← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 218/235
Firdaria
What it is
Firdaria (singular firdār; Latin alfridaria) comes from a Persian word for a period of time. It is one of the time-lord techniques: a life is handed out, chapter by chapter, to the planets, and for as long as a planet holds its chapter its condition in the birth chart is read as setting the tone.
The system reached the Arabic tradition from Sasanian Persia and was set down by Abū Maʿshar in his work on the revolutions of nativities; through Guido Bonatti it passed into Latin practice.
How it is worked out
Each planet has a fixed number of years:
| Ruler | Years |
|---|---|
| Sun | 10 |
| Venus | 8 |
| Mercury | 13 |
| Moon | 9 |
| Saturn | 11 |
| Jupiter | 12 |
| Mars | 7 |
| North Node | 3 |
| South Node | 2 |
They add up to 75 years; after that the sequence begins again.
The order depends on sect. A day birth starts with the Sun and runs as in the table: Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, then the two nodes. A night birth starts with the Moon and follows the same circle from there: Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, then — in Abū Maʿshar's arrangement — the nodes, and finally Sun, Venus and Mercury. Some later authors, Bonatti among them, keep the nodes at the very end for night births as well; the two versions agree for the first thirty-nine years and differ after that.
Each planetary period is cut into seven equal sub-periods. The first belongs to the period's own planet; the rest follow in the old "Chaldean" order of the planets, descending from Saturn through Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. The Sun's ten years, for example, fall into seven pieces of about seventeen months: Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars. The nodes' short periods are not subdivided.
How it is read
The lord of the period describes the broad weather of the chapter; the sub-lord the season within it. A well-placed Jupiter tends to make its twelve years a time of growth and support; a Saturn in difficulty may ask more patience in its eleven. The pairing matters most: a Venus sub-period inside a Saturn period is read through what Venus and Saturn have to do with each other in the birth chart — their aspects, their reception, the houses they rule.
The medieval astrologers did not use firdaria alone. They read it beside the annual profection and the solar return, and gave weight to a theme when two or three of these agreed. A firdār names whose voice is loudest in a stretch of years; it inclines the reading of those years, and the person still lives them.