The stage for any play includes backgrounds which gives us the "set" within which all the action will take place.  The Natural Zodiac is the background for the natal chart.  All of the characters and points in your natal chart relate to the background of the Natural Zodiac.  Astrologer's Cheat Sheet which you will use to learn about the background setting for your natal chart. I suggest you download it saving it to your desktop for easy reference and  print at least 2 copies, one of which is in color. It will be most helpful if you have a notebook or folder to keep yourself organized.   Another link you will spend a lot of time at is here Bob Mark's Astrology . 

 I am also going to ask that during these lessons, you Contact: ty_gereye@yahoo.com  and please always include your lesson number and or question in the subject line. You will note on these lesson pages that I am trying to use available internets sites to make the information accessible to everyone.  This is not always possible, a few  books I will refer to readily are:

 Astrology for Beginner's by William W. Hewitt   ISBN 0-87542-307-8

 The House Book by Stephanie Camilleri  ISBN 1-56718-108-2

  Houses of the Horoscope An Introduction by Alan Oken ISBN 0-89594-932-6

If you search on the internet, or have a good local library you may find these books so that you can read them. They are wonderful informative books and I hope at some point you can add them to your library.

Lesson 1  Setting the Stage

Take a good look at the Astrologer's Cheat Sheet .  A lot of knowing about astrology is memorizing, and you will need to memorize the information from this sheet.  Here is a list you will need to know:
1. The colors of the signs in the same elements or triciplities.
2. The glyphs for each sign around the chart.
3. The glyphs for the ruling planets around the chart.
4. The keywords for each house, sign planet as they appear.
5.  The lower left corner uses a term of Quadruplicities. You will learn more about these later.

As we work with this chart it will become easier for you to remember all of this and more. I do want you to know that within this chart, we would place earth in the center of the chart. This is our "view" of the Zodiac based on geocentric Astrology.  If we were on one of the planets, our view would be a lot different!

The first house on the left side of the chart is labled the Ascendant.  I want you to add the direction of East to your copy of the cheat. For new students you should also add the time 9:00.  Directly across from the first house of Aries is Libra. This is the Descendant, add the direction of West here and the time 3:00.

Now, you will look at the bottom of the page, the fourth house is the I.C. on the sheet. This is abbreviated for the Imum Coeli or sometimes called the nadir.  This is the direction of North and the time of 6:00. Directly above this section is the Midheaven. The Midheaven is the highest point of any chart and receives special attention. Another reference is the Medium Coeli. The direction here is South and the time 12:00.

Another note that you should be aware of is that the chart shows us equal houses. This may be the only chart you will ever see like this, as most of our natal charts are not equal. There are computer programs where we can set the chart to be equal, however using this system does not allow for interceptions which sometimes occur. You will learn more about this term later.

If you sit back and take a look at the times you have written on your copy of the Astrologers Cheat Sheet, it will resemble the face of a clock.  Fill in the rest of the times for each house between those you have already done.


Continuing with Lesson One here is more Information for you.

Now to attend to a bit of Jupiter's legal business.  I do not mind if you share these lessons if you give the link out from the web page.  However, its come to my attention that many things I put up here and a few that we discuss on Astro102 are appearing on other lists with no credit given to the hard work or ideas put forth by myself and or other members.  This is not something to be taken lightly, it is becoming common place to do this and its not right. If it is your work or ideas you would want the credit as well. Copyrights have meaning and I appreciate your cooperation in this matter in respect to any one's newsletters via email, quotes etc. that you want to use!