Almagest

The library · The profected years

The fourth profection year

general summary for a fourth house annual profection year (ages 3, 15, 27 and 39)

What the tradition reads

Annual profections move each year of a life forward one sign at a time from the rising sign, so that the fourth sign from the Ascendant is reached in a person's fourth year, and again every twelfth year after, at ages three, fifteen, twenty seven and onward. A fourth house profection year is read through the house's own concerns, and Alan Leo's summary of the twelve gives the fourth hereditary tendencies, home and domestic life, parentage, environment and the general state of things at the close of life, while his chapter on it names the residence and the family conditions in which a person dwells, and one of the parents, usually the father according to Western astrologers, though the Hindus, he says, name the mother. The ruler of the profected fourth sign becomes the lord of the year, and the tradition reads its natal condition, together with its transits through the year, as the chief planetary theme underneath whatever else the year brings. A fourth house year is read as suited to a move, a change at home, or a development concerning a parent or the family a person was raised in, since Leo puts the house at the Nadir and summarises it as the personal environment, against the tenth as the individual environment. It stands opposite the tenth house year in the twelve year cycle, six years removed each way from the house Leo calls that of honour, reputation and profession, and of the public standing or worldly position.

The story

Vettius Valens, the second century astrologer from Antioch whose ten book Anthology is the only substantial surviving ancient source for the technique, set annual profections out across at least three books rather than in one passage, going back and forth and revisiting the technique several times; his approach drew directly on his own case files, more than a hundred sample charts tested against events he already knew the outcome of, which gives the technique the character of something built by trial against dated lives rather than argued from theory. The arithmetic needed is simple enough for any astrologer of the period to manage without instruments, a person's age divided by twelve, the remainder counted forward from the Ascendant. Profections fell out of ordinary practice for a long stretch after Hellenistic astrology's own decline, and returned to common use only once texts like the Anthology were properly translated and taught again from the late twentieth century onward, a revival closely tied to Chris Brennan's teaching under the name hellenisticastrology.com, which built the worksheets that make the technique's arithmetic usable without specialist training.

Written from

Corpus key profection:4.