Transits, returns, progressions and the other timing methods all try to say when something happens, and each one tracks something different. These guides explain what each technique measures.
Knowing that makes it easier to pick the right one for the question you are asking.
The Guides
- What Are Transits in Astrology? Slow Planets Set the Season, Fast Ones Ring the Bell: Where the planets are today, measured against where they were when you were born.
- Natal Chart vs. Transit Chart, or Climate Is Not Weather: One chart holds the birth moment and the other shows the present sky. Forecasting begins with the relationship between them.
- What Are Progressions in Astrology? You Get the Same New Moon Twice: The day for a year method. How the progressed Moon, progressed Sun and progressed lunation cycle are read.
- What Are Solar Arc Directions? One Degree a Year, and Everything Moves: Slide the whole chart forward at about a degree a year. The technique that gives you an actual date.
- Annual Profections, or Why You Have Done This Year Before: An ancient annual timing method that hands each year to a different house and its ruler.
- Zodiacal Releasing, or the Chapter That Runs Out of Paragraphs: The Hellenistic method that divides a life into chapters, with peak periods and the loosing of the bond.
- What Is a Solar Return Chart? Your Birthday Chart Is Probably the Wrong Day: The chart for the moment the Sun returns to its natal degree, read as a portrait of your year.
Continue Learning
Return to the full Learn library to search every guide, or move to another path: Birth Chart Basics, Traditional Astrology Rules, Relationship Astrology, Astrology Life Cycles.