Birth chart
The birth chart is the map of the sky drawn for the exact moment and place of a birth. It places the Sun, the Moon, the planets, the Ascendant and the twelve houses as they stood at that precise time. It is the foundational document of Western astrology, the reference point from which personality, inner dynamics and upcoming transits are read.
A photograph of the sky
Picture a photo of the sky taken at the second of your first breath, from the city where you were born. The birth chart freezes that position of the planets forever. The Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant form its central trio, around which the other planets and the houses sketch the detail of your inner landscape.
The starting point of everything
Everything in a reading comes back to this base chart. Transits compare today's sky to this chart of birth, aspects link its planets to one another. It is not read as a fixed fate, but as a starting ground, a map of tendencies that you work with across the course of your life.
Sources
- , The Inner Sky (1984)
- , The Astrology of Personality (1936)