Skip to content
Astral Atlas
Wiki concept · Timing & comparison

Decennials

Also called Decennial · Decennial periods · 10-year 9-month distribution

In Vettius Valens's Anthology, a way of cutting a life into periods of 10 years 9 months, which is 129 months, the total of the seven stars' minimum periods counted in months. The first period goes to the sect light, the Sun in a day birth and the Moon in a night birth, if it is well situated, and the other six stars follow in the order they stand in the chart. Inside each period the same seven stars take months, and inside each months-period they take days by a rule on which Valens's own texts differ.

Explore Timing & comparison →Read the Annual profections / zodiacal releasing / firdaria guide →
In this entry

Word origin · etymology

English decennial, from Latin decennium, a period of ten years (decem, ten, and annus, year); astrologers use the plural for Valens's periods of 10 years 9 months.

The periods last 10 years 9 months, a little more than ten years. Mark Riley's English translation names the method by its length, in the chapter heading The 10-Year, 9-Month Distribution of Propitious and Impropitious Times, and does not use the word decennial for it. No Greek term is given here because none was checked in a primary text.

Online Etymology Dictionary, decennial ↗Vettius Valens, Anthologies, translated by Mark Riley: Book VI chapters 5K;6P to 7 (the 10-year, 9-month distribution) and the Book IX section headed A Fifth-Century Addition ↗

How we know · epistemology

Ancient textual method with disagreeing rules and printed slips

The 129-month period, the starting luminary and the order of the stars are stated in Valens's Book VI, which works one example in the Egyptian calendar and says he discovered, tested and put to use a distribution that had been discarded casually; in Book IV (chapter 11) he lists a distribution by the dodekatemoria, which total 10 years 9 months, among the methods that falsify the results. For the days inside a months-period his text gives rules that name different stars for the same day, a later addition in Book IX gives another, and the example and the table of shares contain printed slips that the site's check lists. No text read says what follows the seventh period, so any date and any end of the sequence is a convention of the calculating tool. Valens and the Book IX author report that the method worked on nativities, but they give anecdotal cases, not a test that anyone could repeat, and the site treats those statements as the tradition's own claims.

Vettius Valens, Anthologies, translated by Mark Riley: Book VI chapters 5K;6P to 7 (the 10-year, 9-month distribution) and the Book IX section headed A Fifth-Century Addition ↗

Explore it in your atlas

Open the Decennials tool →See which star governs each stretch of your life, its months and its days, in Valens’s periods of 10 years 9 months, with dated sub-periods and sourced notes.

Connected concepts

Read alongside this entry

Zodiacal releasingFirdariaSectAnnual profectionAphetaChronocrator

Terms used in this explanation

SunMoon
Mentioned in 2 other entries
Apheta →Chronocrator →

Sources & provenance

Use the citations beside each section to distinguish a calculation convention, a historical teaching and an editorial example.

Find these sources across the wiki →

  1. Vettius Valens, Anthologies, translated by Mark Riley: Book VI chapters 5K;6P to 7 (the 10-year, 9-month distribution) and the Book IX section headed A Fifth-Century Addition ↗
  2. Online Etymology Dictionary, decennial ↗