How to Learn Astrology, Part 4

Welcome back to the fourth part of our ongoing series on how to learn astrology from the ground up. If you haven’t checked out the previous entries in this series, make sure to do that here. In this post, we’ll discuss the building block of my own astrological practice, which is casting a daily chart.

What is a daily chart, and how does it differ from daily transits or a horary chart? Put simply, a daily chart is a horary chart, one answering the question of ‘what do I most need to know today?’ Paying attention to one’s transits in a daily chart is optional, but highly recommended. As a horary chart, you can also use it to answer any further questions which come up over the course of a day, though I haven’t fully tested its efficacy in specific situations such as finding a lost object. (I suspect that, for situations personal to the astrologer, it tends to say the same thing that a horary chart cast at the appropriate time would, albeit in different words.)

For those not yet versed in horary astrology, it’s one of the major branches of astrology, and concerns itself with answering a question based on a chart of the heavens cast at a moment relevant to the situation. Often, someone else known as the querent brings this question to the astrologer, who then casts a chart for their own place and time of comprehending the question and interprets it as if they were the querent. If this doesn’t seem as if it ought to work, allow me to let you in on a little secret: the universe doesn’t care what we think.

Your textbook ought to have a section on horary astrology. You’ll want to study it carefully. Practice placing topics under various houses, turning the wheel, evaluating answers by means of planetary dignity, and pay attention to how applying and separating aspects are used to represent the future and past, especially related to the Moon.

At some point every day–preferably early, right after prayer or magical practices, if you do either of those–begin with a prayer that your reading may be blessed with insight and wisdom. Form in your mind the intention that this horoscope represents what you most need to know about today, and cast a chart for your present time and place.

In your early readings, use one and only one meaning for each of the houses, signs, and planets. As discussed in a previous post, it’s best if this meaning is general enough to usually be applicable to your life and covers a wide range of experience.

Begin with the first house. This represents you, and is the most important house in daily readings. Interpret any planets in the first house according to their dignity and aspects. You need only consider applying aspects. Then interpret the ruler of the first house, considering also the house in which you find it. If you have time, interpret the exaltation ruler also. Make a prediction about the type of day you think you will have, good or bad; if bad, consider what advice you find in the chart to make the best of it. Record this prediction, as well as the time and location (or save a copy of a digital chart) in a notebook dedicated to this purpose.

Next you have several options for interpretation. You may go around the chart interpreting each of the houses in the same way. You may choose to pay special attention to the aspects of the Moon. Or you may look at the planets which are angular and interpret them as having special relevance. Ideally you will try all of these. Whatever you do, record your predictions. It will take a while to delineate your first few charts, so make sure to give yourself plenty of time in your day to do so.

At the end of the day, look back to the predictions you made. Evaluate what you got right, what you got wrong, and what you ought to have predicted but didn’t. Make a record of this as well in your notebook. Eventually it will become a valuable tool for your studies. For now, the act of writing down your predictions and results will still facilitate learning.

You should expect to spend at least a few months on this practice before noticing an uptick in the accuracy of your readings. At first, synthesizing a reading, even with only a handful of meanings, will be difficult. But if you keep at it, gradually a remarkable thing will begin to happen, and you will begin to learn astrology from the planets. They will acquire a kind of living presence in your mind. You will develop an intuitive sense of what they say to you and how you relate to them. You will have to read a truckload of charts to become a proficient astrologer, so you might as well get started with at least one per day.

Where did the concept of a daily chart come from? As far as I know, I might have invented it; invented simultaneously with others, perhaps. One of the things my set of spiritual practices calls for is a daily divination. As I was studying astrology intensively when I first took them up, I decided to make my daily divination a horary chart, and it worked so well for my studies that I kept doing it. I’m sure I can’t be the first person to think up this idea, but there it is.

This method of learning astrology has one advantage compared to other options such as studying the charts of famous people. It is impossible to cheat. When studying charts with accompanying historical or biographical information, it can be tempting to fit your theories to what you already know. You must never do this. Astrology is an empirical practice, not a theoretical one. All the astrological knowledge we have is based on observing the planets, making predictions, and then testing whether the results are wrong or right. If you don’t learn the skill of checking your work, your readings will drift out of sync with reality and end up embarrassing at best or delusional at worst. Basing most of your learning on horary removes at least some of the ability to twist a chart into saying whatever you want it to say.

It’s also worth keeping realistic expectations in mind. If you’re coming to astrology from another divinatory system, such as tarot, runes, or Ogham fews, you may be used to receiving blunt, specific, and sometimes literal advice. The strength of astrology lies in reading general currents and patterns in time, not in specific depictions. (While horary can provide startlingly literal answers, this is more the exception than the rule.) If your goal is specificity, you’re better off taking up any of the many systems of divination suited for it.

This distinction exists because astrology is–as far as I know–unique among divinatory systems. It isn’t quite as sensitive to fluctuations in Spiritus Mundi as systems based fully on random selection, thereby allowing greater insight into the patterns of Anima Mundi at the cost of losing some clarity of definition in those vast images which trouble the psychic’s sight. Of the various branches of astrology, horary seems most sensitive to Spiritus Mundi, so you may safely expect to gradually attain greater clarity in your daily predictions.

Once you get a few dozen charts under your wing, you’ll want to begin paying attention to transits. This topic is complex enough that we’ll be covering it in detail later on in this series. For now, it’s enough to pay attention to conjunctions to your natal angles and planets, as well as to the signs and phases of the Moon. As you notice other patterns, record them as well. Soon enough you’ll begin to find out what are general influences affecting your environment and what is particular to you.

Ideally, you’ll want to do this practice, or a similar daily exercise, for as long as you practice astrology. Daily practice of any system of divination develops the intuition and helps you notice synchronicities when the universe is pushing you a certain way. It can, however, become a crutch, which backfires during those times when you’re pushed–sometimes by hostile spiritual powers–in a direction which you don’t want. That is one reason I recommend practicing astrology–or any other divinatory system–within a religious, or at least a magical, framework. As the Homeric Hymn to Hermes remarks, the spirits associated with divination give truthful answers when offered ambrosia, but if this is neglected, they lead men astray.

Considering the limitations of astrology, you may not want to use it for all your divinatory purposes. For immediate, specific questions, or those which extend beyond the scope of your daily chart, you may cast a horary chart, or you might decide to use another, simpler system. If all you’re concerned with is deepening your study of astrology, I recommend geomancy, as they have much in common. While the tarot’s astrological correspondences are well-known at this point, I’ve found them primarily useful for magical and Qabalist work. A tarot reading has very little connection with how astrology is actually practiced. If you are already practicing daily divination with a different system, you may want to decide if you’ll use astrology for your readings a certain portion of the week, or if you’ll use astrology for certain kinds of questions only, or so on. It is generally a bad idea to try to learn two systems from beginner status at once.

There have been a few more cautions given in this part than usual. Astrology is a serious craft, but it is also engaging and fun. If you maintain common sense and a willingness to chuckle at your mistakes, you ought to make good progress in your studies. Do not let a desire for perfection stop you from progressing. The heavens are a perfect circle. On earth, there are no perfect circles. The artist who would draw a circle first makes several sketches and only then selects the best parts of his calculus to trace in darker ink. Draw the circles of the heavens imperfectly and often.