← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 224/235
Draconic chart
What it is
A draconic chart is a natal chart measured from a different starting point. The ordinary zodiac begins at 0° Aries, the point where the Sun crosses the celestial equator in spring. The draconic zodiac begins instead at the Moon's North Node: the whole chart is turned so that the North Node sits at 0° Aries and the South Node at 0° Libra, and every planet and angle moves by the same amount.
The name comes from draco, the dragon. The lunar nodes were long called the Dragon's Head and the Dragon's Tail — Lilly uses those names — because eclipses happen near them, and eclipses were pictured as a dragon swallowing the Sun or Moon. Astronomers still speak of the "draconic month", the Moon's return to the same node.
How it is worked out
Subtract the longitude of the North Node from every position. If the North Node stands at 14° Leo (134°), every planet moves back by 134°: a Sun at 20° Capricorn (290°) becomes a draconic Sun at 156°, which is 6° Virgo, and so on round the chart.
Two consequences follow:
- The aspects do not change. Every point moves by the same amount, so every distance between points stays the same. The draconic chart has the same shape as the natal chart; only its signs and degrees differ.
- The signs usually do. Unless the North Node happens to sit near 0° Aries, most planets land in different signs, and the houses take different signs on their cusps.
Astrologers choose between the mean and the true node for the starting point; the two can differ by a degree or more, and so can the draconic positions. Because the nodes move backwards through the zodiac, completing a circuit in about 18.6 years, the draconic zodiac slides against the ordinary one by roughly 19° a year.
How it is read
In modern practice the draconic chart is read as a picture of something beneath the personality — often called the soul's intent or deeper purpose, by analogy with the nodes' own associations with direction and inheritance. Pamela Crane, whose 1987 book was the first devoted wholly to the technique, read it for a person's driving principles, vocation and inherited pattern.
Its most used application is comparison with the natal chart. Where a draconic planet falls on a natal planet or angle, within a degree or so, it is read as a place where that deeper aim and the everyday self meet — a theme that tends to be lived out strongly. Some astrologers also lay one person's draconic chart over another's natal chart, as a further layer of synastry, and some follow transits in the draconic zodiac.
This is an esoteric and optional technique, firmly at the mystical end of the art. Whether the "soul" language is taken literally or as poetry is a matter of belief, and the history is debated: the soul-purpose framing is largely modern, and earlier British writers who used the draconic zodiac framed it differently. It is best met once the ordinary chart is familiar, as a second lens rather than a first.