An astrological event represents every phenomenon that we can date and locate with sufficient precision to establish an "astrological chart", knowing that such a chart represents a sky view (or the spatial environment) from the event location.

Scientifically, the only hypothesis or theories that seem to be able to justify the existence of such a connection, except for gravitational and electromagnetic forces the influence of which is generally judged negligible, are currently given by occultism and esotericism. Indeed, in this domain of study and knowledge, one considers the universe like a macrocosmic entity for which each part is interdependent upon others and under a certain reciprocal influence, in the same way that the human body is in relation to its organs and cells. From this point of view, there inevitably exists links of influence and causality between an event and planets that surround him. And it is more likely that the biggest and most evolved entities (the planets) influence the smaller ones (men and the terrestrial phenomena to which they are confronted) than the opposite case, even if one can observe cases where the conjugated influence of many small entities (viruses, for example) can affect the bigger ones in a considerable manner (e.g., by illness or death).

At present, esoteric knowledge has no scientific reliability, being unverifiable information about the nature of the influence of astrological energies, their qualities and properties, and their interactions. To purport to know the subtle cosmic influences of the Sun, the Moon and planets on the Earth and her humanity is considered to be presumptuous. An honest astrologer can only admit the markedly empiric nature of his or her work.

Further, in the areas of psychological or medical diagnosis, an individual with an open scientific mind -- a mind that does not reject a given postulate as being false until having proven to himself its deceptive, untrue or illusory nature -- can rightly consider the validity of astrological theory so long as the astrologer is gifted with a basic level of intuition to palliate his lack of knowledge.

A great many modern disciplines currently considered to be found their roots in the ancient "science" of astrology. In spite of the passage of more than a millennium of "pure scientific thought," it is thought by some that one day astrology will again be acknowledged in its turn as a fully-fledged science as it matures to include new knowledge of astronomy, medicine, psychology and many other.

Initial database

The events are recorded in the "Starlogin.mdb" file, in "Access 97" file format, in the table "event". The other data used in the software (such the orbital elements of asteroids and comets) are stocked in other tables that have explicit names.

The database provided with Starlogin contains a startup table of more than 200 events. Most of the events already in the database concern the birth of notable individuals who often marked their epoch.

In order to protect from possible database manipulation mistakes that he could regret (either during the utilization of the software, either with MicrosoftÒ "Access 97"), the user is invited to regularly make, if possible, a back-up copy of the Starlogin.mdb file.

Existing and new events are accessible from the events window that is opened from the "Events" submenu of the "File" menu or with the "Events" button.

To add a new event

To add an event to the list, in the events window: click on the "New" button; choose the UT or local hour option; fill the empty fields with the right values and keep or modify the fields with a default value; then click on "OK".

Note: use the UT hour only for events of astronomical order or for events for which you have reliable information on the determination of the UT hour according to the legal hour, in the case of epochs where rules were usually complex or badly defined for the country of the event (as in France under the Occupation during World War 2nd).

At the time of the creation of a new event:

• If the entered place and its coordinates are not already in the places table of the database, they are automatically added to it, except if the first character of the complete place name is "_" (underlining) or "~" (tilde).
• If one or several fields remain empty, they are replaced by a string like "<name of the field> unknown 012457434".

To add a picture of a selected event, in the events window, you can:

1. Unlock the "Edit" button.
2. Open " Ms Paint" or other graphic software.
3. With this software, open the wanted picture (find it in the appropriate directory).
4. Select the picture and copy it in the clipboard.
5. Close the graphic software.
6. Click on the picture container field (in the upper left corner of the window).
7. In the "Insert Object" window that appears, select the option "Create New".
8. Then select "Bitmap Picture" or an other graphic documents class ("Corel Photo Paint 6.0 picture", "Corel Draw 6.0 graphic", "Photo Editor 3.0 Photo", "Paint Shop Pro Picture" or an other class about a software installed on your computer).
9. When the selection is done and the "Insert Object" window is closed, a menu appears in the events' window.
10. Click on the "Edit" menu then on the "Paste" submenu to paste the picture of the clipboard into the picture container of the events' window.
11. To validate the picture, click on "OK".

You can also:

1. Unlock the "Edit" button.
2. Drag and drop a picture file (JPEG, GIF, BMP, WMF or EMF, mainly) into the picture container on the upper-right corner of the window.
3. Click on "OK".

You can:

1. Unlock the "Edit" button.
2. open " Ms Paint" or an other graphic software.
3. With this software, open the wanted picture (find it in the appropriate directory).
4. Select the picture and copy it in the clipboard.
5. Close the graphic software.
6. Click on the picture container with the right button of the mouse to make appear a contextual menu with "Modify" and "Open".
7. Click on "Modify".
8. A menu appears in the events' window.
9. Click on the "Edit" menu then on the "Paste" submenu to paste the picture of the clipboard into the picture container of the events' window.
10. To validate the picture, change the event (select the next or the previous one in the list, for example), then come back to the event where the picture has been modified.

You can also:

1. Unlock the "Edit" button.
2. Double-click on the picture container to open it with your default graphic program for the current picture format.
3. Modify the picture in the graphic program.
4. Close the graphic program.
5. Click on "OK".

To modify an event

To modify an event in the events window: unlock the "Edit" button, search for the event in the list (or using the surname list for example), modify the content of one or several fields, and then click on the "OK" button.

To delete an event

To delete an event in the event window: search for it in the event list or using the surname list for example; click on the "Delete" button.

To select an event to use

To select an event in the event window, search for it in the event list or using one of the following lists: surname, other names, event type, entity, or place. Then click on the "Close" button. The selected event data are then used in the astrological calculations and in some astronomical ones.

Filters and statistics

Some statistics about events and their sorting according to certain criteria can be obtained in the corresponding window after click on "Filters and statistics" in the "File" menu:

Number of like birth events, distinct of a birth, or any sorted by signs, ascendants, months, years, places, types of entity or configurations; you can see the result in a graph, by checking the "Graph" check box:

Filters (cumulative or not) of events searching on fields of the window event:

• Surname,
• Other names,
• Entity type,
• Event date,
• Event hour,
• Event name,
• Event latitude,
• Event longitude,
• Description,
• Sign,
• Ascendant,
• Configuration.

proceeding as follows: first select the "new filter" option, the "sign" field, and write "Aries" into "Search filter in the field"; then selects the "add criterion" option, the "event" field, and write "Birth (hour?)" into "Search filter..."; then select the " entity type" field and write "human"; and finally click on the "OK" button to see the results in the grid.

Warning: lower and upper cases are not distinct for these searches and for "human" entity type events will give the same result as for a search for a "Human" entity type event.

The data forms

Some data forms about the events or about other data tables use used in StarLogin can be displayed from "Data forms" in the "Display" menu.

The following forms are available:

Asteroids: Asteroids data (name, number, orbital parameters…)

See: Asteroid position

Comets: Comets data (name, orbital parameters…)

See: Comets position

Stars: data about stars (name, identity, position, magnitude…)

Places: data about places (name, latitude and longitude)

Parts: data about parts (name and planets or point to do the calculation)

Charts: data about the calculated charts

Events: data about events (name and other names of the considered entity…)

Constellations: data about constellations (name, abbreviation, position…)

Number of ascendants: number of events, by ascendant

Number of signs: number of events, by sign

Sort by year: sort the events by year

Sort by month: sort the events by month

For the forms where there is a printing icon, you can print the list and get the following kind of window:

The forms about the asteroids, comets, stars, places and parts can be modified. You can add, delete or modify records as for the "Events" (See: The astrological events). The other forms can only be read.

The data grids

Some data grids about the data tables used in StarLogin can be displayed from the "Grid" button when there is one on the corresponding data form.

A data grid is available for each of the following forms:

• Asteroids
• Comets
• Stars
• Places
• Parts
• Charts
• Events
• Constellations
• Number of ascendants
• Number of signs
• Sort by year
• Sort by month

Other data grids about the "events" are in the "Filters and statistics

The data grid can be used as a usefull tool to select a given record (a given asteroid e.g.) in order to see this record displayed in the corresponding data form. Just click on the grey part of the record line (on the left) to move the selection triangle on this line. Then, if you have not closed the data form, look at it and see the new selected record.

You can sort data according to one of the two following methods:

• either by selecting the column to sort by clicking on the column header.
• either by clicking on the "Sort" button and by entering the sorting instruction into the text field in the appearing dialog box, like in the following example from the stars data grid:

Name DESC, [Identity] ASC, HR ASC: means that you sort the star table beginning with the name of stars in descending order, then following with the identities in ascending order, and finally considering the HR number in ascending order.

You must obey the following syntax rule:

• [Title (header) of the first column to sort] DESC|ASC, [Title of the second one] DESC|ASC, etc.

You can filter data according to some criteria by clicking on the "Filter" button and then by entering the filter instruction in the text box of the appearing dialog box, like in the following examples from the star data grid:

• Enter [Identity] Like "*" & "Aquila" & "*" (or [Identity] Like "*Aquila*" or even [Identity] Like '*Aquila*') to obtain the stars of the Aquila constellation.
• Enter [Identity] Like "*alpha*" to obtain the "alpha" stars.
• Enter [HR] Like "4???" to obtain the stars with a HR number between 4000 and 4999.
• Enter [Right ascension] Like "00h*" to obtain the stars having a less than 1h right ascension.
• Enter Declination Like "-*°*[']40*" all the stars with negative declination respecting the following format: xx°xx'40xxx (for example -18°24'40").
• Enter [photovisual magnitude] >3 to obtain the stars having a more than 3 photovisual magnitude.
• Enter [photovisual magnitude] <=4 to obtain the stars having a less than or equal to 4 photovisual magnitude.
• Enter [Name] Between 'Betelgeuse' And 'Sirius' (or [Name] Between "Betelgeuse" And "Sirius") to obtain all the stars the name of which is between Betelgeuse and Sirius (included), in alphabetic order.

You must obey the following syntax rules:

• The strings must be put in inverted commas (") or apostrophes (').
• The ? character replaces any other one in the same place.
• The * character replaces any character after it.
• A special character such as ', " or ? for example must be put in square brackets if you want to look for it in a string (example: [] to look for in a string).
• replaces any digit in the same place.
• [b-g] replaces any character in the same place, if this one is between b and g.
• [!b-g] replaces any character in the same place, if this one is not between b and g.
• [!0-9] replaces any character in the same place, if this one is not a digit.

You can combine several search criteria like in a[!b-m] to look for strings beginning with the character "a" (upper or lower case), the having a letter (or even a digit) that is not between b and m, and finally a digit (e.g. Ap8, aa0, a99).

The column header must be put in square brackets ([header]), but this is not an obligation when the header contains a single word like "Name" or "Identity" (So, to look for the "alpha" stars, you can also write: Identity Like '*alpha*').

You can apply several successive filters to the same grid like in the following example from the event grid.

Etc…