All the traditions · Western Modern
Western Modern
The tropical zodiac with quadrant houses: the psychological tradition most of this century is written in.
Start here
Your big three
Your Sun sign is the one you already know: it is where the Sun was on your birthday and it describes your core drive. Your Moon sign is where the Moon was, which changes every two and a half days, and it describes what you need in order to feel safe. Your rising sign, or Ascendant, is the sign that was coming up over the eastern horizon at the minute you were born. It changes every two hours, which is why we ask for your birth time, and it describes the way you come across before anyone knows you.
Read the three together. A Capricorn Sun with a Pisces Moon and Leo rising is ambitious, privately tender and publicly warm, and those three do not always agree with each other. That disagreement is the interesting part.
Where things happen
The twelve houses
If planets are the actors and signs are how they act, houses are the rooms they act in. The wheel is divided into twelve houses starting from your rising sign. The first is you and your body; the second is what you own; the third is siblings, errands and short messages; the fourth is home; the fifth is romance, play and children; the sixth is work and health; the seventh is partners; the eighth is what you share, including sex, debt and loss; the ninth is travel and belief; the tenth is career; the eleventh is friends and hopes; the twelfth is solitude and secrets.
When a transit lands in a house, that is the room where the weather arrives. We use the Placidus system by default; you can change this in settings, and for births far north or south we fall back to Porphyry.
The wiring
Aspects, the angles between planets
Two planets a certain number of degrees apart are said to be in aspect. A conjunction (0°) fuses them. An opposition (180°) makes them face each other, a square (90°) makes them push against each other, a trine (120°) lets them cooperate without effort and a sextile (60°) offers an opportunity you still have to take. We allow a few degrees of slack, the orb, and the tighter the orb the louder the aspect.
Hard aspects are not bad. They are where your energy and your accomplishments come from. Charts made only of trines tend to belong to people who are comfortable and not much else.
Daily readings
Transits and why today is different from yesterday
The planets keep moving after you are born. When a moving planet makes an aspect to a point in your birth chart, that is a transit, and it is the basis of every daily reading in this app. The Moon touches everything every month, so it sets the mood. Mars, Venus and Mercury pass through in days or weeks. Jupiter and Saturn take a year or more to work through a house, and the outer three take years, which is why a Pluto transit can feel like an era.
An aspect is applying when it is still getting tighter and separating once it has passed exactness. Applying is anticipation; separating is digestion.
What the app draws for it
Core · 2
Natal (radix) — The birth chart itself.
Cosmogram — The zodiac wheel with no houses: the layout Russian and German schools use when the birth time is uncertain.
Life Forecast · 7
Transits — Today's sky around the birth chart.
Secondary progressions — A day for a year, the standard method.
Tertiary progressions — A day for a lunar month.
Minor progressions — A lunar month for a year.
Solar arc directions — Every point advanced by the Sun's own progressed arc.
Primary directions — Ptolemy's key: a degree of right ascension for a year, delivered by the turning of the sky. The chart Prima casts.
Naibod directions — Every point advanced by the Sun's mean daily motion per year — one of Prima's own direction keys.
Returns · 2
Solar return — The chart for the Sun's exact return to its birth degree.
Lunar return — The chart for the Moon's next return to its birth degree.
Elsewhere · 1
Relocation — The same birth moment, read for another place: planets keep their signs, houses change.
Other methods · 7
Draconic — The chart re-zeroed on the North Node.
Heliocentric — The same moment seen from the Sun. Mundane and financial work reads this one.
90° dial — Uranian and cosmobiology: every planet folded into a quarter of the circle, so hard aspects line up. Prima calls this Uranian Astrology.
5th harmonic — Creativity and talent.
7th harmonic — Inspiration and illusion.
9th harmonic (navamsa) — Marriage and inner fruit; the Indian navamsa, which Vedic reading treats as a second chart in its own right.
Harmonic… — Any harmonic from 2 to 180.
Vedic · Jyotiṣa
The sidereal zodiac on the Lahiri ayanamsha, read in whole signs.
Western Traditional
Hellenistic and medieval judgement: sect, the five dignities, and the timing those feed. Seven planets, whole signs.
Chinese · BaZi
The Four Pillars — Saju (사주) in Korea, Shichū Suimei in Japan. Not planetary at all: a sexagenary calendar whose only astronomy is the Sun crossing each fifteenth degree.
Uranian · Cosmobiology
The Hamburg school: midpoints on a 90° dial rather than aspects on a wheel.
Mayan · Tzolk'in
The counts of days: thirteen numbers against twenty signs, the Haab, the Long Count. No planets at all, and the hour never enters into it.
Japanese · Nine Star Ki
Nine stars on the Lo Shu square: a principal star from the year, a character star from the month, and the house each year puts you in.
Burmese · Mahabote
The little key: seven planets and Rahu in seven houses, from the weekday of birth and the Burmese year. No sky at all.