Finding Your Moon Sign
When I learned what my Moon sign and how to find it in my birth chart it was an unexpected act of transformative magick. While I had been observing lunar cycles for years at that point, I was intimidated by how complex birth charts looked like, so I avoided diving into my own. I realized through a bit of study and practice that the birth chart is far less mysterious and complicated than it appears.
What I hope to do with this tutorial is demystify the process of finding the Moon in your birth chart so that you can begin to connect with your lunar flow in even more insightful and powerful ways. For the Moon represents the ways that we channel the vastness of consciousness into our life, how we are shaped by our most true yearnings and desires, and ultimately, helping us find our way back to the inner place that we call home. It’s powerful stuff, so let’s dive in.
Generating Your Birth Chart
Finding your Moon sign (also known as your birth Moon sign or natal Moon) is an essential part of your lunar journey. Use one of the free resources listed below to get your birth chart - my favorite site to do this on is Astrodienst at astro.com. Another option for calculating your chart is Chani Nicholas' beautiful chart generator. It is a great teaching tool for those of you super new to looking at and reading birth charts and works well with her book You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance (which I highly recommend). If you have the resources to, I also recommend printing out a copy of your birth chart and writing all over it as you learn more about what it means and who you are as reflected back to you by planet and star.
image via @anniespratt
Finding The Moon in Your Birth Chart
First let's start with a quick definition. The Natal Moon is the position of the Moon (including its Sign, House, and Lunar Mansion) at the time of your birth. Your Natal Moon is what we are referring to when we talk about your Moon Sign. Your natal Moon (and all of the positions of the planets and other celestial players in your chart) will never change throughout your lifetime. If you were born under a New Moon in Aquarius, you will always have the New Moon in Aquarius as your Natal Moon. This tutorial is all about helping you find your Natal Moon and its position in your birth chart.
So, once you've generated your free birth chart, you can find your natal Moon by looking for the crescent moon symbol - ☾ - on your chart. Below I have highlighted the two places on a free chart from astro.com that information about your Moon sign will show up. On our sample chart, our friend's natal Moon is in the sign of Capricorn. In other words, our friend's Moon sign is Capricorn. You can see the glyph of the Moon - ☾ - located in the sign of Capricorn and numbers next to the glyph which are the exact degrees (i.e. position) of the Moon in that sign. These degrees are also listed below the birth chart along with the degrees of the other celestial players in the chart - I've highlighted its location with an orange box and arrow.
For our sample chart, the natal Moon is located at 19° (degrees) 39' (hours) and 46" (minutes) Capricorn. You'll also see this written as 19 Capricorn 39'46" or 19°39'46" Capricorn in various astrological texts and apps. Most of the time, unless one is making very precise astrological calculations beyond the scope of this course, you only need to know the degree and hour numbers of a sign (i.e.19°39' Capricorn). Knowing the degrees of your Moon sign will help you calculate the position of your natal Mansion of the Moon - but more on that in a minute.
Finding Your Moon Phase
The simplest way to find your Moon phase is to use an online Moon phase calculator such as Moonpage or Chani Nicholas' birth chart generator. You can calculate your Moon phase with an ephemeris and math, but that type of manual astrological technique is harder and harder to find in books these days. The one book in my collection that teaches this technique is Phases of the Moon: A Guide to Evolving Human Nature by Marilyn Busteed and Dorothy Wergin in case you want to learn it.
Whole Signs House System
You'll see that I use whole signs for my house method. If you have a preferred house method for your charts, please use what you are comfortable with. If you don't have a preference, I recommend using whole signs. The whole signs system for measuring houses is one of the most ancient and the style that many of our traditional western astrology ancestors used. I find it to be very accurate and easy to read for beginners and advanced students of astrology alike.
To select whole signs for your birth chart on astro.com, go to the "My Astro" section and click on your name to generate your chart. You'll be taken to a page where you can select the type of chart you want - choose the "Extended Chart" option. Scroll down and you'll see a section labeled "Options for Zodiac and Houses" - use the drop down menu to select "whole signs." Once you do that you can click the "show the chart" button to generate your whole signs chart.
The House Your Moon Is In
You'll notice that the circle of the birth chart is divided into 12 sections (and if you are using the whole signs house system this will be 12 equal sections). Towards the center of the chart you'll see numbers 1 through 12 marking each of the twelve Houses. The Houses always start with the First at the left hand side of the chart and then move in a counter-clockwise direction through the other eleven.
Looking at the sample chart above, we can also see that our friend's natal Moon falls in the 11th House. You can see the number 11 in the center of the chart. The Houses coordinate to different areas of our life - come this way to learn more about the Houses as places of healing rest.
The Mansions of the Moon
Don't worry if you've never heard about the Mansions of the Moon before - while it is an ancient form of astrology it's not used much within modern astrological practice. The Mansions of the Moon (also known as Lunar Mansions) add another layer of auspicious timing to works of magick and self-discovery. We explore the Mansions of the Moon in my course, The Lunar Apothecary, but if you search around there are a few books and websites on the subject that can get you started on learning more (I've listed a few here).
Remember how I pointed out where to find the degrees of your natal Moon? We'll use those degrees now to figure out which Mansion of the Moon your natal Moon was in at the time of your birth. If you look at the list below you'll see that each Mansion is defined by an area of degrees between one to two signs. So the boundaries of the 1st Mansion is from 0°00' Aries to 12°51' Aries. If the degrees of your natal Moon is on or between the degrees of 0°00' Aries to 12°51' Aries then your natal Mansion is the First Mansion.
Using our sample chart, we can determine that our friend's natal Moon - 19°39' Capricorn - is located in the 23rd Mansion.
1st Mansion - 0°00' Aries to 12°51' Aries
2nd Mansion - 12°51' Aries to 25°42' Aries
3rd Mansion - 25°42' Aries to 8°34' Taurus
4th Mansion: 8°34' Taurus to 21°25' Taurus
5th Mansion: 21°25' Taurus to 4°17' Gemini
6th Mansion: 4°17' Gemini to 17°8' Gemini
7th Mansion: 17°8' Gemini to 0°0' Cancer
8th Mansion: 0°0' Cancer to 15°51' Cancer
9th Mansion: 12°51' Cancer to 25°42' Cancer
10th Mansion: 25°42' Cancer to 8°34' Leo
11th Mansion: 8°34 Leo to 21°25' Leo
12th Mansion: 21°25' Leo to 4°17' Virgo
13th Mansion: 4°17' Virgo to 17°8' Virgo
14th Mansion: 17°8' Virgo to 0°0' Libra
15th Mansion: 0°0' Libra to 12°51' Libra
16th Mansion: 12°51' Libra to 25°42' Libra
17th Mansion: 25°42' Libra to 8°34' Scorpio
18th Mansion: 8°34' Scorpio to 21°25' Scorpio
19th Mansion: 21°25' Scorpio to 4°17' Sagittarius
20th Mansion: 4°17' Sagittarius to 17°8' Sagittarius
21st Mansion: 17°8' Sagittarius to 0°0' Capricorn
22nd Mansion: 0°0' Capricorn to 12°51' Capricorn
23rd Mansion: 12°51' Capricorn to 25°42' Capricorn
24th Mansion: 25°42' Capricorn to 8°34' Aquarius
25th Mansion: 8°34' Aquarius to 21°25' Aquarius
26th Mansion: 21°25' Aquarius to 4°17' Pisces
27th Mansion: 4°17' Pisces to 17°8' Pisces
28th Mansion: 17°8' Pisces to 0°0' Aries
And that's it! You now know your natal Moon Sign, House, and Mansion.
image via @anniespratt
Knowing Your Moon
When you learn your Moon sign you can start to read about the ways that your inner Moon shapes the world you live in, the way that you feel at home, and your truest, often hidden, desires. When I say "desires" I am thinking of that which we yearn for most. Very few folks in our lives get to meet our lunar selves as it is such a personal and intimate part of who we are as opposed to our more outward facing Ascendant or Rising Sign and Sun Sign. Our Moon teaches us how we observe, participate in, and perceive our own consciousness - it's a big deal in the birth chart and how we are shaped as individuals.
When you know your Moon sign, you can begin to learn more about the healing gifts of each sign of the zodiac. You can also practice the profound magick that is your monthly lunar return. By knowing your natal Lunar Mansion, you can engage with your shadows for healing and clarity. Of course, those are only just a few ways that learning about the Moon in your birth chart can be of use to you and your practice of healing and magick. I wrote a whole course of study centered on lunar herbalism and magick as a pathway to helping folks discover their unique gifts as a healer because the observation of the Moon in my life has been so profoundly useful. I hope you find it useful, too!
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Wherever your journeys with the Moon takes you, may the path be filled with the sort of insights and tenderness that come from looking into the darkness and finding how holy it is and how sacred we are.
This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎
