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Merastra

Why Merastra exists

Why Merastra exists, and who is behind it.

Sixteen, and a forum

I was sixteen, going through a hard time, and mostly looking for somewhere to put my thoughts other than on myself. I landed on a small site called astrologie-libre, a forum run by a woman who welcomed everyone. I wrote to her, and we ended up talking a lot. Her name was Joanne. I thought of her as something like a friend: she was there for everyone, even in the middle of her own struggles. Astrology gave me a way out for a while, and she gave me something rarer, someone who listened.

Joanne passed away in 2025. I bought the astrologie-libre.org domain name.

A tool that crossed the centuries

What kept me there afterwards was history. For centuries, kings and kingdoms looked to the sky before deciding. That proves nothing, and astrology is not a validated science, so I don't present it as one. But that a tool crossed so many eras still fascinates me.

Sorting the sky

My brain is neurodivergent. It works best when it gathers facts, sorts them and arranges its thoughts. An almanac asks for exactly that: precise positions, sources, a logic you can follow. Merastra is my way of putting that habit to use for someone else.

What you will find here

Too many divination sites live on fear and urgency. Here, the sky is calculated by an engine I designed myself: it brings together keywords, calculation methods and sky data into a single portrait. Planet positions are checked against JPL Horizons, NASA's ephemeris service. The interpretations draw on books from several eras and on other sources, where the traditions answer one another. The texts are written by an open-weight language model from those sources, and I would rather tell you than let you guess. There is no advertising, no tracking and no resale of your birth data.

Astrology and tarot remain tools for reflection. They don't decide for you and they don't predict anything with certainty.

The Essentiel plan is free and complete. Subscriptions pay for development, the engine and the servers, and they also help me make a living, which lets me give this my time.

A few public-domain works

This work draws on a variety of sources. Here are a few of them, all in the public domain:

  • Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos (Ashmand translation, 1822)
  • William Lilly, Christian Astrology (1647)
  • John Gadbury, Genethlialogia (1661)
  • Richard Coley, Clavis Astrologiae Elimata (1676)
  • Raphael, The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century (1825)
  • Haatan, Traité d'astrologie judiciaire (1895)
  • Alan Leo, Astrology for All (1899)
  • Julevno, ABC d'astrologie (1906)
  • Fludd and Piobb, Traité d'astrologie générale (1907)
  • Max Heindel, The Message of the Stars (1918)
  • Sepharial, How to Make and Read Your Own Horoscope (1920)
  • Papus, Le Tarot des Bohémiens (1889 and 1911)
  • A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911)
  • Éliphas Lévi, Histoire de la magie (1860)
  • Lenain, La Science cabalistique (1823)
  • Cheiro, Cheiro's Book of Numbers (1927)
  • Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese (1865), and Chinese classics from the Song and Ming dynasties

Jérémy

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