Your birth chart is fixed. It is the sky at one moment, and nothing that happens later can change where the planets stood. Yet people change a great deal over a life, and astrologers have long wanted a way to show the chart changing with them, not from the outside, the way transits do, but from within. Progressions and directions are the answer: symbolic ways of moving the birth chart forward through time.

Nothing is literally in the sky where a progressed planet stands. That is the point. Transits describe the weather arriving from outside; progressions and directions describe the person developing underneath it. Most astrologers read both, and take seriously what they agree on.

Secondary progressions: a day for a year

The rule of secondary progressions is short: each day after your birth stands for one year of your life. The sky on the fourth day after you were born describes your fourth year; the sky on the thirty-eighth day describes your thirty-eighth year. To see your progressed chart at forty, an astrologer simply looks at where the planets were forty days after your birth.

Because a day stands for a year, everything moves slowly. The progressed Moon is the only hand that visibly moves on the dial: about a degree a month, a sign every two and a half years. Its sign and house are a good short answer to what a period is emotionally about. A progressed Moon moving into the fourth house often coincides with attention turning to home and family; moving into the tenth, with attention turning to work and a public role. Many people find their progressed Moon's last sign change and recognise the month it happened, usually with the slightly uncomfortable feeling of having been predictable.

The progressed Sun advances about a degree a year and changes sign roughly every thirty years. Mercury, Venus and Mars creep along, and sometimes turn retrograde or direct. A station in the progressed chart is one of the strongest signatures the method has. Imagine someone born with Venus retrograde, its station due twenty-three days after the birth. By progression, Venus turns direct when that person is about twenty-three. Astrologers would read that year as a turn in how the person loves and what they value, perhaps after a long stretch of looking back.

The outer planets barely move by progression, so our report leaves them out of the progressed positions.

The progressed lunation cycle

Underneath all of this runs a slow cycle. The progressed Moon goes around the progressed Sun once in about thirty years, passing through the same phases as the real Moon does in a month: new, crescent, first quarter, gibbous, full, disseminating, last quarter and balsamic. Which phase you are in describes the season of your life more than any single aspect does.

A progressed new Moon starts a new thirty-year cycle: something is being seeded that you cannot see yet. The first quarter is the crisis of action, building what the new cycle needs. The progressed full Moon, about fifteen years later, is the culmination, when what was seeded becomes visible, along with what did not work. The balsamic phase closes the cycle: letting go, finishing, preparing. Our report names your current phase, explains it, and gives the date the next phase begins.

Solar arc directions: the whole chart, one arc

Solar arc directions take a different approach. Instead of letting each planet move at its own speed, they move every point in the chart by the same amount: the distance the progressed Sun has travelled since birth. That is close to one degree for every year of life. Every planet, every angle and every house cusp slides forward together, so the chart keeps its shape and simply turns along the zodiac.

The arithmetic is easy to feel. At forty, the chart has moved roughly forty degrees. A planet that stood forty degrees short of your Midheaven at birth arrives on it at about forty. A hypothetical example: someone born with the Midheaven at 2 degrees of Cancer and Jupiter at 20 degrees of Cancer will see the directed Midheaven reach natal Jupiter at about eighteen. Astrologers would read that year as one in which Jupiter's themes of growth, teaching and opportunity become part of the person's direction in life.

Only the aspects the directed chart makes to the birth chart are read. The directed points never change their relationship to each other, since they all move together, so there is nothing new to read between them. The conjunction matters most: a directed planet arriving on a natal planet or angle is the classic solar arc event, and directions involving the angles, the Sun and the Moon are the strongest.

Two methods, two strengths

Solar arc says when, and says it cleanly, because everything moves at one rate. It is less good at saying what: a directed contact names a year and a pair of symbols, and the meaning comes from what those symbols are doing in your birth chart.

Progressions carry more detail, because each planet keeps its own speed. They have stations, sign changes and the lunation cycle, which solar arc cannot have. They are subtler and harder to date. A year that both methods mark is a year worth looking at.

What our reports show

Both reports work the same way. Choose a person and a date, and the report casts the chart for that date and lays out what is happening around it as dated facts.

For secondary progressions, you get the progressed chart for your age at that date, a two-ring wheel with your birth chart inside and the progressed chart outside, your progressed lunation phase, and the aspects in effect between progressed and natal planets, each marked applying (still building) or separating (fading). For solar arc, you get the arc itself, the directed chart, the directed house cusps and the directed aspects to your birth chart.

Each report also has a timeline from two years before your chosen date to three years after: sign changes, house changes, stations, exact aspects and, for progressions, the phase changes. The past is dimmed and the month around your date is highlighted. You can also ask the AI astrologer to read the whole picture at that date.

An aspect counts within one degree. At these speeds that is about a year either side of exact for solar arc and the progressed Sun, and about a month for the progressed Moon. That is the honest resolution of the methods: they date a season, not a day. Anyone offering a progressed aspect to the hour is reading more into it than it holds.

Do you need a birth time?

For the planets, an approximate time will do. For the progressed or directed Ascendant and Midheaven, you need an accurate one, since both are set by the birth time and then move about a degree a year from there. Without a time, the reports are cast for noon and leave the angles and houses out, which removes some of the sharpest contacts, especially in solar arc.

Progressions and directions describe development, not fate. They say what is ripening, not what must happen. When you are ready, see your secondary progressions here, or your solar arc directions, for today or any date you choose.

Frequently asked questions

What are secondary progressions?
A symbolic timing method in which each day of movement after your birth stands for one year of your life. Your progressed chart at forty is the sky on the fortieth day after you were born, read against your birth chart.

What are solar arc directions?
Every point in the birth chart moved forward by the same arc, the distance the Sun has progressed since birth, about a degree for each year of life. The directed chart is then read against the birth chart.

Which should I use?
Both, usually. Solar arc dates cleanly because everything moves at one rate; progressions carry more detail because each planet keeps its own speed. A year both of them mark deserves attention.

What does the progressed Moon mean?
It is the fastest thing in the progressed chart, about a degree a month and a sign every two and a half years, and it tracks what you are emotionally occupied with. Its sign and house are a good short answer to what a period is about.

How is this different from transits?
Transits are where the planets really are now, arriving from outside. Progressions and directions are symbolic and describe inner development. Most astrologers read both together.

Do I need my birth time?
Not for the planets. For the Ascendant and the Midheaven, yes, and directions involving those angles are among the most precise things these methods offer.