Personal planet — Astrology glossary

What does Personal planet mean in astrology?

Personal planets are the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars, the bodies that move quickly through the zodiac and describe the most individual layers of a person. Because they change sign within days or a couple of years, their placements vary sharply from one birth to the next, so they carry the distinctive, person-specific information in a chart: identity, emotion, thinking, attraction, and drive. This matters because they are usually the first features an astrologer reads when building a portrait of someone, in contrast to the slow outer planets, whose positions are shared by everyone born in the same era. For example, two people born a week apart will likely share the same outer-planet signs but differ in their Moon or Mercury placement, which is where their personalities visibly diverge.