Tasyir (Directing)

tah-SEER

arabic: تسيير (Tasyir)

Definition

Tasyīr — Arabic for "setting out" or "dispatch" — is the Arabic-Persian technique of moving a point of the chart forward through the zodiac at a steady rate, to find the next aspect or boundary that will mark an event in life. The point moved is most often the hīlāj, the releaser chosen to stand for the life-force. Benjamin Dykes glosses tasyīr as the Arabic name for the Hellenistic technique called aphesis (Greek for "release" or "sending forth"), and the same technique that medieval Latin called directio — what we now know as primary directions.

In Tradition

In Persian and Arabic-medieval astrology, tasyīr is the leading technique for timing — both length of life and when particular events fall. Dykes's glossary to Persian Nativities lists it among the core Pahlavi-through-Arabic technical terms, paired with hīlāj (the released significator), kadhkhudhāh (its bound-lord and giver of years), and jarbakhtar (the bound-lord met along the way). Bonatti gives the technique the longest tractates of Liber Astronomiae Vol. XI, covering its use in both birth charts and yearly revolutions.

In Practice

Once you have the hīlāj — the strongest of the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Lot of Fortune, or Pre-Natal Syzygy, picked by sect and dignity — you move it forward through the zodiac, counting one degree of right ascension as roughly one solar year of life. The bounds (also called terms, the small subdivisions of each sign) crossed along the way each hand over a bound-lord, the jarbakhtar or chronocrator (time-lord) for those years. Aspects formed with promittors (the planets the direction reaches) mark particular events, and you read the nature of each event from the planets and houses involved. Whether each bound-lord is dignified or afflicted colors the years it rules. Because the movement depends on right ascension and semi-arc — not on ecliptic longitude alone — the figures are specific to the place and time of birth. Tasyīr is the Arabic-Persian counterpart of the Greek aphesis used by Ptolemy and Valens, and of the medieval-Latin directio set out at length by Bonatti.

Historical Origin

Tasyīr is attested across the surviving Arabic and Pahlavi astrological corpus — in Dorotheus of Sidon (Carmen Astrologicum, 1st-century-CE Greek; 8th-century Pahlavi via the 9th-century Arabic of 'Umar al-Tabari), Masha'allah, Abu Ma'shar, Al-Biruni's Kitāb al-Tafhīm (1029), and the Persian Nativities corpus that Benjamin Dykes translated from 'Umar, Abu Bakr, and Masha'allah. Its Greek ancestor, aphesis, appears in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos III and Valens' Anthologiae; the Latin counterpart, directio, is treated at length in Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae Vol. XI Part III (13th century).

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading