Page 15 - Talented Astrologer • Volume 1 Number 10 • June 2017

house placement of the planets, but also the houses the planets rule.
Additionally, the change from day to night, or night to day is critical.
e Triplicity rulers for the Fire, Earth, and Air signs change
depending on whether the chart is diurnal (day), with the Sun above the horizon in houses 7 through 12, or nocturnal (night) with the Sun below the horizon in houses 1 through 6.
Let’s explore some available options when you don’t have an accurate time of birth.
If you have no birth time at all, you can use a sunrise chart.
A sunrise chart uses the Sun as the horoscope, taking the Ascendant to be the exact position of the Sun. is chart speci cally explores the Sun — the authentic “Big S” Self — and shows the potential for growth and self- expression. e Sun is the context of this chart, so all of the houses (for example) relate speci cally to the Sun. e 10th house in a sunrise chart shows how you seek to express your authentic Self (Sun) through your career and public reputation. is is quite di erent from the 10th house in an accurately-timed natal chart, which represents the entirety of your career and public reputation.
Some astrologers nd value in this approach, but I’m not one of them. My main issue with a sunrise chart is that you can’t consider anything related to the Moon because the position, and possibly even the sign of the Moon are suspect.
If you have an approximate birth time, you have more options.
If the birth time is accurate within a 1-hour window, and neither the Moon nor the Ascendant are within 2 degrees of a sign boundary, you can proceed with the interpretation with a reasonable level
of con dence.
You can’t trust aspects to the angles, of
course, because you can’t be sure of the precise position of the angles. But you can eliminate issues with intermediate house
cusps by using Whole Sign Houses for the interpretation.
Lois Rodden ranks birth times from memory as “A” data. at’s always been good
enough for me.
You can also rectify the chart to ne-tune the timing.
Chart recti cation is a process where you consider a set of accurately-timed major life events and adjust the timing of the natal chart so that it supports the timing of those events. e idea is that when you can show that the chart responds consistently to past events, you can expect it to respond consistently to future events.
Recti cation is a very technical, tedious process, and few astrologers have the skills or interest to do it well.
Because there are many ways to rectify a chart, and no objective way to determine if a particular birth time is correct, Rodden classi es recti ed chart data as “C” unless there are multiple recti cations with con icting birth times. In those cases, the rating drops to “DD” for dirty data.
June 2017 17