16
Lunlumo wrote:
I wonder what happened to the registers of the "Sudetenland" - which was German from 1938 to 1945 ?
Or the parts of East Prussia that were incorporated in the Soviet Union? Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) was heavily damaged in the fighting at the end of the war. I don't imagine the Russians had much interest in keeping German birth data except for the purposes of the NKVD.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

17
K?nigsberg - Kaliningrad - the town of Immanuel Kant:

The "Stadtarchiv" -building was totally destroyed by allied bombing, before the town was finally conquered by Soviet troops. In other words: the memory of the town was extinguished. What had been left fell victim to fires during the Soviet siege.
(I went there in 2008 - a depressing site, not worth travelling to. K?nigsberg actually ceased to exist.)

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtarch ... B6nigsberg

The "Gauleiter" Koch - one of the worst of that gang - had strictly forbidden to take the contents of the Stadtarchiv out of store (He also forbade the citizens of K?nigsberg and the whole people of East Prussia to flee in time - as a result ten thousands were killed, the greater part of the surviving women were raped.)
Other officials in other parts of the country, though certainly Nazis as well, showed a bit more of responsibility, thus saving the greater part of the country's cultural heritage.
(I suppose what was in the museums was thought to be more important than files.)

LL
Non coerceri maximo, contineri minimo divinum est.

18
Tom wrote:
My children's BC issued by the county board of health both have birth times on them. My "official" birth certificate does not. Think about it: Where does the government get the birth time from? The hospital, so it has to be there.
Certainly we need a medical professional to record the birth time in the first instance whether a surgeon, GP or midwife. Although, in the past a large number of births were at home not in the Hospital.

While I see the logic of the Hospital retaining the record its not axiomatic. Here in Scotland all such data has been immediately passed on to the office of the Registrar General for Births, Deaths and Marriages since 1855.

For astrologers this is certainly a preferable situation since this information and copies of anyone's birth certificate are publicly available. I can therefore access the birth time of anyone born in Scotland over the last 160 years. Hospital records, are as you state, time limited. More fundamentally, these are personal records which I assume cannot be easily accessed by third parties unless they have written permission?

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Tue Dec 30, 2014 3:09 pm, edited 3 times in total.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

19
Aglaya wrote:
There's yet another bug and I have come across this many times with birth certificates issued in different European countries. Whilst some birth certificates did not contain the time of birth (only the date) up until the mid 70'es (or 60's, depending on the country), nowadays, in almost all countries, birth certificates have birth times on them and this applies to even to the certificates of people born before the 70'es and 60'es. My father's original birth certificate, for instance, does not have the birth time but, when he asked for a new document 10 years ago, it had birth time written on it. This technically means that the hospitals may have been giving birth times to the institutions for a much longer period however, for some reason, the exact time was not considered a relevant information. The reason could be purely bureaucratic - the old template simply didn't have that option.
That must be frustrating. Could you be more specific what countries In Europe you have experienced this problem with? Here in Scotland this doesn't happen. You can either get an 'abtract' or shortened version of the original BC or the full version. Both have time of birth.

Aglaya wrote:
On the other hand, many birth certificates issued for people born after the 70'es (and, again, this applies to at least a few European countries), do have birth times on them only the time itself is incorrect or provisional. This can be easily detected by round numbers - it is never 13.16 h but either 13,00 or 13,30. A few years ago I found out that, until the 80'es, many European hospitals actually kept records in this manner - they would simply make a list of all babies born within each 30 min (occasionally 60min) and send the informations containing round numbers. This way, every baby born between 13.00 and 13.30 (like I said, sometimes even between 13,00 and 14,00) has exactly the same time of birth in the certificate - 13.00h.
Even the newer certificates often have either 13.35 or 13.40, hardly ever 13.37.
That is an excellent point. I was always a bit suspicious of my own birth time as it was exactly 11:00 on my birth certificate. However, the angles seems to work out well with transits, and progressions.

Still, you have inadvertently raised the larger question of whether Rodden data categories need some refinement? I recall Caroline Gerard (who is a former Chair of my Association and a Genealogist) telling me that before the 1980's Scottish birth certificates often tended to round off to the nearest quarter hour. Times became much more precise later. Maybe these later birth certificates should be considered AAA while the older ones AA?

http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Help:RR

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

20
Re: "Still, you have inadvertently raised the larger question of whether Rodden data categories need some refinement?"

If you do a large-scale analysis of the Rodden data, it can be seen that the times x:00, x:15, x:30, and x:45 are disproportionately represented. Because of this, we can be sure that there is some average error (likely approaching approximately 7-1/2 mins of time) for these 15-min-interval times...

Certainly, there are hundreds of rectified charts where the time is likely much closer to correct than even much of the AA data. With an average error of several minutes, it can not even be considered a given that we have even the correct degree on the Ascendant for AA data.

I would rename Rodden-AA data under the truth-in-advertising moniker of a "false sense of security".

21
Atlantean wrote:
I would rename Rodden-AA data under the truth-in-advertising moniker of a "false sense of security".
I have to agree. That is assuming astrologers even bother to check Rodden data category in the first place! It amazes me that some astrologers will throw up charts and offer specific analysis based on houses when they haven't even checked how accurate the data is or considered a rectification.

I think the margin of error is probably much less for modern data from countries that record birth time but suspect your analysis is substantially correct for older AA records which make up the bulk of the Rodden data files.

This also makes me wonder about the research of Michel Gauquelin since he was using European birth data with time of birth that was largely prior to 1950. Has his research been revisited with more modern natal data?

Too many astrologers accept an AA data category complacently. The problem is there is no consensus on how to rectify a chart since astrologers use different methods for rectification such as solar arcs, secondary progressions, primaries etc. Even if we agree on a specific method such as primary directions there are obviously variant approaches within that technique. (I know very well you are a strong advocate of Topocentric primaries but I would prefer to avoid a discussion on the alleged strengths of one rectification technique against the others on this thread).

When a chart is otherwise XX data a rectification can never be proven as close to correct. All that can be offered is an astrological rationale for the rectification. Sometimes I think the preconceptions of the astrologer can creep in setting up the kind of chart they expect to see. I'm sure we have all had the experience of being surprised to see timed data for a chart when we anticipated something totally different.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

22
no need to pan lois rodden.. she did the best she could in circumstances that have changed. of course i suppose it is the privilege of those who live in the present to take pot shots at those who are long dead.

23
James_M
no need to pan lois rodden.. she did the best she could in circumstances that have changed. of course i suppose it is the privilege of those who live in the present to take pot shots at those who are long dead.
Hi James,

You didn't quote what specific comments above you took offence at.

If you perceived my comments above as some kind of attack on Louis Rodden then I urge you to take another look at my posts. I dont think you will find anything to support that view. She was an astrological pioneer who did a very great service for the whole astrological community. And I agree she worked with the tools she had and did an excellent, painstaking job in collating data.

But the fact Rodden left a wonderful legacy behind doesn't mean the Rodden data categories are astrological perfection or that nothing could possibly be improved. If I have any criticism to make its really directed at contemporary astrologers who accept charts categorised as AA as necessarily definitive. I say this with the full awareness I have been one of those people in my time! So the key point I am making is simply to raise awareness of this issue rather than deriding anyone personally.

Getting back to the focus of this thread how are births recorded in the Canadian provinces? What about your province of British Columbia? Do you rely on Hospital records?

Thanks

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Fri Jan 02, 2015 12:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

24
that was more for james alexander..

as for birth records in canada, they have them, but you have to pay for them and they aren't on the birth certs.. i don't know that it has changed since when i was born in the 50's in a big hospital in toronto.

the times i got for my brother and sister sound rounded off too - both born in ontario - the province in the 50's and 60's.. they would use 10:50, 4:10, 10:10 and stuff like that, but i haven't personally seen more specific times until later in time.. as for times back previous to the 50's - maybe you can find the data from a hospital if you go for records.. i know a few from the 40's with times of 7:35, and either a 5 or a 0 on the end of the time like that, but i haven't seen a birth cert down to the minute. lois rodden was from saskatchewan - one of the only provinces in canada to ignore the stupid concept of daylight savings time.. trust farming country to be down to earth and do away with the bankers concepts..

25
Hi Mark,

I notice no one from Australia has commented on this topic yet.

In the state of New South Wales in Australia, birth certificates at least those issued for births in the 2nd half of last century, do not contain time of birth. This is for hospital based births. Home births can & do happen, but I'm not sure if they have to record the actual time of birth in those circumstances either.

See here for current info > http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/Pages/births/births.aspx

Hospital births only have the date, place etc.. on these official government documents which are often used for ID purposes. I use to work in this area of government record keeping so have some knowledge of the system & how it worked.
As far as actual time of day or night is concerned with births in this particular state, the hospitals themselves would have that information, but I'm not sure how long they keep it for, more than likely it would be controlled by legislation.
Libra Sun/ Pisces Moon/ Sagittarius Rising

26
Mark you said :-

"I recall Caroline Gerard (who is a former Chair of my Association and a Genealogist) telling me that before the 1980's Scottish birth certificates often tended to round off to the nearest quarter hour."

That is a priceless piece of information. I am concerned about the birth time of a relative of mine who was born in Glasgow in 1964. Her time is recorded as 3.45 pm and the chart has been troubling me because I see possible health issues. For that birth time her ascendant is a very late Virgo but only a couple of minutes forward in time would send it into Libra and alter all the house lords.
In your opinion do you think when they rounded off to the nearest quarter hour they would round forwards or backwards?

27
Mark,

Concerning the province of Quebec (Canada), hospitals recorded birth time since early 1950, at least. They also gave birth document (usually very small paper with parents name and TOB of the newborn). That was it. Before that, nothing.

Since 1974, the time of birth is usually registered with the civil registry. One must ask a full certificate to get the birth time. The abrigged certificate will not indicate this. As far as I know, no one but the native or someone very close can ask and get that.
Regards,
François CARRIÈRE