Almagest

The library · The profected years

The third profection year

general summary for a third house annual profection year (ages 2, 14, 26 and 38)

What the tradition reads

Annual profections carry each year of a life forward one sign at a time from the rising sign, so that the third sign from the Ascendant is reached in a person's third year, and again every twelfth year after, at ages two, fourteen, twenty six and onward. A third house profection year is read through that house's own concerns, and Alan Leo's summary of the twelve gives the third relatives and kindred, travelling, and the intellect derived from education and study, while his chapter on it studies there all that relates to movement, transition and change, and holds that it rules all affairs that seriously affect the mind. The ruler of the profected third sign becomes the lord of the year, and the tradition treats its condition at birth, together with its transits during the year, as the chief planetary theme running underneath everything else the year brings. A third house year is read as suited to study, a short journey, or a development with a brother, sister or near relative, since Leo's third house holds both the concrete or brain mind and the kindred around a person, and he ties its short journeys to that mind. It stands opposite the ninth house year in the cycle, six years removed each way from the house Leo calls the house of philosophy and the higher mind, and sets against the third as reason and intuition against perception and learning.

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 a single passage, going back and forth and revisiting the technique several times; his practice drew on his own case files, over a hundred sample charts checked against events whose outcome he already knew, a habit that gives the technique the feel of something tested against real dates rather than reasoned out in the abstract. The calculation is plain enough for any astrologer of the period to perform unaided, a person's age divided by twelve, the remainder counted forward from the Ascendant. The method fell out of ordinary use for centuries after Hellenistic astrology's own decline, and only returned to common practice once texts such as 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 produced the worksheets and wheels that make the technique's arithmetic usable without specialist training.

Written from

Corpus key profection:3.