Like most astrologers my age, I originally learned to draw up horoscopes by hand.  Computers quickly changed all that and made it much quicker and easier to calculate charts.  But I could never let go of hand writing the aspects.

I didn’t like how they looked on the print-outs, no matter how many different wheel styles I tried.  And more importantly, they never made much sense to me that way.

So I’ve always used a computer to print out charts, but still keep my colored pencils to draw in the aspects myself.  I figure them out the old-fashioned way, Sun-Moon, Sun-Mercury, Sun-Venus, etc.  As I work through them, I familiarize myself with the chart and discover many connections and patterns that I might have otherwise missed.  When I’m finished, I feel like I have a good impression of the person’s horoscope, its highlights and issues.

Technology facilitates many things for us these days, but may also take away some levels of our experience.  My gut feeling on this was recently confirmed by a NY Times article reviewing studies of handwriting vs. keyboarding.  It appears that more brain circuits are activated with manual writing, increasing mental activity and ideas.  And, as I somehow suspected, handwriting may also help us process new information better.