The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 187, titled:
2019 Astrology Forecast: Overview of the Year Ahead
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on December 31, 2018
Original episode URL:
https://theastrologypodcast.com/2018/12/31/2019-astrology-forecast/
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released February 14th, 2026
Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode is recorded on Friday, December 28, 2018, starting at 2:00 PM, in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 187th episode of the show. You can help to support the production of future episodes of the podcast and get access to some great subscriber benefits, like early access to new episodes, by becoming a patron through our page on Patreon. For more information, visit TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Subscribe. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking with astrologers Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock, and we’re going to provide an overview of the major astrological transits and planetary alignments that will be taking place over the course of the next year in 2019. With that intro out of the way, hey, Kelly and Austin. Welcome back.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey, guys.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, what’s up?
CB: Hey. So we did our Q&A episode a few, what? A week or two ago. We got caught up on where our lives are at over the past few weeks and trips and everything else. And now, in this episode, we’re ready to just jump right into the full forecast. So before we get started, just a few things. I wanna make sure—especially for new viewers who are just finding us—that people know where to find out more about our work, if they’re interested in this episode and want to learn more about each of our individual classes and consultations and everything else. So, Kelly, first to you. Where can people find out more information? And what sort of things do you offer?
KS: Yeah, absolutely. So I offer online astrology classes, as well as video conference/video consults, I guess. And you can find me online. The best place is via my website, KellysAstrology.com.
CB: Brilliant. And, Austin, what about you?
AC: I teach online, and I do readings for people, both in person and remotely. And I do quite a bit of writing, and I have a Patreon for that. You can find all my stuff at AustinCoppock.com.
CB: All right, brilliant. And as for myself, I am the host of The Astrology Podcast, and I have a Patreon where you can get early access to new episodes, as well as I teach online courses. You can find links to everything on the sidebar of TheAstrologyPodcast.com. All right, guys, let’s jump right into everything. So 2019, we’re gonna be giving an overview of all of the major transits of 2019. There’s a lot of stuff going on next year. We’re gonna focus especially on outer planet transits, of which there’s almost like more compared to other years on some level, I feel like. Instead of going through—we had two options. We could either go through this chronologically—like month-by-month—or we could go through it in terms of what are like the top five, top ten, biggest transits of next year that we’re focused on. I think in the past it’s always worked out better for us to go through chronologically and sort of work our way through the year. Because then it’s more of like a natural sort of unfolding of what the next 12 months is gonna be like. Does that sound like an optimal approach to you guys?
AC: Sounds like a plan. A good one.
KS: Happy to do that. That sounds great.
CB: Okay, brilliant. So let’s start off at the top of the year then with January. So January is a big month. There’s a lot going on in January. It’s weird because January’s almost like a microcosm of the entire year in some respect, where it seems like a lot of the major planetary stuff that we’re gonna be dealing with most of 2019 actually really begins in 2019. And not in like the usual way that you might say that, where everything begins at the beginning of the year. But in that, there’s a lot of major outer planet stuff that’s happening already in January that kind of like provides a setup for the rest of the year. That was my impression, sort of going through and looking at this year. Did you guys feel the same way? Is January seen as sort of dynamic and as much of a preview of what’s to come to you guys, as it does to me?
KS: Yeah, totally. I think that January sets up a lot of the themes that we’re going to then explore and revisit throughout the year. We’re going to have, you know, the Jupiter square Neptune aspect, for instance, which is one of the bigger outer planet aspects for 2019. That first exact activation does happen in January, but it will play out through the year. We will get a Mars square Saturn aspect in January, and hard aspects between Mars and Saturn are a bit of a signature for 2019. Plus, we get a taste of, you know, whatever goodness that Jupiter in Sag might have to offer. That’s really amplified by the presence of Venus in Sag with Jupiter in January. So yeah, I think that’s definitely fair, and the new eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn—they kick off in January as well. But did you have different thoughts, Austin? Or were you kind of along the same track?
AC: Yeah, I think that’s a fair statement. We have the Jupiter-Neptune square, which is going to happen two more times in 2019. And I think more importantly we get to meet the new eclipse cycle, which is, you know, in Capricorn, which features the South Node in Capricorn and the North Node in Cancer. And it means there are eclipses next Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn. And I would say that, you know, in many ways, 2019 has very clearly defined advantages and disadvantages. The tough stuff is the Saturn-Pluto-South Node, and the fun stuff is the Jupiter in Sag. And so, we kind of get to meet both the heroes and villains very quickly.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And it’s not just January’s interesting. Cuz it’s not just the beginning of and the opening of the new eclipse series, which are the eclipses for the next year-and-a-half or so, bouncing back and forth between Capricorn and Cancer. Especially this year, in the calendar year, we get two Capricorn solar eclipses and one Cancer solar eclipse. But we also have the ending of the previous cycle, where in January, on the 21st, we get the very last lunar eclipse in Leo, which really closes out that whole eclipse series that we’ve been going through over the past couple of years in Aquarius and Leo. Which included the Great American Eclipse, which was a solar eclipse in Leo, which was like the opposite of this lunar eclipse in Leo, that’s really bringing the whole sequence to completion. So this is just a calendar I’m showing really quickly right now, for those watching the video version, which is the transits and the ingresses and the stations for January, from The Astrology Podcast Planetary Alignments Calendar, available of course at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/2019Posters. And, you know, the end of the lunar eclipse—I wanted to just touch on that briefly. I realized that’s kind of like backwards-looking instead of forward-looking. But do you guys think it’s notable to have like a lunar eclipse kind of closing out that entire sequence of Aquarius/Leo eclipses this month? I mean, to me, that’s sort of bringing something to completion before moving in more firmly into the new eclipse series in Capricorn and Cancer.
AC: Well, what’s interesting is that the new series actually starts before we close out the old, which is often the case with different eclipse series. There’s a sort of interlinking of the past and future or, you know, the old cycle and the new. We start the new and then resolve the old. The new begins with the eclipse on January 5. And then it’s about two weeks later that we get the resolution of the old, which is the—I believe it’s a total lunar eclipse on the 20th-21st in Leo. But yeah, it’s definitely, you know, January having that function of really introducing the new. Really introducing the new. Part of really introducing the new is completing or finalizing the old. And so, it does that.
CB: Yeah. And it just seems like sort of a culmination or a bringing to completion about whatever—especially for individuals—like whatever area of your chart those Leo eclipses have been in; this being the final resolution or final result of all of that over the past year or two.
KS: Absolutely. And the Leo/Aquarius eclipses really going out with a bang. Because even though it’s the last in that series, this is still, technically, a total lunar eclipse, because the Moon is very close to the nodal axis, even though they are split across two different signs. And I think we will see, if you like, some of the cliché of emotional dramas. Because it’s a Full Moon in Leo that happens to be an eclipse, just to close out whatever the last 18 months of Leo/Aquarius eclipses has been for people.
CB: Right. So here it is in the video, just highlighting it. It’s on 20th-21st, a total lunar eclipse at 0° of Leo. And that’s happening right around the same time in the middle of January, where we get that lovely Venus-Jupiter conjunction around 15°-16° of Sagittarius, which is trining Mars at 13 Aries at the time. So that’s part of what we’re dealing with this month. The other thing we’re dealing with this month—in addition to the eclipses that you already mentioned, Austin, I think, or Kelly did—we have the very first of three, a sequence of three Jupiter-Neptune squares. And this is gonna be one of the like characteristic aspects going on for the entirety of 2019. And since this is the very first one in January, this is gonna open up a sequence of events for some people, that’s gonna tie together those three exact squares that take place at different points during the course of this year. And one of the things that’s weird about that, that we’ve talked about before, is it means that we’re not just dealing with a straight, you know, Jupiter transit through Sagittarius, or even in this instance, a Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Sagittarius, which otherwise sounds relatively pleasant. But it’s being heavily colored by—or anything that Jupiter’s doing this year is being heavily colored by that square with Neptune. Have you guys thought much about that square? And how are you interpreting it—Jupiter square Neptune in Sagittarius and Pisces?
AC: I’ll go. I see it as a modifier to Jupiter in Sagittarius. I don’t think it’s a huge deal because Jupiter is so strong in Sagittarius. And when a planet is super strong, it kind of gets to do what it wants, even if there’s contention from other planets. And Neptune—which is, you know, offering the modification—is actually ruled by Jupiter, and so, it has to answer to Jupiter, anyway. And I guess, also, Neptune’s nature is not very contrary to Jupiter. In many ways, I think that Neptune is sort of like Jupiter. It’s like a more passive, yin Jupiter that doesn’t have proper limits. But Neptune is also expansive, etc., etc. So as a modifier, I suppose what I see is that Neptune’s going to make the aspirations and ambitions that Jupiter in Sagittarius seeds bigger, dreamier. And for some people that will result in them, how shall we say, dreaming bigger and achieving it, and for other people, it’ll be dreaming too big to achieve it. But it further expands the scope of Jupiter in Sagittarius’ ambitions, I would say, for better and worse.
CB: Right. I like that. So it’s like, in some instances, you need that inspiration. You need that higher inspiration and that goal, even if that goal ends up being, in retrospect, almost like you set yourself up too high. Or you shot too high and the end result was something a little bit lower or more towards the middle in terms of what you actually accomplished. Sometimes having that idealization to shoot for and the optimization—just being optimistic enough to go for it is sometimes necessary in order to sort of accomplish anything.
AC: Yeah. As I wrote about last month, it’s the principle of an archer will aim slightly above their target to correct for gravity. And so, you know, it’s like shoot for the stars and you might hit the Moon. There’s a certain part of us that needs to aim for something better than what we will achieve by aiming for that. You know, correcting for gravity, I think, is a pretty good way to think about it.
CB: Right. Sorry, there was a delay. Yeah, that’s a great metaphor. So the archer—you have to shoot above your target in order to actually hit what, realistically, you’re aiming for. That’s gonna be—with that Jupiter-Neptune square happening for most of the year—I think that’s gonna be a great metaphor for people to keep in mind with that. Which is a double-edged sword, cuz on the one hand, you’re acknowledging how unfeasible it is to actually achieve some of the things that you might set out to achieve. But on the other hand, the necessity of having like high ideals or aspirations—which might be ultimately unattainable—you kind of need that as a motivating factor sometimes in order to make some of the greatest accomplishments. What sort of metaphors have you used, Kelly, for that, for Jupiter-Neptune squares?
KS: Yeah, I’ve kind of been dancing, again, between the idea that, you know, a square to Neptune can often be confusing or create some uncertainty. It can remove the level of logic and place us into the realm of the imagination or the idea of trusting intuition. So it’s a lot about kind of feeling the flow rather than heavy, hard planning. I know over the last couple of months, I’ve been thinking about my own personal 2019, and the first few months of the year, I kind of knew where I was gonna be. And I just left the second part of the year wide open, cuz we had all these options that may or may not happen. And, you know, with Jupiter-Neptune there’s this feeling of being in that inspiration/imagination place. I do agree with Austin that a Jupiter square to Neptune—with Jupiter in such strong dignity—does have a lot of positivity to offer. You know, it’s guiding you towards a really meaningful direction. Or it’s encouraging you to maybe loosen up, like ‘loosey-goosey’, but where you need to let go or soften up a little bit. And I’ve also thought about this Jupiter square Neptune in the context of like hope and helping and generosity around that idea of wanting to support or to give what you can, or to pour out where you’ve got an excess or an abundance. And sometimes with Neptune, we’re pouring out, you know, on ground that is already wet and soaked. Or we’re pouring out to people that don’t want to take a sip from the cup right now. So I think there may be a little bit of like wastage in terms of the giving this year, but I think it’s coming from a good place, and a lot of what you’re offering is still potentially gonna hit the mark. So I think there are still some outcomes we’ll be happy with from the Jupiter-Neptune, even if we have some moments where we’re a little confused along the path.
CB: Yeah, definitely, that ultimately Jupiter does have the upper hand. It is the planet that’s in the superior position, not just in its own sign, but also, in terms of this being the waning Jupiter-Neptune square. So it’s like if it was on the other side—and Neptune was earlier in zodiacal order—then Neptune might have the upper hand. And therefore, the sort of like illusory nature of Neptune that maybe promises more than it delivers would dominate the sort of theme of the year. But instead, here, it’s the other way around. So it’s like maybe, you know, Jupiter is actually able to deliver on the promises, even if it’s heavily tinged by Neptune and sort of, at first, might seem like it’s over-promising something, in some sense.
KS: Yeah. I don’t think the over-promising—like I do think that’s a relevant archetype. And the other couple of cycles I’ve reflected on, as I’ve thought about this Jupiter square Neptune for 2019, you know, I’ve thought about when was the last time that we had a Jupiter square Neptune aspect, which was back in 2012, when Jupiter was in Gemini. And at that point, I think Neptune really dominated the square there because of the superior position; and also, because Jupiter in Gemini, you know, struggles a little bit more generally, just because that’s a detriment placement for Jupiter. So it’s not the same as that time, even though it is an aspect repeating. And then the other piece that I think about is between 2015 and 2017, we had Saturn in the sign of Sagittarius. And for many people who found that a particularly sort of difficult or stressful time, Jupiter now in Sag, taking the place of where Saturn was, it does feel like some of the opportunities that will come the way for people really affected by this square are a reward or a result of maybe some of the challenges that they just worked through with Saturn in Sag a few years ago.
CB: Yeah, definitely. That makes a lot of sense. This is definitely the other side of, you know, the Saturn-Neptune square that we saw a few years ago. And that’s a much different energy, having Jupiter go through it at the same time. I feel like—I don’t know if you guys got this feeling as well, but there’s so many earth placements going on. There’s so much going on in Capricorn this year. And that Saturn-Pluto conjunction is starting to get so close. It doesn’t go exact this year, but it’s still like one of the dominant energies of the year because it gets, I think, within a degree, by the end of 2019, of going exact. That Jupiter transiting through Sagittarius seems to be like one of the main offsetting and sort of optimistic influences that’s going on this year. That even when things get really heavy during the course of the summer, we still have Jupiter going through Sagittarius sort of like lightening things up and balancing things out. It seems like that’s gonna be one of the saving graces consistently this year, but also, just in January, where we can see this pileup of stuff happening in Capricorn. But at the same time, we have that Venus-Jupiter conjunction sort of offsetting it.
KS: Totally. Yeah, I was just thinking about this yesterday, actually. You know, we’ve got the Jupiter stuff, which is happening in a sign adjacent to the Saturn stuff. So they’re not interfering with each other, but they’re happening in different parts of our lives or around different topics. What were your thoughts on that, Austin?
AC: Oh, yeah, I would agree with, well, everything that y’all said. I really liked the point that you made about the generosity and altruism that Jupiter and Neptune together generate. They’re both very kind. And I would add that, so we’ve been talking about how Neptune will modify Jupiter. But I think that we can also think about it the opposite way, which is, how does Jupiter contribute or detract from what Neptune’s trying to do in Pisces? Which is, as far as my thinking goes, like a 14-year mission of global ‘weirdning’. You know, one, if you look at the last time Neptune was in Pisces, things got weirder very quickly. That’s when the seances became very popular, you know, the 19th century equivalent of pop culture. And if you think about, you know, what’s happened to reality since 2012—since Neptune entered Pisces—you know, we have millions of kids identifying as witches in the United States; there’s definitely this ‘weirdning’ mission. And I think that Jupiter’s time in Sagittarius will actually boost that on a cultural level. I think this is actually a strong time for Neptune, as far as what Neptune is into and what its concerns are.
CB: Right. That’s a really good point. Cuz that’s one of the functions of Jupiter, to like affirm or to say ‘yes’ to other planets in the chart. Or at least, traditionally, that’s how the Hellenistic astrologers used it through the conditions of bonification, where Jupiter, when it was making a close aspect to other planets, would say ‘yes’ to what it wants to signify. But it’s funny in this instance that it’s Neptune. It’s like an outer planet that wants to signify the illusory, the strange, the otherworldly, the things that are kind of like in between worlds, but it’s saying ‘yes’ to that very strongly in some ways this year. I mean, we got a lot of that last year with the trine, while Jupiter was moving through Scorpio. And we saw the rise of like, as you were saying, witches and occultism like going mainstream suddenly, which was really interesting and surprising, almost, to see. But we almost have like an intensification of that now that we have Jupiter in the tenth sign relative to Neptune, making that superior degree-based square all year.
KS: Definitely.
AC: Yeah. I don’t know that it’s an intensification—cuz that trine to Jupiter in Scorpio was pretty good—but it’s at least an affirmation or a continuance. It’s sort of like, what happened last year? Yeah, that’s going to keep happening.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah, like an encouragement. And for a number of reasons I thought that Neptune in Pisces is a bit of a focus this year because of two of the major outer planet aspects. We’ve got the Jupiter square to Neptune, but we also have Saturn sextile Neptune. So they’re both sort of pulling in. You know, Jupiter and Saturn make things a little bit more real or, you know, tangible or made manifest. It’s sort of pulling in that Neptunian inspiration. And I also think about the Neptunian Pisces. You know, this is a very ‘wet’ kind of energy, as a contrast to the very dry, kind of hardening, almost brittle qualities of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn. So there are some really contrasting qualities coming through, and I feel like Neptune is sort of at the center of a lot of what’s going on in 2019.
CB: Definitely. So the other major thing that’s happening this month in January—before we move on—is Uranus is stationing direct in Aries. And that is the final station of Uranus in Aries, which is gonna basically start to wrap up at this point—over the next couple of months—its seven-year-long transit through that sign, that started way back in 2011. So for some people, like a station of Uranus is an intensification of the planet, oftentimes. So if you have planets in like late degrees of cardinal signs that could still be relevant for you. But for a lot of people, it seems like this is gonna be like looking back on the major and sometimes radical, and sometimes—or most of the time—unexpected changes that occurred for you in the part of your life that Uranus has been transiting. Or the part of your chart that Uranus has been transiting over the past seven years, and sort of taking stock of some of those changes over the course of the past decade and just looking back on them before Uranus moves forward and just completely departs from that sign and moves into Taurus in March, where it will stay for the greater part of the next decade. Did you guys have any thoughts? I know we’ve talked a lot about Uranus going through Aries over the course of the past several years that we’ve been doing these forecasts. Did you guys have any reflections on that transit? Or either what it’s meant for you, or things that you’ve seen in the lives of like clients over the past several years?
KS: Austin?
AC: I don’t know that I have anything particularly concise to say.
CB: We’ve got some delays for the recording, if anyone’s wondering.
AC: Come back to me on that.
CB: Well, let me ask you a personal question then, Austin. You, as a person with Cancer rising, Uranus has been transiting through your 10th house over the past decade. Have you had any radical changes in terms of your career during that time?
AC: Yes. I’m much more successful than when it began.
CB: Right.
AC: You know—excuse me, Uranus’ time in Pisces—where I keep my Sun and a couple other of my things—was much more groundbreaking for me. I actually thought—when I was looking at it in 2011—that Uranus in Aries would be much—because it’s my natal 10th, I thought it would be bigger and more earth-shaking. But the way that it’s worked—and this times to the particular, precise transits to my midheaven and aspects to other planets—is it’s been relatively snack-sized breakthroughs professionally, where it’s like, “And now you are invited to speak at a conference, and now you have a book offer.” And so, actually, you know, the Uranus in Aries came through for me in a, I don’t know, how do I say, in a much more polite manner than Uranus usually comes through for people.
CB: Yeah. Cuz sometimes you do see those like sudden, unexpected—like, you know, a sudden, right turn where the person’s life goes in a completely different direction. And yours has certainly been more, you know, building and progressive development over the course of the decades. But it’s also been interesting seeing you remake your image and just your public profile over the past decade, and like shedding your previous persona, where you actually used like a pseudonym in order to start your astrological career. And a large part of the last decade, for me, just as an observer, it’s been interesting seeing you go through a radical sort of change of becoming more—or at least publicly becoming more of who you are on the world stage.
AC: Yeah. Well, that’s an interesting observation. Yeah, I quit writing under a pseudonym during the initial ingress of Uranus in 2010. And, you know, so one of the things people say about Uranus is on a psychological/spiritual level, it pushes you towards authenticity. And I definitely feel like that’s been a consistent push to do that professionally. I think one of the reasons that I didn’t have to destroy everything and start over again—or make a radical right turn or left turn—is because I’d just gone through seven years of Uranus transiting my Sun, which is my sect light. And so, I was already ‘Uranus-upped’. You know, it was during that period that I kind of broke with other people’s ideas about what I should do with my life and said I was gonna be an astrologer. You know, I made a lot of those Uranian changes. And so, I think that Uranus’ movement into my 10th subsequent to that required less rewiring, if that makes sense. Not that it didn’t have its own story, but there was less needed to be broken down because of that.
CB: Sure, definitely. And, Kelly, for you, you’re kind of similar in that you have even more Pisces placements than Austin, so you really dealt with Uranus and got primed. And most of your like major Uranus transits would have come in that decade before, while Uranus was moving through Pisces most of the later part of the 2000s. But how has Uranus—how has that transit been for you over the course of the past decade, since 2011? It’s been moving through—can I say your placements? Like your 2nd house.
KS: Yeah, of course you can say it. It’s in the 2nd house, yeah. I feel like there’s revelations coming.
CB: Have you seen like changes in terms of your finances? Your ability to make money—have they been sort of unexpected or drastic or revolutionary in some way?
KS: Yeah, I mean, like Austin, I do think I’ve had more of a gentle version, if you like, of Uranus in Aries. And for similar reasons, I attribute that to, you know, when Uranus goes over all your lights and your angles and everything, when Uranus was in Pisces. I had done so much. You know, I had broken through with writing, and I’d broken through with astrology all while Uranus was in Pisces. So the Uranus in Aries—which is 2nd house for me—has been very much about figuring out the money thing. Which, funnily enough, up until the Uranus in Aries piece had felt like a bit of a mystery to me, it was like I did my work and I got paid but that was kind of it, you know. I wasn’t really, you know, doing all the right things with money, if you like. So that’s been a huge piece, like managing the personal finance, that type of thing. I often talk about Uranus in the 2nd or in the 8th—or when Uranus is transiting the ruler of the 2nd or the 8th—is about financial freedom. And I think as we’re coming to the end of the Uranus in Aries for me, personally, you know, I’ve paid off credit cards, and I don’t have that kind of debt anymore, just to speak really openly about it. So there has been, if you like, a liberation where more of my money is more of my own, because it’s not going to pay stupid interest rates on things. I also thought, too, of some general comments about Uranus in Aries. You know, the quality of Uranus versus the qualities of cardinal signs are a little bit more similar. They’re not exactly the same.
CB: Sure.
KS: Particularly Aries is like it wants to jump on things, and Uranus wants to make things happen quickly. And so, I have seen a lot with clients that Uranus in Aries has almost sparked a recognition of something that was already latent, and they’ve responded fairly quickly. And what I’m thinking about, as Uranus comes into Taurus, is this idea of Uranus being back in a fixed sign. And there’s more of a—there’s more tension between a fixed sign, how that wants to operate, versus the way Uranus wants to operate. And this is where I start to feel my age or experience with astrology. I remember when Uranus was in Aquarius, cuz that’s when I first started consulting with clients. And I remember the types of Uranus transits people were having were much more dramatic, because when you have a natal planet in a fixed sign, it’s going to want to resist whatever Uranus is bringing up. And so, this little saying about, you know, ‘it’s better to bend a little or to break’ keeps playing in my mind as I think about the shift of Uranus, not just out of Aries, but out of a cardinal sign and into a fixed sign. And, you know, are we gonna be able to bend, or are we gonna be really rigid? And then, is something gonna break, basically?
CB: Right. I love that, cuz they’re not inherently flexible placements. Or fixed sign placements are the parts of our charts that are typically the most inflexible, where you figure something out that you like, and then you stick with it and you do it consistently, and that’s what’s sort of comfortable to you. But then what happens when you get Uranus like coming through, basically, like a wrecking ball, in that part of your chart.
KS: Yeah. And look, so many of our listeners are piping up, the ones on the live record. This is almost a cliché. Like you can take this to the bank. When Uranus transits the 4th house, the IC, or the ruler of the 4th—the person becomes like a nomad, where they don’t necessarily have this permanent abode. You know, they are on the move. They don’t want to be bound. And this was particular, I think, with Uranus in Aries, which likes a little bit of independence anyway. So selling a home. Separating from a partner. Being on the go. ‘Airbnb-ing’ or renting rather than home ownership. That’s a really common one I’ve seen with Uranus in Aries in the 4th or activating the IC. What about you, Austin? Anything coming to mind for you on those fronts?
AC: I’m in profound agreement with what you said about moving from a cardinal sign to a fixed sign. There’s just more to disrupt in a fixed sign, and I think that’s a great way to put it. Also, you know, Uranus volatilizes things. It throws things up in the air.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And Aries is already kind of volatile. And so, you know, there’s almost an intensification of certain Aries patterns rather than a contradiction of them, whereas, you know, Taurus is almost inarguably the most fixed of the fixed signs. And so, there are a lot of stable patterns to ‘volatize’.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And just to wrap up, my Uranus transit has been through the 3rd house over the past decade. And of course like one year after Uranus went into Aries—or within a year of it going into Aries, into my 3rd house of communication—is when I started this podcast. So that’s one of the other weird things about Uranus, is sometimes things having to do with technology and like, you know, advancements in technology and things like that, and leveraging those in whatever part of the chart Uranus is going through can sometimes be the case. And, for me, it was unexpectedly starting a podcast and my communication style developing and changing, and using technology in order to become more comfortable communicating. And over the course of the past decade, if you go back, this is Episode 187 now. But if you go back and listen to like Episode 1 or 2 or 3 or 4, you just see that things are much different, and you can sort of see my progression and development—not that I’m like an amazing orator at this point. But things have changed a lot over the course of the past seven years that Uranus has been going through that sign. And, for me, it’s been unexpected changes in my communication style, partially motivated by changes in technology and attempts to leverage that, in order to create a platform for my voice or for astrology or whatever it is that I’m doing here on the podcast, on YouTube, and other places.
KS: Totally, Chris. And even your online astrology classes—I suspect that they’ve all happened in that timeframe as well, where you’ve been using technology to teach in a way that gets the information out there, but doesn’t require you to be in a classroom every week, for instance. So yeah. And this is where it’s lovely. I think this is a great point you’ve made, you know, to get everyone to think back. You know, what has changed for you since 2010, when Uranus first went into Aries? Which part of your life have you really kind of radicalized or ‘volatized’? And how has that been either freeing or exciting for you, hopefully?
CB: Yeah. Just figure out what whole sign house it’s been transiting through relative to your rising sign, and that’ll give you a pretty good idea of some of the topics that should have come up. And I think especially this month, with Uranus doing its final station there, it’s like that final exclamation mark. It’s that final looking back on what that has been about and sort of bringing some sense of completion or finality to those changes in preparation for moving out of that here, in a couple of months, when Uranus goes into Taurus in March, and then will not return back to Aries for like 70 or 80 years or something like that.
KS: Yeah.
CB: All right, so that’s what’s going—
AC: Chris, I remember—
CB: Go ahead.
AC: Sorry, delay. I just wanted to say, Chris, I remember when you first took over, I think it was The Traditional Astrology Podcast, because you had me on two weeks after Uranus’ ingress into Aries in 2011, the final ingress. And I believe that was the first podcast I was ever on. And that was when I had Mercury at 2 Aries. And so, that was Uranus conjoining my Mercury within 2° and only two weeks after the ingress.
CB: I love that. That’s great. Yeah, Traditional Astrology Radio was the first podcast. TraditionalAstrologyRadio.com was the first podcast I did, that I inherited from somebody in 2010. So that’s so funny, though. Think about that, you know, me starting the podcast in 2011-2012, Uranus going into my 3rd, and then it’s changed. Cuz then you ended up becoming involved in that, Austin, to the extent that you started doing the forecast episodes, and it’s going through your career house; and, Kelly, it’s also going through one of your sort of career/work houses, and the interesting way that that sort of ties together. There’s probably like other underlying, synastry things. And obviously we each have things going on in our personal lives as well. But it’s interesting, I don’t know, how that’s all tied together in a weird way for us. So that’s some of the thinking, looking back, sort of reflective things that I hope people do this month in the long term. But that starts to set us up for the rest of the year. Are there any other major transits in January that we need to touch on before we start moving on here?
AC: I mean, it’s worth mentioning that Mars is in Aries the whole month.
CB: Yeah.
AC: I mean, generally speaking, you know, January is, as you said, initially a showcase of a lot of what this year has to offer, between the great difficulties that are augured by that Saturn-Pluto-South Node thing and the dreamy potential benefits of the Jupiter-Neptune. And January in and of itself is very hot and cold in my estimation. There’s like lots of fire and excitement on some days, and then there’s lots of really heavy, cold, dry, you know, melancholic subjects on other days.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Depending on whether the Moon is activating the fire stuff or the Cap stuff.
CB: Yeah, and look at this. It really starts off right on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, where it’s like Mars moves into Aries on December 31, and then the very next day, on basically New Year’s Day, there’s a Sun-Saturn conjunction really starting off the year. So we get that contrast right from the start opening up the year.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Then we have the solar eclipse, of course. And that’s gonna be the opening phase and the opening sequence. And something’s gonna start—especially in the part of your chart that that solar eclipse falls in—that’s gonna build up and then come to some sort of full manifestation six months later, when there’ll be a lunar eclipse in Capricorn in the middle of the year. So people should pay attention to that solar eclipse, if anything starts in their life, even if it’s subtle or small or almost imperceptible, like a new development in your life. Because that’s something that will build up and then eventually culminate six months later, probably at the lunar eclipse.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So solar eclipse. Lunar eclipse in Leo later in the month, of course, which we touched on. Jupiter-Neptune squares. Mars going through Aries the entirety of January. Eventually that brings us into February. And February is interesting because it partially opens with Uranus has recently stationed direct in Aries, as we talked about. And Mars actually catches up to it not too long after that, so that February is partially characterized by this Mars-Uranus conjunction that’s going on right there at 29° of Aries.
KS: Yeah, talk about going out with a bang. You know, this’ll obviously be the last Mars-Uranus conjunction in Aries. But a lot of what we were just talking about in terms of the Uranus station, I think is just amplified or activated. You know, if there’s one last little bit of Uranus in Aries stuff—either because you have a planet very late in the cardinal signs, or because there’s this final wrap-up piece of whatever Uranus in Aries has been stirring in your chart—it feels like we’re getting that activation mid-February, when Mars gets to Uranus. Austin? Any thoughts?
AC: Yeah, I think that that’s about right. It catalyzes whatever’s left in Uranus, right? Whatever’s left to do. Whatever is left in Aries for Uranus to do, Mars will activate that. You know, Mars-Uranus conjunctions are extremely volatile. And, you know, Mars brings the gunpowder and Uranus brings the spark or the lightning. And so, you know, there are often violent incidents on the news around those times. And it’s important to keep your cool. It’s extra important to keep an eye on your cool, to make sure that it’s still frosty when Mars is conjunct Uranus in Aries.
CB: Yeah, cuz for some people that’s gonna be like an internal compulsion to suddenly make some of those changes and a sort of drive to do so, which can sometimes be impulsive or like not well thought out. Whereas for other people, sometimes it can be a sudden, unexpected, external sort of compulsion or thing that occurs that forces changes into your life somewhat unexpectedly and somewhat dramatically, especially with the Mars-Uranus conjunction.
AC: Yeah.
CB: All right, so it looks like that’s culminating around the 12th and 13th of February. What else do we have going on in February? It looks like we’ve got a Venus-Saturn conjunction that also takes place that month, around February 17, at about 16° of Capricorn.
AC: Yeah, Venus really gets beat up for about the last half of February. Cuz it’s not just Saturn. Venus has to conjoin Saturn, and then Pluto, and the South Node, and then get out of Capricorn. It’s rough.
CB: And then once it does that, it starts running into like squaring Uranus. Yeah, it looks like it squares Uranus from 29 Capricorn to 29 Aries at the end of February. Around like the 28th.
AC: Yeah, it’s really almost the entire second half. Venus really needs to get into Aquarius to get free.
CB: Nice. And that whole sequence begins, of course, as soon as it departs from Sagittarius, and leaves the sign that Jupiter is in, and ingresses into Capricorn. Which happens, it looks like, about February 3. Venus shifts into Capricorn, and we have that shift, and then it starts building up to those conjunctions, and then finally that square.
KS: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the other shift—I really feel like we’re gonna be tracking or tuning into the transits of Mars as we go, throughout 2019. You know, as Mars alternates between hot and cold signs, we’re going to get, you know, Mars amplifying either Uranus, if Uranus is still in Aries, or some of the Jupiter stuff. And in February, mid-month, Mars shifts into Taurus, which kind of tempers and cools things. You know, we get this very volatile—as Austin said—spark and the gunpowder and the lightning strike, Mars-Uranus at the end of Aries. And then Mars goes into Taurus, and it’s like that ‘fight is done’, or ‘that flame is over’ kind of thing. And we get a little bit more of a melancholic kind of tone with Venus in Capricorn for most of February and Mars in the second half shifting into another earth sign as well, into Taurus.
CB: Right. It looks like about February 14. February 13-February 14 is when Mars goes into Taurus.
KS: Yes, right on Valentine’s Day, for people who are into that type of thing.
CB: Nice.
AC: And as a note, it’s relatively early in February that Mercury enters Pisces. Which is significant because Mercury will be retrograde in Pisces for pretty much almost all of March, and it will take well into April for Mercury to leave Pisces. So we’re looking at a rather overextended period of Mercury in Pisces. And so, that begins in early-mid-Feb.
KS: Yeah, that’s a great point, Austin. Cuz it is about two months that Mercury will spend in Pisces. It’ll conjunct Neptune three times as part of that process to do with the retrograde. So we’re going to get—whether it’s confusion or inspiration, you know, you may get a little bit of both, or more of one than the other. You know, what’s real? What’s fake? That’s gonna be a little bit of a surreal kind of energy, I guess.
AC: Yeah, that’s a great way to put it.
CB: That’s weird that that’s happening the same time, almost simultaneously, as that Venus-Saturn conjunction. It’s like the Venus-Saturn conjunction happens on the 17th of February. And then the very next day, by the 18th, Mercury forms its first conjunction with Neptune, which it’ll eventually come back to. So it opens up like a sequence of events with what will eventually be three conjunctions between Mercury and Neptune.
KS: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the 18th-19th of Feb, the first one, I think. The second will be late in March, when Mercury is actually retro in Pisces. And then the third one will be early April.
CB: Yeah. So we’re sort of back to what we experienced with the last Mercury retrograde, which was like squaring Neptune, right?
KS: Yes.
CB: Okay. So some of those issues, like you were saying, involving like communication and, you know, accuracy of communication. Whether communication is being done honestly. Whether there’s deception involved in communication. Whether you’re being heard clearly by other people, or whether other people are hearing something that’s just like not at all what you’re attempting to communicate.
KS: Yes. Yeah, I think that was a great point that Austin made that, you know, we start that process in February, and we’re gonna be dealing with the Mercury in Pisces vibe until mid-April.
CB: Sure. Okay. Is there anything else about March that stands out? I mean, I don’t see—so much of that outer planet stuff happens in January.
AC: Uranus.
KS: Yeah, March is like Uranus into Taurus.
CB: Right, yeah. I was just wrapping up February. So February, we’re good with? Sorry, maybe I said March.
KS: That’s okay. Yeah, the only other little piece is the Saturn-Neptune sextile. We get the first activation of that in February. You know, it’s not necessarily like the most major aspect, but it’s sort of the only other outer planet thing for 2019.
CB: Got it. There it is.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Okay. So Saturn at 15—14-15 Capricorn sextiling Neptune at 14 Pisces.
KS: Yeah. And I don’t think that’s really gonna change the whole Capricorn Saturn-Pluto-South Node, you know, pressure point. It’s just a tiny little bit of a different flavor coming in. But I don’t know, people may notice it or may not notice it. And I think it’ll be more relevant if perhaps you’ve got planets around those degrees, in those signs. Did you have any thoughts on that, Austin? Or was that one less of a priority for you?
AC: Definitely less of a priority. I think it does a tiny bit of softening the brutality of Pluto-South Node-Saturn. You know, it’s a nice touch. You know, it melts a few of the spikier outcroppings, but not in a terribly significant way.
KS: Yeah. Yeah, the ground is very dry and, you know, ten drops of rain are not gonna make a big difference.
AC: Yeah. I mean, you’re grateful for those ten drops.
KS: Totally. You would rather have them than not have them, but there’s still the dryness.
AC: It’s not like, “Oh, this changes everything.”
KS: Not at all.
CB: I mean, it is probably grounding. Probably helpful and somewhat grounding for the Jupiter-Neptune square, which itself is probably lacking in being grounded on some level. So it’s nice having that Saturn-Neptune sextile happening simultaneously as a sort of grounding influence.
KS: Yeah, it’s a nice little extra side piece to some of the other main events, I think, that are going on. And again, we will get, you know, three activations of Saturn-Neptune. Yeah, just I know Neptune’s bringing some wetness and trying to create connectivity and that emotional, or even that kindness, but, you know, it’s trying to bring kindness into a den of lions or something, and, you know, it can be so successful.
CB: Right. All right, so I believe that brings us then to March. And March, of course, the big huge thing I think that is the ‘elephant in the room’—that we’ve already talked about—is that Uranus moves into Taurus very firmly around March 5-March 6. We have the ingress of Uranus into 0° of Taurus, where it will stay for the greater part of the next decade. And it, thus, completes, for the final time, its transit through Aries, which it started way back around 2011. So Uranus in Taurus. We’ve talked about this a lot, off and on, at different points. Because it first dipped into Taurus, I think, last May for the first time, right before it retrograded out and went back into Aries for a few months.
KS: Yes, I think Uranus went into Taurus in May and left Taurus—was it November? It was there for about six months. And now we’re really getting set.
CB: Yeah. And I already like saw it. Like there’s already people’s lives, who you started seeing it change in that area of their life pretty dramatically, depending on what whole sign house Uranus dipped into. I already started seeing some major changes, some major disruptions. Some stuff sometimes coming out of left field, some of which was positive, some of which was more challenging, but definitely changes afoot already just from that few months of Uranus sort of dipping into Taurus last year.
AC: Absolutely.
KS: Totally.
AC: It was—
KS: Yeah, go, Austin. You go.
AC: Okay, yeah. So, for me, it squared my Venus at 2 Aquarius, you know, pretty much right off the bat, and it moved into Kait, my wife’s, 7th house at the same time. And so, for us, that was having to rethink a lot of our practical dynamics. Because Kait went from working part-time to having a thriving, full-time—having a thriving business and being a full-time entrepreneur. And so, you know, kind of the way the agreements we had about, “Well, you do this part, and I do this,” you know, the distribution of who’s gonna do what in this partnership, we had to rethink all of that because, you know, literally things changed, and for the better. But, you know, it was disruptive. It just was a disruption by success rather than, you know, getting struck by lightning or, I don’t know, getting in a car accident. Which makes sense, cuz, again, it hit my Venus, and it moved into her 7th, so you see that in both charts.
KS: Yeah. And, Austin, you make a really beautiful point around how a Uranus-Venus transit does not have to mean the end of one’s relationship. Which is often something, you know, in consults with clients, people can be very concerned about. “Uranus is gonna be aspecting my Venus. Does that mean I’m doomed to be single for this entire transit?” But I think the key there that you guys really experienced—and your story really shows—is it’s about changing the dynamics. And, you know, it can be one person needing to do other things independently of the partnership because, you know, they’ve had this success, or maybe they’re caring for a parent or what have you, but it doesn’t mean that the love isn’t there, if that makes sense.
AC: Yeah. You know, what’s interesting, upon reflection—so this is Uranus in Taurus, right? Taurus tends to indicate things that are actually things and stuff.
KS: Yes.
AC: And so, it really didn’t change our—you know, we didn’t have to like do any deep, soul searching. It was literally like, “Okay, well, who’s gonna do this housework? And how much time do you have? And how much time do I have? And I need to get this done.” You know, it was almost entirely practical in its disruption rather than, you know, being some sort of deep review of emotional dynamics. It was more like, “Okay, well, who’s gonna do what?”
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right.
KS: Which is great.
CB: And your ability to stay flexible, though, in those areas and to like adapt to the changing circumstances on short notice is part of what allows you to not be super upset or to have that as a super distressing or offsetting influence. But instead, it’s just something you roll with. Obviously, there are some things that if you have a sudden, unexpected change of things, that can be harder to adapt to. You know, there are some things that are easier to adapt to and some things that are harder, that could be more challenging, or could be experienced as more of a hardship. But at least for you that was an area so far that’s like, you know, “We can deal with this. This is doable.”
AC: Yeah, it was literally just practical problems to solve. One thing I would say about Uranus’ ingress into Taurus is, you know, watch the news in the week leading up to it and the week after. Uranus ingresses almost always bring big events. Uranus’ initial ingress into Taurus last year was accompanied by that almost unprecedented eruption, volcanic eruption, ongoing in Hawaii, I believe. And then Uranus—if we think back—Uranus’ ingress into Aries, in 2011, was about two days away, or a day or two previous to the Fukushima event; you know, big stuff. And those are largely natural events, but you’ll also see cultural eruptions as well around Uranus ingresses. So it’s a great time for news watching. And it’s also worth noting that Mercury stations retrograde within like maybe twenty hours earlier than Uranus’ ingress. So that March 5th-6th is pretty packed. That’s my birthday, also. So that’ll be an interesting solar return chart to have.
KS: Totally. And, you know, you think about that, like Mercury station retrograde in Pisces, Uranus ingressing into Taurus—there’s going to be confusion or misinformation or, you know, oh, my God, shocking stuff. It’ll be a very dramatic 24-hour period.
AC: Yeah. Well, okay, I mean, to a certain degree, Mercury stationing retrograde, like, “We need to slow down and sort this out,” is sort of what Mercury’s always saying on a retrograde station. And Uranus gives us new information to process. What is there to figure out? Well, there’s whatever Uranus’ second and final ingress brings.
CB: Right.
KS: Yes.
CB: One of the things I think is gonna be funny is I don’t think we’re prepared for how literal some of the Uranus in Taurus manifestations are gonna be over the course of the next seven years. Like I was just watching—I think it was like a little Vice clip, like a news clip, about how there’s like a bunch of companies like racing to develop lab-grown meat, and how it’s getting to the point where it’s almost like sustainable. And they feel like in the next year or two, it’s gonna be affordable enough to start going mainstream, so that they can start selling it to like fast-food places and stuff like that. Like actually developing or taking cells or cultured cells and then like growing, you know, like a steak or something out of that, and how radically that will affect like the food chain, but also, things like pollution and like the environmental impact of things like that. But then, of course, it’ll be hugely disruptive to the existing like farmers or like cattle ranchers and stuff like that. And so, like the cattle ranchers are trying to fight it by, you know, changing laws about what can be defined as meat, and if you can define something that was grown in a lab as meat, or if you have to call it something else. It was just a great, like, little microcosm of what I think Uranus in Taurus is gonna be about. And if you really focus on some basic significations of Taurus, you could make some pretty insightful predictions about what sort of major or radical changes are gonna be happening in the world, in the next seven to eight years.
AC: Yeah, that’s perfect and there’s precedent for that. Both the chocolate chip cookie and the potato chip were invented during Uranus’ previous times in Taurus. And there were also significant advances in food processing technology.
CB: Brilliant.
KS: Yeah, I was gonna jump in there with the same thing. Food technology—a lot of it was actually driven, I believe, by World War 2 as well. But the food processing that happened last time Uranus was in Taurus—they’ve looked back in hindsight at things in the first few years of Uranus in Taurus. Last time they thought, “These are amazing. This is gonna change the food landscape.” And then three or four years on, they’re like, “Actually, this is a little bit ‘Frankenfood-esque’, and it’s not safe. We actually can’t continue with this.” Certain things did continue. But we’re gonna see that explosion of food technology, food processing, food storage, and not all of it we’ll want to stick with. The other big topic that was hugely activated on the last Uranus in Taurus, and in previous ones, is advancements in technology or changes in culture and society that gave more independence to women. So the last time we got many young men going away to war, leaving factories and offices unmanned and unstaffed, and women were sort of allowed to come out of their homes and take on roles or jobs in professional society that they were previously kind of socially were not acceptable. And there is some thinking that even though women had to kind of go back into the home after the war, it was the experience and that taste of freedom that women first had in Uranus in Taurus the last time around that was the precursor to a lot of the women’s liberation movements of the ‘60s. And then on previous Uranus in Taurus ingresses, we’ve had things like the spinning wheel and, you know, things that made what was traditionally known as ‘women’s work’ easier, or you could get it done faster. And it’ll be interesting to see what, if any, types of shifts we get on that front in this cycle as well.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s such a literal example of Uranus being in Venus’ sign and liberating, you know, who lives there.
KS: Yeah.
AC: It’s also just worth noting quickly that Uranus in Taurus also sees revolutions or big changes in terms of currency and the way banking is done, historically, and it’s inevitably going to coincide with the Internet of Things, with, you know, a further interface between the heavy, physical things and the various digital systems. You know, whether that’s being able to Google where your keys are, or 3D printing, or advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. You know, Uranus in Taurus speaks to that interface between the very abstract, Uranian and the very heavy, solid, physical, real Taurean.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Definitely. Yeah, 3D printing accelerating would make a ton of sense. Because then it’s like a very literal manifestation of just bringing technological innovation and advancement to like physical, tangible things. That’s a perfect sort of combination of those two concepts.
KS: Absolutely.
CB: So the past Uranus in Taurus dates you were talking about, Kelly, that was like 1934 through 1943, roughly?
KS: Yes. Yeah, the previous cycle, about 84 years ago.
CB: I’m just animating it now. So yeah, it was late, late ‘30s, early 1940s.
KS: Yeah. And we did have Saturn join Uranus in Taurus for a portion of that time, which obviously adds an extra dimension.
CB: Right. Interesting.
KS: But yeah, just so people know, like coming out of the Great Depression, post the 1929 Stock Market Crash, and then, you know, leading up to World War 2.
AC: Yeah, it coincided with a lot of the Depression. Cuz, you know, the Depression got started and then got worse, and then started to get better and then got worse again. You know, the United States didn’t really come out of the Depression until World War 2. And Europe was also terribly financially stressed during that period of time.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So speaking of that, how is Saturn doing this month? So we’re already into March. I guess we’re not quite there, but it’s just Saturn is getting so close to Pluto. And I guess maybe we’ll focus on that a little bit later, when Saturn stations. Which looks like it’s, what, the following month, in either April or early May.
KS: End of April, at 20 Cap.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah, so they do get so close this year, they’re just not exact. Hang on. Oh, that’s for May.
CB: Should we move on to April then? Or do we have anything else in March that we want to mention? So we’ve got the Mercury retrograde, which Austin mentioned, which is kind of a big deal, with Mercury stationing retrograde in Pisces in early March, and then going back. It conjoins Neptune again around March 24 for the second time. But it actually stations right there in the very same degree as Neptune, at 16 Pisces, towards the end of March, stationing direct about March 28-ish, at 16 Pisces, while Neptune is also at 16 Pisces. So that’s a pretty intense Mercury direct station right on Neptune in Pisces.
KS: Yeah, it is. I mean, as you said, it’s pulling in a lot of the themes that we talked about last Mercury retrograde cycle, so that’s gonna be part of it as well. Just give yourself a few days before you finalize anything, just knowing there’s a little bit of that cosmic confusion.
CB: Right. All right, so, Austin, anything about March, or shall we go to April?
AC: I mean, I think it’s basically, yep, Uranus moves into Taurus, and Mercury is drunk out of his mind the whole time.
CB: Right.
KS: Dazed and confused.
CB: Perfect. All right, so moving into April, what do we have going on here? Mercury is now direct, and it starts to try to get out of the clutches of Neptune, while Venus has moved into Pisces. And it’s actually coming up to a conjunction with Neptune in mid-Pisces and then eventually Mercury. Mars has moved into Gemini, it looks like, by the very end of March. And early April, it starts moving through the early degrees of Gemini.
AC: Yeah. And this really picks up the pace. If you compare Mercury retrograde in Pisces with the Sun in Pisces, and Mars in Taurus, that is slow. Whereas now, as April begins, we have the Sun already in Aries, and then with Mars in Gemini. And there’s probably no greater contrast of speed than that which is between Mars in Taurus versus Mars in Gemini. And with the Sun in Aries, we have that speedy Mars in Gemini ruling the Sun, right? So things start moving and becoming much more active and activated. You know, that also puts the Sun and Jupiter in configuration with Jupiter in Sag again. The Sun by trine and Mars by opposition. That really emphasizes the active, fiery, ‘let’s get moving’ stuff. Basically, April is much faster than March.
KS: You can get a lot more done in April, especially if you felt like you were a little bit drunk or lethargic in March.
CB: Yeah. And one of the things that’s happening is, notice Jupiter actually stations. It does its first station in Sagittarius around April 9 at 24° of Sagittarius. So we have a bit of an intensification of Jupiter in those later degrees of Sag, and then it starts moving backwards and returning back to some of the earlier degrees, or middle degrees of Sagittarius.
KS: Yes. Yeah, that’s a huge station for April. But I do agree with Austin. With Mars getting back into a hotter sign, we are gonna see more forward momentum. You know, Mercury’s finally gonna come out of Pisces and move into Aries. You know, a lovely little extra for April is that we do have Venus in Pisces for most of the month.
AC: Yeah, I’ve been eyeing that for elections.
KS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s gonna be lovely.
CB: All right, yeah, that looks good. And then, so we start moving through April, and towards the end of it, the other major outer planet thing that I noticed is that we get Saturn. It gets so close to Pluto. It gets within like 3°. So Saturn makes it to about 20° of Capricorn by the end of April, and Pluto at that point is at 23° of Capricorn. But then Saturn stations retrograde at 23°31’ of Capricorn, very closely actually conjunct the South Node, which is also at 20° of Capricorn at that time. So this is one of the major Saturn stations this year, where we get an intensification of Saturn in Capricorn pretty closely conjunct Pluto and conjunct the South Node. And this is happening at the end of April. Around April 29-April 30.
KS: Yeah, I’m definitely watching—sorry, Austin.
AC: I said, “Yay!”
CB: Yay.
KS: Being in sarcasm.
CB: This is the first time that we’re gonna get a really intense sort of preview of that Saturn-Pluto conjunction, but it’s also one of the first times that it’s happening with Uranus now in Taurus. And I know one of the things that a lot of astrologers are kind of nervous about is the constrictive nature of Saturn, and perhaps some of the more constrictive—and I’m trying to think of the word. Like pulling back or conservative financial associations that have some of the concerns about that, being related to just the sort of worldwide financial situation, going into more of a sort of ‘pulling back’ phase for a while.
AC: Well, that’s already happened. And the markets have been trying to ignore it, but they can’t at this point. It is arguably officially in bear market territory already. This configuration is super bad for money. Well, for money on that financial global level, and it’s especially bad for the United States. It’s basically, how bad does it get and how quickly over this next year? And then, does it get worse next year? Or how much worse does it get? You know, we’re way overdue for a recession. The fundamentals aren’t there, etc., etc. There’s no like, “No, it could be just fine.” Like there’s a lot of stuff ready to break. And Saturn-Pluto and the South Node altogether in the United State’s Sibley 2nd is 100% ready to break it.
CB: Yeah. People may even underestimate how much the Saturn-Pluto contacts and the closeness that that gets, simultaneous almost with that Uranus ingress—how much that might accelerate some of that stuff and lead to some of the key turning points, that when people look back on it, end up seeing those as like the pivotal turning points during that process of unfolding over the next couple of years.
AC: Yeah. And particularly, with the eclipses happening there. The eclipses are going to—the first one of the year will accelerate it. And then the second one, which we’ll get to in July, is gonna set it on fire.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of, you know, the psychological quality of fear and concern or, you know, paranoia. I don’t think it’s unfounded. I think it’s, you know, with good reason. But particularly, as we get Saturn on the South Node—and we will have that three times throughout 2019—we’re going to see a lot of that concern, fear-based, you know, talk collectively about money. And, you know, when I think about Saturn in Capricorn, and its approach to, say, personal finance, it’s very much about making sure you’ve got that buffer, or that you’re not overextended. That you have got—that you’re living very conservatively, you know, within your means, so that you are not overextended with leverage or with debt. They’re the types of things that can really blow up under this type of configuration. And, you know, I’m not an expert on, you know, global finance, but, you know, I’m certainly expecting the same to be true, where countries have overextended or overcapitalized. That’s where we’re gonna see a huge—the balloon pops, basically, and things come back down to earth with a great thud.
AC: Yeah. And so, one of the things that I think Saturn and the South Node and Pluto all have to say that relates to the financial—that also extends to the personal—is it’s very much about shedding old, worn out patterns. Patterns of organization and control that aren’t working anymore. You know, the global financial system is one example of that, where the way that we’re doing things, you know, is unsustainable. But that same configuration makes the same request or statement on a personal level, right? You know, this is about, basically, Saturn shedding skin. Like your ideas of what responsibility is, your ideas about what control is; where to be controlling and where to be flowing. You know, this Saturn-South Node-Pluto configuration is also chock-full of family issues. You know, if that’s occurring in any place that’s remotely personal and emotional in the life—whether it’s a house or it’s configured to a ruler of a house, say, the 4th—there’s a lot of parental and ancestral stuff that trio is going to stir up. Lots of old patterns.
KS: Yeah, it’s old patterns. You know, it always makes me think of like my grandparents and the kind of patterning and programming they had about money and about security, and then how their fears filtered into their parenting style of my dad, and how that has filtered into how he has raised us. And it, you know, doesn’t always have to be hugely traumatic, but I think it’s really important to bring some clarity or awareness to the way that those ancestral patterns are still informing or driving you today. I think that’s a beautiful point that you make, Austin, around the family lineage. You know, not just your personal childhood, but how that fits into the story of your family, going back a few generations.
AC: Yeah, 100%.
CB: I remember that was one of the things that was interesting about that generation that lived through or grew up during the Great Depression, even things as simple as like food and some of the patterns surrounding like eating, where like a lot of them grew up with less ability to like eat freely. And so, they would make the most out of whatever little they had. And then even later in life, once they were more comfortable or financially successful and things like food was less scarce, that would like build in certain patterns. You know, I’d meet with like grandparents who lived during that, who would just make sure that they would always like finish their plate, for example, when they were eating something—because they grew up in a period in which you had to just like eat everything that you could at that time because food was otherwise so scarce—thinking about like going through a period like this, of greater constriction and sort of dealing with less in some other area, and how that might affect like an entire generation of people as we go through a period like this right now.
AC: Yeah, what got me thinking along those lines is that the Saturn and South Node together form a couple of two-planet yogas in Vedic astrology. One of them basically translates to ‘ghost’ yoga, or ‘unhappy ghost’ yoga. And if it’s in a natal chart, it means that the person will be disturbed by ancestral issues that are generally further back than just the parents. You know, everybody has, you know, mommy and daddy issues, but, you know, that combination indicates that you should look back further, generally speaking. Also, the Ketu-Saturn also forms—I think it’s pronounced sraddha yoga. Basically, it means ‘funeral’ yoga, and it indicates difficulties from improperly mourning one of your parents. And so, you know, these are both pointing to the same thing, South Node-Saturn, unresolved past relating and pertaining to the present. And so, globally, we’re definitely at a period of time where, you know, we’ve sort of made it through the 20th century by the skin of our teeth, and the 19th century. So much has changed, and so much trauma has occurred historically that, you know, is haunting us like crazy right now. And so, why I bring up both the 19th and 20th centuries is we are just about at the end of the 200-ish year triplicity cycle, and we’re just about to switch into a new 200-year cycle. And so, we’re at the very end, and not only are able to look back, but have a duty to look back at, you know, how we got here, and to maybe spend some time thinking about resolving or finding some peace with what’s happened, as well as maybe not carrying those patterns forward.
CB: Yeah. Well, and what that makes me of—and I’m glad you said that—we don’t even have to go that far back. We could even think back to—remember, the 2008 financial crisis coincided with Pluto going into Capricorn. And I remember some astrologers, like Michael Lutin, getting a lot of press at the time for kind of calling that. And Pluto ingresses into Capricorn and then we have the worldwide financial crisis. And when you were talking about like learning the lessons of the past, Austin, that makes me wonder—with Saturn now catching up to Pluto and conjoining it there in Capricorn, as we’re much further now, a decade later into Pluto’s overall transit through Capricorn—about the question of sort of, worldwide, were some of the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis learned and taken to heart, or are some of the same weaknesses and sort of shortcomings in the worldwide financial system still present and still sort of dangerous on some level.
KS: Yeah, these are really interesting points. And I know that the financial sector is gonna feature highly in 2019. And then I also think 2008, we had Jupiter in Capricorn with Pluto. And my greatest nervous energy, you know, around the money sector comes once Jupiter moves into Capricorn itself and joins Saturn and Pluto there. That’s obviously later in 2019. Not to say that what happens with the financial sector is not gonna be difficult in 2019, but I think it gets a little more difficult once Jupiter gets into Capricorn later in the year. And it’s interesting to—
AC: 100% agree.
KS: Sorry. Go, Austin. Yeah, I don’t want to scare people.
AC: It gets worse in 2019. And then I would say if we’re looking for a bottom—if we’re looking for ‘how bad is it gonna get’, we’re gonna need to wait until 2020 to see that.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right. Cuz that’s the weird thing. Most of this year, Jupiter going through Sagittarius is really the thing that’s counterbalancing and is helping out a lot of these transits or is like offsetting them. Especially this summer, once we start getting some really crazy stuff in June and July, in the earth signs especially. A lot of the planets eventually come out of it and move into Leo, where they start getting trines from Jupiter and stuff gets rectified or balanced out a little bit. But we really kind of lose a little bit of that later in 2019 when, as you said, Kelly, Jupiter goes into—it leaves Sagittarius and goes into Capricorn.
KS: Yeah. I mean, it feels to me like Jupiter in Sag, from a financial sector or topic—the financial topic, if you like—Jupiter in Sag is a little of a buffer or a protection. Something is still being propped up. And this is what happened in 2007, which was the last time we had Jupiter in Sag. The stock markets were kind of, you know, going crazy. And in the US, you guys had these—not you guys personally, but the US, itself, had these subprime mortgages. You know, the banking sector was a gong show in the US in 2007, and people were making money left, right, and center. And it all fell apart in 2008 because it was like, you know, building a house of cards. The one sort of slight qualifier I want to throw in here is that the protector, if you like, of the Saturn in Capricorn with the South Node and Pluto—if you’re working in an environment, either personally or collectively at a country level, where there has been more structure or more rules, or more of a generally conservative approach to money, there will be less of a fall to have. I’m not saying there won’t be any kind of fall. But if things are not excessively inflated, the comedown isn’t as dramatic, or there isn’t as far to fall. And an example of that is the difference in terms of what happened with the banking industries in the States versus in places like Australia or Canada, you know, ‘07 and ‘08. Banking industries in Canada and Australia are much more heavily regulated. It didn’t mean there weren’t problems in 2008, but we didn’t have banks going under like the US did. And so, I think there’s a little bit of—there’ll be some country-specific instances here of more or less extreme based on general financial and banking practices within different organizations.
CB: Right. And based on like the natal chart of the country and stuff like that and if they have, for example, a bunch of, let’s say, Cancer or Capricorn placements.
KS: Yeah. I mean, obviously the US—it’s a country that affects the entire global economy, and it is being very directly hit by this. So, you know, I didn’t want to sort of sound like I was overlooking that, for sure.
CB: No, that was a great point. It’s like different countries will react differently. Cuz that also goes back to and speaks to even like natal placements, for example, where I often see people that have Saturn in its own sign—like in Capricorn or Aquarius, or even exalted in Libra—they tend to experience the Saturn return a bit more positively or more constructively as a general rule, other factors aside. And you’re probably speaking to something pretty similar on more like a national level, where if you have some of those Capricorn placements more well-placed, then you’ll probably tend to weather a major transit like this a little bit better than those that don’t.
KS: Yeah, I think there’s definitely a level for some personal experience there, for sure. I don’t know. Austin, what are your thoughts? Do you think it’s just all going to hell in a handbasket?
AC: No. Well, I mean, no. Well, I think it will look that way at certain points, and people will certainly feel that way. And so, you know, you can’t change history, but you can minimize your exposure, you know, to what’s in the systems that are in the cross-hairs of the Saturn-South Node-Pluto thing, right? You know, like not over-investing, you know, in a bubble that’s going to pop, and again, just minimizing exposure. I would say that part of maybe everyone’s homework for 2019—as we’re about to begin it, in maximizing the potential benefit of Jupiter in Sagittarius—is to come up with Plan B and C. You know, if your industry is affected by downsizing and jobs get harder, like, you know, have a plan already in place, so that you’re like, “Okay, well, that happened. Plan B is already in place. I don’t have to think about it in the middle of a crisis and freak out.” Like having options for not just the best-case scenario.
CB: I’m actually curious what that’ll be like for the three of us—cuz all of us have had our professional careers sort of develop and take off in the upswing of like the worldwide economy over the past decade or so—and what the astrological community is like during more of like a downturn.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Astrology’s pretty recession-proof.
KS: It will be interesting.
AC: It’s actually counter-cyclical in some ways.
KS: Yeah, it is counter-cyclical. Because when people are more struggling, they’re more likely to look for insight.
CB: I mean, I know that’s what people say and that’s the common wisdom, and that’s often said by people, especially outside the astrological community, but it’s still kind of like a luxury thing. And I wonder, when people have less discretionary spending, if astrology isn’t one of the things, you know, that you can, I don’t know, get away with doing without in some instances. I don’t know.
KS: Yeah, there was a—I don’t know if it was 2008-2009, or if it was a couple years later, I actually had like a bit of a boom period. And I remember saying to clients at the time—talking about this counter-cyclical kind of quality to astrology as an industry, so it will be interesting to observe. And I think what Austin said there around like insulating or protecting yourself, like, you know, the biggest way to minimize your exposure with these types of configurations in Capricorn—with Saturn so heavily involved—is to reduce your debt, reduce your expenses. To pull back before you need to pull back, so that you’ve got some breathing room if, you know, worst-case scenario does come to pass.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s really great advice, I think, this year and going into next year.
KS: And we could talk about that for the rest of—
CB: Like Saturn and Pluto—so much of this dominates the year. But it’s so funny, cuz we don’t even fully get there. We don’t get to the exact Saturn-Pluto conjunction until early—
KS: January 2020.
CB: Yeah, so early next year.
AC: We don’t really need to, though.
CB: Yeah, we don’t need to, and that’s what we’re gonna learn. We’re gonna get a really stark reminder that like an aspect does not need to go exact. And even once it gets within a few degrees, it’s already active. We’re gonna see—especially in April, when we get that station of Saturn within 3° of Pluto—that’ll be a really good example and test of that.
KS: Yeah.
CB: All right, let’s keep moving. So we’ve gone through April. That brings us to May. What are the major highlights of May? I’m seeing already, at the very beginning of the month, like a Mars-Jupiter opposition at 23 Sag and 23 Gemini that goes exact at the beginning of the month. What else are you guys seeing?
KS: For the month of May, I’m just getting my notes here. May, yeah, we’ve Mars-Jupiter. Where’s Mars? Mars is in Gemini.
CB: Yeah, it’s in Gemini. It opposes Jupiter at 23 Sag on the 5th of May, it looks like. Saturn’s retrograde and starts separating from Pluto. Mercury goes into Taurus around the 6th.
KS: Yeah, I think Mars-Jupiter is sort of what’s happening in May.
CB: Yeah.
KS: I don’t have a lot happening this month. I think the ingress of Mars into Cancer is probably worth noting, cuz that’s amplifying some of what we’ve been talking about with the Capricorn emphasis. You know, we’re putting Mars into the sign opposite Saturn and Pluto. It’s just gonna really highlight that Cancer/Capricorn axis, which is hugely affected by the eclipses this year. But yeah, I think that’s mid-May, Mars into Cancer. And Mars will obviously be in Cancer right through to the end of June. So that, and yeah, Mars opposite Jupiter.
CB: Yeah. And actually, since Austin stepped away for a minute for a break, this would actually be a great time. I forgot to mention the featured electional chart. So every month, we feature an electional chart, where we find the most auspicious electional chart we can find. And Leisa Schaim is our primary electional astrologer, and she and I do a podcast each month for patrons called the Auspicious Elections Podcast, where we try to find four or five of the best electional charts we can find for starting different types of ventures or new undertakings each month, like starting a business or getting married or going on a major journey or a trip or something like that. And each month, in the forecast episodes, we always feature one of the best electional charts that we can find for the following month. So we had a bit of a debate this month about whether we should feature one that would be like the best election for the entire year, or whether we should just feature the best election for January. And we decided to focus on just featuring one for January, instead of trying to pick out the entire year. Because I’m actually in the process of recording and I’m gonna release this week a sort of new electional report that we’re gonna sell on the podcast website, which is gonna feature the most auspicious election we can find for each month over the course of the next 12 months. So we found 12 different electional charts for each month and that’s something we’re going to offer. So here’s the chart that I found for January. Or that Leisa found for January, I should say.
So this chart is actually coming up really fast. It takes place on January 2, 2019, starting around 10:30-10:29 in the morning, with about mid-Pisces rising. So it has mid-Pisces rising. The ruler of the ascendant is Jupiter, which is placed in Sagittarius, in its own sign, in the tenth whole sign house, in a day chart. So this is pretty much the most positive or most benefic Jupiter you could possibly get. The Moon is also in Sagittarius, in the 10th house, and it’s applying to a conjunction with Jupiter within 13°. And that’s one of the next aspects that the Moon is actually gonna make—that applying conjunction with Jupiter; which is very positive since in an electional context, the applying aspects of the Moon indicate the future and the separating aspects indicate the past. Mercury is also in Sagittarius, up there in the 10th house. Venus is in Scorpio in the 9th house. We have a Sun-Saturn conjunction that’s separating in the 11th house in Capricorn. The only downside with this chart is it’s not super great for financial matters because it has Mars in the 2nd house in Aries, although there are some mitigations because Mars is in its own sign, and Jupiter is configured to Mars through a superior, sign-based trine. So it’s taking a little bit of the edge off of Mars. But despite that, it’s mainly just a good chart for 10th house career-type matters or matters having to do with reputation and public perception, even if it’s not amazing for financial matters. So that is the electional chart. What do you guys think of the electional chart for January?
AC: I had already planned on releasing my podcast on January 2, cuz it was about as good as I could find in the next several weeks, and I’m very happy with it.
CB: Brilliant. Good. This will be something similar to Austin’s podcast chart then. Yeah, cuz it’s just a really amazing chart for taking advantage of that Jupiter in Sagittarius, which is something I feel like we need to really take advantage of this year while we have it for the next several months, between now and December, when it leaves and goes into Capricorn. When you can take advantage of an electional chart, where Jupiter is in a great position in Sagittarius, make it the ruler of the ascendant in order to take full advantage of that.
AC: And yeah, one, that’s totally correct. And then, two, this relates back to what we were talking about in terms of handling a year where we know there are some really rough configurations and preparing for that. One thing that’s basically free is doing things with timing, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: You give an election away. If you’re gonna do stuff anyway, it doesn’t cost you anything to do it at the right time. And even if you wanted to do a paid thing for more elections, it’s like, “Oh, it’s twenty bucks, or fifty bucks.” By doing something business-related, by doing that at the right time, could you not make an extra twenty bucks? Of course you could. And so, you know, it’s important—and this is part of the Saturn-South Node thing in general, with the South Node sort of trying to clean out excessive Saturn—don’t think about what you can’t afford. Think about the moves—and this is very Jupiter in Sag. Think about the moves that you have, the advantages you have, the leverage you have, that’s free or might as well be free and use that.
CB: Yeah, that’s great advice for this year. Take advantage or identify your positive traits or skills, or the things that you have going for you and try to maximize those as much as possible.
KS: Yeah, I like that. I’m just very pro-Moon in Sag this year as a general theme, especially if it’s applying to Jupiter directly.
CB: Yeah. And that is exactly what we’re trying to take advantage of in this chart. And that’s why even though it’s so early in the month—it’s gonna happen pretty soon after we release this episode—we wanted to highlight it for people, so they can take advantage of that, if they hear this episode of the podcast in time. If you don’t, Leisa and I otherwise put out, at the end of each month, a podcast called the Auspicious Elections Podcast, where we release four auspicious electional charts for each month. So you can find out more information about that on our page on Patreon. It’s a benefit of the $5 and $10 tiers, if you go to TheAstrologyPodcast.com/subscribe. And then, also, in the next few days, I’m gonna be announcing through our newsletter the auspicious elections yearly report that we’re gonna be releasing as well, which is probably gonna be a recording and a written report with one auspicious election chart for each month, for those that need something more long term. All right, so where does that leave us? Are we still in May? I think we’re pretty much getting finished with May, and it’s time to start moving into what I think astrologers have sort of universally agreed is the most active and somewhat tense part of the year, once we get into June and July, right?
AC: Yeah.
KS: There’s just a lot going on, yeah.
AC: Oh, you mean the meat grinder?
CB: The meat grinder. That’s your title—subtitle for this part of the year, for June and July?
AC: Yeah, it’s a toss up between the ‘meat grinder’ or the ‘Lament Configuration’. Which the Lament Configuration is the pattern of unlocking the box in Hellraiser, that brings the Cenobites in. So again, either ‘meat grinder’ or ‘Lament Configuration’.
CB: Very, very good. Very evocative. So part of that—by the time we get to June of course—is Kelly and I were talking about Mars going through Gemini in May and eventually opposing Jupiter at one point. But what happens is about mid-May, Mars goes into Cancer, and this begins sort of a weird timeframe where Mars starts moving towards the North Node. We start getting prepped up for some eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn, and Mars starts getting very close to and then eventually is gonna oppose Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn. So I’m just animating it now. It looks like Mercury eventually joins Mars in Cancer, and it moves in around June 4-June 5. Mercury goes into Cancer. And then eventually later in June of course, the Sun makes its yearly ingress around June 20th-21st into Cancer, joins Mercury and Mars in that sign. Yeah, so what are we looking at here? We’re looking at Mars opposes Saturn, it looks like, around the middle of June—June 14-June 15—from 18° of Cancer to 18° of Capricorn. Mercury catches up to Mars, basically, right about the same time, and then it opposes Saturn from 18° of Cancer to 18 Capricorn around June 16. Then Mercury catches up with Mars and conjoins it at about 20-21 Cancer, around the 17th or 18th of June. And then the whole process repeats with Pluto, where Mars and Mercury get to 22 Cancer and oppose Pluto at 22 Capricorn around the 19th. So that’s fun. That’s part of what you guys are talking about?
AC: That’s the beginning, yes.
CB: That’s the beginning.
KS: That’s the beginning. Yeah, but there are definitely a few days there between, you know, 14th-15th of June, right up to the 20th-21st of June, that just feels—there’s like an entanglement quality, where you’re kind of stuck in something, and it might be tricky to pull things apart. It’s very fraught and fractious and there’s emotions. And with Mercury and Mars together in the mix, you know, people are saying things but it’s not always coming out right, and the feeling of, you know, there’s this big boulder or this big barrier that is just putting pressure. I keep thinking about the Mars-Saturn aspects for 2019 as like being caught between a rock and a hard place, where you feel a bit damned if you do or damned if you don’t. And that idea of—what did you call it? The meat grinder, Austin?
AC: Yes, the meat grinder.
KS: You have such a way with words. Meat grinder. Yeah, I think this will be a melancholy, fractious, frustrating few days in June.
AC: Oh, I think it’s gonna be more than a few days. You know, just from a technical perspective, this is all of the malefics opposing each other. I think it’s probably important not to undersell this. Like this is really ugly, and it’s more than just a few days.
CB: Yeah, so it’s a whole sequence of a series of a bunch of stuff—bouncing back and forth between Cancer and Capricorn for like a couple of months—that really centers on June and July. Because what happens not long after that, the next part of the sequence, I think, is the subsequent eclipse, right?
AC: Actually, no. So I was going through this day-by-day earlier. So when we get towards the end of June, you’re like, “Oh, good. Mercury and Mars both move out of Leo.” And I was like, “Oh, that really takes the pressure off.” No. Mercury then stations retrograde conjunct Mars to come back into Cancer, right as we’re getting ready for the next eclipse. You know, if you want a—
CB: Okay, so Mercury leaves Cancer, moves into Leo June 26th-27th.
KS: And then stations.
CB: And it’s slowing down and then it stations. Mars goes into Leo, and then Mercury stations retrograde July 7-July 8. And Mars catches up to it and overtakes it at that point. So just when Mercury thinks that it got away from Mars, Mars catches up to it and conjoins it again for a second time.
AC: Yep. And we have that retrograde station and Mercury-Mars conjunction taking place within a 2° orb square to Uranus.
CB: Wow, okay. So it’s not just Mars like overtaking, but it’s like a surprise square from Uranus at the same time. Uranus being at 6° of Taurus at this point and Mercury and Mars conjoining at 4° of Leo around July 8.
AC: Which is right after the eclipse. The solar eclipse in Cancer.
CB: Oh, yeah, that’s cute. So the solar eclipse has taken place on July 2 at about 10° of Cancer. And that is a solar eclipse. So that is like the first—yeah, that’s the first solar eclipse in Cancer. So that’s opening up a whole new sequence basically, right?
AC: Or it’s giving us the other side of the Cancer/Capricorn dance.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Go ahead.
KS: You go, Austin.
AC: Oh, I was just gonna say, so, you know, just in terms of the lived sequence, you know, we just got done with this ‘Mars-Saturn on the nodes’ thing, and then we get the solar eclipse, and then Mercury stations retrograde conjunct Mars and square Uranus. So that part of why I was calling it the ‘meat grinder’ is that it’s not just like, “Oh, it’s a rough couple of days,” or it’s, “Ooh, that two weeks is rough.” It’s like Phase 1 is the Mars part, and then Phase 2 is the eclipses pinging the same axis while we have Mercury retrograde, and with a particularly malefic Mercury retrograde station, with it conjunct Mars. So it’s like, you know, Round 2 is rough. Round 2 is similarly rough to Round 1, but for slightly different reasons.
KS: Yeah, look, I agree completely, Austin. I think that the whole sequence—as soon as Mars enters Cancer—you know, we’re on the battlefield, if you like. And it doesn’t feel until the Sun leaves Cancer—you know, there are peaks within those periods, but with the combination of Mars traveling through Cancer, with all the oppositions and activations—even the early Leo stuff, which you’ve identified. But, you know, I’m not really relaxing or taking a breath until the Sun gets into Leo and out of, at least, the sign opposition there, too.
AC: Yeah, my thinking is almost identical. I looked at the New Moon in Leo as being the first reset. Because we have to do the eclipse that’s showing now, which is the July 2 eclipse, which is the solar eclipse in Cancer, and then we’ve gotta do the lunar eclipse in Capricorn, which is on the same axis. And then the Sun’s gotta move into Leo. And then when the Moon catches the Sun in Leo, we have our first non-eclipsed lunation in quite some time. And I believe the New Moon in Leo is also very close to Mercury’s direct station. It’s basically gonna take till August.
KS: August 1, yeah. Yeah, and August 1, New Moon in Leo, Mercury station.
CB: And here’s the lunar eclipse. So the lunar eclipse is at 23° of Capricorn, or 23-24, July 16, it looks like.
AC: Oh, and one of the things I wanted to mention, one of the other things that’s like really that, too—you have poor Venus moving through tender Cancer and getting brutalized by the same Cancer/Capricorn opposition stuff, you know, during this period of time.
KS: Yeah.
AC: I call it cheating on the part of the planets. I think that’s deeply unfair.
KS: Yes, cuz I think Venus in Cancer has some really nice attributes, but she’s going to encounter a lot of opposition or interference, if you like, in this particular iteration.
CB: Right. She’s almost exactly opposed to Saturn, from 16 Cancer to 16 Capricorn, when that lunar eclipse in Capricorn goes exact on the 16th of July.
AC: Yeah, it’s rough. It’s rough.
CB: Yeah, so that’s all going on. So is that the end of it? Like when does this end? Like we get the lunar eclipse then.
KS: August 1.
AC: About August 1. The New Moon in Leo, in early August, also coincides with Mercury’s direct station. We also have Venus out of there now. And so, basically, things reset in a much less horrible—things reset into a much more pleasing configuration, which is by no means perfect, but infinitely preferable to June and July. August begins a very different storyline and focus.
CB: Sure. And it looks like it wraps up on the very, very last day of July. July 31, there’s a New Moon at 8° of Leo. Mars is still in Leo. It’s at 19°. So it’s still sort of in the mix in a way. And at this time, Mercury is stationing direct at 23 Gemini—or 23 Cancer—still kind of getting opposed by Pluto and some of that stuff.
AC: Right. But it’s moving away from Pluto, right? When Mercury was retrograding back, it was getting closer to all of that mess. Whereas now it’s like, “Eh, I’m not actually gonna oppose you exactly. Let’s move on.” Mars co-present in Leo—with the Sun, Moon, and Venus—is certainly worth noting. It’s one malefic as opposed to a whole axis just racked up with every malefic, or almost every malefic. And so, you know, handling one malefic at a time is no big deal. You know, it’s when problems are compounded by multiple malefics that, you know, you get trouble.
CB: Yeah. Go ahead, Kelly.
KS: Oh, I was just gonna say this is one of the contrasts that does play out throughout 2019. These planets in Leo have escaped from the problems in Capricorn, and they are now at least picking up a little bit of the support or the relief of Jupiter in Sag.
AC: Oh, yeah.
KS: So, you know, part of the issue of the Cancer/Capricorn axis in 2019 is it doesn’t get any help from Jupiter. It’s problem, after problem, after problem without the relief or the outlet of Jupiter. And I totally agree with you, Austin, that once the planets start ingressing into Leo, we’re getting these incremental levels or layers of relief or improvement. Like there’s still a problem, but as you said, one problem is manageable, especially if you’ve got a little bit of support from Jupiter.
AC: Yeah, that whole sign trine from Jupiter in Sagittarius to everything in Leo is glorious.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And the points where those trines perfect are, you know, sweet relief.
CB: Yeah, it’s bringing in a sort of rectification or like resolution of something and like stabilizing it after the tumultuousness of June and July. Cuz here we can see, for example, the Sun exactly trines Leo, August 6. The Sun hits 14 Leo and trines Jupiter at 14 Sag. Then a couple of days later, Venus hits 14 Leo and trines Jupiter at 14° of Sag on August 8. Then eventually Mercury makes its way, starts picking up steam again after stationing direct, and makes it to 14° of Leo by August 20, and again, trines Jupiter. And at this point, by August 18—August 17th-18th—Mars has finally departed from Leo and moves into Virgo.
KS: Totally.
AC: So just to make sure we don’t skip over it, you know, from Mercury’s ingress into Leo onward. So we’ve got about ten days where we have four visible planets—or, yeah, four traditional planets in the same sign, all in Leo. And then that stellium is actually going to get tighter, and then we’re gonna get four planets in Virgo for some weeks, which is pretty unusual.
CB: Wow, okay.
KS: Yeah. Yeah, I thought that was a beautiful point that you made in our show notes, Austin, that we’ve got this sort of fast-moving, traditional planet pileup, where we’ve got the Leo emphasis and then Virgo emphasis, which is unusual. We’ve gotta have the Sun and Mars in the same sign, which can only happen every second year. And then we have to have Mercury and Venus, you know, close enough to the Sun that they’re all in the same sign, while Mars is there with the Sun.
AC: Yeah, it’s really interesting. You know, what we’re looking at is three planets making a superior conjunction to the Sun in like a month, which is pretty rare, right? We have the Venus-Sun superior conjunction in Leo. And then we’re going to have, I believe, the Sun-Mars superior conjunction in Virgo, and so is the Sun-Mercury superior conjunction. But boy, that’s a lot of exactly the same thing. And in some ways, you know, it’s interesting because planets conjunctions with the Sun—especially a superior conjunction—have this quality of purifying, of, you know, burning away the dross, burning away the old. Renewal, right? It’s interesting we get like triple purification after a very messy set of configurations during the previous months. And in some ways, I think that’s gonna be really good, but it also indicates like there’s gonna need to be a big reset after making it through June and July. And in some ways, you know, that’s good, but also remember that planets that are closely-conjoined the Sun are combust. And so, they don’t necessarily work right, especially if we’re looking at horary charts from this period of time. You know, if a planet is burnt up in horary, you know, the house that it rules often has no power whatsoever. And so, there are gonna be some really interesting horaries from this period of time. You know, the only planet that is in fantastic shape is the Sun. The Sun’s in its own sign. You know, one way of looking at combustion is that the Sun gets the other planet’s power. Doesn’t go away, the Sun takes it over, and it becomes the Sun’s own potency. And this is the first time we’ve had the Sun in Leo for, I think, three years, where it wasn’t sharing the sign with the North Node, which is an eclipse point, which is absolutely malefic in relationship to the Sun’s priorities.
KS: To the Sun.
AC: Right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: So the Sun looks awesome during this period of time.
CB: Well, and something that’s really notable is that last eclipse that takes place in Leo—there’s an immediacy to it there in January, but it then has six-month range until that’s fully over, which then comes to completion here during the summer, during this next series of eclipses in June and July.
AC: Well, I would say that it’s replaced by the more recent lunar eclipse in Capricorn, which happens in July.
CB: Yeah, exactly. But that then is the completion of that, bringing to completion some of the Leo/Aquarius stuff that’s been taking place over the past couple of years, which then ties it back into like the Great American Eclipse, for example, last year, which was a solar eclipse in Leo, that gets closed out by this lunar eclipse in Leo. But part of the reason I wanted to mention that is because one of the things that I’ve been waiting to see is how this period was gonna go, and I wasn’t paying attention to the astrology of this summer mundanely. Like I just started paying attention to this recently. But I’ve always been curious because, like, one of the charts that’s super activated this summer is the president’s chart. Trump’s chart, this summer, has a ton of stuff going on in zodiacal releasing. And this is the period I had always been waiting for to understand some of the stuff that happened, going way back to the 2016 election. Because I knew a year after the election, he would go into a loosing of the bond, which usually indicates a major career transition, which is something that actually confused me in the lead-up to the 2016 election. But this career transition was supposed to start a year after the election, starting December 28, 2017, and it would last until March 17, 2020. But then it would have a culmination point about two-thirds of the way through it, which would take place then—theoretically, according to the technique—between June 9 of 2019 and August 10 of 2019, with a focal point around July 23 of 2019 through July 28 of 2019. And that’s when there’s a loosing of the bond on all three levels of the technique. So it’s just repeating itself back and forth, and it’s also, weirdly, happening between the signs of Capricorn and Cancer in his chart, which also turns out to be the exact signs that are getting lit up by all these transits.
AC: That’s really interesting.
CB: Yeah, it is really interesting. It’s a little like unnerving, and I’m nervous about it. But I wanted to mention those dates just because that’s something I’ve been looking forward to trying to just understand what that was gonna mean in terms of his overall chronology for a few years now, what that was coming up. But now that we’re actually paying attention to this period, and we’re seeing all this stuff happening during that exact same, you know, period—using a completely different technique of just looking at transits—it’s sort of bringing a lot of stuff into focus.
KS: Totally. And I just wanted to add my little piece here around what you guys were saying with the Sun. Your point, Austin, around the Sun in Leo period for 2019 does look especially golden. And I’m really excited about that Sun-Jupiter trine just as like a bright spot. There’s a radiance to that energy with the Sun so vibrant in Leo. Jupiter’s so functional in Sag. I don’t know if that’ll be helpful for Trump, necessarily, but I think just for all of us to have, you know, personally, a configuration that’s a little bit more supportive or forward-looking rather than some of the doom and gloom. And, you know, there’ll be a level of this depressing, melancholy tone in that June-July period.
CB: Yeah. Well, I’m just hoping that whatever happens in June and July—that there’s something that steps in and kind of like levels things out. And that’s what we’re seeing from Jupiter in Sagittarius, like casting that ray into Leo, and then all the planets like walking into it, as they’re trying to sort of flee from some of the stuff happening in Cancer. Just some positive rectification or stabling or leveling out that happens after a sort of tumultuous two-month period in June and July especially. And a little bit in August.
AC: Yeah, it’s definitely gonna feel way better. It’s not really gonna fix what’s happening in Cancer and Capricorn, but it’s a blessed tonal shift.
KS: Yeah.
AC: It’ll be—oh, go ahead.
KS: I was just gonna say, I agree. Cuz the Cancer and Capricorn stuff is not gone, it just settles down a bit. You know, in that June-July period, the Cancer/Capricorn stuff is very front and center. And then, I don’t want to say it’s in the background, but it’s not quite as boiling in our face as it was in that period. Sorry, Austin. What else were you gonna say?
AC: I’m chewing. Please go on.
KS: Okay. Okay, sorry. So bad throw. Bad throw.
CB: So then, August. The second half of August, there’s a huge shift, as Austin already mentioned, where stuff starts moving into Virgo. We’re getting out of Leo completely. Mars goes into Virgo by August 18. Venus goes into Virgo by August 20th-21st. The Sun goes into Virgo by the 22nd-23rd, of course. And then eventually Mercury catches up, moves into Virgo almost simultaneously the same time that the Moon does, around August 28-August 29. So then we get that big pileup in Virgo. Everything, again, starts running into Jupiter and squaring it, while simultaneously trining Saturn in Capricorn. So there’s some interesting dynamics as a result of that around that time. It looks like Uranus stationed at some point.
KS: Yeah.
CB: When was that?
KS: Let’s consult our guidebook here. The trusty ephemeris. August 11.
CB: Okay. So that’s actually tied in with all of that, then, that’s happening, as things are trying to wrap up. Uranus stations retrograde at 6° of Taurus, it looks like August 10-August 11.
KS: Yeah. And Jupiter will actually station direct right around the same time, in the same 24-hour period.
CB: Oh, wow, okay. In August—all that stuff we were talking about of Jupiter like lending a hand and balancing things out—Jupiter actually gets amped up himself and really, after a several-month period of being retrograde and not being in great shape as a result of that suddenly, you know, comes back fully powered around that time in August at the same time. That’s even more interesting then.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Yeah.
CB: We’ve got some real reversals and real game-changers going on in August, even more than I thought.
AC: One of the things I was gonna say as a follow-up to the planets in Leo not fixing what’s happening in Cancer and Capricorn—it’s more a shift to paying attention to all of the good that Jupiter in Sagittarius has been doing this year. The direct station of Jupiter in that last third of its yearly synodic cycle is generally where you see the reaping of gains and the rewards for opportunities that were seized and followed through upon earlier in the year.
CB: Right. And Jupiter’s also—sometimes when it’s retrograde—it’s almost like more indirect in its method of approaching or attempting to rectify things, or more subtle. But then by the time it stations direct, it seems like it’s having a more direct and not indirect influence in trying to balance things out.
AC: Yeah, it’s more powerful for good.
CB: All right.
KS: Yeah.
CB: All right, so that’s sort of August. Everything goes into Virgo in the second part of August. That brings us into September.
AC: Where everything’s in Virgo.
KS: Everything’s in Virgo for the month.
AC: Yeah. Well, pretty much until we get to the Sun in Libra, you know. The first half, everything’s in Virgo.
CB: Right.
AC: You know, it’s the same setup. We’ve got Jupiter in Sag and Saturn in Capricorn. And what’s interesting about everything in Virgo is that because Jupiter is at 15° of Sag, and Saturn is at 14-15 of Capricorn, planets are going to basically simultaneously aspect and interact with Saturn and Jupiter. And so, in terms of equilibrating the good with the bad, that’s exactly what that says. You know, looking at Jupiter and Saturn at exactly the same time. And so, Venus, Mercury, the Sun, and Mars are all gonna do that in the first half of September.
CB: Right. It’s just weird that they all hit Neptune at the same time. Like I always keep running into this each year in September—when everything starts going through Virgo—over the past few years. It gets that opposition from Neptune in Pisces really strongly during that time.
AC: Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s interesting. It’s looking, and a little earlier than that, they trine Uranus. So that’s interesting. The planets in Virgo have a clear view of every outer planet. They aspect every outer planet. Which, I don’t know, I kind of like that thinking in terms of Virgo. And, you know, with the equinox approaching in the Northern—or in both hemispheres—that’s sort of like, you know, Virgo sits down to analyze, “Okay, so what’s happened? This was good. That was awful. That’s just kind of weird. You know, how am I doing with these changes?” There’s a reviewing, analyzing, sorting mechanism to Virgo. And the configuration with everything during these first two weeks of September does a really nice sort of job of facilitating that.
CB: Definitely. All right, September, everything’s in Virgo. Lunations, of course, in Virgo. New Moon in Virgo, Full Moon in Pisces. Jupiter is moving fast again. It’s picked up speed after stationing many weeks earlier. Eventually everything starts ingressing into Libra by the middle of the month. So it looks like Mercury and Venus go first, around September 13th-14th. They both move into Libra. The Sun eventually catches up, of course, around the 22nd-23rd.
AC: Generally speaking, I really like this last week of September. You know, with Venus in Libra and with Jupiter in Sagittarius, you have both benefics in signs they rule.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And Mercury’s in a position to get love from both of them. And with the Sun’s ingress into Libra, it also puts the Sun in the sign of a dignified, benefic Venus. But it separates the Sun from Mars, right, by that sign boundary. So I think I know where the auspicious elections for September are going to live.
CB: Yeah, look at that nice Venus-Jupiter sextile there from 16-17 Libra Venus to Jupiter at like 17 Sag, around September 27th-28th.
AC: Yeah, it’s a nice-looking set of days.
KS: It really is.
CB: You were eye-balling that, Kelly?
KS: Totally. Yeah, I had it. Because it’s the only time—well, I mean, Venus is in dignity in Pisces and square Jupiter. But it’s probably the best—it’s one of the best or nicest kind of benefic-type aspects for the whole of 2019. So yeah, I’m totally on board with this, with you guys. Venus is still square by sign to the Capricorn stuff, but she is separating from Saturn. And she gets to interact with Jupiter before she has to deal with Pluto.
CB: Right. So that’s probably gonna be one of our most auspicious elections of the year, once we get to the end of September. All right, so we keep going. Eventually that takes us into October.
KS: The only other thing I’ll just throw in, just for people tracking, is the last Jupiter-Neptune square happens in September as well.
CB: Oh, okay. That’s super important. So when was that? Looks like the 18th-19th.
KS: You had it almost there.
CB: There it is.
KS: Do you have it?
CB: That’s funny, I’m asking you. If only there was some way to calculate when that planetary alignment was—
KS: No, I love it.
CB: So about September 20.
KS: 16-17, yeah.
CB: Yeah. Okay, so the 20th, that’s the last one. When was the second one? Cuz that means we glossed over—
KS: Second one was in June, actually. Well, we had many other things to discuss in June.
AC: Yeah. And that second one gets pretty lost in the cacophony of June.
KS: Yeah.
CB: And it does. But I wonder, because the first part of that sequence starts out in January, and that’s when our first eclipses take place. And then those eclipses—especially that solar eclipse in Capricorn sets it up for the eclipses that then take place in June and July. The fact that the second Jupiter-Neptune square is also occurring during that time, I mean, might mean that it’s actually tied in with this whole sequence in some weird way.
AC: Yeah, I don’t think it’s that important. I don’t think it’s gonna move the needle nearly as much as a lot of other things we’ve been talking about. I could be wrong.
CB: Yeah. Well, we will see. So those dates are gonna be like—what month was the second one, Kelly? June?
KS: June. Yeah, so the Jupiter square Neptune, January, June, and September of 2019.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah. I mean, I do agree with where you’re coming from, Austin. It’s a little bit of a landscape, kind of backdrop setting. I think some charts and some people will be more tuned into it based on, you know, natal placements and configurations. The drama in June and July is definitely going to overtake other experiences then, I think, for many people. There might be a little piece, if you’re really tuned into the Jupiter-Neptune square. You may get a little something in June, but you may not realize it until afterwards, because there are other more pressing situations that demand your attention.
CB: Yeah, I would just remember that if that is activated in your chart—or if it’s hitting a personal planet in some way—when outer planets especially make three aspects due to retrogrades, it sometimes sets up like a beginning, a middle, and an end of the story. And so, the first exact aspect is like the beginning of the story, or the beginning of the sequence of events. The second one is the middle part of the story. And then the third one, which happens here in the later part of September, is the conclusion and the sort of outcome of everything.
KS: Yeah. I mean, I think there’ll be a little bit more space to turn into this aspect in September. And so, it might be a chance to reflect on some dreams or hopes or aspirations. You know, when we talked about January 2019 and that idea of the archer’s bow being shot above the target to allow for gravity, you know, September might be a little bit of a reflection on a, you know, “How close did I get?” kind of thing.
CB: Definitely. That’s perfect.
AC: Well, and it’s agreed. Also, you would get all of this just with watching Jupiter’s synodic cycle. Like the first one, you know, the first part of the cycle after the Sun conjoins it, and it rises in the east, is about the beginning and figuring out what opportunities to go after. And then the retrograde phase—which is when it conjoins Neptune again—is about, you know, things being more difficult or complicated and trying to get through it. And then the third of the cycle, after the direct station, is about outcomes anyway. So you’re gonna get all of this just with Jupiter’s synodic cycle. It’s modified by Neptune, but like that ‘one-two-three’ thing is already there with just Jupiter.
CB: Definitely. All right, so that brings us to the end of September. We then move into October where Mars catches up to the Libra planets. And Mars moves into Libra, it looks like, by October 4. What else do we have going on?
AC: Mercury and Venus into Scorpio and Mars into Libra is definitely what I was looking at as defining this period of time.
CB: Sure. So Mercury goes into Scorpio October 3. Venus catches and moves into Scorpio by October 8.
AC: And this is significantly less uplifting than that ‘fun’ like early October/late September period.
KS: Period.
AC: You know, it doesn’t compare—it’s sort of like a half-strengthed version of the summer’s configuration. You know, the thing that I don’t like about this is that we have Mars and Saturn square each other. And that Mars is not in a very good position, being in its detriment in Libra. And Mars has the job of ruling Scorpio. So both Venus and Mercury are looking to their ruler, Mars, who’s not in good condition and is fighting with Saturn. And so, I don’t love that. I would also add that in Vedic astrology, there’s special preference for Mars’ 4th house aspect and Saturn’s—excuse me, Saturn’s 10th house aspect is also super strong. And when they’re in this kind of square—where Mars is, in a sense, waning back to Saturn—they’re both throwing a full aspect at each other, which is sort of maximum disagreement. That forms a Yama yoga, you know, ‘death god’ yoga. And so, you know, that’s not fun.
KS: No.
AC: It’s not as bad as June and July, but it’s not good.
CB: ‘Death god’ yoga, that’s the technical term?
AC: Yeah, it’s Yama yoga. When you have Mars and Saturn like fully entangled under a variety of criteria, you get Yama yoga, which makes sense. What do you get when you get Mars and Saturn together, right?
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah. Yeah, I had flagged this period for different technical reasons than what you’ve identified, Austin. But I had flagged, you know, the idea of Mars being in detriment and having to—sorry, in fall—and having to deal with Saturn in Capricorn. It feels like tension, discord, disagreement. And it feels angry, if you like. Or the feeling of frustration, basically.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Frustration’s a good keyword for Mars square Saturn. Like wanting to do something, but being blocked in some way, and having to work around that or work within the context of the constraints that you’re forced to accept.
AC: Yeah. From Mars’ perspective, right, Mars is in Venus-ruled Libra. Mars wants to like hang out at a cocktail party. Mars doesn’t want to work super hard in Libra, but a Mars-Saturn square calls for nose to the grindstone, with Saturn so much stronger. And, you know, Saturn is exalted in Libra. So it has, you know, power over there. And so, it’s like, oh, boy, poor Mars. Poor Mars is getting worked to the bone here. And Venus, being in a Mars-ruled sign, is in a place to feel it. And Mercury, being in a Mars-ruled sign, is in a place to think it.
KS: Yeah. And I think, too, you know, Mars in Libra is going against his nature or contrary to his nature. He is trying to figure out how to keep the peace and keep other people happy while still juggling the pressures or the demands or the obligations of whatever Saturn is asking for him. And I think it could highlight a really, maybe tense period in some of our personal relationships as we’re trying to figure out how to keep the people that matter. You know, keep our connections with them on some kind of even keel when there are external circumstances or pressures that might interfere or disrupt that.
AC: Yeah, 100%. Sorry, I just wanted to jump in.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And, Chris, it looks like you’re already paused to talk about this. We have a New Moon in Scorpio right in the middle of this, that is opposed to Uranus by like, I don’t know, ten minutes or something. It’s almost a perfect opposition to Uranus. So we have, you know, that disruptive, destabilizing, volatizing Uranus. Uranus adds that to a period that’s already not super favorable.
CB: Right. This is October 27 when it’s a New Moon in Scorpio at 4 Scorpio, opposite Uranus at 4° of Taurus. And Mars is like super closely square Saturn, from 15 Libra to 15 Capricorn.
AC: Yeah, it’s a rough lunation, right?
KS: Really rough. Yeah, because the lunation itself is opposite Uranus, you know, in terms of the disruption. And then the ruler, Mars, is just dealing with Saturn and Pluto.
AC: Yay.
CB: Right. So that is the end of October. That takes us into November, where inner planets start moving into Sag, starting with Venus, November 1-ish.
AC: Yay.
KS: Yes.
CB: Mercury wants to—
KS: Do a happy dance.
CB: It’s like Mercury almost moves into Sag. But instead it stations retrograde at 27 Scorpio at the very end of October, around the 30th-31st, and goes retrograde in Scorpio for a few weeks. What else do we have going on?
KS: I think Mars is gonna get into Scorpio this month as well. So that’ll be helpful.
CB: It’s like that happens November 18-November 19.
KS: It is obviously coming into one of its rulership signs, but it will have to encounter the opposition to Uranus. So that’ll be something just to make note of.
AC: Yeah.
CB: It looks like right around the same day that Mars moves into Scorpio is when Mercury stations direct at 11° of Scorpio.
KS: Austin?
AC: Oh, that. Maybe there was a delay. And that Mercury retrograde is, I don’t know, pretty like unpleasant. It’s not great-looking, but it’s also not the most malefic thing in the world. You know, it doesn’t compare to the one in June and July. I, for one, will be happy to see Mars back in Scorpio.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And who doesn’t love a Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Sag?
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
CB: That is the highlight of November.
KS: It is the highlight, the very end of November. It is actually the second Venus-Jupiter conjunction because Venus doesn’t have a retrograde in 2018, and she’s gonna cover a little bit more zodiac territory. There was, or there will be, a Venus-Jupiter conjunction in January as well.
AC: Yeah, of 2018.
CB: That’s a nice like parting gift.
KS: 2019, yeah.
CB: Venus gives a parting ‘high five’ to Jupiter in Sagittarius before Jupiter gets out of Sagittarius this year.
KS: Yeah, it’s like a little kiss.
CB: Right.
KS: And then she’s on to the next thing.
AC: I really can’t imagine a more celebratory configuration than Venus-Jupiter conjoined in Sag.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right. It’s like we start the year with that, we go through some tumultuous stuff in the summer, and then we end the year with that.
KS: Totally.
AC: I would say that that’s a consolation prize.
CB: Okay.
AC: That’s not what we’re ending the year with.
KS: No, there’s other things in December. But the end of November looks great for, you know, a wonderful celebration. That’s probably gonna be around American Thanksgiving, I think.
AC: Yep.
KS: Yeah.
CB: All right, well, I think we will just wrap it up then and we will end the year with November.
KS: End of November.
CB: We will save December for next year’s forecast episode.
KS: Yeah. I mean, obviously we won’t. But what happens in December, with the ingress of Jupiter into Capricorn, is we are then set up for the astrology of 2020.
AC: Yep. Let’s look at it.
CB: Yeah. All right, so there it is.
AC: Don’t look away. Look at it.
KS: Yeah, there we go.
CB: So there it is. It’s like December 1 or December 2, Jupiter ingresses into Capricorn, and that really starts off this whole sort of configuration of December. Venus has already gone in several days earlier, it looks like. Around December—around November 24th-25th, Venus had moved into Capricorn. But it’s really Jupiter moving into that sign that is one of the major shifts that occurs in December, at the very end of the year. And it brings a whole different tone to what we’ve been dealing with since January, since now we have four planets, plus the South Node, all in Capricorn.
AC: Yeah. And so, you know, the one thing, the saving grace of 2019 is that there has up to this point always been that Jupiter in Sag, that dignified benefic.
CB: Right. That very optimistic Jupiter in its own sign squaring Neptune, bringing even more optimism, even more hope. Sometimes illusory, but at least, sparkly Jupiter in Sagittarius. But then we lose even that and then there’s just this shift that happens at the very end of the year.
AC: Yeah. And Jupiter is fallen in Capricorn.
KS: Yeah.
AC: That’s one of the most difficult signs for Jupiter to do its thing.
KS: So it really is like, you know, the balloon has popped. We are dealing with—even I can’t spin this one. It’s Jupiter in the same sign as the South Node.
CB: That’s funny, cuz actually somebody said that. They were like, “At least Kelly will balance out Austin and Chris in this month’s, this year’s forecast episode to give us the positive spin on some of these difficult configurations.” So we need you here, Kelly.
KS: I know. I mean, the best I can do is talk about how good the Jupiter parts are going to be, and we really want to take advantage of those. Sorry, Austin.
AC: Yeah, what I said was this would be Kelly’s greatest challenge.
CB: All right, yeah.
AC: This will be the unfairly hard ‘boss battle’.
KS: Yeah. And, I mean, I remember what things felt like collectively in 2008, which was the last time we had Jupiter in Capricorn. Now what we didn’t have then, that we are dealing with now, is the South Node-Saturn co-presence as well. Last time it was just Jupiter and Pluto in Capricorn 2008. The banking industry in America fell apart and caused ripples around the world. We’ve got two more big problems. So this is my greatest challenge, and I’m not sure that I can—I don’t know that we can make this a positive. I mean, I just keep telling people to reduce your financial exposure. I think, you know, the less debt you have, the more insulated you will be from something like this. And that’s what I can say about that.
CB: And part of it at this point is by the time we get to December, Saturn and Pluto are back to where they started at the beginning of the year, which is within 3° of an exact conjunction in the third decan of Capricorn. But now they’re on a collision course and there’s no averting it, where they’re coming up on that conjunction really soon. Saturn is moving very fast, and it’s moving right towards and getting ready to complete that conjunction with Pluto in January.
AC: Yep. Well, so one thing that’s not necessarily positive, but ultimately is, you know, this year and next year—2019-2020—this is a rough transition period. You know, there are years after this. You know, just like we look back at, “Oh, 2008, ‘09, oh, dude, I got fired. I was out of work for nine months.” You know, you’ll be like, “That was rough,” but, you know, life continued after that. And so, you know, one of the ways to work with Saturn in Capricorn, one of the things that’s helpful about Saturn in Capricorn is it can be a very good reminder to look at things in terms of cycles and to look at things historically, and not to get sucked into one point in the timeline, to the point where your vision of that obliterates everything else.
KS: That’s a really good point, Austin. And when I think back to 2008, the other point I like to make is there is a big difference between what happens collectively and what happens personally. Yeah, there was a lot going on in 2008, but I know, for me, there were some amazing things that came into my life. There was huge transformation in that year, but there was also a lot of happiness and a lot of excitement. So, you know, that’s part of this process. The other thing that we haven’t touched on yet—that I’m just gonna throw in here, since it’s like super Capricorn—I mean, as you were clocking through the days, Chris, it’s just like insane once the Sun—
CB: Just showing that buildup at like 22 Capricorn, where like Mercury—
KS: The Sun comes in, yeah.
CB: Yeah, it’s like a four-planet conjunction all at like 22 Capricorn in early-to-mid-January.
AC: But before that, we get a solar eclipse on Christmas.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Oh, yeah.
KS: So the one cultural movement that I’m watching—that I think really speaks to the South Node in Capricorn, and then is amplified by all the other transits of planets moving through Capricorn—is the minimalist movement, and the idea of kind of voluntarily reducing one’s stuff or one’s possessions. That idea of purifying, where we have the basics, we have what we need, we have the essentials, but we don’t have anything superfluous or excessive. And I think that’s—I don’t know, maybe that’s the Kelly spin on this, which is, you know, this is a great time for decluttering and purging; whether it’s physical possessions, like you have too many pairs of jeans, or you have too many books, or whether it’s that you have too many commitments and there is congestion in your schedule with your time. This is very much about coming back to basics, coming back to core, doing what really matters and not getting distracted by anything else.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And making the most out of what you do have, instead of focusing on what you don’t have and maximizing that to its fullest potential. I mean, cuz I have Jupiter in Capricorn, and I think that’s a fine placement.
AC: You are known for your buoyant, Jupiterian nature.
CB: Yeah, exactly. So that is what Jupiter in Capricorn is like, if anybody needs an example. But definitely taking advantage of what you have available to you and learning how to get the most mileage out of that. That’s great advice, Kelly.
AC: Totally. And I couldn’t agree more that Saturn-South Node stuff says ‘less is more’ very emphatically.
KS: Yeah.
AC: You know, you don’t need to get stronger so you can carry more. You need to carry less, and you’ll feel stronger.
KS: Correct. Yeah, you don’t need more organizing things from the storage shop. You actually need less things, full stop, you know, and the idea of tiny houses. And, you know, we’ve touched a little bit on the Depression era, the 1930s, because of Uranus transits back then. Pluto was in Cancer at that time. And I do often think about the Cancer/Capricorn axis as an axis that naturally describes frugality or taking a little bit and stretching it a long way or doing a lot with a little. And obviously in that period in the 1930s, people didn’t have a choice. They had to, you know—they only had a little and they had to make it last. I’m interested to see in this period whether it’s more about making that choice. I could have more, but I don’t need it, and I’m sort of internally self-regulating around excess, if you like.
CB: Right. And even thinking about like 2008, for example, while there were a lot of people that lost a lot and then had to deal with less at that time, there were also some people who—when the markets were really down—were able to make some good investments that then grew and developed over the course of the past decade. Like those investors that wait for the period where, you know, things aren’t going well, and where you can buy, let’s say, stocks or other things, and you make a wise, sort of targeted investment of something—watching that grow when things eventually do start to develop or go on the upturn again, and paying attention to even when things are at their lowest, like still anticipating where they’re gonna be at some point in the future when everything starts growing and blossoming again.
AC: Absolutely. I’ve been saving money for a couple of years to hopefully make a down payment on a house when the shit hits the fan and the prices drop.
KS: Yeah. And this is something that personally, for me, in 2008, I was in a position where I had a little bit of savings, and I was able to invest in some stocks at that time because it was a good buying opportunity, because the stock market had come off. Austin, I know of a handful of other astrologers actually that are on the sidelines with the property market right now in various countries in the world, where they’re just waiting to see what happens in 2019. And, you know, obviously the theory is you want to buy low and sell high. But if we know we’re going into a little bit of a low point, then, you know, waiting for that. And that’s the idea of if you’re insulated and protected, if you’re not overextended, then this can be a great investment in your long-term security, basically.
AC: Yeah. Well, and, you know, Chris, you make a very Jupiter in Capricorn point by saying that, you know, disaster or trouble—malefic things—can be an opportunity, Jupiter, right? It’s Jupiter in a malefic sign. We talked about this with Jupiter in Scorpio, right? How there was an opportunity. Like Jupiter in Scorpio brought us an opportunity to bring justice to unjust things, right?
CB: Right.
AC: And so, similarly, Jupiter in Saturn’s sign, you know, is finding the opportunity that misfortune provides.
CB: Yeah, making the best out of a bad situation, or learning how to thrive and grow even in a difficult environment.
AC: Yep.
KS: Yeah. So you guys just spinned something positive out of this.
AC: Well, I gotta try. We gotta try. You know, without a little effort this is, you know, horrifically depressing.
KS: But, Chris, I’m so glad you shared your own Jupiter placement there because I think that, you know, that can be helpful for people.
CB: Yeah, definitely. Well, it’s just a funny conversation, even just seeing astrologers—and newer astrologers—like discussing things on Twitter like the tendency for people to want to make statements and generalizations about placements. But then people sometimes get very—you know, it can go in a weird direction when it’s all just like one-sided or like negative interpretations of the tendencies of certain placements. And sometimes you gotta explain the other side of the story, which is that every placement, no matter how difficult, can still have positive manifestations, or positive like side effects. Even if it’s not a naturally easy placement, it can still be used in a constructive way in some instances.
KS: Yeah. And this is a really great distinction between the theory of like what is a good or a bad placement for a planet versus the application of that, and what it looks like in real life. Because, you know, for clients that I work with that have Jupiter in Capricorn, they do have this natural, conservative approach to money, and they don’t tend to rack up crazy amounts of debt. If we say they’ve got a lot of fear about it, fair enough. But if that motivates them into good money habits earlier in life, then they also have some—you know, you may not get free money if you’ve got Jupiter in Capricorn, but you really take care of the money that you earn or that you do get.
CB: Yeah, definitely. All right, so just to wrap up those placements for December, and to make sure we properly emphasize that solar eclipse you mentioned on Christmas, on December 25—4° of Capricorn conjunct Jupiter at 5° of Capricorn. That’s the unique thing about this calendar year. We don’t just get one eclipse, one solar eclipse in Capricorn—which might be normal—but we get two of them. One in January and then another in December.
AC: Again, I feel like this year has some unfairly rude moments. It’s like, really? Solar eclipse on Christmas? Like, thanks. Thanks, time.
KS: Thanks, time, yeah. And I always find it is interesting when we get major lunations, like eclipses, or even a Full Moon really close to the solstice. You know, within a few days of the solstice. It just adds to the extreme quality of what’s going on there.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah, that’s—do you want to go back, Chris? Oh, right. Yeah, that’s a lot.
CB: Yeah, that’s a lot of stuff in Capricorn. And then it’s like Mercury moves in there. Venus departs and moves into Aquarius. But then Mercury goes into Capricorn by the end of December, by the 28th-29th. Saturn is getting so close. Like it doesn’t complete, it doesn’t perfect the conjunction, but it’s at 21 Capricorn, getting ready to conjoin Pluto at 22 Capricorn by the end of December. And then eventually we—as we said earlier—we get that exact conjunction of Saturn and Pluto by, it looks like, January 11-January 12, at 22° of Capricorn. And weirdly, the Sun and Mercury basically hit those degrees right around the same timeframe.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, so that is the buildup to everything. Do we get three? Have you guys looked ahead? Do we get three conjunctions of Saturn and Pluto, or is it just that one?
KS: We get one.
CB: Just one? Okay. It’s all building up to that moment.
KS: January 2020, that’s it.
AC: It’s building up to a couple of moments. You know, you fast-forward a little bit, you get Mars-Saturn-Pluto-Jupiter. Like that late-Cap button gets hit hard several times by multiple configurations.
KS: You’re spot on, Austin, but the Saturn-Pluto itself is one. But from late-Feb and into March, we get Mars there, yeah.
CB: All right, well, that’s taking us a little far afield into 2020.
KS: We’ll come back to that for next year.
CB: We’ll bookmark that for one year from now, when we will return again for the forecast for the following year.
AC: Looking forward to it.
CB: Yeah, it should be interesting to check in and catch up on how things went in 2019.
AC: Yeah. Well, hopefully, we’re wrong and this is a great year for the world. That not only is the economy doing well, but economic inequality is shrinking. All of the nations are getting along with each other.
KS: Oh, my gosh, Austin. I love it, yeah.
AC: So those are not my predictions, but hopefully I’m wrong.
CB: Yeah. I mean, as long as I can eat a lab-grown burger with Uranus in Taurus by the end of the year, then I will consider that a successful astrological, I don’t know, prediction.
KS: Yeah, it’s a biggie.
AC: Utopia is at hand, my friend.
CB: Yeah.
AC: It’s good that they’re getting the ‘Soylent Green’ ready for distribution right before things fall into the shitter.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Well, on that note, I think we did it guys. So that is the forecast for 2019. So of course we’re gonna return and check in periodically at the end of each month, since we’re gonna continue to do our monthly forecast episodes, where we’ll do more of a deep dive into the astrology of each month, every month, on The Astrology Podcast. Which you can find out more information about at TheAstrologyPodcast.com. You guys are each gonna be doing your own projects over the course of the next year. Kelly, you also do like a monthly subscription forecast, right?
KS: Yeah, I always forget to mention it. Cuz it’s not technically a Patreon, but it is a monthly subscription with week ahead and month ahead video insights. So you can sign up via the homepage for that as well.
CB: Okay, brilliant. And that’s at KellysAstrology.com.
KS: Yes, I should give the website. That won’t be changing.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yes.
CB: And then, Austin, you are about to, in a few days, launch a podcast on your website AustinCoppock.com, right?
AC: Yeah, it’s been much delayed, but I’ve nailed myself to the January 2 election. So that’ll be coming out. And that’s me talking to my friends about weird stuff. Have to have you guys on at some point.
KS: Of course.
CB: Definitely. We do not get enough of each other with these once-a-month forecast episodes. That’ll be fun to check in on yours. And then, Kelly, you’ve also been doing The Water Trio Podcast lately.
KS: We have, yeah. All going well. We’ll keep that up. That’s a weekly, 30-minute show that we drop every Monday. So that’ll be continuing throughout 2019, with all the exciting developments that 2019 will bring. And they’ll be announced here and there in due course.
CB: Brilliant. And, Austin, you’re gonna keep doing your monthly, Patreon-funded forecasts, written forecasts, right?
AC: Yeah, I do monthlies. I do dailies. I do, you know, articles. Like my yearly will be out in a few days. I did a Jupiter in Sag, things like that. And that slider kind of moves as to how much writing I’m doing on that. It’s usually a minimum of two pieces a month. But when I was doing the decanly column, then it was more like four or five. We’ll see. I think I’m gonna spend more time—I’m gonna reserve some time to write some books in 2019, starting with getting the second edition of 36 Faces out by the end of the first quarter.
CB: Brilliant. Yeah, a lot of people are looking forward to that. It’s been out of print for a while now. So I’ll be looking forward to seeing that in circulation again.
AC: It’s been less than a year, but, you know, people are mad.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah, I’ve had some comments lately where people have been talking about that. And I’m like, “Yeah, I think it’s coming back in print.” So it’ll be great to get that back available again.
CB: Definitely.
AC: Yeah, it’s definitely coming.
CB: And I’ve just launched, a week or two ago, my posters, which I’m still really happy with how they came out, cuz it shows the astrology of the entire year. So for those that want to use some of the artwork that we use in our monthly forecast episodes, but have it for the entire year—so you can see all the ingresses, the retrograde stations and the exact outer planet aspects that we talked about in this episode—you can get this awesome poster package, which is available at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/2019Posters. And I’m shipping those out now. And I think I’ll make it available on Amazon.com sometime in the next few weeks. But for now I’m just shipping them directly worldwide. All right, guys, I think that’s it. So thanks for joining me today for the forecast episode. Thanks everybody in the audience. We had a live audience of patrons that came in and made some comments, some of which we tried to incorporate, some of which we didn’t get a chance to. But I appreciate everybody who supports the podcast through our page on Patreon and who joined us for that. Yeah, and I look forward to catching up with you guys at the end of 2019 and checking in. And maybe we’ll do like a recap episode to take in everything that’s happened by the time we get to the end of the year.
KS: Perfect.
AC: And I look forward to meeting with you guys monthly and doing a blow-by-blow.
CB: Yeah, to like really drill down on some of this. We started out doing that a little bit more at the beginning, for like January. Yeah, but going into, especially once we get to the summer. Cuz we’ll see much more of the trajectory of things once we get closer to it. And that’ll be really fun and really fascinating to dissect it and go into each of the lunations and some of the shorter-term transits that we didn’t get a chance to touch on here.
KS: Completely. Yeah, we’ll be able to go into a little bit more detail, and it’ll be great to keep on track with how things are unfolding. And it’s always fun doing the monthly forecasts with you guys.
CB: Definitely. All right, guys. Well, thanks everybody for joining us today. Thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast. Always appreciate your support. So good luck in 2019. We will see you again next month for the forecast for February. But until then, yeah, good luck. And we will see you again in the next episode of The Astrology Podcast. So thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you again next time.
AC: Take care of yourselves and each other.
KS: Bye.