Website Recommendations

[MoonSwan]

Also, why purchase when you can get them for free all over the web?

I learned to erect charts by hand. With the advent of 'computer-world', (and before I bought my own astro-software-- Sirius), I dipped my toes in the water by using Astrodeinst to create charts. It's free and you can save up to 100 charts you create... http://www.astro.com


The one thing that must always be avoided are the 'canned reports' advertised by so-called 'astrologers', even tho those 'canned reports' have been written by some top-notch astrologers, *sigh*. Anyone can buy these so-called 'interpretive programs' and turn-around and sell the reports they spit-out as bonafide astrological delineations. They are anything but and will disappoint every time. Why? Because it's not an astrologer that is delineating your chart... you're listening to a compupter instead. Ugh. Don't get me started on this. They are the bane of our profession, and all produced in the name of 'making a buck'. They give astrology a bad name and have set back the profession decades towards any kind of legitimacy.

As a professional astrologer myself, I am thoroughly disgusted and utterly appalled that these kinds of 'interpretive software programs' were created... and consummately ashamed of the astrologers who created them and then foisted them on an unknowing public. Shame on them for all eternity!

FaireMaiden

I hope it is ok to jump in on this thread.I've just started Tarot and have fast realised how important astrology is to enhance a reading.

I'm just dipping a toe in and have become fascinated by natal charts etc and was going to ask here which software to buy to aid casting, so thank you for saving me some cash

I want to avoid pitfalls, and I'm not altogether sure about 'canned reports' and interpretive programs? I have borrowed a book from the library and it is full of complicated looking tables etc, I did wonder if computer software might help calculate this more quickly, a sort of computer based Ephemeris or is an interpretive program?

 

[Barleywine]

Synastry = The comparison of two or more charts, i.e. relationship analysis

It's obviously much too soon for such subtleties but, for completeness, there is also the Composite Chart approach popularized by Rob Hand in the 1970s that constructs a new integrated relationship horoscope using the mid-points between the planets and other sensitive points in the Natal charts of two or more entities (people, groups, organizations). Personally I find it less complex and a bit more elegant than synastry.

 

[Minderwiz]

I want to avoid pitfalls, and I'm not altogether sure about 'canned reports' and interpretive programs? I have borrowed a book from the library and it is full of complicated looking tables etc, I did wonder if computer software might help calculate this more quickly, a sort of computer based Ephemeris or is an interpretive program?

There's a huge number of programs available going from free software to the extremely expensive.

A very good cheap program is

Astrology for Windows by Halloran Software. This costs $26.50 and can be dowloaded from

http://www.halloran.com/astwin23.htm

You can actually download the program for free but it has a limited number of charts that you can do without paying the registration cost.

It's the core of the much more expensive AstrolDeluxe but is still the best low cost program I've come across.

A genuine freebie is Morinus from

https://sites.google.com/site/pymorinus/

Unlike Astrology for Windows it's available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Just make sure you download the right version.

Another good freebie is Riyal3 also Windows

http://www.expreso.co.cr/centaurs/riyal.html


The main limit of the freebies is that it's Atlas is very limited (Morinus) or absent so you will need to find the latitude and longitude of the places of most people or events that you want to do charts for. Google Earth or Google Maps can help here.

Programs that have interpretative capabilities cost more, often much more. To be honest, I would recommend any beginner to avoid them like the plague. The reason is that you will end up using someone else's views without really learning much. It's harder to do the work yourself but you learn more and it's much more rewarding.

 

[Minderwiz]

It's obviously much too soon for such subtleties but, for completeness, there is also the Composite Chart approach popularized by Rob Hand in the 1970s that constructs a new integrated relationship horoscope using the mid-points between the planets and other sensitive points in the Natal charts of two or more entities (people, groups, organizations). Personally I find it less complex and a bit more elegant than synastry.

Yes, Hand along with John Townley did popularise this approach and Hand wrote the forward to Townley's book Composite Charts but Townley specifically says that the first thing an Astrologer should do is look at the two individual charts and do some synastry - composites are not meant as an alternative but a powerful supplement.

 

[Barleywine]

http://www.halloran.com/astwin23.htm[/url]

You can actually download the program for free but it has a limited number of charts that you can do without paying the registration cost.

It's the core of the much more expensive AstrolDeluxe but is still the best low cost program I've come across.

I used Halloran's DOS version for years and was very happy with it, but never upgraded to the Windows version. For some reason I thought it was more expensive than that (must have been the deluxe I was looking at). I will have to check it out. Hopefully it's been upgraded for Windows 7.

 

[Barleywine]

Programs that have interpretative capabilities cost more, often much more. To be honest, I would recommend any beginner to avoid them like the plague. The reason is that you will end up using someone else's views without really learning much. It's harder to do the work yourself but you learn more and it's much more rewarding.

No question at all on that point, although some do allow you to edit the included interpretative text to your own liking. Back in the day, BC (Before Computers), when all my reports were hand-written or typed on an office typewriter, it was tedious to try to compile the "brilliant" (well, hopefully adequate) insights and inspirations that I came up with in some sort of catalogued, retrievable manner for reuse. Now I can save all the bits-and-pieces in electronic files to make my own "home-canned" report framework (that on its own is really still just a collage of stacked meanings). But the synthesis will always be the hard work, and the real core of any analysis, one that I've never seen a computer-generated report emulate successfully. Lately I've been using Roy Alexander's 1984 book "Chart Synthesis" as a structured jumping-off place for my own time-tested ramblings.

 

[Minderwiz]

No question at all on that point, although some do allow you to edit the included interpretative text to your own liking. Back in the day, BC (Before Computers), when all my reports were hand-written or typed on an office typewriter, it was tedious to try to compile the "brilliant" (well, hopefully adequate) insights and inspirations that I came up with in some sort of catalogued, retrievable manner for reuse. Now I can save all the bits-and-pieces in electronic files to make my own "home-canned" report framework (that on its own is really still just a collage of stacked meanings). But the synthesis will always be the hard work, and the real core of any analysis, one that I've never seen a computer-generated report emulate successfully. Lately I've been using Roy Alexander's 1984 book "Chart Synthesis" as a structured jumping-off place for my own time-tested ramblings.

I did once try to edit some of the stock interpretations but I don't think I got through one planet by sign and house, let alone aspect. It's an incredibly tedious process and to get a personal take you've got to virtually rewrite it from scratch.

Worse still there's a framework that can't be changed - there's no way usually to allow for position within a sign or even to depart far from a modern approach to signs. And worst of all as you say, there's no way that any integration can be built in.

It's so much easier just to do the interpretation yourself, even if that comes from making notes of planets in signs, houses and by aspects and then using them to do the final integration.

 

[Barleywine]

There's a huge number of programs available going from free software to the extremely expensive.

A very good cheap program is

Astrology for Windows by Halloran Software. This costs $26.50 and can be dowloaded from

http://www.halloran.com/astwin23.htm

You can actually download the program for free but it has a limited number of charts that you can do without paying the registration cost.

It's the core of the much more expensive AstrolDeluxe but is still the best low cost program I've come across.

A genuine freebie is Morinus from

https://sites.google.com/site/pymorinus/

Unlike Astrology for Windows it's available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Just make sure you download the right version.

Another good freebie is Riyal3 also Windows

http://www.expreso.co.cr/centaurs/riyal.html


The main limit of the freebies is that it's Atlas is very limited (Morinus) or absent so you will need to find the latitude and longitude of the places of most people or events that you want to do charts for. Google Earth or Google Maps can help here.

Programs that have interpretative capabilities cost more, often much more. To be honest, I would recommend any beginner to avoid them like the plague. The reason is that you will end up using someone else's views without really learning much. It's harder to do the work yourself but you learn more and it's much more rewarding.

When I was at Rob Hand's website I saw that he recommends Sirius as the best choice for "professional" astrologers. At $650, it would have to be a VERY successful one, IMO. One note on Halloran: I checked with John, who said that, if you have a 64-bit PC, you have to buy the CD at $27.00 + $3.00 shipping. His fully-featured AstrolDeluxe 8 program with report-writer is $169. From my own experience, I can recommend his software.

 

[Minderwiz]

When I was at Rob Hand's website I saw that he recommends Sirius as the best choice for "professional" astrologers. At $650, it would have to be a VERY successful one, IMO. One note on Halloran: I checked with John, who said that, if you have a 64-bit PC, you have to buy the CD at $27.00 + $3.00 shipping. His fully-featured AstrolDeluxe 8 program with report-writer is $169. From my own experience, I can recommend his software.

Programs for traditional approaches seem to cost a lot more - I think that's because, at the moment, the customer base is quite small, compared to say, Solar Fire, or AstrolDeluxe, both of which try to cater for several approaches. The economics suggests that the development costs and other overheads will make the traditional programs more expensive. I don't think I'd pay $650 or anywhere near it though

Halloran software is excellent. I started off with Astrology for Windows, then bought AstrolDeluxe before I swapped to Solar Fire (mainly because it caters more for Traditional approaches).