A little and way to brief History of astrocartography and astrolocality
Astrology is an ancient tradition, as ancient as looking at the Moon and determining where in a cycle one is and the environment around one is. Since the inception of astrology as a concept, it has been built upon, contemplated, perfected, transformed, unleashed, theorized, conceptualized, and recorded to build upon its meaning and insights for the betterment of human life.
One of the concepts of astrology that has gained tremendous momentum recently is that land and place on the earth has correlation with astrological significations and can be mapped for personal gain and enhancement. The idea is old, old as dust, Ptolemy in the Tetrabiblos around 145 A.D. mentions that there are correlations between between locations and planets. Ptolemy gives an affinity of Aries and Mars to England, and Jupiter and Sagittarius to Spain, both of which prove quite prescient over the next two millennium.
Long before that around 1500 BC the Chinese had mapped out 28 lunar mansions and assigned directionality from the indications arising in the heavens to places on earth:
Directionality also played an extremely important role in assigning meaning
to terrestrial space. The Shang king, says Keightly, “lived at the center of a world in which the directions – of the land; of his travels; of the winds, rains, and clouds; and of the Powers that controlled, or were manifested in, those phenomena – were symbolically significant… The King looked out upon the North China plain, from the core of his enduring lineage, from the center of the settlement, from the center of the tu lands and the fang-regions, observing, forecasting, and recording the numerous directional phenomena, mundane and spiritual, on the time-space grid of Late Shang cosmology. That grid was built upon the cardinal directions, upon the seasonal changes in weather and in the motions of the Sun, moon and stars.~ Maria Mateus from her research paper for Kepler College entitled: Directionality and Geography in Mesopotamian Astral Omens. 2009
It is by no means a strange or effortful leap to come to the conclusion that this line of thinking eventually led to flying star fengshui, which is an ancient, well practiced, and thorough form of astrolocality that weds the natives birth time with the location they live in and the house they live in, along with its birth time to predict myriad things for the native dwelling in that place and time.
Like so many things found in Chinese metaphysics, it took a long time for the west to catch up.
By the middle ages astrologers understand that relocation of a natives chart changes the Ascendant, MC, IC, DSC, and therefore the house structure of a chart. In the west there starts to be hints in the written works of astrologers that you can relocate the chart to produce a different effect for the native.
By the late medieval period, astrologers fully understood that changing geographic location altered the Ascendant, Midheaven, and house cusps while leaving the zodiacal positions of the planets unchanged. This knowledge was inherent in the astronomical techniques used to erect charts for different latitudes. Although medieval and Renaissance authors occasionally discuss the astrological significance of moving from one place to another, they generally did not treat the relocated horoscope as an interpretive technique in its own right, as far as we know. The modern practice of relocation astrology, and later astrocartography, appears to be a ninteenth to twentieth-century development built upon these earlier astronomical principles.
A.J. Pearce, known as Zadkiel the younger, in the 1870s starts to write about the power of relocating charts, this is further expanded upon by his student Sephariel who releases a book on directional astrology in 1921. The whole concept is slowly built upon and becomes easier to digest for astrologers, but remains fairly complex until Jim Lewis comes along in the 70s and proposes what becomes astro*carto*graphy.
Jim Lewis does something that no one before him would even dare conceive of, perhaps it is the first hints and taints of late stage capitalism entering the field of astrology, he tries to trademark the concept of his astrological concept.
Ok. but what was Jim Lewis’s concept. It was that you can overlay upon the globe where planets rise, culminate, descend, and reach their anticulmination. From this global mapping, (oh my god this is way to short of an explanation, but hopefully it is enough for now) you can determine where specific planets will have a major impact on you (or the native) and will deliver their promised effects to you in a palpable way. Jim Lewis was trying to make a living and wanted to reap the harvest of the fruit of his insight and tried to trademark his technique which he called astrocartography. Unfortunately, the patent office would not give him the trademark on it, unless he made it astro*carto*graphy. Which he did, and created a whole system, school, and software based on the technique which endured some sort of popularity with astrologers until recently.
Astrology goes through trends, just like everything else, and a good astrologer can predict those trends with astrology. Well, it just so happens that the trend of Zodiacal Releasing has died down and what seems to have over taken it over the last year is the trend of astrocartography. The technique fell into the lap of a foreordained astrologer named Helene Woods who is very good at self promotion and has promoted astrocartography very well as part of that. Now don’t get me wrong, its popularity is not just about her, she is just very good at promoting her astrocartography and helped the concept go viral on the socials, causing the zeitgeist to breathe in flames of youth studying and promoting the practice to explode like Krakatoa covering the globe in its ashes. With fame and renown comes shadow of course, it is always so, and it is marvelous when people are surprised by the very core principle truth that the stronger a light shines, the greater the shadow that it will cast. But that is for another substack rant. A row of quiet intensity has hit the astrological field because one of Helene’s students, a young woman, named Kristine Odegard, in France, has trademarked astrocartography in her country and trying to lay claim to the term of art for herself. She is even sending cease and decest letters to astrologers claiming using the term in their practice. The audacity!
At this point the entire astrological world seems to practice astrocartography to some degree, it is taught at Kepler, it is taught elsewhere, it is just a form of astrology. But alas, here we are, in late stage capitalism where chasing the appearance and experience of opulence is such a manic past time that we find people trying to own concepts and techniques that are methods of art rather than the art itself. Alas, woe, it is the end times, is it not. But, if anyone is to blame, I blame Jim Lewis himself. If you poison the well from which the water flows, downstream, people drink of the same poison.
Astro Locality
Aside from the controversy, I practice the technique myself and work with clients by pulling up what is termed “the Astro Locality Map” on Astro Gold, which seems to be deftly named to avoid messing with the AstroCartoGraphy name and invoking lawsuits from whoever, and looking at where planetary lines fall on the map for the day I was born or a client was born. I do so not because I have studied with any of these people who lay claim to be lineage holders of the tradition, but because I have played with the concept, studied it casually, and applied it to clients charts and my chart for over 20 years now and found interesting and cool things happen when you use the technique.
That being said, I am not a fearful devotee of the method either. Most of my life I have lived on the place where Pluto culminates in my astro locality map. I am certain this is a no no from that school of thinking. But hey, life is what it is. If you are a fish, you don’t know that water is where you live and their is an experience of living in air. Have I had traumatic experiences on my Pluto line, for sure, but who does not have traumatic experiences where ever they live.
Life is suffering, the Buddha taught. That means that everyone will have traumatic experiences in their life. It is part of being alive. Can we all stop blaming eachother now?
I can say however that when I travel to my Jupiter line, New York, Philadelphia, Florida, I have experiences that I can strongly correlate with my natal Jupiter Placement. My Mercury directionality line falls over Chicago, I will see you at UAC where I will be delivering a fine fine fine oration on the Moon and the Souls Journey.
Jupiter on the IC falls over Barcelona, and when I stayed there I could not sleep because of the vividness of my surreal Gaudi dreamscape, if you know you know.
So I one hundred percent vouch for the technique delivering deliverable meaning to a soul coursing through life on earth. I do not think the technique is anything that anyone could or should “own”. I am happy to use it under any name for any client who asks for it. At the threat of being sued, I say, pull up your map on astro-seek.com. Look at where your planets fall and start drawing inferences from it. Yes, there is always greater nuance, detail, and meaning, such as the incorporation of Parans, the subtle variations of indications from which of the stakes the planet was falling on, the locational astrology of the place in terms of chart directionality, the timing of being in certain locations to maximize transits (or minimize them!) For those things, connect with a professional astrologer (my books are open!). However astrology is a universal art whose basics should be known and practiced by everyone, for it is the method of reading time within in space, just as astrocartography is the path of reading space in time.
If you have any questions, please, feel free to leave them in the comments, and thank you to all of my paying subscribers, supporters, and clients who keep me employed as a professional astrologer.