The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 183, titled:
December 2018 Astrology Forecast: No More Retrogrades
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on November 30, 2018
Original episode URL:
https://theastrologypodcast.com/2018/11/30/december-2018-astrology-forecast-no-more-retrogrades/
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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 January 15th, 2026
Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode is recorded on Wednesday, November 14, 2018, starting at 5:18 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this will probably be the 122nd or 123rd episode of the show. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking with Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock about the astrological forecast for December of 2018. 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. Hey, guys. Welcome back to the show.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey, guys.
CB: Hey. All right, so we’re recording this a little bit early in the month—it’s only like December 14—which is unusual for us. But it’s because, Austin, you are going out of town on a major journey that you just finalized—you just got together finally, at the last minute, in a pre-Mercury retrograde snafu, sort of fashion.
AC: It was supposedly final two months ago. So yeah, we decided to talk about this as a good example of, you know, the days leading up to a Mercury retrograde often being as harrowing as the retrograde itself has a reputation for being. Basically, so yeah, I’m gonna be in Melbourne in about five days, and we’re doing a big event. I’m doing a big event with Gordon White. It’s gonna be awesome, So Below. It’s sold out. It’s been sold out. And so, we put this together over the summer kind of quick. And I actually need to get a new passport, because I lost my old passport a couple of years ago. And so, I don’t know, about a month ago—well, a little bit more than a month ago—I ordered the two-week, rapid, you know, ‘pay a little extra money, get your passport fast’ because I wanted to leave room for error, so to speak. And last Monday—this is Tuesday, the 14th right now—I received a letter in the mail from the passport agency which said: “The birth certificate which you submitted as proof of citizenship does not have a raised or embossed seal. And so, we have rejected your application.”
CB: Oh, God.
AC: Which is, you know, a real problem, cuz at that point, we already had a sold-out event. We’d already bought non-refundable tickets across the world, etc., etc.
CB: Right.
AC: And so, I went into deep panic, and I called everybody I possibly could—my parents, the state of Georgia, where I was born, the US Passport Agency. And in order to get it done in time, I needed a new passport issued. No, excuse me—well, I did, but I needed a new birth certificate, because when I was born in Georgia in 1979, they didn’t do fancy, raised seals on the birth certificates. So even the original wasn’t good enough. So I had to get a new one reissued, but you couldn’t get one of those through the mail in time for me to give it to the passport agency, and for them to process it and give me back my passport. So I found out that you can do it in person in about 20 minutes. And so, I was born in Georgia, and you have to go to Atlanta to do that. And so, I was looking at maybe having to book some extremely expensive, last-minute tickets to do that. But my brother, who’s in Florida now, made a heroic, eight-hour journey north the next day and got my birth certificate—cuz he’s related by blood, you can have your mom, dad, children, or siblings get your birth certificate—and then overnighted that to me. I got that last Friday. And then I just got back from Seattle, which I flew to for a Tuesday appointment with the passport agency. The places where you can actually go in and talk to somebody for a passport are states away. Like there isn’t one in Oregon. And you can only get an appointment usually if you’re gonna fly within eight days or something. And so, I’m flying in less than that. So I went in there. When I talked to the passport agency on the phone, they were like, “Yeah, we’re not sure what you need to bring. And we’re not sure what they’re gonna be able to do for you.”
CB: Oh, God.
AC: I’m just, you know, just shitting my pants all week long.
CB: Right. Cuz you have this huge trip that’s been scheduled out for months.
AC: You know, I was saying earlier it’s literally like a nightmare of guilt and shame, where you ruin everything for everybody.
CB: Right.
AC: But I went in, and yesterday I got the passport. And it was actually really easy. I don’t know how to put it other than if you can imagine ‘un-shitting’ your pants.
CB: I mean, that’s a great Mercury retrograde story. And even though Mercury’s not retrograde—yeah, it’s actually getting ready to station here really soon.
AC: Oh, it’s so close.
CB: It’s so close. It’s in the pre-retrograde shadow phase, which it actually entered. So this is a good lesson for everybody who’s not familiar with shadow periods or how Mercury retrogrades work. Even before Mercury actually stations retrograde—once it passes the degrees that it will eventually retrograde back to—you really do sometimes start seeing some of the things that we would typically associate with a Mercury retrograde either starting to be put into place as a preparatory step before the retrograde itself. Or sometimes you actually see people struggling with things that we would associate with the retrograde period itself, which is what this sounds like.
AC: Yeah. And it’s worth noting that over the last few days, Mercury has been, you know, deep in the shadow and within a couple days of the station, and tightly square my ‘natter’—or my natal Saturn in Virgo in the 3rd. Which certainly opposes planets in the 9th, thereby restricting international travel, you know, etc., etc. But all was overcome, you know. And so, if you’re applying for a passport, make sure the birth certificate you submit has a shiny, raised or embossed seal, cuz the one you were issued originally might not have that. And it was just that seal that meant that my brother had to spend like a day-and-a-half driving. Well, he didn’t have to. He heroically volunteered. And, you know, I had to book an emergency flight and wait in line. So, you know, all of that because of an insufficiently-fancy seal on the birth certificate.
CB: Right.
AC: And by the way, when I submitted the original paperwork, the passport agent that I talked to—who can’t create a passport, but you have to talk to somebody to file the paperwork—looked at everything and was like, “This is just fine. You’ve got everything you need.”
KS: Oh, my goodness.
AC: You know, she was so nice and helpful—but now I kind of wanna kill her.
CB: Yeah. I mean, this is a pretty standard, Mercury retrograde-type manifestation in terms of running into obstacles or difficulties or snafus, but then sometimes it just being a thing that you have to push through. And sometimes things still work out in the end anyways, but it’s something where it requires patience and perseverance to deal with a lot of little annoying, logistical issues and things that crop up out of nowhere.
AC: Yeah. You know, one thing that was interesting to me about this one is—so this Mercury retrograde is going to be primarily in Sagittarius. And we actually talked last week about Sagittarius and quests and adventures. And so, you know, my brother had to go on a road trip. I had to take an unplanned journey. You know, there was ‘journey’ to it.
CB: Right.
AC: Which under other circumstances I might have counted as an adventure.
CB: Sure.
AC: And in order to go on my Australian adventure, which will be like a fun, good adventure.
CB: Right.
KS: Yes.
CB: Have you had a Mercury retrograde, annoying snafu like that, Kelly, before? Where you had to just push through, but eventually things came together without being completely wrecked?
KS: Yeah, absolutely. That’s probably my most common type of Mercury retrograde experience, where the shit hits the fan, and you’ve gotta put all this extra logistical effort in to make something happen that originally seemed like it was gonna be smooth. Just like what Austin’s saying. I mean, I’ve had flights where you sit on the tarmac for an hour-and-a-half instead of pushing back from the gate.
CB: Right.
KS: You still get where you’re trying to go, but it takes, you know, either longer or more effort to deal with it. And this is one thing that I will talk a lot about with Mercury retrograde on social media, when people are emailing me, tearing their hair out, thinking the sky’s falling in, like Chicken Little. You know, Mercury retrograde—it’s not a terminal thing. It usually won’t prevent what you’re trying to do, it just makes it that much harder and puts six more hoops in your way, as long as you’re prepared and you’re flexible enough to deal with whatever those hoops might be, like Austin. You had to juggle things around. You had to fly to another state when you weren’t planning it. But you said, “I’m gonna show up and do this.” And you were able to negotiate with Hermes and get it done.
AC: Yeah. Basically, I was like, whatever. As long as there’s a way, I’ll do it.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Whatever the path is.
CB: And sometimes there’s like a do-over, where you have to do it a second time, where you would have ideally wanted to just do it once and be done with it. But sometimes that process of doing it a second time—that’s not really relevant in Austin’s instance.
AC: Oh, yeah, it is. I had to submit—
KS: Two applications
AC: Yeah. I literally had to give them my picture again. I had to give them my birth certificate again. I had to do everything again.
KS: Totally.
CB: Yeah, you had the do-over. But I’m saying that sometimes the second do-over can be better than what you would’ve done during the first time. And I’ve learned that sometimes there’s those Mercury retrograde instances where there’s like a point to it and you come out of it perhaps stronger having persevered and having pushed through to the other side. The process of having to do it a second time sometimes makes whatever you do better because you put more thought into it, and because you’ve had the experience of doing it once already. You know, a typical Mercury retrograde might be like writing a paper or an article or something and then losing it, and having to write the whole thing over again. And it’s a pain and it’s a process you have to go through. You still have to push through. But then maybe because you wrote it twice, sometimes the second version ends up coming out better.
AC: Yeah.
KS: I’m sorry I didn’t think of this before when you were asking me about a story. I’m actually living one right now. Because on the last Mercury retrograde, in that early part of August, I had to buy a new laptop. And of course I know as an astrologer that’s not a good time to buy a piece of technology, but I was going on a trip and I needed to take a laptop with me, cuz I had just been working off my desktop. And in the last week or so—well, about a week after buying that laptop, it started playing up. It had problems with its WiFi card, and I had to get a dongle cuz it forgot that it knew how to do WiFi without this extra thing. I landed in Australia—I had this computer for a week—and it doesn’t work on the WiFi. So I’m absolutely shitting my pants, just the same way Austin was, cuz I’m like, “I have to work off this computer.” We had a podcast to record. I had readings to do. So I’m going to—I don’t know what it’s called in Australia—Best Buy, whatever the tech store is. I think I went to this tech store everyday for a week. “I need this other thing.” “I need this extra thing.” Anyway, made it work. And now in the last week, it’s just paying up even more. And I’ve been meaning to take it back because it should still be under warranty, and anyway, it’s going back in the next few days. And I’m just thinking, “I might wait till next week,” but it’s gotta go back, and I don’t know if they’re gonna give me a replacement. And I kind of don’t want the same type of laptop again. I want a different one because I want a better option. So totally what you’re saying there, Chris. I’m gonna take a bit more time this go around—I’m not leaving for a trip in any kind of hurry—and hopefully get a better result than what happened last time.
CB: Yeah. Although part of the lesson that’s important—that more advanced astrologers learn—is you still have to do it. Like you still have to go through the motions and just go into it knowing that there might be some hassles and there might be some delays, or there might be some do-overs. But most of the time, especially if you’re in a situation where, like in Austin’s case, it really demanded it—you don’t put off doing it, or you don’t avoid doing it. You just try to go into it with the awareness that there might be some additional things that you have to do. But sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, and you can’t just completely stop living your life just because Mercury’s gone retrograde or Venus has gone retrograde or something like that.
KS: Uh-uh, you can’t.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah. Although, I mean, there are things that I will arrange in my schedule so that I don’t have to do them until Mercury is direct again. Okay, so there are the ‘mandatory’ adventures—like the one I just had—but then I also see ‘optional’ adventures, where someone’s like, “I’m really pushing to get this blank out,” a Mercury thing. A book, a podcast, you know, a piece of writing. And they’re like, “Oh, I really wanna get it out in the middle of this retrograde,” and it doesn’t really have to come out there. And then there’ll end up being delays, or they’re not happy with it, and it doesn’t actually get done until the end of the retrograde anyway.
CB: Right.
AC: And so, if you have the option, just actually position it at the end of the retrograde. You know, because I play video games, I see a lot of video game releases like that on Steam, where there’ll be a game that comes out like right around the station. And they spend the three weeks doing constant patches on it because it wasn’t quite ready, and everybody gets mad in the reviews. It’s like would it really have been worse to just wait a couple of weeks?
CB: Yeah.
AC: If you’re looking at an ‘optional’ adventure like that, you know, just take the hit and do it a little bit later if it’s not gonna ruin everything.
CB: Right. Yeah, I totally am on the same page about that. And Christina Caudill in the chat—we have a live chat with patrons who are attending the live recording of this episode as a patron benefit. And she says: “What about the conjunction with the Sun? Good time, if you must.” And yeah, actually, honestly, I always find that halfway through the retrograde cycle—when the retrograde Mercury conjoins the Sun, which is the halfway point through the Mercury retrograde—that that really is an important turning point in the retrograde phase. And oftentimes a lot of the more negative or problematic things that we often associate with the retrograde start to quickly dissipate after that point. So if you have to do it somewhere within the retrograde cycle, if you can get it more towards that conjunction, that might be a good idea.
AC: Yeah, after. Then or after. I mean, the thing is, people talk about that cazimi point and its value, or, you know, it being special. And it is special. But it’s much better for clarity of action and interior clarity than it is a super-good election to do things. Like it’s not a great time to send out a letter, it is a good time to write something. Like you’re writing will be better that day most likely, but it’s not as good—cuz I’ve tested this for years. I was like, “So it’s good. But how was it good, and why is it good?” So, I don’t know.
KS: No, I think I agree with what you’re saying, Austin, and I think symbolically it’s very congruent. Because when a planet is cazimi, yes, it’s in the heart of the Sun, it’s the oasis part of the combustion period, but it’s still an invisible sort of thing. It’s still working in the intangible realm or the unseen realm. So it’s not so good necessarily maybe for making manifest physical things, or like you said, the sending of the letter. But something about pulling things out from the ethers—whether that’s writing down your ideas—there’s sort of this reflective process, if you like. That it can bring clarity to that.
AC: Yeah, yeah. For writing, I find it’s great. For just thinking and, you know, clarity about recent events, it’s really good. It’s also worth differentiating the retrograde cazimi, which we’re talking about, with the cazimi which happens when Mercury is direct, right? Cuz you can have a direct one and a retrograde one. The direct ones seem to be pretty good. They seem to be noticeably better for external things, but I would still prefer the planet visible and in a good sign, all that. And one thing that’s worth noting is after the Mercury-Sun conjunction, when it’s retrograde, the planet—Mercury in this case—is, everyday, leaving combustion. The combustion is getting less intense, right? Whereas on the way in, it’s getting more and more burnt up.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really great point. So it’s falling into the beams after it first stations retrograde. And it’s like falling—almost like gravity from the Sun is attracting it or dragging it into the Sun’s beams. But when it makes that conjunction, when it’s retrograde with the Sun, everything after that point is escaping, gradually, the rays of the Sun.
AC: Yeah, like everyday it’s better.
CB: Sure. And this really works, I noticed. I mean, I’ve known this for a long time, but I noticed it in a lot of people’s lives recently as I was tracking the Venus retrograde. That Sun-Venus conjunction—when Venus was retrograde—really was the middle point in the cycle, and really was a turning point where some people realized something. Whatever that Venus retrograde cycle was keyed into or was connected to for them, it seems a lot of people had a moment of understanding or clarity when they started realizing what needed to be done at that point. And then now that we’re almost at the very end of it here in mid-November—with Venus getting ready to station—the final conclusion of that is starting to take place.
AC: Yeah. Well, and Venus stations in about—it looks like 20-some, no, about 30 hours from now.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
CB: I had a really—it was an example of that with a family member of mine. My mom had—her dog has been sick and doing really not well for like a very long time. He’s lost his eyesight. He’s losing his ‘earsight’. He has really bad—I’m forgetting the term, but a lot of health problems. And this Venus retrograde went retrograde in her 6th, and she realized that he had to be put down, I guess, because he was in such bad shape that he was just suffering basically everyday. And it was like an act of mercy or something at that point.
KS: Yeah.
CB: But I was asking her—she made the realization that that had to happen at the Sun-Venus conjunction. And she didn’t know. She’s not paying attention to the astrology, but I’m just listening, as I’m hearing her talk about that. Then she said at the end of the conversation that the dog was 16-years-old. And then I inquired about the dates, and she said he would have been born sometime in late 2002. So he was born under the same retrograde cycle, you know, two retrogrades, or eight-year increments ago.
KS: Wow.
AC: That’s great. Or, that’s not great. But that is an excellent example.
KS: Yes.
AC: And for people who aren’t aware, the 6th is the traditional house of pets.
CB: Right. And sometimes that’s very literal. And it’s weird because sometimes astrologers can brush that off and just be like, you know, that’s not important. But for some people, having a pet in your life is actually a very, very important relationship, and things, important developments in that relationship can show up in your chart, especially with respect to the 6th house.
KS: Absolutely. I’m a pet parent. I’ve got three cats. Yes, I’m totally a crazy cat lady.
CB: Right.
KS: Although I’d say one of the cats belongs to my husband, cuz she does. She’s a black cat, and we adopted her like two days after Saturn moved into Scorpio. And my husband is the super Scorpio in the family, so she’s definitely his girl. But when Jupiter was going through my 6th house a few years ago, I cannot believe the amount of money I spent on pet bills in that 12-month period. It was nothing life-threatening. It was like dental surgeries and medication for this or that. But it was just like, oh, my God, outrageous. So yeah, I think it’s a good point you’re saying there, Austin—uh, Chris, sorry. The 6th house is about pets. Like it’s not maybe the topic that first comes to mind when we think about the 6th house, but it’s still an important topic to keep in the back of our minds.
CB: Yeah, it definitely can be. And sometimes things like that can be very literal sometimes when you have transits to specific houses, and the people or other things that those represent in your life. You know, obviously, sometimes there’s an emotional or there’s a psychological component, but also sometimes there’s a very literal component to it as well.
AC: Yeah, definitely.
CB: So yeah, I’m glad to hear that that worked out. You’ve got a Mercury retrograde success story. I hope that’s not premature to say. I guess by the time we release this episode, you’ll be in Australia having a great time later this month.
AC: Yep. You know, what’s interesting about my brief trial here was that I needed the passport to do things that were scheduled while Mercury was retrograde, right? Like the pre-retrograde problem-solving that was for while Mercury was retrograde stuff.
CB: Right. The precursor.
AC: Like if it didn’t happen, the letdown or the problem, you know, would have been next week.
CB: Right. Cool. Well, good luck on your trip this month. We look forward to you having a report next month when we do our forecast in December, for the entire year ahead, and maybe you can let us know how it went.
AC: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I expect great fun. You know, I don’t mind a little getting lost. You know, we’ve scheduled some time to just kind of hang out and explore. So that might be really nice. I’m looking forward to Mercury retrograding back to conjoin Jupiter, and then conjoining Jupiter again.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah, we’re gonna have a lot of that over the course of the next few weeks. Kelly, what have you been up to since we last checked in? Actually pretty recently for the last forecast.
KS: Yeah, we did speak just recently, the three of us.
CB: We’ve basically been recording a lot of podcasts.
KS: Yes, I’ve been talking a lot. I’ve had my speaking to the internet going on. So I have started a new little podcast with two girlfriends where we’re just getting together for a really short update each week. And that’s called the Water Trio Podcast. Apparently, we are on iTunes and SoundCloud. That is not my task in the group. But the Scorpio part of the Water Trio, Alicia, has got that together. We’ve also got a couple of episodes on YouTube. And we’re just, you know, ironing out all the bugs. But I think by the time this episode goes live, that should be running smoothly.
CB: I mean, I’m a little jealous cuz I thought we were the ‘water trio’.
AC: What the hell, Kelly?
CB: Yeah, a grand trine of water placements.
KS: We do have, the three of us. Yeah, me and you two gentlemen, who I’m very honored to share microphone space with. Alicia and Cassandra and I have called ourselves the ‘Water Trio’ for about 15 years.
CB: Okay.
KS: So I think they might edge you guys on longevity. And we’ve got Sun signs that all form, basically, exact within a couple of degrees, water trine.
AC: We’re more the ‘Two Pisces and Chris Podcast’.
KS: I feel like we’re the ‘Pisces-Scorpio Podcast’ here.
CB: Two Pisces and a Scorpio walk into a bar.
KS: Correct. Just make sure the bar has a lot of alcohol, I think.
CB: So can people find that by just searching ‘Water Trio Podcast’?
KS: Yeah, the ‘Water Trio Podcast’. We tried to come up with a catchy slogan or phrase, but that ability escaped us. So we just went with the ‘Water Trio’. And yeah, it’s just three women having a chat about astrology for the week. Basically, we get together. We each pick one aspect for the weeks, and then we just talk about it for 30 minutes and that’s it. So it’s kind of a quick look at the week ahead.
CB: Awesome. Well, I’ll put a link to that in the description page for this episode, on The Astrology Podcast website, so people can find it directly.
KS: Thank you so much. Yeah, I can find the link. I can do that part.
CB: Yeah.
KS: I’ll get that for you.
CB: It’s so new that I’m searching for it, and I’m having trouble finding it. So I just want to make sure people get where you have it up.
KS: Yes, that’s a good point. So yeah, one of them—cuz we have this WhatsApp chat, the three of us—and one of them was like, “Yeah, you’re doing a few things.” I’m like, “Yeah, you know, it’s all this Jupiter-Sag action.” So I’m just giving things a bit of crack. And then just teaching my relationship astrology course—that’s been going on as well.
CB: Awesome. That’s exciting.
KS: Keeping out of trouble. I haven’t had any mishaps yet. I mean, I might have had one like Austin, but I don’t know about it yet. So it can stay in the unknown space.
CB: Austin and I ended up doing the ‘cusps’ episode together because you were lecturing at the exact same time that day. But did you have any thoughts on cusps that you felt like sharing, just in general?
KS: Well, it’s funny. I know I had intended to listen to that episode before we spoke today, which, unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to. But of course almost every client that I’ve had this week has had a 29° Sun placement or 0°-something. So it’s like you guys have been coming through in my consulting room.
CB: Okay.
KS: I don’t know if I have any clear opinions to share. But just knowing you guys have done an episode, this is making me think more about it. And also, cuz I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet. And funnily enough, one of the clients who’s got a 29° Sun, she basically said that she thought she was, you know, the next sign around and has only just found out she’s actually the previous sign.
CB: Oh, wow.
KS: Cuz, you know, if you are born on a cusp day, and you’ve never actually looked at your chart, you can quite likely be spending years thinking you’re actually the wrong sign.
CB: Right.
KS: And that’s quite a head shift, I think, to get your head around.
CB: Yeah. And, I mean, that’s probably really the origins of the whole modern cusp phenomenon. You know, you learn about Sun signs first, but then there’s those people right on the border. And then those people on the border have the question of, ‘what does that mean’, ‘does it mean that I’m one or the other, or does it mean that I’m both’, or what is it’, and some of the modern reactions to that, that have happened, as people try to grapple with that question.
KS: A hundred-percent. And I think the three of us had a little chat off-air somewhere about this. And I remember I said something like planets at 29° sometimes feel really hungry, especially if there’s a big change in dignity when they change signs. They can have an impatience or a ‘never enough’. Like they can’t get as filled up as they want to, as they can kind of anticipate they might be able to be. So off the top of my head, Mars at 29 Libra, for instance—that’s gonna have a massive dignity change when it moves out of Libra and into Scorpio. So it can be really hungry or restless or never satisfied, I think, for planets at 29°.
CB: Sure. Yeah, and I mean, my whole thing—cuz this actually ties into the other discussion topic I wanted to have pre-forecast. Cuz what’s happening is that some pop astrology websites are saying cusps mean you’re both, and then they’re blending the signs completely. And there’s some astrologers that are pushing back against and saying that’s not true, and that you’re not both, you’re one or the other. Mathematically, it’s gonna fall in one sign or the other. But I almost felt like the pushback against that was almost too strong, and people were being overly-dogmatic about saying cusps aren’t real or other things like that, and I just wanted to have a more nuanced discussion. And that’s what Austin and I ended up doing in order to explore that issue and look at both sides in terms of some of the different possibilities.
KS: Yeah, it’s a really good thing that I’m glad that you guys gave some airtime to, cuz it does create a lot of confusion. You know, it doesn’t matter to most people because most of us have most of our planets nicely in the sign. But, you know, there’s a transition point. You know, the 29°, the 0°, it’s new or different.
CB: Sure.
AC: Yeah, I’m looking forward to your reflections on the conversation we had. Cuz we both dug up a lot of really good stuff, a bunch of textual references from all over. And there’s a surprising diversity of opinion in the traditional literature.
KS: Yeah, I feel like you guys would’ve done a great treatment of this. Like you’ve almost basically done a research project that we all get to benefit from.
CB: Yeah, a little bit. But it ties into this separate discussion I wanna have before we get into the forecast, which there’s this fine balance, I’ve noticed, in terms of an individual astrologer’s career and maybe just looking at the community in general, as well as reflections on my own evolution or growth as an astrologer. There’s this fine balance between sometimes taking astrology seriously and wanting other people to take astrology seriously and the desire—especially if you’re a professional or a practicing astrologer—to want it to become a more respectable field in the world in general versus also at the same time being able to balance still having some levity about it. To have an approach where you can encompass and be open to some of the diversity of different approaches to astrology and different techniques, but also, different, you know, interest levels or skill levels and how to balance those two. Because we were talking before the show about how I feel like sometimes people—especially younger astrologers—go through a transition phase where they move from Sun signs to discovering natal astrology and full-fledged astrology, and sometimes they get very serious about it. But sometimes some people go through a stage of being almost too serious about it, where they get annoyed about people that are not taking it as seriously, or they go through a sort of dogmatic phase of wanting to tell other people what’s correct or what’s not correct when it comes to astrology. And I say that partially as somebody who went through different phases like that at different points myself. But it’s interesting to me to see people and to sort of reflect on that when I observe it happening in different forms in the community today. Kelly, you said you went through some similar phase?
KS: Yeah, when I first was getting into astrology. I mean, obviously, I had drunk the ‘astrological’ kool-aid, and I was incredibly passionate and enthusiastic about, you know, why astrology was amazing and the right ways to do it. I mean, even some of the early teaching that I shared in my very first small group—you know, when I might have had three students or something—I’d be like, “No, this is absolutely like this and this.” You know, and then your understanding of astrology kind of evolves. And I know, for me, as I got more comfortable in it and more, maybe secure in my knowledge of the craft—not in an egotistical way. Not like I know everything, but more like I really know this piece that I’m working with. I became more open to nuance and certainly less rigid or dogmatic around trying to make everyone else do it, you know, the way that I might have thought was the way, or the way I’d been taught. It’s funny, cuz now I see this. It comes from a very genuine place of huge enthusiasm and passion for astrology.
CB: Right.
KS: And I see this now in other people, when they’re getting started, that it can be very much like, “This is the exact way to do this specific thing.” And it’s like, “Well, I’m not sure that’s the case, but I totally love the enthusiasm that you’re bringing to this debate,” basically.
CB: Right, yeah. I’ve seen it a few times recently in fresh converts to traditional astrology. And there’s actually a phrase for that, I think, in Christianity where they call it ‘the passion of the convert’.
KS: Right.
CB: There’s nobody more passionate about something than somebody that’s just switched from one thing to another. And part of that process sometimes is overdoing it occasionally and going too far. I mean, to me, I’m reflecting on it cuz I find it tremendously annoying to see a freshly-converted, traditional astrologer almost patronizing modern astrologers and trying to dictate to them what is correct or what is not correct in astrology. Cuz even in the instances where I agree in some instances with what they’re trying to say or what they’re trying to convey, there can be this dogmatic or this arrogant attitude that’s sometimes adopted, that’s unnecessary, or is not coming from a great place necessarily, even if they’re attempt is actually coming from excitement or is very genuine, as you said, Kelly.
KS: Yeah. I think it’s just working on that delivery, which is something that you do figure out over time, for sure.
CB: Sure. Austin, you said your transition to traditional was much more gradual.
AC: No, not really.
CB: No, it was pretty black-and-white. I mean, was it the Project Hindsight thing?
AC: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
AC: You know, what was gradual was getting comfortable with the techniques and being able to actually see the chart that way and all that. You know, my orientation switched pretty quickly. And yeah, I was super condescending to people. You know, cuz I was sort of like, “I found the better thing that nobody knows about.” And so, yeah, I was really annoying.
CB: I mean, cuz that’s why you switch because you think you’ve found something better.
AC: Yeah.
CB: By the way, it’s not just modern astrologers going to traditional Western astrology, but you see it also sometimes when somebody goes from modern Western to Vedic astrology. Or sometimes, even occasionally, modern Western to Uranian or cosmobiology or something like that. It’s because you think you’ve found something better. Or your skills perhaps actually have improved by learning this new knowledge, and then sometimes you wanna turn around and try to convince other people or convert other people to follow that path that you follow.
AC: Yeah. Well, I think that by definition, if you’ve been doing one thing for a while and you know how to do it, and you learn how to do another thing, then by definition you know more than you used to, and you know more than just the thing that you’ve been doing. And yeah, I think it is a mistake of excitement and wanting to share and be like, “No, there’s more.” I know that I feel that way, you know, with technical distinctions. I’m like, “Yeah, but what about this? You need to add this to it, etc., etc.” But yeah, it’s easy to, I don’t know, communicate poorly or to just be taken by your own enthusiasm. And sometimes when a new lens is clicking into place, you know, you’re putting a lot of energy into seeing things from that angle and using those techniques. And, you know, you’re so invested in that it’s easy to forget the value of what you previously knew. I’ve had a little bit of that this year, you know, spending so much time with Vedic. There have been a few times where I was so excited about what I could see with the Vedic techniques that I was sort of like, “Oh, maybe what I’ve been doing isn’t very awesome.” And then I would do a reading with the techniques I’ve been using for a decade, and I was like, “Oh, no, this is awesome, too.” And I would be reminded of the value of, you know, what I’ve already done. But, you know, I found it distracting. I was like, “Oh, yeah. No, this is new, and this is amazing. I’ve never been able to look for and find exactly this kind of thing before.” So, you know, it happens.
CB: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a necessary process, to go out on that journey and maybe fully adopt and fully into some approach or some technique or something and to fully embrace that and learn it. And sometimes that involves rejecting or forgetting about things that you originally learned or thought were true as you envelop yourself in that and embrace it. But then eventually I feel like at some point you end up coming around full circle, seeing that there may have still been some value to the other approaches or to your original one. I don’t know. I feel like I see a lot of astrologers that do that full-circle thing. But it’s interesting observing somebody that’s still very early on in that process, I guess.
KS: Yeah. It’s almost like a critical step on the journey—if that makes sense—is to be swept up by your passion or your enthusiasm for something, like you guys were talking about. The enthusiasm of a new convert—it carries you through some of those nervous, early waters or early stages, if you like.
CB: Right. So the other side of that—sometimes I get annoyed about when I see it—is antagonism against, let’s say, pop astrology or so-called ‘lower forms’ of astrology from more established either practitioners or from students of astrology that are getting into more advanced forms. You know, 10 or 20 years ago, this would be the, you know, ‘let’s hate on Sun signs because that’s not real astrology’ thing once you’ve learned about birth charts. Because obviously once you get into birth charts, you realize that astrology is actually very complicated, and Sun sign astrology is somewhat simplistic in its presentation of what astrology is and what it can do. But even more recently I see that now that the level of the astrological discourse is starting to be raised in the general populace, and it’s more common to know about your Sun, Moon, and rising, sometimes even that is sometimes met with scorn from astrologers that are a little bit more advanced. They’re saying that that’s too simplistic or that’s not all there is or something like that.
KS: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting because there are different stages that students go through. And one of the first stages when you cross into real birth chart astrology is to focus on that Sun, Moon, and ascendant. So in some ways there’s gotta be a little give and take for where people are at or where they’re coming from versus that expectation that everybody is where you’re going to be, if that makes sense.
CB: Right, exactly. Cuz this whole discussion came up. Cuz what happened was last night, there was one guy that posted his picture and his rising or Sun, Moon, and rising on Reddit, and then within a few hours, a few other people started doing it, and it snowballed immediately. And suddenly there’s like a hundred people posting their picture and their Sun, Moon, and rising all over the front page of the astrology subreddit, which is our astrology on Reddit. And this has never happened before. It’s common on Twitter. Like you see this all the time on astrology accounts on Twitter, of people starting a thread that says, “Post your Sun, Moon, rising and your picture,” and it’s kind of interesting to see how many young people are doing it. But this was kind of like a sudden, dramatic occurrence that’s never happened on that subreddit before. And I thought that was kind of interesting and endearing to see how many younger people know their rising sign and are into it on that level at this stage. And I was kind of fascinated by it and thought it was cool almost purely for that reason. But by morning time, there was this huge pushback of people saying, you know, “Oh, I’m not gonna subscribe to this subreddit anymore because it’s just low-level astrology, and everyone’s just concerned with their self,” or it’s egocentric or something like that. And they were very put off by it because they felt like the type of astrology that they were doing was so much higher or better than that on some level. So it just comes to those ‘early student’ stages sometimes, but sometimes I just notice there’s this negativity towards pop astrology that’s sort of unnecessary. And I feel like most of the time with more advanced astrologers that have been around the field for long enough, they understand the role that that plays in the community. That they don’t have the same animosity towards it.
KS: Yeah. I mean, I don’t have animosity towards it. I’m really enthusiastic. Because, to me, seeing people talk about some of those maybe more starting-point features is a real clue that our astrological community is growing. And that is just good news on so many fronts for all of us.
AC: Yeah. I mean, that sounds fun to me, but I could also see how—if you were looking for a sophisticated, technical conversation—that selfies might be irritating.
CB: Oh, yeah, I could totally see it. And I could see—if I was still in my early 20’s or late teens—I would have been the first one that would have been railing against all the lame selfie posting when we should be talking about how we’ve just discovered these 2,000-year-old techniques that can predict a person’s future and destiny like 50 years in advance, and we’re using it for, you know, appearance or character analysis or something like that. I guess I’m just reflecting on my own process as an astrologer and growth as an astrologer over the years. And I see some people taking astrology very seriously and sometimes not taking a moment to just reflect on or appreciate that it is actually becoming more popular. And the fact is that, you know, 10 years ago, if you asked a bunch of people in their 20’s to post their Sun, Moon, and rising, they wouldn’t know what that is. And just the fact that there’s so many more younger people that know that at this point—that’s exciting to me and is something worth celebrating and embracing rather than saying that it’s not good enough or something like that.
KS: Yeah. And I think—like to Austin’s point, too—it is then about, you know, gravitating towards people who are in the same space, or wanting to have the same kinds of conversations as you are, at that same time, I guess.
CB: Sure. I mean, you can do that. But then, also, that’s kind of sad to me if more advanced astrologers wall themselves off from that larger discussion. Or never engage in, I don’t know, the more lighthearted manifestations of astrology. There’s a wide diversity of different ways that astrologers or people use and incorporate astrology into their life, in ways that are often very beautiful and very interesting, even if it’s not necessarily your cup of tea. So I almost don’t want astrologers to just wall themselves off by going into closed communities where they only see that specific type of astrology, and they only interact with astrologers that are doing it at that same level necessarily.
KS: Yeah, that cross-pollination’s important.
AC: Yeah, I mean, that’s fair. I don’t know. Chris, if you and I were hanging out with a group of people who were, you know, in the ‘Sun, Moon, rising’ space, and we started talking about, I don’t know, some absurdly technical, obscure thing—if we started talking about the mechanics of zodiacal rising and this-and-that, everybody’s eyes would glaze over. There’s not that much cross-pollination that can happen there. The person who’s just gotten their Sun, Moon, and rising isn’t going to give us an amazing insight into how that technique works on the third-level periods. And unless we wanna sit down and explain for about two hours how the technique works, they’re not gonna get anything from our discussion.
CB: Yeah, totally.
AC: There’s a reason that the popular physicists—like Neil deGrasse Tyson—they just talk about ideas. They don’t sit down and go through the math of how we got this, or why we think there’s a black hole here. You know, it’s boring. If you’re not that deep, it’s boring. And, you know, I’m not gonna be able to tell a theoretical physicist much about the equations that he or she or they are looking at, you know. So some ‘segregation’ or, you know, selection into different little communities is inevitable and useful. Cuz it’s not fun or interesting when you’re in very different places, and I wouldn’t see that as necessarily a problem. But it seems like on Reddit, for example, or on Twitter, you know, we have these shared public spaces, where it’s all kind of one, amorphous thing. Some people are trying to have, you know, one kind of discussion, and other people are trying to have a different discussion, but it’s all astrology, so it kind of gets mashed up together.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s true. And it would be weird if we were having a conversation about some advanced timing technique, and somebody came up and started talking to us about their Sun sign or something like that. Or occasionally, you know a newer astrologer, if they try to present you with their birth chart, and ask you to read it, just as a cold call or cold reading or something like that. So that’s a fair point. I don’t know where else to go with that. That’s pretty much the end of that thought.
KS: Yeah. I mean, we’ve aired some good points, I think.
CB: It’s just part of the broader thing that I’ve tried to have with the podcast, which is an outgrowth of my experience going through Kepler and being exposed to so many approaches to astrology, which is how to create a space that allows astrology to flourish in all its different manifestations. Which doesn’t just mean different techniques, but it also can mean different skill levels and different interest levels. And I don’t know, there’s just something about that in the community. Cuz it also matters in terms of when new people are coming into the community. What are they met with? Are they met with open arms and people that embrace them? Or are they met with people that say, “Your knowledge of astrology or your approach to it is not good enough, because it doesn’t accurately reflect my approach or my skill level?” And I’d prefer people not to be met with the latter because I think more people would be turned away in that sense or with that approach.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Anyway.
KS: I mean, I know for me that’s where I’m gonna try and be welcoming and curious, and you might use the Sun, Moon, whatever, ascendant as an icebreaker. And then if I wanna pick someone’s brain about a really intense technique, I’ll just try and corner them privately and ask them 200 questions probably.
CB: Right. Sure. All right, yeah, so that’s pretty much it in terms of pre-show discussion. So why don’t we make a transition now and get into the forecast for December.
KS: Let’s do it.
AC: I believe there was no bingo for that one.
KS: Was there?
AC: One of the slides was ‘pre-show talk over an hour’, and I think we came in just under an hour there.
CB: Yeah, 49 minutes, 48 minutes.
KS: Do we wanna give the shoutout to Lisa for creating the bingo? Cuz we said we would touch on it on the forecast show.
CB: Oh, yeah, we mentioned it on the other one, but we did wanna mention it on the forecast. Let me find the link while one of you talks about it. Cuz I wanted to see if I could share the video.
KS: Okay, cool. So one of our listeners, Lisa on Twitter, has created this fun and fabulous bingo card that my husband thinks should be printed off for the next live audience to actually play bingo. I guess common things that we say all the time or reference all the time in the show, and it was quite funny. Chris is gonna find it for us. Did you think it was funny, Austin?
AC: I thought it was very funny.
KS: Yeah. Things like, ‘Kelly trying to say something preposterously’, like something exceptionally positive about something preposterously hard, and I was like, “Yep, do that all the time.” ‘Austin making a dark metaphor’.
AC: Yeah, ‘Austin makes a dark metaphor’. Yeah, ‘pre-show longer than one hour’.
KS: Yes, yes.
AC: ‘Conversational digression leads to an idea for a new podcast’.
KS: That was brilliant. Cuz you don’t realize sometimes how many times those things get said. But I guess the listeners—who are taking it in, you know, in a different way get it. Oh, yeah, this is great. ‘Accidentally skipping over a lunation’. I thought that was exceptional, cuz we always forget a New or Full Moon.
CB: Yeah. ‘Chris responds to a lengthy pronouncement with ‘All right, so’.
KS: That was very good. Yeah, and then ‘Long digression’. And then I think I’ve been sharing more about my chart. So that’s probably going to make that bingo square easier.
CB: Right. ‘Quickly quashed reference to Kelly’s natal chart’, bottom-right corner. ‘Thinly-veiled dirty jokes’, which is Austin and Kelly’s forte.
KS: Chris, are you trying to pretend you’re really innocent here?
CB: A little bit. But at least in terms of you guys making jokes, especially before we were recording here—I’ve gotta sometimes try to keep you two on the straight-and-narrow.
KS: Yes. You do a good job.
CB: I do what I can.
AC: Yeah, I mean, it’s PG-13 at the worst.
KS: At the worst. Yeah, this is definitely not full capacity.
CB: Yeah. But anyway, so thanks to Lisa for making that. That’s really awesome. I retweeted it on The Astrology Podcast Twitter account, and you can find Lisa’s account there as well. That’s probably the easiest way to do it.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Cool.
KS: So that was fun. I don’t know. It was just kind of cool.
AC: I’ve never been a bingo card. Never been part of a bingo card before.
KS: No.
AC: That I know of.
CB: Yeah. Anyway, we all loved that. If anybody makes stuff like that, let us know, especially through Twitter, that’s the easiest way. Or send it in, and I’ll probably retweet it. Cuz it’s always fun to see stuff like that.
KS: Absolutely.
CB: Thanks for mentioning that, Christina, in the chat. She asked when I’ll release the 2019 Planetary Retrograde Calendars. So I wasn’t sure if I was gonna have posters again this year, but I actually decided to, I think. So we’re trying to finalize the design. And the designs have actually taken a little bit longer than I had anticipated, but I’m trying to finalize them and get things printed up now. So I actually did wanna share a preview of one of the posters. So here is a preview of one of the posters, which I’m calling Planetary Alignments 2019. So I’m doing the final proofs. And I just did a test print a few days ago, and it came out really well. So I’m hoping to have these printed up soon. There’s also gonna be a 2019 version of the Planetary Movements Calendar, which is the circular calendar that shows you where the planets will start at the beginning of the year, and where they’ll end, as well as what signs of the zodiac they’ll retrograde through, if they do go retrograde during the course of the year. And then we’re gonna release that, I think, in a package with one other poster, which is a really nice, high quality depiction of the zodiac. Like a poster of the 12 signs of the zodiac and their planetary rulers, which is the same image that we used in the recent ‘zodiac’ series for part one and part two, when we went through the meanings of all 12 signs.
KS: This is really pretty, Chris. It’s distinctly different from what you have done in the past. Like the font and the color scheme—I think it’s much prettier. My Venus is all over it. I loved it.
CB: Yeah, I’m really excited about it. Paula did most of the design. Paula Belluomini. And then we had the background. The background is actually a commissioned piece from Jack Cusumano—I hope I’m pronouncing his name correctly—who is an astrologer, but he also does animation as part of his background career as well.
KS: Wow.
CB: He’s an animator on a lot of really big shows, but he actually did this amazing illustration for us, for the background. So I’m pretty excited. Cuz it looks nice here, but it actually looks even more brilliant in print, when it’s on the actual poster. So hopefully, by sometime in December, hopefully, by the next forecast episode, I’ll be able to make an announcement about ordering those or where they’ll be available and stuff like that.
KS: Excellent. So this is a teaser. You know, “Save the date. They’re coming. Give us a few weeks, and then you’ll have shipping info and ordering info.”
CB: Exactly. So I’ll release that through the podcast website. Patrons, of course, will find out about it, you know, right away first. But I’ll probably make some announcements during the episodes in December, once I get it together and I’m ready. I mean, last year, shipping those out was just crazy, so I’m not necessarily looking forward to that again. But I’m hoping to figure something out in the next few weeks.
KS: Excellent. Yeah, I’m excited. That looks beautiful.
CB: All right, awesome. Well, let’s transition to the forecast then, since we’re now 56 minutes in. So we’re about to fill in one of Lisa’s bingo squares if we delay any longer. So let me pull the chart up for December and share it with you guys, for those that are watching the video version. All right, so this is actually, technically, the chart for right now. But let’s move it forward to the 1st of December. All right, so December 1, 2018. Move it towards the middle of the day with Aquarius rising, and here we are. So first, one of the things I wanted to say—cuz we’re just about to move out of this tomorrow, the day after we record this—Mars is finally out of Aquarius. It’s been there for what seems like approximately a decade at this point.
AC: I think it’s four months total this year.
CB: Is it really only four months? It seemed like five or six.
KS: Felt like it was five.
AC: I think it’s almost exactly four, but we can check it. You know, there were two solid months of Mars in Capricorn, too.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Okay, right.
AC: Oh, maybe there were even three.
KS: Three.
AC: I think there were two of Mars in Capricorn.
KS: I’m going with five months.
CB: Okay.
KS: Because Mars went into Aquarius like mid-May, right? And it was in Aquarius until like the 13th of August.
CB: Yeah, May 16, Mars first went into Aquarius.
KS: That’s three months. And then it went back into Aquarius on the 11th of September.
AC: Right.
KS: And it doesn’t leave until the 16th of November.
AC: Okay, yeah. Yeah, that’s five.
KS: Five. It’s five out of the last six months.
CB: Right.
AC: And then three in Capricorn. So not a lot of variety.
CB: Right.
KS: All Saturn-ruled. All Saturn-ruled since March.
AC: Yep.
CB: Which is just bizarre. Because now it’s gonna spend like a month in Pisces and then it’s done. So it’s gonna go into Pisces November 15, and it’s out already and into Aries by December 31.
KS: Six weeks.
CB: Yeah. And it’s still moving kind of slow, I think. I don’t even think it’s back to full speed yet, by that time. Is it?
AC: That’s about normal.
KS: Six weeks is pretty standard, I think.
CB: Okay.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Cuz, I mean, it’s been direct since the end of August—
KS: Yeah, it’s been out of shadow.
AC: —slowly picking up speed.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Brilliant. So yeah, that’s a big shift then in terms of just what the past several months have been like. Especially if Aquarius is prominent in your chart, either natally or if it’s been made prominent over the course of the past few months through some timing technique like profections.
KS: Yeah, it’s just the grind. I’m chuckling because in the consulting room, I’ve seen with clients like whatever house they’ve had Aquarius in, it’s been a grind. It’s the combination of the Mars and the South Node there. There’s been a lot more stress or anxiety about the topics of the house that have been Aquarian.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, definitely. Did you guys see any specific manifestations of that, that spring to mind?
KS: I mean, I saw a lot, with people who have Aquarius 8th and 12th houses, having a lot more mental health issues or stress or anxiety; things getting exacerbated or getting worse. Yeah, that seemed to be the most common thing. I don’t know if you have anything more specific, Austin.
AC: Yeah, I would agree with that. Nothing more specific. I find that Mars in air signs generally is great for anxiety, if you have a propensity towards that, as I do. Mars in air signs tends to exaggerate that. And then with the extended retrograde stay and the co-presence with the South Node and all that, there’s just been a ton of that.
KS: Yeah. So it’s not necessarily that I’m like, “Oh, Mars in Pisces is amazing,” it’s just different. And I just feel like I would just like something to be not Mars in Aquarius or not Mars in a Saturn sign, just for five minutes.
CB: That’s just bizarre for Mars, of all planets, to be just sitting somewhere for so long.
KS: He spent five months there when normally he spends six weeks. A massive emphasis.
CB: Even just energetically, Mars is usually quick, sudden things, even when it’s negative. It’s like something that happens fast and happens suddenly or unexpectedly. And that’s what’s such an anomaly about the retrograde period, is it’s just sitting on some part of your chart for a very long time.
AC: Yeah, Mars has the greatest difference in speed in different parts of its cycle. No other planet, you know, has that much of a difference, right? Cuz Mars basically becomes Saturn during part of the cycle—
CB: Right.
AC: —and then starts zipping along again.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So looking at the chart, I mean, that’s one of the big things that I noticed right away. Of course we’re also now getting more firmly into Jupiter in Sagittarius at this point. It starts out at the beginning of the month already at 5° of Sagittarius. So this is, you know, our first full, full month of Jupiter in Sagittarius, even though we had most of November with that as well. Let’s see. What else is going on? We’re about to hit the tail-end of Venus. It looks like Venus starts out December 1 at 29 Libra, and it’s about to make its way back into Scorpio. So we’re at the very tail-end of all of the Venus retrograde stuff finally, at the beginning of the month.
KS: Yeah, within the first couple of days of the month, Venus returns to Scorpio and Mercury returns to Sag. Both of them—sorry, a big part of Mercury slips back into Scorpio. I beg your pardon. That’s on the 1st, I think. And Venus comes back into Scorpio, moving forward now. And so, it’s sort of an interesting shift with those two planets. Venus is gonna spend most of the month in Scorpio. So we do have Venus and Mars both in water signs for the month of December, primarily, for the most part. So that’s a bit of an interesting thing to keep in the back of our minds.
CB: What degree did Venus station retrograde at, again?
AC: 10?
KS: 9? 10. Austin, gold star. Bingo! Austin got it.
CB: It looks like Venus makes it back to 10° Scorpio around December 17. So that’s when Venus will actually leave the—
KS: Her shadow.
CB: —post-retrograde shadow phase. And that retrograde period will be more or less completely over at that point.
AC: Yeah. And Venus is nice and high in the eastern sky by that point, in the pre-dawn sky. You know, we’re back to a ‘normal’ Venus rather than, you know, the ‘sewer ordeal’ Venus. And so, yeah, you know, there are some of those themes just with Venus in Scorpio, but this is a Venus that is literally rising higher in the sky every morning and getting brighter every morning. And so, it’s gonna be dealing with the same degrees, and therefore, some of the same themes and material. But it’s about elevating it rather than sinking down to the nadir to getting to the bottom of it. You know, there’s a very literal verticality to Venus’ cycle, and the retrograde portion was the sinking down, getting to the bottom of it. And again, this is the same space, but it’s rising up and perhaps pulling some of it up. Or just rising above the things that pulled you down before.
CB: Brilliant.
KS: Totally.
CB: So we’re gonna be able to go out in the mornings here for a few weeks or a few months, and if you look out before sunrise, you’ll see this really bright, sort of whitish star rising over the eastern horizon, not too long, maybe an hour or two before the Sun does. And that’s actually gonna be Venus.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah, I always say when you’re looking to spot Venus in the sky, she looks like the ‘twinkle, twinkle, litter star’. She looks like that sparkly, very bright light that we imagine all the stars look like, but of course they don’t. You know, the morning star Venus is more of an independent style of Venus. So I think—as you were saying, Austin—Venus is rising in the sky, so there’s an increasing energy here. But I wonder if there’s something there around gaining confidence or gaining independence, just from that phase relationship that Venus has got there.
AC: Yeah, definitely. And also, the morning Venus is more assertive. You know, it’s the passion to do what you’re gonna do, right? Like evening Venus is more ‘cooperative partnership/what do you think’. In some of the old texts, they say, okay, so morning Venus is relatively masculine and evening Venus is relatively feminine.
KS: Yes.
AC: And what they’re saying with those terms is, you know, assertive, self-oriented, and using that Venusian energy to shine with what you’re doing, or using that Venusian energy to cooperate and partner.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Brilliant. Astronomically, I mean, I feel like some astrology students learn this really late in their studies. But if you just pay attention to it—it’s much easier if you have the animate feature on something like Solar Fire, where you can animate it and look at, you know, sunrise. But you just take the chart and set it for about sunrise, when the Sun is conjunct the degree of the ascendant. You know, of course when the Sun conjoins the degree of the ascendant, that’s sunrise, and it rises over the horizon. But if the Sun is rising over the horizon at that time, then that means any planets that are just slightly above that—for example, right now, we have Jupiter and Mercury and Venus—are gonna be planets that already rose over the ascendant a little bit prior to that time. It’s just a good way to start to orient yourself and connect what you’re seeing in the birth chart, which is an abstract, two-dimensional depiction of when you go outside in the morning, just before sunrise, and you actually can visibly see these planets in the morning sky.
AC: Yeah, that was month seven of the fundamentals of astrology this year, and last year, and the year before for my students.
CB: Was telling them to go out and watch the stars and the planets?
AC: To be able to tell the phase of Mercury or Venus immediately when looking at a chart.
CB: Right.
AC: Or else I frown at you.
CB: Frown and wag your finger.
AC: If it’s earlier in degrees, in an earlier sign, and it’s separated by at least 15, you can see it. Or you can see it in the morning, if it’s later, that’s gonna be an evening rise. It’s really easy once you’ve got the eyes for it. You just have to, you know, look at it until you can see that. And then when you can see that, it’s the easiest thing in the world.
CB: Yeah, definitely. There’s just a few different frames of reference that are going on with respect to the solar phase cycle versus the movement of the planets through the signs of the zodiac versus the diurnal rotation and the movements of the planets around the axes represented by the horizon and the midheaven and IC. Demetra’s book actually—her new book—deals with a lot of this. And there’s a huge section right in the middle that deals with the solar phase cycle especially and its interpretation in ancient astrology. Things like planets moving fast or slow, what their phase relationship is to the Sun, whether they’re rising or setting under the beams, stationing, and all sorts of other things like that. It’s one of the reasons I’m actually really excited about the book. And I think one of the biggest contributions that she’s gonna make with it is reintegrating a lot of that stuff around the solar phase cycle into the modern discourse about planetary condition.
KS: That’s gonna be a valuable contribution.
AC: Yeah, that’s really important.
CB: Definitely. All right, so that’s Venus. What else are we looking at, at the beginning of the month, at the start of the month, that’s notable or that we should talk about?
KS: What have you got your eyes on, Austin?
AC: Well, I think one thing that’s worth saying is that for about two-thirds of the month, the Sun and Jupiter will be in the same sign, and it’s a Jupiter-ruled sign.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And I know that last month we talked about, you know, Jupiter in Sagittarius a fair bit. But, you know, in a sense we’ve got like 20 days of getting to know Jupiter better. Also, getting to know Sagittarius itself better. Because having the ruling planet of a sign—in this case, Jupiter in Sagittarius—makes all of the characteristics of the sign shine that much brighter. They become very obvious. And in this case, these are rather positive characteristics. Cuz we’re talking about Jupiter in a sign ruled by a benefic. And I guess, also, on the topic of horizonal factors—and when you can see stuff and when you can’t—the Sun-Jupiter conjunction is in late November. But by the middle of the month, we’ll be able to see Jupiter in the east with Mercury and Venus. We’ll be able to see Jupiter for the first time in Sag. And so, when a planet’s light becomes visible like that, the things that were brewing while it was invisible start to become really obvious. And so, I said a little bit last month about how, yeah, Jupiter’s in Sag, you’re gonna feel it, and you’re gonna be thinking about it. But you’re really gonna start seeing what it means in December, when Jupiter becomes visible again. And that’s gonna be a little bit different, you know, in different places on the globe, and depending on horizon or atmospheric factors. But, you know, it’s basically the middle of the month when the Sun and Jupiter are separated by 15. So that’ll be nice. And, you know, we’ll have been getting to know Jupiter in Sag not only because of that, but because this particular Mercury retrograde cycle entails not one, but three conjunctions between Mercury and Jupiter. The first was in, I think, early November in Scorpio, and then the second was in late November in Sagittarius, and then there will be a third conjunction between Mercury and still relatively newly-ingressed Jupiter in Sagittarius.
KS: Yeah, I’m definitely excited for that to come up. I’m just trying to look at the date. Oh, the 21st, on the solstice, Mercury conjunct Jupiter. I know it’s across different signs that we’ve had Mercury conjunct Jupiter in Scorpio the first time, second time while Mercury’s retro in Sag, and then the third time, Mercury’s direct in Sag with Jupiter there. It does create this really interesting three-part process that is different from but connected to the Mercury retrograde itself. And I don’t know if I’m going out on a limb here, but I know we’ve got this crazy Mercury retrograde, and it’s squared by Neptune—or the Mercury station. But I’m a little curious as to how the Mercury retrograde is gonna play out given that it is ruled by Jupiter in Sag. There’s no Mercury retrograde problems, but somehow whatever Mercury retrograde problems you’re dealing with, they sort of feed or speak to the larger Jupiter in Sag story.
AC: Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. I think the story’s gonna end on a much more positive note than it began.
KS: Yeah. And this December 21, I mean, this is the date of the solstice, Mercury and Jupiter. It’s one of the really busy days in December because we do have the solstice happening. I think Venus is trine Neptune on this day as well. But then it’s like Mercury, the messenger, comes to Jupiter, and this just feels like hearing some good news or welcome news, or a letter arriving that you’ve been waiting on, yeah, with Mercury conjunct Jupiter, in Jupiter’s sign.
AC: Yeah—oh, go ahead.
CB: One of the things I keep coming back to, looking at this, we’re looking at the day for December 21 right now. It’s just so closely square to that Neptune. I feel like that’s gonna color Jupiter in Sagittarius so much this time that it might be hard for us to even anticipate fully what that’s gonna do, or what that’s completely gonna look like, in the same way that it seemed like that ended up being a huge component to Saturn going through Sagittarius a couple of years ago, or a few years ago. Which really modified a lot of the delineations in really significant ways, especially in retrospect. Sometimes it was in ways that weren’t immediately clear as we were going through it, but that’s sometimes the nature of Neptune. But when we’re talking even about the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction, I keep looking at that square with Neptune—because it’s so tight, within just 4°—as a major modifying factor of everything that’s going on in Sagittarius. Do you guys have delineations for Jupiter square Neptune?
AC: Yeah, I have some ideas. So one, Jupiter and Neptune significations are not nearly as hostile to one another as Saturn and Neptune significations are.
CB: Sure.
AC: And two, Neptune is present in Pisces, which is a Jupiter-ruled sign. And so, the Saturn-Neptune squares gave us a lot of uncertainty about boundaries. You know, literally, Neptune’s uncertainty and capacity to dissolve versus Saturn’s attempt to create some certainty and to clearly delineate boundaries, which it’s not super good at in Sagittarius anyway. And so, again, I think we had a much more hostile situation there. I think what we have with Neptune being square to Jupiter—or Jupiter being square to Neptune for a lot of 2019—is there’s a capacity to go from realistically positive with Jupiter in Sagittarius to, you know, slide into fantasy-land.
CB: Right.
AC: But that’s a much smaller slide than the Saturn-Neptune slide.
CB: Because optimism can blow things out of proportion or exaggerate them in a way that’s not fully realistic, but is at least optimistic in a positive way.
AC: You know, if we’re talking about Jupiter’s power, we’re talking about the ability to imagine something first, which isn’t yet, and then to make it so, right?
CB: That’s good. I like that.
AC: Yeah. And so, we’re already starting in ‘imagination land’.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah, which is Neptune’s happy place.
CB: Right, yeah.
KS: And it’s good to point this out, I think. Because one of the things I was thinking about with December—we’ve got Mars joining Neptune in Pisces and a bunch of planets—Mercury, Jupiter, and the Sun—spending time in Sag. So we’re really starting to get that emphasis between those two signs. And that is, you know, one of the main, if you like, outer planetary-type aspects for 2019, Jupiter square Neptune. So it’s sort of just starting to let you know, you know, are we staying in the realm of realistic fantasy, or have we gone too far off the deep end? And that’s something we’re all gonna be exploring the relationship between, off and on, throughout 2019, as those aspects get stronger. I think it’s January that Jupiter starts to square Neptune exactly by degree.
CB: It looks like January 13th or 14th is the first exact square.
KS: Yes. Yeah, that makes sense. So I agree with what Austin’s saying around there’s more of an affinity, or there’s more similarities between Jupiter and Neptune. And then the other component of course is that Jupiter is ruling Neptune in Pisces. And so, we didn’t have that when we had Saturn in Sag. Saturn was a little maybe outside of his comfort zone in Sag to start with, and then having to negotiate with Neptune from that place.
CB: Definitely. That’s a really good point. And I wonder—cuz I don’t if it works this way with outer planets, but with inner planets, traditional planets, there’s a mitigating factor of reception that often takes the edge off a square. But I honestly don’t know how I feel about that, or if that works with outer planets as well. If reception is a potential mitigating factor when it comes to hard aspects with outer planets. You guys have any strong or medium, weak opinions?
AC: I think in this case, yes. I think Neptune has significantly less desire and power to disrupt or contradict what Jupiter in Sag is doing than it did Saturn.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know if I necessarily have a clear absolute about the outer planets and what you’re talking about there, Chris. But I do think there’s something like a friendliness. There’s already a tie between Jupiter and Neptune because Neptune’s in Jupiter’s sign. So it just sort of seems like there’s potentially something a little bit more productive or useful as an outcome, even if there are a lot of, you know, tangents, which are very typical of both mutable signs—and certainly Neptune—along the way.
CB: Sure, sure. All right, so I guess we’ll be talking about that a lot more, since this is probably gonna come up. That’s gonna be one of the major mundane outer planet aspects that’s gonna get activated presumably at least three times next year, with Jupiter squaring Neptune. Three, Kelly?
KS: Yes, we do get three. Yeah, I think right through until September, but I’ll double-check.
CB: So I’m sure that’s gonna become a major focus in our yearly forecast, which we’re gonna do next month. So I think we can save some of that discussion for then. Before we get completely off track with just the initial chronological giving of dates that we usually do, on December 1, we have Mercury retrograding back into Scorpio. We have Venus ingressing, moving forward from Libra into Scorpio on December 2. And then the next major event that happens is we have Mercury stationing direct in late Scorpio on December 6. So we have the closing down of the Mercury retrograde period that we’re experiencing here in the second half of November. And then eventually, in that same week, we have a New Moon in Sagittarius on December 7.
KS: Yes. And Mars conjunct Neptune on the same day, I think. December 7.
CB: Right.
KS: I mean, I did wanna just make a quick reflection about the meandering start to our conversation today. Cuz the last few episodes have been really good at being quite chronological.
CB: Right.
KS: I feel like that meandering is almost just a metaphor or some sort of alts for the energy of December, with so much Jupiter in Sag and Pisces energy. Like we kind of are living the December energy as we’re attempting to do the December forecast.
AC: I think we do that most times.
KS: Usually Chris keeps us better on date order.
CB: Yeah, we’re even more off than usual. I think it was partially because we ended up with a Gemini rising election today for starting the recording, and Mercury’s ruling the ascendant. And it’s like almost exactly square Neptune from 13 Sag to 13 Pisces. So this is a nice preview of some of that Neptune in Pisces energy that’s going on.
KS: That dazed and confused. Now there is a comment coming through in the chatbox, which was something that I had wanted to throw out there too, which is there’s a couple of links to the fixed star Antares this month. And one of them is on the 2nd of December, when the Sun hits 10 Sag and kind of picks up the vibration of Antares. And then later in the month, Jupiter will actually get to 10 Sag. So I was curious. You know, Antares is one of the royal stars. It’s known as the ‘Watcher of the West’. You know, when I was first taught about Antares, I was taught, of course, it’s the alpha star in the constellation of the sign of Scorpio. So it’s like this pure Scorpio energy. But I was taught that the way we often see it show up is that it indicates the closing down or the ending of cycles, in a similar way that autumn does. Like this sort of natural or necessary kind of death or decay experiences. Now that’s coming through from this star being in the constellation of Scorpio, not the zodiac sign of Sag, which are two different things. And I’m just curious about how that might manifest for some people in December around needing to shut certain things down before they can really get into whatever growth or opportunity Jupiter in Sag might be indicating for them. And I think that December 2, when the Sun hits Antares, is a bit of a clue around something that might need to be wound down.
CB: Yeah, I love that. Because you would almost think that we’re done with the darker or more introspective or brooding nature of Mercury going through Scorpio, but it has to return back to that before it can fully push into Sag and then complete some of those conjunctions with the Sun and Jupiter in its direct phase. So it’s returning back to Scorpio, conjoining that fixed star, and then stationing direct in that first week of December.
KS: Yeah. I think I was referencing the Sun conjunct Antares on the 2nd. I’m not sure if Mercury gets there that first week, sorry.
CB: Yeah, I was just connecting it with the simultaneous happening of Mercury basically stationing around the same time.
KS: A hundred-percent. A hundred-percent. Is that something you had incorporated in your thoughts of December, Austin?
AC: Yeah. Well, the Sun hits Antares every year. The Sun hits everything every year. But the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction is right on top of Antares. I don’t think of Antares at all as a star of endings.
KS: Okay.
AC: That sounds accidental, because it’s at the end of the calendar year that the Sun hits it. When I see Antares in natal charts, with Antares I see a willingness to fight and struggle. Not necessarily like in a bad way, but a willingness to get in there and fight for something. To fight to be successful. To fight to be the best that you can be. To fight because you’re an asshole, whatever, but like all of it. And Antares also anchors one of the nakshatras. I’m probably gonna pronounce it wrong, Jyeshta. And one of the themes which is associated with Jyeshta is being the best. It’s competing and out-competing people. You know, being better, being faster, being stronger. And, you know, you have to struggle if you wanna be the best in whatever ranked hierarchy. And so, I think it does come at a time, especially this year, of endings, cuz we made it through. We’ve almost made it through this very exciting 2018. And that Mercury-Jupiter—that final Mercury-Jupiter conjunction—it would be significant to have a Mercury-Jupiter conjunction on top of Antares at any point, but it’s the third and final. And so, it does have this role of finishing things out. I think there’s gonna be like, okay, so now that we’ve done all this, what are we struggling to make real? What are we gonna struggle to make the best it can possibly be? So anyway, that’s my experience and thoughts on Antares.
KS: Yeah, cuz I totally get, of course, that the Sun hits it every year. I did think it was interesting that we’re getting that Jupiter activation this year, and of course to have Mercury right there on top of it. So it just felt a little bit more poignant—
AC: Definitely.
KS: —with that combination.
AC: And you’ll be able to see that, too. That’s something people will be able to see in the morning. You’ll be able to see Jupiter, Mercury, and Antares all visible for just a little bit before the Sun rises.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Okay, so this is just before the heliacal setting.
AC: No.
CB: Sorry, let me back it up.
AC: Both Mercury and Jupiter are on the rise.
CB: Yeah, right. So the Sun is moving away from Jupiter. So it’s coming out from under the beams. But Mercury—because it’s picking up speed again—eventually is gonna set under the beams of the Sun.
AC: Yeah, it’s still rising at this point.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Cuz it’s just come out from under the beams.
CB: There it is. I’m just looking at when it gets within that 15° range. But it’s not until much, much later.
KS: What you’re looking at now is Jupiter’s 25 from the Sun.
CB: Yeah, I was looking at Mercury getting to—
KS: Oh, Mercury getting within, okay.
CB: —it’s 15° range. Although, like we were saying, I think, in the pre-chat discussion, that even that’s an approximation, and that each planet really varies, depending on your location and other factors.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Totally.
AC: Anyway, you’ll be able to see them all.
KS: It’ll be good. And that was another tangent for this episode. Do we wanna talk about the New Moon in Sag much? Or Mars conjunct Neptune on the 7th? I just wanna make sure, Chris, that you’re happy with what we’re doing for the early part of the month.
AC: We don’t wanna give people the ‘Skipping a lunation’ square.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right. Yeah, let’s not skip the lunation. So this is the lunation that takes place on December 6 at, it looks like, 14° of Sagittarius.
KS: Yeah, 14-15 Sag, I think, by the time the Moon—it might be 15.
CB: 15. I’m just animating the chart and getting there. Yeah, you’re right. So the Moon doesn’t catch up until the Sun hits 15. So it’s about 15° of Sagittarius, we have a New Moon. Also, Mercury’s stationary at that point. It’s stationing direct at 27 Scorpio. The lunation is squaring Mars and Neptune, which are conjoined almost exactly. Those are also going exact at 13° of Pisces. And that was like a huge issue we ran into with elections this month—wanting to take advantage of Jupiter now being in Sagittarius and in its own sign, and wanting to make a Sagittarius rising chart, or some sort of Jupiter election. But having Mars in Pisces squaring all that Sag stuff all month creates a tension that’s really hard to get around with some of the day charts.
KS: Yeah. And it really feels like that square is very poignant around this New Moon. I mean, the Sun-Mars square happens a couple of days before, and the Sun-Neptune square, just in the lead up to the New Moon as well. So there is that sort of frustration-aggravation feeling as we get the Sun and Mars squared off at each other, but with the New Moon and Neptune in the mix.
CB: Right.
AC: I think with everybody being Jupiter-ruled, and Jupiter being in Sag, you know, there’s definitely gonna be some fire. You know, with Mars’ fire, I always ask the question, okay, is this going to activation or irritation?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Or, you know, what mixture of those two? And so, leaving out Neptune for a second, as far as, you know, Sun-Neptune—or excuse me, Sun-Mars squares, you know, this has got some pretty positive stuff going on. I think this will be more towards activation and enthusiasm. You know, when you get Mars mixed with Jupiter—or ruled by Jupiter and aspecting Jupiter—Jupiter uplifts Mars pretty easily, and you get more of that, you know, excitement. Maybe you’re overeager to go out and conquer or whatever, but it does trend strongly towards the positive as far as Mars stuff goes, as far as the range of Mars stuff goes.
CB: Sure. Okay, give me the same delineation, but then not ignoring the Neptune conjunction that’s happening simultaneously.
AC: Okay. Well, I wasn’t ignoring it. It’s just that we have that Mars-Sun in square to each other for most of the month. So with this lunation, it’s interesting because one thing I find with Mars-Neptune aspects—especially a conjunction like this—is that occasionally, you know, if you watch the news you’ll see a Mars-Neptune story where somebody just goes nuts. And you’re like, “Oh, there we go, Mars-Neptune.” But what I most often experience and just see, you know, in the week around that in life is that Neptune seems to almost dissolve Mars, where you actually have a distinct lack of motivation, which can be irritating. But there’s also often a distinct lack of conflict. Like that torch goes into the water and it’s just sort of like, “Okay, I don’t really feel like doing anything, but I definitely don’t feel like arguing.”
CB: Right. So sometimes Neptune can sap the energy or the will of Mars to be assertive or to be directed and take a specific course of action.
AC: Yeah, that’s what I see.
KS: Oh, I completely agree on that front. I would go so far as to make a bold statement there and say Neptune always does that to Mars.
AC: Yeah.
KS: The symptoms of having Neptune in hard aspect to Mars in the natal chart, you know, you can be very lethargic. Some people have health conditions that are hard to diagnose and manifest with symptoms of tiredness or low energy. Sometimes there’s literally low iron and things like that. It almost feels like this pattern around the New Moon is like maybe having a bit of a funk or losing your spark and not really knowing why. And there’s a moodiness to it, I guess, rather than potential aggression.
AC: It might also be a break.
KS: Yeah. There’s these two periods in the month where we get these super Neptune vibes, and this is one of them. The following week, when the Moon goes through Pisces, there’s this other one. Just taking a little time, I agree with that, for sure. You know, there’s that tension between the Mars-Neptune not wanting to do anything and the New Moon in Sag. You know, often we see on social media with astrology the New Moon is like ‘do all these new things for the next month and get started’. And this might just be a little bit more mellow than that.
CB: Yeah, I like that. So the Moon’s with Mars in Pisces and Neptune around December 14-December 15. That was that other range of dates you were mentioning.
KS: Yeah. Like it’s a very ‘Sag-y’ Pisces month and then we have these periods where it’s a little bit more Sag here or a little bit more Pisces there. And I think maybe this is kind of what we’re speaking to, Austin, that most of the stuff that is happening—even if it’s a typical square aspect or what have you—it has more of benign tone to it, cuz it’s all coming back to this rulership by Jupiter in Sag.
AC: Yep.
KS: It’s not like, you know, when Mars is in Aquarius squaring Jupiter in Scorpio, and they’re really digging their heels in. It just feels more benign. That’s the word that I keep coming back to.
AC: Yeah, I totally agree.
KS: Yeah. So we didn’t miss that first lunation, yes.
CB: That’s gonna keep us on track for now on. I think Lisa doesn’t realize what she’s unleashed on us in pushing to continue to improve in a funny kind of way.
KS: Lisa has done a great job with that.
CB: Definitely. I’m just trying to pull up some famous ‘Mars-Neptune conjunction’ people in order to illustrate that point from a natal perspective, cuz it seems like that’s sometimes a useful tool to demonstrate. Or sometimes people appreciate that—having a more concrete example. Do you guys know of any? Or have you had any Mars-Neptune examples that you frequently think of or invoke sometimes?
KS: Gonna put my thinking cap on. Do you have anything, Austin?
AC: Do you mean like a natal chart?
CB: Yeah, like a natal. Either a close Mars-Neptune conjunction, or even like Mars-Neptune being in the same sign, and therefore, co-present and kind of rubbing off on each other in that same place.
AC: Oh, let’s see. So in the first astrology class that I ever taught, there were four people with a Mars-Neptune conjunction.
KS: Wow.
AC: Which I all met at a kung fu school.
KS: Are we kicking things again, Austin?
AC: We were doing a lot of punching things there.
KS: Okay, right.
AC: But yeah, I think if I can get it together, I’m totally posting a video of me kicking something on the internet, for you tomorrow, Kelly. To celebrate Mars’ entrance into Pisces.
KS: Please. I think myself and the entire podcast crew just laughed and laughed about my innocent comment about maybe you wanted to be a soccer star, and you’re kicking bodies. We would all like to see an exemplar, please.
AC: I’ll see what I can do. I’m busy.
KS: I know. You’ve only got 2,000 other things to do. Chris, here’s an example, Bill Clinton.
CB: Oh, right.
AC: That’s a good one.
CB: It’s like right on the ascendant.
KS: Right on the ascendant, in Libra, with Mars ruling the Aries descendant.
CB: Yeah, that’s kind of tied into the thing we were talking about. We were using him as an example, I think, of when we were talking about Libra, and the sign, one, as somebody that had Venus in Libra in the 1st house and his having an air about him or something—that people often reported as being very striking when they met him in person—as being very charming or something. But it’s not just having Venus in Libra. It’s having Neptune, Mars, and Jupiter right there on the ascendant as well.
KS: Yeah. If anybody was listening when I was talking about Neptune-Mars aspects by transit and being low energy, and someone might have a Mars-Neptune aspect natally and was freaking out, you know, Bill Clinton might be an example of, you know, you can still have energy levels. And you can still obviously get a lot done, even if you do have a Mars conjunct Neptune aspect in your natal chart.
AC: Well, so Christina Caudill, in the comments here, is mentioning Charlie Sheen. And I believe that conjunction is in Scorpio, whose performance of ‘The Marshal’ was strongly drug-fueled, right. So we have the Neptune and the Mars. So, you know, Mars ruling iron, and to a certain degree, the blood. And so, he was like, “I have tiger blood,” right? ‘Fantasizing’ Neptune about the ‘blood’ Mars.
CB: Right. But it was kind of delusional. He was going through an almost manic period for a few years there.
AC: Oh, he was on lots of drugs.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah. He was clearly in the haze.
CB: Sure. I’m just throwing up these charts really quickly. That’s his chart. And then here’s Bill Clinton’s chart—for those watching the video version—with the ascendant at 5 Libra, and then Mars at 6 Libra, Neptune also at 6 Libra. So that’s an exact conjunction right on the ascendant. Venus at 11 Libra, and then Jupiter at 23. Another one I found is Charles Manson actually had Mercury-Neptune conjunction in Virgo in the 5th house.
AC: Mars-Neptune.
KS: Mars, yeah.
CB: Sorry. Yeah, Mars-Neptune.
KS: I did this in class when I was teaching on Monday night. Every third word that came out of my mouth was a technical typo. Like I was just saying the wrong words.
CB: Right, I know. I opened this episode—as I think somebody pointed out to me in the chat—with saying the date wrong as well, I believe. I said December 14, you guys said?
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. But you know what? Mercury’s in its madness state right now. It’s out of bounds. It’s in detriment square Neptune. It’s stationed. It’s all the things.
CB: Right. Let’s see, other random ones. Weird ‘Al’ Yankovic—I have his birth data.
KS: I was gonna say, “Did you find his?”
CB: Yeah. He’s got Mars conjunct Neptune in Scorpio in the tenth whole sign house.
KS: Oh, Lady Gaga?
CB: Does she?
KS: Let’s take a look at her chart. Christina’s giving us the heads-up on here.
CB: Do we have time for her? I don’t remember if we do.
KS: It is somewhat speculative, her birth time. I think the 9:53 is commonly used, but it’s not an A-rated time.
CB: Okay.
KS: She’s got Mars at 0 Capricorn and Neptune at 5 Capricorn. So I think whatever time she was born, she’s got Mars-Neptune.
AC: Oh, I have a good example. It’s not somebody you would know, but it’s still a good example. So I have a friend who has a very tight Mars-Neptune opposition—which is still going to connect them very strongly—on the ascendant/descendant axis. And one of the things she does is she’s an aerialist and sort of a circus-style performer in a dance company that only performs mythology. So they’ll perform Babylonian mythology in amazing costumes, on 10-foot stilts, doing crazy aerialist stuff. It’s very ‘Neptunian’ illusion, but also, you have to be in the best shape possible for a human to do any of that. So there’s the Mars-Neptune.
CB: Nice.
KS: Beautiful. Beautiful.
CB: That’s a great constructive manifestation of the energy.
AC: And I would love to promote their company, but I don’t wanna give away someone’s chart details without talking to them about it.
CB: Yeah, yeah. All right, so that’s a good little chat about Mars-Neptune. Where are we at in terms of the month? We’re basically still just talking about the first week or the first half of the month, basically, at this stage, right?
KS: Yeah. The middle is a little quieter in terms of a lot happening.
CB: All I really see is Mercury—go ahead.
AC: Yeah, I was just gonna say Mercury goes back into Sag.
KS: Yep, December 12.
AC: And then it heads for Jupiter, which we’ve been talking about. Mars is departing from Neptune at that point, getting some fire back.
CB: Right.
KS: Which is nice.
CB: And I think, actually, this is the stage—
KS: You got an electional chart?
CB: Yeah, in the second week. We were really struggling with the election because we had so much trouble. Leisa Schaim was looking at the elections this month and really wanted to use that Jupiter in Sag, and even Mercury in Sag, but had so much trouble getting around the Mars squares and the Neptune squares. So we found a few different charts. There’s one that’s like a pretty decent chart—but it’s not one that would otherwise stand out as being an amazing election—that we thought about featuring this month. And then there’s another chart that’s sort of like a teaching example. It’s a good example of some of the issues that you run into with electional astrology, and we decided to feature that one this month. Not necessarily cuz it’s the most amazing election possible in December, but because it’s decent, and it shows you some of the hard concessions that you sometimes have to make when you’re doing elections. So let me pull it up really quickly here. So the chart is set for December 13, 2018, at about 6:12. You know, a quarter after six in the morning, local time, wherever you’re at. So let me throw that chart up on the screen really quickly. Here it is. So you’re shooting for about 7° of Sagittarius rising for one possible version of this chart. And there’s two versions. Cuz it really makes a difference whether you make this a day chart or a night chart, and you’re gonna have some major differences, one way or another, depending on which one you go with.
All right, so here’s the chart. It has Sagittarius rising. Mercury has just ingressed back into Sagittarius, where it’s making its way now towards Jupiter. So we’re out of the whole Mercury in Scorpio period. Since we have Jupiter in its own sign in Sagittarius, we want to take advantage of that, and we wanna make Jupiter prominent in the chart by making the ruler of the ascendant. So this is one of our early Jupiter elections, by having Sagittarius rising, Jupiter is the ruler of the ascendant, and making Jupiter either conjunct the ascendant, or at least somewhere in the rising sign, or otherwise in the first whole sign house. So it’s there along with the Sun and Mercury. So the Moon in this chart has just moved into Pisces, where it’s gonna square Mercury, but then eventually apply towards a square with Jupiter with reception, since the Moon is in Jupiter’s sign. And this is a relatively good chart if you wanna take advantage of all of the things that people associate with Jupiter in Sagittarius—and that both we’ve delineated and other astrologers have delineated—in terms of some of the potential for optimism and confirming things and growth and expansion and everything else. The downside is that you either have to make Mars the more difficult planet in the chart and make it somewhat prominent, or you have to make Saturn the most difficult planet in the chart and put it in the 2nd house of finances, which is gonna make this chart not very good for financial matters. And it’s gonna depend entirely on whether you make it a day chart or a night chart. Do you guys kind of see where I’m going with that?
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Totally.
AC: So if you’re going to begin an endeavor where you wanted to make money, you would do this once the Sun had risen, so that Saturn in the 2nd was less malefic. Whereas if you were going to, say, build a house—which is a 4th house matter—you would wanna do it during the night, so that Mars in the fourth whole sign house was not as malefic.
CB: Yeah, exactly. Since, in day charts, Mars is gonna be the most difficult planet in the chart, putting it simply, whereas in night charts, Saturn is gonna be the most difficult planet in the chart. So you literally have a choice here because the Sun is, you know, at 21° of Sag. So you could make this a night chart by just having early Sag rising. Like having 6° or 7° of Sag rising in whatever your location is, that will make this a night chart. Because that means the Sun will be underneath the horizon, below the ascendant, and it won’t quite be daytime yet at that point. So that’s one option. And if you do that, and you make it a night chart, you’re gonna render Mars in the 4th house, in Pisces, which is squaring a little bit widely some of the Sagittarius stuff. You’re gonna make it less of a problem, and it’s gonna take a lot of the edge off of that square. The downside—go ahead.
AC: I’m just gonna jump in.
CB: Sure.
AC: I was just looking at days and hours. So one thing that might tip the scales here is if you wait until day. Then you get day and hour of Jupiter, with Sag rising, with Jupiter on the ascendant, as opposed to day of Mercury, hour of Saturn.
KS: Yeah.
CB: If you make it a day chart?
AC: Yeah, if you make it a day chart.
KS: Wait till sunrise.
AC: You get day and hour of Jupiter, with Jupiter in the first whole sign house.
KS: Cuz it’s a Thursday. So the first planetary hour of the day, starting at sunrise, is gonna bring the double-Jupiter vibe.
CB: Right.
KS: Just for listeners who may not be familiar, yeah.
CB: And it’s nice. And that’s gonna emphasize Jupiter even more and make it even more prominent in what is already a Jupiter election. But then the downside is just you’re also gonna mildly afflict Jupiter by having Mars squaring it, as well as squaring the Sun. And you’re gonna put the Moon in the same sign as Mars in a day chart, very widely applying to it by a conjunction. Although it will go through Mercury and Jupiter first, so it’s not a complete deal-breaker. So it’s just a matter of, yeah, where you wanna place the emphasis of the more challenging planets, basically, and what you’re willing to deal with in order to get that. If you did make it a day chart, that would make this chart much better for financial matters. Like if you’re launching a business, or you’re doing something where the financial component is really mission critical, then you probably would wanna do that. That way, it’s just Saturn in the 2nd house, in Capricorn, in a day chart, which can make things develop financially more slowly, or put some barriers in place initially. But eventually, in the long term, it probably becomes a strength or something that eventually works out relatively decently further on down the road. Whereas, conversely, if you made this a night chart—by backing up the election an hour earlier and doing it before sunrise—you put Saturn in the 2nd house, in a night chart. That’s gonna indicate much more challenging, long-term issues with financial matters as a recurring theme with the most difficult planet in the chart in that house. So it’s that versus putting Mars in the 4th in a day chart and some of the potential problems that could come in terms of, let’s say, the home, the living situation, the foundations. Things that are hidden or not evident. It’s often sometimes overlooked that the 4th house is the most hidden part of the chart, and it can sometimes indicate things that are not apparent or not visually, you know, what you see at first. So yeah, those are the two options. So we wanted to highlight this election, not because it’s the most amazing in the month. Because you have those two major, potential drawbacks, depending on where you put those planets, and whether you make it a day chart or a night chart. But it’s a nice illustration of the type of issues that electional astrologers often face in having to choose and make some concessions in terms of, you know, the more difficult planets in the chart and what you’re okay living with and baking into your electional chart versus what might be a deal-breaker and what might not be okay for a certain type of election.
AC: Yeah. I just wanna add one more thing. One thing I like about this is that it has the rulers of every angular house conjoined. You have Mercury ruling the 7th and the 10th, and you have Jupiter ruling the 1st and the 4th, and you have them, you know, within 7°, with Mercury applying. And so, it’s nice to have all of the powerhouses lorded by two planets that are right next to each other, with one of them a very strong benefic.
CB: Yeah. And that’s actually the other election that we almost featured. But instead we’re gonna talk about just on the Auspicious Elections Podcast is one set for the actual Mercury-Jupiter conjunction a few days later, where we can take advantage of that conjunction even more. And even though it’s closer in proximity at that point to the Neptune square, it’s still sort of nice and a little bit auspicious. Anyway, so that’s the electional chart we wanted to feature this month as an educational example. You wanted to say something, Austin?
AC: I think ‘A Little Bit Auspicious’ would be a great name for something, like a podcast or a blog or something.
CB: Right. That would be a good band name, astrologer band name, A Little Bit Auspicious.
KS: A Little Bit Auspicious. I’m sure there’ll be many iterations of that coming out in the next 12 months with Jupiter in Sag.
CB: Right.
KS: Nice call, Austin.
CB: Yeah, so that’s the election for the month. And I think Leisa found three or four auspicious election charts later in December that we’re gonna talk about on the Auspicious Elections Podcast, which is available to patrons who sign up through our page on Patreon, on the $5 or $10 tier. And then you get immediate access to that episode, which we should be recording and releasing sometime this week.
AC: Yeah, the ‘Pretty Damn Auspicious Edition’.
CB: Right. The ‘Pretty Damn Auspicious Election’.
KS: Oh, my gosh. I mean, you made a really good point. I can see this is like a great teaching tool election, because you do sometimes have to make decisions when you’re doing electional charts between, is this thing more or less important? Because we can’t conduct astrological surgery and put things exactly where we would like them. So it’s part of the reason, you know, when you engage someone to do an electional chart for you. That’s part of what you’re paying them to do, is to make some of those tough decisions.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah, you’re paying them to look at it for an hour and go, “Eh,” and clicking forward and backward.
KS: Oh, my gosh. You almost get RSI in the finger. “What about this time, the next day?”
AC: “Well, that’s better, but then that’s messed up.”
KS: “Now this is stuffed up.”
AC: Yeah, it’s a lot of neurotic hemming and hawing for me.
KS: Yes.
CB: Well, and it’s great also because it gets to the heart of astrology and electional astrology, which is sometimes you have to choose. You’re given the option to choose, so you can choose, you know, potential outcomes in the future. But sometimes you can’t have both. Like in this instance, in this chart, we can’t have both, let’s say, a good 4th house and a good 2nd house. You have to pick which one is more important to you, and you have to be okay with the other one, you know, being not great, or potentially having major issues that you have to struggle with in that area. And everything is context-specific, since there are some things where that’s okay, or where you can get by and still have things work. Whereas there’s other things where that might be more of a deal-breaker.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yep, yep.
CB: All right. Yeah, Lisa Newcomb says: “That sounds like life.” And that’s true. I mean, that’s a good point. But sometimes it’s so much more stark within the context of electional astrology, having to make that choice. Sometimes it’s not something you’re used to dealing with in natal astrology, which is a little bit more fuzzy sometimes in terms of making those choices, and whether this outcome is gonna be, you know, starkly more problematic one way or another.
AC: Yeah, totally.
KS: Definitely.
CB: All right, so I’m pretty sure that brings us then to the end of the second week of December and takes us into the third week of the month. So when we get to that point, we’re basically talking about the next lunation primarily, right?
KS: The Full Moon on the solstice in Cancer.
CB: Yeah.
KS: We mentioned earlier in the show that Venus comes out of her shadow on the 17th, which is sort of through the middle of the month. And then, yeah, it is really the solstice that I’m happy to move towards. Is there anything that you want to throw in there, Austin?
AC: No, I think that was the next thing I was looking at.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Okay. So Venus passes its shadow degree, and Venus retrograde is officially over by December 17. And then the Sun moves into Capricorn on the 21st.
KS: Yeah, 21st. And then shortly thereafter, the Moon moves into Cancer.
CB: Right.
AC: Like really shortly thereafter.
KS: Yeah, cuz the Full Moon’s at 0 Cancer. I always find that a little more polarized when there’s a Full Moon right on a solstice or an equinox point. Particularly a solstice point, which is sort of an extreme point anyway to do with the Sun’s journey. It really feels like there’s that pulling or that shifting or that tension of opposites. That sort of classic Full Moon energy feels very potent or strong at this time.
AC: Yeah, yeah. I really like the Full Moon in Cancer every year. And this is a relatively lovely one. I mean, Mercury and Jupiter are still tightly-conjoined. The Sun is within about 10° of Saturn and applying to it, but it’s not too tight yet. You know, the Sun and Moon are finally off-angle from Mars. The Sun’s been in at least a sign-based square with Mars for pretty much the whole month leading up to that. To me, this feels very Cancer-Capricorn. Like there’s not a ton of other stuff to really color it. It’s very much that lunation which we get every year on its own terms.
KS: Yeah. One thing I always appreciate about the Cancer Full Moon—which of course we have every year sometime between late December and late January, just depending on where the lunation falls, anytime the Sun’s in Capricorn. But I like it because the polarization of the very nurturing, soft—or maybe not soft, but the wetness and the connectivity of that Moon in Cancer opposed the Sun in Capricorn. I like what you said there, Austin, about it really feels like Capricorn versus Cancer, and it’s very pure in its expression this year.
CB: Right. There’s a real dark/light polarity thing going on here as well. Because the Sun—at least in the Northern Hemisphere of course—when it hits Capricorn, it’s at the coldest and darkest part of the year. But then, simultaneously, we’re going to get the Moon, on the opposite of the spectrum, at its brightest on the same day, which is a weird contrast symbolically.
KS: Totally, yeah. I mean, I always find those contrasts and those extreme qualities—they’re so heightened around the solstice anyway. But yeah, this is the depth of winter. It’s the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere. Lucky people down in Australia will be baking in the hot Australian summer Sun, and we’ll all be very jealous.
AC: I will have fled back to the North American continent by that point.
KS: So, Austin, you will be flying back—I’m not sure the exact date, but I’m presuming sometime around the middle of December, perhaps.
AC: Yeah, we arrive back on the 12th, local time.
KS: Okay. So I always find it interesting when I fly between the hemisphere in December because you’re almost celebrating winter solstice and summer solstice in the space of a 24-hour period. You know, you’ll leave Australia with the very long days, and you’ll come back to the States with much shorter days. It’s quite a contrast. It’s kind of fun and loopy to think about.
AC: Yeah, it’ll be a perfect conclusion to the Mercury retrograde.
KS: That’s true.
AC: Yeah, flipping seasons twice.
KS: Yeah.
AC: I’m hoping that it will give me some greater insight into thinking about the two simultaneous seasons happening all the time. Cuz we’ve been talking more about seasonal factors lately, and it’s something that I’ve been trying to think about for a while. Like, okay, it’s the solstice, that means that in one half of the world, it’s the longest day. At the same time, as in the other half, it’s the shortest day. Trying to think of that from an Earth-based perspective rather than ‘a single point on the Earth-based’ perspective, if that makes sense.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yes.
CB: I’m still, honestly, really struggling with that lately. Because I’m having a hard time divorcing the tropical zodiac, and the way that it’s grown and been developed symbolically in the Western tradition over the past 2,000 years, which has been largely Northern Hemisphere-centric. And even though the astrological community and the world in general has become much more global and more dispersed throughout, and astrologically, we’ve done a pretty good job of attempting to make astrology more inclusive. There’s still a fundamental conceptual issue there that I struggle with in terms of the extent to which the tropical zodiac and much of its Western conceptualizations have been rooted in the Northern Hemisphere and those seasons versus how much it’s not at all, and is something that’s universally applicable and does not need to be flipped, depending on the hemisphere.
AC: Right. Yeah, it’s a knot to be untied, hopefully, gracefully, within our lifetime.
CB: Yeah. I mean, I think Patrick Watson recently published an article where he tried to provide a solution to this, that has to do with the direction that the galaxy is headed or something like that. Where he tried to orient it in a more galactic, universal framework in order to make an argument for why the vernal equinox should be started there, and why that’s a respectable starting point that’s true in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. But that’s been the question I’ve been asking astrologers for about 10 years now. Come up with a solution for why the vernal point is a valid starting point for the zodiac, that’s true in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and then you will have solved that conceptual issue.
AC: Yeah, because it works, but a more clearer ‘why’ would be nice.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah, totally. Totally.
CB: I mean, yeah, it just comes down to the rulerships, cuz of the modalities. The quadruplicities, we don’t have an issue with. But it’s really, why are we assigning the Sun and the Moon to Cancer and Leo, that is true in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres? Because that appears to be the basis of the start of the rulership assignment rationale scheme.
KS: Yeah, the symbolism definitely comes from the Northern Hemisphere seasons. There’s such a crossover there. And the weird magical thing is the application of that to people born in the Southern Hemisphere still rings true. And it does make me wonder about the essence of something rather than the actual thing. Like the difference between the intention of something, I guess. It’s very abstract. It definitely requires a lot of contemplation, Austin.
CB: Sure.
KS: And that 36,000-feet, you know, flight ceiling is a great place to ponder such things.
AC: Yeah. Well, and I’ll have plenty of time on my hands.
KS: Yes. So we did get the second lunation in December, the Full Moon in Cancer. I mean, what I was thinking, too, you know, I think a lot about the astrology of the latter part of December. Because I think a lot about the holiday season and, you know, what people may or may not be doing at different points through the month. And that Full Moon in Cancer—it’s basically over the weekend, just before the Christmas celebration, which I know not everybody is gonna celebrate. But for those who might be gathering with family or friends that may be far away, it’s common to do some of these celebrations the weekend before or the weekend after. And that weekend feels a lot like gathering with your intimate inner circle, whether it is family, biologically or by blood, or it’s your friendship family, or that feeling of family that you get in your local community. Feels like there’ll be a lot of that coming through with the Cancer Full Moon over that weekend, just after the solstice.
AC: Yeah. Well, that’ll grand trine with a few things. It does oppose Saturn. It does have to oppose Saturn and Pluto, but the Full Moon in Cancer will form a grand trine with Venus in Scorpio and Neptune in Pisces on the 23rd.
KS: Yeah. So that’s quite cuddly.
AC: It’s quite cuddly.
KS: Yes.
CB: We had a Sun-Saturn conjunction last year, right after Saturn went into Capricorn, right?
KS: I’m sure we did.
AC: Because Saturn had just ingressed.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah, Saturn was early. Let’s check. This is how my ephemeris gets beat up on.
CB: Oh, yeah, you got a new one. That was a big Instagram story this month. What have you done to that ephemeris? That ephemeris was in tatters.
KS: Honestly, I smashed it in about two years. It just died on me.
CB: Do you still have it around?
KS: I do. Hang on one second. I’ll find it. Keep talking.
CB: Okay. It’s funny. It’s a thing that’s unique to Kelly. But it’s like every astrologer, whatever it is, The American Ephemeris—I’m not sure if it’s because we use it so frequently compared to most books, since it’s a reference book that you’re constantly flipping through, or if it’s just that these things are produced somewhat poorly. Well, no, that’s terrible.
KS: The pages fell apart. I mean, 2017, clearly, I’m done with it.
CB: Just holding up a piece of paper that has a bite mark taken out of it.
AC: Is that your cat’s, or your husband?
KS: It just fell apart. And it fell apart in the middle of the page.
CB: Right.
KS: This is my third copy of this book.
CB: Yeah.
KS: But I mentioned this to Lee Lehman at a conference once, and she said I have to find a bookbinder who will strengthen the spine and put a hard copy on it.
CB: Okay.
KS: Which I did think sounded good. Except, you know, because I travel so much, I didn’t want to have to carry a heavy book. Like one thing I do like about this 50-year one is it’s very easy to slip into the laptop bag.
CB: Right. Yeah, I’ve gone through like four.
KS: Okay, great. Oh, I feel like I’m in good company then.
CB: No, no.
KS: Excellent. Yeah, we did have a Sun-Saturn conjunction, basically, on the solstice last year, my trusty ephemeris. It was funny, though. I got a lot of comments on my Instagram post and story about people wanting to learn how to read an ephemeris. So this is bingo card #2,675, which is, ‘Another podcast episode should be on how to read your ephemeris’.
CB: Yeah, I’ve been meaning to do, at the very least, a video on my YouTube channel for that. But maybe we could turn it into a podcast episode, if we could figure out a way to translate that into audio successfully. An audio discussion.
KS: Oh, yeah, it’s very visual.
CB: Yeah, like looking through the tables.
KS: Yeah, it’s very visual.
CB: But it might be worth a discussion about the ephemeris in general and the value of learning how to use one, as well as, you know, a little bit about how to actually track it.
KS: Honestly, if nerd culture has become cool, this is the nerd bible.
CB: Right.
KS: And it’s telling—my nerd bible—that the Sun will conjunct Saturn on the 2nd of January. So Happy New Year, everybody.
AC: Yeah. And so, after that somewhat—
KS: Full Moon.
AC: —‘squishy’ Full Moon, we have the Sun sliding towards conjunction with Saturn for the rest of the month.
CB: Yeah.
AC: And that is significantly less squishy.
CB: And it doesn’t quite conjoin before the end of the year or end of the month, but it’s getting pretty damn close.
AC: And I think we can meaningfully contrast that with all of the Jupiter stuff that was happening earlier. You know, we have the third Mercury conjunction to Jupiter, which was in Sagittarius. And so, you know, with the Jupiter stuff, it’s a reset into what’s possible, what’s worth striving for, etc., etc. Whereas the Sun’s conjunction with Saturn is a reset on what just has to be done—facing necessity, facing obligation. And so, January, therefore, focuses us to some degree—if we’re willing to cooperate with it—on both the positive and negative of the year to come. You know, what we’re gonna have to do and then what we might be able to do. And that’s one of the chief features of 2019, is Saturn and Jupiter will both be in the signs that they rule for virtually the entire year. We have a really strong benefic. We have the greater benefic, Jupiter in Sagittarius, in great strength, and we have the greater malefic, Saturn, in a position of great strength as well. And so, you know, we have “Here’s the good and here’s the bad. Here’s what you have to do, and here’s what you get to do.”
CB: Yeah.
KS: I really like that. Sorry, Chris.
CB: No, I love that. That’s great, Austin. And look at this. So it’s December 31. It’s the very last day of the calendar year, and we’re getting so close to that conjunction. We’re within about a degree of it by the end of the day. The Sun is at 10 Capricorn, Saturn’s at 11 Capricorn. But that night, in most time zones, before the end of the end, Mars finishes its track through Pisces and switches over to the other cardinal sign into Aries. And it’s so weird how we get that switch, basically, at the very end, on the 31st of December, pretty much the 1st of January. And then basically, the next day, we get the Sun-Saturn conjunction in Capricorn at the same time. It’s kind of a stark way to open up 2019, with having that Sun-Saturn conjunction and the realism or the constraint that you were talking about, Austin, with also Mars entering into its domicile and entering into a much more dynamic sign that certainly Pisces, which it was transiting through for a month-and-a-half. But even to some extent, it’s transit through Aquarius in the previous months, or Capricorn prior to that.
AC: Yeah.
CB: So I realize it gets us into 2019 and the next year.
AC: It’s a heck of a way to start the vulgar new year.
KS: Did you say ‘vulgar new year’?
AC: Yeah. That’s the calendar. It’s the vulgar new year. That’s the correct term for it.
CB: The calendar year as opposed to the astronomical year.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Okay, okay, cool. I’ve just not heard that turn of phrase before. I agree with completely what you’re saying. It’s very harsh. It’s very different, I think, as soon as the Sun moves into Capricorn, all of the bubbles and, you know, hopeful excessive Sun and Jupiter together. I mean, Ficino calls the Sun and Jupiter and Venus ‘the three graces’, and he talks about these are the three planets to appeal to for health or vitality or just goodness in general. I thought that was a great point that you made, Austin. We’ve got the Sun and Jupiter in the same sign together for the first three weeks of Sag—but then we don’t. And then we have the Sun and Saturn in the same sign together, and that’s very much the party’s over, now you’ve gotta do the cleanup, back to reality. You know, we’ve got that running through those last 10 days of December, which is also when Jupiter sort of goes over Antares as well. So there is a really different tone or feeling to those last 10 days of December compared to the rest of the month. We have that every year, with the Sun going into Cap, but with the conjunction to Saturn looming. Sorry, Chris.
CB: It looks very sobering to me—the keyword that’s coming to mind, with Mars departing from that month-long party with Neptune, the conjunction with Neptune in Pisces. And then suddenly it switches out and the party’s over, and within 24 hours, we get the Sun-Saturn conjunction, which unto itself would be a very sobering, symbolic influence.
AC: Yeah. I would say, yeah, do your partying around Christmas and then maybe not so much around New Year’s Eve.
KS: And interestingly, around the Christmas date, we have Mercury square Neptune again on the 24th, which will actually spill over into the 25th if you’re in Australia. So it does look a little loosey-goosey there. And then the end of the month is very different.
CB: You know, maybe part of this is that thing—it’s kind of a cliché, but for some people actually works out—is the New Year’s resolution thing, and getting to work, basically, at the start of the new year. Some of the sobering stuff going on here almost looks like that in a positive way. Or you could, perhaps, spin it in a positive way that could be constructive.
KS: Well, shall I try? You know, the start of a calendar year is often when people are thinking about long-term goals. They’re thinking about achievements or plans. And I think in some ways that sobering energy of Saturn might help people narrow their focus so that instead of saying I’m gonna fix every area, or make changes in every area of my life, it’s much more targeted around let’s pick one or two priorities and see what happens when we give them our full effort. Our best effort. Our prioritization, if you like.
CB: Right. Cuz it’s not just the sobering and the focus—like you were saying there—and the dedication of the Sun-Saturn conjunction, but it’s also Mars switching into Aries and perhaps, you know, having the drive to push yourself to do some of those things and to drive yourself forward versus this very directionless Mars-Neptune conjunction which we’ve been going through for a month-and-a-half up to that point.
KS: Yeah. Like there’s two things when I think about that Mars switch into Aries. I think, fantastic, Mars is in Aries. He wants to get stuff done. He wants to make like Nike and just do it. And I think it’s interesting to have that very early in January. We’re gonna have six weeks—right through till mid-February—of Mars in Aries. But I’m very aware Mars is gonna have to negotiate with Saturn as he moves through Aries.
CB: Sure.
KS: So again, whether it’s sobering or external interference from the Saturn influence—which kind of puts pressure on your enthusiasm or your motivation—I think the key that we’re sort of alluding to is Mars dries out when he moves into Aries. He’s moving from a wet sign into a fire sign, so he’s more clear-headed. And that dry energy is what’s gonna carry us through into the new year. And dry can be clear thinking, clear decision-making. Less emotional. Don’t worry about the fluff. No muss, no fuss. It can be a little bit separative in the sense that there can be such a focus that other things just get cut away. These are some of the themes that we’re thinking about or considering when we’re starting to think about January.
CB: Yeah. I was reading recently that a lot of people—they’ll go back to the gym in January, but then they’ll try to push too hard, and they’ll injure themselves.
KS: Yes.
CB: And so, it’s kind of like the drive and enthusiasm, or balancing the drive and enthusiasm of Mars in Aries, in its home sign, and the exuberance of wanting to push yourself to do better versus still taking it easy and recognizing your limitations or your boundaries, and not, you know, forcing those to run up against each other in a way that results in your hurting yourself somehow.
AC: Yeah. So do you guys think maybe we should save New Year’s resolutions for next month?
CB: Well, and I realize we should. But the only issue is just that because we’re gonna do the entire yearly forecast next month, we usually end up skimping on January, because it’s such a small, initial speed bump towards getting to the other really interesting stuff the rest of the year. So that was the only reason I thought it would be okay to go a little bit into this, since it all switches over right on New Year’s.
AC: Okay, we weren’t gonna do a January and a yearly?
KS: I thought we were.
CB: We will. We will, for sure.
KS: I guess what you’re saying, Chris, is because Mars technically is moving into Aries on December 31, it’s like an energy shift at the end of this month, but it’s setting up January.
CB: Yeah, that’s the only reason I thought it was okay to dwell on that a little bit here. Just cuz I know we’re gonna spend so much time trying to evenly distribute the full 12 months during the next episode. That we’re not gonna spend the norm—
AC: Oh, okay, I see. I thought we were gonna do separate episodes for January and 2019. Gotcha.
CB: No, no. When we do the December one, we end up just making that the entire forecast for the entire next 12 months.
AC: Gotcha.
KS: Okay. I thought what Austin thought. So that’s good. We’ll just have one less show to do.
CB: I mean, if you guys want to do two episodes next month—no, I actually take that back. I’m not doing two episodes.
KS: We’ll do a year ahead. Okay, well, then we should talk about the Venus conjunct Jupiter in Sag in January.
CB: Okay.
AC: Oh, there are so many things to talk about in January.
KS: I know. I’m like, “Okay, shit. Quick, what do we need to throw in?”
CB: No, no. We’re not going all the way into January. I was just throwing in those two because the Sun-Saturn conjunction is so close. It happens right after the new year switches. And Mars goes into Aries like New Year’s Eve. So that’s really the main reason I wanted to talk about those just briefly. Cuz that kind of caps off the very end of December and the very end of this year. But otherwise we do start getting into stuff that’s a little bit more further afield in January.
AC: It’s definitely a ‘get to work’ after seeing all the glorious Jupiterian possibilities.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Sure.
KS: It’s very different from December.
CB: Definitely. All right. I mean, that pretty much brings us to the end of the month. Is there anything else we need to be mentioning about the end of December? Or anything else that we forgot to touch on about the forecast in general for next month?
KS: I don’t know if it’s maybe on the lighthearted front, but I always like to look at the energy of New Year’s Eve for all the party people—yeah, okay, Moon in Scorpio, kind of late in the moon phase—just whether that had more of, again, this sobering tone, or more of like an intimate celebration with maybe a small group of friends rather than the big parties. I know everybody’s in different ages and stages of life that’s listening, but I don’t think I’ve had any comments on that or any thoughts.
CB: Sure. What do we got? We got a nice Moon-Neptune trine going on. We’ve got the Moon-Venus conjunction.
KS: Good for party things.
CB: Sure. But then there’s also a little bit of a sobering sextile from Saturn.
AC: Oh, a sobering sextile to Saturn. I think you win the alliteration award tonight.
CB: Thank you.
KS: Nicely done. Nicely done.
CB: But yeah, I mean, it’s nice. Other than that switch, other than the Sun-Saturn conjunction itself—which is kind of looming just around the corner, you know, the next day, basically, when everybody wakes up after whatever their New Year’s Eve celebrations were. And other than Mars switching signs that night—which actually could be a significant shift for some people—it’s like, you know, with whole sign houses, that Mars is gonna switch into a new house in everyone’s chart. And for some people that could be a bit more dramatic than for others, depending on which house that is or whether that house is activated by transits. Whereas for others, it’s not gonna build up until later in that sign, when it hits an angle or a personal planet or something like that.
KS: Totally. Did you have any New Year’s Eve tips or thoughts, Austin?
AC: No.
KS: Okay.
AC: I don’t like New Year’s Eve.
KS: I’m not a huge fan either. Like I’m often in bed with a cup of tea by 10. But I know that I’m not the majority.
AC: So when I was younger, I didn’t like it. And then I found out that it’s because our calendar is wrong. And I was like, “See, I was right.” I don’t know. I just end up doing my partying earlier in the month, and that’s the last thing I wanna do. You know, the Sun’s been in Capricorn for 10 days. My mind is not on revelry. It’s on, you know, what I need to get done and what I wanna do and how to build structures for that. You know, I don’t know. I’ve just never really liked it.
KS: Cool. That makes sense. Yeah, I agree with you. Like the partying is the Sun in Sag month. And I think the Full Moon in Gemini—which comes obviously earlier, I think it’s actually late November this year—I always think that’s a really good celebratory energy. It totally feels like party to me. And that last period of December—I’ve always liked those last 10 days of December because it’s like everything gets quiet for a while. That feeling of shutdown, or everybody’s just maybe in their little corners. And I like it, you know, cuz running a business, it’s a time when actually, no, you won’t get a lot of emails. Not that, you know, I have any problems getting emails—cuz I run my business, emails are great—but it’s nice to have a few days where you don’t feel there’s that urgency to get back to people, I guess.
AC: I hear that.
CB: Yeah, definitely.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Well, guys, I think we’ve reached the end of this episode. And this is pretty much our last forecast for the year, because next month, of course, we’re gonna be focusing on 2019. So we’ve just completed our 12th, whatever, forecast episode for 2018.
AC: High-five.
KS: Yay. Yay, us.
AC: So what is that? So we’ve done three full years and then like half of another year. So that may be the 42nd, 43rd, 44th episode we’ve done together, just doing months.
CB: Wow. That’s crazy.
KS: 42 months? Yeah, if we’ve done three-and-a-half years.
CB: We did our first one on the Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Leo in June of 2015.
AC: Yeah, I think it was June.
KS: Yeah, it was like post-NORWAC.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Brilliant. Well, it’s been a lot of fun. It’s nice being at the end of the year. We all keep upping our game and trying to improve things. We’re all now on new microphones. So we’ve been improving the microphone. We’ve got Kelly on the nice one. Austin, we got your earlier this year. And I’ve been on mine for about a year-and-a-half now. Yeah, and that’s largely actually due to support from the patrons and the listeners and everybody that’s been so great. And we really love all of the fans of the show and everybody that comes up, especially, Kelly. You just had a conference recently where you met a lot of listeners, and a lot of people came up to you.
KS: I totally did at the SOTA astrology conference. It was a lot of fun. And it’s always lovely to meet people who are listening to the show. You know, they’ll often share little tidbits, things they liked, or ‘can you add this in’ or what have you, and it’s always great to meet people in the flesh, in real life.
CB: Definitely. And hopefully we’ll all be doing a lot of that next year, I think, starting with NORWAC in May of 2019, in Seattle.
KS: Yes.
AC: Yeah, I’ll be doing a little bit of that in about a week-and-a-half in Melbourne.
KS: You will, Austin.
AC: And there will be some listeners there. So let’s have a beer or seven.
KS: Yeah. It’s Australians. There’ll be more than one.
AC: Better be.
KS: It’s gonna be hot, too. You’ll need it to cool down. Have a great time, Austin.
AC: Yeah, thank you.
KS: Chris and I will wanna hear all about it.
CB: I look forward to hearing your report.
AC: Yeah, I can’t imagine it not being super fun.
KS: Excellent.
CB: Awesome. Cool. All right, guys. Well, yeah, and I look forward to hearing the rest of your Mercury retrograde stories.
AC: I’m sure there’ll be some kerfuffles.
CB: Sure. Well, thank you for regaling us at the opening of this episode with your initial. And our sympathy goes out to you as the first sacrificial victim of the Mercury retrograde during this cycle of this month. But good job persevering. And yeah, thanks for sharing that. That was a great example, I think.
AC: Oh, good, good. I mean, I just got back from Seattle like six hours ago.
KS: Yeah.
AC: So this just got solved.
KS: You’re a massive trooper for keeping our pre-booked podcast recording date as well.
AC: Well, I warned you all last week.
KS: I know. We had contingency plans, for sure.
AC: I was like, you know, it’s Mercury mess week, I might need to stay another day or whatever. But things went according to plan.
CB: I was fully prepared for you to be connecting in at the last minute from a coffee shop in Seattle.
AC: Yeah, right. Just random people in the background.
CB: Right.
KS: Oh, my gosh.
CB: You’re talking about Mercury retrograde very loudly and very enthusiastically while everyone looks at you weirdly.
AC: Yeah, there’s some weirdo in the background photo bombing and making faces.
KS: Oh, my gosh.
CB: All right, guys. I think that’s it. So yeah, thanks everybody. Thanks everyone in the audience who attended. All the patrons who supported the show and attended the live recording. We appreciate you and like your comments. Thanks to Lisa for the amazing bingo thing. And everybody should check that out. I’ll put a link to it in the description page for this episode, and etc. Check out the description page, cuz that has a lot of good links on it for everything we mentioned in this episode every time. And that’s pretty much it. So thanks everybody for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
AC: Take care.
KS: Bye.