Free, with no e-mail address. Birth time and place come next, and both can be skipped.
Enter your birth date, and your birth time and place if you know them, and this free calculator finds your big three: your Sun sign, Moon sign and rising sign, drawn in a real chart of the sky at your birth. It runs in your browser and needs no e-mail. Below, we explain how to read the three together.
"Big three" is the shorthand for the three most personal points of a birth chart: the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant, better known as the rising sign. Most people know their Sun sign. The Moon and the rising sign fill in the rest of the outline, and together they describe a person far more closely than any one of them can alone.
Each answers a different question. The Sun describes your core: what you are working towards and where your sense of purpose comes from. The Moon describes your emotional home, what you need in order to feel safe and how you respond before you have thought about it. The rising sign describes how you meet the world, the manner and pace you bring into a new situation before anyone knows you well.
The three move at very different speeds, so they need different amounts of information from you.
The birthplace does one more job. It tells the calculator which time-zone and daylight-saving rules were in force on your birth date, and those historical rules are applied automatically, so a clock time from decades ago is read correctly. The calculation itself agrees with an independent reference ephemeris to within 17 arc-seconds for the planets and 0.2 arc-seconds for the Ascendant. The limit on your result is the birth time you enter, which is why a time from a birth certificate or hospital record is worth finding.
Reading the big three is less a matter of adding three descriptions than of seeing where they agree and where they pull apart. The elements are a good first step. When two or all three of your signs share an element, that quality tends to run through the whole person: it is visible at a first meeting and still there at home. When the elements differ, the layers show at different moments. The rising sign shows in how you enter a room, the Sun in what you pursue over the years, the Moon in what you need when the day is over.
Some pairings sit easily. A Sun and Moon in the same element, or in fire and air, or in earth and water, tend to want compatible things. Others meet with more friction. A Moon in a water sign under a fire Sun, for instance, may need quiet and closeness while the Sun wants movement and an audience. Such a contrast is tiring when one side is ignored. Given room, it tends to become range: the Sun's drive, with somewhere private to come back to.
The rising sign changes how the other two are seen. A reserved rising sign can keep a warm Sun out of view until people know you; a quick, open rising sign can make a private Moon easy to overlook. Others often meet the rising sign first, come to know the Sun over time, and see the Moon only up close. The guide to the big three in plain English reads one combination through from start to finish.
Start with what is certain. If your rising sign is missing because the time or place is unknown, the Sun and Moon still say a good deal, and you can add the rising sign later if you find the time. If the Moon shows two candidate signs, read both before you settle on either. Then read the three short readings in your free chart against each other rather than one at a time, and look for the sentence in each that you recognise most.
For more on each piece, our guide to the Moon sign explains what the Moon describes, the Moon sign calculator covers the days when the birth time decides it, and the rising sign calculator shows how to get the Ascendant right when your birth time is uncertain. The full written reading goes further, into how the rest of your chart supports or complicates these three.
It is shorthand for the Sun sign, the Moon sign and the rising sign, or Ascendant. The Sun describes your core direction, the Moon your emotional needs, and the rising sign the way you meet the world. Read together, they give a much fuller outline of a person than the Sun sign alone.
Two of them, usually. The Sun sign comes from the date, and so does the Moon sign on most days; when the Moon changed sign on your birthday, the free chart names both candidates. The rising sign needs the exact time and the birthplace, so without them we leave it out rather than guess.
None of them outranks the others, because they describe different layers. The Sun is the centre most readings start from, the Moon matters most in private life and close relationships, and the rising sign shapes first impressions and sets the houses of the chart. A reading is most useful where it looks at how the three agree and where they pull apart.
Because the Sun is only one point in the chart. The Moon changes sign roughly every two and a quarter days and the rising sign about every two hours, so people who share a Sun sign often have a different Moon and usually a different rising sign. The rest of the chart adds further differences.
Yes. The chart is calculated in your own browser, and the free chart needs no e-mail. It shows your chart wheel, your Sun, Moon and rising sign, and a short reading of each; the rising sign appears when you give the birth time and place. A detailed written reading of the whole chart can be ordered if you want one.