Unlocking Your Birth Chart: Mercury, Venus, & Mars

A Step by Step Guide to Understanding your natal Mercury, Venus, & Mars

This guide is meant to help you understand why you communicate (Mercury), relate (Venus), and take action (Mars) the way you do.

Resources to Have on Hand

In addition to your birth chart, which I explain how to obtain in Step 1, there are a few resources I think you will find very helpful to have handy while you go through this step by step process. You can obtain both of them free by subscribing to my website: marialuz.online. They are: The 12 Zodiac Signs Explained and The Key to Glyphs: Sign and Planets. You can also use the internet (e.g. astro-seek) or a basic astrology book (I recommend this workbook style one), or my podcast Maria Luz’s Conscious Curiosities and this Guide to your Big Three. You will also want to journal your insights.

What is a Birth Chart?

An astrology birth chart, also known as a natal chart, is a snapshot of the celestial bodies' positions at the moment of birth. It displays the positions of the sun, moon, planets, and asteroids, as well as other celestial points such as the Ascendant (Rising sign) and Midheaven (MC).

We can use our birth chart to gain insights into our tendencies based on the positions and aspects (angular relationships) between these celestial bodies. Each planet and point in the chart represents different components of a person's psyche and natural mode of operating, while the houses they fall into provide further insights into the area of life these energies manifest in a person's life.

Because we have the entirety of the birth chart in us, we contain the energies of ALL of the 12 zodiac signs, even if there are no planets or points where that sign resides. We will still feel its energy in that area of our life.

Why should we be consciously curious about Mercury, Venus, and Mars in our birth charts? These planets, along with the Sun and Moon, are considered our ‘personal’ or ‘inner’ planets, because they change sign and house more frequently than planets with longer orbits to the sun.

These 3 planets, which we can see with the naked eye from Earth, can help us understand personal themes around:

• Perception, how we filter information through our mind

• Communication

• How we relate to self, others, material things

• Our creative process

• What is sure to cause us to take action

• Why we value who and what we do

• Our relationship to literature, music, art, theatre

• How we express anger

  

  Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash

Step 1: Download a copy of you birth chart. In addition to your date of birth, you will need the location and time. If you do not know the time, let it assign the default or enter 12:00 (noon). One idea if this is you, you could order your birth record from the county in which you were born (the department of vital statistics), typically for about $30. You can download a copy of your birth chart at one of the below websites, or using an app, such as Time Passages, Co-Star, or the Chani App.

https://astro.cafeastrology.com/natal.php

https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/birth-chart-horoscope-online

https://www.astro.com/cgi/chart.cgi. 

You will end up with a circle that looks like a wheel. In the diagram, the circle represents the celestial sphere, with the Earth at the center. The circle is divided into 12 sections, each representing one of the 12 astrological houses.

 

Each house corresponds to specific areas of life, such as self, home, relationships, career, etc. The houses are numbered counterclockwise starting from the Ascendant, which represents the eastern horizon at the time of birth.

The Ascendant is located at the 9 o'clock position on the chart. The houses are divided by lines called "cusps," which mark the beginning of each house and indicates the point where one house ends and the next begins.

Note that the Ascendant sign changes ~every 2 hours, which is why astrologers stress the importance of an accurate time of birth. Regardless of the sign on the cusp of the first house, the signs always follow one another in the same order, proceeding counter-clockwise from Aries to Pisces.

There are numerous different systems for dividing up the chart. Most astrologers use the system from the lineage in which they were trained. As I am trained in the Jeffrey Wolf Green Evolutionary Astrology lineage, I use the Porphyry house system, which is a quadrant as opposed to an equal house system.

Step 2: Determine your Mercury, Venus, and Mars signs. 

Refer to the Key to Glyphs to see the symbol (glyph) for Mercury (stick figure with round head and little horns), Venus (circle head on top of cross body), and Mars (circle with a diagonal arrow) and for each Sign they are in. In most charts, you will see the glyph for the planet furthest toward the outside of the wheel, followed by a number (the degrees), glyph for the sign, and another number (the minutes), and possibly an ‘Rx’ (retrograde). Your app or birth chart may also have come with a table of glyphs and signs. Write down the sign for each of the 3 planets.

Mercury sign:

Venus sign:

Mars sign:

Step 3: Explore your Mercury, Venus, and Mars sign energy using The 12 Zodiac Signs Explained list (or this book) and the information below.

Basic associations of the three planets are listed below:

Mercury represents our perception of stimuli, internal and external. Think of it like a computer: collecting, sorting, and labelling.

Venus represents how we determine who and what we value, our sense of beauty, and how we relate to people and things. 

Mars represents how we take action toward our conscious goals, how we feel and then embody desire.

In your journal, for the signs for each planet, use the 12 Zodiac Signs Explained (or the book referenced) to identify the Keyphrase. Then write a few of the ‘skillful’ and ‘unskillful’ expressions that resonate with you with regard to what each of the planets represent in your life (from above). Usually, some will jump out at you as feeling familiar! Make any notes about insights.

Example for Mercury in Virgo.

• Keyphrase: My need to analyze, discriminate, and function efficiently.

• Resonant skillful expressions: Analytical, disciplined, helpful.

• Resonant unskillful expressions: Judgemental, self-deprecating, critical.

• Journal Notes: I notice when doing anything unfamiliar, I tend to become self-critical. How can I be more objective and less hyper-critical of myself?

And now its your turn!

Step 4: 

Reflect and/or journal on your Mercury, Venus, and Mars signs. I suggest continuing your exploration after this. Here are some prompts to get you started.

1. Do I keep telling myself and others old stories about myself rather than heal and evolve?

2. What is/was my role in any painful relationship spots? What have I learned?

3. Do I stand up for myself when it is required, or do I habitually abandon myself, and where does that pattern come from? Is there any healing I can do if this is a wound? 

4. Focusing in on one area of life (work, home, health, etc), how might these planets work together to support you?

For extra credit, you may want to do this 20 min hypnotic track to further explore your personal meanings of love, desire, and connection. Also check out episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of Maria Luz’s Conscious Curiosities podcast wherever you listen.

I hope this guide has provided you with a jumping off point to further investigate what makes you tick from an astrology lens. By learning our own and others’ astrology, we develop more compassion for the human condition. We see that some tendencies were just programmed into us, and when we are not aware, we slide onto the path of least resistance rather than to grow and evolve in ways we are meant to.

You are now empowered to own your astrology!

Reference for The 12 Zodiac Signs Explained: Astrology for Yourself, by Douglas Bloch and Demetra George

Related:

Unlocking Your Birth Chart: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding Your Sun, Moon, and Rising Signs

Questions? email me: info@marialuz.online