The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 174, titled:
October 2018 Astrology Forecast: Venus Retro in Scorpio
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on September 30, 2018
Original episode URL:
https://theastrologypodcast.com/2018/09/30/october-2018-astrology-forecast-venus-retro-in-scorpio/
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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 November 14th, 2025
Copyright © 2025 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode was recorded on Thursday, August—or not August—September 20, 2018, starting at 3:50 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this the 174th episode of the show. For more information about how to subscribe to the podcast and help support the production of future episodes by becoming a patron, please visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking with Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock about the astrological forecast for October of 2018. Hey, guys. Welcome back to the show.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris.
KELLY SURTEES: Hello.
CB: Hello. Kelly, you are back. You were in Australia the last time we talked to you, but you’re back home now.
KS: I am. I am back home and finding my feet. I’m loving it.
CB: Excellent. And, Austin, you also just got back from a trip to a conference, right?
AC: Yeah. I was up in Seattle for the Texts and Traditions Colloquium.
CB: Interesting. And that was for like esoteric books, basically, right?
AC: Yeah. It’s the successor to an event which ran for about a decade called The Esoteric Book Conference. And so, it’s a bunch of, you know, wizards talking about their favorite books. Presenters, you know.
CB: Sounds fun. All right. So today we’re gonna get into the astrological forecast. I can’t believe it’s already been a month since our last one. I always say that. But this time it did really fly by pretty quickly. We’re gonna focus primarily on the Venus retrograde. I think that was the thing that we all agreed really stands out for October. Or that’s like the main astrological transit I think we’re probably gonna spend the most time talking about. But before we get there, as usual, we have a few news and announcement-type things to get through, and a little discussion topic, and then eventually we’ll get to the forecast. So for the video version of this, I’ll put some timestamps in the description, or in the comments section below the video, if you wanna skip ahead to the forecast. And I’ll see what I can do about maybe putting some timestamps on the audio version, on the description page for this episode as well, if people wanna skip forward there, also. All right. So before we get into things, first, what do you guys have going on this month? Kelly, you are getting ready for a conference, right?
KS: Yes. I’m getting ready for the SOTA Conference, which will be in Buffalo mid-October, the 18th to the 22nd. Better check the dates. So about a month from now. And it’s one of those lovely kinds of small conferences. I think their tagline is, you know, “You won’t get lost in the crowd.” And I often take the train down from Toronto Union, because it’s maybe a two-hour drive. So it’s a very pleasant sort of trip. And in previous years, when I’ve gone on the train, you sort of bump into other astrologers, and you feel like you’re sort of taking the train to Hogwarts or something. Because it’s quite a beautiful train trip where you go over the Niagara region. Yeah, so that’s coming up. I’m giving the pre-conference or one of the pre-conference workshops there. I’m also participating in a panel. This is really interesting. They’ve put together a panel on Saturday afternoon around, you know, when we’ve made mistakes. So when we’ve, you know, made forecasts or, you know, given reassurances, if you like, to our clients where things haven’t quite turned out as expected. So I’m really looking forward to both participating in that, but also, hearing what my fellow panelists have to say on that front.
CB: Yeah, that’s a great idea for a panel. Cuz that’s so important in terms of not just acknowledging, you know, one’s successes—which, you know, certainly we all like to do, or you might like to highlight as an astrologer—but also, sometimes going back and looking at your failures in order to like grow and improve, not just individually, but as a community.
KS: Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry, Austin. What were you gonna say?
AC: Oh, I was just gonna say, yeah, I think it’s important of course to look at where you went wrong when you didn’t get the right answer. But I think in doing that it’s also useful to look back and look at, you know, where you are getting everything from, and say, “That was actually a reasonable prediction. It’s not that I messed up and, you know, none of these techniques work or whatever. But realize, like, as far as I know, everything was pointing to that.” And then look for the bit that you didn’t see, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Cuz sometimes when we’re self-critical, you know—although there’s a lot of improvement that results from self-criticism or criticism of past actions—sometimes it’s easy to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. And that’s a way of not really sitting with the mixture of success and error that went into whatever the prediction was.
KS: Yeah. So I’m just starting to go through all of my, you know, clients’ charts with just some of the feedback that I’ve had. I’ve known for a while I’ll be on this panel. So every now and then, when someone tells me something, I’m like, “That’s not how I interpreted that thing,” just making that mental note. So it’ll be interesting. Yeah, it’s really different to talk about, look, we can get it right a lot of the time, or we can get it partially right. But, yeah, what are we missing when something doesn’t quite go as expected?
AC: Yeah. And those like ‘close-but-no-cigar’ predictions are really interesting.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Sure. So that’s the State of the Art Astrology Conference, known as SOTA. And that’s in Buffalo, later in October. Do you know the website for that?
KS: Yeah. I think it’s Donna Van Toen, so it’s Donna’s website. And Donna is D-O-N-N-A. Van Toen is V-A-N T-O-E-N. So even if you Google like S-O-T-A, ‘SOTA and Donna’, it should come up quite quickly.
CB: Okay. Awesome. And that actually reminds me that just in the past week, I think, the official announcement went out for the next Northwest Astrological Conference, which is gonna take place in Seattle next May. And Kelly and I—we’re both speaking at it. I think we’re both also doing like competing workshops, unfortunately, at the same time. What are your lectures there, Kelly?
KS: That’s a very good question.
CB: Okay. Well, instead of asking—
KS: Don’t ask me that question, cuz I haven’t checked. Cuz, you know, some people come back to you and say, “We’ve chosen these topics.” And I think you and I were chatting the other week, and you were like, “No, is the website up?” And I was like, “I’ve gotta check.”
CB: Right.
KS: But we are giving post-conference workshops on the same Monday, I believe.
CB: Yeah, that’s one of the funny things about astrologers speaking at conferences. The organizers usually ask you to submit like three or four possible talks that you could give and then they pick one that sort of matches the overall flow of the rest of the conference, and, oftentimes, the astrologer doesn’t find out until they’ve put the schedule up officially on the website. So a bunch of us just found out in the past week what talks we will actually be giving at NORWAC. This is gonna be I wanna say the biggest conference of the year, cuz there’s a lot of energy going into NORWAC. The organizer of NORWAC is, of course, Laura Nalbandian who organized UAC last year. All three of us are gonna be there. Austin, you’re only like an hour away or something, right, from Seattle?
AC: Eight.
CB: Eight? Okay.
KS: Eight hours? Okay.
CB: Eight hours.
KS: An hour flight.
AC: So, yes, I live in Oregon, but I live five hours south of Portland.
CB: Got it.
AC: Cuz people are like, “Oh, you’re in Oregon. So that means Seattle’s right around the corner.” No. California is 15 miles away.
KS: Right.
CB: All right.
KS: We’ll actually all be together in person then.
CB: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that. And hopefully, I mean, we’re still kicking around the idea—and I need to talk to Laura—about maybe we can do some sort of podcast event. If we were gonna do one next year, then I think NORWAC is where we would do it.
AC: Yeah, that’s natural.
CB: At the very least we’re gonna do a meet-and-greet. But maybe best-cast scenario, we do a live recording of an episode like we did at UAC a few months ago.
KS: Totally.
CB: So that’s gonna be awesome. You can find out more information about that at norwac.net. It’s gonna take place at the end of May 2019. I’m giving a talk on reception as a mitigating factor in natal astrology, another talk on sect, the difference between day and night charts, and then a post-conference workshop on blending modern and traditional astrology. And, Kelly, it looks like your workshop is Places of Ease and Pathways of Frustration: Go Deeper with Natal Aspects.
KS: That’s right, yes. Cuz I did what you were just saying where, you know, you submit a few topics, and it’s not just you get to speak on your favorite thing, cuz the organizer’s trying to balance the topic choice, basically. So I’m giving one of the keynote lectures and that is going to be on Towards a Collaborative Future: Past, Present, and the Way Forward. Now that I’m actually already working on it, that’s a little bit more of an intense thing to give. And then one of the talks I’m giving is called Timing of Transformations. So looking at some of those major predictive events that can happen when you go through a really significant life event. And then the second talk is on career planets. So fulfilling your potential, looking at where we can see career potential in the chart or career themes. And it is a great conference. And Laura has already said that the interest very early on is much stronger or much more interest than usual. So it’s the kind of conference where it might actually sell out. So for people who are interested, definitely book early. And the early-bird rates are incredibly affordable. So if you are thinking of coming to that conference, I wouldn’t leave it to the last minute to get registered.
CB: Definitely. All right, cool. I’m actually really excited about that, cuz NORWAC is always my favorite. It was my first conference, and it’s always like the one that I enjoy the most. Just cuz it’s like a nice size and you see, often, a lot of the same people, and it has like a cool layout in the hotel and everything else.
KS: Yes. The courtyard.
CB: Right.
KS: And Luba behind the bar with all the bad drinks.
CB: Right. There’s always like the same bartender like every year.
KS: Yeah. She’s been there as long as the conference has been there maybe. I’m not sure. She’s lovely.
CB: Sure. All right, so that will be great. Austin, what do you have going on this month?
AC: Well, I’m going to be teaching the synodic cycles unit in my fundamentals of astrology. So we’re gonna be going over how phase affects planets. And of course we’ll be talking about retrogrades, but we’ll be talking about the other less-famous phases the planets go through, right? Like occidental and oriental and combust and, you know, all of that. So, you know, it’s a piece of the fundamentals. Everyone should know it. If you don’t, you can drop in. Even though the class is designed sequentially—how shall we say—there are modules that are standalone. So people can pop in for a month if they need to bone-up on a particular topic, like synodic cycles. And it’s not this month, but I should tell you about it this month. As I mentioned before, I’m doing a live event in Melbourne, Australia with my friend and colleague Gordon White on November 24. And that is So Below, and we’ll be talking magic and astrology in history. And considerably more than half the tickets are already gone. So if you’re thinking about doing that, don’t doddle, because we can’t let extra people in. There’s, you know, a hard limit. And so, those tickets not only buy you some time with Gordon’s lovely self and my own questionable self, we actually have the venue for, I think, 8 or 10 hours, and have sponsorship from a brewery. And so, there will be two hours of, you know, hopefully not-totally-boring talking, and then there will be another eight hours of definitely-not-boring drinking and carousing and getting to know people. And that’s included with the ticket price.
CB: Awesome. Yeah, that sounds great. That’s great that it’s already half sold out. So it’s really booking up fast.
KS: Yeah, that’s amazing.
AC: Yeah. Well, we hoped people would wanna come.
CB: Sure.
AC: It’s the free drinks.
CB: Yeah, an open bar will do that. All right, so that’s what you’ve got going. You’ve got the event, the synodic cycles, and the Venus in Scorpio webinar as well, right?
AC: Yeah. I was originally going to do that this Sunday, but I’m going to need to reschedule it. And I actually wasn’t gonna bring it up, cuz I hadn’t figured out when I would reschedule it yet. That’ll get announced within the next couple of days. I think I might just do it on the station. It’s a Friday. I might maybe just, you know, dive right in. Either that or the previous Friday.
KS: On the Venus station?
AC: Yeah. So it’s either gonna be the 5th or—thinking about it, I’ll probably do the previous Friday. It’ll probably be the 28th. Yeah, I’ll do the 28th.
CB: Okay. And that actually reminds me—oh, and people can find out—I’m sure you’ll have a description page for that on your website, austincoppock.com.
AC: Yeah, I’ve had the description page up. We’re gonna talk about the Venus retrograde, and Venus retrogrades in general, and this one specifically, this year—as well as the Venus retrograde in Scorpio, which happens every eight years—and then do a little bit about what it might look like if it’s conjoined a planet in your chart. You know, if there are planets in the path of it, or if it’s a particular house and this and that. So we’re gonna, you know, try to hit it from as many angles as possible.
CB: Awesome. And actually that reminds me, Kelly, you’ve got that planetary trends retreat coming up in early 2019, right?
KS: Yeah. I was like speaking of forward planning, Austin, you’ve just given me my segue of what I forgot to talk about. Yeah, I’m doing a year-ahead transit and progressions workshop in Palm Springs, January 18-20, 2019. So that is open for registration for anyone who is interested. We’ll be looking at what’s happening in 2019, but connecting it to your personal chart. So the idea is to give everyone a chance to step away from their regular life, check back in with the cosmos, see what your personal cycles and planets have got in store for you, and do a little bit of sort of celestially-inspired, year-ahead planning.
CB: Awesome. That sounds great.
KS: Yeah. So info for that is on the Astrology University website.
CB: Okay. Just astrologyuniversity.com?
KS: Yeah. Like if you just put in ‘Palm Springs retreat’, it’ll come right up on the search button there.
CB: Perfect. All right, sounds good. Let’s see, what else? As for myself, I launched the Professional Astrologer Course, and that went really well. It’s been a really great rollout so far, and there was like a great first group of students who are taking it. And I’ve been spending some time over the past month doing interviews, video interviews with different professional astrologers, to add to the course. Sometimes they’re kind of short, like 30 minutes. Me and Kelly—we just did one where we got kind of carried away and it turned into like an-hour-long discussion about how to structure a natal astrology consultation. And then that sort of branched out into a bunch of like related themes. I don’t even know all the things we ended up getting into. Do you remember, Kelly?
KS: Yeah. I feel like we provided a really good overview of practice management, you know, handling the client, how to structure the session, how to manage the time. It would almost answer a lot of questions people would have about getting started or giving consults. Because we did blow our 30-minute time limit quite badly.
CB: Yes, but it was worth it, and that was a great interview I’ve added to the course. And so, I’m just adding different interviews to different parts of the course, with different professional astrologers, to get different perspectives and opinions. And I also did one with Adam Elenbaas on his experience teaching astrology. I did another one with Sam Reynolds on how he uses Twitter and how he’s used Twitter in order to really grow his astrological consulting business over the past decade. And I’m gonna keep doing other interviews over the course of the next month or so and adding them to different parts of the course. So you can find out more information about that course at theastrologyschool.com. And, yeah, I’m still doing open enrollment right now, so you can sign up whenever you’d like. Other announcements. Paula Belluomini and I are working on the calendars for next year, for 2019, and actually we’re having trouble coming up with a background design for next year’s calendar and we’re looking for a background design. So if there’s any designers out there that are interested in potentially submitting one, or if you’ve found a piece of artwork that might be nice, that we might be able to license, send me an email to let me know, just cuz we’re looking for something that would be striking on like a single-page calendar that shows all of the transits for the year. Hopefully, we’ll have that out before too long. Other than that, I’m also possibly looking for an assistant or for assistants. Because I’m getting kind of overwhelmed with the podcast and other sort of duties and other things that I’ve got going on, and I need to start like farming out some work. And I’m realizing that that’s what a lot of my friends are doing. Like, Kelly, you work with different people. That’s how you’re able to do as much as you do, right?
KS: Yeah, I do. I have a couple of great—I call them my ‘magic team’, Katrina and Rob. And they both work a couple of hours each day just keeping on top of inquiries. Sometimes people just need information that can be passed on from someone else. So, of course, anything to do with astrology and content and sessions and teaching is still all me. But as you guys know, there’s a portion of the inquiries that we get where somebody just needs to check the starting date for something or the price for something, or, “I can’t find the link for something,” and those inquiries can be handled by the ‘magic team’. And that just gives—well, it gives me a little bit more time to do the creative stuff. So more blogs, more podcasts, more videos, more teaching. And, similarly, I think for you Chris—and I know, Austin, we’ve talked about this, too. I think if anyone’s listening, that has skills in this sort of assistant support/tech/astrology space, let any one of us know.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Please do.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Definitely. And that goes in a number of different areas where I need help. I mean, one of them I’ve been behind in a while now is getting together transcripts for the podcast. Although, since we’ve started doing videos, I realized recently that YouTube automatically captions all episodes of the podcast that are uploaded to a video. All you have to do is just press the closed caption button. And the captions are actually surprisingly good. So a lot of the episodes that there’s video versions for, there’s gonna be transcripts already on YouTube. But there’s a lot of back episodes that I still need to, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to organize that project for a while now. So a bunch of little projects like that that I could use some help on, if anyone has any interest. I think that’s it for those announcements. The last sort of ‘announcement’ announcement is this month’s giveaway. So I actually found this really amazing astrological planner for 2019, and we are partnering up with them in order to give away three copies of that planner to three lucky patrons for this month’s giveaway. Cuz each month, we do a giveaway to patrons of The Astrology Podcast who support it on the $5 and $10 tiers. And so, I’m gonna do a drawing where we give away three of these planners, so I wanted to mention it really quickly. Cuz it’s kind of cool, and it’s kind of an innovative way that they’re developing this, where they’ve got a crowdfunding campaign in order to print up their target goal, which is, I believe, 2,000 copies of this really nice astrological planner for 2019. And for people watching the video version of this episode, I’ll just share my screen really quickly so you can see it. So it’s called the 2019 Astrological Planner by The Magic of I. And it’s pretty cool as a sort of weekly planner, and they call it sort of like a navigational tool for discovering your potential. Cuz it’s not just an astrological planner where it shows like the Moon cycles and planetary movements and things like that, but it can also be used as sort of like a journal as well. You’ve used different journaling-type things like that before, right, Kelly?
KS: Yeah, I have, cuz I’m a massive note-taker. And the production quality on this looks amazing. It just looks really spectacular. I’m like, I wanna buy one immediately.
CB: The phrase is “an intention-setting journal.” So part of the description is it says that: “The planner’s a love child of an artfully-designed regular calendar and a weekly planner and a yearly intention-setting journal and a map of planetary movements for 2019.” So the artwork is just really beautiful. The author is an astrologer named Kerry Kershaw from Melbourne, Australia. And one of the cool things about this is she has versions for both Northern and Southern Hemisphere. So she’s sort of conscious to make those two different versions for different timezones. There’s one for Pacific timezone and one for Southern Hemisphere. Like one of the Australian timezones. What’s AEST, Kelly? Which one is that?
KS: That’s the Australian Eastern Standard Time, I believe.
CB: So like Sydney and other cities like that.
KS: Yeah, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, basically. It’s the main timezone, if you like, that the major cities or the majority of the population in Australia would be on.
CB: Perfect.
KS: So that’s great. Yeah, so coming out of Australia, they’ll definitely have the North American timezones, but they’ll have the Aussie ones as well, which is great.
CB: Sure. Okay. So it’s got a monthly calendar, an aspectarian. It’s got different reference guides. It’s designed for both beginner, intermediate, and advanced students of astrology. So you don’t have to have a huge astrological background to use it, but you can actually learn astrology just through the process of using the planner. They’re doing an Indiegogo campaign, which ends on October 4, in order to plan it. So if they can get enough backers, then they will print 2,000 copies of the journal. I think they’re gonna print it no matter what. But their goal is raising $20,000 for printing all of the copies and shipping them for this planner. So there’s still 14 days left from the day that we’re recovering—that we’re recording this. So if you’d like to support this project, and also get one of the planners, do a search for ‘2019 Astrological Planner by The Magic of I’, or I’ll put a link to it on the description page for this episode of the podcast, on theastrologypodcast.com website. So you can find out more information about it there. All right, so that is the giveaway this month. Let’s transition at this point into our discussion topic before we get to the forecast.
So usually we have some sort of discussion topic where we just discuss things that are going on or things that have been on our mind, that we’re working on, over the course of the past few weeks, but we’re having a hard time. There’s not like a lot of topics. The only topic that I came up with is a discussion that came up recently on Twitter, which is a broader topic of pricing astrological consultations. Because there’s a little bit of an issue there where, from an astrologer’s perspective, sometimes it’s hard to figure out where to set your prices for doing like a natal astrology consultation or something like that. Because pricing is a little bit all over the place in that astrological community and there’s no set rate that like everybody uses as a standard rate, which then can make sort of confusing from a client standpoint in terms of knowing, you know, what’s an appropriate price to pay versus what’s not. But that led to a separate discussion, which is one of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that sometimes if you come across somebody who’s charging like way, way, way more than anybody else is—but they’re not an astrologer that’s otherwise well-known or like renowned for doing great work or something like that—that sometimes that can be kind of like a red flag that it could be like a scam of some sort. And this came up because there was some kind of scam astrologer that was charging like a lot of money and then like not delivering reports or that was ripping people off. And that was one of the red flags for this person—just that he was charging like way more than anybody else was, but he wasn’t like a leading astrologer or something like that. And it sort of made me realize that even though I see that, or I know that that’s kind of like a red flag, that’s not something that most people would realize was a red flag necessarily. Have you guys seen that as well? Or is that something you agree is kind of like a red flag?
KS: I don’t know if I would say red flag, specifically. But, I mean, I’m always struck by, you know, people who charge what seem quite extreme amounts of money for a session. I guess I’m like, okay, well, I guess if that’s what they’re charging. But I feel like if they’re not offering anything for that, then of course that’s a massive rip-off. I mean, whether you’re charging a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, if you’re charging for something and then not delivering it, that’s obviously an issue, for sure.
CB: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I guess that’s one thing, not delivering. But I guess there’s a question, an open question of there’s a tension between the sort of idea of, you know, charging whatever the market can bear or what have you as one approach versus when is there limit of diminishing returns, in terms of like when is an astrologer charging too much, or when are they charging more than what they’re actually able to offer or something like that. It’s not something that there’s like a definitive answer to, but it’s certainly a question that I think most conscientious astrologers wrestle with from time to time.
AC: Yeah. I mean, I think the only reason that I have my prices where they are is that Kait looked at like five people she knew that I would consider my peers and said, “This is the average of what they’re charging. Doesn’t that seem about right?” And I was like, “Well, if that’s what’s happening.” It’s very difficult to ascertain the value of something like astrology. What is the value, right? Maybe if you were doing financial astrology, if you were like helping people with day trading or something and they could actually quantify how much money you are helping them make, that might be the one exception. But, you know, that’s a notable exception to what’s obviously a rule. It’s a difficult thing.
CB: Sure. Yeah, and it’s hard because there’s like the other end of the spectrum. And most of the discussion over the past few months I’ve seen amongst astrologers who are like on Twitter—where it’s become much more active with professionals over the past few years—has been like encouraging younger people to start charging or to start seeing clients. And in my course, in the Professional Astrologer Course, I have a few videos just talking about this question of, you know, at what point should you start charging or when should you start offering consultations. When do you know that you’re ready to start doing that or accepting money? And my response to that is if you’ve been studying astrology for a while, you should start seeing clients at some point. You basically just have to push yourself, too, because there’s not gonna be any point where you feel like you know everything there is to know about astrology. Because one of the issues is that there’s a limit to book learning, and a large part of your education as an astrologer is only gonna happen once you start seeing clients; because every new client you see, you’re gonna learn something new from. So at some point you just have to take the dive or take the risk and start doing it and push yourself to start doing it. So that’s like one end of the spectrum of just like encouraging more astrologers to, you know, start charging for their services and to set like appropriate fees and not undersell themselves. But then there’s that other side of the discussion as well about either when does it become too much, or when is somebody doing something that’s kind of unethical or exploitative or something like that.
KS: Yeah. I mean, Leisa’s just put an example in here. And I think you’re sort of talking about people charging in sort of the thousand-dollar-an-hour-type range or something.
CB: Yeah, we’re talking about like exorbitant amounts.
KS: Yeah.
CB: At least currently, relatively speaking, top astrologers—I saw a quote recently saying that like Steven Forrest and Alan Oken charge like $350 an hour, right?
KS: And I actually know a bunch of people that charge in the $300-$350 an hour range. I’m pretty sure Jessica Lanyadoo charges $325.
CB: Sure. And that’s like the upper-end of the spectrum, though, more or less, at the current point in time. You know, that’s in and of itself pretty expensive. But if somebody else, who’s not like Steven Forrest, is charging like a thousand dollars an hour, like that’s where it’s a little bit of a red flag to me, or it’s one factor that you would take into account as potentially problematic.
AC: Well, it’s just not a good deal.
CB: Sure.
AC: You can get like absolutely top-notch astrologers for $300.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah.
AC: I would say in the $200-$400 range, you can find a lot of fantastic people, right? Unless you have found, you know, the world’s ‘secretly best’ astrologer, there is no reason to pay a thousand.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Again, you can get like top-shelf, highest quality for way less than a thousand. So whether it’s ethical or unethical, it’s not a very good deal.
CB: Sure. Cuz my main point here wasn’t even just like what’s an appropriate price among legitimate astrologers. It was more just I cringe sometimes when I see examples of somebody actually being ripped off by somebody who’s either pretending to be an astrologer or who’s, you know, using astrology and is like harming people in some way. And one of the ways that you can harm people is like overcharging, not offering an actual valid service and things like that. And so, that’s the main thing, just that if you see somebody that’s charging like way more than somebody else, that might be a red flag to you as a consumer that maybe they might not be the best person to go with, or maybe you should be careful and do additional research, or even get, you know, referrals. Cuz one of the things that you can do is ask around and see if there’s other astrologers who would vouch for that astrologer and say that person does good work. Because so often with the astrologers that are scam artists, it’s like other astrologers in the community know about that and will tell you if you ask about that person. So it’s more of just how to educate consumers of astrology about things that they should watch out for or beware of as potentially problematic issues.
KS: Totally. Yeah. I mean, it sort of makes me think of that old adage, you know, ‘buyer beware’. And I definitely think you wanna do your research about who you might connect with, but what is a relevant or appropriate price point. And it’s tricky, you know, if somebody feels like they’re adding value, and they’re at the thousand-dollar-an-hour mark, and they’ve got clients who feel like they’re getting value out of their consult. I mean, I don’t know if that’s possible. I find it a little bit astronomical to think that that’s there. And it does seem that most of the astrologers who might be involved in the astrological community with teaching and writing or publishing books and things are in that $200-$400 an hour space. People take a bit for currency conversions, perhaps.
CB: Sure. And that’s sort of a thing, you know. Somebody in the comments is saying, Kaitlin Coppock is saying that there’s a thing about pricing your waitlist down. So there are astrologers like Steven Forrest who are scheduling out like a year in advance. Maybe like two years in advance at this point, I don’t even know. And so, sometimes charging more is almost necessary. Because their time almost becomes more valuable at that point, it becomes necessary. But that’s a whole separate issue and separate discussion. Cuz all I’m talking about is the situation where I say an astrologer’s not well-known, where they don’t have people that are like banging down their door in order to see them necessarily, but they’re still charging exorbitant amounts. That’s where it’s a little bit weird or can sometimes be a red flag. And that’s the only reason I’m bringing that up in terms of, you know, is there a supply and demand thing going on? Or are they overvaluing what they actually have to offer on some level? So, yeah, I don’t know. What do you think, Austin? You’re abnormally quiet. And so, I’m not sure if you’re disagreeing.
AC: Oh, no. I’m just actually kind of calm today.
CB: Okay.
AC: It happens every now and again.
KS: We’re not used to this.
AC: Yeah, I know. I gotta keep everyone guessing, right? I don’t know. You know, I think we’ve said a lot of what can be said. I mean, obviously every person has the right to ask whatever they ask for their time and energy. I don’t think that somebody who doesn’t have much of a reputation as an astrologer is going to be very successful in commanding a thousand dollars an hour, so I don’t think that’s something we’re gonna have to worry about everywhere. That would suggest that the demand for astrology was even more extraordinary than it already is. It’s suspicious.
CB: Bizarrely, like you do occasionally hear that story of like this person who paid that exorbitant amount to that, you know, astrologer nobody’s ever heard of and then didn’t have a good experience for whatever reason. I mean, that’s what’s bizarre. Still, sometimes people—right. Something in the comments Kaitlin is saying: “People assume that it’s worth it at that point. If they’re charging that much, it must be really good.”
AC: Yeah. I mean, it can happen.
KS: Whether it is good or not, there is a perception in the marketplace that if something’s a little bit more in price that there’s something a bit better about it. And I’m not saying that’s correct. I’m just saying that tends to be how pricing and market value kind of works.
CB: Sure. And maybe I framed this discussion wrong. Cuz I’m framing it in terms of pricing, but that’s more like a professional issue. Maybe the question I should have asked is just, what are some things that you guys see as red flags? I mean, do we all agree that occasionally, very rarely, like you’ll run into somebody in the astrological community that might be like a bad actor or might be not using astrology for great purposes or might in fact be life scamming people or something? Cuz like, to me, I do very rarely, occasionally like run into situations like that where that’s clearly the case. But I don’t know. I mean, have you guys run into that? Or do you feel the same way?
KS: I haven’t run into that, actually. So I wanna hear more about what you guys might have found. I feel like I’ve mostly connected with people who are genuine and offering something of substance for whatever price point they’ve got going on. I haven’t run into scams.
CB: Yeah. I mean, I think that is the case. And that’s almost not your expectation if you’re coming at it from like skeptics—for example, from outside of the astrological community—who assume that all astrologers are just ripping people off. And so, if you’re coming into the community from that perspective, you might expect that. But in reality, 99.9% of all astrologers you meet are actually just genuine, normal human beings that are using this kind of weird subject, but they’re trying to do the best job that they can, and they’re trying to be ethical and upstanding people.
AC: Yeah. I also think astrology is not the best way to scam people if you’re going to profess to have mystical powers. Because, you know, one astrologer can talk to another and find out whether they know about astrology. Like there are different schools and such. But like, you know, not everybody’s astrology looks exactly the same, but there are basic things like, do you know the structure of the zodiac? The houses? What planets rule which signs? What aspects are? You know, there’s a technical curriculum that every astrologer shares to some degree. It’s easy to verify. Whereas, you know, the only scammers that I’ve encountered were billing themselves as psychics. You know, there’s no testing their knowledge, right? Which isn’t to say there aren’t legitimate psychics or people, you know, doing legitimate things under that label, but that’s a lot easier to scam people, right? You’re just like, “Yep, I have mystical powers.” “Where did you learn them?” “I was born with them.” There’s less you can test. And, you know, if you’ve ever lived in LA, for example, there’s like a questionable psychic on every corner.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right. Yeah. And something you said, Austin, like when you meet like another astrologer, as a practitioner, you can recognize that they’re practitioners pretty quickly, and you can relatively easily start to gauge what they know or what they don’t know. Whereas from a client’s perspective, if you either don’t know any astrology or you’re new to astrology, you don’t really know what to look for necessarily, and instead you have to rely on other signals, like their marketing or how they come across or other things like that. And I think that’s what can make it tricky sometimes to make those sorts of judgments is just not being able to tell.
KS: Yeah. There’s one question that’s come in the Q&A box about a listener who said they paid, you know, $400 in 1982 for a session with a well-known astrologer at the time, and that astrologer demanded that they not speak or ask any questions during the session. So I think that would be a warning sign to me if you’re gonna pay to have a consultation with someone, but you can’t have a discussion as part of it. So one question for people to ask if they’re new or if they’re looking for someone might be, you know, “Can I ask questions as we go?” or, you know, “What tends to happen in the experience?” If you’re just gonna have to sit there and listen to someone talk at you for a couple of hours, that would ring warning bells in my mind.
AC: That is certainly very different from the way that I like to do things, but I could see somebody where that was just their reading style.
KS: Yeah.
AC: But that is certainly odd. But there are some very odd people who are very genuine astrologers.
KS: That’s true. That’s true.
CB: Sure. Yeah, so this is all part of a broader thing. And maybe that can be a separate episode in and of itself at some point, which is just like astrology from a client standpoint or from a consumer standpoint and how to research doing an astrological consultation, so that you have a good experience, and different things to look for in order to find an astrologer that’s suited to what you wanna get out of the consultation.
KS: Totally.
AC: I think that would be helpful.
CB: Cool. All right, well, so that’s really it for that discussion, in terms of discussion topics. I don’t know if we have anything else. Do you guys have anything you wanna talk about before we get into the forecast?
AC: Nothing that we haven’t—you know, we’ve talked a lot about the state of astrology over the last three months, maybe. Three or four months. And the only things that I can think of are more general like that, and I don’t know that there have been particularly new developments. So I would say, no, I don’t have anything particular to add at this moment.
KS: I mean, the only question I would throw at you guys—cuz this is coming up a little bit in the chatbox—I know the original intention of the discussion wasn’t necessarily about pricing, per se, but if you guys were to give a guideline to new practitioners, you know, ‘maybe start charging in this range’, do you guys have any tips or suggestions for people around that?
CB: Yeah. It doesn’t matter, just charge. It can be like $5 or $20. $25 or something. Like do a reading for $25 for a friend or for somebody. Just start somewhere really low. And then gradually, over the years, as you get more comfortable, you’ll raise your prices, until they eventually reach an appropriate level and become sort of self-sustaining, if that’s what you’re shooting for. But even just charging like $5—as long as there’s some sort of exchange, and you’ve taken that first step, is really important.
AC: I wanna double-down on the exchange part. Like that’s really important that they are giving to you, and you are giving to them. There’s a power that comes out of exchange. So I see people struggling with like, “Oh, I need to charge more, but I’m afraid to,” and the advice those people are given—which is well-intended—is like, “Hey, this is worth it,” you know, addressing some of the issues with money many of us have; you know, charge more and feel good about it. What I would also just say, you know, as far as getting into your practice and getting comfortable reading for clients is make sure not to charge so much that it makes you nervous as hell that you’re not going to live up to that price. You know, pick a price. You know, basically think about charging 50 and then 75 and then 100. And when you start feeling nervous, like maybe pull back from that a little bit and let yourself like grow into a price. Because, you know, I can think of periods of time where I was charging almost nothing, but I wasn’t sure about the value of what I was doing. And so, charging, you know, like 50 bucks or whatever it was, made me more anxious during the reading, and made my experience of the reading worse, and made me worse at reading. And so, that’s something to think about, too. And, you know, you’ll relax into your price. And once you get comfortable, you know, at ‘X’, then think about, you know, ‘X plus 2’, you know, whatever it is.
KS: Totally. Because I think this is the question that, I mean, we probably deal with as teachers and practitioners more often, “Yeah, what should I start at?” And the exchange piece is really critical. Because one of the things I think new practitioners do tend to struggle with is recognizing the value in what they’re doing—so your advice there, Austin, around just charging at a price point that doesn’t stress you out. And the other thing that I think we have to get used to when we start charging for our services is the immediacy of the exchange, which is that idea of, you know, when you have a job that you work for a company somewhere, money just shows up in your bank account every couple of weeks or every month, and you don’t have that sort of direct ‘I did this and got that’ feeling. But when you do a consult, certainly, in the beginning, where people might just be paying you in cash or by check, you sit down, you have a conversation, and at the end of it you ask the other person to give you some money. And that’s a feeling that many of us or that experience, you know, really pushes a lot of buttons not just around money but about self-worth and do you feel you’ve added value. So I think the whole beginner pricing or the starter astrologer pricing piece, it’s not just as simple as ‘this is what the work is worth’. It’s how you feel comfortable about that and it’s a really good point to keep in mind. I mean, I always say to students if you can aim up, you wanna try and get yourself up to about a hundred dollars an hour; but if you have to start at 50 an hour, cuz you feel more comfortable there, or you wanna come in at 75. Or even if it’s 20 bucks in the beginning—cuz all you’re doing is practicing that immediacy and that exchange. But it’s a tricky thing. There’s a lot to work through internally.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, I like—oh, go ahead.
CB: No, go ahead.
AC: Kelly, I like what you said there about the immediacy of the exchange. So, you know, we often exchange our time, energy, and action for money, but it’s abstract.
KS: Yes.
AC: If I think about when I was like 22 and working at RadioShack at the mall, you know, I would get my paycheck, but it wasn’t super important to me that I do the very best job possible for my boss, because he was just the local manager of a chain, you know, of a national corporation. You know, you could care about helping the people who came into the store, but like the money changes hands like 10 times before you get paid, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Whereas when you’re an astrologer, one, like it’s just one other person, and there’s no filter at all. Like they are giving you money, you are giving them your art. And you care about them, right? You’re like, “Oh, I really wanna make sure this was worth it for this person,” right? You know, like my heart did not overflow for RadioShack, right, who was giving me the money. You know, you can’t even compare the immediacy and emotional weight of like trying to, you know, be of value and service to one other person who you’ve just talked to for an hour or two versus like putting in your time, you know, at Burger King, or Rax. I worked at Rax. It’s sort of like Midwest-only Arby’s. It’s pretty gross.
KS: Oh, God. First jobs—that would be a funny conversation.
AC: But that was just all a way of saying, yes, the immediacy and the unfiltered nature of the exchange—it’s something most people have never experienced.
KS: Exactly. I like how you said ‘the abstract’. Like most of the time money just appears in our bank accounts, or we get a check, but there isn’t that direct interaction. And that changes when you go into—I don’t think it’s unique to astrology. I think it would be similar in all of the natural or healing therapies. So counselors or psychologists or massage therapists, even beauticians—there is a little bit more of an immediate sort of service or time or art or craft exchange for money. And that’s different from what we’re used to, until we get into this type of work, and then you become much more familiar and comfortable with that. And then as you get more comfortable with it, that’s when you can feel more comfortable to raise your prices.
CB: Sure. But definitely starting at that point. Just because doing it for free, for like friends and family is one thing, but you don’t have necessarily as much pressure. But as soon as you’ve accepted some money for it—like you said, Austin—even if it’s only $5, there’s suddenly this pressure on you to perform and like do the best job you can as an astrologer. And I think most astrologers, that’s useful to start getting into that mindset of having that pressure in order to force yourself to do the best job that you can each time you do a consultation with somebody. And as a result of that tension, you’ll have growth as an astrologer and as a consultant.
AC: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that pressure is good as long as it’s not overwhelming. Makes you bring your A-game.
CB: Right.
KS: That’s exactly it. You want a bit of pressure. And I am the same. I think nerves are always good. It keeps you on your toes. It just keeps the adrenaline going, which keeps you sharp. But you don’t want so much so that you’re stressing out. Particularly for the kind of work we do, it becomes very blocking. I like that point that you made, Austin, on that.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. Okay, cool.
CB: Cool. All right. So I think those were the discussion topics. So why don’t we go ahead and jump into the forecast for October at this point. Where do you guys wanna start with this? I mean, maybe we could start by just looking at—I have an overview. I’ve got a couple of pieces of artwork for the astrology of October that I could share really quickly. The first one is a nice little thing that Paula Belluomini made me for my horoscopes this month. So I’m gonna be using this for the 12 different rising sign horoscopes that I’m doing on YouTube. Cuz I’m still going strong with that like three or four months later, and it’s still going really well. But this is just a little chart that shows the planetary movements for October, basically, starting from October 1 and moving through until October 31. So the big one of course this month is gonna be the Venus retrograde, and I think that’s gonna be the primary thing that we’re gonna end up talking about this month. Because in terms of just major planetary aspects that are going on or other major movements, it seems like that’s the main one. When I asked you this, it seemed like that was really the thing you were focused on. Right, Austin?
AC: Yeah. I mean, everything builds around Venus. Everything opens up from there. Venus’ movements are absolutely central.
CB: Okay. So we’ve got Venus in Scorpio, stationing retrograde. It stations retrograde right at the very beginning of the month, on October 5, right?
KS: Yes. Friday, October 5, which will be Saturday, October 6 if you’re down under.
CB: Okay.
KS: That’s really where the month starts, I think.
CB: Right. It’s only like the main aspect for the month, but it’s also basically what the month opens with—that Venus stationing retrograde in early Scorpio.
AC: Yeah. And even though it doesn’t assume retrograde movement till the 5th, it’s stationary. Venus is barely moving. It’s already in the station degree on the 1st. Like it’s just there. And then we get that beginning-to-retreat motion on the 5th. But the energy will already be there. You’ll already be feeling it.
[technical audio issues]
CB: Definitely. Yeah, I guess we’re recording this a little early. It’s only September 20 here. But as you were saying, Venus is already super, super slow.
[technical audio issues]
CB: Sorry, it’s cutting in and out. I’m not sure if I’m interrupting you.
AC: Can you hear me? Can y’all hear me now?
CB: Yeah, I can hear you. I think it was cuz I was sharing the screen. Were you seeing issues, Kelly?
KS: I did lose the sound on Austin a little bit there. I could see your screen still, Chris, and that was fine, but it was a bit crackly.
AC: Yeah. Kelly, I lost you and Chris. You started like fragmenting. Your voice started fragmenting digitally. You know, that like bad auto-tune sound?
CB: Okay.
AC: I think we’re back now.
CB: It might have been cuz I was sharing the screen. So I’ll just leave it with the screenshare off for now and just talk.
KS: Cool.
AC: Okay. But, yeah, Venus.
KS: Yeah, Venus.
CB: So Venus is super slow at this point in late September, and it gets to a point where it’s practically like hovering around the same degree for like a week or two, once it gets close to that stationary point, right? I mean, I guess that’s one of the important things to understand about stations, that sometimes new students don’t realize. Even though in the ephemeris it looks like this moment—like a specific time, like if you animate it in Solar Fire or you look at the charts where Venus is direct and then suddenly it’s retrograde—really it’s like an arc, where it’s slowing down and turning around for this whole span of time during the first part of the month, basically, right?
AC: Yeah. I mean, it’s in the station degree on the 1st, right? It’s barely moving.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah, Venus will be at 10 Scorpio for about two weeks, sort of a week before and a week after the station retrograde event, if you like. So that’s a good point, Chris, to remind people that Venus is just—she’s just hanging in the sky and just sitting at that 10 Scorpio, which becomes then a really sensitive or pivotal degree in the landscape of October, if you like.
CB: Right.
KS: Or even just 10 of the fixed signs, because there’ll be a square.
CB: And that becomes part of like what a retrograde period is about—hitting that single note of that specific degree, 10° of Scorpio, for like a really long time. Whereas, normally, Venus would just very quickly move over that degree over the course of like a day or two.
AC: Yep.
KS: Yeah. Yeah, so it’s like the emphasis or the exaggeration. And the theme—which I think is really kind of a thing for October—is the idea of rather than having a lot of different things going on, it’s really drilling down on a few specific things. It’s like the ‘going deep’ rather than kind of ‘going wide’.
AC: Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, that’s Venus in Scorpio.
KS: Right? Talk about a repetition of themes.
AC: Yeah, right? That’s what this month looks like. It looks like a fractal, where you get the same pattern repeating on macro and micro levels. And so, let’s just talk a little bit about Venus in Scorpio, right? So Venus—just starting with the basics—Venus is considered to be in its detriment in Scorpio, right? And how do y’all interpret that?
KS: Venus in detriment in Scorpio. Well—I’m like where do we start?
AC: Just trying to start with like simple technical and then we’ll unfold from there.
KS: Very basic. I mean, we’ve got Venus, the planet of unification, trying to pull things together. That’s the pure, raw energy of Venus to pull together. Moist planet, and she’s in the sign of Mars, or a sign of Mars. And Mars is a dry sort of vibe. Although, it’s Scorpio, so it’s not a dry sign, but the nature of Mars is to kind of divide and dissect and even to separate or to conquer. So there is inherent tension between what Venus normally likes to do and the path she has to walk when she’s in Scorpio. And I think Venus in Scorpio—like any planet in detriment—is sort of holding that tension between what it would like to do versus what is available for it to do. Where would you guys go with this? Cuz there’s so much rich symbolism here.
CB: I like that. Cuz it’s like if Venus is in its own sign, then it gets to do the things that it usually likes to do. But instead, Venus being in not its own sign, but instead, a sign opposite to the one that it normally lives in is like Venus excelling at things that aren’t normal to Venus. So I guess part of the question is, what are some of the things that are not normal to Venus, that Venus does well in Scorpio?
AC: So with this issue of planets in detriment, right, planets in detriment are always opposite the signs that they rule. They’re as far away from home as possible in that sense, right? Chris, I believe you were trying to get behind the term ‘exile’ for planets in detriment, right?
CB: Yeah. I’m still trying to get on that. Still trying to promote ‘exile’. Cuz that’s actually the term that’s used in a number of other languages, like in Spanish—I learned this a few years ago—and I think possibly in French. They use the term ‘exile’ more commonly than the term ‘detriment’.
AC: I like it.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And so, when you’re in exile, you are, by definition, in a space that is not home, right? It means it’s a negation of home, the negation of comfort. It’s a negation of being surrounded by friends and family, right, if you’re in exile. And so, Venus is exiled to Scorpio, right? You have to banish her from the city, right? She doesn’t go willingly. And so, you know, if we think about it, again, there are a lot of ways with this. I was going to make a specific point.
KS: Oh, damn. I hate it when you lose it.
AC: No, it’s okay. But, Kelly, as you were saying, Scorpio is a martial sign. Although, cutting and severing are very much, you know, core, essential, archetypal, martial actions, in Scorpio—and also very martial—is piercing, right?
CB: Right.
AC: The scorpion’s tail pierces.
KS: Yes.
AC: You know, there are weapons which cut, and there are weapons which crush, and there are weapons which pierce, right? And Mars is like the sharp ones, right? We look at the god of war, if we look at Ares or, you know, Roman Mars, or if we go East and we look at like Kartikeya, the god associated with the planet Mars has a spear actually much more often than he has a sword, and it’s certainly a spear which the scorpion wields, right?
CB: Are you bringing this up cuz of the recent discussion, like the Twitter discussion about Mars, or is this natural?
KS: This is just Austin talking, I think.
CB: Okay.
AC: I’m unaware of that.
CB: There was just somebody that was promoting the idea that Mars doesn’t have anything to do with sex because it’s severing and separating, and therefore, only Venus can have those associations. But then the counterpoint that was never brought up in the discussion is the thing that you just said, which is that even though severing and separating is part of the archetype of Mars, or a large part, it has this whole other side about piercing as a sort of like separate facet of its archetype.
AC: Oh, okay. Yeah, so I guess what I was saying hooks into that. No, I’ve been trying to hide from the internet for a couple of months, so I missed that. And so, anyway, we have piercing, right? And so, you know, you talk about someone’s heart being pierced, right. Or drilling is also an energy, a movement pattern that Scorpio in particular brings up. And we talk about drilling into the heart, right? And this is what Venus in Scorpio, especially retrograde, does. Whenever you’ve got retrograde motion, you have the planet making a loop in the sky. It’s circular. You know, we could see that as drilling or circling rather than just moving straight forward. And, you know, it’s important to note that during Venus retrogrades, those are the periods where Venus gets between us and the Sun, and so, it’s closer than normal. And so, you know, Venus is as close, as deep as possible. And so, there’s something ‘underworld-y’ about that. There’s something which pierces the surface and gets to the depths. And when you do that with Venusian topics, archetypally, a lot of Venusian things—like partying and like being polite and having people be polite to you and just having nice interactions—those depend on not drilling down to what’s really going on. When you drill down enough beneath any Venusian surface, you will find things which contradict that. Even in the best relationships you’ll find fears, you’ll find trust issues, you’ll find old hurts which impact, which, when accessed, ‘emotional’ oil wells surface and coat you with sticky goo and sometimes catch on fire. And so, with Venus in Scorpio—with natives that I’ve known and that I’ve read for—part of the detriment is that ‘piercing-digging-trying-to-find-the-truth’ action which is so characteristic of Scorpio, if you try super hard to find out, you know, the truth about someone and how they really feel, you’re going to find things that it’s very difficult to relate to and it’ll make it harder to trust that person, right? That’s why, you know, if you wanna be diplomatic, you wanna get along with everybody, don’t drill down into everything. You know, into them and their entire history and, you know, all that. Anyway, I’ve been monologuing. I’ll let you guys jump in. You hear what I’m saying, I think.
KS: Oh, totally. I mean, I love the ‘drilling into the heart’. That’s beautiful. Someone could hashtag or tweet that. That’s a beautiful symbolism that pulls together Venus in Scorpio, Venus retrograde in Scorpio, for sure. And when you were talking about the exile, which I love, I’ve gotta keep remembering that for a planet in detriment. It reminds of that idea of being a stranger in a strange land. Because I think, too, there is that idea of, you know, Venus is kind of having to do things maybe without her normal repertoire of skills or talents. And so, she isn’t as smooth or as polished as she normally is when she’s in Scorpio. There’s maybe some rough edges. It’s more of a sandpaper kind of vibe. And I like what you said there. It reminded me of, you know, the truth can hurt, and I think that’s very potent. Something I think about all the time with Venus in Scorpio is that she keeps looking for more or wants to go deeper, or she keeps peeling back the layers. And what she finds can be an absolute or a raw, honest, kind of visceral truth, but it’s not necessarily gonna be something that’s comfortable or that binds you together more closely. It’s more likely to be something that feels a bit like a stone in your shoe or a thorn in your side, where it’s like, “Oh, now I know this. How do we proceed from here, given that that maybe sits uncomfortably with me?” or within the context of whatever that relationship is.
AC: Yeah, definitely. Also, I would say part of the challenge, you know, it’s also Venus’ job to reveal the beauty in things and to help us find joy in experiences and sensations. And so, if we look at what the landscape of Scorpio is full of, you know, we get horror imagery, right? And, obviously, people wouldn’t make and watch horror films if there wasn’t something there. But it’s a challenge to find beauty in it. There’s a challenge to find joy in it. You know, it’s not the normal set of experiences and images and sensations that we find joy and beauty in. So it’s a challenge for the planet—in this case, Venus—to do its job, which is to find the beauty, to find the joy, to find pleasure in.
CB: Right, like the gothic. A very literal manifestation sometimes can be like the goth aesthetic. I remember one of my first friends in high school—when I started learning astrology—I thought it was funny that she had Scorpio rising. And when I started reading about Scorpio rising—and I think also Venus in Scorpio—it sort of made sense, because that was part of her aesthetic, seeing something aesthetically-appealing in that darker aesthetic.
AC: Yeah. It’s 100% goth.
KS: Yeah.
AC: You know, in a sense, it’s gonna be Halloween for two months.
KS: I was just gonna say it’s all Halloween. I just realized, Austin, I think our spouses have something in common to do with their ascendant signs. Or maybe not. I’m not sure.
AC: Scorpio?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah.
KS: I can’t remember. Yeah, yeah.
AC: Shh, it’s a secret. You can’t tell people.
KS: Can’t tell anyone.
AC: You can’t tell people that they’ve got Scorpio rising. The Scorpio risings will be angry with us.
KS: Cannot talk about it. I mean, that’s the only holiday that my husband wants to decorate the house for. It’s Halloween planning as soon as we get to September. And I do not have Scorpio rising. So it’s the holiday that I’m like I don’t wanna do anything for, but he goes to town with Scorpio. You know, it’s also making me think—when I do consults for people that have the Moon or Venus in Scorpio natally, I always try to be very aware that Venus and the Moon in Scorpio feel things at this much deeper level than the rest of us are even aware of. And so, there is a sense of sometimes being misunderstood or being sensitive to undercurrents that most of us are not normally attuned to. And I think with this extended Venus retrograde in Scorpio period, one of the things we’re all gonna need to do is we’re gonna be tuned into things or sensitized to things that we are normally oblivious to or that we normally miss. And that can bring, you know, stuff to the surface.
AC: Yeah. It can also sink us beneath the surface.
KS: Well, yeah. Pull us down.
AC: One of the things that I’ve observed and felt during Venus retrograde—or excuse me, during Venus in Scorpio, I was very aware of the last time Venus went into Scorpio—is having a hard time wanting to be social because I was in a sunken place. Not necessarily like an awful place, but, you know, like the directionality of my mind was like inward towards concealed emotions, not expressing outward, right? Like spiraling inward, maybe on a quest, but not radiating outward, right? And so, a lot of times it’s just it’s easier to be introverted.
KS: Yes.
AC: It’s harder to like be extroverted. You know, when it’s something that’s happening in the sky, and it’s hitting everyone to a greater or lesser extent, it can be harder to connect, because everybody else—maybe two-out-of-three people or half the people there—are having a harder time connecting than they normally would, too, cuz they’re kind of, you know, brewing something on the inside. And so, you know, we could say it’s anti-social. Where Venus is social, Venus in Scorpio—especially Venus retrograde in Scorpio—is anti-social.
CB: Sure.
AC: By direction.
CB: Yeah. Although, it’s like intensely more interpersonal, focused on like single-mindedness in relationship rather than spreading that out to everybody.
AC: Right. And that’s both Venus retro and Venus direct in Scorpio. Like the scorpion is single-pointed, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: Again, it’s not radiant. It’s piercing. And so, you know, it’s that one relationship, with that one person.
KS: Singular.
AC: You know, Venus in Scorpio seeks intimacy, and greater and greater intimacy, but, you know, you find things on your way to intimacy.
CB: Sure.
AC: Something happened on the way to intimacy.
CB: And that then leads to maybe another thing that sometimes comes up with Venus in Scorpio, which can be the idea we were just talking about of like single-minded focus on relationship can also sometimes lead to other emotions like jealousy or things like that.
AC: Indeed.
CB: Or an intense sense of that, or a very intense sense of that.
KS: Totally. I mean, and we—sorry, go, Austin.
AC: Oh, no. Somebody in the comments, Nathan, writes that: “Venus in Scorpio can also be joining through conflict,” which I agree with.
KS: That’s a beautiful way of putting it.
AC: One of the things that might bring up for people—if this is their style—is relationships that are kind of dependent on stinging each other, ‘I sting you, you sting me’, that have that like conflict and mutual poisoning as part of their pathological side. Or just becoming aware of those dynamics in otherwise healthy relationships. “To what degree is this sustaining us, and this is not? Perhaps we can do it differently or better.”
KS: Yeah. It’s that idea of those sort of couples or relationship situations where you get locked into the arguing together or the disagreeing or the causing pain. And that brings up, you know, something that I thought of when you were speaking earlier, Austin, which is particularly Venus in Scorpio—or Venus in Aries would probably have a bit of this, too. But it’s that fine line between what brings you pleasure and what actually causes you pain or hurt or harm. And that can come up in a psychological sense, in a sexual sense, in an emotional sense, but it’s sort of exploring that edge of, can we make this sharp and intense and exciting? And, you know, how close can we go to that edge where it becomes pain? And do we want to actually go a little bit into the side in which there is some pain, but it’s that very, very sort of fine line there?
AC: Right. Well, and what is the appropriate cocktail of pleasure and pain, right? Because there’s no intimacy without pain, right? At least sometimes.
KS: At least without the risk of their being great pain, for sure.
AC: I mean, if you wanna have a relationship with someone for more than a month, if you want to stay intimately connected with someone. This reminds me of a dream I had like 10 years ago where a mouse with a scorpion tail stung me. And in the dream, I had this like revelation or I had this experience where all pleasure and pain became just different flavors of one sensation. It was like this weird moment of enlightenment brought about by a mouse with a scorpion tail. Anyway, this has me thinking about it.
KS: This is so random, but so on point.
CB: Hashtag astrologer dreams.
AC: Yeah. We need to find that mouse. That might be really helpful this fall.
KS: Totally. And then, of course, we’re really dealing with the shadow side, if you like—to use that language—of Venus. I think one of you guys alluded to this. You know, the idea of betrayal or jealousy, obsession. It’s emotions or the desire for togetherness that can kind of run amok or run into the darker territory rather than the lightness of, you know, the compromise and togetherness type of thing.
AC: Yeah, yeah. Well, and issues with control as well is part of that.
KS: Power play.
AC: So I was doing some research, and one of the things that happened pretty much every time Venus went retrograde in Scorpio for the 50-60 years is that there were famous kidnappings. That’s like, “I’m going to possess this person, I’m going to kidnap them,” right? “They’re going to be mine,” right? And these are some of the issues, you know, we deal with in the Scorpionic complex in general. It’s interesting to see them, you know, expressed in that extreme, hyperbolic, literal form. But there is that like feeling controlled, feeling like you’re kept somewhere by someone, or desiring to control more of a person’s life than is right, because you want them all to yourself. You know, it can start from a place of love, but it gets a little twisted on the way. And those dynamics, you know, in a non-criminal insane form are present in, you know, lots of relationships. It doesn’t mean that you’re, you know, a psychotic person because you have some issues with control, or that you’re attracted to people, you know, who have issues with control. And, you know, letting another person be in control is part of your relationship with control. They’re both control issues.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, cuz the scorpion not only has a stinger, it has claws. Claws are for control.
CB: Sure, a non-literal sense. To take maybe kidnapping as the extreme—like physical, literal manifestation—like the other end of the spectrum within that, but also, that’s more relatable can sometimes be issues of like manipulation or Venus in Scorpio issues surrounding manipulation, both overtly but sometimes covertly or more subtly, and how themes of manipulation can sometimes play out in different ways either consciously or sometimes subconsciously.
AC: Yeah. Well, and fear of manipulation. Maybe somebody does something—if you’re in like a new-ish relationship and somebody like does something which pings a pattern you’ve been subject to before, that caused you a lot of pain. And maybe that person really is just a repetition, and maybe it just looked like it for a little bit, but all that trust stuff flares up. You armor-up and try to control the situation so they can’t control the situation, and now you’re retrograding, you know.
CB: Right. That’s great. Cuz that then leads to the other side of that, which is paranoia. So like paranoia or like fear of something that leads to paranoia, that may or may not be an actual thing, but maybe just like imagined based on fears.
AC: Yeah. And so, this is nice. We kind of naturally got to one of the images that I’ve been working with in trying to write about this and think about it. One thing I got a lot was like basically sewers. This retrograde in Scorpio is going to make a lot of us deal with what’s in the ‘emotional’ sewer. You know, all the like, you know, jealousy, anger, hurt, mistrust, fear that we usually just flush. We’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it’s not like that, flush.” You know, just like in the physical sewer system, that stuff doesn’t stop existing, it just goes to the sewer place, right? And so, the toilet, which overflows—the ‘emotional’ toilet, which overflows, is one of the themes here. And so, in dealing with that—
CB: Is that gonna be the episode title?
AC: So check this out. In Seattle, I was talking to a friend of mine who is a fantastic, passionate genius, madman, Joseph Uccello, who actually laid out the Celestial Art and 36 Faces, and is an author in his own right. And he was telling me, he was like, “Dude, I’ve been getting really into sewers lately.” He was like, “I’ve been walking around at night like recording sewer sounds.” And I was like, “As your astrologer, I think that the upcoming Venus retrograde in Scorpio is the perfect time to explore sewers.” And then he was telling me about doing research on the Roman sewage system, and there’s literally a goddess of the sewers, and it was Venus Cloacina, who is like the Venus of the sewer system. And I was like, “Awesome. We now have a name for the patron goddess of the Venus retrograde in Scorpio. It’s Venus Cloacina.”
KS: Love it.
CB: Yeah. That’s good. Sorry, I never have a good transition from these things, but I like the image where you said that normally these are things that just like, you know, flow through you, and then those emotions pass by, just like Venus normally will like pass through Scorpio over the course of, what, like three weeks. But here it’s actually literally like slowing down and stopping and getting stuck there for some reason.
AC: And the flow is getting reversed.
CB: Right.
KS: Oh, my gosh.
CB: So, yeah, that’s not that imagery. I don’t know. Maybe we can try to come up with better imagery for that, but that’s pretty apt.
AC: Well, and also, like if we’re talking about ‘standard’ Venus, right—like Venus strong and, you know, in Venus’ sign and like getting to do all the normal things—you’re dealing with material that is appealing to the senses. And so, the revolting, like the bodily, revolting quality of sewage, that’s what we’re dealing with. How do I find beauty in this, right? I, myself, have at times underestimated the emotional challenge of Venus in Scorpio by thinking of like fun horror movies and, you know, cool goth style, and that is certainly a good example of like successful Venus in Scorpio redeeming the Scorpionic on Venusian terms.
CB: Those are like the easy examples.
AC: What?
CB: Those are like the easy examples.
AC: Yeah. But there’s also the sewage, where it’s like this doesn’t make like cool, goth stylings. That’s just sewage, right? That’s not aesthetically-challenging. That’s just gross, right? So, you know, it is both like, you know, high goth fashion and fun horror movies, but, you know, it’s also sewage.
KS: Well, what that made me think of—as you were talking about sewage and, you know, the Venus, and how can we find pleasure—I couldn’t quite get to pleasure-in-the-sewage-pipe, but I got to useful or rich or productive, which made me think of the compost.
AC: Yes.
KS: So a compost being obviously you put all your food scraps or your yard waste, and you turn it over, and, you know, over a period of time, this becomes incredibly nutritious for the soil. And so, I wonder if that’s part of the symbolic imagery of the point or the purpose. Because as we’ve alluded to—or maybe we’ve said in passing—Venus is retrograde in Scorpio every eight years, almost to the day, and we get these really intense periods where we have to kind of compost and mulch in all the stuff, I think, of the last eight years. Cuz I always think about Venus retro in Scorpio on these eight-year trends. So it’s that time to maybe go into the sewage pipes or go into the compost heap and just turn things over and see what needs to come out that, you know, can be put to use, and what needs to sit in the pile for the next cycle, basically.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s a hundred-percent right. It’s the alchemical thing.
KS: Yeah, the alchemical thing.
AC: This is the matter. And it can become something useful, but it’s not useful right now. And you have to reclaim it or claim it in order to change it.
KS: Yes.
AC: You know, when we just kind of like shove things away, it puts them in stasis some of the time. You know, you’re just like, “Nope, I never feel that way.” But if you’re like, “Yeah, I do feel this way, and it’s not good, but it won’t change if I pretend that I don’t,” that’s the actually putting it on the compost pile. It’s like finding a place for it in your awareness rather than just flushing it.
KS: Exactly. Yeah. It will have something in it that you will need or that you will need to distill, and so, we can’t just push it away.
AC: We can. It’s just not gonna work out.
KS: I guess that’s when you’re gonna end up with a sewage backup. Your pipes will be blocked or exploding.
AC: It will definitely return.
KS: Correct—in an unpalatable way.
AC: Yes. I think that the Jupiter being co-present with Venus for the Scorpio part of the retrograde—I feel like Jupiter is going to help this process be more productive. And I’ve been seeing with Jupiter in Scorpio, for almost a year now, a very strong like poison-into-medicine thing. You know, sewage into compost, you know, for the fresh bed of roses. And so, I think it’s nice that we have Jupiter there. But we should talk about Uranus, I think.
KS: Yeah, we do.
AC: We’ve got some pretty good stuff going on with just like the sense and imagery for Venus in Scorpio retro.
CB: That was the thing that I noticed. Cuz I was starting to work on my monthly horoscopes, and I was animating the chart and I wasn’t seeing like a lot of major outer planet aspects or hard aspects or other things going on this month, besides the Venus retrograde. But what I did notice in animating the chart and going through day by day—especially if you speed it up quickly—is just all the inner planets going into Scorpio this month. But every time a planet would switch into Scorpio, it just immediately opposes Uranus, which is sitting there at about 0° of Taurus for most of the month. And therefore, when Mercury goes into Scorpio, when the Sun goes into Scorpio, when the Moon goes into Scorpio, when Venus retrogrades back to early Scorpio and moves back into Libra, they hit that opposition with Uranus almost immediately, which is really, you know, much different. Yeah, it’s much different compared to like a normal year, where you have everything move into Scorpio in the fall like this but not usually running into Uranus.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, there’s that. So before the Sun and Mercury enter Scorpio, they’re in Libra. What’s Libra ruled by? Oh, it’s ruled by Venus. And then, oh, well, when they leave Venus-ruled Libra, where do they go? Oh, they go to conjoin Venus, right, which is one of the eight ways—there’s no way of getting away from Venus in October. Yeah, and then there’s the opposition, which is the opposition with Uranus in Taurus. Which Venus will have done once by the time October starts and will do a second time in October, and then do a third time in November. And the Full Moon—which I’m sure we can get into later—is just worth noting. The Full Moon is on top of Uranus, in a Venus-ruled sign and opposite Venus retrograde. This is part of, you know, why we’re like, “Okay, it’s the Venus in Scorpio show,” cuz everything comes back to it.
KS: Well, it does. And if we’re gonna pop out a few dates, we’ve talked about the Venus station retrograde early in the month, October 5. And then we’ve got the Venus—well, Mars coming back or coming forward to square Venus while she’s retrograde, around the 10th.
AC: Can we pause on that for a second? That’s very important.
KS: Yeah.
CB: What degree did Mars originally station at? Was it at 9 Aquarius?
AC: I believe it was 9.
CB: Okay. So it’s gonna clear its shadow finally by like October 8th or 9th. But because it’s still in that first-half of Aquarius, that means that’s the other thing that all those planets are hitting when they’re going through early Scorpio. Not just the opposition with Uranus, but they’re also often squaring Uranus not long afterwards as well—or squaring Mars not long afterwards as well.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yes.
AC: I mean, Mars literally clears its station like within a day of it squaring Venus exactly. You know, the Venus and Mars cycles this year are so entwined, right? They station almost exactly 90° away from each other. Venus’ retrograde station is in Scorpio, which is a Mars-ruled sign, while it’s square to Mars, who’s just getting done with that, you know, four-month arc. And of course both of them are angular to Uranus throughout the retrogrades. And so, there’s such a like handing-off from the events of the Mars retrograde over the summer to the Venus retrograde of the fall, or Q3 to Q4.
CB: Right. Literally the day that Mars is finally completing the last phases of that retrograde that it’s been doing for the past few months, Venus stations retrograde basically within a few days.
AC: Yeah. It’s passing the ‘fun’ baton.
KS: Yes.
CB: I’m gonna try sharing my screen again really quick. Let me know if it slows down.
KS: Yeah, let’s see if we can get that. Cuz I think that square is kind of critical just in that, you know, Venus is in Mars’ sign, and she’s encountering the ruler of her current sign, while she’s retrograde, via a square aspect. And, yeah, the Moon, as we can see there—the Moon is with Venus around the same time.
CB: Right. There we go. So you guys can see it? So like, for example, October 10, Venus is squaring Mars exactly at 10 Scorpio to 10 Aquarius. And it looks like the Moon catches up and hits Venus at 10 Scorpio at roughly the same time. And Mercury has just ingressed into Scorpio a day or so earlier, and it’s pretty much exactly opposing Uranus.
KS: Exactly opposite Uranus, yeah.
CB: 1 Scorpio to 1 Taurus that day.
KS: I mean, one of the things I often do when I consider the month ahead is try to look for some of those days where the energy feels a little bit more charged, or there’s a bit more going on, and this October 10 period is one of those days that stands out. The days in the month don’t always stand out for good reasons, but it’s just there’s a lot of activity. And Venus squaring Mars that day definitely feels like, you know, hitting bumps in the road, hitting a block. You know, being frustrated, being irritated. Short tempers, short fuses. Maybe making rash decisions just cuz, you know, you’re kind of so fed up. So those are some of the things just to be mindful of on that day.
AC: Yeah, for four or five different reasons. One of the things that this makes me think of is how Venus retrogrades often bring about a rearrangement of relational dynamics, you know, in friendships, in romantic relationships and marriages, etc., etc., and, you know, often like the existing dynamics are brought into question, right? Like Venus, by staying in the same set of degrees for much longer, is literally dwelling on a topic. And so, when we dwell on a topic, we become more aware of it. And so, that’s a piece of any and every Venus retrograde. However, this one, I would say, you know, to the second power, or at least times two, because we have Venus opposed Uranus for virtually the entire time, depending on what orb we wanna use. And Uranus loves to change shit up, right? Uranus loves to disrupt ongoing dynamics and do anything else. Do nothing instead. Do something experimental. Do something. Just do anything else. And so, you know, the relational rearrangement component of this Venus retrograde I expect to be quite significant, especially because Uranus is in a Venus-ruled sign. And so, you know, being configured to Venus so long—it’s configured to its ruler—it’s easier to make changes when a planet is configured to its ruler.
KS: And it is interesting, too, that we’ve got these links between Mars and Uranus coming up, where the activity this month just keeps triggering Mars and Uranus. Because both of those planets have this sort of similar, kind of destabilizing, uncomfortable, you know, not-on-firm-footing kind of quality to them.
CB: Right. More of a divisive sort of quality in different ways.
KS: Yeah. I know they’re not the same, but I do find that, yeah, maybe they’re coming from different places: the divisiveness, the solo kind of quality, or that sort of prickly quality. Certainly, you know, Uranus, obviously, freedom, but Mars, you know, that fight to do it their own way. So there is still sort of a headstrong quality, I guess.
CB: Right. If Uranus is freedom, Mars is like independence in a sense?
KS: Maybe, yeah. Yeah, it is tricky to kind of parse them out, but they seem to have that sort of similar tone.
CB: Maybe self-sufficiency is like a positive or constructive aspect of that for Mars.
KS: Yes.
AC: Independence.
KS: Independence is a good one for Mars. So there’s that day, for sure. And then is there anything we wanna talk about for the middle of the month? Or do we wanna skip to—
AC: We should probably at least mention the New Moon.
CB: Yeah, the lunation.
KS: Oh, yeah, the New Moon. We’ve kind of skipped right past it. The New Moon, on October 8 at 15 Libra.
CB: So 15 Libra, October 8, New Moon. Sun conjoins the Moon. Let’s see—close aspects. It looks like it’s squaring Pluto at 18 Capricorn. This is shortly before Mercury ingresses into Scorpio just a day later. So Mercury is still in Libra, and Venus is just hovering right around that stationary degree at 10 Scorpio. So what do you guys think about this New Moon? I guess it’s the other lunation that’s really the one that stands out the most this month. I guess this one is a little bit less significant-looking in some respects.
KS: Yeah. I don’t know if Austin has any words. I mean, my sort of quick thoughts are it’s a lunation ruled by Venus. Venus is in station and square Mars. I know with the New Moon we often think, you know, intentions-setting or plan for the month ahead or fresh start. But this almost feels like a pause-type of New Moon, or trying to go forward but there is, you know, a big ogre, the Mars square to Venus. There’s something that might be I’m thinking like a troll or something. Like you wanna do this one thing, but there’s a necessary distraction or a tangent that might take up some time in this first part of the lunation cycle.
AC: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s where the Sun and Moon agree that it’s time to have a ‘sewer’ adventure.
KS: Have a ‘sewer’ adventure. They’re booking their tickets on the ‘Sewer Express’. Is that what’s happening?
AC: Yeah. They’re both like, “Yep, we agree, it’s ‘Venus’ time,” right?
KS: Yeah.
CB: So in order to look forward, you have to look back. That would be the intention of that New Moon ruled by Venus stationing retrograde.
KS: And go down.
AC: You know, in order to balance the scales, it depends on what we pull up, right? What we find down below, right? There’s underworld data that needs to come in before we can balance these scales. And that middle decan of Libra is in particular about contracts, like the contracts between people, both emotionally and financially. It’s the Saturn-ruled decan, right? It’s a way of like cementing a relational dynamic. And so, it’s sort of like, “Oh, okay, well, this is the deal, and maybe I want out of this deal,” right? Or, “Oh, this deal looks like it’s gonna be good, maybe I should do a background check first.” But, you know, it’s the relational dynamic as solidified by a contract, a deal, an agreement, an understanding that’s all dependent on Venus and what Venus finds.
CB: Sure. So that reflectiveness or that looking back in and of itself in other retrogrades, commonly, we sometimes end up associating with literally looking back on past relationships or like reassessing past relationships, or sometimes things that happened earlier in like a current relationship.
AC: Oh, definitely.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So that seems like a common theme with Venus retrograde just in general. But from this one—because it’s taking place in Scorpio—there’s like a much more deep quality to it of going back sometimes and dredging up things that were sometimes difficult or where there were more intense feelings surrounding them. I mean, cuz one of the things that’s interesting is that this Venus is gonna stay retrograde in Scorpio the entire time, but instead, it’s gonna retrograde back into Libra. What degree does it actually station direct at?
KS: 25, mid-November.
CB: 25? Okay.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And so, look, the beginning and end of this will look very different.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
CB: I mean, that’s almost like a kind of dark beginning to our retrograde story, or a much more intense sort of beginning, but then retrograding back into its home sign and a little bit of a lighter conclusion to it.
KS: Yeah. The Venus retrograde has a very different quality or tone or feeling. Like when we have this conversation for November, I feel like we’ll be talking about quite different imagery.
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
KS: There’ll be no sewers.
AC: It makes me think of Snow White.
KS: Oh, my God. Did you just use a positive image, Austin?
AC: Well, I was just thinking like, you know, it kind of begins with like an evil witch.
KS: Yeah, the woman, the one in the mirror.
AC: And then it ends with a Disney princess. Cuz Venus in Libra can be a little Disney princess. No offense to Venus in Libra or the Disney princesses.
CB: Yeah. But it’s like how sometimes in like movies or narratives you have that like dramatic twist that takes place like two-thirds of the way through the story in order to add like dramatic tension. But in this instance, like the dramatic tension is happening in the first half of this retrograde cycle rather than the second half, or rather than like two-thirds of the way in.
AC: Yeah. I mean, there’s definitely a twist at the conclusion, too. The twist is Uranus is back in Aries now.
KS: Yes.
AC: The third opposition with Uranus is in a different set of signs. And so, like the ending looks really different than the beginning.
CB: Okay.
KS: Which kind of feeds to that analogy around going back over old territory. I mean, we pull that image with Venus retrograde—or even Venus in Scorpio—cuz it’s things that have been held onto or hidden. But you’re so spot on there, Austin. It’s late November, Venus back in Libra opposing Uranus, who is now back in Aries. I mean, that’s a completion of the ‘Venus retrograde’ story, but there may be something completing or ending, you know, from the past to do with the ‘Uranus in Aries’ story there as well, because both of those have that kind of tone to them, I guess. So the ending is very different. I guess to summarize it, from what we’re saying, where you think this story is gonna go—based on the start of October or how events unfold in October—is not where it’s gonna end up when you consider where things go in November.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Right. It’s just an unexpected conclusion.
KS: Yeah.
CB: But it looks like we get both the beginning of the ‘Venus retrograde’ story, as well as the middle of the story in October. Cuz it looks like the Sun-Venus conjunction—
KS: October 26.
CB: Right.
AC: Well, and so, let’s do the Full Moon and then the conjunction, cuz that’s the sequence.
KS: That’s the sequence, chronologically. Kind of fits Austin and my sensibilities about timelines.
CB: Yeah, I guess there’s nothing else really to cover before that. It’s like Mercury goes into Scorpio on the 9th, which we’ve already mentioned. But then that pretty much brings us to the Sun.
KS: Yeah, like that middle week of October, I mean, Mercury passes over Venus in Scorpio. And there’s a couple of other Mercury aspects, but there aren’t any super. It’s the 15th, I think, that Mercury passes over Venus. And I always think of you now, Austin, with the broadcast. You know, with Mercury triggering planets doing other things. You know, it’s like Mercury is giving Venus the megaphone.
AC: Yeah, I think it’ll be helpful for like thinking through some of what we’ve been feeling. Like I can contain some of this in my intellect as well. It’s getting your head around it a little bit better.
KS: Yeah. Putting it into words. Having a conversation that maybe seems a little bit more clear rather than, you know, deep or intense or skewed from that Venus in Scorpio.
AC: Whether it’s like, you know, the Venus retrograde is something wholly external, or it’s like a really intense internal thing, Mercury makes things thinkable. You know, it might bring some relevant facts, you know, up.
KS: Yes.
AC: But, yeah, something about that Full Moon.
KS: Yeah. I mean, the Full Moon is sort of like—
AC: It’s quite a Full Moon.
KS: All the bells and whistles.
CB: Okay. So it looks like this is taking place on October 24, the Sun has moved into Scorpio just a day or so earlier. And the Sun is at 1° of Scorpio. And the Moon ingresses into Taurus where it immediately conjoins Uranus. And then immediately after that, very shortly afterwards, it opposes the Sun, and we have the Full Moon at 1° of Taurus. So conjunct Uranus at 0° of Taurus and opposing the Sun at 1 Scorpio and Venus at 4 Scorpio. So this is just shortly before that Sun-Venus conjunction, which marks the middle-point of the Venus retrograde as well.
AC: Yeah. You know, Kelly, I kind of remember us having conversations about the Full Moon in Taurus for the previous years and about how it’s such a nice, stabilizing, grounding lunation.
KS: We used to love it, didn’t we?
AC: Yes. It’s going to be different for the next seven years.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And so, that’s normally what you would expect out of a Full Moon in Taurus. It balances that intense, volatile, mobile, Scorpio energy with like nice, grounding, solidifying, Taurean qualities. But this year—as well as several of the next years—we’ve got Uranus in Taurus. And this year, the Moon’s moment of peak fullness occurs 1° away from Uranus, while Venus is retrograded back very close to the Sun and very close to opposite the Moon and Uranus.
KS: I mean, it really sets up this sort of opposition theme, if you like. Cuz we have the Full Moon on the 24th, and on the 31st, the Venus-Uranus opposition peaks. So that last sort of week of October—the ‘see-saw’ energy or the flipping between different scenarios is very strong. There’s a real polarization, if you like, with Uranus in the mix. So the twist. The unexpected turn. Things moving in a direction that wasn’t part of the plan. Yeah, this is the first of our non-stable and safe Taurus Full Moons.
CB: And it’s also square the nodes pretty much exactly. So is this the middle-point, then, between like the last eclipse series and the next one?
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
AC: That’s the South bending. So that’s as low—that’s as far beneath the plane that the Sun and Earth are on—as the Moon is gonna get at this point. So that’s the bottom before it starts coming up again towards the North Node.
CB: So in that case, whatever this event is—or the sequence of events that are taking place around the time of this Full Moon—is potentially tied into the sort of sequence in between whatever those eclipses are about, for some people, that have been taking place. I mean, we’re talking about the eclipse sequence that’s still wrapping up in Leo and Aquarius, basically, and this would be the midpoint between them.
AC: Yep.
CB: Okay. So that might be important, then, for some people in terms of being able to contextualize some of the events that take place at this time within the broader context of like what’s been going on over the past year or two, and will then be continued on three months later in the next set of eclipses early next year.
AC: Yeah. There’ll be a tie-in.
CB: Right.
AC: I mean, just the Full Moon on Uranus is enough. Like I think that’s what it’s gonna look like in the foreground. It’s gonna look like a Full Moon conjunct Uranus, ruled by Venus retrograde, right? And so, this could be—and will be for some people—revelatory.
KS: Yeah.
AC: A lot of the ‘Venus retrograde’ stuff and the ‘Uranus’ stuff, it’s gonna be like, “Oh, this is the change that’s happening in me. This is the change I’m ready to make.” And it’s also going to be a hot mess for a certain other portion of the population. And then there are gonna be people for whom it’s both, where out of the hot mess rises the steam of revelation. I don’t know.
KS: You’re really milking these analogies, Austin.
AC: That’s my job.
KS: I know. I love it. The revelatory theme—I mean, I always think of a Full Moon as bringing revelations, because it’s this illuminating kind of vibe that brings light, that helps to bring things out of the darkness into the light. So it doesn’t make negative things positive. It’s not like that. But it helps you see or understand things that you had previously been, you know, dark to, or that you hadn’t understood, or you hadn’t seen in their full context. And so, to have that energy of the Full Moon right smack bang on Uranus—and so tightly conjunct Uranus—I mean, the revelations then have the shock factor or the unexpected. Like ‘the hot mess’ is probably not a technical term, but is very apt. Some of us are gonna have a really chaotic few days where we’re just kind of ping-ponging from one thing to the next. And Uranus always makes things fast. You know, so everything is happening at once. Or things are happening now that you thought weren’t gonna happen for quite some time. It just sort of stirs it all up and makes it all happen here and now.
CB: Right. I like that idea of things becoming more rapid, cuz that is definitely a Uranus thing. And it’s more common and you see it in like technological applications or advances in technology, and technology either moving faster and faster or allowing things to move faster than they did previously. But in instances like this, it can sometimes just be speeding up the sequence of events much faster than it normally would go.
KS: Yes.
CB: All right. So we’ve got this Full Moon, and this is taking place on the 24th. Before we go further past this, I don’t wanna skip over it. Cuz I actually forgot last month to do the auspicious electional chart for the month, and we ended up recording that separately. So I should actually pull that up at this point, because it takes place actually a few days before we hit this critical juncture with the Full Moon on the 24th. So let me pull that up really quickly. So the election for this month, that Leisa Schaim picked out, takes place on October 21, 2018, starting around, let’s say, 1:07 PM local time. Whatever your local time is, just set it for about 1:07 PM. And what you want to shoot for by setting it at 1:07 PM is having Capricorn rising. So you wanna shoot for Capricorn rising for this electional chart. Let me just get it on that specific degree. So when you set it for 1:07, what you’re shooting for is to make it so that it’s around 10° of Capricorn rising. Although, that’s kind of negotiable in this instance. Try to make it so that the midheaven is not squaring Mars at 15° of Aquarius, but otherwise, anywhere probably with the rising sign in the first half of Capricorn would be good. So the electional chart for this month has Capricorn rising, Saturn in Capricorn, in its own sign in a day chart. It’s relatively well-aspected by the benefics. So Venus has got a tight sextile that’s applying with Saturn, from 5° of Scorpio going to 4° of Capricorn. Jupiter is also in a superior sign-based sextile over Saturn that’s not close by degree, but it is at least a superior sign-based sextile, lending some support as well. Mars, unlike last month, is no longer in Capricorn. So we’re able to use Capricorn rising elections again since Mars is now in Aquarius, and therefore, not in the first whole sign house. And, yeah, so this just before we hit that sort of critical turning point of the Full Moon. And in this chart, the Moon is at 23° of Pisces in the 3rd house, and it’s applying to a trine with Jupiter at 26° of Scorpio in a day chart, with reception. Because the Moon is in Pisces, which is one of the signs ruled by Jupiter, which helps to increase the relationship or tighten the relationship between those two planets and make it even more positive than it already was.
So this is a really good Saturn election. It’s one of those early Saturn elections, now that Saturn moved into Capricorn late last year. Earlier in the year, we had some problems using Saturn elections with Saturn in Capricorn, cuz a lot of them were night charts. But here in this half of the year, we’ve been taking advantage of the fact that they’re day charts at this point. Because when you have Capricorn rising in October, the Sun is gonna be in Libra at that time, and therefore, it’s gonna be a day chart. So, yeah, you can use it for a lot of positive day chart-type Saturn activities. The only thing this chart is not that great for is financial matters, because it puts Mars in the 2nd house in a day chart, which is not super ideal for financial matters. You would probably wanna go with a different election if you were looking for more of a financial election.
AC: Yeah. Also, South Node in the 2nd is no good for money.
CB: Sure. Just cuz of the decreasing property of the South Node.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Funny story, actually. I think Rolling Stone Magazine did like this cover story on Johnny Depp recently and his financial problems. And it was really interesting because they said he just had problems spending money, and he spent money like way too fast and way too impulsively on like extravagant purchases. And he has Mars in the 2nd house in a day chart, and I thought that was just a great manifestation of that placement.
AC: Yeah, I think of Mars in the 2nd as burning through, you know. I guess the South Node would be you have a hole in your wallet, and Mars is you burn through cash.
CB: Right. Exactly. Therefore, this election would not be great for that, unless you want to burn through cash, or that’s something that you’re going for, for some reason. But otherwise, it’s a very lovely election. It also has some okay ‘11th house’ stuff going on with all of the benefics up there. Although, the 11th house is ruled by Mars, so there’s the potential for some problems as well. Otherwise, generally, it’s a good Saturn election, so we would primarily recommend it for that. So this was the most auspicious electional chart that we could find this month. We do have three other charts that we’re gonna review on the Auspicious Elections Podcast this month, which we’re recording in the next few days. And that’s available to patrons who are on the $5 and $10 tiers. So you can find out more information about that at theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe, and then there’s a link to our Patreon page there if you wanna join and listen to that episode. All right, so that’s the election for the month I just wanted to interrupt with before we went further. I think we’ve talked a decent bit about the Full Moon as being a critical turning point in the month. But what’s going on after that? Is there anything else that we really need to mention?
KS: The only thing that I have—and it’s not like necessarily like amazing or super strong compared to the Full Moon—but I do think it’s just worth a quick mention of the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction on October 29, which is a little bit like sort of a final broadcast, if you like, from Jupiter in Scorpio. And then whether we wanna go into the Venus opposite Uranus aspect, which is at the very end of the month—
AC: We also skimmed right past the Sun-Venus conjunction, which happens like the day after.
KS: 26th.
AC: Yeah, like right after the Full Moon. It’s really a one-two.
KS: One-two wham, Wednesday-Friday.
AC: Yeah, so that’s the dead center of the Venus retrograde. So whenever you have Mercury or Venus retrograding, the exact middle of it is the Sun’s conjunction with that planet. And that’s the inferior conjunction, which is when the planet is actually closest to us. When a retrograde Venus is conjoined the Sun in the chart, it means that Venus is between us and the Sun, and right around the closest to Earth, right? And that’s part of how the middle of a Venus retrograde feels, right? You can feel it, right? It’s going in. It’s going towards us. It’s close. There can be an uncomfortable lack of proximity, but at the same time that perfect alignment with the Sun qualifies as a cazimi, right? When a planet is in the heart of the Sun, the planet gets that clarity from the Sun. And so, that’s a big clarity point. And it’s nice that a big clarity point follows that potentially quite disruptive Full Moon so immediately. It’s literally a day later.
KS: Yes, it’s an important one. It does often get overlooked. I like how you really reiterated there, Austin, that it is the midpoint of the Venus retrograde cycle. So, you know, things start to shift. And it’ll be interesting. Because, you know, we were talking before about the change in quality of Venus retrograde in October while she’s retro in Scorpio versus Venus retro in November, where she’s in Libra. It almost feels like that transition is maybe starting once we get on the other side of this Sun-Venus conjunction.
AC: Yeah, definitely. It’s the point where if you go any further into the woods, you’re actually beginning to leave the woods, cuz you got to the middle.
KS: Yeah, you’re beyond that.
AC: It’s the bottom of the underworld where you can only go up, right? It’s that point. It’s the nadir or the center.
KS: Yeah.
AC: If you continue onward, now you’re going out rather than going deeper.
KS: Yes. You’ve gone past the halfway point.
AC: It’s as deep as we have to go, right?
KS: Yeah.
CB: It’s really interesting. You can see it really clearly in Mercury retrograde periods, that middle-point being like the crucial turning point within the cycle, where there starts to a resolution oftentimes to the problems that were initiated at the retrograde station. But it’s interesting seeing that sometimes in the retrograde cycles of other planets like Venus as well.
AC: Yeah. If you’re paying attention, you can see events start to pivot, and you can also kind of feel something shift around that day. Which is kind of funny because on a—never mind. I was gonna say we have a Mercury-Sun conjunction exactly today, but it’s not retrograde, and I’ll just be confusing.
CB: Sure.
AC: It’s also a shift in the synodic cycles, the subject of my class for this October.
KS: Nice segue.
AC: If you’d like to be confused, then I will—
KS: You’ll confuse people more?
AC: Well, it’s gonna get complicated before it gets simple. You know, presenting the mechanics is initially confusing. But, you know, if you want clarity, you have to go through that confusion.
KS: Which is really a good metaphor for October, isn’t it?
AC: Yeah. It’s all one theme.
KS: It’s all one theme. Well, and speaking of all these ‘love’ Venus themes, one thing I forgot to mention earlier is that my next online astrology class is a four-part class starting October 29, on astrology and relationships. So I don’t know that we’ll necessarily do synodic cycles, but we will look at synastry, compatibility, along with timing in the context of relationships. So that will start after this Sun-Venus conjunction.
AC: Okay, I got a new metaphor that’s not sewer-oriented.
KS: Oh, okay, good. We’ll take it.
AC: Okay. So it’s into the dark woods.
KS: That’s what you said before, and like, yes, okay, tell us more. It’s like Little Red Riding Hood or something.
AC: Right. I mean, how many fairy-tales had ‘into the dark woods’ as a theme?
KS: Yeah.
AC: But, yeah, it’s the dark woods of the heart. And I’m immediately thinking about Dante’s circle of hell where there’s woods, but I’m gonna leave that out.
KS: It’s funny you mention that, cuz I just quoted a passage from that when I was teaching on the weekend.
AC: Dante?
KS: Yeah. The part where he talks about, you know, “Midway through the journey of life, it’s like I’m stuck in the dark woods, and I don’t know where to go from here.”
AC: Oh, okay. I was thinking of the other woods, but that works, too. There’s a circle of woods that’s actually extremely appropriate, but is maybe too dark and depressing. I don’t know. I’ve been pushing it with the blood and sewage and scorpions and toxins.
KS: This is your kind of month, though, Austin.
AC: I know, right?
KS: I’ll be reveling in Snow White metaphors in November when we have Venus and Jupiter in their own signs.
AC: So I’m gonna go for it.
KS: Good.
AC: So the layer is the ‘Wood of Suicides’, and it’s a metaphor for much more than just literal suicide. But the people in Dante’s Inferno who took their own lives are turned into trees, and there’s some mean birds that live in these trees and they tear at the branches. And the souls which become trees can only speak when their branches are broken and their sap is oozing out. Because they could only speak when they were in pain, or they only communicated when they were suffering, and they were locked inside it. And that’s not inappropriate, that’s not off-theme for the emotional imagery, or for the emotional stuff that Venus retrograde in Scorpio brings up.
KS: Beautiful.
CB: Yeah, that’s good.
AC: Okay. So not too dark, okay.
CB: Oh, no. It’s still pretty dark.
AC: But appropriately dark.
CB: Right. I like the title better than our earlier sewage-themed title.
KS: Yes.
AC: Oh, no. I think my piece is going to be called “The Black Honey of Venus Cloacina.”
KS: Beautiful. There’s gonna be some great Twitter stuff going on with all of these threads, themes, and possible titles.
CB: And I wanted to actually bring it back and ask you something, Austin, your ‘mouse’ dream. And you were talking about the interplay between pleasure and pain, and that being tied into Venus and Mars. And not to like return back to that whole discussion, but kind of to return back to it, I was curious if you could expand on that a little bit. Because it was a topic brought up, and it was something I was trying to think about—which is that interplay between Venus and Mars and sexuality, and the general question of what does Mars have to do with sex. And is that it? Is that part of it? Or how would you address that question?
AC: Right. One, I mean, just on a very simple technical level, Scorpio—which is one of Mars’ two signs—rules the genitals in the body, so that’s worth noting. So there’s an easy connection there. But, yeah, with pleasure and pain, sex is not, for the vast majority of people, purely Venusian. It’s not just like getting a back rub. There’s the martial component. A lot of people like it rough, or like it rough sometimes. Or are in the mood for that, that day, but not the other. There’s like a ratio almost of Venus to Mars that we could use as a lens to look at a lot of people’s sexuality. You know, purely Venusian, you know, flower petals and soft music and like that’s absolutely part of it. I would say that sex is more Venusian than martial, cuz you can take Venus to an extreme, people are touching and saying nice things. You take Mars to an extreme, nobody’s even talking, but there is that secondary Mars component, which is very difficult to ignore. And not all of the sensations that people like are like soft and gentle. And so, like that’s Mars, you know.
CB: Sure.
AC: That’s without even bringing up like BDSM or, you know, any of those flavors—those tastes, if you will.
KS: Yeah.
CB: What do you think, Kelly?
KS: Well, I mean, this is making me think of a scene from Sex and the City. And that’s probably dating myself. I’m showing my age a little bit. You guys have maybe never seen Sex and the City, I’m not sure.
AC: I think I watched all of them.
KS: Okay. Cuz what you’re describing there, Austin, is sort of saying that there is maybe a healthier or a functional place for Mars in sexuality or in sexual expression. And the scene that I’m thinking of is the maybe very vanilla character of Charlotte York, who’s probably the most romantic, fairy-tale-like one, who’s just, you know, always looking for love. And there is a scene where she’s visiting with some old friends, and she’s talking. She got a bit drunk at lunch, and she’s talking about how, you know, “Don’t you just want someone to kind of throw you down and just kind of have that kind of more rough, like ‘when the headboard is banging against the wall’ kind of experience?” And this is the vignette from the scene. And I think, you know, even though this is a very perhaps Venusian or soft, romantic character, even she’s expressing that there are times when she wants that friction or that fast pace, or even kind of more of that aggression style, which would be something much more martian.
AC: Well, and that term right there, ‘friction’.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Friction is martial.
KS: Yes.
AC: Friction creates sparks.
KS: Yeah.
CB: It doesn’t have to be negative. Like all aspects of sexuality are not necessarily coming from a negative place with Mars, but there’s a constructive place where that’s coming from as well. I mean, one of the other answers to that question—that I was thinking of as I was trying to think about this myself—was in that interplay between like what you were talking about earlier, there’s that side of Mars that is severing and separating, Austin. But then there’s also the piercing quality. And another part of that is like the, let’s say, penetrative quality of Mars, which in a negative sense can be like, you know, getting stabbed by somebody, but in another sense can have like, you know, other types of sexual connotations that are not necessarily negative.
AC: Right, well—go ahead.
CB: Go ahead.
AC: Well, I was just gonna say it just occurred to me that friction is an important part of sex—which it is for the most part. There are acts which don’t depend on friction, but many of them do. The way to maximize friction is to put one thing inside another thing, for something to be surrounded on all sides by friction, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: You know, if we rub our arms together, that’s one part of my arm getting friction. Whereas if something was inside my arm—I’m sorry, I’m trying to not be too prude. But like as a dynamic, when one thing is inside another, it maximizes friction. You get friction in as many surfaces as possible at the same time.
KS: Yeah.
AC: More surface area, thank you.
KS: Yes, more surface area. And I think that, you know, penetration is—I’m not saying it’s the only—but it’s a common part of sexual encounters, basically.
CB: Right. And that becomes like the constructive function of Mars and its role in a sexual relationship—the penetrative role versus Venus’ more receptive role. And like I had actually a crude way of putting that which is that Mars is basically the signification of fucking, basically, whereas Venus would be the signification of being fucked. And when I was talking to Christopher Renstrom about this, we were placing it in the context talking about Ptolemy’s approach to sexuality, where he was talking about Venus and Mars. And what was interesting is he wasn’t distinguishing between gender, but he was just distinguishing between whether you were like a top or whether you were a bottom, which was true of like heterosexual relationships, but also, homosexual relationships. And that sort of has been the way that I’ve sort of understood Mars and Venus and that interplay, which doesn’t have to be necessarily negative, but instead, it’s more about who’s playing which role.
AC: That makes sense.
KS: Yeah. Yeah, there’s a receptive quality to the planet Venus, and there is a penetrative or driving or even an attacking force to the quality of Mars.
AC: Yeah, I really think—as we’re talking about this—it’s almost like any act of physical union and closeness is going to be primarily Venus. But it’s like how much Mars would you like seasoning your Venus? It’s almost like, you know—
KS: How much spice?
AC: I think of going to Thai restaurants. Like do you want one-star, or do you want five, right? And for people who like five, one is boring. For people who like one, five makes it so that they’re not able to enjoy their meal.
KS: It’s too uncomfortable.
AC: I can’t even taste it. It’s way too hot.
CB: Right. Yeah, I like that. That’s really good, because it also takes it outside of a negative context. Even though, obviously, if you threw spice into like somebody’s eyes that would be viewed as like a negative thing. But if it’s something where you’re just eating, and you’re just choosing different levels, then it’s placed in a neutral and sort of constructive context.
KS: Which is kind of the piece with Mars. It depends on where it is, how it’s received, and what degree. You know, is this heat in the fifth degree or in the first degree? And the right application. Spice in the eye, very, very painful. Spice in the mouth, you know, pick your ratio.
AC: Right. Depends. Makes me think of the taste of both, like spicy and hot versus sweet. And sweet and spicy is totally a combination that works.
KS: Totally a combination that works, yeah.
CB: So the final thing, though, is sexuality something that is only proper primarily to Venus? Or is it something that both Venus and Mars share in common, because of that dynamic or that duality between them?
AC: I would say that it is primarily Venusian. You know, if I have to give it to one planet, Venus wins. But if we’re gonna talk about any other planet besides Venus—which we should—Mars would be number two.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, and I can’t tell if I can extricate it from that dynamic between the two. But because relationship itself is more of a Venusian thing, I think it’s easier usually to put sex also in that category.
AC: You know, you need a certain amount of Venus to just get two human beings together in the same room, right? If you have all Mars, it’s like some, you know, tough, grizzled whoever, like living with their dog alone in a cabin, hunting for a living, you know.
KS: Yeah. I mean, I think I might go in a little different direction. I do think you need a splash of Mars to get two people to go from ‘we’re having a nice chat’ or ‘we’re having a nice dinner’. We need something to spark up. We need a little heat to come into this. Otherwise, we’re just, you know, chocolate sauce on ice cream. Like it’s just delicious, and we’ve had so much sweetness. I think you need a splash of Mars. I think it’s predominantly Venusian, but I do think we need the heat. We need the fire.
AC: Yeah. I think we’re kind of one mind here, maybe saying it differently. But, yeah.
CB: Well, maybe that’s the thing that changes it from just being almost like a friendship, or like a union of two people in friendship of some sort or similarity or affinity to something else, to having like sexual chemistry. And that’s where the Mars element comes in, perhaps.
KS: Yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna be crude or something, but it feels like, you know, that throw-down component, which is like, yeah, something has to shift or turn on or get activated, where you want to actually go into that space with another person. And whether it’s friction or heat or spice or passion or whatever, they seem a little bit more like Mars pieces.
AC: Yeah. So, yeah, if Venus is the water, then you have to have at least a little heat. There has to be a flame. Something has to ignite that in order to make it steamy, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: Steamy is heated water.
KS: Correct.
CB: All right.
KS: So did we give you some answers there, Chris?
CB: Yeah, I think that was some answers. I mean, it was sparked by a discussion that was started by Ryhan Butler, so I wanted to give him credit for that. And I was curious what you guys—cuz it was just something I was thinking about as a result of that, and thinking back to, yeah, just that issue. Because that was an issue for me years ago, cuz I had a similar issue of, is Venus really the primary planet that has to do with sex because of its connection with relationships? Or what role does Mars play, and why does Mars play a role in sexuality? And is it only in a negative sense? Cuz there’s like an issue where you read some ancient texts—like Valens—where often a lot of the negative aspects of sexuality are given to Mars, because that’s an extreme manifestation. And that’s also something that sometimes comes naturally—if you had to assign it to a single planet—to Mars as a malefic. But that’s not necessarily to say that it only has that or can only be expressed in a negative context. Yeah, anyway, thanks for humoring me with that. And I thought it was good because of this Venus retrograde. We’re gonna see so much of Venus that excels at doing things like Mars does. Doing things like Mars in Scorpio would, but seeing Venus express that. And that’s one of the reasons why I thought it was sort of like relevant to talk about this month in this context, because that’s so much of what the energy of the month will be about.
AC: Yeah, definitely.
KS: Very on point or on theme, for sure.
AC: Very on topic.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Awesome. Good, good. Well, I’m glad that I did not like take it in a totally out-of-left-field topic direction. So I think we’re going on over two hours here. So I think we’re both towards the end of the month—
KS: Standard.
CB: Right. Standard. So the last thing that happens at the very end of the month is I did notice there’s a shift where, obviously, Venus retrogrades back into Libra, which is something we’re gonna spend a lot of time talking about next month. Cuz it’s gonna spend pretty much the entirety of the rest of its retrograde there, and then eventually will station direct there.
AC: So actually it regresses into Libra on Halloween.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Okay. Right. Later that day here in the US. Interesting. So Venus goes back into Libra on Halloween. And then, also, at the same, the other ingress that takes place is Mercury—I think the same day—shifts from Scorpio, where it’s been all month, and moves into Sagittarius, which also, consequently, is where it’s gonna station retrograde just two weeks later. Or a little over two weeks later. There’s a little bit of an interesting shift there that takes place at the end of the month, where suddenly things lighten up a little bit. Venus moves out of Scorpio, and Mercury also moves out of Scorpio, leaving only the Sun and Jupiter there. So a little bit of an energy change right at the very end of the month on Halloween. And then that pretty much closes out the month.
AC: Yeah, it becomes less of a gothic fairy-tale.
KS: Yes, definitely.
CB: All right.
KS: So it’s a shift. Like lightening the mood, if you like. And that’s a big teaser for next month’s episode.
AC: Yeah. Once we’ve entered the dark woods and discovered the hidden sewage plant there and proceed outward, possessed of revelations.
KS: Possessed of revelations. Or juicy mulch, which we can, you know, grow something from.
CB: Yeah. And sometimes returning back to and finishing things that were started previously. I actually have a very concrete manifestation of that, where Demetra’s finishing her book on Hellenistic astrology right now, and volume one is gonna be completed. And I’m reading through it, and I’m trying to write the foreword right now. But she’s completed and just wrote a footnote for a section where we researched a bunch of definitions, and she did a translation of a great text of Antiochus back in late 2010. And I just realized, as she’s finalizing that—for publication in this book—those translations were actually things that we put together—her and I and Ben Dykes—back eight years ago, right around the time of the last Venus retrograde. So that’s kind of a concrete manifestation of sometimes you can have a repetition of similar topics or themes coming back again during a retrograde in those eight-year increments.
AC: Yeah.
KS: A hundred-percent.
AC: I’m curious about that. Cuz I wrote my first almanac during the Venus retrograde in 2010.
CB: Okay.
KS: Interesting. So that’s something everybody should do this month. Have a think back to October-November 2010, which was the last Venus retrograde in Scorpio and in Libra, and see if there are any repetitions. And maybe they can post them in the comments of the show just for more ongoing chit-chat.
CB: Now that you mention it, I think I may have started podcasting in November of 2010.
KS: Oh, yeah?
CB: Well, I’ll have to look into that. All right, guys.
KS: There you go. You guys are much quicker off the mark than me. I’m like, “I’ve got no idea what happened in 2010,” but I’ll have a think about it.
CB: Right.
AC: I started thinking about it last year. I was like, “What’s gonna happen in 2018?” “Oh, no, that?”
CB: It’s always those things that you don’t think about or you don’t remember until they start repeating themselves. And then you think back and remember, “Oh, yeah, that did happen eight years ago, and it was connected to this thing that’s happening now.”
KS: Totally.
AC: Yep. No, there’s a lot of stuff. When I think back to that October-November, Kait was super busy, and I was away writing, and so, we just spent less time with each other than we normally do. And she’s on track to be super busy during the fall, and I think I’m probably gonna find myself, I don’t know, lost inside of book projects. So, you know, the more things change.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Brilliant. All right, guys, well, thanks for joining me today. This was a lot of fun. It’s always great catching up with you and talking about the month ahead, so thanks for, yeah, joining me again today.
AC: Always.
KS: Anytime. It was fantastic. Always lots of fun.
KS: All right. And thanks to our audience. We had about 25 or 30 people here joining us, who are patrons of the podcast, who were joining us for the live, early-access recording tier. So thanks a lot. There were a lot of great questions and comments, and I always appreciate that. Thanks to all of our patrons who support the show and allow us to produce it each month and to keep making it bigger and better. It makes a huge difference. Thank you, also, to people who have given us ratings on iTunes, cuz it helps other people to find the podcast. So please be sure to like and subscribe and all of that stuff. So thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you again next month.