The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 191, titled:

February 2019 Astrology Forecast

With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees

Episode originally released on January 31, 2019

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2019/01/31/february-2019-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 Andrea Johnson

Transcription released February 14th, 2026

Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode was recorded on, what is it? Tuesday, January 29, 2019, starting at 1:19 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this the 191st episode of the show. You can help support the production of future episodes of the podcast by becoming a patron through our page on Patreon. For more information, visit TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Subscribe. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking with Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock, and we’re gonna be looking at the astrological forecast for February of 2019. Hey, guys. Welcome back to the show.

AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris.

KELLY SURTEES: Hey, guys.

CB: Where are you both at? Austin, you’re joining us from Oregon, like usual?

AC: Yep, I’m back home.

CB: And Kelly, where are you at?

KS: I’m in Sydney, in Australia right now, on the road doing my best ‘traveling astrologer’ impression.

CB: Awesome. You just got done with your forecast in like, where? In Florida?

KS: In Palm Springs. Actually in California.

CB: Okay.

KS: So yeah, Tony and I had run a 2019 year ahead astrology retreat down there, which just wrapped up maybe about 10 days ago. That was the first time we’d done something like that. And it was fantastic, if we do say so ourselves, based on the feedback we got. And we’re gonna do it again next year. So I was part of the way to Australia, so I’ve just come out here for a few weeks to see family and do a bit of work out here.

CB: Awesome. That sounds great. So you guys are prepped and ready, both done like different astrological writings for February. I just got done doing a marathon, 12-hour series of livestreaming horoscopes last night on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, so I am prepped and ready to talk about the astrology of February. Austin, I’m sure you looked at all of this like years ago probably for some forecast, right?

AC: No. I mean, I do it like the month before.

CB: Okay.

AC: So it’s always fresh for me. But yeah, I wrote all my dailies, and I did my monthly summary, and I looked at it in the context of my yearly. So I’ve got some thoughts.

CB: Good. Yeah, I remember when you used to do the almanacs. Cuz you had to publish those like way ahead of time, and that was a yearly almanac that was printed. So you were looking at stuff like a year or year-and-a-half ahead of time, right?

AC: Yeah, when I was doing those, you know, yeah, there was basically a monthly summary and then daily entries and then other essays. And that was really interesting to do an entire year ahead of time. I think Kelly’s done stuff even further ahead of time. Cuz I was self-publishing, and so, you know, I didn’t have to have everything done six months before publication. But you’ve worked with some publications where you were like out six months-plus, right, Kel?

CB: Well, she’s still doing it.

KS: Yeah, I still actually. Funny you should mention it, here’s the 2019 Wellbeing Astrology Guide. A very Neptune in Pisces cover. But yeah, we actually go to the printers in June, and the magazine, they put it on sale late August/early September. So this edition I wrote—like the 2019 horoscopes I wrote in March of 2018. Yeah, so when you’re working with a publishing company, there is quite a long lead time. So you kind of do it, and then I almost have to revisit it as we get closer. Like, “What was happening in that month again?”

AC: So have you had the experience—I best you have—where you read something that you wrote a year ago, about what’s happening now? You have no memory of writing it. And you’re like, “Wow. You know, that’s really helpful. That’s really insightful. I’m glad whoever that was wrote that.”

CB: Right.

AC: It seems alien, cuz you don’t remember doing it, and it was so long ago. And you’re like, “Oh, I guess I am pretty good at this. I’m glad I read that.”

KS: Yeah, I have had that. And sometimes I think, “Oh, that’s a really nicely-constructed sentence. Who wrote this?” And then I’ll be like, “Oh!” You know, not to big-note yourself, but you do forget what you create, if you like, a) a long time ago, or b) when you’re in the throes of that inspired process.

AC: Yeah. And writing—especially when you’re, you know, writing horoscopes or writing dailies—like it’s such a trance. Like it’s not a normal mode of awareness.

KS: It has to be, yeah. Especially if you’re doing dailies, you do have to. This where I always think my ‘Pisces’ bits love it, cuz you just get into a flow. You come out of that really conscious, clear, rational and you just drop into some kind of flow state and let it flow or let it go, if that makes sense. Like let it have its head, if that makes sense.

AC: Or, how shall we say, you scramble uncomfortably for an hour to try to find that flow state. You’re like, I’ve been there before, and I’m trying to find a way back home.”

KS: “Where is it?” Yeah. It’s funny. There’s a beautiful piece. Elizabeth Gilbert—who some of our listeners may have heard of—she wrote this book called Eat, Pray, Love years ago. You guys have probably heard of her. She gave a TED Talk on creativity, which is amazing. And if anyone hasn’t seen it, I would highly recommend it. And she talks about a poet—I think it’s Mary Oliver, but I’m 100% sure—where the poet is like out in the field one day, walking around, and sort of feels this poem coming through her. And she’s kind of rushing to get home, so she can write it down with her pen and paper, and she kind of just grabs the end of the poem. And as she’s writing it down, she’s writing it down backwards, if that makes sense. In Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk, she talks about how in ancient Greek thought, you weren’t a genius, that you had a genius inside you. So you had this kind of ‘creative/inspiration creature’. And this is a very Piscean approach, which is probably good as we contemplate February’s extended Mercury in Pisces tour that’s coming up. So yeah, that sort of idea of interacting with the creativity. But yeah, it’s knowing the flow state and then, how do I get back into it, basically.

AC: But I like that, too. Like you grab whatever—the poem or the piece or the idea—by whatever you have. If you have it by the toe—

KS: Or the tail.

AC: You follow that piece to get to the whole body of it. But sometimes you’re like, “I know it’s kind of like this,” and, you know, you follow it.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah.

CB: And one of the interesting things about reading different authors of astrological forecasts and horoscope columns. Sometimes they pick up or end up focusing on different pieces of the entire puzzle, or accessing it. And everybody often gets to a similar place, but sometimes they start at different locations, depending on what’s speaking to them more that month.

AC: Definitely.

KS: 100%. Yeah, some people are focused on the arm, some the head, some the tail. You know, they can get into the core that way, but they’ve come in with a different perspective or a different point of view.

KS: Yeah. All right, so that’s part of what we’re gonna be doing here today, as we look at the astrology of February. So as usual with our forecast episodes, if this is your first time, we’re gonna spend the first little bit—I’m gonna guess about 45 minutes or so, probably longer—talking about catching up, talking about a few general discussion topics related to astrology that have come up over the past few weeks. And then in the second hour of this, we’re gonna get to the actual astrological forecast for February, which is gonna include an overview of all the major transits, plus, a featured highlighted electional chart for the month using the principles of electional astrology. So if you are bored already with our discussions, you can jump ahead to the forecast. There will probably be a timestamp in the description below this episode, probably on YouTube or on the description page on TheAstrologyPodcast.com. So given that, no one has any right to complain. If you don’t, just jump forward and skip anything.

AC: That is the internet. That’s the one inalienable internet right is the right to complain. Can’t take that away from the people.

CB: The people that do have a right to complain are our lovely audience, who’s joining us today, and who have no ability, unless they walk away, to skip out from our conversation.

KS: That’s true, our live audience.

CB: So apologies to them. But thanks everyone for joining us today. So I’ve got a few discussion topics lined up. Before we get to those, I just want to see if there’s any news or stuff we meant to mention before we get into other events. I know one major thing that’s coming up, that we just finalized in the last week—or at least got some preliminary plan of—is that we scheduled and we’re ready to announce that we’re gonna be doing a podcast event at the Northwest Astrology Conference the day before the opening, on Thursday, in May, right?

KS: Yes.

AC: You damn right.

KS: Very exciting. 8:30 PM. Be there or be square.

AC: Yeah, it’s the NORWAC pre-game.

KS: Yes.

AC: The pre-funk.

CB: So NORWAC pre-game show. We’re thinking about—we’re still kicking around ideas. But we’re thinking about doing one of these forecast episodes and recording our forecast for June at this little, two-hour, pre-conference event on Thursday. What is it? May 22? Do you guys know the date? Is it the 23rd?

KS: Let’s double-check. We should know this.

CB: That would be good.

KS: I have to look up the Thursday before NORWAC. The 23rd. Yeah, spot on.

CB: Cool.

KS: Thursday, the 23rd.

CB: Thursday, the 23rd, in Seattle, starting at 8:00 PM. It’s gonna be right after Mark Jones’ pre-conference workshop. So if you’re attending that, you’re gonna have to come in a little early. Cuz the conference doesn’t officially open until the next day, until Friday. But we’re hoping it works out, so that some of the podcast listeners can join us. Seating is gonna be limited. We’ve only got room for about 200 people. We don’t have reservations or anything like that, but hopefully, we’ll be able to fit everybody in.

KS: And it’s kind of an open event, if I’m understanding it correctly. Correct me if I’m wrong. If you just happen to be in Seattle, and may you are or aren’t coming to the conference, you can certainly pop in to our podcast event.

CB: I’m not actually entirely sure about that.

KS: Okay. That part we have to check, okay.

CB: Yeah, I do know it’s gonna be a free event. So people don’t have to pay extra for it, which is one of the cool things, and I’m hoping that’ll help people to attend. But definitely people attending the conference or people flying in from out of the city—I want to make sure there’s plenty of room for them. So hopefully there will be, and there’ll be 200 seats. So it should be a great event. It’ll be very similar to the event that we did at UAC just last year and last May. So if you want a preview of what that’ll be like, just go back and watch the episode we did with the recording from that. All right, so that’s exciting. And we’re all gonna be at NORWAC then, coming up in May. And that conference—it sounds like it’s getting really big and getting really full. Like I heard that the hotel might be booked up at this point.

AC: Mm-hmm.

KS: The hotel is already booked up, yeah.

CB: Okay.

KS: There are overflow hotels that Laura, the conference organizer, is directing people towards.

CB: Okay.

AC: Yeah, there are a lot of hotels in that area. So it’s not like people are gonna have to be 10 miles away.

CB: Okay, that’s good. So that’s gonna be the big conference of the year. I’ve seen a lot of younger astrologers like raising money and doing innovative things like fundraisers and stuff in order to get tickets. So I’m pretty excited about that and looking forward to seeing and meeting a bunch of people there in just a few months. The other big conference this year is, in June, the Astrological Association of Great Britain is hosting their annual conference. And I’m gonna be speaking there for the first time, so I’m looking forward to seeing some people in the UK. Then in August, I believe, is the NCGR conference in Baltimore, which is the other big US conference this year.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, are either of you going to that one?

KS: No.

AC: I don’t believe so.

KS: No.

CB: No, East Coast this year?

KS: Yeah, I don’t know that I’ve been to an NCGR conference before. But I just really like to keep July and August conference-or-major-event-free if possible, cuz there’s so much traveling that happens at other times of the year. And I’m super excited about NORWAC this year. A) We’re all gonna be together, which is great, but I’ve got a full presenting schedule there. So that’ll be my big conference event for 2019.

CB: Right. For some reason, we’ve just added an additional event. So me and Kelly are gonna be pretty worn out by the end of the week. We’re gonna do that pre-conference podcast event, two lectures, and then a workshop. Are you giving a keynote or anything as well?

KS: Yeah.

CB: You are? Okay.

KS: On Friday, at the opening.

CB: Also giving a keynote. Oh, the opening. You’re doing the opening for the entire conference.

KS: Yes.

CB: Okay.

KS: So no pressure. It’s easy. No one will see that if I flop. Yeah, so I’m really looking forward to Monday night. I think you’ll find me slumped over a vodka in the bar maybe.

CB: Very good.

KS: Yeah, it’ll be fun. It’s my favorite conference to go to. So I’m really excited to see people. And it’s huge. Like there’s twice as many tickets that have sold so far, I think, for this event.

CB: Yeah. And I’m told that a lot of podcast people are signing up for it, so that’s pretty exciting. I think we’re gonna see a lot of people there. I did want to mention one other piece of information about that, that there’s scholarships available. There’s a diversity scholarship for NORWAC. I think they also have a general scholarship that seems to be available through their website. So you can find out more information about both of those at the conference website, which is norwac.net. I think the Association for Astrological Networking is also about to offer and announce scholarships for this year. And many people apply for those in order to get some scholarship, or at least a partial grant to attend a conference. Although I think they can also sometimes be applied to other things, like research projects. So just do a search for the Association for Astrological Networking and become a member of that, and then I think you’ll be eligible to apply for one of those scholarships. And Kelly, you just finished a term on the board of AFAN?

KS: I did, actually. Yeah, I just served. I stepped in to complete somebody’s term, who had to pull out, but I think I was in about two-and-a-half years. It was a really interesting experience, like a great opportunity to give back to, you know, this community who has given me so much, but to really also understand how organizations work, or how the astrological organizations support astrology in the world today with their events, and their communities and things like that. So that was really interesting. Yeah, so we’ve just voted in a bunch of new members, which it’s gonna be really exciting to see where they take AFAN in the next two years as well.

CB: Yeah, I’m really excited there’s a lot of newer and younger astrologers that got involved and seem to be on the board now. And it’s so crucial because that’s how conferences oftentimes happen, through the organizational efforts of these organizations and some of these volunteers who put in time and effort to make sure this community stuff can take place.

KS: Absolutely. Like the conferences wouldn’t happen without organizations, like AFAN’s work. And it is—it’s a volunteer thing. But it just helps support the community and the growth and create the infrastructure that allows, you know, even scholarships to be given away and things like that, which is just helping support the future of astrology, and I’m definitely all for that.

CB: Yeah, definitely. So that’s a great organization, the Association for Astrological Networking, just because they have a mandate to just give away scholarships and give, I think, most of their proceeds every year. Or most of the money that they take in has to go back out to scholarships as part of their bylaws, or towards community efforts, like organizing conferences. There’s other organizations, like the National Council for Geocosmic Research, which is the one hosting the NCGR conference in August. ISAR, the International Society for Astrological Research, their next big conference has recently been announced. It’s happening here, in Denver, in 2020. And I’m actually pretty excited about that.

KS: Is that May or August? I keep having trouble remembering when that is. But it is 2020.

CB: That’s a good question. Don’t know the answer to that. I wanna say May, but I wouldn’t think that it would coincide with NORWAC like that.

KS: Yeah. Here’s October. But you won’t have to worry about flights for that one, Chris.

CB: No. And I’m thinking about doing some major podcast event-type stuff with that, since it’s gonna be local. So I’m really looking forward to having you guys over. Maybe we can have like a sleepover at my place and do like a live podcast event.

KS: You lie. There would be no sleep in such a thing.

CB: Right.

KS: There would be too much talking.

CB: That is true. So yeah, lots of conferences, and organizations are important. One other organization that’s important, I was recently reminded of, is the Association for Young Astrologers. They’ve been promoting their free lectures recently, which is a really awesome thing that they’ve had ever since the beginning, but I completely forgot about it. And I know all three of us have donated lectures to that, so that when you sign up to become a member of the Association for Young Astrologers, you get access to this whole MP3 library that tons of astrologers have given lectures to over the years. So you guys both have lectures there, right?

AC: Yeah, I can’t remember what I donated. I might have a couple of things in there.

KS: Yeah, I think I donated one of my lectures on progressions. But it’s a great back catalog. And to get access to that for just your membership fee, which I’m not sure off the top of my head what it is. Maybe $40 or $50 a year?

CB: No, it’s like $20.

AC: I think it’s like $20.

KS: Oh, $20. Oh, my gosh. That is phenomenal value, even if you just signed up to get access to the recordings.

AC: Yeah, it’s four or five coffees.

KS: Yeah, yeah.

CB: So I’ve got two lectures in there. I think both of you do. I originally signed up for this Project Hindsight workshop, that’s available there, way back.

AC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. I’ve listened to all those.

CB: Yeah, I signed up for that in like 2004 or something. That was the first thing that got me to sign up AYA, that library. So anyway, that’s another organization. There’s lots of organizations doing great work. So sign up for them to help support—not just for the personal benefit that you get out of it, which is a lot—but also to help support the broader community in some of those efforts. All right, discussion topics today. I just did, with Leisa—Leisa and I just did a landmark episode, where we finally did an episode on electional astrology. It’s something I’ve talked about and sort of used implicitly for years here on the podcast. But I always avoided doing an episode on that because I have a lecture on it, that I sell on my website, and I also have a course. So that’s always been a struggle with the podcast, which is how much to sort of give away for free and just post through the podcast versus how much to hold back as part of my course offerings. But after doing the latest set of electional stuff, where Leisa and I launched an entire year ahead report, I realized there were a lot of people who just don’t understand the basics of electional astrology, or don’t understand what we’re doing with the charts, or how to use them, or how they’re constructed. So we sat down and recorded a very long, almost agonizingly-long, three-hour episode on electional astrology and outlined most of the basic principles of the subject, especially in terms of the approach that I take to electing most electional charts. So in terms of discussion topics today, I wanted to ask both of you guys—cuz everybody has a slightly different approach to electional, just based on like what’s worked for you and what hasn’t over the years, or what things you’ve decided to emphasize for different reasons. And so, I was curious what some electional tips are for you guys. Or what are crucial things in electional charts that are non-negotiable for you, or that you try to always integrate in one form or another? Kelly, let’s start with you.

KS: Austin? Yeah, I’ll go.

AC: I—

KS: Go.

CB: I mean, Austin, one of the things I know you use a lot—that I don’t use as much—is the planetary days and planetary hours, due to your work with magical astrology, right?

AC: Yeah, that’s definitely a factor I like to take in. Because a lot of the elections I’ve done are for magic stuff or talismans or whatever else, and so, that’s certainly influenced my approach to electional in general. I guess I see it like a treasure hunt. Like, you know, I’ll look through the year, look through the month and just find what looks good. Like, you know, what are the best skies of that period, whatever the treat is, you know, and then play with the various risings on this day or that day, with the Moon aspecting this, from this angle or another. I try to find the good thing and then find the best possible angle on the good thing.

CB: Right.

KS: That’s a really good summary.

CB: Like sometimes finding like the dignified planet that’s in its own sign or exalted and then figuring out the best way to accentuate that, by like putting it on the ascendant or the midheaven or something like that.

AC: Yeah, exactly. What are we working with here? Like, what’s the best thing? And then, what is that good for? And then, how do we, you know, get the most out of it? I guess, you know, one thing that I’ve started thinking about more is putting fixed stars on angles when maybe the planets aren’t doing enough for you. You know, it’s like, “Well, you’ve got that, too.” It doesn’t change what the planets are doing. But, you know, there’s a difference between like putting Algol on the ascendant versus putting Regulus on the ascendant. So sometimes you can use that to kind of tune the election in the direction that you want.

CB: Yeah, so fixed stars, planetary days and planetary hours. That’s good. What about you, Kelly?

KS: Yeah, well, I like how Austin summarized that with the idea of picking the best thing and then finding the best time, on the best day, where that’s the most active. Cuz really, when you’re looking over a longer period, that’s exactly what you’re doing. You know, when I used to do a lot of wedding elections, I’d be looking for when Venus is gonna be in some sort of dignity, and then how can we get a chart where that’s angular or aspected by Jupiter or the Sun or the Moon in some sort of positive way.

CB: Right. That’s what Austin did for his wedding election.

AC: Yep.

KS: Yeah, yeah. I think we probably both did that for our wedding elections.

AC: Yeah. And I’ve done wedding elections for people where I’ve literally just said, “Okay, what does it look like while Venus is in Pisces this year? What does it look like while Venus is in Taurus? And then, okay, what about Libra?”

KS: Yeah.

AC: You know, if the time was that open, I’d be like, “Okay, so what’s the good Venus pickings?”

KS: Well, absolutely. And, I mean, we’ve done exactly the same thing. Cuz if you’ve got a year, they’re the first three periods that I would go to. Sometimes I might skew it to the natal chart. For instance, if the two individuals were quite heavy in their natal charts on fire and air, then I might prefer Venus in Libra for them. And if the individuals were earthy or watery, I might look at the Venus in Taurus or the Venus in Pisces. Assuming you’ve got enough of the luxury of choice, cuz you don’t always. Sometimes if you want a nice Venus, you just have to take, you know, this one week or what have you.

AC: Right. It’s like, you know, like, “Oh, the perfect election is on Thursday. We can get the venue on Saturday or Sunday.”

KS: Exactly.

AC: “Okay. Well, I like Saturday better.”

KS: Yes. Yeah. And that’s such a good point to keep in mind with elections, especially with things like weddings, where you’re often like, “Maybe Friday, if you’re lucky.” But usually what I suggest to people is that there’s three key things you want to try and get into your electional chart if you can. The first one is you want to have the ruler of the ascendant sign in some kind of helpful or functional place or condition. So, you know, you don’t really want an ascendant-ruling planet in the 6th or 12th house, for instance, unless you were specifically talking about going on a retreat maybe. So usually that’s the first thing. Then whatever the Moon’s doing. You know, what is the next aspect the Moon is making? Is that gonna be sort of helpful? Cuz those two things, for my money, are how we can get a lot of juice and activity and energy into the chart. And when we’re electing, we want to try and put in as much juice. I mean, people don’t have to elect. They can just do stuff at random moments. But in an ideal situation, you’d have, yeah, the ascendant ruler in a functional condition, and you’d have the Moon applying to aspect—well, applying to aspect the ascendant ruler would be fantastic, but applying to aspect some sort of planet that can be helpful. When you can, I like to avoid putting the ascendant in the electional chart—I like to avoid having that fall in one of the more difficult or restrictive houses in the person’s natal chart.

CB: Okay.

KS: You know, you don’t always get that choice. But I don’t usually like to pick Aquarius rising elections for me, personally, cuz that’s 12th house for me. And most of what I’m trying to do, I don’t really want to be ‘12-housey’ about it. So little things like that. And then, yeah, the fixed star part. When I was first trained in electional astrology, that was actually how I was taught to bring in qualities of the planets that you may not be able to get via planetary placement. So the fixed stars, you know, you might have a Mars-Saturn fixed star or a Venus-Jupiter fixed star, and you can sort of emphasize both in an angular placement in the chart, or the Moon. And as you mentioned, I think, Algol, Austin, you know, usually it’s a big avoid if Algol is on an angle in the electional chart.

AC: Yeah.

KS: I’d be like, “Let’s do this at a different time,” basically.

AC: Unless you’re electing something truly horrible.

KS: Yes, to cause grief or anxiety or terror in some capacity.

AC: Probably not good for marriage charts.

KS: Certainly not for marriage charts, no. I think I used to use Spica a little bit, just as that sort of protective star sometimes, you know, in marriage charts. Yeah.

CB: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like all those rules are also more or less sort of what we outlined and are similar to the approach that we outlined in the episode. And that’s kind of like a standard approach if you read through enough electional astrology texts. While they all have different variations for different topics, in terms of what to focus on or what to avoid, there’s like certain core standard things that are true for most electional rules.

KS: Totally. So yeah, I’m pretty sure you guys would’ve covered those things, Chris, and probably a few extras in your three-hour, detailed, deep dive discussion.

CB: Yeah. Although it’s funny. Cuz even those two things of like ‘make sure the ruler of the ascendant is good’, ‘make sure the Moon is good’, breaking down what that actually means in specifics for somebody that’s a complete novice to electional astrology actually takes a lot more time than you would think.

KS: Well, yeah. You have to go through all the iterations of, what does a good Moon in an electional chart look like?

CB: Right.

KS: Why is this one better than that one? Yeah, no, it would take time to spell that out. It’s easier for us to summarize ‘here are the rules’.

AC: You have to learn astrology to understand what makes a planet good or not.

KS: Yes.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah. So assuming you know all those things, there’s just really three or four rules to electional astrology.

CB: Right. Yeah, so I’ve been thinking about it since then, and there was really one simple rule that you could really get a lot of mileage out of, which is just with the Moon. Try to avoid having a chart where the Moon is applying to a hard aspect—like a conjunction, square, or opposition—with Saturn in a night chart or Mars in a day chart, and try to gravitate towards charts where the Moon is applying to some sort of aspect with Jupiter in a day chart or Venus in a night chart. And it’s like if you follow that basic rule, that’s a really great starting point most of the time, I feel like, for most electional charts.

AC: Yeah. Yeah, well, I would consider Moon in a hard aspect with either malefic, but especially the out-of-sect malefic—that’s an anti-election.

KS: Yes.

CB: Right.

AC: Like any other day of the month.

KS: Avoid.

CB: Right.

AC: And so, I feel like 2019—I’ve been thinking about this—is in some ways the easiest year to get into electional astrology because just do it while the Moon’s in Sag.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Just do it while the Moon’s in Sag.

CB: And a lot of our elections—and honestly, that’s really funny that you say that, cuz our electional chart that I’m gonna talk about, that’s the featured chart for this month, is in fact the Moon in Sag applying to a conjunction with Jupiter.

AC: You know, I’ve done a bunch of elections recently, and I’m like, you know, being really careful and thinking about like, “Well, what about this?” I’m like, “Oh,” and I just end up doing it. You know, “Let’s just do it when the Moon’s in Sag.”

CB: Yeah.

AC: It’s just there for us the whole year.

KS: Totally.

CB: Definitely. So that was actually tough, cuz we tried to have some variation. So we released the 2019 Electional Astrology Report. It was our first time doing it, but we tried to pick out one electional chart for each month and did that. But there’s a lot of featuring or trying to feature Jupiter elections this year while it’s in Sag, before it moves into Capricorn at the very end of the year. Although there are then, finally, some nice Saturn elections that we did feature, I think, towards the very end of the year to try to get some mileage out of Saturn in Capricorn, if that’s an election that you want to try to use. So one other thing related to that, before we move on, is the debate about the integration of the natal chart into the electional chart. And that’s something that you already alluded to, Kelly, with your third rule.

KS: Yeah.

CB: And I feel like all astrologers are more or less on the same page, that in theory, or in best-case scenario, obviously, you want to, and you should integrate and take into account the natal chart to some extent. But sometimes there’s just a question of priority or like which one you’re gonna look at first. Do you guys have like a prioritization? For me, sometimes it’s harder because of all of the rules that go into finding an electional chart, just in terms of the sequence. I’ll often try to find the best electional charts I can find within the timeframe that I’ve been given. So let’s say somebody said, “I want to get married within this two-month timeframe. Tell me the best date.” I will first look and try to identify the best standalone electional charts, and then I’ll compare what I find. If I find like four or five charts, I’ll then compare those to the natal chart, and usually end up going with the one that matches the natal chart the best at that point, just as part of my workflow for doing electionals for clients. But I know that there is sometimes some debate about this, and there are some people that feel like you really should start with the natal chart first. Do you guys have like a preference, or does it vary?

AC: I would say that my approach is very similar to yours. I prioritize the election itself. And if there are a couple that will work, then I will pick the one that coheres better with the natal chart. A lot of the discussion or debate comes up when electing talismans.

CB: Right.

AC: Planetary talismans.

CB: I’m sure.

AC: And so, it’s not 100% the same, but there is some of that, and there’s a little bit of how much does the natal chart matter. And, you know, I would say the consensus among people who actually, you know, have put some time in and done some experiments is it matters, and then you’ll get opinions as to the degree.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah, I used to favor—particularly with wedding elections—I did like to have a quick look at the birth chart first, just to get a feel. You know, perhaps one person has a Saturn-ruled 7th in a day chart, and in that instance, we might want to, you know, include that a little bit more in the election. But when I would then be looking at possible elections, you know, you can’t help but notice the ones where you’ve got, you know, just a great election. So I think it’s a constant dance of weaving between ‘this is a great electional chart’ versus how much is it directly connected to the natal chart of the person involved.

CB: Right. I mean, cuz you can have a really great electional chart. But if it puts like Mars and Saturn and Pluto and like, you know, Chiron in a conjunction on the person’s ascendant at that exact moment, that might not be a great experience for them subjectively.

AC: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I don’t look to the natal chart for confirmation. I look at it for possible deal-killers.

KS: That’s a good point.

AC: I’ll just use whatever the good electional chart is, as long as there aren’t deal-killers when I compare it to the natal.

CB: Right. Yeah, because in some instances, it’s funny. Cuz if it’s something that many people are involved in, you can kind of think of it like—you might create venture that is actually successful and goes on to be something great, that outlives the person who started it, but maybe it doesn’t end up being individually positive for that one person because it doesn’t jive with their natal chart very well. So that’s the reason why you’ve gotta take that into account in terms of not just making sure the entity that you initiate or bring to life at that time is successful, but also, that it’s helpful for you personally, or the person who’s initiating it, who’s asking you to make the election for them.

AC: Right. Like having a beautiful, talented, successful child who you don’t get along with.

KS: Exactly.

CB: Right. And that’s exactly what an electional chart is. It’s literally like creating the chart for something or the birth of something. Which is then weird if you reverse that because then you start realizing—this is something I’ve been realizing lately. I see more younger astrologers coming in who, weirdly, have the birth charts or transits that I remember looking at like not that long ago. Like 18 years ago. And you like remember that day very distinctly. Have you guys run into this so far, yet, with clients?

AC: Yeah, yeah.

KS: Yeah.

CB: This is how I know I’m having like a midlife crisis, when I start meeting people whose charts I distinctly remember looking up the delineation on Astro.com at one point, in the early 2000s, for like that transit for that day.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Okay. Austin, you have like a thousand-yard stare.

AC: Oh, well, you know, Kelly and I just have a couple of years on you.

CB: Okay, you guys are way ahead of me on this.

AC: We’re exactly ‘x’ number of years ahead of you.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Right. Well, and you guys are both like Pluto in Libra, right? Like I’m Pluto in Scorpio. So I’m still used to being the youngest generation in the astrological community. But now, I am the old man with Pluto in Scorpio, and there’s all these like Pluto in Sagittarius kids running around.

KS: Yeah, it’s so hilarious to hear you say that, Chris, cuz for such a long time, you were the kid running around.

CB: Right.

AC: Chris, were you born in ‘84?

CB: Yeah.

AC: Okay. Yeah, so we’ve got five years on you.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Okay, so you guys are way ahead of me on this. You’ve already gone through this process, and you’ve come to terms with it.

AC: It’s just something that happens.

KS: It is. And it’s only gonna happen more and more as we continue to age.

AC: And especially recently, as there’s sort of a whole generation that’s getting into astrology now. And so, you know, I’m just doing more readings for people who are like 23 or 25. And I’m like, “Oh, I remember that. I remember those transits from when I was in college.”

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah. Yeah, it’s kind of fun. It’s like, oh, it takes you back to sometimes the good ole days, sometimes some tough periods, yeah.

CB: All right. Well, I’m glad that you guys have already experienced this and this is just my own personal crisis.

AC: I think it’s like an astrological—

KS: Rite of passage.

AC: Yeah, it’s a mile marker. Like I’m sure it’s happened to everybody, you know, who’s committed their life to astrology forever.

CB: Right. Yeah, I mean, there’s other things that go along with that. Anyway, to move on, I think that was the main thing I wanted to talk about in terms of electional astrology. Most of the other newsy topics that I have are kind of little blow-off things. Like it’s been interesting, I’ve been seeing a lot of birth data being discovered or disseminated lately on social media. And that’s been kind of exciting for me because for a long time, I was getting kind of worried. If you look through Astro-Databank, there’s like a lot of funny celebrity charts, which you realize when you look through it was just like somebody from like the Pluto in Leo generation who had like their favorite celebrity, and they went out and tried to get their birth data, or they asked them for their birth data. And you can see in the notes, it says like, you know, “Astrologer asked for such-and-such musician’s birth data.” And so, there’s a lot of charts for like, you know, bands that were popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s and things like that, but that starts dropping off pretty dramatically once you get closer to like the ‘90s and the 2000s. And I was getting worried about it for a while, that younger astrologers were not going out and getting birth data for like notable individuals as much, and it sort of wasn’t as common as it was in previous generations of astrologers. But I’m starting to see that change a little bit, and I’m also starting to see how people are getting birth data or releasing birth data more easily or more frequently through things like Twitter and Instagram and things like that. Have you guys noticed some of this as well?

AC: A little bit. Yeah, I mean, part of it is I think the Pluto in Scorpios are on the case now, ready to hunt that data down. I think we Pluto in Libras felt that it might be too rude.

KS: Yeah, we didn’t know the social etiquette, so we didn’t get on that bandwagon.

AC: That seems terribly awkward.

KS: Yeah. Well, I saw Arthur—one of our dear listeners—picked up Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s birth details. And that’s a fantastic story. He just called or emailed her campaign office, and they checked with her, and she was happy to share it. So around that time, there did seem to be a bit of a rush on people getting some birth dates and details, which is fantastic.

CB: Yeah, that was a really brilliant, great example of that, and I’m really excited to see somebody —a younger astrologer who’s recently come into the community—doing that. Where he just reached out to her campaign and talked to a campaign staffer, who contacted her and got her permission, and then also got the birth time, and then passed it on, with permission, to Arthur to mention publicly. And she’s like a major, you know, notable figure in the news, and a politician, and perhaps somebody that will become more notable in the future. Or continue to become notable, but at this stage, relatively early in her career. Only like a year into her becoming a public figure. That’s now a piece of birth data that we have, that the community can study and draw on and sort of learn from collectively. So that’s pretty exciting. And that wasn’t the only one. There was another one on Twitter. I just happened to notice somebody I was following—who’s a younger astrologer—and she follows like Mac Miller’s Instagram account. And she noticed that his mother, to celebrate his anniversary—he was a musician who just passed away a few months ago—released a picture of his birth announcement, which contained his birth time. So that was a really big deal, especially for a lot of younger people that were fans of that musician, who passed away just a few months ago, that we now have a timed chart for him, which people can study and relate to in different ways. I also saw an announcement on Twitter yesterday that Patton Oswalt had like announced his birth time for some reason. I think it was on his Twitter account. So he’s a comedian, or a notable comedian. So it was just like a bunch of different pieces of birth data that are just coming out in different ways. And sometimes it’s easier to overlook them. But it’s kind of noticeable and nice when that is noticed and then added to a repository like Astro-Databank.

AC: Yeah.

KS: It’s fantastic.

AC: It’s very difficult to analyze people’s charts if we don’t know when they were born.

CB: Yeah.

AC: That’s a big part of it that makes this whole thing work.

CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s crucial because that’s a crucial piece of our research process as astrologers and contributes to like the community research effort to understand astrology better, because those individual case studies are some of the best opportunities to do that. And it’s not just, you know, private individuals that astrologers consult wit—or obviously like a huge part of that—but also, having birth data for public figures is pretty useful as well because their lives tend to be very well-documented, and therefore, they provide very useful, objective research studies in some instances.

AC: Yeah, yeah. Studying biographies is an irreplaceable tool in astrological education.

CB: Right.

KS: Yes.

CB: Definitely. So just to encourage—I think those are just like great instances that I wanted to mention. Cuz I would encourage all listeners to do that and to challenge listeners to think of some notable people who you’re like a fan of, some celebrity you follow or something like that, and actually see if we have birth data for that person, if we have a birth time for them. And if not, like consider actually reaching out, and consider how you would do that and what the most respectful way would be to attempt to reach out to see if you could get that birth data somehow. And I think if more astrologers did that, then we would be able to generate even more data to research collectively as a community. And that can only be a positive thing for astrologers in general.

KS: Totally.

AC: Absolutely. Get out there. Do it. Chase them down.

CB: All right, so that’s happening not just with birth data. But also, recently, the US presidential election for 2020 is starting to ramp up, and people are starting to launch campaigns. And that’s been kind of interesting to watch from a birth data perspective as well. Well, not just from a birth data perspective. But some of these campaign launches—you can actually time and cast a chart for the first announcement. And that’s been actually really fascinating, seeing when different people are announcing their campaigns and some of the charts that they’re starting under versus like others, and there being this sort of qualitative difference from an electional standpoint to some of these charts. Have you guys been paying attention to any of those launches?

AC: No, I’m trying to pretend that another election isn’t coming.

KS: Isn’t coming. You’re ‘ostriching’. You’ve got your head in the sand.

AC: I mean, I can imagine some good things about it. But it’s just sort of like, “Oh, didn’t we just do this?”

KS: It’s such a long buildup with the two-year campaign process, yeah.

AC: I’m not emotionally ready to add that to, you know, the ambient confusion of this year and last year. You know, there’s a lot on our plate in this little slice of history.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, I’m definitely not quite ready for that either. But at least from an astrological standpoint, it’s interesting to see some of it start happening. And it raised an interesting issue that I had forgotten about, which is that sometimes with politicians and notable people, there’s sometimes a question about whether they ever are using electional astrology, which almost sounds like a paranoid thing. Except back in the 1980s, from a lot of the astrologers around that time, you hear stories from the early ‘80s, when the astrologers were like, “Reagan keeps launching things at really weird times, like in the middle of the night. And the chart that he keeps launching them under looks strikingly auspicious from an astrological standpoint. It’s almost as if he’s using electional astrology.” And then later, in the ‘80s, that suspicion ended up being confirmed that he actually had an astrologer working for him. So even though sometimes, you know, that sounds like it could be almost like paranoia or something like that, there are some times astrologers work behind the scenes with notable people in order to elect the launch of major ventures and undertakings.

AC: Well, and that’s the historical norm, if we like just back up out of the 20th century and look at most of human history, in most places. Specific, you know, auspicious timing for important moves by power people is the norm.

CB: Yeah, I tried to give a little historical overview of just a few notable electional charts at the beginning of my electional episode. Like the founding of the city of Baghdad in the 8th century was elected by a group of astrologers. Queen Elizabeth I, her coronation was elected by the famous astrologer John Dee, and so on and so forth down through history.

KS: Yeah, it’s very common even, I think, in parliament, in the UK, maybe in the 1700s—17th century. Maybe even into like 1600 and 1700. When they sat down to start parliament for the first time, the chart for that would be calculated, so that they could have an understanding of what the year ahead or the session might look like based on the astrology. So it’s a very good point you make, Austin, that it’s actually more the norm that astrology would have been used for things like this; you know, bishops to launch campaigns to become pope and things like that. So I’d almost be surprised if some of the presidential candidates or, you know, people in power positions aren’t doing major launches, where there’s a lot of money riding on them. I’d almost be surprised if many of them weren’t actually using astrology.

AC: Yeah. And I think probably more are everyday right now. I think we’ll get back to that historical norm over the next several years, cuz astrology’s re-intersecting with the mainstream culture.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Sure. But then that brings up actually the point I wanted to make, which is that I had forgotten about this, and it was something I ran into actually pretty commonly when Patrick Watson and I were still doing The Political Astrology Blog a few years ago, but it was that sometimes it’s actually not clear whether a notable person is using electional astrology. Because sometimes notable people that initiate or launch a major venture in their life—that will later turn out to be successful—will sometimes just launch it naturally, under a notable or auspicious astrological alignment just naturally, if it’s something that is later gonna become successful.

AC: That’s when successful things are supposed to happen or supposed to begin. I would say that, conversely, you can tell when somebody’s not using electional astrology.

CB: Right.

KS: Yes.

AC: You’re like, “Ooh, okay, I guess your astrologer was sick, or you don’t have one.”

CB: Right. Yeah, and I definitely have already started to see that with some of the launches that have taken place this past month, with some stuff being enclosed versus others doing it after a period of enclosure. But it was just interesting, because of that, there’s oftentimes this ambiguity surrounding whether you could even tell from the outside if a person was using electional astrology. And there’s a lot of different factors and other nuances that kind of go into that, but it was an interesting question to think about.

AC: Definitely.

KS: Yeah, it is.

CB: All right, so that’s basically it in terms of pre-show stuff. The only other issue I have—this is probably the most important issue I have on the table to talk about today—has to do with my concern with the frequent conflation of the symbol of Cancer, which has historically been a crab, with the lobster. Cancer’s the only sign—I think this is the only zodiac sign that you can get away with this. Typically, there’s like a graphic designer or something, they get a gig where they have to like make the zodiac. And I think this is how it happens like 98% of the time down through history, where you have some graphic designer who is told to like, you know, illustrate a zodiac, and they get to Cancer, and they just pick some random crustacean, which usually ends up being a lobster instead of an actual crab, which is the actual animal or totem for that sign of the zodiac. Initially it bothered me, and it was like a little thing that would make my eye twitch, but now I just find it kind of humorous. And I’ve had a few people—there was one person that reminded me of this by tweeting me lobster Cancer symbolism on Twitter this past week, that reminded me of that whole issue and how it is perhaps one of the biggest issues that is plaguing the astrological community today. Do you guys agree?

KS: I love your concern for this.

CB: Thank you. I’m doing it on behalf of the Cancers.

KS: That’s true. And they appreciate you speaking up for them.

CB: Right. Somebody has to.

AC: Yeah, that actually goes back into the Renaissance.

CB: Oh, I know, but I still think it’s a mistake. And sometimes people will try to come at me, saying like, “Well, such-and-such Renaissance author also illustrated a lobster.” But the answer to that is they’re still wrong. I mean, it was still a mistake that’s probably based on just the illustrator not knowing the difference between a crab and lobster, or thinking that they were equivalent because they both have like pincers or something. I don’t know, I draw the line—

KS: It’s a fallacy.

AC: Yeah, I’m not as happy with—like the lobster is not as symbolically delicious as far as what Cancer actually means. You know, like the lobster is built to move forward in a straight line.

KS: Yes.

CB: Right.

AC: And a big part of the crab is circumambulating things. And they’re also—yeah, I don’t know. It’s not as good. I would agree.

KS: And we need to be clear on what the difference between a lobster and crab is so we can understand why it’s wrong. And that’s a great distinction there, Austin, because forward movement is not associated with the sign of Cancer. We need the crab to go sideways.

CB: Oh, is this—Alissa G, are you actually in the audience? Are you the person that tweeted the lobster at me this week on Twitter?

KS: Yes.

CB: I think we might have—she says: “Sorry I re-triggered the trauma for you.” She says: “Yeah, okay.” Well, thank you for joining us. I appreciate that. You did re-trigger me, and I did have a sleepless night over this. But I appreciate you reminding me of the issue, so I can bring it to people’s attention.

AC: Right. Well, so, Chris, you know, I’m gonna have to tweet you like a new, hot lobster pic everyday for like the next two weeks.

KS: Yes.

CB: I would actually love that, any lobster pic.

KS: You’re gonna get slammed now. You want people to send you lobster pics?

CB: Not just any lobster pics. Send me instances—like within the context of the other zodiac signs—accidentally being illustrated by the crab, and I will create a whole gallery of this just to show how widespread the phenomenon has become, and how this is one of the greatest travesties of our time as astrologers in the early 21st century.

KS: Oh, my goodness. I love it. This is gonna be a side research.

AC: I’m googling lobster memes already.

KS: Yeah.

CB: All right. All right, so I will leave that there. We will revisit this possibly in future episodes. Maybe Episode 192 of The Astrology Podcast. In the meantime, do you guys have anything else you want to mention or plug before we move on to the forecast for February?

KS: I’ll just say that I have online classes coming in March. So look for info about that once we get to about mid-February.

AC: I also have online classes coming in March. Look for info about that once we get to mid-February.

KS: Austin and I, we don’t actually plan this, but it just seems to be that we’re sometimes on the same schedule.

AC: Yeah, we’ll teach different stuff, probably.

KS: We will, totally. Well, sometimes we teach the same stuff.

AC: Yeah, that’s true. Well, I mean, the basics are the basics. Like astrologers need to teach classes on planets, signs, aspects, dignity, etc., etc. But yeah, I’ll have my entire year’s teaching schedule figured out and laid out. So that’ll just be out, I don’t know, in the next two weeks, by mid-February.

KS: Yeah. Are you aiming before Mercury goes into Pisces to announce this? Or are you happy with the first week of that?

AC: We’ll see.

KS: Yeah.

AC: We’ll see.

KS: See how quickly we get it done.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Brilliant. And the only thing I have to promote is that I just want to say thanks to everybody who bought one of the Planetary Alignments Posters this month. I sent out a bunch of them over the course of the past two weeks. Hopefully, everybody has received one by now. I just shifted everything over to Amazon. So you can now find the posters on Amazon if you search for ‘2019 astrology calendar poster bundle’, which is kind of a mouthful. But one of the things that’s nice about having it on Amazon now is that people that are Prime members can get free shipping, free two-day shipping on the posters now, which is pretty sweet. So just do a search for ‘2019 astrology calendar poster bundle’ and then you will find the posters there. All right, guys, so that’s our pre-show warm-up chat. Are you guys ready to get into the forecast for February?

KS: Yeah.

AC: Suppose I am.

CB: I’m gonna need a little more excitement than that. This is a big month.

AC: Well, Chris, I really have to pee. And so, I was just thinking about whether I should hold that, or, you know, whether that needs to be taken care of. And since I brought it up, why don’t you guys pretend that I’m still here, and you’re covering for me, while I turn off my video and go take care of myself?

CB: Okay.

KS: We’ll do our best.

CB: Leave the video. All right.

KS: Oh, my gosh.

CB: All right, Kelly, it’s just me and you. I think I almost want to return back to the Cancer chat, cuz now I’m kind of riled up about that, but let’s leave that.

KS: I’d love to hear you riled up about it.

CB: Well, let me actually ask you, cuz this is one of the episodes, and we weren’t sure if we wanted to talk about it. I did want to ask you, cuz I was curious what your opinion was. My other episode topic, earlier this month, was I sort of discussed the more sensitive topic of why does it seem like there’s more women who are into astrology than men. And I was just curious if you had any opinions about that topic. Do you agree, first off, at the premise? Do you think there are more women? That it seems like there’s more women in the astrological community or that have interest in astrology than men?

KS: I do agree with the premise. And I don’t have any detailed study to back that up, but just from my subjective observation, anecdotally, there does seem to be.

CB: You haven’t done like an extensive scientific study?

KS: I do not have like—what is it, when people leave the voters and they do polls? Like I have not done exit polls at conferences, for instance.

CB: Right.

KS: But you look around in any room, at any astrology event—whether it’s your local monthly astrology meeting, or something like the large UAC welcome ceremony—there just seems to be a much larger proportion of women there than men. So I would certainly agree with that premise. I’m not sure if I have a good reason as to why.

CB: You don’t. Or if you’ve heard speculations, are there any that you feel have resonated with you more about why you think that is? Like one of the questions that it comes down to is the question of, is there some inherent reason for that? Like are women more drawn to astrology for some reason, whether that’s inherent and has always been the case, or whether it’s just situational in terms of how astrology is now? Or is it something where it’s just the marketing and how it’s geared now? I mean, do you have any opinions about reasons that you’ve thought of that have made sense to you?

KS: Look, and I’m, again, no expert. I don’t want to offend anyone. But I’ve been involved in various types of healing therapies over the years. Probably eagle-eyed listeners have heard me talk about being a massage therapist in my 20’s and having a counseling background as well. And in those industries there are also more women than there are men. And I don’t know whether that’s because—you know, not that men can’t be drawn to healing or, you know, soulful or intuitive practices. It just seems like more women do, or women are more open about that type of interest that they may have. The thing I get a bit stuck on is, you know, when you look at historical astrologers, the women don’t seem to be as well-represented in terms of published books and things like that. You know, we hear about Valens and Maternus and Olympiodorus and Alexandrinus, and even Ptolemy, and then Lilly, and, you know, the Persian guy, if you like. But I think you found one historical female astrologer. And I sort of wonder where were all the women then, if that makes sense.

CB: Yeah. Well, and actually I was thinking about this more over the past week. Cuz I did write a post on Twitter that was like the first female astrologer that we know of, that was practicing seems to be an astrologer named Buran of Baghdad, who lived in like the 9th century. And she was part of the same family of one of the astrologers that picked the chart for the election for Baghdad in like the late 8th century. But as I was thinking about this more, I realized we don’t actually know. Even though the majority of astrologers we know—virtually all the astrologers until relatively recently in history, the published astrologers whose works survive—are men, we don’t actually know what the composition of the clientele consisted of for astrologers. And we don’t know if it was just men seeing astrologers, or if there were an equal number of women, or if even back then there were more women who were seeing astrologers, even though the astrologers themselves tended to be men, just because men tended to be the only ones that got that type of education in the ancient world and in most ancient societies, which then puts a restriction on who could practice it in some sense. And I only bring that up because I remember that in my book, I cited from the 1st century, there was a piece of satire that talked about women consulting with astrologers, and then eventually they saw astrologers so much that they started seeing clients themselves. And while this was a piece of satire, I took it to be something that probably had some hint or some sliver of truth in it. You know, even if there were male astrologers in the ancient world, some of their clientele in the Roman world would have been women. So we don’t really know what the breakdown was in the ancient world of like, you know, astrologers’ clientele necessarily.

AC: Yeah. And we don’t know what the demographics of practicing astrologers were. You know, like if we just took the foremost influential astrology books that might be preserved for 500 years from the last 50, and then extrapolate it, you know, we would have zero data to extrapolate the thousands and thousands of working astrologers who were alive at that time.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah. I mean, the other thing, you know, there may have been female astrologers working at those times in history and they weren’t able to publish. I mean, even in English literature, right up into the 19th century, 18th century, we had female writers publishing under either, you know, their initials—so they didn’t present as female—or publishing under a name that was, you know, sort of more gender neutral. So there are some of those issues like, why don’t we have more books by older astrologers—or older women astrologers, historical female astrologers?

CB: Yeah.

KS: But I think you’re right. We don’t have data on this, which puzzles me sometimes when I start to think about it.

CB: Sure. And definitely in terms of the historical question. And, I mean, those two instances of the two earliest figures of female astrologers that I do know are, you know, Buran of Baghdad, and then possibly Hypatia. But the thing that they both share in common is that they would have come from a family, where the family background was astronomy or astrology. And so, that actually probably goes back much further where there were family lines of astrologers and lineages of astrologers, where it was passed down from generation to generation as a profession. And there’s no way that you had, for example, in like Mesopotamia, generations of like men passing down astrology to their male children without also their daughters probably learning astrology at the same time. And although some of their names were lost to history, I’m sure there that would have been the context in which a number of female astrologers would have learned astrology and become proficient in astrology as well, at the very least.

AC: Yeah. Well, and having a family trade was also the norm historically. It wasn’t like go to kindergarten, go to primary school, go to high school, and then, you know, go to college and specialize in whatever you want, right? It’s like, “Well, we know how to do this. We’ve been doing this for about eight generations now.”

CB: Yeah, and that’s all the history thing. But, I mean, just to bring it back around to the actual modern question—which may just be modern.

KS: Yeah, I don’t know that that speaks to the modern in any way.

CB: Yeah. I mean, is there anything? I mean, what do you think? We all know that there’s a bunch of speculations and nobody actually knows the answer. And anybody that takes an extremist position on this is probably, you know, adopting a view that’s not nuanced enough. Because there’s probably like multiple, different reasons for this phenomenon at this point in time in our society. And it may be different in other societies. For example, in India, it may be a whole different question due to the cultural acceptance of astrology. But there’s still just an underlying question that astrologers sometimes discuss, which is, why are there more women interested in astrology at this present point in time in the West?

AC: So I think this is a huge topic. And so, I’ll just say one thing that I think might be true or useful. And that’s from a masculinity standpoint. I think that part of masculinity in the English-speaking West, which I’m familiar with, is being rational. And I remember I met a friend of a friend in LA many years ago, and we were talking. And he was like, “Oh, what do you do?” I was like, “Oh, I’m an astrologer.” And he was like, “Oh, but you seemed like such a rational person.” And that was the way he defined himself. And so, you know, I think that men, to a certain degree, are expected to perform rationality in order to, you know, get their ‘man card’ stamped, in order to like, you know, not be placed outside that category. And so, I think there’s one piece of it, which is sort of a negative piece: If more women are into astrology, but why do there seem to be less men? And I think it would be because of the way that masculinity is constructed and performed in our society. Or a lot of it has to do with this performance of rationality, which astrology is a blatant violation of. “But you seemed like such a rational person, Austin.”

KS: Yeah, backhanded.

CB: Right. And is that then a purely, almost temporary societal construct, that’s only relative to our current culture’s conceptualization of masculinity and femininity? Is there anything about that that is not temporary, or that is more timeless? I mean, it comes down to—you know, one of the things that was really funny about the responses to that episode, they tended to be very extreme. And I was actually more concerned going into it about offending people on the left that I actually completely forgot about a lot of the people that would be offended on the right about some of the directions that that discussion went. And one of the things that ended up being debated is like the question about whether there were inherent differences between men and women that were then relevant when it comes to discussion about things like astrology and rationality and things like that. And that ended up being a much more hot-button discussion or debate than I almost expected it to be, with people adopting more extreme positions than I realized. So would you guys like to weigh into that? Is this a great moment to?

KS: I think Austin’s point is beautiful, and it probably goes to the piece that I was sharing earlier, about you do generally see more women in the healing types of modalities. And whether that speaks to a more, I don’t even know, like a less rationalistic mindset in women, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know that that’s necessarily true. But we do value in our society this definition of masculinity as somebody who sticks with the facts. And, you know, going back to, really, the Scientific Revolution is when astrology really got quite divorced from astronomy and became valued, culturally, as its lesser sister. I don’t know that that’s true. Like I don’t think astrology is the lesser sister of astronomy, but we can see the divide that happened in society and culture.

CB: Sure. Actually, to speak to that point, that was actually something I realized afterwards as well, when I was reading, or rereading some old articles about some stuff that’s going on with the skeptical community, and women attempting to become more integrated into that, and some of the conflicts that have happened in the skeptical community involving women over the past few years. Evidently, the skeptic organizations and conferences and stuff are largely dominated by and populated by men. And that’s created some issues as women have tried to become more integrated into that, and have become speakers and giving talks and things like that, and some of the tensions that are raised as a result of that. But I thought that was then an interesting mirror in terms of the astrological community, if it’s true, that there is such a wide disparity between those two groups. And I don’t know if that’s, again, just some temporary cultural thing, or if there’s something else going on there.

AC: Well, and that would also—again, it’s difficult. This is a complicated enough conversation. And not being able to ground it in data in the present either is a bit of an issue. It’s like, “I don’t know, it seems like at that conference, it was more like this,” or on Twitter, “Seems like this.”

CB: Yeah.

AC: You know, anecdotal stuff like that is good. But like, you know, again, when you’re dealing with something that’s inherently complicated and multifaceted, not even having the basic demographics makes it all the more difficult.

CB: Well, and it’s not that anecdotal. Because the original—the article that I cited, that started some of this discussion a couple of months ago, actually did cite a couple of studies that have been done in the past decade. And both of them—

AC: Oh, okay. I didn’t see that.

CB: —indicated that it was like 2-to-1, basically. Like for every one man that said that they ‘believed in astrology’, whatever that means, that there were two women who said the same. So it ended up basically indicating that there are about, roughly—if those polls were correct, those two different polls—twice as many women who profess some sort of belief that astrology was a legitimate phenomenon. Which, if those polls are even roughly accurate, probably stacks up with most of our general observations about the astrological community in general, I would feel like.

AC: Yeah, that’s interesting. It would also be worth differentiating people who would generally say, “Yeah, I don’t know, I read my horoscope column, seems legit,” versus people who are actively involved and identify as astrologers or amateur astrologers. It’d be interesting to see if that changed or stayed the same. And also, it would be interesting to watch those numbers as we go through, let’s say, five years ago versus five years from now.

CB: Right. Yeah, definitely.

KS: Yeah.

CB: That demographic may change. Go ahead, Kelly.

KS: Well, I was just gonna say, just to the point around, you know, people reading horoscopes versus actively involved. I mean, I can think of any number of ‘women’s magazines’ who will have a horoscope column in them, but I can’t really think of any ‘men’s magazines’ that have horoscope columns in them.

CB: Right.

KS: That would be like a supply-meeting-demand kind of thing.

AC: Well, and also, marketing creating demand.

KS: Absolutely.

AC: There’s definitely some chicken-and-egg dynamics.

CB: Yeah. I mean, that’s the question. Is it a chicken-or-an-egg-type scenario? Which one’s starting it? Is it coming because the market is demanding it, and there’s more women interested in astrology? Or is it coming because the marketing itself is creating the demand?

KS: It’s a great question.

CB: Okay.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah.

KS: But it’s a big, complicated topic. It’s hard to do justice in like a quick, 10-minute discussion.

CB: Sure. And I didn’t want to get anybody in trouble or drag you guys into any debates that you’re not wanting to get involved in. I was just curious to hear your perspective. And I know that some people were curious, also, to hear your perspectives on the topic, just because, you know, it’s an interesting phenomenon that is discussed. I feel like this conversation has come up at different points, in different conferences I’ve been to, just because it’s a general observation that people make. And then people throw out different speculations, often wondering what the causes are that contribute to it.

KS: Yeah. And, I mean, I’m sort of thinking like, how would you do a survey to try and figure this out? You know, you’d have to sort of ask people why they’re drawn to astrology, or what they think they’re getting out of it, and try to determine somehow whether, you know, those who identify as women, who are responding, have a certain type of thing, and those who identify as men. It would almost take some time to put together how you would try and come up with some information that would answer the question.

CB: Yeah, definitely. And that comes up even with the very basic thing about polls of ‘do you believe in astrology’ and some of the issues with even asking that question. And what does that actually mean? Do you believe in astrology versus, I don’t know, whatever else? Do you think astrology’s a legitimate phenomenon? Do you incorporate or use astrology in your day-to-day life? And so on and so forth.

KS: Yeah. I mean, there’s a difference between believing in astrology, which could mean any number of things. But then some more specific questions could be, have you ever taken an astrology class? Or have you ever had an astrology consult with someone? Yeah, do you actively use astrology day-to-day or what have you?

CB: Yeah. Well, cuz one of my funny scenarios for that is the respondent who is like a very hardcore, Christian conservative fundamentalist who says, “Yes, I believe astrology is a legitimate phenomenon, and it is the work of the Devil.” So there was that scenario of that segment of the population where they would say, “Yes, I think astrology is real.” But what they mean by that when answering that question is a little different than what we might assume.

KS: Exactly.

CB: All right, guys.

AC: Well, I believe the same thing as that person. I just have a different relationship to it.

CB: Right. You’re okay with that? On that note, that’s a great transition point into talking about our forecast for February.

KS: Yes. So if you too think astrology is the Devil’s work, I’m not sure if you want to keep staying with us. Oh, gosh.

CB: All right, is that actually a good transition point? I was just making a joke.

AC: Yeah.

CB: But are you guys ready?

KS: No, totally. Yeah, we’re totally ready.

AC: I mean, we’re like almost an hour-and-a-half in and we haven’t started talking about February.

CB: All right, let’s get into it. All right, enough with the jokes. Let’s get serious about looking at the planetary alignments for next month. Let me throw up the chart for right now. Let’s actually start looking at some charts. I’m gonna throw up the Animate Chart in Solar Fire. Everybody keeps asking me what program I use, even though I try to mention it every other episode. And this is Solar Fire with the Animate Chart feature. And they gave me a promo code, which is ‘AP15’. So you can get, I think a 10% discount if you buy it through the company Astrolabe, at Alabe.com. And I meant to say one of the best investments I’ve ever made—I don’t know if you guys have done this yet—was to buy like a cheap, second monitor for like a hundred dollars, so I can throw up charts on a second monitor all the time. Have you guys discovered this yet? This is like a great astrologer life hack.

AC: No. That’s a great idea.

KS: I have not. I have not.

CB: Yeah, just like buy a cheap monitor, put it off to the side, and you can just run Solar Fire in a window and throw up charts on it. Or throw up the clock feature, so you can just see the clock ticking by and the ascendant changing signs at different points.

KS: Okay. More technical purchases. Love it.

CB: Right. All right, so here’s the chart for right now, but let’s move it forward to February 1. And I just got done doing a marathon of horoscopes, so I have plenty to say. And I know a lot of details about the astrology of next month. But where do you guys think we should start? Kelly?

KS: Mars is square Pluto on the 1st of the month.

CB: Mars square Pluto? Okay, so we open up the month—so just starting out the month with Mars at 21° of Aries squaring Pluto at 21° of Capricorn. And Mars, of course, is towards the end of Aries and is coming up on that lovely conjunction with Uranus at 29° of Aries, I think, towards the middle of the month. So it’s kind of sandwiched in between the Uranus-Pluto square, which was much more dominant earlier in the decade.

KS: Yeah, I guess there’s a little volatility right out of the gate. Mars, of course, has been through Aries for most of January and has already tangoed with Saturn, and is now getting into the hot spot with Pluto. So I don’t know. The Mars square Pluto, to me, feels a little bit like tension. You know, powerful force pitted against powerful force. Or like a young challenger, you know, coming against some sort of established or entrenched entity or organization. And I always think—with a square like this involving Mars—yeah, there’s that feeling of tension and probably a need for adjustment. So a bit of an intense start to the month. But what are you guys thinking? I don’t know if you guys paid a lot of tension to that. I mean, it’s Mars square Pluto heading into the Uranus conjunction. So there’s still a bit of Mars in Aries volatility left.

AC: Yeah, quite a bit. It’s a couple of weeks until it actually hits Uranus. Like you said, that’s just sort of the territory that Mars is in for almost the first two weeks of the month. You know, it’s square Pluto. It’s square the South Node and the North Node. It’s square the nodal axis. It’s coming up on Uranus. It’s volatile. You know, all of those factors are volatile.

CB: Right. And that’s really interesting because it’s also coming off of something I overlooked. I was so entranced by that beautiful Venus-Jupiter conjunction in mid-January that was happening in the early morning hours, in the night sky, where you could see those two bright, white planets coming together. And I was like, “That is a great electional chart.” There was a nice little grand fire trine around that time when Mars was in mid-Aries, and the Moon was in mid-Leo. I was like, “That would make a great electional chart,” and I completely overlooked the not-so-lovely Mars-Saturn square, which was also going exact virtually simultaneously around the same time.

AC: Yeah, I remember that. That was frustrating. I was like, “Ooh, I’m gonna—ohh.”

CB: Yeah, that was basically mid-January. So we’re coming out of that as we’re opening up February as well; coming out of that Mars-Saturn square.

AC: Yeah, but it’s like more trouble for Mars, and Mars like, you know, firing up some of these other configurations, which can be trouble in and of themselves.

CB: Right. Definitely. And Venus—actually, no. Let’s not move onto Venus. So the Mars thing—I’m glad you guys focused on Mars because that really evenly divides the month pretty much in half. Because Mars spends the first half of the month in Aries, and it sort of like culminates with one last hurrah or one last bang before it leaves Aries, with that conjunction with Uranus, at 29 Aries, around the 12th or 13th. And then immediately after that, it departs from Aries. It finally gets free of all of those hard aspects, and it moves into Taurus for the second half of February. And then at least in terms of Mars, it’s kind of like smooth sailing from there.

AC: Yeah, or smooth couch surfing.

KS: Smooth slowing down, that’s for sure.

AC: But yeah, I mean, there’s a huge difference in fire and pacing between Mars in Taurus and Mars in Aries, just in and of itself because of the signs. But also, you know, this last bit of Mars in Aries is Mars increasingly conjoined Uranus, which is super volatilizing, right? You know, it super charges Mars in what can be potentially destructive ways. And so, you know, it’s added lightning to the fire. And so, there’s such a huge difference in intensity and pacing between Mars as it begins the month and Mars once it moves into Taurus.

CB: Sure.

KS: Yeah, that’s one of the other things I had said in my monthly membership videos. If you’ve got a lot of things that are kind of urgent or have to be done quickly, you know, you sort of want to take advantage of the Mars in Aries period, because it is a bit like hitting the brakes once Mars moves into Taurus. And it’s gonna feel like a weird, almost 24-hour period because Mars conjuncts Uranus on the 13th of Feb in the Eastern timezone, and then within 24 hours, it actually moves into Taurus. So we kind of go through this big, explosive Mars-Uranus, whether it’s a breakthrough or an unexpected kind of shock or surprise. And then it’s like the calm after the storm may be sooner than you might expect.

CB: Yeah, it definitely calms down pretty quickly after that. So it’s one of the last major aspects that we get of Uranus in Aries. And it’s almost fitting that that’s like the last major aspect, with Uranus completing its nearly decade-long transit through Mars’ sign. I guess we already talked about this, and we did a sort of retrospective of what Uranus going through Aries has been for each of us, probably in the last episode. Was that when we had that discussion?

AC: Yeah.

KS: The last one or the year ahead.

AC: I think it was the last episode. Either that or the yearly.

CB: Okay.

AC: And then I’m sure we talked about it when Uranus made its initial ingress into Taurus last year.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah. I mean, these Mars-Uranus conjunctions are like really extreme punctuation points of the longer Uranus in Aries trend. So for anyone who’s sort of curious about it, we’ve had three or four of these already, you know, going back two years and then two years prior and two years prior to that. So that could be a fun thing to check back in, just to see what might have been going on for you with this longer, eight-year chapter coming to a close, and then having these sort of periodic, Mars-Uranus interactions in that timeframe.

CB: Yeah, definitely. That’s a really good idea in terms of past research and looking at the past in order to anticipate and predict the future.

KS: Yeah, it can be really useful from a learning perspective as well, just to see how that’s been for you. Yeah, I think we did talk about it. Cuz, Austin, you talked about it maybe being 10th house—

AC: Yeah, I gave a little history.

KS: —and how your career has changed, yeah.

CB: Yeah. All right, so that’s one of the more dynamic and explosive configurations this month happening. It looks like it goes exact around the 13th of February, the Mars-Uranus conjunction, and that’s sort of a nice bookend for the first half of the month. But backing up, back to the very beginning of the month to keep things roughly chronological, one of the other shifts that occurs pretty early on in the month is we get the very tail-end of Venus being in Sagittarius with Jupiter. But that’s pretty much over just a few days into February. And Venus ingresses into Capricorn on February 3 and finishes up its lovely conjunction with Jupiter in Sagittarius, and makes its way down into the sort of darker hallway of moving through Capricorn over the course of the rest of February. Because it basically spends the entire month of February moving through Capricorn, where it slowly starts hitting all of those outer planets. First, with a conjunction with Saturn, then a conjunction with Pluto, and then finally, it squares Uranus before it leaves and moves into Aquarius in March.

AC: Yeah. And that’s part of a general trend in February, which is going from fiery and dynamic to earthy, right? Cuz as January ends and February begins, we have Venus in Sag, and we have Mars in Aries. And then, you know, Venus moves into Cap, right? So we’re going from fire to heavy earth. Additionally, we also have Mercury going from air, Aquarius, into watery Pisces, and then Mars, you know, from electric conjunction with Uranus in Aries into grounded Taurus. So that’s all three of those planets moving from signs of a yang polarity into yin, right? Into earth and water. It’s that tone, that’s set by the second half of February, that really endures for much of March. You know, that’s almost the next month in the sense of that’s what it feels like, and there’s a real shift away from the fiery, intense, go, go, go, busy, busy, busy, put out fires, start fires, etc., etc. It’s there at the end of January and the first part of February. It’s, you know, one piece at a time.

CB: Definitely. I love that. I mean, in terms of Venus at least—and just isolating Venus’ transit through Capricorn—I think this is one of the more positive transits happening this month. Because I feel like it’s gonna, for some people, lighten up some of what has otherwise been a pretty heavy transit of Saturn through Capricorn over the course of the past year. Especially for some people with night charts, where that Saturn transit might be a bit heavier or might be a little bit more restrictive in terms of the house that it’s traveling through and the part of their life that that correlates with. Having Venus dip into Capricorn seems like more of like a counterbalancing or an alleviating influence, even if only temporarily, that’s kind of like lightening up the mood a little bit in the Capricorn part of your chart.

AC: I hope that’s correct.

KS: I’m waiting for Austin’s dissension on this.

AC: I’ll just say that I hope that’s right. I mean, generally, I don’t like to have my benefics teamed up on by three malefics.

CB: Yeah. I mean, Venus conjoining Saturn is not usually a super light-and-carefree-type energy. Even less so, Venus conjoining Pluto, which it does a few days later. And then Venus squaring Uranus is also a bit unstable in terms of Venus-related significations. But nonetheless, my thinking is if you’re just experiencing Saturn and Pluto transiting through that part of your chart, you were already not having a party in that part of your chart, let’s say, over the course of the past year. So at least if Venus comes in there, that’s a much different energy. That’s at least temporarily being imported into that area of your chart. And while Venus may not be having like the best time—like it shows up to a pretty lame party, and it’s trying to at least spruce things up—that’s at least something compared to, you know, what you’ve been dealing with for the past 13 months at this point in that sign.

AC: Yeah, I’d rather Venus stay in Sag with Jupiter, personally, but that’s what’s coming up. You know, I think that there are two sides to it. One is Venus is trying to help, but it also puts Venus, you know, in the middle of the trouble. And one of the ways that I experience Venus transits—and see other people experience them—is that whatever Venus is touching in the sky tends to be something that you feel. And some planets are nice to feel if they have a velvety texture, and then some you’d rather not feel. It’s like, you know, I like horror movies, but I don’t want to be super heart-centered and open and watch a horror movie. You know, I’d rather have some distance. And so, you know, I think it’s a little bit of both. The way I wrote about it, the way I thought about it is it’s about two weeks when Venus is really in the middle of it during the second half of Capricorn. You know, it’s like Venus is gonna kind of push us to come to terms emotionally with what’s happening in that area and, you know, figure out a way to try to be okay with it, which, you know, is both an improvement and an unpleasant experience.

KS: Yeah, I do sort of feel that Venus is gonna bring a little bit of moisture into this very parched place, perhaps. I don’t know that she’ll, you know, take away what’s going on, cuz of course she won’t. But I don’t know, there’s something about Venus-Saturn that is sobering and crystallizing and clarifying. It may not feel great, but it helps reveal what is solid and what is substantial, as it also reveals what is not solid or what is not substantial. And that’s where, you know, if there is any disappointment or that sort of reality check, you know, it won’t be telling you something that hasn’t already been in play. It’s just bringing you to a point where you can be honest with yourself about it.

AC: So I completely agree with you about Venus-Saturn. But, for me, it’s like, “Oh, but there’s so much other stuff going on.”

KS: Totally.

AC: You know, if it was just Venus and Saturn, I would have a very different read on it. It’s just that, you know, South Node and Pluto—they’re so complicated. They bring up like shadowy, half-understood, half-processed, and confusing. You know, if it was just Saturn—yeah, I wish it was just Saturn.

KS: Yeah. I mean, I always think, yeah, Venus-South Node, yeah, I think that can be quite tricky or challenging. And I always think it’s about sort of dealing with the ghosts or the emanations of relationships past, or, you know, of people from the past. And I agree with that word that you used, Austin, around the shadowy kind of stuff that is often happening in the background, but we’re often oblivious to it. But I think it’s February 22 and February 26 that Venus kind of hits Pluto and then the South Node. So it is pretty heavy, you know, towards the very end of the month there.

CB: Yeah. And, I mean, some people are going to experience these transits as being constructive and relatively positive and that’s something I want to be clear about. Cuz one of the things I was actually concerned about, about our yearly forecast, is I’m a little worried that we were almost too overly pessimistic or negative in the yearly forecast, and that people kind of left bummed out about it. Which, on the one hand is, I understand, appropriate for what we were talking about, and you can’t necessarily get around completely when you’re dealing with a year where there’s like Saturn moving through Capricorn and an impending Saturn-Pluto conjunction and some of the other heaviness that we talked about. But nonetheless, I definitely meant to—I think in retrospect, after listening to it again—try to bring in some of the counterbalancing positive stuff, since sometimes as astrologers, I think, we can tend to focus on the things that stand out more. And sometimes the things that stand out more easily are the things that are a little bit more challenging. But sometimes it’s worth it to sort of like go out of your way to see what the silver lining is, or what the possible positive manifestation could be, even of some of the most challenging transits.

KS: Absolutely.

AC: Well, I thought we did a wonderful job balancing it, Chris.

CB: I’m not sure if ‘meat grinder’ was necessarily the most balanced catchphrase.

AC: You guys were supposed to counter that.

CB: Okay, well, that is what I’m doing.

KS: Okay, right. I failed in my duties. I mean, I do have something that I’m actually really looking forward to with Venus going into Capricorn. And I feel my thought is that this is a stabilizing energy. So as much as—you know, on paper, in theory—Venus in Sag with Jupiter is like amazing and golden and double-benefic, I do think that for some people that’s been excessively hectic, in that there’s been maybe either too much of a good thing or just too much of too much. And one thing, I think Venus moving into Capricorn—just because of, you know, the nature of Capricorn—is more solid and planned and measured. And I totally know like Pluto and South Node are there, but I do think there is going to be a bit of a calming or a stabilizing quality. And I think for some people, they’re gonna love that change of Venus moving into Capricorn from that perspective.

CB: Right. I love that. That’s a great point, also, cuz that Venus-Jupiter conjunction was also squaring Neptune at the same time. And while it’s very optimistic, there’s something that’s very lacking in realism.

KS: You can’t hold it. There’s an intangible quality to it.

CB: Yeah, it’s just not being realistic or grounded. And Venus moving into Capricorn and forming a conjunction with reception with Saturn is much more grounded. You know, if it goes in the Venusian sense of relationships, that’s a much more practical and a much more realistic-type relationship setting compared to Venus conjunct Jupiter square Neptune.

KS: Yeah.

CB: So, you know, that’s something potentially positive.

KS: Well, and it is. I mean, I don’t know. This is kind of the point we’re kind of speaking to, I guess, is the difference between the theory of the astrology versus the lived experience of what that looks and feels like in an individual’s life. And I’m not trying to pretend that Capricorn is a happy place right now, but some good can come from calming and stabilizing, basically.

CB: Sure. As a sort of counterbalancing thing. It’s definitely a stark contrast between, let’s say, mid-January versus mid-February, and what a Venus-Jupiter conjunction looks like versus a Venus-Saturn conjunction.

AC: So one thing that I will say is that part of the context for this period of time is that very early in February, we get a lunation that is not eclipsed.

KS: Yes.

AC: And so, we move out from under the shadow of the two eclipses in a row in January. And, you know, we’ve talked about this before. You know, it’s eclipse season. And, you know, when it’s eclipse season, there’s a little funky darkness all over the place, and it would shade my interpretation of what the month as a whole is like. And so, we move out of that very early in the month. And so, while Venus is maybe going through some very difficult terrain during the second half of February, at least it’s not in the context of either a solar or lunar eclipse, but back on the standard cycle of light and darkness.

CB: Speaking of, did you guys watch the lunar eclipse that night, in Leo, a few weeks ago? That was amazing.

AC: The rain cover here, or the cloud cover was so thick that you couldn’t even see it. Couldn’t even see it.

CB: It was really brilliant. Like we went outside and we caught it right as it was exact. And it really drove home the meaning and the symbolic significance of eclipses for me in a way that the solar eclipse did. But I forgot what a lunar eclipse is in a very literal sense. It’s like you’re standing there, the Moon is full. So it’s at a Full Moon, and the Moon is at its brightest. And it’s basically not as bright, but it’s basically acting in the same role that the Sun does during the day in that it’s lighting everything up and it’s providing light. And then all of a sudden, for this brief period of time, the Moon is just suddenly darkened, and it becomes much darker out, and the light of the Moon is literally eclipsed. And there was something very visceral about that, just like the Great American Eclipse a year-and-a-half ago, which was also in Leo. But I just forgot what an actual lunar eclipse was like. Did you get to see it in person, Kelly?

KS: Yeah, we were actually down in Palm Springs, and we had beautiful, clear skies. And it reminded me that I had seen a lunar eclipse before, back in Sydney, in 2007 or 2008. And I was struck by it. It lasts quite a long time, from when, you know, the dragon, if you like, starts to swallow the Moon. So the darkness and then the redness that kicks in—you know, I agree with you completely, Chris. When you see it—and we sort of tracked it—you could see the Moon looking different for a couple of hours. We saw it at its peak, then at the buildup, and then the fade out. And it really does bring home how scary that would be if you were an ancient culture and this was a source of light for you or a cycle that you were relying on. So it was really quite striking to see. So yeah, unfortunately, of course, not everyone would have clear skies, and you couldn’t see it in every part of the world. But I think if ever there is a lunar eclipse near you that you can see, it’s worth taking that time to pop out and have a look. You get it viscerally in a way you don’t get from reading about it.

CB: Yeah. And, I mean, the thing about it that struck me was just how anomalous it is. It’s like you’re in the middle of the day, and the Sun is out and bright and shining in a solar eclipse, and then suddenly it’s dark, and it’s flipped. It’s almost like it’s nighttime. And you get the same effect with a lunar eclipse, where it’s the middle of the night, the Moon is shining and it’s bright, as it should be. Cuz we have a Full Moon every month, just like the normal monthly cycle of the Sun and the Moon, and a New Moon starting out dark and then growing and becoming full two weeks later, and so on and so forth. But then something happens. And for a brief moment in time, the natural cycles of things are like interrupted and sort of disrupted in some way. And having that sort of experience viscerally just gives you a much greater understanding of why eclipses are important. Because it’s not just a normal Full Moon or New Moon, but that anomalous phenomenon of the light that’s being provided at the time, and the interruption of that, suddenly shifting is almost like a marker or an omen itself. That there’s some sort of more notable, new beginning or a more notable culmination that’s happening at that time.

AC: Absolutely.

CB: Yeah, so that was part of what I got from it. And I just wanted to mention that just cuz it seemed like it was a big deal. It was kind of cool watching everybody talk about it, and watching all of the photos come in from around the world and people talking about it on Twitter. I mean, there was some sort of social media stupid name that somebody came up with for it. What was it again? It was like ‘Blood Wolf Super Moon’ or something?

KS: Oh, yeah.

AC: Yeah. Well, and I think in some calendar, that is the Wolf Moon. And it was a Super Moon, which is not hyperbole. That’s natural. It means, you know, the Moon was near perigee.

CB: Right.

AC: It was an eclipse, which does look like a Blood Moon. But when you put it all together, it’s a little bit—

KS: It’s a little much.

AC: It’s a lot much.

CB: Yeah, I wasn’t sure if somebody was like trolling, if somebody was like, “Let’s try coming up with a crazy name for this and seeing if we can get it to catch on.” That almost seemed like what the case was at first. All right, so back to your point.

KS: The lunations in February are very different.

CB: Yeah. I mean, almost in retrospect, or in comparison, kind of disappointing. That was actually my issue. This is the first non-eclipse lunation that we’ve had in Aquarius for a couple of years. And when I was trying to delineate that for the horoscopes, I was trying to talk about it being like, you know, a New Moon in Aquarius and a new beginning that will then grow and develop over the next six months. But as I’m saying that, realizing how, you know, relative to the eclipses that have just been happening in that same part of your chart for two years, it’s almost much more insignificant in some ways. So it was hard to hype it up too much.

AC: Yeah. Well, it’s more like a breath of fresh air after those years of that. You know, the transiting nodes and the eclipses on them—they get you to change in those areas, but change is energy-intensive and exhausting. It’s nice, you know, to complete a cycle of change. We’re usually pretty done with it after a year-and-a-half or two years.

KS: Yeah, it’s like a return-to-normal programming in this area of life. And the lunation has a nice little sextile from Jupiter.

AC: Yeah, exactly.

KS: It’s not all bad.

CB: That is nice.

KS: Yeah.

CB: All right, so got that New Moon that’s taking place there on, looks like the 4th of February in Aquarius, at, it looks like, what is it? 15-16 Aquarius?

KS: Yeah, I think 15 maybe, technically. And that’ll be Tuesday, the 5th for people in Australia. Yeah, in that first week of February, we’ve got the New Moon in Aquarius. And then later that week, the Sun actually makes the direct sextile to Jupiter. You know, planets in Sag, of course, get to be in the same sign as Jupiter. But planets in Aquarius also escaped from the Capricorn stuff and are getting a nice sextile from Jupiter. So that’s a nice little life, too, I think.

CB: Definitely. Okay.

KS: Yeah, when we were talking about elections before, Austin, you were like, “Yeah, just put the Moon in Sag.” I’m like, “Yeah, my backup is the Moon in Aquarius.”

CB: That’s good.

AC: Moon in Leo, too. You know, the thing that’s nice about Leo is that Leo doesn’t have the North Node in it anymore.

KS: Yeah.

AC: So it just gets to be Leo.

KS: Yeah.

CB: All right. Let’s see, so we talked about Venus and its trek through Capricorn. We talked about Mars in the first half of the month going through Aries and conjoining Uranus. We talked about the first lunation of the month, which is the New Moon in Aquarius. The other major inner planet shift chronologically, I think—unless there’s anything I’m overlooking—is Mercury moving into Pisces on the 10th of February, right?

AC: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a big’un.

KS: We do need to give some airtime to that.

CB: All right, so there that is. So just throwing it up on the Solar Fire chart right now. There’s Mercury moving into Pisces on the 10th of February. And this is actually beginning what normally would just be a quick little jaunt through Pisces over the next two-to-three weeks. But this one is unique, where Mercury is actually going to be having an extended stay in Pisces over the course of the next couple of months due to a retrograde period right before he departs from the sign.

AC: Yeah, it’s there. Mercury’s in Pisces until April 16.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Wow. Okay.

KS: Two months.

CB: Two months. Two-and-a-half months. Or, no. Yeah, two months exactly, almost.

KS: Yeah.

AC: So yeah. Let’s see, where shall we begin?

CB: So it’s not just Mercury in Pisces. But of course he is joining up with our friend Neptune, which is around the middle of the sign at this point, around 15°. And Mercury conjoins Neptune at 15° of Pisces on the 18th of February. And normally, as usual, that would just be like a once-a-year, very quick, very brief conjunction that Mercury would make with Neptune, as it always does whenever it catches up to Neptune once a year. But this year’s a little different because Mercury—shortly after it completes its conjunction with Neptune on February 18—begins slowing down as it moves into the later degrees of Pisces, and eventually slows down so much that it stations retrograde next month, around March 4 or March 5 of 2019. Stations retrograde at 29° of Pisces and then begins moving backwards, where it conjoins Neptune for a second, and then eventually a third time. Because it stations direct around the same degree of Neptune, around 15°-16° of Pisces. Obviously, that takes us forward a little bit far. It takes us a little far afield into the forecast for March and basically April as well. But it’s necessary to mention here because towards the later part of February, Mercury actually enters its shadow, which are the degrees that it will retrograde back to. And that first conjunction with Neptune actually becomes the first in a sequence of three conjunctions, which then means that it’s probably more important and will probably stand out in some people’s chronologies as much more notable than it should be otherwise.

AC: Yeah.

CB: You guys excited about this? You’re breathless in your excitement about this?

KS: We’re speechless.

CB: Yeah.

AC: So one thing I was gonna say is that Neptune basically is Mercury’s shadow.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Right.

AC: Mercury stations retrograde—or, excuse me—stations direct conjoined to Neptune in the same degree. So like that’s the shadow, Mercury’s first conjunction to Neptune.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And then, you know, that’s where it’s coming back to. And so, you know, again, just contextualizing this in terms of the, you know, general vibe of the month, we’ve got both Venus and Mars well into earth signs at this point. And so, you know, we go from having a lot of fire and air to a lot of water and earth. And so, you know, it’s a little muddy. I imagine the pacing will slow down, which, again, may be a relief to some people. But it’s obviously not amazing for getting things done quickly or for, you know, having plans unfold in an efficient manner entirely in accordance with your intention.

CB: I really like the careful way that you just phrased that. That was really good.

AC: You’re welcome.

CB: Could you repeat, actually? That was so carefully and precisely constructed.

KS: So eloquent.

AC: No.

CB: Because there’s like a much more casual, let’s say, way that you could have phrased that just now, but you did actually a really good job of doing it very professionally.

AC: Well, thank you. Yeah, I’m haunted by a spirit that’s very articulate and professional that possesses me a few minutes at a time everyday.

CB: Right.

AC: I don’t think I can replicate it.

KS: Yeah.

CB: All right. I mean, cuz I would also like to hear the other version of that, the ‘meat grinder’ version, let’s say, so to speak, of that delineation. I mean, you can let it sit with you for a few minutes, if you want.

AC: Well, the image in my mind—or it’s a statement in my mind, which is, “I’m thinking with soup here.” Like having beef stew instead of brain tissue.

KS: Oh, my goodness.

AC: You know, some people get this in terms of, you know, interior states, and some people get this, you know, socially. Like this’ll be someone in their life or, you know, whatever. I mean, it’s about as impeded as Mercury can be in Mercury’s, you know, clarifying, rational, linear-order duties. What’s interesting is it’s not really afflicted in the sense that it’s not getting like horribly beat up by malefics. You know, it’s not a meat grinder.

KS: No.

AC: You know, Mercury is square Jupiter for a lot of this, and also, ruled by Jupiter. And so, you know, it reminds me a lot of December’s retrograde. December’s Mercury retrograde. You know, Mercury was retrograde in its sign of detriment. Here, Mercury is retrograde in its sign of detriment/fall. Both are Jupiter-ruled, and Mercury is configured to Jupiter for both of them. I think there might be a little bit of that same, like tons of classic Mercury retrograde problems but things turn out okay in the end. Yeah, I’ll leave with that.

KS: Yeah, I think that’s a good point to keep in mind. You know, Jupiter in Sag can act as a little bit of balm or a helper or a saving grace here. I do think there are gonna be some periods of chaotic confusion almost, with that classic misdirect or misunderstanding or crossed wires. And one contributing factor—especially in that February 19th-20th period—is that we will have the second lunation for February, which is in Virgo. So it’ll be ruled by this Mercury, which will be basically conjunct Neptune. And I’ve been suggesting to people—just knowing Mercury’s going into Pisces for such a long time—that if you do have like plans or schedules, or, you know, if you’ve got a bunch of stuff where you have to book travel, or you’ve gotta organize logistics and things like that, you know, maybe try and get it down before Mercury goes into Pisces. But certainly, if you can’t get it done by February 10, then, you know, as soon as or thereafter as you can. Because this is going to be a little bit frustrating with some of the delays or the classic communication snafus, I think.

CB: Yeah. I mean, cuz miscommunication is already like a Mercury retrograde thing that sometimes happens just on its own. But then miscommunication or communication that ends up, yeah, not just being miscommunicated, but sometimes poor communication is almost like a Neptune-Mercury thing in and of itself as well. So we’ve got like two compounding factors that are sort of emphasizing miscommunications and the danger of that at this time.

AC: Yeah. And I guess, you know, one of the things that I think this cycle screams is just confusion.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Like, “I don’t know what to make of this.” And, you know, sometimes one of the things I see with a lot of Mercury retrogrades is that things aren’t clear yet, and that in order to arrive at what will seem in retrospect like the correct decision, you kind of have to wait for all the data to come in. And that could be internal or external data. Sometimes you’re not ready to make a decision. You just kind of gotta slide back and forth with Mercury and stay ambivalent until you’ve actually reached the point of clarity. You know, one of the things that I see people do all the time to escape the feeling of confusion—which of course we want to solve confusion—is to sort of leap towards the first premature piece of clarity—first premature answer to the question. You know, if it’s not the real answer then that’s actually worse than just being like, “Yep, I’m confused. I’m gonna have to just sit with this.”

KS: Yeah, I think that sitting with it is a great tip or a great strategy. Somebody in the comments talked about planning for the Seattle conference. Yeah, I plan to finalize my flight details, you know, before Mercury gets into Pisces, basically. So if you do have travel arrangements to make for that conference, yeah, try and get that done before, if you can. The other thing, though, you know, Mercury in Pisces, of course, is not good for maybe filing your taxes, or doing detailed research, or making clear decisions that are informed by facts. But Mercury in Pisces can be good for the inspiration/imagination realm, where you’re maybe figuring out what being intuitive looks like, or what trusting your instinct rather than the information might look like. I’m not saying that, you know, we should all just run around and go, “I had a feeling, and I’m basing my whole life on it,” but Mercury in Pisces is drawing us into that imaginal realm. And particularly with these three conjunctions to Neptune. You won’t be able to rely on facts or clear thinking in the way that you normally can. And the point of that, I think, sometimes is to draw you into a deeper relationship with that more felt sense part of you, that you may not be able to explain why you’re comfortable or not comfortable with something. But if you have that energy or inkling inside of you, it’s okay to sit with that. And I think that’s just—kind of to your point, Austin—around like if you’re confused, just be confused. You don’t have to move out of the state that you’re in, in a hurry, basically.

AC: Yeah. Well, and I agree with what you’re saying entirely about navigating with a different set of instruments. You know, time to practice running on sonar.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Sure. But certainly, it’s like you can try to do that. But also, I don’t know, I feel like especially around the time of that first conjunction, around the 19th, that people probably should be extra cautious, or at least strive to be as clear in communication as they can, or strive to integrate whatever counterbalancing measures that they can. Like if you have to sign a contract, be very careful to read through, so that you understand all the details going into that contract. Because having a Mercury retrograde—where it’s gonna conjoin Neptune and then come back twice more to those same degrees for two more conjunctions—just really sort of smacks of like a misunderstanding or a miscommunication that then leads to a series of events that play out over the course of the next couple of months, to me. And sometimes that’s like that comedy-of-errors-type situation. You know that cliché thing that always happens in like romantic comedies? There’s just like some sort of miscommunication at the beginning, and if only they had not had that stupid miscommunication, the rest of the story wouldn’t have taken place and you basically would have just had like a 10-minute movie. That’s kind of like what this Mercury retrograde seems like to me. Like the initial event or miscommunication or circumstance—that sets up the entire two-month story—all takes place in that last week or two of February.

KS: It’s a really good point, Chris, how you’re linking, you know, the events of the latter part of February with this next two-month’s chapter. As we know, with any Mercury retrograde, we don’t know what we don’t know. And I think that phrase is even more potent or on point for such a confusing time that Mercury’s going in, with Mercury-Neptune. We don’t know what we don’t know.

AC: Yeah, don’t sign the dotted line.

KS: Yeah, I’m like when you said, “If you have to sign a contract,” I’m like, “I’m really trying to avoid it.”

AC: Like, “I’m really busy for about three weeks.”

KS: Yeah.

CB: Well, it’s like you can try. But it’s just like sometimes—like, Austin, I keep thinking of your last Mercury retrograde experience. Like you had to get, you know, your passport so that you could go on that trip at that time. And it was like not negotiable, it was just time to do this thing, and then you, of course, ran into the cliché Mercury retrograde delays and snafus and everything else. But through pushing through and through perseverance, you were eventually able to make the trip and everything worked out okay, but it just took some extra effort. I feel like we’re getting the same thing here. There’s gonna be some people where we can’t just be like, “Don’t do anything during the second half of February.”

AC: Right. But if you don’t have to, don’t.

CB: Sure. Yeah.

KS: Yeah.

CB: I mean, and that’s always the electional advice.

AC: Well, it’s not, “Don’t do anything.” It’s, “Don’t do anything that is primarily Mercury-dependent.”

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah.

CB: But if you are—

AC: And if you have to, then try to get it done earlier. Try to get as much as you can done before we get into hot water. Or, you know, whatever chunky water, whatever it is. Polluted water. Psychedelic-laced water.

KS: Murky, murky water.

AC: And if you have to do it at that time, then just, you know, factor that in. Be like, “Yep, it’s probably gonna be a pain in the ass.” Don’t be like, “Yep, it’s gonna be one quick trip, and this is gonna be taken care of.”

CB: Right.

AC: Be like, “Okay, well, you know, hopefully, it’s quick. But I should not be shocked and surprised and hurt and confused if this takes a little longer.”

CB: Right. Well, and that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. And there’s gonna be some people that do it, and they have to do the thing at that time. And then they see pretty quickly, “Oh, there’s been a miscommunication. Oh, it’s now leading to this result and this series of events that I’m gonna have to deal with over the next few weeks, as I try to work this out and straighten out this thing.” And people will be more aware of it as it’s happening, and you won’t necessarily be able to completely avoid it. Cuz we can’t all just like completely stop doing any mercurial activities during the second half of February. But certainly, by being aware of it, you can at least, hopefully, mitigate some of the worst-case scenarios of it with a little bit of effort.

KS: Yeah, I think that’s key whenever Mercury’s a little bit floaty. A little bit of extra effort is required. You’ve gotta double-check, or you’ve gotta do it twice or even three times.

CB: Right.

KS: I mean, I know, for me, like I fly back to Australia like the day before this happens, and then I’m gonna be settling into, you know, my normal client consult practice and things like that at home. And like, yeah, these types of things are when technology doesn’t work as expected, and it takes longer to make connections, you know, that normally happen quite quickly. And I’m not gonna take that time off from, you know, seeing clients, for instance. But I’m gonna know that we need a bit more flexibility, or it’s worth double-checking about different things, just to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

CB: Right.

KS: That’s sometimes, you know, necessary with Mercury. It’s just the extra effort.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, I love that. That’s great, because you also know then not to get overly-frustrated. Whereas if you’re not paying attention to it, you might get frustrated. Or if there’s like a client, and their technology is like on the fritz, you might be annoyed. You’re like, “Oh, this is taking up extra time,” or something like that. But you being aware of that is gonna give you a little bit more peace of mind to just anticipate it ahead of time, but also, just to be patient with it as it’s playing out for people.

AC: Yeah.

KS: Totally.

AC: Every Mercury retrograde, I get three times as many client reschedules.

KS: Yes.

AC: People will like email me, and they’re like, “Yeah, I know we were set for the 14th, but I had this thing.” And I’m just like, “It’s fine. It’s par for the course.”

CB: Or it’s like three o’clock and they say, “I thought we were on for like one o’clock today,” or something like that.

AC: “I thought you said Tuesday.”

CB: Right.

KS: Yes. And there’s a forgetfulness component to Mercury with Neptune, or Mercury in Pisces. And yeah, I’ve noticed that, even back to my massage therapy days. “Oh, it’s Mercury retrograde. We’re gonna have half the clients reschedule.” But the funny thing that used to happen with that—and it still happens today, even with astrology clients—is somebody will be like, “Oh, my God, I can’t make it,” and then somebody else will email me and be like, “I really wanted to try and get in quickly,” or what have you. And I’ll be like, “Oh, well, this other person just had to step out. So I can actually step you straight in.”

CB: Right.

KS: So I don’t know if that’s me personally. But I often find in those Mercury retrograde rescheduling situations, it tends to work out really well, kind of as it was meant to, if that makes sense.

CB: Yeah, the importance of staying open and flexible and available for unexpected, but fortuitous reschedulings.

AC: Yeah.

KS: Totally.

AC: That’s part of what I was getting at with ambivalence. Be like, “Okay, so I have to reschedule there.” Like what you said, literally see who comes in to fill that slot.

KS: Totally.

AC: You know, I have at least one or two like positive, unscheduled developments for a Mercury retrograde. Like I wasn’t gonna do it this way, but now that I have to, it’s good. But I think it’s important to say that that’s definitely a Mercury retrograde phenomenon, but it’s not one-for-one. It’s not like every fuck up that happens during Mercury retrograde is divinely ordained and is gonna be replaced with something better. If you set expectations for that, you will be sorely disappointed. But it happens.

KS: It does.

CB: It’s funny. Like 2-to-1 or like 3-to-1.

AC: Yeah, yeah. I’d be comfortable with that, 2.73-to-1.

KS: Oh, let’s be precise. Oh, my God.

CB: That is what Mercury-Neptune loves is precision, I think, above all else. Right, guys?

KS: 100%. Very detail-oriented.

AC: Well, that was made-up precision. So maybe Neptune would be down with that.

CB: Right.

KS: That Neptune rule over that. You’d just pulled that figure out of the air.

AC: Well, and maybe that’s a Mercury-Neptune signification, right?

CB: Pretending to have precision.

AC: Yeah, made-up data.

CB: Right.

KS: Faking-it-till-you-make-it kind of thing, yeah.

AC: But let’s talk about that Full Moon. It’s kind of a fun Full Moon.

KS: Yeah, the Full Moon. Virgo right on Regulus.

AC: Yeah, like right on Regulus, within a degree.

KS: Yeah.

CB: I’m not used to Regulus being talked about as being in Virgo, now tropically, rather than Leo.

KS: Yeah, it takes me a minute to catch up.

AC: Michael Lutin needs to sit you down and explain it for three-to-seven hours.

CB: Right.

AC: Remember, that was like his thing for a while.

CB: Yeah, no, I remember. Like one of his plays, at one of the UACs, was all themed about Regulus moving into Virgo, I think. Wasn’t it, in 2012?

AC: Yeah, I believe so. I believe I was in that play. I’m not sure what I was exactly. I was painted green, and I had crow wings. It was never exactly explained to me why I was doing this, but it was a pretty good time.

CB: Right.

KS: Green, with crow wings. Oh, my goodness.

AC: But anyway, yeah, Regulus is there.

KS: Conference parties, yeah. So what do you want to say about this, Austin? Tell us.

AC: Well, so, one, it’s interesting because it’s in the very first degree of the sign, just like our eclipse was last month. We’re having our Full Moons really early in signs. And so, that’s kind of interesting just insofar as it shifts the topic. It shifts the general topic to that next axis of signs. You know, like 20 hours before this Full Moon, the Sun was in Aquarius. And it’s like, boom, now we’re dealing with Pisces, Sun in Pisces. And, boom, here’s the Full Moon in Virgo. You know, Virgo/Pisces axis, like this is what we’re doing. It’s like a much quicker subject change. And I felt that really intensely this month with the Sun’s ingress into Aquarius and then immediate Full Moon, eclipsed Full Moon in Leo. Like my first and second half of the month were so different. And some of that is certainly the eclipse’s potency. But it’s also that quick, double-shift to the next axis rather than the Sun’s in that sign for a week and you get used to that, then the Moon comes around. It’s a much quicker change up.

KS: Yeah, that’s—

AC: Oh, go ahead.

KS: That’s a good point. I was just gonna say, that’s a beautiful point. I hadn’t thought about it quite that way, but it makes complete sense. It’s like this massive grand entrance of the Virgo/Pisces time, if you like. Or the Pisces time with the Virgo Full Moon.

AC: Yeah. And, you know, at that point, all of our other planets have shifted, right? We’ve got our Mars, Mercury, and Venus shifts well underway. And now we have the Sun and Moon, right, activating the water/earth axis. So this is, you know, overwhelmingly water/earth, right? We have, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six—if you count the node planet—in earth, right, and four things in water, right? All we have in fire is Jupiter and Uranus, and then nothing in air, right? So elementally it’s very different. You know, it’s the psychedelic mudslide from whatever we had before.

CB: One of the other things that’s interesting is, in terms of the hemisphere emphasis, you know, in some charts, all of the planets are all over in one half of the chart, basically, or in one half of the zodiacal signs. And so, I was noticing in some of the horoscopes that for some of the people—like some of the later rising signs, like Scorpio rising or Sagittarius rising—all of the planets are transiting through the bottom-half of the chart and some of the personal houses at this point. And the only thing that isn’t this month is that lunation, which is the only thing that’s over on the opposite end of the zodiac, which is acting as a weird sort of counterbalance for some people this month, depending on where all the other planets fall, in terms of the hemisphere emphasis.

AC: That’s a really interesting point. I hadn’t thought about that. Yeah, almost everybody’s over on one side.

CB: Yeah, somebody in the—and I forgot her name—livestream pointed that out to me last night, as I was going through, I think, the horoscope for Scorpio. So it was an interesting point to contemplate then in terms of, are all of the planets going through, let’s say, the bottom-half of your chart at this point, or the top-half of your chart? Are they going through the left side of your chart or the right side of your chart? And then, how does that Virgo Full Moon, being the opposite to all of that, counterbalances things?

AC: Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. And so, I always like to look at, you know, whatever aspects the Moon has. So it’s got a trine to Mars in Taurus. Generally, I don’t like my Full Moons to have aspects to malefics. But that’s pretty—I don’t know—it’s a trine. You know, I think Mars is going to be very sleepy after all of that action conjunct Uranus in Aries. It doesn’t bother me too much. But also, the Moon, you know, in maybe two hours before ingressing—or maybe two hours before the perfect moment of the Full Moon—makes a trine with Uranus. And so, the Moon’s departing aspect is Uranus and applying with Mars. And so, even though, you know, it’s a Virgo Moon, and it’s all earthy and stuff, there’s a little bit of zip there, you know, with the Moon trining Uranus and Mars.

CB: Right.

KS: Well, a little zip, yeah.

AC: Yeah. And then, you know, certainly being conjoined Regulus—there’s some more secret tangy sauce that that Moon is mixing up.

CB: And it’s interesting with Mars there because, you know, it’s such a calm period in late February, as Mars is going through the first decan of Taurus, in terms of coming out from all of that cardinal stuff that’s been going on. But it’s almost like the calm before the Taurus storm. Because Uranus is coming in right behind it next month in March and then starts shaking things up in that sign.

AC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this Full Moon, I think, is more dynamic than it looks because of those trines and because of Regulus. You know, among other things, Regulus has just got a lot of energy. It’ll make you famous. And, you know, so I was looking at this Full Moon a while back, cuz Kait and I, we’re trying to figure out when to do more Regulus work. And first, I was like, “Oh, there’s a Full Moon conjunct Regulus. That would be a perfect time to do more Regulus stuff.” But the more we looked at it, we were like, “Actually January’s Regulus Moon was better,” and so, we did that. Or mostly Kait did that. I just helped with the timing. We decided on the January one. And I think she’s going to release that series on this Full Moon, if I’m not mistaken.

CB: Nice. I’ve been enjoying her social media posts.

KS: You are mistaken. You are being corrected.

AC: I’m being strongly informed that the series is getting released on the 7th, so that there’ll be time for it to ship in time to arrive—

KS: For the Full Moon, yeah.

CB: Got it.

AC: I knew the Full Moon was involved.

KS: Yeah, the Full Moon was the trigger. I love it.

CB: Well, I’ve been enjoying Kait’s social media posts. And she’s been very active over the past couple of months, pumping out some good content on some of her astrological magic and related material. What was her website, again?

AC: Oh, it’s SphereandSundry.com.

CB: Okay, cool. Well, do you guys have anything else about that Full Moon, before we move on? I just remembered that I needed to mention the electional chart for this month.

KS: The electional chart, which is at the very end of the month, if you’re doing Moon-Jupiter.

CB: Yeah, exactly. So I’m gonna throw up the animated chart. I believe this is it. So this is the electional chart that master electional astrologer Leisa Schaim has picked out for us this month. It is a Jupiter election in order to just like squeeze the last of some of these amazing Jupiter elections from the beginning of the year, because, of course, Jupiter is only gonna stay in this amazing condition for so long. And in fact, a couple of months from now, it’s getting not too far away from stationing retrograde, at which point it’s gonna be retrograde for like a few months this year. Which is not a complete deal-breaker in terms of electional charts but it is a little bit less than ideal. So if you want to really take advantage of some of the best Jupiter elections—we already had one of the best ones in early January—one of the next-best ones is taking place this month in February. So the chart that we picked out for this month to feature is set for February 27, around 6:45 in the morning, with early Pisces rising, but just after sunrise. So set the ascendant for about 10° of Pisces in your location. And if you do that, then that should be just after the Sun has risen over the eastern horizon, because the Sun is at about 8° of Pisces in this chart on February 27. If you do that, it sets up a chart where Pisces is rising, Jupiter is the ruler of the ascendant and is located at 21° of Sagittarius. And it is present in the tenth whole sign house with the Moon, which is also at 21 Sagittarius, applying to a conjunction with Jupiter. So this one’s a little tricky. It should work for most timezones, from Denver and east of Denver. But it might get a little bit tricky, where the Moon may have separated on the West Coast of the United States or further west, like Hawaii and other places like that. So try to make it so that the Moon is still applying to a conjunction with Jupiter. If it’s not, in your location, then all you have to do is just back it up one day earlier, when the Moon is still in the earlier degrees of Sagittarius. Put it so that Pisces is rising, and you should still get roughly the same electional chart, more or less. Austin, you and I were talking about this, I think, earlier, before we started the show. About Moon-Jupiter conjunctions this year while Jupiter is in Sagittarius being like one of the main things that we’re going for in electional charts.

AC: Yeah, just do it while the Moon’s in Sag. This is glorious. And having the Part of Fortune on that Moon-Jupiter conjunction, I don’t know, that’s just like a little extra secret sauce. That’s so good.

CB: Right. That is nice. And then if you can, try to get the degree of the midheaven somewhere up there in your location in Sagittarius, not too far from that Moon-Jupiter conjunction. Mars is in the 3rd house. And since this is a day chart, that’s where it’s a little bit problematic for 3rd house matters. Additionally, Mercury is very late in Pisces, and it’s getting ready to station retrograde only about a week after the election. So that is the part of this chart that is not optimal, that it’s an electional chart later in February. So it’s really sort of already getting into the thick of that Mercury retrograde stuff. And even though Mercury is not retrograde yet, it’s pretty close. So this is a really optimal Jupiter election. It’s probably good for 10th house matters, since it has the ruler of the ascendant in the 10th, very well-situated. But it may not be very good for communication. Not just because of the Mercury retrograde that’s impending, but also, with Mars in the 3rd house in a day chart, since the 3rd house—as I believe we discussed in a recent episode—has to do with communication. Did we settle that? Did you guys have any further investigations on that? 3rd house, communication?

KS: I haven’t done any further research, but I have not forgotten. It is on my to-be-researched list.

CB: Okay.

AC: Yeah, that’s definitely one of the things that happens in the 3rd house.

CB: I still have this image of both of you like busting out your copies of Firmicus Maternus, which apparently you both have within reaching distance of your desks.

KS: Yeah.

CB: And the thing that was funny about that is I also have a copy of Firmicus Maternus in reaching distance, but I just didn’t pull it out. And I wish that I had because it would have been a good snapshot.

KS: That was quite funny.

AC: This is a great ‘success’ election.

CB: Right.

KS: Pretty powerful.

AC: You know, like the 10th house is by far the best of what’s going on here. And the lord of the ascendant is in the 10th. Like it’s great. You know, this is like being super successful at something, whether it’s throwing a party or, you know, whatever it is. And a little bit of the vibe I get from it is it’s sort of like don’t sweat the small stuff. Yeah, Mercury’s doing whatever, but here’s 10-times-as-much Jupiter, right? Just right on the Moon, on the Part of Fortune. That’s just such an overwhelming Jupiter that you can get away with a lot of little things not working out. I do wish it wasn’t the day and hour of Mercury, but I’ll still give that an ‘A’ grade. I like it. I’m gonna use it.

CB: Still gets a pass.

KS: The Jupiter—I mean, it ticks all of my major boxes for elections. The ascendant ruler is amazing, and it is getting the benefit of the Moon pushing onto it. Both of them are angular, and as Austin said, extra special sauce with the Part of Fortune there. And this is a great example of like no election chart will be perfect. And if you really want the good stuff, you’ve just gotta be prepared to take that little annoying niggle of, you know, the weird person in the corner or whatever it happens to be. Because the larger thing here is this is quite golden.

AC: Yeah, it’s really nice.

CB: Yeah, so this is our featured election for the month that we’ve featured as the best election we could find for February. We also just recorded—Leisa and I just recorded next month’s Auspicious Elections Podcast, where we went through and picked three other electional charts for other parts of February, to give you a total of, I think, four or five electional charts for next month. And that episode is gonna be posted later today. It’s available for patrons of The Astrology Podcast who support the podcast through our page on Patreon, on the $5 and $10 tiers. So we’ve got that. We also released earlier this month—we weren’t sure if we were gonna do it, but we actually pushed it out at the end of December. We recorded a two-hour report, where we went through and picked out one of the best electional charts we could find for each month of 2019 as a bit of an experiment. Cuz people keep asking us for long-term elections on the monthly Auspicious Elections Podcast, but that’s not really how that’s set up. So we decided to do a report for those long-term people that are looking for something for later this year, and it ended up coming out pretty well. So I’ll put a link to that. It’s just titled 2019 Electional Astrology Report. If you Google that, it should come up. Otherwise, I’ll put a link to it on the description page for this episode on TheAstrologyPodcast.com. All right, and that is the election for the month, and that kind of brings us to the end of February. Is there anything—I’m trying to look at my Planetary Alignments Calendar to see if there’s anything major that I’m forgetting to mention. Do you guys have anything? I mean, that Virgo Full Moon and Mercury sort of slowing down and getting ready to station really is the tail-end of February, right?

AC: Yeah, it really is.

KS: They are the big things, yeah. I mean, we touched briefly on the Venus-South Node February 26. Not, you know, on the level of the Full Moon, but it’s happening.

AC: Yeah, I feel like that South Node flavor—that Venus-South Node flavor will be, how shall we say, most accessible then. But I feel like that’s gonna be just part of the flavor once Venus closes in on Saturn. It’s a Saturn-Pluto-South Node Sunday, and it’ll just be the part of Venus’ movement through that area that most focuses on that. And of course that’ll be while Venus is squaring Uranus. It’s kind of all one thing in a sense.

CB: That’s what I’m looking at, is that Venus-Uranus square. Cuz that’s like the last—I think that’s the last major aspect, inner planet aspect, that Uranus gets before it completes its trek through Aries.

KS: Because it’s moving in early March.

CB: Right. So Uranus, it looks like it moves on March 6. Is that correct?

KS: Yeah, 5th or 6th, ring the bell.

AC: Yeah, my birthday is the day before.

KS: Yeah, I was trying to figure out where that would be in relation to you.

CB: So it’s at 29 Aries in your solar return?

AC: It’s at 29°59’. And, you know, Mercury stations retrograde within 24 hours of Uranus changing signs, as we’ve talked about before.

CB: Right.

AC: And that’s my birthday.

CB: Nice.

KS: Oh, that’s okay. Got it.

CB: Good times. Well, that’s gonna be fun to talk about next month on the forecast.

KS: In our next month’s episode, yeah.

CB: The forecast for March, which we will be doing. We will be back again in a few weeks to record here, in the later part of February, I assume. Kelly, are you gonna be back from your trip by then?

KS: Yes. Yeah, if I get home on the 18th. Yeah, so that later part of February, where Venus is in the hot mess part of Capricorn, we’ll be recording then.

CB: Cool. Now that I’m getting settled into the new studio, and starting to do the livestream, one of these days you guys have to come out and join me for one of my marathon, all-night horoscope recording sessions. And we can just stay up late and get progressively more tired and potentially silly recording horoscopes for one of these months.

AC: Only if there are intoxicants involved.

KS: Are we allowed to drink?

AC: Alcohol, plus something else.

KS: Oh!

AC: Maybe you get to pick the something else, Chris. There’s gotta be at least two types of intoxication out there.

CB: Yeah, I have been talking to Cam White. He wants us to do a podcast, which is ‘Drunk Astrology’. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to do that without accidentally offending, you know, somebody, like if we did the horoscopes. I would feel bad if we accidentally said something about a sign that was not good and somebody took it to heart.

AC: I feel like there’s a little ‘buyer beware’ there. Like if you’re looking to be dealt with sensitively and delicately, maybe the ‘Drunk Astrology Podcast’ is not the place to go. There are literally a thousand others.

CB: Yeah. And Shakira in the chat says I should try doing horoscopes zodiacally backwards or out of order sometimes. And I actually did last month when Cam and I recorded them. We did a random number generator and did them randomly when we recorded. We also spread it across two days. So we did record them randomly, so that no sign necessarily got short-changed, cuz they were at the end or something like that. I did decide last night to do it in order because I was concerned—since I was doing it live for everybody on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube—about people being able to anticipate what sign was coming first, and being able to tune in at different points. So that’s why I just did it from Aries through Pisces last night. But I’ll try different things in the future.

AC: Gotta keep them guessing.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah.

CB: And she says she appreciates that as a Pisces rising. “I understand, yeah.” And Arthur also mentioned, as a Pisces, that sometimes when people go through all 12, and they get to the end, that Pisces kind of sometimes gets screwed because the astrologer’s so tired that they just want to get it over with. I was a little bit out of it. But one thing I will say to counterbalance that is by the time you get to Pisces, you’ve done it so many times that actually you guys get the most refined and well-directed delineations, just because the astrologer’s got it down at that point, and they know the month like the back of their hand by the time they get to that sign. So they may be a little tired. I’m not gonna lie about that.

KS: Not gonna lie. I mean, when I used to write a lot of horoscope columns, I’d write Aries and Taurus, and then I’d get to the end, I’m like, “Oh, I can say what I said in Aries and Taurus a little bit better now because I’ve been refining.”

AC: Yeah, I think Aries actually gets the short end of the stick a lot of the time. Like that’s the one I end up editing the most. A lot of times it’s twice as long and half as good as the other ones, cuz I’m like trying to figure out how—like we talked about, trying to get a hold of that poem, like you were saying at the beginning, Kelly; where it’s like, “I got it, I got it down,” by the end.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah.

CB: And that’s true with my videos as well, that the Aries and the early ones tend to be longer. So sometimes people perceive that as like they’re getting a better deal or a longer delineation, but it’s actually because you’re still getting the hang of the month as you’re going through them. But once you’ve got a number under your belt, you’re actually getting more concise because you know the main points.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Does one of you have a chicken in the background?

KS: Sorry. I know, it’s a chicken. I think mom just fed the chickens. It’s all very a backyard-barnyard kind of situation here at mom and dad’s. They must have just been fed or they’re laying eggs.

CB: No, that’s fine. I love that. I was just making sure. I was not sure who that was coming from.

KS: Yeah, I was like, “Oh, my God. That’s gonna be so loud.” Thanks, Steven, for fixing that when you edit.

CB: No, I think we’re leaving that in. That is a first.

KS: It’s very Australian. Great eggs, though, cuz they’ve just come from the backyard.

CB: Nice. All right, guys, so let’s wrap this up for February. Kelly, people can find out more information about you at KellysAstrology.com. You’re doing a monthly, private forecast, which you do each month, where you go through everything in more detail. That’s one of the main things you’re doing right now?

KS: Yeah, for my monthly subscription. Yeah, it’s a week ahead, month ahead video, where we just break down everything. So if you want even more month ahead stuff, you can sign up via the homepage. It’s at the bottom, scroll down.

CB: Cool. And that’s at KellysAstrology.com. Austin, you are doing your Patreon thing, where you’re sending out your monthly written astrological forecasts ahead of time each month. You finally actually launched your podcast.

AC: Yeah, yeah.

CB: You did the first episode.

AC: Yeah, I launched Eavesdropping at Midnight. That’s what I ended up calling it. And yeah, it’s a series of interviews, extended conversations between myself and other practitioners of the various stuff that I practice. And it comes out whenever I feel like it.

CB: All right.

KS: I love your scheduling, Austin.

AC: I have so many things that are so tightly scheduled. I have friends that are podcasters. I don’t need another full-time job. It’s a little side project. I think it’s fun. I think at least some people really like it.

KS: Of course. Of course.

AC: But I just can’t tie myself to another regular production schedule.

KS: Regular thing.

AC: I have a couple in the can already. And so, you know, there might be some months where I drop three. And there might be some where I cruelly withhold. We’ll find out.

KS: Yeah. I love it.

CB: You are a cruel taskmaster of a podcast runner, but I appreciate it. I love it. So people can just do a search for Eavesdropping at Midnight. And it looks like your website comes up, which is the primary place it’s at. It’s at AustinCoppock.com. But it’s also available on iTunes. If you do a Google search for Eavesdropping at Midnight, it shows up in a few other places, it looks like, as well.

AC: Yeah, we’re getting it hooked into all of the standard podcast outlets. But yeah, it’s just on my website. You can see there’s a thing that says ‘Eavesdropping at Midnight’ on the homepage. So right there.

CB: Cool. And speaking of podcasts, Kelly, you guys are really doing a great job with your new podcast that you’re doing with Cassandra. That seems to be going really well.

KS: Yeah, we’re having a lot of fun. And I’m laughing because Alicia—the third leg of The Water Trio—she often has chickens in the background when we’re recording. That’s why I mean it’s such an Australian thing. But yeah, unlike Austin, we decided to shackle ourselves to a weekly schedule.

CB: Nice.

KS: So we’re dropping a new episode every Monday. And that’s just a 30-minute look at the week ahead. Casual, a few laughs, some good juicy insights there. We are on SoundCloud and iTunes. And we’ve just started a Facebook page. And we’re actually all doing a live event in Sydney together tonight just for some of our listeners. So it’s sort of a small, intimate gathering. But we thought if we’re all gonna be together in the same country, let’s just do something. But we’re having a lot of fun with it. Yeah, it’s a commitment to do the weekly, but we are really enjoying it. And I think people are enjoying listening, so that’s good.

AC: Well, I’ve been listening, and I enjoy it.

KS: Oh, good.

CB: Yeah, it’s really great. You guys are up to Episode 13. So people can find that if they just do a Google search for ‘Water Trio Podcast’. It comes up on Kelly’s website, KellysAstrology.com, and it comes up on SoundCloud. and it’s also on iTunes, it looks like.

KS: Yeah, yeah. And we just had a lovely listener reach out a few weeks ago and say: “I can do sound editing.” And so, the last couple of episodes, the sound has improved because we’ve had a sound editor helping us out, which of course makes a huge difference. So we’re really grateful to him for coming on board and just willing to keep making it a great show for people as we grow.

CB: That’s good. They can edit the chicken sounds in or out. It’s good to have somebody working with you for that purpose.

KS: Yeah. Oh, gosh.

CB: All right. And as for me, my main thing is just having launched that electional report, throwing the posters on Amazon this month. And I’m gonna keep plugging away with the podcast, which continues to grow and expand and develop. I just experimented with livestreaming. Oh, yeah, I decided not to do the horoscopes. I don’t think I’m gonna do the horoscopes as an audio version this month on the podcast. They’re just gonna be video versions that are available on my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com/TheAstrologySchool. They’re also available on my Facebook page and on my Twitter feed, which is @ChrisBrennan7. So people can find the horoscopes there this month, if they want, for their individual rising sign. All right, I guess that’s it, guys. So we are done for the month of February. Thanks everyone for joining. Thanks to the audience and all the patrons who joined us today, as a patron bonus, who were able to attend the live recording. It was great seeing some of your comments. So thank you for joining us. Thanks to all the patrons who support the show each month. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to do it. And I’m gonna keep growing and expanding the podcast over the course of this year. So thanks for joining me today, guys.

AC: Yeah, this was fun.

KS: Anytime. Always a good laugh, thank you.

CB: Yeah, I had a good time. It sounds like the chickens are not done.

KS: Of course, cuz we’re done now.

CB: Yeah, cuz we’re finished, so it’s time to wrap up. All right, so thanks a lot everybody for joining. Thanks for watching and listening. Be sure to like and subscribe. And we will see you next time for the forecast for March. All right, have a good night.

KS: Bye.