DIALOGUES IN ASTROLOGY 08: Birth Time Rectification

In the labyrinth of Jyotish an elusive  X factor of  Birth Time plays a very important role. It is, after all, the start of everything. But what is a birth ? How does define birth ?

To cast a chart three things are needed viz. Date of birth, Time of Birth and Place of Birth. These three things help to deduce, what the sign falls in the first house, at what degree is this magical Ascendant. Without that one cannot start. Now one may ask what about the people who don’t know when they were born, or where  etc… For that too there are different set of rules. One can cast their charts but it does have limitations to make predictions. Of the said  three things one can observe the Birth keeps repeating. Thus it is critical  factor as to define what a birth is. How is a birth defined has certain rules laid down for the different Yugs, as life duration is different for each Yug. 

There are myriad of opinions as what to define birth of child. One may consider crowning as birth, one may consider complete delivery of the baby (umbilical cord intact) and so on. Jyotish too as different opinions, one says once the head touches the ground baby is born. Now many deliveries happen in hospital head touching ground part is absent.  Another rule is once the baby is separated from the mother it is born. This is tricky, as it does not clear what is separation. Is cutting of umbilical cord separation? Or just baby delivered with cord intact a birth? How does one decide timing in case of twins birth via Caesarian. In such an event, the baby on top, the first one removed is the younger one while the one on lower side is the elder. But it does happen that the umbilical cord of younger is cut first.  One school of thought says that birth is when the baby breaths first breath. Now in few cases that can happen 10-15 minutes after crowning or even after cord is cut. Some cases babies have been resuscitated, what’s their timing. All in all we see that birth time is a rabbit hole, no one way to know for ascertain the right time. And don’t forget in all that labour when all the nurses, doctors are occupied to birth the child safe and healthy along with the mother, who keeps the time?  Like always this is just rounded off timing, despite any instructions from the family of the new born. 

We all can safely assume, all our birth times are just close approximations of our birth. As this knowledge is shared, once the smart ones have understood that this time is most important they have found ways to manipulate it. Why? Well, reasons can be many, chart matching for marriage (one of the most common reason), desire (burning-waala) to get a child say like Amitabh, Sachin or whomever one idolises. Such thirsty desperates have their astrologer buttered with many green Gandhis. They approach the astrologer and ask for so called good ‘birth times’ for delivery of their baby. Armed with this time they approach the doctor ask him to get their baby delivered at one of those chosen time. Way is out Caesarian. Doctors who fall for such deals, make money with caesarian delivery over normal delivery. There have been rackets promising access to such facility of having a made to order baby.  There have been conscious doctors who have opposed such demands of parents, prioritising the health of mother and child over few bucks. Same goes for astrologers too, many avoid playing into these loopholes, but there is always one who runs for money.       

This is just one of the many ways wherein the Birth time fear or greed is missed. Challenging this misuse, or to stop it is rather difficult. As of now there exists no safeguards to prevent this, except one’s own moral compass. One does wonder as why this birth timing is so critical, what’s so catastrophic about being approximate? What difference does 1 or 2 minutes here and there make? That does make almost world changing impact. Consider a case of twins, who are born few minutes apart (such an event is quite rare), will they have same destiny? That need not be the case. Like I have mentioned in other article, and even at start of this one, the Ascendant plays important role. In the chart the Ascendant falls in the sign rising at east horizon at time of birth. Say the twins are born at 9:20 am and other at 9:25 am and that time the rising sign on eastern horizon was Cancer, then the ascendant will fall in this sign. Using the place of birth and date of birth, the degrees of Ascendant are calculated (now-days computers do all the toil)  

Thus the first house will be occupied by the Cancer sign. Now it is not necessary that the rise of that sign will coincide with birth time. A sign takes  two hours to rise, i.e every 2 hours a new sign rises on the eastern horizon. Thus it could be a case that in our example birth time 9:20 am could be end of Cancer and start of Leo rise (Leo is just below horizon). This makes one of the twin with first house with Cancer and other with Leo. Now if the birth time is not accurate such babies born on cusp (when signs are changing) then the casted charts are absolute erroneous. This error isn’t limited to the main chart known as the Rashi Chart. There are many other charts which are drawn based on this primary Rasi chart. Like explained in earlier article each house represents 30°, these can be further divided into finer charts knowns as Divisional chart or simply D-Charts. There is D2, D3, D4, D5 …Dn charts. Each has its own importance and way of interpretation. These Divisional charts go upto D150, ie 150th division of 30°. One such chart which the seers who wrote about Jyotish, laid very heavy stress of importance is D60, which means the 60th division. In such a chart one gets to see why being born so close the twins differ immensely. To analyse such a chart one has to have absolute correct time of birth, just 1 minute can change the interpretation totally.    

Having said that, one does wonder if all the birth times are questionable then how can we get the right time, how can we be sure or will it always be root of error in predictions? Here the concept of birth time rectification comes handy. As the name suggests, there is always the need to rectify the birth when on visits the Jyotish. A good practitioner, without say does this rectification prior analysing the chart.  A good practitioner will try and predict few events of past to his client from the given, and reverse engineer the time. This is the birth time rectification. This isn’t done every time, but it needs to be done once so that the correct timing of birth is  achieved. 

This is rather a must step if anyone is visiting an astrologer for the first time, get the right time and use it for all future astrological adventures. Ask the astrologer to mention at least 5 events from your past life so that you can judge how good he/she is and also he/she gets the opportunity to rectify your timing. This is just one of the many factors based on which a Jyotishi will try to interpret a chart, having this corrected is just one step close to being on right path, but that does not assure that the Jyotishi will make predictions free of error. There are further more factors which one has to reign in.