Secondary progressions calculator: your progressed chart
Secondary progressions move the birth chart forward at the rate of one day for one year: the sky on the fourth day after you were born describes your fourth year, and the thirty-eighth day your thirty-eighth. It is the oldest of the symbolic timing methods still in daily use, and it describes development from the inside — what a person is becoming — rather than events arriving from outside.
Cast the chart
Secondary progressions
Because a day stands for a year, everything moves slowly. The progressed Moon covers about a degree a month and a sign in two and a half years, which makes it the only hand that visibly moves on the dial. The progressed Sun advances about a degree a year and changes sign roughly every thirty. Mercury, Venus and Mars creep, and can turn retrograde or direct — a station in the progressed chart is one of the strongest signatures the method has. The outer planets barely move at all.
The progressed Midheaven advances by the solar arc, and the progressed Ascendant follows from it at the latitude you were born at, so both depend on a known birth time. When either changes sign, or when a progressed planet arrives on an angle, the chart is describing a change of direction rather than a change of mood.
Underneath all of it runs the progressed lunation cycle: the progressed Moon and the progressed Sun complete a full round of phases in about thirty years, from progressed new moon through progressed full moon and back. Which phase of that cycle you are in says more about the chapter you are living than any single aspect does.
This calculator casts the progressed chart for any date you choose and lays out what happens around it as dated facts: sign ingresses, stations, the exact aspects between the progressed chart and the birth chart, and the phase changes. The window runs from two years before the date you pick to three years after, so a progression that has not yet perfected is still in view.
An aspect is counted within one degree, which at these speeds means about a year either side of exact for the Sun and about a month for the Moon. That is the honest resolution of the method: progressions date a season, not a day, and anyone offering a progressed aspect to the hour is over-reading it.
The reading is written from those dated facts rather than assembled from prewritten interpretations, because a progressed aspect lasts years and describes something unfolding — which is not what a text written for a transit lasting days has to say.
Questions people ask
What are secondary progressions?
A symbolic timing method in which one day of movement after your birth stands for one year of your life. The progressed chart for your fortieth year is the sky on the fortieth day after you were born, read against your birth chart.
Do I need my birth time?
For the progressed Moon, Sun and planets an approximate time will do. For the progressed 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.
What is the difference between progressions and transits?
Transits are where the planets actually are now, arriving from outside. Progressions are symbolic — nothing is literally there — and describe inner development. Most astrologers read both, and take seriously what the two agree on.
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 solar arc directions?
Solar arc moves every point in the chart by one and the same amount, the distance the progressed Sun has travelled. Progressions let each planet move at its own rate, including stations and the progressed lunation cycle. Solar arc is blunter and easier to date; progressions are subtler.
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