Chapter 1
on a study of your own chart can yield a wealth of powerful insight and self-knowledge. While your birth chart stays the same, reflecting the qualities of the moment in time relative to the place in which you were born, the planets in our solar system keep moving. A transit is essentially when a planet moving through the heavens makes contact by degree and angle to a planet in your birth chart. When this happens, we get an idea of an upcoming energy cycle on your horizon by looking at the archetypes associated with each planet, as well as the aspect that is being made between those planets. Some aspects are easy, flowing, and constructive, such as the trine or sextile, while others can suggest potential conflict or the need to integrate the two energies, such as the square or opposition. Some transits indicate a time of opportunity, flow, growth and abundance in your life, while others suggest important life lessons, a major developmental shift, or a crossroads. Transits have been used since ancient times by astrologers to forecast or predict unfolding motifs both in the collective and in a person’s life. Having insight into what time it is in your life can be immensely useful. It’s like having a guidebook or a map that lets you know what themes to expect and when. You can then engage more consciously with the energy at play, rather than react to it. Although it is not the intention of this book to describe astrology basics or all transits in detail, if you’re called to delve deeper into these fascinating subjects, I suggest Steven Forrest’s Inner Sky and Changing Sky as excellent starting points. Each of the significant transits we will be discussing has a powerful purpose to help us move forward on our soul’s journey in this lifetime. They teach us the lessons we came here to learn and nudge us onto the path we’re meant to be on. As such, each of these portals is an initiation in the truest sense of the word. And although we experience countless transits throughout our lives, there are several that are game changers, and those are the ones we’ll be diving into here. I have chosen to focus on the phase of life between the first and second Saturn returns: beginning with the first Saturn return that 22
