The Chart Wheel

The Chart Wheel. An astrological chart is drawn as a wheel, a circle that maps the sky at a particular moment and place. The circle represents the full three hundred and sixty degrees of the zodiac, and everything in a reading is plotted somewhere on it. Learning to read the wheel is the first step in making sense of a chart. Around the rim of the wheel run the twelve signs, always in their fixed order. Inside the rim sit the twelve houses, like slices of a pie, numbered counterclockwise. The planets are placed in the wheel according to where they were in the sky, each falling in a particular sign and house. Lines drawn across the center connect planets that form aspects, showing the chart's inner relationships at a glance. The left edge of the wheel is the Ascendant, the point that was rising at the moment of the chart, and the houses are built outward from there. Reading the wheel means taking in several layers at once: which sign and house each planet occupies, where the four angles fall, and how the planets connect. The chart wheel is the canvas on which the whole of astrology is drawn.