How to Cast, Read and Unpack Your Birth Chart According to an Expert Astrologer
When you’re talking about astrology with a friend, significant other or colleague, and they ask, “What’s your sign?” your go-to response is the sign that the sun was moving through when you were born. It’s a case that astrology skeptics love to zero in on, asking how everyone born during a 30-day period could possibly be exactly alike. But what they — and, to be fair, a lot of astrology newbies — don’t know is that your sun sign (also referred to as your zodiac sign) is just one piece of a complex, nuanced blueprint referred to as your birth, or natal, chart. It’s a highly unique wheel-shaped chart that is calculated based on not only your birthday but the exact year, time and place you were born.
Your astrology chart will show you not just what sign the sun was in when you were born but also how many degrees into that sign it was (each sign spans 30 degrees, and you’ll want to note the degrees of each sign as you start to piece all these moving parts together). It’ll also show you the placement of the moon and what signs the planets occupied at the precise time of your birth from the vantage point of your birthplace. Because the sun, the moon, and the planets in our solar system all move at different speeds, you might have been born when the sun was in Cancer, but the moon was in Aquarius and Venus was in Leo. And each of these natal placements offers valuable intel into your motivations, strengths, opportunities for personal growth, personality and perspective.
As I point out in both of my books, Mercury Magic: How to Thrive During Retrogrades and Tap Into the Power of the Messenger Planet All Year Long and Raising Baby by the Stars: A New Parent’s Guide to Astrology, the best way to begin to make the most of astrology as a tool for bolstering self-awareness or better understanding someone significant in your life is to cast a birth chart. Read on for how to do that and what you’ll want to look for.
How to cast your birth chart
To start, you’ll need your:
Full birthdate, including month, day, year
Place of birth, including city, state or province and country
Time of birth
If you don’t know those details, you can find them on a long-form birth certificate. From there, you can check out any number of sites or apps to calculate a free birth chart. A few options:
My website, MaressaBrown.com.
The Time Passages app.
A paid software that professional astrologers use, such as Astro Gold (for Macs) or Solar Fire (for PCs and Macs).
Work with a pro astrologer — many offer birth chart analysis and reading.
Pro-tip: I highly recommend using the above resources or another app/website that generates the wheel version of your birth chart. Some apps/sites only show your birth chart information in a list format, noting which signs and possibly which houses each placement (e.g., the sun, moon, Mercury, et al.) falls in, however that is not a birth chart. To get the most information bang for your buck, you want to see the whole wheel.
Key details to check out in your birth chart
When you first look at your birth, or natal, chart, chances are you could be more than a little daunted by all the intricate details, symbols and even colors. It can help to bear in mind that astrology is a 2,000+ year old practice that people study throughout their whole lives, and even after decades of learning, they’ll continue to pinpoint new information or interpretations.
That said, you can start out by familiarizing yourself with the planets and what they influence, the signs (plus their element and modality, which speaks to their innate nature and how they interact with the world) plus a few other helpful points.
The Planets
The sun: Core identity, self-image, confidence
The moon: The moon represents inner world, emotional needs, intuition and instincts
Mercury: Communication style, approach to information-gathering and sharing, thought processes, decision making
Venus: Relationships and romance, creative self-expression, perception of beauty, relationship to earning money, pleasure
Mars: Action style, inner drive, anger, motivation, self-assertion
Jupiter: How you make your own luck, expression of generosity, thirst for soaking up knowledge
Saturn: Approach to setting boundaries, life lessons related to discipline, how you take responsibility
Uranus: How you innovate, rebellion against convention, experience of personal freedom and individuality
Neptune: Imagination and creativity, spirituality, desire to heal
Pluto: Experience of infatuation, how you uncover secrets, relationship to power struggles and control
The Signs
Aries: The cardinal fire sign
Taurus: The fixed earth sign
Gemini: The mutable air sign
Cancer: The cardinal water sign
Leo: The fixed fire sign
Virgo: The mutable earth sign
Libra: The cardinal air sign
Scorpio: The fixed water sign
Sagittarius: The mutable fire sign
Capricorn: The cardinal earth sign
Aquarius: The fixed air sign
Pisces: The mutable water sign
Other Helpful Points
North Node: Your north star in this lifetime, what you’re aspiring toward
South Node: Where you’ve been, past lives, challenges, karma
Chiron: Deep wounds and how you can heal others
What to know about the houses of your birth chart
Every chart is split into 12 pie slices, and you can think of them as a map of the stars and planets specific to when and where you were born. The top of the chart (houses seven through 12) shows what was visible in the night sky when you were born, and the bottom of the chart (houses one through six) show the planets and constellations (a.k.a. signs) that could be seen in the sky from the opposite hemisphere. As the Earth rotates on its axis over a 24-hour period, the sun, the moon, Mercury and all other planets and stars rotate clockwise through the houses.
Each house represents a particular area of life and is associated with a planet (called the natural planetary ruler) and one of the 12 signs.
The Houses
First House: Self, associated with Mars and Aries
Second House: Income, associated with Taurus and Venus
Third House: Communication, associated with Gemini and Mercury
Fourth House: Home Life, associated with Cancer and the moon
Fifth House: Romance, associated with Leo and the sun
Sixth House: Wellness, daily routine, associated with Virgo and Mercury
Seventh House: Partnership, associated with Libra and Venus
Eighth House: Intimacy, joint resources, associated with Scorpio and Pluto
Ninth House: Adventure, higher learning, associated with Sagittarius and Jupiter
Tenth House: Career, public image, associated with Capricorn and Saturn
Eleventh House: Friendships, long-term aspirations, associated with Aquarius and Uranus
Twelfth House: Spirituality, dreams, associated with Pisces and Neptune
The Ascendant and Other Angles
ASC: You’ve probably heard of your rising sign, a.k.a. ascendant. This is the sign that was rising over the eastern horizon, and you can find that on the cusp of the first house (which sits on the left-hand side of your birth chart).
DC: The cusp of the seventh house, which sits across from your ascendant, is called the descendant or DC, and that speaks to how you show up in partnerships.
MC: The cusp of the tenth house, which is at the very top center of a birth chart, is called the midheaven, or MC, and that reflects your professional path and public image.
IC: The cusp of the fourth house, at the bottom center of a birth chart, is called the Imum Coeli (a.k.a. bottom of the sky), or IC, and colors your inner world and home life.
How to put the building blocks of your birth chart together
For starters, you can use your birth chart to pinpoint your “big three” (sun, moon and rising) or even “big six” (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars and rising signs), which can give you a better sense of your overall personality, perspective and path. And as you get in the weeds with each building block (the planet, the sign and the house), you can begin to weave together a narrative about how you see the world, your strengths and your challenges.
For example, if you look at your Mercury placement, you can get a sense of how you articulate your thoughts, how you learn, the ways in which you make decisions, learn, share and assimilate information. You can note the sign it is in for a better sense of how you enact these Mercury-ruled behaviors. So, say Mercury happened to be moving through mutable earth sign Virgo when you were born. You’re service-oriented, analytical, thoughtful and perpetually on admission to gather information in an effort to be helpful to others. You can then look to the house that your Mercury in Virgo was in at the time of your birth. Perhaps it is in your second house, which speaks to how you make your income, your self-worth and your values. Chances are you apply — or would do well to apply — Mercury-fueled skills, in a detail-oriented Virgoan way, toward earning money.
Down the road, if you want to learn even more about astrology and your birth chart, you can also denote how each placement interacts with the others. For instance, your Mercury might sit at 20 degrees of Scorpio, while your Mars — which speaks to how you take action and your inner drive — is at 17 degrees of Cancer. These are both water signs, so they form a harmonious trine and speak to the fact that you have a natural, easygoing alignment between how you communicate (Mercury) and how you act on your passions and motivations (Mars).
The bottom line on understanding your birth chart
As you might have already concluded, piecing this all together might feel slightly overwhelming at first. But it’s important to remember that natal astrology is a nuanced, in-depth, time-honored practice that provides everyone from astrology beginners and veterans with plenty of fodder for lifelong learning. And while you might enjoy self-study and many astrologers do begin that way, working with a professional astrologer is one of the best ways to really unpack and better wrap your head around all of the specifics as well as the big picture. But no matter how you go about learning about your birth chart, you’re sure to find that better understanding yourself through a celestial lens is bound to leave you feeling more self-aware and empowered.
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