It’s often said that your Ascendant is your “public face”, the way you first come across to people, and what you’re basically about. Your Sun sign is the way you express yourself creatively and your Moon sign the way you initially respond to situations, and how you nurture. That's a very, very simplistic guideline of course. Each sign has characteristics – Aries is bold and daring, Cancer is home loving and so on. So someone with a Sun in Aries and a Cancer Moon might be adventurous, but be very serious about building a home life and caring for family.

When you have the positions of all the planets (the term “planet” in astrology includes the Sun and the Moon, too), you can plot them on a chart wheel – a circle divided into 12 segments, each segment labelled with a sign of the zodiac. You can then immediately see which planet is in which sign. You can also divide the wheel into twelve parts in a different way, starting with the position of the Ascendant. These subdivisions are called houses – using the simplest system, if your Ascendant is 10 degrees of Gemini, then your first house will be that part of the zodiac from 10 degrees Gemini through to 10 degrees Cancer, the second house 10 Cancer to 10 Leo and so on. There are other “house systems” which don’t use equal divisions, and on your chart you’ll see I’ve used a house system called “Placidus”. Each “house” corresponds to a certain area of life; for instance, the 3rd house is to do with communication and local travel. So if your chart has Mars in Aries in the third house, you may communicate in a very forthright manner.

Finally, looking at the positions of planets in your chart, the angles between them are significant. If two planets are very close to each other, they are in conjunction and their energies work together. If they are almost opposite each other, they are in opposition, and their energies will raise issues with the person dealing with them. Planets at right angles (square ) present challenges, and planets at 120 degrees apart (trine) or 60 degrees (sextile) have energies that flow freely and are “easy” in the person’s life and so don’t present a big issue in the person’s life. These angles – actually called aspects in astrology – only apply over a small range (called an orb) - a bit like focusing a camera – so an angle of 88 degrees or 92 degrees is still considered “square”, but an angle of 80 degrees is not.

Each of the signs of the zodiac can be grouped into one of four elements - Fire, Earth, Air and Water. The zodiac signs, in order, are: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Aries is Fire, Taurus is Earth, Gemini is Air and Cancer is Water. Then the cycle repeats, so Leo is Fire again, Virgo is Earth and so on for the twelve signs. These signs correspond to different personality types – Aries, Leo and Sagittarius have “fiery” personalities, for example.

Also, the zodiac can be divided into three qualities – Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable. The Cardinal signs are Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, because these signs usher in each new season (Aries for Spring, and so on). The Mutable signs are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces, because these signs occur at a time when the season is “mutating” into the next one (Pisces is about to usher in Spring). The Fixed signs are the ones in the middle – Taurus (middle of Spring, corresponding to the ancient festival of Beltane), Leo (middle of Summer, festival of Lughnasad), Scorpio (middle of Autumn, festival of Samhain) and Aquarius (middle of Winter, festival of Imbolc). Again, these correspond to personality types – Cardinal signs like to initiate, they need to create what they want, motivate action and trigger the next phase. Fixed signs hold on to the status quo and preserve what is valued, they are focused and determined. Mutable signs reflect the processes of adaptation and dispersal; they move beyond what exists, adjust plans, and redesign. Their attitude is flexible and exploratory.

Each zodiac sign thus has a unique combination of element (Fire, Earth, Air, Water) and Cardinal / Fixed / Mutable - for example, Leo is Fixed Fire, and so has a fixed outlook and a “fiery” (extrovert and sunny) personality; Pisces is Mutable Water, and so is adaptable and has a “watery” (emotional and sensitive) personality.