The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 199, titled:

April 2019 Astrology Forecast: Grand Trine in Fire Signs

With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees

Episode originally released on March 31, 2019

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2019/03/31/april-2019-astrology-forecast-grand-trine-in-fire-signs/

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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. Today is Tuesday, March 26, 2019, starting at 4:56 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 199th episode of the show. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking about the astrological forecast for April of 2019, with a little bit of chat and catching up at the beginning of the show, as we talk about astrological topics before going to the forecast. So if you want to jump ahead to the forecast and skip all of our rambling in the introduction, then just look for the timestamp either below this video on YouTube or on the description page on TheAstrologyPodcast.com website. For more information about how to support the podcast and help support the production of future episodes by becoming a patron, as well as getting some subscriber benefits like early access to new episodes or other bonus content, please consider becoming a patron through our page on Patreon. So you can find out more information about that at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Subscribe. All right, let’s jump into it. Hey, guys. Austin and Kelly, welcome back to the show to talk about the forecast for April.

AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris.

KELLY SURTEES: Hey, guys.

CB: Hey. So it has been an eventful few weeks since we talked last. And it sounds like for some reason all three of us are getting ready to—or are in the process of moving.

KS: Yeah, this seems to be a random coincidence.

CB: Yeah. So your move is just a little relocation, right, Kelly?

KS: Just a small one to a whole other continent. Peter and I never do things by halves, and he’s been given a posting in Europe. So we’re actually moving to Belgium in July for two years. So that’s just a massive, exciting-but-total-upheaval kind of thing. But you guys both have moves on as well.

CB: Yeah.

AC: Maybe for me.

KS: Maybe.

AC: We’re looking. We’re looking.

KS: Okay.

AC: Nothing’s certain yet.

CB: Austin has a potential move on the horizon. Uranus went into my 4th house, and I suddenly decided it was time to move out of our basement apartment—where we keep getting noise interruptions from dogs and vacuums and things like that—and move into a new place that finally has a dedicated podcast recording studio. Cuz that had actually been a funding goal that I set last year through Patreon. And since we’ve almost reached it, and our lease was up, we decided it was time to move out of our place where we’ve been for nine years; which coincidentally, actually, was pretty much the entirety of the Uranus transit through Aries, through my 3rd house. And now it’s going in my 4th house and we are moving this week. So by Episode 200 of The Astrology Podcast, which we’re gonna be celebrating at the beginning of April, I should be in the new recording studio.

AC: Awesome.

KS: That’s really exciting.

AC: Yeah, you’re due.

CB: Yeah, it’s really good. We’ll have a guest room and other things like that, which is kind of wild. So we’re gonna hopefully have you guys over at some point to actually join us in the physical podcast recording studio and maybe do one of these forecast episodes in person.

KS: That would be amazing.

AC: Yeah, that would be fun.

CB: Yeah. So I’ve got a lot of other announcements in terms of that, which I’ll get to probably on Episode 200, just in terms of starting to shoot more in-person interviews with astrologers and possibly starting to work towards the next phase of the podcast, which is moving towards possibly doing some sort of documentary or more documentary-style interviews with prominent astrologers in the community.

KS: Very cool.

CB: Yeah. So I’ll leave that there. So what do you guys have going on? Austin, what have you been up to this past month?

AC: Oh, let’s see. It’s been a busy month. It was birthday month. I traveled. I spent the first 10 days of March out in Virginia—where my mom’s side of the family is from—visiting with my grandma, whose birthday’s very close to mine. She’s not doing well, so I wanted to see her and spend some shared birthday time with her. And then since I got back, I’ve just been doing my thing. I finally got my 2019 class schedule up, which I meant to do a month-and-a-half ago, but things kept happening. So that’s up. I’ve got fundamentals of astrology, year one and two. I’m also teaching a tarot and astrology class. And I’m doing just a one-off, online lecture on the Jupiter-Saturn cycle and the different elemental eras, comparing the 200-years of, let’s say, air that we’re moving into with the last time it happened, and the time before that, and the time before that. So doing a little cross-section of history and sorting things by that technique. Let’s see. I’ve been electing for Sphere + Sundry. We’ve got a nice Jupiter and Venus series that should be out by the end of April. And I’ve been procrastinating editing my own podcast; so my little interview project. I’ve only put out one. Let’s see. I have four more already recorded that just need a little love before I can put them out. So I’ll probably make up for not putting out anything in retrograde March by putting out two things in April. Don’t hold me to that. Or maybe do hold me to that.

CB: Right. I enjoyed that first episode that you released with Tony Mack.

AC: Oh, good. Yeah, Tony’s great. Tony usually lets his work speak for himself, or speak for itself, but I thought people would enjoy hearing him speak with words rather than crafted metals.

CB: Right.

AC: Got some other good ones. I actually have another one. I won’t tell people who, but I have one with another astrological metalsmith, I have one with a publisher and astrologer, and I have one with a publisher/alchemist. And the alchemy one was actually conducted in an outside alchemy barn while chickens crowed.

KS: Oh, I think I know who that might be. I’m looking forward to that.

CB: Yeah, that kind of narrows it down a little bit.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, I’m excited about that. So people can find out more about your podcast, as well as the courses that you just mention on your website, which is AustinCoppock.com.

AC: Yep, it’s all there. And then Sphere + Sundry is SphereandSundry.com.

CB: Brilliant. And speaking of podcasts, it seems like everyone and their mom is launching a podcast now. Kelly, you, though, have been involved in launching. You guys have been really busy launching your new podcast, which has been really amazing. I’ve been listening to it over the past few weeks. That seems to be going well.

KS: Thank you. Yeah, we’re having a lot of fun with it. Touch wood, we’ve managed to keep to our once-a-week episode schedule, which has been a bit full on.

CB: Yeah.

KS: We’ve had a little bit of a hiccup with our sound engineer. So I’m not sure what’ll be happening there in the short term.

CB: What happened? What do you mean?

KS: There was just a bit of a—I don’t know. We can’t get in touch with him at the moment, actually.

CB: Well, we’ve got a guy. Austin’s brother, Steven, does amazing—

KS: Is he available for more work?

CB: He is. And I’m actually trying to get him to come out to Denver right now to help me.

KS: I’ve got his email address. I’m gonna email him immediately after we finish recording.

CB: Yeah, no, he’s amazing, and I highly recommend him. Especially cuz I want to give him as much business as he can handle.

KS: I didn’t know he was available for work. Because I actually have other stuff in my business that we could use an extra video sound engineer person for.

CB: Okay. Well, you can’t steal my guy.

AC: He’s my guy.

CB: Right. No, but definitely Steven is amazing. Yeah, we’ll put you in touch with him.

KS: Okay.

CB: Yeah, so your podcast is amazing. I’ve been enjoying it. You guys are really killing it. You’re doing one a week. It seemed more than that at one point.

KS: You might have been listening more. Yeah, no, we usually get together every two weeks and record two episodes, just for time efficiency purposes. But we were dropping an episode every Monday morning, basically. And we are doing week-ahead-style astrology. So yeah, I mean, Austin, you’ve just got so much more maturity where you’re like, “I don’t want to lock myself into a schedule,” and me, in my naivete, is the complete opposite. Like, “No, let’s do one every week. That sounds fantastic.”

AC: No, you’re just not way behind on all the things that I’m way behind on. It’s not really maturity at all.

KS: Oh, I don’t know. There’s a bit of behind. I’m behind on things.

AC: Well, as a little bit of a preview for what this month is about, April’s about catching up.

KS: I’m so excited for the astrology of April. I know we’ll get to it. But yeah, the catching-up-cleaning-out kind of vibe. But yeah, everybody and their dog is doing a podcast, including me. Which means there must be really simple technology available, cuz I’m not the most technical person.

CB: No, I mean, it’s great. And your co-hosts are doing a great job, I think, of filling in some of that stuff.

KS: Oh, they do all the technical, Cassandra Tyndall and Alicia Yusuf, who are two very dear friends. We’re called The Water Trio Astrology Podcast, and we get asked all the time, “Are you guys actually all water signs?” And we absolutely are, and our Suns all form trines. So we’ve got an early Pisces and early Cancer and an early Scorpio. So we do actually have a degree-based grand trine between our Suns.

AC: A legit, in-orb grand trine.

KS: It’s legit, in orb.

AC: Not one of these cross-sign grand trines.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Right.

KS: We’re not trying to make something up out of nothing. It’s legit.

AC: Pet peeve, people doing grand trines—where one of the planets is not in the sign of the proper element.

KS: Yeah.

AC: The whole point of a grand trine is that there’s elemental agreement.

KS: Yes.

AC: And so, if you’ve got that planet sneaking in at the end of Virgo, then you know you don’t have a grand air trine.

KS: No. I’m totally with you on that, Austin. I share that pet peeve.

CB: Right. So no false advertising there. And that’s called The Water Trio Podcast, fittingly. And you can find that on iTunes and SoundCloud and YouTube and Facebook, and just about everywhere by doing a Google search for ‘Water Trio Podcast’.

KS: Yes, thank you.

CB: Brilliant. And are you launching any classes or anything? Other events? It seems like you guys have had a lot of advertisements on Facebook lately, I’ve been noticing. So I know you have something going on.

KS: Yeah, I just learned about this stuff. And then Tony does some stuff. So we just had my career and life direction, four-part class start. So that’s just kicked off. And my next webinar is on astrology and fertility. And that’s coming up, I think, Saturday, April 6. It’s through Astrology University. And because Austin and I do like to twin a little bit in our careers, on the 13th of April, I’m giving a talk on the Saturn-Jupiter cycle.

AC: Oh, really?

KS: Yeah, people must think we know about this. But it’s usually in the podcast where I’m like, “Oh, Austin, you’re doing that. I’m doing the same.”

CB: You’re competing with each other subconsciously.

KS: I don’t know about that.

AC: We literally have the same prenatal lunation.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Right. As we discovered last month.

AC: To be fair, I actually gave my talk at a local group in January.

KS: That’s true, you did.

AC: There were problems with the recording, so I’m gonna need to give it again.

KS: I love it. Yeah, so Astrology University is doing a summit on the astrology of 2020, which is that weekend, April 13-April 14. So I’m giving a talk as part of that on the Saturn-Jupiter cycle. But there’ll be a bunch of other astrologers like Demetra George and Mark Jones who’ll be speaking. Steven Forrest. I can’t remember everyone else, but the lovely Astrology University crew.

CB: Brilliant. That sounds great. So that’s AstrologyUniversity.com. What else? We all have to start preparing pretty soon, cuz not this month, but the month after that, we are of course going to NORWAC, in Seattle, the Northwest Astrological Conference. Sounds like tickets are almost sold out for that, if they’re not already. And we’re doing our pre-conference podcast event where we’re gonna record a live episode of The Astrology Podcast there at NORWAC, in front of an audience of up to 200 people. So we’re still in the process of putting that together but we know it’s happening. And it’s gonna be, I think, that Thursday night before the conference.

KS: May 23. I think we’ve got an 8:30 PM kickoff time.

CB: Yeah, something like that.

KS: It’s a little later.

CB: And I also wanted to mention that NORWAC is definitely the big one, the most immediate conference that’s coming up this year. But since that’s about to be sold out, the other big conference this year is gonna be the conference that’s happening in Baltimore, which is the NCGR conference, the National Council for Geocosmic Research. And that conference is happening in Baltimore, Maryland, August 30-September 3, 2019, and that’s also gonna be a great conference. So for those that can’t make it to NORWAC, or if Baltimore is more in your neighborhood and more easily accessible or what have you, that’s a great alternative conference to attend. I’m gonna be giving a talk there. Leisa’s gonna be giving a talk there. There’s a bunch of other great astrologers who will also be, so hopefully, some people can come out and join us for that.

KS: Yeah, that’s supposed to be an amazing conference. I’ll be in Europe, but it’ll be great for anyone that’s here. I’m gonna have to learn about European conferences.

CB: Yeah, well, Europe, in June. Actually that’s a great segue, cuz in June, I will be following you to Europe. And I will be going to the UK to give my first ever talk and workshop at the Astrological Association conference that’s happening in June, not far from Cambridge, yeah, in the UK. So that’s gonna be great. People can buy one-day passes, they asked me to remind you. So if you just want to come in and only see my lecture, that’s totally fine. Or if you just want to come in and see somebody else’s lecture, that’s totally cool as well. So I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of podcast listeners and other people from the UK, as I give workshops on profections, zodiacal releasing, and a keynote lecture on the history of astrology.

AC: Very nice.

KS: That’s very prestigious. Congratulations.

CB: Thank you. So I’ll be getting some tips from you, Kelly, about that. Somebody’s asking about the URL of the conference. And it looks like the URL is astrologicalassociation.com. And there you can find the page that’s for the 2019 conference, and it gives all of the information about it. Actually I just remembered, I’m also gonna give a workshop in Romania, the week before. And I’m still working out the details of that—but I should have it announced sometime pretty soon—with the main astrological organization that’s in Romania. I’m gonna give a workshop on mitigating conditions in birth charts.

AC: Oh, that’ll be interesting.

KS: That sounds very cool.

CB: Definitely.

KS: How did you get hooked up with that?

CB: The Romanian group—when my book came out on Hellenistic astrology—they’ve had a good, thriving community for traditional astrology there, and for Hellenistic astrology especially, over the past decade or two; the last couple of decades. And they were super excited and super supportive when my book on Hellenistic astrology came out two years ago, and they ordered a few boxes of them to deliver to their members when it was released. So it was one of the main groups that I remembered being super excited, and they’ve been wanting to have me out for years, but I kept putting it off while I was writing the book. But now that I’m finally flying out to the UK—and I’ll already be sort of roughly in the area—I figured I might as well take another stop to go over there and meet up with them and give a talk.

KS: Absolutely. I wasn’t quite sure exactly where Romania is on the map, but I have familiarized myself now.

AC: Carpathian Mountains.

KS: Yeah, just kind of south of Poland and southeast of Germany, I guess.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Amazing. Yeah, look, if you’re already in the UK, it’s just gonna be a couple of hours on the plane.

CB: Yeah, totally. So I’m hoping to do that. And I might try to do some interviews while I’m in Europe with some different astrologers and spend a little time there.

KS: Yeah.

CB: So I’ll put links up to that, probably on the description page on TheAstrologyPodcast.com website. That way, if people want to check it out, they can find the URL there. So that’s the stuff I have going on. And otherwise, I’ve just been releasing bonus content for The Astrology Podcast. Leisa and I just recorded the last episode here in our current studio, and released Episode 20 of The Casual Astrology Podcast—which is available to patrons through our page on Patreon—which is like a private, casual podcast that we release once a month. So that was fun. And now, we’re getting ready to move, and we’ll be recording Episode 200 next week. So I actually have a question. I’m trying to figure out what to do for Episode 200, and it’s a choice between doing a ‘best of’ or some sort of retrospective on the past 200 episodes, or even doing a poll for people to vote on the top 10 or 20 episodes. Or, alternatively, a bunch of people have asked me to do a biographical or some sort of interview with me about the podcast or something like that, I think one of you said.

AC: Yeah, I like that idea.

KS: We’ve both said.

AC: And someone should interview you.

KS: Yeah, I’ve been thinking that for a while. And when you mentioned you need something special for Episode 200, I’m like, “Yeah, somebody needs to interview you.”

CB: Yeah. Well, I wish I could bring you two out here. Like fly you guys out here to do that.

KS: Sure. Next week? We’ll just grab flights.

CB: Yeah, just fly out. We’ll have to pass around some sort of collection plate for that. But anyway, I’ll figure that out pretty soon. Cuz literally the first episode of April has to be Episode 200.

KS: 200, okay.

CB: And then after that, I’ll be interviewing Kim Farnell about her new book on Alan Leo, which I’m really stoked about, and it should be a good month.

KS: Fantastic.

CB: Yeah. Is there any other pre-show stuff that we meant to talk about? What’s been going on over the past month? Is there any news or events in the community that’s relevant? I’m trying to think—like books that have come out, or discussions in the community? You got anything, Austin?

AC: Well, I haven’t really been paying attention to online. I see people on Twitter complaining about Chiron. There was Ben Dykes book, but you spent quite a bit of time talking with Ben about that.

CB: Yeah, a really amazing book. I highly recommend getting it.

AC: And what is the title of that?

CB: It is—actually I have my print copy right here. It’s The Astrology of Sahl ibn-Bishr: Volume 1: Principles, Elections, Questions, and Nativities. The guy literally learned Arabic—so he could translate this book—over the past decade. And now, he knows Arabic very well, and he’s just translating stuff like crazy. But this book with Sahl—like what’s important about it is Sahl is one of the first or second generations of Medieval astrologers. And what’s bizarre—and I didn’t see until Ben translated this from Arabic—is he actually had a translation of Rhetorius, as well as a translation of Dorotheus and parts of Valens. So when you read this book, there’s parts of it that look very Hellenistic. He’s paraphrasing parts of Rhetorius almost directly. And so, you realize that the first generation of astrologers writing in Arabic were basically practicing Hellenistic astrology. There were certainly some changes to it early on, but it’s so similar to Rhetorius and stuff that there’s much more continuity in the early Medieval tradition than I realized.

AC: Nice. That sounds like an important linkage.

CB: Yeah, it definitely is. And Ben also has an important and interesting discussion about house division, where Sahl is identifying and recognizing both whole sign houses and quadrant houses. And he’s trying to reconcile them and seems to have specific terms or terminology that he’s using when he refers to whole sign houses versus quadrant houses. So there may be some resolution there. There’s also some interesting stuff about the void-of-course Moon and how we ended up with at least three different definitions of void-of-course Moon. The answer to that may be partially in Sahl. So lot’s of cool stuff.

KS: Yeah, I’m really excited to get my hands on a copy. I mean, I have a bit of a reading stash that I’m still making my way through. But actually, I did sort of have a question for Austin that I got from reading your book, Chris.

CB: My book?

KS: Yeah, your book. It’s actually under my flowers.

CB: My book, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, available in fine bookstores everywhere.

KS: Everywhere. A bit dog-eared, cuz the course I’m teaching online right now is on career and life direction, and we’ve got a lot of focus on the midheaven in the chart. And I was really fascinated to read in your book, Chris, about—I’m pretty sure it’s your book—the concept of the four angles was probably developed first before the concept and structure of the 12 houses themselves.

CB: Yeah, that’s a suspicion that I have. I think it’s something that some of the academics also assume, but there’s a couple of good arguments for why that might be the case. One of them is that in Dorotheus and the earliest electional authors, they almost focus only exclusively on the four angles, and they almost just don’t mention the houses at all.

KS: Yeah. And then there’s a sentence that goes on to say one of the reasons that this could be is that the Ancient Egyptians placed a lot of emphasis on the rising and culminating decans in the chart.

AC: And setting.

KS: And setting. So, Austin, is that something that you had come across in your research as well? I just thought that was fascinating, the idea of the decan that the midheaven is in the decan, or the decan that the ascendant is in. It sounds like a no-brainer, but I just hadn’t quite pulled that together conceptually or interpretively, I guess.

AC: Yeah, absolutely.

KS: And I’m a bit worried now, of course, cuz I’ve looked up the decan of my midheaven, and I’ve gotta think about a few things. Try to infect people only with good things.

AC: You’ll see some health-and-appearance stuff with the rising decan in some of the older texts. They are faces, you know. And so, not available in fine bookstores anywhere.

KS: Can’t get this one. Lucky if you’ve got a copy.

AC: Actually only available in the finest and behind glass.

KS: For maximum price.

AC: It’ll be out again, I promise.

KS: Sometime.

CB: Where is it available? Does William or somebody up in Seattle have one, behind glass? Or where is that?

AC: Yeah, I don’t know who has them right now.

CB: Okay, okay.

AC: I’m sure Mortlake & Company up in Seattle probably has a copy or two. I remember seeing, I think, two of them at the Text and Traditions conference last year. But the standard paperback will be out again before too awful long. No promises as far as dates right now. It’s been a little bit complicated figuring out second edition stuff while figuring out the rest of work and life, but it’s happening.

CB: Yeah, cuz you’re not just re-publishing it. You’re redoing all the illustrations and everything in it.

AC: I think so.

KS: Oh, wow.

AC: I’ve learned some things. You know, I wrote that in 2013. And so, when you write a book about something, and you give away everything that you know, you often end up, I don’t know, creating an emptiness into which much pours. So I’ve learned quite a bit, and I’ve found some more sources that I would like to include in the next edition, etc., etc.

KS: That’s fantastic.

AC: Yeah. Well, that’s how it goes.

KS: Absolutely.

CB: So talking about the angles, if you think about it, the four angles are the things that are just astronomically apparent, and that’s the foundation of the entire house system, any house system, to begin with. You have the rising, where you can see the Sun and the Moon and the other planets rise over the eastern horizon each day. You have the culmination overhead—however you define that in terms of the midheaven—where the planets are either at their highest in the sky, or where the zodiac hits its highest point of arc in the sky, depending on what house system you’re using. You have the setting, where the planets and the Sun and Moon and everything set underneath the Earth each day. And then you have the anti-culmination, where they get to their lowest point. So those are independent astronomical things, where you can look and observe them and then almost draw symbolic meaning from just what that actually looks like in the sky, and what it might mean symbolically as it relates to a person’s life. And then all of the houses that were then developed after that are derived from those as the basic framework. Either the planets are moving away from the angles, or they’re moving up towards the angles, and that becomes the cadent and succedent houses. And so, everything ultimately is derived from the angles and that’s part of the argument for those preceding everything else on some level.

AC: Because they’re all visual—they don’t even require the ability to count to two—literally, all you have to do is look and say, “Watch the sky. Okay, that’s rising, that’s setting. Oh, it’s getting higher, it’s getting higher. Oh, now it’s starting to come down.” And so, a visual recognition of the angles is something that almost certainly proceeds any written record, cuz it requires nothing but an understanding of up and down, right?

CB: Right. Yeah. So you were just reviewing that, just finding that interesting?

KS: I just found that really fascinating. Cuz I was just reviewing the literature, the historical lineage, if you like. Whenever I teach on something, I just like to read all the books that I can on it, just to make sure I haven’t missed anything. Maybe it’s the paranoid person in me, but other times I just like to hear other people’s take on it. And I just thought it was fascinating. I mean, as much as I’m like, “Oh, that makes complete sense that the angles would have come before the houses,” I don’t think that I’d stopped to actually think about that before. And that idea with, say, whole sign houses and the angles—a question that students often have is, “How does the midheaven versus the 10th house work?” So I wanted to really just make sure I had a deeper understanding as I possibly could on the midheaven itself and its significance, which you’ve really articulated clearly—well, you did in your book, Chris, and Austin, you did today—around it’s just a visual phenomenon. It’s up. It’s as high as it’s gonna go. And the symbolism of that, I think, is really beautiful. And then I didn’t know about the Ancient Egyptians focusing on the decans of the angles, if you like, and that forming part of their interpretive piece. And that makes great sense because those angles are really tied into that Ancient Egyptian cycle of life and death placed or overlaid onto the daily cycle, if you like.

CB: Right. Yeah, the easy way to remember it is just that, basically, the Egyptians developed the precursor, the thing that would eventually lead to the concept of the 12 houses, and the Mesopotamians developed the concept of the 12-sign zodiac. And then when those two traditions were merged around the 1st century BCE, that’s when you get, basically, what we recognize as Western astrology, which uses both the houses and the signs of the zodiac together, as two separate reference systems that then get merged together in an astrological chart.

KS: Just beautiful.

CB: Yeah, so we’ll have to talk about it more in our upcoming episode, one of these days, on the significations of the 12 houses, which I mentioned as an idea last month.

KS: Oh, yeah.

CB: And that generated, actually, a lot of excitement, cuz a lot of people would definitely like to see that episode. So we’ll have to talk about doing that at some point.

KS: I think we’re both on board, but maybe in the second half of the year.

CB: Yeah, it’s a big thing to do, just as our two-episode series on the signs of the zodiac was, but it’ll be fun whenever we get to it.

KS: Oh, it’ll be fantastic.

CB: Sure.

AC: Good times.

KS: I’m not trying to blow our own trumpet. That might have come out wrong. But it’ll be really fun to do, is what I meant.

CB: Yeah, yeah. So that was good. That new Picatrix translation came out. And I haven’t gotten a chance to read through it a lot yet, but I’m kind of excited about that. Have you gotten that, Austin?

AC: No, I haven’t gotten it yet. I’ve read several reviews. I understand that it’s useful. There’s not really much there that’s not in the Warnock-Greer. There’s a little bit of academic framing, which, as a practitioner, is interesting to me, but not necessarily of vital importance. I am personally holding my breath for the new translation of the Picatrix from the Arabic, which should be coming out later this year. Oh, I forget the woman’s name, but I follow her on Twitter, and she gives some sweet updates on it. Cuz that’s something that we don’t have. We have the Ouroboros, which was a heroic first effort, but we need more and she’s doing that, and I’m excited for it.

CB: Yeah, I have also been following her on Twitter. I think her name is Liana Saif. But she was actually posting updates as she was translating the Picatrix from Arabic. So you could see her progress, especially as she was finishing up. And I remember seeing the final tweet, within the past month or two, that she had translated the final page. So that’ll be really interesting to see. Somebody asked me a question about that recently—which is actually kind of funny—which was the ethics of using a text like that, where sometimes it’s doing kind of dark or sometimes quasi- or maybe even overtly unethical things. Cuz we were talking about a Medieval text on magic and how to deal with, I don’t know, astrology that’s verging into questionable territory. And it’s been a while since I’ve read Warnock’s translation of the Picatrix to remember the occasional area that was kind of sketchy, but it was an interesting question to contemplate. Have you thought about that, Austin, in terms of that text or others?

AC: Sure. You know, there’s a fair amount of astrological magic in 36 Faces, and so, there’s actually a little ethical note in there. You know, the thing is you can’t learn astrological magic and only learn how to do helpful, entirely pure things. It’s like having a body. If you have a body, then you are capable of doing good, evil, and everything in between. I guess you could leave out every part that mentions Mars or Saturn. But the ethics of it—or the morality or the moral choices—those are practitioner’s choices. I don’t know. It is what it is. You know, we need knives to cut food. You can stab someone with a knife. If you’re the kind of person who gets a steak knife and says, “Oh, I’m gonna go stab a bunch of people,” well, you’re an asshole. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make knives. You know, there’s no way around it, and it’s one of the reasons people have been nervous about magic forever, because it’s a form of power that you can’t wholly control, and it’s very difficult to regulate by the state.

CB: Yeah, and that’s electional astrology and astrology in general. You can do things with it, but sometimes there’s not an inherent thing that it’s always gonna be positive, or there are ways to misuse it, either to inadvertently cause harm. Or potentially, somebody could overtly cause harm or even deliberately cause harm just because it has some power to it.

KS: It is a power, and the way in which it gets used is determined by the user, essentially. I mean, the ‘knife’ image is something I use in that way, too, when teaching, Austin. The knife could be the scalpel in the surgeon’s hand, that’s gonna cut out something that’s toxic or killing you, or it can stab you through the heart. It’s the same tool, just used for different purposes.

AC: Yeah. And in many ways material such as found in the Picatrix makes more obvious some of the moral questions which are inherent in astrology, that actually works. You know, if you have electional astrology that actually works, then you can bring success to people who are doing evil in the world, right?

CB: Right. Cuz that’s funny when it comes to political astrology and stuff. Cuz you get into a little bit of a subjective area there in terms of who you’re deeming to be doing things that are unethical or is a misapplication of astrology. Like if somebody uses electional astrology that’s from an opposing political party that you agree with, in order to make their candidate win, is that unethical or something? Or do you think that’s wrong? Obviously, that’s a much more neutral or questionable argument to make. But, I don’t know. I was just thinking about Reagan in the 1980s. Supposedly his astrologer wrote that she used electional astrology in the debates. But the way that she used it is she said that she deliberately went out of her way to pick a date for the debates that would be bad for her opponent, or for Reagan’s opponent, who was Jimmy Carter. So she was almost looking for a bad astrological day and made that the electional date of the debate.

AC: Absolutely. And even to take this down to psychologically-oriented astrology or psychodynamic astrology, if you use astrology—

KS: This is my cat, Merlin, saying ‘hi’. Sorry.

AC: No worries. If you use astrology to understand what a person’s weak and wounded parts are psychologically, yes, that can be used in a therapeutic context, but it’s also exactly the information that a cruel and manipulative person would want. And no doubt the same tools that have been used to manipulate people have been used to heal people. You know, it’s the problem of power.

KS: Yes.

CB: Yeah. And this actually brought up a discussion that I saw a lot of the younger astrologers having on Twitter a few weeks ago, when there was one new, very new astrologer who is apparently doing readings now. And she had some sort of conflict with a client, and then in a live Instagram stream, said something about the client’s background or mental health status.

KS: Divulged private information from the session in a public forum.

CB: Which just led to huge public backlash from other contemporary astrologers, especially in her generation. And it was productive in that it also led to a lot of discussions about ethics and about ethical guidelines that are in the astrological community, and what’s appropriate versus what’s not. And probably a lot of younger astrologers in their teens and 20’s learned more about the fact that some of the astrological organizations have specific ethical guidelines at this point about what is appropriate in practice versus what’s against the rules and what could get you kicked out of an astrological organization if you violate some of those guidelines very strongly. And that would be an instance of that. But this is probably part of a broader discussion about astrological ethics, I guess.

KS: Yeah, and it’s an important conversation for the community to be having. Astrology’s a little different from other therapeutic practices like counseling or therapy or what have you in that there is an initial, quite strong perceived power imbalance between the astrologer and the client. The perception is that the astrologer has some sort of wisdom or knowledge about the person. You know, it’s not that that’s not true. But straight away, when we sit in session with a client, we are in a power position, and you have to be incredibly aware of the dynamics around that and honoring it. To what you guys are saying, I mean, there is a power, even if you’re not explicitly doing planetary magic or Picatrix-level invocations. Just the art of sharing astrology in a very intimate space—where it’s like I’m not just talking about the general astro weather—you’re talking to a human being about the specific astrology for them and their journey. That’s a very sacred and privileged place to go in. That was horrible what came out on Twitter about that particular individual and how their confidence was violated by this astrologer, basically.

CB: Yeah. I mean, it could have been worse. I mean, I don’t want to name the person or anything. I think the backlash from the community, and also, the discussions that it generated were useful. Hopefully, that one astrologer learned something from that and will never do anything like that again. But also, I think it was a nice learning lesson for the community in general, in terms of their being some standards and norms that sometimes get enforced by the community itself and by reactions from fellow practitioners if you really cross a line. And that, to some extent, is the reinforcement or is the enforcement in the community in terms of adhering to some baseline level of professional guidelines.

AC: Yeah, I don’t know. The idea that somebody would violate the inherent privacy of a consultation is, I wouldn’t say, mind-blowing, because there are lots of stupid people out there. But if you even need to be told that, then you shouldn’t be practicing astrology, or most things involving people. Obviously, it’s all private.

KS: Shouldn’t be working one-on-one, yeah. I mean, it is. And even to the extent that if you take the therapeutic definition of privacy, it goes beyond just not disclosing what’s discussed in a session and right up to the level of not even disclosing who your clients are. So if the client wants to say, “Oh, I had a reading with so-and-so,” the client can say whatever they want. They’re allowed to share. It’s their information. It’s their privacy. But as the practitioner, not even saying, “This person’s my client,” unless they say something in a public forum first.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Yeah. Or sharing birth data being part of patient or client confidentiality.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah. So there’s a lot of that. There’s a lot of that that astrologers take for granted. But I do think it was important because I think some astrologers, probably for the first time, opened up and read some of those ethical guidelines. And sometimes if you haven’t read them before, and you’re not coming from a psychological or counseling background, there can be stuff in there that you don’t realize are guidelines that you need to be aware of. So I think that was productive in that sense at least.

KS: Yeah.

CB: And the other thing—just to take it back to the original discussion—it’s not just magic, but electional astrology. Sometimes there are elections where using the malefics—for example, constructively, or what it would be like to pick a chart where you make Mars, in a day chart, the ruler of the ascendant, or Saturn, in a night chart, the ruler of the ascendant—and some of the potential for problematic things. Or using an election, a Mercury-Neptune conjunction—like we have going on right now—and constructive ways to use that, as well as ways where somebody might use that in a way that’s questionable. There’s the potential for using astrology in ways that are not always as constructive or positive as we immediately assume. But it’s almost kind of useful for an astrologer to think through some of the different possibilities, as part of their training, to be aware of. And I’m trying to think of some other analogies. In the Harry Potter universe, they have the training in the dark arts, or defense-against-the-dark-arts class or something like that.

KS: Yeah. Yeah, because I think that’s a really good point that you make, Chris. And Harry Potter is a wonderful reference.

CB: Right. Yeah, that was a great way to compare our entire field.

KS: They’re learning magic, but they’re also learning that there is a dark side or a shadow side, or there is a way that what they’re learning can be used for negative outcomes. And there probably isn’t enough discussion around that in astrology today, that there’s a sacred power that we’ve got. But people could do some very nasty things with it, if they were so inclined. So at least be aware that that’s there.

CB: Yeah. What do you want to say, Austin? You have some reservations?

AC: Well, I’m sure there are overtly destructive things you can do, but it’s just part of the whole thing. You know, if you elect so that you get the job, then that means that other people didn’t get the job. You know, one person’s success in a competitive field is other people’s not-success.

CB: Right.

KS: That’s true.

AC: I do think it’s important not to get into pearl-clutching about it. You know, astrology provides a real advantage. And people who have an advantage have an advantage over those who don’t have that advantage.

CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s not pearl-clutching.

AC: I’m not saying you were. But I feel like, “Oh, there’s a dark side to it,” the positive side is the dark side. The fact that you can elect so that great success will happen for you, again, in a competitive situation, is not-success for someone else. And so, that’s not a dark art. You’re trying to create something good. You’re trying to create a benefic situation. You know, it’s not like you’re calling the Dementors to attack other people. You know, you’re still aiming to win instead of other people. It’s just part of the deal.

KS: It is part of the deal. And actually I’m like, “Oh, my God, we’ve probably all done this,” because I’m sure we’ve all elected times to sign agreements like buying houses or signing leases and things like that. And in those instances, we’re essentially trying to pick a time that puts us in a more favorable position than the other person. Now maybe the other person does want the deal done, but of course you always weigh it towards you getting the better outcome. So that’s kind of what you’re saying, Austin. In a competition, where there’s you versus someone else, if you’re trying to get yourself to come out ahead, the other person is potentially coming off second-best.

AC: Right. Even if the intention is to create a good in your life.

KS: Yeah.

CB: There’s different scenarios even with that. There’s a scenario where it is mutually beneficial or almost even between two parties. Then there’s a scenario where it’s not mutually beneficial, but instead, you went out and the other person is not in as good of a footing in that scenario. Or there’s the other one where you set it up so that the other party, the 7th house, benefits and you, the 1st house, is in the worst position and not benefiting as much. So just the realization that there are different scenarios in terms of that, and it doesn’t have to be, I don’t know, mutually beneficial or what have you.

KS: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this is great.

AC: It makes me think of I was looking over Ben’s translation of Dorotheus the other day, and there’s some interesting electional models he has for a real estate transaction, where one house is your situation, the other house is their situation. You know, one is the buyer’s situation, one is the seller’s situation. One is a mutual place and one is general outcomes, etc., etc. The problem is that there aren’t enough benefics to go around.

KS: There aren’t.

AC: I don’t know many astrologers who elect specifically so that somebody else gets the better side of a real estate deal.

CB: Yeah. So we’re signing a lease. We had a lease-signing option. With electional astrology, sometimes there’s multiple times with potential charts that you could use as the electional chart, and sometimes it’s not always clear which one to go with. So Leisa and I, in electional astrology, we usually just try to hedge our bets and get decent electional charts for each one we can during different parts of the process. We had three different charts, and one of them was contacting the company in order to initiate looking into getting the place. The other was signing the lease on the place, which is a binding contract for taking possession of it. And the other was the first day that we move in and first walk into the place now, it being ours and owning it. And we had different setups for that. We decided, in the electional chart, that only the mutable signs rising seemed to provide a good rising sign for this week or for that date. And we could have put the Moon-Jupiter conjunction that’s happening in the 1st house, which represents you, the 10th house, which represents the action, the 7th house, which represents the other party, or the 4th house, which represents the outcome, or in this situation, your actual living situation. And so, sometimes you do have questions like that about which one you put it towards and sometimes weighting it more towards one or the other.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Just cuz there could be a scenario where you have to put the stuff in the 7th house so that it’s somehow benefiting the other party if you’re trying to avoid, let’s say, putting the malefics in the 2nd house and losing money on yourself or something like that. There are scenarios where occasionally you might have to weigh things more on the party’s side, in some sense, in order to avoid some worse drawback or something for yourself.

AC: Certainly.

CB: Okay. All right. Anyway, that’s a whole other thing about electional astrology, and yeah, the question of how to use malefics constructively in an electional chart sometimes, or when to make a malefic the ruler of the ascendant, depending on what you’re trying to do. All right, so that was it in terms of discussion topics. I know a few people had asked about Chiron. What happened? Chiron changed signs recently or something like that?

KS: Yeah, I think it went into Aries.

AC: Yeah, it went back into Aries.

CB: Okay. So I don’t really use Chiron at this point in practice, over the past decade. Do you guys use it?

KS: No.

CB: No? Kelly says ‘no’. Austin?

AC: I take note of it. I’ve noticed that if it’s conjoined a significant point in the natal chart, it often is meaningful. Or if it is a conjunct part of somebody’s business by transit, it often describes part of what’s going on. I don’t use it like a planet. Like I don’t really draw aspects to it, other than the conjunction. But yeah, I do use it.

KS: So more like fixed star, Austin, with the conjunction?

AC: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in the sense that I only use the conjunction. You know, obviously, it’s running around the zodiac, so it’s not like a fixed star.

KS: It’s not quite as potent as a fixed star.

AC: Yeah, it doesn’t have immortal fire.

KS: No. Yeah, those stars are pretty magical.

CB: So Chiron. Yeah, I recognize that asteroids can signify things sometimes symbolically, but it’s just not up there in the list of priorities for me. It’s so far down the list that, practically speaking, I hardly ever integrate stuff like that. Is that kind of where you’re coming from as well, Kelly? Or are there other asteroids that you do use more regularly?

AC: It’s not an asteroid.

CB: What do you call it?

KS: No, it’s kind of this weird thing on its own, yeah.

AC: It’s a planetoid.

KS: A planetoid.

AC: It’s not part of the asteroid belt.

CB: Okay.

AC: It’s between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.

KS: And Uranus, yeah.

CB: Okay.

KS: I mean, the funny thing is that my very first professional talk was actually on Chiron, when I was a wee, little, baby, pre-Saturn return astrologer. And I think I managed to insult everyone who was over the age of 50 in the audience because of my complete immaturity. And Chris Turner has a wonderful story about that, but that’s a story for another time. So I definitely have worked with Chiron in the past, but I have not worked with it lately. As I got more traditional and more into things like dignities and planetary strengths, the extra that I prefer or enjoy using more are the fixed stars. So I don’t really work with asteroids or planetoids in my own practice, personally. But, I mean, I have students that do or clients that do, and that’s fine. I just say that, “This is how I would interpret based on my approach.” I mean, the asteroids and Chiron, I always think it’d be interesting to look a little bit more at that. But I really enjoy the work in process, I guess, that I’ve got now. I’m good with that.

CB: Okay.

KS: If that makes sense, yeah. Does Austin want to share anything about Chiron, maybe?

CB: And remind me—before we fully transition into the forecast—that there’s two major announcements I completely forgot to do, and then we’ll get into next month.

KS: Okay.

AC: You know, now if neither of y’all really use it, I don’t know that there’s that much to talk about. Yeah, I use it. I do think that it has a meaningful overlap with what some people would call the ‘Wounded Healer’ archetype. I see it primarily bringing to the forefront issues around difficulty with embodiment or identification. Psychologically, it seems to show areas that there’s an anxiety spike and that the person is very uncomfortable in, both by transit and conjunction. When I see it physically, the wounds that are often associated with Chiron seem to stem from a difficulty in inhabiting or identifying with a particular body part. I think of one reading I did many years ago—which I thought was such a good example—was Chiron in Gemini in the 6th. And the person had an undiagnosable lung condition, and the only thing that produced significant results, in terms of healing it, was doing biofeedback, where they had to learn to take conscious control of their breathing. And so, when there’s an issue indicated by Chiron, especially when it’s physical, the answer doesn’t seem to be allopathic medicine, but a reconnection with that body part. So that’s my 10 cents on what I’ve seen with Chiron. But I don’t look at it unless it’s somewhere very significant. It’s not one of the seven.

CB: Sure.

KS: Cool.

CB: Yeah. And, I mean, it’s just one of those things where every astrologer has to draw the line somewhere in terms of the points that they use and incorporate regularly, and there’s something somewhat subjective to that. There’s maybe some objective things you can look at, like the difference between the visible celestial or planetary bodies versus the invisible ones, or in terms of size or whatever. But nonetheless, there’s still some sort of subjective line that each astrologer has to figure out for themselves, where they’re gonna draw the line, just in terms of their personal practice and what’s just a practicality of how many bodies or points or other things you’re gonna use. And that’s why some astrologers will occasionally criticize other astrologers for not using some points. It’s kind of weird to me, just because everybody draws the line somewhere. Like maybe you use the seven traditional planets, but you don’t use the outer planets. Or maybe you use the traditional planets and the outer planets, but you don’t use the asteroids. Or maybe you use the traditional planets, the outer planets, and the asteroids, but you don’t use the Arabic parts. Or maybe you use all of those, but you don’t use midpoints, or whatever. Like it goes on and it’s ultimately endless. Like fixed stars, trans-Neptunians, if you want to get really wild. The hypothetical points.

KS: There’s a lot of extras to choose from, basically.

CB: Yeah.

AC: No, yeah, you have to draw a line, and I think that line should be coherence, if you can’t bring it all together, and you don’t have a sense of priority between all the different bodies. Use Chiron if you like Chiron, but don’t confuse it for the Moon, right? Obviously, midpoints are less significant than the planets which generate midpoints, right? Not all the fixed stars are equally as bright or significant. The more stuff you do, the more you have to have priority, and the more you have to understand the relationship between all of the points you’re using.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yes.

CB: And it’s hard sometimes, I’m sure, especially for newer students because different traditions will tend to fetishize some specific point that they’re really into. Like you have the evolutionary astrologers and the North Node, or some branches of evolutionary astrology and Pluto and saying that that’s the soul. Or you have some traditional astrologers and the Part of Fortune, the Lot of Fortune. You have some modern astrologers that do that with Chiron, and so on and so forth. So I’m sure that’s confusing also with some newer students, cuz they’ll initially come in and learn some specific approach to astrology that really emphasizes some specific body or set of bodies, and then you go into another tradition and that’s not their emphasis at all. So learning how to deal with that is a learning curve.

KS: It’s a massive learning curve. Cuz you tend to think your first teacher, whatever—or your teacher is gonna teach whatever their working model is, and it’s very easy to think that that’s the only working model, or that’s how everyone does it. But it’s part of the reason why I think it’s great for students or newer astrologers to really connect with more than one astrology teacher, to get a little bit more variety in their training. Not to confuse and overwhelm you, but just to show you that there are many iterations of this thing we call astrology. Now everybody’s got—I don’t know, maybe I’m gonna make some blanket statements here and somebody’s going to correct me. You know, everybody’s going to have 12 houses of some house system in the chart, everybody’s gonna use at least the seven original planets, and then add on your extras as you go.

CB: Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons why I can’t emphasize enough—especially if you’re becoming a professional astrologer, if you’re already doing astrology professionally—to try to attend an astrology conference. For me, in my ‘tips for learning astrology’ articles—and you and Kelly and I did a podcast years ago on that topic—the final thing is always attend an astrology conference because it will just expose you to so many different approaches to astrology and so many different traditions in such a quick time span. It’s a great eye-opener to show you everything that astrology is and the full spectrum, in addition to actually introducing you in person and connecting with different practitioners.

KS: Yeah. And the point of having that exposure to a variety of teachers and astrological pathways is not to overwhelm you and make you think that you actually have to know all the pathways. It’s more to let you know that you can make choices about the way you want to use your astrology. So I know some students go and then they’re like, “But now I have to learn all these other things.” It’s like, no, you don’t. Just see what resonates with you, what fits with your philosophy, what you feel—as you said, Austin—you can make coherent. You know, you only want to use as many tools as you can be clear and useful and insightful with. Otherwise it’s just clutter for you, and more importantly, it’s clutter and overwhelming for your client.

CB: Yeah, it’s like if you only knew that there was one fast-food restaurant that existed, and you always went to that one fast-food restaurant that you really liked, but then suddenly learned that there’s a bunch of other ones that exist. Like you might still go to that first one as your primary thing, but it might be nice to know that occasionally you can go somewhere else if you feel like it one night.

AC: Yeah. Or that there’s food that’s not distributed through a window.

CB: There’s always that. Always that.

KS: That you can go and have a ‘white tablecloth’ experience, too.

CB: So speaking of conferences, that is the thing that I forgot.

KS: Yeah, two announcements.

CB: ISAR. The ISAR conference next year is about to do voting. And that’s gonna open up at the beginning of April, right around the time—I told you guys not to let me forget this. And this is major.

KS: I forgot about it.

CB: We all applied to get in to speak at the ISAR conference, which is gonna be this huge, international conference happening in Denver, not this September, but next September of 2020. So it’s that far in advance. It’s like a year-and-a-half in advance and they’re already planning it. But a bunch of astrologers—I think the limit was, what? 120 or 140 astrologers?

AC: I think it was 120.

CB: Okay. We all tried to get in. I’m not quite sure yet—did we all get in? Did you get in, Austin, before the cut-off?

AC: My application was accepted.

CB: Okay.

KS: Okay, great.

CB: Good. So we all three applied. But the thing is, ISAR wants people to campaign for this and to actually solicit votes. Because they’re gonna open it up to their membership. And now, I think, in April, their membership is gonna be given an option to vote for who they want to see speak at this conference. And ISAR wants people to use their networks to encourage their supporters or followers to vote for them, because they think that’s a good indication of how many people will actually attend their talks at a conference, and they want to make sure the people that are speaking at the conference are people that are gonna draw a crowd or what have you. So voting for that’s gonna open up sometime in the next few weeks. You can find out more information about it at their website, which is isarastrology.com/conference. And at some point there you’ll get an email to vote, if you’re an ISAR member. If you’re not an ISAR member, you might consider signing up and becoming a member, not just to vote, but also, to get access to their monthly newsletter. They have a quarterly print journal. And I think members will also get a discount on the conference if you’re an ISAR member, so it’s a good reason to sign up for that. And it’s also gonna be here in Denver. So it’s like I’ll basically be hosting this thing next year.

KS: We’ll all be staying in your spare room.

CB: Yeah.

KS: There is another advantage to signing up for an ISAR membership, which is that they now offer what’s called a Star Club. And I think every two weeks, they’re doing live webinars you can attend. I don’t know for sure if you can attend free or just for a significantly reduced rate if you’re a member. And then of course, as a member, you get access to the back catalog of recordings. And I did a talk for them early in March on progressions. Yeah, so, but of course, then you can vote, whether you vote for us or someone else that you love. I don’t think you could love anyone more than us, but maybe you love them as much as you love us, who knows? But you can definitely vote because that’s important to how people get selected to speak.

CB: Yeah, you can literally pick out the program that you would want to see if you were to attend an astrology conference, and all the lectures you would like to attend. So that’s a pretty good opportunity. So check that out at isarastrology.org. Finally, the other announcement I forgot to announce is there’s this new astrology card deck that’s being funded right now and the deadline’s about to end, cuz they’re funding it through a Kickstarter. And it’s actually really cool. It’s called Astro Essentia: An Astrology Oracle Deck. And it’s a 36-card oracle deck and guidebook depicting astrological archetypes through collage-type imagery for learning and for divination. So the artist is an astrologer named Courtney Sahl, and she’s funding this through Kickstarter. So it’s like a cool way to fund an astrology project. And right now they have not met their deadline or their goal, and the funding goal ends on April 1. So if they get funded, this deck gets printed up, and it’ll be really nice. And if it does not get funded, then nothing happens, I guess. So people can check that out on their website, which is astroessentia.com. I’ll put a link on the description page, on The Astrology Podcast website. And for those watching the video version, here’s a nice little image of it. I really like their illustrations, their collage illustrations of the houses. And I think it’s kind of a good learning tool for learning the meanings of the houses, as well as the planets and other things like that. Had you seen this, Kelly?

KS: I hadn’t seen it, no. But it does look very colorful and very vibrant. Not that everybody’s doing it, but I did know of Ash Bonnelli, who, I think, is behind the ZODI Deck, which is another deck collection that has come out just in the last month or so, I think.

CB: Yeah, I actually love that deck, and I found it late. Cuz they also did a Kickstarter, and I wish I had seen it before it had closed. But you can find that deck at zodicollective.com or just do a Google search for ‘ZODI cards’ or ‘ZODI Collective’ and you should find it.

KS: Yeah. I mean, different imagery on those two, I guess depending on what your visual taste is, your own aesthetics. Yeah, they’re both really interesting. And it’s so exciting to see people coming up with tangible products to share astrology, but also, to see that innovation and that creativity in the astrological community. Because this is all part of the business offerings, if you like, within our field.

CB: I know. I’m actually really excited about that because there’s just a ton of cool astrology swag and physical products that are coming out lately with the popularity of astrology going through the roof. Like I got this cool, wooden, woodworking thing of my birth chart that was sent to me recently that I’ll have to show you guys at some point. There’s another astrologer I found on Instagram last week who has been printing up hats with the planetary glyphs on them, and I got a Saturn.

KS: I could have a Venus hat?

CB: Yeah. Well, I got a Uranus one and a Saturn one to help propitiate the Uranus transit into my 4th house, and I think it’s working out so far. I’ll have to wear that in an upcoming episode of The Astrology Podcast. But yeah, you could get a Venus one.

KS: There’s an astrologer out in Newfoundland, Elodie, who is just gorgeous. And she made a comment on Facebook recently that ‘astrology is the new yoga’. And I thought that was really interesting in terms of just reflecting how much astrology is sort of exploding into mainstream consciousness or awareness, in the way that yoga did 10-15 years ago, whether that’s good or bad. But I think all of this swag is coming through because there’s obviously more of a demand for it.

CB: Yeah. And you can see the one I was just talking about. They’ve got beanies and stuff at astrologyapparel.com. And I think they recently changed the URL, so it may not show up in the search results. But just search for ‘astrologyapparel.com’. Can you guys see this?

KS: Oh, my God, that’s fantastic.

CB: Yeah, I got the Saturn and the Uranus hats already. But I think she’s working on a Mercury one for me.

KS: I’m gonna make a request for something in pink.

CB: Totally. And she also has a nice Instagram page there as well.

KS: Oh, very cool.

CB: You want a hat? You’d wear a Neptune hat or something, Austin?

AC: No, I’m done with Neptune. Neptune’s been on my Sun for like a year-and-a-half. I’m so over it.

CB: Right.

AC: It was fun. It was fun for six months, but Neptune has overstayed his welcome, its welcome, her welcome, their welcome—whatever Neptune is.

CB: Well, speaking of that, I think that is a great segue into talking about the astrology of April and getting into the forecast section of this podcast.

KS: Love it.

CB: So we are coming out—we are just days away from the beginning of April. I think the starting point has to be the Mercury retrograde in Pisces that’s been happening all of March, and it’s finally stationing direct here at the beginning of the month, conjunct Neptune. So that is basically what we’re opening up the end of March with and the beginning of April with, right?

KS: Yeah. I mean, technically, Mercury stations direct on March 28, but it is still in Neptune’s clutches until the 2nd of April. So, I mean, talk about Neptune overstaying his welcome.

CB: Here is the chart for right now.

KS: I mean, I even have Mercury in Pisces and I’m done with this. What did you call the month of March earlier, Austin? You just said ‘retrograde month’. I think that’s a great term for March.

AC: Well, and there’s such a contrast between March and April, in part, because Mercury stationed on the 6th of March, and is stationing direct at the end of March. Mercury’s basically retrograde the whole month.

KS: Totally.

AC: And we had Mars in Taurus the whole month. You know, Mars in Taurus may have some virtues, but speed is not one of them. And so, what’s interesting is April begins with Mercury finally direct and Mars having just moved into Gemini. And so, there’s a huge contrast there between retrograde Mercury and Mars in Taurus for March and Mercury direct and the Mars in a Mercury-ruled sign, in the more active, manic of the two Mercury signs, pushing things forward. And that Mars in Gemini is especially significant because as April begins, we have the Sun in Aries. And so, we have the Sun in a Mars-ruled sign. And so, the sign that Mars is in is obviously significant there, right? So we have Mars in manic Gemini for the whole month and more, and then later on, we’ll get Mercury and then Venus into Mars-ruled Aries. And so, the pacing of April is, in many ways, the complete opposite of the pacing for March.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Moving away from all the wateriness. We’re getting away from all of the Neptune and the Mercury retrograde and moving into much more dynamic fire and air signs.

AC: Yeah. Just in talking about air, we haven’t had anything other than the Moon in air signs, except for poor Venus in Aquarius for March. And so, we have a much more active, dynamic air. Or a much more active, dynamic planet in an air sign, with Mars in Gemini. I mean, no hate for Venus in Aquarius. I have Venus in Aquarius. But it just wasn’t in position to speed anything along.

KS: No, it didn’t have the extra help. And I am totally with you on this, Austin. The symbolism of Mars moving into Gemini—which happens, technically, on the last day of March—we’re gonna feel it as we come into the month of April. There’s a lightness. There’s an increase in mobility and movement—because air is so much more mobile that earth—and that idea of things being sped up or going a lot faster. But of course we now have the caution about scattering ourselves. You know, we can be so excited that whatever delay or barrier or stuckness has shifted, that we come out of the gate with 25 things we’re trying to do all at once. So that’s probably the other side of the coin, but it is genuinely just gonna feel lighter and like things are happening more quickly.

AC: Yeah. And I would agree completely that the principle difficulty or danger or thing to watch out for with Mars in Gemini is scattering attention, scattering energy.

KS: Yeah, I thought that was really relevant in this first week of April because we will have the New Moon in Aries, in that first week of April. I think it’s the 5th. And of course that New Moon in Aries is ruled by Mars in Gemini. You know, Mars is in Gemini ruling the Sun, but it’s also gonna be the lunation ruler for that couple-week period as well. So that danger or tendency to be scattered is a little bit highlighted.

AC: Yeah, the rule of thumb I use with Gemini is do three things at once instead of six.

KS: We say the same thing, yeah.

AC: You know, if you try to make it too Saturnian and boring, then you lose what power that that offers you, if you try to just make it one thing and pay attention to only that. You’ve gotta give yourself a little bit of room to move for that energy to circulate. You limit it, but you don’t step on it.

KS: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s not about doing seven to 10 things. It’s somewhere in the three-to-five range.

AC: Yeah, exactly.

KS: Multiplicity is relevant. Yeah, you need a few pots on the stove. I mean, even a big stove, you max out at five burners, basically.

AC: Yeah, exactly.

KS: Yeah.

CB: And one of the things that changed last month, of course, is Uranus went into Taurus.

KS: Oh, yeah?

CB: You guys have any reflections on that so far? I mean, we already obviously talked about that last month, and we’ve talked about it previous months. But, I mean, I already started noticing major changes with it going into my 4th house and suddenly moving. One of the things I wanted to point out—cuz it’s a useful interpretative principle that I saw happening in my own life, but it works just in general. We kept talking about how last year, Uranus dipping into Taurus would act like a preview of some of the transits that would come up with Uranus finally moved into Taurus this year for the final time, and there might be some sort of connection. And what I realized, in retrospect, was that last fall, when Uranus was going through Taurus—and I think when it stationed—I initially started thinking about moving when it first went into my 4th house, but then decided it wasn’t time to and I needed to wait a few months. And then as soon as it went back in this month, I started getting the idea again. But this time I realized it was time to move, and now I’m actually moving. So there was like a formal connection between one period and another, just based on a planet first dipping into a house and then leaving and then coming back. And you can sometimes see that with retrogrades, especially outer planet retrogrades that connect long spans of time. Did you guys have anything like that, or was that just me?

KS: We both did.

AC: Yeah, I had a really obvious one. Kelly, you want to go ahead?

KS: Oh, no. You go, Austin, yeah.

AC: Okay. Yeah, so last year, Kait and I made an offer on some land, and it didn’t end up happening. This was after Uranus’ ingress into Taurus. And then this year, it looks like we’re going to offer on a house in the same town that we had offered on land last year. And that’s just come up since Uranus went back into Taurus a couple of weeks ago.

KS: Just in the last few weeks. That’s amazing. You know, I’m amazed because all of us have these stories about moving, and it sort of clues me into the Taurus-land-earth connection. You know, it’s not just about environmental or monetary or food factors. It’s literally, I think in some ways, which land are you physically present to or connected to. Cuz we had the same thing last summer, mid-2018. I had a little bit of a temper tantrum and mentioned to my husband that I just was not gonna be able to do another 10 years of Ontario winters, which are basically very extreme winters. I just had this little Aussie, beach girl inside of me that needs to get back to the ocean. What is our exit strategy? And we spent a few months over the summer just going back and forward. We even went so far as to taking a recon trip out to Victoria, on Vancouver Island, thinking, we love it here. It’s more affordable. It’s on the coast. It’s on the Pacific Ocean, which is what I love. And we made a plan. Two years from now, my husband will retire, and we’d move there. And then, like a month later, before Uranus had left Taurus the first time, my husband comes to me and says, “There’s this job in Europe that I think I’m gonna apply for.” You know, the Jupiter in me is like, “Give it a shot, and we’ll worry about it. You’re gonna have to have 600 interviews for this job. Just put your hat in the ring and see what happens.” And of course he did get the job. And so, this March, just after Uranus went into Taurus again, we went on what’s called a ‘house-hunting trip’ as the recon part of finding a place to live, connected to this job that he’s starting in Belgium in August. And so, that sense of being stirred last year, and thinking you have a plan, it’s like the beta version. And then Uranus has come back and this is the actual version of what’s going to happen. So, yeah.

CB: That works, not just with Uranus transits, but other outer planet transits. Like Saturn, Jupiter, when they’re going back and forth, especially across sign boundaries, but also, sometimes just in terms of the degrees that they hit. Like if you get the first transit of an outer planet, but then it goes retrograde and comes back and hits it two more times, sometimes you’ll see a similar thing where there’s a sequence of events that plays out over an extended period of time.

KS: Yeah, totally.

AC: Yeah, absolutely.

KS: Yeah. And it is interesting, cuz it’s not 4th house for all three of us. Uranus in Taurus is 3rd house for me. Austin, I think it’s 11th house for you.

AC: Yeah, it’s aspecting the ruler of my 4th precisely though.

KS: Okay, okay. Yeah, for me, it’s aspecting the ruler of my 1st and 10th, not the ruler of my 4th, but it’s still happening, regardless.

CB: Yeah. I mean, so yours is interesting. I mean, that brings up like one of the episodes I did this month. I didn’t do horoscopes this month, my apologies to everybody who was emailing me all month, asking about the horoscopes. But we did, on Episode 197, a talk on Uranus transits through each of the 12 houses, where we recorded a local meeting of the Denver Astrology Group. By the way, if anybody lives in Denver, and you haven’t attended yet, you should totally join us for one of the meetings. Just do a search for ‘Denver Astrology Group’, and you’ll find our page on Meetup. But we did a panel, and we talked about what Uranus transits are like through each of the houses. And we also shared some stories and took some stories from the audience about how those transits have worked out for different people in the past and heard a lot of really interesting stuff. And that actually was meant to, in some ways, be the placeholder for doing horoscopes this month because it applies to each of the 12 rising signs, so people can understand what that Uranus transit’s supposed to be about for them. But you guys are coming off of certain Uranus transits. I guess, Kelly, it’s coming out of your—not your tenth whole sign house.

KS: 2nd.

CB: Second whole sign house and moving into your third. And, Austin, it’s coming out of your tenth and moving into your eleventh.

AC: Yeah, correct.

CB: Yeah. I mean, we’ve talked about this in the past. Is this redundant? I mean, did you guys see major changes—Kelly, in your 2nd house, or Austin, in your 10th, over the course of the past decade?

AC: Yeah, we have talked about it. You know, for me, it was actually surprisingly steady in terms of growth. You know, I’ve certainly made a lot of progress professionally since 2012, or 2011.

CB: Oh, right. Yours was shedding your pen name. Basically, it was not long after you had done that. I realized you had started that process maybe a little before. But certainly coming into your own in terms of your reputation has been interesting for me, witnessing that with you over the past decade.

AC: Yeah, that was the very beginning. I think I did that two months after the toe-dip ingress in 2010. I believe I did that in September of 2010, right before I went out to the Esoteric Book conference that year. But yeah, I think there are certain houses that Uranus’ potency is much safer in than others. You know, in the 10th, you can break ground. You can do a lot of the dramatic-breakthrough stuff that Uranus is reputed to do pretty relatively safely. You know, I don’t love Uranus in the 6th house for people, for example. You know, there are areas that you don’t really want quick movement, but then there are other areas where that kind of movement’s just fine. I like Uranus in the 9th a lot, too. I see a lot of people have really huge upgrades to the way they think about and approach reality during a Uranus transit through the 9th. And there are other places that aren’t necessarily hostile, but it’s not that useful. Like Uranus in the 3rd—it’s disrupting your schedule.

KS: That’s the definition of my life right now, Austin.

CB: Yeah, that’s Kelly’s.

AC: You know, that’s not nightmarish.

KS: No.

AC: You know, certain planets’ significations fit more easily in certain houses than others.

KS: Absolutely.

CB: And I want to ask you about yours, Kelly. But really quickly, I wanted to ask you guys—one commenter on YouTube was a little bit annoyed. Cuz by the time we got to the very end of it, we got to the 12th house—just like when you start from Aries and go all the way through to Pisces, and you’re exhausted by the time you get to Pisces—we were running out of time. Also, the 12th is hard to talk about sometimes because there can be some challenging stuff there. So you can be, sometimes, a little more tight-lipped about talking about that, cuz you don’t want to make a bunch of negative statements. But have you guys had any observations about Uranus transits through the 12th house, and some different ways that that sometimes manifests for people? It’s a tough question. Oh, yeah, you’re pulling out your ephemeris to see. Cuz you would have had that at one point.

KS: Yeah, totally. Uranus in Aquarius. So I’m just tuning into when that was for me. So Uranus was in Aquarius, I guess—where’s my other red book? I need the other one. Late ‘90s. So when Uranus was in Aquarius—that was 12th house for me—I started to study astrology formally. I need to just check. I’ve got books everywhere.

CB: Do you have three ephemerises within reaching distance?

KS: I do, actually.

CB: Okay. No, that’s good. That’s impressive.

KS: I have an old and newer version of this, and then I have this one. Cuz sometimes you just need to reference this shit.

CB: Right.

KS: Oh, okay, right. 200 thoughts in my mind. Uranus in the 12th, for me, was working through a lot of baggage from my past. Basically, Uranus moved into my 12th when I was about 17- or 18-years-old and was there until my early 20’s. Now it was just stuff from my family and my upbringing that I had to process. I always think of the 12th house as a bit like your personal Pandora’s box, where you have stuff that’s kind of tucked in there that you might have forgotten about, and Uranus comes in and starts stirring everything up. I remember having periods of sleeplessness at that time. And I remember doing a lot of really intense journal writing. You know, it was Uranus in an air sign, so that was part of it, but I just had to get some of the stuff inside me out. But I also did start studying astrology, and I also took my remedial massage therapy training. I also started running my first little astrology group in my own home—because it was sort of that quiet, safe, 12th house sanctuary—but still doing Uranus-type stuff, if you like. So there can be some productive elements to it, but it has a quality of disturbing the psyche or disturbing the mind. Now, for me, that helped me push back on the pressure I had about pointing my life to go into a more conventional career, which I tried for a couple of years. But by the time Uranus was out of my 12th house and into my 1st, I was like, “No, no. We’re gonna give this astrology/massage therapy gig a shot, and we’ll come back to corporate if we need to in the future.” So it was processing a lot of that stuff for me and then some of the symbolism that I would tie in there. But I don’t know. I mean, how would you phrase it, Austin?

AC: Oh, the first thing I was gonna say was therapy.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Like you said, it stirs up all that 12th house stuff, and the best thing to do is actually cooperate with that. Let’s say if Uranus is moving into your 12th house, or has just moved into your 12th house, start a dream journal. This is something I’ve said a million times, but it’s true. One of my favorite things that anybody’s said about Uranus was something Rick Levine told me one time. He said, “Uranus makes it impossible to repress anything in that area.”

KS: Can’t keep a lid on it.

AC: So the 12th house is where things go to be repressed. And so, yeah, you get eruptions of whatever that material is. And so, it’s best if you have something to catch that in, and then to refine it, and then to begin the alchemy because the raw material will emerge of its own accord.

KS: Yeah.

CB: I like the keyword you used, Kelly, of dealing with the past or letting go of the past.

KS: Yeah, it was really critical. And when I track back now, when I think about Uranus in Pisces—which was 1st house for me—that was this sort of explosive, exciting ‘outcome-ing’ of me working as an astrologer. I think I’ve written about this on my blog. When Uranus hit the degree of my ascendant, I magically, coincidentally, out of the blue, ended up with a very large annual astrology horoscope writing contract that I’ve been doing for many years ever since. But I don’t think I could have been in a position to benefit from what Uranus in the 1st was really trying to bring forward had I not dealt with the baggage and just all the stuff that happened in my childhood that was weird and painful. You don’t have the resources as a teenager or as a young child to deal with that stuff, so you tuck it in the 12th. You know, regardless of how old you are when Uranus goes through your 12th, it’s only gonna happen once in your lifetime. If you live to be an average 84-year-old person, we all get seven-to-eight years of Uranus in the 12th, and that’s your opportunity to clear a lot of that emotional baggage or psychic clutter. And you wanna do it because you wanna be ready for Uranus in the 1st house. That’s so exciting that it’s worth whatever you have to sift through with Uranus in the 12th.

CB: Definitely. Yeah, and so that idea that it can be sometimes about sudden endings, but endings sometimes as being necessary in preparation for a new beginning, starting with the 1st house.

KS: Absolutely. Yeah, in a few comments, in the chatbox here, similar. People—like you guys were saying—doing therapy. And somebody else really got into their astrology at that point. And there may be other things going on, too, but it’s interesting those little pieces.

CB: Yeah, I’ve been reminded about—you guys made this point already—that Uranus transits are often about liberation and seeking freedom. But then sometimes there is a question. And I’m already observing this in different people’s lives—in watching that shift in Uranus in one person I know, where it’s going through their 4th house—and this sudden urge to make major, radical changes, but then sometimes questions about whether they’re gonna ultimately end up being constructive changes or not-constructive changes. Just that question sometimes where there’s a little bit of walking into the unknown, but a desire or a feeling like are being pushed to do something, and you can’t necessarily or it might be hard to hold that back even if you wanted to.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, it definitely lights that Promethean fire, right? There’s a desire to, I don’t know, steal fire from heaven, to reject the existing order of things. It’s very Prometheus. It’s also very Miltonian Satan, ‘I’d rather reign in hell than serve in heaven’. You know, the ‘anything but this’ is a very common Uranian sentiment. Whether that’s fortuitous or not, it’s not fortuitous or not. That’s the directionality of it. And you have to assess whether it’s a good idea or not based on whatever instruments you have. When I think of Uranus, I always think of The Fool card in the tarot. You know, it’s a figure who’s kind of all packed up and on the road, and they’re about to fall off a cliff. You know, The Fool is the archetypal protagonist in that they don’t know the story that’s about to start. You know, they don’t know the story that they’re about to fall into. I tend to advise people when they’re having big Uranus transits to just take an experimental frame of mind because you don’t know. You know, find out. You know, try that. See what happens. I think that one frame of mind that people come into with Uranus transits, that’s actually the least useful, is wanting to know everything ahead of time.

CB: Right.

KS: It’s like the least useful strategy for life, basically.

CB: How to expect the unexpected.

AC: Right. Yeah. Of course, on an emotional level, that’s how we react to a significant uncertainty, we want to double-down on the known. You know, Uranus is the mad scientist and doing experimentation and then finding out, finding out what happens; obtaining some of that scientific bravery with your life, where you’re willing to experiment without pretending that you know exactly what’s going to happen. Regardless of what happens, you will have data. Although we get scared when we make any change that is significant, people’s fear about making change and fear that they’ll make a permanent mistake is often much greater than the actual consequences of whatever the choice is. You know, be brave. Don’t pretend you know everything. Find out what happens. You know, like we were saying with the way that Uranus’ steady direct motion and then retrogradation goes, a lot of times, if it’s a planet that’s being aspected, you’ll get three hits. And so, maybe you go for it on the first one, and then you reevaluate on the second or the third or whatever. Anyway, that’s a little bit of how I deal with Uranus.

CB: The phrase that comes to mind is it’s like the ‘throw caution to the wind’ transit. Like that’s the best phrase or idiom I can think of that sort of encapsulates what you were talking about.

KS: Yeah, I use a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson to often describe Uranus signatures, if maybe someone has a really strong Uranus placement in their natal chart, or somebody’s who’s going through a big Uranus transit. The quote is: “Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” And the idea there is that there is that experimentation/data-gathering, as you were saying, Austin. It’s almost like you’ve gotta get curious about what things might be like and give it a shot and see what happens, basically.

CB: And I love that we’re already seeing this. Like this is what’s so exciting to me about major planetary shifts, especially outer planet shifts, when you were into it already. We’re now a few weeks into it. Cuz we’ve been anticipating for a while what it was gonna be like and what stuff we were gonna start seeing, and now, I’m starting to see it happen. And it’s so much fun to start seeing that stuff happening in people’s lives around you, and starting to see the shift in those energies or however you want to describe it. Cuz it’s so informative and educational, but visceral in actually experiencing it sometimes in your own life and seeing it happening in other people’s lives, in terms of that real empirical or tangible understanding of learning astrology. Like Uranus hasn’t gone into Taurus before in my lifetime. This is the first time I’m experiencing this, so it’s interesting seeing that and what that’s like. A transit that maybe I noticed coming up in the ephemeris 20 years ago—when I first started learning astrology in the early 2000s—is now happening, and you’re starting to see those changes in different ways in people’s lives around you.

AC: Yeah, it’s great. I’m always entertained by the shift from theorizing and speculating as to what a particular planetary position might do and getting to watch the show.

CB: Right. Or like this month, doing that with the Mercury retrograde conjunct Neptune in Pisces. That was everything it was cracked up to be for me. I mean, there were some curve balls, but they were funny, on-character curve balls, so I was just like, “Yeah, of course that’s happening because of this. Cuz Mercury’s retrograde in Pisces and it’s conjoining Neptune now.”

AC: Yeah, that one was as-labeled.

KS: I love it. I mean, I’m thinking, on the Uranus track, one thing astrologically that’s happening in April is we will have the Sun conjunct Uranus, which I think is the first time the Sun is conjunct Uranus in Taurus. Because last year, I don’t think they were at the same degree. They might have been in Taurus at the same time, but we didn’t get a conjunction. Correct me if I’m wrong, Austin.

AC: Yeah, no, you’re correct. Uranus followed the Sun into Taurus.

KS: That’s what I thought, yeah. I mean, it’s—

AC: Yeah, go ahead.

KS: —later in the month. But I’m really interested to watch and see what sort of amplification or spotlight or activation comes through around that time for this longer Uranus in Taurus trend.

CB: Looks like April 22, around 2.5° of Taurus. So that’s more or less right around where it stationed retrograde at 2° of Taurus last year.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Nice.

KS: Just a little thing in April.

CB: Right. You’ve got something hitting that, right, Austin, at two fixed signs?

AC: Yeah, I have my Venus at 2 of Aquarius. So we should have an offer on a house by then, if things go as I suspect they will.

KS: Yeah. Beautiful. That’s exciting.

AC: Yeah. You know, fingers crossed. I don’t want to jinx it.

KS: Don’t wanna jinx anything. Yeah, it’s early days. Buying a house is such a big process that I always feel like it’s a bit magical when it comes together because there’s so many steps and stages along the way: the financing, the banking, the approval, the agreeing with the seller. You know, there’s a number of steps where things can fall down, and they do sometimes. You know, the one time, of course, where it all comes together, it is that sense of ‘meant to be’.

CB: Yeah, so let’s start hitting the rest of the forecast a little bit more in order, from the top of the month and then moving through. One of the first things that happens—I think we should touch on—is there’s a lunation really early in the month, in the first week, right?

KS: Yeah, the 5th. Friday, the 5th.

CB: Okay, so New Moon on Friday, the 5th, in Aries. So there’s a New Moon in Aries.

KS: Yes.

CB: All right. What do you guys think about that? It’s a New Moon. It’s at 15° of Aries. Mercury is direct now, but it’s still conjunct Neptune. So we’re still trying to drag ourselves out of that Mercury retrograde conjunct Neptune, but we’re not quite there yet. It looks like the lunation at 15 Aries is squaring Saturn a little bit, about 5° away, at 20° of Capricorn. It’s a little heavy. Although by this time, of course, Mars has changed signs and moved into Gemini and finally gotten out of Taurus.

AC: Yeah, so, I mean, we’ve got an interesting and mixed bag here, right? We have Venus in a beautiful position at 11-ish Pisces there. You know, the Sun is exalted in Aries. You know, there’s a blooming light there. You know, it’s the best dignity that the Sun has had in months and months and months. And we also have the Sun’s ruler in this case, Mars, just enter Gemini the week before. You know, fast, fast, fast, let’s do things. But Mercury is still deep within the shadow of the previous retrograde, still fallen in murky Pisces. And the Sun is striding toward a square with an intimidating Saturn. You know, it’s not just Saturn in the superior position to the Sun, it’s Saturn in Capricorn. It’s Saturn conjunct the South Node. It’s Saturn conjunct Pluto. You know, that trio, that Saturn-Pluto-South Node, is hands down the most consistently difficult stuff in the sky in 2019. And so, it’s interesting. There’s something almost a little bit potentially heroic about the Sun in Aries confronting the Saturn-South Node-Pluto in Capricorn. And in the days following the New Moon, the Sun will be moving closer and closer into that square, and there’s more to that story. You know, if we’re talking about doing new things and trying to get everything together, the weight of the past is very much symbolized by that Saturn-Pluto-South Node. And so, this is heroic, ‘Marie Kondo-ing’. You know, this is ‘Marie Kondo-ing’ with a flamethrower.

CB: Right.

KS: Well, yeah—sorry, Chris.

CB: No, go ahead.

KS: I was gonna say it is heroic, ‘Marie Kondo-ing’. But I think it’s also some kind of weird invitation/demand that the ‘Marie Kondo-ing’ process is now applied to more substantial internal things rather than just our wardrobes or our stuff, in terms of the blossoming that the Sun in Aries is striving towards versus this, if you like, baggage or old patterns or habits that might be described by the Saturn-South Node-Pluto combination. Whether that’s just a bad habit that you’ve fallen into, that you need to figure out a way to try and get out of the grips of, whether there is some stuff in your family history—the idea of the ancestral lineage we had talked about a little bit before with the South Node here—it’s almost looking at what is impairing that Sun in Aries path forward. Which is probably gonna have something to do with the past, something old, something entrenched and how can there be some sort of negotiation between those two.

CB: Right.

AC: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s significant to note that if we’re using the Mean Node calculation, right before that we have the South Node or Ketu’s conjunction with Pluto.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And later in the month, we get the South Node’s conjunction with Saturn. And so, we’ve had that—what’s the three-form of pairing? That trining, that ‘triumvirating’, the ‘trio-ing’ of Saturn-Pluto-South Node for, I don’t know, four or five months now. But this is the South Node hitting both Saturn and Pluto exactly while they’re closer than they ever have been before, right?

CB: Which is really weird, of course. Cuz later this month, we’re gonna get an intensification of Saturn in Pluto when they both station retrograde.

AC: Yeah, on the South Node.

CB: Wow.

AC: You know, this month is really interesting to me from the point of view of we have that ‘obstruction/difficulty/blockage/weight’ signature super emphasized. But for a lot of the month, we also have a pretty glorious set of configurations, right? We have Venus exalted. We’ve got the Sun exalted. We’ve got Jupiter in Sag. And then you put the Moon in the right place and you’ve just got beautiful charts at several points this month. And so, in many ways we have a better set of configurations during the first three weeks of April than we’re gonna have for quite some time. You know, it doesn’t get better in May.

CB: Yeah, that’s what Leisa and I found. We just recorded and released The Auspicious Elections Podcast for April. Leisa actually found a bunch of great electional charts for the first half of April, but then it started getting a lot more difficult later in April to find really clean charts.

AC: Yeah. Well, there’s a significant shift right around the Sun’s ingress into Taurus.

KS: Yeah, Venus goes into Aries about the same day.

AC: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we have the Sun moving out of exaltation and Venus moving out of exaltation on the 20th. You know, it’s not that it starts raining poop.

KS: It’s not raining rainbows. Or there’s no gold pellets coming down anymore.

AC: Yeah, those choice bits just aren’t available anymore.

CB: Well, and look at the contrast. Like look here. On April 23, the Sun conjoins Uranus for the first time; that transit you guys were talking about. And that’s the same day, virtually, that the Moon conjoins Jupiter in Sagittarius. But then it’s like immediately after that, the Moon goes into Capricorn and catches up with Saturn and the South Node and Pluto. And that’s when the first of those series of stations happen. Cuz Pluto stations retrograde at 23 Capricorn immediately after that, around the 24th or 25th. Then the Moon hits those planets. And then not too long after that, by the 29th and 30th, Saturn stations retrograde.

AC: Yeah, exactly.

CB: It’s like a weird pileup at the end of the month.

AC: Yeah. You know, as far as getting while the getting’s good, up until the 20th.

CB: Right.

AC: I don’t know. Part of the imperative here is to catch up on stuff while the skies are supportive to start the new things that you’ve been meaning to, while the skies are supportive. We have a really nice window here. Like I don’t think that there are better electional charts for another five months. There are some good ones. There are some nice bits in August, and I like the end of the second half of September a lot. And it’s not that it’s all horror between now and then, it’s just that there are some unusually good things that are present during the first couple of weeks of April. And so, you can just kind of kick back and enjoy it, or even better, make use of it, despite the fact that, yeah, that Saturn-Pluto-South Node thing is there. The resistance is there. It’s not that there’s no resistance and that it’s a slip-and-slide to utopia. There is resistance, but there’s still a lot here. There’s a lot that makes it worth putting in the effort to get things started, to get caught up during these first three weeks.

KS: Absolutely. I nerded out a little bit on the Saturn-South Node/Pluto-South Node. I just did a bit of data collection just to see how often are these things happening, have we had an instance, relatively recently, where Saturn and Pluto have been with the South Node so closely. And that actually hasn’t happened. I only looked back to the 1900s. And Pluto and the South Node are together about every 17 years, give or take. Saturn and the South Node are together about every 11 years. There’s been two instances in the 20th century where they were close, once within sort of a six-month timeframe, and once within about a 12-month timeframe, but this is the only instance where we get that conjunction happening—Saturn-South Node-Pluto—in the same four-week period. So there is some amazingly good stuff. It’s like the first two-to-three weeks of April are these extremes, if you like, where there’s some really good stuff that’s worth activating, as you said, Austin. But I do think we have to be really present to the idea of what we have to demolish or pull apart or step away from or end, so that we can maybe have space or energy or resources to go for the good stuff, to go for the gold.

CB: And that just reminded me. You saying that, Kelly, reminded me that the lunations this month must be the halfway point or the midpoint between the eclipses this year in Capricorn and Cancer, the Capricorn/Cancer axis. Because that means these two eclipses—or sets of lunations in Aries and Libra are the middle cardinal signs in between that. So it’s like the halfway point.

AC: Yeah.

KS: Yes.

CB: Yeah, so turning point with respect to whatever the series of events is—that were probably opened up with some of those eclipses earlier this year in Capricorn and Cancer—and then whatever the continuation of that series of events is this summer, when we get the next set of eclipses six months later. But here, we have the crucial turning point in between that series of events, when we get our two lunations this month, first, in Aries, and then in Libra. So while we’re speaking about that, and speaking about the first part of the month being way better, this might be a good opportunity to mention the electional chart for this month before I forget to do it, like I did last month. So we actually found a ton of charts. We had more charts and more alternative rising signs that we threw in this month than I think any other month we’ve done on The Auspicious Elections Podcast so far. We had two potential ones that we could feature, but we decided to just feature this one. So this is the chart. It’s set for April 14, 2019, starting at around 7:15 in the morning, give or take, not too long after sunrise, with around, let’s say, 12° of Taurus rising, or just Taurus rising in general. So this an 11th house-focused electional chart. It has Taurus rising, and the ruler of the ascendant is Venus, which is exalted in Pisces, in the eleventh whole sign house, and it’s applying to a square with Jupiter, which is over in Sagittarius, in the eighth whole sign house, in a day chart. So this is a situation where the ruler of the ascendant is well-situated zodiacally, being in the sign of its exaltation. It’s also in a good house, the 11th house. And it’s got an applying, close degree-based aspect with a benefic, which is Jupiter, that it’s applying to by square with reception. So this would be a great 11th house chart for 11th house activities related to friends, groups, alliances, and things of that nature. We definitely recommend it for that. It’s not a great chart for financial matters, cuz it has Mars in the 2nd house in a day chart. So if financial matters are really crucial to your election, then you might not want to use this chart. You might want to use one of the other electional charts that we found this month in that podcast. The Moon in the chart is in the 4th house at 17-ish degrees of Leo, and it’s applying to a trine with Jupiter. And this chart also—depending on your timezone—has the Sun at 24° of Aries, applying to a trine with Jupiter at 24° of Sagittarius. So you can put any degree of Taurus rising. You probably don’t want to put Uranus right on the ascendant, unless you’re doing something particularly Uranian. We have it set here so that the midheaven in Denver is at 24° of Capricorn because we wanted to mitigate the Sun being in the 12th house. And that’s the way to do it, by making the Sun configured by a close degree-based aspect, within 3° to the degree of the Sun. And if you do that, you’ll get more of a constructive or positive manifestation of the Sun in the 12th rather than a more challenging one that people might want to avoid. So that is the electional chart for this month. You guys have any 11th house things you need to do this month?

KS: I mean, this chart—this has totally got nothing to do specifically with this election, the Taurus rising, Venus in Pisces—reminds me of a conversation that happened on Twitter with Austin. Maybe it wasn’t a conversation. You might have tweeted something around the exaltation degree of Venus being a better day for Valentine’s Day, when the Sun goes near there each month.

AC: Well, what I was saying is what’s interesting is that St. Patrick’s Day—

KS: That’s what it was.

AC: —is actually when the Sun overlaps with Venus’ degree of exaltation every year. And it’s interesting because it’s a holiday that’s already super-Venusian, even though it’s supposedly about celebrating snakes going away or something. But really it’s about wearing green—which is a traditional Venusian color—and hanging out and drinking a lot and having a great time. Which is like, of course, that’s the ‘Venus in Pisces’ day. If you look at the election for Valentine’s Day, if you look at Valentine’s Day from an electional standpoint, it doesn’t work very well.

KS: Yeah, the Sun’s in craziness then.

AC: Yeah, it’s just like, yeah, it’s in the last decan of Aquarius, okay. But what’s fun about the day of this electional chart is this is the final season of ‘Game of Thrones’ day.

KS: Is it a premiere day?

AC: Mm-hmm.

KS: That’s hilarious.

CB: It’s premiering on the 14th?

AC: Yeah.

CB: That’s so funny. So our most featured electional chart for the month is the day that the final season of Game of Thrones premieres.

AC: And if you look at 6:00 Pacific, right, then you have the Moon basically at 24 in a perfect grand fire trine with Jupiter and the Sun. It’s like, well, of course. Everybody is going to watch that. You know, of course that has a pretty epic configuration.

CB: That’s hilarious. You’re right. That grand fire trine does complete later that evening, like right around the time it’ll be airing.

KS: Well, yeah. That Sun-Jupiter trine—it’s a really yummy aspect that we have coming through this April, with the Sun exalted, Jupiter in rulership, and then to get the Moon application.

AC: Yeah. And that’s also the Sun’s reward for getting through the square to Saturn, South Node, and Pluto. You know, the sequence—which I spoke of the first part of when we were talking about the New Moon at 15—the Sun then has to do the square with Saturn-South Node-Pluto. But as soon as the Sun gets done with that, it gets a nice trine with Jupiter.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And so, there’s a reward waiting immediately on the other side of that particular ordeal.

CB: Right.

KS: A golden reward, yeah. Beautiful.

CB: Nice. At 24° of the fire signs, an exact fire grand trine. Yeah, definitely take advantage of that. That’s like the opposite of your podcast, Kelly. Some other fire sign people are gonna have to start a podcast that day called ‘The Fire Sign Trio’.

KS: Absolutely. Yeah, and it’ll be very different.

CB: Right. Yeah.

KS: Very different.

CB: Yeah, that’s the electional chart for this month. So we found five or six other electional charts, which you can get access to if you become a patron on the $5 or $10 tiers on our page on Patreon, at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Subscribe. Then you just go to the Patreon page, sign up, and then you’ll get immediate access to that. I think it’s a 30-or-40-minute discussion where Leisa and I go through all of the electional charts each month and talk about what they can be used for and what they’re good for or not good for or what have you.

AC: Nice.

KS: Fantastic.

AC: Speaking of fire signs, and sort of back to astrology’s infiltration and increasing intersection with pop culture, do either of y’all watch Drag Race?

KS: Austin, is that a serious question for me?

AC: Yeah.

KS: I don’t.

CB: Serious because the answer is ‘yes’?

KS: No, the answer is I’m not even sure what the show’s about. Is it drag racing? Drag queens?

AC: No, it’s the apotheosis of reality television. Anyway, it’s RuPaul’s Drag Race.

KS: I was like, “Is this the RuPaul show that I’m randomly hearing about?” Okay.

AC: Yes. I can’t believe you don’t watch Drag Race. Anyway, the runway theme a couple of weeks ago was your zodiac sign, What’s Your Sign? And so, all of the contestants did a full runway look that was their zodiac sign. Not only was it just fun, but it was also fun because you got to see everybody’s sign.

KS: Oh, cool.

AC: And they were not evenly distributed. It was sort of Leo, Aries, and Pisces. There were multiple, multiple, multiple. And I think there were maybe two Caps and that was about it. But I was like, “That makes sense.” I don’t know. It was a lot of fun. Okay, so neither of you guys watch it?

CB: No.

KS: No, but I think this is great.

CB: If you’re endorsing it. This is giving the ‘Austin Coppock’ seal of approval. I’ll have to check it out.

AC: Kait and I have seen every episode of every season. We are waiting with baited breath.

CB: I mean, that’s just like one of another hundred different things I’ve been meaning to write down, of just astrology weirdly coming out into the mainstream or into mainstream media in different ways. Like The New York Times ran an article against Mercury retrograde or complaining about it this past month, trying to dissuade people.

KS: They’re still saying Mercury is in retrograde, but at least it was in The New York Times, I guess.

CB: Yeah. And there was a funny little exchange on Twitter where Cosmo, Cosmopolitan, made fun of them, and they were like, “That’s such a Capricorn thing to say,” or something like that, in the Twitter exchanges. Because Cosmo actually just launched a new and expanded astrology section in their magazine, which is interesting and another manifestation of that. I feel like there were a few other little things like that that happened in the past month, and I can’t remember them all. I’ve been meaning to do a podcast episode. So I might ask people to send me things that you’ve seen over the past year where astrology is suddenly showing up in different weird ways in mainstream media, and seems to be going more mainstream. And maybe I’ll do some sort of roundup of that in an episode of the podcast, at some point here in the not-too-distant future.

KS: Yeah, that would be cool.

CB: Yeah. Okay, back to the forecast. We got through the first lunation. Where are we at? Once we get to the second week of the month, I think there’s an important thing that happens, which is Jupiter—who has been cruising along in Sagittarius, doing pretty well—suddenly slows down and stations retrograde by about April 9-April 10, right?

AC: Yeah.

KS: Yes.

AC: I mean, Jupiter’s been slowing down for like a month.

CB: Right.

AC: It’s only a surprise if you hadn’t noticed that. But yeah, we get Jupiter’s retrograde station, on the 10th, is it?

KS: Yeah, on the 10th. Yes, 10th, Eastern. 11th, in Australia.

AC: So that begins Jupiter’s third-of-the-year retrograde, which it does each and every year. I feel like we need to do a little bit of a PSA moment here. You know, the retrogrades of Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, etc., etc., they’re not like Mercury or Venus retrogrades. Venus, for example, will almost flip significations and go from being a creator of harmony to a creator of strife when it goes retrograde. Jupiter doesn’t become this big, bad awful when it goes retrograde. It calls for a little bit more thoughtfulness about surging forward. I tend to describe it in terms of consolidating the gains that you’ve made or digesting what you’ve learned. You know, it’s not quite as extroverted or as ‘risk-takey’, but it’s not malefic. And it doesn’t become malefic in elections or in natal charts. In terms of grading Jupiter’s phases in terms of pure benefic potency, it is not as potent as the direct phases, but it’s still worth putting in your electional chart. It’s still Jupiter. And in this case, it’s still Jupiter in Sagittarius.

CB: Yeah, it’s like a slight impediment, or, what is it? Like a minor imperfection on Jupiter. I don’t know. Sometimes when I put an election out, where it’s like Jupiter, I know somebody’s inevitably gonna criticize it and say, “Well, you made the ruler of the ascendant retrograde,” or something like that. But if we’re talking about Jupiter in its own sign, in a day chart, in a good house, if it’s also retrograde, that may cause some delays or some do-overs or minor imperfections or impediments like that, but that’s not a huge deal-breaker. And sometimes I feel like people struggle with that, with electional astrology, of not knowing how to correctly prioritize, and realizing that a lot of the art of electional astrology is trying to avoid the things that are the worst-cast scenario and working with the things that are acceptable shortcomings, let’s say.

AC: Yeah, I find with Jupiter’s retrograde, it does take a little bit longer to get to the positive outcome, but it gets to the positive outcome.

CB: Right.

AC: It’s just the path is a little windier. It’s the difference between a straight versus a windy path to get to something good, and both of them lead there. And so, yes, prefer the direct over the circumambulatory, but still—

KS: Yeah, you take a surreptitious Jupiter versus a much more difficultly-placed Saturn or Mars that might be direct, but could still be more problematic. I think that was a good PSA, Austin. Because I do find that people struggle to understand that a retrograde can affect a planet differently, depending on the nature, size, and scope of a planet. And for some planets, a retrograde is massively-inhibiting changing influence, and for other planets—as we’ve just described here—it’s a blip, but you’re still looking at a golden thing. Yeah, so it’s not as much of a deal-breaker, I guess, for the slower-moving planets as it is for the quick ones.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Definitely. So yeah, we’ll be dealing with that for the next several months. It’s not till later this year at some point that Jupiter—

KS: In mid-July.

CB: July?

KS: I think it’s mid-July.

AC: August.

KS: Or is it mid-August?

CB: Okay, on the 2019 Planetary Alignments Calendar, which I have on my wall—

KS: Oh, I beg your pardon, yes.

CB: Conveniently, I just sent a bunch, 150 of them, to Amazon, and it’s back on Amazon after being gone for a few weeks. And I’ve dropped the price to $15. So you can find that on Amazon. You search for ‘2019 astrology calendar package’, or something like that, and you’ll find it. It says that Jupiter stations direct August 11.

KS: Here’s me wishing it goes direct in July. Sorry, Austin.

AC: It’s almost exactly on the trines to the Sun that Jupiter stations. So you basically have four months of morning rising, four months of retrograde, four months of evening rising with Jupiter. You know, it’s a benefic, and so, it likes clean math. You know, it’s not complicated. It’s just basically a third for each cycle, with a little bit of invisibility at the end.

KS: Love it. So yeah, Jupiter will spend basically the whole month, I think, at 23-24° of Sag.

CB: Okay.

KS: Cuz of the station.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Which, I mean, for some people, will be good, if that’s hitting a personal planet for you. It may be the intensification of a positive transit. It’s certainly something. It’s gonna come back to that point. So it may initiate or begin a series of events that may not fully come to completion until later this year, when Jupiter returns back to that degree; back to 24° and completes its final pass. But at least it could be the initiation of an opening of a certain window, that could have some positive-growth-and-stabilization-type themes. All right, so that’s happening around the 10th. Then we get into the next week of April. And that’s probably where a lot of the action starts happening, right?

AC: Right. Well, we have the big old grand trine on the 14th, which is Sunday.

CB: Right.

AC: And then shortly thereafter, we have a planet changing signs. We have Mercury moving into Aries. So this is Mercury finally being done with Pisces, after more than two solid months. So that’s a good thing.

CB: Yeah, when did that start? It’s not until it leaves pretty much. Cuz it stationed retrograde at 29. So that’s basically when it leaves its shadow as well.

AC: February 8, I wanna say. No, February 9.

KS: Oh, beg your pardon. 18th. February 18. Listen to us with Mercury in Pisces. Oh, my God, wrong year. Oh, my God, that’s 2018.

AC: Mercury entered Pisces on February 10.

KS: On the 11th.

CB: There it is. So now I’m sharing it. I thought I was sharing it. I forgot that I wasn’t.

KS: It’s like two months that Mercury’s been in Pisces.

CB: Okay, so that was the beginning of that transit for a lot of people. February 10, it went into Pisces, and has been going through everyone’s whole sign house that’s represented by Pisces. So at the very least, activating the topics associated with that house. It went into its shadow, what? At 16° of Pisces? So that was around February 19. Then it stationed retrograde at 29 Pisces around March 5-March 6. It went direct recently this week, as we’re recording this, around March 29, and then finally moves direct and passes its shadow April 16 and moves into Aries around the same timeframe, around April 17. So yeah, that’s the end of a very long Mercury transit for a lot of people.

KS: It is.

AC: And so, not only is that Mercury in swift, bright, sharp Aries, that also puts Mercury into a mutual reception with Mars, right? Mercury is in Mars-ruled Aries. Mars is in Mercury-ruled Gemini. And so, we’re kind of doubling-down on that quick, multiple, fast, sharp, bright quality.

CB: I like that. That is very nice. How do you feel about mutual receptions? That’s actually the talk that I’m preparing for NORWAC, reception as a mitigating factor in natal astrology. And I sort of recognize different types of mutual reception. Especially in natal astrology, I always see that as a really big mitigating factor. And that’s one of the things I’m interested and excited to share with people. Cuz it’s one of the nice traditional concepts that I learned in terms of traditional mitigating factors that really seem to make a difference when you’re looking at natal charts and whether somebody has a challenging aspect, that’s really tough, versus when there’s a silver lining or even something more constructive about it.

AC: Yeah, I like them. I differentiate between those where the planets form at least a whole sign aspect versus the ones where they don’t. You know, I guess the way that I think about them these days is, one, when you have mutual receptions, not always, but often, you have planets that are in the opposite of their domicile, or are in places where they’re usually uncomfortable. The one this month doesn’t have that issue. But one of them might be Mars in Libra and Venus in Aries, right, where they’re both in exile or detriment. But they can look at each other, and they rule one another. And so, what I tend to see is that you will have many of the difficulties that are suggested by the planets being in detriment or wherever they are that’s problematic, but you’ll also have benefits as if they were in signs that they ruled. You sort of get both rather than just getting the low-dignity version.

CB: Right. I love that. And it’s easy for people to overlook, but it’s such a key to really understanding some charts and why they operate, or why they work sometimes as well as they do unexpectedly. So here’s the completion of this reception that we’re looking at right now at the very end of the month, April 30. So this mutual reception, where Mercury gets to 19 Aries and forms an exact sextile with Mars at 19° of Gemini. So they’re both exchanging signs or domiciles, and they’re completing an exact aspect with each other. So I’m actually looking for chart examples of people that have either a reception, a traditional reception, which is when one planet is in the sign of another, and especially if they’re still applying to an exact degree-based aspect. If you have a good example of reception in your chart, and you know what that matches up with in your life in some way, then email it to me. Cuz I’m actually farming those out and looking for new additional examples over the course of the next month or so, as I’m preparing that lecture. Yeah, so that’s a nice reception. And that’s a notable thing that’s sort of characterizing the entirety of this month, as soon as Mercury moves into Aries. Cuz then it’s just building up to that exact aspect for the entirety of the month. It looks like it goes exact on the very last day of April. So that begins about April 16th or 17th, when Mercury goes into Aries. And it looks like that ingress of Mercury into Aries occurs right before we get that lunation in Libra. And that’s the second lunation in Libra. It’s one of those rare instances we mentioned last month, where we had one lunation right after the equinox—which occurred at 0° of Libra—at the beginning of the Sun moving into Aries. The Moon hit early Libra and formed a Full Moon. And now we’re getting our second Full Moon about a month later at 29° of Libra on April 19. So two lunations, two Full Moons in Libra, kind of a little bit unique. And it’s interesting, again, with those being the middle points between those two eclipses. Just a lot of energy happening in the cardinal signs.

AC: Yeah, it is interesting. One of the ways that I was thinking about it and writing about it is we had a Full Moon in the first degree of Libra, then we have a Full Moon in the last degree of Libra. And so, there’s a double-emphasis on balance, on equilibrium, which is I think exactly what’s useful halfway between the eclipses, starting the second quarter of this year, which is not full of friendly skies. You know, it’s like getting your balance back, as we mentioned earlier, catching up on stuff, getting to the point where you’ve got your balance. You know, things might not be perfect, but you’re on top of it again and are ready to move forward from a place of balance rather than stumbling from week to week.

CB: I like that.

KS: That’s a beautiful description. One other thought that I—I mean, you’re always so poetic, Austin. It’s a Gemini thing. I’ve noticed people that have, I don’t know, some personal stuff in Gemini—I don’t know. Anyway, sidebar. Mental craziness. One thing I had observed or just thought about with this lunation—the Full Moon ruler, Venus, also at the very end of her sign at this lunation. So there is this real sense of like the Full Moon at 29°, Venus at 28 Pisces. It’s like we’ve got this moment of clarity or rebalancing or insight. And then within 24 hours or so, we’ve got the shift of the Sun into Taurus, Venus into a new sign. So it’s like it hangs on the precipice and then something sort of shifts or drops away or changes form and focus quite quickly afterwards.

CB: Right. This is like the critical turning point in the month.

KS: It is, yeah. Sun and Venus—as Austin said quite beautifully earlier—they’re in their exaltation signs, and then they’re not. And both of them are there, and then not there quite quickly. It’s quite an interesting thing to have both change signs in the same 24-hour period.

CB: Yeah. And with that lunation, the other thing that’s interesting is, cuz Uranus is so early in Taurus, as soon as the Moon is done with that lunation, it just immediately slips over into Scorpio and immediately opposes Uranus at 2° of Taurus. And then the Sun basically does the same thing, which is right after that Full Moon happening at 29° of the Libra/Aries axis, the Sun changes signs and then just immediately starts that application with Uranus at 2° of Taurus, which it completes a couple of days later on the 22nd.

AC: Yeah. And so, I mean, really, that Sun-Uranus thing is active for most of the end of April. Like maybe, say, 20th through 26th or something. Just give it a week-ish.

KS: Give it a good week, yeah.

AC: Because the Moon’s gonna ping that a couple of times.

CB: Right. So that’s getting us into the later part of April at this point. And pretty much we start running into, at this stage, like I mentioned earlier, when the Moon goes into Capricorn, after completing its conjunction with Jupiter. Pluto stations retrograde at 23° of Capricorn around April 24-April 25, right around the same time that the Moon’s in Capricorn, conjoining Saturn and Pluto and the South Node, weirdly. And then not too long after that, just a few days later, the very last week of April, on the 29th, we have Saturn also stationing retrograde in Capricorn. So there’s some real intensification of that cluster of Capricorn planets, that are all clustered around 20° and 23° of Capricorn around this point in late April.

AC: Yeah, although it edges into May. Shortly after that pair of stations, we can see there on the 29th, Mercury is at 17 Aries. And so, then Mercury is gonna square Saturn and the South Node and Pluto, and Venus is gonna do the same. And so, the end of April and the first part of May is more challenging than that first three weeks of April that we’ve been talking about.

CB: Right.

AC: There’s more focus on the weight of the Saturn-Pluto-South Node there.

CB: And triggering those transits, if you have sensitive points there. Sometimes it’s when the stations happen that you get the intensification that produces a turning point or an event in that part of your life that coincides with that transit, whether it’s a positive one or a challenging one. So that’s also true with Jupiter stationing over at 24 Sag earlier in the month, but definitely the people getting a heavy transit or any sort of significant transit by the Saturn and Pluto around 20° to 23° of Capricorn. Whether it’s conjoining or sextiling or trining or squaring or whatever, opposing natal planets in your chart, that last week of April is really gonna be the focal point for that transit.

AC: And again, it issues us into the next phase for Saturn. You know, Saturn’s gonna be retrograde for months, right? And so, just like the rest of the superior planets, Saturn has its morning/rising phase, its retrograde, and then its evening. And so, it’ll be retrograde for months. And so, this is the sort of reevaluation phase. I think of the retrograde phase of Saturn as inspection for what you built, or an inspection of structural changes you made, making sure you really got done all the things you were supposed to get done.

CB: Definitely.

KS: Yeah, absolutely. The Saturn station, I think it’s really interesting. And you sort of alluded to this earlier, Chris, if your chart is being activated. For instance, maybe you have a natal planet or chart point—like the ascendant or one of the other angles—at 20° of a cardinal sign. You’re getting a very strong dose of Saturn experientially, we could say, loosely, mid-April to mid-May, given that the station’s right at the end of the month of April. It’s like a reality check or a call to clarity. You don’t necessarily have to make all the changes immediately because you get that second activation later in the year, where Saturn’s gonna return to 20° Cap, and Jupiter’s gonna return to the 23°-24° of Sag. But it’s definitely letting you know the topics and the territory that need your full attention to be reworked, restructured, adjusted, consolidated; insert appropriate adjective there.

CB: Brilliant. I love that. Good. All right, and that’s kind of how we close out April, honestly. Not to close out on too sober of a note, but that’s kind of what the last week or so is kind of like after some of the change in energy and the more dynamic nature of the first half of the month, and some of the nice electional charts that we see then. Yeah, we just had a little bit of an intensification of the Saturn-Pluto-South Node Capricorn energy towards the end of the month and early May. And then that will start to usher us into May and June and July and some of the major alignments that we talked about on the yearly forecast episode that are coming up right around the corner from there.

AC: Yeah. And an additional angle on the Saturn-South Node-Pluto stuff is that I would say do whatever work is called for in that area. Don’t put it off. Like don’t wait for eclipses to happen on top of that Saturn-South Node-Pluto in order to deal with it. A lot of times these things have their own pacing, and you can’t necessarily zoom ahead and graduate early, but there’s certainly the option to fall behind or keep up. You know, that Saturn-South Node-Pluto stuff isn’t super fun for most people, but it’s worth putting time in now so that it’s not like an overdue bill when June and July’s configurations roll around.

CB: Yeah, that’s really great advice, to start working on that now, especially if you can anticipate that as something that’s coming up, that might become more critical, and something you already know you need to start working on. Just start doing it now because that will help you to mitigate it and make sure it doesn’t all hit you at once, once we start getting those eclipses later in the middle of the year.

AC: Yeah. You know, if people need some clarity about what that’s about, think back to the first half of January, when we had our solar eclipse near that Saturn-South Node-Pluto, right? Some of the themes that rose then and how those have carried forward.

CB: Yeah, so that eclipse was in Capricorn on the 5th of January.

AC: Mm-hmm.

CB: All right. Is there anything major, transit-wise, that we’ve completely overlooked or forgotten about, as we’ve been going through this? You got anything, Kelly, in your three ephemerises?

KS: I know we don’t always talk about every aspect, but the one at the end of the month that I’ve just got my eye on is Mars square Neptune on Saturday, the 27th. You know, for the most part, there is a lighter, more mobile energy to Mars in Gemini. But this square with Mars squaring Neptune is sort of ‘glucky’, clogged up, definitely more lethargic. You know, I often sometimes use the word ‘comatose’ for Neptune. The idea of just being slowed down or needing that break or just a kind of escape. So there’s definitely, I don’t know, confusion, in the more negative, even deceit and deception. But it’s a hazy few days as Mars makes that square to Neptune at the end of the month.

AC: Yeah, I find that Neptune has significant power to debilitate Mars.

KS: Yeah.

AC: It’s like trying to drive a tractor through a lake. Like you have all that horsepower and it just kind of doesn’t matter. I find energy levels and motivation often dips around then. The Mars-Neptune squares, sometimes people’s immune systems go down. You know, it’s not great for making fast progress.

KS: It’s not. It’s like the opposite of fast progress.

AC: Yeah. Well, it’s like, “Well, in what direction should I turn my efforts? And I don’t really feel like doing it anyway.” You know, it’s that kind of energy.

KS: I mean, yeah, I totally agree on that. Like, “I don’t really feel like doing it anyway.” I mean, that’s pretty much the vibe.

CB: And what a great compliment to Saturn and Pluto sort of grinding to a halt in Capricorn, in their forward movement, and then starting to turn back at that time. Or at least stationary, virtually, right around the same time.

AC: Right. Yeah, this being the hundredth reason. Like make hay while the Sun shines during the first part of the month, cuz the last 10 days are not really pro-action.

CB: Yeah, things are slowing down and coming to a bit of a stand still for a little bit.

AC: Yeah. You know, there are revelations afoot with the Sun’s conjunction to Uranus, but I don’t think there’s gonna be action.

KS: No.

CB: Sure.

AC: You know, and the Moon’s waned down. So get it done. Get it done during the first part.

KS: Yes.

CB: All right. Brilliant.

KS: As much as you can.

CB: So I think that’s the forecast for the month. What should I title this episode? Do you guys have a pithy title?

KS: I’m gonna defer to the Gemini Moon on that one.

CB: ‘April Astrology Forecast:’, something very brief, like two or three words.

AC: We have different titling styles, Chris.

CB: Yeah, right. You would do a whole paragraph—if you could get away with it—for the title of the episode.

AC: More like five or six words.

CB: Okay. I’m just trying to keep it on one line. That’s my imposed restriction. So I’m gonna think of that. If anybody in the audience—

KS: Okay, ‘Sweetness and Success’ because of the Venus in Pisces/Jupiter in Sag. But for the first half of the month only.

CB: Okay. I’ll put that in parentheses.

KS: Yeah.

AC: ‘April: It’s Pretty Good for a While’.

CB: Right.

KS: ‘It’s Pretty Good at the Start’.

CB: Thumbs-up emoji. All right, I think that’s it, guys. So thanks for joining me today for the forecast for April.

KS: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having us. Always a pleasant chat.

AC: Yeah.

CB: We’ll be back again next month for the forecast for May. And then after that, potentially, we’re thinking about doing at NORWAC one of these forecast episodes live, in person, in Seattle, in front of a live audience, or at least some sort of cool discussion in person. I guess we’re still working that out, but we’ll see what happens. Do you guys have anything else to mention before we wrap up?

AC: I don’t think so. I mean, classes, Sphere + Sundry elections. You know, I’m Patreon writing. Sort of all my standard stuff you can find at AustinCoppock.com.

CB: Kelly?

KS: Yeah, very similar. Classes. Consults are booked out for a couple of months. So if you are thinking that you’d like a reading, I’m letting people know, book a couple of months in advance right now. And there’ll be changes to my timing with availabilities come July, after we move. But yeah, I’m teaching for most of April. Teaching online different classes, all on KellysAstrology.com.

CB: Brilliant. And as for me, I’m not sure if I’m doing horoscopes this month, cuz I’m moving this week. I’ll try to get it together if I can. Looking for possible volunteers to do transcripts of The Astrology Podcast. Cuz we’ve been slowly organizing those over the past six months, and there’s actually some new ones on the website, if you go to TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Transcripts. Also, I’m looking for WordPress design themes—both for my consulting site, as well as for the podcast website—to potentially redesign it. I’m working with somebody on that. But if you happen to know of a good theme that would look good, then please send it in, cuz I’d love to see it. Also possibly looking for website designers. If anybody is good with WordPress, I might be looking for somebody to work with. And then finally, Episode 200 is coming next month. Kelly, you and I did the first forecast episode back in June of 2015, and that was Episode 32 of The Astrology Podcast. And then Austin joined us the very next month actually for Episode 34. And it’s so funny, cuz both of those were really impromptu. Kelly and I—I think it was at NORWAC or something.

KS: It was totally at NORWAC. And you were like, “I need to be more creative or just do more stuff with the podcast.” Anyway, we somehow came up with the idea of a monthly forecast show, and we just did it the next month. And then Austin was visiting you the month after maybe.

AC: Yeah, I was speaking at a tarot conference in Denver, and I was crashing with Chris.

KS: Yeah. And then it’s just been the three of us ever since, offering some insights and a whole lot of madness as well.

CB: So it’s like how many episodes? That’s at least 50 forecast episodes we’ve done. So I’m about to celebrate Episode 200. So a quarter of those episodes were actually then, presumably, with you guys, if my multiplication is correct.

KS: Well, close to it. I mean, we would have done 12 episodes a year, for nearly four years.

AC: And then we did significations of the basic planets.

KS: Yep.

AC: And then we did zodiac one and two.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And then, Chris, you and I have done one or two separate. And Kelly, you’ve done a couple of separate with Chris.

KS: Yeah, that’s true. We’ve done a few pairs. Yeah, so between the three of us, we’ve contributed.

CB: Yeah, I think altogether that’s definitely over 50 episodes. So at least a quarter of the 200 episodes that I’ve done have been with you guys. So thank you both for joining me on this. This has been really amazing, and it’s definitely changed my life over the past few years. I think I launched the page on Patreon around the same time. And all the support I’ve received from listeners has totally changed my life, and is allowing me and Leisa to finally move out of our crappy basement apartment and move into something a little bit more nice. And that’s gonna improve the sound so that there’s not dogs barking and other stuff that is baked into some of the classic, most important episodes of the podcast in the past; hopefully, no longer in the future. But yeah, thanks to both of you two, as well as all the patrons and all the listeners who have supported the podcast over the past few years. And I’m gonna keep pushing to improve and expand what I’m doing, and just keep going and making it bigger and better.

KS: Yeah, you’re doing a wonderful service for astrology, Chris. It’s amazing to see how it’s taken off. I mean, I love doing these shows with you guys every month. So it’s just wonderful to be a part of it, even in a small way.

CB: Yeah.

AC: Yeah.

CB: And, well, it’s just fun doing it together. Cuz we get to hang out and talk and catch up each month and talk astrology, which we would normally do. It gives us an excuse to do what we love to do privately anyway, but we’re doing it as part of our profession and doing what we love.

AC: Yeah, it’s been a really wonderful thing, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me as part of it. I like it. It’s been good, you know. You know, it’s changed your life. But it’s also, I think, changed—I don’t want to oversay it’s changed everybody’s lives who’ve listened, but it kind of has, or at least a goodly proportion. You know, you’ve changed some of the topography of what discussions are happening in ‘astro-land’ and absolutely for the better. So cheers to the next four years.

KS: At least.

CB: Yeah.

AC: It’s been four. Sorry. I wasn’t saying it should end at four.

KS: No, totally. I had this weird flash the other day where I was like, “Are we still gonna be doing these shows?” Cuz, Austin, you and I just both had a big birthday. I’m like, “Will we still be doing these shows when we celebrate our 50th?” And I was like, “Probably.” I mean, if people are still listening. We’re not gonna lose our passion for astrology. So it just feels like you’ve started something amazing, Chris, that is making such a contribution to our field.

CB: Yeah. Well, it’s been a lot of fun having the opportunity to do that, and I can’t believe I’m able to. And I’m gonna try to reinvest in the community, cuz I want to start doing more serious interviews with some astrologers. I’ve been talking with Michael Erlewine about doing an interview with him. And he, unfortunately, recently had a stroke, but we’re talking about actually flying out there to do an in-person interview with him to capture part of his story, as like I’ve said in recent episodes—one generation of astrologers is on their way or is handing over the baton to another—capturing some of those stories while we have a chance to. So I think that’s gonna be the goal for the next hundred episodes of The Astrology Podcast, so we’ll see what happens.

KS: That’s beautiful. Somebody in the comments just said: “Oh, it’s like Venus is in Pisces now or something.” I’m like, “Yeah.” Showing the love. And that’s a wonderful thing, Chris, because I know that generational shift. It’s so wonderful to capture those legacies and that wisdom, of people who have been doing this for longer than we’ve been alive. You know, their experience is something that you kind of want to preserve for posterity. And you have a wonderful vehicle to be able to do that.

CB: Yeah, and that’s what I’m gonna do. And that’s why I’m taking the Patreon money that’s coming, and I’m funneling that into video and audio equipment. Cuz I’m doing remote interviews, but the next stage of the podcast, I think, is doing high-quality, 4K interviews with some of these famous astrologers that are still around, and learning and documenting some of that astrological history to pass onto the next generation, and some of those stories that you can only get by talking to a person. And I don’t want it just to be these small boxes through Zoom, but actually sitting with people in person and flying to their home to interview them in a much more intimate setting. I think that’s gonna be my goal. So yeah, if people want to help support that, then sign up and become a patron. And that’s gonna be my goal for the hundred episodes.

KS: Love it.

CB: All right, guys. Well, I’ve got some moving to do, some boxes to move.

KS: A few books to pack up, Chris?

CB: Yeah, one or two. Leisa is not excited about us having to move like 30 or 40 boxes of books. And I’ve got a ton of bookshelves to set up. But hopefully the next episode should be shot in the new studio. So I look forward to showing it to everybody here in a week or so.

AC: Remember to lift from the knees, Chris.

CB: Lift from the knees. Okay, I will remember that, thank you. Thanks to our audience of patrons for attending this live recording. We appreciate and love your comments. Thanks to everybody for listening, and we will see you next time.