Understand the chapter you are in. Find your next step.

What your current chapter means for you, one practical next step and why it fits. Then every turning point of your life as a season with a purpose: what it is for, what it asks of you and what to leave alone, and where in your life you feel it most. Together they are the tradition's answer to why life feels the way it does right now, and what to do with it. It is reflection, not a forecast: it says what a season is about, and what you make of it is yours.

It is about you. Every date on your road is measured from your own birth: the day, the place and, if you know it, the hour. Two people born a few days apart meet their turning points on different dates. The example on this page is Alex's, a made-up person, so you can see the shape of a road before you walk your own.

The chart calculations give dates, not promises of events in your life. With an unknown birth time, affected dates are marked approximate. Each turning point is found on the Swiss Ephemeris, drawn from NASA's planetary tables, the same ephemeris your birth chart is cast on. Your road gives the day each one is exact, every pass when a planet loops back, and when its season begins and ends.

Your birth chart is cast from your date, time and place. The road then follows every slow planet across your whole life and finds each moment it returns to where it stood when you were born, or turns against it: Saturn's returns and quarters, Jupiter's returns, the returns of the Moon's nodes, the great turnings of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, Chiron's return, the progressed Moon, and the eclipses that fall on your chart. The chapters come from the traditions that named them, from Ptolemy's seven ages to the Chinese year. Your written reading is written by the Almanac's reading model from those measured facts alone, and checked before you see it: it may not name a year your road did not measure.

• Saturn's returns and quarters

  The tests of seven, fourteen, twenty-one and the great return near twenty-nine, and every round after.

• Jupiter's rounds of growth

  The twelve-year returns, near twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six and on.

• The dragon's returns

  The Moon's nodes coming home every 18.6 years, and turning between.

• The great clock of Uranus

  Its quarters near twenty-one, forty-two and sixty-three, and its return near eighty-four.

• The wounded healer's return

  Chiron home again around fifty, and the old hurt turned into wisdom.

• The progressed Moon

  Its homecomings near twenty-seven and fifty-four, and the thirty-year lunation of a life.

• The outer planets on your chart

  The once-in-a-life crossings of your Sun, Moon and angles by Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

• The chapters of a life

  Ptolemy's seven ages, the firdaria, the profected years, the pinnacles, Sade Sati and the Chinese year.

Your road is still drawn. The great returns of Saturn, Jupiter and the others keep their dates, because those planets hardly move in a day. Without the hour, your road leaves out the crossings of your Moon and rising sign, counts your years from your Sun, and marks the few dates that could move by some months.

Yes, two ways. The example road of Alex, a made-up person, is open on this page in full. And when you walk your own road you see its shape before any payment: how many turning points it holds and the age each one comes at. The dates, the written reading and the places open with the 7-day free Oracle trial, which costs $0 today.

Your full Road opens as soon as checkout confirms your trial, with the Oracle member tools and Oracle conversations. $0 today. 7 days free, then $19/month. We email you 2 days before the trial ends. Cancel on your billing page before it ends to avoid charges. Payment details are required. After membership ends, your saved Road stays on your account and shows its shape; existing one-time Road purchases keep their full access.

If you start a trial and decide it is not for you, cancel on your Billing page before it ends and you pay nothing; we email you 2 days before it ends. Access continues until the end of the confirmed trial period. For charges or delivery problems, see our refund policy.

Read the whole refund policy

It shows where tradition says each planet is strongest for you. At the moment you were born, every planet stood overhead somewhere on Earth, and was rising, setting or underfoot somewhere else; those places draw lines across a map of the world, and your road names the towns and cities near them, from the kind ground of Venus and Jupiter to the steeper ground of Saturn. It needs your birth time, because four minutes of clock time move every line about 111 km. It is a map to explore, not a verdict: visit a place before you move to it.

No. It names the seasons of a life as the old traditions count them, dated from your birth: when each one comes, and what it has asked of people. It never promises an outcome. What you make of each season is yours.

They are used to measure your road and are kept with your account, so it can be opened again. They are never sent to advertisers, and never put in a web address.