How much today is touching you

What the number is

It is the weight of every aspect the moving planets are making to the planets in your birth chart today, and it is compared against your own forty-five days either side of it rather than against other people. A day that would be busy for somebody else can be an ordinary Tuesday for you, so the only useful comparison is with your own quiet weeks and your own loud ones.

This is our own method rather than an inherited one. It is written down because a number you cannot question is worth nothing: every figure here names the contacts that produced it, and the same chart at the same moment always gives the same answer.

It does not predict anything and it is not a warning. A high number does not mean something is coming; it means the sky is making a lot of angles to your chart, which some people find useful to know and others do not.

How the number is worked out

It starts from your birth chart, worked out on this device from the details saved on the front page. For the moment you open the page, the positions of the Sun, the Moon and the planets out to Pluto are compared with the planets in your chart, looking for the five major aspects: conjunction, opposition, square, trine and sextile. A contact counts when it is within six degrees of exact for a conjunction or an opposition, five for a square or a trine, and three for a sextile.

Each contact is weighted three ways: by how long the moving body stays on a degree, so the fast Moon counts least and Saturn and Pluto most; by how personal the point it touches is, with your Sun and Moon counting most; and by the aspect, with conjunctions weighted most and sextiles least. The closer to exact, the more it counts. Everything is added into one total for the day.

That total on its own would barely move, because the slow planets set a background that changes over months. So the same total is worked out for thirty-one days, three days apart, from forty-five days before today to forty-five days after, and the index is where today falls among them. Fifty is the middle of your own season; a hundred means no day in that stretch had a higher total.

Reading it: an example

Suppose the dial shows 72. The line beside it says the day is above your own average, and the list underneath names the contacts that weigh most, for instance Saturn square to your Sun, 1.2° off exact, and the Moon trine to your Venus. Read that as: the sky is making more angles than usual to your chart today, and most of the weight comes from one slow, close square to a personal point. It does not say whether the day goes well. A 15 on another day is just as plain: one of your quieter days, with few close contacts.

What it does not measure

It does not use the ascendant or the houses, and it does not sort contacts into easy and hard ones. Because it is worked out for the moment the page opens, the Moon’s contacts can shift a little between morning and evening. Without a birth time the chart is set for midday, so the Moon in your chart may be several degrees out and contacts to it are the least reliable part. And since every chart is compared only with itself, two people’s numbers cannot be compared with each other.

Where to look next

The transits page lists every exact contact to your chart over the next three months, to the minute, which is the detail behind a busy stretch. The five aspects are explained one by one, and the planets covers what each body is read as. If there is no chart saved yet, start with your birth chart on the front page.