← The course · Level 1 · Start here
Let’s start at the beginning: what exactly you are looking at when you look at a natal chart, and the attitude that makes it useful.
Your birth chart is a photograph of the sky taken from the exact place where you were born, at the exact minute you were born: where the Sun, the Moon and the planets sat along the zodiac belt. It isn’t a modern invention — we’ve been reading this map for millennia — and you don’t need to believe anything to use it well: it works as a symbolic language, an ordered set of mirrors that helps you ask better questions about yourself.
What it is not: a sentence, a fortune-teller, or a closed definition of you. As we always say at astralpaper: astrology here is symbolic and supportive. The chart proposes; you decide.
Fixes the Sun and the slow planets. With the date alone you already know your Sun and almost always your Mercury, Venus and Mars.
The sky turns fully every 24 hours: the time sets your Rising sign and the layout of the houses, and refines the Moon (which changes sign every couple of days). Check your birth certificate or the civil registry. If it can’t be found, noon is used and the chart is read without leaning on the Rising or the houses.
Being born at the same time in Barcelona or Buenos Aires gives different skies: the horizon isn’t the same. City and country are enough.
Everything in this course fits in one sentence: the planets are the what (the functions: thinking, loving, acting…), the signs are the how (each function’s style), the houses are the where (the life area where it plays out) and the aspects are the conversations between planets. When in doubt, come back to this sentence: it is the skeleton of everything.
“Mars in Cancer in House 1” reads like this: the function of acting (Mars), in a protective, emotional style (Cancer), deployed in identity and presence (House 1). Three pieces, one sentence.
Read your chart the way you’d read a good novel about yourself: looking to recognise yourself, not to obey it. If something doesn’t ring true, don’t force it — maybe it isn’t your moment to see it, or maybe it simply doesn’t apply. The chart is at your service, never the other way round.
Create your birth chart for free and apply this lesson with your own sky in front of you. And if you want to compare readings, the premium interpretation starts at €2.90.
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