Astrological Time + Timing Techniques

Most of the astrology you might read or hear about on the internet is based on what are called transits—the movement of the planets through the sky in real-time, like changing celestial weather patterns with which we can describe collective and personal experiences and events.
 
But this is only one way that astrology describes the quality of time.
 
Throughout this ancient tradition over thousands of years, astrologers have used a myriad of symbolic timing techniques that function according to principles that bring our experience of time into more complex and elegant dimensions.
These techniques are not only far more ubiquitous throughout the ancient tradition than the use of transits in the way we often use them today, but also offer frameworks through which to understand how a chart—and thus a life—unfolds.
 
Some techniques—like circumambulations through the bounds and zodiacal releasing—divide the life into different periods or chapters of different lengths, for which different planets are responsible, indicating both the quality of such periods as well as the themes that can become story arcs throughout those chapters. These ancient techniques are usually referred to as “timelord techniques” because they indicate specific planets as the lord of the times.
 
Another timelord technique called annual profections activates a different part of the chart for each year of life, and the planet that rules the sign on the house that is activated by the annual profection is understood as responsible for that year. Profections can also be advanced through the chart month by month. In both annual and monthly profections, specific areas of life take on more emphasis or focus as the profection comes to a specific house in the chart, suggesting that the whole chart is not active in the same way at all times.
 
Along with annual profections, the solar return chart—a chart that is cast for the moment when the Sun returns to where it was when you were born, your astrological birthday—can be used in relation to the natal chart as a way of considering how that year of life compares to the baseline description of the life established by the natal chart itself.
 
Secondary progressions is a symbolic timing technique that understands a day of life to describe a year of life. So, if we want to get a sense of what might be unfolding in a specific year of life—year 30, for example—we look at what was going on in the sky on the 30th day after you were born, almost like a foreshadowing or like a microcosm that then unfolds like a fractal across the macrocosm of the years. We can look at the progressed chart in relation to the natal chart, the changing conditions of the progressed planets, as well as relationships they make with the natal chart over time.
 
Other techniques like the minor periods of the planets or the ascensional times of the signs take astronomical phenomena—like the synodic recurrence cycles of the planets or the time that it takes for each sign of the zodiac to rise at a specific latitude—as the basis when different parts of a chart will be most active. These techniques can indicate when specific parts of the chart and areas of life ripen and come to fruition.

Many of these ancient techniques are far more personal and specific to how they function in each unique chart. That means that it is more difficult to talk or write about these techniques in a general way that will apply to a wide audience. In the age of social media—or in the previous age of newspaper horoscopes—mass appeal is often the priority. This is one reason why transits tend to be quite popular on the internet because while transits may be occurring in relation to different parts of each person’s chart, where the planets are moving through the sky in real-time is the same for all of us.
 
Transits also tend to appeal to a post-enlightenment privileging of causal rationality. Whether or not we believe that the movements of the planets “cause” specific events and experiences in our lives, the correlation of such experiences and events with the real-time motion of the planets can easily align with a rationale of causation—which is a familiar way of thinking for many of us since modernity.
 
In contrast or compliment, I find that symbolic timing techniques appeal less to a sense of causation and more to a sense of description and meaningful correlation. When we work with symbolic timing techniques, it is more like telling a story that we discover is uncannily significant to our lived experiences, rather than seeking out evidence that aligns with a model of cause and effect.
 
Giving greater attention to symbolic timing techniques is not to depreciate the value of working with transits—transits are an integral part of my own astrological practice.
But it is to suggest there are social, cultural, and technological reasons why certain parts of the astrological tradition circulate more widely, and also to remind us that the methods we incorporate into our practice of astrology not only offer different possibilities for what meaning we might make, but also shape our perception and experience of time itself.

When we work with a range of astrological timing techniques—both symbolic and real-time—we cultivate an experience of multiple temporalities moving simultaneously, in concert with each other, each with different qualities and all unfolding across different scales. This experience of multiple temporalities expands our understanding of time beyond a singular linear trajectory—like the presumption of uniform life stages marked by significant life events, often dictated through the bias of compulsory heterosexuality, or the idea of linear progress narratives. We come to experience time beyond quarterly projections and annual reports, beyond the calendar year, the 40+ hour work week, the 24-hour news cycle, the endless scrolling of social media feeds, and other ways our perception of time is structured under the conditions late-stage capitalism.
 
This is one of the great gifts of astrology: attenuating and orienting us toward more expansive, complex, and nuanced experiences of time at both personal and collective scales.
So, if you are a student of astrology or someone who is really interested in astrology, I encourage you to continue to pay attention to the real-time transits of the planets, and also go deeper into this rich tradition to discover what more it might reveal about your own life—and time itself.
 
Whether you are a student or practitioner of astrology or not, we might all ask ourselves:
What am I practicing that shapes how I perceive and experience time?
How might changing my relationship with time be part of my resistance and liberation?