So, now that you’ve worked with all the basic astrological components on your chart, it’s time to put everything you’ve learned together. By far the best way to use the information you’ve absorbed so far is to test it, test it, test it! as my first teacher used to say. Test your own birth chart, and also test those of your family and friends: that means looking at your chart/their chart and seeing if you can work out how all the energies in it – the planets in the signs and the houses aspecting each other – play out. So where to start?
When you read the birth chart of a friend or a family member, start with their Sun. This is where a person shines from; it’s their essential self, their real self. No matter which sign a person has on their ascendant, once you see where their Sun is, you know something about their core, about their Self. A person’s Sun shows you what they are on Earth to do.
Look at which house their Sun is in – this tells you about their life mission. Then look at which sign it’s in. What messages are you getting from this information? Start to put it together. The Sun is a person’s yang side, the part of them that’s ‘out there’. For their yin side, their emotions, you need to look to the Moon.
To understand what it means to have the Sun in any of the signs, read the Meaning of the signs section and apply that to your own or someone else’s Sun. Can you see how it comes out of you or them?
To recap, then: the first three things to check when looking at your own or someone else’s chart are:
Now ask yourself, for a start, how do these three go together? Which elements are they in – are you dealing with a very watery or fiery or earthy or airy person, for example? How do their Sun, Moon and Rising Sign go together? Are they all in the same element or in clashing elements?
Once you know the big three, you definitely have the lie of the land on any birth chart. At astrology conferences, astrologers (who are notoriously precious about sharing their exact time, date and place birth data – or maybe that’s just me!) usually wear little name cards giving their Sun, Moon and Rising Sign. You can tell so much from just these three.
Next, you need to look at the rest of the planets in the chart: are there lots of planets in a particular house (which suggests a focus in life)? Which aspects are the planets making to each other? Are they easy or challenging.
The fact is, we can’t interpret the position of a sign, planet or house on its own – instead, the entire chart must be taken as a whole. The birth chart is full of pieces of information about an individual and, using a process that astrologers call ‘synthesis’, these elements must be must synthesized into a complete picture of the person. Synthesis simply means using your own brain and ideas to weave together all the elements in a chart in a way that no book or computer-generated chart could ever do.
For example, if you’re reading someone’s chart and you want to understand their Venus, you should look for the following basic information about that planet:
The trick is to take in all this astrological data about that person’s Venus and rattle it around in your brain until you get it as a synthesized whole and becomes, for example: ‘Venus in Capricorn in the 3rd house sextile Mars (in Pisces in the 5th house), with Venus therefore ruling houses 7 and 12.’
After this, you need to ask yourself the following:
That’s astrology!
Here’s a personal example: I have Venus in Gemini in the 2nd house sextile Uranus in the 15th. So let’s break that down…
Venus (abundance and love) in Gemini (writing) in the 2nd house (money) sextiling (harmonizing with) Uranus (the planet of astrology and digital matters) in the 5th house (creativity).
And I love to make my living from writing about astrology, a lot of which I do online.
As you have seen already, there’s a lot to learn with astrology. The truth is, you can maybe never learn it all. There are so many techniques to try, but even the basics contained in this book give a really good grounding. It’s okay to learn as you go, as long as you don’t unleash any dire or negative predictions on the people you read for along the way. Sure, there are negatives in astrology but they are not what we should focus on, and there’s always a solution to be found in every chart problem. After a while, you’ll start to feel this intuitively.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a softy when it comes to my family. I tend not to look at their birth charts too often, as I will obsess and worry! However, if and when there are issues, being able to refer to a friend or family member’s chart can be a huge bonus. This is especially useful with kids – you can help them see the lessons they are meant to be learning, from their birth chart and also by transit.