Birth Chart Shapes: Bundle, Bowl, Bucket, Locomotive, Seesaw and More

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Before reading a single planet, some astrologers look at the whole wheel from a distance and ask how the planets are spread around it. Are they crowded into one part of the circle, split into two camps, or scattered all the way round? The American astrologer Marc Edmund Jones gave this first impression a vocabulary in 1941, with seven named shapes: Bundle, Bowl, Bucket, Locomotive, Seesaw, Splash and Splay. They are still often called the Jones patterns.

This page is the reference: what each shape looks like, what astrologers in this tradition associate with it, and where the categories blur. How to find your chart shape is the step-by-step method, and hemisphere emphasis covers the related question of which half of the chart holds most planets.

Chart shapes are an astrological concept that Astrologist.com explains. The free chart draws your planets on the wheel, but it does not classify chart shapes, and nothing on the site assigns you one automatically.

What counts toward a shape

Astrologist.com uses the ten planets from the Sun to Pluto, and nothing else. The Lunar Nodes, Chiron, Lilith and the four angles (Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven and IC) are left out of the count. The Nodes are always exactly opposite each other, so they would sit on both sides of any split, and the angles are reference points of the chart frame rather than bodies in it. This matches the ten-planet convention the site uses for a stellium.

Some astrologers like to see where Chiron falls in relation to the shape as an extra. That is a personal choice; on this site it never changes the ten-planet classification.

A shape is made from zodiac longitudes alone: the position of each planet measured round the circle from 0° Aries. Houses and angles play no part, which is why the shape is the same in any house system. It is not completely independent of birth time, though. Planets keep moving through the day, and the Moon covers roughly 12° to 15° in 24 hours, so a chart that sits close to the line between two shapes can change with the hour. A birth chart without a birth time explains what remains reliable when the time is missing.

The seven shapes at a glance

The numbers below are commonly used working guidelines, not rules that Jones fixed to the degree and not something the site calculates. Writers draw the lines a little differently, and that is fine as long as you say which guideline you used.

The order matters. A chart whose planets fit within 120° also fits within 180°, so it is called a Bundle, not a Bowl. Working from the tightest shape outward keeps one chart from collecting several labels.

Bundle

In a Bundle every planet sits inside roughly a third of the wheel, and the other two thirds are empty. It needs all ten planets, including the fast-moving Moon, to sit close together.

Astrologers in the Jones tradition associate the Bundle with concentration: a narrower range of interests pursued with focus, and a tendency to start from a limited base and make a great deal of it. The empty two thirds are not read as missing abilities. They are often described as areas a person meets through other people or later experience.

A Bundle is not the same as a stellium. A stellium is a cluster of planets in one sign or one house; a Bundle is about the spread of all ten. A Bundle chart often contains a stellium, but plenty of charts have a stellium without being a Bundle.

Bowl

In a Bowl all ten planets sit within about half of the wheel and the other half is empty. The dividing line can fall anywhere: it does not have to follow the horizon or the meridian.

The traditional reading stresses self-containment and a sense of having something to give or to carry, with the empty half experienced as what is sought or lacking. Some writers also pay attention to the two planets on the rims of the bowl, at each edge of the occupied half.

Bucket

A Bucket is a Bowl with a handle: nine planets gathered within roughly half the wheel, and one planet on its own across the empty side. On Astrologist.com the handle is always a single planet. Two planets together on the open side do not make a handle under this working method; such a chart is better described as a borderline Bowl or Seesaw.

Jones-tradition readings treat the handle planet as the channel through which the rest of the chart is expressed, much as a bucket is lifted by its handle. That is a reading device. It is not a claim that the handle is the strongest planet, and the site does not rank planets by strength. The handle is also a question of spread, not aspects: a handle planet can make several aspects, and an unaspected planet can sit anywhere in a chart.

Locomotive

In a Locomotive the planets occupy about two thirds of the wheel, around 240°, and leave one empty sector of about 120°. Because a chart with a smaller spread is classed as a Bundle, Bowl or Bucket first, the Locomotive label is used only when none of those fits more clearly.

The traditional reading is self-propulsion: drive, momentum and a practical sense of what is missing, with the empty third pictured as the gap the person keeps working to fill.

The Jones tradition also names a leading planet. Picture the wheel turning clockwise, the way the sky turns through the day. The leading planet is the one at the front of the group, the planet immediately following the large empty sector in that clockwise direction, so that it would move into the empty space first. In zodiac terms, if the empty sector ran from 0° to 120°, the leading planet would be the first planet after 120°. Like the Bucket handle, it is a way of focusing a reading, not a measure of power.

Seesaw

A Seesaw has two distinct groups of planets facing each other across the wheel, separated by two substantial empty arcs. An empty arc of about 60° or more on each side is a commonly cited guide, not a hard boundary. Each group should contain more than one planet; a single planet opposite a group is the Bucket idea instead.

The Seesaw is usually read as awareness of two sides: weighing options, seeing both viewpoints, and sometimes swinging between them. It is not the same as an opposition aspect. Two groups can face each other without any exact opposition between them, and many charts with oppositions are not Seesaws.

Splash

In a Splash the planets are spread broadly round the wheel, with no large empty sector and no dominant cluster. Traditional readings link it to wide interests and versatility, with the occasional difficulty of focusing on one thing.

Splay

A Splay has three or more clearly separated clusters of uneven size, sometimes described as tripod-like. The traditional reading is individualism: interests that do not fall into a neat order and a dislike of being classified.

Splay is easy to misuse as a label for whatever is left over. On this site it applies only when there really are three or more distinct clusters. A chart that fits nothing cleanly is better called mixed or borderline.

Borderline and mixed charts

Many charts do not fall cleanly into one shape. Common situations:

• Between two shapes. The planets span 185°: a little too wide for a Bowl, far too narrow for a Locomotive.
• A handle that is two planets. Not a Bucket under the one-planet handle used here; describe it honestly as a borderline Bowl or Seesaw.
• Uneven Seesaw groups. Eight planets on one side and two on the other meet the Seesaw guideline in a literal sense, but some readers would hesitate.
• A Moon at the edge. The Moon's daily motion can open or close a gap, so the shape may depend on the hour of birth.

In all of these "borderline", "mixed" or "no clean Jones type" is a valid answer. Forcing a chart into one of seven boxes, or tuning the numbers until it fits, adds false precision. Nothing about a chart is wrong because its shape is unclear.

How shapes relate to other chart overviews

A chart shape is one of several ways to describe a chart as a whole, and each answers a different question:

• Shape describes the spread of the ten planets round the wheel, using longitude alone.
• Aspect patterns such as the T-square or grand trine are built from specific angles between planets. A chart can be a Bowl and contain a grand trine; the two are separate facts.
• Element balance counts signs by fire, earth, air and water. That is a sign quality, not a position on the wheel.
• Hemisphere emphasis counts planets by house half and needs a reliable birth time. The hemisphere guide covers it.

None of these is a personality type, a diagnosis or a forecast. A shape describes a pattern and a set of tendencies astrologers look for; the planets, signs and houses still say what, how and where. How to read a birth chart puts the layers in order, and planets meaning covers what each planet stands for.

Look at your own wheel

Create your free birth chart and look at how the planets spread round the wheel; the step-by-step method turns that first impression into numbers. The methodology page sets out the site's calculation choices. You can also ask the Astrologist to talk through what a shape means; it can discuss the idea, but it is not an automatic shape classifier.

Related articles

• Hemisphere Emphasis in a Birth Chart
• How to Find Your Chart Shape and Hemisphere Emphasis
• What Is a Stellium in Astrology?
• Aspect Patterns
• Element Balance in a Birth Chart
• How to Read a Birth Chart
• Planets Meaning