitude and latitude, a time-changes book showing stuff like Daylight Savings Time date ranges and the like, a book of proportional logorithms, and some math skills. These days you can probably find the resources on-line if you're allowed to use them. When I was learning I created my own data collection and calculation form to make sure I captured it all.
 

Minderwiz

Barleywine is probably right, I don't know of any recent book that goes through these calculations but there may be some of the older material that is still in print. My ancient copy of Parker's Astrology has a section on drawing up a natal chart, and that book is still listed on Amazon.

Alan Oken's Complete Astrology also has a largish section on how to draw up a chart and that too is still listed. In both cases, make sure that the current edition still contains the material required.


I also used John Filbey's 'Natal Charting'. I think it's out of print but Amazon UK is advertising it as second hand for 1 penny. It contains virtually all you need in terms of instructions and virtually all the tables you need bar an ephemeris. If that doesn't work, try

http://www.waterstonesmarketplace.c...h-Chart-Construction-John-Filbey/book/4574212

The lowest price is £0.68 but obviously condition, etc come into it.

And if that doesn't work, I'll lend you my copy, though that will mean direct contact and supplying your name and address.



As Barleywine says you will need an ephemeris, but that is available on line -

http://www.astro.com/swisseph/swepha_e.htm

Google Earth will give you the latitude and longitude of any place on Earth, so if you haven't an atlas, that will do fine.

You will also need a table of houses to find the Ascendant and the house cusps (if you have to use Placidus or another quadrant system) Skyscript has a number of resources:

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/study_aids.html

And here's an ancient version

https://archive.org/details/AstrologicalTablesOfHousesForNorthernLatitudes

based on Alan Leo's methods.

I'm sure you could find more with a little googling LOL.

You will need a calculator for the calculations (or you could use a spreadsheet) if you've got a scientific one then it's better but if the worst comes to the worst, you can get away with a pen and paper and school maths.

Barleywine makes a great point about a pre-produced data sheet. You need to be very methodical here and that means keeping track of everything.

Lastly (I think) you will need some pre-prepred blank charts. So you either design one yourself using a computer and drawing software or you do it with a pair of compasses and a ruler.

Please come back with any follow up question as you go. It's interesting to scratch the old grey cells and go back fifty years or so.
 

Barleywine

John Frawley's The Horary Textbook has a method that includes exactly four steps. Buy it for the horary (if you eventually come to that), not for the calculation method.

Jeff Mayo's How to Cast a Natal Chart is 194 pages on the subject. I'm not sure about availability. I got a lot out of that one.
 

Astraea

I learned from Margaret Hone's wonderful A Modern Textbook of Astrology, first published in 1951 and still in print (available new and used at Amazon). It has all the grids and diagrams you'll need to perform the calculations, though if memory serves you must supply your own chart blank for the finished product. Hone's method is straightforward and easy to learn. Hone was an advocate of the Equal House system, but she included detailed discussions of other methods of house division in her text.

My teacher also used the Rosicrucian Fellowship's ephemerides and Simplified Table of Houses. I forget which house system the table of houses used to get the intermediate cusps. You can find inexpensive copies of Rosicrucian Fellowship materials used on Amazon. They are not as accurate as modern computerized tables, but they're good enough to demonstrate your ability to follow procedures. Or, as Minderwiz says, you can look for that information online and print out the pages you'll need for reference.

Learning to cast charts by hand is an invaluable skill, as it trains one to think astrologically and makes it easier to spot errors in computer-calculated charts - you'll know what ought to go where, and when something is way off.
 

dadsnook2000

More books

Centuries ago when I learned astrology calculation, Margeret Hone and Jeff Mayo, both of the UK and the Faculty of Astrological Studies, had books and forms that one could use. I still have copies of the chart forms that I used as well as some of the tables. If resources can't be found elsewhere I could e-mail scanned copies of this material. I don't have the books any longer as they went with the 350+ astro books I threw away when I cleaned house. These days I only have a hundred or so astro books that I keep for reference. Dave
 

inanna_tarot

Thank you everyone :) I have instructions and blank charts but I just cant my head round it today. I will try again tomorrow. Im learning horary and so have to use regiomontanus houses, so its all a challenge.

Eta - I have Oken's book so I'll have to dig it out and see what it says.:)
 

Barleywine

Learning to cast charts by hand is an invaluable skill, as it trains one to think astrologically and makes it easier to spot errors in computer-calculated charts - you'll know what ought to go where, and when something is way off.

I still use my old hand-calculated charts to validate the ones I get from my computer programs :)
 

Minderwiz

Thank you everyone :) I have instructions and blank charts but I just cant my head round it today. I will try again tomorrow. Im learning horary and so have to use regiomontanus houses, so its all a challenge.

Eta - I have Oken's book so I'll have to dig it out and see what it says.:)

Good luck!!!

I can't find a table of Regiomontanus houses but there's two resources you can use.

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/regio1.html

Which is an article on deriving Regiomontanus house cusps from their Placidus equivalent.

Which requires a table of Placidus houses

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tables-Hous...id=1425842726&sr=1-3&keywords=table+of+houses

The first article is by David McCann, who is also a member here, so I'm sure he will be happy to answer any queries on the method he suggests. All you need do is PM/email him.

You're in for major brain ache, so make life a little more bearable and draw on the support offered here. One thing it does do is get you aware of those chart errors on computer programs (usually caused by data entry errors) as Astraea mentioned and we all have those issues at some time or another.
 

inanna_tarot

Okie.. I think I have worked out how to get the local sidereal time (following my instructions).
Now I have it, I have no idea what to do with it lol).

For example if I was going to look for a chart now, 1300hrs GMT in Exeter on the 9 march 2015

The Sidereal time for 00:00 10 march is 11hrs 9min 25sec
but I want to get my time now so I need to -11hours to get the sidereal time for now which is 00hr 9min 25 secs.
The acceleration of interval (-11hrs) is 9.86secs x 11 = 108.46 secs which is approx 1min and 8 secs, which I need to take away as my time was at 0000 on the 10th.
00hr 9min 25secs - 1min 8secs = 00hr 8min 17secs

Then I have to adjust this for my longitute equivalent which is 3,5deg (approx) W so
4(mins of time) x 3.5 (deg of longitute) = 14mins, which I need to subtract from my sidereal time as it is West
00hrs 8min 17 secs - 00hrs 14mins 00 secs = 23hr 54mins 17 secs

So my Local Sideral Time at 1300hrs in Exeter on the 9th March 2014 is 23hr 54min 17 seconds.

Is that right?


Now my next instructions is to look at the table of houses with this calculation, the ancient version you posted Minderwiz https://archive.org/details/Astrolog...thernLatitudes I dont understand at all, but I assue that the degrees listed are 360 from 0 being 0Aries?

I've found a Table of Houses for Regiomontanus system via link from skyscript http://www.skyscript.co.uk/texts.html scroll down to R :D which I've downloaded.

So if my LST is 23hr 54, the table gives me times for 23hr52 and 23hr 56. Which should I use?
Also, it gives it for lattitute degrees 50 and 51, now exeter is 50.7 deg Lat, so I'm think which should I use? Should I go with 51 or aim to try and correct them for extra precision. My tutor has given a table for putting in Nearest Lower and Nearest Higher ST so should I put those in for the 51 deg?


And yes I now have a headache and thats before looking at the planets!