A birth chart is the sky at the moment and in the place you were born, drawn as a wheel: where every planet stood, in which sign, and over which part of the horizon.

This reading takes the whole chart as one: the Sun, the Moon and the planets with the Lunar Node in their signs and houses, the aspects between them, the twelve houses and the signs they begin in (the Ascendant and the Midheaven among them), the classic combinations such as the Moon phase you were born under and the pairing of your Sun and Moon, the planets that were retrograde when you were born, and the asteroids (Chiron, Lilith, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta and others) with their aspects. It starts from what carries the most weight in your chart, lets the rest confirm or complicate it, and follows the pattern it makes into love, work, home and the inner life.

In 1925 the astrologer Marc Edmund Jones and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler produced, in a single afternoon in San Diego, one image for each of the three hundred and sixty degrees of the zodiac. Dane Rudhyar reworked them in the 1970s into the form most used today. Each degree has its picture, A woman watering flowers in her garden, A man formally dressed stands near trophies he brought back from a hunting trip, and a planet or angle in that degree is read through the image. The symbols are not predictive; they are poetic, a way of seeing a placement through a scene rather than through a rule.

Read together, the symbols of the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Midheaven and the personal planets form a set of images that often rhyme with one another, and the rhyme is the reading: what the pictures of this chart have in common, where they pull apart, and what story they tell when placed side by side. This reading takes the Sabian symbols of the planets and angles of the birth chart, says what each image suggests for the placement it belongs to, and describes the picture they make together.

Behind the moving planets stand the fixed stars, and a planet or angle in a birth chart conjunct a bright star takes on that star's character. Regulus on the Midheaven, Algol on the Sun, Spica on the Ascendant: these have been read since Ptolemy, each star carrying a nature drawn from its colour, its constellation and the myths attached to it. Antares is Mars and Jupiter, Aldebaran Mars, Fomalhaut Venus and Mercury; the four royal stars of Persia, Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares, Fomalhaut, mark the chart with a particular kind of success and its particular test.

Only close conjunctions count, within a degree or so by longitude, and only with the planets and the angles; a star on its own in an empty part of the chart says little. The stars add a layer of specificity the planets alone lack: two people with the Sun in Leo are different if one Sun sits on Regulus. This reading takes the stars conjunct the planets and angles of the birth chart, says what each star has meant and what it does to the placement it touches, and describes what they add to the chart as a whole.

The Lots, called Arabic because they reached Europe through Arabic astrology though they are older than that, are points in the chart calculated from the distance between two planets or angles, projected from a third. The best known is the Lot of Fortune, the distance from the Sun to the Moon measured from the Ascendant, which stands for the body, the circumstances and the luck of the life. The Lot of Spirit, its mirror, stands for what the person does and intends. Others describe marriage, children, illness, death, travel, the father and the mother, each built from the planets that signify those matters.

A Lot is read by its sign, its house and its ruler: the sign says how the matter is approached, the house where in life it plays out, and the ruler, by its own condition in the chart, says how well. Planets conjunct a Lot colour it directly. The Lots do not replace the planets but add a layer the planets alone do not give, a set of focal points for the matters of life. This reading takes the principal Lots of the birth chart, their signs, houses and rulers, and describes what they add to the picture the planets draw.

Before any single placement is read, a chart has a shape. The chart signature gathers the measures that describe that shape: the balance of the four elements, fire, earth, air and water; the balance of the three modes, cardinal, fixed and mutable; the hemispheres and quadrants where the planets gather; the pattern the planets make around the wheel, a bundle, a bowl, a locomotive, a splash; the planet that dominates by rulership and aspect; and the sign and element the whole chart leans toward when its parts are added up. From these a signature sign emerges, the sign the chart behaves like even when the Sun is elsewhere.

The signature is the temperament of the chart, in the old sense: how energy moves through this person before it is channelled by any particular planet. A chart heavy in fixed earth lives differently from one scattered through mutable air, whatever their Suns. This reading takes the signature whole, says what kind of person the measures add up to, where the chart's weight falls and where it is light, and how the single placements that follow should be read against that ground.

Synastry lays two birth charts over each other and reads how they meet: where the planets of one person touch the planets of the other, and which areas of life each one stirs in the other.

This reading covers the aspects between the planets and angles of the two charts, and where each person's planets fall in the other's houses. It weighs the closest and strongest contacts first, reads them for the kind of bond you chose, and shows where the two of you meet easily, where you strain, and what each one brings out in the other.

A composite chart is the chart of the relationship itself, cast from the midpoints between the two people's planets: not one person or the other, but the third thing they make together.

This reading covers the composite planets in their signs and houses and the aspects between them: what the relationship is for, how it feels from the inside, where it is strong and where it strains, read for the kind of bond you chose.

Pair Traits & Dynamics turns two birth charts into a portrait of the bond: twenty relationship traits, from emotional bond, trust and communication to humour, adventure and business compatibility, each scored from the contacts between the two charts and from the composite chart, and ranked against other pairs.

This reading follows the traits from the most distinctive, shows the contacts behind them, and reads them for the kind of bond you chose. In a bond that is not romantic, the romantic and sexual traits are read as admiration, shared passions, fun and common drives.

There are two ways to cast a chart for a relationship. The composite averages two charts, placing each planet at the midpoint of the two people's positions, and gives a chart that never existed as a sky. The Davison chart, named for Ronald Davison who developed it in the 1970s, takes the midpoint in time between the two births and the midpoint in space between the two birthplaces, and casts a real chart for that moment and that place. It is a sky that actually stood over the Earth, with genuine houses and angles, and it is read as a birth chart would be, except that the person it describes is the relationship itself.

Its Sun says what the relationship is for, its Moon how it feels from inside, its Ascendant how it meets the world; its Venus and Mars how affection and desire move between the two; Saturn where it is tested and Jupiter where it grows. The aspects among its planets are the dynamics the pair keep living through, whoever started them. This reading takes the Davison chart whole, leads with its lights and its angles, follows its tightest aspects, and uses its houses as the areas of life the relationship actually occupies, which is the reason this chart is worth casting rather than a composite.

Astrocartography casts a birth chart for another place: the planets keep their signs and their aspects, but the Ascendant, the Midheaven and the houses change, so a planet that sat quietly in one corner of the chart at birth can stand on an angle somewhere else and colour life there. For a couple there are three charts to carry to each place, not one: each partner's birth chart, and the chart of the relationship itself. This reading uses the Davison chart for that, cast for the midpoint in time between the two births and the midpoint in space between the two birthplaces. A composite chart, the average of two charts, has no moment of its own and so no sky to draw on a map; the Davison is a real moment over a real place, so its planets have lines like anyone's.

A place suits a couple when it is good for both partners and for the relationship's chart. Where it lifts one partner and weighs on the other, the gap counts against it, however good the average. When one place is chosen, the houses change for both charts at once, so each partner's planets can land in a different house of the other's chart there: the aspects between the two charts stay the same everywhere, but a Venus that falls in the partner's seventh house in one city may fall in the twelfth in another. This reading takes the places that score best for the aim the two of you chose, or the one place you picked, and reads them chart by chart.

A forecast reads the moving sky against your birth chart: the planets of today touching the planets and angles you were born with, and crossing the houses of your chart.

This reading covers the period you chose month by month. For each month it reads the transits to your natal planets and angles, ranked by how strongly they act over the month, with the planets retrograde in it and their station dates. Above the months it follows the slow transits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto that shape the whole period, with the dates each one is in orb, and the houses the planets are crossing.

A relationship forecast reads the moving sky against the composite chart, the chart of the relationship itself, cast from the midpoints between the two people's planets.

This reading covers the period you chose month by month. For each month it reads the transits to the composite planets and angles, ranked by how strongly they act over the month, with the planets retrograde in it and their station dates. Above the months it follows the slow transits that shape the whole period for the two of you, with the dates each one is in orb, and the composite houses the planets are crossing.

A relationship cast as a Davison chart has a sky of its own, and the planets moving today make aspects to it exactly as they do to a birth chart. These are the transits on the relationship: when transiting Saturn squares the Davison Sun, the relationship as a whole is under review; when Jupiter trines its Venus, the two enjoy each other more easily; when Mars opposes its Moon, tempers run short between them. None of it belongs to either person. It describes what the relationship itself is living through on the day.

The slow planets, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, stay for months and mark a season of the relationship; the fast ones, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, pass in days and colour the mood. Because the Davison chart has real houses, a transit through its seventh or its fifth is about the relationship's own areas of life, which no composite can show. This reading takes the day's sky against the Davison chart, leads with the tightest contact and what it asks of the pair, keeps the slow apart from the fast, and says what the period asks rather than what will happen: a transit reading describes a climate, never an event.

A relationship cast as a Davison chart has a sky of its own, cast for the midpoint in time between the two births and the midpoint in space between the two birthplaces, with real houses and angles. The planets moving overhead make aspects to it as they do to a birth chart, and a month is the span in which those contacts can be watched whole: a planet comes into orb, perfects its aspect on a given day and moves on, and the slow ones, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Node and Chiron, hold a contact for weeks or months.

This reading follows each contact through the month rather than reading a single day. It leads with the slow contacts that frame the month, the season the relationship is living through, then the faster planets' contacts on their dates, the stations of planets turning retrograde or direct, and the days a planet moves into a new house of the relationship chart. The Moon is left out: in a month she touches every point once or twice and would drown the rest. None of it belongs to either person: it describes what the relationship itself is living through, and it says what the month asks rather than what will happen.

Secondary progressions move the birth chart forward by one day for every year of life: the sky of the second day after your birth describes your second year, the sky of the thirtieth day your thirtieth year. It is the oldest of the symbolic timing methods, resting on the ancient correspondence of a day to a year, and it describes inner development rather than events: the person you are becoming, the chapter of life you are in, the needs that have come to the surface.

The progressed Moon is the heart of it. It moves about a degree a month and changes sign every two and a half years, and its sign and natal house say where the feelings and the needs gather now. The progressed Sun moves a degree a year, so its sign change, which happens at most twice or three times in a life, marks a change of life chapter. The progressed lunation cycle, the progressed Moon's phase against the progressed Sun, is the roughly thirty-year arc of the current chapter: new, growing, full, waning. And a progressed planet on a natal one, within a degree, brings that natal placement forward for a year or two. This reading takes the progressed chart for the chosen date, its phase, its aspects to the birth chart and the timeline around the date, as one picture of where this life stands.

Solar arc directions move every point of the birth chart forward by the same arc: the distance the progressed Sun has travelled since birth, about a degree for every year of life. Where secondary progressions let each planet move at its own pace, solar arc moves the whole chart as one piece, so that the relationships inside it never change but the whole slides over the natal positions, and a directed planet or angle arriving on a natal point brings that point to the front of the life for about a year on either side of exactness.

The strongest directions are the ones that touch the angles and the lights: a directed Midheaven on the natal Sun, a directed Saturn on the natal Ascendant, a directed Venus on the natal Moon. Sign ingresses of the directed Sun, Moon and angles change the tone of a whole period. Because the arc is nearly uniform, solar arc directions are a precise timing tool, often read beside the progressions and the transits of the same date. This reading takes the directed positions for the chosen date, the contacts they make with the birth chart within a degree, and the timeline of directions around the date, and describes the period they mark.

Annual profections are the simplest of the Hellenistic timing techniques and one of the most used. Each year of life is assigned to one house of the birth chart, starting from the first house at birth and moving one house forward each birthday, so that the year from the twelfth to the thirteenth birthday returns to the first house, and the cycle repeats every twelve years. The house of the year says which area of life is activated; the sign on its cusp and the planet that rules that sign become the time lord of the year, the planet whose condition in the birth chart, and whose transits during the year, carry the year's story.

A profection year is read in layers: the house, and what it governs; the sign, and how that area will be approached; the time lord, where it sits in the birth chart, what it rules and what aspects it makes, and the planets in the profected house, which are activated too. The technique's strength is its plainness: it names one planet to watch, and the transits to and from that planet during the year are the ones that matter most. This reading takes the profection for the chosen date, the house, the time lord and its natal condition, and describes the year they describe.

Zodiacal releasing is a timing technique from Vettius Valens, a Greek astrologer of the second century, and it is not a chart. It takes one point of the birth chart, here the Lot of Spirit, which stands for what a person does and is known for, and releases time from it: the sign the Lot falls in rules the first chapter of the life, for as many years as that sign's planetary period, then the next sign in order rules the next chapter, and so on around the zodiac. Inside each chapter, shorter periods run through the signs in the same order, so that any month of a life sits inside a nested set of sign-rulers.

Two things are read above all. The loosing of the bond: when a sequence has gone round all twelve signs it does not start again but jumps to the opposite sign, and Valens read that jump as a change of direction in the life. And the peak periods: when the running sign is angular to the Lot of Fortune, the chapter is one of visibility and consequence, when the person's work is seen. There are no planets, aspects or transits in this technique, only signs, periods and dates. This reading takes the whole timeline, says where the life stands now and what this chapter and its running period ask, then reads the chapters already lived as the road here and the ones ahead as what is coming.

A return is the moment a planet comes back to the exact degree it held when you were born. The Sun does it once a year, on or near your birthday; the Moon every four weeks; Mercury, Venus and Mars roughly every one or two years; Jupiter every twelve, Saturn every twenty-nine and a half; the Lunar Node every eighteen and a half. A chart cast for that instant, at the place where you will be, is the return chart, and astrologers have read it since the Middle Ages as the map of the cycle that opens: the solar return as the year ahead, the lunar return as the month, the Saturn return as a whole stage of life.

A return chart is read like a birth chart, but everything in it belongs to a period rather than to a person. The return Ascendant and the house it falls in on your birth chart say where the cycle begins and what colours it; the house the returning planet occupies says where its matter will be lived; the planets on the angles are the ones that will be loud. And because the return chart is laid over the birth chart, every aspect between the two says how the coming cycle meets what you were born with. This reading takes the return chart, its houses and its aspects to your birth chart as one picture, and describes the cycle they open.

An ingress is the moment the Sun enters one of the four cardinal signs: Aries at the March equinox, Cancer at the June solstice, Libra at the September equinox and Capricorn at the December solstice. These four turning points divide the year into its seasons, and astrologers have cast charts for them for well over a thousand years. Traditionally the Aries ingress is the chart of the whole year, and the other three are the charts of the season each one opens, until the next ingress takes over.

The moment of an ingress is the same for everyone on Earth, so on its own the chart describes the climate of a season, not a life. What makes it personal is where it is cast and what it is laid over. Cast for the place where you will be, its Ascendant and houses are yours; laid over your birth chart, its planets fall in your natal houses and make aspects to your natal planets. The house of your birth chart where the ingress Sun falls is where the season's attention goes, and the closest aspects say which parts of you it touches most. This reading takes the ingress chart, its houses and its aspects to your birth chart as one picture, and describes how the turn of the season lands in your life.

A birth chart is cast for one place. Cast it for another, and every planet keeps its sign and every aspect holds, but the Ascendant and Midheaven move, and with them the houses: a planet that sat quietly in your sixth house at birth may stand on the Midheaven in another city, and the whole chart turns around it. Astrocartography maps that. Each planet draws four lines around the globe, the places where it rises, culminates, sets or stands at the lowest point, and where you live near one of those lines that planet governs the place for you. Jupiter's line is not the same experience as Saturn's.

The technique was systematised in the 1970s by Jim Lewis, but the idea is older: relocation charts have been drawn for as long as people have moved, and the relocated angles are what matters. This reading takes the relocated chart, the planets that come to the angles at the place in question or at the best-scoring places for one aim, and sets them against the birth chart: what changes there, what stays as it was, and what the move would do for the aim you named. Where little changes, it says so; a place a few hundred kilometres from the birthplace is mostly the birthplace.

The draconic chart is the birth chart measured from the North Node of the Moon instead of from the spring equinox: the Node is set to zero degrees of Aries, and every planet and angle is moved by the same amount. The Nodes are where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's, the points where eclipses happen, and astrologers who use the draconic chart read it as the chart beneath the chart: the soul's intention, the deeper purpose, the pattern the person is carrying out, as distinct from the personality the tropical chart describes.

Read alone, the draconic chart has the same planets, houses and aspects as the birth chart, because the whole thing is rotated together; what changes is the signs. A tropical Leo Sun may be a draconic Scorpio Sun, and the difference between the two is where the reading lives. Where draconic and tropical agree, the person's purpose and personality run together; where they differ, there is a tension between what one is here to do and how one presents. This reading takes the draconic placements against the natal ones, leads with the lights and the angles, and describes the deeper pattern the chart suggests.

Every placement in a birth chart is usually read along the zodiac, by longitude. But the planets also stand above or below the celestial equator, by an amount called declination, and two planets at the same declination are in parallel, two at the same declination on opposite sides in contraparallel. Astrologers read a parallel as a conjunction and a contraparallel as an opposition, and these contacts are invisible in the ordinary chart: two planets ninety degrees apart by longitude can be joined by parallel and act as one.

The declinations also show which planets are out of bounds, beyond the Sun's furthest declination of about twenty-three and a half degrees, where the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars can go. An out-of-bounds planet is read as unbound by the usual rules of its sign, more extreme and more original in what it does. This reading takes the parallels and contraparallels of the birth chart and any out-of-bounds planets, and describes the hidden conjunctions and oppositions they add to the chart read by longitude alone.

A harmonic chart multiplies every position of the birth chart by one number and takes the remainder around the circle. The fifth harmonic multiplies by five, so planets in quintile, seventy-two degrees apart, become conjunct; the seventh brings together planets in septile; the ninth, the navamsa of Indian astrology, brings together those in novile. Each harmonic therefore shows one family of aspects that the ordinary chart leaves faint, and the planets that cluster in a harmonic chart share a theme the birth chart only hints at. John Addey developed the method in the 1970s from the older Indian divisional charts.

The fifth harmonic is read for creativity and the personal style of making, the seventh for inspiration and the inner imagery, the ninth for what one is drawn toward and what sustains, the marriage chart in the Indian tradition. A harmonic chart has no houses that mean what the natal houses mean; it is read for its conjunctions and oppositions, the planets that come together under that number. This reading takes the chosen harmonic, the planets that cluster in it and what they clustered from, and describes the pattern it brings to the surface.

An eclipse is a New or Full Moon that falls close to the Lunar Nodes, so that the Earth, the Moon and the Sun stand in a line and one light is covered. Astrology has read them as turning points since the Babylonians, and two kinds of eclipse matter for a person. The prenatal eclipses, the solar and lunar eclipses just before birth, mark the degree the life was conceived under, and that degree stays sensitive for life: a planet or angle there carries the eclipse's theme, and later eclipses and transits to it are felt. And the eclipses to come, each at its own degree, touch whatever stands near that degree in the birth chart, and the house they fall in says which area of life is turned.

An eclipse is not a disaster; it is a change that comes from outside, a door opened or closed by circumstance rather than by choice, and its effects unfold over the months around it. This reading takes the prenatal eclipse degrees against the birth chart and the eclipses of the coming period, where they fall by house and what they touch, and describes what is being turned and when.