← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 212/235
Ingress
What it is
An ingress is a planet crossing from one sign of the zodiac into the next — Venus entering Gemini, Saturn entering Pisces. The word means simply "going in". Every planet makes ingresses; what differs is how often. The Moon changes sign every two to three days, the Sun about once a month, Jupiter about once a year, Saturn every two to three years, and Pluto only every decade or two.
A retrograde planet can also slip back across a sign boundary into the previous sign, and then re-enter the new one when it turns direct — so a slow planet's ingress is sometimes a three-step affair spread over months.
How it is read
In everyday astrology an ingress is read as a change of tone: the planet keeps its own nature but now expresses it through the qualities of the new sign. Mars moving from cautious Capricorn into inventive Aquarius, for instance, is read as the same drive turning toward different means. The slower the planet, the larger the shift: a Jupiter or Saturn ingress is read as the start of a chapter in the collective mood, an outer-planet ingress as a change of era. In a personal chart, the house a planet enters matters as much as the sign.
The final degree of a sign before an ingress has its own lore — a planet making no further aspect before it leaves is read as void of course, most famously the Moon.
Ingress charts in mundane astrology
The most important ingress in the tradition is the Aries ingress — the moment the Sun reaches 0° Aries at the northern spring equinox, around 20–21 March. That point is the start of the tropical zodiac, and medieval astrologers following Abu Ma'shar called the chart cast for it the revolution of the year of the world. Cast for a capital city, its Ascendant, angles and the condition of the planets were read for the year ahead in that country: its rulers, its people, its harvests and its prices.
The Sun's entries into the other cardinal signs — Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, at the solstices and the autumn equinox — mark the seasons, and their charts are the quarterly ingresses. The tradition, as Ramesey sets it out, decided how many to use from the sign rising at the Aries ingress: with a fixed sign rising, the one figure serves the whole year; with a mutable sign rising, the Aries and Libra ingresses each serve half; with a cardinal sign rising, all four are needed, one per quarter.
As with any chart of the world, the place matters: the same ingress has different angles in Paris, London and Washington, and that is where most of its local meaning lies. Mundane astrologers also study ingresses of the slow planets — Saturn or Uranus entering a new sign — and the New Moon or eclipse nearest the equinox, which some writers, Rudhyar among them, preferred to the ingress itself.
All of this belongs to mundane astrology and is read as inclination in collective affairs, not as prediction of particular events.
In a reading here
The Almanac notes the Sun or any planet changing sign on the day (the Moon's sign is shown separately), with what the ingress is read as meaning, and gives the Sun's entry into a cardinal sign its own seasonal reading. The sky events gathered around a news story include cardinal ingresses near the event's date.