Astrology

The glyphs

Seven classical planets, three moderns, the lunar nodes, and the twelve signs — the complete alphabet of a chart.

• ☉︎SunThe luminary of day; vitality, sovereignty, the visible self
• ☽︎MoonThe luminary of night; body, memory, the daily life
• ☿︎MercurySpeech, exchange, craft — the go-between
• ♀︎VenusConcord, beauty, desire — the lesser benefic
• ♂︎MarsSeverance, courage, heat — the lesser malefic
• ♃︎JupiterIncrease, counsel, law — the greater benefic
• ♄︎SaturnLimit, time, structure — the greater malefic
• ♅︎UranusModern: rupture and invention (1781)
• ♆︎NeptuneModern: dissolution and glamour (1846)
• ♇︎PlutoModern: the underworld register (1930)
• ☊︎North NodeThe Moon's ascending crossing; increase, appetite
• ☋︎South NodeThe descending crossing; release, depletion

• ♈︎AriesCardinal fireruled by Mars
• ♉︎TaurusFixed earthruled by Venus
• ♊︎GeminiMutable airruled by Mercury
• ♋︎CancerCardinal waterruled by Moon
• ♌︎LeoFixed fireruled by Sun
• ♍︎VirgoMutable earthruled by Mercury
• ♎︎LibraCardinal airruled by Venus
• ♏︎ScorpioFixed waterruled by Mars
• ♐︎SagittariusMutable fireruled by Jupiter
• ♑︎CapricornCardinal earthruled by Saturn
• ♒︎AquariusFixed airruled by Saturn
• ♓︎PiscesMutable waterruled by Jupiter

Four elements × three modes

The zodiac is not a list of twelve personalities but a product of two smaller alphabets: four elements crossed with three modes. Most sign “keywords” are this arithmetic said slowly — Aries is nothing more mysterious than fire behaving cardinally.

The twelve houses

Signs describe how; houses say where — twelve departments of a life, counted counterclockwise from the ascendant. The shaded quarters are the angular houses, where the chart touches its own frame and planets act at full strength; each gold glyph sits in the house where tradition says that planet rejoices— the doctrine of the joys, which is also where the houses’ oldest names come from.

Seven ways to cut the circle

Houses assign the sky’s twelve departments of life. Systems differ on what exactly is divided — signs, the ecliptic, time, or space — and charts move house when the system changes. The bright lines mark the angles where quadrant systems pin their frame.

• Whole sign

  divides signs themselves

  The rising SIGN is the first house entire; every sign is one house. The oldest system, standard in Hellenistic and Indian practice, revived widely since the 1990s.

• Equal

  divides the ecliptic, from the ASC

  Twelve equal houses measured from the ascendant DEGREE. The midheaven floats free of the tenth cusp.

• Porphyry

  divides each quadrant in thirds

  The simplest quadrant system: each quarter between the angles is cut into three equal parts. Third century, still in use.

• Placidus

  divides diurnal time-arcs

  Divides the TIME a degree spends between horizon and meridian. The default of most modern software; fails at polar latitudes.

• Koch

  divides ascension times of the birthplace

  A twentieth-century time-arc method computed from the birthplace's own horizon. Popular in German-speaking practice.

• Regiomontanus

  divides the celestial equator

  Divides the celestial equator equally and projects to the ecliptic. The house system of Lilly and classical horary.

• Campanus

  divides the prime vertical

  Divides the prime vertical — the great circle through east point, zenith, and west point — into equal lunes.

The grammar of aspect

Aspects are how planets address one another: each is a whole-number division of the circle, which is why astrologers speak of them as harmonics. The five Ptolemaic aspects descend from sign geometry — trines join signs of one element, squares signs of one mode — and the older doctrine counted them sign to sign before degrees entered it. An orb is the allowance either side of exactness; a planet moving toward perfection of an aspect is applying, and its promise is still ahead — moving away, it is separating, and the matter is already done.

• ☌︎Conjunction

  0° · the circle undivided

  Ptolemaic · orb ~8–10°

  Two planets fused into one working function. Neither easy nor hard in itself — its temper is entirely the temper of the planets joined.

• ⚺︎Semisextile

  30° · the circle ÷ 12

  minor · orb ~2°

  Adjacent signs: neighbours that share no element or mode. A mild, nagging unlikeness more felt than seen.

• ⚹︎Sextile

  60° · the circle ÷ 6

  Ptolemaic · orb ~4–6°

  Fire with air, earth with water: compatible temperaments. Opportunity rather than gift — ease that must be invited to act.

• □︎Square

  90° · the circle ÷ 4

  Ptolemaic · orb ~7–8°

  Signs of the same mode collide at cross-purposes. The productive crisis: friction that builds exactly the strength it demands.

• △︎Trine

  120° · the circle ÷ 3

  Ptolemaic · orb ~8°

  Same element, effortless current. The chart's given talents — and, undisturbed, its laziest places.

• ⚻︎Quincunx

  150° · the circle ÷ 12 × 5

  minor · orb ~2–3°

  No shared element, mode, or polarity: the blind spot. Perpetual adjustment between things with no common language.

• ☍︎Opposition

  180° · the circle halved

  Ptolemaic · orb ~8–10°

  Full awareness across an axis: confrontation, projection, partnership. What the square forces, the opposition negotiates.

The seven shapes of a chart

Before reading any single placement, Marc Edmund Jones taught reading the whole distribution at once. His seven patterns — published in the Guide to Horoscope Interpretation(1941), and built for the ten-planet chart Pluto’s discovery had just completed — treat the gestalt of a nativity as its first sentence: where the planets gather, where they leave the wheel bare, and which single body, if any, the geometry appoints to lead. The shaded arc marks the occupied stretch; the pale dot marks that appointed planet.

• Bundle

  keynote · Concentration

  All ten planets within about 120° — the span of a trine.

  The rarest pattern. Everything the chart has is gathered into one department of the sky, and the life tends to match: a specialist temperament that digs one channel deep rather than many shallow, with limited patience for whatever falls outside it.

  leading planetThe leading planet — first of the group by clockwise rotation — sets the agenda the whole cluster serves. Two-thirds of the wheel is empty; what the bundle ignores is as diagnostic as what it holds.

• Bowl

  keynote · Self-containment

  All ten planets within one half of the wheel (~180°).

  A hemisphere occupied and a hemisphere bare: the life carries its own sources and feels the missing half as a question. Jones read the bowl as self-contained purpose — something held that must eventually be carried across to the empty side.

  cutting planetThe cutting planet, at the clockwise edge of the group, leads the whole formation and describes how the person advances into the empty hemisphere. The rim of the bowl — which houses it spans — shows where the holding happens.

• Bucket

  keynote · Direction

  Nine planets in one half; a single planet alone in the other.

  A bowl with an outlet. The isolated planet becomes the handle through which everything the other nine gather is poured, and the life organizes itself around that point of application — cause, craft, mission, or grievance.

  the handleEverything rides on the handle: its sign, house, and aspects govern the discharge of the whole chart. A handle conjunct the group's midpoint opposition is the pattern at its purest.

• Locomotive

  keynote · Drive

  Two-thirds of the wheel occupied (~240°); an empty trine.

  Jones' figure of executive momentum: the empty trine registers as a felt lack, and the chart mobilizes around solving it. Self-starting, problem-hungry, with power delivered unevenly — like a wheel driven from one point.

  the engineThe engine — the planet that leads the train clockwise into the empty trine — is the chart's driver and its point of greatest torque. The middle of the empty trine names the prize the drive is secretly aimed at.

• Seesaw

  keynote · Negotiation

  Two opposing groups, separated by two gaps of 60° or more.

  A life conducted between two camps: two sets of commitments that face each other across the wheel and refuse to merge. The temperament weighs, compares, alternates — capable of real perspective, and of permanent postponement.

  where to lookThe oppositions that bridge the two groups are the working axes of the chart. The heavier cluster is the home base; the lighter one is the counterweight the life keeps returning to pick up.

• Splay

  keynote · Individuality

  Three uneven clusters — a tripod, often braced by a grand trine.

  Energy spiking in three distinct departments with real gaps between: the tripod stands on its own arrangement and resists schedule, category, and other people's priorities. Jones read it as rugged, ineradicable individuality.

  where to lookRead the three legs as a standing structure: the midpoint of each cluster names a footing, and any grand trine linking them is the pattern's brace — self-sufficiency built into the geometry.

• Splash

  keynote · Breadth

  Planets distributed around the whole wheel; no gap much over 60°.

  The opposite of the bundle: interests sown across every quarter of the sky. At best a genuine universality — many rooms lived in comfortably; at worst the classic diffusion of a life spread one planet deep everywhere.

  where to lookWith no leading planet to appoint, look for any tight conjunction to act as a gathering point, and fall back on the balance of elements and modes to find where the scatter secretly leans.

The boundaries are judgment calls, not measurements: real charts are often hybrids, and a near-miss — a bowl with one straggler, a locomotive missing its gap by a few degrees — is read as the nearest pattern with the deviation noted. Jones would say the deviation is where the interpretation starts.

The correspondence spine & essential dignities

The seven classical planets in Chaldean order, with the attributions the whole Western system hangs from — now including the four essential dignities. A planet in its domicile rules the ground it stands on; in exaltation it is an honoured guest; in detriment, opposite its home, it works in a place built on contrary principles; in fall, opposite its exaltation, its dignity is inverted. Condition first, meaning second: this is the oldest rule of judgment. The full tables live in the correspondence explorer.