Start with the big picture, end with the details

Chart interpretation is a little like portrait sketching. When you’re drawing a picture of someone, the last thing that you want to do is start with a detail, like an eye or a mouth, no matter how tempting it is to just zero in on your favorite thing about that person. When you start from the details, you can’t capture the likeness of someone. Same with chart interpretation. If you start with a Sun sign, Mercury placement, or midpoint, you’re basically trying to draw someone by only drawing on of their features.

Start with the big stuff. Big patterns. If you see that they have almost all their planets in one modality and the points are in a grand cross formation, that's a big picture thing. Sect stuff is big picture stuff. Figure out if they were born during the day or night or morning or evening before figuring out where all of their planets are. If you were actually present at the moment of their birth, then sect would be the first thing that you notice.

From there, you can start looking at the medium size details. Now that you know that they’re a daytime or nighttime birth, do you notice any obvious patterns in terms of their diurnal or nocturnal planets? Do they have all their nocturnal planets ruled by malefics? Do they have a stellium in a particular sign?

Only after you’ve looked at all of the big and medium sized picture stuff, should you even look at aspects. Aspects are there to refine a chart only. You will understand quite a lot about how different planets relate to one another just by looking at the essential dignities, elements, and modalities. If they have an overdominance of one modality, then you already know that there are some challenges. If they have a lot of one element, then you can already anticipate their trines. Looking for more exact aspects with certain orbs around each planet (I use 10º orbs for luminaries, 7º for other planets, and 2-3º for points) is really about intricacy. Don’t get lost in the details right from the get go.

Figure out the essential dignities

Seriously. They're called essential for a reason. You can’t tell how each planet in your chart interacts together unless you already understand the conditions for each planet themselves. If you can see that Saturn is squaring your client’s Sun, you don’t really have enough for interpretation until you know what kinds of conditions their Saturn and Sun are in.

You can figure out a client’s essential dignities by drawing a simple chart. Make two columns, one for domicile rulership and another for exaltation rulership. If you want, you can also take a peek into their triplicity rulers and bound lords (but that will mostly just give you more info about how the elements and degrees affects the patterns in their planets and counts as more detail oriented stuff). Leo is ruled by the Sun, Cancer by the Moon, Gemini and Virgo by Mercury, Taurus and Libra by Venus, Aries and Scorpio by Mars, Sagittarius and Pisces by Jupiter, and Capricorn and Aquarius by Saturn. For the exaltation lords, Aries is ruled by the Sun, Taurus by the Moon, Pisces by Venus, Capricorn by Mars, Cancer by Jupiter, and Libra by Saturn.

Once you make these two columns, figure out which planets are in the best condition and which planets are in the worst condition. Figure out which planets rely on each other and if there are planets that only deposit themselves. Find out whether all their nocturnal planets are ruled by diurnal planets (meaning that they might be working against themselves) or if they have a more chill chart. Find out which planets are in detriment or fall and which ones are dignified or exalted. Then, find if they have a final depositor, if they have mutually receptive planets, or multiple depositors. Using these patterns, you should be able to group their planets together. You can use these groups that you made in sync with the houses.

For example, you might have a client who was born during the day with a dignified Saturn. If they’re experiencing a Saturn transit through an angular house or if that Saturn squares their Moon, don’t jump to a really dark interpretation of Saturn. By doing the essential dignities, you’ll know that Saturn might not be such a big issue in their life. Now, if that same client has a Mars in Cancer conjunct their Jupiter, then you have something to talk about. A Jupiter in Cancer is exalted by a Mars in Cancer is in its fall. Both are ruled by that Moon which squares a reasonably benevolent Saturn. In this scenario, both the Moon and Saturn would also be depositors.

Only once you understand how well each planet feels fed and supported can you understand how they tend to behave. Think of the planets like people. If you were trying to mediate a dialogue between two people, wouldn’t you want to know a bit about their personalities first?

The Houses are where the astrology happens

Chris Brennan said in his podcast that you can’t have astrology without houses and it’s true. Without houses, you can only really see certain symbols and archetypes, how they might feel supported or not, and how they interact with one another. Houses describe how these symbols play out in the course of your client’s life on earth. Houses ground the interpretation into your actual life.

Without houses, that dignified Saturn we talked about earlier is just that. Saturn is the daddy planet and, in it’s own rulership, it’s a patriarch archetype that’s chilling out in its own zone. You don’t know anything about how this Saturn might affect your client’s life, about whether it’s a Saturn that’s about peer pressure, a Saturn that’s about home stuff, a Saturn that’s about teachers and institutions, or a Saturn that’s about shadow selves. Only when you put houses into the mix do you really have the questions you need to start talking to your client about their life.

You don’t know anything about your client

This is more of an overall thing but the most important thing to keep in mind when interpreting any natal chart is the chart doesn’t actually tell you anything about a person. Got that? That’s right. You can’t predict anything about someone using their chart.

Take this example: lemme quickly describe a chart for you. I’m going to say, well, this person has Sun in Gemini, Mercury and Venus also in Gemini, a Libra Moon, a Mars in Scorpio, a Jupiter in Libra, and a Saturn in Capricorn. They’re also an Aquarius rising. Based on this information, after you’ve done your essential dignities and found all sorts of patterns, after you’ve looked at house placements and thought about interactions between planets...can you tell me anything at all about the person? They’ve got a lot of air stuff, right? So they must be the flirty type? They’re a nighttime birth with a dignified Mars, right? So they must be a sex addict?

Now, what if I told you that chart I gave you wasn’t a person at all but the chart of a mouse?

You don’t have any information about a person just based on their chart. You can’t even tell if the chart you have belongs to a human being or a rodent. That means that you’re really not going to be able to tell: how that person deals with heteronormativity, race relations, what their job is, whether they’re dating someone, how or where they grew up, etc. Those are all things that you have to ask your client, just as a regular counselor would. Astrology is just your framework for your discussion. Being an astrology based counselor means that you still have to counsel.

Now, there’s been a few exceptions to this rule that I’ve personally observed. There’s been times where certain relationships between planets in a client’s chart have manifested in ways that are just too synchronicitous to be real. I’ve had Saturn ruled seventh house Suns ask be about work stuff, me feel like there’s more to the conversation based on the house placement and ask about their partner, and find out that they’re involved romantically with a career mentor. I’ve seen clients whose third house shit coincides perfectly with their siblings’ Sun signs or clients whose MC/IC axis describes their parents precisely. However, these “predictive” surprises happen because I already knew something about the client. I knew that they were a human being, that they live in the 21st century, I knew a bit about their lives, etc. If I didn’t know whether the chart I was interpreting was a koala or a human, then I might not have made some of these same associations.

So, now that we’ve decided that you really don’t know a thing about your client other than what they tell you, then what is the consultation even for?

You’re not born into your chart. You grow into it.

This is another big one to keep in mind for all chart interpretation. Say you’re talking with that client with the dignified Saturn still and, after talking to them and hearing about their life, you realize that they fit none of the stereotypes of a dignified Saturn person. They don’t have a career, don’t want one, are currently hitchhiking around the country, and gambled all their money away in Atlantic City last week.

Your job as an astrologer, at this point, isn’t to figure where in their lives they might embody more of a Saturn figure but to figure out how this Saturn has been developing and changing throughout the course of their lives. This is where transits and progressions come in. If you’re doing Saturn work with a client, always ask them what they were doing around age seven, fifteen, and twenty one. If you’re working with Jupiter related issues, ask them how puberty went.

Maybe that client was a very serious seven year old, has Saturn currently passing through their twelfth house, and they’re spending the year trying to exorcise some of the responsibility patterns given to them by their family. Maybe the lifestyle they live now is actually due to some element of control from a partner who they’re afraid to lose and who they met when they were twenty one.

With every single planetary placement or pattern, the question to ask yourself and your client isn’t “How is this person embodying this trait?” but “How has this person changed this trait within themselves and how are they preparing to change this trait for the future?”