The Moon right now
This is the sky itself: what the Moon is doing at this moment, and the same for everyone reading it. What it means for one particular chart is a different question, and the answer is further down.
tldr: The Vedic month and the Chinese month are the same days — 9 November to 9 December — under two different names (Margashirsha and 十月). They must be: both begin at the same New Moon, because both are watching the same sky. The Western month over the same stretch begins and ends somewhere else entirely.
All Three At Once
Western, Vedic and Chinese are three complete systems looking at one sky. They are not translations of each other and nothing below is forced to match, but where all three point at the same thing, that agreement is worth more than any one of them saying it alone.
Where They Agree
The Vedic month and the Chinese month are the same days — 9 November to 9 December — under two different names (Margashirsha and 十月). They must be: both begin at the same New Moon, because both are watching the same sky. The Western month over the same stretch begins and ends somewhere else entirely.
When does the month begin and end?
- Western
The 1st to the 30th or 31st — a Roman civil month, which has no connection to the Moon at all. The word 'month' comes from 'moon', but the unit stopped being lunar a long time ago.
- Vedic
9 November to 9 December — New Moon to New Moon, 29.7 days
- Chinese
9 November to 9 December — 朔 to 朔, 29.7 days
What is this month called?
- Western
August, September — names inherited from Roman emperors and numbers.
- Vedic
Margashirsha — named for the Sankranti, the Sun's entry into a sidereal sign, that falls inside it
- Chinese
十月 — numbered by the 中氣, the major solar term inside it
Both lunar calendars name their months by where the SUN is, not the Moon. That is what makes them lunisolar rather than merely lunar, and it is what stops the months sliding backwards through the seasons the way a purely lunar calendar (the Islamic one, for instance) does.
Why the Western and Vedic signs disagree
Western astrology measures the zodiac from the spring equinox (the tropical zodiac); Jyotish measures it from the fixed stars (the sidereal zodiac). The two were aligned about seventeen centuries ago and have drifted roughly 24° apart since, so the same Moon is very often one sign in the Western reading and the sign before it in the Vedic one. Both are internally consistent and neither is a mistake — they are answering the question against different reference points.
What This Means For You
This is the sky all three traditions share, the same for everyone. Read against your own chart, each has its own thing to say about you, and where they agree about you, that is the part to trust first.
