Secondary progressions: one day for one year

Secondary progressions rest on a symbolic equivalence: the sky of the day after your birth describes your first year, the sky of the day after that your second, and so on. It is often credited to Placidus de Titis, in the 17th century, who mainly popularised it: Vettius Valens already gives its principle in the 2nd century, and Kepler mentioned it before Placidus. Alan Leo then established it in the 20th century, and the technique has become one of the most widely used in modern astrology.

Since the Sun moves about one degree a day, the progressed Sun moves about one degree a year: it changes sign roughly every thirty years. The progressed Moon, much faster, crosses a sign in about two and a half years. These two rhythms give two scales of reading: the great season of life and the climate of the moment.

There are other techniques of symbolic motion. Primary directions rest on the daily rotation of the sky; tertiary progressions count one day for one lunar month. AstralPro uses secondary progressions, the most widespread today.

The engine calculates everything locally, with astronomical ephemerides, leaving nothing to the writing.

• Age is measured in tropical years of 365.2422 days, between your birth and the day the report is generated.
• The progressed date is your birth (in universal time) plus as many days as you have years, fractions included.
• Seven bodies are progressed: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto move too little in a few dozen days to be progressed.
• The Ascendant and the Midheaven move forward by solar arc: the arc travelled by the progressed Sun since its natal position is added to the natal MC, then the Ascendant is recalculated from that MC and the birth latitude.

Other methods move the angles forward differently, for example at the Sun's mean rate or according to the daily motion of the sky. AstralPro uses the solar arc, which gives slow angles, about one degree a year. Sign changes are calculated for each body from its own birth degree, never from a fixed age.

The engine then looks for aspects between the progressed points (the seven bodies, the AC and the MC) and fourteen natal points: the ten planets, the North Node, Chiron, the Ascendant and the Midheaven.

• Only the five major aspects count: conjunction, opposition, trine, square, sextile.
• The maximum orb is 1.5°. A progression moves slowly: beyond that, the contact is not considered active.
• A progressed angle is never compared with the other natal angle: that contact depends mostly on the birth latitude.
• Contacts are ranked by orb, tightest first; at equal orb, the one touching a more important body comes first.

The report keeps the five tightest contacts. When the progressed body has its own speed, the direction is given: an applying contact is tightening, a separating contact is coming apart. Progressed angles have no direction.

The chapter carries the title "Secondary Progressions" and the subtitle "Your inner sky, today". After a short introduction, four parts follow one another:

• "The progressed Sun": your great life phase, the current sign, the age at which you entered it, and the next shift.
• "The progressed Ascendant": if it has changed sign since your birth, the report points it out and describes the new shade of your way of approaching the world.
• "The progressed Moon": your emotional climate of the moment.
• "The contacts of the moment": one paragraph per contact, from the tightest to the widest, with the exact orb.

The chapter reads the life phase, not the underlying character, which remains the business of chapter I. The ages cited are checked automatically against the calculated data. The Book goes further, with the complete timeline of each body's sign changes.

For Camille Morel, AstralPro's example chart (fictional data), born on November 14, 1993 at 7:42 a.m., here are the progressions as of October 1, 2026, at 32 years and 11 months.

• Progressed Sun: 25°13' Sagittarius. Her natal Sun is in Scorpio; the progressed Sun has been in Sagittarius since the age of 8, and will enter Capricorn at around 37 years and 7 months.
• Progressed Ascendant: 9°17' Sagittarius. Her natal Ascendant is in Scorpio: it has changed sign, and the section points this out.
• Progressed Moon: 12°30' Aquarius, for a natal Moon in Scorpio.

Her five contacts of the moment: progressed MC sextile natal Mars (orb 0°04'), progressed Saturn square natal Pluto (0°25', separating), progressed MC sextile natal North Node (0°33'), progressed Jupiter sextile natal Chiron (0°35', applying), progressed Jupiter conjunction natal Mercury (0°40', separating). The two MC contacts have no direction, as with any progressed angle.

The symbol for the degree of her progressed Sun, taken from AstralPro's 360° wheel, emphasises forged discipline, mastered repetition and endurance: a nuance the chapter weaves into the reading of her great life phase.