In the book Power Points in Time we looked at the way time and change move, in themselves, but we didn’t look at birth charts or transits. Here we are going to look at the way that change moves through us, personally. As soon as we are born, the planets keep on moving, and they enter into relationship with the planets and places in our charts. These are called transits. They indicate the way that temporal energy-weather particularly affects us as individuals, since our personal patternings are all unique and different. Transits show our personal time-links with the universe. Learned astrology by doing transits. Disappointed with social sciences in university (LSE) I moved to the mountains of Wales with an astrology book (Dane Rudhyar’s Astrology of Personality), Raphael’s Ephemeris and a friend, with an astrological chart and a load of questions that the then-available books and courses weren’t answering. For many moons we sat there, in front of the fire, of a quiet evening, working out and observing our transits, discussing them and what they felt like, what they seemed to be doing, and all of the things going on inside us, and gradually the workings and implications of astrology and life started falling into place.

If you devote yourself to examining transits and the general movements of the planets, using your own personal life and experiences as the raw material for your researches, you will find that something very deep goes on in your understanding of astrology and life, just as I found. There is something very close-to-home about transits: transits are about you. They are a way of moving into direct experience, into living wisdom, rather than stored knowledge. If you find yourself memorising words and concepts, try to switch your attention to simply observing, feeling, cogitating, chatting with others: books are here to stimulate your own thinking, not to replace it. There is no hurry to understand things: a few things understood well can be far more productive than many things partially grasped. Basic principles of transits: The motions of the planets in the heavens perpetually affect our birth charts. If you look in your ephemeris, each of the planets currently in motion will be found to be sitting in a particular house in your chart, and some of them will be forming aspects to your natal planets, some of these applying, some separating, others exact. This all changes over time, and that’s what we’re studying here. If there are multiple aspect structures in your chart, then several planets can be activated by one transit, all at roughly the same time – and if there are two or three transiting planets affecting such a structure, then there’s a whammy going on. Transits show how the cosmos affects us personally, and the way our lives go through changes, and the options we are offered at each turn.Here we shall look at some of the basic factors you should take into account when working and playing with transits. .