Gochara · transit

Gochara is transit: where the grahas actually stand in the sky now, laid over the fixed positions of the birth chart. The natal chart is the ground that does not move, and gochara is the weather that crosses it. A transiting planet is read by the house and sign it passes through and by what natal points it touches there.

The Vedic habit is to count transits from the Moon as much as from the ascendant. A planet’s passage is read by its distance from the natal Moon sign, so the same sky reads differently for two charts with the Moon in different places. Some schools weigh transits from the ascendant as well, and the tradition holds both rather than choosing one.

The classical scheme adds vedha, a set of blocking points where one transit cancels the effect of another, so gochara is never read from a single planet in isolation. It is weather, not fate: a passing condition laid over the standing chart, read as pressure or ease and not as a fixed event.