Review: Be Your Own Astrologer

I’ve always wanted to learn how to do astrology. My grandma was an astrologer – she worked for the famous astrologer Alan Leo – but sadly she never taught me. To be honest, back then, the maths required to draw up a chart put me off. Luckily there are now oodles of online sites that create the chart for you so long as you know where and when you are born .

This makes astrology a bit easier, but you still need to know how to interpret the chart and what the different planets mean in their various positions. This is where a new bookBe Your Own Astrologer - A step-by-step guide to unlocking the secrets of the signs and planetsstarts from.

I picked the book up at my local library - and as I have said before I am often delighted with the excellent range of mind, body, spirit titles on the shelves at the library in my nearest high street.

Be Your Own Astrologerwas written by Joanna Watters, who is an astrology tutor and writes a regular column for Chat It’s Fate. It is published by Cico Books, which says on its website: "This simple, comprehensive guide to astrology will help you lift astrology out of the simple newspaper columns. Learn birth chart analysis to get the entire context of your unique astrological DNA.

The description continues: "The road to astrology is paved with misconceptions, which are largely down to the fact that the gap between Sun-sign astrology and horoscopy is immense. Whilst the former is kept alive and kicking in media horoscopes, often referred to as 'Your Stars,' the latter is the study of the individual horoscope, also known as the birth chart or the nativity."

Be Your Own Astrologer does start with a description of the characteristics associated with sun signs, but goes on to explain the symbolism and influences of the planets, the houses, ascendants, aspects and how to interpret a chart. It ends with looking at cycles, returns and transits - and explains what those terms mean in a way that is straightforward and made sense to me.

Although the book has lots of nice pictures, it isn't a coffee table book. It really does go into quite a lot of depth and I learnt a lot more than I knew already about astrology through reading it. If anything, towards the end, the book went a little too deep in too few pages for me. I could have done with Joanna taking the explanation of exactly how to read a chart a bit more slowly, but that's probably just my own lack of natural ability with spotting angles on mathematical diagrams. It has spurred me on to study further - although I think I could do with taking proper lessons rather than trying to teach myself just from books.


Links and previous related posts
Be Your Own Astrologer - A step-by-step guide to unlocking the secrets of the signs and planets
http://www.rylandpeters.com/
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2008/02/astrology-for-lovers.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2009/03/bibliotherapy-healing-power-of-books.html