How to get creative direction from your project's birth chart

Did you know that your creative project has an astrology chart? Yep! Just like you have a moment of birth, everything you make has a moment of inception and therefore an astrology chart that describes its essence. In this episode I teach you how to create a birth chart for your project and what you need to look at in order to get creative direction ASAP. Your project’s birth chart can tell you about its unique pace and flow, its tone, its appearance, its ideal audience, and more! Pro tip: You can also apply everything in this episode to your overall business’ birth chart.

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Transcript

Hi there. Welcome back to Cosmically Inspired, a podcast for creators who want to enhance their project planning. Making and launching with astrology. I'm your host, Claire Gallagher, and I am so excited to talk about today's topic Today. We're gonna dive all the way down deep into your project's birth chart.

Yep. Your project has a birth chart, just like you have a birth chart, and today we're gonna talk about how to get creative direction from that chart.

Now, just a side note here, I could have also called this how to get Creative Direction from your business's birth chart because the concepts I'm gonna share today apply to a birth chart regardless of if it's for a business or if it's for a creative project. But since cosmically inspired mostly centers around creators, we're gonna talk about the.

Birth chart of a specific creative project.

Okay, so [00:01:00] let's back up a little bit and talk about why we don't wanna use our own birth chart when making creative project decisions. And it's not wrong to do that, and I certainly do it. I mean, I use my birth chart to help me in crafting my day-to-day flow, my rhythm, how? I work creatively is shown in my birth chart, but when I am trying to tune into a particular project and get to know a project's own desires, its own flow, its own rhythm, I don't wanna use my birth chart for that.

I wanna use the project's birth chart it. I think it's really important, whether it's a creative project or a business. A business especially, it's really important to separate yourself from the life of that project or the life of that business. This is an energetic shift that's really important. You are not the business and you are not the project. The business [00:02:00] and the project are separate entities from you. And this might be hard to grapple with, especially if you're a personal brand or something like that, but it's a really important energetic shift. We want to let our businesses and our projects have a life of their own, and we wanna stop, quote, funding the project from our own vital force.

Even though we're the creator, we're making the things and we're showing up in the business and the project every day, and it often feels like we're funding the project. We wanna make that energetic distinction that the project can fuel itself. It has its own vitality, it has its own lifeline, and we can be separate entities from the business and from the project.

We don't want the project to be some type of energy vampire. Right. That sucks us dry. So just little food for thought there. If you are only using your birth chart to make decisions about your [00:03:00] business, about your creative projects, you're probably missing a lot of vital information that you can get from the project's own birth chart.

So how do you get a birth chart for your project? Now, I'm gonna list a lot of options in this section, and none of them are wrong and none of them are perfectly right. It really is dependent upon the energetic feeling of beginning and only you can answer that question, you know? When did it really feel like the project started?

Or the business began. Now, one option is to draw up a birth chart for the moment you first had the idea. This can be a little hard because we often have ideas in the shower or while we're driving or they, they're like a passing. Glimpse, right, and it happens really quickly, and [00:04:00] we don't often have a practice of looking at the clock or looking at the watch when we have an idea pass by.

However, as an official astrology nerd, you may wanna begin the habit of taking a screenshot on your phone or something like that. At the moment, a new idea passes. Your brain because this moment is potentially one of the options for your project's birth chart,

and I think this is one of the more powerful options it might be easy to track down the day, but tracking down the time of when you had an exact idea can be a little tricky. I. Do your best guess, and it is okay to guess.

It is okay to estimate. If you can get it down to a two hour window, that's probably good enough. And if you can't do that, use the day and put in either sunrise or noon for the time on that day [00:05:00] and just realize that the houses aren't going to be super, super duper accurate, but everything else is gonna be just fine.

 Another birth time option for a creative project is when you agreed to do the project or when you signed a contract. This may not be applicable for everyone, but if you do contract work or if you're like me and you have a publisher and you signed a contract to fulfill a particular creative endeavor, the moment of that signing when all parties have signed the contract.

Is an option for the birth time of your project, and this is what I have done for my current book that I'm finishing up right now, is the moment that all the parties signed the contract and I got the E DocuSign back. That's the moment of the project's birth. Now, when the book comes out, the. Birth time is gonna change to the publication date, but in terms of like [00:06:00] diving into the flow of the project, how it wants to be created, its timeline, its tone, all of that stuff, I wanna know during the creation process, I used the contract sign time.

 Another option is the moment you buy a.com for a particular project or business, and this is really easy to track because you're gonna have an email from the domain service provider that tells you not only the date, but the exact time that you purchase the website or the.com, the domain rather.

Similarly, but a little bit different. The moment when your website for the project or the business went live is another option. And again, how do you weigh these options? For me, it's a physical sensation of a swelling in my chest. When there's an excitement of that newness coming through, you might have a different sensation than me when it comes to things birthing [00:07:00] from your body.

Okay? So pay attention to what newness feels like for you and the time you felt that in regards to this project or business is the time I want you to use. Another option, especially for a creative project, is the moment when you began to work on it. So this is, um, probably easy to find if you keep like a Google calendar or if you track your time when you're working, et cetera.

You can probably narrow it down pretty quickly, or if it's like a document you can look in, like right click and look in the settings or the information about the document for when it was created. That will give you a timestamp for when you first started working on it. If this is a business that you're wanting to draw up a chart for, and you have registered the business name or you have incorporated or something like that, the time and location [00:08:00] of that will be your chart.

So again, that was a lot of options, but I want you to pick the one that feels most energetically, like a real birth, the real start of something. Like I said, for me it's this feeling of excitement and of hope, like a big swelling or a balloon inside of my chest. But maybe for you it's something different, but that is the key to picking the quote right chart.

Okay, so you have the chart. Now, what do you do? What can it tell you? There's so much that a project inception chart can tell you, but a few things include the project's personality. Yeah. Now you may already know what the project is, but you might not. And sometimes projects have a life of their own and they become something other than what we intended.

Perfect reason [00:09:00] why to use. The project's birth chart instead of your own, let it become what it wants to become anyway. The chart can tell you about its personality ranging all the way from what is it to what its tone of voice is like and what its visual appearance is like in terms of the creative flow and process.

The chart of the project can tell you about its own pace and its own speed, like how it wants to come out into the world. The chart can tell you about the project's strengths and weaknesses, which is really important when you're wanting to create a very nice, tidy, finished product. It can also tell you who the project is for, and maybe you think you already know this, but you might get some unique insight into this from the chart, and we'll talk about this a little later.

And finally, you can use this chart to time things in relation to your [00:10:00] project. For example, times where the project may flow out really easily, times where it might be a little slower times to share about the project. Times of revising or reworking the projects times for launching the project. And when you're doing this, you're gonna be looking at transits to the project's birth chart.

Let's take a few pieces of a project, birth chart and chat about what they mean so you can follow along with your own business or project birth chart. Make sure you have a copy with you and I'm gonna pick out a few of the most important points and planets for you to start with. Now, this is not exhaustive.

We could talk about everything in the chart, but today I just wanna do an overview so you can get a little bit of creative direction as soon as possible.

The first thing you might wanna look at when gazing at your [00:11:00] project's birth chart is the ascendant, also called the rising sign, which is synonymous with the first house. So when we're looking at. A natal chart or a birth chart. The ascendant describes life itself. It describes the character and the personality of the person, and it also describes the body and its appearance and its vitality.

It's the same thing in creative or business astrology. The ascendant is going to describe the overall personality of the project and also what it looks like if it has a visual component. The ascendant will inform what that visual component is ranging from colors to brand feeling, imagery, all of that stuff.

The ascendant also describes the feeling and the response that other people have when they interact with your project, what and how they [00:12:00] perceive your project. And so this feels a little bit outside of our control, but with the birth chart, you can have an insider view into what do other people think and feel when they look at my project for the first time.

Perhaps the most important piece of your project's birth chart is the planet that rules the ascendant. This is also called your chart ruler. We could call it the ascendant ruler. We could call it the ruler of the first house. So you're gonna find the sign that occupies the first house, the rising sign, and you wanna know what planet.

Rules that sign, and that is the ascendant ruler of your project.

So just in case you don't have these memorized, I'm gonna list them out really quickly here. The sun rules Leo. So if your project is a LEO rising, the sun is the ascendant ruler. The Moon rules [00:13:00] cancer. Mercury Rules, Gemini and Virgo. Venus Rules Taurus and Libra. Mars rules Aries and Scorpio. Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Pisces and Saturn rules Capricorn and Aquarius.

 So find the rising sign and then determine which planet rules that sign, and that is your project's ruler. Really important. So in Natal astrology, the chart ruler is the one planet that represents you. It is the most important. And in creative or business astrology, it represents the project or the business itself.

So you really wanna get to know this planet. You wanna know everything you can about it. This is the planet steering the entire creative process and life of your project. It can [00:14:00] describe what the project actually is, as well as some of its motivations or values. For example, a Venus steered project is going to have very different desires and motivations and values from a Saturn steered project.

Now you can take this really, really deep and if you are intermediate or advanced in astrology, you can assess the condition of your project's planetary ruler to really understand some of its strengths and weaknesses. So this is gonna include concepts like sect and location, visibility, speed, and direction.

All of these things are going to inform the health and viability of your project, as well as strengths and weaknesses, like I said before. So for example, in terms of direction, let's pretend that your project's [00:15:00] ruler is retrograde. Okay, so this might describe a project that takes a little bit more time to come about, or a project that has more revisions than you expected, or a project that went in a totally different direction than you intended.

Is that bad? No, it's just different, and that's part of the creative process for this project. On the other hand, maybe we have a project ruler that's exalted. For example, maybe the project ruler is Jupiter, and Jupiter is in the sign of its exaltation, which is cancer. This might describe a project that is well received by other people that gets lots of great feedback and praise, and that is thought really highly of.

We like that. On the other hand, maybe the Project Planetary ruler is in the sign of its detriment. I wanna spin [00:16:00] this for you a little bit. Yes. It might describe some creative pitfalls and difficulty along the process, but it could also describe a project that's inherently designed to solve a problem or to serve a certain population that's suffering.

All right. Ready to keep going. This is so fun. I'm ready. Let's talk about the sun in your project's birth chart. Remember in last episode if you listened to it, we talked all about the planets in creativity and business, and we labeled the sun as the vision holder. It's kind of like the CEO of your business or creative project.

You are gonna look to the sun for a reminder on the bigger why or purpose of your project. If you ever forget where the project is heading and what its meaning is, what it was meant to do and why it's here. You wanna look to the sun? [00:17:00] So for a small example, and there's so much we could unpack. We could unpack the sign and the house and the aspects.

But for example, the book I'm working on right now has the Sun in Pisces, and this sun is conjunct Saturn. So the Sun in Pisces is a project that wants to be. Spiritual. It's innately mystical. It wants to do a lot. He wants to do everything, but then there's Saturn in conjunction with the sun, which really wants to take that spiritual wisdom and make it practical and anchor it down to earth.

 So even though this is an astrology book and it's very out there and it's very woo if you will, the Saturn component conjunct the sun really makes it very practical.

It's definitely a guidebook and it is a how to [00:18:00] manual.

The next planet I want you to check out in your project's birth chart is the moon. Last episode, we talked about the moon as the team manager, and I want you to consider the moon as the planet that's sets the creative flow for the project. It. Defines its natural fluctuations and its pacing and understanding your project's.

Moon sign can give you clues on how to develop a nourishing routine around the creative process. It's also gonna tell you how the project feels nourished and loved and paid attention to. And that might sound kind of funny, but if you don't already talk to your creative projects like a separate entity, I encourage you to try it.

So for example, when I was really stuck with the book a few months ago, I wrote it a letter and asked it a few questions about how. I could treat it better, and it answered and it told me what it [00:19:00] needed. We can also get this information from the project's moon sign. It's going to tell us how the project feels nourished and cared for, and when a project feels nourished and cared for, it's gonna flow.

For example, my book project has a Virgo moon and. I found after asking it that it wanted me to commit to working on it a little bit every day at the same time, and so I did that. I. I set it on my calendar and I said, okay, book. I'm gonna spend time with you for this long at this time of day, every day, and I'm gonna just check in with you, ask you how you're doing.

Sometimes I'll write, sometimes we'll think about stuff, you know, it doesn't have to be rigid, but that's what the Virgo Moon of my project wanted. It wanted devotion and it wanted to know exactly when I was gonna spend time with it. That's very Virgo. So riding [00:20:00] marathons did not work for this project because that's not what it wanted to do.

It didn't want me to sit down for eight hours a day and pound it out of the keyboard. It wanted me to do a little bit every day at a very specific time, and that's how it flowed The easiest.

The next planet I want you to check out in your project's birth chart is Mercury and Mercury from last episode, if you recall, is the tech and communications manager when it comes to business and creativity. When it comes to a specific project, it can describe the tone of voice that the project takes, and this is where projects really take on a life of their own.

Because the project's Mercury may be very different from your natal mercury, right? So allow the project's Mercury to channel through or to stream through, allow the project to be its own entity to express itself in its own unique way. Mercury, [00:21:00] Zodiac sign might describe the type of words that the project uses its vocabulary.

It might describe the speed at which it talks, and I'm using quotations 'cause it could be a novel or it could be a podcast. You know, talking is relative, whatever that means to you. And it can also describe the content that Mercury wants to talk about. Like what is this project interested in communicating?

What is the message and in terms of tone, mercury can describe things like, is the tone flowery or is it straightforward? Is it sugarcoated or is it very blunt? So I encourage you to explore this and especially if the mercury is very.

Opposite to your own. Just, um, sit with that and, and be curious about how you can allow more space for this project to express itself in a way that's different than you.

The [00:22:00] next place I want you to look in your project's birth chart is at the descendant degree, and if you're using Whole Sign Houses, which is the house system that I recommend and I use, the descendant is going to be in the seventh house. Okay. The sign that occupies the seventh house might describe your ideal client or the ideal receiver of your project.

So if it's a business, it might be a client. If it's a project, it might be a reader or a recipient or a buyer, et cetera. This sign, the psychology of this sign, the strengths and the weaknesses of this sign can describe your ideal receiver's pain points, what they worry about, what they love. And this is important for you to know as a creator, because if you're strategic.

You wanna solve these problems with your project, right? Or your service if it's a business. [00:23:00] So understanding your project's descendant can help you position and market the project for your ideal people. For example, I know that. The podcast or the business that this podcast is a part of has Aries on the descendant.

And so I know that I am talking to Aries people. These are people who are passionate, who have big ideas, who love to start things, but they're not. Super great at finishing things or bringing them to completion. Knowing that allows me to create content and services that are centered around helping creative people finish their projects with astrology.

The last place I want you to look today in your project's birth chart is the midheaven. There's a little bit of overlap here with the ascendant. It's kind of splitting hairs here. But for the purposes of this podcast, the Midheaven can [00:24:00] be a little bit more about what the project is known for publicly.

So is it known for being funny? Is it known for being of service? Is it known for being caring? Is it known for being really blunt and honest? Like what is the project known for? what is it recognized for? This is also what I would label the visibility point of your project.

The midheaven is the highest point in the sky at the moment of the project's, inception or beginning, and so it represents the most public and visible point. And so if you're at the point where you're ready to release a project or uh, share a project or open a business, you might wanna time the release.

With the midheaven, if you can.

Okay. There is so much more that we could unpack with your project's birth chart. There's so much more we could go into with this episode, but I think I've covered what I think is most vital and important for [00:25:00] now for you to start with. So your action step is to go get a birth chart for your project or your business and start. exploring the planets and the points that we talked about today.

Just one fine point here about the difference between a business and a project. You might have a business that does a lot of projects, and in this case, I would recommend that you have multiple charts that you reference for different things. For example, as a business owner, I want you to have a business chart for the.

Overarching business that helps you make decisions about really big things, like high level stuff, like direction of the business in terms of projects, like maybe within your business, you wanna write an ebook or create a course. I want you to create a birth chart separately for each of those projects so that it can help you inform the creative flow and the creative process.

So hopefully that helps. Uh. [00:26:00] Separate or distinguish those two things. So you might have multiple charts after the end of this episode, and that's totally cool and expected. I create a birth chart for every service I create, every course I've made, every book I've written, each project has its own distinct birth chart.

All right, I'll talk to you next time.