The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 517, titled:

2026 Year Ahead Astrology Forecast

With Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock

Episode originally released on December 30, 2025

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/30/2026-year-ahead-astrology-forecast/

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

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Transcribed by Teresa Lardo

Transcription released January 2nd, 2026

Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today is astrologer Austin Coppock, and we’re gonna be looking at the year ahead astrology forecast for 2026 and giving you an overview of the entire year’s transits over the next 12 months. 

So hey, Austin. Welcome. Thanks for joining me. 

AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey Chris. I am happy to be here. 

CB: Yeah. We are doing it; we are back again for another year ahead forecast. We’ve been doing these for many, many years now, and it’s always something we prepare a lot for, but we have got a lot to talk about because there’s so many transits this year. This is gonna be an incredibly pivotal year in world history, and I could not think of a better astrologer to talk about that with than you. So thanks a lot for joining me. 

AC: Thank you. That’s very kind. I feel the same way. We’ve got so much to discuss. 

CB: Yeah. Well, luckily we’ve got a lot of practice at this point doing these, and that was something you and I were talking about is like, we got a lot of experience doing the yearlies and the monthlies at this point, which is really gonna come in handy this year because there’s so many distinct astrological transits going on that any one of them could be like, the important transit we would talk about this year as the biggest one. But instead there’s like, five or six or seven of those, I think. 

AC: Yeah. It’s pretty jam-packed. It’s definitely a year that’s – maybe – they talk about weeks worth a decade. There’s some very insightful quote about that. I don’t know if we have 52 weeks, each of which is worth a decade, but this year is definitely punching above its weight in terms of drama. 

CB: Absolutely. All right, so here’s our structure today. Our goal is we’re gonna spend about an hour in the first part of this episode doing an overview of the biggest transits of the year and talking about the major – especially outer planet – transits and other things like that. Then in the next part of the episode, we’re gonna transition into a month by month breakdown where we go through and talk about a little bit more of the micro details of the major astrological transits happening in each individual month. And we’re gonna go through that quarter by quarter until we get to the end of the year. 

So big picture first, and then zooming in in the second half of this episode. As always, there’ll be timestamps if you wanna jump ahead to any different parts of the episode. But otherwise why don’t we just go ahead and jump right into it with the overview of the astrology of 2026. 

All right. 

AC: Let’s do it. 

CB: Let’s do it. So here first I wanna share the planetary movements calendar that was designed for us by Paula Belluomini who designed our monthly and yearly to show where the planets will start at the beginning of the year and how far through the signs of the zodiac they’ll get by the end of the year, including some of the different retrogrades and eclipses that are gonna take place during the course of this year, as well as some of the major conjunctions such as that Saturn-Neptune conjunction right there in Aries. 

So here are the major transits this year that we’re gonna focus on in this overview that are the biggest impact transits and the major astrological alignments during the course of 2026. So for the audio listeners, I’ll just read off some of them quickly, and then we’ll talk about each of them in detail. 

So the first one is that right off the bat at the beginning of the year, Neptune departs from Pisces, completing a more than decade-long transit and moves into the sign of Aries where it’s gonna stay for 13 years. And simultaneously, Saturn leaves Pisces and moves into the sign of Aries where it’s gonna stay for two years, and then immediately in February the two planets form a conjunction in the sky which only happens every like, 36 or 40 years or something like that. And this is one of the most important alignments that’s finally taking place at the beginning of the year. 

Then in February and March, we also have our first eclipse season with an eclipse in the sign of Aquarius and Virgo. After that, Uranus departs from Taurus and enters into Gemini where it will stay for seven years right in the middle of April. And then a couple months after that, we get our first of four Mars-Uranus conjunctions on July 4th, starting the first of those will start taking place every two years from 2026 forward until 2032. 

Jupiter’s gonna transit through Cancer in the first half of the year, but then it’s gonna go into Leo in the second half of the year for a one-year-long transit. Then we get our second eclipse season in August, leaning over a little bit into early September, which is gonna take place in Leo and Pisces. Then we get a Venus retrograde later in the year in Scorpio and Libra that’s really centered on October through November when Venus starts moving backwards through the sky from our vantage point. And then finally by the end of the year as things are closing down, Mars is slowing down and getting ready to station retrograde, and it’s already entered through its shadow period in the signs that it’s going to retrograde in from late September through December before eventually stationing retrograde in Virgo on basically the very first week of January of 2027. So that’s kind of the setup at the very end of this year that leaves us on a cliffhanger as we’ll talk about here in just a little bit.

So those are the major alignments that we’re gonna be talking about here. Do you wanna start with some big picture statements, or should we jump right into Saturn and Neptune? 

AC: I think Saturn-Neptune is pretty big picture. 

CB: Yeah. We have been talking about that transit for a while. And one of the things that’s wild about that is, you know, how – let me show actually a diagram. I’ll show a couple diagrams from that were designed by Paige Herbert to help illustrate some of the astrology of this year. And this one primarily illustrates the conjunction of Saturn and Neptune where we saw Saturn and Neptune get within one degree of a conjunction last summer, especially around the July timeframe when they first dipped into Aries. But then they retrograded out and went back into Pisces, but now by February, they’re both fully into Aries and we get the first and only exact conjunction between those two planets. And just prior to that, Neptune departs from its long transit through Pisces and moves into Aries on January 26th, whereas Saturn departs from Pisces and moves into Aries on February 13th. And one of the things about that that you and I talked about in the last forecast episode for December is how all of the outer planets this year are finally changing signs. Like, they’ve been doing this weird thing of going back and forth for a few years, and we’ve clearly been on the cusp of a new era for several years now – especially since Pluto first started dipping into Aquarius in 2023. But now everything fully shifts into the new signs that they’re gonna be in for a long time, and it’s the end of one era and the beginning of a new era, and there’s just no going back is the keyword I was talking about last month. 

AC: Yeah. And “no going back” is absolutely right. The astrology divides his decade very neatly in terms of the outer planet positions where Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are, and 2025 – which we are in the final days of now – was the first year where we saw where Uranus, Neptune, Pluto are going to be for the rest of the decade. But unlike “no going back,” they all went back! Except for Pluto. So we got a taste of Neptune in Aries; we got a taste of Uranus in Gemini. But only a little sizzle reel. And since September and then November for Neptune and Uranus, they’ve been back where they were in 2018, even. And so our Saturn-Neptune conjunction coming up early this year – it is a return to the future. It’s back to what’s actually unfolding and will continue to unfold for the rest of the decade. 2025 was our last moment with the first half of the decade. And I hope it was more bittersweet, touching, and pleasant for most people than it was for me. It seemed like kind of a bad ending. Like, I might have left a negative review online for how all those planets left it. 

CB: Sure. Yeah. It’s definitely – there’s a touch of that for sure, especially with like, the Saturn transit through Pisces, I know a lot of people are excited to be done with. And you know, this is – so some of my keywords for this year was like, this is the point of no return. But it’s also the year that stuff gets real where we’ve seen a glimmer of some of that stuff over the past couple of years of what’s to come, but like, this is the year in which a lot of that I think will finally fully start to manifest. And nowhere is that gonna be more clear than the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, because we’ve been experiencing the copresence ever since Saturn went into Pisces and joined Neptune by sign in that sign-based conjunction starting in March of 2023. And they’ve been like, slowly building up to this conjunction, and we could see one of my primary keywords for that conjunction, which is the creation of this reality distortion field getting more and more intense over the past three years as that conjunction grew closer, peaking last summer when it got the closest. 

But now, we’re finally getting the only exact conjunction in February, and that’s gonna be intense – the completion of something that’s been building, that we’ve been feeling, for so long – but also having it move into a new sign, marking the beginning of a brand new era.

AC: Yeah. It’s a little confusing, because in one sense, it is the peak of that configuration, right? It is the only moment when the two will be in exactly the same minute of the same degree. And yet, they will continue to be in the same sign until the middle of 2028. And so it’s very much a climax, but it’s not a climax that leads to a conclusion quickly. We’ve got more than two more years of Saturn-Neptune after this peak point. 

CB: Right. Yeah, that’s a really good point. 

AC: And as you were saying, it’s been interesting that we’ve had the two together, close together, doing all of their confusing, reality muddling, ontological crisis-inducing work in one sign, but the actual moment where they make contact is in another sign entirely, and at zero degrees of Aries, which is a rather significant point. Many people would say that the zodiac begins there. Certainly where the Sun is on the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere. It’s an important point. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, we’ve been seeing that. I mean, one of the things that this is obviously coinciding with is – in terms of the reality distortion field – is the peak of AI generated video being perfected so that it’s now going to hit a point I think by February where it’s gonna be hard to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not. And we’re already there, but there’s still an awful lot of tells oftentimes where you can kind of like, tell the difference. But I think we’re hitting the turning point where it’s gonna be hard to do that anymore just as this conjunction is going exact. And it’s been amazing seeing the buildup to that point over the past few years, but that’s just one technological example of a broader phenomenon of this difference between telling what’s true and what’s not, or telling what’s lies versus what’s truth, essentially, in many different areas of society and in our lives in general. 

AC: Yeah. And I would add to that what’s reality and what’s imagination, which can be tricky. Because you can imagine real things, and sometimes if enough people believe, what is imagined becomes real. And so hence the reality distortion, the ontological crisis; it makes deciding what is clearly true and real much trickier than normal. Which is —

CB: Yeah.

AC: — you know, it’s never the easiest thing. That’s why the discipline of philosophy still exists with unanswered questions. Right? The “what is real” is not an easy question under ideal conditions, and Saturn-Neptune conjunctions are the opposite thereof. 

CB: Right. Yeah. So we have that, and then we also have structures – like, the dissolving of structures that are kind of like, breaking down at this time, which is a really classic Saturn-Neptune thing that happens. Like the last conjunction, for example, was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union at that time. So we’re seeing similar sort of dissolving of structures in different places, both personally as well as in the world in general like with the US government, there’s so many different structures that are being dissolved over the past year, like, really rapidly that it’s been startling to watch how literal that is in some instances.

AC: Yeah. And those – just like with the dissolution of the USSR during the last cycle, there’s often sometimes shockingly quick and nonviolent? Not that there aren’t sometimes critical consequences. But you expect a structure to put up more of a fight, but it just kind of gets booped, and then falls apart rather than like, the walls don’t need to – under Saturn-Neptune, the walls don’t need to be sieged for months. It’s not like the result of some loud, structural attack. It’s a little shocking at how quickly a thing will fold. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Which makes you ask, was it ever real, right? If it fell apart like that, then maybe my ideas about its density and its reality beforehand were off. 

CB: Yeah. I had the image recently of like, a cardboard box – which normally are like, structurally pretty sound if you can ship packages in them and stuff can go around the world in a cardboard box if it’s like, sturdy enough. But if you place a cardboard box in a pool of water, it very quickly loses structural integrity and can just like, collapse on its own in that context because like —

AC: Right. 

CB: — the water is just so antithetical to the makeup of the cardboard. And that’s one image I have right now for some of the structures that are hitting that like, folding point right now. 

AC: Yeah, that’s a great image. 

CB: Yeah. So those are major things. Other Saturn-Neptune things that we need to mention – I mean, there are positive things I will mention. Because one of the things about this Saturn-Neptune conjunction that’s important is it’s gonna be a recurrence transit for anybody born during the previous Saturn-Neptune conjunctions over the past century, especially the one that happened around 1989 in Capricorn and then the one that happened before that around 1953 in Libra. For anybody born around those conjunctions that have that as a signature, this conjunction is gonna represent a pivotal turning point in your life because it’s like, the same music is playing over again that was playing when you were born. And sometimes a spotlight gets shown on those people that have that conjunction natally at this time. And one of the things I noticed in the recurrence transit episode is that even people that had it like, several degrees away – let’s say like, 10 degrees away natally – when the exact aspect forms, sometimes that’s when the most pivotal event happens in their life. So I think for a lot of those people, it’s gonna be that February timeframe becoming really crucial. 

AC: Yeah. I think that’s right. And it’s interesting that the last two were also in cardinal signs. The ‘89 and ‘90, the Saturn-Neptune was in Capricorn, and then in ‘51 to ‘53, it was in Libra. And so for the people who were born in the early ‘50s, it’s Saturn-Neptune opposite where Saturn-Neptune was natally. So it’s like, you know, it’s very configured. It’s on the same axis of houses. 

CB: Right. So one thing I’ll say about that that is positive, though, that I saw a lot in the Saturn return stories of the 1989 people is that there were these attempts to manifest like, a utopian ideal in the world and to bring form to that. And that’s something we see a lot during Saturn-Neptune conjunctions is people that have like, a higher philosophical or religious or spiritual notions about the world trying to bring that into manifestation somehow, sometimes by creating like, a religious community. I noticed in the Saturn-Neptune episode in history that I did with Nick that there was a lot of religious communities founded around Saturn-Neptune conjunctions, so we’ll probably have some things like that happening and small beginnings at this time. But also just other people that have like, social ideas for social or political causes trying to bring some of their structures from their ideals and their philosophy into concrete form at this time. 

AC: Right. Trying to create a Saturnian structural container for the imagined or believed or dreamed thing. 

CB: Right. And so for some, you know, that might be a good thing if we’re talking humanitarian ideals and ideals that are sparked by let’s say sympathy or empathy or other things like that that can be good Neptunian things. But then of course there’ll be others that might be not as good, depending on different ideologies and other things that are involved. 

AC: I mean, I just can’t imagine that possibly going wrong! 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Utopian movements pretty much always succeed is what history teaches us, which is why —

CB: Right, right. 

AC: — things are so good now! 

CB: Yeah, clearly! 

All right, so Saturn-Neptune – part of the context though with Saturn-Neptune we should set briefly also though is Neptune’s departure from Pisces and entry into Aries, and then Saturn’s similar departure from Pisces and entry into Aries. And you know, one of the things we talked about last year a lot that I’ve continued to try to learn more about and sort of marvel about was the last time Neptune left Pisces and moved into Aries was in the middle of the 1800s, and it happened to coincide with the start of the Civil War in the US. And I was just watching this old Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War from like, 1990, and at the very beginning – in the first couple episodes – they just kept emphasizing how everybody had this like, really overidealized view about what the war would be like, and a lot of like, illusions surrounding war because there hadn’t been like, a major, major war for a generation. So a lot of these like, younger guys were growing up not having fought in a total war and not really knowing what that would look like. But also that the technology had changed so rapidly in the intervening years that they didn’t realize that the carnage was gonna be much higher than what they were expecting, so that people were like, going to the first Civil War battles and like, setting up picnics as spectators to watch this little thing. And everybody thought it would be a short affair. And there’s something about that that’s reminiscent of this time, because like, over the past year, we’ve seen a lot of ideas about this idealization surrounding the warrior ethos, for example, is something that’s been discussed a lot recently. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. Just to add to the Civil War bit, neither side had any trouble filling its ranks with soldiers during the early years. And that changed dramatically just a few years in. And it was in fact because of the shortage of soldiers later into the conflict that conscription became US law. And interestingly enough, the Neptune in Aries before that one, right – so 160-some years earlier – was the first time that Great Britain passed conscription acts, right? Making people become soldiers. 

Yeah, that idealization – you know, like, Neptune is always dreaming and trying to dream the ideal of the sign that it’s in. Right? And Neptune in Pisces, you know, it was a dream of – I guess it still is for another 28 days – a dream of boundless compassion, of deep acceptance. You know, Neptune allows in, right? And that’s one of the reasons Neptune is considered so strong in Pisces is Pisces is very good at allowing in and allowing beings to be and reality to be vast. And so there’s that watery, dare I say passive or accepting ideal – the ability to accept and imagine the world being vaster and to have good relationship to that world, right, is I think a big part of it. And that’s so different from Aries, especially the first part of Aries. That’s one of – I’m sorry – it’s one of the I think more dramatic cusps in astrology is the difference between the vast acceptance and fluidity of Pisces and the often hyper-individuality of Aries. And that hyper-individuality, the capacity to assert the power of the individual in a fantasy setting against all odds as opposed to the individual being able to accept living in a vast universe with powers far beyond one. In Aries, we’re trying to assert ourselves. And so that same vastness which maybe we tried to accept in Pisces sort of becomes the dragon, or a potential foe or danger in Aries. And so the power of the individual to stand against becomes part of the ideal. And you know, as you were saying, the warrior ideal. Like, individual strength and it’s still Neptune, and Neptune does like sacrifice. So that ideal of heroic sacrifice I think we’ve seen growing and will continue to permeate and percolate throughout culture. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Well, that was one of the Civil War things is like, all the young guys at the beginning were imagining like, running into battle and having hand-to-hand combat. But like, the technology had changed so that the gun ranges extended much further than the previous war, so they were all just getting shot down in great numbers. And the heroicism immediately was cut out of it after a few major battles, and then what set in was disillusionment, which is like, that classic Neptune dichotomy where it’s like, it starts with this over-idealized, not clear picture of something, but then by the end, there’s this sense of disillusionment when the reality sets in. And that’s one of the tensions that’s gonna be happening, especially in the next couple of years as Saturn is transiting through that sign at the same time and we’re sort of going back and forth between these extremes of idealization versus like, overly being focused on the cold, hard reality and in some instances brutality of the situation. 

AC: Yeah, it’s Neptune in a Mars-ruled sign. Right? Like, it’s sad when a dream of compassion proves unrealistic. It’s often much worse if a dream of struggle turns out just to be brutality and violence. 

CB: Right. Yeah. And I mean, you making that contrast also with Pisces and what we’re moving out of is making me think of how even in this new era, it’s like, we’re starting off this era coming into it with recently some of these idealized things about like, hyper-masculinity and things like that and a lot of like, young boys coming up listening to like, podcasts and stuff where that weird, somewhat distorted image of masculinity is being sold to them. But then at some point during the course of this, like, the disillusionment with some of that when the reality of some of the shortcomings of those things becomes probably clear. 

AC: Yeah, definitely. It’s definitely – if you look at male sort of images, it’s like, out and about in the world especially what’s been sort of increasing over the last year, it’s starting to look like the ‘80s again. Right? Like, the action hero, right, is sort of the last cinematic reference we have for this sort of Neptune in a fire sign, which got going during Neptune in Sagittarius, which didn’t move out until ‘84. You also see on the internet the Neptune side, there’s increasing talk about – and often transparency, for what it’s worth – about people taking massive amounts of drugs and synthetic hormones to become, to look like the action heroes and the very real health risks to that. There’s also a rapid rise in – I don’t know how to put this – dudes getting dude surgery to look dude-lier, which is also, you know, Neptunian. It’s like, creating, shaping the image. Right? And so, yeah, we have like, a moving towards conformance with this sort of resurgent hypermasculine ideal. And I think we both expect that to be very much a part of Neptune in Aries for some time. 

CB: Yeah. The interesting part that will be interesting with Saturn going into Aries at the same time and putting the breaks on certain things or creating this tension between, you know, the slow, heavy nature of Saturn and the incendiary nature of Mars as part of the characteristic next couple of years that we’re gonna be experiencing of Saturn going through that sign and all the, you know, Saturn in Aries people that were born in the ‘90s hitting their first Saturn return and sometimes being slowed down or being forced to have restrained action, encountering limitations on different areas where you expect freedom of movement as being like, primary keywords during that time. 

AC: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s going to be really interesting to see to what degree is the Neptune in Aries current this like, valorization of the individual action hero – is it slowed down for a little bit by the copresence with Saturn? Probably, but is it also made very real given Saturn’s ability to concretize things? It’s very strange to start a 14-year Neptune period with a conjunction to Saturn. Saturn is much more a planet of slowing down until death, approaching the end of things, right, the last leg of the journey. But we’re starting with that. Like, the planet of endings and legacies and slow accumulated structure. 

CB: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about Saturn in Aries maybe on its own for a minute just to get some clear keywords out. When I think about that placement, I think about like, carrying an acute irritation or a burden over an extended period of time and having to develop an endurance of stamina, basically. Because one of the people I think about with that placement who I know is about to hit his Saturn return is Mr. Beast who’s like, the biggest YouTuber, but all of his – most of his YouTube videos are about these challenges where at first it was him challenging himself to do something that was irritating or unbearable for like, an extended amount of time. But now he’s turned that into game shows where like, a bunch of people have to do that over a period of time. Like, one of his videos was like, being chained to your ex-partner for like, 30 days or something like that, and can you survive that 30-day irritation or stamina challenge and different things like that. 

AC: Right. So yeah, like, the creation of ordeals where it’s something that you have to endure for X amount of time, which — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — is definitely how I feel about Saturn in Aries going into it and based on last summer! 

CB: Right! Yeah, because it’s like, it’s something that you would rather not do, but then there’s a goal or like, there’s a pot of cash basically at the end of it. And the dilemma is if you can put up with this irritation, and if you can expend a huge amount of energy and stamina to keep yourself in one place even though you’d like to be moving somewhere else, then you will get this reward at the end of that long period. And I think that’s gonna be one of the keywords for all of us as we’re experiencing this Saturn in Aries transit over the next two years in different parts of our life, and as it’s going through different houses in each of our charts. 

AC: Yeah. Hopefully there are rewards. There will certainly be enduring irritation. 

CB: Yeah. Well, the flipside of that, of course, is sometimes there can be extreme frustration and extreme burnout and feeling like hitting a brick wall with that as well, which can be the downside, especially when you combine it with Neptune which can bring some feelings of fatigue and exhaustion. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s part of the unusual nature of Saturn in Aries. Saturn is in its fall in Aries, right? It’s in its depression. It’s a very difficult place for Saturn to communicate its core nature, which is slow, cold, glacial, inexorable. You know, maybe crushing in its weight and coldness, but is certainly not fast and irritating, right? Whereas that is the nature of Aries. Aries is fast and irritating. It’s a Mars-ruled sign; it’s pokey. It likes to move quick. And so we have, you know, we have this built in contrast between young and fast and old and slow, between hot and cold, between authoritative and frivolous that often makes Saturn in Aries as a transit more challenging to endure, because it’s not just playing by Saturn’s rules. It’s not just enduring the slow and the heavy, and it’s not just moving fast. It’s a very awkward combination, which in the past has been exemplified – one of my favorite examples of this was the last Emperor of China in 1908 during a Saturn in Aries period who was a toddler. And so you have to obey the toddler. But the toddler wasn’t really in control, but kind of was in control, and so yeah. Like, there’s this weird contrast between authority and like, inexperience and youthfulness, and that also speaks to Saturn in Aries is often – in that it is in the place of the exaltation of the Sun, right? The Sun is at its best and brightest in Aries. And with Saturn there, we often either – one, see trouble for those in authority, whether they deserve it or not. And then we also often see leaders who do not represent the solar ideal of the Sun’s exaltation, such as the toddler emperor. The last time that Saturn was in Aries was during Bill Clinton’s second term, right, which was largely paralyzed due to the sex scandal. And so that sort of scandal for leaders or inappropriate leaders being a point of contention is very common, historically, for Saturn in Aries. 

CB: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense and setting up like, authority conflicts. And you know, last summer when the Saturn-Neptune conjunction was coming so close for the first time, there was all the explosion of different things that were being like, covered up, and there was widespread realizations about different things that were being hidden or things that were thought to be conspiracy theories like, suddenly becoming real or becoming validated, and the – I’m sure – continual stories related to that as Saturn-Neptune grows even closer. 

AC: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah, a lot of what’s been coming out serves to create scandal for those in authority or reveal the fallen actions and mindset, right? Like, that’s very much in line. I wasn’t even thinking of that. One — 

CB: Well, it makes me – before you get to that point, it makes me think of the point you made in the last forecast in December, which is just – that we’ve talked about – that sometimes the Saturn-Neptune conjunctions are like, imaginary. Like, let’s say conspiracy theories for lack of a better word or there’s probably a better word for that, but like, the Salem witch trials, for example, was a Saturn-Neptune conjunction I believe. Or we both looked at like, the Satanic panic in the last Saturn-Neptune conjunction in the ‘80s was one of those things where it was just like, there was this belief that there was this widespread thing happening that then in retrospect once we got out of it, it turned out that it wasn’t as widespread as people feared that things might be happening. And so on the one hand, you have that, which is you have the fears surrounding something that may not actually be happening in reality and that you don’t realize until you come out of it. But then on the other side, there’s this weird flipside of the coin where it’s sometimes the confirmation of bizarre conspiracies and other things like that and the attempt to suppress them that are actually – and cover them up – that are actually taking place. 

AC: Yeah, and being put in a position not to be able to know what the limit of – being put in a position where you can’t know at the time is very classic Saturn-Neptune. Like, how deep does the rabbit hole go? How deep is the corruption? Like, I didn’t think that was possible, but now I see that my ideas about this were wrong. But like, where does the thing end? You have this aerosolized fear from Saturn. And with the moral panics, right, we had the peak of the Satanic panic last Saturn-Neptune, and the two previous ones were Red Scare one and two. 

CB: Right. Where the fear that was like – and 1950 is one that was interesting, because on the one hand, that’s peaking with that Saturn-Neptune conjunction, and you have – who was the politician at the time who was just like —

AC: McCarthy. 

CB: McCarthy. So it was the peak of the McCarthy era where they’re just accusing everyone of being Communists, even people that aren’t, and then people’s lives are being ruined over false charges and conspiracy theories. But then on the other hand at the same time, you did have, like, legitimate people that were working for the Soviet Union as spies, and that was part of how the nuclear program, for example, there were people inside the Manhattan Project that were leaking secrets to the Soviet Union. And then that became a flashpoint as well, the realization that in some instances some of those things were actually happening. 

AC: Yeah. And that was the dawning of a very real and very at times lethal and consequential rival between the USSR’s version of Communism and America’s version of capitalism. Like, it was a real thing, but it was also a lot of the things that got said about a lot of people were fake. Right? Which is why the Neptune-Saturn conjunctions are so hard, especially in the middle of them, to navigate. Because if it was just —

CB: Yeah. 

AC: If there was just like, well, there’s one lie and one truth, and you just have to pick the right one, it’d be much easier. We’d all, we’d do much better. We’d spend less time gnawing at the problem. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

Some last keywords that were coming up for me as I was thinking about Saturn in Aries are things like military discipline, martial arts, channeling one’s anger – sometimes positively and sometimes not positively, military restructuring – like we started seeing a lot of that last year when Saturn dipped into Aries over the summer. But also sometimes like, conflict with authority and authoritarianism as like, a Saturn in Aries type manifestation as well when you put Saturn and Mars together. 

AC: Yeah. One of the things I think about with Saturn in Aries is in contrast to Saturn’s exaltation in Libra is why is Saturn exalted in Libra? What’s so good about those rules? It’s because they’re based on fairness and rules that are based on fairness endure a long time. Right? Whereas with Saturn in Aries, you get the enforcement of rules or the formulation of rules that are just brute force. Right? And brute force always has a shortened timeline. Like, as soon as people can resist law by brute force, they will, right? Because there’s no consent. Saturn in Libra is always about mutual consent. Those laws last. But if, you know, yeah. And that goes for governance; it also goes for parenting, right? If your only answer to your child is “because I said so,” right, like, that’s gonna run out real quick. Like, you’ve gotta have reason. Yeah, you’ve gotta have reason behind your laws if they are to have longevity. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. All right, we could keep talking about these three combinations forever, but I wanna move us onto our next major thing in the overview section, which is our first eclipse season, which weirdly actually begins in February overlapping with the Saturn-Neptune conjunction and then also trails over into March. 

So let me share the diagram for eclipse season, because this establishes the ranges that I’ve established over the past few years for eclipses, which is that they begin about a week before the eclipse, and it ends a week after the second eclipse. So you end up with a timeframe that looks roughly like this where our eclipse season is gonna be roughly from about February 9th, peaking with the first eclipse on February 17th in Aquarius, which is very close to the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, and then there’s that intense phase in between the first eclipse until you get to the second eclipse, which is a lunar eclipse in Virgo on March 3rd. And then about a week after that, the eclipse season trails off around March 11th or so. 

So this is an interesting and important new eclipse season, because on the one hand, we get the next installment in the Virgo eclipse series which has been going on for over a year now going back to 2025, but also we had the first Pisces one in late 2024. But this one’s unique because we get the first eclipse in the sign of Aquarius, which is the beginning of a new sequence of eclipses that’s gonna be happening in Aquarius and Leo over the course of the next year or two. So this is opening up an entirely new story, especially for each of us personally in a new part of each of our charts, as the eclipses this year start shifting from the Virgo-Pisces axis to the Leo-Aquarius axis with the keyword I always use of being major endings and major beginnings in whatever area of the chart eclipses start to fall. 

AC: And this one is especially oriented towards new and confusing and potentially monstrous beginnings, as it occurs like, three days before the one exact Saturn-Neptune conjunction. And occurring in Aquarius, it is ruled by Saturn! Which is very tightly conjunct Neptune! And so this eclipse just so happens to be in a perfect position to magnify – yeah, just to further magnify the now exact Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries, which is pretty wild. I was repeatedly, I kind of kept coming back to this. Because it’s like, really? It happens right at the same time and is ruled by Saturn. And so part of it will be just a wild loudspeaker for all these Saturn-Neptune in Aries themes, but of course it has its own characteristics and darkness. 

CB: Yeah. The other thing I think it’s really gonna magnify is the Pluto transit through Aquarius. 

AC: Yeah. That too. 

CB: So this is our first eclipse in Aquarius and Pluto’s already been moving back and forth trying to go into Aquarius since, what, 2023. But now it’s fully in Aquarius, and now we get our first eclipse there. And to me, whenever an eclipse happens in the same sign as another planet, it will tend to magnify and exacerbate whatever that planet is already doing in that sign. And you can start seeing some of the most important turning points happen when eclipses start hitting there. 

So so much of what we’ve seen is as soon as Pluto started going into Aquarius, we had the explosion of all of the AI artificial intelligence stuff and the artificial intelligence revolution or whatever you wanna call it really starting to set in, so that at this point, even though we’re only two or three years into it, it seems like AI is now like, integrated into everything. Like, it’s in PowerPoint. It’s in Photoshop. It’s in so many different programs that we all use on a daily basis. Like, Gmail has a whole AI thing. You could just go down the list of all of these different things that we all use on a daily basis that AI has found its way into at this point, but somehow this year all of that is gonna become magnified really rapidly, not just because of like, eclipses starting to happen in Aquarius with Pluto, but also because this year we get our first of two exact trines from Uranus in Gemini trining Pluto, which is also going to speed up and quicken the pace of some of that technological development. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don’t know what’s bigger than everywhere? Right? What’s more omnipresent, even more omnipresent, more deeply rooted? 

CB: Yeah. I mean, that’s what we’ve gotta figure out. I mean, like, how can it go further from here? I mean, one of the ways, since it is coinciding with the Saturn-Neptune conjunction which is bringing the reality distortion and the difficulty telling what’s real versus what’s fake is obviously this is the completion of the video thing. In terms of having videos generated, like, anybody now can create a video fully manifesting visually an idea or an imagination they have and to put it into real form or some sort of form in a video. And I know you’ve been a little skeptical about whether we’re at the point where you can tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not, but I feel like we’re gonna hit that threshold here in February where even you, my friend, might be surprised at being fooled once or twice. 

AC: Oh, yeah, I’m sure I’ll get fooled once or twice. Yeah, I’m skeptical of a lot of things surrounding AI. But yeah, we’ll see what the ceiling is, and we’ll see what it’s useful for other than pictures. But — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — forget about me. But so one important way that AI can get bigger or more omnipresent is the social acceptance and rejection, and the permeation of culture. The cultural layer is, I think, there’s much more to come in 2026. You know, we’ve started to see various forms of embrace as well as reaction against, and I think that will continue significantly, and that is I think looking at the eclipse cycle moving into the same axis as Pluto absolutely will be part of that. I think it will also play into another Pluto in Aquarius theme, which is rising alarm about inequality, which many would argue is competing for or some would say one of the most important issues today, and that rhymes perfectly with the last time Pluto was in Aquarius when we had the French Revolution. 

CB: Right. That’s a great point. Because it is creating a new social hierarchy in which you have these handfuls of companies that have these ultra-powerful AIs that everyone’s using and that is informing different people’s opinions. Because people are starting to switch from using search engines to using AIs to search and look up information about everything, but then depending on what AI you’re using it’s been slanted based on different political views; it’s being slanted based on different geopolitical things. And a relatively small number of people or corporations like, control those AIs, and that then filters down to everybody else. So it’s — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — interesting. 

AC: Yeah. And in addition, the types of labor that it looks like AI will most easily and effectively be able to replace are the lower rungs on the ladder. Just as an example, in law, it’s not successful attorneys with 30 years of litigation under their belt that will be replaced by AI; it’s people getting their first job. It’s paralegals. You know, it’s like, the bottom third of the hierarchy where people get their start. And so there’s growing concern about entry level or lower tier positions that then, you know, are the way you get to higher tier positions being disappeared or becoming much more scarce. 

CB: Yeah. That’s a great point I forgot, because the robotics side is a whole other piece of that that’s gonna become increasingly obvious as a part of this and an outgrowth of Pluto in Aquarius over the next 20 years that we still have before it finishes in 2040. And the combination of humanoid robots becoming more common in society while artificial intelligence is getting better and better. And one of the things I was realizing that’s gonna become an issue is like, humans are trying to create – really, a bunch of companies and even governments are pushing to create a new sentient species as fast as they can. But then one of the things is once they create that sentient species, to whatever extent they’re successful, one of the rules is that humans wanna make it fully under the control of humans. But there’s a tension there, because if you actually do successfully create something that’s sentient, you’re creating a rule on it right from the start that essentially you’re gonna be enslaving it basically. Like, enslaving a sentience. And that’s gonna create all sorts of like, social issues and conflicts at some point in the future as you have different groups of humans coming to different conclusions about whether you can like, enslave another sentient species or whether that’s fundamentally wrong for philosophical and religious purposes like, I think is actually gonna become a major thing during the course of some of this. 

AC: Yeah, if something resembling sentience can be achieved, that opens that very large can of worms. 

CB: Right. Because one of the things is it’s gonna be a different sentience than what humans have, and some humans then, because it’s different than what we have, will classify it as lesser and therefore not something not deserving of freedom, versus others are gonna fall down and say even though it’s different, because it has sentience it’s deserving of freedom and this is gonna create some social conflicts in the future. 

AC: Yeah. And it would be – if we get to that place, it’ll be interesting to see how the reams of science fiction about that problem match the reality of it.

CB: Yeah. Well, it’s because – that’s like, one of the reasons I was thinking about that a lot recently is because I was studying the Uranus in Gemini period during the Civil War and especially the Mars-Uranus conjunctions during that time. And that became the core argument and one of the core things that the Civil War was about was about slavery and about like, you know, a group of people taking away and the deprivation of freedom on a whole class of humans versus the attempt to restore or give freedom to an entire class of humans. And I realized at a certain point that that was happening at that time during those Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini in the US Civil War because that was the signature in the US birth chart, which has a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini. And we’re always used to thinking of that conjunction as having to do with like, liberation and freedom and things like that. But I realized at a certain point that Mars, you know, and Vettius Valens in the second century, he also says that Mars can be about the taking away of good things or the deprivation of something or the subjugation of somebody. And so the negative side of that sometimes of that Mars-Uranus conjunction is like, the deprivation of freedom or the taking away of liberty, and then the conflict that that sets up when freedom or liberty is being taken away from a class of beings.

AC: Yeah, absolutely. Right. Well, and why would you have to fight for freedom if there wasn’t a contending force? 

CB: Right. Yeah, exactly. So it’s like, one of my questions on the horizon is like, how could that manifest again in the future, and where will – there’ll be classes that are being deprived freedom or in which there’s legitimate arguments about the giving or taking away of freedom of some group of people, let’s say.

AC: Yeah. So should we use that as a transition into Uranus in Gemini? Because I think that’s a pretty good one! 

CB: That is a great one. Let me very quickly just —

AC: Let me just – okay. Let me just add to that that Uranus in Gemini does give us basically a history of liberal philosophy. Of like, the idea of governance that prizes individual liberty and freedom. Not just starting with the US Revolution, but in the cycle before that, we had John Locke publishing all of his major works, which were used more or less as a blueprint by that US government. And we’ve had struggles around and redefinition and further development of those ideas in every Uranus in Gemini since then. 

CB: Absolutely. Let me show – I wanna ask you a question about that. Let me show the diagram first, though, just to set up the baseline. So this is a diagram for Uranus in Gemini, which is gonna last from 2025 through 2033. And we had our first like, dip into that last year starting July 7th through November 7th of 2025. But then Uranus retrograded back into Taurus where it’s gonna spend the first few months of 2026, but then starting on April 25th, 2026, Uranus is gonna move fully into Gemini where it’s gonna stay for quite some time until 2032 and 2033. So this is a super important transit we talked about many times in the past, especially because the United States was born when Uranus was in Gemini. And every 84 years, when Uranus comes back to Gemini, the US has had a major conflict, including the Civil War – well, the Revolutionary War, then the Civil War, and then World War II, and then it brings us to today. 

So part of what you’re saying, though, is that Uranus in Gemini ideal and period goes back even before the American Revolution? 

AC: Yeah. Like, the idea of governance which privileges individual freedom, which is not the historical norm – you know, that’s where we get “liberal” from, not to be confused with sort of current factions, but like, the grand tradition of liberalism starts one Uranus cycle before the American Revolution. And then every time we get Uranus in Gemini, there’s struggle over that idea and ideal of governance as well as further definition or redefinition. And so, you know, it does seem like we’re at a place where liberal democracy needs to be caught up. Like, you know, there’s a little bit of – like, where we were left after World War II, and then there’s everything that’s happened since. But the world has changed quite a bit. Like, in that Uranus in Gemini serves as a very dramatic refresh and sort of reincarnation of those ideals into the now current period of history, it sure seems like we’re due for that! 

CB: Yeah. Well, I was watching that new Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolutionary War that everyone’s watching right now; it’s amazing. I would recommend everyone watch it, because it provides so much insight into the Uranus in Gemini period from the founding of the United States and what that was all about, but also a lot of things that are very important to us today as we have a recurrence of that transit. But one of the things it was really emphasizing that you’re talking about here is how up until that point, the right to rule and lead a country was largely hereditary. It was something like, one king inherited from another king, and that’s basically rulership, and those are the people that deserve to be in power and are invested in that. But that was one of the things that so radical about the US at the time was, yeah, setting up like, a representative democracy basically or a republic, and the right to rule being partially based on the consent of the people. 

AC: Yeah. And valuing the individual within the society’s range of actions. Like, their personal freedom as well as their consent – their ability to choose governance or participate in a choice of governance as well as a choice of life activities was very novel. Like, the United States was the largest experiment of that kind. Not that there are no other instances in history, but you know, a quite novel experiment that certainly at first in no way lived up to its own ideals. But in many ways has slowly gotten better – and worse – and better and worse, and better and worse at living up to them. But has not completely abandoned them yet. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and there was so much idealism surrounding a lot of that at the time. But one of the things, you know, because we’ve been focusing on the Uranus return of the United States so much over the past several years – one of my earliest episodes of The Astrology Podcast was actually about that back in 2013 when Nick and I did an episode about that – and just noting that correlation that astrologers have been noting since the 1800s, which is just every time Uranus comes back to that sign, there’s a reassessment of some of that. There’s always a major conflict, because Mars is conjunct Uranus in the US birth chart. But sometimes there’s a reassessment of some of the ideals that were built into some of the founding documents of the United States like the Declaration of Independence and that notion of like, all men are created equal and other things like that get reassessed sometimes during those times. And nowhere was that more clear than during the Civil War when that became the focal point of it. But even during World War II, some of those themes were coming up as well, because I noticed, for example, on the first Mars-Uranus conjunction of World War II, Roosevelt signs the documents to set up some of the first Japanese internment camps. So already there’s these issues about creating and sometimes subjugating people based on different like, classes in society and things like that. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. And right, there’s that same – Mars-Uranus – the embattled ideals, or freedom being in danger or people’s capacity to choose being threatened or coerced, and so necessitating a struggle over it. 

Another thing that happened during the World War II era was the framing of negative rights. The ideas that a person, in addition to having the freedom to, I don’t know, leave your house whenever you want to, right, as a positive right, something that was added at that time was the idea of negative rights – of being freedom from. Right? Being free from, you know, harassment, enslavement. To be free from things as well as free to. And there was a very important document at that time, like, the framing of negative rights. But just as an example of the further like, thinking and development of that set of liberal ideals. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Or free from – like, in the Revolutionary War, free from taxation without representation, for example. 

AC: Right. Exactly. 

CB: Yeah. So one of the reasons I’m bringing Mars-Uranus, because this year on July 4th, weirdly, on the birthday of the United States – what’s widely recognized as the birthday of the United States and the Declaration of Independence, the signing of it, when there was a Mars-Uranus conjunction back in 1776 – we get a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini just like it was back in 1776. And this is an incredibly important signature, so much so that I just did a whole episode and research project with Nick Dagan Best where we went back and looked at Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini in US history and found that they always represented major turning points during the course of the war or the conflict that was taking place during those times, which were the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. And usually the Mars-Uranus conjunctions at the beginning of that period after Uranus had just gone into Gemini, the first or second conjunction was usually the starting point of that war or that conflict. And then the Mars-Uranus conjunctions towards the end of that period of Mars in Gemini were sometimes the resolution and the bringing to completion of that conflict. So if that pattern holds, then it means that this first conjunction this year and the second conjunction two years from now in 2028 should be the start and the flashpoint of whatever this major conflict is that we’re looking at over the course of the next seven years, whether that’s an internal conflict like the Civil War was, or a major external conflict like World War II was. The flashpoints and the most important turning points are gonna be those Mars-Uranus conjunctions starting July 4th of 2026. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. How do you feel about Mars-Uranus? What do you have to say or what are your keywords for that combination? 

AC: It’s an explosive combination. It is a precedent-shattering and setting combination. Rules are broken, which then sets – you know, it breaks a norm to set a new norm, which is often quite un-norm. It’s a quite violent combination, and that violence can be enacted by people, but we also see crazy accidents during Mars-Uranus conjunctions that do a lot of destruction and may cause loss of life. And we have those both on purpose as well as by accident. They set things off, right? It’s very much the quality – I mean, one of the things that you see with the history of Mars-Uranus conjunctions is you literally see accidental giant explosions where a flame gets too close to a gigantic powderkeg or the equivalent thereof. And everything goes up in a second. And so you have this like, latent power. Like, all this latent energy, and then Mars provides the strike of the match or the little bit of flame. And that can be done internationally; it can be done unintentionally. But yeah, there are – like, flashpoint is a great term for that, for what they do. 

CB: Yeah. For sure. I mean, the most – biggest example of that, of course, was the end of World War II in 1945, the Mars — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — Uranus conjunction in Gemini that coincided with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that huge explosion but also the huge turning point in humanity technologically that that represented where suddenly humanity could destroy itself for like, the first time in its history after that point as it started basically the Cold War from that point forward. 

AC: Yeah. Precedent shattering but also new world beginning. Right? It’s the atomic age. 

CB: Yeah. And that’s actually one prediction from our last year’s forecast that I made that’s been aging unfortunately very well, which is that I thought Uranus returning to Gemini where it was when the atomic weapons were first created and used would bring us back to a period in which those were more prominent again. And unfortunately in the news over the past several months, we’ve been inching back towards that with the US saying it’s gonna start testing nuclear weapons again and other news stories coming up with nuclear weapons with other countries over the course of the past several months in a way that’s very unsettling as we are heading into a series of four Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini over the next several years. 

AC: Yeah. Well, I’ll say what I said last time, which is I agree, and that I think we will be very lucky to get to the other end of this Uranus in Gemini period with no nuclear weapons being deployed. 

CB: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. 

Okay, so other keywords that are important for Mars-Uranus but also Uranus more broadly is, you know, revolution and rebellion. Secession and separation – like, the splitting apart of something. And that was something that was interesting learning more about the Revolutionary War is realizing even though we classify like, the Civil War itself in the 1800s as a civil war, the Revolutionary War was actually kind of a civil war as well because it was, you know, the colonists were still part of the British and they decided to break away and secede, essentially, and form their own country. And even within the US mainland, there was a lot of conflict between revolutionary forces versus loyalists who wanted to stay part of the British crown, basically, so that the Revolutionary War was not just an external war with another country, which is how we look at it in retrospect, but it was also in some ways like, a civil war and the breaking away or separation or secession of one piece of a country from another. 

AC: Hundred percent. Yeah, ask King George. That was a hundred percent a civil war. And you see really clearly the basic Gemini symbolism of division, right? Of fragmentation, of dividing and division and further subdivision. 

CB: Yeah. And also rapid technological advancement, especially in communications and transportation was a huge part of not just World War II, which is the most obvious one, but also the Civil War had a huge, huge amount of that as well. There was a huge amount of things involving communications with like, the use of telegraphs and telegraph lines in war for the first time that was like, delivering battlefield updates nearly in real time to the White House for the first time, but also developments in transportation, such as the use of like, railroads to help facilitate the war efforts for the first time, so — 

AC: Yeah. It was the first war that used railroad ads for logistics, and it changed everything. 

CB: Yeah. So that’s important precedent. And then of course, we also had a lot of rapid technological development in both wars with the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in weaponry. Like guns that could shoot further and more accurately in the Civil War, and then of course in World War II we had the development of the atomic bomb and the deployment of that for the first time. 

So I’m bringing this up because these are some of the themes that we’re gonna be experiencing with Uranus in Gemini and especially the Mars-Uranus conjunctions over the course of the next seven years as we have just rapid advancements in technology and communications. Like, even more so than now, because like, right now everyone could hear that and be like, “Well, yeah, that’s already happening.” But we’re gonna see an acceleration of that, I think, beyond what we can even fully anticipate at this stage. But also in transportation at the same time, and then finally also in terms of military technology and the new deployment of technology in wars and conflicts in ways that’s new and innovative and potentially more destructive than what we’ve seen up to this point. 

AC: Absolutely. Some people are already calling this the dawn of a revolution in military affairs, that armies are going to look very different on the other side of this. And yeah, as you were saying, I don’t think many people realize how technologically revolutionary the Civil War was in the United States. I was reading recently and just stumbled across a thing that was talking about how all the European powers were fascinated with the American Civil War, not because of the moral issues so much, but because it was in many ways the first modern war. Because it was the first time we had repeating rifles, right? A.k.a., what would become machine guns. Submarines. Ironclad ships. The first aircraft carrier was for launching observation balloons, which was a new thing as well as aerial reconnaissance. The telegraph was used in addition to the railroads. There were also – with the telegraph, we also had the introduction of new military codes for encrypting messages. Like, it’s sort of everything that would inform warfare for the next hundred some years in its infancy. And so yeah, and so you see a combination of transportation and communication or information technologies all put to military use. And of course, the Civil War is a very important precedent for us, or for our astrological configurations during this era because we had Uranus in Gemini and Neptune in Aries then, and that’s what we have this time. We didn’t have Neptune in Aries during World War II. 

CB: Yeah. And that was the piece that was crucial about all of the idealism of all the young soldiers heading into the war was – and thinking it was gonna be this heroic like, hand-to-hand combat thing that would be over in 90 days is they didn’t know how much the technology had jumped and leapfrogged and become much more advanced, or how much it would even become more advanced during the course of the war, which just increased the brutality and the carnage, the sheer amount of casualties and deaths in the war way beyond what anybody on either side was expecting. And that was one of the things that then led to that arc of like, illusions and overidealization of war in the early part of Neptune in Aries, but then like, disillusionment once the sheer scale of it became clear. 

AC: Yeah. And it really frames that Neptune in Aries hope or ideal, like, the dream of an honorable but hard fought duel which will decide things. Right? As opposed to a grinding conflict that degrades all those involved. 

CB: Right. Yeah. And the introduction of like, gatling guns and things like that that are just like, mowing people down. 

So so much of this, obviously, the obvious parallel that we can already see developing that has been developing the past few years is drone warfare and just what that looks like and what the brutality of that as a new form of warfare that we can already see being deployed most notably in like, Ukraine – in the war between Russia and Ukraine. But just how much that changes the nature of war in the modern period. 

AC: Yeah, and that’s such a interesting and perfect combination of the transportation and the communication or informational technologies, because they’re fast-moving, there are a lot of them, and they can be – you know, there are some AI or like, pre-programmed drones. There’s obviously the remote control. And it’s just changed every operation in warfare. It hasn’t replaced anything; it’s changed everything, right? Trenches are still useful, but you have to be able to defend against drones that can drop grenades directly on top of you. Right? Like, artillery’s still useful, but now it may be more so, because you can use drones to spot for you and scout. And so drones have just sort of become part of all these things that have been warfare in the modern era, but now everything’s different and needs drones, and it keeps changing and new things get discovered every season. 

CB: Right. Yeah. And all of this is important, because with Uranus going back into Gemini again, I believe we’re on the cusp of a major war. So we have to talk about some of those things being on the cusp of this. But then also obviously there’s gonna be other, more positive manifestations of this as well. 

One of them I noticed recently that’s a blend between Uranus in Gemini and the Saturn-Neptune conjunction is I posted my video horoscopes that Leisa Schaim and I did this year for each rising sign, and I posted clips of them on Instagram. And on Instagram, there’s an option to translate them automatically, and it had the ability to translate them into three different languages – into Spanish and Portuguese and Hindi – where it dubbed the audio and it mimicked my voice and did a pretty good mimic of my voice, dubbing it into each of those languages. But then it also used AI video to change my mouth so that my mouth matched the words that were being spoken in that language. And so I was just struck by how Uranus in Gemini at this very early stage is like, the breaking down of all borders between communication and that being one of our keywords over the next seven years where functionally the barriers between different humans that were naturally there as a result of language are suddenly being erased to some extent in a significant way and how that’s gonna impact society and the world if all of us have these like, automatic translators. 

AC: Yeah, that’s a great point. Right? Like, how many works of entertainment and fiction and culture were you just not exposed to because there was never an English version? Right? And yeah, it’s like… Yeah, like, the potential for all of that to change culture and to impact culture is pretty extraordinary. And it’s not that – I don’t know. Like, it doesn’t have to be perfect to have a massive impact. Right? It’s just like, lowering the friction to crossing linguistic barriers. 

CB: Absolutely. And how much that will also impact society and people’s perceptions, including people’s like, prejudices, because so often it’s like, humans sometimes are able to other other people if they don’t speak the same language and therefore there’s an assumption of a difference or a foreignness or like, an alienness to different groups. But if all of a sudden, like, you can understand an entire other country or group of people and you can see that they’re just speaking normally and they’re normal humans, and you don’t have those illusions of separateness or otherness, how that will impact things in terms of people’s perceptions and prejudices seems like it would be a very positive development to me when it comes to that. 

AC: Yeah. Totally. In addition to that, you can also see the potential for further fragmentation in the sense that if… So back when I was a boy, 74 years ago, everybody kind of either saw the same movies or didn’t see those movies, but there was… You know, there were three channels on television. And you were either for or against what was on the TV, but there was very meaningfully a mainstream culture. And that has – culture has become – the culture that is available has become much more widely varied since we go to internet. But that, like, the potential for erasing or at least minimizing language barriers means that the amount of potential culture that any one person is exposed to is quadrupled, quintipled, et cetera, et cetera. And so you know, like, the chances of, “Oh, did you see that thing?” The chances of a watercooler moment when everybody has all of the culture in the entire world at their disposal, right? Like, the ability to find yourself in a niche that nobody you know knows anything about increases by whatever factor. Which isn’t necessarily a bad or a good thing, but it’s a thing. 

CB: That’s incredible. Yeah, that reminds me – during the last Uranus in Gemini period, the United Nations was founded. And so you have that image of like, all of the representatives from the different countries there that are each wearing, you know, the earpiece where the other peoples’ languages being automatically translated by a translator in their ear. It’s like, we have a version of that happening now over the past seven years, but for everybody. And that’s – I mean, that’s a beautiful image to me of what you were saying where somebody could create like, a viral clip in Spain that all of a sudden is automatically translated into every language and everybody around the world is like, knowing about that viral clip. It really is breaking down borders a lot more than at any other time. 

AC: Yeah. And I think a lot of people will probably be very surprised to find out what other people were thinking. “Oh, I had no idea that half a billion people were thinking about this like this!” Nobody — 

CB: Right. 

AC: Nobody in the anglosphere says that about this thing, and vice versa. 

CB: Right. Yeah. That’s brilliant. Okay, and then the last thing, of course, is obvious but bears repeating is just with the transportation revolution that’s coming with Uranus in Gemini over the next seven years, this is probably gonna be the widespread adoption of self-driving cars and having that in place much more than we might even expect by the end of this transit in the mid-2030s, and electric vehicles also taking over during this time as well are two really obvious ones that I can see. But there will probably be other things involving drones and different things like that — 

AC: Delivery drones. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Delivery drones gotta be right around the corner. 

CB: Delivery drones and then also, you know, a year or two ago I was talking about the drone taxi cabs also starting to become a thing as well. 

AC: Right. 

CB: Yeah. So that’s a major thing. Okay, so that’s Uranus in Gemini, and that’s the Mars-Uranus conjunctions. There’s more there, but it might be a good time to take a break. What do you think? 

AC: My bladder agrees. 

CB: Okay. The bladder has spoken. We take a little break. 

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AC: Yeah, it looks great. Honestly. Being able to have the same, access the same thing on multiple devices is pretty useful because I have a laptop, a phone, and a desktop, and they certainly can’t all run the same software. And it sounds like they are very thought – it seems like there’s a lot of nice quality of life stuff. Like, oh, that’s nice, so you can just put it in privacy mode rather than having to remake the chart or take the chart image and export it and then edit it. I’m excited to see what features come next. There’s a voracious evolution, Zerg-like, happening. 

CB: Yeah. I love the dark mode; I love the zodiacal releasing module, and like you were saying, I love how you can get your charts basically across any device. Because I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to pull up a chart, but it’s like, stuck on my desktop at home and I don’t have access to that chart file on my phone or my tablet. 

AC: Yeah, it’s pretty nice. And I like dark mode. You know, I kind of artificially create dark mode whenever I write things. I always write with white text on a black background. Have for 20 years. 

CB: Nice. Nice. Yeah. I’m gonna be trying it out soon on some of the forecast episodes. I’m gonna experiment with it and see if we can alternate from the blazing Sun of the Solar Fire like, white chart design that I usually use and see if I can give people’s eye a break here in some future episodes. 

AC: I’m here for it. Literally and figuratively. 

CB: Awesome. All right. Well, let’s get back into the overview section of this forecast, which is going longer – of course – than we expected, but that’s all right because we’ve got so many big, weighty things to talk about. But the next thing I wanted to talk about is Jupiter this year, which is spending the first six months of the year still moving through Cancer, through the sign of its exaltation, but then starting at the end of June, Jupiter’s gonna move into the sign of Leo for the next year where it’s gonna be joining up with eventually the South Node and then Mars as well as an eclipse that’s gonna take place in August in the sign of Leo. So it’s the start of actually a bunch of Leo activity this year. 

AC: Yeah. It sure is. So you know, Jupiter spends the first half of the year in Cancer, which is its exaltation, and in pretty good shape. And one of the things that Jupiter does is it keeps things from falling apart. You know, we often look to Jupiter for new good things, and Jupiter does bring opportunities. It potentiates growth, et cetera, et cetera. But that’s the positive half. The other half that Jupiter performs, which is in natal charts and in the skies, is protecting us from worst case scenarios, providing remedy where there’s injury, or holding things together. And I shudder to think how much Jupiter is holding together right now in Cancer as Jupiter is literally full strength in Cancer; this is as much high quality Jupiter juice as we’re going to get. And Jupiter in Leo, of course, has its own excellences but is overall less capable of holding things together. And so that is one of the differences in Jupiter moving from Cancer to Leo is we get less ability for Jupiter to kind of keep everything together for just a little while longer. And it’s worth noting that Jupiter in Cancer is in the same sign it was when the Declaration of Independence was declared and that the United States in that chart has Mercury, Sun, Venus, and Jupiter in Cancer, and it is a Jupiter-ruled chart. And so again, one shudders to think that what we see before us here in December of 2025 is the United States with a lot of support that will go away halfway through the year. In fact, it’ll go away about a week before our first Mars-Uranus conjunction. Just in time! 

CB: Yeah, that’s a great point. Well, what’s funny is we had a really tangible example of that protective function that you were talking about literally like, over the past few days, because you got sick like, a few days ago right before this forecast with a cold. And my heart sank the moment you told me that, because that’s always our worst case scenario is like, one of us gets sick and can’t do the big forecast that we’ve been preparing like, a month for. But you, my friend, somehow already fought it off and are in amazing shape today, and I realized like, that’s part of that – you actually have Jupiter exalted in Cancer in your birth chart in the first house in the place of the body. And Jupiter is serving that like, protective function sometimes I feel like when it comes to your health and ability to either fight stuff off or recuperate pretty quickly. 

AC: Yeah. Hundred percent. It’s definitely an area where I have received blessings, to restore what has been depleted or to protect from what would harm. Yeah, because it was just – we had a very quiet Christmas, just Kait and Lucian and I, and they were both dog sick. And so I was just cuddling with my two beloved booger piles for days on end. The viral load was very intense, but it got in a little bit and then I bounced back. And I —

CB: Nice.

AC: You know, bouncing is a pretty Jupiter thing. Right? It’s that, like, you know, when people talk about like, a soft landing or what cushions an impact – like, the ability to bounce off of things. Or like, if you have a fall, instead of just splatting, like, bouncing. Like, that capacity to reattain elevation, to deal with impacts in a way that doesn’t interfere with or doesn’t damage the structural integrity of the thing. I think bounciness might be a bit of a Jupiter core signification. What do you think? 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Especially bouncing back, because speaking of that, it’s like, one of the things Jupiter was helping all of us with in the past just like, six months now since it moved into Cancer is it’s been cleaning up the mess that the Mars retrograde in Cancer left at the beginning of 2025 and late 2024 where Mars was just for many of us, at least, was wrecking a certain part of our life based on what house it went retrograde in in Cancer. But then luckily, we’ve had Jupiter come in in the second half of 2025 to clean up some of the mess. But while that’s helped a lot, like, Jupiter still has a lot of work to do. And luckily, we’ve got like, six more months for Jupiter to really get things going. And especially around the time of Jupiter’s direct station in Cancer, I’m looking forward to Jupiter being fully empowered so it can do some of its best work there strengthening the Cancer sectors of each of our charts. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. There are multiple configurations during the first half of 2026 that I would have no hope at all for, except for the Jupiter intervention which is present in all of them. And again, like, Jupiter won’t always prevent negative things from happening, but a lot of times, it prevents the worst case scenario, or it offers the potential for repair or restoration of relationship. And that’s, of course, in addition to the positive things that Jupiter still has to offer people this year in that Cancer area of their life, which is, you know, the capacity to grow or develop in a new area, to obtain new knowledge, et cetera, et cetera. So we like Jupiter in Cancer. We like that we’ve got another six months of it. 

CB: Yeah. To grow and to develop, to nurture something new, and to allow it to grow and flourish. But also because it’s a planet in its exaltation, that often represents doing the best or the highest version of whatever it is that you’re trying to do. So I think each of us can really take advantage of that this year by thinking about what house Jupiter is transiting through in our chart and thinking about what’s a way that we could improve that sector of our life if we really planned it out and thought about it ahead of time. Not in a haphazard way, but in a way of like, what is the best version of this that I could be doing in my life? And then executing on that plan. 

AC: Yeah. And one thing that I’ve noticed about Jupiter’s exaltation in Cancer is that it often comes off as humble in aspiration or slow-moving, but the results are really extraordinary over time. It doesn’t look as exciting as like, Jupiter in Pisces or Jupiter in Sagittarius. But you look at, for example, the only investor who’s been among the richest people in the world is Warren Buffet, who’s a Jupiter in Cancer who just… If you listen to him and look at what he’s done, he just invests in companies that he believes in. Right? But has done that for 60 years. And so a lot of times, there’s something almost confusingly humble about the approach of Jupiter in Cancer, but then the results are anything but humble. And so like —

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — slow but steady, right? Like, every plant, at least, starts as a seed. Right? You don’t try to take the giant oak and transplant it. Like, you know, you nurture the acorns, and then before you know it, you’ve got something oaken and huge and extraordinary. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and Jupiter in Cancer also just excels at taking care of people, and we’ve talked about like, the ACA being passed 12 years ago and being instituted under that transit in terms of Americans getting healthcare at that time, and then the challenges to some of that that are coming up at this time where it’s just barely been hanging on by a thread. But that’s a good example also of like, taking care of large groups of people by providing healthcare of the sort of energy that Jupiter in Cancer can bring of how can you help large groups of people with that sort of energy during the first six months. 

AC: Yeah, and care. Care is such a good keyword for anything Cancer, but especially a benefic in Cancer like Jupiter. 

CB: Right. So this kind of peaks, this energy peaks and is the most positive to me around early June. Because around that time, Venus moves into Cancer and forms this very auspicious conjunction with Jupiter in early June that just looks super nice and I’m really looking forward to as one of the most positive alignments of the year in early June. And one of the things in the Electional Astrology Report that Leisa and I just released is I kind of mentioned how I remembered how last summer, the Taylor Swift marriage announcement – like, the proposal announcement – happened. The proposal happened around the Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer. So in the report, I kind of speculated that we’d probably see a big celebrity wedding like Taylor Swift around that time of that conjunction in early June. 

AC: I actually just got invited to a wedding in early June. 

CB: Did you? Okay. 

AC: By non-astrologers! 

CB: Is it Taylor Swift? Did you get invited to Taylor Swift’s wedding? 

AC: Yeah, she found out that we have the same Venus and we’re besties now. 

CB: That does make sense, actually. Well, I actually just saw in a tabloid – tabloids are saying that she’s getting married in early June. So I’m actually calling that as an accurate prediction on my part, because that was what I was thinking is if she got proposed to – if the proposal happened under the conjunction, it would make so much sense for the actual marriage to happen on the recurrence of that in June. So we’ll see if that actually happens, if that gets validated some time soon in the larger press. But it’s a nice little sweet spot in the year despite all of the challenging stuff we’ve been talking about and some of the really difficult aspects like the Mars-Uranus conjunction in July. There are at least these like, sweet spots at different points like that Venus-Jupiter conjunction at the beginning of June. 

AC: Yeah. And I’m gonna restrain myself from talking about the other sweet fruits available – the orchard of that time of year. But yeah, that’s right smack in the middle of my favorite portion of the year to come. I believe Kelly would refer to that conjunction as “juicy.” 

CB: Juicy. Yeah. Well, that is the – if our famous prediction about March of 2020 was that was like, the “no hugging” time of the year, then that will be the hugging time of the year in early June, I think we could say. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Hugs all around. 

CB: Hugs. All right, so speaking of that actually — 

AC: And after what comes before that, you know, a lot of us are gonna need a hug. 

CB: Yes. Definitely. So speaking of that, actually, Leisa and I just released our 2026 Electional Astrology Report, which is a guide to the most fortunate dates in 2026. And that’s how I first found that Venus-Jupiter conjunction, because what we do in the report is we pick the most auspicious dates for starting things next year, which you can use for business, love, or pretty much any major life event. And we went through each of the next 12 months, and we picked out the two best dates and the two best astrological charts with times that you can use to do things next year during the course of 2026. And we released this as a report that people can purchase through our website.

So we have 28 auspicious charts because we expanded it to two charts this year per month rather than just one. And the report includes a video report, an audio report, plus an extensive written report as a PDF. And it includes a monthly forecast with not just the dates to do things that are good, but we also tell you what dates to avoid because sometimes electional astrology is just as much about knowing which dates to avoid doing things than it is like, knowing which dates are really good. 

So we’re doing a launch sale right now where the report is on sale for 49.95, but only until January 7th, and then the price is gonna jump up to the regular price of 75 [65] dollars. So you can get the report now at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/2026Report. 

AC: Excellent. And it’s so much work. And it’s so nice to have somebody else do it for you. 

CB: Yeah, because it’s a lot of work to like, found good dates to do things. Like, marriages or launch a business or something else. But we actually did that ourselves and then put it in a report. And what’s funny is like, we’re doing this work for ourselves as well, because — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — you’ll see us using these same dates like, all throughout next year. Like, a lot of my major podcast episodes will launch on these dates or will be recorded. You know, product launches and other things like that. Because I actually use these as the best dates; I just happen to also make a report to share them with everyone else. 

AC: Yeah, it’s nice. And it’s pretty, it’s consistently entertaining how often we end up with either exactly the same idea or like, a variation on a theme of what the best day of the month is to do a thing. 

CB: Right. And we find out in retrospect that we both like, did the most important thing on the same day and like, time that month within the same hour. 

AC: Yeah. Or like, oh, I picked the same day, but I wanted this rising because of this, but like, it’s so – yeah, it’s the same principles, and it’s not just Chris and Leisa’s opinion. You know? 

CB: Right. 

AC: There are a lot of principles that get applied, and you get… You know, with rigor, there’s a very small divergence between what the best days are and often no divergence at all in opinion. 

CB: Definitely. Awesome. Well, yeah. So get the report before the price goes up on January 7th at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/2026Report. 

All right, so let’s transition into talking a little bit more about Jupiter in Leo, because we really focused on Jupiter in Cancer, but that’s just the first half of the year. And then in late June we get a major shift where we end the first chapter of this year basically, and we move into the second chapter when Jupiter goes into Leo because that’s the first of – like I said – at least, like, three, maybe four major Leo transits that just like, start happening from that point forward. 

AC: Yeah. Yeah, it is. So should we talk a little bit about Jupiter in Leo, the nature of the planet in the sign, before we talk about all of the friends that Jupiter will make in Leo? 

CB: Yes, please. 

AC: Yeah. So right, Jupiter, although not exalted, right? Not like, this formula for excellence for Jupiter that Cancer is, Leo’s a great place for Jupiter when it’s not interfered with. Right? Jupiter likes warmth and expansiveness; the solar principle, which is present in Leo, is a welcome alloy to Jupiterian buoyancy. You often see people who are born with a gift of personable and relatable warmth, Jupiter in Leo bestows a gift of confidence and belief in oneself, and/or the capacity to strengthen others through seeing them and believing in their capacities. There can also be a theatrical or performative talent – the ability to appear and to command attention, which is also helpful for people in leadership roles. It’s a good Jupiter. Like, it has quite a few – it can do quite a few things. It’s no longer the exaltation, but there’s a lot to like about Jupiter in Leo. 

CB: Yeah. It has this buoyant, radiant energy which I think about sometimes like, a prominent Jupiter in Leo of – you know, there’s some people where that idea of like, visualizing or trying to manifest the future, and not just faking it until you’re making it, but like, literally manifesting things in your life through a sheer optimism and belief that you deserve and can accomplish something, and then just like, creating that in your life out of that that I often think about when it comes to Jupiter in Leo, and especially people that have Jupiter in Leo in the first house kind of exude when I think about their natal placements. That’s what I think of. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it really turns the often trite stuff about believing in yourself into something realistic and actually kind of enviable. You’re like, oh — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — that actually, that’s – you say thing, but you’ve acted on that and you’ve demonstrated that that’s not trash! There actually is something to that. Yeah, and again, there’s just a nice warmth and sort of embracing quality. Off the top of my head, like, Will Ferrell is a Jupiter in Leo who’s just like, a darn likable fella. There’s just like, there’s an accessibility to that Jupiter in Leo gives that I think is rather nice. And for those of us with solar issues who flee at the coming of the light, Jupiter in Leo can be medicinal as a way of seeing how not all – like, as a way of proving that the Sun does more than give you skin cancer. 

CB: Right. Yeah. I’m looking through my list really quickly of people that have Jupiter in Leo, and you have sometimes great creatives like George Lucas who created Star Wars or a more recent example, we’ve got Bill Burr the comedian. We’ve got… Bo Burnham is a great like, contemporary creative example, just his ability to like, create things truly as a creative in some sense, but also a performer. 

AC: Yeah. Well, and Bo Burnham has an ability to take what is very self-involved material, very Leo “me me me,” but make it wide-reaching and all-embracing. Right? 

CB: Right. 

AC: It extends that personal “me me me” to actually it’s me, but that’s me as just one instance of us, and so it becomes interesting and relatable. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, speaking of – you using that is making me see another one in my list, which is Joe Rogan, and just him as a central figure becoming a podcasting empire but through the centralization of just him as a personality and his conversations with other people is what made his podcast take off originally. 

AC: Yeah. Like, obviously a person that a lot of people can relate to. 

CB: Right. Yeah, or as like, the everyman or something like that early on, at least — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — that was the attraction. 

Okay, but also other people that just genuinely effuse good energy. Like our friend Kelly Surtees, for example, is a — 

AC: Yeah! 

CB: — famous Jupiter in Leo. That’s a good one. 

AC: Hundred percent! 

CB: Let’s see. Judith Butler. Anthony Bourdain is another, again, another one like the everyday man that people can relate to that just exudes this kind of buoyant but, yeah, positive energy in some way that’s very much on their sleeve. 

AC: Yeah. And another instance of someone whose work is very much about their experience, but their experience is big enough that it doesn’t feel self-centered. 

CB: Absolutely. All right, I’m seeing others because I’m trying to pick out, for example, some different women. But like, Eleanor Roosevelt was a really famous Jupiter in Leo as well. Angela Davis. Pamela Anderson. It’s like, where you sort of start seeing like, a pattern here going through some of these different names. But that’s the energy, and we’re only gonna get that energy for a little bit though, at least in its pure, I don’t wanna say unadulterated form, because it gets adulterated like, pretty quickly.

AC: Unmolested? 

CB: I’m not gonna go there either, but I will say, you know, Jupiter in Leo is there… Well, really, yeah, no, it’s not unadulterated, because like, as soon as it goes into Leo it opposes Pluto —

AC: Pluto. 

CB: — and then in August, we get the first Leo eclipse. So then there’s a second magnification of the Leo energy. In July, we have the nodes changing signs and the South Node goes into Leo. And then at the end of the year, starting in September, Mars goes into Leo and it starts building up to a retrograde in Virgo and Leo that’s gonna extend far into 2027. So it’s like, when Leisa and I were doing the horoscopes this year, for every sign we were just realizing that whatever the Leo sector of your chart is, whatever house that coincides with is really gonna be getting the most activity this year in some ways because especially in the second half of the year it just starts getting pinged by all the major transits. 

AC: Yeah. I’m sure you had a similar experience as I did where I would look at it and be like, “Oh! And so Jupiter’s gonna move into your blank house, and that’s gonna be great, but I guess it opposes Pluto and it’s gonna be copresent with the South Node for 11 of the 12 months, and oh – is that Mars? Oh, and Mars is going to be there for five of those months.” So it’s a lot of Leo, and there’s a lot for Jupiter to reconcile, overcome, equilibrate, deal with in Leo. And that’s another difference between Jupiter’s time in Cancer and Jupiter’s time in Leo. Jupiter, once we get to mid-February, will be dealing with the whole sign but not exact square from Saturn and Neptune, which certainly affects – like, does some limiting – of how much pure Jupiter in Cancer excellence we can get and how much its Jupiter in Cancer offsetting or trying to mitigate the Saturn in Aries stuff. But there are no exact aspects. Jupiter has got a lot of free time to do its own thing. Whereas Jupiter will be extremely busy dealing with the dragon’s lashing tail as well as Mars in and out of Leo. 

CB: Yeah. And one of the things Jupiter’s gonna do is it’s gonna aggrandize like, all of the people that have prominent Leo placements, whether that’s their Sun sign or their rising sign or 10th house or what have you. We’re gonna see all the Leo people coming and being thrust more into the forefront of headlines and other things like that from late June and early July onwards, and that’s only gonna accelerate in August when we get that Leo eclipse. But then — 

AC: I like – I think “aggrandize” is a really good term. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And there are some parts of that that there are gonna be good things for some of those Leos subjectively during the early parts of that, the aggrandizement, but then later in the year when Mars gets involved, things become more troubling and there’s more drawbacks and conflict that starts coming up in that area with the people that have that placement prominent. 

AC: Absolutely. I would say that the trouble starts as soon as that first eclipse in Leo lands and that Mars adds to that. 

CB: Let me just show that eclipse then, since we’re really getting into it here. So our second eclipse season is taking place in August with the first eclipse being this solar eclipse that occurs in Leo at 20 degrees of Leo on August 12th. So the eclipse season officially begins about a week before that by around August 5th or so. It peaks with that first eclipse in Leo, and then we get that – it’s always the most intense in between the two weeks that follow the first eclipse, and then we get the second eclipse is a lunar eclipse in Pisces on August 27th, which then means that eclipse season doesn’t end until some time in the first week of September around the 4th or so. 

So part of what this brings up that I mentioned earlier is how this is gonna be – this partially represents us wrapping up or heading towards wrapping up the Virgo-Pisces eclipse season or eclipse series, I should say, that’s been happening since 2024 when we had our first lunar eclipse in Pisces in September of 2024, and then our first lunar eclipse in Virgo in March of 2025. So we’re gonna get in 2026, this lunar eclipse in Pisces, but then the last eclipse of that series happens in February of 2027 in Virgo, and then we’re all finished with that. So what we’re seeing then is the later parts of a sequence of eclipses that were representing a series of major beginnings and major endings in the Virgo and Pisces sectors of our charts that should be headed towards completion and headed towards wrapping up whatever that unfolding of a sequence of events has been over the past year or two that these eclipses represent. 

So that’s one part of that, and then the other part of that is that this also represents the beginning of the new sequence of eclipses in Aquarius and Leo, which started in February of 2026 with the first eclipse in Aquarius and then we get the second half of that in August with the first eclipse in Leo. But then we’re gonna have eclipses bouncing back and forth between those two signs, going all the way until 2028. So this is truly opening up a new chapter where we’re gonna have, in the Leo and Aquarius sectors of our charts, some things coming to a major ending and some closures of major things that have been happening in that area of our life for years up to this point. But then also as a result of those closures, we’re gonna see new beginnings and the humble origins of new trends that are gonna emerge over the course of the next two years. 

AC: Boy, will we. 

CB: Yeah. So that’s super important, and then that’s one of the reasons why the ingress of Jupiter into Leo is important, because we got a double activation of Leo going on between those two basically from July into August. 

What else is going on? That Jupiter, we’re gonna get into that more in the monthly breakdown, but I’m not super stoked, though, that Jupiter opposes Pluto as soon as it goes into Leo. Because like, one of my references for that is I remember the flipside of that, which was the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in 2020 where we had three of those. And the two primary things if you go back and listen to the forecast episodes I was noting at the time as those conjunctions were happening is near each conjunction, we were seeing a proliferation of sometimes conspiracy theories for lack of a better word where sometimes the truth was being manipulated by people in power in order to get the masses to do things by misleading them was one of the archetypal things I was noticing about that. But that was also during the period in which with covid like, some of the highest death numbers were happening when those two planets came together exactly. 

So those were two of my takeaways back in 2020, so — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — it’s one of the things I’m not… 

AC: Oh, just add to those series of moments is Jupiter-Pluto is found in a conspicuously large number of not just billionaire, but like, mega-billionaire charts. And we had people in the top one percent of the one percent of the one percent doing extremely well financially during those same Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions in 2020. 

CB: Right. Although it was because they were taking advantage of a catastrophic crash where the market took a nosedive, basically, during covid. But the ones that had enough money and were smart, they immediately jumped in and invested during those times and then came out of it making huge amounts of money. 

AC: Yeah. So yeah. One thing – so here’s a hopeful thing for this Jupiter-Pluto opposition. So in that we’ve seen Pluto in Aquarius very consistently measuring the march of AI, if Jupiter’s opposing that in this warm and rather humane sign of Leo, perhaps that is the formation of some meaningful cultural resistance to the potential excesses or negative impacts that AI everywhere in everything can have. 

The founding — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — of the human resistance from the Terminator franchise? 

CB: Sure. Or like, the centering of, I don’t know, individual consciousness as opposed to the collective consciousness which the AI sort of represents. Or the individual – the creativity of the individual, let’s say, as opposed to the creativity of the collective which all the AI stuff is just drawing on people’s individual creations and then is just like, creating something new and artificial based on that. But maybe there’ll be a countertrend. 

AC: Yeah. Like with Jupiter in Leo and with Leo in general, you get a lot of auteur type figures, right? Where it’s like, the writer-director. I’m like, hey, it’s actually really nice when one person is like, primarily responsible and it’s a coherent vision rather than a committee design. And again, we see a lot of famous auteurs have big piles in Leo. And that idea of auteur cinema and authorship in general extended outward into culture in general as it is being juxtaposed by like, the AI creations are exactly the opposite of auteur theory. 

CB: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And where the creative output and success is often centered on like, the personality and the persona of the individual in a distinct way. 

AC: Right. It’s sort of, I don’t know, you know, there’s a famous written piece from many decades ago called “The Death of the Author.” And so the people have debated “The Death of the Author” for a very long time; this seems like another very important round of debate about whether the author is or is not dead – the Schrodinger’s author. 

CB: Yeah. All right. So that’s kind of Jupiter in Leo. We’ll talk more about that later. That’s kind of also eclipse season too. We don’t have anything more to say about that, right? 

AC: No. I mean, really, it’s… Yeah. It coincides with it. It connects with the Jupiter themes. It may negate some; it might hyperinflate others. And then the other one, the one in Pisces, is a continuation just as you said of what we’ve been doing and won’t be done with until early 2027. 

CB: Right. Okay. So yeah. But people should just prepare for the major endings and major beginnings that have been happening in the Virgo and Pisces houses of your chart, that energy starting to shift dramatically towards the Leo and Aquarius houses of your chart of major endings and major beginnings. 

AC: Right. So that’ll be the end of August is the very last eclipse in Pisces. There’s one more in Virgo to go, but that’s basically the wrap-up for the Pisces side. 

CB: That’s crazy, because then that’s also just wrapping up this whole experience of Saturn and Neptune in Pisces that’s been going on since March of 2023. And already a lot of the fatigue that people have had in Saturn going through that sector of their chart, a lot of the added responsibility and like, the weightiness of that. And while Saturn has departed already earlier in the year, having that final eclipse in Pisces at this time in August is really gonna put like, a capstone on what that entire experience has been about over the past three years. 

AC: Yeah. And as I mentioned in a previous episode, there has been at least one outer planet in Pisces – either Uranus or Neptune – since 2003. 

CB: Since 2003. Yeah, you’re right — 

AC: When Uranus went into Pisces. And then Uranus leaves Pisces and then within a month, Neptune’s in Pisces in 2011. 

CB: Yeah. So 2011 was the big shift of Neptune into Pisces, and that’s the other thing that’s ending this year. 

Okay. So I think that’s good. I wanna move onto the last two major transits that start happening in the last quarter of the year. And the first one is we get a Venus retrograde that takes place in the signs of Libra and Scorpio in October and November when Venus slows down in the sky and then turns around and starts moving backwards in the order of the signs of the zodiac for a period of about 40 days and 40 nights. 

So here’s a diagram that Paige made that shows the Venus retrograde, which is in the middle where Venus stations retrograde at eight degrees of Scorpio on October 3rd. And then it retrogrades back into Libra before stationing direct on November 13th at 22 degrees of Libra. But one of the things we learned about Venus retrogrades in the last Venus retrograde that occurred in Aries and Pisces at the beginning of 2025 was that part of what happens when Venus goes retrograde in a couple of signs is it’s not just the retrograde itself, but it’s also Venus spending an extended period of time in two signs of the zodiac and basically in two sectors of our chart over a several month period. And when you look at it from that standpoint, the broader period that’s relevant related to this starts to build up on August 6th when Venus first moves into the sign of Libra, which is the sign it will retrograde back to. And then Venus enters its shadow degree, which is the degree it will later retrograde back to at 22 degrees of Libra on August 31st. And then after that, after Venus stations direct in mid-November, it doesn’t exit its shadow degree at eight degrees of Scorpio until December 15th. And then it doesn’t completely depart from the signs that it went retrograde in until January 7th. 

So what we’re gonna see here is the unfolding of a sequence of events between early August and early January that are very much centered on the retrograde in October and November, but are connected to a broader series of events that we’ll all be experiencing in the later part of this year. 

Yeah. So Venus retrograde keywords. One of the things about Venus retrograde, of course, is it has this backwards-looking orientation where there’s people from your past sometimes that comes back. There are situations from the past that sometimes become relevant again to the present. And there’s a sense of having to sometimes visit and redo the past and decide whether you want to take something from the past and bring it back into your future and take it with you, or whether you’re gonna revisit the past but decide that what was in the past is best to stay there, basically, and then you move forward without it. That’s one of the core themes that come up during Venus retrogrades. 

AC: Yeah, definitely. The Venus retrogrades are, you know, similar in action to Mercury retrogrades, but the types of connections that are made or unmade are not so blithely or easily cast aside or reconnect – because it’s not just informational. With Venus it’s like, do I re-tether myself to this person, to this thing, to this endeavor, to this place. And so the questions about like, whether to reconnect or stay connected or disconnect are all have an emotional and life weight to them. They’re substantial, right? It’s much more in the realm of living tissue rather than abstracted numbers and letters. And so lots of relational questions. 

And so this one happens during fall in the northern hemisphere every eight years. So 2018, 2010, 2002, and as I was thinking through these, Chris, I have a perfect memory of Venus retrograde in Scorpio from 2002. So Scorpionic themes – Venus is in detriment or exile in Scorpio because many of the things that we find in Scorpio are not easy to love. They’re not easy to enjoy. One of the themes that we might see in Scorpio is decay, as it is, in the northern hemisphere, often a quite moist time of year where things are happy to rot. And in the fall of 2002, I found myself recently graduated from college, working in a RadioShack, which was a rotting business soon to go out of business across the land, in a dying mall. Right? You remember malls. In a dying mall in a dying rustbelt town in Ohio where I grew up. And during that time, my college girlfriend was like, “Yeah, we live in different places; we should probably just be done.” And I was like, “That’s reasonable,” but I found myself newly single, so alone and then surrounded in like, a three-layer concentric rot onion. And I was like, that’s such good Venus retrograde in Scorpio content. 

CB: I love that; that’s perfect. 

AC: And everything was fine. I saved up a bunch of money, and then I got the fuck out of there. But I had to do that like, retrograde season in the abyss. I hung on — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — the meat hook alone in Mansfield at the public mall in the RadioShack. You could come and throw things at me while I rested upon the meat hook shilling cell phones. 

CB: Ah, man. I wish I could have been there to see that. That’s good. 

Yeah, so the repetitions of Venus retrograde are very strong because of that eight-year repetition; that’s something we saw very vividly earlier this year in early 2025 when we had the retrograde in Aries and then all of these events and circumstances and scenarios from previous Venus retrogrades started coming back up again, not just in people’s individual lives but also in terms of world events. So I actually created a slide here to give people all of the Venus retrogrades in Scorpio that have occurred over the past century that will call back not just events in people’s personal lives, but also situations in world events. So the full Venus retrograde in Scorpio list is 2026, 2018, 2010, 2002, 1994, 1986, 1978, 1970, 1962, 1954, 1946, 1938, 1930, 1922, 1914, and 1906. So we’re gonna see the Venus retrograde was always later in like, the fourth quarter of each of those years, so especially things that happened in the fourth quarter of those years we’re gonna see come back again as repeating circumstances and scenarios in our time, like I said, in both personal events and mundane events. 

AC: You know, what just occurred to me is that boy, the fourth quarter of a lot of those years includes a ton of really decisive midterm elections in the United States.

CB: Yeah. That is gonna be certainly the focal point of things happening in the US is the US midterms will be taking place in early November of 2026. 

AC: Yeah. You can go back, I don’t know, for most of the last, I don’t know, at least 24 years, and those are all pretty significant midterms. 

CB: Yeah. And I’m sure this one will be. I mean, one of the things that sucks, though, is this Venus retrograde – you know, there’s some Venus retrogrades that maybe are a little bit more pleasant than others because of the aspects to how it starts. This one truly does not look good at the beginning. Because when Venus stations retrograde in Scorpio in early October, it has some really rough aspects to Pluto and Mars because there’s a Mars-Pluto opposition going exact at the almost exact same time as Venus is stationing retrograde. And you know, it’s also happening in Scorpio, and I just, I was hoping for a, I don’t know, more pleasant-looking Venus retrograde station that what we’re looking at here. 

AC: Yeah. It’s … Pretty max… It’s misery-maxxing. And in addition, we also get a Mercury retrograde in Scorpio nestled inside the Venus retrograde. So it’s definitely – every eight years, Q4, Venus retrograde in Scorpio, but like, on max difficulty. It’s more upsetting; it’s more dramatic. You know, the changes wrought may be more impactful and permanent in good ways, too. But the ordeal quality that Venus retrogrades always have will certainly be present. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: It’ll be less of the like, off-the-beaten – it’ll be less the unorthodox fun side of Venus retrogrades, which is a side of Venus retrogrades, and more the Inanna’s ordeal, which we learn things from and is significant. It may be better for us in the long run than the unorthodox fun side, but certainly more difficult to experience. 

CB: Yeah. I think it’s gonna… We’re gonna see more of the scandal and like, provocative things side of Venus retrograde taking place. Some of the either breakups or getting involved with an ex type things are gonna be much more tumultuous than they would have been in other Venus retrogrades where it might have been more pleasant. 

AC: Yeah, this one has a really raw look to the first portion. 

CB: Yeah. It does get a little bit better once Venus stations direct. Like, this is definitely – I’m glad you mentioned the descent of Inanna, which is often one of our core myths that goes back the furthest to the ancient Babylonian period from 3,000 years ago, maybe even 4,000 years ago in terms of that myth where Inanna is like, this queen who takes this descent to the underworld and has to give up all of her power and possessions and clothing and everything else and gets stuck in the underworld. But then eventually emerges and comes back on the other side of it a changed woman. I think we’re gonna see that theme much more vividly this time than even previous Venus retrogrades because it starts off so difficultly. But then when Venus does emerge and eventually stations direct, it stations direct in Venus’s home sign of Libra and Mercury stations direct the exact same day in November on November 13th. 

AC: Yeah. Yeah, this one’s definitely front-loaded as far as difficulty goes. 

CB: Yeah. So there will be some surprise comebacks, like returning from a period of obscurity, or yeah, emerging with a more authentic persona after going through like, a dark night of the soul type period will probably be pretty common during that. 

AC: Yeah. There’ll probably be a lot of really loud and bloody crashouts at the beginning, and then a disappearance, and people returned with their shit actually back together. 

CB: Right. Let’s see. Other keywords for that that we learned this year with the Venus retrograde are like, severing alliances. Like, breaking of diplomatic ties. Leaving groups that no longer align with your values and different things like that. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: Messy breakups, I think is gonna be a good keyword. 

AC: Yeah. Or alliances and membership in groups. Yeah, like, those sort of things thrown into question. Because sometimes the Venus retrogrades will throw things into question; it’ll look like there’s a falling out, but then it’s restored, but maybe not. But like, throwing into serious question where you cannot be certain that the United States and Canada will not be at war. I’m just joking about that, but like, you know, it’s something that you take for granted that there will be peaceful relationships between two entities or countries and that being thrown up into the air as a question mark. 

CB: Okay. 

AC: And some of them — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — right, some of them being alliances that are broken then, and some of them merely being thrown into question. But that being a meaningful characterization of that period where there’s uncertainty around relationships between individuals and entities. 

CB: Yeah. Definitely. 

One of the things about Venus going retrograde in Scorpio is it’s the sign of Venus’s detriment or antithesis or exile. And one of the keywords I wrote down for that is the outsider becomes the insider, where sometimes in Venus retrogrades in general but maybe especially this one, we have marginalized voices or especially marginalized aesthetics suddenly becoming the center of attention or the center of fashion. And I think that’s even more the case here, because we have Venus retrograde in Scorpio and just thinking of sometimes like, a Venus in Scorpio as like, a gothic type of aesthetic or a darker aesthetic in general and is often outside of the mainstream, but for some reason it becoming more prominent as part of the mainstream at this time.

AC: Yeah. Yeah, the gothic or sort of funereal – yeah, it would be interesting to see if dark colors end up on the palette consistently with this one every eight years. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Which I’ll just say is in real contrast to the Jupiter in Leo vibes. Right? Because Jupiter’s in Leo for a year, and Jupiter Leo is like, sunny, it’s bright, it’s — 

CB: Loud? 

AC: Yeah, bright, loud. It’s not dark and brooding, whereas this is Venus setting a very dark and brooding tone. 

CB: Yeah, dark and brooding, but beautiful and strangely magnetic even though it’s initially doing something that’s weird – that seems weird or seems so not normal, not normative, basically, that it stands out and rubs people the wrong way at first. But then eventually by the end of it, like, lots of people start doing that thing. It becomes trendy. 

AC: Yeah. Something that seems anti-aesthetic but then gets appreciated or incorporated. 

CB: Yeah. And that brings up one of the core keywords that I sort of came to in the episode I did with Elly Higgins earlier this year where we were looking at like, Venus retrograde in Aries in queer history. But there became this recurring theme with Venus retrograde of normative versus non-normative and the tensions that arise during all Venus retrogrades about traditional values and modern expressions of identity versus ones that are like, non-normative, whether it’s gender or sexuality or relationship structures becoming more prominent at this time when the non-normative basically becomes more prominent. 

AC: Yeah. Right. Yeah, that makes – the normative and non-normative is a good way to put it. I was thinking like, I used the term “unorthodox.” I think “normative” is probably better than “orthodox.”

CB: Yeah. I like that; that’s good – unorthodox versus orthodox.

Okay. So — 

AC: Makes it sound a little church-y, but I’m glad that it was communicating – because it really is about like, yeah, aesthetic and relational pattern and yeah, and the choices and patterns that are normative and unorthodox at a given period of time and the continued mutation and back-and-forth of what’s normal as it changes. 

CB: Absolutely. 

All right, the last major transit we’ve gotta talk about in this overview before we do a monthly breakdown is the Mars retrograde that’s building up in Virgo and Leo towards the end of the year as 2026 is wrapping up. So Mars isn’t gonna actually station retrograde until January 10th of 2027, more than a year from now. It’s gonna go retrograde at 10 degrees of Virgo and it’s gonna retrograde back into Leo before it stations direct at 20 Leo on April 1st, 2027. So that’s actually the core nucleus of the retrograde, but again, because a retrograde also represents a planet spending an extended period of time in one or two signs, when we look at it from that perspective we realize that Mars already goes into the sign it will retrograde back to – which is Leo – on September 27th. And then it enters its shadow degree at 20 degrees of Leo on November 5th. So we’re already building up to the retrograde, and there’s already starting to be the unfolding of the sequence of events that will become the most intense during the retrograde itself in the buildup to it in the last quarter of this year, especially let’s say October, November, December of 2026. Then we have the retrograde, and then it’s not until like, July 15th of 2027 that Mars will finally depart from Virgo – the retrograde sign. So it means that this is really an extended period that goes from like, late September and early October of 2026 all the way until the middle of 2027 that we’re starting to build up to as 2026 ends. And in that way, it’s kind of gonna leave us on this huge cliffhanger with that Mars retrograde just getting going at the end of 2026. 

AC: Yeah. We’ll be within one week of the station on New Year’s Eve of 2026 when you can really start feeling the ground tremble in anticipation. So yeah. Hope you like Mars in Leo. Hope you like Mars in Virgo. There’s like, five-ish months of each on the way. And I really hope you like Mars in Leo, because half of our last Mars retrograde gave us I think four – no, five – months of Mars in Leo. So we’ve been getting a lot more Mars in Leo than any other flavor for the last while. And yeah, so just think about what Mars challenges are like in those parts of your chart, because you’re not gonna be able to sleep through it. Right? It’s not like, well, it’s an annoying month, but then it’ll be over. There’s no ignoring Mars during the retrogrades and especially the extended wings of the retrograde. And it’s worth noting that the Leo part, as we said earlier, is part of the Jupiter in Leo story and part of the eclipses are now in Leo story. And so we have this intersection of what Mars is doing on and off for 10 months as well as what the South Node’s doing for a year and a half as well as what’s Jupiter’s doing for a year all in Leo, and most particularly in the third decan or the last portion of Leo. And so planets in the end of Leo in particular are going to get an awful lot of attention. And they’re pretty different influences, right? The eclipse energy and the Jupiter and the Mars. It’s not – they don’t all sing the same song, but they are going to do – what’s the three-person version of a duet? A truet? Tri-et? Trio? 

CB: I am not sure. But yeah, I get what you say, the three-person song. Well, and that’s the problem is like, when Jupiter goes into Leo, it’s singing a much more growth and expansion-oriented and affirming type song in Leo. And we get that energy and then we get the eclipse in August in Leo, which is like, adding some weight to it of this is a monumental and pivotal turning point where you’re starting some major endings and major beginnings in the Leo area of your life. But then in late September, Mars joins, and it brings this more discordant energy to that area of our chart where the feelings of like, severing and separation are gonna be much more prominent, as well as this feeling of like, irritation or like a burning type sensation metaphorically is the other thing that we saw very prominently with Mars retrograde in Leo just in the past year. 

AC: Yeah. Well, and Mars brings contest and struggle and dispute. Right? It’s like, Jupiter says, “Oh, I believe in -” you know, you gain confidence, and then somebody attacks that. And then you get in a fight with them, and you know, like, the Mars-Jupiter together, especially in Leo, is very confident but in a way that often gets people into fights. Like, Jupiter-Mars together are very confident about coming out on top and about being able to benefit from victory, whether through glory or spoils. And then again, the tail of the dragon is kind of haunting all of that, suggesting in addition to the retrograde of Mars yet to come that there are deeper, more lasting and potentially more upsetting and permanent consequences to those intersections than there might first seem. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

AC: And you know, if you’re in a country that has, I don’t know, like, a president with their rising and Mars in that last decan of Leo, you probably wanna pay attention to that. 

CB: Yeah. With actually the top two leaders of the country having their risings in that late part of Leo, so that both of them —

AC: Oh, I didn’t — 

CB: — are gonna get — 

AC: I didn’t realize that! Okay. 

CB: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing is like, and you know, so much of the past year we’ve also seen how that ancient notion of how the leader of the country, their birth chart becomes kind of like the birth chart for the country for the period in which they’re in power. And so we’re thinking of all three of these Leo transits going into the rising sign of the president with Jupiter in Leo and the aggrandizing with the eclipse in Leo bringing to greater prominence actually just like the —

AC: Well, and — 

CB: — just like the eclipse in Leo back in 2017 when Trump first became president. But then you bring in the Mars element as well on top of that, which brings in a much more militant combative, sort of warlike energy. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. It’s worth noting that this is the sort of reverse companion set of eclipses to the 2017 ones that we’re entering where we had the head or Rahu in Leo then, and now we have the tail there. So the dragon’s in the same position but facing the opposite direction. And eclipses exaggerate and create rises, but they also create sudden falls and disappearances. They provide a dramatic rollercoaster. 

CB: Yeah. I’m reminded of like, in Valens in the second century, he talks a lot about Mars and Jupiter representing military generals and the heads of war and things like that. And having that combination come into greater prominence makes me nervous about that, of a more militaristic setting of things. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. It’s such a – like, Mars-just is such a military parade glorious commander on the horse sort of – what’s the word you used earlier? Aggrandizement of military might. Oh, and something about Leo and even sweet Jupiter in Leo is that same self-affirmation also very easily becomes ra-ra nationalism. Like, just as it can be, “Oh, I affirm myself,” it’s a nation’s affirming themselves, you get a strengthening sometimes, an expansion or strengthening, sometimes even a cancerous expansion of national identity. It doesn’t make nations less likely to go to war or to take offense. Especially with —

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — the combination of Mars. But even just Jupiter. 

CB: And it’s a weird combination, because Jupiter, as we talked about, has this protective function. But then Mars has the opposite where it has this more danger function that it brings into things, and that’s part of the contrasting energy that we’re gonna be seeing between those two placements hanging out in Leo roughly at the same time from late 2026 through the first half of 2027. 

AC: I’m gonna not say more, because we’re going to do a walk-through. 

CB: Okay. All right, let me give just some final keywords, because I was trying to go back and summarize general principles that I learned from the Mars retrograde earlier this year that we did at least like, three episodes about, and the severing function was huge. The act of cutting ties in people’s personal lives in whatever area Mars was going retrograde in, whatever house. This included like, ending contracts, removing people or things from your life, and the finality of making a clean break after a period of tension. So sometimes that’s like, a singular event, but oftentimes even a separation from somebody is a sequence of events, and that’s what this nine-month Mars retrograde period will represent for some people. 

Some of the listeners in like, the live recap episodes where I interviewed people talked about quitting jobs, firing employees, and I think at least one or two instances ending long-term friendships or relationships during the Mars retrograde. So I wanted to mention some of those things, because it’s weird how this Mars retrograde kind of gets kicked off by the Venus retrograde that happens first just as Mars retrograde is building up. So there’s some of the tensions that the Venus retrograde starts, especially in October when it stations retrograde in the difficult square with Mars and Pluto, will kick off a series of events that Mars will then take the baton and carry forward. 

AC: Indeed. And — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — I would just add to that you also see during Mars retrogrades that Mars work, like projects that are governed by Mars in your life, houses whose affairs are guided by Mars, a lot of times in addition to the social frictions and potential tensions and separations, you also just see the general retrograde thing of things taking much longer to get going and to cross the finish line than usual. You have the same gotta do it three times from a Mercury retrograde, but spread out over months and months and months. And so often things are frustratingly slow in those areas. There are problems that emerge that take a long time to get resolved. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And there can be this like, internal – the slowness itself can have this internal heat where it manifests as this like, frustration with how slow things are going, this feeling of sometimes like, simmering resentment over it, or even like, an inflammation – either metaphorically or in some instances very literally. Like, literal inflammations. 

AC: Yeah. I definitely see people struggling with inflammatory conditions getting aroused by Mars retrogrades that are hitting their stuff. Yeah. And you also have the sort of happy medium of martial effort is harder to find. You see a lot of people either unable to summon motivation down in the heart of the retrograde, or flying at things with a sort of unsustainable, berserker rage sort of pacing, neither of which is particularly fruitful. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. We used the analogy that turned out to be really good with the spicy pepper analogy that like —

AC: Yeah.

CB: — you know, Mars retrograde is like eating a spicy, like, the hottest pepper, like a ghost pepper where you eat it and you think it’s done, but it just like, stays in your mouth for this extended period of time and there’s little that you can do but just to wait it out and bide your time until that period of heat and inflammation is over. 

But let’s say – those are all challenging things, so let me just try to give a positive spin. There were a lot of instances I saw of people standing up for themselves and doing the thing that was hard but that it was the right thing to do for them. And sometimes that process of like, ending a relationship is realizing that let’s say your boundaries are being pushed, or realizing you’re in a situation that doesn’t accord with where you wanna be and who you are in life and deciding to set out on your own even if it means having to cut something out of your life. And sometimes that can be challenging or unpleasant, but sometimes it can be necessary. And sometimes when you get to the other end of that, you can find your life in a better shape than it was when you went into it, because you made the hard decision to do what was right for you. 

AC: Yeah. Or you cut out the shitty toxic person. Right? Now they’re not here anymore! Yeah. Another thing that I see consistently that’s fruitful is the sort of getting a sense of what the challenges in your life – the martial challenges – actually are during this period. Now what they were, but what they are now or what they are becoming, and then realizing that you need to like, one, change your expectations and think about how to rise in order to meet those challenges that are here now or the performance demands for this part of your life. And a lot of times, that necessitates like, a difference in training and how are you cultivating yourself to be capable of meeting the demands present? This was very clear to me last time, because the last Mars retrograde went over my Ascendant three times, and that was the first year of being a parent for me. Right? 

CB: Right. 

AC: So it was like, okay, like, different, totally new set of challenges. And yeah, and like, needing to prepare for those differently as well as coming to understand what they were. And by the end of it, like, pretty good. Pretty good at parenting! At least very oriented towards being good at parenting rather than like, “What the fuck is happening?” And yeah, and bemoaning how the person who came into being a parent was unprepared to being a person that knows how to prepare as well as being aware of what the challenges are. Like, you know, rising – because there’s rising to meet a challenge, which is like, just sort of motivation. But most of Mars’s arena is – most of the Mars parts of life – involve preparation and training and thinking and strategizing about how you’re gonna deal with or overcome or do well at the thing. 

CB: Absolutely. Yeah. 

AC: And it takes a long time to kind of reconfigure all that. 

CB: Right. I like that, yeah. There’s this period of reconfiguring after the initial setback basically is a very common Mars retrograde theme. 

Other themes we found in history with Mars retrogrades I’ll just list off quickly are things like military and tactical fiascos where there were like, invasions and aggressive actions that were poorly planned and executed at the wrong time, and the result was like, an embarrassing retreat. The Bay of Pigs in 1961 was one of the examples of that where there’s like, the failure of an initial special operation that gets bogged down. 

There can be taking the axe to a structure was something we saw majorly during the Mars retrograde in Cancer earlier this year, which is like, the indiscriminate cutting or firing or dismantling of agencies or structures or institutions or systems where you see somebody just like, taking a hatchet to established orders and —

AC: Right. The willy-nilly chainsaw. 

CB: The chainsaw! We saw that image of like, you know, Musk holding a chainsaw earlier this year, and that was like, the enduring image of Mars retrograde in Cancer to me earlier this year, because also part of – in that instance, it was taking the chainsaw to like, social systems. So this is gonna be a different context in Virgo and Leo, but I think we’ll see prominent like, chainsaw cutting, knife, hatchet symbolism coming up during this retrograde as well. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: There’s also like, civil unrest and radicalization, sometimes anger boiling over in the streets or events that radicalize specific groups of people. We saw some stuff like the Waco siege in ‘93 during that retrograde. The Tulsa race massacre in 1921. The Watts riots in 1965. 

AC: Yeah, the anger boiling over and then with Mars retrograde, like, shit getting out of control. Like, Mars stuff getting out of control, which is always a danger with Mars stuff, but there’s very much a boiling over quality in the heart of the retrograde, because it’s actually during the heart of the retrograde that Mars is the closest to the earth and super bright and visible all night long. It’s like the Full Moon for Mars. 

CB: Right. That actually brings up – I wanted to share a slide because one of the things I got really into in the past couple of years was looking at long-term planetary repetitions. And the most powerful one I found for Mars is the 79-year cycle where the same Mars retrograde between Virgo and Leo will repeat during the same part of the year every 79 years. It’s almost exact. It’s really brilliant. So the repetitions that this Mars retrograde are gonna be connected to and will bring up some similar themes to are late 1947 through early 1948, late 1868 through 1869, and late 1789 through 1790. And that last one was the most important and interesting one for me in a number of ways because of some of the things that were going on back in that timeframe around like, the Civil War sort of like, timeframe. Or not Civil War – sorry, like, American Revolutionary timeframe. 

AC: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I literally just wrote those numbers down so that I can zoom in on them later. 

CB: Yeah. I am just trying to find my notes really quickly. There’s other repetitions as well of like, a 47-year Mars retrograde thing that was really important as well, but it was a lot of challenging stuff, so maybe I’ll save some of that for later when we get to that in the full breakdown. 

AC: Yeah, we’ll have… Yeah. And we’re gonna have a lot of months of Mars is in the shadow. Mars is deeper in the shadow. Mars is really deep in the shadow. We’ll be narrating it step by step next year. 

CB: Yeah. One of them I did wanna mention though is just the early in the Revolutionary War, basically, like, Lexington and Concord happened around one of these from Mars to Leo retrogrades and also the lead up to Lexington and Concord which was there were a bunch of false starts, basically, to the Revolutionary War where the tensions were boiling and they were getting to that point, but then it wasn’t until after Mars stationed direct and started moving through Leo and Virgo, then it kicked off and like, Lexington and Concord happened. But there were like, precursor events that led into it, and that’s one of the important parallels I think today. 

AC: Yeah, that makes sense.

CB: Yeah. All right, my friend. Well, that’s our broad overview of 2026. Why don’t we take a little break, and then we’ll come right back to do the monthly breakdown? 

AC: Okay. 

CB: I also wanted to give a shout out to our sponsor for this episode, which is the Chani app. One of the main reasons I wanted to highlight the Chani app this year is that we’re seeing a huge wave of new astrology apps that are relying entirely on AI chat bots and ChatGPT to generate their interpretations. And the Chani app is different, because it’s one of the only major apps that uses zero AI. 

As astrologers, we know that reading a chart requires a level of nuance, context, and intuition that you really just cannot get from an algorithm. So when you use the Chani app, you’re getting personalized information that’s actually written by a real, trained human astrologer. 

So the app is packed with features like daily horoscopes, Moon phase updates, and weekly rituals. But since we’re focusing on the future today, I specifically wanted to recommend checking out their transits feature which gives you a hyper personalized look at how the planets are interacting with your unique birth chart every day. They also have a full 2026 astro reading available now, which breaks down the main themes of the year for your month-by-month along with journal prompts and guided meditations to help you navigate it. 

The Chani app is free to download on the Apple app store and Google Play. So if you want to make sure your daily astrology is coming from a human source, definitely check them out. 

All right. So yeah, it’s crazy in the past few years since like, ChatGPT and everything came out, like, how many people are turning to that to get delineations of their birth chart or transits, but how bad it still is, and like, how much it still messes up and hallucinates or just says stuff that isn’t true or isn’t right. And it’s one of the real dangers that people don’t realize, I think, if they’re just now getting into the field.

AC: Yeah. And when it does get things right, it’s because real human astrologers got things right and wrote it down. And the AI scraped that content without attribution or payment and is regurgitating it. And yeah, even if it was great, it would still be stolen, but the AI astrology content both sucks and is stolen. And so as a real, trained, human astrologer, and as part of the human resistance, I support the Chani app’s decision to go only with real, trained, human astrologers and not thieving machines that are bad at astrology. 

CB: Right. Yeah. I really like that Chani spent the time necessary to write those delineations and to think about it from a real, practicing astrologer’s standpoint. Like, what a transit means both in sometimes literal interpretations but also psychological interpretations. And I have the Chani app on my phone, because one of the things I love is it just tells you every time a transit is going exact or when there’s an astrological alignment going exact it gives you a push notification. So it’s one of the things that kind of keeps me up to date on like, what’s happening in the moment, especially sometimes if I forget that a transit’s going exact a certain day and some event starts happening in my life, like, all of a sudden I get a notification that the transit just went exact in the sky. And then I’m like, “Oh, it was that; that makes sense.” 

AC: Yeah, that’s really helpful. I think I have that app installed in my brain, because I get push notifications in my brain when these things happen. But occasionally, I too forget. 

CB: Well — 

AC: No, it’s really helpful, and especially as you’re like, getting to know what the configurations mean against the background of your chart, like, having it front and center so you can have that a-ha moment. Like, why was I feeling cranky all today? Oh yeah, Mars is on my Moon by a 60th of a degree. That makes sense.

CB: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, everyone should check out the Chani app. It’s free to download on the Apple app store or on Google Play. And I’ll put a link to Chani’s website in the description below this video as well as on the podcast website entry for this episode. But definitely support them and support, yeah, human astrologers giving delineations to humans! 

All right, my friend. It’s time to get into the monthly breakdown. We did our big overview of the major transits for the year, and those were somewhat arranged in a sequence. But one of the things that you always feel is important and emphasize is you feel like we need to like, actually look at each month and talk about things and do a little bit more zoomed in view of a month-by-month breakdown, right? 

AC: Yeah. I think it’s really nice to tour the year. To just do a walk-through. Get a sense of like, the different flavor of each month and how it feels and how it becomes the next thing. 

CB: Absolutely. All right. 

AC: Because there is space between some of these big things, and those spaces are filled unequally. And there are also, because of the nature of history, it’s usually the nice moments that get left out of the overviews because nice moments don’t get written down in the history books. Right? It’s the catastrophic, the confusing, and et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, I think a little – a jaunty stroll is called for. 

CB: I like that. That sounds good. All right, well —

AC: Stroll we shall! 

CB: Stroll we shall. 

AC: Arm in arm! 

CB: We’ll get an essence of the month. 

All right, so let me share the planetary alignments calendar for January, which is actually from our wall calendar which is now available on the podcast website at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/2026Posters where you can get a version of this that shows the entire year. But this shows the major alignments happening this month in January of 2026, and some of the major highlights happening this month are we’ve got this triple conjunction of the Sun, Venus, and Mars January 5th through the 9th. Mars-Jupiter opposition January 10th. Mercury-Mars conjunction January 18th. Neptune entering Aries on the 26th. Mars-Pluto conjunction in Aquarius on January 27th. And finally, a nice sweet little Venus-Mercury conjunction on January 29th. 

AC: Yeah, and to me, the overwhelming theme of the month is that Mars and Venus are invisible to the naked eye. They are with the Sun, and Mercury joins them for the second half of the month. But we have the cazimi or the perfect conjunction of both the Sun and Venus and the Sun and Mars – a little later Sun and Mercury – all in a very close timeframe. And so those conjunctions end the cycle, end and begin a cycle for both Venus and Mars. And so they both begin again in this place in Capricorn, and so there’s a lot of quiet but consequential deliberation happening, because we’re ending cycles and beginning them, and we always do that with planets conjoin the Sun, which means we can’t see them. Right? And so it’s stuff behind closed doors, behind the veil of our eyes where important things are being sorted out and new cycles are being begun. But you can’t necessarily see that much on the surface. And Mars and Venus both stay with the Sun and stay invisible for all of January, and shortly about two weeks after their conjunction, the Mars-Venus-Sun conjunctions in Capricorn, those three as well as Mercury all conjoin Pluto over about a week. We get Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars conjoining Pluto from I believe the 19th until the 27th. And so that’s a lot of planets, all invisible, mind you – we’re not gonna see anything but the Sun. But that’s four planets conjoining Pluto within a week. And it’s within that same week that Neptune sneaks back into Aquarius – or excuse me, Neptune sneaks back into Aries. 

So all of this, like, so much happening here but again, all hidden. All hidden behind the Sun. And so my like, one sentence phrase for January is like, “quiet, but very consequential.” 

CB: Yeah. There’s a lot happening behind the scenes. Yeah, doing elections this month was hard because it’s sandwiched between like, this peace-shattering Mars-Jupiter opposition early in the month and then this somewhat violent Mars-Pluto conjunction late in the month in Aquarius, with this really provocative Sun-Venus-Mars conjunction in Capricorn happening around the middle, and a really verbally combative Mercury-Mars conjunction happening around the same time. 

So the Venus-Mars conjunction reminds me of so much we’ve seen over the past year or two is things coming up involving like, gender but also sex and sexuality and sometimes negative things coming up with sex and sexuality. Like, for example, the Epstein – Epstein, it turned out, had a Venus-Mars conjunction in his birth chart. And that ended up being relevant when the Pisces eclipse happened I think last September or something like that, and then a big dump of those files came out sort of showing some of the things that were happening there. 

AC: Yeah. And I wonder how much that happens in these assemblies, these like, behind closed door assemblies in January we find out about later. Because these are really consequential and kind of dramatic conjunctions. 

Another thing that I wonder about with Mars and Venus being conjoined is that it was under a Mars-Venus conjunction in Capricorn that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. And so this is the same two planets – under different circumstances, but reunited in almost exactly the same part of the same sign. And I don’t know what that means, but it seems like there should be some meaningful development there. Again, one we might not see in January but find out later was initiated then or decided then. 

CB: Yeah. It would make sense for there to be a significant turning point with the Ukraine-Russia war, especially because the Saturn-Neptune conjunction going exact in January and February, those Saturn-Neptune conjunctions are always super important in both Russian history as well as Ukrainian history. And one of the tricky things that Leisa pointed out to me recently was that Pluto’s going to conjoin Zelensky’s Sun early in the year, which is kind of a challenging transit to be having. And then of course, we mentioned earlier that people born in 1953, 1954 under that Saturn-Neptune conjunction are having an important recurrence transit when this conjunction goes exact between Saturn and Neptune in February, and one of the world leaders we know that was born then was Putin. 

AC: Yeah. And Xi Jinping of China. And so yeah, this January, there’s all this latent energy. All this stuff being decided. All these conjunctions. And then immediately after in February or like, mid-February, Saturn moves back into Aries; we’ve got the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. We have that big ol’ eclipse in Aquarius only two days off from the exact Saturn-Neptune conjunction. I think things go from like, charged, intense, and whispering in backrooms to very loud once we get to mid-February. I don’t think there will be that same sense of behind closed doors. I think the Saturn-Neptune in Aries, I think we can count on to be, though confusing, neither subtle nor quiet. 

CB: Yeah. So let me show the calendar for February since we’ve moved onto that month. And here’s the planetary alignments calendar for February where as you’ve pointed out, the Saturn-Neptune conjunction is the highlight. But we also get on February 3rd Uranus making its final direct station in Taurus. And Leisa noted that not only is Uranus stationing there, but it’s also all of the planets that go through Aquarius start squaring that and like, pinging that for most of February. So we need to touch base on that. But then just to get the date breakdown, February 13th, Saturn entering Aries is huge. February 17th, we get our first eclipse of the year, which is that solar eclipse in Aquarius which happens to be square Uranus. The 20th of February is the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. The 22nd is a actually very nice Venus-Jupiter trine. The 25th, Mercury stations retrograde in Pisces for our first Mercury retrograde of the year. And then there’s a Mars-Uranus square on the 27th with some unexpected disruptions and probably violence. And then the same day, Mercury, which is retrograde, conjoins Venus while the two are in Pisces on February 27th. 

AC: Yeah. And so between Saturn moving back into Aries, the eclipse, Saturn-Neptune together, and all of the squares with Uranus, like, loud, jagged – the action starts in an inarguable way. The year is off to a very loud and jagged start by the time we get to mid-February. 

The one saving grace, I think, for February, because there’s a lot of like, “hold onto your seat,” is that Venus is actually in pretty nice condition for a lot of February. I don’t love Venus being present with the eclipse point in Pisces, but Venus is in its exaltation and in a trine with Jupiter, which is also in its exaltation, which rules Pisces. And so there’s a lot of – there’s like, craziness but with a side order of high-end benefics off to the side, which I’ll take. 

CB: Yeah. I do appreciate the Venus-Jupiter trine that goes exact with reception there. It seems like a very lovely aspect. But it’s just happening in the middle of this crazy eclipse season where we always see prominent people either falling from a height or sometimes people who were previously obscure being thrust into the spotlight. And we’re gonna see a lot of that during this eclipse season, especially people that have Saturn and Neptune hard aspects, especially the conjunction, natally, because that eclipse basically is magnifying the importance of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction at the time. 

But also just this is the final hit of Uranus in Taurus. And whatever that transit has been about since 2018, we’re getting one last, very loud blast of that transit here this month with all of these planets in Aquarius squaring Uranus and Uranus stationing direct there for the last time, putting an exclamation mark next to it. And that’s gonna have a very personal impact on all of us realizing how much that sector of our chart has changed based on whatever house Uranus has been going through in Taurus since 2018, 2019. But also in terms of world events. Like, some of the things we’ve seen there is the rapid growth and expansion of digital currencies and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and things like that becoming more popular, and some final important turning point with respect to that taking place at this time I think with this final station.

AC: Yeah. Absolutely. And we’ve got the station and just as we had the one, two, three, four planets all conjoining Pluto, we have one, two, three, four planets not in quite the same tight sequence, but still tight enough all squaring Uranus right after that station. And our big eclipse in Aquarius is also square that Uranus. So it really is Uranus taking a bow for its performance, for the many earthquakes that it caused in the pasture lands of Taurus. Let’s hope —

CB: Yeah, and throwing — 

AC: Go ahead. 

CB: And throwing one last curveball, frankly. Like, this seems —

AC: Oh yeah. 

CB: — like a very, like, something coming out of left field that’s not anticipated, but throwing a wrench in things that’s unexpected, and yeah. You know, other Uranian keywords like disruptive, electric, things like that — 

AC: Shocking. 

CB: Shocking. 

AC: Yeah. Right? And at the same time as Saturn-Neptune is basically perfect. And right at the time – like, literally aspecting the eclipse. The second half of February is extremely disruptive and confusing, but again, with this weird side order of like, delicacy-level benefics. The Jupiter and the Venus look great. They just don’t – they’re off to the side doing their own thing while Uranus and the eclipse and Saturn-Neptune are all reeking of very confusing chaos, and — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — yeah, setting the seas a’boil. 

CB: Absolutely. So you know, the eclipse season opens on February 9th. It peaks with the first half of it on February 17th, but then the most intense phase is the next two weeks after that until we hit the second eclipse on March 3rd. And then we get eclipse season continuing for seven more days at least after that. So that takes us into the month of March, and —

AC: Yeah. And Mercury has gone retrograde just before we get into March, and the Mercury retrograde is a big player in March. So we have the lunar eclipse, and it’s not the last lunar eclipse in Virgo; we’ll have one more in February of 2027. So we have the lunar eclipse at 12 degrees Virgo on March 3rd, which is opposite Mercury, and Mercury is the ruler of this eclipse. And it is actually the day before the eclipse that Mars goes into Pisces. And so we have the eclipse in Virgo is opposite this Mercury retrograde and Mars combination that we have in Pisces, and we have Mercury retrograde and direct in Pisces for pretty much the whole month. It is basically as difficult a position as you could put Mercury in – retrograde, in the sign of its fall, as the ruler of the eclipse, conjoined one of the eclipse points and conjoin Mars. And so just as we spoke earlier about how the Venus retrograde in the fourth quarter is a particularly difficult version of a Venus retrograde, this is a pretty disastrous, potentially disastrous Mercury retrograde, as it’s connected to all these other things and in a maximally difficult position. 

CB: Yeah. The part about the Mercury retrograde I like the least is that when it stations direct, it has this – near the direct station – it has this conjunction with Mars around the middle of the month while it’s retrograde. And that really harkens back to some of the Mercury-Mars conjunctions that we saw over the past several months and some of the fights that erupted, a lot of the tensions and verbal combativeness, but also like, the technological snafus and other things like that. Although there was also people that were born with Mercury-Mars conjunctions coming into prominence at that time. 

AC: Yeah. I think, again, with Mercury being the ruler of that eclipse, I think it’s gonna carry a little extra power, a little extra potency, a little extra shadow. I think it’s going to be more confusing and distorting. And again, I worry with Mercury that connected to Mars, right, because it suggests that the consequences of misunderstanding or communication or bad information may be not merely mistakes, but may lead to disputes, fights, severance, you know, wars at various levels. 

The saving grace — 

CB: One positive —

AC: Yeah, we’re probably gonna say the same thing. That trine to Jupiter, though. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, the one positive thing that I really wanna highlight this month is Jupiter stationing direct in Cancer. Jupiter gathers together like, a huge amount of positive power to impact things and to offset things for the better by stationing direct in the sign of its exaltation around 15 degrees of Cancer around the middle of the month. And that is helping to offset some of the Pisces transits like Mercury and Mars because it has a trine to those. 

AC: Yeah. I think there’s gonna be the equivalent of some lost at sea and surrounded by sharks, but miraculously discovered before anything goes wrong. Right? Like, some really rough circumstances where people are saved or the worst is avoided through tremendous grace or divine intervention or a sudden insight. Because it’s a lot for Jupiter to hold back, but there’s certainly the potential – and there will be the reality – of it seems really awful and maybe it gets pretty bad, but then like, there’s a way out, or what was lost was found, et cetera, et cetera. Nonetheless, it’s definitely a watch-your-ass Mercury retrograde. 

CB: Yeah. I’m thinking that a lot of the good things that Jupiter has promised and has like, almost been able to fix as it’s been transiting through Cancer starting in the second half of 2025, that Jupiter’s finally able to fully deliver at this point in March of 2026 and forward because it’s finally direct in that sign and able to manifest the remainder of whatever benefits and rectifications and affirmations that it has to provide in each of our charts in that area. So that’s a good thing to be looking forward to, I think, from that point forward.

AC: Yeah, Jupiter’s gonna be doing maximum work again from this point in mid-March until its exit from the sign at the end of June. And it’s a really good time for Jupiter to wake up, because there’s quite a bit amiss at this point in time. 

CB: Yeah. It’s got stuff to do. Okay, so let’s move onto the month of April. Here’s the planetary alignments calendar for April, and the primary things in April – oh yeah, April’s like, one of the busiest months where we’ve got April 9th, Mars enters Aries and builds up to a Mars-Saturn conjunction. April 12th, there’s a Mars-Neptune conjunction in Aries. April 13th, Venus-Jupiter sextile is one of the positive aspects this month. April 14th, Mercury enters Aries. April 16th, Mercury-Neptune conjunction. April 19th, Mars-Saturn conjunction, which is really the focal point of this entire month. And then April 20th, Mercury joins them the very next day and conjoins Mars and Saturn at the same time. And then if that wasn’t enough, Uranus enters Gemini on April 25th, ending its seven-ish year transit through Taurus and beginning the rest of its six to seven year transit through Gemini. 

AC: Yeah. So at the beginning, March madness is beginning to fade. Venus has just moved into Taurus, right, because Venus has been copresent in Aries with Saturn and Neptune, which is not the easiest place to be. By the end of March, Venus is in Taurus applying to a sextile with Jupiter in Cancer. Like, great for – again, like, we have these nice side dishes of benefic stuff at the same time as we have historically wild and potentially dangerous configurations. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: And so the big story is absolutely that Mars entering into Aries on the 10th. 

CB: I think Venus will provide a light distraction, but it’s very light and the focal point, yeah, is this conjunction that peaks right here between Mars and Saturn, which is gonna call back to like, the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. And that’s one of the weird things delineating some of this is like, we get a very important world history turning point in February at the exact conjunction. But then when Mars and Mercury come in here and reactivate that conjunction, it brings it all back into focus again. 

AC: Yeah. So one example, right, so we have the Saturn-Neptune, which have their exact conjunctions and have like, a meaningful copresence. Because almost all of the big stuff that happens doesn’t happen in a day even if we could point to pivotal days in that. And so Mars speeds things up, inflames them. It gets things moving, especially in Aries. And the Mars-Saturn in and of itself is a potentially, you know, it’s our most destructive two planet combination. 

CB: Right. 

AC: And so just as an example, in 1917, when we had the Saturn-Neptune in Leo, Mars moved into Leo to join Saturn and Neptune in September and then was there until early November. And so the difficulties that the – I believe it was the empire of Russia was having at this time exploded into what’s called the October Revolution where there was very widespread chaos and destruction of humans and property and was the initiating event for what would become the Russian civil war, which would eventually years later give us the USSR. And so you know, like, Mars takes that wood which has been stacked, right, and sets it aflame. And we have a similar pattern during a lot of Saturn-Neptune conjunctions where almost always at one point during the copresence of those two, Mars will enter the same sign. 

CB: Okay. Right, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Mars-Saturn conjunctions also in like, traditional and ancient astrology are traditionally associated with the outbreak of plagues and pestilences and things like that, and we certainly saw that in 2020 where there was that big stellium pileup in Capricorn that the lockdowns ended up peaking on the Mars-Saturn conjunction around that time. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: And Saturn-Neptune conjunctions themselves are – we saw on the Saturn-Neptune episode earlier this year – sometimes associated with different types of plagues and things like that breaking out. 

So that’s not great. Like, I’m not liking that aspect in terms of things, in terms of our traditional worst planets. And then even just Mars moving in there to such a fiery sign and conjoining Neptune is gonna create some confusion surrounding conflicts. And in previous years, like, what was it? Maybe 12 years ago or something? No, it was like, 2010, 2011, I remember famously the Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Aries coincided with the assasination of Osama bin Laden, basically, when the US finally found bin Laden. This conjunction here gives me militaristic vibes, but there’s something confusing about it where the causes or the actions are either not clear to the public or where there’s a mistake of some sort. Like, I remember there was a Mars-Neptune hard aspect a few years ago when Biden was in office, and the US launched a strike in Afghanistan. But they ended up targeting the wrong people and just like, massacring basically civilians who were not evidently the intended target. And sometimes that mistaken attacks military-wise can be a result of Mars-Neptune. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. Right? And so Mars-Saturn is always dangerous. Capable of unleashing plagues, battles. Again, this will – I think we’re both in agreement that this looks more like attacks and battles than it does plagues. But they’re capable of all sorts of destructive things. And the presence of Neptune introduces that potential for confusion, deception, et cetera, et cetera, which becomes quite dangerous when we’re looking at lethal significations, right? The lethal mistake is infinitely more impactful than the oopsie without lethal force. It’s very confusing, and it peaks like, right around April 20th when we have Mercury conjoin. But it’s quite strong leading up to that, and the copresence will continue where both the Mars and Saturn and Neptune will be in Aries until just past the first half of May. And so there’s – I definitely see… There are alerts. There are hazard lights over this period of time, especially if you keep any of your important planets in a cardinal sign. 

CB: Yeah. And I just, I don’t like Mercury is involved as well, because Mercury conjunct Mars is gonna incline people towards fighting and like, anger and angry words. But Mercury conjunct Neptune is gonna incline it towards confusion and sometimes making a mistake communicating. And when you put those together, it’s like, you know, mental or communication mistakes that lead to conflict essentially. And then Mars on top of Saturn-Neptune brings more of the structural collapse type sides of Saturn-Neptune much more to the forefront. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. It’s very much the hammer to the rotten pumpkin. 

CB: Right. All right, so — 

AC: Well, and so the right after that configuration peaks, still in April, then we get Uranus. Right? Uranus moves back into Gemini for keeps. Right? So — 

CB: Huge — 

AC: Huge. 

CB: — monumental shift. Let me put up a Uranus diagram one more time just to let people know what a major shift this is in terms of the long-term. This is Uranus going into Gemini on April 25th. And then it’s gonna be there until it starts moving into Cancer in 2032 and 2033. So we’re really talking about like, a major long-term chapter in world events changing at this time, both in world events as well as in our personal lives at the same time since this is also Uranus moving from one whole sign house and moving into another for like, the next seven years. 

AC: Yeah. Absolutely. And so think back to between July and early November of 2025; that’s when you got your preview of Uranus in Gemini. Think about the Gemini house in the chart. What changed there? What was going on there? Good, bad, and/or other. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Because yeah, Uranus is gonna move in. It’s gonna be your new roommate there for most of the decade. 

CB: I just remember we need to take a little break, right? 

AC: Sure. 

CB: Okay. So we’re about to transition to May. I wanted to take a little break because I meant to ask you what you have going on and what you have coming up this year. 

AC: Okay! Well, I’m going to be teaching my astrology program, my Fundamentals of Astrology program. It is three years long; it’s great. I will be doing an enrollment for the program on January 14th is the next one. You need to sign up for the mailing list to be alerted; I don’t spam people or put it out publicly. So if you’re interested in enrolling, there’s information on my website. First enrollment is the 14th. We’ll do another one in early April before Mars moves into Aries. 

CB: Nice. 

AC: And then try to do one per quarter. And in addition to that, I will – a number of the things that I elected, and participated to various degrees in the creation of for Sphere and Sundry will be coming out. We made a bunch of stuff in 2025. And so we just put out the Jupiter series, this Jupiter in Cancer series, and I realized, Chris, that we have now done at least one series for every planet in both signs that it rules and its exaltation, except for Saturn’s exaltation, which we won’t have a chance to do for another 14 years. But — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — other than that, we have all the good Mercury, all the good Sun, all the good Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in both Capricorn and Aquarius, but Sphere and Sundry was not open for business in 2010 and 2011. So no Saturn in Libra yet! We’ve got almost everything, and we have all four royal stars and a couple other good ones as well. So yeah, come on down to Sphere and Sundry. We’ve got bottled planets; we’ve got bottled stars, the finest vintages. Not just bottled, right. There are incenses and oils and a great variety of other products. I like the salves, personally; I like being able to smear myself with Venus in Taurus is my recent favorite for calming the fuck down in the evening. 

CB: Yeah. I like the oils and the bath salts for that are pretty nice. And I like that you’re capturing some of these planetary elections and keeping some of that energy bottled up so that people can kind of like, use it at different points when they need to to bring a little bit of that time and like, essence back into their present life. 

AC: Yeah. I think people are gonna miss Jupiter in Cancer when it’s gone. You know, I think it’s very – I think Jupiter’s associated with gratitude and teaches gratitude, because it’s so easy to take Jupiter for granted. It’s just bad stuff that you don’t have to experience or things that end up just fine. And then when that influence is gone or waning, you appreciate being protected, maybe even coddled a little bit. 

CB: Excellent. So tell me, what are your websites where people can find out more information? 

AC: Okay. So my website for classes, and I have a great variety of recorded lectures and workshops that I’ve given, is AustinCoppock.com – A U S T N C O P P O C K dot com. And then Sphere and Sundry where we have the seed bank of auspicious planetary positions is SphereAndSundry.com – S P H E R E A N D S U N D R Y dot com. 

CB: Awesome. Perfect. And I’ll put links to those in the description below this video or on the podcast website for those that want to check out your websites. 

Cool. All right, let’s transition to talking about the astrology of May. Here’s the planetary alignments calendar. And the main things that I highlighted in May is that it opens with this explosive Mars-Jupiter square on May 4th. Then Pluto stations retrograde in Aquarius on May 6th. Venus ingresses into Cancer, which is actually pretty positive, on May 18th, because then it’s building up to the Venus-Jupiter conjunction. May 22nd, we get the first Sun-Uranus conjunction in Gemini which is an important synodic cycle reset. And then finally, May 25th, we get a Mars square Pluto, which is a very unpleasant aspect just before we move into the pleasant part of June. 

AC: Yeah. For me, the big division for May is like, the 16th, 17th, 18th, because 16th, we get a New Moon, and then 17th, Mercury enters Gemini. 18th, Mars enters Taurus and Venus enters Cancer. So we get three planetary switcheroos on the 17th and 18th. And then have a New Moon to just kind of restart things the day before. And so I am very excited about Mars not because I love Mars in Taurus and I’m so excited to see it square Pluto, but I think we will definitely need a break from Mars-Saturn-Neptune in Aries. And so that ends that period of really intense fiery copresence. And so I love that. Who doesn’t love Mercury in Gemini? Well, probably some people. I love Mercury in Gemini. Mercury loves being in Gemini. And we get the beginning of Venus’s copresence with Jupiter in Cancer. It is not unopposed; Saturn is gonna square Venus for a while. But it’s the beginning of both benefics together in Cancer. Very wholesome, very sweet, very restorative. It’s three quick changes all in two days that begins the like, month and a half-ish – let’s say five or six weeks – that I would consider the best stretch of the year. It’s not without flaw, but I think it’s the nicest portion of the year. Or it begins — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — the nicest portion of the year. 

CB: Yeah. Early June is absolutely. We have to get through, though, this Mars-Pluto square first, which is annoying because it kind of interprets the early part of Venus in Cancer where Pluto’s station early in the month is as far into Aquarius as it’s gotten at this point where it’s getting to like, five, six degrees of Aquarius and then it stations retrograde. So there’s this loud exclamation mark next to Pluto and some of the technological leaps and bounds that it’s making over the past few years coming to a critical turning point. But we start to see some of the downsides of that technology, I think, is part of what we see here when Mars squares Pluto. And I don’t like that aspect because it’s not coincided with great stuff over the past few years. And I was just watching, like I said, like, the Civil War documentary, and two of the biggest early bloodiest battles of the Civil War where people were like, “Oh, okay, this is bad; this is not gonna be easy,” happened on Mars-Pluto squares — 

AC: Ah.

CB: — with some of the biggest carnage and things like that. And I thought that was really striking noticing that as I’m looking at charts like, watching this Civil War documentary. 

AC: Interesting. And we also get – as a wildcard, we have, as you mentioned, the Sun’s first conjunction with Uranus in Gemini and shortly before that we had Mercury’s first conjunction with Uranus in Gemini. Right? So May has – so, we really, we get to see a bunch of Uranus in Gemini, not all of which is bad. Some of which is going to be quite clever and fun and innovative, while we’ve got this Venus-Jupiter thing forming up. And again, you know, I don’t like Mars square Pluto, but I think I’ll take it over the copresence with Saturn in Aries. And especially once Mars clears that square with Saturn, it’s a significantly deescalated Mars compared to the whole time in Aries, and honestly in Pisces being on the same axis as the second eclipse and caught up in that Mercury retrograde, that was probably pretty Mars-y as well. So I’ll take this Mars in Taurus, especially once we clear this square with Pluto. 

CB: Okay. We’ll see — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — when it comes time for that. But all right, so let’s move into June. I think that’s good for May. Because now we get into my favorite part of the year at the beginning of June when things seem the nicest and the calmest compared to other parts of this year which are so pivotal and decisive and everything else. And the highlights of June include the Venus-Jupiter conjunction which goes exact in Cancer on June 9th, but then later in the month, things start to change all at once, and there’s this huge shift when on June 28th, Mars ingresses into Gemini. On the 29th, Mercury retrogrades in Cancer, and then also on the 29th, Jupiter enters Leo. So we’ll talk about those separately, but —

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — let’s talk about the good part first, all right? 

AC: Yeah. Because the joker-esque prank is not until the end, right? So we’ve got all the nice things we talked about with the end of May. Mars has cleared that square with Pluto. Venus draws close to and then conjoins Jupiter. Mercury has joined the party in Cancer. And the rule with Mercury is Mercury’s friendly when Mercury hangs out with friendly planets and is an asshole when it hangs out with malefics. And so we have Mercury with both malefics during April; now we have Mercury with both benefics for a little bit. 

And so Saturn gets to kind of boo and limit the perfect joy that is otherwise available in Cancer, but it’s a lot of good stuff all in one place. 

CB: Yeah. I think this is just about the confirmation of good things and the affirmation of romantic unions, such as through like, marriage and long-term partnership. The reconciliation of people that have previously fallen apart or been severed for some reason, having them come back together. And this is also because Jupiter’s moving super fast at this point, so it’s on its way out of Cancer, but it has this one last really positive aspect which I think is gonna help to smooth over any remaining issues from the Mars retrograde that was happening in the early part of 2025 will finally get smoothed over at this time before Jupiter departs from that sign. And like I said, I’m expecting some like, notable celebrity weddings or proposals around this time, and it’ll be interesting to see how that goes since last summer the biggest one was like, the Taylor Swift proposal was all over the news and went viral. 

AC: Yeah. No, it’s kind of – just as Mars-Saturn can give you all things that are hard, Venus-Jupiter especially in a sweet caring place like Cancer has a picnic basket full of a wide medley of pleasant, healing, restorative, reinforcing, affirmative, maybe things are gonna be all right sort of things. 

CB: Yeah. Nurturing. So some of the best electional charts of the year are in this timeframe in like, early June. So yeah, I’ll save that for the Electional Astrology Report, but just to give people a preview, like, that’s a really good aspect, so take advantage of it or check out the report if you wanna find some specific dates that we would recommend. 

AC: Yeah. And I will just add that there really aren’t very many pastoral moments in 2026. Like, this is as good as it gets. And so if you wanna do something really nice or if you have something that really needs a good chart, it’s going to be difficult to do better than this first couple weeks of June. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So you can find out more about the elections that we recommend, the specific dates and times, at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/2026Report. 

All right, so later in the month things change, though. There’s like, a shift, and we get it – it comes at the end of June, but it’s basically taking us into July. 

AC: It’s such an evil twist. 

CB: Right. It’s like, you get this nice little island of goodness with the Venus-Jupiter, but then it’s like, we’re back to important world-changing, historic events taking place, basically, as we move into late June and early July. 

AC: Right. So if we’re looking at Mercury and we’re like, oh, Mercury’s going to make a conjunction with Jupiter! Oh, we had a Venus-Jupiter conjunction; now we’re going to have a Mercury-Jupiter conjunction. But Mercury says, “Nah,” and stations retrograde on the — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — 29th, right before completing that conjunction and that is the same calendar day that Mars enters Gemini. And so the Mars entering Gemini means that we’re now very close to the perfect Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini, which we have discussed quite a bit and is extremely disruptive and historical in its disruptiveness. But not only that, but it’s Mars-Uranus in Gemini, meaning it’s ruled by Mercury. So this conjunction, this first conjunction is getting set to take place as Mercury is stationing retrograde and declaring chaos, declaring that it will not in fact conjoin Jupiter. And Jupiter says, “No more Cancer,” and moves into Leo and begins opposing Pluto all basically within a day. All this occurs within about 36 hours. And so the thing that we thought was gonna happen – the Mercury-Jupiter – doesn’t happen. Mercury is retrograde, and Mercury-ruled Mars is now like, dead set on a conjunction with Uranus. And so, like, what a twist at the end of June. 

CB: Yeah. It definitely takes a turn. There’s like, a heel turn that happens. It’s crazy how close Mercury gets, because we almost get that Mercury-Jupiter conjunction, and then it just gets averted. 

So let me find the July calendar since we’re already talking about July. 

AC: Right. And so that’s how we enter July.

CB: Yeah. So here is the calendar for July, which is a crazy month. It’s one of the craziest and most active months of the year, which is weird to say in such an otherwise very active year. But July really does stand out. And the things about July that I wanna mention as the highlights, it’s a very long list. But it’s like, July 4th – Mars-Uranus conjunction. July 7th – Neptune stations retrograde. July 17th – Uranus-Pluto trine goes exact for the first time, which is major and monumental. July 20th – Jupiter opposes Pluto. July 20th also – Jupiter trines Neptune. July 23rd – Mercury finally stations direct in Cancer. July 26th – Saturn stations retrograde. July 26th – North Node enters Aquarius. And then finally July 29th, there’s a Sun-Jupiter conjunction in Leo. 

AC: Yeah. And just to add a little bit to that, we have Jupiter and Pluto and Uranus and Neptune all at four degrees of their respective signs for several days in a row in July. So like, everybody’s aspecting perfectly. Like, on the 19th through the 23rd, we have four planets at four degrees. And then the Sun hits four degrees of Leo on the 27th, and then on the same day as the Sun-Jupiter conjunction, the 29th, we have a Full Moon at six Aquarius, which is real close to that four. So it’s a Full Moon basically right on top of Pluto and aspected Mars and Uranus and everybody else. Like, everything is connecting to everything in it’s… Yeah, the traditional way that July 4th is celebrated with lots of explosions of noise seems very appropriate, but appropriate all month. 

CB: Yeah. Especially around that conjunction though. One of the things we always see on these Mars-Uranus conjunctions is so much starts happening at once. Like, a ton of events start happening at once, and this is forming already because Mars-Uranus comes within 10 degrees by like, June 17th. But really when Mars goes into Gemini on June 28th, that’s when —

AC: Yeah.

CB: — there’s this distinct turn when it gets within three degrees, which peaks on the 3rd and the 4th. And then eventually it’s not until July 19th that it’s like, 10 degrees away, but it’s still copresent for the rest of that time. And historically, it’s the entire copresence of Mars and Uranus in Gemini that represents the most important turning points in US history, especially during the Uranus in Gemini periods which always represent major conflicts or wars. And even just in the past few years, to give you some preview of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Taurus that have led up to and probably represented some of the precipitating events, in 2020, the Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus was January 6th and Biden’s inauguration. In 2022, the Mars-Uranus conjunction, the primary thing was Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago was raided by the FBI, and that was the start of his legal troubles for the FBI cases files. The same time, Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan and it set off this international thing between the US and China that was problematic and probably a precursor. Then two years after that, the next Mars-Uranus conjunction happened in July of 2024 during the US presidential election, and at that time, there was the assasination attempt that took place in Pennsylvania. Then a few days later, the RNC convention happened and Trump was nominated as the Republican nominee for his party. He also selected and announced Vance the day of the Mars-Uranus conjunction. And the FBI case from two years earlier was suddenly dismissed by a federal judge. And then a few days after that, Biden got sick and dropped out of the race. So that was the last Mars-Uranus conjunction, and that’s what I mean when I say so much happens at once, and it’s all very pivotal stuff especially in US history. And this is the next one and it’s happening on July 4th. 

AC: Yeah. If we had to pick one configuration for the United States this year, this is what we’d pick. Right? Like, most telling moment. 

CB: Absolutely. And like, the Civil War – Fort Sumter started on a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini to give you some historical perspective as well. There’s just major turning points sometimes in US history that start on these conjunctions, and this is gonna be a big one. And it’s the first of four that’ll happen from this point forward every two years, but this one’s important because it’s falling right on the nation’s birthday, so that means it’s gonna bake it into the solar return chart for this entire year. 

AC: Yep. Yeah. And we’ll see how much it’s describing domestic, how much international, how much both. But it’s the birthday party to watch closely. 

CB: Absolutely. 

AC: And the other stuff, right, everything is talking to everything. Uranus is aspecting like, four or five planets, including Mars pretty much all month. Whatever is set off by the Mars-Uranus has plenty of fuel from the rest of the sky. It’s not like the Mars-Uranus conjunction is isolated off in a corner not aspecting everything. It’s tied into almost everything when it occurs. 

CB: Yeah. One of the most important things it’s tied into is we get our very first Uranus-Pluto trine this year, and I cannot – we cannot underestimate and I cannot understate how much that’s gonna accelerate the pace of technological development. And like, the only thing I can even imagine that could accelerate it from what it’s already been doing over the past few years is if there’s some sort of like, massive leap in terms of some of the artificial intelligence stuff that that represents. And this is the first trine that we’ll get this year, but there’ll be another one later in the year I think that goes exact around December. 

AC: Yeah, I think you’re right. But yeah, it’s absolutely cyberpunk fuel. And you know, yeah, we’ll see what that looks like. It’ll probably look like several things, some of which will only be clear in retrospect. But yeah. Yes. And even though we don’t like for Jupiter’s sake Jupiter opposing Pluto, we also have Jupiter sextiling Uranus and Jupiter, you know, aspecting Pluto and Jupiter trining Neptune – the Jupiter also supports that configuration, and the Neptune supports that configuration. They’re all moving very fast and supporting each other in that fast, fiery, potentially quick unsustainable race forward. 

CB: Right. Yeah. But also the Saturn-Neptune conjunction is getting reactivated this month with both of them stationing retrograde. There’s really like, three times this year that Saturn-Neptune gets really activated; it’s the conjunction in February, it’s this station in July, and then it’s another station at the end of the year in December when I feel like some of the intensity of the reality distortion field we’re gonna be reminded of at this point, even as those two start moving away. 

AC: Yeah. Those are great points, because they’re close together, they station direct and retrograde very close to each other in terms of calendar dates. Right? And so in terms of – yeah, in terms of all of our Saturn-Neptune topics, the reality distortion, ontological crisis, moral panic, Russian history, all of those topics we’ve only spent a couple hours today talking about. 

CB: Right. Yeah. 

AC: But August is really calm. 

CB: Let’s take a little break before —

AC: He said — 

CB: — we get to August. 

AC: Okay. 

CB: All right. 

Shout out to our sponsor, which is the United Astrology Conference which is happening next year, September 3rd through the 9th, 2026, in Chicago. So the United Astrology Conference, which is also known as UAC, is the biggest astrological conference in the world. And it’s typically held every four years since the 1980s. This time, it’s back for the first time, though, after an eight-year hiatus with the last one being in 2018. So join thousands of astrologers for an unforgettable experience of discovery, collaboration, and expansion. UAC is the place to be to sharpen your skills, connect with other astrologers, deepen your insights, and grow your astrological business. 

It’s the world’s biggest astrology conference, and here are some stats. There’s gonna be five astrology-packed days. They’re expecting more than 1,500 people from around the world at all levels of astrological interest. There’s gonna be 108 speakers, 270 lectures, plus 20 informal lunchtime lectures, 15 different tracks running simultaneously, including the Essentials of Astrology, Health and Wellness, Relationships, Finance and Economics, Vedic Astrology, Traditional Astrology, Mundane Astrology, Horary Astrology, and lots more. There’s also gonna be six pre-conference workshops and six post-conference workshops, plus an opening ceremony keynote by Chani Nicholas herself. It’s happening in the vibrant city of Chicago, and there’s gonna be nightly entertainment and many other events. 

So UAC is actually brought together by several sponsoring organizations, including the AFA, ISAR, NCGR, OPA, along with the ACVA and AYA. And all of these organizations are holding exams and hosting member events during the entire week. 

So for more information about the conference and accommodations, visit UACAstrology.com, and I’ll put a link to that in the description below this video on YouTube. 

So big conference. The last one was in 2018. I’m very excited about that; that’s gonna be great. 

AC: Yeah. It’s the closest thing in reality to all of the astrology and all of the astrologers in one place. 

CB: Right. Yeah. People used to tell time with UAC, because they would happen every four years. So it was just like, this regular thing where all these astrologers from around the world would gather in the same city. And to have that not happen now since 2018 has been this huge hole in the community, so I’m really excited that all the organizations have gotten it together again to host another one. 

AC: Yeah. And one of the benefits of putting all the astrology and all the astrologers in one place is you get this recoherence, this coming back together. You know, there are so many people that I’ve just known since UAC. Like, I’ve gotten to know the astrology world and, like, felt an actual sense of community as opposed to just people talking about community. Like, it really is a special thing that doesn’t happen very often. And speaking of that, I think I’m pretty sure Sphere and Sundry’s gonna vend for the first time at this upcoming UAC. I’ll be there. I’ll be workshopping and lecturing. But yeah, it really is a special thing. I’ve been to two, and I made literally lifelong connections at both of them. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. There’s always a lot of unexpected good stuff that comes out of putting that many astrologers in like, the same room together. There’s been translation projects that have been born out of UACs, lifelong friendships have come out of UACs and partnerships and other things like that. It’s always a great event. 

So check that out, and shout out to them at UACAstrology.com. And then I also wanted to mention that earlier in the year, there’s a smaller conference that’s taking place in Seattle if you’re not able to attend UAC due to scheduling or what have you, you could also check out the Northwest Astrological Conference, which is happening May 21st through the 25th, 2026, in the city of Seattle. And they’ve been doing this for over 40 years now. This is a family-run conference. And you can either attend in person, or you can attend virtually from anywhere because they have this affordable online streaming option that they’ve been doing over the past several years that keeps getting better and better. 

So NORWAC is one of the longest running astrology conferences in the world, and they’re shooting for more of an intimate gathering this year in order to make it easier to connect with speakers and make new friends and to put together kind of a welcoming, inclusive, and community-focused environment. So there’s gonna be over 30 leading astrologers, and you can choose from a wide range of lectures and workshops covering both traditional and modern techniques. So to learn more or to sign up, visit NORWAC.net, and as always I’ll put a link in the description below this video on YouTube or on the podcast website entry for this episode. 

So lots of good conference options next year. 

AC: Yeah. And NORWAC’s in that lay May space where things are starting to look pretty cheery. 

CB: Yeah, you get that Venus-Jupiter copresence building conjunction, so hopefully some good vibes coming out of that after the conference as people are getting back from it in early June. 

AC: Yeah. And you get maybe some exciting Mercury-Uranus in Gemini vibes. Some exciting new ideas. 

CB: Absolutely. 

All right, my friend, let’s move onto talking about the astrology of August, which is when we get our second eclipse season taking place as well as a number of other notable things. 

So here’s the planetary alignments calendar for that month. And the major things that I wanted to mention about August are really several things, because there’s actually quite a bit coming off of the transits of July and the craziness of July. But the main breakdown I wanted to say is August 6th, Venus ingresses into Libra, which is important because that’s the sign it’s gonna retrograde into – retrograde back to, I should say – so we basically have the onset of the pre-Venus retrograde period and the onset of a very extended transit of Venus through that sign and that sector of each of our birth charts. So start paying attention to that then. 

Then August 12th, we get the solar eclipse in Leo, which is the first of that new eclipse series. August 17th, we get a lovely little Venus-Jupiter sextile. August 27th, there’s a lunar eclipse in Pisces. And then August 31st, we have Venus entering its shadow degree at 22 degrees of Libra, which is the degree it will retrograde back to at the end of the Venus retrograde period in November. But then the same day, we also get the completion of a Jupiter-Saturn trine on August 31st, although it’s a little bit marred by the fact that like, the very next day on September 1st, Mars also squares Saturn at the same time. So we got some trickiness with that. 

AC: Yeah. So Venus has got a complicated time in Libra this year. Usually it’s a bit of a relief when Venus leaves Virgo and goes into Libra; it’s a chance to rebalance and re-equilibrate emotionally. And there’ll be some of that, but there’s something a little bit more complicated beneath the surface. One of the things that I’m focused on for August in addition to what you mentioned is Mars’s ingress into Cancer, which will be Mars’s first time back into Cancer since the extended retrograde stay in 2024 and part of 2025. And this time, Mars will spend a lot of it in a square with Saturn. And so we have building especially during the later half of the month a square between Mars and Saturn while both are in the sign of their depression or fall, which provides like, a tense, frictive, potentially nasty little current in the background of things. And although they don’t T-square Venus exactly, it also – Mars and Saturn being in cardinal signs while Venus is in the cardinal sign of Libra also serves to complicate Venus’s ability to make peace while in the sign of the scales. But — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — I think you’d agree the big story’s the solar eclipse. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, all this is happening in the context of eclipse season, and especially since the first eclipse happens in Leo, you know, all eclipses, we always see these prominent figures rise and fall. And I think this is gonna be even more the case here during this eclipse, because it’s happening in Leo with Jupiter and Mercury also in Leo at the same time. So this focus on public figures, on people that are highly visible, but then this energy of that suddenly becoming eclipsed near the South Node, which can sometimes signify a decrease or a detraction of things and just the potential for some prominent people to either become obscured. Sometimes we’ve seen major public downfalls. We also sometimes see like, major celebrity deaths like, taking place during that period. But the flipside is there’s probably gonna be some people with Leo placements that suddenly are thrust into prominence in relatively positive ways during the context of what’s otherwise kind of like, a chaotic eclipse season as eclipse seasons often are. 

AC: Yeah. We have this like, coming out of nowhere and then going to nowhere where someone who’s bright and prominent disappears or falls, and somebody you’ve never heard of comes out of nowhere. The eclipse portal is a two-way portal. And this is the first really complicating thing that we see – or this is one of the really complicating things that we discussed in the context of Jupiter’s time in Leo. This makes it much more unusual and dramatic than it would otherwise be.

CB: Yeah. Exactly. Because it’s like, Jupiter – on the one hand, the eclipses are magnifying Jupiter’s transit through Leo and making them more weighty. But it’s also creating this instability, because eclipses are always like, pivot points where pivotal events start taking place and there’s this turn. And it’s either a turn upwards or it’s a turn downwards. But one of the common things is like, sometimes an eclipse will close one door suddenly and like, bring to end a series of events or a chapter of your life in the Leo sector of your chart. But then by closing that door, it’ll open another door. But at first usually when that happens, it’s not obvious that you’re starting out a new thing or a new chapter of your life that’s gonna be monumentally important. It’s only the fact that an eclipse is coinciding with it that clues you in that some seeds have been planted that are gonna grow and flourish in the future. 

AC: Yeah. And that’s a big part of navigating eclipses is remembering that the language of obscurity and shadow is the stuff eclipses are made of. And that being able to see things for what they are extremely clearly is often quite difficult during eclipse season. Though in retrospect, you may see that something tremendous began or that the seeds of its destruction were clearly sown during that time. Occasionally you just get a big, dramatic thing where it’s obvious at the time. But again, like, the eclipses are literally phenomenons of obscuration. And so sometimes it can be really tricky to tell what’s going on. And so this is our first eclipse in Leo. We’re gonna have more Leo eclipses. And this is followed by our last eclipse in Pisces. 

CB: Yeah. I love that for us. So just to get the dates of eclipse season for the audio listeners, it’s like, eclipse season starts somewhere around August 5th. It peaks with that first eclipse around August 12th in Leo; then we get the two week intense period where the most chaotic and monumental events take place until you hit August 27th when the lunar eclipse in Pisces takes place. And then there’s a drop off that goes into the first week of September when things will probably wrap up and calm down around September 4th, at least in terms of what eclipse season is signifying. 

AC: Yeah, and — 

CB: So — 

AC: — some other things agree with that timeframe as well. 

CB: Yeah. So here’s the — 

AC: Go ahead. 

CB: Just because you mentioned it, here’s that longer timeline in terms of the eclipse series in Aquarius and Leo that this is kicking off. And so it’s gonna start a series of events in February and August of this year that then are gonna keep coming up in six month increments in our life leading to further beginnings and endings starting from this point in August of 2026, and then you jump to like, February of 2027 and then August of 2027, and then eventually finally January of 2028, I believe. And then that will be the wrapping up of that entire sequence. 

AC: Yeah. So hold onto your Leo and Aquarius placements. 

CB: Yeah. And then the last thing was the wrapping up of that series. What was crazy that you and I were surprised to – I was surprised to find when I was making these graphics with Paige was that there had only been one solar eclipse in the sign of Virgo and Pisces during this entire time. 

AC: Yeah, it’s all lunar eclipses. 

CB: Yeah. It’s like, we sort of knew that subconsciously, but it wasn’t until like, putting it on this timeline that you could really see the impact of that and how, you know, our first eclipse is a lunar eclipse in Pisces in September of 2024. And like, all of the rest of them are lunar eclipses in that series between Pisces and Virgo except for that one crazy solar eclipse that happened in September of 2025. And that was during that crazy month where like, the Charlie Kirk assasination took place near the Pisces eclipse early in the month and the first Uranus station, and then there was like, that funeral that happened to fall exactly on the — 

AC: On the eclipse. 

CB: — eclipse on the 21st of September. 

Yeah. So that eclipse series is starting to wind down by this point in August of 2028 with the last eclipse in Pisces as we said, and then finally the last eclipse six months later in Virgo in February of 2027, which itself actually is gonna be a wild, wild eclipse – the eclipse season at the beginning of 2027, because that’s the one that happens during the Mars retrograde in Virgo. And the eclipse like, happens I think in Virgo right when Mars has just squared Uranus. And that’s — 

AC: They’re within two degrees. We wanna say that as the teaser at the end of December? 

CB: Okay. Yeah, yeah. Don’t get ahead. 

All right, so anything else about August? 

AC: No. I think that’s good. And as we get into September, on the first day of September, that Mars-Saturn square actually perfects, which we don’t love, but we do like that for the next couple weeks, the Mars-Saturn square will be weakening. And so that is a peak of a pretty nasty configuration. But then it declines. And so just as some of the power of the eclipses is beginning to wane down as we get further from the second eclipse, we also start to see the Mars-Saturn square declining in power, which is good. And one of the things that we’re left with is a pretty good looking Mercury in Virgo, which is moving back into visibility. It’s Mercury in the place that it knows how to do its thing best. And Mercury, while not a benefic, when Mercury’s in good condition, it’s really good for at least figuring out your way through and around difficult things. Right? It’s not a balm of restoration, but Mercury provides a lot of clever fixes and workarounds and ways to make things workable and thinkable. And so we like that period of Mercury in Virgo, which is followed on September 10th by Mercury’s ingress into Libra, which is a somewhat different circumstance as well as Venus’s ingress into Scorpio now getting — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — deep into the shadow of that retrograde to come. 

CB: Yeah. This is the important part of September for me is that Uranus stations retrograde at five degrees of Gemini on September 10th. And the same day, Venus ingresses into Scorpio, which is the sign that Venus will go retrograde in. So this Uranus station’s really important; it’s like, the second retrograde station in Gemini. And the first one occurred one year earlier during September of 2025 during that crazy eclipse season where there was the assasination that took place, and then just a huge amount of polarization occurred in the country at that time as well as like, crackdowns on free speech and other things like that. So this being the second station is invoking some of that polarization again to me in terms of Uranus stationing there in Gemini and how that’s tied in with the Uranus return of the United States. And then at the same time, we’re seeing the onset of Venus in Scorpio and the retrograde that’s starting to bring events from the past back into the present. But it’s initially gonna do that in a way that has some tension and some problems associated with it. 

AC: Yeah. And I think that it’s gonna be that entry of Venus into Scorpio that makes it really clear that there are some things that are gonna need to be sorted out. I think we might be able to pretend that things are gonna be okay for the earlier part of Venus’s shadow in Libra, especially once it clears the opposition with Saturn. But like, it’s gonna be pretty clear there’s something fishy here; there are things to be – they’re gonna need to get dredged up before they can get sorted out. 

CB: Yeah. And speaking of dredging things up, Venus is not the only planet that moves into its retrograde sign. But by the end of the month, Mars in the final days of September moves into Leo, which is the sign that it will retrograde back into. So functionally we also start getting Mars starting to look backwards and starting to slow down in the sky when it prepares to station retrograde in January of 2027. But we’re already starting the buildup to the Mars retrograde starting by the end of September. So both of those planets – both Venus and Mars – heading into their retrogrades at this point is starting to make us look back to the past, but it’s also starting to bring some kind of ghosts from the past coming back into the present. 

AC: Yeah, and we have – and it’s the beginning of the Mars-Jupiter-South Node copresence. 

CB: Yes. Great point. 

AC: And that copresence occurs for – we have that copresence for a lot of the fourth quarter, and then we have it again in 2027. But we have an exact conjunction of Mars, Jupiter, and the South Node, all three in the same degree later on this quarter. 

CB: Right. So… 

AC: So September is quickly becoming October, where Venus’s station awaits. Venus’s somewhat dread station. 

CB: Yeah. So here’s the calendar for October where we can see all this stuff taking place. And October is really one of my least favorite months of 2026 — 

AC: Rough. 

CB: It’s really rough because of the Venus retrograde and how it’s tied in with all of these tough configurations where Venus is stationing retrograde in Scorpio at the same time that like, Mercury’s squaring Mars and Mars is opposing Pluto, and both of those are squaring Venus. So it’s like, there’s some Venus retrogrades that theoretically – like, practically – start off better and are like, a pleasant jaunt down memory lane or something like that. This is not what this one is. This one is more of a rough trip down memory lane. 

AC: Yeah. And we have, Mercury’s kind of shadowing or paralleling Venus in a lot of ways throughout this retrograde. Because Mercury makes the same square to Pluto and square to Mars that then Venus makes shortly thereafter. And Mercury will station retrograde in Scorpio shortly after Venus’s station retrograde in Scorpio. But the main thing is Venus’s retrograde being square Mars-Pluto, which is a tricky thing in and of itself even if there weren’t a Venus retrograde involved. Like, we would be talking about Mars-Pluto if there’s nothing going on, which is Mars-Pluto gives us sometimes what seem like senseless acts of violence and terror. On a more internal level, it also brings up power dynamics, makes people paranoid – sometimes justifiably, sometimes unjustifiably. It’s tense and secretive and sometimes points to controlling or quietly coercive dynamics. And so just that by itself and then being connected to both Mercury and especially the Venus – Venus’s retrograde station – and first couple weeks going backwards makes for a raw and potentially quite upsetting set of skies for the first, I don’t know, half of October. 

CB: Yeah. Mars and Pluto are both like, two of the traditional rulers of the underworld with Pluto/Hades, for example, being the ruler in like, Greco-Roman mythology. But Mars was connected with the underworld and with death in the Mesopotamian tradition, and we kind of lost that with the Greco-Roman tradition that associated it with the god of war. But one of the things we saw the last time Mars and Pluto were opposed coming out of the retrograde earlier this year was the death of the pope, and I think the exact funeral ended up being the day or very close to the Mars-Pluto opposition. And there was all these world leaders that were flying in from around the world to attend this funeral of this world figure. 

AC: Yeah. And that’s a good point. They both agree on lethality. 

CB: Yeah. And Mars itself, of course, is the planet of war and violence, but when you put it together with Pluto, Pluto amplifies whatever it touches, so you get extreme acts of violence or of whatever Mars is signifying. So that’s not great. And then I wanted to correct something I said in the horoscopes, because Leisa made this point which was a really good point, which is like, usually during a Venus retrograde, people with night charts will sometimes experience that transit as being like, an extended positive transit and some good things will happen. In the first part of this Venus retrograde, though, I think that’s gonna be a tough transit for a lot of people. And even if some positive things come out of it in the long term, especially at the direct station, we all may experience the opening part of this retrograde in October as being rocky at best. So I did wanna put that as a little addition or correction to some of the horoscope predictions. 

AC: Yeah. It’s a rough one. There will be a lot of raw feelings. And yeah. It’s a rough month. I’m going to not name other things that add to the difficulty, but it is a rough month. I will say that I think it gets noticeably better once we get Venus’s regress into Libra. Once Venus has cleared the square with Mars and then the square with Pluto, it becomes something closer to a normal-ish Venus retrograde rather than the extra hard chaos mode version. 

CB: Right. Yeah. So we get… Later in October, it’s like, we get the Venus cazimi in Scorpio, which is at zero degrees of Scorpio, but we also get Mercury stationing retrograde in Scorpio for the beginning of our third and final Mercury retrograde, which curiously, all of the Mercury retrogrades this year take place entirely in water signs, which is a really interesting little factoid about the Mercury retrogrades this year. And this one, for some reason, starts working in tandem with the Venus retrograde from late October forward, because Mercury will station direct the same day as Venus on November 13th. Yeah. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: Should we go to November? 

AC: Yeah, let’s go to November. And so — 

CB: Okay. 

AC: — one really nice thing about November is that as Venus is continuing to work backward through Libra, Venus actually gets to make multiple sextiles to Jupiter! And Mars. But two aspects with Jupiter, only one with Mars. And so we have Venus having retreated to a place of power – Libra – for Venus, and also getting to make a nice supportive aspect from Jupiter. Jupiter’s got problems, but Jupiter is nonetheless a benefic and will provide some perspective, support, a little cushion, a little bounce, a little something not hard or sharp or cruel, which at this point in the Venus retrograde we’ll probably all need. And so this second half-ish of the Venus retrograde is not nearly as cruel as the first half. 

CB: It’s really just astounding how both Venus and Mercury station direct at the same time and what a huge feeling of forward movement that’s gonna be. Like, they’ll be slow to get going again, so there’ll still be some delays and some slowness coming out of both the Mercury and Venus retrograde, but just to have both of them turn direct on the same day and to make that turn I think is gonna be felt by all of us as a sudden turn in terms of the… We’ve all been looking backwards, and there’s something that’s been pushing us towards the past for weeks up to this point for like, 40 days for Venus and three weeks for Mercury. But then all of a sudden, we all start looking forward again to something that’s on the horizon at this point by November 13th. 

AC: Yeah. It’s really nice. It’s really nice to have them both turn the same day. And then intriguingly enough, it’s just a few days later that we have the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter and the South Node – the mean calculation at least – all at 25 Leo. Right? Which is — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — probably going to mean a number of different things to a number of different charts. There’s a lot of different things you can get out of that. Some people will get more Mars-Jupiter where it’s like, oh, a huge surge of confidence and going forward with something. Some people might get more of the South Node-Mars, which can be a martial problem with a mysterious origin. Like, and 20 other variants. And what’s interesting is that, like, that Mars-Jupiter-Ketu or Mars-Jupiter-tail of the dragon is sort of, I feel like it’s promising something in the future from the Mars retrograde that’s upcoming. It will probably bring something itself, but it’s also, I don’t know. I feel like it’s very haunted by things to come in 2027. 

CB: Yeah. On the positive side, it’s like, there’s a big, bold, like, enterprising energy to this Mars-Jupiter conjunction, which for some people if it’s hitting the chart in a nice way can be about taking bold action and being successful or decisiveness that leads to a good outcome coming into a commanding position. Like a lot of the ancient delineations of Mars-Jupiter are like, generals coming to the forefront or rising to the height of a command structure where, you know, sometimes being decisive in especially a combat context – like, a military context – especially is really important for a general or something like that. Like, one of the generals in the Civil War did a terrible job because he would never finish the job. He would always like, wait before taking bold action, and as a result of that, eventually he got fired as a result of never being decisive enough to like, win the battle or win the war. 

AC: Yeah. Mars-Jupiter is excellent for military figures. A number of famous generals have that combination. I think George Patton actually has a South Node-Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Virgo, if I’m not mistaken. Anyway. We don’t need to talk about Patton. But — 

CB: No, I mean, that’s important in the sense that I was gonna say anybody with a Mars-Jupiter conjunction, especially in Leo, is gonna come into prominence and have important events happening in their life at this time, but especially if you have like, a Mars-Jupiter-South Node conjunction, then that’s — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — gonna be very personally important for you and maybe even more so if it’s in the sign of Leo, or if it was also close to Mars stationing retrograde in the Virgo-Leo series.

AC: Yeah, it’s not that common a combination. So I mean, if you’ve got that and the closer a match to this one, the more of a really significant activation it will be. 

CB: Yeah. So those are some of like, the good things of that. Negative things are sometimes a Mars-Jupiter, we see like, Mars’s explosive tendencies being magnified by Jupiter so there’s like, a big explosion. There can be the shattering of a peace, since Jupiter usually represents peace and Mars represents war. And it’s hard, because it’s also building into the retrograde, so we know that this is not the last time we’re gonna see this conjunction. But it’s almost like, the opening of a sequence of things. 

AC: Yeah. And whereas the Mars-South Node combination has a lot of things that are not glorious. There are a lot of – as I was doing research on this last month, I found there were a number of assassinations that are Mars-South Node combinations, like the infamous assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which kicked off World War I was a Mars-Ketu. And so yeah, it’s a strange combination and it will work differently for different people, but the like, big and bold is – we’re gonna get a lot – there’ll be a lot of big and bold. Not everybody gets big and bold, but it will be on the menu. And of course — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — big and bold can easily be a big pain in the ass if someone is being big and bold at you, rather than you are — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — the one bigging and bolding. 

CB: Yeah. Big and bold and flashy and like, shock and awe are some of the keywords for that. But after that, later in the month, Mars moves into Virgo, so it moves into the sign it will retrograde in. And then at the same time, Uranus makes its second exact trine with Pluto that’s happening this year, which again, I’m just still associating with rapid technological advancement in both the Gemini sector, which is like, communications and travel. But then also the Aquarius sector, which recently has just been so much about the artificial intelligence explosion over the past few years. And there’s some sort of synergy that starts happening between those two areas that reinforces and accelerates what each is doing at this time. And this is the second major boost of that this year. 

AC: Yeah. Right? Well, you put AI in drones. Right? You have the algorithmically patterned drone swarm or something like that. You can put the Pluto in the Uranus in Aquarius travel thing. 

CB: Right. Or in robots, in like, humanoid robots or something like that. 

AC: Right. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Put the thing in the thing. 

CB: The thing in the thing. 

AC: And so — 

CB: The intelligence in the machine. 

AC: Yeah. Or the pseudo-intelligence. The thing that’s gonna fly the thing around and drive it into stuff and people. And of course, the Uranian part of that is further exacerbated or comes to the fore with Mars’s ingress into Virgo because that puts Mars in a square with Uranus —

CB: Yes. 

AC: — from November 25th onward for the next week until it’s perfect on, what, December 4th? December 3rd? 

CB: Yeah. That is our opening aspect of December is this Mars-Uranus conjunction from three degrees of Virgo to three degrees of Gemini. And that’s such a crucial aspect, because when I was researching the Civil War and World War II, both of those had a Mars retrograde in Gemini so that it really exacerbated the Mars-Uranus conjunction basically at that time, and that ended up being a crucial turning point in each of those wars. In the case of the Civil War, it was towards the end of it during the most destructive phase. Whereas during the other one, it was during a different period, but what’s crucial about this is that this is gonna happen three times. So this is the first of three squares between Mars and Uranus. And the one that happens in early 2027 when Mars is retrograde and then there’s an eclipse there in early Virgo is gonna be incredibly decisive and important but potentially destructive turning point. Let me just animate that so you can see. So this is the first Mars-Uranus square in early December of 2026. But look at this… I know we’re getting into 2027, but it’s important context for what we’re building up to at the end of 2026. Here’s Mars stationing retrograde around January 10th at 10 degrees of Virgo. And then Mars starts moving backwards back towards Uranus for a second square. And then it completes that square around here in February of 2027 from one degree of Virgo while retrograde to one degree of Gemini, and then look at the Moon. The Moon comes up, hits a Full Moon at the beginning of Virgo, but it’s next to the nodes, so it’s also an eclipse. So there’s the last Virgo eclipse takes place at this time, which just magnifies the Mars retrograde which is squaring Uranus. And that’s what all this Mars retrograde buildup in the shadow period is doing at the end of 2027 is it’s leading us up to this really critical event that takes place in early 2027. 

AC: Yeah. And both you and I looked at this year and then looked at December, and it ends just before this giant thing gets moving. Right? Like, Mars is not quite retrograde. It is so deep in the shadow; it’s been doing some very suspicious things with Jupiter and the South Node. It squared Uranus, and it’s about to do all of it again and get spotlighted by an eclipse right at the heart of its retrograde journey. And so 2026 ends with things about to heat up or heating up to what will be, I don’t know, very intense in the first quarter of 2027. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And this first Mars-Uranus square on December 1st is incredibly crucial with respect to that, because it’s one of those things that will feel big at the time and it’ll seem like a one-off event, but then it’ll actually be part of a series of events that will unfold over the next six months. 

So other things happening in December that are important to mention are Saturn stations direct on December 10th. And then two days later, Neptune stations direct on December 12th. So this is that third and final activation of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction that we’ve had at least two others of earlier in the year – first the exact conjunction in February, then we have the stations in July. But at this point when they station direct, they’re only six degrees away from each other, so we kind of have this reengagement of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction and the reality distortion field taking place at this time that’s making it hard to tell the difference between what’s real versus what’s not and what’s true versus what’s false. What is, you know, digitally altered versus what’s a hard fact in the world. And some of the things with like, coverups and different things like that are probably again becoming quite prominent at this time. 

AC: Yeah. Coverups, illusion, yeah. All of – moral panics, dissolutions and sudden collapses. It’s all on the table. 

CB: And also ideological or people aspiring to higher ideals and aspiring to bring that into tangible form for some reason, which can be a positive side of things. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: And so in the middle of December, Venus finally… Shadow. So like, Venus has dug her way out of the underworld by the time we get to the year’s close. Just in time for Mars to begin his reign as red king of midnight. 

CB: Right. That’s a good point. So Venus exits her shadow at eight degrees of Scorpio on December 15th, but then at the beginning of January, January 7th, finally departs from Scorpio and moves into Sagittarius and completes the entire sequence. 

AC: Yeah. And so we’ve got this giant Mars story that’s about to get loud just as the year ends. Like, we’ve gotten pieces of it; we’ve done basically the first third, right? Mars has spent time in Leo with Jupiter and the South Node, which it’ll do again. It’s entered Virgo and squared Uranus, which it’ll do it again. We’re one third of the way into this Mars story, but the loudest part and the most chaotic part is just over the boundary into 2027. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. So you know, in world events, that’s tough because the Venus retrograde almost seems like a breakdown sometimes in… What is it called when countries are like, trying to form alliances or have diplomatic negotiations? It’s like, a breakdown in diplomatic talks or something like that. 

AC: Yeah. Although the two sextiles between Venus in Libra are kind of nice. Venus snuck in another sextile to Jupiter at the very end of November after the direct station. So there is some restoration of relationships towards the end of Venus’s retrograde or after Venus’s retrograde. But is it enough to offset the Mars configuration after Mars configuration after Mars configuration? Almost certainly not. But better to have some help from the benefics than none at all. 

CB: Yeah. The little light aspects between Venus and Jupiter at different points of the year keeps showing up as little helpers, even during — 

AC: It’s nice. 

CB: — some of our most difficult aspects of other planets. And it’s nice that there will be helpers and healers and sometimes silver linings that are attempting to offset things even during the troubled times. 

AC: Yeah. It can be very restorative just to have something go right in the middle of everything else going wrong. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

AC: Just a little something, right? It’s like, but this is actually not only just fine; this is actually going great. And it doesn’t mean that there aren’t those other troubles, but it helps keep the mind in balance and capable of dealing with the challenges afoot. 

CB: Yeah. And in terms of personal lives, like, having Mars and Jupiter there at the same time, even if there’s this challenging energy that’s happening in the Leo sectors of our charts, there’s also that positive expansive energy in the Leo sector with Jupiter that’s trying to offset things, and in some instances will be successful in doing that. So I like that there are counterbalancing things so that it’s not all just like, purely one thing or the other. 

AC: No. No, it’s not. It’s just the Mars-Jupiter-South Node thing is so tricky because it’s a preview of things that happen again. And so it makes me a little nervous. I’m like, well, it looks like it could mean this, but I know that that story is more complicated than it looks like at the time. Which doesn’t mean – complicated doesn’t mean all bad, right? But it’s tricky. It’s a configuration I’ve been staring at for a month and a half now. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: We’ll have to wait until literally this year – or excuse me, this time next year — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — to talk about this, the Mars story, which still will not have fully gotten moving quite yet. Although Mars will have done a ton of shit in 2026. It’s a pretty Mars-heavy year. Right? Mars-Pluto, Mars right in the middle, Mars configured to that Virgo eclipse and with the Mercury retrograde. Mars-Saturn, then Mars-Uranus, then Mars-Saturn square, and then Mars-Jupiter-Ketu, and then Mars – like, there are a lot — 

CB: Yeah, the Saturn in Aries —

AC: — of Mars — 

CB: — Neptune in Aries. 

AC: Yeah. Like, even though Mars isn’t the once-every-36-year Saturn-Neptune or like, the once every 84 years Uranus in Gemini, Mars is kind of trying to steal the show, or at least stir everybody else up. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Even Venus retrograde in Scorpio is like, a Mars-ruled sign —

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — and that’s one of the reasons why it’s the sign of Venus’s antithesis opposite to Taurus. 

AC: Yeah. And of course, Mars is square Venus at the retrograde station and Venus is in Mars’s sign. Yeah, there’s — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — a lot of martial dynamics to navigate this year. 

CB: Yeah. But as you said, I can’t believe we end the year of 2026 on such a cliffhanger being on the verge of Mars going retrograde in Virgo so that one year from now, we’re gonna obviously have a much clearer picture and we’re gonna have seen a lot of the clues of what’s leading into this, because Mars will have traveled all the way through Leo and gotten part of the way into Virgo so that the scene is gonna be set. But one year from now, we’re gonna have to check in again and see what the whole cliffhanger is that we’re left hanging on at the end of 2026. 

AC: Yeah. My suspicion is that we’ll be looking at things at the end of 2026 and being like, “Really? There’s more?” Like, “This is not the climax?” I think it’s gonna be —

CB: Right. 

AC: — it might be a little bit like the end of the second season of House of the Dragon where like, there are like, every major faction – it ends with like, every major faction has armies preparing for war and there are dragons getting saddled up. You’re like, “Oh my god, it’s gonna be an awesome battle.” And they’re like —

CB: Right. 

AC: — “See you next season! In two years.” 

CB: Right. Yeah, that’s true, because there was a big dragon battle that happened at the end of that season, but then it turns out that the biggest battle of the series is supposed to open the next third season or something. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: So big year. Big year. It’ll get remembered. It’ll get talked about. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: You can do it, everybody. I can do it. Chris can do it. It’s not gonna be fun at a lot of points, but it’s not without its consolations and rewards and victories. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, we’re all in it together. We’re all living in historic times. Everyone’s gonna be doing their best, and one of the things about other historic times in either US history with Uranus in Gemini periods or other periods of world history is sometimes in moments of crisis, that’s when people step up to do what’s necessary and find courage and strength within themselves to do what’s right or to do what needs to be done in order to help not just themselves but also other people. And I think we’re gonna see a lot of that, and that may be the highest manifestation of some of the heroism of like, let’s say, Neptune in Aries, which in certain contexts might be misplaced if it’s glorifying war and killing. But on the other hand, there could be acts of heroism and of other things of that nature that could be very positive. 

AC: Yeah. To have, yeah. To rise to the occasion in ways that you didn’t know you were capable of. 

CB: Yeah. And especially with Uranus in Gemini, one of the things that keeps coming up in different periods is like, the urge for freedom and liberation and the drive for that becomes paramount, especially in US history. These become the periods in which there’s struggle and there’s often a great struggle surrounding that concept and surrounding the attempts to suppress the concept of freedom and liberty. But then there’s also the push to achieve that at the same time and to sometimes reach new levels of freedom and liberation for different groups that didn’t exist prior to that time. 

AC: Yeah. And also to preserve what gains had been made in terms of trying to have a democracy, trying to have a place where individual rights are respected regardless of any other criteria, any and all criteria. 

CB: Yeah. Funny thing I forgot to mention in the Mars-Uranus episode, but in 2005, there was a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Pisces. And the third Star Wars prequel came out, and that was the one where there was this famous scene at the end of it where like, Natalie Portman’s character is watching the emperor has just like, started a fake war in order to take over power and get rid of the democracy of the Galactic Republic. And she’s watching the entire empire sort of like, take over and the democracy falls, and she says something like, “So this is how liberty dies – with thunderous applause,” or something like that. And that was on a Mars-Uranus conjunction, which again just goes back to that recurring theme during those conjunctions of both the drive for freedom sometimes and liberty, but also sometimes the attempts to suppress it and the tension between those two polar opposites. 

AC: Yeah, the struggle. 

CB: The struggle. Yeah. 

All right. Well, speaking of struggles, my friend, I think we have just completed our 2026 year ahead astrology forecast. 

AC: I think you’re right. 

CB: Okay. How do you feel? Do you wanna just keep going and talk about 2027 at this point, or you wanna take a little breather? Maybe like, a year long break? 

AC: You know, I don’t know, Chris. I’m gonna need to lie down and breathe carefully to figure out that I even have a body, much less what I think I should do. I should probably eat the other half of my burrito. That’s about as much as I’ve got for future actions that are planned. 

CB: Awesome. Well, thanks for powering through even though you got sick a few days ago and had been recovering and struggling to get better. But thanks for showing up here today for this year ahead forecast. It’s always not just a pleasure, but it’s an honor to do these forecasts with you each year and to attempt to predict both for individuals as well as world events where things are headed. And I’m glad we’ve been doing this for as many years as we have and building up all the experience so that we can do our best to give people a little bit of insight into what’s coming up. 

AC: Yeah. Back at you, my friend. Is this our 10th yearly forecast? So we started in 2015. 

CB: Oh wow. Yeah. 

AC: So —

CB: Right. 

AC: Christmas or, you know, end of 2015 would have been number one. 

CB: Yeah, you’re right. 10 years of doing this. I’m glad, because we needed that 10 years of preparation because there’s so much – there were so many callbacks and, you know, things that we’ve seen in different transits over the years that became relevant in this forecast. I’m glad we got as much experience in as we did before world events like, you know, started getting really serious. 

AC: Yeah. It would have been nice to get a few more years in of practice before 2020. I think we did all right for 2020, but that’s… The bar got raised significantly in 2020. And it hasn’t really calmed down since, but we’re sort of entering… I guess 2025 was probably the next escalation. This was a pretty wild year. But 2026 is gonna do its very best to show 2025 that it ain’t shit. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s the year that things get real. But we’ll be checking in again every month – you got – you have a better — 

AC: I was gonna say, no take-backsies, 2026. 

CB: Right. 

AC: No take-backsies. 

CB: No going back. All right, we’ll be back again next month, of course. We’re gonna keep doing the monthly breakdowns where we’ll go into each of these things with more detail. I guess we’ll do that at the end of January for the month of February. But otherwise, I think that’s it for this forecast. 

So people should check out your website, which is what again? 

AC: AustinCoppock.com. 

CB: Brilliant. And for mine, you can check out TheAstrologyPodcast.com for information about the electional report or the posters for this year. But otherwise, thanks a lot for watching. Thanks to all the patrons that joined us in the live audience for this recording today. Good luck, everybody, in 2026, and we’ll see you again next year! 

[END CREDITS]

If you’re a fan of the podcast and you’d like to find a way to help support my research, then consider becoming a patron through my page on Patreon.com. In exchange, you’ll get access to subscriber benefits such as early access to new episodes, the ability to attend live recordings, the monthly electional astrology podcast, an exclusive podcast series called The Secret Astrology Podcast that’s only available to patrons, or you can even get your name listed in the credits. For more information, go to Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.

Special thanks to patrons on my Producers tier, including patrons Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jeanne Marie Kaplan, Melissa DeLano, Sonny Bazbaz, Kwatsi Alibaruho, Annie Newman, Ginger Sadlier, Berlynn West, and Nicki Crawford.

People often ask me if I’m available for consultations, but unfortunately I’m not right now because the podcast takes up so much of my time. However, I did create a consultations page on The Astrology Podcast website that has a list of astrologers that I recommend for astrological consultations. You can find that at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Consultations.

The astrology software we use here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, which is astrology software for the PC. You can get a 15% discount by using the promo code ‘AP15’ at the website Alabe.com. 

For Mac users, I recommend the software Astro Gold for Mac OS, which is astrology software for the Mac computer made by the creators of Solar Fire for the PC. You can get a 15% discount with the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ through their website at AstroGold.io.

If you’re really looking to deepen your studies of astrology, then I would recommend signing up for my Hellenistic Astrology course, which is an online course in ancient astrology where I take people from basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over a hundred hours of video lectures, plus monthly webinars and Q&A sessions. And then at the end of the course, you get a certificate of completion saying that you studied with me if you pass the final written test. Find out more information at TheAstrologySchool.com. 

Finally, shoutout to our sponsor for this episode, which is the United Astrology Conference, which is happening September 3rd through the 9th, 2026, in Chicago. Find out more information at UACAstrology.com.