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Quick Tips for Beginners
Confirming the birth time

How can we ever be absolutely certain we are working with someone’s correct birth time?  When undertaking a consultation with a person who has given me a specific birth time (especially ones that are exactly on the hour) I always spend the first five minutes with them checking to see if I am working with the right time.  If the birth time is out by four minutes then the birth chart can be (on average) one degree out on the angles, which is particularly significant when looking at someone’s forecast.  When using progressions and directions, four minutes of time can make a difference of one year!

I always ask a client how they got their birth time as even hospital records cannot always be relied upon and it is possible the time could be a few minutes out.  Another question I ask is ‘Do they know what their birth was like?’  Often planets that conjoin or make hard aspects to the Ascendant can describe their birth experience.  Pluto conjoining (or in hard aspect to) the Ascendant can sometimes indicate trauma or a rescue situation during the birth.  Similarly, Mars can indicate a speedy delivery; Neptune an induced one; Uranus an early one and so on.  Also, planets in the twelfth house can tell us about the pregnancy.

Solar arc or primary directions can be a quick and easy way to check the degrees of the angles.  If any planet is directed the same distance as the sun, (or a day for a year with primary directions) then it will eventually cross an angle.  For example, if the client has Jupiter ten degrees away from the I.C you might want to ask them if anything happened at age ten, such as moving abroad or moving home for example.  Or, if Saturn is 27 degrees from the Descendant, you could ask if there was anything significant that happened at the age of 27, particularly to do to with relationships, work or health.  It is possible the client made a commitment within a relationship or even ended one during this time.  Frequently, when exploring someone’s past experiences and events whilst using directions, you get answers which could indicate  the angle degrees to be a year or two out from the chart you have calculated.  It is not uncommon to hear a client say that nothing happened at age of 10, but they moved house at age eight because their father got a promotion, or that nothing happened at age 27, but they got married at age 25.  These types of responses may lead you to re-adjust the birth time by eight minutes or at least use a little caution when working with the angles.

An event or experience that is momentous for someone may be depicted by a planet that is emphasised in the chart, (such as the focus of a T-Square, apex of a Yod, leading planet, or the handle of a bucket), when it has been directed to an angle.

When confirming the birth time with the use of directions it is like unlocking a safe clock.  Calculating the degrees from each planet to angles is to explore the meaningful combinations to ensure the birth time is the correct one and this is relatively easy and quick to do. 

Other helpful techniques which require a bit more work can be explored and help to confirm the birth time.  Family degrees are always interesting as it is quite common for parents, children and siblings to share the same angle degrees or the same degree of a sign (that is, a parent may have a planet at the same degree of their child's angle, or vice versa).  This can also be true in relationships.  Families can also share angular planets.  Tracking the secondary progressions of the Angles as well as the conjunctions of the secondary progressed Moon to the angles can also help verify the time of birth.  Transits to the angles (and moon) are always helpful and can provide further confirmation but orbs can often be a problem.  However, when a transiting planet stations or goes retrograde back over an angle, this can be helpful in finding the correct degree, and thus, the correct time. 

With any major event in life, the appropriate configurations and significators will show in almost all the techniques you use.  Some charts are much easier to work with than others, for various reasons, but the aim here is to confirm the birth time you are working with.  Unless the birth time is known to be absolutely accurate, it can be considered speculative.

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