Periphora

Definition

Periphora (Greek περιφορά, "circuit, revolution") is the carrying-around of the heavens — the wheeling paths of the planets as they revolve. In Greenbaum's reading it is the bridge-word between Plato's cosmic imagery and the natal chart: the particular circuit of heaven into which a given soul is set at birth.

In Tradition

Greenbaum draws periphora from Plotinus, who sets the soul within "a particular configuration and circuit of heaven" and has it pushed about by that revolving sky. She reads this as Plotinus's own bridge from Plato's Myth of Er — the spindle, the Fates, the revolving planetary paths — to the configuration of planets at the moment of birth. The natal chart becomes the analogue of the revolution into which each soul is placed.

In Practice

This is a philosophical rather than a calculating term, so it shapes how you frame a chart more than anything you measure. Periphora invites you to see a nativity not as a static snapshot but as one slice of a turning cosmos — the particular revolution of the heavens a soul was set within. Read alongside the Myth of Er imagery, it gives the chart a place in a larger picture: the wheeling paths above, and one soul's allotted position among them.

Historical Origin

The term is treated in Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology (chapter 7, §1.1, p. 271), in her reading of Plotinus (Enneads II, 3.9) against Plato's Myth of Er.

Etymology

Origin: Greek. Meaning: circuit; revolution; a carrying-around.

Further Reading

• Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology
• Chris Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology