Astrocartography is the branch of astrology that asks a simple question: if your birth chart was cast for a different place on the same moment, what would change? The answer is the houses and the angles, and when you draw the places where each planet would sit exactly on the horizon or the meridian, you get lines across a map of the world. That is an astrocartography map, and it was popularised by the American astrologer Jim Lewis in the 1970s.
What the lines are
Each planet gets four lines. Where it would be rising (on the Ascendant), setting (on the Descendant), overhead (on the Midheaven) and underfoot (on the IC). The rising and setting lines curve across the map; the overhead and underfoot lines run straight north to south. Where you were born, every planet sits exactly where it was in your natal chart. Move to a Venus Midheaven line and Venus becomes the planet overhead in your relocated chart, which astrologers read as Venus colouring your public life and reputation in that place.
The lines people care about most
- Sun lines: being seen, vitality, confidence. Good for places where you want to be noticed, tiring for places where you want to hide.
- Moon lines: home, feeling, family. Often where people say "it just feels like home".
- Venus lines: love, pleasure, friendship, beauty. The classic holiday and romance lines.
- Jupiter lines: luck, growth, opportunity, teachers. Doors open, sometimes too many.
- Mercury lines: talk, study, trade, busy minds.
- Mars lines: drive, sport, ambition, and friction. Energising for some, exhausting for others.
- Saturn lines: work, discipline, structure, limits. Hard, serious places where people build things slowly. Rarely a holiday.
- Uranus, Neptune and Pluto lines: change, dreaminess and intensity respectively. Powerful and not always comfortable.
How close is close?
A common rule of thumb is that a line's influence is strongest within about 300 kilometres and fades by about 1,000. Being near a line is not the same as being on it, and almost every city is near several lines at once, which is why a list of "your Venus cities" without the rest of the map can mislead. The honest reading looks at the whole picture for a place: which lines are near, which are strongest, and what else is going on in the relocated chart.
What it is good for
Three things, in practice. Choosing between places you are already considering for a move. Picking a holiday that gives you what you actually need right now (rest, romance, adventure, a reset). And making sense of a place that has always felt either wonderful or wrong to you. It is not a reason to move somewhere you have never been, and it is not a prediction of what will happen there.
It needs a birth time
The angles move about one degree every four minutes, so every four minutes of birth time shifts every line by roughly 100 kilometres. A rough time like "morning" could put the lines thousands of kilometres out. Astrocartography is only worth doing with a birth time to the minute or within about half an hour. If you do not have one, see how to find your birth time.
Your lines on a world map, your most compatible place on earth and your best holiday destination, read for you.
Questions
Can astrocartography tell me where to live?
It can describe how different places are likely to feel and what they tend to bring out in you. The decision is still yours, and the reading describes tendencies, not events.
Do the lines work for holidays as well as moving?
Yes. A short stay near a Venus or Jupiter line is the classic use, and a good reading picks a holiday destination that suits what you need now.
How accurate does my birth time need to be?
To the minute or within about half an hour. Each four minutes moves the lines about 100 kilometres.