Understanding The Stars: How To Interpret Your Horoscope in 2019

Whether you’re a passionate follower of the stars or not, horoscopes make for compulsive reading. From your career to love life and everything in between, the level of perspective you can gain ahead of a new day, week, month or year is astounding. But have you ever felt like you’re not fully sure of what you’re reading?

Horoscopes help to put into words what astrology tells us about our behaviour, motivations and the interactions we have - but sometimes we can be at risk of misinterpreting the meanings of what’s in store for us. So, with this in mind, let’s take a look at how horoscopes are designed to be interpreted by readers.

Noting your sun sign

It forms the cornerstone of astrology, and is integral to your interpretation of horoscopes. Your sun sign represents the location of the sun on the day you were born. Over the course of a year, the sun aligns inside each of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. It spends 30 days moving through each sign, and whichever sign the sun was aligned with on the day you were born, that’s your sign.

Horoscopes traditionally chart their contents by sun sign, so it’s imperative to your understanding that you’re aware of which of the twelve signs of the Zodiac you belong to.

Lessons in language

The biggest challenge you face when reading horoscopes is understanding the content that you’re being provided with. To write horoscopes, astrologers pivot on the sign of the first house. When it comes to writing Aries, they put Aries on the first house, and to wrote Taurus, they put Taurus on the first house, and so on.

Astrologers continue this process throughout all signs of the Zodiac. Whenever it comes to constructing a new horoscope, they reassess the house positions of the planets and write their reflections accordingly.

The way horoscopes are written has major ramifications for the reader. If you’re not careful, the horoscope you’ve turned to for the last decade as an Aries could have in fact been written for Aries rising.

Astrology.com signifies this common conundrum with an example: “Say an astrologer wants to focus on Venus’ transit of Libra in their upcoming horoscopes. As an Aries sun sign, you read your Aries horoscope as per usual, understanding that this means Venus would affect the seventh house of partners in romance and business. Venus transiting this space may bring us closer together to partners or highlight the need to find equilibrium in partnerships by using Libran tactics like objectivity and diplomacy.”

Resisting categorisation

While we’re often used to reading horoscopes specifically for our sun sign, it’s worth remembering that we’re all a little more complex than that.

Our personalities are actually made up of the entire Solar System, and the sun and moon function with the help of the eight planets in the Zodiac. Furthermore, the sign each planet occupies influences a specific part of your character.

Because of all of our astrological influences, it’s important to read horoscopes with the understanding that our personalities run much deeper than the text on the paper, or on the screen. Horoscopes remain an accurate way of charting our short-term futures and the influences that will affect our lives, but the way our personalities interpret these influences will vary greatly.

Remember that horoscopes aren’t rulebooks

Reading horoscopes as if they’re blueprints for changing your life is a risky game to play. Astrology was never meant to be a predictive or prescriptive protocol. They don’t tell us what to do or what’s going to happen in specific terms - but their job is to simply advise on the best possible course of action for readers to take by explaining what astrological influences are affecting our lives.

When you read a horoscope, it’s worth remembering that you, like all of us, have a complex personality that’s influenced by everything within our solar system and beyond. Because astrologers don’t have enough space or computing power to take every variation in the planets into account, what you typically read remains highly accurate to your sun sign, but can’t cater for your individual personality.

This means that you must apply your own interpretations to your readings and draw on your life experiences in order to understand the challenges and opportunities you could face and how to make the most from them.

The most important thing to remember the next time you read your horoscope is to have fun! The stars will take care of the rest. With the above interpretive insights in mind, hopefully, you’ll be able to take to the new adventures that 2019 will bring with a better understanding of your sun signs and what they mean to you.