Astrology Symbols and Glyphs: A Complete Guide to Reading Your Chart
Every symbol on a birth chart decoded — the 10 planets, 12 zodiac signs and 5 major aspects, with a glyph key and how to read a placement like a sentence. The whole alphabet of your wheel.
The first time you see your birth chart, it looks like a coded message from a civilisation that really liked circles. Little forks, crescents, arrows, a lopsided h. It’s not decoration and it’s not random — it’s an alphabet, and a small one. About ten planets, twelve signs, a handful of aspect marks. Learn the glyphs once and the wheel stops being a puzzle and starts reading like a sentence.
Everything below is exactly what this site’s chart calculator draws, so the key doubles as a legend for your own wheel.
The planets and points — who is acting
The planets are the actors: each one governs a department of life. The three points at the bottom (Ascendant, Midheaven, North Node) aren’t planets but appear on the wheel, usually labelled rather than drawn as a glyph.
| Glyph | Body | Governs |
|---|---|---|
| ☉ | Sun | Identity & vitality |
| ☽ | Moon | Emotion & instinct |
| ☿ | Mercury | Mind & communication |
| ♀ | Venus | Love & values |
| ♂ | Mars | Drive & desire |
| ♃ | Jupiter | Growth & meaning |
| ♄ | Saturn | Structure & discipline |
| ⛢ | Uranus | Change & awakening |
| ♆ | Neptune | Dreams & dissolution |
| ♇ | Pluto | Power & transformation |
| Asc | Ascendant | The mask you wear |
| MC | Midheaven | Vocation & legacy |
| ☊ | North Node | Soul’s direction |
A memory trick: most glyphs are built from three pieces — a circle (spirit), a crescent (soul) and a cross (matter). Venus ♀ is spirit over matter; Mars ♂ is the same circle with the cross flung outward as an arrow. You don’t need the symbolism to use the chart, but it makes the marks stick.
The zodiac signs — how it’s expressed
If a planet is who, the sign it sits in is how — the style, the accent, the costume. Each glyph is a stylised picture of the sign’s creature or emblem.
| Glyph | Sign | Element · Modality |
|---|---|---|
| ♈ | Aries | Fire · Cardinal |
| ♉ | Taurus | Earth · Fixed |
| ♊ | Gemini | Air · Mutable |
| ♋ | Cancer | Water · Cardinal |
| ♌ | Leo | Fire · Fixed |
| ♍ | Virgo | Earth · Mutable |
| ♎ | Libra | Air · Cardinal |
| ♏ | Scorpio | Water · Fixed |
| ♐ | Sagittarius | Fire · Mutable |
| ♑ | Capricorn | Earth · Cardinal |
| ♒ | Aquarius | Air · Fixed |
| ♓ | Pisces | Water · Mutable |
That element-and-modality column isn’t filler — it’s the grid that generates all twelve signs, explained in zodiac elements and modalities. Once you know a sign’s fuel and its motion, the glyph is just a name tag.
The aspects — how the pieces connect
The lines drawn across the middle of the wheel carry their own small set of marks. These are the five major aspects:
| Glyph | Aspect | Angle & feel |
|---|---|---|
| ☌ | Conjunction | 0° — fusion |
| ⚹ | Sextile | 60° — easy opportunity |
| □ | Square | 90° — productive friction |
| △ | Trine | 120° — natural flow |
| ☍ | Opposition | 180° — polarity |
If you want these unpacked properly — why squares aren’t curses and trines aren’t free lunches — that’s birth chart aspects explained.
Reading a placement like a sentence
Here’s where the alphabet becomes language. A placement is almost always written planet + sign (and, if you have a birth time, + house). Read it left to right:
- ☽ in ♋ = Moon in Cancer = emotional instinct, expressed in a nurturing, home-rooted key.
- ☿ in ♊ = Mercury in Gemini = the thinking mind, running fast and curious.
- ♀ in ♏ in the 7th = Venus in Scorpio in the seventh house = how you love (intense, all-or-nothing), playing out in the arena of partnership.
Who, how, where. That three-part grammar is the entire skill behind how to read your birth chart, and every line of a full reading is just that sentence repeated for each planet.
One note for readers raised on Vedic charts: these round-wheel glyphs are the Western convention. North and South Indian kundli diagrams are square grids that use short abbreviations (Su, Mo, Ma, or Sanskrit initials) rather than these symbols — same planets and signs, a different drawing tradition. This site renders the Western wheel, so the glyphs above are the ones you’ll meet here.
See them on your own wheel
- Calculate your birth chart — free, in your browser, no account.
- Hover any glyph on the wheel and match it to the tables above.
- Read each planet as a little sentence — who, how, where — and the coded message turns out to have been about you all along.
Reading about charts is one thing — seeing your own is another. It takes about thirty seconds.