How to read a natal chart

First make sure the chart was built from the right data: date, time, place and time zone. If the time is approximate or unknown, note for yourself which parts of the chart are unreliable — usually the Ascendant, the angles and the houses. With an uncertain time it is better to draw no conclusions about them at all. More in the article a chart without a birth time.

1. The Sun, Moon and Ascendant. These are the three anchor points: will and direction, feelings and needs, the manner of entering the world. Start with them — they set the overall tone. This trio is covered in the article the Sun, Moon and Ascendant.
2. Planets in signs. Each planet is responsible for its own theme: Mercury for thinking and speech, Venus for attachment and taste, Mars for action and drive, Jupiter and Saturn for growth and limits. The sign shows the manner in which the theme is expressed.
3. Houses. If the time is known, a house shows the area of life where a planet’s theme is more noticeable: work, home, relationships, everyday life.
4. Aspects. The angles between planets show how themes interact. A conjunction merges them, a trine and a sextile make working together easier, a square and an opposition create tension that calls for effort.
5. Putting it together. Look for repetitions: if several factors speak of the same thing, that is the main theme of the chart. If factors disagree, it is not a mistake but a description of an inner contradiction.

The example is fictional: the positions were invented for explanation and are not calculated from anyone’s data.

Let the Sun be in Taurus, the Moon in Scorpio, the Ascendant in Cancer, Mars in Gemini, and let there be an opposition between the Sun and the Moon.

• Anchor points: a drive towards stability (the Sun in Taurus), deep feelings that are not always spoken (the Moon in Scorpio), a cautious manner (the Ascendant in Cancer).
• A planet in a sign: Mars in Gemini acts quickly and through words — arguments, negotiations, many things begun.
• Aspect: the opposition of the Sun and Moon is tension between the wish for calm and strong emotions. It is not a “bad” aspect but a theme the person works with throughout life.
• Putting it together: a calm outward manner with an intense inner life behind it, and a quick, verbal way of acting.

A full reading arranges such observations into 11 chapters by theme. You can see how this looks in practice in the open sample reading.

• Reading each factor separately and piling contradictory descriptions into one list.
• Drawing conclusions about the houses and the Ascendant when the birth time is unknown.
• Treating tense aspects as a sentence and harmonious ones as a guarantee of luck.
• Looking in the chart for a prediction of specific events. A natal chart describes inclinations, not a timetable of life.

It is most useful to read a chart as a set of questions to yourself. What in the description resonates? In which situations does it show up? What does not match — and why? It is worth writing your observations down and returning to them after a few weeks: that way it becomes clear which themes are truly yours.

That is why every chapter of the reading has a “What you can try” block with questions and exercises for observation, and the last chapter is about how to apply the reading as a whole.

If you want to try it with your own data, build a chart — the full reading rests on these same three anchor points and unfolds the rest of the chart in 11 chapters. If you would first like to get to grips with the basics, go back to the article what a natal chart is.