Learn the System

A field guide to the method behind the forecasts
Use these entries as a map of the tradition, its vocabulary, and the specific forecasting method used here.

What this system is

Western astrology is a symbolic timing system built around the tropical zodiac. Here, the sky provides the calendar while signs, houses, aspects, and planetary cycles provide a language for noticing patterns, pressure points, and choices. The astronomical events themselves are measurable; the meanings associated with them come from historical astrological traditions. The value of the system is not certainty or fate, but a structured way to think with time, cycles, symbolism, and reflection.

Historical backbone

Western astrology grew through multiple cultural layers rather than a single origin story. Mesopotamian celestial omen traditions and Babylonian astronomy contributed systematic sky observation and zodiacal frameworks. Hellenistic astrologers in the eastern Mediterranean developed horoscopic techniques combining planets, zodiac signs, aspects, angles, and houses or places. These traditions later moved through Persian, Arabic, Islamic, Byzantine, medieval Latin, Renaissance, and early modern intellectual worlds. Modern Western astrology contains overlapping schools including traditional and Hellenistic revivals, psychological astrology, humanistic astrology, evolutionary astrology, mundane astrology, horary and electional traditions, and popular Sun-sign forecasting.

Tropical zodiac

Tropical astrology anchors zero Aries to the March equinox and divides the ecliptic into twelve equal signs of 30 degrees. Because of precession, tropical signs do not map one-to-one onto the present astronomical constellations with the same names.

Planets as symbolic functions

Sun: vitality, identity, authorship. Moon: needs, habits, responsiveness. Mercury: language, cognition, exchange. Venus: attraction, values, aesthetics, relating. Mars: drive, conflict, pursuit. Jupiter: expansion, meaning, confidence. Saturn: limits, structure, responsibility. Uranus: disruption, experimentation, innovation. Neptune: imagination, diffusion, idealization. Pluto: power, compulsion, deep transformation.

Signs

Signs describe symbolic styles of expression. They are organized by four elements, Fire, Earth, Air, and Water, and three modalities, Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable.

Houses

Houses describe life areas. This yearbook uses a solar whole-sign technique: the reader's Sun sign is treated as the first house and each transiting sign is counted forward from there. Readers who use whole-sign natal houses may also read their Rising sign for a more house-specific forecast.

Aspects

Conjunctions combine, oppositions polarize or reveal, squares create friction, trines facilitate, and sextiles offer openings. Astrologers disagree about orbs, weighting, and which points deserve aspect treatment.

Retrogrades

Retrograde motion is an apparent reversal produced by relative planetary motion. The astronomical appearance is real. Astrological traditions commonly use retrogrades as symbols of review, revision, return, or reworking. Modern astrologers also track pre- and post-retrograde shadows.

Eclipses

Solar eclipses occur at New Moons and lunar eclipses at Full Moons near the lunar nodes. Astrology often treats them as intensified lunations. This library explicitly bans fatalistic eclipse writing, disaster predictions, and fear-selling.

Evidence boundary: Astronomy factual where stated; astrology historical/symbolic