The element count

Four numbers, and at first the element count is nothing more: how much fire a birth chart holds, how much earth, how much air, how much water. Gathering them takes no time. The real question comes afterwards – what four numbers can carry about a person, and where they begin to mislead.

What gets counted

What gets counted are the ten celestial bodies that interpretation works with: the Sun and the Moon – astrology counts them among the “planets” too, even though astronomy sorts things differently – and then Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. In most schools two further points come in that are not bodies at all: the ascendant and the midheaven. That makes twelve entries, spread across four elements.

Three per element would be the even share, and four is still nothing out of the ordinary. At six or seven in one element it becomes plain, and at zero or one as well, only the other way round. The same calculation can be made with the three modes, that is with cardinal, fixed and mutable.

Three things that skew the count

The twelve entries are not twelve independent voices, and that is where the commonest error of reasoning lies. Mercury never moves more than 28 degrees away from the Sun, Venus never more than about 47. Mercury therefore always stands in the sun sign or in the sign next to it, Venus two signs further at most. A Sun in fire is fairly likely to bring two more fire entries with it: a single piece of information becomes three, and the count registers every one of them separately.

The second thing is the slow planets. Uranus needs around seven years for one sign, Neptune about fourteen, Pluto twelve to over thirty depending on the stretch of orbit. Anyone born a few years before or after you has them in the same signs. Those three entries say something about a year group and nothing about what sets you apart from your classmates.

And thirdly, entries hang on the birth time. The ascendant and the midheaven travel with the rotation of the Earth; on average a different sign stands on the eastern horizon every two hours. The Moon covers a good 13 degrees in a day, and on some days of birth it changes sign before the day is out. Without an exact time of birth the count is therefore not wrong, but blurred.

Six in fire is not always the same thing

This is where the real way of handling the result comes from. Take two birth charts that both show six entries in fire. In the first the Sun stands there, and with it Mercury and Venus, plus the Moon, the midheaven and a fiery rising sign. In the second the six come from Uranus, Neptune and Pluto – that is, from the decade of birth – and from Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, while the Sun, the Moon and the ascendant stand in water signs.

The number is the same, and the two people have little in common. It says how often an element occurs, not where it stands. Anyone reading a count therefore does not look at the largest number, but at the list behind it.

What four numbers are good for, then

As a finding they are no use; as a way in, very much so. In a few seconds they show which corner of a birth chart is occupied and which stays empty, and they supply the questions the work starts from. Why is so much in one single element? Does that hang on a single placement or on the decade of birth? And does what they say agree with the second count, the one by mode, or contradict it?

A cleanly calculated count stands up to these questions; one drawn from an estimated time of birth goes wobbly at the ascendant at the latest. What each single element describes is set out on the page of the four elements, and what the ascendant actually is, in a place of its own. For a count of your own you first need a fully calculated birth chart – the horoscopes show how one of those comes about.