The trials of the seven nights: how they are drawn, how to pass them

What the trial is for: reading a chart, not reciting

A lesson is read in a quarter of an hour; knowing how to use it is another matter, and the trial is there to check it. It does not ask you to repeat a definition: it sets a chart in front of you and asks you to find a house, a ruler, an aspect in it. That is the move you will make again on any chart afterward, yours included.

Nothing is asked by surprise: every notion is explained in the night’s lesson before it shows up in a question. If you have read the cards and done their exercises, you have already met everything the trial expects of you. How the course unfolds, one night a day, is explained on the page The seven nights, step by step.

How a trial is drawn

When you tap “Take the trial”, the site draws your questions: ten per trial on the first six nights, fifteen on the seventh. They are set on real skies, births picked at random whose chart the site calculates the way it calculates yours. The houses, rulers and aspects you read there belong to a real chart, never to a diagram arranged for the exercise.

The skies change with every draw: you never take the same trial twice. So remembering yesterday’s answers is no use, only the method carries over from one trial to the next. An ordinary trial mixes three kinds of questions.

• The night’s calculated questions, the most numerous: “On this chart, which house is Neptune in?”, or “Sun at 18° Capricorn and Uranus at 21° Taurus: which aspect do these two positions form?”. The answer is read on the wheel, or counted.
• Two questions on notions, about what the lesson explained: “Which are the four angular houses?”, “A square between two planets indicates…”.
• Two questions from the nights before, from the second night on, so that nothing fades: in the trial on aspects, you may still be asked which body rules Virgo.

How you answer: one question, one answer, its correction

The trial moves one question at a time. Some come with a wheel, others fit in a sentence; all offer several answers, most often four, and only one is right.

1. Read the question, look at the wheel when there is one, then tap your answer. It is sent at once: one answer per question, with no going back.
2. The correction appears right away: “Correct.” or “Not quite.”, the right answer highlighted, then an explanation that says why.
3. Tap “Next question”. At the top, a bar keeps track of your answers: one mark per question, right or wrong.
4. Under the bar, a line counts the mistakes you can still afford: “2 more mistakes allowed”, then “1 more mistake allowed”, then “No more mistakes allowed”.
5. On the last question, tap “See the result”: the night’s star lights up, or the page tells you how many right answers were needed.

You have three hours to finish a trial you have started. After that it expires, its attempt still counts and the page offers to start a new one: better to take it in one go, at a quiet moment.

The pass mark: eight out of ten, twelve out of fifteen

The night’s star lights up at four fifths of right answers: eight out of ten, twelve out of fifteen on the seventh night. So you are allowed two mistakes in an ordinary trial, three in the last one. It is demanding, and on purpose: at that level you can truly read what the night taught you, and the next night can build on it.

If one mistake too many comes along the way, the line under the bar warns you: “The pass mark is out of reach tonight: go to the end to read the corrections.” Take that advice: the explanations of the remaining questions are the best preparation for the next trial. At the end, a failed trial shows “Not yet”, your score and the number of right answers that were needed, along with the “Reread the lesson” button.

Three trials a day, and they come back at midnight

The first night is played without an account; the following ones with a free account, which keeps your stars and knows how many trials you have taken that day. For each night not yet completed, it gives you three a day. A trial you have started counts, even if you leave before the end: the attempt is taken when the questions are drawn, not at the result. After the first one, the night’s card tells you where you stand: “2 more trials possible today”.

Once all three are used, the trial button disappears until midnight; the lesson itself stays open. Trials come back at midnight, Paris time, for everyone. Wherever you are, the page shows a countdown in hours and minutes, never a local time to convert.

Do not spend your three trials in a row. After a failed trial, reread the cards behind the questions you missed, then try again: the draw will be new, but the same skills will come back.

House numbers are hidden: you have to count

From the second night on, some questions ask which house a body is in, or the ruler of a sign. On those wheels, the house numbers are not written. It is not a trap: the lesson of the second night announces it and teaches you to count. Reading a number is copying; counting is knowing your way around any chart.

The method comes down to three moves. They are the same as on the wheel of your own chart, where the twelve houses follow one another in the same order.

1. Find the Ascendant, on the left of the wheel, marked AS: house 1 begins there and dips below the horizon.
2. Count the cusps counterclockwise: house 4 opens at the bottom, house 7 on the right, house 10 at the top, and house 12 brings you back to the Ascendant.
3. Place the body: it is in a house when it stands between that house’s cusp and the next cusp, always in the counting direction.

The classic trap: a body placed just before an angle belongs to the house before it. A Sun close to the Midheaven, but not yet past it, is in house 9, not in house 10.

Retaking a completed night for its full brightness

A completed night does not close. On its card, “Take the trial” becomes “Retake the trial”, and this time without limit: as many trials as you like, on any day. The site keeps your best score. A retake that goes less well takes nothing away: the star stays lit, and so does the earlier score. The date of your first success does not move either: retaking neither brings forward nor delays the opening of the next night.

Why retake? For the sparks. Each right answer of your best score is worth ten sparks, and a flawless night adds fifty: its star reaches “Full brightness”, written on its card in place of “Completed”. The total is shown under the Big Dipper, between your stars and your days in a row. Stars tell how far you have come; sparks, how surely you read.

The great sky: the trial of the seventh night

The last trial has a name, “The great sky”, written on its button in place of “Take the trial”, and it changes scale: fifteen questions, twelve right answers to find. Six are about the crossing, the subject of the seventh lesson, three about its notions, and six are taken from the most demanding of the whole course. Everything the first six nights taught you can come back, and that is the point: the seventh night crosses the readings instead of lining them up.

The rules themselves do not change: three trials a day, one answer per question, the correction right away. Only the margin widens, three mistakes allowed instead of two. Once passed, the great sky lights the seventh star, and the Big Dipper is complete: its story is told on the page the Big Dipper and its seven stars.

How to prepare for a trial

The trial rewards method, not memory. Three habits make the difference, and none takes more than a few minutes.

• Reread the lesson. “Reread the lesson” stays open on the night’s card, even once the day’s three trials are used. The “To remember” lines of each card make a good last-minute summary.
• Redo the exercises on the cards. Under “Your turn”, a card asks a question of the same kind as those of the trial, corrected at once and with nothing at stake: it counts for nothing, except for you.
• Check on your own chart. At the end of the lesson, “Apply the lesson to my chart” opens your chart when the site already knows it: find your houses there, their rulers, your aspects. Otherwise, calculate your chart: what you have seen in your own sky stays with you.

If the third trial of the day fails, nothing is lost: the lesson waits for you until tomorrow, and a night of sleep often does the rest.