Fast Transits and Slow Transits

A transit’s meaning is not only who is moving and where they land. It is how long they stay. Approximate stays in a sign, for orientation:

• Moon — about two and a half days
• Sun — about a month
• Mercury — variable; often a few weeks, longer when retrograde
• Venus — similar to Mercury’s order of magnitude, longer when retrograde
• Mars — roughly six weeks, longer when retrograde
• Jupiter — about a year
• Saturn — about two and a half years
• Rahu and Ketu — about a year and a half, retrograde by default in usual calculation

If you give a three-day Moon transit the same interpretive weight as a Saturn occupation, you have flattened the sky into a newsfeed.

What duration is for

Duration is a filter on claims. A fast transit can describe a mood, a conversation, a short window of friction or ease. It is a poor explanation of a marriage, a degree, or a decade of work. A slow transit can describe a chapter of conditions — pressure, expansion, appetite, unhooking — against which many smaller events occur. It is a poor explanation of why one Tuesday was rude.

This is why Saturn and the nodes dominate serious gochara work, and why daily Moon-transit horoscopes are mostly entertainment. The Moon is not trivial in the natal chart. The Moon as a two-day visitor is a small visitor.

Mercury and Venus

Mercury and Venus are intermediate, and they retrograde, which lengthens some stays and repeats some contacts. A Mercury retrograde over a natal planet can describe a stretch of revision around that planet’s topics. It does not describe a cosmic punishment for email. Keep the duration honest and the topic natal.

Stacking with dasha

A slow transit that lands on a house already lit by mahadasha is more interesting than either clock alone. Dashas vs Transits is the comparison. Duration is why you bother stacking: you are asking whether a long condition and a long period agree. You are not hunting for a three-hour Moon aspect to explain a career.

A useful habit: before speaking a transit, say how long it lasts. If the sentence sounds silly with the duration attached — “this two-day Moon will define your vocation” — the sentence was already silly. The duration only made it audible.