The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

So I'm going into the 9th month of my Seeker/Initiation ceremony (a year and a day of study) and here recently I've been paying more attention to the stars, constellations, horoscopes, and planetary alignments. It's not that I disbelieve horoscopes that are found in virtually every newspaper and email-based website, it's just that I would feel more comfortable gaining knowledge with how the solar system moves, and how to act in those situations, you know if, say, Mars decides to get in the way of Jupiter's energy.
I have a handful of knowledge about the personality and views of the planets' respective deities, but I guess what I'm trying to ask now is if there is a chart or a way to map out the cosmos in the way they do in all of those horoscope articles?
Any books, articles, or suggestions on syncing with the flow of the galaxy?

So I'm going into the 9th month of my Seeker/Initiation ceremony (a year and a day of study) and here recently I've been paying more attention to the stars, constellations, horoscopes, and planetary alignments. It's not that I disbelieve horoscopes that are found in virtually every newspaper and email-based website, it's just that I would feel more comfortable gaining knowledge with how the solar system moves, and how to act in those situations, you know if, say, Mars decides to get in the way of Jupiter's energy.
I have a handful of knowledge about the personality and views of the planets' respective deities, but I guess what I'm trying to ask now is if there is a chart or a way to map out the cosmos in the way they do in all of those horoscope articles?
Any books, articles, or suggestions on syncing with the flow of the galaxy?

 
I think what you're looking for is an ephemeris, a book of celestial positions and relationships.  My mother, a professional astrologer, always had a big well-thumbed ephemeris on hand to look things up.  I'm willing to bet you can get a digital one, these days, that would be searchable--in fact, some astrology websites might have one you can use in a pinch.

You might also find books like Planets in Aspect and its companions, Planets in Transit and Planets in Houses, useful for boning up on what all of those newspaper folks are talking about.

maybe I'm just dumb, I can't seem to make heads or tales about that ephemeris website you listed >.<

 
It's just the Wikipedia page on the term.  An ephemeris is a book with tables listing, by date and time, where various celestial bodies will be in the sky and their positions in relation to each other.  It's a sort of astrological almanac.  Before we had fancy computers to do it for us, astrologers drew up charts for various dates--events, births, what have you--by going to the relevant ephemeris, calculating for latitude and longitude, and marking down the listed positions on the chart--and then calculating angles of aspect, etc., to have something to interpret.  Nowadays many astrologers use easier-to-operate digital databases that make the calculations for them, but it's the same thing.
If you want more of the raw information on where a given planet or whatever will be, when, and where all of that astrological data comes from, the ephemeris is the appropriate reference book.

Any books, articles, or suggestions on syncing with the flow of the galaxy?

I found this when I was looking for something similar.http://www.artcharts.com/calendar/ephemeris.html
 
I have not been able to spend the appropriate time to focus on this the way I'd like, but it may help. Also, not sure how good/accurate it is. The months I'd printed out a while back were matching with the astronomical ones then, but I have not cross checked recently. Here is the USNO one http://asa.usno.navy.mil/.

Every time I look at them and realize that I'd have to dedicate at least a few years of study to have it ingrained Lao Tsu comes to mind telling me the master goes everywhere without every leaving his home.