kdlrose/astrokeys

🪐🌌⌨ qmk unicode map for the working astrologer

astrokeys

colors purely illustrative ok

sailorhg and Cassidoo's keycaps got me into mechanical keyboards in the first place, and it was only when showing off my astrolokey'd Planck to a new astrologer friend that it occured to me to make something for our incredibly specific use case. This repo's core is unicodemap.c, a modular hunk of code for you to throw in front of your keymap and arrange how you wish. However, I stand by my pedantic layout informed by the Hellenstic thema mundi! I think you can easily adapt it to a more standard board with staggered rows.

• The home row is the seven classical planets divided by sect, with Mercury ☿ and its domiciles in the middle (between realms).
• The signs all take up the first row above their rulers. Shift to access the signs later in the zodiac.
• Logically, the lunar nodes are right below the moon. Per evolutionary astrology, you have to work to get the north node.
• The outer planets are no more than 2 keys from their modern domiciles.
  • Pluto ♇ is next to the Aries/Scorpio key, aka QWERTY "P" for unintended mnemonic ease;
  • Uranus ♄ and Neptune ♅ are next to each other under Saturn ♄ (Aquarius) and Jupiter ♃ (Pisces) for my agenda even greater than astrological tradition (lesbianism 🗡🪞🎻🏎).
• The five major aspects occupy , . / or < > ?, which just makes me happy in terms of punctuation. Shift to acess the larger angles. So far, the only problem character in terms of being unsupported by mainstream fonts is sextile ⚹, which I barely use anyway.
• Big nerd enum table bonus: the planets' aliases are their metals in alchemy!
• Threw in the classical elements' alchemical symbols for fun! A 4x12 grid feels very mystical, at least in Western cosmologies.

Use

I assume you're using qmk-cli since the configurator is more of a hindrance when dealing with any number of custom keycodes, and set up your environment appropriately. See the docs if not!

Modular

Copy unicodemap.c into the top of your keymap. Add or remove or ignore anything! If you use asteroids or minor angles, those are pretty much all in block U+2600.

just lifting the example map [PLANCK REV7 ONLY]

First, look at keymap.c and make sure you actually want it, or edit as you see fit. It's pretty close to the first three layers of the default, with the addition of a numpad (useful since astrology is math) and vi-style navigation. I use what would be the right alt key as a momentary layer toggle.

1. Save the whole folder planck-rev7 to your local qmk_firmware dev branch: qmk_firmware/keyboards/planck/rev7/keymaps. I would rename it something else to avoid redundancy, like astrokeys.
   • The only edit you may need to do is in config.h: defining your input method based on what OS(es) you use. A warning, though, that Linux support is pretty bad. QMK seems fine with mainstream distributions with desktop environments, but if you're like me and run a WM with as little GTK as possible, good luck.
2. Run qmk compile -kb planck/rev7 -km [KEYMAP NAME]. This should write a .bin file straight to qmk_firmware.
3. Put your Planck in bootloader mode, then run qmk flash -kb planck/rev7 -km [KEYMAP NAME].
4. On macOS: Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources and add (+) Unicode Hex Input.