There’s a reason you should read your ascendant sign and not your Sun (star) sign when reading your horoscope – and it’s all to do with houses. When you look at an astrological chart it is usually presented in a wheel format – with twelve divisions – we call those divisions houses.
Astrology houses tell you where events will happen
Each of those houses represents a particular area of your life – and when planets are travelling through these houses, their energies are often felt in those areas of our life. Below is a basic listing of some of the general things related to each astrological house.
How horoscopes are written
When an astrologer writes a general (Sun sign) horoscope they have no way of knowing what each of our individual charts looks like, so they write a horoscope based on only our Sun sign (what sign the Sun was in at your time of birth).
When an astrologer writes a Sun sign horoscope they place the astrological sign that they are writing about on the ascendant (start of the 1st house). The problem is – most of us don’t have our ascendant in the same sign as our Sun.
Take, for example, my chart below. I am an Aries, with the Sun in the 3rd house and my ascendant at 26 degrees Capricorn (there are 30 degrees of each sign). When the astrologer puts Aries on the ascendant it is like putting my Sun in the 1st house – but my Sun is in my 3rd house.
Below is a biwheel, with my natal (birth) chart in the middle, and the placement of the planets at the moment (transiting planets) in the outside chart. You can see that there are 3 planets transiting (traveling through) my 9th house and 2 planets transiting my 11th house at the moment.
Chart with Aries on the Ascendant
An astrologer doing a Sun sign horoscope for Aries at the moment would be looking at a chart similar to the one below. Note that the 3 planets transiting my 9th house are showing up in the 6th house of the Aries ascendant horoscope chart. Similarly – the two planets transiting my 11th house are transiting the 9th house in the chart below.
Chart with Capricorn on the Ascendant
So, to overcome this difference, I read my horoscope as a Capricorn and/or an Aquarius. Why Aquarius? Only because my ascendant is so close to the end of Capricorn and the beginning of Aquarius.
Also, depending on what house system is used and where you were born, the sizes of the houses can be quite different. With the popular Placidus house system which I have used above, they are rarely in 30-degree blocks, as well as rarely starting with 0 degrees of a sign.
If I look at a chart at the moment with Capricorn on the ascendant we can see that the 3 planets transiting my 9th house at the moment are transiting the 9th house of the Capricorn ascendant horoscope at the moment. However, the 2 planets transiting my 11th house are transiting the 12th
Chart with Aquarius on the Ascendant
If we look at a chart about the same time with an Aquarius ascendant, we can see that the 3 planets transiting my 9th house are transiting the 8th house of the Aquarius ascendant chart but that the 2 planets transiting my 11th house are also transiting the Aquarian 11th house.
I hope that made sense. If not, why not give reading your ascendant sign a go anyway and seeing if it is any more accurate for you than when you read your Sun (star) sign horoscope. If you do not know your ascendant you can get a free copy of your natal chart by signing up for my newsletter or use the natal chart generator to view your natal chart details immediately.
