Astrocartography

Before You Start

Astrocartography works from a saved chart.

• Choose a saved birth chart under Birth chart.
• If you have no saved chart yet, the window asks No saved chart yet? and offers Save current chart, which saves the chart in Astro Clock, or Back to Astro Clock.
• Transit lines are drawn on top of the natal map; they don't replace it.

Open it from the Places group of the Astro Clock Tools bar. Astrocartography, Mundane and Weather share one window with three tabs; close it with the close button or press Escape. The Mundane Guide and the Weather Guide cover the other two tabs.

Screen At A Glance

Legend

1. Astrocartography, Mundane and Weather tabs
2. Birth chart: the saved chart, with Refresh
3. Map lines: Natal or Transit
4. Inspect city
5. Place finder goal
6. Map, Intersections, Local space and Report
7. Map layers
8. The map, with zoom
9. Side inspector for the inspected place
10. Add to compare
11. Summary

The window has three parts: the setup column on the left, the results in the middle, and a side inspector on the right that opens when you inspect a place. Close the inspector with its own close button or Escape.

Starting The Workspace

1. Choose a saved birth chart.
2. Choose Natal or Transit map lines.
3. Choose the bodies and angles you want on the map.
4. Choose a Place finder goal if you want ranked cities.
5. Read the map, inspect a city or click Rank candidate cities.

Birth Chart And Map Lines

The saved chart is the base chart for the whole workspace.

Map lines switch between:

• Natal
• Transit

With Transit, choose Current time or Manual under Transit time. Both offer an optional Transit chart location and Transit chart time zone, and Manual adds a date and time. Click Use current time or Apply transit.

Transit lines follow Jim Lewis's Cyclo∗Carto∗Graphy: a transit line marks where a planet's position at the chosen moment falls on one of your own chart's angles. On the transit Saturn MC line, for example, transiting Saturn sits exactly on your relocated Midheaven. Hover a transit line and it reads, for example, "Transit Saturn on natal MC".

Bodies, Angles And Map Layers

Legend

1. Bodies
2. North Node and Chiron, optional
3. Angles
4. Map, Intersections, Local space and Report
5. Map layers: Global parans, Ranked candidates, All line labels
6. Refresh map
7. Ranked candidates on the map
8. Natal date and time, and the goal
9. Number of natal lines

• Bodies: Sun through Pluto are the core map bodies. North Node (the mean node) and Chiron are optional.
• Angles: MC, IC, ASC and DSC.
• Map layers turn on Global parans, the Ranked candidates pins and All line labels. Hover a line to name it; click it for details.
• Each MC line carries a small dot at its zenith: the place where that planet stood directly overhead at birth. Jim Lewis and Ariel Guttman call these centres of intense energy that also affect every place on the same latitude.

Set these before ranking cities when you want the map and the ranking to reflect only the lines that matter.

Place Finder Goal

The Goal changes how candidate cities are ranked.

• General inspection keeps the workspace neutral.
• A goal such as Home, Career, Love or Money ranks cities for that theme.
• Health, accident and gambling goals carry one short note: they read themes in a place and are not medical advice, a safety check or a prediction of winnings.

Choose a goal before you click Rank candidate cities.

Search Atlas

Under Search atlas you can set:

• Keyword (optional): a city or country keyword
• Country code (optional)
• Region filter
• Search resolution

Rank candidate cities fills Ranked candidates with cities for the goal and filters. Each candidate shows its astrology rank, country and population, its lead factor, how stable its rank is, the model signal, a score, and Inspect and Add.

The ranking is astrology only. It does not assess personal safety, healthcare, living costs, employment or visa requirements; check those separately before travel or relocation.

Use the Place Finder Guide for goals, resolutions, search progress and ranked candidates in detail.

Inspecting A Place

Type a place under Inspect city and click Inspect, or click Inspect on a ranked candidate. The side inspector opens with the place, its coordinates and Add to compare, then:

• a Summary with the lead factor, mode, goal, natal signal, model signal and rank stability
• the natal baseline and the nearest lines, each with its distance and meaning

The reading follows Lewis and Guttman:

• The closest line is the most potent. When an MC line is nearly as close (no more than about 75 km farther), the MC line leads, since the MC is the strongest angle.
• A line can still be felt up to about 1,000 km away, as a weaker outer field.
• A planet weak in your birth chart (in its fall or detriment, combust, retrograde, under hard aspects or out of sect) is named, because its difficult side is likelier on its line.
• A city lying on a planet's zenith latitude gets a note: that planet passes directly overhead along the whole band.
• Close to the poles, where many lines crowd together, the signal is scaled down; Lewis and Guttman say crowded lines tend to cancel out.

Add to compare keeps the place in a comparison list so you can compare several places.

Workspace Tabs

• Map
• Intersections
• Local space
• Report

Start with Map, inspect a city, then move into the other tabs once you have a place worth studying.

Parans

A paran holds along its whole latitude, at any longitude. A city within 2° of a paran's latitude is in its band, at full strength within 1°, and the paran counts toward goal scores as well as the reading.

Local Space

Local space draws each planet's line out from a place along its compass direction, in both directions around the globe, following Michael Erlewine.

• Every planet's line counts the same, whether the planet is above or below the horizon.
• Choose Relocated to draw the lines from the inspected city, or Natal to draw them from your birthplace.
• With Natal, the panel lists birthplace lines that pass within 150 km of the inspected city, and on which side: facing the planet, or facing away from it.
• Local Space lines are read on their own and don't change Place finder scores.

Report

Legend

1. Report tab
2. Cards, sections and the city
3. Delineation
4. Natal Lead Line
5. Lead Paran
6. Place finder score
7. Location Climate
8. The side inspector's Summary

Report brings the inspected place's reading together:

• the delineation, with the lead line and current Place finder score
• the lead line, plus the lead intersection and lead paran when the place has one
• Location Climate: how the place reads before any goal weighting
• Intersections, Parans, Local Space, the Relocation Layer and Place finder fit

Birth-Time Accuracy

Below the results, Birth-time accuracy says whether the chart's birth time is eligible for ranking and how sensitive the map is to it. A time as entered, without a declared range, is sampled a few minutes either side, and city ranks are marked provisional when the birth time hasn't been certified.

Practical Workflow

1. Save or choose the birth chart you want to use.
2. Open Astrocartography.
3. Choose the bodies, angles and Place finder goal.
4. Rank candidate cities, or read the map yourself.
5. Click Inspect on a promising city.
6. Move through Intersections, Local space and Report for the fuller reading.

Notes

• A saved birth chart is required.
• Transit lines show where the planets of a chosen moment fall on your own chart's angles.
• General inspection works without a goal, but ranking is built around the chosen goal.
• Report is most useful once a city has been inspected.