Ikigai and astrology

The Ikigai Diagram Was Drawn by an Astrologer: The True Story

By Solen, astrologer · 12 October 2026

The diagram everyone shares

You’ve almost certainly seen it: four overlapping circles, with “ikigai” written where they all meet. It appears in career workshops, TED-style talks, self-help books and thousands of posts about finding your purpose. Most people assume it comes from Japan, along with the word.

It doesn’t. Its story starts in Spain, with an astrologer.

The true story, in four steps

1. 1966 · JapanThe psychiatrist Mieko Kamiya publishes Ikigai ni tsuite (“On the meaning of life”), the classic Japanese book on ikigai. There are no circles in it: for her, ikigai is what gives a life its worth, and a feeling, not a formula.
2. 2011 · SpainAndrés Zuzunaga, a Spanish astrologer and author, draws a Venn diagram of purpose: four circles, with purpose at the centre.
3. 2012 · A Spanish bookThe diagram is first published in Borja Vilaseca’s book Qué harías si no tuvieras miedo (“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”).
4. 2014 · A blog postAfter watching a talk on the long-lived people of Okinawa, the blogger Marc Winn publishes “What’s your ikigai?” using a translated version of the diagram, with “purpose” replaced by “ikigai”. He later said he had simply changed one word on a diagram. That version is the one the world now shares.

What ikigai really means in Japan

In Japan, ikigai is closer to “a reason to get up in the morning”. It can be a grandchild, a garden, a morning walk or a craft practised for its own sake. It doesn’t have to make money, serve the world or be something you’re especially good at. Writers on Japanese ikigai, such as the neuroscientist Ken Mogi, describe it more as small daily joys than as a grand plan.

So the four-circle diagram isn’t a translation of ikigai. It’s something else, a map of a purposeful working life, that borrowed a beautiful word. Both are worth having. They just answer different questions.

Why it matters that an astrologer drew it

Zuzunaga’s circles ask the questions astrologers have always asked a birth chart: what do you love, what comes naturally to you, what are you here to give, and how will the world receive it? The diagram is, in a sense, the shape of a chart reading with the planets taken out.

The trouble with the diagram on its own is that it asks you to fill in the circles yourself, and most of us don’t know the answers. That’s exactly why people search for their ikigai in the first place.

Reading your four circles in the stars

This is what SkyPath does. It reads four circles from your birth chart, then finds your calling where they meet. They’re not the same four labels as the popular diagram; they’re the four points of the chart that describe a calling:

Circle	Read from
What lights you up	Your Sun, by its sign and house
What comes naturally	Your South Node: the gift you were born with
What you can be known for	Your Midheaven (MC): the work the world sees
What you’re growing into	Your North Node: the direction of your growth
Your calling	Where the four meet

Instead of guessing what to write in each circle, you see what your chart already says, in plain words. Then the question becomes the one that matters: does it ring true?

Want to go deeper into the career side? Read how your birth chart shows your calling, or, if you’re 27 to 30 and everything feels uncertain, what your Saturn return is asking.

Sources: Ikigai misunderstood and the origin of the ikigai Venn diagram (Ikigai Tribe) · How the Andrés Zuzunaga Venn diagram became ikigai (Ikigai Tribe)