Spica, I appreciate your attempt to help me but I'm afraid I don't understand why you think my chart needs to be rectified or why you think my ASC is wrong.
I was born at 2:11 p.m. on August 24, 1958 in Oklahoma City, OK. The state of Oklahoma had not adopted Daylight Saving Time. My birth time is recorded on my birth certificate and I was born by Caesarean section for which my mother was wide awake after a long, unproductive labour. My mother always focused on time; she couldn't bear to be without a wrist watch for even an hour. She said that she only agreed to have the C-section--and so to give up her watch--when she was assured that she would be able to see the clock in the operating room. She noted the time I was born and the OR nurse recorded it on the hospital chart, too. I take these together to be reliable. She was a Virgo, too, by the way, and details mattered as much to her as they do to me.
Okay, I do understand your resistance to the process of rectification. Not everyone is equipped to deal with it. However, as an astrologer you should have established the act of birth on which your time of 2:11 p.m. is based. Was it when you first emerged from your mother? Or the first time you took a breath, or the first time you made an independent movement, or the first time you made a sound, or the first time your umbilical cord was severed? I could go on.
The truth is that Astrology 101 says human birth time is valid when the baby makes its first act independent of the mother. But no-one has yet established which act of the baby is decisive! Could it be that the removal of the baby from the mother is the trigger?
And in your particular case where both mother and OR nurse were agreeing on a time of birth in an admittedly very precise Virgoan manner, under almost scientific conditions, this makes your case very interesting.
Please let me know if your mother ever told you what was the particular event of birth that both your mother and the OR nurse had based this birth time on. I really want to know!!
Even so, it's possible that the clock was wrong, I suppose.
That is a very generous admission – the accuracy of the clock(s) involved is always an issue.
But what I am trying to impress on you is that ultimately birth time has to be derived from testing the natal chart – whether it is based on an actual and particular birth event or whether some other more esoteric factor occurs that will later empower the natal chart to yield accurate event data about the native.
I hadn't known that, to find out about my chart's reference to my father's death, I needed to look for angular aspects to my natal Saturn. I understand that now, and it does make sense!
Yes, you grasp it. The only way to rectify a natal chart is the use of the Angles, notably the Ascendant and/or the MC [there are rules which tell us which one to use], because they are based entirely on time and space.
For determining the events of birth and death we always use the Ascendant. There are many more rules to guide you in using directions.
My natal ASC is at 12 Sag 20' 05". Saturn is at 19 Sag 04' 22". The Solar Arc between my birthday and the day my father died is 8° 27' which, added to the ASC is 20° 47', bringing the SA ASC into conjunction with Saturn.
No, no – the Ascendant has most definitely NOT conjoined natal Saturn - it has overshot Saturn by 1 degree 43 minutes of arc. Such an arc could not even trigger an event at the stated time.
Perhaps I did not explain this to you clearly the first time. Let me try again now. Every forecasting technique whether it be directions, progressions or transits has its limits of effectiveness. In the case of secondary progressions these are effective only within the space of 1 degree and thirty seconds – although some astrologers may disagree on the exact limit.
You are obviously acquainted with the use of secondary progressions and are used to seeing charts associated with events based on timing within about 1-2 degrees. Many of those charts are inaccurate because a secondary progression cannot operate with an arc of more than 90 minutes away from the radical significator.
From the point of view of other forecasting techniques this 90 minute leeway is a big window of opportunity but it is also too big to rectify birth time.
In the case of directions theory says the limit of effectiveness is plus or minus 1 minute of arc. That is when we use the measure of exact calculated solar arc for any event taken directly from ephemeris. However, in practice where we are using the averaged solar arc of 59 minutes, astrologers use 5 min. of arc as the orb of effectiveness. This is slightly sloppy but it works in practice and allows faster mental calculations, with the advantage that as you become familiar with directions you can visually spot them on a chart, rather than having to depend on a computer to do that for you.
I also see that, on the chart with both the Secondary Progressions and the Solar Arc places, the SP ASC moves to 19° 10' which is exactly conjunct Saturn, but for 5 minutes.
Do I have this right?
No, it is not the Secondary Progressed Ascendant that moves to 19-10 – it is the Progressed Saturn which moves only 5 minutes of arc from its natal position. This is not significant even in secondary progessions.
The Secondary Progressed (SP) Asc. is shown in red on the outer circle and is at 21 Aqu 43. It is past conjunction with natal Chiron – but if your chart were rectified it would be activated at your dad’s death, showing how deeply wounded you felt like the loss of your best friend.
(I don't understand why you've recommended subtracting the SA from the ASC when the arc moves anti-clockwise around the chart.)
As your rectified birth time is slightly before your recorded birth time, you move back along the zodiac from the fixed point of the event which is natal Saturn at 19 Sag 06. As I said very clearly “take the zodiacal longitude of Saturn and subtract the solar arc [of the death date] in degrees and minutes”. Let me demonstrate.
Death date of father = 23 May 1967
Your birth date = 24 Aug. 1958
Age at the event = 8y-9m
Solar arc of event = 8 d-38 m
Significator of event = Saturn 19 Sag 06
SUBTRACT solar arc of event from Significator of event = 10 Sag 24
This is your Rectified Ascendant 10 Sag 24 which gives you an MC of 25 Vir 11 and a birth time of 2:02 p.m.
I must say that I feel quite relieved to have learned about arcing the ASC to Saturn tonight!
Thank you for your recommendation of Noel Tyl's Solar Arcs. I have a copy of it, in fact, though I can't claim to have read it at all closely. His chapter on rectifications is, frankly, a bit ponderous and difficult. I love Noel Tyl and have learned an enormous amount from him but I would have liked him to set out how to rectify a chart in a briefer, point-by-point outline. His description of how he rectified Hillary's horoscope is convoluted, particularly when one is just trying to get the basic information! I've just checked his Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology, which I purchased recently, and find his description of rectification there to be clearer.
Sorry you find Noel Tyl a little thick. Personally, I think his stuff on solar arcs is amongst is his best work. If Tyl can be criticised it is however largely because of his overly-dramatized presentations, his excessive wordiness and a tendency to re-invent long-established astrological terms to fit his own mindset. His version of astro psychology is not my cup of tea. But I find his astrological reasoning very sound.
For this reason I also loved his work on rectification. His work Astrology of the Famed is a modern classic – entertainingly written for once and his astrological deductions of his subjects were fascinating as the basis for rectifying their natal charts.
This is how I got started in rectification.
Cheers
Spica
