The map shows where every line falls. A personalized reading weighs them against your own chart — which planet is strong, which line to move toward, which to be careful near — and ranks your best places.
Get your astrocartography reading →Read it one planet at a time. Each planet draws four lines across the globe: its MC line (vertical, where it culminated overhead), its IC line (vertical, where it sat at the bottom of the sky), its Ascendant line (curved, where it was rising) and its Descendant line (curved, where it was setting). Locations within roughly 500 miles of a line carry that planet's signature. Venus lines soften and attract; Jupiter lines expand opportunity; Saturn lines test and mature; Mars lines sharpen drive and conflict; the Sun line concentrates identity and visibility. Where two lines cross, both planets speak at once.
Astrocartography is interpretive, not deterministic. A Jupiter line will not hand you success — it amplifies Jupiter themes wherever you stand on it, for better and worse. The mature use of the map is to narrow a real choice between places, or to visit a line before committing to it.
Every planet is angular at four places on Earth — overhead (MC), underfoot (IC), rising on the eastern horizon (Ascendant), and setting on the western horizon (Descendant). Each of those four positions traces a line across the map.
Pick a planet to see what each of its four lines tends to bring. These are the archetypal meanings — a personalized reading weighs them against the strength of that planet in your chart.
Beyond the four basic lines, the map's Advanced panel exposes the techniques serious practitioners read by. Toggle them on once you've narrowed to a planet or two — with all ten on at once they're intentionally dense.
A paran is a latitude where two planets are angular at the same moment — read as a band across the whole latitude, not a single spot. Jim Lewis and Bernadette Brady treat these crossings as a location's hidden signature: the place where two planetary energies fuse, even where no main line runs.
A different lens. Instead of where a planet is angular, Local Space (Michael Erlewine) draws the compass direction each planet sits in from your birthplace — your Venus might lie due southeast. The lines radiate outward as great circles, useful for orienting a move or even arranging a room.
Where two planetary lines intersect, both planets speak at once — a doubly-charged location. Crossings are among the most loaded places on any map: a Venus–Jupiter crossing reads very differently from a Saturn–Pluto one.
There are two conventions for the rising and setting (AC/DC) lines: the mundane method — the planet's body on the true horizon, used here, and the Jim Lewis standard — and the zodiacal method, which uses the planet's ecliptic degree. The vertical MC and IC lines are identical either way.
Move toward a strength, not away from a problem. A line amplifies its planet wherever you stand on it. The safest lines to move toward are the planets that are already well-placed in your birth chart — which is the single most important thing a personalized reading establishes before recommending anywhere.
Mind the orb. A line's influence is strongest within roughly 75 miles and fades out by about 500. The relocation compass on the map shows which lines fall within orb of any city you check.
Visit before you commit. Spend two weeks near a Venus or Jupiter line before uprooting your life for it. The map narrows a real choice between places far better than it justifies a leap into the unknown.
Planetary positions use Meeus astronomical algorithms — the Sun (Ch. 25) and Moon (Ch. 47) to about ±0.02°, with JPL/Standish Keplerian elements for Mercury through Pluto. Ecliptic positions are converted to right ascension and declination with date-accurate obliquity, and lines are placed against Greenwich Mean Sidereal Time. Your birth time is converted to UTC using your birthplace's IANA time zone (DST-aware), so line longitudes are accurate to a fraction of a degree. Nothing is sent to a server — the whole map is computed in your browser.
Yes — the map, every planetary line, and the relocation compass are free with no signup. Only the personalized interpretation, which ranks the lines that matter most for your specific chart, is a paid reading.
For the vertical MC and IC lines, birth time barely matters. For the curved Ascendant and Descendant lines — and for precise placement near your city — it matters a lot. Even fifteen minutes shifts the angular lines.
There's no universal best. Jupiter expands, Venus eases, the Sun makes you visible; Saturn, Mars and Pluto intensify their harder lessons. The real question is which planet is strongest in your chart and therefore safest to amplify — which is exactly what a personalized reading answers.
Yes. Use the search box on the map (or click anywhere) and the relocation compass lists the planetary lines running nearest that spot, with distance and whether you're within orb.