If you’re new to astrology or are a seasoned astrologer, you may have or will start to hear more about something called astrocartography. But what is it? Why is it important to you? How can you use it in your life?

Most of us are familiar with having our natal chart, or birth chart, read to us by a professional astrologer or getting a free birth chart. You learn about your sun, moon, and ascendant signs. Astrology is an ancient language that can unfold in so many ways. One use of this ancient language tells you where different parts of the world will ignite certain aspects of your soul’s identity and experience.

Astrocartography (ACG) Explained

Astrocartography developed and the term coined by American astrologer Jim Lewis in the 1970s, is the ability to map where the planets of a person’s birth chart are conjunct (or next to) the significant angles in a person’s birth chart (astrowiki). Angles being the Ascendant (ASC), Descendant (DSC), the medium coeli(MC), and the imum coeli(IC). Because you were born at a specific time, place, and date, your astrocartography map is unique to you. Where your Venus IC astrocartography line is on an ACG map will be entirely different for someone born at a different time than you on the same day and location. Below is an example of an ACG map.

Like many languages, there are layers and nuances to understanding and mastering it. The same is true for ACG. You may have seen some astrologers only reference your ACG map and advise where may be good or more challenging places to be in the world. Not all Jupiter and Venus lines are created equal. Another factor that a well-trained ACG astrologer should consider is something called parans.

Paran Lines

Parans are the latitudinal coordinates when two planets’ ACG lines intersect on the map. Looking at this example of an individual’s paran lines through the United Kingdom, they have a Mercury/Jupiter paran line running through the north of Scotland and a Mercury/Sun paran a little further south closer to Edinburgh. If you were to follow that line, it would be at the same latitude all around the globe. Any other locations at that same latitude would feel the effects of that paran.

Local Space Lines

Not only can a trained ACG astrologer review these aspects of your ACG map, but they can also review something called local space lines. This allows us to pinpoint within a city the best neighborhoods for you to live in based on where those local lines lay. In the example below, if we were to follow this person’s local lines, we can see they spread out from the place of birth, showing where in the world this person will experience the energy of Jupiter compared to Neptune or Venus.

Why astrocartrography should be important to you

I believe astrocartography will become the next big thing on the astrology block because people are learning more about this modality and how it can uniquely benefit them. As we become a more connected world through technology, the ability to travel and experience other locations is wide open to us. How often have you had a friend suggest going somewhere on a vacation? The way they raved about it, you didn’t want to miss out. But when you got there, you were underwhelmed, or even worse, you were disappointed. You didn’t have the same experience. You didn’t get the same vibe or energy from that place.

That’s because of ACG! That person’s ACG map, parans, relocated chart, local lines, and aspects, along with the timing, could have been much more favorable for them in that location than your own ACG reading might say about the same location.

Even if an ACG astrologer finds you some fantastic locations with supportive parans, great relocated charts, and aspects on your ACG Map, the timing of when and how long you go to those places could make or break the experience. That is something we call cyclocartography, which I will talk about in another post.

Common Myths of Astrocartography:

What are the perfect places for me worldwide?

• What are the perfect places for me worldwide to have it all (success, money, family, partner, house, career, creativity, etc.)? I’m here to say there is no perfect place for anyone. We all carry the planetary bodies in our energetic design (the birth chart). No matter where you live, you can’t escape your Saturn or Mars. Instead, reframe to see that every place on the globe will offer some benefits and opportunities for growth and healing. It depends on what you want to prioritize in your life at any given moment. Each place on the planet has optimal places to support your priorities and goals in life. We need to read your map to unlock those answers.

There are no “bad” lines.

• There are no “bad” lines. Your Saturn and Mars lines may not be as scary as some might make you believe. This is where understanding your birth chart is vital. If you have a well-placed Mars with supportive aspects in your birth chart, your Mars line may not be as intense or challenging as other individuals’ birth charts. A solid understanding of your birth chart is critical when assessing your ACG map. Like I said earlier, you may have a well-placed Mars, but your Jupiter might not be as strong in your chart and may have some difficult aspects, meaning it won’t show up as strongly in how it can benefit you as it could if positively placed and well aspected. I know from experience I have Saturn conjunct Mars in my birth chart. No matter where I go in the world, I will always have the energy of Saturn and Mars together. It depends on what house (area of life) and what sign (the flavor those planets will take on) will express those energies differently for me in new places.

I can’t move to another country.

• I can’t move to another country; this won’t work for me. This, my friends, is where remote activation becomes so essential. Remote activation is the ability to activate the energy of a remote location through interaction with the people, food, music, research, art, etc., from that location. For example, you prioritize healthy habits and find that Porto, Portugal, is a location that would provide amazing support and activation for that area of your life. Still, you can’t afford to go there. The following would be some of the actions you could take to tap into that energy for yourself remotely: go to online forums and talk with people from Porto to learn about the culture and history, reading about the history and culture of Porto, looking up and making recipes unique to Porto, finding some pictures you love to look at and viewing them daily, or maybe listening to local folk music from Porto. These activities would activate the energy as if you were in Porto yourself.

How to use astrocartography in your life

The most fun part is the world truly is your oyster. The limits of ACG are only created by the limits of your imagination. The scope of how this can benefit you is really up to you. There are endless possibilities of how finding the most optimal location(s) can support your dreams and priorities. Here are a few examples of how ACG can be used:

1. Career – finding companies to work for in your ideal locations, starting a business.
2. Relationships: finding your romantic partner, building a community, finding the most supportive, fun, and loving friendships, finding the right business partner(s), and meeting new people.
3. Creativity: writing a book, starting a blog, shooting a film, making a creative art project, dancing, singing, cooking, gardening, etc.
4. Communication: podcasting, building out a social media presence, becoming a thought leader
5. Healing: spiritual awakening, deep healing, or development
6. Rest and leisure: travel for relaxation, ease, and comfort, and participate in a retreat
7. Home: finding places that “feel like home” where you “want to plant roots.”
8. Adventure: places that will bring out the adventurous side and make you feel like you are pushing your limits
9. Focused project work: places that will support deep focus work if you are working on a big project
10. Learning: places that provide the best support for learning and curiosity

I am grateful to my ACG teacher, Helena Woods. The world of astrocartography has opened up so many opportunities, and I want to share them with you and support you on your journey. I’d love to hear your thoughts down below. If you want to learn more about how I can support you with an ACG reading, please check out www.lisagoeke.com.

Sending you big hugs with Light and Love,

Lisa

Resources:

“Astrocartography”.Accessed on October 1,2024. Astrowiki. https://www.astro.com/astrowiki/en/Astrocartography

Oh, Uranus, you sneaky little trickster of a planet. Yes, you have a long orbit time (84 years), but you LOVE to get us with a “gotcha” moment. Something we humans (at least here in the United States) love to call an astrological mid-life crisis.

Transiting Uranus opposing natal Uranus explained.

What does Uranus represent? Energetic archetypes of unconventionality, innovation, sudden unexpected changes, spontaneity, erratic, and transformation come to mind. Though slow-moving, she quickly reminds you that change needs to happen even if you’re not paying attention.

My most poignant experience to date happened roughly seven years ago, one night when I was in a deep sleep. This occurred during July or August of 2017. At that time, Uranus was trining my natal Neptune. I remember it was a full moon. In the middle of the night, I woke up suddenly. I felt a massive wave of energy, so sudden it felt like a lightning strike through my entire body.

This profound and seemingly obscure experience began a very intense spiritual awakening and dark night of the soul. The transiting Uranus trine my natal Neptune, was a profound astrological experience bringing significant change to my life forever altering my path.

What could an astrological mid-life crisis mean for you?

At the midway point of a complete Uranus cycle, roughly 42 years, people experience this astrological mid-life crisis. A time filled with excitement, fear, feelings of liberation, and a need to live life in alignment with your authentic self, and change is inevitable. This sudden, once-in-a-lifetime intense period profoundly shifts an individual into a direction they never saw coming. It’s a time when one thinks to themselves, “Oh my god, I have everything in life, but I’m not happy; I need to change something now.” or “I’m not getting any younger, and I still haven’t traveled the world like I have always wanted. I will quit my corporate job and teach English abroad while I travel the world.”

This is at the top of my mind because I turned 40 this year. I couldn’t help but think about my own impending astrological mid-life crisis and what this period may mean for me.

• Who am I? Am I the person I want to be? Do I show up in a way that reflects how I see myself?
• Do I have the right priorities and goals that align with my deepest desires and purpose?
• Am I willing to take action to achieve those goals? If not, am I willing to accept those consequences?

One universal truth I’ve come to accept is that I and everything around me are constantly changing. How do I embrace a period of intense, sudden, life-altering change that is bound to happen?

What should you do about the uneasiness you may experience?

Positive psychology and Taoism taught me two things: Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and wu wei.

Self-Determination Theory:

Because you probably like to feel in control of your life, self-determination theory looks at the ability or process of making your own choices, which in turn controls your destiny.

Let’s examine how positivepsychology.com breaks down some of the main components of SDT. You can read more about this theory to learn more about its history and evolution.

Essential Components of SDT:

• Intrinsic Motivation: “comes from within” (Ackerman).
• Extrinsic Motivation: drive to behave based on external sources, resulting in external rewards” (Ackerman).
• Autonomous Motivation: “includes motivation that comes from internal sources and includes motivation from extrinsic sources for individuals who identify with an activity’s value and how it aligns with their sense of self” (Ackerman).
• Controlled Motivation: “made of external regulation-a type of motivation where an individual acts out of the desire for external rewards or fear of punishment” (Ackerman).
• Introjected Motivation: “motivation from ‘partially internalized activities and values’ such as avoiding shame, seeking approval, and protecting the ego” (Ackerman).

The theory ties in autonomous and controlled motivation to state that you may feel more self-directed and autonomous when driven by autonomous motivation. On the other hand, if you were driven by controlled motivation, you may feel pressure to behave in a certain way; as a result, you may experience little to no autonomy (Ackerman).

That sounds familiar. Reflect on the moments or times when your decisions and actions were motivated by feeling pressured or needing to behave a certain way just to “fit in.” I can think of some general life experiences off-hand: corporate masking, making friends as a teenager, into early adulthood, etc.

But what does this have to do with astrology? Well, I’m glad you asked. By reaching our early 40s, we have lived enough life, gained enough experiences, and navigated enough relationships and situations that our motivational drivers have been tested repeatedly. The more we make decisions and take actions that are either in alignment or out of alignment with our authentic internal self-identity, the stronger we develop a sense of whether we are living a life that is authentic to us. What happens when you’ve followed what everyone else says for too long? It becomes painful that you can no longer operate that way, and something needs to change. When the transiting Uranus opposes your natal Uranus, that is when the energetic catalyst is at its peak for you to make those necessary changes.

Ackerman describes a self-determined person as holding the following characteristics:

1. They believe they are in control of their own life.
2. They take responsibility for their behavior (taking credit and blame when either is warranted).
3. They are self-motivated instead of driven by others’ standards or external sources.
4. They determine their actions based on their internal values and goals.

The theory also states that the type of goals and how you pursue them are essential for overall well-being. The phrase “doing things my way” has never been more true. Uranus holds the same energy of being unpredictable, innovative, liberating, awakening, revolutionary, chaotic, progressive, eccentric, rebellious, and electric. This energy aligns with the theory’s premise of fulfilling the basic needs of competency, autonomy, and relationships that meet your needs.

I would argue that you can’t pursue dreams and aspirations at the cost of everyone and everything else around you. That is where Wu Wei comes into the picture.

Taoism: Wu Wei

Sometimes defined as “inaction” or “effortless action,” it is a way of being and acting without a sense of self. You’re in harmony with the world’s energy, and I would also say the universe. It means you still take action. Instead, you put your ego aside. You put your need to control an outcome, how things should be, and your expectations of life and the world, and allow yourself to flow with the energy and where it will take you. In other words, instead of forcing a particular outcome, you make decisions and take actions that follow the natural flow of life instead of fighting it.

You may think that’s great, but I have bills, a family to support, etc. I hear you. That, my dear friend, is the mastery of it all. Some of my favorite examples of grounded practices of wu wei:

• Checking in with my body. Instead of rushing into a decision out of fear, I should pause and tune inward to notice how it physically feels in my body. Would I feel calm, secure, grounded, and at peace if I were to say yes or no? Do I feel relaxed in my body, or do I feel anxious?
• Changing my decision. It is my prerogative to change my mind after I make a decision. Circumstances and information about the decision could have changed, and my original decision may no longer be what is best, and I need to change my response.
• Waiting. Giving no response and waiting a few days or weeks to see how things unfold.
• Observation. I become an astute observer of my own life.

These changes may not necessarily occur in the external world. More often than not, these changes impact how you see yourself, your beliefs, your values, your ideals, etc.

Tools to navigate your astrological mid-life crisis.

But Lisa, these are two completely contradictory frameworks. Yes, AND I still believe you can find a way to balance them both. What if instead of controlling how external circumstances will look, the focus would be on defining the internal frameworks and values that add meaning to you and your life? For example, how would you define success? What would being healthy mean, and what would it look like to you? Where are those definitions and frameworks for how to describe them? How would you define success, happiness, marriage, health, and so on, regardless of what your family, friends, and society say it should look like?

You can build and enhance the skills you need to build your own self-determination: self-awareness and self-knowledge, goal-setting ability, problem-solving, decision-making, ability to self-advocate, ability to create action plans and execute them, self-regulation, and self-management.

So, if you know that around this time in life, something, in some way, will be a life-altering change. How do you want to prepare yourself to navigate that change without knowing how it will look in your life? This, my friends, is where we can start the conversation of navigating our paths. Please share any bits and bobs that resonated with you the most; how would you be more in the flow when life is happening?

You can see my other resources and services here if you’d like to learn more about how I can help you navigate this period.

Sending you big hugs with Light and Love
Lisa

Resources:

• Ackerman, Courtney. (2018). Self Determination Theory and How It Explains Motivation. https://positivepsychology.com/self-determination-theory/