Glossary

Fire moves on appetite: it commits to a thing before it has finished assessing it.

Earth works with what can be measured, held, maintained and spent.

Air puts distance between itself and an experience so that it can describe it.

Water registers a situation as a feeling before it registers it as a fact.

Cardinal signs open a cycle: they initiate, and they are most themselves at the beginning of something.

Fixed signs hold a cycle in place: they sustain, consolidate, and resist being moved off a position.

Mutable signs close a cycle: they adapt, distribute, and prepare the ground for whatever replaces the current arrangement.

The body is in the sign it rules, so it operates on its own terms and needs no translation.

The sign favours this body: its function is welcomed here, sometimes more readily than it is examined.

The body has no traditional standing in this sign. That is the ordinary case rather than a weakness: it simply takes its colour from the rest of the chart.

The body sits opposite the sign it rules, so its usual method does not fit the setting and it has to reach its ends indirectly.

The body sits opposite its exaltation, where its function is easy to overlook and tends to be used with less confidence than it actually has.

Houses 1, 4, 7 and 10. A body here acts early and in the open, and other people register it whether or not you meant them to.

Houses 2, 5, 8 and 11. A body here consolidates: it holds, funds and maintains what the angular houses set in motion.

Houses 3, 6, 9 and 12. A body here works by adjustment, learning and reflection rather than by direct action, which makes it quieter and not weaker.

The angular relationship between two bodies or points — a conjunction, square, trine and so on. This product uses the same word for where today's sky touches your natal chart and for where one chart touches another.

The same aspect arithmetic a natal chart uses, run between where the sky is today and where a body sat at birth. Orbs are half the natal table's width, because a transit is a daily event, not a permanent feature of the chart.

The sky frozen at the exact moment of birth — your birth chart. Computed once and never changes; only today's sky moves against it (see Transit).

The highest point of the sky at the moment of birth — the 10th house cusp. It cannot be computed without a birth time.

A table or calculation giving where a celestial body sat at a given moment. This product's engine runs the Swiss Ephemeris library directly rather than inventing its own position arithmetic.

The degree where a house begins. The Ascendant and Midheaven are two fixed cusps set at birth; how the other ten are drawn between them depends on the house system chosen.

The point setting on the western horizon — directly opposite the Ascendant, the 7th house cusp.

The instant the transiting Sun returns to its natal longitude. Once a year, within a day of the birthday.

The instant the Moon returns to its natal longitude. Thirteen times a year, every 27 days 8 hours on average.

The moment a planet moves from one sign into the next. Filterable under this name in the sky calendar.

How far an angle may sit from exact and still count; the tighter the orb, the stronger the contact. Angles involving the Sun or Moon traditionally get 25% more room.

A contact is applying while the faster body still moves toward exact, and separating once it has passed it. Applying reads as something still forming, separating as something settled.