Astrology, read four ways

Most astrology stops at one zodiac and calls it you. We read your chart in four skies, because the life you live, the body you live it in, the sky as it actually is and where your soul is heading are not the same story. Start with the overview, or go straight to the sky you're curious about.

The short answers

What does my birth chart actually say about me?

A birth chart is a map of where the sun, moon and planets stood, seen from the place you were born, at the minute you were born. Astrology treats each planet as a part of you: how you think, how you love, what you pursue, where you hold back. It then reads where each one landed and what it was in conversation with. Your sun sign is one planet out of ten. On its own, it is one line of a long letter.

What does my tropical chart say about my personality?

The tropical zodiac is the one Western astrology uses. It is anchored to the seasons rather than the stars: zero degrees Aries is the spring equinox, every year. That makes it a zodiac of rhythm and lived experience. It describes the surface of a life well: your personality, your instincts, how you begin a week, how you behave when you are bored.

What is my sidereal sign, and why is it different?

The sidereal zodiac measures the planets against the fixed stars, as the constellations actually stand. The tropical zodiac, used by Western horoscopes, measures them against the seasons. Two thousand years ago the two lined up. Since then the slow wobble of the earth has pulled them about 24 degrees apart. Most people's planets now sit roughly one sign earlier in the sidereal chart. Your sun may be Leo in one and Cancer in the other. Both describe you.

What is my true sky sign, and am I an Ophiuchus?

The familiar zodiac divides the sky into twelve equal slices of 30 degrees. The constellations themselves are not equal. Virgo is vast. Scorpius is small, and the sun crosses it in about a week. Between Scorpius and Sagittarius the sun passes through a thirteenth constellation, Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer, for a little under three weeks each year. True sky astrology reads a chart against the constellations as they really are: thirteen of them, of differing sizes.

What does my draconic chart mean?

The draconic chart takes your birth chart and rotates it to align with the moon's nodes, the two points where the moon's path crosses the sun's. In astrology the nodes form the soul's axis. The North Node is the direction you are growing towards. The South Node is what you have already mastered and tend to fall back on. Align the whole chart to that axis and a different picture appears: not who you are on an ordinary day, but who you are beneath the life, and what you arrived carrying.