Solar arc, transits and the graphic ephemeris

A birth chart is a moment. To read a period of life, Uranian astrology moves the chart forward in two ways.

Solar arc directions

In the days after birth, the Sun moves about one degree a day. Solar arc directions take one day after birth for each year of life. They then move every factor of the chart forward by the distance the Sun covered in those days: the solar arc.

At age 30 the arc is close to 30°. Each directed factor has moved about 30° from its natal place.

A directed factor reaching a natal personal point or midpoint, in a hard angle, marks a period when that picture becomes active. The solar arc grows by about one degree a year, so such contacts are slow and lasting.

Transits

Transits are the actual positions of the planets and the transneptunian points on a given day. The slow ones (from Jupiter outwards, and the eight transneptunian points) describe periods of weeks or months. A slow planet can cross the same point three times, forward, backward while retrograde, and forward again.

The graphic ephemeris

The graphic ephemeris puts time on the horizontal axis and position, folded into 45°, on the vertical axis. In that space every hard angle sits at the same height:

• a natal point is a horizontal line;
• a moving factor is a curve;
• each place where a curve crosses a line is an exact contact.

Hora Horoscope computes each crossing to the hour. It also gives the window in which the contact lies within orb, and the pictures already standing on the natal point, which the crossing activates.

By default it covers the period of a reading: three months before to six months after the chosen date. You can widen the window to several years.