Enter your birth date, the most reliable time you have and your birthplace. The chart shows Lilith by sign and degree with its house, its motion and its aspects within the natal orbs, labelled as the osculating apogee so that any comparison with another tool starts from the definition.
What to look for in your result
- The definition beside the name: osculating (true) lunar apogee, Swiss Ephemeris body 13.
- The sign and degree.
- The motion. The osculating apogee speeds up, slows down and can be retrograde; the mean apogee only ever moves forward.
- The house, which depends on the birth time, and the aspects with the orb of each.
Because the definition drives the number, the label matters more here than it does for any planet.
A worked example
| Body | Position | House | Motion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lilith (osculating apogee) | 5°49′ Aquarius | 12 | retrograde, 1.19°/day |
Demonstration birth: 1991-09-06 at 18:30 local time, Kyiv, Ukraine (50.4501° N, 30.5234° E), Europe/Kyiv at UTC+3, so 1991-09-06 15:30 UTC. Tropical zodiac, Placidus houses, Swiss Ephemeris 2.10.03. Full result and settings on How to verify your birth chart.
In the demonstration chart Lilith is at 5°49′ Aquarius in house 12, retrograde at 1.19°/day. It is 5.8° from the nearest sign boundary, further than it moves in a day, so no birth time on this date would change the sign. The house is a different matter: Lilith sits 9.2° from the cusp of house 1, and the cusps move with the birth time.
Aspects to Lilith within the natal orbs (conjunction 8°, sextile 6°, square 8°, trine 8°, opposition 8°), tightest first:
| Aspect | With | Orb |
|---|---|---|
| Opposition | Chiron | 0.57° |
| Trine | Mars | 2.35° |
| Conjunction | Saturn | 4.97° |
| Square | Ceres | 5.26° |
| Opposition | Vesta | 7.10° |
The tightest contact is the opposition with Chiron at 0.57°, against an allowed orb of 8° for that aspect. Since Chiron moves 0.10°/day and Lilith 1.19°/day, their separation changes by up to 1.29° across a day. The contact therefore holds at any birth time on this date.
Which Lilith this is, and how it is read
Three different things are called Lilith, and they do not sit in the same place. The chart names the one it uses.
| Point | What it is | Used by NatalChart.AI |
|---|---|---|
| Osculating (true) lunar apogee | The apogee of the actual, perturbed lunar orbit at the birth moment; Swiss Ephemeris body 13 | Yes, this is the Lilith in every NatalChart.AI chart |
| Mean lunar apogee | The apogee of an averaged lunar orbit, moving steadily forward; the mean Black Moon Lilith on many sites | No |
| Asteroid 1181 Lilith | A main-belt asteroid unrelated to the lunar orbit | No |
The osculating and mean apogees can differ by several degrees on the same date, enough to change the sign near a boundary and the house near a cusp. A tool that does not name its definition cannot be compared reliably.
In astrology Black Moon Lilith is often read as what a person will not tame or is expected to hide, and as a place of refusal. NatalChart.AI presents that as a symbolic theme attached to a calculated point, not as a measured trait.
What birth-time uncertainty changes
The osculating apogee moves irregularly and, on some dates, faster than any planet (1.19°/day in the demonstration chart), so on a day when it crosses a boundary the sign depends on the time. The house always does: the cusps move with the time and place, and Lilith can change house without the sign changing.
The orb of an aspect to Lilith can shift by about a degree across a day; a contact with the Moon shifts far more, because the Moon moves up to about 15° a day (14.60°/day in the demonstration chart). If your birth time is unknown, keep the house and the Moon contacts marked as uncertain. See what an unknown birth time changes.
Questions
Which Lilith does NatalChart.AI calculate?
The osculating, or true, lunar apogee, Swiss Ephemeris body 13, in the tropical zodiac. It is not the mean apogee that many sites label Black Moon Lilith, and not the asteroid 1181 Lilith.
Why is my Lilith in a different sign on another site?
Most often because the other site uses the mean apogee, which can differ from the osculating apogee by several degrees, or the asteroid, which is a different object altogether. A sidereal zodiac or a different birth time will also move it. Compare the definition first, then the settings.
Why does the chart show Lilith retrograde?
The osculating apogee is a point on the calculated lunar orbit, not a body. Its longitude decreases for stretches of time as the orbit is perturbed, and the chart reports that from the calculated speed exactly as it does for a planet.
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