The Saturday morning that I paused - at a sunny outdoors market's used-books stall to glance over the motley variety studied into its trays - and happened on a shabby old book among them - I had no clue to what it really contained: an uncanny, new, life-fulfilling code, with major results for its lucky readers.

The sometimes stark differences between human natures, I learned, can be predicted from a simple astrology timetable... just two planets combine to shape us. They are our closest neighbours in the sky above us. Venus combines with Mars to tell us that people are really their birthdates.

The genetic combination of two parents can predict no personality pattern - their children far from identical in character. But the astrological combination of where two planets are positioned in the zodiac of the heavens above us on our birthday does predict a personality quality, I learned. The zodiac?

It's the imaginary belt of the heavens in which are the apparent paths of the sun and moon and principle planets; and it contains twelve constellations and hence twelve divisions called signs: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces.

So, in choosing the day to be born, is selected the character that we are for the lifetime we are starting. Maybe it's we who do the choosing before we leave "the sky" to start our lifetime on Earth. Or maybe our loving "upstairs Advisors" choose for us! Do premature births and late births become a little more meaningful with this understanding? Oh! it appears obvious that the physical health of motherto- be and of unborn child are the governing factors, but how much do we understand of the rôle of our spirit, and the rôle of the everlasting spiritual world, in deciding that we will come here at all... let alone exactly when?

The old book contained sets of tables of 123 years, here extended to 150 years, and tables of two planet positions in those years and many pages describing a vastly contrasting range of personality qualities. They showed a direct connection between everyone's birthdate and its unique personality for engaging with others - especially with a lover or partner but also with family and the everyday people in our lives.

But far wider although less vital, than finding an ideal lover, is the natural curiosity we have concerning our forebears. We all have ancestors who lived in horse-and-wagon times, and in the days of embarking on precarious sailing-ship voyages to the other side of the world, who often reared families of twelve children or more. What was great-great-grand-mama's personality to cope with that? This book has a page describing her. You need just her

birthdate.

And far wider still, or certainly of wider impact on some readers' future, is the old book's value in you seeing into the character of a baby yet to be conceived and born. Do we get the significance of an old book enabling family-planning for children with pleasant personalities?

So it became clear that steps should be taken, giving many out there the surprising info I'd stumbled on. Here was the ideal for easy reading: an e-book that's a breeze to follow on your computer screen, with lightning speed hyperlinks.

Starting on page 25, with someone's birthdate year between 1880 and 2029, click on the print-line of the year. A few seconds later, after two more computer mouse clicks, comes the full-page personality and character description of a person born on that day.