A natal reading, in outline
This outline shows the shape of a natal judgement rather than a whole one. A real reading runs to several thousand words and takes its detail from the chart in front of it; what does not vary is the order.
1. Temperament and constitution
Everything else is read against this, so it comes first. Temperament is calculated, not impressionistically judged, from the Moon's sign and phase, the Ascendant and its lord, the season and the planets near the angles.
The result is a mixture — a sanguine constitution with a strong choleric secondary describes someone quite different from a plain sanguine — and the mixture tells you how the native meets everything the rest of the chart will describe. Whether it is balanced or distempered matters more than which humour predominates.
2. Mind and aptitude
The significators of mentality show how the native thinks: quickly or slowly, by system or by association, with what degree of obstinacy. Aptitude for a kind of work is read from the significators of vocation and their condition — Mercury and Venus together point in a different direction from Mars and Saturn, and the tradition is specific about which.
The honest limit: the chart shows the aptitude and the standing that can come with it. It does not name a trade. Craft, commerce, something to do with beauty or leisure — that is the range a traditional judgement gives, and a reading that names the exact job is either lucky or has been told the answer.
3. Resources
The second house and its lord, the part of fortune, and the condition of the benefics. The question is not "will the native be rich" but where substance comes from, how steadily, and what tends to erode it. Losses through badly chosen partners is a specific and common reading; so is profit from property or from leisure.
4. Relationships
The seventh and its lord, the condition of Venus and the Moon, and — in the tradition — the aspects between the lords of the first and seventh, which describe not whether there will be a relationship but what kind of arrangement it will be.
This is often where a chart is most difficult, and it is where a reading needs the most care. What a chart shows is a pattern of difficulty, not a verdict on anyone's marriage.
5. Timing
Profections, directions, firdaria and the solar revolution, applied in that order and required to agree. A period that only one technique marks is not worth reporting. A period that three of them mark, each in the same department of life, is.
What the client receives
A written judgement in this order, with the reasoning shown — which testimony produced which statement, and where they conflicted. An interpretation you cannot check is one you have to take on trust, and trust is not what this is for.