Reading Your Birth Chart: How to Put Planets, Signs, and Houses Together

One of the most fundamental skills an astrologer needs to have is the ability to read a planet and its sign and house as a complete unit. You can sort of understand each of these three elements in isolation the way you can understand the words in a sentence, but reading a planet in its sign and house is the same level of literacy in astrology as being able to read a sentence in a human language.

One of the differences between the language of astrology and human communication languages is that words in human languages generally have one basic meaning, and that isn’t the case with planets, signs, and houses. The dictionary might have two or three definitions for an English word, but these differences are usually about nuance or context. A cat might be a lion or a tiger or a tabby, but it will never be an orange.

A planet, sign, or house in astrology doesn’t have only one meaning. Each symbol points to a collection of tangentially related things.

For example, Mercury rules the analytical mind, communication, learning, teaching, astrology, and commerce. These things are similar in that they all involve thought and working with abstraction, but they aren’t the same in the the way that house cats and tigers are the same. It’s more like what you would expect if someone sat down with a description of Mercury the god and made a mind map of all the things he might be interested in.

(Since the planets were originally considered to be literal faces of the gods, that may be something that actually happened.)

Working with symbols that have a constellation of meanings is an opportunity and a challenge.

It is a challenge because any list of meanings—even meanings as broad as archetypes—will never encompass all of the complexity of the symbols. How do you reduce the mind, communication, learning, teaching, astrology, and commerce into a single word? You can’t without losing some of the meaning. Trying to work with all of the meanings of an astrological symbol at once is a recipe for a headache.

The complexity can be wonderful, though. If you embrace the complexity and focus on one meaning at a time, the world opens. You could spend a lifetime going deep with an astrological symbol, unpacking the layers of meaning and nuance as you explore each of the correspondences one at a time.

Reading Astrological Sentences

The basic elements of an astrological sentence are: a planet, a sign, and a house.

Each planet is a part of your psyche or (depending on the school/branch of astrology you’re practicing) a thing out in the world.

The sun, for example, describes your ego, the things that bring you joy, your life force, your life focus, father, or “king.”

A planet’s sign describes the personality of the planet.

The sun in Taurus, for example, describes a person who loves a simple life, a person who finds pleasure in simple things, a life force that is earthy and grounded, a focus on finding peace and serenity, a father who is grounded and a bit materialistic, and a king blessed with wealth and abundance (who might, also, be grounded and materialistic).

The planet’s house describes the planet’s main sphere of influence. If the birth chart was a play, the house would describe the types of scenes you would expect to find the character represented by the planet to be in.

The sun in Taurus in the 10th house, for example, describes a person who loves a simple life in their career, a person who prefers a career where they don’t have to deal with a lot of complexity, a grounded and earthy life force that helps (or hinders) the person in their career, a father whose grounded materialism is career oriented, a king famous for his wealth and abundance.

As you can see from the examples, as you add the sign and house to a planet, the level of complexity grows, but the level of detail that can be read about a planet grows, as well.

But the technique for reading the three together is actually quite simple:

Choose one of the things the planet represents and use it like a noun.

Use the sign to describe that planet.

Use the house to describe where in the life that planet tends to show up.

And that is, basically, all there is to it.

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