The astrological personality analysis

The question “who am I” is not the one classical astrology asks. It asks something narrower and more answerable: what does this person have to work with — what basic equipment, what dispositions, what recurring difficulties.

The order

1. The temperament. Not a matter of impression but a calculation: from the Moon’s sign and phase, the ascendant and its ruler, the season, and the planets at the angles. The result is a mixture — choleric with a melancholic secondary is not the same thing as pure choleric — and everything else is read against it. See the four elements.

2. The mentality. The significators of thinking — Mercury, the Moon, and the planet Mercury is connected to — show how someone thinks: fast or slow, systematic or associative, flexible or tenacious.

3. The dignities. What condition each planet is in on its own, before there is any talk of aspects.

4. The houses. Which area of life it works in — and whether it can work from there at all.

5. The aspects. Last. An aspect between two weak planets does little, however exact it may be.

Most misreadings come from starting at point 5: a striking aspect catches the eye, a dignity has to be looked up.

What it yields

A description of dispositions and of recurring patterns — and, through the timing techniques, of stretches of time in which something moves.

What it does not yield

No diagnosis. Neither medical nor psychological. A chart names no illness.

No verdict. There are no good and bad charts. There are planets in favourable and in unfavourable condition, and every chart has some of both.

No ready-made person. The old formula — the stars incline, but they do not compel — is not a reassurance but an accurate description of the technique. It describes dispositions; it does not decide what becomes of them.

And testability

The awkward counterpart: a character description cannot be refuted. It convinces both sides and nothing follows from it. Anyone who wants to test whether the technique holds has to formulate a statement about a period of time, in advance, with a date. See why a reading feels accurate.