The ages of life in the chart

Tradition divides a life according to the seven planets, in the order of their orbital periods — from the fastest to the slowest. Ptolemy gives the best-known version.

The seven ages

Moon — 0 to 4 years. Growth, the body, complete dependence.
Mercury — 4 to 14. Language, school, learning.
Venus — 14 to 22. Affection, attraction, first attachments.
Sun — 22 to 41. Standing, office, the middle of life.
Mars — 41 to 56. Confrontation, self-assertion, the fight for what has been achieved.
Jupiter — 56 to 68. Prestige, perspective, withdrawal from the fray.
Saturn — from 68 on. Limitation, taking stock, old age.

The division is not arbitrary: it follows the orbital periods and the Chaldean order. And it has stayed remarkably plausible, although life expectancy has doubled since Ptolemy.

What it does — and what it does not

It is a general scheme. It applies to everyone alike, and therefore says nothing about a single person that would set them apart from anyone else.

Its value lies elsewhere: it says which planet is chiefly called upon in a stage of life. And the condition of that planet in the birth chart is individual. A well-placed Mars turns the years between forty and fifty-six into something different from what a Mars in fall makes of them.

What gives individual dates

The real timing techniques, and they contradict the scheme regularly:

Firdaria — planetary periods that run in a different order for a day birth and a night birth.
Profections — one sign per year of life; the ruler of the sign reached becomes the lord of the year.
Primary directions — one degree per year, with datable contacts.
The solar return — the colouring of a single year.

And the rule holds here too: what only one technique shows is not reported. See the quality of a stretch of time.

A word on the “levels of development”

The modern notion that a sign or a planet can be lived at a higher or a lower level does not belong to the tradition. It comes out of twentieth-century astrology.

The objection is a practical one: it cannot be tested. Anyone who can always say that a person is living their Mars “undeveloped” can explain any behaviour at all with the same interpretation — and an interpretation that explains everything distinguishes nothing.