Your personal transits: how to calculate and read them

How do you calculate your personal transits?

A transit is a planet in today’s sky forming an angle with a point of your natal chart. To calculate yours, the site needs your birth chart: your transits are read on it, not on your Sun sign alone. If you have already calculated your birth chart on this device, the page offers it to you: tap “Read my transits” and it opens straight onto your week.

1. Open My transits, or tap “Read my transits” on the transits page.
2. If no chart is kept on the device, fill in the “Your birth” form (date, time and place), then tap “See my transits”.
3. The page opens onto your week: three landmarks at the top, your reading, the wheel of your birth, then the folded detail.
4. To read the transits of someone close to you, tap “Change chart” at the top of the page, then pick another chart from the device or “Calculate another chart”.

You can also reach your transits from your chart page, with “Read my transits of the week” in the transits section, and from your space, where every saved chart has its own “My transits” button.

What you see at the top of the page

Under the title, a line reminds you which chart the page is calculated from, for example “Based on the chart calculated here for Camille.” Three landmarks then give you the essentials at a glance, before any reading.

Just below, the sentence “Your reading takes into account” names the houses, the exact aspects, today’s Moon and the backdrop of the slow planets. Tap any of these words to open its explanation in a bubble, without leaving the page.

• Today: today’s date, so you know which sky you are looking at.
• The strongest passage: the tightest major transit, on a personal planet or an angle first, with its orb in degrees. Tap it to read its page. When no major transit is tight, the card simply says so.
• Today’s Moon: the house of your chart it is crossing (its sign if your birth time is missing). Tap it to open today’s sky.

Your reading of the week, composed on your chart

At the heart of the page, your reading of the week is composed in a few seconds from your exact chart and the transits the site calculates, just like the express reading of your chart. It unfolds in titled parts: what is moving for you right now, the strongest passage, what is loosening, what is taking shape, your heart and your bonds, your drive and your work, all the way to your gesture for the week. Every placement it names is matched against the calculated sky, and its tags lead to the transit’s page, with its time window.

The first parts can be read without an account. The rest opens with a free account: it is written for you and stays in your space, and “Keep this chart and this reading” lets you find it again on all your devices. The reading is written once a week for each chart: open the page again during the week and you will find it just as it was.

At the end of the reading, the line “A question about your reading?” opens the chat: your chart answers you, with your transits of the week recalculated for every question. You get five questions a week without an account, ten with a free account, and unlimited questions with My Birth Chart+ (how the chat answers).

If the composed reading is not available when you open the page, the site’s own texts take its place under the title “What the sky is activating for you”: the strongest passage, the other passages under way and the houses the slow planets are crossing.

Slow planets and fast planets: why they don’t weigh the same

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto move slowly: they stay for months, sometimes years, on the same point of your chart. They draw the backdrop of the period, the major passages that shape a life. The page counts a major transit as under way as soon as it is within three degrees of the exact aspect, and it also watches the ones that will enter that zone over the next twelve weeks.

The Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars cross a sign in a few weeks. Their transits colour the week without defining it: the reading only keeps them when they become exact, within one degree, between Monday and Sunday. The Moon is faster still: it changes sign every two and a half days and sets the emotional climate of the day, which is why it has its own landmark at the top of the page.

How to read a transit: aspect, orb and exact passage

A transit reads in three words, as in “transiting Saturn square your Sun”. The planet in the sky says what is acting (Saturn: structure, maturity), the aspect says how (the square: a tension that calls for a decision), and the natal point says where it touches you (the Sun: your identity, your vitality). The transits encyclopedia interprets every combination, and the page What is a transit? covers the basics.

The orb is the gap, in degrees, between the exact angle and the actual one: the smaller it is, the more the transit is felt. Under one degree, the page says “exact”. “Applying · tightening” flags an aspect moving towards its exact point, “separating · moving away” one that is coming apart. A major transit often passes three times over the same point because of retrogrades, which is why the page sometimes gives several exact dates.

• The conjunction: the planet sits on your point, the most direct effect.
• The sextile and the trine: smooth passages, doors that open if you push them.
• The square and the opposition: tensions that make you choose or adjust, often the most fruitful ones.

The house being crossed and your next twelve months

Your chart is divided into twelve houses, each one an area of life: partnership in the 7th, work in the 10th, home in the 4th. A slow planet crossing a house puts its energy there for months: that is where the period plays out for you. Houses are calculated from your birth time; without it, the page reads your planets and offers “Add my birth time” (why the time matters).

Further down, “Your transits in detail” keeps everything else, folded away. “Your transits now and over the next twelve months” lists the major transits under way with their orb, the houses the slow planets are crossing, then the windows ahead where the aspect is within one degree, with their exact dates. Each line has its “Read this transit” link, and “The placements of your chart” brings back your birth chart.

Note down the exact dates of the passages that concern you: they are good moments to launch, decide or let go of whatever the transit is working on.

My transits, daily horoscope or today’s sky: which one to read?

All three pages talk about the same sky, at three distances. Today’s sky shows the planetary positions for everyone. The daily horoscope applies that sky to each of the twelve signs, from your Sun sign alone. Your transits lay it over your whole chart, to the degree and in your houses: the most personal reading of the three.

To look further than the week, the solar return gives you the chart of your year, from one birthday to the next. And for a complete reading of your chart, twenty to twenty-five pages shaped by your question, see the written reading.