The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 301, titled:
May Astrology Forecast 2021
With Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on April 29, 2021
—
Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
—
Transcribed by Teresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released January 4th, 2024
Copyright © 2024 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
—
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, we’re gonna be looking at the astrological forecast for May of 2021. Joining me today are astrologers Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock, and today is Tuesday, April 27th, 2021, starting at 12:10 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the three hundred and first episode of the show. So hey guys, welcome back to the podcast.
KELLY SURTEES: Hi!
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris.
CB: Hey. We are having a fun tech setup day, getting some technical stuff worked out. This is always fun. We’re heading into a Mercury retrograde coming up this month, so maybe this is just a preview. Why don’t we go ahead and take a look at the sort of brief overview of the astrological forecast, just to give you a look at some of the major highlights. And then we’re gonna jump into a detailed breakdown of the astrology of May, followed by maybe some miscellaneous discussion topics later in the episode, maybe an hour or 90 minutes in.
So here’s the astrological alignments calendar for May of 2021. Some of the major highlights this month feature a bunch of the inner planets, as well as one outer planet, shifting from fixed signs into mutable signs such as Gemini and Pisces. On the third of May, Mercury goes into Gemini. On the 8th of May, Venus goes into Gemini. Then we’ve got a New Moon in Taurus on the 11th, Jupiter ingressing into Pisces on the 13th, the Sun ingressing into Gemini on the 20th, Saturn stationing retrograde in Aquarius on the 23rd, a lunar eclipse in Sagittarius on the 26th, and then Mercury stationing retrograde on the 29th of May. So those are some of the major highlights of the month. What are some of the other major highlights that I’ve overlooked? Kelly, do you have any off the top of your head?
KS: I mean, I’m looking forward to an aspect this month between Mercury and Saturn, in addition to of course the big news – Jupiter moving into Pisces. That’s definitely high on my list of May features.
CB: Yeah, that Mercury-Saturn trine with both of them in their domiciles, their traditional domiciles, is one of the nice highlights in the first half of the month.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Totally. Austin, are you psyched about Jupiter entering into its fishy domain?
AC: I am. I am, I’m looking forward to the bounty of the sea.
CB: Bounty of the sea. That’s like –
KS: Already with the quips! So good!
CB: That’s like how, what, tuna is called like, the chicken of the sea or something like that? So Jupiter, there’s something, some sort of parallel there, we’ll come up with it later in the show. What other highlights —
AC: Jupiter’s maybe the Wagyu beef of the sea.
CB: Oh I like that, okay. So what are you looking forward to? I know we’ve also got eclipses coming up at the very end of the month; that’s pretty significant, moving into eclipse season.
AC: Yeah, I mean, there’s not much I’m not looking forward to about this month. It’s a great month to be a mutable nativity.
CB: For sure. Also, with Saturn stationing retrograde, Uranus starts closing the gap and it actually catches up to and overcomes Saturn by next month. So we’re actually also moving into or back into Saturn square Uranus territory here, which quickly culminates next month with the second exact Saturn-Uranus square. So that’s a major outer planet alignment that’s building up very quickly and very rapidly this month.
KS: Yes. Yeah, moving back into that space. I think I’ve been, like, trying to forget about that and just focus on the middle of the month with Jupiter, but it’s good to keep that in mind.
CB: Yeah, so there’s definitely, like, two parts of the month. There’s like the first half of the month, with Mercury going through Gemini and trining Saturn, and some of the stabilizing aspects like that, and then Jupiter moving into Pisces mid-month. But then the end of the month, I feel like things start getting a bit more tense with Mercury going retrograde, Saturn stationing, and Uranus coming up to square it, and then also the Sagittarius lunar eclipse and the beginning of eclipse season again.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Things kind of go in a different direction. They take a turn at the end of the month.
CB: That’s a good phrase. All right. So, why don’t we, should we just jump right into the major breakdown of the first week of the month?
KS: We can. Do you wanna do any promo stuff at this point, or do you wanna get into it a little bit first?
AC: Sure, we might as well. I mean, that is a major thing that’s happening this month in terms of the astrological community, so thanks for mentioning that, is that the Northwest Astrological Conference is taking place in May, and that is the main sponsor for the month. So the Northwest Astrological Conference, most professional astrologers know about it because it’s one of the main astrology conferences that happens every year in May for the past 36, 37 some odd years. This year, again due to Covid, it’s actually taking place online. So it’s like a world-class astrology conference that’s happening online this year, where there’s over 30 astrologers who are giving lectures on different types of astrology as well as workshops. I think, Kelly, you’re doing a workshop?
KS: I am, yeah. Post-conference workshop on Monday all about preparing for an astrology consult. So it’s less about like, doing the chart read itself and more about like, centering the chart read in the experience with the client, so a little bit of the business-y, practical, you know, prep side of things. And I think you and Leisa are speaking in the main program as well, Chris.
CB: Yeah, I’m giving a talk on the traditional view on the malefic planets and some of the unique sort of esoteric views of the malefics in traditional astrology, which are a little bit more nuanced and a little more detailed than you might expect. And I’m looking forward to giving that talk, but I’m actually mainly looking forward to just seeing a bunch of other talks from sort of a mixture of older established astrologers as well as some newer astrologers that are either giving their first talks or sometimes just their second talks at a major conference. So NORWAC is always a good time. It’s too bad we can’t be there in person, but maybe next year. But I think given how well it went last year that this year should be pretty good. Austin, you have always had successes at NORWAC. I believe that you got together with your partner at a NORWAC, right?
AC: Yeah. So if you’re looking for a life partner, apparently you can find those at NORWAC. It’s not on the website, but you know, sort of the secret menu.
CB: You two will have to do a workshop on that at some point. We’ll have to clear that with Laura maybe and see how that goes. All right, well, people can find out more information about that conference; I definitely recommend checking it out at NORWAC.net, and that’s taking place later in May, at the end of the month, May 27th through the 31st, 2021. So be sure to check it out. All right, thanks for mentioning that, Kelly.
Let’s jump into breaking down the major astrological happenings in the very first month, or first week of the month. So let me pull up, for those watching the video version, the planetary movements in the software that we use, which is Solar Fire. Here’s our electional chart for recording this episode, and here’s the chart for May 1st. So as we can see, we sort of start out the month with most of the inner planets, most of the planets in general, moving through the fixed signs, and especially the inner planets moving through and completing their trip through Taurus, but then pretty quickly in that first week of May, we see that ingress of Mercury into Gemini, followed by Venus moving into Gemini by the 9th. So we start getting a shift of not just inner planets into the mutable signs of Gemini but also eventually Jupiter catching up and moving into Pisces around May 13th, May 14th as well. So how do you guys feel about that first week of May and that shift from sort of like fixed sign energy to mutable energy?
KS: I feel good about it. I’m especially excited because I don’t know if I just have a bias towards mutable signs, so I love when we get more mutable mojo, but particularly Mercury coming into its home sign. I know there are gonna be some messy moments of that with the retrograde and some of the aspects that Mercury is gonna make, but I think the first part of the month, Mercury is just really, you know, getting our thoughts going in a way that can be stimulating and, I don’t know, I know Venus will have a dignity change coming out of Taurus into Gemini, but I still think there’s a little bit of fun to be had with that.
CB: Definitely, I like that.
KS: What are you guys thinking? Yeah.
CB: That first half of the month with Mercury going through Gemini, I think, is good times. And yeah, Mercury is more chatty, and the shift toward mutable signs – one of the key words for mutable signs is just “change,” and sometimes that change can be really good and can be really refreshing, and especially in the first half of the month, that sense of like, something refreshing is what I’m looking forward to perhaps the most.
AC: Yeah we can say with mutable signs, it’s their job to change it up, to switch it up, do something else.
CB: Yeah, exactly. So just like the, when you get into the, when the Sun gets into the mutable signs, it’s that weird middle ground where it starts moving away from the middle of the seasons and towards the next season, so it’s like preparing for and paving the way for an impending change. There’s a heavy feeling like that, I feel like, in May with that shift to mutable sign energy and that feeling of preparing for and paving the ground for an impending change.
AC: Yeah. Another thing that’s nice about Mercury and Venus moving into Gemini is it coincides with them both being very visible in the western horizon. They both made superior conjunctions to the Sun over the last month or so, and so they were invisible. And Mercury is currently visible, getting more so, but Venus has been almost invisible for a while now, and so that evening star Venus is, how should we say, to a certain degree the beneficence is equivalent to the amount of light, so getting more and more light is a good thing.
CB: Funny that you mention that. I just recorded an episode with Demetra George where we talked about the Sun and we, a big part of that was talking about the solar phase cycle. So I’m not gonna release that episode until early next month, so after this one, but Paula Belluomini, my friend, made some nice diagrams for me to help illustrate that concept of, especially for the inner planets, the solar phase cycle and that process of either moving under the beams of the Sun and moving towards the different conjunctions or moving away from it and emerging from under the beams of the Sun, and that’s kind of what you’re talking about Venus and Mercury doing here, right?
AC: Yeah, absolutely. And this is visual. People can look out to the western horizon just after sunset and be able to see both of them, both Mercury and Venus.
CB: Brilliant. And speaking of that, so we’re recording this on the 27th, but just yesterday was the Full Moon in Scorpio, which was very bright and very vivid. Did you two go out and look at it?
KS: Didn’t even have to try – it was beaming in through the windows! It was fantastic. It was gorgeous.
AC: Yeah, same here.
CB: Yeah, it was extremely bright. And one of the funny stories that happened yesterday that – shoutout to listener May Anna for pointing this out in the podcast forum – but they noted that Apple computers released this new major update and like, a privacy app, where they’re calling it App Tracking Transparency, and it’s supposed to make it so that companies have to let you know if they’re gonna be using tracking of your movements and different things for ads, sort of like how Facebook will like, track you and then try to make ads that are customized to you, and Facebook is already like, complaining about it in newspapers and stuff. But it’s interesting having something like that from a major, major company, from Apple, being rolled out on a Full Moon in Scorpio, focusing on issues of like, privacy and transparency and things like that.
KS: Yeah, I mean, I often think of the Full Moon in Scorpio, just the little tagline of like, a light coming into the darkness, or shining a light on something that’s kind of hidden a little bit, and this is a really interesting thing about being more transparent about what’s happening with things that you might not otherwise think about.
CB: Yeah, a Full Moon in Scorpio and transparency about privacy. Like, how great is that as like, a little sentence? And it’s funny because of course Steve Jobs had Saturn in Scorpio, and it makes me think of other famous Saturn in Scorpio things that had to do with privacy, like – I think J. Edgar Hoover had Saturn in Scorpio, and so the FBI ended up having Saturn in Scorpio as well. And this is something we talked about a lot years back when Saturn was transiting through Scorpio and some of those things were like, Saturn returns.
AC: Didn’t the Snowden leaks initially happen under Saturn in Scorpio?
CB: Yeah, that might have been the case. That was around that time frame. And there was all those, then suddenly there was this explosion of discussion about privacy and whether the U.S. government was like, tracking everybody and storing, you know, that data and all sorts of things like that. That was a really wild time, Saturn in Scorpio, so issues of privacy being a classic Scorpio theme.
AC: Oh, and he has Saturn in Scorpio in his nativity.
KS: It was his return, right? His Saturn return in Scorpio?
CB: Was it? Snowden?
AC: I think so. Let’s see.
KS: Quick data checking in the background.
CB: Yeah, I’m pulling up on Solar Fire, not to like, fact check you or something.
AC: Yeah, no no, I was guess-timating from the age. June 21st, ‘83, that would be early Scorpio for Saturn, maybe late, maybe end of Libra?
CB: Yeah, it was right on that cusp. But anyways, you were right that it was around that time that all that discussion was happening, so interesting. We’ll still be, since we’re just coming off of that and that was the last lunation, that lunation is gonna, you know, carry forward some of that energy the next couple of weeks, so that takes us into, you know, that first lunation at the very least, that New Moon that’s gonna take place here in May, in Taurus on the 11th. So maybe some issues with, or at least themes having to do with, privacy as a major theme to reflect on in our lives in different ways, coming off of that Full Moon energy at the beginning of the month.
AC: Yeah there’s, the New Moon sort of locks in the number of changes we’ve had. You know, we’ve got Mercury and Venus in a very different place than 10 days previous. It’s nice. It’s very, you know, another thing about just planets in Gemini is they’re lively. You know, it’s very, like, you know, they’re very mobile, lively, back and forth, you know, talk talk talk, go go go. Especially with Mercury there, being the sign ruler and you know, having quite a bit of light.
CB: Yeah, that’s –
KS: Yeah there’s –
CB: Go ahead, Kel.
KS: Sorry, Chris. I was gonna say, yeah there’s a real kind of interactive quality to this Gemini, you know, transit, like, yes, let’s do this, or let’s talk about this, or let’s exchange this back and forward. And there’s something about Venus in Gemini with, like, the pleasure of exploring curiosity or the pleasure of that interactivity or connectedness. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Also playfulness and also movement and ideas of movement and freedom of movement may be like a major theme with everything moving into Gemini in the first half of the month. I’m a little bit concerned that the second half of the month, when Mercury slows down and stations and then starts retracing its steps while square Neptune, that that strikes me a little bit similar to what happened a year ago when Venus went retrograde in late Gemini around the same degree square Neptune, and there was this, at least in the U.S., like, people coming out of the first lockdowns and sort of thinking it was over, and we could go out again and everything was gonna be great, and then all of a sudden the second wave hits, and everybody had this reality check that we were still in the middle of a pandemic. And I’m a little nervous about Mercury going retrograde later in May as an almost sort of echo or repeat of that to some extent, but at least in the first half it seems like having a breath of fresh air and the ability to move about freely is like, one of the themes.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. And as we said, like a change-up. It’s different, right? Going outside isn’t, you know, we were able to go outside and go around wherever we wanted for most of life. And you know, it wasn’t always that awesome. You know, there are car accidents and you know, it’s fun to see people, then you realize that, you know, not everybody’s that awesome. And so there might be a little bit like, oh okay, I can do that again, yeah that was – I guess it’s better, but you know. It’s not, you know, it’s not like – there were problems with normal before normal got destroyed.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah, it’s easy to idealize something when it’s off-limits or when you can’t do it, but then getting reacquainted with it requires not just reacquainting yourselves with, like, the benefits of it but also with some of the downsides.
AC: Yeah, and –
KS: Yeah –
AC: Go ahead.
KS: I was gonna say, the one word that I’ve thought a lot about with this Mercury-Venus combo in Gemini, because it sort of peaks in an exact conjunction between the two of them later in the month, is the pollinators. I always think about, like, the bees and the butterflies and the birds in the garden, and that sort of, you know, there’s a process of fertilization that goes on with the exchanges and the interactivity and the connectedness that happens there that seeds things for the future, I think.
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Well, since we’re kind of dwelling on the Mercury in Gemini in the first half of the month and how kind of awesome that is, it might be a good time to —
KS: Yes.
CB: — mention the election for the month, which is a Gemini chart. It kind of brings, it gets a little ahead since it also incorporates Jupiter moving into Pisces, but I’m gonna throw it in really quick anyway.
So it looks like our featured election for the month, the main one, there’s kind of two really good ones, but the main one I wanted to feature is a Mercury in Gemini election, which takes place on May 14th around 7:15 a.m. So let me find the chart for that. Here it is in Solar Fire, and we’re gonna go for 7:15-ish a.m., which is, you should end up with a Gemini rising chart. Just adjust the chart until you have about 17 degrees or so Gemini rising, and this is roughly what it’ll be. So this is just after the New Moon in Taurus, so the Moon is waxing and increasing in light. We have Gemini rising, and Mercury is in Gemini at 15 degrees of that sign, along with Venus and the North Node and the Moon. The Moon is at 23 Gemini, and Jupiter has just recently ingressed into Pisces, so this is a day chart with Jupiter in the 10th whole sign house in one of its domiciles in Pisces, and overcoming through a superior square all of those planets in Gemini, which is a nice, sort of affirming aspect. Mercury is just coming off of its trine with Saturn. It might have been nicer to catch the applying trine with Saturn, but that’s fine, it’s still kind of a stabilizing or grounding aspect to have for Mercury in Gemini, which can otherwise be kind of light. The Moon is separating from a conjunction with Mercury in Gemini, and it’s actually applying to an out-of-sign trine with Jupiter, so we’ve got a nice Moon-Jupiter trine that’s applying in this chart. It’s not the best chart for financial matters because it has Mars in the second house in a day chart, but otherwise it’s a good Mercury chart for things like writing, communication, it’s pretty good for career matters with Jupiter in the 10th house, and so on and so forth. So that’s our, I think that’s our main election for this month that I wanted to share. What would you guys use a Mercury election for?
KS: Writing or dealing with my inbox.
CB: Definitely.
AC: Yeah, something similar.
CB: We were just talking about, Kelly, before we started the recording, like, writing books and like, elections for writing books and how I actually had to restart my book and pick out a new, better electional chart in order to rewrite the entire thing at one point in the process.
KS: Sometimes you need to just, to change up the energy that’s infusing the project, so that’s smart strategy.
CB: Yeah, for sure. So we actually have a bunch of elections this month because it’s one of the better months for electional charts, so we packed a bunch of elections in. So if you’d like more charts for different days, check out the Auspicious Elections Podcast that I do each month with Leisa Schaim for patrons through our page on Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast. But otherwise, yeah, good luck with that chart and let us know how it goes.
All right, so back to our first week, maybe getting into the second week of the month. We’ve got all the Gemini action going on. We also have a lunation very early in the month on the 11th of May in Taurus, right?
KS: Yes, we do. And Venus comes into play a little bit there as the ruler of the lunation. So that Venus in Gemini vibe kind of just gets pulled in there a little bit.
CB: There it is. So it’s gonna happen at 21 degrees of Taurus in Venus’s sign, and Venus has just recently ingressed into Gemini. So, how do you guys feel about this lunation? It’s not making any major, like, hard aspects with anything, I mean, I guess we have a square with Jupiter; Jupiter’s getting ready to move into Pisces. We’ve got our two inner planets already in Gemini at this point. Mars is not very prominent, so it’s not a very tense lunation like some other lunations this year.
KS: Austin, do you wanna make a comment?
AC: Sure. I think that the New Moon in the third decan of Taurus provides an interesting contrast with the Mercury, Venus, and soon-to-be Jupiter action, you know, which is very mutable and fun and going everywhere and playful – I think we could add to playful carefree. And so, you know, Taurus is a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more cautious than that Gemini cluster. And especially the third decan of Taurus is very much about – I think of it as the insurance decan. It’s the, like, you know, things can happen even if you, you know, act responsibly and prepare and all that. You know, it’s the shit happens, and so just make sure that if shit happens, that you’re still okay. There’s like, just a note of caution. Not a dire warning, but just a note of caution.
CB: Yeah. What were you gonna say, Kelly?
KS: Yeah, because it is otherwise a fairly straightforward kind of New Moon in that, I mean, as like, what are the aspects the New Moon’s making? It’s like a sextile to Neptune and an applying square to Jupiter, and that’s kind of it. So yeah, it felt a little bit like, slow and steady, carry on, go forward, kind of thing.
CB: Yeah, I mean, it feels pretty nice. I mean, as a lunation, it seems pretty calm and pretty stable and pretty enjoyable or relaxing. And I think one of the ways to look at it is just in contrast with things getting much more tense by the time we hit the next lunation two weeks later, which turns into not just a Full Moon but also a lunar eclipse while Saturn is getting close to stationing, while Saturn is stationed, and it’s like squaring Uranus, and Mercury’s retrograde square Neptune, and there’s just all this stuff happening by the end of the month. By the time we get that second lunation, maybe that’s the main way to understand this first one in contrast is just things being much more easygoing and stable early in the month.
AC: Yeah, it should be a good time. I mean, it really kicks off a fine – or culminates, it brings together and sets the tone for a really fun couple weeks. And a really fortunate couple weeks.
CB: Yeah, and one of the aspects that’s really close during that time of the New Moon that you mentioned that you liked particularly, Kelly, was that Mercury-Saturn trine, which looks like it goes exact the following day on May 12th. What are some just key words for those not familiar with that configuration for Mercury trine Saturn or Mercury in Gemini trine Saturn?
KS: Yeah, I mean, technically there’s a lot to like about this aspect – two planets in domicile forming, you know, a favorable alignment. So to me, Mercury-Saturn like this, when Mercury-Saturn work well together, it’s about some clarity of thinking. It can be practical decision-making, getting to a decision or agreement with some ease or like, “Oh yes, we’re kind of on the same page,” or there’s less discord here. And I love a good Mercury-Saturn aspect for dealing with paperwork or formalizing and finalizing an agreement. You know, we talk a lot in astrology about problem Mercury, like Mercury retrograde or the Mercury-Neptune when there’s a whole bunch of Mercury things to avoid doing, and I think this is a great example of, you know, there’s a lot of good Mercury things you could do with this aspect. Yeah.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And sometimes, you know, sometimes Mercury in Gemini can have a reputation for – while it’s very good at communicating, it can be kind of flighty or kind of in the worst case scenario kind of shallow or just like surface-level, but one thing that’s nice about adding in a trine for Saturn is it brings not just a stabilizing sort of archetype or influence, you might say, but also a sense of, like, depth and like, gravity to what Mercury is doing at the same time.
KS: Yeah, there’s some substance here. Austin?
AC: Yeah, I would say that. So as far as any of Mercury’s work that you want to stick, that you want to add perseverance to, it’s good, it’s not the, how should we say, that solidity that Saturn provides does come at the cost of speed. Even by trine, even in domicile, the trine to Saturn does reduce the, like, raw velocity of mercurial things, so it’s not good for that, just like, “Get it done.” But it’s more of a like, “Let’s sit down and take the afternoon to get it done.” I’ve joked before about Mercury – well, kind of a joke – about Mercury trine Saturn in domicile – probably a great time to speak with the dead, whatever that means. To research things very thoroughly, you know. And all of history is full of the dead, right? So learning about what’s happened is one way of speaking with the dead.
CB: Yeah, I like that, and also just that idea of communicating. Mercury being great at communicating and Saturn being the accumulation of knowledge that only comes about as a result of time and through trial and error, and a favorable combination of those two things so that maybe, you know, being able to communicate that which was learned from the past in some way, which could then extend, you know, outside your lifetime in the way that you’re talking about, Austin. But there’s so many other ways that that archetype could also manifest in a smaller scale at the same time.
KS: Yeah, there’s also something about benefiting from the wisdom of experience, like the lessons learned that either you have and you’re making a better decision based on that, or you’re speaking with a mentor or somebody either older or more experienced than you in a particular area and you get to benefit from their experience or lesson learned. There is a real, there’s a gravitas or a substance that I think Saturn gives Mercury here that you wouldn’t normally get out of Mercury in Gemini, I agree completely.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point. That’s supposed to be the focus of my NORWAC talk is ancient astrologers talking about sometimes when Saturn is well-placed, the native benefitting at the expense of other people, but in a positive sense it could also be, you know, not just learning from other people’s mistakes but also learning from other people’s wisdom, who have gone before you and having experience and wisdom as a result of effort, as a result of just time, spending time doing something. So —
KS: Yeah.
CB: — that’s one of our —
KS: There’s a general like, really productive feeling, I think, with that aspect, sorry, yeah.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And that’s actually reminding me that I meant to mention the, I keep thinking about and marveling or doing more research into how crazy it is, how quickly the vaccines were developed, and how that did end up manifesting. Because I did, in episode 300 that I released, in the episode before this one, I did like a major highlight reel of highlights that were put together by a listener named Alicia Park, who picked out, like, highlights of great, either prescient statements or deliberate predictions that we made in our forecast episodes last year, and it was really fun looking back on that episode and seeing some of the things that we got right. But it was really crazy that the vaccines did end up being rolled out to the public on the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction or very close to it in Aquarius. And we almost didn’t – like, we did at the time, but I still keep marveling at how notable that was as a technological development and major advancement in technology that happened very rapidly that coincided with that conjunction in Aquarius. And it’s almost more notable now that we’ve seen in the past few months the wide-scale rollout of that and the effect that it’s having in helping some people to get over the pandemic and things like that, or hopefully society eventually moving on. But it’s interesting to think about that as a technological advancement.
KS: Yeah, I think it’s really great. And just to think how quickly, and the collaboration that went on in different parts of the scientific community, you know, funding barriers, you know, just not there as they normally are, and it is quite quick, and it’s amazing that it’s, you know, it’s effective and it’s helping people, and that it timed out with that, I think, yeah. Because sometimes I think the point you’re also making, Chris, is that sometimes these things slot a little bit more when you look back, and that’s one thing that, you know, is clearer and clearer now for sure.
CB: Yeah, well, I mean, I think because sometimes when looking ahead at something like that, at like a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius, we were all looking forward to technological advancements, but sometimes we think about, like, crazy sci-fi stuff, like everyone’s gonna be driving around in flying cars or something like that, is maybe what we would have thought back in the ‘90s. But instead, it was the bringing to bear of a new technology and a new way of developing vaccines in order to fix like, a major problem that had come up in the world at that time, which is just as much of a technological advancement in a very, you know, serious and profound way as flying cars, but just not as like, obvious in some ways.
AC: Yeah, well, I think it really does a good job of heralding what will no doubt be like, decades of significantly greater interest in funding for the biotech, for lack of a better term.
CB: Yeah, for sure, and also I was reading about how the vaccines and the type of vaccine was actually originally developed for cancer research, but then they just realized that they could apply it to developing a vaccine for this new issue that had just come up as well, so there’s lots of other things that we haven’t even seen that they will roll this out for in this new approach. Anyway, but I just got vaccinated; I’m pretty excited to have some coverage now going forward. I feel pretty tired, but feeling tired for a few days feels a lot better than the two months when I got sick last March a year ago, so I’m pretty excited to hopefully come out of this feeling better and having some protection from that going forward. Kelly, I think you’re getting yours soon?
KS: Yes, we are scheduled next month, so we’re looking forward to getting that done before we have some, a bit of a big travel thing coming up in the summer, so we are looking forward to getting that done before then, yeah.
CB: Awesome. Cool. And Austin, you’re out in the middle of nowhere, not having to like, interact with people, so you’re in pretty good, protective bubble to begin with.
AC: Yeah, my cantankerous antihumanism and the isolation —
CB: Finally paid off.
AC: — that has yielded as apparently great protection from vaccines. Or not, sorry, great protection from diseases. But we probably will; we’ll probably go get it done second half of the spring. There’s just a lot going on. It’s yet another thing to schedule. But yeah, we’re in a low risk area.
CB: Good times. All right, so everybody – go out, get your vaccines, and get some protection because it’s definitely – whatever minor tiredness or other things it comes with is a lot better than the multiple months of major illness that you might deal with otherwise, or at least that I experienced last year.
All right, so let’s go back to the forecast. We’re talking about the second week at this point. We’ve talked about the lunation, the New Moon in Taurus on the 11th, and now we get to the big, the elephant in the room, or the big, the chicken of the sea as we were saying earlier – Jupiter moving into Pisces on the 13th of May, and the sort of breath of fresh air that I know a lot of us have been looking forward to in terms of Jupiter finally being free of some of the restrictions and the things that have been holding it back over the past year or two during its long journey through the Saturn-ruled signs of Capricorn and then Aquarius.
KS: Yes, it is.
AC: Yeah, it’s gonna be nice.
CB: Yes, my two Sun in Pisces friends, I know you’ve been looking forward to this for a while, not just for altruistic, you know, world in general reasons, but perhaps for personal reasons as well.
AC: Perhaps.
KS: Maybe slightly selfishly, but also collectively it is – I mean, it’s the greater benefic coming into a place where, you know, theory tells us Jupiter has some resources or some gift or support or even that concept of like, you know, the word that comes to my mind is succor, you know, that almost semi-religious, spiritual thing of like, you know, something good for the soul kind of thing, and I think that will be a balm that will benefit many at this time.
CB: Definitely. So that’s really emphasizing some of the – we’re talking about the Gemini placements in the first half of the month, and ideas of like freedom of movement and that’s, you know, freedom of movement is a good keyword for Jupiter as well, because I remember, Kelly, you especially as someone who travels a lot and travels internationally, that was one of the first things you really pointed out when Jupiter was really getting hammered a year ago while it was going through Capricorn and it was conjoining like, Saturn and Pluto and everything else, was just that one of the primary things that was getting hurt by Jupiter in its planetary condition being so restricted was, you know, restrictions on travel and freedom of movement.
KS: Yeah, the travel, I think, has been huge. Obviously it’s one industry that has been sort of totally decimated on some levels. And so I think Jupiter’s condition in Saturn-ruled signs, but combined with the co-presence of Saturn, and that combination? Obviously, Jupiter is in Cap and Aquarius every 12 years, but for Jupiter to be there with Saturn? That’s an every 60 year kind of cycle, so that’s not something we deal with all the time. And then add in too that we had the South Node in Sag, which you know, the last time that happened was in the post 9/11 travel environment, which changed long, big distance, sort of you know, flight travel substantially as well. So I’m really intrigued to see what Jupiter in Pisces – how it helps, but I think that the best help from Jupiter in Pisces in that context is really in 2022, when Jupiter is there longer and when the South Node isn’t in Sag. So it’s a taste but it’s not the fullness, I don’t think.
CB: Yeah, that was the, I think that was the keyword that I wrote down as well, like a taste of freedom or something like that, because Jupiter’s gonna dip into Pisces but it’s not gonna stay there. It’s just gonna be there very briefly before it goes retrograde next month in late June. It stations retrograde at like, the first degree of Pisces, and then by the end of July, it retrogrades back into Aquarius, so it’s returning back to something that it almost thought that it got out of, but it’s not quite over yet.
AC: Yeah, it’s a two-and-a-half month appetizer. You know, it’s the like, full appetizer course. You get, like, the Caesar salad, you get a big pile of wings, you get some —
KS: Soup, bread rolls.
AC: — thinking of the barbeque place that – yeah, like, loaded jojos, maybe some onion rings, maybe something healthy, who knows. I’ve been thinking about this one a lot in terms of rain. The idea of bringing the rain, being a rainmaker, like, make it rain. Because this is Jupiter in a watery sign, and I’ve been thinking about how in a lot of places, for a lot of history, having enough rain, right, if you don’t have a lot of irrigation, in order for all of the food to grow, all of the non-animal food, all of the plant food, you need enough rain. And you know, as we’ve had droughts more often lately, I think it’s sort of underscored how important it is, like, for the rain, to be able to bring the rain, and you know, we use that as – that’s a general figure of speech, which has to do with like, good luck coming, just like raining down from heaven, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: I’ve also just been, you know, looking at weather astrology more and more, and also you know, in this part of the country, it’s fire country. And so it’s not just, “Does the rain put out the fire?” But there are water table levels, and there’s just how juicy all the plant life is. Like, how much rain has the vegetative and soil layer, how much does it absorb? Because the more moist you are coming into fire season, the less likely that things will get out of control. And I’ve been thinking like, Jupiter, Zeus, like, sky gods in general, like the beneficence of the sky gods and goddesses is the bringing the rain, right? Both metaphorically and quite literally.
CB: That’s a really interesting point, because in looking at the highlights from last year, that was one of the things that you said about that pileup in Capricorn, Kelly, that really peaked in like, March of last year when all the lockdowns, especially across the west, really went into place, was when you were talking about Capricorn, you were talking about how dry it was, and how just in terms of the underlying Aristotelian qualities or Stoic qualities of the signs, that there was a real focus on Saturn and earth signs and dryness. And one of the things that dryness does is it kind of separates things.
KS: Yeah, it creates space, like everything, you know, if you think about plant life, it kind of shrivels and pulls back, and it does become more crumbly. And I love what you’re saying, Austin, and then of course I think about it in an emotional capacity – what does wet do? Wet is the binding agent that like, clumps together, or closeness, and you know, that wetness of connection is something that I think maybe psychologically or emotionally we’re all maybe aching for in different ways because we have had much more dryness. We’ve had more than our fair share. And the fire seasons, I think, in the U.S. – I know in Australia, fire season last year was horrid. So yeah, the bringing the rain is something that will be very welcome.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good analogy, and so it’s like the return also of social connection and whatever social lubricant of people being maybe in person or able to form in-person connections again, especially as some people then are coming out of the past year of enforced isolation – self-enforced, often, isolation and not being able literally to connect with people both not just physically but also emotionally.
KS: Yeah, and the other thing I think about is, you know, the water as emotion and feeling, and how with what we’ve all been through in the last 12 months or so, there’s a lot of people that are just holding their feelings together or just keeping it together, and we’re gonna have like, a flood, I think, of emotion that individually and collectively, supporting our emotional selves is gonna need to be a part of the whole Jupiter in Pisces cycle, just this next little bit but also next year as well.
AC: And I would add to that on a collective level, that a strong Jupiter, as this is, Jupiter shows ways that things might be improved or manners in which problems might be solved, you know, and like better solutions is something Jupiter brings. And like, you know, Jupiter will be described as hopeful or positive, but when Jupiter’s in a strong position, that’s not ungrounded. It’s literally seeing a better way that things could go, or seeing solutions, right? So that positivity isn’t just, you know, it’s not just based on waking up in the morning and say, “Things are gonna get better,” right? It’s actually gonna be like, “Oh, we can move things this way,” or “I can do this. What if we did this? I bet that would be better.”
KS: Yes.
CB: So, but one thing that —
KS: I mean, we could talk about that for two hours, that planet, I think, so.
CB: But one thing we have to emphasis, and that was emphasized from the outset, is that this is a preview, and that’s because of the temporary nature of this transit over the next couple of months where Jupiter just dips into Pisces in the first couple of degrees, but then by late July, retrogrades right back out and goes back into Aquarius where there’s unfinished business for the entirety of the second half of the year. So eventually it’ll station direct in October at 22 Aquarius and start moving forward again, and picking up speed, and eventually by late December, Jupiter will return to Pisces, will be finished with Aquarius, and will be back in Pisces to stay for, you know, most of 2022 I think.
AC: Unfortunately, no.
KS: No.
CB: Does it just zoom through?
AC: It just zooms through.
KS: May. Yeah.
CB: Oh man. All right. Well, that kind of bums me out, but —
AC: So this first bit, which takes us, Jupiter’s in Pisces from mid-May until almost the end of July – it’s about a third of the amount of time, third or quarter, 30 percent-ish of the time that we’re gonna get Jupiter in Pisces. So maybe it’s the appetizer and the first course to a lavish, three-course meal.
KS: It’s a seven-course degustation, and we’re gonna get two courses now or something, basically.
AC: Yeah, I like that.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. I just, only going through two degrees, I feel like it can’t be that filling initially, and there’s something that’s still left for the future after this two month period of experiencing Jupiter in Pisces for what is, in the big scheme of things, a relatively brief span of time.
KS: Yeah, I think there’s gonna be a mix, because there’s gonna be the rain coming down, which is the healing or the support, whether it’s medicine or opportunity, you know, Jupiter is a helper in that regard. But it’s also – to Austin’s point, I think – it is the vision or the solution that parts of it you can put into place now and parts of it are gonna take a little bit of time to develop.
CB: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It looks like it retrogrades back for a little bit into late Pisces towards the end of 2022.
KS: Yeah, for a little under two months I think.
CB: Okay, so that’s —
KS: It’s just 28, 29 degrees when it comes back later next year.
AC: Yeah. I’ll take it though.
CB: Yeah, for sure.
KS: Hundred percent.
CB: It’s interesting and kind of weird and just, you know, ties into this, you know, timing technique that we kind of used and worked out really well last year of just sometimes the first pass of something indicating a preview of something that comes back and becomes more important later on. And so we did that for things like the Mars-Saturn conjunction when the lockdowns hit and Covid hit worldwide, and then how that connected to when the vaccines were released publicly in December when Jupiter and Saturn conjoined at the same degrees, or the Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions and some of the waves of Covid and how that preview, you know, gave us a heads-up about some of the later waves or the third wave. So there might be something similar here just in terms of a connection between this period of time when Jupiter goes into Pisces initially and sets something up, and the full payoff we don’t see until, like, starting in December of this year when Jupiter returns back to Pisces a little bit more permanently.
All right, so that is Jupiter in Pisces that’s taking place, you know, starting and takes us headlong into the second half of the month. Is there anything else going on in the second or third week of the month that we should touch base on before we get to the really busy end of the month or last week of the month where there’s like three different major things?
KS: Sun into Gemini in the third week?
CB: Yeah. So our final inner planet moves into Gemini, and then the Gemini party is complete. So let me just animate that for those watching the video version – there it is – by the 20th, 21st, Sun moves into Gemini, and then we have the Sun in Gemini, Venus in Gemini, Mercury in Gemini, and the North Node in Gemini forming a sort of quasi stellium.
KS: It’s a lot of Gemini.
CB: Yeah. One of the things I think you mentioned that you like about that ingress is that because Jupiter already preceded the Sun by moving into Pisces that as soon as the Sun moves into Gemini it forms a square with Jupiter.
KS: Yeah, and I’m just curious – it’s not that I like, “Oh, I think this is a really gorgeous aspect,” but I’m more curious as to how this draws out some of the threads or the themes or the topics that we’re gonna see with Jupiter in Pisces, and I think collectively, you know, it’s just a matter of paying attention to headlines around May 21st when that aspect is happening. And personally, thinking about the kinds of things that you’re starting to get curious about or interested in. I don’t know that it all happens on that day, but I think it’s, you know, the interest or the topic or the initial something to do with part of this Jupiter in Pisces piece. You get some ideas or somebody says something and that makes you open up a little bit more.
AC: It just kind of moves it along.
KS: Yeah, then Jupiter’s not just hanging out there by himself. He’s like, “Oh, right – I’m gonna have a dialogue about something,” so what is the dialogue about, I guess is the question.
CB: Right, that makes sense. So that ingress happens just a few days before our next major thing that happens this month, which is Saturn by that point begins slowing down and eventually stations retrograde at 13 degrees of Aquarius by the 23rd of May. So this is notable for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that this is the furthest that Saturn has gotten into Aquarius since it’s been moving through that sign starting about a year ago, starting in what, March, April of 2020, when it first dipped into very early Aquarius and then eventually it returned back to Aquarius in December of 2020. But now it’s getting into the second decan of Aquarius and almost up to the very middle of the sign. So especially anybody with fixed sign placements is starting to feel the heat with Saturn – or, alternatively, the coldness, I guess, of Saturn, would be a better metaphor.
And the second reason this is important is if you take a look at Uranus, because Saturn is slowing down and is stationary, Uranus is actually moving very fast, and by the time we get to this point in late May, Uranus is already at 11 or 12 degrees of Taurus, so it’s actually catching up to and will eventually overtake Saturn at 13 degrees of Aquarius, so this Saturn station is not just important as a critical turning point and intensification of Saturn in its transit through Aquarius, but this also means we’re really ramping up to the second exact Saturn-Uranus square, which is gonna take place in the middle of June, but already by the end of May, Uranus is within a degree of squaring Saturn. So we’re really getting into Saturn square Uranus time again, of which we already experienced a little bit of earlier this year.
AC: Yeah, they begin mutually applying to each other once Saturn starts moving backwards. They’re both moving towards the perfect aspect, and so, yeah there’s, as you said, a swift re-intensification of that square, which has, you know, sort of been part of the background almost all year. It’s not like it’s really been absent, but this is a little power surge as far as all those significations go.
CB: Yeah, it really starts ramping up to that second square, which – here’s the diagram again from Archetypal Explorer, which shows the second exact hit between Saturn and Uranus taking place between 13 Aquarius and 13 Taurus on June 14th. The first one was from seven degrees of the same signs on February 17th, but we see a quickly increasing sort of ramping up of that aspect peaking in June like really starting to intensify by the very end of this month. So just to give a rundown, what are some of our keywords again just to remind people, for Saturn square Uranus? What are your keywords, Kelly?
KS: Saturn square Uranus. Okay so, we have instability, things that are normally steady and stable becoming unpredictable, inconsistent, erratic. One of the big words I think about is disruption or interruption, so things that might normally happen consistently or with some regularity, now it’s, you know, higgledy-piggledy. When I think about this in a client’s chart, I often think about this idea of finding a way to free oneself or to liberate oneself from obligations or duties that have become restrictive or limiting in some capacity, so there’s that change that leads to freedom or autonomy or independence that I think is part of this. Socially and collectively, it does talk about upheaval. It talks about the systems or the structures within society having to go through fast-paced changes because I think with Uranus, you know, things can happen, you know, when we say unexpectedly or out of the blue, it’s like, we’ve gotta just, you know, catch up real quick, basically. So there’s some of the themes that I would go to with this. What about you guys?
AC: Well, so one thing I’d like to add is that as far as client charts, I’ve been seeing people who are born under the Saturn-Uranus co-presence and conjunction from the late ’80s who have like, a very powerful Saturn-Uranus signature in their chart – that just getting activated in whatever house it’s in. It’s, you know, it’s a recurrence transit in the sense that it’s just that pairing of Saturn and Uranus, powerfully and in a sustained way. And what’s interesting is I see both the like, breaking away from a structure for freedom. I also see new responsibility arriving, you know, at the speed of a lightning stroke, right? You also have that, like, suddenly there’s a new structure. Suddenly a structure disappears, suddenly a structure appears. It’s pretty interesting.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And I think we saw earlier this year at the beginning of the year, for example in January, when that square was already heating up, some of those like, classic archetypal themes of like, attempts to overthrow the establishment as like a major thing, and we had the, you know, attempt – I forget what the term is, it’s like escaping me at the moment, but the attempt to like, overthrow the government. What is the term that I’m thinking of?
KS: Is ‘coup’ the right word? Yeah, coup.
CB: Basically, yeah. Insurrection, thank you, yes.
KS: Insurrection, that’s the word, yeah.
CB: Insurrection, and that was a very literal manifestation of this broad, archetypal theme of attempting to overthrow the establishment, which we even see from a mythological standpoint in the story of Saturn and Uranus in, like, Greek and Roman mythology. But also if we think back to last summer, the like, May-June time frame was actually our very first preview of this, with the George Floyd protests and some of the things that were happening early last summer, where we see a similar but different version of that archetype of like, attempting to overthrow bad societal structures that are like, built into society, and to expose them and reject them and change things, basically, like, things that need to be changed. So I think we’ll keep seeing alternations between those different themes with this Saturn-Uranus square growing in intensity next month and sort of waxing and waning during the entire course of this year.
AC: We also had the GameStop thing, as far as like, attempting to —
KS: Earlier this year.
AC: — yeah, attempting to overthrow a rigged system or to, you know, however you wanna frame that. But it was certainly not system-friendly. Some of the imagery that I’m getting, you know, trying to think about it on a personal level as well as a collective level, is with Saturn we have structure, right? And if you – Uranus likes to shake things, right? Things vibrate or shake when there’s a lot of energy put into them in a short amount of time. And if you think about different structures, right, like things that are brittle – if you shake them, they come apart, right? Whereas there, you know, there are more coherent structures, like a tree. You shake a tree and some fruit might come out, right? But it’s not gonna like, the tree, if it’s sufficiently moist, is not brittle. And sort of seeing the different structures in your life, whether they’re psychological sort of complexes or, you know, the set of matters in a particular area of life, like, how do they deal with the shake, right? And if they’re brittle and they start coming apart, then maybe the idea is then to rebuild, right? Whereas if, you know, you also get kind of a stress test then you can see what parts of you and what parts of life can do a little shaking, right? That have some flexibility, some mobility, and coherence and can take a little shaking. Does that make sense?
CB: Yeah, I like that imagery of shaking a tree or even Julie Palmer mentions like, an earthquake in the chat, and just that notion of shaking the very foundations of something and whether something will come loose as a result of that.
AC: Yeah, if you like, for example, if there’s a smallish tree that’s been dead for a while, and you shake it, it’ll start to crack, whereas the same tree alive will just do a little wiggle.
KS: I love that imagery and the moisture, the wetness coming in, which gives the flexibility. So when something’s really dry, you know, if it’s brittled, if it’s hardened, if it’s really old, it’s more likely to crack or break, whereas something has that moisture – which can sometimes be associated with youth or just freshness, like something’s been updated or it’s recently been watered – and then it can handle it. And the idea of like, fruit coming off a tree – that’s a great thing! That’s the gift of the tree. You know I’m here for the tree stories.
AC: Yeah, right. And you know, I think that’ll, maybe that might be a useful lens to look at some of the systems which get challenged this year, which have been challenged and will continue to be challenged. Like, when they get shaken, you know, is there enough life in that tree? Or can you hear the cracks and snaps as the brittle, dead structure, you know, shows itself?
CB: Well, and sometimes that being an opportunity for people.That the instability and the process of being in the middle of a movement that’s like, shaking up the foundations of something sometimes turns into opportunity to people, which calls back to your point about like, the GameStop thing and all of the people that were participating in that that was shaking up like, established financial structures and then a bunch of people getting rich as a result of that. It also calls back to what ended up – again, thinking back to the highlight episode from last year – ended up being a good call in retrospect, which is us talking about the Saturn-Pluto conjunction and how it could coincide with extreme fluctuations in wealth, up and down, but how sometimes it’s during those times when things are falling apart that some people make their fortunes by taking advantage of a low point, or a difficult time for many people becomes an opportunity for some. And that ended up working out certainly for example with some of the billionaires who became even more wealthy. But this year, maybe that’s a similar archetype of, you know, it’s not people being at their lowest, but it’s people that sometimes can thrive during periods of instability when there’s major shake ups that are happening to established structures.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. There’s new pathways open, right? When an existing structure is going through a period of crisis or change. You know, there are pathways that are open that weren’t before, and they may not stay open. Like, there are, I don’t know, like the highways of chaos, right, that don’t exist during times of order.
CB: Yeah, in times of rapid change, sort of like when a new technology comes on the scene, sometimes it’s those early adopters who adopted early and are just there first for whatever reason, sometimes by choice or sometimes by circumstance, who have the most benefit just because they get on the new platform and make the most of it early on.
KS: This is reminding me of one other thing that I often use as a little analogy for when people are in major Uranus transits or cycles in their life, and it’s the idea of an exception to the norm or exception to the rule, which I think is what you guys are getting at – the idea that, normally, you can’t do X, Y, or Z, but in this, you know, weird circumstance or weird cycle or unusual time in your life, or collectively, things that you would normally be prevented from doing you may be able to find, like, a side door through or around, for instance.
AC: Yeah, there is – also, some people do better during unpredictable times like this. Some people do better during ordered times. I’m reminded there was a great general of the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history named Cao Cao – I think that’s the correct pronunciation – and we have this sort of literary history of that period, and it’s said that he went to be evaluated by some, like, oracle or sage, and the person looked at him and said, “You’ll be a capable minister during times of peace, but a genius in chaos.”
KS: That’s fantastic, yeah.
CB: One of the things that makes me think about that’s been really vivid this year just in the past few months – we’re only a few months into 2020, but – after, because we’re also coming up on the new set of eclipses, it was after the last eclipse that happened in November, which was in Gemini. And on the day of that eclipse, Bitcoin suddenly I think hit a new high, and I noticed that correlation and then decided it was time to do an episode on Bitcoin in like, early December, so we did “The Astrology of Bitcoin” with Robert Weinstein in early December shortly after that eclipse. But that’s a new thing that we’re heading into now as we’re heading back into that eclipse series, so it’s gonna call back to that previous set of eclipses in late November and early December. But also one of the things that’s gone really crazy this year, perhaps partially coinciding with, you know, we’ve talked a lot about Uranus going through Taurus and some of the changes with currency, but Bitcoin has just gone nuts over the past few months in terms of its value and in terms of people buying into it and putting large sums of money behind it. And it’s been really wild to see that actually taking place before our very eyes as something that we’ve kind of been anticipating ever since the ingress of Uranus into Taurus back in, what? Like, 2019, 2018?
AC: Yeah, it’s also, right, all this interaction with Saturn is also just moving along some of the Uranus in Taurus themes that we talked about literally years ago, right? Like, currency. Like, big fluctuation of currency, but also just the question of which is – excuse me, new answers to the question of valuing things. Right? Because currency is a tool for valuing things.
KS: Yeah, currencies and food. Food development, food technology, food supply. I think they were some of our Uranus in Taurus themes.
CB: Yeah, Vandana in the chat quotes a Wall Street Journal article that says, “China Creates Its Own Digital Currency, A First For A Major Economy.” So we’re just seeing continued emergence of some of that story of the Uranus going through Taurus theme that we were expecting for that to be a major signature for this decade. But it’s interesting how it’s really getting keyed off, especially now that Saturn is squaring that placement from Aquarius. So we could expect to see further rapid changes and perhaps destabilizations of things like that as well as rapid fluctuations up and down.
AC: Yeah, and so I cut out there for a second, but what I was trying to say was just that, so you know, Uranus in Taurus and currency – that’s very consistent throughout history. But really, what’s behind that is Uranus in Taurus asks for us to think originally and think all over again how to value things, right, which is what currency is – a tool for estimating value. And you know, I think that the chaos of the last year has shown that some things have been overvalued. Some things have been undervalued. And so this question of like, you know, what is X worth? That question and questions like that are very much hovering around this time, and tools which help us answer that in new ways are an essential part of that storyline.
CB: For sure. Let’s see, one other thing that came up in discussing this that I thought of is I’ve noticed and become reacquainted with this year a tendency that Uranus sometimes has that’s sometimes overlooked as a tendency to go to extremes. Of wanting to like, push things and go as quick and as fast as you can towards whatever one’s ideal goal is as part of like, a tendency that Uranus has. That it’s rapid, and it wants everything to happen quickly and for the old order to be removed and the slate to be wiped clean as fast as possible. And that’s been an interesting thing I’ve noticed come up in different ways over the course of the past few months as Uranus is becoming more prominent and as that square has become more tense.
AC: Uranus is, I’ve always thought of Uranus as uncompromising.
CB: Right.
AC: Like, no, it needs to be totally different now.
CB: Right, like immediately and radically. Like, the sense of radicalness in terms of its tendency to go to extremes.
KS: And there is a quality of acceleration. There is a quickening or, like, it’s going faster. And then just something one of you said before about how – maybe it was you, Austin – Uranus has been in Taurus for a while, but the Saturn interaction is really pushing that to go into more structural or substantial kind of expressions, essentially.
AC: Right, it’s aspecting the structural foundations of a number of matters, right? So we’re seeing it really clearly. And it’s really, if we’re just thinking in terms of the longer Uranus in Taurus story, it’s interesting that, before too awful long, by the time that the Saturn-Uranus squares are done, we’re going to have Jupiter conjoining Uranus, and they’ll be eclipse – Rahu – they’ll be eclipses on that Uranus a couple years from now. So like, there’s, you know, what’s happening now leads into that.
CB: All right, that’s a really good point, that the eclipse series, we’re going through Gemini-Sag now as we go into eclipse season, but by the end of the year it switches to Scorpio and Taurus.
AC: So yeah, Uranus gets more attention after the Saturn sequence.
CB: Good point.
KS: Oh that’s this year, that’s a great slide.
CB: Yeah, I like that, again, from Paula. Thanks, Paula.
KS: I mean, if I was to summarize what we’ve been saying and Chris, I think, what we’ve been talking about the second half of May, it starts to get a little bumpy or wobbly at this point. Like, Saturn stations, and now it’s applying to Uranus, and then we’re going into eclipses.
CB: Yeah, we gotta talk about eclipse season, because that is the other big thing that we move into at this point, and it really, you know, eclipses happen in six – they happen in pairs, you know, a New Moon, a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse, and they happen in six month increments. And the last set that we had, as I said, was in late November and early December. Here’s a little graphic from that, again, from Kyle at Archetypal Explorer, shoutout Kyle. So what we have here is a continuation of an eclipse series that really got going late last year, and now it’s time for the next installment of that. So there’s some things that that means, you know, mundanely in terms of a world sense, like for example, the eclipse on December 14th ended up being really important. That was in Sagittarius in the U.S., and should have been like, the start of a new cycle in some sense. And we saw simultaneously, I think, around that time both Biden – basically, the Electoral College voted on that day and Biden was given the votes, and that was kind of, for all intents and purposes, pretty much the end of the presidential election cycle that was still lingering questions over up to that point. But also that was the first day, I think, that the first person or patient in the U.S. got the vaccine administered. So, and of course we’ve talked about the U.S. potentially in the Sibley chart having a Sagittarius rising birth chart and how that relates. There may be some mundane things; there’s also some personal things, of course, because that eclipse series was the shift into a new set of signs, into Gemini and Sagittarius, and so it was opening up a window of some major changes in different parts of each person’s life depending on what houses those eclipses fall in. So here we see a continuation of whatever that eclipse story theme was that began at least by late last year.
AC: Yeah, definitely. So, this one that’s coming up in May, May 26th-ish, is on the South Node, so it’s on the tail of the dragon, and it’s at, what? Like, five Sag? Looks like, something like that?
CB: Yeah, five Sag.
AC: And so, you know, generally, with the tail side, we’re looking at releasing something or letting something go, creating an absence where there was a presence. And it’s very interesting to me that we have this in Sagittarius, a Jupiter-ruled sign, you know, a week-and-a-half after the ruler of Sagittarius, Jupiter, moved into Pisces. Just thinking about like, what can be released? What might need to be cleared or released from Sagittarius, right? Especially in that Jupiterian context, now that we have new Jupiter, like making room for new Jupiter. And when I think of Sag, I think of very much like a quest format, like a quasi-religious set of actions, or a set of actions that has, you know, mythic or soul-level value, right, which is what a quest is. And, I don’t know, it feels like letting go of, like, there’s a thing of like, letting go of the idea that you are on one quest to make room for a new one on some level. Like, letting go of one myth to maybe live a better one. Does that resonate at all?
CB: So yeah. I mean, I have to point out also the standard thing of, you know, it was a solar eclipse, a New Moon, in December, so there may have been, especially in that part of each person’s life, laying the seeds or foundation for something that would grow and develop over the next six months, and then we should see a culmination of whatever that theme was that was started in December that culminates here with this Full Moon lunar eclipse that starts at the end of May, and the energy of that carries forward for the next six months.
KS: Austin, are you back?
AC: Yeah I had a really bad drop out there, sorry, I don’t know when it cut out.
KS: That’s okay. We all wanna hear what you want to say.
CB: Yeah, I was really —
AC: What was I saying?
KS: What was the last thing we heard?
CB: You were saying something very profound.
KS: “Letting go!”
AC: Oh, yeah I was talking about – so, with the South Node, it’s about clearing things away. Like, think of the tail sweeping things clean or sweeping things away. And so, I was just thinking about what is there to sweep away in Sagittarius right now? Well, the ruler of Sag – Jupiter – just moved into Pisces, and is stronger than it’s been in a while, right? And so Jupiter is – if we were looking in this sort of Sag/Jupiter realm is, you know, what’s meaningful, right? Jupiter is the planet of religion, which we could maybe say instead of religious meaning, but just like, what’s deeply meaningful, right? What’s meaningful at a soul level? And with Sag, Sag is the active, action-oriented side of Jupiter, it’s the fire sign that Jupiter rules. And – so sorry, I’m just watching your faces really carefully to make sure they’re not frozen.
KS: No, no, you’re good.
AC: And so, you know, our action – how do we say? – our meaningful action or our paradigm for meaningful action is it’s mythic, it’s a quest, right? Like, what quest am I on? You know, am I trying to, I don’t know, slay the dragon, kill the evil king, you know, whatever it is.
KS: Rescue the whatever.
AC: Yeah exactly, exactly. Save the who-now. And so I was just thinking about like, clearing away old quests, like clearing away some of the like, what our meaning structure has been, like making room for sort of new myth, new mythic motivation. You know, maybe clearing away an old myth, right? You know, maybe you got stuck in one of the rough Greek ones.
KS: And you’d like to update that.
AC: Yeah, not all of those would be very fun to live. But this sort of like, initially clearing to make emptiness so that the Jupiter rainmaking can fill the vessel, if that makes sense.
KS: Totally. So the farm land analogy is you have to clear the field at the end of the season and let it kind of rest and receive the moisture so that it’s ready for whatever’s coming next.
AC: Yeah, totally. Totally. Or from a super nerdy, computer RPG level, like, sometimes you have a big list of quests that you’ve received, like every NPC you talk to assigns you a different quest, and you need to clear all that out.
KS: I love what you’re doing here because I hadn’t gone as far with this, but the piece about the eclipses in Sag, and Jupiter has just changed signs – so whatever has been operating for a while, like, that’s, you know, emptied out, washed away, swept out, you know, and now, yeah, I love that. What is the new dream or the new thing to crave or seek or search for?
CB: So tying it together with the other eclipse keywords, like a culmination of events that necessitates or coincides with a decrease or a removal or clearing out of something in this area of your life.
AC: Right, like, it’s finally time to let go of this.
CB: Right.
AC: You know, because these things build for a long time. If there’s anything significant to let go of, then we’ve been holding it for a while.
CB: Right, so the question each person has is what are you letting go of in this part of your life? What is the culmination at this point? And maybe it was something that you started thinking about heading in that direction six months earlier, but now it’s finally time to have that sense of release in this area of your chart.
KS: Yeah. I think the point about building for a while, because we can hark back to the eclipse cycle of six months ago, or we can even think maybe the last almost 12 months since the South Node has been in Sag, because this will be —
CB: Yeah.
KS: — the last lunar eclipse in Sag in this cycle.
CB: And I know, I don’t remember if we had a debate, we always have a debate about like, how close the eclipses have to be to the nodes to like, be called an eclipse, and I don’t remember if we had it about that one, but I really feel like that one that happened a year ago at the beginning of June, which I believe was in Sag, was close enough. It was like, 15 degrees, but it was one of those ones where it’s just a mathematical eclipse, but that could have been part of the beginning of this eclipse series. So, and if we look at it in that long-term time frame we’re talking about, the like, late June or the early June time frame of last year of 2020.
AC: Yeah. That one’s a really hard. It’s hard there because there was so much going on otherwise in the sky. There was the Venus retrograde conjunct the Sun exactly square Mars, and then the Full Moon slash eclipse was like, tightly angular to both of those, but yeah.
CB: Yeah, I mean I’ll never forget that eclipse because I always associate that eclipse that happened in early June with Breonna Taylor and that falling on her birthday, and everybody in cities like, around the country, like, remembering her and her life sort of meaning something and being recognized at that time right when that eclipse hit. And it was so striking to me that I felt like that was actually an eclipse, even though it was so far away from the nodes.
So yeah, eclipse season, and of course this is just one part of eclipse season, which is starting with this lunation, but then there’s another one, a solar eclipse, that happens next month in June in Gemini, right?
KS: Yes, yeah. June 10th. So then we’re in that like, eclipse sort of little tunnel really, starting the 26th of May, so between eclipses.
CB: Yeah, eclipse season. And then that fully activates the other side of the equation or the other side of the coin, which is whatever that opposing sign is or that opposing house in your chart. So I know, like, I don’t know, we know somebody who’s having a major move soon that has a solar eclipse taking place, like, in the living sector –
KS: In their fourth house of their chart!
CB: Yeah. Is that okay? I don’t know how much —
KS: No, that’s totally fine. I feel like we share so many pieces that people can be detectives if they want.
CB: Right, they go back through all like, 300 episodes and reconstruct your chart.
KS: Totally. Yeah.
CB: So you’re moving back to Canada. You’ve been in Europe for two years, and this solar eclipse is gonna hit in your fourth house right before you move. And that’s not like, planned or that’s not – you didn’t, like, go out of your way to like, plan that for eclipse season. It’s just happening that way.
KS: It’s just happening that way, yeah. And it’s funny how – I talk about this a lot with clients in consults, how life sort of happens, and it’s like the astrology is sometimes descriptive rather than prescriptive in that, you know, it makes complete sense that you would do something like this under these circumstances even if it’s come about through timing factors that you didn’t have a lot of say around.
CB: Yeah, and that’s really – sometimes with eclipses that’s the most notable just because sometimes it’s things that are not, that you didn’t fully plan out. It’s just how things fell out or how things turned out.
KS: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And I mean, you know, I often think of the North Node as this sort of hunger, this kind of like, “I can’t get enough.” And because we are preparing to move back to Canada, back to our home in Ontario, there is a piece of myself but also my husband where we just are like, aching to be, you know, somewhere familiar. And so it’s very nodal axis-y, so yeah, to have the eclipses there.
CB: Interesting. Maybe “longing” could be a North Node term.
AC: Oh yeah.
KS: Yeah, there’s like, I can’t get – there’s a bit of an insatiable kind of quality, I think, to the North Node, that yeah, is worth keeping in the back of one’s mind, yeah.
CB: So, eclipse season, do we have anything else? Austin, do you have anything else about eclipse season that you want to say?
AC: Well I’ve heard almost nothing that’s been said for the last couple minutes because I’ve been in Elon’s satellite jail. One thing that I think might be worth adding is that whatever area of life that Gemini is for you, that the June eclipse occurs within, will have been already massively over-stimulated, right? Because we’ve had Venus there, we’ve had Mercury there, and Mercury is still there. And should we talk about Mercury?
CB: Yes.
KS: Yes.
AC: That’s a pretty important piece of this.
CB: It is time. That is the last major thing that we really wanted to mention here is that by the time you get into the second half of the month, Mercury starts slowing down in Gemini and eventually stations retrograde at 24 degrees of Gemini by, what? the 30th, 31st of May?
KS: Station retro May 29th.
CB: May 29th, okay. So, and Mercury stations retrograde at 24 degrees of Gemini, pretty much squaring Neptune, only about a degree off at 23 degrees of Pisces. So it’s not just a Mercury retrograde station, but it’s also Mercury square Neptune simultaneously.
KS: Mercury-Neptune. Yeah. And there’s gonna be three Mercury-Neptune squares, but I think there’s two that are just kind of like, one either side of the station retro, so that feeds into a hazy, kind of maybe overwhelmed quality for Mercury?
CB: Yeah, for sure, I mean, because Mercury retrogrades can also already be about like, miscommunication or confusion, but Mercury square Neptune just redoubles the confusion and sometimes miscommunication themes.
AC: Can either of you hear me?
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
AC: All right, I was confused about whether I could communicate effectively or not.
KS: I think this is a great, like, gestalt. This is a lived example of what we were just discussing – Mercury-Neptune.
AC: But yeah, it’s interesting, though, because it’s Mercury in its own sign and retrograde, right? And so remember looking at these, you know, whether they’re in Virgo or in Gemini, and thinking like, “Okay, is it gonna be better because of that?” How is it different because it’s in its own sign? And what I’ve come to is primarily that it’s more powerful, right? Mercury is, in a sense, the manager of that Gemini territory, and so has full authority to rearrange things as it goes retrograde, right? So the Mercury in dignity when it’s retrograding, it has, you know, it’s allowed access to everything rather than being in somebody else’s territory, and you know, playing, messing with their stuff but not having full power.
CB: Right, definitely. I keep thinking back to last year. A notable Mercury retrograde hard aspect with Neptune was like, February-March time frame of last year was very early in the pandemic where it was still new and nobody knew what was going on or how this thing was transmitted. And initially, they didn’t think it was like transmission – they thought it was transmissible by, like, touch, and not by air, and so like, for example, the U.S. government wasn’t recommending that people wear masks initially during the pandemic, which was just terrible and you sort of think of how many people must have gotten infected – including myself, I was still going out to like, coffee shops, and that might have been how I got sick in March. But that was like, a Mercury retrograde conjunct Neptune and this is a Mercury retrograde square Neptune, and just that potential for making a mistake due to something not being clear or you being under some sort of false illusion about something. That’s one of the things I keep thinking about.
AC: Or having bad information, right? This Mercury in its own sign is very clever, right? And so you can be very clever in the way that you act based on bad data, right, and still act ineffectively.
CB: Or like thinking that you’re more clever than you are or that you can out-clever something, not realizing a sort of hidden pitfall that you’re not seeing because you’re under some sort of false illusion or pretense.
AC: And with Neptune, right, with Neptune a lot of times it comes back to story, right? If you have the wrong narrative, you can make what seem like smart decisions within the story that you believe is happening, but it’s actually a different story, and so those smart decisions don’t end up being smart.
CB: Yeah, and that’s so – because like, still, it makes me think of a year ago because remember – so I’m gonna animate this and take it back a year. We had the same thing almost exactly with Venus and its retrograde. And this is when, like, people are coming out of the first lockdowns in May, and everything looks like it’s gonna be good, and then Venus slows down at 21 Gemini and stations retrograde square Neptune at 20 Pisces, and then all of a sudden it’s just, like, no, things are not over, and it turns out that was a mistake, thinking we could just go back to normal at that point, and we’ve still got a long ways to go. So fast forward back to this year, it’s just weird that now it’s Mercury that’s slowing down, just a few degrees after that, and Venus catches up and conjoins it around the same degree at 23, 24 Gemini around the same time, but then again we’ve got a Mercury retrograde, and it stations squaring Neptune. So there’s just some sort of like, formal similarity there to me between this time period in late May and June of 2021 and that period in like, May and June of 2020.
KS: There’s definitely some common threads. One of the things that I can’t help but sort of fixating on is the dignity condition. You know, there’s a difference of Venus in Gemini to Mercury in Gemini, and Mercury in Gemini is still going to have concerns to deal with, but there’s an underlying… something that, you know– The image that keeps coming up for me when I think about this Mercury in Gemini square Neptune is some transport and travel and things like that starting to come back online, and the many, you know, if you think about the many layers of information that have been processed to keep planes, you know, safely landing and baggage, and people going through checkpoints and things like that – when things haven’t been operating at a high level for a while, and then you start, you try to gear up, and you try to do it kind of quickly, there are going to be mistakes made. There are gonna be quirks that people forgot about having to do that is, I think, going to be contributing to the crossed wires, the messiness, the delays, the foggy, you know, Mercury-Neptune has this foggy facts. So it’s like, trying to do something Mercury in Gemini that on paper seems like it should work, and just running into some of those snags because things are not used to operating at this level.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: That makes sense. And, I mean, maybe one positive thing is just that Jupiter is in Pisces and that is different having Jupiter in Pisces overcoming through a superior square and kind of bonifying or providing some protection or some optimism for Mercury that wasn’t necessarily there a year ago perhaps. But look at this – even, like, Mercury retrogrades, and right around the same time that the Moon goes into Gemini and conjoins the Sun for that solar eclipse, Mercury is there at the exact same degree pretty much simultaneously at like 19, 20 Gemini around June 10th. So it’s weird how the Mercury retrograde gets tied into eclipse season and really emphasizes that Gemini-Sagittarius axis again. So somehow the Mercury retrograde story is tied into the eclipses in the sense of, you know, maybe we have to, like, repeat our usual Mercury retrograde keywords, which we weren’t as good about as I wish we were. We were a little bit in the lead up to like, the election last year, but sometimes those like, most basic keywords are the ones that end up being the most profound. So, you know, miscommunication, going back and reviewing something, delays. What are our other Mercury retrograde keywords?
AC: Having to do things all over again.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Having to do it three times.
KS: Yeah
CB: Do-overs.
KS: Yeah, the crossed wires, the emails going to the wrong place, you know, sending something and it not getting, you know, whether it’s by post or electronically sending something.
CB: Yeah, technological snafus.
KS: Totally. Sending something that shouldn’t go to someone that ends up there. Yeah, so the crossed wires. But there is something about, yeah, the revisiting, the reviewing, the going back over, you thought it was done and it’s not. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Reflecting on something from the past or reconnecting with someone or something that you thought was done, or sometimes even like, initiating and doing something and thinking it’s done, because it should be like a quick process, but then realizing you have to go back and do it over again and it becomes something where sometimes you have to do it a second time or in a sequence of three.
AC: And so it might be worth restating that Mercury doesn’t go retrograde until the very end of May, and that most of this is gonna be June stuff.
KS: That’s a very good point, yes.
CB: Yeah. I just wanted to set it up because it may be tied into the eclipse story, because it seems to tie into eclipse both in terms of Mercury stationing happening so close to that first eclipse in Sagittarius, just two or three days off, but then also the Mercury retrograde cazimi with the Sun being tied into the following eclipse in June. But yeah, a lot of this stuff is being set up at the end of May, but some of these critical turning points – or even if there’s a crisis or a problem that comes up – that’s still playing out mainly in June.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
KS: I mean, I think that’s a really good point in general, that May in many ways is kind of set up for themes that do continue into June. With the eclipses straddling the change of month, Jupiter coming into Pisces, which is going to be, you know, continuing in June, and the Mercury in Gemini – I mean, that’s a two-month long cycle that’s gonna run through ‘til early July. And we don’t normally have Mercury kind of spend so long in one place. So there is this, May is just part one of this middle of the year period, I think, and June is the second part. Even the Saturn-Uranus set up that you were talking about.
AC: Yeah I kind of feel like the middle of May, or like the first portion of May especially – the middle is almost like a brief vacation, like —
KS: Right?
AC: It’s really fun, it doesn’t last very long. Right, like a vacation, like —
KS: Yeah, like a week.
AC: Yeah, like, which is amazing if you can take a whole week off.
KS: Yeah.
AC: But then things turn into like, the next, I don’t know, it’s like the next serving of, you know, big serious important stuff in June.
KS: Yeah.
AC: But we have, like, a little space that’s not already filled in May.
KS: Yes. And I mean, do you think that space runs through ‘til after the Jupiter ingress? What do you think is the turning point for that?
AC: Yeah, I think the Jupiter ingress really kicks it off. I mean, it’s really, it’s not until the very end of May that we really turn towards, you know, this next sequence of events, which is more, you know, it’s Mercury retrograde, it’s eclipses, you know, Saturn moving back toward Uranus, like the last third of May —
KS: But there’s almost like two-and-a-half, like, almost three weeks of like, that spacious feeling in the first part of May.
AC: You know, we have these, like, turns into, you know, a more, I don’t know, what’s the word? Tenebrous direction, like going into that wormhole with the eclipses. But that’s not until the end, and the Saturn station is a little earlier, but it’s gonna be those things which turn us towards those more serious things. Like, they need to chip away at the vacation feeling, right?
KS: Right.
AC: Like, it’s gonna be one thing and then the next thing —
KS: And then the next.
AC: Right? It’s not like, all at once. And Jupiter will still be in Pisces, you know. There’s still a lot of good stuff.
KS: Yeah, that … I just smile so big every time I think about it, and not even for me personally. I just think it’s just a nice contrast, nice to have a well-placed benefic, which we’ve not had for some time. Oh, I meant to say this earlier – Jupiter in Pisces, of course, does not get interfered with by Saturn in any way, shape, or form. There is no aspect connection, there’s no rulership. Not only is it in its own sign, it is completely free from Saturn’s involvement.
CB: Right. Jupiter unleashed.
AC: Or Jupiter relaxed, right, for the first time.
KS: Relaxed! Yes.
AC: Gone fishing.
KS: Jupiter at ease.
CB: Temporarily at ease.
KS: Yes, yeah. But you know, on that note, like using the holiday sort of thread that you were weaving through, Austin – once you’ve had a chance to recharge, then you can manage the not-at-ease sometimes a little bit better, or for a longer period. Like, you get that refresh, and then you’re like, “Okay, I can go again.”
AC: Yeah you get your hit points back.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Go back to taking damage.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Speaking of taking damage, I’m seeing Mars —
KS: Don’t look at Mars. Don’t look at Mars’s next ingress!
CB: It’s just, it’s creeping towards the end of Cancer, because it’s not like, hitting anything with hard aspects the entire time it’s going through Cancer. And then suddenly it switches into Leo in mid-June and just sets up for that opposition with Saturn and the square with Uranus.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, so we will save that for talking about – it’s hard sometimes not to get, when we have a month like this when all of the important stuff starts happening at the very end of the month, and you can just see the sort of like storm clouds off in the distance, it’s hard not to wanna jump ahead and look at that. But maybe we should set that aside for next time.
AC: And we covered that pretty extensively in the yearly, so if someone wants to pop forward towards the second half of June….
CB: Yeah.
KS: That’s true.
CB: Our 2020 year ahead forecast —
AC: Or the 2021?
KS: 2021!
CB: You know, whatever. I mean, really you should – some of the themes we talked about last year are still carrying forward, but yeah, 2021, if you wanna check that out. All right. Are there any other things we need to touch on about the forecast before we wrap up this segment of our little discussion?
KS: I think we hit it.
AC: Yeah.
KS: I mean, we hit all the big stuff. Nobody’s missing anything for May, the highlights.
CB: Yeah, I think that was pretty comprehensive. We got the Full Moon in Scorpio and the weird Apple app tracking thing, the shift from fixed to mutable signs and the transition or change associated with that, Jupiter going into Pisces and the optimism of that, but temporariness of it. Mercury going retrograde square Neptune later in the month. Eclipse season beginning in Sag and Gemini. Saturn stationing finally in Aquarius, and Uranus closing the distance to hit that second square next month. So those are really the highlights of the month of May.
KS: Yeah.
CB: All right. Cool. Well, that is the forecast for this month. We’re already like an hour and 45 minutes into this, so I don’t think we’re gonna talk about a lot of miscellaneous topics, but I had a few miscellaneous topics to touch on. Do you guys have anything you wanted to mention? Actually, why don’t we do promo stuff. What do you both have coming up? Kelly, I know you’re speaking at NORWAC at the end of May, right?
KS: I am. I’m speaking at NORWAC. I’m giving two talks and the workshop. So I won’t go into a huge spiel, but we talked about the workshop earlier. The talks are called “Benefits and Blessings with Venus and Jupiter,” and the second talk is called “Malefics of the Mind,” looking at how we talk about what goes on in our brains using our birth charts. So that, and then I’m teaching a course in June on transits, so a live class on how to interpret your transits in June. And just doing my regular monthly astrology guide offering as well, so that’s me.
CB: Awesome.
KS: And I’ll be not working through July and August.
CB: I love that we’re both giving talks on malefics at NORWAC.
KS: I didn’t realize that was what your talk was on! I’m like, oh, this is fantastic! Says maybe a glutton for punishment, but I think it’s great to get a deeper sense of how to really work with them or what they really mean, or even like – your talk, I understand, is gonna be a little bit more like, what was actually meant by working with the malefics, you know, conceptually and philosophically.
CB: Yeah, that’s just one of the cool things and fun things about conferences is like, rapid-fire getting those different perspectives from different professionals in the field about, you know, sometimes very specialized things, but things that are really good to know about.
KS: Yes.
CB: So what is your website? Because you mentioned you do like a monthly forecast each month, like a recorded thing, where you really do a deep dive into the transits each month, right?
KS: Yeah. So I have a subscription, and I’m so bad at telling people about what I do. I’ve been doing it for like, three years. And yeah, I go through each of the aspects that is happening. Like, there’s a video for each week just covering the aspects for that week. So yeah, my website’s KellysAstrology.com, and if you’re interested, you can find out more info or sign up there.
CB: Awesome. So KellysAstrology.com?
KS: Yes.
CB: Sounds good. Austin, what do you have going on?
AC: Well, so first of all, in May, Sphere + Sundry is going to release a Saturn series, speaking of working with malefics, that I elected last year. And I found an election that would bring out the positive significations of Saturn. You have to be really careful when working with malefics, right, to bring out the parts that you want, like the longevity and patience and endurance and security, like you know, that like, good, noble, helpful Saturn. And Kait did amazing series design on it, so that the Saturn series – and that’s the Saturn in Cap – that’s gonna come out I think in the second half of May. I’m also beginning my Years Two and Three classes in May, and then I’m going to open up enrollment for Year One. I spent the last month and a half rebuilding an entire platform for my classes. I’m gonna be doing Year One a little bit differently, it’s starting a little bit later, but so, you know, back to teaching for me with Jupiter moving into my ninth house where my sect light is, right?
KS: Makes sense.
AC: But yeah, I don’t know. There was some talk about, between Kait and I, about like, do we release Saturday when Jupiter just got good? But I think it’s the perfect complement that like, that sobriety of good Saturn just so you don’t go too temporary Jupiter in Pisces crazy. So I hope it hits the spot, or at least complements the spot nicely.
CB: I love that. Good thinking. So that’s at SphereandSundry.com, right?
AC: Mmhmm.
CB: Okay, and then your website for the classes is AustinCoppock.com?
AC: Yes. There’ll be some announcements there. I have a separate website, but find me at AustinCoppock.com.
CB: Okay. Brilliant. That sounds good. As for me, I’m just doing the podcast. I already recorded an episode with Demetra on the Sun in order to continue our planetary series, and I’m gonna keep focusing on that and pumping out great episodes as well as bonus content for patrons. So you can support that if you listen to the podcast and like it, kick in a few bucks every month helps out. Find out more information about that at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.
So, what else do we have going on? We celebrated and we already talked about this last month, but celebrated 300 episodes of the podcast. I released that episode that was like, a highlight reel from our forecasts, but perhaps one of the most important things that took place in the past month was, in order to celebrate episode 300, I got an astrology cake. Leisa Schaim and I got an astrology cake, with the electional chart on the cake. So I have to show this to you guys. I already released some video, so a lot of people have already seen it, but I just wanted to put it up here because I was enamored with this cake, where – I didn’t know it was gonna come out this good, but it came out —
KS: It’s magnificent!
CB: Yeah, it is beautiful. So here it is for people watching the video version. Shoutout to Maggie and Molly’s Bakery in Denver, where we just like, I sent in like, a diagram, and I thought they would maybe, you know, be okay, but this turned out to be like, fantastic. And whoever – they did tell me that the woman who ended up doing it that morning like, was into astrology, so that’s why she like, colorized the glyphs with the elemental scheme, and it just came out really really well, and was also absolutely delicious. So thanks to them for doing that. Here’s some detail in the glyphs – nice little Saturn-Jupiter in Aquarius thing, and it turns out that the South Node in Sagittarius was delicious. So we did have a problem, which like, what house do we eat first? And we ended up eating the 4th house because it was also a celebration about a home development that was a nice monument.
KS: I love it!
CB: Then we had a question of like, where do you go from there? And then we did 4th house, then 5th house, then 3rd house. So we actually ended up eating the cake according to the angular triads. So, angular house, succedent house, then cadent house. And I believe that’s the correct manner to eat a cake. So I hope from now on, everybody will follow that as the correct order, although it may start like, different sects of astrologers like, arguing with each other for the next century about the correct order.
AC: Chris, you’ve clearly created a new species of sorcery.
CB: Right, which is like, eating the electional chart of the moment. Like, I didn’t read about that in the Picatrix, but I’m sure the author of the Picatrix would have agreed with that approach.
AC: Absolutely.
KS: That’s fantastic! I also need to note – because I think I saw this on Leisa’s socials somewhere, I never remember which social – but the cake was gluten-free as well?
CB: It was also gluten-free, and I couldn’t tell. Like, it didn’t taste gluten-free, but it was also gluten-free and amazing.
KS: Oh my gosh, I would have eaten that whole thing up so fast. That looks amazing.
CB: Yeah, I actually really wished you guys were here to enjoy it with us, partially because it was a gigantic cake, and I never wanted to eat another cake again after we got done eating it for like a week. But next time you guys are in town like you were when we did our 2020 year ahead forecast like a year and a half ago, I will definitely get you guys a gluten-free astrology cake, and we can share it together, using whatever the most amazing election is next time.
KS: Chris, you know I’m gonna hold to – I’ll be so excited to have cake with you guys.
CB: Okay. Well, we will definitely do that. Let’s see, what else? Speaking of, actually, Kelly, we talked about the eclipses, and you’re actually getting ready to move this summer, where you’re doing this whole – you did it two years ago, and it was a whole like, thing, to like, relocate, and you shipped all your stuff over on a boat to Europe —
KS: Yeah.
CB: — and now you’re actually moving back to Canada, so you’re gonna be moving for the next few months and you’re actually gonna take a break from doing the forecasts for the first time in, I think, ever, right?
KS: Ever, yes. I mean, I think I might have missed one episode once, a few years ago, because I might have been in Australia. But yeah, I’m going to – yeah, we are moving, so you know, July is kind of moving tunnel, and we’re just getting into all the prep for that. And so, yeah, I’m gonna take a few months off the podcast, so I won’t be back next month to see you all. I will miss you all very much. I know you guys have organized some amazing cohosts to step in and keep, you know, the show going. So I’m looking forward to listening along, but I’ll be back in the fall to connect with you all again then. So yeah, this is a little bit of eclipse 4th house, 10th house action for me personally.
CB: Yeah, well, we wish you a speedy move back from Europe, back to North America. We’re gonna have some other astrologers that are gonna fill in. We’re gonna do a sort of random one guest host a month type set up, me and Austin, but we’re looking forward to some, you know, speaking of the nodes and the nodes sort of like, shaking things up sometimes.
KS: I know. It’s a little bit of a podcast shake up. But yeah, I know that you guys already have the guest hosts, which are other, you know, astrologers that are amazing, they’re already scheduled and ready to go. And I think you’re gonna announce it like, a couple weeks in advance just to keep it a little exciting for people.
CB: Yeah, we have some good —
AC: Mystery host.
CB: — some good hosts lined up, and I think people will be happy. And Austin thought it would be good to leave some suspense, some mystery, and I think that’s probably a good call, so you’ll have to see who we have the next few months.
KS: Yeah.
AC: We’ll miss you, Kelly.
KS: I know. I’ll miss you guys. Don’t make me cry!
CB: Yeah well —
KS: It’ll be good.
CB: We’ll have to go back —
AC: We are excited about you returning to a North American time zone, though.
KS: Oh my lord, you and me both. You guys have been amazing in being so flexible and understanding, because we are not all working at our best times of day. So it is gonna be nice to be back in a more comfortable timezone for all of us, I think. So that’ll be good.
CB: Yeah. That should be good. Well, good luck with the move. Definitely check out – just because the highlights thing, like sometimes in, like back in the ‘90s, different television shows would sometimes do like, highlights, and that was always kind of lame. But putting together the highlights that Alicia Parks sent for episode 300 of just us doing these forecasts together back to back just reminded me of how much fun we had, and even when it got really serious, how much we learned just doing this together as a team over the course of not just the past year but also the past, you know, five or six years that we’ve been doing this. So it was a lot of fun reflecting on that and just realizing how far we’ve come as astrologers and as friends and as a team as we’ve been doing these forecasts. So thanks to the two of you for joining me on that journey.
AC: Absolutely.
KS: It’s been an honor and a privilege, yeah. It’s been an amazing journey. I’m really excited to check out that episode.
CB: Yeah. All right. And the next time you guys are in town, especially since you’re gonna be on the continent again, Kelly, and then you know, we’re all gonna get vaccinated, hopefully we can meet up again at some point, whether it’s at a conference or for a workshop or to record a podcast or just to hang out. That’ll be a fun thing that’s sort of like, on the horizon for some time in the future as well. I think Laura’s already planning on doing NORWAC 2022 in person next year —
KS: Yes, I believe, yeah.
CB: I think ISAR just announced that they’re not doing a conference in person this year but they’re gonna try to bump theirs ‘til next year and still do it in person in like, Westminster, Colorado, or something. So maybe Jupiter in Pisces in 2022 on the horizon brings meeting up with friends again in person at some point potentially.
KS: Fingers crossed. I mean, the crazy thing is, Jupiter will already be in Aries for NORWAC 2022.
CB: Oh my god. Yeah. So it just zooms through Pisces.
KS: Straight through. Yeah. I think the U.S., their travel – I saw an announcement from the CDC a couple weeks ago, so it could have changed because of course announcements change all the time at the moment. But they were saying that if you’re fully vaccinated, you can come in and out of the U.S. without quarantining, so there is gonna be that sense of yeah, being able to meet up in person. That’ll be good. That was really fun, the 2019 shows that we did together in person.
CB: Yeah, that series, that’s what the highlight reel starts with, and it just is a really vivid reminder of what it was like to meet up in person, which was so weird because usually we’re using Zoom, and there’s like, sometimes a delay, or you know, we record this and we talk for a little bit before and after, but then that was it. But that was like, a week we spent together, and that was actually your idea, Kelly. You were the one that really pushed for that. And just looking at that year ahead forecast that we recorded in November of 2019 I think, you know, thank god we did meet up in person —
KS: When we did.
CB: Yeah, not just to hang out in person, but also to plan out our year ahead forecast even more than we did in previous years, because of course, last year ended up being a monumental year in world history and I’m really proud of the work that we did as astrologers, both predictively as well as just like, learning on our feet as we went and experienced this whole thing together.
KS: I’m just having a really ditzy moment. I’m just putting this together now. The 2020 year ahead forecast we did in person on that trip.
CB: That was the one – because we met up for that week —
KS: Right!
CB: — and it was really intense, and the very first thing we recorded, I think, was the December forecast. So people should actually listen to the December 2019 forecast because that actually contains some stuff that was relevant to 2020, but then the day after that, we recorded in person the 2020 year ahead forecast. And the only reason that we did that was because you, that fall, you were like, hey, why don’t we do this year’s in person instead of just doing it online like we always do? And we sort of looked at each other metaphorically and were like, okay, sure, why not? And that ended up being this amazing —
KS: Jupiter was in Sag – why not?
CB: Right.
KS: We were all trying everything!
CB: Yeah, and we used an amazing Jupiter in Sagittarius election that month to record that very episode because we used our best electional chart for our year ahead forecast. So that’s another actually interesting little facet of that as well.
KS: Yeah. And just so people know, we recorded – didn’t we record a couple of non-timed episodes then? Like, did we do houses or signs or something?
CB: Yeah, we did our two houses episodes part one —
KS: That’s right.
CB: — and part two, and those have actually become two of the most popular episodes of The Astrology Podcast ever on our YouTube channel, partially because it was like, an amazing discussion on the houses, but also because it was something we filmed in person, and the vibe and just flow between us in conversation was much more fluid than normal as a result of that.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, I don’t believe I lagged out in person.
CB: Yeah.
KS: You do not lag in person. That is not you.
CB: But that was a lot of fun and we’ve also recorded other live episodes in person at conferences where we’ve done like, what have we done? We’ve done like, Q&A episodes, like a couple of those, and maybe a forecast or something?
KS: Oh my god, we’re gonna have to do something at NORWAC 2022.
CB: Yeah. That would be a lot of fun. If we all make it to Seattle next year, we’ll have to seriously consider that.
KS: Okay. You know me, I’m always planning!
CB: Right.
KS: Never short of ideas.
CB: Well, and always ready to jump in a plane and like, travel across the world for —
KS: Any time!
CB: — to meet up with friends.
KS: Yes. It will be great to be closer again. I think that’s part of the like, when we’re talking about the nodal piece, that’s part of the ache is just familiar, close. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right, and that was actually what the forecast episodes were born out of was you and I meeting up at a NORWAC in like, 2015, and saying we should have conversations like this more often, like on the podcast, and why don’t we try recording a forecast? So we went home right after NORWAC and did one, and it went so well —
KS: Just did it!
CB: — we decided to do it again. And the very second one, Austin happened to be there because he was —
KS: Yeah.
CB: — attending a tarot conference, and so we tried throwing it together, a forecast with the three of us, and it just happened to work out.
KS: So, I love that when we tell the origin story of this, because I think it’s really good for people to know we were just winging it. You know, we had an idea, and we just thought, we’ll just try it and see what happens. And then Austin was there, we’re like, yeah, just have him – let’s just do it! And then, you know, it’s not like there was a grand plan in the beginning. We had no idea if anyone would listen or be interested or whether we’d just enjoy it and it would be satisfying. Yeah, I think that conversation happened at about three in the morning —
CB: Right.
KS: — at NORWAC.
CB: There may have been some wine involved probably.
KS: There could have been some wine, yeah.
CB: It’s weird looking back on that now and the past decade, probably realizing that some more widespread phenomenon than people think, that so many things in the world are actually spur-of-the-moment things where the person doesn’t know whether this is gonna be a success, and that nothing seems inevitable at the time. It’s just something you sometimes do and try out, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. But sometimes the future is much more, you know, doing things spur of the moment than you might think.
AC: It’s the very definition of serendipity, with me being in town for just that week and all that.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah!
AC: And for the election, too. There was the Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Leo.
KS: That’s right, yes. In some ways that was like, the official start, I feel like. That was a good election.
CB: Yeah. Yeah, definitely for a tarot conference of all things. All right, guys. Well, this has been fun. I have a bunch of other miscellaneous topics I could throw in, but we’re at two hours, so it might be time to call it a wrap for this episode of The Astrology Podcast. What do you think?
AC: I think that’s a good idea. I’m —
CB: Yeah.
AC : — uncertain whether I’ll be able to participate in the conversation given my Internet situation.
CB: Understand. I will send a strongly worded letter to Elon Musk inquiring about your internet connection here after we get done recording. But this was a lot of fun, so thank you both for joining me as always. Thanks to our audience of patrons who joined us for the live discussion and for the chat. We really appreciate it, and your feedback and comments always end up shaping and informing the episodes in really wonderful ways. So thank you all for not just joining us but also for your support. Thank you, Austin and Kelly, for doing the forecast with me. And yeah, good luck, Kelly, in your move, and we’ll be back again next month and hopefully again many times after that in the future. All right. Thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time.
AC: Bye!
KS: Bye!
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.