Calculate your own birth chart!

To start understanding astrology to a deeper level than just the Sun sign the first thing you will need to do is calculate a birth chart, in most astrology courses, the first thing you are given is your own chart to study, and then it's fun to run charts for close family and friends, and then as you learn what all the different planets, signs and houses mean you can look for different formations amongst people you know, and consider if they are manifesting those traits - and that's what makes it all really come alive and makes it easy to learn. As part of my examinations at the Faculty of Astrological Studies I had to learn to calculate a chart by hand, using only an ephemeris and lots of paper (and blood, sweat and tears!) But now there are now many websites that will run your birth chart for you for free (hooray!) My favourite is Astrodienst - they let you set up a number of charts for free and you have a whole catalogue of charts you can then run and it's full of great articles and forums as well. To run a chart you will need a persons date, time and place of birth - that's it! In many countries time of birth is recorded on birth certificates, but not always in the UK, so this might be the hardest part to find out. If you really don't know, common practice is to set it for 12 noon, all the planetary positions and angles between them will be correct, but the angles won't be, and neither will house placement, and these are some of the really important parts of a chart. If it's a person I know, I will ask them to do some detective work to try to narrow down the time, you commonly hear "tea time" or "just before lunch" which then narrows the band of time down for you. I then will run a few test charts out at different intervals throughout that time period and see what "fits" best in terms of what I already know of the person. Since the Ascendant and any planets in the first house or conjunct the ascendant are easy to see, this can often work well. But lets assume you have all the data you need, you go to the right hand side and click on My Astro (in red type on the print screen below) and then follow the instructions to set up your chart.

You will then get a beautifully presented birth chart, also known as a natal wheel or horoscope! And even before we go into the depths of how to read it, you will be able to refer to the box on the top left which will show you which planets you have in which signs, like this one below:

So already you can start seeing if you are a "typical" sun sign person by having more than one planet in that sign, or you might have several planets in a totally different sign! Keep this chart to hand as we work through all the elements in a birth chart, and maybe start collecting the charts of your nearest and dearest too :) Hope you got your chart - let me know in Comments if you have any questions or problems at all!