Errors in Birth Time Versus Errors in Birth Place

Errors in Birth Time Versus Errors in Birth Place

December

Master’s Musings, Late May 2025

Errors in Birth Time Versus Errors in Birth Place

0:00 / 0:00
Master’s Musings

 

On March 19, as we were preparing for one of our frequent Question-and-Answer Zoom sessions, Penelope contacted me with a minor concern about our monthly “chart winner.”  As usual, many people had submitted their charts, hoping to be the one whom we would put in the spotlight for a half hour or so at the end of the Q&A time. Penelope had done the usual drill, using a random method to pick the winner. When she had chosen, she quickly emailed me with her problem. “I am confirming the Ascendant degree with the chart winner. She was born in Brooklyn at a very specific time (3:26am), but she was not specific about exactly which Brooklyn location.”
 
Penelope was right. Brooklyn is big! It stretches about fifteen miles from Greenpoint in the north to Brighton Beach in the south. Was she right to worry about coming up with the wrong chart unless we knew precisely where in Brooklyn this woman was born? We all know that the place of someone’s birth is a critical element in our “holy trinity” of birth date, birth time, and  birth  location. How big an error in her Ascendant and house cusps might we introduce if we had her being born in Greenpoint when she was actually born in Brighton Beach?
 
The answer was easy to discover with a few minutes’ work. I can’t remember the details of the chart, so I just did some fresh calculations here at my desk as I wrote this little essay. I happen to be writing on April 25. Arbitrarily, I set up a chart for noon today in Brooklyn – but I altered the latitude that my Winstar program gave for “Brooklyn” to reflect a birth way up in the north end of the borough, in Greenpoint. There, I got an Ascendent at 23 degrees Cancer 58 minutes. I then did the same thing for the south end of Brooklyn, at Brighton Beach. There the Ascendant is 23 degrees Cancer 51 minutes. 
 
The two Ascendants are indeed different, but only by seven minutes of arc. That’s too small a change to make any practical difference at all. No worry, in other words. It didn’t matter where in Brooklyn our chart winner was born. Saying “Brooklyn” was good enough.
 
That was a north/south change. What about east/west? That would naturally have more impact on the Ascendant. Here let’s look at the worst case scenario: a true megalopolis. Shanghai, China, stretches about seventy-five miles in an east/west direction. I applied the same method I used with Brooklyn, altering the atlas listing of Shanghai’s latitude and longitude to reflect two widely-spaced places of birth that were both technically within the city limits. In the east along the coast, that calculation shows an Ascendant of 1 degree Leo 49 minutes. In the west, seventy-five miles away, the Ascendant backs off to 0 degrees Leo 47’. It’s shifted over one degree, in other words. And there, even though the change is not huge, we might potentially run into some trouble.
 
The takeaway is that if you are dealing with a client who was born in one of the world’s truly gigantic cities – Mexico City, Mumbai, and so forth – it might be worth asking them for some clarification about exactly where in the city they were born.
 
By the way, when I simply accept the atlas’s figures for the position of Shanghai, they point to the central district of the city. I am not sure exactly what the protocol is for choosing the latitudes and longitudes in the various astrology atlases, but I suspect that approach is typical. And sensible. The point is that if we had simply accepted that given “downtown” latitude and longitude and used it in setting up a chart for someone “born in Shanghai,” that one degree shift from east to west would be considerably mitigated, and probably drop down to no more than about a half-degree of error. And that’s well within the margins of acceptability for our work.
 
The bottom line is that when Penelope wondered about where in Brooklyn our chart winner was born, she really did not need to worry at all. “I was born in Brooklyn” is enough for us to set up a chart in which we can have confidence.
 
THE REAL ELEPHANT IN THE LIVING ROOM . . .
 
 . . . is not the place of birth, but rather the time of birth. Even small errors in the time, unlike discrepancies in latitude and longitude, can quickly make a big difference.
Our chart winner had what appears to be a carefully timed birth of 3:26 AM. But what exactly do we mean by “birth?” Some of you women who are reading my words are mothers – and Happy Mothers’ Day, by the way! But you know very well that it wasn’t as if one day you were walking along minding your own business when suddenly, pop, there’s your baby. 
 
Some births are fast, some are slow, but none are “instant,” where there would be an easily and universally identified minute of birth. Is the moment of birth the emergence of the child’s head, the full emergence, the first breath, the cutting of the umbilical cord? I’ve heard all of them and I really don’t know which theory is correct.
 
Our chart winner was born at 3:26 AM? Hmmm . . .
 
And of course there’s human error, clocks running fast or slow, especially in the pre-digital days.The time of birth is ever the Achilles’ Heel of astrological practice. My birth certificate states that I was born (whatever that means) at 3:30 AM. Through my own experience of the timing of events in my life, I’ve rectified that back to 3:22. And that change has thrown my Ascendant off by nearly three degrees, enough to make a significant difference in my chart.
 
I suspect errors of that order are common and widespread.
 
  • The underlying point for our purposes here is that any slight error in one’s house cusps that is introduced by ambivalence about where in a given town or city a person was born is eclipsed by the almost-inevitable uncertainties that are built into a birth time, even a seemingly accurate one.
 
So how can we live with these wild cards? Carefully, is the answer. We get the best birth information we can get and we set up a chart, trusting it to be more or less accurate. If we have an ongoing relationship with a client, we might start to notice small but systematic errors in the timing of events in that person’s life – things happen a little sooner or a little later than we would have predicted. Perhaps that time of birth needs some adjustment, just like my own.
 
Soon we will have an honors elective available about the technical process of rectifying a birth time. That will be FCEA 402 – and if you have much Virgo energy, welcome to paradise! It’s a picky process, but it will get you up to Warp speed with your understanding how transits, progressions, and solar arcs actually work faster than any other method I know.
 
Until then, don’t sweat the place of birth – but keep a suspicious eye on everyone’s time of birth.
 
Steven Forrest
May 2025

 

 

Our 400-Level Course on the Asteroids

Our 400-Level Course on the Asteroids

Dean’s Update, Late May 2025

Our 400-Level Course on the Asteroids

 
 
0:00 / 0:00
Dean’s Update
 
We begin Gemini season this year with some exciting news about our classes and programs here at the FCEA. We will have a new series of advanced classes at the 400-level addressing many of the special topics students requested we cover. Several years ago, Steven and I worked together to create the curriculum that was designed to introduce students to a number of useful topics in astrology, in order to give these subjects an evolutionary spin. Since then, we have been very busy running and growing the FCEA, but now we are ready to start rolling out these 400-level courses one at a time in the months ahead. This will be a gradual process, so please be patient! We want to make sure we have everything properly in place with each new offering. 
 
Steven and I are standing before the Altar of Demeter (Ceres) in the Stadium of Ancient Olympia.
Steven and I are standing before the Altar of Demeter (Ceres) in the Stadium of Ancient Olympia.
Please read on to hear about the program changes and the first 400-level class opening: FCEA 405: The Asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Juno. With synchronicity and grace, when this newsletter article comes out, we will be traveling in Greece to a few of the many sacred temples and sites associated with these well-known Goddesses in Greek mythology. What a blessing and gift to be able to commune with them, feel Divine inspiration, and connect with our hearts through pilgrimage with one another in this sacred landscape. I am so thrilled to be joined by so many FCEA students and members on this Greek odyssey with Steven. But I also look forward to sharing this rich topic in evolutionary astrology together with those who wish to join FCEA 405. 
 
Eventually, there will be a variety of optional elective 400-level courses available to 300 Master Level students and FCEA graduates. These will include electional astrology, astromapping, and chart rectification, to name just a few. Students who complete three 400-level electives will earn an Honors Designation on their FCEA Master’s diploma, and students completing all six 400-level electives will earn a Distinguished Honors Designation. By participating and receiving credit in these classes, students will be able to add recognition of a specialty (a focus upon certain advanced skill sets in evolutionary astrology) to their practice, and the two-tiered honors designation will be noted on graduate listings on the FCEA website and added to their FCEA diploma. I am hopeful this new 400-level curriculum will provide an additional layer of support for students who are expanding their professional practice. 
 
In FCEA 405: The Asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Juno, we focus upon these “Big Four” because they were the first asteroids (Astronomers now call Ceres a dwarf planet, along with Pluto. We astrologers continue to call it an asteroid.) to be discovered and introduced into astrological study and analysis. Personally, I am very excited about this course! As I write this newsletter article, the asteroid Vesta is transiting my natal Neptune/Juno/Pallas conjunction in Scorpio, 8th house. It feels as if synchronicity is saying this is the right time to open the class with its maiden run. In FCEA 405, we will explore Ceres, Vesta, Pallas and Juno in both the natal chart and by transit, progression and solar arc. We will investigate these four asteroids in the context of various charts, including their possible role in the nodal story or when the lunar nodes are being activated. 

For this initial class offering, FCEA 405 will run July 25th through August 15th, four weeks long with Zoom meetups on Fridays between 12:00 pm and 2:00 pm, Pacific time. In addition to live weekly tutor-led class sessions, the course includes written discussions, handouts, charts and videos by Steven. Course tuition is $399. If you are currently in the 300-level or an FCEA graduate, please consider joining us in class! Our catalog includes enrollment information. I hope to see many of you participate down the road, as well, as we open each of these exciting new courses.

 

 
Catie Cadge, PhD
May 2025