If you’re brand new to the world of Astrology, welcome! I started getting into Astrology back in 2018 when I was in the middle of a spiritual awakening, which for me began with asking the questions, “Who am I, really?” and “What am I/what are we all doing here?” After booking reading after reading with various healers, psychics, astrologers, and other intuitive practitioners, I started studying Intuitive Astrology for myself so that I could have that amazing feeling of ah-hah moment insights on my own schedule, without having to pay someone else for them each time. 

For me, Astrology has been the most invaluable tool to reconnect me with my soul, to remind me of my inherent gifts and strengths, to help me become more self-aware of my own energy and patterns, and to align me with my sense of purpose in the world. 

If you’re curious about starting to dive into your own astrology chart, I’ve put together this comprehensive blog post with some of the most common questions I hear from people who are just starting out in exploring astrology. I hope that this will serve as a helpful guide for you, and as always, feel free to comment below or send me a DM on Instagram (@chelseajewel33) with any additional questions that come up for you! 

WHAT IS AN ASTROLOGY BIRTH CHART?

Ok, so first things first - what even is a birth chart?! Essentially, an astrology birth chart is a map of the sky. It’s a snapshot of exactly where each planet was in the sky at the exact moment of your birth. 

Here’s an example of what a birth chart actually looks like: 

See that little circle with the dot in the middle that I’ve circled in pink? That symbol represents the Sun, and the symbol on the outside circle that I’ve circled in blue represents the zodiac sign that the Sun was moving through on the day/time I was born. That’s where we get your ‘sun sign’ or ‘zodiac sign’ from, which is typically what you read your horoscope for (e.g. “I’m a Leo!”). 

But as you can see, that one symbol is just one tiny little piece of the chart overall. That’s why most astrologers don’t necessarily put a ton of stock in horoscopes. Yes, they can give you some useful information (although for the most complete picture, you should really be reading your horoscope for your Sun AND Rising sign - but that’s a separate topic altogether!), but your Sun sign is really like 1/100th of the full information that you can get from your birth chart. 

If we go back to the idea that your birth chart is a map, you can think of it as a map to your unique energy, or a map to your unique soul expression. The old astrologer’s adage states, “As above, so below,” which basically means that the planets and zodiac signs are representations of energies that we feel internally. Instead of subscribing to the belief that astrology and the movements of the planets cause us to be certain ways, I believe that they are reflections of energies, archetypes, and parts of our soul that we chose to work with, integrate, and heal in this lifetime. 

WHAT DO I NEED TO LOOK UP MY ASTROLOGY CHART?

You can pull up your own birth chart for free online or via some apps on your phone. You’ll need to provide the following and input it into an online tool/calculator that can generate your birth chart for you: 

• Your date/month/year of birth

• The exact time you were born, down to the precise minute 

• The city/country you were born in

The reason having your exact birth time is so important is because it determines your Rising sign and the house placements within your chart. Your Rising sign is essentially the zodiac sign that was coming up on the horizon at the time you were born, in your exact birth location - and this changes by one degree every two minutes. And since every zodiac sign contains 30 degrees, a slight difference in birth time could drastically change your chart. 

WHAT IF I DON’T KNOW WHAT TIME I WAS BORN?

If you don’t have your exact birth time, don’t worry - there’s still a ton of information you can get from your chart, even without it. 

You will still be able to take away which sign each planet falls in in your chart, and the aspects (aka relationships) between any 2 planets. What you’ll be missing is your rising sign and the precise house placements where planets fall in, since that information is determined by your exact birth time. 

If you know the general window of time you were born (e.g. I know I was born in the afternoon, some time between 3-7pm), an Intuitive Astrologer can sometimes help you determine your Rising sign and birth time. Always check with them to see if they are willing to do this with you before booking an appointment for this purpose. You can also search for ‘astrologer birth time rectification’ to find a specific service to help you determine your time of birth based on planetary placements and significant events from your life so far. 

If you have absolutely no idea what time of day you were born, I would suggest inputting 12:00pm (midday) into astro.com and for now going with the information you can get about which signs each planet is in and the aspects between them. Once you get more familiar with the language of astrology, you may be able to intuitively reason what your rising sign is, based on what makes the most sense based on your life experience. 

WHAT WEBSITE SHOULD I USE FOR MY BIRTH CHART?

As a professional Astrologer, my personal favorite website that I recommend is astro.com. I find that the charts they produce (like the one shown above) are the most clear and easiest to read. Here are the exact steps to follow to get your astrology chart from astro.com: 

1. Go to astro.com

2. Click to "Horoscopes" at the top and then select "Extended Chart Selection" (under "Drawings and Calculations" section)

3. In the first box under “For visitors who do not yet have a user profile” click on “Enter Birth Data”

4. Enter your first name, gender, birth date, exact time of birth, and birth location, then select “Continue”

5. Under the "Options for zodiac and houses" section select "Whole Signs" from the drop down menu (this part is optional - Whole Signs is the house system that I personally use and teach in my astrology courses, as I find it to be more accurate. That said, many other astrologers who I respect and trust use the Placidus house system. This is a whole separate topic and debate within the astrological community that you don’t necessarily to get into yet 🙂)

6. Select "Click here to show the chart" 

7. Once your chart is displayed, you can save it as a jpeg image so that you don’t have to go through this process every time you want to look at your chart.

HOW DO I FIND OUT ALL MY SIGNS?

Ok, so now you have this big circle with hieroglyphic-looking symbols all over it. How do you actually figure out your signs and what this all means?

Using your chart from astro.com, there’s two main ways you can understand all of the signs that you have planets in: 

First, you can look at the symbols in the circle. Here’s a slide from my Astrology Crash Course that helps break down and explain what all of the pieces of this chart are: 

In order to understand this, you’ll need to be able to know which symbols represent which planets and signs, which you can find in this helpful glyph guide from Cafe Astrology.

The second way is that you can scroll down to the box below the circle chart, and it actually lists out the signs (well, the first three letters of the sign) that each planet falls in. You can see from my chart example here that I have my Sun in Leo, Moon in Sagittarius, Mercury in Virgo, etc. 

From there, you can begin researching and understanding your chart piece by piece by googling each individual one: e.g. searching for “Mercury in Virgo,” then “Venus in Virgo,” etc. Keep in mind that taking this approach will definitely produce some insights, but as always, keep everything you read online with a grain of salt. Also keep in mind that professional astrologers are able to read your chart and synthesize how everything works together, which is something you won’t necessarily get from looking everything up in a piecemeal way. 

Lastly, if you’re wanting to know which house a planet falls in in your chart, you can’t tell this from the list below the chart - those numbers represent the degree that a planet is at, not the house number. To find the house placements, you’ll need to look at the actual circle part of the chart, and note down which ‘slice of pie’ (these are numbered 1-12, and those are the numbers at the most inside part of the circle) a planet falls in - in the image below, I’ve circled all 12 house numbers in pink so you can identify them clearly.

Again, using my chart as an example, you can see the following house placements: 

• Sun in the 10th house 

• Moon in 2nd house 

• Mercury, Venus, and Mars in the 11th house 

• Jupiter in the 9th house 

• Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in the 3rd house 

• Pluto in the 1st house 

If you’re not familiar yet with all of the planetary symbols, you may need to scroll back and forth between the circle chart and the list to be able to tell which planet is which. Have patience with yourself and take notes that make sense to you that you can come back to. 

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOUR SUN AND MOON SIGNS?

If you just want to know your Sun and Moon signs and aren’t really concerned yet with where the other planets fall like Venus, Mercury, Saturn, etc. you can just look for these two symbols in your chart: 

Sun ☉

Moon ☽

Again, you can scroll down to the list below the chart and see which zodiac signs they fall in, and then research their meaning online from there. You can also use my instructions above to see which house they each fall in and research that as well (e.g. for my chart, I would look up “Moon in 2nd house” and “Sun in 10th house” for added meaning and insights from my chart). 

HOW DO YOU READ AN ASTROLOGICAL CHART?

There are 4 main ingredients when reading an astrology chart:

• The planets

• Which zodiac sign a planet falls in

• Which house a planet falls in 

• The aspects, or relationships between 2 or more planets 

Each planet falls into one zodiac sign and one house in your chart, and that is the basis for understanding the language of astrology. For example, from my chart we could look at each of the following: 

• Sun in Leo in the 10th house 

• Moon in Sagittarius in the 2nd house 

• Mercury in Virgo in the 11th house 

• Saturn in Capricorn in the 3rd house 

The zodiac signs and houses are like layers of information that color the personality of the planet. For example, the Sun represents our light, our purpose, and where we shine most brightly; we each have the Sun in a certain zodiac sign which flavors the ways and styles with which we shine most brightly, and each have the Sun in a certain house, which tells us about the area of life where we shine that light most brightly. 

If you’re wanting to understand this more easily and deeply, this is exactly what I created my Astrology Crash Course to explain. Within this 3-hour workshop, you’ll learn how to intuitively interpret and understand any planet/sign/house combo from your chart or from someone else’s chart that you want to read for. 

HOW DO I START LEARNING ASTROLOGY?

As I tell all of my Astrology students, Astrology is a LANGUAGE. And just like with studying any other language, studying and beginning to speak and understand the language of astrology takes time, patience, dedication, and practice. 

The best place to begin learning astrology is to fully understand the archetypes and energies that each planet, each zodiac sign, and each house represents. Here’s a helpful and super basic summary: 

rom there, you’ll want to practice applying that understanding to be able to intuitively interpret what any different combo of a planet/sign/house means. For example, you’ll be able to speak the language of astrology when you can understand what each of these is saying to you:

• Mars in Aries in the 3rd house 

• Venus in Leo in the 7th house 

• Jupiter in Gemini in the 9th house 

• Sun in Capricorn in the 12th house 

• Or any other combo of a planet + sign + house as listed above! 

Here are 3 resources, varying in price and scope, that I’ve put my best astrological wisdom and experience into creating to help you get started in learning the art of Intuitive Astrology: 

1. FREE Masterclass: Storytelling Journey Through the Zodiac: A 35-minute video workshop helping you understand all 12 zodiac signs and their potential shadow expressions or potential highest ‘light’ expressions. I love this workshop because I break it down in a story, instead of just listing out keywords and descriptions of each sign for you. 

2. Astrology Crash Course - This is a recorded 3-hour workshop that’s perfect for any beginner to astrology. The price is $141, and again, I’ve distilled my best astrological teaching methods to help you more fully understand everything that I’ve covered in the post above. In it, I use a super helpful metaphor to help you understand how to interpret any planet/sign/house combo in a chart, and I go through each of the energies for the planets, signs, and houses in way more depth than the short cheat sheet above. If you’re new to astrology or want to be able to really understand your own chart in a more intuitive and practical way, this is the very best resource I know of to help you get started. 

3. Discover Your Stars - This is a full 8-week program for students who are committed to learning and understanding Intuitive Astrology. It’s fully on-demand and self-paced, so you can go through it as quickly or slowly as you like, and I have monthly live Q&A sessions for DYS students to join, where you can bring your questions and your own chart to apply what you’ve learned. This course is still well-suited for beginners to Astrology - the difference is the level of commitment you feel toward studying it and using it, either for yourself or integrating astrology into your own existing business. If you’re curious about this program, there is a ton more information on the DYS homepage, and you can feel free to reach out to me with questions or concerns you have before making the decision. 

I hope that this post has provided a helpful starting point for your astrological journey, and I know that your chart will have many inspiring and validating ah-hah moments in store for you, just as mine did for me!