Transit tables

[planet9]

Transit tables are a new method of presenting information concerning planetary transits in a compact form. A transit table is based on the following input:

• Two planets (either two moving planets or a moving planet and a planet in a natal chart) P1 and P2
• An aspect A (e.g. square)
• Three orbs, O1° > O2° > O3° (e.g. 5°, 3° and 1°)
• A time period from date D1 to date D2
• A timezone (for display of times)

If P1 is a moving planet and P2 is a natal planet then two additional inputs are needed:

• The preferred zodiac, tropical or sidereal
• A birth date (which must be earlier than D1)

A birth time may be input but has little effect on the output except when P2 is the natal Moon.

The resulting transit table, consisting of one or more lines, then shows:

• For each orb value, the date when aspect A forms (if it does) between planets P1 and P2, and (if it is in effect at D1, or forms after D1, but ceases before D2) the date when it ceases (that is, the start and end dates of the transit relative to the orb value).
• If an aspect becomes exact (e.g. 90° for squares), the date and time at which this happens.
• If an aspect forms but does not become exact, the minimum difference from the exact value which is reached during the transit, and the date at which this happens.

In a transit table the start and end dates of closer transits (e.g. 3°-squares) are shown immediately beneath the start and end dates of less close transits (e.g. 5°-squares), showing how the closer transits are nested within the less close.

This can be understood better by consideration of the following two examples.

First a transit between two moving planets (a.k.a. a world transit):

This table tells us the following about the two 10°-oppositions which are made between Saturn and Neptune during 2005-2007:

• The first begins on August 30, 2005, and ends on February 4, 2006.
• The second begins on June 25, 2006, and ends on September 3, 2007.
• During these three years these two planets come within a 5°-opposition three times (October to December 2005, July to October 2006, and January to August 2007).
• During these three years these two planets come within a 1°-opposition three times (August-September 2006, February-March 2007 and June-July 2007).
• In the first 10°-opposition an exact opposition is not reached; instead the closest opposition is 3°39' from exact, occurringon November 16, 2005.
• In the second 10°-opposition an exact opposition is attained three times, on August 31, 2006, on February 28, 2007, and on June 25, 2007.

Now a transit between a moving planet and a planet in a natal chart (a.k.a. a personal transit). In this case a zodiac must be specified, since although the dates and times of world transits are zodiac-independent, this is not true of personal transits. In this example we use the tropical zodiac and a birth date of January 1, 1989. The following transit table gives information about the square transit of Uranus to the natal Saturn during 2012-2014 for orbs 5°, 3° and 1°:

This transit table tells us:

• Transiting Uranus comes within 3° of an exact square with natal Saturn on February 19, 2012, and this 3°-square persists until March 31, 2013.
• During this period Uranus is within 1° of exact square during three periods: March 27 to May 3, 2012; September 26 to December 4, 2012; and December 22, 2012, through February 23, 2013.
• In each of these three 1°-square transits an exact square is formed three times, on April 14 and on October 22, 2012, and on February 1, 2013.
• During most of May to September 2013 Uranus is beyond 5° exact square aspect, but re-enters 5° on September 30, 2013, and remains there until February 28, 2014.
• During this period an exact square is not attained; the closest is 2°56' on December 17, 2013.

Transit tables are useful for anyone seeking exact information regarding dates and times of world transits or personal transits. The latter is most interesting to practicing astrologers because they can then be forewarned of transits made by moving planets to planets in the natal charts of their clients (and in their own natal chart).

Transit tables were invented by Peter Meyer in January 2011.

Transit tables showing world transits for several pairs of outer planets and for all aspects (for orbs 15°, 10° and 5°) may be viewed by following the links below:

• Jupiter-Uranus 1899-1915
• Saturn-Pluto 2000-2020
• Saturn-Uranus 1998-2019
• Saturn-Neptune 1998-2020
• Uranus-Pluto 2000-2022

 

[Peregrine_Moon]

Most astrology software programs calculate these things easily. Peter Meyer may have set up the layout of the information you've provided, but it's stretching things quite a bit to say that he invented it!

Your post is really an advertisement for a software company.

 

[planet9]

Most astrology software programs calculate these things easily.

That seems to me rather an exaggeration. It's true that it's possible to get the same results with a lot of work, but, for example, how much work would be needed from your preferred astrology software program to get all the dates and times (including the time of exact square aspects) in the personal transit example I gave? How about getting all the dates for all the aspects formed by the outer planets as given in the links to the transit tables at the end?

Peter Meyer may have set up the layout of the information you've provided, but it's stretching things quite a bit to say that he invented it!

No-one else, to my knowledge, has ever made use of such a compact way of presenting data regarding planetary transits. If so, please cite examples of any prior use of such transit tables.

Your post is really an advertisement for a software company.

Really? Does it mention a software company? If so, which one? Does it mention any item of software? If so, which?

Do you perhaps dislike the conveyance of information to other astrologers which might assist them in their astrological analyses?

Or do you perhaps dislike the idea of a person obtaining advance knowledge of when planets will be transiting their natal planets (such as when Uranus will be squaring their natal Sun, and how long this will last) rather than going to a fee-charging astrologer and paying them a not inconsiderable amount to provide the same information?

 

[Claire19]

Most astrology software programs calculate these things easily. Peter Meyer may have set up the layout of the information you've provided, but it's stretching things quite a bit to say that he invented it!

Your post is really an advertisement for a software company.

Transits have to be on the outer wheel of any personal natal chart to have an effect in our individual lives. So what good are tables?

 

[planet9]

Transits have to be on the outer wheel of any personal natal chart to have an effect in our individual lives. So what good are tables?

Well, thanks for asking. My understanding of personal transits (when a moving planet forms an aspect with a planet in one's natal chart) is that the effect on our individual lives is due to the transiting planet itself, and that it does not depend on how astrologers set up natal charts.

To take the example of the personal transit I gave in my first message, the person born in January 1989 might be aware that during the period when transiting Uranus forms a square with their natal Sun they might expect some difficulties (of the sort which have been described elsewhere in this forum by such excellent astrologers as Peregrine_Moon), and therefore would like to know in advance when exactly the Uranus square natal Sun will start, when it will be exact (and how many times exact), and how long it will last. This information is contained in the transit table I gave in that example.

 

[Peregrine_Moon]

Oh, goodness... why attack me?

As far as I'm concerned, people are welcome to do as they like and use whatever tools or resources they choose. Some astrologers glory in such extra-precise details as that company's software will provide. Terrific. If that helps them in their practice, I think they should use it. Others do things differently and are still excellent in their craft.

I get testy with infomercials. A lot of what I've seen you post here seems to be advertising for this particular software company. Many or even most astrologers here have their own ways of doing things. Folks who are new to astrology or just getting started may be your target market, for all I know. I'm not sure that this forum, where people are often working on questions of meaning and direction, is the place for advertising this product, though.

Go in peace, planet9.

 

[gen6k]

you should try programming modules that people are coming up with on this forum.

zoidiasoft has all the most advanced hellenistic features. delphic oracle has like 12 time-lord systems all matched up together.

well basically if you make contemporary experimental modules that would be the missing peice in (software competition)

zoidasoft chose to find these hidden ancient features that kepler or solarfire dont have because they are a smaller company. if they didnt have these things no one would buy it cause its already included in things that were built up for 10 years.

its basically about "innovation", "looking for the next step", "finding loopholes"

 

[planet9]

Peregrine_Moon remarked that in this forum people are often working on questions of meaning and direction. That's certainly true (although this forum is for consideration of all things astrological, not just for questions regarding the interpretation of natal charts and related personal concerns), and in these times questions of meaning are of concern to many, because the orthodox scientific view of the world (a universe which, according to that view, 'really' consists only of clusters of atoms, 'forces' between them, and 'energy' -- existing within a vast vacuum) has no place for what humans regard as meaningful. This orthodox scientific cosmology is the root cause of most of our psychological, social and economic problems. Some people seek to overcome the meaninglessness of the world implied by the modern scientific view by turning to a fundamentalist form of some religion, some by living as if nothing mattered other than their own amusement, and some by interpreting their experience within the framework of astrology, thereby raising what Peregrine_Moon has referred to as "questions of meaning", especially as they relate to one's personal life, for which a study of one's natal chart and personal transits is recommended.

The meaninglessness of the world implied by the modern scientific ideology has also been addressed astrologically in a different way, by the work of the archetypal astrologer Richard Tarnas. His book Cosmos & Psyche concerns, not personal transits, but rather world transits. In that book he draws attention to the correlation between planetary aspects (mainly conjunctions and oppositions of the outer planets) and both world events and events in the lives of significant people, and adduces evidence that the world possesses an underlying unity, order, and meaning (rather than consisting just of atoms, etc., in empty space) which manifests itself in synchronistic correlations between planetary transits and events in the human realm.

Since this thread concerns transit tables I won't describe Tarnas's work in more detail here. I'll just note that it was his descriptions of outer planet transits which inspired the production of the outer planet transit tables mentioned at the end of my first message.

 

[planet9]

Some readers may have concluded from the two examples of transit tables that I gave in my first message in this thread that transit tables are always fairly simple and not so difficult to interpret. That's actually not the case. The two examples that I gave were selected for simplicity so that their explanations would be fairly short and not hard to understand.

Here is an example of a particular complex transit table, showing the course of the opposition between the moving planets Saturn and Uranus during 2007-2012 (relative to orbs of 15°, 10° and 5°). It is complex because of the retrograde motions of these two planets.

This transit table shows that:

• Saturn and Uranus come within 15° of an exact opposition four times during 2007-2012 (September 2007 to March 2008, July 2008 to November 2010, March to September 2011, and briefly in June-July 2012.
• An exact opposition is not attained the first time, the two planets reaching only 6°23' from exact.
• Saturn and Uranus come within 10° of an exact opposition five times during 2007-2011, and within 5° of exact three times during 2008-2010.
• During 2008-2010 an exact opposition occurs five times (on the dates marked by asterisks in the transit table), and at the 2nd and 4th of these Saturn is retrograde.
• In the last two 15°-oppositions an exact opposition is not attained, the two planets coming only to 6°5' and 14°19' from exact.

Not all outer planet transits are as complex as the one above. In fact the square transit made by Uranus and Pluto (relative to orbs 13°, 9° and 5°) during 2007-2020 is fairly regular:

This transit table tells us that:

• During 2007-2020 Uranus and Pluto come within 13° of an exact square aspect four times, within 9° of an exact square aspect seven times, and within 5° of an exact square aspect six times.
• Of the six 5°-squares, an exact square aspect is not attained during the first three or the last two, but in the third the two planets almost do this, reaching to 1°1' from an exact square.
• During the fourth 5°-square, which lasts from March 24, 2012, to June 14, 2015, an exact square aspect is reached seven times, on June 24 and September 19, 2012; on May 20 and November 1, 2013; on April 21 and December 15, 2014; and finally on March 17, 2015.
• Beginning with the first 13°-square in March 2007 Uranus and Pluto successively approach and recede from forming an exact square, the difference of the minimum from exactness decreasing until during 2012-2015 seven exact squares are attained, after which the difference increases until the end of the final 13°-square in May 2020.

Richard Tarnas has a long discussion of the archetypal astrological significance of this Uranus-Pluto square in his article World Transits 2000–2020 - An Overview. His discussion (on pp.162-167) begins:

The Uranus-Pluto square of 2007–2020 is the first major hard-aspect or dynamic alignment of the Uranus-Pluto cycle since the conjunction of the 1960s. While this transit is still at an early stage, we can see already many of the most distinctive manifestations of the Uranus-Pluto archetypal complex in current events: the intense acceleration of the pace of change, the intensified cultural ferment, the increased social and political turmoil internationally, the empowerment of emancipatory and revolutionary movements, the political activation of youth, the empowerment of women, the empowerment of ethnic minorities, the radicalization of political movements and ideologies across the spectrum...

[edited quote over 100 words against forum rules - Moderator]

For a transit table showing details of all Uranus-Pluto transits during 2000-2022 go here.