Relocating the Birth Chart

[Jim Eshelman]

When you change your location on Earth, the mundane (local) details of your chart (angles and mundane aspects) also change. Amending the horoscope to show this is called relocation.

Most types of astrological charts relocate. The key point at the moment is that your natal chart shifts with your location. Stated as a general principle:

The moment of your birth is stamped invariably in time. However, YOUR BIRTH MOMENT AND NATUS EXISTED EVERYWHERE IN SPACE. As you move from your birth location to other points in space, you experience that moment as if you were born at the new locations.

Relocation is a simple matter that most astrologers now take for granted. However, it may be the most esoteric, reality stretching detail in astrology because it relies on the fact that your natal chart came into existence at one moment in time and all points in space.

This requires a four-dimensional concept of astrology and how it operates, supporting my view that astrology’s basis – how it works – lies outside three-dimensional physics. This should never have been a surprise since time is basic to astrology’s fabric, not just a variable. Fortunately, as we live in an era in which the principles and thinking of quantum physics increasingly penetrate ordinary life, this stretch of our workaday worldview is unlikely to scare anyone away.

I want to give you the chance to appreciate the great implications of one of astrology’s simplest, most routine techniques. Remember what I have often given as astrology’s fundamental doctrine:

Every intersection of time and space (each moment at each place) has a unique character. Whatever arises out of a place-moment partakes of its nature.

If we define you as the character or condition of the universe at the moment you were born – identify you, effectively, with that moment – then you exist everywhere at once because the moment of your birth existed at once in all points of space.

Because relocation involves recalculating a horoscope for a new place, it would be easy to think of this as “getting a new birth chart.” But you do not get a new chart when you relocate. Instead, you just move around inside the same big moment into which you were born and look out at the world through a different window.

Your physical body’s location anchors the angles of your horoscope. Celestial factors (zodiacal positions and ecliptical aspects) remain unchanged everywhere on Earth, while mundane factors (such as angularity and mundane aspects) are anchored by your position in space.

[Jim Eshelman]

We call a chart recalculated for a new location a relocated chart, locality chart, local chart, or most formally a locus (in contrast to natus).

Calculation is simple: Recalculate the chart for the same moment as the nativity (same birth date and time) and for the new location.

One error you might make is misunderstanding what I mean by “the same moment.” For example, I was born in Rochester, Indiana at 4:13 AM Central Standard Time (CST). Relocating my chart to Los Angeles, “the same moment” was not 4:13 AM Los Angeles time. Los Angeles was on Pacific Standard Time. When I was born in Indiana at 4:13 AM CST, it was 2:13 AM PST in California.

Different astrology programs perform this task differently. Some programs take care of all the time conversions for you: Tell the program you want to relocate a chart to Los Angeles, and it will make all the adjustments. Others require that you make the time adjustments yourself: I could either calculate the chart anew for 2:13 AM PST, keep the original 4:13 and force it to CST, or work entirely in Universal Time (UT) or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as we used to do when hand-calculating charts – in this case, ensuring that both my natal and local charts are for 10:13 AM GMT (10:13 UT).

A simple test will confirm whether you got the relocation chart timed right: Moon’s longitude will be identical in both charts.

[Jim Eshelman]

A locality chart does not replace your birthplace birth chart. It adds to it, just as we add to who we are from birth by incorporating new experiences and expanding underdeveloped parts of ourselves.

We never lose the natal chart for two reasons.

First, the natal horoscope (for the time and place of birth) is imprinted on our psyches. Birthplace angles remain sensitive throughout our lives, responsive to current planets moving across them (transits, triggering events), or to interaction with other people’s planets (to describe our relationships with them, a technique called synastry).

Second, the longer we live near our birthplace, the more we adapt our character and responses to that context. If you were born with Mars on an angle and lived near the birthplace for 15 years, you have 15 years’ history of acting and reacting in martial ways. Even after you move, these habits persist, perhaps for your whole life or at least until time erodes and reshapes them.

When I moved from my birthplace (Rochester, Indiana) to my home for my entire adult life (Los Angeles), the planet longitudes (and, thus, the ecliptical aspects) remained identical. (They are celestial, not local.) However, the angles became quite different, bringing new planets to the angles. My closest ecliptical aspect is Venus square Pluto (0°13'): At birth, both Venus and Pluto were in the remote background. Once I moved to Los Angeles at age 20, Venus and Pluto came to the immediate foreground.

This is quite a change! It transformed my life. The most obvious changes involved the expression of my Venus, which, as an adolescent in Indiana, was not well-developed or strongly expressed. On moving to California, this changed dramatically. My life here has included long, loving relationships and eventually meeting and marrying the love of my life. Additionally, Pluto has been a constant strong presence (in too many important ways to list). Where I first landed in Southern California, in Irvine and nearby Placentia, my Pluto was 0°01' from Eastpoint, marking the spot where I cut off the past and the ties I had left behind and began living by my own rules and reconceiving my life from inside-out. A dozen years later, one of my most important, life-altering events occurred while driving through nearby Santa Ana, where my Pluto is only 0°02' from the same angle.

I have never lost my original angular Moon nature. It still strongly marks my personality.

Hundreds of relocation examples could be cited: Astrologers (especially Sidereal astrologers) have routinely tracked local chart variations for decades. The late Jim Lewis, who marketed the first commercial product helping people understand how their chart changes with geography, collected anecdotes of people’s experiences living in and visiting various places.

My wife, born into an airline family and with a personal will to wander, is widely travelled with many tales to tell. When she first wandered the often-confounding streets of Paris on her own, she felt at home, that they were entirely familiar (the sort of familiarity that stirs suspicions that past life memories are in play). While it takes nothing extraordinary to feel happy in Paris, the intimacy of her connection aligns with her natal Venus and Neptune mere minutes from her Paris angles.

On the other hand, she lived two summers in Homer, Alaska, nearly dying there from an abrupt kidney infection. For Homer, her Saturn is 0°40' from Eastpoint in close mundane opposition to Mars, and her 4° natal Mars-Uranus conjunction becomes a 0°00' orb mundane conjunction!

Using the best birth times available, a dozen U.S. presidents were born with Jupiter foreground, second only to Sun for most common angular planet. (Similarly, Moon-Jupiter aspects are their most common aspect.) Nine of these 12 foreground Jupiters moved closer to the angle in Washington, DC, while seven other presidents acquired an angular Jupiter when they moved to Washington. Jupiter is by far the most common planet on local Washington angles for U.S. presidents.

[Jim Eshelman]

When we move to a new location, does it take time to acclimate to the new angles? Or is the effect immediate?

In terms of producing objective events, effects are immediate. We know this because local angles have reflected people’s experiences simply driving through an area. Astrologer Jim Lewis reported a personal “flat tire zone” that he could not drive or even ride across without getting a flat. Pres. Harding, becoming sick while touring Alaska, died of a feverish illness soon after landing in San Francisco where his Mars was on Midheaven. Pres. Kennedy had Pluto on MC through the longitudes of Texas. His widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, had Jupiter angular in Greece, which permanently improved her fortunes. Billie Jean King won her biggest, best-known match ever in Houston where her Jupiter was 0°02' from an angle. Charles Manson moved his Mars-Neptune conjunction to the angles when he relocated from Cincinnati to Chatsworth, California. So immediate are these effects that we might consider relocation of one’s natal angles as the first layer of astrological prediction.

Other effects build over time, seeming to mark a distinct destiny for a place. Walt Disney, born in Chicago, wrote his name forever on Anaheim where his Mercury was exactly angular, just as Mercury was on MC of Rancho Mirage when Betty Ford was born. Harvey Milk left his home in New York, moving to San Francisco where he had Mars within a degree of an angle for a life of passionate activism and eventual death by murder. The Rev. Jim Jones relocated his church and followers to what became the eponymous Jones¬town, Guyana, where his Sun and Mars were each 1° from an angle in close mundane square. He and all who went with him died there.

Effects of a new angularity occur at once and then modify our behavior over time. We acquire relocated angles instantly, even if we occupy a location only momentarily (as when passing through); then, the longer we stay somewhere, the more subtle characteristics work themselves into our lives.

We feel a newly angular planet more strongly than we did before. It has more energy, the greater need and opportunity for manifestation that we know to expect from foreground planets. We make new choices, practice new behaviors, and develop new habits, effectively incorporating the newly angular planet into our permanent arsenal of skills.

If we later move from that geographic area, we lose the inner pressure and energy brought by its local angles but retain any behavior changes we have developed – at least, until time or later behavior changes erode or replace them.

[Jim Eshelman]

Much in a locality chart is identical to what is in the birthplace nativity. What should draw your attention are things that change from one location to another.

Angularity
Foremost, angularity will change. If the relocation is across a large distance, new planets will come to angles. Across shorter distances, the orbs of foreground planets (how close they are to the angles) will change, becoming narrower or wider.

You never lose the natal chart. You only add things to it by relocation.

If a relocation is from birthplace to somewhere else, the primary matter of attention is what new or closer angularities you gain at the new location.

Earliest impressions of a new location’s angularities usually come in the form of effects on us, as if the newly angular natal planet is somehow outside of us, acting on us like a transiting planet. In simple terms, natal Venus or Jupiter angular will bring love or good fortune our way, natal Mars or Saturn will bring harshness or hardship, natal Pluto will cut off the past or irrevocably reorient our lives, natal Sun will light us up, while natal Neptune will intoxicate or confuse us.

These, of course, are our own planets, our own psychological energies rooted within us in our own needs, motives, and behaviors. Yet, before we start making conscious choices and owning the energy, events feel like they arise from outside of us. Then, at some point, we start actively, consciously seeking to fulfill the intensified, newly angular planet’s needs.

“Go west, young man!”
Horace Greeley’s slogan for fueling America’s westward expansion – “Go west, young man! Go west!” – is a readymade aphorism of self-unfolding by astrological relocation. Nearly all Western civilization has been a westward movement, from Middle Eastern lands and the eastern Mediterranean west across Europe, leaping the Atlantic to the Americas, and westward across New World lands from coast to coast.

Relocation displays a certain astro-logic in this instinctive westward movement: As we move westward, relocated angles move earlier in the zodiac, meaning that planets seem to move counterclockwise through the houses. As we move eastward, they move in the opposite direction.

The longitude difference from Chicago to San Francisco or Los Angeles is about 30°. On average, this is the width of one house. This means in practice that people born in America’s Midwest (or even as far east as the East Coast, which is about 45° away) usually bring natal background planets to the foreground by moving to the West Coast.

Therefore, moving 30° to 45° west is one way to bring withheld, underdeveloped (background) parts of yourself to the foreground where they are front and center. From Gothic marches westward across Europe to America’s cry of “manifest destiny” and 20th century encouragement to “head out to California to find yourself,” billions of people over the centuries, unconscious of what they were doing, have streamed in the direction of unlocking the more locked-up parts of their own horoscopes, which, on average, means heading west.

• One noted Sidereal astrologer, born in Iowa with Scorpio luminaries and a sweet Venus-Jupiter square angular – but Mars square Uranus in the remote background – ended the strangling suffocation she had always felt by moving away, landing in Southern California with a Uranus-Pluto mundane square near angles. Within the gracious patina of her native Venus-Jupiter, she lived a more iconoclastic, creative, impactful life.
• Another Sidereal notable left his homophobic Ohio hometown for a West Coast destination that brought his background Moon-Mars square to the angles. He felt at home and at liberty to challenge life on his own terms and follow his desires.
• Dublin-born Cyril Fagan retired to Tucson where his Sun, nearly to the minute, was rising and Venus conjoined EP-a. While living there, he finally gained some measure of the recognition his life’s work deserved.
• Nebraska-born Donald Bradley came of age, awakened to astrology, and found his footing under the patronage of Llewellyn George while living in Long Beach, California with his Sun 1° from Nadir and Neptune setting. He later accomplished some of his most important intellectual work (including a monumental government-funded study of astrology and meteorology at New York University) while living in Manhattan with Mercury 1½° from Ascendant. He eventually settled peaceably in Tucson with Moon moderately foreground.
• Finishing our tour of travelling Sidereal pioneers, Brigadier Roy Firebrace, born in Nova Scotia, had Jupiter rising through Moscow where he served as head of the British Military Mission. In London, where he retired after the war, hurling himself into explorations of astrology and metaphysics, he had Uranus exactly angular. At his birthplace in Nova Scotia, Uranus was remotely background and Jupiter barely foreground. (In Roy’s case, his unfolding was in response to the inner prompt, “Go east!”)

Any conscious relocation decision must be worked out individually, of course. The math for bringing the desired planets foreground is unique to each chart. Not everyone will want to move, many being happy where they live.

Mundane Aspects
Before we had enough evidence to be confident that mundane aspects worked in natal charts, one strong indication of their probable efficacy kept presenting itself: Changes in mundane aspects often strongly showed the contrast between someone’s experience of different geographic spots.

That is, when mundoscopes of birthplace and current (relocated) locale show different mundane aspects – some lost from the birthplace, others gained at the new location – this change tends to correctly describe differences in how they experience themselves and their lives in the two spots. Being mundane aspects, usually these gained or abandoned aspects more obviously describe differences in manifest conditions or events in the two spots.

What remains unclear at the present stage of our research is whether the effects of natal (birthplace) mundane aspects ever go away with relocation. Evidence is mixed. On one hand, consistent with the principle that “you never lose the natal chart,” eminent people with natal mundane aspects often remain great examples of the aspect even after they move away from the birthplace.

For example, Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany with a 0°55’ Moon-Uranus mundane square and a moderate Moon-Pluto mundane opposition that his chart does not have when relocated to Pasadena or Princeton. Was he less brilliant or less quirky at Princeton than he was in Europe? No, of course not. On the other hand, his genius came from many parts of his chart, and he already had decades of experience stirring the neural pathways of his genius and habituating his quirky, outlier personality; and his life was far less disrupted and unstable after he came to America than before.

On the other hand, we have examples in which the driving intensity of a mundane aspect eventually abates after someone permanently moves to an area where the aspect no longer exists; or, if the aspect persists with a larger orb, it finds a new relative importance in the equilibrium of their psyches.

At present, the best course is to assume the aspects still operate at least as habituated behavior and perhaps as permanent psychological energies, though less likely to erupt as explicit events.

Potential Parans
Parans are a powerful variety of aspect formed when two planets are exactly angular at the same time and simultaneously form a mundane (prime vertical) aspect. When these planets are not actually on angles but are positioned so that they will later rotate to angles at the same time, they form a potential paran.

Besides newly or differently angular planets, the most pronounced effects of a relocation often are changes in our potential parans. Some of these aspects are lost when we leave one location. Others are acquired when we live in a new place. Potential parans involving planets on the horizon change when we shift geographic latitude regardless of any change in longitude. Those involving only the meridian stay with us everywhere on Earth.

In moving from my Midwest birthplace to Los Angeles I lost a Mars-Saturn paran square and gained Sun square Jupiter-Uranus. This is one of several factors reflecting that my fortunes changed dramatically for the better.

A colleague – a woman of notable focus, self-determination, and independence – moved a few hundred miles south where she acquired a Sun-Neptune paran. Within a few months, her life had become so uncomfortably domesticated and directionless that she promptly moved back. (She could use the more southern location for holiday escapes but not as a primary location for her life.)

Another woman has a triple Venus-Saturn-Neptune paran above a certain latitude and a Sun-Saturn paran below that latitude. At the northern location she could never find the true love she desired. Upon moving farther south, she found love, though other circumstances of her life felt blocked and burdensome. (She is still working out that dilemma.)

Bill Clinton moved from his native home in Arkansas to Washington, DC when he became president, putting Jupiter about 1° from EPa (consistent with his presiding over the strongest economic period in decades and remarkably high approval ratings during his second term). Yet he also acquired Mercury-Pluto and Venus-Uranus parans, so investigation, interrogation, and consequences of sexual liberty also marked his years in Washington.

[Jim Eshelman]

If you have a specific location in mind – where someone already has moved or visited (or plans to move or visit) – the relocation technique is simple: Recalculate the natal chart for the new location.

However, what of the opposite question? What if someone wants to identify the best location for a move, a visit, to choose between possible colleges where they will spend the next four years, or any other purpose?

Sidereal astrologers pioneered the methods for making these decisions that today are commonplace across all astrology. The basic technique is to prepare a map (whether of a limited area or the whole world) showing exactly where each planet is on each angle. Because these are shown as lines, the method gave rise to expressions like, “living under a Venus line.”

The generic name for this is an astro-map.

Bradley’s 1948 book Solar and Lunar Returns included a section devoted to relocating the natal chart. I learned to calculate astro-maps by hand from reading a Fagan “Solunars” installment in American Astrology from the 1960s. Firebrace sometimes published similar hand-drawn maps in Spica for his quarterly world forecasts beginning in 1962.

The first person to generate astro-maps by computer was Gary Duncan, using large IBM mainframes: He calculated them each year for new moon and full moon charts for the Llewellyn Moon Sign Book and provided similar maps to Donald Bradley for Sidereal lunar ingress charts (a technique important to forecasting world events) for “Garth Allen’s” annual political forecast articles.

But the person who truly put astro-mapping on the map was the late Jim Lewis, who first made astro-maps commercially available to anyone under the trademarked name Astro*Carto*Graphy. Jim’s beautiful, artistic plotted maps, intelligent support literature, and wonderful lectures and writings spread A*C*G quickly. Other innovators, such as Neil Michelsen through his Astro Computing Services, later offered similar computer generated astro-maps. Today, popular astrology software calculates these on demand.

Popular astrological software such as Solar Fire generates astro-maps. Each line shows where a planet crosses a major angle. (Another map variation shows planets on minor angles.) Because a nautical mile (approximating a statute mile) is about 0°01' of longitude, you can estimate a 3° orb either side of an angle as about 180 miles either side of the line.

[Jim Eshelman]

A task as important as planning a permanent relocation requires as much art as science. Many things must be considered, including practical details about the target area and how they meet one’s personal needs and tastes. Nonetheless, from the purely technical astrological side, the approach is simple.

If the planned relocation is for a specific purpose, consider selecting the planet corresponding to that purpose, such as Mercury for education or Mars for athletic training.

Otherwise, rely on the simplest principles: Select a place with unafflicted natal benefic planets on angles (especially Venus or Jupiter, but also Uranus or Sun) while avoiding malefics (Mars, Saturn, and Neptune). That is, pick a natal benefic planet free of strong aspect to malefics, then put it on an angle.

For example, in my own chart, my best concentration of planets is Jupiter conjunct Uranus (0°17'). However, it is difficult to put this on angles without having Mars-Neptune nearby. Also, my Jupiter-Uranus does not fall on angles anywhere in the United States, where I prefer to live. I am much better off selecting my natal Venus for relocation.

Interestingly, life led me straight to a spot where Venus is closely angular without my planning it consciously. At age 20, I think I may have noticed this but had not paid much attention to it: The issue was not on my mind at the time. However, it probably was on Gary Duncan’s mind when he invited me to move west and work with him.

Onan astro-map, a Venus line is easily visible through the U.S. West Coast near Los Angeles. Venus also swings up near Lisbon and exactly through Paris, noteworthy since my wife also has Venus on an angle near Paris.

The Mars lines swerving so close to Jupiter-Uranus (especially along the horizon) render the latter a bad choice. Saturn crossing Jupiter-Uranus kills the buzz for Porto Alegre, Brazil. Saturn also cuts right through Melbourne, which may explain why I simply could not get there while I was in Sydney. (I might joke that the universe arranged a national internal air strike just to keep me from getting to Melbourne. That, at least, is what happened the one time I was in the area.) If I were drawn to travel to Tanzania, I might think twice on seeing a precise Mars-Neptune intersection.

From a quick glance it does seem that the areas around Los Angeles and Lisbon or Paris are the best places for me on Earth.

Of course, my wife has Jupiter rising near Denver (so I made sure, when we had the chance, to take her on a two-week vacation driving around Colorado which, of course, she loved).

Hopefully, from these few examples you have access to the essential technique.