Local space astrology

What local space is

Astrocartography asks where on Earth each planet was rising, setting, overhead or underfoot. Local space astrology asks a simpler question: standing at your birth place at the moment you were born, in which compass direction did each planet lie?

That direction is the planet's azimuth, measured clockwise from north: 0 degrees is north, 90 east, 180 south, 270 west. Every planet has one, including the ones below the horizon, because a planet beneath your feet still lies in some direction.

The map takes each direction, draws it on the ground starting at your birth place, and keeps going in a straight line over the curve of the Earth. A straight line on a sphere is a great circle, so each local space line runs all the way around the world and back to where you were born.

How to turn it on

1. Enter your birth details and draw your lines.
2. Open the Lines tab and, under More layers, tick Local space lines.
3. Each planet you have switched on gets a line in its own color, leaving your birth place in that planet's direction.

You can show local space lines alongside your astrocartography lines, or switch the planet chips so only one or two planets are drawn. The Globe view shows the true shape of each line best.

Reading compass directions from home

Local space is about direction more than distance. If your Venus line leaves your birth place to the northeast, tradition reads northeast as Venus's direction for you: travel, moves or meetings that way are said to carry Venus themes of warmth and ease, whether the place is near or far.

Start with the planets that matter for your question: the Moon for home and comfort, Venus for connection, Jupiter for opportunity, Saturn for effort and structure. Note the direction each one points to from your birth place, then look at which towns, regions or countries you already know lie along it.

That makes local space a natural fit for small scales where astrocartography lines say little. Practitioners apply the same directions within a region, a city or even a house, reading the part of a home that lies toward a planet as colored by it. Reading directions inside a living space recalls feng shui, but the two traditions are separate and follow different rules.

This map draws the lines from your birth place as it was at your birth. Some local space astrologers also redraw the directions from a later home; that version is not drawn here.

Why the lines curve, and why they come back

A great circle is straight on the globe but looks curved on a flat map, and the farther it travels the more it bends on screen. Its compass bearing also changes along the way: a line that leaves your birth place heading northeast is not still heading northeast on the other side of the world.

Each circle also leaves your birth place in the opposite direction. A line that starts out to the northeast also runs out to the southwest, and both halves meet again at the point on the far side of the Earth. Practitioners differ on how much weight that opposite half gets, so read it more lightly than the direction the planet actually stood in.

Local space versus astrocartography lines

	Astrocartography lines	Local space lines
What they show	Where each planet was rising, setting, overhead or underfoot	The compass direction of each planet from your birth place
Where they start	Nowhere in particular: they cover the whole map	At your birth place
Shape	MC and IC straight north to south; AC and DC curved	Great circles through your birth place
What counts	Distance to the line	Direction, more than distance
Often used for	Choosing a region or city	Directions from a base, short moves, the layout of a home

The two can be read together. A city near both a planet's astrocartography line and its local space line is read as doubly marked by that planet. For a third layer, see parans.

Local space and your birth time

Directions depend on the moment: as the Earth turns, every planet swings around the sky, so local space lines rotate with birth time. The Earth turns 1 degree every 4 minutes, and the azimuths shift as it does, so an exact birth time matters here as much as it does for any line.