Chart shapes
Bucket
A full half with a single planet opposite it
- The rule
- A bowl, plus one planet standing alone on the other side
- Read through one planet
- Yes
What it is
Nine planets inside a hemisphere and the tenth alone across the wheel, with clear space either side of it. That lone planet is the handle, and the shape is named for what it looks like.
This site requires an empty arc of at least 60 degrees on both sides of the handle and the other nine inside 180 degrees. Both are conventions; a handle of two planets close together is counted as a bucket by some authors and is not here, because the moment two planets are allowed the shape becomes hard to tell from a lopsided seesaw.
How it reads
The handle is the whole reading, and this is the shape the tradition is most confident about. Everything held in the bowl is described as finding its way out through that one planet, which makes it the most important placement in the chart by a considerable margin.
The tradition associates a bucket with a person who has a channel: a single, identifiable way that a great deal of otherwise general capacity gets expressed. Whatever the handle planet governs is where that happens.
It is also read as the most directed of the seven. A bowl is self-contained and a bucket is a bowl that has found an outlet, which is why the two are so often written up together.
Where the reading sits
The handle, the lone planet opposite the rest. It carries the entire chart and is the placement worth reading first.
How common it actually is
Common: 13.8 per cent of charts, about one in seven. Nearly twice as frequent as the plain bowl it is built from, which is worth knowing given how much more the tradition has to say about it.
What to watch for
Assuming the handle is a strength. The tradition says it is the outlet, not that it is comfortable or well placed, and a difficult planet as the handle is read as demanding rather than as a gift.
Is your chart a bucket?
The birth chart tool names your shape along with the span it occupies and the widest empty arc. Bear in mind that the thresholds are a convention rather than a fact, so a different tool may reasonably give you a different word for the same chart. The hub prints the exact numbers this site uses.
The other shapes
- SplashSpread all the way round, with no large empty arc
- BundleAll ten planets inside 120 degrees
- BowlAll ten planets inside one half of the wheel
- LocomotiveAll ten inside two thirds, leaving an empty trine
- SeesawTwo groups of planets facing each other across two clear gaps
- SplayIrregular clumps that fit none of the other six