A portrait of the sky at the exact minute you were born

This is a picture of the actual sky at the exact minute someone was born, and I can explain what’s in it.

I make birth chart prints using Vedic astrology (Jyotish) — the astronomical and mathematical system developed in India over two thousand years ago. Each print shows where the Sun, the Moon and the planets actually were, worked out for one date, one time and one place.

Most personalised star maps are a rendering of the night sky. This is a chart, calculated from the same figures an astronomer would use, with a two-thousand-year-old system behind it.

What you receive

Every order includes:

• the chart itself, as a print or as a high-resolution digital file
• a companion guide explaining how to read it

The guide is the part that matters to me, because a chart without the explanation is just a decoration. With it, you have something you can read and come back to.

The four colourways

Four colourways: Celestial, Botanical, Coastal and Supernova. The chart is identical in each. Only the palette and the border change.

• Celestial
• Botanical
• Coastal
• Supernova

How precise the birth time needs to be

The question I’m asked most is how precise the time has to be. The honest answer is that the more precise it is, the better. For the chart on your print, a few minutes either way usually won’t matter. But Jyotish also works with divisional charts — a set of further charts drawn from the same birth moment, each covering a different area of life — and those are much more sensitive. If a reading includes them, a minute one way or the other can sway how the chart is read.

If you do not know your birth time

If you don’t know what time you were born, there are two places to look before you give up on it.

The paperwork. Some birth certificates record the time and some don’t, depending on where and when you were born, so it’s worth checking before you assume either way. If it isn’t on the certificate, hospital notes, a red book or a baby book often have it.

Whoever was there. A parent’s memory is more useful than people expect, and it doesn’t have to be exact to be worth having. “Some time in the morning” already rules out most of the day, and “early morning” narrows it a lot further. Tell me what you’ve got and I’ll tell you how much of the chart it settles and how much it leaves open.

If there is no time at all, the chart can be read from the Moon instead of the rising sign — the Moon chart, or Chandra Lagna.

A chart cast on the birth time is the outer view: how someone meets the world, and how the world reads them back. The Moon chart is the inner one, showing what they notice first, how they take things in, and how they feel their way through. It answers a different question, and for some people it turns out to be the more useful of the two.

What it can’t do is timing, which depends on the rising sign. So a Moon reading describes what is there, and says plainly what can’t be known without the minute.

Reading your chart

If you already have a print, the guide explains every element on it. If you don’t, it shows you what you would be looking at.

How to read your chart

What helps me give you a better reading

People ask whether knowing them changes what I see in the chart. With someone I’ve never met it doesn’t, because I’m only reading what’s in front of me. What does help is knowing what you’re hoping to get out of it. The fourth house covers property, and it also covers your relationship with your mother. So if you’re thinking about buying a flat, I know which of the two to spend the time on. It does help when you tell me what you’d like to explore.

How I handle the difficult parts

People ask me not to tell them bad things, even when they’re there and I can see them. I understand why, and this is how I handle it. I’d never make a claim about something so negative that it can’t be reversed, because that isn’t what a chart shows. If there’s a challenging period ahead I’ll say so, but I’ll also offer ways to work through it and tell you when it ends. Forewarned is forearmed, and my purpose is to send you away prepared, not worried.