To practise accurate astrology you need accurate data.
It is the sine qua non of any form of prediction, and essential for deep and perceptive analysis.
Unfortunately the times of births and events are all too often inexactly recorded; many are dependent on the vagaries of human memory, others on clocks wrongly set, while others are recorded only approximately, or written in a hand that is hard to read. Time-zones may be confused, Daylight saving overlooked, am or pm wrongly assumed, and sadly dates are all too often falsified purely out of vanity!
Unless you are a twin, whose time - at least in the UK - must be precisely registered on the birth certificate to establish for legal purposes which sibling is the elder, it isn’t safe to assume that even a Scottish, American or royal birth record is as accurate as an astrologer would wish, and some time devoted to rectification is usually time well spent.
Each astrologer will evolve their own favourite route through the minefield of natal timing; mine is a combination of old and new techniques as you will see.
There are three main client scenarios that most of us have to deal with: 1) ‘I haven’t a clue’ 2) vague - eg, ‘some time in the morning’, ‘around tea-time’, ‘at night’ - 3) approximate - eg, ‘Noon’, ‘about 2h15'. With 1) we really have our work cut out, 2) requires the skills of a detective as well as the complete arsenal of rectification weaponry, 3) hopefully resolves quite quickly with one or two tools out of the bag.
1. With no time at all to start with, it may be impossible to get anywhere near the correct chart. Some astrologers dowse for the angles and swear this works; maybe it does. My own solution to this problem is to employ a precisely-timed Q-chart (qv) which at least provides a working pattern that is accurate and authentic in a specific context.
But I have attempted a full rectification from scratch a few times, and on these occasions I would first study the progressed Moon against the client’s history during a few eventful years. In one case there was a progressed New Moon during the year in which my client was married, so we agreed to assume this mapped directly onto the marriage date and that we could work on from there. The chart we ended up with seemed to describe her and her life very well; it may have been a real success. But with no proof, we shall never know, and as in all such cases the resulting horoscope remains speculative.
2. A vague time, plus the progressing Moon and any Transits of major planets to possible angles at that time of day, can tighten up the data sufficiently to start testing with annual progressions and Solar Arcs at crucial points in the subject's history. If these are homing in on a believable birth-time, then we can treat the evolving chart as ...
3. ... approximately correct; at which juncture the transits need looking at again, then annual progressions - direct and converse. Then we get to the clever stuff! The daily progressions can now be checked for precise dates that have clear significance in the native's life. If appropriate planets are close to but not exactly on daily angles, then a slight shift of a few degrees to bring them onto the horizon or meridian can be read back to the natal chart to ascertain the exact time of birth.
Next we also want to check the Dwad - especially if we know the person or situation really well. The interactions of the Dwad chart with the radix should provide an extremely accurate description of the subject if the birth time is correct. A shift in the Dwad of, say, 6 degrees on the MC translates to half a degree on the radix MC and a time-correction of two minutes.
After all that, it is interesting - though not essential - to see if appropriate asteroids are lining up as they should on the newly calculated angles, either in the radix or the Dwad. If they do, then the chances of a successful rectification here are high, and it should be safe to use the chart for onward analysis and guidance.
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