Ep. 123 Transcript: Locational Astrology: Astrology of Where You Live

CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode is recorded on Thursday, September 7, 2017, starting just after 9:31 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 123rd episode of the show. For more information about how to subscribe to the podcast and help support the production of future episodes by becoming a Patron, please visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. In this episode, I’m going to be talking with Moses Siregar about locational astrology which is the astrology of where you live on Earth. Moses, welcome to the show.

MOES SIREGAR: Thanks for having me.

CB: I’m excited to have this talk with you today and it’s great having you on the show for the first time. So we actually go back and I’ve known you for something like 12 or 13 years or so, since at least 2014 or 2004, right?

MS: It’s definitely been awhile, MySpace was a thing for sure. Even before MySpace was a thing, right?

CB: Right. I think we go back to the old social network days when I used to have a forum on MySpace, and I think that’s how we first met and started interacting. And you were actually the first president–and this is when I first met you–I think you were the president of the Association for Young Astrologers. And that organization had just gotten started and you were part of that initial group, right?

MS: Absolutely.

CB: All right. Relatively in the grand scheme of things you were a somewhat younger guy compared to let’s say everyone else. And you’ve actually been doing astrology though for quite some time, since you were pretty young. I think you started in 1994.

MS: Yeah I was in college and my Mom was into astrology. So she was going to astrology meetings in Princeton, New Jersey. Yeah I was definitely a kid at Madalyn Hillis-Dineen house, so I grew up around it. I would do things like science fair projects in first and second grade on the solar system, so my Mom kind of got me into it in that way probably. I had a Liz Greene book I was reading in first grade which I found many years later when I was probably in high school or even college, and I had all the kids in my first grade class, their names written down and their Sun signs.

CB: Wow.

MS: Yeah I was into that very young and then I thought my Mom was nuts because she was really into astrology when I was a teenager. And then she told me some things about my chart one night and I thought, “How the heck do you know that about me?” And so she had old Matrix software with the dot matrix printer and she had Isabel Hickey and Steven Forrest books and Rob Hand and everybody. And so I just started going through all these books and printing up charts of all my friends and family just to prove to myself that this stuff didn’t work…and here I am. So I’m 42 now and I’ve been doing astrology readings professionally for 23 years, I think. And that’s been the majority of my income, certainly is today.

CB: Wow, brilliant. Yeah that’s a really interesting story just because usually most people’s family members are certainly not astrologers, and if anything either don’t care for the subject or actively outright dislike. But you were in the unique position where your Mom was actually an astrologer and that was always interesting because she’s actually still active in the astrological community. So yeah, you had a great start and then you have actually specialized. You studied a few different topics and a few different areas but one that you really came to specialize in it seems and have become known for is your work with locational astrology. And that goes back quite a ways as well, right?

MS: Yeah I got pretty serious about it in the early 2000s, whatever it is that we call those. And yeah it’s one of the things that had me traveling around a little bit to some different places. Some of you may have heard the story I moved to Maui, Hawaii where I have Venus rising, and the cool thing is I chose the day and the time. I actually chose the flight based on when it was going to land on the island and this was in 2000. So the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in 2000 was on my Descendent. I have a 16-and-some-change in Scorpio rising. So I had this Jupiter-Saturn conjunction happening on my Descendent into my 7th house, if you look at it that way. And so I chose the date and then the time and everything and moved to the Venus rising line and I met my wife the first day I got there. So that’s always something I can tell people that, hey, it worked for me.

CB: Yeah that is definitely showing off your own skills and showing that the techniques actually work in practice in your own life. And that’s always nice to be able to do that with those really stark, usually not that very stark examples but that’s pretty good. And so you actually wrote in a book I was just re-reading recently that came out a few years ago titled Astrology: The New Generation. You actually wrote a great chapter titled A New Look at Locational Astrology and Astrocartography in that book. And it was actually a really great introduction to this subject and so I wanted to have you on to talk about it. And one of the things that you said in the book, and I wanted to see if that was still the case, is that the majority of the consultations that you do–because you’re a practicing astrologer and you have been for quite awhile–are actually focused on locational astrology or things related to it, right?

MS: Yeah, definitely. I would say probably four out of five readings I’m doing at this point are about location and helping people with that. Of course you can bring some other things into that–their transits and their dashas and things like that. But yeah that’s what I do, that’s what I’m really passionate about. I feel like in an hour or two I probably have a much better chance of really making an impact on someone’s life by helping them figure out the best place to be.

And I would say locational astrology to me is like remedial measure number one in astrology. I like things that we can do with astrology as a remedial measure to actually change our situations. Everything in astrology I love pretty much but I love something that can go right in and make a difference. The western tradition doesn’t have a lot of those remedial measures anymore, in Vedic astrology, they have some. But I think in the West it’s one of our best possible things that we can do to help people really make a change deliberately.

CB: Sure that makes sense. All right, well let’s define our subject then. So there’s some terminology issues here, there’s some historical issues where a large part of this approach is sort of a little bit more recent or was developed over the course of the past century. So let’s talk a bit about the history of this subject and both what it is and how it developed.

And so there were some–in ancient astrology of course–astrological associations with geography. And specifically there were different countries that were associated with certain zodiacal signs and that’s sort of a continuing thing in different parts of the tradition that was used within the context of mundane astrology. But it’s not really until modern times that you really get people starting to look at the natal chart and look at natal astrology and relocating it in different ways, right? Is that more or less accurate?

MS: Yeah. So Jim Lewis is the person who trademarked the term astrocartography and he’s the most well-known. Although the article that you referenced, I go into the fact that he had a lot of influence from some of the sidereal astrologers–Fagan and Bradley and some of those guys. And it’s a bit murky but there was an article published in American Astrology by Fagan–and this was in 1966 which was 10 years before Jim Lewis wrote his astrocartography booklet–and he does sort of a natal thing for this woman. This woman, she’s got Uranus on the Ascendant in a conjunction with Algol, and he interprets that in terms of her location and says that she should move somewhere where she has Sun and Venus on the Midheaven instead. So he was doing a natal type of astrocartography right there and Jim Lewis certainly we know studied those guys. I think he took ideas like that and really ran with the baton.

And then he did some really brilliant things in terms of the mapping and particularly the popularizing of that for sure, where he again trademarked the term and made it a really well-known phenomenon. So he deserves a lot of credit for just getting this new idea out there. It’s not always easy to get a new idea out in the collective astrological consciousness but he did that. And there were some other people doing things with maps before but it was more mundane astrology. People might look at an ingress for the Solstice or something like that and put those lines on the map, but he definitely made that much more of a natal phenomenon.

CB: OK. So part of the premise is for the past 2,000 years–or at least since the invention of the concept of natal astrology circa 410 BCE when we have the first birth charts–birth charts have always been cast for the date and the time and the location that the person was born under the premise that the alignment of the planets at that moment would indicate something about the person’s future and most subsequent predictions that were made throughout the course of their life were always based on that fixed birth chart.

And so one of the things that it seems started to develop in the 20th century–and it’s not clear if Fagan developed this or Fagan was drawing on it from somewhere else–the idea that if you did not continue to live in the location you were born in, the city you were born in, you could recast the chart or recalculate it for the same day but change the location so that it matched whatever your current location was on the Earth. In some instances, if you move to a different part of the country or if you move to a different part of the world, if you actually change the location of your chart it would significantly change the positions in the chart. Even though some of the aspects would be the same, all the planets would shift to different houses and would move to different angles and things like that and that would create a different interpretation under the premise that if you relocated the chart just like you’ve relocated yourself the chart itself would change in some way essentially, right?

MS: Yeah, absolutely. Then when you get into it further, as we’ll talk about, there’s so many other techniques you can do too–different kinds of lines we can put on a map and study–but that is the core idea. I like to think of that moment of the first breath by the individual and at that moment there’s this grid or hologram or something that’s just set up right on the Earth right there and all the possibilities locationally are set at that moment. There are things that change over time with locational astrology as well. But right then even though you’re drawing your first breath in Duluth, there’s a certain picture, a certain chart taking place in Tokyo that same moment. And if you ever go to Tokyo, you’re tapping into that same moment in time, that frozen moment in time when you drew that first breath and going to a different astrological environment that was set right then. So it’s pretty wild to think about it.

CB: Yeah I mean it’s a really interesting concept. It’s one of those unique innovations in 20th century astrology where you could really see taking pieces of the earlier tradition but then going in a new direction with it or expanding upon it in a sort of interesting way. And the idea that you’re still basing this partially on the birth chart and the day or the moment that a person was born, your premise then by extension is that the birth chart is not only saying things about the quality and the future of a person’s life but that it also has something to say about how they will experience or what types of events they will experience in different parts of the globe if they visit those different parts of the globe based on something about the arrangement of their chart on the moment they were born essentially, right?

MS: Right. And it’s exciting to think of it in that way that you could go to a different place and experience life as if you had that birth chart. I still refer back to the natal chart a great deal in my work. You could go to your Venus rising line for example. I’m still going to look at what is Venus doing in your natal chart to give me most of my clues of what is this Venus going to deliver for that person. But I still think you can go see what it’s like to have been born with a different chart too and your experiences will be very different. And people have that experience a lot. They go to New York and they feel one way and they go to San Francisco and they feel another way and certain things just flow in one place and they’re blocked in another place.

And then it gets back to choice which is the part that really turns me on too. Oh, you can choose. You can understand this stuff. You can study it for yourself, see what you can create, and then try to elect your own birth chart in a sense by finding the place that creates the chart you would most want to live under at any given time in your life.

CB: Right, that makes sense. And so one of the things that that might explain is how you can have a city–let’s say a famous city or a tourist destination–like Paris or something like that where different people can go to a city and can have radically different, subjective experiences of what that city is like. Just their whole perception of that place and that culture and everything surrounding it can just be very, very different for different individuals. And this almost becomes sort of like a conceptual or a philosophical reason why people might experience things in such radically different ways aside from the obvious reasons why that might exist. Sometimes there can be very unique or very weird things that happen to people in different parts of the world that are very distinct and stand out as different types of experiences that one could have that might be out of the ordinary let’s say.

MS: Right. And it’s not that subtle. Once you really understand what the strong astrological factors are for someone in a place, it’s not subtle–it’s very, very significant. And I also like to point out that there’s no time delay. It’s not that you get to Paris and then you have to wait a month and then it comes in. It’s absolutely seamless. As soon as you are there, it’s there too, there’s no separation. I remember one time flying over a certain line and someone on the airplane misunderstanding something and thinking that this incredible noise is coming out of my headphones when it was really the guy behind me–I think it was my Pluto line or something. There I was even just flying over the line but experiencing the astrocartography.

CB: Sure. I mean it’s really weird and it can be kind of eerie in that way. I’ve had a few experiences like that myself which I’ll explain later once we get into the techniques more. But I’m trying to think of any of any other preliminary things before we get into some of that. So one of the questions then or maybe one of the things we’ll get into a little bit more later is there’s a tension and there’s certainly debates. And so while we’re covering this very broadly and we’re going to try and present the subject very broadly, I’m sure that this is one of those areas in astrology where there’s plenty of room for debate and there’s different astrologers maybe that will take different positions when it comes to certain things associated with locational astrology essentially, right?

MS: Right. And it is new we have to recognize. I’m such a big proponent of it because I see it working so powerfully in my life and in everyone else’s life I’ve ever looked at, so I’m very confident in it, I very much ascribe to it and all that. And then there are a lot of people who they’ve come through, they’ve been trained, and it wasn’t really a part their training, so it’s a new idea to them and I respect that. It is a new idea, so we shouldn’t necessarily just embrace everything that’s new of course. And yet, I think it is one of the most exciting if not the most exciting modern invention in astrology. But yeah I think even just from 10 years ago, there’s more and more acceptance of it. I think people are getting more and more comfortable with the idea of it. And you’ll still meet some curmudgeons who just don’t think it works or something like that and then of course there’s things I’d love to show them.

CB: Sure. Yeah I mean I think that’s always the case and there’s always a tension between how much to accept and integrate and add to your approach versus how much to change. And this is one of those real areas where this could make a difference depending on how far you want to go with it. So for example, one of the tensions or one of the questions is how much does the natal chart still have some sense of primacy or is still the ultimate arbitrator of a person’s character or future or fate or however you want to describe it versus how much does the relocated chart–depending on where you live or where you move to on the Earth that’s different than your birth location–actually really alter things, or can it even fundamentally change what was already indicated in the natal chart. It seems like some locational astrologers might say this can change everything versus others might say this is only a very minor influence but otherwise the natal chart is still the primary thing. Where do you fall when it comes to that?

MS: That’s a really good question. I still believe in the primacy of the natal chart. And I’m someone who mainly does locational astrology, so I think that is still the primary factor. You can look at what happened when Saturn transits your Ascendant in your natal chart versus in your relocated chart and you can notice these things. So Cyclo*Carto*Graphy–probably another one of those trademarked terms from Jim Lewis–had to do with the events that would move over time and change over time which basically is going to be the transits of the slower-moving planets. I guess transits of any planets for that matter and then progressions typically more so of the faster planets.

So for example, I have been able to notice Mercury in my Cyclo*Carto*Graphy as it progresses over my relocated Ascendant. On the map, you can see a Mercury ascending line in Cyclo*Carto*Graphy and I’ve seen it go over San Francisco and then L.A. and San Diego and then Las Vegas. And then I live in Arizona, in Prescott, Arizona, so I’ve seen it go over Prescott and now it’s working its way east. I would have very mercurial experiences in all those places as that would unfold over the years, so there are things like that that are super interesting. And some people like to focus on that aspect of it, the influences that change. I could follow that Mercury line forever theoretically and always have this very mercurial experience, really be the eternal student maybe or eternally doing mercurial things whatever that happened to be. So that’s a really good question about if the natal chart seems to really strongly suggest that something would not happen could you completely change it by a new location and improve that situation. That’s a good question.

CB: Sure. We don’t necessary have to answer it here. But it’s one of those things that comes up that’s sort of a natural question because astrologers I think sometimes can come to different conclusions about that based on whatever their own philosophical or spiritual beliefs are, based on the technical restraints of how long they’ve been using that and if they actually have seen people do things that are radically different than what otherwise might have been indicated in the natal chart or what have you.

MS: Yeah. What I do know is the locational influences, they always work and the natal chart is always primary as well. Well it’s always primary but then the natal influences are always happening when you go somewhere. Let’s say someone’s natal chart looked absolutely like relationships were just not the thing in the cards for them this time around, not the thing that’s likely to happen. I’ll have to take more note of stories like this and cases like this, so I’m glad you brought it up. Maybe they moved to a place where the influences for a relationship are tremendously better. I believe they would have a tremendously better experience of their relationships in the places where they have the better locational influences for that. But does that completely upend the natal story and suddenly give them the happily ever after? Maybe not. But then again if that’s what the person wants that’s what they should probably try for. Maybe they should go to that place and see what is possible for them.

CB: Yeah. I mean that makes sense to me just in terms of what I’ve seen in my limited use of relocational astrology that usually often what it’s doing is emphasizing–I think one of the things you say in that chapter is that it’ll take natal placements and when they become more prominent in a relocated chart, it’s like it’s amplifying or it’s turning the volume on that planet up to 10 or 11 or however high it can go. So if there’s something in your chart that’s indicated, if you relocated and you go to a different part of the world that really emphasizes that placement then whatever the natal potential is, is going to be drawn out or amplified even more. So it’s not necessarily completely contradicting what’s in the natal chart sometimes but instead it’s just emphasizing it even more than it might be otherwise.

MS: Right. That’s a good way to put it. I think in this respect it’s similar to gemstones in Vedic astrology. If you live on your Mars line, for example, it’s going to be roughly similar to wearing a gemstone from Mars in Vedic astrology, so it is a way of amplifying the effect of that planet. And just as in Vedic astrology, wearing a gemstone for Mars–wearing the coral, the red coral–is not necessarily going to make it better if you already have a really rough Mars placement. In fact, it may make it more intense in a lot of ways. Similarly with the location. If you move to the Mars line, it’s going to give you more of what’s already promised in the natal chart.

So again there I go with the natal chart being so important because if you want to emphasize a certain area of your life, you still have to work with what’s there. And this does come up in relationships sometimes because maybe there’s a woman and she’s looking for a good relationship, and the significators that you might normally look at in her chart, maybe all of the significators of relationship in her chart, maybe none of them look great for that. For example, a woman on a Sun line is more likely to bring men into her life in my experience. But maybe her Sun is super-afflicted. Well I’m not going to recommend that because that might bring in a partner. Maybe if you just want to have a partner, yes, your odds of having a partner are increased if you put that Sun in a potent place on chart. But then what sort of man does it bring into your life? And it’s likely to be that Sun story which may go back to a father story or maybe it’s a previous husband or something.

So to a large degree the cards are dealt and you can turn up the volume on those planets or turn them down. But then there are other ways where you might rearrange the picture and do a creative shuffling of the cards you’ve been dealt and it might come out looking pretty differently too. So sometimes the best thing is not to emphasize certain planets but how to deemphasize certain planets and just tweak things just right. And it’s a real delicate balancing act when you get into all the ways of doing that which I think we’ll talk about. There’s local space and there’s geodetics and there’s “parans.” And there’s things you can do with the relocated chart and the astrocartography lines and then you can go further from there too, so there’s a lot to it.

And I think in astrocartography people tend to have a more simplified idea of what this is because of astrocartography, because you have the maps with the rising, setting, culminating, anti-culminating lines, even the parans that are on those maps. People have a more simplified idea of what it is than I think what it really is when you really get into breaking it all down. And the art of it becomes very, very detailed and figuring out, well, you’re 50 miles from this local space Neptune line but you’re 15 miles from this paran line, and then this astrocartography line is 200 miles away. There’s a lot of tweaking of, OK, we need a little more of this, a little less of that, and all the different lines have different orbs and range of influence. That’s a subtle art that you have to have a lot of experience with that I think to juggle it right.

CB: Sure. Well let’s get into that and introduce then the basic technical premise of part of this. This is something that probably would be better in a video or a visual format because it’s kind of hard to explain but I think we can explain the basics in terms of the angles. So you have a natal chart and in that natal chart–as long as you have an accurate birth time–you’re going to have certain planets that are in different houses, and each of those planets is going to be in greater or lesser proximity to one of the four angles: the Ascendant, Midheaven, Descendant, and IC. And astrologers have always traditionally held that planets that are closer to angles are more prominent in the chart and in the person’s life.

And it seems like the early premise of locational astrology as it was constituted in the 20th century–evidently as early as that reference that you found in that article by Fagan which then was expanded by Jim Lewis later in his approach–is the idea that when you relocate the location of a chart, when a person moves to a different part of a country or to a different part of the world and you recalculate the chart for that city, it will shift the planets and some of the planets will come closer to certain angles in the chart and other planets will move away from certain angles and therefore become less prominent. And so the premise is that there’s going to be certain cities where a planet in your birth chart might move exactly to let’s say the degree of the Ascendant to the degree of the Midheaven and therefore that city or that area of the world is going to be characterized more by the quality or the nature of that planet essentially, right?

MS: Yeah.

CB: Is that the basic premise of one of the most fundamental parts of this approach to astrology?

MS: Yeah I would say that’s the starting idea that made this work so famous and it does work so well. The angles are so important. And when the planets move to the angles very powerful things happen. At the same time I would argue that there’s a lot more to it than just that even within the context of a chart. If you think of it this way, we’re talking about four angles which in the context of a chart is four houses. It’s the beginning of four different houses in the chart, but there are 12 houses in a chart.

So you may have a place where there are no lines on the map but the relocated chart might say some very interesting things. The person’s stellium might move into the 8th house or it might move into the 9th house or something like that. So the angularity is such a key part of this, kind of the elephant in the room. But even on the level of the chart, I think in astrology we should think in terms of 12s more often than in terms of four, and I’m a big proponent of that with relocated charts.

CB: Sure. So relocating the chart, looking at the chart as a whole as it’s been changed based on what the new location is.

MS: Yes. And there are some things within the context of doing that that I’ve learned mostly by talking to people and hearing their stories and saying, “Oh, what happened when you lived in Sydney?” and hearing the stories, certain things I’ve learned about how to read the relocated charts that were not what I would have initially thought. So I think you can go pretty deep into that rabbithole too.

CB: Sure. And for most people–I’m trying to think of this–I don’t know any statistics off the top of my head. But what I want to say that the majority of people probably either continue to live in the city where they were born or probably don’t live that far. Let’s say if they’re in the United States, they still live within the same state as where they were born. So if you’re in the same city or if you’ve only moved let’s say a few cities over, it’s not going to make a huge difference in terms of your relocated chart and your charts largely going to be the same. It’s really in those instances where you’ve moved to a relatively far distance away from where you born that it really makes a huge difference, right?

MS: It depends. Sometimes you might move two hours and it could be an utterly different paran, especially if you’re going north and south. The local space lines, they come from the birth place. So essentially the way local space works is let’s say you’re born in the afternoon and someone was standing right there, and they said, “Oh, there’s the Sun.” They point at it and they start walking toward the Sun and they go all the way around the Earth in a big circle–that’s a local space line for the Sun. And so all of the local space lines come out of the birth location. They sort of go in one direction and come back through in the opposite direction and so you have all these circles that are intersecting through the birth location.

You might move 30 minutes away but you go smack dab to where your Saturn and Mars opposition has a local space influence–that’s significant. It could be that the rising sign changes if you move a little bit. And there are some things I do with the intermediate houses where moving a couple of hours could create a pretty big difference there too. So basically what you’re saying is right of course. If you move across the country it’s a whole new thing entirely but sometimes even a small move can have a lot of ramifications.

CB: Sure. One of the things we’re getting into when you mention local space is just the reality that there’s been several different major approaches or different techniques for doing different things related to locational astrology it seems that have developed over the past few decades, and so maybe we should attempt to define some of those. On the one hand, we have the relocated birth chart which is part of what we’ve been talking about. Just taking the birth chart that you have and instead of your birth city setting, whatever your current city is as location and that changing the chart and telling you something about that. Then from that there’s also other concepts like astrocartography closely related to the idea of the relocated chart, right?

MS: Yeah it’s similar because the angles are so important. So a couple of things to introduce here. As you said, you would change your birth place but keep the same moment in time–that’s the thing to be careful with. So if you have astrology software, and let’s say you were born 3:00 PM in New York, you don’t want to just say 3:00 PM in San Francisco. Obviously, you have to keep the same moment in time, so you have to be careful with that because that’s a mistake you can make.

CB: So you would keep the same moment in time but just take the timezone conversion into account is what you’re saying.

MS: Right.

CB: Like 2:00 PM here in Denver is 4:00 PM in New York, for example.

MS: Right. So you could make it 4:00 PM New York or you could just manually keep it as Mountain Standard Time or whatever you were going to do and keep it as 2:00 PM. So that way when you look at the relocated chart all the planets should be in exactly the same longitude, so that the degree and the minutes within a sign are not going to change. If you see your Moon has moved a degree, whoa, wait a minute, you’ve done something wrong because then you’ve actually change the moment in time, so we want to keep that the same.

CB: Right.

MS: So now another thing we have to introduce with astrocartography, there’s two ways to put those lines on the map. So Jim Lewis came up with a way to do it astronomically in a way that was astronomically correct. So for example, I had a client today and we were looking at her Jupiter rising line. She was born very close to it. Well, where is Jupiter? The center of Jupiter, essentially where is it actually rising astronomically versus where is the degree in zodiacal longitude where Jupiter sits or where we reckon it to sit along the ecliptic? Where is that degree rising? And that’s the difference between in mundo mapping and a more zodiacal approach to mapping. There’s not typically that wide a range.

But like my client today, her Jupiter line moved quite a bit, and she was born just on the other side of her Jupiter line so that Jupiter was in her 12th house from her Jupiter ascending line. She was born to the east of it, so Jupiter shows up in the 12th house of the chart. And she was considering moving to a place where her Jupiter in mundo line, the one that shows where it was astronomically rising. She was considering moving to the place that was just like exactly where that was and it was a good distance away. Jupiter wouldn’t normally veer off the ecliptic that much but in this case it did. Pluto is the main planet–if you use Pluto–that will move a great deal because it has a lot of celestial longitude, if that’s the right term. Celestial latitude I think it is where it doesn’t follow the ecliptic the way most of the planets do.

And so Jupiter descending could be over in L.A. and then the same Jupiter setting line–where it’s actually setting–might be over in Denver. But that being said, the relocated chart and the map, they tend to be pretty much in sync with this exception kept in mind. So if you see Jupiter rising in Chicago for you, you’re going to see it on the Ascendant basically when you relocate the chart there. So those two things are related. It’s just that the mapping is just taking the angles into consideration and leaving out the rest of the information.

CB: Sure. And when we’re talking about astrocartography, this is the approach that was pioneered by Jim Lewis where he takes this idea of the relocated chart and of different planets moving towards or away from the different angles in the chart and actually projects that onto a map of the world, so that you can see when different planets would be prominent in terms of hitting the different angles sort of mapped out into a geographical thing across the entire globe basically, right?

MS: Yeah. And you can just have that map all laid out and there it is. Although as soon as I think of those maps, fear comes up because I’ll have so many clients who have been around for awhile, and they have these maps and they got them in the ’70s or the ’80s or whatever. They’ll say, “Oh, I have the map and I have the booklet.” And so it’s almost like they don’t realize I’m going to pull that up and I’m going to see all my own stuff and use my Solar Fire and Solar Maps, and I use Horizons a little bit too. But the point I’m making is that there can be a misconception of well that’s what it is. It’s that map. That’s what you need. And I have to politely explain diplomatically that that is some very important stuff but there’s a whole lot more to look at too, so we want to look at more than just what you have there.

CB: Sure. Yeah it’s always more complicated than it seems at first glance. And I’m sure there’s many different modifications or different approaches that you can take based on things like latitude and whether to incorporate that or not, as you were saying. But for the most part, just in terms of us introducing the concept that’s essentially what astrocartography is at its most fundamental level it seemed in terms of Jim Lewis pioneering that and introducing. And also this is actually where it gets a little tricky in terms of some of the terminology of what to call this stuff. Because he actually in developing that and introducing that concept of projecting those lines of planets hitting angles onto a map, he ended up copyrighting that approach essentially. And there’s a specific term, Astro*Carto*Graphy, which is still under copyright essentially by his trust basically, right?

MS: Trademark I think they would use. So astrocartography with the little asterisk after the Astro and after the Carto, that’s one of his trademark terms. And I guess he trademarked astrocartography as a one-word thing as well. Although I’ve heard people argue that legally that’s such a generally used term that you have more leeway if you were to use it that way than if you were certainly to put the asterisks in there. The asterisks are clearly the specific thing that he created. But then again he popularized the term astrocartography. The Continuum website–continuumacg.net is I believe what it is–they have a page where they go into some of those legal questions if you want to write about astrocartography should you do that and you can explore that. Jim Lewis also under the umbrella of astrocartography, he also worked with parans quite a bit too. And so that originally is an Egyptian concept, with a paran.

CB: Yeah, like co-rising stars.

MS: Yeah. My client today had a Saturn-Mars paran that she had lived around most of her life. And at one point she lived really close to it and I’m saying some things about it. She had written notes in her email to me that, “Oh, I really like this place. I like the town and I had more free time and such.” And it was a place where she had this Saturn-Mars paran which is not a line I’m typically going to recommend to someone. And I explained it to her, I said often I’ll describe this as kind of like a car wreck energy where we have the two traditional malefics and so on. And she said, “Oh, I did I have a really bad car accident there.” I’m like, OK, well, at least it makes sense, we see what it was. So then I had to say, well, OK, if you were to live on that line again, we know what it is in terms of it made her work really hard and things like that. And that’s kind of the upside of a Saturn-Mars, you might work really hard and that can be good. But I had to say there may be a bit of a roulette game you’re playing in terms of the potential for something like a car wreck or something that’s undesirable to happen.

So Jim Lewis also worked with these parans which is a far out thing if we get into it for a second. Let’s say somewhere over on the other side of the Earth, or a quarter of the way around the Earth, whatever you prefer, at the same latitude where you are right now there may have been a planet rising. Jupiter may have been rising and Venus may have been setting–well, that’s a trickier example. Let’s say Venus is at the Midheaven and Jupiter’s rising. And so those two lines are intersecting right at your latitude quite far away from where you are living right then but that latitude becomes really infused with that combination of Jupiter and Venus.

The idea of angularity makes a lot of sense. When you were born maybe Jupiter was rising in Bali. OK, that was happening when you were born. Wherever you were born, Jupiter was rising in Bali. We can say, OK, that makes sense to me. It’s easier to swallow that one. A paran–it’s happening, it is an astronomical fact. Those lines were intersecting. One of the planets was rising, one of the was culminating at that spot and as those lines crossed right there.

Anyway, that’s one of Jim Lewis’ things too. And that is a really, really important technique, and anyone who does this work probably really looks at those a lot. And they’re neat because they’re really pinpointed. Like I’m to the point where about 30 miles from those is where I’m taking those really seriously which is about a half a degree of latitude, little less than that. So about 35 degrees is about a half a degree of latitude. And those are very specific, so that is another thing we can put under the category of astrocartography as well.

CB: OK. So there was some relatively straightforward things that are relatively easy to understand and some of those have been popularized like the projecting of the planets that are rising or culminating onto a globe in order to see where the different lines are and that’s pretty straightforward. And then there’s some more complicated or sort of advanced or obscure things that were also popularized in this approach and it seems like it became Jim Lewis’ main thing. And he published a little booklet or a book on the subject back in 1976, and I think that was his first publication on the subject back around that point essentially, right?

MS: I think so.

CB: OK. Interestingly, Jim Lewis was actually just mentioned a few episodes ago when I was interviewing Kenneth Bowser about his work in Western sidereal astrology. It was interesting because he actually told me in that interview that he was taking a class with Jim Lewis in San Francisco in like the 1960s or ’70s or something like that. And Jim Lewis told Kenneth Bowser that he should look into the work of Cyril Fagan. Even though Jim Lewis was a tropical astrologer, for some reason he thought that Bowser would appreciate Fagan’s work, and that ended up actually being the genesis of basically Kenneth Bowser getting into sidereal astrology and going that whole route over the past 40 years, so there’s an interesting crossover there.

And then of course in your chapter on this topic in the New Generation book, you actually talk a little bit about how there’s some ambiguity about how aware Jim Lewis was of Fagan’s work on locational astrology and to what extent that influenced his work on locational astrology versus to what extent some of those things were unique or independent inventions on Jim Lewis’ part.

MS: Right. And one of the interesting stories there Ken Irving had shared with me was that he at one point showed Jim Lewis some maps that Donald Bradley used in American Astrology. And he said that Jim was genuinely surprised when he showed him those maps because he didn’t think anyone had done that before him. Ken said, “I had no reason to doubt him on that,” so Bradley was doing some mapping. 

And then it was interesting that in Jim Lewis’ 1976 booklet Astrocartography which he didn’t use the asterisks with, he gave particular credit to Donald A. Bradley, and he was the only astrologer that he mentioned by name in the dedication of that booklet. So some of the mapping, he at least gave some credit to Bradley for that, and Bradley was doing some of that. But again typically people were not doing that natally so much, they were using it for mundane purposes before that.

CB: OK. To whatever extent, he certainly seems to be aware of the work of some of these earlier astrologers and the siderealists who are doing some of this work. To whatever extent that influenced him we don’t know. But he certainly took some of those approaches that were pre-existing and then elaborated on them significantly and began studying and researching and also promoting this whole approach to astrology which really took the location as a major component in one’s astrological approach, and eventually he developed a certification program surrounding that, right?

MS: Right. And I have gone through that certification. So I am A*C*G certified. Wikipedia says there are 88 of us who have been certified on that approach right now. It’s a cool thing. You can do it, it’s not so hard. What you do is you get the transcript of a seminar that Jim Lewis taught. It was called Professional Training and Certification Seminar. He taught it in September of 1993. Karen McCauley edited and transcribed it along with Lori Osborne. And you get the whole transcript of how he taught it at that time and then you take a test. And for the most part the answers are in that book. You have to know some astrology too, obviously, but most of the specific stuff is right there. So you can go through that, it’s not terribly expensive, and you can have that as a certification.

In my opinion, if you go through that certification you shouldn’t necessarily just hang up a shingle and start telling people where you think they should live because there’s a lot to this and that is the foundation. Those are the shoulders I stand on with my work, what Jim Lewis did, I have immense respect for everything he did. But I think if you’re just going off of that you are definitely going to give people some bad advice because it’s just not everything. It’s a lot of it, it’s just not the whole picture. So, yay, certification in this method but I do not believe that you should just start doing it if you’ve been through that certification. I think there’s a lot more to this than just that–just my opinion, obviously.

CB: Sure. And if it’s based on a transcript from back then we’re talking about pre-1995. Basically, Jim Lewis, he was not just up-and-coming, he had been up-and-coming for awhile. But he was one of the bright, shining younger astrologers from that generation of astrologers who came in and who were born in the 1940s–like Rob Hand and Demetra George and a lot of the other Pluto in Leos that we know–who became so prominent, especially in the 1980s forward and had such brilliant careers. He was somebody who was doing all this great work and doing some very pioneering stuff. Also, he won the Regulus Awards, one of the first Regulus Awards that was given out at the United Astrology Conference in 1992. He was actually given one of those awards for discovery, innovation, and research which I think is specifically for his work on locational astrology, right?

MS: Yeah, absolutely.

CB: Yeah. So he was doing all this brilliant work but then he was one of the victims of the AIDS epidemic and he died prematurely in 1995 at the age of 53. Sometime last year, I interviewed Gary Lorentzen and one of the points that he made is that we lost a lot of really great astrologers in the 1980s and 1990s due to the AIDS epidemic. And Jim Lewis was certainly one of those people where had he continued to be alive and continue to practice and refine his approach, you kind of wonder in what ways it would have continued to grow and change over the course of the past 20 years versus getting frozen in time where it was when he died in ’95.

MS: Yeah. That’s a really interesting point. When you consider astrocartography and his influence on that I think you have to consider too it was a very well-commercialized product–people could buy the maps with the booklet–and he was successful financially with it. He created a great thing and I think that’s cool. And I think at the same time, you have to look at, well, what are the limitations of that?

So for example, he would give an orb on a paran up to like 1-1/2-to-2° of latitude from that paran. Or he would give an orb on an astrocartography line, he talked about it in terms of maybe 700-800 miles away or even more, I think. And that would be one of my critiques is that he would sometimes use these really wide orbs on things because those were techniques that he was using, and they don’t in my experience necessarily work that well, those wide orbs. I don’t think parans have hardly an effect at all at 2° of latitude. I don’t use those in my practice with that kind of orb. And the astrocartography lines too, typically 800 miles away, I’m not going to look at that. But those were the tools he had and so those were the tools he used, and I would be critical of that part of it, just that part of it. I think that makes sense given what he was doing and he had a product he was selling. But as astrologers, we want to know what really works best for our clients, and so that’s one part of what he did that I would say be wary of.

CB: Right. And often the first generation of astrologers who innovate with a new approach and introduce it–or in some instances recover it from some older traditions–what happens in that first generation of astrologers is often this process of critical analysis that goes on in the next generation who actually learn from the first generation and then start putting the techniques into practice and saying, “Well this part works pretty well but this other part I’m not sure about, and if I were doing it I would modify it this way,” and so on and so forth. It’s just a natural part of the tradition, I would say.

MS: Right. Another example of that is–he was aware of this–the difference between being east or west of a line. Well basically if you go west of an astrocartography line the planet will show up in the angular house if you’re using a quadrant-type house system. So if you go west of your descending Venus line, Venus is in the 7th house, but if you’re east of it she’s at the end of the 6th house if you use the Descendant as the demarcation point between the 6th and 7th house. He did talk about in his certification course that thing but I do remember him not emphasizing it a whole lot. Whereas in my experience with clients it’s a really important thing–it’s surprisingly important.

And that has been so true in my experience with clients that I kind of took for granted that a lot of other people would know that. And then as I started teaching more of this, I would find people who said, “Are you sure about that? Have you seen that work?” and I realized that people didn’t really know that. So yes, it’s a Venus rising line you might have somewhere but which side of the line are you on? Is Venus showing up in the 12th house or in the 1st house? There’s a world of difference between those two things.

So a lot of times with a good ascending line, unless the person is really focused on a 12th house matter, a lot of times I’m going to recommend going east of that line to have the planet in the 1st house. So things like that are big considerations and he was aware of that. But another critique would be that he, in my opinion, should have focused on that even more–but again it’s in there and it’s relevant. So yeah that’s all we’re trying to do is just refine this and get it more and more specific so we know how to work with it, and we should expect this process to continue for a very long time. Because really this whole approach, if you think of it, it’s kind of amazing how young it is. In the context of the whole astrological tradition, this is a little baby, it’s brand new.

CB: Right. You’re talking about a tradition where there’s techniques that have been practiced for like a thousand years or 2,000 years, and we’re talking about something that’s only been around for three or four decades.

MS: Yeah. I mean his book in ’76 is one of the big foundation moments, so 40 years roughly and that’s great. And at the same time it’s cool that I think we know as much as we do already. It’s very usable. It’s not like we have no idea what we’re doing. If you study it you can figure it out for the most part. Which is not to say that we won’t figure out a lot more in the future–that’s the exciting part. But we can still do quite a lot with it today which is pretty awesome, and no one deserves more credit for than Jim Lewis and his early influences like Cyril Fagan and Bradley.

CB: Sure. And I think you cited an earlier book which actually said that Jim Lewis’ work with relocational astrology might be one of the most important developments in late 20th century astrology, one of the top three new innovations up there with I think midpoints and harmonics or something like that, right?

MS: Yeah. I was trying to remember if that was harmonics as well–yep, harmonics. And Charles Harvey and Michael Harding argued in their book Working with Astrology that this was one of the three most important modern advances in astrology.

CB: Sure. And one of the things you said about this being a product was kind of interesting because it raises an interesting side discussion. Sometimes you see this and it’s always an interesting phenomenon where as practicing astrologers we can kind of see both sides of that coin, which is that sometimes astrologers develop their own techniques or their own specific approaches. And there’s often a tension between, on the one hand, to what extent is that technique or that unique approach–whatever it is–something that needs to remain identified with the astrologer and almost becomes their intellectual property in some sense versus once you introduce a new technique are you simply discovering something that’s almost like a property of the natural world. Once you discover that–if other people find it useful and it becomes mainstream or widely adopted–it becomes part of the tradition and not necessarily something that belongs to a single person at that point.

Here with astrocartography there’s a really interesting tension between that because, on the one hand, he copyrighted or trademarked this specific phrase astrocartography, and some of the things associated with that approach are theoretically supposed to be trademarked. But then, on the other hand, it’s something that’s become so common and so mainstream at this point that there’s this question of can you really keep something like that trademarked, or to what extent can you if it’s become used by everybody, or it’s become sort of like a general thing.

MS: Right. Yeah I think in particular it was his work with the mapping. People had looked at angular planets of course and things like that but he had a way of mapping that and creating a product out of that. So I think that’s probably one of the areas they’d be more likely to defend their turf on, and yet plenty of astrology software programs have the mapping feature in it.

CB: Right.

MS: I’m not aware of them being particularly litigious, but I shouldn’t probably say that because I don’t really know the whole history. But from what I’ve heard it’s not like they’re going after everybody who’s producing a map or using the term “astrocartography” though arguably they could. I mean you can sue anybody over anything, I guess. But yeah I’m not aware of really prominent examples of that that have happened.

CB: Yeah I mean it’s just weird. It’s one of those things where in publications related to this you often do see the trademark claim very prominently. If it’s from the trust itself, or if it’s somebody writing about it, oftentimes you will see a reference to the trademark, or sometimes you’ll see a reference to the trademark. And it’s always weird because typically the people that are really concerned about the trademark, they will write it out the specific way that he seems to have trademarked it, which is Astro and then an asterisk, and then Carto and then an asterisk, and then Graphy–which I have to say that’s an incredibly annoying writing that out each time. I almost really refuse to–most times if I’m every talking about this–put the asterisk in just because it’s just terribly annoying, especially to what extent it becomes a common phrase or term that’s used to refer to an entire group of techniques and different things that people use in the community today. It’s almost annoying having a copyrighted term with little, cute typography-type things that are thrown into it as part of the trademark.

MS: Right.

CB: But that raises a separate question. Where I was going with that was what the hell do we call all of this stuff? Because it seems like there’s not a generally accepted term where I see some people refer to this as the whole branch let’s say of astrology or this whole approach of looking at location and changing location. Some people refer to it as “astrolocality”. Some people refer to it as locational astrology. Some people refer to it as relocational astrology. Then you have astrocartography sometimes just used as a catch-all term. Sometimes it’s used to refer specifically to Jim Lewis’ stuff but other times I’ve seen it used as a generic term for this type of astrology. I mean what should we call it, or what do you prefer to call it?

MS: I think the most general terms tend to be astrolocality. And Martin Davis I believe wrote a book, I think Astrolocality was the title or was in the title. I commonly say locational astrology. To me it just kind of rolls off the tongue a little easier and it just sort of makes sense. You could say relocation astrology as well. I think those are all fine. But I don’t know, I like locational astrology.

CB: Sure. I just did a little informal poll on Twitter and so far 43 people have vote. And 33% say astrolocality and 67% say they prefer locational astrology. So right now it sounds like most people are going with what you said with the locational astrology. It’s a little bit annoying to have to write two words rather than one, and so it’s a little bit more inconvenient that way but it actually makes sense and is a little more straightforward in terms of describing what it’s about by referring to it as locational astrology. So maybe that would be a good, general catch-all term for this area.

MS: Yeah I think so. At one point they were starting to lay out some of the major techniques. Do you want to throw geodetics into the mix?

CB: Sure. What is geodetics?

MS: Geodetics–this is the one of all of them that I wished didn’t work. It’d probably be this one because it’s the most divorced from something we can really point out as actually happening astronomically like paran. We talked about the lines crossing in that latitude as it takes on the quality for paran, or angularity of the planets–where are they rising and setting and so on? Even the local space we described as big circles that you can form that go through your birth location based on the direction. Put a compass on the ground and say, “Oh, there’s Venus over there to the northeast, let’s go that way,” and then you get a big circle–that’s local space. So that makes sense and they’re based on something that has this astronomical basis to it.

So geodetics–geodetics were used also in terms of mundane astrology. Back in the old days, some of the old magazines, they’d publish the maps and have geodetic positions for planets at equinoxes and so on. Collectively we agree on the Greenwich meridian as the zero meridian. So Greenwich, England–that’s where east and west come together basically in terms of longitudes. And then you go east from there–and you go 1, 2, 3–you go 1 East, and 2 East, and 3 East, and then we go all the way like that.

So what geodetics does is it says that 0° meridian at Greenwich is 0 Aries and then you go all the way around. So if you get to 30 East that would be 0 Taurus as a Midheaven and then go 60-East that’s 0 Gemini. So we create a grid. It’s based on a circle. That’s one thing that we can say, OK, well that’s a lot like astrology. We have a circle 360°, and we divide it into 12 sections and you have the Midheavens for 12 signs and they’re equal in that way.

From those meridian placements you can figure out what would be the ascending and descending equivalents at any given spot on the Earth. So New York will always have the same meridian. It’s always the same longitude, right? It’s New York. It’s got a certain longitude and that corresponds to a certain degree in the zodiac because that’s a 360° circle. And then based on that we’d say what would the Ascendant be in New York if you had that Midheaven? And so therefore the Ascendant positions become set as well.

OK, well, you create this grid. It’s a big grid like that and it’s astrological. Instead of thinking in terms of 360° which is numbers, you think in terms of zodiac signs and 30° zodiac signs. So based on that grid, let’s say you have a planet. I’ve got Neptune around 9° of Sag near Antares. Well that happens to be the Midheaven that goes through the middle of Arizona basically, so I live near a Neptune Midheaven in geodetics. Now notice in this case this is the one technique where the way it applies is completely different. Where the line exists is completely different in tropical versus sidereal astrology. That’s not true of any of the other things. The parans don’t change. Tropical/sidereal, the ascending, descending, the angles don’t change, the local space doesn’t change. But here it does because my Neptune may be at 9 Sag in tropical astrology but it’s not. It’s in Scorpio in sidereal astrology, so my Neptune Midheaven is in a different place in sidereal astrology.

Now most people who do geodetics are westerners who do tropical astrology, so they’re only going to be familiar probably with their tropical geodetic placements. I do Vedic astrology and Western astrology, and I’m a big believer in both the tropical and sidereal approach. So if I look at geodetics I have to look at the tropical geodetics and then I have to look at the sidereal geodetics or vice versa. And the interpretation then changes because I might like your Jupiter more on your tropical chart than I do on your sidereal chart. And so in that case I’m more interested in where’s your tropical Jupiter geodetic yada-yada line, or I might be more concerned about your Saturn if we think of it from a sidereal perspective. Maybe it goes into Aries and it’s in its fall, and maybe in the Vedic chart, it doesn’t sit quite where you want it. I’m going to be more careful about your sidereal Saturn geodetic positions. So again I wish this one didn’t work because in a way it’s such a construct. It’s such a thing that we project the 360° starting at Greenwich. Well, why Greenwich? I mean it’s kind of arbitrary, right?

CB: Right. I remember you presenting this at the Blast Astrology Conference years ago. You hosted two of these conferences called the Blast which was this amazing conference. What years was that? That was like 2007 and 2009?

MS: I want to say ’06 and ’08 but I might be wrong on that.

CB: Oh no, actually that sounds better, ’06 and ’08. They were just great conferences but you gave that talk on locational astrology at one of them. But one of the things that you brought up that always made me a little skeptical of that approach was that there’s a little bit of arbitrariness in why are we starting the zodiac at Greenwich as 0° of Aries rather than any other location on the Earth, or what have you.

MS: Right. And again I wish it didn’t work but it does. And if you ignore it, it may be really to your detriment. And there are some people who are really good at geodetics. I had Scott Wolfram speak at the Blast on that subject because it was kind of his baby and he’ll give a great presentation on that. So unfortunately it does work.

CB: Who came up with this approach? Was this one of Jim Lewis’ things? Was it somebody else?

MS: No. I don’t think Jim Lewis did hardly anything with geodetics that I’m aware of. It’s older. Again it’s one of those things that was used in mundane astrology for a certain length of time. It definitely goes back at least into somewhere in the 20th century. People were publishing articles in the astrology magazines with geodetic maps. So that one I want to say is older than that even. I want to say it goes back further but I’m quite sure about that right now.

CB: OK. And that was an interesting point that you made though earlier. So most of the astrocartography lines that we were talking about earlier–since that’s all based on the degree of the Ascendant and the degree of the Midheaven–that’s going to apply no matter whether you use the tropical zodiac or the sidereal zodiac because it’s essentially just looking at the houses and that reference system is the same. Whether you’re using tropical or sidereal, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Vedic astrologer or a Western astrologer, it’s going to work essentially the same. But something like this where you’re talking about a locational astrology that’s based on using the zodiac that’s going to be very sensitive to shifts depending on whether you’re using tropical or sidereal.

MS: Yeah. That’s the one geodetics where it will be very, very different. But the thing about the other lines–let’s say you have a Venus Midheaven–the sidereal astrologer and the Western astrologer will agree 100% on where the line is. There is no difference in terms of where the line is as far as which zodiac you use but the interpretation might still be very, very different. Let’s say you have a tropical Venus in Libra and the Western astrologer really likes certain things about that Venus, and then the Vedic astrologer sees Venus in Virgo and does not like other things they see about that Venus, they might give completely different interpretations. “Oh, you should absolutely go to this Venus line,” or “Oh my god, don’t go to that Venus line.”

CB: OK. So in both of them they would both say, yes, Venus is prominent in this city because it would be on the Midheaven if you moved there, and Venus is also very well-placed in your chart because it’s in its own domicile. But in the other they would say Venus is actually debilitated in your chart, so it’ll be prominent but it won’t necessarily be good experiences in this place.

MS: Right. And you can get Jupiter in Capricorn versus Jupiter in Sag and there’s lots of examples like that where it might be very, very different as you would interpret it. And I am a big proponent of doing both. I think if you only do one or the other you are really risking missing a very important part of that story. And I tend to be cautious. Like in that case with the Venus–one is you try to track what actually is the result for that person but if I had to guess that person will get a very mixed result. They might have some really beautiful Venus experiences and they might have some really rough Venus experiences at the same time, and you can have that. We know that astrology can be so complex and sort of paradoxical and contradictory in those ways, and you can get wonderful and terrible results from the same things sometimes because of the mixed conditions, and I definitely see that a lot.

Whereas if I were that Western astrologer, I would normally be gung-ho, “Yeah, I really like this Venus line for you” but because I do the Vedic side, I’m going to see that Venus in Virgo. And if it’s not well-aspected and so on in the Vedic tradition, I’m probably not going to recommend that line very strongly, or maybe you’d be further from the line, you wouldn’t go right to it, and that way you’d minimize the damage it could do, let’s say. So I see that a lot and I very much believe that’s how this works.

CB: Sure. So maybe that’s worth actually talking about a little bit here just because your approach represents an interesting counterpoint or another opposite end of the spectrum from July. I did a couple of episodes focusing on the zodiac. In one, I interviewed Vic DiCara who’s part of this growing group of practitioners of Vedic astrology who use the tropical zodiac. So starting out with Ernst Wilhelm’s paper–which I think you’re familiar with from 10 years ago–was one of the first major astrologers who came out saying he was still using Indian astrology but it was meant to use the tropical zodiac. And evidently that’s grown over the past few years where now there’s a few other semi-major astrologers who are following that approach and advocating it. 

So I interviewed Vic about his approach, and he was very adamant about the tropical zodiac being the correct zodiac and the sidereal zodiac not being correct. And then I did another interview with Kenneth Bowser who specializes in Western sidereal astrology, and he was very adamant that the sidereal zodiac was correct, the original and the correct zodiac to use, and the tropical zodiac was wrong or was incorrect and should not be used.

In some ways, because the Vedic things has blown up into a much bigger thing and they’re having some major arguments right now, I almost wishedI had contrasted the interview with Vic with another Vedic astrologer who is more in the mainstream and using the sidereal zodiac in order to do the proper balance on that. But instead what I was trying to contrast was just different practitioners who are practicing what are almost like minority approaches in their own approach, where a Vedic astrologer using a tropical zodiac is a minority approach compared to the vast majority of Vedic astrologers who use the sidereal approach. And then Kenneth Bowser using the sidereal zodiac as a Western astrologer is of course a relatively small proportion relative to most of the Western astrologers who are tropical. Anyway, I bring that up because I’d forgotten and this is reminding me that you’re somebody studied both the Western tradition and the Vedic tradition. And the way that you ended up going with that when presented with that issue of the discrepancy between the zodiacs is that you essentially use both and you jump back and forth or switch back and forth between the two, right?

MS: Absolutely, yeah. By the way, another guy–Sam Geppi, our friend–he’s been putting out some stuff too on the zodiac issue if you want to hear someone defending the sidereal stuff from the Vedic side of it. But yeah that’s something that I very much do and I’ve looked at both. If I could really say that one was just superior to the other one I guess my life would be easier, it would be simpler. Honestly, one of the reasons I took a little bit of a break from the community for awhile–like you said, I did these conferences and so on but then I kind of got to step back for awhile. 

Even though I’ve been doing my work with clients, I wasn’t really so public about it and so involved in the community. But one of the reasons why is just things like this where people just get such a fixed idea about this zodiac versus that zodiac. And to me if you just step back and you realize there’s Western astrologers thinking sidereal is the way to go, there’s Vedic astrologers thinking tropical is the way to go, there’s obviously a lot of sidereal astrologers who believe that’s the way and a lot of tropical astrologers who think that’s the way. Come on guys, don’t you think maybe this is all working?

Doesn’t it seem like a lot of people are finding a lot of evidence for both? And I’m certainly not the only person that suggests that. There’s plenty of people who believe that they both have something to say, but that’s been my experience. I try to do my own research always on these things, and there’s times where the sidereal chart will just nail something for a person and just makes so many things so clear, it can give me so many great results. And I just am so glad I have that sidereal chart because maybe the rulerships just become a lot more obvious in the chart. The exaltations and the falls and things like that might just become so much more obvious. And sometimes it’s the tropical chart that will just make things nailed so clearly, so right.

So yeah it’s just a matter of considering multiple things. And the truth is we all do that on so many levels no matter what kind of astrology you do. Unless you’re very rigid you’re used to thinking about things on many levels. Even if you interpret any one planet, you’re used to being able to think of so many different things that can apply for a planet, things that can help you determine its condition and its state and what it’s going to deliver in a chart.

And then it’s funny to me you’ll have Western astrologers looking at things like antiscia and contra-antiscia and all sorts of stuff. A Vedic astrologer’s looking at harmonic charts and 9th harmonic charts where you scramble everything. In the harmonic approach everything gets scrambled and things like antiscia you’re scrambling everything around too. And people will accept that but they won’t accept the same exact birth positions of the planets simply with a different zodiacal reference. That’s a much smaller leap to take than scrambling everything with some other type of technique. 

So it’s funny to me that people can’t get over that part of it because it’s so basic and there’s such a strong tradition and a strong argument for using a seasonal approach or using a sidereal approach. There’s pros and cons to both, there’s issues with both approaches. Luckily, I look at it and I find that they work for me. They both work for me and I’m able to deal with that. I’m able to consider that this Venus could be in Libra and in Virgo at the same time, and if you move to that Venus line we’re going to expect some strong Venus results and some challenging Venus results, and that’s life. It’s easy to see I think if you look at it enough.

CB: Right. I guess the issue with the harmonic comparison is at least with harmonic charts–where you do end up with planets in different signs–they at least oftentimes try to contextualize and say the 9th harmonic chart will pertain to a person’s future life, whereas the 12th harmonic chart will tell you something about the past life or what have you so there’s some sort of contextualization. While there’s people who say maybe the sidereal zodiac should be used for looking at things this way and the tropical zodiac should be used for talking about things this way, I haven’t necessarily seen anybody present an approach where they’ve clearly outlined or demarcated that the sidereal zodiac works and it’s useful when looking at things this way, and the tropical zodiac works but it’s useful in looking at things this way, but sometimes it’s just you can use both.

I think the hesitation that some people have is that maybe that gets a little bit murky especially what you’re trying to do, for example, what you’re talking about here, which is make a specific statement that if you move to this city and you make this planet–let’s say Venus–in your chart more prominent then you’re going to have this specific outcome in the way that that will or will not effect the person’s life in a positive or negative fashion.

MS: Yeah but it does work. That’s been my experience with it that it really explains a lot. To the harmonic example, I would say to those people consider the tropical chart like another harmonic almost. We can get into some of the differences in tropical and sidereal. I do think there is a subtle difference. Sidereal, you’re looking at something with the backdrop of the stars. And in tropical, you’re really looking at something in a seasonal context which is much closer to us on the Earth.

The way I would think of it as you experience the seasons. You feel the heat of summer, you feel the cold of winter, and it’s so up close and in your face and so personal like that. Therefore to me, in my experience the tropical lends itself to more of this up close and personal look at someone where you really have to be down there interacting with them face to face to see all of that. Whereas sidereal, if you think of it, it’s very objective, it’s very distant. The stars, how far away are they? In that sense, it’s more like seeing the fate in the sky in a way that’s kind of objective and says, well, this person is a rockstar. That’s like sidereal Leo maybe, right? Whereas the tropical Leo might have that personality but maybe not the result or something.

Now I don’t want to make too hard and fast a distinction there because you can absolutely see the fate and destiny from the tropical chart and you can see some psychology certainly from the sidereal astrology. Although a lot of the psychology in Vedic astrology I think comes more from the “nakshatras” or from the interactions of the planets and somewhat from the signs–but I think the signs it’s kind of distant. Like if you know me up close and personal, I’m a Scorpio rising. But if you see me at a distance, I might look a lot like a Libra rising because I’m like, “Well, you should do tropical and sidereal,” and I’m always balancing two sides of things like that and trying to be fair to everything and see what works. I think there’s a bit of a difference like that.

And by the way, house systems have a similar thing like that where, to me, Whole Sign houses are more like the sidereal approach in the sense it’s objective, it’s a bit more distant, but it’s a bit more like this is really what the life is if you see it from a distance, this is what they actually do. Whereas I think the quadrant systems are more up close and personal where you feel them like the seasons like tropical astrology. Which is why I would say that tropical astrology based on a quadrant-based house system is kind of the ultimate psychological astrology, which not coincidentally is what people do.

When people do psychological astrology, it’s typically tropical and they’re typically using a quadrant house system, things like Placidus, and then the ultimate karmic picture, objective picture may be sidereal and Whole Signs. So I think tropical/Whole Signs are an interesting combination of the two because you get the up-close-and-personal with a little more of the objective view. And you could say something similar if we mix it up the other way too, but that’s a little bit of my take on tropical, sidereal and Whole Signs versus quadrant house systems.

CB: Sure. And I think that’s definitely something it’ll be interesting to see how that continues to grow and develop and how people reconcile those things and try to come up with explanations for how the different reference systems might still be correct, about how you can have different perspectives on them like you just did here. And you’re definitely one of the people who’s been earlier on than most trying to reconcile and trying to figure out how to do that just because you studied both traditions pretty early on.

And that was a good reference, I’m glad you referenced Sam Geppi. He’s one of the YouTube astrologers–it’s basically the YouTube Vedic astrologers that are having this huge debate about the zodiac issue right now–and his video that he put out did have an interesting counterpoint. Some of Vic’s videos–Vic of course has put out some responses to that and a few other people have gotten involved. So people can search for those on YouTube if they want and see that continuing debate as a follow-up from those episodes I did in July.

MS: Nice.

CB: Yeah so we don’t have to get stuck there. As we’re getting further into this and getting closer to winding this up, I wanted to make sure we touched on a few points. One of them is just going back to the very basics of doing a relocated chart and looking at planets that are more prominent in the chart by hitting certain angles, which are then represented oftentimes in an astrocartography chart by those planetary lines that across the globe. There’s some people who will move to different lines in order to see what different planetary experiences are like when you emphasize that in a chart. But you actually are a little bit unique in that you don’t typically recommend going directly onto a specific line, right?

MS: Yeah it very much depends on the individual, their goals, and it depends on their chart. I do think if you have a planet in pristine condition in your chart–like you just love everything about your Jupiter or your Sun or whatever it might be–then absolutely consider going right to that line because it will give you the maximum impact. But in my opinion, half the charts I look at are going to have even one planet in that kind of condition. It’s again very similar to gemstones.

So I do a little bit of recommendations occasionally with gemstones too and have some experience with that. If you’re going to wear a gemstone for a planet–for the most part, it’s a little different actually come to think of it, but there’s a lot of similarities–you want it to be a planet you want to emphasize. You want to turn up the volume on that planet. The difference is with gemstones you can take a benefic planet that’s maybe getting beat up by some other planets and wearing the gemstone can strengthen it against those malefic aspects. Whereas if you move to that planet’s line and it’s getting beat up by other planets, it’s going to still give results like it’s getting beat up by those planets, so you have to be careful with that.

Anyway, like half the time I can look at a chart and say, “Oh, you know what? I think your Mercury is so good that I think you could wear the gemstone for Mercury, no problem, and I think you could live on the Mercury line, smack dab on that line with no problem.” And then the other half of the time, everything is a little too mixed and there’s nothing that’s really clearly going to give such great results that you want to emphasize it tremendously, and it super depends on the individual, their goals, their story and all of that. You really have to take everything into account, which is why I don’t do readings unless the person’s on the phone with me. I want to talk to them. I want to find out what makes them tick, what are they really interested in. And a chart for one person in one place I might not recommend it for someone else who was born at the same moment maybe in the same place if their goals were different.

So a lot of times what I’ll do is recommend being a moderate distance from the line, let’s say 3-to-6° away from the angle. So maybe it’s a Moon line where the Moon is 4° from the IC in the 4th house instead of 1° from the IC because if you go to that Moon line, you get everything it’s going to give you in full force. And maybe there are a lot of things you like about your Moon but then there’s that one aspect that really you don’t like about your Moon. Guess what? If you go right to where that Moon line is you activate that aspect. Maybe it’s got a square from Saturn and that’s no fun for you. Then if you go right to that Moon line or that Saturn line you’re going to get that aspect turned up to 11 really amplified, so you may not want to do that.

But maybe there’s so many other good things about your Moon and maybe the rest of the chart looks really nice too. And so you want some contact with your Moon but you don’t want too much because too much can be too powerful, so maybe you go 50-percent of the line. 50-percent of it means from 0 to 8 is the full spectrum. To me, 8° away from the angle, at that point it’s not really an angular line anymore. But up to 8° it gradually goes from a hundred percent influence down to 0. And so 4° away that’s about 50%. Maybe you have a really good Mars or Saturn and there’s a lot of things to like about your Mars or your Saturn. Definitely you’ll see people who do well on their Mars and Saturn lines and there are people who have good natal placements for their Saturn and their Mars. But you still might not want a full blast on those guys, so maybe you go 6° away or even 7° away where you get some contact from those lines but not too much.

So yeah that is something that I always like to try to point out because the popular idea is that what astrocartography is, is “Oh, I go to my Jupiter line” and “I go to my Venus line and I do all these things,” and that is not necessarily the best thing to do. It might be the best thing to be 400 miles from your Jupiter line, that may be the very best thing you could do. And that’s one of the misconceptions that I am happy to try to dispel. Because I think that locational astrologers have probably done a lot of harm to people by saying, “Oh yeah, go to your Mercury line,” and then they’re not aware that Mercury in Aries is actually in Pisces in the Vedic chart, and in that system there’s a really strong aspect from Saturn because makes that forward sextile–that 60°-opening sextile aspect– which is a full aspect in Vedic astrology from Saturn. But the Western astrologer would go, “Well, that’s a cute sextile,” while the Vedic astrologer goes, “That’s a full aspect from Saturn and your Saturn’s in Pisces.” Then when we change the rising, it ends up in the 12th house or something. So there’s a lot of ways you can mess up your life if you emphasize the wrong things.

CB: Right. It sounds like a be careful what you wish for type scenario. Like the people who wish to be famous and then they become famous but then they’re miserable for some reason. Other people wish to be rich and they win the lottery and then all these terrible things happen. That’s not a great example or a great analogy but it sort of makes me think of that as something that’s kind of similar.

MS: That’s what angularity can be a lot like. It’s like, “Yeah, I’m famous,” and “Yeah, this is great,” and “Yeah, and my health sucks,” or “My family life sucks” or something like that. So particularly with angularity it can be that kind of double-edged gift.

CB: Right. And just that idea that’s really powerful that you mentioned in that chapter in the New Generation book, the idea that it’s very difficult to find a pristine planet. Very few people and almost nobody has a completely pristine planet in their chart that has absolutely no problems with it, so that anytime you’re emphasizing something–even if it’s the most well-placed planet in your chart–it’s probably going to have some drawbacks that come with it. And if you’re going to turn the dial on that planet up to 10 you have to be prepared to deal with the drawbacks or some of the consequences that might come along with that.

MS: Yeah. And a lot of clients I think experience that where they’re living on their major lines and they’ll tell you the good things which you might expect from those placements but then you hear all the other problems that are going on in their life and it’s not sustainable. And a lot of times the really strong lines are not sustainable. But again if you have a great planet and you really want to emphasize that planet–and you want to put it in the right house, on that angle that you really are looking for the result from–you might get a great result from that but it’s not necessarily the best thing. And it depends too on what your goals are.

To some degree, angularity can give you more fame and more recognition and it comes at a certain cost. There’s a certain intensity for being more prominent often but not everyone wants that. Some people want to retire and just have a happy little life. Some people don’t have big goals, they don’t need to be someone big. Those people probably don’t want to live on angular lines. Unless they’ve got a really, really sweet angular line they can live on, it’s just going to be very happy. 

If you’ve got a 20-something year old person who wants to be a movie star or a rockstar, one of the first things I’m going to look for is a good angular planetary line for them. But someone who’s later in life, who is not looking for anything so dramatic, they just want to be happy, the angular lines, I’m a lot less likely to recommend those to those people just in general because you’re playing with fire to some degree if you go right to where those lines are. And that’s not to say there aren’t great stories with the exact lines, there are.

CB: Yeah. Actually I have some great anecdotes if you want from my limited experience with this. But this is one of the things where I really do think relocation astrology and astrolocality–especially in terms of relocating to different lines that make certain planets in your chart prominent–in my limited 33 years of whatever on Earth have had some great, very stark experiences with that.

I grew up in Denver essentially and lived here most of my life but when I was 19, I moved to Seattle for a year in order to study at Kepler College. And on the one hand, basically within a month of moving there, I had a pretty prominent Saturn in my chart both tropically and sidereally. It’s the ruler of the Ascendant and it’s up in the 10th Whole Sign house or the 9th house in quadrant. And immediately upon moving there, they forced me at Kepler to start studying ancient astrology, and I had my introduction to Hellenistic and Indian astrology there starting about a month after I moved to Seattle unexpectedly. And so I actually got into the study of ancient astrology at that time in this city that was right on my Saturn Midheaven line which was pretty apropos.

But then at the same time, I had moved there partially for a relationship and then we broke up shortly after I moved there, and so it ended up being a very sort of lonely and sort of isolated year of living in Seattle and not really doing much except for studying and not socializing or anything else and missing home and missing a bunch of my friends and things like that. So you’ve got this double-edged sword of on the one hand some of the positive aspects of Saturn and on the other hand some of the more challenging aspects.

MS: Right. And I pulled up your chart in Seattle. Are you curious to hear another comment on it?

CB: I mean if you want to. I don’t want to go too far into it, but go nuts.

MS: Well OK, just a couple of other interesting things. Your Mars was rising there. You have Mars in Capricorn. So the breakup–which I think we see it more clearly–I mentioned the Mars because Mars obviously can separate people. You have this very strong Mars there. But one of my pet techniques, you go look at the Equal House cusps in this chart. Saturn by the way would be Midheaven but also 11th house, but then Venus is really close to the 12th house cusp. So your story was very much the relationship broke up and you were kind of alone and doing your own thing there. Well the Venus with the 12th house cusp and then Neptune actually ends up on the 12th house cusp in the Porphry house system really speaks to that 12th house theme being very strong. And then we can talk about what the Mars would have meant as well–a couple of other cool things I noticed.

CB: Yeah there’s a lot of other stuff you can definitely bring in. So there was that Saturn line which is weird. So I moved to Seattle and Seattle’s pretty much on my Saturn Midheaven line. But what was weird is that the following summers–so my year in Seattle was winding down–I ended up moving across the country to the other side of the country to Maryland to live at Project Hindsight where they were translating these ancient astrological texts. And what I saw before I moved there–which I thought was really weird and I was always curious how it would work out–was that my Neptune Midheaven line ran right through the city that I was moving to in Maryland. So I was literally moving from my Saturn Midheaven line to my Neptune Midheaven line.

And at the same time, I think Neptune over the course of that two-year period was transiting over my Ascendant. And it just ended up being a lot of hilariously Neptunian type figures there. And a lot of the people around there ended up having really prominent Neptunes and especially Mercury-Neptune combinations which then ended up tying into some of the types of experiences that I had and the different things that went on there over that two-year period, so that was interesting. And then there was one other thing with a Mars line but I’ll save that for another time. So anyway, my limited experience is just that I have had experiences of moving to and living in cities–or sometimes visiting cities–with a Mars line for an extended period where the type of experiences that I had there did seem very evocative of the nature of that planet for better or worse.

MS: Right. A friend of mine with Mars in Capricorn, she used to live on a Mars ascending line in Hawaii, in Maui. And her breakups would be really brutal on that line. It just was one of the things that showed me when Mars is really powerful like that it can be tough in some areas of life too.

CB: Right. Yeah that’s basically what it was was a bad breakup in moving to a different city where Mars was like really prominent and then getting stalked for like a few months.

MS: Oh wow.

CB: Yeah it’s good times. Anyway, so that’s my limited experience in astrocartography. And that’s why while I’m no expert on the subject–and I don’t do consultations on it like you do, or don’t have any certification–I definitely think that there’s something to it and that’s why I wanted to have this discussion to introduce my audience to the concept. And I’m glad that we got a chance to talk about it as much as we did here.

MS: Yeah. One last little thing that occurs to me to mention is because the main influences in a place won’t change, just pay attention to what happens to you in a place. You might not even need the astrology. Maybe you’re someone who doesn’t even know your birth time but you know every time you live in New York, yada yada yada happens, well it doesn’t change. There are some things that change, yes, definitely, but to me the main significant things are always going to be there. And if there’s Mars and this and that going on that’s always going to be there. So if you feel like a place always gives you certain results, it’s going to probably more or less keep giving you those same kind of results.

So if you didn’t know your birth time, you’d literally have to go places. There are some techniques you can use if you don’t have a birth time. Sometimes the “parans” you can use to a degree. The geodetics actually become very useful if you don’t know your birth time. But still beyond that you have to look at what’s going on for you in a place. And if a place isn’t working it’s not likely to change especially if it’s been that way for a long time. So one other little thing that I thought to add.

CB: And the last thing I wanted to mention because I’ll kick myself if I completely forget is one of the other ways that relocation astrology is commonly mentioned even by astrologers that don’t do astrocartography is the idea of–and this is a new innovation I think in modern times–relocating the Solar Return chart. And sometimes you’ll hear about astrologers moving around to different places or just visiting different places in order to get a new Solar Return chart. And I’ve always been a little bit unsure, a little bit uneasy about the idea of that. Where do you stand when it comes to relocating or going somewhere just to have a different Solar Return chart? Does that work? Does that not work? What do you think?

MS: I don’t know for sure but I do think it’s a sound idea generally. And there are people who I respect who do it, like Ray Merriman is very big on it. And he does it personally in his own life, he goes to places to do that. So I think on the one hand it can be good even if we just look at it as a matter of setting intention. You’re going to this place for this chart, for this year. You’ve made a very conscious choice and that alone is powerful.

But it is true that you have a Solar Return at a certain moment in time, and where you are where it occurs it makes sense that it relevant. But what I have found too is that even if you go somewhere for a Solar Return and then you come home, I do think you can then relocate the Solar Return chart to where you live and that chart will also play out through the year. I don’t think you can get away from that. Maybe you live in Denver and your Solar Return is great or not great in any given year. If you’re going to live in Denver, I don’t think you can erase that fact. But I suspect, as strong as I can say it that if you do go to some place to have a better Solar Return, you probably do create a better experience that way, and a) it’s intentional, and b) it’s astrological. But then you can even look at the returns from the natal location too. Some people do Solar Returns from the natal location also and so obviously that doesn’t change.

So for me I haven’t done enough research in that really to have a strong opinion. But if a client comes to me I’ll tell them basically what I just said, and I’ll say I think it’s a perfectly sound thing to do, it’s not going to necessarily change everything. But hey, if you’ve got the money, you want to travel for your birthday, let’s find a good place. I just did one of these the other day actually where I found a good place for her for the year and also a good place where she had good astrocartography, so I thought she could have a nice vacation at the same time. Like anytime she could go to this part of the world, it should be more or less a good place for her to be. So you could look at it both ways which is also cool.

CB: Yeah. And that’s where some of the conflict I think comes up even within a purely relocational context. On the one hand, let’s say you live in New York but you travel all the way to Hawaii just to have your Solar Return there for a weekend and then you fly back to New York. But let’s say New York is where your Mars line falls and that it’s not very well-placed in your chart–so that your experience of where you’re actually going to be living for that entire year is that Mars line–but you’ve just gone for the sake of having a different Solar Return, you run into some issues. And it’s just interesting how this has come up as a conceptual issue over the course of the past few decades through the use of relocational astrology as a concept, whereas prior to that time I think traditionally they just used the natal location for most of the traditions. So this is kind of a new thing that astrologers are sometimes debating or struggling with.

MS: Right. Yeah, just my own little research into Solar Returns, I really liked essentially the relocated Solar Return. So if I’m born in New Jersey like I am but I live in Georgia like I did for a long time, I’ve really found the ones in Georgia spoke to my experience a lot but I know that you can do it natally too. But maybe the way that I evolved to do it and the way I evolved to read the chart worked for the relocated type of Solar Return chart. And someone using a different technique, maybe something more traditional with the natal, maybe that works better for them. But yeah, I like looking at those too.

CB: Sure. Well I think that pretty much brings us to the end of this discussion then. We’ve covered a lot of ground here today. I’m actually surprised at how much we got through. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else we meant to touch upon before we wrap up. I did want to mention a few months ago Ronnie Gale Dreyer and Kenneth Irving sent me a book that they republished of one of Jim Lewis’ books, and it’s titled The Psychology of Astro*Carto*Graphy. 

So The Psychology of Astro*Carto*Graphy by Jim Lewis with Kenneth Irving–this is a book that seems to be a relatively comprehensive outline of large parts of Jim Lewis’ approach. And then it has an interesting appendix at the end or an afterword by Kenneth Irving that talks about Jim Lewis and his life and his work. So people who want more information about him and his approach, this would probably be a good starting point it seems, right?

MS: Yeah. Martin Davis has a book–I think it is called Astrolocality–and it gives a good survey of a lot of the different techniques that you can use. He’s done some neat work with local space lines and local space lines crossing astrocartography lines. And at one point, he called those destiny points or something like that. Then I think he decided he didn’t like that name for it anymore but he’s got some cool stuff like that.

If you really want to study it, I have a course on my website. I’m probably going to do another class in locational astrology over the next year or so if I don’t get to it, but I think I will. But anyway, it’s a real comprehensive, 12-week course that was recorded on GoToMeeting and it had 40 pages of handouts and stuff. And that’s for sell on my website. I think it’s about 250. But if people really want to study it that’s the only thing I can totally recommend because it’s the only thing I totally stand by.

CB: Sure. And your website is astrologyforthesoul.com?

MS: Yeah, astrologyforthesoul.com which I’m in the process of redoing right now. I’m excited to get some different stuff going on there. People can find me on Facebook as well. I’ve got a new page there called Astrology: The Cosmic Mirror with Moses Siregar. I’m posting almost everyday on that. I’m going to start doing some vlogging and just video content. And then my YouTube channel is also named that, which I haven’t uploaded the video for yet but I’ve got it started. And one of my goals over the next couple of months is to start putting some videos up there as well. And then I have a newsletter that people can sign up for as well and they can just get in touch with me and talk.

And I’ve just started flirting with this idea if someone wants to do a little intro consultation where I would just tell them what I think about the place where they currently live maybe in 10 minutes or so and then they could decide what they think about it from there. I’ll for now extend that to anyone listening to the podcast that I’m willing to try that with some people too. If it doesn’t work out then I reserve the right to say I’m not doing those anymore. Anyway, that’s something else I’ll throw out there.

So yeah this is what I love to do. I love that sense of, wow, today I helped someone go from a place that maybe is absolutely not going to support them to a place that will totally support them. And sometimes I hear from clients some really great things about how happy they are compared to where they lived before and that feels really great. So that’s why I’m passionate about doing this because I feel like maybe I can really help some people completely get a whole new intention for their life and find the place that supports it. So this is still the thing in astrology–of all the things I’ve done over the years–this is the thing I still am really passionate to do because I believe it can make a big difference like that, so I’m happy to help people with that.

CB: Excellent. All right, well I definitely recommend people check out your website since that has links to most of your stuff at astrologyforthesoul.com and to do a Google search for Astrology: The Cosmic Mirror because then your YouTube channel–which you’ll have videos on soon–and your Facebook page will come up. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what you do on YouTube in the near future.

MS: Oh, thanks.

CB: Cool. All right, well, thanks a lot for joining me today.

MS: Oh man, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

CB: All right. And thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

MS: Bye, bye.