PRACTICE / 33 OF 36
Read Today's Transits
By the end you will understand how the transits on the today page are worked out, and use which body is moving to tell a matter of days from a matter of months.
Approved original lessons, free on the web · 2026-10-12
THE IDEA
Your task: read one transit on the today page and judge how long it lasts.
Table: the Moon stays in a sign about two days, the Sun about a month, Mars about two months, Jupiter about a year and Saturn about two and a half years. All averages from NASA orbit periods; retrograde motion changes any single pass.
A transit says which moving body has reached which of your placements.
What one transit line says
A transit has three parts: the body that is moving, the placement of yours it has reached, and the angle between them. Pull those three apart before you think about meaning; in that order, what you see is a clear relationship between positions.
Reflection promptThis app works out the day's positions once a day and compares them with your positions at birth. The allowed gap is 1 degree in general and 2 for the Sun and Moon; within 0.1 of a degree counts as “exact.”
How this tool worksWhat the old texts say: the timing chapter of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos is Book IV ch. 10, the division of times, which splits a life into stretches by rule and reads each stretch in turn.
Cited sourceTo know how long it lasts, look first at which body is moving.
How long it lasts
The same angle can last very different lengths of time depending on which body is moving. The Moon is past in a day; the Sun in about two; Mars within 1 degree usually a few days; Jupiter a week or two; Saturn and the planets further out can come and go over months, because retrograde motion brings them back. These are rough figures worked out from NASA orbit periods.
Derived calculationSo when you see a transit, first ask who is moving. If it is the Moon, it is today's matter at most.
Reflection promptIf Saturn is the one moving, it is a theme you have been meeting again and again lately, one that stays for quite a while. Ask yourself: which matter has kept coming back to me these past months?
Later interpretationWhat the old texts say: Book I ch. 2 of the Tetrabiblos says predictions sometimes fail, and that more than the heavens shapes a person.
Cited sourceOBSERVE YOUR OWN CHART
Look at my chart
Your turn: open the today page and pick one transit.
- Split it into three: who is moving, which of your placements, which angle.
- Use how fast that body moves to judge whether this is days or months.
- Write one line: does the description match what today was really like?
Without a birth time, rising sign and houses stay blank.
LOOK CLOSER
A common mix-up
“The today page predicts what will happen to me.”
The today page describes two sets of degrees — the day's and your birth chart's — forming an angle. You can check it against how your day went.
“If I feel nothing, it was worked out wrong.”
The positions really are calculated, but Ptolemy himself says predictions fail and that more than the sky shapes a person. Feeling nothing is a normal result.
CHECK YOURSELF
Now, try it yourself.
Sources and rights
- Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, trans. F. E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library, 1940)
Book IV ch. 10, the division of times, is the text's timing chapter and divides a life into stretches by rule, unlike modern transits; that chapter also generalises about peoples in its era's terms, which this lesson neither cites nor uses. Book I ch. 2 says predictions sometimes fail and that more than the heavens shapes a person. The transit orbs — 1 degree, 2 for the lights, exact inside 0.1 — and the rough durations are this app's numbers and this lesson's arithmetic.
The Robbins translation is in the public domain, as the University of Chicago LacusCurtius copyright page records. The transcriber's own notes and layout are not cited. · 2026-10-10
Limits of this lesson
The today page's descriptions are a language for checking yourself against, not predictions and not warnings.
The allowed gap (1 degree in general, 2 for the Sun and Moon, exact inside 0.1) is this app's setting; durations are rough figures from orbit periods, and retrograde motion changes any single pass.
The demonstration shows a method; it is not a real person's chart or your transits today.
YOUR STUDY
Write what you learned in your own words.
Write it down: the transit you picked, roughly how long it lasts, and what you actually noticed.
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