A birth chart has three layers. The planets say what kind of energy is involved, the signs say how it is expressed, and the houses say where in life it shows up. This guide covers the first and the last: the ten bodies Fate Hall places in your chart, and the twelve houses they fall into.
The ten bodies
Astrology calls the Sun and Moon "planets" for convenience, so a modern chart has ten: the two lights, the five planets visible to the naked eye (Mercury to Saturn) and the three discovered with telescopes (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). They are often grouped by speed:
- Personal planets — Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars — move quickly and describe your character, feelings, thinking, affections and drive. Two people born a few weeks apart can have quite different personal planets.
- Social planets — Jupiter and Saturn — take a year and about two and a half years per sign. They describe growth and responsibility, and are shared by everyone born in the same year or two.
- Generational planets — Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — stay in a sign for many years and are read mostly through the houses and the aspects they make.
| Body | Rules | Time in one signaverage 1950–2049; share of days retrograde 2001–2030 |
|---|---|---|
| ☉︎ SunSelf · life purpose | Leo | 30 daysnever retrograde |
| ☽︎ MoonEmotions · inner needs | Cancer | 2.3 daysnever retrograde |
| ☿︎ MercuryThinking · communication | Gemini, Virgo | 30 daysretrograde 19% of days |
| ♀︎ VenusLove · sense of beauty | Taurus, Libra | 30 daysretrograde 7% of days |
| ♂︎ MarsDrive · desire | Aries | 57 daysretrograde 9% of days |
| ♃︎ JupiterGrowth · good fortune | Sagittarius | 11.8 monthsretrograde 30% of days |
| ♄︎ SaturnResponsibility · trials and maturity | Capricorn | 2.5 yearsretrograde 36% of days |
| ♅︎ UranusChange · originality | Aquarius | 6.8 yearsretrograde 41% of days |
| ♆︎ NeptuneDreams · inspiration | Pisces | 13.9 yearsretrograde 44% of days |
| ♇︎ PlutoTransformation · deep power | Scorpio | 15.0 yearsretrograde 44% of days |
The average times and retrograde shares in this table were calculated with the same planetary formulas Fate Hall uses for your chart, day by day over a century. Mercury and Venus average about a month per sign because they travel with the Sun, but a single visit varies a lot: a retrograde loop can dip back into a sign for just a few days, or hold Mercury in one sign for more than two months and Venus for about four. The outer planets look backward for a large share of the year: Saturn and the three slow planets are retrograde on well over a third of all days, which is why a retrograde symbol beside them in a chart is common and not a cause for alarm. See Mercury retrograde for what the term means.
The twelve houses
The houses divide the sky around your birthplace into twelve sectors, each linked to an area of life. The first house begins at the Rising sign, on the eastern horizon, and the count continues below the horizon, so houses one to six are "below" and seven to twelve "above". Opposite houses form pairs: self and partner (1 and 7), your money and shared money (2 and 8), home and career (4 and 10), and so on.
| House | What it covers | With Leo rising |
|---|---|---|
| 1Natural sign: Aries | you: your body, appearance, temperament and the way you begin things | ♌︎ Leo |
| 2Natural sign: Taurus | money, possessions, earnings and what you value | ♍︎ Virgo |
| 3Natural sign: Gemini | siblings, neighbours, short trips, learning and everyday communication | ♎︎ Libra |
| 4Natural sign: Cancer | home, family, roots and private life | ♏︎ Scorpio |
| 5Natural sign: Leo | creativity, romance, play, pleasure and children | ♐︎ Sagittarius |
| 6Natural sign: Virgo | daily work, routines, service and health habits | ♑︎ Capricorn |
| 7Natural sign: Libra | partners: marriage, close one-to-one relationships, open rivals | ♒︎ Aquarius |
| 8Natural sign: Scorpio | shared resources, debts, inheritance, intimacy and transformation | ♓︎ Pisces |
| 9Natural sign: Sagittarius | long journeys, higher learning, beliefs, law and publishing | ♈︎ Aries |
| 10Natural sign: Capricorn | career, public standing, reputation and ambitions | ♉︎ Taurus |
| 11Natural sign: Aquarius | friends, groups, networks, hopes and causes | ♊︎ Gemini |
| 12Natural sign: Pisces | solitude, retreat, the hidden and the unconscious | ♋︎ Cancer |
Each house also has a "natural" sign — Aries for the first, Taurus for the second, and so on round the wheel. Astrologers use the natural signs as a reminder of each house's theme, but the sign that actually occupies a house in your chart depends on your Rising sign, as the last column shows for someone with Leo rising.
Whole sign houses
There are many ways to divide the houses. Fate Hall uses the oldest, called whole sign houses: the entire Rising sign is the first house, the next sign is the second house, and so on, with every house exactly one sign wide. It has three advantages for a free online chart:
- It works at every latitude. Systems that divide by time or space, such as Placidus, can produce extremely uneven or even impossible houses far from the equator.
- It is forgiving about birth time. A planet changes house only when the Rising sign itself changes, not every few minutes.
- It is easy to check by hand: count signs from your Rising sign.
Because of this, a planet's house on Fate Hall may differ from a chart made with another house system, especially for planets near a house cusp in that system. Both are legitimate; they answer the question in different ways. Fate Hall also shows the Midheaven (MC), the highest point of the zodiac at birth, which other systems use as the start of the tenth house; in whole sign houses it usually falls in the ninth, tenth or eleventh house.
Putting it together
To read a single placement, combine the three layers into a sentence: planet, sign, house. "Venus in Taurus in the fifth house" might read as "affection (Venus) expressed steadily and sensually (Taurus) in romance and creative play (the fifth house)". Start with the Sun, Moon and the ruler of your Rising sign, then look at houses that hold several planets: they mark the areas of life your chart emphasises. Empty houses are normal — with ten bodies and twelve houses, every chart has some — and do not mean that area of life is missing.
Common questions
Why does Fate Hall not show houses for my chart? Houses need the exact birth time and place. Without a time, the chart is drawn for noon and the houses and Rising sign are left out; the planets' signs are still shown.
What about Chiron, the lunar nodes or the asteroids? Fate Hall's chart keeps to the ten traditional bodies plus the Ascendant and Midheaven, which carry most of the meaning in a natal reading.
Is there an equivalent in BaZi? Not exactly, but Zi Wei Dou Shu also arranges a life into twelve palaces, starting from a Life palace set by the birth hour — a striking parallel to the twelve houses counted from the Rising sign.
Related guides
- Sun, Moon and RisingWhat your Sun, Moon and Rising signs each describe, the twelve signs with their elements and rulers, and why the Moon and Rising signs need your birth time and place.
- Astrology AspectsThe five major aspects, how angles and orbs are measured, worked examples, how many aspects a typical chart has, and what each aspect suggests.
- Mercury RetrogradeWhat retrograde motion really is, Mercury retrograde dates for 2025 to 2028 calculated and cross-checked, what astrologers associate with it, and retrograde planets in a birth chart.
- Zi Wei Dou Shu: Palaces and StarsAn introduction to Zi Wei Dou Shu (Purple Star Astrology): the twelve palaces of life, the fourteen main stars, the five element bureaus and how the chart is placed from your lunar birthday.