Holy Astrology: Beginner’s Guide
The Big Three: Astrology Basics
By McCayla Connors
Many have stumbled across astrology in the last couple years, whether through your own research, a friend, a random “Astro-hoe” asking you what’s your birthday at the bar, or on social media. What that random “Astro-hoe” really wants to know is what are your big three and how can she ruin your life or try to change you entirely.
Now you may be asking yourself “my big what??”
Your big three, my dear students.
What most people don’t know right away about zodiac signs and astrology is that there’s much more to it than just your birthday zodiac sign.
Let’s say your birthday is June 10th, 1995. That makes you a Gemini (I’m so sorry for you in advance love), this is what many call your zodiac sign. The pros and superfans know it better as your “sun sign”. This is the sign you most likely know yourself to be, but maybe you don’t relate to it — or the toxic memes and Instagram posts about your indecisive chaotic Gemini self don’t sit well with you. I’m here to tell you why that might be the case for you.
More Than Your Sun Sign
For starters, your sun sign is determined by your birth date, birth month, and year. However, there are (to our knowledge) many other stars and about eight or nine planets, depending on whether or not you let Pluto sit at the table with the other big dog planets, in our solar system.
Funny enough, all of those planets and stars were also in certain positions the day you were born, and so they also play a part in your astrological personality/identity. The main planets you will see in your natal chart or birth chart are the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto.
There are other placements, that are certain points in the sky or your chart such as:
- the Rising or Ascendant
- the Descendant
- Chiron
- Imum Coeli (IC)
- the North and South Nodes
- and the Midheaven
Today we’re only going to focus on the big three, which are the Sun, Moon, and Rising/Ascendant.
Your Sun Sign
In a nutshell, your sun sign represents your ego. Much like the Sun itself, this is the energy you’re pushing and it recharges you. This is the one you think you are due to pop culture astrology and no one ever diving into the details before circa social media.
The sun sign in your chart represents your identity and your sense of self. It can be seen in how you talk to yourself, or what’s known as your inner dialogue. This is your inner essence.
There are 12 astrological signs:
- Aries (March 21 — April 19)
- Taurus (April 20 — May 20)
- Gemini (May 21 — June 21)
- Cancer (June 22 — July 22)
- Leo (July 23 — August 22)
- Virgo (August 23 — September 22)
- Libra (September 23 — October 23)
- Scorpio (October 24 — November 21)
- Sagittarius (November 22 — December 21)
- Capricorn (December 22 — January 19)
- Aquarius (January 20 — February 18)
- Pisces (February 19 — March 20)
If you’re wondering about the listed order, it’s not favored in anyone’s direction, it is truly the chronological order for the signs. The astrological year begins with the Aries season and concludes with Pisces.
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Some of you most likely already know your sun sign like I stated earlier, but others might just now be learning. So find your birthday and pinpoint it above. Now we can move on to diving deeper into your chart! Here’s mine for a preview of what you can expect:
There are two ways to find your full birth chart. Option one: you can visit a certified astrologist who will use a fancy equation along with some personal questions about your life to pinpoint your time of birth and astrological coordinates. If you don’t know your birth time, your mom doesn’t know your birth time, or for some odd reason your hospital records don’t have it… this is your best bet. You’ll also need to research on your own to find your astrologist, much like finding a new doctor.
For those of you who do know your birth time, first of all, congratulations. Second, you’ll want to visit a certified chart generator website to grab your birth chart ASAP. You’re more than welcome to visit an astrologist too, that is if you enjoy people in person. Listed below are my personal top three sites for grabbing birth charts.
Birth Chart Websites
Once you have your birth chart, make sure to take a screenshot or save that PDF to your files, you’re going to need this written down somewhere as time goes on.
Now, don’t be alarmed when you see all the information handed to you. There’s a lot to it, but I’m going to break it down for you. I’ll also be using my personal chart as an example so feel free to compare mine with yours.
Using the Chani Nicholas generator, I can see that my Sun Sign (my identity) is in Scorpio (meaning I have a mysterious and penetrating style). There’s also information on houses and transits, but that’s level two so we’ll come back to that another day. Right away though, I know this makes sense for me because my birthday is November 18, just before Scorpio season fades out. Not only that, I know I’m a quiet person, but very deep which aligns with the mysterious and penetrating description.
Next, we have the Moon placement.
Your Moon Sign
The moon represents our psyche and your emotional nature. It also rules over our instincts and vulnerability. It’s known as the maternal planet and represents our needs. It’s also been said to be the energy you really are, especially when you’re alone. I’ve also heard it can be seen in the way you decorate your room. The moon also tells us how we receive and support our loved ones. It reflects the light of other people’s Suns (just like it reflects the light of the Sun every night) and elicits emotional reactions. The way that the moon pulls and pushes the tides, works the same way with our hearts. Because it’s connected to our hearts, it’s the most important placement for us to nourish. The element of a person’s moon placement also indicates a great deal about their emotional palate, but I’ll save that for a later lesson.
What most people don’t understand about astrology is how all these other planets have an effect on us and how they’re determined. The Sun sign is easy because it’s just about what day you were born on since the Sun doesn’t go very far each day in the Earth’s rotation. The moon on the other hand depends on the time of the day and the place a person was born. The moon moves through the signs every two and a half days so you and a friend could have the same birthday but different moon signs if you were born in the morning and they were born in the afternoon.
Looking at my chart, I have a Pisces moon which is a water sign, so naturally my emotions are more complex. This is something I knew about myself long before I dipped into the world of astrology. Naturally a Pisces moon is compassionate, imaginative, loving, and can lack boundaries. Being emotionally sensitive, a Pisces moon tends to absorb other people’s emotions. Check! I can’t count the amount of times I was suddenly stressed out, anxious, or felt small because of how intense another person’s emotions were. I would get this feeling just from walking into a room where someone was by themselves or when I go into a group conversation. So in short, I can vouch for Pisces moons being able to essentially read someone’s heart.
There’s a lot more I could say about the moon sign, but I’ll save that for an in depth post.
Your Rising/ Ascendant
Notice the two names, they mean the exact same thing, one just sounds more sophisticated than the other. Whichever you say, this placement is determined by the Sun’s position in the sky at the time a person was born. The ascendant placement points to the easternmost horizon of our first breath. This is a really cool placement to me, simply because it’s the entry point into our entire life and being, it creates the tone for the rest of our lives and our natal chart.
The ascendant not only tells us about the masks we wear and the more superficial parts of us, but it is also very telling of someone’s day to day nature in my opinion or how a person carries themselves. More importantly this, the ascendant, is what most people probably think your sign is, it’s your first impression. If the sun is your ego, this is your mask protecting said ego. Your rising sign can be representative of your physical appearances, your aesthetic, and it can be seen in your Instagram posts. Now the ascendant isn’t just an indication of our outer traits, it also reveals our shadow selves and aspects of our childhood. Hello childhood traumas! The ascendant also helps us discover likely partnerships and tells us how to find balance. I’m sure you can see by now (at least I hope you can see) how all the “Big Three” placements in your chart work together to make up who you are inside and out.
Now example time: I’m a Pisces rising, go figure right? The first impression most Pisces risings get is they’re easygoing, imaginative, sensitive, and/or impractical. I don’t exactly resonate with this bit, mainly because I distinctly remember in middle school people thought I was a “female dog”, to put it nicely, when they first saw me or talked to me. Apparently my Pisces moon was controlling my looks more back then. On the physical appearance though, oh.. they knocked it out of the park here. Pisces risings are known for their large dreamy eyes (check), gentle demeanor, soothing voice (sometimes I’ve heard this compliment), prominent feet (I’m a size 10, I think that’s pretty prominent), soft skin (check), flowing movements, and star quality. I’m not sure if it’s vain to say I think I have “star quality”, but hey the stars said it first.
We’ll use my chart as an example again here. I did also mention balance and childhood being topics the rising sign points to, so let’s dig into those a bit for a Pisces rising. As children, Pisces risings are perceptive and dreamy, needing a lot of alone time to live in their imagination. If they’re not protected, they’ll absorb other people’s emotions and become psychic sponges for negativity. Meditation and other methods of self-care are good to begin early on so they can harness their gifts of sensitivity and compassion without feeling overwhelmed. Speaking as a Pisces rising who definitely didn’t know about meditation or the idea of self-care until they became viral sensations, I really could have benefited from journaling, meditating, and general self-care as early as eight years old. Take it from someone who lived it, if you have a child (or are expecting one) with a Pisces rising, you need to take their emotional profile and first self-care regimen into serious consideration with parenting.
Reflection Summary
It’s so interesting to see how my moon and rising alone, sitting in the same astrological sign, overlap and work together while also collaborating with my Scorpio sun — all three being water signs may I remind you. I hope you all can see now how the stars connected create the blueprint that makes up who you are. There’s much more I can teach you about so please follow me to keep up with the Holy Astrology series.
