The Astrocartography library
What Is Astrocartography?
Your chart, drawn on the earth
Your birth chart never changes, but the Earth keeps turning beneath it. Astrocartography maps where each of your natal planets rises, culminates, sets, and anti-culminates around the globe, turning a single chart into a world map of places that speak to you.
Draw your map, freeOne chart, a whole Earth
At the moment you were born, every planet stood somewhere over the Earth. Seen from one city, a planet was rising; from another, it hung directly overhead; from a third, it was setting. Astrocartography draws those places: for each planet, every location where it sat on one of the chart's four angles, the Ascendant, Midheaven, Descendant, and IC, at the instant of your birth.
What you get is a world map crossed with lines, one set for each planet. Along a planet's line, that planet acts as if it were angular in your chart: loud, present, impossible to ignore. Life on your Venus line feels different from life on your Saturn line, even though you are the same person carrying the same chart in both.
Weather by geography
The philosophy is the one we bring to every chart on this site: weather, not fate. A line doesn't force events; it tunes the atmosphere around you. Jupiter on an angle tends to open doors and enlarge appetites. Saturn on an angle asks for structure and patience. The Moon brings feeling and belonging to the surface. Place amplifies what is there; it never replaces your choices, your effort, or the rest of your chart.
Jim Lewis popularized the technique in the twentieth century under the name Astro*Carto*Graphy. The idea underneath it, that a chart can be relocated and read for a new place, is the much older practice of relocation astrology, simply drawn for the whole world at once instead of one city at a time.
Seeing your map
Our free Best Place to Live tool casts your map from your birth details and finds where your chart shines brightest. It names your strongest place and reads what your lines are doing there. After that, the next things to learn are the planetary lines themselves, the four angles they cross (begin with the Ascendant line and the Midheaven line), and how close to a line counts.
Keep learning
The rest of the library: seven short guides to the places your chart lights up.
Relocation AstrologyHow a move changes the way your chart plays out, and how to choose with it.
The Relocated ChartThe same planets cast for a new city: a new rising sign, new houses, a new emphasis.
Planetary LinesThe four lines every planet draws across the Earth, and what each one brings.
The Ascendant LineWhere a planet rises for you: places that change how you come across.
The Midheaven LineWhere a planet crowns your chart: places for work, calling and being seen.
IC & Descendant LinesThe lines of home and of partnership: where you root, and whom you meet.
Orb of InfluenceHow far a line reaches, and why you choose a region rather than a pinpoint.
See it on your map
Every one of your planet lines drawn across the United States, and the cities scored for the life you want, with your best place read free. It works even if you don’t know your birth time.
Draw my mapYour questions, answered
Do I need my exact birth time for astrocartography?
Birth time matters more here than almost anywhere else in astrology. The angles shift about one degree every four minutes, and the lines shift with them. Without an exact time, the map is cast for noon, which blurs which lines truly run closest to you.
Do astrocartography lines work if I never travel?
The strongest effects come from time you actually spend in a place. Practitioners also read lines for the flavor of your dealings with a place, though: companies, people, and opportunities based near a line often carry its tone.
Is astrocartography the same as a relocated chart?
Same engine, different view. A relocated chart re-casts your birth chart for one city you choose; astrocartography draws the results for every place at once, as lines on a map. Use the map to build a shortlist and the relocated chart to look closely at each city on it.
Can a place override my birth chart?
No. Geography emphasizes what your chart already holds. A move can bring a planet's themes forward dramatically, but your whole natal chart travels with you wherever you go. That suitcase is non-negotiable.
Explore every tool
Every free reading, chart and calculator on the site, gathered here so you can find yours.