ASTROCARTOGRAPHY

Your birth chart records the sky at one moment. Astrocartography asks where on Earth that same sky would have placed each planet on one of the chart's four angles.

Every publication runs this piece. Almost none mention that it sorts eight billion people into twelve holidays, which even by astrology's standards is ambitious.

The maths is accurate to the minute. The meanings are a tradition. Whether a line changes your life has never been demonstrated, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

Your first map looks like a plate of spaghetti thrown at the world. There is an order to look at it in, and it is not the order your eye wants to use.

They get used as synonyms constantly. One is a filter that works on the whole globe at once; the other is a detailed reading of a single address. The order you use them in matters.

The house was chosen by two people, at least one of whom no longer lives in it. That is a real reason to reconsider where you are — and a poor reason to be in a hurry about it.

Grief does not respect a floor plan. The house is the same house and it has stopped being the same house, and no amount of rearranging it settles the question.

Almost nobody chose where they live. They chose a job, and the postcode came attached. Retirement is the first time in decades that the constraint is gone, and the freedom is more disorienting than people expect.

Everything about the house was decided by people who no longer live in it. The catchment area, the spare rooms, the distance to the station. The reasons left; the mortgage stayed.