Okay, we're finally ready to dive headlong into the meat of astrology, the astrological chart itself. This is where the foundation of your astrological influences is laid out. A trained astrologer can look at your astrological chart and tell a lot about you just from a glance. By going into depth he can tell even more. So, the questions that need to be answered are, what is an astrological chart, what's on it and how to you make one for a person?

To answer those questions in real depth would take a book in itself. For the purposes of this article we're going to just give you the basics. You can then do further study on your own if you really want to dive into creating and reading your own astrological chart.

An astrological chart is derived from some basic information about your birth. In order to create one, what is needed is your exact date of birth including the exact time. For example, December 12, 1982, at 7:15 PM. Also what is needed is the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the place where you were born. You're probably wondering, why do we need all this info? The reason is simple. The planets are constantly moving every second of every day. Plus, the relationship of where you are to each planet changes based on where on Earth you are at the time of your birth. That's why somebody born on April 5, 1987, at 8:10 AM will have a different astrological chart from somebody born on the exact same date and time if they are born in Germany and the other person is born in Alaska.

The actual technical skill required to put together an astrological chart is mind boggling. However, with computer technology, you can now simply input the information into a program and have your whole chart of when you were born spit out for you. That is about 90% of the battle itself. The rest of the battle is simply interpreting the chart.

An astrological chart contains an enormous amount of information. While all of it is important, some of it is more important than other parts in that the majority of the information derived from the chart comes from these few pieces.

The main thing your chart is going to tell you is what planets were in what houses at the time of your birth. This is important because each planet has a specific influence on certain aspects of your personality depending on which planet it is and what house it occupies. If you've taken a basic science course in school then you know that the 9 planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Neptune, Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto as well as our own Earth. The Earth however is not included in the chart because it is the planets that affect the Earth and not the other way around. So since you know what the planets are, you then need to know what the houses are to know what influences the planets affect.

There are 12 houses, Identity, Spirituality, Community, Ethics and Career, Beliefs, Transformation, Relationships, Work and Service, Creativity, Home and Family, Knowledge and Self Worth. Each of these houses has control over a variety of what you might call sub houses or categories. For example, relationships come in all sizes such as friends, business and relatives. A house is more complex that just its general description.

To simplify the whole process, your chart is read by figuring out which planet is in which house at your birth and thus determining what the major influences are in your life. From the chart we get your sun sign, which is your main sign and a number of other pieces of information. The main pieces give the basic characteristics of your personality and influences. The minor pieces go into more detail, which we will do in future articles.