CHARLES E. O. CARTER
(31st January 1887 – 4th October 1968)

Carter's chart

Charles Carter’s Birth Chart.

31st January 1887

10.55pm. Parkstone, Dorsetshire, England. 50N43 02W00.

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Charles Carter gave his birth data quite distinctly as 31st January 1887, 10.55pm. Parkstone, Dorsetshire, England. 50N43 02W00. However if you cast a horoscope from this information you will find that the angles differ slightly from those on the chart Carter published as his own in ‘Symbolic Directions in Modern Astrology’ – and shown on this site. (The ascendant will be 16 Libra 04 instead of 17 Libra 15 and the midheaven 20 Cancer 54 instead of 22 Cancer 27).

Why the discrepancy? Did Carter rectify his chart?

The answer may be one of Time. If you cast the chart using the time and co-ordinates given by Carter: 10.55pm 50N43 02W00, but use Local Mean Time (LMT) instead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), you get almost exactly the same chart as included. There is a fractional difference of some minutes in the ascendant and midheaven, but this can be explained by the fact that Carter would have been trying to interpolate from a table of houses. Also the co-ordinates Carter gives for Parkstone were those commonly published for the general Poole locality, and are actually for Hamworthy if you check an Ordnance Survey map of the Poole area, although he states Parkstone as his birth place. (However this movement of a mile or so yields a negligible difference).

The interesting thing is that GMT actually came into force in 1884 – some 3 year prior to Charles Carter’s birth. Carter states his birth time was ‘recorded’, yet according to Jeff Mayo, all births in the UK since 1884 would have been recorded in GMT and not local mean solar time. Many small communities in those early days of GMT were almost certainly still setting their clocks locally. This explanation might solve the mystery of the small differences in Carter’s birth chart and allow us to use the map shown with confidence.

[See also Michael Edwards’ detailed discussion on the discrepancies in Carter’s chart in ‘The Astrologers’ Quarterly’, Volume 61 No.1, Spring 1987]

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