Time Lords

A time lord technique divides a life into periods and names the body that governs each. Where a transit asks what the sky is doing now, a time-lord technique asks which of the natal planets has been handed the reins, and for how long. The Hellenistic and Persian astrologers used several such systems side by side; the API exposes three: annual profections, firdaria, and zodiacal releasing.

Every technique answers from the natal chart alone: its instant, its Ascendant, the Sun for sect, the classical rulership table, and the lots. No ephemeris is consulted, except where a boundary is deliberately anchored to a real solar return.

One vocabulary

Every technique emits flat period records sharing one shape:

Records are ordered by start then level, not nested: a renderer draws one track per level and recovers the nesting from time containment. Technique-specific fields ride alongside: house and sign for a profection, major_lord for a firdaria sub-period, sign, angle_from_fortune, and loosing_of_bond for a releasing period.

Nothing precedes birth. A range that begins earlier is cut to the birth instant, which is a true boundary and is not flagged.

Annual profections

The count is simple enough to do on your fingers, which is why Valens could assume every reader knew it. At age n, count n signs forward from the rising sign: that is the profected sign, the count is the profected house, and the sign's domicile ruler is the lord of the year. Age 0 (birth to the first birthday) is the first house and the Ascendant's ruler; age 1 the second house; age 12 the first house again.

Monthly profections run the same count inside the year: month 1 is the profected year's sign, month 2 the next, so that the twelfth month returns to the sign the year began in, one sign short of the next year.

Whole sign, only. Profections are defined on signs — Valens counts signs from the rising sign — and the modern revival treats that as intrinsic. Practitioners who cast the natal wheel in Placidus still count profections by sign. So the API always counts whole signs from the starting point's sign, whatever house system the natal chart uses; an Ascendant at 29°59′ of a sign profects as that sign. (The medieval variant that advances the Ascendant's degree 30° a year is a different technique and is not offered.)

Other starting points. The Ascendant is the classical start, but the count from any point is the same arithmetic: profecting the Lot of Fortune or the Moon's sign is common, and the Midheaven is used for matters of career. from picks the starting sign.

Where a year begins

The arithmetic says which sign; it does not say on which day the year turns. Two rules are in use, and the API offers both:

• Mean year (default): the year turns year_days after birth, and each month is an equal twelfth of it. The default is the mean tropical year, 365.2422 days, which is what "a year from the birthday" means on average; 365.25 gives the Julian year some tables assume.
• Solar return (solar=true): the year turns at the moment the Sun returns to its natal degree, and each month when the Sun reaches 30°, 60°, … past it. This is the astronomically exact reading, and it is computed in the chart's own zodiac: a sidereal chart's year turns at the sidereal return, which lags the tropical one by the precession accumulated since birth.

The two agree on every house and lord. The years turn within a day of each other. The months drift further — the Sun spends 31.4 days in Cancer and 29.4 in Capricorn, so equal twelfths are up to about three days from the ingresses by mid-year — which is exactly why both rules exist.

Firdaria

The Persian planetary periods walk a fixed 75-year sequence of nine major periods, seven planets and the two lunar nodes, in an order set by sect. A day birth begins with the Sun, a night birth with the Moon:

Each planetary major is split into seven equal sub-periods whose lords begin with the major lord and continue in the Chaldean order (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon), wrapping: a Sun major runs Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars. The node majors have no sub-periods. After 75 years the sequence starts over.

The sect is the Sun on or above the horizon, decided exactly as the lots decide it, and it is the only thing the natal chart contributes: firdaria are the same in any zodiac. Some medieval presentations place the nodes after Mars in the night sequence rather than last; night_order selects that. Years are the mean tropical year by default.

API endpoint: /v1/firdaria (1 credit)

Zodiacal releasing

Valens's releasing (Anthology IV) walks the signs in zodiacal order from a lot's sign, the Lot of Spirit by default, each sign lasting its planetary years: the years of its domicile ruler, with Capricorn taking 27 rather than Saturn's 30.

A year is 360 days, which is what makes the nesting exact. Each level divides the unit by twelve: chapters in years, then months of 30 days, then 2.5-day units, then 5-hour units. Inside a period of sign S the next level begins again from S and proceeds in order, each child lasting its own count of the smaller unit, the last child cut to the parent's end.

Loosing of the bond. The twelve signs total 211 units, so a parent of 18 years or more outlasts one full circuit of its children. When they have completed all twelve signs, the sequence does not return to S but jumps to the sign opposite the parent and continues from there. The child that begins the jump is flagged.

Angularity to Fortune. A period whose sign is the 1st, 4th, 7th, or 10th from the Lot of Fortune's sign is angular to Fortune, and the 10th is the peak of the sequence. The count is reported so the four are distinguishable.

API endpoint: /v1/zodiacal-releasing (2 credits)