Progressions, also called “secondary directions”, correspond to the psychological development of the individual which is established on a symbolic base which is generally “1 day = 1 year” (solar base), although other symbolic rhythms can be retained (in degree of solar arc in particular or on a lunar basis), including in reverse chronological direction with the “converse” secondary progressions (which have a more karmic nature).
Like Transits, progressions relate to the temporal factor of the astrological analysis and are often used as a basis for Astrological Forecasts.
However progressions relate to the individual psychological factor, whereas transits are partly more collective factors.
The progressions do not represent objective external events (as transits can sometimes represent), they only refer to subjective conditions, to the psychological feeling.
The progressions indicate either disabling blockages or potentialities for intelligent adaptation of the personality to events, but they are not those events.
“Even if we could know every step of fate, who could ever reveal the meaning of what the individual on his deathbed will have given to them ?”
Astrologer Dane Rudhyar in his book “Astrology of Personality”
Principle of Secondary Progressions
Direct Progressions principle is that the movement of the planetary configuration just after birth indicates the unfolding of the individual’s evolutionary periods, they specify the natural development pattern of the potential represented by the Birth Chart.
The progressions (like the Primary Directions) are based on the principle that birth is not a static, fixed act but an instant of a dynamic process that extends far beyond – upstream and downstream (direct and converse progressions) – from the date of birth (of the first breath). They are the study of planetary displacements and cusps of houses for the whole period “framing” the birth, generally on the analogical basis that one day is equal to 1 year, for example to study the 30th year, the direct progressed chart will be found 30 days after the birth, same time, same place of birth.
This base is retained on the symbolic principle that the rotation of the earth on itself in 1 day is equivalent to its rotation time in its orbital revolution around the Sun in 1 year.
These symbolic progressions remind us that the newborn is not born with a completed personality, but rather that its “radical” chart represents potentialities in the making, and they indicate us “when” certain things will actualized.
We perceive externally, physiologically, each phase of the changes that take place on the human body in the phenomena of growth when we are children, and of aging when we are adults. But in terms of the growth of individuality and spiritual maturity, how do we perceive the phases of their realization ?
Thanks to the progressions, the astrologer can discover in a person’s life the main decisive points and moments of crisis, he can determine the opportunities for action that will unblock and perhaps allow the individual to become emancipated.
Unlike the physiological process of growth which can be clearly defined anatomically (baby, young child, teenager, young adult, old man…), the inner development pattern is not standardized, but on the contrary totally personalized and different for everyone !
Thus an individual will be able to experience a certain facet of objective human consciousness, while another will experience another facet, each time according to his level of evolution.
Even if we all tend towards the same goal of final fulfillment and Individuation, the laws of nature mean that we are not all equal in the cycles of psychic development. These cycles are not identical and formatted.
Thus, for example, if we can arbitrarily say that the passage to adulthood takes place at the age of 18 (legal majority), the maturity of the psyche and the development of consciousness are not so easily subjectively measured ! We are not all at the same stage of development, and we do not advance, neither at the same speed, nor in the same direction, the principle of life is not linear…
Each phase of human development of the psyche conceals its own aspirations and conflicts, these phases are partly correlated to the unfolding of the physiological phases of a life (birth, teenagehood, maturity, old age, etc) but not necessarily. The progressions provide us with information on all of the tensions in this process.
Progressions and destiny
“Free will is the ability to do gladly that which I must do.”
Carl Gustav Jung
The progressions are therefore the internal clock of the psychic events, they indicate at which period of life will be integrated the fundamental contents of the birth chart, until then unconscious. The progressions determine and regulate, as it were, the growth process of the personality (Individuation) that follows from the “plan” that is the birth chart.
The birth chart brings us the knowledge of the existing latent psychic reality, the progressions indicate the course of their fulfillment, so they can be considered partly as the “destiny” of individual.
The destiny is simply the individuality in the making, the fulfillment that the progressions describe is the direct embodiment of one’s self-knowledge. This accomplishment depends directly on this knowledge and it will come to extend it as it’s completed : the more one knows oneself, the more one accomplishes oneself, and the more one accomplishes oneself, the more one knows oneself.
The progressions have a purely symbolic and subjective character, they do not announce objective events, but above all “psychic events” (blockages, complexes and psychological evolutions), the emergence of “something” to the conscious. This emergence often comes in Synchronicity with manifestations in personal and social life, but these are indicated by the Transits.
Progressions indicate that it’s time for a certain part of the psyche to be fulfilled, but they indicate the essence of the inner experience only !
Here all the richness of the astrological language comes into play, but also all the difficulties of interpretation, because the same type of event will be lived in as many different ways as there are people on earth !
Let’s take an example, how can be meant a marriage ?
It can of course appear as a period of love blossoming, or as a personal or social achievement, but if it was only that, it would be too simple ! 😉
It can also be felt as a fear or confusion, a deprivation of freedom, it can be a period that will bring back reflections, melancholy and nostalgia of a past, or anger and frustrations…
In order to properly analyze progressions, one must be careful not to be prejudiced. Any individual, can live any phase, any time ! (almost… at least that’s how I like to approach them)
Some will never reach maturity, neither at the age of 18 nor at 70, others will not start a family and will find the job that really corresponds to them only at 45 and the great love of their life at 60… in matters of destiny, all these cases are valid in the absolute ! because they correspond to phases of development of the psyche, and this development is in constant evolution, we are in perpetual change all in a different individualized way.
For this reason it’s important to never despair of our destiny if we do not conform to these patterns or these “psychological thresholds” fixed by society, once again they are only an arbitrary reflection, at most a mirror of the collective unconscious at a given moment, without more importance; the most important thing is to really become who we are ! too often, unfortunately, this kind of despair resulting from these social pressures leads the psyche to Depression or to forms of isolation…
If we can serenely welcome these changes, they are not only phases of development, but are especiallyfavorable to our process of Individuation, because very often they are the concrete material result of the fight we have led -sometimes since our birth- against our different Subpersonalities and their psychological projections (our Shadow, our Anima, our Animus…). It’s a form of soul liberation, but unfortunately not everyone is able to let these existential phases fully express themselves and accompany them.
Converse Progressions
They concern the prenatal course, the pregnancy phase, i.e. going back in time before birth in the same way as direct progressions : 1 degree = 1 day. They indicate the cyclic phases and the planetary influences which presided over this birth. It can be very interesting to study the mother’s birth chart for this period of pregnancy by cross-referencing the analyses either by Transits, or by a Synastry.
Of infrequent analysis, the converse progressions relate to the deep roots of the being, to the “Real Self”, to mysticism, to the metaphysical quest that will make seek to give meaning to things, or even lead into a Depression with the interrogation and questioning phases that accompany it.. For these different reasons they are called “karmics” (see Karma in astrology) because their unconscious roots which condition individual can go back “far away” sometimes…
As an astrological karmic study, it’s relevant to cross their analysis with major karmic and transcendental elements, of course Sun, Ascendant, transpersonal planets (Neptune, Uranus, Pluto), Black moon, Lunar Nodes.
As we are not all equal on the path of evolution and Individuation, the converse progressions will be very significant in some people and much less in others… but they should not be neglected.
Often, we find a certain complementarity between the converse and secondary progressions over a given period of time, with similar analogies… For example the secondary progressions may highlight an aspect of the progressed Sun on the natal Moon, while the converse progressions will be particularly active around the 4th house, or this kind of thing…
Secondary Progressions analysis
A progressed chart must be brought closer to the “radical” chart of your birth (and to a Solar Return chart, to have an idea of the evolution on the Transits side), the progressed chart has in itself no real meaning. Aspects that could be done or undone are of interest only if they are related to the ultimate purpose that the natal chart represents.
The progressed chart “adapts” to the needs of evolution present in the birth chart.
The interest of the progressions is to study the evolution of all the individual factors, related to the movement of the houses, especially the angles of the chart (Asc/Dsc, FC/MC), as well as to the personal planets.
The personal planets are the fastest (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars) and will quickly accentuate positively or negatively the existing links, especially with the collective and social planets (Jupiter and Saturn) and the transpersonal planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto), or by changing sign or house, producing interactions and awareness when activating certain sectors.
Any tilting into retrograde motion, or resuming direct forward of a planet (especially fast planets), in the course of a progression, must obviously be carefully analyzed accordingly.
In the progressions, the orb is brought back to 1° and the average influence duration in a planetary configuration analysis is 3 years, taking into account the speed of the personal planets (the duration varies according to the speed of the analysed planet and possible retrogradation phases).
The phases may overlap from one year to another :
- First year, orb 1° before the exact aspect, the evolution that is being prepared is in the making, possible crystallization of the psychic contents, phase of “pre-crisis” or “crisis”, accentuation or on the contrary rupture of the existing links in the radical chart (the birth chart)
- Second year, Exact aspect, full emergence of psychic content, “psychological explosion”, revelation… Official and active crisis phase.
- Third year, orb 1° after the exact aspect, integration phase of the new psychic contents, assessment, evolution, metamorphosis…
The Moon is a notable exception : its “step” (its progress) being much faster, its influence duration is shorter, but it remains decisive, it will be studied in the context of a “progressed lunation” by paying extreme attention to the phases of New Moon (progressed moon in conjunction to progressed sun, or to natal sun).
The study of progressions proves to be relevant when assessing the content of “environmental instability” that Transits (especially the background transits of slow planets) may produce, and if necessary, if there will be deep transformations, harmonization, good integration, etc.
Progressions should always be correlated with the corresponding Transits.; Transits modify the personal and social environment of the being, independently of its own innate potentialities, even if the reactions provoked by these transits will be directly conditioned by the fundamental structure of the being.
Progressions indicate by which means Transits and Birth chart can be integrated by the individual, i.e. how and when these new psychic contents are likely to be integrated in the native’s personality and life.
The subjective conditions described by the progressions will find, especially through the Transits, external events to “objectify itself”.
A progression does not happen by chance at a given moment, the individual gains by questioning himself as much on his Transits (or his Solar Return) as on the global content of his planetary cycles.
The progressions can indicate modifications in the relational feeling. They allow indeed to detect the modifications of the usual projections made by the individual, in particular that of the Shadow.
The progressions are also interesting to cross with a Synastry because they often indicate “updates” of Projections of “inner partner” , Anima and Animus.
In astrogenealogy, by studying a Synastry with close relatives (ascendants and descendants), progressions can allow to identify or confirm very sensitive “hereditary degrees”.
Help provided by the Progressions
Some very intuitive people, very attentive to their unconscious (often marked by Water as astrological element), are very sensitive to the progress of the progressions phases, and feel internally, sometimes precisely, the beginning and the end of the cycles. This intuitiveness can give them an advantage in the integration of the different evolution phases.
For people who are less intuitive or who want confirmation, the interest of the help that an astrologer can bring in these cycles does not lie so much in predicting that there will be a shock, nor why and how, but rather in understanding why there is this subjective reaction in the person, and if necessary, helping him/her to fully use this reaction in a constructive way in his/her evolution. The astrologer can here bring a depth of analysis thanks to the astrological tool.
The quality of this help is subject to multiple factors of the consultant’s life, environmental, social, cultural, familial, psychological… Hence the interest of an exchange, the study of the birth chart alone is not enough, the human being is not an isolated element at all, living in abstraction and nothingness, on the contrary a great part of the elements that we take over as individuals are elements belonging rather to our social being (work, family, friends…), but we must begin to identify them clearly in order to be able to replace them in the “whole”.
The purely materialistic vision that leads to believe that only the concrete reality delimited by birth and death exists in life is destructive, because the individual tends to confine himself simply to what he has acquired and closes himself off to what could be transcendental factors of fulfilment indicated in direct and even more in converse progressions…
Progressions can help to know and understand the main phases of psychological evolution that the individual will have to go through, and as such they have a significant value as an astrological and psychological technique of Individuation. They allow to place the being in the dynamic process of his birth and in the depth of his cycles…