The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 184, titled:
Astrologers on Becoming Parents
With Chris BrennanĀ and guests Ashley Otero and Patrick Watson
Episode originally released on December 16, 2018
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released July 6th, 2023
Copyright Ā© 2023 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and youāre listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode was recorded on Thursday, December 13, 2018, starting at 4:42 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 184th episode of the show. In this episode Iām gonna be talking with Ashley Otero and Patrick Watson about what itās like to be a parent and an astrologer. 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. Hey, Ashley and Patrick. Welcome to the show.
ASHLEY OTERO: Hi, thanks for having us.
PATRICK WATSON: Thanks for having us.
CB: Yeah. So, Patrick, welcome back. And, Ashley, this is your first time on the podcast, right?
AO: Yes. Thank you for having me. Itās good to be here.
CB: Yeah, long-time listener, first-time caller.
AO: Yes.
CB: Right. Something like that. All right, so this was a topic that actually you brought up Ashley, ācause itās something youāve been thinking about and sort of working on a little bit lately due to some changes in your own life over the past few years, right?
AO: Uh, yeah. Yeah, I thought it would be interesting to have an episode or have a discussion about children and their charts in astrology since itās pretty relevant, and I thought it would be fun to speak to other astrologers that have kids too. āCause I feel likeāmaybe itās just a feeling, but sometimes I feel like most of the astrologers donāt have kids or maybe their children are just older, and a lot of us younger astrologers donāt yet have kids or donāt have kids, so I thought it would be a fun discussion to have.
CB: Yeah. And you had your first child recently, right?
AO: Yeah, September 2017. So heās a year-and-almost-three-months. Heāll be 15 months on the 16th.
CB: Okay. And, Patrick, of course, weāve had you on the show at various crucial points when you were having your first and second childāthird child. You have three children now. What are their ages?
PW: I have one whoās 7, I have one who is 4, and another whoās 3āand no more.
CB: No more.
PW: Yeah, yeah, thatās enough. Yeah, itās kind of funny. The Astrology Podcast has always kind of been there at these crucial moments. So Iām a little freaked out actually and kind of wondering, āIām on the show again. Whatās going on?ā But, yeah, this is a really interesting topic, and itās funny how I keep coming back to the show on this topic in some ways. We talked about the election of my sonās birth and issues revolving around Saturn in the 5th house in the Saturn in Sagittarius episode. So, yeah, happy to be here and interested to talk with other astrologers on this topic. And I think itās kind of cool because we have like a mother and a father representative. Yeah, so itāll be interesting to see what we have to say.
CB: Yeah, I forgot about that. That was actually Episode 15 of The Astrology Podcast in February of 2014, which was titled, āThe Ethics of Using Electional Astrology to Time a Birth,ā where it was coming down to the line of whether you were gonna have to induce the birth. And there started being all these questions about whether you should, and picking your childās birth chart and all this other stuff back then, right?
PW: Yeah, it was fun.
AO: I remember that episode. That episode really impacted me. And I remember having a huge argument with my partner about that episodeājust about that whole concept. We had a pretty lengthy discussion or argument about it, butting heads about our differing opinions on this.
CB: About whether you should or whether you shouldnāt?
AO: Yeah, about if we were to have a child someday and if we found ourselves in similar circumstances. I was basically probing him to see if he would be okay with me electing a time if I had that option.
PW: So did you?
AO: I didnāt have to actually. Yeah, I progressed pretty quickly, and, yeah, he came pretty fast. So, luckily, I didnāt have to worry about that.
PW: Right.
AO: But, yeah, years ago, we werenāt really coming to agreement on that. But I remember that episode. I liked it a lot. It had an impact on me.
CB: Thatās funny. And that was the same situation with you at the end, Patrick. You had sort of thought about it a lot, but in the end it didnāt end up mattering because it ended up happening.
PW: Well, the one part we did have control over was the day. But the general hourāit got pushed back further than we had planned because of other emergency birth which were happening at the time. And so, he came right when he was supposed to, and there were other sort of implications of that that I think are really kind of interesting. So, partly, I did choose the time, and for my second childāmy third child rather. Yeah, I had a bit of a hand in it, but ultimately the universe had the final say.
CB: Yeah, and you were there with an atomic clock timing it. Your second child has like 29° of Taurus rising. But you know for sure itās 29°. Itās not 0° Gemini.
PW: Right. Yeah, I am absolutely positive that he is at 29° Taurus rising. And we found out at various points of our relationship, leading up to that point, featured 29 Taurus, so it was a weird foreshadowing of his arrival. But, yeah, I may or may not have been focusing on the time a lotā
CB: A little too much.
PW: While my wife is being cut open. It was a tense moment.
CB: Yeah. And you actually were talking about on Twitter recently how you noticed that different parts of your relationship with your wifeādifferent crucial turning pointsāthe astrological placement of those was weirdly tied in with 29° of Taurus.
PW: Uh, yeah. I mean, I didnāt want to get too off-topic; well, weāre on topic. Yeah, basically, my wife and I donāt have any placements at 29 Taurus, so I was really confused about why his Ascendant should be at this degree. There is nothing in our chartsāno midpoints, no lots, nothingāat that degree of Taurus. But then I looked back through our relationship and we met when the Moon was at 29° of Scorpio, and we had our first kiss when Jupiter was at 29° of Taurus. And I know thisāwe conceived him on the night when the Sun itself was at 29° of Taurus. We just happened to know that just because of the way things turned out in the weeks leading up to finding out that we were pregnant. So, yeah, it was really strange but the chronology of our relationship sort of seemed to foreshadow this degree, and it ended up showing up as his rising degree. And then his sister has the Moon there too, so it sort of carried on with my third child.
CB: Right. I like that because that kind of foreshadows some of the discussion here today. āCause it seems like a lot of it comes down to questions about choice and free will and fate and how much you should try to control things versus how much is outside of your control, or you should just leave up to chance or what have you.
PW: What Iā
CB: Go ahead.
PW: Oh, I was gonna say what Iām really interested to find out is if other people have had this same kind of realization because itās difficult to get this kind of information from celebrity charts; itās really something you can only ask of an astrologer whoād understand its significance. So I was curious, Ashley, maybe youāll have to kind of look back in your chronology and see if there are these connections with your childās chart. But have you?
AO: Itās a good question. Yeah, as far as the conceptionāIām pretty certain about the conception day. Well, itās like a ātwo-day window-ishā, but I know that it was over the ocean. When I found out that I was pregnant, I was pretty sick and thatās how I found out. His due date was like exactly 9 months or 10 months from that conception date that I speculated it would be. But as far as degrees go, I actually havenāt really thought about that. Like I didnāt really look at that, but there are some interesting themes and seemingly interesting family ties between our charts. Heās a Virgo. So Iām an Aquarius, and my partner is a Libra. So he doesnāt share the same Sun sign or Moon sign or anything like that, but there are some interesting themes like where the nodes are placed next to planets.
So heās got some nodal stuff. His Moon is near my Lot of Fortune. Itās like conjunct my Fortune, which is pretty interesting, I think. And we have this interesting dynamic between our charts of these Full Moons. So my Sun opposes his Moon, and his Sun opposes my Moon. And then looking at my partnerās chart as well, thereās some interesting things there. But thereās this carried-on Jupiter themeāand Jupiterās pretty strong and pretty big in my chartābetween my partnerās chart as well. Heās got that Jupiter in the 4th, so I think thatās interesting to see.
PW: Interesting, yeah. I mean, thatās almost a whole other topic, the astrology of family connections.
AO: Yeah.
PW: The rabbit hole goes deep.
AO: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
PW: Itās kind of funny you mentioned the Jupiter thing. My son has the same Jupiter as his grandmother, and she has a very special affection for him. Heās almost like her favorite. And so, I think itās funny that they both have the same Jupiter placement by degree almostā
AO: Oh, wow.
PW: In Cancer.
CB: Yeah, and that was Episode 104 with Lynn Bell where we talked about her book, Planetary Threads, which is about the astrology of family dynamics. And she brought up that topicāor we talked about it a bitāabout how sometimes you have chart placements that will repeat across generations, whereas other times a child will be born into the family that has something that the rest of the family doesnāt have that kind of balances it out, or adds some sort of counterbalance in some way.
PW: And you see that with the so-called āblack sheepā of the family. Itād be interesting to look at the chart of Sting or something, ācause he is this big musician, but he said he came from a family of non-musicians and he was completely seemingly unrelated in that sense. So it kind of makes you wonder if there would be an astrological correlation with that kind of thing.
CB: Right. I mean, one question is did you have trepidation coming up, knowing the chart ahead of time, or did you have a lot of questions? Ashley, when you were getting close to the due date, were you focused on what the birth chart would be? Were you, I donāt know, apprehensive at all? What were your feelings as you got closer to actually meeting your son?
AO: Yes, well, it was something I thought about pretty often, I mean, just being a practicing astrologer. I was pretty anxious anticipating which day he was gonna be born. I was definitely looking at where the Moon was gonna be on those days leading up to my due date. Originally, my due date was actually September 11. And then, I donāt know, I think I was 30-some weeks at one point, and my midwife told me, āOh, no, you know what, actually your due date isnāt the 11th. Itās the 17th. So I was like, āOkay,ā so it changed that. Before then I had been looking at the Moonās transits, and looking and like, āOh, itād be really nice if he had like a Taurus Moon,ā hoping that he has like a nice Moon of course because Iām thinking about his relationship with me, particularly because I have challenged Moon in my chart. And so, I really didnāt want him to have, so I definitely was anxious about that. I did want him to have a nice Moon and not have any contact with the malefics, or with the Sun as well. So I did think about that. Yeah, I was thinking about it a lot and always just wondering. And itās not really something you can know, so itās like hurry up and wait and see what you can see. And then I pretty much went into labor the day beforeāor two days beforeāmy due date, and he was born the day before his due date.
CB: Wow. So it was pretty close to roughly the chart that you were able to anticipate 30 weeks on.
AO: Yeah.
CB: Okay. I mean, that sort of leads into one of the questions that you asked when we were talking about this in preparation for this discussion, which is the question of once you have the chart whether itās ethical, or whether you feel that itās ethical to try to delineate that chart, or if thereās anything thatās unethical or risky about attempting to predict aspects of your childās future. I think that was one of the underlying questions that you had in thinking about this discussion at first, right?
AO: Yeah, yeah. Iām curious as to what other astrologers feel. Youāve had quite a few episodes where this topic comes up briefly, and youāll speak with other astrologers about their perspective on delineating or just consulting someone on their childās chart and whether that is okay or not.
CB: Right.
AO: And it seems like there doesnāt really seem to be a correct answer, but a lot of astrologers tend to say or seem to feel that it kind of depends. I think some astrologers feel like itās something that they shouldnāt be even talking about or even looking at, and then some donāt really seem to care at all. I feel like Iām a little bit in the middle and I think it really depends. I think it depends on the parentsā reasons why they want to look at their childās chart because I think thereās legit reasons for doing that. Itās like what kinds of temperament might they have? How might they do in school? How can you help them in those regards? Emotionally, whatās a good way for you to bond with them if you feel like thereās differences, or if you feel like thereās a barrier between you for some reason? So I think that there could be some good things. But of course if youāre trying to groom your child into being something that you want them to be that might not be of interest to them, or in their interest, then obviously it seems like there can be some kind of problem with that.
CB: Yeah.
PW: Right. I agree with that. Although I think I might fall a little more on the side ofāIāll admit, I have no problem looking at my childās chart. However, I think the line I guess that I draw is I think itās okay to look at my childās chartāI try not to take anything that I get from it to the point where I would exclude other possibilities for them. For example, I can see from my sonās chartāhis Ascendant ruler is Venus in the 9th in Capricorn, conjunct Pluto, opposite Jupiter, and retrograde. So he has this really striking Ascendant ruler, and heās this very adorable little boy. Heās obviously gonna be very handsome. And heās such a ham, and he loves to perform for people. And so, this naturally gets me and my wife thinking, well, should we cultivate this in him? And I would only ever want to cultivate something that I really felt like I just saw as a person rather than as an astrologer. I feel like being a parent is āhereā and being an astrologer is below that somewhere. It has to be.
I mean, Iām not a perfect astrologer. I feel like I could potentially be a better parent than I could be an astrologer. When youāre a parent you are dealing with the child that youāre actually seeing. With astrology youāre dealing with some abstractions, I guess. Itās less visible, itās less tangible. So I just feel like itās okay to look at your childās chart, just donāt do anything irreversible based on that. Only base your actions on what you are properly seeing and understanding and experiencing with your child as a parent rather than an astrologer.
CB: Iām trying to think of some potential drawbacks because thereās people that think that astrology is incredibly useful or could be incredibly useful in life in general as a tool or something to maximize your potential, and so you could see why they would then apply that to the charts of children. But then the drawback is sometimes there can be misapplications of astrology, and Iām trying to think of what some of the worst-case scenarios might be that could lead to or cause somebody to have trepidation about using astrology or applying it to their childās life. What would be, theoretically, an inappropriate or problematic use of astrology?
AO: Well, something I had thought of is, for example, letās say a parent takes their childās chart to an astrologer, and they want to just inquire about what their child will be like. Letās say theyāre still an infant and they want to get an idea of what their childās gonna grow up to be like; maybe some inherent things that they think theyāre going to grow into regardless of how theyāre nurtured, or maybe because of the way theyāre nurtured. For example, letās say the astrologer says, āOh, it looks like thereās some emphasis on the 6th house. You might want to watch out for this child falling into some kind of depression later on in life.ā I donāt want to say someone might think that it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy for them to say something like that. If you tell them, āYour child might get depression later on in life,ā one, the parents are gonna just be so worried after that and are gonna be feeling terrible and like, āOh, my gosh,ā and analyzing every single thing that they do. Like, āWhat if I do this wrong? This is going to negatively affect my child.ā So I think that thatās a pretty risky and dangerous thing.
You would think, āWho would say that?ā But Iām sure there are a lot of astrologers that might say that not thinking that there are consequences to interpretations like that. Even if itās true, even if itās a possibility, it might not be something that should be interpreted or said because you canāt ever really know, and it could manifest in so many other ways besides, for example, depression or mental illness or something of that nature.
CB: Right. Yeah, usually where the discussion focuses is definitely on a client whoās a parent seeing an astrologer and whether itās ethical for the astrologer to read a childās chart from their parent without the childās consent basically. Not just the consent issue, but also the potential for saying something that could negatively impact the parent in the way that they relate to the child in some way, like if they issued a bad prediction. Like if the astrologer said the child has a difficult planet in the 3rd house, so they could have trouble traveling someday, and so the parent then never lets the child get a driverās license or something like that.
AO: Right.
CB: Or they have a difficult planet in the 11th house and they sayāgo ahead.
PW: Iād just like to clarify what I had said earlier, reflecting on am I okay with reading my own childās chart. When it comes to someone elseās child then I think you have to be just as judicious as you would be with the client, or in dealing with someone elseās child as an educator or a counselor or a doctor. I mean, I think in all those cases where youāre dealing with someone elseās child then you have to be really, really careful about the kinds of impressions that you give them.
CB: Right. You have a unique perspective on that.
PW: I wasnāt just saying, āOh, yeah, Iāll read any kidās chart.ā No, Iāll read my own kidās chart. I wonāt do anything irreversible with them based on their chart. But, yeah, when it comes to other peopleās kids, you gotta be, yeah, super careful.
CB: Yeah. And you have a unique perspective because you actually work with childrenāor you did as part of your day job.
PW: Yeah, Iām a teacher. Iām a teacher still. Yeah, so itās a minefield. Probably one of my worst fears is getting some all-caps email from a disgruntled parent over something Johnnyās upset about that happened in my class. I mean, it doesnāt happen often, but itās a fact of life. Youāve got to be really, really careful talking with other peopleās children. Thereās very sensitive issues there.
CB: Sure. But imagine a worst-case scenario of a client-astrologer situation and you say something negative about the kidās chart. Say, they have difficult planets in the 11th house and you make some generic statement like they might have trouble with friendships at some point in their life, and then the parent as a result of that keeps them from forming friendships, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where the parent is actually the agent of the problematic thing that the astrologer saw in the chart. Thatās probably one of the things that astrologers worry about the most in terms of a client setting. But certainly Iām sure astrologers who are parents thatās a concern potentially as well perhapsāseeing something and then accidentally causing that to happen inadvertently by trying to avoid it or something.
PW: I mean, Iām trying to think of when I might have facilitated a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I gotta be honest, one, I donāt really have the time to focus on my kidsā charts as much. I am just in the daily administration of parenting them, so I donāt really parent by astrology. It must sound strange, like, āYouāre an astrologer, and youāre a parent, and you donāt parent with astrology?ā Not really. I mean, Iām aware of things. Obviously when bad things go down, I kind of look at the chart and transits, and like, āOh, yeah, well, thatās activating all my Mars placements with my kids and thatās probably why that happened.ā But I find it difficult to use it very proactively ācause life is just kind of barreling in on me the whole time. Everything’s going by too quickly to get a broader sense or perspective of whatās happening astrologically and how all these things are lining up. I donāt know if youāve noticed this Ashley, but Full Moons, they never go to sleep, right? Like I have to stay up then too ācause theyāre up.
AO: Yeah, I mean, heās only been here for a year-and-change, so he doesnāt really sleep much at all anyways.
PW: Right. Fair enough. Maybe a little later on.
AO: Yeah, his Ascendantās in Cancerāhis Ascendantās ruled by the Moonāso, yes, he definitely fluctuates with that; with the Full and New Moons, he definitely does.
CB: So that actually raises a point. Have you guys recorded or paid attention to different milestone moments astrologically in your childās developmental phases and then noted the astrological correlations? Or is that something that you avoid doing or only do in retrospect because it would take you out of the moment?
AO: I certainly have. Iāve done it for a few milestones already. Itās not like something will happen, for example, when he first started crawling, or moments when he had said, āMama,ā for the first time. I would look at the time, and I would jot it down on my phone in the note section, but I donāt pull up a chart right then and there because Iām busy focusing on making sure he doesnāt hurt himself or something.
CB: Right.
AO: Iām too busy parenting. Like Patrick said, things just are going so fast that you donāt have time to sit there and be like, āOkay, let me pull up this chart and look at this.ā You don’t have time for that.
PW: What a luxury.
AO: Yeah. Itās fun to go back and look at it later, which I have. So I definitely record certain milestones when Iām thinking about it and I see something’s happening. I look at the time and I try and write it down so I can save it for memory and look back on it, but itās not something that I definitely have time to sit there while itās happening. I try to still be in the moment and paying attention to his āfirstā or whatever is happening, so I can actually enjoy it while itās happening that first time. But, yeah, itās just looking at relevant transits and other times it seems like I donāt really get anything from this, like I donāt really see any relevant transit going on thatās relevant to that.
CB: Right.
PW: I think I took down the time that they first walked, like more than a couple of seconds of wobbling. And I think I took down the time of the first really clear word, just ācause I thought thatās gonna be useful at some point, but I think I have the data stashed away somewhere. What I think is kind of funny about looking at the transits of kids is that you see the same types of scenarios, but just shrunk down to a kid-sized version. So a kidās Mercury retrograde period is very different from an adultās Mercury retrograde period, right? I noticed this especially with my Gemini daughter, with a Mercury-ruled Sun. Sheās very clever and very crafty. Sheās veryāhow do I say it without making it sound terrible? Sheās very good at finding the loopholes in our rules and very good at executing a perfect strategy to get to the cookies when sheās not supposed to.
But a kidās Mercury retrograde period is when we told them we were gonna go to the movies if they did these chores, and then we had to go back on it because the car broke down, then theyāre real upset because we canāt go to the movie they wanted to see. I mean, for them, that is a frustrating Mercury retrograde, but itās kind of shrunk down to kid-size. Oh, my gosh, this past Mercury retrograde especiallyāwhich actually happened in my 5th houseāthere were just so many stupid arguments and fights between the kids: āShe took the remote,ā or āHe hit me.ā I mean, yes, they fight all the time kind of, but, I mean, it was like especially aggravated during this Mercury retrograde in my 5th house, and in my wifeās 5th house, ācause we both have the same Ascendant. So itās just kind of funny how if you think of an adultās experience of a Mercury retrograde and kind of shrink it down to how a kid experiences it, itās the same thing. So kind of a funny thing that I think astrology offers to the charts of kids is just bit-sized Mercury retrogrades.
AO: Itās funny that you say thatāoh, Iām sorry, go ahead.
PW: Go ahead.
CB: I was just gonna say that all of those transits would be much longer ācause theyāre taking up a much larger portion of the current overall life compared to somebody thatās an adult.
PW: And you think about that when you think about how impacting some of these early events are. I sometimes have wondered why earlier experiences are more impacting than later ones, and I think thatās a good way to look at it. The percentage of their life that Mercuryās been retrograde is rather bigā
CB: Right.
PW: āCause theyāre so young. So, yeah, itās kind of funny looking at it that way.
CB: What were you gonna say, Ashley?
AO: I was just gonna add to Patrickās point there that it was interesting, speaking of Mercury retrogrades, the one that we had earlier in the yearālike the springāI think it went back through Aries. I think it started in Taurus and went through Aries and was actually around the time that my son started crawling. When he began crawling, like a lot of babies, he began crawling backwards instead of forwards. And it was just so notable that it happened during Mercury retrograde and it was going back through Aries. And I was like, āWow.ā I remember recording that and being like, āThis is so Mercury retrograde through Aries, an infant crawling backwards for the first time.ā
CB: Wow.
AO: Yeah.
CB: Thatās great.
AO: Yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting.
CB: Yeah, I mean, thatās the thing I always missed out on; Iām the one in this group that doesnāt have any children. But the part that I feel like I missed out on is astrologers that are parents probably have the greatest empirical test of astrologyānot testābut the ability to actually study somebodyās life from the very start. And even though youāre not doing it constantly, youāre still on some level in the back of your mind noticing little things like that, Iām sure. Or when different personality traits start to come out, Iām sure thatās something that you guys are noticing. Thatās actually a good question: At what point do you start to notice some of those personality traits that might correlate with the birth chart?
PW: I think definitely as theyāve gotten older. I mean, babies, when theyāre first born theyāre just kind of cute blobs who just sleep, but eventually they start really kind of animating themselves. Thereās a weird period of time where they donāt say anything. You know they understand things, but they donāt actually say anything until they are finally ready. Itās like thereās some sort of switch that happens and then suddenly theyāre talking. So itās kind of weird to see. For example, with my eldest daughter, she didnāt really talk very much. She would say like a few words here and there; she was maybe around 3 or so. But then we got cats and she suddenly started speaking to the cats and that just kind of completely set her off. I wish I had gotten the time forāwell, actually I guess I could probably go back and find out when we got the cats because I remember that was really when her speaking developed.
But, yeah, what I was gonna say is I think they really start becoming their personalities as they go on. Itās not always immediately apparent. For example, my daughter, she has the Moon in Cancer rising, so she has the Moon ruling her Ascendant. This is the Gemini oneāsorry, I lost my thing there. And sheās such a good big sister. Sheās really grown into wanting to take care of and provide for the kids. I mean, oftentimes sheās doing things we donāt even necessarily want her to do. You know, she wants to make dinner for them; she wants to dress them. Itās almost like her younger sisters and brothers are her own children. She is very much like a mother to them to the point where weāre like, āHoney, donāt worry about it. We got it. We got it.ā Sheās very on top of it. But itās just funny ācause we associate the Moon with being a very caring and domestic and nurturing kind of character and sheās sort of embodying that even at this early age. Maybe thatās typical of big sisters, but that was one thing that I kind of noticed.
CB: Sure.
PW: Sheās devious as well though with the Sun in Gemini.
CB: Maybe some of those traits are starting to come out more as things progress, ācause that was one of the debates that came up recently. Somebody corrected me where I said there was debate about nature versus nurturing and how much is just there already when a person is born in terms of personality traits versus how much develops later as a result of environmental or other experiences that a person has. And somebody said that thatās not a debate anymore in psychology, that itās generally just acknowledged that itās both. But Iām sure thereās still questions about the extent to which one or the other is more important in some instances or less important. Are you noticing anything, Ashley, in terms of that at this stage, after a year?
AO: Yeah, so, like Patrick says, for quite a while they donāt speak, and heās just now starting to say a few words, particularly ānoā because we tell him that pretty often. But even without speaking, from a very early age, I feel like heās definitely had a lot of personality. And I donāt necessarily know or think that thatāsāI donāt want to say commonābut maybe thatās just because heās my kid and Iām like, āOh, heās really like this,ā and maybe all parents are like that. But since maybe even three- or four-months-old heās been very exuberant, very much like a Leo Moon. Very expressive and screaming out of happiness and laughing and just lots of energy. And so, I feel in a sense like thatās definitely big personality. A lot of people have noted since he was younger, āOh, heās very alert, and heās very social,ā and so I question and I wonder sometimes is that part of his Leo Moon coming out? Heās very fiery and just, āLook at me, Iām so cute.ā I donāt know what thatās about. But part of me does really feel that it is traits of his chart, his Moon, for example, coming out.
Itās interesting that you say that thatās not a debate anymore, nature versus nurture. Iām reading a book right now that is basically a really well-researched book on the topics of introversion versus extroversion. And the author speaks a lot about wondering is this something that people are born with, or is it something that just by nurture that we become a certain way. And some of the big researchers, like you said, at this point itās really a matter of both. But I think that the point has been that weāre born with certain temperaments, and depending on how we are nurtured into them we can kind of go on either side of the spectrum. And I think thatās kind of a big thing that we can see inside the chart. Is this child prone to being someone thatās more introverted and quiet and thoughtful and serious-minded, or extroverted and big personality and just outgoing and those kinds of things? I think thatās something thatās interesting because even something as simple as introversion versus extroversion has a lot of characteristics tied to those qualities.
CB: Yeah, definitely.
PW: Itās funny thoughāoh, go ahead.
CB: Even as astrologers, we can see both because the basic premise of natal astrology takes into account or assumes that there are some things that are kind of in-built qualities or tendencies. But as we were talking a few months ago on the ātwinsā episode, thereās two people that can be born with the same chart or very close to the same chart, but if theyāre raised by different families that nurture those qualities in different ways or have different synastry that might either enhance or suppress some of those qualities in different ways then itās gonna come out very differently even if you can see some base similarities.
PW: Yeah, I think something that astrology doesnāt necessarily take into account as much, or rather astrologers donāt really emphasize quite much is natal astrology sort of really leans into the idea of nature. But I think we tend to not also emphasize that these charts happen within a specific contextālike you saidāof synastric relationships with other family members, but also, in terms of chronology, transits. For example, I just thought of this as Iām looking at the swing out thereāone of the transits I was kind of worried about for my son was Mars going retrograde over his Sun. And, yeah, like within a week of that transit, he had several really bad injuries, like he fell off the swing. And since he fell off the swing, he hasnāt quite been ready to play on it again; like heās kind of found other things that he likes to play on. Also, he used to love when I would toss him into the air, and he hates that now. He doesnāt like to be held up high like that.
And just making the connection now, yeah, obviously he would be less likely to want to do the things heās experienced as a consequence of when he fell off the swing that we have outside. And thatās something you couldnāt just get from his chart knowing he has the Sun in Aquarius. Thereās several adjectives you could get from that, but I feel like the transit from Mars to his Aquarius Sun kind of brought out the more fearful or doubtful qualities of the ruler Saturn, and he only got that because of the danger that he experienced from the fall off the swing. And there were a couple of other things in that week too. He touched something that was too hot or something; Iāll have to go back and find the exact timing on that.
CB: Right. Yeah, thatās a really good point.
PW: But basically, yeah, it was a Mars transit to his Sun. It was injuries, falls, burns, that kind of thing; it was sort of what I feared. But I canāt stop him from playing. I donāt know when heās gonna touch something thatās too hot. I mean, I can try to keep those things away from him, but kids are crazy; they do things; they go places. Itās difficult.
AO: Theyāre fast.
PW: At the risk of sounding like I’m just a totally negligent parent, this stuff is really hard. And this is not an excuse, but itās difficult just keeping your kids safe and out of trouble.
CB: Yeah, I mean, thatās a really good point. So everybody has a birth chart, but then the planets keep moving after that point. And different transits are gonna hit everybodyās chart at different stages in the developmental process, whether theyāre relatively inner planet transits (like Mercury retrograde, or even some of the Mars stuff weāre mentioning here) but also outer planet transits (like Saturn and everything else). And thatās gonna have a unique imprint in terms of either emphasizing or sometimes causing problemsānot causing problemsābut correlating with problems with different placements. So I guess I could see a worst-case scenario.
So youāre talking about having the realizationāwhich youāve sort of developed, which I think all astrologers develop on their ownāabout having to let go to a certain extent and just let the chips fall where they may, which is a place a lot of astrologers eventually get to just in terms of looking at their own lives and realizing that you simply canāt control or you canāt manipulate everything. But having to do that also when it comes to people in your life, like your children, I could see the opposite though. I could see somebodyāif they were really focused on the astrologyābecoming almost neurotic about it, trying to track every transit, and trying to stop every possible difficult thing from happening. And that might be falling into that category where astrology and parenting could maybe be problematic or not as helpful as maybe it could be.
PW: Parenting is hard enough without also adding on the potential worries astrology could give you. And Iām not saying you should never use astrology in your parenting at all. But, I mean, thereās a point at which thereās just not a whole lot more you can do as a parent or as a parent consulting astrology. Yeah, so, the point Iām at is thereās only so much you can do. Obviously try your best.
AO: Certainly. Parents that are also astrologersāthereās really not that much of a difference except that itās kind of fun that we can see a chart, and it can be helpful in instances where maybe theyāre older and theyāre going through their first Saturn transit thatās significant. And so, maybe, for example, itās going through their 12th, and maybe theyāre not telling you something that theyāre feeling bad about and this is why theyāre behaving in this way. So this is how you might be able to approach them but not necessarily change anything. āCause Iām also of the philosophy that we have control over some things, but when you look at the big picture and how many other factors are going on in reality, thereās a narrow lane that weāre actually able to control, and the rest is a lot of things going on at once that we canāt. So we kind of just do our best, right?
So whether youāre a parent thatās also an astrologer or not, itās just that we have a little bit of extra tools and things so that we can kind of see maybe why somethingās happening and how we want to respond to it when we can. Otherwise if itās something thatās already happened then, āOh, maybe thatās what was going on. That Mercury retrograde in my 5thāthis is why my kids are being so annoying and wonāt just stop fighting,ā and those kinds of things. But, yeah, I agree, itās hard enough as it is. Parenting is hard.
CB: Yeah. And just knowing the duration, I mean, even for adults, usually one of the most useful things is just knowing when a certain period will probably end. Like knowing the Mercury retrograde will be over in three weeks, or knowing that Saturn transit has like a two- or three-year shelf life before the most intense part is over or what have you, I could see how that would potentially be useful in a parenting context.
PW: No, definitely.
CB: All right, what were some of the other discussion topics that we wanted to touch on here?
AO: I thought this would be just interesting. Someone recently approachedāwell, not that recently. Itās maybe been a couple of months, I donāt remember. A month or two, or maybe a little more, someone asked me if I would write parenting or child horoscopes for their site. And I thought it was interesting, but I donāt really have the time to dedicate to that right. I ended up sending it to someone else to see if they wanted to do it. But I thought that that was interesting and it kind of made me wonder if you were to write horoscopes forāI guess you guys have written horoscopes; you guys do horoscopes as well. If you were to write horoscopes in that context, letās say youāre writing it for the child, obviously the child is probably not gonna read it, the parentās gonna read it; so youāre addressing the parent. So how exactly do you write that, especially on a day-to-day basis on these transits?
Like if thereās an 8th or a 12th house transit, for example, how do you put that in the context of parenting and address it for the child? I wonder how that would be done.
CB: Yeah, youād have to re-contextualize all the house significations within a 5-year-old context. 8th house might be like learning how to share or something like that.
AO: Thatās a good point.
CB: Your toys versus someone elseās toys.
PW: Thatās almost what Valens, Vettius Valens does. He mentions in a few places in his books, āThese planetary periods get distributed by this many days [or years or whatever], but for the charts of infants, do it by days and hours.ā He just shrinks the planetary periods down. You gotta shrink the whole idea of the sky down into the experience of a child. But, I mean, how young would we be talking?
AO: I mean, I donāt know. But, yeah, that makes sense.
PW: Like 10? Like 5? Thereās a huge difference.
AO: Yeah, I wasnāt told much else about the details of that, but I just thought that was interesting and I wondered about it after. Like I wouldnāt even know how to initiate that. Like what if they gave you an age range that was between 5 and 10? It sounds a bit challenging, and Iām not really up for the task of childrenās horoscopes at this time in my life. Being a parent is enough.
CB: Yeah, thatās an interesting thought experiment of how you would construct that. And it just brings up the relative nature of astrology in general and the importance of understanding the context in which youāre doing the delineation because the context of the birth chartāor whatever chart youāre castingāreally makes a difference, and this actually came up on Twitter recently. There’s actually a lot of young astrologers now that are using Twitter and are not connected with the astrological community, but theyāve started doing readings and consultations, and theyāre using it as a micro-blogging platform and developing their own followings there and theyāre starting to do consultations. And one of the things thatās interesting is that theyāre doing what a lot of astrologers I knowāand how I started out as wellāwhich is theyāre doing written delineations or written consultations at first.
A lot of newer astrologers feel more comfortable with that because they can collect their thoughts and write out the delineation, and thereās not as much pressure to perform like in a verbal consultation, but Iāve been trying to encourage a lot of them to make that transition. You need to make the transition towards doing consultations verbally because then you can have that immediate feedback, and you can have that dialogue with the client, which is actually really crucial. āCause that helps you to establish the context of the chart and to better focus in on the things that are important and have that sort of exchange with them where they can also ask you follow-up questions to find out whatās important to them, so that you can focus on what they actually really want to talk about, and not just some other random part of their life that theyāre not interested in at the moment. So that would be important I guess even if you were doing a delineation for a 5-year-old.
AO: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
PW: Right. Ashley, I have a question for you.
AO: Okay.
PW: I mean, I donāt know if weāre allowed to do that, but do you feel that your child is described by your 5th house ruler? And do you feel like you are describing placements in your childās chart? I know heās still really young.
AO: I wonder how he feels about that. And since he canāt talk, I canāt really ask him.
PW: Right.
AO: But itās an interesting thought, definitely. Iām curious about that as well. So my 5th house ruler is Saturn, and I have Saturn conjunct Uranus within 1°. I was born during the Saturn-Uranus conjunction in Sagittarius, and itās in my 3rd house. So I have a pretty full 3rd house, and, interestingly enough, he also has a very full 3rd house. He has Sun, Mercury, Mars in the 3rd all in Virgo. So he was born during that Mercury-Mars conjunction by degree. So I feel itās a little early for me to tell if he does fit that Saturn placement. To me, he doesnāt really seem super serious right now, not yet. But he is very inquisitive and he can be mischievous in that mercurial way, so not Saturnian.
PW: Right.
AO: But I donāt know if anyone else sees this, but I do kind of find this interesting similarityāeven though thereās no aspect thereābetween Aquarius and Virgo; oneās ruled by Saturn, oneās ruled by Mercury. But I do feel like thereās kind of this interesting thing where both of them have this attraction towards analyzing patterns and fitting things into maybe labels and figuring things out.
PW: Well, theyāre both air trigons. Mercury, Saturn, and Jupiter are the air trigons, so I can see that.
AO: Yeah, so I donāt necessarily. I canāt give you a clear answer as to whether I see him as that Saturn-Uranus, but I wouldnāt be surprised being that he was born with Aries in the 10th. And I know a lot of people attribute the 10th to the father. In my own chart, I kind of give it to both parents, but I think thatās a case-by-case basis really. But he does have Uranus in the 10th, and he has Mercury-Mars in the 3rd, so make of that what you will. Even though heās not speaking actual words, he chatters a lot; thereās like a lot of gibberish. And I do kind of suspect that heāll be kind of maybe eccentric or weirdānot in a bad wayājust kind of funny. So, yeah, maybe that gives it that Saturn-Uranus. As far as his chart, he has the Moon in Leo. His Moon doesnāt make any Ptolemaic aspects, so it doesnāt really have any kind of filter. So Iām curious how thatās gonna come out, and Iām hoping to kind of help him channel that into balancing caring for himself as well as others since he has that Ascendant ruled by the Moon.
When he was born with the Moon in Leo, I was like he could have easily been born with the Moon in Cancer in the 1st. And so, that was one of the thingsāonce I finally got to see his chart after he was bornāI was like, āMoon in Leo? That’s cool.ā I was like, āSo am I gonna be the āMoon in Leoā mom? Is he gonna be seeing me as dramatic?ā Which I think probably thatās true. Is he gonna see me as flamboyant and, I donāt know, very expressive. For me, I think thatās kind of interesting.
PW: The āastrologerā mom.
CB: Right.
AO: Maybe that kind of weird, funny mom. I guess the āhippieā mom or something like that, even though, to me, I see myself as a very serious-minded, kind of serious person. But then in that sense I am very playful with him, and I try and bring out a very childlike attitude with him because heās very high energy and he needs a lot of stimulation and entertainment. So perhaps, perhaps.
PW: Yeahā
AO: Oh, Iām sorry.
PW: Oh, no, go ahead.
AO: I just noticed a transit. As far as seeing us as parents in their charts, I did notice in this last yearābecause he was having a Cancer profectionāthe Moon transits were especially important to him. And I noticed a lot of times when the Moon was transiting through Aries and going through the 10th that my partner actually tended to get injured during those days. Like a couple of times he sprained or injured his foot and his toe really badly and he couldnāt walk or carry my son, so I had to always, always carry him and put him to sleep. And one time he hurt his hand, and one time he hurt his back. So I thought that one was really interesting ācause it was like after it happened a couple of times, I was like, āI have to look at these transits; he just keeps injuring himself,ā and every time it was like there was an important aspect with the Moon. And especially I noticed that itās transits to Aries, which happens to be through his 10th house, and I thought that was an interesting thing to see.
CB: Yeah, thatās really interesting. I mean, that reminds me of children having a heavy Saturn transit through the 7th house. Itās not them having relationships or something, but itās their experience or observations of what relationships are about if thereās something going on in the parentsā marriage; if the parents split up or something like that. And thatās sometimes a tricky thing that I have come across occasionally, when an astrologer sees something that might be tricky in a childās chart that might be reflecting something about the parents, either in terms of their relationship with them, or the relationship between the parents with each other.
PW: Yeah. I mean, I have some examples that are kind of personal. But suffice it to say, I mean, I think that when transits are happening through the 7th house of a childās chart, I think that itās reflecting through the parents to some degree. Obviously a child doesnāt necessarily have their own relationships, but the topic of partnerships and connections or relationships, I think it has to do with, to some degree, how the parentsā relationship is going. I mean, thereās a lot of things that happen in a childās life which are directly related to the decisions and events that are happening in the parentsā life. I donāt know, itās almost like the cycles of planets mature. Venus transits, the first time around, those first eight years, those are gonna be very different kinds of Venus events than when you experience them the second time through, from 8 to 16; thatās gonna be the widening of your social circle. Then 16 to 24, those are probably gonna be more serious adult relationships and it sort of continues on with each pass of the cycle. Not every Venus transit is equal is what Iām trying to say.
Anyway, what was I gonna say? Oh, I was originally gonna respond to Ashleyās comments about how the parents are reflected in the childās chart. Whatās kind of interesting in the charts of my kids, the 4th house ruler for all of them is in the 10th house of their charts. So their parents are all in their 10th houses. So Iām trying to figure out exactly what that means since they all have the same house position for their 4th house ruler. Itās represented by different planets, but still in the 10th. One thing Iāve noticed with the ruler of my 5th, the ruler of my 5th is Jupiter in the 9th. And itās the same thing for my wife. She has the ruler of her 5th in the 9th.
And what I think is interesting about that is I was born in England, my wife was born in Phoenix, my kids were born in a foreign landācoming to the United States. And then for my wife, her kids have English dual citizenship, so they could theoretically move to the UK as adults and as citizens. So thereās kind of an interesting connection there. I wonder if it will mean that our kids could potentially move away from us, since they potentially have that capability. But then also just the very fact that my kids donāt come from my own homeland. I went somewhere else and thatās where I had childrenāwith Jupiter in the 9thāfrom the UK to the US. So I think thatās kind of an interesting way of how my 5th ruler has already kind of played out in my own story of my children.
CB: Yeah, I have an example like that I think I used in my book of a client who had the ruler of the 5th in the 9th. She had two children, and one of them grew up always wanting to live abroad. He wanted to live in Asia for some reason. And as soon as he turned 18, he moved abroad and heās been living there for the rest of his adult life. And the other child grew up in a largely non-religious household, but then when she got older, she got really interested and involved in this specific sect of Christianity, and she ended up moving across the country to live in like a religious commune of some sort.
PW: Interesting.
CB: So both children ended up manifesting different versions of 9th house significations basically and you could kind of see it in their motherās chart.
AO: Thatās cool.
PW: Interesting.
AO: Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah, I remember just a few days after Lucas was born looking at his chart and making speculations about us as the parents, about our livesājust looking at his chart and not necessarily even the 4th house, but looking at his Moon and thinking the ruler of that was in the 3rdāIām like, āHuh, am I going to homeschool him?ā ācause I have a thing with wanting to be particularly involved in what heās educated on and how heās educated. And so, I was like, āOh, I wonder if I actually will be homeschooling him,ā and stuff like that. So itās interesting to kind of be able to make choices or to think about what you will do down the road in your own life just looking at someone elseās chart, your childās chart.
CB: Right.
PW: Ashley, did you say that the ruler of your 5th was in the 3rd?
AO: Yes.
PW: So, I mean, the 3rd is like early education, right?
AO: Yeah, yeah.
PW: I mean, Saturn in the 3rd, itās quite a lot of effort to do homeschooling. So thatās interesting that itās already kind of popped up as a primary concern for you, the schooling and education.
AO: Yeah, itās something that Iāve thought aboutāoh, sorry, go ahead.
PW: And you also mentioned that he had the Sun, Mercury, and Mars in the 3rd as well.
AO: Mm-hmm.
PW: I mean, I donāt want to do an on-the-spot interpretation of your childās chart without seeing any other details, but even just from those details I would think that someone with the Sun, Mercury, and Mars in the 3rd might be a bit of a class clown potentially or a prankster of some sort. Maybe it would be difficult for them to be in a traditional classroom environment. And that might be the source of how you then have to put in a lot of effort in 3rd house activities related to your child in kind of taking the reins of educating your child yourself.
AO: Yeah.
PW: I mean, I hope Iām not overstepping my bounds here.
AO: No, thatās okay. Itās interesting.
PW: A mid-podcast reading.
AO: Right.
PW: But I think thatās kind of interesting that it sort of lines up that way already.
AO: Right. Yeah, thereās like that emphasis between both charts having a 3rd house emphasis. Which actually kind of leads me to another thing that I was hoping that we could discuss, which is talking about composite charts with our children, looking at composite charts between parents and children. Which is not something that I had really thought about too much until recently when I was researching things to consider for this episode when I was approaching Chris about it, and then I did end up casting a composite chart between myself and my son. So itās interesting to see. Iām curious if you have any thoughts about that in general.
PW: Well, I actually must admit that I have not looked at any composite charts between myself and my kids. I donāt tend to use composites quite as much in my practice as I used to. I think theyāre interesting as midpoint maps. Weāre talking about midpoint composites, right?
AO: Yeah.
PW: One thought I kind of have about that is thatās sort of showing one part of the story, like mother with the child. I wonder how youād be able to combine three charts?
AO: Right.
PW: āCause youāre half of who they are and then the father is the other. So I wonder how one would combine three charts together? Maybe looking at the midpoint of the midpoints between the mother-child, father-childā
AO: Yeah, thatās a little bit of a head trip.
PW: Yeah.
CB: I mean, I think somebody does do group composites. I think thatās an option on Astrodienst, so it may be a thing that some astrologers do. But it is an interesting question and thatās always been an interesting idea for me, and I think I interviewed John Townley just a year or two ago. And the idea that when two people come together, and they have some sort of relationship in their life, itās like there is some third entity which is the composite chart or the relationship itself. And thereās something about your dynamic thatās different from either of your individual charts on their own, or even different from what your synastry is. Thereās almost like some other third element and that is sort of represented by the composite chart in some sense. Yeah, I mean, that would be interesting to explore more deeply for an individual like a parent or in other types of family relationships.
PW: Ooh, I have a question. Oh, sorry, go ahead.
AO: I was just gonna say that I did think about that episode that you did with him when I had come across some material online talking about composite charts between parents and children. And then I thought about your episode, thinking about comparing how does one person benefit or not benefit, or what do they take away from that relationship, which is the entity of the two charts together that youāre comparing. Like comparing one chart with the other parent chart to the composite, and the child chart to the compositeāwhat does each person take away from that? The subtleties and all of that gets tied into the relationship itself and the bond between parent and child. I thought that was interesting.
CB: Yeah. I mean, one of the big things thatās really fascinating are the instances where the child can have one perception of the parent that may or may not actually reflect what the parentās actually like to an objective observer, or when a child has a certain experience of the parent as being overbearing or being some other quality specifically. It might be coming out more due to the synastry or due to maybe even the composite chart or something like that thatās really emphasizing whatever personality or traits the parent has being perceived much more intensely in a way thatās maybe not quite as they might seem to somebody else. And I like the idea of being able to explore that a little bit more through astrology, through things like synastry or the composite chart.
AO: Yeah, I think that could be really helpful for those that are actually licensed therapists, if they were also astrologers. I think that could be a very helpful tool to use.
CB: Right. āCause then they could identify that your parent makes you feel this, and these are some of the feelings that you have that you may have a hard time processing, in terms of your relationship with them, and this causes problems, or what have you. But from this other perspective, your parent is maybe not necessarily that way to other people, or they might come off differently to other people.
AO: Yes.
PW: I was gonna ask, how do you approach the issue of having multiple children? āCause thereās the derived method where you look at the third from the 5th, like the sibling of the child. And then I guess the 9th is the third from 7th, the next child, and so on. āCause, I mean, I generally take the 5th house and its ruler to be kind of the primary significator for children in general, so not just specifically the first child. But thereās an interesting thought of potentially using derived houses to represent the different children. Although I guess it would repeat after having six children. What do you think? Do you guys have any thoughts on that?
CB: I havenāt dealt with that that much, but I know itās an issue. Iāve run into instances where, to me, itās been clearālike with that other 5th house exampleāthat both children were just manifesting different aspects of the same house, and it was more just like there was the house for children and the ruler of that house was in the 9th, and then both of the nativeās children happen to manifest different version of the same archetype. Very distinctly different, and yet still overarchingā
PW: Thematically consistent.
CB: Yeah, thematically consistent ways.
PW: Yeah, and thatās the way I would look at it too, but I didnāt know if you had an opinion about the derived house method for different siblings
AO: I know that people do certainly use it. I donāt, and I havenāt really practiced that either. I think itās interesting, and Iām a little curious because my dad, for example, has seven kids, so Iām curious as to how that would look if we were to use the derived houses. He also has Sagittarius in the 5th with Saturn there. So heās got Jupiter ruling his 5th, and he definitely has a lot of kids.
PW: Donāt tell me that. Seven kids, oh, Jesus.
AO: Yeah.
CB: Another thing related to that is in a lot of ancient authors, it wasnāt just the 5th house that was children, but also the 10th house was treated as having to do with children. The 10th house is the house of praxis or of occupation and what one does, or what one creates or produces, and the 10th house then was partially like one of the things that you end up accomplishing in your life, which is your children. So those two houses were treated as relating to children. And in some authors, like Ptolemy, that gets extended to also the 11th house and the 4th house. So he actually deals withā
PW: Right. The 4th, 5th, 10th, 11th.
CB: Yeah, as all relating to children. And I was never sure if that was because of derivative houses where heās saying that the 5th and the 10th deal with children, and then the 4th and the 11th are like the 5th and the 10th relative to the 7th. So itās like your partnerā
PW: Your partnerās child as well.
CB: Right. Or if there was some other independent reason for those assignments. Like the fact that Jupiter has its ājoysā in the 11th, and Jupiter was associated with procreation and the begetting of children and stuff in Valens. Not really clear, but thatās worth exploring as well if somebody wanted to do more of a research topic on the houses that signify children and how to deal with the issue of multiple children in a personās life.
PW: And thereās also a couple of lots of childrenā
AO: Oh, right.
PW: Which Valens talks about as well. So, yeah, I mean, I guess when I see all that Iām just kind of like, āYou know what? Iām gonna stick with the 5th.ā The 5th works. We know it works. I donāt know about the other ones necessarily, but we at least know the 5th does. And it works on the conceptual level of diurnal motion is bringing the fifth sign towards the IC. So itās not your point of origin, but it eventually becomes part of your family thatās being brought forth towards your family. So thatās what kids are; they become part of your family. And itās the sign after the 4th too, so itās what follows being in your own home with your parents to eventually having your own family with your own kids. So itās sort of that which follows your IC.
CB: The continuation of the family lineage.
PW: Right.
AO: Yeah, so I suppose there are a lot of different ways that if astrologers did specialize, or if they did have a knack for doing charts with parents and children, there are a lot of different ways that they could look at those kinds of things which are useful. I havenāt really delineated for parents, and Iām a little iffy about who I would take on as a client for that if I did, just because it can be such a touchy topic and you want to be careful. But, yeah, I think I prefer to stick to the 5th as well. I like simplicity. I donāt want to overcomplicate things. That can also happen with asteroids and all kinds of things. One of the things that attracted me to traditional astrology is itās simple and thereās good structure. Itās just, okay, follow this, and it makes sense. So 5th house as well.
PW: Right. Straightforward.
AO: Right.
CB: Right. And speaking of traditional astrology, one of the questions that you had put in the outline was, āFor more traditional- or Hellenistic-oriented astrologers, how do you feel about analyzing zodiacal releasing periods of your childrenās charts?ā which is particularly for career, which is unique. Zodiacal releasing is such a bizarre technique ācause it calculates all of the periods, and it breaks a personās entire life up into chapters for like the first hundred years or 150 years; basically the foreseeable future of the personās entire life into very specific, discrete chapters.
AO: I will say that I have done it.
CB: You have done it? Okay.
AO: Yeah, so I definitely looked just because I was curious. So he has Fortune in Virgo, and he has Spirit in Gemini. So he has them angular to each other, which is cool. And so, Mercury is just such a huge player in his chart: I mean, Fortune and Spirit, and the Mercury and Mars conjunction, the Sun, all in the 3rd. So I did look. Like we discussed earlierāand I agree with a lot of what Patrick saidāIām not going to push him to do a certain career or do something that I think, āOh, you should do this. Youāre really good at this.ā I think that each person should make their decision for themselves. I will suggest if he asks questions, or if heās curiousāwhich I think heāll be very curiousābut I think heāll probably be able to figure it out on his own as his own person. As an astrologer and being his mom, I was curious, like, āHmm, I wonder what his zodiacal releasing periods look like.ā So I imagined as Iām looking at them, āOh, so the first 20 years of life is gonna be like this,ā and started imagining scenarios and how he might develop into a person; probably someone very inclined towards academics perhaps or something like that, which wouldnāt be surprising given his parentsā backgrounds.
CB: Sure.
PW: I have definitely looked obviously. Yeah, I canāt resist, so I definitely looked. One thing to keep in mind is I think Valens says that for infants or for youth that you should look at Fortune rather than Spirit. Especially when theyāre younger, theyāre more ruled by circumstance, by the circumstances of their parents; theyāre less independent. So the idea is that you use Fortune for both topics until theyāve sort of developed more of their own mind. I think he even says around 19 is when you should officially start using Spirit for analyzing the charts of young people. So, yeah, I looked at my sonās zodiacal releasingāI forget exactly what I saw with my daughtersābut he does have a Fortune 10th period, but way later in life, like in his 60ās. So Iām not sureāitās like long periods of obscurity and then this really, really big one somewhere in his 60ās. So it kind of makes me think of the kinds of things that people do that are really, really big when they are at that age. I mean, sometimes thatās when people are finally retired and kind of get to do what they want to do.
AO: Right.
PW: So he might be freed up to kind of pursue his lifeās work at that time and have big success. But look at the average age of a presidential candidateāthatās gonna be middle-aged to 60ās, so, I mean, thatās potentially another possibility. I think itās sort of back to reading, yeah, his Fortune 10th. Thatās definitely a much more visible period. So itās kind of a curiosity. Iāll never see it. I wonāt be alive at that point. Itās just so kind of odd to think that at that point heād probably be a grandfather potentially. I mean, it doesnāt really impact anything on a day-to-day basis, but I guess I kind of know maybe heās got some calling heās gonna get to do like way later on down the line. So I just wonder what the point of knowing it is. But I know itāI know that that was on the docket for his releasing.
CB: Yeah, I think a recurring theme here that we keep coming back to is a lot of just silent knowing. And itās not necessarily that youāre doing anything with that, or thereās not the necessity of needing to do something with it actively, but sometimes just part of being an astrologer and being a parent is just silent observation and knowing about certain things even if youāre not actively trying to manipulate or control things, or go out of your way to do something different than what you would otherwise.
AO: Yeah, definitely feels like a wise, oldāeven though we’re not really old yetāa wise, old person that looks into it, not with a crystal ball. I remember one time you did something, or you put something up with a crystal ball. To a lot of people, from the outside, it seems like astrologers are that. We have this crystal ball in front of us, and weāre just looking in and telling you about your future.
CB: Right.
PW: Yeah.
AO: Yeah, so it does feel like that. But, yeah, definitely, even as parents, how could we not want to know what happens to the little humans that we help create?
CB: Right. Yeah, I mean, I think itās interesting. Weāre gonna have to check back in periodically over the next 5, 10, 20 years just to see how things are going, and to see if youāve had any new evolving insights as youāve gotten further into this journey, as both parents and astrologers, if your views have changed at all, or if youāve noticed anything different thatās surprised you or if itās just continued to confirm where youāre at already at this point.
AO: Yeah. Iām sorry, I have one more question. And actually I didnāt know that this would be perfectly relevant, but it kind of is, because Patrick mentioned having stepchildren. So I was curious, do you also use the 5th house, do you do derivative houses, or do you look at Saturn when youāre looking at those kinds of things in their charts? I mean, have you even considered that? Iām sure you did.
PW: Yeah, itās really interesting you bring that up because it was actually pretty early on in my astrological studies I read thatāI forget exactly who. It was some traditional author who said that Saturn in the 5th can indicate that one is a father of others, which I thought was always kind of strange.
CB: That’s one of Valensā significations of Saturn.
PW: Okay, yeah. So Saturn in the 5th is being a father of otherās children. Whatās especially weird about that is I have Saturn in Sagittarius. When I was growing up, I was raised totally Catholic, and I had to choose a confirmation name. So I had to choose a saint to be the name that I would take for being confirmed as a Catholic. And so, I donāt know, I was looking through this book of saints, trying to figure out which one am I gonna be: Saint Barnabas, Saint Francis. Then I thought, āI donāt respect any of these.ā The only one I actually like is Saint Joseph because he wasnāt Jesusā real dad or anything, but he still was a dad to Jesus. So I thought, āThatās noble. I respect that.ā So I just think itās kind of strange that, yeah, just a few years later when Iām getting into astrology and rebelling against Catholicism that I read this thing about how having Saturn in the 5th means being a father to another personās child.
And I didnāt really think much about it later on, but when I was about 24 I met my wife; she was not my wife at that point obviously. I had no idea what her life was like, all I knew was I was super in love. And I didnāt know that she had just gotten out of a divorce. I didnāt even know that she had a child. So it was really hard on her, and it was this big surprise. She has a child, her husbandās left, out of the picture and not in their lives. And I just kind of thought to myself, well, this is a thing that can happen sometimes. Iām really in love with this woman, and Iām not going to deny this feeling just because she has had a child. I thought thatānot that this is the reason I did itāit reminded me of the fact that I had at one point held Saint Joseph in high esteem precisely because heād been a stepparent of a sort, and I have Saturn in the 5th.
Thereās been some complications with that. This is not an easy situation, necessarily, but this was very gratifying as well because sheās my first daughter. Sheās my first child, and sheās my first experience at being a parent. Her Sun is exactly opposite my Saturn. So itās interesting because obviously sheās connected to me through this difficult topic of being a stepparent literally with her Sun opposite my Saturn. But when we got married, when I got married to my current wife, Venus was at that degree. And I made a special vow on that day to be her father as I was marrying her mother. So Venus was on her Sun opposite my Saturn on that day, and that is I feel like the sweet little story of me being a stepdad. Now how actually I am as a stepdad is completely up for debate, but at least the road there was kind of described very well I think by Saturn in the 5th. The 5th ruler describes my children, but I think the planets in my 5th houseāSaturn and Uranusākind of describe the incidental circumstances of the topic of children in my life.
CB: Yeah, thatās brilliant. So it sounds like itās still the 5th house, and it was indicated in your natal chart itself by having Saturn in the 5th.
PW: Right.
CB: And thatās actually really brilliant that you noticed that transit. You have a night chart, so Venus would be the most positive planet for you in transits. And it opposed and aspected exactly that Saturn placement the day that you actually became officially a stepfather.
PW: I elected the wedding, but that was an unintended consequence of picking that date.
CB: Okay.
PW: I also thought the whole connection with the Saint Joseph stuff was really weird too because the ruler of my 5th obviously is Jupiter in the 9th. So it has all this sort of religious connotation, even though itās not a religion I hold. I mean, I still respect Saint Joseph, Iām just not a Catholic.
CB: Yeah, totally. And then thereās one last one that I look forward to hearing more about from you guys in the future, which is just events happening in the parentsā lives that are reflected in the childās chart. So the child having certain indications for their parents or certain transits of planets through the 4th house relating to parents and then events happening in your lives which someone correlates with that is another interesting feature of this whole astrology of parents and children thatās kind of mysterious.
AO: Yeah, I think thatāll be interesting to see as time goes on.
CB: Right.
PW: Iāll try to keep better track.
CB: Better keep good notes. āCause itās not just us. Itās not you guys watching their charts, but thereās something weird where thereās a reverse thing going on as well where their charts are sometimes reflecting your life in this weird and very mysterious way.
AO: Right.
PW: Mysterious.
CB: All right, well, I think that brings us to the end of this episode. We were gonna shoot for 90 minutes and weāre right there right now. Is there anything that we were supposed to touch on, or that we meant to that we didnāt get a chance to?
AO: I donāt think so. I think we pretty much covered it. Oh, there was a list if someone were interested or kind of curious as to why they might consult with astrology for their childās chart. Thereās a number of things that you could get from it. Should I quickly read off the little list of things?
CB: Sure. Yeah, if you wanted to, go ahead.
AO: Oh, okay. So the first is looking into their emotional nature and needs, and we talked a bit about that. The second was the parent-child dynamics, the perceptions of the mother and father; we talked about that as well. Intellectual and psychological profile. Their physical needs. Also, their health and their vitality, which youād look at through the 1st house. The innate gifts, talents, and their creative outlets, and things that you might want to kind of encourage; maybe not push but encourage them to seek out. Some of the collective traits in their generation. So you might look at 11th house things like their friends or generational stuff that they might be involved in. Their learning tendencies; their personal learning tendencies and their ideal educational environment; we kind of talked about that a bit. And then their spiritual orientation and development and the best ways to nurture that. So, yeah, I really wanted to touch upon that. And that was actually referenced from another astrologerāand I forget the link. Itās like soulbridging-something. Iām sure you can include that, right, Chris?
CB: Yeah, it looks like itās at soulbridging.com/parenting-consciously-astrology. And the article is titled, āParenting Consciously with Astrology,ā by Natasha Alter, on the website soulbridging.com.
AO: Yeah, she has some good information there, but I thought that list was actually really succinct. It was really good.
CB: Yeah. And Iād love to hear more from listeners as well. Hopefully people can post some comments in the comments section on the description page for this episode on theastrologypodcast.com, just in terms of some of the questions that we were talking about here. Where do you come down with the question of looking at your childās chart versus not? Are you one of those astrologers that chooses not to, or chooses to, and what are your reasons for that? Do you have any good examples? Itās funny ācause both of you are younger people, so youāre still a little bit earlier in this journey. But Iāve actually met and been friends with a lot of older astrologers that have children and have had children that grew up and had entire lives and families of their own, and so Iām sure thereās a lot of interesting stories and observations that people like that could share, if they feel like sharing them in the comments section or other things related to this topic. So hopefully it can be the start of a broader discussion about this rather than obviously the endpoint of the discussion.
AO: Yeah, I think thereās a lot more to discuss, so hopefully that was an engaging conversation. I thought it was. It was interesting some of the things that we talked about and some of the stories that you shared, Patrick. I think it was cool to see that. So, definitely, it would be cool to keep the conversation going online.
CB: Definitely.
PW: Yeah, it was nice to hear some of your comments about parenting and astrology. It was pretty cool. I donāt think I really talk to astrologers about parenting.
AO: Not often, right?
PW: Astrologyās not a family-friendly field necessarily. But, yeah, hopefully weāll get some cool comments from other parent astrologers, and hopefully none from people who want to pretend that their furbabies are the same as having human children. I donāt know the astrology of furbabies is equivalent toā
AO: Skin-babies?
PW: Skin-babies.
AO: I definitely want to meet the other parent astrologers out there.
PW: We should start a parent astrologers group, a therapy group.
CB: And pet astrology is a whole other topic that I have not gotten to, but hopefully one of these days, on a future hard-hitting episode of The Astrology Podcast.
PW: Hey, maybe you could have a furbaby, Chris, and you could do a full astrological experiment.
CB: Yeah, an investigative report. I will get back to you on that.
PW: You need a puppy.
CB: Where can people find out more information? Patrick, whatās your website? What are you doing at this point? You got a new venture recently, right?
PW: Uh, yeah. So Iāve transitioned away from the āBig Fat Astroā label to some degree, but you can find my work now at www.patrickwatsonastrology.com. I also have a website called www.weddingastrologer.com, which is for newly-engaged couples looking to elect their wedding dates. So you can find me at www.patrickwatsonastrology.com.
AO: Fun.
CB: Brilliant. And, Ashley, where can people find out more information about you?
AO: So you can find me, if Instagram is your thing, you can find me on Instagram. My handle is temple_healing_arts. I also have a website where I blog, and you can book me for consultations there. My websiteās cosmicsoupbowl.com. So ācosmicā and āsoupbowlā dot com, just all one. Thereās no hyphens or anything. And you can also find me on Facebook. If Facebook is your thing, my Facebook handle for my page for astrologyāitās a mix of astrology because Iām also a mother; I blog about motherhood as well. So just search for āAshley Otero, Writer and Astrologerāāor āAstrologer and Writerā. Iām sorry, I messed that up. Itās āAstrologer and Writerā. Yeah, Iāll send you the information for that if you want to link it there on your page.
CB: Brilliant. Yeah, Iāll put links to your websites in the description page for this episode on theastrologypodcast.com, so people can check them out there. And I meant to mention a really quick announcement. I recently tweaked it for iTunes and RSS feeds for podcast apps on phones. For the past eight years or however long Iāve been doing the podcast, it only shows the latest 50 episodes. But I actually finally figured out how to tweak it, so now it shows all 184 episodes. So now you can access all of the back catalog and go all the way back to Episode 15 or whatever the earliest episode Patrick was on and listen to the start of his whole journey into parenting and everything else from way back in 2012 when the podcast was started. And I think thatās it. So, yeah, thanks a lot guys for joining me today. Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we will see you again next time.
AO: Thanks. Bye.
PW: Thanks for having us. Bye.