Bruce Lee's Birth Chart

The ranking weighs traditional emphasis against how seldom each feature turned up among random 1940s births. Its two leaders hang on the clock: a Sun within 1°30′ of the horizon (about one chart in 44), gone by 7:15:55 AM, and a Sun within five degrees of an angle, here the Ascendant (about one chart in 9), true of any birth from 6:42 AM to 7:31 AM.

The other six come from the date and hold at every hour of it: the missing air element (about one chart in 27); three Scorpio dignities, the Moon in its fall (about one chart in 12), Mars at home (about one chart in 6) and Venus in detriment (about one chart in 6); the fixed-sign majority (about one chart in 8); and the seesaw layout (about 25%).

Almanac sunrise, when the Sun's upper edge clears the horizon, came at 7:02:38 AM, 9 minutes before the certified minute, but sect waits for the Sun's center, which rose at 7:07:20 AM. From then on the chart is diurnal: the Sun presides, Jupiter is the benefic of the sect and Mars the malefic against it, as the sect calculator sorts them. A birth 5 minutes earlier hands those roles to the Moon, Venus and Saturn.

Mars at 4°33′ Scorpio occupies a sign it rules (about one chart in 6). Its own term and face lift it to 96 on the page's strength scale, ahead of the Sun's 85, so this method names it lord of the geniture at any hour. As the only planet in its own sign, it ends every chain of traditional rulers: the Sun reports to Jupiter, Jupiter to Venus, and Venus, a guest in Scorpio, to Mars. Hellenistic authors counted a malefic contrary to sect as the hardest planet to handle.

The Moon at 11°23′ Scorpio is in its fall (about one chart in 12) and Venus at 1°21′ Scorpio in detriment (about one chart in 6), two nocturnal planets out of sect in a day chart. The Moon ran swift and Mercury was the one slow planet. No planet came within fifteen degrees of the Sun, so none was combust, Mercury nearest at 19°58′. The Moon, 23°50′ short of the Sun, was in the balsamic phase the moon phase calculator names.

The time is copied from Lee's California certificate of live birth, made out for Lee Jun Fon as registrar's number 8363 in district 3801. The attending physician signed it on November 29, 1940, certifying a live birth at 7:12 AM, and the local registrar received it on December 5. The clock was Pacific Standard Time (UTC−8), kept all year in California until wartime clocks arrived on February 9, 1942, so no daylight-saving correction applies.

The surviving copy, a corrected one, sits in the return-certificate case file his parents opened in 1941 before taking him to Hong Kong (case 12017/53752, Record Group 85, National Archives at San Francisco). The Chinese Exclusion Files blog reproduces the scan and notes that the correction touched only the mother's length of residence in California. A physician's certificate gives a birth time its strongest standing, though it vouches for what was written, not for how closely anyone read the delivery-room clock. Jeff Chang's Water Mirror Echo (2021) repeats the minute in its opening chapter without naming a source.

Looser accounts circulate beside it. The family's website and HistoryLink give only the hour of the Dragon, between 6 and 8 in the morning; the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture moves those hours to the evening, against the certificate. Baidu Baike's English entry gives 7:00 AM, labeled UTC+8, with no source for the hour; it looks like a rounding of the Dragon hour, and this page casts it on the hospital's clock.

Cast 12 minutes earlier, the 7:00 AM chart keeps nearly everything: 3°44′ Sagittarius rising; the Scorpio Moon and every planet's sign; the three T-squares; a Sun within a degree and a half of the horizon and five degrees of the Ascendant, though now just under it. Not yet risen, the Sun sits in the 1st house, so the chart turns nocturnal; Mercury moves to the 12th house, and Neptune loses its conjunction with the Midheaven.

At the certified minute the closest calls belong to Mercury and Neptune. Mercury entered the Placidus 11th only at 7:10:35 AM, so a birth 2 minutes earlier returns it to the 12th house, and Neptune's conjunction with the Midheaven began at 7:09:36 AM. Leaving aside the Sun, whose margin the sect paragraphs above give, the remaining planets change house only if the certificate erred by more than 20 minutes. Sagittarius rising has 30 minutes to spare on the early side and 1 hour 50 minutes on the late one.

All three T-squares in the chart share an apex. Pluto, retrograde at 4°13′ Leo in the 8th house, squares both ends of three oppositions running from Scorpio to Taurus: Mars to Jupiter, Mars to Saturn and Venus to Jupiter. The Mars leg to Pluto, 0°19′ from exact, is the closest aspect in the chart; the widest leg is Venus opposite Jupiter at 6°10′. Mars sits in every figure but the Venus one, and all seven legs stay in orb from midnight to midnight.

Practitioners who use T-squares treat the apex as the outlet for the oppositions' strain, and modern astrology frames Pluto in terms of pressure, control and rebuilding. This apex also trines the Sun (1°00′) at every hour of the date, and the Ascendant (1°58′) only from 6:32 AM to 7:31 AM.

The Ascendant is 6°12′ Sagittarius and the Sun 5°14′ Sagittarius, well inside the five degrees that make a Sun angular (about one chart in 9 among 1940s births). Already over the horizon, the Sun sits in the 12th house by Placidus and in the 1st house by Whole Sign houses. Many traditional practitioners would apply the five-degree rule traced to Ptolemy and read a first-house Sun, as Placidus itself would for a birth before 7:07:20 AM.

The four Scorpio bodies, Venus at 1°21′ up to Mercury at 15°16′, had all risen before the Sun and share the Placidus 11th house, though only from 7:10 AM, when Mercury crossed in, to 7:53 AM, when Venus moved on. Jupiter at 7°32′ Taurus and Saturn at 9°29′ Taurus, both retrograde, share the 5th house below the horizon; Neptune at 27°24′ Virgo sits 6°08′ from the Midheaven in the 10th house.

No planet was out of bounds. Pluto reached furthest from the equator, 23°14′ north, still 0°11′ inside the Sun's limit of 23°26′.

Mars square Pluto, the Sun on the Ascendant and the Sun trine Pluto, the three tightest contacts, all fall within 1°00′. Modern texts read a close Mars and Pluto square as force held in reserve and then spent at once; this one holds whatever the hour. The Moon's nearest contact is an opposition to Saturn, 1°54′ from exact and in orb until 5:38 PM, which textbook readings pair with emotional reserve and responsibility taken on early.

Jupiter rules Sagittarius in the traditional and the modern scheme alike, so it is the chart ruler either way, one of four retrograde planets and 1°56′ from Saturn. It meets the Ascendant only by quincunx (1°20′), an angle Hellenistic authors did not count: Taurus is the sixth sign from Sagittarius, a relation they called aversion. It also opposes Mars (2°58′) and the Moon (3°51′), facing the Scorpio group head-on.

Across the ten planets and two angles, earth has five points, water four, fire three and air none (about one chart in 27). Every planet but the Sun and Neptune stands in a fixed sign (about one chart in 8), and none of the twelve counted points is cardinal. The old temperament tally leans phlegmatic, two votes of five. Modern writers link a missing element to skills acquired rather than given, and fixed signs to persistence.

Around the wheel the planets split into a Taurus group, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, and the rest, strung from Pluto in Leo to the Sun in Sagittarius, with empty arcs of 152°17′ and 70°33′ between them. Marc Edmund Jones called this a seesaw, and later authors read it as a habit of weighing opposites; about 25% of random births in the decade share it, a test the chart pattern analyzer runs.

Taken to Hong Kong as an infant, Lee returned to San Francisco to live on May 17, 1959, aged 18; SFist reported in July 2026 that California had named that date Bruce Lee Day. He gave a demonstration at Ed Parker's first Long Beach International Karate Championships on August 2, 1964, as the Bruce Lee Was Here timeline records, and ABC premiered The Green Hornet, with Lee as Kato, on September 9, 1966.

In Hong Kong, The Big Boss premiered on October 23, 1971, with Lee in the lead; Fist of Fury followed on March 22, 1972, and The Way of the Dragon, which he wrote, directed and starred in, on December 30, 1972, each date from the film's Wikipedia article.

Lee died in Hong Kong on July 20, 1973, at 32, and Enter the Dragon premiered in the city six days later, on July 26. None of these dates bears on the birth time, which rests on the certificate alone.

Nearness counts shared Sun, Moon and rising signs first, then how close the planets sit. Each of the four closest repeats one of Lee's signs, none the rising: Kylian Mbappé's and Manny Pacquiao's the Sagittarius Sun, Mbappé's planets the nearer, then A. R. Rahman's the Scorpio Moon, just ahead of Brad Pitt's, a third Sagittarius Sun. The roster lists no other birth on November 27, 1940.

Subtracting the Lahiri ayanamsa, 23°01′, pulls most of the chart back a sign: the Sun to 12°12′ Scorpio and the Ascendant to 13°10′ Scorpio; the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars into Libra, the Moon at 18°22′ Libra; Jupiter and Saturn into Aries and Pluto into Cancer. Only Uranus, at 0°38′ Taurus, and Neptune in Virgo keep their tropical signs.

In Jyotish terms that is a Vrishchika lagna holding the Sun, with the Moon in Tula, in Swati nakshatra, 1°37′ short of Vishakha. The Tula Moon holds all day; Vrishchika rose from 6:07 AM to 8:31 AM, so the lagna holds at the 7:00 AM reading too. Its lord, Mars, sits in Tula, the twelfth sign from the lagna.

Several verdicts change with the zodiac. Venus in Libra is in its own sign, and Western detriment is not neecha in any case; the Moon leaves Scorpio, its neecha sign in Indian practice too, and Saturn becomes neecha in Aries.

Saturn returned to 9°29′ Taurus on April 12, 1970, when Lee was 29.4, in one crossing with no retrograde repeat. Jupiter regained 7°32′ Taurus on May 31, 1952, at 11.5, and on May 13, 1964, at 23.5. In astrological tradition the first Saturn return marks the step into full adulthood, a reading of the cycle in general rather than of his life.

Positions come from precise astronomical calculations for 37°47′ N, 122°24′ W, the Chinese Hospital as Wikidata locates it, with Placidus houses, the tropical zodiac and the true node. Each rate compares the chart with random 1940s births run through the same code, horizon and angle rates rescaled to San Francisco's band of 30-45 degrees from the equator; a rate measures frequency, not meaning. Feature windows come from recasting the chart through the day.