Triple Wheel

The Triple Wheel lays the current sky (transits) and a time-advanced version of your own chart (progressions) over your natal chart. Pick a date and you can see where that day’s sky touches your chart, all on one screen. Open it from Basic charts in the sidebar.

Press the chart title to open the chart-switching menu. Chart and Tables change the view of this same Triple Wheel.

Setting the date

You can change the date used for the transit and progressed rings.

• Press the date picker at the top of the chart and choose a date from the calendar
• When you change the date, the two outer rings (transits and progressions) update to that day’s positions
• Choose a past date to review earlier placements, or a future date to look ahead

The default is today. You choose a date only; the calculation uses 12:00.

Setting the location

House cusps in the transit ring depend on the place you observe from.

• Use the location picker to set the place used for the transit calculation
• Changing the place recalculates the transit house cusps
• It is common to set your home city, or the place where an event happens

The three rings

From the inside out the rings are natal, progressed, and transit. The labels on the wheel read Natal, Progressed, and Transit.

Inner ring: natal chart

The innermost ring shows the planets at the moment you were born. These positions never change. Every transit and progression reading uses the natal chart as its reference.

Middle ring: progressions

The middle ring shows the progressed positions. The technique is called secondary progressions: the sky one day after birth stands for your first year, two days after birth for your second year, and so on.

The progressed chart is the sky on the date that many days after birth, calculated for the birth location. The ASC and MC are worked out for that same moment.

The progressed Sun moves about 1° a year, so it takes roughly 30 years to cross one sign. The year it enters the next sign depends on its degree at birth. Because progressions move slowly, people use them to follow inner changes and multi-year stretches.

Outer ring: transits

The outermost ring shows where the planets actually are in the sky on the date you chose.

When a transiting planet makes an angle to a natal planet, astrologers link it to events and shifts in mood around that time. Saturn and the slow planets from Uranus to Pluto keep a similar angle for months or years, so they are read as longer themes.

The center of the wheel is divided by the natal houses. The progressed and transit ASC and MC are marked with small ticks on the edge of their own rings.

Aspects to natal

The Triple Wheel draws no aspect lines in its center. The aspects that transiting and progressed planets make to your natal planets are listed in the Aspects to natal panel beside the wheel (below it on a phone).

• Tabs at the top of the list switch between Transit → Natal and Progressed → Natal
• Rows are sorted by orb, the tightest first
• For example, if transiting Saturn is conjunct natal Sun, that row appears in the Transit list. Progressed Moon square natal Venus shows in the Progressed list
• Hover over a row to draw that single line across the rings; press it to keep it. Press it again, or switch tabs, to clear it

Open Display settings from the chart gear. Set the list orbs with Transit orb and Progressed orb on the Aspects tab. They start at 3° for transits and 1° for progressions.

Reading the list shows quickly which natal planets are being activated right now.

Table view

Switch from Chart to Tables at the top of the screen to see natal, progressed, and transit positions side by side in three columns.

• Each column lists the sign, degree, and house for every planet
• Small differences in degree that are hard to read on the wheel are easy to see in the table
• Retrograde planets are marked with an R

On the Chart view, the cross-aspect matrix in the data panel lists the aspects between natal and transit planets.

Related pages

• Solar Arc Directions: a different technique for timing, separate from the secondary progressions used in the Triple Wheel.
• Stars touching your chart: see on Home where today’s sky touches your birth chart.