Your zodiacal releasing

Your life has chapters, and some of them rise higher than others. Zodiacal releasing, the timing technique of the 2nd century astrologer Vettius Valens, releases a life sign by sign from the Lot of Spirit or the Lot of Fortune. It shows the chapter you are living now, the season inside it, the peaks when life tends to come into the light, and the turning point when a chapter looses its bond. Enter your birth date, time and place to see yours.

What is zodiacal releasing?

Picture your life as a long thread unwinding from a single point in your chart. That point is a Lot, a sensitive place found by measuring between the Sun, the Moon and your Rising sign. From the moment you are born, the thread is let out one sign at a time. Each sign holds it for a fixed number of years, then hands it to the next sign of the zodiac.

The Greek word Valens used is aphesis, a letting go or release, and the English name, zodiacal releasing, comes from its modern translators. Each stretch of years is a chapter of your life, and the sign that holds it gives the chapter its character.

Spirit and Fortune

Most astrologers release from one of two Lots, and each tells a different story.

The Lot of Spirit follows what you do with your life: your work, your will, your ambitions and the path you choose. When people speak about zodiacal releasing for career, this is the Lot they mean.

The Lot of Fortune follows what life brings you: your body, your health, your money and your circumstances. It is the other side of the same life.

By day, Fortune is measured from the Sun to the Moon and Spirit from the Moon to the Sun, each counted on from your Rising sign. By night they change places. Hali works out day or night from where the Sun stood against your horizon, and shows you both stories.

How long each chapter lasts

Every sign holds the years of the planet that rules it. Most are old cycles of return that ancient astronomers knew well: Venus redraws the same pattern in the sky every eight years, Jupiter circles the zodiac in about twelve, Saturn in about thirty, and after nineteen years the Moon’s phases fall on the same calendar dates again. Saturn rules two signs and gives them different years, 27 for Capricorn and 30 for Aquarius, and the reason for the difference is still debated.

Sign	Ruler	Years
Aries	Mars	15
Taurus	Venus	8
Gemini	Mercury	20
Cancer	the Moon	25
Leo	the Sun	19
Virgo	Mercury	20
Libra	Venus	8
Scorpio	Mars	15
Sagittarius	Jupiter	12
Capricorn	Saturn	27
Aquarius	Saturn	30
Pisces	Jupiter	12

Chapters, seasons and spells

Zodiacal releasing works in levels, and every level is a twelfth of the one above. Each level begins in the sign of the period that holds it and runs on through the zodiac in order.

Level 1, chapters

Counted in years of 360 days. A Leo chapter lasts 19 years of 360 days, about 18.7 calendar years.

Level 2, seasons

Counted in months of 30 days. A Leo season lasts 19 months, about 1.6 years.

Level 3, spells

Counted in units of two and a half days. A Leo spell lasts 47.5 days.

Level 4, hours

Counted in units of five hours. At this finest level, Leo lasts 95 hours, about 4 days.

Hali shows the first three. Your chapter is the long story, your season is the part of it in the light now, and your spell is the finest grain, a few weeks to a couple of months.

Peak periods

Not every season of a chapter carries the same weight. The signs that matter most are those angular to the Lot of Fortune: the sign of Fortune itself and the 4th, 7th and 10th signs from it. When releasing reaches one of these signs, astrologers who use the technique find that life tends to quicken and come into view. These are the peak periods.

The 10th sign from Fortune is counted the highest peak of all, the top of the arc, when what you have been working toward tends to be seen. Peaks are not promises of good news. They are times when more happens, and more of it shows.

The loosing of the bond

The twelve signs hold 211 months, a little over 17 years, when you add up all their seasons. The chapters of Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Capricorn and Aquarius last longer than that. When the seasons of a long chapter have passed through every sign and there is still time left, the next season does not return to the chapter’s own sign. It leaps to the sign opposite.

Valens called this the loosing of the bond. Astrologers who use zodiacal releasing watch it as one of the great turning points of a life, a change of direction that the years before it were quietly preparing.

How to read your releasing

Start with your chapter from Spirit. Its sign sets the tone of years, and its ruling planet, where it sits in your birth chart, says a great deal about how the chapter tends to go. Then look at your season. When it falls in a peak sign, expect more to happen, and more of it in public. When it falls in a quieter sign, the work goes on behind the scenes.

Then switch to Fortune and read your body and circumstances the same way. Lay your chapters beside your life chapters and your profection year, and you hold three of the oldest clocks in astrology at once.

Where does zodiacal releasing come from?

Vettius Valens was an astrologer from Antioch who worked in Alexandria in the 2nd century. His Anthology is one of the largest books of astrology to survive from the ancient world, full of real charts from his own clients and students, and Book IV sets out the method of releasing.

The technique fell out of use and was all but forgotten until the 1990s, when Robert Schmidt and Project Hindsight began translating the Greek texts into English again, and Chris Brennan’s teaching made it one of the most studied techniques of the revival of traditional astrology.

How Hali works out your releasing

• Your Lots of Spirit and Fortune come from your Sun, Moon and Rising sign, from the same astronomy engine behind every Hali birth chart.
• Day or night comes from whether the Sun stood above your horizon at birth.
• Chapters begin at the moment of your birth and are counted in years of 360 days, seasons in months of 30 days and spells in units of two and a half days.
• When a chapter outlasts all twelve seasons, Hali looses the bond and leaps the seasons to the opposite sign.
• Peaks are measured from the sign of your Lot of Fortune, whichever Lot you release from.
• With a rough birth time, Hali tells you if a Lot sits close to the edge of a sign.