Astrology is a language, and there is a lot of shorthand involved in making a chart. Before you can look at a chart and understand what it means, you must have a clear understanding of the glyphs, which is what we call these symbols.
On a chart, the aspects (conjunction, opposition, square, trine, and sextile) are shown by colored lines connecting planets on the chart, but these glyphs are used when writing about the aspects.
There are a few other symbols here and there: some asteroids have symbols, and elements and modalities have symbols too, but if you can remember those shown on this page, a natal chart will suddenly not seem very confusing!
