Reddit mentions of The Modern Text-Book of Astrology

>Many persons find it difficult to reconcile belief in the "ruling of the stars" with belief in free will. At first sight it appears unjust and arbitrary that certain lines of life—even vicious ones—should be indicated by the "rulers of nativities" as the only lines in which the "native" will prosper; and they ask incredulously whether it can be rationally supposed that the "accident" of the day and hour of birth, is, by Divine Providence, permitted to direct and dominate the whole career of an intelligent and responsible being. But this objection is superficial, and the result of incomplete knowledge. For the difficulties of astrological science, if viewed in the light of Karmic Predestination or Fate, not only disappear, but give place to the unfoldment of a most lucid and admirable system of responsible causation. There is but one hypothesis capable of solving the enigma of Fate, and that hypothesis is a doctrine common to all the greater schools of thought—Vedic, Buddhist, Kabbalistic, Hermetic, Platonic,—the hypothesis, to wit, of multiple existences, or the doctrine of the Metempsychosis. Destiny, in the view of these philosophies, is not arbitrary, but acquired. Every man makes his own Fate; and nothing is truer than the saying that "Character is Destiny. For that which in one existence is Will, becomes in the next Fate. By the hands of men themselves, then, are their natal lines cast, whether in pleasant and virtuous, or in painful and vicious paths. For in what manner soever an ego conducts itself in one existence, by that conduct, by that order of thought and habit it builds for itself its destiny in a future existence. And the ego is enchained by these pre-natal influences, and by them irresistibly compelled into a new nativity at the time of such conjunction of planets and signs as oblige it into certain courses, or incline it strongly thereto. Hence "Destiny," or Karma, is said by Hermes to "determine the position of the stars." And if the course so defined be evil, and the ruling such as to favour chiefly vicious propensities, the afflicted ego, even though assuredly reaping the just effects of its own demerit, is not left without a remedy. For the ego may oppose its will to the stellar ruling, and heroically adopt a course opposed to the direction of the natal influences. Thereby, indeed, the ego may bring itself under a curse for such period as those influences have power, for, as Hermes tells us, "no man can escape from Destiny, nor preserve himself from the action of the stars"; but at the same time, the will thus exerted will reverse the planetary affinities acquired, and give a new "set" to the current of the Karmic predestination, so that the ruling signs of the next nativity will be favourable to virtue and to a loftier state. (The Virgin of the World, trans. by Anna Kingsford, pp. 142–43)

> This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars: as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2)

> Inasmuch as a man identifies himself with his physical self and the physical world about him, so he is indissolubly part of it and subject to its changing pattern as formed by the planets in their orbits.

>Only by the recognition of that which he senses as greater than himself can he attune himself to what is beyond the terrestrial pattern. In this way, though he may not escape terrestrial happenings, by the doctrine of free and willing ‘acceptance’, he can ‘will’ that his real self is free in its reaction to them. (Margaret E. Hone, The Modern Text-Book of Astrology, p. 17)

Image: Lynn Bywaters, Zodiac Sun.

The Modern Text Book of Astrology by Margaret E Hone.
See: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Text-Book-Astrology-Margaret-Hone/dp/1933303352

It's old, but has never been bettered in my view. It's how I learnt astrology before later gaining a diploma from the Faculty of Astrological Studies in London.

For a basic overview of astrology and its significance/purpose, I'd suggest you read Margaret Hone's Modern Textbook of Astrology. As an adjunct to that, Isabelle Pagan's From Pioneer to Poet gives helpful detail on the specific signs.