Hello all,
I hope you’re taking good care of yourselves and your folks as we sit in the strange churn of eclipse season. Eclipses are fascinating centers of Astrology’s history. There are so many ways they’ve been discussed throughout the tradition. I’ve created a short video to illustrate some mundane eclipse timing techniques. We will use last year’s total solar eclipse in Aries as an example. This is a public post. Feel free to share it with folks you think might be interested. I hope you enjoy!
(PS- I am writing this PS on the afternoon of 09/10. I recorded and wrote all of this before the events of today & had this posting scheduled to send. I'm going to post it as scheduled, but recognize that it's an intense day. This material contains references to violence, death, war, etc. If you're feeling disregulated, skip this post or save reading it for another time.)
LINK TO VIDEO
PROCESSES OF TIME / THE ARIES ECLIPSE IN APRIL 2024
We so often get stuck in the immediacy of the present. Astrology as it currently circulates can sometimes exacerbate this. We think everything happens in the right, now, now, now! Today’s lunation, today’s transit, the exact moment of today’s eclipse—as if each celestial event fully reveals itself on the day it occurs.
But astrology’s timing works differently. It unfolds across longer arcs, through stages of emergence, ripening, and intensification. Very few things in the heavens arrive whole and complete at once.
Even a transit, which we tend to mark by a single date on the calendar, is always a process. We know it simply by being alive. You don’t just wake up one morning and suddenly get married, or begin a new career, or hold a newborn in your arms. These moments are preceded by long periods of preparation, contemplation, and becoming. They are lived into.
This is especially true for many timing protocols used on eclipses. Their impacts last well beyond the moment of occurrence. They linger. They echo. They spiral and unfold long after the exact moment the shadow was cast, revealing their meanings in ways we only begin to grasp as the years pass.
In the video linked HERE I share a method for working with last year’s total solar eclipse in Aries. The Aries eclipse was visible across the United States and was a total eclipse. That emphasizes a visible and potent impact on the US. We are in a moment that a 2nd-century Hellenistic astrologer, Ptolemy, would call the “intensification period.”
I want to make a small but crucial disclaimer. My own interest in astrology is as much historical as predictive. I do not claim to know which techniques “work” in any final sense. I have only worked with these techniques for a few years. I share them in the spirit of curiosity.
I also share them with an agenda! My constant aim with astrology is to reframe my thinking about time. There is something profoundly enlivening about returning to the methods of our astrological ancestors. They give us fresh ways to think about time as complex overlapping processes, not discrete events. These techniques broaden our understanding of how experience, meaning, and impact evolve. Even if none of these techniques “work” I treasure the way they change my thinking about time.
Most of this work is based on Dr. Benjamin Dykes series, Astrology of the World. The eclipse material can be found in Astrology of the World Vol 1: The Ptolemaic Inheritance.
THE ARIES ECLIPSE OF 2024
The total solar eclipse of April 2024, visible across the United States, is of particular significance. Its visibility and totality suggest an impact that touches the nation directly. In Washington, D.C., the eclipse occured with Leo on the ascendant, emphasizing the Sun as central in the configuration.
The Sun at 19° Aries had just moved beyond its maximum degree of exaltation. Its had just passed the height of dignity when it was eclipsed. This image of light obscured at the very point of power suggests challenges to the solar principle: authority, leadership, and visibility. With the eclipse also near the Midheaven, the themes of rulers and figureheads are underscored.
Falling in the ninth place, the eclipse extends its relevance to law, courts, religion, higher education, and foreign affairs. Its ruler, Mars, was joined closely with Saturn in the eighth, a place associated with death, taxation, and shared resources. In mundane terms, this may speak to debt, supply chains, or systems of finance. Mars, as a morning star, carries additional force in Ptolemy’s doctrine.
We can add in some general potential topics connected to an Aries eclipse. Aries connects to four-footed animals. Aries is one of the northern terrestrial signs. Ptolemy connects those signs to earthquakes. Aries is an equinoctial sign. Ptolemy connects that to sacred rites and worship, weather, and crops.
Taken together, the picture is not reducible to a single prediction. Instead, we see a cluster of recurring motifs: the eclipse of power at its height, the vulnerability of leaders, institutions of law and religion, and the disruptive role of martial forces, issues of financial and collective burdens, and death. It is in these overlapping themes that the character of the Aries eclipse begins to emerge.
TIMING TECHNIQUES IN TETRABIBLOS
Ptolemy’s protocols in Book II of the Tetrabiblos teach us that the “life” of an eclipse stretches over years, with periods of duration that have a beginning and intensifications. Using these techniques, the beginning period was Aug 8th, 2024 - Dec 8th, 2024. We are only now entering the heart of the intensifying effects.
Let's look at an excerpt from the Tetrabiblos to work through the April eclipse.
How many equinoctial hours the obscuration of the eclipse lasts in each.
For when these data are examined, if it is a solar eclipse, we shall understand that the predicted event lasts as many years as the equinoctial hours which we discover, and if a lunar eclipse, as many months.
The nature of the beginnings and of the more important intensifications of the events, however, are deduced from the position of the place of the eclipse relative to the centres.
For if the place of the eclipse falls on the eastern horizon, this signifies that the beginning of the predicted event is in the first period of four months from the time of the eclipse and that its important intensifications lies in the first third of the entire period of its duration;
if on the mid‑heaven, in the second four months and the middle third;
if upon the western horizon, in the third four months and the final third.
The beginnings of the particular abatements and intensifications of the event we deduced from the conjunctions which take place in the meantime, if they occur in the significant regions or the regions in some aspect to them, and also from the other movements of the planets, if those that effect the predicted event are either rising or setting or stationary or at evening rising, and are at the same time in some aspect to the zodiacal signs that hold the cause; for planets when they are rising or stationary produce intensifications in the events, but when setting, and under the rays of the sun, or advancing at evening, they bring about an abatement.
Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 2.10, trans Robbins
The Aries Solar Eclipse of 2024
Ptolemy’s Eclipse Timing Key
We will focus on Washington DC today. I have, in previous posts, used the time for the total eclipse which is a bit longer. HERE'S A LINK TO SEE THAT Scroll to the section on the Aries Eclipse to see that timimg worked out.
Washington DC - 2.5 hours
Washington DC= 2 years 6 months
Total relevant timing window: August 2024 - Feb 2027
BEGINNING / second 4 months of year / August 8th, 2024–December 8th, 2024
Beginning: August 8th, 2024–December 8th, 2024
INTENSIFICATION/ 2nd 3rd of timing / June 8th/ Oct 8th through April / Aug 2026
Intensification DC: 2nd ⅓ of 2.5 years = 10 months
10 months from Aug 8th 2024 -Dec 8th 2024 =June 8th, 2025 - Oct 8th, 2025
Intensification lasts: June 8th/ Oct 8th through April / Aug 2026
UPCOMING TEACHING
Friends of Dorotheus: Friends of Dorotheus is a group I offer through Patreon. I began it back in 2023, and it quickly became a treasured part of my work.
This fall, we will start with a fresh look at the fundamentals of advanced traditional timing techniques. We’ll spend the year learning about circumambulations/distributions, zodiacal releasing, primary directions, profections, and so much more. If you’d like to study with me, if you want to do a deep dive into traditional techniques, or if you simply want an opportunity to read key astrology source texts with a like-minded community, this is a special group. You can dive in now or join the community in the fall.
You’ll get the most out of FOD if you already have a solid foundation in traditional astrology and you’re ready to refine your skills, enhance your interpretive power, and build lasting connections with fellow practitioners.
We will restart the timing material on October 19th at 10:30 am PT. Class meetings happen once a week through Zoom. They alternate between Mondays at 9am PT and Fridays at 12pm PT. We have a once-a-month casual meetup on Sundays. If you can’t attend the live sessions, everything is recorded.
$20/month low-income/wealth (with access to all other Patreon content)
$50/month regular price (with access to all other Patreon content)
$90/month community sustainment price (with access to all other Patreon content)
If you’d like to give the gift of astrological learning, you can now also gift memberships through Patreon.
This will be my last year offering this level of teaching at this accessible price.
Quotes from Members
Larry is hands down one of the most knowledgeable astrologers I know, and one of the very few who cares about teaching. She has a talent for making complex concepts and techniques approachable and digestible.
Joining Friends of Dorotheus is an absolute must for any astrologer looking to explore the minds of the ancients and be in community with an eclectic group of passionate students. Larry has an incredible ability to make these ancient astrological texts accessible and makes them applicable to our lives in the 21st century. The wide variety of techniques we have explored in this group has improved my usage of astrology as a tool ten-fold, and the individuals in this group have enriched my life beyond the astrology. No traditional astrological study is complete without Friends of Dorotheus!
MORE TEACHING
Hellenistic Considerations of the Moon: I’m thrilled to be co-teaching a virtual course this fall with a wonderful friend and fellow astrologer, Chris Burick. Sign up early if you know you want to attend. Kepler offers an advanced pricing discount too. Class begins October 26, 2025 and lasts for five weeks. We meet on Sundays from 9am-11am.
