How to Read a Birth Chart: Identifying the Basic Components

Hi, my name is Chris Brennan with TheAstrologySchool.com, and in this video I'm going to talk about how to read and how to identify the different components in a birth chart. So in one of my previous videos, I showed you how to calculate your chart, or the best way to calculate your birth chart, by basically going to astro.com, entering in your birth data, and then it'll spit out or generate a copy of your birth chart, which is essentially just a diagram of the alignment of where the planets were at the moment you were born. So in this video, I want to talk though a little bit about how to identify what is actually given to you in that diagram, which is the the starting point for interpreting and eventually coming to understand what the positions in your birth chart mean. So the very first step in doing that, in understanding the birth chart, is first just understanding the different components that go into it, and then once you have figured that out, once you actually know what you're looking at, then eventually you can go about finding out what it means. So let's take a look at a copy of a birth chart that I cast for today from astro.com. So this is just a chart. I set the data. I treated it like it was a person, like it was a male born today, July 27, 2018, but, you know, that doesn't really matter for our purposes. We're just going to treat this as if it's an actual birth chart, and we're going to talk about some of the different pieces of the chart that are actually presented in this diagram from astro.com. So the very first thing is, in the top left-hand corner, we have the birth data and the coordinates that you entered. So astro.com will have asked you for your name, your birthday, which is the day, month, and year that you were born, the birth time, and the city that you were born in. So all of that data is basically presented in the top left corner. It also shows the exact coordinates of the city that you were born in, which is the longitude and latitude for whatever city you were actually born in. So this shows the longitude and latitude for Denver, Colorado, which is where I set it to, which is 104 West 59 and 39 North 44. So none of that's really terribly important, but it's just useful to know that that's what it's presenting. It's basically got the data that you input in the top left-hand corner of the chart. So just below that, it says the type of chart. It's a natal chart. It says the method, which is the chart design, which it's calling WebStyle. This is their default WebStyle chart format. If you go to birth chart comma ascendant or whatever it's called on the website. It also says what form of house division was used. Their default is Placidus, but there's also other forms of house division. So usually I use whole sign houses. Some astrologers use Porphyry houses or Regiomontanus or many other forms of house division. You can find those in the advanced chart format, but it's just the default. It always goes to Placidus. Also useful in this section, it lists your sun sign as well as your ascendant sign. So that's really useful because even if you don't know the names of the planets, it will at least, or if you don't know the symbols for the planets that are used over on the right, it will at least tell you right from the start what your sun sign is and what sign of the Zodiac your ascendant is located in. All right, so let's skip over to the right side of the chart. Let's start talking about the actual chart wheel itself. So one of the first things we should probably start with is in the wheel itself, it lists the 12 signs of the Zodiac and it uses the symbols for each of the signs. So for example down here in the bottom right corner, this is the symbol for the Zodiac sign of Aries. Next is the Zodiac sign of Taurus. Next is Gemini, then Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. So those are the 12 signs of the Zodiac and those are the symbols that are used for them. I do have another video where I go through and teach you how to draw the the symbols for the signs of the Zodiac, but they're drawn slightly differently depending on which program or which website you're using to calculate the charts, but for the purpose of reading these birth charts from Astra.com, those are the symbols that they use. So that fundamental wheel is the signs of the Zodiac, then inside of that wheel they list the planets. So they list where each of the planets are in the signs of the Zodiac. So for example, the Sun and the North Node are right here and the Sun is located at 4 degrees of Leo. Mercury is later in the same sign and it's located at 23 degrees of Leo. So each of the Zodiacal signs, each of the signs of the Zodiac, is it's basically like a span or a space of something known as the ecliptic, which is like a band or a belt that's around the Earth. So each sign of the Zodiac consists of exactly 30 degrees. 30 degrees and then each of the planets are in one of those 30 degrees within whatever sign it's located in. So the Sun and Mercury at the top part of the chart, this is the symbol for Venus, which is over here in the sign of Virgo. Next is Jupiter, which is located at 13 degrees of Scorpio. Next is Saturn, which is located at 3 degrees of Capricorn. Pluto is at 19 degrees of Capricorn. The Moon is the one to the right and then Mars are located at 5 degrees and 3 degrees of Aquarius respectively. Neptune is at 16 Pisces. The chart by default lists the asteroid Chiron, which here is located at 2 degrees of Aries. And then finally the planet Uranus is located at 2 degrees of Taurus in this chart. So this is important because each birth chart, the most important thing that it does is it tells you what sign of the Zodiac each of the planets is located in and what degree within that sign of the Zodiac that each of the planets is located in. So it basically tells you how far into that sign of the Zodiac, how early or late in the sign that it is. So for example, earlier we saw that the Sun was very early in the sign of Leo at 4 degrees and Mercury is very late in the sign of Leo at 23 degrees, but they're both in the overall zodiacal sign of Leo itself. So the most fundamental information that a birth chart lists that it actually gives is that indication of what sign of the Zodiac each of the planets is located in. And so most of you probably know your Sun's sign, like here the Sun is in Leo and so this person would be a quote-unquote Leo because their Sun was in that sign of the Zodiac when they were born. But they have other planets and other signs of the Zodiac like Mercury in Virgo, the Moon in Aquarius, Jupiter in Scorpio, and so on and so forth. So part of the first realization that everybody has when they start studying their birth chart is the realization that astrology is not just about the Sun's sign or everybody is not just one Zodiac sign, but instead everyone's birth chart has a mixture of planets and different signs of the Zodiac which creates a sort of unique character profile, let's say, for each person. All right, so those are the signs of the Zodiac. The next thing that the chart shows is it also shows aspects which are relationships or distances between planets, and each of these aspects or the different distances between the planets have different meanings. So if the planet is one sort of distance from another planet, then it means one thing, and if it's a different distance, it means another thing. So the aspects are listed just inside the planets in this sort of inner circle where you have the red and blue and also the green and black lines. So the most important lines are the red and blue ones because those are the major aspects which, for our purposes here, denote the aspects known as the sextile, the square, the trine, and the opposition. So generally speaking, the main thing you need to know is that squares are when the planets are approximately 90 degrees apart. So squares are when the planets are approximately 90 degrees apart, and they're represented by a red line that's about 90 degrees. So it's not always exactly 90 degrees, but usually if it's close to 90 degrees, then you'll see a red aspect line drawn from one planet, in this case the Sun, which is up here in early Leo, to another planet, which in this case is Jupiter, over here in the middle of Scorpio, about 90 or so degrees away. So the squares are 90 degrees. There's also the opposition, which is 180 degrees. Opposition, which is another red line. Then there's the sextile, which is about 60 degrees, and then finally there's the trine, which is when planets are about 120 degrees from each other. So generally speaking, sextiles and trines are viewed as positive or easy, whereas squares and oppositions are viewed as either challenging or sometimes negative. So you don't need to understand at this stage how to interpret different planets when they're in aspect to each in each other. You just need to understand that that's what's being displayed in this inner section of the chart is the aspects, which are relationships or geometrical intervals between planets. So aspects are actually also denoted in the bottom left corner of the chart as well, in this little section here, which is known as the Aspectarian. So the Aspectarian is in the bottom left part of the chart, and what it does is it lists each of the planets, and then it tells you if they have an aspect with another planet, and if it does, what type of aspect it is. So for example, it starts up here with the Sun and the Moon, which are the first two planets listed. So Sun and Moon, and it says that those two planets are in opposition to each other. So the opposition is denoted by a little glyph that looks like this, like two circles with a line between them. And if we go back and look at the chart, that's actually what we see. We're physically or literally in the chart, you can actually see that the Sun is up here in Leo, and it's opposite to the Moon down here in Aquarius. So it literally creates a sort of opposition in the chart where they're on each sort of different ends or opposite ends of the chart, and that's the opposition. So the Aspectarian is a quick way just to identify what aspects each of the planets has. The other aspects listed are things like the square. So for example, Mercury here is listed as being square to Jupiter. So a square literally just looks like a square. And in the chart itself, we can see Jupiter here at 13 Scorpio, and it's square sort of widely to Mercury at 23 degrees of Leo. So other aspects are the Trine, the Sextile, and there's also conjunctions. And there's also one of the problems with the Aspectarian that Astra.com does by default is it also includes minor aspects that are less important. So it includes things like the Quintile, the Semisextile, the Inconjunct, and other things like that, which even if you use those as a new person to astrology, makes things a little bit unnecessarily complicated. So for our purposes, if you're a beginner, I would recommend just focusing on the red and blue aspects, which are the major aspects or the most significant or important ones. So those are things like the Trines, the Oppositions, and the Squares. Alright, so that's the Aspectarian, and it's pretty cool because it can sort of tell you at a glance what planets are an aspect to what. Let's see, other parts of the chart. Another major factor in the chart, there's two other major factors. There's one nice easy little quick reference box, or there's one additional reference box I should mention before we go forward though, and that's this little box right here. So what this does is it tells you, it gives you two pieces of information. It tells you what the elemental makeup is in your chart in terms of which planets are placed in either fire signs, air signs, earth signs, or water signs, and it nicely kind of color codes them, which is kind of useful. So if you look at the first horizontal sort of axis, it tells you that the following planets are all in fire signs, and it puts those planets in red. So it tells us that Chiron, the Sun, Mercury, and the North Node are all in fire signs, and fire signs have a particular interpretation in terms of delineating what those actually mean. Then it tells you that the following planets are all in air signs, which are the Moon and Mars, which are both in Aquarius. Next it tells us that all of these planets are in earth signs, and that includes Saturn and Pluto, which are both in Capricorn, which is a green earth sign, as well as Uranus, which is over here in Taurus, which is an earth sign, and Venus and the Midheaven, which are in Virgo, which is another earth sign. So one of the things you'll learn pretty early on is that, generally speaking, the elements are color-coded. So in astro.com, it codes the earth signs as green, it codes the fire signs as red, it codes the water signs as blue, and then it codes the air signs as kind of like orange or yellow. So all of that information, you can see that visually if you just look at the chart, if you know what signs are associated with what element, you know that if you look at the chart and you see that, for example, that Venus is in a green sign, you know that Venus is going to be in an earth sign. Or if you see that Jupiter is in a blue sign, you know that that means Jupiter is in a water sign. But another quick way for you to find that information out is just by looking at that little box to the left that tells you the elemental placements of each of the planets, which is pretty handy. So, let's see, besides that, the box also tells you about the modalities and what modalities each of the planets are placed in. So these are additional properties of the signs where each of the signs of the zodiac, there's only 12 signs of the zodiac, and each of them falls into one of three categories, which is either cardinal, fixed, or mutable. So this other sort of, what is it, layer or line basically just tells you which planets are in cardinal signs, which planets are in fixed signs, and which planets are in mutable signs, which is useful once you, again, just like with the elements, once you learn the elements, once you learn the modalities and what they mean, this becomes like a useful reference point in terms of interpreting different parts of your chart quickly and easily. And generally speaking, this box is useful because it can tell you quickly when there's a preponderance of planets in a certain quality in the chart. So, for example, we noticed that this person has a lot of earth placements in green, as well as, that seems to be the sort of element that the person has the most placements in, is earth signs. The person also has a lot of placements in fixed signs, so we would say that the fixed quality is one of the predominant qualities in this person's birth chart, or in their life in general. So you can use this little box in the middle left part of the chart, basically, in order to just quickly get a snapshot of some of the dominant themes in the person's life. All right. Finally, one of the last boxes I should mention is this one up here that lists each of the planets, and one of the things that's useful about it is it gives it writes out the name of the planet and it puts the glyph or the symbol for the planet right next to it on the left. So it lists the symbol for the planet, then it gives the name. This is useful because if you don't know the symbols for the planets yet, you can actually use this in order to memorize them. So you can look at, for example, Mars. You see the symbol for Mars, and then you see the name for Mars, and that can help you to memorize those symbols. So obviously when you look at the chart over on the right, you see the symbol for Venus, but you may not recognize it yet. But if you just look over on the left, you'll see this really useful key that tells you that that's the symbol for Venus. So that's kind of handy if you're new. The other thing that this table is useful for is it tells you the degree that the planet is located in, the sign that it's located in, and then the basically the minutes and seconds, which are subdivisions of the individual degrees of the signs of the zodiac. So for our purposes, the only thing that's really important is just the first two pieces of information, which is that it lists the degree and the sign. So it tells you that the Sun is at four degrees of Leo, which visually we can see over here when we look, and we see that the Sun is at four degrees in the sign of Leo. So it's just presenting the same information that's over on the right in the actual diagram, but it's writing it out in words and numbers instead of just using, you know, glyphs or symbols, which again is just useful in terms of if you're still a beginner and you're still learning this stuff. So the only other thing that's useful there that I should mention is that it will also tell you in this box if the planet is retrograde. So if there's an R just after the number entry, that means that the planet is retrograde, and so instead of moving forward through the signs of the zodiac, it's temporarily moving backwards through the signs of the zodiac at that point in time. And there's a specific or unique interpretation that goes along with retrograde planets, which you'll learn eventually at some point. So this is also listed in the actual diagram itself. So for example, here we can see that Saturn is listed as being retrograde, and if you look at the actual chart, you'll see Saturn there. It's listed as being in three degrees of Capricorn, but there's also a little R next to the glyph for Saturn, which indicates that it's retrograde. So anytime you see a little R next to a planet, that indicates retrograde. So Pluto's retrograde, Mars is retrograde, Neptune is retrograde, it looks like Chiron is retrograde, and Mercury is retrograde, and that's it. The other planets that don't have an R next to them, like Jupiter, are not retrograde. So that's another useful piece of information that the chart gives you. Finally, the very last thing that the chart also displays is the houses, or the twelve houses. The starting point for this is the horizontal axis that's presented in the middle of the chart. This is what's known as the ascendant-descendant axis. So the ascendant is over on the left side of the chart, the left side of the circle, and it's just listed as AC. So it says the AC, or the ascendant, is in the sign of Scorpio, and it's at 23 degrees of that sign. So that means that this person's ascendant is in Scorpio, and what the ascendant is, is it's the sign of the zodiac that was rising over the eastern horizon at the moment that the person was born. So when you're trying to understand the ascendant, think of the ascendant as... Remember that in the morning, every morning, the Sun rises over the eastern horizon, and that's when it goes from nighttime to daytime, is when the Sun basically rises each morning over the horizon. Well, that area of the horizon where the Sun rises, that's actually the ascendant. In this chart, I cast the chart for 3.07 p.m. So it's kind of later in the afternoon today, so the Sun was all the way up here, but the Sun earlier this morning, at like 5 or 6 o'clock this morning, it would have rose over the ascendant, over the horizon, until it eventually got to the point that it's at today. So the point here is just that the ascendant is the spot where the Sun rises each morning, but the Sun isn't the only planet that rises over the eastern horizon. But in fact, at any one moment in time, there's going to be other planets and other signs of the zodiac that are rising over the horizon at that specific point in time, and that's what the ascendant indicates, or that's what it refers to, and that's what it depicts in the chart, is it tells you exactly which sign of the zodiac was rising over the eastern horizon at the time that you cast the chart for. So if this is a birth chart, and this is the chart for when a person was born, then we would say that their ascendant is in Scorpio, because Scorpio was the sign of the zodiac that was rising over the horizon at the moment of their birth. So the rising sign and the ascendant, the actual degree of the ascendant, which is 23 degrees, is important because that's usually used to set up a series of 12 houses, which are sectors of the chart, where it divides the chart into 12 additional sectors, and each of these sectors is designated in the very innermost wheel, where you'll see 12 numbers. The sector that is usually associated with the ascendant, or follows immediately after the ascendant, is referred to as the first house. So the very first sector that follows after the ascendant, this entire sector here, is the first house, and it's designated by the number one. Then after that, we have the second house, which is designated by the number two. Then we have the third house. Then we have the fourth house, and so on and so forth, until you go all the way around the chart, and eventually you have 12 houses. So each house ends up representing a different part of the person's life, and a different topic in the person's life, and in some instances it can indicate different people in the life. So for example, the second house is associated with finances. So the second house is associated with money and finances, and that's where astrologers would look for financial questions. The seventh house, which is over here, is associated with relationships. So this is where an astrologer would look for the topic of relationships. The tenth house, in the Midheaven, is associated with career. So that's where an astrologer would look to study matters pertaining to a person's career, and so on and so forth. So the houses actually become incredibly important in terms of doing predictions and delineations for different areas of a person's life. So it's important to be able to identify them early on when you start studying astrology, and when you learn how to calculate a birth chart. Finally, the only other thing that's worth mentioning here is the very last box that I haven't mentioned. This is just a little box that lists the degrees for the Ascendant, the Midheaven, the starting point or the cusp of the second house, the third house, the eleventh house, and the twelfth house. So this is basically just a box that lists the starting point for some of the houses, just in case you weren't able to read that information in the chart itself. So, for example, we know from the diagram itself that the Ascendant is at 23 degrees of Scorpio, and over here in this box, it tells us that the Ascendant is at 23 degrees of Scorpio. Conversely, we can see that the Midheaven, which is the starting point of the tenth house when you're using the default method of house division on astro.com, the Midheaven's at 5 degrees of Virgo, and the little box tells us that the Midheaven's at 5 degrees of Virgo as well. So it basically just reiterates the same information that's already over here in the chart itself. All right, I'm trying to think if there's anything else, but I think that's it in terms of just a basic overview of the birth chart and what we're looking at here when you're when you get a copy of your birth chart from astro.com, and in terms of what it indicates. So, that's the basic starting point or the basic building block to learning astrology and getting into this subject more broadly, because the birth chart is just where everything else comes from, basically. You have to learn how to read charts before you can learn how to interpret them, and before you can learn how to make predictions or other things using astrology. You first have to understand the basic signs and symbols, and that's probably, if you're brand new to astrology, going to be your first starting point is just learning how to memorize the symbols for the planets, the symbols for the signs of the zodiac, and then the symbols for the aspects, which are, again, the relationships between the planets. And once you get that basic information down, you should be in pretty good shape to start learning how to actually interpret what each of those placements mean in the birth chart, and from there, eventually, you'll be hopefully really good at doing it, and you'll become a pro astrologer yourself at some point one of these days. Alright, so that's it for this quick little introductory overview of how to read your birth chart and what the different components of the birth chart mean. So, thanks a lot for watching. If you have any questions, please post them in the comment section below. Please be sure to like and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want to see more videos like this, and I'm always looking for suggestions about what video I should do next, just based on what kind of questions people are actually asking. So, if you have a question, or if there's a certain type of video that you'd like to see me do next, then shoot me an email or drop me a note in the comment section below to let me know. Alright, thanks a lot for watching, and I'll see you next time.