I thought it would be fun to explain how to tell the time by looking at an astrology chart. And better yet, how to guess the time a person was born using just two pieces of information: their sun sign & their rising sign.
This is a good party trick that makes you look cool and psychic even if you know next to nothing about astrology. Hahaha but really. Unless they're really into astrology, most people are shocked that you can decode a piece of real-world information from knowing so little about their chart.
The first thing you'll need to do is identify the horizon.
The ascendant or AC (in the 1st house) marks the eastern horizon at the time of birth— where the sun rises. Exactly opposite (the DC and 7th house) indicates the western horizon—where the sun sets.
Draw a line directly across the chart from the AC. Everything above that line is up in the sky, while everything below it is on the other side of the earth.
Now, imagine the circle of the chart is a clock:
Each of the 12 segments represents about 2 hours of the 24 hour day (they actually vary in length depending on the birth location, but for a quick estimate we don’t need to worry about ascensional times).
This chart is an imaginary example of a sunrise chart on the equator at 6am (that’s why you see the symbol for the sun exactly in the middle of the line of the ascendant—the sun is ascending at sunrise). You will never see a 0° ascendant (it will be at least 0° and 01 minute). These are a useful generalization of the time of day represented by each house, which in reality varies depending on the birth location.
Just take into account when sunrise would be at that time of year in the person’s birth location and start the clock at that time, at the degree of their AC. The next 30° of the chart above the AC is about 2 hours, the following 30° is about two hours, etc.
You’ll know right away that the person was born around sunrise if they have the same rising sign and sun sign.
If the sign of their sun is opposite the sign of the rising they were born around sunset (for example Pisces rising with a Virgo sun; Cancer rising with a Capricorn sun; Libra rising with an Aries sun).
To fine tune your guess, take the midheaven and IC into account as well. The MC or midheaven is the culminating point of the sun at that moment in the location of the chart. That means it’s the highest point the sun gets before starting to go down toward the western horizon. Its exact opposite point is the IC or imum coeli, the anti-culminating point or lowest point.
If the sun is near the MC, it was the moment when the sun was highest in the sky that day— opposite that, near the IC, is the dead middle of the night. Ask yourself what time the peak of the day or the darkest moment of night was in the location that the person was born.
If the MC and IC aren’t in the 10th and 4th houses (respectively), remember that the middle of the day and middle of the night move with them. Imagine the clock above stretching in the direction of the MC, so if it’s in the 11th house, the afternoon is very long, and you should allot more time between midday and sunset. Put more simply: summer has long afternoons. Just be aware of where the person was born and what the time is like in different seasons there.
Let’s look at a natal chart (with the time removed) see if you can guess the time they were born.
This is Shakira, born in Barranquilla, Colombia, near the equator (note, there's no reliable source for her reported time of birth, but it doesn't matter for our example):
Where on the “clock” does her sun fall?
Start at around 6am, which is 17 Aries, her AC. Move 30 degrees up to 17 Pisces and it’s around 8am, move 30 degrees more to 17 Aquarius and it’s around 10am. Since her sun is close by (at 13 Aquarius), you can guess she was born around 10am. She was in fact born at 10:08am! Now, her sun was a few degrees off from exactly 17 degrees Aquarius, but she was also not born exactly on the equator. Still, the method works!
Remember that more or less the farther north or south you go, the later the sun rises in the winter and the later it sets in the summer. This quick method doesn’t work great for those born at the poles. Bjork was born at 8:10am, but in Iceland in November that was still nighttime, with the sun under the horizon!
Obviously, if you have someone’s chart in front of you, the time will probably be written on it. But just knowing the person’s sun and rising signs, here are the steps to calculate a guess in your head:
1) Imagining the “clock chart” above, put the person’s rising sign in the first house
2) With that sign in the first house, figure out which house their sun sign would be. Picturing this takes some practice, but it’s second nature once you get the hang of it.
3) Estimate what time the sun might rise at that time of year in the place where that person was born.
4) If the line of the AC is the time of sunrise, about what time on the “clock” is their sun?
Make your guess within that 2 hour block of time!
You may not be able to say the exact time of birth off the top of your head, but with just this understanding of the natal chart as a clock, you can easily guess about what time of day someone is born.
Maybe more importantly, you now have a much deeper understanding of what the chart is representing when you look at it. It’s not just an abstract set of symbols— it really is a map of the heavens, and it’s also a solar clock!