Birth Time

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

To cast a chart, three things are needed: the date of birth, the time of birth and the place of birth. These three tell us which sign falls in the first house, and at what degree this magical Ascendant lies. Without them one cannot begin. Now, one may ask: what about people who don’t know when or where they were born? There is a different set of rules for that too. Their charts can be cast, but they have limits when it comes to making predictions. Of these three things, notice that the word ‘birth’ keeps repeating. So it becomes critical to define what a birth is. Certain rules for defining it have been laid down for the different Yugs, since the span of life is different in each Yug.

There are myriad opinions on what counts as the birth of a child. One may consider crowning the birth; another may consider the complete delivery of the baby (with the umbilical cord still intact), and so on. Jyotish too has different opinions. One says the baby is born once its head touches the ground. But many deliveries now happen in hospitals, where the head never touches the ground. Another rule says the baby is born once it is separated from the mother. This is tricky, because it doesn’t make clear what separation is. Is cutting the umbilical cord the separation? Or is a baby delivered with the cord intact already born? And how does one decide the timing for twins delivered by Caesarean? In such a case, the baby on top, the first one taken out, is the younger, while the one lower down is the elder. Yet it does happen that the younger one’s cord is cut first. One school of thought says birth is the moment the baby takes its first breath. In some cases that can happen 10–15 minutes after crowning, or even after the cord is cut. Some babies have to be resuscitated; what is their time? All in all, birth time is a rabbit hole, and there is no one way to ascertain the right time. And don’t forget: in all that labour, when the nurses and doctors are busy bringing the child safely into the world along with the mother, who keeps the time? As always, it is just a rounded-off time, whatever instructions the newborn’s family may have given.

We can all safely assume that our birth times are just close approximations. And as this knowledge has spread, the smart ones, having understood that the time matters most, have found ways to manipulate it. Why? The reasons can be many: chart matching for marriage (one of the most common), or a desire (the burning kind) to have a child like Amitabh, or Sachin, or whoever one idolises. Such desperate, thirsty parents keep their astrologer buttered with plenty of green Gandhis. They ask the astrologer for so-called good ‘birth times’ for the delivery of their baby. Armed with these times, they approach the doctor and ask for the baby to be delivered at one of the chosen moments. The way out is a Caesarean. Doctors who fall for such deals make more money from a Caesarean than from a normal delivery. There have been rackets promising access to such made-to-order babies. There have also been conscientious doctors who refused such demands, putting the health of mother and child above a few bucks. The same goes for astrologers: many avoid playing into these loopholes, but there is always one who runs after the money.

This is just one of the many ways in which fear or greed around birth time is misused. Challenging or stopping this misuse is rather difficult. As of now, no safeguards exist to prevent it except one’s own moral compass. One does wonder why the birth time is so critical. What is so catastrophic about being approximate? What difference can a minute or two here and there make? As it happens, an almost world-changing one. Consider twins, born just a few minutes apart. Will they have the same destiny? Not necessarily. As I mentioned in an earlier article, and at the start of this one, the Ascendant plays an important role. In the chart, the Ascendant falls in the sign rising on the eastern horizon at the time of birth. Say one twin is born at 9:20 am and the other at 9:25 am, and at that time the sign rising on the eastern horizon was Cancer. Then the Ascendant falls in Cancer. Using the place and date of birth, the degree of the Ascendant is calculated (these days computers do all the toil).

So the first house will be occupied by Cancer. But the rise of a sign need not neatly coincide with the birth time. A sign takes about two hours to rise; that is, a new sign rises on the eastern horizon every two hours or so. So it could be that, in our example, 9:20 am marks the end of Cancer and the start of Leo’s rise (Leo being just below the horizon). That would give one twin Cancer in the first house and the other, Leo. If the birth time of babies born on such a cusp (when the signs are changing) is not accurate, the charts cast are absolutely wrong. And the error is not limited to the main chart, known as the Rashi chart. Many other charts are drawn from this primary Rashi chart. As explained in an earlier article, each house covers 30°, and these can be divided further into finer charts known as divisional charts, or simply D-charts. There are D2, D3, D4, D5 … Dn charts, each with its own importance and method of interpretation. These divisional charts go up to D150, the 150th division of 30°. One chart on which the seers who wrote about Jyotish laid very heavy stress is the D60, the 60th division. In such a chart one gets to see why twins born so close together differ immensely. To analyse it, one needs an absolutely correct time of birth; just one minute can change the interpretation totally.

Having said that, if all birth times are questionable, how do we get the right time? How can we be sure, or will it always remain a root of error in predictions? This is where birth time rectification comes in handy. As the name suggests, the birth time always needs to be rectified when one visits a Jyotishi. A good practitioner does this rectification, without being asked, before analysing the chart. He will try to predict a few past events for his client from the given time, and reverse-engineer the correct time from them. This is birth time rectification. It doesn’t need to be done every time, but it needs to be done once, so that the correct time of birth is established.

It is in fact a must if you are visiting an astrologer for the first time: get the right time, and use it for all your future astrological adventures. Ask the astrologer to name at least five events from your past, so that you can judge how good he or she is, and so that he or she gets the opportunity to rectify your time. This is just one of the many factors on which a Jyotishi interprets a chart. Having it corrected brings one a step closer to the right path, but it does not guarantee that the Jyotishi’s predictions will be free of error.