Did you know that any astrology program may calculate the wrong rising sign?

One problem of wonderful technology is that we simply press a few buttons and out comes information, but the information may not be correct if we are not familiar with some of the details of how the technology works. A good example of this is the tendency for even professional astrologers to trust that their astrology software is producing the correct house cusp positions. Depending on where you live, the likelihood of this may vary from probably about 95% to over 99% likelihood, but an error rate of 1 in 20 is too much for a professional. The rising sign may be incorrect because our knowledge of time zones and observance of daylight saving time (DST) is not perfect. An astrology program must know at any given moment in any location in history what the time zone and observance of daylight saving time were in order to calculate the charts correctly. Do the progams know this? Usually, but not always. In the 1970's Tom Shanks and Neil Michelsen made a breakthrough in assembling and organizing this information and they produced two products, The American Atlas and The International Atlas, which were made available as books and later as software. I worked with Tom Shanks on updating and refining this information many years ago, and now we continue this work at Cosmic Patterns. Customers have sent us corrected and improved information for dozens of different countries, and we recently received more information in the past few weeks that we will work on over the next few months to improve the tables. We are also adding more warning messages for data entered at times when there is conflicting information about whether DST is observed. Another problem is the calendar in use. Some astrologers and software programs assume that the Old Style calendar was used until the late 1500's and then the New Style calendar was adopted but some countries did not begin using the New Style calendar until the 20th century! For decades we have worked on updating our tables and we continue this work. Every year over a dozen countries change their rules as to when DST is observed and we update our tables so that if you do charts of current events or babies, the birth charts will be accurate. This is a never-ending job, and it is one the things going on "behind the scenes" to help make sure that the charts you calculate are correct. We receive reports fairly regularly of charts being calculated incorrectly with other programs because the time zone and DST tables have not been updated with the best information available. Just as one example, a customer told me about a month ago that she was very grateful that we do this because the chart she did for a child born in Buenos Aires was correct while the chart done by two other astrologers using other software is incorrect. It is a good idea to run the free update on our website about once or twice a year to update your tables. E-mail us with your name and address and request the update link if you do not have it. Our time zone and daylight saving time tables are not perfect but they are the best available. If you use some other software program and you are generally happy with it, you can run the chart on the free online chart service which is available on our website and many of our customers to run the chart to verify that the rising sign is correct. This is generally not needed for births in the USA because the ACS Atlas tables are still very good in the USA, but in most other countries we have made a large number of updates and corrections. If you encounter a discrepancy or are concerned about accuracy of a chart because of concern about the correct calendar, time zone, or DST observed, e-mail us the birth data and what your concern is and we will let you know what information we have for the chart. In most cases the discrepancy is simply resolved by simply having accurate time zone and DST information that has been thoroughly researched and clearly documented. Building upon the work of Neil Michelsen and Thomas Shanks and the hundreds of people who contributed to that project, and the many dozens of astrologers and our workers here who have put in many hundreds of hours researching, organizing, and entering updated information, we have the most accurate and complete information available, and we continue to improve our time zone and DST tables regularly. Frankly, I have found it uncomfortable to play the business game of touting our products, but it is also important that users of astrology software are aware of issues that can affect their work, so in this article and some of the future articles, we shall put modesty to the side and get important information out to you that can help you with your work, research, or study of astrology.