How to ACTUALLY study astrology
study tips from your astrologer bestie ~ everything I wish I knew when I started studying astrology!
So, you’ve fallen in love with astrology. Maybe you pulled your chart for the first time and are now diving into all your placements. Maybe you understand all the individual pieces of your chart but are stuck on how it all fits together. Or maybe you are comfortable with your own chart but have trouble reading other people’s.
Either way, that screenshot folder full of hot takes from AstroTok and that Pinterest board of random graphics isn’t cutting it anymore. Now you’re ready to go deeper… and you’re realizing that this rabbit hole is deeeeep. So where do you even begin?!
At this point in your astrology journey, you probably don’t need more information. You need to learn how to work with the information in real world applications.
Astrology is best understood when lived and experienced. This was the major unlock for me in my studies. I studied the charts of my friends, family, and famous people to understand how different placements manifested. I paid attention to transits and watched how they unfolded for myself and the people in my life. I got curious and created research projects to dive into.
Astrology isn’t meant to be studied like vocab words on flash cards. At its core, astrology is storytelling. Really, this is what makes someone a “good” astrologer–they have the ability to make the birth chart come alive! They know how to tell the story of a chart and animate its characters. Good astrologers can pull the stars down to earth and make them relatable through real world examples, metaphors, and analogies.
Yes, the more you study, the more factual information you will learn… but you will also be taking in different perspectives, hearing the same concepts described many different ways, and picking up cool insights along the way. All of this will help you develop your own unique voice and way of thinking.
So if you’re ready to take your astrology studies seriously, here are some study tips to help you apply your knowledge to the real world and gain fresh insights, plus the best way to learn advanced astrology topics—basically all the tips I wish I had gotten when I started self-studying astrology almost a decade ago!
✩ Study tips for: Real World Application ✩
Celebrity & historical figure charts
These are goldmines. Why? Because their lives are public! You can find pretty much anyone’s chart online between the Astro Databank, AstroSeek, and Astro Charts. Find the chart of someone interesting, then watch a documentary or read their biography while referencing their chart. Autobiographies specifically are great for astrology studies because you get to hear their first-hand experience and learn more about how they think.
For a more advanced case study, examine their major life events through transits, solar return charts, or progressed charts. If you want to practice your interpretation skills, pretend to give the person a reading.
Create your own research project
It can be difficult to take in information if you are bouncing around from topic to topic. Focus your studies by choosing a niche topic to research. It could be as simple as a deep dive into a particular sign or planet, or you could focus your research on a topic like “astrology of my favorite musicians” or “Venus signs of famous artists.”
You could even take a poll among your friends or on social media. Occasionally, I will do one of these research projects on my Instagram story. For example, once I asked everyone what they did for work and the sign of their Midheaven. There were a lot of correlations, with several Libra MCs working in law or human resources, and Scorpio MCs working as therapists or counselors!
Read for friends & family
There are many benefits to reading the chart of someone in your life. For one, you probably know this person fairly well which gives you context. It’s really fun to see their personality traits explained by their chart! It also helps you begin to connect dots between certain placements and find similarities across several charts. For instance, all my Libra rising friends are major people pleasers, and all my Virgo sun friends have stomach problems! (Love you guys, sorry for airing your dirty laundry on my Substack)
Another benefit of reading for friends or family is that they can give you real-time feedback. You get to practice how you explain things, test your interpretations, and see how they land. The people in your life can be a safe space to start if you are interested in reading for others but don’t feel ready to read for a stranger yet.
Read for a stranger
On the flipside, maybe you don’t have anyone in your life who you feel comfortable reading for yet. Or maybe you’ve read your friends and family to filth, and you’re ready to test your abilities out on a stranger’s chart. The subreddit r/AskAstrologers can be a great place to connect with randoms online. This sub is full of people’s charts and their specific questions like “why am I so critical?” or “why do I struggle to make friends?” This is a great way to get practice with answering targeted questions!
Teach your friend who knows nothing about astrology
They say you don’t truly understand something until you can teach it to others. Find an astro-curious friend and try to teach them about rising signs, Mercury retrograde, or whatever topic you’ve been studying. This will really test your knowledge!
Follow astrological transits
A birth chart may be static, but the planets are always moving. Tracking transits is a great way to get a feel for each planet as they move through the zodiac (and thus, your birth chart). Let’s say your 7th house is ruled by Cancer and you have no planets there. You may not be as familiar with this sign or house if you are only studying your personal placements. However, this part of your chart becomes activated as transiting planets move through Cancer, giving you a taste of that sign’s flavor.
Pay attention to planetary ingresses, aka whenever a planet moves into a new sign. Take note of where it’s happening in your chart and how it manifests for you IRL. An easy way to do this as a beginner is to follow the sun through the 12 signs. The sun will remain in a sign for about a month, giving you plenty of time to get familiar with each sign (p.s. I write a ZODiAC MAGAZiNE each season to help you do just this!)
If you’re ready for something more advanced, consider tracking the moon (who spends about 2.5 days in a sign) or looking at current aspects (eg. Venus square Saturn) against your chart.
✩ Study tips for: Learning Advanced Topics ✩
Read astrology books
I know social media algorithms are tempting, but books give you depth. This will also expose you to several different astrologers, approaches, and philosophies. My local library has a great selection of astrology books, so be sure to check yours out too! You can also find used astrology books online for dirt cheap through sites like ThriftBooks. If you want somewhere to start, here are some books I would recommend:
The Moon Sign Guide: An Astrological Look at Your Inner Life by Annabel Gat (beginner-friendly)
You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance by Chani Nicholas (beginner-friendly)
Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View by Richard Tarnas (advanced)
Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune by Chris Brennan (advanced)
For more astrology book recs, check out my Bookshop! I also have my favorite tarot, witchcraft, fiction, and self development books listed there.
DIY Lectures
If you are an auditory learner or enjoy lectures, a fabulous resource for you is the Astrology Podcast. This show is the definition of a deep dive–some of the episodes are over 6 hours long! I enjoy watching the video version, as opposed to listening to the podcast, because I am a more visual person and they will share graphics related to whatever they are discussing. They have episodes on cool topics like queer astrology, the United States’ Pluto Return, financial astrology, and astrocartography. I love to listen to it and take notes as if it’s a class I’m enrolled in!
You could hypothetically do this with any YouTube channel or podcast, but The Astrology Podcast is truly the gold standard when it comes to astrology content online! There is nobody doing it like Chris Brennan. He also invites a variety of guest astrologers onto the show, so it’s a good way to get exposure to more schools of thought.
Pair astrology with other disciplines
Astrology becomes even richer when layered with other practices and disciplines. Make it personal and let your other interests weave in! Here are some examples of how I incorporate astrology into my other interests:
Mythology is where the planets really come to life. Each planet is associated with a god or goddess, and their myths help you see them as living and breathing entities rather than just planets in our solar system. For instance, in astrology, Saturn and Jupiter are like, total opposites? According to myth, Zeus (Jupiter) is the son of Cronos (Saturn) and they have a pretty…weird…father-son relationship.
In Tarot, each card is associated with a sign or planet. If you can already read tarot, this can be a great way to conceptualize astrology and understand the symbols and archetypes associated with each sign and planet. Each sign has its own designated Major Arcana card (Aries = Emperor, Taurus = Hierophant). Since there are only 12 signs and 22 Major Arcana cards, the leftover cards are associated with the traditional seven planets (Mercury = Magician, Empress = Venus) and the four elements. Additionally, the four suits of the Minor Arcana are associated with the elements and are divided up using a modality system (cardinal, fixed, mutable) so each sign also has three designated cards. Check out this Labyrinthos post for more information on this system.
My Witchcraft practice is so intertwined with astrology that I really couldn’t do magick without it. You can use astrology to guide your manifestations and align them with certain transits or lunations. For instance, a new moon in Taurus would be a good opportunity for money manifestation, or transit Venus conjunct your ascendant would be great for glamour magick. I also like to create altars for each equinox/solstice to welcome the new season and align with its energy.
It’s so much fun to explore history and pop culture through the lens of astrology! This is a branch of astrology called mundane astrology and deals with the astrology of society or the collective, rather than the individual's birth chart. This method works really well if you are wanting to learn more about the generational planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) which influence the masses over several years due to their slow pace.
I hope this article gave you a sense of direction for your studies and inspired new ideas. It was a lot of fun to put together, and it’s exactly the type of resource I wish I had when I started studying astrology nearly ten years ago.
Not to sound discouraging, but you will not master this in a week. Or a year. Or maybe ever. And that’s okay! Even as a professional astrologer, the stars still surprise me and I’m always learning new things about them (and myself).
Astrology is about cultivating awareness, curiosity, and connection with the cosmos. Studying astrology is a lifelong journey, and that’s the beauty of it.
Beautiful recommendations! I personally didn’t go the celebrity route (I avoid pop culture like the plague) but one thing I did add in at first was intuiting someones sign when I first met them. This was amazing to see what came up for me after they told me their chart. While sometimes the sun sign might not be what you receive first, it’s interesting to see what you did pick up and why after looking at their chart!