So, the other day, I got it into my head to try and figure out Augustine of Hippo's birth chart. Don't ask me why, sometimes these ideas just pop up. Maybe I was reading something, or maybe it was just a random Tuesday thought. You know how it is.
Getting Started - The Hunt for Info
First thing, obviously, was to find his birth details. That sounds easy, right? Well, for someone born way back in 354 AD, it’s not like they had digital records or anything. I started digging around, mostly online, because who has time to go to a library these days for this kind of thing? I found his birthday pretty quick: November 13, 354 AD. Location was Tagaste, in Numidia, which is now Souk Ahras in Algeria. Okay, got that.
But here’s the kicker, and it’s always the kicker with these old figures: the birth time. Good luck finding that! Seriously, nobody back then was noting down, "Augustine popped out at precisely 2:47 PM." It's just not a thing they did, or if they did, it's long lost. This is where the whole thing starts to get a bit… well, let's just say "approximate."
Plugging it In - The Tools
Anyway, I decided to press on. I’ve got some astrology software I mess around with. Nothing too fancy, gets the job done for these kinds of experiments. So, I fired that up. Entered the date: November 13, 354 AD. Entered the location: Souk Ahras, Algeria. The software is clever enough to figure out the old coordinates, or at least get close.
Then came the time. What to do? Some folks just use a noon chart when the time is unknown. It’s like a placeholder, gives you a general feel but messes up the houses and the Ascendant completely. Others might try a sunrise chart. I just shrugged and thought, "Alright, let's just pick noon and see what happens." It’s not like I’m publishing this in some academic journal, it’s just me messing about.
What Popped Out - The "Chart"
So, with the noon placeholder time, the software crunched the numbers.
- Sun in Scorpio. Okay, intense, transformative, deep thinker. Kind of fits, I guess, for the guy who wrote "Confessions." Scorpios are always digging into the messy stuff.
- Moon sign? This is where it gets really iffy without a birth time. The Moon moves fast. With a noon chart, it landed in one sign, but if he was born earlier or later in the day, it could easily be in the sign before or after. So, I basically just noted it down with a big mental question mark.
- Other planets were scattered around, as they would be. Mercury, Venus, Mars... they all had their places based on that date.
The Ascendant and the houses, though? Pure guesswork with a noon chart. The Ascendant changes every couple of hours. So, no real insight there. It’s like trying to guess someone’s personality just by knowing their birthday without ever meeting them or knowing what time they showed up to the party. You get a tiny piece, but the rest is a blur.
So, What's the Point?
Honestly, doing a chart for someone like Augustine without a birth time is more of an exercise in "what if" than a real astrological reading. It’s a bit frustrating, really. You get this historical figure, you know their Sun sign, and you think, "Ah, that makes a bit of sense!" But then you hit the wall of the missing birth time, and it all becomes super speculative.
It’s kind of like that time I tried to fix my old radio. I found a diagram online, but it was for a slightly different model. I poked around, changed a few things that looked similar, and it sort of worked, but then it would only pick up static on Tuesdays. Useless, right? This Augustine chart felt a bit like that. I got something, but what does it really tell me? Not a whole lot with any certainty.
Still, it was an interesting little project for an afternoon. Kept me busy. But if anyone tells you they have Augustine's "exact" chart, I'd take it with a massive grain of salt. Unless they’ve got a time machine, they’re probably just guessing like I was.
