Steve Jobs's Birth Chart

AA is the top grade on Lois Rodden's scale: the time was copied from an official record rather than remembered or estimated. Jobs's entry reached it in January 2006, when Astro-Databank received the certificate. Before that it carried 6:00 AM, worked back from one sentence in Jeffrey S. Young's 1988 biography of Jobs (its title is in the table below), which put his Sun, Moon and rising sign all in Pisces.

No minute of that day in San Francisco fits the sentence. The Moon left Pisces for Aries at 6:05 AM, and Pisces did not begin to rise until 6:39 AM, 33 minutes later; it rose until 7:54 AM. By the time Pisces reached the horizon the Moon had already moved on. A 6:00 AM chart keeps the Moon in Pisces, in the sign's last degree (29°56′ Pisces), but puts Aquarius on the Ascendant, so it satisfies two parts of the sentence at most. The certificate settles the question the other way: Virgo rising, with the Sun and Moon in different signs.

The table shows how much a wrong time costs. Moving the birth from evening to dawn moves the Ascendant from Virgo to Aquarius: every one of the ten planets lands in a different house, and the Midheaven moves from 21°18′ Gemini to 3°17′ Sagittarius. Only the signs of the planets survive, and even the Moon's does not.

Virgo rising, and Mercury retrograde in Aquarius

The Ascendant is 22°17′ Virgo. In traditional astrology the planet that rules the rising sign is the chart ruler, and Virgo's ruler is Mercury. Jobs's Mercury is at 14°21′ Aquarius, retrograde, in the 5th house. Astrologers read Virgo rising as a careful, exacting manner, attentive to how things are made and quick to notice what is wrong with them. Mercury in Aquarius is read as thinking that starts from principles and is unbothered by convention, and the fifth house is the traditional house of pleasure, children and creative work. Many modern astrologers read a retrograde Mercury as a mind that goes back over its own ideas before settling them.

The Sun in Pisces, in the sixth house

The Sun is at 5°44′ Pisces in the 6th house. Pisces is read as imaginative and receptive, alert to mood and atmosphere; the sixth is the house of daily work, skill and routine. Astrologers who combine the two describe imagination applied to the details of a craft. The Sun's sign is opposite the rising sign, a combination often written up as a pull between vision and precision, but by degree the two are 16°32′ short of an opposition and the API's orbs do not count them as an aspect.

The Moon in Aries, in the seventh

The Moon is at 7°44′ Aries in the 7th house. It had crossed into Aries at 6:05 AM and would not leave until 8:46 AM on February 26, 1955, so the Moon's sign does not depend on the certificate. Astrologers read an Aries Moon as quick, direct feeling that flares and passes, with a need for independence; in the seventh house, the house of partners and open dealings, the Moon is read as feelings worked out in relationships with other people.

Venus, Jupiter and Saturn

Three slow contacts tie Venus at 21°10′ Capricorn to Jupiter at 20°30′ Cancer and Saturn at 21°09′ Scorpio: Venus sextile Saturn, exact to the arc-minute; Venus opposite Jupiter, 0°39′; and Jupiter trine Saturn, 0°39′. Venus in Capricorn, a sign ruled by Saturn, and in close sextile to Saturn is read as a taste for restraint and for things built to last. Jupiter is exalted in Cancer in the traditional scheme and retrograde; it sits in the 10th house, the house of career and public standing, 3°37′ from Uranus house rests on the time.

Placidus or Whole Sign

The wheel above can switch house systems, and for this chart the choice moves the luminaries. Placidus divides the sky by time, so the Sun, early in Pisces, falls short of the Descendant at 22°17′ Pisces and lands in the sixth. Whole Sign houses make each sign one house, counted from the rising sign, which puts the Sun in the 7th house, the Moon in the 8th house and Mercury in the 6th house. Many astrologers in the Hellenistic revival use Whole Sign houses and would read the Sun as a seventh-house Sun, oriented toward partners and open rivals; the readings above follow the Placidus chart the page draws by default.

Mars in Aries, opposite Neptune

Mars is at 29°05′ Aries, in the last degree of one of its own signs, opposite Neptune at 28°03′ Libra with an orb of 1°02′. Astrologers read Mars in Aries as direct, impatient drive, and Mars–Neptune oppositions as drive bound up with ideals and imagination, with the risk of chasing what cannot quite be reached.

Virgo rose at San Francisco from 5:25 PM to 7:52 PM that evening, so the rising sign would survive a clock up to 37 minutes slow or 1 hour 49 minutes fast. The degree would not: the Ascendant was moving 12°15′ an hour, a degree every 4.9 minutes, and the Midheaven 13°51′. The Sun had set at 5:57 PM and was 15°59′ below the horizon, so this is a night chart whatever the exact minute.

Two planets sit almost on a Placidus cusp. Pluto would move into the 11th house if the birth were less than a minute later, and Uranus into the 11th house if it were 2 minutes earlier. Certificates record a minute, but 7:15 is a quarter-hour figure and may be rounded, so those two house placements are the ones to hold loosely. Everything else in the table keeps its house for at least 12 minutes either way.