Free birth chart: calculation and interpretation
A birth chart is a map of the sky at the moment you were born, seen from your birthplace.
Your birth
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By Thomas Guilhot · updated
Example: Camille, Paris, March 14, 1987, 2:30 PM
How to read a birth chart
The texts report what tradition associates with each position; none describes future events.
What tradition says
For Western astrology, heir to Ptolemy and the Greek authors, each planet is said to stand for a function, each sign a way of carrying it out, and each house an area of life. Reading a chart would amount to combining these three layers: Venus, in Taurus, in the 10th house would speak of a taste for lasting beauty, expressed in the public role. Aspects would tell how these functions talk to one another.
Authors do not agree on everything: the house system, orbs, the modern rulerships of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, the place of Lilith. We state our choices. No scientific demonstration supports it: it offers words for describing yourself, not a verdict.
How to read this chart
Planet
A function of the personality: thinking, loving, acting, growing, lasting. The Sun and the Moon, called luminaries, are counted with the planets.Sign
The way a planet would express itself: with drive, with constancy, with curiosity. Twelve signs, 30° each.House
The area of life where a planet would act: resources, home, relationships, vocation. Calculating them requires the exact moment and the town of birth.Rising sign
The point of the zodiac that rises in the east as you come into the world; its sign opens the 1st house and would color the first impression.Aspect
A notable angle between two planets (conjunction, sextile, square, trine, opposition). It shows how their functions are in dialogue.Orb
The gap between the actual angle and the exact angle of an aspect. The smaller it is, the stronger the aspect is said to be.Retrograde
A planet that, seen from Earth, seems to move backward through the zodiac. A mere optical illusion, read by astrologers as a more inward function.Element and modality
Fire, earth, air, and water; the cardinal, fixed, and mutable modalities. Counting them gives the overall relief of the chart.
How a birth chart is calculated
The calculation starts with the time. The time on a birth certificate is legal time, to be converted to universal time, with the time zone and any daylight saving time of the period included: in France, these often changed, and between 1940 and 1942 the unoccupied zone and the occupied zone did not share the same time. Before 1891, each town followed its own local time, which the calculation reconstructs from the longitude.
The longitudes of the ten celestial bodies, the Sun, the Moon, and eight planets, are then drawn from the Astronomy Engine library, whose accuracy is on the order of an arcminute. They are expressed in the so-called tropical zodiac, used in the West, whose first degree coincides with the spring equinox. The true lunar node and Lilith (the mean Black Moon) are added to them.
Local sidereal time and latitude finally give the rising sign, the Midheaven, and the twelve houses, in Placidus, the most common system. Near the poles, where Placidus becomes impossible to calculate, the chart switches to Porphyry and says so. The aspects included are the five major aspects, with orbs of 5 to 8°, widened for the Sun and the Moon.
What your chart studies
Your birth chart read position by position: the planets, houses, and aspects of your chart, each one explained, to read online and in a PDF booklet.
Sun in Pisces, house 9
Sun in Pisces
You exist fully when you feel, imagine, and connect to a reality larger than yourself.
Your chart in 2 minutes
The key markers that set the tone of your chart, one sentence each.The Sun, Moon, and rising sign trio
Three markers form the foundation of a chart.Your planets, sign by sign
Each planet describes a function: thinking, loving, acting, growing, lasting.The houses of your chart
The houses divide your birth sky into twelve areas of life.The major aspects
When two planets form a notable angle with each other, their functions are in dialogue.How the energies are distributed
Where the ten planets gather: by element, by modality, and, with the time of birth, in relation to the horizon.Your action notebook
Eight leads drawn from your trio and your tightest aspect, to spread over four weeks, two per week: a strength to cultivate, a point to watch.How your chart was calculated
The positions come from the site’s astronomical engine (Astronomy Engine).
For the person in the example: 5 chapters, 43 readings, about 2 minutes for the essentials, 8 minutes in full, and a PDF booklet.
In practice
Free, no account
No sign-up, no email address, no trial that turns into a paid plan.Online and as a PDF booklet
The complete chart is read online on its own page and can be downloaded as a PDF booklet, to print or keep.Your data, yours
First name, day, time, and city of birth are sent once to the Versana server, which calculates the chart and stores the complete chart with them. They never appear in a page address, are neither sold nor shared, and are erased along with it: at any time from its page, and after three years at the latest.
Go further in this section
Rising sign calculator
The rising sign alone, calculated step by step, with the margin of error on the time.The twelve signs
Dates, elements, modalities, and rulers of the twelve signs of the zodiac.The rising sign, sign by sign
Each rising sign read in detail: first impression, ruler, love, and work.The Moon and its phases
Phases, the year’s full moons, and the Moon’s passage through the signs.
Share the tool: the link leads to the page, without anything you entered.
Frequently asked questions about the birth chart
Is the birth chart calculation free?
Yes, entirely: no sign-up, no email address, no trial that turns into a paid plan. You receive a complete birth chart: the wheel, the Sun, Moon, and Rising trio, each planet in sign and in house, the houses, the aspects, and the distribution of the elements, each with its reading.
The complete chart is read online on its own page and can be downloaded as a PDF booklet, to print or keep.
What if I don’t know my birth time?
Check “unknown time”: the chart is then calculated for noon, and the site shows no rising sign, no Midheaven, and no houses, which would change from one hour to the next. The planets in their signs, their aspects, and the distribution of the elements remain readable. If the Moon changes sign that day, the page says so.
To find the time, ask for the full copy of your birth certificate from the town hall where the birth was registered: the time appears on it.
Why does another site give a different rising sign?
The gap almost always comes from the data rather than the formulas. A forgotten daylight saving hour shifts everything by one hour; a 1941 birth in the unoccupied zone, by two; a village replaced by the county seat moves the horizon by a few minutes. Some sites also replace a missing time with noon without saying so.
The house system does not change the rising sign: Placidus, Porphyry, or Equal houses all start from the same degree. Only a sidereal zodiac, that of Indian astrology, gives a different sign, shifted by about 24°.
To compare, open the rising sign calculator: it shows the universal time and the sidereal time used, values that any other serious software should reproduce.
What is the Placidus house system?
It is a way of dividing the sky into twelve houses, attributed to the Italian monk Placidus de Titis (17th century). It divides into three the time each degree takes to rise from the horizon to the meridian, and then to descend from it. It is the most common system in software and among French astrologers of the 20th century, including André Barbault.
Its limit is well known: beyond the polar circle, some degrees never rise and the calculation fails. The site then switches to Porphyry, an older division. Other divisions exist, in equal parts or sign by sign; the complete chart sticks to Placidus.
True node or mean node: which should you choose?
The lunar nodes mark the two places where the Moon’s path crosses the Sun’s. Their actual movement oscillates: that is the true node. The mean node smooths out this oscillation; the gap between the two rarely exceeds a degree and a half.
The site uses the true node, like most current software; older ephemerides and part of the French school used the mean node. The choice changes the sign only when the node is near a boundary: the complete chart uses the true node.
Is my birth data kept?
For the complete chart, yes. First name, day, time, and city of birth are sent once to the Versana server, which calculates the chart and stores the complete chart with them. They never appear in a page address, are neither sold nor shared, and are erased along with it: at any time from its page, and after three years at the latest.
To suggest places, the site loads a small file of names sharing your first two or three letters, without transmitting what you type.
What if I lose the link to my complete chart?
The link appears as soon as the complete chart is ready: add it to your bookmarks or download the PDF booklet, which can be kept without the link. No account or email replaces it: without the link, a complete chart cannot be found again, and that is what keeps it private.
Does a birth chart predict the future?
No. The chart describes the position of the stars at one moment; what tradition associates with those positions is a symbolic language, not an announcement. Our texts report it in the conditional and announce no event, whether in love, at work, or elsewhere.
Astrology has not received scientific validation. Many people use it as a mirror: words to name tendencies, to compare with what they are living. That is the use we offer.