The Method
How we do it, shown in full.
Most astrology apps hand you a paragraph and ask you to trust it. We would rather show you the machinery. This page is the whole of it: what we compute, the rules we apply, where the old masters disagreed, and what we will never claim.
Every reading in Astro Assist starts with real astronomy. When the app says the Moon is void of course at 2:14 pm, that time came out of an astronomical calculation for your coordinates, not a database of horoscope text. The whole engine is deterministic: the same question, moment and place always produce the same answer, and every verdict lists the exact factors that produced it, point by point. There is no random number anywhere in this product, and no AI invents a planetary position. If we cannot compute it, we do not say it.
Planetary positions
The ecliptic longitude of the Sun, Moon and planets at any moment, computed from astronomical algorithms accurate to about an arcminute. A planet moves an arcminute in under a minute of clock time, far finer than anything that changes an interpretation.
Speeds and retrogrades
Each planet's daily motion, derived numerically, which tells us when a planet is retrograde, stationing, fast or slow.
The Moon's condition
Phase and illumination, sign, speed, the void-of-course windows (the stretch after the Moon's last contact before it changes signs), and the Via Combusta.
Planetary days and hours
Sunrise and sunset for your exact coordinates, the unequal hours between them, and their classical rulers in the Chaldean order.
Essential dignities
The full Ptolemaic tables: rulership, exaltation, detriment, fall, triplicity, Egyptian terms and Chaldean faces. This is the precise, degree-by-degree measure of every planet's strength that classical astrology is built on.
Significators
Every matter has a ruling planet and every action has a natural agent. When you ask about money, we check Venus. When you are about to sign, we check Saturn. The engine scores the actual condition of the planets that govern your specific question.
The angles
The Ascendant and Midheaven of the moment, computed from sidereal time and your coordinates, so we know which planets stand on the angles where their influence shows most.
Fixed stars
The great named stars (Regulus, Spica, Algol, Aldebaran, Antares and others), precessed to the current year, checked against the Moon and your matter's ruler.
Sect: day and night
Whether a chart belongs to the Sun or the stars, computed from the Sun's true altitude at your coordinates. By day Jupiter helps most and Mars bites hardest; by night Venus and Saturn trade those roles. It reshapes every reading, and almost no app computes it.
Eclipses
Every solar and lunar eclipse, found by real eclipse search. Classical doctrine says never to begin important matters in an eclipse's shadow, so any election within days of one takes the penalty, by name and date.
The Lots
The ancient Arabic Parts: Fortune, Spirit and Eros, computed with the sect-reversed formulas (Ascendant plus Moon minus Sun by day, reversed by night) and placed in your houses.
Profections and returns
Your year, the old way: each birthday advances the chart one house, and that house's ruler becomes Lord of the Year. We compute the house, the lord, its live condition, and your next solar return to a hundredth of a degree.
Declination and out of bounds
The second dimension: every body's distance north or south of the celestial equator, the parallels between charts, and the planets that wander past the Sun's own limits, out of bounds.
Dated transits ahead
Not 'Saturn will square your Sun' but the exact dates it goes exact, found by root-finding across the year ahead, including each pass of a retrograde loop.
Two charts together
Synastry: every meaningful cross-contact between two birth charts, weighed on the traditional tables into four separate threads (attraction, harmony, endurance, conversation), with the exact degrees shown.
The sky you dreamed under
Dreams are read against the real Moon of the night, not a symbol dictionary: her sign, her phase, whether she was void of course, and how she touched your natal Moon, Neptune and twelfth house. When the night was quiet, we say so plainly. The honest floor under any dream.
Your birth chart
Natal positions, your Ascendant when birth time is known, and the day's real transits against them, with historical timezone resolution for the birth moment.
The interpretive rules are not ours. They are the working doctrine of electional and horary astrology as it was actually practiced, taken from the books astrologers still train on. When you ask for a launch date, the engine favors a waxing Moon, avoids her void hours, checks the dignity and freedom of the planet ruling your matter, looks for the benefics on the angles and the malefics off them, and weighs the planetary day and hour. When you ask a yes-or-no question, it assigns significators from the houses, looks for an applying aspect between them, reads reception for willingness, checks whether a third planet translates or collects their light (the old doctrine of the go-between), and lets the Moon carry or kill the matter, exactly as the tradition prescribes. When you lay two charts together, the cross-contacts are weighed thread by thread on the same published tables astrologers train on.
William Lilly, Christian Astrology (1647). The foundational English text of horary judgment: significators, perfection, the considerations before judgment, the void-of-course Moon.
John Frawley, The Horary Textbook. The clearest modern statement of traditional horary method, including reception as the measure of willingness and desire.
Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos. The classical source of the dignity tables and aspect doctrine the engine implements.
Guido Bonatti, Liber Astronomiae. Medieval electional and horary doctrine, including the treatment of the Moon as the carrier of every election.
The Hellenistic tradition. Whole-sign houses, the twelve topical houses as a complete map of life, planetary days and hours, the doctrine of sect, annual profections and the Lots, recovered in modern translations of Valens and his peers.
Every candidate moment starts at a neutral 55 and earns or loses points from named factors. Nothing is hidden: the same factors you see under a verdict are the ones that moved the number. A real example, scored the way the engine does it:
Worked example · “sign the partnership agreement”
- Neutral starting point55
- ▲ Waxing Moon, the classic tide for things meant to grow+10
- ▲ Venus, ruler of partnership, exalted and free+9
- ▲ Day of Venus: theme and time agree+6
- ▲ Jupiter trine the Moon, applying+7
- ▼ Saturn, agent of signatures, in fall and working uphill−4
- ▼ Mercury retrograde: contracts get revisited−15
Verdict for this moment68
A decent day pulled down by a retrograde Mercury. The engine would keep scanning and usually finds a cleaner one nearby. Every factor above appears in the app exactly like this, with its reasoning spelled out.
Astrologers have argued about details for two thousand years. An honest engine does not pretend otherwise. Where the tradition splits, we pick one documented convention, apply it consistently, and tell you what it is:
Orbs
Traditions disagree on how close an aspect must be to count. We use moiety-style orbs scaled per planet for horary, and tighter fixed orbs for electional scanning. Documented, consistent, and deliberately conservative.
House system
Whole-sign houses for horary and topical work, the oldest and most reproducible system. We state this rather than silently mixing systems.
Reception
Some schools read reception as desire, others as mere willingness. We read reception by domicile or exaltation as genuine liking, and minor receptions as openness only.
The void-of-course Moon
Lilly allowed exceptions in four signs. We apply the plain rule and soften the judgment rather than ignore it, and we say so when it matters.
Compatibility honesty
Synastry apps love a single big percentage. We refuse: two people are not one number. You get four separate threads with the exact contacts behind each, because that is what the tradition actually supports.
Engine precision
We currently compute with a respected open astronomical engine accurate to about an arcminute, and the production roadmap includes the Swiss Ephemeris, the same arcsecond engine used by professional software. No interpretation in this app changes between those two precisions.
Astrology is a tradition of meaning, not a laboratory science, and we will not dress it up as one. Astro Assist computes the sky with scientific precision and applies the classical rules with care, and what you do with the reading remains yours. We do not predict fixed fates. We do not replace lawyers, doctors, advisors or your own judgment, and the law and your duties always outrank the stars. We will not sell fear, we will not time harm for anyone, and someone who arrives in a dark hour gets pointed to real human help, never to a chart. What we promise is narrower and, we think, more valuable: real mathematics, the tradition faithfully applied, every verdict showing its work, and an honest tone about what a sky can and cannot tell you.
The engine ships with an audit harness, eighty checks and growing, run against the production code itself: the dignity tables are verified against the classical texts (Jupiter exalted in Cancer, Saturn in fall in Aries, and so on), computed positions are checked against the known sky, the Lot formulas reverse correctly by sect, the solar return lands within a hundredth of a degree, the eclipse search finds the real eclipses of the coming year, the safety screen is tested against both harmful questions and innocent idioms, and every scoring path is exercised end to end. The current sky shown across the app, down to the ticker on the front page, is the same live computation, so you can verify us against any ephemeris or astronomy app you trust, any day, for free.