Understanding transits and where the planets are in your chart right now can give you fascinating and life-changing information about themes that will be coming up for you in the next few months and even years.
A natal chart reading is an essential starting point in understanding the planetary themes in your chart. It looks at the time and place at which you entered the world to reveal your cosmic blueprint. It gives you insights into the patterns and potential that will shape your life throughout its course. When we discuss the birth chart I prepare for you, I will help you to uncover your hopes, strengths and potential in ways that will help you imagine the kind of future you most want to live.
A transit forecast plays a different role because it evaluates how you are positioned in the cosmos at the current moment and how the current positions of the planets cast their influence over your natal birth chart. A transit forecast can help you to examine the issues that are affecting your life right now. It can shed light on planetary themes that might be fuelling difficulties and blockages in your work, relationships or creative expression at this point in your life. But it can also uncover positive shifts in the relationship between your birth chart and planetary movements that can support and give momentum to your dearly held plans for the months and years ahead.
How often should I have a transit forecast reading?
People often book a transit reading with the idea that it will offer them a snapshot of their life now and the factors that are influencing it, and so it is common for people to assume that a “one transit a year check up” is enough to help keep their lives on course.
But, in fact, having a transit reading every two to three months is more effective because it empowers you to grow and work more deeply with the knowledge you gain from each session. When you have regular transit forecasts, readings operate less as a snapshot of the issues you face right now and more as a reflective practice that gives you tools and insights you can use to take control of your life and where it is heading.
To understand how a series of transit readings can unfold deeper and more useful lessons for our lives than any single session, let’s take a look at what ‘collective transits’ are and the reasons why it helps to think about them carefully over a series of transit sessions.
What is a collective transit in astrology?
“Collective transits” are the ones we all go through, but experience differently. Understanding transits and exploring them through regular readings can help us to navigate these important moments in our lives.
The Saturn Return
The major life transits are the Saturn Return which we go through when we are aged 28–30, again from 58-60, and, if you live long enough, 88–90. These periods are when Saturn returns to the place it held in your chart when you were born. This momentous transit marks a time of astrological growing up. Your first Saturn Return can mark the point where you finally become a true adult for the first time and take on significant real-world responsibilities. Meanwhile, your later Saturn Returns operate as similar points of transition into new life phases that can change how you see yourself and how you interact with others and the world around you.
The Saturn Opposition
We often overlook the Saturn Opposition, which is when Saturn opposes itself in your natal chart at the half-way points between its returns. A Saturn Opposition can represent an equally unsettling time in your life. In my own life, I got divorced and moved back to Ireland from Wales during my Saturn Opposition. It was a time of starting a new life alone, with different responsibilities, and forging a new path for myself, and so the Opposition was hugely important for me in my life’s journey. But it was incredibly daunting for me at the time, and regular transit forecasts helped me to make sense of my progress.
Regular transit forecasts offer us the chance to appreciate the pressures that planetary movements are exerting on our lives at given moments, but they also give us the opportunity to work through the issues those pressures raise.
Certainly, I see in my own practice as an astrologer, working with people across the world and helping them to understand transits, that if we don’t do the work required of us during our first Saturn Return, the second Saturn Return often brings the exact same themes up a second time around. That gives us another chance to reflect, heal and transform, but understanding transits can help us access that healing the first time around!
The Uranus Opposition
The Uranus opposition takes place when you are between the ages of 38 and 42, though sometimes, it can occur as late as when you are 45. It is when Uranus – the planet symbolising genius, innovation and radical change – opposes itself in your natal chart. This can be a time of unexpected change, when you are forced by circumstance or driven within yourself to begin living a more authentic life. If your life is not authentic, whether or not you are seeking change, Uranus tends to come along and force it for you – think about the mid-life crisis as Uranus’s calling card!
When you are going through the Uranus opposition, regular transit forecasts can give you an invaluable opportunity to weigh up the major decisions you are making in a considered and detailed way.
The Chiron Return
The next major collective life transit, close on the heels of your Uranus Opposition, is the often overlooked Chiron return, which happens when you between the ages of 49 and 51. This brings you a time of healing and restoration. You may find yourself drawn to become more involved in alternative therapies or feel compelled to do deep healing work on yourself once your Chiron Return occurs. For many people, this is a time when they begin to make full use of regular transit forecasts to provide the rich insights they are looking for at this moment in their life journey.
Understanding transits and the insights they offer, and reviewing and reflecting on them through regular transits forecasts, can support you as you make changes and progress at many different points in your life.
Even though these are collective transits and we all go through them, the effects they have on each of us vary. The transits of the slow-moving planets interact differently with the patterns and purpose revealed in our natal charts. The rich discussions we have in your transit forecast readings can help to gain and understanding of transits and unpack the particular meanings they have for you.
In my next blog post, I will talk about transits to the four axes of the birth chart – the ascendant, descendant, midheaven and Imum Coeli (or the bottom of the sky).
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