Astrology

Every culture that looked up long enough built a system out of what it saw. The Babylonians and the Greeks gave us the zodiac most of us know. India kept its own, measured against the stars rather than the seasons. China built a calendar of animals and elements that turns on the New Year rather than the birthday. The Maya counted days in a cycle of twenty signs and thirteen tones. The Celts, or at least the people who wrote about them later, hung a year of trees on the Moon.

I use all of them. When I write a full portrait for someone, each of these systems gets its own say, and then I read them against each other. Where two of them point at the same thing in a person, I say so. Where they pull apart, I say that too, because the disagreement is usually where the interesting part of someone lives.

This area of the Library takes them one at a time.

Western Astrology

This is where most people start, and it is where I started. Your Sun sign is the one line of astrology everybody knows, and it is a fair place to begin, but it is one line of a chart that has ten planets, twelve houses and a horizon in it. The Western Astrology section teaches the whole chart the way I use it in a reading. Learning Astrology is the place to begin. The Birth Chart shows you what a chart is and why the time and place of your birth matter so much. Then the pieces, one page each: The Elements and Modes, The Planets with a page for each of the ten, The Houses, The Aspects, Transits and Retrogrades, The Moon and the phase you were born under, and The Fixed Stars. The Signs gives each of the twelve its own page, and Astrocartography, your chart drawn on a map of the world, follows them.

The New and Full Moons of 2027 lists all twenty five of them in Perth time, with the sign each falls in, the eclipses among them, and how I work with the cycle.

Why the Moon Looks Upside Down in Australia explains why the face, the dark patches and the crescents look wrong in a book from Britain or America. We are the ones standing on our heads, and the stars turn over too.

The Southern Cross and the Southern Sky is about Crux, the smallest of the eighty eight constellations. Its northern history, finding it from Perth, finding south with it, and the rest of the southern sky.

Your Rising Sign explains the sign coming up over the eastern horizon at the minute you were born, why it needs your birth time and place, the time zone of the birth place, and the chart ruler. Each of the twelve Rising signs has its own page.

The Saturn Return follows Saturn back to the spot it held the day you were born, near 29, again near 58 and again near 87. What Saturn is asking each time, and meeting your return well.

The North Node and South Node are the two points where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's. What you carry in, where you are heading, how the pair work together, and where the nodes sit in the sky now.

Chiron, the Wounded Healer starts with the small body found in 1977 and the myth behind the name. What Chiron shows in a chart, the healer's trap, and working with your own.

Your Moon Sign is the part of the chart that answers what you need after a bad day. Why the birth time can matter, the Moon and your mother, and where the Moon is strong. Each of the twelve Moon signs has its own page.

Mercury Retrograde in 2027 gives the three retrogrades of the year in Perth time, how to read the dates, what sits either side of 2027, and what to actually do.

Eclipses Seen from Perth explains why eclipses come when they do, lists the eclipses of 2027, and looks ahead to the total solar eclipse of 22 July 2028. It covers watching safely and what to do with an eclipse.

Star Sign Compatibility closes the section. Why a magazine grid falls short, what the elements and modes say about two people, and why I read two whole charts side by side.

The daily posts carry the live sky. The Week Ahead goes up every Monday and reads the coming week for all twelve signs across three systems, and the Moon posts arrive with each New Moon and Full Moon.

Chinese Astrology

The twelve animals and the five elements, read as a calendar before a horoscope. The Chinese Astrology section starts with the year animal everybody knows and then goes where most people never go: the New Year rule that catches January and February births, the Five Elements and how they layer on the animal, Yin and Yang, and the three pillars of year, month and day that I read together in a full portrait. The Twelve Months and The Day Animals give the month and day animals their own pages, and The Animals gives each of the twelve its own page, with its friends and its one clash. The Year of the Fire Goat sets out 2027, and each of the twelve animals has its own page on how the Goat year sits for it. Chinese Animal Compatibility puts the twelve around a circle and shows who gets along: the four groups of friends, the six secret friends and the six clashes, and why you look further than the year.

The daily posts carry the Chinese layer through the year: the Fire Horse post, the month animal posts as each month turns, and the Week Ahead's Chinese line for every sign.

Vedic Astrology

The astrology of India, Jyotish, reads the same sky against the stars rather than the seasons, which is why it will very likely tell you your Sun is one sign back from where you thought it was. The Vedic Astrology section explains that difference without taking sides, then goes to what Jyotish does best: the Moon over the Sun, the twenty seven nakshatras the Moon moves through (each with its own page), the nine grahas including Rahu and Ketu, the bhavas, and the dashas that give a life its planetary periods. The Rashis gives each sidereal sign its own page, paired with its Western sign.

Mayan Astrology

The Tzolkin, the 260 day sacred count of the Maya: twenty day signs and thirteen tones turning together, so that the day you were born has one sign and one tone, and the pair is your kin. The Mayan Astrology section explains the count, the thirteen tones, the four colour families, and gives each of the twenty day signs its own page. It also says plainly which count I use, because the kin on one website often differs from the kin on another.

Celtic Tree Astrology

A year of thirteen trees, each ruling about four weeks, each tied to a letter of the old Irish Ogham alphabet. The Celtic Tree Astrology section says plainly where the calendar comes from, which is more recent than most books admit, and then gives each of the thirteen trees its own page, because as a set of thirteen character pictures it reads very well beside the other systems. Your tree needs nothing but your birthday.

How to use this area

Start with your own chart. Work out your Sun, your Moon and your Rising sign, read those three pages, and notice what fits and what does not. Then read the planets and the houses and go back to your chart with them. You will learn more from your own chart than from anyone else's.

Astrology is weather and character, never a sentence. Nothing in a chart tells you what will happen to you. It tells you what kind of season you are in and what you are made of, and what you do with that is yours.

You will be your own teacher. All I will do is help you remember what you already know.

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.

The pieces in this area