Cyclocartography Calculator

Cyclocartography is a locational astrology technique that maps where the moving planets are angular across the Earth for a given date. Developed by Jim Lewis as Cyclo*Carto*Graphy, it adds timing to astrocartography: your natal lines show where a place matters to you, and cyclocartography shows when that place becomes active.

Lewis introduced Astro*Carto*Graphy in the 1970s to map the sky of your birth onto the globe. Cyclo*Carto*Graphy came after, as the timing layer: instead of freezing the sky at your birth, it casts the sky for a later date and draws where every planet sits on an angle at that moment. Those transit lines drift as the planets move. Jupiter's line slides across a continent over a season. Pluto's line can sit near one city for years.

This calculator works in mundo, meaning each sample date gets a real chart of the sky and the lines mark where each planet is actually rising, setting, culminating, or anti-culminating. The same convention drives our astrocartography map, so the two tools agree with each other. Positions come from the same Rust computation engine that powers the rest of Augurine, using JPL-grade ephemeris data through ANISE.

Transit lines themselves are the same for everyone on a given date. What makes a reading yours is the layer underneath, your natal map. A transiting Jupiter line crossing a city means more when your natal Venus line already runs through the same region, and the calculator flags those double hits.

Astrocartography and cyclocartography use the same math pointed at different questions. Astrocartography casts the sky of your birth and freezes it: those lines never move, and they describe the standing relationship between you and a place. Cyclocartography casts the sky of some other date, so its lines drift with the planets and describe a season rather than a lifetime.

If you have not mapped your natal lines yet, start with the astrocartography calculator; this tool assumes you already have a place in mind. For the full technique history and line-reading fundamentals, the astrocartography guide covers the natal side in depth.

The timeline shows the slow planets, Jupiter through Pluto, because those are the lines worth planning around. A transit line counts as an activation when it passes within about 300 miles of your destination, and the calculator grades every window by closest approach: Strong within 150 miles, Moderate within 300, Faint out to 500. Distance softens influence gradually, so treat the bands as a dimmer rather than a wall.

Each window names the planet and the angle it crosses. The four angles read the same way they do on a natal map. An MC line concerns career, reputation, and being seen; an IC line concerns home, family, and roots; an ASC line colors your body, mood, and how you come across; a DSC line runs through the people you meet and what they want from you. The planet says what kind of season it is, the angle says which room of life it happens in.

Watch for double hits. When a transit window lands where one of your natal lines already runs, the months in that window tend to carry more weight, the way a chorus lands harder when two voices sing the same note. The calculator marks these, and they are the windows worth building plans around.

The fast planets, the Sun through Mars, sweep their lines across the whole map too quickly for a monthly timeline to catch honestly, so they appear in the Right Now panel instead: a snapshot of every line within range of your destination today.

Every planet drags its lines around the globe at its own pace, which is why cyclocartography treats a Moon line and a Pluto line as different species. The stay times below assume the Strong band, within about 150 miles of a city at mid-latitudes. Retrograde loops stretch everything: a planet that stations near your destination can triple its visit.

The practical split: Jupiter and Saturn windows are the ones you time trips and decisions around, since they arrive, stay a while, and leave within a planning horizon. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto lines behave more like eras; when one parks near a city you care about, it describes the tone of years there, and the question shifts from when to visit toward what living under that line would ask of you.

The classic use is trip timing. You already know a Venus or Jupiter place from your natal map; cyclocartography tells you which months add a second benefic voice, and which months stack a Saturn or Pluto line on top of your vacation. A week in Lisbon under a transiting Jupiter MC window reads differently from the same week under a transiting Saturn ASC window. Neither is forbidden; they are different trips, and it helps to pack for the right one.

For a move, run the timeline on your shortlist cities before you commit to dates. A relocation is a natal-line decision first, and the relocation chart calculator shows how your whole chart reorients at the new place. But arrival timing matters too: landing during a Saturn IC window points the first months toward foundations, leases, and slow building, while a Uranus window suggests the plan will get rewritten on the ground. Frame it as knowing the weather rather than obeying it.

Cyclocartography also pairs well with local space astrology, which draws compass bearings from wherever you stand, and with a plain transit chart for the personal layer: what the sky is doing to your chart regardless of geography. Location timing works best as one voice in that conversation, and it should never override the practical facts of a place.