The planets and what they stand for

This is an introduction to ZodiacFolk’s reflective approach to modern Western astrology, which measures the zodiac from the March equinox (the “tropical” zodiac). Other traditions, including predictive ones, work differently.

If the signs are the style, the planets are the “what”. In astrology, each planet is a different part of life: how you think, how you love, how you push, how you grow. Read the sign as the adverb and the planet as the verb. “Mercury in a bold sign” means thinking, done boldly.

A small note first: astrologers call the Sun and Moon “planets” for convenience, even though the Sun is a star and the Moon is, well, the Moon. Nobody minds.

The fast ones: the personal planets

These move quickly across the sky, so they’re the most personal to you.

• Sun is your sense of direction: what you’re aiming at and what feels like you.
• Moon is what helps you feel at ease: moods, comfort, habits of the heart.
• Mercury is thinking and communication: how you take in information and share it.
• Venus is what you enjoy and value: taste, affection, what makes life pleasant.
• Mars is energy and action: drive, effort, how you go after things.

The big, slower ones

• Jupiter is growth and possibility: learning, optimism, where you stretch. It takes about a year per sign.
• Saturn is responsibility and limits: structure, patience, the long game. It takes roughly two and a half years per sign.

The distant ones: the outer planets

These move so slowly that a whole generation shares them, so they color an era more than a person.

• Uranus is change and independence: surprises, shake-ups, freedom. About seven years per sign.
• Neptune is imagination and uncertainty: dreams, art, things that are hard to pin down. About fourteen years per sign.
• Pluto is deep change and letting go: what gets transformed. Roughly twelve to thirty years per sign, since its path is uneven.

A memory trick

Sort them by speed. The Moon is the sprinter, Pluto is the one still stretching. The faster a planet moves, the more it shows up in daily life; the slower, the more it shapes the background of a whole period.

Planets don’t act alone

A planet always sits in a sign (the style) and a house (the area of life), and it can form angles with other planets (you’ll meet those in the aspects lesson). Learn those in the later lessons. For now, remember one rule of thumb: every planet is a different question. Mercury asks “how do I think about this?”, Venus asks “what do I value here?”, Mars asks “what do I do about it?”

What this isn’t

Here, we use planets as symbols, a set of labels for ordinary parts of life, and then reflect on how those parts are doing. We don’t use them as evidence that a planet causes anything, or to predict what will happen. Some traditions of astrology do predict; this introduction doesn’t, and it doesn’t claim they work either way.

Try this

Pick one planet for the day: Mars on a day you need to push, or Venus on a day you want to enjoy something. Do one small thing that fits it. Mars: tackle the chore you’ve been dodging. Venus: make one thing nicer, like a nicer mug or a favorite snack. At night, note whether naming it helped.

Next: make a star map of the real sky above any place and moment.