Friendly, plain-English guides to astrology
A birth chart is just a picture of the sky at the exact moment and place you were born — drawn as a wheel of signs, planets, houses and aspects. The starting point of everything.
Read more →A four-thousand-year journey from Babylonian clay tablets to phone apps — omens, the Hellenistic birth chart, Ptolemy, the Islamic Golden Age, and the modern revival.
Read more →The planets are the 'what' of a chart — the players. A quick tour from the Sun and Moon through Mercury, Venus and Mars to the slow, generational outer planets.
Read more →The twelve famous names are just equal slices of sky — and each is a style, not a thing. What the signs really are, a one-line feel for each, and how astrologers sort them.
Read more →Every sign is just two simple ingredients — an element (fire/earth/air/water) and a modality (cardinal/fixed/mutable). Learn those and the whole zodiac clicks into place.
Read more →Each sign quietly splits into three ten-degree decans, each flavoured by another sign of the same element — why an early Leo differs from a late one.
Read more →The Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven and IC — the four corners of the wheel. Self and other, public and private, the cross everything else hangs on, and why birth time matters.
Read more →Your rising sign (the Ascendant) is how you come across — your 'front door'. The third of the 'big three' (Sun, Moon, Rising), and the one that needs your birth time.
Read more →If planets are the 'what' and signs the 'how', the houses are the 'where' — the twelve areas of life. A quick tour of all twelve rooms, from self to the hidden.
Read more →A gentle, plain-English introduction to conjunctions — what they are, and why two planets sitting together act as one.
Read more →Astrologers don't all agree where the houses begin — Placidus, whole-sign and the rest. What stays fixed, why the disagreement exists, and what a beginner should actually do.
Read more →Find your rising sign, ask which planet rules it, and you've found your chart ruler — the captain of the whole chart, and the best single place for a beginner to start.
Read more →Astrologers ask not just which sign a planet is in, but whether it's comfortable there — domicile, exaltation, detriment and fall. And why 'debility is not doom'.
Read more →What reception means — a planet sitting in a sign another planet rules, so the second 'receives' the first like a host welcoming a guest — and why mutual reception can rescue an otherwise difficult chart.
Read more →The different flavours of conjunction — tight and loose, combust and cazimi, stelliums, great conjunctions — and how each shows up in a reading, all in plain English.
Read more →Beyond the conjunction, the four big aspects — sextile, trine (the easy ones) and square, opposition (the challenging ones) — and why 'hard' doesn't mean 'bad'.
Read more →Planets are almost never at an exact angle, so how close counts as an aspect? The orb is the wiggle room — and the rule that tighter means stronger.
Read more →When three or more planets link up they form a shape — stelliums, Grand Trines, T-squares, Grand Crosses and the Yod. How single aspects become whole pieces of a personality.
Read more →Beyond the big five: the semisextile, semisquare, sesquiquadrate, quincunx and quintile — smaller angles that add subtle shading, and what each one represents.
Read more →The exact halfway point between two planets is a sensitive spot where their energies blend — and when a third planet lands on it, you get a 'midpoint picture'. An advanced, precise tool.
Read more →What 'void of course' means — when a planet (the Moon most famously) makes no more aspects before it leaves its sign — and why it matters for timing, questions and birth charts.
Read more →Your birth chart is frozen, but the real sky keeps moving. Transits are today's planets making angles to your natal chart — astrology's way of talking about timing. Weather, not fate.
Read more →Astrology's other timing method, alongside transits: a day for a year, gently evolving your own chart. Transits are the outer weather; progressions are you slowly growing up.
Read more →Each year the Sun returns to its exact natal degree — cast a chart for that moment and you get a preview of your coming year. A popular forecasting tool, read as tone not fate.
Read more →The third timing method: slide the entire birth chart forward by the Sun's arc — about one degree per year — so even the slow, deep planets get their moment. A degree ≈ a year.
Read more →What it means for an aspect to be applying (still building toward exact) or separating (already past) — how to tell, why applying is the stronger, and why it decides 'yes or no' in a horary question.
Read more →When two planets don't quite connect, a third can carry the light between them (translation) or gather both their light (collection) — the classic way a question still comes together through a helper.
Read more →What a retrograde planet really is (an illusion of backward motion), why Mercury gets the blame, what 're-' really means — and why it's a pause, not a punishment.
Read more →The station — when a planet seems to stop before turning — is the intense heart of a retrograde, and the pre- and post-shadow are its run-up and wind-down: the fuller shape of the cycle beyond 'Mercury is retrograde'.
Read more →A planet retrograde at your birth isn't weakened — its energy is turned inward. What natal Mercury, Venus or Mars retrograde feels like, and why the outer planets barely count.
Read more →The Moon comes in two parts worth knowing: your Moon sign (how you feel, beneath your Sun sign) and the Moon's phases (the new-to-full-and-back cycle, and how to work with it).
Read more →The Moon's Nodes aren't planets but two opposite points — the South Node (your comfort zone, what comes easily) and the North Node (your growing edge, where you're headed). The most hopeful axis in the chart.
Read more →An eclipse is just a new or full Moon happening right on the lunar nodes — the most powerful lunations of all. Turning points and eclipse seasons, read as climate, not catastrophe.
Read more →Two beloved modern points beyond the planets — Black Moon Lilith (the wild, untamed self you were told to hide) and Chiron (the wounded healer: your deepest hurt, and your gift for helping others through it).
Read more →A calculated point blending your Ascendant, Sun and Moon, marking where wellbeing comes more naturally for you — the most famous of the Arabic Parts.
Read more →Beyond the ten planets: Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta — the asteroids that fill in nurture, wisdom, commitment and devotion. An optional layer of fine detail.
Read more →Every aspect is just a number dividing the circle — so what if you tuned the whole chart to one number? The harmonic chart, what each number means (5=creativity, 7=inspiration, 9=joy), and Addey's system.
Read more →The actual stars of the night sky — Regulus, Aldebaran, Spica, Algol — and what it means when a planet sits right on one. An old, optional, starlit layer.
Read more →A quiet traditional technique: every planet has a shadow twin mirrored across the Cancer–Capricorn solstice axis. Two planets on each other's mirror share a hidden bond — plus the equinox mirror, contra-antiscia.
Read more →Lay two birth charts over each other and read the aspects between one person's planets and the other's — the astrology of relationships. A dynamic, not a destiny.
Read more →Beyond the flat zodiac: a planet's north/south position (declination). Two planets at the same declination are 'parallel' — a hidden conjunction — plus contra-parallels and out-of-bounds planets.
Read more →Astrology's practical daily side: the seven planets ruling the hours in Chaldean order (and why the weekdays carry their names), how to pick a fitting hour, and the almanac/ephemeris that keeps the sky's diary.
Read more →Question astrology: cast a chart for the exact moment a question is asked and read the answer from it. Significators, the Moon, applying vs separating, radicality — and William Lilly. A thoughtful mirror, not a yes/no oracle.
Read more →Astrology's oldest, outward-facing branch — reading nations, cycles and the mood of an age rather than a person. The key terms (ingresses, great conjunctions, outer-planet cycles) and Barbault's cyclic index. And no, 'mundane' doesn't mean boring.
Read more →Before you compare two charts, your own says how you love: Venus (affection) and Mars (desire), the 5th house (romance) and 7th/Descendant (partnership), plus Juno and the Moon. Know your own heart first.
Read more →Beyond synastry: give the relationship its OWN chart. The composite (the midpoint average of two charts) and the Davison (a real chart for the midpoint in time and place). The couple as a third thing.
Read more →The active cousin of horary: look forward and pick an auspicious moment to START something. The waxing, non-void Moon, strengthening the ruler of the matter, benefics on the angles — a fair wind, not a guarantee.
Read more →History and symbolism, NOT medicine (see a doctor for anything real): the 'zodiac man' mapping signs to body parts head-to-toe, the humours, the 6th house, and the decumbiture chart for the moment illness began.
Read more →A speculative, controversial branch (NOT financial advice): the big Jupiter–Saturn economic cycles and Barbault's index, plus the bolder market-timing tradition (Gann, the ISBA) and the 2nd/8th houses. A fascinating study, a terrible strategy.
Read more →How financial astrologers boil dozens of planetary angles down to one wavy 'weather' curve — the Bradley siderograph and Barbault's cycle index — and why to read them with a healthy pinch of salt.
Read more →Jupiter and Saturn meet every twenty years, and mundane astrologers have watched that beat for centuries. A plain-English tour of the long cycles — and how lightly to hold them.
Read more →Re-zero the whole zodiac to your north node (the 'dragon') and every planet shifts sign while the aspects stay — a 'soul chart' read for deeper purpose, and compared to the natal to see where soul and self align.
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