Best time to move

Where and when

Astrocartography answers where: your birth lines show which places astrologers connect with love, work, home or a fresh start. Relocation astrology also has a way to answer when. As the planets keep moving, they keep crossing the angles of your birth chart at different places on Earth. Draw those places for a given day and you get your transit lines, a method Jim Lewis called cyclocartography.

When a moving planet's transit line runs through a city, that planet sits on one of your angles there: your Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven or IC. Astrologers read that as the planet's theme coming into focus for you in that place, for as long as the line stays close.

How the tool finds your window

For each day of the next two years, the tool works out where the moving Jupiter, Venus and Sun fall on the four angles of your birth chart, and checks whether any of those transit lines runs within 300 km (186 mi) of your city. A run of days when one does is a window. For each window you get the dates, the planet, the angle and the day the line comes closest.

These three planets are the ones astrologers most often associate with growth, ease and visibility. Jupiter moves slowly, so its windows can last weeks, and it can come back over the same place when it turns retrograde. Venus and the Sun move faster, so their windows are shorter. The Sun counts on the MC and AC only, the two angles linked with direction and self.

The free result shows your next window and how many more the two years hold. The Personal Atlas lists every window in the next two years for each of up to 5 cities, with exact dates.

What each window is read as

Window	Often read as a time for
Jupiter on your IC	Settling in, a bigger or better home, family
Jupiter on your MC	Work, a new role, a bigger stage
Jupiter on your AC	Confidence and a fresh start
Jupiter on your DC	Helpful people, partners, new connections
Venus on your IC or AC	Feeling welcome, making a home pleasant
Venus on your DC or MC	Love, friendships and good first impressions
The Sun on your MC or AC	Arriving with energy and a clear aim

Astrology is a symbolic tradition. A window is a way to choose among dates you could pick anyway, not a promise about how a move will go.

Place first, timing second

The timing of a move matters less, in astrocartography, than the place itself. Your birth lines stay where they are for life, while a transit window passes. Start with the cities: see your lines on the map, the places ranked for each part of life in best places, or up to three cities side by side in where should I live. The relocation chart shows how your chart changes in each.

Then use the windows to pick among dates you could realistically choose: the day you travel, the week you arrive, a first visit before you decide. Leases, jobs, visas, schools and the people around you come first; a window is one more input, not a reason to rush or wait.

Which day counts?

Astrologers do not all agree. Many take the day you arrive to live in a place as the start of your time there; others look at the day you sign a lease or a contract, or the first night you sleep in the new home. If you can, aim for the arrival to fall inside a window, and treat the rest as a matter of taste. All of this is computed in your browser; your birth details are not sent to a server. See the method page for how the lines are drawn.