READING A BIRTH CHART
USING JAMES FRANCO AS AN EXAMPLE
Here is an imgur file with the pictures discussed in this post.
This chart was made on chart.chaninicholas.com. You can fill one out without adding your email address and follow along, or use the James Franco one to get an idea, as any examples I discuss are going to be using his chart. As you progress, the most respected website to use for charts is astro.com. On the right side of the page you can click their Extended Chart Selection and there are a great many settings to play with. It will be too confusing for a beginner, though. Which is why I teach and learn using the chart creator at Chani Nicholas's site. It's very crisp and clean with minimal details which is great for not getting overwhelmed.
This chart has James Franco's exact time of birth. As you can see on the next slide, it's very important for this information to be as accurate as possible, as it will change several important placements. If you use the universal unknown time (usually set to midnight), you might be working with a chart that has the wrong signs listed, or planets in the wrong house or sign. This is important both for knowing how the current astrological "weather" will affect you or the person whose chart you are reading, but also because each specific placement offers keys to knowing yourself on a deeper level.
These are very specific messages about who you are, where you struggle and excel in life, what you need to know to unlock your ultimate path, how you interact with careers, the collective, friends and family, money, relaxation.. it's all in there. So when you have the wrong time listed, you can see by the next slide that it changes some but not all of these placements. You might find that you thought you had a moon in cancer but you don't even have cancer in your chart. Or that your chiron was in taurus when really it's in aries. This is all important information so you want to get it right so that you are working from the right blueprint.
If you cannot find your time of birth, round to the closest number you can, but your information will be off. There are advanced astrologers out there who can reverse engineer your time of birth to get the most accurate chart, you could find them by looking up birth chart rectification.
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Here is a list of all the basic placement symbols so that you can learn what they are. The birth chart is very complex and intimidating at first, but if you learn a little at a time and build upon it as you gain more clarity and understanding, it's easily digestible.
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There are two systems of astrology that most people use. This is the western system, called Tropical. The chart style used most frequently for making these is called placidus. In placidus, the lines are offset, and it can be very confusing for a beginner, so I like to set up charts in whole signs, another chart style, to make it really clear what is where. I will show you the chart in placidus so that you can see what I mean. It is good to use once you know all the basic placements and are ready to move on to working with houses and degrees.
The other method is the Vedic or Sidereal system, which is an Indian system. The vedic system uses a square chart instead of a round one, and the placements you will have are slightly different than what you will see in western systems. Many people feel that vedic astrology is more accurate, but it's up to the individual to see how they resonate with their signs and placements in both systems. Vedic could be considered advanced astrology for it offers additional insight over the western system. I suggest familiarizing yourself with the western system first, however.
Here is a link to a page with good information about the differences between vedic and western astrology.
http://www.robertkoch.com/vedic-vs-western-astrology
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There are twelve zodiac signs, and twelve houses. Each person's chart will start with their Sun sign, based on their date of birth. The other placements many consider important are the rising or Ascendent sign, and the Moon sign.
Planetary placements are important too. Each planet rules a different aspect of your life. Venus, for example, rules love and money. So it would be good to know what's going on for your venus sign when you were looking at relationships.
Here is a page about the various houses of the zodiac. You can combine the sign or planet and the house, to see the personal mix of traits for the person you are doing a chart on.
https://astrostyle.com/learn-astrology/the-12-zodiac-houses/
Here is a page about the planets and what they rule. You will also see things like chiron, your north and south node, your MC and IC, your ASC and DC. These are opposite points to each other and as always, it is important to note where they are placed to get the most information out of what they mean. Chiron represents our deepest wounds that we need to heal in this lifetime, so whatever sign it is in will signify what you need to work on. In the James Franco chart, we see that his chiron is in Taurus, which means that he has had to work on the struggle to let himself enjoy material success without feeling guilty or opulent. He might struggle with being too severe and not treating himself often enough, and he might spoil others when he can't do the same for himself. Conversely, he might go to excess and overindulge, and finding that balance is what he needs to work on.
https://cafeastrology.com/articles/planetsinastrology.html
Learning what each individual planet and aspect stands for in your chart will help you understand your deeper motivations, needs, and desires. If you look at your north and south node, for example, you will learn where you've been and where you're headed. The south node is typically seen as what you came into this life with, gifts and struggles from past lives. The north node is where you are headed. You need to overcome the struggles from your south node, and embrace the aspects of your north node. For this reason, as you get older your north node will hold more valuable information for you than your south node, as you will have mostly overcome it's struggles.
James Franco's south node is in Aries, and his north node is in Libra, which suggests that he has had to work on the tendency to alienate people close to him in his life. He might have struggled with being too competitive and self-focused earlier in life, taking things too personally, and being impatient and impulsive (that aries influence). He will have needed to work on learning tact and cooperation, better empathizing with others, and let go of his self confidence issues that create this dynamic. He might have struggled with feelings that his partners were too demanding, and might be more prone to acting intuitively in the moment rather than researching before acting. He might have struggled with being a lone wolf, not growing as much as he could had he slowed down and faced these issues head on. His main goal is to learn cooperation and partnership and how to connect with people mmore closely. The sign of libra is all about balance and relationship with others, so this makes a lot of sense.
As you get into more in-depth astrology, you can start to work with the degrees that each sign or planet is located at within the chart. These have meaning, as does all other aspects. I haven't worked with degrees yet, but here are two sites you can look at when you are ready. I've basically learned everything by googling and finding a page that I resonate with and studying one piece of the puzzle at a time. You may have to go over the same information a few times before it sticks, as with any new language or practice that you are learning.
https://www.tarot.com/astrology/birth-chart-degrees-minutes
https://thenatalchart.weebly.com/blog/how-to-read-your-natal-chart-for-beginners
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When you get into more advanced charts, they will have lines all over the middle of the chart connecting various placements to each other. You will start to see words depicting how they are connected to each other, as this is still more useful information. Aspects might be conjunct, square, sextile, semi-sextile, etc to each other. This often means that these aspects relate well to each other or that they rub each other the wrong way, which helps you learn how certain planetary movements will affect you.
You might see a chart that has a set of planets on the inside and another set on the outside. This is when you can see your birth chart (inner) set against the current date or any date you choose (outer) so that you can see how they play out together. You can also do a similar thing by combining two people's birth charts for a synastry report.
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Aside from individual signs, you might notice that you have several planets in one sign. If you have three or more clustered together, this is called a stellium, and it can mean that you have a heavy placement in that sign and so should consider it an important sign to look out for. For example, James Franco has heavy emphasis on Leo, Taurus, and Aries, and might find that he resonates a lot with information directed at those three signs.
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If you go even deeper than this, you can look into chinese astrology, native american astrology, mayan astrology, and numerology. These will all give you interesting insight into yourself as well.
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As you go deeper, you may want to start taking note of the new moon and full moon cycle, as well as any eclipses and other lunar and solar activity, as they will influence your chart as well. Retrogrades and other movements of the planets are very important to follow. There are many good astrology pages on instagram, you can search keywords to find pages that you resonate best with.
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Here are some apps and websites that I have saved that you may find useful on your journey. If you want quick information just use google, like mentioned above, and find the page that makes sense to you. Don't try to learn everything at once, it can be really overwhelming.
APPS (android compatible, unknown if they are iphone compatible)
-the pattern (by pattern home, inc.)
-astromatrix (by astromatrix)
-numerology (by mirofox)
-astrology master (by sistemkod)
-horos (by vinicius b vieira)
-daily horoscope (by comitic)
WEBSITES
https://astrostyle.com/learn-astrology/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAstrologers/comments/64my9t/resources_faq/
http://thezodiac.com/starmart/timeofbirth.htm
https://astrolibrary.org/basics/
https://www.theplanetstoday.com/index.html
https://gallery.mailchimp.com/175e8092910b3b72daf76e244/files/The_Art_Of_Astrology.pdf