How to Use Weekly Transits for Planning

On Sunday, transiting Mars at 9 degrees Virgo is 3 degrees from Omar's natal Venus at 12 degrees; at half a degree a day it enters a 1-degree orb on Thursday and is exact on Saturday.

A transit is the current position of a planet compared with a point in your natal chart. A weekly view sits between a daily glance and a monthly overview, and it gives you time to arrange real tasks around whatever you choose to notice. It also keeps you from reacting to every fast-moving contact.

The aim is a one-page sheet you fill in once, on a regular day, in about fifteen minutes. The sheet puts your actual commitments first and the sky beside them, and it stays honest about how much of the sky it covers.

Not every transit deserves equal attention, because planets cover very different distances in seven days.

An aspect is exact when the angle matches precisely, and the orb is the margin on either side that you still count. Orbs for transits are often about 1 to 3 degrees for slower planets and about 1 degree for faster ones. A contact is applying while it is moving toward exact and separating once it has passed.

Speed decides how long a window lasts. Mars covers about half a degree a day on average, so a 1 degree orb on each side gives a window of about four days, while a 3 degree orb gives about twelve. The Moon covers about 13 degrees a day, so a 1 degree orb lasts under four hours.

Do this on the same day each week, and keep the sheet in one place.

1. Three minutes: write fixed commitments for each day, such as deadlines, appointments and family time.
2. Four minutes: note the Moon’s sign and phase for the week, and where it changes sign.
3. Four minutes: look for contacts from the Sun, Mercury, Venus or Mars to your natal points, with the exact day and the orb you are using.
4. Four minutes: choose at most one slow-planet background theme and write one question about it.

Omar is a constructed person with Venus at 12 degrees of Virgo in his natal chart. On Sunday, transiting Mars is at 9 degrees of Virgo and moving about half a degree a day, so it is 3 degrees from his natal Venus. Dividing 3 by 0.5 gives about six days to exact, which is Saturday.

With a 1 degree orb, the contact enters his window when Mars reaches 11 degrees, one degree from his Venus, which takes about four days from Sunday and falls on Thursday. It leaves the window at 13 degrees, about two days after exact, which is the following Monday. His fixed items are a report due the first Monday morning, dinner with a friend on Wednesday and a presentation on Friday. He plans nothing differently, but he writes one question about drive in his closest relationships and checks on the following Monday whether anything stood out.

A sheet can be as plain as three columns. This one follows the constructed week above, counting from the Sunday when he made it.

Any list of transits depends on choices: which bodies you include, which natal points you compare and which orb you allow. If your list skips asteroids, minor aspects or the angles, say so on the sheet. Otherwise a quiet week may only mean a narrow search.

A good sheet states its coverage in one line, such as “Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, major aspects, 1 degree orb.” That line keeps you from treating the list as the whole sky and lets you compare one week with the next on equal terms.

Which day should I pick for the sheet? Any day that you will keep. Many people use Sunday evening or Monday morning, but a habit you repeat beats a perfect day.

Do I need to check every day too? No. If the weekly sheet has the dates of the contacts you care about, a daily glance is optional; our daily astrology check-in routine covers a Moon-only version. This sheet is for arranging tasks, so if you are still learning to read a single transit, start with our transit check-in routine for beginners, and close each month with our monthly astrology checklist.

What if two contacts seem to disagree? Write both, then ask which matches something you are actually doing this week. Contacts are prompts, and no rule says that one cancels another.

Can weekly transits tell me when something will happen? No. They describe symbolic themes and a calendar of questions, and they cannot place events.

Reserve attention for a relevant slow-planet window, keep brief contacts on a separate line and fit both around real commitments. If a week is full, the sheet should shrink to a single line, and that is a fine outcome.

This Sunday, write your fixed commitments for the week and one line stating what part of the sky you chose to look at. Add the Moon’s sign for each day, and stop there if that is all you have time for.

On the following Sunday, spend two minutes comparing the sheet with what happened. Note which contacts you noticed in real life and which passed unseen. After a month you will know how much weight the weekly view deserves in your own routine.

Weekly transits cannot place events, and a contact list is only as complete as the bodies, aspects and orb it states it covers.