Chart Techniques Overview

Ways of Reading a Chart. The signs, planets, houses, and aspects are the building blocks of astrology. Chart techniques are the methods that put those blocks to use, the different ways a chart can be cast, compared, and read. Knowing the techniques is what turns a static birth chart into a living tool for understanding character, relationships, and timing. The techniques fall into a few groups. The natal chart is the foundation, the map of the sky at birth that everything else is measured against. Forecasting techniques such as transits, progressions, solar arc directions, returns, and profections show how a life unfolds over time. Relationship techniques such as synastry and the composite chart compare two people. A few specialized branches, like horary and electional astrology, use charts for very particular purposes. Some of these are offered as features in this app, including the natal reading, the current transits, and the synastry comparison between two charts. The entries in this section define each technique in turn, so a reader can understand both what a chart says and the many ways astrologers work with one.