Birth Chart & Stones

A birth chart is a photograph of the sky: where the Sun, the Moon and the planets stood, seen from the exact point on Earth where you were born, in the minute you were born. That is why it takes three pieces of information and not one. The date sets the planetary positions, the place decides which slice of sky was rising in the east, and the time — the one that matters most — fixes the Ascendant, which moves about one degree every four minutes.

The houses are the twelve slices the sky around you is divided into, and there is more than one way to cut them: Placidus is the most widespread in the West, Whole Sign the oldest and simplest, Koch and Regiomontanus divide the space on different geometric principles. There is no right system and wrong one — they move the boundary between one house and the next, not the planets. Aspects, by contrast, are the angles between two bodies: 90° and 180° mark tension, 120° and 60° ease, and the orb measures how far an angle falls from exact. The tighter it is, the more that aspect weighs.

The positions you will read here are computed to the arcminute from ephemerides, not estimated: they are the same ones an astronomical almanac would give you. What astrology adds on top — the meaning of Venus in Libra, of Mars in the eighth house — is interpretive tradition, not measurement. It is worth keeping the two apart: the numbers can be checked, while the story built over them is a way of asking yourself questions, and the questions stay yours.