The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 138, titled:
The Astrology of 2018: Overview of the Major Transits
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on December 29, 2017
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released February 13th, 2025
Copyright © 2025 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode was recorded on Tuesday, December 26, 2017, starting just after 3:00 PM. Actually at 3:08 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 138th 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 gonna be talking with Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock about the forecast for the year of 2018, and we’re gonna be looking at some of the major planetary alignments that will occur over the course of the next 12 months. So, Austin and Kelly, welcome back to the show once again.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Well, thank you. Nice to be back.
KELLY SURTEES: Thanks, Chris.
CB: All right. I can’t believe it’s been a year since we did our last forecast episode. 2017 has blown by, and now it is time to do another 12 months. So you guys have both been busy. Cuz you guys both write columns, and you have all sorts of things that you’ve done already looking at the forecast for next year, right?
AC: Oh, yeah.
KS: Yes, yes.
CB: Kelly, you wrote a whole magazine back in June or something, right?
KS: Yeah, I write annual horoscopes for an Australian magazine. I meant to bring a copy down. Anyway, and yeah, we do it early. So I’ll actually be starting 2019 very early in 2018. So yeah, I’ve got lots. But I’ve been working with clients over the last month. I’ve had a couple of clients that wanted these broad overviews of 2018, so it’s been nice to dive back into it. It’s good prep.
CB: Brilliant. And, Austin, you’ve been doing an almanac for years, where you basically do the same thing, right?
AC: Well, I used to do it in a book form. You know, I moved it online about two years ago. And so, I provide more than I provided in the written form, but it comes out throughout the year. But yeah, I deal with every day. I do months. I do essays on things like Saturn in Capricorn. And I switched from doing a weekly column to a ‘decanly’ column. So an every 10-day column with horoscopes. And I’ve spent the first-half of this month pretty much just thinking about Saturn in Capricorn all day, everyday. And then since it’s been 2018 all day, everyday. So yeah, I’ve got some thoughts.
CB: Yes, I think that’s most astrologers over the past few weeks—intensely focused on the ingress of Saturn into Capricorn. And now here we are at the end of the year, so we actually have to look at what the other planets are doing. So this is actually the first year—aside from doing the forecast episodes—where I’ve actually had to do the same process you guys did, because I am going to be releasing in the next week—right about the time that we release this podcast episode this Friday—two astrology calendars; where I’m actually branching and going to be trying to publish a couple of calendars. One of them is a large version of the one you see behind me, which is a 2018 calendar that shows the zodiac and shows the movement of all the planets and their retrograde cycles during the course of the year at a glance. And that’s something I made with Paula Belluomini from Brazil, and we’re releasing it on Friday. And then also recently, I partnered with Kirk Kahn—who does the Planet Watcher Calendar—and we’ve partnered up this year in order to do that together. And I just got done putting together all of the planetary alignments for that for 2018 and actually looking at every single ingress and lunation and everything else, which I had never done before, and it was quite a thing. So this is a preview that’s from 2017. And doing that process, and going through and looking at every single alignment, I actually have a lot more respect for what you guys go through every year when you do the—which is this very painstaking process of looking at every possible alignment over the course of the next 12 months on a daily basis, right? Do you guys always go through day-by-day? Or how do you approach it? Kelly, do you go through every single day?
KS: Yeah, I take a top-down approach. So I tend to start with what are the bigger aspects. What are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto doing? And then how is Mars triggering into that? What is the Sun doing? Where are the eclipses? You know, what’s changing signs, when? So I don’t know, as you were saying that, Chris, I was like, “Maybe that sounds Saturn in Virgo, like Austin and I,” because it’s a very methodical process to gather all the data. And then once you’ve gathered all the data, you kinda have to sit with it. So before I start writing year-ahead horoscopes, I want to just reflect on, okay, this is happening, what is that gonna feel like? What is that gonna look like? How might that show up, not just collectively? Cuz when you’re writing horoscopes, you’re really writing for the individual. So what will this look like in a person’s life? The prep for writing horoscopes, for instance, I call it ‘playing your scales’. If you’re a musician, you have to do these more rote things to keep you in the flow. To keep that intuition and that interpretive energy high, you’ve got to be doing this day-to-day groundwork. I don’t know if you think about it similarly, Austin, or different, but it is that labor, which I love, that prepares for the future.
AC: Yeah, my process is really similar, sometimes it ends up different, but generally I start with the big stuff. I think I ended up—just so I don’t miss key moments—I think I ended up going through and looking at every day of the year using Planet Watcher, the visual ephemeris. I think I did that twice, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Like Kelly said, oh, it’s Saturn in Capricorn, that’s a big deal. But what configurations? Is there something in June that activates that, that I maybe wouldn’t have thought of just knowing that a planet’s in a sign? I guess the only thing I would add—and you’ve probably had a similar experience, Kelly—there’s the data-harvesting, and then I just have to sit with it. It’s almost like here are a thousand seeds. This is a cherry tree seed, and I think I know what cherry trees are like, but I can’t imagine what the entirety of the garden looks like immediately, I have to just kind of plant them all. And then after a week or so of pain, it grows in my head and I can see it. I’m like, “Oh, okay, that’s how it all looks together,” and that takes a while. That’s the ‘headache’ part for me.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
KS: That’s the ‘marinating’ part. And you can’t rush that process, basically.
CB: Yeah, and then it’s interesting also—doing these with you guys each year—seeing how those transits actually play out and grow, and how some of those seeds of those planetary transits actually turn into events. Sometimes worldwide events or other times much more personal events during the course of a year, especially when it’s something that you saw coming a year or a year-and-a-half ahead of time, or sometimes two years ahead of time.
AC: Mm-hmm. And I think when you spend that much time looking at things early, ahead of time, even if it’s something that looks particularly horrific, you’re like, “Let’s get over it. Come on, what’s it gonna be? What’s it actually gonna be? Come on, let’s just do this.” I don’t want to just be like, “Okay, next month.” I think I was really excited for the eclipse to actually happen, you know, the Great American Eclipse to actually happen. I was like, all right, we’ve all said way too many things about it. Let’s just see how it goes.
CB: Yeah, cuz everybody started freaking out about it once it started getting close. But it’s like astrologers have been paying attention to that for like a year or two ahead of time. We knew that was coming up. Yeah, so in terms of calendars, somebody in the chatroom here, that’s attending the live episode, said: “When will they be available, and where?” So I’m just gonna share my screen really quickly. Because I already have the promo page up, and you can find out more information about the posters at theastrologypodcast.com/2018poster. And there I’m selling the 2018 Planetary Movements and Retrogrades Poster, which is the round calendar, and I’m also gonna be selling the Planet Watcher Calendar, which we just finished. We’re trying to finalize the design right now. I don’t know if I’ve shared this. Can you see the Planet Watcher Calendar here? Or is it still showing the other one?
AC: I can see the Planetary Movements Calendar.
CB: Okay, try this. So this is not the final version, but this is pretty close to what the final version of the Planet Watcher Calendar will look like. More or less, we’re almost there. So literally just finished this last night. There were like a hundred entries in each of those, but it was fun to do, and it gave me a new perspective on, yeah, just that process; that process you guys have been going through for years now. So yeah, theastrologypodcast.com/2018poster. I’m gonna start shipping them this weekend. This is kind of an experiment cuz I’ve never done posters before, but I’m excited about it because they came out super-well. There’s the little one. It’s about that size.
AC: Chris, can you hold that back up again for just a second? I just wanted to say—
KS: Hold it up again, cuz it’s gorgeous.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
AC: What I wanted to say is the way that you’ve done the retrograde movements, the ground that those planets will cover over the year, that’s something I’ve been sketching on the outside of natal charts for like five, six, seven, eight years. I don’t even remember when I started doing it.
CB: Right.
KS: This is my 2018 prep. This is the page I do to prep for horoscopes. And it’s not as beautiful as yours, Chris, but it’s the same concept. You need to see it visually.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah.
CB: And that’s what I was going for there. Cuz then you can kinda visualize your own chart and what your rising sign is and then what planets are gonna go retrograde in what houses and over sensitive points and so on and so forth. So this year we’re gonna package the Planet Watcher and that calendar together, which is exciting. Initially, I’m gonna do all the direct sales myself and shipping myself, which I can only do in the US. So initially, for the first few weeks, it’s only available in the US, but then I’m gonna expand it later to Canada and Mexico and then eventually worldwide over the course of the next few weeks. So just pay attention to that page on theastrologypodcast.com or email me for more information, and yeah, you should have a poster soon. All right, so other news and announcements before we get into the full forecast for this year. So we’ve got a few giveaway prizes this month to patrons of The Astrology Podcast, since every month we do giveaway prizes to people who support the show, especially on the $5 and $10 tiers. There’s three primary things I’m giving away. The three things are books, actually. One of the books is The Greatness of Saturn, which ties in with an episode we did earlier this month, where I talked about Sade Sati on an earlier episode. Austin, have you read this one?
AC: The Greatness of Saturn. No, I’m aware of it. I know the outline of the story, but I haven’t sat down to read it yet.
CB: Yeah, a really good book from an Indian astrological perspective, but about Saturn transits and this theme that we talked about of finding compassion or developing compassion through suffering or through challenging yourself. It’s a really good book. So that’s a good one for a lot of those people that are beginning important Saturn transits now, with Saturn going into Capricorn. Another book I’m gonna give away this month is The Gods of Change by Howard Sasportas, which has recently been reprinted sometime in the past few years by Wessex Astrologer. It’s like a classic book on the outer planets, which I thought would be good for some of those people who are having some heavy outer planet transits and changes over the course of this year with Uranus changing signs, for example. I don’t know, Kelly, have you read that one, The Gods of Change?
KS: I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to understand outer planet transits. It was out of print for a while and now it’s back in print. So that’s a great one to give away, as is this one, which I’m reading. It’s an ode to Saturn.
CB: Oh, you already have it, okay.
KS: Based on him coming into Capricorn.
CB: Awesome. Good, you have both of the books I’m giving away. And then the third book I’m giving away is a copy of my new book that came out earlier this year, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, which I’ve talked all about on previous podcast episodes, so I don’t need to go into it here. But those are our three giveaway books this month, and then finally the other giveaway is actually a piece of software. There’s a new astrology software program out called Bindu Astrology Software, and this software specializes in Jyotish or in Indian astrology—or Vedic astrology, depending on what you want to call it—but it also integrates some Western and Medieval components. So apparently this is a partnership with Cosmic Patterns which makes Sirius and Kepler software, and they’ve decided to develop this new program, and it’s actually pretty cool. So you can find out more information about that at binduastrology.com. And we’re gonna be giving away two free copies of that to patrons of The Astrology Podcast. I know, Austin, you’ve been getting much more into Vedic astrology recently, right?
AC: Yeah, I actually have on my to-do list to buy good Jyotish software by the end of the fiscal year so I can write it off.
CB: Right. Yeah, good time of the year to be doing that. Well, I’ll definitely send you a link to this.
AC: Please do.
CB: I guess it’s just binduastrology.com, and you can check it out. Other news and announcements, so the big one this year of course is the United Astrology Conference is happening in Chicago in May, right at the end of May 2018. All three of us are giving talks there and are gonna be at that conference. I’m actually doing a post-conference workshop on Hellenistic timing techniques. And we’re also gonna do a meetup for members or for listeners of the podcast at some point during the course of the conference as well, with details to be announced soon. So it’s a really big deal. I’d recommend everybody attend this conference because it’s basically the astrology conference of the decade. And I did want to let people know that there’s a bunch of scholarships that are gonna be available here in the next few weeks for people that need some financial help going to UAC. There’s the ability to potentially get a scholarship in order to pay part of your tuition for attending the conference. So UAC itself is giving out 12 scholarships, and you can get more information about that at uacastrology.com/registration/scholarship. The deadline to apply is February 1, and the winners are gonna be announced by March 1. The other sponsoring organizations, the astrology organizations that are putting on UAC, are also each gonna be offering their own scholarships. So I’d recommend signing up for a membership with one of these astrology groups, or multiple astrology groups, and then applying for a scholarship. Because one thing people don’t know is usually not very many people at all apply for scholarships, and it usually just ends up going to whoever applied at that point. So people often think there must be tons of people applying and there’s no need to, when in reality it’s the exact opposite. So anybody that wants a scholarship, where that would help you get to the conference, I would seriously consider applying through one of those avenues, and you’ll have a pretty good shot of getting it. All right, any other news and announcements before we move on? Do you guys have anything you want to say about stuff you have coming up over the next year?
KS: I’ll have online classes ongoing throughout 2018, details of which will be on my website. And at the very end of 2018, I’ll be releasing my 2019 Moon Calendar, which I’m doing for the first time in a wall calendar hang format. So month by month with a beautiful image, info about the New and Full Moon, and some ‘astro’ data for the month. So that will come out at the end of 2018, so stay tuned for that. What about you, Austin?
AC: Oh, I’m also gonna be teaching. I’m gonna be doing fundamentals classes and intermediate classes. And then, I don’t know, I’ve been teaching a lot of the same deep, ‘nuts-and-bolts’ stuff for several years—and I’m still doing that this year—but I’m gonna do a bunch of more fun, experimental stuff I haven’t taught before. I’m gonna do several astrological magic courses. I think I’m gonna do more one-off webinars on specific topics. I kinda want to get more experimental. And my 2018 teaching calendar will be up on my website hopefully very soon. I still have to make some decisions about where things go and if I’m gonna do that or not, if that makes sense.
CB: All right, sounds good.
AC: We’ll all be at UAC. We’ll all be speaking at UAC.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yes, I’m really excited to see you guys there. We usually go to smaller conferences, and we meet a ton of podcast listeners at those. So I have no idea what UAC is gonna be like. I think it’s gonna be a little insane.
AC: Well, that’s kind of the point of UAC. I mean, for people who don’t know, it’s not just another conference. It’s like thousands of astrologers from around the world crammed into one hotel for a week. It’s irreplaceable.
CB: Yeah. And somebody was asking on Twitter the other day, they were like, “I’m 80% committed to going to UAC. What’s the last thing to push me over for the other 20%?” And one of the things I said—I don’t know, it’s a little dark—is this is probably gonna be the last UAC where you have the opportunity to meet some older astrologers who have had a major impact on the field over the past 30 or 40 years, and to actually meet them in person or attend one of their lectures or thank them for their work or shake their hand or something like that in person, all in one place. We’re talking about hundreds of these very influential, famous astrologers at this conference, from all over the world. And some of them are not necessarily gonna be around by the time of the next UAC, whenever that is. So the last one was in 2012, and this one’s taking place in 2018. So that’s six years ago at this point. Yeah, so, to me, that’s a good reason, I think. This is not only the largest conference of the decade, but for some of these very prominent astrologers, it’s gonna be the last chance you could get to meet them.
AC: Yeah, that’s a grim but fair note. I mean, and it’s not everybody’s gonna be gone. But, you know, if it’s four to six years, somebody will be missing. Somebody you’ll be sad you’ve missed.
CB: Yeah. The only thing that made me think about that was just that they were gathering names. They do a thing sometimes, a memorial of astrologers we’ve lost since the last UAC. And I was surprised, when I saw some of the names on that list, how many there were since last time.
KS: Absolutely. I was just gonna say, if they’re not gone, they may not be in a position to travel. After I went to my first UAC, which was in 2008, I came back, and what I used to say to people was beg, borrow, or steal. If you’re into astrology, you have to get to a UAC conference at some point. It’s indescribable. It’s hard to put into words the feeling of being in the same building with a thousand others, or even more when you add the speakers and everything in—a thousand other astrologers. You know, what we do is kinda weird, and it’s not something that you can go to a mainstream university for. And the feeling I had was like, “Oh, my God, this is my tribe. These are people who are into the same things I do, and there’s a lot of them.” And that gave me a huge boost in confidence. So if you’re committed to astrology, if astrology’s something you’re genuinely passionate about—whether you want to make it your full-time work, or it’s a passionate hobby that you have—the ‘UAC’ experience is a once-in-a-lifetime for many people, but it is worth it. Hopefully we’re all convincing you. If you’re on the fence, come on over with your ticket and see us and many, many other very well-known, successful astrologers there.
AC: Yeah, it’s amazing. I don’t even like people, and I thought it was great.
CB: Right, yeah. All right, I think if anybody was not convinced, now they’re convinced. And if they need any more convincing, they’re probably beyond hope. So people can find out more information about that conference at uacastrology.com. We keep using the acronym, but it’s called the United Astrology Conference 2018. So yeah, hope to see you there. So why don’t we move onto the focus of this episode, which is the forecast for 2018. So, Austin, we were talking a little bit before, and you were talking about maybe doing an overview or a preview of some of the main themes at first and then breaking it down into quarters, into the four quarters of the year. Does that sound like a good approach?
AC: Yeah, I think the chances of getting lost in one detail or another are way too high if we don’t have a guiding structure like that. And this year also is particularly easy to break down into quarters. It sorta breaks itself down with some of the configurations.
CB: Right.
AC: So can we start with Saturn in Capricorn?
CB: That is the ‘elephant in the room’. Saturn has recently left after—
AC: Or the ‘pair of gray golf shirts in the room’.
CB: Right.
KS: I thought that was hilarious.
AC: For those who are just listening, Chris and I both independently decided to wear gray golf shirts. Note, this is, I think, the second time I’ve worn a golf shirt in 20 years.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Saturn commands, we obey.
CB: Right. And it’s the only thing that I wear because of the lighting—it’s the only thing that works with the lighting in here—but I appreciate the symbolism there. So Saturn in Capricorn—we’ve just finished a three-year transit of Saturn through Sagittarius. We’ve been talking about that one pretty much ever since we’ve been doing the forecast episodes, so it feels weird to finally now be moving onto a new, three-year-long transit. And this is gonna last for a full three years, right? It ingressed just a few days ago, in December of 2017. And it’s gonna stay there until, what, December of 2020?
AC: Yeah, it’s in and out during 2020.
KS: It’s in and out.
AC: But the final ingress, or the final egress from Capricorn and into Aquarius isn’t until December of 2020. So that’s a whole lot of Saturn in Capricorn. And I’m glad that you’re bringing it up in a three-year context because, one, Saturn likes long-term thinking. You know, for those of you who weren’t paying as much attention to astrology in, say, the beginning of 2015, if you look at the ‘Saturn in Sagittarius’ themes—which began in 2015—and how in some ways completely literally and logically they played out over ‘15, ‘16, ‘17, you have a chance now to get to know Saturn in Capricorn and set reasonable and useful expectations for what three years are gonna be about. You know, getting to know a slower-moving planet sooner rather than later allows you to adapt to it and to structure your actions and set your expectations, so that you’re working with that and you’re not surprised.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, that was a good point. You pointed out how literal many of the ‘Saturn in Sagittarius’ manifestations were, which was just wild for all of us to see over the course of the past two or three years, oftentimes in a not-very-good way, and that’s one of the things that really now has heightened my interest in this transit. Theoretically, with Saturn going through Capricorn—which is the sign that it rules, and the primary sign that it’s associated with in pretty much all traditions of astrology—we would expect to see a much more pure and literal manifestation of Saturn over the course of the next two to three years.
AC: Yeah, I’m already seeing it and feeling it. Let me start by saying something nice about Saturn in Capricorn.
CB: Okay.
AC: So one of the things I just saw over this last week with a bunch of people is this ‘credit where credit is due’ phenomenon. People who’ve been laboring long and hard and maybe in part ‘unthanked’ for years—I’ve seen numerous people just getting the accolades that they probably earned five years ago but that’s getting delivered. You know, one of the ways that you talk about Saturn, Chris, that I really like is how Saturn can confirm, right? You know, Saturn gives you the nod, the big stamp of approval for what you’ve already been doing, right? And so, it’s not getting something for free, it sure is nice to get your back-pay for work you’ve already done. Whether that’s being paid in love and admiration or money or whatever, there’s that sort of confirmation like, “Yep, you done good, kid.”And I’ve just been seeing that, and that was nice to see, right? It’s not all cold, still in prison. It’s that, too, but it is like, “No, no, you’ve earned it. You have earned it. Confirmed.”
CB: Right. If you have earned it, then it is confirmed or delivered at that time.
AC: Mm-hmm. And, you know, you may not realize how much you’ve earned. You know, sometimes we just get into the groove of, no, this is what I do, and I’m not doing it for praise or the big paycheck or whatever. It seems you forget that maybe that’s more impressive than you realize. I’ve seen that happen with three or four people within two days of the ingress. I was like, “Oh, that’s nice.” It’s so Saturnian. You know, I thought the Sun’s solstice conjunction with Saturn only a few days after the ingress made some qualities of the ingress of Saturn in Capricorn a little bit more clearer, a little bit more quicker than they might have otherwise been.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And here, I’m throwing that up on the screen—for those watching the video version of this—that Sun-Saturn conjunction that happened pretty much right after the Saturn ingress, when we had the winter solstice, basically, in the Northern Hemisphere. And, Kelly, what are some of the main themes that you are really focused on in terms of Saturn in Capricorn?
KS: Yeah, look, I love the thread that you guys are talking about there, that idea of confirmation. Because I do think with Saturn—I always describe Saturn as the ‘rewards or consequences’, that you get acknowledgment for what’s been done. Saturn rewards diligence. He rewards consistency. He rewards thoroughness. And I think one of the lovely things that you’ve identified there, Austin, is the idea that the essence of Saturn is about getting on with what needs to be done, and it’s that quiet ‘getting on with it’ that is often overlooked. And it’s lovely to see those examples as you were saying, Austin, where that quiet ‘getting on with it’ is now getting the acknowledgment it deserves. Because I do think with Saturn in Capricorn particularly there’s a solidness to this. It’s sort of this double-earth. Or, you know, if you look at the temperamental qualities, it’s a ‘double-cold, double-dry’ combination, because the planet’s qualities are congruent with or the same as the sign’s qualities. So we’re getting this real sense of that plodding energy and how that creates the foundation and the idea of slowing down and internally confirming what we can be responsible for, how we want to respond to what’s going on around us. The internal confirmation, I think, is perhaps just as important as that external acknowledgment. But you do always see—I noticed this with Saturn transits for clients—that whatever wisdom or authority or experience you have collected, perhaps without being aware of it, when you have a significant Saturn transit, it comes to you that others recognize that wisdom and that strength and that authority within you. So there’s no false prophets here with Saturn in Capricorn, but people that are solid and substantial start to get the acknowledgment and the recognition that they deserve.
CB: Definitely.
KS: Yeah. I don’t know, do you guys have more? There’s so much to say about this.
CB: In some instances, the opposite. I mean, some of this started happening of course after Jupiter went into Scorpio and some of these scandals started. There was this huge disclosure of a lot of these scandals. But now it seems part of Saturn in Capricorn is this ‘retribution’ phase we’re seeing with some of the people, especially with heavy Capricorn placements. I’ve seen some of the people who were accused—like Kevin Spacey, for example, who has Saturn in early Capricorn, and there was this huge movie that was just released this month that he was literally replaced from. He was like the star of the movie, and they replaced him over the course of the month and re-shot all of his scenes with a different actor; again, using that keyword of ‘retribution’ or, yeah, the effects of something that he had done earlier in his life.
AC: Yeah, and I’m really glad you brought up that side of it. I think these two different outcomes are very much the result of the same process, and that’s being judged. You know, you can be judged and people can be like, “Hmm.” If you’re at the country fair, and you’ve entered your pig, they’ll judge your pig, and they might judge that to be the finest pig in the land, or they might judge you to be a negligent owner and your pig unfit for human eyes, but it’s that result of judgment. You know, evaluation and then confirm or deny.
CB: Right. But also penalty and this idea of ‘penalty and rewards’ seems like this theme that we’re already coming back to a few times here.
AC: Yeah, yeah.
KS: The idea of ‘consequences’. I think we’ve said before with Saturn there’s no free lunches. You get what you’ve earned. And if what you’ve earned is a punishment—because your actions don’t stand up to the judgment—then the ‘chickens come home to roost’ at this point. And I do think that’s interesting. You know, one thing I always think about with Saturn transits, we have different flavors or different iterations of Saturn in the three-year period based on the sign Jupiter’s in for that timeframe. And this first Saturn in Capricorn cycle, we’ve got Jupiter in Scorpio, so it is just bringing up that.
CB: Right, definitely. You know, in order to keep this moving in terms of giving a brief overview of some of the major themes, Jupiter in Scorpio is the other major one that we’re gonna be dealing with most of the year, right?
AC: Yeah, I would like to say one more thing about Saturn in Capricorn as it relates to this year. This is following up on what Kelly was saying about it being double-cold and dry. Saturn in Capricorn is this earthy anchor that’s just gonna be pulling things back down to Earth all year-round. You know, there’s a strong gravitational field. And that’ll be really good for some people, that’ll be bad for other people. It’s going to be virtually impossible to get into those sort of light, fiery, excitement, outrage storms that we had during Saturn in Sagittarius; there was something inherently ungrounded about that. But Saturn in Capricorn is always gonna wanna bring things down to facts, and that’s different than what we’ve had and it’s an important weight. You know, it’s like putting an extra 200 pounds on the ‘ship of the year’.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah, definitely. Are there other overview-type things that we should touch on? I mean, I know in your outline it was like ‘Saturn in Capricorn, Jupiter in Scorpio’. Uranus, of course, is a huge, huge player this year when it shifts signs and makes its first ingress into Taurus, about halfway through the year, right?
AC: Yeah, a third of the way.
KS: May.
CB: May, okay.
KS: Do we want to touch on that now or in the quarter?
AC: I’d prefer to do it in the quarter, but I’m flexible.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yep, that’s fine.
CB: In that case, let me run through them really quickly. So Uranus in and out of Taurus, going back and forth between Taurus and Aries for much of the year. We have a continuation of the Aquarius/Leo eclipses. And this is an issue I ran into with the Planet Watcher Calendar when we start getting close to that shifting into the Cancer/Capricorn axis—the next set of signs—and we get our first eclipse in Cancer. It’s like 15° off the nodes, but it’s just barely within that range. I don’t know if you guys consider that an eclipse, or if you think it’s too far off. What do you think, Austin?
AC: It’s the shadow of an eclipse’s shadow. I think there will be some hints. There’s gonna be a little bit of teaser trailer for the next cycle of eclipses, which are Cancer/Capricorn. But considering that every so slight—I don’t even think it’ll be visible to the naked eye—Cancer eclipse will be followed by the most dramatic eclipse of the year, which will be seen by billions, for me, is my single configuration highlight for the year. Instead of a solar eclipse, like we had in 2017, we’re gonna have a big old lunar. And so, I think that’s gonna rather overshadow the ‘shadow of a shadow’ of the little, tiny, pseudo-Cancer eclipse. Which doesn’t mean it’s not real. I think in terms of what people will notice and what will move events and news, I think we’re solidly in the Leo/Aquarius.
CB: Definitely. Yeah, and a continuation of some of that.
KS: Agreed.
CB: And really that was one of the few things that I wanted to mention in retrospect about 2017. So much of the focus of most astrologers was that eclipse—the solar eclipse that occurred in Leo last summer and the fact that it went across the entire United States, and then occurred right on the ascendant, or somewhere very close to the ascendant of Donald Trump—a lot of people, a lot of astrologers were very much focused on that relating directly to him and some sort of event or something perhaps taking place either that was personally relevant to him or the country as a whole. But it seemed like a lot of what that ended up being was just much more simply almost like a marker that he was the president at that time or would be president at that time, and that so much of the focus would be on him and his personality and the effect that was having on the country as a whole. Whether for better or worse, or whether you like him or hate him, just the fact that so much attention was on him as a person, and he became the leader of the country last year seemed to be a large part of what that was about.
AC: That’s a part of it. We haven’t given that eclipse its official six months to show us what it is or isn’t gonna do.
CB: Yeah, it’s definitely not over yet.
AC: You know, there are a lot of thematic things you can say about Trump and the eclipse, but when you look at that cycle—that North Node in Leo, South Node in Aquarius eclipse cycle—very literal things happen to presidents where you don’t have to dig for the details, like Bill Clinton getting impeached or Reagan getting shot. They’re usually not subtle. And so, it will be a strong deviation from the historical pattern if we don’t have a much more literal event for Donald Trump. Deviations from patterns happen, right? You know, because he was literally born during a lunar eclipse that might give him some sort of weird immunity to that rule, but I’m a little wait-and-see about it. I think for me, looking at the eclipse and what did the eclipse signify, the literal destruction of huge parts of the United States by fire and water within the next two weeks was rather shockingly literal. The Northwest caught on fire and hurricanes battered areas of the Gulf Coast. You know, it was very literal as far as, oh, yes, this is a bad omen for this country, destruction, right? I don’t think that can be ignored. That was, again, a little bit more literal than I was looking for. And I know people are excited about the fall of many people from positions of power. They’re excited about attributing that to Jupiter in Scorpio. But that is literally a classic signification of a total solar eclipse that you see over a country. You know, it signifies the ‘eclipsing’ of those who were at high and bright places. Chris, you had some quote that you read. I think it was you. It was something Hellenistic, I’m sure. But it was that the common people need not fear the eclipse so much as those who are in positions of power, or those who are magistrates and this and that. And, you know, there are certainly a slew of people in very powerful and influential positions who got nuked not long after the eclipse. So I think between that and the weather, the natural disasters stuff, those are gimmes cuz those are classic significations. And Trump, wait and see.
CB: Sure. And did you have anything to say about that, Kelly? I was gonna mention a few things.
KS: Oh, just briefly concurring with Austin around the idea of the Sun being eclipsed in Leo, leaders having a downfall. So I think, Austin, you make a really good point that it’s not just Jupiter in Scorpio necessarily, or maybe that’s incorrectly getting a lot of the credit when we’re still in that six-month period after this very dramatic Leo eclipse. Leaders of all kind—leaders of industry, leaders in business—it doesn’t just have to be the leader of the country, I guess. So yeah, that was a really good point. Culture, exactly. Hollywood certainly is.
AC: The Sun and entertainers, I think, is a real thing.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Sure.
KS: What were you gonna add, Chris?
CB: Of course you made a good point, Austin, with some of the shifts recently—Saturn moving into Capricorn. But also, I had a long-standing thing I’ve been waiting more than a year now to find out what that was gonna be, which is that prior to the 2016 election, I didn’t understand why Trump had a career transition. It starts on December 28, and it lasts for about 17 months—using the zodiacal releasing time-lord technique—and I didn’t understand why he’d be having a career transition a year after the election. So that’s a long-standing thing that I’ve been looking forward to seeing what that’s about. You know, I have some speculations of what it could be. But at this point, since we’re there, I guess we’ll have a front row seat basically over the course of the next 16 months, starting here pretty soon. So we’ll see what happens. And I’m sure that’s still very much tied into the eclipse and some of the events that were taking place around the eclipse, and whether or not we know about them or know what they set in motion already now.
AC: Yeah, that’s the hindsight thing with astrology, where you look back and you’re like, “Well, of course that was the seed point for this incredibly important event.” But when you just see a little seed going into the ground, a lot of times it’s very hard to imagine that it will grow into the tree. When you’ve given that seed time to germinate and you look back on it, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, well, it got planted in July. That’s obvious now.” But it’s one of those things.
CB: Definitely. All right, so we’ll have a continuation of some of those stories that started with the previous Aquarius/Leo eclipses, as those eclipses continue over the course of the next year. We’ve also got an interesting thing that someone pointed out—a few astrologers have noted—which is that all of the Mercury retrogrades this year take place in fire signs, right?
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: That’s pretty interesting and unique.
AC: It’s not that unique. It’s part of the Mercury cycle that repeats, but it’s absolutely worth noting.
CB: Sure.
AC: You know, almost all of them—two-out-of-three in 2017—began in earth and then ended in fire, and the cycle’s kind of moved back a little bit. So the first two this year—the first one’s in Aries, the entire thing is in Aries. The second one’s entirely in Leo. And then the third one begins in Sag, but it gets into late Scorpio for its direct station, but they’re 90% in fire. And that’s interesting to me in particular. And, Kelly, I know you’re into humors and qualities. So we’ve got that fiery element. 2017 was overwhelmingly fiery. And so, we have that fiery element in 2018 with all of the Mercury retrogrades, but we have that strong, earthy anchor with Saturn in Capricorn. You have any thoughts on the elemental mix this year?
KS: Yeah, look, I do, because it is very different. I don’t know that I would say as an absolute form that 2018 is ‘earthy’, but if we compare it relative to 2017, it is earthier or more earthy. And I do think it’s the Mercury retrogrades in fire that carry the ‘fire’ thread through. But from those larger planets—of course Saturn in Capricorn, even Jupiter now being in a water sign—it’s bringing it into the ‘cool’ side of the temperamental qualities. And then I think it’s really interesting that we will have Uranus in Taurus for about half the year, from May to November, which is a ‘cooler’ version of Uranus as well. I know the modern planets don’t have the traditional designations, per se, but from chatting with people like Lee Lehman and even just reflecting, Uranus definitely has more of that ‘heating’ quality to him just based on what happens with his transits, for instance. So having Uranus being in a fire sign for the better part of the last eight years, we’ve had a very volatile version of Uranus. And I don’t want that to be misconstrued as saying we will not see volatility, cuz I think we absolutely will, and we’re gonna see it around the ‘Taurus’ realms: the material world, money, food. Lynn Bell—in the WellBeing Astrology Guide—wrote a really interesting article which touched on Uranus in Taurus, and she looked at actually the liberation of women as a thread that comes up around Uranus in Taurus, which I thought was really interesting with the rulership of Venus. And so, I do think—from an elemental or a temperamental piece—we are shifting into a ‘cooler’ period that does have a slower pacing, and that comes from that ‘cool/dry/earth’ focus, which is one of the things I’m really interested about to see unfold for 2018.
AC: Definitely. So I want to jump on the Uranus in Taurus. I don’t want to go into a big delineation of it.
CB: Yeah, maybe we should—
AC: This is an overview piece.
KS: Should we hold that?
AC: And so, I was straining to understand this year, and I thought that I would understand it better if I looked at it relative to not just the years which have come before—but like the next 10 years and how does this fit into the story of where things are going—and it reminded me of something very interesting. So 2018 is the first year that we will have Uranus in Taurus, Neptune in Pisces, and Pluto in Capricorn. So what’s interesting about that is that that’s what we’re gonna do until 2025 when all three change signs. And so, that’s gonna be the steady background until the middle of the next decade, and then it’s going to feel like all three of those change overnight from being in three yin signs—you know, water and earth signs—into three yang signs. And so, just as this is the first year of Saturn in Cap—which is like a three-year arc—this is also the first year of a seven-year arc that’s gonna take us to a major transition point.
KS: That’s a really good point, Austin. Chris, I don’t know if at some point we should do a show on these longer trends, cuz there’s so much interesting shifting on this. I know we don’t want to get side-barred with it today. But what Austin just said, and how those cycles relate back to stuff that happened 500 years ago, phenomenal stuff. So maybe we could—I know you want to keep us moving, cuz Austin and I will just keep talking.
CB: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we’re still supposed to theoretically do a ‘Saturn in Capricorn’ episode sometime in January, and maybe we can fold it into that. Or maybe we could just set up for a separate ‘outer planet’ episode once we get that full ‘Saturn in Capricorn’ one out of the way. Cuz the one we did with Saturn in Sag went so well and ended up being such a good preview and such a good setup for what the next few years of Saturn in Sagittarius were like, I really want to make sure we do that again for Saturn in Capricorn.
KS: Perfect. It deserves it.
CB: Yeah, definitely.
KS: That’s a great point, Austin.
AC: Thank you. I was really excited.
KS: What do you want us to talk about next?
CB: So in terms of the other stuff, we’ve also got the Mars retrograde that’s gonna happen this year in Aquarius and Capricorn. It’s gonna go retrograde in Aquarius and then go direct in Capricorn. We’ve also got a Venus retrograde, which starts in Scorpio and then goes back to Libra. And then finally, later in the year, we have Jupiter ingressing into Sagittarius and leaving Scorpio, eventually. Although it spends most of the year in Scorpio. And then finally the only other thing I noticed in terms of overviews this year is that there’s this weird lack of outer planet alignments—at least in terms of exact aspects—when I was putting together the Planet Watcher Calendar yesterday. The only exact aspects that were happening from outer planets were Jupiter trine Neptune three times next year and Jupiter sextile Pluto. Other than that, that was pretty much it. There were some that got very close, but they never go exact. So is that what you guys found as well?
KS: Yeah, that is really interesting. I noticed that, too. Yeah, the biggest aspects are Jupiter trine Neptune and Jupiter sextile Pluto, that’s it. Saturn trine Uranus, within a few minutes, or within maybe a degree in August, but it doesn’t become exact because of the way the stations work. But that’s it. There’s no big, clash, bang Uranus square Pluto brouhaha happening, which I think is interesting. I don’t know, I think there’s enough other stuff going on that’s going to stir the pot. But yeah, we don’t have a ‘banner-level’ aspect, I guess.
AC: No. I would say that the closest we get to that is the Saturn-Pluto co-presence, but they’re not even remotely conjoined by degree.
CB: So it’s like there’s aspects that are building, that we start getting previews of. But it’s not like some of these other years where we’re dealing with Uranus square Pluto off and on all year, or Saturn square Neptune off and on all year in 2016 and stuff like that.
AC: Right.
KS: No. And actually I know when—go.
AC: Oh, I was just gonna say we’ve had more than enough of that over the last seven years.
KS: Yeah, yeah. I know we’ll talk about this when we get to the right quarters, but just to flag it top-level, one of the most interesting aspects of this year that I’ve got my eye on is how the Mars retrograde is gonna tie into squaring Uranus. So Mars is going through early Aquarius three times as part of its retrograde cycle, and that’s gonna put Mars into this sort of ‘aggravating’ square with Uranus at that early part of Taurus. You know, you wouldn’t necessarily pick that aspect in a year where Uranus was square Pluto, but I think failing that, that’s gonna be an interesting aspect to watch from a ‘big picture’ perspective.
AC: So I think we’re ready to jump into quarters and really tear into it.
CB: Yeah, let’s do it. We’ve been beating around the bush a little bit here, so let’s get into the details of the year. So let’s start with quarter one. So the first three months of the year, January through March, what is our focus? What is our main theme in quarter one?
AC: Well, it’s the least dramatic quarter would be the theme. Doesn’t mean there won’t be drama. I mean, the primary thing I’m looking at—and that I think people will notice—in the first quarter is the next installment of eclipses; there being a solar eclipse in Aquarius and a lunar eclipse in Leo. I also think it’s probably worth noting that in relatively early January, Venus makes a superior conjunction to the Sun. That’s the Venus cazimi in Capricorn, and that is the counterpoint to the retrograde—to Venus’ retrograde—which happens in Q4. You know, if you’re gonna pay attention to the retrogrades, you should probably also pay attention to the direct conjunctions or the superior conjunctions. They’re sort of the mellower, more insightful counterparts.
CB: Right. And that’s kind of like the beginning of the Sun-Venus cycle, basically, that conjunction of the Sun and Venus, when Venus is moving direct rather than retrograde.
AC: Yeah. I mean, there are, I think, strong arguments to be made on both sides that it begins on the inferior conjunction—which happens to be retrograde—or it begins on the superior. They’re both very important. It’s almost like arguing about Full Moons and New Moons, but people on both sides of that argument would agree that New Moons and Full Moons are important, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: The superior conjunction of Venus to the Sun is Venus on the far side of the Sun, reaching out into the solar system and into space versus the retrograde conjunction—which we’ll have either late October/early November—where Venus is between—
KS: October.
AC: —the Sun and the Earth. And so, the superior conjunction is that reaching out, and it’s considered to be a point of purification in a lot of ways; but like a nice purification rather than a ‘getting tossed in a fire’ sort of purification.
CB: I love that you picked this one out, cuz this is actually the same day as our auspicious election that we wanted to highlight for this month. So I think I might actually go ahead and introduce that now while we’re on this date. So the electional chart that Leisa picked out for this month, we wanted to focus on a Saturn election. And actually earlier in the year is better, where you can get some day charts with Saturn in Capricorn being in its own sign. So what I have here for our auspicious electional chart for January, it’s set for January 8, 2018 at approximately 7:26 AM, here in Denver, Colorado, since that’s about when sunrise occurs. But basically what you need to do is you just need to set your electional time for whenever sunrise is locally—and the Sun just begins to rise over the ascendant or over the eastern horizon, with Capricorn still rising—and that will basically be the electional chart. So this is the same day as the Sun-Venus cazimi, which Austin mentioned. And part of the purpose of this chart is it has Capricorn rising and Saturn in Capricorn in the first whole sign house. So it’s in the same sign as the rising sign, so it’s still technically in the 1st house according to whole sign houses. And it’s a day chart. The other very important thing is making this a day chart rather than a night chart so that Saturn is of-the-sect-in-favor, as they say in Hellenistic astrology. So the chart also features some other nice things, like the Moon in Libra in the tenth whole sign house applying to a square with Venus with reception, which is positive, a square to a benefic with reception. Since the Moon is in Venus’ sign, it’s relatively positive. This is just after the Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Scorpio, which is actually around the degree of the MC in the eleventh whole sign house. The only part of this chart I didn’t like is that Mercury is kind of hidden away in the 12th house, and we weren’t really able to help him out very much. But he is otherwise not a major part of this election, so I don’t think it’s a huge deal. But this is a very good Saturn election if you’re trying to do something related to Saturn. Or if you’re trying to invoke ‘Saturn-type’ themes or archetypes, this would be a good chart very early in the year, in order to try to harness some of that energy, so to speak. You guys have any advice on ‘Saturn in Capricorn-type’ elections, or things that you would do with a strong ‘Saturn-heavy’ chart like this one?
AC: Begin a diet. Begin a workout regimen. Lay the foundations to something. I would say beginning any sort of discipline that you intend to keep for the next ‘X’ amount of time. Maybe save your New Year’s resolutions for the 8th.
KS: Yes, I agree. Stuff that will last for a long time, or things that require a bit of effort, it’s sort of welcoming in that necessarily work.
CB: Sure.
KS: There’s a sub-theme of Venus in here as well, just with the Venus-Sun and the Moon applying to Venus. So maybe the ‘diet’ thing is great, cuz you’re pulling in appearance there, too.
CB: Yeah, and I like that to offset the election, cuz usually Saturn has this reputation of being kind of harsh or kind of austere. But by throwing Venus in there on the degree of the ascendant essentially—and also putting the Moon in Libra applying to Venus—it can help to soften the election a little bit. Especially in terms of aesthetics and the appearance of whatever it is that you’re initiating at that time and making it a little bit more appealing and a little less harsh than it might be otherwise.
AC: Yeah, well, and you can impose a discipline on yourself in order to balance yourself, right? You know, eat less of this, not so you can be deprived but so you can be closer to balance, right?
CB: Right. Yeah, exactly. So that is the electional chart that we’re highlighting for January. And Leisa has actually picked out—as usual, as we do every month—four other, or three other auspicious electional charts, which we’re gonna talk about on the Auspicious Elections Podcast later this month, which is available for patrons. So if you’d like to get access to that discussion, then all you have to do is become a patron of The Astrology Podcast on the $5 or $10 tier through our page on Patreon, and then you’ll get access to the 45-minute Auspicious Elections Podcast for January, where we go over our four top charts that we found during the course of the month. So that is it for our election for January. Moving back to the discussion, so, Austin, you were going through the Sun-Venus cazimi before I interrupted you. And the other major theme of the first quarter is basically just the eclipses that are coming up in the Aquarius/Leo axis, again?
AC: Yeah, I think that’s the main thing. I would note with the Sun-Venus cazimi—a cazimi is what you call an exact conjunction of another planet with the Sun. It’s being ‘in the heart’ of the Sun, and it’s a special moment. Some people liken it to the Sun granting that planet a special favor. You know, having the king’s favor, or having the sovereign’s favor. I would be remiss if I did not note that this particular cazimi of Venus and the Sun is almost exactly conjunct Pluto. So, you know, maybe I take back what I said about the ‘purifications’ being sweet and gentle. You know, there will probably be some long, deep conversations about the structure of relationships happening in the days around that, and it’s probably a good time to do that. You know, it might never be a fun time to do that, but that’s intense. Again, whether it’s the midpoint in the Venus cycle or the beginning point, it sets a tone that’s gonna last for three quarters of the year in terms of ‘Venusian’ affairs. So I would pay attention to that, especially if you’re a more ‘Venusian’ person, or that’s the hand of the clock that your life moves in sync with.
CB: Right, definitely. And we can sort of visualize this conjunction. Right here it’s taking place at 18° and 19° of Capricorn during that timeframe in early January, around the 8th and 9th. And yeah, that’s a pretty close pileup right there. And it’s interesting cuz it’s almost exactly sextile that Mars-Jupiter conjunction—that 18-19 Scorpio—at the same time.
AC: Right, which just perfected.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah, it’s definitely one of the ‘high energy’ days in January, if not the first quarter, for sure.
AC: That’ll probably take a few days to sink in. I mean, the ‘Mars-Jupiter’ thing is gonna be ramped up for a week ahead of time. You know, when planets are hidden behind the Sun, a lot of times they have a very strong internal or spiritual quality that isn’t necessarily immediately obvious in events. But, you know, those cazimi conjunctions, a lot of times that’s when the really key insights land, where you’re like, “Oh, I’ve been doing it this way for years, but I don’t have to,” right? Or you see yourself from a new angle, or you see someone else from a new angle. You know, they’re just perceptions, but they’re really critical. Critical as in crucial, not critical as in negative.
CB: Right, right. You know, we’ve been mentioning the eclipses, but I just wanted to mention that the very first one—the solar eclipse in Leo—takes place at the very end of January, on January 31. So that’s really early in the year already, we get hit with the next eclipse. And then after that—I’m sorry. I apologize. That’s the lunar eclipse, which occurs on the 31st of January. And then there’s a solar eclipse that occurs in Aquarius on the 15th of February. And that’s the pair that’s connected to the ones that happened six months before that, which was basically last summer, in the set that occurred in Leo and Aquarius then, right?
AC: Yep, yep. Kelly, you have some thoughts?
KS: Yes. Yeah, Austin and I were just doing briefly in our pre-show chat—definitely it’s January 31 in North America, February 1 in Australia, and then February 15-February 16. They do hark back to the August 2017 period. I’m actually really interested in the lunar eclipse, or the Jan 31-Feb 1, because the two lunar eclipses in 2018 are total lunar eclipses. So that makes them a more dramatic or visual spectacle, but it also makes them, I think, more of a stirring or an activating force from an astrological perspective, too. So the lunar eclipse is at 11 Leo at the end of January. It’s only 3° off the nodes, which is how as astrologers we know it’s a tighter eclipse. We’ve got the Venus pulled in there, cuz the Sun and Venus are right on the South Node at the time of that eclipse. So I think we’re going to see some kind of dramatic revelations around that time. We’re certainly gonna get this feeling of heightened energy, heightened focus. I mean, it’s back in Leo, and that is gonna put the spotlight on leaders, again, which I think is interesting. But for my money and to my mind, that event, that lunar eclipse—total lunar eclipse at the end of January—is probably the biggest thing happening in the first quarter.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Austin, I know you’ve got thoughts on this, too.
AC: They’re very similar to yours. So much so that I don’t need to repeat you. Let’s see, can I add anything? Yeah, I would just think back. Look at your chart, look at what houses Leo and Aquarius are, and look at what happened in the part of your life that that house points to during August. You know, I have a friend, for example, who quit his job like a month before that and was like, “I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to find something new,” blah, blah, blah. I mean, it wasn’t ‘blah, blah, blah’, there were legitimate concerns. and I looked at the fact that his 10th is Leo, and there’s gonna be a big eclipse there. And so, he ended up starting his new job, which was perfect, on the eclipse. You know, whatever action is happening—for him that was the 10th, which is the ‘professional’ house—if Leo is your 10th, think about what happened professionally and your place in the world and your labor in August, and then look for the next installment in that arc end of January and beginning of February.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And that’s so huge because for some people you can really just see the eclipses bouncing back and forth over that year-and-a-half or almost two-year period between those two houses in their chart and how that really does light up the topics associated with those houses. Especially if the person goes into a profection year where Leo or Cancer is activated, so that the luminaries are more heightened in their focus during that time, or if they have an angle that falls right on the eclipse degree or something like that. Like here, the lunar eclipse is taking place at 11° of Leo. So if you’re ascendant or your descendant or your midheaven or something was right there, then that would be a particularly important eclipse for you.
AC: Yeah. And again, we’ve already done a couple of these. So just look at what happened. You know, look at what happened before and how the eclipses churned that pair of houses.
CB: Right, definitely. Okay, so we’ve got that eclipse taking place on the 31st. And then the next one of course takes place approximately two weeks later, and that is the solar eclipse, which occurs at 27°.
KS: It’s 27 Aquarius.
CB: Sure, 27 Aquarius, on February 15, 2018. So 27 Aquarius, and that’s a solar eclipse at that time.
KS: It is. It’s a little, partial eclipse, because the lunation—the Sun-Moon conjunction—is a little ways off the node itself. And this is really the ‘direct opposition’ eclipse, if you like, to the Great American Eclipse—just by degrees—from August of last year. So that is gonna be interesting just to see, again, that pair of houses. But now, rather than the big ‘Leo’ drama manifestation of this eclipse pair, we’ve got the ‘Aquarius’ thinking about it or the pulling it together, or trying to bring a little bit of logic or rationality into the process. Austin, you probably have more to say on this one, I think. I don’t know.
AC: I would agree. I think that’s much more reflective, much more digestion-oriented; and that’s in part because it’s on the South Node, and in part because it’s in Aquarius. That should be a quiet day. Not necessarily that the world will be quiet that day, but that I would say a good use of that would be to make space to digest experiences and to just sit with whatever needs sitting with.
KS: Yes, I think that’s a really good way of approaching it.
CB: Definitely.
KS: And yeah, that’s the first pair of eclipses, I guess.
AC: Yeah.
CB: And the other thing that we have written down for quarter one is one of those few aspects that we see come and go during the course of the years that’s not a major tension aspect. It is one outer planetary alignment that is taking place, which is Jupiter sextile Pluto, off and on, over the course of the year, right?
KS: Yeah, and I didn’t need to take a lot of time on this. I just thought it was worth mentioning as one of the few larger aspects for 2018. And the other reason to mention it for January is it’s the first hit. So there will be three direct hits of Jupiter sextile Pluto in 2018. The first hit I’ve got here is about January 16, around 19° Scorpio/19° Capricorn. So just taking the idea or the thread of Jupiter sextile Pluto—an unfolding of an opportunity or an idea that emerges in January that you play out or that you explore throughout the year, because we do get another activation in April, when Jupiter is retrograde sextile Pluto. And the final piece is about mid-September, when Jupiter, then direct, makes the final Jupiter-Pluto activation. So again, with the same kind of advice, look at the houses—the ‘Scorpio’ house, the ‘Pluto’ house, the ‘Capricorn’ house—mostly because I think this aspect is pulling in or connecting the longer trend of Jupiter in Scorpio with the longer trend of Pluto in Capricorn; so there’ll be an interesting way of pairing up or connecting the topics of those two houses. And I think if you’re really deeply in tune with watching your chart, you’re going to see that emerge in January when we get this first activation. So mostly just that it’s two slightly longer trends connecting in a potentially helpful or easy way, because it will be a sextile aspect. Yeah, I think that’s probably it for the first quarter. Yeah, I don’t know if Austin had any comments to add to that, or if we just want to go to quarter two.
AC: Just one little thing. The word ‘transformative’ does get overused a lot in astrology—but I really want to use that.
KS: I know. I’m with you on this, Austin. I feel like a cliché.
AC: You know, as far as relatively gentle, ongoing transformations, that’s kind of what it wants me to say.
KS: Yeah, a little support for that.
CB: Brilliant. All right, so if that’s it for the first quarter, then I think we’ll move onto quarter two here. Again, the big looming thing in quarter two—which is such a huge deal—is Uranus ingressing into Taurus. And that happens in May, I believe, right?
AC: It does. There’s one thing that’s worth talking about before that—and it actually starts in mid-March and then it ends in mid-May—and that is the fact that we’re gonna have Mars and Saturn and Pluto all in Capricorn for about two solid months.
CB: Okay.
AC: And that’s a heck of a combo.
CB: Sure. So that ingress looks like it takes place on March 17. Mars moves into Capricorn.
AC: Yeah, and I believe it moves out on May 15.
KS: Yes.
CB: Okay.
AC: And so, you know, Mars and Saturn are traditionally the malefics, and if we were going to put Pluto in the benefic or malefic category, I think he would fall very solidly in the malefic category. And Capricorn is the only sign where both malefics are empowered. Saturn rules Capricorn and Mars is exalted.
KS: Yes.
AC: You know, when malefics—Mars and Saturn—are signs that they rule or exalted in, when they’re powerful, it means they’re really good at doing ‘Mars’ and ‘Saturn’ things. It doesn’t mean that they suddenly become supremely nice. Dignity does not make malefics good guys. Mars doesn’t stop wanting to burn things. Mars doesn’t stop enjoying a good fight. And so, you know, there are gonna be some hard moments for people during these two months. There’s no way around that. It doesn’t mean that death befalls the entire land and a plague wipes us all out or anything, but it’s a hard combo, and it’ll be noticeable. One thing I would point out is you and Leisa may have already gotten to this, Chris—or this might be a fun surprise waiting for you—but there is gonna be a ton of the Moon besieged between the rays of two very powerful malefics, right? When the Moon goes through Capricorn that’s gonna be a bonus. It’s gonna be a very ‘Capricorn-y’ Moon. Every time it goes through Aries, it’s gonna have to square them. Every time it goes through Libra, it’s gonna square them. Every time it goes through Cancer, it’s gonna have to oppose all three. And so, that’s really going to affect the rhythm of those two months.
CB: Yeah, that really makes a lot of the cardinal elections difficult, where it’s like you’re gonna have to skip certain signs, you can’t put the Moon in those signs for a while. You’re gonna have to skip certain rising signs. It really makes things tricky. So here’s an example. On April 7, for example, the Moon is separating from a conjunction. The Moon is in Capricorn, it’s separating from a conjunction with Saturn at 9 Capricorn, and it’s applying to a conjunction with Mars at 11 Capricorn. So it’s fully besieged or enclosed between a conjunction with those two planets.
AC: Yeah, and then when it gets free, it gets to go visit Pluto.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah. So April has two dates to throw into what you’re talking about, Austin. We’ll have Mars conjunct Saturn around the 3rd of April exactly, and then Mars conjunct Pluto at the end of April, around the 26th. So I agree with you, Austin, that the entire period of Mars in the same sign as Saturn is definitely one to watch. For those who need a little bit of evidentiary proof, cast your minds and memories back to 2016 and the periods then, when we had Mars in Sag, when we also had Saturn in Sag. And for a number of people that I worked with around Saturn transits, while Saturn was in Sag, those periods in 2016—when Mars was in Sag, too—were the hardest or the heaviest or the most challenging. Not that we want to scare you or freak you out, but this is a period to watch with Mars and Saturn. Mars and Saturn in the same sign will do it. But if we add in Pluto—yeah, Austin.
AC: Yeah, I would just add the time before that was when Mars and Saturn were in Scorpio together, and that’s when the Ebola outbreak happened.
KS: That was horrible, too, for a number of reasons. And we just had someone asking about Mars and Saturn in Sag. So I’m pretty sure it was March-April-May 2016 and then August-September 2016. So just the co-presence of Mars and Saturn being in the same sign, adding it in with Pluto. So that’s definitely worth a mention before we get to the big news of this quarter, which is Uranus going into Taurus. And, Chris, you mentioned that Mars leaves Capricorn around the 15th of May. It does. So it is waiting at 0 Aquarius the moment that Uranus crosses into Taurus. So we get a very volatile or explosive expression of Uranus coming into Taurus, because the moment that that happens, we get the square forming.
AC: That’s a really good point.
KS: Yeah, I’m so interested in that aspect, because we’re not gonna really get a sense of just ‘Uranus in Taurus’ energy. I don’t think we’ll see that properly till 2019, because 2018, Uranus in Taurus is flavored by this aggravation from Mars in Aquarius.
AC: Yeah, there are a couple of things that connect to that. One, the last couple of degrees of Mars’ time in Capricorn are Mars entering the shadow of the retrograde. Mars will eventually station direct at the end of Capricorn. So even though we get through that Capricorn period, there’s a piece at the end that we’re gonna have to come back to. Like Kelly said, just a few degrees into that shadow—when Mars ingresses into Aquarius, where we’ll be for quite some time—you get the first square to Uranus, right? The first of three.
KS: Yeah, around the 15th of the month, I think.
CB: It’s right at 29. I’m just animating the chart.
KS: No, Mars—
CB: Oh, it does make the ingress first, okay.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So Uranus goes into 0 Taurus and then Mars goes into 0 Aquarius. So that’s quite a way to start Uranus ingressing into a new sign after, what, seven years now, it’s been moving through Aries?
AC: Like seven-and-a-half years. 2010, it did a toe dip and then it went back to Pisces. It was, I want to say, March 12 of 2011 when it entered Aries for good. Not for good, but solidly and wasn’t going to regress.
KS: Yes, solidly.
CB: I was watching Rick Levine’s yearly forecast the other night, and he pointed out that the Fukushima disaster happened shortly after one of those initial ingresses of Uranus into Aries.
AC: Yeah, it was the ‘for keepsies’ ingress.
CB: Okay.
AC: Yeah, it was March 2011.
CB: Got it. Yeah, so this is huge. And this is huge also because it’s not just moving in there for this year—this is gonna be the first year—but it’s gonna stay there for quite some time, for the better part of a decade, basically, right?
KS: Yeah, this is like the preview, May to November 2018. This is a taste of what’s to come. Because in early 2019, Uranus is in Taurus—to use Austin’s phrase, ‘for keepsies’—for a solid seven years, right into that mid-2020s decade that Austin flagged earlier. So this is a huge shift. Having an outer planet like Uranus change signs, we are getting a level of that. Like this is a shift in the paradigm or the collective vibe and theme. And we are coming out of fire and we are going into earth, but we’re bringing Uranus into the realm of earth. And the first image that I get from that is this idea of volcanoes or tectonic plates starting to shift. And I’ve observed this. I remember when Uranus was in Aquarius, the last time it was in a fixed sign years ago. Because as much as we’re all younger astrologers—I know I was, and I’m sure you guys were already working with astrology then. I remember that transits from Uranus in a fixed sign, it’s the idea that if something doesn’t bend, it breaks. Now when Uranus is in a fixed sign—in a mutable sign, sorry, there’s more ‘bendiness’. Mutable signs by their nature bend. Cardinal signs, you just have to put a fire under them and they go. But fixed signs need a little bit more of a warm-up period, and they’re not flexible. So it’s really interesting to see how things have to come apart to be reformed to come back together. And I’m gonna be really interested to watch the ‘Taurus’ area in my own chart, my own birth chart, and I think that is how we all need to be paying attention to this cycle personally. What house does Taurus hold for us? And how is that part of our life gonna be really shaken, not stirred over this next little while? I’m interested to hear what you guys think about it.
AC: Yeah, I would agree with that. I would also add that not only is Taurus fixed, but it’s earth. So if we’re talking about solidity, density, and therefore, a lack of flexibility, Taurus is kind of number one getting to be the fixed earth sign.
KS: Yeah.
AC: I remember when I first learned astrology, I learned that Uranus was exalted in Scorpio and fallen in Taurus. And I don’t agree with that now, but I am sympathetic with what that implies. I do think that there’s an especially difficult pairing of Taurus and Uranus that we’re going to be dealing with. Cuz if you think about things in Taurus—whatever house that is—that’s a place where things go best when they go smoothly, right? It’s business as usual. You know, it’s not helpful to not be able to project profits for next quarter or to know how much you’re gonna be able to reserve for bills or whatever. Or if you think about the ‘Venusian’ side of Taurus, it’s nice if the flower garden isn’t full of people who have Halloween masks and jump out and they’re like, “Ha, gotcha,” and scaring the bejesus out of you while you’re trying to smell the flowers. It’s a difficult pairing. And so, I’ve been doing some initial thinking on it, and I think that it’s pretty obvious. I think I’m one of 800 astrologers who put together Uranus in Taurus and cryptocurrency. If we’re talking about Venus ruling an earth sign—things which have monetary value. And I think that Uranus will probably be very disruptive to the valuation of things in general, but especially those things that are particularly demarcated as units of value. Currencies, right? And we have the ‘Uranus/technology’ connection, like currency and ‘new’ currency. And so, I think that the ‘cryptocurrency’ story will play out during Uranus in Taurus. I think Patrick Watson had a piece on Uranus in Taurus that he called “3D-Printed Everything,” which makes a lot of sense to me.
CB: Right.
AC: Did you guys see that?
KS: Yeah, that was great.
CB: That’s a very interesting idea, that idea of currency and something that normally is supposed to be stable, and what happens if something that you usually think should be or you rely on it being stable isn’t or has wild fluctuations. Another thing like that, that I was thinking about—that somebody brought up when we did our yearly forecast for our local astrology in Denver—was the associations of Taurus and Venus with food, and the ideas of changes and radical shifts in food and nourishment and things like that; like very fundamental, physical things that are needed in order to support life, and what advancements or developments or technological departures would look like when it comes to an area like that. And one of the ones that was kind of interesting as a concept was the idea of starting to head towards lab-grown meat and things like that, and what happens at the point when growing meat in a lab or something like that is just as cheap as growing it on a farm. At what point do things start shifting more radically in that direction or other interesting things that we don’t think about, or that we take for granted and are just sort of mainstays in our life? You know, what happens when you have a planet like Uranus that either takes a wrecking ball to it, or otherwise brings something to the table that’s just out of left field, that you hadn’t even contemplated before?
AC: Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I’m not primarily a financial astrologer, but it kind of screams volatility in commodities markets, like the actual value of things. How much is corn worth, right? How much is iron worth? There’s something about Taurus which speaks very much to just things. Like this is stuff. This is iron; we put it together and make things of iron. This is gold. These are stones. This is wheat, etc., etc. I don’t know, it kind of screams volatility in the value of the materials that we use to make our things and make our bodies.
CB: Definitely. All right, so those are the main things. And then of course the Mars square Uranus is gonna be happening off and on, because Mars goes retrograde later in the year. So that’s something we’re gonna get three hits of, right?
AC: Yes, sir.
KS: Yeah, we get one hit in this quarter, and we get the second two hits in the next quarter.
CB: Okay, got it. So are there any other things in quarter two that we want to touch on, or should we jump right into quarter three?
KS: The only thing just to mention is that the Mars retrograde starts on June 25 at 9 Aquarius. The bulk of it is gonna happen in the next quarter, just to flag it for people from a date perspective.
CB: Sure. But it’s already slowing down and getting ready to station by that point.
KS: Really slow, yeah.
CB: Super slow. And then there it is, stationary.
KS: Anything you want to add, Austin?
AC: I’m sorry. What do I want to add to which piece?
KS: Just is there anything you want to add to this quarter, quarter two, before we go into the next—
AC: I think I’d rather just deal with the Mars retrograde in Q3, cuz that’s 90% of it.
CB: Let’s actually jump right into that at the start. So I know the eclipses are next on our list. But that retrograde, it’s slowing down, and it’s stationary by the very end of June. It looks like it stations retrograde by June 26-June 27 at 9° of Aquarius. And that basically then takes us into July and into our third quarter.
AC: Yep, yep. Yeah, and so, it’s a Mars retrograde. And this Mars retrograde ties in very strongly with the eclipse cycle. And I think for you, Kelly, definitely for me, the single thing of the year is the total eclipse basically conjunct Mars retrograde within a few degrees.
KS: On the South Node so tightly, yeah.
AC: Yeah, so there’s a lot going on there. Shall we start with the ‘Mars’ part and then get into the eclipses? Or eclipses and then Mars?
KS: Let’s go with the Mars, just cuz it’s chronological.
AC: All right, so what are your thoughts on this one, Kelly? I’ve been getting my head around it, but I’m not entirely there.
KS: Yeah, I have to say I agree. I’m totally there on some of the activations that we’ve talked about: Uranus-Mars and the Mars eclipse. It’s intriguing because Mars is such a volatile or fiery kind of energy, and we’ve got Mars in Aquarius. So it’s sort of like that idea of can we channel this heat into debate or discussion, or into producing ideas or innovative awareness. And so, I’m happy to have Mars retrograde in, say, an air sign and the tail-end in earth than last time—we had Mars retrograde in a fire sign—cuz I think that just makes it very volatile. But I think there’s gonna be tension. There’s gonna be tension around debate or around discussion and the frustration that comes whenever Mars is retrograde around the lack of progress or the lack of movement and momentum. And we may see that playing out collectively and politically, but I think personally that’s how a lot of us will experience it, as feeling a bit dead in the water. Like you’re on the boat and the power’s been cut, and you’re now a little bit at the mercy of things that you can’t control as much as you’d like. And so, managing one’s inner frustration or being aware that that mid-year period—from late June to late August—we’ve got this kind of ‘treading water’ period that’s gonna happen. And just as you’re animating there, Chris, yeah, I think you’ve got the eclipse. And I think the peak period within the Mars retrograde, it’s kind of happening around that eclipse, because we will have Mars opposite the Sun at those same degrees. So I think that late July period is what it’s all sort of building up to.
CB: Yeah, just looking at that, that’s crazy how close the lunar eclipse—right there at 4° of Aquarius—is to that retrograde Mars, which then of course are all squared to Uranus at 2° of Taurus. That’s such a tense, volatile combination.
AC: It’s like, dude, that’s my pick of the year as far as if you’re gonna pay attention to one thing. I saw that, I don’t know, earlier this year, and I was like, “Uh-uh, I’m gonna have to think about that.”
KS: Yeah.
AC: Just a few things to add to what you were saying about Mars retrograde, Kelly. I absolutely experience and see those ‘dead in the water’ moments. Like, for me, I’m relatively ‘Mars-y’. There are a number of pieces in my chart that run on Mars. And during those Mars retrogrades, I hit the gas pedal and there’s no movement. You know, I’ll have these moments of just no energy, and I’ve talked to clients who are ‘Mars-y’ and they have similar experiences. But what I will say about Mars retrograde is it’s not all ‘dead in the water’. It’s like ‘dead in the water’ half the time, and then there’ll be a furious storm, which doesn’t actually help you get anywhere either. But there’s like this lack of steady, helpful—it’s either no gasoline or the gas has splashed everywhere. Mars retrograde periods, a lot of people experience it as like you don’t have that happy medium where the gas is just in the gas tank. I would add to that, in my experience with watching the lives of people who have Mars retrograde natally, they do great. For some reason, I collect Mars retrogrades. I know a lot of Mars retrogrades in my personal life, and it’s not all a hundred-percent favorable, but Mars retrogrades are consistently much more favorable for people who are born in that phase themselves regardless of sign.
CB: Interesting. Yeah, or even other people that are born with Mercury retrogrades that sometimes respond a little bit more to that. It seems to be almost like a general principle.
AC: Yeah, yeah, it’s your phase. You know, no matter how great or not-great or whatever its qualities, you’re familiar with it. You’re like, “I know how to do this, I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” or whatever.
CB: Right.
AC: You know, I’m thinking about Mars in an air sign retrograde. And one thing I see when Mars is in air signs generally—and especially when it’s retrograde in air signs, like it was retrograde in Libra not too many years ago—is you get a lot of anxiety; a lot of negative internal wind would be one way to put it. It’s just sort of like, “I don’t know, what do I do? Do I do this? Do I do that?” When you feel pushed to do something, and you don’t know what the right decision is, that’s a great recipe for anxiety. You feel like something’s important, and you should do something, but you can’t decide; or there isn’t a clear option, so you end up blowing back and forth between things. That’s pretty much Mars retrograde in air signs, a wonderful recipe for that type of anxiety-generating structure.
KS: Absolutely. I mean, Mars inflames things. And in an air sign, it’s the mind, the thinking, and the communication processes that get inflamed. They can become indecisive, confusing, or even contentious, and that can be internal or external. So it’s difficult, I think.
CB: And it’s funny you guys mentioning that, cuz this actually takes place—that Full Moon takes place shortly after Mercury has just stationed like a day or two before that. So this is taking place right on a Mercury retrograde station, at the beginning of a Mercury retrograde. Then you get a lunar eclipse Full Moon conjunct Mars square Uranus at the same time.
AC: And not to be a ‘Debbie Downer’, but if you look at the previous lunations, they’re on Pluto and on Saturn. In July, basically that Mars retrograde is not the only difficult thing.
KS: The July 13 eclipse is opposite Pluto.
AC: Yeah, there are several difficult lunations in a row.
CB: Oh, it’s like exactly opposite Pluto. So the New Moon is at 20 Capricorn on July 12. And Pluto is at—sorry, the New Moon is at 20 Cancer, and Pluto’s at 20 Capricorn.
AC: Right. Now look at the Full Moon right before that, and you’ll see it’s tightly conjunct Saturn.
KS: Mm-hmm. And that New Moon you just mentioned, Chris, that’s actually an eclipse, too. It’s a more partial eclipse, but that’ll just add a little bit of juiciness. Oh, I hadn’t spotted this one, Austin. Great point out.
AC: Yeah, I spotted that on my second ‘clicking through every day’ pass.
KS: Your ‘Saturn in Virgo’ attention to detail, aka, obsession with tedious work has been well-rewarded.
AC: Indeed.
CB: So June 27, a Full Moon.
AC: That’s right on the station with Mars. It’s like a day after Mars’ station.
CB: Wow.
KS: That’s the Mars station, too.
CB: Okay, wow. So yeah, we were saying at the beginning there’s not a lot of exact outer planet aspects, but there’s some heavy lunations stuff that’s happening on top of some outer planet alignments that is pretty heavy and serious-looking.
AC: Yeah, yeah. I mean, if I have to pick what’s gonna be easy and hard, Q3 is the hardest by far.
CB: Right.
KS: Agreed.
CB: That’s where all the action is to you guys?
KS: Totally. The only other month that I would maybe highlight would be April, when we have the Mars-Saturn co-presence, but the Q3 overall, for sure.
AC: Yeah, I would agree. As far as single months, April’s up there.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Got it, okay.
KS: Yeah, in this quarter, we’ve got Mars square Uranus again. That happens in August for the retrograde hit, and the Mars square Uranus in September, when Mars is finally direct. So just adding all of that volatility. So this is a very volatile quarter, I guess. And that particular lunation we’ve been looking at—that end of July—the Moon conjunct Mars, at an eclipse, both on the South Node, I mean, this has cutting and volatility and combustibility written all over it. Austin, you had an interesting point about where this eclipse was visible. Is it this one, or was it the earlier one?
AC: Oh, the big lunar. The big lunar is sort of centered. I guess the center of visibility would be, I don’t know, maybe a couple of hundred miles south of the Persian Gulf, but people will be able to see it. So if anyone lives in the Middle East or India—it’s sort of centered on Southern Eurasia. But you’ll be able to see it in Africa. You’ll be able to see it in Eastern Europe, and I think all the way over to China, but kinda centered on Iran, India, Pakistan, kinda that area, if I’m remembering correctly. I might be off by a hundred miles, but it’s very visible because it’s a total eclipse.
KS: Yeah. So that’s interesting to have such a volatile eclipse visible in those parts of the world.
CB: Right. And then it looks like by the time we get to August, on August 11, we have our solar eclipse at 18° of Leo. And that sort of caps off our little eclipse season there during July and August.
AC: Yeah. And boy, after all those configurations—
KS: That’ll be the last eclipse.
AC: We’ll greet that with open arms. Like that’s the easiest lunation for a month-and-a-half, just a partial eclipse.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right.
KS: In Leo. Yeah, and it’s gonna be the last eclipse, I think. It’s the last eclipse we have with the nodes in Leo and Aquarius, even though we’ll still have a little ‘Leo/Aquarius’ action in early 2019. A little one, isn’t there? No, that’s okay. But I agree with you, Austin, this is gonna feel somewhat gentle relative to what’s been going on in the months prior. Relative—it’s still fire.
AC: It’s only relatively gentle.
KS: Relatively so.
AC: What do y’all think about Mars moving back into Capricorn? Cuz Mars is actually gonna be back in Capricorn for almost a month. It’s gonna be retrograde there for a while, then it’s gonna station direct and then make it out, and it will be very slow. And that’s gonna feel very different than Mars in Aquarius retrograde.
KS: I—yeah, you go.
AC: No, so please go ahead.
KS: I was just gonna say, yeah, this is basically mid-August to mid-September. It’s Mars back in the sign of its exaltation, pretty close to its exaltation degree, too, if I’ve got that correct. I think it’s gonna station at 28. I can never remember whether it’s 26 or 28, but I know it’s late Cap. It cools it down. I will be welcoming that shift a little more. You know, I always worry when we’ve got a fire planet doing some difficult stuff in an air sign, cuz air feeds the fire. Which can be exciting, but it can feed the volatility. So the coolness, the calmness. But as you said, Austin, it’s putting Mars back in the sign of Saturn, so that could re-trigger some of the challenges from April of 2018, just temporarily and with that final sense. Yeah, do you agree with that piece?
AC: Yeah, I think with Mars stationing direct in Capricorn, I think there’s gonna be a lot of talk with Mars retrograde in Aquarius. I think there are gonna be some big, decisive, power moves once Mars stations direct in Capricorn. There’ll be some courses of action in which people have gone this way and that way. But I think probably on a geopolitical level, there’ll probably be some power moves right around that Mars in Cap station. And in people’s personal lives, it’ll be like you’ve talked it to death. You know, what’s the plan? When are you gonna make the move? I think a lot of people are gonna make their move around that station or shortly thereafter.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Well, and that makes sense, doesn’t it? The end of the retrograde.
CB: Go ahead, Kelly.
KS: Sorry, Chris, you go. Oh, I was just gonna say, yeah, just the idea of the end of the retrograde, that’s when things are happening. And I think what you’re saying, Austin, is that Mars back in the sign with Saturn in Pluto, that’s when we see the plays coming out that people have been brewing.
AC: Yeah, yeah. I have one historical precedent for it, and I kinda don’t want to mention it, but I have to now, don’t I?
KS: Okay. Now that you’ve told us you have something, it’s like saying, “No, no, no, I know something you don’t know.”
AC: This is not that rare a cycle, so there are other precedents. But the Mars stationing retrograde in Aquarius, and then stationing direct in Cap—literally the outbreak of World War II is the direct station in Cap. That’s when Germany invades Poland.
KS: Such a happy event, Austin.
AC: That’s not gonna happen this time. But I was looking at the timeline and there was all of this going back and forth, and they kept delaying the attack because the alliance with Italy wasn’t solid. And they weren’t sure what Stalin thought, and so they had to get the things with the Russians. And then right around the direct station, they go for it, and that begins a rather horrendous storyline. I don’t think that that’s going to happen. There’s nothing that suggests that that’s going to happen, but that is a lot of, “I don’t know, what do we do?” That was a rather decisive move. Anyway, that’s a precedent. It’s not the only one, it’s just a very clear one.
CB: Wow. I mean, at the very least—even just from a personal standpoint—like you were saying earlier in the year, Austin, that move of Mars into Capricorn begins such a heavy period with all three of those planets clustered in that sign. And it’s like you think you’re through with it for a period of time over the summer, but then it comes back. And there’s something that’s left unfinished until Mars returns to that sign, stations there in that final moment of power, and then eventually later in the year goes forward again and departs from Capricorn finally. But it’s like an interesting opening salvo of whatever these broader themes are that are gonna be building up over the next few years, as Saturn gets closer and closer to Pluto, conjoining it later on in Capricorn.
AC: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know, it’s hard not to see some big moves. Whether it’s this country doing that or a person doing that, there are gonna be power moves this year that change landscapes, small and large.
CB: Sure. All right, well, I think that’s a good note to end quarter three on, which is our most tense and troubling quarter, I think we all agree.
AC: Yeah.
CB: So that brings us then finally to quarter four and the last three months of the year. So October, November, December of 2018. And there’s pretty much three primary things about this one, but the one that it really opens up with or one of the key ones is the other major retrograde that we’re having this year, which is a Venus retrograde, right?
AC: Yeah, yeah.
CB: So what is going on with that? It looks like by the time we get to September and October, Venus is in Scorpio and it’s slowing down. But then it stations already by October 6 in Scorpio, right?
KS: Yes, I think October 4th or 5th it’ll station retrograde around 10 Scorpio, and we’re gonna have that as the theme for this quarter. And one point I always like to make mention of when people are thinking about Venus retrograde cycles, even though Venus does go retrograde every 18 months, it’s the eight-year repetition of Venus retrograde back in the same sign that I think is a little more interesting or significant from a cyclical or a cycle’s perspective. So it was eight years ago, late 2010, that we last had Venus retrograde in this early part of Scorpio. So that can be an interesting period to be tying back in when we come to this Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 2018.
CB: Oh, yeah, I remember that Venus retrograde. That’s the ‘2010’ one and the ‘2002’ one.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Yes, yes. What do you remember about it, Chris?
CB: I remember the ‘2002’ one though.
AC: I have a happy story.
CB: You have a happy story?
AC: I wrote my very first astrological almanac—like the full book version—during that Venus retrograde in 2010.
KS: Fantastic. The ‘2008’ one—‘2010’ one, sorry. Beautiful. And that would have been 5th house for you.
AC: Yep.
KS: Yeah, nice.
CB: I think the ‘2002’ one for me was a sudden revisiting of an old relationship very tumultuously. So that was my recollection of the ‘2002’ one.
AC: I remember that story.
KS: Okay, excellent.
AC: And that is a theme. That’s a very common theme with Venus retrograde.
KS: That is a theme. It is. Yeah, reconnecting with past loves. Ghosts from relationships past.
AC: They rise from their graves to haunt you. And sometimes to say really nice things and deliver messages that allow for completion. One thing I’ll say about Venus retrogrades is a lot of times people’s romantic pasts will reemerge, and again, a lot of times there’s like a nice piece of closure in that. However I do see people getting confused as to whether that past should be their present and future. It’s like, well, if these people are coming back, I don’t know, there’s a bunch of weird coincidences. Maybe it’s weirdly fated. And then I see people being like, “Well, maybe we should do this again,” and then Venus goes direct, and they’re like, “Oh, no, we should definitely not do this again.”
CB: Right. That’s why that didn’t work out last time.
AC: Oh, really? Okay.
CB: No, the reminder sometimes of the Venus retrograde is the revisiting. The revisiting can sometimes be good, but other times it can just reinforce what you already knew at one point, but then maybe you forgot or got fuzzy on the details.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, sometimes it can just be like you did get it, right?
CB: Yeah.
AC: Do you have to do this again?
KS: Yeah.
AC: But what I would say is don’t believe or disbelieve relationships during Venus retrogrades. Let things be ambivalent. Be like, that’s interesting this person’s back in contact with me. Let me explore that. Don’t give it a name or a structure until Venus is direct, if you don’t have to. It’s much easier to just let it sort itself out. And you can participate in that, you don’t have to be avoidant. You can participate in that without being like, “Yes, we were supposed to be together forever, that’s exactly why this is happening. I’m leaving my wife (or husband).” Just kinda let it sort itself out and watch before making judgments.
CB: And look at the alignments on this one. It’s funny, because Venus is stationing there in early October at 10° of Scorpio. But Mars is just getting back to its shadow point; the point that it went retrograde at earlier in the year. So it’s at 8 Aquarius around that time. And it actually sneaks up on and then squares Venus from about 9°-10° of Aquarius to about 10° of Scorpio once Venus is stationed retrograde. And then the other funny thing about this retrograde cycle of Venus in Scorpio is that it goes back to early Scorpio and conjoins the Sun. So we have another Sun-Venus conjunction, like one of the ones we saw earlier this year in Capricorn, except this one is opposing Uranus at the same time, cuz Uranus is still at 0° of Taurus. So you get a Venus-Uranus opposition basically right around the time of the Sun-Venus cazimi.
AC: And I’m gonna interrupt you here, Chris. So back that up a few days and notice that there’s a Full Moon in Taurus, like right on Uranus, I believe. Yep, there it is. So the Full Moon in Taurus is right on top of Uranus while Venus and the Sun are conjoining in Scorpio.
CB: Brilliant.
AC: So we have another lunation just touching it off.
KS: Yeah. And usually, Austin, we love this Taurus Full Moon, but it’s gonna be a very different type of Taurus Full Moon in 2018.
AC: Uranus is gonna be ruining all of my happy, stabilizing, Moon in Taurus elections.
CB: Right.
AC: How am I supposed to do lunar magic?
KS: The other point, too—Austin, I think you mentioned this in our pre-show chitter-chatter—is that the first decan, I guess, first 10° or 11° of the fixed signs are very active with these station retrograde degrees of Venus and Mars and some of these lunations, particularly if you do have significant chart points or key planets in the early parts of the fixed signs. Because, Chris, you made a really good point there. Venus is hitting her station with Mars just coming out of his shadow period. And that’s really the first 10 days of October where Venus and Mars will both be around that 10°, not for the first time and not for the last time, but certainly very active. And that’s a great lunation to point out.
CB: Yeah, and that’s a really good example because it shows what you would normally think is a relatively nice and stable and quiet lunation of the Moon going through Taurus, where it’s exalted, and it’s a stable earth sign, a fixed earth sign. But once you get a planet like Uranus going through there—and you have every lunation having to take that energy from Uranus into account—that’s a tremendously destabilizing and upsetting influence that you otherwise normally wouldn’t experience. So it’s really bringing something new to the table. And that first trek of Uranus going through those early degrees of Taurus this year is gonna be a really interesting preview of what most of the next decade is gonna be about. And I’d really recommend people pay close attention to what house Uranus goes into in your chart, especially what whole sign house it goes into, in order to see a preview this year of some major shifts and some major changes that are gonna be occurring in that area of your life over the course of the next decade.
AC: Yeah. You know, 100% agree. And also, we’ve kinda said this several times, but I’m gonna say it again. So this preview period—this initial ingress of Uranus into Taurus—this is going to be a rather dramatic trailer for the movie to come, because we have it configured to both the Mars and Venus retrogrades. Mars squares it three times. Venus opposes it three times. And so, again, it will be an unsubtle trailer for the movie.
CB: Definitely.
KS: Totally. And when we say the idea of a paradigm shift or a big collective shift, Austin, you just gave a great example when you were talking about the Full Moon in Taurus and the Uranus involvement. Every Full Moon in Taurus that we have in the next eight years, it may not be as close or as tight by degree, but we’re going to at least have that co-presence of Uranus in Taurus.
AC: Yeah, so it’s gonna change all of your elections.
KS: All of your elections. As you said, your magical work. I mean, a cliché or typically-stable Full Moon in Taurus is just not available for the next eight years.
AC: I mean, maybe separated by 20° and applying to a benefic you can get away with it. But yeah, it’s gonna be there the whole time, and it’s gonna start showing up in people’s solar return charts and their lunar return charts, and it’s just gonna get encoded into all of these sub-charts that we use.
CB: Right.
KS: And, Chris, you’ve moved the chart onto the ‘happiness’ transit at the end of 2018. I don’t know if we can call it that.
CB: Since we were talking about the Venus retrograde, I just wanted to bookend that. Venus eventually stations direct at 25° of Libra towards the middle of November. And that’s kinda interesting, cuz it’s right around the same time that Mercury, which had been retrograde for a few weeks—oh, I’m sorry. Mercury stations retrograde for a few weeks at that point. And Jupiter has also just switched signs and moved from Scorpio into Sagittarius, which is probably a good segue to talk about that as one of the last major transits that’s occurring towards the later part of this year; Jupiter leaving Scorpio and moving into its home sign of Sagittarius.
AC: So on that note, I want to jump in and just say one last thing about the Venus and Mars retrogrades, which I think is gonna tie nicely into Jupiter. Both Venus’ retrograde, which begins in Scorpio, and Mars’ retrograde, which begins in Aquarius, they start with those planets in signs that are either inimical to the planet’s significations or just no help. You know, the only type of essential dignity that Mars has in Aquarius is a single bound. Aquarius is not ‘Mars-y’. And Venus will start her retrograde in Scorpio, which is the traditional detriment of Venus. But both of these retrogrades end with their direct stations in signs where they’re very much at home and very powerful, right? Venus stations direct in Libra. You know, Venus is like, “Oh, thank God, back in Libra. This is how it’s supposed to be.” And Mars gets back to Capricorn and is like, “All right, no more confusion. I know what to do.” I’m trying to be positive here. I know I’m not good at being positive, but I’m trying.
KS: You’ve done a great job today, Austin.
AC: Thank you. Literally, this is putting things back where they’re supposed to be and there may be that as a theme. Getting Mars back to where it’s supposed to be, getting the ‘Venusian’ side of your life back to where it’s supposed to be, and to be able to work from there. And then we get that beautiful ingress of Jupiter into Sag.
KS: Yes, that’s a really good point, Austin. And I know we have Mercury retrograde for half the month in November 2018, and even though Venus is direct for the first-half, she’s back home. So if you’re gonna be retrograde, at least do it in comfortable territory. So November is definitely at least do it in a house where you’ve got access to everything. You can play your favorite music, or the fridge is stocked with your yummiest food, whatever it happens to be. I like November. I’m happy for Jupiter to move into Sag. I remember personally, 12 years ago, when Jupiter was in Sag, and that was a lovely time for me. But I’m biased towards Jupiter, cuz I have a very strong ‘Jupiter’ chart. But Jupiter in its home sign, and two benefics coming into dignity. Venus will also station direct near the fixed star Spica, which I think has some positive offerings to share as well. I don’t know. I think you made some good points, and I do like this period generally.
CB: Yeah, definitely. That shift of Jupiter into Sagittarius seems like a nice bit of optimism towards the end of the year. And then you get a Sun-Jupiter conjunction right after that in Sagittarius. I mean, there’s a little bit of tension. Cuz it’s like Mars has just ingressed into Pisces and starts squaring all of that at the same time, which is a little unfortunate.
KS: It’s a little annoying.
CB: It’s a little annoying. But at least there is some shift towards the end of the year, which at least in the long term—over the next 12 months, with Jupiter in Sag—gives us some optimism for what lies in the future. Yeah, so I think that’s the last thing. The only other thing was Uranus of course going back into Aries in the later part of the year, just as one last check to see if you got what that was all about in whatever house that’s been transiting through in your chart over the course of the past seven years, since the early 2010’s.
KS: Yeah, I think that’s November 6 that Uranus goes back into Aries, and it will be in Aries until early March. So just a few months.
CB: One of the themes I wanted to mention for Uranus going through the houses—we’ve talked a lot about the disruptive quality of Uranus, but there’s also this quality of innovation and renovation that’s always a good theme to focus on as well. In looking back on what my ‘Uranus going through Aries’ experience has been like, a large part of that was going through my third whole sign house. And I actually started doing this podcast and started doing podcasting not too long after Uranus went into Aries. And so, it’s been interesting that a large part of Uranus going through my 3rd house has been finding new and innovative ways to use technology in order to communicate and my growth process as I’ve learned how to do that over the course of the past half-decade or so.
AC: Yeah. One of the positive significations I see Uranus as having by transit is supercharging an area. And a lot of times that area can’t hold the charge, you will blow fuses. But Uranus tries to supercharge things, it’s just that the circuitry might not be able to hold it. And also, when I talk to people about transits they’re having, when Uranus goes through a house, you end up just getting kind of itchy and bored and more willing to experiment and try new things. And sometimes that can be a problem, but it can also be really useful. It’s also really useful to just be like, yeah, it’s okay that I’m itchy and bored and feeling a little rebellious and maybe want to change things up. That’s what Uranus transits feel like. And maybe that’s gonna be a change in six months or a year, and you’re starting to feel it internally. Kelly, at the very beginning you said something about Uranus having a ‘hot’ quality if we’re looking at qualities. And I agree with that, cuz Uranus catalyzes. You know, it gets people moving. They want to change things. They want to do this, they want to do that. You know, to heat things up and get them moving, often quite quickly, is a quality of fire, or it’s a fiery quality.
KS: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And to put what you just said then, Austin—and what Chris said earlier—around that idea, the ‘Taurus’ area of our charts and our lives is an area where we tend to prefer consistency and stability and routine and repetition. So whether it’s discomfort or just this really unusual quality coming into a part of our charts and lives, the idea of Uranus is now going to stir the ‘Taurus’ part, it is going to bring heat and stimulation and activation into an area of life that is sometimes stagnant. Now in the ‘Taurus’ part of our chart, that stagnancy can work to our favor. It can mean that we’re consistent or reliable around that area of our life. But it might also mean that we get stuck in a rut, or that area of life has become a little bit boring or a little bit dated and tired, and Uranus will certainly be freshening things. I think you mentioned the word ‘renovation’, Chris. Yeah, it’s time to spruce things up here. And you don’t yet know exactly what the sprucing up will need to look like, but you’re gonna get a few glimpses and a few tastes of that throughout 2018, for sure.
AC: So something you said triggered an insight, or what I hope is an insight. It’s at least a thought. But Taurus being a place where you can get too comfortable, that makes a lot of sense to me. You know, it’s like, oh, it’s so nice, and there’s cookies and there’s the couch and there’s some fried snacks—Uranus can break up some of that. Nietzsche has a phrase he uses, ‘wretched contentment’, where you’ve let yourself get comfortable with something less than what you’re capable of.
KS: Yes.
CB: I like that. That’s a good keyword for that, ‘wretched contentment’, yeah, and the breaking of that or the shattering of some of that over the course of the next half-decade as Uranus goes into that sign, and this year being a preview of what a lot of that’s gonna be about.
AC: Yeah.
KS: We had one question here around Saturn trine Uranus, then a comment saying that even if it’s not exact, Saturn trine Uranus by sign is often very innovative without total disruption. And it’s probably worth a mention that Saturn trine Uranus—mid-August to mid-September 2018—they will actually be trine by degree, but not trine by minute. So we’re getting very ‘Virgo’ about this trine not being exact, which it is technically not exact, but it is pretty damn close. So I think maybe just as a quick side note or footnote to mention, there will be some of that innovation, and maybe it’s productive disruption, potentially. I don’t know. Austin, you got some chuckles there. I wonder if you guys have any thoughts about this.
AC: Oh, I was just flashing on what I know was a shared ‘Saturn Virgo’ moment between us. I was looking at that conjunction, and I’m like clicking by hour and by day to see if it perfects or not. I was like, “They’re both there.”
KS: Yep, I know. I was like, “How close? This is so damn close.” And it does not become exact.
CB: Right. And the last thing I wanted to mention here—I have an animated chart, and I took it all the way to December 31, which is almost a year from now. And it looks like we end 2018—the very last day of next—with almost a degree-off Sun-Saturn conjunction that will occur at around 11° of Capricorn at the very, very beginning of January. But it’s interesting that we just had in the past week or two here the ingress of Saturn into Capricorn and the first conjunction of the Sun with Saturn. So the very first opening Sun-Saturn conjunction or cazimi, we will close the following year, 2018, with the same conjunction. So it will be an interesting revisiting and reflection point of what the first year of Saturn in Capricorn has been all about at that point.
KS: Totally. And I’ll just make a quick, slightly patriotic mention here of my home country Australia. The federation chart of Australia, the January 1, 1901 chart includes a Sun-Saturn conjunction in Capricorn, actually very close to these degrees here. So I think leadership issues and leadership planning and succession planning, etc., in Australia over these next few years, with Saturn in Capricorn—it’s Saturn return sign for Australia—is just gonna be interesting to watch. And this is interesting, cuz Australia as a country—the federation chart—also has Jupiter in Sag; so the recurrence of those two returns at the end of 2018 for Australia as a country. So that’s just a little aside there, but this is a great chart to close our year ahead forecast on, Chris.
CB: Yeah, I think we’ve covered quite a bit here. I’m actually surprised at how much we got through. I didn’t think we were gonna get through it all, but it looks like we did, and we’ve come to the end of 2018. So it’s kinda weird looking that far into the future. It’s late December 2017 right now, and we’re already looking at what transits are gonna be like 12 months from now. And I guess we opened with that discussion at the beginning of this podcast with this weird thing that astrologers do, where they’re always constantly looking very far into the future and trying to anticipate and see the outlines of what the future holds. And it’s an interesting exercise that all of us do to a greater or lesser extent, but I think it’s an important process. And it’s always fun doing these episodes with you guys, because I think it helps to really sharpen one’s skills in this martial arts-type way of repetition, of looking at transits and anticipating and predicting or forecasting, but then also seeing how that turned out and calibrating your understanding of astrology accordingly.
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: So I guess we will see then how the next year goes, and we’ll revisit this episode in 12 months and see some of those key turning points during the course of the year and how important they ended up being. Like that lunar eclipse that takes place over the summer with Mars and Uranus and everything that we were so focused on, or the Uranus ingress into Taurus and other types of events like that.
AC: Yeah, definitely. So, Kelly and Chris, do either of y’all have advice or parting words? How do you do that? That’s the obstacle course or however you want to put it. And this might be, not ‘generalizable’, but it might be ‘generalizable’, I really feel like if you work with Saturn in Capricorn, Saturn in Capricorn will work for you. It’s the only planet that’s in dignity all year. Think long-term. You know, stay steady in your movement towards where you want to be by the time Saturn is done with Capricorn. Think of this as year one of three. And so, it’s a three-year plan, right? What do you want to have accomplished by the time you get done? And then cut that into three years, and then cut that into four quarters. And you know what? If there’s a big pain in the ass one of those quarters, it’s okay. There’s still a lot of quarters between you and where you plan to be by the time Saturn exits Capricorn. And I feel like that can be really stabilizing in the midst of some not-so-stabilizing configurations.
KS: Yeah, I agree, Austin. I think the message is definitely long-term, long-term, long-term. What you’re doing now is not going to bear fruit immediately, and you probably shouldn’t expect it to. You really want to think, “I’m doing something now that I’m gonna benefit from years down the track,” whether it’s at the end of the three-year cycle. One thing for me personally is I’ve decided to get really inspired about retirement planning. So I’m putting this money away, and I’m not gonna see it for 20 years necessarily. But, to me, that’s an incredibly ‘Saturn in Capricorn’ thing, that idea of short-term pain for long-term gain. What can you do today that offers you a gift in the future, or provides you protection and security in the future? Cuz I think those words—‘protection’, ‘security’, ‘safety’—whether it’s financial or otherwise are huge Saturnian and Capricorn words. So that’s what I would say as parting words for that piece. The other very brief thing I would say—based on the idea that we’re getting of dipping our toes into Uranus in Taurus for 2018—be open to or embrace change in areas of life that you’re normally very rigid or that you’ve become a little complacent or a little too comfortable, because I think that sort of summarizes what we’ve said around the ‘Uranus in Taurus’ bit. So that would be my short summary of our last couple of hours.
AC: I think that’s very nice. I like that a lot.
CB: Yeah. And I like that idea of just taking the first steps of that slow process of starting to climb the mountain. And even though it’s gonna take a long time, or it’s gonna take a while before you reach the summit of that, just knowing that there is a summit, you have to start somewhere by taking those first few steps to start walking upwards.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Right. And nobody climbs mountains with jet packs. Like if you try to climb super-fast, you get to fall back down to the starting point super-fast. And so, just to tie this into something at the very beginning, I mentioned Saturn in Cap. I’ve been noticing Saturn in Capricorn already giving credit where credit is due, where it’s been earned. And so, be one of those people by the end of Saturn’s time in Capricorn, right? Even if you’re a grasshopper and not an ant right now, set yourself up to be able to look back at 2018 and 2019, from the end of 2020, and be like, “Yep, I got here.” I got that degree. I got the job I wanted. I put the money away. I became skillful in an art that I was just a beginner at a couple of years ago. You know, be that person in three years that gets credit because it’s due.
CB: Definitely. All right, well, I think that’s a good note to end on. That’s a nice, optimistic, while still realistic or pragmatic note to end on. And I think that is in keeping with and appropriate to our newfound Saturn in Capricorn transit. So thanks guys for joining me for this. Thanks to our patrons who are joining us for the live recording of this episode in the audience. And yeah, I can’t believe we made it to the end of 2017. It’s been a lot of fun doing these monthly forecast episodes with you guys every month. We’ve done 12 of them now over the past year, and we’ve done a few dozen over the past few years. But I’m looking forward to revisiting some of these themes again in more detail on each of the monthly forecast episodes over the course of the next 12 months.
AC: Yeah, it’ll be really nice to do the blow-by-blow and watch how it plays out and get those nuances you can only get when you actually see it happen. That’ll be great.
KS: Yeah, once we’re into it.
CB: Definitely. All right, well, people can find out more information about Austin on his website, at austincoppock.com. More information about Kelly at kellysastrology.com. And you can find out more information about the podcast at theastrologypodcast.com. So yeah, thanks everyone for listening. We appreciate you, and we will see you next time.
AC: Bye.
KS: Bye, everyone.