We will open this session by selecting “Settings” and “Chart Colors”.

First thing to do is draw your attention to the 5 numbers in the upper middle of the screen.

1- gives you monochrome and your chart will be set for the colours you choose for Aries.

2-gives you 2 colours and Aries represents all diurnal signs while Taurus represents all nocturnal signs.

3-gives you 3 colours with Aries representing the Cardinal signs, Taurus representing the Fixed signs and Gemini representing the Mutable signs.

4-gives you 4 colours with Aries representing Fire, Taurus representing Earth, Gemini representing Air and Cancer representing Water.

13- allows you to set them all individually.

If you like the default colours or feel you may want to go back to them, there is a way to ensure this. 

Spend a few minutes with the colour picker tool and make 11 “samples” of those colours (don’t worry the colour picker will generate more tile spaces if you need them). 

Simply select each colour in turn and then drag the large sample over to make a tile of it.

To then change a colour is as simple as picking one, the colour will automatically change and you can see the results immediately.

The other way to save the default colours is to save the Kairon 4 .plist. 

Be aware that making the Library ‘visible’ (which contains the .plist) involves making a ‘Library’ visible in your user directory. 

In here you can seriously mess with the programs on your Mac, so caution is advised. 

The path is ~/Library/Containers/com.Kairon.Kairon4/Container.plist.

Now to get to the business of changing colour. I will make two selections, one for ‘Dark Mode’ which will feature modality colours, and one for ‘Light Mode’ which will feature elemental colours.

I am not a particularly sophisticated colour guy so I just used the pencil section in the colour picker. 

I can and will change the colour of a couple of aspects. Remember that to do this we select the Object screen then the ‘Aspect Settings’ and click on the aspect to get the colour picker up.

So it really was not very difficult to set these both up. Dark mode will be largely events, Light mode will be largely natal (and to get those colours required the colour wheel) and I will see how long it takes me to get bored with it and change it up.

Both sets of colours were chosen to be easy on the eyes and assume I will spend a lot of time reading… plus they both print easily as well.

This concludes the basic set-up, I am sure your preferences will look a lot different to mine. Further help files will showcase just what a powerful tool Kairon 4 is, and why Kairon has been my preferred software for over 20 years.

Here we can change everything, and I will perform a few rudimentary changes to make this software more friendly for me.

Let us deal with those Arabic Parts first. 

The ‘Font Style Generator’ is where these can be adjusted.

These steps must be done in order to work at all. 

Clicking the down arrow on the Font Stye Generator twice will find ‘Fortuna’ (clicking once will get Spirit which I have already done to get the method fresh in my mind).

Clicking on the ‘Font’ button will bring up the system Font menu. I have selected the font ‘Kairon Semiserif’ and by default it is in size 14.

Clicking on the ‘Glyph’ button will show you the glyphs in that font, and to see them easily I need to view them at size 24 which must be selected in the system font menu while you have all the glyphs selected.

Once you have identified the symbol you would like to use (I chose the well known Part of Fortune symbol for this one) simply drag it onto the field on the right. Adjust it on the cross hairs with the adjustments directly above and also to its left. Adjust its overall size to its right.

Congratulations you have worked out how to change any symbol in your chart!

The changes made must be saved. If the ‘Save’ and ‘Cancel’ buttons are greyed out, try first to use any of the adjustment steppers, if that does not work restarting the software will be necessary.

A second way to do the same thing but which will allow you to use any image that you have access to. 

You can use anything you like here. Basically if you can select it you can drag and drop it (or copy-paste if you prefer). I found a symbol which reminds me of the old symbol for Uranus. (it is actually a symbol for Transpluto or Isis, but it looks pretty.)

To empty the field on the left, select all while the cursor is in that field and delete.

To get to Uranus I stepped though everything until I found it. 

The picture at the top shows the selected glyph. Dragging it to the empty field on the left makes it the only thing in that field.

Dragging it from the field on the left onto the field on the right changes the glyph. Minor adjustments will need to be made using the steppers for position and size.

The Cancel button will return the glyph to its previous default, the Save button will lock it in as the new default. Again if those buttons are greyed out Kairon will need a restart.

So that is how you can change any glyph. 

If you are fond of many asteroids and have a supply of images there are very few limits to your creativity.

If you are like me, you will have your own set of ‘pet objects’ which you like to see in a chart, or maybe you have heard about one which you would like to try. Selecting objects in Kairon 4 is very easy.

The object selection screen is very large and quite comprehensive. My selections for regular reading are shown, yours will probably be different.

While we are in the objects menu I will set up aspects. Now this window will only tell you which aspects to display, it will not allow the setting of orbs etcetera, that we will do when we get back to the ‘settings’ screen.

Colours can be set here by clicking on the aspect then selecting the colour you want from the colour picker.

However, do remember to select both the Radix and the Grid for visible aspects. Some people may like to see different sets in the Radix and the Grid, this gives you that option.

While I am still selecting objects I had better select my favourite Arabic Parts. 

First you must find your part in the main column (or create it but that is for another discussion). Then it can be added by the ‘add selected item’ button, at which time it appears both on the list to the left, and on the drop down menu from which it can be deleted if required.

As you can see Arabic Parts come up with a generic ‘placeholder’ which I will replace with glyphs when I get back to the ‘Settings’ screen, but for now I have just selected them, (like I have selected aspects without doing anything to them). 

Colours again can be changed here by clicking on the ‘added’ item. The colour will apply to the glyph when that is changed as well.

Again make them visible in the Radix and Grid if that is what you want.

I will proceed to show you how to change glyphs, but if you are impatient then it has already been talked about when discussing astroids here: https://kairon.at/Kairon4/en/custom-symbols/

The most general settings are set from the menu by that name which appears at the top right of the window. Clicking on that will pop up another window which I have shown below.

The ‘Radix’ default can be set here. My own preferences on this pane are not far from the default and are shown at the bottom. 

As I set up this program for my own use you will progressively see the screen shots change.

Of interest here, when I first learned astrology I drew charts according to what made most sense to me, and being in the Southern Hemisphere, that was clockwise with Ascendant to the Right, this pane allows you to do that! It also allows for various Vedic configurations. I have long since adopted Western Astrological conventions. However you can have some fun with this!