Astrology reference
The Planets
Every planet is a function rather than a fate: a verb your chart conjugates in a particular sign and house.
Sun
Identity · 1 year per cycle
The Sun is the organising principle of the chart: what you are consciously becoming rather than what you already are. Its sign describes the style of your vitality, its house the arena where you must be seen in order to feel real.
- ◇Rules Leo and the 5th house
- ◇Dignified in Aries, weakest in Libra
- ◇Afflicted: pride, performance, burnout
Moon
Instinct · 28 days
The Moon governs reflex, memory and what soothes you at three in the morning. It is the most honest body in the chart because it operates below decision. Its house shows where you seek safety; its sign shows the texture of your moods.
- ◇Rules Cancer and the 4th house
- ◇Moves roughly 13° per day
- ◇Afflicted: dependency, moodiness, hoarding
Mercury
Mind · 88 days
Mercury is perception and its translation into language. It never travels more than 28° from the Sun, so it always describes how you narrate your own identity. Retrograde three times a year, it turns attention inward for revision.
- ◇Rules Gemini and Virgo
- ◇Retrograde ~3 weeks, 3× yearly
- ◇Afflicted: overthinking, nervous speech, deceit
Venus
Value · 225 days
Venus describes what you find beautiful and therefore what you move toward. It rules attraction, money, taste and the terms on which you will accept love. The house it occupies is where you are most easily charmed.
- ◇Rules Taurus and Libra
- ◇Never more than 48° from the Sun
- ◇Afflicted: indulgence, appeasement, transactional love
Mars
Drive · 2 years
Mars is the capacity to want something enough to fight for it. Its sign shows how you argue, pursue and defend; its house shows where your energy is spent and where anger tends to accumulate unspoken.
- ◇Rules Aries, traditionally Scorpio
- ◇Retrograde every 2 years, ~2 months
- ◇Afflicted: rage, accident-proneness, exhaustion
Jupiter
Expansion · 12 years
Jupiter enlarges whatever it touches — meaning, opportunity, and excess alike. It spends about a year per sign, so its transits mark the year's arena of growth. Where Jupiter sits natally, you are lucky in a way you rarely notice.
- ◇Rules Sagittarius, traditionally Pisces
- ◇One sign per year
- ◇Afflicted: overreach, dogma, sloppy optimism
Saturn
Structure · 29 years
Saturn is time, limitation and earned competence. Its house shows where you started behind and will end up an authority. The Saturn return, around ages 29 and 58, ends the arrangements that were never truly yours.
- ◇Rules Capricorn, traditionally Aquarius
- ◇2.5 years per sign
- ◇Afflicted: fear, rigidity, chronic self-denial
Uranus
Disruption · 84 years
Uranus breaks patterns that have outlived their usefulness, usually without consultation. A generational planet by sign, it becomes personal by house — the area of life where you are unwilling to be predictable.
- ◇Rules Aquarius
- ◇7 years per sign
- ◇Afflicted: chaos for its own sake, detachment
Neptune
Dissolution · 165 years
Neptune dissolves boundaries — between self and other, real and imagined, devotion and delusion. It is the source of art, compassion and the specific blindness you keep re-entering.
- ◇Rules Pisces
- ◇~14 years per sign
- ◇Afflicted: escapism, victimhood, addiction
Pluto
Transformation · 248 years
Pluto governs power, taboo and irreversible change. Where it sits, control issues live; what it transits gets stripped to the load-bearing structure and rebuilt without your consent.
- ◇Rules Scorpio
- ◇12–31 years per sign
- ◇Afflicted: manipulation, obsession, paralysis
North Node
Direction · 18.6 years
Not a body but a point: the intersection of the Moon's orbit with the ecliptic. The North Node describes the unfamiliar development your life keeps insisting on; the South Node describes the comfortable competence you over-rely on.
- ◇Moves backwards through the zodiac
- ◇18-month stay per sign
- ◇Nodal return at ~19, 37, 56
Chiron
The wound · 50 years
Chiron marks the injury you cannot fully heal in yourself but can reliably heal in others. Its house is where you felt defective early and where your genuine expertise later grows.
- ◇Orbits between Saturn and Uranus
- ◇Chiron return at ~50
- ◇Afflicted: over-identification with the wound
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