Written in the Stars: A beginner’s guide to astrology
Many college students are all too familiar with the scenario: You’re enjoying yourself at a social gathering and talking to someone you’re meeting for the first time. After the grueling and methodical year, major and hometown small talk, they ask, “What’s your big three?”
As the person who defaults to this question at nearly every party, I can say there tend to be one of three responses. One, they say astrology is a bunch of BS and jump at the first opportunity to leave the conversation. Two, trying to show that they’re not clueless, they awkwardly stumble over their words as they pull up their birth chart on Snapchat. Or three, least commonly, they clearly have experience discussing their chart, open an astrology app and ask to see my chart too.
While I don’t think astrology can say everything about a person, with the vastness of the universe and cosmic energies all around us, it’s difficult for me to believe that everything happening in space doesn’t have an impact on each of us on Earth. Whether you’re a believer, skeptic or just plain confused, here’s a rundown of what you should know if you find yourself in this situation.
When the average person thinks of their zodiac sign, they’ll think of their sun sign first. This is the easiest one to find because it only relies on your birth date. Anyone born between Sept. 23 and Oct. 23 is a Libra, no matter the exact location or time they were born. However, your sun sign isn’t the end-all-be-all of your chart. So, if you don’t feel mysterious enough to be a Scorpio or organized enough to be a Virgo, don’t count out astrology’s accuracy just yet.
The twelve signs are divided into four elements: earth, fire, water and air. Earth signs — Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn — are characterized by their groundedness and stability, fire signs — Aries, Leo and Sagittarius — are bold and daring, water signs —Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces — are emotional and intuitive, and air signs — Gemini, Libra and Aquarius — are intellectual and communicative.
When looking at elements, it’s important to look at your whole chart, rather than just your sun sign or even your big three. Your big three could have only earth and water signs, but combined with your other placements you could be air or fire-dominant — meaning the element most present in your chart.
Another, less-known way to categorize signs is by their modality. Cardinal signs — Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn — are the leaders of each season (i.e. the spring equinox falls in Aries season) and are the signs of change, trendsetting and leadership. Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius are fixed signs. Falling in the middle of a season, they are typically more stubborn, grounded and focused. Finally, each season ends with a mutable sign: either Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces. They are typically referred to as the “philosophers” of the zodiac and can exhibit flexibility and open-mindedness.
Because each modality has one sign from each element, every sign is unique in its combination of the two categories. Capricorn’s combination of an earth sign’s stability with a cardinal sign’s trendsetting nature makes it a great sign for leadership, and Pisces gets the reputation of being an imaginative, daydreamy sign from its water and mutable blend.
The sign that gives the most comprehensive insight into one’s life is the rising, or ascendant. To find this, you’ll need to know your city and time of birth and input them into a birth chart calculator. If you don’t know your birth time, you can still find nearly every other placement in your chart, but birth time is necessary to find your ascendant.
The sky is split into 12 sections, — or houses — much like the hours on a clock. Each house rules a different part of life, such as friendship, money and travel. The signs and planets that fall in a specific house in your chart can determine what you value in each of these areas and can even predict in what areas you’ll find future success.
For example, the 10th house, or 10th segment of the sky, rules fame, honor and career. If a Pisces mercury is in this house, this person would probably be successful in some sort of emotional communication — such as songwriting or filmmaking.
Your rising sign is especially important because it always falls in your first house, and you can determine each subsequent house by moving through the zodiac calendar. If you have an Aries rising, Taurus would rule your second house, Gemini third and so on.
Rounding out the big three is the moon sign. The moon rules emotions and is basically who you are, at your core, when no one else is around. Upon reading someone’s chart for the first time, their moon sign tells me the most about them because it’s the part of themselves that they don’t usually share with the rest of the world. For example, my Scorpio sun, Cancer rising and the plethora of air placements in the rest of my chart may characterize me as someone who goes with the flow and craves chaos, but my grounding Taurus moon represents my desire for comfort and uneasiness about change.
Mercury rules communication and learning, Venus rules love and Mars rules sex and aggression. These, combined with your big three, are usually referred to as your “big six.” If you really want to impress the next person who asks you about your big three, pull out your knowledge of these planets too.
The further a planet is from the sun, the slower its orbit and longer it stays in one sign. For example, Pluto tends to stay in a sign for a whole generation. From November 1983 to January 1995, Pluto was in Scorpio. This roughly equates to the timing of the millennial generation. Generation Z is categorized by Pluto in Sagittarius, which is generally a rebellious, fiery, spontaneous sign and greatly reflects the traits of this passionate generation.
It’s not as common to ask for someone’s placements outside of their big six because, especially in college where people are close in age to each other, most people have the same placements from Jupiter to Pluto.
There’s certainly enough room to go deeper into birth charts. Masculine and feminine signs, nodes, aspects and specific degrees of planets and a plethora of other celestial affairs can provide even more insight into what the stars say about you — but let’s save that for another day.
Jenna Peterson is a junior writing about anything and everything astrology-related. She is also a news editor at the Daily Trojan.