Finding your exact birth time: where to look, and why the minute matters

Why the minute matters

The Earth turns on itself in twenty-four hours, and the twelve signs pass over the horizon in the same time. Your rising sign, the sign coming up in the east when you were born, moves about one degree every four minutes and changes sign every two hours on average, faster for some signs and slower for others at our latitudes. A twenty-minute error shifts it by about five degrees.

The twelve astrological houses start from the rising sign and the Midheaven: when those move, every house moves with them, and a planet can pass from one area of life to another. Your Venus stays in its sign, but it can leave the house of partnership for the house of work.

The Moon moves too, about half a degree an hour. A few hours’ difference is enough to change its degree, sometimes its sign, as the page on an unknown birth time explains. That is why the site asks for the time to the minute, and why a rising sign calculation made with a rounded time stays an estimate.

The full copy of your birth record

This is the most reliable source. In France, the birth record carries the time, declared by the maternity ward or the doctor. Only the full copy (the copie intégrale) is sure to reproduce it; a short extract or the family record book does not always show it.

In France the full copy is free. You request it from the town hall of your place of birth, at the desk, by post, or online on service-public.fr for most towns; it then arrives by post. You can request it for yourself, and your parents, grandparents, children or spouse can request it for you.

1. Contact the civil registry of your place of birth: in France, the birth record request on service-public.fr, or the town hall itself.
2. Ask for the full copy of the record, not an extract or a short certificate.
3. Give your name, first names, date of birth and your parents’ names, then the address where you want to receive it.
4. When it arrives, look for the time in the first sentence of the record, right after the date: French records often write it out in words.

Born outside France? In England and Wales, a birth certificate shows a time only for twins and other multiple births, while Scottish certificates carry it. In the United States, the long-form certificate from the state’s vital records office usually shows it, while a short-form abstract may not.

Your health record book, the maternity ward, your family

Without the record to hand, other papers give the time, sometimes faster. Start with what is at your home or at your parents’ home.

• Your health record book: in France, the page about the birth usually gives the time, along with the weight and length.
• The maternity ward or clinic: medical files are kept for at least twenty years. For a birth that is not too old, the hospital often still holds the delivery file, which the mother can request.
• Your parents: a birth announcement, a baby album, a letter from the time, a hospital bracelet kept in a box. Their memory helps too, but it remains an estimate.

Two sources that give the same time are worth more than one. If your parents’ memory and the record disagree, trust the record: it was filled in on the day, or very close to it.

Copy the time exactly as it is written

Enter the local time as the record shows it, without converting it. The site applies the time zone and the summer or winter time in force that day in your town itself, including in years when the rules were different: the details are in how accurate the calculation is.

A round time (“noon”, “3 pm”) was often rounded by whoever wrote it down. To see whether the rounding changes anything, calculate your birth chart a quarter of an hour before, then a quarter of an hour after: if the rising sign stays in the same sign, you can rely on it; if it changes, keep both in mind.

What the exact time changes in your readings

With the time to the minute, the wheel of your chart gains its rising sign, its Midheaven and its houses, and each planet takes its place in an area of life. The sky’s passages over your angles are dated to the day in My transits, and the solar return gives a reliable rising sign for the year.

Long readings depend on it even more. The tailored PDF reading of My Birth Chart+ asks for the exact time, because the rising sign and the houses carry a large part of the reading; the step-by-step guide to entering it is in calculating your birth chart.