Weekly Horoscope
This week
Weekly readings for all twelve rashis, with both the sidereal and the tropical date range shown for each. Below the signs: what seven days actually change in the sky, and what they do not.
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 7 days
| Graha | Full circuit | Holds one rashi | Moves in 7 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moon | 27.32 days | about 2¼ days | 92° — 3.1 rashis |
| Sun | one year | about 30½ days | 6.9° |
| 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 | 3.7° |
| Jupiter | 11.86 years | about one year | 0.58° |
| Saturn | 29.46 years | about 2½ years | 0.23° |
| Rahu and Ketu | 18.6 years (retrograde) | about 18 months | 0.37° Retrograde always, so the motion runs backwards through the rashis |
Every figure in the last column is 360 divided by the circuit length, times 7 — 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 week 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 week is a Moon reading
Read the last column of the table above from top to bottom and the shape of a weekly reading falls out of it. In seven days the Moon travels a little over three rashis. The Sun travels about seven degrees, which is not quite a quarter of one. Jupiter travels six tenths of a degree and Saturn two tenths — less than the width of a nakshatra pada, which spans three degrees and twenty minutes.
So the slow grahas are, for the purposes of a week, exactly where they were. That is not a limitation of the reading; it is the reading. A week is the interval over which the Moon moves and nothing else does, which is why the weekly page for each sign is built on the Moon's path and on the vara cycle rather than on a transit list. It is also why each sign's yearly page reads Jupiter and Saturn instead: over a year Jupiter covers about thirty degrees and changes rashi once, so on that scale it is the Moon that averages out to nothing.
The Moon's circuit of the zodiac takes 27.32 days, so a week is a bit more than a quarter of it. Over those seven days the Moon passes through three or four rashis and seven or so nakshatras — it holds each nakshatra for roughly a day, since 27.32 days divided by 27 nakshatras is almost exactly one. That is the whole mechanism behind a weekly reading: which rashis the Moon crosses, and what relationship each of them has to the rashi you were born under.
What changes in seven days, and what does not
Changes
- The weekday, and with it the vara lord — seven days, seven grahas, one full turn
- The Moon's rashi, three or four times over
- The Moon's nakshatra, about seven times, roughly one a day
- The tithi, and with it the paksha if the week straddles a new or full Moon
- Which grahas the Moon is in aspect to, since it laps the whole chart in a month
Does not change
- Your janma rashi and your lagna — those are fixed at birth and never move
- The mahadasha and, almost always, the antardasha you are in
- Jupiter's rashi and Saturn's rashi — two tenths of a degree is not a change
- Anything anyone means by “Saturn is on my Moon”, which is a two-and-a-half-year condition
- Rahu and Ketu's rashi; they hold one for about eighteen months, moving backwards
The right-hand column is the more useful one. A great deal of weekly horoscope writing quietly borrows its weight from the left column's pace and the right column's significations — announcing a career turn or a marriage prospect for the coming week, when the grahas the tradition actually reads for those things have not moved far enough in seven days to be measured. Read about what each graha signifies and the mismatch becomes obvious.
Questions readers ask
Why is a weekly horoscope built on the Moon rather than on the planets?
Because over seven days the Moon is the only graha that goes anywhere. It covers about 92 degrees in a week. Jupiter covers about 0.6 degrees over the same seven days and Saturn about 0.2. Whatever Saturn was doing to a chart last Monday, it is doing the same thing this Monday. A reading that claims a week changed because of Saturn has not done the arithmetic.
Does the week start on Monday or on Sunday?
Both conventions exist and neither is wrong. The Hindu vara cycle is conventionally listed from Ravivara, Sunday, because it is named for the Sun; the ISO week used by most calendars starts on Monday. A single vara does have an astronomical boundary — it runs sunrise to sunrise, not midnight to midnight — but the fact that seven of them pass before the cycle repeats answers to nothing in the sky. The week is a convention, not a period, which is worth knowing before treating it as a natural cycle.
Which sign should I read, my Sun sign or my Moon sign?
Jyotish reads the Chandra rashi, the sign the Moon held at your birth, as the primary one, and most Hindi rashifal is written for it. A Western column is written for the Sun sign. The two are the same for about one person in twelve. If you do not know your Moon sign, the Moon sign calculator will work it out from a birth date, time and place.
Why do the cards show two date ranges?
Because there are two zodiacs. The sidereal range is measured against the fixed stars and is what a Vedic reading is computed from; the tropical range is measured from the equinox and is what newspaper columns use. They have drifted about 24 degrees apart, which is roughly 24 days — so a great many people are one sign in one system and the previous sign in the other. Both are given so the difference is visible rather than hidden.
Can a weekly horoscope tell me what will happen to me?
No, and this page does not try. A sun-sign or moon-sign column has no birth time, so it has no bhavas — no houses — and the bhava is what decides which part of a life a transit touches. Without it, a weekly reading is a description of where the Moon is, written for a twelfth of everybody at once. It is a place to start, not an answer about one person.
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.