Astrocartography

Relocation chart

Also known as: relocated chart, relocation, chart for another city

A relocation chart is a birth chart calculated for the same moment of birth but for a different place on Earth: the planets keep their signs and degrees, while the angles and houses change with the new coordinates.

A birth chart is calculated for the moment and place of birth. A relocation chart asks: what would the same sky look like seen from another city? The moment does not change, so the Sun, Moon and planets stand in the same signs and at the same degrees, and the aspects between them are identical. What changes is the horizon and the local meridian: a new ascendant, a new Midheaven and a new division into houses. At the birthplace itself, the relocation chart is simply the birth chart.

A relocation chart and astrocartography are two views of the same thing. The map of lines shows where in the world a given planet stands exactly on an angle. A relocation chart shows the full picture for one specific place: which planets change house, which move close to an angle and how the emphasis in the chart shifts. If a city lies near a Venus line on the DSC, the relocation chart for that city will have Venus close to the Descendant. AstroSensus calls a planet angular in a place when it stands no more than 8 degrees from a relocated angle.

AstroSensus calculates the relocated houses with the same system your birth chart uses. In Western astrology that is Placidus, and Porphyry inside the polar circles, where Placidus stops working. In Vedic astrology it is sidereal whole-sign houses, counted from the new lagna. In the whole-sign system each sign is one house, so relocation shifts the houses in steps: when a different sign rises in the new place, the lagna changes and the whole arrangement of bhavas follows it. When the rising sign stays the same, the Jyotish houses do not change, even though the degree of the lagna is different.

How do you read a relocation chart? Start with the angles: which sign rises in the new place, and what stands near the ASC, DSC, MC and IC. Then the houses: which planets move into a different house, and which area of life they emphasise. Tradition reads the Sun moving from the sixth to the tenth house, for example, as a shift of emphasis from daily duties to professional role and visibility. Finally, notice what does not change: the planets' signs and aspects are still the same chart. Relocation does not create a new personality — it changes the stage on which the same personality plays.

Most astrologers read the two charts together: the birth chart as the foundation and the relocation chart as a local accent. That is why, in a place where you have lived for years, it is worth comparing the relocation chart with your own experience: do the angles and houses of the new city describe something you already know? Like the map of lines, a relocation chart needs an exact birth time and place — with an approximate time the angles would fall in different places.

In AstroSensus the relocation chart is part of the Premium plan. It opens from a city's panel on the astrocartography map: you choose a city and see the same birth chart calculated for it. The map with its lines is part of the Family and Premium plans; on Family, the relocation button appears next to a city with a Premium badge. A relocation chart is a tool for reflection, not a recommendation to move or a forecast of what will happen in a given place.