Yes, your birth time matters (and what to do if you don't know it)

Your rising sign is whatever zodiac sign was coming up over the eastern horizon at the moment you were born. It changes roughly every two hours, and it sets the layout of your whole chart. Whether a planet lands in the part of your life that is about money or the part that is about relationships depends on it. An hour off and the houses can shift completely.

So yes, I ask for the exact time. I’m also fussy about old clocks. Daylight saving rules in 1985 were not what they are today, and a chart drawn with today’s rules can be quietly off by an hour. Wrong rising, wrong houses. I always check which time rules actually applied at the place and moment you were born.

Don’t know your birth time?

Start with your birth certificate or hospital records. If it comes down to a parent’s memory, push for something concrete. “Just before lunch” is worth far more than “morning, I think”.

And if the time is truly lost, you still get a real reading. Your Sun, your Moon in almost every case, and the angles the planets make to each other don’t need a clock, so I read those. I simply leave out the rising sign and the houses rather than guess at them. A shorter honest reading beats a longer invented one, every time.

The free reading works with or without a birth time.