As we all know, astrology is a huge, beautiful, but complicated field of study. There are infinite traditions, techniques, and approaches that you could spend years and years studying just a couple of them at a time! Astrology is one of those subjects that never ceases to amaze you and you never fully finish learning about it or "master" all of it. It weirdly gets more confusing and complex the longer you study it!
The things we read and learn about astrology when we first start out studying are usually very different from what we learn as we continue studying longterm. You'll start to have sudden crises and realize "wait, this entire concept I learned a while back doesn't work at all how I originally thought it did," or "I just learned this new concept and it makes some things I learned a while ago make absolutely no sense, so now I have to change my entire view on astrology." Since there's so much information and so many different approaches to astrology, it takes time to really sort through everything to find what's helpful and useful to you, and what's not.
The things I'll be talking about here are tips that I really, really wish I had known earlier on in my studies to save me time and confusion. Not everyone will agree with me on all of these points, but these are some things I've learned, or realizations I've had that really changed the game for me.
1. Cookbook interpretations aren't totally accurate when studying or reading a chart.
When I say 'cookbook interpretation,' I'm referring to the interpretations where you simply look up "planet x in sign/house y" or "planet x aspecting planet y" and it gives you a bunch of generic possible meanings without being personalized to the specific chart you're looking it. They're sort of a one-size-fits-all summary that glazes over all of the nuance and context provided by the rest of the chart.
If you were to draw up another birth chart with the same placement you're interested in researching, but all the other components of the chart are different, you would get the exact same interpretation of that single placement regardless of how different the two charts are as a whole. Those types of interpretations can only go so far. They're great to start off with, don't get me wrong! It's impossible to look at a birth chart and be able to start putting all of the pieces together to form a personalized interpretation when you first start using astrology or learning about your own chart. Chances are, you don't even recognize the astrological glyphs yet! We can't suddenly come up with advanced interpretations right off the bat, we have to start somewhere.
Those cookbook interpretations are great to get a broad sense of what a placement does on its own, but in reality, no single placement functions as if it were immune to the influence of everything else in the chart. Every chart is unique. All of the different components factor into how each placement will manifest, which means a simple, generic description of a placement won't truly encapsulate the many facets that make your placements unique to you. If your goal is to study astrology seriously and practice it professionally or do readings for other people, I think it's incredibly important to eventually stop relying on those generic interpretations.
Don't worry about trying to memorize or make your interpretations perfectly match what websites say about them. They more than likely won't exactly fit an individual's chart since there's a lot more going on in a whole chart than a general summary will take into consideration.
If you want to learn how to provide impactful readings, break up with those short cut interpretations and practice gathering more individually accurate information from a chart.
2. Astrology is primarily centered around the planets, not the signs.
We're so used to seeing the signs being portrayed as the core component in astrology, that the majority of people don't even know astrology has more to it than that. Of course that's mainly because the average person hasn't really been exposed to astrology aside from seeing their horoscope in a magazine, but that focus on the signs even tends to carry over when we start studying horoscopic astrology (horoscopic astrology: the type of astrology that uses full charts that include your ascendant (rising), and the other planets/points that we know and love).
It's super easy and even fun to play with the idea of what the signs do and how we see those qualities reflected in people. But when you really look at it, the signs on their own are honestly very limited with what they can do and the influence they have in astrology overall. When we center our astrology around the signs (I've seen some astrologers call this "signology"), we're not too far off from doing exactly what people accuse horoscopes of doing: generalizing all people based on just 12 plain archetypes.
We know that there's a lot more to astrology than sorting people into 12 sets of characteristics, but we miss out on what astrology is fully capable of when we reduce it to the signs with a smaller mixture of planets, houses, and aspects on the side.
Aside from those considerations, let's look at the foundations of astrology. Looking back at the work of ancient astrologers, planets were the primary focus of astrology from the beginning. Astrology began with people observing the appearance and tracking the movements of the "wandering stars" in the sky, and taking those planets' qualities into consideration when determining what their jobs were. People used the planets to predict events long before systems of zodiac signs, houses, and aspects were formed. Hundreds of years before the zodiac signs that we know today were standardized, Babylonian astrologers used 17-18 constellations to track the motion of the planets. The zodiac "signs" back then weren't even the same as the ones we know now.
Later on when more systems, doctrines, and techniques were being developed, astrologers used the planetary rulership scheme to develop the meanings of the signs, NOT the other way around. Let me repeat that, because this is important. The signs did not pass their meanings on to the planets, the signs GOT their meanings FROM the planets they're ruled by.
Mercury doesn't represent communication because Gemini is associated with talkativeness, Gemini is associated with talkativeness because it is ruled by the planet Mercury. Capricorn didn't pass on some of its meaning on to Saturn, Capricorn got its meaning FROM its ruler, Saturn. The same goes for all of the other signs.
I'm being so thorough with this point because it makes it clear that even if you DO mainly use the signs, those signs' meanings are based on the planets, just like with the majority of other concepts in astrology.
Even breaking it down to one of the first things a lot of us learn in astrology, the signs simply tell you HOW the planets do what they do. The signs don't act on their own. The planets' positions and movements are ultimately what we pay attention to in astrology, whether it's in birth charts, horary charts, election charts, or even tracking transits' correlations to current events (mundane astrology).
If I have an empty house in my chart, what do I look for to find the meaning of that house? I look at where planetary ruler of that house is placed. If I want to know what changes my career will go through over the next year, what do I look for? The transits of the planetary ruler of my Midheaven or 10th house, or even looking at the different planets that will be moving past my Midheaven or through my 10th house.
The planets are key in astrology.
Understanding the how the planets work and making them your focus will improve what you do. Learn their strengths, their weaknesses, their temperaments, their cycles, etc, and it'll drastically change how you use astrology.
3. The signs are not equivalent to the houses.
I'll keep this one brief and direct because it seems to be a big topic of debate among astrologers.
To define them as best as I can, the signs are segments of the ecliptic (the annual path through space the Sun makes from the earth's POV) that the planets move through because of their rotation around the Sun (this planetary movement is called 'secondary motion'). The houses are segments of the earth's sky from a specific location that the planets seem to rotate through on a daily basis because of the earth's rotation on its axis (this daily movement is called 'primary motion').
Here are some pictures to try and help you visualize the difference between these two things.
The houses (segments of the earth's sky) represent topics and areas of our lives. The signs (segments of the ecliptic) give the planets transiting through them different characteristics, and tell us which planets rule those transiting planets. They have two different purposes, which is why I firmly believe that we need to separate their meanings. Of course this is complicated a bit by what we call the '12 letter alphabet,' where we see Aries, Mars, and the 1st house all treated as being "naturally connected," then Taurus, Venus, and the 2nd house all are treated as being "naturally connected," and so on. The 12 letter alphabet is everywhere, unfortunately, so it takes most of us a while to come around to the fact that the houses and signs do not share purposes in astrology just because they're numbered the same (Aries = 1st house because it's the1st sign of the zodiac, etc).
To reiterate what I'm saying here, Aries (and Mars) does not "naturally rule" the 1st house. Taurus (and Venus) does not "naturally rule" the 2nd house. Gemini (and Mercury) does not "naturally rule" the 3rd house, and the same goes for the rest of the signs and houses.
Unless you're an Aries rising, this concept does not work. If you're a Capricorn rising, Saturn rules your 1st and 2nd houses, Jupiter rules your 3rd house, Mars rules your 4th house, Venus rules your 5th house, and so on. The ONLY people who have Aries + Mars associated with / ruling the 1st house are Aries risings. The ONLY people who have Capricorn + Saturn associated with / ruling the 10th house are Aries risings. I can't emphasize this enough.
If you really want to get into where the houses got their meanings, their position in the earth's sky, angularity (whether they're angular, succedent, or cadent), and planetary joys played a big part in that. I won't get into these right now, but if you want resources on these concepts, I recommend the lecture on the houses from The Astrology School.
Bottom line for this point: learn to distinguish the signs and houses. For a lot of us, the houses made almost no sense until we learned that they ARE NOT the same as the signs, and they shouldn't be treated as such.
4. The outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) are not usually very personally significant in a birth chart.
These three planets are called the 'generational planets' for a reason. They group together entire generations of people, which means their positions by sign are the same for people born within years and years of each other. They're so far from the Sun and they move so slowly that they are not as consistently active as the rest of the planets. Uranus takes around 8 years to move through ONE sign, which means everyone within 8 years of your age have the exact same Uranus sign as you. The same goes for Neptune and Pluto, but they're even slower, which means you share that sign placement with even more people.
So yes, I may have Pluto in Sagittarius and it supposedly makes me so adventurous and
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* free spirit *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧, but everyone born from 1996 to 2009 has Pluto in Sagittarius as well. Think about how many people were born in that 13 year long time span! And that's relatively quick for Pluto considering the fact that it can spend up to 31 YEARS in one sign.
A side note (and this is a personal belief, but I do know others who think this as well): I believe that Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto function differently from the other 7 planets. Part of what determines what the planets do is their visibility in the sky, their brightness, their color, and their speed. Fast planets are more active or faster to manifest than the slower moving ones. The brighter planets (Jupiter and Venus) are benefic, the dimmer, more muddy colored planets (Saturn and Mars) are malefic. Things like these are how ancient astrologers made note of what the planets represent. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are newer planets (discovered within the last 200 years), so those same astrologers obviously weren't around to use those same guidelines to decide what they represent and how they work. But if you take those same things into consideration, the outer planets wouldn't be as significant in general, and some consider them to be malefics because 1) they're not visible to the naked eye, and 2) they're SO slow.
I still do take the outer planets into consideration in certain cases (which I'll go over later), but overall, I believe that they work differently because of their qualities. Unlike the 7 visible planets which rule over signs, and represent topics, people, etc, I believe that the invisible outer planets act more as influencers, working behind the scenes rather than on the stage with the rest of the planets. I don't believe that Uranus rules technology itself (technology is very Mercurial), but I do think it has to do with the progression of humanity, and therefore the progression of technology. I don't believe that Neptune rules the subconscious, but I do believe that Neptune tends to hide things or confuse and muddy things up. I believe they have specific qualities that they tend to throw into everything else going on in a chart, but don't rule over the common, everyday things we deal with.
In a lecture I once listened to, Robert Schmidt said something like "If the outer planets are transcendental, why do we reduce them to common topics and objects?" That really confirmed my view on those planets. (I don't remember the exact quote, so don't hold me to that.)
The only time I'll really consider an outer planet to be influential in a chart is if A) it's in an angular house, or B) they're very tightly aspecting other inner planets.
5. Your birth chart is not limited to only being about your personality.
This one is pretty simple. Modern astrology for the most part poses your entire chart as being ALL YOU. As if every piece of your chart is simply a different part of your personality. That's not completely the case. Of course your chart can tell you about your personality, but it also can tell you about your life as a whole, which includes people and things that are not you. You can see different people, places, topics, objects, and more in your chart!
Want to know about your romantic partners? Look at your 5th house, 7th house, their rulers, or Venus. Want to know about your friends? Look at your 3rd house, 11th house, their rulers, or Jupiter. Want to know about your neighbors? Look at your 3rd house and its ruler. Want to know about your debts and inheritances? Look at your 8th house and its ruler. The list goes on.
Just about anything that is in your life in any way can be seen somewhere in your chart. Don't go on studying thinking that your chart can only tell you about how you behave!
6. It's normal to feel like certain placements and aspects in your chart don't fully resonate with you at all times!
This is another one I learned through traditional astrology that modern astrology didn't teach me. Not all of your chart is active at all times throughout your entire life! Your chart tells you the story that is your life, and throughout that story, different planets will become a major character, take charge and become more evident in your life than they may have been before or may be later.
This is something that timing techniques such as profections, zodiacal releasing, solar return charts, and more, can tell you. I won't go into how to do use those techniques in this post, but it's something to keep in mind and research!
7. Indicators specific to your birth chart are just as important, if not more important than general indicators.
When I talk about indicators in this case, I'm talking about planets that represent (indicate) certain things in your chart. An example of something that a planet generally indicates is Venus representing relationships. This can apply to everyone, which is why it's a general indicator. Let's say Venus in your birth chart rules the 3rd house and 10th house. In that case, Venus would also represent (be an indicator for) your environment (3rd house) and your career (10th house). These indications of Venus unique to your birth chart. Another example would be the ruler of your 7th house representing relationships. That ruler isn't always Venus, it's based on your own birth chart and it's unique to you. The reason I think this is something important to pay talk about now is because it's something I don't see talked about with beginners all that often, and I really wish I had learned that sooner.
This goes for all other topics and people! Pay attention to all of it, not only the general indicators just because they apply to everyone and are used more commonly.
8. Retrogrades aren't that big of a deal!
We've all seen the hype surrounding retrograde phases. Of course they do have significance and meaning, but they're not anything to be afraid of. They're completely normal, you've gone through so many in your life already, and you'll go through many more. Retrogrades happen because of the planets' rotations around the Sun from our point of view. Since the planets are constantly rotating around the Sun, retrogrades are just part of their cycle and they occur regularly. It's nothing to psyche yourself out or get nervous about! Even when 8 planets are retrograde all within one year, it's still normal, because this happens about every 2 or 3 years! Mercury is retrograde three separate times every single year, and some planets, like Saturn for example, are retrograde for about 5 months out of every single year.
Even though retrogrades do happen regularly, not all of them are significant for you personally. This goes back to what I said before about timing techniques. If a planet is activated for you and it's retrograde, or if a house is activated and a retrograde planet is transiting through it, it's more likely to be significant for you. If a planet or the house that a retrograde planet is moving through is not activated, it's probably not going to be as impactful on you directly.
Either way, retrogrades aren't all big and bad and scary, so try not to let the hype around them get to you! Don't let those "there are 6 retrogrades this year, karma is gonna kick all our asses!!" posts scare you. Save your energy!
9. Your draconic chart is not your "soul's journey."
I'm not even completely sure where this idea came from, it's just something that circulated on Twitter for a while and we all ate it up without question. First of all, ??? Second of all, it's been confirmed that the concept of how draconic charts are drawn up was just a mistranslation, and so it's not even a very reliable concept. I've read something similar about sidereal astrology too and I kind of question that concept of "ego vs soul's journey" as well, although sidereal IS a valid system to use if you choose. That's a whole other topic that's too big for this post, so I won't get into it. This is a super short point, but I wasted time looking at my draconic chart a couple years ago, so I figured I'd share that to save others the trouble.
10. Contrary to popular belief, traditional astrology isn't irrelevant just because it's old.
There's this common argument that modern astrology dominates over traditional astrology because it has taken all the best parts of the tradition and grown from it. This is not true!
Due to political and religious changes throughout history that resulted in astrologers being exiled, astrology texts being outlawed, burned, and/or lost, a good majority of thousands of years of astrological work was missing for hundreds of years. This means that when newer astrology began to come around, a lot of the knowledge and progress that had been made throughout history wasn't taken into consideration. If they didn't even know about all of this lost knowledge, how could they build upon it to make the practice better?
Modern astrology wasn't exactly created because traditional astrology was deemed unfit and outdated. There was just a lack of awareness of the traditions for the most part because of lost texts and the fading off of astrology. Astrology wasn't always popular or legal, and the internet hasn't always been around, so it wasn't easy to find astrologers to learn from or get consultations from, books to read or anything like what we have today. It was only in the past 30 or so years that astrologers began rediscovering and translating ancient texts, which brought back some very useful and advanced techniques that had been lost for hundreds of years. 30 years is VERY recent, and work is still being done to recover those lost texts and techniques, so these concepts still haven't fully been reincorporated into modern astrology yet.
We live in a time where astrology resources are more accessible than ever, astrologers are everywhere, and astrology itself is pretty popular. Take advantage of all of the knowledge we have available to learn from! Don't dismiss tradition just because it's incorrectly assumed to be irrelevant to what we do in modern times. This is the perfect time to learn from all sorts of traditions and figure out how they can work with the newly developed concepts we have today.
Thank you for reading this long post! I have other things I want to address, but some topics are too big to cram multiple into one post, so we'll talk about those later on.