Starlit Portraits

How to read your chart

Everything on your print, explained — start anywhere.

You do not need to know anything about astrology to use this page. Below is what each part of your print means, in the order you are most likely to want it.

What you are looking at

A birth chart is a record of positions. Given a date, a time and a place, the positions of the Sun, the Moon and the planets can be calculated exactly — the same arithmetic that predicts an eclipse decades ahead. Your chart is those positions, drawn as a diagram.

Jyotish measures those positions against the fixed stars rather than against the seasons, using the Lahiri ayanamsa. This is why a Jyotish chart usually places planets about one sign away from where a Western chart puts them. The two systems measure from different starting points, and neither is a mistake.

The positions come from astronomical software. The design, the assembly and the interpretation are mine.

The shape of the chart

Your print uses the North Indian chart format: a square divided into twelve segments, one for each house (Bhava).

The layout never moves. The first house — the one that describes the self — is always the diamond at the top centre, and the rest run anticlockwise from it. What changes from one chart to the next is which sign (Rashi) sits in each segment.

So there are three things to find in any one segment: the position on the square is the house, the small italic number at the corner nearest the middle is the sign, and the letters are the planets that were there, each with its degree printed underneath.

A North Indian birth chart, its houses numbered, and one segment enlarged Three drawings. The first is a chart as it is printed: a square divided into twelve segments by its two diagonals and a diamond joining the midpoints of its sides, with a small italic sign number at the corner of each segment nearest the middle, and planets with their degrees. The second is the same empty grid with the houses numbered one to twelve, starting at the diamond at the top centre and running anticlockwise — first the top diamond, then the two triangles to its left, then the left diamond, and so on. These numbers are not printed on a real chart. The third enlarges the twelfth house, the top-right triangle, showing the sign number 4, the abbreviation Ve for Venus, and 25 degrees. As it is printed 5 8 2 11 6 7 4 3 9 10 1 12 As 26° Ve 25° Mo 12° Sa 11° The same twelve positions, numbered 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 House numbers are never printed — they are here to show the order: first at the top centre, then anticlockwise. The twelfth house, enlarged — always in this position, on every chart Ve 25° 4 the planet — Venus how far into its sign — 25° the sign — 4 is Cancer

The rising sign (Ascendant, or Lagna)

The largest label on your print is the rising sign — the Ascendant, or Lagna, abbreviated to As. It is the point of the zodiac that was coming up over the eastern horizon at the moment of birth.

It is the one element that depends most sharply on the exact minute. The Earth turns through the whole zodiac in a day, so the rising sign moves on roughly every two hours. Two babies born the same morning in the same hospital can have different ones.

That is why I ask for the time to the minute, and why the chart is read differently when the time is not known.

The twelve houses (Bhavas)

The chart is divided into twelve sections, called houses — Bhavas. They are areas of life rather than places in the sky: the first concerns the body and the self, the fourth home and family, the tenth work and standing in the world.

A planet sitting in a house tells you which area of life that planet's description applies to. It does not tell you what will happen there.

All twelve are described in full further down this page.

The signs (Rashis) and the numbers

The small italic numbers are the signs — the Rashis. Each sign is numbered from 1 to 12, starting at Aries. One sits in every segment, at the corner nearest the middle of the chart, and it tells you which sign was occupying that part of the sky.

They are the only thing on the chart that moves between one person and the next. The twelve positions never change; the numbers in them do.

The nine planets (Grahas)

Jyotish works with nine Grahas — seven visible bodies and two calculated points: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and the two points called Rahu and Ketu.

Rahu and Ketu are where the Moon's orbit crosses the Sun's apparent path across the sky — the geometry that determines when eclipses happen. They appear opposite each other on every chart, always exactly half a circle apart.

Underneath each abbreviation on your print is a figure in degrees: the planet's position within its sign, printed as whole degrees from 0 to 30.

The retrograde marks

A small subscript R next to a planet means it was retrograde — appearing to move backwards against the stars as seen from Earth.

Nothing actually reverses. The planets orbit at different speeds, and when the Earth overtakes one on the inside, it appears for a few weeks to slide backwards — in the same way a slower car appears to move backwards as you pass it. The Sun and the Moon are never retrograde.

The segment of sky (Nakshatra)

Alongside the twelve signs, Jyotish divides the same circle of sky into twenty-seven segments called Nakshatras, each covering 13°20′ and named after the stars in that region.

Your guide names the Nakshatra the Moon was in. The Moon crosses the whole circle in about twenty-seven days, so it moves through roughly one segment a day. It is a much finer division than the sign — closer to a date stamp on the sky than a category.

All twenty-seven are shown below, and each one has a full entry of its own.

Read all twenty-seven in full

What a chart does not tell you

A chart describes. It does not predict.

What is on your print is a record of positions — a description of the sky at one moment, and of the tendencies that arrangement is traditionally associated with. It is not a statement about what will happen to anyone. I do not make claims about health, money, relationships, fertility, work or legal matters, in any product, however the question is asked.

That applies most of all to a chart made for a child. Nothing here says who they are or who they will become — it says what the sky was doing on the night they arrived.

Quick reference

The twelve houses (Bhavas)

  1. 1The self. The starting point of the chart, and the section the exact minute of birth decides. It describes the body, the temperament and the impression someone makes before they have said anything.
  2. 2What is held. Money, possessions and the family someone comes from: resources in the widest sense. It also covers the voice — what is said, and how.
  3. 3Effort and nerve. Brothers and sisters, short trips, and the initiative it takes to begin something. The skills learned by doing rather than by studying.
  4. 4Foundations. Where someone is from and what they rest on: the childhood home, the mother, land and property, and having somewhere to return to.
  5. 5What is made. Children, creative work made for its own sake, and the kind of intelligence that plays. Learning taken up for pleasure rather than out of duty.
  6. 6The daily round. The tasks that repeat, work done in service of others, and the obstacles met along the way. Health sits here as the body’s daily maintenance — as a subject the house covers, never as a claim about anyone’s.
  7. 7The other person. One-to-one relationships of every kind: marriage, business partners, and how someone meets another as an equal.
  8. 8What is not on the surface. Endings and what follows them, change that is not chosen, matters kept private, resources shared or inherited, and research — the pursuit of what is hidden.
  9. 9Purpose (Dharma) and the long view. What someone orients by: teachers, philosophy, study taken to depth, good fortune and travel far from home.
  10. 10Standing in the world. Career, the role someone is publicly known for, and the authority they carry in it.
  11. 11Networks and what comes through them. Friends, groups, income from work already done, and the things someone hopes for.
  12. 12What happens out of sight. Rest, retreat and the parts of life lived privately: sleep, solitude, time spent abroad, and what is given away rather than kept.

The twelve signs (Rashis)

Questions

If something on your print is not covered here, write to me at olgakhan.astrology@gmail.com and I will explain it.

If you would like the whole chart read properly rather than summarised, I offer written readings — contact me at the same address.