Can the stars tell us where we should live?

If you've spent any time in the overlapping Venn diagram of astrology fanatics, wellness gurus, and millennials who browse Zillow for fun, then you've probably encountered whispers — or rather, full-blown TikToks — about astrocartography.

This niche brand of astrology, first developed in the 1970s by an American astrologer named Jim Lewis, is part of today's $2.3 billion psychic-services industry.

All you need is the date, time, and place of your birth, and a professional reader will overlay your birth chart onto a world map, identifying the exact position of the planets the moment you entered the world.

Astrocartography uses those planetary lines to determine where certain cosmic energies are most active and supportive for different areas of your life.

Unlike standard horoscopes, astrocartography isn't asking "What kind of person are you?" but "Where will you be the best version of that person?" (No pressure.)

For example, if the Sun was directly above Ireland at the time of your birth, your Sun line passes through there, and being in that location could amplify your vitality and authentic sense of self.

Move to your Venus line to optimize loving relationships. Avoid your Mars line unless you're weirdly into conflict or career chaos. (I'm oversimplifying, but like I said, I'm tired.)

As someone who's spent the last five years debating whether to plant permanent roots in tri-state suburbia or move to my husband's native England, it was only a matter of time before I booked a reading.

Chasing astral lines

When I reached out to astrocartographer Helena Woods, she had just arrived in Australia for a short trip chasing her Sun MC line (Sun = core identity, MC or Midheaven placement = public image and career, so it was indeed fitting.)

Woods said she's done thousands of readings since 2021, and most of her clients are women in their 30s to 50s — many of them moms — navigating life transitions. She typically charges between $350 and $550 for a private session.

She got into astrology as a teen, spending hours at her local bookshop reading everything she could on the subject, and went down a similar rabbit hole after discovering astrocartography in her 20s.

"I was eating, breathing, sleeping astrocartography and just wanted to tell everyone I could," she said. "I'd do free readings."

By 2018, she'd gone all in on her astrocartography business and now does it full-time, doing private readings, posting videos, and selling masterclasses to train others in the practice.

"Relocation is the future," she told me. "People are realizing place plays a huge role in feeling aligned and wondering, 'Do my values align with where I live?'"

Woods practices a form of traditional Hellenistic astrology that uses predictive timing. This technique was originally used in the 1st century BC to predict everything from water cycles for farming to the downfall of kings or civilizations.

"I love being able to tell people not just where to go, but when to go," Woods told me. (During my personal reading on April 30, Woods advised me to be in the south of France or Corsica from August 10 to 12. If anyone reading or Business Insider wants to underwrite this trip for journalistic purposes, my inbox is open!)

Woods also believes that places hold stories — and that certain parts of the world unlock themes in our lives baked into our natal chart.

"The birth chart is a snapshot of when you took your first breath," she said. "But when you move, you activate different areas. That's where free will meets fate."

Real people, real moves

Two years ago, 29-year-old Angelique Camilla was ready for a change. She'd dropped out of teacher's college in Canada, her car kept breaking down, and her cat had recently died.

"Everything was falling apart," she said. "So I thought, why not experiment with something and look into astrocartography?"

Her "best" line was through Caracas, Venezuela, but because of the political instability, she couldn't move there. All of her South American lines looked good, so she followed her chart to Medellín, Colombia.

"The moment I arrived, it felt right," she said. "Of course, I looked up the country, the healthcare — it has a big expat community. I arrived, not knowing Spanish, but open-minded. And I was scared, but it just felt so right to be there, and I started meeting amazing people."

Camilla stayed eight months, fell in love (with someone born on that sweet, sweet line of Caracas, Venezuela), and launched a coaching business. She emphasizes that even if astrocartography opens the door, "you still have to trust yourself enough to walk through it."

Maybe being told that moving to a specific place could bring you happiness caused Camilla to focus more on the good and work harder to find joy. It's possible her astrocartography reading created a confirmation bias.

Psychotherapist Dr. Jan Seward told BI that confirmation bias "would come into play when a person is making a relocation that is not of their choosing, and the reading has given them the bias of what to expect."

Even if that is the case, though, she said it may not be such a bad thing.

Dr. Seward started incorporating astrology and astrocartography into her traditional therapy practice about 20 years ago. For some skeptics, seeing psychic services intersect with mainstream psychology makes the idea feel more approachable.

"A patient might be stuck, and astrology would just open up the therapy," she said.

Seward sees a natural crossover between the two practices: "When a psychologist gives you a series of personality tests, our job is to look at all that data and make a narrative that makes sense and that you should feel is descriptive of what your life is like, what it feels like to be you. And astrologers do the same thing. We just look at different data."

Some psychologists might use astrocartography as a tool, but it's no prescription.

Dom and Mishell, the duo behind Cosmic Vibrations with almost 200,000 TikTok followers, work with everyone from Gen Z adventurers to retirees trying to outrun American politics.

Dom, who is self-taught, emphasized that astrocartography shouldn't exist in a vacuum — people should "do a little bit of legwork" to see if a place actually suits them.

"I'm a very big advocate of statistical demographic research, too. So basically, you have your energetic side of this coin, but do you know about the crime rate, the healthcare, and all those other little factors that can really make or break a location?"

Sometimes, such moves require trial and error.

Simone Alyssa, a 36-year-old former startup executive who's now a full-time content creator, is a self-described "serial mover." She first discovered astrocartography seven years ago and has since lived in multiple US cities — and tracked her experiences by planetary line.

"My Jupiter line runs through Nashville, and it's supposed to be your most social place. It was too social for me — every day, I was meeting someone new. I was getting invited to a lot of events. I was on TV at one point," she said. "I was supposed to be there for a year, and I only lasted a summer."

Los Angeles, where she's lived three times, lies on one of her most powerful lines. "Every time I move there, I do feel that powerful kind of energy … I end up starting a new venture."

As Dom seems to suggest, Alyssa uses astrocartography with a grain of salt. "Obviously, at the end of the day, if my line is somewhere in rural Wyoming, I'm probably not going to move there," she said.

And if you're not ready to relocate to Wyoming? Astrocartography says you can consume a place's energy instead. Listen to its music, eat its food, and watch its TV shows.

My best lines run through the UK, so it makes cosmic sense that I spent last weekend semi-ignoring my children to eat Cadbury and binge "Fleabag" season two, again.

My journey from skeptic to skeptically open

I approached my astrocartography reading with the classic elder millennial Virgo woman's cocktail of curiosity and irony. I love data and control. I also love feeling cosmically special.

In January 2020, my husband and I left NYC "just to try" suburban life for a year. But then, of course, March 2020 happened. Five years and a pandemic later, we're still renting and debating whether to live in the US or the UK.

In the end, Woods, Dom, and Seward all did readings for me. And all three said the same thing: England looks really, really good for me. My Sun and Jupiter lines blaze through the UK, signaling self-actualization, confidence, and relationship success.

The truth is, I've always felt good in the UK. I did a year of undergrad at Oxford and got my master's degree in London. Sure, it probably helped that I was in my early 20s, and my only life responsibilities were reading lists and pub crawls, but I was happier there than during college in the US.

All of Europe looks pretty good for me, too. I have a Jupiter midheaven with a soulmate line around Belgium (that explains my short relationship with a Belgian violinist in 2009).

According to Dom, I could "live in England and then pop around and travel all over Europe and just be peachy keen."

The East Coast, and the suburbs of NYC where I live now, also generally looked pretty good for my family and creative lines. (If I ever feel like heading up to the Dakotas, or down to Austin or Central Mexico, I should also be in good hands.)

Seward and Dom suggested I consult charts for my whole family, so I did. I learned:

• My husband's chart suggests he'll feel professionally drained and isolated on the East Coast in the US, whereas his UK lines are "supportive and grounding."
• My son is easygoing — he could thrive anywhere, but England gives him a subtle boost.
• My daughter has a decent "learning" line here in New York, but would also benefit more overall from a move across the pond.

I don't know yet if we'll move overseas, but perhaps more than ever before, I'm seriously considering it.

I might be misreading hindsight and insight, or just looking for some non-falsifiable justifications for wanting change. But what I do know is that astrocartography is having a moment, and I don't think it's going to pass anytime soon.

Perhaps astrocartography is resonating with people for the same reasons astrology has remained popular through centuries of science: Human brains are wired for patterns and meaning. We crave frameworks to understand ourselves and our decisions, especially in times of transition.

Alyssa put it simply: "We're in late-stage capitalism, late-stage dating apps, we're about to go into a recession. People are just struggling. If you're not hurting anybody, and you take it with a grain of salt, I think it can just be fun and a little grounding if you need that direction in your life."

Following the stars won't magically solve your problems, but they might offer just enough of a nudge — or a narrative — to help make a hard decision feel more aligned, and to help you trust your own intuition a bit more.

If nothing else, it's a fun way to feel seen by the universe. And sometimes, that's all we really want.