How to read a birth chart: a beginner's guide

What you're looking at

A birth chart is a map of the sky for the minute and place you were born. It's drawn as a wheel, and the chart above shows yours, or a sample if you haven't entered your details yet. The outer ring holds the 12 zodiac signs. Inside are 12 slices called houses, with symbols for the Sun, the Moon and the planets scattered among them.

To build one, you need your birth date, your birth time and the town or city where you were born. The date places the planets in their signs. The time and place decide which sign was rising on the eastern horizon, and that's what turns a general sky map into your personal wheel.

Skyprint uses the tropical zodiac, the system most Western astrologers use, where Aries always begins at the March equinox. Houses use the Placidus system by default.

Step one: meet the planets

Each planet stands for one part of you. It can help to think of them as a cast of characters, each with a job. The Sun is your sense of self and what lights you up. The Moon covers emotional needs. Mercury handles thinking and talking, Venus handles love and taste, and Mars handles drive and anger.

Those five are called the personal planets, because they move fast enough to differ between people born weeks or even days apart. Jupiter and Saturn are slower and describe growth and discipline. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto take years to change signs, so you share their signs with everyone your age, and they become personal mostly through the house they land in.

When you're new, read the personal planets first. Most of your day-to-day personality lives there.

Step two: read each planet's sign

The sign a planet sits in shows how that part of you behaves. If the planet is the character, the sign is its costume and accent. Mars in Aries goes after things fast and out loud. Mars in Cancer goes after them sideways, often by protecting someone else first.

Each sign belongs to one of four elements, which give a quick read on temperament. Fire signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) are eager and warm, and earth signs (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) are practical and steady. Air signs (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) live in ideas and conversation. Water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) lead with feelings.

If most of your planets share an element, that temperament tends to show up everywhere, from how you pack for a trip to how you apologize. The guide to elements and modalities goes further.

Step three: find the houses

Houses show where in your life each planet does its work. There are 12, numbered counterclockwise from the rising sign, which sits on the left side of the wheel. The 1st house is you and how you come across. The 4th is home and family, the 7th is partnerships and the 10th is career and public life. The rest cover areas such as friendships, routines and travel.

A planet's house depends on the time you were born, so this layer needs an accurate birth time. Without one, keep reading by planet and sign and leave houses for later.

Empty houses are common and harmless. An empty house just means no planet was passing through that slice of sky. The sign on its starting line, called the cusp, and the planet that rules that sign still describe that part of your life.

Step four: notice the aspects

Aspects are angles between planets, measured around the 360 degrees of the wheel. They show which parts of you team up and which ones argue. Most chart drawings show them as colored lines across the middle.

The five main aspects are the conjunction (planets side by side, 0 degrees apart), the sextile (60 degrees), the square (90), the trine (120) and the opposition (180). Trines and sextiles tend to feel easy. Squares and oppositions bring friction, and that friction often turns into motivation. A conjunction blends two planets so closely that they act as a team.

An aspect doesn't need to be exact. Astrologers allow a few degrees of leeway, called an orb, and the tighter the orb, the more you tend to feel the aspect.

Putting it into a sentence

Once you have the pieces, combine them into one sentence per planet: planet, then sign, then house. Venus (how you love) in Gemini (through talk and variety) in the 5th house (dating and fun) might read as: you flirt through banter and fall for people who make you laugh at trivia night. Add any tight aspects as a second sentence.

Start with your Sun, Moon and rising sign, known as the big three, then find your chart ruler, the planet that rules your rising sign. Look for clusters too. Three or more planets in one sign or house is called a stellium, and it usually points to a big theme in your life.

Go slowly. One planet a day is a perfectly good pace, and the chart tends to make more sense each time you come back to it.

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