What is the difference between natal chart, transit chart, progressed chart and solar return chart?

A natal chart most closely resembles a base map. It tells you how core personalities, major functional configurations, relationship styles, stress structures, advantageous resources, and life issues are typically organized. It's not responsible for telling you what will happen in which year, but for "what will be your recurring themes." Transits, progressions, and solar returns are all tools of time. They are not there to overturn the natal chart, but to answer "What is activating this base chart right now?"

Therefore, the first difference between the four types of disks is not the complexity, but the different division of labor between the structural disk and the time disk.

The best time to transit is to see where the external environment touches you now. It's like the weather, telling you which star is knocking on your door. Progression is more like internal growth. It talks about the state you are slowly growing into. Many changes may not necessarily lead to big external events immediately, but you will obviously feel that you are changing. The solar return is like a yearly theme map, telling you which issues are more likely to revolve around the whole year from this birthday to the next. The three do not overlap, but cover the same period of time from the three perspectives of triggering, maturity and annual setting.

People who know how to read will not use them to replace each other, but will let them confirm each other.

Without a natal chart, the time chart will become very empty, because you don't know what long-term main line those triggers fall on. On the other hand, if there is only a natal chart and no time chart, it will be difficult for you to explain why certain years of the same person are particularly like a career period, certain years are particularly like a restructuring period, and certain years are like a relationship transition period. The mature interpretation logic is: first use your natal life to find the main line, and then use transit, advancement and reflections to determine when and how this line will be lit, and what the stage setting will be for this year.

The really useful way to use the four disks is never to work alone.

The confusion that many people have is not that they can’t remember the terminology, but that they can’t tell when to look at which disk. Your natal chart looks at you as a person, your transit looks at external opportunities, your progress looks at internal transformations, and your solar return looks at the theme of the year. Once this division of labor is clear, understanding will be much smoother when you come into contact with more detailed time techniques later.

A really good way to get started is not to pile up more and more tools, but to finally know which drawer each tool should be placed in.