Profection Settings
The Profections tab of the Profections Study holds the technique options: Year Boundary, Monthly Method, Daily Method and Rulership Scheme. The tab also carries the shared Event Type drop-down, which selects between the annual, monthly and daily levels of the technique.
Traditions disagree on where the profected year starts, on how the monthly and daily divisions are made, and on which rulership scheme applies. Every one of those choices changes the resulting lord, so each competing scheme is offered explicitly here.
Configure the Profection Settings
To state the technique options the study profects by:
- Click the Profections tab. The technique settings sit on their own tab of the study's settings column.
- Choose the level of the technique: select a value for Event Type. This choice governs the rest of the tab, because Annual Profections disables the Monthly Method row, and any event type that excludes daily profections disables the Daily Method row.
- Define how the profected cycle is divided: select values for Year Boundary, Monthly Method and Daily Method. Together they set where the profected year begins and how its monthly and daily divisions are made.
- Choose which planet is read as a sign's ruler: select a value for Rulership Scheme. This decides the lord the study reports for each profected sign.
Technique Options
Each setting below changes the boundary dates the study reports, the lord it names, or both.
Year Boundary
The instant the profection year turns. This choice anchors the whole cascade, because every month is generated from its year's boundary and every day-period from its month's boundary, so it moves every event at every level.
| Option | What It Means |
|---|---|
| On Birthday | The year turns on the natal wall-clock anniversary in the natal record's time zone: pure calendar arithmetic on the birth moment. A February 29 birth anniversary falls on February 28 in common years. The default. |
| Solar Return (Tropical) | The year turns at the Sun's actual return to its natal tropical longitude, a solved instant rather than a calendar date. |
| Solar Return (Sidereal) | The year turns at the Sun's actual return to its natal sidereal longitude. The two solar returns drift apart from each other by roughly twenty minutes per year of age, and both drift from the calendar anniversary. |
| Prophetic Year (360 Days) | The year turns every 360 days counted from the birth moment, so it consults neither the calendar nor the Sun and drifts steadily against both. It pairs exactly with 30-Day Months and 2½ Days per Sign: those three together divide the year with no remainder at any level, and annual boundaries land on exact integer ages. |
Monthly Method
How a profection year divides into profection months. This is the point on which implementations of the technique differ most. Every method generates its boundaries from the year's own annual boundary instant, and each month sequence is cut off by the next annual boundary. The drop-down is enabled unless the Event Type is Annual Profections, because the daily level needs monthly boundaries too: a day-period is defined relative to its enclosing month.
The options offered vary with the Year Boundary you selected. Three of the four boundaries offer the same four methods; the prophetic anchor offers three.
With the On Birthday, Solar Return (Tropical) or Solar Return (Sidereal) boundary
| Option | What It Means |
|---|---|
| 12 Months (Natal Day of Month) | Twelve calendar-month steps from the annual boundary: each month begins on the same day of the month and time of day, in the natal record's time zone, with short months clamped to their last day. The default. |
| Solar Months (30° of Sun) | Each month begins when the transiting Sun reaches the natal solar longitude advanced by a further 30°, that is, the Sun at the natal degree of each successive sign. Under a solar-return anchor the first month coincides exactly with the annual boundary. |
| 28-Day Months (13 Steps) | Thirteen months of exactly 28 days from the annual boundary. Thirteen 28-day months come to 364 days, so the thirteenth runs long to the next annual boundary and re-activates the year's own sign, closing the year where it began. |
| 30-Day Months (12 Steps) | Twelve months of exactly 30 days, the month of the prophetic reckoning. Under a birthday or solar-return anchor the twelve steps fall about 5.24 days short, so the twelfth month runs long, as the 28-day method's thirteenth does. |
With the Prophetic Year (360 Days) boundary
| Option | What It Means |
|---|---|
| 12 Months (Natal Day of Month) | Twelve calendar-month steps from the annual boundary, each beginning on the same day of the month and time of day in the natal record's time zone. |
| 28-Day Months (13 Steps) | Thirteen months of exactly 28 days from the annual boundary, the thirteenth running long to the next annual boundary. |
| 30-Day Months (12 Steps) | Twelve months of exactly 30 days. Under this anchor they close the year exactly, since twelve thirty-day months come to 360 days, so no month runs long and each of the twelve signs is activated once. |
Solar Months is absent from the prophetic list because a month measured by the Sun's motion has no defined meaning inside a year that consults neither the calendar nor the Sun. If Solar Months is already selected when you switch to the prophetic anchor, the study settles on 30-Day Months, the division the prophetic anchor was built around.
Daily Method
The length of a daily profection period, that is, how long the profected point spends in each sign at the daily level. Every method counts exact multiples of the period length from the month's boundary instant, and the sequence is cut off by the next monthly boundary. The drop-down is enabled only when daily profections are being generated, that is, when the Event Type is All Profections or Daily Profections.
| Option | What It Means |
|---|---|
| 1 Day per Sign | Exact 24-hour periods from the monthly boundary, so each daily profection begins at the same time every day. The default. |
| 2½ Days per Sign | Twelve signs paced across a 30-day month, echoing the Moon's round. This is the exact daily pairing for 30-Day Months: twelve periods of 2.5 days close a 30-day month with no remainder. |
| 2⅓ Days per Sign | Twelve signs paced across a 28-day month, at seven-thirds of a day each, the lunar-derived rate. |
Rulership Scheme
Which table names the Lord of the Period from the activated sign. The two schemes agree on nine of the twelve signs and differ only where the modern table substitutes an outer planet.
| Option | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Traditional | The classical assignment, using only the seven visible bodies. Scorpio is ruled by Mars, Aquarius by Saturn and Pisces by Jupiter. The default, and the scheme the technique's own tradition uses. |
| Modern | The modern assignment, substituting Pluto for Scorpio, Uranus for Aquarius and Neptune for Pisces. Every other sign matches the traditional table. |
Event Type
The Event Type drop-down on this tab is shared with other studies rather than belonging to the technique itself. On a Profections study it selects which levels of the cascade are generated, from the annual boundaries alone up to all three levels together, which also makes it the study's main volume control. See Event Type Selection for the full list of values.