This book is extracted from a seminar given on 28 September 1997 in London as part of the seminar programme of the "Centre for Psychological Astrology".

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Dramatic horoscope changes can occur when we relocate, but there are also subtle ones. For instance, if you move only a short distance and yet that move has altered your house system such that it shifts your Sun or your Moon into another house, that is important. Normally, you won't notice it the minute you arrive, because it takes some time and much energy to make a major move, so that you are unlikely suddenly to feel, "Oh right, my Sun has now just moved from the eighth house to the seventh house, therefore relationships are going to be really much better for me, and I'm not going to be dwelling always on the mysteries of life but on friendship, relationship and lighter hearted things." That would be mad.

However, you might find that if you moved there, lived there for a couple of years - a Mars return is about the time it takes to take root in a place - that kind of subtlety will manifest. You will still be the same person and the Sun will have its same aspect, let's say it squares Saturn, so you still are that same individual with a strong challenge to the ego. You still will be required to develop under stress and hard work, but you may find that in partnerships and relationships you are much less interior and more involved - that you are not as isolated (eighth house Sun) and more capable of working with another.

The further away from your natal place that you move, the more dramatic will be the way you play yourself out. I think that if we are going to consider relocation as a choice, rather than as happenstance, then it is good to be practical about the move, taking into consideration all the ramifications, and also doing the relocation charts. In other words, there are many reasons for moving. The basic two reasons are you must move, or you want to move. Most people move because they are aesthetically and/or pragmatically attracted to a place. Work is better, education, cultural attraction, aesthetics are more appealing, it is better for the family, and so on.

That is why I think Astro*Carto*Graphy comes in as an important tool, because if one is emigrating from one part of the world to another, then it is important to see the overall "tone" of the area. People who feel an urgent desire to move to other countries for reasons other than just the kind of buildings that are there and the art work, are usually being called by their soul - there is some soulful attachment to the place, some deep work that needs to be done in that place. A*C*G might give you the big picture, but the relocation chart will give you the local picture.

The global picture is Astro*Carto*Graphy, the local picture is the actual setting of the horoscope for the little tiny village/town or major city where you want to live, say within a 600 mile proximity of the big line that has attracted you. You can use both. Because Astro*Carto*Graphy doesn't show you the houses, but the power energy, you will want to look at the houses.[*]

For instance, if we are considering a choice of a couple of places because we love both, and a major A*C*G line runs midway between them, or is in the vicinity of both, then setting the relocation chart will fine tune the places. Assuming that both are equally placed in our hearts as places to go, and the choice can be made rationally through mapping, then you will find using these methods helpful to you and your clients.

Subtle changes:
same person, different perspective
Let's say you want to move to Sydney or Melbourne, Australia. They are far enough apart that it would make a subtle difference in your relocation chart, but initially, A*C*G might have drawn you to that part of the world and it would be better for you for various reasons, maybe a Venus/DSC line crossing a Moon/IC line is happening just off the coastline, mid-way between the two very different cities. So, the area is lovely to contemplate, but what are the details?

So if you set a relocation chart for Sydney and then one for Melbourne or Adelaide, then you would find subtle differences between the way your natal self, your "hardwired" self resonates with the area, and how the area receives your energy.

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Where are the planets going to be much happier? Where are they going to be more productive? Where would the individuation process be better facilitated especially if we are wanting to foster an underdeveloped or shadowed side of our self. If we are thinking of moving, then we would want to base it on aesthetic, practical and astrological pictures. So, for example, I think some planets are more comfortable in quiet places, rather than angular. I would consider very carefully locating to a place that has hard statements on angles, unless you plan to exemplify that configuration in a socially or politically useful way.

By that I mean, weighty generational configurations like a Saturn/Uranus conjunction, Uranus/Pluto conjunction, a Saturn/Pluto conjunction, a Saturn/Neptune conjunction or the T-cross that occurs with Jupiter, Uranus and Saturn in Libra that presented in the nineteen-fifties, and so on. These are important configurations denoting a personal connection to a collective intent or theme, and if they are too much for an individual to bear in an angular - conscious - fashion, then outstanding events will occur.

When you are considering relocation, the best place to start is at home, thinking of your own self. How would you rather live out your celestial array? Where would you rather see the most challenging aspects enacted within the context of your life? Would you rather have them engaged in the ninth house where it can become an argument with the gods or a philosophical pursuit, or would you rather have it enacted in your fifth house where it might be interacting with your children or a lover or taking speculative risks that could be very dangerous?

So, these are some of the most important considerations to keep in mind. There are individuals who have shifted a hard and ineradicable, inexorable natal aspect from, say, the fourth house, where they are dwelling constantly on matters of the family and transforming the family and working all these aspects out in the microcosm of the family collective, yet could use them in ways which would transform society. One of my clients who appears as a case in "The Astrology of Family Dynamics" , who had a "wasting disease" commonly called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, for almost seven years, the immunodeficiency illness, was born with the Uranus/Pluto conjunction in the Ascendant, opposite Saturn on the Descendant and forming a T-cross to her Mars/Venus conjunction in Sagittarius in the fourth house. So she was continuously processing her family dilemma through her psyche and her body until finally it became somatic - she fell ill and she has worked through all that.

The good news is that at the end, as I was writing the story up for the book, I had to write a last minute add-in that she had got married, has relocated to another part of the world and she has really changed that drama into another, more enjoyable drama. She now is in place whereupon she has a Uranus/Pluto/Midheaven; Saturn/IC with the Mars/Venus/Ascendant and it's a much more healthy challenge, living and working in an exciting place where she is offered diplomatic jobs, mediation work in the "war zone" and so on. She shifted her T-cross around to different angular prominence! So you can shift the focus of yourself, by moving yourself, but for Fiona, the family dynamic still exists, her work still exists, her T-cross is still there, but it is to a better cause, because she is using herself in another way.

Taken from
Erin Sullivan:
Where in the World? - Astro*Carto*Graphy and Relocation Charts.
CPA Press, London.

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