Can Relocation Help the Outer Planet Person?

©8-3-2010 by Donna Cunningham, MSW

 Since I’m in the middle of an apartment move myself this week, I thought this would be a good time to give you more information about the astrology of relocation.

Outer Planet People (OPPS) are those with more than one of the outer planets emphasized in their birth charts, especially those with the outer planets on one or more chart angles.  If you have an outer planet on the angles natally, locations far east or west of your birthplace can change your life and career in very important ways.

With Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto on the Midheaven natally, for instance your relationships with parents and other authority figures have doubtlessly presented an ongoing challenge in terms of having the freedom to pursue a fulfilling life work.

I hear from many OPPs who have struggled a lifetime with the complications an outer planet on an angle can entail. Having an outer planet on the Ascendant can color their social connections with everyone they meet.  Since mainstream individuals often have little clue about what to do with their own outer planets, they tend to be very reactive and rejecting when encountering a person who wears one of these planets as an outer garment.

Consistently being treated this way can be alienating in the extreme. Moving half a continent away can mean getting out from under familial parental pressures and the projections of everyone around you so that you can start over fresh. Leaving home won’t change all your problems so you can’t avoid the work you need to do on your use of the outer planets, or the same patterns will catch up with you.

Suppose you don’t have an outer planet on an angle natally, but the outer planets are strong in your chart in other ways.  If the outer planets represent our genius—those ways we help ourselves and the collective move beyond everyday reality—then could it not be argued that the OPP needs to move to where those planets are on the line? Should you not, in fact, put that planet on the relocated Midheaven if you want your contribution to be recognized by the world?

Still, you have to ask yourself if you are not biting off far more than you can chew, maybe even asking for a broken tooth or two. If Pluto, for instance, is strong in your birth chart, it will always be a strong part of you, but do you want to make it even more dominant by living in a place where you can NEVER get away from its pressures?

Since Plutonian types are prone to becoming the targets of other people’s projections, would you want to live in a spot where others are continually projecting their disowned Pluto qualities onto you? Is that even safe?

Before choosing to put an outer planet on the relocated angles, assess how purely and how consistently constructively you are using the energies of the outer planet in question. Be honest with yourself, for when you intensify the energies by moving to line on the map where that planet is angular, keeping it all in balance may become far more difficult.  It becomes harder not to crash and burn, dramatically.

You will doubtlessly also find yourself surrounded by others of the same type—a mixed blessing, since it can be wonderful to find like-minded souls. However, you’d also have to monitor your associates’ expressions of those energies carefully, as they can pull you toward the negative expressions.  As long as you are going to the considerable effort and expense of moving, you might instead wish to emphasize a more solidly grounded part of your chart.

The Outer Planet Person—City Mouse or Country Mouse?

Certainly there are individual differences, but it is my observation that the various outer planet types thrive in certain types of locales and are miserable in others, depending on the nature of the highlighted planet. Except for Neptunians, who are extremely sensitive to their environment, OPPs often thrive in larger cities, where they less apt to fall under the scrutiny of small-minded others and more likely to meet like-minded folks.

Uranians love the glitter and excitement of big city life, where they can stay abreast of all the newest trends, like seeing the newest film releases immediately. They love the intellectual stimulation and the concentration of bright, innovative, and often quirky thinkers.

They finally have a chance to have a group around them that thinks the same way they do.  Here, they find true peers who validate their counter-culture ways, so that they can be who they are without shame or social pressure to conform. (They may handle small town life better now with internet access to the myriad of groups and email lists that flourish on the net.) The less evolved Uranian loves excitement for its own sake.

Plutonians, too, may be happier in large cities, where they can have the privacy and anonymity they crave. They are often singled out or ostracized in small towns for their differences and even for their power, since nothing remains a secret in such places. All is judged and remembered. The less evolved Plutonian likes cities for the sleaze, especially the license to engage in sexuality compulsively and anonymously, without continually tripping over their discarded conquests on the town square.

Neptunians may not do so well in large cities, especially those who have become psychically and environmentally sensitive (as often happens under Neptune transits to the 6^th, 1^st, or 12^th houses). Psychic sponges, they can become hyper-reactive to noise, neighbors, crowds, environmental toxins, and other disturbances in the force.

As they become increasingly sensitive, they may not be able to handle cities any more and may need to go to a remote place where meditation and other spiritual practices are made easier. They thrive on quiet spaces to immerse themselves in creative pursuits, and they often thrive on being near water.

 Now that You’ve Moved…

 Remember that relocation is not a cure-all for OPPs’ long-standing woes. Difficult aspects and placements in the birth chart represent ways that we create our own difficulties, so analyzing the behaviors represented by those astrological factors is essential to a successful relocation. What you need to consider is that your self-defeating attitudes and behaviors go right along with you when you move, so if the problems you are having in the old location are mostly of your own making, they will be with you in the new one as well.

You may get a temporary break from them, given new people and unfamiliar circumstances where you are on your best behavior—a kind of honeymoon period. However, unless you have well and truly learned whatever lesson is involved and healed whatever wounds or patterns you kept tripping on in the old place, the old patterns will eventually creep back in the new one.

Thus, if you entertain the thought of a move, you also need to examine your contributions to recurrent problems honestly. Take responsibility for shaping a new reality for yourself in the new location through new attitudes, behaviors, and relationship strategies.

Note: This is an excerpt from a chapter on locational astrology in my ebook, Astrological Analysis:  Selected Topics in Chart Interpretation, available at Moon Maven Publications.

Readers, have you ever moved or traveled to a place where one of the outer planets was on the angle?  Were you born in a place like that?  Tell us what it was like in the comment section.

Relocation and Astro*Carto*Graphy Articles:

• Cosmic Piñata #7: Astro*Carto*Graphy Angles
• Chart Patterns for Relocation—What’s Yours?
• Relocating under Fire? Help from Astrology and Essences

A great resource: Continuum, the organization devoted to preserving Jim Lewis’ work on Astro*Carto*Graphy and furthering our knowledge of locational astrology maintains a library of over 50 articles on this topic here: http://continuumacg.net/articles.html. This organization also maintains a list of certified Astro*Carto*Graphy practitioners.

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