How to read your astrocartography map
Five steps, worked on a real chart. Every distance and threshold on this page is computed by the same engine that writes a reading, so you can check the method against an example rather than take it on trust.
Start with distance, and measure it the right way
A map carries 40 lines: 10 planets, each drawn on 4 angles of your chart. Every one of them is a curve or a meridian on the surface of the Earth, and the only question the map can answer is which of them pass close to a place you are actually thinking about. So the first move is not interpretation. It is a distance.
That distance is the shortest great-circle distance from the place to the nearest point on the line itself. It is not the east-west gap along your own latitude, which is how most guides describe the measurement and how a lot of calculators draw it. On a tilted Ascendant or Descendant line the two disagree by up to a few hundred kilometres, and they disagree in the direction that makes a line look further from you than it is. A city can sit comfortably inside a line's influence and appear, measured the easy way, to sit outside it.
Four distances then matter. They are not thresholds we picked: each is a figure published by a working astrologer, converted from miles and rounded, and the reason to borrow them rather than invent them is that a number you chose yourself cannot be argued with.
- Under the line to 80 km
Close enough that the line is the first thing worth saying about the place. This is the one band that is ours rather than borrowed, and it is deliberately stricter than anything in print. - Strong to 320 km
The line is doing real work here. Most of what a reading has to say about a place is said from inside this band. - Background to 565 km
Present, and worth naming once, but not the thing that decides how a place reads. - Faint to 805 km
The outer limit anybody publishes. Past here a reading should say nothing, and ours says nothing.
Read the planet, which tells you what the line carries
The planet is the what. It is the part most people already have some feel for, and it is also the part where a table of ten planets does the reader a quiet disservice: a planet does not carry the same thing on every angle. Venus on the angle of first contact is not Venus on the angle of partnership, and flattening the two into one entry for Venus is how a map turns into a horoscope.
That is why the meanings live as 40 separate pages rather than 10. Find the pair you are actually looking at, and read that.
Read the angle, which tells you where in a life it lands
The angle is the where. Not where on the map, which the line already told you, but which department of a life the line reports to. There are four of them, and they are the same four however many planets you stack on them.
Ascendant
The eastern horizon: where this planet was climbing into view at the minute you were born. It is the angle of the self, and it governs the body, the manner, and the way a place meets you before you have said anything to it.
An Ascendant line is a curve, not a stripe. The longitude where a planet rises shifts with latitude, and it shifts hardest near the latitudes where that planet stops rising at all.
Descendant
The western horizon: where this planet was sinking out of sight as you were born. It is the Ascendant's opposite point and the angle of the other party, governing partners, rivals and counterparts, and whatever reaches a life through other people rather than through effort.
A Descendant line is a curve, not a stripe. The longitude where a planet sets shifts with latitude, and it shifts hardest near the latitudes where that planet stops setting at all.
Midheaven
The top of the sky: the meridian where this planet stood highest at the minute you were born. It is the angle of the public record, and it governs work, standing, and the thing a person ends up known for, which is not always the thing they set out to do.
A Midheaven line is a meridian. It runs pole to pole at a single longitude, which is why it draws straight while the horizon lines curve.
Imum Coeli
The bottom of the sky, directly beneath the Midheaven and on the far side of the Earth from it. It is the angle of private ground, and it governs home, family, property, roots, and the part of a life nobody is watching.
An Imum Coeli line is a meridian, and it is the exact opposite meridian to the same planet's Midheaven line: half a world apart, one straight stroke each.
Check the second measure, which most guides do not mention
A line's distance on the ground is not the only way its strength gets measured, and this is the step that separates a careful reading from a confident one. The lines on a map are computed in mundo, from where a planet actually stood relative to the horizon and the meridian. A relocated chart measures something else: how far the planet sits, in zodiacal degrees, from that same angle once the chart is recast for the new place.
For any body off the ecliptic those two genuinely differ, and neither can be derived from the other. A planet's line can pass a thousand kilometres from a city while the planet sits a few degrees from that city's relocated angle, and the reverse happens too. The second measure is banded at 3, 6 and 8 degrees, again on a published scheme rather than one of ours.
No source in the literature ranks the two measures against each other, so there is no honest precedence rule to apply. What is left is the conservative reading: name both, and pitch the claim at whichever of them is weaker. A reading that quotes only the flattering measure is not reading the chart, it is selling.
Know what the map does not tell you
A line is not a verdict, and the map cannot rank places for you. It can say that a particular planet is angular at a particular place, in a particular department of life, at a measurable strength. Everything that makes a place liveable, the language and the work and the people and the cost of being there, sits outside what any chart carries. A guide that closes by naming the city you should move to has stopped describing the map.
The other thing worth knowing before you look is that an empty answer is a real answer. Nothing about a chart guarantees a line near anywhere in particular, and a reading that finds nothing inside the innermost band should say so plainly instead of reaching for the next band out to have something to report.
Counted across all 120 chart lines on the three published charts here, 21 of them, 18%, have no settlement of any size inside 80 km.
The same five steps, on one real line
Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, is one of three published charts on this site. Take a single line from it: the Sun Midheaven line.
Measured the way step one describes, the nearest settlement of any size under that line is Novi Sad, Serbia, at 0 km. That is inside the innermost band, which is the one case where the line is the first thing worth saying about the place. The planet tells you what it carries and the angle tells you which part of a life it reports to, which is steps two and three, and both are on that line's own page.
This is not a line we picked because it was convenient: it is discussed in Albert Einstein's published reading, so you can read what was actually written about it and check the method against the result. Read it.
Common questions
- How many lines are on an astrocartography map?
- 40. Ten planets, each drawn on the four angles of the chart: the Ascendant, the Descendant, the Midheaven and the Imum Coeli. Some maps draw fewer because they leave out the outer planets, and some draw more by adding asteroids or the lunar nodes.
- How close does a line have to be to count?
- Inside 80 km the line is the first thing worth saying about a place. Out to 320 km it is doing real work, to 565 km it is background, and 805 km is the outer limit anybody in the literature publishes. Past that a reading should say nothing at all.
- Do I need my exact birth time?
- For the horizon and meridian lines, yes. The Midheaven moves about one degree of longitude every four minutes, so an hour of uncertainty slides those lines across roughly fifteen degrees of the Earth, which is the difference between two countries. A rounded or unknown time does not make a map worthless, but it does change which claims the map can support, and a reading should tell you which ones those are.
- What if no line runs anywhere near me?
- That is a common and legitimate outcome rather than a failure of the map. Across the three published charts on this site, and every planet-angle pair on each of them, a meaningful share have no settlement of any size inside the innermost band. The honest response is to say so, not to widen the band until something appears.
- Why do two astrocartography maps disagree?
- Because they are drawing different things and rounding differently, not because one of them is broken. The conventions, the projections and the external checks are set out in full on the accuracy page.
Now do it on your own chart
The map is free and takes no email. Enter your birth moment and the lines draw themselves, and you can tap any planet to read what its lines carry.
Nothing on this page tells you where to live, and neither does a reading. It measures what is angular where, and leaves the decision with you.