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Astrology 101: Basic Foundations to get started
- Aleena Glinski
- Feb 7
- 22 min read
Contents
This blogpost is a transcript from a YouTube video that I released on 8/31/25. If you would like to support your reading with some audio or visual stimulation, here's the video for your enjoyment.
Intro
If you are curious about astrology but feel overwhelmed by the complexity and just don't even really know where to start and are looking for some grounding in the foundations—just basic astrology 101—what is it, how does it work, and what can it do? This is a video for you. My name is Aleena and welcome to Prometheia Astrology. I am the astrologer for creatives and change makers with a physics BS from Yale.
Let's get right into it. My learning objectives for you today that I hope that you will be able to do by the end of this video are to be able to define astrology, identify at least two things that astrology can do, and define what a birth chart is.
What is Astrology?
So what is astrology? Astrology is an art, a science, and a system of symbolic thinking using astronomical bodies. It is a science in the sense that it is using astronomy. We are using the mathematically calculated pathways of the planets through their orbits around the sun. Originally there was no difference between astrology and astronomy, and all of our astronomical learning and scientific discovery was motivated by astrological thinking and knowledge. Originally there really was no difference between the science of astronomy and the system of symbolic thinking and subjective meaning and interpretation of astrology. So it has this kind of quantitative reasoning that is the foundation of it all.
But it also has all of this symbolic meaning. Astrology is really like a language that you can speak—a symbolic language using astronomical bodies as symbols. The language of astrology is quite poetic as it is based in symbolism and is quite abstract, which is why it can get really confusing really quickly for people because there's so many different pieces and there's so much layer and nuance that you can bring to everything. But I'm going to try to keep this really just bare-bones basic today.
The Fundamental Assumptions of Astrology
The fundamental assumptions of astrology are really important to get into. This is all of the premises that astrology is based on, from which we derive our understanding, our delineations, and our interpretation of what things mean. These are sort of the assumptions that astrologers share to some degree.
The first is that there is a correlation between celestial movements and earthly events. This is the most basic. If nothing else, pretty much all astrologers will agree on this one. This one goes back as far as astrology does. The most ancient original astrology that was happening was simply people observing the stars and noticing things that were happening on Earth and making connections between that. It actually was not until maybe a thousand years or more from the oldest record of astrological thinking that we have that is written down in human history that we start to have the birth chart and this idea of a horoscope. The most ancient original basic premise of astrology is just that things that are happening in the sky—the movements of the planets—are correlated to things that are happening here on earth.
The second assumption is that astronomical bodies and points carry archetypal significance. Each of the different symbols or bodies or points in space that are represented in a birth chart and in astronomy have symbolic archetypal significance. This is what we are working with as we are speaking the language of astrology.
The third is that the visual experience of astronomical movements from our subjective experience has symbolic meaning. This is the point where people get caught up sometimes because there was a point in human history, in astrological history, where we didn't really have clear boundaries between the subjective and the objective. For instance, when humanity discovered that the sun is the center of the solar system and not the earth—that it is not that everything revolves around the earth like we used to think, but actually the sun is the center—this changed a lot in astrological thinking. Prior to this, we were thinking, for instance, in a retrograde when it looks like a planet is moving backwards in the sky, that that star is actually moving backwards.
In fact, if you are seated on the planet Mercury as he's going retrograde—if you were on Mercury going along his path in his orbit—he's not actually moving backwards. The planet Mercury is not actually moving backwards. The planets only move forward, but because of our spot in the solar system, because of the different distances each planet is from the sun, it looks like things are happening that are not actually happening from a more objective, godlike observational point of view. For astrology, it's important that we understand that our interpretation of things is not coming from this objective, godlike point of view, but rather it's extremely important to understand that all of the meaning that comes out of astrology is from our subjective point of view. The way things look to you from your specific point in space from your specific point in time has symbolic meaning.
Even if Mercury is not actually moving backwards when he goes retrograde, the fact that it appears that way to us affects us. Similarly, the moon is never actually gone from the sky. A new moon does not mean the moon disappears. The moon is always being the moon and her full self, her full-bodied self. But from our perspective, it looks like there's no moon, and that is significant symbolically and has an effect on us because of the way that we are seeing things from our point of view.
This is more of my personal language that I think many astrologers would agree with. The way that I think it makes sense to interpret astrology is to say that time has a quality. The moment that something comes into existence is somehow imprinted with the quality of that moment, which has something to say about its character and its destiny. Rather than time being like some one-dimensional linear thing that is just a unit that happens one second after another—it is that, but it also has this felt quality. It is not just quantitative time, but it is also qualitative. Astrology gives us a system to measure and predict what the quality of a moment will be.
The assumption that you are sort of required to make to get into some of these different astrological techniques requires that we understand that the moment that something comes into existence is somehow carrying the quality of that moment of time that somewhat, to some degree, defines the character, the nature, and the disposition of that thing for the rest of its life, and also can give us a look into what might happen in this thing's future. All of that is related to the quality of the time that that thing comes into existence, which could be a person, or it could be a business, or it could be anything. Any thing that has an origin can have a birth chart—a bridge, it doesn't matter.
What is an Archetype?
If we say that there is archetypal significance to the astronomical bodies in the sky, what does that mean? There are many different ways to understand archetypes. I think most people first encounter this word in a literary context, understanding archetypes as characters in a story or foundational character types that you see in many different narrative structures.
There's a rich history of understanding this word to keep it within the astrological context in the most ancient sense that we have record of in human history. We see that people are understanding the planets as gods. Being a god or goddess is sort of one version of thinking about an archetype. This is the most ancient version of archetypal thinking. For instance, the planet Mars has this energy of war, aggression, violence, assertion, splitting, and severing—kind of the archetype of war in a sense, and conflict. Originally, people conceptualized these stars as gods, and eventually the Greeks came to assign the planet Mars the god Ares.
Before this, people were still thinking of planets as gods. They had the fullness and character of a humanoid god that was just in this other sky realm, but still had flaws and complicated relationships and was closer to human-like nature. By the time we get to Plato, he evolves this thinking into what he calls "forms" or what some people now call "Platonic ideals." Plato had this idea that there's this other realm—this realm of forms—where there is the most perfect essential version of any given thing. For instance, a human is not something that you can ever really encounter as a category. I'm a human, you're a human, but none of us individually can really define or encapsulate the totality of what it means to be a human. Plato's idea was that in this realm of forms, there is some essential archetypal human essence that you can never completely wrap your head around or grasp because it's like a category. It's like the more abstracted version of a thing. There could be, in this planetary sense, some perfect version of the archetype of war and Mars's energy or the god Ares, but it's no longer like this humanoid god figure, but rather like this other realm where the most perfect essential nature of a thing exists that all of our earthly material manifestations are sort of reflections of.
Fast forwarding a couple millennia, we have the philosopher and psychologist Carl Jung, who took this idea of Plato's forms and archetypes and birthed archetypal psychology. Many astrologers are a big fan of Carl Jung and really resonate with his work. Carl Jung himself admitted that he was quite interested in astrology and would often look at the horoscopes or birth charts of his clients. We have written evidence for this, which is fascinating. Carl Jung did this work to uncover the collective unconscious. He was very interested in dreams as well and symbolism, and did research to look into and uncover what archetypes were present across cultures and across time. He found that there were many essential archetypal figures that people were encountering in dreams. Even from different places in different points in time, even back in history when people and places didn't share a culture, there were still similar archetypal figures that would show up.
Jung postulated that perhaps there is sort of this other realm where there are these archetypes and these volitional entities that interact with us in dreams and also we end up projecting onto different people and symbols. Rather than the planetary energy archetype coming from this realm of forms like Plato postulated, Carl Jung gave us this idea that there's something called the collective unconscious. There's this psychological realm that everyone can be tapped into—or is tapped into to different degrees—where there are these psychological impulses and instincts. Similar to the way that we have physical biological impulses and instincts, there's also psychological impulses and instincts. These are like the different archetypal energies that come through us that we can sometimes even be possessed by.
In astrology, we can think of the different planets as these different psychological functions and psychological instincts. That's the way astrology came back into vogue in the 20th century. It had been on the decline since the rise of Christianity and the scientific revolution. But in the 20th century, we had Carl Jung bringing this psychological archetypal psychology into the field and astrologers picking this up, connecting the dots, and reading astrology through the psychological lens.
Now we're in a moment where we are having a traditional revival in astrology, which is what I'm a part of. I'm a Hellenistic astrologer. In the 80s or 90s, we started to uncover very ancient texts that had never been translated or hadn't been translated in many many centuries. We were getting all of these ancient timing techniques and ancient wisdom of how ancient astrologers were practicing. People started to pick that up and apply these techniques. We have a whole new synthesis going on where we are still mostly aware and connected to this psychological framing, where astrology can be viewed as sort of a map of the psyche. But now that we have these ancient texts being recovered, we can also look into this more ancient understanding of astrology where it is certainly connected to character but also can tell us about the external world that you might encounter as well and things that happen outside of you, which I'm very interested in.
Archetypal Psychology and Astrology
To get a little bit more specific and bring it down to earth a little bit more: the planets in the birth chart can be thought of as different parts of yourself, like these psychological instincts. For instance, Mercury is our communication. Mars is our drive to take action. Venus is our impulse to love and relate and connect and look for beauty and harmony. The sun is the ego and the moon is the unconscious. There's this psychological framing that we can look at where each planet represents a different aspect or part of the self.
We can also look at the planets through this more traditional lens. Sometimes, depending on where they're located in the chart, they can actually represent other people. For instance, the seventh house is related to the marriage partner, the spouse. Planets here can sometimes represent the actual spouse or person that you may end up marrying. The fourth house is the place for parents. Placements here can relate more to the energy of the parents and so on.
Sometimes the planets, depending on the placement, can represent types of experiences that you might encounter. For instance, the 10th house is related to career and vocation. Planets that we find here can sometimes relate to the type of work you do or the type of fortune that you have regarding career and vocational things. Not every chart placement is active all the time. There's the psychological piece of it that's more or less omnipresent. But sometimes the chart can also represent certain experiences that you will have in your life that are finite, where you have this one experience in this one particular point in time when that placement is activated using one of many different astrological timing techniques and it plays out. There's many different ways to interpret the archetypal significance and meaning of the different astrological and astronomical symbols in the birth chart.
What is a Birth Chart?
What a birth chart is, is a map of the sky the moment that you were born. In astrology, we can look at not just a birth chart, but the chart for the sky at any given point in time and place for any particular reason. This could be the birth chart of a YouTube video or of a business or of a bridge or a house—the moment you built a house—or a person. Or you can look at the birth chart to just get a sense of the moment in time that you're in. Even if nothing is coming into existence in that moment, just to get a temperature check of what is the vibe of this moment. That is what the birth chart is here to tell us.
We can see the different symbols and points of the birth chart. The first circle includes the zodiac signs. Inside of there, we have the different houses. Inside of there, we have the different aspects. There are points like the ascendant, which is the eastern horizon; the western horizon; the MC, the point directly overhead; and the IC, the point directly below. I thought it would be good to just get a picture in your head for what a birth chart looks like. The outer circle represents the planets and points in the sky out in space. The next circle is the zodiac. Then we have the houses, these numbers 1 through 12, and all of these lines representing the different aspects or relationships between the planets.
The 4 Pillars of Astrology
To give us a sense of the symbolic nature for what this means, I find the ancient understanding of astrology to be very helpful and intuitive. These are the four pillars: the zodiac signs, the houses, the planets, and the aspects. The way that ancient astrologers understood these four pillars was as if the sky was its own world.
In the sky world, there are these 12 kingdoms, which are the zodiac signs and the houses. Because I am an ancient Hellenistic astrologer, I use ancient Hellenistic house systems where the zodiac sign is the same size, shape, and place as the house. The zodiac signs and the houses together make up the kingdoms in this sky world. Each of the different kingdoms is like a country where it has its own culture and its own personality. It has a certain way of being that is more natural and intuitive to it and a different area of life that it is responsible for.
The planets literally, etymologically, mean "wandering star." From an ancient perspective, they did not understand that the planets were planets. They only saw what looked like a star that was moving, whereas all the other stars seemed to be still. There were these seven stars that seemed to move around. These were like the kings of the different kingdoms in this mythology. There are these wandering characters that traverse around the sky world—the planets—and sometimes they find themselves somewhere that is particularly supportive of their nature, that is natural and intuitive for them. Sometimes they find themselves in places that are particularly difficult or more challenging.
Each of the planets is like the king or queen of one of these 12 kingdoms. If the king or queen finds themselves in the sign of its place of rulership—when the king is in his kingdom—this is a very nice thing. It's in a place that supports the planet's nature and is in alignment with the type of energy that it wants to bring into the world. But the planets can also find themselves in places that are particularly difficult or antithetical to their nature, that want to do or have tendencies that are opposite to what they would like to bring to your life and to the world. This depends on the time and place of your birth.
Lastly, we have the aspects, which are like the relationships between the characters. Are the characters getting along? Are they helping each other out or are they in conflict? Are they fighting against each other? This will relate to the angular distance between them—the aspects.
The Astronomy of the Birth Chart
To ground ourselves on the astronomy a little bit more, because this is very helpful to understand how this all works and makes it a little bit more intuitive to understand the symbolic meaning: there are these four angles that are the ascendant, the descendant, the midheaven, and the IC. These are the points that anchor us in the sky. The ascendant is the place on the eastern horizon. The descendant is the place on the western horizon. The IC is the place directly below us—if you could dig a hole to the other side of the planet—and the MC is what would be directly overhead.
This is why it's important to have the birthplace and time, because the eastern horizon in Australia will be very different from the eastern horizon in Philadelphia. This is giving us a map of where the planets are from our specific point of view. What is above the sky for me will be different from what is above the sky for someone in the southern hemisphere, for instance.
This is another really confusing piece of the astronomy because this is very complicated to imagine: many different spheres floating through space orbiting around the sun, plus the earth's rotation, plus your particular place on the planet. I'm going to do my best to break it down. The angles—the points on the eastern and western horizon, what is directly above and below—these will make a full rotation in 24 hours because that's how long the day is. The earth will rotate all the way around in 24 hours and this is our cycle of day and night. The entire sky that is around us will seemingly, from our point of view, be rotating around with us as we on earth are spiraling in earth's rotation.
The angles are also what determine the houses. Both the angles and the houses will make a full rotation in 24 hours. What this means is that because there are 12 signs, and 24 divided by 12 is 2, about every 2 hours the zodiac sign that's on the eastern horizon will change because one-twelfth of the earth's rotation will be complete in about 2 hours. We have this daily rotation happening, and in addition to that, we also have the orbit of the planets through the zodiac.
The zodiac signs are more or less fixed because these are part of the realm of fixed stars—the stars far out in space, not the planets. But the planets that are nearby are actually moving around in their orbit, so they will change place in the zodiac. The rising sign, the point on the eastern horizon, will change about every 2 hours. But the moon, for instance, takes about 28 days to go through the zodiac to complete her orbit. She will change signs once every 2 and a half days. Not only is the moon rotating around us in the cycle of day and night, but she is also moving through her orbit around the earth. Similarly, the sun takes about 4 weeks to travel through one zodiac sign and switch signs.
Hopefully, this is giving you a sense of the landscape and the story that's unfolding that we are interpreting symbolically through the movements of the earth and the planets. It is also important to note that in astrology, a "planet" includes the sun and the moon and also Pluto. But the seven traditional planets do not include Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto because those are not visible to the naked eye. Those were not discovered until after the 18th century. From an astrological point of view, the seven planets that are closer to us that we can see with the naked eye represent more of the personality and what is a part of your character. The outer planets still do have an impact, but it's more collective. Because they're so far away, they take much longer to change signs. The moon takes 2 and a half days to change signs, but Pluto takes about 20 years to change signs. Everyone within about a 20-year time span will have the same Pluto sign. That particular sign placement is not so unique to your personality.
To take it back a little bit to more basics: many people don't necessarily understand that different planets have different signs. In our solar system, there are seven traditional planets and three outer planets. Your "sun sign" is the sign where the sun was at the time of your birth. The sun is moving around the zodiac and takes a full year to get all the way around. When he is in or near a certain constellation, that is the zodiac sign that he is assigned to. You have not only a sun sign but also a moon sign, a Mercury sign, Venus sign, Jupiter sign, Saturn sign, all the things. Each of these represents a different aspect of who you are and gives us different information about the type of character and life that you might live.
In a chart, there is a difference between the gray letters and these symbols that are solid white. The white symbols are actually physical bodies that exist out in space. These gray symbols are not physical bodies, but instead points in space that are determined mathematically. For instance, the ascendant is the eastern horizon. There's not necessarily any planet on the eastern horizon; it's just a point in space. The MC is the point directly overhead. It does not necessarily mean that there's anything physically existing there, it's just a point in the sky for us that is significant to interpret symbolically.
In addition to the planets, I also look at the nodes, the lot of fortune, and that's pretty much it. But there are more physical bodies like asteroids you could put on here, and more angles that you could include like different lots and the vertex. Different astrologers use a different number of symbols to interpret. Especially as a beginner talk, there's so much that you can get out of just the planets alone with nothing else. I prefer to pair it down. There's really no limit to the amount of different bodies and nuance that you can add to things, but I think it tends to be more powerful and potent to just focus in on the things that are going to be the most felt. The deeper you get into astrology, the more you can start to add in and layer on these different components. Especially at the beginning, I think it's better to focus on just the planets, the signs, the aspects, and the houses. If you wanted to go deeper, I would suggest that you start learning with each of the planets, then get into each zodiac sign, and then the houses and then the aspects. That tends to be the order that is good to build on for learning.
The Astronomy of the Zodiac
The last piece that I want to give to really ground in this is a little bit of context around the zodiac because people who are skeptical of astrology love to bring up the fact that the zodiac is not where it was at the point of its origin.
At the beginning when the zodiac was conceptualized, the constellations—Gemini, Cancer, Scorpio—the zodiac signs were named after these constellations and originally the constellation was at the point in the sky where that zodiac sign was assigned. Now, 3 or 4 thousand years later, we have this thing called precession where the earth's axis actually wobbles a little bit. Now the tropical zodiac is no longer aligned with the constellations. It's shifted almost a complete sign over.
Another interesting and important thing to note is that the constellations are also not exactly one-twelfth of the sky. For instance, Virgo is a very big constellation and Cancer is a very small constellation. The zodiac does not actually map on to the size and shape and present place of the constellations. Instead, the tropical zodiac—which I use as a traditional astrologer—has to do with the equinoxes.
Aries is the first part of spring that starts at the spring equinox. Cancer is the summer solstice; that's when Cancer season starts. Libra is the beginning of fall at the fall equinox, and Capricorn is the beginning of winter at the winter equinox. The mutable signs are in the middle of each of those seasons, and the cardinal signs are at the end of each of those seasons. Rather than being aligned with the constellations, the tropical zodiac is aligned with the equinoxes and has more to do with the solar cycle and seasons. I think this makes sense to use because even if you don't believe in astrology, I would be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't feel affected by the seasons at all—the length of the days changing, the warmth and the coolness. We are very affected by the solar cycle.
Much of the symbolism for these different zodiac signs is actually derived from the season that they're in. Aries being the spring equinox—the beginning of spring—has this big initiating energy. Aries is the warrior; it's bursting forth. It is the life that's coming through the ground. It is the seed breaking from its shell and piercing through the ground as it grows. This is the energy of Aries and also of spring. This continues throughout the zodiac.
Reading the Birth Chart as a Symbol
One of my missions as an astrological teacher and educator is to get people fluent in reading astrology as a two-dimensional symbol rather than a one-dimensional linear list of placements. I think many apps are now giving people their information in this way, where you just have a list of each of the planets and the zodiac sign that they're in. But it is so much richer and deeper and complex than that.
When you're able to really read an astrology chart—when you're able to read a "horoscope" (which is the chart of a moment)—as a holistic symbol, you're able to use both the left and right side of your brain at the same time. Reading through a list is a very left-brain way of thinking, but looking at a symbol in its fullness is more of a right-brain thing to be able to see an image completely. There's so much that you receive from this visual experience of the birth chart. It would be like trying to appreciate the beauty of a tapestry by looking at one thread at a time rather than stepping back and looking at the totality of the imagery in the tapestry. It allows you a point of access that is deeper within yourself. You're able to sidestep some of the ego grip when you look at things symbolically rather than through words and reading one line after another. There's so much that you get visually when you see the lines and the way things are connected and how close they are. I'm a big proponent of learning how to look at the chart and read it as a symbol.
What can Astrology Tell Us?
To close, I think it's important to touch on what astrology actually does. There are many different schools of astrology and many different ways people have of talking about and understanding what astrology can do. Different astrologers will have different opinions about what it's capable of.
Astrology can tell us about the psyche, the character, and who you are. It can help us understand where you will probably have strengths in your life and where you might potentially have more weaknesses or blind spots or different aspects of being that might be more challenging for you. Astrology can also tell us about the future and tell us what the vibe of a moment will be and how that moment might affect you through things like transits and annual profections and zodiacal releasing. We can get into interpreting the future and how things might play out for you in your career, romantically, and all sorts of things.
There are also some astrologers who practice things like predicting the weather. There are astrologers who look into astrocartography, which is finding out the place that would be the best for you to live or the most constructive for different reasons—like where might be a place where you experience more love or romantic harmony, or places where you might experience more career success. There's a whole school of astrology called horary astrology, which is a type of divination where you can ask an astrologer a question and then we analyze the chart of the moment that the astrologer understands the question and use that to interpret the answer. There's also electional astrology, which gets into planning dates. We look at auspicious elections. Because we can see what the quality of the moment is, we can predict the quality of that endeavor. If you were starting a business or planning a wedding, then we can choose an auspicious date that would be particularly beneficial.
There are people who practice astrological magic, which I'm not very familiar with, but people who do that will do certain practices to harness the energy of different planets so that you can carry it around in a talisman—capturing planetary energy within certain stones or liquids. There are psychological astrologers who are using astrology therapeutically to work through mental health and relational things. There's also synastry where people look into relationships, like "am I compatible?" and "how will my relationship be with this person?" I also don't really practice this type of astrology too much, but it is something a lot of people specialize in. There are fertility astrologers and astrologers that focus on health. We can look at health issues and the physical body—that's a whole specialization—and also planning things like pregnancy.
My specialty is more around timing things, so talking about the future and, in particular, I'm specializing in career things—getting into purpose and career vocational-type things—figuring out what might be the purpose of your life's work and when you might encounter that and when you'll have certain career peaks or challenges.
Closing and Offerings
To close, I will let you know that I do offer consultations in this way. I do 60-minute sessions that are more just like the birth chart reading—what does your chart say about who you are and your general character? We get into purpose there as well. Then I do timing, where we get into more of the future and looking at what's coming up for you and things like career peaks.
You can also follow me on Instagram and subscribe to me here on YouTube. That really helps me if you want to support my work or get notified when I am making new videos. I have been working through a series on the planets. I have about half of them done so far at the time of my releasing this video. After that, I plan to do a series on each of the zodiac signs, each of the aspects, and each of the houses. I'm open to making lots more educational videos like this. So, if there's anything that you would like me to do, feel free to leave a comment. Or if something did not make any sense and you would like clarification, let me know. Feel free to send me an email if you have any questions as well about my consultations. If you're wondering if I might be the right astrologer for you, feel free to reach out. Thank you so much for being here . I hope you have a beautiful day.
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