I have a personal fascination with Out of Bounds Planets (aka “OOB”). This fascination began for me when I realized that I had 3 planets out of bounds in my planetary makeup. This got me curious about what exactly this meant for me, and what this meant for other people with OOB planets, and how a planet being OOB might manifest in one’s life. Let’s start with some general housekeeping and understanding of what an OOB planet actually is. A planet is considered out of bounds when its declination is anywhere beyond 23 degrees 27 minutes north or south of the equator. When the planet goes out of bounds, it means it that is is no longer under the dominion of the Sun…..and out of sight and out of pull, the planet can behave how it wants. Certain planets tend to go OOB more often than others, while some planets never go OOB at all.

To see if you have any planets out of bounds, go to Astro.com and create your natal chart (create an account first if you don’t already have one). Once you have created your chart and have it pulled up, click on “additional tables” that you will find above the natal chart that you created. Once clicked on, the first page of the PDF should look like the image below. You will want to turn your attention to the “Declination” column, and see if any of the declinations in your chart exceed 23 degrees 27 minutes. If one does, the you have an OOB planet (or you could have a few, as in the case of yours truly).
**The table that is pictured below comes from Astro Gold, not astro.com (but astro.com is a free software and the table will look similar.

The Moon goes out of bounds the most often, with some years producing more OOB people than others. This has to do with the Nodes of the Moon; every 18.6 years or so the North Node finds itself at 0 degrees Aries. The years this occurs, the Moon can find itself at a declination up to 28.5 degrees. The closer to 0 degrees Aries your North Node is, the further OOB your Moon will be. In the last 70 years or so, the years that have produced the most OOB Moon people are 1950, 1969, late 1987-early 1988, and 2006. Mercury, Venus, and Mars go OOB somewhat often, but they usually don’t exceed a declination of 27 degrees (though every once in a while Venus and Mars can reach 28 degrees). Uranus and Pluto don’t go beyond 24 degrees (if they even ever really reach a declination 24 degrees), and since these are much slower moving planets, these planets going OOB tend to be a generational thing, and felt on a generational level. Jupiter hardly ever goes OOB, and when it does it never goes far beyond that 23 degrees 27 minute mark. Saturn and Neptune never go OOB, as well as the Sun (duh).

Since out of bounds planets have moved beyond the Sun’s line of sight, they are able to operate in a “different” way than they typically would. This “different” sort of way could be a way completely abnormal to the planet and the energy involved, or it cause the planet’s energy to become exalted and extremely well-developed. Planets out of bounds tend to produce visionary, free-thinking, and deeply original people in all areas of life, but especially in the arenas dealing with the planet and its energy. These people tend to operate outside of the confines of regular society, thinking and living outside of the box. The person will probably be regarded as “weird” in some way (which many OOB people don’t mind, and kind of enjoy, especially as they get older). Depending on the planet involved and aspects made to the planet in the chart of the native, the OOB planet can be a positive or negative attribute (sometimes it’s a little from column A & column B). The further OOB the planet is, the more that OOB energy will be expressed, noticeable, and felt by the native (and other people). Because the Moon goes out of bounds the most frequently with the highest declinations, its OOB effects tend to be seen and felt the most.

I know there are astrologers/students of astrology that don’t pay much attention to out of bounds planets. This could be due to lack of information on the subject, not realizing OOB planets are a “thing”, or just a personal preference of not believing them to mean much in the overall makeup of the chart. I disagree with the last part very much. Being born in late 1987 myself, I went to school/grew up with people born during the height of an out of bounds Moon season. Now, I realize that adolescence is a strange time and teenagers can be kind of strange in general while on their quest to find and figure themselves out. But the group of kids my age, in my “class” seemed to be a hodge-podge of extreme emotional weirdos; from people that were just crazy intuitive from a very young age, to those that were more eccentric than your everyday teenager, to those who just really & truly had no fucks to give about anything, my class had them all (and at a higher rate it seemed than the class above and the class below mine). Because of my own experience, and watching people my own age operate a little different than other people, I just can’t believe that there isn’t something to out of bounds Planets in one’s natal chart.

If you would like me to read out of bounds planets in your chart for you, get a reading from me here 🙂 Also, if you are more of a watcher than a reader, head to my YouTube channel where I have content on out of bounds planets and so much more.