In a previous post, I showed how you can confirm a birth time using solar arcs by simply eyeballing the possible direction of a solar arcing planet to an angle, or vice versa. Using the time taken in years and months for the arc to close, you look for a corresponding milestone event for that date in the individual’s life. If the event date is close enough to the arc closure date (up to 3 months give or take), then you can be reasonably sure of the birth time. I used several real life examples drawn from my consultations to illustrate the process. All the times that were given to me by those clients were said to be from birth certificates, so all I needed to do was play a little defense and simply confirm the birth time.
Often, though, you will come across people who do not have a birth certificate with a recorded birth time. Instead, they have a time such as “between 4 and 4:30 pm”, or “between 11 and 11:30 am” or something like that, typically within a half hour window. Usually this is based on the memory of a family member, but is presented with a degree of confidence that is hard to ignore. And in many of these cases, I have been fairly successful in pinning down the time to within a five minute margin, tested during the rest of the consultation with projections that fit the events in the clients’ lives. The obvious thing to do in these cases is to start with a time that is in the middle of the window and then eyeball for solar arcs of Saturn and the outer planets to the angles to narrow down and rectify the time. Let’s look at a couple of examples to see how this works.
Example 1
This is a woman who said she was born in the window 2:30-3:00 pm. So, the first step is to cast a chart for 2:45 pm and then work from there.
What I want to do here is focus on and around the angles, and see if we can spot any outer planets lurking nearby. We know then that there will likely be a solar directed conjunction between an angle and an outer planet that has manifested in this woman’s life.
The only outer planet close enough to an angle is Neptune, at the bottom of the chart, close to the IC in the 4th house. The IC is at 18 Sco 10 and Neptune is at 00 Sag 42, so the arc separation between them is 12 degrees and 32 minutes. The SA IC would conjunct Neptune in about 12.5 years. You want to ask her whether there was a memorable event when she was around 12 and a half years old, but because this is the “middle” time chart, you want to cover the spectrum of ages during which this conjunction could have manifested.
If she was born at the early extreme of 2:30 pm, the IC would be at an earlier position than for a 2:45 pm birth. Recall that the MC/IC moves 1 degree of arc distance for every 4 minutes of clock time. 2:30 pm is 15 minutes earlier than the middle 2:45 time, so the IC would back up by about 4 degrees. As a result, the arc separation to Neptune would increase by 4 degrees, which amounts to 4 years of time. This would put the prospective event at 16.5 years of age. Likewise, for the other extreme of a 3:00 pm birth time, the IC would move forward by 4 degrees, decreasing the arc separation to Neptune by 4 degrees, or 4 years of time, and put the prospective event at 8.5 years of age.
So I ask her, “Was there any kind of major loss or confusion in the home when you were between 8 and 16 years of age? These are typical Neptunian significations. And she says, “Yes, my grandmother died when I was 10 years old. I was very close to her, so this was a big loss for me.” There it is, clear as bell. Since the event time range is 8.5-16.5, and the actual event happened when she was 10, it puts the birth time much closer to 3:00 pm (corresponding to the 8.5 year mark). I chose 2:55 as a workable birth time time, and moved on with the consultation.
Example 2
Here’s the chart of a woman who said she was born between 1:30 pm and 2:00 pm. This chart is cast for 1:45 pm.
Let’s quickly eyeball the chart to see if any of the outer planets is near an angle. We see Pluto in the 4th house within shouting distance of the IC, separated from it by a little over 15 degrees and 30 minutes. So we know that SA IC would conjunct Pluto in about 15-16 years time. We also see Neptune in the 6th house, separated from the descendant by about 31 degrees. But at the time of the consultation, this woman was well under thirty years of age, so we cannot use Neptune’s SA directed contact to the descendant since it would only happen after she crosses 30.
So I focused on the SA directed arc from IC to Pluto. Like the previous example, the extremes in the birth window time would pull the event back or forward by about 4 years. So I ask, “Was there a major transformation in the home—say you moved, or someone in the family died, anything like that—when you were between 11 and 20 years or age?” “Oh yes,” she says, “I left home to go to the US to study, I was there for five years.” Clearly this was a major uprooting experience, making a new home for several years in a foreign country, an experience that would have changed her life in many ways then and forever. All very Plutonian. “How old were you at that time?” I ask. “I was 18.” Well, that puts the birth time earlier than 1:45, near the midpoint between 1:30 and 1:45 pm. I could use either 1:35 pm or 1:40 pm as the working birth time, and continue.