Every astrologer has had this conversation with a client at least once. “My mother said I was born at 10:00 o’clock.” “AM or PM?” asks the astrologer. “Not sure, I’ll have to ask my mother.”

In an astrologer’s perfect world birth times would published right along the birth date. This would make our job easier and would eliminate what Lois Rodden would label DD, dirty data. Dirty data is anything along the lines of “my mother said” or “Auntie remembers it to be . . .”

A birth time is important because it fixes the ascendant and the moon, two of the the Big Three that includes the Sun, the three most basic markers of your personality. A birth time also fixes the position of the houses which important when it comes to making predictions based on the movements (transits) of the positions.

Whenever I give a reading that does not include an accurate birth time I tell the client straight up that the lack of the birth time can affect the accuracy of the reading.

Astrologers also have a technique called rectification that can pinpoint the possible birth time by matching life events against the chart to see which time makes the most sense in terms of what happened in an individual’s life. Rectification is a lengthy process, very technical, requiring a willingness to look at a lot of charts. Not all of us want to do that. Personally, I’d rather rip out my upper lip hairs with tweezers. Continue reading →