What To Do If You Do Not Have a Specific Birth Time For Your Chart
For a human design chart, what do you do if you do not know your specific birth time?
It's really common in this world to be told that you need your exact birth time because there are a lot of things that change very, very quickly in your human design chart. The planets move similar to hands on a clock through the different astrological signs, through the different gates, and that's how definition is created in the body graph. That specific time is really important because something could change between, let's say 11:15 and 11:20. Maybe you have a whole bunch of gates that are on a cusp. A lot of them are in line sixes, and then within that five minutes you have four different planetary placements that move and define other gates really quickly. It could be something like that, but it also could be that nothing in the body graph really changes for a couple of hours.
The primary thing that you want to look at, the planet that moves the quickest, is the moon. What I usually do if I don't know somebody's birth time is I will run a whole bunch of charts for their birthday. I'll start at midnight. I'll go through the AMs; I'll go all the way to PM. I'll start with 12:05 AM, and then I'll do noon, and then I'll do 11:55 PM just to see what changes throughout the entire day, and based on that, I'll usually see that the moon moves once or twice, and then maybe a couple of other things will move on that day.
Based on that, I'm going to look at what's consistent. Everything that is consistent, I know I can work with. Maybe if it's not your very specific birth time, there are still a lot of things that you can work with on a gates level, on a planetary level, through your gene keys. A lot of those are probably going to be similar, so you will probably get at least some data that you can work with.
If I am working with a client and there's a big change, I’ve seen somebody go from a reflector for five minutes to a mani gen, your aura type can change, your authority can change, different centers can be defined, I'll just start working through their experiences. I'll let them know that this is a variable thing, but we can still work with their experiences because the aligned energy is still the aligned energy.
Let's say their splenic center is defined during part of their birthday, and it's undefined for another part of their birthday. We're going to look at the specific gate that changes and what gate changes that's defining or undefining that particular center. That's going to be a gate that we're going to work with and play with, but we're going to work on trusting that and surrendering to that and allowing it to show up in different ways. That's ultimately what working with your chart is. It is looking at a pattern and figuring out how you operate within that pattern.
Sometimes that means leaving room for variability; sometimes that is being open to being flexible. Sometimes that is getting a little bit more control in a certain area or being a little bit more assertive and affirming. Whatever it is, you have access. We all have access to everything in the chart. If there are a couple of things that are questionable or you're not quite sure of, you can work with it. You can play with it, and you can allow your intuition to guide you instead of the specific things that you're seeing on a chart.
The whole point of human design, and I will come back to this as my cornerstone over and over and over again, is to learn more about yourself. It's to trust yourself on a deeper level. It's about intuitive decision making and self awareness, but also awareness of other people, and that doesn't come from following a set of rules. It's not a box that says, "This is who you are." Every step of the way, you're supposed to challenge it. You're supposed to redefine yourself. You're supposed to say, "Okay, you say that I'm this. You say that I operate like this. Do I resonate with that? Does that feel good in my body? Does that not resonate for some reason? Why doesn't it resonate?" It's getting curious to create your own definitions. Regardless of what your chart says, or if you know your specific birth time or not, you can still use the system to come to your own conclusions.
If you don't know your birth time, if you're very far off or you have no idea if you were born in the morning or the evening, the variables might be information that is difficult to nail down for you, but you can work with your body graph. You can work with other areas of your chart. I really trust that the information that we need is always available to us. Run with that. Trust that maybe you're not meant to know exactly what your variables are. You can trust that that's something that is happening for you, not to you.
I will also kind of tune in and intuit what somebody's birth time is. I believe that I heard Richard Rudd talk about this as well, but he believes that all of the information is available to us through intuition, and whether you believe in the akashic records or collective unconscious, I believe that information about people and birth times and very specific things are things that we can get from the world. We can get that inspiration, we can find that piece of information through the collective consciousness.
I have used a pendulum to accurately get someone's birth time as well. The pendulum asks yes/no questions. I approach it like it's a sacral authority. I ask it yes/no questions, so I'll ask, was it born before noon? If it's a yes, I know I'm working with an AM chart. If it's a no, I know I'm working with an afternoon chart. Awesome. I've narrowed it down by half, and then I'll start with six. If it's before, I'll say, okay, it was before or after 6:00 AM. You've cut it in half again, and then you've narrowed it down to a six hour window, and then you narrow it down to three, and then I can kind of do from three to one hour. Then I'll ask if it was before or after, let's say, 11:00 AM or 11:30, and you can narrow it down to the minute.
Sometimes I'll work through this process and figure out a specific answer, and sometimes I'll be working and then a specific number, specific time will just pop into my head. Then I'll run with that, and say, okay, is it yes/no? Is it this particular time? Is it 10:52? If it says yes, it's a yes, and I'll sit with that in my body and I will run that chart, and then I'll look at what changes. What are the possibilities that I'm wrong? Essentially, I'll look into the unknown.
I'll work with the client to figure out what they feel about that, what their truth is, and what they feel about the things that change. What conditioning pops up for them when I say maybe you have a defined ego? Maybe you don't have a defined ego, how do you feel about that? How do you identify? What resonates with you? Then we can work with that.
You can play with it, and play with what ifs. What if you have a defined ego? What if you have an undefined ego? What would you do differently in this moment if it were defined or undefined? That's a great way to ask yourself or show yourself why you would let a label change your actions. In moments where maybe you would act a little bit differently if you had a defined ego, why are you limiting yourself to that action not being available to you? That action's available to you. If you could imagine it, you can take that action. It's available to you in that moment, so give yourself some power. Empower yourself a little bit. Remember that we all have access to everything in the chart, and if you don't know your birth time, you can still play with the chart. There are lots of things that you can learn about yourself, and there are lots of experiments that are available to you.
Interested in a beginners guide to interpreting the details of your human design chart? Check out DECODED!
Interested in a nervous system regulation tool based in Human Design, Rapid Resolution Therapy, with a dash of magic? Check out MESSY!
