TAROT + ASTROLOGY BLOG

Find out which are the best books for learning Astrology, with everything from a beginner's overview to more complex methodologies and niche topics. Here are my top 11 favourites:

A Solar Return chart is an astrological forecasting technique used for assessing the potential themes and general feel of your next solar year, i.e. birthday year (from one birthday to the next). They are usually cast on your birthday, solar returns are the moment the Sun returns to its natal degree, which can actually be the day before or after your birthdate), but they can also be done retrospectively as well once you are already part-way into your next birthday year if you would like insight into the unfolding of the rest of the year.

Secondary progressions, sometimes called secondary directions or a-day-for-a-year progressions, is a predictive Astrology method of “progressing” or, in a sense, maturing your Natal Chart to see how it has evolved from when you were born. It is done by moving your chart forward by one day for every one year of life, so the 30 days after you were born would reflect your first 30 years of life.

The essential Planetary dignities help to construct an Astrological picture of how well a Planet is performing, how comfortable it is, and the extent to which it can express its strength (or weaknesses) based on its placement in the Zodiac Signs. They are a construct of ancient Hellenistic Astrology largely defined by Ptolemy. The Planetary joys are House placements where the Planets are particularly happy and can also add another layer of detail to our analysis.

The Nodes are physical points in space, not planetary bodies, that represent where the orbit path of the Sun and Moon would seemingly intersect on the ecliptic from our vantage point on Earth. When they are perfectly aligned is when we get the Eclipses.

Astrology House systems are methods for dividing up the sky into a Natal Chart to be interpreted. They take the sky as a 360º whole and use different calculations of division to get the Astrological Houses, cusps, and other important points. The Babylonians may have been the first to set out the concept of House division, using Whole Sign Houses. There are at least 20 different Astrology House systems created, in this post I will discuss 8 of the most popular versions in use today.

There is an ancient timing technique from Hellenistic Astrology called Zodiacal Releasing that is used to define what a period of life may involve for you. There are several areas of life that can be used to calculate what’s known as Lots, and when you will be “releasing” from them, i.e. activating different periods.