Combustion in Transit: What a Combust Planet Does

A planet too close to the Sun becomes combust. It rises and sets with the Sun and disappears from the visible sky. Vedic astrology reads that loss of visibility as a loss of independent strength.

The principle rests on visibility. When a planet cannot be seen, its own result cannot be separated from the Sun's.

The Orbs

The orbs below follow Brihat Jataka, which is the convention used across this site. Degrees are measured from the Sun in either direction.

Mercury and Venus take a tighter orb when retrograde. The tradition treats a retrograde planet as closer to the Earth and therefore harder for the Sun to overwhelm.

The Sun is never combust, since it is the cause. Rahu and Ketu sit outside the scheme, since they have no physical body.

Which Planets Are Combust Most Often

The answer turns on 2 figures: how far a planet can get from the Sun, and how wide its orb is.

Mercury never exceeds about 28 degrees of elongation and carries a 14 degree orb, so half its possible range sits inside combustion. It spends more of the year combust than any other planet. A Mercury transit reading has to check the condition before the house.

Venus reaches about 47 degrees and carries only 10, so it stays clear for most of the year.

Mars, Jupiter and Saturn each pass behind the Sun once per synodic cycle. Combustion for them is an event on the calendar, lasting a fixed stretch each cycle. It runs a few weeks for Jupiter and Saturn, and longer for Mars. The Moon becomes combust every month around the new moon and clears within days.

How Combustion Changes a Transit

The house keeps its theme. The planet loses its ability to deliver that theme on its own terms.

A combust Jupiter transiting your 9th still activates dharma, teachers and long travel. What it stops doing is giving Jupiter's own generous result there. The Sun's significations move into the space, so the house fills with authority, position, ego and the father where Jupiter's expansion would normally sit.

That substitution is the most useful part of the reading. The house stays active and its result arrives in the Sun's terms.

A favourable house position with a combust planet is the most common reason a promising window produces nothing. The classical list said the position was good and the planet was not in a condition to use it.

Combustion Planet by Planet

Mercury Combust

Mercury is combust more often than any other planet. Thinking, speech, documents and negotiation all continue, and they carry the Sun's weight where Mercury's precision would normally show.

Statements come out heavier than intended. Positions get taken where a question was meant. Written work done in this window wants checking before it leaves your hands.

Venus Combust

Venus is combust rarely, because its elongation runs wide. Comfort, relationship and taste lose their ease, and self-regard takes their place.

Arrangements made here tend to serve one party more than both. Wait for the clearance before agreeing terms that need to feel fair afterwards.

Mars Combust

Mars carries the widest of the 6 orbs at 17 degrees. It also moves slowly against the Sun, so it can stay combust for 2 months or more.

Energy continues and direction gets muddled. Effort goes into being seen to act. Competition handled in this stretch costs more than it returns, and the same dispute handled a month later costs less.

Jupiter Combust

Jupiter carries the narrowest orb at 11 degrees, and its combustion is the shortest of the slow planets.

Advice given in this window carries position more than wisdom. Teachers and counsel are harder to judge. Decisions about study, dharma and long travel do better either side of it.

Saturn Combust

An orb of 15 degrees, once a year, for a few weeks inside a 2.5 year transit.

Structure and patience give way to urgency. Work that needs slow assembly gets pushed, and the pushing produces rework. Saturn's own discipline returns as soon as it clears.

Moon Combust

The Moon is combust every month, for a few days around the new moon. This is the shortest and gentlest of them.

The mind runs quiet and inward, visibility drops, and the appetite for public activity goes with it. The new moon day is the low point of the monthly cycle and is traditionally kept for the ancestors and for rest.

Checking It Without Software

The principle gives you a test you can run yourself. A combust planet cannot be seen, because it is lost in the Sun's light.

Look west shortly after sunset or east shortly before sunrise. A bright Venus or Jupiter sitting clear of the horizon glow is not combust. A Venus nobody can find for several weeks is inside its orb.

This works for the 5 visible planets and it is how the orbs were arrived at in the first place. It also gives a reader something to check that does not depend on trusting a calculation.

Combustion in Transit and Combustion at Birth

A planet combust in the birth chart carries that condition for life. It shapes how the planet delivers in its own dasha and how its significations run across the whole chart.

A planet combust in transit is passing. It lasts days or weeks and changes only that window.

Where both apply, the window is pronounced. A natally combust Venus meeting a Venus combustion transit is the weakest Venus period that chart will see. The same logic holds for every planet.

What Combustion Does Not Do

It does not cancel a transit. The house still activates and the theme still runs. Only the planet's independent voice is missing.

Combustion also does not last. It is the most temporary of all the strength conditions, and for the fast planets it clears in days.

Remedy is not called for on its own account. Combustion is a position in the sky, and the practical response to it is scheduling.

How to Use This

Before reading any transit, check whether the planet is inside its orb. The transit pages carry combustion windows for each planet by year.

Then move the work. Anything depending on the planet's own quality should sit outside the window. Negotiation and documents go outside a Mercury combustion, agreements and money outside a Venus one, counsel and study outside a Jupiter one.

Read it alongside the bindus in the sign and the running Vimshottari period. A planet combust, in a sign with low bindus, during an unrelated dasha, explains almost every disappointing transit. A personal consultation weighs it against the full chart.

Summary

Combustion is proximity to the Sun close enough to remove a planet from the visible sky. The orbs run from 11 degrees for Jupiter to 17 for Mars. The Sun causes it and never carries it, and the nodes sit outside the scheme.

The house keeps its subject. The planet loses its own result there, and the Sun's significations take that space. Mercury is affected most and the Moon least.

Check the condition first and read the house second, then schedule work that depends on a planet for the weeks it can be seen.