TIMELORDS AND SYMBOLIC TIME IN ASTROLOGY

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.

A number of these ancient techniques used different forms of calculations to determine which planet or planets would function as a chronocrator—often translated as “timelord”—for a specific period of time. When a planet is activated as a timelord, it takes on greater responsibility for describing the quality of time during that period, either for life as a whole or in reference to particular areas of life.

Each planet brings its own qualities and significations more prominently into the periods of life for which it is activated as a timelord. This can also include indicating significant developments in the areas of life associated with the houses that planet rules as well as the house in which it is placed. The condition of a planet in the natal chart is part of the story that unfolds during when that planet is activated as a timelord.

In this way, these timelord techniques are part of how ancient astrologers described when particular potentialities within a natal chart were likely to become more significant within a life. They understood that every part of the chart is not active in the same way at all times, and the variations of lived experiences could be describe by these timelord activations.

One of the most common timelord technique in practice today is called annual profections.
Annual profections activate 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.
Starting from the Ascendant as the first year of life, with each subsequent birthday—also known as your solar return—the profection advances to the next sign in zodiacal order, activating a different part of the chart and a different planet as the annual timelord.

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 and activates a different planet as timelord for that period.
Profections are relatively easy to calculate because they advance on the annual scale on your solar return and on the monthly scale counting month to month from your solar return.

Other timelord techniques are calculated using more complex methods and are also capable of describing longer periods of time in your life.
For example, techniques like circumambulations through the bounds—also known as distributions 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.

Circumambulations through the bounds is calculated by projecting the Ascendant forward through the bounds of the signs of zodiac at a rate that is based on the ascensional time of the signs. The bounds of the zodiac are irregular subdivisions of the signs of the zodiac for which different planets are responsible.

The ascensional time of a sign is measured by how many equatorial degrees—degrees of the celestial equator—pass across the Midheaven while that sign is rising over the horizon at a given latitude. This rate in degrees is translated into years of your life.
As we project the Ascendant forward through the degrees of the bounds of the zodiac year by year, the planet that rules the bounds through which the projected Ascendant is moving is said to be the primary timelord for the period during which the projected Ascendant is advancing through its bounds.

Zodiacal releasing starts from either the Lot of Fortune or Lot of Spirit, advancing through the zodiac at rates that are based primarily on the minor years of the planets, which are translated into a number of years, months, weeks, and days corresponding to the minor years of the planet that rules the sign that is activated according to this technique. The minor years of the planets are generally based on their synodic return cycles—the number of years it takes for that planet to make a conjunction with the Sun in approximately the same part of the sky.

So, for example, the planet Mercury takes approximately 20 years to make a conjunction with the Sun in the same part of the sky. In zodiacal releasing, when one of Mercury’s signs—Gemini or Virgo—is activated, Mercury will be the timelord for 20 years, 20 months, 20 weeks, or 20 days, depending on the timescale we are examining.

At any point in your life, each of these symbolic timing techniques can tell a different part of the story of how your life is unfolding, often at different scales.
Zodiacal releasing can identify planets as timelords at the longest scale, anywhere from 8 to 30 years at a time—then can also identify timelords for shorter timelines at the scale of months, weeks, and days.
Circumambulations through the bounds can identify planets as timelords for periods of a couple of years up to around 12 years or so—depending on the ascensional times of the signs at the latitude where you were born.
Annual profections can identify planets as timelords for a year at a time, whereas monthly profections can identify planets as timelords month to month, in combination with the annual timelord.

Thus, using these techniques in combination with one another, you very well may have three to eight different timelords at any given time, each one offering a different part of your story.

Each planet signifies different qualities, experiences, and lessons that characterize the periods for which they are activated as a timelord in any of these techniques.

During different periods, we might be learning more about responsibility and boundaries, freedom and abundance, navigating conflict and finding uses for our anger, coming into our own sovereignty and seeing things clearly in a new way, learning more about what it means to love and be loved well, focusing on your own studies or how you are putting ideas out into the world, or orienting toward caretaking and tending to the needs of the body, for example.
Some planets can indicate greater ease while others can indicate greater effort—but whatever the planets describe, they are part of how we become more of who it is that we are here to be.

Throughout our lives, different planets come into these timelord roles for different overlapping or coinciding periods, like a committee or council of planets guiding us through our own processes of becoming.

These are relatively cursory descriptions of these techniques, but I share them as a gesture toward the ways that the ancients thought about symbolic time and how a chart can come to describe the story of a life.
These are techniques that I use in all of my timing work with clients—along with secondary progressions, transits, and the solar return chart.
If you are interested in exploring what these techniques can offer to your understanding of your life, you can reach out using the contact form on the Bookings page.