Once a natal chart is drawn up, then the interesting question comes up: just what does it mean?

To say there is a "correct" interpretation of a natal chart is nonsense. There are many interpretations. "Right" and "wrong" are not the variables at work here. The variable at work is: what are you looking for?

The natal chart contains enough information about you to fill an encyclopedia and then some.

You're not going to digest all that in one swallow. Narrow down your enquiry to something manageable.

Once you have that figured out, getting going on the interpretation of the chart is fairly straight-forward. If you're a beginner, you'll want someone knowledgeable about astrology to walk you through the parts of your chart which answer your question(s).

Those more knowledgeable about astrology will find themselves buying one (or more!) of the many books available on chart interpretation. But an arm's length opinion from a professional astrologer often rounds that picture out, and is well worth the money invested.

Once you have that diagram of the planets in front of you and you start to try and figure it out, you will come up against the one hard reality of astrology: it is a foreign language unique unto itself, the language of the stars. And like any foreign language, it requires time, effort, and patience to learn.

The language of the stars is unlike any other. It is not linear. We are used to speaking in sentences, which usually take one thought and logically tag it onto to the next. Forget that lonely left-brain approach. Get your right-brain functioning, too. Astrology has multifaceted factors at play simultaneously, even multi-dimensional if your spiritual comprehension goes that far.

It's a bit of a stretch to take all that activity and reduce it to a dry linear language, and often a few things are lost in the translation process. Good astrologers are like language interpreters. This is art as well as science.

To interpret a chart, astrologers often start by looking at four basic areas: The signs, the houses, the planets, and the aspects. Each is a lengthy curriculum in itself to learn. (Advanced chart interpretation gets in things like transits, progressions, and returns.) Then these four are blended together in a process called chart synthesis. This is where people who are good at working simultaneously with left and right brain excel, and it's where you really get to see what your chart says about you.

This is also where you see the differences in the schools of astrology, as different schools do the synthesis differently, as do different astrologers. It is the synthesis which makes the big difference in the interpretation. There aren't really textbooks for this. It's something learned from a lot of experience.

And here is where your free choice comes in again. You can invest the time and energy and learn to do this yourself, or you could see a professional and gain the benefit of his/her years of experience. Click here for a few tips on getting the most from your professional astrologer.