The Inner Sky

Sinderella's note

Steven Forrest's *The Inner Sky* is the astrology starter Sinderella hands to anybody who asked what their rising sign actually means and stayed for the answer. Forrest writes evolutionary astrology — soul-purpose-and-karma flavor, but written like an English professor, not a yoga teacher. *Madonn',* it's good.

The long version

Steven Forrest's *The Inner Sky* — first published in 1988, regularly reissued — is the cleanest entry point into modern astrology that Sinderella has found. Forrest writes what he calls *evolutionary astrology* — a soul-purpose-and-karma framework — but his prose is *not* yoga-teacher prose. He writes like an English professor: clear, structured, occasionally funny, never woo-woo. The book walks the reader through the planets, the houses, the signs, and the aspects in plain language, then teaches you to read your own birth chart in the back third. By the end you can actually read a basic chart — yours, your sister's, the new person you're seeing. Forrest has written several follow-up books — *The Book of Pluto, The Book of Neptune, Yesterday's Sky* — but *The Inner Sky* is the one to start with. Pair it with a free online birth chart from astro.com (you'll need your time and place of birth). Sinderella keeps her copy at the folding table next to the tarot books — she uses both at once when somebody comes in confused about what they actually are. Saint Catherine of Siena (the mystic) for the chart. Saint Augustine (the lapsed-and-returning) for the seeker.