If you’re planning the ultimate getaway, why not look to the heavens. Lucy Holden discovers that each of us has our own place in the universe where happiness, success, and love are all guaranteed.
Kimberly Dewhirst: ‘I wasn’t looking for love in Hong Kong, but Venus had other ideas’
My life is on track to reach a personal and professional zenith next year if I move to Mauritius. This is according to Kimberly Dewhirst, an astrocartographer who has studied my birth chart, projected it on to a world map and knows where I should and shouldn’t go to get the most from the planetary influences in my life.
‘Your Saturn line is bang on Mauritius,’ she explains, ‘and so it would be a really good place to understand your responsibility, authority and how hard you’ve worked to get where you are.’
Astrocartography – a relatively new form of astrology – is experiencing a hike in trendiness thanks to viral TikTok videos that attempt to explain how different places hold different planetary influences for us based on where and when we were born. Astrocartographers create a natal chart (or your birth chart) by looking at the location of the planets in the sky. They then present lines which correspond to the movements of the major celestial bodies such as the sun or moon. These lines are different for everyone and are thought to bring out a different quality in you when you’re in a place near that line.
The stars contain everything that occurs on this planet.
Also known as ‘relocation astrology’, astrocartography was invented in the 1970s by Jim Lewis, an astrologer who noticed that his car broke down in the same spot in the Nevada desert every time he drove through it. ‘It turned out he had a Mars line running right through that location, which equates to anger and accidents ‒ and cars,’ explains Kimberly.
‘Typically, the people interested in astrocartography are looking for guidance,’ adds 37-year-old Kimberly, who studied at the London School of Astrology (LSA) in 2013 after completing a degree in English and marketing in Leeds. During a pandemic in which lives have been turned upside down, it makes sense that more of us are asking: ‘Where should I go to improve my life?’
Astrocartography doesn’t just show us where we should go but also with whom – and even what we should buy there. Kimberly, while not recommending that someone invest their money in stocks, in an area with favorable planetary influence, can give advice on how to do business or purchase a property.
Kimberly was fascinated by the unique aspect of stargazing after attending an LSA conference. Kimberly realized she was interested in learning more and devised a plan. ‘I went to the conference just before I was setting off on a grown-up backpacking trip, so I decided to travel to my energy lines – which were in Australia, China, Japan, Thailand and Miami – to see how each place affected me.’
She had already visited Hong Kong and China, then returned to Hong Kong. Two weeks later, she decided she wanted to go on Tinder dates. ‘I wasn’t looking for love, but it made total sense because my Venus line is in Hong Kong.’
For Kimberly, the position of Venus – the planet of love, sex, desire, flirtation and pleasure – meant she was ‘presented with people that could make me happy’. Seven years later, she still lives on her Venus line in Hong Kong with the man she met on Tinder, who’s now her husband. She also writes Spotify horoscopes and assists people with astrocartography.
And now it’s my turn. She asks for my date, location, and details about important cities and countries. Then she looks at my stars, and tells you that I was born with a strong cluster of planets in Capricorn. ‘It’s what we call a stellium,’ she says. ‘Because the moon, Venus, Saturn and Mars rising [in every location planets are either ‘rising’ (‘ascending’) or ‘descending’ at the time of your birth]You were born so closely together that you had a lot more presence. There’s an emphasis on you. A long-awaited child?’ she asks. ‘People look to you for entertainment. A lot comes back to you and your initiating qualities.’
We look back at our past, having agreed that Mauritius would be the best place for me to live my best life. Kimberly wanted me to give her a list with places that significant events occurred before she met me. She claims that she has some explanations based on the planet lines and stars. Amsterdam – where I’ve had several relationships and which crops up repeatedly in my life – has the same energy as Lisbon and Paris, according to my charts, and is led by my ‘moon ascendent’, but also affected by the position of Neptune, Uranus, Mars and Venus, which tells her that those cities were, amid the romance, places of waywardness, sensitivity and self-sabotage. ‘The chart suggests you learned lessons and had experiences that were problematic,’ she tells me.
Having been on ‘romantic’ breaks to Paris and Lisbon that instead involved a lot of alcohol and soul-searching about what we were doing together, her analysis seems quite accurate.
We move on to Cuba, where I once went on an ‘Are we going to do this or not?’ romantically questioning holiday. Kimberly tells me that the country is on my sun line, which symbolises ‘ego, men, kings, rulers, and flags we were born to raise’.
I didn’t choose Cuba as the destination, but rather an egotistical man who thought he was a king of several things did, so I appreciate her analysis. ‘When you were maybe eating a pineapple, were you able to acknowledge what was coming up for you in the relationship at the time?’ she asks, as I try to remember if I ate any pineapples, but think it was mainly fish in torrential rain.
The sun figuring in my birth chart also suggests to Kimberly that there were money issues – which there were, with both of us worrying about finances at the time. And ‘the eagerness to get back to the job’ is accurate, too, given that I’d been out of work for months and was about to start job-hunting on our return.
As a natural cynic, I wonder whether there’s an element of self-fulfilling prophecy about all of this. If Kimberly tells me I’ll excel ‘politically and professionally’ in Mauritius, will I therefore have the confidence and ambition to do that? Perhaps unsurprisingly, she doesn’t think so. ‘It depends more on the ability of the astrologer to translate your birth charts because everything that happens on Earth is in the stars – from incarceration to the death of a child,’ she says.
‘Some astrocartographers say people should go nowhere near certain planet lines ‒ ones that symbolise gruelling hard work, for example ‒ but those can work very well for some people. It depends totally on the person you’re reading for and what they’re looking to achieve.’
Kimberly states that people who aren’t able or willing to relocate to Mauritius can still benefit from their energies by participating in culturally-relevant activities. This means that you don’t have to travel far for astrocartography. ‘You could watch a film located there, or walk the streets on Google Maps,’ she says. ‘If you love pictures of the Eiffel Tower, you might have an ascending moon in Paris, and so owning artwork or buying a lamp in the style of design popular there can bring you the same energy.’
I would be grateful if you could let me know a place where Mauritian lamps can be purchased.
Check out Kimberly’s horoscopes, blog and astrocartography adventures at starsignstyle.com and follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @starsignstyle