PRACTICE / 26 OF 36
Find Your Three Key Placements
By the end you can find your Sun, Moon and Ascendant and write one line for each with the planet as its subject.
Approved original lessons, free on the web · 2026-10-12
THE IDEA
Task: find the three key placements and write one line for each.
Diagram: an outer ring labelled Sun, an inner ring labelled Moon, and a point at the bottom labelled Ascendant, stacked on one vertical line to show three different layers rather than real degrees.
Copy down your Sun, Moon and Ascendant exactly as shown, candidates included.
Finding them on screen
Start with the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant: they are the placements most often used to describe a person, and the steadiest place to begin reading. Find all three and you have the material for three lines.
Reflection promptOn the chart page the Sun and the Moon each have a row, with a sign and perhaps a house. The Ascendant has its own row, which shows its sign when you have a birth time.
How this tool worksCopy the three down before doing anything else, including any “unconfirmed” mark and both candidates. A candidate is what this chart truly looks like, and worth noting as it is.
Reflection promptWhat the old texts say: in Book III ch. 12 of the Tetrabiblos, listing parts of the body, Ptolemy gives the Sun sight, the brain and the heart; ch. 13 gives the Moon the sensory, non-rational part; and ch. 2 takes the rising degree as the chart’s starting point.
Cited sourceThe planet is the subject of the sentence; the sign describes it.
One line each, planet first
Write “my Moon is in Scorpio, so under pressure I go quiet first,” with the planet as the subject. If you have a house, add the area of life; if not, two parts make the whole sentence. “My Moon is in Scorpio” is more accurate than “I am a Scorpio”: a sign describes one body, not the whole person.
Reflection promptA common reading: the Moon shows what you need to feel safe, and Scorpio gives it a deep, held-in, watch-first manner, so under pressure it goes quiet first. Keep the sentence shape, change the body or the sign, and you have a different line.
Later interpretationOnce the three lines are written, keep them separate. Kept apart, the gaps between them stay visible — and the gaps are often the most useful part: a steady-looking Ascendant with a quick-reacting Moon, for instance, is a clue worth noting.
Reflection promptWhat the old texts say: the book judges a body first and then the sign it is in — for example Book IV ch. 4 reads Mars, Venus and Mercury and the signs they are passing through.
Cited sourceOBSERVE YOUR OWN CHART
Look at my chart
Your turn: three lines, in this lesson’s note.
- Copy your Sun, Moon and Ascendant, with any “unconfirmed” mark and candidates.
- Write one line each with the planet as the subject and the sign describing it.
- No Ascendant? The Sun and Moon lines are the whole answer.
Without a birth time, rising sign and houses stay blank.
LOOK CLOSER
A common mix-up
“The three lines should sound like the same person.”
The three describe different layers, so differences are normal — and that gap is one of the most useful clues in a chart.
“With two candidates, just pick one to make it easier.”
Keeping both is the accurate record; if you find your birth time later, it settles on its own.
CHECK YOURSELF
Now, try it yourself.
Sources and rights
- Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, trans. F. E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library, 1940)
Book III ch. 12 gives the Sun sight, the brain and the heart in its list of body parts; ch. 13 gives the Moon the sensory, non-rational part and Mercury the rational; ch. 2 takes the rising degree as the starting point; and Book IV ch. 4 shows judgment starting from a body and its sign. The body-manner-area sentence order is this lesson's arrangement.
The Robbins translation is in the public domain, as the University of Chicago LacusCurtius copyright page records. The transcriber's own notes and layout are not cited. · 2026-10-10
Limits of this lesson
Without a birth time the Ascendant row is empty and the Sun and Moon lines are the whole answer; with two candidates, note both.
The demonstration placements are not a real person’s chart.
YOUR STUDY
Write what you learned in your own words.
Write your three lines here. Later lessons come back and revise them.
Your note stays in this browser. Switching languages will not translate it.