The Animodar project

The Animodar is a method of rectification — of recovering a birth time that is uncertain or unknown. It is described by Ptolemy, repeated through the medieval tradition, and still used. Whether it works has never been properly tested.

This project is an attempt to test it.

What the method claims

Take the syzygy — the new or full moon — immediately preceding the birth. Find the planet with most dignity over that degree. The claim is that the numerical degree occupied by that planet will be the same, or very close to, the degree of the Ascendant or the Midheaven of the nativity.

An example: if the lord of the preceding syzygy stands at nineteen degrees of Sagittarius, then the Ascendant or the Midheaven of the birth chart should be found near nineteen degrees of some sign — the sign does not matter, the number does.

It is an unusual claim. It ignores the sign entirely and rests on a numerical correspondence, which makes it easy to dismiss and also, unusually, easy to test.

Why it can be tested

Most rectification methods cannot be. They are used when the birth time is unknown, and there is nothing to check the result against.

The Animodar can be inverted. Take charts whose birth times are known to be accurate, apply the method, and compare its prediction with the recorded time. Do that across enough charts and a statistical answer appears — either the correspondence occurs more often than chance would produce, or it does not.

What we need

Charts with reliable birth times. In practice that means, above all, the charts of children whose times were recorded at the birth and are still recent — a hospital record, a birth certificate that states the hour, a note made on the day.

What we cannot use: a time someone remembers approximately, a time rounded to the hour, or a time that has already been rectified by any method. Each of those would quietly decide the outcome in advance.

How to contribute

Send the date, the time as recorded, the place, and the source of the time — that last one matters, and a contribution without it cannot be used. Write through the contact page.

Data is used for the statistics only. No name is recorded with a chart, and nothing identifying anyone is published.

The result, whatever it is

We will publish the finding either way. A negative result on a technique the tradition has repeated for eighteen centuries is worth more to the field than another article assuming it works — and the possibility of a negative result is the only thing that makes the positive one worth anything.

Our other projects, on house division and the term tables, are described under research.