Read Me First
Here is my disclaimer: I have zero interest in “fortune-telling” about any tall, dark strangers coming into your life, predicting the lottery, or forecasting exact events. My focus, rather, is helping you empower yourself to live your life with joy, optimism, confidence, and a sense of purpose no matter what events come to pass. Evolutionary astrology is one good tool among many to help you achieve those attitudes quite well.
Signs
Simply put, the 12 signs of the zodiac represent the four seasons of the year. Each season has three divisions or “months” to make up the 12 signs. We are talking about the personality characteristics that go with the seasons and not the constellations that bear their names.
The tropical zodiac does not care where the literal constellations are and none of them are exactly 30 degrees wide anyway. Think of each sign, then, as the psychological underpinning of a certain time of the year. Each sign is 30 degrees wide and 30 x 12=360 degrees to complete one rotation of the earth on its axis. The signs are composed of a mode and an element. The modes are cardinal, fixed, and mutable to correspond to the beginning, middle, and end of a season. The elements are fire, earth, air, and water which represent the raw stuff of our environment. You could also think of fire as spirited, earth as grounded, air as mental, and water as intuitive. As we describe each sign we will bring the imagery of its mode and element into play.
Houses and Angles
In Brief, the houses present information about which area of your life an event will manifest. Where in your life is the “stuff” happening? The beginning of each house is called the “cusp”. The houses are more action-oriented than the signs. They are numbered from one to twelve on the natal chart in a counter-clockwise direction with the first house representing the sign and degree of the zodiac that is “dawning” on the eastern horizon at the time and place of your birth.
This is called the Ascendant (ASC). At that same time, the opposite sign and degree of the zodiac on the cusp of the seventh house is “setting”, which is called the Descendant (DSC). Also, the highest sign and degree at this same time on the cusp of the tenth house is called the Midheaven (MC), and the opposite point on the other side of the earth and on the cusp of the fourth house is called the Imum Coeli (IC). These four cusps are known as the Angles. Think of them as gateways to four critical parts of your life.
The Ascendant represents how you dawn on people you meet or how you begin things. The Descendant shows how you tend to see the people you meet. The Midheaven points to how you appear in public to people who don’t know you. It speaks of your career and mission in life. The Imum Coeli is all about the deepest or most hidden part of your life, which often involves family of origin issues. The qualities of the first sign Aries corresponds to the meaning of the first house and the second sign to the second house, in what is called the natural zodiac. This helps explain how the house and sign relate to each other. Say you have a Pisces Ascendant. The way you dawn on people will be with a Piscean style. So whatever sign is on the cusp of a house sets the style in which life manifests in that house.
One way to describe the energy of houses is to link them to the panorama of how your life unfolds (see Howard Sasportas’ book, The Twelve Houses ) . We are going to use this metaphor to help explain the houses as we go.
Planets
The planets are all about actionable qualities that correspond to different parts of your personality. Another way to say it is that they show how you tend to act in different areas of your life. The old dictum “as above, so below” applies here.
For simplicity sake we call the Sun and Moon planets as well as Mars, etc. Imagine watching a play taking place in a house. The planets represent the actors in the play, the signs represent the décor in the rooms and the houses represent the specific rooms where the action is taking place. The planets are the most important parts of the play. All of the action centers on them. The signs are about the psychological profiles that color the actions of the planets contained therein. You might say that the actions of the planets are modified by the signs and demonstrated in the houses.
The Sun represents your core thinking and vitality. The Moon brings forth your intuition, feelings, and deeply felt memories. Mercury shows how you communicate both speaking and listening. Venus tells you about your style of love, beauty, and aesthetics. Mars is your warrior, energy, anger, and your ability to act. Jupiter gets into how you value yourself and what you need to expand in your life. Saturn will reveal to you where you need to do a lot of work to succeed as in “how bad do you want this”. Its lessons can be hard realities. Uranus is your sudden inspiration and changes. It can show you in what part of your life you need to be true to yourself. Neptune is all about connecting to Spirit or the universe which is frightening for some people. Pluto is about power and psychological issues. Wading through the morass of your psychological issues can restore incredible power to your life.
Aspects
The Aspects are the angular relationships between planets, points, and angles expressed in degrees of arc. This shows which planets are talking to each other and the kind of conversation they are having.
There are what we call major and minor aspects. The major aspects are: conjunction at 0 degrees, sextile at 60 degrees, square at 90 degrees, trine at 120 degrees, and opposition at 180 degrees. The most important minor aspects are: semi-sextile at 30 degrees, semi-square at 45 degrees, sesquiquadrate at 135 degrees, and quincunx at 150 degrees. The easy aspects are the sextile, trine, and sometimes the conjunction. The difficult aspects (read tougher conversations) are the square, opposition, and sometimes the conjunction. With the conjunction it depends on the nature of the planets involved. The minor aspects are mostly regarded as tougher conversations. Two other aspects worth mentioning are the quintile at 72 degrees and bi-quintile at 144 degrees. These tend to be viewed as mental aspects which don’t manifest stuff in your life but do tell you about some of your mental connections.
Special Points
The most used special point is called the Part of Fortune. It is derived as a combination of the three most important elements in your chart: the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant. It can answer the question, “What does my best day look like?” Another useful point is the Vertex which tends to be active when someone critically important shows up in your life.