The Astrology of Place
When a new client comes to me for an astrology reading, the first thing I ask is for their date, time and place of birth. It's often the time that causes problems because it needs to be as accurate as possible to make sure that the Ascendant and Midheaven, the key angles in the chart which describe how we interact with the world, are accurate. But location is all important too and I've been considering lately the different ways that Where as well as When affects the natal chart. A chart erected for the exact same time but on different sides of the world will be very different, so that the astrological symbolism available to you varies as much with where you are as when. As an astrologer, there are various techniques which unlock the mysteries of the chart as it moves in place and the two I work with the most are the relocated chart and astrocartography.
Astrocartography, as the name suggests, maps the astrological chart onto the map of the world. this allows you to study the map and decide where is a good place for you - where you might get that career recognition you've been craving, even where you might meet the love of your life. Often there is a significant point running through an area someone is drawn to, even if they've never visited. A place we've never been to can still have an impact on us. If our family have moved or migrated around the world, those transpersonal planets which bring out generational issues might have an impact in the place our ancestors came from, even if we've never visited. Astrocartography shows the different potentials the world holds for our natal symbolism to play out, giving us a map with the lines of our chart running through it as the image below shows.
The relocated chart simply moves the chart to the new place and depending on how far away that it, planets may move houses and even the angles of the chart might change. What this means is that different areas of life come into focus when we move to a different place. We might move countries and suddenly find that our creativity is awakened, that the work we've been doing for years is recognised and validated. Areas of the chart which lack resources might gain them when we move so that we are able to work through our issues around relationships or self worth or emotional security more easily than we could in our place of birth. Moving ourselves and thus our charts in space offers us a different experience so that we find different parts of ourselves in different places. This isn't always easy - if Pluto or Chiron, for example, become prominent, they might be showing a place where our wounds or trauma might come to the surface, seeking healing. I lived in Minsk for a few months as part of my undergraduate Russian degree - with my natal chart relocated to Minsk, the wounded healer Chiron is closely conjunct my Ascendant and I lived out perfectly the symbolism of a wound in that place - the whole time I was there, the cancer my father had been diagnosed with just before I left was getting worse and I ended up leaving a week earlier than scheduled so that I could get home just a couple of days before he died. And the whole time I was there, childhood habits of connecting with people and expressing myself were playing out. I remember thinking that it felt like I was back in primary school. Our chart doesn't change when we relocate but we are viewing it through a different lens, so that what had been in the background is suddenly on the surface, demanding to be acknowledged.
There's a whole fascinating world out there and inside you! If you want to discover more about your own relocations and the geography of your personal growth, get in touch to book a reading.