by Steven Forrest, copyright 2000.

This article first appeared in The Mountain Astrologer

PLEASE NOTE: Steven no longer does chart rectifications. Contact Shirley

Waram or Jodie Tighe (Forrest) to have your birth time rectified.

“I don’t know the time of my birth.” Any working astrologer hears that line a few times a
month. In rectification—the craft of discovering the true Ascendant of a birthchart—the first
rule is never accept an “I don’t know” statement on face value! Always, without fail, make a
strenuous attempt to discover the recorded birth time…which is often actually available, many
times quite easily. Don’t let a client’s hesitation to search compromise your work!

The technical procedures of rectification are valid and useful, but they are not foolproof,
especially when the birth time is completely unknown and the window of possibility is
twenty-four hours wide. Since a wrong birthchart is every astrologer’s nightmare, it is both
wise and ethical first to exhaust all the time-sleuthing possibilities available.

Any information helps. As we will be discovering, even narrowing down the birth moment to
something as vague as “in the morning” or “it was still dark” can be immensely helpful.
Encourage your client to press information from his or her parents, older siblings or anyone
who might have been around at the critical event. Often they’ll give you invaluable clues,
especially when encouraged to re-live the event in their memories.

In America, generally your best bet for finding actual records of the birth time, assuming that
there are no immediate family records or memories, is at the state level. Hospitals aren’t often
much help, but each state has a Department of Vital Statistics or something similar where
birth certificates are stored. Often these official birth certificates contain more information
than the ones issued to the parents, especially for births dating to the time before xeroxing.

For a complete listing of all the relevant state offices, with their addresses and phone
numbers, for all fifty U.S. states, click here . By the way, if you find something inaccurate
there, please let us know! The information changes periodically and we’re dependent on
people around the country keeping us current, as they often do. We’re maintaining this as a
kind of public service to the astrological community, and we rely on your help.

Once you’ve exhausted all these possibilities and you’ve still come up empty, it’s time to start
the actual technical procedures of rectification. The process will drive you half-crazy, but
mastering it will make you a better astrologer—and not just because you’ve absorbed a new
technical skill. Rectification also brings you right into the heart of the way transits,
progressions, and solar arcs actually operate.

IN A NUTSHELL…

In a nutshell, what you are doing in rectification is working backwards through astrology’s
predictive techniques. Normally, we have an accurate birth time and we use transits,
progressions, and solar arcs to predict the timing of events or developments in a person’s life.
In rectification, we do it the other way around: we use the timing of events that have already
happened to “post-dict” the time of birth—in other words, we come up with a chart that would
have predicted the timing of major developments in the client’s life, developments which
have already occurred and whose times are known.

THE CLIENT’S TASK

The client’s task is to provide you with a list of the dates of major events spread out through
the length of his or her life, with very brief descriptions of them. For example, “I got married
on January 7, 1984” or “my first child was born on June 27, 1978.” Emphasize that there’s no
need for long confessional biography here; all you need is a phrase and a date.

I find it helpful not to be too directive. Seeing how the client defines “major events” is often
illuminating. If it’s all professional developments, that suggests the possibility of a big Tenth
House focus, and that can be a helpful clue, corroborating the results of all the technical
procedures we’re about to learn.

I ask my clients for a list of about ten such events, but the number isn’t really critical. The
only constraint here is that the events must be spread over a wide period of time. Nine events
within a six month period will foul up the rectificational process for reasons we’ll soon
explore in detail. It’s better that no two events are closer than within a couple years of each
other at a minimum. A wider spread is even more helpful.

The more accurate the date of the event, the better. Thus, births, marriages, and significant
deaths tend to play a big role—people usually remember those dates exactly. Sometimes a
client will say “I moved to Seattle in May 1996, but I can’t remember the date.” See if they
can remember if it was the first or second half of the month—anything to focus it a bit.
“Dates” vaguer than about a month are not really useful, unless you restrict yourself to
progressions or solar arcs, which move relatively slowly. Even there, a year or two is about
the outer limit of usefulness.

THE PROCEDURE

Once you have the list of dates, the real work begins. The fist step is to set up a hypothetical
birth chart as a starting point. Don’t make any guesses here. If you have zero idea what time
the person was born, erect it for noon. If you have a range of times (e.g., “between 3:00 pm
and dinner”), split the difference—say 4:30. Remember that this is just an approximate chart;
make a real effort not to become enamored of it!

The next step is to run transits, progressions, and solar arcs based on that chart, for the dates
the client has supplied. Now I recommend a cup of coffee.
In essence, here’s the idea: you know that big changes tend to happen for people when there
are major transits, progressions, and arcs to the four Angles of the chart—the Ascendent, the
Descendent, the Midheaven, and the astrological Nadir.

If you see that there was a tendency for planets to be in the middle of Capricorn when big
changes were happening for the client, then it’s a good bet that mid-Capricorn might be one of
those four Angles…assuming you can’t explain that mid-Capricorn sensitivity any other way.

Thus, the crux of the rectification process:

A. Eliminate all the sensitive areas in the hypothetical birthchart which you can explain away
through natal planetary contacts…
B. Then assume that any other sensitive areas are related to the Four Angles…remembering
that if you know the Angles, you know the birth time.

Now, if the client has a natal planet in that mid-Capricorn hot spot, then we really haven’t
learned very much; we already know people’s lives change when a natal planet is heavily
aspected by transits, arcs, or progressions. So, to repeat the core principle, what you are
seeking is a set of points to which the client is astrologically reactive that can’t be explained
through passing aspects to any natal planet.

The foundation of the whole rectification process lies in the fact that House cusps are time-
sensitive, whereas planets will generally move relatively slightly in zodiacal terms during the
day. Every four minutes, the Midheaven moves through about one degree. The numbers vary
a bit for the other cusps, but they’re all in that range.

What about transits, arcs, and progressions to the Succedent and Cadent Houses? In practice
I’d suggest focussing strictly on hits to the ultra-sensitive Angular cusps and ignoring the
intervening ones. One benefit of this approach is that it neatly by-passes all arguments about
which system of House division is best—with only a few minor exceptions, all of them agree
on the Angles and disagree only on the cusps of the other Houses.

THE TOOLS

In working with secondary progressions for rectification purposes, use the Sun, Mercury,
Venus, and Mars. The Moon is a little dicey because, unless the birth time is reasonably
accurate for starters, like within a couple of hours or so, the initial position of the Moon is too
uncertain for us to trust it. Using the progressed Ascendent or Midheaven would be a major
blunder, since the absolute uncertainty of their initial positions is the crux of the problem we
are addressing. Never use the progressed Ascendent or Midheaven in rectification!

With solar arcs, use everything except the Ascendent, Midheaven and Moon.

With transits the situation is a little bit trickier. You can always use Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
Neptune, Pluto, and the Lunar Nodes. When the dates that the client has provided are accurate
within one day, add the Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars.

When the dates are not that accurate, then those faster planets have blurry positions due to
their rapid motions—while Pluto will move only a fraction of a degree in a month, Mercury
can cover a wide arc in that length of time. The faster transiting planets lose their usefulness
unless the dates of the critical events are known accurately. You may have to make some
judgment calls. If, for example, your client moved to New York “during the first week of
February 1997” while transiting Mars, Venus, or Mercury was making a Station, you may
have detected something useful. That would be a particularly powerful inner planet event, and
more importantly we would know its position pretty accurately for that week, since a
Stationary planet won’t shift far within that short time-frame.

I never use the transiting Moon in rectification.

THE POWER OF THE FOURTH HARMONIC AND THE MODES

Fourth harmonic aspects—the conjunction, square, and opposition—are very dynamic and
reliable. They correlate powerfully with biographical events. I’d suggest using them
exclusively for rectification work, forgetting all other aspects, at least initially. Thus, we are
looking strictly for squares, conjunctions, and oppositions to the Ascendent/Descendent axis,
and ditto for the Meridian/Nadir axis.

In practice, what this means is that you’ll be noticing a pattern like this: “there’s a tendency
for things to happen in this person’s life when planets get to the fifteenth or sixteenth degree
of Mutable signs.” The key is that the four Mutable Signs form a cross—a fourth harmonic
structure. (And of course it’s the same for the other two Modes, Cardinal and Fixed.) If you
have 16 Gemini rising, then activity around 16 degrees of any one of the Mutable signs will
trigger events since 16 Sagittarius would be an opposition and 16 of Pisces or Virgo would be
squares. And if there are no natal planets in any of those degrees, you’ve probably found a
major clue about the position of the Ascendent, Descendent, Midheaven or Nadir.

This “fourth harmonic” thinking is a very practical, effective approach—for me, it preserves
just enough essential data. Looking for conjunctions alone wouldn’t do that. Meanwhile it
eliminates just enough less-important data, such as the milder effects of the trines, sextiles,
and minor aspects, for clarity—and perhaps your sanity—to be maintained.

AN ACE IN THE HOLE

On a given date at a given birth place, a specific Midheaven will dictate a specific
Ascendent. If, say, the Midheaven is 9 Cancer at a given moment, then the Ascendent must
be, say, 17 Libra at that latitude. In other words, a specific Midheaven degree and a specific
Ascendent degree are linked at each latitude. You can’t fudge that Ascendent back five
degrees and still maintain the same Midheaven, even if the rectification data seems to be
begging for it. Nature constrains us here, and that’s actually helpful in practice because it
narrows our range of possibilities and helps us out of a variety of jams, as we will soon be
seeing.

Say 9° Cancer happens to be the Midheaven of our hypothetical chart. We have no real reason
to believe it’s accurate—we came up with it simply by splitting the difference between the
earliest and latest possible birth times, which were a couple of hours apart. Now, through
transits, arcs and progressions we observe that both eleven degrees and nineteen degrees of
the Cardinal signs are really hot—things happen in our client’s life when planets arrive in
those degrees. We’ve probably hit paydirt….just assume an 11 degree Cancer Midheaven and
a 19 degree Libra Ascendant, and it all works out neatly. Nature “permits” that chart, and it
now fits the actual timing of events in the client’s life. We just assume that our client was
born about eight minutes later than our starting-point chart, advancing its Midheaven and
Ascendant by about two degrees. Sometimes rectification is that easy, and we’re done.

ORBS
How close does a planet have to be to an exact aspect for it to “work?” We know from more
general astrological practice that the answer varies with the speed and nature of the planet as
well as its innate strength in the chart. Progressions and Arcs generally operate in tighter
aspectual orbs than do transits, but none of them require exactitude to be effective. Might
someone get a big professional promotion with solar-arc Jupiter one degree off their true
Midheaven? Sure. This inherent “slush” fuzzes the rectification process somewhat.

The immediate effect is that someone whose true Midheaven is 12Leo17 will show an array
of significant transits, arcs, and progressions within a couple of degrees on either side of that
point—and probably a few outlying Saturn or Jupiter transits as well. As common sense
would dictate, you are basically splitting the differences among the positions of these hits,
determining a point that seems to be nearest the center of the activity. Gradually the various
traces of evidence will converge on a single degree. Some practitioners claim a level of
accuracy beyond that. Perhaps they’re right, but I personally suspect there’s often an element
of wishful fantasy in such claims. Orbs are an astrological reality; there can be no doubt about
that. And logically they constrain the accuracy of the rectification process, although if we
push it far enough, averaging out the errors that orbs create, we can get extremely close to the
true moment of birth. And of course, for the lion’s share of practical astrological work, if the
House cusps of a chart are accurate within a degree, you’re in good shape.

HIDDEN ANGLES

In an accurate natal chart, a planet might very well happen to be conjunct an Angle, or in a
fourth harmonic aspect to an Angle. This is of course a common occurrence, and it threatens
the rectification process with a serious pitfall. The planet can effectively hide the Angle.
Here’s how: From routine astrological practice, we know that arcs, progressions and transits
to the planets themselves are extremely energetic events. In rectification, we ignore all
passing aspects to natal planets because we are only interested in locating the unknown, time-
sensitive points: the Angles themselves. If someone’s Sun lies in 5 Cancer, when we check
out our “hit lists” around those sensitive dates the client supplied, we know we’ll very likely
see a lot of events connected by fourth harmonic aspects to 5 Cancer…a moving planet
conjuncts, squares, or opposes her natal Sun and her life gets colorful. Initially, we ignore that
data because it isn’t telling us anything we’re seeking to know—we already knew where her
Sun was and that it would be sensitive to getting clobbered by a Pluto square! But if her true
Ascendent happens to fall in 5 degrees of a Cardinal sign, then those aspects to her Sun would
be effectively hiding it! An Ascendent in 5 Aries, or 5 Libra, or 5 Capricorn, or even conjunct
the Sun in 5 Cancer would basically disappear, hiding “behind the Sun.” We’d be looking
right at it, but we wouldn’t see it. We’d think we were just seeing arcs, progressions, and
transits triggering her natal Sun.

How do we sort that one out? Well, we know that her Ascendent and Midheaven are
somewhere, and that they are likely to be implicated in major life-events for her. If, after a
close analysis of several events, we seem to be getting nowhere, there’s an excellent chance
that we’re in a “hidden Angle” situation. Our confusion becomes useful information, in other
words. If nothing is working, probably the Angles are hiding. That little insight will save you
a lot of headaches.

Go a little further. Due to astronomical realities, especially outside the tropics, it’s relatively
unusual in practice to see the Midheaven actually square the Ascendent. This helps us as well
because if one Angle is hidden, it’s less likely that the other one is hidden too. We’ll see a big
unexplained spike in only one Modal area—and immediately suspect that the other Angle is
hiding behind a planet. Pursuing our example, maybe there’s an unexplained cluster around
12 degrees of the Cardinals. We give her a 12 Aries Midheaven, and then the Ascendent
happens to fall in 5 Cancer, conjunct her Sun. We’ve got a good candidate chart.

THE INCALCULABLE USEFULNESS OF VAGUE HINTS

Way back in the first paragraph of this article, I rhapsodized about the incredible helpfulness
of even a vague hint as to the time of birth. Wring the client for anything and everything in
that department. Maybe he or she tells you, “I can’t find my time of birth….but mom says it
was definitely in the wee hours.” One learns to take everything with a grain of salt, but that
provides a really useful head start. Set up a chart for 1:00AM and another one for 5:00AM,
and you’ve got a strictly limited arc of possibilities for all four Angles. The right chart is
going to be in between those extremes. That’s only a four hour spread—already six times
more precise than starting with just the birth date. Somewhere in there is the right chart, and
you’re six times closer to a right answer than you would be if you only knew the birth date.

It’s even better than that. Continuing with this example, maybe you’ve got an unexplained
cluster of events around 10 degrees of the Fixed Signs. Your assumption is that it must
correspond to either the Horizon or the Meridian axes of the chart. Between 1:00AM and
5:00AM on that day, there was probably only one possibility for a Fixed sign on the
Midheaven—say, arbitrarily, Leo. There was also only one possibility for a Fixed sign on the
Ascendent—say Scorpio. One of those is probably your answer…but which one? Is it 10
Scorpio rising? Or is it 10 Leo on the Midheaven? It could be either, and those are two
different charts. But, there’s good news: unless we’re dealing with an Ascendent-Midheaven
square, it won’t be hard to sort it out. Here’s how: Look at the 10 Leo Midheaven chart. It will
dictate a specific Ascendent, depending on the latitude of the birthplace. Maybe it’s 19
Scorpio. Now, the critical question—does that Ascendent also correspond to a “hot spot” for
the client? If it does, get out the champagne. You’ve found the Midheaven—and an
Ascendent that agreed with it! That’s the Holy Grail.

If it doesn’t agree, then experiment with that 10 Scorpio Ascendent. It too will dictate only
one possible Midheaven—is that a hot spot? Yes? Champagne! No? Well, don’t despair. Read
on.

By the way, we made this example a little easier than some real-world situations in that we
assumed we knew something about the time of birth—that it occurred during the wee hours. If
we hadn’t had that helpful clarification, we would have had to try out 10 degrees of every
Fixed Sign on both Ascendent and Midheaven…which is exactly what you do if you are
rectifying within a 24 hour range. That represents a lot more possibilities, which makes it a lot
more challenging in practice. The techniques remain the same, though. Gradually, the
erroneous charts are eliminated and the truth emerges.

You sometimes get into confusions generated by polarities—is that 10 Taurus or 10 Scorpio
on the Ascendent? Unless you are dealing with an Ascendent-Midheaven square, then the
Midheaven-Nadir hit-clusters will usually clear that up—they’ll support one Ascendent and
preclude the other.

COMMON SENSE AND ASTROLOGICAL EXPERIENCE

Avoid ’em both as long as possible. “This person really looks like he’s got Leo rising —check
out that hair!” In the end, impressions and intuitions like that may cast tie-breaking votes, but
beware! “What a career-driven person! She’s got to have a big Tenth House!” There is a real
place for these kinds of judgements in rectification, but that place is at the end of the long,
hard process of actually looking at the data. Deeper astrological experience reminds us that
Pluto in the First house can effectively masquerade as Scorpio rising. Venus conjunct the
Ascendent can be mistaken for Libra rising. And mature common sense tells us that neurotic
insecurity and a controlling, materialistic early family life can correlate with tremendous
career drive, even with nothing in the Tenth House. But transits, arcs, and progressions to
Angles never lie.

CLOSELY SPACED DATES

Or almost never lie. In one situation, transits, and especially arcs and progressions, can lie to
you with great authority, and that is when you are working with events that are closely spaced
in time. Here’s a cardinal rule of rectification: Never do that! If your client gives you ten dates
that all fall within a five year period, you’ll get guaranteed false results. Why? Because in five
years, none of the progressions or arcs will have moved very far. You’ll see “clustering” all
right, but it won’t have anything to do with the Ascendent or Midheaven! Of course
everything is clustered—nothing had enough time to move anywhere!!! You’ll imagine
you’ve found this incredible hot spot when all you are seeing is a trick you’ve played on
yourself with the numbers.

I generally ask my clients to give me around ten dates, none of them closer than two years to
any other. I encourage them to include events from their childhoods, if possible—big family
moves, parental divorce, births of siblings, and so on. That spreads it out. Ideally, I’d get
something from every chapter of their lives.
One obvious corollary is that it’s easier and more accurate to do rectifications for people over,
say, thirty years of age. Under age five or ten, the process would be quite dubious. In
between, it’s worth a shot, but it would be foolish to take any result as final.

STUCK?

Sometimes a rectification just falls neatly into place. When that doesn’t happen, just setting it
aside for a couple of days can work wonders. Failing that, then the next step is to go back to
the client and get another set of dates. By random ill-fortune, the first list might have neatly
demonstrated the positions of the client’s Sun, Moon, Venus, and so on, but simply not
involved anything that revealed the Angles—big events can happen in a person’s life without
major Angular influences. The odds are long against that, but it does happen. Nothing for it
except a fresh start with a new set of events.

Many times, despite your admonitions, a client will have given you a longer list of events than
you requested, or one that you had to weed out because of too many closely-spaced events. In
that case, work with the unexplored events—but, if you are using those closely-spaced events,
make it a fresh start! Don’t add the new ones to the previous events, or you’ll get those
“instant amazing results”…which are totally wrong for reasons we discussed a couple
paragraphs back.

A FEW PRACTICAL WRINKLES

Let’s say you are torn between a Taurus and a Scorpio Ascendent. Maybe the Meridian axis is
square to the Horizon, and you’re just tearing out your hair trying to decide which Ascendent
is right. At this point, common sense and astrological experience can legitimately enter the
equations. Does the person have that penetrating intensity we associate with Scorpio? Does
his or her professional life corroborate that (presumed) Leo Midheaven? What about the
placement of planets in Houses? Which arrangement best fits existential, observed reality? As
we said earlier, this kind of thinking does have a place in rectification—and we just defined it
specifically.

That much is fairly obvious and intuitive, but we have another technical ace in the hole here.
If Scorpio is rising, then Pluto and Mars are the co-Rulers of the Ascendent. We know that the
planetary ruler of the Ascendent is always a very sensitive point. When we were compiling
our hit lists for the big events in the person’s life, did we notice that Pluto and/or Mars really
stood out? Did anything contacting either of them virtually always correlate with major
fireworks? Do they seem more reactive than the rest of the planets? That would argue
powerfully for Scorpio rising in this scenario. Or was it Venus that seemed to be at the center
of every hurricane? Maybe we should consider that Taurean ascendent after all….

Here’s another trick. Most astrologers have observed family patterns in charts—you got your
father’s nose and your mother’s Moon. We are not talking simply about Sign positions here—
it’s generally down to areas two or three degrees wide. It might not always be the same planet
in the particular degree area; very commonly, for example, a child’s Ascendent will be the
Moon or Sun position of one of the parents, or vice versa. If your client has children whose
birth times are known, set up those charts. Ditto if parental birth times are known. Are there
degree areas that leap out as a family pattern? Are they close to any of our suspected Angles?
Even if the birth times are unknown, we can almost always at least get their birthdays, which
gives us the position of the Sun and planets to within about a degree of accuracy, and a good
guess about the Moon.

Very similar patterns apply to the charts of people outside our families with whom we have
serious or pivotal relationships. Getting the charts of “significant others” can often help us
build confidence and precision in our rectified chart—”her lover’s Moon is smack on the
Ascendent I’ve come up with!”

I emphasize that none of these tricks is a substitute for the more technical procedures we’ve
outlined. But after you’ve done the technical work, you might still be torn between a couple
of possibilities…or just need some extra confidence in a chart you’re thinking is probably
right. That’s where these pieces fit into the puzzle.

Transits, solar arcs, and secondary progressions provide a lot of data. Probably they are
enough. But you can also work with converse solar arcs and converse progressions, which are
surprisingly active and effective. One can extend out into the realm of Minor and Tertiary
progressions as well. All these are powerful techniques, and arguably they are under-used in
modern astrological practice. In my interpretive, counselling work with clients I prefer a
simpler approach, but I’ve commonly used all of the above techniques in particularly teeth-
gnashing rectificational procedures.

One insight that will be brought home to you in this work is that it is very hard to know from
a biographical event which planet was the trigger. Over and over again, you’ll see deaths
connected with Jupiter or Venus, promotions connected with Saturn, humiliations connected
with the Sun, and successes linked to Neptune. This is a good reminder that we should never
be too literal about the outward, concrete “predictive” meanings of the planets. What they
really do is tell us what the event meant to the client. If you’re interested in going more deeply
into that idea, I’d recommend you have a look at my book, The Changing Sky. (ACS
Publications, San Diego.) The bottom line here is that any planet’s passages can coincide with
almost anything in our outward lives, but when any of them hit Angles, things do happen. It’s
the timing of the event more than the nature of the event that helps us in rectification.

THE ROLE OF COMPUTERS

A computer definitely makes rectification easier. Even the crudest of programs allow one
easily to set up an array of possible charts and “hit lists” for the relevant biographical dates.
Most of the major programs also support some kind of “rectification” sub-routine. Generally,
they enable the adjustment of a chart through altering the birth time and either the Ascendent
or the Midheaven. In practice, I usually wind up with a big pile of paper charts and lots of
pages of scribbled notes. Still, the computer, while not strictly necessary, is as useful in this
branch of astrology as it is in any other.

A.I.R. Software (115 Caya Ave, W.Hartford CT 06110, (860)232-6521), in its old DOS-based
Star Trax program, offered a wonderfully simple rectification module which I love very much
—in fact Jodie and I maintain an ancient lap-top simply because it holds that program. You
enter the approximate chart and the critical dates the client provided, select transits,
progressions, and arcs, punch a button, and the positions of the moving planets are instantly
“binned” by fourth harmonic degree, just as I’ve been describing in this article. Various
parameters can be adjusted, and the whole program is a very helpful adjunct to the processes
we’re exploring. If you can find a copy of that older program, grab it. A.I.R.’s fearless leader,
Alphee Lavoie, in the Windows versions of their Star Trax programs, has replaced that
rectification module with a newer, more complex and powerful one. I’m not a computer guy,
and I have to say it’s too complicated for me, even though Alphee has explained it to me. If
you are computer-friendly, I’d heartily recommend trying it—I know the program works
incredibly well, because Alphee sat in front of me and used it very convincingly to adjust my
own earlier rectification of my own chart, and Jodie’s rectifcation of her chart, by a few
minutes. Alphee is a pal and he’ll probably murder me for saying this in print, but I really
wish he would include the older, simpler rectification sub-routine as an optional module for
the cyber-challenged in any new updates of his excellent new Millenium Star Trax For
Windows .

There may be other good rectification programs out there; please forgive me if I’ve not
mentioned them. As I said, even though I use computers, I’d serve pretty well as a worst-case
customer scenario for any software company. If you are computer-less or computer-phobic,
you can do everything in this article, to a high degree of professional precision, with nothing
but an ephemeris, a Table of Houses, some time, and plenty of coffee.

STILL STUCK???

All these procedures are laborious, but they work. If you are still stuck after a long effort, you
can repeat the above procedures as long as you and the client both have the patience and
interest. If you pursue them diligently, you won’t hit the wall often. When you do, remember
what the Father of Medicine said: “First do no harm.” At some point, frustration sets in, and
that can lead to “settling” for a chart in which you don’t really have much faith. This is the
moment for some reflection on the terrible responsibilities being an astrologer entails. If you
don’t feel good about the chart you’ve created, it’s probably best simply to say that
straightforwardly to yourself and to the client, and put the whole project aside at least for a
few months. It’s smart, of course, to have alerted the client to that possible outcome right
from the start.

THE TERROR OF HAVING TWO WATCHES

Someone very wise once observed, “A man with a watch knows what time it is, but a man
with two watches is never sure.” As you get into rectification, inevitably you’ll be drawn to
check out your own chart, even if your birth time is allegedly “accurate.” It’s usually
disconcertingly eye-opening. Even a birth time given to an odd minute, which sounds so
convincing, can be off by surprising margins. My own birth was listed on my hospital birth
certificate as 3:30 AM. Using the procedures I’ve described in this article, I rectified it to
3:21, and Alphee Lavoie convinced me it was 3:19:25. Clocks are simply wrong sometimes.
Pediatricians and nurses have more pressing tasks than recording birth times accurately.
Outside astrology, nobody thinks accuracy here is very important. Astrologers themselves
don’t even really agree on exactly what we mean by “the moment of birth.” Errors in this
absolute bedrock of our craft are far more common than we like to believe. In the best of
worlds we would rectify every chart. Given the paramount importance of an accurate chart to
the accuracy of any subsequent interpretation, I suspect our astrological descendants will look
at us the way we now look at medieval doctors doing surgery with dirty hands.

In closing, I’d like to make it clear that I basically no longer do rectifications. The process is
enjoyable in the same way that doing a crossword puzzle is enjoyable, but it’s time-
consuming. I’m overwhelmed with the rest of my work and, sadly, I’ve had to set a limit in
this department. I hope that someone out there with a taste for this kind of procedure will soon
place an advertisement for a rectification service in the Mountain Astrologer classifieds. It
could be a good basis for a profitable professional astrological business, and it would certainly
provide an excellent support to the community.

Meanwhile, let’s all dare to trust a peek at that confusing “second watch” we’re carrying: the
actual evidence of planetary motions as they impact the birthchart. It’s a lot more reliable than
the clock on the hospital wall, and not that hard to read with a little perspiration and patience