The words a chart uses
What is a transit in astrology?
A transit is a planet in today's sky making an aspect to a point in your natal chart, which the tradition reads as an occasion for reflection on both themes.
Your natal chart is fixed at the moment of birth, but the planets keep moving. When a planet in the sky today comes within orb of an aspect to a planet or point in your chart, astrology calls it a transit. Saturn square your Moon, for example, means the Saturn of today stands about ninety degrees from where the Moon stood when you were born.
A transit has a window: the days it is in orb, the moment or moments it is exact, and the time it takes to separate. A slow planet can turn retrograde and pass the same point two or three times, so one transit may have several exact dates.
Occasions, not events
Becoming Choice treats a transit as an occasion to notice, never as something that happens to you. The dates are geometry; the theme is an invitation. You can look at what is actually going on in your life during a transit, ask whether its theme connects, and consider how you want to respond.
The Transits page draws every contact as a bar on a timeline, with its exact passes, its retrograde stretches and how loud the tradition would call it, so you can see what is in orb now and what is coming.