Astrocartography: where your lines run

Astrocartography maps where on Earth each planet stood on one of the four angles of your chart at the minute you were born: rising, culminating, setting or at the nadir. The result is a set of lines on a world map. Near a line, that planet’s theme gets louder: relationships on a Venus Descendant line, growth at work on a Jupiter Midheaven line. The modern method was developed and popularised by astrologer Jim Lewis in the 1970s.

Yes. The Earth turns one degree every four minutes and the lines move with it, so an hour of error shifts them by almost 1,000 km. If you know the time to within a quarter of an hour, choose “approximate, ±15 minutes” and we will draw bands. If you have no time at all, you can narrow it down in an account from life events.

Usually because of the method: most sites, astro.com included, use the planet’s real position in the sky, while some use its point on the zodiac. For Venus and the Moon the gap can reach hundreds of kilometres. Birth time and the width a site gives a line matter too. We default to the astro.com method, and the other one is a switch in the calculation details.

Venus lines are linked with love, beauty and pleasure; Jupiter lines with growth, luck and generosity. What gets louder depends on the angle: relationships on the Descendant, work and recognition on the Midheaven, home on the IC, yourself on the Ascendant. All 40 line descriptions open in the line card.

The map can show which themes get louder in a city and help make sense of what you have already lived through in different places. The decision to move is best made on life grounds: work, visas, people, climate. Lines add one more way of looking at a city. If you are choosing between several cities, the Places map reading compares them by your chart: what each one amplifies, what it asks of you and when to act in the year ahead.

The lines are the same in Western and Vedic astrology: they come from the planets’ positions in the sky, and the ayanamsa does not move them. Interpretation differs. Each city card shows both the Western Ascendant and the Vedic Lagna.

Astrocartography shows the whole world at once: where your lines run. A relocation chart is your birth chart recalculated for one city, with a new Ascendant and MC. This page has both: the line map and “My cities”, with your birth chart recast for each place.

Astrocartography describes a place for your whole life; a solar return covers one year, from one birthday to the next. You can spend your birthday in another city and the solar return chart changes. Our solar return calculator does that, and every city card links to it.