Transits

Your birth chart is a snapshot. The sky did not stop when you were born: the planets kept moving, and they are still moving now. Every so often a moving planet reaches a sensitive point in your chart, and that part of your life wakes up. That meeting between the sky now and the sky then is a transit.

Transits are the most widely used timing technique in astrology. They are how astrologers talk about "now".

How a transit works

A transit is an aspect between a moving planet and a fixed point in your birth chart. Read it like any aspect:

1. The transiting planet says what kind of energy is arriving: Saturn brings structure and tests, Jupiter growth, Uranus change, Neptune dissolving, Pluto transformation.
2. The natal planet it touches says which part of you is involved.
3. The aspect says how: a conjunction starts something, a square brings tension and action, an opposition brings awareness, a trine or sextile brings ease.

In the example, transiting Saturn opposes the natal Sun, and transiting Mars squares it: a season when identity is tested and pushed to act.

Why some transits last for months

Here is something that surprises many people. A slow planet does not pass over a point once. Because of retrograde motion, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto often cross the same degree three times: forward, back, then forward again, over many months. That is why a big transit feels like a season rather than a day: it builds, eases, returns and resolves.

What is moving in your chart now?

Start with your birth chart: every transit and return is read against it.

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