Robert Sterling Hand is an American astrologer, historian, and writer.

Early life

Robert Hand was born in

Plainfield, New Jersey Plainfield is a City (New Jersey), city in Union County, New Jersey, Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Nicknamed "The Queen City",

, and grew up in

Orleans, Massachusetts Orleans ( ) is a New England town, town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, situated along Cape Cod. The population was 6,307 at the 2020 census. For geographic and demographic information on the census-designated place Orleans, ...

. He began studying astrology at the age of 17. His father, Wilfred Hand, was a specialist in

cosmobiology Historically, the term 'Kosmobiologie' was used by the Germans, German medical astrologer Friedrich Feerhow and Swiss statistician Karl Krafft in a more general sense "to designate that branch of astrology working on scientific foundations and key ...

and heliocentric astrology, and used astrological charts to forecast changes in the

stock market A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks (also called shares), which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include ''securities'' listed on a public stock exchange a ...

, and taught his son the basics of casting astrological charts. Hand went to Brandeis University, where he earned a B.A. in Intellectual History in 1965. He then went on to

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

and left before receiving a degree to pursue astrology as a full-time profession in 1972.

Career

Early in his career, Hand wrote books on astrology and started a company that developed computer programs for astrologers. He began writing programs for

microcomputers A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

in 1977 with a desire to bring the benefits of fast and accurate calculations to the practice of astrology. Out of this effort, he founded Astro-Graphics Services in 1980 which later become Astrolabe, Inc. Hand founded Arhat Media in 1997. Arhat, which is an acronym for "Archive for the Retrieval of Historical Astrological Texts", procures, protects and publishes translations of historical astrological works and secondary source material for serious astrologers and scholars. Some of this material has been integrated into the Robert Hand Library, which now houses the original texts and

translations Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

of most of the ancient and medieval astrologers, as well as the history of science,

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and mystical Judaism. Hand gives chart readings and consultations in

Reston, Virginia Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, and a principal city of both Northern Virginia and the Washington metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, Reston's population was 63,226. Founded in 1964, Rest ...

, and

Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

Works

Books

* * * * * ;Contributions *

Interviews and lectures

* Transcript of a talk Hand presented at the Astrological Conference 2005 of the British Astrological Association in York, UK. *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hand, Robert 1942 births Living people 20th-century American astrologers 21st-century astrologers American astrological writers American male non-fiction writers American spiritual writers Brandeis University alumni Catholic University of America alumni New Age writers