The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 297, titled:
April 2021 Astrology Forecast
With Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on March 31, 2021
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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 Teresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released August 31st, 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 is episode 297, and we’re recording it on Monday, March 29th, 2021, starting at about 11:18 AM here in Denver, Colorado. Joining me today are astrologers Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock, and we’re gonna be looking at the astrological forecast for April of 2021. Hey guys, welcome back to the show.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey —
KELLY SURTEES: Hey!
AC: — Chris.
CB: So today, we have a audience of patrons who are joining us recording this live, so thanks everyone for joining us today. Let’s go ahead and jump right into it. First, taking a look at the Planetary Alignments Calendar for April of 2021, and a lot of what we’re gonna be focused on this month is a shift of planets that are gonna be moving through the sign of Aries, and then eventually the sign of Taurus, as well as a shift of Mars moving from Gemini into Cancer. And this is a lot of really the main focus of this month are those inner planet shifts, as well as a New Moon taking place in Aries, and a Full Moon taking place in Scorpio.
Here is the Planetary Alignments Calendar that shows the ingress of Mercury on the 3rd of April into Aries. Then the New Moon in Aries taking place on the 11th of the month. Venus moving into Taurus on the 14th. The Sun-Mercury conjunction and cazimi taking place on the 18th. Mercury and the Sun both simultaneously moving into Taurus on the 19th. Mars moving into Cancer on the 23rd. Full Moon in Scorpio on the 26th, and finally Pluto stationing retrograde on the 27th of April.
So those are some of our major transits this month. Let’s go ahead and take a look at where the planets are right now today as we’re recording this. Here is our amazing electional chart for recording this episode today with Cancer rising and the Moon applying to a trine with Jupiter in a day chart. We’re just finishing off the Sun-Venus cazimi here at the end of March that we mentioned at the end of the last forecast episode. And have you guys had anything happen in terms of that cazimi recently?
KS: It’s still too internal I think, for me.
CB: Okay. I noticed I had Demetra George’s volume two of her series, Ancient Astrology, the proof copy just showed up in the mail the other day and we pulled it out and started reading through it, which I was really excited about. And then the publisher pointed out that the last time the proof copy for volume one came through that it was also the day of a Sun-Venus cazimi, which is kind of an interesting correlation. So that was something I noticed. Anything for you, Austin?
AC: Nothing super specific. But yeah.
CB: Okay. No problem. All right, so we’re gonna be looking at the astrology of April today. Shall we just start at the top of the month and go through chronologically, or are there any major overview statements that you guys wanted to make first?
KS: I think – I mean, I have a couple of statements, but I don’t wanna take up too much time. I mean, the —
CB: Go nuts. Just like, take up as much as time as you want.
KS: Okay! The general vibe when I looked at April was planets moving from hot signs to cold signs, so throughout the month, we’ve got planets leaving – well, in Gemini and Aries, and then switching to Taurus and Cancer. So there’s this like, cooling off, which can translate into sort of a slowing down or some sort of settling or even going from more of an extroversion to an introversion. Just as a general tone. And the one other piece that I was – you know, I always look at what’s unique about this month. Both the lunations will be ruled by Mars this month, except that Mars will change signs between the lunations. So we get the New Moon ruled by Mars in Gemini, and then the Full Moon in Scorpio which will be ruled by Mars in Cancer. I know we’re gonna talk about all of those in detail, but just as the theme, they were some things that caught my eye.
CB: That’s a really great point. That New Moon in Aries on the 11th, and then Full Moon in Scorpio on the 26th.
KS: Yeah. I was like, what do they have in common? Oh, Mars! Everyone’s favorite friend!
CB: Right. That makes sense. Is that the same sense that you were getting for your overview this month, Austin, in terms of that shift initially of all the planets – the inner planets – like, moving through the fire sign of Aries and then that shift into Taurus?
AC: Yeah, very much so. And the end of the month not only has sort of a trio of ingresses as we get Sun, Mercury, and Venus, not necessarily in that order, moving into Taurus. Then we have all three of those planets activating Uranus, and to a certain degree reactivating the Uranus-Saturn square. So I’m certainly looking at that as sort of an interesting moment. And there is Kelly’s point about the temperature of the planets is I’m seeing now is totally true. Because not only are the Sun, Venus, and Mars moving from hot Aries to a cooler Taurus, but we also have Mars moving into a water sign around the same timeframe. So yeah, that’s really interesting.
CB: Yeah. And I would recommend everybody really pay attention to what whole sign house those ingresses are, you know, shifting into relative to your life in order to personalize it and understand what that’s gonna mean for you. I like both of you mentioning or Kelly mentioning, you know, that activation of the planets going through Taurus activating the Saturn-Uranus square, and then something Leisa mentioned to me, which is worth noting also is just the planets moving through Aries, this is gonna be the first time we’ve gotten a cluster of planets moving through the sign that Mars went retrograde in last year for about six months for such a long span of time. And whatever some of the either activity that that kicked up or some of the sometimes tensions that that kicked up having a little bit of a reactivation of that, not necessarily in a negative sense, but maybe in more of a clean-up sense since we see Venus moving through that range of degrees and having a New Moon take place in that same area of everyone’s charts basically.
So that’s some of the overview in terms of basic things. Should we jump into – are there any like, review things that happened in the past month that we need to touch on, or should we jump into the chronological breakdown of April?
KS: I’m happy to jump in.
AC: Yeah. Let’s jump in.
KS: Okay.
CB: Okay, here we go. All right, so let’s start with April 1st. We start out the month it looks like coming off of the Mercury-Neptune conjunction that we’re clearly experiencing today as we’re recording this, as it’s like, a degree away. Mercury-Neptune conjunction in Pisces. And that’s really one of the first major shifts that happens this month is that Mercury moves out of Pisces away from that conjunction with Neptune and moves into the sign of Aries where it catches up with the Sun and Venus which have already been transiting through that sign for, what, like, a week or two now.
Other things that we start the month out with – Saturn and Jupiter are still transiting through Aquarius as they have been for the past few months. Jupiter’s really cruising at this point, and it already is at 23 degrees of Aquarius at the start of the month. And by the end of the month, it gets all the way to 28 degrees of Aquarius. So this is basically the last full month of Jupiter in Aquarius for a little bit, right?
KS: Yes, yes, it is.
AC: Yeah.
CB: All right, so live that up for those with the Aquarius placements like myself while you still can before Jupiter moves into Pisces. Let’s see. What else do we have going on? The Sun-Venus conjunction is still coming off that cazimi that occurred early in Aries is still separating, still starting to get some distance here at this point by April 1st. The Sun is at 12 Aries, and Venus is at 13 Aries. Mars has just passed the halfway point and passed the conjunction with the North Node, with the node being at 12 degrees of Gemini and Mars being at 16 degrees of Gemini. So we’re just coming off of that conjunction. I was noticing something this past month where I had like, a transit of a South Node over a planet and noticed a distinct like, experience of decrease in some area of my life. And this was like, the second or third major transit that I’ve had like that over the past few years where I’ve noticed that as a really tangible signification having to do with the nodes, which is actually one of the ancient and like, basic significations all the way from the 6th or 7th century that the North Node has to do with increase and the South Node has to do with decrease. But I was struck by how literal that can be sometimes. Have you guys noticed that happening very literally sometimes as well?
AC: Yeah. I think I have one really obvious anecdote about that, and what I would say is that when decrease is certainly not the wrong term, but often disappearance, which is a somewhat sudden decrease as per the, you know, the eclipse point’s natural powers is maybe a little closer. So this was 2015. Yeah, it was 2015, and Mercury was exactly conjoin – sorry, the South Node was transiting my Mercury exactly, and I wasn’t thinking about this. But I was getting ready to do the hell march that was writing my yearly astrological almanac, which I did five of, and I was like, you know what? I don’t wanna do this. And I just was like, I’m just gonna let it go. I’m gonna do other projects. And then it was like, a week later, I just noticed that the South Node was on the degree of my Mercury in the 10th. So literally letting go of a writing project.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Very literal.
CB: That makes sense. And that’s something I saw a few years ago when somebody stepped down from an organizational position that they’d been leading for several years, and the transiting South Node moved over and conjoined the ruler of their 11th house at that time. So there was like, a decrease in 11th house activities at that time where they stepped back from or relinquished power over an organization that they were heading.
Have you had stuff like that, Kelly?
KS: Yeah. I can’t think of a personal example, but it is something that comes up with clients a lot. I’m working with a couple of Sag rising clients at the moment, so obviously South Node’s going through the first. And some of the things they’re experiencing are just lower vitality or loss of energy, sometimes for a specific reason and sometimes for a non-specific reason. But that general quality of diminishment or decrease showing up with, you know, first house things for sure.
CB: Okay. That’s really cool and really interesting to me, because sometimes I was having a hard time distinguishing between whether things are happening because the eclipses are taking place in those signs for like, a year and a half or two years or whether the nodes were really acting as sensitive points that were decreasing or increasing things in those specific degrees. But it really is sometimes the specific degrees that are standing out even if the broader sequence of like, eclipses taking place is relevant as well.
AC: Yeah, they definitely matter as transits even when we’re not in the middle of a pair of eclipses.
KS: Yes. I would concur for sure.
CB: Yeah. All right. So back to our chart for the moment. So Mars is just getting off of that conjunction with the North Node as it moves into the second half of Gemini at the very beginning of the month. What else do we have? Pluto’s —
AC: Well, so there’s one thing about that that might be worth noting. I think I saw someone in the comments bring it up. I don’t remember. I wanna give them credit. Maybe somebody else can find it. But so the Mars moving past the North Node breaks the Kala Sarpa yoga that we’ve been inside of for a while, which is when all of the planets are on one side of the nodes or the other. And a lot gets said about that, but we can say that it’s not considered to be tremendously fortunate, and very often what it means for an individual is that there’s significantly less freedom of choice until a certain age – sometimes the Kala Sarpa yogas will like, expire as the nodes mature. But generally speaking, Kala Sarpa is like, time serpent or time dragon or snake, roughly. And the idea is you’re a little bit of, you’re kind of stuck in the dragon’s belly a little bit and that there’s less – Marie Masco in the comments says, “less agency” is what I was struggling to say. That things just, you know, you’re just kind of in the belly of the beast, and you have to move with the beast. And a number of astrologers whose names I can’t remember right now – apologies – have pointed out that we’ve had an unusual number of Kala Sarpa yogas in the sky over the last year or so, and that’s pretty easy to correlate that with the events of the last year. I would say people have not felt more agency.
CB: I like that. So Mars is emerging from the belly of the dragon at this point in early April.
AC: And you know, again, I’m transferring natal here, so some of this might fit oddly. But in natal, if you have everything except one planet between the nodes like that, the one planet that’s outside the dragon is generally really key for steering because it’s not encumbered. It’s not twisted up in the, you know, it’s not held in the coils of the dragon. And so it has more agency and more ability to guide the rest of the planets and the life.
CB: That makes sense. Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about recently over the past few days is how, you know, so much of the focus last year was on the concentration of planets in Capricorn, and that intense like, Capricorn energy of Saturn and Jupiter and Pluto, especially that conjunction of those three outer planets, in Capricorn and the sort of like, Saturn type energy, and the contrast between the way especially that ancient astrologers used to contrast Saturn energy versus Mars energy, and the contrast between hot and cold and what happens when you have something that’s very hot and it like, excites things into motion versus something that’s very cold that slows them down. And we tend to associate that notion of things that are extremely cold with Saturn, but it was a good description like the past 12 months since we’ve just passed like, the anniversary of when all the lockdowns took place worldwide over the past month. But that notion of everything becoming cold or slowing down and stopping moving and just that whole feeling of like, a lack of movement over the past year has been one of the more defining characteristics as everybody’s been for the most part, like, more inside and more immobile in some sense than every before. And what it looks like as we start to see a breaking up of that, which is you know, a return of movement a little bit over the course of the next year maybe.
AC: Well, I think that this is an interesting month to discuss that, because I think by the end of the month with the three planets in Taurus all conjoining Uranus, I think there will be an explosion of movement.
CB: Right. And that gets preceded by that move of those three planets through Aries of Venus and the Sun and Mercury. This time, you know, unique this year, because that also happened lsat year but the problem was that all of that was getting squared by that Saturn through that dominating superior square from Capricorn. But this year, those three inner planets are moving through and sort of exciting that fire-like energy unencumbered from that square from Saturn.
AC: Yeah. And last year, we had Mars as the ruler of Aries with Saturn and Pluto while the Sun was going through Aries, so the Sun looked to – well, for part of the time – so even the planets in fire were looking to Mars in a very cold sign. Right? Even the mode of action that Mars in Capricorn led was careful. You know, careful, thoughtful, coldly calculated. And then that continued with the Mars-Saturn copresence in Aquarius. So yeah. Slightly —
CB: Yeah.
AC: — less frozen solid this year.
CB: Well, and then even once Mars got into Aries last year starting in the summer in the northern hemisphere, it looked like things were gonna start moving forward again, but then all of a sudden Mars slows down and starts walking in reverse. And so you also get some of those slow type significations or those delay-type significations coming from that retrograde at the same time for six months that just sort of dragged on and on. So even once there was the potential of some like, fire sign energy going on, there were also delays and slowness associated with it at the same time.
All right. So back to our breakdown. So Mercury going into Aries is one of our major – our first major real – shifts that takes place at the beginning of the month in terms of inner planet ingresses and sign changes. So moving out of, as we said, the conjunction with Neptune and moving out of the sign of its fall or the sign of its depression, which is Pisces, and moving into Aries. This begins a nice little mutual reception, actually, between Mercury and Mars that lasts for a good chunk of this month and that builds up for a good bit of this month as Mercury’s moving through the sign of Aries ruled by Mars and applying to a sextile with Mars, that it looks like it eventually completes around April 17th when Mercury gets to 26 Aries and sextiles Mars at 26 degrees of Gemini.
KS: Yeah, that’s a really interesting feature of April, I think, is that sort of friendship and interaction and then the exact mutual reception between Mars in Gemini and Mercury in Aries. I’m really interested to see with Mercury coming out of arguably its most sluggish place, Pisces, and into Aries where it dries out a little bit, which can correlate with some clarity or even the idea of increasing speed, because we know Aries is a lot faster than Pisces. And whether that speaks to logistics and movement and I also thought about the Mercury-Mars piece to do with some of the vaccination protocols and programs that are going on. Not just delivery of vaccines to individual, but also delivery of vaccines around the world. It just seems like, you know, shots in arms seems like a very Mercury-Mars, Gemini-Aries types of thing.
CB: Right. That’s a good point. Yeah. So Mercury exchanging signs with Mars – and this is reminding me just the topic of reception, when I was doing an episode earlier this month on Lilly again I was reading through, and he has this little section where he talks about reception, and it’s a lot more important in his text that I realized. And that’s become a hugely important and I did an episode on reception as a concept a couple of months ago and how important it is as a mitigating factor, because often difficult aspects in a chart, if there’s a reception or a mutual reception, will become much softer and more manageable or more constructive. And looking at this mutual reception between Mercury and Mars this month, I’m thinking of what a constructive interaction between Mercury and Mars looks like between those two planets. Because sometimes when we think about Mercury and Mars interactions, we think sometimes about the more extreme spectrum of like, verbal altercations or having an accident or something like that. But Mercury-Mars combinations also have very good productive sides as well, and having a sextile between these two with a mutual reception is probably gonna be on the better end of the spectrum that you can get in terms of a combination of those two planets.
AC: I think it’ll be very useful for getting some writing done.
CB: Yeah. So energy, being able to channel energy into writing or other mercurial activities would be a great manifestation of that or great application of it.
AC: Yeah. Just in terms of how they can help each other achieve, you know, their respective goals, right? Mercury has all these – well, Mars always has shit to do, right? Mars is like, oh, I gotta do this; this has gotta get done. And Mercury’s speed, cleverness, and technical precision is pretty useful for accomplishing more things quicker, which Mars in Gemini, you know, already has quite a bit to do.
KS: Yeah. It feels very clear, very assertive or decisive. Because I am thinking, too, like you said, Chris, this is a potentially productive or useful “good” Mercury-Mars combination. So you know, whether it’s helping people make decisions or be like, diagnostic in some capacity, so that idea of like, deciding and doing seems there’s a more clear or even a faster shift from, you know, making a decision to taking action about it, which isn’t always the case.
CB: Yeah. That’s a good point about making a decision and taking action when Mars and Mercury are working together in a harmonious way, that’s something that flows much more easily, the idea of decisiveness and taking action quickly instead of the opposite, which is like, a delay or something like that, slowness to act.
AC: Yeah. And I think that the speed and extraverted direction of this combination will be extremely obvious by contrast the first several days, because we’ll be coming out of Mercury with Neptune in Pisces, which is as diffuse and potentially kind of distracting, distracted, meandering, daydreaming as possible. You know, the Pisces-Aries cusp always is one of the more dramatic cusps of the zodiac anyway —
KS: Totally.
AC: — and for Mercury especially this year, I think it’ll be really obvious. Like, oh, it’s time to get things done!
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Mercury-Neptune combinations, especially in Pisces, are definitely much more meandering and hard to focus, which can sometimes be good if you don’t need to get anything done. But if you do, sometimes coming out of that can be kind of like, coming out of a cloud like you were saying or a breath of fresh air.
KS: Yes.
CB: All right. So that’s one of the major signatures, because that mutual reception lasts for the entirety of like, the first half of the month basically. And it’s actually kind of interesting, because we get at the very culmination or very end of that, the sort of climax, which is a Sun-Mercury cazimi on April 18th it looks like around 28, 29 degrees of Aries. And then right after that, Mercury switches into Taurus. And that also happens, you know, any time Mercury is direct and forms a conjunction with the Sun, Mercury is also moving at its fastest. So it’s kind of interesting that it’s not just in a fast sign of Aries and it has that mutual reception with Mars that it’s just coming off of the exact sextile with, but it’s also just moving super fast and hitting that conjunction with the Sun right at the culmination of its trip through the sign of Aries. So this idea of like, quickness or speed or fastness, especially in terms of communications, seems to be one of the sort of signature or hallmark things going on this month, especially in the first half of just things speeding up in the first half of April.
KS: Yeah. I think to pick up on something Austin said, which is that the sign change from Pisces to Aries is very dramatic and very different. You know, we go from a cold, wet sign to a hot dry sign, and that – by April 3rd when Mercury’s into Aries, we’ve got a little over two weeks until about the 19th when Mercury goes into Taurus. I think a lot of things that currently feel overwhelming or aren’t clear or you’re kind of stuck in the feeling of it all, there’s gonna be a lot that happens. So yeah. And to your point, Chris, Mercury is like, zipping through the sky right now. Like, the phrase that comes to my mind is “bootscooting,” which is like, I don’t even know where that comes from. Some crazy Kelly Australian phrase. But it’s just going so far. Because it starts the month in Pisces, whips through Aries, and it’s, you know, more than halfway through Taurus by the end of the month.
CB: Yeah. I love that. So people might look at what whole sign house Aries occupies in their chart and think about that as a sort of speeding up or an acceleration of movement and an acceleration of events in that part of your life. And that, again, is nice in terms of a contrast with the second half of last year where there may have been some slowdowns due to the retrograde Mars or some delays or potentially some conflicts as a result of that and some dwelling on that part of your life. But the contrast here in the first half of April especially is an acceleration of events and developments in that area of your life instead of things moving forward and making progress or movement one way or another.
KS: Yeah.
CB: All right. So that is the first thing is just Mercury and Mercury cruising through that sign. That might take us to and kind of —
KS: Yeah.
CB: — brings us to that first lunation of the month, maybe?
KS: Yeah it does.
CB: All right. So there’s that lunation that is the New Moon in the sign of Aries, which takes place on the 11th of April. Let me pull that up here in the Animate Chart feature on Solar Fire. We can see that cluster of planets around the time of the New Moon in Aries with a stellium of four planets in the sign of Aries at that time. It looks like the exact degree of the conjunction is 22 degrees of Aries for the New Moon on April 11th.
KS: I’m curious to hear what you guys think about this New Moon. My thoughts when I first looked at this chart were it definitely feels like it’s continuing some of those themes of taking action and moving forward, partly because the ruler of the lunation is Mars, which is in a direct sextile to the New Moon itself.
CB: Yeah. I like that sextile. It’s so different and it’s such a fresh, you know, aspect to have compared to all of those squares and like, conjunctions and all the hard aspects of last year. And just the difference of like, what it looks like when the energies are a bit more free-flowing and a little bit more flowing between some of these planets rather than running at odds or running at cross purposes.
KS: Yeah. The one other thing that I really liked about this New Moon chart – excuse me – is that Mars is starting to apply to the trine to Jupiter. So it’s sort of taking that like, I don’t know, it’s such a Mars-y lunation. And then, you know, what’s going on with Mars? Yeah, it definitely feels like plans for the future or maybe a little bit mentally busy with thinking about lots of things. But yeah.
CB: Yeah, that trine with Jupiter is one of my favorite aspects this month, because it’s forming for quite a while. It’s like Mars is moving towards that trine with Jupiter for pretty much most of the first half of – the entirety of the first half of – the month, because it doesn’t complete the trine until it looks like about April 16th, April 17th from 26 Gemini to 26 Aquarius. But as a result of that, especially in day charts, when I was looking at electional charts this month, Mars just gets this nice stabilizing or bonifying effect from Jupiter, especially because Jupiter’s also in the superior position five signs earlier than Mars. And because it has a superior trine, it’s able to sort of restrain or stabilize Mars in a way that maybe wasn’t possible as much last year in some of the configurations to even it out so that even if it’s like, a day chart and Mars was the most difficult planet in the chart, it’s gonna be way more positive or way more constructive than it often is due to that applying trine to Jupiter.
AC: Yeah. I really like Mars in aspect to Jupiter. You know, part of it, as you said, is stabilizing, bonifying. Another part of is, you know, Jupiter I think has a good way of reaching Mars and saying, “You know, I know this needs to get done. But you don’t need to be a dick about it.” But in a way that’s confirming. Like, “No, I’m gonna help you get this done. But, you know, just a few less rough edges.” Right? A little bit less internal and external friction.
CB: Yeah. There’s that confirmation, but it’s like, a reassuring confirmation of what Mars is trying to do, and maybe that’s emphasizing or helping even more with it breaking free or getting out of that configuration with the nodes. And Mars being the planet that’s kind of heading out on its own on the other side of the nodal axis leaving the rest of the planets behind and sort of going it alone, but having a little bit of confirmation and stability as it does so.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, the more I look at it, the more interesting that lunation is, because as you said, we’ve got that – the ruler is Mars, it’s got that nice to Jupiter, and then the Sun-Moon-Venus and Mercury to a lesser extent are kind of all at that midpoint between Mars and Jupiter. And I wish I had more of the midpoints and planetary pictures memories, but if anybody is working with that kind of astrology, this is a bonanza of planetary pictures and midpoints.
CB: Yeah. And it’s all pretty flowing. The only challenging aspect in it, aside from the Uranus-Saturn square that’s now three degrees separating, the only hard aspect in there is Venus closely squaring Pluto from 26 degrees of Aries to 26 Capricorn around the time of that New Moon lunation. And a Venus-Pluto square can sometimes have a somewhat obsessive quality, you know, when it comes about in hard aspects like that.
KS: Yeah, that’s a —
CB: What are your positive – what —
KS: I don’t know if – I mean, it is tricky, the Venus square Pluto, partly because Venus is so close to the Sun as well. It’s sort of feeling maybe angry about some things or feeling unsettled by things or dealing with a power dynamic or a control situation where there’s that element of maybe not having seen it before. One of the transit pieces of theory that I kind of work with is, you know, the condition of a planet receiving an outer planet transit tells us a lot about how we deal with that, and Venus is struggling a little bit in Aries, we might say there, being combust and in detriment. So I think it sort of speaks to that need to navigate some undercurrent that has been perhaps simmering away, but has not fully made itself obvious. And doing so requires an extreme level of negotiation to try and find your way through. It’s like the fly in the ointment of that otherwise very sort of progressive, forward-thinking New Moon chart.
AC: Yeah. I would agree with all that, and just add that Venus is the least happy out of all those planets. Right? This isn’t like, the beginning of a great lunar month for relationships, but it’s good for a lot of other things. Like, it’s very active – right? Air and fire are very like, accomplishment oriented. Very achievement oriented. Maybe not the most thoughtful or socially considerate, but good for what it’s good for.
CB: Yeah. Venus… I was talking about like, the obsessive quality of Venus-Pluto aspects, which can sometimes be good if the focus of one’s desires is like, accomplishing something or that which it takes – if you have a goal that you enjoy working towards but requires a sort of single-minded dedication towards that. And sometimes that energy can be useful in that sense if you’re channeling it constructively towards something in that way. But then the downside can sometimes be the obsessive relationship quality or the like, stalker aspect of Venus-Pluto conjunctions or hard aspects, which can be a little bit more problematic if the obsessive quality is channeled in a way that’s not warranted or that’s not wanted in some way.
So I think that’s the New Moon in Aries that’s taking place there around the 11th. Anything else about that lunation before we move onto the next aspect?
AC: I think we covered it from a couple angles.
KS: I think we covered some good detail.
CB: All right, so —
KS: “Onwards,” is what that New Moon says to me. “Onwards.”
CB: Onwards, and upwards. So immediately after that New Moon, after that lunation, we kind of start closing out that first half of the month and starting with the Moon, we start getting a series of ingresses into the sign of Taurus and sort of a wrapping up or completion of some of those transits through Aries. It looks like Venus moves into Taurus and returns to her home sign on April 14th. That’s also actually consequently the day of our featured election for this month, which I’ll pull up here in just a moment. Then we get the culmination of the Aries transits with the Sun-Mercury conjunction which takes place on April 18th, and then immediately the next day on April 19th, Mercury moves into Taurus. And then shortly after that, the Sun also moves into Taurus, and we get the completion of the Aries transits and the beginning of a stellium of planets moving through Taurus from April 19th forward of the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Uranus.
So the beginning of the Taurus stellium, and a pretty distinct shift from a fiery cardinal sign to an earthy, fixed sign of Taurus I think at that point, right?
KS: Yes. Yeah, and when I work with clients who have planets progressing from Aries to Taurus, there is this distinct desire to slow down. To maybe hit the brakes a bit, or to rearrange one’s circumstances so that there is breathing room or a chance to have, you know, that sort of “work-life balance” where there’s time to do but also time to play and relax. And I think there is gonna be a lot of activity as the Sun goes through Aries this month, and then when we get to this sort of mid-month transition – because it’s a lot to have three of the faster moving planets go into the same sign within a few days of each other. It is really going to feel certainly a change in temperature, I think a little bit of a change in pace. I know it is gonna activate that Uranus-Saturn square that you were referencing there, Austin, and so there is this sense of like, picking back up with the main theme of the year. But definitely a sense – I’m really looking forward personally to Venus in Taurus. It’s one of my personal fave planet-sign combos, and not because I have it or anything; I just like the Venus-Taurus vibe. What are you guys thinking about that?
CB: What are you thinking, Austin?
AC: Well, I think it’s a little complicated. So you know, Venus is very happy in Taurus, right? It’s rulership, you know, it works really well. It produces many pleasing Venusian experiences. But Venus is still pretty darn combust, and Venus is in that conjunction with Uranus moving deeper into that for a little bit and is also on the harder side of that square with Saturn. And so it’s a little dramatic and busy until it clears all that at the very end of the month.
Like, some of – you know, with Uranus and Venus, I see a pretty polarized set of results. Sometimes you will have like, the shocking, remarkable, pattern-breaking qualities of Uranus applied to Venus in a positive way. Like, wow, I’ve never had such a good time! Or like, I took a hike, and it was amazing. You know, a little bird landed in my hand and told me arcane secrets. Right? You know, something amazing happens. But then because Uranus is destabilizing by nature, we’ve talked about this on and off for a while, you know, our Venusian Taurean things – some of them we don’t like being destabilized. Like, we like to know that there will be food at the grocery store when we go there. We like to know like, if you’re married, you would prefer that you be married next week too. Right? That’s not a surprise you would be happy about. And so I see really again, really polarized results from Venus-Uranus conjunctions.
CB: One of the things I’ve been noticing that has surprised me a little bit is that I’ve been focusing a lot more on the destabilizing tendencies of Uranus, which are always like, very pronounced and like, focusing on that that it’s just gonna destabilize whatever part of the chart it’s moving through in your birth chart and in that part of your life. But the other thing that Uranus does sometimes is it just does the opposite of what you’re used to. And whatever the opposite is, but it’s always relative to that – like, whatever the status quo is in that part of your life, it will sometimes flip on its head. And what’s been weird for that that I’ve noticed in some people’s charts is that sometimes if they’re already used to instability or a certain part of their life not being very stable, the surprise is the opposite. Is suddenly a part of their life becoming unexpectedly stable or becoming unexpectedly more grounded than it typically is so that the Uranian sort of shakeup at that point is still shaking something up, and it’s still presenting you with the opposite. But it really is just relative to what you’re already doing or what the status quo is up until that point. And that’s been an interesting thing that might be more pronounced here as we see Venus coming up and conjoining Uranus at this point and really emphasizing that transit of Uranus through Taurus just shaking up whatever the status quo is in that area of your life.
KS: Yeah. I think that’s a really astute point, Chris, that Uranus will change whatever is considered familiar or comfortable or “normal” for you. And you know, we often think, well, Uranus is gonna make things move more, but sometimes it actually brings a period of, I don’t know, like, physical stillness with internal change perhaps, or vice versa. But there is a sense that I think the core message with Uranus that gets sort of closer to that symbolically accurate more often is that idea that what is different for you, because you might be someone who’s in a romantic relationship where your partner travels a lot for work, and that’s the norm for the two of you. And then you have this big, dramatic change, and all of a sudden, then you’re both home a lot for instance. So you know, being home a lot doesn’t necessarily sound like Uranus, but if it’s not what you’re used to or the normal pattern, I think that’s a really astute point to make there.
CB: Yeah, just because we’re used to the opposite, you know, version of just the person that’s like, a button-down person and has like, a nine-to-five job and goes to work every day and they have like, a major Uranus transit over their Ascendant and they quit their job and they go like, traveling the world in like, a van, and making a living through like, panhandling or like, playing a flute or something like that. And that’s the like, Uranian like, suddenly their very random transit for that period of their life. But what happens if that’s what you’ve already been doing for like, a decade and you’ve been traveling the world in a van and panhandling and all of a sudden, you get a major Uranus transit and suddenly you decide to settle down and like, buy a house with like, a white picket fence? And for you, relative to your life, that’s what’s weird and sort of random or unique relative to your circumstances.
It’s just a funny aspect of Uranus and that unpredictability that’s always so hard in making a statement or prediction about Uranus transits, because it often is going to be the opposite or like, the last thing that you think of that’s like, an unexpected disruption. But that relative factor always can throw a curveball that you don’t necessarily expect.
So that Venus-Uranus conjunction is a little bit of a highlight of the month around 10 degrees of Taurus, and it looks like that’s culminating around April 22nd. Interestingly of course, immediately after that, we also get the Venus-Saturn square from 12 degrees of Taurus to 12 degrees of Aquarius. So for people that have been experiencing or getting hit by that square between Saturn and Uranus over the past couple of months more strongly if you have like, personal planets at let’s say between nine and 12 degrees of fixed signs, that could be reactivating something when all of the inner planets start moving over those degrees and kind of reactivating or sort of transferring the light in some sense between Uranus and Saturn. So a little bit of a reactivation of that square, would you say – I think you mentioned that earlier, right, Austin?
AC: Yeah. And it’s also, you know, fixed sign-a-palooza. Right? We’ve got Jupiter, Saturn, Sun, Uranus, Mercury, Venus, and sometimes the Moon in fixed signs by the time we’re in the last third of April.
CB: Right. Yeah. So big emphasis on fixed signs and I mean, what are fixed signs? Fixed signs are supposed to be more about stability and about slowing down a little bit and ideas of permanence rather than change. But it’s kind of hard, because we have that tension between the Saturn-Uranus square, which is showing almost like, a tension between change versus permanence in some sense taking place in fixed signs.
KS: Yeah. I think one of the phrases that I like for fixed signs in addition to all the phrases that you mentioned, Chris, is that they take longer to make changes or to do things that their pace of movement or progress is just a little slower. And it’s not to put a value judgment on whether quick is good and slow is bad; it’s just to say that the fixed sign approach is to take a little bit more time to sink into it. You know, can be longer to make the decision and then longer to move through. And I think one of the challenges with this Saturn-Uranus square to try and parse it all out is Saturn does like to create longer term plans or projects, and Uranus is sort of prodding. So there is this real sense of questioning or reassessing some of the longer term structures that people might have in their lives, just to see whether they’re in the right format to stay long term or whether we need some kind of, you know, refresh or update, I guess. That’s one way I’ve been kind of working with it. Is this the right thing, and if so, am I doing it in the way that still best suits me, or have I changed and therefore does the thing need to change, or does the way I’m doing it need to change?
AC: Yeah. I think that this quality that fixed signs have of taking longer to enact change or something like that, taking longer to come up with change, it’s because of the nature of the change. It’s much more – fixed signs are much more into policy rather than a quick decision or like, it’s like the difference between – so the fixed signs are saying, “What is our diet plan going to be for the next 90 days? What are the parameters of our diet going to be?” whereas the cardinal is like, “Let’s get Thai tonight.” Right? And that like, you see more action more quickly with “Let’s get Thai tonight,” but it’s less impactful, right? And then I guess mutable would be like, “Oh, the awesome Thai place is closed. Do we wanna maybe eat Taco Bell because we’re trash people?” Speaking of me, there. This is something I have done that I’m confessing to.
CB: The other thing I think of with Taurus – I was thinking about recently noticing somebody chart where it was funny when people like, speak their chart. And their interest was in like, food and being a foodie. And I forgot that that was just a basic fundamental signification of like, Taurus and Cancer placements sometimes and that connection with the Moon. And I did an episode earlier this month with Israel Ajose on the Moon where we just talked about the Moon for like, two hours, and it was great really drilling into the significations of the Moon. But one of the things we talked about was the connection between the Moon and like, the stomach and food. And both the nurturing quality of food, but also the connection between the body and the like, physicality of that being like, a core component to living and how that gets connected with signs like Cancer but also with Taurus. Yeah, and just like the regularity and notion of fixity in terms of that which you prefer or the thing that you always come back to because that’s your favorite thing that is reassuring in some way and that plays some role of stability in your life.
AC: Yeah, that’s nice. Well, and also like, how important is the feeling of being full after a meal, and what does the Moon do every month, right?
CB: Right. Yeah. That’s a really good point, and that the Moon’s – you know, we just had the Full Moon in Libra, and that’s one of the most visible astronomical things each month of the Moon’s waxing and increasing in light versus its waning and decreasing in light.
KS: Yes. It’s the emotional side of it, but then also that physical nourishment, that vital, essential food source kind of thing.
CB: Yeah. So that’s bringing us back and we’re focused on both this series of conjunctions with Uranus as well as the then as a result of that the squares with Saturn. Is there anything else about those squares with Saturn? I wanna step back in a moment and talk about the electional chart for this month, but before we move on or lose that thread, because we get first Venus squaring Saturn, and then we get very quickly Mercury squaring Saturn and Mercury conjoining Venus almost simultaneously. And then eventually I’m sure the Sun will come up – I guess that’s actually early next month, so it’s primarily that Venus and Mercury square of Saturn, which occurs right after the conjunction with Uranus, and maybe something about the tension between changes versus the tension of staying the course with Saturn and maintaining the established status quo.
KS: Yeah, it feels a little bit like that tension between autonomy and independence or freedom and space, which can be Uranus themes or signatures, versus – and because Mercury and Venus go to Uranus first and then deal with Saturn, it’s maybe getting a taste of a breakthrough or what could be or where things might be going, but needing to perhaps then when the planets interact with Saturn to honor an obligation or a duty or a commitment to sort of follow through with the effort or to show up in a way that is still meaningful even if it requires effort.
CB: Right. That makes sense. So I wanna back up a little bit, because our electional chart for this month is partially set to take advantage a little bit of that Venus ingress into Taurus and is set for the same day. So our featured election for this month that Leisa Schaim and myself picked out is taking place on April 14th, 2021, around let’s say one PM local time – so whatever it is like, one PM in your location; you don’t have to change it based on the timezone or anything like that. And then adjust the chart so that you have the Ascendant somewhere in the early degrees of Leo. And in our location, we tried to put the Sun right on the exact degree of the Midheaven at 25 degrees of Aries. So if you do that, you should roughly end up with a chart that looks generally like this.
So it’s a Leo rising chart, with the Sun exalted in the sign of Aries in the 9th whole sign house. The Sun is still applying very closely to a sextile with Jupiter from 25 degrees of Aries to 25 degrees of Aquarius. So this is a condition of bonification, especially because it’s a day chart, and the Sun is moving towards the most positive planet in the chart. Mercury is in Aries with the Sun in the 9th whole sign house, and the Ascendant placement of the Sun in general is good for 9th house topics having to do with publishing or studying or education and other 9th house topics like that. Venus has just ingressed in our location into Taurus in the 10th whole sign house, so we’ve got a pretty strong 10th house focus in this chart. The Moon is also in Taurus, and it’s applying to a square with Jupiter from about 24 degrees of Taurus to 25 degrees of Aquarius. Let’s see, the more problematic part of this chart is Mars in a day chart in the 11th place of friends and groups and alliances, so it may not be a super great chart for those topics, for 11th house topics, although even Mars is significantly mitigated in this instance and is not gonna be as bad as it could be in that position because it’s applying very closely to a trine with Jupiter, which is helping to restrain and balance out some of the extremes of Mars so that it’s not gonna tend towards being as extremely divisive in the 11th house focus as it could be.
Let’s see, what else is going on with this chart? I think that’s it. It’s just a good general all-around chart because the ruler of the Ascendant and the Moon are both applying to benefics and are both relatively well-placed. And the 7th house and 10th house and 9th house are all in relatively decent condition, so those 9th house topics or 10th house topics having to do with career or even to some extent 7th house topics having to do with partnership are in pretty decent shape.
So I think that’s the electional chart of the month. What do you guys think of that, or have you used an electional chart like this before for anything? Like, 9th house topics?
AC: Oh, sure. I mean, so there are the specifically 9th house topics, but then I think it’s also just worth noting that the 9th house is a good and fortunate place generally, and especially for the Sun. And so you can get in addition to the house-specific things, you can kind of get some general goodness out of that. That exalted 9th house Sun ruling the Ascendant is pretty good, and if you pulled your chart back two minutes, a minute or two, I think you’d be hour of the Sun, too.
CB: Yeah, you’re right, because it switches with the Midheaven.
Yeah, so planetary hours, and that’s something that we actually talked about that this month with the episode with Sue Ward, because that was one of the considerations before judgment that Bonatti recommended and the Lilly repeated was just connecting the planetary hours with the rising sign or the ruler of the rising sign in some instances.
KS: I do have a soft spot for the Leo rising, Sun in Aries charts as a starting point because of that really strong solar signature that comes through. To exactly what you’re saying Austin, the Sun in its joy in the 9th, but you have an exalted planet ruling the Ascendant in its joy. The individual who this type of chart always makes me think of is Maya Angelou who was a Leo rising with the Sun in Aries in the 9th. Now, of course, she’s different age and has all the other planets everywhere else, but that sort of radiant, solar – you know, the regal quality that just became even stronger throughout the course of her life. I think that radiance sort of whether it’s looking for wisdom, finding wisdom, it’s a really beautiful signature.
CB: Yeah. And there’s also just double instances of exaltation and planets being in domicile in this chart, which is kind of nice. It’s a nice chart filled with quite a number of different essential dignities, either essential ones or like, temporary ones where you’ve got both luminaries in their signs of exaltation, the Sun in Aries, and the Moon in Taurus. You’ve got Saturn in its domicile in Aquarius. You have Mercury and Mars in a mutual reception even, which is kind of a temporary sort of dignity in and of itself. Yeah, but having planets in their exaltation, especially the ruler of the Ascendant – I’ve been thinking about exaltation recently and how it really does have this fundamental meaning of when something is like, raised up or is brought up to a level that’s higher than whatever the norm is and how that can sometimes be useful if you’re trying to accomplish something where you stand out as a result of sort of like, raising the bar in whatever it is that you’ve set out to do. And I think that would be a good keyword for using this electional chart if you have something major to start this month at some point during the course of April.
So that is our auspicious election for this month. We’ve got three other electional charts that we found this month which are available on The Auspicious Elections Podcast. So you can find out more about that by going to TheAstrologyPodcast.com/AuspiciousElectionsPodcast, and we just released that episode I think a day or two ago. April was kind of unique, because unlike other months over the past few months, there were pretty decent elections throughout April. It wasn’t one of those months where like, all the elections you have to get in at the very beginning of the month or the very end of the month. But instead, we were able to find I think four or five during the course of April that were pretty solid at different points in the month. So it’s a good month, I think, for starting new ventures and undertakings with electional astrology.
KS: Yeah, that’s a good point, Chris, because I noticed that when I was just looking at all the different aspects that are forming this month, between having the Sun in Aries and then Venus in Taurus later in the month, there’s just a few things to choose from in terms of what you might emphasize. And then because the quick planets are moving quickly, you know, some of them are forming different aspects to Jupiter or even the Mercury-Mars. Like, there’s a fair bit of choice this month which we having seen for a couple of months. A little bit more variety, I think.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And that may be another just manifestation of some of the things we’re talking about this month in terms of the even keel of April. First initially with the Aries planets, but then especially in the second half of the month with the planets that are transiting through the sign of Taurus. There’s the page for The Auspicious Elections Podcast, and yeah. So that’s April 14th for our election this month.
Let’s move on and start focusing on – I think we were already into the second half of the month, but what is the next combination or the next major transit that we’re coming up to? I think we’re just coming off of talking about Venus and all the other planets hitting the square with Saturn, right?
KS: Yes. And there’s probably an ingress we just wanna come back a couple of days to look at, which is the Mars into Cancer placement.
CB: Right. So that is the ingress of Mars into Cancer that takes place on the 23rd of April.
All right, so…
KS: Yes.
CB: Let me share the chart again. There it is; Mars goes into Cancer April 23rd. This is just after Venus is coming off of the conjunction with Uranus and just before Venus squares Saturn, so it’s right around that pivotal time in the month where we start getting those conjunctions with Uranus and then the squares with Saturn. And coincidentally, Mars changes signs right about that time, shifting from Gemini into Cancer.
So how are you guys feeling about Mars moving into the sign of Cancer into traditionally what’s called the sign of its fall?
AC: Not great.
KS: Yeah, I was gonna say —
CB: Not great?
KS: — you wanna leave?
CB: It’s a little bit the opposite of what we were just talking about, the idea of planets being in the sign of their exaltation and being raised up or sort of raising the bar in some sense or being in some instances, like, exalted planets can manifest very literally as even being exalted in like, a societal level of being in an upper class or something like that for whatever reason. But with fall, we get a little bit of the opposite in terms of some of its literal manifestations.
AC: One of my working metaphors for planets in their fall is like, literally – so what we’re looking at with essential dignity is what is the relationship between the planet as an actor, a doer, and the piece of terrain that they find themselves in? Right? And there are places that bring out the best in you, and that’s it’s really easy to do your thing, and then there are places where it’s extremely difficult to do your thing. And I think of the terrain for fallen planets as often being like, having little like, potholes or like, a gopher might dig a hole and you’re walking and you trip and fall down. There are like, little traps almost for a planet in its sign of fall, and so it tends to trip and fall down. And sometimes it’s —
KS: Literally.
AC: — “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” And just, Chris, as you were saying about exalted planets, there’s often a quality of being up above it, right? A planet in its fall is definitely down in it.
CB: Yeah, like —
AC: What was —
CB: — rising to the occasion might be a good like, exalted planet keyword, versus, you know, whatever the opposite is.
AC: There’s an excellent Nine Inch Nails song, I believe, about this.
CB: Right.
AC: “I was up above it; now I’m down in it,” yeah. Na-na-na?
CB: Yeah —
KS: A great lyric for this concept.
CB: I don’t think I can get the clearance for that to play that right now, but your like, verbal recreation of it I think will have to do for now.
AC: But anyway, yeah, that feeling of getting stuck —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — is often there with fallen planets.
CB: Yeah.
KS: And that quality of stuck or congestion maybe feels very Mars in Cancer. Yeah. You know, the water analogy in a way that is like, sluggish or has a slow quality. I often think about Mars in a water sign where mood affects motivation, and so what can be done is totally dependent on how you feel —
AC: Right.
KS: — and in this case with Mars in Cancer, there is that agitation of the most sensitive or vulnerable or tender feelings, because Mars is in the sign ruled by the Moon, and that can sometimes interfere. But I loved what you were saying, Austin, about the – like, I imagine twisting your ankle in the pothole on the ground and the falling down.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Glad that worked for you. And then you’re just like, I don’t wanna get up! Like, I don’t feel like – what are we gonna do? Get up and go to work?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Work sucks anyway; I’m gonna just sit here.
CB: Right, because the thing we were talking about earlier that Mars excels at is just doing and taking action and sometimes the downside of that – it can go either way – can be like, impetuousness and diving headfirst into situations without thinking it through. And I think that’s one of the reasons that Rhetorius talks about about why Mars is exalted in Capricorn, because Saturn provides the structure that holds back some of and moderates to some extent Mars’s tendency to be impulsive in its actions, and it is what happens when the action tendency of Mars is trained and sort of molded in a constructive way so that it acts at the right time and at the right moment, and it withholds actions when necessary. But one of the problems when Mars is in Cancer and it’s ruled by the Moon is it’s sort of like, the opposite tendency, which is that the Moon changes signs so frequently that it’s prone to fluctuations and is prone to allowing Mars to act on impulse just based on day-to-day sort of like, moods or day-to-day currents. And it may not always act at the right moment as a result of that if you just watch how quickly the Moon changes signs and fluctuates from like, day to day or from moment to moment. It provides a less solid or a less stable foundation from which to act on, and sometimes Mars can then get itself into more trouble as a result of that.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. That’s well put. So I think – here’s a crude summary and translation of some of these concepts. When in coldhearted Capricorn, Mars gives no fucks, and that’s excelent for Mars. When Mars is in caring Cancer, it gives way too many fucks. It cares too much about this and that; it’s easier to get offended. It’s easier to feel afraid or worried, et cetera, et cetera. And that while a person in general may be improved by being more caring, the action of Mars is complicated significantly by what can be an overload of personal emotion.
KS: Yeah, that’s beautiful. Because Mars’s sort of purpose or job is to get things done; it’s to make decisions; it’s to keep the movement going. And when it has to factor in every little feeling along the way, that will necessarily slow things down or complicate things in some capacity.
CB: Yeah. So being subject to the day-to-day moods and then basing one’s actions as a result of temporary or fleeting feelings and tendencies instead of long-term ones. So that’s opening up, you know, this is only happening at the very tail end of April in the last week basically of April, but it’s setting up a trend and a tendency that’s gonna carry us through the next month or two.
One of the other things that’s kind of problematic about this ingress is it takes Mars out of what has been a pretty supportive couple of month transit of Mars through Gemini where it was getting first that constructive superior trine from Saturn in Aquarius, and then secondly the aspect that was happening for most of April, which was that applying stabilizing trine from Jupiter. And all of a sudden, when Mars goes into Cancer, it’s like, completely in aversion to both of those planets and no longer configured to them and no longer has that stabilization or that support. But instead it comes into a somewhat more unstable or somewhat more erratic ground just purely being ruled by the Moon and the Moon changing signs every couple of days and having no configuration to the outer planets Saturn and Jupiter.
AC: Yeah. It’s interesting if we circle back for a second to that Mars being the only planet out of the Kala Sarpa for half of every month. Right, the Moon’s out half every month and then in half every month. But Mars is the only planet out of – like, you know, we talked about Mars being key to making changes rather than just riding along in the belly of the beast. And so Mars’s move into Cancer certainly makes that more challenging.
KS: Yes. Yeah, I was like, what are the silver linings that I could throw in here? I mean, it will be nice for Mars to not be in the same sign as the North Node, but to what Chris was saying, you know, not having that protective Jupiter vibe doesn’t do well. And what you’re saying, Austin, is with the Kala Sarpa, because Mars is the only planet on the other side, it is kind of running things a bit. And now it’s gonna be Mars in Cancer running things, which is not ideal.
AC: Yeah, well, so the idea is less that it runs things, right, because the planets in the Kala Sarpa might be more powerful, but that it has a freedom. Whatever you can get it to do is going to have more power, because Mars is acting outside of that situation.
KS: Right. It’s got that agency. Right. Yeah. And we do have about six weeks. It goes until July.
AC: Yeah. Well, and so just to say something not completely negative, Mars does have a bound early on in Cancer which gives it —
KS: Yes.
AC: — some, helps stabilize it in terms of its own purposes and aims. And then —
KS: It’s the first set of bounds, isn’t it?
AC: I think so? I know it’s early. And then if we’re doing the triplicity method for decans, Mars rules the second decan of Cancer, and is good for sort of protection, security Mars stuff. Right? It doesn’t become Mars in Aries just because it’s in decan, but there is a useful potency there for like, you know, keeping the foxes out of the hen house would be one way to think about it, which is – you know, that’s a martial situation in that you’re trying to fortify your chicken coop.
KS: Yes.
AC: Against the murderous predators.
KS: My parents have a chicken coop, and we have had situations where a fox or some other predator has got into the chicken coop, and it’s a very literal situation that happens, so. I also just said the wrong thing – Mars is in Cancer until about the 10th or 11th of June, so not quite ‘til July. But still a solid six or seven weeks.
CB: I like that as being our primary recommendation for late April is fortify your metaphorical chicken coop.
KS: Yes. Yeah. There is something that I see showing up in clients’ charts about Mars in detriment or fall about somebody who works to advocate or speak up on behalf of, you know, a community that might be marginalized or disenfranchised in some capacity. And Mars in Cancer, to me, or maybe not to me, but what I see is situations to do with family instability, sometimes domestic violence situations. I’m not predicting those with Mars in Cancer, but I’m talking about how some people with that placement in their birth chart work in advocacy or support to provide resources for people in those types of situations. So there’s a way that what is technically difficult in astrology can show up as somebody who is working on behalf of problems in society that might be described symbolically by that technical difficulty if that makes sense.
CB: Totally. That makes a lot of sense, and I keep seeing that come up over and over again, and it’s such a cool manifestation of astrology where sometimes people that have what are considered to be difficult placements traditionally, it’s not something that always necessarily manifests as a difficulty to them in their life directly as a hardship, but sometimes it can manifest as them working with or helping other people who are in those circumstances. And that is always really interesting to me when you see that in somebody’s chart and you realize that’s how they’re playing that out by trying to help those that are in that situation that’s described by the placement.
AC: Yeah, and that would actually be what I would prescribe in terms of a remedy, right?
KS: Of course! Yes!
AC: Because it’s like, you know, when you have a planet that’s in a difficult situation you would like to improve the way that works in your life, you donate time, money, energy, thoughts, words – you know, you donate a portion of what you have to the betterment of people in situations described by the difficulties that that planet has.
CB: Right.
KS: Yes, and what really brought this home to me a few years ago was a client who has given permission for me to use her chart as a teaching example who has Mars combust the Sun in Libra in the 8th house in their birth chart. So it’s a day chart with Mars in detriment combust the Sun. And what she does is she works as a psychologist for children with traumatic brain injuries, which I thought was just really getting into the difficulty of Mars in the 8th house and the mind. You know, she’s not the brain surgeon; she’s the psychologist for children with those types of issues. And to your point, Austin, because then the life almost becomes this sort of ongoing practice of remediation or charitable offering, I guess, through the effort of the individual.
AC: Right. And that remediation for one’s chart is also often remediating a part of the world. So there is a kind of, there’s some nice, “Oh, it’s all connected,” sort of moments in that way of thinking.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. That idea of remediation or the things underlying remediation or when somebody’s doing remediation without even knowing it is one of the most interesting and mysterious parts of astrology that I still need to explore and probably part of the reason why it’s mysterious is because that’s like, the overlap almost with magic and some of the things we’ve talked about before, Austin. But that’s something I meant to do an episode on because there’s an undercurrent of that that runs through the astrological tradition and pops up in different places going back to, you know, Mesopotamia and to like, the substitute king ritual and other things like that where the notion is that the energy or the astrological signature has to manifest somehow, and it’s just a matter sometimes of taking that into your own hands and bringing the manifestation into concrete reality consciously and deliberately versus the opposite. And I guess, you know, we get some of that also in like, Jungian psychology and that thread that shows up in late 20th century astrology, but it’s part of a much older tradition that’s still somewhat mysterious to me as well. Like, when that happens and when you can do something deliberately versus when something must manifest in some other way.
AC: Yeah. You should have that conservation with Freedom.
CB: Okay. Freedom Cole? He would be a good person to have that discussion with about —
AC: Oh yeah. Just absolutely tremendously knowledgeable about all these topics.
So one of the things that Freedom teaches that he got from Sanjay Rath is when you’re looking for “Will this person on their own steam end up doing a useful remediation” like the case that Kelly just mentioned, configuration to Jupiter is a huge part of that. And then the timing for when remedies naturally present themselves is very often just Jupiter going over that planet once every 12 years. You get a lot of – you’ll see people like, oh yeah, I started doing that when Jupiter was conjunct the planet. It works very well. There are certainly cases where that’s not true, but yeah, Jupiter’s the key for finding the sort of automatic medicine rather than having to go on a huge quest.
CB: Yeah.
KS: That’s really good to have that piece.
CB: I like that; it’s interesting and also brings up an issue from earlier this month with the considerations before judgment, and in horary charts, like, the astrologer getting entangled in the question and showing up in the horary chart itself. And some of those considerations being designed in order to describe what the implication is for the astrologer and whether sometimes they’ll do a good job or whether the astrologer will mess up. Or some of the older texts talk about whether a person will receive good advice from like, a doctor or even from like, a diviner or other people that they’re seeking advice from, versus if a person has a tendency or perhaps will not get good advice from this person that they’re consulting with in some way.
AC: Yeah. So we could take it to the level of paranoia and do horaries for the horary appointments we book. When we wanna get a horary from someone, we can do a horary to see whether they’ll do a good job or not, and then —
CB: Right.
AC: — argue for like, 45 minutes. I wanted to say with doctors, right, a lot of times if you’re doing a remedy for a health problem, you don’t necessarily have the health problem magically disappear. But the next time you go to a doctor, they just happen to know exactly how that works. Like, I’ve seen that result from doing a particular mantra or practice to improve health. Sometimes there’s a direct effect, but a lot of times, the person just realizes they live next to a masseuse who’s dealt with that particular nervous issue a million times. You see that like, that net of synchronicity just drawing super tightly around exactly what you need.
CB: Right.
KS: That’s fantastic.
CB: Like a black hole that’s like, warping the spacetime dimensions around that area of a person’s life.
AC: Which we’re familiar with astrology doing anyway, right?
KS: True.
CB: In what way, or what do you mean by that?
AC: I mean, that’s what transits and time lords – that’s the way timing techniques look, right? When things look really great in the chart you may not know exactly what’s gonna happen, but you go for a walk and, I don’t know, find a bag of gold coins. Or you know, when things look bad, sometimes you go for a walk and every little thing goes wrong. Right? There’s that sort of distorting the or pulling from the wide range of possibilities of any moment to make the transit happen. You know, good, bad, other.
CB: Right. Or you’re having a Uranus transit and you meet a person who comes into your life that has like, Uranus on the Ascendant at that time.
AC: Right. Sometimes there’s almost like, when I see people go into like, a really hot period in terms of their romantic life, it’s almost like, 30 people – well, 30’s a lot – but you’ll have like, it’s like —
KS: Two or three’s usually more than —
AC: Yeah!
KS: — enough!
AC: But you’ll have like, a number – you won’t just have like, they meet one —
KS: One.
AC: — person. It’s like a job everybody wants, and the applicants are lined up around the block. But you just see it’s like, okay, it’s open season here, and they’ll just bump into somebody and like, my waiter was amazing when I was here, and then I, you know, whatever – yeah, you just see the life space just sort of contoured with the astrology.
CB: Yeah. Definitely. All right. So that brings us to – I wanna make sure we don’t overlook it, but our very last astrological signatures of the month, which especially is that Full Moon that takes place in Scorpio on the 26th and Pluto stationing retrograde on the 27th.
So let’s take a look at that Full Moon since those two things are happening pretty close together. It looks like this Full Moon in Scorpio is taking place at seven degrees of Scorpio with the Sun at seven degrees of Taurus. Both of them are kind of somewhat closely squaring Saturn at that time, which is at 12 degrees of Aquarius. And they’re also very closely or even more closely hitting Uranus, which is at 10 degrees of Taurus at that time. So the Sun is fully in an adherence or an applying three-degrees aspect with Uranus, and the Moon as soon as it completes that opposition with the Sun then immediately applies to the opposition with Uranus. So this lunation seems to be really emphasizing that Saturn-Uranus square at this point in the month around April 26th.
AC: I think you could get into trouble under this lunation.
CB: Get into trouble. A little bit of a rambunctious —
KS: I’m like, tell us more! What kind of trouble?
AC: Well, so you know, you’ve got the Saturn-Uranus and there’s tension there, both by archetype and angle, right? Saturn’s trying to contain and constrain, and Uranus wants to break free. And then you have the extremely high emotional energy of a Full Moon in a water sign, and you know, it’s Scorpio, so it’s not… It’s not the most diffuse water, right? It’s fixed. Like, water flowing through a hose is fixed. So there’s a pressurized quality to Full Moon in Scorpio. And then with the ruler being Mars in Cancer, we have basically two Mars-Moon combinations there – Moon in Mars’s sign, Mars in Moon’s sign. And like, yes that’s a mutual reception, but I think it will serve to pressurize and heat the water. Just seems like I like what Venus are Mercury are doing, but seems like they might get stuck making good jokes about things going a little fuckin’ nuts.
KS: Yeah. It feels very emotionally churning or stirred up at like, deep levels, for sure.
AC: Yeah. I mean, one of our yearly things that we talked about is that, you know, Saturn square Uranus years, it’s big protest energy, right? For all sorts of different reasons, right, wrong, and other. The period of time around this, I will be shocked if there aren’t massive demonstrations in several places. I don’t know why. I can speculate. But it’s just, it’s so pressurized.
KS: It’s got that feeling of like, tension boiling over type of —
AC: Yeah! That’s —
KS: — the hot pot on the stove, yeah.
AC: Yeah, that’s so right, and that’s a perfect Mars-Moon, Kelly. Right? The water boiling over.
KS: Yeah. And Austin, I mean, you said this at the top of the show that as we get the planets going through Taurus this month, we really get that Saturn-Uranus square activated, and this Full Moon is really just bringing home that tension, that push-pull.
AC: Yeah. Absolutely. I really like “boiling over.” That’s perfect.
KS: Yeah. The pot boils over.
CB: It’s interesting that because of where Saturn is a couple degrees after Uranus at this point that Uranus then gets hit first by the luminaries or by any planets applying to it, and then Saturn comes later. So the restraint of Saturn comes after the sudden, unexpected outburst or rebelliousness of Uranus. And also it’s interesting, you were talking about the watery nature of sort of emotional nature of that Moon and its reactions, and the Moon being ruled by Mars in this lunation in Scorpio. But then when you look to what Mars the ruler is doing, it’s actually in Cancer, so this is a mutual reception or at least a reception of some sort between the Moon and Mars being in each other’s signs and not necessarily helping each other out in there, because both of them are not in signs – they’re actually both in the sign of their fall or depression where maybe they struggle the most to produce results at their highest or most refined level.
AC: Yeah. You know, and this is maybe just a sidenote worth making. If this was a natal chart, I would expect that the person would have a really interesting and probably ultimately useful shape for that Moon-Mars mutual reception by the time they were an adult. As just a moment in time, you know, it’s just a couple days. Right? With the Moon in Scorpio, we don’t have enough time to like, figure out exactly how all of that works, and so I would read this significantly more negatively as like, what’s the end of April gonna be like, versus the way I would read it for a nativity. Because, you know, there are obviously a lot of similarities, but natal has its own shape, right? And it has a context of “You’re gonna live with this chart for decades,” whereas I’m not going to live with this chart for decades, right? None of us are.
KS: No.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point about like, the timeline and the scale sometimes of some of these charts or even like, a horary question. I think that’s why sometimes horary questions can be read very literally and very straightforwardly symbolically of whatever the initial meaning of that placement is, because you don’t have like in a natal chart, a long timeline with which to experience setbacks or to make mistakes but then to learn and grow as a person from them and to try to do better the next time that placement is activated. But instead, sometimes you just have the initial impulse, and sometimes if that initial impulse is not on the most solid or easiest footing, then there can be like, a misstep of some sort.
AC: Yeah. When I teach electional, I like to joke about just the difference in the way we approach a nativity with like, profound compassion and patience, versus an election, where we want to be judgy pricks. I was like, you know, you don’t want to start your business on a chart that’ll really come into its own in its late 30s, right? Like, that happens with people – arguably, myself – but I don’t —
KS: Yes, all of us!
AC: I don’t wanna start a project there. It’s like, well, you know, the first two decades are really rough. The 20s are kind of in the middle, but you know, by 2057, you know, this nativity’s really gonna shine. It’s gonna have learned a lot of lessons. It’s like, no, not for elections. Different rules for people and moments.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah. That’s an important point. Because that is, it’s a more tough type Full Moon because the Moon is in the sign of its fall as we’ve been talking about, ruled by Mars, which is in the sign of its fall. But even to take that out, the Moon is moving into a tight square with Saturn. So it’s got that feeling of the slowdown, if you like, or the limit or the pressure mounting.
CB: Yeah, and the very last thing is just Pluto stationing retrograde at 26 degrees of Capricorn. Do you guys have anything notable – I mean, we’re getting towards the later degrees of Pluto in Capricorn at this point. I think that’s the furthest it’s gotten at this point in that sign towards the later degrees of that sign. We are not quite at Pluto in Aquarius yet, but we’re getting pretty close as we inch more and more towards the middle of the decade.
AC: So is that the same day as the Full Moon?
KS: The very next day.
AC: Okay. Well that also – you know, Pluto is sort of our door to the underworld. And sometimes things disappear and go hide down there, and sometimes things that we forgot about erupt out of that Pluto door. So that feels like a reinforcement of some of that like, boiling over feeling around the Full Moon in Scorpio.
CB: Right. Just the intensity of that and a doubling up of the intensity.
AC: Right. Well, and things coming up, right? Like, the fixed water of like, water pressurized underground coming up as a geyser, right? That is, you know, overworld-underworld relations. What can be seen above the ground and what’s beneath it. But like, pressure below erupting.
KS: Yeah. And I mean, it’s obviously the station retrograde day. Because it’s late – like, it’s 26°48’ that Pluto stations retrograde, we actually get almost four months of Pluto at 26 Cap. So for those listeners or individuals out there who might have a planet or an angle around 26 of any of the cardinal signs, then this will be particularly relevant for you because it’ll be activating something direct in your chart.
CB: Right. That’s a really good point.
All right. I mean, and since that’s taking place on the 28th, that is basically the end of the month, and I believe is pretty much the last major, major thing that happens. It looks like there is a Sun-Uranus conjunction that happens on like, the last day or two of the month at 10 degrees of Taurus. But otherwise, that leads us into May and leads us into the astrology of next month.
KS: Lots to talk about then for sure.
CB: Yeah. So any other things to mention before we wrap up the forecast segment of this episode?
KS: I think we did… We definitely touched on all the highlights.
CB: Yeah. It looks pretty good. Not a lot of outer planet activity or major configurations like that, but there is a lot of inner planet activity and a lot of shifts to those new signs, especially activity in the Aries, Taurus, and Cancer signs and sectors of each person’s birth chart.
All right. Cool. Well, one of the things I wanted to mention since we’re talking about May and we’re like, leading into May that’s happening in the astrological community is the next probably one of the biggest astrological conference of the year is actually taking place next month, and that’s the Northwest Astrological Conference, which is our sponsor for the podcast episode this month.
So the Northwest Astrological Conference, they are having their 37th annual conference May 27th through the 31st. This is usually for its like, 37-year history is usually an in-person astrological conference that takes place each year in Seattle. But this year, as last year, it’s happening online as a virtual conference, but it’s still basically like, a world-class conference that, as a result of the pandemic, is being made more accessible where you can attend it online this year and basically watch a bunch of major astrology lectures from the comfort of your own home.
So I know NORWAC is like, a favorite conference that all of us have always really enjoyed going to, and the three of us have met up at a bunch of different times. Kelly, you and I started doing podcasts immediately after like, one or two Northwest Astrology Conferences, I think, right?
KS: A hundred percent, yeah. I think when we were talking recently, it was like, maybe back in 2013? After that conference? It was before we started doing this show, but we did a few one-off shows. But yeah, the NORWAC conference is definitely a fun one. We’ve had some good memories, I think all three of us, from those events. With the three of us together, but also just some of the other people that we’ve each had a chance to meet and connect with.
CB: Yeah. I think we met up and had such a good time talking at like, a NORWAC that we came home and we started doing the forecasts immediately after one back in like, 20 whatever it was —
KS: 15?
CB: — 2015? Because it’s been five years now.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Almost six.
KS: Almost six. Yes.
CB: So it’s got a great lineup of speakers this year, including many people that have been on the podcast. There’s actually just a ton of people that I recognize from the podcast. Ben Dykes, Nate Craddock, Gemini Brett, Nina Gryphon, Diana Rose Harper, Demetra George, Stormie Grace, and like, a million other names. I’m not gonna attempt to read them all off because I’ll forget some. But I’d encourage people to attend because one of the things that’s unique about this is I always encourage people to attend astrology conferences because it has both an educational as well as a social component, but usually it costs quite a bit to attend an astrology conference in person because you’ve gotta pay for both the ticket to attend, plus like, a flight to get out there probably, plus like, a hotel and food to stay there for like, a week in Seattle. And it can be kind of a daunting financial expense. But one of the things that’s actually a benefit of this conference suddenly being moved online due to the pandemic over the past year is it makes a conference that otherwise would be a little bit less accessible a little bit more accessible where you can attend a conference like this from the comfort of your own home. And last year, they did this I think over like, what, like a month or two prep time they had to switch it from an in-person conference to an online one, and it actually went off with surprising success last year and ended up being a great event at the end of May 2020. So this year, they’ve had a little bit more experience doing an online conference, and I think they’re gonna do even better, including not just the educational component, but integrating more of a social component as well so that people can meet other astrologers and socialize in between the lectures.
So that should be good. Anything else I should mention about that that’s relevant about attending a NORWAC or attending an online conference?
KS: I think the only other piece is that there is the main conference itself, and then there are pre-conference and post-conference workshops. And you can do everything, or you can pick and choose, where if you’re, you know, a little bit more cautious about your cash, you might think there’s just a pre-conference or a post-conference that you like that you want to sign up for and you can do that, or you can sign up for the main conference program, I think just from a practical, logistics perspective.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point. And you’re actually doing a workshop for NORWAC, right?
KS: I am. I’m doing one of the post-conference workshops, which is probably how I know that you can do them, you know, as part of signing up or not, on the Monday. And it is all about prepping for an astrology consult. So some tips and guidelines for preparing for consulting. So whether you’re just starting or you’ve been doing it for a while and you’d like to get your process, your client sort of experience, you’d like to really improve that or enrich that for yourself and your client, we’re gonna go through a bunch of things for that.
CB: That sounds amazing. Cool. Well, people can find out more information about that at NORWAC.net. And like I said, it’ll be taking place May 27th through the 31st, 2021. And yeah, I’ll be there giving a talk, and —
KS: Yeah, what’s your talk gonna be on, Chris?
CB: My talk is on some unique ancient views of the so-called malefic planets and the fact that the conceptualization and the way that the malefics were understood was much more nuanced and much more interesting in ancient astrology than people often realize. So we’re gonna be analyzing and really going into that, and it should be a fun talk. Yeah. So people should check that out.
Okay, I think that’s it for the forecast portion of this episode. That was a lot of fun. I did wanna talk to you guys about maybe a few little whatever miscellaneous topics as we wind down and wrap up this episode over the next 15 minutes or so. Any major topics? Your topic, Kelly, actually that you were just talking about about preparing for consultation was really interesting, because it reminds me of I saw this tweet by Alice Sparkly Kat a few days ago where they said – and I thought this was really interesting and something worth talking about – they said, “How do other astrologers deal with not being able to talk about rewarding/learning/emotional experiences with clients in order to protect client privacy? It feels like a big part of my life is secret.” And I thought that was a really interesting point, which is true, and it’s kind of like, an experience that all consulting astrologers have, which is that you have these amazing interactions with clients and it’s not just the client that’s learning things about their life and about the chart, but the astrologer in talking to an individual learns something as well in seeing a unique manifestation of a chart in a person’s life that they’ve never seen before. But then the astrologer, once it’s over, you aren’t able to talk about that like, immediately. And there can be like, this somewhat isolating component to it. How do you guys deal with that, or have you experienced that as well?
AC: I would say that’s actually something I kind of oddly value. I definitely sympathize with the frustration of like, having a really kind of amazing experience and not being able to talk about it, but I also – I feel like that’s part of becoming an astrologer is learning to hold that deeply private space and to become a well of secrets. There’s something about being the person who is entrusted with that that is kind of unique and powerful and special. And so that’s not always comfortable, but I guess I value it enough that the discomfort isn’t something I think about as much.
CB: Yeah, maybe it’s something that you get used to or once you get more and more practice, it doesn’t become as burdensome as it might feel like early on.
AC: Yeah. I would just say, you know, just thinking about that, I would say it’s something I’m even proud of at this point, being able to be a person who can do that.
KS: Yeah, there is something very sacred about the intimacy of a consult. And at the same time, there can be this amazing sense of… It’s hard to put into words that feeling of seeing the astrology come alive in the story of your client, whether it’s something to do with their family of origin experience or something they’re dealing with now with a timing event. It is in some ways life-affirming or affirming to the power and strength of astrology, even if it is describing something difficult, because there’s a congruency in the symbolism, if you like. But I guess I’m a little bit like you, Austin, in that I’ve not felt that it’s been a burden to maintain that intimacy. But then I’ve also had some very intimate, small, kind of peer-to-peer groups or discussions where I’d be able to share anonymous elements of something, like a specific one thing or what have you that sometimes allows a level of release without betraying something sacred. And then the extra piece is there are some clients when we have that experience where the client is comfortable to have that experience shared in a teaching capacity like I did earlier today with one of my other clients’ stories about the Mars and the Sun in the 8th house. And there’s so many more that you experience in session than what you can actually share, but it’s lovely when you get permission to share and then that learning can be a light that helps others understand something in a chart.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Right.
AC: There’s —
CB: So sometimes – go ahead.
AC: I was just gonna say there’s also sometimes a “you kind of had to be there” quality to it. Like, there are things that you can describe and make sense later, but it was like, you know, the depth of the moment is sometimes very meaningful and not terribly communicable.
CB: Yeah. That’s the issue. Even sometimes if you do ask for permission to share some tiny piece of a consultation which was like, an interesting manifestation or something even anonymously, that when you try to pick and pull that one piece out of the larger context of the story of the person’s life and the way that they described it in the moment of the consultation, it loses a little bit of its impact and essence even then.
Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So that’s an interesting topic and just something – it’s interesting the things that astrologers experience and learn that are things that you do during the course of practicing astrology that are just unique as a profession in having some of those experiences. And I think sometimes it’s nice when different practicing astrologers experience something like that and then express and talk to other astrologers about it in order to see how they deal with or work with different things that are like, pros and cons or things that come up during the course of just doing the profession.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So that is Alice Sparkly Kat, and I’m actually doing an interview with them on their new book on post-colonial astrology in April, so I’m looking forward to that and got a advanced copy that I’m working on right now. Other episodes coming up this month – I did an episode and started a series on the Moon in a series where I’m gonna do one planet per episode and just do a deep dive on each of the planets. I know the three of us did a series on the seven visible planets several years back that was still like, my main treatment of the planets on The Astrology Podcast, but now we’re going even further into that over the course of the next several months. And I’ve already booked an episode with Demetra for later in April to talk about the Sun and to talk about the solar phase cycle and all the different things related to the Sun that the Sun kind of controls or is wrapped up in in terms of its astronomical movements and astrology.
KS: Oh, fantastic!
AC: Yeah, it should be awesome.
CB: Yeah. Let me see what other topics are going on this month in terms of podcast things or that happened last month. I guess we talked about and mentioned the considerations before judgment in passing and horary astrology. Both of you have practiced horary at different points, right?
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yes.
AC: I’m not good at it.
CB: You’re not good at it? What’s —
AC: No, I just never like, made it a discipline. Like, I can kind of do it, you know? I know most of the principles. I just, it never became something I dedicated myself to, so you know.
CB: Yeah. It is a sort of thing in and of its own, and it’s interesting how different astrologers can come to specialize in different applications of astrology or can have a different focus. And because the field is so vast and so complex that while you can get some training in the different areas and different branches and while that’s a good idea because then having at least some familiarity with them is good and that’s what I try to do on the podcast and showcasing all the different approaches and traditions, ultimately everybody does kind of come to specialize in some specific approach to some extent it seems like, right?
AC: Yeah. Or you can —
KS: Yes, I think —
AC: — only get good at so many things, you know?
KS: Yes.
AC: If you can get great at three things, that’s amazing. Right? But there are a lot more things, even within astrology.
CB: Right. Can you get good at like, 10 things or 20 things?
AC: Right.
CB: And the answer is probably not as good as you could get at just like, focusing in on three things.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And as a —
CB: And you learned, Kelly, early on you did horary, but you’ve been focusing more on natal over the past few years?
KS: Yeah. I did do horary for quite a few years, and the way I would deliver my horary answers was through a written format. And that was definitely sufficient for, you know, the work that was being done and the prices that I was charging for that service at the time. But I personally much prefer a live discussion, and there just came a point where I had to pick doing, you know, birth chart consults and timing or doing the horary. And I do love the horary. It’s one of the things that every now and then I sort of wistfully miss, I think, because of the clarity of it. I mean, there’s a couple of great examples from that that I still remember now where I’m like, that was just so literal and so clear! And yeah. So I love – Austin, I think one of you guys made this point earlier where horary is just about the situation right now. So you get a little bit more of a cut and dry, clear sort of response, whereas the birth chart has got inbuilt timing sort of things, mechanisms. You know, there are certain things that will be maybe a little bit harder at this point, a little bit easier at that point. You could sort of see that baked into the chart from the get-go. So there’s more to hold, but I guess the depth of that appeals to me. Yeah. And then there are people who specialize in horary who are fantastic at it, and I just refer on.
CB: Yeah. That’s been my thing as well is I’ve come to focus more over the past decade after doing more horary 10 years ago, I’ve come to focus more on natal and electional over the past decade as like, my main interests and my main things that I’m doing on a regular basis. But recently in revisiting some of the horary stuff, it’s gotten me interested in going back to that again, and I’ve been revising – I had this old course that I recorded back in 2008 on like, a voice recorder on horary. And I took it down a few years ago because it was out of date, but I’ve been thinking about going back and revising that. But it’s funny listening to the old lecture, because my voice is like, much different in 2008 and sounds more like, high-pitched or something compared —
KS: Well, that’s 12 years ago! 12 or 13 years ago. It’s a long time!
CB: Yeah. It’s been a long time. But I’m thinking about going back and relaunching that and redoing it, especially after having a recent podcast episode, not just with Sue Ward, but also with Rob Bailey and having a great discussion I’m gonna release as one of the first episodes in April on the considerations before judgment in horary astrology.
So anyways, but part of the lead-in to that was that this is episode 297 and we’re coming up actually on episode 300 of The Astrology Podcast. So it’s about to pass like, a major milestone, which is kind of exciting. I’m trying to figure out how to celebrate that and whether to do like, a retrospective which is what we did for episode 200, weirdly, which was like, right after we had moved into here and moved into the new studio. And it’s interesting that it’s been a hundred episodes since then.
One of the things that happened recently is a listener sent in like, a supercut of a bunch of a statements and predictions we had made on the forecast episodes last year in 2020 that worked out really well. And I’m thinking about putting that together and releasing that as a little video on its own on the YouTube page for The Astrology Podcast, and that could be like, a thing to celebrate the 300 episodes. But I’m trying to think if there’s anything else I should do. Do you guys have any ideas?
AC: I think that it’s important for that episode that you wear a comical party hat.
CB: Okay.
KS: I mean, I wanna send you cake. Because 300 episodes is a massive achievement! Maybe we’ll finally get Chris doing interpretive dance of the planets.
CB: I am more interested in the cake idea, and maybe I can finally get one of those fancy, amazing astrological cakes that I’ve seen on like, Instagram where somebody has like, a birth chart on the cake itself or something like that. And I can share that.
KS: That would be amazing.
AC: I’m really fixed on this hat, Chris. I’m gonna go shopping. I’m thinking like, some sort of colorful, metallic cone with a little string, right? I think on your bald head, it would look really good. You can kind of do it like, at a slightly jaunty angle.
CB: Maybe I can wear it and just not mention it and never say anything about it.
AC: Yeah, yeah.
CB: I think that would be —
KS: Yeah, just pretend that it’s not there.
CB: Okay. If you get me the hat and send it to me, I will seriously consider wearing it, so.
AC: Okay! It’s a deal.
KS: Well, you have to tell me like, the date that you think you’re gonna record it, because I’m sure there’s a way to get a cake to you as well. And you’ll have to eat a piece on camera or something.
CB: Yeah. We’ll see what happens here this month.
Let’s see, any other things? I mentioned Demetra’s book is gonna be coming out soon, or at least we’re proofreading it, which is really exciting – volume two of her book, Ancient Astrology. And it deals entirely with the – not entirely, but a good chunk of it – with the significations of the houses and how traditional astrologers dealt with and conceptualized the significations of the houses as well as how they’re interpreted. And I’m really, really excited about that, because it combines centuries of sources, and Demetra’s expert analysis of that, so it should be really good when that becomes available.
Yeah. Any other discussion topics or anything else you guys wanna talk about or mention before we wrap up this episode?
KS: I just wanna congratulate you, Chris, on being so close to 300 episodes. That’s —
AC: Yeah!
KS: — an amazing achievement.
CB: Thanks. I didn’t know that I would get here when I started in 2012, especially because if you listen to the first episodes, I’m just doing them every few months. Like, as a sort of blow-off thing occasionally with friends, I would like, scramble and put together something when there was something interesting to talk about or I was thinking about. And what’s funny is the podcast initially for the first few years, if you pay attention to it, I’m really just like, talking to close friends who I knew and had them on or people who I could talk into coming on to do a podcast with me, or I would go to a conference and become friends with somebody and then we would go back after that and wanna keep talking, so we would record podcasts together like I did with you, Kelly, after NORWAC or after UAC. And Austin, you and I – you joined us for the forecast episodes. You were on some of the early episodes, but then you joined us for a forecast episode randomly five years ago, and now we’ve recorded more than I think 50 or 60 forecast episodes in that time. So that’s been a lot of fun and it has been a huge chunk of the podcast over the course of the past five years now. So thanks, both of you guys, for being a huge part of that and a huge part of the success of The Astrology Podcast over the past half a decade.
KS: Thanks for having me. Or us!
AC: It’s been an honor.
KS: It has.
CB: Yeah. So we’ll see now that it’s become more of a community thing, there’s a lot more pressure in terms of getting a good cross-section of the astrological community and displaying all the different astrologers and all the things that are interesting that are going on. But it’s always fun, and I’m gonna keep this past month especially with some episodes like the one on Buran of Baghdad I dedicated like, a few weeks to just researching that episode and then providing a really thorough like, research project, and then presenting it as a podcast. And I think I’m gonna do more stuff like that and like the considerations before judgment episode and making more resources available to astrologers as this turns into more and more like, a series of free classes that I’m just offering to the world through YouTube as well as through the audio podcast on the podcast website. So we’ll see how that goes over the course of the next hundred episodes, and what it looks like by the time I get to episode 400.
All right.
KS: Very exciting.
CB: I think that’s it for this episode of The Astrology Podcast, so thanks, guys, for joining me today for the forecast for April. And we’ll be back again in a month to look at the forecast for May in just a few weeks here.
KS: Thank you!
CB: All right! Well —
AC: So —
CB: — thanks everyone for listening – oh. Austin?
AC: Kelly, what do you have going on this month?
CB: Oh right.
KS: Oh! Yeah. April, I am doing a webinar for Astrology University on Jupiter in Pisces, so that’ll be towards the end of April. But the details to sign up if you’re interested are on my website, KellysAstrology.com, now. I’m just starting to prep for NORWAC. What about you, Austin? What have you got going on?
AC: I will be finally opening enrollment for my 2021 classes that’s been a little delayed. But we’re gonna get started in May. And then the classes will start in May; enrollment will open in April. And Sphere and Sundry just released a very fine Sun in Aries series from last year, the Exalted Sol. And it’s – looking back over the election, I got very excited. So Sun in Aries in the first day and hour of the Sun, and then the Sun in Aries ruled by exalted Mars in Capricorn in the 10th. And the Moon is conjunct Aldebaran and waxing. And so we have the Moon giving this accord is also conjunct a Royal Star; it feels very good. It’s very like, bright and invigorating. I’m really excited with the way it turned out. Kait did an amazing job.
CB: Nice. I love the photographs.
KS: Very exciting.
CB: Really good.
So that is available at SphereAndSundry.com, and Austin, your website is AustinCoppock.com. And Kelly, what is your website where your offerings are?
KS: KellysAstrology.com.
CB: Perfect. And I really like your website; your website’s in really good shape lately. I like how —
KS: Thank you.
CB: — it’s all laid out.
KS: I can’t take any credit for that. We must thank Tony Howard for his fabulousness there. Yes. So that’s Jupiter in Pisces. We’ll talk a little bit about what it means for this year and for next year. So that’s coming up at the end of April.
CB: Brilliant. All right. Well, thanks guys, and good luck with both of us. I always love seeing what you’re up to each month, and everybody is so productive and industrious, and then we get together each month to do these, and it’s always a good time.
All right. I think that’s it for this episode of The Astrology Podcast, so thanks everyone for watching or listening. Thanks to all the patrons who joined us for the live episode and for the live chat today; appreciate it, and thanks for your support. And that’s it. So good luck in April, and we’ll see you again next time for the astrology of May in about a month. So good luck, and see you again next time.
AC: Bye!
KS: Bye!
[END CREDITS]
CB: Special thanks to all the patrons that supported the production of this episode of The Astrology Podcast through our page on Patreon.com. In particular, thanks to the patrons on our Producers tier, including: Nate Craddock, Thomas Miller, Catherine Conroy, Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Sumo Coppock, Nadia Habhab, Issa Sabah, Morgan MacKenzie, and Jake Otero. For more information about how to become a patron and get access to exclusive subscriber benefits such as early access to new episodes, go to Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.
Also, special thanks to our sponsors, including: the Northwest Astrological Conference which is happening online May 27th through the 31st, 2021; find out more information at NORWAC.net. The Mountain Astrologer Magazine, which you can find out more information about at MountainAstrologer.com. The Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological Almanacs, which you can find out more information about at Honeycomb.co. Also, the Portland School of Astrology; more information at PortlandAstrology.org. The Astro Gold Astrology App, available for both iPhone and Android, available at Astrogold.io.
And finally, the primary software program that we use on episodes of The Astrology Podcast is called Solar Fire Astrology Software, which is available at Alabe.com, and you can get a 15% discount with the promo code ‘AP15’.