Transits in Astrology: How the Moving Sky Meets Your Chart
A transit is a planet in today's sky forming an aspect to a planet or point in your birth chart. Transits are how astrology times things: the birth chart is the fixed map, and transits show which parts of it are being activated now and for how long.
Fast and slow transits
The Moon transits your whole chart every month, so its contacts last hours and describe moods. The Sun, Mercury and Venus take days. Mars takes days to weeks. Jupiter and Saturn take months, and Uranus, Neptune and Pluto can take more than a year over one point because of retrograde loops. The slow transits describe chapters; the fast ones describe days.
What makes a transit matter
The planet doing the transiting (Saturn matters more than the Moon), the point it touches (your Sun, Moon, rising sign and Midheaven matter most), the aspect (conjunctions, squares and oppositions are the strongest) and the orb (the closer, the stronger).
Transits and the daily horoscope
A Sun-sign horoscope treats your Sun sign as the 1st house and reads the day's sky against that. A personal reading uses your actual chart, so it can name the exact natal planet a transit touches and the day it is closest.
Returns
A return is a planet coming back to the exact place it held at your birth. The solar return happens each birthday, the Jupiter return about every twelve years, and the Saturn return around ages 29 and 58.
Find yours
Where every planet is today, which are retrograde and what is exact this week. Current transits
Read today's sky against your own chart
Everything on this page applies to your chart in a particular way. A Precision Horoscope casts your chart, finds today's transits to it and writes the reading for you. The first one is free. Get my free personal reading