Which means it changes sign around a hundred and sixty times a year, and each change happens at a specific minute.
The Moon is the fastest moving body in a chart. The Sun holds a sign for a month; the Moon holds one for about two and a quarter days. It crosses the entire zodiac in 27.3 days, the sidereal month, and then starts again.
A moon sign calendar is simply the list of those crossings: the moment the Moon leaves one sign and enters the next, called an ingress.
These two get mixed up more than anything else in astrology, so it is worth separating them plainly.
A full Moon can happen in any sign, and the Moon passes through every sign whatever the phase. A calendar of one tells you nothing about the other.
Our tables use the sidereal zodiac, measured against the fixed stars, which is the one Vedic astrology uses. Most moon calendars you will find use the tropical zodiac, anchored to the spring equinox.
The two frames lined up roughly two thousand years ago and have drifted about 24 degrees apart since, because the Earth's axis wobbles. In practice that means a sidereal ingress happens about two days later than the tropical one, and names the previous sign. Neither calendar is miscalculated; they are measuring from different starting points. The full explanation is here, including how much it shifts birth signs.
In Vedic astrology the Moon is read before the Sun. Your birth sign, the Janma Rashi, is your Moon sign. Your birth star is the nakshatra the Moon occupied. The main timing system is calculated from where the Moon stood at birth. So the Moon's movement is tracked far more closely here than in the Western tradition, where the Sun holds that position.
The calendar shows where the Moon is now. Where it was at your birth is the more personal question, and it takes about a minute to answer.
Find my Moon signIt is a list of the moments the Moon moves from one zodiac sign into the next. The Moon is the fastest of the classical bodies, crossing a sign in about two and a quarter days, so its sign changes roughly a hundred and sixty times a year.
No, and the two get confused constantly. Phases are the Moon's relationship to the Sun: new, full and the stages between. The sign is where the Moon sits against the zodiac. They run on different cycles and answer different questions.
Because it reads the Moon first. The birth sign, the Janma Rashi, is a Moon sign, the birth star is the Moon's nakshatra, and the main timing system is calculated from the Moon's position. Western astrology puts the Sun in that place instead.
Barely. Unlike the ascendant, which changes with latitude and longitude, the Moon's sign is effectively the same worldwide at a given instant. What changes is your local clock time for that instant, which is why the tables here are given in UTC.
Positions come from the JPL DE421 ephemeris through the skyfield library, with the True Chitra Paksha ayanamsa applied. Boundaries are found by stepping through the year and then narrowing each crossing to the minute. The same engine runs our calculators, so the two cannot disagree. The method is set out on how we calculate.
Astrology here is offered for reflection and self-understanding. It is not prediction, diagnosis or advice, and no outcome is promised. The astronomy behind it is real and calculated; what any of it means is a tradition of interpretation, presented as exactly that.