Freddie Mercury was interested in astrology he created the Queen coat of arms using the 4 astrological signs of the 4 members 2 Lions for Leo one crab for cancer & two fairies for his own mutable sign of Virgo, Watching the Live Aid concert at Wembley with probably 100,000 audience
everybody was impressed & overwhelmed by his complete control & charisma, given he was a Virgo Sun & Mercury in Virgo where did his ability come from ? was it all down to Regulus, His naming the band Queen would point to that influence
The chart above shows his nativity to my mind he must have a strong Leo & sun in the first for where else in the chart can he draw his ability to shine.
The second chart is for his passing in 1991,There are additional factors in his solar return/ progressions chart which colaborate but this solar Arc shows enough.The Solar Arc Sun on Jupiter his 8th Lord all opposing Hades. The Solar Arc moon exactly opposes his 12th house Pluto
It is interesting he has the Saturn Pluto conjunction & his death was a result of a new deadly Virus
Recently the Saturn Pluto conjunction of 2020 brought the same themes to the world.

hey zosma

there is no accurate birth time for him.. i looked at adb and astrotheme - nothing... hard to comment on a chart without an accurate birth time.. cheers james

Hi James
I got my time from astroseek the famous people category

zosma -

astroseek would be a better website if they provided the basis for the data they offer.. as it stands, they don't.

https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/ ... -horoscope

lets say they got the time right.. 510am doesn't sound like a rounded off time, but maybe..
leo rising can often be viewed as ''charismatic''.. ascendant at the midpoint of mercury/pluto and mars/uranus ( 2 degrees, but could be less if time is ever so slightly out) - would also be seen as 'charismatic'... the mercury-pluto combo could be very persuasive which it seems he was... ascendant at the sun-saturn midpoint is less so, but definitely a focused energy again here... its a bowl chart essentially with moon-uranus as the outer edges of the bowl..

but perhaps the moon-jupiter = midheaven and moon-venus = midheaven is a better set of combos for his huge success in the artistic realm...

the chart seems to work from a midpoint angle for me anyway, but it would be nice if astroseek upped its game by providing the basis for the time for him.

The better source is generally astro.com (astrodatabank). The presentation of data there is clearer and more transparent.

https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Mercury,_Freddie

There is a great deal of speculation about the time of Mercury's birth so any time must be treated sceptically.

For what it's worth, here's my guess: 5.24 am, approximately midway between the 5.10AM time and the 5.50AM time. Leo rising doesn't seem unreasonable to me, and the later time puts Virgo on the ascendant. Good 'ol Regulus rising here! Always a sure bet for superstardom! A couple of nice things about this time - the Moon is trine the Leo ascendant from Sagittarius; Mercury is rising in the first house; the two benefics are at the midpoint of Moon/Ascendant. Broadly speaking the royal fixed stars - Regulus, Antares, Fomalhaut and Aldebaran are angular.


Temperamentally he is strongly choleric (warm and dry) with a good admixture of sanguine (warm and moist). This combination is likely to make him popular and charismatic, if a little irascible at times.

Thanks James & astralwanderer I think i will use the 5.24 time as it places the SA mars almost exact the IC at the time of death, I know it is in sect & less of a malefic than Saturn.but I have found in my own chart that although I have Mars in sect as I am a night birth Mars is definitely
the worst of the two malefics for me.In Freddies chart Mars is at the same degree as the nodes so as Barbara H Watters wrote In an astrologer looks at murder planets on the same degree as the nodes will be more fated.

Hi Zosma - thanks for the feedback. It seems like a time that is worth exploring to me. His chart is an interesting rectification study. If he has a nocturnal birth at around this time then the only planet above the horizon (traditionally speaking) is Saturn, the out of sect malefic. This is rather counter-intuitive, but to push the birth time back, bringing the Sun closer to the horizon or above it, either brings Virgo to the horizon, or after a couple of hours, takes the Moon into Capricorn. Neither of these scenarios seems very likely to me.

In fact, a 5.10AM time (+2 hrs 45 mins) aligns SA Mars with his IC more precisely than the 5.24AM time (+2 hrs 45 mins). The nice trine of the Moon to the Ascendant is lost at this earlier time, but most of the attractive features of the Regulus rising chart are retained. The Moon actually moves to the cusp of the 5th house at 5.10AM using Porphyry which is an apposite symbol given his role as an entertainer. (For time zone issues see following post.)

There are a significant number of arc directions for his death which seem relevant if this 5.10AM time is used:

SA Pluto to malefic 2nd-8th Porphyry cusp.
SA Moon opposite natal Pluto.
SA Mars conjunct IC.
SA 12th house cusp conjunct natal Sun.
SA Mercury conjunct natal Mars.
SA Sun conjunct natal Jupiter.
SA ascendant moving past his natal Neptune during the couple of years prior to death.

This last direction might have some relevance to Mercury's wish to keep his illness (due to the AIDS virus) secret.

At the end of the day, we don't (and won't) know Mercury's actual birth time so any rectification will be on the merits of the symbolism associated with any particular time. I wonder if the 5.10AM time is based on a rectification using the directions above. It seems to have come from Frank Clifford, the British astrologer. On p.176 of his British Entertainers (rev. ed. 1997) he says of the 5.10AM time: Birth time speculative (around 21 degrees of fixed signs seem significant) but doesn't give any further information. This comment seems a little odd, given that 5.10AM gives an ascendant of 25 degrees Leo!

Planetdance, the software that I use, gives a time zone correction of +2H 45M where yours seems to give +3H. The Clifford book also seems to be based on a +3H zone correction. Further investigation is needed on this. It would be helpful if you could post your 5.24AM chart, which I guess is similar to my 5.10AM chart (+/- 1 minute).

Time zone in Zanzibar

I've done a bit of research on this. It looks like Solar Fire and Astro-seek use East Africa Time (+3 hrs) for charts in 1946 in Zanzibar. Planetdance uses +2 hrs 45 mins. However I'm not sure that EAT was used in 1946 in Zanzibar. Unfortunately the only evidence I can find is from this website, which doesn't cite any authority for it's record:

http://en.timeofdate.com/city/Tanzania/ ... start=1940


This shows that at least until 1949 it is possible that Zanzibar, which was not part of Tanzania at the time, used +2 hrs 45mins ahead of Universal Time (or GMT) instead of a standard time zone like EAT. In any case, it looks like a chart for 5.24AM (+ 3 hrs), Zanzibar, on Mercury's birthday, would be the same as 5.09AM (+ 2 hrs 45 mins).

Prior to about 1970 there can be a great deal of uncertainty about the time zones and adjustments in place in many parts of the world.

Freddie Mercury rectification.

The following chart is for 5.09AM (+2 hrs 45mins), 5 September 1946, Zanzibar. I think this should be the same as 5.24AM (+3 hrs) for the same date and place.



With the 5.09AM chart (+2 hrs 45 mins), his temperament calculation is altered slightly, but only to increase his warmth and moisture (sanguine). In my view, this combination of sanguine and choleric is likely to give someone extremely high levels of charisma and personal power.

hey ed and zosma

fun playing with dirty data, isn't it?? lol.... i try not to get down in the mud myself, too often....

i was wondering why i couldn't get the angles you were getting with the 524am time... your 2nd last post on this thread explains it...

morinus uses 3 hour time difference, but as you note, that may or may not have been in effect in 1946..

thanks for your post on the issue of the time zone.... now when you add that to the rectification process, it really has great potential to be a wrecktification!!

Hi James - as ever, it's all speculation. However this confusion may actually be really interesting evidence for a 5.10AM birth. Let's put a little story together!

Freddie Mercury clearly had an interest in astrology. As Zosma notes, he created a crest for the group incorporating symbols for each of the Sun signs of the band members. He also comes from a Zoroastrian family, and astrology is incorporated into this religion. Or perhaps we should say there are astral elements to the beliefs of Zoroastrians.

His birth certificate, which is available, doesn't record a birth time, and Freddie, wishing to know the time of his birth seeks out an astrologer to rectify his chart. They come up with 5.10AM, but here's the rub: they use a +2 hr 45 min correction giving 25 Leo rising. This time is picked up by Frank Clifford somehow. (He does a lot of great work on data collection by the way). He plugs it into his software, but the calculation uses a + 3 hr correction. Bingo! The ascendant is now 21 degrees Leo but the time becomes associated with Mercury's birth.

However, this time (using a + 3 hr correction) does not give the precise SA directions that Zosma notes at the time of Mercury's death. It is only the 5.09-5.10AM time (using +2 hr 45 mins) that gives the SA directions noted above. To get a similar chart one has to use 5.24-5.25AM with the +3 hr correction.

It's intriguing, but not entirely implausible. The lesson here is for astrologers to be extremely careful about the accuracy of time zone corrections built into their software, especially for dates prior to 1970 or so.

thanks ed, for the additional notes..

i agree with you on the fragility of the birth time data with the use of computers and the topic of time zones, dst and etc, specifically.. it is fraught with a lot of potholes on the road...

as to the separate topic of rectification, i think this topic is equally - probably more so, full of potential pitfalls and wrong conclusions... it would be extremely flimsy to rely on one event, with a surmise of what the astro to this event is, to base a rectification... that is speculation, not rectification! fun to do mind you, but just as frivolous too!

for me, the midpoints aren't as relevant for this time 510, and a 245 utc alteration... the 510, with 3 utc fits much better, but again - it is only one of many tools (midpoints) for coming to a speculative time for freddie mercurys birth time... i just don't bother doing rectifications and think 99% are unlikely to be any good... but that's me!