Astrology calendar: the sky, month by month

• November 13Mercury Goes Direct
• November 14Venus Goes Direct
• November 22Sun Enters Sagittarius
• November 24Full Moon in Gemini
• November 26Mars Enters Virgo
• November 29Uranus–Pluto Trine
• December 2Jupiter–Chiron Trine
• December 4Venus Enters Scorpio
• December 6Mercury Enters Sagittarius
• December 9New Moon in Sagittarius
• December 11Saturn Goes Direct
• December 12Neptune Goes Direct

These are the five most common questions, each answered with the next computed date. The left column opens the overview of every date of that kind, the middle one the page for that single event.

1. Skim the month. Highlighted entries are the big moments: full moon, new moon, eclipse, the start of a retrograde. Everything else is the quiet background.
2. Open a date. Each event page gives the time, degree and duration and explains it in plain sentences. A trine, for instance, just means two planets work together without you having to do anything.
3. Compare with today's sky. The current planetary positions show where every planet is right now; whether Mercury is retrograde is answered under Mercury retrograde.
4. Relate it to your chart. The same full moon lands in a different house for everyone. The personal daily horoscope shows yours, based on your birth chart.

The moon phase calculator shows which phase was in the sky when you were born. Dates grouped by kind are under full moon, new moon, eclipses and retrograde planets.

Follow a whole year month by month. Every event is listed with its date, time and sign, plus what it means in plain language.

• ☿Mercury retrogradeThree to four times a year. Every date, and where the next one meets your chart.
• ♄Saturn returnAbout every 29.5 years. Your first, second and third return, calculated to the day.
• ℞EphemerisEvery planet on every day, at 00:00 UT. With ℞, stations and lunar phases, month by month.

New moon & full moon

The Moon needs about 29.5 days for one cycle. The new moon counts as a starting point and the full moon as the moment something becomes visible. That is why so many rituals attach to these two points.

Eclipses

Two to four times a year a new or full moon falls close enough to the lunar nodes to become an eclipse. They read as an accelerated version of the underlying phase and arrive in series spanning roughly 18 months.

Retrogrades

No planet actually moves backward. It only looks that way from Earth as we overtake it, the way a car in the next lane seems to roll back as you pass. Astrologically the phase counts as a time of repetition: reviewing, correcting and revising rather than starting fresh.

Sign changes

When a planet changes zodiac sign, the tone of its theme changes with it. For fast planets that lasts days; for Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto it lasts years, so those ingresses mark whole chapters.

Exact aspects

An aspect is the angle between two planets. The calendar marks the moment that angle becomes exact, which is the peak of a configuration you can already notice before and after.