Master’s Musings, January 2023

The basic idea is very simple. Maybe when you were born, Mars was rising. That means Mars was more or less in the East. Let’s state that idea precisely – Mars bore 97 degrees East, True. That was its azimuth at the instant of your birth – which really just means its “direction.” The word “True” means we’re relating Mars to the actual north pole – true north – not to the magnetic compass “north” which is a little different.

Of course a planet may not actually be on the horizon at your birth. If it’s high in the sky, then we drop it straight down to the horizon, as if it were actually there – and that’s its azimuth. Same thing if the planet is below the horizon – we just bring it straight up. So everything is projected onto the local horizon – hence the term, “Local Space.”

In essence you are standing there at your birth place at your birth moment looking out toward a big, clear, wrap-around 360 degree true horizon. All the planets are brought down or up to that horizon and you see in what direction they lie. Maybe Mars was to the east, Saturn to the northwest, whatever. Then the idea is that whenever you move eastward in your life, you are inviting Mars energy. Whenever you move northwest, you are inviting Saturn energy.

It’s a bit like the Celtic and Native American notions of the “Four Directions” except it’s much more personal and individual – my Mars direction might be your Neptune direction.

If you take a map and plot those directional lines connecting you outward to the planets on the far horizon, what would you see? Lines radiating out in every direction from your birthplace.

That, by the way, is how you know you are looking at Local Space lines rather than Astrocartography lines – the LS lines radiate out from your birthplace, while the Astrocartography lines don’t. They’re all over the map.

One more point: if you shoot a magic arrow to the west and it keeps traveling westward around the earth, eventually it will hit the back of your head – an unpleasant metaphor, but a useful idea for our purposes. All Local Space lines do exactly that – that’s why you’ll see that Mars line heading East, but you’ll also see another Mars line heading west – it’s really the same line, coming back around.

Here’s how it all works in practice:

When for example a client is retiring and wide-open about where he or she will move, I’ll set up both Astrocartographic and Local Space lines, all on a single map. In other words, I don’t really make much distinction between them – they’re all just lines of energy.

We’re evolutionary astrologers, and so in becoming skilled with these techniques, it is essential to avoid simplistic notions such as “moving to a Jupiter line is good and moving to a Pluto line is bad.” I lived happily on my Local Space (LS) Pluto line for forty years in North Carolina. My life there was definitely “plutonian,” but much of that extremity revolved around me helping other people through their own “descents into the underworld.” I definitely became far more “plutonian,” but it wasn’t a bad thing – although naturally I did earn a “PG” rating on a few occasions.

You’ll learn more in 404, but here’s another piece of the puzzle. In my own chart, Pluto is in the 9th house. Education, travel, and publishing are common associations with that house – and of course all of them were underscored in my life while I lived on my Pluto line. (If my Pluto had been in a different house, different areas of life would have been in the spotlight.)

In 2008, I  moved west, down a Jupiter line. I’ve prospered here, but I’ve also been chronically  overextended – plus I’d love to lose about 25 pounds. Lord Jupiter giveth and Lord Jupiter taketh away!

We can enter deep waters with these astrolocality techniques just as we can with the rest of astrology. But there’s a very simple, straightforward quality to them as well. Along a Saturn line, you’ll underscore Saturnian possibilities in your life. Will you be lonely? Or will you write a book or earn your doctorate? As ever, there are many possibilities, and much of what happens depends on choices you make.

I’m no fortune-teller and that’s not what the FCEA is all about . . . but just to make this real for you, take a peek at Volodymyr Zelkenskyy’s LS map:

Running north-northeast from Zelkenskyy’s birthplace are three LS lines. They pass through the Moscow area. One of them is Venus, but it’s a bit to the west and thus the least relevant when it comes to understanding Zelenskyy’s energetic relationship with the Russian capital. Mars and the Sun are the ones that really tell the story – notice how Moscow is squeezed in right between them.

What does Zelenskyy “see” when he looks toward Moscow? What energies and experiences can he expect to emanate from that direction? Rage, danger, and attack are of course distinctly “Martial” possibilities. The Sun can represent potentially overwhelming force.

The rest is history, as they say.

How’s about Vladimir Putin’s Local Space lines? Do they cast any light on Ukraine? Have a look:

What does Vladimir Putin see as he looks toward Kyiv? His LS Pluto line runs just west of the Ukrainian capital. As he turned his attention south, he was faced with his worst nightmares – history has borne that notion out in obvious ways, of course. More deeply, what unresolved psychological and karmic issues did he trigger into manifestation as he “moved in that direction?” What fear inside himself was he actually attacking – and what fear attacked him back again?

Naturally, we could dive far more deeply into the charts of these two men, making the personal meaning of Putin’s Pluto and Zelenskyy’s Mars much clearer. As ever, in the spirit of the FCEA, our questions would revolve around how we might counsel them rather than how we might predict their futures. In FCEA 404, we will learn how to do all of that. Here in this brief newsletter, I just want to give you a taste of how this branch of astrology promises to empower you with a new set of skills. Even at the simplest level, it’s pretty astonishing – Zelenskyy looks to Moscow and sees Mars and the Sun, while Putin looks to Kyiv and sees Pluto.

As they say, you can’t make this stuff up.