I explain why the birth time most people think is correct – and are using for their astrology chart and astrological forecasts – almost certainly is NOT precisely correct.
I also briefly discuss how astrologers use a process called “rectification” to refine the birth time more accurately, and why an accurate birth time is important (and it absolutely is!).
As well I briefly cover some basic ethical issues relating to handling the birth details of other people.
This episode was published on July 9, 2022 at 12:17am EDT.
Episode transcript:
I’m your host, John Irving. Thank you for joining me.
Greetings all, it is July 8, 2022.
In this hopefully short episode, I’m going to talk about why your birth time, the birth time that you’re given or that you use or that you’re aware of, is almost certainly inaccurate.
Unless you have done or gone through a process called rectification, which is a fairly advanced astrological technique to reverse engineer a birth time your birth time is probably wrong.
And this was prompted by a long thread on my YouTube channel under the video titled, “Navigating Difficult Times and Challenging Astrological Aspects.”
I was having a long conversation there. I’m not going to put out the name here, because I don’t have permission to do that. But if you want, you can probably figure it out just by looking at the comments section there.
And then it occurred to me that this is one of those things – and there’s many things like this that I really would like to get to here – that I just have taken for granted. Because I’ve been aware of it for many years but I realize not a lot of other people are. And you really don’t see this discussed enough or very often at all.
So first of all, let’s talk about briefly why an accurate birth time matters. If you want to do accurate, predictive work, that is, to look at upcoming events or current events and understand when they are going to impact you the most, or the most intensely, with a lot of precision, you really need an accurate birth time, a reasonably accurate birth time. And by that, I mean within a few minutes, and the closer, the better.
And that is because, depending on your own chart, you could be born near the cusp of a sign, or the moon might be in a different house, depending on whether you’re 10 minutes earlier or 10 minutes later, that kind of thing.
Planets can shift positions in the chart fairly quickly, because the Ascendant or the angles of the charts go through all of the degrees of the zodiac every 24 hours. That is two hours per sign, roughly.
So let’s say you think your Ascendant’s at the end of Cancer, but five minutes later, it would be in Leo. Those are incredibly different Ascendants. And like I said, planets may shift houses as well, too, during that time period.
Now, generally, the outer planets are going to be in the same signs, most likely. They’re not going to change signs, but the house position in your chart may change, and that can change things dramatically.
So I’ve done readings for people who’ve given me birth times, and then they’ve said, well, this doesn’t fit me or doesn’t make sense. And I’m like, well, it’s probably not me. It’s probably your birth time is way off. That’s only happened a couple times, mind you – literally, just a couple times – because I’ve done other readings that were extremely accurate, and people were blown away.
Now, I can’t control what somebody gives me as their birth time, but I always tell people whenever I do any reading for them that this is going to depend on the accuracy of your birth time.
And why would the birth time be inaccurate? Well, pause and think about this for a second.
I’ll just pause.
What is the moment of life? When does life begin? Think about it.
Well, people would say, well, when you’re born. And I’m like, well, is that when you leave your mother’s body? Is that when they cut the umbilical cord? Is that when you start crying?
Well, technically, the answer is it’s when you take your first breath. That is the beginning of your incarnation. And your last breath is the end of your incarnation. Strong chills here. And so a lot of people don’t understand that.
Now, here’s another thing, especially if we go further back in time, you know, older people, a lot of times, they would round off the time because they didn’t think it mattered all that much.
You know, 2.30, what’s the difference? 2.30, 2.10, 2.45 p.m., you know?
Sometimes they might’ve forgotten to write it down and they just throw something down there to fill out the paper so that they don’t have a blank form. It could be off by hours even.
And sometimes people just went on memory. I think it was like three o’clock, but you know, your mother’s in labor. Like, how does she really know what’s going on?
Was the clock in the delivery room accurate or not? Maybe it was off by 10 or 15 minutes.
There’s so many variables here.
So people didn’t know when life begins. There’s a lot of misunderstandings about that.
Very few people realize that life begins at the first breath.
So someone would have to literally be sitting there with a stopwatch almost. Or looking at the clock at an accurate clock, which is the whole other thing, because cell phones really only came into prominence, you know, in the past 20 years or so.
But they would have to be sitting there looking at it and looking at the baby, and then when the baby goes… gasps… that is the moment. That’s the moment where life begins.
So that is why most people’s birth times are off easily by five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, more.
You could be a completely, your Ascendant could be completely different, you know, Pluto could be in your 10th house rather than your 9th house, whatever.
There’s so many variables here, I’m not gonna get into all of them.
But that’s why it’s really important to have an accurate birth time.
Progressions and Solar Arcs are a fascinating tool of astrology, and when we look at Solar Arcs, they move a degree per year.
So a quarter of a degree is three months. And when Solar Arcs aspect the angles, we can see major events occur.
So this is where this accuracy gets really important when we’re looking at Solar Arcs, the house positions, the planets in the houses, the progressed sun, things like that.
So you may not realize it, but it can make a really big difference when we get into some of the more detailed analysis of the astrology chart.
Now, I did not have an accurate birth, I didn’t have a birth time at all, in fact, because I was adopted.
So I had to, many, many, many years ago, go through this process, it’s an astrological technique called rectification, rectification, one word.
And what you do is you reverse engineer the birth time, looking at when certain transits and events happened throughout your life over a long period of time. Where you can say, oh, something dramatic happened here at this time, and then five years later, something dramatic happened here, and so on.
And then eventually you can move the chart around until everything just clicks. And when it clicks, it’s like a huge eureka moment, because you’re just like, oh my God, everything makes sense. Bam, bam, bam, everything just lines up. It’s astonishing how it works. It’s effectively triangulation, taking known points to determine another point.
And it validates astrology, because you can see how these major transits, and usually we’re talking about transits to the angles, the Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven, IC, because they structure the chart and they give us the placement of the signs in your houses.
You can use Solar Arcs.
When I did it, many, many years ago, it literally took me like two weeks of working on this, not 24 hours a day, but I’d work at it every day for hours, each day for a couple weeks. I can do it much faster now, but back then, my knowledge wasn’t as deep as it is now. So it can be a quite lengthy process.
Now, some astrologers will actually offer this service, and some specialize in it, because it’s a branch of astrology, it requires quite a bit of skill, because you have to identify what those trigger points are so that you can realize the birth time.
Somebody’s birth time, they might actually, if you go back far enough in time, you can find people whose birth time isn’t even on the day they think it is.
Now, here’s why this matters. Again, like I said, it’s because it’s necessary for doing accurate predictive work, really accurate predictive work, timing.
And then the other thing is, is that a lot of people go around with these birth times they were given without validating them, and they will go pay people to do readings for them, or pay for online readings, or have their chart done, or something like that. And they’re using invalid information.
Now, if it’s only off by a few minutes, it might not make that much of a difference. But the more off it is, the more of a difference there will be. And especially if you’re born, if your Ascendant or something is, say, near the cusp of signs at the beginning of one sign and the end of another, it can change signs, that makes a huge difference.
So I’m just pointing this out because I think that there’s probably been hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of cases where people have paid for astrological services using erroneous information and therefore received erroneous interpretations and forecasts. It’s kind of scandalous, actually.
So I think people need to be aware of that. I’m not going to right here detail the process of rectification because it would be way too long. That’s an in-depth topic. And it requires a fair amount of knowledge.
Yes, you can do it as a beginner. It’s just probably going to take you quite a bit of time.
You also need to have significant key events that have occurred in your life, deaths, births, marriages, divorces, honors, big moves, promotions, career highlights, graduations, very fortunate events like winning the lottery or something like that, or dramatic events like accidents or things like that. Things that will really stand out in your life that can be dramatic. That is also necessary.
Another thing that came up in that thread, which I think is extremely important, and I can’t recall if I’ve actually said this here before or not, but it’s this:
Astrology is a vast, vast subject. It is a lifelong art.
And it is not possible to become an expert or at least somebody who should be discussing this publicly in any kind of teaching capacity. You can simply not do that from a few months or even a few years of study. The subject is simply too large and too vast and too deep.
And anybody who studies astrology will know that the more you study it, the more you realize how big of a topic it is.
I was first introduced to astrology in the 1980s, and I didn’t take it up seriously as a study really until probably the 1990s, because it was so daunting to me. The scope of it, the knowledge, it is incredible.
So I don’t think people should be putting themselves out there as astrologers unless they have studied for years at least.
And on a related matter, it is a sacred art. It should never be used to harm or undermine other people. That is black magic. And that has serious karmic consequences.
You should always have permission to discuss somebody’s chart with other people, if you look at it.
Personally, I never share birth details with anyone without permission. In fact, I’ve never done it because there would never be a reason to. But if I wanted to, I would most certainly gain permission before I spoke about somebody’s astrological configuration without their permission.
Yeah, I just would never do that. Because as more advanced students of life, we have greater responsibility, and the birth details of people is sacred.
It’s a spirit, I’m getting huge chills here. It really reflects their soul’s desire in this incarnation, and it should never be abused.
I would never take somebody’s astrological chart and use it to tear them down in any way or attack them. I would never even consider it.
Just bear that in mind, that you should treat it as a sacred art.
It’s kind of like the tarot cards. I’m not a tarot reader myself, but I know many tarot readers personally. And they’ve told me that if they don’t follow the guidance the cards give them, they will lose their power to read for others. It’s a similar kind of thing.
In fact, I’m not aware of any spiritual art that is as deep and as complex as astrology. One great spiritual teacher said it accounted for roughly 20 or 25% of a person’s experience because there is free will, and we can alter our destiny through our actions or inactions, but that it plays a very serious role in defining someone’s life experience.
On the other hand, it goes without saying that the path of liberation, self-realization, self-mastery, and enlightenment is the ultimate of all challenges, often taking thousands of lifetimes to accomplish. And I state that just to keep things in perspective.
Back on point. Yes, I was able to get my birth time down to within a minute or two of accuracy. And I know that because I’ve been observing my transits over many years.
So I went from no birth time to within a minute or so. There’s 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in each hour. So that’s quite remarkable. And you can do that too.
You can even just get it fairly close and then over time observe transits and things and you’ll be able to refine it and tweak it. Trying to get perfection in one shot is probably not realistic. So just bear that in mind.
The person who introduced me to astrology pointed out that the scars on my forehead and my red hair were a good indication that I was probably an Aries rising or Aries Ascendant. And that narrows it down to two hours once you figure out your Ascendant.
So I would recommend that you start with that if you have no idea what your birth time is.
And I’m not trying to dissuade anybody from studying astrology by saying that it is a profoundly deep lifelong study. I’m just giving you a heads up that if you really seriously want to study astrology, just be aware of the scope and scale of the subject.
And if you’re gonna do rectification, make sure the dates and times of these events, and they need to be fairly precisely timed events. Like I graduated on a Friday night at nine o’clock at such and such a college.
Make sure that you get the dates and times accurately or you’ll just send yourself on a wild goose chase and you’ll end up wasting a lot of time.
Prior to the advent of computers, people would do this kind of work manually, which is definitely possible, but it can be extremely time consuming. So good astrology software is probably a prerequisite if you’re gonna be doing this kind of work.
And you can get software that is decent and can do the job, but really good astrology software with all the add-ons can get fairly expensive.
If you’re really into astrology, you will buy the basic package and then you’ll keep upgrading and upgrading as time goes on because you’ll want all the additional features and tools that the add-ons can provide. And in the end, you can spend quite a bit of money.
Now, if you don’t really wanna study astrology and say money is an issue, maybe you can find a friend who is studying astrology who would help you to do this. And for them, it’s a great learning experience. And if they’re patient, you can go back and forth and try and figure this out. It’s kind of like solving a mystery or a puzzle.
Or maybe you can find an astrologer locally who you can barter with or something who will do some rectification work for you in exchange for some service that you provide.
Finally, if you know a really good psychic or channel, you can ask them to try and provide you with your exact birth time. However, I would still verify that using some of the techniques I have described here.
Again, this recording is unscripted and impromptu, so I apologize for any lack of coherence or structure in the information I’m conveying.
Anyway, I just wanted to put this out there to save people a lot of grief and time.
And thanks to the listener for bringing up this topic and having that conversation with me. It inspired me to do this.
Take care, and we’ll talk to you again soon.
