1. Sun, Moon and rising sign
The best place to begin: will, emotional need and the way you present yourself. If you do not know the time, start with the Sun and Moon.
Your birth chart
The sky at your birth
A birth chart is the photograph of the sky at the exact moment you arrived: where each planet stood, what was climbing over the horizon and how they were speaking to one another. Put in your date, your time and your city and the whole thing comes out, wheel and all.
✦ Astronomical positions✦ Three house systems✦ A layered reading
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A compass
How to read your chart without getting lost
Start with the largest pieces and then move into the detail. A chart is read in layers, not as a list of isolated labels.
2. Planets by house
The planet says which function is active and the house where it happens. Venus in the tenth house is not read like Venus in the fourth.
3. The tightest aspects
Start at the top of the list: the aspects are ordered by closeness to the exact angle and the tightest often feel clearest.
What if I do not know my birth time?
You can calculate the planets by sign, but not the rising sign, Midheaven or houses. If the Moon changed sign that day, its position can vary too.
Why can this differ from another website?
This chart uses the tropical zodiac and equal houses. A site using Placidus will divide the houses differently even when the planets by sign agree.
Does a birth chart predict my future?
No. It is a symbolic reading of tendencies and tensions that may help you ask questions, not a replacement for decisions, diagnoses or professional advice.
The chart is worked out with the same astronomical formulas the ephemerides use (positions checked against the real sign changes between 1998 and 2025). The reading, on the other hand, is symbolic: a portrait to recognise yourself in, not a diagnosis and not a prediction.
Your star sign is simply where the Sun happened to be on the day you were born, and that is about a tenth of the story. That morning, or that small hour, there was also a Moon sitting in some sign, an exact degree of the zodiac climbing over the horizon, and eight more bodies scattered across the sky, one or two of them apparently walking backwards. A birth chart is that whole photograph: the entire sky, in your minute and seen from your city.
Here it is worked out for real. The positions come from the same astronomical formulas the ephemerides use, and they have been checked against twelve genuine sign changes spread between 1998 and 2025 — Saturn entering Pisces, Pluto entering Aquarius, Uranus into Gemini — to within a day or two. Your time is converted to Universal Time using the historical clock rules of the place, which is exactly where half the internet slips: Britain ran an hour ahead all winter long from 1968 to 1971, and an hour of error moves the rising sign by nearly a whole sign.
What comes out is the wheel drawn, a table with the ten bodies by sign, degree and house, the aspects they form with one another and a reading of every piece. If you do not know your time of birth you can still run it: there will be no rising sign and no houses, since both depend on the clock, but the planets by sign are yours all the same. And if you only want the essentials, your Sun, your Moon and your Rising sign live next door.