Reading your Birth Chart

It is not a secret — you can, and should, look at your own natal chart. I recommend using astro.com, which is free and very accurate. Sign up, add your birth data, and select Extended Charts. It will by default show you your Placidus chart. You can choose a different chart style — I’m a Hellenistic reader, so that’s the one I look at, and select that under Chart Drawing Style. Use the chart that feels good to you.

Of course, this is just a chart, and it’s not going to tell you what to do.

Most beginners will start by looking up the meanings of the planets in the signs, the planets in the houses, the signs in the houses. Maybe you progress to what it means when one planet is squared, or sextile to another. (As an aside — natal is a technical term for birth and is often used by astrologers. If you see it, they’re talking about your birth chart, or the placements at your birth.)

It’s a lot of data! For those with an astrological instinct or some training, it’s easy to put this information together, but otherwise it’s going to feel disjointed, contradictory and hard to manage.

If it feels like too much, you can always book a reading with me and I can make it more coherent and meaningful for you.

If you think you understand something, but want confirmation or a deepening of that understanding, you can book a training/consultation session where we can review it together.

Or you can work on your own — which is fine! This is one way new astrologers are born. Because the next question, inevitably, is ‘what do I DO with this?’ It can feel liberating to know that your chart describes you, but astrology is more than a glorified BuzzFeed personality quiz. It wants to be used!

One: Choose good resources for your information. You want something that’s not going to be afraid to talk about the difficult parts of your chart. If your resource cannot speak gently but firmly about the problems of a planet being in detriment or in fall, and if it only has good things to say about Mars and Saturn… keep looking. We all know that our life is full of both the good and bad, and growth only happens when we can acknowledge all of it.

Two: Don’t be afraid of the hard stuff, and don’t use it as an excuse. If your chart repeatedly points to anger issues, difficulty accessing your emotions or problems with money, it is trying to warn you, not doom you. Maybe you’ll want to talk to your therapist about it (astrology informed therapy is a thing!), maybe you’ll devise some coping mechanisms, or maybe you’ll just give yourself some grace that you’re still learning how to deal with this, and more earnestly celebrate your successes as you work through it.

Three: Lean into the good. If your chart confirms you’re good with people, or numbers, or that you really find your joy working with animals, try leaning into these areas! Sometimes these will be so obvious you already knew, but sometimes the chart is giving you permission to play.

Four: Don’t let it rule your life. Some people lean hard into fate vs determinism and worry that there’s nothing they can do to make their lives better if bad things are in their chart.

Further Explorations

Try different chart expressions. I still struggle with Placidus — my own chart unfolded when I learned Hellenistic Astrology, which often changes which signs rule which house, and therefore which house each planet resides in. If Placidus doesn’t make sense, does whole sign?

Keep building your symbolic understanding. Each planet, each house, each sign — are all full of dense imagery and concepts. Each has multiple civilizations worth of myth and meaning. The more you know, the more information you may be able to draw from your placements. If you’re struggling to understand your Saturn placement, make sure you move beyond just a list of keywords and explore myth and culture. Make sure you’re not getting stuck in one image, one idea, one story.