Why Do You Ask for the Time of Birth to Create My Personalized Horoscope?

How accurate are personalized horoscopes, that incorporate not just the sun  sign but are drawn up with place and time of birth? - Quora

Everyone has an astrological natal chart. This is a picture of the sky directly over you at the moment you were born. It never changes. When creating a personalized forecast, we look at where the planets are today and how they relate to the planets’ original placement in your unique birth chart. We also look at your overall personality according to your natal chart and predict how someone with your natal chart would most likely respond to the events that are unfolding in your life. When creating a compatibility report, we compare your chart and the other person’s chart to see what elements of your charts are compatible and which ones would likely clash. To understand how your time of birth plays into this, we will start with an analogy.

Imagine that an astrology chart is a clock with ten hands spinning around. In essence, astrological forecasting is simply reading someone’s ten handed clock and telling them what time it is and what time it is about to be. Some planets move quickly like the minute hand or the seconds hand on a normal clock and some move slower like the hour hand. The moon, sun, Venus, and Mars all tend to zip around fairly quickly. Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are moderately paced. Neptune and Pluto are so slow that they create big generational influences. Most Baby Boomers have Pluto in Leo and Neptune in Libra. However, those born after 1958 have Pluto in Virgo and Neptune in Scorpio. This is why those born at the end of the bell curve, like Madonna, Bono, and Obama often fit in better with the post-Boomer generation. The faster planets have a more noticeable affect on our personalities and often trigger more of the day-to-day events in our lives. Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are mid-speed and create trends and themes more than they do generational changes or moody changes. Your natal chart is your personal clock frozen in time at the moment of your birth. Instead of two or three hands frozen in place on the face of your clock/chart, you have twelve little symbols (representing each planet’s “hand”) sprinkled randomly around your clock.

 

Your chart has two circles; one is bigger than the other. When stacked on top of each other, the bigger circle peaks out around the edges of the smaller circle. The outer circle is cut into twelve equal sized sections. Each of those sections is named after one of the constellations. They are always in the same order as they occur in the seasons, they never shuffle or get mixed up. Aries (begin spring), Taurus (mid-spring), Gemini (end spring), Cancer (begin summer), Leo (mid-summer), Virgo (end-summer), Libra (begin fall), Scorpio (mid-fall), Sagittarius (end fall), Capricorn (begin winter), Aquarius (mid-winter), Pisces (end winter), and back to Aries (begin spring). They always are shown in this order, because the seasons never change.

 

The inner circle is also cut into twelve sections. However, it is more like a pizza that sometimes has wide slices and sometimes has narrow slices. The slices that are on opposing sides are always the same width. So if section 1 is narrow, so is section 7 directly across from it. If section 2 is wide, then so is section 8. The opposite sides always mirror each other. The twelve sections within the inner circle are called “houses” and they each govern over certain aspects of our lives. 

 

Different charts have different sized houses. Some people have houses that are mostly equal in size and others have a couple of really large houses and a lot of really tiny houses. All this means is that planets have more time to affect certain areas of your life and less time to affect others. A big money house does not mean you will have a lot of money, just that planets have more time to make good and bad things happen to your money. The planets are displayed inside the inner circle’s houses. Therefore, we could say things like “She has Mercury in the second house.” Or “He has a tenth house sun.” Having a lot of planets in one house does not bless or curse that house. It just means that you will put a lot of importance on the topics governed by that house. 

 

Next, imagine that someone anchors these circles together by poking a pin through the middle of both circles that will allow both wheels to spin around independently of each other, but without actually separating from each other. You can move the outer wheel’s zodiac signs to match up with the various houses. For example, you could spin them around so that Aries lines up with the third house or so that Taurus is halfway across the seventh house and halfway into the eighth house. Now when we read someone’s chart we can say things like “She has Mercury in second house Virgo.” Or “He has his sun in tenth house Leo.” The inner circle tells us which house the planet is in and the outer circle tells us which zodiac sign it is in.

 

When we create a birth chart, the date and location help us decide where the planets are and tells us how the zodiac signs and the planets line up. What we do not know is where the houses are. A chart without a birth time is as if someone threw away the inner circle and just sprinkled the planets on the bigger wheel with the zodiac signs. This is what you would call a solar chart rather than a natal chart. 

 

In a solar chart, we will put your sun sign in the first house. Therefore, if you know from your birthday that you are a Virgo, then we would spin the inner circle around so that Virgo (from the outer circle) is in the spot where someone’s first house belongs. Then Libra would naturally fall into the second house, Scorpio into the third, Sagittarius into the fourth etc. When you read a generic sun sign forecast, this is what they are using to make the predictions. It can be accurate in a generic sense, but it is not detailed and personally accurate, because we do not know where your houses really are supposed to be. When we use solar charts for compatibility purposes, we can tell you if you have similar or different spending habits, but we cannot tell you which financial topics you will argue about.

 

For example, let us say that the solar charts show that he is going to be fiscally conservative and she is going to be fiscally irresponsible. In a solar chart compatibility reading, we can only tell you that much. But if we had the birth times and the real house placements then we could tell you that his fiscal conservatism is in the areas of his chart where gambling is. And her natal chart shows that her fiscal irresponsibility is in the extended family areas of her chart. Now it is easier to warn the couple that she may be tempted to give away money to her siblings or that she is extremely generous with her family during birthdays, weddings, and holidays. And that he is not likely to be one to gamble or to take undo risks with his money. They still could have some occasional money debates, but they at least know when and where it is likely to show up. This makes it easier for them to judge their levels of compatibility. They could decide that their financial differences are not necessarily a deal breaker after all.

 

What the birth time tells us is where the “horizon” is in your personal picture of the sky at the moment of your birth. The “horizon” in a normal clock is at that invisible line that goes across the face of the clock passing through the numbers 9 and 3. The birth time tells us where that same line is on your personal clock/chart. The spot where the number 9 is on a normal clock is where the Rising Sign (the horizon of your chart) is placed on your natal chart. By giving an astrologer your birth time, you are in essence telling them which way is up when they hang your clock on the wall. It is also like telling us which way is north when we are trying to read your personal map. Someone with an Aries Rising will have the outer wheel/zodiac sign Aries sitting over the spot where the number 9 would be on a normal clock. However, someone with a Scorpio Rising would have their clock hang on the wall so that Scorpio was at the 9 spot.

 

In compatibility reports, the comparison of Rising Signs is the comparisons of the outer image, outer personality, and the face they show the world that may not match who they are on the inside. If your sun sign and your rising sign are the same, then you are a “what you see is what you get” type person, but if your sun sign and rising sign clash, people may have a hard time being able to figure you out. Sometimes we have a couple that have compatible sun signs. At their core, they really connect and love the other person’s inner self. However, their Rising Signs could clash and so how they behave rubs each other the wrong way. This creates those situations where deep down you love the other person, but you just cannot stand the way they conduct themselves. Without the birth time we cannot analyze this part of the relationship