Читать книгу Astrology For Dummies - Rae Orion - Страница 32

In the past, before the computer and related technology infiltrated every molecule of human existence, casting a chart was more than a challenge. It was a commitment. It required hours of free time, a fearless attitude towards mathematics, the ability to concentrate on minutiae, and a willingness to grapple with longitude, latitude, standard meridians, local time, daylight saving time, universal time, sidereal time, and a table of proportional logarithms. If you made a mistake — and it was easy to do that, adding when you should have subtracted or copying the wrong numbers from a page entirely covered with rows and columns of numbers — well, you had to start all over again. Most people didn’t have the patience.

I felt differently. I liked staying up late with a pot of tea and all my astrological supplies: a planetary almanac or ephemeris, a heavy atlas, a book of time zones and time changes, a Table of Houses (my battered hardcover — it must be around here somewhere — had a copyright date of 1893), pads of yellow paper, and the special horoscope blanks I bought at a metaphysical bookstore. As I calculated each planetary position and house cusp, drew the symbols of the signs and planets onto the wheel of the chart, figured out the geometrical relationships among the planets, and counted up how many were in fire signs, in earth signs, and so on, the chart — and the person — slowly grew clear in my mind.

That process takes time, and I don’t do it anymore. I use a computer, like every other astrologer. With a computer or a smart phone anyone can generate an accurate chart in less time than it takes to sharpen a pencil. It’s a satisfying form of instant gratification, which is why, as nostalgic as I occasionally feel for those long-ago evenings of computation and revelation, I wouldn’t go back.

In those days, many people who were fascinated by astrology never learned it because they were put off by the math or by the amount of time required. Those issues no longer exist. In the rest of this chapter I tell you how to get an accurate copy of your chart the easy way — via the internet.