← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 205/235
Secondary progression
What it is
Secondary progression rests on a simple equation: one day after birth stands for one year of life. The sky as it was ten days after you were born is read as the picture for your tenth year; the sky thirty days after, for your thirtieth. Nicholas deVore defines it as the aspects formed by the planets' motion on the successive days after birth, each day counted as a year.
Unlike a transit, a progression is symbolic: the progressed planets are not where the planets are now, but where they were on that early day.
How it is computed
To find the progressed chart for a date, count the years (and fraction of a year) since birth, add that many days to the birth moment, and look up the planets' positions for that instant in the ephemeris. The progressed angles come from casting a chart for that moment at the birthplace. The progressed positions are then read against the natal chart, through the natal houses.
What moves, and how fast
At a day for a year, the fast bodies become the meaningful movers:
- The progressed Moon moves about one degree a month, so it crosses a sign in roughly two and a half years and goes round the whole chart in about twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Its sign and house are often read as the emotional tone of the current stretch of life.
- The progressed Sun moves about a degree a year, changing sign roughly once every thirty years.
- The progressed lunation cycle — the progressed Moon's phase relative to the progressed Sun — takes about thirty years from one progressed New Moon to the next. Dane Rudhyar read it as the large frame of a life's chapters: a new impulse released around the progressed New Moon, coming to clarity around the progressed Full Moon.
- Mercury, Venus and Mars move a little; the outer planets barely at all, though a progressed planet changing direction is noted.
How it is read
A progression reading looks at the state at a given moment (where the progressed Moon, Sun and angles stand, and which lunation phase is under way) and at the events in a period: progressed planets changing sign, progressed lunations, and progressed planets coming to an exact aspect with natal points. These are read as inner developments — a gradual shift in what a person is ready for — more than outward events, and are often paired with transits, which tend to show when the outer world answers.