Almagest

The library · The profected years

The tenth profection year

general summary for a tenth house annual profection year (ages 9, 21, 33 and 45)

What the tradition reads

Annual profections carry each year of a life one sign further from the rising sign, so that the tenth sign from the Ascendant is reached in a person's tenth year, and again every twelfth year after, at ages nine, twenty one, thirty three and onward. A tenth house profection year is read through that house's own themes, and Alan Leo's summary gives the tenth profession, business ability, fame, honour and material reputation, with all worldly activities and moral responsibilities, and attaches to it the parentage and hereditary tendencies; his chapter calls it the house of honour, reputation and profession, and the apex of the horoscope, thrust out most prominently into the busy life of the world. The ruler of the profected tenth sign becomes the lord of the year, and its condition at birth, together with its transits during the year, is read as the chief planetary theme running underneath everything else the year brings. A tenth house year is read as suited to a change of profession, public recognition, or a matter concerning a parent, since Leo's tenth house carries both the worldly status of a person and the parentage he files there, and he summarises it as the individual environment against the fourth's personal one. It stands opposite the fourth house year in the twelve year cycle, six years removed each way from the house Leo gives home and domestic life, parentage, environment and the state of things at the close of life.

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 a single passage, going back and forth and revisiting the technique several times; his approach relied on his own case files, over a hundred sample charts tested against events whose outcome he already knew, which gives the technique the feel of a method proven by trial against real dated lives rather than argued from theory. The arithmetic needed is simple enough for any astrologer of the period to manage unaided, a person's age divided by twelve, the remainder counted forward from the Ascendant. Profections largely disappeared from ordinary practice for a long stretch after Hellenistic astrology's own decline, and returned to common use only once texts such as the Anthology were properly translated and taught again from the late twentieth century onward, a revival closely associated with 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:10.