Astrocartography (ACG) projects natal planetary lines onto a world map, revealing where different planets would strongly influence your life. The Sun line brings vitality and recognition, Venus brings love and art, Jupiter brings prosperity, Saturn brings discipline and challenge, Uranus brings change. The reading covers your planetary lines for a given location or offers an overview of the most favorable destinations for love, career, spiritual growth and financial prosperity.
Where it comes from
Astrocartography was developed by Jim Lewis in the 1970s, who trademarked the term and built the first commercial service around it. The technique itself extends older locational astrology — the practice of recasting a chart for a different place, which is far older — by plotting the results onto a world map. Lewis's innovation was graphical rather than theoretical: instead of calculating a chart for each city one at a time, the lines show at a glance where each planet would be angular.
How the method works
For each planet, four lines are drawn across the world map marking the places where that planet would be rising, setting, at the top of the chart or at the bottom at the moment of your birth. A Venus rising line marks locations where Venus would be on the ascendant; a Saturn line at the top of the chart marks where Saturn would sit on the midheaven. Places near a line are read as amplifying that planet — for better and worse, since the same line that brings opportunity brings that planet's difficulties. Distances up to a few hundred kilometres are usually treated as within range.
What a reading covers
A reading gives your lines on a world map, what each planet tends to bring where it is angular, which places sit on favourable lines for work, relationships or study, and which lines to be careful with. It also covers places you have already lived, which is the honest way to test whether the technique describes anything for you.
Common questions
- Do I have to move for it to matter?
- The lines are read as active while you are in the place, including for a short visit. Longer stays are described as showing the effect more fully.
- Is there a best line?
- No single one. A Jupiter line is read as expansive and also as prone to overreach; a Saturn line as hard and also as where lasting things get built. It depends on what the period is for.
- Does it need an exact birth time?
- Yes. The lines depend on the angles, which move about one degree every four minutes, so an inaccurate time shifts every line substantially.