The three things we promised, and how we do them

Four details:

• · Your birth date
• · Your birthplace
• · Whatever you know of your time: exact, rough, or unknown
• · Your first name

From that one birth moment we run eight symbolic systems, each by its own rules, plus a reconstruction of the real sky. Your birthplace resolves the historical time zone and your local horizon. Your name drives the numerology and name-origin readings. We ask for anything more only when a specific method needs it, and if you would rather not give it, we leave that result out instead of guessing. AsterNym’s Luck Pillar direction, for example, needs sex together with the polarity of the year stem.

The keyhole belief, in practice. Most apps compute one chart. We compute Western astrology, BaZi, Chinese zodiac, Jyotish, Zi Wei Dou Shu, Numerology, Tarot birth card, Human Design and the Birth Sky, and, where you ask for them, Saju, Nine Star Ki, Weton, Mahabote, The Tzolk'in count, The I Ching. Same birth, many lenses.

You can also tell us which part of life you are asking about. That never changes your chart or any score. It changes only which parts of the same calculated profile we put first.

If you come during a hard time: AsterNym will not tell you that your chart caused the event. It can offer a symbolic vocabulary for what you are living through, and suggest a small next step.

Eight symbolic systems, and what each needs from you

Western astrologyHellenistic roots, continuous tradition

Your Sun, Moon and rising signs and the chart behind them: ten chart bodies across twelve whole-sign houses and the aspects between them. Optional timing layers include secondary progressions and, when the birth data supports it, a solar-return chart.

Birth time: The rising sign and houses need a time and place; Moon aspects can change through a day.

BaZiChinese Four Pillars, Tang dynasty onward

Your four pillars and the Day Master they are read against: the element pattern, hidden stems, the Ten Gods, and, with the inputs its convention needs, your ten-year Luck Pillars.

Birth time: The Hour Pillar needs a time; without one the strength judgement is provisional.

Chinese zodiacPopular year-animal tradition

Your birth-year Earthly Branch, shown as one of the twelve animals, on AsterNym's declared Lunar New Year boundary for the popular zodiac.

Birth time: Stable from the date.

JyotishIndian sidereal astrology, Vedanga

A sidereal chart on the Lahiri ayanamsa: the nine grahas by rasi and house, your Moon nakshatra and pada, the navamsa, and the Vimshottari dasha and antardasha timeline.

Birth time: The lagna and houses need a time; the nakshatra can change during an untimed day, and the page shows the interval instead of picking one.

Zi Wei Dou ShuChinese palace astrology, attributed to Chen Tuan

Twelve palaces, fourteen major stars, the birth-year Four Transformations and the decade cycles, on AsterNym's San He-based implementation.

Birth time: Structurally hour-dependent; without a time AsterNym computes every possible hour chart and reports what survives.

NumerologyModern Western number traditions

Your Life Path and Birthday Number from your date, and, when you give your full birth name, Expression, Soul Urge and Personality from its letters.

Birth time: Stable from the date; name numbers depend on spelling and romanisation.

Tarot birth cardModern tarot-numerology method

One of the twenty-two major arcana from your birth month, day and year, by AsterNym's single-card method, not drawn from a shuffled deck.

Birth time: Stable from the date.

Human DesignModern system, 1987

Your BodyGraph, Type, Authority and Profile from two astronomical snapshots: the birth moment, and the Design moment 88° of solar arc earlier.

Birth time: Without a time AsterNym scans the whole day and reports the windows in which the Type, Authority and Profile change, marking each as settled or unsettled.

One astronomical layer

The Birth Sky: the stars, Moon and planets above the astronomical horizon at your birth moment, the Sun’s altitude and twilight state, and the catalogued star nearest the zenith. This is astronomy, not an interpretive tradition. The zenith is computed for the true equator and equinox of your birth date and the nearest eligible star is chosen by angular distance from it, so “nearest overhead” means what it says.

Each system is calculated on its own and stays in its own lane. We never blend their rules. Then we do the two things that make a reading instead of a data dump.

We compare them. Your report sorts what the systems say into three buckets:

• · Themes that repeat, with the source of each, and a note when two of them are one system wearing two hats.
• · Where the systems disagree, left visible instead of averaged away.
• · What only one system says, allowed to belong to its own tradition.

Overlap is an interesting prompt. It is not independent evidence that a trait is true, and AsterNym never says that several systems “confirm” you. The Sun and rising are both Western astrology. The zodiac animal is the year branch already inside your BaZi. The tarot card and the Life Path both start from the same date. We say so where it matters.

We combine three of them into one identity. AsterNym synthesisYour element comes from the Chinese Four Pillars, your modality from the Western zodiac, and your plane from numerology. Three traditions, one name, and all of it from your birth date alone. Five Day Master elements, three modalities and four planes give sixty identities. The ingredients are old. The sixty-identity framework and its names are ours, and we label them as ours everywhere they appear.

Day Master element × Sun-sign modality × Life Path plane = AsterNym identity

It used to be the element crossed with the Life Path alone. That put sixteen times as many people in the commonest identity as in the rarest, and left ten of the sixty holding under half the share they should. Adding the modality spreads real birthdays almost evenly: measured over every day from 1950 to 2015, the commonest identity holds 2.0% and the rarest 1.4%. Ten of the twelve names survived the change; Strategist and Scholar are new, and Achiever and Master Builder retired with the Life Path as the naming axis.

One honest limit. A Sun sign needs a birth time on the roughly one day in thirty when the Sun changes sign, and neighbouring signs never share a modality. On those birthdays the identity genuinely depends on the hour, so where we do not have it we say the identity is undetermined rather than picking a side.

For two people, AsterNym Match compares two profiles and gives a Match Score out of 100: 80% from AsterNym’s declared BaZi compatibility method and 20% from the Western Sun-sign relationship. Shared initials, birthplaces or nearby birth stars are shown as connections we noticed. They do not move the score, and nothing you buy can. It is a symbolic index, not a probability that a relationship will work.

This is the line most of astrology will not draw, and it is the spine of the site.

Calculated. Planetary positions, your Four Pillars, your numerology numbers, your Human Design activations, your Zi Wei palaces, your Jyotish chart and the real sky over your birthplace. These follow declared, versioned methods and can be checked against any observatory.

The conventions that could move your result

BaZi day rollover

Civil midnight, with the late-Zi hour (23:00 to 00:00) shown both ways where it changes the day pillar. The year turns at lichun, not at Lunar New Year, and the year and month pillars are compared against the solar term on its own clock.

Zi Wei calendar policy

The opposite of BaZi on both boundaries, deliberately: the Zi Wei year turns at Lunar New Year rather than lichun, and a birth between 23:00 and 23:59 is charted on the next lunar day rather than staying on the civil one. If your BaZi and Zi Wei charts disagree about your year, that is the two systems working correctly, not a fault. The lunar year and leap-month handling are set in one config and printed on the chart.

Western house system

Whole Sign, with the ascendant taken as exact intersection of the ecliptic with the eastern horizon.

Aspect orbs

conjunction, sextile, square, trine, opposition, one base orb each, policy western_v1, with no widening for the luminaries.

Lunar node

mean node (Meeus), the node most published charts use.

Numerology master numbers

11, 22 and 33 are kept unreduced; every other total reduces to a single digit.

Tarot birth card

One card from the month, day and year, by AsterNym's stated single-card method.

Human Design nodes

The node convention and the 88° solar-arc Design moment are both versioned in the engine.

Jyotish ayanamsa

Lahiri, stated on the page, with the value used printed beside the chart.

Believed. What those positions are said to mean. That is tradition, offered for reflection. These symbolic systems have not been shown to predict personality or events, and we say so plainly while still taking their history and internal logic seriously.

Where we turn a symbolic result into something to do, we offer it as a low-stakes experiment, never a remedy for a deficiency. In BaZi the most common element is not automatically good and the rarest is not automatically something you lack: we separate the raw element pattern from any balancing judgement and name the method used. For money, the practical parts sit apart from the symbolic ones, and lucky numbers do not change any odds. No diagnosis, no fate, no causality.

We never quietly insert noon.

Exact

You gave an exact birth time. Time-sensitive results are calculated directly.

Rising sign, houses, Hour Pillar, Zi Wei chart, Human Design, the exact Birth Sky.

Roughly known

You gave a range. AsterNym calculates across it and shows what stays stable and what changes inside it.

Rising sign switch times, Moon range, which house a planet falls in, Human Design windows.

Unknown

AsterNym calculates everything the date fixes and, where useful, scans the entire possible day instead of inserting a fake time.

Rising and houses withheld; Moon aspects classed stable or possible; Hour Pillar withheld; Zi Wei across all hours; a reference evening sky, labelled as such, never a birth-minute sky.

Without a time there is no exact Birth Sky and no nearest-overhead star, and we say that instead of showing one. Where a reference evening sky appears, it is labelled a reference, not your birth minute.

Everything is looked up from named sources, and we name them.

Planetary positions

astronomy-engine 2.1.19 for the Sun, Moon and eight planets, apparent (light-time and aberration applied).

Asteroids and Lilith

JPL Horizons heliocentric vectors, 1700–2100, cubic Hermite interpolation, with the mean lunar apogee for Black Moon Lilith.

Cities and time zones

The GeoNames geographical database, used under CC BY 4.0, which also resolves the historical time-zone rules for your birth date.

Star positions

A Hipparcos-derived catalogue of named stars at J2000, with proper motions verified against SIMBAD for the fastest movers.

Name popularity

United States Social Security Administration public naming records.

Public-figure birth data

Wikidata, with the source and a Rodden rating for the birth time shown on every profile.

Where it runs

On AsterNym's own servers, against those datasets. No third party is asked what your chart means.