While the sign is undeniably an important elements of a natal chart, it limits the view of a person

Linda has never believed in astrology because she doesn't feel her sign characterizes her. Linda is an Aries. While Aries people are supposed to be determined, daring and active, she feels to be a sensitive, compassionate, dreamy and sometimes shy girl.

Then Linda discovered that her most important sign is Pisces (having the Moon, Venus, Mercury and Jupiter in Pisces) and her most important planet is Neptune.

Moon and Neptune characteristics portray Linda much better than her sign. Linda ran the astro reports through 12andus and found her most important qualities as being compassionate, dreamy, empathetic, bohemian, but also contradictory and dispersive. This is a better receipt for a spiritual researcher or a novelist than a company executive or an extreme sports lover.

Most of the people know astrology through the daily, weekly or yearly horoscopes popularized by newspapers and magazines. That's not real astrology; at the best is entertainment.

The ordinary horoscopes look at the “sign”, which is actually the position of the Sun at birth. While the Sun's position is undeniably an important elements of a natal chart, it’s exactly that; “one of,” not “the only one”.

Few people know that there's a number of planets’ positions to consider, and even fewer know about the existence of the 12 astrological houses and the aspects between planets and houses.

All in all, there might be up to hundreds of elements to consider for understanding a person in astrological terms. Each of those elements provide an insight to the whole personality.

A skilled astrologer will synthetize most of those elements through his experience and intuition. At 12andus we accurately calculate the strength of each of the planets’ positions, houses, and aspects. Then we infer the associated traits of a person or a relationship. This is done through complex calculations which will be explained in further articles.

Astrology makes sense only when it is personalized with the full elements of a chart, something which the generic horoscopes can't obviously fulfill. Every person is unique as it is every individual natal chart.

See also:

Why we should finally stop with the Sun sign astrology

What to expect from an astrological reading