The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 106, titled:
Astrology Forecast for May of 2017
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on April 30, 2017
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released November 27th, 2024
Copyright © 2024 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. So this is Episode 106 of the show, and today we’re gonna be talking about the forecast for May of 2017. You can find out more information about the podcast, or you can subscribe at theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. So joining me today of course, as usual, are Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees. Welcome, both of you, back to the show.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey, guys.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hello.
CB: Hey. Surprisingly, it’s been a month since we talked last. Lots of stuff has happened. We’ve got some news and announcements to get out of the way at the top of the show and then we’ll jump right into the forecast. So those who would like to know how to jump straight to the forecast, I’ll put a timestamp in the description for this episode, and then you can skip over everything else and just go there if you’d like. Otherwise, let’s see, so news and announcements first. Since this is the final episode of April, we need to do the drawing for April, for the prizes for this month. In order to cut out some time that we usually waste doing the drawing and everything else, I’m just gonna do the drawing and announce the winners separately through Patreon—directly to the people who are entered into the drawing—and just let the person know that they won. I do, however, want to mention the two prizes, which are essentially our two sponsors for this month. So the first one is we’re giving away a pass to the Northwest Astrological Conference. This is gonna be the best astrology conference of the year. It’s taking place in Seattle from May 25-29, 2017. It’s gonna feature over 30 speakers speaking on a variety of different astrological topics, including pre- and post-conference workshops. Including, I believe, a workshop with our friend Mark Jones, as well as a number of other very good astrologers. There’s gonna be a huge bookstore, because the family that runs the conference actually used to run an astrology bookstore in Seattle. So they’re very big in the astrology book industry, and they always have an amazing bookstore at this conference. And other than that, I’m gonna be attending. I think Austin’s gonna be there.
AC: I’m actually not gonna be able to make it.
CB: What? You’re not gonna show up?
AC: No. I thought I was going to, but I have a contrary commitment.
CB: What’s that? Can I inquire?
AC: Nope.
CB: Okay. All right, I may still try to talk you out of that. I mean, I want to hear what this other commitment is off the air later, but that’s disappointing. Well, a lot of other astrologers who have been on the podcast over the years will be at this year’s conference, including Sam Reynolds, including Mark Jones, and just a ton of other notable astrologers. So you can find out more information about that conference at norwac.net. There’s still time to sign up. It takes place pretty much one month from now. But usually, if you get your plane tickets booked three weeks ahead of time, you can do it before the price jump. So I will announce the winner of that to the patrons directly, after we’re finished doing this episode. So the other prize we’re giving away this month is a copy of Benjamin Dykes’ forthcoming book, which is a translation of the 1st century astrology Dorotheus of Sidon. So Dorotheus was a 1st century astrologer whose work was extremely influential in the Hellenistic and Medieval astrological traditions to the extent that most later works on electional astrology and horary—and some works on natal—were really predicated on Dorotheus’ work, due to all of the Medieval astrologers that drew on him. So this book contains some of the earliest material on both natal astrology and electional astrology that survived from the tradition. And it’s really exciting. I’ve been actually reading a PDF of it from Ben to give him some comments over the past few weeks, and it’s just an amazing accomplishment and an amazing new translation. So he’s gonna announce the release date of the book in the next week or two, in early May, and we’re gonna do an interview to talk about the book, to do his formal announcement sometime in early May as well. So you can find out more information on Ben’s website at bendykes.com. You guys have read Dorotheus, I’m sure, right?
KS: Bits and pieces. Maybe not in as much depth as you guys might have.
AC: No, it’s been a while. It’s not something that I’ve picked up in the last couple of years.
CB: Sure. It’s a useful text in terms of—especially the fifth book—reading the electional material, because you can really see where a lot of the later electional rules come from. For later authors, they’re just sort of repeating different rules that have been passed down for hundreds and hundreds of years, but in Dorotheus you actually see, to some extent, the original source of where many of them came from. So that’s an exciting work. Yeah, and I’ll announce the winner of that giveaway also in the next few days. So other announcements—do you guys have any major events or classes coming up?
KS: I just have one webinar on the progressed Sun, which I’ll be teaching on Saturday, May 20. So if anyone’s interested in the progressed Sun from a timing perspective, you can sign up for that via my website. That’s it.
CB: Okay. And what about you, Austin? Do you have anything coming up?
AC: Yeah, I’m actually launching a 12-week-long class on transits on Saturday, May 13. And it’s gonna be exciting. I decided to make it a really long class because I feel like astrologers generally learn transits in a really piecemeal manner. Cuz once you figure out what they are you can kind of look at 10,000 of them. You start looking at individual cases. But I wanted to lay out and explore transits from the beginning and in the context of other timing methods. And so, if anyone would like to work on transits with me—and sort of start over again and sort of build it up from the beginning—that’s a really good way to locate and patch holes in your knowledge and technique. So it begins on May 13.
CB: Awesome. All right, so that’s a couple of weeks from now. So still time to sign up through your website.
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, and as for me, I released a few new recordings recently, which you can see on the sidebar of theastrologypodcast.com. On theastrologypodcast.com, I think it’s ‘/store’. There’s a section that shows recordings. So I released a new 90-minute lecture on the history of Western astrology, a new 75-minute lecture on an introduction to the basic rules of electional astrology and how to select auspicious charts, and then another lecture on zodiacal releasing and timing peaks and transitions in your career and overall life direction. So you can see those on the sidebar of the podcast website. Other news and announcements—registration for the United Astrology Conference is now officially open. So that’s actually really exciting. So the conference is gonna take place a year from now, in May of 2018, but it’s already getting ramped up, and it’s already been a several-year process in the making because this is the biggest astrology conference of the decade. UAC, or the United Astrology Conference, occurs when all of the major astrological organizations in North America pool their resources in order to host one big mega-conference, basically. So I wanted to mention to people that the early-bird special ends May 1. You may or may not be listening to this by then. If you are, and you considered signing up, I’d really recommend getting in before the price jump. Cuz basically you can get in for not-super cheap, but relatively cheap compared to what it’s gonna cost the longer and longer you wait to sign up. So if you’re thinking about signing up, sign up early before the price jump on May 1. And let’s see, also, the whole schedule is up. So you can actually see everyone who’s speaking and what their topics are. The pre- and post-conference workshops are up. I’m actually doing a post-conference workshop on annual profections and timing how different topics will go in a given year for you using the concept of profections. You guys are both giving talks at UAC as well. What are you guys speaking on?
KS: That is a very good question, Chris. I would need to check the schedule to remind myself.
CB: Sure. You’re actually organizing a whole track, aren’t you?
KS: Oh, that reminds me. Yes, I am, the natal intermediate and advanced. I think I’m talking about aspects and a second talk on maybe some challenging chart or difficult chart combinations, something along those lines. I know I’m speaking on Friday and Sunday, that much I know. It’s the best conference. I’m so excited about it. And now that registration’s open, it’s definitely worth people signing up to get the best price. It’s like the ‘astrological’ Olympics.
CB: Yeah, it’s gonna be crazy. The last one was in 2012. So this is literally just something that happens twice a decade, if that. And so, it’s always like this really important event within the astrological community that has a lot of significance and importance for a lot of people.
KS: Totally. Yeah, it’s the kind of event that people will make the effort to come to, even if they’re not normally in the habit of going to conferences every year.
CB: Right. And, Austin, are you speaking on the decans?
AC: Yeah, I’m giving a talk on the faces.
CB: Okay, awesome. All right, so you can find out more information about that at uacastrology.com. All right, other news and announcements. I’ve been retooling some things during the Mercury retrograde with the podcast website, which didn’t really go very well, honestly. I was trying to fix the feed, because a lot of people had noticed that when you subscribe to the podcast through iTunes or a mobile phone app that it only shows the latest 50 episodes. And I’ve been trying to get that to go back further now since we have a catalog of over a hundred episodes. Initially, I completely messed up the feed. I think I fixed it at this point, and it’s now showing the last 100 episodes and seems to be working on mobile phones again. The only issue is that iTunes doesn’t seem to be updating as regularly as it should, so there may be a lag or a delay in iTunes updating. Otherwise, you can see a lot more episodes and download a lot more episodes than you could before automatically on your phone. So check that out and let me know if it’s working for you on whatever device that you’re using. Other announcements—the only other piece of news or announcement I had is a community-wide piece of news. Bill Nye, the skeptic and science promoter, recently launched a new series on Netflix, and he actually had an episode where he had an astrologer on, and our friend Sam Reynolds actually joined him for a panel. It was like two or three skeptics and then Sam, basically, an astrologer—in between these other two—for a very brief discussion about astrology. A very brief and pretty hostile discussion about astrology. Did you guys catch it?
KS: I haven’t had a chance to watch it, no. You did though, Chris, right?
CB: Yeah. I mean, I just finally checked it out last night. I didn’t think that it went that well. I mean, I’ve seen different comments in the community of general support, which is good in terms of supporting our friend. But I did send him a message to see if he wanted to come on the podcast and maybe do a recap or a postmortem of how it went and how it came out and what he learned from it, or what he would have done differently. Cuz one of the things that’s always true about these segments is they’re always exceedingly short and brief by design because it’s one little 5-minute or 10-minute segment within the broader context of a 30-minute or 60-minute show. So there’s only so much that you can really say, and you only get so much time to get your point in. But then you also probably have issues with editing and whatever was recorded is then condensed down further in order to get it in that short format. So I don’t know. I mean, these things rarely go terribly well for astrologers. And this one—the cards were kind of stacked against him to the extent that it was a panel with three skeptics and one astrologer. But yeah, I’d be interested in hearing how other people thought it came off, or how they perceived it as going, and then maybe we can talk to Sam and have a broader discussion about that process of attempting to interface with either the skeptical community or the public at large, and how to deal with some of the questions.
Cuz some of the questions that were being thrown at Sam were kind of subtle, but they were all pretty nefarious. I mean, one of the questions—it was a very subtle comment—he was like, “So you do this for a living?” And then he was like, “So you make a pretty good living off of this.” And so, he was just trying to not very subtly imply that you’re basically ripping people off and making a lot of money off of something that he didn’t believe worked or was a legitimate phenomenon. And Sam kind of tried to take the track right from the start—which I understand—of saying astrology is not a science, it’s a language. And I understand why he took that track—and other astrologers have attempted that—but it doesn’t usually come off very well. Because when you say that to a group of scientists—where their litmus test for what is real versus what is not is ‘is it scientific’ or ‘is it a science’—that just sort of means that you’re conceding the point, or you’re just saying right from start that you don’t think that what you’re doing has any actual objective validity. And I don’t think that that’s what Sam was actually trying to say in terms of that he doesn’t think that it works. Clearly, he does. But the way that they would have interpreted that was probably an acknowledgment that he didn’t think that what he was doing worked or something like that.
AC: Yeah, I just wanted to say I didn’t see that, but I’ve seen versions of that. I think we all have. One of the fundamental problems is paradigmatic if you are trying to talk to somebody about an art or science, a craft like astrology that can’t possibly exist within the parameters of what you think is real. Like these people have a paradigm. They have fundamental assumptions about what is real and what can be real. And so, sparring about details is never really gonna get anywhere if you don’t address the reality model which says that astrology can’t possibly exist. You know, one of the tactics that astrologers have used is to try to validate astrology from a sort of literary angle. And literature is valid within a modern, materialist viewpoint, right? It’s not real, but it’s valid. It’s not science, but people like it. You know, that might be fine in certain conversations, but that’s not really what astrology is. Astrology may have literary value, but it has considerably more value than that. And one of the things that drew me to astrology actually when I was younger is that astrology consistently demonstrates that the boring model of the world—where everything is made of meat and sand—cannot possibly be real because astrology exists, and it works, and because lots of other things exist. If you don’t deal with that fundamental paradigmatic issue, you can’t even remotely approach doing in a short, canned segment where you’re set up to look dumb. Like you need an hour of debate with a very good moderator to even start digging into those fundamental assumptions about reality.
CB: Yeah, yeah. And this definitely wasn’t that. I mean, I don’t want to make it seem like it was completely nefarious, even on Bill Nye’s part, in terms of the setup. I mean, he actually had a legitimate professional astrologer—somebody like Sam on—to his credit. Most of the time with these things, you see a random astrologer that nobody knows or has a questionable background, or where astrology isn’t even their primary practice. Like they’re a yoga instructor that does astrology on the side. Which there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re representing the entire astrological community, ideally, in most other panels like that, you have someone who stands out above other people in their field or is in a good position to really represent the entire profession. So it was actually nice that they had Sam on as a more respectable astrologer in the first place. But yeah, there’s very little you can say within that timeframe, and you have to be really on point in your response to specific criticisms. So yeah, that was tough. He did respond to one. Bill Nye threw out the common, “Isn’t that simplistic that you’re reducing everyone to 12 signs (or 12 possibilities)?” And Sam did start to say—unfortunately, it was towards the end of the discussion—“No, astrology’s not that simple, you’re oversimplifying it or don’t have an accurate view,” and I wish he had had more time to expand on that point. The three people that he was talking to the issue about—the most important thing that he could have pointed out is just that all of them know very little about the subject, and most of their arguments about it and their statements about it really reflect that for anybody that does know anything about the subject. So when they say astrology reduces everyone to 12 groups or 12 categories, right away it’s easy to point out that that’s not necessarily the case, that he’s simply taking for granted the most general or consumer-level version of astrology, the surface level of astrology. And Sam did start to point that out, but it didn’t get a chance to stick with them. So before we move off that topic, maybe that’s a relevant point, astrology as a language, and maybe this is something that should be addressed. When we say ‘astrology is a language’—I think a lot of astrologers might agree with that statement to some extent—that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not objectively true or doesn’t have some objective validity, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: I mean, mathematics is a language.
KS: It is a language that people believe to be true.
AC: I guess the question is, to what degree does that language describe reality and its mechanics. I think one of the implications of when people say ‘astrology is a language’—again, that’s a very broad term—in a lot of ways, it’s a dodge.
CB: Right.
AC: And sometimes you need to dodge when people attack you, so no hate there.
CB: I mean, it’s a dodge, and it’s not a dodge. I mean, it’s a dodge in that sometimes it’s used as an attempt to sidestep. I mean, there’s a distinction between saying astrology is not a science versus ‘astrology, as it is currently practiced, has not been validated by the scientific method, or astrologers don’t usually practice using the scientific method. I think those are two separate things, and even those are typically conflated in modern discussions about what is a science; that a science is something that has been validated using the scientific method. Those are two things that were not always and don’t necessarily need to be conflated, and maybe are separate because there are separate issues involved. I mean, the fact that astrologers don’t use the scientific method most of the time when they’re developing or employing their techniques means that it doesn’t fit the modern definition of a science. So Sam was right from the start on some level to say that it’s not practiced in scientific context, but that’s not necessarily the same as saying that it’s not valid or objectively true. And that’s where astrologers need to be careful if they adopt this ‘astrology is not a science and it doesn’t need to be, and it doesn’t matter’ argument, because the word ‘science’ is really a stand-in at this point, for most of contemporary society, for things that are valid or things that are not valid, things that are imaginary or purely artistic or what have you, right?
AC: Yeah, I think science is a stand-in for truth. And I would also just say a lot of things that human beings do that are real are not sciences. Walking is not a science, it does not mean that walking is not real. And what I would also say is that astrology does have a number of elements in it. There’s a large piece of astrology which overlaps with the science as it is more commonly-defined than diagrammed. For example, you check whether your techniques work. For example, if you’re looking at a profection, you’re looking at this person is in a 3rd house profection, let’s look at the other times this person has been in a 3rd house profection. Let’s see the structure of the chart and what that suggests and then see how that played out in previous instances. That’s not some sort of free-wheeling, artistic gobbledygook, right?
KS: Yeah, it’s grounded in technique.
CB: And in empiricism. There’s a sort of empiricism there.
KS: Yeah, this debate sort of makes my blood boil, when astrology gets accused of being insubstantial. The word ‘science’ is a cop-out when people say it’s not a science. It’s like what do you mean by that? Do you think that it’s not a fact, or it’s not based on data? Because it is. Certainly the placements of the planets, for instance, that’s a piece of data, and we’re interpreting that. I don’t know. I do have trouble articulating how I think about this. I know when we get attacked about it, it really makes my blood boil.
CB: Right. I mean, maybe, I don’t know, you could expand on that point. For you, when somebody says it’s not a science that’s annoying because you feel like they’re just saying that’s it’s not true when they’re saying that it’s not a science, or that it doesn’t have any objective validity, and that sort of goes against your direct experience and familiarity with the subject.
KS: Exactly. And I think the word, when they say ‘astrology’s not a science’, it’s almost a cop-out, because they’re using that word as something that has gravitas to imply that, in contrast, astrology does not have gravitas. You guys might be able to correct me if I’m wrong here, but the history of astrology predates the history of what is commonly accepted as modern science. And yeah, I don’t want to say simply I know astrology works because I’ve seen it, but when we say we’ve seen it—when you’re a working astrologer and you’re in consultation with clients and students day in and day out, and you’ve done that for more than a decade—you have numerous examples of correlation or the symbolism or the relationship between (as Austin was saying, a profection, or even a firdaria, or a transit or a progression) with the symbols seemingly ‘magically’ (if we want to use that in air quotes) being able to accurately describe changes or events in a person’s life. And I guess I don’t know if my argument is enough to go against the science, which sort of portrays itself as the be-all and end-all, because I question that in and of itself, too.
CB: Yeah. I mean, what it is, is just they would come back and say that the purpose of applying the scientific method—and this is where astrologers go wrong—is there are things like confirmation bias that we’re not controlling for or other areas like that, where our perceptions of astrology could be flawed. And because we’re not using proper controls, we’re not weeding that out in some sense. And that’s usually the argument, or that’s the assumption. Cuz it’s usually more of a presumption than a true knowing of it, cuz most of the skeptics aren’t familiar with astrology to even be able to articulate what it is or what astrologers are doing with it. But they just assume and commonly put forward the statement that anytime astrology is correct, it’s just due to things like confirmation bias, and the astrologer remembering the hits and forgetting the misses, which was Bill Nye’s primary argument last night, or one of his primary arguments.
KS: Right.
CB: And it’s like in that, to the extent that astrologers don’t usually use controls, that’s the area where astrologers—it’s true—don’t use the scientific method in order to weed out things like that. And that’s the area where they have some point in terms of what it would take for astrology to be on the level of a mainstream, modern science. You would have to put controls and constraints on it like that in order for it to fit that category. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not valid because that step hasn’t been taken yet, or because astrologers as a community have not progressed to that level, where they put those sorts of constraints on it all the time.
KS: Yeah, it must have been frustrating for Sam, for sure.
CB: Yeah, I mean, I should be clear. I mean, I’m the only one that listened to this. I’m sorry for putting you guys on the spot in terms of a discussion about it. It’s just since it came up yesterday, it definitely sparked some thoughts and some ideas and wanting to discuss it. I want to have more discussions on the podcast about how to deal with some of these things in the astrological community and what sort of responses astrologers could have and why they would respond in certain ways. Understanding both what the criticism is and when the criticism is valid versus when it’s not valid, and how astrologers either can respond to some of those criticism or can, in some instances, take steps in order to improve what they’re doing so that certain criticisms can no longer be valid or no longer be relevant. But maybe we’ll save that for another show.
KS: Yeah, that could be a whole, huge debate, for sure.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, agreed. I will just say one thing. If there’s a conversation to be had there, it’s silly for it to be people representing ‘science’ who then get to criticize astrologers and that’s the conversation. There are lots of problems with science and the claims of science, and the grotesque mistakes—paradigmatic, in particular—that the institution of science has made every decade for as long as we’ve had it. Lots of practices and ideas—which are currently out of favor and have been seen to be great mistakes—were done with the full backing of science in its day, and so we’re dealing with science in its day now. And so, there are critiques to be made about science. Not the idea of science, but the practice of science and the particular ideas which are validated by science at this particular moment in history.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point, and that was something I was thinking last night. You know, what I was noticing is that it was like Bill Nye—whose entire career at this point, and for many professional skeptics—is just having this whole line-up of many, many different fields that they are against or have deemed to be not sciences or unscientific, and therefore, invalid. But like you said, Austin, at any different point in history there’s gonna be some specific areas of the world or some specific areas of knowledge where humans have a mistaken assumption about what is valid and what is not valid. And it’s pretty easy to bet that nobody’s gonna be 100% correct about something, universally correct across the board about something 100% of the time. So when you have somebody like that, like Bill Nye, who’s like all of these fields—and we’re talking about several dozen fields—there’s not a single shred of validity to any piece of any of them, you realize that in the long term they’re gonna be wrong about some part of that. Especially not being specialists in any of those specific fields, but instead just being specialists in the ways in which arguments can be wrong or can be mistaken, which is what skeptics sort of excel in. Anyway, we know that they’re gonna be wrong about something. And 100 years from now, how much do you want to bet that there’s gonna be some specific thing that they thought was true—or that they thought was impossible—turns out, with future scientific understanding, that’s not the case, or they were mistaken? So it’s like you want to take a shot at which one of those things they were mistaken on at that time, and yet, was still argued in their day very aggressively and very vigorously and with much self-confidence that they knew for sure that that was an invalid area of knowledge or expertise. All right, shall we move onto the forecast?
KS: Let’s do it.
CB: All right. So we’re talking about the alignments for the month of May, the astrological alignments for the month of May. And we start the month—actually maybe you want to start it off, Kelly. What’s the primary thing? Do you want to go with signatures for May, or do you want to go with the top of the month?
KS: Well, I’ll just repeat myself when we were doing a sound check because I do think the standout signature—and I’m so glad Austin and I agree on this—for May is the Saturn trine Uranus aspect, which is happening later in the month May 19-20-ish will be the exact hit, but it is kind of in play for about 10 days. I think it’s Saturn’s at 26 Sag and Uranus is moving through 26 Aries. I’m writing up my horoscopes for next year at the moment, and I don’t think we actually have another Saturn trine Uranus hit, so this is like the last.
AC: We do.
KS: Are you sure it’s exact, Austin?
AC: Um, let me check. I think it’s in September.
KS: It’s not exact to the minute. It comes in exact to the degree.
AC: No, it has to be. Cuz Saturn is in an earlier degree than Uranus, and so Saturn has to trine Uranus again. That’s in November.
KS: Okay, hang on. It’s not in November.
CB: You guys are talking about Saturn trine Uranus?
KS: Saturn trine Uranus. Yeah, so they’re both at 2. So Saturn will be at 2 Cap, and Uranus will be at 2 Taurus in September. But Saturn will station direct at 2°32’, and Uranus will be at like 2°14’ at that point.
AC: So we have another Saturn trine Uranus on November 11.
KS: Oh, beg your pardon. This year, 2017. Okay, great. Yeah, okay, good. I was confused by that. So yeah, the Saturn trine—it’s biggie. We’ve got the two big planets coming together in fire signs. We did have a hit of this late last year, I believe December 2016. So it’s the second part of a three-part process. And yeah, I think there’s just a lot more aspects happening this May, but the Saturn trine Uranus certainly stands out as the dominant one. So 26 fire signs. Yeah, Saturn trine Uranus—I mean, there is that kind of explosive, destabilized, restructured, shake things up. You know me, I kind of like a little bit of change, so I don’t mind the refresh. One way I’ve been thinking about this aspect is the longer Saturn in Sag trend being kind of really sparked by that Uranus trine. So if you think about where and how Saturn in Sag is affecting you or your chart, this is like, okay, those breakthroughs you’ve been maybe contemplating or thinking about since late 2016, what actions can you take to really concretize or manifest those? But I was interested to hear what you guys thought about this, too.
CB: Yeah, I mean, that trine—even though it doesn’t get closer until, what is it, mid-month?
KS: Around the 19th and 20th of May is when it becomes exact.
AC: Quick interjection here. One, they’re less than 2° apart the entire month, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Also, this particular configuration is absolutely lit up by Mercury for much of the month as well. So as the month begins, on May 1 we have Mercury at 24 Aries retrograde about to station direct. And then once it stations direct on the 3rd, Mercury is going to then conjoin Uranus for a third time in as many months and then it’s going to trine Saturn. So we have Mercury at a station point moving very slowly, aspecting both of these. We could say that Mercury is carrying the light between Uranus and Saturn, but it’s not much of a river to cross. It’s a small stream to step over. And so, we have a very large exclamation point with Mercury tying these two together. Sure, it’s a thing that’s on and off more or less all year, and there’s one more exact hit, but we don’t have the same kind of mercurial emphasis.
KS: Well, yeah. And to add to that, Austin, we’ve also got Mars activating Saturn and Uranus at the very end of May this month. Mars will be in Gemini opposing Saturn and sextiling Uranus. So Mercury’s activating earlier in the month and then Mars. So it is almost like an emphasis on this aspect this month with those faster planets playing into it.
AC: Yeah, I think of more of the Mercury emphasis simply because it’s a very important part of his cycle. It’s a station. You know, it’s not just passing by. Not that Mars won’t activate it and be a pain in the ass. But I really like that—that Mercury just sitting right next to Uranus and trine Saturn for, what is it, two weeks? How long does it take? Almost exactly two weeks. It’s not until May 15 that Mercury leaves Aries. So the first-half of the month, it’s Mercury just sitting there with Uranus and then trining Saturn.
CB: Yeah. And we’ve had that already for the past week or two, here in the later part of April. And for me at least, I feel like that’s really intensified and destabilized some of the typical Mercury retrograde-type technology mishaps and snafus that sometimes you might associate with Mercury retrograde. It really seemed to have intensified a little bit, at least for me, over the past couple of weeks with Mercury making that retrograde conjunction with Uranus and station while it’s been in late Aries.
AC: Absolutely. Reports have been coming in from all around. What I’ve noticed is my things breaking. They’ve been blowing up, but so has my brain. I’ve had so many good ideas in such a short period of time. Whatever part that makes the good ideas, I wish that it could have distributed the ideas I’ve had every morning over a two-month period so I could be steadily inspired. The Mercury-Uranus is so interesting and fun and creative and piercing and illuminating on a mental level, but that same signature is not so good for physical things. It tends to break things. It’s like juice through an electricity grid blowing it out. And one thing I want to bring up, I had like, I don’t know, five clients in a row—as well as several people that I know—who are all going through one version or another of the same storyline, and that storyline was absolutely this Mercury-Uranus in trine with Saturn. And to be short and general in describing it, basically, it was about there being a moment or an opportunity to change a very long-standing pattern in their life. If there was something where they were stuck, and they’d been stuck doing something and it wasn’t working, certainly, it wasn’t bringing joy. It’s like, “Well, I’ve gotta do this, and I’m doing this because I’ve got to do this.” But I’ve seen a number of people who’ve had like a little crack, a little window open up where maybe there’s another way, right? On one level it’s almost this ‘escape from prison’ dynamic, but what makes it different than that is it’s about escaping the prison and then coming back to it as the architect, cuz you don’t leave Saturn. There’s a difference between being stuck and imprisoned in the commitments you’ve made and in what you have to do to meet your obligations versus looking at it with the architect or the creator’s eye and saying, okay, I do need to do these things, but maybe I can design another way to meet my obligations or meet my needs. Are those the bricks of a prison that somebody else stuck you in? Or are those the bricks of your own palace, which you’ve just forgotten that you have architectural authority over? And so, there’s that story playing out a lot.
CB: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And that’s clearly one of the major signatures of the very start of May, just because of Mercury’s station there with Uranus really highlighting that trine. But then I think I’m onboard with what you were saying earlier, Kelly, that later in the month, it seems like the signature becomes the Mars-Saturn opposition. Which goes exact, what is it, the 27th-28th of May?
KS: Yeah, yeah, it’s really at the tail-end of those last few days. I think it is definitely an aspect to be watching. I think it might be exact like the 30th-31st.
[crosstalk]
KS: Sorry?
AC: Oh, it looks like the 29th for most people.
CB: Let’s see. I’m just doing the animation in Solar Fire. So yeah, about the 28th-29th, Mars hits 25°46’ Gemini.
KS: I think it’s gonna get to 26. Oh, I beg your pardon, 25, sorry.
AC: Yeah, I have 25°44’ for both of them.
KS: Yeah, so it’s the Mars-Uranus that’s on the last day of the month.
CB: Oh, right, so it completes. And that’s interesting also because at the same time we have Venus catching up to Uranus and getting into late Aries at this point. So we’re finally out of the post-Venus retrograde shadow period. Because Venus—where did it station? It was like in mid-Aries, right?
KS: 13 Aries.
CB: 13, okay. So Venus stationed retrograde at 13 Aries originally a few months ago when it went retrograde. And then it gets back to that point, about 12-13 Aries, May 17-May 18. Some astrologers use shadow periods, like Nick Dagan Best, for example, uses shadow periods. Until Venus is direct after the retrograde station—and then passes the specific degree that it originally stationed retrograde at, which it doesn’t do until mid-May, until May 17-18—the full Venus retrograde period is not over. But it’s interesting that that period ends by mid-May finally. And then shortly after that—right around the time that we get the Mars-Saturn opposition—Venus starts catching up to a relatively close conjunction with Uranus in late May, around 26 Aries as well. So that kind of fills out that configuration we were talking about earlier, right, Kelly?
KS: Yeah, if we extend our view to the last week of May/first week of June, we actually have Venus and Mars involved with that Saturn-Uranus trine. So it’s definitely dynamic, I guess.
CB: Yeah, so we’ve got the tension of a Mars-Saturn opposition on the one hand, but then we almost have something that’s breaking the—what is it when you have two parties that are in an immovable situation?
KS: Oh, yeah, like breaking the stalemate or an intermediary of some kind?
CB: Yeah, cuz it’s not a square aspect. But instead it’s a trine aspect between Venus and Uranus in Aries to Saturn in Sagittarius and then a sextile to Mars. Like you were saying, Austin, earlier, that was part of the symbolism you were drawing in for Mercury conjunct Uranus and then trining Saturn, right? The idea of that being the way out or the way to break through in some since?
AC: Mm-hmm. I think it’s potentially quite liberatory. On a mythical level, I’ve been thinking about it a lot in terms of Hermes busting Prometheus out of jail.
CB: So how would you apply that to later in the month, where it’s sort of switched out? So you’ve got Venus, or Aphrodite, conjoining Uranus and then trining Saturn who is now getting besieged or blockaded or something by Mars opposing Saturn.
AC: Well, I guess looking at it, thinking about it, in my interpretation I would probably look at Mars interacting with Saturn-Uranus and then Venus following shortly thereafter. I think it’ll be more of a quick sequence rather than an altogether now.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point. Cuz Venus actually doesn’t catch up until after that opposition between Mars and Saturn. So it’s like you get the tension of the Mars-Saturn opposition which sort of culminates. That’s actually something that’s gonna be building up all month, cuz Mars is already in Gemini. So it’s already forming a sign-based aspect with Saturn that’s gonna get more and more intense as you get further and further into May, until eventually it culminates around the 27th or 28th.
AC: And I would just add, especially once Mars clears the trine to Jupiter, the 13 Gemini Mars/13 Libra Jupiter. You know, Mars’ applying aspect will be to Jupiter until he clears 13, and then it will be headed for Saturn. I think people will feel and see that switch once Mars clears those degrees.
CB: Sure. So up until that point. So we’ve got Mars in Gemini, but it’s at least applying to and sort of intercepted by that aspect or that trine from Jupiter at about 14° of Libra, which Mars hits at 14° of Gemini around May 11-May 12. But after that point, it’s just all applying to that opposition with Saturn as the next outer planet aspect that it’ll hit. That’s basically what you’re saying, right?
AC: Yeah, yeah. But I think that the applying trine to Jupiter will sort of pad or shield that. I don’t think people will even notice it until Mars clears those degrees. And then I would say the game is on once Mars moves into the same decan—or the opposite decan of Sag; the last decan of Gemini.
CB: Sure. And that brings up an interesting point because you do have the best aspect and the worst aspect here. And that raises the question that sometimes I get and I think about a lot in looking at different chart examples, which is, how does it play out when you have a planet that has both a very positive aspect to it, as well as a very negative or challenging aspect to it? And is it the case that they cancel each other out in some sense, or balance each other out so that they’re less extreme than they would be otherwise? Or is it that you get both simultaneously or alternately? How do you usually approach that issue, Kelly, in terms of when you have a really positive aspect and a really negative one to the same planet?
KS: Yeah, look, it’s tricky. I think that they both manifest, that there is some good, but there is also some challenge. I don’t think that one cancels the other out. I don’t know if that’s too simplistic. The only catch with the Mars-Jupiter this May is that within a day of Mars trining Jupiter, it is also square Neptune.
CB: Oh, yeah, that’s a really good point.
KS: Yeah, so that’s what I was saying earlier. There are so many aspects because Mars is moving through an air sign. So it’s just picking up all of the planets that are in air and fire signs, which is most of the outer, like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus. And then it’s in Gemini, which happens to be the one air sign that will make a traditional aspect back to Neptune, too. Look, I think the Mars-Jupiter is gonna bring something that is classically about adventure or a leap of faith. Or you take a risk and it pays off, and you get some kind of boon or benefit or welcome result. There is the caution of course with Neptune there that maybe you’re not quite clear on what you’re doing. I don’t know. I think the goodness of Jupiter does show up. But then, yeah, within a couple of weeks, we’ve got Mars dealing with Saturn. And whether it’s the same issue, and you’re just coming back down to ground and realizing you need to maybe slow things down, or there are limits that you thought you might be able to get away with not dealing with that you how to now address, or whether it’s a separate issue—there’s one are of life, for instance, that maybe is positively-charged with Mars-Jupiter and then there’s a particular challenge or difficulty that shows up in a different area of life, around a different topic with Mars-Saturn. The timing will indicate which one happens first, and yeah, I don’t think the one cancels the other out. I mean, how do you guys deal with it?
AC: Sequence is super important, like you were saying. Which happens first, right? Different branches of astrology will see these operate differently.
KS: Totally.
AC: In a natal chart, everything happens, right? Whereas if we’re looking at transiting configurations, it’ll be like, this happens, and then a few days later, that happens. I think there are situations based primarily on reception where you can get cancellation of difficulties or cancellation of benefits. It depends on how much those planets work together. If they work together, I think you’ll tend to get more of an average. If they can’t work together, then you’ll tend to get one ‘good’ and one ‘bad’ disconnected from one another. And so, you could average those, but two average events are different than one ‘good’ and one ‘bad’, right?
CB: Right.
AC: So yeah, depends on how tight they are, depends on the sequencing, depends on reception.
CB: Oh, yeah, reception is a really good point. I mean, I guess we don’t have a reception as far as I can tell in any of these instances, except with Jupiter and Saturn and that sextile. I mean, we do have a nice mutual reception between Mars and Mercury all month, which I wanted to try to work into some of the elections, but I had a really hard time.
AC: Honestly, Chris, I was really excited for that to happen. And I clicked in several days ago, and it just seems to have made a lot of the Mercury retro issues nastier and sharper and hotter.
KS: That’s where the more explosive component of this Mercury retro is coming from, too, in addition to Uranus.
CB: Sure. Yeah, and that makes sense to me. You know, I couldn’t figure out a way to make it a night chart and make that work, and that was the issue. I’ve seen other Mercury-Mars mutual receptions that have worked out a little bit better. But you’re right, just in terms of mundane things and recent experience of it—especially while Mercury’s still retrograde—that really does seem to have amped up some of the issues associated with it. I mean, talking about the Mercury-Saturn opposition at the end of the month versus the Mars-Jupiter trine at the beginning of the month reminds me that Leisa and I ran into this while looking at electional charts for this month. And that’s one of the reasons why the electional chart that we decided to highlight for this month is at the beginning of the month rather than later on. So maybe I’ll introduce that chart really quick. The electional chart that we decided to highlight for this month takes place on May 7, 2017 at approximately 4:20-4:21 PM local time. So I have it set here for Denver, Colorado, so that it has early Libra rising. Let’s say about 4° Libra rising. Basically, if you want to cast this chart for your location, set it for about 4:20 PM and just try to make it so that the ascendant is located at about 4° of Libra. And as long as you get that, then the chart will be roughly correct and roughly what we’re recommending here, since what’s important is just making sure that the ascendant is located in early Libra for the purpose of this chart. So there’s a few different possible elections and a few different possible rising signs that you can actually use on this date, but the one that we liked the best was Libra rising chart. So the chart has 4° of Libra rising. The Moon is also in Libra in the 1st house at 14° of Libra, and it’s applying to a close conjunction with Jupiter, also in Libra, at 14°, also in the 1st house. So you want to be careful about this one because that conjunction is super close to exact at this point. So if you’re over on the West Coast, I don’t know, you might be squeezing it in, if you can make it. Did you cast the chart, Austin? Can you still catch the conjunction on the West Coast around this time, on that date?
AC: What’s the time again?
CB: It’s like 4:20 PM on May 7.
AC: Oh, that’s gonna be super close. I mean, it’s still conjunct. It might be departing by 10 minutes. Yeah, it’s departing by less than a quarter of a degree.
CB: Yeah, so it’s still pretty good. But ideally, best-case scenario, for most timezones I think you can catch the Moon still applying to Jupiter, and if you can, that would be great. It’s also positive because the Moon is the ruler of the 10th house. So this would be a good chart for career-related things or other sorts of 10th house activities. The ruler of the ascendant is Venus, which is located in Aries in the 7th house conjunct the degree of the descendant, so that it’s setting at this time. Although it’s in the sign of Aries—which is otherwise the sign opposite to its domicile or the sign of its detriment—it’s otherwise configured well with Mars. It has an opposition with Jupiter, and it’s actually applying to, eventually, that opposition with Jupiter with reception, because Jupiter is in Venus’ sign. And generally, Venus is relatively well-placed and not afflicted by either Mars or Saturn or any of the other outer planets as far as I can tell for the most part. So it’s not a bad chart. It has a little bit of a focus on 7th house matters because Venus, the ruler of the ascendant, is located in the 7th house. It also has an applying sextile with Mars, which is the ruler of the 7th, which is placed in the 9th. So even if it is a 1st house/7th house-type election, it’s not necessarily a bad one, but you could probably do pretty well with it. And yeah, Mars and Saturn are otherwise not terribly prominent in the chart. And since this is in the first part of the month, the chart still features that application or that applying trine between Mars and Jupiter that Austin mentioned earlier. So you still get some of the benefits from that developing in the future since it’s still applying. And then, finally, the last thing is that this chart of course takes place after Mercury has stationed direct on May 3. So you still get Mercury conjunct Uranus, but it’s otherwise direct, so that you’re coming out of the retrograde and moving away from that rather than still in the midst of it or still moving towards it. So yeah, what do you guys think about that chart? Have you guys noticed this chart coming up in your own practice? Or have you guys been looking for elections in May at all?
KS: I haven’t had to look for many elections for May. It is quite a nice chart, cuz you’ve got some really good features here. Having the Moon and Mars applying to Jupiter, and yeah, ascendant ruler in the 7th. Even if it is maybe not in its happiest sign, it’s still in a really functional place. Yeah, I like this chart. It’s got some good features. I like Mercury-Uranus. I think it’s great for opening the mind, which is the first step or stage to any kind of change that you might affect in your wider life. And that’s where I think so much of what you guys were saying—particularly, Austin—with that really emphasized Mercury-Uranus. That mental breakthrough energy shifts things in a ‘you can’t go back’ way. So it’s lovely to have it there.
CB: Yeah. And often a quickness of mind or a quickness of communication seems like a common Mercury-Uranus-type thing. I mean, there’s a few other rising signs that you could use on this date that would be okay. One of the other ones that we considered was Cancer rising. So if you did it a few hours earlier that day with Cancer rising, then you would have the Moon as the ruler of the ascendant applying to a conjunction with Jupiter in Libra in the 4th house, which is also pretty good. So there’s that one. I think there’s another chart with—yeah, there’s a few other combinations that you could try. I mean, you do run into some issues with the Mars-Saturn opposition by sign, so that they’re opposite to each other. And you want to kind of avoid making that too prominent, which rules out some signs that otherwise you might want to use. For example, I really wanted to try to take advantage of the Mercury-Mars mutual reception, where they’re exchanging signs in Aries and Gemini. So one of the ones I wanted to use—and I think I had used in previous years—was something like Gemini rising, so that the ruler of the ascendant is Mercury, which would be in Aries in the 11th, exchanging signs with Mars. But in order to do that, you would really want it to be a night chart. Otherwise, you would be putting Mars in the 1st house in a day chart, which would be basically putting the most difficult planet in the chart in the 1st house, which is a no-go.
So I don’t know. If anybody else can figure out a way—one alternative is you could try doing Aries rising, so that the ruler of the ascendant is Mars, which would be in the 3rd house, exchanging signs with Mercury in the 1st. But the issue I had with that is then you would have a night chart with Mars being opposed by sign to Saturn in a night chart, which I just felt was kind of problematic and maybe not worth recommending compared to some of these later charts, like Libra rising or Cancer rising. Anyway, that’s the election for May. One thing that’s come up that I meant to ask you guys is that Leisa’s been getting a lot of requests for marriage elections. And a lot of people are saying ‘September’ for some reason to the extent that they want it to take place in September, and they want her to look at September. She was wondering if there’s something going around where, for some reason, some Sun sign columns have been recommending September and that’s why everybody’s trying to get a date in September. Have you guys heard anything about that? Or do you know why September might be coming up more prominently for marriage elections this year?
AC: I’ve done one marriage election this month, and it was for June.
CB: June, okay.
KS: Yeah, September is a popular month for wedding elections. I’ve noticed this in years gone by that it seems to be a month where people are like, “You know, if we can get something in September, that would be great.” Yeah, I don’t think I’ve picked one for September this year. There is gonna be a Venus sextile Jupiter aspect this September 2017. So whether somebody has written about that somewhere and that’s got people thinking, I’m not sure.
CB: Yeah, I feel like there’s gotta be something. Cuz it was just a weird amount of people that seemed to have some implicit astrological reason why they wanted September before they had really even gotten a full electional workup. So we were kind of curious what was going on with that, so we’ll have to keep investigating.
KS: And, Austin, you did a wedding election for June. And you went with what date did you say?
AC: I’m not gonna tell you.
KS: Okay then.
AC: I will just say that all the times I do wedding elections, it’s like, well, let’s start with Venus. And unlike the last several months, you can actually start with Venus in June, right? Cuz it’s Venus in Taurus.
KS: Correct, cuz she’s in Taurus.
AC: And there are some things you need to work around, but there are some nice things. One, we get Jupiter direct during the first-third of June, which is a nice thing. Nice direct benefic with Venus, the other benefic, in a sign she rules. And we have a nice Mercury in Gemini, too. So you’ve got multiple, functional, happy, healthy planets. As long as you stay away from that Mars in Cancer opposition too centrally, there’s a lot to work with in June.
CB: Yeah, especially that Venus in Taurus and Jupiter in Libra. Good times. So the main election that we’re highlighting for May for the purpose of the forecast episode is May 7, and that’s the best election we can find for this month. Of course Leisa and I are recording tomorrow our Patreon exclusive, electional, 45-minute forecast episode where we outline some of the other electional charts that we found in May, which are not quite as good as May 7, but that you could use as backups or as alternate charts if you wanted to. So we’re actually gonna try doing that as a video this time. So we’ll have it as both an audio discussion, as well as a video recording that you can watch, so that you can actually see us animating the charts and moving through and showing off some of the different charts that month as sort of an experiment. So if you’re interested in checking that out, you just have to become a patron on the $5 tier through our page on Patreon and then you’ll get full access to the recording as soon as it’s available. All right, so that’s the election for May. What have we not covered? I’m sure there’s a lot that we haven’t covered when it comes back to the forecast for May. So we talked about the Mercury station at the beginning of the month. Right around the 9th and 10th, we start getting some activity. I know that Kirk Kahn emphasizes the nodal shift which occurs around May 9. I’m not sure if he’s using the True Node or the Mean Node. Have you looked into the North Node changing signs in May?
AC: Indeed.
KS: Yes, I’ve got the True Node. I think it’s the 9th. Yeah, that’s significant. We’ll be talking about a whole different series of eclipses as a result of that.
CB: Yeah.
KS: It’s taking the focus out of the mutable signs—because the North Node is in Virgo and has been for 18 months—and then shifting them onto Leo and Aquarius.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah, I think it’s a big deal. We’ve had one preview eclipse on that access, which was the lunar eclipse in Leo in February. But then we went back and finished up the Pisces/Virgo cycle with the annular in Pisces at the end of February. And now we’re done with Pisces/Virgo, and it’s going to be all Leo and Aquarius for quite some time. The next installment of which will be a lunar in Aquarius and then a very dramatic solar in Leo in August. And so, the nodes moving gets us closer to that. Now people will start having not just that foreshadowing from the eclipse in February, but full-on nodal transits, right? If you live at the end of Leo, here comes the North Node, and vice versa if you live at the end of Aquarius.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Cuz we really are by that point—around the time that it shifts—at the halfway point between the eclipses that we had in February and the eclipses that are coming in those two fixed signs in Leo and Aquarius in August.
AC: Yeah, almost exactly halfway.
CB: Yeah, we get the Full Moon in Scorpio—the next fixed sign—on May 10. So that really is the middle point in terms of lunations. And it’s weird that you have the nodes switching signs right at that time and moving into fixed signs.
AC: So what do you all think about this Full Moon? I have two thoughts. One, it doesn’t really aspect anything, and I’m okay with that. Two, it’s hard to be an astrologer who sits with classical dignity and gets super-duper excited about the Full Moon in Scorpio. You know, Scorpio is the sign in which the Moon is considered ‘fallen’. You know, Scorpio is messy, and that’s part of what we like about Scorpio, but that’s also part of why the Moon can be problematic in Scorpio. Needless to say, it’s a Mars-ruled lunation. It doesn’t tend to be a lunation of overwhelming joy and positivity. It doesn’t bring the end of the world every year. Anyway, I just wanted to throw that out. Kelly, you’re better at being positive than I am.
CB: I didn’t notice this, but the lunation occurs on the same day of the Mars-Neptune square that you mentioned, Kelly. Or at least within 24 hours of it.
AC: Yeah, it’s super close.
KS: Yeah. So part of what is interesting about this lunation is it’s ruled by Mars, and Mars will be square Neptune and basically trine Jupiter on the day. So yeah, Scorpio Full Moon—of course, Austin, “Kelly, be more positive.” Look, I do love a messy water Full Moon because it brings all of the emotions to the surface. So when I say ‘messy’ I’m almost thinking of that Medieval temperament. It’s a ‘wet’ Full Moon. And so, maybe there’s a ‘muddled-ness’, but there’s certainly an intense or a deep engaging. So I think things can come to light, or you can gain insight about stuff that maybe is normally hidden. But I agree with you. The Moon is fallen here. She is not raised up. She is in the subterranean realm, if you like, from the concept of ‘fall’ or ‘fallen’. She’s coming down, and I think that speaks to the experiences that people can have. And then, yeah, when the ruler of the lunation, Mars, ties that aspect to Neptune, that enhances the watery or the emotional, the sensitive, or maybe the coming undone of something that has been held firmly. And it is going to be the first lunation with the nodes in the new signs. Not that it aspects it, but it’s just interesting that it’ll be our next celestial marking point after those nodes have shifted.
AC: Yeah, so let me just try to follow that up. As far as the messiness goes, I should point out that I don’t necessarily dislike the experience of a Scorpio Full Moon. It just rarely seems to herald something fantastic. It’s like, yeah, I got really drunk, that was kinda awesome, but that doesn’t fit within my definition of auspicious, or ‘I’m gonna remember that forever’, like that was important.
CB: Sure.
AC: Let me just pause. I think that that’s an excellent election for debauchery. And so, if you’re looking to elect a hangover, I think May 10 will do you well.
CB: That’s a good Mars-Neptune interpretation. I like that.
KS: I mean, you’re talking about getting drunk. I’m like, okay, well, sexual energy as well with this. So there’s a few things people could do under this Full Moon if they were so inclined.
AC: Indeed.
CB: Sure.
KS: And we should keep it G-rated.
AC: So I’m gonna have to mark that down on my calendar, just a mental note to get wasted on May 10.
KS: But I think the thing is when you’re getting wasted, for instance, or you’re having a few drinks or whatever, you’re in the watery realm. You’re disconnecting. You’re not being productive. You’re not following ambitions. I mean, the whole point of this Full Moon is to not do those things and to sink into emotional space. So yeah, that can all be a part of that, I guess.
AC: That was actually one of the things that I mentioned earlier, the first thing that I liked about it—that it’s not connected to anything. Neither the Sun or the Moon has any aspects to Saturn or Mercury or Venus or Uranus, or even Mars, or Jupiter. It’s just the Sun and Moon getting wasted.
KS: Doing their thing.
AC: Things like that, again, they’re the very opposite of ‘this is a fine time to begin’, right? Like, yes, this is going to be a consequential time where you can leave your mark on the world or lay the foundation stone of something monumental. Like, no. But the advantage of it is that it’s disconnected. And so, I’m actually increasingly certain about my plans. I just underlined ‘Get Wasted’ three times on my calendar.
KS: Three times, okay.
CB: That’s a really interesting observation. Once it completes that aspect with the Sun at the Full Moon, the Moon doesn’t apply to anything anytime soon. It’s actually—according to the modern definition—void-of-course as soon as it completes the Full Moon. And it looks like the next aspect is to Venus once it changes signs and moves into 7° of Sagittarius. About 17° later, it eventually forms a trine with Venus.
AC: Yeah, that’s like 32 hours of lunar motion.
CB: Way beyond a typical orb or application of the Moon. Like you said, it’s not applying to anything. They’re not really aspecting anything. But what’s weird about that is there’s so much other action going on around that time with other exact aspects. So it’s like Mercury is at 26 Aries exactly trining Saturn almost, at 26 Sag. You’ve got Mars making that exact square with Neptune, and then Mars very shortly after that going in for the exact trine with Jupiter. You’ve got a lot of other planets that are doing things, but for some reason the lunation itself—the Sun and the Moon—are kind of isolated or on their own.
AC: Yeah. And so, what that’s gonna mean is that the Full Moon itself will be juicy, there will be a potent current there, but it’s not necessarily gonna go anywhere for a day or two. But once we get into the Moon’s time in Sagittarius, it’s gonna be lighting everything up, right? So if we just look at the Moon’s next sign after it’s full—if we look at Sag—it’s going to trine Venus, oppose Mars, sextile Jupiter, trine Mercury and Uranus while they’re close, and conjoin Saturn pretty much all at the same time. So approximately two-and-a-half days after the Full Moon, we get treated to a still quite Full Moon—a Moon with a lot of juice left—just hitting everything. My guess is it might feel almost like a ‘delayed’ Full Moon to people, where all of the action comes not on the day or the day before, but a day-and-a-half, two-and-a-half days later.
CB: Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. And then around that time of course, two-and-a-half days later, you also start getting the completion of some of those other aspects. Mars hits Jupiter a day or two later, for example, around May 12, May 11, and so on and so forth.
AC: Yeah, and that’s when the Moon’s in Sag. So the Moon in Sag sees all of those direct aspects.
CB: Nice. Very nice. Okay, so that is the lunation. That’s actually our first lunation of the month, which is the Full Moon in Scorpio, which takes place on the 10th. Eventually, the following week, Mercury finally gets out of Aries and gets back into Taurus, which is roughly where it went retrograde in early Taurus. So it goes back into Taurus on May 16. So it’s almost getting out of its own shadow period. Did you guys remember? Was it at 3° when it went retrograde?
AC: Was it 4?
KS: Mars?
AC: No, Mercury.
KS: Mercury. Sorry, beg your pardon. Yeah, it was 4.
AC: So I wanted to talk about that really briefly. Remember last month, Ben Dykes had pointed out that Mars?
KS: Yeah, the wild.
AC: And so, that Mercury station was only like a degree-and-a-half off where Mars was in the ingress chart. And that was when we got our ‘Syria’ thing, where the US fired a bunch of Tomahawk missiles at the base. You know, at the Syrian airbase suspected of housing or facilitating chemical weapon attacks. And then just yesterday, we had the New Moon right on top of that Aries ingress Mars position, and we had North Korea doing a massive military display. And if you look at the news for the last two days, there are a lot of hilariously martial things. Like someone was arrested for carrying a razor-blade around parliament, there was a brawl in another country’s parliament—there’s all of this stuff. I was curious about how much transits to that Aries ingress chart would show up, and I think it’s very clear that it matters. Cuz there’s nothing particularly martial about that New Moon in Taurus at the end of April otherwise. I just want to make sure to follow that up, as we’ve talked about that for 20 minutes last month.
CB: Right. So just following transits to the Aries ingress chart is a really important thing.
AC: And in particular, that Mars, cuz it’s in such a weird position. Yeah, here we go. “Armed British police arrest man with knives near Theresa May’s office.”
CB: Wow. Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. Okay, so we’ve got the Mercury ingress into Taurus. We’ve got the Saturn trine Uranus going exact around the 19th, which we’ve already discussed. Eventually, the Sun goes into Gemini on the 20th. Not too notable. And then, finally, we have the final lunation of May, which is a Full Moon in Gemini on the 25th.
AC: New Moon.
CB: Oh, sorry. Yeah, the New Moon on the 25th in Gemini.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So how do you guys feel about that second lunation?
KS: Let me pull up the chart. Have you had a good look at it already, Austin?
AC: Yeah. That lunation—like what the Sun and Moon are doing—is just fine. I think that the attention will probably be on the Mars-Saturn opposition around that time because they’re really close at that point. It’s like the final four days.
KS: Yeah, they’re within a couple of degrees.
AC: And I think that’s really going to stick out. I think it’s just like kind of a plain old New Moon. It’s the New Moon in Gemini. There’s nothing about anything that’s aspecting the Sun-Moon conjunction tightly that I think is terribly out of the norm. Again, no information is information, right? The Sun and Moon are at 4 Gemini, and there’s nothing aspecting them. I think the nearest aspect would be a trine to Jupiter, and that’s 9° away.
KS: Yeah.
AC: So pretty okay. And because it’s not dramatically good or bad, I think that a lot of that will be overshadowed by the Mars-Saturn opposition, which will bring challenges to the forefront.
CB: So that’s like 2° away from exact at that point, the Mars-Saturn opposition?
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: It is. The other slightly-tense aspect that’s also happening then is Venus square Pluto. Nowhere near as significant. Mars-Saturn is gonna be larger, bringing problems to the surface, but just to add another layer of tension with that Venus square Pluto.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s true. It’s just that’s like a day or two and that goes away. Whereas the Mars-Saturn is like a solid week-long aspect in terms of where you’re gonna see it and feel it.
CB: Yeah. Although the Venus square Pluto is exact at the time of the lunation. It’s almost perfectly exact.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah, it’s partile.
AC: Yeah, it’s just that it doesn’t aspect or rule the lunation at all, and so I tend to not care.
CB: Sure.
AC: It’ll still matter for that day, but I don’t think it gets encoded in the DNA of the lunation if it doesn’t aspect. I think as far as a daily influence, yes, you will Venus-Pluto, feeling Venus-Pluto will just make it easier to feel Saturn-Mars.
KS: Correct. It’s just gonna be amplifying that.
AC: So let’s talk about Mars and Saturn. Cuz we’ve been saying, “Hey, that’s there, hey, that’s there, hey, that’s there, hey, that’s there,” but we haven’t really done any delineation. So I have a Mars-Saturn opposition in my natal chart. I’ve lived with that. I like it. It’s really good for working yourself to death, and I mean that in a positive way. There are a lot of people who achieve quite a bit through industry over time, through effort (Mars) over time (Saturn). Bruce Lee’s another Mars opposition Saturn. His work ethic was exceptional. You know, Mars-Saturn—it does stir up unfortunate events over which we sometimes have no control. But most of the time, for most people, it’s just like nose to the grindstone. And that doesn’t necessarily feel good, but it’s really like only a week or two. It’s like a week-long aspect as far as being active. You know, I would advise to just work your ass off for a week. It’s okay, you’ll live. You’ll actually be proud of what you accomplished afterwards. There’s just a way of managing the friction between what you want to do and what you need to do. You know, there’s an emotional, internal skill there that takes time to develop, because it’s frictive and it doesn’t feel good to work harder than you feel like working, but it’s doable. What do you think, Kelly?
KS: Look, I don’t have the aspect myself, because I was born just far enough before you were, Austin, to get Mars in a different sign to not having it. Yeah, look, I agree. I mean, I think we approach things similarly with the idea of effort, obstacles, or applied effort, or effort over time. Yeah, the Mars-Saturn is always, “This is what I want to do, this is my impulse, this is my desire,” which is Mars, versus Saturn, which is like, “But this is what’s due this week,” or “This is your obligation,” or “This is your commitment,” or “This is the promise you made.” I mean, I don’t know that I can come out super-positive because it is a heavy aspect.
AC: It’s an opposition between two malefics.
KS: Exactly. Like even I cannot spin this one. And I think—as you’ve said, Austin—it’s gonna feel hard and it’s gonna feel heavy, and it is gonna be about a week until Mars gets into Cancer. Not that Mars is amazing in Cancer, but it will be outside of that opposition to Saturn.
AC: I agree.
KS: Yeah, really, we’re talking the last week of May, the first few days of June. It’s just nose to the grindstone. But I think the other thing you might have said—and if you haven’t said it, I’m gonna say it now—is it’s not gonna kill you. This is a manageable problem or concern, it’s just you’re gonna have to sacrifice pleasure for responsibility or duty. And maybe going forward there’ll be something that you can take from that which is about the choices and the commitments and about how you manage your time. So I think something that a difficult Saturn aspect is always trying to show or reveal is that these are the consequences of the choices that you have made. And if you have been sort of planned and measured and you’ve stayed on track or on schedule, then there can be a sense of getting to the bottom of something. And, Chris, this happened when we were podcasting before and having another storm. Yes, you can hear noise in the background. It’s thunder. But if you have been shirking your responsibilities, if you’ve been thinking, “I’ll deal with it later,” later is coming at the end of May, and you will have to pay up, right?
AC: I love that ‘later is coming’. Later is always coming.
KS: At the end of May. Yes, but it is the end of May, and you will have to pay the piper then.
AC: Nice.
KS: You’ve got all month to get ready for that.
AC: Okay, so a couple of things that you stirred up in me. So part of this is it’s Saturn-Mars, but it’s Saturn in Sag/Mars in Gemini. I think with Mars in Gemini, I think you might have to sacrifice doing three or four different things and just do that one thing in order to bring Mars in Gemini in line with what Saturn wants. So I’m gonna revisit ‘this is how it’s gonna feel until Mars is in Cancer’. True to some degree, but remember that Mars opposes Saturn at 26-and-almost-nothing, or the very end of 25, and then immediately moves on after Mars begins to depart from the opposition to Saturn, and then immediately sextiles Uranus. And so, there’s going to be this shot of freedom right after ‘later’ comes.
CB: Right.
KS: That’s a good point, Austin. Yeah, cuz it’s like, okay, you’ve done this thing now. You’ve slogged it off for a week, and there’s some kind of liberation that is an instant reward.
AC: Yeah. And that’s gonna coincide with Venus hitting Uranus, too.
CB: Right. And then applying to Mars.
KS: Chris, were you gonna say something there?
CB: To boil down that Mars-Saturn opposition and the basic meaning or the archetype, I mean, part of it’s pushing as far as you can go, but then still eventually running up against a limit. A limit you can’t go further past, even after fully exhausting yourself and reaching that point where you can’t go any further. Is that the underlying keyword that you were getting at there, Austin?
AC: That’s one way it could go. Mars opposite Saturn can be running into the limits of your power, right? It can also be pushing yourself further than you realized you could go, replacing an expected limit with a real limit. Yeah, I mean, it’s hard work. I think that between Mars and Saturn, the virtues of industry and relentlessness are generated, and they’re not smiling angels, but they’re great to have on your side.
CB: Yeah, I mean, even the metaphor of building muscle and the process of building muscle and what that actually involves from a physiological standpoint sounds like that, or is a good metaphor for Mars-Saturn. You know, you push yourself so far that your muscle actually breaks down, but then it sort of grows back stronger and bigger. And you continually go through that process over and over again of pushing yourself past that limit where something breaks, but in the process of it breaking you eventually are able to push your boundaries even further than you previously thought that you could, or than you previously actually could.
AC: Absolutely. And the physiological metaphor reminds me that I think it would be irresponsible to say that you should just push, push, push, push, push. If this axis is falling on a health-sensitive area for you, you might still need to do a bunch of stuff. And so, everything I said might be accurate, but you need to be triply careful with yourself, cuz these Mars-Saturn oppositions are totally happy to injure people.
KS: Yeah.
AC: That reminds me of one of the most interesting things that I had heard in a while about exercise. A friend of mine who’s into CrossFit madness went to some gym, which is the normal CrossFit, as CrossFit is to power walking, but just full of insane athletes. And one of the things that they told him was there’s no such thing as overworking yourself, but there is such a thing as under-recovery. And so, they went out of their way—when they weren’t pushing their bodies—to be as gentle and restorative and nurturing to their bodies as humanly possible. And I think that that’s the corresponding polarity when you have like a super-hard work aspect in your natal chart or during a period of life. If you have to work super hard, then you have to recover super hard as well.
CB: That makes a lot of sense. And we almost get some of the recovery-type things afterwards—once that opposition is completed in this instance—with some of the more positive, flowing aspects that occur over the next few days.
AC: Right. We do have the Sun approaching a trine to Jupiter at the very end of the month, which is nice.
CB: Right.
AC: And by the way, when I say ‘recovery’, it doesn’t mean do whatever you want. It means actually treat yourself like you’re a child that you care about who’s just been exercised to the point of exhaustion. Take a bath. Eat really well. Hydrate.
CB: Sure. And so, for some people, if it’s hitting a more sensitive point, or if this is a more challenging transit for some reason, then in some instances it could be pushing it too far or hitting the limit or going over your personal capacity in some sense, and then having the results of that, or dealing with what comes from that when you go too far and reach the point of over-exhaustion or something, right?
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Yeah, I think exhaustion is the physical symptom that is a possibility.
AC: Yeah, well, especially at the very end of these two signs. You know, the very end of Gemini is when the Sun approaches one solstice. The very end of Sag is when it approaches the other solstice. And the solstices are the points of maximum polarity between yin and yang or light and darkness. You know, there’s a lot of exhaustion symbolism around the last decan of both Gemini and Sag. I think we can safely say that those are anorectic decans because they’re so polarized.
KS: Yes, that’s a good point, because the solstices represent this primary polarization.
AC: Yeah, like it’s literally as far from balanced as the year gets.
KS: As can be. And it is interesting, too, even if you just think about the symbolism of the signs of Gemini and Sag, that idea of the scatteredness or the ‘more is more’ and really just kind of wringing yourself out. So I think as much as we’re talking about exhaustion and those anorectic decans—as you were saying, Austin—there’s something in this that I keep picking up on around managing stress and anxiety. In addition to physical exhaustion, I think there can be this mental burnout with Mars in Gemini to Saturn in Sag.
AC: Yeah, I find that Mars in air signs in general is excellent for generating anxiety.
KS: Actually, you say that like it’s a good thing. You could really generate some anxiety with this.
AC: It’s really a great time if that’s what you want to do.
KS: So then, as we were all saying, I guess the idea of self-care. Active or proactive, adult self-care and those healthy limits.
AC: Yeah, let that be the shadow of your industry or your exertions. If you need to work harder than normal, take better care of yourself than normal. You know, a lot of times people think taking care of themselves means doing things which are pleasure-less, or they think it’s just like eating a tub of ice cream and drinking a gallon of booze, right? Taking care, nurturing both your psyche—if you’re feeling frazzled—and your body should be moderately pleasurable.
KS: Yes, not indulgent and escapism level.
AC: It’s not the ‘Scorpio Moon’ debauch, right?
KS: No. That’s exactly what I was thinking.
AC: There are some elements of that, right?
KS: But not to the extreme.
AC: It should feel like more discipline, right? If it feels like Saturn, then at least on an emotional level it’s not nurturing. But, you know, baths—I’m a big fan of baths.
KS: Brilliant.
AC: I have like 18 planets in water signs.
KS: I’ll co-sign on that. Basically, take a bath. It’s good for so many things.
AC: And have like a glass of wine. Maybe half a bottle, but not like more than one bottle.
KS: I just read in the bath.
AC: Yes, exactly. Reading, bath, moderate booze.
KS: Bubbles. No booze for me in the bath, Austin. I know we’re born really close together. We’re so different on that branch.
CB: Yeah, that pretty much brings us to the end of May.
KS: We’ll be in our baths on May 31.
AC: Then when Mars moves into Cancer, I’m just gonna move into the bath, and I will be podcasting from it.
KS: From the bath.
AC: Live from the bath.
CB: Yeah, that’ll be our new spin-off show, ‘Bath Time with Austin & Kelly’. All right, so that’s the last major alignment of May. So that brings us into June, and that pretty much brings us to the end of what we’re covering in this episode, I think. Are there any other major things that happen in May astrologically that we completely overlooked or forgot to talk about?
AC: There’s one thing I think is interesting. We got near it, but didn’t settle on it.
CB: What was that?
AC: I think it’s really interesting that just as Venus clears the degree that she stationed retrograde at in early March, Jupiter is waiting on the other side of the zodiac, and we have a Venus-Jupiter opposition pretty much exactly when Venus clears the shadow.
KS: Yes.
AC: And that’s extra interesting because Jupiter is in a Venus-ruled sign. And so, that really looks like kind of a review and an, “Okay, we did that, and this happened and that happened, and let’s get our equilibrium back and move on.”
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. So basically, at the very, very tail-end of the Venus retrograde period—when Venus finally passes the degree of its shadow period and ends the post-retrograde shadow phase and hits the degree it retrograded at—Jupiter’s retrograded all the way back to 13-14 Libra and is exactly opposite it. That’s kind of striking really. Cuz Jupiter was so late when it started.
AC: Yeah, isn’t it?
KS: Yeah, that’s cool. It’s beautiful. May 18-19-20. That’s really nice, Austin. So it’s like she’s coming out and there’s Jupiter to give her a big bunch of flowers, or a pat on the back, or some reward for that time in the underworld. And just to kind of tie that into the Saturn-Uranus—I don’t want to go back over it. But just the dates—May 18-19-20—Venus comes out of her shadow, opposes Jupiter, Saturn trines Uranus, all on the same three dates. So that’s gonna be nicer than the last week of May.
CB: Yeah, and it’s also some resolution to some of the things that happened during the Venus retrograde, including the culmination or the high point of it, which was the Venus-Saturn square, when Venus stationed direct in Pisces. The opposite end of that—at the very tail-end of the retrograde—is the Venus-Jupiter opposition.
KS: That’s right, yes. Because we did have those two squares from Venus to Saturn. This is a total change in quality.
CB: Yeah, well, that seems positive to me and a smoothing over of some problematic things that may have happened for some people during the retrograde and having a positive conclusion to that in some sense.
KS: Yeah, you see all those. Fabulous. And that’s actually why I think writing dailies is like playing scales for a pianist. I think that’s what doing dailies is for an astrologer. Some of those nuances that you think, “Oh, they must happen all the time,” you really get a sense. Anyway, I get a bit passionate about that.
CB: That’s a good point about it being like astrologer training in some sense and really sharpening and heightening your skills for some of those combinations by attempting to do a daily horoscope, and attempting to look at transits on a day-to-day basis.
KS: Yes.
CB: Even what we do here, for me, has really had the same effect, by forcing me to look at the major configurations of every month. Over the past few years, doing the electional column and having to find four electional charts each month, it really forces you.
KS: I think that’s probably the traditional astrologer equivalent of writing Sun sign daily horoscopes, doing your elections every month.
CB: All right, well, I think that pretty much brings us to the end of May. So I guess that’s it for this month. So it’s gonna be another month—actually we probably have to record the next forecast episode earlier in May because of NORWAC, cuz I’ll be away from that. But still, we’ll have to take a little break before reconvening again in, what, three weeks or so.
KS: Yeah, that sounds great.
AC: Yeah, that’ll work.
CB: Awesome. Well, thank you both for joining me today. Any final words before we sign off?
KS: Thanks for listening. Have a great month. Tell us how it goes.
AC: Yeah, what Kelly said.
CB: All right, that sounds good. All right, well, thanks everyone for listening. I’ll see a bunch of you at NORWAC next month. I’m gonna try and talk Austin into or possibly kidnap Austin for that, so we’ll see if he shows up. And yeah, thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
AC: Bye.
KS: Bye.