Astrology is a very precise science. However, it is only as precise as your birth time, which is used to determine your Ascendant (Rising Sign) and the exact degree and minute of the planetary positions. The degree on the Midheaven and all of the house cusps are then determined by that calculation. The planets’ placement is then determined by the cusps. Forecasts and interpretations are always off without a precise birth time. The utility of all of this data includes evaluating your personality, deciding on a career path, contrasting your chart with that of other people you know, and predicting future events in your life.
You should get a copy of your birth certificate before booking a consultation or ordering charts and reports. You can have your chart corrected if you don’t have a birth certificate, the time is missing from yours, you think your certificate may be inaccurate, or you just have an estimated birth time (see next section).
How about your birth certificate, though? How precise is it? It could not be as true as you believe. Correcting the date and location is simple, but birth times present a completely other challenge. Doctors and nurses often aren’t astrologers, so they don’t pay much attention to the precise moment of birth. They might round off a birth time of 8:38 to 8:40 or 8:35, for instance. The time recorded on the delivery room records or an estimated birth time that may be much sooner or later than the actual birth time may be used by the doctor to complete the birth certificate later.
Your birth certificate may not even contain a section for the time of birth depending on when and where you were born. Because they were born at home, at a time when birth certificates were not deemed required, or in a nation where birth certificates are or were not issued, some persons do not even have written birth certificates. Other issues with birth certificates exist in some areas of the United States. For instance, during several years in the state of Illinois, War Time—the forerunner to our current Daylight Savings Time—was in place, but not all hospitals observed it; many of them carried on with Standard Time operations. In other words, if you were born in Illinois within those times, your birth certificate might be a complete hour inaccurate.
Predictive astrology in particular, and astrology in general, are rarely precise without a precise birth time. Although some overall information and interpretations may be accurate, the nuances and event-focused details will be false.
