Rahu in Aquarius, Ketu in Leo (May 2025 to Dec 2026)

The timeline runs in three beats: the nodes arrive in Aquarius and Leo in May 2025, travel backwards through those signs for about 18 months, then leave for Capricorn and Cancer in December 2026.

The nodes always sit exactly opposite each other, 180 degrees apart, so they change signs as a pair.

Speed gives context. The Moon covers a sign in about two and a quarter days and the Sun in about a month.

Mars takes about 45 days per sign, Jupiter about a year, Saturn about two and a half years.

Rahu and Ketu move the other way, east to west, at roughly 18 months per sign, so a node transit is a long stay.

Aquarius is the 11th sign of the zodiac, an air sign and a fixed sign, ruled by Saturn. Leo is the 5th sign, a fire sign and a fixed sign, ruled by the Sun.

Here the texts differ.

Skybond's engine gives Rahu and Ketu no sign of their own at all.

Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (BPHS, R. Santhanam's translation) and P.V.R. Narasimha Rao (PVR), author of Vedic Astrology: An Integrated Approach, give Rahu Aquarius as its own sign, with BPHS adding that some sages give it Virgo instead.

Ketu has no dignity in Leo in BPHS, PVR or Skybond's engine.

Each view is read within its own frame.

Skybond counts houses in transit using whole-sign houses: the sign of your reference point is the 1st house, the next sign the 2nd, and so on. PVR puts it plainly: 'We can see which house a planet is transiting in, with respect to natal lagna, and expect the planet to influence the matters of that house.'

The grid above lists the count for each of the 12 ascendants. Walk through one row: for Aries, Aquarius is the 11th sign counting from Aries, so Rahu is in the 11th house, and Leo is the 5th sign, so Ketu is in the 5th.

A second reference point is common too. PVR and B.V. Raman (author of Hindu Predictive Astrology) both count transits from the janma rasi, the sign holding the Moon at birth, and the same whole-sign count applies from a moon sign.

Skybond's sample chart (a teaching chart, not a real person) has lagna Cancer and Moon in Leo. From the lagna, Rahu in Aquarius lands in the 8th house; from the Moon in Leo, it lands in the 7th.

Same transit, two counts.

Rahu and Ketu are the north and south nodes of the Moon, two shadow points rather than visible bodies. They drift backwards, from east to west, against the order of the signs; a node takes about 18 months per sign, the Sun about a month.

Skybond uses the mean nodes, the averaged positions of the Moon's nodes; some calculators use the true nodes, so node dates can differ slightly between calculators.

One thing this page leaves out: the nodes' aspects, the other houses a planet is traditionally said to influence. Texts and calculators differ on what aspects Rahu and Ketu cast, so Skybond does not state them here.

PVR is explicit that standard transit results 'are given only for reference. In reality, not everyone with the same janma rasi experiences the same results'. He adds that 'the results given by planets depend on what they stand for in the natal chart'.

B.V. Raman agrees: 'There is no denying the fact that the birth horoscope directly affects Gochara results.' Gochara, or gochar, is the Sanskrit term for transit.

So use the grid to locate the houses, then read what those houses mean in your own chart. Skybond publishes one transit article per event for each of the 12 ascendants at /transits/{sign}/, free to read, and in the app transits are written for your own houses, counted from your lagna and from your Moon.

This page does not rate a transit as good or bad. The house it falls in shows where to look.