What a retrograde planet is
Seen from the Earth, every planet sometimes appears to slow down, stop and drift backwards against the background of the stars for a few weeks or months, and then to stop again and go forward. The planet is not really moving backwards. The Earth overtakes it, or it overtakes the Earth, and the angle changes, much as a slower car seems to slide back when you pass it. In Sanskrit this backward motion is vakri, and the two turning points are the stations: the day the planet stops before going backwards, and the day it stops before going forward again.
The Sun and the Moon are never retrograde. Rahu and Ketu, the lunar nodes, move backwards all the time in the mean reckoning, so they are treated as a pair of their own. That leaves five planets that can be retrograde at birth: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. Mercury is retrograde about three times a year for about three weeks, Venus about once in nineteen months for about forty days, Mars about once in two years for around two months, and Jupiter and Saturn each once a year for four to five months. For that reason Jupiter and Saturn are retrograde in roughly a third of all charts, and Mercury in about one in five.
How the tool works
You enter the date, time and place of birth. The tool reads the planets from the Swiss Ephemeris tables on this site, in the sidereal zodiac with the Lahiri ayanamsa. For each of the five it finds the two stations on either side of your birth moment. If the one before your birth was a turn to retrograde, the planet was retrograde at birth, and the tool gives the date it began, the date it turns direct again, the sign and degree at each turn, the length of the retrograde and how far into it you were born. The dates are in the time zone of your birth place.
If you give your time of birth, the tool also gives the house of each retrograde planet counted from your rising sign. Without a time, it uses noon and leaves the houses out. If a planet turned retrograde or direct on the very day you were born, the tool tells you the clock time of that turn, because then the birth time decides which side you are on.
Below the result the tool lists any planets that are retrograde today, with their own dates, so that you can see what the sky is doing now.
What tradition says
The Parashari tradition does not treat a retrograde planet as weak. A planet that is vakri is counted as having strong motional strength, called cheshta bala, and is often read as a planet whose results are intense, long-lasting and turned inward. A retrograde Jupiter or Saturn, for example, is often described as working with more independence and less ease. The modern habit of blaming retrograde Mercury for muddles is mostly a newer idea, and the classical view is more neutral.
Teachers add their own refinements. Some say a retrograde planet gives its results late or after a delay, some give extra weight to a planet that is nearly stationary, and some stress that Mercury and Venus, which stay close to the Sun, behave differently from Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These views are not shared by every school, and the tool does not apply them. It states the plain fact (retrograde or direct), the dates, and a short reading of the theme of each retrograde planet, and leaves the interpretation to the whole chart. Sign, house, dignity, aspects and the running dasha change how a retrograde planet is felt a great deal. For that, see the Mahadasha calculator and the free kundali.
Reading the table
Each retrograde planet appears with its sign, degree and house. The next columns give the date the retrograde began, with the sign and degree where the planet stopped, and the date it ends, with the sign and degree where it turns direct. A retrograde can begin in one sign and end in the previous one, which is why the signs may differ. The last column gives the length of the retrograde in days and how many days into it you were born. A planet near the start or end of its retrograde, when it is nearly stationary, is read by many astrologers as especially strong, but that is a teaching and not a rule everyone follows.
None of this predicts events or says how your life will go. It is a way to look at one feature of the chart and to find the dates. For where the slow planets are now, open the transits page, and for positions at birth use the planet position calculator.
Frequently asked questions
↳ Is a retrograde planet bad in a birth chart?
Not in the classical view. Parashari tradition counts a vakri planet as having strong motional strength and reads it as intense and inward, not as weak or harmful. Its sign, house and dasha matter more than the retrograde alone.
↳ Why are the Sun, Moon, Rahu and Ketu not in the list?
The Sun and Moon never turn retrograde. Rahu and Ketu always move backwards in the mean-node reckoning, so being retrograde does not set them apart the way it does the five planets.
↳ How often is each planet retrograde?
Mercury about three times a year for three weeks, Venus once in about nineteen months for around forty days, Mars about once in two years for roughly two months, and Jupiter and Saturn once a year for four to five months each.
↳ What if my planet turned direct on my birthday?
Then the birth time decides. The tool names the clock time of the turn on your birth date, so you can see whether you were born before or after it. Without a birth time the tool cannot settle it.
↳ Why do the dates differ from other sites by a day?
A station is the moment a planet stands still, and it can fall late in the evening or early in the morning. The date depends on the time zone, so this tool shows it in the time zone of your birth place, which can differ from a site that uses another one.