Your Guide to Sect
Are you a day chart or a night chart?
In my newsletters each month I like to go back and forth between going deeper into timing techniques that I love, while still returning to the basics to help you deepen your understanding of your birth chart. Today, we’re focusing on the latter by going over the concept of sect. Have you ever wondered why you may feel more in touch with your moon sign than your sun sign? Or why Mars transits tend to go much better for you than they do for other people? Or why Jupiter may not really feel like the most positive planet in your chart? These types of things can be explained by sect.
Sect is an ancient astrological technique used in interpreting charts, and is based on if you are born during the day or at night. Below, we will get into all of the steps for how to see that for yourself, and depending on if you have a day or night chart, there are a set of planets that are more beneficial to you. I’ve talked before in a past newsletter about identifying places of strength in your birth chart, and this is simply another way of looking at what planets have extra power in your life, versus which ones might be felt in a more challenging way.
Step 1: Note where the sun falls in your chart
When you are looking at your birth chart, note the degree of your ascendant and descendant axis. From there, you will then want to check if the sun in your chart falls above that line or below it. If the sun falls above the ascendant/descendant axis, you have a day chart. If it falls below, you have a night chart. See the two diagrams below for a visual of each.
Especially if you’re born around sunrise or sunset, it’s crucial that you have an exact birth time. If you have the sun right on the degree of the ascendant in the 1st house, then I would go with a day chart, since the sun is in the process of rising in the sky. If you have the sun right on the degree of the descendant in the 7th house, I would go with a night chart, since the sun is setting and losing light. In the diagram below, you can see the sun and ascendant are both at 19 degrees, so the sun is just rising in the early morning. I would go with day chart for this one.
Step 2: Identifying your sect light
Now that you know if you are a day or night chart, we can figure out what your sect “light” is.