Ep. 153 Transcript: Annual Profections: An Ancient Time-Lord Technique

The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 153, titled:

Annual Profections: A Basic Time-Lord Technique

With Chris Brennan

Episode originally released on April 24th, 2018

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

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Transcribed by Elizabeth Ocean

Transcription released July 7th, 2019

Copyright © 2019 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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Chris Brennan: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan and you’re listening to episode 153 of The Astrology Podcast. So, today what I’m going to be doing and it’s been a while since I’ve done a solo show with the podcast and I’ve been meaning to one, do a solo show for a while and two, I’ve been meaning to give a lecture or to record a lecture on a specific technique or a specific technical approach that’s kind of unique to my approach or that’s tied in with my approach to Hellenistic and modern astrology. One of the techniques that I’ve mentioned frequently over the years is the technique known as annual profections, which is a Hellenistic time-lord technique. And I know I’ve mentioned it a bunch of times. I have alluded to it a bunch of times. Occasionally, I’ve made sort of brief remarks about how to calculate it, but I’ve never actually done a show where I really went in depth on this technique.

I’d been putting it off. It’s also something that I wrote about in my book and something that I teach in my course. So there are often times over the years, I’ve had this tension between how much to present on the podcast for free, just publicly versus how much to hold back in my course. So I feel like at this point there’s enough in the course and I go into much detail in my full 9-hour lecture on this technique, that it would be okay to do a somewhat brief what I’m going to shoot for is let’s say like a 90-minute treatment of annual profections, as kind of a beginner’s introduction to this technique. So, it will get a little bit complicated at different points. But one of the things I’m going to try to do is tie this back into other episodes of the podcast that I’ve done in the past. I’ll put some links and some references to episode numbers so that if you’d like to, you can go back and listen to other episodes that I’ve done in the past for more information about some of the concepts that I’m going to mention along the way here.

So, if you feel a little in over your head, don’t worry about it if this is your first time hearing about the technique because there are a lot of other concepts that go with it. Usually this is one of the techniques that I present at the very end of my course on Hellenistic astrology once we’ve gone through a lot of basics. So here I’m going to try to review some of those basics quickly, but for the most part, you know, just kind of take it in and think about it. Let it sit with you on your mind, if this is your first introduction to the technique. Don’t worry if it seems a little overwhelming at first. Alright, so last things…if anyone has any questions as we go, go ahead and just let me know in the chat box here in the zoom window.

Let’s go ahead and get started. Alright, so for those listening to the audio version, I’m going to do, I’m going to be sharing slides and I’ll probably share a pdf or a video with the slides which will be available through the podcast website or through my page on youtube. So, you can go there if you’d like, to see the visuals that are meant to accompany this presentation. Otherwise, if you’re here watching this live or if you’re watching the video version, you should see the slides, along with a little window with my camera on. Alright, so the title of this lecture is Annual Profections, a Basic Time-Lord Technique. and I’m recording this I should say on Tuesday, April 24th, 2018. I started a few minutes ago probably at 1:05 PM in Denver, Colorado. This is the 153rd episode of The Astrology Podcast. 

Alright, so what we’re talking about today, this is a lecture on a specific technique, but it’s also kind of an introduction to a broader range of techniques or a lost set of timing techniques known as time-lord systems or time-lord techniques from the Greek word chronokrator which literally means Lord or ruler of time. So it turns out that one of the things that’s happened over the past 20 years, about 20, 25 years ago, some astrologers in the west got excited about going back to recover some ancient techniques from Greek and Latin, astrological traditions from about 2,000 years ago, and one of the things that they found, they didn’t actually initially know what they were going to find during this process of going back and looking at old texts and translating them. But one of the things that they ended up finding is that there was this lost system of timing techniques known as time-lord systems.

So, the time-lord systems are important because the basic premise underlying just about all of them is that there’s certain basic latent potentials in the natal chart that are indicated by the different placements in the natal chart and the different combinations. But not all of those placements are activated at all times. Instead the placements lie dormant, until the placements or the planets involved, are activated as time-lords according to one of these techniques. So the time-lord techniques are actually the western equivalent of the Indian dasha systems and the Indians have been using dasha systems for about 2,000 years now, at least the most popular of which is called the Vimshottari Dasha system. And while it’s calculated much differently then this technique is, it has some similarities in the way that it’s applied and used, especially in terms of the concept of the technique being used in order to activate the latent natal potential of certain planetary placements.

One of the things that’s interesting about that is just even though in the west, we’re just recovering some of these techniques now, the Indians have been using them for 2,000 years. There’s some interesting things that we actually could learn from the application of the western time-lord techniques by studying how the Indian astrologers still apply them to this day. As a result of that, a friend of mine named Kenneth Johnson and I actually recorded an episode very early on in the podcast on episode 30 where we talked about and compared, how the Hellenistic time-lord techniques are similar to, in their application and sometimes different to the Indian dasha systems. So, you can see episode 30 of The Astrology Podcast for that discussion I had with Kenneth Johnson a few years ago. So in terms of discovering the time lord techniques or rediscovering them, Vettius Valens, who is an astrologer, who lived in the second century mentions at least seven time lord systems that he was aware of. 

So there’s actually several of them and one of the problems with these systems is that most of them didn’t survive into modern times. So we’re just rediscovering them now. Profections is actually one of them that survived in some traditions, but for the most part it’s not a well known technique, like secondary progressions or transits or solar arcs are. Part of that I think is that the original application of the technique and the original way that it was applied was lost over the past 2,000 years. So part of what I’m going to be trying to present to you today is the original approach to using this specific time-lord technique. All right, so annual profections is actually the most widespread time-lord technique that was used in the Hellenistic tradition about 2,000 years ago. So let’s say roughly between the first century BC and seventh century CE. 

This is the one time-lord technique that almost every ancient author whose work survives, either used or at least mentions in passing if they don’t give an actual treatment of it. There are some astrologers who just mention it very briefly, like Ptolemy, there’s other astrologers like Vettius Valens where he spends at least three books of his anthology going back and forth and revisiting the technique several different times and giving different modifications of it and showing different ways to use it. He also uses dozens of example charts in order to show us how he uses the technique. So for some astrologers, this was a really important and really crucial technique. Despite that, there was actually no name for the technique in the Hellenistic tradition or they don’t seem to have had a specific name for it. Some astrologers kind of refer to it indirectly as the technique that’s used to determine the lord of the year or the planetary ruler of the year. 

In terms of describing the technique, the name that we’ve given to it as partially just descriptive because what you do in order to calculate it, and I’ll just mention this briefly and then I’ll come back to it in a slide or two, is that you just determine what the rising sign is or what sign the ascendant is located in a person’s chart. And you count one sign per year from the rising sign and whatever sign you come to when the count is finished, that sign and the ruler of that sign is activated as the time-lord for the year. So that’s why it was, and we’ll go back over that or we’ll come back to that later and I’ll show some diagrams and some examples so that you can see how that’s done, exactly. Or how that’s calculated, exactly. But basically you’re just starting from the rising sign and you’re jumping forward at a rate of one sign per year for each year of the native’s life. 

So the term profection that we use to refer to this technique, it actually derives from a Latin term that was used to refer to it, which is perfectio, which means a going away, setting out to a departure or to advance something. So it basically means to advance or to progress something at a certain rate. So, profections can actually be done at a yearly rate, at a monthly rate, or even daily and hourly. For our purposes, we’re just going to be doing annual profections, which is moving forward one sign per year. So that’s why it’s called annual profections. So, Arthur, do you have any questions first off in the chatbox? So Arthur says I’d appreciate it a little bit about the sub levels. If there’s time at the end. I’ll see if we can get to it. But it gets a little bit complicated getting into monthly and daily and especially hourly profection. 

So I sometimes will use monthly profections, but typically I’ll focus just on the yearly. This is really, I think this technique is used best when you’re just trying to get a general overview of the year, although sometimes it can be useful doing the monthly, it just gets a little bit complicated and a little bit overly complex. Alright, so let’s move on. 

So let’s talk about calculating the technique. Let’s imagine a chart that has the ascendant in Cancer. So we’ve calculated the chart and the ascendant is in Cancer. So in order to calculate profections, the basic premise is that when you’re born, whatever sign the ascendant is located in, that sign and the ruler of that sign become activated for the first year of your life. So if you have Cancer rising, then the sign, the zodiacal sign, Cancer is activated for the first year of your life. 

Basically from the moment you’re born until you’re first birthday, then the moon is also activated as the lord of the year for that first year of your life. So once you reach your first birthday, it then moves to, it jumps suddenly on the day of your birthday to the next sign in zodiacal order and zodiacal order is always counter clockwise. So jumps to a, in this instance, Leo, which is the second sign from the rising sign, and it would activate Leo and the sun, as in the next year of the person’s life from their first birthday until their second birthday. Then when they reach their next birthday, it moves to the next sign in zodiacal order, which in this instance would be Virgo. Then once that year is up, it moves to the next sign in zodiacal order, which would be Libra and activating Venus and so on and so forth. 

It’s actually a surprisingly simple technique because you’re just jumping forward one sign per year for every year of the natives life. But even though it’s almost deceptively simple, because even though it’s very simple to calculate, the actual interpretation can get kind of complicated and kind of interesting as we’ll see later. So, if you’re just counting one sign per year from the ascendant, of course, eventually it’s gonna come back around to the ascendant when the native is twelve years old. So at twelve years old, the profections complete the first cycle. And what it does is it basically, it basically comes back to the rising sign and then activates that sign over again at the age of twelve years old and then repeats the twelve year cycle. So at twelve years old, the ascendant and the rising sign or activated again. At thirteen years old, the second sign from the rising sign or the second whole sign house is activated again and so on and so forth. 

So every 12 years, basically the cycle repeats and starts over again at the ascendant. So eventually at 24 years old, the profection cycle comes back to the ascendant, at 36 years old, at 48 years old and so on and so forth. So an easy way to calculate the technique is basically just to divide by twelve and always know that it starts out every twelve years again at the ascendant, so 12, 24, 36, 48, 60 and so on and so forth. So I’ve actually created a handy diagram that you can use to calculate profections for the first 71 years or so of your life and you can access it right now. I uploaded it to my website, so it should be available there right now at hellenisticastrology.com/profections-wheel.pdf. 

So that’s a pdf that you can print out and you can use this in order to, to sort of memorize, depending on your age, what profection year you’re in. 

And this can be kind of useful because there are certain years of a person’s life that are always associated with certain profection years. So as I’ve said before, 12 and 24 and 36 are always first house profection years where the rising sign in the first house are activated. But there’s other profection years that are easy to memorize as well, like 18 years old, you can see over on the far right is always a seventh house profection year or let’s say 21 years old is always a tenth house profection year and so on and so forth. 

So there are certain years that for everyone are going to be activating the same part of the chart, basically. There’s another worksheet, the other one’s more of a diagram. This is more of a worksheet that I created for calculating profections to make it even easier. You can access this one at hellenisticastrology.com/profections-worksheet.pdf.

So with this, all you do is basically you figure out in the top row, what your rising sign is and then in the left column you find your age and then you line up your age and that helps you to find out what sign is activated for you, in a given year. So it’s basically just a quick and handy way of calculating annual profections for any year in your life. And this is also a printable worksheet that you can use. So you can find it at that URL if you want to use it. Alright, so there’s a couple of preliminary things before we get into the interpretation of the technique. One of them is that I’m going to be using the traditional rulership scheme and this is the original system, basically the symmetrical system for assigning each of the visible planets to different signs of the zodiac through the original rulership scheme. 

So with this, it basically assigns the Sun and the Moon, the two luminaries to Cancer and Leo, and then the rest of the visible planets are assigned, flanking out in zodiacal order based on the relative speed and distance from the sun. So Mercury gets the two signs on either sides of luminaries, Gemini and Virgo. Venus gets Libra and Taurus. Mars gets Scorpio and Aries. Jupiter gets Pisces and Sagittarius and Saturn, finally gets the two furthest signs from the luminaries, which are Capricorn and Aquarius. A lot of people may already know this system, some of you may already use it. I just wanted to mention it so that people, that I’m not taking anything for granted in terms of the approach that I’m using in this lecture. So even if you don’t normally use the traditional relationship scheme, you may want to play with it and may want to experiment with it for the purpose of this technique or at least I would recommend doing so, because you might find it more effective, within the context of this specific technique. 

The other system that we’re going to be using and the other concept or technique that we’re going to be taking for granted here is the concept of whole sign houses. So in whole sign houses, all you have to do is figure out what sign the ascendant is located in. And then whatever sign that is becomes the first house. So for example, if the ascendant is in Aries, then the entire sign of Aries becomes the first house, then Taurus becomes the second house, Gemini becomes the Third House, Cancer becomes the fourth house and so on and so forth. So I feel like I’ve talked about whole sign houses enough on the podcast so far that most listeners should probably already understand and take for granted that that’s what I’m using. However, if you’d like to go back and listen to one of my early lectures where I tried to to to make the case and outline the case for whole sign houses, check out episode 52 of the astrology podcast, which was a previous lecture that I did, sort of promoting whole sign houses, which I used it as sort of tongue in cheek title at the time, which is Whole Sign Houses, The Best System of House Division. 

I probably should have tone that down a little bit, but for our purposes it’s still a useful lecture in terms of understanding the basics of that approach. And part of what we’ll be seeing once we get into the example charts later in this lecture is sort of demonstrating how whole sign houses. actually work in practice. So that’s part of the reason I wanted to do do this lecture as well because it sort of will help to tie together some of the techniques that I use and take for granted on the podcast and show you how they work in a more dynamic fashion when you’re actually trying to do readings and interpret charts. All right, so we’re going to start with now we’re going to start with our first interpretive principle, which is that when the perfection comes to a specific house, the topics associated with that house are going to be activated for that year of your life potentially. 

So, that’s a pretty simple concept. If the profection comes to the second house, then it means that financial matters may play a greater role in your life in that year compared to other years. Or if the profection comes to the seventh house, then matters pertaining to relationships or partnership could become more prominent in that year compared to other years. If the profection comes to the 10th house then career matters can sometimes take a greater part of the focus of the year or there can be a specific event related to career matters that ends up standing out and becoming characteristic of that year as a whole. You know, maybe there’s some particularly important career development that occurs for you in that specific year. So part of the terminology here is that I use the specific terminology when talking about profections that is kind of like shorthand, which is that, you know, if a person is in a, if the 10th house is activated according to profections and that year of the person’s life, I’ll say that they’re in a 10th house profection year. Or if the second house is activated, I’ll say that they’re in a second house profection year. so all that means is just the profection has come to that specific house. And so that’s going to be the focal point when we’re talking about what the profections mean in that particular person’s life for that specific year. 

But it’s just useful shorthand and I want to mention it and get it out of the way so that you understand what I mean when I say a 10th house profection year or a seventh house profection year or what have you. So here’s the basic diagram that just has some of the significations, of each of the 12 houses using some of mostly traditional significations but also of some mostly Hellenistic significations, but also some medieval and a few modern ones as well. So these are some of the topics that you might expect to arise. 

This is certainly not all of the topics that you would expect to arise, but these are some potential topics that might arise from a traditional or an ancient standpoint when certain houses are activated in your chart according to profections in a given year. So first house traditionally was associated with the life, the body, the health, but also the native’s character and their psyche to some extent. So the first houses, the house where the sky and the earth meet, and it’s also the house most closely associated with the native and their physical incarnation, which traditionally was conceptualized as the union between the soul and the body. So first house profection years are interesting when they happen because sometimes the first house will pertain to the physical body. 

So, it can have to do quite literally with things that happen to your body, which can include health issues, but it can also include issues pertaining to your appearance or how you look or act or present yourself. But it can also have to do with things pertaining to your character, to your mind or to your intellect in some sense. So first house profection years when the first houses activated can pertain to positive or negative things that are happening to you psychologically or in terms of your character or how you’re actually acting or behaving in the world in some broader sense. The second house of course, is the house of finances and it pertains to your livelihood and things like your possessions as pretty straightforward, literal manifestations. The third house, is siblings, learning and travel. The fourth house is your parents, your home and your family and living situation. Fifth House profection years often pertained to things like children, pregnancies, sometimes sex can come up as a topic that’s associated with the fifth house in certain profection years. The sixth houses associated with illness, injuries, subordinates or people who work in a subordinate role underneath you and things that you do for work. 

The seventh house is relationships, marriage, partnership in a general sense as well as other people in a general sense, like one on one relationships, the eighth house, death, inheritance and financial matters that belonged to other people or possessions that belonged to other people is a common theme that comes up. A ninth house, travel, foreign places, foreigners and education, 10th house, career, reputation, advancement and superiors. 11th house is friends, groups, hopes and alliances. 12th House traditionally was loss, sickness, enemies and confinement. So these are pretty straight forward. You know not getting into like deep sort of psychological or other types significations here, but sometimes just very straightforward, literal manifestations of certain houses from a traditional standpoint. So let’s look at some examples really quickly in order to show you what kind of things sometimes happen in certain profection years when certain houses are activated in the chart. 

So this is my first example. It’s the birth chart of Lisa Marie Presley, and she was the, or is the daughter of the famous musician, Elvis Presley. Elvis actually died when she was nine years old, but she didn’t inherit his entire, she was his heir basically, but she didn’t inherit everything from him. His inheritance was held in a will or in a trust until she turned 25 years old according to his will. So what is interesting about that is the day that she turned 25, she inherited Elvis, his entire estate, which was estimated to be worth about a hundred million dollars. So that’s interesting because if you do the profections, so I have the numbers written around on the outside of the wheel. So 22 is an 11th house profection year, 23 is 12th house, 24 is first house in 25 is second house. So basically as soon as she turned 25 years old, she switched into a second house profection year. Then suddenly that was the year in which she inherited the entire estate of her, her father, who had died years earlier. 

So the general point is just that sometimes financial matters can become more important or can become the focal point of the year in second house profection years. So obviously that’s not to happen to everybody that has a second house profection year, nor is it going to happen every time a specific person has the same second house profection year. There’s some reasons for that that will come to, and we’ll talk about later about why specifically in her chart this might have been more important than it might be for, for me or for you or, or somebody else with a different chart. So we’ll come back to this chart a little bit later. 

Here’s another profection. So this is the birth chart of Robert Kennedy, who was the brother of US President John F. Kennedy. This case is really striking because Robert turned, the native who’s chart this is, turned 38 years old, just two days before his brother John F. Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. So 38 years old is interestingly enough, a third house, profection year with the third house of course being the primary house that’s associated with siblings according to most traditions of western astrology. I have the numbers written around the corner around the sides. So 34 is an 11th house profection year 35 is 12th house profection year, 36 is first house, 37 is second house, and finally 38 is a third house profection year. So he switches into the third house profection year according to profections. 

Theoretically, siblings should be an important topic that would come up that year, and two days later his brother is, you know, famously assassinated. So the loss of a sibling in this instance where it wasn’t necessarily something positive, but instead it was something negative. So this is another chart that we’ll come back to a few times later in order to understand better why it went in a more negative direction rather than a more positive direction.

Here’s another profection year. So this is a client chart of somebody who turned 39 years old, so he moved into a fourth house profection year. So the fourth house is activated according to profections and therefore we would expect the home and the living situation to potentially take on greater focus in that year for some reason. But what ended up happening is that, one of the major events that occurred that year, is that his house actually caught on fire and burned to the ground. 

So he actually lost his home and his living situation or his home and living situation was majorly disrupted in that specific profection year when the fourth house was activated. So what I’m trying to demonstrate here is just that sometimes you just have to, sometimes the technique can be very straightforward and very literal in that there’s something associated with the topics, the basic topics associated with that house that can sometimes become the focal point of some of the major turning points or some of the major events that will occur in that specific year of your life. So that’s why it’s important to pay attention to, you know, a profection year that’s coming up and to think about what those topics might be. 

Alright, so now we introduce our first additional interpretive principal and our first modification of the principle that we just looked at and the first additional modification is the notion that when you calculate the profections and it comes to a specific sign and activates a specific house, if there are any natal planets in that house, in the birth chart, than those planets will become activated as well in that that year of the native’s life. So the first question you need to ask, ask yourself is, are there any natal planets in the house that have become activated? If there’s not, then you don’t need to even consider it because there’s nothing to consider. However, if there is, then you want to think about what those planets are and what they are doing or what they’re signifying in that specific person’s chart because whatever it is that they signify for better or worse, is going to manifest in that year of the native’s life. 

So this is an additional way that this technique works as a time-lord technique because this is one of the ways that planets get activated is if they’re in the sign that the profection has come to, then they become activated as time-lords. So therefore they’re able to unleash the natal potential that’s latent in those placements, since the moment of birth. So there’s a few things that you want to ask yourself in terms of what the planets are. One of the things that makes it easier that you can use to kind of distinguish between placements is that typically the benefics and the malefics tend to be more distinctive when they’re activated in a specific sign or a specific house. So the benefics of course, are Venus and Jupiter and the malefics are Mars and Saturn. So typically speaking as a rule, when the benefics are activated in a specific profection year, things will tend to go smoothly or will tend to be more easy in that area of the native’s life. Whereas if the malefics are activated, things could tend to be more challenging or there could be some obstacles or setbacks in that specific area of the person’s life that’s being activated. 

So one of the things I should say here, I mean I’ve done, I’ve said this and I’ve had this discussion a few times before in the past, I know one of the first episodes I did with Mark Jones, we talked extensively about the concept of benefic and malefic planets and the usefulness of that concept in astrology. And one of the ways that I defended it is by saying that benefit or malefic typically pertains to the subjective experience of the native in terms of whether they’re liable to experience the events in their life that occur at that point in time or in that particular area of their life as being more subjectively preferable or unpreferable and that generally speaking, the benefics will tend to when they’re activated, coincide with events that are experienced as more subjectively preferable. Whereas, the malefics will tend to be experienced as events and circumstances that are more subjectively, let’s say unpreferable. So we’ll see here in some of the upcoming examples, some instances of that. Now that doesn’t always mean that every time a benefic is activated, that only good things are gonna happen to you that year. Nor does it mean that every time a malefic is activated, that only bad things are gonna happen. Because there are for one, mitigating conditions and you really have to take into account the condition of the planet and the birth chart in terms of determining whether the significations it’s going to provide are going to be more constructive or more destructive. So planetary condition plays a huge role here in terms of determining how the planet will express it’s significations and we’ll get into some conditions for determining that here in just a little bit with things like sect for example is a major factor when you’re looking at the benefics and malefics. 

So there are some questions. Sheila says, do you consider outer planets like Pluto in the sixth house in a sixth house profection year? Yeah, I would if they’re in the sign that the profection comes to. So I wouldn’t necessarily pay attention to them as rulers, but I would pay attention to them if they’re in the sign that the profection has come to, especially if they’re conjoining another visible or inner planet in that sign. Because they often especially act as modifying factors for the inner planets. And that is like a relevant piece of information in terms of interpreting, you know if the profection year comes to Venus and the person has Uranus conjunct Venus or Pluto conjunct to Venus, so that’s going to characterize things a little bit differently when that Venus Planet is activated compared to, you know, if Venus doesn’t have any outer planets configured to it or if it just has Jupiter conjoining it or something like that. 

So whatever, again, it’s just coming back to the principle that whatever the natal potential or the natal promise of the planet is, that’s what it’s going to deliver when it’s activated as a time-lord. So it’s just taking into account all of those things in terms of the basic interpretation of the placement and what it should mean in the birth chart for the native’s life as a whole and then saying that some of those things that it indicates in the native’s life as a whole are going to be delivered in that year, it’s activated as a time-lord. Arthur asked, does dignity of a malefic affect how malefic it is? Yeah. Because that’s one of the major mitigating factors is that dignified malefics tend to behave themselves more and that tends to mitigate it so that typically dignified malefics will tend to act more constructively and will not fall on the extreme end of the malefic spectrum. They’ll tend to move more towards the middle and will tend to be more moderate. 

Alright, so, so let’s go back to our first chart example, which was Lisa Marie Presley. So, remember she was the daughter of Elvis. Elvis died when she was nine. She turned 25 and she inherited his hundred million dollar estate. So she inherited that at the start of her second house profection year. But you know, obviously, you know, when I went into a second house profection year, when I turned 25, I didn’t inherit $100 million dollars. So what makes things different for, you know, my life or your life versus Lisa Marie Presley’s life, at least in terms of her birth chart or what the birth chart indicates? And the first thing we notice right away immediately with that first modifying principle that we took into account is that ah, which was that planets in the sign that have become activated are also activated as well. 

Right away that we see that she has a natal Jupiter in a day chart placed in the second whole sign house. So that means she didn’t just go into a second house profection year, but she went into a second house profection year, which also activated her natal Jupiter placement in the second house. So as a very basic delineation, you know, Jupiter in the second house is just generally could be delineated as positive things potentially happening surrounding money or surrounding financial matters as the most basic blanket statement that you could make about somebody who has Jupiter in the second house. So she has that placement. And then in the specific year in which it was activated at the age of 25 she inherited $100 million dollars and therefore had a positive financial situation happen in her life. So there’s other pieces to this chart. There’s other parts of it. 

So I think we’re actually gonna come back to this at least one or two other times to show additional modifications that help to further specify what happened in that part of her chart and why her chart was geared in that specific way. But already we’re starting to see, you know, how you can further specify things by taking into account additional variables like planets that are placed in the second whole sign house. Yeah, the, the circle with an x in it is the lot of fortune. 

So this example is actually funny because somebody on Amazon, I got like one not great review of my book on Amazon and he specifically cited this example where he said in the book he thought I was like seeing patterns where they didn’t exist and it gave it like a three star out of five star review. And he said something to the effect that like, you know, everybody has a second house profection year, when they turn 25, so what makes Lisa Marie Presley any different? And for some reason he completely overlooked the entire point of that example, which is that she had Jupiter and the second house in a day chart as well as a few other things that we’ll mention later. 

So I hope I’m conveying correctly, I’m not sure if I didn’t convey it correctly in the book or if that guy I suspect just didn’t get it. But just understanding the point that, you know, the first thing that we’re doing is establishing what is the natal promise or the natal potential of the birth chart. And then secondarily, we’re applying the timing technique to figure out when those specific promises will be delivered in specific years at the native’s life. 

Alright. So here’s another example, this is a chart of somebody who they turned 18 in 1951 and moved into a seventh house perfection year. So her seventh whole sign houses Cancer, which contains Venus and the Sun in a night chart. In this year, she actually met her future husband and they began a relationship, together in that profection year. And what ended up happening is eventually they got married and they were married for more than 70 years. So they had a long and successful marriage together, after that point. But the point of this example is that they met when she was 18 years old and she had Venus in the seventh house in her birth chart. So there was already sort of a positive promise for relationships being an area of her life that would go well based on the birth chart. And then that was delivered when she met her future husband in the year in which that Seventh House placement was activated. 

Conversely, a more depressing example. So this is the birth chart of former vice president Joseph Biden. He turned 30 years old when, when he turned 30 years old, I think, sometime in the 1970s, he similarly moved into a seventh house profection year. However, unlike the previous example he had, instead of Venus and the Sun in the seventh sign house, he had a Saturn in the seventh whole sign house. And what ended up happening is just about a month after his birthday, his family was involved in a horrific car accident and his wife and his daughter were actually killed in that car accident. So there’s a similar thing going on in terms of the profection coming to the seventh house, the relationships and the marriage partner in particular being a major part of the focus of the year. But in his instance, the fact that there was a malefic there characterized his subjective experience of it as being more negative. So contrasting those two examples and just being able to make the broadest statement that you may experience some challenges in this sphere of relationships in this year. 

The ability to make that statement to me is incredibly powerful versus the previous example where you would say you may experience some positive things in the sphere of relationships in this year. So I’m restricting my delineation, I’m keeping it as basic as you can. You could obviously make a much more advanced or complicated delineation than that. And we’ll get into some additional variables and nuances that you could take into account in order to make a more specific statement, as we go further into this lecture. But I just want to show you how we’re starting out from very simple concepts and we’re building them up gradually so that you can make reliable, relatively straightforward statements about a person’s life that actually come true sometimes in very literal ways. Alright, so additional modifying principle. One of the really crucial additional factors and interpretive principles that’s been recovered from ancient astrology that I mentioned on the podcast frequently is the concept of sects. 

So sect is the distinction between day and night charts. And the basic premise of sect as far as astrology or, or ancient astrology is concerned, is that the quality of the planets is expressed differently depending on if the person was born originally during the day or if they were born at night. So it’s a really crucial interpretive principle, but it’s only in the past 20 years or so that it’s been recovered in western astrology because it was lost at some point during the course of the tradition. I actually personally believe that part of the reason that was lost is that some of the lesser sect related rejoicing conditions that had to do with whether the planet is above or below the horizon or in a masculine or feminine sign that some of those sort of minor conditions were elevated in the later traditions. And that led them to not apply sect properly because of the proper application of sect originally was just primarily, is it a day chart or a night chart, and then using that to make a, a sort of blanket or overall statement about the quality of the planets. 

And what happened is some of the additional conditions that were minor things were elevated in importance later on. And I think that that threw off the effectiveness of the technique because they started emphasizing things that were not really all that important. So whatever you’ve learned about sect previously, just forget it for the purpose of this lecture cause all we’re focusing on is just, is it a day chart or is it a night chart? And does the planet prefer to be in a day chart or does it prefer to be in a night chart in terms of the quality of its significations? So we’ll get to that in just a minute.

So the primary thing that sect does is it actually alters the expression of the benefics and malefics in a significant way. And it can make the benefics act in a way that’s either more benefic so that they express their benefic significations more readily or it can do the opposite and it can cause the malefics to be more inhibited and to withhold their benefits significations so that they are much more moderate in their expression. Similarly with the malefic can cause or can, result, let’s say in the malefic, either expressing their significations in a way that’s extremely negative so that you get the far end of the malefic spectrum in terms of the worst, worst case scenarios in terms of the manifestations of the significations of those planets or sect can cause the planets to moderate their significations, the malefic to moderate their significations so that they’re not as much as they could be otherwise. But instead the malefics become constructive. 

So as a result of that sect is a really crucial interpretive principle for determining if the benefics are actually going to be fully benefic and if the malefics are going to be fully malefic or if there’ll be somewhere in between. And that’s why it’s a crucial principle that’s been missing from a large part of the discussion that was happening in the 1970s and eighties, where contemporary astrologers rejected the concept of benefics and malefics because they said, you know, clearly sometimes Saturn behaves negatively, but in other instances it’s clearly quite constructive. And so they said, therefore the concept of benefic and malefic or that distinction is no longer useful or relevant. 

What was missing from that discussion as the concept of sect. Because you can actually see in many instances that the way in which the benefit or malefic manifests its significations is partially due to its sect status in the chart. So it’s not this, it’s not this wildcard factor that just has to do with like the consciousness or the level of spiritual evolution or introspective-ness of the native. It’s actually a technical consideration that astrologers didn’t know about and had lost and were overlooking. And that was the crucial piece of that discussion that had been missing. So I’ve had many discussions about sect on the podcast. One of the earliest discussions was one I had with Robert Hand on episode 37 so you can go and listen to that if you’d like. 

There’s also a tag for sect. If you go to the astrologypodcast.com/tags/sect, you’ll see several other podcasts where I talked about sect or where sect played a major component or a major role in the discussion that we were having. So I’d recommend going through those if you want to learn more about this concept, at least as far as the podcast is concerned. So sect is really easy to determine. Basically the quick and easy rule is just that if the Sun is in the top half of the chart above the exact degrees of the ascendant descendant axis, then it’s a day chart. Whereas if the sun is anywhere below in the bottom half of the chart below the ascendent descendant axis, then it’s a night chart. So there’s some additional details and nuances surrounding that. If the Sun is really close to the ascendant or descendant, which means it’s very close to rising or setting, we don’t need to get into that here. 

The general principle, though is just, if it’s in the top half of the chart, it’s a day chart. If it’s in the bottom half of the chart, it’s a night chart. And the reason that that’s useful or the immediate way to apply that as a concept is it helps you to identify what according to sect will be the most positive planet in the chart and the most negative planet in the chart. So generally speaking, the rule is this…all other factors aside, the most positive planet in a day chart is going to be Jupiter and the most positive planet in a night chart is going to be Venus. Whereas conversely, the most negative planet in a day chart is going to be Mars. And the most positive planet or the most negative planet in a night chart is going to be Saturn. So that is a quick and easy rule. 

It sounds almost too simple, but it’s actually surprisingly useful in practice. So I would recommend memorizing, these assignments because you’ll find that it creates a quick and easy way for you to identify the planet that’s going to help out and act as a positive influence in a person’s chart and the planet that’s going to be or cause or correlate with some of the greatest problems or difficulties or obstacles in the person’s life. And that can be very useful when you’re first looking at a chart, whether it’s your chart or a client’s chart or what have you, if you’re able to quickly identify, the planets that are helping and the planets that are causing problems. 

Alright, so let’s return back then to our first example chart where we see again, we add an additional modifying principle. And one of the things that we notice in Lisa Marie Presley’s chart is that she has the Sun, you can see over on the far right, just a few degrees above the degree of the descendant. So as a result of that, she was basically born just before sunset. So therefore it was still a day chart. So because it was still a day chart, that means according to our previous diagram, that Jupiter should be the most positive planet in her chart. And that Jupiter of course is placed in the second house. So again, it’s an additional modifying principle because what we see is that she wasn’t just in a second house profection year, she wasn’t just in a profection year where Jupiter was in the second house, but she was also born with a day chart and therefore Jupiter was the most positive planet in her chart. So again, there’s an additional modifying factor that when you take into account can help you to understand further why that placement and it’s activation would have been particularly good for her compared to let’s say if she had been born like an hour later after sunset than Jupiter would not be the most positive planet in her chart, but instead Venus would have been. So therefore that second house profection year might not have coincided with such a huge financial windfall from her or for her. But instead Jupiter’s placement there and the second would have been more muted. 

Similarly, going back to my previous seventh house example with the native who had Venus and the sun and the seventh whole sign house and she went into a seventh house profection year and met her future husband. So the other part of that is that she was actually born like more than an hour or so after sunset. Since the descendant is at 25 degrees of Cancer and the Sun is at five degrees of Cancer, that means the Sun has already set underneath the horizon in this chart. So she was actually born at night. So as a result of that, since she was born at night Venus is the most positive planet in her chart. 

So one of the statements we would make right away seeing that Venus is the most positive planet in her chart and it’s in the seventh house, that is one of the areas of your life that’s going to go the smoothest or in which you’re going to have some of the greatest, the most positive things happen to you, all other factors aside, is the sphere of relationships and marriage. And in point of fact, when that placement was activated, when she turned 18 years old, she began the most important relationship and positive relationship of her life, to the person that she would eventually get married to. 

Now you can contrast that with, this is another native who has the Sun and Mars in the seventh whole sign house in a day chart. So the Sun is at 10 degrees of Scorpio and the descendant is at around three degrees of Scorpio, which means that the person was born just before sunset. So they’re born just before sunset. Therefore, it’s a daily chart and Mars therefore is the most difficult planet in the chart. And it’s also in the seventh house, compared to the previous chart where the most positive planet was in the seventh house. Therefore we say that some of the most positive events in your life will probably occur in the sphere of relationships for this native. Having the most difficult or negative planet in the sphere of relationships indicates that some of the most difficult events in her life would take place with respect to relationships and marriage. 

And what happened is that when she turned 30 years old, she moved into a seventh house profection year. That placement was activated of Mars in the seventh house and her husband died a month later or a month after she turned 30 years old. 

So I use that example as a contrast here when we’re talking about the most positive and negative planets that sometimes…for this person, for example, this was a one time event in her life in terms of this is the most, this is the worst year of her life in terms of negative events in the context of relationships. But it was clearly timed in terms of the annual profections. So sometimes identifying the most positive and negative planets is important because it can help you to identify those specific years in the life in which some of the most positive or most negative events might occur that are characteristic or that stand out in terms of the native’s life as a whole.

Alright, another example, so this is the birth chart of Charlie Sheen who is a famous actor. So he turned 45. He was 45 years old, starting in September of 2010 and he moved into a 10th house profection year. So his 10th whole sign house is Pisces, the 10th sign from the rising sign and he has Saturn there, but it’s an a night chart. So his Sun is down in the fourth house and the bottom half of the chart, we know it’s a night chart. He has Saturn in the 10th. So that’s going to be one of the more difficult areas or difficult placements for him. And in that year it got activated. 

What ended up happening is that starting in 2011 basically early 2011 he kind of freaked out a little bit and he destroyed his career. He got himself fired from the sitcom that he was the leading actor on and on that show he was actually the highest paid actor on television at the time. But because of his behavior, he ended up getting himself fired. Then also in this year, he may have learned as a result of some sort of like drug binges and other stuff he was going through at the time. He learned that he may have learned or seems to have learned that he was HIV positive. 

One of the things I’m pointing out with this example is that dual sort of indication that I was talking about with the first house at the beginning of this lecture, since we’re profecting from the ascendant or from the first house, sometimes what we’re talking about is things that pertain to the body. And other times we’re talking about things that pertain to the person’s character and their actions. So, sometimes it can kind of go either way or sometimes it can apply to both.

Arlene asked, can you do profection years from progressed charts as well or is it only applicable to natal charts? I’ve never seen that done. So this is really, as far as I know, just a technique that’s applied to natal charts primarily. I have seen some people apply it to event charts or like electional charts for businesses or, or marriages or corporations or things like that. But that’s still more like a natal chart or profecting from a fixed natal chart. And Arthur’s asking if you can profect from houses other than the first and the short answer to that is yes. And I’ll come back to that question later at the, at the end of this lecture. Alright. So does anyone have any other questions up to this point in terms of where we’re at so far in terms of just the profection coming to a house and that activating planets that are located in that house, especially if they are benefics or malefics. Okay. Pretty straight forward stuff so far. 

Alright. So the next additional modification of the technique that we’re going to introduce is one that I’ve already mentioned in passing, but basically when the profection comes to a specific sign or a specific house, of course using whole sign houses, the houses in the signs are one in the same. 

They coincide exactly on top of each other. But when the profection comes to a sign/house, the ruler of that house also becomes activated. And that planet is the one that’s known as the lord of the year or the planetary ruler of the year or otherwise, basically just the time-lord, for the year, it’s the planet that rules the House that has become activated. So what I mean by that is that if the profection comes to the seventh house, and let’s say Gemini is on the cusp of the seventh house than Mercury, the ruler of Gemini becomes activated as the time-lord for the year because it’s the ruler of the seventh house, and it’s the ruler of Gemini. Or if the profection comes to the 10th house in areas is on the cusp of the 10th house then Mars will become activated as the lord of the year. 

So according to this, this technique, even though when, when, the profection comes to a sign, it will activate planets that are in that sign. It’s really the planet that rules the sign that is the primary time-lord for the year and that’s the one that you end up paying the most attention to. ultimately in the end, most of the time is the planet that rules the sign that the profection has come to. So what you need to focus on then once you figured out what planet is the lord of the year, is what is the condition of that planet in the natal chart? 

Because again, the basic premise of this technique is that what’s going to manifest at that time is simply whatever was promised in the birth chart based on the condition and the placement of that planet. So basically you want to ask yourself questions like, is the ruler of that house in a good condition or is it in a bad condition natally? Is it, let’s say afflicted or is it the opposite of afflicted, which is to be bonafide. Is that planet closely aspected by benefits or is it closely aspected by malefics? 

There’s a bunch of different considerations like that for determining planetary condition in ancient astrology that become hugely important at this point. Because again, if the planet is just going to manifest whatever it indicated in the natal chart, then you want to be able to find out exactly what that planet was promising in the natal chart based on its condition. But you can’t do that unless you understand the basics of basically what indicates a well positioned planet and a chart versus what indicates a not well positioned or, or a poorly positioned planet in a birth chart. So that’s obviously something that’s a little bit beyond the scope of this lecture. 

I do the full treatment of that is something that I deal with in the middle of my Hellenistic course where I have a long lecture that deals with the original seven conditions of what’s called bonification and maltreatment.So you can find out more information about that on the course side. 

So Corina asks, are you familiar with Abu Maʿshar ‘s Special Treatment of the Sun and Moon? It’s lords of the year. He seems to not use the sun or moon as the lords of the year but uses substitutes based on a confusing set of rules. I don’t think I was familiar with that but I don’t, that’s not the approach that I follow just because, I have lots of examples of charts where a person comes to like a Cancer profection year and the moon is clearly activated as the lord of the year or a person comes to a Leo profection year and the Sun is clearly activated as the lord of the year and it’s condition in the chart ends up indicating what types of events occur in the life at that point. 

I feel pretty safe using the luminaries as planetary rulers. Sure, yeah, that’d be great if you could send me that. Okay and I might be overlooking other questions if people aren’t putting them in the chat box. Okay, I see, so there’s also a q and a and Marsha asks, what if a benefic planet and malefic planet are conjunct in the natal chart in the house is activated? Then it typically means that you’ll get both especially if it’s the most positive planet and the most negative planet you’ll tend to have a year in which there’s both extremes in which some of the best events happen and some of the worst events happen. So that’s like the, you know, the year where you attend a wedding and a funeral type situation. There are instances where some times one of the planets will have more power or will win out over the others so that either the benefic or the malefic will will outshine and will overpower the other planet depending on their condition and how they’re situated in that sign. But again, then it, it just really comes back to the conditions of the planets and how they’re situated. 

Somebody asked, Catherine asks about the URL of the second pdf. So the URL for that is just hellenisticastrology.com/profections-worksheet.pdf. Let me see if I can put it in the chat. There we go, so it should be in the chat box now. Alright, so we are back to the lord of the year. So the condition of the lord of the year oftentimes will indicate the outcome of the year or what the ultimate outcome of the year we’ll be. 

So going back to I think what my second or one of my early example charts of Robert Kennedy where we saw that he turned 38 years old, he moved into a third house profection year with the third house being associated with siblings. And then two days later his brother was assassinated or was famously killed. 

Part of the reason why he experienced a negative outcome in that third house profection year rather than a positive outcome is, was the condition of the lord of the year. So if you look at the sign and the House that’s activated, we see that Cancer is activated. There’s no actual planets in the third house. He does have the north node there and he has the lot of fortune there, but otherwise there’s no planets there. So then we look to the ruler of that sign. And the ruler of Cancer is of course the Moon. The Moon in this chart is placed in Capricorn at 28 degrees of Capricorn conjunct the south node. It is in the same sign as, and it’s separating from a conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, which is quite positive. But the problem is that if you look at the very next aspect that the Moon makes the Moon at 28 degrees of Capricorn is actually applying to an out of sign square within just a few degrees to Mars, which is at a four degrees of Scorpio in the seventh whole sign house in a day chart. 

So because it’s a day chart, Mars is the most difficult planet in the chart. And the Moon as the ruler of third house of siblings is applying directly to a challenging aspect, a square with that malefic planet. So what happened is that when the Moon was activated as the lord of the year, in that third house profection year in one of the years of this native’s life, he famously and tragically lost a sibling under very martian type circumstances were where he was shot, basically. So yeah, there’s other things we can take into account. Patricia, for example, points out that the Moon is also in detriment. That’s relevant as well. There’s a few other relevant pieces. It’s not like this is the only thing or that I’m even giving all of the different pieces or variables or that there aren’t other techniques that would show overlapping important indications at that point in time. 

But the point here is just showing that sometimes profections can very quickly and a very straightforward and sort of black and white fashion can really identify some of the most important placements and some of the most important themes in a given year. So Matthew says, do you regularly use out of sign squares and Hellenistic astrology? In some instances, especially if it’s a very close, like within three degrees, although for planets like the Moon where even from a Hellenistic perspective, the range of application or the orb for the Moon was much wider where they paid attention to 12 and 13 degrees applying aspects for the Moon. If there’s an aspect that’s going to complete within 12 to 13 degrees, I’ll definitely pay attention to that for the moon, even if it’s out of sign. Cause in this instance that actually ends up being a condition of maltreatment. 

So in, in my lecture on the seven conditions of bonification and maltreatment that come from the first century astrologer Antiochus of Athens, one of the conditions is applying to an exact square or opposition, within the range of orb of that planet, which for the Moon is 13 degrees. So the Moon is actually the most poorly positioned planet in this chart because it’s being maltreated by Mars or it’s being afflicted is the later term for maltreatment.

Alright, so let’s keep moving. My other example of the lord of the year and why it’s so important to pay attention to that condition of the ruler of the year is the, the rapper Dr Dre, we actually have a birth chart for, he made an estimated $620 million in 2014 when the company that he co- founded, which was beats electronics, which is like the headphone company that got really popular a few years ago, was sold to Apple computers and Dr Dre himself made $620 million in just that year from the sale of that company. 

So according to reports at the time, this was actually more than any musician had ever made in a single year. And this happened in 2014. He turned 49 years old that year in 2014, earlier that year. And thus at 49 years old is actually a second house profection year. So in his chart, and this is a exactly time chart from the birth certificate, he has Gemini Rising and Cancer is the second whole sign house. So the ruler of Cancer is the Moon, which is at seven degrees of Libra in this chart. And it’s actually applying to a trine within 13 degrees. So the orb that I’m using for the moon, 13 degrees, again, it’s applying within 13 degrees to a trine with Venus. That trine with Venus is made more positive because there’s also reception because the Moon is in Libra, which is one of the signs that Venus rules. 

So what we have is the ruler of the second is actually very well placed in the chart because it’s, it’s in the fifth whole sign house, which is one of the most positive houses. It’s applying to a benefic by a trine, which is the most positive aspect of all of the possible aspects. There’s also reception because the moon is in Venus’ sign, which therefore creates a closer affinity between the moon and Venus. So there’s the potential there for a very positive financial indications because the ruler of the second is so well placed. But it was in the year in which he moved into that second house profection year that he made what presumably will be the most money in a single year in his lifetime.

Okay. Some people are asking questions. I don’t understand. What is your question, Annie Frank? You just said, what about Mars? But I’m not sure what the context of that question is. Corina says, if the Moon were squaring Venus, would it still be bonafide? Yeah, it wouldn’t be as positive. But if it’s a square, especially with reception than it’s still a benefic applying to where it’s still a planet or a significator applying to a benefic. It would not be necessarily as positive though. 

The moon is in conjunction. I mean, it’s an out of sign. You’re saying what about the moon being in conjunction with Mars? It’s an out of sign and separating conjunction. So that wouldn’t necessarily be relevant here as a condition of maltreatment. Maltreatment only occurs through, applying aspect but not necessarily separating ones. Okay. So let’s move on. 

The other chart that I wanted to use to demonstrate the distinctions between the lord of the year is the birth chart of Vanessa Williams, who was a famous model and singer, an actress. So she actually became the first black Miss America in September of 1983 when she was 20 years old. So 20 years old is a ninth house profection year. So Pisces, her ninth whole sign house was activated and Pisces contains her natal Mercury, her natal Jupiter and her natal Sun as well as the degree of the midheaven. 

So the, the MC here is actually the quadrant midheaven and because it doesn’t fall in the 10th whole sign house, it’s actually falling in the ninth whole sign house. It’s importing 10th house significations over into the ninth house so that you get an overlap of both ninth house significations as well as 10th house career significations in the same whole sign house. So she basically won the Miss America pageant and became the first, she became very notable as, the first black Miss America in that year of her life. And this is a day chart with Jupiter in Pisces in its own sign in the ninth whole sign house. So it’s basically the most positive planet in her chart, being activated in that year. And it was definitely one of the most notable in one of the most positive years of her life. But then what’s interesting is the very next year the profection switched over and moved forward one sign and activated Aries, which is her 10th whole sign house. 

And what ended up happening is when she switched into that 10th House profection year, when she turned 21 years old, there was some scummy, the story’s kind of complicated, but they basically, there was some scummy magazine that said that they were going to publish nude pictures of her that she had taken when she was in college. And as a result of the publication of those photos, she was forced to give the crown back and resign as Miss America. And it ended up being a, a tremendously embarrassing and difficult, year of her life where basically, she went from being on top of the world to suddenly, you know, seeming like her career was completely destroyed over this scandal. So, it switched to the 10th house activating areas and there’s no planets in the 10th house, which means that it’s just Mars, the ruler of the 10th House, which becomes activated. 

And again, because she has a day chart, that means Mars is the most difficult planet in our chart. So that creates an interesting contrast where you go from Pisces where it’s activating Jupiter as the traditional ruler of Pisces in a day chart as the most positive planet and the chart to switching to Aries activating Mars as the lord of the year. And suddenly the most difficult planet in the chart is, is being activated. So there’s some different things that we could go into in terms of Mars’ condition and, and other factors like that. But I just wanted to show the contrast sometimes when you switch from one lord of the year to the other and how that oftentimes has a lot to do with the planetary condition. So it’s not always going to be that that stark because it, you know, not everybody has like a super well placed planet like she has with Jupiter in a day chart in Pisces conjunct the MC completely unafflicted and unaspected by Mars and Saturn. 

And not everybody has like a really super poorly placed malefic either. So the contrast isn’t always that stark, but sometimes when you run into a chart where it is, you can notice in some profection years a very stark distinction between one profection year and the next. Linda asked what if the ruler of the year is retrograde in the natal chart? Retrogrades sometimes, traditionally in the Hellenistic tradition were interpreted as delays. So sometimes it can just indicate a delay in the manifestation of the significant portions of the planet until later in the year. 

Alright, so there’s a bunch of conditions that traditionally it’s like these are all the conditions in the Hellenistic course. In my Hellenistic course we build up to, and we go, we go through a bunch of different steps that you learn initially just in terms of understanding what the condition of a planet is in the natal chart. 

And so this is like a quick list of some of the things that you might want to ask yourself or try to take into account as you’re trying to determine the, the condition of the lord of the year. So things like, you know, is the planet of benefic or malefic, is the benefit or malefic in a chart that matches its preferred sect status or is it in a chart that’s the opposite to its preferred sect status? What is the zodiacal dignity of the planet? Is it in its own sign or exaltation or conversely, is it in the sign of its depression, the sign of its fall or the sign of its detriment? Additionally, we want to pay attention to things like mutual receptions. Like, if the planet is not in its own sign, but if it’s exchanging signs with another planet, that can actually be an important mitigating factor that can give it a type of zodiacal strength or dignity that it might not have otherwise. 

Other factors that you want to take into account or things like, is it located in a good house or in one of the bad houses, like good houses are ones like the fifth or the 11th or the 10th, whereas the challenging or the bad and the quote unquote bad houses are houses like the sixth house or the 12th house. I think I actually have a diagram on that. Yeah, here’s a little diagram. So traditionally the good houses are the houses that aspect the ascendant through one of the major aspects. So that would be like the third house, the fourth house, the fifth, seventh, ninth, 10th or 11th. Those are generally going to tend to be experienced as more positive compared to the houses that do not aspect the first house according to a major aspect, which are the second, sixth, eighth, and 12th. 

Other conditions is the planet bonafide or maltreated. That’s a whole separate discussion in and of itself. And then finally, are there any mitigating conditions? So a positive mitigating condition is if you have aspects from benefics. So let’s say you have a poorly placed planet, but it has very tight applying aspect from benefics that’s going to help to counteract any negative indications of that planet to balance out a little bit. Conversely, another mitigating factor that’s very important is if you have a planet that’s being afflicted, especially from a close aspect with the malefic if there’s reception with the malefic then it will help to mitigate that challenging aspect. So I think we’ll actually come back to that concept a little bit later. When I talk about mitigations for just a second. Yeah, that’s another question that’ll come up later. 

Okay. Here’s the actual slides. So, so mitigating conditions, you’ve got to pay attention to mitigating conditions. Cause this was one of the things I think that people initially puts people off of studying traditional or older forms of astrology because there’s a lot of things that are stated in, in extreme terms like in terms of like worst case or best case scenario. And there’s a lot of things that are that sound very black and white, like it’s either positive or negative. But the thing that people often overlook is the importance of mitigating conditions because it’s the mitigating conditions where you get many of the shades of gray in between and you get planets that are, are moderated or counteracted for better or worse. And that plays a very important role in terms of specifying the conditions by which something can either be pushed towards the extreme for better or worse or can be made, somewhere in the middle, somewhere more moderate. 

So for example, as I said, afflicted planets can be made better if they’re bonafide or they’re being counteracted by benefics. So if you have a really poorly placed planet that may not actually be the worst case scenario or you may not experience the worst case scenario, if there’s benefics  that are lending a hand to counteract that placement. Conversely, if you have a really well placed planet, it still might not be the best possible scenario if that planet is being made worse by being afflicted by malefics. So, there’s a bunch of different considerations you can take into account reception and planets having zodiacal strength, otherwise known as dignity by being in their own signs and in their domiciles or in the signs of their exaltation, are major mitigating factors, especially for planets that are otherwise afflicted by malefics. So this isn’t the lecture to get into like a full treatment of benefics and malefics. 

And luckily, if this is a concept that’s new to you, I had an amazing discussion on episode 28 with an astrologer named Michael Ofek where we talked about a ton of different mitigating conditions for, planets according to traditional astrology. So just go to The Astrology Podcast website and find episode 28 to learn more about that concept. And there’s a pretty thorough discussion there already.

Alright. So before we move on to the next interpretive principle, does anyone have any questions, before we move on? No. Okay, good. Alright, so I don’t know if this is the last, this is one of the last interpretive principles that I wanted to interpret. I wanted to introduce for the purpose of this lecture, which is just so we’ve already introduced the idea that you’re going to want to pay attention to the condition of the planet that has become the lord of the year. 

One other factor that you really want to pay attention to and that’s really gonna come into play in terms of the interpretation of the themes that are going to come up in that year is the significations that the House that the lord of the year is located in. So if you go into a profection year and let’s say Mercury is activated, you want to pay attention to what house Mercury is located in because the significations of that house, is often going to come into play. So if the lord of the year is in the seventh house, then relationships will potentially become part of the, the narrative surrounding the story of the native’s life in that year. Or if the lord of the years in the 10th house than career matters could become relevant. Or if it’s in the 11th house, then friends could become relevant. So this is tied up in the broader context of interpreting the rulers of the houses and what happens when the ruler of one house is in another house and how that planet can import significations from the house it rules into the house that it’s placed in. 

So for example, if one of the delineations are, one of the situations you might find is, if the ruler of the seventh house of marriage is located in the 11th house of friendship than it may indicate a situation where at some point the native has, let’s say a relationship with a friend or a friendship becomes a closer or more intimate relationship. With profections the year in which that planet is activated, the ruler of the seventh house in the 11th house. It’s also going to be activating that dynamic and that connection between the seventh house and the 11th House itself. So this is something I go into in more detail in a separate lecture that I have on, I think it’s called like Interpreting the Rulers of the Houses and Timing Their Activation. Then it’s of course something I spend a lot of time going through. I have an entire lecture on in the Hellenistic course, but for the purpose of this part of the lecture, all you need to understand is just that when a planet rules a house, it imports the significations of that house into whatever house it falls. 

So back to Lisa Marie Presley’s chart. So again, we keep focusing on this second house profection near Jupiter was activated in a day chart in the second house. But if you pay attention to the ruler of the year, and this is a Virgo profection year, so her second house is Virgo, then you know that Mercury, the ruler of Virgo is also activated in that year. And we want to pay attention to what house it falls in. Mercury is actually in Pisces in her chart, which is the eighth side house, which traditionally is the house that has to do with death and inheritance and other people’s money.

So this is one of the final additional factors. It’s not the only additional one, but this is one of the final additional crucial factors that really help to characterize what happened in that specific year and why her second house profection year, when she turned 25 involved her inheriting $100 million dollars from her deceased father. It was because she had a super positive benefic and the second whole sign house and the place of finances and the ord of the year. The ruler of the second house was Mercury, which was placed in the eighth house of death and inheritance. And so the manifestation of the activation of those placements ended up being very literal in that year in that she inherited her father’s estate at that time. 

Another example, this is a the birth chart of Steve Wasniak who founded Apple computers with Steve Jobs in 1976. So part of it is that at that time he was 25 years old, so he was 25 years old and 25 years old is a second house profection year. So, it’s similar to the previous chart where you know, Lisa Marie Presley was in a second house profection year, and the ruler of the second house was in the eighth house and therefore she inherited a bunch of money from her father. This is somebody else who turned 25 years old and his second, he moved into a second house profection year. His second house is Libra, which is ruled by Venus and Venus is actually placed in Cancer in the 11th whole sign house, which is the place of friends. So he has a basic setup in his chart where the ruler of the second house of finances is located in the 11th house of friendship. Venus is also incredibly well placed because it has a superior sign based trine from Jupiter, which is in Pisces, which is actually a condition of bonification according to the Hellenistic tradition. 

Venus is otherwise not afflicted by either of the malefics, it’s also conjunct it’s domiciled lord, which is the ruler, of the 11th House, which is the Moon. So what happened is that he founded this company with his friend who was Steve Jobs. And as a result of this partnership, basically this financial partnership with his friend Steve Wasniak, the native became incredibly rich as a result of it. So the most general delineation you could sort of put together for that, for the ruler of the second house in the 11th House, is that somehow your finances are going to be tied up with your friendships. Because it was well placed. That was actually in a positive sense in this instance. So there could be other instances, and I’ve seen other instances where it’s more in a negative sense where the person, if it’s afflicted or something, could lose money as a result of their friends. 

But in his case, because the ruler of the second is actually well positioned, it was that positive things will happen to you financially as a result of your friendship. And in the year, the second house profection year in which that was activated, that was the start of that, sort of full fledged financial partnership. 

Let’s see, one more. This is the birth chart of Ted Kennedy, who was actually the other younger brother of John F. Kennedy. Ted Kennedy was 31 years old when JFK was killed and 31 is an eighth house profection year. So his eighth whole sign house is Leo and the ruler of Leo is the Sun, which in his chart is located in Pisces in the third whole sign house. So he has the ruler of the eighth house of death in the third house of siblings. And in the year in which the profections came to the eighth house of death and activated the ruler of the eighth house in his third house of siblings, he tragically lost a sibling, which is pretty straight forward. 

Let’s see. More positive example. So this is somebody who, turned 32 years old and moved into a ninth house profection year. So it activated Taurus and the ruler of Taurus is Venus, which is located in the fourth house of the home and living situation. So the ruler of the ninth house of travel and foreign places was located in the fourth house at the home and living situation. And what happened is that when he turned 32 years old and went into this ninth house profection year, he basically moved to relocate permanently to a foreign country. So moving to live abroad in a foreign country was the indication of having the ruler of the ninth and the fourth and then it was activated in the year that he went into a ninth house profection year. 

Alright, so there’s just a few other interpretive principles. I think there are two more left here before we start wrapping up. One of them is 12 year repetitions. So one of the things that’s obvious here that’s pretty straightforward…as soon as you learn the technique, one of the things you realize is that because there’s only 12 signs and you’re counting one sign per year from the year the native was born, that means the cycle is going to repeat every 12 years. So one of the things that happens, this is actually very useful to know this and to pay attention to this because one of the things that happens is you actually will see sometimes similar themes that echo through the native’s life when the same houses are activated. So that’s especially the case if it’s a particularly important house in the native’s chart or it’s a house that stands out in some way, due to planets being in that house or due to the ruler of the house being very prominent or taking a prominent role in the native’s chart for some reason. 

So every 12 years, you’re going to have the same profections repeat. But what changes is two things. One, there’s other general time-lord techniques like zodiacal releasing, which actually will change and will set the tone for entire decades of your life. So annual profections is a time-lord technique that changes from year to year, but zodiacal releasing is a technique that sometimes will activate certain parts of the chart or certain signs for upwards of 20 or 30 years. So here on the video is some of the zodiacal releasing periods where it assigns years to each of the signs. So Capricorn for example, is 27 years. Aquarius is 30 years. Cancer is 25 years. Leo is 19, Virgo is 20, and this is a separate time-lord technique where it activates certain parts of the chart for decades of a person’s life. 

Typically you’re supposed to use a technique like this first because it can be used to divide the person’s entire life or let’s say the first hundred years of the person’s life into just a few separate chapters so that you can get kind of a bird’s eye view of the entire life. And then what you do is you use techniques like profections in order to zoom in on or in order to narrow down specific years of the person’s life. But the zodiac releasing periods set the general tone and then use the annual profections to specify that the particulars in a given year. So that’s one thing that changes is the other general time-lord periods like the zodiac releasing. The other major thing that changes is the transits from one cycle to another. So you know in one let’s say one profection year, you might be going through a 10th house profection year where the focus is career and you might have let’s say Jupiter transiting through the 10th house at the same time. 

So maybe you experience something that is very positive in that 10th house profection year related to your career, but in another profection or let’s say 12 or 24 years later when you again have the 10th house activated, you might have, you know, a Mars Saturn conjunction by transit that that goes exact in your 10th house in that year. And in that year you might experience more challenges or difficulties or setbacks within the context of the 10th house because the transits at the time are emphasizing challenging significations and circumstances rather than more positive ones. So the transits have the power typically to intensify or sometimes even to counteract certain indications that are in the birth chart. But typically you’ll still see a broad repetition of similar themes and similar circumstances based on the profection years. But it can be altered and offset basically based on the transits and that’s transits through the sign that has become activated as well as transits to the lord of the year. 

And I think that’s one of the last things that we’ll touch on here in just a second. I have one example of the repetitions. It’s not a great example because it’s not, a timed chart for sure. But this is the birth chart of Hillary Clinton. So there’s still great controversy in one of the episodes I did a year or two ago, was talking about the controversy surrounding her birth time. This example still kind of works even despite that because what we noticed and what we know is that every time she goes into a 10th house profection year and she’s always going to go into a 10th house profection year during a certain years, basically, regardless of what her birth time is, she often becomes very prominent but also runs into major obstacles or sometimes setbacks or difficulties. 

For example, when she turned 21, she was chosen to speak at her college graduation. She was chosen to, to speak on behalf of the students, which, which was a very prestigious thing that happened to her at that point in her life when she went into one of her earliest 10th house profection years. But she ended up giving kind of a controversial speech and she received a lot of publicity for it, but also a bit of blow back as well because she gave kind of a controversial speech according to some people. So fast forward then to, I believe her next 10th house profection. 12 years later, what happened is that she was already married to Bill Clinton and he had previously become governor of Arkansas, but then he was up for re-election and he lost. And a large part of the reason that he lost was put at her feet because they said that she didn’t do some of the typical things that she was supposed to do is like a governor’s wife or something like that. 

And so the loss of the governorship for him was taken very personally for her as like a personal setback that she had partially been responsible for. And as a result of that, she decided to completely make over her image at that point in time, in order to do whatever it took to allow the two of them to be politically successful in the future. So fast forward to 12 years later, what happened is that she had her birthday just before the 1992 presidential election and she again moved into a 10th house profection year. And a few weeks later, her husband won the election and became president in November of 1992. So on the one hand, they moved into the White House at that point and she began again, an extremely prominent period in her life where she became first lady of the United States, which is a really prominent position. 

But then they assigned her a role to pursue universal health care basically starting early the following year. So she started trying to promote and, and sort of pursue an agenda to establish universal healthcare in the United States. And she experienced extreme blow back, extreme pushback in that process and in the process kind of got a little bit vilified. So it ended up being an extremely difficult year subsequently for her personally and politically as a result of some of the opposition that she ran into at the time as a result of her efforts there. So that was 1992 and then finally she did another 12th house profection year that we’ll skip over in the mid two thousands. And finally she went into another 10th house profection year, starting on her birthday in October of 2016 and then a few weeks later, like one or two weeks later, she lost the presidential election in November of 2016 to Donald Trump. 

Thus beginning the, the following profection year where yeah, she had to, you know, figure out what to do after losing the presidential election. So one of the issues, of course, one of the reasons I always gravitated towards the Scorpio rising birth time, which is the eight AM birth time for her, is that it puts that Mars Pluto, Saturn conjunction in her 10th whole sign house, which would mean that it’s that conjunction that’s getting activated every time she moves into these 10th profection years, which of course would make a little bit of sense based on what we’re seeing, where they are periods of extreme prominence, but also of extreme difficulty and the hardship and loss in some instances. But you know, we don’t know because there’s other birth times floating around. There’s one person who’s talking about the eight PM time working as well. 

And there may be some way in which that’s relevant. I don’t really know and I’m not sure if we’re ever going to find out unless the birth certificate is released at some point in the future. But regardless, even without the birth time, we know that it’s always in these 10th house profection year that the same scenarios or the same situations keep happening and you can see the similar repetitions in her life. So of course there’s variations at different points based on the transits and sometimes it’s intensifying the negative placements and other times it’s easing them and making them not so bad so that the prominent things win out over the negative things. But you can still see a sort of similar repetition that goes throughout the person’s life. And honestly, that’s the primary, one of the keys to using annual profections as a predictive technique is through, going through the person’s past history and figuring out what the repetitions have been in 12 year increments, whenever certain houses are activated.

So if you’re working with a client or if you’re looking at your own chart and you have a certain profection year coming up like let’s say a 10th house profection year, the best, one of the best things that you can do aside from just trying to assess the planetary condition and what houses it rules and all that other stuff is literally just go back in your chronology and see, what happened in 12 year increments, the last time that house was activated. And if you can identify any similar or any recurring themes that have happened during those times because if you can, and if there is a strong theme that comes forward, then often times you can use that in order to infer some of the themes that are likely to become prominent in the following year when that profection is activated again. So it sounds pretty simple, but it’s actually pretty straightforward and pretty useful technique for again, trying to predict and anticipate the future. 

So Leisa Schaim actually has a whole lecture on this topic that’s on her website, leisaschaim.com which is titled Repeating Years, Repeating Themes where she has largely a bunch of client charts and then a few celebrity charts where she goes through and shows different repetitions of different profection years in different people’s lives and how sometimes there were similar repetitions and other times there were differences based on transits and how you can use that and incorporate it into your approach to profections to enhance the ability of the technique to make predictions. So I’d definitely recommend checking that out. 

Alright. And I believe this is the very last thing and it’s again going back to the concept of transits because one of the keys and one of the, one of the reasons that this technique is the most useful, for the finding the lord of the year, is that the planet that becomes the lord of the year is actually activated both in its natal position as we’ve gone over up to this point in the lecture, but also in its transits. 

So that’s a really crucial statement that whatever planet is activated according to annual profections as the lord of the year is also going to be activated in its transits. So what I mean by that is there’s three different things that you then have to pay attention to once you understand that that’s the case. The transits that become more important are one, the transits to the lord of the year and the birth chart. And what I mean by that is if Mercury is the Lord of the year in your birth chart according to annual profections, then that means that you’re gonna want to pay much closer attention to any transits that mercury receives in your birth chart during the course of that year. So for example, if you have Saturn transiting over Mercury that year, that’s going to be that transit is going to be much more important and it’s going to stand out much more compared to other years where if you have Saturn transiting over Mercury, but it’s not the Lord of the year, then that transit might come and go and not be that big of a deal. 

Whereas if you have that transit in a year in which Mercury is actually activated as a time-lord, that’s the year in which that’s going to play a dominant role in terms of setting up the themes of that year in the person’s life. So in this way, using profections is actually one of the, one of the things that it does, or one of the reasons it’s useful is that can help you to filter out which transits are going to coincide with an event versus which transits are going to come and go without much significant happening. It can also help you to rank which transits are more important and which ones you should pay more attention to in a given year versus the ones that might not be as important or that you don’t need to pay as much attention to based on which planet is activated as the lord of the year. 

So the first one is pay attention to transits to the lord of the year in the natal chart. The second one is pay attention to transits by the lord of the year to natal planets. So what I mean by that is if you have Jupiter activated as the lord of the year, then pay closer attention to what transits to your natal chart that transiting Jupiter makes in that year. Or if you have Saturn activated for example, and you’re having a Saturn return then that Saturn transit and any trends, any planets that Saturn transits over in that year are going to be hit and are going to stand out much more strongly than in another year. And that also applies to things like retrogrades. So for example, if you’re in a profection year where Mercury is activated as lord of the year, sometimes, things like Mercury retrograde periods actually stand out much more in those years compared to other years because Mercury is the Lord of the year and that, specific timeframe. 

So that’s usually typically when I’m paying attention to Mercury retrograde periods. That’s the reason why some Mercury retrograde period stand out in our life as being particularly notable or almost like cliche-ly you know, Mercury retrograde type periods. It’s typically those years in which Mercury is activated as the lord of the year. And then goes retrograde. And then finally, the third point is pay attention to transits through the profected sign that year. So if you’re in a Scorpio profection year and Jupiter transits through Scorpio, that transit of Jupiter through Scorpio in any planets that it hits during that time are going to be much more important than they would be otherwise. So the three, pay attention to transits to the lord of the year, transits by the lord of the year and transits through the profected sign for the year, and that will help you to identify which transits are going to be more important that year, but also filter out those transits, transits that are going to be less important in that year. 

Patricia asked Chris, do you use the exaltation ruler in addition to the sign ruler? No, I only pay attention to the domicile lord, when I’m looking at the rulers of the signs. Linda asked, what if there are multiple planets in the profected house? Then all of them are relevant. You pay attention to all of them. That becomes really important then, when you’re dealing with the case of a stellium, those years when a person has a stellium, those years when the stellium is activated tend to really stand out in the person’s life because they have a stellium there and all of those planets are getting activated when the profection comes to that sign. 

So transits are important. I just have a few examples of that before we start to wrap things up. I’m not sure that I see your question, Theresa. Oh, you’re in a 12th house profection year, but Gemini, if my year right now is in the 12th house, but Gemini, does Mercury come into play or is it just Neptune? I don’t understand the question. If you’re in a Gemini profection year then Mercury is the Lord of the years, so you would pay attention to Mercury. 

Okay, so here’s an example of transits. So this is somebody who turned 39 years old and moved into a fourth house profection year. So he has Libra rising in his fourth house in Capricorn. So we moved into a fourth house profection year, the fourth house is empty natally, there’s no planets there. The fourth house has to do with the home and the living situation, of course. So what happened though is that at one point during the year, he has a day chart natally and Mars transiting Mars ingressed into Capricorn on October 26th of that year. 

And just a few days later on October 29th, his house caught on fire and burned to the ground along with all of his possessions. He was also injured and he had burns on 20% of his body but otherwise made it out alive. And the main thing was just that his house basically burned down. So what this is demonstrating and why you use this example is because he was in the fourth house profection year. We know that fourth house matters should be part of the focus of that year. But then the actual event that ended up characterizing that year the most, his house burning down ended up coinciding exactly with the transit of Mars, into his fourth whole sign house. So the transits still act as the triggers sometimes of what will happen in the given year, but the profections help you to focus in on which transits you need to pay the most attention to and which ones potentially are going to be more important. 

I’ve got, let me see one more example of that. So this is the birth chart of of George Lucas, who directed Star Wars. And what happened is that he, when he was 18 years old, he moved into a seventh house profection year. Mars was activated as the lord of the year and he got in a major car accident. So Mars is activated, as the lord of the year and what it did, what happened is that Mars, transiting Mars came up in conjoined the ruler of his ascendant. So the ruler of the first house, it came up again, conjoined Venus at 11 degrees of Taurus in his first whole sign house. So what happened basically is that he was really into driving race cars and he wanted to grow up when he got out of school to be a race car, like a professional race car driver. 

But he was driving one day and he got in this horrific car accident where his car flipped a bunch of times after it was driving really fast and it flung him out of the car and then the car smashed into a tree and like crumpled up like a, like a can. So that if he had been in the car, he would have been crushed. And even though he was flung from it, he was still pretty badly injured and ended up in the hospital for a few weeks. So after that point he decided he didn’t want to race cars anymore and he went to college and eventually got into filmmaking and then made Star Wars and the rest is history. But the, the genesis of that shift or that change in his life trajectory was this really traumatic event when he was in this terrible car accident. 

So the point of this example is two things actually, one that you have to pay attention to when a planet is activated as the lord of the year, the transits that that planet makes to other natal planets in the chart are going to be more important. But his case is actually interesting because he had a dual transit where at the same time that transiting Mars was conjoining his natal Venus, transiting Venus was at 25 degrees of Cancer the day of the accident. And that was exactly conjunct the degree of his natal Mars at 23 Cancer in the third whole sign house. So that was actually a counteracting or a counterbalancing transit where even though he had this highly negative transit of transiting Mars to natal Venus, the ruler of the Ascendant, he also had a benefic or a positive transit of transiting Venus to Natal Mars. 

And of course he was thrown from the car and even though he was badly injured, he survived the accident and went on to live his life. So what we have here is kind of a dual instance of a really negative transit and then a somewhat positive offsetting transit at the same time. Yeah, Patricia says that Venus also rules the sixth house, is that relevant? Yeah, that’s relevant. The Venus rules the sixth house of injury and it’s in the first house of health in the body. The other thing that’s relevant is that Mars itself natally is in the third house, which is the house, from the medieval tradition forward that had to do with short distance travel. So things like driving cars, is probably relevant in terms of the placement of that planet. Alright, so we’re now, sort of introduced everything that I want to introduce in terms of the basic method of annual profections. 

I did want to mention at this point very, very briefly that there is a more advanced method of annual profections where you can actually profect from any planet, place, any planet house or a point in the chart, not just from the ascendant. And what this does is it creates a contextual time-lord technique in order to allow you to time the activation of different parts of the chart relative to specific topics and the native’s life. But of course since we are now at about two hours in this lecture that is beyond the scope of this lecture. So I will not be able to get into it today. This is going to be the subject of my workshop at the United Astrology Conference next month. So if you happen to be attending that conference in Chicago and you liked this lecture so far, then you should definitely join us for that workshop at UAC. 

I also, if you’re not attending that conference, I deal to some extent with the advanced method of profections a little bit in my course in Hellenistic astrology and I’m going to be adding another lecture on that topic later this summer once I get back from UAC. So you can check that out for more information. Alright, Kareena asks how do eclipses and the sign of the profection affect the character of the profection year. The main way that eclipses are relevant is that I’ve noticed that when a person goes into a Cancer profection year or Leo profection year, that all eclipses that take place that year or much more important than they are in any other year. And those tend to be the years where an eclipse happens, it happens in a certain part of the chart and whatever house or whatever topics are associated with the house that the eclipse falls in tend to become much more prominent, much more quickly than they would otherwise. 

So it’s like there are some years of your life where you notice an eclipse happens and then an event happens like really close to it and you clearly see that there’s a connection between the two. Whereas there’s other years where an eclipse will happen in a certain part of your chart and like nothing that significant will happen. The difference is profections. And whether, the luminaries are activated that year, as the lords of the year. Alright, so concluding remarks. Time-lord techniques are really crucial for timing because they activate the signatures that are already built into the birth chart. They activate the latent natal potential of a placement and you can’t really fully know when the latent potential is going to manifest in the person’s life unless you know the time-lord techniques. So that’s why this, the recent discovery over the past couple of decades of these techniques is really crucial. 

So we’ve only recovered these techniques really recently, but we’ve actually learned a stunning amount over the past two decades in the process. And this was actually kind of a short, my full lecture on annual profections and my course is actually nine hours long. So this is the short version of sort of a version of this technique or a version of this lecture and the more complicated time-lord technique called zodiacal releasing that I mentioned briefly earlier that breaks up the entire life into chapters that are 10 or 20 or 30 years long each. That lecture is like 18 hours long in my course. So these techniques actually get kind of complicated and we’ve learned a lot about them, but there’s actually still a lot more research that needs to be done. So I’m interested in recruiting more people who are interested in studying these techniques and helping to unpack what they can actually do because there’s still so much that I know that’s left that we still need to reconstruct and figure out about them since we’ve only just rediscovered them and only like a handful of people have been using them over the course of the past couple of decades. 

So one of the things to me is that I think that this demonstrates the value in studying some of the older traditions because it turns out that there were techniques that we lost that do things that we didn’t know were possible and that we didn’t realize that we were missing until recently. But once you figure it out, once you learn that or once you realize that, it’s hard not to be interested or drawn to studying some of those older traditions. The purpose, I don’t think necessarily, and this is how I ended my book, is not to go back into the past and stay there, but instead of the purposes of studying ancient traditions is to go back into the past, study some of the older traditions to find the techniques that are useful and compliment what we’re doing today and to bring them forward and integrate them with other modern traditions and modern techniques. 

And I believe that that can be done. And that’s the work that’s being done right now. And me and some of my friends on the podcast have sort of demonstrated our approach to that in our own personal synthesis of some of these ancient and modern techniques over the past few years. In particular, the work that I do on the monthly forecast episodes with Austin and Kelly, the three of us I think all demonstrate part of that modern synthesis of modern and ancient techniques that were sort of moving towards right now as a community. So I hope this is interested you in some of the older techniques and you’ll want to study them more. In terms of resources for further study, I definitely recommend going back and listening through some past episodes of The Astrology Podcast. I’ve tried to highlight a few of them during the course of this lecture to give you an idea of which ones you might want to check out in particular. But I’m sure there’s a number of other early episodes that are also relevant to this technique that you might want to check out as well. 

You can also check out my book, which came out last year titled Hellenistic Astrology, the Study of Fate and Fortune. I have a whole chapter in the book that’s on annual profections as well as chapters on zodiacal releasing, determining planetary condition through modification and maltreatment and more. I also teach an online course in Hellenistic astrology that has over a hundred hours of lectures just like this one. So this is the short version of this lecture on annual profections. The longer one is about nine hours. The zodiacal releasing one is about 18 hours because some of these techniques are actually so complicated that it takes actually a while to unpack what you can do with each of them. And one of the things that I really liked to do and one of the things I wanted to demonstrate in this lecture is how I really appreciate demonstrating how the techniques work, not just conceptually, but also showing how they work through example charts. 

And that’s one of the reasons why my full profections lecture is nine hours long, it’s cause I have I think like 50 or 100 example charts in that lecture. And similarly the zodiacal releasing one is almost 20 hours long because I think I have over a hundred example charts just in that one lecture alone. So actually demonstrating how they work in real life example charts is really crucial for me in terms of actually teaching and showing you what you can do with these techniques. So you can sign up for the whole course or you can sign up for individual modules like just the lecture on profections or just the lecture on zodiacal releasing and you can find out more information about that at courses.theastrologyschool.com. So this month, if you sign up before May 1st and you use the Promo Code Jupiter, you actually get a 15% discount on the course. 

But otherwise I try to keep them set at reasonable prices and you can find more information on my website. So I have like four websites, I don’t know why I really need to narrow it down at some point, but you can find out more information about my work at hellenisticastrology.com, Chris Brennanastrologer.com, theastrologypodcast.com, and finally my core site, which is the astrologyschool.com. Alright, I think that’s it for this episode and for this webinar. Thanks everybody who attended live. I appreciate it. It looks like we’ve got 25 ish participants. 

Yeah. Does anybody have any questions or comments at this point? As we’re wrapping things up, Beth asked, do you know when this podcast or webinar will post? So Austin and Kelly and I just recorded the forecast episode yesterday, but I need to release this episode first. So I’m hoping to release this episode by the end of this week and then the forecast episode will be released sometime early next week. 

So this is going to be, you know, a free lecture on The Astrology Podcast website, which partially is supported by, you know, being able to do that by everybody who signed up on Patreon to support the podcast and donate a few dollars every time I release an episode. So that’s part of the reason I wanted to give a good technique lecture because even though I like to do historical talks, oftentimes like the, the book review we did on Liz Green’s, new book a few episodes ago, I sometimes want to make sure that we get in some really solid technique episodes every once in a while, as well. And that’s part of what I was shooting for with this episode. I also felt like it had been awhile since, you know, I kind of focus on interviewing other people are having other discussions a lot and I’ve gotten away from doing solo shows cause typically people prefer on the podcast to listen more to dialogues and discussions. 

And typically that’s a little bit more interesting. But then as a result of that, sometimes I’ve gotten away from showing what my own approach to astrology is to some extent. So I wanted to do this lecture again just to remind a lot of newer people who maybe haven’t been listening for a long time, what my approach is and what some of the techniques are that I use. 

So Matthew asks, in addition, your own excellent work on profection, whose current writing should we seek out on the topic? So if you do a search for annual profections, I wonder if I can, share my screen really quickly. There’s a great article by an astrologer named, so there’s been a couple of students of my course who have written articles on profections that I really like. And in some instances they’ve done a better job of I don’t want to say explaining it, but sometimes just presenting it in a way that’s unique and I think useful that compliments some on my own presentations. 

So let me see if I can share the screen for that really quickly. Okay. So this is just a Google search for annual profections, but one of the first results that comes up is on a website called Seven Stars Astrology and the article is titled Astrological Predictive Techniques. Profections Intro. So this is by, I forget if I can say his name but he goes by Ant on his website but he has a great article, on profections and he has a lot of other good articles on Hellenistic astrology. He had not been doing posts for a little bit for a few years. I think he was focusing on something else but he’s come back to it recently, which I’m excited about cause he does good work on Hellenistic astrology. So that’s at sevenstarsastrology.com there’s also a great intro to profections on Jo Gleason’s websites. If you go to amyjogleason.com she has an article titled Intro to Profections, and she has like a great diagram, so she’s got another profections wheel sort of like mine that is really useful for memorizing those profection years. So I’d definitely recommend checking that out. 

I’ve been making some videos on my youtube page, so I had a little short, like 10 minute video on annual profections. That’s worth checking out. My Youtube page is youtube.com/theastrologyschool. So I called my youtube channel, the astrology school and had been posting sort of videos on profections and zodiacal releasing and other things like that over the past year or so. So those are some ones I would recommend.

I mean there’s other authors like if you want to read through Vettius Valens. Valens has the most advanced and complex treatment of annual profections that survives from the Hellenistic tradition. So he would really be the primary go to author. The only issue with Valens is that there’s a public translation by Riley, by Mark Riley, and that’s the one that everybody reads at this point. But it doesn’t contain diagrams or chart examples. So Valens one of the things that makes Valens nice is that he uses a ton of chart examples, but if you’re reading Riley’s translation, you basically need to have some blank charts and you need to go through and recreate the, the examples as Valens tells you. So he’ll say, Valens will say, here’s a chart example is Scorpio rising and Mars in Capricorn and Jupiter in Sagittarius. So you’ll need to go through and like write the chart out. That way you can visualize what he’s talking about. So that can be kind of a laborious process, but I would definitely recommend it because it’s worth it. You’ll find the most advanced treatment of profections in his work in the anthology. So that’s the anthology of Vettius Valens. 

One of the things that we did in the Hellenistic course over the past few months, it was, we’ve been doing some live webinars where we’ve been reading through Valens’ treatment of different techniques. So one of the things I did, is I think we’ve done two webinars so far where we read through different chapters of balance where he deals with profections and I went through and created a pdf document where I inserted the chart wheels into Riley’s translation. So that’s like one of the things that I tried to do with the Hellenistic course in order to make some of this stuff more understandable is doing some guided readings like that from authors like Valens. 

Let’s see. Other questions? How common is it for people to use the finer technique that projects months? I mean, you don’t see that many ancient astrologers mentioning, I guess Paulus mentions it briefly. One of the issues is that even though everybody agreed on the basic approach to annual profections and calculating the lord of the year, there was some debate about how to calculate monthly and daily profections. 

There was different variants or variations of how to calculate it, including one lot like technique, a technique that was like sort of like calculating the lot of fortune, but it was used to calculate the monthly and the daily profections. So some of that confusion I think meant that not everybody calculated monthly and daily profections and it’s made it a little bit uncertain in modern times, which approach is best. So I sometimes do monthly profections but not very commonly because typically I’ll use the zodiacal releasing for studying finer periods like that. I know Robert Zoller is actually one prominent astrologer who does use monthly profections and he has an interesting variation of that technique where you do the yearly profections to figure out the lord of the year. And then you profect the months by going one month per sign from the profected sign of the year until it reaches the sign that contains the ruler of the year. 

And when that happens, that will indicate the most important month in that 12 month year when the, when the ruler of the year is activated on the monthly level. That’s a little bit complicated, but it’s an interesting variation of the technique. Alright, well, if nobody else has any questions, then I think I should probably wrap it up because we’re coming in at like two something to two hours and 15 minutes or something like that. Thanks everyone for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed this lecture. If you’re listening to this on the recording, I hope you’ve enjoyed the podcast. If you listen to us on iTunes, please be sure to give us a good rating on iTunes since it’ll help other people to find it. Do the same if you’re watching the video on youtube. And finally, if you want to support the podcast, then be sure to sign up and become a patron on patreon because that’s how I’m able to produce so many episodes each month is through the support patrons. Okay. So that’s it for this episode. Thanks everyone for listening and we’ll see you next time.