Vettius Valens periods with L1, L2, L3 subdivisions.
Peaks and Loosing of the Bond included. Sub-300ms responses, Swiss Ephemeris precision.
ZR pairs naturally with the other time-lord techniques. Add
Real numbers from real traffic, not marketing slides
Every Valens technique exposed as JSON
The Hellenistic time-lord technique, exposed as a single REST endpoint
Zodiacal Releasing is a Hellenistic timing technique from Vettius Valens, written down in the 2nd century CE and revived in the 1990s by Robert Schmidt and Project Hindsight. Chris Brennan brought it back into mainstream astrology through The Astrology Podcast. The Zodiacal Releasing API turns this technique into a simple POST request. Send a birth chart, pick a lot like Spirit or Fortune, choose a date range, and get back a nested tree of L1, L2, and L3 periods. Peaks and Loosing of the Bond come flagged. The current-period endpoint returns what's active right now for any chart, perfect for app widgets that show 'what's happening today'.
ZR uses one of seven Hermetic Lots as an anchor, most often the Lot of Spirit for career and the Lot of Fortune for body and livelihood.
The sign holding that lot becomes the starting L1 period.
From there, periods unfold in zodiacal order using the planetary years assigned by Valens: Sun gets 19 years, Moon 25, Mercury 20, Venus 8, Mars 15, Jupiter 12, Saturn 27.
Each L1 contains nested L2 periods, each L2 contains L3, and so on down to L4 if you want daily precision.
The API takes a birth chart and a date window, runs the cascade, and returns the active periods at every level.
You can request up to four levels deep in one call.
The response is flat JSON, so you map straight into your UI without any post-processing.
Spirit and Fortune are the two big lots in Hellenistic timing.
Spirit relates to career, intentional action, and what you do.
Fortune relates to body, livelihood, and what happens to you.
The math comes from Paulus Alexandrinus: by day, Fortune is Asc + Moon - Sun, Spirit is Asc + Sun - Moon.
By night, the formulas flip.
Get the sect wrong and your lots land in the wrong sign, your L1 starts in the wrong place, and every downstream period is off.
The API handles sect detection from the birth chart, so you send the raw birth data and get the right answer.
The other five lots, Eros, Necessity, Courage, Victory, and Nemesis, follow the same pattern with different planetary inputs.
All seven are available via the lot parameter.
Loosing of the Bond, often abbreviated LOB, is the moment a ZR period chain reaches a sign and then 'jumps' to a non-adjacent sign instead of continuing in zodiacal order.
It happens when the next sign would land in the 11th place from where the current period sits, which traditionally signals a major shift.
Valens treated LOBs as turning points in a life narrative.
Modern Hellenistic astrologers like Chris Brennan use them to mark chapter breaks.
Computing LOB by hand means tracking the cumulative period structure and detecting the jump condition at each transition.
The API does this automatically and flags every Loosing of the Bond in the response with the trigger date and which level it occurred on.
Peaks, which happen when a period activates the sign holding the underlying lot, are flagged the same way.
The integration looks like any other REST call.
Authenticate with a Bearer token, POST to /api/v3/timing/zodiacal-releasing with subject data plus from_date, to_date, lot, and max_level.
The response is a single JSON document with the active periods.
For a 'today' widget, use /api/v3/timing/zodiacal-releasing/current and pass the subject plus an optional query_date.
You get back the active L1, L2, and L3 stack for that moment with chronocrator details.
Most apps cache the window response per user and refresh the current-period response daily.
The Business plan at 220,000 requests covers 7,300 daily users polling the current endpoint once per day.
Co-Star, Pattern, and Costar-style apps use this pattern to layer Hellenistic timing on top of transit-based feeds.
Building ZR in-house means licensing an ephemeris, implementing Hellenistic lot math, writing the cascade logic, detecting Loosing of the Bond, and validating against Valens' Anthology examples.
Realistic estimate: 3 to 6 weeks for one engineer, more if you also handle sect detection and edge cases like out-of-bounds Moon.
Most teams that try end up shipping L1-only and skipping LOB.
The API gives you the full implementation in a Bearer-token POST.
Swiss Ephemeris underneath means 1-arcsecond planetary precision.
Sect detection is built in.
Peaks and LOB are flagged.
The validation suite checks against published examples from Valens and Brennan.
You spend the saved time on the part users actually see: how the timing reads in your UI.
Add advanced time-lord features that transit-only apps cannot match. ZR makes the upgrade tier worth paying for.
Feed L1, L2, and L3 context plus Peak/LOB flags into the prompt so the model talks about real Hellenistic timing, not vibes.
Give working astrologers a ZR view their clients can read, with Peak and Loosing of the Bond markers on a timeline.
Generate 'chapters of life' content from real chart data. Each L1 is a chapter, each LOB is a turning point.
Teach Hellenistic astrology with live calculations from student-submitted charts instead of static textbook examples.
| Endpoint | POST /api/v3/timing/zodiacal-releasing |
| Current Endpoint | POST /api/v3/timing/zodiacal-releasing/current |
| Average Response Time | <300ms (window), <180ms (current) |
| Ephemeris | Swiss Ephemeris, 1-arcsecond precision |
| Lots Supported | spirit, fortune, eros, necessity, courage, victory, nemesis |
| Max Period Depth | L1, L2, L3, or L4 in one call |
| Peak Detection | Automatic, flagged per level |
| Loosing of the Bond | Automatic detection with trigger date |
| Sect Handling | Day/night detection from birth chart |
| Date Range | Any from_date to to_date window |
| Compare Mode | Optional compare_lot for side-by-side runs |
| Response Format | Flat JSON, no XML, no SOAP |
| Auth | Bearer token, standard HTTP |
| Rate Limits | Plan-based, no per-second throttling on paid tiers |
| Feature | Astrology API | Others |
|---|---|---|
| Response Time | <300ms | 2-4 seconds or no endpoint at all |
| Period Depth | L1 through L4 in one call | L1 only, or DIY recursion |
| Lots Supported | All 7 Hermetic Lots | Spirit only, sometimes Fortune |
| Peak Detection | Flagged automatically | Compute it yourself |
| Loosing of the Bond | Detected and flagged | Not exposed |
| Current-Period Endpoint | Yes, dedicated /current | Reuse window endpoint, filter client-side |
| Sect Handling | Automatic | Pass a day/night flag manually |
| Price | $11/mo starter, $37 most popular | $49-199/mo or self-host |
Calculate the Lot of Spirit, the default anchor for ZR career timing
The body and livelihood lot, used as the second ZR anchor
The 12-year house cycle, often paired with ZR for context
Persian planetary time-lords, complementary to ZR
Egyptian and Valens decennials, another time-lord layer
All 11 timing endpoints in one reference
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