The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 545, titled:
Roland Orzabal on Astrology, Fate, and Tears for Fears
With Chris Brennan and Roland Orzabal
Episode originally released on August 19, 2026
Original episode URL:
https://theastrologypodcast.com/2026/08/19/roland-orzabal-on-astrology-fate-and-tears-for-fears/
—
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
—
Transcribed by Teresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released September 19th, 2026
Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
—
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today is legendary songwriter, musician, and cofounder of Tears for Fears, Roland Orzabal. And we’re gonna be discussing his brand new autobiography, Welcome to Your Life: Love, Death, and Tears for Fears, which is also subtitled An Astrological Memoir, which he incorporated astrology throughout while telling his life story.
So Roland, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to The Astrology Podcast!
ROLAND ORZABAL: Thank you very much. This is my first Astrology Podcast. I’m a —
CB: Yeah.
RO: — virgin! Yeah.
CB: Yeah, your first —
RO: Be gentle!
CB: — one – I’ll try! This is your first time on —
RO: Oh yeah.
CB: So yeah, you’ve been promoting the book, and I just finished reading the book and I absolutely loved it. I read it all the way up until late into last night. And you told your entire life story, but then you would frequently have these digressions about astrology where you were both looking at your life through the lens of astrology but also teaching the reader about astrology in the process.
RO: Yeah.
CB: And I realized by the time I finished this book is while you’re known as a legendary musician, you’re also an astrologer. I mean, that’s part of your biography, it seems like, at this point to me. Or would you classify yourself as that, or how would you frame that?
RO: I’m not a professional astrologer, obviously. I use it to understand myself, what’s going on inside me, what’s going on in my life at this point in time because of transits. Understanding my family, my parents. So yeah, it’s solipsistic, you might wanna say. I’m concerned about myself, not so much about mundane astrology. So events in the world – although I’m very keen, I listen to various astrologers talk about them and it’s always fascinating. But no, for me, it’s “know thyself,” as someone once said, and I don’t think you can without looking at yourself through the astrological lens.
CB: Right. Right —
RO: So I —
CB: Yeah.
RO: Yeah, so I’m not a professional, but I know a lot about it.
CB: Sure. And I guess I should have said I have a pretty broad definition of “astrologer,” because for me, an astrologer is somebody who believes that astrology is a legitimate phenomenon that has moderate to advanced training in it —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — and who regularly incorporates it in their day-to-day personal life in some sort of active sense. And at least in that context, and to the context that you framed your biography partially through the lens of astrology —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — I’m really fascinated by that. And right from the start, let’s talk about and let’s frame it a little – when did you get into astrology? You started studying I think you said in 1986, right?
RO: It was ‘86; it could have been ‘87; I’m not quite sure. Uranus in my chart is at 26 degrees Leo, so I am wondering whether it was actually when I was 26. And I was in a form of psychotherapy called primal therapy. Primal Scream, the book, was made famous by a man called Arthur Janov; he’s a Californian psychologist. The reason I bring this up is because his philosophy, his belief system, was that of tabula rasa – the blank slate. We are all born a blank slate upon which life carves our every nuance of character. So that was my belief system. I had a father that was abusive, violent, and unpredictable, yeah? And so I wanted to divorce myself. I wanted to divorce myself from my childhood. That’s why I was doing primal therapy; it’s very intense; it’s very Plutonian, meaning you go deep into yourself, into the cave of your soul, you slay the dragon, the dragon which is the ugly stuff that’s protecting the trauma which occurs when you are too young and too vulnerable to experience the reality of the emotion. So when you’re older, you can. You are no longer vulnerable; you can do that. So that was my belief – blank slate, we’re born a blank slate.
Now, this lady across the road from me and my wife – my late wife, Caroline – drew up astrological charts, and I thought, “Wow. It’s amazing.” So we asked her, and I think this is the time before computers, so she was doing it by hand. And we then went out for a meal with her so that she could explain what they meant. But something occurred, something – there was a bad atmosphere between her and my wife, and I don’t know what it was, you know? And so my wife kind of stormed out, and I ran after her, you know, that kind of thing. And I had two charts of these glyphs, squiggles, and lines – one which represented me, and I had no idea what they meant. So I thought, well, this is the type of guy I am, I thought, “Right, I’m gonna find out.” So I went to a local bookstore just up the road and I bought quite a few books. I was very skeptical, obviously; I didn’t know how it worked. I didn’t know if it worked. I didn’t know what it meant. So one of the first books I bought was Percy Seymour The Evidence of Science – I don’t know if you know that book. I mean, it’s —
CB: Yeah.
RO: — no longer relevant, but at the time, it was the best guess. And I kind of read that, and I read a few things, and then I looked at an ephemeris, and I saw – “Wait a minute. I’m a Leo.” You know? I always thought I was a Virgo; I was looking at those magazine columns and, you know, I thought, “Yeah, I’m a Virgo – makes sense.” I felt very Virgoan, you know. And —
CB: Right, you had a song lyric referring to —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — your Sun in Virgo before you learned that your Sun was in Leo.
RO: Exactly. I can’t believe – I can’t deny that I’m a Virgo, too. It’s in “I Believe” from Songs from the Big Chair. And so I’m a Leo all of a sudden. I think, “okay!” And then I see I’ve got three planets in Capricorn. I go, “Okay, well, that’s – let me look at Capricorn. Oh, that makes sense; that makes a lot of sense.” And then I looked at my father’s, and there I saw him with a Capricorn Sun and the Moon in Leo. I’m thinking, “What’s going on?” I mean, this is kind of hard for me to take, but I’m actually made from the same stuff. And so then it completely changed my perspective, my belief system from tabula rasa to a completely the opposite. That we are actually born with like, a set of complexes, meaning complex in a kind of – in a psychological way, and also astrological meaning, you know, if you have something that’s difficult to coordinate, like Moon square Mars, for instance, part of you might want to be nurturing, and a part of you might want to be rugged individualist. So they don’t go together. So that’s a complex of sorts, called a complex. We all have them. So my mother had the same thing as me – a T-square of signs between Capricorn, Cancer, and Libra, you know? So that for me was initially hard to take. But then I started looking at other people, and their chemistry and what was going on inside them, and then I realized that – my god, that this is absolutely incredible.
Then I started getting into interpersonal astrology, the chemistry between people. So like, synastry where one of your planets might hit my Descendant. You know, in your case, Venus-Uranus conjunction in Sagittarius – beautiful. You know? And that was fascinating to me. And also what’s called the composite chart where you put two charts together and you end up with midpoints even though it’s not a chart that reflects the sky in reality, it‘s still absolutely fascinating. So you know, I saw for instance if you are born with Venus is before the Sun – so for instance, I’m a Leo, Venus is in Cancer, and you meet someone whose Venus is after the Sun, when you put the charts together in a composite manner and get midpoints, the Sun is conjunct Venus, which is very nice. So I started to think, well, you know, there is a way of mapping out the chemistry between people quite easily. You know, the difference between whether you fall in love with someone, you like someone, they’re your friend, they’re your bank manager, all kinds of things.
CB: Yeah, that’s one of the most fascinating reflections throughout the book is how you reflect on some of your interpersonal relationships, especially with important people in your life like your bandmate Curt Smith and —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — how you both share these late Capricorn placements and the sort of, like, give and take of one of you having Jupiter at 28 Capricorn and the other having Saturn gave this quality of give and take, and sometimes tension. But then also something —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — balance. Or other times, you’ll mention, like, a producer who had Mercury there at 28 and how that fit in —
RO: Yeah —
CB: — with you and Curt’s placements. So it was really —
RO: Yeah, no.
CB: — brilliant. Like, this is literally, like, the type of autobiography I always – we always wish that somebody would write or that prominent celebrities would write that astrologers read biographies with this in the back of their mind. Like —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — the person’s birth chart placements. But your book is so unique for the first time I’ve ever seen of somebody that actually consciously did that and weaved astrology into the narrative while telling your life story.
RO: Yeah. No, I mean, when I wrote that – no one’s asked me about that, by the way. You know, I’ve done quite a few interviews. Not a lot of people, unless they’re astrologers, gonna know what the hell 28 degrees Capricorn means, you know.
CB: Right.
RO: I put the – there’s a saying, a little sentence in the book by Marc Edmund Jones. It’s the – he describes, he makes an attempt to describe what every degree of every sign actually means in a very small, succinct way. And I think it’s pretty good, but you know, that 28 degrees Capricorn for me, it was blindingly obvious, especially in 2020. I think it was 2020 when we had Saturn, Jupiter, and Pluto all coming together around that degree. And I knew that something was gonna happen. I didn’t know what was gonna happen, but I knew it was big; I knew it was important. And it coincided with me and Curt finishing The Tipping Point album, which was very well-received. And at the same time, I realized that our producer, our modulator, the go-between also had Mercury at 28 degrees as well. So we’re all having the same transit at the same time, which it strikes me that you often come together with people so that your joint fates collide. And I’ll give you another example that’s also in the book, which is again, gonna be hard for a lot of people to understand. So for instance, I met my second wife, Emily, just before Pluto in Capricorn was about to enter her 7th house. And I said to her, “You’re gonna meet an old man – older man – who’s gonna change your life.” Now, I never thought that was me. But while it was entering Emily’s 7th house of partners and first marriage, it was also entering my 9th house of second marriage. So there was a convergence of destinies that relied on other people. And for me, it’s a mystery, an absolute mystery, why this happens, but we seem to have in the back of our mind something is compelling us to do certain things, and it’s almost like the whole thing is arranged. I’m not completely sure, but that’s what it seems like.
CB: Yeah, that’s one of my favorite things about the book ultimately is you keep having these reflections about fate and about the nature of fate and what the implications of some of these alignments are that you talk about that line up so perfectly with major turning points in your life or major interconnections with people. You mention intergenerational astrology, which you mentioned earlier, like, having almost like, the reversed placements of your father with the —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — Capricorn and Leo placements and just how ultimately, like, you keep coming to this place I think later in the book of despite it sometimes coinciding – the astrology coinciding – with sometimes very difficult or tragic things, and other times very positive things that ultimately you seem to view fate as something ultimately positive and like, encouraging or that you don’t necessarily look at negatively. But instead you seem like most astrologers where you view it with a sense of awe and wonderment.
RO: Well…
CB: Or how would you frame that? That was just my take —
RO: No, that’s —
CB: — on the book.
RO: — that’s fine. For me, it’s, you know, fate is a lovely word. You know? It’s got many evil overtones. For me, it’s life. This is life. You know? And these are such huge phases in your life. It’s very hard to say whether it’s, you know, whether it’s fate, determinism. You know, your free will combines with determinism, with fate, in a way that again you don’t understand. You think you’re making a choice here. But when you look back, you go, “Was that really a choice, or was I compelled to do it?” And I could have given it – you know, I think a lot of things, I think some people are more fated than others. That’s one thing. I think if you’re seriously touched by Pluto, then that’s always gonna be the case that that’s gonna play an important part of your life. And I would say for instance, you know, when Pluto was square my parental axis, my father died, yeah? It’s to be expected, but you know, coincided with it when Pluto was square my Sun in Leo – S-U-N – I became a father. So that’s Pluto, death and rebirth or death and birth. During the same transit of the Pluto square my Sun, I became a father again three years later. When Pluto went all the way – I mean, this is a long story, but when it went all the way where it is now, which is perched on top of my Midheaven, slightly come back, I became a father again to Eula, my daughter. So there’s – how can I put it? I mean, it’s Pluto, the power behind the throne, you know? Who’s sitting on the throne? You are. Your Self, with a capital S. The Sun. So these are the automatic parts of your brain or body or whatever you wanna call it. The parts that go unrewarded, unapplauded. They are private. They are secret. This is the – all the things you do in your body that you don’t think about, like breathing, you know? So yeah, I mean, for me, Pluto is, you know, we know it’s about survival obviously. But it’s about survival in the most obvious way and it’s about, well, you can’t do anything without it; that’s a start. It’s almost the starting point from which you can hopefully evolve and learn more. But I mean, I saw recently there was a guy written a whole book about demoting Pluto. I don’t know if you saw that.
CB: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don’t – I don’t know about that! I don’t think – I did my Pluto episode I did with Richard Tarnas, who’s one —
RO: Oh, did —
CB: — of your —
RO: Oh really? Wow.
CB: — your major influences that you cite —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — in the book. And Pluto’s so central to your life because you have —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — your ruler of the Ascendant is exactly conjunct Pluto, and maybe we should —
RO: Exactly, yeah.
CB: If you’re open to it, maybe we could take a look at your chart just to orient —
RO: Sure!
CB: — people a little bit, since —
RO: Yeah, yeah, sure.
CB: — we’re talking about it so much here. So my chart format, I hope – it’s not, I think, how you usually put your chart format, but this is – you use Placidus houses, right?
RO: Yeah, that’s right.
CB: Okay. So this is a Placidus chart, so I’m gonna describe a little bit for the audio listeners. So we’ve got a chart with mid-Gemini rising, and the ruler of the Ascendant is Mercury which is at seven degrees of Virgo exactly conjunct Pluto at seven degrees of Virgo as well. The Sun is a little earlier; it’s at 29 degrees of Leo conjunct the North Node and Uranus, which are at 27 and 26 degrees of Leo respectively. We have Mars at three degrees of Libra and we’ve got a Capricorn stellium with the Moon at 14, Saturn at 24, and Jupiter at 28, and they’re opposite to Venus at 22 degrees of Cancer. And then finally we have Neptune at eight degrees of Scorpio. And yeah, this is the basic setup for your chart.
And one of the things I mentioned to you just before we started talking about that I had in mind that we might sort of think about or keep in mind is just in some of the ancient astrologers, they would look at the quadrant house placements like this, but they would also pay attention to what sign a planet was relative to the rising sign and treat that as if it was, like, a secondary overlay for the house placement. So that’s like, the whole sign house. And there’s just a few placements for you that I thought were really striking, like the ruler of the Ascendant in your chart is that Mercury, which by quadrant house in Placidus is in the 5th house, the house of creativity —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — of music and everything else. But it’s also in the whole sign placement it’s in your 4th house, and I thought this was really relevant in terms of, like, the focus on your father, on your parents, on the relationship with them, but also your interest in psychotherapy and in getting to the bottom of things. And even like, the relationship you had with Curt early on as being more of the person not directly the frontman, that wasn’t as directly in the front but was kind of behind the scenes in some ways as you described seemed reminiscent a little bit of that overlap between, like, 4th and 5th house sort of themes. So it’s just something we might keep in mind as an additional perspective as we’re talking through some of this.
RO: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know the – I only know this, well, equal house – not equal house, but —
CB: Placidus.
RO: For me, I would definitely describe my father as Uranian, so I would put Uranus in the 4th myself. My mom, funnily enough, also has Uranus in Aries in the 4th, which can explain why she was caught in a sudden bout of violence. Yeah, I mean, also the way I see it and I experienced it, I would say also my father was Plutonian, so there’s a loose conjunction there with Pluto and Uranus. So I would say the both of those planets, Uranus and Pluto, played a big part in my life, because I’ll give you an example. Yes, I was always fascinated by psychology – that’s the Mercury-Pluto – and I still am. What’s going on beneath the surface, what’s going on inside, what’s going on in the subconscious, unconscious. But if you think about us in the beginning, we sang about psychology – Primal Scream – but we used technology – Uranus. It was the combination of the two that I think was quite powerful.
CB: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And that technical component, you excel technically and that Virgo side comes through so clearly in so much of your stuff. Even the book itself I thought was interesting, and I wasn’t sure if it was deliberate, but it was partially told in a non-linear storytelling way —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — where you started a little bit in the future, and then —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — you went back and you started telling things chronologically. And then sometimes you’d go back in the past again, and it actually reminded me of, like, Mercury and its constant cycles of going forward and then going retrograde and then going forward again. Was that conscious, or was that something that just happened organically?
RO: Well, I don’t know about – I mean, I like the idea of Mercury going backwards, forwards. Very nice. To answer your question simply, it’s narrative arc. So I wanted, you know, I wanted to start with a death and end with a life, and not the other way around. So and also, you know, the first chapter, “Please Be Happy,” this was, you know, it coincided with Pluto crossing my Moon in the 8th house. This was, I would say, the defining point of my adult life. And you know, I’ll say another thing that the – the book is a love story as well. So and at the moment, you know, well, I stopped when there was a happy ending, you know what I mean? Whether there ever is remains to be seen.
CB: Yeah. That was a – yeah, starting – I loved that, that you started talking about one of the biggest losses and tragedies, losing your first wife Caroline —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — when Pluto was transiting over your Capricorn planets. And then yeah, ending with the birth of your daughter recently —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — just last year with —
RO: Yeah.
CB: —- right after Jupiter went into Cancer, I think you said, right?
RO: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it’s a long story. But yeah, the whole episode with Caroline – I saw it coming, you know. I mean, I saw the Pluto in Capricorn coming up to cross my Moon, and I was thinking, “Whoa.” This was years before, you know? And sometimes it can just mean cancer, you know. Cancer that can be healed at some point; you know, it’s not necessarily the end. But and it was also, you know, as I say in the book, it was hitting my Moon, and it was also hitting my son’s Moon, who has the Moon in 13 degrees Capricorn. And it was squaring my older son’s Moon in Aries, all happening at the same time, miraculously, you know? And so that happened; it wasn’t very nice at all. It took a long time indeed. But what happened, you can see by my chart, what happened to me was when Pluto crossed my Moon, it then started to oppose my Venus in Cancer, yeah?
CB: When Pluto crossed your – yes, it started to oppose your —
RO: Well – that’s right, yeah. So it crossed my Moon, and then it started to oppose my Venus in Cancer. Now, as far as I know, Venus is the young woman, and Cancer is a sign associated with America – 4th of July. So therefore, this was a young American lady suddenly came into my life while this sort of death in a sense or a reconfiguration of my let’s use the word “anima,” you know, was happening. And then as I said, so it opposed my – went up to oppose my Venus in Cancer. Emily’s Ascendant is at 22 degrees Cancer.
CB: Oh wow.
RO: I mean, it’s —
CB: Right on your Venus. That’s incredible.
RO: Yeah, it’s ridiculous! And her Mars in Capricorn is at 22 degrees. You know?
CB: Wow.
RO: Yeah, I knew I was in trouble.
CB: Right.
RO: So you know, there’s – I say in the book this feeling of destiny, you know, when I met Emily, I was completely confused, because I thought I had this sort of voice screaming at me, you know, “That’s my wife.” I think – I don’t know. I suspect – I don’t know, I have no proof, but I suspect that we have a part of us which isn’t so time-based, you know? It’s not frozen, it’s not locked in spacetime. It can sometimes see what the future is. That sounds a bit mystical. But I do wonder about it. But yeah, I mean, the whole thing – then again, it’s this thing of free – I’m not sure if it was a choice! I’m happy about it. Very happy. But I’m not sure if it’s a choice.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you see those things, and sometimes you see the difficult long-term transits coming like you did with the Pluto transit. But then there can be other transits that you don’t anticipate that can bring really —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — wonderful things out of that —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — despite really difficult circumstances. And I mean, I was remarking with the first chapter and the last chapters just, you know, the ruler of your 7th house is Jupiter, and it’s in the —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — the 8th sign, and you were opening the book with a reflection about the death of your first wife and the —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — how that impacted you for such a long time. But then also meeting Emily, your second wife, who is from another country with the ruler —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — of the 7th in the 9th Placidus house. So just seeing those overlaps is really interesting. And maybe we should back up, because one of the other things that was interesting is you were born on a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, and the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions have seemed like they’ve been incredibly important for you at different turning points in your life. But especially going back to, if we could start a little bit back towards the beginning of your career —
RO: Yeah.
CB: You formed the band with or got signed, I think, with Curt – Tears for Fears got signed in 1981, right?
RO: Yeah.
CB: Is that correct?
RO: Yeah. That’s right, yeah.
CB: Okay, so that was the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that was taking place in Libra. And I just found that really fascinating, because of the technique that I’ve been exploring a lot over the past year or two called recurrence transits where if a person is born with a certain alignment in their birth chart, like a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, let’s say, then for some reason they tend to have these really important turning points when the same two planets come together in the same aspect in the sky. And it seemed —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — like that was the case for you in the early ‘80s with the starting of that. And then again some turning points that were taking place around the conjunction in 2000, and then finally again around the 2020 timeframe when those planets —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — came back together.
RO: Totally.
CB: You also mentioned that Saturn transits were really important for you where I think you said you wrote your first song or performed it when you were seven years old at your waxing Saturn square, right?
RO: Yeah. I was – yeah, I mean… Well, Saturn – I mean, seven degrees. Yeah. I wrote my first song. I mean, that was a kind of a kid’s song. That was when my parents split up when I was seven. And yeah, I mean, these are phases of Saturn. I mean, they’re, how can I put it? I mean, everyone goes through them. Saturn for me has never been too problematic, you know? At one point in my life, it was during the Elemental period where I’d split with Curt and I was going out on tour on my own, and Saturn was right on my Midheaven like the sword of Damocles, you know? Loads and loads of lots of pressure. But it makes you perform, you know. It forces you, and it doesn’t feel good, but it’s vital. You know? It’s that which you must do.
The other thing I noticed, you know, we talk about the good times and the bad times – you know, Jupiter transits —
CB: Can I mention that really quick? Because that was a really interesting impressive —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — thing that your Saturn return ended up being in the 8th sign was this —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — terrible financial thing where your manager —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — ripped you guys off for, like —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — millions of dollars and then —
RO: That’s right.
CB: — this also coincided with a period of heightened tension with your partner in the band, with Curt and Tears for Fears —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — that led to the two of you splitting up. And then what you were just describing was after Saturn moved into Aquarius, then you were on your own with the band, and you felt the period of intense pressure to sort of make it on your own —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — which is a really brilliant manifestation of Saturn on your Midheaven. But it’s your Saturn return story was actually really, really interesting —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — as well.
RO: Yeah, we’d forgotten that completely, yeah. Yeah, no, it was amazing, because what’s happening in my life – it’s still happening in my life – is I was doing music, focusing on production, arrangement, writing, being a musical director day in, day out. Yeah? I was being wholly consistent, which Saturn loves, Saturn’s gonna reward consistency. And in a sense, it did because things didn’t go well with Curt and I, and it was our Saturn – both having our Saturn return. In one sense, Saturn was rewarding me for all the hard work, and in a sense, it was punishing Curt although he was rewarded in other ways. He was rewarded with having freedom, you know? Which I didn’t have at all.
CB: What is – you didn’t mention it in the book. You mentioned in passing Curt’s —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — 11th house at one point. Is his rising sign something okay to talk about; is it public —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — is it not public —
RO: Oh, yeah.
CB: — in terms of his —
RO: It’s Sagittarius, yeah. That’s – yeah, of course. I mean, two people in my life, big people, you know, important people in my life were Caroline and Curt. As I say in the book, I was looking for that fire that my father was a terrifying symbol of, and I found it in Curt – Sagittarius rising, I’m Sagittarius Descendant – and I found it in Caroline – also Sagittarius rising.
CB: Wow. I love that. That’s such a cool – that happens all the time; I see that all the time where —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — you know, whatever our rising sign is, because that sets up the opposite sign as the 7th house, just drawing in important people that have that as their rising sign and having two of the most important people in your life having the opposite rising sign with you, that’s amazing.
RO: Yeah, incredible, isn’t it? Again, we go back to the 7th house cusp and the house of first marriage. So my first marriage was Sagittarian, you know? It was a lot of fun, a lot of excess, you might say, which didn’t turn out very well for Caroline.
CB: She ended up dying from complications related to alcoholism —
RO: Yeah, it was cirrhosis stage four, yeah. It was really bad. So my experience of that was Plutonian; her experience was Neptunian. That wasn’t really a transit; that was in her birth chart. She was like that – Neptune in the 10th house. Mars conjunct Jupiter in Pisces, conjunct Chiron in Pisces – the injury – Jupiter-Chiron, injury to the liver.
My 2nd house – sorry, the second – sorry! My house of 2nd marriage, the 9th house, is a Capricornian house. And it’s a Capricornian marriage. You know, it’s not so much excess, and a lot more responsibility.
CB: Yeah, you – she was when you met her working on like, a – Emily was working on a master’s in creative writing, and it seems like you both hit it off intellectually with a bunch of different similar interests and things like that, and —
RO: Well, yeah, I mean, her Sun is at 12 degrees Gemini exact on my – virtually exact on my Ascendant.
CB: Oh wow, okay.
RO: So yeah. So it was, you know, this is a thing with life – it’s chemistry. And no one can explain it. No one – Freud can’t explain it. Jung can’t explain it. No scientist can explain it, but you can explain it through astrology. You know? I mean, I can say —
CB: Right.
RO: — to you, you know, her Sun’s on my Ascendant. You go, “Okay, great.” A lot —
CB: Right.
RO: — of people are gonna say, “What’s that mean?!”
CB: Well, that’s one of the beautiful things in the book is, like, there’s an initial level of the book which is just reading a very interesting biography about your life, but then because you interweave astrology through it, there’s all this additional subtext that I get as an astrologer. And anybody with basic or intermediate competence in astrology can understand this second language that you’re using, but it’s almost like this hidden language that you won’t fully get. And it reminds me – I’ve been reading some of the ancient Greco-Roman Hermetic texts by priests in Egypt where they would do that. They would have an initial surface level meaning in the text, but then they would use all sorts of, like, double entendres and hidden meanings, and there’s something very mercurial about that in terms of presenting or speaking in two languages almost at the same time, which is one of the things you really do in the book that makes it such an enjoyable read as an astrologer, of just like —
RO: Right.
CB: — you know, seeing both of those language used simultaneously and intertwined.
RO: No, I mean, yeah. I couldn’t – you know, it was my – I have a literary agent in New York called Mark Gottlieb, and he was going around to different publishers selling a book of fiction I’d written called Truth Wall, and they were all saying, “When’s he gonna write a memoir?” And Mark said to me, you know, why don’t you – “Have you ever thought about it?” And I thought, no. Because I can’t actually – I can’t think of anything without thinking of the astrology and the accompanying astrological meaning. But at the same time as this was going on, well, I was reading – I read a couple of books on astrology, and I thought, “Well, I don’t – I’m not really getting the feeling, you know? I want more blood and guts. I wanna know what this really, really feels like. And I don’t wanna know about what Mars in Sagittarius means.” You know, you can figure that all out yourself. What does it feel to that person? How terrible is it? How wonderful is it?
So I thought – and also, I felt I know quite a bit about astrology, and I don’t always – some of what I believe may not be what you believe or what other astrologers believe, you know, about the rulerships, for instance, of the signs, the rulerships. I have a different idea about that. But I thought, I wondered if I could combine the two – the story of my life, which is relatively interesting because of my exotic childhood, and it’s interesting because of Tears for Fears and all the success. Interesting because of what I’ve had to go through in terms of addiction and in terms of Caroline. But yeah, no, I just thought, it felt right and it felt natural, and I had my first meeting – I only wrote three or four chapters, you know – and I had my first, my only meeting with Carrie Thornton from Dey Street. And she had no problem whatsoever with including astrology. And I thought, well, okay – well, here we go! And she had an idea of how to incorporate it, because I was going to sort of weave it in like a tapestry, possibly to the detriment of the narrative. But she said, no, we’ll do it as a series of interstitials so you have the story mainly with very few references to astrology, but at the end, you can explain a little bit more of what was going on, and that’s what I did.
But yeah, it is – I hope it’s got depths to it that people will get. They’ll get it by reading it. And I hope – one of the reasons why I tried to make it accessible, not with too much jargon, was I was hoping that people would get to the end of it and start to understand astrology. Because it’s not what you read in the papers and magazines. That stuff is rubbish. It’s far, far more in depth and extremely complicated.
CB: Yeah. That was the biggest thing about this and that I could see that you accomplished is almost every chapter at the end of it has this digression where you teach people astrology, and you want them through —
RO: Yeah.
CB: There’s one about the significations of the planets. There’s one about the meanings of the signs and the quadruplicities and the elements.
RO: Yeah.
CB: There’s another about the significations of the houses. So that your book, and especially to, like, the large audience of largely non-astrologers that you’re speaking to, it almost reads to me like the – it’s like, the Cosmos and Psyche of autobiographies where somebody really, you know, prominent is presenting astrology in a really respectable fashion to non —
RO: That is an amazing compliment. Thank you very much! Because Cosmos and Psyche is just incredible, and it’s just – it’s just absolutely wonderful. I actually have a signed copy.
CB: Nice.
RO: It was for my 60th birthday. My wife Emily contacted Richard Tarnas and got him to sign one to me; it was just absolutely beautiful. Yeah, but it took me a while. Took me a while to read it.
CB: Yeah.
RO: It’s amazing. So that’s a great big compliment you say that, and that’s kind of – I could have – I think I could have added a bit more astrology, but I’m not sure if it would have, you know, maybe put some people off.
CB: No, I think it was the perfect amount for a non-astrological audience that it will be – in the same way that Tarnas’s book was the gateway for many people into astrology – that this’ll be the gateway for many people. And that’s actually why I did the interview, because like, your publicist reached out to me in, like, June, but initially I don’t think they – it was clear to me that there was an astrological component to the book. I thought it was just an autobiography, but then I realized a couple of weeks ago and it happened actually the day of the solar eclipse in Leo, and I realized what the book truly was and read it and said, “This is amazing.” Like, I wanted to talk to you about this. And you were actually born right after a solar eclipse in Leo, so that’s one of the brilliant timing things is you just had a recurrence transit where you were born around a solar eclipse in Leo, and then an autobiography about your life just came out the same month as a solar eclipse in Leo. And that’s incredibly synchronistic to me.
RO: Yeah. Well, that’s – I don’t know a lot about solar eclipses other than the fact that I’ve seen one, which was amazing. But I would say —
CB: Did you not know you were born right after one?
RO: I did not! That’s new information; thank you for that! I would say that last solar eclipse really set things off. I don’t know how; I don’t know why. A lot of the time, I don’t – I try not to get too excited about things, you know. The astrology of this book, you know, and Jupiter on my 4th house cusp, that kind of stuff. You know, you’re optimistic, but you don’t wanna get too carried away. But yeah, I would say that that solar eclipse really kind of set the word alight. I started to get some chart positions and stuff like that, and it was a real shock, you know, of going in straight in number three in New York Times and my friends sending me stuff and I’m number one in England in the Saturday Times and number three in the Sunday Times and I’m thinking, “Well! Okay! Well, obviously people are excited about Tears for Fears. Let me see what effect I can have, you know, astrological, you know?”
CB: Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, you did a great public service to all the astrologers and all the people that treat it like a significant subject that is more than what you see in the newspapers and things like that.
Okay, so backing up, I wanna back up and make sure we cover all of the bases here. One of the – do you know Curt’s rising degree? I was curious about that.
RO: I don’t have his chart on my computer. I don’t know it —
CB: Okay.
RO: — right now. Yeah.
CB: Sure. No problem.
Let’s see, I wanna go back and cover certain things. You know, just going back to the height of in the ‘80s of Tears for Fears, and I’m trying to think of some of the astrology that came up during that time period. We talked about you being in your early 20s and the two of you having your waning Saturn square when things start to come together in terms of the band, and then eventually releasing your first album, I believe, in 1983, right?
RO: Yep.
CB: Okay. And then your second album comes out in 1985, and that ends up being your biggest album in terms of chart performance, right?
RO: Yeah. Absolutely.
CB: Okay.
RO: And I would say can you go to the degrees of the signs – so my Saturn is at 24 Capricorn. So Big Chair – Songs from the Big Chair. Huge success, you know? Did it feel good? No! It felt Saturnian, you know? So it’s, as I say in the book, it’s like, it can bring the greatest reward, but it won’t feel great, you know? And then Seeds of Love, 28 degrees, 28 years old, Capricorn – 28 degrees of Capricorn. Seeds of Love felt amazing.
CB: 1989?
RO: In 1989. It was just a fantastic experience of touring and traveling and freedom. Really Jupiterian, and then that lead to the Saturn return, and it was goodbye, Curt and me. But the other interesting thing right now, because this book was coming out I was looking at the astrology with Pluto conjunct my Midheaven in Aquarius, which is very astrological, that all makes sense. And the Jupiter in Leo right at the bottom of the chart, really fantastic omens. And I’m thinking, “Well, hang on a minute – why does this feel so Saturnian again? It feels like Big Chair.” You know? And where is Saturn coming from? So I’m looking at Saturn. And there he is, he’s squaring my – this is by transit – squaring my Moon.
CB: Yeah.
RO: Saturn in Aries squaring my Moon in Capricorn, not very nice!
CB: It’s those squares again.
RO: Yeah, lots of isolation, lots of sort of loneliness.
Then if you – you should be able to show this, but there’s my progressed chart where the progressed Midheaven is 14 degrees Aries where Saturn is placed. So even on —
CB: Oh, okay.
RO: Yeah! I mean, it’s just – whoever came up with this stuff is a genius, you know? I mean, it’s just absolutely ridiculous! So that’s explains why it’s so Saturnian, you know.
CB: Right, yeah. I mean, Saturn is just such a dominant —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — player in your chart, because you were born at night, so the Moon is the most important luminary for you, and it’s in Capricorn applying to Saturn and Jupiter in Capricorn. And that stellium is so important, and so much of your life and those hard aspects of Saturn back to its natal placement by transit just keep showing up over and over again at different points.
And you mentioned progressions, and that was another great digression you had at one point where you briefly described secondary progressions and you described moving from one major phase of your life to another, I believe, when the Sun moved into Libra as being —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — a really big shift for you in terms of, like —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — the tone and quality of your life, I think, right?
RO: Huge. I mean, I said earlier, you know, I used to think I was a Virgo, you know? That make extreme sense to me being sort of rational and self-analytical. The sense there was something wrong with me; there’s something wrong with me, which led me to psychotherapy. And you know, a bit of a control freak, tending towards sobriety – those were the days. And for the first 30 years of my life, my Sun was progressed into Virgo, yeah? When it progressed into Libra, my first son was born, and I didn’t know why I was in psychotherapy anymore. It’s just like that! Absolutely incredible. Perspectives! The shift in – now my progressed Sun’s in Scorpio; that’s another story. But yeah, no, it was – and then all of a sudden, you know, I’m not singing about my past. I’m wearing these, you know, I’m getting my hair done and wearing these beautiful velvet suits. It’s all very swish and very Libran, you know, but crazy.
CB: Yeah, I loved that, noting that shift. And yeah, there were two things – two thoughts there – on of them is a lot of the songs earlier in the mid-’80s seemed like they had a much darker tone to them or darker tendency that seemed evocative of your Mercury-Pluto conjunction ruling the Ascendant or your —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — Moon applying to that conjunction with Saturn. Like, especially “Mad World” being your first really big hit single —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — that you wrote. And then I meant to ask you, like, the one musical question I had is just with later around the time you were having that recurrence transit of Jupiter and Saturn around 1999, 2000, 2001, and there’s the cover of “Mad World” by Gary Jules. I meant to ask you – I don’t know if this gets asked before – but it made me think of how with Trent Reznor and Johnny Cash, there’s that famous story about Johnny Cash doing the cover of “Hurt” and Trent Reznor at first being reluctant about it or, like, that feeling weird to him because of what a personal story it was, but then eventually having this feeling like it became Johnny Cash’s song in some way and, like —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — releasing that. Did you have similar feelings when it came to that cover, or what was your relationship to that in terms of seeing your own lyrics and whatever you felt behind that song coming out through someone else’s mouth and then sort of becoming so popular and influential for a period?
RO: Yeah. Well, I was flattered, honored, surprised, and really fully immersed in what they’ve done. It was just, you know, there’s a story in the – I didn’t know about – I had signed off on the film ages ago, and I forgot about it, you know? And my ex-manager, Debra Baum, came across the CD to England and she put it on the kitchen on the boombox, and I was just absolutely blown away. And as it says in the book, my younger son who’s about seven or something at the time, not quite sure, starts singing along to it. And it was, like, you know, me and my progressed Sun in Libra had completely forgotten about my awful past, my awful childhood, and I just became – had become this dad looking after everyone. But you know, I love that version really very much.
CB: Okay. Nice. Yeah. So it really it wasn’t something where there was like, negative feelings around it, but instead it —
RO: No.
CB: — gave you a lot of perspective hearing it that many years later —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — from a —
RO: Yeah, it was beautiful.
CB: — completely different lens.
RO: It’s a beautiful expression of the lyric and made the lyrics sound – it made the lyric audible, whereas it could have got lost, it can get lost in the clacks or in the clutter of what we did.
CB: Right. Absolutely. Okay. So I have other things. How are you feeling at this point? Like, we could pause here and take a little break. This is going really well; we’re at an hour, though, if you’d like to —
RO: Okay.
CB: — keep talking, we can, or we can —
RO: Sure.
CB: — head towards trying to wrap things up. It looks like we could – there’s a bunch of other stuff, obviously, we could go into. But how are you —
RO: Okay.
CB: — feeling?
RO: I feel fine. Yeah.
CB: Okay, cool.
RO: It’s just very nice speaking to an astrologer, you know, because —
CB: Yeah, I —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — saw some of the other interviews that you did, and it’s nice seeing you trying to explain astrology to non-astrologers, but I can —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — see —
RO: It’s tough.
CB: — that, you know, obviously, they don’t get it on that level —
RO: No.
CB: — so yeah. You know, getting to give you the chance to, you know, expand —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — on some of this with somebody that understands, I relish —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — the opportunity. Okay, let’s talk about some of the other themes in the book, though. I mean, one of the major recurring ones early on is just telling the story of your parents and some of the heaviness surrounding that. And we don’t have to get into all of that, but it just seemed like such a dominant part of your early biography, and I was just so repeatedly struck by – I mean, from my perspective and the perspective of ancient astrology, they would look at what planet rules the rising sign, which for you is Mercury, and then what sign it’s in relative to the rising sign as indicating some of the house topics. And there just seeing, like, Pluto conjunct Mercury in the 4th sign, which has some of those themes of parents, of early home and living situation, and yeah. Then there was also the other component with your IC in the sign of Leo, very close to the Sun and Uranus, and then your father having that Uranian component as well —
RO: Oh, completely. Yeah.
CB: — in many different ways. But then also —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — having Neptune in Scorpio exactly squaring your —
RO: Right.
CB: — IC and some of those issues with, like, mental health issues that came up. There was also with the Mercury-Pluto conjunction, there was, like, your parents shot amateur pornography in order to make money early on and how that impacted you. There were so many, like, themes there that were just, like, deeply Plutonian and Uranian and Neptunian that it was really – your honesty in the book and analysis and sharing some of that and processing it was really incredible just as a case study in astrology —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — in addition to biography.
RO: Yeah. I mean, you know, in the second chapter, it’s called George and Margaret, and it’s about my parents, and specifically very much about my father. I kind of left my mum alone, you know; she’s still alive and 91 years old, and god bless her. But yeah, my father, you know, as it says in the book, he was an electrician and Uranus is sometimes called the electric planet. In fact, electricity was discovered soon after the discovery of Uranus. And my father was an electrician who had electric shock therapy. So he was also, you know, his Uranus was in Aquarius, so very, very political. He was into politics post-second World War, which were kind of utopian one world. An attempt – you know, I know his dad, my grandfather, was very involved in Esperanto, which was a language designed to get everyone speaking the same one so there was no difference between Spain, Italy, Germany, and England or Mexico or whatever. We all have this common language; we can all live a peaceful existence. Yeah, my father was, you know, very involved in the world – Association of World Federalists. So this was, again, a real progressive quality my father had with the Aquarius and with the Uranus. But, you know, his Leo Moon, as I say in the book, was, you know, I think sometimes that Leo holds Aquarius back, because it’s that ego. It’s coming in, and my father was definitely the center of things, Napoleonic, even.
CB: Yeah, he seems to have had this, on the one hand, despite some of the violence and some of the mental health issues that he struggled with, you do talk sometimes about this eccentricness and this brilliance sometimes that – it was —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — interesting how your life has developed ultimately and having especially your side interests in astrology and —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — making that so important compared to, like, in his biography, the things he struggled with but also sometimes having these unusual and interesting interests and side things that he focused on.
RO: Oh yeah, I mean, he was – I mean, you know, it was, he was a funny guy. Apart from the politics, you know, post-World War II politics, he then with the woman who sort of replaced my mother very sort of a kind of neurotic Scandinavian called Sylvia, he started to explore extrasensory perception. And he would hypnotize her. He wrote a book that’s Neptunian. You know, he was never particularly successful, my father; he never got published, you know? And no, it was just a crazy world that he lived in, you know? In estate housing. So there was no normality. And in some ways, it’s kind of nice, but not when you’re a child.
CB: Yeah, that sense of especially once your parents broke up the lack of foundation and needing to move around from place to place and these other 4th house themes of feeling sort of like, unmoored or untethered or ungrounded seemed like it was, in addition to just witnessing the breakup of your parents, the lack of a stable home after that point seemed like it —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — affected you really deeply for a while.
RO: Oh yeah. I mean, completely. I mean, then we never owned our home. I mean, when my parents were together, it was state housing, so that was, you know, a cheap rental. And then when my parents split, my mother, we went into rental accommodation as well. It wasn’t until many, many years later that I think my mum bought her first home. So I was about, I was 15 years old.
CB: Okay. Yeah. So that’s another interesting 4th house sort of emphasis just in terms of how that impacted your life.
And then let’s see, that brings in the father, which we’ve covered, the mother…
RO: Yeah.
CB: At the height of your fame, the father publishing a letter you wrote to him, an angry letter, was, like, a huge —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — sort of terrible experience that you had, again bringing up some of those Plutonian and other themes in terms of the 4th house. And then when did he pass away? Because that was another important I think timing or turning point, right?
RO: That was 1988, yeah. It was —
CB: Okay, yeah, that was the other Saturn return thing was —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — your father passing away, basically. By sign – like, Saturn starts —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — heading in that —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — direction.
RO: Yeah, not quite, but I mean, it’s – I mean, it was expected. You know? I mean, he was 73 years old. That was the age expectancy of the time, even though he never exercised. He smoked all the time. He managed to survive. No, I can’t – I don’t know the actual astrology of that, other than the fact that it was the Pluto squaring my Imum Coeli, my 4th house cusp.
CB: Okay, that — yeah, that’s pretty significant. I’m just pulling —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — that up now. So Pluto was – yeah. Saturn went into Capricorn later that year, so that would have been the start, but yeah. Pluto was around early to mid-Scorpio at that point.
And then to jump forward again, not in a non-linear fashion, but one of the later things you talked about that was really interesting was Neptune going through Pisces later in your life and —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — struggling with Ambien addiction when —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — Neptune was squaring your Ascendant especially.
RO: Ascendant-Descendant, yeah.
CB: Yeah. And there was other transits that were tied in with that, but that was actually one of the most gripping chapters for me, just in the way that you wrote that, and —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — the way that you expressed what dealing with something like that, like Ambien addiction, is like, I thought was really brilliant. But seeing it in the backdrop of that Neptune transit was very interesting as an astrologer, especially when you started to go through the process of getting clean as well —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — as obviously the backdrop of the heavy Pluto transit going over your Capricorn stellium and the simultaneous feelings of grief and loss that you were dealing with for much of that decade.
RO: Yeah. I mean, again, this is – I didn’t – at the time, I was going through it, and I was just going through it, and it was frightening. And maybe we should explain something to your listeners that I’ve been addicted to Ambien since around 2003. And I’d taken it in a very regular way, in a very structured way. But once my wife died, I started using it as a kind of way of keeping grief at bay, which is not a good idea at all. Grief needs to be expressed, or else it will just kill you.
So then I started taking too much; I started taking it in the day whenever I would get these terrible feelings of grief. I couldn’t process them. They would threaten my whole being. And in the end, I had seizures, which took me into hospital. Luckily my girlfriend, now my wife, was with me, called 999. I had these grand mal seizures, which I’m not very proud of it, and they’re not very nice. You have periods of psychosis, you know, straight away. I mean, it’s just, it’s really remarkable what the brain can see, convince – I was convinced I was in a completely different place! And but what I didn’t notice it was a Neptune square. Maybe it would have helped me a little bit; I’m not sure. So it’s all in retrospect.
So what was happening was my body was telling me to quit. Absolutely quit, and get clean. My mind was telling me I absolutely need this because I can’t sleep without it. So then what happened was I was having these seizures, and then I went into these periods of – huge periods of spasming. Of shaking, literally shaking with all my muscles tightening. It was like the best gym workout you could ever imagine. I lost weight. My muscles were suddenly defined. But what Neptune was doing was trying to cleanse me, if that makes sense. Now, I put it very well in the book. I put it very well, indeed, I think, about – I’m grasping for the words now. But you know, I mean, there’s different ways of looking at it. I mean, you could sort of say, well, I think —
CB: This is 2018 by this point?
RO: Yeah, 2018. I think that Neptune was wanting to be – I don’t know the words now, the words. Let’s say Neptune was making way for me to be more Neptunian in a musical sense and not Neptunian in the addiction sense, if that makes sense. I mean, I put it in the book; I explained it very well, you know, of what Neptune can actually do. It’s extremely painful. It was extremely painful for me to go through those spasms. My body wanted to get rid of the toxin, and yeah, it took a long time.
CB: Yeah. And this is, like, Saturn’s in Capricorn at this point, so you’re already – by sign, this is your second Saturn return already happening as well and hitting a physical wall where you just —
RO: Oh yeah.
CB: Especially having your Moon so early in mid-Capricorn at 14 degrees where your body literally, as you said, if you hadn’t played tennis as much as you did over the years and been in relatively good physical condition —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — like, it might have killed you at that time. That this was —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — you know, thinking about fate and free will, it really made me think about that, that sometimes there could be a doorway that’s open for one option at certain points in your life. And for you, it seemed like this was a point where it could have been the end. But then it wasn’t, partially because your partner was so proactive – Emily was so proactive about calling the hospital —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — or encouraging you to get into rehab or other things like that.
RO: Yeah, exactly. I mean, no, I mean, it’s, you know. It is funny in life, isn’t it? You kind of think, well, you spend all those years playing tennis in the Caribbean mid-day and your heart is going crazy – like, crazy! And in some ways, you’re kind of preparing yourself when you’re a lot older when you actually need the strength of that muscle just to keep you alive. There’s – I don’t know if you know Jeremy Renner. He wrote a book about his near-death experience called My Last Breath – My Next Breath, sorry! And he talks about when he was a child and his mother was pregnant with another kid. She would take him to this class to learn how to breathe. And he thought, “This is ridiculous. Why do I wanna know how to do that?” But when he had the accident with the snowplow, he’s dying. He knows he’s dying. And he knew instinctively that all he had to do was keep breathing. It wasn’t automatic anymore. So you do wonder in your life, maybe – and maybe this is a glamorous way of looking at it – but you do wonder whether you are, your earliest self is preparing your older self for something that’s gonna be very tricky to handle.
CB: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s true, and it’s weird how some of the early life experiences that are either positive or negative often do end up preparing us for the exact – those most crucial moments that happen later on where all of our experiences intersect in this important way sometimes to create some of the most important experience of our life which then are sometimes hinted at already or in the birth chart. But then at the later time, you finally see what that placement was all about.
RO: Yeah.
CB: And I mean, this also brings up with your 8th house Moon and the Capricorn stellium just you do mention near-death experiences and an interest in that in the book.
RO: Yeah. Yeah. I’m very, I’m fascinated by it. Absolutely fascinated. I’m not a particularly religious guy, but it was when Pluto was transiting my Jupiter in Capricorn, it was first doing that, it was during covid as well. I was spending a lot of time watching YouTube, and the near-death experiences on there were – it changed my worldview, completely. But I will say this about astrology. Astrology allows or takes into consideration every belief system from atheism to theism. And we are predetermined to have those beliefs. A lot of people are atheists that don’t know why. They think that it’s a rational decision. A lot of people are theists; they think it’s a rational decision. But it’s, you know, as I said recently, you are predetermined to believe things you believe, thinking you came up with that idea.
CB: Yeah. I always am entertained, especially sometimes by, like, astrology skeptics that have, like, Saturn in a night chart in the 9th house or something like that, and their impulse is —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — to reject or be dismissive of things like astrology. But then the astrology itself describes that.
RO: Explains it, I know. It’s incredible. It’s absolutely incredible. I mean, I tell this story – I’m not sure if it – you know, I can’t establish it as fact or quotes or use citation, but it was a book I read which I lost in the move. And it describes going into an excellent bookstore that has a Mind, Body, and Spirit section; that’s where the books on astrology live. There are 12 books of divination from Aries to Pisces. What the year ahead is gonna bring. Now you would think over a 10-year period, they would all sell the same if there’s nothing in Sun signs. But as this book says, the books that sell the most are Scorpio and Sagittarius. The books that sell the least are Gemini and Taurus. And now I found myself at dinner parties, you know, with a Taurus. It’s like, they’re not interested!
CB: Right.
RO: You know, they’re just not interested! And you know, you meet a Scorpio and you know you’re gonna be interested. Of course you are! You wanna know what’s going on underneath the surface. And the same with – Gemini, you know, a Gemini – it’s not so much that Gemini is atheist. It’s just their orientation is towards moving information around. Jupiter and Sagittarius, it’s philosophy. Mercury, Gemini, it’s not. And this is also, again, goes down to belief system, this goes down to what your experience is. A good example of that kind of thinking is do know Federico Faggin? Federico Faggin, he’s written a book —
CB: No.
RO: — he came up with the – he invented the silicon chip. And he wrote a book called Irreducible. He’s an idealist, yeah, as opposed to a materialist. And he had this —
CB: Okay.
RO: — he had this incredible – he was tasked with trying to make computers conscious, yeah? And he had this incredible experience, a mystical experience, you know? And he explains it all, and this is why he believes what he believes. And then you’ve got someone like Anil Seth who is your materialist neuroscientist who completely is the opposite. Now, Anil Seth is a Gemini, and Federico Faggin is a Sagittarius. But they don’t know that.
CB: Right.
RO: It’s like – because their experience is gonna be completely in line with how they – the energies that are making them up. I find the whole thing fascinating. This is why I, you know, I know every time I’m being a Leo. It’s kind of like, “Come on!” You know?
CB: Yeah. Well, that – it’s kind of digression, but your Sun in Leo and your changing hairstyles throughout the book being, like, a major recurring thing was a funny kind of like Leo element —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — of things that comes up with the Leo mane or the Leo hairstyle.
RO: Yeah, it’s crazy. And I mean, even the cover of the book!
CB: Right.
RO: It’s like, here’s an old Leo! And I mean, there’s a part of me that just doesn’t wanna be that, you know. It’s that guy on stage, you know, and a part of me just wants to be Capricornian, you know. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. You blend all of those elements, though, at different points in your life eventually together so seamlessly where you have the intense, deep, wanting to do the underground work with the Mercury conjunct Pluto.
RO: Yeah.
CB: You have the serious, sometimes ambitious, sometimes depressive Moon and Saturn and Jupiter in Capricorn —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — element, and then you have this other creative Leonine element where —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — you know, you’ve had to stand on your own and become your own frontman and express yourself creatively and center sometimes your own needs and ambitions and wants and other things at other points with that. So that’s another reason why it’s a great case study is understanding by reading your full biography, like, the synthesis of how you are all of those placements rather than just, you know, one of those things.
RO: Well, you know, I mean, yeah. This is my story, you know? And I only occasionally do I get to step outside of it all, you know, and know that this is not me, if that makes sense at all. This is the narrative of your life, and you have choices, but I’m not sure how much is our say and I know the universe doesn’t care if you drink coffee or tea, as long as you have a hot drink. And so, you know, I try and – only occasionally, I’m not very good at meditating, and only occasionally once have I managed to get to this point in my brain that tells me that no, this isn’t you. Which, again, is gonna sound slightly mystical, but I’m grateful for those periods.
CB: Yeah. For sure.
All right, one of my last questions – just astrological influences. You said – one of the things that was really cool is you said you attended lectures by Liz Greene —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — the ‘80s —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — which is incredible, because she’s such a legend —
RO: She’s amazing.
CB: — but for sort of people in my generation, she’s more reclusive and we don’t see as much of her at this point. So you attending —
RO: Yeah, I know.
CB: — lectures of hers in person is amazing. And then also Richard Tarnas has been a huge influence on you.
RO: Yeah.
CB: You mentioned Marc Edmund Jones once in passing.
RO: Yeah.
CB: What were your —
RO: Sabian symbols.
CB: Yeah. What were your major astrological influences, or are there any missing?
RO: It was Liz Greene, Liz Greene, Liz Greene, very much —
CB: Okay.
RO: — to begin with. And so my school of astrology is called psychological astrology, so we would go, me and my late wife, we would go on a Sunday to Regent’s Park College and listen to Liz lecture. There were a few other people, as well. But it would be a room; there would be, you know, 50, 60 people. And she would speak very quietly, so people would listen. And everyone would put their sort of tape recorders right next to her to try and get what she said. But no, she was a fierce, fierce woman. And so she also in the astrology shop in London on Covent Garden, you can buy – you can buy them online as well – they’re booklets. You give them your birth time, and she does – it’s computer-generated, which is quite remarkable – of your psychology. They’re remarkable! Remarkable.
So yeah, she was – I mean, I’ve read The Astrology of Fate; I read that when I was 29, and I read it when I was 59. And I’ve read other books by her. But yeah, she – her perspective definitely was – and Richard Tarnas was a different thing altogether, because that’s mundane astrology, you know? But incredible.
CB: And Tarnas was more of – because his book came out in 2005, I think —
RO: Six.
CB: — give or —
RO: Yeah.
CB: Six? Was it six?
RO: Yeah.
CB: Okay. So that’s, like, a later influence. So you had, like, Liz Greene.
RO: Yeah.
CB: The Marc Edmund Jones. Were there any other major influences just, like, for historical purposes? I do a lot on the history of astrology, and just who’s reconstructing and placing whose influences people are drawing on to sort of contextualize their work in that way. Is there any other major authors that – or were those really the main ones for you?
RO: They’re the main ones, yeah. And I think, as you said, the Tarnas book is just remarkable. And you know, he talks about the Saturn-Pluto cycle of all the things that coincided with the conjunction, the square, and the opposition, including 9/11 which was a tight opposition of Saturn in Gemini, Pluto in Sagittarius. Saturn in Gemini, the twins, Pluto in Sagittarius – flying. And then, you know, as it says in the book, I just got blown away by this, and so I checked when the last Pluto-Saturn conjunction was, and it was in Capricorn in 2020, and it coincided with covid. So there’s another devastating thing that really changed our lives.
CB: Yeah. I mean, his discussion about Saturn-Pluto in his book and how it coincided with the AIDS pandemic —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — you know, ended up being some of the most prescient predictions about the covid pandemic when that same conjunction recurred. So his prediction, as well as Andre Barbault’s predictions —
RO: Yeah, that’s what —
CB: — were two of the biggest ones that really predicted the covid pandemic. But —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — going back to the Saturn-Pluto opposition in 2001, that was would have been in your Ascendant-Descendant axis roughly, and you —
RO: Exactly, yeah.
CB: You had an album that came out, like, on 9/11 —
RO: Yeah, yeah, I did, yeah.
CB: — that as a result of 9/11 didn’t do well, right?
RO: Well, I don’t know if it was a result of 9/11, but!
CB: Oh, okay.
RO: Certainly 9/11 took over. Any press I had organized was no longer important, which is fine. But yeah, you’re absolutely right; it was – I don’t know why I was suddenly involved in the Saturn-Pluto cycle, or not suddenly but I was – but I was! Yeah, it was Saturn was on my Ascendant; Pluto was on my Descendant. And yeah, I got caught up in it. I was actually flying – I flew the day before, that’s right. I may have —
CB: Wow.
RO: — had to fly that night, on 9/11. That doesn’t matter. You know?
CB: Yeah. That’s scary.
RO: Yeah.
CB: But yeah, that’s a really personal story then, like, having an album come out that day, and that then and flying the day before and sort of like, personalizing that Saturn-Pluto opposition that obviously —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — had much bigger implications in terms of world events and affecting thousands and millions of people. But then sometimes the personal stories of how things like that happened or how it fell in an individual’s chart are —
RO: Yeah.
CB: — very interesting.
RO: Yeah. I think so.
CB: Yeah. Great.
All right. This is amazing. Thank you so much for doing this interview today. I think I’ve run through most of my questions. Are there any major topics that you wish we had touched on or questions I should have asked or things when we’re talking to, like, an astrological audience or final thoughts that you have in terms of everything and just what you were hoping to accomplish with the book?
RO: Well, you know, I hope that your audience will understand what we’re talking about. Because you know, it can still sound like jargon. It doesn’t to me or to you, but to a lot of people it will, so I’m just hoping, yeah. And I’m hoping – I know that the book I’ve written, there’s gonna be a lot of interest because there’s never been a biography even on Tears for Fears or let alone an autobiography or memoir. So there’s a lot of interest from that perspective, and interest because I had an interesting life not devoid of suffering. But I hope that people understand the astrological, you know, the information, and they’ll understand that most of all, this is a story. That’s one thing I realized when I was writing it. Because every now and again, I would pull away. I would have a bird’s eye view of my parents. A bird’s eye view of what was going on with Caroline. And for a second, I wasn’t involved in the narrative, and it was wonderful.
CB: That’s beautiful. I love that. And that’s, you know, things come full circle, and that’s why it’s called Welcome to Your Life.
RO: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for writing the book. Everyone should go out and get it. I know all the astrologers are gonna enjoy it. And I don’t think it’ll be over their head at all; I think they’ll really enjoy it.
RO: Great.
CB: But thanks for joining me today, and thanks —
RO: Thank you!
CB: — everyone – thank you! Thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time.
[END CREDITS]
If you’re a fan of the podcast and you wanna get access to bonus content, then become a patron through my page on Patreon where you can get early access to new episodes, attend live recordings and webinars, access the monthly electional astrology podcast, The Secret Astrology Podcast that’s only available to patrons, or you can even get your name listed in the credits. Find out more at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.
Special thanks to the patrons on our Producers tier, including patrons Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jeanne Marie Kaplan, Melissa DeLano, Sonny Bazbaz, Kwatsi Alibaruho, Annie Newman, Ginger Sadlier, Berlynn West, and Nicki Crawford.
If you’re really looking to take your studies of astrology to the next level, then consider signing up for my Hellenistic Astrology course, which is an online course in ancient astrology where I take people from basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over a hundred hours of video lectures, plus live webinars and Q&A sessions each month. And at the end of the course, you get a certificate of completion saying that you studied with me. Find out more information at TheAstrologySchool.com.
If you’re looking to get an astrological consultation, then check out the new consultations page on the podcast website where I have a list of astrologers I recommend for birth chart readings and other types of consultations. You can find that at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Consultations.
The astrology software we use and recommend here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, and you can get a 15% discount on it by using the promo code ‘AP15’ at the website Alabe.com.
For Mac users, we recommend the program called Astro Gold for Mac OS, and you can use the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ to get a 15% discount at their website, which is AstroGold.io.