A standing thread for good starting points in astrology.
The usual advice, and it holds up: get comfortable with the signs, the planets, the houses and the aspects before anything more elaborate, and read a chart as a whole rather than as a pile of separate keywords.
The atlas carries entries for the planets, the signs, the houses, the decans and the fixed stars, each linked to everything it touches, so it can be read alongside whatever book you are working through. Traditional and modern astrology are both described here, and where they disagree the atlas records the disagreement instead of choosing a side.
Post what helped you, so that whoever arrives next has somewhere to look.