Reference
Learn astrology
Everything this site knows about how a chart is read, written to be checked rather than believed. Start with the ten planets, or with astrocartography, which is the part almost nobody else explains properly.
The twelve signs
Dates, element, modality and ruler for each, and what it means to have your Moon, rising or Venus there rather than your Sun.
The ten planets
What each one governs, what it rules, how long it takes to move, and how much of the placement is genuinely personal to you rather than shared with everybody your age.
- SunIdentity, vitality and what you are becoming
- MoonNeed, instinct and what settles you
- MercuryMind, language and how you process
- VenusValues, attraction and what you find beautiful
- MarsDrive, anger and how you go after things
- JupiterMeaning, growth and the risk of too much
- SaturnLimit, structure and what has to be earned
- UranusDisruption, independence and the sudden turn
- NeptuneImagination, dissolution and what you cannot see clearly
- PlutoPower, compulsion and what will not stay buried
Beyond the planets
The lunar nodes, Chiron, Black Moon Lilith, the four large asteroids and two points calculated from the angles. Every one of these is now in the chart, and every page says how old its reading actually is.
- North NodeThe direction of growth, and the thing you have no practice at
- South NodeWhat comes easily, and what you hide in
- ChironThe injury that does not close, and what it made you able to do
- Black Moon LilithWhat you will not apologise for
- Part of FortuneWhere the three most important points in the chart agree
- VertexThe encounters you did not arrange
- CeresNurture, and what happens when it is withdrawn
- PallasSeeing the pattern, and fighting with strategy rather than force
- JunoWhat you require from a commitment
- VestaWhat you give yourself to entirely
The twelve houses
Where in a life each part of a chart actually happens. The only one of the three that needs your birth time, which is the reason a Sun-sign horoscope has to approximate them.
- 1st houseSelf, body and first impressions
- 2nd houseMoney, possessions and self-worth
- 3rd houseCommunication, siblings and the local world
- 4th houseHome, family and where you come from
- 5th houseCreativity, pleasure, romance and children
- 6th houseWork, routine, health and service
- 7th housePartnership, marriage and open enemies
- 8th houseShared resources, intimacy, death and what is hidden
- 9th houseBelief, higher learning and distant places
- 10th houseCareer, reputation and public standing
- 11th houseFriends, groups and what you are working toward
- 12th houseSolitude, the unconscious and what is out of sight
Look one thing up
A whole chart is a lot to read when the question was one placement. These answer a single question each, from the same ephemeris.
- What is my Sun sign?Identity, vitality and the direction you are growing in
- What is my Moon sign?Emotional needs, instinct, and what has to be in place before you feel settled
- What is my rising sign?How you come across, and the first impression you make before anyone knows you
- What is my Mercury sign?How you think, learn and put things into words
- What is my Venus sign?What you value, what attracts you, and how you behave once attracted
- What is my Mars sign?Drive, anger, appetite, and how you go after what you want
- What is the sky doing to my chart?Transits with exact dates, and your real houses rather than solar ones.
- Are the two charts compatible?Synastry: every contact between two charts, and a composite.
- Which house does this year belong to?Annual profections: one sign per year of life, and the planet that rules it.
- What is on my midpoints?All 45 halfway degrees, and whatever is sitting within a degree and a half.
- What applies at my latitude?Parans: two planets angular at once, which hold right around the world.
- What is retrograde right now?Live planetary motion, and every turning point this year.
- When is the next full Moon?Every lunation and eclipse this year, with the sign each falls in.
- Where is every planet today?Current positions, declinations and motion for the whole sky.
- This month, day by dayA daily ephemeris at midnight UT, with retrogrades marked.
- Is a fixed star on one of my planets?Regulus, Algol, Spica and the rest, at the positions they hold now.
- When was Pluto in Scorpio?Sign tables for the slow planets, 1900 to 2050.
- Who shares today's date?Born and died on this day, with both charts.
- What are my numbers?Numerology, with every reduction chain shown.
- How well do you know today's sky?Five questions a day, generated from the live ephemeris.
- Something less seriousFive games, and every one of them has a real answer behind it.
The aspects
The angles between the planets, and what each pair is associated with when it makes one. This is the part of a chart that explains why two people with the same star sign read completely differently.
Five majors and five minors. The majors are the ones the tradition is built on and the ones with pages of their own; the minors are real, are detected in every chart, and are marked as the weaker signal they are.
- Conjunction · 0°Two bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Semi-sextile · 30°Thirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Semi-square · 45°Forty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sextile · 60°Sixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Quintile · 72°Seventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Square · 90°Ninety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Trine · 120°A hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sesquiquadrate · 135°A hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Quincunx · 150°A hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Opposition · 180°Directly across the chart: two ends of one axis
Chart patterns
An aspect connects two planets. Three or more make shapes the tradition gives names to, and those names are what people are usually told they have.
Eight of them, with how often each actually occurs counted across 73,049 real charts rather than estimated. The yod, which almost everything written about it calls rare, turns out to be more than twice as common as the grand trine.
- T-squareTwo planets opposite each other, both square a third
- Grand trineThree planets each 120 degrees from the other two
- Grand crossTwo oppositions at right angles: four planets, four squares
- YodTwo planets sextile, both quincunx a third
- KiteA grand trine with a fourth planet opposite one of its points
- Mystic rectangleTwo oppositions joined by two trines and two sextiles
- Grand sextileSix planets evenly spaced: six sextiles, six trines, three oppositions
- StelliumThree or more planets in one sign
Chart shapes
A pattern is about the angles between a few planets. A shape is about where all ten of them sit, and every chart has exactly one of these seven.
The cut-offs between them are a convention rather than a fact, and authors disagree. This site prints the numbers it uses and shows how much they change the answer, which nothing else on the subject does.
- SplashSpread all the way round, with no large empty arc
- BundleAll ten planets inside 120 degrees
- BowlAll ten planets inside one half of the wheel
- BucketA bowl, plus one planet standing alone on the other side
- LocomotiveAll ten inside two thirds, leaving an empty trine
- SeesawTwo groups of planets facing each other across two clear gaps
- SplayIrregular clumps that fit none of the other six
Astrocartography
Your chart drawn onto a world map. This is the part of the subject this site covers more thoroughly than anywhere else, including a written meaning for all 40 planet and angle combinations.
- What is astrocartography?The technique, its history, and what it does and does not claim
- The four anglesThe backbone of both a birth chart and an astrocartography map
- Parans and crossingsThe part of a map almost nobody explains, and the surprising thing about it
- Relocation charts comparedTwo techniques, the same birth data, two different questions
- Using a map responsiblyA method, and the limits worth knowing before you book anything
- Local space: the compass versionThe technique that works over a mile as well as a continent
- Visiting a line, or living on oneThe distinction the technique is least clear about, stated plainly
- When no line runs near youThe commonest result on any map, and the one least written about
- Which of the forty to read firstHow to prioritise a map without pretending the ranking is a law
- How we calculate itThe ephemeris, the derivation, the distance bands and the paran orb, published rather than hidden.
Longer reads
The subjects that need an article rather than a reference entry.
- What is a birth chart?The whole thing from first principles, and what the ten bodies are doing in it.
- How to read your birth chartA method, in order, for somebody looking at their own chart for the first time.
- Sun, Moon and RisingThe three placements a chart is built around, and why the Sun is the least revealing of them.
- The twelve housesWhat each house covers, and why the houses depend entirely on your birth time.
Read your own chart instead
Every tool here is free and computes from the Swiss Ephemeris, the same engine professional astrologers use, rather than from a lookup table.