Planet Types
If the planets had an org chart..
If you’ve ever wondered why your chart has multiple planets but people only tend to talk about a couple on social media, this page is for you.
Astrology groups the planets by how they function in your life. Some describe your personality and day-to-day behavior. Others influence how you think, connect, grow, or change over time. The more personal the planet, the more noticeable it tends to be.
Let’s break them down.
The Big Three
These are the ones you’ll hear about most often: Your Sun, Moon, and Rising (aka Ascendant).
They describe your core personality (Sun), your emotional world (Moon), and your first impression/aesthetic/filter on reality (Rising). This trio gives people a snapshot of how you operate day to day.
If astrology were a novel, the Big 3 would be the main character, internal monologue, and book cover.
Personal Planets
These are the planets that feel the most you. They influence your thoughts, preferences, and behavior.
Mercury – how you think, speak, and process
Venus – what you value, how you connect
Mars – what drives you, how you act
Together with your Big 3, these form your personality blueprint. They shape your decisions, communication style, attraction patterns, and conflict habits—basically the part of you that people actually interact with.
(Sun, Moon, Rising, Mercury, Venus and Mars are sometimes known as Your Big Six.)
Social Planets
These move more slowly and affect the parts of your life that evolve with experience: career, beliefs, authority, ambition, and long-term relationships.
Because they stay in each sign for about a year (Jupiter) or two and a half (Saturn), you share them with people close to your age, and they tend to influence generational milestones and life phases—graduations, quarter-life crises, late-bloomer glow-ups, etc.
Outer Planets
Sometimes called the generational planets, because they move so slowly you share them with your generation. They shape big themes over decades or entire life stages.
Uranus – how you rebel, innovate, and wake up
Neptune – how you dream, blur, and transcend
Pluto – how you transform, confront power, and regenerate
These planets are not specific to you, so they’re less about personality and more about what you’re here to unravel. They can describe where you feel drawn to extremes, where you dissolve your ego, or where you keep rebranding yourself whether you want to or not.
Other Stuff in Your Chart
The below aren’t planets, but they’re still worth paying attention to. Think of them as adjacent to the personal planets—more niche, a little weirder, and not always active at full volume. But when they are loud, they tend to hit deep. (not a comprehensive list, but these are the ones I tend to pay the most attention to)
An asteroid associated with the wound you didn’t ask for but somehow became good at dealing with. Chiron shows where you may feel tender, awkward, or perpetually “off,” but also where you develop wisdom, empathy, and very specific superpowers.
Think of it as the part of you that says, “I can’t explain why, but I get this.”
Lilith isn’t a planet—it’s a point in the Moon’s orbit tied to rejection, rage, and reclamation. It can show where you’ve been told you’re “too much” or “not enough,” especially around autonomy, sexuality, and power.
It doesn’t play nice. That’s kind of the point.
Short for Medium Coeli, this is the highest point in your chart. It represents your public-facing self: career, reputation, ambition, and the legacy you’re building. It’s not always about a job—it’s about what you’re known for.
The MC is your professional headline, even if the rest of your chart is off writing poems in the woods.
Directly opposite the MC, the IC rules your inner foundation. Childhood, home, roots, privacy, and what “security” actually feels like to you. While the MC shows your public face, the IC is who you are when no one’s watching.
It’s not always visible, but it shapes everything.
The North Node points to the direction you’re growing into. The South Node shows what comes easily—possibly tooeasily. They’re not planets, but they speak to purpose, past tendencies, and the kind of stretch that feels both terrifying and weirdly inevitable.
If your chart is a GPS, the Nodes are the long-term route. Not always the fastest. Definitely the most meaningful.