How does a chart work?
A map of the sky at the moment you began. Astrology is a symbolic language and a practice of attention — pattern and symbol, not fate. Start anywhere below.
What astrology is
Everything in the solar system is in motion. Astrology is the practice of reading that motion as meaning — a shared language built over centuries for noticing patterns in a life.
It isn't fate written down. It's a frame: a way to see the weather you're moving through and the shape of who you are, and to decide what to do with it.
The natal chart
Your natal chart is a freeze-frame of the heavens at your birth — where each planet sat, and which signs and houses they fell in. It's the backdrop the rest of astrology reads against.
Built from your birth date, time, and place, it's drawn as a wheel: signs around the rim, houses as the slices, planets placed where they were. AuLun calculates yours and lays it out as a wheel and a table.
See your natal chart →The signs
The twelve signs, Aries through Pisces, are the qualities a planet expresses through. They're grouped by element (fire, earth, air, water) and by mode (cardinal, fixed, mutable), which is where their character comes from.
Your "sign" in casual conversation is your Sun sign. But it's only one placement among many; the chart is the whole sky, not a single card.
Read the signs in Stars →Rising & the angles
The rising sign, or Ascendant, is the sign that was climbing the eastern horizon at your birth. It sets where the whole wheel begins and is often read as how you meet the world.
It's one of four angles: the Ascendant and Descendant on the horizon, the Midheaven and IC up the vertical. They're sensitive points, which is why an accurate birth time matters. Without it, the angles and houses can't be placed.
The planets
If the signs are flavors, the planets are the actors. The Sun is your core, the Moon your inner life, Mercury how you think and speak, Venus what you love, Mars how you act. The outer planets move slowly and color a whole generation.
A placement reads as a sentence: the planet (what), the sign (how), the house (where). Mars in Scorpio in the tenth is a different drive than Mars in Libra in the third.
The houses
The wheel is divided into twelve houses, each an arena of life: self, money, communication, home, creativity, work, partnership, and so on. A planet's house tells you where its energy shows up.
Houses depend on your exact birth time and place, and on a house system — the math for slicing the wheel. AuLun uses Placidus, the most common, and falls back to a planets-only read when the birth time is unknown.
Aspects
Aspects are the geometric angles planets make to one another — conjunction, sextile, square, trine, opposition. Some are easy and flowing, some are friction, and the friction is often where the interesting work is.
How exact an aspect is (its orb) tells you how loudly it sounds. AuLun weights the tight ones and lets the loose ones fade.
Transits
Your natal chart is fixed, but the sky keeps moving. Transits are where the planets are right now, and the aspects they make to your birth placements — the current weather against your fixed map.
That's what a daily horoscope reads: not vague sun-sign copy, but the actual transits to your actual chart on this actual day.
See today's transits →Synastry
Synastry overlays two charts and reads the contacts between them: where your planets touch someone else's, and what that tension or ease tends to feel like.
It's not a verdict on a relationship. It's a map of the dynamic — where two people meet easily and where they ask each other to grow. In AuLun you can run it with friends.
Explore compatibility →