Spiritual Astrology: How to know if you have the “wrong” birth time

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This title sounds a bit presumptuous does it not? Well forgive me, but I intend to back up my assertions below. This is a post based on a comment a reader made on the last post, which has to do with Rectifying the Astrology Chart, or finding the correct birth time when either it is A) unknown or B) so far off, some information is not making sense when doing the interpretation on the given time.

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When rectifying the birth time, below are some aspects which we (astrologers) use to know when there should (read nearly always is) be a significant event in the person’s life; therefore, if you have one, or better yet, more than one of these aspects come to pass and you barely blink, then there is the chance your birth time is off. Or, if the interpreted area of life is affected, but it always seems to be about say, six months off (late), then a discrepancy might exist. Also, when I say significant event, it usually means a physical event (a marriage, a move across the country, becoming a monk or nun, getting a really bad flu which requires hospital treatment, car accident, other freak incident, etc). Here are the aspects:

When major planets cross the Ascendant or MidHeaven: Pluto, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter

When the Progressed MidHeaven makes a hard aspect to any personal planet: the Chart Ruler (the planet that rules the Rising sign), the Sun Ruler (the planet which rules the Sun sign), the Sun, the Moon, Mercury or Mars (when it makes a hard aspect to Venus, usually a relationship is arising, affected or otherwise “up” at that time).

When the Solar Arc Ascendant makes a hard aspect to any of the personal planets mentioned above.

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This list above, with about fifteen or more potential aspects in it, is a good start for Timing Events which come about based on an accurate birth time. Note, not included in this list are when Transiting planets cross Natal planets – this is because this will happen regardless of whether your birth time is five minutes off or twenty-four hours off. Transiting Saturn is going to cross Natal Mars about the same time for someone born 6/24/81 versus someone born 6/25/81. So conversely, if one or more of the listed-above Timing Aspects happen, comes exact and nothing happens for several months or more, then it might be worth looking at your birth time again.

If you happen to be younger, say born after 1980, then your birth time is more than likely accurate. More parents nowadays are making an effort to get the right moment of time recorded when their baby takes its first breath. But in the past, especially when major interventions were used to deliver the baby (general anesthesia or it was a breach birth and the baby needed to be resuscitated, etc), the doctors and nurses are much more focused on making sure the baby and mother are alive and surviving than being concerned about getting the first-breath-moment accurate, and for good reason! Therefore hospital birth certificates can be off by as much as 45 minutes, although they tend to be closer than that.

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When someone gives me the birth certificate time or especially if they tell me what their mother told them, and they give me a nice round number, “Oh, I was born at 5 PM.” Or, “my birth time, right, my Mom said it was 6:30 AM.” When I see either of these round endings, I am curious about and open to the birth time being a bit off when I do the interpretation. Usually I will get some major life events from the person just to confirm that 5 pm is the right number. No use doing a lot of prep work when it might need to be adjusted anyway… Generally though, you can back track using the above list (or other aspects which I did not mention) and get two or three major life events to corroborate their birth time and once it looks close (within a couple degrees, which translates to within ten minutes) I proceed with the full interpretation.

And, as I hope I mentioned previously, not knowing your birth time is okay. We can cast what is called the Solar Chart with the Sun as the Ascendant which puts a major focus on the solar element of the chart, but it still yields decent results. So don’t fret if you don’t know you birth time. You can still glean a lot of information from the Transiting and Progressed planets in aspect to your Natal planets.

Why does it matter how accurate the birth time is? Every four minutes, a new degree of the Ascending (Rising) sign changes. So at 1:00 pm, 19 degrees of Aquarius is rising on the Eastern horizon. At 1:04, it will be 20 degrees and so on. Therefore, if the birth time is off by 30 minutes – that is seven or eight degrees difference between a given Ascendant and the actual one, at 45 minutes it gets to 11 degrees plus. As you can probably tell, if you care to do the math, a new sign rises on average of every two hours (4 minutes per degree, 30 degrees in a sign, 120 minutes = two hours). Therefore, if you only know, “well my mother said I was born after dark.” This is a great starting point, but this is almost like being told, “go find my car, I parked it somewhere in this small city.” Uhh… Yes, of course you would find it given enough time… 🙂

Actually, being told that there is a four to six degree window in which someone is born is MUCH better than trying to get someone’s birth information when you don’t even know what day they were born on. I maintain a Tibetan Buddhist practice, so I have a number of friends who are apart of the exiled Tibetan diaspora. And when it comes to their birth info, it seems they are concerned with two things: 1) which season they were born in and 2) the year in which they were born. The Tibetan calendar always has an element mixed with the animal of that year, for instance, they might say, “I was born in the year of the fire-horse,” or the earth-tiger, iron-rabbit, etc. Did I mention the word birth day anywhere in that commentary? Nope. At that point, you’ve got to forget the birth time! Also, when Tibetans migrate to the US, there is usually a discrepancy between their calendar system and ours, so their driver’s license might be close to the correct birth date, or it might be weeks off! Yeah, so if you know your birth date AND your birth time is close, then that is a blessing indeed!

I hope this helps to clear up a little more about what it means to Rectify an astrology chart. As you can tell, it takes a bit of practice and skill. You can’t just sit down with a book and start asking someone questions and then voila, ten minutes later say, “I got it!” No, there are times when it might take me an hour if I start with an intuitive hit and investigate that, or it can take upwards of two hours when the process is all empirically derived and explored.

Kirby Moore has been studying Western Astrology since 2003, having studied under several Western Astrologers with backgrounds in Karmic Astrology, Evolutionary Astrology and Hellenistic Astrology. He sees clients professionally for Spiritual Astrology interpretations both in person and over the phone. His private practice also includes Craniosacral bodywork and healing facilitation through healing touch. To schedule an appointment, you can reach Kirby at the following number in the U.S.: four three four, four six five, zero six zero three. Thank you for reading.