Lesson 1 · 9 min
What a Transit Is
A birth chart is a snapshot, but the sky keeps moving. A transit is the meeting of today's sky with that snapshot.
The sky keeps moving
Your birth chart records where the Sun, Moon and planets stood at one moment. Astrologers call these the natal positions. The planets did not stop there. They kept travelling around the zodiac, and they are still travelling today.
A transit is the current position of a planet, read against the natal chart. When astrologers say 'transiting Saturn is crossing your Mercury', they mean that Saturn in today's sky has reached the same zodiac degree that Mercury held at your birth. The word comes from the Latin transire, to go across.
In this tradition the natal chart describes the shape of a life, and transits describe the seasons that pass over it. The chart stays fixed. The sky above it changes every day.
Fast and slow
Seen from Earth, each body moves at its own pace. The Moon is quickest: about 13° a day, a new sign roughly every two and a half days, and the whole zodiac in about 27 days. The Sun moves about 1° a day and takes a year to return to the same point.
Mercury and Venus are a special case. Their orbits lie inside Earth's, so from here they never stray far from the Sun: Mercury no more than about 28°, Venus no more than about 47°. On average each takes about a year to go round the zodiac, just like the Sun. At their quickest, though, Mercury can cover nearly 2° a day and Venus about 1.25°, both faster than the Sun. That is why tradition ranks them between the Moon and the Sun.
Beyond the Sun the pace slows. Mars takes about two years to circle the zodiac. Jupiter takes about 12 years, so it spends roughly a year in each sign. Saturn takes about 29.5 years, about two and a half years per sign. Uranus takes 84 years, Neptune about 165 and Pluto about 248, and Pluto's stretched orbit means it can spend anywhere from about 12 to over 30 years in one sign.
Cycles and returns
Because each planet circles the zodiac, it eventually comes back to the degree it held at your birth. Astrologers call this a return. The Sun returns once a year, close to your birthday. Jupiter returns about every 12 years, near the ages of 12, 24, 36 and so on.
The best known return is Saturn's, which comes around the ages of 29 to 30 and again near 58 to 59. Astrologers read the Saturn return as a time of taking stock: looking at what you have built, what you carry out of habit, and what responsibilities you choose to keep. It is described as a phase of growing up, not as a fixed event.
Why speed matters
Speed decides how long a transit lasts. The Moon passes over a point in a few hours. The Sun takes a few days. Saturn can stay near the same degree for months, and the outer planets for a year or more.
For that reason astrologers usually treat fast transits like weather, a mood of the day, and slow transits like climate, a longer theme. Later lessons show how retrograde loops stretch the slow ones further, and how to read a transit to your own chart.
Key terms
- Natal position
- Where a planet stood in the zodiac at the moment of birth, as recorded in the birth chart.
- Transit
- A planet's current position in the sky, read in relation to the natal chart.
- Return
- The moment a moving planet comes back to the exact degree it held at birth, such as a Jupiter or Saturn return.
- Chaldean order
- The traditional ranking of the seven visible bodies by apparent speed, from slowest to fastest: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon.
- Orbital period
- The time a planet takes to go once around the Sun, which sets roughly how long it takes to travel through the whole zodiac.
Worked example
Worked example: Maya's returns
Our teaching sample Maya was born on 15 March 1992 at 14:30 in Lisbon. The Zodiaq engine places her natal Saturn at 14°24' Aquarius and her natal Jupiter at 7°41' Virgo.
Saturn takes about 29.5 years to circle the zodiac. Following its path, the engine finds that transiting Saturn came within about 1° of Maya's natal Saturn in May 2021, then turned retrograde and drew back. It came round again and reached the exact degree around 22 January 2022, when Maya was 29. That was her first Saturn return.
Jupiter moves much faster. The engine finds transiting Jupiter exactly on her natal Jupiter around mid September 2015, when she was 23: her second Jupiter return, about two twelve-year cycles after birth.
Notice the pattern. The slower the planet, the rarer its return and the longer it lingers near the point. That difference in speed is exactly what the exercise asks you to order.
History and traditionFrom Babylonian tables to modern planets
Babylonian astronomers kept careful records of the planets for centuries. Their so-called Goal-Year texts used known periods to predict where a planet would appear, for example a 59-year cycle for Saturn, after which its pattern in the sky nearly repeats.
Hellenistic astrologers writing in Greek, from about the second century BCE, joined these observations to the birth chart. They watched the slow planets, especially Saturn and Jupiter, alongside other timing methods. The seven visible bodies were ranked by speed in what is now called the Chaldean order.
Uranus was discovered in 1781, Neptune in 1846 and Pluto in 1930. Modern astrologers added them to the chart, and their very slow transits became a large part of twentieth century astrology.
Try it: Order the planets by speed
Arrange the ten bodies from the fastest moving to the slowest, as seen from Earth.
Tap the items in order. Tap a placed item to remove it.
Your order
Still to place
Check your understanding
Question 1 of 5
Think about it
If you think back to your late twenties, or look ahead to them, what would you want to take stock of at that stage of life?