The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 216, titled:

August 2019 Astrology Forecast: Leo and Virgo Stelliums

With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees

Episode originally released on July 30, 2019

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2019/07/30/august-2019-astrology-forecast-leo-and-virgo-stelliums/

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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 April 15th, 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. Today is Saturday, July 27, 2019, starting at 12:22 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 216th episode of the show. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking about the astrological forecast for August of 2019 with my good friends Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees. First, we’re gonna do a little bit of a recap where we talk about what happened over the past month since we did our last forecast, and we’re also gonna check in on just what’s been going on with Austin and Kelly since that time. And then, eventually, we’ll jump into the forecast, probably about 45-minutes-to-an-hour into the episode. So if you wanna jump ahead to the forecast, you can find timestamps for the video version, below the video, in the description. Or if you’re listening to the audio version, you can find the timestamps to jump forward on the podcast website for this episode, at TheAstrologyPodcast.com. So this episode is being recorded in front of a live audience. So thanks everybody for joining us today. These are all patrons who are joining us, who support the show. And for more information about how to support the podcast and the production of future episodes—while getting access to benefits like the ability to attend live recordings or early access to new episodes—please visit TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Subscribe. All right, hey, guys. Thanks for joining me today.

AUSTIN COPPOCK: My pleasure.

KELLY SURTEES: Hello.

CB: You are both in new surroundings, having both randomly moved roughly at the same exact time.

KS: Yes, randomly.

CB: Yeah, well, you were both born—we established recently—very close together.

KS: Yes.

AC: About a week.

CB: About a week apart. And Kelly, you’ve just moved from Canada to Belgium.

KS: Yes, just for fun.

CB: Just for fun?

KS: Well, actually for my husband’s job, but, yes. It’s been an intense month. And I know, it’s interesting—I’m really keen to catch up with both of you, but especially to hear, Austin, how you are doing with your move. We feel like our move is sort of half done. Because everything’s been packed up and sent but we haven’t received everything. Cuz of course moving countries is a little more of a drawn out process than packing up and moving truck and driving to wherever you’re going and then unpacking later that day or the next day. So we haven’t got to the unpacking part yet, so we’re still a little in limbo. So our stuff has arrived in Belgium, but it has to go through customs, and that’s something that can be a few days, a few weeks. You know, nobody can give you any clear answers. So we knew that going in, so we’re just appreciating a bit of a pause. But it looks a little different at your end, Austin.

AC: Yeah, I think that your comment about unpacking later that day is hilarious.

KS: Yeah, I was gonna say, really, unpacking takes like months.

AC: Yeah, it does. Let’s see, I guess we’ve been ‘here’ here for about two weeks, but we went to a conference last weekend. And that was a conference we were very glad we went to. It was the VGS, the Viridis Genii Symposium. It’s a plant magic get-together. It was fantastic. And we had signed up for it, I don’t know, eight months ago, when we didn’t know it would be in the middle of a move. And so, we got here. We were here for a few days, conference, and then I’ve been here a few days again. So we are even more delayed in our unpacking than would be reasonable. Also, this room was a horrid, truly oppressive salmon pink color. It was awful. And so, I had to put two coats of primer and then two coats of paint on here to get it to be something other than a hell cage, and then move all my stuff in.

KS: The painting, yeah. That’s what people sometimes forget with moving. Then you have to do all the painting and freshening up before you can even get unpacked.

AC: Yeah, I mean, you can’t set anything up when you’re in the middle of painting, unless you’re cool with giving it a lively, spotty coat of paint. So yeah, I had considered whether I should try to make my office presentable for the podcast, but this is the truth of it right now, where there’s a ladder over there, there’s a paint roller. Some of my books are out of the boxes. There are also many more in boxes. I’m happy to be here, but very much in process.

CB: Yeah, and I love how both of you are settling in towards the end of the Mercury retrograde—where Mercury’s getting ready to station—and all of your stuff is basically about to show up any day now, right, Kelly?

KS: Yeah, fingers crossed. I’m ready to do some good magic for that.

CB: Yeah, hopefully, they deliver your stuff and not somebody else’s books.

KS: Yeah. The books—it’s the worst. Like I could bring maybe 10 books with me. I had to think of which ones to pick. Anyway, yeah.

AC: Yeah, actually when I was packing books, I packed two or three boxes and wrote ‘Priority’ in gigantic letters on them. Cuz it’s like I’m gonna need these for work. Like these are reference books.

KS: Yeah.

AC: So I’m glad I did that.

CB: I think that’s always like the biggest thing any astrologer has to move, is their book collection. But what’s funny is there’s stories about that going back to the 6th century, of Justinian closing down all the philosophical schools—or the pagan philosophical schools—and all the astrologers leaving and going to Persia and taking their books with them.

KS: Oh, wow.

CB: That’s a story I always thought was deeply relatable. Cuz I can imagine them packing up their books and taking them with them, cuz I’ve seen that with other astrologers that are contemporaries. All the time, that’s one of their most prized, prioritized things, but also, the hardest things to move, cuz you have so many boxes of them.

KS: And they’re so heavy. They’re the most expensive thing to have to move.

CB: Yeah. So all right, guys, we were gonna do some pre-show stuff. I wanna start, maybe, by checking in on the past month and talking about how the astrology ended up working out, since it’s been a month since we discussed the forecast for July. Now that July’s largely over, it would be good to check in. We finished part two of what has been lovingly dubbed the ‘meat grinder’ by Austin and that caught on somehow. Did it play out? Did it meet up to its expectations? Did it live up to your expectations of the meat grinder?

KS: Austin?

CB: Million-yard stare.

KS: Yeah.

AC: It has been a gauntlet of necessity.

KS: Yeah, it’s—sorry, go.

AC: Oh, okay. I was just gonna say expecting it to be rife with challenges made it a lot easier. There were a few points where I was sort of like, “Why are things so hard right now?” and I was like, “You know, that’s not fair.” Or I was having normal human emotional reactions, and I was like, “No, no, this runs for another couple of weeks. Just bear down until you get there and then you can complain.” And that was actually really helpful. You know, even though one portion of me knows what to expect, etc., etc., the part was like, “Well, but this is hard and I’m tired.” It’s like, “Yeah, yeah, I know. You talked about this. You wrote about this like seven months ago (or eight months ago).” And so, knowing there was a challenge made it easier to rise to it. And honestly, I felt relatively blessed in the numerous small challenges that I was pushed to confront rather than some of the big ugly stuff that I’ve heard lots of reports of. You know, a lot of people just getting hurt, and in some cases, dying. So I’ll take a multitude of inconveniences over getting in a car accident any day.

CB: Yeah, one of the people that actually passed away was a guest of The Astrology Podcast. Tem Tarriktar, who was the founder of The Mountain Astrologer magazine, passed away in early July—actually right when Mercury was stationing retrograde in Leo, which was his rising sign—from throat cancer that moved very fast. Like he was fighting for a few months, and then all of a sudden he was in hospice, and then all of a sudden he was gone. But thankfully, last year, I was able to do an episode with him—I’ve been pushing to do for a while—where we just covered his life and his work, and specifically, documented his history with The Mountain Astrologer magazine. And that was Episode 149 of The Astrology Podcast. So I’d really recommend people go back and listen to it because it has a lot of added weight at this point, now that he’s passed away, which we didn’t anticipate happening so soon when we recorded it. But that’s definitely one of the reasons why I’ve been trying to get some of these biographical interviews with some of these older astrologers, to document some of that history while we still have a chance to.

AC: Yeah, that’s awesome. He was a kind, bright, and insightful person, who’s work carried astrology through a lot of the, I don’t know, last quarter of the 20th century. As I’ve mentioned before, part of my initial education in astrology was a couple of how-to astrology books from the used bookstore and a stack of about 40 old Mountain Astrologers that I bought for 20 bucks.

CB: Yeah, and that’s one of the best ways to learn astrology if you’re early on, is The Mountain Astrologer magazine. So one of the things he was really good about—he was a very humble person. But one of the things I respected the most was the fact that he took what was essentially a photocopied newsletter—how he started it—selling it in grocery stores in 1987, and it became, over the next 20 or 30 years, one of the largest and most well-circulated and well-respected astrological publications in the world. But one of the things he was really good about was creating a space and a platform to showcase many different approaches to astrology, and you can find articles on modern Western astrology, on Vedic astrology, on traditional astrology. Like The Mountain Astrologer’s always been very diverse or very good about showcasing the diversity of the astrological community. And I think that was a precedent that he set that then influenced other people, in other mediums, including myself. And what I’ve tried to achieve with The Astrology Podcast is very much, not emulating, but influenced by what he created with The Mountain Astrologer.

AC: Yeah, well, and it was not all written at a beginner level either. It wasn’t just for consumers of astrology. You know, it was in many ways for practitioners at a variety of levels. That was something that set it apart from some of the other stuff—or from a lot of the other material that was on the market. It wasn’t like mass-market horoscopes.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah, I always appreciated the fine balance they were able to strike between having enough articles to make it a valuable purchase for someone newer to astrology, as well as having enough meaty or more complex pieces for those who were more well-versed in the language. So I believe the magazine is continuing, though. So if anyone hasn’t subscribed, you can jump on and do that.

CB: Yeah, I think it would be a great thing to show support—people renewing their subscriptions or getting new subscriptions—in order to help encourage the team that he left behind, including his wife, that they wanna continue it, and they wanna keep it going and try to continue that legacy. So I would definitely recommend going and searching for The Mountain Astrologer magazine and getting a subscription, not just to support them for the hell of it, which is good to do in and of itself. But also, cuz it’s actually a great resource for astrologers at any level, and it should be supported by the community. So yeah, that was one of the things that happened. So we had the Mercury retrograde station at the beginning of the month conjunct Mars. We also had the eclipses. So the first full set of eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn. And that was really interesting to see how that was manifesting in different people’s lives as well. Leisa and I actually did a workshop at The Mercury Cafe earlier this month, where we went through and took examples from the audience of just eclipses falling in different houses and how that’s worked out in different people’s lives—showing how it really activates the axis between those two houses for a year-and-a-half or a couple of years, as the eclipses are bouncing back and forth between those two whole sign houses. And we were able to get some pretty vivid stories that we released as Episode 115 of the podcast, just showing how those topics can sometimes manifest very literally in a person’s life. Do you guys have any good eclipse stories in your own life, from the past, about an eclipse that fell in a specific house, or axis of two houses, and how that really correlated with some major change or turning point in your life?

KS: I’m just fact-checking.

CB: Like for example, I had an eclipse that fell in my fourth whole sign house, and I moved away from my home state for the first time ever and moved to Seattle to study at Kepler College. And then not long after that, I ended up moving to Maryland to study at Project Hindsight. Or I had an eclipse in my 7th house 10 years ago and started a major relationship. I had one that was really funny, that was somebody I know who had an eclipse just take place. The Cancer eclipse was in their 3rd house, cuz they have Taurus rising, and I forgot to mention this on some other recordings. But it was really funny because they moved to a different state in the United States in order to take care of a sick niece, who was going through a fight with cancer. And the person sold their house, and they moved into an RV. And they’re now living in an RV—which is a funny, 3rd house thing—down in the vicinity of their niece, which is another 3rd house thing. So a couple of overlapping significations of the 3rd house there for that person.

KS: Yeah, that’s super interesting.

AC: Yeah, so off the top of my head, Kait and I moved in together for the first time, a long time ago, on an eclipse on the ruler of my 7th. Let’s see, I made the decision to stop writing my annual almanac as a print publication right around a South Node eclipse, in my 10th, on my Mercury. Let’s see.

CB: That’s pretty good.

AC: I lost my voice for almost two weeks during an eclipse on my ascendant. That was a South Node solar on my ascendant in 2009. And I lost my voice—I was sick as I had been in, I don’t know, 5-10 years—right around the days leading up to the eclipse in Cancer that we just had. So 1st house eclipse energy is not sustaining, right? It’s not life-supporting. It’s change-enabling, change-catalyzing. You know, we both moved during the eclipse season, Kelly.

KS: Yeah, well, and that angle is active in both of our charts.

AC: Yeah, yeah.

KS: Late Capricorn is something for both of us.

AC: Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.

KS: Yes.

AC: Anyway—go ahead.

KS: I was just gonna say, when I first moved to Canada—so September 2008—there was an eclipse just prior to that on Jupiter in my chart, which rules so much of my chart, like the Leo eclipses, just maybe two months beforehand. I was teaching, so I couldn’t go sooner, but shortly thereafter, moved countries.

CB: Jupiter’s the ruler of your ascendant and your 10th, right?

KS: Yeah.

CB: Okay. Pretty good.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Any others?

KS: That’s it.

CB: That’s all right.

KS: That’s the only one I’ve got, that I can find quickly.

CB: Well, you are in luck. Because for that episode we released, the eclipse episode—which some people have listened to, but for those that haven’t—I just wanna make sure people don’t sleep on that episode. Cuz it was a really good one if you’ve ever wanted to know how to work with eclipses. And Paula Belluomini created this awesome handout for us, which is like a five-page, printable PDF, which just gives a table of solar and lunar eclipse dates, to show you what the date was, but also, what sign of the zodiac it falls in. It’s like an 80-year handout. So you can actually not just look at what the current and upcoming eclipses are, but more importantly, you can go back through your past chronology. And I would recommend especially focusing on what houses the eclipse fell on in the past and just seeing if any major topics came up when the eclipse fell in that house, and sometimes you’ll find some really interesting stuff.

KS: Can you go back to the early ‘80s on that, Chris?

CB: Sure.

KS: I know that’s a while ago.

CB: So like early, early ‘80s?

KS: Yeah, like between ‘80 and ‘85. There we go. That’s so interesting.

CB: Going through Leo/Aquarius. See, this is also useful, cuz it demonstrates that idea that it just bounces back and forth between two signs for like a year-and-a-half or sometimes two years, and then, eventually, it switches to another axis of two signs. But as a result of that, it means it’s bouncing back and forth between two houses in your chart as well, and you’ll often see this interesting exchange or interplay between those two houses at that time.

KS: This is so interesting because in 1981, there were eclipses in early Leo, again, and we actually moved from Australia to Fiji for my dad’s work at that time.

CB: Okay. Interesting.

KS: Yeah, yeah.

CB: So you had a similar repetition.

KS: Yeah. Super interesting, thanks. So there you go. Eclipses on Jupiter—you too can move countries.

CB: Yeah, so that handout—you can find it. It’s linked on the podcast website, under Episode 215. So just go to TheAstrologyPodcast.com and pull up the episode titled, Interpreting Solar and Lunar Eclipses in Your Birth Chart, scroll down, and you will see the PDF titled, Solar and Lunar Eclipse Dates (PDF).

KS: That’s a great resource. Actually I saw that flash by on social media at some point, and that’ll be amazing. Cuz it’s much faster to have that—and lighter than having your whole ephemeris with you—in a hurry.

CB: Yeah, well, and the original idea for it was there’s another ephemeris that ACS makes, which is Tables of Planetary Phenomena or something. Do you know what the name of that is?

KS: No, I don’t, but I get the concept. That’s very cool.

CB: Planetary Phenomena.

KS: Quick Google.

CB: Yeah, I’m looking it up really quickly. Tables of Planetary Phenomena by Neil Michelsen. So it’s the same people that make the ACS Atlas, so the American Atlas that we all use. But that book has a few-page thing where it does something similar in terms of showing eclipse dates. So that was kind of where I got the idea for doing another handout like that, to make it a little bit more clean and a little bit easier to print out and everything else. But that’s good ephemeris to check out for ephemeris aficionados.

KS: That’s fantastic.

CB: Yeah. Okay, so eclipses were one of the components of the meat grinder. We’ve talked a little bit about the Mercury retrograde. And I think we wanted to go back to that, cuz there’s a little bit more Mercury retrograde stuff to discuss.

KS: Yes.

CB: One of the realizations I had—and it wasn’t a major one, but it was useful for me—was thinking about the astronomy of Mercury retrograde this month. I realized one of the primary keywords for Mercury retrograde for me has always been delays. So delays in the manifestation of something, or delays in the attempt to manifest or initiate something and sometimes detours or digressions. But I was realizing that part of the astronomical reason for that this month is that what happens when Mercury goes retrograde is it’s moving forward in the zodiac. It’s moving forward in its normal motion, in this path around the Earth from our perspective. But then when it goes retrograde, it suddenly slows down and starts doing a loop, where it starts moving backwards. But eventually it stations direct and does another look and comes back and starts going forward again, and then eventually returns back to, essentially, where it started, and then it continues, or it completes its journey. So what’s happening from an astronomical standpoint is Mercury is going, but then it has a slight detour or a slight delay, and then eventually gets back on track, or back onto its path and does complete its journey. So I think that’s the reason, astronomically, why symbolically—Mercury retrograde—one of the primary keywords is just delays. Cuz it’s not that Mercury just doesn’t complete its journey or gets completely thrown off track, it just has this detour for about three weeks, before eventually doing what it needs to do in completing its journey. So I wanted to mention that just as a useful thing to think about when people are trying to understand and conceptualize why Mercury retrograde means what it means. It’s because it has that specific astronomical movement, and that astronomical movement has a mirroring or a symbolic connection with what’s happening on Earth at that time, and that’s Mercury retrograde.

AC: Yeah, if you trace its path, it looks like a little roller-coaster loop-de-loop. One of the things that creates the delays or part of the delay journey is that you get circuitous routes and circumambulatory movement towards goals rather than straight lines. You know, with a detour, you get there, but it’s not a straight line. You planned on the straight line. But as Chris was saying, if you look at what Mercury’s doing, Mercury’s doing this, right?

KS: Yeah.

AC: The path from here to here is this, rather than this, and you see that, too. And you’ll get there. Well, most of the time you’ll get there, but, yeah, there’s that country road quality to it.

KS: Yeah, the freeway is not available, and you’ve gotta take the roundabout route.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, and I had a funny one with that this time, where I ordered this book—this expensive academic book from Brill, that was a translation of one of the books of the 12th century astrologer Ibn Ezra, and it has a Hebrew critical edition and then an English translation. And after a couple of weeks, I just got the book the other day, and I opened up the front cover of the book and the inside was backwards and upside-down, so that it started on the first page with the index. And then the book went backwards in order, and also, all the text was facing the opposite direction or was upside-down. And it wasn’t cuz the book was in Hebrew or something like that, but it was because the book was just misprinted. So then I had to file a claim on Amazon and ship the book back. And then eventually, once they get it, they’ll refund me the money, and then I’ll have to order another, and then eventually I’ll get the book, but there’ll be this annoying delay in the process. And that’s just so common of Mercury retrograde. And sometimes it happens in little, just annoying things like that, like just trying to get a book. But other times it happens on bigger things as well, but it’s still the same dynamic or process oftentimes.

AC: Yeah, that’s the shape of it.

KS: Absolutely. I mean, I had a really classic Mercury retrograde years ago when I was flying from Sydney back to Canada, and went to the airport, went through customs, got on the plane, the plane takes off. We fly about an hour-and-a-half north, we have dinner on the plane, and the plane’s like, “Something’s wrong, we have to go back to Sydney.” This is a 15-hour flight, mind you. “We’re gonna have to go back to Sydney. You’re all gonna have to leave the airport, go and stay in a hotel, go back to where you came from, and come back again in the morning, and we’ll go for a take two.” You know, massive loop-de-loop. Still got there, but on, obviously, a massive delay. That’s a really good visual, actually, for people. The country road detour.

CB: Yeah, definitely.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Did you have anything come up for this one? Or any past, famous Mercury retrograde stories or anecdotes like that, Austin?

AC: Sure. Let’s see, so yesterday, I was trying to get my mic situation working. You know, this is a fancy, high-quality mic. And like most sophisticated things, there are more points of breakage. It’s not a plug-and-play. And so, I’d been messing with it ever since I set up my desk, and it hadn’t quite worked, but I had something else to do and it wasn’t necessary. But last night, I was like, “Okay, we’re gonna do the podcast tomorrow. I need to make sure this works.” And I spent about an hour just going over every connection, and everything was correct, but the computer wasn’t recognizing the device.

CB: Okay.

AC: And I was getting very frustrated. And then Kait came down, and I went over it with her. And she just unplugged some stuff and plugged it back, and it worked, which was wonderful and at the same time extremely frustrating. You’re like, “But I just did that four times,” but it worked, but it worked. Yeah, so getting all of the connections right, I don’t know, it just needed to be unplugged. The right things needed to be unplugged and then re-plugged in the right order, which is not something you find in an instruction manual. Let’s see, on the Mercury retrograde—

CB: What is the purpose of that, though? Cuz sometimes with Mercury retrogrades, where you have to do the do-over, or you have to do it twice—it’s noticeably better the second time, when you have to put more effort into it, or there’s something you learn from the process. And it seems like sometimes it’s just like an annoying thing, where you have to do it twice, or it takes longer than it should have, and I wonder what the point is—if there’s a point to that.

AC: Well, I think sometimes there is a point and then sometimes you’re just spitting into the wind.

CB: Yeah, like that’s an experience that we have to have. I don’t know, that experience exists in the world and those are sometimes just the times in which that happens.

AC: It’s certainly available during those times.

CB: Sure. Okay, what was your other story?

AC: Oh, let’s see. Oh, our dishwasher. So we ordered a dishwasher, and then the dishwasher came. And the dishwasher fellow came, and the whole under-sink area gets taken apart, and this and that. And I don’t even remember, but there’s some widget that’s missing, and so, they weren’t able to install it. And so, there’s just a giant dishwasher in the middle of the living room, and the dishwasher man can’t come back until next week. That one’s particularly good for Mercury in Cancer because it’s water, and it’s about cleaning. It’s a domestic product, right? We have Mercury in the domicile of the Moon. It’s like, thanks.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah, that’s annoying.

AC: Oh, and Kait reminds me they rescheduled the install for Wednesday, next Wednesday, which is the day that Mercury goes direct.

KS: Love it.

CB: I love it. Perfect.

KS: That’s so good.

CB: Any other meat grinder anecdotes, or other things, now that we’re coming towards the tail-end of it—we’re almost out of it?

KS: I don’t have any? Do you wanna share anything, Austin? I feel like I’ve just been in ‘moving land’. Like you mentioned before, Austin, for us, a lot of the logistical stuff, touch wood, has gone relatively well. It’s been the emotional instability of just being in transition and being in flux. It’s not that it’s not to be expected. But then once you’re in it, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I knew it would feel unsettling, and this is what unsettling feels like, and I don’t like it, yeah.”

AC: Yeah, there have certainly been some in transition internally, as well as externally.

KS: That’s a great way of putting it.

AC: All of the meat grinder stories that I can think about right now are just more unpleasant things that happen to people. Like my friend’s daughter got blood poisoning from a spider bite.

KS: Nasty.

AC: I can tell you stories like that. But I think everybody knows that this was a difficult period and that we are all happy to move onto the rest of life and the rest of 2019.

CB: Yes, definitely. And there are some nice things around the corner, as all the planets start moving into Leo, here, at the beginning of August. So we will get to that in just a second. Any other pre-show chat stuff that we need to mention?

KS: I mean, the one thing—cuz we flew with our cats just a couple of days after Mercury went retrograde. So of course I was a bit of a nervous Nelly. And of course Mercury’s retrograde, with Mars, in Leo, which is 6th house for me. So I’m on high alert, “What’s going to be going on with these cats on the plane?” So we did actually have the cats in the cabin with us. They were like our cabin luggage. They were under the seat in front of us. But actually everything went really smoothly. We had a tiny snafu with the paperwork when we were checking into the flight where they just couldn’t find the second receipt. Cuz when you bring a cat onto a plane, you’ve gotta pay for it. They weren’t interested in any of the health documents or vet checks, they were like, “We just wanna make sure that you’ve paid for both of these cats.” You know, there was just a little hiccup while they found that. And then the funniest thing was when we landed in Belgium, we were going through customs and immigration control, and we’ve got the cats in soft carriers. My husband’s got one, I’ve got another. And we go up, we give them our passports, they’re babbling to my husband in French—cuz it’s French-speaking, and I don’t speak French—and they didn’t ask anything about the cats. They didn’t even comment that we had them. There was just literally nothing required and off we went. So it was phenomenal the fact that if you don’t have a Canadian or an American passport, and you enter America, there’s fingerprinting and scanning of all kinds of eyes and things. But we were able to bring our cats into another country with not even a stamp on a piece of paper.

CB: Right.

AC: Interesting.

CB: In Australia, they’re really stringent about that and vegetables, right?

KS: Australia and England, cuz they’re self-contained environments, because they’re islands, yeah, they have hugely high quarantine laws. Like if you bring a pet, a domestic pet, into Australia, you have to have your pet into quarantine anywhere from two weeks to six weeks, depending on where it’s coming from. So yeah, someone’s asking what airline. We were on a Brussels airline flight. Funnily enough, there are a lot of airlines that will fly pets. I guess there’s a certain length of flight. The flight we were on was just under eight hours. And the reason that we understood the pets were allowed in the cabin is the weight of the pet. So small dogs and cats, they just said, “Yep, they’ll go in the cabin with you.” There wasn’t even any discussion.

CB: Cool.

AC: We actually had a cat situation as well.

KS: You guys did. Not a good one, though.

AC: Yeah, the day that the movers came to throw everything in the truck, our cat ran away. So we looked for him, looked for him, and then came back a couple of days later. And we thought he’d run outside, cuz he does that, and we were looking around outside, etc., etc. And I went inside, and I was looking around and doing some stuff, and I heard a meowing from under the floor. And he had gotten into the crawlspace underneath the floor and then had gotten bored. And I went to the access point and grabbed him. But yeah, it was underworld cat trouble that took about three days to figure out.

KS: Literally underground. And how’s he settling into the new place? Cuz cats really don’t like moving their castles?

AC: He likes it. He likes the new place quite a bit.

KS: Excellent.

AC: The master bedroom is the only thing on the top floor. And so, there’s a landing where he can kind of look out over at everything. You know, cats like to have that superior position, right? They like to look down on things. And so, I think he’s pleased that he can survey much of his domain without being surveyed himself.

KS: Yes. Well, that’s cool.

CB: Yeah, I like that. So you guys are, otherwise, getting settled. And it’ll be interesting, a month from now. Do you think in a month you guys will both be relatively settled?

KS: I hope so.

CB: Okay.

AC: Yeah.

KS: I’ll be settled or mildly alcoholic, I’m not sure.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah, I mean, it takes. When we last moved, we had all the main stuff done within a couple of weeks, but there were some things that were a few months before we got around to it.

CB: Yeah, I mean, it took me a while to get settled into the new place, here.

KS: Yeah, how long did it take you?

CB: I don’t know, a few months, cuz then we started traveling and going to NORWAC, and then I went to Europe. Then I came back and then I flew to another LA thing recently for an interview, which I can’t talk about yet, but will maybe come out later, in the month of August. And I’ll announce that when that’s out. All right.

KS: I love that we’re talking moving with cats, with the Mercury retro in Leo.

CB: Yeah, yeah.

KS: That’s hilarious.

CB: So let’s transition to the forecast. Before that, we have to get some of our news and announcements out of the way really quickly. So let’s bang that out. So Kelly, what do you have coming up this month?

KS: So August, I have a webinar for Astrology University on Saturday, August 10—not August 11, August 10—on activate your ascendant/midheaven. So it’s about how to work with the main points to do with identity and life direction. So that’ll just be a Saturday webinar that you can sign up for via my website.

CB: Which is KellysAstrology.com.

KS: Yes, exactly. Sorry, thank you.

CB: Brilliant. Austin, what do you have coming up?

AC: Well, I have an 11-week class, which begins on August 8, which is on tarot and astrology. We’ll be looking at the cards.

CB: Tarot and astrology—tell me more about that.

AC: So the cards have been assigned astrological connections in most decks. I’ll be looking at the Rider-Waite-Smith system, which I’ve used for 20 years, and just sort of building the bridge between, for example, The Chariot is connected to Cancer, how do those connect, right? It’s not just a symbol. It’s not just a picture of a crab. There’s a relationship between the tarot and astrology, but they’re not identical. And so, I’ll be spending some time going over every single card and building that bridge, and then also looking at practical things you can do—how the cards that come up in a reading can reference chart positions, and how to illustrate a chart using cards. So that begins on August 8, and that’s gonna be every Thursday for almost three months.

CB: Awesome. And where can people find out about it?

AC: At my website, AustinCoppock.com. And then as far as electional work for Sphere + Sundry, the skies have not been too juicy over the last two months, and so, there’s nothing percolating right now. But August, as we’re gonna get to, has some nice moments, and so, Sphere + Sundry fans can look forward to some tasty offerings in September.

CB: Brilliant.

KS: Yes, I’m excited to see what Sphere + Sundry will be rolling out after August.

AC: Some of them you will expect. Some of them you’ll be like, “Oh, how did I miss that?”

KS: Ooh, I like it! Throwing down the gauntlet.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Nice. All right. As for myself, as I announced last month, the price of my courses—like my course on ancient Hellenistic astrology—is being raised on August 1. So that will have gone up already by the time most people listen to this. But if you’re listening to this before August 1, and if you wanna get in before the course price raises, you can still do so before the first of the month. Even after the first of the month, of course, it’s still priced relatively reasonably, cuz it has over a hundred hours of audio, with hundreds of example charts. And it takes you from the basics of ancient astrology all the way through intermediate and advanced techniques, so that you come out of it knowing how to read birth charts pretty effectively, I have to say. You can find out more information about that at courses.theastrologyschool.com. So that’s one thing. Our electional report that I did with Leisa—where we picked out one of the best electional charts for each month, for all 12 months of the year—since we’re already into August, we’ve discounted that heavily. So you can get that for a way-discounted price just by doing a Google search for ‘2019 Electional Astrology Report’, and you’ll find that on my website at ChrisBrennanAstrologer.com. Also, since we’re almost finished or over halfway through the year, The Astrology Podcast 2019 Astrology Calendar Poster Bundle on Amazon—we’ve got about 70 of those posters left and then that’s it for those posters. So that’s heavily discounted at this point, cuz I’m just trying to get rid of the rest of the stock. So it’s like $10 or $12 for three posters, which is a pretty good deal. So do a Google search for ‘2019 Astrology Calendar Poster Bundle’ and you’ll find that on Amazon.

Other stuff to mention in passing, the NCGR conference is coming up at the very end of August. So I wanna say the last big astrology conference of the year is the NCGR conference happening in Baltimore from August 30-September 3. So Labor Day weekend in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m gonna be there. Leisa Schaim’s gonna be there. There’s gonna be a bunch of other astrologers giving lectures and workshops there. You can find out more information about it at geocosmic.org. Other conferences coming up, the ISAR conference next year, in September of 2020. So it’s a long ways away, but some of the schedule for that is being finalized. And we are tentatively able to announce that Austin and Kelly and I are gonna be doing a pre-conference workshop there, at that conference, which is really exciting. It’s gonna be the first time the three of us have done a full workshop together, and yeah, I’m excited about announcing more details for that pretty soon.

KS: Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s gonna be so much fun.

CB: Yeah.

KS: I can’t believe we have to wait a whole year.

CB: Yeah, that’s kind of annoying, but it’s gonna be here in Denver, which I’m excited about. So people will be able to visit my home state. Maybe people can visit The Mercury Cafe, which has appeared in some of the podcast videos recently, like the eclipse one. And there’ll be lots of other fun stuff, so it’s time to start getting excited about that conference, which is definitely gonna be the biggest conference next year. All right, I think that’s it for news and announcements. Why don’t we transition into talking about the astrological forecast for August of 2019.

AC: All right.

KS: Let’s do it.

CB: So let’s start out actually with the artwork for August, that Paula Belluomini made for us. And this is, initially, just the ingresses and the lunations and the retrograde stations or direct stations for the month of August. Can you guys see that?

KS: Yeah.

AC: Mm-hmm.

CB: So this is the brief glimpse or brief overview. We’ve got a New Moon at the beginning of the month in Leo, then a Full Moon in Aquarius, then one of those rare months where there’s another New Moon, which takes place in Virgo at the end of the month. We’ve got Jupiter stationing direct, finally, in Sagittarius, Uranus stationing retrograde in Taurus, Mercury going into Leo. Actually most of the planets are going into Leo at this point in the year and trining Jupiter. Then later in the month, everything starts shifting into Virgo. You can see Mars going in first, then Venus, then the Sun, then Mercury. So that’s kind of the very broad overview of the month. And here’s the transit chart with all of that superimposed on a 12-sign zodiac wheel. So you can see not just where the lunations are, but also, the movement of the planets—where they start at the beginning of the month, and where they’ll end up by the end of the month. All right, so where do you guys wanna start? Shall we start at the top of the month? Top of August?

AC: Yeah, well, let’s start out with the transition into August, which bookends the configurations which really started at the beginning of June. The end of the meat grinder, as it were.

CB: Right. I’ll throw up the Solar Fire chart. So everybody always asks me each month what program I’m using. I’m using the program Solar Fire, which is usually for PCs. Although they’ve got a Mac version coming out later this year. If you live in North America, I think you can buy it through astrolabe—or alabe.com. And they’ve given us the promo code ‘AP15’ to get a discount on the program. So this is the chart for right now, but let’s move it forward a few days to August 1. There we go. All right.

KS: Nice.

CB: Transition point. You’re saying we’re at the transition point. We’re moving out of the meat grinder. We’re moving out of the astrology of June and July, which was very dominated by the Cancer/Capricorn axis, I feel like.

AC: Yeah, so the last day of July is the New Moon in Leo, and that’s our first non-eclipsed lunation since June, right? So we’re moving out of the eclipse cycle. You know, eclipses aren’t done the second they’re over. You can extend the timeframe—

CB: What was that, Kelly?

KS: I have all this cardboard-boxing to help with soundproofing, and I guess my cats were trying to get in behind it and just knocked it all over.

CB: Okay. Sorry about that, Austin.

AC: Oh, it’s okay. I was just saying at the very least, to get out of the feel of eclipse season, you need a non-eclipsed lunation, right? So August begins on the heels of our first non-eclipsed lunation in a while, and the last day of July also holds Mercury’s direct station. So August begins finally out of the eclipses and with a direct Mercury.

CB: Yeah.

AC: And so, that’s a pretty big transition in and of itself.

CB: Yeah, I love that. That’s like starting fresh in two different ways. Like starting out with a New Moon in Leo—it looks like it’s at 8° of Leo—and starting out with Mercury stationing direct in Cancer and completing the three-week Mercury retrograde cycle.

AC: Yeah. And so, already we have on August 1, we have the Sun and Mars and Venus all in Leo, right? And so, as far as sign emphasis, we had a lot of Cancer/Capricorn. And this sets the stage for a lot of Leo, which will be followed later in the month by a lot of Virgo.

KS: Yeah, it’s a lot of lots. There is this really fresh feeling. And I’m glad we did go back to July 31, because that New Moon, not being an eclipse, really does break the pattern of the eclipse energy. And the fact that Mercury’s stationing direct—as the last planet, like the last man standing—in the Cancer/Capricorn axis, from the temporary planets, it really feels like when we get to August 1 there’s just so much freshness coming through.

CB: Definitely. So emerging from a turbulent period, where there was a lot of tension, a lot of delays, and a lot of, for some people, important or pivotal turning points, and important new beginnings, as well as some significant endings. Yeah, and then emerging out into a fresh new cycle of lunations and a fresh new cycle of Mercury moving forward and no longer being in that phase of delays, but instead, coming out the other end and rectifying that which had gone awry previously.

AC: Yeah, literally being in the position where the much-delayed whatever is finally arriving, whether it’s your book or Kelly’s packages, right? Mercury’s moving forward again.

KS: Thank goodness.

CB: Yeah, I’m looking forward to that book, and I hope it is not upside-down and backwards this time. It’s just like backwards or one of them, I’ll be fine with it. But if it’s both upside-down and backwards, that’s a little too much.

KS: That’s just classic. And maybe the dishwasher repairman will arrive with the right equipment.

AC: Yes. Yes, if God wills. It’s worth noting, though, although there are some new and fresh things, we also have Venus, most historical authors would say, at the very end of Venus’ cycle. Venus is no longer the morning star, nor has Venus risen as the evening star. We have an invisible Venus all month, and Mars is also just barely visible, if at all, all month. You know, part of Venus and Mars traveling through Leo with the Sun is them being under the beams or properly combust pretty much all month. You know, I was thinking about this last night. This sort of coming out of whatever, the gauntlet or wormhole the last two months have outlined for us, there are some things which need to change. It’s an end and a beginning of a new cycle, which is Venus’, in this case, superior conjunction to the Sun, which is pending all month and is perfect in the middle of the month. But Venus is being burnt up, as is Mars, right? And so, that’s the burning up of one cycle and the seeding of a new cycle. You know, this new cycle of Venus gets seeded in the solar fire of Leo. And so, a lot of people are gonna see relational patterns changing. Relational patterns sort of getting done and then needing to be seeded or renegotiated. That combustion of Venus isn’t always super pleasant, especially when Venus is going into combustion. It’s not like an out-and-out malefic party, like some of what we’ve been seeing, but it’s coming up on a transition point in terms of how we relate to things and people.

CB: Yeah, and it looks like that goes exact August 14, the exact Sun-Venus conjunction at 21°11’ minutes of Leo.

AC: Mm-hmm.

KS: Yeah, just before the Full Moon in Aquarius. And it’s a really great point that you’re making there, Austin, because Venus is invisible—it’s quite a few weeks. I think it’s about six weeks that she’s invisible, is it, between the switch from AM to PM star. And it does sort of have these subtle themes of introspection, reflection, that kind of quiet, inner space, without the heaviness of what we’ve had in June and July. But something hasn’t become visible yet, if you like. I think we’ve gotta wait till September for that.

AC: Yeah, so Venus conjoins the Sun, like Mercury, in two different circumstances. One is the retrograde circumstance, in which Venus is between us and the Sun. And then the circumstance that we’re coming up on in August is when Venus is on the far side of the Sun, often referred to as the superior conjunction. Whereas the point where Venus is between us and the Sun, the retrograde, is deeply personal, right, it’s close, this is literally the opposite point in the cycle. We’re as far away from Venus as we get, and the Sun is between us and Venus. You know, this part of the cycle favors, rather than the personal, the universal significations of Venus, right? Like love not the chocolate cake, but love God.

KS: That’s great. So that’s the start of the month.

CB: Yeah.

AC: Well, no, that’s the entire month.

KS: Well, no, but we were just talking about the July 31 stuff as well.

AC: Yes.

KS: Yeah.

CB: One of the things I love about the beginning of August—especially for electional purposes—is that for so long everything was moving through Cancer. All the inner planets were through Cancer, like the Sun and Mercury and Venus, and also, Mars, and so, everything was getting caught up in. Of course we had the eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn. But also, while everything was going through those signs, it was getting caught up in this opposition between Saturn and Pluto and the South Node in Capricorn and then Mars opposing that from Cancer. So this Mars-Saturn-Pluto opposition that was bouncing back and forth for most of June and July. And Jupiter over in Sagittarius, which has been retrograde for a while, was just completely not involved in that party at all because it was over in Sagittarius, which doesn’t really aspect Cancer and doesn’t form a major aspect with Capricorn. So one of the things that’s really beautiful about August is at the very top of the month, as soon as everything starts moving into Leo, it starts moving into these trines with Jupiter, which is just a real breath of fresh air compared to the really tense oppositions that we were dealing with between Mars and Saturn for most of the past couple of months. And I think that’s what I’m looking forward to the most. Not just everything being in Leo and having that sense of starting a new cycle with the New Moon there, or with Mercury stationing direct, but just this pattern that we’re gonna see, especially in the first week or two of August—of everything moving into this exact trine with Jupiter at 14°-ish of Sag.

AC: Yeah, and not only that, but it’s as Jupiter stations direct.

CB: Yes.

AC: Which we like.

CB: Definitely.

KS: Yes. Yeah, I mean, and the first of those aspects kicks off on August 7, with the Sun forming the trine to Jupiter. You know, there’s other things going on, but the Sun in dignity, Jupiter in dignity, so close to stationing direct, there’s a real sense of, I don’t know, hope, optimism, perspective, possibility. The feeling I keep getting is the sense of looking to a far-off horizon and feeling as though you could give that a shot. You’re not necessarily gonna do it all this week, but the feeling of these aspects—as they come through and trine Jupiter—is just more, I don’t know, movement-oriented. Or there is that upbeat quality, which we just have not had for such a long time.

AC: Yeah, it’s very much a rekindling of the heroic and far-seeing spirit, emerging from the tunnel and looking out to perhaps the longer-term goals which got temporarily occluded by the short-term difficulties which needed to be navigated recently. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, this is what I’m doing with my life. This is where I’m going.” Looking to the horizon and remembering at what point you wanna be on that horizon. You know, I think we can contextualize the Venus-Mars combustions within that, right? Because Venus and Mars are much more personal than the Sun and Jupiter, right? They’re night planets. They’re personal. They’re relational. And so, while the diurnal and more objective planets—the Sun and Jupiter—are looking out to the horizon and saying, “I wanna be this, I wanna do this,” it necessitates a bit of a gear change on the personal level with Venus and Mars, right? We have to orient emotionally.

CB: Yeah, I like that. The optimism of the new is, I think, the keyword I’m getting from that, in terms of having the newness of some those cycles—the New Moon in Leo trine Jupiter, Mercury stationing direct, and then, also, Venus starting a new cycle in respect to its phase relationship with the Sun—and the optimism that comes with starting out a journey fresh versus the opposite scenario of when you’re already winding down a long journey.

AC: Yes, I guess I see it as getting back to the journey that you’ve been on all year, which is gonna feel refreshing and new. But it’s like, “Oh, yeah, this is what I was doing,” right? Jupiter stations direct, and this is the evening Jupiter phase rather than the morning Jupiter phase, which we had December through, let’s say, April of last year. And so, we’ve had Jupiter in Sag for a while. We’ve been aspiring. Things got complicated. But this is back to the journey, back to the quest, back to the mission, which can feel like waking up out of a very confusing set of dreams. And just on a more macro time level, we have until December to Jupiter in Sag, right?

KS: Yes.

AC: We’ve got several months left. We can still do the things which haven’t quite gotten done, which we wanted to do. We’ve got time, and this is remembering that.

KS: Remind yourself, cuz it’s like go big or go home between now and December with anything Jupiter in Sag-related.

CB: Well, and what’s nice now, in this part of the year, we’re gonna have Jupiter direct again, which we haven’t had for several months. And also, over the course of the past month or so, with the Sagittarius rising charts—where Jupiter’s in the 1st house, and it’s the ruler of the ascendant—ever since the Sun moved into the later part of Gemini, we’ve been able to get Sagittarius rising charts as day charts. And I’ve really noticed the qualitative difference where some of those Sagittarius rising elections have just been hitting really well over the course of the past month or so. And I’ve really been enjoying seeing how well that works out and realizing that part of the difference there is probably that switch in sect. Several months earlier this year, you could do Sagittarius rising charts, but they were night charts, so Jupiter was contrary-to-the-sect, and it wasn’t quite as positive or quite as benefic as it could be. But that shift over the course of the past month or month-and-a-half has been really noticeable to me, in terms of starting different things and using Sag rising charts for elections.

AC: Yeah, that’s great. And that’s where you see some of the synodic details, where you’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s the evening Jupiter,” and you’re like, “Yeah, I guess, but you can see it during the day.” Try to find Jupiter rising. Try to find a chart with Jupiter rising, and you’re like, “Oh, the Sun’s below the horizon for months and months.”

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah.

CB: So speaking of that, I might as well introduce at this point our one auspicious electional chart. So the most auspicious electional chart that we could find for the month of August, and this was found by Leisa Schaim. We actually found this way back in December when we did the 2019 yearly report, where we tried to find the best electional chart we could for each month of the year. And this is the one that really stood out as the best chart in August. This is gonna be one of those days I’ve noticed in social media over the past year or two where, suddenly, you mysteriously see all the astrologers scrambling to announce and mysteriously launching new projects all on the same day. I think this is gonna be one of those days, cuz this chart just stands out as so positive and so auspicious. So this is the chart that Leisa came up with. It’s for August 9, 2019, roughly around 3:40 PM, let’s say, local time. So whatever city you’re in, set the chart around 3:40 PM and adjust it so that the ascendant is in the middle degrees of Sagittarius. So what you’ll end up with is a chart that has Sagittarius rising, and Jupiter is in Sagittarius in the 1st house. And Jupiter is actually only about a day-and-a-half from stationing direct. So for all intents and purposes, this is a stationary Jupiter that’s stationing direct and beginning to move forward. This is a day chart, so Jupiter’s of-the-sect-in-favor and is fully benefic. It’s in its own domicile. It’s ruling the 1st and the 4th houses. And we find the Moon there with Jupiter at around—at least in our timezone—13° of Sagittarius, applying to a conjunction with Jupiter. So this is really just one of the best Jupiter charts of the year in terms of taking advantage of Jupiter moving through Sagittarius and being in its home sign. This is one of the best charts where you can really squeeze the most out of that, just in terms of ticking off all of the possible boxes of what you’d look for, for a great Jupiter electional chart. It also has some other positive things. Like Venus is over at 15° of Leo. So it’s trining the Moon and Jupiter pretty closely. It’s not a terrible, terrible chart for financial matters. It has Saturn in its own domicile, in a day chart, in the second whole sign house. So not, potentially, gonna be good very quickly. But especially in the long term, financial matters might be decent with this chart. Not a great chart, to some extent, for 9th house matters, like travel, with Mars in the ninth whole sign house in a day chart. Although, even that’s a little bit negotiable or a little bit mitigated because the Sun and Venus are there in the 9th, and the Sun is trining Jupiter as the ruler of the 9th house. So it’s like there’s a difficult planet in the house, but the ruler is doing somewhat okay, so it’s a little bit mixed. Finally, Mercury is direct, and it’s in the 8th house. We tried to mitigate it—because it’s in the 8th house—by, in our location, making it so that the degree of the midheaven was at 27° of Virgo sextiling Mercury, which helps it out of that 8th house position to not manifest in a more challenging way, but instead, to be a bit more constructive. So with this chart, we’d recommend just setting it anywhere in Sagittarius rising, in your location, and trying to get the midheaven so that it’s aspecting Mercury within 3°, in order to mitigate that 8th house placement. And that is our electional chart for the month of August. We found three or four other electional charts that we presented and we recorded for an episode of the Auspicious Elections Podcast, which I’m releasing to patrons through our page on Patreon later today, I believe. So if you wanna get the other electional charts, you just have to subscribe to that on the $5 or $10 tier, and you’ll get access immediately. Have you guys already seen this electional chart?

AC: Mm-hmm.

KS: Yeah, it’s a good one.

CB: I think pretty much all the astrologers have. Like Ben Dykes has a new book coming out, which is a translation of Abu Ma’shar’s full work on solar returns from the Arabic. It’s a big, thick book. I actually got a pre-publication copy right here that I’m reading, cuz we’re gonna do an interview about that. And then both the book is gonna be published and we’re gonna release the interview simultaneously on this date, on August 9. So that is something to look forward to. That’s already one instance of astrologers doing something major on this electional chart.

KS: That’s lovely. I’ll be on holiday in Paris this week.

CB: Nice.

KS: Yeah, which was a totally random thing. My girlfriend from Australia is gonna be in England for a wedding, and she’s like, “Well, I’ll come and visit you guys.” I’m like, “Okay, I’ll take a few days off work. And where do you wanna go?” And she’s like, “I can go to Paris any day of the week and twice on Sunday.” I’m like, “Let’s go to Paris.” So we might be out in the world, but I’m sure I’ll have nothing scheduled. And Austin, you don’t wanna say anything about stuff you guys might have up your sleeve?

AC: Well, I am starting my astrology and tarot class right around here.

CB: Yeah, you’re doing it on the 8th.

AC: Yeah, which is still Moon and Jupiter in Sag.

CB: Yeah, and I meant to mention—Leisa asked me to mention, so that’s a good reminder—that for some people, there might be certain timezones where you can get the Moon still applying to Jupiter. And if the Moon’s separating from Jupiter, just back the chart up by a day. And for some people, you can do August 8, around the same time period, with Sagittarius rising, and the Moon will still be in Sag, still applying to that conjunction with Jupiter, just a little bit widely.

KS: Well, yeah, and that’s on a Thursday, too, which just gives it a nice little boost.

CB: Jupiter’s day.

KS: Yeah.

AC: It’s a nice pair of days.

KS: I see what you did there, Austin.

CB: Oh, yeah. Kelly’s picking up on the subtle planetary days that Austin is dropping, okay. So this is the beginning of August. So it’s just everything moving through Leo, everything trining Jupiter, Jupiter stationing direct, and everything being good. We have the lunation, of course. We have that first lunation we mentioned, which is the New Moon in Leo at the very top of the month. Mercury, in moving direct, eventually, finally gets out of Cancer, which is almost amazing.

KS: That’s like the end. The absolute end of the hangover of the meat grinder, I think.

CB: Yeah, that’s the final gasp. Last gasp of the meat grinder is Mercury moving out of Cancer and moving into Leo.

AC: Yeah, there’s a little digging out after Mercury’s direct for that first week or so. Even though it may be dealing with the same topics that July’s retrograde dealt with, it’ll be on the solution side rather than the, “Oh, no, not this again.” It’ll be like, “Oh, that’s finally fixed.” And, “Oh, the dishwasher man finally came,” or “Oh, the new desk I ordered is finally here,” or whatever it is.

CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Cuz it looks like all the way, until about August 14-August 15, that’s about how long it takes before Mercury leaves its shadow.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, so it originally stationed retrograde at 4° of Leo conjunct Mars. So it’ll finally return back to that point and then will complete that entire sequence of events around August 14-August 15, which, interestingly and curiously, is also right about the same time as that Sun-Venus conjunction we were talking about earlier and the Full Moon in Aquarius, which looks like it takes place at about, what, 22° of Aquarius.

KS: 22, yeah.

CB: Brilliant. So that is our second lunation of the month, the Full Moon in Aquarius. So that’s a pivotal turning point this month right in the middle of the month, around August 14-August 15, that Full Moon in Aquarius, Mercury completing and leaving its shadow, and completing the full retrograde cycle, and then, finally, the Sun-Venus conjunction.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, that’s a big one.

CB: Okay. All right, well, that looks good.

KS: I mean—sorry, I was gonna say it’s a relatively-benign Full Moon, too, when you think back to the last Full Moon we had being the eclipse. This one, of course, is off-axis to anything happening in Saturn—with Capricorn, sorry. I mean, Full Moon’s can still be a little emotional, but this one is, yeah, relatively benign.

CB: Yeah, definitely. And it looks like Uranus has just stationed retrograde at 6° of Taurus as well, around August 12. So as far as Uranus is gonna get in this pass is up to about 6.5° of Taurus before it stations retrograde here and begins moving back to the earlier degrees of Taurus over the course of the next few months.

KS: Yes, it’s gonna come all the way back to 2° at the end of the year or early Jan.

CB: 2, okay.

KS: Yeah, so there is a little shift with Uranus going retrograde this month.

CB: So those of us with stuff more towards the middle of fixed signs can breathe a sigh of relief that that’s as far as it gets on this pass. But next year, early next year, it’s gonna get further than that.

KS: Yes.

AC: Yeah, and those of us with planets at 2 fixed can go back to gritting our teeth.

CB: Yeah.

KS: And those of us with planets at 0 fixed are like, “Whew.” It’s so funny. But, I mean, you see this even with client work, too. It’s like, “Oh, you’re in this band. So you’re on the 2020 Uranus track,” or “You’re on the 2022 Uranus track,” basically, just depending on where in the fixed sign—how far into it your planets are.

CB: Yeah, when is Uranus gonna station, closely conjunct or squaring or opposing your planets by degree?

KS: Yeah.

AC: Well, and I treat, because of Uranus’ broad wiping through the years, Uranus’ transits—they’re year-and-a-half-two-year phases. It’s like if you look at a given chart, you’ll be like, “Oh, it’s 5° away.” And then you look six months later, and you’re like, “Oh, it’s 1° before the planet rather than after it.”

KS: Yeah.

AC: You know, they are much more like phases than they are moments. You know, like with our meat grinder, for example, it’s like that’s not gonna happen again, right? That was a brief pileup of things. Whereas Uranus will just kind of, I was gonna say, lazily wipe back and forth. It’s not really lazy.

KS: Nothing lazy about Uranus, yeah.

CB: Yeah, I mean, especially if somebody has something, like your Sun is at 6° of Taurus or something like that. I mean, if it’s stationing right on top of some personal planet, that could be a turning point when the planet does station.

AC: Yeah, but it’s a turning point within a longer process. Cuz if it stations at 6, it’s probably gonna come back a couple more times.

KS: Yeah, it’s back at 6 in April 2020, and again later in the year, like December 2020-January 2021.

AC: Nice eye. That was quick.

KS: I mean, I have been doing consults over the last little while, so, yeah. But that’s what you mean about a phase, Austin. It’s building you into it, and maybe you get a pause, but then you’re coming back. Cuz it’s not something that you’re done with just in a couple of months.

AC: Yeah, it’s much like the eclipses in the sense that, yes, that’s an eclipse on your rising or whatever, but it’s one of a series that’s gonna run for a year-and-a-half.

KS: Yeah. Yeah, and it’s funny. You do see there are certain degrees that get the year-and-a-half, and there are some degrees that just get the nine-month Uranus transit, if there’s no station involved, basically. Sorry, Chris. I cut you off there.

CB: I was just gonna say that something came up in the eclipse workshop that we did earlier this month. While sometimes there’s a pivotal event or turning point that coincides with an astrological transit of some sort or an activation, oftentimes so much of timing in astrology has to do with cycles and periods of transition and change, which rarely happen overnight. Usually it’s like process-oriented, or timing in astrology is process-oriented. And that’s why it’s so important to talk with a client about the sequence of events during different parts of their life and what they were going through during that time. And there’s this interesting process that’s involved in feedback, which helps you to sharpen your understanding as the astrologer to be able to get into more specifics by having this sort of dialogue with them about processes that they were going through during different time periods.

AC: Mm-hmm. Definitely.

KS: Yes. Yeah, I mean, I do wanna give a shoutout to all of our listeners who have their Moons in the middle of the cardinal signs, who are getting the Saturn transits. I’ve just had a number of clients recently that have got Moons at 15-16 of Aries/Libra/Cancer/Capricorn, that are getting very heavily triggered by Saturn. But that’s very specific to that part of the sky for 2019.

AC: Yeah, yeah. They get to hand that baton off shortly.

KS: Yeah.

CB: All right, so let’s transition to the second half of the month.

KS: You’d like to put the Virgo hat on?

CB: Yeah, it’s time to get into the details. So Sun-Venus conjunction on the 14th. Full Moon in Aquarius on the 15th. Then we transition. There’s a very stark difference, the first half of the month and the second half because we get our first change when Mars moves out of Leo and ingresses into Virgo on August 18. And that’s the first in a series of planets that all then pile up and move, roughly, around the same time, from Leo into Virgo.

KS: Yeah. Yeah, it’s like the Virgo week. Sun—sorry, Mars, Venus, the Sun. There’s just so much. We’re gonna have all the personal planets by the time we get to the New Moon in Virgo. All of those personal planets are in Virgo for a couple of days at the end of the month.

CB: Right.

KS: It’s cooling down the qualities of Leo, being hot and dry, versus the qualities of Virgo, being cold and dry. There’s still the dryness. So there’s still that potential for order or organization, which of course is associated with the sign of Virgo, but it is associated with the dry quality. So that’s gonna intensify. But I think if you’re finding the excess of fire stuff, or the excess of Jupiter in the first half of the month a little extra or a little too much, then when we get to this Virgo period in the second half of the month, there will be a turning down. Turning down the heat or turning down the temperature, which can allow you to slow the pace down a little bit. I don’t know. Do you guys disagree?

CB: No, I mean, that definitely makes sense. And for some people, it depends. Is your chart more fixed-sign heavy? In which case, the Leo stuff is maybe gonna be the more active part of the month for you versus, once it moves into Virgo, things are gonna calm down. If you have a much more mutable chart, if mutable signs are more heavily emphasized in your chart—like Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces—then everything moving into Virgo is gonna be potentially an amping up of things becoming more active for you in the second part of the month.

AC: Yeah, I don’t really associate Virgo with calm or slow.

KS: No, it’s not calm, for sure, because it’s potentially probably anxious or highly-excessive thinking.

AC: But there’s a lot to do.

KS: There’s a lot to do, but it’s more in a measured, planned way relative to the way that Leo fire would go about it, I guess.

CB: Yeah, definitely.

AC: Yeah, it’s definitely more fact- and task-oriented.

KS: The word I’ve been using, when I’ve been looking at August for my monthly subscribers, is productive. You know, it’s time to turbocharge productivity to get the most done, in the most efficient way.

AC: Yeah, to drill down.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, Leo—if we’re talking about how the Sun gets things done, the Sun delegates and describes CEO-style, like “We’re moving in this direction.” Like we were talking about earlier, there’s a lot of vision and direction between the Sun and Jupiter during the Leo portion. But then the Virgo is like logistics, right? How does this get done and have all the things on the list gotten done?

KS: Yes. And who’s doing them? And in what order? And do we have the tools? And can we make the system more efficient? And what’s the process? And I always think, too, when Mars changes signs, we only get Mars in each zodiac sign once every two years. So this Mars-in-Virgo piece—which is sort of a bit extra on the annual Sun-Virgo-Mercury, sorry, Sun-Mercury-Venus in Virgo—it’s sort of a more unique thing to have Mars in Virgo. It’s not a game-changer, but it’s a little bit more, “Let’s tackle this part of our chart,” for instance, wherever your Virgo house is. We need to make decisions. We need to get some things done here.

AC: Yeah, absolutely.

CB: Definitely. So we’ve got the 18th for Mars going into Virgo. Then Venus goes into Virgo on the 21st. And shortly after that, we have the Sun, of course, making its annual ingress into Virgo on the 23rd of August. And then eventually, Mercury catches up right about the same time that the Moon does. And Mercury goes into Virgo on the 29th of August, and then the Moon follows suit shortly after that on the very next day. On August 30, we have our last lunation of the month, which is a New Moon at 6° of Virgo. So we have what is unquestionably a large stellium in Virgo of five planets.

KS: A very Virgo 48 hours.

AC: Yes, indeed.

KS: Because you’re right, Chris. Like Mercury goes into Virgo, and the Moon comes in after. So we’re gonna have a Moon-Mercury conjunction in Virgo. Of course, we have the Moon-Sun, that’s the New Moon. But then we’ll also get a Moon-Venus and a Moon-Mars conjunction in Virgo. So it’s a very active 48 hours with the Moon just triggering all those planets there.

CB: Yeah. Yeah, really activating them quite nicely. So that’s pretty cool-looking then. We’ve got a big emphasis on Virgo, and Mercury really completing that whole thing by returning to its home sign at that point, and moving direct, not retrograde. It’s not gonna go retrograde in Virgo this month.

KS: No.

CB: So that’s nice.

KS: One of the little mentions—just a little extra for this week. Because Uranus has stationed retrograde at 6 Taurus, this last week of August has a series of trines, from the planets hitting 6 Virgo to just trine Uranus in Taurus. Like Monday, we have Venus trine Uranus, Wednesday, we have Mars. Thursday, we have the Sun, and then the New Moon itself will be in trine to Uranus. I know it seems almost incongruent to put Virgo and Uranus in the same sentence, in the way the symbols of that sign and that planet work, but there is a lot of activity tying Taurus and Virgo together in that last week of August.

CB: That’s a really good point, and I like that. Cuz that’s actually different than something we skipped over a little bit, about the nice thing about everything going into Leo and then trining Jupiter. We kind of skipped to the part where everything has to go through the square with Uranus in Taurus first, while it’s going through early Leo. Whereas in the second half of the month, when everything starts moving into Virgo, we get these nice trines between the Virgo planets and Uranus in early Taurus.

AC: Mm-hmm.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Certainly less disruptive and more innovative or more creative in a positive way.

KS: Yeah, I’m really curious to see how that stimulates things. Like Uranus can help the Virgo/over-analytical get moving, but the planets in Virgo can kind of say, “Well, if you want me to throw things up in the air, we need an outcome. We need some sort of output that we can say the chaos we’ve created was worth it or it led to something.”

CB: Right.

AC: Yeah, I think with those trines, there’s gonna be a lot of executing on big changes that were decided earlier in the year, with Uranus in Taurus, or cleaning up big changes that happened earlier in the year.

KS: Yeah, I like the clean up because it’s like cleaning up with a twist, or doing it in a way that you hadn’t expected, but is maybe better than you could’ve planned.

AC: Yeah—or maybe.

KS: Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just a bit—it feels like a lot of stimulation that week.

AC: Yeah, well, to a certain degree, with Uranus, we do experiments, whether we call them experiments or not. You know, we make a change and we don’t know exactly what the outcome is gonna be. We take a leap and then we deal with the data coming in from making those changes. And those Virgo planets are well-placed to clean up where it needs to be cleaned up or make adjustments or build in or course correct or whatever. You know, the Mercury-ruled-ness of Virgo makes it, in many ways, to my mind, very compatible with Uranus. To a certain degree, Uranus is the mad scientist and Mercury is the lab tech that knows how to categorize the results.

KS: I love it. So it’s a pretty interesting end to the month.

CB: Yeah, it’s kind of a nice end to the month. I mean, all of this is much quieter in some ways than what we’re coming out of. Or at least a little bit less dramatic, a little bit less tension, even if occasionally we run into stuff, like the Uranus squares between the early Leo planets and Uranus, or Uranus stationing direct around the same time and some of the unexpected disruptions that that may bring. Yeah, it’s otherwise nice moving into a somewhat quieter period of the year.

AC: Yeah, in many ways, again, there’s sort of a personal, invisible gear change because Venus and Mars are pretty much invisible this whole month. You can maybe see a little edge of Mars at the beginning of the month, but Mars isn’t very bright. So it’s gonna be basically invisible the whole month, so is Venus. And then by the end of the month, Mercury will also have joined Venus and Mars in invisibility. And so, we have all those personal planets hidden beneath the golden skirts of the Sun. You know, Jupiter is bright and direct and Uranus is stationing. You know, part of this clustering with the Sun means that everything is beneath the veil. It’s a little busy underneath, but a little quieter on the outside.

CB: Definitely.

KS: Yeah, like a duck. Busy feet, calm on top.

CB: Should that be the title of this episode?

KS: Maybe.

AC: Sorry, what was the duck analogy?

KS: So with a duck, they often say they look like they’re just calmly meandering through the water, but their little feet are paddling like crazy underneath to keep them moving.

AC: That’s hilarious, okay. I didn’t imagine a duck in water, I just imagined a duck and tried to find the hidden action.

KS: Yeah, on the water, on the water. Yeah, they look calm, but busy underneath.

CB: What should my title for this episode be? Usually I can only fit like one thing in. Like ‘Mercury Retrograde in Leo’ or something, I think, was on the last one. Or ‘Eclipses in Cancer/Capricorn’. Is there a single thing I can focus on, even if that’s just one piece of what we actually ended up talking about?

KS: You could do ‘Jupiter Station Direct’ or ‘Sun Trine Jupiter’. And you could stick a word like ‘Luck’ or ‘Abundance’ or ‘Growth’ or ‘Progress’ in there, if you wanna go on the positive. But Austin usually has really witty—I mean, he came up with the ‘meat grinder’.

CB: Right.

AC: Austin, sometimes has some things. It happens. Ooh, Kait recommends to me, ‘The Light at the End of the—’

KS: Oh, you cannot!

AC: ‘The Light at the End of the Sausage Casing’.

CB: Okay, I like that.

KS: I mean, it made me laugh, but I don’t think that’s going in the search engine.

CB: Yeah, it’s not gonna check off the search engine optimization boxes that I’m looking for, but maybe it can be the subtitle.

AC: I don’t know. I mean, the main thing, I think stelliums—that’s the one thing that’s true all month.

CB: Stelliums, I like that.

KS: Yeah.

CB: ‘Leo in Virgo Stelliums’.

KS: Yeah, that’s great.

AC: Yeah.

CB: I like that.

AC: You know, the Sun always goes from Leo to Virgo during this period of time, but the weight of Leo and then Virgo is greatly enhanced this year, right? It’s like all the Leo, all the Virgo.

KS: Yeah, I guess that’s what I was trying to say earlier with the Mars involvement. You know, Mars is only there once every couple of years, and Mars isn’t always in a sign when the Sun is there, too. So it just feels like this double-amp up, both for Leo and for Virgo this year.

AC: Right. You know, wherever Mars goes that’s where the battle is, right? There’s where the work is. It’s like, okay, that’s where the call to action is.

KS: Yeah, six weeks of, “We gotta work this. We gotta make decisions. We gotta do stuff. We can’t faff around. We’ve got six weeks and we don’t get it again for two years.” So no faffing.

AC: Which is, in some cases, a blessing.

KS: Totally.

AC: You know, again, on a slightly longer-term scale, this is the second half of the year. You know, the meat grinder—it happened to be the middle, time-wise, but it was also a dynamic that really separated the first half and second half. And the first half had its challenges, the second half has its challenges, but you have basically four more months of Jupiter in Sag, right?

KS: Yeah, have at it. Have at it.

AC: You know, December is back into ‘Capricorn land’.

CB: Right. I was just looking and that’s when the next set of eclipses takes place. We get that solar eclipse on the 26th of December.

AC: Oh, it’s the 25th in our timezone. It’s Christmas Day.

KS: It depends on timezones, yeah.

AC: Yeah, we get that eclipse Christmas goose.

CB: Nice.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, and just everything’s in Capricorn.

AC: Yeah, in many ways, it’s almost like 2019—or how shall we say—the workable portion of 2019 ends the first week of December, and then we’re in a transitional period where everything’s in Capricorn, and then we get 2020’s shape coming out. But this is the second half. Like whatever you haven’t got to, whatever you wanna get done—there’s a little bit of head down, endure, do what needs to be done these last two months, and now we’re beginning. Okay, now it’s time to make progress again to get to where you need to get to, come back to your plans. You know, click into phase three. You know, it’s good. It’s workable.

KS: Yeah, there’s a lot that you can do between now and that first week of December.

AC: Yeah, and no Mercury retrograde until November, no Venus retrograde. You know, there’s this and that.

KS: That seems like a long time. That’s fantastic. You’re right.

AC: Well, it’s because we’re not even done. Mercury’s still retrograde as we speak.

KS: There’s been so much going on, that I was like, “Oh, my God, it is still retrograde.” Yeah, it sort of feels like it’s been retrograde forever.

AC: It does.

KS: That’s not just me? Oh, my lord, that’s so interesting. But it’s a chilled month, August. It’s very different from June-July. So if you had a rough couple of months, there’s a whole different set of sky patterns coming through for August.

AC: Yeah, and like you said, with just the elemental qualities of being hot, the nice way to say ‘hot’ is warm.

KS: Yeah, but it’s hot right now.

AC: Yeah, but there’s also just some warmth on an emotional level, on a spirit level, especially with Jupiter. You know, Jupiter in Sag brings us that temperate, inspiring warmth.

KS: Yeah.

AC: You know, even though it’s been hot out, I think for some people it’s been frosty on an emotional level. It’s like, okay, cage up and get through it. And so, that Leo stuff—it’s warming on an internal level, which will be nice. Kind of getting back to the heart. Cuz sometimes you can’t be heart-centered. You have to be task-centered, right?

KS: Yeah, no, actually I misunderstood where you were going with that, Austin. And absolutely, the warmth. I think I was talking with a couple of girlfriends, like as soon as the Sun went into Leo, you could start to feel just a little bit of that radiance coming in. Yeah, just the improvements began, even though we’re still dealing with some circumstances that are stressful.

AC: Yeah, I could feel that. I was like, “Oh, that’s good.”

KS: Yeah, that’s nice.

AC: More of that, please.

KS: Yes, I’d like a second helping. Not to be greedy, but I’ll take it.

CB: All right, I think that kind of brings us to the end of the forecast then, which I’m genuinely shocked by, cuz we’re only an hour-and-30-minutes into this recording. So somehow we’ve done a sub-two-hour episode for probably the first time in like two or three years.

KS: Ever. I mean, I did notice when I was putting my month together for August, there are just fewer astrological aspects happening, I think, this month as well. So in addition to them having a nicer or more uplifting—or we can access them, cuz there’s more of that personal tone—there are just less things going on.

AC: Yeah, and the things that do happen are not extremely complicated.

KS: No, it’s like this little thing will square that 48 hours, done. Or this thing’s gonna trine that. Feel good, or whatever it happens to be.

AC: Right. And it’s like, oh, where are the planets? They’re in Leo and then they’re in Virgo.

KS: Yeah, that’s it.

CB: Yeah. All right.

KS: So it is possible. We have shown that it is possible.

CB: Yeah. Are there any other astrology-related things, or things that have happened in the community then worth mentioning or talking about, briefly, as we wrap things up?

KS: I have a tiny little personal thing that’s astro.

CB: Sure.

KS: I did get invited back to speak at NORWAC in 2020. So I’ll be attending that conference, which will be the other—it won’t be as big as ISAR. It’ll be on the other side of the country. But I know for some people that’ll be a little bit more doable. So that’ll be end of May, in Seattle, 2020.

CB: Awesome.

AC: Yeah, me, too.

CB: Awesome.

KS: You did!

AC: Yeah.

KS: Yay!

AC: Yeah, I’ll actually be giving a couple of talks and a workshop there.

KS: Fantastic. You’re giving a workshop. Brilliant!

AC: If I’ve got people for that long, I think we’re gonna do all of the decans and some fun things you can do with decans.

KS: Fantastic.

AC: As I was packing my books—oh, God, what was it? Oh, it was Rhetorius. Rhetorius has a section that is simply on which decans—if you have Venus in them—make you a horrible, lustful monster. That’s all it is. It’s these decans, under these conditions, and you will be a lust monster of short description.

KS: Oh, my gosh.

AC: You are going in 36 Faces, volume two.

KS: Volume two.

AC: I will, of course, include, if I do end up doing that as a workshop. I couldn’t leave out the lust monster placements.

KS: Oh, that sounds super interesting, Austin. I am also doing a workshop. So we’re on at different times, cuz I’d love to hear you for that long on the decans. That’ll be amazing.

AC: It’ll be fun. Let’s do all 36 and then talk about what we can do with them. I’ve done that once before as a workshop, and it was a lot of fun.

KS: Fantastic.

CB: And I’m excited about our workshop at the ISAR conference, which is gonna be a pre-conference that Wednesday. And we’re gonna do, I think, a variation of this workshop I’ve wanted to do—the three of us for a long time—and Austin and I did a test run at NORWAC, which is synthesizing modern and ancient astrology. And I think we did a pretty good job of getting a feel for how that would when you and I did it, Austin. But this time I wanna make it bigger and better and add more visuals and have a lot more diagrams and stuff to show. And I think bringing you in, Kelly, is really gonna complete the trifecta, so that we can create the new synthesis that surely all astrologers will then adopt and start practicing over the next century.

KS: I’m excited to teach with you guys. We’ve been talking about it for such a long time. And I’m so happy that we’re able to do it at a conference, where we can have so many people joining us. So that’s gonna be a lot of fun.

AC: Yeah, that’ll be awesome. No, it’ll be great to take what we learned from the first time and expand on this, and do less of this, and add a visual for that. Because it was huge and exploratory, and I enjoyed it very much. You know, it’s a slightly ambitious topic, Chris.

CB: Slightly?

KS: We’re gonna have to put some parameters in place to make it manageable, I think, for me, as a presenter. You guys impress me so much with how you get through so much material.

CB: Yeah, we covered a lot, so we’ll have to work on that. But we’ve got a year to get it together, and I think we can pull it off.

KS: Yeah.

CB: I’m trying to think of other fun social media things. There’s one that’s happening right now, over the past few days on Twitter, and I think it was started by Shakirah Tabourn.

KS: Who was on the call earlier. Or maybe she’s still here.

CB: Maybe she’s still here. Are you still here, Shakirah? So she started a thing where she recorded a video of herself writing out the astrological glyphs on a piece of paper. And now a bunch of people are doing the same and posting how they write the glyphs. While there’s obviously a standardization, there’s also a lot of variation in just how exactly you can write them out. But I really love this, cuz this is one of the first things that I feel like every astrologer should do, is memorize and learn how to write the symbols for the planets and the signs of the zodiac.

KS: Well, yeah. I wanna say, Austin, you and I have given a lot of love to the Mercury-Venus aspect as an artistic signature in previous episodes. And this happened on the Mercury retrograde conjunct Venus aspect. It was Wednesday, I think, of last week, or just a few days ago.

AC: This week.

KS: This week. I don’t even know what week it is, but it was beautiful. And I was watching everyone, and I was like, “Everyone is doing this so precise.”

AC: Oh.

KS: And so small. Like they were writing the glyphs and videoing. I think, Shakirah, we need to maybe put her Twitter handle or something. And she said it’s totally by accident. I was like if I drew them, mine are really big and messy. I couldn’t do it. So it’s @thestrology, without the ‘a’. And then everybody was retweeting. Did you get something? Oh, there we go.

CB: So @thestrology_. And yeah, she’s here right now, joining us for the live version of this recording. She says: “It happened during the Mercury and Venus conjunction on Wednesday, but totally by accident.” Yeah, so you weren’t going out of your way to do that, but then suddenly everybody was doing it and showing their approaches, which I really loved seeing.

KS: Well, yeah. And then different people, the way they put the symbols together, I was like, “I had never thought to draw that symbol in that way.” And it was just really interesting seeing different people’s writing styles. Like somebody wrote Taurus without taking the pen off, like not as two different symbols, but in like one weird little roundabout. Anyway, it was very interesting to see. I’m glad we had time to mention this tonight. Good memory, Chris.

CB: Yeah, I love that. There’s always little things like that happening at different points on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, that are fun to highlight. So people can check it out and join in and maybe post their own versions of the video of how they write the glyphs.

KS: I was wondering if there’s any way—I’m like the three of us should have done it in the show, but we’re not really set up for this.

CB: Well, I actually have an old one that I did 9 or 10 years ago, which was like one of my first YouTube videos. Cuz what was funny about that is I was talking to Leisa, and she said that she didn’t know how to write the glyphs. And she had been studying astrology for several years, but it just was something she had never done. So I realized that some people actually can get to a more advanced stage in their studies, and if you don’t do it early on, sometimes you just don’t end up doing it. So I actually did a little video where I demonstrated on a whiteboard my approach to doing them. So if you don’t know how to draw the glyphs yet, just do a Google search for ‘How to draw astrological symbols or glyphs for zodiac signs and planets’, and you’ll see my little version how I write the glyphs at least, as of 2010 or something like that.

KS: Yeah, it’s funny. You know, every time I’ve taught a beginner or an intro class, it’s usually part of an assignment in the first few weeks. I agree that it’s very important to learn to do because these are the letters in the alphabet that you’re going to use to communicate and express yourself, probably forever, once you learn them. I just thought the astrology of this going sort of semi-viral on Twitter was just amazing, with that Mercury-Venus conjunction.

AC: Yeah, that’s such a good catch.

KS: Right! And it just happened. And as Shakirah was saying, it wasn’t intentional. I guess she just got inspired and was picking up on something in the ethers at the time.

CB: Yeah, I love that. And I’ll put a link to that in the description page for this episode, on The Astrology Podcast website, to that thread on her Twitter page, so people can respond or post their own versions in response to it or what have you.

KS: Oh, she’s saying she’s in a Mercury profection year as well.

CB: Okay, nice.

KS: Which is great.

CB: That’s an episode I’ve been meaning to do for a while, as soon as I can get Alan Oken. I’ve been trying to get Alan Oken to do an episode with me, cuz he has this really good treatment. I don’t know if it’s historically valid in terms of how the glyphs actually came about, in his intro to astrology book, which was one of my first books, Alan Oken’s Complete Astrology. I think that’s the title. He talks about the symbolism for the glyphs and what they mean or what the deeper meaning is supposed to be behind the glyphs, and I always thought that was a really interesting treatment. So this is reminding me that I’ve always meant to do that episode with him.

KS: That’ll be really good.

CB: Yeah, but he lives somewhere remote, and it’s hard to get him good internet access and a microphone and stuff like that.

AC: Doesn’t he live in Portugal?

CB: No, he teaches at a major astrology school in Portugal, but he lives in Bali, but like some really remote part of Indonesia or something.

KS: Okay.

CB: Yeah, so one of these days I’ll get him. And yeah, you guys got any other topics? Anything else funny come up this month? Social media? Astrology?

KS: I’m drawing a blank. Crickets.

CB: You’ve both been moving.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah.

KS: I mean, the cardboard boxes that the cats just knocked over in the middle of the show have been there for 10 days, and they haven’t touched them. But of course tonight, while we’re recording, bang. Just crazy.

CB: Podcast episodes this month—I did one about how there’s the increasing frequency of cesarean section births. I don’t know if you guys saw that.

KS: I saw it come up, yeah. Tell us a bit about it.

CB: Well, we’re just moving to a period where cesareans are becoming more and more common over the past few decades. And since they’re scheduled ahead of time, the doctors will tend to fit them into their schedules during normal business hours, like 9-5, Monday through Thursday, Monday through Friday sometimes. So it’s changing the distribution of births. There are more daytime births instead of nighttime births. And that’s also causing there to be a greater preponderance of certain rising signs or certain placements of the Sun being in certain houses, like in the top-half of the chart, and stuff like that. And so, it’s just interesting thing to think what the implications of that are in the long term, especially if it keeps heading in that direction.

KS: Yeah, like there’s gonna be maybe, potentially, a higher percentage of people with the Sun in—I mean, if they’re scheduled C-sections, they’re usually first thing in the morning. So that’s like Sun/12th-Sun/11th houses usually. You can end up with a cesarean section. I know someone I know had gone into labor naturally but ended up with a cesarean, and it happened later in the day. But the scheduled ones do tend to happen in the morning. And so, it’s not even just in the top-half of the chart, it’s usually just in the 12th/11th/10th houses.

CB: Yeah, so it’s interesting to think about. Or a world in which a night birth, like somebody born at midnight, with the Sun in the 4th house, as a unique thing versus a ton of people with the Sun in the 10th house, or the 11th house, or something like that.

KS: Yeah, I mean, it’s thought-provoking. I don’t know that I necessarily have answers. But I believe there was a study done some years ago that indicated more babies are generally born near the Full Moon rather than the New Moon. So there’s sort of an argument there that there are more of certain types of Moon phases, for instance, if that’s something that you consider. Right? Like it’s more common for people to go into labor nearer the Full Moon. And so, there’s more people, potentially, born with the gibbous Full Moon and disseminating Moon phases.

AC: That makes a lot of sense. I mean, the Full Moon brings things to fruition, right? The cup overfloweth.

KS: Yes. Yes, exactly.

CB: Yeah, like Wendy Stacey—who I did that episode with, which was titled, “The Increasing Frequency of Cesarean Section Births”—said there was already tendencies towards certain births occurring naturally, in certain times of the day and on certain days of the week, but just that this was shifting things even more in a certain direction due to societal and technological things happening at this time.

KS: Yeah.

AC: So do you guys know what day you were born on? What day of the week?

KS: I do. Do you guys? You must know, right? It’s on our charts.

CB: Yeah.

KS: I’m a Tuesday Mars girl.

AC: Oh, okay.

KS: What are you guys?

AC: I am Monday’s child.

KS: Ah, the Moon.

AC: There was some rhyme I remember when I was younger. It was like, “Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace,” and I don’t remember the rest.

KS: ‘Monday’s child’ poem. “Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace. Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go. Friday’s child is loving and giving, Saturday’s child works hard for his living. And the child that is born on the Sabbath Day is bonny and blithe and good and gay.” There you go.

CB: I like that. I was born on Thursday. Do you guys know the story surrounding your birth? Like do you know if you were an induced birth or C-section?

AC: I was three weeks premature. My mom and dad had just moved into a little house out in the country, and they were re-tiling or re-grouting the fireplace when my mom went into labor. And then, let’s see, they went to the hospital, and the doctor was out of town. And so, they tried to delay labor by giving her a screwdriver, like vodka and orange juice.

CB: And that’s how it started.

KS: And since then—

AC: Yeah, apparently that did succeed in delaying the labor. Let’s see, I was born in the afternoon. I was the only baby in the hospital.

KS: Wow.

AC: Again, I was three weeks premature, so I was severely jaundiced. I was also born with jet black hair.

KS: Wow.

AC: It has all lightened, except for one patch, which stayed black. Let’s see, and my stomach valve didn’t really work for the first year. So if you turned me upside-down, everything would fall out.

KS: Just came out, yeah. Wow. Yeah, I don’t know my birth story. My mom passed away when I was a child. And my dad just says, “You were born, and you were healthy.” Like one of my brothers was a cesarean section. So he’s like, “That was a bit dramatic. And one of your sister’s had the cord around her neck. But you were just born and it was sort of fine.” The story that I have from when I was young is, shortly after I was born, or maybe I was a couple of weeks old, we were at home, in the family home, and I was lying on the mat or something, and dad was looking at me. And he sort of said, “Oh, if I could just have five more like you, I’d be a happy man.” And you gotta be careful what you wish for, cuz he did have another five. We’re not all the same, but I’m from a large family. People may not know that. I’m the eldest of six. Do you know your birth story, Chris?

CB: Yeah. And I wanna say, just briefly, your Sun is in the 1st house, so you know you would’ve been born around sunrise, early in the morning at least.

KS: Right on this. Yeah, so my mom must have gone into labor naturally. And it was a natural delivery, if you like.

CB: Yeah, so there’s some sort of story there, where at least, relatively at night or early in the morning, she must have gone into labor.

KS: Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe one of my aunts will know. They’re the keepers of the family stories. I’m gonna have to report back next episode.

CB: Yeah, well, it’s just something interesting to think about in terms of what were the circumstances of birth. Not just the birth time, but what was happening around that time. I know Firmicus Maternus, in the 4th century, has a few omenological things that he mentions. Like if the native was born during a thunderstorm, and there was a bolt of thunder when the native was born, then it means this or something like that. And it’s something I think about from time to time. I don’t have a super-good story, it was just kind of a funny story. Apparently, my mom—either she had gone into labor or something, but my dad had a haircut scheduled. So they went, and he was getting his hair cut, and then the lady cutting his hair said, “When are you due?” And she looks at my mom and says, “When are you due?” And she says, “Right now.” And somehow, she had gone into labor—I don’t fully understand the story—but then they went from there to the hospital. But she said it was like the worst haircut that my dad had ever gotten. Because the hairstylist was so nervous, she was just trying to get it done as fast as possible, and then they went to the hospital. And I was born at 1:28 PM in the afternoon.

KS: I love it. Yeah, I mean, there are certain signs, of course. You know, women know they’re in labor, and you don’t always wanna go to the hospital too quickly. So she might have been like, “It’s early labor.” But you’re her eldest child, right?

CB: I was the second.

KS: The second, okay. So she would have recognized the signs. So then she might have been more confident to just say, “We got a bit of time, get your hair cut,” or something.

CB: Yeah, so maybe it was something like that. But I’m not sure what the broader, symbolic significance of that is, but it’s something interesting to think about, for everybody to figure out what your birth story is, and if that has any symbolic significance either with your later life or just in terms of your chart; since there’s parts of the chart that are supposed to, theoretically, indicate what the labor was like and if there was anything notable during the labor itself or not.

KS: Yeah, I think it’s really fun to hear clients’ birth stories and notice different signatures in the chart, potentially. It’s really interesting. I can tell we’re gonna have some great comments on YouTube and Facebook around this episode. People with birth stories.

CB: Yeah, if anybody’s got any interesting birth stories, let us know. Or if there’s any correlation in your birth chart with your birth, let us know what the circumstances were surrounding it. The only other thing, I did one episode at the beginning of the month where I released this interview with Clive Kavan, who published the Regulus edition of Lilly in 1985. And that was a really fun and interesting historical interview, talking about the first wave of republications of ancient texts. And he brought to the interview a first edition of William Lilly from 1647, which was exciting. Cuz I didn’t realize that books like that were still in circulation and were still in collections, or sometimes available, that you could actually find them. But yeah, so that got me excited to look into them. And I’ve been getting into this whole thing about antiquarian books and the whole antiquarian book thing. And I know that’s something you’ve already been involved with to some extent, Austin, or at least you have friends that move in those circles.

AC: Yeah, being a long-time attendee of the Esoteric Book Conference—which is now the Texts & Traditions Conference—yes, I have many antiquarian friends, or just people who like fine editions of things, who want that to be on the bookshelf for the rest of their life. You know, if you love a book and you know you’re not gonna read it once and then it’s gonna sit there for 10 years, getting the finest version of that. And then some people do it as an investment. You know, I think that overlaps with the people who do it out of love and appreciation of books as art objects.

CB: Yeah, well, along those lines, I’m super excited. I found, quite by luck, a first edition of William Lilly’s Christian Astrology, which is the oldest English-language, major textbook written in English on astrology. It was published in 1647. So it’s a nearly 400-year-old book. And I’m so excited that I have found that, cuz I didn’t know stuff like that was still around, and I came across it quite by chance. But yeah, I’m thinking about attending that Texts & Traditions Colloquium or Conference in September. Cuz that sounds like an interesting world that I’m just starting to learn about and get used to.

AC: Yeah, it’s in Seattle every year, in September. It’s nice. There are some speakers, and there’s a very nice book fair.

CB: Yeah, cuz my love of books and astrology books is already very developed. That’s like a whole other world of priceless books or fine edition books and things like that. I know that’s something that you did, which I sort of understood theoretically when you did it. The first edition of your decans book was published, and there was a super-fancy version, like a limited edition version of it, that I have a greater appreciation of now a few years later, understanding the whole antiquarian book trade.

AC: There were a couple of layers of fancy. There was the trade paperback and then there were three layers of fancy.

CB: Yes, and so, speaking of books, when is your new edition coming out? Cuz people keep asking me about it. Now I’m starting to get hassled about when Austin’s decans book is gonna come out again.

AC: It’ll be out in the fourth quarter. You’ll be able to have one in your hands by Christmas.

CB: Okay. And speaking of hassling people about books, Kelly, when is your book on secondary progressions coming out?

KS: Well, there’s now a bit of pressure actually to get it out for ISAR 2020. But that was always the goal, to have it out for ISAR 2020. So once we get a little settled here, about mid-August actually—probably on some of those nice elections—will be when the rest of my work on the manuscript starts in earnest. So we are working towards it. It’ll probably be published mid-2020, I guess, or maybe there’ll be the official launch at ISAR, but that’s the goal.

CB: Brilliant. So you may be giving a workshop on secondary progressions at the ISAR conference, in September of 2020. And so, the goal is to have books on secondary progressions in hand by that time.

KS: Ready to go, yeah. Cuz every now and then it pops up on social media, and it just reminds me of how little information there is on the topic and how curious people are. I know I’ve given lots of workshops, and I’ve got online courses and things. But I know for me, personally, as a learner, how valuable having a book is that you can just refer back to time and time again. And so, yeah, that’s the goal to put all my theories—which are a little unusual because there are traditional techniques in there, even though secondary progressions, as far as we know, is a relatively modern technique. So there’s a traditional flavor to it. And then a bunch of examples, so it’s really accessible. Yeah, I’m really excited to get it. I just, last year, 2018, taught some modules that gave me the missing bits of theory that I just hadn’t quite fully perfected. And so, it’s really well-timed how it’s all come together.

AC: And something in general, there are things that I think we would take for granted in conversation that anybody past a certain level involving astrology just knows. And then somebody says, “Oh, well, what book do I get on that?” And you’re like, “It’s mentioned in this one section of Firmicus.” There’s a familiarity that goes well beyond that. You know, it’s like four or five people have taught it, but I don’t know what to tell you for a book. And I think that we’re in a phase, and maybe just entering a phase where some of the textual record is gonna catch up with what astrologers these days know.

KS: Yeah, I mean, on that subject of books, I have received in the last six weeks many requests to participate in astrological books. You know, a publishing company saying, “We’re looking to do a book on astrology, this and that. Are you interested in being a writer for this book (or the writer for this book)?” And in the years I’ve been working, I mean, I’m doing less astrology writing now than I have in the past, with probably a lower public profile, because I’ve written for a lot more magazines in the past than I am now. And I’m just sort of realizing how the publishing market is jumping on the astrological bandwagon, if you like, in terms of wanting to put out more books of varying levels on astrology, because they’re noticing that zeitgeist shift, if you like.

CB: Yeah, cuz the publishing of astrology books was on the decline for years. And then suddenly we’ve seen this resurgence over the past year or so, where suddenly not only are publishers more interested—and I’ve seen that as well—but also, there’s no astrology books coming out by major publishers. So Annabel Gat’s book, The Astrology of Love and Sex, just came out. I know Chani Nicholas has a book coming out, an intro to astrology book, later this year, which I’m excited about.

KS: And I think Jessica Lanyadoo—and I never quite pronounce her last name properly, and I apologize for that. I think she has a book coming out, too.

CB: Does she? Okay.

KS: Yeah, yeah. So there’s just a lot. And I know there’s a few groups of astrologers that are all contributing to a series of astrology books that’ll be coming out as well. So it’s fascinating how that tide is rising again.

CB: Yeah, that’s really exciting actually. Are you gonna do any of that? Or have you considered it?

KS: I haven’t gotten back to the emails yet. I’ve been looking at these emails and I’ve had to think about it. Obviously, the progressions books is my priority. But then the crazy part of me is like, “Maybe we can squeeze another one in.” But based on the experience of you guys and just watching you with your own books, I’m very reluctant to take on anything else right now until that first book is out.

CB: Good. Yeah, get the first book out. I wanna see that book on secondary progressions, cuz then I can recommend it to everybody.

KS: Thank you.

CB: That’s still one of our most popular past podcast episodes, the one you and I did on secondary progressions that went so well.

KS: Yeah, and I do still get feedback about that. And if people are looking for more info, just search. I’m not sure what episode number it is, but it’ll be The Astrology Podcast list. Chris might look it up for us now. Because that’s basically an intro to progressions right there.

CB: Yeah, that was Episode 144, on TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Episodes, titled, “Secondary Progressions: Every Day Symbolizes a Year.”

KS: Yay.

CB: All right, well, I think we’re at two hours, so it’s time to wrap up this episode. Thanks a lot for joining me today, guys.

AC: My pleasure.

KS: Thank you. Talk about the start of a new era.

CB: Yeah, I’m really excited about seeing what your backgrounds look like exactly one month from now. So we have a nice picture of Austin’s, and we got a nice picture of Kelly’s. So we will take a snapshot, and we will check in one month from now and see how things look.

KS: See how they go. I was just thinking, now that Austin and I have moved, we have all moved in the last few months.

CB: Yeah.

KS: All of us, yeah. Which is quite a thing.

CB: Yeah, it’s a lot. It’s a big deal. And you don’t realize how big of a deal it is until you do it. And then when you’re in the midst of it, you’re like, “Wow, this is a lot of work.”

AC: Never again. Never again.

KS: And then you think, “I’m never doing this again.”

CB: Right.

KS: Well, you can actually say that, Austin, cuz you’re in your forever home. I’m thinking, “Oh, my God. At some point in a few years, we’re gonna have to go back.” Cuz we’re here on a time-limited contract. So I’m not gonna worry about that now, though.

CB: All right, cool. All right, guys, well, thank you and good luck next month. Thanks to all the patrons who joined us today. There were like 40 people in the audience who were all patrons on the live access tier. Thanks to all the patrons who support the podcast. Cuz pretty much my ability to do a lot of the episodes and the interviews that I’ve been doing lately has been largely predicated on that. I’m getting ready to launch a new Patreon tier on Patreon, where people can get a mention and a shoutout at the end of the episodes. And I’m also gonna be launching some advertising stuff and have been talking to a couple of companies like Astro Gold. I use their astrology app all the time, so I’m totally open to promoting it. Yeah, so if anybody wants to support the show, and you listen to the show regularly, please consider supporting it and pitching in a few dollars just to buy me a cup of coffee each month. I drink a lot of coffee. If you can throw in just like $4 a month, then that’ll buy me at least one, which I will drink in episodes, such as this one. So thanks to all the patrons currently doing that, and thanks to everybody who signs up over the course of the next month to get access to some of those benefits. You can find out more information by searching for ‘The Astrology Podcast’ on Patreon, or going to TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Subscribe. So thanks everyone for listening or watching this episode, and we will see you again next month at some point, when we talk about the astrology of September. So until then, take care.

KS: Bye, everyone.