Cosmic Piñata #7: Astro*Carto*Graphy Stories

©8-21-2010 by Donna Cunningham, MSW

Having gone through a major and anything but smooth move this month, I’ve dedicated recent posts to sharing some of what I know about relocation astrology. I was certified by Jim Lewis as an Astro*Carto*Graphy practitioner and did written interpretations for his company.

Over the years, I ran into strange cases among clients. In my travels to give seminars around the world, I also experienced interesting effects of Astro*Carto*Graphy lines directly. Though I’m retired from client work, this is a good time to write about those experiences so others can learn from them.

Astro*Carto*Graphy Maps and the 4 Relocated Angles

 First, here’s a brief explanation of the Astro*Carto*Graphy lines for those who haven’t worked with them. They are lines on an Astro*Carto*Graphy map representing the four angles of the relocated chart, since these shift as you move from place to place.

Just like the natal chart, there is a relocated Ascendant (ASC), IC, Descendant (DSC) and Midheaven (MH), though they never replace the natal angles completely. The Midheaven lines around the world show places where a particular planet would operate strongly in career, the Descendant lines show influences on relationships, and so on.  As an example, here’s Barak Obama’s map:

The map shows places in the world where one of the natal planets moves onto a relocated angle. Thus, there are four places in the world where natal Pluto, for instance, is on one of the angles of a relocated chart. If you moved to one of them, your experience would be colored Plutonian purple, in whatever manner you’ve been accustomed to expressing that.

 (For a detailed explanation of the four angles, visit a library of more than 50 articles about Astro*Carto*Graphy and relocation at Continuum at the link below.) 

Odd Examples of Astro*Carto*Graphy Lines

Rectification via Astro*Carto*Graphy:

 A friend of mine is a genuine citizen of the world, traveling to and living in a large variety of exotic places in her adventure-packed lifetime.  I was never convinced of her supposed ascendant because she had so much pizzazz and was much sought after wherever she went.

When I questioned her further, it turned out that she’d been born in the early morning hours of the date when the time changed from daylight to standard time—back in the early days of DST.

It was entirely possible that the delivery room clock had not been changed in the middle of the night and thus that DST was registered on the birth certificate rther than standard time.  I immediately commenced to rectify her chart through transits and progressions on the dates of the many significant events in her life.

The evidence was pointing to the sign I guessed at, but what really convinced both of us was the difference between the two Ascendants on her Astro*Carto*Graphy map. The lines on the original map were far out in the ocean and other places she’d never been. The rectified map, however, precisely pinpointed places she’d lived or had adventures.

 The planets on the rectified angles made sense astrologically in terms of the events. For instance, one DSC line ran through a part of New Zealand where she’d twice been married.

She embraced the new Ascendant and felt ever so much more glamorous. Shortly afterward, a stunning and life-changing event occurred when transiting Uranus hit one of the angles of that chart. It confirmed the rectification, and so have other major events since then.

A Family Tragedy shows up on the map:  

 Years ago, a client was considering relocation as a way to mitigate some of the more difficult expressions of her close Moon-Pluto-Saturn conjunction. Naturally, I gave her the standard relocation caveat that wherever you go, you take yourself along. Analyzing the chart, we learned that part of what that heavy triple conjunction represented was her two parents, both of whom were concentration camp survivors.

Then we looked at her map, and particularly at Europe, where she yearned to live. Eerily, the Moon-Pluto-Saturn lines for the Midheaven ran through the place where the concentration camp was located.

A Secret Hidden In Plain Sight:

I’ve since learned that Midheaven and IC lines often represent ancestral lineage.  When I was 47—seven years after my mother’s death—I learned a secret she’d taken to the grave.  Her father was half Comanche. When she was young, in the rural Midwest in the 1920s, the fact that they had Native American blood would have been enough to send them to the reservation, so it was carefully hidden.

For myself, I was thrilled and excited to find the reason for many inexplicable things about myself that other people considered weird. Like the fact that I was always in love with some tree or other. Like the fact that I believed God was in everything. As I studied Native American spirituality after the revelation, it all made sense.

I hadn’t looked at my Astro*Carto*Graphy map in some time, but when I did so again, I was struck by a strange detail. The Comanche reservation is in Anadarco, Oklahoma, and the line for my Moon on the Midheaven runs exactly across that dot on the map. My Moon is in Aries, a warrior-like Moon that can only represent that unsuspected maternal heritage.

A Whole World of Books: 

Authors and business people may find positive Midheaven lines like the Sun, Jupiter, or Venus very fruitful for their entereprises.  As an author whose books have been translated into numerous foreign languages, I’ve discovered that the more popular translations have been in countries where my Midheaven lines are strong. 

My book, Healing Pluto Problems, is one with many foreign editions, but the most successful one was in Germany, where my Pluto Midheaven line runs.  There were years when I received more royalties from the German version than the English one. 

 My favorite location, however, was Brasil, the only country other than Portugal where Portuguese is the major language. Brasilian companies have published Portuguese translations of almost every book I’ve ever written, and as a result, I was invited for three tours to give seminars. I adored the warm, lively, receptive audiences.  I was treated like royalty, received standing ovations, and appeared on television and in the newspapers.

What line does a person have to travel for royal treatment like that?  My Venus-Uranus-Saturn conjunction is on the Midheaven in a north-south band of Brasil that runs through every major city.  

What about you, Readers?  Have you or anyone you know had any interesting experiences with your own Astro*Carto*Graphy lines?  Share them in the comment section so we can all learn more about this fascinating branch of astrology.  

 Previous articles about relocation:

•  Relocating under Fire? Help from Astrology and Essences
• Chart Patterns for Relocation—What’s Yours?
• Can Relocation Help the Outer Planet Person?

Visit Continuum’s library of 50 articles about Astro*Carto*Graphy and relocation here: http://continuumacg.net/articles.html. If you’re interested in having your map interpreted, that site also has a list of certified practitioners and places to order the computerized Astro*Carto*Graphy maps.

Coming on Sunday, the 29th, a free webinar on Astro*Carto*Graphy.

The last in the Kepler College free summer webinar series will be held Sunday, August 29, starting at 2:00 PM Pacific Time (5:00 p.m. Eastern time). Karen McCauley will be present an introduction to Astro*Cartography and using this method to understand how different locations might affect us or even become prominent influences in our lives. Register now at www.kepler.edu

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 If you’re already a subscriber and want a copy, forward the most recent email post to me at skywriter@q.com. To sign up for a subscription, go to the top right hand corner of the blog and click on “Subscribe.”  Then send me an email with your subscription confirmation or an email post with a request for the booklet in the subject line.