In lesson 1 the planets were the what. The signs are the how: the style a planet works in. You could memorize twelve descriptions, but you'd forget half of them by next week. There's a better way. Every sign is made of two simple ingredients, and once you know them you can work out any sign yourself.
The first ingredient is the element. There are four: fire, earth, air and water. The element tells you what kind of energy a sign has.
The second is the mode. There are three: cardinal, fixed and mutable. The mode tells you what the sign does with that energy, whether it starts things, holds them steady or changes them.
Four elements times three modes gives you twelve combinations, and there are twelve signs. Each sign is exactly one pair, and no two signs share the same pair.
Fire is enthusiasm and action. Fire signs warm up a room, move first and get bored when nothing is happening. A campfire is a decent picture of it: bright, alive, and in need of fresh wood.
Earth is the practical and the physical. Earth signs care about what's real, what works and what they can touch. They're usually the ones who remember to bring snacks.
Air is ideas and connection. Air signs live through talking, reading, comparing notes and meeting people. They'd rather understand a thing than feel it first.
Water is feeling and bonds. Water signs notice moods, hold onto memories and care a lot about who is close to them. They often know how a room feels before anyone says a word.
Imagine three friends planning a weekend trip.
The cardinal friend is the one who says "let's go" and books the place. Cardinal signs start things. They're good at beginnings and less patient with the long middle.
The fixed friend is the one who, five years later, still goes to the same cabin every summer. Fixed signs keep things going. They're loyal and hard to budge, for better and worse.
The mutable friend is the one who reworks the plan when it rains. Mutable signs adapt. They're flexible and good in a crisis, and they can have trouble committing when nothing forces them to.
There's a neat way to remember which is which. The cardinal signs are the ones the seasons start in (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, going by the northern hemisphere). The fixed signs sit in the middle of each season. The mutable signs come at the end, when one season is turning into the next.
Here are all twelve, sorted by element, in the order cardinal, fixed, mutable:
Now try building a sign. Taurus is fixed earth. Earth is the physical, fixed keeps things steady, so Taurus is about keeping the physical world steady: the same good bread, the same comfortable chair, a savings account that only goes up. Pretty much everything people say about Taurus follows from those two words.
Pisces is mutable water. Water is feeling, and mutable means it changes shape, so Pisces takes on the feeling of whatever it's near, the way water takes the shape of its glass. That's where its reputation for empathy comes from, and also its reputation for getting lost in other people's moods.
Capricorn is cardinal earth: starting practical things. Plans, businesses, a five-year goal written on the fridge. Try Gemini (mutable air) on your own before you look anything up. You'll be surprised how close you get.
A quick way to get a feel for a chart is to count elements and modes. Count the ten planets, and add the rising sign as an eleventh point (we'll meet it properly in lesson 5; Maya's is Taurus).
Maya's elements come out like this: earth 5, water 4, fire 1, air 1. Her modes: mutable 5, cardinal 3, fixed 3.
So her chart is mostly earth and water. That's a grounded, feeling-led mix: someone who takes in a lot emotionally and then wants to do something concrete about it. The mutable lean fits too, since her four Pisces planets are all mutable water.
Now look at the thin side. Her one fire planet is Pluto and her one air planet is Uranus, and from lesson 1 you know those are the slow, generational ones. Her five personal planets are all in earth or water, every single one. That's worth writing down. We'll come back to it in lesson 7, where gaps get their own attention.
A thin element doesn't mean a person lacks that quality. Plenty of people with little air in their charts become great talkers, often because they had to work at it. A thin element tells you where something comes less automatically.