Monthly Horoscope
This month
Monthly readings for all twelve rashis, with both the sidereal and the tropical date range shown for each. Below the signs: the one sankranti every solar month turns on, and why that makes a month a different reading rather than a longer week.
Choose Your Rashi
Two date ranges are given for every sign because there are two zodiacs. The sidereal range is the one the reading is computed from; the tropical range is the one most people recognise from a newspaper column. They differ by the ayanamsa, currently about 24 degrees.
Aries
मेष · Mesha
Sidereal Apr 14 – May 14 Tropical Mar 21 – Apr 19
Taurus
वृषभ · Vrishabha
Sidereal May 15 – Jun 14 Tropical Apr 20 – May 20
Gemini
मिथुन · Mithuna
Sidereal Jun 15 – Jul 16 Tropical May 21 – Jun 20
Cancer
कर्क · Karka
Sidereal Jul 17 – Aug 16 Tropical Jun 21 – Jul 22
Leo
सिंह · Simha
Sidereal Aug 17 – Sep 16 Tropical Jul 23 – Aug 22
Virgo
कन्या · Kanya
Sidereal Sep 17 – Oct 17 Tropical Aug 23 – Sep 22
Libra
तुला · Tula
Sidereal Oct 18 – Nov 16 Tropical Sep 23 – Oct 22
Scorpio
वृश्चिक · Vrishchika
Sidereal Nov 17 – Dec 15 Tropical Oct 23 – Nov 21
Sagittarius
धनु · Dhanu
Sidereal Dec 16 – Jan 14 Tropical Nov 22 – Dec 21
Capricorn
मकर · Makara
Sidereal Jan 15 – Feb 12 Tropical Dec 22 – Jan 19
Aquarius
कुम्भ · Kumbha
Sidereal Feb 13 – Mar 14 Tropical Jan 20 – Feb 18
Pisces
मीन · Meena
Sidereal Mar 15 – Apr 13 Tropical Feb 19 – Mar 20
What actually changes in 30 days
| Graha | Full circuit | Holds one rashi | Moves in 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moon | 27.32 days | about 2¼ days | 395° — 13.2 rashis |
| Sun | one year | about 30½ days | 29.6° |
| Mercury | about a year (geocentric) | roughly 3 weeks to 2 months | Tracks the Sun Its average rate is the Sun's own, but it loops forward and back around it, so no single figure for this interval would be honest |
| Venus | about a year (geocentric) | roughly 3 weeks to 2 months | Tracks the Sun Its average rate is the Sun's own, but it loops forward and back around it, so no single figure for this interval would be honest |
| Mars | 687 days | about 8 weeks | 15.7° |
| Jupiter | 11.86 years | about one year | 2.5° |
| Saturn | 29.46 years | about 2½ years | 1.0° |
| Rahu and Ketu | 18.6 years (retrograde) | about 18 months | 1.6° Retrograde always, so the motion runs backwards through the rashis |
Every figure in the last column is 360 divided by the circuit length, times 30 — the arithmetic is on the page so it can be checked rather than trusted. Mercury and Venus are the two exceptions and are left without a figure on purpose: their mean rate is the Sun's, so the arithmetic would return the Sun's number for a motion that is nothing like it. Past two full circuits the figure is divided by 360 as well and given in circuits, because a count of rashis stops describing anything once a graha has been round twice. A month is a real astronomical interval and the table is what it does to the sky; it is not a forecast, and nothing here says what will happen to anybody.
A month is one sankranti
The Sun moves 0.986 degrees a day, so over thirty days it covers 29.6 degrees. A rashi is thirty degrees wide. Those two numbers being almost equal is the entire reason a monthly reading exists as a category: a solar month holds exactly one sankranti, the Sun's crossing from one sign into the next, and that crossing is the only thing on a monthly timescale big enough to build a reading on.
Compare the Moon over the same interval. In thirty days it covers 395 degrees — a full circuit and a little more — so it visits every rashi, aspects every graha, and comes back past its own starting point with a rashi to spare. Whatever the Moon does to a chart in a month, it does all twelve versions of it, which is the same as saying it does none. On a weekly scale the Moon is the reading; on a monthly scale it cancels out. That inversion is why the weekly hub argues from a different table than this one.
Jupiter and Saturn sit in between. Two and a half degrees for Jupiter in a month and one degree for Saturn are too small to read as an event, but they are not nothing: twelve of those Jupiter steps make thirty degrees, which is one rashi, which is the yearly reading. Rahu and Ketu cover about a degree and a half, backwards, because they always move retrograde. Every figure in this paragraph is 360 divided by the graha's circuit length, times thirty, and the circuits are in the table above so the arithmetic can be repeated.
The twelve sankrantis
Each sign's month is named for the sankranti that opens it. The dates below are approximate, and deliberately so — a sankranti is an astronomical instant that shifts by a day either way across years, and the day on which it is observed is a separate question that depends on region and on when the instant falls relative to sunrise. For the exact panchang of a given day, use the panchang rather than a table.
| Sankranti | Rashi | Sun enters around | Monthly reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mesha Sankranti | Mesha (Aries) | Apr 14 | Aries monthly |
| Vrishabha Sankranti | Vrishabha (Taurus) | May 15 | Taurus monthly |
| Mithuna Sankranti | Mithuna (Gemini) | Jun 15 | Gemini monthly |
| Karka Sankranti | Karka (Cancer) | Jul 17 | Cancer monthly |
| Simha Sankranti | Simha (Leo) | Aug 17 | Leo monthly |
| Kanya Sankranti | Kanya (Virgo) | Sep 17 | Virgo monthly |
| Tula Sankranti | Tula (Libra) | Oct 18 | Libra monthly |
| Vrishchika Sankranti | Vrishchika (Scorpio) | Nov 17 | Scorpio monthly |
| Dhanu Sankranti | Dhanu (Sagittarius) | Dec 16 | Sagittarius monthly |
| Makara Sankranti | Makara (Capricorn) | Jan 15 | Capricorn monthly |
| Kumbha Sankranti | Kumbha (Aquarius) | Feb 13 | Aquarius monthly |
| Meena Sankranti | Meena (Pisces) | Mar 15 | Pisces monthly |
Several of these carry observances far better known than the sankranti itself. Makara Sankranti is the most widely kept of the twelve and marks the beginning of Uttarayana, and Mesha Sankranti is the solar new year under a different name in Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Bengal. Each sign's monthly page gives its own sankranti's regional keeping, along with the three different month lengths the Hindu calendar has to reconcile.
Questions readers ask
Why is a monthly horoscope a Sun reading?
Because the Sun is the only graha whose pace matches the interval. It crosses one rashi in very nearly one month, so a solar month contains exactly one sankranti — and one clean event is something a reading can be built on. The Moon, over the same thirty days, visits all twelve rashis and finishes back where it started, so it cannot tell one month from another. Jupiter and Saturn move too little for anything inside a month to register as a change. The arithmetic for all of them is in the table above.
Does the astrological month start on the 1st?
No. A solar month runs from one sankranti to the next, and the sankrantis fall in the middle of the calendar months — between the 13th and the 18th, as the table on this page shows. So the Sun's month in a sign covers the second half of one calendar month and the first half of the next. This is why the sidereal ranges on the cards above look shifted against the dates you may be used to, and why a reading labelled for a calendar month is not measuring the same interval as a reading labelled for a rashi.
Is a Hindu month the same as a solar month?
Not necessarily — there are two systems in use and they have different lengths. A solar month is sankranti to sankranti. A lunar month is new moon to new moon, which is shorter, so the two drift apart and an extra month has to be inserted periodically to keep them in step. Each sign's own monthly page works through the three month lengths side by side, along with what a tithi is and why tithis slide against calendar dates.
What can a monthly reading tell me that a weekly one cannot?
A month is long enough for a real transit to change. The Sun changes rashi once; Jupiter moves about two and a half degrees and Saturn one, which over a year compounds into Jupiter changing sign. A week contains none of that — over seven days only the Moon moves. So the honest division is that a weekly reading describes the Moon's path and a monthly reading describes an ingress, and neither is the other at a different length.
What can a monthly reading not tell me?
Which part of your life the ingress touches. That is decided by the bhava — the house the sign falls in, counted from your lagna — and the lagna cannot be known without a birth time. A monthly column has no birth time, so it reads the ingress from the rashi instead and produces one reading for a twelfth of everybody. It is a real astronomical event honestly described; it is not a statement about one person's month.
Read your Moon sign as well
A sun-sign column is written for a twelfth of everybody at once. Jyotish treats the Chandra rashi — the sign the Moon held at your birth — as the primary one, so if you know it, read that page too. If you do not, the calculator will tell you from a birth date, time and place.