What is astrocartography?

Astrocartography meaning and definition

Definition: astrocartography is the astrological technique of drawing a birth chart onto a world map, as lines showing where each planet was on one of the four angles of the chart at the moment of birth.

A birth chart is a picture of the sky from one place at one moment. But at that same moment the sky looked different from every other place on Earth. From one city a planet might have been rising while from another it stood at the top of the sky. Astrocartography asks: if you had been born at the same instant somewhere else, which planets would have been on the four angles of your chart? The answer is a world map of lines, one set of four per planet. The name joins astrology and cartography, the making of maps.

Jim Lewis and the origin of astrocartography

The technique was popularized from the late 1970s by Jim Lewis, an American astrologer who died in 1995. His approach, drawing every planet's angular lines across a world map for a single birth moment, is what most people mean by the word today.

The idea behind it is older than the map. Astrologers had long cast charts for places other than the birth place. What the world map added was a way to see all of those places at once, so a reader could ask which cities put which planet on an angle without casting a chart for each one.

How it works, astronomically

The Earth turns once a day, so every planet rises in the east, climbs to its highest point, sets in the west and passes beneath you. Astrology calls the four turning points of that daily circle the angles:

• AC (Ascendant): the eastern horizon, where a planet rises.
• MC (Midheaven): the meridian above you, where it reaches its highest point.
• DC (Descendant): the western horizon, where it sets.
• IC (Imum Coeli): the meridian below you, its lowest point.

At the instant of your birth, each planet was exactly on one of these angles for some places on Earth. The places where it was on the MC form a straight north to south line; so do the IC places, half a world away. The rising and setting places form curves, because the horizon tilts with latitude. Twelve bodies times four angles gives 48 lines. All 48 lines are explained here.

None of this is guesswork; it is the same spherical geometry used to predict when a planet rises. The Earth turns one degree every four minutes, which is why the birth time has to be accurate: four minutes of error moves every line by about 111 km (69 miles) at the equator.

Vedic (sidereal) astrocartography

Vedic astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, which is measured against the fixed stars, while most Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac, measured from the equinox. The two name the same point in the sky with different sign labels. Because a line depends on where a planet really was in the sky, not on the zodiac used to name its position, a Vedic astrocartography map draws exactly the same lines in exactly the same places.

What changes is the reading. In sidereal reckoning many planets fall in the previous sign, and so can the rising sign of a relocated chart. Vedic astrologers may also read the lines through their own tradition, for example giving more weight to the lunar nodes, Rahu (the North Node) and Ketu, and less to Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

An example

Imagine that at your birth Venus stood at its highest point along the meridian through central Europe. Your Venus MC line then runs straight down that meridian, from the Arctic through Europe and Africa. Your Venus IC line runs down the opposite meridian, through western Alaska and the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Near the equator, your Venus AC line crosses a quarter of the world to the west, in South America, and your Venus DC line a quarter of the world to the east, in Southeast Asia. Farther north and south those two curves bend toward each other. Repeat that for the Sun, the Moon and the other bodies, and you have a full map. In practice the lines fall wherever your birth moment puts them; this is only a sketch of how they relate.

Why no line is simply good or bad

Beginners often open their map, see a Saturn or Pluto line through their home town and worry. The tradition does not work that way. Astrologers read every planet with a strong side and a hard side, and they ask what you want from a place. A Saturn line is often described as demanding but productive; a Venus line as pleasant but sometimes too easy. The line pages give both sides for every line.

What it can tell you

Within the tradition, astrocartography offers a vocabulary for places. The planet on a line says what kind of experience is associated with it (Venus with warmth and connection, Saturn with effort and structure, Uranus with change), and the angle says where in life it shows: self, partners, career or home.

People use it in practical ways: to think about why one city felt like home and another never did, to choose where to spend a holiday, or to add one more angle when they already have a shortlist of places to live. Used like that, the map is a prompt for reflection. It gives you questions to ask about a place and about what you want from it.

What it cannot tell you

It cannot tell you that you will find love, money or health in a particular city, and nothing on this site claims that. No line is a guarantee and no line is a curse. A map also knows nothing about jobs, visas, cost of living, climate, safety or the people you would leave behind, and those count far more in any real decision. Treat a line as one input among many, never as a reason on its own to move, stay, start or end anything.

Is astrocartography real?

Two different things are meant by this question, and they have different answers.

Are the lines real? Yes, in the astronomical sense. The lines show where planets were actually rising, setting and crossing the meridian at your birth, and they can be calculated precisely. Our method page shows how ours are computed and checked against NASA data.

Do the lines affect your life? There is no scientific evidence that planetary positions at birth shape what happens to people in particular places. Astrocartography is a symbolic tradition, like the rest of astrology. Many people find it a meaningful way to think about places and choices; that is a matter of personal meaning, not of proof. We present it in that spirit: "astrologers associate", never "this will happen".

Related techniques

• Relocation chart: your birth chart recalculated for a new place. The planets stay in the same signs; the angles and houses change. It is the chart-wheel view of a single point on the map.
• Parans: latitudes where two planets were on angles at the same moment, read as a band all around the world rather than at one crossing point.
• Local space: lines drawn outward from your birthplace in the compass direction of each planet. Some astrologers use it for moves within a city or a region.
• Geodetic astrology: an older, separate system that assigns zodiac degrees to longitudes of the Earth itself. It is mentioned here only so you can tell it apart.

How to start

1. Find your birth time, as exactly as you can.
2. Enter your birth date, time and place on the free map.
3. Click the places that matter to you and read the lines nearest to each.
4. Use how to read an astrocartography map to understand line styles, symbols and distances.

You do not need a paid reading to begin. Every line, crossing and relocated chart here is free, and each line page explains what it is associated with in plain words.