What Every Part of Your Astrology Birth Chart Actually Means

If you’re into astrology, you probably already know what a birth chart is. If you’re not familiar, though, it’s basically a picture of where all the planets were in the sky at the exact moment of your birth, and no two people have the exact same chart! If you’ve ever looked at a birth chart, you probably know that they’re super complex. There are all kinds of symbols, segments, and lines, and if you’re not familiar with what it all means, it might look like an entirely different language. So if you want to learn how to read your birth chart, you’ve come to the right place. Keep reading to find out the basic elements of a chart and how to interpret them.

Calculating your birth chart

The first step to finding your chart is going to a birth chart calculator website. Enter your birthdate, place, and time (Tip: If you don’t know your exact time of birth, ask your mom or look on your birth certificate). I recommend selecting Whole Sign houses as the house system in extended settings. With this house system, each house is ruled by one sign, making understanding transits (movements of planets) much easier.

Understanding the Signs

When trying to understand your birth chart, it’s important to know a little about the qualities of the rest of the signs because everyone has all 12 in their chart. The signs are categorized by the following elements and modalities:

Elements

  • Fire signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius): Passionate, energetic, enthusiastic
  • Earth (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn): Down to Earth, patient
  • Air (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius): Intellectual, social, talkative
  • Water (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces): Emotional, nurturing, perceptive

Modalities

  • Cardinal (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn): Leaders, initiate things
  • Fixed (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius): Stable, thorough, persistent
  • Mutable (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces): Flexible, adaptable, good at multitasking

The Planets in Your Chart

You might know your sun, moon, and rising signs. These are called the big three for a reason—they’re the core of your identity. But there are many other placements that make up different sides of your personality, too.

Personal Planets

The planets below are called personal planets because they move quickly, meaning the sign they’re in is different from person to person.

  • Sun: Your identity
  • Moon: The inner you, how you process and handle emotions, your mother
  • Venus: What you find aesthetically pleasing, what you appreciate or look for in someone you’re dating
  • Mercury: How you communicate
  • Mars: How you take action

Generational or Outer Planets

These are farther from the Earth and move more slowly, staying in one sign for about 1-30 years. So everyone born around the same time as you will have these planets in the same signs. How they show up in your individual life depends on the houses they’re placed in.

  • Saturn (28.5 years): Hard work, restrictions, boundaries
  • Jupiter (1 year): Expansion, luck
  • Neptune (14 years): Idealism, intuition, spirituality, confusion or delusions
  • Uranus (7 years): Change, independence