The Role of Birth Time in Astrology: Why It Matters So Much

Ever wonder how two friends of the same birth day can have wildly different personalities, lives and stories? You share the same birthday; you both may be in the same hospital, but one of you is the calm planner, while the other is the wild dreamer. The answer lies in something most of us forget to think about: the exact moment you took your first breath. In astrology, your birth time is more than just an insignificant piece of information on your birth certificate. It's the key that enables you to map out your life.

In India most people know their date of birth from memory. They confidently tell other people their sign of the zodiac. However, when you ask them the hour and minute of their birth, you'll notice that they will take a moment. That break is why it is a suitable time to discuss this topic. If you do not know the exact time of birth, your entire birth chart can be based on a weak foundation and all of the predictions from the chart can be inaccurate. 

Imagine that your birth chart is a picture of the sky. The date indicates which day the picture was taken. The location can be used to indicate the camera angle. However, the time tells you the exact second the shutter went off! A mere tweak in that second can make all the difference in the world in the picture. The planets continue to orbit. Earth spins on its axis. So when you come on this earth is the time it becomes yours and not anyone else's.

Each planetary position at that very moment forms a cosmic blueprint which affects your nature, your daily habits, your strengths and your weaknesses. Hence, in India the birth time is considered as sacred. In the past it was customary to write it on a piece of paper, or even a small slate, as soon as the baby cried a fistful of times. It was that little note that meant so much to a life. 

At the time of your birth the sky in the area above you is in a special arrangement. Sun, Moon and the other planets are placed in certain Signs and Houses. Also, a certain zodiac sign is rising on the east horizon at that moment. In Vedic astrology, this rising sign is known as Ascendant or Lagna and it can be determined solely based on your birth time and place.

Lagna changes every 2 hours. You can have different rising signs, even on the same day, in the same city, with one baby being born at 5:30AM and the other at 7:30AM. With that one change, all of their chart can change in meaning. They will sound and look quite different when you put them on paper; in their personalities, their responses, their fears, their gifts. That's also why identical twins who are separated by only 20 minutes can have very different lives. 

The Lagna is similar to the cover of a book. This is the first thing that others will see before a story is read to them. It influences the perception of the world of you and your reaction to the world. Sun sign is not the person; in Indian astrology, it's the lagna that is much more important than just the sun sign mentioned in the newspaper columns.

Your rising sign determines how you enter a room, how you speak and even some of your physical characteristics. It is also the birthplace of your 12 houses of kundali. All other planets in your chart express themselves in relation to this one. If the birth time is not correct, this can all fall apart like a house of cards in a high wind! 

A janam kundali is made up of 12 houses, each of which has a certain aspect of life under its control. One house is responsible for your job. Another one talks about marriage. One is on financial business. The other speaks about health. The planet which is located in which house depends upon your birth time. Just switch the time by fifteen minutes and a whole planet can go and quietly disappear and change the reading.

Suppose your friend says that Venus has entered your marriage and partnership house (seventh house) in your chart. Venus is the planet of love and hence you are feeling happy. However, if your birth time was incorrect, then Venus may be in your sixth house, where health and daily issues lie. Now, the meaning is completely different! Your love life reading was wrong, you were misled and you left with unrealistic expectations.

This is the subtle threat of a wrong birth time. Many walk around for years with predictions that were never really for them. 

The Moon sign or Rashi is of great importance in the Vedic astrology. The Moon sign is the foundation for most of the rituals, name-giving ceremonies and match-making decisions. But the fastest moving body in our chart is the Moon. It changes its position in the sky every few hours.

If your Birth time is inaccurately entered, then your Moon sign might also be incorrect. Similarly, your Nakshatra, the star constellation where the Moon was located at the time of birth, is to be respected. There are 27 Nakshatras and each of the 27 Nakshatras have its unique personality flavour. In India, the parent's celebration of the child, called the "namkaran", is often based on the initial letter of the name, which may be the same as the Nakshatra. So if the birth time is incorrect, then the name's beginning letter will be incorrect, and this minor detail will tag along with the child throughout their life. Picture yourself being named someone that doesn't harmonize with your cosmic vibration. Just that one reason alone is enough to make birth time worthy of consideration. 

Vedic astrology has an excellent system known as Vimshottari Dasha. It's sort of like a big cosmic calendar detailing which planet is in the ascendancy at each juncture. There are some Dashas of sixteen years duration. Others can survive for seven years, or even twenty years! The actual date and time of each Dasha are determined by the position of the Moon at birth, which relies on the correct time and date of your birth.

Your time is off by an hour, and your Dasha starting point could be several months or years off. The astrologer will predict that you will be blessed next April, but in fact your luck has already gone two years ago. You can see how this can be really confusing for somebody who is attempting to arrange a wedding, launch a business or even change careers. The Dasha system is the pulse of Indian astrology and the right heartbeat of this system is when the birth time is accurate. 

There are many people in India who don't have any time for their birth anywhere. Perhaps the hospital simply rounded it up to the nearest five minutes. Perhaps, the family had been so engrossed in the arrival of the baby that no one noticed the time. Perhaps the actual time was entered days after the certificate was issued. All these petty mistakes come to haunt you when you go for horoscope readings with an astrologer.

If the time is wrong, the result will be a wrong Lagna. A wrong Rashi/Ascendant results in wrong houses. Wrong houses lead to wrong planets, at the wrong time and place. It becomes a guessing game throughout the reading. But even the most learned astrologer will be unable to assist you if the basic data is weak. It's as if trying to find your friend's house with the wrong address on the paper. 

Some babies are born just at the edge of the sign change. This is referred to as cusp birth. Suppose a baby is born at 6:01 AM. That's when the Ascendant could be in Gemini. However, the Lagna may still be in Taurus when the actual time is 5:59 AM. This personality reading can totally change in just two minutes!

Babies who are born close to sunrise, noon, sunset or midnight may require special attention when recording the time of birth. Midwives and family elders in old India would sit with a clock to closely monitor the needle of the clock. This little tradition is often forgotten in today's hectic delivery room environment and in the rush of paperwork. Just a few minutes of attention at birth can save a lifetime of confusion later!

Fortunately you can find the right birthtime even if you can't remember it. The first place to look is in your hospital records. In many cases, the time may be on the long form of your birth certificate. If this isn't the case, then ask your mom, your grandmother, or any aunt that was there at the time. Their memory might not be precise to the hour, but it could allow you one or two hours to work.

In some families, in India, the time of birth is also mentioned in religious texts such as the janam patri prepared by a pandit a few days after the birth. If your family has been doing this since long, take out that yellow paper from the Puja room. It can help you save years of trial and error and provide you with a solid base for your whole planetary positions chart. 

But what if there's no record at all? There is a simple solution to this problem in astrology called birth time rectification. This approach entails examining the significant events of your life by a skilled astrologer. There are planetary movements that can be matched to big events such as marriage, change of jobs, accidents, birth of a child or the death of a loved one. The astrologer can now work backwards from these real events to help him determine your actual time of birth within a few minutes.

It requires patience and skill, but is a proven and reliable technique in Indian astrology that has been used for centuries. After correcting the time your planets suddenly make sense. Your old lines match with your chart, and your predictions for the future become clearer. It's like clearing the oil off a foggy window and getting a clear view.