Learn

Natal chart

A map of the sky for the exact moment and place of a birth: every planet's position, the rising degree, the houses. It is the fixed reference that all timing techniques compare against.

Ascendant

The zodiac degree rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. It anchors the house wheel and colors how you meet the world. It moves through a full degree about every four minutes.

Midheaven

The zodiac degree crossing the local meridian at birth, the high point of the ecliptic in that sky. Abbreviated MC. The most public angle of the chart: work in the world, reputation, direction.

House

One of twelve divisions of the sky, counted from the eastern horizon at birth. Houses tie a chart to its hour and place, and each one hosts a set of life matters: money, work, partners, home.

House system

A rule for drawing the twelve house boundaries. The common systems agree on the Ascendant and differ on the cuts between the angles. Placidus and whole sign are the two you will meet most often.

Placidus

The most widely used house system. It divides each degree's daily travel above and below the horizon by time, so house sizes vary with latitude. The default in most chart software, including ours.

Whole sign houses

The oldest house system: the rising sign becomes the whole first house, the next sign the second, and so on. Every house is exactly one sign. Simple, ancient, and back in wide use.

Cusp

The boundary where one house or sign ends and the next begins. In a computed chart a planet is always on one side of it: positions are exact, so nothing is truly between signs.

Ecliptic

The Sun's apparent path around the sky over a year, which is really Earth's orbit seen from inside. The zodiac is a band around it, and every chart position is measured along it.

Tropical zodiac

The zodiac Western astrology uses, anchored to the seasons: zero degrees Aries is the March equinox point, wherever the constellations have drifted. Signs here are geometry, not star patterns.

Aspect

An angle between two planets, measured in degrees around the zodiac circle. A handful of specific angles put the pair in conversation, and the closer to exact, the stronger the tie.

Conjunction

Two planets at the same zodiac degree, zero degrees apart. Their agendas fuse and act as one, for better or worse depending on the pair. The strongest aspect there is.

Sextile

Two planets sixty degrees apart, two signs from each other. A friendly aspect: cooperation that is available but not automatic. It opens a door and waits for you to walk through.

Square

Two planets ninety degrees apart, three signs from each other. The aspect of friction: two agendas at cross purposes, forcing a move. Uncomfortable and productive in about equal measure.

Trine

Two planets 120 degrees apart, four signs from each other, usually in the same element. The easiest aspect: the pair cooperates without being asked. Its gift and its risk are the same thing, ease.

Opposition

Two planets 180 degrees apart, facing each other across the wheel. A standoff between two pulls that share one axis. The work is balance, and it often plays out through other people.

Orb

The allowance around an exact aspect. A square is exact at ninety degrees; with a six-degree orb, anything from 84 to 96 counts. The tighter the orb, the stronger the aspect.

Applying and separating

An applying aspect is still tightening: the faster body is closing on the exact angle. A separating aspect has peaked and is easing off. Same angle, different direction of travel.

Retrograde

The stretch when a planet appears to drift backward through the zodiac. A trick of viewpoint, not a change in the orbit. In practice its matters come up for review rather than for launch.

Station

The pause when a planet halts to reverse direction, standing still against the zodiac for days. A stationing planet is at maximum weight: whatever it touches in a chart gets its full attention.

Shadow period

The zodiac zone between a retrograde's two station degrees, crossed three times in all. The weeks entering and clearing it, before and after the spell itself, are the pre and post shadows.

Ingress

The moment a moving body crosses into a new zodiac sign. The Moon makes one every two or three days; the Sun makes twelve a year, and its Aries ingress opens the astrological year.

Transit

Where a planet is now, read against where everything stood at your birth. A transit is a moving planet crossing a sensitive point of the natal chart: a window of weather, not a verdict.

Saturn return

Saturn takes about 29 years to come back to its natal place. The first return, near age 29, is adulthood's real threshold: structures that do not fit get pruned, and what remains is yours.

Lunar nodes

The two points where the Moon's orbit crosses the Sun's path. Not bodies but crossings: eclipses can only happen near them. Astrology reads the axis as familiar ground versus growing edge.

Lunation

One complete cycle of the Moon's phases, New Moon to New Moon, about 29 and a half days. Astrologers also use the word for the marker moments themselves: a New or Full Moon is a lunation.

Eclipse

A New or Full Moon that falls near the lunar nodes, aligning Sun, Moon, and Earth. Astrologically it is a lunation with the volume turned up. Notable, not ominous.

Void-of-course Moon

The stretch after the Moon's last exact aspect in a sign, before it enters the next. With nothing left to complete, tradition reads these hours as poor for launching and fine for finishing.

Synastry

Chart comparison: one person's planets read against another's. Cross-aspects and house overlays show where two people run smoothly, where they grind, and what each wakes up in the other.

Magnitude

The astronomer's brightness scale, and it runs backward: the lower the number, the brighter the object. Venus shines near -4, bright stars near 0, and past 6 the naked eye gives up.