Relocation Astrology Tutorial: Rising Sign Shift

In my natal astrology chart and in the relocation astrology chart I live in my current home, my rising sign is Leo. In Chile, it's Leo, too. But that's not true everywhere.

I'm the first to insist that the astrology chart never compels anythig; free will is always available, at least in response to whatever "is" at an given time and place. Still, it's fascinating to feel the chemistry change that comes with a shift of rising sign.

In Maine, where I vacation every summer, my rising sign is Virgo. That doesn't sound restful to you? Ah, but Virgo is my sun sgn, too, and in this location I feel at home in an obscure fishing village with a population thaaat swells to 350 people during high summer. It's where I freely indulge my passion for gathering with a few good friends to indulge in handcrafts, seafood and story-sharing, completely TV-free. It's one of my definitions of bliss.

My rising sign shifted to Libra when I visited the Orkney Islands last year, where I came home to a community I never expected to feel so tangibly my own. While I've always known the British Isles as prominent in my bloodline, as someone with a U.S passport, I never expected the visceral sense of family I felt all the time I stood on Scottish soil. And I felt even more at home in the Neolithic sites still standing there.

In what was then still Yugoslavia, my rising sign is Scorpio. There, very unlike the self I generally recognize as me, I never communucated with anyone stateside for almost two weeks. The Iron Curtain was still in place, and, once through the mountain tunnel and across the border, I was deeper into Scopio territory in more ways than one. Approproately enough, this was 1990, and Yugoslavia was simmering with the violence that shredded the country less than a year later. Intense, simmering, driving along the highway, into Mostar and Sarajevo was like driving through an unreleased Humphrey Bogart film. Scorpio incarnate!

On the other hand, in San Francisco where my rising sign is Cancer, several folks suggested I could have a great career teaching astrology to children. I can hardly wait to see what happens when my rising sign shifts to Gemini, in Hawaii at the end of August!