Basics of Astrology
There is a lot more to astrology than “Your Sign.” A complete astrology involves generating a “Natal Chart.” A natal charts looks like a pie. My natal chart is shown above. There are three primary components to the natal chart: Signs (or Constellations), Planets (including the moon and sun), and Houses. The chart represents what the sky looked like when you were born.
Imagine Earth as being in the center of the pie and you are looking at it from above the North Pole. There is a horizontal line going across the chart with a label “AS” for “Ascendant” at one end of it. This line represents the dividing line between the side of Earth that you were born on and the opposite side. The left end of that line represents the eastern horizon as seen from where you were born. The right end represents the western horizon.
The constellations/signs are evenly placed around the outside of the pie. The planets are placed inside the pie in front of the constellation/sign of where they were when I was born. The pie is cut into twelve pieces. Each piece is called a house. The first house starts at the location of the ascendant. This is called the “cusp” of the first house.
From an astronomy point of view, the above chart tells me what I would have seen if I were able to look at the sky when I was born. In my case, it would have been night because the sun was on the opposite side of the Earth in front of the constellation Pisces. I was born at 2:55 a.m. If I looked east, I would see the constellation of Sagittarius right on the horizon. I would see Mars in front of it. If I looked straight up, I would see the moon with Jupiter right next to it. They would both be in front of the constellation Libra. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto would be out, but I would need a telescope to see them. I would not be able to see Mercury, Venus, and Saturn because they are on the opposite side of Earth.
The chart is not as simple for the astrologer. The fact that the sun is in front of Pisces tells the astrologer something about my personality, but there is a lot more information there. The astrologer also notices that the sun is in the second house, the second house cusp is in Aquarius, the sun is on the opposite side of Earth, and the astrologer notes where the sun is with respect to the other planets. All of these features contribute to my personality. Then the astrologer would need to look at the other planets in the same fashion.
Don’t worry about this stuff too much. Most of that is beyond the scope of this book. We are only going to concentrate on the sun and which constellation it is in front of at the time of your birth. I wanted to show you the complete astrology so that you realize that there is a lot more to astrology than “your sign.” There are computer programs that can print your chart and a booklet describing your personality based on it. To give you an idea of how small of a part the sun plays, consider the following. My booklet is about ten pages long. Only three lines of it are the result of the sun being in Pisces.
The constellation that the sun was in front of when you were born is often called “Your Sign” or more properly “Your Sun Sign”. I’m going to stop referring to the constellations Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius (Scorpio), Sagittarius, Capricornus (Capricorn), Aquarius, and Pisces as constellations and call them “Signs” instead. Scorpius will be called Scorpio and Capricornus will be called Capricorn.
The sun takes one year to go through all twelve signs. A nice thing about the sun is that it usually changes signs on the same dates every year. The key word here is “usually”. For example, the sun usually enters Capricorn on December 22nd, my dad’s birthday. The year that my dad was born, the sun entered Capricorn December 23rd. That means that my dad is actually a Sagittarius. Below is a list of the astrological signs, in order, and the dates that the sun is “usually” in them. “Your sign” would be the sign the sun was in on your birth date.
| Aries | March 21 | to | April 19 |
| Taurus | April 20 | to | May 20 |
| Gemini | May 21 | to | June 20 |
| Cancer | June 21 | to | July 22 |
| Leo | July 23 | to | August 22 |
| Virgo | August 23 | to | September 22 |
| Libra | September 23 | to | October 22 |
| Scorpio | October 23 | to | November 21 |
| Sagittarius | November 22 | to | December 21 |
| Capricorn | December 22 | to | January 19 |
| Aquarius | January 20 | to | February 18 |
| Pisces | February 19 | to | March 20 |
* Remember: The dates the signs change fluctuate within a couple of days from year to year. If you were born on the edge, check an ephemeris to be sure of your sign.
If you are going to start observing people, I suggest that you memorize the order of the signs. Don’t bother remembering the dates that they change unless you like memorizing things. Just remember that the sun changes signs around the 21st day of every month. That should be sufficient.
I like to find what sign people are soon after I meet them. Part of the reason that I do this is to research astrology further. Once I know someone’s sign, I can observe how similar they are to other people of the same sign. The other reason that I try to find their sign is so that I know how to react around them. We will get into that later in the book.
I really do not like to come out and ask their sign. People tend to treat you like a freak when they find out that you are into astrology. I find out their birthday and then derive their sign from that. It is pretty easy to find out people’s birthday. You can make it pop up in conversation with out being too suspicious. You can also get their birthday from their driver’s license when comparing how bad your pictures are. The internet is becoming a good source for birthdays as well. Knowing the order of the signs and that they typically change around the 21st makes it pretty easy for me to figure out people’s signs. If their birthday is close to the 21st, I look it up in an ephemeris.
The signs are grouped together into categories of common characteristics. Generally speaking, people tend to like people that have similar characteristics. With that in mind, you should get along best with people in the same categories as you. It is pretty easy to figure out which signs are in the same category if you know the order of the signs. The most common ways to breakdown the signs are by Gender, Quality, and Element. Every second sign is considered to be in the same Gender. There are two Gendergroups: Masculine and Feminine.
| Masculine | Feminine |
|---|---|
| Aries | Taurus |
| Gemini | Cancer |
| Leo | Virgo |
| Libra | Scorpio |
| Sagittarius | Capricorn |
| Aquarius | Pisces |
Every third sign is the same Quality. There are three Qualitygroups: Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable.
| Cardinal | Fixed | Mutable |
|---|---|---|
| Aries | Taurus | Gemini |
| Cancer | Leo | Virgo |
| Libra | Scorpio | Sagittarius |
| Capricorn | Aquarius | Pisces |
Every fourth sign is the same Element. There are four elementgroups: Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. The Fire and Air signs make up the Masculine signs and the Earth and Water signs make up the Feminine signs.
| Fire | Earth | Air | Water |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aries | Taurus | Gemini | Cancer |
| Leo | Virgo | Libra | Scorpio |
| Sagittarius | Capricorn | Aquarius | Pisces |