15 - When Transits Don't Do Anything

Have you ever looked forward to an astrological transit only to be disappointed? Transits are probably the most popular timing technique used in astrology today, and although powerful, sometimes transits just fall flat. In this episode, we explore three reasons why transits don’t do anything and how to identify the ones that matter the most.

• 02:51 What’s a transit?
• 04:58 Reason one
• 06:36 Annual Profections
• 08:44 Reason two
• 12:36 Reason three

Blog Post: A Beginner’s Guide to Annual Profections https://www.astrologywithclaire.com/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-annual-profections

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Transcript

Hi, I'm Claire Gallagher, and this is Third House Gossip, where we spill the astrological tea. So pour something delicious and let's chat. This podcast is sponsored by me. So to support the show and support yourself, come see me for an astrology reading. Just head to astrologywithclaire. com. That's astrology with C L A I R E dot com. 

Well, hey, astro lover, welcome back to another episode of third house gossip. Technically, I guess I should welcome myself back since it's been quite a little bit since I recorded a podcast. I think I recorded my last podcast a little too early. It was all about my Saturn transit to my ascendant and I had only gone through.

Wait, two passes? I hadn't finished the transit before I recorded the episode and I learned a few things that the story [00:01:00] was not over yet. So I had to go through some Saturn things over the last few months and I am coming out of my Saturn hibernation, my end of year break, and I'm just really excited to be back talking astrology with you.

I do have a limited amount of astrology appointments available. So if you just head to astrologywithclaire. com, that's astrology with C L A I R E. com, you can book an appointment. I am rarin to go and excited to chat. I have also reopened my astrology mentorship, so I create custom mentorships for serious students who are interested in going pro and it is completely custom.

So what we'll do is you'll just set up a chat, a casual chat with me for free, and we'll see where you're at, what you need help with, and how I can [00:02:00] potentially help you on your journey to becoming an astrologer.

Alright, I think that's everything in terms of welcoming myself back to the podcast. Today we're going to talk about transits and when they fall flat, when they are disappointing, when they don't do anything, when you're waiting on a transit and nothing happens. So this is actually pretty common and it's not talked about a lot, which is why I want to bring it up.

But there's several reasons why transits fall flat, and I've picked three today to go through, but I'm sure there's many more that we could identify. Not all transits matter and hopefully after this episode you'll have a better idea of which ones might actually do something and which ones to pay attention to.

So what's a transit? If you're listening to this episode, you probably know what a transit is, but because I love beginners, let's start from the [00:03:00] beginning. So you have your birth chart, right? And it stays the same. It doesn't change. But after you were born, the planets kept moving. They didn't stop. And as they move around the sky, they, quote unquote, move around your birth chart and make connections with the planets in your birth chart.

There's a lot of ways that transits can manifest both internally and externally. So they can correlate with internal shifts, like shifts in thought patterns, shifts in behavior. Shifts in desires, and they can also manifest externally like events or things that are happening outside of you.

Transits are probably the most popular and frequently used timing technique in astrology today, and I use them as my main timing technique in practice, but there's a lot of [00:04:00] qualifiers that help me determine what to pay attention to and what to discard. Because if you. When you watch transits, you know that you're having a transit most days and it's just too overwhelming and becomes meaningless.

So there's got to be a way to prioritize and organize transits so that they make sense and are applicable. Okay, so here are my three reasons that I think transits sometimes don't do anything. And again, this is not exhaustive. This is just my thoughts, uh, the things that come to mind first. So. Reason number one, the planets involved are not major players, and I'll explain all of these in more detail in a bit.

Reason number two, the planet making the transit doesn't have much to give. And reason number three, the planet being transited has trouble receiving.

All right, let's start with number [00:05:00] one. The planets involved aren't major players. So what I mean by this is that there are no time lords involved in the transit. Let me back up. In a transit, there's usually two planets involved. There's the planet that's receiving the transit, so the planet in your birth chart that's being activated, and the planet in the real time sky today doing the activating.

Sometimes In transits, and most of the time, in most transits, there are two planets involved, but they're not really important for the time being. Meaning, they're not active players. They're not really holding a lot of sway in your life at the time. Meaning, they're not a time lord. So let me explain what a time lord is.

It's basically a planet or a small group of planets that have increased power and influence over your life for a certain duration of time. So when it [00:06:00] comes to astrological timing, not all planets have equal standing. So planets can be turned on or turned off. off. And the planets that are turned on have more influence and sway and say in your life and its events.

If a planet is turned off, quote unquote, they're in the background or lying dormant.

So when a transit doesn't involve a time Lord or one of these turned on or activated planets, it doesn't really have a direct way to affect your life. There's no intermediary for it to work through. Now, there are a lot of techniques in traditional astrology that have to do with time lords, but the one that I use the most often is annual profections, where each year of your life is flavored by a particular house of your birth chart and therefore a particular planet.

So I just put up a blog post on my website that will walk you through the [00:07:00] basics. It's called a beginner's guide to annual profections, and you can find it at astrologywithclaire. com slash blog. I highly recommend giving that a read because I'm not going to describe annual profections here. And by the end of this podcast, you're probably going to want to know what your time Lord is.

So I walk you through it in that post. All right. So for example, in annual profections, we're working with age. And at the time of this recording, I'm just gonna lay it all out there. I'm 39. So when you're 39, The fourth house is activated by profection. I have Pisces on my fourth house, which means Jupiter is my time Lord because Jupiter is the traditional ruler of Pisces.

So now I already know that I can eliminate paying attention to lots of transits if they don't involve Jupiter. I want to pay attention to [00:08:00] transits from real time Jupiter in the sky right now to parts of my birth chart, and transits to my natal Jupiter. These are probably going to be the most noticeable and impactful, and correlate with any main events or turning points of my year.

And it checks out, so give it a try. So all the other transits, except a few, which are beyond the scope of today's episode, can kind of be put to the side. You don't have to worry about them. And they're not really going to compare, uh, with the Time Lord transits. They're not going to correlate with major events.

Okay, reason number two why transits don't do anything. The planet making the transit doesn't have much to give, meaning it's weak or it's in poor condition as we would say in traditional [00:09:00] astrology. Planetary condition is a really complex topic that you could spend your entire life studying.

And I probably will. But essentially, it's an assessment where a combination of factors determine how strong or weak a certain planet in your birth chart is. It's a combo of things like zodiac sign placement, House placement, if the planet is visible, how fast it's traveling, which direction it's going, and the aspects it makes, and some other bells and whistles.

So a lot of things go into assessing a planet's happiness. The easiest place to start With planetary condition is assessing the zodiac sign that a planet is in. So certain planets like being in certain zodiac signs and they don't like being in others. It's just like us where we have certain environments that are really comfortable for us and then others where we feel like a [00:10:00] fish out of water.

For example, planets really love being in the signs that they quote rule. So quick and dirty summary, the moon rules Cancer, Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo, Venus rules Taurus and Libra, Mars rules Aries and Scorpio, Jupiter rules Sag and Pisces, and Saturn rules Capricorn and Aquarius. So when those planets are in those signs, they're happy.

They've got all the resources they need, they have the comforts of home available to them, and they have more strength.

On the other end, planets don't like being in the sign opposite of their rulership, and this is called detriment. So being in detriment is like being in a foreign environment where you can't speak the language, you don't have the right currency, and your luggage got lost so you don't even have clean undies.

It's a little tongue in cheek, but it [00:11:00] is what it's like to be in detriment. So you have to be creative. You have to, you know, find solutions. You have to work extra hard to get basic needs met.

So back to transits, what does this have to do with transits not doing anything? Well let's say that you were looking forward to a Venus transit and you're like, oh my gosh, it's going to be so good, I can't wait. or you're looking forward to a Jupiter transit and you're like, yes, I'm going to win the lottery and all the things.

Well, if Jupiter or Venus are in a sign that they really don't like while they're making the transit, they don't have a lot to give you. It's like asking this person that just landed, um, from an international flight and their luggage got lost and they don't have the right currency and they don't speak the language, it's like asking them for help.

They can't help you. They don't have anything to give you. And so sometimes [00:12:00] transits amount to nothing when the transiting planet just doesn't have a lot of juice or a lot of oomph.

So the other day I was just curious about The sun in Aquarius transiting my natal Jupiter, and that's not a major transit, but I thought, oh, this might be good. I might get some good news. I might feel a certain type of way, et cetera. But the sun in Aquarius is in its sign of detriment, and so the transit really didn't amount to anything. It just passed by unnoticed. But it did allow me to think about this podcast episode and write a few notes down

The last reason. Why transits might not do anything is that the planet being transited or receiving the transit has trouble receiving. So this is the flip side of everything I just said a second ago. In point number two, if the planet in your natal chart being transited is in poor condition, for example, [00:13:00] in a sign environment that's not optimal for it may have trouble receiving the transit itself.

Fine point here, this can also show up as a transit being really challenging and difficult instead of a transit completely falling flat, but I digress, okay? So, when you have a planet in your birth chart that's really weak for whatever reason, And it's transited by another planet. It can sometimes show up as an opportunity that you're not able to take full advantage of.

Or maybe you receive something, but it's not exactly what you wanted. Or it's not something you're able to use optimally. Or perhaps it might show up as being overwhelmed by something coming at you from the outside or the inside. So, Planets, when they're in poor condition, they're often [00:14:00] ineffective or inconsistent.

And so they can be given a gift by a transiting planet, but not be able to really put it to good use. Now, this isn't a solid rule. I'm not saying this is what it's always like, but this is realistic astrology and, you know, um, this. I've seen this happen many times, so I hope this episode helps you make sense of transits and narrow down which ones actually matter.

Remember you want to pay first attention to transits from your time lord in the real time sky and transits to your time lord in the natal chart. If you want. A rundown of how to figure out which planet is your time Lord head to my blog at astrology with Claire dot com and read the post called a beginner's guide to annual profections.

If you want to explore your time Lord for the year and other cosmic cycles, I would love to see you for a consult. [00:15:00] Again, you can find me at astrology with Claire. com. And I think that's all I have for now. I've been pretty sick all of January, so my voice is starting to give out. So let's keep this short and sweet.

And I hope to be back in your earbuds soon. Much love.