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Astrology
A tropical natal chart: ten planets, the lunar nodes, Ascendant and Midheaven, elemental balance and aspects.
Below: what a natal chart is, how to read one step by step, and what the houses, aspects and terms in the tables mean.
What a natal chart is
A snapshot of the sky
A natal chart is a diagram of the sky for one moment and one place: where the Sun, Moon and planets stood along the zodiac, and which degree was rising over the eastern horizon. Astronomically it is an ordinary ephemeris reduced to a single point in space and time; astrologically it is a set of symbols used to describe character. A chart is cast once and never changes: the planets move on, the natal picture stays as it was.
Why time and place matter
Signs change slowly — hours for the Moon, decades for Pluto — so the date alone settles almost everything. The Ascendant, Midheaven and houses depend on the daily rotation of the Earth instead: the rising degree moves about 1° every four minutes and a whole sign every two hours. The birthplace fixes the latitude and longitude the horizon is computed from. Without an exact time the signs of the planets still hold; the houses and the Ascendant no longer do.
What a chart shows — and what it does not
A chart describes dispositions, not events: it has no way to tell a surgeon from a butcher when one configuration fits both. It names no dates, diagnoses nothing and cancels no choices. It is read most honestly as a language of self-observation: it gives words to what you already know about yourself, and occasionally to what you preferred not to notice.
Signs are not constellations
Western astrology works in the tropical zodiac: the zero point is the spring equinox, and the twelve signs simply cut the circle into equal 30° arcs. Over two thousand years precession has moved the constellations by almost 24°, so "Sun in Aries" means a stretch of the ecliptic, not the stars of Aries. Vedic astrology counts from the stars, and for most people its sign is one back — hence the difference between the two sections of this site. There is no thirteenth sign in either: Ophiuchus is a constellation, while the zodiac is divided into equal parts by construction.
Houses and their systems
Houses are twelve sectors measured not from the equinox but from the horizon at the place of birth: they say in which area of life a planet shows up. This site uses the Whole Sign system: the first house equals the sign of the Ascendant, the rest follow in order, each a full 30°. Placidus and other quadrant systems divide the circle unevenly, so the same planet can land in the neighbouring house there — especially at high latitudes, where Placidus degenerates. Keep the difference in mind when comparing this chart with one cast elsewhere.
The four vocabularies
Planet — what
A function of the psyche: will, feeling, speech, attraction, aggression. The planet answers "what part of me is at work".
Sign — how
The style in which that function switches on: fast or slow, head-on or around. The sign is the adverb to the planet’s verb.
House — where
The area of life where it becomes visible from outside: work, home, partnership, money. The house is the stage set.
Aspect — with whom
The angle between planets: whether they support each other, argue or merge. Aspects are the syntax that binds phrases into text.
Seven steps to a reading
1.The big three
The Sun is the core and the will, the Moon is needs and reactions, the Ascendant is the manner of meeting the world. These three give the frame everything else hangs on. If they disagree — Sun in Capricorn, Moon in Pisces, Ascendant in Leo — that contradiction is already the first honest conclusion.
2.The chart ruler
The planet ruling the Ascendant sign rules the whole chart. Its sign, house and aspects show where a person is drawn by default. Ascendant in Libra — look at Venus; in Scorpio — Mars and Pluto.
3.Planets through the signs
Read the table top to bottom, keeping speed in mind: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars are personal; Jupiter and Saturn describe a social role; Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are shared with everyone your age and say almost nothing about you as an individual.
4.Planets through the houses
Now the same list by the "House" column: the sign says how, the house says where. Venus in Taurus in the sixth house shows taste and affection through work and daily routine, not on a stage. The house that collects several planets is the main theme of a life.
5.Aspects — tightest first
The table is sorted by orb: the smaller the deviation from the exact angle, the stronger the link. Start with aspects under 2° and with those involving the Sun, the Moon or the chart ruler — the rest is background.
6.The overall pattern
Step back: the balance of elements and modes, clusters of planets, empty areas, hemispheres, retrogrades. A missing element says as much as an abundance: a chart without water does not mean coldness, it means feelings have to be translated into whatever language the person does speak.
7.Synthesis
Single indicators prove nothing. The rule is repetition: if the same theme comes out of three or four independent places — the Sun sign, the house of Mars, a stellium and an aspect to Saturn — it is real. A lone signature backed by nothing else is better set aside.
Planets: what each one governs
Personal planets
They cross a sign in anything from two days to two months, so people born in the same year have them differently placed. This is character in the narrow sense.
☉ Sun
Speed: a sign a month · a circle a year
Will, dignity, the way of being oneself in public. The Sun shows what a person spends themselves on and what they consider their right. In childhood it is usually borrowed from the father, or whoever stood in for him, and only really switches on around thirty.
The question this planet asks: What do I do when nobody is making me?
☽ Moon
Speed: a sign in 2–2.5 days · a circle a month
Needs, reactions, the memory of the body. The Moon governs how a person settles down and what they call home; it comes online earlier than the Sun and shows most clearly in exhaustion and in the first second of fright.
The question this planet asks: What do I need in order to feel safe?
☿ Mercury
Speed: 2–3 weeks per sign, with retrograde loops
Speech, learning, exchange. Mercury never strays more than 28° from the Sun, so it sits in the solar sign or next to it: thinking always serves the will. It shows the pace of talk, the attitude to detail and the way of arguing.
The question this planet asks: How do I take things in, and how do I explain them?
♀ Venus
Speed: 3–5 weeks per sign
Value, taste, attraction. Venus shows what a person finds pleasant and worth spending on — people and things alike — and how they show affection: in words, in gifts, in simply being there. It never strays more than 48° from the Sun.
The question this planet asks: What is good enough for me to want it?
♂ Mars
Speed: 1.5–2 months per sign
Action, anger, the ability to stand one’s ground. Mars answers how a person starts and how they meet resistance: at a run, indirectly, or only once it has become unbearable. The same placement speaks about stamina and its cost.
The question this planet asks: How do I push, and how do I get angry?
Social planets
Jupiter takes a year per sign, Saturn two and a half. They describe relations with society rather than personality: where a person is given something, and where they are held to account.
♃ Jupiter
Speed: a year per sign · a circle in 12 years
Growth, meaning, generosity — and overstatement. Jupiter marks the area where things come easily and luck turns up: there a person expands naturally, sometimes past all measure. It is also read as the shape of a worldview and of trust in knowledge.
The question this planet asks: What do I believe so firmly that I never check it?
♄ Saturn
Speed: 2.5 years per sign · a circle in 29 years
Limit, deadline, responsibility. Saturn marks where nothing works the first time and where growing up happens through refusal and repetition. The Saturn return at about twenty-nine and again at fifty-eight is the classic point where a life is rebuilt.
The question this planet asks: Where do I have to be the adult, whether I like it or not?
Outer planets
From seven to twenty years per sign: your whole school year shares them. Personal meaning comes only from the house and from aspects to personal planets — the sign is about a generation.
♅ Uranus
Speed: 7 years per sign · a circle in 84 years
A break with the norm, suddenness, freedom. By sign Uranus describes how an entire generation broke with convention; what is personal is its house and aspects — there a person does not fit, and there they are capable of an unexpected move.
The question this planet asks: Where do I refuse to live the way everyone else does?
♆ Neptune
Speed: 14 years per sign · a circle in 165 years
Dissolving boundaries: inspiration, compassion, illusion and escape all by one mechanism. The house of Neptune shows where a person sees outlines poorly and takes the wished-for as the real — and where they are capable of genuine compassion.
The question this planet asks: Where do I prefer not to see clearly?
♇ Pluto
Speed: 12–20 years per sign · a circle in 248 years
Power, crisis, irreversible change. Pluto marks the theme that cannot be gone through by halves: it pushes to the limit and rebuilds. The sign is wholly generational; the house and tight aspects are personal.
The question this planet asks: What in me is beyond control, and what do I control instead?
Points, not bodies
The lunar nodes are where the Moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic — the places eclipses happen; the Ascendant and MC are where the ecliptic meets the horizon and the meridian. Nothing shines there, yet geometrically they are as real as the planets.
☊ North Node
Speed: 1.5 years per sign, always retrograde
The North Node is the direction where there is no experience yet, and therefore no comfort. Traditionally read as the task of growth: what is worth learning, however clumsily it comes out.
The question this planet asks: What am I awkward at learning, and still need to?
☋ South Node
Speed: always opposite the North Node
The South Node is the area where everything is already mastered and therefore seductive: the familiar, well-worn move a person falls back on under pressure.
The question this planet asks: Where do I retreat to when things get hard?
ASC Ascendant
Speed: a sign every ~2 hours
The rising degree: the manner of making contact, the pace, the look, the first impression. Not a mask in the sense of deceit — rather the door everything else comes out through. The point most sensitive to the accuracy of the birth time.
The question this planet asks: How am I seen before I am known?
MC Midheaven
Speed: a sign every ~2 hours
The Midheaven: public role, reputation, the peak of a career, what a person is called in the third person. Its opposite, the IC, is roots, home and where they came from.
The question this planet asks: What am I called when I am not in the room?
The twelve houses
1 · First house
Begins at the Ascendant. Appearance, temperament, the first move towards the world, health as constitution. A planet here is visible to everyone at once, whether its owner likes it or not.
Kind of house: Angular — Houses 1, 4, 7 and 10 sit on the axes of the chart. A planet in an angular house shows up sooner and more visibly than anywhere else.
2 · Second house
What is a person’s own: earned, saved, bodily. The attitude to money here is inseparable from the question of what one thinks oneself worth.
Kind of house: Succedent — Houses 2, 5, 8 and 11 hold what the angles began: resources, attachments, what has been accumulated.
3 · Third house
Everyday exchange: talk, correspondence, short trips, neighbours, siblings, school learning. Everything within the radius of an ordinary day.
Kind of house: Cadent — Houses 3, 6, 9 and 12 handle transition and sense-making: learning, routine, the search for meaning. A planet here works more quietly but more flexibly.
4 · Fourth house
The bottom of the chart (IC): the family of origin, ancestry, dwelling, private life behind a closed door, and what a person becomes in old age.
Kind of house: Angular — Houses 1, 4, 7 and 10 sit on the axes of the chart. A planet in an angular house shows up sooner and more visibly than anywhere else.
5 · Fifth house
Everything done out of surplus rather than need: infatuation, art, risk, gambling, children as continuation. Here a person shows themselves and expects it to be appreciated.
Kind of house: Succedent — Houses 2, 5, 8 and 11 hold what the angles began: resources, attachments, what has been accumulated.
6 · Sixth house
Not vocation but daily labour: duties, schedule, quality of execution, and the body as something to maintain — sleep, food, illness. Subordinates and pets belong here too.
Kind of house: Cadent — Houses 3, 6, 9 and 12 handle transition and sense-making: learning, routine, the search for meaning. A planet here works more quietly but more flexibly.
7 · Seventh house
Opposite the first: the other as an equal. Marriage, business partnership, litigation, open conflict. Planets here often describe less the partner than what a person hands the partner to carry for them.
Kind of house: Angular — Houses 1, 4, 7 and 10 sit on the axes of the chart. A planet in an angular house shows up sooner and more visibly than anywhere else.
8 · Eighth house
What cannot be halved: other people’s and shared money, debts, inheritance, intimacy, crises and everything irreversible. Its dark reputation comes from literal reading — it is about turning points, not about lifespan.
Kind of house: Succedent — Houses 2, 5, 8 and 11 hold what the angles began: resources, attachments, what has been accumulated.
9 · Ninth house
The third house expanded: university, foreign cultures, long journeys, law, faith, teaching and publishing. Where a person assembles a general picture of the world.
Kind of house: Cadent — Houses 3, 6, 9 and 12 handle transition and sense-making: learning, routine, the search for meaning. A planet here works more quietly but more flexibly.
10 · Tenth house
The top of the chart (MC): profession, recognition, relations with authority and a public name. A planet here works in the open and shapes what a person is remembered for.
Kind of house: Angular — Houses 1, 4, 7 and 10 sit on the axes of the chart. A planet in an angular house shows up sooner and more visibly than anywhere else.
11 · Eleventh house
The circle chosen rather than inherited: friends, allies, professional milieus, hopes and long-range aims. It shows how a person fits into a group and what they get from it.
Kind of house: Succedent — Houses 2, 5, 8 and 11 hold what the angles began: resources, attachments, what has been accumulated.
12 · Twelfth house
What happens without witnesses: sleep, imagination, hidden circumstances, hospitals and monasteries, and one’s own mechanisms that go unseen. A planet here is strong but poorly recognised.
Kind of house: Cadent — Houses 3, 6, 9 and 12 handle transition and sense-making: learning, routine, the search for meaning. A planet here works more quietly but more flexibly.
Aspects: how planets connect
☌ Conjunction · 0° · Orb ±8°
Two planets stand in the same place and work as one: their functions are no longer distinguishable and switch on together. A conjunction amplifies both — and does not ask whether they suit each other.
How to read it: Read it through the pair: Sun with Jupiter is scope, Sun with Saturn is early seriousness and a high bar set for oneself.
⚹ Sextile · 60° · Orb ±5°
An easy link between elements that understand each other: fire with air, earth with water. It offers an opportunity but does not force anyone to take it.
How to read it: A sextile shows where a person can, if they take it up. Without effort it stays an unused resource.
□ Square · 90° · Orb ±7°
A right angle between signs of the same mode: two functions demand their own at once and get in each other’s way. The classic source of inner conflict — and the main engine of a chart.
How to read it: A square is not "bad": it makes a person act. A chart without squares is more often sluggish than calm.
△ Trine · 120° · Orb ±7°
A link within one element: the functions agree and support each other at no cost. Usually an area of inborn ease — a talent nobody ever counted as effort.
How to read it: The flip side of ease is reliance on it. A trine often describes what someone does well and therefore never develops further.
☍ Opposition · 180° · Orb ±8°
Two functions face each other across the chart: each is right in its own way and no single move reconciles them. Often one side is handed over to other people — and comes back as conflict with them.
How to read it: An opposition is resolved not by one side winning but by a pendulum: acknowledging both in turn.
Planetary dignities
| Sign | Domicile | Exaltation | Detriment | Fall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ♈ Aries | ♂ Mars | ☉ Sun | ♀ Venus | ♄ Saturn |
| ♉ Taurus | ♀ Venus | ☽ Moon | ♂ Mars (♇ Pluto) | — |
| ♊ Gemini | ☿ Mercury | — | ♃ Jupiter | — |
| ♋ Cancer | ☽ Moon | ♃ Jupiter | ♄ Saturn | ♂ Mars |
| ♌ Leo | ☉ Sun | — | ♄ Saturn (♅ Uranus) | — |
| ♍ Virgo | ☿ Mercury | ☿ Mercury | ♃ Jupiter (♆ Neptune) | ♀ Venus |
| ♎ Libra | ♀ Venus | ♄ Saturn | ♂ Mars | ☉ Sun |
| ♏ Scorpio | ♂ Mars (♇ Pluto) | — | ♀ Venus | ☽ Moon |
| ♐ Sagittarius | ♃ Jupiter | — | ☿ Mercury | — |
| ♑ Capricorn | ♄ Saturn | ♂ Mars | ☽ Moon | ♃ Jupiter |
| ♒ Aquarius | ♄ Saturn (♅ Uranus) | — | ☉ Sun | — |
| ♓ Pisces | ♃ Jupiter (♆ Neptune) | ♀ Venus | ☿ Mercury | ☿ Mercury |
A planet in its own sign (domicile) or in exaltation acts freely and recognisably; in the opposite placements — detriment and fall — it has to solve its task with borrowed means. This is not a good/bad scale: Saturn in fall in Aries is not worse, it simply finds waiting harder. The second ruler in brackets is the modern one — Pluto, Uranus and Neptune were given signs only in the twentieth century.
Common mistakes
Reading a single indicator
Any single detail is contradicted by the next one. A conclusion carries weight only when it repeats from several independent places.
Taking the Sun sign for the whole chart
The Sun is one point out of thirteen. The Moon, the Ascendant and the houses often describe a person more convincingly; newspaper horoscopes live off exactly this substitution.
Interpreting outer planets by sign
Pluto was in Scorpio for everyone born between 1984 and 1995. What is personal there starts with the house and with a tight aspect to a personal planet.
Drawing house conclusions from an uncertain time
An hour and a half shifts the Ascendant by a whole sign, and all twelve houses with it. If the time is approximate, read planets by sign and aspect, and leave the houses alone.
Splitting aspects into good and bad
Squares and oppositions supply energy and force action; trines lull. A chart of pure harmony describes not a happy life but a life with no inner reason to change anything.
Expecting events and dates from a chart
A natal chart describes a structure, not a timetable. Anything that sounds like "in June it will happen" comes from the interpreter’s imagination, not from the chart.
Explaining by chart what life already explains
Age, family, country and health shape behaviour more precisely than any configuration. The chart is the last layer on top of them, not the first.
Frequent questions
I do not know my exact birth time. Is the chart pointless?
No. Tick "I do not know the time" and the chart is cast for noon. Every planet’s sign except the Moon’s stays correct; the Moon can shift by 6–7° and in rare cases change sign. The Ascendant, MC and houses are simply not read in such a chart. An exact time is usually on the birth certificate or in hospital records; the astrological way of reconstructing it from events is called rectification and is not considered reliable.
Why does the Vedic section give me a different sign?
Because that section uses the sidereal zodiac, tied to the stars, while this one uses the tropical zodiac, tied to the equinox. The difference is the ayanamsa, now about 24°, so the sign usually moves one back. Both systems are internally consistent; they simply count the circle from different zero points.
Is it true there are thirteen signs and everything has shifted?
No. Ophiuchus is a constellation the ecliptic passes through, but the zodiac is twelve equal 30° arcs, not constellations of unequal length. The thirteenth-sign story resurfaces in the press every few years and changes nothing in either tropical or Vedic astrology.
Which house system is the right one?
There is no general answer — there are over thirty systems and the argument is two thousand years old. This site uses whole signs: the oldest system, stable at any latitude, and it creates no false precision when the time is uncertain. Placidus, the most common today, produces 60–70° houses at high latitudes and breaks down near the polar circle — which is why it is deliberately not implemented here.
Is a retrograde planet bad?
No — it is the geometry of observation, not a property of the planet. In a natal chart a retrograde planet usually describes a function that turns inward first: the question is settled with oneself before it is taken outside.
Which matters more, sign or house?
The house answers "where does this show", and in practice it is more concrete: the sign describes a manner, the house the area where that manner appears. When the two disagree the house usually wins, but both should be read.
Does the chart change over time?
No, the natal chart is fixed. Movement is described by transits — today’s real planetary positions relative to the natal ones — and by progressions, a symbolic "day for a year" count. Neither is calculated on this site.
Why are Chiron, Lilith and the asteroids missing?
Their positions are computed differently from the planets and need separate data series; on top of that they hand a beginner a dozen extra points before the ten main ones are mastered. What remains here is ten planets, the nodes and two axes.
Can two charts be compared?
That comparison is called synastry: the aspects from one person’s planets to another’s. There is no separate calculation here, but the horoscopes section works out compatibility by sign, taking elements and gender into account.
Glossary
- Ecliptic
- The apparent yearly path of the Sun across the sky; all longitudes in a chart are measured along it.
- Ascendant (ASC)
- The degree of the ecliptic rising in the east at birth. The start of the first house.
- Descendant (DSC)
- The point opposite the Ascendant, the western horizon. The start of the seventh house.
- Midheaven (MC) and IC
- The top and bottom of the chart: the culminating degree of the ecliptic and its opposite. The public–private axis.
- House
- One of twelve sectors measured from the horizon; the area of life where a planet shows itself.
- Cusp
- The boundary of a house. In the whole sign system it coincides with the start of a sign.
- Orb
- The permitted deviation from an exact aspect angle. The smaller the orb, the stronger the aspect.
- Stellium
- A cluster of three or more planets in one sign or house.
- Ruler
- The planet that owns a sign. The ruler of the Ascendant sign is called the chart ruler.
- Domicile and exaltation
- The signs where a planet acts most freely; their opposites are detriment and fall.
- Retrograde motion
- The apparent backward motion of a planet as the Earth overtakes it. Marked with an R in the table.
- Lunar nodes
- Where the Moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic: North (Rahu) and South (Ketu). Eclipses happen there.
- Precession
- The slow wobble of the Earth’s axis, about 1° in 72 years. It is why the signs have drifted away from the constellations.
- Ayanamsa
- The accumulated difference between the tropical and sidereal zodiacs; today about 24°.
- Transit
- A planet in the current sky crossing a natal degree. A way of talking about the present moment rather than about character.
- Synastry
- The comparison of two charts: aspects from one person’s planets to another’s.