Astrology 101

Let me attempt to give the super basic primer I wish I had when I started practicing.

When people say something like, “I’m an Aquarius!” what that means is they were born between January 19 to February 18. This is the time of the year when the sun is in the sign of Aquarius. From our perspective the sun, moon, stars, and planets appear to move through the sky, each at their own pace. The sun takes about a year to make a full loop through all 12 zodiac signs. The moon is much faster—it cycles through all 12 signs in about 28 days. And Saturn takes around 29 years to do the same. Your natal chart (aka birth chart) is a 2D representation of what the sky looked like the minute you were born. It shows what sign each planet was in and a bunch of other juicy info. This is what astrologers “read”.

There are 8 planets (the sun and moon are “luminaries”).

Each planet has a plethora of unique meanings that have evolved over hundreds of generations. For example, Venus is associated with relationships, love, harmony etc. In astrological interpretations, sometimes it’s easy to think of planets as verbs. E.g. Venus loves, Venus unifies, Venus sweetens… Jupiter gives, Jupiter teaches, Jupiter expands…

There are 12 signs.

Like planets, each sign has many meanings (aka significations). For example, Virgo is associated with being detail-oriented, organized, humble etc. Sometimes it’s easy to think of signs as adverbs, or how a planet expresses itself when it does its thing. For example, a Venus in Virgo might show love through daily, thoughtful acts of service (in a Virgo-like way), whereas a Venus in Leo might drop a banner over the freeway that says, “TRANS IS BEAUTIFUL” because Leo is quite different than Virgo.

The ascendent

Finally, we need to talk about the Ascendent (aka the rising sign). This is arguably the most influential thing in your chart! Imagine the chart below rotating clockwise and imagine a horizontal line superimposed in the middle to represent the horizon. The rising sign is the sign that was rising over the eastern horizon when you were born. This orients the entire chart and defines where all the planets and signs “land”. In the chart below, the ascendent (middle left highlighted in white) is in the sign of Capricorn, so Libra is at the top. If the rising sign was, Aquarius (the sign below it Capricorn represented by two Charlie Brown stripe-y lines) then Libra would be tilted over to the right, and Scorpio (the symbol to the left of Libra) would be in that top dog position.