Understanding Planetary Transits (Gochar)

Your birth chart is a frozen snapshot of the sky at your birth moment – but the sky keeps moving. The planets continue their orbits, passing through different signs and houses day by day. These current planetary positions, viewed against the backdrop of your birth chart, are called transits (Gochar).

Think of your birth chart as a fixed landscape (mountains, rivers, cities) and transits as the weather moving across it. The landscape determines the terrain of your life; the transiting weather determines what happens on any given day, month, or year.

Not all transits carry equal weight. The slower a planet moves, the longer it stays in one sign, and the deeper its impact. Fast planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun) change signs every few days to a month – their transits create short-lived moods and events. Slow planets reshape entire chapters of your life:

When a transiting planet enters a sign, it activates the corresponding house in your birth chart. But the activation is not uniform – several factors determine the strength and nature of the transit:

Ashtakavarga is a point-based system that evaluates how favorable each sign is for each planet's transit. The Sarvashtakavarga (SAV) combines all planets' contributions to give a total score (0-56) for each sign. This is the most objective way to assess transit quality:

Deep dive into Ashtakavarga →

The Transit Radar on the Kundali page visualizes the Sarvashtakavarga scores as a circular heatmap around the 12 signs. It shows you at a glance which areas of your zodiac are currently "green light" (favorable for transiting planets) and which are "caution zones":

Transits and Dashas are the two timing systems in Vedic astrology. For the most accurate predictions, both must agree. A challenging transit during a favorable Dasha is experienced mildly; a challenging transit during a challenging Dasha is felt strongly. The principle:

• •Dasha = the base vibration (what themes are active for years)
• •Transit = the trigger (what activates events within those themes)
• •Event = when both Dasha and Transit point to the same house/planet/theme simultaneously
• •Example: Jupiter Dasha + Jupiter transiting the 10th house = career breakthrough