Because astrological readings can be a chapter in a book alone, for the purposes of this article we're going to do a very simple and stripped down reading. However, this will give you a good foundation for really getting into depth when doing your own reading.

The first thing you have to do is get the subject's birth info. We need the date, time and place of birth. For the purposes of this reading, we'll just pull some info out of thin air. Let's take April 15, 1984, at 8:00 AM in the town of Newark, New Jersey.

We take this information and throw it into our favorite astrological computer program. For this example we'll use Astro123, which is actually a shareware program with some very powerful features.

After throwing in our variables, the program spits out an astrological chart for us containing the position of each planet and some analysis to follow.

Reading the chart itself can be a little difficult at first, but with some practice you'll more than get the hang of it.

The first thing we want to look for is the sun sign. In this case, the sun is in Aries so this person is an Aries. As stated in an earlier article people born between March 21 and April 20 are Aries. Aries people have very strong personalities and are usually natural born leaders. They are very straightforward, which means they can be very blunt. An Aries is the kind of person you want to have as a friend as they will fight to the death to defend your honor.

Looking beyond that, we have the following pieces of information. This person's moon is in Scorpio. This indicates that this person is very secretive and tends to brood in silence over the wrongs that people have done to him or her. These wrongs can be real or imagined. It doesn't matter to a person with their moon in Scorpio. Other planets are in other signs but we concentrate on the moon because since it is the body that is closest to the Earth it is the one with the most influence on us.

Then there are the planets as they fall into certain houses. Remember, there are 12 houses and 8 planets plus the sun and moon. How each of these bodies fall into each house affects how we deal with the various aspects of our lives.

For example, this person born on this day has the moon in their 5th house. Taking what we know about each of these we can make some generalizations about this person. The moon is what represents our feminine side. The 5th house is the house of creativity. A person with the moon in their 5th house indicates that emotions may get in the way of creativity. This is not a good thing for someone who dreams of being an artist. Unfortunately, many of histories most tormented artists had the moon in their 5th house at birth. That is why so many ended up as suicides or going mad.

Then we have the aspects that we discussed in an earlier article. These are the things that provide us with the challenges in our lives. One of the strongest aspects in this person's chart is Mars being square to Neptune. In this case it is a perfect square at exactly 90 degrees. Squares are the most challenging of aspects. In this case, Mars square to Neptune indicates a person who fights for the underdog. Many rights activists have Mars square to Neptune. These people are constantly challenged and their lives are never easy when fighting for the rights of others.

These few pieces of information are but a fraction of a person's astrological analysis. You can see now why astrology is such a complex science and a lot more than just predicting the future.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Astrology