Why I Threw Out the Aspects From the Astrology API and Recalculated Everything Myself
I don't have my own astroprocessor. Computing Mars's position in the sky at a specific second in 1988 is astronomy: NASA ephemerides, precession, nutation. I could have downloaded the data and written the calculation myself, but it's simpler and more reliable to get the positions from an external API. What to do with those positions afterward — that's astrology, and there I only trust myself.
What Comes From the API
The external service receives the date, time, and place of birth and returns a natal chart: positions of all planets (degree, minute, sign), house cusps, aspects between planets, and plenty more.
The subscription costs $49 per month. The API calculates positions and cusps accurately — that's astronomy, hard to get wrong. But everything else is an interpretive layer, and it doesn't work for me.
What Doesn't Work
Orbs — the main problem. An orb is the tolerance: how much an aspect can deviate from the exact angle and still be considered active. The API uses its own orbs, which don't match the ones I was taught. The result — some aspects in the chart are spurious, some important ones are missing.
Fictitious points. The API returned Lilith, but without her aspects. A Lilith–Moon conjunction at 1° is a significant indicator, but the API simply didn't show it. Why — I don't know.
Aspect set. The API may calculate minor aspects that we don't need, or miss important ones due to its own orbs.
In the end, the solution was simple: take from the API only what it calculates reliably — object coordinates and house cusps. Scrap everything else and recalculate.
What Gets Recalculated
Aspects
A custom orb table for each pair of objects and each of the five aspect types. Not a single orb for all conjunctions — but a specific orb for a Sun–Moon conjunction (10°), for a Mercury–Pluto conjunction (5°), for a Mars–Saturn sextile (4°), and so on.
The logic: luminaries (Sun, Moon) are the "loudest" objects, their orbs are wider. Outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) are quieter, orbs are narrower. Lilith has the tightest orbs — only exact aspects matter.
Aspect precision directly affects its weight in the analysis. An aspect with an orb under 1° is an entirely different story than an aspect at the edge of an 8° tolerance.
Combustion
A planet's proximity to the Sun is a separate calculation with three zones. A planet within 2° of the Sun — deep combustion: energy fused with consciousness, invisible from the outside. From 2° to 5° — strong. From 5° to 8.5° — moderate. And a special case — cazimi (less than 17 arc minutes): the planet in the "heart" of the Sun, a unique status.
The API doesn't calculate this at all — yet for interpretation it's critical. A combust Mars and a non-combust Mars are two completely different descriptions.
Dignities
A custom table: which planet in which sign has domicile, exaltation, fall, detriment. This is the standard Western astrology table, but it needs to be explicit in the system, not implied.
In Summary
From the external API we take only coordinates — astronomy. All the astrology (aspects, orbs, combustion, dignities) is calculated within the system using its own tables and rules. This data is fed to the interpreter agent, which generates the energy descriptions.
Could we have done without the external API and calculated positions ourselves? Probably. But $49 per month for guaranteed accurate astronomy is a reasonable price for being able to focus on the astrology.