Relocation chart or astrocartography: which one answers your question

The difference in one line each

Astrocartography draws every angular position across the whole world at once and asks: where does anything stand out? It is a search across places.

A relocation chart takes one place, recalculates your chart as though you had been born there, and asks: what does the whole chart look like from here? It is a full reading of a single place.

What changes and what does not

This is the part that trips people up. Relocating a chart does not move any planet into a different sign. Your Sun stays where it is, your Moon stays where it is, and every aspect between planets is exactly as it was. Those are properties of the moment, not of the place.

What changes is the angles, and therefore the houses. A relocated chart puts the same planets into different houses, which is why a place can emphasise a part of your chart that was quiet at home without changing anything about who you are.

An astrocartography map is a compressed view of exactly this: a line marks a longitude where a particular planet lands on a particular angle in the relocated chart.

Which to use, and when

Use the map when the question is open. It covers the whole world in one picture and is the only sensible way to notice that something interesting sits somewhere you had not considered.

Use a relocation chart when you have a shortlist. A map tells you that your Jupiter MC line runs near a city; a relocated chart tells you what happens to the other nine planets there, which is the half a line cannot show you and the half that usually decides whether a place is actually a good idea.

The honest summary is that a line is a headline and a relocation chart is the article. Most disappointment with astrocartography comes from reading only the headline.

What neither can tell you

Neither technique knows anything about visas, cost of living, climate, language, the job market or whether you will be lonely. Those are the variables that actually determine how a move goes, and no chart contains them.

Both also depend completely on an accurate birth time, because both are built on the angles. If your time is uncertain, a relocation chart is confidently wrong in the same way a map is.

Frequently asked questions

Does relocating a chart change my Sun sign?

No. Relocation changes the houses and the angles, never the signs. Your planets were where they were at the moment you were born, and moving the calculation to a different place cannot alter that.

Which is more accurate?

They are the same underlying calculation shown two ways, so neither is more accurate. The map covers everywhere at low detail, the relocation chart covers one place at full detail.

Do I need to have lived somewhere for a relocation chart to apply?

The usual convention is that a relocated chart describes the experience of being in that place, and applies while you are there rather than requiring permanent residence. That is convention rather than a tested rule.