and I went and deleted the post for being too esoteric...:)
The only way I learned was osmosis from reading way too much of it. If you are interested, here's some good links:
http://astrologyblogger.com/ -a site with a stream of updates on astrological articles and blogs, a lot of fun reading there.
http://raginguniverse.blogspot.com/ - my friend jm, who is one of the best astrologers and one of the biggest Obama fans I know
http://neithnet.blogspot.com/ - my other friend Neith, who is also amazing.
Have fun!