How to read your own transits without an app
Two lists of positions and one rule about what to ignore. The ignoring is the hard part.
3 min read · Published 30 August 2026
The short answer
You need two things: your natal planet positions by sign and degree, and the current positions of the planets. Compare them and look for the slow planets — Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — within a degree or two of a natal placement. Ignore the fast movers almost entirely: the Moon aspects everything every month, so its transits carry no information about a period.
What you need
Two lists
- Your natal positions, by sign and degree. Available free on any chart — AsterNym's natal chart gives them to the degree.
- Current planetary positions. An ephemeris, a free site, or an almanac. You want sign and degree for each planet today.
- That is it. No app required, and doing it by hand is what teaches you the technique.
What to look at, and what to ignore
| Transiting planet | How long a contact lasts | Worth watching? |
|---|---|---|
| Moon | A few hours | No. It contacts everything monthly |
| Mercury, Venus | A few days | Rarely — and they retrograde back over the same point |
| Mars | About a week | Sometimes, particularly to the angles |
| Jupiter | A few weeks | Yes, as a lighter theme |
| Saturn | Several months, often across three passes | Yes — the most-watched transit |
| Uranus, Neptune, Pluto | One to two years | Yes — the major chapters |
The ignoring is the whole skill. Something is always transiting something, and a practitioner who reads every contact will find significance in every week — which is indistinguishable from finding it nowhere.
The three-pass pattern
Slow planets rarely pass a natal point once. Because they retrograde, they typically cross it three times: direct, then retrograde back over it, then direct again.
The three passes are often separated by months and can span more than a year. Practitioners read them as a sequence — the first raising the theme, the second reviewing it, the third resolving it.
This is worth knowing because it explains a common experience: something apparently concluding, resurfacing months later, and then concluding again. Whether the transit causes that or merely provides a frame for noticing it is the usual open question.
The record that makes it worth doing
This is the part that turns the exercise from entertainment into something you can actually learn from, and almost nobody does it.
Write down, in advance, the dates of the exact contacts you have found and what you expect. Then leave it alone. Read it back a year later.
Without a written record, memory keeps the hits and discards the misses, and you will conclude the technique works regardless of what happens. With one, you get an actual answer about your own experience — which is more valuable than anyone else's opinion on the matter.
It is the same discipline recommended for tarot spreads and progressed Moon chapters, and for the same reason. It is also the single cheapest way to become a better judge of any predictive claim.
Common questions
- How do I read my own transits?
- Compare your natal planet positions by sign and degree with where the planets are today. Look for slow planets — Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — within a degree or two of a natal placement, and largely ignore the fast movers.
- Which transits actually matter?
- The slow ones. Saturn contacts last several months across three passes, and Uranus, Neptune and Pluto contacts last one to two years. The Moon aspects everything monthly, so its transits carry no information about a period.
- Why do transits happen three times?
- Because slow planets retrograde. A planet typically crosses a natal point moving direct, retrogrades back over it, then crosses again moving direct — three passes often spread across more than a year.
- What orb should I use for transits?
- One degree is sensible, two at most. Wider orbs leave a slow planet in aspect for years at a stretch, which makes the technique unfalsifiable and removes any timing value it had.