Software Reviews
New Age Retailer - September 1997 issue
Astrological Software

NOTE: This review appeared in a magazine that is oriented towards gift shops and new age stores. The Kepler program is the only program available that can be anyone from beginner to professional to consistently obtain accurate birth charts and very high quality interpretations at a reasonable price. Shortly after this review, we released Kepler Version 4.2, which is even more exciting for store owners and their customers because Kepler Version 4.2 has the "Live Mini Reading", a spoken interpretation with musical accompaniment. More about Kepler 7.0 >

Cosmic Pattems is the first company I know to target their astrological software to retailers. Their new Kepler program allows retailers to do two things: sell the software program itself and use it in the store to print and sell colorful charts and personality reports.

Because the program has a built-in atlas of virtually every city and town in the world, as well as time zones and daylight-savings-time dates, the person running the program doesn't have to know anything about astrology to produce the charts. (Astrological pros also will appreciate this timesaving feature because it eliminates the need to look up all this data.) Three types of astrological reports are available in the package: natal analysis, compatibility, and future forecast. Retailers can do personalized flower essence reports, gemstone reports, relocation charts, and karmic-insight reports in any of several different languages. A variety of graphics and fonts allow retailers to customize printouts and add the store's name to the finished product. A free demonstration disk is available for those who want to try Kepler without obligation or let a customer preview the program.

Knowledgeable astrologers also can calculate progressions, Arabic parts, sidereal charts, harmonics, and many other sophisticated projects with this program. Not just for fun, this is a serious tool. My only complaint, and it is a big one, is that Kepler is not available in a Macintosh version. Kepler comes on CD-ROM and wholesales for $125 (retail $200), which includes an advertising stand, five demo disks, and full-color customer brochures.