…for researching purposes, serving as an introduction and a reference to my future character profiles. Every examination will provide a link back to this journal, so that newcomers can look back at this basic info and better understand later concepts.

Most of the research has been done with the many resources offered by astrologer Linda Goodman, a credible source that has never let me down! However a few one-liners have been taken from Wikipedia (usually not a credible source, but their astrology page happens to be quite good ).

Elements
Fire: represents one's desires and creative energies.
Water: represents imagination, human feelings, and one's ability to love and sustain.
Air: represents the intellect and one's ability to reason and communicate.
Earth: represents one's material resources, environment and possessions.

Qualities
Cardinal: associated with initiation and creativity.
Fixed: associated with stability and determination.
Mutable: associated with resourcefulness, holism and adaptability.

Additional Traits
Personal: principally aware of and concerned with individual concerns.
Interpersonal: principally aware of and concerned with social and societal concerns.
Transpersonal: principally aware of and concerned with humanitarian and existential concerns.

Planets
(Pluto, my own ruler, is a planet, or at least an influence. Argue and taste my Scorpio wrath!)
Sun: usually thought to represent the conscious ego, the self and its expression, personal power, pride and authority; leadership qualities; and the principles of creativity, spontaneity, health and vitality; the life force…also involves creative enterprises that are a projection of the person, from art and business to having children..
Moon: associated with a person's emotional make-up, unconscious habits, rhythms, memories and moods, and their ability to react and adapt to those around them. It is also associated with the mother, maternal instincts or the urge to nurture, the home, the need for security, and the past, especially early experiences and childhood.
Mercury: represents the principles of communication, mentality, thinking patterns, rationality and reasoning, and adaptability and variability.
Venus: associated with the principles of harmony, beauty, balance, the feelings and affections, and the urge to sympathize and unite with others. It is involved with the desire for pleasure, sensuality, personal possessions, comfort and ease. It governs romantic relations, marriage and business partnerships, sex (the origin of the words 'venery' and 'venereal', the arts, fashion and social life.
Mars: associated with confidence and self assertion, aggression, sexuality, energy, strength, ambition, and impulsiveness.
Jupiter: associated with the principles of growth, expansion, prosperity and good fortune; and a person's inner sense of justice and morality and their ideals and higher goals… also associated with the urge for freedom and exploration, humanitarian and protecting roles, and with gambling and merrymaking.
Saturn: associated with the principles of limitation, restrictions, boundaries, practicality and reality, crystallizing and structures. Saturn governs ambition, career, authority and hierarchy, and conforming social structures. It concerns a person's sense of duty, discipline and responsibility, and their physical and emotional endurance during hardships.
Uranus: modern interpretations associate Uranus with the principles of genius, individuality, new and unconventional ideas, discoveries, electricity, inventions, and the beginnings of the industrial revolution. Uranus governs societies, clubs and any group dedicated to humanitarian or progressive ideals. Uranus, the planet of sudden and unexpected changes, rules freedom and originality. In society it rules radical ideas and people, as well as revolutionary events that upset established structures.
Neptune: associated with idealism and compassion, but also with illusion, confusion and deception; with religions, spirituality and mysticism, the mass media, creativity in art and music, drugs, extreme sensitivity, fantasy and imagination, psychic phenomena and altered mental states.
Pluto: …called "the great renewer", is considered to represent the part of a person that destroys in order to renew through bringing buried, but intense, needs and drives to the surface and expressing them, even at the expense of the existing order. A commonly used keyword for Pluto is "transformation". It is associated with power and personal mastery and the need to co-operate and share with another, if each is not to be destroyed. Pluto governs big business and wealth, mining, surgery and detective work, and any enterprise which involves digging under the surface to bring the truth to light. Pluto is also deeply associated with Mars.