The 7 Planets - Luminaries and Wanderers

The first thing you need to know about traditional astrology, is that we employ only the 7 classic planets in our calculations.

These are:

• The Sun
• The Moon
• Mercury
• Venus
• Mars
• Jupiter
• Saturn

These are the only planets that should be considered in astrological judgements, no more, no less. There is a reason to this, and for that you need to understand the story of how Astrology came to exist.

In ancient greece, many years ago, horoscopic Astrology was born. The greeks (and egyptians before them) payed attention to the movement of the stars across the night sky to predict coming events.

In order to be able to track these events, they would look at the position of the Sun, the Moon and the rest of the stars.

They divided this sky objects into 3 categories:

- The Luminaries (Sun and Moon), the bringers of light.

- The Constellations (composed of fixed stars, that barely move).

- The "Wanderers", or errant stars, which are the classical planets.

Of course, back in the day, most greek or egyptian astronomers didn't have fancy telescopes, or astrological software to keep track of this objects. They had to make their calculations based on mathematical formulas, and data acquired through observation of the celestial movements.

In a way, astrologers could only use the data they could gather with their own eyes.

This is the reason why in traditional astrology, we do not employ the outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, because they don't reflect light. These 3 planets have no place in astrology, because they carry no message for us.

They are mistankenly used in Astrology, because they are considered part of our "solar system", and they orbit around the sun. Of course, what most people don't realize is that there are thousands of pluto-like planets orbiting the sun, in the far reaches of our solar system. 

So should we use other planets like 90482 Orcus? What about Haumea?

What about the moons of other planets, like Jupiter's moon Europa?

The planets in Astrology are 7, and will always be 7. No more, no less.

It doesn't matter if you call yourself a Modern astrologer, there is no reason at all to use these planets. If it wasn't because of the invention of the telescope, they would have probably never been used in the first place.

The 7 planets themselves, were assigned rulership over the 12 zodiac signs:

This is all you need for Astrology. Don't pay attention to the other planets. Even if you find them right on the cusp of important houses, or in conjunction with other planets, they mean nothing.

Use only the 7 planets. And you'll do fine!