aspect overview/cut and dry

Aspects are the ways the planets interact with one another.

There are four basic aspects:

Trine: planets three signs away from each other, aka signs in the same element (water, fire, air, earth). This represents an easy flow of energy in that part of the chart. For example, Aries and Leo, fire signs, trine.

Planets four signs away from each other, with the same quality (cardinal, fixed, mutable), square. An example of square are the fixed signs of Taurus and Leo. This is more of a challenging aspect.

Signs opposite each other are in opposition, duh, for example Aries and Libra are in opposition. This signifies an area of life where balance is an issue.

 Conjunct is two planets in the same sign. This intensifies the sign and planets in the chart.

Astro makes it pretty easy to find out your aspects. When you get your free chart, you'll see a chart like this on the bottom left-hand side:

This is where it gets kind of confusing- you have to decipher the symbols! You can see each planet running diagonally down the top of the chart; sun, moon, mercury, etc. The symbols inside the chart show the aspects. At first, I'd recommend just look at the four major aspects- square (represented by a square :P), a trine (triangle), opposition (two circles joined by a line), and conjunct (a circle with a line going out of the top right).  You can see that this person's Venus and Mars trine, while their Moon and Mars are in opposition.

Or you could just look at this, from wizzards, which is an awesome site btw. If you want to get more specific, this shows the actual degrees between the aspects- the closer in degree they are, the tighter the aspect, and more intense it is:

This adds another dimension to Astrology and your chart. :) You can start to put more pieces together and get a clearer picture of your chart and yourself! After you've done this it's easy to Google "jupiter trine pluto," or whatever, to see what sort of info pops up.

This is confusing stuff, so please feel free to ask away in the comments if you have any questions about your aspects! I'm not sure if this is super clear so please ask if anything's unclear. Sorry that this is such dry material, but I wanted to bring it up...

Also, I have a new plan of action for blogging... an experiment, of sorts, to try to keep me more on track. Let's just say that today is "aspect day." :P