Appointments are neither meaningless nor arbitrary as quality of time. The start time already includes the further course of a project.
You cannot influence the time, but you know what to expect when.
On the one hand, the date and time of a moment allow us to seize «the favor of the hour». On the other hand, the features and characteristics of these developments can be used in prognosis.
Thus, processes can be diagnosed, monitored, and scheduled.
The temporal description is only one possibility. The second aspect is the place that is always tied to a certain time.
Especially in the global context, prognosis is therefore always a localization.
The prediction is an essential skill of astrology. Thus, astrology is not only a tool of knowledge, but a method for predicting personal or global developments.
There are many indications that astrological prognosis has led to the formation of solar and lunar observatories, which played a central role worldwide and in almost all cultures. The knowledge of how such predictions were made is not known. So it remains speculation about the state of past knowledge.
However, through the description of past observations and forecasts it becomes possible to discern what methods and formulas they were using.
Based on my experience, predictions about harvests or war and peace were already possible in those times with simple procedures that enabled important orientations. That is certainly a reason for the high value of astronomy and the effort spent on the establishment of solar and lunar observatories in many cultures.
In modern times, new astrological methods have been developed that allow a very accurate prognosis.
In order to protect one's own knowledge or lack of documentation, the knowledge has been cloned, fragmented, or not even handed down. Thus, astrological knowledge must not only be developed further, but rediscovered and described again and again.
These lapses of transmission are necessary because they make it difficult to collect them through science, ideology, and religions. They protect astrological knowledge from institutionalization, commercialization, and the like.
Since every question has a certain "birth time", it already contains the possibilities for solutions and answers. Thus, even "false" statements can point to the truth. This can be the time of an idea, a conversation or a first meeting, as well as a "false report" in the press.