What is a real Horoscope?

The future forecasts on the Web or in newspapers are often referred to as a “horoscope”. A real horoscope is a MAP of Space-Time – an “image of the hour” as its Greek root words imply. It is a chart of where the Sun and Moon and Planets are located in Space and in relation to each other, and to a particular place on Earth, at a particular instant in Time. It is like a snapshot of “a particular place in Time and Space”. If that instant in Time is the time of birth of an individual and the Space is his birth place, then that horoscope is called a “natal horoscope” or “natal chart” or “birth chart”. When you ask an astrologer for “a birth chart” be sure to provide your month/day/year and town/state/country of birth (plus the hour/minute if you know).

Those “daily horoscope” columns for the 12 zodiac signs are only based on an assumed month and day of birth which falls within a range of dates when the Sun is in a particular Sign. They are generalized “Sun Sign” horoscopes, but they do not take into account the year (or hour and minute) you were born, or the town and country you were born in. Since your personal “Time and Space” are not really known, these so-called “horoscopes” are only based on an estimate of where the Sun was located on your date of birth, and thus are far less detailed and accurate as a Personal Horoscope Reading based on your full birth data – which will include the positions of the Moon and ALL the Planets, and what that means about you as a unique individual. Not even identical twins can be born in the same Space at the same Time.

What the average person calls “a horoscope” is actually a reading of that map of Time and Space, or an interpretation in words of that horoscope chart’s symbolic meaning.

Unless you are a student of astrology who knows how to read the map, you will not get much useful information from a real horoscope chart, any more than you would from looking at your own chest X-ray or mammogram without being a doctor trained in reading X-ray images.