Aspects illustrated on Charts

[Grigori]

I've been looking around at different chart drawing website and they seem to be using standardised colors/methods for illustrating the aspects between the planets. The catch is, there not immediately obvious to me what they are and my few books don't explain the illustration method either.

Seems like blue refers to softer aspects like sextiles or trines, and red is hard aspects like oppositions or squares. I have no idea what the green dash-y ones may refer to. Or the black dot-ty ones.

Could someone please help me understand the graphics better?

 

[dadsnook2000]

As you noted . . .

As you noted, there are some "standard practices" when it comes to drawing aspect lines; red for challenging aspects, blue for supportive aspects. Once you get further than that you are dealing with the capabilities of the software.

As an example my (purchased) software uses the reds and blues but has a set of check boxes and slide bars that lets me turn on/off major aspects or turn on/off minor aspects, and also permits me to tighten up or loosen up the orbs of the aspects I elect to see on a chart by sliding a bar along a scale. Further, I can customize the aspects I use as well as set their orbs -- and I can do that one way for natal charts, another way for progressed charts, another way for solar returns, etc. All of this applies to the planets, uranian hypotheticals, asteroids -- whatever.

Given all that, there is not standard once you move beyond the basics. I would suggest that you note an aspect line that puzzles you and then determine the positions of the two planets that are so connected, then determine their distance and find out what aspect that distance represents. Dave

 

[Grigori]

Thanks Dave. Which astrology program do you use? I like that it gives you so much control over the graphics. (Cause the ones I have seen do not, and are actually pretty hard to look at )

 

[dadsnook2000]

My software

My software is purchased from Halloran who is in LA. My package costs something like $150 to $200, plus I have added a report writer (which I don't use), and I update every year or so to keep up with all of the added features. One feature I like is clicking on a planet and having a chart pop up with all of its aspects and/or midpoints -- then clicking on a listed mid-point and having Erbertin's interpretation pop up. Cool. Lots of cool stuff.

You can download a slightly smaller/simpler version for free from his website which is www.halloran.com Check it out. Dave

 

[Rhiannon SW]

I have Solar fire 5. It's on the complicated side at first but it can do so much. I still haven't even touched the surface as far as all the aspects to the program. www.astrolabe.com.

 

[einhverfr]

Unless you are running a Mac, I would recommend Astrolog (a free Astrology program). It is not licensed for commercial use.

You can get it at http://www.astrolog.org

You can set the colors for each aspect however you like

BTW, it is available for Macs, but last time I tried it, it was basically a port of their X11/command line version which made it rather difficult for an average Mac user to understand. The Windows version is much nicer and even on Linux, I prefer the Windows version to the UNIX/X11 version. It runs fine using any Windows emulator I have ever used.