The Cosmic Calendar: Using Astrology to Get in Sync with Your Best Life

by Christopher Renstrom

Overview

Go from astrology-curious to cosmically empowered with this expert guide to decoding the stars for everyday life

Timing is everything—and astrology is a personalized calendar designed just for you. Go beyond the memes and clichés to discover how to use this ancient system to get in sync with the stars—to become the fully empowered, energized, and happy human you are uniquely meant to be.

With fascinating, funny, and spot-on insights—and without jargon or technical details—popular astrologer and columnist Christopher Renstrom illuminates the "time stamp" the stars gave you when you were born, giving you actionable insights to help you work with the stars, not against them, to live your best life every day. You'll discover:

How the signs and seasons of the year work together to tell us when to take action

What the planets and the four elements reveal about our personalities and preferences

The best time to start a new relationship, quit your job, and finally get your finances in order—based on your unique astrological profile

If you're ready to go beyond the basics—but not into the weeds—level up with The Cosmic Calendar.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525541080
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Christopher Renstrom is the creator of Rulingplanets.com, an online astrology site based on his bestselling book, Ruling Planets. He currently writes the daily horoscopes for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com. Renstrom also lectures on the history of astrology in America from pre-Revolution to modern times, and runs Ruling Planet workshops around the country.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

In 46 BC Julius Caesar changed the world. He had been invited to a dinner party on Queen Cleopatra’s barge and found himself seated next to one of her court astronomers, Sosigenes. The two men became absorbed in conver­sation and were inseparable all night. The discussion was about calendars. The Roman calendar had been a mess for decades. It was based on the Moon, so intercalary months needed to be added every eight years in order to align it with the seasons. Although lunar calendars were commonplace throughout the Mediterranean, Roman priests had been adding and sub­tracting months willy-nilly to extend the terms of politicians in office they favored and shorten the terms of those they disliked. Indeed, their manipula­tion of time was wreaking havoc on shipping, commerce, and tax collecting.

Sosigenes suggested switching over to the Egyptian calendar, which was based on the Sun. Centuries earlier the Egyptians had calculated that it took the Sun 3651/ 4days to return to the place in the sky where it was at the spring equinox. He demonstrated to Caesar that by dividing the year into twelve months— one month of 30 days alternating with another of 31—he could create a consistent year of 366 days and then reduce February by one more day in order to sync the calendar to the Sun. That way, instead of hav­ing to add or subtract an entire month every eight years, all Caesar had to do was add one day to February once every four years. This was the origin of the Julian calendar— named after Julius Caesar, of course— and it stan­dardized timekeeping throughout the republic. Sundials and obelisks (both Egyptian inventions) soon became all the rage as Roman citizens were able to clock for themselves the time of day, month, and year. Moreover, this change of calendars gave birth to Western astrology— which had been based on the Moon since the twilight days of Babylon and would, from Julius Caesar on, be based on the blazing Sun.

Your birth chart is a calendar. One that’s unique to you because it’s a picture of the heavens at the moment of your birth. You can think of it as a screenshot of the sky— your sky— and this individualized star map will guide you throughout your entire life. It tells you when you are in season or out, and when’s a good time to start a venture or think better of it; it shows you grace periods where you can breeze right past obstacles and it gives you a heads‑up on future rough patches where you can expect resistance. And like the calendar, this can all be done according to the Sun— which is why it’s so important to know where the Sun is in your birth chart. Not everyone was born with the Sun shining overhead. Many of us were born when the Sun had already set. People born in the early- morning hours aren’t going to be like people born in the late afternoon any more than people born in the middle of autumn are going to have the same outlook on life as those born in the spring. This book will also describe your individual elemental tem­perament as depicted by the planets in your birth chart. This will be easy for you to understand because everything relates back to the Sun. The Sun represents you in your birth chart, and we will be using it as the “You Are Here” planet throughout this book.
 
 
How to Use This Book

You will need a copy of your birth chart and for that you will need to know your birthday and year, birth time, and birthplace. You can download a copy of your birth chart from my website: RulingPlanets.com.

If you don’t know your birth time, then use 12 PM. Astrologers often use noon as a default time because it still gives a general idea of where the Moon is. You may not be able to distinguish if you’re a day or night birth, but at least you’ll get a list of the planets for your birthday and that will still allow you to use this book.

1. Identify your Sun sign (you can do this by looking up your birthday in this book)

2. Find your season: Are you spring, summer, autumn, or winter?

3. What’s your mode: Are you an unstoppable force? An immovable object? Or are you the one trying to make an impossible situation work?

4. Are you a day or night birth? This is significant because if you’re a night­time birth, then the Moon is going to be just as important as the Sun in your chart—maybe even more so.

5. What’s your elemental makeup? This is what really unpacks the birth chart. The four elements— water, earth, air, and fire— describe the cor­nerstones of your personality: your emotional life, material welfare, so­cial skills, and spiritual beliefs. Based on the seasons, the four elements are rarely evenly distributed in a birth chart, and how they work with (and sometimes against) the Sun speaks to your temperament.

6. Explore the Sun in the signs. This section describes the Sun as it passes through the twelve zodiac signs in calendrical order. You can use this to read about yourself— along with loved ones and friends— but you can also use it to identify your ruling planet. This is the planet that rules your Sun sign, so you’ll want to look it up (along with the sign that it’s in) to read more about how your Sun’s energy will be directed in life. Finally, you can use this Sun sign section to get a fuller grasp of the seasonal dis­position of the other planets in your chart.

7. Get to know the planets. This section describes the planets in your chart along with the signs that they are in. Each planet will refer back to your Sun (i.e., you)—which is why some planets will be helpful, some will be challenging, and some will leave you scratching your head. Furthermore, this section describes what it’s like to have Mercury and Venus as morning stars versus evening stars, what it means when a planet is retrograde, and where certain planets are in domicile, detriment, exaltation, or fall.

8. Learn to use your astrology chart as a personal calendar. This part of the book shows you how to turn your chart into a calendar using the seasons and elements. Not only is it useful for timing decisions, romances, and sit- down talks with your kids, but it can also help you negotiate problem areas of your birth chart where the energy gets stuck or you experience a disconnect. There’s no such thing as a “bad” chart because the Sun is always moving through the twelve signs of the zodiac. It may take days, weeks, or months, but the Sun will always “come out tomorrow” because at some point it will be in season or it will pass through a zodiac sign of a similar or the same element. This easy‑to‑use method will help you to plan for that and, more importantly, to do things in your own time.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Understanding Your Cosmic Calendar 1

Astrology Is a Calendar 3

The Seasons 7

The Equinoxes 8

The Solstices 8

Modes 11

Elements 12

How the Sky Works 29

Day Chart 30

Night Chart 32

The Angles 34

The Sun, Moon, and Rising Signs 35

The Sun 37

The Sun 39

Spring Sun Signs 45

Summer Sun Signs 57

Autumn Sun Signs 69

Winter Sun Signs 81

The Planets 93

The Moon 95

Mercury 117

Venus 135

Mars 159

Jupiter 181

Saturn 203

Uranus 223

Neptune 243

Pluto 257

Your Astrology Chart As Personal Calendar

Acknowledgments 287

Editorial Reviews

Extraordinary knowledge of astrology is woven into every page—accessible, humorous, and profoundly insightful. Everyone needs this book!”  
—Chani Nicholas, bestselling author of You Were Born for This

"Christopher Renstrom does something stellar with this book; creating a direct link to the vast subject of astrology, making it easy to access and apply to our lives. But more than anything The Cosmic Calendar is a pleasure to read.”
—Isaac Mizrahi 

"Christopher Renstrom combines a deep knowledge of history with a wise and humorous take on the way we live now. The Cosmic Calendar is essential reading for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of how to use astrology to get the most out of life."
—J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Friends and Strangers
 
"Renstrom’s "seasonal" approach to Astrology is fresh and new and always hits the mark."
—Patti Stanger, The Millionaire Matchmaker
 
"A gift for the new student and seasoned practitioner alike! Applies characteristic diligence, clear and novel organization, and masterful command of the language of the heavens to provide a new twist on the fundamentals of Western astrology.—
—Michael Lutin, astrologer and columnist

From the Publisher