In Astrological Transits, astrologer April Elliott Kent will guide you through the best ways to make the most of your birth chart. Learn how to make the most of good transits and harness and transform the energy of “bad” ones. You’ll also understand planetary cycles and anticipate your own transits. Finally, you’ll know how to read planetary return charts, work with planetary retrogrades, and use eclipses to recognize major patterns and turning points in your life.
Author’s Note:
There is a part of you that doesn’t change much, really, from the time you’re born until the day you leave the planet. In astrology, we look to your birth chart to find insights into this true, unchanging self. Take a snapshot of the sky at the moment of your birth, from the place where you were born. It’s as though a nuclear blast happened at that moment and imprinted the heavens on you. That is your indelible, astrological schema. That’s the person you are inside.
But then you learn to walk, you go to school, you fall in love and get your heart broken, you have a child or lose a parent, and each of those experiences leaves a mark. So you’re not precisely the same person you were on the day you were born. Astrology acknowledges both realities: that there is an unchanging core deep within each one of us, and that a shy, vulnerable infant can grow into a poised, strong adult. The birth chart is what we set out with, the knapsack full of traits and native weaponry that we carry into the world for sustenance and protection. But along the way, we encounter the world, it encounters us, and things change. Astrologers call these encounters transits.
In astrology, the term transits refers to the ongoing movement of the planets, in contrast to their positions at your birth or when some other notable event occurred. Because they are connected to current reality, transits reflect our collective reality, the world we’re all living in together. Transits are like cards that the world deals us, and what we do with them—how we play the hand—is what changes us and determines the course of our destiny.
Your birth chart is a snapshot of the sky at the moment you were born. But what happened in the next moment? The planets continued to move, that’s what happened. Some of them move quickly, and others at the pace of drying paint. Take a snapshot of that same sky from the same place just twenty-four hours later, and you’d see some changes, but not many. Some slightly different stars would be rising on the horizon and culminating overhead. Most noticeably, the Moon would be in another part of the sky. The Moon is our fastest-moving celestial companion: In just twenty-eight days, it makes a complete lap of the ecliptic, covering 360 degrees and every zodiac sign.
But everything else on that next day will most likely be just about where you left it. You’d have to come back in a month to see much movement from Mercury, the Sun, Venus, or Mars. Jupiter occupies the same, narrow 30-degree span of sky for an entire year, and Saturn for about two and a half years. As for Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto… well, you wouldn’t see them at all, but rest assured, they’ll have hardly budged. We live in an orderly universe, and nowhere is this more evident than in our solar system. The planets move in predictable cycles, revisiting the same points in the zodiac at regular intervals. For instance, each year, within a day on either side of your birthday, the Sun returns to the same point in the sky that it occupied at your birth. “Many happy returns” indeed!
Contents:
- An Overview of Transits
- Understanding Planetary Cycles
- Transits of JUPITER: The Leap of Faith
- Transits of SATURN: The Ability to Respond
- Transits of URANUS: The Shooting Star
- Transits of NEPTUNE: The Tide
- Transits of PLUTO: The Undertow
- Transits of MERCURY, VENUS, and MARS: Planetary Triggers
- Transits of the SUN and MOON: The Dance of Light
- Houses 1 and 7: Self and Important Others
- Houses 2 and 8: Personal and Shared Resources
- Houses 3 and 9: Learning and Understanding
- Houses 4 and 10: Origin and Destination
- Houses 5 and 11: Creations and Legends
- Houses 6 and 12: This World and the Next
- Transits in Action
Astrological Transits: The Beginner's Guide to Using Planetary Cycles to Plan and Predict Your Day, Week, Year By April Elliott Kent pdf
