Transits: Today’s Sky Meets Your Chart

A transit is the real position of a planet in the sky at a given moment, compared with your birth chart. Your natal chart is a snapshot taken when you were born; transits are the live sky moving across that snapshot. When a transiting planet forms an aspect to a planet in your natal chart, astrology says the themes of that natal planet are being stirred up.

Slow planets and fast planets

A planet’s speed tells you whether a theme is brief or long-lasting.

• Fast planets (Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars) pass through an aspect within hours or a few days. They set the mood or the weather of a day.
• Slow planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) hover near an aspect for weeks or even a year, and when they turn retrograde they may return to the same angle two or three times. These are tied to the larger turning points of life.

Reading the transits of the fast planets is a modern practice. The old books worked mainly with the slow planets and gave little weight to transits of the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus, so the app uses the fast planets only for the mood of a day.

For scale, the Moon spends about two and a half days in a sign, Jupiter about a year, Saturn about two and a half years, and Pluto well over a decade in some signs.

How the app uses transits

Your personal daily horoscope is built from the day’s transits measured against your own birth chart. That is why it differs from a general sign horoscope: it responds to the planets in your chart, not just your Sun sign. The daily page also shows the Moon’s sign, phase and house for the day and lays that day’s sky over your natal wheel. The transits page looks further ahead, over a month, three months or a year, with a timeline of when each transit begins, becomes exact and ends. Tap a transit to see its dates, including any return to the same angle while the planet is retrograde.

Reading them well

Transits describe tendencies and atmosphere, not guaranteed events. A tense one often asks for patience and adjustment, while a flowing one opens a window. Use them as a question: which area of my life is being activated right now, and how do I want to respond?