The Academy

Learn to read your own sky.

Seven levels. Each one ends with a question about a real chart, the answer, and the arithmetic that got there — so the next body, the next aspect and the next day are yours to work out rather than ours to tell you.

The worked examples use a demonstration chart, because you have not opened a reading with us. Open the free one and this page does the same sums on yours.

Level 01
The bodies
What the sixteen points in a chart are, which of them are not bodies at all, and how a position is arrived at.
AfterwardsYou can find any body in your own wheel and say, from its longitude alone, which sign it is in and how far into it.
Sun
traditionally read as the centre of a chart — vitality, the will, and what a person is fundamentally for. It is the placement most people already know as "their sign".
Moon
traditionally the inner life — need, memory, what settles a person and what unsettles them. In most traditions it is read as the counterweight to the Sun rather than as a lesser light.
Saturn
traditionally the faculty of limit — structure, time, responsibility, and the discipline that gets built by carrying something. The tradition reads it as the boundary of what a person can be held to.
Lilith
traditionally read as the part of a person that was never going to comply — what they will not domesticate, and what they were asked to be quiet about.
Which sign is this chart's Mars in — and work it out from the longitude rather than reading it off the wheel.
Mars is at Leo 20°37'. ASTRONOMICAL
Show the working
Its ecliptic longitude is 140.61°. Divide by 30: 140.61 ÷ 30 = 4 remainder 20.61. That is 4 whole signs GONE BY, so it is in the fifth — Leo — and 20.61° into it. The 0.61° is where the 37 arcminutes come from: a degree is 60 of them, so 20.61° is Leo 20°37'. Do that with any body's longitude and you never need the wheel to tell you.
Level 02
The signs
Twelve equal divisions of the ecliptic measured from the March equinox — not constellations — and the elements and modalities that group them.
AfterwardsYou can count your own chart by element and by modality, and say which of the four is doing most of the work and which is missing.
Scorpio
the fixed water sign, traditionally read as depth: what is under the polite version, and what is not let go of.
Count this chart's ten planets by element. Which one carries the most, and is any element missing altogether?
water leads with 6 of 10, and there is nothing in air. ASTRONOMICAL
Show the working
Fire 2, earth 2, air 0, water 6. The elements run in that order from Aries and repeat every four signs, so a sign's element is its position in the zodiac modulo four — no table needed. Count the ten planets only: the nodes, Lilith, the Vertex and the Part of Fortune are calculated points rather than bodies, and giving a point an element would put something in a balance that has no mass.
Level 03
The houses
Where the sky was relative to your own horizon at your own birth minute, which is why the time and the place matter and the date alone does not.
AfterwardsYou can say which house a body is in, and explain to somebody else why a birth time four minutes out moves the whole wheel by a degree.
The first house
traditionally the house of the self as it arrives — body, bearing, and the first thing a room decides about you.
The seventh house
traditionally the house of the other — partnership, opposition, and every arrangement that takes two signatures.
The tenth house
traditionally the house of the public record — vocation, standing, and what a person is known for.
Which house is this chart's Sun in — and how much would a birth time four minutes later have moved it?
The Sun is in the tenth house, with the Ascendant at Capricorn 14°18'. ASTRONOMICAL
Show the working
The whole wheel turns once a day, so it moves about one degree every four minutes: 360° ÷ 24h ÷ 60min × 4 = 1°. Four minutes rarely changes a house, and twenty can. That is the entire reason we ask for a time and refuse to invent one.
Level 04
The aspects
The angles bodies make to each other, the orbs that decide when an angle counts, and why an orb is a convention rather than a measurement.
AfterwardsYou can find the tightest aspect in your own chart with subtraction, and say how far from exact it is.
conjunct
two bodies in the same place, traditionally read as fused rather than in conversation — they arrive together and are hard to tell apart from the inside.
opposite
two bodies facing each other across the chart, traditionally read as a pull in both directions that does not resolve by choosing a side.
square
two bodies at right angles, traditionally read as friction: the grinding that produces something, rather than a fault to be repaired.
trine
two bodies in easy relation, traditionally read as available rather than impressive — so available it can go unused for years.
sextile
two bodies within reach of each other, traditionally read as an opening that answers to a first move and stays shut without one.
Find the tightest aspect in this chart's chart — by subtracting two longitudes, not by looking at the lines.
Jupiter is opposite Lilith, 0.0° from exact. ASTRONOMICAL
Show the working
Jupiter is at 234.54° and Lilith at 54.56°. The difference is 179.97°, which around a 360° circle is a separation of 179.97°. Within 8 degrees of 180 degrees apart. This one is 0.0° off that — about as exact as an aspect gets. The orb is a convention rather than a measurement: a tighter aspect is a stronger one, and different practitioners draw the line in different places.
Level 05
The moving sky
That the natal chart never changes and the sky over it changes every minute — and that a transit is simply where a body is now against where it was then.
AfterwardsYou can take a live position, subtract your natal one, and say whether the two are in aspect today.
Where is the Moon right now, against this chart's natal Moon — and are the two in aspect today?
The Moon is at Leo 4°20' now; this chart's natal Moon is at Aries 12°47'. They are 111.5° apart. ASTRONOMICAL
Show the working
111.5° is 8.5° from 120°, which is outside any orb we use, so today they are not. The natal figure will be the same next year and the year after. The other one changed while you read this: the Moon moves about half a degree an hour.
Level 06
The hours
The planetary hours: an inherited scheme that divides daylight and darkness into twelve unequal parts each and gives every one a ruler.
AfterwardsYou can say which planet rules the hour you are in and why, and tell the difference between that claim and an astronomical one.
Which planet rules the hour you are in, and how was that decided?
This is the hour of Jupiter — traditionally the hour for expansion. TRADITIONAL
Show the working
Daylight is divided into twelve equal parts and darkness into twelve more, so an "hour" here is rarely sixty minutes: in midsummer a day hour is long and a night hour short. The first hour after sunrise belongs to the planet the DAY is named for, and the rest follow the Chaldean order — Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon — around and around. THIS IS INHERITED PRACTICE, NOT PHYSICS. The sunrise it is built on is measured; what the hour is FOR is what the tradition holds. Telling those two apart is the most useful thing on this page.
Level 07
Putting it together
How to tell a theme from a coincidence: count how many INDEPENDENT parts of the chart point at the same thing, and discount the ones that are the same body twice.
AfterwardsYou can look at any claim about a chart — ours included — and ask the only question that separates a reading from a horoscope: what else says so?
What does this chart's chart say more than once — and how would you know the difference between a theme and a coincidence?
What you want: 12 independent parts of the chart point at it, which is why it is stated plainly. THIS CHART
Show the working
Count the witnesses, then discount the ones that are the same body twice — a Mars placement, a Mars aspect and a Mars-ruled house are one testimony wearing three coats, not three. Anything left with fewer than two independent witnesses is suppressed rather than written up, because a theme resting on one factor is a horoscope line. This chart's strongest survives that discounting with 12 independent factors still standing, which is what earns it being said plainly rather than hedged. Ask this of any claim about a chart, including ours: what else says so?

Where to practise

The wheel in your reading answers level one to four — tap any planet and it shows the same working. The Navigator is levels five and six, running live.

Open the Navigator