One of the best things about being a journalist is the deeply random conversations I get to have with complete and utter strangers, many of whom also happen to be semifamous. Like the time I interviewed “plus size” supermodel (ridiculous, she’s like a U.S. size four) Crystal Renn. It was supposed to be a basic Q&A for London’s Stylist magazine, but the first thing Crystal wanted to know when we sat down were my Sun, Moon, and Rising signs. It turns out we were both astrology mad. Soul sister! I thought to myself, as the first thing I usually do when I get asked to interview someone is look up their chart.
Of all the wonders of the Internet, the fact that you can google most celebrities’ birth details will never cease to be a constant source of entertainment for me. And by the way? For the student of astrology, this is also a great way to hone your skills. After all, once you’ve got their birth chart in your hands, the lives, loves, failures, and successes of the A-list are all out there just waiting to be analyzed.
For the uninitiated, your birth chart is essentially a map of the sky, showing the exact position of the planets on the wheel of the astrological zodiac at the moment you were born—that is, the moment your soul chose to incarnate this time around. Each placement of each planet is a window into a different aspect of a person’s personality.
Back to Crystal, who loved astrology because as a model she found herself interacting with new people all day, every day. At every casting, every photo shoot, and every catwalk event, she would be faced with a whole new team—and what better way to break the ice, not to mention work out who the hell you are working with, than a little astrological inquiry? Knowing somebody’s Sun sign (their intrinsic personality), Rising sign (how they come across), and Moon sign (deep-seated emotional needs and how they react to stuff) helped her find her place within the group, work out how to read different individuals, and, on a more advanced level, how best to communicate her own wants and needs. When the people in question (photographer, makeup artist, stylist) were responsible for how she was going to look in the resulting images, not to mention potentially recommend her for the next job, you can see how she’d found this to be a highly valuable life skill.
Sun Sign = Your Intrinsic Personality
Rising Sign = How You Come Across
Moon Sign = Emotional Needs and Responses
And in my book (this book, ha), it’s not only supermodels who can benefit from getting a grip on the basics of astrology. Yes, it’s fun to read a daily, weekly, or month-ahead horoscope for your own Sun sign, but it’s when you learn some of the other key aspects of your chart and then apply this insight to your relationships with your Self and others that things get really interesting.
Astrology tends to get a bad rap from people who assume it’s about trying to “predict” future events—and because it’s based on something as seemingly random as the position of celestial bodies circling the Sun millions of light-years away. In answer to this, (a) I’d like to remind us all for a moment how profoundly our lives are affected by the seasons—not to mention the impact the daily weather forecast has on our mood. And if we can see the influence of the Moon in the ebb and flow of the tides, is it really such a stretch to believe that the other planets in our solar system might also affect life here on Earth? That the “cosmic weather” might also play some kind of role in our lives?
Meanwhile, (b) my take on astrology is that it’s actually a complex language of symbols for describing the intricacies of human nature. After all, for anybody fluent in astro-speak, it’s so much simpler to describe myself as having my “Sun in Aries” than go into a whole riff about how I can be self-interested, but at the same time am deeply loyal; or how I’m a born entrepreneur, prone to risk-taking, with a warrior soul that really, truly, underneath all the ego BS, wants to save the world.
For as far back as I can remember I have been fascinated with the way this mystical language just always seemed to make sense. That is, if I didn’t spend too long trying to wrap my head around the concept that each individual life on Earth is shaped by the position of the planets at our time of birth. But for me, how astrology works isn’t really the point (scientists versus mystics, remember?). I see it more as a tool for personal development, with which to interpret what, why, how, and when certain events, emotional states, and evolutionary processes are presenting in our lives. And all in the name of our evolution/karmic journey.
Yes, astrology can also seem like an extremely navel-gazing pastime. But I think the desire to know yourself and the world you move through better is essentially a drive to be a better, more effective human being. Not that it’s there to be used as a scapegoat, either. Cultivating an awareness of the way certain astrological aspects could influence events is a very different beast to simply blaming all your shortcomings, your just-couldn’t-really-be-assed-to-go-there fuckups, on the stars. This is where the concept of “free will” comes into play, the idea that while we are undoubtedly children of the cosmos and part of the Universal grand plan, we still get the deciding vote as to how our lives play out.
As my astrologer friends Tali and Ophira Edut, better known as the AstroTwins, put it, it helps to see your birth chart as kind of like your “factory settings.” The cosmic blueprint you’re working off in this lifetime.
How you then go about constructing your life depends on all sorts of external factors, including the people you meet, the opportunities you’re presented with, and, ultimately, the decisions you make. But having that original blueprint on file to refer to is a great way to ensure that the foundations remain solid. As such, when you study the language of astrology as a tool for personal development, learning the basics of interpreting your own chart is a really great place to start. With this information at your fingertips, I guarantee you’ll be granted a whole new perspective on your life, your relationships, and, yes, your karmic destiny.
It was the fabulous AstroTwins who lifted the lid on chart interpretation for me. Tali, who met and married her husband at Burning Man, studies shamanism in her spare time, and Ophira, whenever I visit her apartment in the East Village, has a pack of Angel cards out on the table. But they also write the horoscopes for ELLE and appear as regulars on The Real Housewives—in other words, they’re a pair of Mystical Girls, making some seriously magical waves in the Material World.
Numinati alert! I thought when we first connected. (The “Numinati” being my affectionate term for my Numi coven.) And when I then discovered they were leading a Become Your Own Astrologer retreat in Tulum, Mexico, that summer, I knew I would move heaven and earth, not to mention all the freaking constellations in the zodiac, to be there.
This is where I first got a proper handle on basic birth chart interpretation, using what the Twins refer to as the “three-part puzzle” for examining each “aspect”—or planetary placement in non-astro-speak—in a chart. More on this to come. It was also where I got my first taste of comparing two people’s charts (another of the Twins’ pet subjects)—in the process uncovering some home truths about my chart in relationship to my mum’s, for example, that have gone on to shape the way we understand and therefore communicate with each other, taking our mother-daughter connection to a whole other, more forgiving, level. Big stuff. And yet more fuel to my already burning astrological obsession.
READING YOUR CHART
So first up, it’s very important to understand that your Sun sign, which is the sign you read for when you check your daily horoscope, really only represents part of your nature, even though popular culture puts so much emphasis on it. But there are actually eleven planets at play in any one birth chart (including the Sun, Moon, and North Node, which aren’t technically planets, but which astrologers treat as such), each of which has a bearing on said chart. As such, you also have a Venus sign, a Mercury sign, and so on.
And then there is your Rising sign, or Ascendant—the sign of the zodiac the Sun was rising in at the specific time of your birth—which also has a major role to play. Rising signs change every two hours, though, so it’s only possible to calculate your Rising sign if you happen to know, to the nearest two hours, what time you chose to come into the world. But if you don’t, never fear, it’s by no means essential for calculating your chart.
Which, thanks to the aforementioned wonders of the Internet, you can do for free online. In fact, if you haven’t already, go and do it now at www.astrostyle.com, the online home of the AstroTwins, where there’s a link on the homepage for you to “Do your chart for free.” If you don’t know your specific time of birth, you can just enter 12 p.m. (this won’t affect the other planetary aspects). It might also be a good idea to print it out, so you can take some notes.
Okay, got it? Good. And if you don’t have access to a computer right now, here’s what my chart looks like, to give you an idea:
Pretty technical looking, I know, and I’m not going to go into too much detail here. But there are four things to focus on for now.
First, see that circle in the middle? That’s you. Or, if you’re looking at my chart, that’s me. Hi! Yes, pretty egotistical, since IRL, the planets actually revolve around the Sun. But in our birth chart, we get to sit center stage.
Now, look at the outer ring of the chart. This is the Zodiac Wheel, and as you can see it’s divided into twelve sections, one for each SIGN of the zodiac, as denoted by the twelve different symbols or “glyphs” in the right-hand columns of the table opposite—which you may recognize from when you read your horoscope or see your Sun sign written about. My chart begins in Sagittarius on the left (or East) at “9 o’clock,” where it says “A.C.” (for Ascendant).
LEARNING NO. 1: The signs of the zodiac represent the different aspects of our personality, how we show up in the world and deal with situations.
Next up, you’ll see that the middle ring is also divided into twelve sections. These are the different HOUSES of the chart, and they’re numbered 1 to 12, beginning, again, at the nine o’clock position on the left. Each house is “ruled” by the sign it intersects—so my First house is ruled by Sagittarius, my Second house by Capricorn, my Third by Pisces (just), and so on. As such, each house will be colored by the personality of the sign it’s ruled by.
LEARNING NO. 2: The houses represent the different areas of life that we operate in—love, work, home and family, and so on.
Finally, check out the symbols floating in the different houses. These represent the PLANETS, and the chart is essentially like a screengrab of their position in the solar system at the time of our birth.
LEARNING NO. 3: The planets represent our motivation in life, the things that drive us to act.
Basic chart interpretation lies in learning how these three elements interact with one another—planet, house, and sign—as they show up in different combinations in each and every individual birth chart. Here are a couple of examples to help explain what I mean.
As you can see in my chart, Mercury is in Aries in the Fourth house. Since Mercury is the planet of communication, and Aries is the sign of passion and all things new, it makes sense that I’ve always felt compelled to write about the next big trends! In my Fourth house of home and family conditioning, this could speak to the fact I feel most productive writing in my home environment (in fact in every magazine job I had, I did all my actual writing at home), as well as the fact that I was always encouraged to read as a kid.
On a deeper level, the Fourth house also rules women’s issues, suggesting that my writing is destined to somehow impact the lives of women. Add my Moon (subconscious impulses and needs) being in Cancer (the sign ruling the feminine principle) in the deeply “mystical” Eighth house and, well, I bring you The Numinous. Um . . . confused yet?! As you are beginning to see, the “language” of astrology can get pretty complex, offering layers and layers of information to be interpreted. So, for now, let’s get back to basics.
Before I move on to an overview of the different areas covered by each planet, house, and sign, a quick word about the Rising sign and house positions if you don’t know your exact time of birth. Basically, it’s impossible to get an accurate read on these without a time—but you will still know which sign each planet is in, plenty to work with as you begin to get to know your chart.
So once again, the rule to remember is:
BASIC BIRTH CHART INTERPRETATION
Planet (motivation) + Sign (how you direct this) + House (the area of life where that motivation and effort will manifest).
As you’ll begin to see once I get into the traits of each planet, sign, and house of the zodiac below, there’s lots of crossover, all kinds of subtleties, and many, many different ways to interpret what the AstroTwins call this “three-part puzzle.” And besides bucket-loads of experience, I believe the most skilled astrologers employ a degree of intuition, tapping into the numinous nature of this mystical science, when interpreting a chart.
As Julia and Derek Parker write in their brilliant Parkers’ Astrology (a great beginner’s book for anybody serious about the study of astrology): “The art of interpreting a chart is to look much more deeply—to consider the many different aspects shown by planets and signs and their inter-relationships, and weigh them so that one mitigates or strengthens the effect of another. You can, in this way, discover an in-depth portrait of yourself that is astonishing in its light and shade, its subtlety and persuasiveness.”
And, well, if that’s the end goal, we all need to start somewhere—so here’s a cheat sheet for you to refer to as you begin to look at your own chart:
The Planets
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THE SUN: Self-awareness, personal power, life force, creativity, essence, self-expression, spirit, will, drive for personal significance |
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THE MOON: Feelings, instincts, moods, response to things, gut reactions, emotional security, basic needs |
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MERCURY: Communication, speech, thoughts, logic, analysis, ideas, intellect |
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VENUS: Beauty, love, taste, harmony, aesthetics, attraction, charm, romance, sensuality, comfort |
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MARS: Action, energy, desire, impulse, drive, strength, courage, anger, competition |
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JUPITER: Enthusiasm, luck, fortune, optimism, positivity, generosity, benevolence, truth, outgoingness |
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SATURN: Discipline, structure, wisdom, ambition, practicality, realism, responsibility, karma |
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URANUS: Breakthrough, the unexpected, innovation, sudden change, insight, awakening, originality |
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NEPTUNE: Imagination, ideals, sympathy, compassion, intuition, emotions, universal love, dreams, fantasy |
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PLUTO: Fundamental transformation, change, death and rebirth, basic drive, regeneration, inheritance |
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NORTH NODE (not an actual celestial body, but a point referring to the Moon’s position in relation to the other planets at the time of your birth): Life purpose, destiny, personal growth, supportive people, potential |
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SOUTH NODE (this may not be shown on your chart but will always be in the opposite sign as the North Node): Old patterns, past-life experience, inherited traits, innate talents, cultural conditioning |
The Signs
Remember! Your chart will be influenced by ALL the signs to some degree—so no simply looking at your Sun sign and going: “Oh yeah, that’s me.” The traits of each sign show how you direct the energy of the planet it holds in your chart.
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ARIES: Self-starting, outgoing, active, forceful, entrepreneurial, self-confident, strong |
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TAURUS: Stable, persistent, productive, deliberate, wealthy, practical, reliable |
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GEMINI: Communicative, witty, adaptable, curious, many sided, variety seeking |
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CANCER: Sensitive, feeling, receptive, nostalgic, security oriented, emotionally perceptive |
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LEO: Expressive, self-aware, entertaining, playful, warm, childlike, creative, dramatic |
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VIRGO: Analytical, logical, intelligent, detail oriented, sensible, methodical |
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LIBRA: Balanced, just, tolerant, relationship oriented, sociable, cooperative, diplomatic |
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SCORPIO: Intense, determined, thorough, energetic, secretive, passionate, forceful |
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SAGITTARIUS: Enthusiastic, optimistic, jovial, friendly, generous, expansive, honest |
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CAPRICORN: Organized, serious, practical, ambitious, hardworking, disciplined, realistic |
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AQUARIUS: Friendly, intuitive, original, independent, unique, inventive, experimental |
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PISCES: Imaginative, sentimental, sympathetic, compassionate, artistic, dreamy, escapist |
The Houses
FIRST HOUSE: Personality, physical body, self-image, personal self-expression
SECOND HOUSE: Finances, personal possessions, talents, earning ability, values
THIRD HOUSE: Communication, learning, information, discussions, siblings, transportation
FOURTH HOUSE: Home, family, the mother, nourishment, emotions, habits
FIFTH HOUSE: Creativity, love affairs, play, pleasure seeking, entertainment, art
SIXTH HOUSE: Daily work, health and wellness, diet, medical treatment, cleanliness
SEVENTH HOUSE: Relationships, partnerships, cooperation, social awareness, justice
EIGHTH HOUSE: Transformation, power, death and rebirth, sexuality, inheritance, taxes
NINTH HOUSE: Travel, philosophy, learning, aspirations, religion, spiritual teachers
TENTH HOUSE: Career, reputation, ambition, responsibilities and duties, the father, politics
ELEVENTH HOUSE: Friends, group activities, humanitarian interests, insights, rebellion
TWELFTH HOUSE: Healing, the subconscious, ideals, meditation, spiritual development
So once you’ve dug into your own chart . . . it’s pretty much a given that you’ll want to start looking at the charts of all the most important people in your life. Your family members, your lover, your boss. That irritating friend you can’t help loving to death. There are specific ways to interpret how two charts interact with each other, but that gets kind of advanced to go into here. Suffice it to say that comparing the traits of, say, your Cancer Moon and your mother’s Gemini Moon will begin to give you some insight into why, when it comes to certain basic needs, it can be difficult for the two of you to relate.
Yes, this is an example from my own life, and being able to “see” this in our charts was actually the first step on what has been an incredibly healing journey for my relationship with my mum. There’d never been a lack of love between us, but I was always frustrated by what felt like a fundamental inability to communicate on a soul level. I think one of the reasons I left home so young is because I spent a lot of time feeling guilty for not being the kind of daughter I thought she wanted: a.k.a. one who wanted to share every detail of my emotional life with her.
Following a checkered path juggling various jobs to try and make ends meet as a single mum, she has actually found her calling as a psychotherapist (she studied the work of Carl Jung among others, the Swiss founder of analytical psychology who, by the way, was deeply invested in astrology as a tool for analysis). Makes sense, then, that her focus has always been on airing your feelings to heal—whereas I have always been deeply private about my emotional life, preferring to keep my feelings close to my chest until it feels safe to share. That’s some not-so-friendly Gemini (her)/Cancer (me) Moon-sign friction right there.
You can add to this that her Gemini Moon is in her expressive Fifth house, while my Cancer Moon is in my secretive Eighth house! But guess what? Developing an awareness of this conflict through the lens of astrology has also helped me see the value in “her” way of doing things, and to therefore override my innate fear of sharing my emotions—a healing journey in itself.
And yes, considering all the different ways each aspect in a chart can be interpreted, an argument can be made that it’s always possible to see what you want to. But I believe this is also the point: that you see (or choose to see) what you do in a chart for a reason. This is where the intuition part comes in. So long as you are fearless in following your gut to what feels like the truest reading for any particular aspect, no matter how inconvenient or ugly, you will be gifted with rough diamonds of self-awareness to polish and allow to inform your choices and actions going forward.
By using this technique to better understand my needs and my mum’s, and the ways in which we move through the world as a result, our relationship has been transformed. For my part, developing the maturity to override my “crabby” Cancer Moon tendencies (Cancer is symbolized by a crab in its shell) and give her what she always needed from me—a real heart-to-heart—is what’s been instrumental in moving our relationship on. Not overnight, not without us airing some difficult truths about our shared history, and not without buckets of tears. But we’ve gotten to a place where I know we both feel like mother and daughter in a way we were never able to before. It’s this that’s helped me evolve and open up about my feelings in other areas of my life too.
As the AstroTwins’ Ophira puts it: “Astrology is a tool for radical forgiveness,” and it’s not like either my mum or I changed who we are. Rather, I’ve been able to see our differences from a whole more accepting perspective. She is she, I am me, these are our differing needs, and that’s okay.
So if astrology in my book (this book) is for self-reflection, with a view to deeper self-knowledge, a few more words on what I do not believe it’s for—and that’s planning every move you make, every single second, of every single day.
You’re no doubt aware of how some people act like the world must come to a standstill every time Mercury goes into retrograde (i.e., slows its path in the sky so it looks like it’s moving backward). As the planet of communication, contracts, and technology, Mercury’s roughly thrice-yearly retro phase is supposedly a time when things go haywire/backwards in these areas—and as you may well have experienced, this can definitely be the case!
But this is NOT a reason or an excuse to go hide under a rock until it resumes “forward” motion. Because guess what? All the planets are going retrograde and making all kinds of other “negative” aspects all the time, stirring trouble and rubbing one another the wrong way. If we put our lives on hold every time the cosmos was looking anything less than blue skies ahead, we’d never do anything. In fact, going back to my likening astrology to a kind of cosmic weather forecast, you don’t cancel your plans because it looks like rain out—but you do pack an umbrella.
I also like the analogy used by Dr. Chee Ming Wong, an anesthetist I interviewed once who regularly cast his own astrological divinations: “If there’s a bumpy road ahead, then it would be wise to slow down. Conversely, there will be moments that are potentially advantageous.” According to wonderful Dr. Ming Wong (scientifically trained Dr. Ming Wong): “The scientific discipline is good at measuring observable phenomena. Yet, for all that remains a mystery, perhaps the way of the ancients, which includes astrology, provides a well-trodden pathway in exploring the science of the unknown.”
Something to recite in the face of all those who will invariably treat you like a total Froot Loop for choosing to believe that the celestial bodies with which we share our place in space have any bearing on our earthly, human lives whatsoever. Along with this quote, a favorite of mine, from Parkers’ Astrology: “The Universe is not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think.” I rest my case, amen.