"I’m Capricorn, you’re Leo, my mother is Taurus and the neighbor is Aquarius."

Does this sound familiar? I believe so. Nowadays, most of us know our zodiacal sign and the interest we have for this subject is continuously growing. But how many of us actually know what a horoscope and a chart are?

The answer: few! This is why so many questions and interpretations get born, a thing that ultimately leads to the defamation of astrology. You don’t need to be an astrologer to know some things about astrology, some elements that will help you.

This article was made for the specific purpose of explaining briefly and without details, what a horoscope is and what are the main components of a chart.

First of all, what does it mean that I’m Capricorn and you’re Leo? The basic zodiacal sign we keep talking about is given by the Sun’s position at birth. Therefore, I’m Capricorn because the Sun was in Capricorn when I was given birth. You can identify this when you make a chart. The chart represents the astral map of an entity (individual, community etc.) at a certain time. It contains a lot of elements that help at making a horoscope or an astrologic analysis.

For making a horoscope or an astrologic analysis you need three elements:
- The zodiacal sign
- The planets
- The astrological houses

At all this you can add a lot of other elements that bring more information.

The planets

There are 10 planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) and they represent a certain characteristic of an individual, a certain type of energy.

For example, the Sun represents our basic personality, our ego, the conscious, while the Moon represents our subconscious and emotions. So when I say I’m Capricorn, I actually say that my basic personality has all of Capricorn’s characteristics. But the fact that I have the Moon in Pisces, for example, makes my emotions similar to the zodiacal sign of Pisces. The same way, Mercury represents the mentality, the way we think and communicate; Venus represents the feeling and the things we like, while Mars represents our basic energy.

The planets form between themselves many angles and relations. These relations can be: harmonically (those of 60,120,0 degrees) and un-harmonically (45,90,180 degrees).

The zodiacal signs

There are 12 zodiacal signs (Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces) and I’m sure you know them very well. They represent certain characteristics that have a strong influence on the planets. A Moon in Aries will be totally different then a Moon in Libra.

The astrological houses

The 12 astrological houses symbolize the activity sectors in every person’s life. These are being calculated according to the hour and the place of birth. These can have different sizes (in degrees). For example, the 7th house symbolizes the partner, marriage, contractual relationships etc. The 10th is the house of carrier and social elevation.

About the houses, there is an aspect that was a mandatory role: the first grade of a house is called cusps (or cuspis). There are 4 big cusps: the Ascendant (1st house), the Middle of the sky (10th house), the Descendant (7th house) and the Bottom of the sky (4th house). The one most known is the Ascendant, which according to the zodiacal sign it’s in, it symbolizes the qualities one must gain during this lifetime.

To make an astrological analyze, one must count all this factors plus a lot of others a thing that depends on each astrologer in part.

The idea of this article was to show you that each individual is unique in its own way and not all from the same zodiacal sign are the same. Also the prediction on TV or on the newspapers even thought they might be correct, don’t apply to all during that period of time.

My name is Dan Ciubotaru and I'm the author of this astrology software. I'm a romanian astrologer , member of Romanian Astrologers Association and I'm currently based in Bucharest, Romania. My websites are: http://ciuboda.blogspot.com, http://www.astrologydatabase.com and http://www.configurationhunter.com