Western astrology
Astrology Calendar: Retrogrades, Eclipses, Moon Phases and Sign Changes by Year
In Western astrology, the calendar is the shared timetable everyone works from: when planets station retrograde and direct, when the Sun and planets change sign, when the Moon is new or full and when eclipses fall. Unified Reading computes those dates from its own ephemeris, in UTC, and publishes them here by year, with a page for each sign.
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Key facts
| Elements | Fire: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius · Earth: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn · Air: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius · Water: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces |
|---|---|
| Modalities | Cardinal: Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn · Fixed: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius · Mutable: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces |
| Sun sign method | Tropical zodiac, from the Sun's ecliptic longitude on the birth date, so cusp dates resolve per year |
What the calendar contains
Each year has one calendar page that gathers everything, then separate pages for each planet's retrograde periods, for the year's eclipses and for its new and full Moons. A retrograde page lists every station with its date, UTC time, sign and degree, the length of each period and the shadow zone, the span of degrees the planet crosses three times. The eclipse page gives the type of each eclipse, solar or lunar and total, annular, partial or penumbral, with the degree and the time of greatest eclipse. The Moon page lists both lunations for every month.
The sign pages take a different cut through the same data. For each Sun sign in a given year they list the season, meaning the dates the Sun spends in that sign, every eclipse on the sign's axis, every planet that enters the sign, every retrograde period that moves through it and every new and full Moon that falls in it, followed by the tradition's themes for that sign written as questions. Someone who only knows their Sun sign can use that page without a birth chart; someone with a chart can read the same dates against their houses.
How the dates are computed
Every position comes from Astronomy Engine, the open-source ephemeris that also calculates a Unified Reading birth chart, as geocentric tropical longitude of date. An ingress is the minute the longitude crosses a thirty-degree boundary; a station is the minute the daily motion changes sign; a lunation is the moment the Sun and Moon are at the same longitude or exactly opposite; an eclipse is taken from the engine's eclipse search, which follows the same classification as the NASA eclipse catalog. The results are rounded to the minute and stored in a table that the build recomputes and checks against the engine before any page is published.
All times are UTC. That choice keeps the table unambiguous, but it means an event late in the UTC day falls on the next calendar date in Asia and Australia and one early in the day on the previous date in the Americas. The time is printed next to every date so you can convert it. Nothing on these pages depends on your location except that conversion, because the zodiac positions of the Sun, Moon and planets are the same from everywhere on Earth.
What the calendar does not do
It does not forecast. Astrology attaches meanings to these events, and the pages describe those meanings as the tradition gives them, but a station or an eclipse is a date, not an outcome. The calendar tells you when the sky does something; your own chart says where it lands for you, and your own life says what you do with it. The pages are written to be useful as a planning tool for someone who takes the tradition seriously and as a reference for someone who simply wants the dates right.
It also does not calculate transits to an individual chart, meaning the angles between today's planets and the positions at your birth. Those need a full chart and a different kind of page. The free preview and the full reading work from your birth data; this calendar works from the sky alone, which is why it can be published for everyone and why every number on it can be checked against any other ephemeris.
The events, one by one
A retrograde is an optical effect: Earth overtakes a slower outer planet, or a faster inner planet overtakes Earth, and for some weeks the planet appears to drift westward against the stars before resuming its eastward path. The two turning points are the stations, retrograde and direct, and astrologers treat the stretch between them, plus the shadow degrees on either side, as the active period. Mercury does this three or four times a year, Venus roughly every nineteen months, Mars about every twenty-six months, and the planets from Jupiter outward once every year for four or five months.
An ingress is the moment a body crosses from one sign into the next. The Sun's twelve ingresses mark the seasons, the four cardinal ones at the equinoxes and solstices, and the slower planets' ingresses mark the longer chapters: Jupiter changes sign about yearly, Saturn every two and a half years, Uranus every seven, Neptune every fourteen and Pluto anywhere between twelve and thirty-one. A lunation is a new Moon, when the Sun and Moon share a longitude, or a full Moon, when they sit opposite. An eclipse is a lunation close enough to the Moon's nodes that the shadow of one body falls on the other, which is why eclipses arrive in pairs about a fortnight apart and migrate slowly through the signs.
How to read it alongside your reading
The simplest use is to find your Sun sign's page for the year and note three dates: the start of your season, the eclipse nearest your sign's axis and the Mercury retrograde period closest to a plan you care about. Put them in a diary as review points. If your reading gave you a rising sign, look at that sign's page too, because astrologers weight the rising sign heavily for timing; the same goes for the Moon sign and feelings. A numerology Personal Year, calculated from your full birth date, adds a second rhythm that runs from January to December and does not depend on the sky at all.
The pages link both ways: each sign's year page leads to the retrograde, eclipse and Moon pages for its dates, and each of those leads back to the signs it touches. The natal pages in the library describe what a planet in a sign means in a birth chart, and from this year onward they also show whether that planet is in that sign during the calendar year, so a reader can tell a birth placement from a current transit at a glance.
Try it with your birth date
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Read together
One tradition on its own gives a single angle. A Unified Reading puts your Life Path and name numbers, your Sun sign (plus Moon and rising when you know your birth time), your Chinese zodiac animal and your life stage side by side, and points out where they agree and where they pull apart. See how that looks in the fictional sample reading, or start with the free preview and pay $4.99 once only if you want the full reading.
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Frequently asked questions
Which years does the calendar cover?
The years listed below. A new year is added when its table has been computed and checked; each year keeps its own pages so older calendars remain available as a record.
Why are the times in UTC rather than my time zone?
Because the page is the same for every reader and UTC is unambiguous. Each date has its time printed beside it, so you can shift it to your own zone; only events within a few hours of midnight change date.
How accurate are the dates?
They are computed to the minute from the same ephemeris that produces the birth chart in a Unified Reading and are checked against the engine at build time. Different published tables can differ by a minute or two because of rounding, and by a day when a source prints local time.
Is this a horoscope?
No. A horoscope interprets; this calendar lists. The sign pages add the tradition's themes as questions for reflection, and they say so, but no page here predicts an outcome for any person.
Last updated November 2, 2026. Awaiting editorial review. Numerology and astrology are interpretive traditions for reflection, not predictions.