Excerpt from:
"Location And Your Life"
   Going Beyond Linemaps
    by Julian Lee                                                        PRESS HERE FOR PERSONAL  LOCATIONAL ADVICE
       LOCATIONAL ANALYST

"Linemaps like ''astrocartography" and "astrolocality" derive from
something more ancient and whole called the Relocated Natal chart.

The Relocated Natal chart is ancient.
Linemaps, on the other hand, are a recent creation of computer technology.

The Relocated Natal is something complex, and operates as a whole system.

Linemaps, on the other hand, radically simplify the Relocated Natal.
Out of one hundred+ technical factors, linemaps focus on just a few, creating a pretty-looking product which is not overwhelming to the average consumer.

The Relocated Natal is the actual source document from which linemap "lines" are created, but....

To understand this, imagine you have a big
painting of your grandfather up on the wall.
That's looking at your actual Relocated Natal chart.
Now imagine another guy witha picture showing
only his grandfather's nose and thumb.
That's the unfortunate astrologerwho works from a linemap.

Now, what is a Relocated Natal chart?
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To get a RelNat, an astrologer draws a birth chart for you
as if you had been born somewhere else.

I'll repeat that for you, because it's very basic: To get a RelNat, an astrologer draws a birth chart for you as if you had been born somewhere else.

Maybe you were really born in New York, but we draw the chart as if you had been born in, say, Ashland, Oregon. We use the same universal time, but a different lattitude/longitude. The result is a chart looking like a Natal Chart, but your planets are in different "houses." The change of houses is especially pronounced with eastern or western movement.

Your Houses
Houses are sectors in the Natal Chart, or RelNat, that condition specific realms of life. The Second House is about your money and substance, the Fifth is children and creativity, etc. Houses stand for the most nitty-gritty realms of living. The ancient theory is that planets in a house bring emphasis to the affairs of that house; a story is created in that house. Next, the nature of those planets will give a particular coloration to that story.

So if we put a planet into the house of marriage and partnership, we get events; some kind of story, in the partnership department. If the planet is Saturn, the story of partnership will have Saturn-like ingredients. If it's Venus, there will be Venusian elements in the story. We could also say that the partner himself will have either Saturn qualities or Venusian qualities.

The twelve houses have a strong correlation to the twelve signs (First/Aries, Second/Taurus). If you think of what the signs are associated with, you can learn much about the houses. For example, the Third is the Gemini house. So the planetary setup in Third tells what happens in the realm of communication and learning. On a practical level, your third house setup colors your ability to write, speak and learn. It also tells about your experiences with fax machines, telephones, computers, etc.

In the natal chart, houses are a function of the location of birth; they are a statement of which piece of sky-space was on the earth horizon, in that place, at the birth moment. In a RelNat, we get a different piece of sky on the ascendant, and thus different houses. Go run a bunch of RelNats for yourself for different locations. As you check out various RelNats, the planets are seen to move in and out of the various houses. Whereas your Natal may have had nothing in second, now in your Hawaii RelNat, you have a planet in second, or whatever.

Elizabeth Taylor's
Not-So-Empty Seventh House
Elizabeth Taylor was born in England and her London natal chart shows no planets in the house of relationship (the 7th). When a woman has many husbands and boyfriends, it is reasonable to expect planets in her house of relationship. In other words, if there is an emphasis in an area of life, there should be an emphasis in that house. But here is Taylor's London chart with an empty seventh. Now, astrologers will go thru all sorts of contortions trying to account for such house anomalies, resorting to arcana.
.

If you examine Taylor's RelNat for the Los Angeles area, she pulls Sun and Mercury to her seventh there. That's a picture of the leonine and intellectual Richard Burton, who she hooked up with in the west coast. In New York, where she also lives, she has strong planets in that ol' Hitchin' House, including Venus (a good looking fella comes with it). Uranus is also in her New York seventh. (Brings sudden and unstable relationships, often with an age difference or with someone eccentric. Malcom Forbes? Michael Jackson? Yup.)  So Elizabeth Taylor's seventh house was never really empty, after all.

John Lennon's marriage sector in England carried the mild, benign planet of Mercury along with Sun. And John did have a wife in England. But take him to New York, and we see Pluto fill his seventh. This setup, which he had in New York, produces the Dragon Lady (a darker mate who controls you). In general, Pluto-7th pulls heavies into your life. CIA, FBI, and obsessive types included.

About Those Linemaps
By "linemap" we mean the little map with lines across them purporting to tell you about locational astrology conditions. Now what, exactly, is a linemap by comparison to the RelNat? The answer is that linemaps are partial assays, or cuts from the RelNat, spread world-wide.

Say I want to show you where all zoos are in America. I make a bunch of dots on a map, indicating their presence in various places. Then I could connect the dots together and call it a "zoo line."

That is esentially what is happening with astrocartography-type maps.

Now let's look at the "zoo line" I just made for you. I point to a town on the "zoo line" and tell you: "Here you'll find exotic animals."
You say, "Duh."
But I'd be telling the truth!
It's just that you know:
There has to be much more going on there than a zoo.

Astrological linemaps are like that. They choose a few astrological factors out of 100+, make dots where those factors exist, connect the dots together to make a line, then give the "line" a name.

It's like me giving you a box containing a kitten, a snake, and a policeman. Then I tell you: A kitten's in here.
.

Do you have a linemap? Like astrocartography or astrolocality? If you do, try a little experiment.
Get your linemap and find the SU-MH line. Now, go get a relocated natal (Relnat) for a location where the Sun-MH line is drawn. In other words, choose a town where that "su-mh" lies and run out the RelNat for that town. You should be able to get a RelNat for a couple of bucks, or run one on a computer. Many astrology programs will run Relocated Natal Charts. Now look at it.

You'll see that in the new wheel for that location, the Sun is sitting there at the top of the chart. I mean, it's like, sitting there. Plop on top of the wheel. It's a visual. That little round thing with the dot in the middle -- that's the sun. The top of the wheel -- that's the midheaven.

Now, a lightbulb might go off in your head. You'll slap your head and say, "Aha! That's why they drew that line across here and called it "su-mh." To indicate that this particular technical factor takes place in my Relocated Natal in this particular location!"
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Maybe Pluto was once in 7th, now its in 5th. (Heavy changes with your kids if you have any...)
Again, no informative line was drawn.

Maybe your natal midheaven used to be Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter. That was very protective. Now in this new chart it'll be Capricorn ruled by Saturn from the sixth. That's usually a life's role involving tedium and virgo-esque, functionary work. Is that what you want?
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Any factor indicated on a linemap will always be visually evident in the RelNat for that area, but the RelNat contains over 200 technical facts. Of these 200+ technical facts, usually about a dozen of those are major influences. Yet a linemap will generally show you two or three factors for a given area, at most.

Once I mentioned these things a fellow who sells linemaps. He assured me that linemaps show the only RelNatfactors that are "major aspects." All other facets of the Relocated Natal were "minor," he assured me, and not worthy of the wonderful depiction as a "line." That's hogwash.
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Seeing all of this, you might wonder how in the world the whole linemap thing got started.

In the early seventies astrologer Jim Lewis was experimenting with relocated natal charts. (RelNats) He was seeing some interesting phenomena with them. He noticed that if he lived or traveled to a RelNat that had a planet conjunct an angular house cusp, (whereas that conjunction wasn't in his Natal Chart), that location produced noticeable phenomena associated with that natal conjunction.
(The first, fourth, seventh and tenth  houses are called "angular" by astrologers; the other houses have other names. Lewis was interested in watching these particular houses, and then only the cusps of these houses.)

So he was watching these RelNats. Someone born with Venus in Seventh natally will attract good looking friends and relationship figures. This is the observation of the past. But Lewis noticed that if one travels or relocates to a place where Venus went to that RelNat seventh, that pleasant phenomena occurs in that place. As if, when living there, you start getting the chart you would have had, if you had been born there. (Again, he watched only the cusps of four of twelve houses.)

The CUSP (starting point) of a house is traditionally considered a strong position for a planet to occupy. Thus it was that such phenomena was easy to note when traveling or relocating to such zones. .

So Lewis could see the phenomena of cusp conjunctions immediately and with certainty.

What Lewis had stumbled upon without realizing it
was this revolutionary fact:
The Relocated Natal Chart actually works.

Deepak Chopra was born in India. He became a world-famous writer, lecturer, and philosophical influence. He also became wealthy. But here's a guy born with:
No planets in his house of fame and career.
No planets in his house of writing and communicating.
No planets in his house of money.

Modern astrologers, used to dealing with relocated folks, are accustomed to such silliness.
To solve this problem, simply check out Chopra's RelNat in southern California, where he went before hitting the big time.

By moving to Southern California, Chopra threw:
Sun/Jupiter and Neptune into his money house; (any one of these planets in Second can be a powerful wealth producer)
Mars/Mercury/Venus into his writing and speaking house; and
the powerful Uranus -- planet of the esoteric philosopher -- into his house of career.
These factors obviously, and in a straightforward way, explain Chopra's success.
All of the sudden, the house system "works."

What's really fascinating is this:
If you look at Chopra's Astrocartography map, not a single one of these factors is shown on a linemap for Chopra in southern California. And yet they are all there. To see them, you just look at the RelNat.

It's scary to think so, but linemaps seem to be "dumbing down" the astrologers.
 

Lines On a Linemap Are Arbitrarily Chosen Indicators
Presenting Less Than 5% Of RelNat Factors
Jim Lewis was interested in studying and validating the affects of relocated angular house conjunctions only. He wasn't interested in the other houses, rulerships, or even other parts of angular houses. His decision to show only these on his astrocartography maps was an arbitrary research decision; and definitely not a holistic approach to location, or the Relocated Natal chart. Other linemaps (Astrolocality, etc.) present more line-markers, showing more technical RelNat factors. For example, ACG's Astrolocality map shows some squares, trines and sextiles -- again in the form of lines. But even these show less than 10% of RelNat factors for an area.

Linemaps are Pretty.
But can 5 percent of a chart
be good astrology?

One more analogy: You are looking to buy a house and are considering two possible properties. Let's say that each home has about 100 features which could be enumerated on a list. Maybe a dozen of the features are major. If you went into a real estate office and they handed you a paper listing only three of those hundred+ features, would you feel you were getting much information?

It's the same with linemaps.
What is the new sign on the midheaven going to be?
This is critical information about your life's work in that location.
How is the new midheaven Ruler being transited in future?
A linemap won't show you.
What is happening with the money houses in your RelNat? Why not try a Jupiter-in-Second? They're great for bringing the money in. (Makes sense doesn't it? The big fatso Benefic in your house of money?)  Some folks who have enjoyed Jupiter-2 in their locational charts, aside from Chopra, include Michael Jackson, J.Paul Getty, and John Jacob Astor.

And they don't think Jupiter-in-Money house is a significant RelNat aspect?

Moving based on a linemap is actually like going into a battle with a hundred soldiers, but having only a few of them visible to you. Any astrologer who would make a locational recommendation based on a linemap, instead of the relocated natal, is missing a few cards in his deck.
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I have seen a mother move to where Saturn moved into her new Fifth House of children.
She loved her children; she didn't want any bad news concerning her children. But she went after a "Sun-MH" line on a linemap and ignored the Fifth House. Saturn-in-Fifth is definitely, a major aspect if you have kids. It produces dramatic problems and suffering of one's children, and that's what she ended up with. It's also a biggie if you are into creative expression, art, or performing.
 

So if you are serious about locational astrology,
you start with the source document:
the Relocated Natal Chart, for the area
you are interested in. This chart tells a
much bigger story than a linemap can.

The Natal chart is a whole;
it is best studied as a whole.
The Relocated Natal is a whole.
It is best studied as a whole.

But I'm only just beginning to tell you the secrets of location.
Now, let me tell you some really amazing things that you can do for yourself with the laws of location....."