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The "Problem"
After receiving a user query as how to the calculator produces a different "local time" from that of a calculator not related to this system, and replying to the best of my understanding, the following e-mail exchange soon revealed this was not an entirely innocent question. The sender first had said he was not mathematically inclined, but immediately started to produce quite developed ideas of a calendrical nature and it soon was apparent he had been out all along to "debunk" this site for providing a local birth time based on a misunderstanding of the Ho Lo Li Shu method.
I'll just give two quotes. In the first he gives a birth place where he finds the calculator erring very much. This also shows his understanding of the instructions given by Chu & Sherrill in the book "The Astrology of I Ching" on how the true local birth time is produced. In the second quote he clearly sums up his complaint.
Quote 1: I do know how to calculate true local time, and I know that your site is calculating it wrong – not always, but nevertheless on many occasions, especially with those cases where the place of birth is far from the standard time meridian.
I'll give you the place Kashi, in the far West of Tibet, as an example (see here ). It lies on 76°E. Let's take 15:00 as birth time, 15 February 1980. The standard time meridian is 120°E (time zone GMT+8). Using the calculations from S&C's book it goes like this:
· The difference between the place of birth and the standard time meridian is 44°.
· This has a time value of 176 minutes, which have to be subtracted from the birth time.
· 15:00 – 176 minutes = 12:04
Quote 2: Let me reinstate your error: S&C say, “Longitude corrections should be made by adding one minute of time for each fifteen minutes of longitude the location is east of the standard time meridian , or subtracting one minute of time for each fifteen minutes of longitude the location is west of the standard time meridian ”. But you “bring the birth data into alignment with the closest standard time meridian”. That is not what S&C are telling you to do. And this is what produces the wrong outcome when you have locations that are far from their standard time meridian.
The Reply
To the second quote I gave my final opinion on the technicalities using his own Tibetan data. It had now been revealed that the writer uses some other calculation software upon which he has based his idea of what Chu & Sherrill says in their text. The original C&S instruction will be shown in full below. (For some reason the writer has swapped the order of the original authors; in the 1st and 2nd edition of "The Astrology of I Ching" Chu is mentioned first and Sherrill second.)
I believe you have all misunderstood the C&S instruction since they use loose language, sometimes substituting a synonym for a word used only a moment earlier! (Like in the three examples, where the birth time is once called "clock reading," and in another case "reported time.")
Your attempt to make "standard time meridian" into something else than "closest standard time meridian" is the very root of this evil (misunderstanding on the writer's part). In fact, the very Table 8a you seem so intent on removing from the book is clearly the one containing the "time correction to CLOSEST standard meridian". C&S only have ONE kind of meridian in mind!
You and the other programmer are apparently performing two operations on the basis of the C&S instruction where only one meridian related operation on the raw data is mentioned in the text! These instructions are eminently simple and clear to follow!
Take the C&S example b, Charleston, South Carolina, longitude 80°W. "The standard meridian is 75W," they say, referring to Table 8a and the 75 Time Meridian in the left column. As if teaching children they spell out the method clearly: 80 minus 75 leaves us five degrees, to the west of "the standard meridian" at that.
C&S then points us to the fine print just below the Table 8a where they have stuffed (because of lack of space it would seem) the larger longitude variations from "time zone" (that is, the "time meridian" given in the left column).
They note that five minutes discrepancy from the correct "time meridian" amounts to twenty minutes, which must be subtracted. And then the small two minute fix and Lo and behold! - there we have "true astrological time"! Time to move on.
My reply refers to an earlier mail where I could hardly believe I heard right when this "expert" pronounced the crucial Table 8a was unnecessary!
It should also be noted that Chu & Sherrill variously called the processed (final, local) birth time "true astrological time" and "true local time", but in the Netherlands they seem to think the authors are talking about two different things. After showing that none of the three examples in the book showcases two separate manipulations of the recorded birth time in terms of adjustment to the meridian, this self-styled expert turned sour: "
This makes such fine material for an article about narrow-mindedness." Apparently he has now published the discussion in a way meant to discredit this site.
The Arbiter: the original pair of authors!
Truth is, C & S really did create an ingeniously simple way of "detaching" this system from its place of birth at 120°E by placing a "virtual" Peking at every meridian around the globe, in every case using the same method of subtracting as many minutes from the birth time as the birth place was to the west of this virtual center of the world, or adding time in case the birth place was located to the east of the meridian.
In the below two scans you will see the very short text above the key table (with, I must repeat, this "expert" insisted on was disposable in one of his letters! He might have made a typo though, because Table 8b does not greatly contribute to anything. The text continues on the second scan which also shows two of the three examples.
Note the total absence of anything even remotely hinting at what this person was doing with the Tibetan data, that is, his additional three step "fix" to establish "true local time."
In several places Chu & Sherrill use the phrase "true astrological time" as a synonym for "true local time," and the left page describes in full how to produce this! Read, reflect and make your own judgment.
I believe the "expert" may have went astray already with the very first sentence, where C&S say:
True local time must be used determining the hour and minute of birth, before entering the appropriate tables.
If mistaking the "appropriate tables" for the two shown in these pages, one might get the impression there is something to be done before even looking further into this section! But the tables C&S refer to are the following dozen or so, by which the birth symbol is produced step by step.
What their quote in fact introduces, are these very tables (seen in the scans) by means of which one slightly modifies the recorded birth time, so as to get the "true astrological time" or "true local time" for use in further calculations. The three examples repeatedly refer to these two tables and no other procedure supposedly indicated by that initial sentence which made the "expert" totally go astray.
Pages (150 dpi) open in new tabs:
 
The author's third and last example is here given in full.
Also note first step of the basic computation where once
more mention is made of Table 8a/8b but nothing more.
Just for clarity's sake, let's apply our visitor's method to e.g. C&S's third example: Las Vegas 115°W.
Since our "expert" obviously holds the 120°E as a sacred reference from which all adjustments for a "true local time" must proceed (he has discarded Table 8a, and the idea of a worldwide distribution of "virtual" Pekings, remember?), Las Vegas is a whooping 235° westward of the Chinese reference point. (Or should we in this case rather proceed eastwards from 120°E until we reach Nevada? Nowhere in their text do Chu & Sherrill involve us in such a morass of possible solutions to this quandary.)
Translated into time (each 4 minutes equal 1°) this means we must subtract 940 minutes or more than fifteen hours from the Las Vegas birth data. Of course the result does not even remotely resemble that obtained by C&S for example 3 by applying their method - which is also the method implemented in the calculator on this site!
What our self-styled expert should have done with his Tibetan birthplace was to locate the meridian closest to 76°E, in this case the 75° meridian, and add a mere four minutes since the birthplace was ever so little to the east of this particular "virtual" Peking.
(This text has been slightly abbreviated from that originally published.)
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