Sade Sati Calculator — your Shani Sade Sati dates

What Sade Sati is

Sade Sati — sāḍhe sātī, “seven and a half” — is Saturn's passage through the 12th, 1st and 2nd signs counted from your natal Moon. Saturn takes about two and a half years over each sign, so the three together run for roughly seven and a half years. The Moon is the mind, and Saturn crossing it and the two signs on either side is felt as weight: things take longer, cost more and ask for more patience than you had planned.

It is not a curse and not a single event. It is a long stretch in which Saturn — the planet of time, labour and consequence — sits on the part of the chart that registers comfort. What it takes away is usually what was not built on work; what survives it is usually what was.

The three phases

The peak — Saturn over the Moon itself — is usually the heaviest. When Saturn turns retrograde it can slip back a sign and cross the same boundary two or three times, so a phase can start, pause for a few months and resume. The calculator lists every crossing.

Sade Sati dates for every Moon sign

Each Sade Sati between 1990 and 2060, and the Ḍhaiyā periods of 2020–2040, for all twelve Moon signs. Dates are in Indian Standard Time. A † marks a Sade Sati with a retrograde pause inside it.

Ḍhaiyā — Saturn in the 4th and 8th from the Moon

Outside Sade Sati, two other Saturn transits are watched from the Moon. In the 4th — Ardhāṣṭama or Kaṇṭaka Śani — Saturn sits on home, mother, vehicles and peace of mind. In the 8th — Aṣṭama Śani — it sits on health, longevity and sudden obstacles, and is the harder of the two. Each lasts about two and a half years; in Hindi both are called Śani kī Ḍhaiyā.

The pāya (Mūrti) of each phase

Every time Saturn enters a sign, the transiting Moon's position counted from your natal Moon grades that transit. The same Saturn entry can be gold for one Moon sign and iron for another.

Why two people with the same Moon sign have different Sade Satis

The dates above are the same for everyone born with the Moon in a sign. What happens in them is not. Four things decide it:

• Which houses Saturn rules from your ascendant. For Vṛṣabha (Taurus) and Tulā (Libra) ascendants Saturn is the yogakāraka, the best planet in the chart; for Makara and Kumbha it rules the ascendant itself. For others it rules difficult houses and its pressure is harder to use.
• Saturn's strength at birth — its sign, its divisional-chart dignity, whether it is retrograde. A strong Saturn in transit tends to give through effort; a weak one takes.
• The daśā running at the time. A Sade Sati that falls in a good major period is felt as hard work; the same transit in a difficult one is felt as loss.
• The pāya and vedha of each phase — the grading above, and whether another planet obstructs the transit.

The transit reading shows Saturn's transit on your own chart with its pāya and vedha, and your birth chart shows where Saturn sits and what it rules.

What to do in Sade Sati

Saturn rewards steady work and exposes shortcuts. The period asks for exactly what Saturn signifies: do the duty in front of you, carry the weight without complaint, and stop clinging to the result — “you have a right to your work, never to its fruits” (Bhagavad Gītā 2.47). In the tradition Saturn is the Kūrma avatāra of Viṣṇu, the tortoise who held the mountain steady on his back; remembering the Lord in that form, and offering the work to Him, is the remedy that fits the planet.

Questions

More from your chart

• Find your rāśi and nakṣatraYour Moon sign, birth star and pāda from your birth details — and how much the birth time matters.
• Manglik dosha checkIs Mars in a dosha house from your ascendant, Moon or Venus — and is it cancelled?
• Kaal Sarp dosh checkAre all seven grahas hemmed between Rāhu and Ketu — full, partial, or the gentler Kāla Amṛta?