The house rules · published in full

Our method

Astrology has schools, and an honest almanac says which one it keeps. This page states our system entire — what we calculate, what we tabulate, and how every free tool on this site reaches its answer.

The system

One school, kept consistently

Zodiac

Tropical — signs measured from the March equinox, the convention of Western astrology. We do not mix in sidereal positions.

Houses

Whole-sign. The daily column transposes the Moon’s sign onto each Sun sign’s whole-sign wheel — the traditional columnist’s method. Free tools that lack a birth time show no houses at all rather than guessing.

Bodies

Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto; the Ascendant and Midheaven where a birth time and place allow; and the lunar nodes (mean node, labeled as such — the true node can differ by up to about 1.7°).

Aspects

The five majors: conjunction, sextile, square, trine, opposition. Conjunctions are read as fusions — supportive or overwhelming by the planets involved — never as automatic blessings.

Orbs

Chart wheel and compatibility snapshot: 6°. Transit checker: 3°, widening to 6° for background contacts and saying so on the result. Contacts are marked applying (orb closing) or separating (orb opening).

Rulerships

Traditional rulers with the modern co-rulers named alongside: Scorpio under Mars & Pluto, Aquarius under Saturn & Uranus, Pisces under Jupiter & Neptune. Every other sign keeps its classical ruler.

Retrogrades

Apparent geocentric motion, computed — a planet is marked ℞ when its ecliptic longitude is decreasing at the moment in question. The Sun and Moon never retrograde and are never marked.

Computed, or tabulated

Where every number comes from

Computed live, in your browser. Planetary positions, the Moon’s sign and phase, lunations, the Ascendant and Midheaven, aspects, retrograde motion and the mean nodes are all calculated on your own device by our astronomy engine — an implementation of standard published algorithms (Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms; the JPL approximate planetary elements, valid 1800–2050). Its accuracy is roughly a hundredth of a degree for the Sun, a tenth for the Moon, and well under a degree for the planets — more than sufficient to place a body in its sign and degree. Your birth details are used for the calculation on your device; the free tools send no birth data anywhere.

Tabulated, and checked. Two calendars are kept as tables rather than computed: the Mercury retrograde periods and the eclipse list. Both are checked against the astronomical canon (NASA’s eclipse catalogue and the published planetary ephemerides), and we cross-check the retrograde table against our own engine’s live measurement — the retrograde page shows both. Penumbral lunar eclipses are included in the eclipse table and named as such: the alignment is real even when the dimming is subtle, and a calendar that quietly omits them is incomplete.

Ranked openly. When the transit checker names your “strongest” transit, that is a ranking by our published weighting, not a law of nature: slower planets weigh more than faster ones (Pluto down to Mars), conjunctions weigh more than oppositions and squares, which weigh more than trines and sextiles, and tighter orbs weigh more than wider ones, scaled to aspects against your Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars. A different astrologer with a different weighting might name a different transit first — ours is simply stated, and applied the same way for everyone.

The daily column

How a horoscope entry is composed

Each morning’s entry for each sign is assembled from four true facts about the sky, in the traditional columnist’s manner:

The Moon’s sign, transposed onto your sign’s whole-sign wheel, names the house — and so the life-area — of the day’s main theme.
The Moon’s phase sets the tide line: building counsel while waxing, clearing counsel while waning, hinge counsel at the quarters.
The Moon-sign’s element colours the note on love; its modality colours the note on work.
A date-seeded selection keeps each day’s entry stable from midnight to midnight, so the column reads the same at breakfast and at supper.

What a sign entry cannot honestly do, we say on the page: it is written for one-twelfth of humanity from your Sun sign alone. Forecasts read against your own placements are the membership’s work, not the free column’s.

Honesty rules, kept sitewide

Unknown birth times are never guessed. The chart is cast for noon, the Rising sign and houses are withheld, and an ambiguous Moon is flagged as ambiguous.
The nearest-city gazetteer is an approximation, and we say so. Birthplace sets the clock and the horizon; when your Rising sign sits near a sign boundary the result says plainly that an exact time and place could tip it.
Calculation and interpretation stay separate. The astronomical positions are calculated first; the astrological meaning applied to those positions is interpretive, and the site does not present it as scientific proof.
No payment for what is not ready. Works closed for preparation take an email address, never money; the full policy is in the notices.

See it at work

The method, applied

Every free instrument on this site runs on the system above — the same zodiac, the same orbs, the same engine.

Cast your free birth chart Check your strongest transit

If you would rather apply it yourself

The system above, taught in order

A published method is only useful to someone who can work it. The three courses teach exactly what this page describes — the same zodiac, the same houses, the same five aspects and the same orbs — in the order that makes each part usable before the next arrives.

Course I

Astrology Foundations

Signs, bodies, houses, elements and modalities, the Big Three and the major aspects. After this, astrology stops being vocabulary and starts being grammar.

$49

Course II

Read Your Own Birth Chart

From placements to interpretation: reading order, combining sign–planet–house, aspects and orbs, and writing one coherent reading of your own figure.

$99

Course III

Forecasting with Transits

The timing craft: fast and slow cycles, orbs and exact dates, retrogrades and returns, simultaneous transits — and a timeline of your own year.

$129

No course here claims astrology predicts outcomes. We teach the craft as practitioners keep it — a language for reflection and timing, held with a light hand.