Personal planets and luminaries
| Body | Symbolic function in a chart |
|---|---|
| Sun ☉ | Coherence, purpose, vitality and the organizing center of identity |
| Moon ☽ | Habit, emotional regulation, memory, need and embodied response |
| Mercury ☿ | Perception, language, learning, classification and exchange |
| Venus ♀ | Attraction, valuation, relationship style, pleasure and aesthetic choice |
| Mars ♂ | Assertion, effort, separation, desire and direct response |
The Sun and Moon are astronomically a star and a satellite, but astrology traditionally calls them luminaries and reads them alongside the planets. Their faster cycles make transits more frequent and usually shorter.
Social planets
| Planet | Symbolic function in a chart |
|---|---|
| Jupiter ♃ | Expansion, confidence, meaning, opportunity and proportion |
| Saturn ♄ | Boundary, responsibility, structure, delay and durable form |
Jupiter and Saturn connect personal activity with wider social structures. Neither is simply lucky or unlucky. Expansion without proportion can become excess; limitation can frustrate while making a result sustainable.
Outer planets
| Planet | Symbolic function in a chart |
|---|---|
| Uranus ♅ | Disruption, independence, innovation and discontinuity |
| Neptune ♆ | Sensitivity, imagination, idealization and dissolving boundaries |
| Pluto ♇ | Concentration, power, compulsion, elimination and deep reorganization |
Outer planets move slowly, so a generation shares their sign placements. House position, exact degree and aspects make them more individual. Their transits can remain active for a long time and repeat through retrograde motion.
Natal planet and transiting planet
In Astro Legacy the transiting planet is moving through the selected date. The natal planet or point belongs to the birth chart. “Transiting Mars square natal Saturn” therefore has a direction: the current Mars cycle is contacting the natal Saturn pattern.
Read the same pair differently when the roles reverse or the aspect changes. Add the signs, houses, aspect, orb and phase before drawing a conclusion.
Additional bodies and points
Astro Legacy also includes Chiron, the North and South Nodes and Lilith. They are not all planets and should not inherit planetary properties automatically. They have a separate Nodes, Lilith and Chiron guide.
Common questions
Which planet is the most important?
There is no single universal answer. The Sun, Moon and chart ruler often receive attention, while exact angles and repeated aspects can make other planets prominent.
Does retrograde make a planet weak?
Not automatically. Retrograde status changes interpretive context. See retrograde planets.
Does one difficult planet placement predict a problem?
No. A placement describes one part of a system and needs the rest of the chart, timing and real context.