Without a doubt, computers have been the greatest boon to the practice of astrology in the past 2,000 years. Much as we'd like to focus on the art of interpreting astrological charts, before computers, astrology involved some serious math. Thanks to computers, we can calculate hundreds of intricate, detailed, and above all accurate natal charts, progressed charts, return charts, transit lists and more in the time it would take us to calculate the Ascendant of a chart by hand.

Today, the only astrologers that calculate charts by hand are doing so in order to pass a certification exam. (If you'd like to know how to do the math on your own, or if you're worried about passing the math portion of your exams, check out my math book, Astrology Math Made Easy in the Books section!)

When it comes to astrology software, you have a wide range of choices. There are literally hundreds of astrology programs that calculate charts, and hundreds that will even provide cookbook interpretation reports, too.

I am a die-hard Macintosh user. The only time this has ever created a challenge for me is when it comes to astrology software, because quite frankly, there aren't any professional level astrology programs written for the Macintosh operating system. My personal solution was to buy a copy of Parallel's Desktop for Mac and run Solar Fire. It does everything I need it to do and more, and I really don't like spending more time in Windows than I have to, so I haven't tried any of the demos for the Windows products.

Please bear in mind that this is a very small sample of the astrology software offerings available. I’m not a software reviewer, and I really have no desire to become one. I've used Solar Fire almost exclusively to prepare for my clients since 1998. I don’t even scratch the surface of what it can do. All I care about is that it has the classical astrology and essential dignity features and reports that I need. Other than the Time Cycles programs, I haven't looked at another astrology program in more than 10 years.

Professional Astrology Software

Time Cycles Research: IO Edition, IO Horoscope, IO Forecast, IO Relationship, IO Detective, IO Body and Soul, Star*Sprite, Others

Time Cycles Research offers the only professional astrology programs designed for the Macintosh. I've been a customer of Time Cycles Reasearch since 1993, and I still use their programs for my computer reports, particularly for my monthly forecast reports. As far as the report writer aspects go, these products are excellent. You can use the pre-written reports, or create your own, custom reports.

I've resigned myself to the fact that TSR has no intention of catching up with the OSX development cycle. Some of the basic features that I used to rely on (such as batch printing) have been missing for many years now, despite their promises that the feature would be restored as soon as they caught up to Apple's OS upgrade cycle.

On the plus-side, their chart wheels are extremely attractive, as are the font options. If you don't need professional level features and you can figure out the classical astrology on your own (using an EZ Dignity Card, for example), TCR is the best Mac-native option for astrology software. If you need more professional features—or any classical astrology features at all—you'll probably do what I do: run Windows under a virtualization program (like Parallels Desktop) and use Solar Fire.

Astrolabe: Solar Fire

Solar Fire, by Astrolabe, was named Best Astrological Program of 1995 by American Astrology's software critic, and given exceptionally high marks by The Mountain Astrologer as well. Astrolabe also has an extensive selection of astrology software for Windows, including Solar Spark, Solar Maps and JigSaw. You can visit Astolabe's web page for more information, call them for a catalog at 1-800-843-6682, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information. Solar Fire is the program to use if you are at all interested in Tradtional or Classical astrology. Solar Fire 5, available now, has extensive (and customizable) support for Essential Dignities, Arabic Parts (Greek Lots), Horary strictures, Fixed Stars, and more. This is the program that I use myself; it saves me literally hours in preparation for each client because I'm able to select and customize reports that contain exactly the information that I'm looking for. Many other programs have added classical astrology features; however, I always defer to J. Lee Lehman on matters classical, and she has personally requested, tested, customized and blessed the classical features in Solar Fire. Quite frankly, that's all I need to know.

Matrix Software: Win*Star

For many years, the two professional astrology programs available were Solar Fire and Win*Star. Both are packed with more features and options than any one astrologer would ever need. Personally, I think Win*Star has better graphics than Solar Fire, but it was the feature difference that mattered to me, and when I made my choice several years ago, Solar Fire had classical astrology features, and Win*Star did not. The latest version of Win*Star has some classical features (although from what I can see from the examples on their web site, they're not nearly as useful or as powerful as Solar Fire's). You can download a demo of Win*Star from Matrix's web site, and judge for yourself.

Cosmic Patterns: Kepler

Kepler software is the most recent addition to the mix. Kepler seems to have classical astrology features, although I couldn't find specific evidence of thigns as simple as essential dignity tables listed anywhere. Kepler does, however, have the best graphics of any astrology program I've ever seen. Their Art Wheels are simply stunning. One feature unique to Kepler is the ability to run a chart that includes nothing but Arabic Parts (Greek Lots) and displays them in a chart wheel.