How Meridians scores your cities

When you enter a city, we calculate how close each of your planetary lines passes to that location. Planetary lines are unique to your birth chart. They mark the places on Earth where each planet was rising, setting, at its highest, or at its lowest at the exact moment you were born.

The framework

Our scoring is built on the astrocartography system that Jim Lewis created in the 1970s. Two published figures anchor how we measure distance:

• Jim Lewis established that a planetary line's influence extends approximately 700 miles (1,127 kilometres) on either side. (Lewis & Irving, The Psychology of Astro*Carto*Graphy, 1997, Ch. 2, “Lines and Crossings”)
• Clarisse Monahan identifies the zone within 250 miles (400 kilometres) as a “power place” where the connection is strongest, noting that “the closer you get to exact locales, the more powerful your activation.” (Monahan, Astrocartography, DK, 2024, Ch. 1)

Lewis stated the 700-mile boundary as a practical orb. He observed that exact proximity to a line is qualitatively more powerful, but he did not specify a mathematical curve.

Our implementation uses a smooth gradient. Within Monahan's 400-kilometre power-place zone, the signal is near full strength. At Lewis's 700-mile (1,127 km) boundary, it falls to roughly a quarter of peak. Around 1,400 kilometres, it approaches zero. The shape of that gradient is our own design.

What we score

Each planetary line maps to life areas through two layers.

The four anglescome directly from astrocartography's published framework. A planet on your Ascendant (AC) line relates to personal identity and self-expression. On your Descendant (DS), it relates to relationships and partnerships. On your Midheaven (MC), career and public life. On your Imum Coeli (IC), home, family, and roots. These associations are consistent across Lewis, Monahan, and the broader tradition.

The planets carry traditional astrological associations: Venus with love and romance, Mars with drive and assertion, Jupiter with growth and opportunity, Saturn with discipline and structure, and so on. These core associations are well-established in the astrological literature that the astrocartography framework draws from.

Our 16 scored life areas are our own mapping. The 14 base areas are career, finance, wealth, power, love, relationships, home, health, communication, identity, learning, spirituality, travel, and creativity. Two composites are derived from these: family (from home and relationships) and purpose (from spirituality and career).

We assign each planet-angle combination to the life areas it most closely relates to. Some assignments are direct: Venus on a relationship line maps to love. Others are interpretive: Venus mapping to wealth, Mars to health, Saturn to finance. Chiron and the lunar nodes, which are not covered by Lewis or Monahan, are included based on their roles in broader astrological tradition.

Your overall score is calculated from the 14 base areas, not the two composites. It reflects both the breadth and strength of the lines near your city, with a bonus for any area where the connection is particularly strong. A city with one exceptional area scores higher than a city where everything is merely adequate.

What the scores mean in practice

Cities near the same planetary line will score similarly. That is correct. Astrocartography identifies zones of influence, not pinpoint locations. If Paris and Brussels both sit near your Jupiter line, Jupiter's themes are available to you in both places. The scores reflect this honestly rather than manufacturing false differences.

What we do not yet compute

Astrocartography practitioners consider several factors that our scoring does not currently include:

• Your natal chart's relationship to each planet.A Jupiter line means something different if Jupiter is strong and well-connected in your birth chart versus isolated or under tension. Lewis called these “shadowed” planets: they may express more as events that happen to you than as qualities you can direct. (Lewis & Irving, Ch. 3)
• Which side of a line you are on.Being east versus west of a planetary line places the planet in different houses of your relocated chart, subtly changing how its energy expresses. Lewis noted this can be “crucial” in some cases. (Lewis & Irving, Ch. 2)
• Line crossings.Where two planetary lines intersect, their energies combine. Lewis found these crossings carry about one-third the strength of the lines themselves. They can be significant in regions far from any single line. (Lewis & Irving, Ch. 2)

These are areas we plan to develop. For now, our scoring shows you where your strongest planetary connections are and gives you an honest picture of your chart, without overpromising precision that the framework does not yet support.

See your chart for free or learn more about what astrocartography is and how to read your chart.