- by Roy Kirkland
Astrology, as practiced in the Hellenistic Era (150BC – 400CE), was more like Jyotisha (Hindu Astrology) than the western astrology we use today. The whole-sign system of houses was used for interpretation, and sign subdivisions such as the Egyptian Terms (Bounds) and Dodecamotria (known in India as Dwadashamsas) were routinely used. Also, as in Hindu astrology, the centerpiece of the “System of Hermes” was a robust and practical set of predictive tools.
Circumambulation (“walking the circle”) was the most important of these tools. In this method, the ‘predominator’ (the Sun, Moon or Ascendant depending on their conditions in the chart) is ‘carried’ through the planetary bounds (Egyptian terms), and to conjunctions and aspects with the planets. The ancients devised this method to describe primary motion, the apparent westward movement of the Sun, Moon and stars across the horizon.
When the predominator changes bounds, a new major period begins, and the planet “ruling” that bound becomes the general time-lord. When a planet, or one of the “rays” of a planet (our familiar sextile, square, trine or opposition aspects) is reached, that planet becomes the participating time lord until another such encounter. Followers of Ptolemy use reverse nomenclature – the planets aspecting the predominator are the general time-lords, while the bound rulers participate. Ptolemy’s style of Circumambulation is the origin of modern ‘Primary Directions’.
Another accurate and useful time-lord system is the method of “Zodiacal releasing”, or aphesis, as described by Vettius Valens. This method was based on secondary motion, the apparent motion of the Sun, Moon and Stars through the signs of the Zodiac.
While any point (planet, lot or angle) can be released, this technique was generally applied to the Lot of Fortune or the Lot of Spirit. Valens and his contemporaries used the Lot of Fortune to examine forces in our lives that are outside of our control, and the Lot of Spirit to analyze our willful actions.
Releasing can also be done from any lot (or planet) in order to study those aspects of life described by the point to be released. There are a few calculation tricks to releasing, but learning this system is worth the effort, because aphesis repeatedly proves itself to be a very concise and accurate predictive tool.
Profection (Valens called it “Twelve Turning”) was a popular and simple predictive method, in which the signs moved at the rate of a sign per year, month or day. Profections may have fallen from popularity because the abandonment of whole sign houses and aspects created too much confusion as to how to analyze and interpret them. Yet they are a very important tool, because an astrologer could use them to make marvelous predictions quickly once the standard chart had been cast, without the need for rare and usually inaccurate planetary tables or tables of planetary motion.
Profections count a sign per year by ordinal numbers, such that the age from birth until one year old is one’s first year, the age from 1 to 2 is the second year, etc. Therefore, if one is 12 years (between 12 and 13 by the way we count birthdays) old, they would be in their 13th year, and the annual sign would return to the sign of the 1st house. If a person were in their 24th year (between the 23rd and 24th birthdays, or 23 years old), we just remove two 12’s and end up with 0, which counts as the 12th sign from the rising sign.
Let’s say a person is in their 42nd year (41 years old) and has Virgo rising. They’ve been around the Zodiac 3 times (in 36 years), and that leaves us with 6, meaning that Aquarius (the 6th sign from Virgo) is the sign of the year. At this point, all you have to do is remember that the interval between the rising sign and the annual sign tells us how to judge the chart. In this example, if the 41 year old person with Virgo rising has natal Mars in Sagittarius, then Mars “hands over” to whatever is in Taurus, the 6th sign from Sagittarius. Were Venus in Pisces, she would hand over to anything natally in Leo during this particular year.
This action also takes place regarding the divisions of time – the Year-lord hands over to the Month-lord who hands over to the Day-lord. In other words, if Pisces were the year lord, and Leo happened to be the active month in a Virgo rising chart, it could be said that Jupiter, or any planet in Pisces is handing over to the Sun, or any planet in Leo. Therefore, to fully analyze the month, you would need to start with Leo as the first house and hand over to the 6th from all planets and houses in order to get the proper sequence.
The terms used to describe how Profections work translate as “handing over” or “taking over” or “taking up”, and make no mistake, this was very different from the “blended influence” theory of aspects and other planetary combinations in vogue today. If, for instance, Venus was the year-lord and Saturn was the month-lord, then Venus would “hand over” to Saturn: Venus would be the substance or matter “filling the form” which is indicated by Saturn. Saturn would describe the pot, Venus would describe the flowers.
*note* - from here on, I will introduce some of the Hellenistic terms for the Planets and Lots
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