The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 122, titled:
Astrology Forecast and Election for September 2017
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on August 30, 2017
—
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
—
Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released February 13th, 2025
Copyright © 2025 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
—
CHRIS BRENNAN: Welcome. This is the 122nd episode of The Astrology Podcast. I’m Chris Brennan. And joining me today are Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees, and we’re gonna be talking about the astrological forecast for September of 2017. So if this is your first time listening to the podcast, you can find out more information about how to subscribe at theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. We decided not to do a livestream today, although we are doing a sort of private stream with patrons of The Astrology Podcast who support the show by donating each time we release an episode. If you’d like to join us for that, or if you’d like to donate and support the podcast, you can find us on Patreon by searching for ‘The Astrology Podcast’ and learning more information about that. So where should we start? So I guess it’s been a month since I talked to you guys last, and maybe we could get caught up on some news-and-updates-type things and then later on jump into the forecast. So we’ll spend the first little bit of this talking about some stuff that’s happened over the last few weeks or different news and other observations we’ve had, and then later we’ll get into the forecast for September. So in the description page for this episode, I’ll actually put a timestamp, so that if you want to jump forward to the forecast portion of the episode you can. Otherwise, you can just stick around and listen through until we get there. So the biggest thing of course was the eclipse. How were you guys doing, and what was your experience? Or how did the eclipse go for you over the past week or two?
KELLY SURTEES: I feel like I almost got ‘eclipsed’. It was such a weird day where I live, just near Toronto in Canada. We had like a partial experience where the light really changed in the afternoon. So it felt like dusk. It felt like it was 9:00 PM at night in the summer, but it was only two in the afternoon, so it was sort of weird. I felt very, very tired, weirdly so, on that day, and just had to keep taking a lot of rest. It was in my 6th house, so that kind of made sense for me. Yeah, so that was my personal experience. Just a weird vibe on the day more than anything. How about you guys?
CB: So it was like partial in your area? It was probably not far from what I viewed here in Denver. Although I guess I’m not sure of Toronto, cuz it swooped down across the United States. So maybe you were a little bit further from totality, or a lot further than I expected.
KS: Yeah, I think something like 60% or 70% totality was the technical description. So we still had heaps of light, I guess. I was surprised at how much light we still did have.
CB: Okay. Did you get some glasses and stuff?
KS: No.
CB: No.
KS: It was kind of hazy. Yeah, it was almost like that idea of the Sun being obscured, I guess. It’s like, where exactly do we look?
CB: Sure.
KS: But also, cuz it was the middle of the day, on a Monday, I was like, “I’ve got a bit of work to do,” so I kept ducking in and out. It was funny.
CB: Okay. And, Austin, were you right in the path of totality there in Oregon? Or where were you at relative to it?
AUSTIN COPPOCK: I think we were about two hours south of the path of totality. It was quite dramatic here. Let’s see, so we went outside and, I don’t know, I think it looked like it was maybe 80%-90%. The light definitely dimmed considerably, and the night creatures came out. Owls began hooting. I was sitting in the backyard. The mosquitoes—which usually don’t come out until dusk—came out, and I started getting bitten by mosquitoes. Yeah, it was obviously quite powerful. I also saw a variety of people having the ‘energy level’ dip that you described, Kelly. A lot of people were complaining about being very tired in the days before and after. You know, what’s interesting is here—even though it’s not causally-related—ever since the eclipse, the skies, which are usually crystal clear mountain skies here, have been just a flat gray because of all of the ash from the forests that are burning not that far away. The air smells like smoke, and the Sun comes through red when you look up. So it’s kind of post-apocalyptic-looking.
CB: Right.
AC: The wildfires have been out of control. And there are supposed to be wildfires in this area. That’s part of the natural cycle, but it’s very intense.
CB: Yeah, I mean, that’s really interesting, cuz I hadn’t thought about that until it happened and I started reading about it more, like the animals and stuff and other insects. Because it gets so dark, it’s suddenly nighttime in the middle of the day. And it’s one thing to actually say that theoretically versus experience it. Yeah, I mean, Leisa and I just went out to a park here in Denver, because we decided not to go north to Wyoming. We heard that half-a-million people were flocking there, and they’d been planning it out five years in advance, and we figured it would be too crazy to want to deal with that. And I don’t know if I’ll end up regretting that. I guess I do a little bit, but we still saw the eclipse take place. We were sitting in a park for a couple of hours with our glasses, and it was quite a spectacle to behold. I mean, it’s much more of a visceral-type experience to witness an astronomical alignment like that happening in real-time. And it was a little bit more, not intense, but a little bit more striking even than I had expected.
KS: It is different to experience it, I think, and part of the beauty of observing the stars of astrology is the experience. I caught up with Kenneth Miller when I was out in San Diego earlier in August, and he talked about the take on the eclipse from the Vedic or the Indian tradition, where it really matters what else is happening in the sky on the day of the eclipse. So he was saying Indian astrology wouldn’t necessarily give an eclipse a forecast interpretation ahead of the event, because they would incorporate the experience of the day. So was it cloudy at the time, was it windy—they would sort of factor that in. So it becomes more experiential—sort of what you were alluding to, Chris. That felt experience, I guess, rather than just the theory of it all.
CB: Right. And taking into account the omens, other omens that are non-astrological surrounding it at the time. That’s something that the Indian tradition is much better about, that used to be part of the Western tradition, and you would see things in Firmicus Maternus. He talks about if lightning strikes when some major astrological alignment happens, it means this, or other things like that. All right, so other things in terms of the eclipse, just any final thoughts on it. Well, I had a funny ‘Mercury retrograde’ thing happen where Demetra George and I were gonna record an episode of the podcast—it was gonna be Episode 121—last week, but we kind of got ‘Mercury retrograded’ where I sent here a nice microphone, and we wrote our outline and prepared for it for a few days and got ready to record, and then got time to do it. And then her computer didn’t recognize the microphone for some weird reason that’s never happened to me, so we, after 90 minutes of trying to record that episode, had to give up. She’s somebody who has Leo rising—and the eclipse, therefore, was around her ascendant—and she actually discovered that there was some sort of heart problem going on, and she needed to have surgery. So she actually went in for that the morning after we were supposed to do the podcast. And I’ve heard that she’s doing okay, but it was one of the interesting things, as I started noticing some of the people around me and different ways in which different people got hit by the eclipse when it was hitting personal points in their chart. Did you guys have anything like that in terms of noticing friends or clients or anyone getting hit in interesting ways?
AC: I saw a couple of things that repeated themselves. One was a bunch of car accidents in the week following. A bunch of eye infections. For those of you who are on the video, my left eye is a little strange and red right now for reasons that I can only connect to the eclipse, cuz nothing’s happened to my eye and I don’t have eye infections. But I heard that from a bunch of people. I mean, insofar as we can look at this eclipse as being specifically oriented to the United States, there is a tremendously destructive hurricane that’s been taking place in Texas, which is interesting because eclipse and disaster, historically, go hand-in-hand. I don’t know, I think it’s a little interesting that it’s not an area that was on the eclipse path. It’s definitely part of the nation that was eclipsed. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, the skies are full of ash here. This is, I think, just a slightly more intense version of what happens every year in August and September, but it’s at least made a poetic backdrop for it. I also saw a lot of couples get in nasty, nasty fights, or break up and get back together with surprising rapidity.
CB: Interesting. Yeah, and it’s weird because it was of course also coinciding with this Mercury retrograde period where it stationed in Virgo. And we’re only now, what, like halfway through that. Cuz we just had the Sun-Mercury conjunction, I guess, a day or two ago, and we’re gonna be on the other side of that over the next week or two. Yeah, and then in terms of world events, I mean, a lot of the focus from astrologers was on the fact that the eclipse was falling on Trump’s ascendant conjunct Regulus. And I thought it was really interesting in the news, later that same day of the eclipse, that he announced plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan, which, in reality, doesn’t seem like a huge announcement relative to what some of the astrologers were concerned about, that it could be a much more major event or something like that. Although I wonder if that doesn’t imply that that action or that development won’t have greater long-term significance than you would otherwise might think that it should.
AC: Yeah, there’s that. There’s also—if we’re just looking at the band of two weeks between the two eclipses—that was when the whole ‘Charlottesville’ thing happened, which was certainly unfavorable for Mr. Trump. Also, somebody pointed this out—and I noted it myself—that you had people who were openly Nazis or Neo-Nazis marching. You know, historically, they’ve used the black sun on their flags, right? The black sun is often used by Nazis for Nazis. And it was interesting as we were coming up on a big, black Sun event that you had those people out in public, in greater numbers, and louder, and getting more national attention than they have in I don’t know how long.
CB: Yeah. I mean, that was a huge deal that was happening, especially that two weeks between the eclipses. And now it seems like that’s, I don’t know, not died off completely, but the hurricane’s taken the focus in the news, but that was a huge thing that was going on for a couple of weeks. And it was interesting how a lot of the focus then ended up being on Trump, in terms of whether he was repudiating some of those groups or not, or attempting to blame both sides or whatever.
AC: Yeah. Also, a lot of people left his business council. The captains of industry abandoned him. And he lost support among some of the Republicans. There were a number of people who quit. There were a lot of people who tossed down his banner and kind of refused to hold it anymore.
CB: Sure. And then the final thing—this is something that came up in my interview with Bernadette Brady. We did an interview about her work on eclipses, but this was a point where I felt like I had a major disagreement with her, where she said the events associated with an eclipse should take place at the time of the eclipse, but there’s this whole other tradition. It was in the context of trying to talk about the Medieval tradition, where sometimes they say if an eclipse takes place under this condition, then the effect will happen or the event associated will happen three months later, or six months, or nine months or what have you. And something—the more and more I’ve thought about it over the last few weeks—that I really feel even more strongly is that eclipses sometimes can coincide immediately with events, but sometimes they can also initiate a sequence of events, where the full outcome of it isn’t really clear until a while later. And that’s something that happens kind of frequently in different parts of astrology, that it seems like it’s important to recognize. With eclipses especially, because they sometimes tie together these longer periods of six-month intervals where you have the eclipse season, where the New Moon and Full Moon starts taking place close to the nodes in the different signs. Or over a year-and-a-half or an almost two-year period, you have just a series of eclipses bouncing back and forth between two signs, and there’s a sort of interconnection between a lot of the events that take place in between those periods it seems to me. I mean, how do you guys feel about that? Or where do you come down in terms of eclipses taking place with events immediately versus sometimes there being a delay of some sort?
AC: I don’t even think it’s a discussion. I think that’s of course what it does. Sometimes they’re immediate things, but it’s a seed. I don’t even think that’s a debate. I’m really surprised that Bernadette expressed that opinion.
CB: Yeah, I was a little surprised as well. I mean, had you heard that before, Kelly?
KS: No. And I listened to, I think, the first-half of that podcast, cuz Bernadette was one of my very first astrology teachers years ago.
AC: Oh, really.
KS: Yeah, being Aussie gals. She was probably the second person that I learned astrology from.
AC: I love her work on the fixed stars.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Just to say something nice and respectful.
KS: Oh, she’s got some amazing stuff. And her book, Predictive Astrology: The Eagle and the Lark—which is where all of her eclipse research is—is a great reference for just transits and progressions and that type of thing. One thing I did really relate to with Bernadette was when she was saying that in being a working astrologer—which she has always been a consulting astrologer—she is really trying to refine her practice into ‘what can I tell people about what’s gonna happen’ and obviously give some really accurate dates. I thought that was interesting. I do find the eclipses, in that sense, are hit-and-miss because sometimes you’ll have an eclipse and the event on the day, and sometimes it does unfold over the three-to-six-months after. So I think I’d have to agree with Austin on this that it’s not always on the day itself. So that does surprise me as well.
AC: And I’m a little ‘eh’ about using a six-month range for an individual’s transits, in an individual chart, like there’s something there. But I definitely use the two weeks following and preceding. Two weeks between the eclipses and the two weeks after the second eclipse, but before we get a regular New Moon or Full Moon—those are lunar cycles, which are very specifically seeded by eclipses. You know, I see a lot of stuff like two days later, three days before. Like that’s really, really, really common. It’s very rare. I actually can’t think of an example where there wasn’t anything in the weeks surrounding an eclipse, and then it ended up signifying something big four months later. I think if you’re gonna have an echo like that, you will have an initial sound within that much smaller time period, which will then bounce around for the next six months.
KS: That’s a really good point. That’s probably what I really agree with. We do need to have something relatively close to the eclipse date, and it’s gotta be a chart that’s really activated by the eclipse. In the same way, Chris, you were just saying with Trump and that announcement around this war with Afghanistan, which sort of kind of got lost in the mix with all the other stuff that was happening at that time. But it will be interesting to see what that leads to, or what that was a foreshadowing of in the coming weeks and months.
CB: Right. And it just brings up this recurring issue that I’ve talked about many times before on the podcast, which is sometimes an event can take place in a person’s life that’s important, or personally will impact them, but they’re not fully aware of it at the time, or they don’t realize the implications of it at the time. I’ve seen somebody, for example, who had an eclipse happen and met a new person, or a new person came into their life that they would later get into a major relationship with. But they didn’t realize at the time that that meeting would be so significant, or that would be the person that they would later go on to marry or something like that. And so, that’s actually a real issue just in terms of researching astrology in general, the fact that sometimes in the moment, it’s not always clear what the significance of events are, or they’re not always necessarily in the person’s field of vision. And it certainly complicates things when it comes to studying the effects of things like eclipses, especially.
KS: For sure.
CB: All right, let’s see, I’m trying to think if there are any other ‘eclipse’ things before we move on, but I think that was pretty much it in terms of other recent news. I just released an episode with Gemini Brett today where we talked about observational astronomy, and talked about this weird debate that happened this weekend in the astrological community, where this thing about the Flat Earth theory came up. Did you guys see that taking place or going on?
AC: I think that it’s very generous to characterize that as a debate, Chris.
CB: Yeah, I mean, it was like Julia from the CIA (Cosmic Intelligence Agency) group posted a link to some astrologer who, on YouTube, was trying to promote the Flat Earth theory. And I didn’t know there were any astrologers who believed in this or even entertained this as a thing, but now I know there’s at least one or two. And she linked to it, saying: “Hey, isn’t this absurd?” And then the guy showed up on her Facebook page and started freaking out, throwing personal attacks and insults at her. And anybody that tried to challenge him, he started attacking and stalking them. It was really kind of insane. You actually saw it, Austin?
AC: I became aware of it afterwards.
CB: Okay. What were thoughts on that? I was vaguely aware of the Flat Earth theory as a thing that was out there, that some people thought, that I didn’t pay much attention to, but it didn’t really become relevant until I saw some astrologer—who has like 70,000 followers on YouTube—actually promoting it recently.
AC: Yeah, I still don’t think it’s relevant.
CB: Sure.
KS: It’s a bit crazy that it happened, and it’s crazy that somebody just went a little bit berserk, I guess. And it just seems like a crazy concept which one would go so intensely about.
CB: Sure. I guess the only way it was relevant—where Brett and I tried to frame our discussion about it, that I released earlier today—is just that, unfortunately, one of the realizations that I had and that we had in dealing with these people, or thinking about how you would deal with a person who’s promoting such a crazy theory about the nature of the solar system or the cosmos or the Earth or what have you is, unfortunately, when you step outside of yourself and think about it, you realize that most scientists would actually view astrologers the way that we view and would immediately reject something as crazy as the Flat Earth theory. And there was something a little bit disturbing to me from a personal and a philosophical perspective, thinking about and realizing that. And that’s not meant to say that we should entertain it or treat it more respectfully—or as anything connected with reality—than we should, but it’s at least giving us some perspective on how outsiders sometimes deal with astrologers in some instances. No? Not really? Not willing to go that far? Okay.
AC: No.
KS: I didn’t catch it at the time, so I feel like I’m a spectator.
AC: Well, what I would just say is a very important difference is that astrologers take in all of the facts and then do more. We don’t reject facts about the physical structure of the cosmos and substitute in made-up stuff. We start with the facts and then we go further using the facts as a base, but there’s a huge difference in method there. And sure, if someone thinks you’re crazy, then it might be kind of parallel to you thinking someone else is crazy, but that’s about where the parallel ends.
CB: Yeah, I mean, and that’s all in terms of the parallel. I mean, there is an issue where the way that most astronomers assume that astrology is defined is that it’s like celestial influences that are directly influencing and causing terrestrial events to happen or for people to behave in certain ways. And as far as they’re concerned, or as far as they know there’s no such mechanism that could explain that. And so, you get into similar territory in terms of the physical sciences from that standpoint, but obviously Flat Earth theory is a much more insane thing to even contemplate because of everything we know about the solar system and the world or the globe and how it just becomes the mother of all these other conspiracy theories, where they start saying it’s a government conspiracy to suppress knowledge of this and all of these other things. Anyway, sorry to dwell on that, but it just kind of blew my mind because I hadn’t seen anything like that. And it also brought up these other questions about standardization in the field, or why it’s useful for astrologers to have some background in astronomy. Even the ‘certification’ question is often brought up in the context of improving the standards of astrology or other things like that. But every once in a while you will run into somebody who is claiming to practice as an astrologer but is genuinely kind of insane, and this was kind of an instance of that. The issue is, what do you do, or what do we do as a community? And the answer is that you can’t really do anything because the lack of standardization in the field or certification means that anybody can put themselves out as an astrologer, and anybody can basically say anything. But even though I’m somebody who’s usually against certification, or really not that onboard with the idea of standardization in the way that some of the organizations have taken it, this was one of those instances that actually gave me pause and made me wonder if something like that isn’t more relevant than I sometimes think it is. I mean, do you guys think about things like that? Or does that give you any pause in terms of that question?
AC: I don’t think that that’s actually an answer. There are groups that certify astrologers and hold them to a certain standard. It doesn’t stop people from being astrologers outside of that, unless you would like there to be solid laws on the books that one cannot practice as an astrologer unless they’ve done the equivalent of ‘astro’ med school. Just like a person can’t practice as a doctor unless they’ve done that. You know, unless you have that level of total control linked to certification, then it’s not a solve at all.
CB: Right. And I’m not willing to go that far, and I understand the pitfalls if you go that direction, and why those would be major drawbacks, because some of the best astrologers are self-trained and have done no certification whatsoever. And certainly at this point in the astrological community, it’s not really reflective of the quality of a person’s work. But I guess I was just saying this is the extreme end of the spectrum of not having anything like that within our community, and it does seem problematic. It gave me a glimpse into what the other argument could be and what the issues are for a second, that I hadn’t really fully considered as much in the past.
AC: Does it seem crazier to you than ‘Pleiadian ascension 2012-ness’, which we’ve had for a long time in the astrological community? Cuz it just kind of seems like that’s ‘that’ side of things.
CB: I mean, yeah.
AC: And that’s been around. To me, it just seems like a new version of that. It’s like it’s the 2017 version of ‘astro’ crazy.
CB: No, just because it incorporates 20 different conspiracy theories into its thing. It says that the Moon landing was a hoax and the government is suppressing all of this, and that the world is literally flat and that any pictures that have been taken from space or anything are fabricated, and just all this other crazy stuff. So it becomes much more disconnected from reality and even things that are easily demonstrated or demonstrable, so that it seems much more different than that. But then you do get into that question of, where would you draw the line if you were trying to create standards in the field? Or when is it okay to call something out as being bogus versus when is it not okay to question somebody’s approach to astrology or cosmology or their belief system or what have you? Cuz that’s one of the issues in the astrological community where this is relevant. There are actually some astrologers that defended the ‘Flat Earth’ guy and attacked Julia, saying, “How dare you criticize this guy’s belief system, or this guy’s approach to astrology?”
KS: It sort of raises that question about what someone believes versus what is true. And it sort of veers into maybe the territory around religion to my mind, which is people do believe things that aren’t grounded in maybe a fact or a truth, if that makes sense, and it’s that gray area if this is what they believe. From our perspective, we’re like that’s factually incorrect. And, Austin, you made a beautiful point where it’s like we take the facts and we build on them as astrologers. We use a foundation in the natural world and then look to create some meaning from that. It is a tricky question because where do you put the line there? I mean, part of me is sort of thinking, sure, the line maybe moves for different groups, but at least agree from some starting foundation or principles. And what’s so almost shocking about this experience is that this person is taking their foundation back 5-or-600 years to something that has been disproved. I can’t really get onboard with how that could be okay, I guess.
CB: Right. And I guess there’s no way to say it. You know, I’m certainly not condoning it, but I’m just using it as an extreme example of one of the discussions that’s come up in the community lately of relativism. Relativism is a philosophy that many astrologers are adopting in order to deal with the fact that there’s so many different traditions and approaches to astrology and religion and cosmology and all these other things. You know, at what point does it go too far? Cuz this is an obvious example where I think most astrologers would agree this is way too far and you’ve crossed the line. But where is that line then, and is it possible to draw it?
KS: And that’s a really good point. Where would the line be? And then we’d have to all have an ‘agreeance’, I guess, that this is the line. The thing it makes me think of—to sort of speak to your point, Austin, around that idea of medical standards or having to do this practicing certificate—is there something different as an intermediary? Something like the masons or some sort of trade level, where it’s like we all agree on these basic principles. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I can see, Chris, why it’s really prompted this food for thought for you.
AC: Yeah, well, when have astrologers all agreed on anything?
KS: I mean hello house systems.
CB: Well, yes and no. I mean, most astrologers agree that the world is round.
AC: I mean on organizing themselves in a political manner, which that would require. It would also require the government—the United States government at least—to recognize astrology as valid in order to treat it like medicine. I think it’s not a road worth thinking about cuz it’s simply not gonna happen, or at least not for a hundred years.
CB: Well, no. We can have internal standards within the community without having the government.
AC: Right. We already do and it doesn’t stop that.
CB: No, we don’t. We’ve started over the past 10 years with some certification processes. But each organization is doing their own thing. The quality of all of them is pretty poor, cuz I’ve seen some of them. So any efforts to do any sort of certification or standardization are still in their infancy, if anything, and none of them have been organized community-wide. So it’s not that we have that or that already exists. It hardly exists and it’s not community-wide. So you would have to talk about that before you’d even get to the point of saying that the government’s gonna be involved or something like that.
KS: I mean, if you want to talk about the standards, it’s a tricky issue—the standards issue, I guess—because do we have one country that sets the standard for everyone globally? Does each country create some standards for themselves? I agree with your point, Chris, that there are not a lot of consistent standards. Even in the US alone, there are three or four different organizations that certify people. I know just from my experience with Australia, we just have one organization that certifies. But I don’t know, it would be an interesting thing to see if astrologers could organize in that way. Yeah, I don’t know. I think it’s great to do structured training for people who want to be an astrologer. Whether we could all come together, I’m not sure. I mean, it’ll sort of be interesting to see what that might look like.
CB: Sure. Well, it’s just something that will be interesting because that discussion’s only been happening for a decade or two in terms of standardization and attempts to move towards that. All the astrological organizations in the US, for example, have only adopted ethics rules in the past 10 years. But as more and more traditions continue to be revived and developed over the course of the next decade or two—and as all these old traditions are coming into play—it will be interesting to see what sort of synthesis happens in the future and if standardization is just completely impossible as a result of that, or if the merging of the different traditions at some point could allow for some basic form of standardization to take place in the future, and at least if there’s a few baselines that astrologers could agree on—such as the world being round or what have you. Anyway, maybe that’s enough for that discussion and we could move on to the forecast section of this.
KS: Cool.
CB: Okay, so last month we focused on the most pressing or obviously prominent thing from the top of the episode. But a few people asked if we could actually do things more in order this month, just because it might be a little bit easier to follow in the audio version. So if we start at the top of the month, what’s the first thing that comes up in the forecast for September that we might want to talk about?
KS: First thing, so, for me, I mean, I’m just planning out the month ahead for my website here, so I have a month with all the scribbles on it. Mars trines Uranus on Saturday, the 2nd, and then the first of the two Mercury-Mars conjunctions that we’re gonna have this month on Sunday, the 3rd. I mean, Mars-Uranus—I kind of like Mars-Uranus aspects. Maybe I have a freaky fascination with chaos. But from a personal perspective, the way I see that manifest for clients and for friends and that type of thing, Mars trine Uranus can be about really getting some stuff done. Definitely that kind of combustible energy. But this is a trine, I guess, not a square. The Mercury-Mars, that’s sort of this prickly energy that I think we’re gonna have to deal with a little in September. We do have two iterations of Mercury-Mars. The first is in Leo on the 3rd, and the second is in Virgo on the 16th. So I think the one on the 16th is a little tempered because we’ve got the cooling grounded-ness of Virgo coming in. But the Mercury-Mars on the 3rd—maybe heated discussions, outbursts. Maybe some volatile conversations. You know, that sort of food-in-mouth disease, I guess, we’d call it. So from the very start of the month they’re the two things I’m looking at at the very beginning.
CB: Okay. Right. And so, we get the Mercury-Mars conjunction, and the retrograde is wrapping up relatively early in the month on the 5th, right?
KS: Yeah.
CB: Okay, so Mercury’s direct in Leo on September 5. And what degree does it station on? Is it at 28?
KS: It is at 28, yeah. I mean, that’s a pretty hot thing. I think we might have kind of flagged that last month to chat about. You’ve probably got some thoughts on that, Austin.
AC: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot that happens the first week, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: So we have Mercury back in Leo at the beginning of the month, and Mars and Mercury are mutually-applying to a conjunction with each other. And so, that happens early morning on the third night of the 2nd. So Sunday night, if you’re in the western hemisphere. And then pretty much right after that, or a day after that, we get Mars entering Virgo, switching, and then we have Mercury stationing direct pretty much at the same time, and then we have the Full Moon. It’s boom, boom, boom.
KS: The 5th and 6th, yeah.
AC: Yeah, 4th, 5th, 6th. So that’s a lot going on. And so, like you said, Mercury-Mars is squabbly, right? It’s squabbly. You know, you tend to get even more rancor in the media and publicly. People saying nasty things to each other. People threaten each other. I don’t know, maybe that’s another spat between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, or it could be a lot of other things. There are a lot of hotspots these days, right? And you have Mars entering a Mercury-ruled sign. So even though the conjunction is breaking up, it’s still Mars-Mercury. And we’ve got another Mars-Mercury coming up a week-and-a-half later. But what’s interesting to me is that there’s a very strong contrast with that Full Moon.
KS: Yes, yes.
AC: It’s a Full Moon in Pisces, and it’s a Full Moon conjunct Neptune in Pisces, which is certainly not aggressively verbal, right? Those aren’t words that we associate with any of that complex.
KS: I’m not sure you’d get aggressive or verbal out of that Full Moon.
AC: You know, you said something earlier, Kelly. You were like, “Oh, I’m just waiting for that Full Moon.” And the phrase that popped into my mind was like coming to wash away our sins.
KS: Oh, that’s beautiful
AC: At least for a tiny little bit.
KS: Yes.
AC: It might not actually do it, but it might feel like it for a little bit. I think it’s going to mellow out some of the Mercury-Mars stuff. In a very few cases, it’ll just add crazy to it, right? But in general I think it’s gonna mellow it out. It’s not really configured to it. You know, it switches us out of eclipse time.
KS: Yes.
AC: It will be the first lunation we’ve had since July that is not eclipsed, and it moves us out of the two weeks since the total solar. And so, I think there will be some relief. And even though Mercury’s direct station will be prickly—because it’s near Mars—it is a direct station.
KS: Yes.
AC: I often experience a certain relief and an ability to think and write, again, in the days leading up to and following Mercury’s direct station. There’s usually a bit of clarity. Some people, especially people with natal retrogrades, might not like it as much, but for most people and most things the direct station is an occasion for a nice sigh.
KS: That feeling of a nice sigh is really what I get coming out of this Full Moon. Like this 24-hour period of washing away our sins, cleansing, softening, I don’t know, healing, feeling. And not everyone’s gonna love that vibe, cuz I think there’s definitely gonna be this air of confusion coming through. Maybe because Mercury stations literally 24 hours before the Full Moon, maybe not the best time to be making high-level, detailed decisions, but I think a great time for maybe relaxing or taking a chill, stepping back.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. So there’s the day of the Full Moon, but the Moon’s in Pisces for over two-and-a-half days, right? And it’s all gonna kind of have that feeling about it.
KS: It’s gonna be nicely-tempered.
CB: And it’s kind of nice for people with Leo rising or with fixed signs, just because also Mercury is stationing the first day that Mars finally clears that sign in a while, and therefore, removes some of the agitation or other things that may have been associated with that transit over the course of the past month or so.
AC: Yeah, definitely. But there is more Mercury-Mars stuff waiting.
KS: We’re not done with it.
AC: And so, you know what’s really fun about the upcoming Mercury-Mars, the second one, which occurs in September, that’s the 16th? That is the day that there are simultaneous Juggalo and Trump supporter marches on Washington. You guys heard about this?
KS: No.
CB: No.
AC: Okay, so there’s a big pro-Trump rally scheduled for September 16 that just happens to be the day that a massive Juggalo or ICP (Insane Clown Posse) fans were scheduled to march on Washington.
KS: Literally there’s gonna be clowns marching and Trump people marching.
AC: Right, scary clowns. And the scary clown people are very much not the pro-Trump people, at least as far as the internet can see. And so, we’re gearing up for a heated ‘clown clash’ in Washington. Look on the internet. Hopefully, it’s not violent, but it will definitely be hilarious. It’s hilarious that it’s even happening.
CB: When is this, again?
AC: This is the 16th. This is the day of the second Mercury-Mars conjunction.
CB: Okay, there it is in Virgo.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, that Mercury-Mars conjunction is tough. Cuz when we were looking at elections this month, it’s like it falls right in the middle of the month, and it’s applying for much of the first-half. And so, it’s this weird thing that you have to sort of get around for a big part of the month.
AC: Yeah, especially once Mercury goes back into Virgo on the 9th, which is probably the first interesting thing that happens after Mercury’s direct station. But once Mercury goes back into Virgo on the evening of the 9th, then you’ve got Mercury and Mars applying and in the same sign, and 3° or less away from each other. And so, even though, yeah, there’s a conjunction on the 2nd/3rd, and there’s another conjunction on the 16th, that will be a relatively constant background for more than the first-half of the month. Because even when Mercury conjoins Mars, it then passes it by a minute, and then two minutes. And so, it’s gonna take us really until close to the end of the month to really get a meaningful separation between those two.
CB: Right. And it looks like even once it is, then it’s applying to square Saturn at 21 Sag for a good chunk of the month.
AC: Yeah.
CB: That’s fun.
KS: At least Mercury’s in Virgo. That’s the saving grace.
AC: So how do we live with, basically, three weeks of Mercury-Mars?
CB: I mean, one of my solutions—from an electional standpoint—was to try to do stuff at night. Because at least if it’s a night chart, you can diffuse some of that Mars being in the more malefic side of the spectrum. And especially the fact that, as Kelly said, it’s in Virgo, you have reception between Mercury and Mars, so there’s also some mitigation. It’s like there’s ways to work around it, at least from a technical standpoint or an electional standpoint, but how you get around that from a social standpoint is maybe a much different question.
KS: Yeah, I mean, it strikes me that Mercury-Mars in Virgo would be really good for technical or mechanical writing or researching. It’s maybe not gonna be ideal for the pleasant, sweet stuff. So that’s what that feels like if you had a big editing project to do, if you had a detailed writing thing to do. Yeah, I mean, tackling things in a decisive way. I mean, that Mercury in Virgo has a lot of dignity or strength, I guess, but that can exaggerate the tendency to overanalyze things. And at least with the Mars there, you can maybe cut or decide and not totally let the mind run away, but it is prickly. And then of course one of the contrast energies to that is the Venus-Jupiter sextile, which is happening just a little before that second exact Mercury-Mars conjunction. So the 14th and the 15th we’ve got Venus on the North Node, Venus sextile Jupiter. And Jupiter is very close to the fixed star Spica then as well. So these feel like two very contradictory energies in the themes or the topics that they are activating, because that Venus-Jupiter does feel more collaborative or more supportive rather than the Mercury-Mars. But I’m interested to get the take that you guys might have on that.
AC: Yeah, I would agree with that very strongly if Jupiter wasn’t coming right up on that opposition with Uranus.
KS: With Uranus, okay.
AC: You know, what I’ve seen watching the Jupiter-Uranus oppositions this year is that Uranus in Aries totally gets to ruin the peacemaking that Jupiter in Libra tries to do.
KS: Okay.
AC: And the Uranus in Aries is ruled by Mars. I mean, I’d rather have that Venus-Jupiter sextile than not. I just think that even that configuration is actually relatively volatilized.
KS: Okay.
AC: Especially also because you’ve got Venus on the North Node. And the North Node does not favor clarity or balance.
KS: No, it’s extreme, for sure.
CB: You’re saying from an Indian perspective of the nodes representing destabilization?
AC: I mean, yeah, the Indian perspective is definitely part of my perspective on the nodes. I’ve fed myself with everything I can find. I think that what is often said in Jyotish about that is true.
CB: Sure. I was just asking because I know the Medieval astrologers would look at a benefic-North Node conjunction and say, “Oh, that’s positive,” because the nodes increase the power of the benefics and magnify them, and therefore, that’s a positive conjunction.
AC: Yeah, I think it’s positive for some of Venus’ significations. I just don’t think that as a part of this larger set of configurations it’ll end up being useful.
CB: Okay, sure. It is nice—just to speak to your point briefly, Kelly—that there is at least reception as well in terms of that sextile, so that it’s strengthening the ties a little bit even more than it would normally in terms of a sextile between Venus and Jupiter.
KS: Totally. I can see where you’re coming from, Austin. It’s not that I disagree, cuz I think the ‘Jupiter’ component is very much all about Uranus this month. But for specific ‘Venus’ things—Venus is on the North Node sextile Jupiter, she is gonna trine Uranus shortly after this—but it just feels like some sort of breakthrough or a pushing-forward. And that is not always easy or smooth, but it can bring progress that is at least maybe motivating, or that idea that ‘this is my vision and I’m doing something towards it’, I guess. Venus gets that benefit from Jupiter. I mean, I do think about planets in fire signs as being a little bit primal, so not always grounded, which is definitely part of, I guess, the issue with the whole larger Uranus in Aries cycle. It’s interesting the different takes on the nodes, for sure.
CB: Yeah, that’s always been one of my issues with the nodes, reconciling the different traditions—because the Medieval tradition has this specific approach that’s partially derived from conceptual things, the Indian tradition has a specific approach, and then the modern tradition has developed its own approach more recently surrounding them—and what the middle-point is between those when it comes to specific rules of making tradition about what a specific placement, like Venus conjunct the node means; whether the nodes are being treated like destabilizing influences or like magnifying influences or what have you.
AC: Yeah, well, I would say that the North Node actually destabilizes by magnifying. And a lot of Indian texts would say the same thing. What is a very common opinion in Jyotish is that the North Node is good for material significations, but it’s bad for spiritual significations. It makes you rich, but not happy.
KS: Yeah. And the reverse is true, too, right? The South Node—it’s more spiritualized in its nature, but not great for material stuff.
AC: Right, right. And so, both of those are destabilizing and can be seen as beneficial in one way and malefic in another way. It depends on which side you bet on. If you want a bunch of money, a ‘South Node’ thing is not gonna be helpful for that.
KS: No way, no way.
CB: Sure. So it actually becomes relevant in terms of some of the elections that Leisa and I were looking for this month. And I had a really hard time—or we had a really hard time figuring out which one to highlight in the forecast episode as a result of that. We found some that had some good, positive things, but there were always some major drawbacks, and a lot of the drawbacks made it so that there wasn’t a really good one that stood out very well. Let me share the one that we decided to promote as one of the main elections that we found, to explain the pros and cons surrounding it. So it takes place on September 10, 2017 at approximately 2:08 AM. We set it for Denver, Colorado, but the important thing is just to make sure that Cancer is rising. Specifically, we have about 23° of Cancer rising. Although you could adjust that a little bit, depending on what you’re trying to highlight in the chart, just make sure you have Cancer rising.
KS: Chris, just quickly, did you pick 23 Cancer because it’s in the direct square to Jupiter?
CB: Yeah.
KS: Okay.
CB: Leisa sort of narrowed that down, and she wanted to make it square to Jupiter in order to make Jupiter even more prominent than it already is by being in the 4th house and not that far from the IC. You could really adjust it and do a few different things in terms of that. I mean, you could back the ascendant up and make it so that it sextiled the Mercury-Mars conjunction or the Sun in the 3rd house in order to energize those placements a little bit more, even though they’re cadent. You could try to move the MC forward, but I don’t know if you can get it forward enough to trine Venus while Cancer is still rising. I mean, there’s a few different options. So this one’s not as closely-timed as some of them. And that’s why I was saying just focus on getting Cancer rising more than anything. So the chart has Cancer rising and the ruler of the ascendant—which is the most important planet in the election—is the Moon, which is exalted in Taurus in a night chart. It’s completely in aversion to or is not aspected by Saturn, which is good since this is a night chart; and that would be potentially hampering, especially if there’s a hard aspect between those two. The Moon is applying to a square with Venus and a trine with the Sun eventually, and it’s otherwise placed in the 11th house. So this chart is, to some extent, 11th house-focused in terms of groups and alliances and other things of that nature. It would be good for 11th house-type matters. The other thing about this chart—and the reason why I wanted to highlight it—is, because like Austin and I were talking about earlier, the Mercury-Mars conjunction is really prominent this month. And pretty much anytime, in any of the day charts or day chart elections, you run into this issue, especially around the first part or the middle of the month where you’ve got a pretty prominent Mercury-Mars conjunction, which can be problematic because it can cause or can correlate with discord or divisiveness or other things like that. And if that’s not what you’re going for in your election, then you don’t want to necessarily emphasize that, but instead you want to find ways to mitigate it. And one of the two primary ways that you can mitigate it is, one, by making it a night chart, so that applying conjunction between Mercury and Mars is not gonna be as destabilizing for Mercury, and Mars is not gonna be acting as much of a malefic in this chart.
So that’s one of the things we have going in this chart, just trying to mitigate what is otherwise a rather prominent Mercury-Mars conjunction, so it’s a night chart. It also has reception, which also takes some of the edge off of the conjunction between Mercury and Mars. We’ve got Venus in the 2nd house of financial matters in a night chart, which is somewhat positive for finances. But that’s when the major drawback comes down for this chart—which is the thing that I really didn’t like about it, but it’s the only thing that I can’t really avoid—which is that there’s a pretty close applying square between the Sun and Saturn within about 3°, which is a serious, problematic condition in this chart that’s actually maltreating or afflicting the Sun. And as the ruler of the 2nd house, the Sun is primarily acting out financial matters in this chart. So I don’t think—even though Venus is in the 2nd—that this would be a very good chart for financial matters. But in terms of 11th house matters (focused on groups or friends or alliances) or even to some extent 3rd house matters involving communication, potentially travel—although this is two in the morning—unfortunately, you’re gonna have to be either staying up very late or getting up very early to use anything under this chart. But financial matters would probably not be a great one because the ruler of the 2nd is so afflicted.
AC: That’s really too bad. Because if the Sun wasn’t afflicted, that would actually be a great ‘money’ chart.
CB: Yeah, with Venus in the 2nd house.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And a big, juicy Taurus Moon, Cancer rising getting ruled by that.
CB: Yeah. And I mean it’s one of those things where it does have so many positive things, it’s probably one of those situations where things might go well initially, because you have Venus in the 2nd house doing relatively well in a night chart. But then because the ruler is declining and it’s afflicted by Saturn, things might not turn out very well later on.
AC: Or they might just move painstakingly slow with that Sun-Saturn. It might be like, “Yeah, we’re making progress,” and it’s like less progress every whatever. So maybe not a good long-term election. Maybe more something to use for things that aren’t going to endure for years.
CB: Sure, definitely. That’s definitely good advice, especially where there’s an emphasis on cadent placements—like there are in this chart—rather than angular ones. Yeah, so that’s the chart. It also has Jupiter angular in the 4th house. So it’s trying to make the benefics more prominent and trying to put the most difficult planet in this chart—which is Saturn in a night chart—sort of out of the way, where it’s in the 6th house. So really the only planet that it’s seriously harming is the Sun, but otherwise, it’s not majorly prominent in this chart, and therefore, is not as much of an issue as it could be. So that’s our one election that we’re gonna highlight for September. Leisa found five other electional charts for September that we’re gonna talk about in The Auspicious Elections Podcast, which is available to patrons on the $5 or $10 tier. All of the other charts pretty much have this same dynamic, though, this month where there’s some really positive things—and that’s why we picked out those charts and emphasized those things—but then there’s some major drawbacks as well. Like, in this instance, the Sun being afflicted. In other charts, it’s other things, like dealing with the Mercury-Mars conjunction or other things like that. But this is a workable chart if you want to get up at two o’clock in the morning on September 10.
KS: Love it. I mean, it does feature one of the aspects that I didn’t know if you guys wanted to speak to it briefly—the Sun square Saturn aspect that is gonna happen around the 13th of September. I often notice clients really struggling with choices between personal preferences versus that duty/obligation side of things when we get hard Saturn-Sun aspects. Is that something you guys have noticed as well?
AC: Yeah. Also, it’s a ‘deadline-y’ aspect.
KS: A what? Sorry.
AC: It’s a ‘deadline-y’.
KS: Oh, like on a deadline. I’m like that’s a technical term I haven’t heard. But I’m familiar with deadlines, got it.
AC: Not a technical term.
KS: Coming up against the deadlines, perfect.
AC: Right. Just like where I imagine a lot of deadlines are gonna land, either self-imposed or otherwise. You’re like, “Uh, I said I would get it done by mid-September.” But it’s that same sort of, “I don’t wanna do it, oh, I’ve gotta do it, I don’t wanna do it,” like that kind of feel.
KS: Totally that. And one thing I like or appreciate about hard angles between the Sun and Saturn is it sort of really shows if you really don’t want to do something, then make a different choice going forward. Just don’t say ‘yes’ to it. I think that idea of Saturn and restructuring sometimes comes through. Sometimes you don’t want to do something and that’s just cuz you’re feeling lazy, but you know once you get into it, you’ll actually really enjoy the process.
AC: Yeah, that’s something I experience with ‘Saturn’ stuff a lot. You’ve gotta get some momentum going on your own, and then once you do it then it becomes not so bad. But there’s looking at the ‘Saturn’ obligation from the outside and from the position of rejection and just thinking about how much you don’t want to do it and building up a little complex about it or a little cathexis. But then when you actually do it, you’re like, “Okay, this is not unendurable.”
KS: No. I mean, and that’s the great thing about Saturn, too. His tests are often endurable. It’s just a matter of deciding whether you want to take that test at that time. That’s the choice, I guess. So I just thought I’d mention that aspect quickly while we were there. Sorry, Austin.
AC: No, I think that’s important. And I like what you said about commitments. You know, whenever there’s an encounter with Saturn, it brings up the commitments that we have made in the past that are now rising to the forefront. Although it’s often too late to ‘uncommit’ without being a flake at that point, it can give you some food for thought for next time somebody says, “Will you do this at this time?” or “Will you commit to x, y, or z?” You can remember the last time you were miserable because you said you were gonna do something and you had to do it. And that’s so Saturn. It’s food for thought for the future, right?
KS: Totally.
CB: Definitely. So is there anything else? We’re at the middle of the month. In the notes we had the Mercury ingress September 9, and it sort of jumps forward a little bit. We’ve talked about Venus conjunct the node and sextile Jupiter, which happens around the middle of the month. And then it seems like the next thing really is Venus’ ingress into Virgo September 19, which happens right around the same time as the New Moon in Virgo on September 20.
KS: Yes. And Mercury will oppose Neptune on the 19th as well. So we do kind of skip ahead from the middle of the month to that 19th-20th.
AC: Yeah, I mean, after the Mercury-Mars conjunction, they both move on. They move on towards oppositions with Neptune, which is interesting and certainly doesn’t portend a period of clarity following whatever verbal exchanges occur during the Mercury-Mars.
CB: Right. And that’s what we actually started this retrograde under. Because Mercury stationed at 12 or 13 opposite Neptune, right?
AC: That’s a really good point.
KS: That’s a great point.
AC: That’s coming back to that place. You know, shadows are worth thinking about normally. But this is especially important because the relationship with Mercury was like, “Oh, it’s Neptune. I’m gonna oppose Neptune, and then I’m gonna come back and then do it again.” It’s coming back to an event that began the Mercury retrograde rather than just the space in which it began.
CB: Right. It’s a different—not different, but it certainly will amplify whatever that process of leaving the shadow period is and whatever the initial sequence of events were that started the Mercury retrograde period, and then coming back and revisiting them one final time.
AC: Yeah. So on that note, I have a question for y’all. One of the things I surmised at the beginning of the Mercury retrograde—and have seen as a theme in addition to the obvious ‘solar eclipse’ themes—is people trying to pierce the ‘Neptunian’ veil with this Mercury retrograde starting opposite Neptune. Like people trying to find out what the real situation is and get down to it, but often being quite confused and exchanging one illusion for another. But it seems like there’s been, in the background, Mercury trying to cut through or figure out a way to cut through Neptune. Is that something y’all have seen at all?
KS: I hadn’t thought about it quite like that, but it’s a really interesting point, Austin.
CB: I mean, I mainly just bought a laptop that I had to return and got screwed with technology and electronic things this time around.
AC: Yeah, I got some good ones. I’m in a Mercury-profected year, so every one of these is just wrecking the house on me.
CB: Oh, yeah.
KS: Oh, gosh. Well, the only weird thing we’ve had here is my husband is so frustrated with me because I haven’t bought a new phone yet.
AC: I haven’t bought a new phone yet either. I lost mine. I left mine on a plane. I haven’t had a phone for like three weeks.
KS: Oh, gosh. I mean, I still have mine, but I’m a pretty dedicated not-iPhone person, so I have a Blackberry. And it does need to be updated. It’s not running a particular app that my family uses to communicate all the time. WhatsApp doesn’t run on my old Blackberry thing. And so, my husband gets so frustrated when he wakes up in the morning and there’s like 50 messages from my family in Australia. He’s like, “You’ve gotta look at this damn phone,” and, “When are we buying you a phone?” And I keep delaying it. I’m like after the Mercury retrograde, I hadn’t even factored in the Mercury opposition with Neptune. So it’s gonna have to wait till I get back from the next trip then.
AC: That reminds me of a good friend of mine who’s a Pisces. He has what he calls ‘Pisces’ voicemail, which is where you just don’t ever set up your voicemail, so that no one can leave voicemails.
KS: That’s brilliant.
CB: And I have to say, you guys probably made the smart decision. Cuz every once in a while you have to just give in and do whatever the thing is that you have to do during the Mercury retrograde, and then you have to go through a lot more hassle.
KS: You just have to deal with it.
CB: Yeah, you just have to deal with it. That’s kind of the lesson, having to sometimes push through or strive through being part of the process and that being healthy, or sometimes having things just go awry and having to deal with that. But then every once in a while, as an astrologer, you also have that experience of just wanting to test it or wanting to push it, or feeling like you have to do it at that time, even though you know what the transits are. So me getting that new laptop—I’ve been without a laptop for like a month, and it was having serious problems in terms of keeping on top of email and in terms of doing the podcast and everything else. So at the beginning of this retrograde, I was just like, “I have to do this, hopefully it won’t be too bad.” But then I got the laptop and it immediately had issues, and it’s been a process of getting it repaired and sending it back over the course of the past three weeks through a series of different, funny disasters with it. So I respect your restraint, both of you, in not getting your phones during the course of that and having more strength than I did not to test it out.
AC: You know, Chris, as complimentary as that is, I don’t think it was my restraint or discipline that was responsible for me not getting a phone.
KS: I think it was just ‘Neptune’ vagueness at my end.
CB: Sure.
AC: I was like, “Oh, I don’t know, I’m really busy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll do it later.”
KS: Do it later, yeah. Not a conscious decision.
CB: Got it.
AC: So let’s talk about the New Moon.
KS: Oh, the Virgo New Moon on the 20th.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Let’s do it. What do you want to say, Austin?
AC: I don’t know. I’m gonna say it’s at 27° Virgo.
KS: Yeah.
AC: The last decan of Virgo is not very—
KS: It’s very Virgo and New Moon.
AC: Uh, yeah. And so, what’s interesting is if you look at that, that is five visible planets in Virgo for that moment.
KS: Yes.
CB: Right.
AC: Which is worth noting. The last decan of Virgo—I would say it’s very [sighs] and tropic. You see a lot of physical things falling apart. All of the images are basically dead bodies, or bodies being prepared for burial.
KS: So uplifting, Austin.
AC: Well, that’s what the images are.
KS: That’s what it is, I know.
AC: Some of the decans are full of happy, victory stuff.
KS: And this isn’t one of them?
AC: This is not one of them. So it’s concerned with legacies. Legacies and consequences which extend beyond the immediate, right? What is the legacy of your life? Or your administration, or whatever your work. It has to do with when this falls apart—as it always will, everything falls apart. Everything given a body falls apart over time. What will the legacy be? So that’s the spiritual/mental level of it, but it’s often very hard on people’s health. It’s hard on people’s health and it’s not good for their things.
KS: Cool. It’s hard on people’s health. Which I think even a modern astrologer might get to with all this ‘Virgo’ brouhaha.
AC: Yeah, I agree that there are other methods to come to that conclusion.
KS: I like the decans. I love the images. They’re so rich, Austin. And then of course, as you guys pointed out, this Virgo New Moon is ruled by Mercury, which is still within that 3°-window of conjunction. Which I think is a definition of maltreatment, right, with Mars?
CB: Yeah, it’s usually within 3°. That was one of the reasons why the ‘Sun-Saturn’ thing was so important earlier.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And perfectly opposite Neptune, within seven minutes.
KS: Oh, Mercury. Yeah, the opposition is right there.
CB: Right. That’s such a crucial turning point. So we’ve really pinpointed one of the core hotspots of September, right around this New Moon, just because we have the New Moon going exact at 27 Virgo, Mercury hitting that opposition with Neptune at 12 Virgo/Pisces, and simultaneously leaving its shadow right around that degree range. And then at the same time, Venus—just right before that—has just ingressed into Virgo and joined the party.
KS: Yes. And it is quite the party.
AC: So among the many things that that means, one of them is that we’re finally done with all the ‘Leo’ business.
KS: Yes.
CB: Right.
AC: Finally. So no more ‘North Node/Leo’ stuff for a while. And instead we’re dealing with it’s a very ‘Virgo’ September, at least once it gets going.
KS: Yeah, at this latter part, for sure.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really great point, also. Cuz this is exactly one lunar month after the solar eclipse that we finally get to that point. And even though we’ve already had the previous lunation, this is like the next New Moon after that solar eclipse New Moon at 28° Leo. So we’re finally fully free of that, both in terms of all the planets moving out of that sign, but also in terms of moving onto the very next lunation cycle.
KS: Yeah.
CB: All right, so this is September 19-September 20. And then after that point, the next big thing that takes place is the Sun actually ingresses into Libra just a few days later, right?
KS: It does.
CB: Looks like that’s about September 22.
KS: Yes. So it could be the 23rd on the East Coast, or in Australia, I guess, just depending.
CB: Okay, so we get the Sun’s ingress into Libra about September 22, and thus, ends summer in the northern hemisphere at least.
KS: Yes, and winter in the southern.
CB: Right. The end of summer in the southern hemisphere.
KS: Yeah. Although Australia’s a little quirky. They do it at the end of the month rather than actually on the solstice and the equinox. But there are other countries in the southern hemisphere that probably see it more.
CB: What do you mean by that?
KS: Like in Australia, they would celebrate the start of spring. They actually celebrate it on the 1st of September, if I’m remembering correctly. And now all the listeners will let me know. You know, in the northern hemisphere, we say the season starts on the solstice or the equinox. In Australia, they would have it at the start of the month beforehand.
CB: Okay, got it.
KS: A little, yeah. I mean, that’s not necessarily what astrologers in Australia would do. That would be like if I asked my dad—who doesn’t really know much about astrology at all—when does spring start or when does summer start, summer starts on the 1st of December, not the solstice.
CB: Got it.
KS: It’s just a quirk, the country’s quirk.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yeah. And then I guess the next big aspect is actually when Mars opposes Neptune.
CB: Yeah, it looks like September 24 we get the exact Mars-Neptune opposition at the same degrees that Mercury basically opposed Neptune. So we get the other side of that continuing drama of planets moving through Virgo and hitting that opposition with Neptune.
KS: Yeah. And this is an interesting couple of days, the 24th and 25th. We have the Mars-Neptune opposition, which is like getting caught in the haze. Or the fog has descended, how do you move forward when your plan doesn’t hold up? And I always think Mars-Neptune aspects are like trying to drive through very heavy fog, and you have to almost feel your way forward or intuit. And maybe you have to slow your pace because the details, the data, or the perspective is not there. But we also have very, very quickly after, the Mercury-Saturn square is kicking in; the Mercury at 21 Virgo. So September is—you know, there’s periods where there’s three or four days and there’s no big aspects, and then we have two or three things happening within the same 48-hour period. I don’t know, I think Mercury-Saturn versus Mars-Neptune are, again, two very different types of aspects. But I’m very curious to hear what you guys think about this.
CB: Yeah, what do you think, Austin, contrasting earlier in the month, we had the Mercury-Mars versus later in the month, we have the Mercury-Saturn square being completed?
AC: It looks like there are a lot of details that need to be attended to, and that it will not be easy to attend to them.
KS: Correct.
AC: I mean, we have the planets trying to operate from Virgo and being afflicted from various angles, right? You know, Neptune I don’t generally class as a malefic, but when you apply Neptune to mercurial affairs, I think it’s totally a malefic.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And then Saturn’s definitely a malefic. And so, with the Mercury-Saturn and the Mars-Neptune, that’s a lot of resistance. You know, you may want to be understanding about timetables during these last 10 days.
KS: Flexible.
AC: Yeah. Things may take longer than you planned and getting upset about that will probably not make them go any faster.
CB: Yeah, that seems like great advice for Mercury-Saturn, just because, like you were saying earlier, Saturn often slows things down, but it can also reject or say ‘no’ to things. So the attempt to do something in terms of Mercury or to communicate something can be met with resistance or with opposition. And the question that comes up oftentimes during those times is it’s one of those things where you have to persist and push through the opposition, or it’s something where you’ve met a wall that you cannot go further through, and you have to give up.
AC: Yeah, I would consider this to be almost an ‘anti-election’ for mercurial matters.
CB: Right.
KS: I like that, Austin. Like a date to avoid rather than a date to elect.
CB: Or like if you wanted to pick a really bad electional chart for something, that could be like a sport or something.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yes.
AC: Oh, you know, speaking of things that happened last month in August, one of the things that I think was interesting, that millions and millions and millions and millions of people watched, was the big boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor. And I thought it was very interesting that it occurred on the day that Mercury was cazimi the Sun, Mercury retrograde cazimi the Sun in Virgo at about 3°. You know, if we’re talking about bringing clarity to something, there was all this talk, from all these people, imagining a thousand different scenarios where Floyd Mayweather was gonna knock him out without getting touched, or Conor McGregor was gonna dive in there from the sky and punch him in the mouth and that was gonna be that, and there was this giant cloud of hype surrounding that fight. And then with the Mercury-Sun conjunction everybody got to see what actually happened. And it was a pretty good fight, right? Floyd Mayweather won—he’s the better boxer—but it wasn’t embarrassing. None of the extreme or hyped-up scenarios happened. It was a really interesting example of, okay, here’s the Mercury-Sun conjunction in the middle of the retrograde. Here’s what it actually is, especially in Virgo. Here are the facts. Like this is the number of punches landed; this is what happened. And after like months of crazy hype, I think it was one of the most hyped fights ever. Each of the participants made at least a hundred million dollars.
KS: Wow.
AC: So anyway, yeah, that was right after the solar eclipse, too. There was definitely an element of solar eclipse happening there, and there was certainly that element of clarifying. And if we take Mercury as, in part, ruling athletic contests of many sorts—which is a very common traditional signification—the Sun clarified Mercury, clarified the result of that athletic contest on that very day. Anyway, this should have gone in our earlier section, but I just remembered it now. Thought it would be worth at least describing.
CB: Yeah, I thought it was really interesting, that fight, cuz of how big it was. But I looked, and we actually had a birth time that looks reliable for Conor McGregor.
AC: Oh, really.
CB: And it was super-fascinating that he’s actually a night chart, with Saturn at 27° of Sagittarius. Cuz the other thing that was happening this past week, of course, is we got the final station—the direct station of Saturn in Sagittarius—and this is the last time that it will make a station in Sagittarius before it goes direct and finishes up its very last pass of the last few degrees of Sagittarius. And that is of course where he has his natal Saturn placement at 27° Sag. So this big fight—and his loss of this fight—was part of his Saturn return. And that of course has some interesting echoes that we’ve talked about a year or two ago with Ronda Rousey, who was another fighter who had Saturn in Sag and suffered a pretty major defeat as she was going through her Saturn return.
AC: Or a pair of them.
CB: Yeah, two major defeats.
AC: Yeah. And I would say that they effectively destroyed her career, whereas Conor McGregor actually won the respect of a lot of the boxing world and got a hundred million dollars. But he lost the fight. He got punched in the face a lot in front of millions of people, which I think we could classify as ‘unfavorable’.
CB: Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of an interesting contrast, or it raises some interesting questions about what is the difference with Ronda Rousey—potentially, her career is effectively over—versus somebody like Conor McGregor, where it was a huge payday and he lost. And certainly that was not the hoped-for outcome on his part; who knows how hard he took that personally. But at the same time he also got a lot of respect and his career is certainly not over, I don’t think, right?
AC: No, not at all. Not at all. People are begging him to fight. He’s proven that he can bring in hundreds of millions of dollars as a draw to events. He’s proved that he can actually stand. He went 10 rounds with what many people believe to be the best boxer in the world, and possibly of all time. You know, he didn’t just jump in there and get stomped.
KS: It was respectable. We say this in rugby, too. You never want to watch a washout because that’s not enjoyable. You want to actually see a good match. So if he went 10 rounds, then he held his own, I guess.
AC: Yeah, exactly. And so, the event as a whole was a giant win for him, even though he was the loser of the contest.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yeah, it’s interesting, the loser but still the big payday. Sorry, Chris.
CB: No, I mean, that was pretty much it. I’m collecting the very last of my ‘Saturn in Sagittarius’ Saturn return examples before doing some kind of episode about that, as we’re getting towards the end of Saturn in Sagittarius. And this is just one of the other interesting ones to show another side of that, that I found over the past couple of years; or one of the more recent ones. So if you guys happen to notice any more, let me know. Or if anybody listening happens to notice any good ‘Saturn in Sagittarius’ Saturn return stories, definitely let me know, since I’m trying to get the material together for that to do an episode at some point in the next few months.
AC: Hmm, that would be a good episode.
KS: Yeah. Speaking of Saturn, I think there’s two quick points I’d make, one about Saturn and one about Jupiter for September as a whole. We do have Saturn—you just said this, Chris. Saturn is now bouncing off its station. So Saturn in Sag is now making its last pass through that third decan—that third part of Sag—and this is it. This is like the final ‘hurrah’ of Saturn in Sag, cuz we’re just having Saturn move forward until December when it moves into Cap. And this month, September, Jupiter will cross its station degree from earlier this year. So Jupiter is pushing into the last 7° of Libra for the first time, and then of course going into Scorpio next month, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in that episode. But there’s just something interesting with both Jupiter and Saturn clearing station degrees or coming off station that really feels like moving forward and certainly pulling away from this ‘eclipse’ energy. There’s some different stuff coming through with Jupiter and Saturn over the next little while.
CB: Yeah, definitely. It’s closing something up, or winding down, rather than starting something new. What was the degree that Jupiter stationed, again? I can’t remember offhand.
KS: I think it was 23.
CB: Okay.
AC: Yeah, it was right around there, 22-23, back in February. And then it went direct at 13, and it’s just clearing the previous station.
KS: Yes.
AC: But yeah, I mean, this fall, like Chris said, it’s about wrapping things up. It’s wrapping up this entire ‘Saturn in Sag’ chapter. And the next chapter is very different, and we’ll have plenty to say about it. You know, I think that being inside this year—and especially this last part of this year—a lot of things seem really important, that when we’re looking at this time period two years from now will sort of be like, “Oh, we missed it.” Like there’s all this stuff right around the corner, all this ‘Saturn in Cap’ stuff, and we were just so busy with our eclipses and our Saturn in Sag. I don’t mean you guys and myself as astrologers. We’re talking about this month.
KS: Generally and collectively, yeah.
AC: Yeah, I think collectively a lot of people are gonna be like, “Oh, I thought (blank) was so important. It was so loud and dramatic. But it ended up that (blank) was way more important.”
CB: Yeah, definitely. And it’s funny, looking back at past times or past years when that has happened, because you see all of the attention being on one thing. And then in retrospect, or in hindsight, it’s clear that it was something else that looked small perhaps at the beginning that ended up having a greater significance.
AC: Yeah.
CB: All right, so the very last things happen at the very, very end of the month. There’s like a succession of three quick things that happen, right?
KS: Uh, yes, there are three things. We’re going to have—really saving the best for last—the third hit of Jupiter-Uranus opposition, Mercury moving into Libra, and Venus opposite Neptune. Are they the three things that you meant? I hope so.
CB: Yeah, I think those are the three: Pluto stationing on September 28, Jupiter opposing Uranus on the 28th, and then Mercury ingressing into Libra around the 29th.
KS: Oh, the Pluto station as well, yes.
CB: Yeah. What was the fourth one you mentioned?
KS: Venus opposite Neptune.
CB: Oh, yeah, good call.
KS: To continue the theme.
CB: Right. So the third planet in September in that succession of oppositions with Neptune is finally Venus at 12° of Pisces. So do you guys have anything around that? Anybody with 12 mutable placements are gonna get this weird succession of those three inner planets hitting Neptune during the course of the month. And it seems like if you have anything near those degrees, that could be a sensitive point this month, in addition to Mercury leaving its shadow there, so that whatever the retrograde station was—that set everything up with the Mercury retrograde—was the starting point.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Yes.
AC: I know what it’s gonna be for me. I have the Sun at 14 and Saturn at 10.
KS: Yeah, I was like Austin and I will be all over this.
AC: Yeah, I mean, I’ve already planned it. I didn’t think about it in terms of every detail that we’ve discussed. September, we’re not having any guests. We’ve had a lot of guests over the summer. No guests. I’m digging myself out of my ‘work hole’, I’m getting ahead. I’m catching up on things like car registration, etc., etc. Literally the plan is ‘Virgo clean up the Neptune mess’.
KS: Yes.
AC: Cleaning up my diet, blah, blah, blah. It’s very clear for me what that’s gonna be. There may be parallels for other people who have planets there. It’s just like cleaning it up after kind of a crazy summer.
CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, just as a metaphor for this shift from dealing with so much Leo over the past month or two, and then shifting to having so many planets not just in earth signs, but having them all in Virgo over the course of September, basically.
AC: Yeah. And like we noted a couple of times, it’s a lot of Virgo. We’ve got, I think, a minimum of three planets in Virgo.
KS: At any one time.
AC: Once we get past the 9th?
KS: The 9th, when Mercury moves in.
AC: Right.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And then even when the Sun leaves, we’ve still got three planets in Virgo.
KS: Yeah, cuz by then, Venus is in. So I guess wherever you have Virgo in your chart—whatever house it rules—that is getting a lot of attention this month.
AC: Yeah, I would look at wherever Virgo is trying to clean up wherever Pisces is, right? Cuz Neptune is the spill or the mess.
KS: Yes.
AC: The area of life which has become less organized than it could be.
KS: Yes. Oh, my goodness.
AC: So we need to talk about the Jupiter-Uranus opposition.
KS: Jupiter-Uranus.
CB: Yeah.
AC: It sort of outranks almost everything we’ve been talking about.
CB: So this is the final one. Jupiter is cruising at this point, and it’s on its way out of Libra. And we’ve been talking about this since that very one was last December, right?
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Yeah, end of December, first hit. Early March, second hit.
CB: So I remember back then when we started talking about it. We knew it was gonna be the first of three, and we were sort of expecting a lot of unexpected developments and things like that to take place right from the start. But there’s often this thing that’s a little bit annoying with some of those transits, where there’s gonna be three of them. Sometimes it’s not the first one or two that you have the clearest manifestation of, but instead, you get a sequence or a series of hits. And sometimes that third and final one is the one that carries the greatest punch it seems. I don’t know if you guys have seen that as well, or if that’s how you feel about it, but this will be the third and final exact opposition between Jupiter and Uranus.
AC: Yeah, I mean, the other two were very ‘protest-y’, which is a pretty basic ‘Uranus-Jupiter/Libra-Aries’ sort of thing. Yeah, they were very ‘protest-y’, and that ‘protest-y/demonstration-y’ theme has been very strong since the Uranus-Jupiter started in December, and it hasn’t been merely left or merely right. There’s been a lot of standing up and making much noise. What’s interesting is with Jupiter in Libra, it’s like, “Hey, we want justice,” and Uranus in Aries (Uranus in a Mars-ruled sign) seems to stimulate a very vigorous version of that, rather than the quiet, diplomatic version of that. One of the cultural themes—which I’ve seen that Uranus-Jupiter tension oversees—is Jupiter’s trying to bring people into whatever the middle-ground is, and Uranus is like, “No, we can’t do that,” in ways both right and wrong, right? But Uranus in Aries is not a “Let’s compromise and let’s all figure this out together. It’s okay if you’re kinda wrong, I can accept that.” Uranus in Aries is uncompromising. Uranus is always uncompromising, and Aries is hardly a ‘compromising’ sign, whereas Jupiter is a ‘compromising’ planet, and Libra is a ‘compromising’ sign. And so, it seems like there’s tension or this back-and-forth throughout the year. Like, well, maybe we can all just come together. No way we can come together if that’s gonna be the case. And so, I’ve seen it in all sorts of different versions. You see, Jupiter in Libra I see as having a very nice idea, but sometimes that doesn’t work, like with the ‘Trump Charlottesville’ thing, equating the white supremacists protesters with the Antifa people and being like, “Yeah, they’re all wrong.” It’s like, not really. And he has Jupiter in Libra, natally. But then there are other circumstances where actually middle-ground would have been great. There was a real middle-ground. But anyway, it’s this tension back and forth that I’ve seen those two sort of lording over. As far as what I would expect from the ‘Jupiter-Uranus’ thing—the third and final—I would expect more massive demonstrations. I don’t know on which side, or which sides or whatever, but I would certainly expect public drama and outcry.
CB: Sure. That’s interesting, the idea of false equivalence, cuz I feel like I’ve seen that cropping up in a few different areas lately. And that’s an interesting idea, to tie that into the Jupiter-Uranus opposition.
AC: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s a thing. It’s like, well, maybe we can come together. No, we can’t come together, right? Or, not with that.
CB: Sure. And I’m trying to remember, were there any other things about the Jupiter-Uranus opposition over the course of the past year? I mean, that’s a really good point, tying it into some of the protest things that were happening. I mean, I remember it most vividly last year. Trump had just been elected, and some of the Democratic astrologers were thinking, in the US, that, “Oh, is something crazy gonna happen with the Electoral College?” or something like that, and that didn’t really materialize. But I’m trying to think if there were any other things like that, where something truly unexpected did happen. When was the second pass? I’m trying to remember when that exact second opposition was.
KS: It was early March.
AC: March 2.
CB: Okay. And I’m trying to remember what was going on back at that point, or what that one was even about at this point in order to understand the full sequence of what these three oppositions have been about from a mundane perspective. But I’m having trouble even remembering what was going on with that in terms of March.
KS: I’m not a hundred-percent sure.
AC: I was right in the middle of moving, which was both Jupiterian and Uranian.
CB: Yeah, I was in the middle of just launching the book and the craze surrounding that. I mean, that was very Jupiter-Uranus in terms of it happened suddenly and unexpectedly, because Amazon decided to launch my books two weeks early, and very quickly sort of expanding into business mode surrounding that for about a month.
AC: Yeah. Maybe we can come back to the mundane timeline and the story. But on a personal, one of the things that I wrote about at the beginning of the year—that I’ve definitely seen play out—is this tension between trying to make slow, steady, balanced progress (‘Jupiter in Libra’ style) versus needing to change everything up. Is growth going to come by proceeding in this direction steadily, or do I need to change things up? Is it like a quantum leap? Do I need to just get out of here, or do I need to do this instead? Or do I need to just stay with it? And this difference between people making leaps to improve things or having a revolution, personally or otherwise, it’s sort of like reform or revolution within a person’s personal sovereignty, and one interfering with the other because they’re not sorted out. Anyway, please go ahead, Kelly.
KS: Oh, yeah, I think that’s a really good point, Austin, the idea of a change in progress and the extreme fluctuations. Is it steady or is it just the breakthrough component? The only other thing I wanted to throw in is how this has affected the generational transits. So for people born in ‘72, ‘73, ‘74, and parts of ‘75—who are having their Uranus opposition at the same time—they’re having their Uranus opposition transit while transiting Jupiter is conjunct their natal Uranus, so it’s sort of playing into that. So I think in the same way that the Jupiter square Pluto aspect that we talked a little bit about last month was really triggering a certain pocket of people’s Pluto square Pluto transit, this Jupiter-Uranus opposition has really amplified or exaggerated the Uranus opposition for a certain portion of people.
AC: Yeah, that makes sense.
CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Actually in thinking about some of those people that I know, I can actually connect that with some things I’ve seen.
KS: Yeah. You know, I think Richard Tarnas—in his book Cosmos and Psyche—talks about Jupiter-Uranus as this great breakthrough energy of innovation and invention, which I think that it can be. But it does come with those fluctuations and those upheavals, which are more extreme or more dramatic, because we have Jupiter representing expansion, or just generally being large, amplifying the Uranus ‘cosmic’ crazy, I guess.
AC: Yeah, that’s a good point. In that chapter, in Cosmos and Psyche, Tarnas discusses the Jupiter-Uranus cycle in terms of cultural innovation or change or revolution, or I would say ‘mutation’, and the opposition is the more tense part of that.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And I think that a lot of cultures have been going through a period of upheaval. I would also say that if we look at when these things occurred historically, those changes are not always for the better. You know, Tarnas does tend to point towards the wonderful breakthroughs rather than the nasty mutations which occur culturally.
KS: At the same time.
CB: That’s a really interesting and funny point in terms of the idea that Nick Campion talks about, the ‘myth of progress’. I don’t always agree with the general statement that things necessarily always get better. Sometimes they can take steps backwards, or they can devolve, and understanding that or sometimes looking at that in an astrological context can sometimes be hard. Because oftentimes when you’re working with clients or talking to the public, there’s a desire to want to use astrology, and some astrologers explicitly go out of their way to use it to try to be empowering or insightful or motivating. But sometimes you can have certain aspects where there can be drawbacks or things can not go well for people, or can break down structures in ways that are not desirable.
AC: Yeah, if you look at the last time that Jupiter was opposite Uranus—when they were in Libra/Aries like this—there were some cultural mutations in Germany that I think no one would regard at this point as positive.
KS: As positive.
AC: Quick side note about the idea of change and the term ‘evolution’. When I think of Uranus, I often think of ‘mutation’, which is a divergence from the normal. But in nature, most mutations are dead-ends. They’re evolutionary dead-ends. They’re non-viable mutations—and cultures do that, and people do that. Fortunately, as we are our own petri dish, we can revert back to the previous genome of our life, which we had backed up. But sometimes not every mutation is a viable one.
CB: Sure.
KS: That’s interesting.
CB: That’s a good final point then about that Jupiter-Uranus opposition, unless you have anything else, Kelly.
KS: No. Austin, that sounds really fascinating, but I’m just checking my old-school, red ephemeris from the 20th century. And yeah, we had Uranus in Aries with the Jupiter in Libra opposition in 1933-1934. Good call, Austin. I hadn’t even thought about that.
AC: Yeah, I did the research on all of that last fall, and I managed to scare myself silly. I didn’t include it in my write-out.
KS: Of course—
[crosstalk]
KS: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I was like, did we really have Jupiter in Libra the last time Uranus was in Aries? But we did. So very interesting.
AC: I guess one more thing. I don’t know exactly what the story’s gonna be after this is over on a collective level. But on a personal level, and from the perspective of testing out various life mutations, this is the third and final of the Jupiter-Uranus. And so, if people have been making changes and experimenting, or forced into unusual circumstances this year, this is the last installment in that process, right? And so, in part it will bring clarity as to which mutations are viable. You know what? I don’t think I’m gonna do that. I’ve been experimenting with that, and that’s not what I want to do. Other people will be like, “Oh, no, this worked great. This is gonna be my new baseline.” I would say it’s the results phase of certain experiments where the hypothesis is either confirmed or denied.
KS: Love it.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And that connects a little bit to experiments that we’ve been doing, and that I’ve been doing. I’m thinking back and now I actually remember what March was. March was the point where, Austin, you and I—our microphones eventually started breaking down, and so I upgraded and started changing my audio setup. And that eventually acted as a catalyst to—over the course of the last few months—using Zoom again and starting to do the livestreams, and starting to do video and everything else. And that’s something that we’re still working out and still getting used to, as we have been over the past few months. And this is only, I think, our third attempt at doing it again since we’ve resumed doing that after a one- or two-year hiatus while I was writing the book. So yeah, we’ll have to see. Our next episode will actually be right around the time of that Jupiter-Uranus opposition, and we’ll have to figure out whether to keep doing that or what sort of format works in terms of this, and where to continue to take things in the future. So I forgot at the top of the episode to mention the stuff that we meant to promote. So maybe we should take a minute to do that really quickly before we wrap things up. Kelly, do you have any events or things coming up in the near future?
KS: I do. Two quick ones to mention. I am teaching a pre-conference workshop as part of the Calgary Astrology Conference, which is happening in September in Calgary. And the pre-conference workshop is on firdaria and profections. So we’re just gonna look at some older timing techniques. And then the second event, I will be in Sydney in early October, and I’m doing an intro to Hellenistic ideas, so whole sign houses, the idea of sect. The idea is to keep that workshop a little on the intimate side so we can introduce some of these concepts that are Hellenistic in nature and see how that might change attendees’ charts. So if you’re confused about whole sign houses or sect, then if you’re in Sydney, come along. And the details are on my website. So those are my next two big things.
CB: Awesome. That sounds good. And your website is kellysastrology.com?
KS: Yes, thank you.
CB: Okay. And, Austin, what do you have going on?
AC: Oh, I’m gonna be writing. So I do a Patreon-funded column. I do a column every decan and then dailies all month, and then a monthly piece. This upcoming September, I’ll begin teaching an introduction to synodic cycles class, and that starts on the 23rd. And I will be teaching my first class on zodiacal releasing. And so, that’s a month-long class, and that’s gonna begin on the 9th. So that’ll be interesting.
CB: Okay.
AC: Been doing it for a long time, but I’ve never really taught it before. So I’ll put my ideas into a teachable form.
CB: Awesome. That should be good. And your website is austincoppock.com?
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: Okay. And people should check that out there. I mentioned how Demetra and I were gonna do a show. We were gonna do a show and have a great discussion about the development of the significations of the houses, which hopefully at some point in the future we’ll still be able to do. I did promise her I would mention the thing that she was actually coming on the show to promote, which is that in October, she’s doing a five-day retreat/intensive on Hellenistic time-lord techniques, where she’s actually gonna go through several different Hellenistic time-lord techniques over the course of a week and do a full presentation on those. So that’s gonna be in Portland, I believe, in October. And you can find out more information about that on her website at demetrageorge.com. Click on the page that says ‘Schedule’, and you’ll see that event scheduled and you can find out more information about it. As for me, I’m just gonna keep doing the podcast. In my Hellenistic course, we’ve started doing some live readings of texts, where we’re reading through Vettius Valens together and going through some of his example charts and actually talking about and dissecting his approach to delineating birth charts from the 2nd century. So you can find out more information about that on my website, or my course site, which is theastrologyschool.com. And I think that’s it. So that’s it for the September forecast, so thanks guys for joining me. And thanks to our audience. We had about 20 patrons, 22 patrons who joined us today, who are supporters of the show. So thanks for joining us and making some comments during the course of the show. And we will reconvene again in a month to talk about the forecast for October. All right, well, thanks for joining me today, guys.
KS: Thanks for having us, Chris. That was fun.
AC: Yeah, it was my pleasure.
CB: All right, and thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.