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AstroTally is a little astrology program I wrote in JavaScript. I used to have it under the GNU General Public License, but as of 7:09 PM, Oct. 13, 2007, I've placed it (and all the previous versions, despite the fact that the GNU license is still included in their zip files, since I didn't feel like updating them all) in the public domain, so you can do whatever you want with it, including make heaps of money with it somehow.
If you can figure out how to make heaps of money off of AstroTally, you're probably a genius and deserve heaps of money. :-) If you do manage to make money from this somehow, I would appreciate it if you would donate or microdonate to me, and/or buy products and/or services from me.
I still plan on developing AstroTally much further, and I will probably even switch programming languages. I'm most likely to use a combination of PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript, although I had considered Perl, and the J programming language, and even foolishly considered sticking with only JavaScript.
Being written in JavaScript, AstroTally should hopefully work with any modern web browser, but, it was developed using Internet Explorer 6 and I didn't go out of my way to make sure it worked as well in other browsers, so if it's not working, bear that in mind. Future, not-yet-developed versions will likely end up working best with my favorite web browser, Opera.
Zip File Contents
The contents of the AstroTally_v1_8.zip (71 KB) file:
- AstroTally_v1_8.html
- AstroTally-FormGenerator_v3.html - This program is to make it easier to input your own chart data into the program.
- index.shtml - This web page. Actually, an earlier version of it, since I didn't feel like updating this zip file as well as this page.
- astrotally.pl - a script I wrote in Perl for converting Astrolog 5.40 output to HTML forms useable in AstroTally. It's a faster alternative to using the AstroTally Form Generator - if you can get Perl to work, that is.
- astrotally72.gif - The tacky logo image.
- colorbar.jpg - The guide to what the colors mean in aspect tables.
- red.jpg - The background image.
- a.css - the CSS stylesheet for this page, with no tabs or paragraphs breaks.
- a-unsquished.css - the unsquished, more nicely-formatted version of that file.
- And the following source code files:
alert.js - aspecttables.js - basicoutput.js - calcaspectratings.js - calcaspects.js - categoryfactorlineages.js - categoryfactortables.js - checkboxes.js - complexoutput.js - constants.js - dataretrieval.js - font-astrofontashs.js - font-starfont.js - getobjrulers.js - index.js - miscfunctions.js - objectconverters.js - objects.js - outputwindow.js - ratingindexaspecttables.js - stringconverters.js - test.js - variables.js
Important Web Links
- http://www.sternton.com/astrofonts.htm - The site you'll need to visit to get "StarFont Sans" and "AstroFont © ASHS", the two astrological fonts useable in AstroTally.
- http://astroblahhh.com/astrology/software/astrotally/index.shtml - This page.
Old Versions
Here are all the previous versions of AstroTally:
- All Old Versions in One Zip File (231 KB)
- AstroTally_v1.zip(38 KB)
- AstroTally_v1_1.zip (38 KB)
- AstroTally_v1_2.zip (51 KB)
- AstroTally_v1_5.zip (52 KB)
- AstroTally_v1_7.zip (54 KB)
Release Notes
v1.0 2/19/2004 (Feb. 19, 2004)
AstroTally is this JavaScript thingamabob I made, which should work in any JavaScript-capable web browser (unless you have pop-up blocking turned on). It basically just takes the data in a chart - planets', houses', and other points' signs, degrees, minutes and house locations - and spits out lots of nice little tables and things.
It also assigns numbers to aspects, which are supposed to represent the aspects' significance; I call these numbers, mystifyingly enough, significance ratings. (Or merely, aspect ratings). Here is a page which explains how the significance ratings are calculated, and contains another JavaScript calculator thingamabob: http://astroblahhh.com/astrology/aspect_rating_table.shtml
The ultimate purpose of AstroTally is to make it possible to boil down in the most objective manner possible - without reliance on a human being's subjective, intuitive, and possibly rule-bending and/or outright wrong judgments and approximations - just how (for instance) "Jupiterian", "Plutonian", or whatever-ian a chart, or a given factor in a chart, is.
It doesn't quite do that yet, though, since I don't know what the most sensible way to do that would be. For instance, I'm not sure how much weight a sun in Scorpio, sun in the 8th house, or sun ruled by a planet in Scorpio or by a planet strongly aspected by Pluto should have compared to a sun square Pluto with a 77.8 aspect rating (aka a 2 degree orb).
I don't feel like describing in detail everything the program does, and it mostly doesn't really need explanation - but for an example of one of the program's currently functional features, it will print everything you (or rather, I) might possibly want to look at for how Plutonian something is (or, in the jargon of this program, how many Category 8 factors something has), and let you, the user, puzzle over it.
For instance, if you want to look at Category 8 factors for Eleanor Roosevelt's sun, it would tell you:
- Whether her sun is in Scorpio or the 8th house.
(It's not.) - Whether her sun is in aspect to Pluto.
(There's a sesquisquare with a 37.777777777777764 rating.) - Whether it's in aspect to planets, or even house cusps, in Scorpio.
(There's a semisextile with Mars in Scorpio with a 64.44444444444443 or 1° 4' orb - though, I don't actually really know if this would mean she's supposed to be more Scorpionic, all other things being equal, than a Libra with their sun in no hard aspect to a planet in Scorpio. There's also a semiquintile with a 21.666666666666664 rating with the House 12 cusp in Scorpio - but I would be doubtful about considering an aspect from a house cusp to be particularly meaningful, especially given the indeterminacy of where non-angular cusps are located depending on what house system you use. But maybe an aspect from an angle might be meaningful - like if she had Scorpio rising square her sun or something?) - And whether it's in aspect to planets in the 8th house, or to the 8th house cusp.
(There's a septile with a 43.333333333333336 rating with Jupiter in the 8th; and she also has a square with a 69.07407407407406 rating to her Placidus 8th house cusp. Once again, though, I'm doubtful about whether these factors would or should be thought to make the overall evaluation of her sun more Scorpionic/Plutonian.)
Beyond that, it would give you all the above Category 8 details for the ruling planets (by sign) of her sun. (As a note, sign rulers in the program are referred to as parents or ancestors; house rulers as landlords). Her sun in Libra is ruled by Venus in Virgo, which is in turn ruled by, and in fact in "mutual reception" with, Mercury in Libra.
The program would tell you that her Venus is square Pluto with a 78.51851851851852 rating, sextile her Scorpio 11th house cusp with a 82.38095238095238 rating, square her Scorpio 12th house cusp with a 25.37037037037038 rating, conjunct Jupiter in the 8th with a 50.666666666666664 rating, and semisquare her 8th house cusp with a 9.44444444444444 rating; and that her Mercury is trine Pluto with a 89.44444444444444 rating, semisquare Mars in Scorpio with a 33.88888888888888 rating, semisextile her Scorpio 11th house cusp with a 26.111111111111107 rating, sextile her Scorpio 12th house cusp with a 18.095238095238095 rating, semiquintile Jupiter in the 8th with a 31.66666666666666 rating, and quintile her 8th house cusp with a 76.66666666666667 rating.
So, though perhaps not all of the preceding facts would (or should) mean anything to you as far as how Plutonian her sun is, the program would present them to you (in, of course, a much more organized format than the paragraph above :-) ), without your having to do all the work of looking for these factors yourself.
There are still a lot of features that could be built into this program, but, I have little clear idea yet of what to implement and how, and don't think I'll be finishing anything in the near future, so I thought I'd best just release it now and let some other folks fool with it.
The default chart data used in the program belongs to Eleanor Roosevelt, born October 11, 1884 at 11:00 AM in New York, New York (74:0W, 40:42N). (Here's a copy-and-pasteable Astrolog command line: -qa October 11 1884 11:00 EST 74:0W 40:42N ) The house cusps used are Placidus.
This program is open source and released under the GNU General Public License.
v1.1 2/24/2004 (Feb. 24, 2004)
The only update is to the AstroTally Form Generator utility, which is now v2.0 and is rather improved.
v1.2 3/8/2004 (March 8, 2004)
The AstroTally program itself is now v1.2. The output is a lot more colorful and pretty to look at now. :-) Although I suppose some of the colors might clash horribly. :-)
It has the nifty new feature of aspect tables with cells of different colors depending on the aspects' ratings, making it easier to tell at a glance which are the most significant aspects.
I also fixed some weird glitch I noticed with the "All Category Factors for All Planets" feature, where the links it would print would sometimes link to the wrong place on the page. And, I made it so the "Category Factor Tables" feature now outputs links.
And, I tweaked the formatting with the data forms a bit, since I noticed on a Windows ME computer the forms looked wrong. I slightly tweaked the AstroTally Form Generator to account for that problem as well, so it is now v3. I would've made it v2.1, since it was such a minor change, but Tripod complained about the file name length.
v1.5 5/12/2004 (May 12, 2004)
The AstroTally program is now v1.5. The program now prints aspect tables organized by rating, and the tables printed using the "Planets' Category Factors", "All Category Factors for Planets" or "All Category Factors for All Planets" buttons are now differently (and hopefully better) formatted.
Also fixed a small bug where the program wouldn't notice that some things that are exactly 180° from each other were in an opposition aspect.
v1.7 7/13/2004 (July 13, 2004)
The AstroTally program is now v1.7. The interface looks a little more organized, and there are some new options, and some of the old ones were renamed to be a bit more memorable, if not understandable. Plus, the program should start up a bit faster.
Also, here's a new little introduction to AstroTally which basically reiterates (or perhaps even makes more clear) the basic purpose of it. Thanks, E., for writing me a message on the topic of astrology which inspired me to write this.
I've thought for a long time that astrology is a way too hazy business, and a really useful thing to have might be a completely objective, automated way of processing the data in a chart - something like, assigning each chart factor a rating for importance, organizing similar factors into categories, and somehow deriving from this a nice, clear overview of the relative significance and insignificance of various categories of factors in a chart.Which is basically the purpose of this little JavaScript computer program, AstroTally, I wrote for fun... but it doesn't really do the "nice, clear overview" part yet to my satisfaction. :)
But I do think such a program is necessary, because, although a human being can get a fair, rather foggy idea of the most important factors and themes in a chart just by looking at it, they'll inevitably overlook some things because there are just so many of them. A computer program which processes everything in a chart according to fixed, unbendable rules isn't going to overlook or exaggerate anything.
This is important, because claims (or hypotheses) like "people with 'a lot' of factors of a particular category in their chart tend to be very (whatever)" are impossible to test without some standardized system of determining what constitutes "a lot" of factors of a particular category.
As for why I'm so interested in categories of factors rather than just single factors... one of my theories (very tentative :) ) is that any given single factor - like someone's sun sign, or a single aspect, or whatever - isn't usually going to amount to much of importance in isolation. (And if it's true, as I think I recall having heard once, that the Gauquelin studies' results were only very marginally, even if still significantly, above chance, that would seem to bear that part of my theory out). My feeling is that the way any single factor might play out could easily be cancelled out or obscured by other, stronger factors or combinations of factors.
But I think perhaps the behavior of a person with many compounded chart factors of approximately the same meaning perhaps might correlate very strikingly to astrological claims. And so I wonder if the folks in Gauquelin's study with successful careers, who had Mars conjunct the ASC or MC, had many other factors, in addition to the Mars thing, indicating a very driven nature - and perhaps an absence of many factors indicating a more lackadaisical nature... :)
My hope is that AstroTally will eventually be helpful in making these types of things obvious and clear in a fast, easy, automated, and most important of all, standardized and consistent fashion.
v1.8 4/14/2005 (April 14, 2005)
Probably the most exciting part about this update is the fact that AstroTally can now use some astrology fonts, and thus actually display astrological glyphs. The fonts it can use are "StarFont Sans" and "AstroFont © ASHS", and as of this writing, they are available for download at http://members.fortunecity.de/all/info/astrofonts.htm.
By default the program will use "StarFont Sans", but you can change that by fooling with the source code of the AstroTallyv1_8.html file. The stuff you need to fool with is near the top of the program - brief instructions are provided.
Less excitingly, the program now has buttons to display tables of planets' sign and house rulers. A couple buttons and things were renamed and shuffled about. Fixed assorted small bugs - a small problem where if the aspect rating was "null" some kinds of output wouldn't work, and a slight bug where sometimes the contents of a house wouldn't be printed. Also fixed another bug related to the opposition aspect, and hopefully didn't create any new bugs in the process.
The program's source code is now spread out over multiple files, instead of all crowded into one file. This makes it a lot easier for me to edit.