Almagest

The library · The profected years

The ninth profection year

general summary for a ninth house annual profection year (ages 8, 20, 32 and 44)

What the tradition reads

Annual profections carry each year of a life one sign further around the wheel from the rising sign, so that the ninth sign from the Ascendant is reached in a person's ninth year, and again every twelfth year after, at ages eight, twenty, thirty two and onward. A ninth house profection year is read through that house's own themes, and Alan Leo's summary gives the ninth the higher mentality with its scientific, philosophic and religious tendencies, long journeys and dreams; his chapter calls it the house of philosophy and of the abstract mind, gives it rapid transit and foreign travel, and grants it some connection with legal matters, probably, he says, because Jupiter governs it. The ruler of the profected ninth sign becomes the lord of the year, and its condition in the birth chart, together with its transits through the year, is read as the chief planetary theme running underneath everything else the year brings. A ninth house year is read as suited to a long journey, deep study, a change in a person's outlook, or a matter of law, since Leo's ninth house carries both the foreign voyage and the philosophy and deep thinking he sets against the third's more conventional studies. It stands opposite the third house year in the twelve year cycle, six years removed each way from the house Leo gives relatives and kindred and the concrete brain mind, and calls the house of perception and learning against the ninth's reason and intuition.

The story

Vettius Valens, the second century Antiochene astrologer whose ten book Anthology remains the only substantial ancient source for the technique, treated annual profections repeatedly across at least three books of the work rather than in one passage, going back and forth and revisiting the technique several times; his practice drew on his own case files, over a hundred sample charts tested against events whose outcome he already knew, an approach that gives the technique the character of something proven by trial against real dated lives rather than reasoned out abstractly. The calculation itself needs no instrument, only a person's age divided by twelve and the remainder counted forward from the Ascendant. Annual profections fell out of ordinary use for centuries after Hellenistic astrology's own decline, and returned to common practice 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 and wheels that make the technique's arithmetic usable without specialist training.

Written from

Corpus key profection:9.