Reference · the glossary
Every term, in one plain sentence
The jargon lives here, so it never has to live in your reading. Look up any term, get a one-sentence definition, then see what it actually means for you.
- Ascendant vs sun signYour sun sign describes your core identity and what energises you, while your ascendant (rising sign) describes the face you lead with — the gap between them is the difference between who you are inside and how you first come across.
- AspectsAspects are the relationships between two placements in a birth chart — whether two parts of you cooperate, clash, or amplify each other — and they are where most of the real psychological texture of a chart comes from.
- Big Three (sun, moon, rising)Your "Big Three" are your sun (core identity), moon (private emotional life), and rising sign (the impression you make) — three layers that together sketch how you operate.
- Black Moon LilithBlack Moon Lilith describes the suppressed, unpolished part of you — raw desire, anger, and appetite that you learned to hide, and that asks to be owned rather than performed away.
- Chart rulerYour chart ruler is the one planet that sets the overall tone of your whole chart — a kind of lead voice that colours how the rest of you tends to come across.
- ChironChiron describes a core, tender wound you carry — and the way that same sore spot often becomes the thing you understand deeply enough to help other people with.
- Composite chartA composite chart blends two people’s birth charts into a single new chart that treats the relationship itself as its own entity — with its own character, rather than a forecast of the couple’s future.
- DescendantYour descendant describes what you look for in close partners — the qualities you are drawn to in others, often because they balance something you do not lead with yourself.
- EclipseIn astrology an eclipse is a charged new or full moon often read as a turning point or theme of change — a prompt to pay attention, not an omen of disaster or a predicted event.
- Imum Coeli (IC)Your Imum Coeli, or IC, describes your private foundation — your roots, your relationship to home and family, and the inner base you return to when no one is watching.
- Jupiter signYour jupiter sign describes where you naturally grow, where optimism and confidence come easily, and the kind of experience that makes your world feel bigger.
- Lunar nodesThe lunar nodes are two opposite points in a birth chart — the north node and the south node — that together form one growth axis: what already comes easily to you, and the harder direction you are quietly being pulled to grow toward.
- Mars signYour Mars sign describes your drive and your fight — how you pursue what you want, what fuels your desire, and the way you handle anger and conflict.
- Mercury retrogradeMercury retrograde is an optical illusion — a stretch of weeks when Mercury appears to move backward from Earth, which astrology folklore blames for communication mix-ups and tech glitches, though nothing about the planet actually reverses.
- Mercury signYour mercury sign describes how your mind works — the way you think, take in information, learn, and communicate with the people around you.
- Midheaven (MC)Your midheaven, or MC, is the point at the top of a birth chart that astrology links to your public role and vocation — how the wider world reads your direction, as opposed to who you are in private.
- Moon signYour moon sign describes your inner emotional life — how you actually feel and self-soothe in private, as opposed to the face you show the world.
- Natal chartA natal chart (or birth chart) is a snapshot of the sky at the exact moment and place you were born, read as a map of how you are wired rather than a forecast.
- North nodeYour north node describes a growth edge — the unfamiliar direction your development seems to pull toward — read as a behavioural challenge rather than a fixed destiny.
- Part of FortuneThe Part of Fortune points to where ease and natural flow tend to live for you — the area of life where things click into place when your head, heart, and instincts are working together.
- Progressed chartA progressed chart is a symbolic technique that advances your birth chart forward in time to describe slow inner development — how your emotional life matures — not events that will happen.
- RetrogradeA retrograde planet is one that appears to move backward from Earth — an optical effect, not a real reversal — read in a birth chart as a drive turned inward rather than as bad luck.
- Rising signYour rising sign describes the impression you make on first contact — your social style and instinctive way of meeting the world, which is often very different from who you feel like inside.
- Saturn returnYour Saturn return is the roughly two-to-three-year stretch around age 29 (and again near 58) when astrology says Saturn comes back to where it sat at your birth — a name astrology gives to the familiar late-twenties reckoning, not a sentence of doom.
- Saturn signYour saturn sign describes where you face your hardest lessons — the area of life ruled by discipline, fear and self-doubt, and the place you slowly, durably mature.
- South nodeYour south node describes your psychological comfort zone — the old, familiar patterns you fall back on under stress, and the ones you are quietly being asked to grow beyond.
- StelliumA stellium is a cluster of three or more planets bunched together in one area of the chart, concentrating a lot of energy into a single, hard-to-ignore theme of your life.
- Sun signYour sun sign describes your core identity and what energises you — the steady, conscious sense of who you are, and the part of astrology nearly everyone already knows.
- SynastrySynastry is the practice of reading two birth charts side by side to describe a relationship — how two people’s patterns fit, rub, and play off each other, rather than predicting whether they are "meant to be."
- The elementsThe four elements — fire, earth, air, and water — are astrology shorthand for four basic temperaments: drive and energy, practicality and the body, ideas and people, and feeling and depth.
- The housesThe twelve houses are the life areas a birth chart divides experience into — one for self, one for money, one for home, one for love, and so on — showing where in your actual life a given trait tends to play out.
- The modalitiesThe three modalities — cardinal, fixed, and mutable — describe how you handle a project or a change: whether you start it, hold it steady, or adapt as it shifts.
- TransitsTransits compare where the planets are in the sky right now against the fixed positions in your birth chart — used as a calendar of recurring themes, not a forecast of events.
- Twelfth houseThe twelfth house is the part of a birth chart astrology associates with your blind spots and hidden patterns — the parts of yourself that run quietly in the background, often visible to everyone but you.
- Venus signYour Venus sign describes how you love and relate — the way you give and receive affection, and how you decide what (and who) you find valuable.
- Void-of-course moonA void-of-course moon is simply the gap between when the moon makes its last major angle in one sign and when it enters the next — a scheduling term, not a window of bad luck or a forecast.