Page 21 - Talented Astrologer • Volume 1 Number 2 • October 2016

Transits consider the movement and position of the of years: transits are a minor, limited tool in predictive
planets in the sky as they form dynamic aspects to
the planets and angles in the natal chart. Transits are the most popular predictive tool in use today, and also the tool I had the most experience using.
Like most astrologers, when I thought of predictive astrology, I thought of transits activating the natal chart.
What I didn’t know at the time was that transits were never used to forecast signi cant events in predictive astrology. Until recently, astrologers relied on primary directions to show the unfolding potential of the natal chart. Transits were only ever used to help with timing.
The blueprint for interpreting a transit is relatively straightforward.
When the transiting promissor forms an aspect to a natal signi cator, the disruption, related to the speci c aspect, that comes from the house of the transiting planet, a ects the a airs of the houses ruled by the signi cator, and the e ect — the behavior or action — is experienced in the house the natal signi cator occupies.
But even employing e Rule of ree, I couldn’t get transits to work consistently across the celebrity charts I had selected as the examples for the class. I was discovering what astrologers had known for thousands
astrology. You have to combine them with other tools, because on their own, they don’t mean much.
How did transits become so popular?
Astrology as we know it today dates back to the 1970s. It can be argued that the modern era of astrology began in 1968, with the publication of Sun Signs by Linda Goodman. Goodman’s book sparked a renewed popular interest in astrology, the likes of which hadn’t been seen for hundreds of years.
In the early 1970s, Para Research began to publish the rst astrology “cookbooks,” including a series of books exploring the transits of each planet, written by Francis Sakoian and Louis Acker, and e Planet Series, which included Planets in Transit by Robert Hand (1976). In
1973, Neil Michelsen began Astro Communications Services, providing computer-generated astrology charts and reports. Para Research also o ered computer- generated chart interpretations, including transit reports.
If you wanted to learn astrology in the 1980s or 1990s, you relied on astrology books and astrology software. Virtually all of the easily available astrology
books that addressed predictive astrology emphasized transits, and all of the astrology software programs
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