Jane Struthers - Write Your Own Horoscope: Follow the Stars, Design Your Destiny

Youll learn how to create tailor-made predictions about your future, based on the planets making contact (transits) with your birth chart. Although you may long to dive straight into this area of the book, your results will be more accurate if you first use Write Your Own Horoscope to explore and interpret your chart.

Understanding your birth chart will give you a good idea of how youll react to the transits coming up for you. Thats because a natal planet (a planet in the sign and degree it occupied when we were born) affects us both externally and internally, so the way your best friend reacts to a particular planet may be quite different from your response. To give you an example, if your chart shows that youre shy, sensitive, are happiest at home and that you hesitate to take risks, a transit from Jupiter (the planet of expansion, which includes travel and education) is unlikely to inspire you to splurge on an airline ticket so you can explore a remote part of the world. Instead, you might decide to learn something new at home, or your life might be broadened when you get to know someone from another culture or country.

What Do You Need to Use This Book?

Very little! Armed with your birth details, you can consult a free astrology website, which will calculate your chart. Alternatively, you can invest in an astrology computer program. Then just print out the chart, ready to analyze it with the help of this book. When you want to forecast the future, you can use the website or program to calculate the transits and refer to this book to interpret the results.

Getting It Right

Maybe youre thinking that you could find a website that does all of this for you? The snag is that some sites arent very accurate, only give sketchy information, or focus on your Sun sign rather than your entire chart. The benefit of this book is that its crammed with detailed and accurate information, focusing on the most important areas of our lives: love and sex; work and career; money; relationships and family; and how to harness your potential. There are also hints and tips throughout to guide you every step of the way into the fascinating world of astrology.

How to Write Your Own Horoscope

You can write your own horoscope in two ways. The first is to analyze your own birth chart to explore what it reveals about you. The second is to use it to look into your future over different time frames.

Writing a Daily Horoscope

If you want to see whats coming up for you on a specific day, use an astrology program that allows you to select the transits for that particular day. Consider each transit in turn and dont ignore lunar transits because theyll show how youll be feeling and reacting to whats going on around you.

Writing a Weekly Horoscope

You need to consider every area of your chart affected by transits, so you can get an overall impression of what the week will bring. Note any New or Full Moons because theyll add emotional colour to the week. New Moons signal the start of something new, according to where they fall in your natal chart. Full Moons signify endings.

Writing a Monthly Horoscope

Look more broadly at the transits occurring during this time. Start by interpreting the transits from the slowest-moving planets. Note the sign of the transiting Sun because that will tell you which area of your birth chart is being activated by the Suns energy.

Writing an Annual Horoscope

You cant possibly interpret every transit during an entire year, so you need to take an overall look at what your future holds. Start by noting any transits from Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter. These move slowly so create a long-lasting influence. You can also cast a special chart, called a solar return, set for your birthday, that will show you whats coming up over the course of the year.

The nuts and bolts of astrology

If youre wondering how astrology works, this chapter will give you a simple explanation. Although you can still write your own horoscope without this knowledge, it will provide a good framework for understanding the roles that the planets and zodiac play in your life.

The Solar System

Here we are on Planet Earth, spinning through space, orbiting the centre of our solar system: the Sun. Solar means related to the Sun, and the Earth, in common with the other planets, revolves around it.

THE PLANETS

Astrology focuses on the movement of ten planets. You may think there are only seven Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune but the Sun and Moon both count as planets in astrology, even though astrologers know that the Sun is a star and the Moon is a satellite of the Earth. And although Pluto was demoted to the status of a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006, theres no doubting the fact that hes anything but a dwarf planet when you consider the influence he has on us astrologically.

Although we know that the Earth is a planet, we dont usually include it in an astrology chart because that is set using Earth as our vantage point.