Birth Charts 101: Draw Your Chart
Fifth House Astrology Goes Back to Basics, Arts and Crafts Edition
You’ve asked, and I’ve listened! Welcome to Birth Charts 101, a semi-regular series on the basics of interpreting your natal chart!
In this series we’ll cover the basics of birth chart interpretation, but in fun, bite-sized portions that hopefully taste more like dessert than — I don’t know, a kale smoothie? (Not that I’m knocking smoothies, Virgos! Calm down.)
It’s always good to go back to the basics in astrology, I’ve found, even after many years of study. Sometimes the simplest explanations to chart interpretation really are in the most straightforward basic building blocks of the chart.
In this first, hands-on, installment, we’ll cover the foundational structure of the birth chart — the natal wheel itself — in its simplest form.
This is the type of chart described in some of the oldest surviving astrological texts, such as those by 2nd-century astrologer, Vettius Valens. In Book II of his Anthologies, translated by Mark Riley, Valens provides many example charts to illustrate his techniques. However, they are given simply as lists of chart positions, not as diagrams, and with no degrees noted. Here’s a typical example:
“Another example: sun, Mercury in Cancer, moon in Taurus, Saturn in Pisces, Jupiter, Mars in Leo, Venus in Virgo, Ascendant in Libra. This nativity too was illustrious and distinguished. The native was entrusted with royal office and was thought worthy of a high priesthood. . .”1
To understand the chart he’s describing, the reader has to physically draw it out. Here’s my version of this ancient Cancer sun’s chart (note the absence of the outer planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, which weren’t known of then):
This is the type of chart we’ll be learning to draw — a simple but completely usable natal chart using Whole Sign Houses, the oldest and simplest form of house division.
We’ll use the astrological symbols of the planets and signs within the wheel, but with no degrees. Ancient astrologers used sign-based aspects, in which planets made aspects (relationships to other planets) if they formed geometric angles from their signs — the conjunction (located in the same sign), sextile (two signs apart), square (four signs apart), trine (five signs apart), or opposition (7 signs apart). Degree positions are important — don’t get me wrong, you need the degrees for more advanced astrology — but you’ll be amazed at all you can learn about a chart just from the placements of planets in signs.
Why, you might ask, in this day and age, when digitally-generated birth charts are available at the click of a mouse, should we even bother drawing one by hand?
The answer is that drawing out a chart by hand is one of the best ways to understand the dynamics of a chart, particularly for visual learners.
If you’ve never drawn out a birth chart, whatever your level of astrological knowledge, now is the time to give it a shot!
Until relatively recently, astrologers always drew out charts for their clients, from the hand-drawn charts of a few decades ago (my own first natal chart was drawn up in ballpoint pen for my parents by an astrologer friend; it’s beautiful and whimsical), to the charts reportedly traced out on trays of sand by astrologers two thousand years ago, with decorative stones standing in for the planets.
Birth charts can be as straightforward (like my example above) or as elaborate as you want, and there are a number of astrologers out there who create beautiful, hand drawn charts (here is one I came across that looks quite lovely).
And, who knows, with all this creative Pisces energy right now, you might even end up with a cool piece of art for your wall! (Or to turn into an NFT or whatever!)
What You’ll Need:
A copy of your birth chart - there are many websites and apps that will generate a free chart, including astro.com, astro-seek.com, and the TimePassages app. We’ll be creating a chart using Whole Sign Houses, so selecting this house system under the extended settings or options will help, though it’s not necessary at this point. Basically, you just need to know your rising sign and the signs each of the planets are in.
Blank paper
Pencil
Black pen (I use a fine-tip Sharpie)
Colored pencils (optional but fun!)
I’m going to draw out Elizabeth Taylor’s birth chart as an example in the steps below.
Step 1: The Circle of Earth
The circular structure of the birth chart represents how the movement of the planetary bodies was experienced beginning in ancient times. People observed that certain planets became visible first in the early morning, while others set under the horizon later on, and that this would change over the course of time.
Draw a large circle on the paper. I draw with pen but you may want to use a pencil and then trace over with pen once you’re satisfied. It doesn’t have to be perfect!
Step 2: The Horizon and Midheaven
Next, draw two lines bisecting the circle horizontally and vertically.
The horizontal line represents the horizon (get it?), where the visible planets emerge by day or night. The vertical line represents the Midheaven, the highest point in the sky at that moment, representing public life and reputation, and its opposite points, the Imum Coeli, the lowest point of the chart, indicating private life and that which is hidden.
You should now have four quadrants within the circle:
Step 3: The Houses
Now, divide each quadrant into thirds and extend the lines across the center of the chart to the opposite quadrant. Your circle should now be divided into twelve slices of pie. Number them 1-12 starting with the one on the left just below the horizon line:
Step 4: The Signs
This is where you computer-generated birth chart comes in handy. First you need to know which sign your Ascendant or rising sign is in — it will the sign at the start of the first house if you’re using Placidus houses.
Draw the glyph corresponding to your rising sign outside of the first house, then add the rest, continuing in zodiacal order. Here is an official source on how the glyphs should look. When drawn by hand there’s often variation in how they appear, based on the individual habit or taste of the astrologer.
Here is how I’ve always drawn them, since I was a teenager, and the little devices I used to learn them back in the day:
Elizabeth Taylor was a Sagittarius rising, so I begin with Sagittarius on the first house and continue in order: Capricorn second house, Aquarius third house, Pisces fourth house, and so on:
Step 5: The Planets
Now we get to the main course: the planets. Draw the planetary glyphs into the corresponding signs/houses in your chart. Note that some planets might be in different houses if your computer chart was generated using Placidus houses. Using the Whole Sign House system, each sign corresponds to one of the houses, starting with the Ascendant/first house, and continuing in zodiacal order.
Here are my versions of the planetary glyphs and the ways that I designed to remember them:
Here is Elizabeth Taylor’s completed chart with the planets filled in:
As you can see, she had Sagittarius rising, Pisces sun, Mercury, and Mars all in the fourth house, Scorpio moon in the twelfth house, Venus and Uranus in Aires in the fifth house (sudden and dramatic love affairs, anyone?), Jupiter in Leo in the ninth house, Saturn in Aquarius in the third house, Neptune in Virgo in the tenth house (the planet of film and illusion in her house of career!), and Pluto in Cancer in the eighth house.
I’m already starting to interpret her chart, but we’ll save that part for our next installment.
For now, we’re not adding in some other elements — the nodes of the moon, the Lot of Fortune, the floating Midheaven, or the asteroids, for example. Charts can get complicated very fast, and so, I like to keep them purposely simple at first.
Step 6: Have Fun!
The final, optional, step is to decorate the chart in any way that you like. Some people like to use color to highlight the elements (fire, earth, air, and water) or to emphasize the planetary energies at play.
I enjoy decorating charts in a purely fifth house way (for fun and creative expression) and am not a trained visual artist. Nevertheless, I’m happy to share this with you as a spur to your own creativity. Here’s my decorated version of Taylor’s chart:
You can decorate the chart in whatever way calls to you. For Taylor’s chart, she was born at night (as seen in her birth time and the sun’s position under the horizon), so I’ve emphasized that, since the time of day (day or night) is an important interpretive tool that we’ll get into later.
I’ve chosen to highlight what I see as the energies of the signs and planets in the houses, with signs of the same element (Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces for water, for example) colored with a similar palette. Planets in houses are emphasized, but empty houses aren’t neglected, since, as we’ll learn, each house has a planetary ruler, even if it’s located elsewhere. So, each house is drawn into the story of a person’s life, even if it’s empty.
Have fun drawing your chart! Keep it around for our next installments in the future (if it’s not made into an NFT, that is!).
And just a reminder that you can now read Fifth House Astrology and all your other favorite Substack newsletters in the new Substack app for iOS:
Vettius Valens, Anthologies Book II, Translated by Mark Riley, page 37.