Home · What is astrocartography
The plain explanationWhat is astrocartography?
The shortest honest answer, followed by the longer one. You do not have to believe any of it to read this page.
The short answer
At the moment you were born, every planet was directly overhead at exactly one point on Earth, and on the horizon along a line of other points. Project those positions onto a map and you get a set of lines. Ten bodies across four angles of a chart gives forty lines, and they fall in a different place for every person alive.
Astrocartography is the practice of reading those lines as a map of places — the claim being that living near one of yours emphasises a particular quality of experience there.
Where the lines actually come from
This part is not interpretation. It is the same calculation that tells you where a solar eclipse will be visible, and any two competent tools should agree on it to the arcminute.
A Midheaven line is a meridian — a line of longitude — placed where a planet stood directly overhead. Its Imum Coeli line sits exactly opposite. Ascendant and Descendant lines are solved separately at every latitude, which is why they curve.
Where a body never rises or never sets at a latitude, its line does not exist there. An honest map leaves that gap. A map that draws a continuous line through it is showing you something that is not there.
The formulas, in fullThe four angles, briefly
MC — Midheaven
What you are seen doing. Career, visibility, reputation. The angle most associated with public work.
IC — Imum Coeli
Home, rest, the private base. A demanding planet here affects the place you are meant to recover in, which is why it tends to be felt so strongly.
AC — Ascendant
How you arrive and how you are met. The version of you a new city seems to draw out.
DC — Descendant
Who you meet, and how partnership tends to run. The relational angle.
What we claim, and what we do not
The geometry is exact. The reading is an interpretation drawn from a fixed table written by a person — nothing is generated, so the same birth moment gives the same words in ten years and you can hold us to a screenshot.
You do not have to accept the interpretation to use this. Run it against cities you have already lived in. Either it describes them or it does not, and that is a test you can finish in about a minute.
A city has no fixed character either. It has a relationship with one particular chart — the same street is a sprint for one person and a rest for another, and most cities are simply neutral for you, which we will say rather than reaching for something.
Common questions
What is an astrocartography line?
A line on a world map marking every place where one planet was exactly on a chart angle at the moment you were born. Ten planets across four angles gives forty lines, and they fall in different places for every person.
Do I need my exact birth time?
For the angular lines, yes — an hour of error moves them by about fifteen degrees of longitude. Without a time you still get a real reading: the lines that depend on it are switched off, and you see the full band each one could occupy instead.
What do the four angles mean?
MC is what you are seen doing. IC is home, rest and the private base. AC is how you show up. DC is who you meet and how you relate.
Is astrocartography scientific?
The geometry is: the lines are computed with the same spherical trigonometry that predicts an eclipse, and any two tools should agree on them to the arcminute. The claim that being near a line changes your experience of a place is an interpretation, not a measurement, and we say so rather than blurring the difference.
Start with a city you already know.
The fastest way to judge any of this is against a place you have lived.