Free Weekly Horoscope
Monday morning, and the question is in the air: what will this week bring? That is what the free weekly horoscope is for. It sits between the daily horoscope, which is out of date by the afternoon, and the yearly horoscope, which is far too broad for everyday life. Seven days is a stretch of time you can take in at a glance.
What a weekly horoscope is
A weekly horoscope is a reading for one star sign – that is, for everyone whose Sun was in the same sign of the zodiac at birth; astrologers also call it the Sun sign. The Sun moves on by about one degree a day and takes around thirty days to cross a sign, which is why your date of birth alone is enough to work it out. Twelve texts therefore cover the whole readership.
From this follows the most important thing about such texts: they are a weather forecast, not a letter written to you. A forecast for half the country is not wrong just because your own garden stays dry. It describes a general pattern, not your patch of ground.
Where the statements come from
The basis is not inspiration but a table: the ephemeris, the list of planetary positions for every single day. From it you read off which celestial bodies form which angle to each other during the week. Each one moves at its own speed, and its speed determines what it governs.
- The Moon changes sign roughly every two days. It gives the week its beat: about three shifts of mood, no more.
- Mercury and Venus always stay close to the Sun – Mercury never more than about 28 degrees away from it, Venus never more than about 48. They supply the concrete topics: conversations, arrangements, money, affection.
- Mars stands for drive and friction. It needs almost two years to travel once around the zodiac and stays on the same theme for weeks.
- Jupiter and Saturn barely budge in seven days. They are the backdrop, never the point of a weekly horoscope.
What each individual celestial body stands for rests on a craft handed down; you can read about it on the Planets page. The Four Elements page explains which signs share an element.
What a weekly horoscope cannot do
A text for a single star sign works with a fraction of the information a complete birth chart contains. Everything that calls for the time of birth is missing: the houses, that is the areas of life, and the ascendant, which moves into a new sign about every two hours. Two people born on the same day, six hours apart, get exactly the same weekly text – and still have very different personal charts. Nor does a weekly text say whether Mercury was retrograde at your birth; what that means is explained in retrograde Mercury in the birth chart.
- A serious weekly horoscope names no dates. “The go-ahead comes on Tuesday” is not a result, it is an invention.
- It says nothing about illness, court cases or deaths.
- It is deliberately worded in open-ended terms. Anyone who wants to can recognise almost any week in almost any text. That is the weakness built into these texts – reckon with it instead of falling for it.
How to read it without going astray
- Read it on Monday, not on Sunday. Looking back, something always fits; if you read it in advance, you have a hunch that can turn out wrong.
- Read two texts. If you know your ascendant, read the text for that sign as well. Many people recognise themselves far more clearly in it.
- Check it. Write down one sentence on Monday and read it again on Sunday. After two months you will know what these texts are worth to you.
When twelve texts are not enough
The weekly horoscope is a way in, not a dead end. The next step comes down to this: more data, fewer generalities. With a date, a time and a place of birth, a chart can be calculated that belongs to you alone – you will find an overview on the Horoscopes page, and what you can get straight away is on the Free Horoscopes page.
A completely different view of the same week is offered by Chinese astrology; anyone who wants to learn to calculate and interpret for themselves starts at Becoming an Astrologer. In the end it is not the text that decides, but what you make of these seven days.