Using both a practical and a humanistic approach, Zip Dobyns guides the reader through the proven techniques used to rectify a birth chart. The precise methods she outlines to find the correct birth time are easy to follow, and include the use of various methods of planetary and angle progression, solar arc directions, local house cusps, transits, and more. She also discusses less dependable techniques.

About destiny, Zip wrote: "Materialistic science assumes that destiny (experience) creates character. Materialistic astrology assumes that the planets create both character and destiny. Humanistic astrology assumes that our attitudes and actions (including unconscious desires and habit patterns) create our destiny, that we are born when our character-destiny matches the state of the cosmos, and that the planets offer a useful blueprint of the cosmic order, but do not create it. All approaches agree that internal nature and external circumstances match, so that we can understand one more clearly in the light of the other. They differ in where they place the power: in chance and matter (science), in the planets (materialistic astrology), or in the mind

(humanistic astrology)."