Related links: where to go deeper

The original AstroZone kept a links page at this address. In that spirit, a short and honest one.

A links page ages badly unless it stays short and generic, so this one names kinds of resources and one or two durable examples of each, rather than attempting a directory.

Casting a chart

Every serious astrology site offers a free chart calculator; the long-standing Swiss site astro.com remains the reference implementation professionals check against. Whatever you use, the inputs decide everything: date, exact time, and birthplace. If the birth time is unknown, say so to the software — a “noon chart” quietly guesses, and the houses and moon sign it prints may be wrong.

Learning the tradition

For the modern psychological school, the books people actually recommend to beginners have been stable for decades — Stephen Arroyo and Liz Greene for planets and aspects, Robert Hand's Planets in Transit as the standard reference for timing work. For the older, pre-psychological tradition, the revival of Hellenistic astrology has put translations of the classical sources within reach of ordinary readers for the first time.

The other shelf

An honest links page includes the critics. The controlled studies of astrological prediction — Shawn Carlson's 1985 double-blind test in Nature is the famous one — found astrologers performing at chance. The Barnum-effect literature explains why readings feel accurate anyway. Reading both shelves is the difference between studying astrology and merely consuming it.

Elsewhere in this subject

Start with the whole-chart argument, then the parts of a chart, sun and moon, and what a computed report is.