A natal chart is rarely read whole and all at once: it holds about twenty meaningful links, and without an order they turn into a list. Below is the route by which a chart is taken apart in practice. Each step leads to the section where you can calculate it or read further.
- 1
Build the chart
An exact date, time and city give the planetary positions and the house cusps. The time matters most for the houses: a quarter of an hour shifts the ASC by roughly a degree and a quarter, and the whole house grid with it. Without a time the chart is read as a cosmogram, without houses.
Natal Chart Online → - 2
Work through the aspects
Aspects show which functions of the chart are linked and on what terms. Start with the majors: conjunction, opposition and square set the tension, trine and sextile provide the resource. The orb is not a formality here: an aspect eight degrees wide between two fast planets does not work.
Aspects in astrology: angles, orbs and meaning → - 3
The twelve houses of the natal chart
What each house means, its natural sign, ruler and axis
The twelve houses of the natal chart → - 4
Overlay the current sky
Transits are the same chart with today's planetary positions on top. They add no new themes; they show which part of the natal chart is active now. Start with the transits of Saturn and Jupiter: they hold for months and are visible in a biography.
Planetary Transits Online - Calculate Free → - 5
Find the dates
A single day's snapshot does not answer the question «when». For that you need a transit calendar: it finds the moments when an aspect becomes exact and gives a list of dates for the period. The practical value is exactly in those dates: you plan time-dependent things around them.
Transit Calendar for Your Natal Chart → - 6
Account for the retrogrades
Retrograde periods explain why the same theme returns three times: the planet crosses the same degree in direct and in retrograde motion. Once you know the degree of the station, you can see whether it touches your chart or passes in the background.
Retrograde Planets → - 7
See the year
The solar return is the chart for the moment the transiting Sun comes back to its natal longitude. It does not cancel the natal chart; it shows which part of it gets the accent this year. A solar return is read together with the natal chart, not apart from it.
Solar Return Calculator →
Beyond this come the predictive techniques that require an exact birth time: progressions, directions, the returns of the slow planets. They make sense once the natal chart and the transits have stopped being a set of separate facts.