Timing
Transit Alerts
Choose which sky events matter, how much warning you want, and which parts of life you want them read for. Everything is calculated from your saved birth details, on this device.
In short
Set customisable alerts for the transits and retrogrades that touch your own chart: choose lead time, intensity and life areas, then get dated prompts.
- Slow-planet alerts are chapters, fast-planet alerts are weather. Do not plan a life change around a Mars transit.
- Retrograde stations sitting on a natal degree are the strongest single signal most charts produce.
- Cluster alerts matter more than isolated ones. Three hits inside a fortnight is a theme.
- Turn off anything you never act on. An ignored alert trains you to ignore the useful ones.
3°
Typical personal orb
3×
Hits per retrograde transit
29.5
Years for one Saturn round
Origins
Transit alerting is the oldest practical use of astrology. Mesopotamian court astrologers were paid to watch for specific sky events and send word to the palace — the surviving tablets read almost exactly like notifications.
Medieval election astrology turned the same habit into a planning tool: not what will happen, but when to begin. Sailing dates, coronations and surgeries were all timed to a moving sky against a fixed natal chart.
The modern version is simply automated. A transit is a live planet touching a natal point; an alert is the moment that contact enters orb. What has changed is arithmetic speed, not method.
The Method
Save an accurate birth chart
Alerts are only as good as the natal points they aim at. Time and place matter for the angles and the Moon.
Pick a small watchlist
Sun, Moon, Ascendant, ruler of the chart and one personal concern. Alerting on everything is the same as alerting on nothing.
Set a sensible orb
One to three degrees for personal planets, up to five for the slow outer bodies that stay in contact for months.
Read entry, exact and exit
The story usually begins at entry, peaks near exact, and resolves on the way out. Retrogrades run the sequence three times.
Write one line per hit
A short note when the alert fires turns the calendar into evidence you can review in a year.
Practice Notes
- Slow-planet alerts are chapters, fast-planet alerts are weather. Do not plan a life change around a Mars transit.
- Retrograde stations sitting on a natal degree are the strongest single signal most charts produce.
- Cluster alerts matter more than isolated ones. Three hits inside a fortnight is a theme.
- Turn off anything you never act on. An ignored alert trains you to ignore the useful ones.
Myth & Truth
Commonly said
A hard transit means something bad will happen.
In practice
Squares and oppositions describe pressure and required adjustment. What that produces depends entirely on what you do.
Commonly said
Only outer-planet transits count.
In practice
Outer planets set the chapter; inner planets set the day it becomes actionable.
Commonly said
Nothing happens if you miss the exact date.
In practice
Orbs are wide and effects spread. The exact degree is the peak of a curve, not a switch.
Questions Readers Ask
How many alerts should I keep on?
Three to six. Beyond that the feed becomes background noise and you stop reading the ones that would have been useful.
What orb should I use?
One to three degrees for Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars; up to five for Jupiter through Pluto, which stay in contact far longer.
Why does the same transit fire three times?
Because the planet stations retrograde and crosses the degree forwards, backwards and forwards again — a three-part story rather than one event.
Are alerts stored on my device?
Your watchlist and birth data stay with your profile, and alerts are computed from them rather than pushed from a shared feed.