Jarzāmān (Cutting-Point)
Definition
The jarzāmān is the killing degree — the 'cutting-point' or destroyer — in the Persian-Arabic length-of-life apparatus. It is the place a directed releaser (hīlāj) meets a malefic by body or close ray and life is cut off. The name comes from the Pahlavi 'hour of the time' (zamān), Latinized in transmission as arantehar. It is one of the four technical components of the longevity judgment, alongside the hīlāj (the point directed forward), the kadhkhudhāh (the giver-of-years), and the jarbakhtar (the bound-lord governing each stretch).
In Tradition
In the Persian-Arabic length-of-life tradition the jarzāmān is the anaireta — the malefic contact that terminates life by primary direction. It is the third part of Masha'allah's longevity apparatus, working with the released significator and the planet that fixes the years promised: where the direction runs into the deadly ray or body, life is cut off. Whenever the directed releaser reaches an unmitigated malefic, that contact carries the force of the cutting-point.
In Practice
After you have found the releaser by the standard sect-and-placement cascade and the planet that gives the count of years, direct it forward through the zodiac at roughly one degree of right ascension per year of life. Watch for the contacts that act as the cutting-point: the directed point entering the body of a malefic, or meeting a malefic's close square or opposition by ascensions, especially when no benefic ray mitigates it. Aspects of Saturn or Mars to the directed degree of the Ascendant, Sun, or Moon, and ingress into a malefic's bound without a benefic's aid, are the contacts to weigh. The year-count reached at the final unmitigated malefic contact is read as the predicted length of life. Mitigation by a benefic ray — Jupiter's or Venus's aid — can reduce a fatal configuration to non-fatal distress rather than an end. Keep the jarzāmān distinct from the jarbakhtar, which merely colors the quality of each period the releaser crosses; it is the terminating contact alone.
Historical Origin
The jarzāmān is set out in Masha'allah's Book of Aristotle, in the length-of-life chapters (Book III), where it is named alongside the hīlāj, kadhkhudhāh, and jarbakhtar as one component of the longevity apparatus, with a worked Dorothean example terminating at a malefic's body. The doctrine, of Pahlavi-Persian origin, is preserved in Benjamin N. Dykes's Persian Nativities (Vol I), which glosses the term and traces the underlying bound-direction technique to Dorotheus's Carmen Astrologicum.