Natal Charting Ascendant Calculation, Horoscope `map of the hour’ continue…

I can’t go into natal charting in any depth in this post, but, just as a reminder to those of you who are moving into real astrology, here are the steps that you will need to take.

Either buy a computer program that will work out the figures for a natal chart, progress it, produce a list of transits and put everything together in chart form, and then teach yourself to use this. Or teach yourself how to do it by hand. If you are serious about astrology, do both!

If you are going to work out a chart by hand, take the following steps. Find the date of your subject’s birth in an ephemeris and list the planetary positions. Adjust those planets from the time given in the ephemeris to the time of birth, concentrating especially on the faster moving planets and the Moon.

Now you will need to find the ascendant. The following extractshows the method of erecting a natal chart for my daughter Helen, who was born in London, England. If you decide to try the method for yourself, do it first and then check the computer chart to see how close you managed to get.

Mark the ascendant/descendant line on an astrological chart and then divide into 12 equal houses. Arrange the 12 zodiac signs from the ascendant onwards. Mark in the midheaven and the nadir.

Finally place all the planets and any other features that you want to use in their correct slots in the chart.

Start to interpret the chart by looking up the meaning of the ascendant, the Sun, the Moon, the planets and anything else on which you can find information.

Natal Charting Calculating your Ascendant by Hand

It is worth noting here that astrology is a creative and interpretive skill which suits the slightly arty or linguistic type of person, therefore the person who makes a good natural astrologer is usually a poor mathematician. I am an absolute dunce where maths are concerned, yet I can calculate an ascendant, which goes to show that anyone can.

Here is the chart for my daughter Helen. She was born in London at 2.18 (2.18 am) on 21 August 1965. (NB: I have used a midnight ephemeris for these calculations.)

1. As Helen was born in London, there is no need to make any adjustment for place of birth. Astrological calculations are based on the proximity of the birth to the Greenwich meridian.
2. An August birth means that British Summer Time was in operation, therefore deduct one hour making the birth time 01.18 GMT.
3. The sidereal time (exact star time rather than calendar time) at midnight on 21 August was 21 hours 56 minutes 25 seconds.
4. Add the time of birth to the sidereal time. Remember that when adding there are 60 seconds to a minute and 60 minutes to an hour.
5. Now you will have to make an extra calculation which is called ‘interval time‘. This means that you add 10 seconds for every hour, 5 for every half hour and 3 for every 20 minutes. If you forget this, the chart will be slightly inaccurate but not by so much that the actual rising sign will be changed.
6. Now look up the resulting figures in ephemeris.
7. In Helen’s case, when we look in the ephemeris, we can see that her figure of 23hrs 14 mins 38 secs falls between 23.12.10 which comes out as 17° 37′ of Cancer and 23.15.52 which comes out as 18° 20′ of Cancer. For most purposes the round figure of 18° of Cancer which falls between the two will be quite good enough.

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