Planets
Planets in the natal chart
In astrology, the Sun, Moon and planets provide a language for different parts of experience: expression, feelings, communication and action. It is symbolic language, not a judgement of a person.
Brief explanations help you read without specialist knowledge. Astrological terms describe a symbolic method, not scientifically established personality traits.
When astrologers say "planets," they mean a fixed list of bodies tracked in a chart: the Sun and Moon (technically luminaries, not planets, but grouped here by convention), Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and — in most modern practice — Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. For each one, the calculation layer is genuine celestial mechanics: an ephemeris (this project's own included, following the standard two-body Keplerian method described in Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms) computes each body's ecliptic longitude for the exact birth instant, which sign that longitude falls in, and whether the body is retrograde (apparently moving backward from Earth's point of view — a real, calculable optical effect, not a physical reversal of orbit).
The interpretive layer is different in kind. Traditional astrology assigns each planet a recurring theme — the Sun with identity and vitality, the Moon with emotional habit, Mercury with communication, and so on — built up over a long documented history rather than derived from a physical mechanism connecting planetary motion to human affairs. This project keeps the two layers explicit: the position, sign, and retrograde status shown for every planet in your report are calculated facts you can verify independently against any correct ephemeris; the paragraph of narrative attached to them is a symbolic reading, not a further measurement.
A planet's position is rarely read in isolation — see "Zodiac signs" for what a planet's sign changes about its reading, "Astrological houses" for where in your life a placement is said to apply, and "Aspects between planets" for how two placements interact.
The interpretive layer is different in kind. Traditional astrology assigns each planet a recurring theme — the Sun with identity and vitality, the Moon with emotional habit, Mercury with communication, and so on — built up over a long documented history rather than derived from a physical mechanism connecting planetary motion to human affairs. This project keeps the two layers explicit: the position, sign, and retrograde status shown for every planet in your report are calculated facts you can verify independently against any correct ephemeris; the paragraph of narrative attached to them is a symbolic reading, not a further measurement.
A planet's position is rarely read in isolation — see "Zodiac signs" for what a planet's sign changes about its reading, "Astrological houses" for where in your life a placement is said to apply, and "Aspects between planets" for how two placements interact.