About the Academy

The Academy exists to teach traditional Western astrology thoroughly enough to be practised. That is a narrower aim than it sounds. A great deal of astrological instruction stops at description — what a placement means, what a sign is like — and leaves the student unable to answer a question. We teach the part that comes after: how to weigh conflicting testimonies, how to decide which of them governs, and how to say so in plain language to the person in front of you.

What we mean by traditional

We work from the material that was standard practice from the Hellenistic period to the seventeenth century, and from the translations and editions that have made it available again. In practice this means a chart is read through:

• Essential dignity — the condition of a planet in its own right, before anything is said about aspects;
• Accidental condition — house placement, speed, phase, and the states of combustion, besiegement and aid that decide whether a planet can act at all;
• Reception and aspect — who is willing to receive whom, which is what turns a geometrical contact into a result;
• Timing — profections, directions, revolutions and firdaria, applied in an order rather than in parallel.

None of this excludes what has been learned since. It does mean that the classical framework comes first and the later material is read against it, rather than the other way round.

Our objectives

1. To present the applications of astrological knowledge as one coherent practice rather than as separate specialities.
2. To ground study in the history of the subject, so that a contemporary technique can be seen for what it is — an addition, a simplification, or a misreading.
3. To place ethics beside technique. A consultation touches health, money and family; the skill to speak about them responsibly is part of the training, not an afterthought.
4. To contribute to a practice of astrology that is structured, well grounded, and able to explain itself.

How the teaching is arranged

The main course runs over three years and covers interpretation, the astronomy and calculation a practitioner actually needs, and consultation skills. Around it we hold seminars and workshops on single subjects — a technique, a class of chart, a difficulty — which can be taken on their own. The teaching page lists what is currently offered and the formats each subject can take.

Beyond the classroom

Teaching is only half of the work. The Academy publishes reference tables and articles, maintains a journal of predictive astrology, and runs research projects that depend on collected data — house systems, term tables, rectification by the animodar. Students and practitioners are welcome in all of them.