Astrology and computers

Computers quickly perform planetary and numerical computations that astrologers find useful.

History

In the decade before personal computers became available, astrologers who wanted their charts calculated for them by computer could send payment to Astro Computing Services (ACS) in San Diego and receive printed charts by mail. Founded by 17-year IBM employee Neil Michelsen (5/11/1931 - 5/15/1990) in 1973, ACS published the first computer-generated ephemeris in 1976, "The American Ephemeris", providing an alternative to "Raphael's Astronomical Ephemeris of the Planets' Places" from Britain and the "Golgge Tages-Ephemeride" from Germany. Along with Thomas Shanks, Rique Pottenger, and other members of the ACS staff, Neil produced more than 20 sets of ephemerides and tables, including atlas/time zone change reference books, and tables of houses, asteroids, heliocentric, sidereal, and planetary phenomena.

When personal computers first became available, astrologers and astrology hobbyists were quick to purchase them and to look for astrological/astronomical calculation software. The job of calculating the planet and house positions for someone's place and time of birth from a printed ephemeris and table of houses by hand with pencil and paper or even with an electronic calculator took about one hour. And there was no guarantee that the calculations were made without mistakes.

Astrologer Michael Erlewine was the first astrologer to write complete astrological programs for microcomputers, in 1977, and make them available to other astrologers. In 1978, Erlewine founded Matrix Software. Matrix Software, some 28 years later, is still the largest astrology software company in the U.S.

A number of other astrologers or their spouses wrote programs to quickly do the astronomical calculations on early personal computers. When electronic bulletin board systems became popular with the introduction of 1200 bit/s modems in 1985, astrologers began to search for a downloadable calculation program. To meet this demand, John Halloran wrote and released into the public domain a program first for CP/M computers and then for the IBM PC. The final version of this popular download to be released with source code was version 7, also called ASTROLPC.BAS. A number of astrologers subsequently told Halloran that they had been working on their own programs, but that, after trying his free program, they switched to using it. Similarly, astrologers on the internet sought an astrological calculation program that would work on Unix systems. This demand was met by the open source software program Astrolog, first posted to Usenet in 1991.

"The Astrology Book" (2003) by author James R. Lewis includes the history of several of the major astrology software companies. The Matrix Software company began in 1977 as a magazine that published astrological/astronomical algorithms contributed by hobbyists before anyone realized that computer software would become a business. By 1986, commercial programs included "Blue*Star" from Matrix, "CCRS" and "Nova" from Astrolabe, and "Graphic Astrology" for Macintosh from Time Cycles Research. "The Astrology Book" also profiles Cosmic Patterns Software (1983), Halloran Software (1985), and Esoteric Technologies (1993). During the decade of the 1990s, these companies made the switch from linear menu-driven programs that tried to maximize what could be done in a small amount of memory to object-oriented programs for Windows and the Mac that exploited newer computers' graphic interface and huge RAM memory. The "Solar Fire" program from Esoteric Technologies and the "AstrolDeluxe for Windows" program from Halloran Software both came out in 1992. Halloran's "Astrology for Windows" freeware/shareware program, which is available now in 15 languages, came out in 1994.

Calculation Features

Computer astrology programs today typically do accurate planet position calculations for hundreds or thousands of years, display and print these positions using astrological glyph symbols in graphic charts (which are round wheels in Western astrology, as opposed to Indian or Vedic astrology), save and retrieve individual's data to and from database files, compare the planet positions of different charts to find the astrological aspects between them - such as for compatibility, calculate the dates of important events in the future for a chart, research the saved chart database, and generate colorful geographical maps with lines showing where the planets rise and culminate. Astrology programs usually come bundled with an electronic atlas - putting at the astrologer's fingertips the longitudes, latitudes, and time zone observance histories for thousands of cities and towns.

Interpretation Reports

Some astrology programs additionally draw on databases of interpretations to assemble readable reports that can range from 10 pages to 50 pages in length. A knowledgeable astrologer will typically provide clients with computer-generated interpretation reports as a supplement to a personalized reading which draws upon the astrologer's intuition and ability to synthesize chart factors. The strength of computer-generated reports lies in their ability to narrate in a thorough, methodical way the most important factors or elements with a hopefully state-of-the-art description of what is known about each. If the report creator tries to synthesize together the meaning of two or more placements or aspects, when present in the astrological chart, it greatly expands the size of the written materials on which the program must draw. For example, the 50-page "KidZone with Sun/Moon" report, which starts with a page that synthesizes the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant sign placements, must draw upon 3,776 Kb of written material. The astrologer Grant Lewi pioneered chart synthesis by publishing the book "Heaven Knows What" in the 1930s with 144 Sun/Moon sign delineations and aspect cross-references that he developed on the basis of thousands of questionnaire responses received during his time as an astrology magazine editor in the late 1920s.

Resources

* [http://www.soulhealing.com/astroenc.htm "A Brief History of Astrological Calculation Software"]
* [http://www.soulhealing.com/optimal.htm "The Optimal Use of Astrology Software"]
* [http://www.halloran.com/toc.htm "Astrology Software Cookbook of Tips and Procedures"]
* [http://www.astro.com/swisseph/ The Swiss Ephemeris] is a high precision ephemeris, largely based upon the DE406 ephemeris from NASA's JPL. Includes source code.