006. relocation codes: using astrocartography to find your perfect respawn point
an exploration of how reading the sky as software reveals the magic in movement and the divinity of place
relocation isn’t new for me. i’ve been doing this for years, mapping my own migrations and helping others trace theirs, learning how movement itself is one of the oldest forms of divination. people underestimate how powerful it is. they think relocation is logistics, leases, boxes, flights… when really, it’s initiation.
i have pluto in the fourth, chiron in the third. translation: home as underworld; speech as scar tissue. for a long time, i thought that meant i was doomed to instability, that home would always dissolve and my voice would always ache. it always felt hard to connect with my peers, like i spoke a dialect no one else understood. i felt perpetually out of place, misunderstood in classrooms, neighborhoods, and friendships. i assumed i was fated to live on the edges of belonging, watching stability happen to other people.
then i found astrocartography. not the pop-astro-instagram version like standing on your sun line makes everything bloom (rolls eyes), but the real machinery: how a chart rotates when you move, how the angles of the sky reorient the theater of your life, how the same natal code runs a different interface when you change coordinates. discovering it felt like learning that i wasn’t cursed; i was configurable.
my fate wasn’t fixed. it was responsive.
astrocartography showed me that i could change the script by changing the setting. it’s not that pluto vanished from my fourth house; it’s that i found locations where pluto’s pressure transformed from collapse to creation, where the underworld of “home” became a sanctuary, where the chiron in my third became medicine through my words. relocation didn’t erase my lessons. it reframed them.
that’s what i love most about this work. it’s equal parts astronomy and alchemy. your natal chart is your root system, but your environment determines which roots get the most light. every coordinate you move through is a new arrangement of the same divine code.
this is what i’ll be teaching in my live relocation class: how to read your astrocartography map, how to pull and interpret your relocation chart, and how to translate those shifts into lived experience. for only $33, we’ll move beyond the surface of “lines” and into the living architecture of your chart in motion. if you learn best through examples, you’ll see it in real time with real charts, real lives, and real relocations. the class is wednesday, november 5th at 7 p.m. eastern, and the replay will be available for those who can’t attend live.
if you want something more personal—your coordinates decoded one on one—you can also book a relocation reading with me. i’ll walk you through your map, your lines, and your relocation chart so you can understand exactly how your energy interacts with the world.
in this entry, i’m opening the machine and showing the internal logic: what astrocartography actually is, where it came from, how relocation really works, and why your chart is less about fate and more about configuration.
astrocartography 101
the system beneath the lines
astrocartography is relocation astrology turned interface: the art of taking your birth sky and projecting it onto the globe to see where each planet is strongest by angle: rising (asc), setting (dsc), culminating (mc), or rooting (ic).
in short, astrocartography rotates your chart based on the location in the world, so the same natal code begins to operate through a different landscape. the planets themselves don’t change, but the stage does. your chart becomes circuitry, the earth becomes the motherboard, and you become the current moving through both.
while many people associate astrocartography with modern digital maps, the lineage stretches far back into the roots of astrology. early astrologers explored how place interacts with the chart through geodetic and local-space systems — methods that assigned zodiac degrees to longitudes or traced planetary directions from a specific location. others studied parans, the crossing points between planetary lines. but it wasn’t until the twentieth century that someone unified these ideas into a single, accessible framework.
that someone was jim lewis: born james lewis slayden in new york city in 1941.
part astrologer, part entrepreneur, part mystic-technologist, lewis turned the abstract study of planetary geometry into a practical and visual tool. in the late 1970s, while living between new york and san francisco, he began designing the first world maps of this kind, hand-coding planetary meridians onto the earth’s surface.
he called his system astro*carto*graphy — with asterisks to symbolize the crosspoints between heaven and earth.
in 1979, he published his first collection of maps and reports, making locational astrology accessible to the public. two years later, in 1981, he filed a patent for an “astrological device and method,” effectively blending sacred study with intellectual property. his innovation was to combine planetary angles, mathematical precision, and computer technology to show anyone, anywhere, where their cosmic currents ran strongest. through the eighties and early nineties, he lectured internationally, trained practitioners, and built a licensing network so the work could continue beyond him.
when lewis passed away in 1995, his estate formed the astrocartography trust to preserve and manage his legacy. the official trademark for ASTRO*CARTO*GRAPHY was renewed in 2000 and later released in 2011, but by then the term had already entered the collective lexicon.
today, astrocartography has evolved to include related techniques such as parans and local-space lines, yet lewis’s structure remains the foundation: planets + angles + place.
in simple terms…
the premise of astrocartography is simple and profound — project the natal sky onto earth, observe where each planet aligns with an angle, and read those meridians as energetic corridors.
the astrocartography map gives you the where, and the relocation chart reveals the why. together they form the sacred circuitry of movement, a reminder that “home” is not fixed to one address but lives in the places where your chart remembers itself most clearly.
astrocartography may sound like myth, but it’s also math. before we can decode the spiritual circuitry, we have to understand what’s structurally shifting when we relocate.
what actually changes when you relocate
sometimes people misunderstand what happens when they hear the word astrocartography. they imagine that moving across the world rewrites their entire chart; as if their sun sign changes, or their planets trade places. that isn’t the case. your natal chart remains the foundation, the original source code. the placements of your planets and the aspects between them are fixed; they are the architecture you were born with. if you were born with a pisces stellium and an aquarius moon (like me! teehee), you will always carry those placements no matter where you live. the relationships between your planets — the dialogues they have with one another — remain consistent. in that sense, your chart’s language doesn’t change.
what does change is the board the chart is playing on. when you move, you tilt the board. astrocartography doesn’t change the planets themselves, but it changes the perspective from which you experience them. the rotation of the earth relative to your new location alters your angles (the ascendant (rising sign), descendant, midheaven, and imum coeli) and the way your houses are distributed across the chart. those houses represent the areas of your life through which the planetary energy expresses itself: your identity, home, relationships, work, community, and so on.
when you shift the angles, those areas reconfigure. the planets remain in the same signs and hold the same aspects to each other, but they start lighting up different rooms. that’s why relocation feels like entering the same play with a new set design: the story stays the same, but the environment and the supporting characters change.
for example, in my natal chart, i’m a virgo rising, which means mercury rules my chart. my default way of moving through the world is mercurial: analytical, communicative, detail-oriented. but in southeast asia, my relocation chart gives me an aquarius rising. suddenly, i’m navigating life in a more saturnian way: disciplined, structural, focused on mastery and long-term evolution. saturn falls into my third house here, which draws my attention to language and perception. it’s as if the universe rewired my daily routines and communications to become part of my spiritual training. i didn’t stop being a virgo rising at my core; i simply started viewing my life through a saturnian lens. that’s the magic of relocation: it doesn’t erase who you are, it rotates the lens so you see yourself — and the world — differently.
so when we talk about “changing your chart” through relocation, what we’re really describing is a shift in angles and houses. the planetary energy stays constant, but the context, the landscape that energy moves through, is what transforms. this is why understanding relocation is so valuable; it shows you how environment shapes experience, how the same natal blueprint can unfold in completely new ways depending on where you stand on the planet.
in summary:
your planets and aspects remain the same — your natal code is fixed.
what changes are the angles (ascendant, descendant, midheaven, imum coeli) and the houses, which represent life areas.
relocation reorients these houses, causing different themes to surface more prominently.
the experience is like shifting camera angles — same story, new perspective.
moving locations can highlight new versions of your natal potential, revealing facets of self that remain dormant in other places.