The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 312, titled:
August 2021 Astrology Forecast: Jupiter Returns to Aquarius
With Chris Brennan, Chani Nicholas and Austin Coppock
Episode originally released on July 27, 2021
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Mary Sharon
Transcription released July 30, 2021
Copyright © 2021 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, we’re going to be looking at the astrological forecast for August of 2021. Joining me today are astrologers, Chani Nicholas and Austin Coppock. Hey, welcome, guys.
CHANI NICHOLAS: Hi.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey.
CB: Hey. All right, we’re going to be looking at the forecast for August. Let me do a quick animation to give you an overview of the month and then after that, we will jump into a detailed breakdown to give a day by day and week by week play of the coming month. All right, here’s the animation for the month that was prepared by Hugh Tran. We go into August of course, part of the backdrop is Jupiter is just recently retrograded back into Aquarius. Then right away on the first of the month, the sun conjoins mercury in the sign of Leo and both of them oppose the planet Saturn, which is in Aquarius. The following week, we get our first lunation of the month, which is a new Moon in the sign of Leo on the eighth of August, followed by Mercury departing from Leo and moving into its home sign of Virgo on the 11th of August. After that, Venus moves into her home sign of Libra on the 16th and then we get one of our big movements of the month in terms of the outer planets, which is Uranus, stationing retrograde in Taurus on August 19th. After that, the following week, we get our second lunation of the month, which is a full moon in Aquarius, actually our second full moon in Aquarius cuz there was one just previously towards the end of July as well actually the same day that we’re recording. And then immediately after that, the sun moves into Virgo, both of those occurring on the same day on August 22nd. Finally, the last transits of the month are Mercury departing from Virgo and moving into Libra on August 30th. That’s the basic animation, basic overview for the month. So, welcome both of you. Austin, we just established that we’ve done like 60 forecast episodes together-
AC: No, 80 or something.
CB: 80? Okay.
AC: It was 72 plus half a dozen dozen.
CB: Okay. Well, when we hit like 100 I think that’s the point where you achieve mastery. Joining us this month, Kelly Surtees is taking the month off again. She’s still in the process of relocating back to Canada from Europe. And so our special guest co-host is Chani Nicholas who is the author of You Were Born for This as well as the creator of the popular self-titled Chani app which lots of people are using at this point and I’m really excited about. Welcome to the show, Chani.
CN: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Love and props to Kelly. We miss her.
CB: Yeah.
CN: I’ll do my best to fill in as the token woman and also Canadian, so I’m currently swapping. Yeah.
CB: Right, it is big shoes but we’re excited to have you today. Your book has become one of the books that I’ve actually been recommending new students of astrology lately. It just came out last year. So I know that was, maybe you’re already getting away from it since it’s been a while, but is that still something you’re hearing a lot about or still promoting? Or how’s the book launch? How did that go?
CN: The book launch was wild because I literally launched it in the beginning of January 2020. So everywhere I went, everyone of course asked the question like, “How’s the astrology for 2021?” [Chris laughs] And I think one of my talks I was like, “Let’s not talk about it.” Or I would say I’m not going to answer that question cuz I don’t want to bring everybody down. So I felt like it was wild to get that under the closing gates of 2020. But it was an amazing thing. I’m happy, it feels like a thousand years ago.
CB: Yeah. In the old world, but that’s a good point cuz I remember I bought it at a Barnes and Noble and that would have been one of the last books that I walked into a physical store to buy right before the pandemic.
AC: Question, Chani, when you were done and then it was finally out, did you never want to write another book again? Cuz that’s how I felt when I was finally done with Faces a million years ago. I was like, “Okay, I don’t think I need to write for another five years.” I’m wondering, were you hungry for more, were you unfazed or did you need what felt like a long break?
CN: Austin, you and I have talked about this, but I felt such an incredible hangover. I am not somebody who finds it easy and wonderful to celebrate myself for. So having a book I don’t know, writing online for so long is one thing, but putting something into a book is a whole other process. And energetically, it was a real initiation for me. And I had absolutely no interest in ever doing it again. Next year, I do go into a Mercury perfection here. So we’ll see what happens. But we just also went immediately into doing the app. So, why wait? So I launched the book at the beginning of 2020, and then the app at the end of 2020. So by the beginning of 2021, I was like, “Wow, that wasn’t so smart.” So now I’m just trying to stabilize everything, I think. But yeah, I did not. I did not ever want to do that ever again.
AC: It took me about five years to want to write a book again. And then I didn’t have time.
CN: Yeah. [laughing]
CB: Great. And the app is available for iPhone. And you said that you actually recently integrated Chiron into it, which was a feature a lot of people have been asking for.
CN: Well, it’s a feature that we promised since the beginning of the app’s launch, and it just took us longer than we thought. So Chiron is finally in the app. And you can read about your Chiron by sign and house and any conjunctions that might make and then also by transit.
AC: I think Chiron felt wounded to not being originally included.
CN: Austin, let me tell you, the process was painful. The process actually exposed a lot that we needed to understand. So it was all very apropos.
CB: Brilliant. Why don’t we get into the forecast, first with just an overview of some of the major stuff happening this month and then we’ll go into sort of a step by step breakdown chronologically? Why don’t we start with the big elephant in the room at this point, which I believe is, it actually happens at the tail end of July, but it sets the backdrop for the entire month, which is Jupiter retrograding back into Aquarius and returning back into Aquarius, where it left way back in May when it moved into Pisces for a few months. But it retrogrades back into Aquarius on July 28th. And then it basically stays there for rest of the year, for the second half of 2021. So that’s part of I think the main thing that overshadows the entire month of August at this point, right?
AC: I wouldn’t use the term overshadow, I would say underpins. Right, it’s part of the new config, the new setup, the new understructure for things. It’s not going to be like, “Oh my god, Jupiter’s in Aquarius every day.” but it’s a shift. And as you said, it’s a rest of the year thing, right? In a sense, you could have cut 2021 into three pieces, right? Jupiter in Aquarius one, then Jupiter in Pisces, then Jupiter in Aquarius, two. Chapters a similar length, not exactly equal, but a little over a little under four months each.
CB: Yeah, and so part of the context then going into that is the feeling of what it’s been like with Jupiter in Pisces over the past few months, which started out really amazing, everything is suddenly seemed very optimistic and places were opening up and the world was almost going back to normal. It was almost for a little very brief period of time of Jupiter in Pisces, it was almost as if a pandemic had never happened. And we were back to pre-March of 2020 times. That was my experience walking around Denver and seeing people filling up restaurants and stuff. Was it like your experience as well or what did you guys see?
CN: Yeah, we’re recording this while Jupiter is still in Pisces so I’m also hanging on to every last moment of it. Yeah, I was like, “I’m going to drink this Kool Aid. I am going to have this party. I’m going to have this good time.” It felt very opulent and free and I think we’re just so starving for some shift and the slipperiness of the Pisces and Jupiter. So it allowed for so much bonding to happen, I feel like there was this opening and allowance and a yes after so much no and so much subterranean space between us. So it did feel like that and I was like, “This is not going to last and this is not necessarily the be all end all of it of anything.” But I felt like I was so dehydrated from so much Saturn, that I was gulping down the Jupiter in Pisces. And I feel like everyone’s doing that. I don’t feel that much difference yet again, Jupiter is still in Pisces while we’re recording, so… I know the variants are around and stuff but I don’t feel like it’s actually landed in any way if it’s going to land in some way that’s going to restructure us yet again. So but yeah, it was a good pride
CB: Yeah, good pride and there’s just a tonne of people packing for the parades and different stuff.
CN: Yeah, and just people being able to party again. And also to be outside, it’s the summertime, it’s not like Jupiter went in Pisces in December January, February. At least sorry if I’m being hemisphericly biased, but in the Northern Hemisphere to have that after that long winter and to feel so trapped for so long, and then to have spring and summer with that additional little boost, felt very decadent.
CB: Yeah, definitely. It’s weird, just how visceral those feelings of like hope and optimism and other things were and have been over the past few months in comparison to just the heavy Saturn themes that we’ve been dealing with over the past year or so.
CN: And then we had Cancer season with it. So then, everything that was going through Cancer got that little bump from Jupiter and it was in the midst of the Saturn Mars opposition. It was a good dose.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, that’s right. One, to be fair, Jupiter will go back into Pisces.
CN: Yeah.
AC: Right, like we say, “Oh, it’s temporary. It was just a lie.” It’s like, “No.” We just have to do about five months of Jupiter in Aquarius with Saturn again. And then we do Jupiter in Pisces, and then we do Jupiter in Aries.
CN: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, well, and that was the thing though, is that Jupiter, we always knew that there was some skipped step or there’s something that was unfinished business that Jupiter would have to go back into Aquarius to fix. And so one of the things that was funny that happened in terms of dates and just recounting some stuff is the mask restriction in the US at least was dropped nationally by the CDC on May 13th, which was the day or within 24 hours of Jupiter ingressing into Pisces. So one of the CNN headlines was people vaccinated against COVID-19 can go without masks indoors and outdoors, CDC says. And now in retrospect, now that Jupiter station retrograde is going back into Aquarius, they’re rethinking whether that was actually a good idea, because originally it was intended to encourage more people to get vaccinated. But now due to some of the COVID variants like the Delta variant that started showing up in late June, when Jupiter station retrograde in Pisces, now there’s pressure on the CDC to change its mass guidance. So I just saw an NPR headline this week that said, quote unquote, public health experts call on the CDC to change its mass guidance. So there’s things like that. And one of the things we saw in December of course, when Jupiter and Saturn conjoined in Aquarius was the release of the vaccines and the public release of the vaccines all of a sudden, and so I had wondered if that return of Jupiter to Aquarius wasn’t some further development that needed to take place with the vaccines or their implementation. And now recently, there’s stories about booster shots being recommended, especially for people that have a compromised immune system, and notions of people getting a third shot or more in the future in order to cover some of the variants.
AC: Yeah, well, and it’s also just with Jupiter retrograding, back, right, that second phase, the, even though it’s not much, you still have six months of track records for various vaccines, you can see how things perform, you can do some evaluation, you couldn’t do ahead of time. And I believe there are vaccines that had longer development cycles that will be released. I was telling you about the one that’s made from moth blood that I was excited about.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s like the Garth COVID vaccine.
CN: I think they’re trying all angles like, “Okay, you guys won’t get vaccinated? Maybe if it’s moth blood…”
AC: We’ll see. I literally know nothing about it other than I like the idea. But yeah, it’s round two, right? And Jupiter always gives us three phases within each 30 degree arc, right? It gives us a direct, it gives us a retrograde, and then it gives us another direct, right? So we have like, diurnal or not, excuse me, we have the day and night sect phases of Jupiter and morning rising and evening rising and then we have the opposition phase. So we get three phases of Jupiter for every year. And so this is the middle one, which is the re-evaluative and always retrograde.
CN: Yeah. And I don’t know if it was an official thing, but there was some talk about if you got a J&J vaccine, that would require a booster just in and of itself.
CB: Right. That was the one that was just one shot initially?
CN: Yeah.
CB: Okay. Yeah. And I think Israel, for example, has already started doing additional booster shots at this point, even for people with two. So that’s coming down the pipeline. And additionally, just one of the things that’s happening this month, that’s a little bit different is we’re moving out of some of the really difficult configurations and fixed signs that we’ve been dealing with for the past month or two, especially with the Mars-Saturn opposition and the square with Uranus culminating at the beginning of July.
AC: That configuration sure delivered. That was a pretty classic case of astrology good but not morally or generally good. We had the building collapse in Florida, we had a bunch of things exploding around fourth of July, Haiti’s president was assassinated, you had the heat dome in the western US, you had torrential floods in Germany and in China, and then 20 other things, as far as like, “Oh, I think that’s a malefic hotspot for the year.” it paid out.
CN: And we have the variants at that point, too, right?
AC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the promising start for the Delta variant.
CB: Also, there was that huge chasm in the middle of the ocean that opened up that was on fire. And we did not precisely call it a portal to hell opening up in the ocean with the Mars-Saturn opposition, but now we can add that to our repertoire of delineations for the future.
AC: Yeah, hell mouth. [laughing]
CB: Right. Vague archetypically consistent, or sometimes it’s funny debate between astrologers, astrology is psychologically predictive or archetypally. But then, sometimes no, a literal portal to hell opens up in the ocean that week of that alignment. All right, so one of the things also with Jupiter returning back to Aquarius and us getting away, Mars moving into Virgo this month and getting out of Leo, is I feel like that’s also for people personally going to lighten up some things in terms of the fixed signs and in terms of the Aquarius placement where when Jupiter left Aquarius, went into Pisces in May, well that’s been good for Jupiter. It’s left Saturn to its own, somewhat intense and somewhat severe devices over the past couple of months. And for some people, that has been hard in the Aquarius sector of their chart and whatever house that that is associated with. So I think for some people Jupiter coming back to Aquarius is also going to be some antidote or some fix or help or alleviation of some of the stress in that part of their chart over the next six months as well.
AC: Yeah, a little padding. So, one thing about Saturn and Aquarius, being assaulted by both Uranus and Mars without Jupiter’s help, something funny happened in a UFC match. The hugely anticipated, hugely watched match between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier, it was a re rematch, it was their third match. And it ended in the first round with Conor shin snapped in two and at a 90 degree angle. And so what’s interesting is that there have been three of these injuries in big fights ever in the 30 year history of that organization. Two of them have been in the last six months and Saturn went into Aquarius. And so on the Zodiac man illustration, you always see Aquarius as the shins and so yeah, it’s interesting to see again that translating so literally as like Saturn is in Aquarius, watch your shins. The Shin taker has come. [laughing]
CB: That’s really interesting cuz we actually have a time chart for Conor McGregor and he’s like Taurus rising, right? So, that injury or that Aquarius stuff was in his 10th house?
AC: And I think I’m going to say Sylvie Oslon, we talk MMA and astrology sometimes, I believe they said that Conor had just moved into an Aquarius period at some level of ZR, which would make it interesting, right? Highlighting the strength and durability or lack thereof of the shins.
CB: I don’t know MMA very well, but I saw somebody say that might be a career ending injury. Is that that bad or how bad was it?
AC: Yeah, it’s happened so few times. The famous one was Anderson Silva. And he came back and fought, but he was never the same. He never reclaimed the level of excellence or he never got his flowers back. And it wasn’t like his shin didn’t work, right? Cuz the shin either holds you up or it doesn’t. But it’s a long time off training, there’s a weakness there. And then psychologically, if you’ve ever had a serious injury, it’s a revelation of vulnerability. You’re like, “Oh, that part of me can be broken when I’m just doing my thing.”
CB: Yeah, that’s such a sad experience, like to experience fallibility or vulnerability or that you’re not invincible.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, we know that we can be hurt but to feel broken by something is, it’s like a negative initiation. You’re like, “Oh, I didn’t really understand.”
CB: Yeah. All right. And I just want to share the chart for today because we’re actually recording this the day of the first full moon in Aquarius, which is going to actually go exact later tonight. But that’s again, it’s like opening up and putting attention on the Aquarius and that sign both globally and in a mundane astrological sense but also, probably personally for many of us in terms of what chart or what area of the chart or what house Aquarius falls in your actual birth chart. And I know Chani, one of the things you always say is like, “Oh, look at the moon every full moon and get that viseral experience.” Why do you say that to people?
CN: Cuz I hope people will get off their phone and go look at the majesty that they live under, and it’s always good to go and take that in. I think it’s a good break up, but I’m always just that person.
AC: Well, you can feel it too when you step outside during a clear full Moon. You’re like, “Oh!” There’s the visual, but there’s also the energetic wave.
CN: Yeah. And also just to relate us back to the sky, cuz we have so little relation to it. So it’s really interesting, like you said, it’s like without Jupiter, it’s moving into the conjunction with Saturn. And then we have the next one that’s going to be co-present with Jupiter and actually conjunct Jupiter. So it feels like all of this that’s happening in Aquarius, it’s like, Jupiter’s coming back, Saturn’s already there, we’re having two full moons in a row there. The first one is without Jupiter, so we can feel that situation in our chart, whatever is happening in that part of our chart. And then the next time it comes, Jupiter is there. And so it punctuates what Jupiter has come back to help us fill out or grow into or to better structure if it’s an idea that we’re working on and parsing out. So it feels like even though it’s Leo’s season, and there’s enough going on, not a tonne but there’s an interesting that Kazemi is really interesting at the beginning of the month, but it feels like there is that background emphasis on Saturn, what Saturn is trying to build, what Saturn is trying to grow us into, what Saturn is trying to hammer into ourselves in our lives, about our mortality, about the limited time we have to do this thing in this part of our life while Saturn is there. And Jupiter without sorry, Saturn without Jupiter is like Maleficent without her daughter, or when they’re apart. And then there’s a bit of a return of that some hope or some space or some philosophical outlook maybe.
AC: Yeah, really like comparing those two full moons. Because one, it’s rare, not shockingly rare, but it’s rare to have two full moons in the same sign in a row. And it’s very interesting to have one right next to Saturn and the other right next to Jupiter after the shift backwards. It’s almost like here are the problems and then here are the solutions, right? Or here’s not certain solutions, but here’s what can be done about those things, right? Cuz you can’t necessarily solve things but you can improve things, there are better and worse work arounds, et cetera, et cetera.
CN: Yeah. So really understanding this part of your chart for folks listening could be really helpful in the next month.
CB: Yeah, and I think that’s a really good point that the problems in the Aquarius sector will become clear during this phase in late July and early August, because it’s not just that we’ll have that full moon conjunct Saturn, which will actually be very visible, people can go out and see this because it’ll rise over the eastern horizon just after sunset, you’ll see this big, beautiful full moon rise, and you’ll see this little star just after it, which is Saturn, here towards the end of July. But even a few days after that, we have that parting shot between Mars and Jupiter that happens just as the two are changing signs where just as Jupiter switches back into Aquarius at the very end of July, Mars opposes it from 29 degrees of Leo, creating a major tension between those two planets. And that axis of the chart of Aquarius and Leo in all of our birth charts, before Mars departs from that sign and leaves Jupiter to clean up the fixed sign axis on its own.
CB: Yeah, and so August begins.
CB: Yes. All right, so our first major configuration with that, as the backdrop is basically the sun Mercury conjunction or Cazimi, that occurs on August 1st at 10 degrees of Leo, which just coincidentally is exactly opposite to Saturn at 10 degrees of Aquarius at that time, which is interesting for a few different reasons. But one of them is that whenever the sun is exactly opposite to Saturn, that means it’s exactly or precisely halfway through its retrograde cycle. So this is part of the solar phase cycle between the sun and Saturn and it means we’re exactly halfway between the point where Saturn stations retrograde a few months ago, versus when it will finally station direct in the future about I guess it’s 70 days later.
AC: So one fun question mark thing about that is that when you have sun opposite Saturn perfectly like that, you won’t have any charts, you won’t have any day charts with Saturn above the horizon, you would be perfectly in sect. When a planet is opposite the sun, it refuses to be part of the day sect. Because as soon as the sun rises, it sets, and as soon as the sun sets, it rises. And that’s interesting cuz when we think about an opposition, you’re like, “Oh, there’s a disagreement.” But we see that, when we frame it in terms of day and night charts and sect, is a planet opposite the sun refuses to be part of the sun’s sect, the sun’s diurnal religion.
CB: Although it’s interesting at this point, because this is the exact point where that switches, where we’ve been in six months of this where you couldn’t have a day chart with Saturn, and basically not being contrary to the sect, but this is the point where after this date on August 1st, you start ending up with day charts, again, with Saturn being basically not contrary to sect and being able to use some of the other like Aquarius rising charts, for example. And that ended up featuring in some of our elections this month where I don’t think it’s a featured election, but here it is, for example, with let’s say, August 9th, with 10 degrees of Aquarius rising and Saturn right on the ascendant at nine Aquarius, and the sun is just barely, what, six degrees, seven degrees above the horizon at this point. So this is a turning point in the year where all of a sudden we start being able to use some potentially Aquarius rising elections again in the second half of 2021.
AC: So I like this. I think this Mercury-Sun conjunction opposite Saturn is really interesting in between step for that full moon in Aquarius on Saturn and then full moon in Aquarius on Jupiter thing. This is Mercury’s direct conjunction with the sun. So this is not the retrograde one, right? But the one where Mercury’s on the far side of the sun. And those Cazimis are conjunctions, Mercury’s as far away from Earth as it gets. So we’re looking far out, we’re trying to think about bigger picture things as opposed to very personal things, as in the retrograde. And so, this one is asking very clearly for us to think about these Saturn issues, right? There was all the inflammation of the Saturn-Uranus thing during July with Mars there, and it’s like, “Okay, so now that things are literally exploding or torrential rain or whatever, there’s still issues here.” And we can just look at the issues outside of like an acute case, but what are the chronic issues with Saturn and Aquarius? And then Mercury Sun is just perfectly poised to reveal that.
CN: Yeah, it feels like a moment of critical insight. It might not be the biggest thing that ever comes through or a download that you get that it might not even be a surprise, it’s like something that you actually know really well. But that thing that it comes through with a clarity that allows you to actually witness it, hear it, understand it, know it. Because I always feel like if Saturn does anything, it makes things real. Like, “Hey, you’re not going past this, this is not a joke, this is the limit.” And so if it’s like a Cazimi moment where we’re getting inside of something, or we’re able to slip into that inner chamber place where we get that download, perhaps, then that Saturn, it’s like we’re aligning with something that is unmistakable. And I always think that working with Saturn, well, for a number of reasons, but it’s one of the most I think transformative planets to work with because it makes things real. It gives you feedback in real time, like, “Oh, that hurts, that doesn’t work, or that’s going to waste your time or that’s not good for your soul.” Because it’s results and not great feelings. So I was thinking this very beginning of August is like that point of like maybe I hear my intuition, or maybe I hear myself about something that I usually of skim over. And also, I think it’s a really interesting invitation to sit with a part of us, that is critical for better and for not better. If we’re being critical towards the self or for being limiting, self limiting, it’s like the heart of Leo, it’s the heart of the sun. It’s that first decade of Leo, and it feels like there’s so much about the persona and about how we work with it, how we shine. And if we’re doing the opposite of that, which Saturn in Aquarius literally is, then what is that tension? Where do I get to be my full self? And then where do I need to like both have responsibility and accountability? And then if I teeter over too far to that Saturn and Aquarius side, I am limiting myself and I’m destroying my own sense of self through too much restriction. So it feels like that really interesting tension for us to do some, I think, personal investigation and work like where does that inner critic go wild, or this might be a really good time to actually get to it and be able to talk to that part of self so that it doesn’t have free rein to govern us.
CB: Yeah, I love that. That’s really good point about the critical function of Saturn, especially when combined with Mercury, because Mercury-Saturn conjunctions can be really good at seeing the faults or the problems in things. And oftentimes that can be projected outwards and seeing the faults in other people or those around you. But it’s interesting having this conjunction, because Eemian Leo opposite to that and maybe that function being turned inward to some extent and being able to see your own faults, but trying to decide what’s a healthy level of that versus what’s going too far, cuz opposition’s sometimes can have a tendency to take things a little bit too far or further than they should.
AC: Yeah, like that. And so that’s going to tend to be more personal, if that’s in the same sign as one of the luminaries or the ascendant. If it’s more external, like it’s in the 10th, or it’s in the fourth, that’s a very structural analysis, right? If it’s in the fourth, it’s like, “Oh, if I don’t replace that one step in the stairs, somebody’s going to fall through, right?” Or at work like, “Oh, the structure of my business or the structure of the organization that I’m in needs, do I want to be part of this?” But it’s the same critical eye and it’s the same structural analysis but turned outward. You kept saying sit with it, which is something I literally like to do with Mercury Cazimis. I find if I turn off the noise that I surround myself with, there’s some really good mind time during the Cazimis, like about six hours, both the retrograde and the direct like this. It’s like the benefits of meditation temporarily times three for about six hours. It’s like a really rich field of mind.
CN: Yeah.
CB: One other thing is this, Cazimi is happening in the immediate aftermath of Mars departing from that same sign, from Leo. It’s like Mars is taking off, and it’s kicked up a lot of dust in that sign, and in that sector of each person’s natal chart, some more than others. And then in the immediate aftermath of that, we get that deep critical thinking and internalization with the Sun-Mercury conjunction right away on August 1st, right after that.
CN: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, and then it’s interesting, right? Cuz where both the sun and Mercury are going to head into a square with Uranus after that. So, in part, we’re activating the Saturn-Uranus thing, that standing wave or whatever you want to call it. But it’s a little bit more sequential than we did last month, than we did in July, cuz Saturn and Uranus were closer in July. And so with this one we get Saturn, count one two three four, Uranus, right, rather than buh-bam. It’s more of a one, pause, pause, two. And so I think some of the signals will be usefully slightly disentangled, which may be fruitful, right, to be able to see Saturn and Uranus not interfering with each other by trying to do their thing at the same time, but just a little bit of separation. And I think Mercury, of course, is the planets that’s best at discriminating between A, B, and C and finding the space between two things to understand the nature of each individually.
CN: Yeah. And Mercury is moving so fast at that point.
CB: Yeah.
CN: So by the third, Mercury already squares Uranus and then it takes the sun to the sixth to actually do it. So it feels like that first week of August is maybe parsing through some of the leftover themes of the Saturn-Uranus square, but in a way that is very slow and methodical, or at least pensive at the very beginning of the month. And then I think Eliza Robertson called this week the weirding with Mercury and then the sun squaring Uranus. But it feels quick, too.
CB: I like that. At least we’re on the downslope from the Saturn-Uranus square and the intensity of some of that and the disruptiveness of it for some people and going into one of the…
CN: The downslope meaning there’s only one more?
CB: Well, the downslope meaning we’ve got three peaks this year.
CN: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, like the respite.
CB: Right, the respite. That’s a good one
AC: The break between rounds two and three.
CN: Yeah, it feels like three though doesn’t even really ever… It just hangs out for so… It’s almost a four but it’s not quite intentionally two.
AC: Yeah, the four is almost stronger than any of the others, even though it’s never exact. They’re so close for so long.
CN: I know. Oh my god, okay. We’re just stalling through the year. [laughing]
CB: Don’t start telling people about 2022. Yeah, we have to see that before…
AC: I think it’s useful at saying, “Okay, this Saturn-Uranus thing, it’s not over in November.” It’s almost all of Saturn in Aquarius.
CN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My own sign for sure, but definitely…
AC: If you put down the controller halfway through the game, you will lose the second half.
CN: Right.
CB: Right. So but aside from Uranus stationing mid month and some intensification of that, especially if anybody has fixed planets around, I think it’s around 14 degrees of fixed signs where Uranus stations at 14 Taurus at least we get a little bit of distance, relatively speaking, compared to the most intense portions of this year when Saturn and Uranus are close to exact and Mars is also in the mix.
AC: Oh, yeah. August is a godsend for the fixed signs, relative to July, right?
CB: All right. So I think that starts to bring us in our first week to our first lunation of the month, which is that new moon that takes place in the same sign, in the sign of Leo looks like about 16 degrees of Leo, on the 8th of August. And this is very much still emphasizing many of the same themes that we were just talking about in terms of those fixed signs. It’s just barely a couple of degrees off from squaring Uranus from 16 degrees of Leo to 14 degrees of Taurus, so that Uranus energy is still pretty prominent, in this second week, now that we’re going into the month, not just with that square to the lunation, but also with Uranus getting ready to station retrograde here in just a matter of days as well.
CN: So, it’s still pulling focus.
CB: Yeah. So, what is a Uranus lunation like? Uranus squaring the new moon in Leo, we’re still talking about fixed signs. And I keep thinking about like with fixed signs, just the love of that which is comfortable, and that which stays the same and wanting things to stay the same. But Uranus often just introducing a jolt to that, which of all of the signs may be fixed signs have the hardest problem with just because of the tendency to not want to change. Whereas Uranus, if it signifies anything, changes one of the primary functions.
AC: Yeah, I think it’s going to feel like a continuation of what happened the week before with the Mercury-Sun, right? It’s just more Saturn into Uranus, right? So, how that could look or feel. Saturn is like, “Oh, I would like this to be the pattern or this to be the structure and so on, using my my Lego bricks to try to build this.” And then Uranus says, “But what about this factor? Right?” And so, then you either do a redesign, or you figure out how to work around the Uranus change or accommodate the Uranus change, but it’s like, there’s the structure and then there’s the challenge to that structure, right? Like we talked about last month, the answer might be to take all the bricks apart and build something else. It might just be to modify designs or because this is not an entirely new thing, if you had an idea was like, “Okay, what’s a structure that’s sufficiently adaptive to deal with Uranus?” Then you might see at this point like, “Oh, it is working.” Right? I did design for chaos.
CN: Yeah. I don’t know if we specifically said this, but I like the point that you brought up about it being midway through Saturn’s retrograde or they’re like that halfway point, and to have that Cazimi there get the insight about what the Saturn thing is, and then to go through the bumps of Uranus. And then we also have on the second, we missed it, but there’s Venus trine Uranus at the very beginning of the model, so it feels like the whole week is really… Yeah.
AC: That’s a great point cuz Uranus is in Venus’s sign.
CN: Yeah.
AC: So it’s going to be much more responsive to aspects with Venus. One pause there, we’re talking about the Saturn-Sun opposition’s with a halftime show. What is a Saturn halftime show? Is it just like Bauhaus or…? [laughing]
CN: What are the mascots that come out during that halftime game at that halftime show? I’m sure you have pictures of them.
AC: I’ve got some bands I’d like to book.
CN: Yeah. Yeah, so it feels like a week that requires some innovation or requires them doing things differently or requires them last minute. Maybe I don’t know, it’s also like a Leo just going back to the Leo New Moon. It’s like a Leo New Moon, so it does feel like leaving square separating from that square to Uranus. It feels like anything could happen. It’s got energy to it and it feels lively, anyways, and at any rate.
CB: Yeah. So we’ve got that the likeliness…
CN: The likely time to breakout, try something new, do your thing but do it a little differently or really questioning why do I care what other people think, honestly truly if the Saturn-Uranus square is actually going to last through 2022, I might as well live a little.
AC: Yeah, I like that with Venus-Uranus. I find that Venus-Uranus aspects in general, like changing up your pattern of pleasure seeking, it’s generally very fruitful. Cuz we have things that we go to like I like this show, I’ll watch this show to feel good or I like this food. And recognizing the patterning of that and trying something new, breaking your your own history of this is what I like.
CN: Yeah, get freaky.
CB: Yeah, I like that. So Venus trine Uranus, August 3rd, and trying something new. Later, once we get to the new moon, right after that Venus actually opposes Neptune from 22 Virgo to 22 Pisces. It was a little bit more tricky, Venus-Neptune hard aspects are not always super in check with reality or not seeing things necessarily as they are but sometimes as they want them to be.
AC: I think they’re great as long as you don’t assume that that’s how it’s going to be. I think it’s an awesome opportunity to check out from the hard subterranean edges of life. You’re like, “No, I know that I’m taking a vacation emotionally.”
CN: Yeah, getting the kid, not the kid, but your friend who might be a little bit more straight laced, getting them high, watching them roll around the floor laughing and eating donuts.
AC: But I agree. There’s certainly danger, let’s say you meet somebody new during that aspect exactly. And you’re like, “Oh, we had such an amazing time.” Assuming that, well, that’s how it’s going to be, right? That is a rare configuration. And so you would have bad assumptions about the future if you did that.
CN: Yeah. There’s not a lot of reliability for Venus between the Uranus and Neptune. But it could be fun.
CB: Yeah, it could be fun. And sometimes surrendering to that is okay, of just being like, “I know objectively this is something that’s probably too good to last, but I’m going to enjoy it in the meantime for whatever brief period of time it’s present.” And even if it doesn’t turn out to be crack the tall, it seems to being willing to let it go if it comes to that.
CN: Yeah, or taking the day to be purposely not productive.
AC: Yeah.
CN: Staring at the ceiling, let yourself go. Let yourself be in the Neptune, if at all. It’s like Virgo needs to like loosen up a little.
AC: Yeah, and it’s worth noting that that’s Venus in Virgo. And that last deck in Virgo is where the degree of Venus’s maximum fall is. It can be a hard place where there are a lot of deeply self critical feelings.
CN: Yeah.
AC: And that Neptune is in Venus’s exaltation sign, right? Venus will take what Pisces has to offer cuz it feels good.
CN: Yeah.
CB: I was reminded of that as the value of that a few weeks ago. I got sick on the Mars-Saturn opposition, which was hilarious because that was like the halfway point from when I got sick last year at the Mars-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius. So then the opposition ended up being another like hit to my health. But I just spent the week watching movies, and I was reacquainted with the healing power of just venturing out and taking a break occasionally, which was a nice and surprising reminder to have.
CN: Yeah, goal is to be able to do that without having to get sick.
CB: Right. That would be a admirable goal some day. It was reminding me of movies that are good for astrologers or have some allegory for astrology. And I don’t know if you two have ever thought about this. But oftentimes, movies that have a heavy component having to do with like fate or time or other things like that, that I think in the back of my mind, I often think about or watch as an astrologer with a specific lens. Even basic Hollywood movies like The Matrix or something like that and the way that astrologers often think about astrology as this code that’s underlying reality. And you can almost see it as like allegory like that. Do either of you have movies like that, that are ones that appeal to you as an astrologer?
CN: I can’t think of any but I will say that last night we were watching the Michael Jordan documentary.
CB: Oh, how was it? I heard it was good.
CN: Oh my god, it’s so good. I’m sure everybody listening to this does this but you watch something like that and then you pull up the person’s chart. And Michael Jordan has a– drumroll please– Mars and Leo opposing Saturn and Aquarius.
CB: Yes.
CN: So what you’re having is like a return return. Anyways, I won’t diverged into that too much, but it was interesting to watch that as the end of the literal transit is happening.
CB: Yeah, that’s brilliant. Here’s this chart with…
CN: Oh, it’s right there. Yeah.
AC: So per se, I’ve remembered a movie or a series of movies that does play with fate and astrology, they’re terrible that they’re called. They’re from like 20 25 years ago, and it’s basically death is stalking a group of teenagers. But not as a person, it’s like just the fate. What are they called? But anyway, the idea, Final Destination, thank you game.
CB: All right. Yeah.
AC: Where it’s just like the Time Lord or the awful transit where you can’t see the actor, right? It’s not a monster coming to get you, it’s that time has decided that you will die now. And so the piano misses a character, but then they get hit by an automobile and it’s just like it’s trying to evade predestination. And there are certain transits that feel like that. We’re like, “Okay, that missed me. But oh, now that’s coming for me.” And you’ve got to be doing your matrix style bullet dodging.
CB: Yeah, I love that series also, because oftentimes, the person once they had full knowledge of the future, they would try to do things to avoid it. But then the very things that they ended up trying to do to avoid it, ended up dooming them to fulfil the fate that they were trying to avoid in the first place. So that’s a good one. The other one, similar one like that was Slumdog Millionaire, which was that one that was really popular 10 years ago, where it was like a kid was on a game show. And he had to answer all the questions. But then every thing that he had done in his life, up to that point, had actually in a weird way, through fate taught him the correct answers, that they ended up asking him on the game show. And so it was an interesting meditation on fate and predestination and choice and things like that.
AC: I wish I could add Jupiter rising to this list as a person with Jupiter rising. I was like, “Okay, cool, there’s a movie.” And I was like, “Oh, not not not cool.”
CB: Right. Yeah, all the astrologers when they announced that one, we’re thinking that the look house key siblings had gone to astrology, and we’re going to get a nice big Hollywood astrology movie. And that is not what ended up happening there at all.
AC: The Matrix was so good.
CB: Yeah, well, they’re making a fourth one. So we’ll see. We’ll see how that goes, if they can return to that successfully. So if anybody in the comments thinks of any other movies that would be good allegories for astrology or astrologers, let us know in the comments. And I might actually do an episode on that at some point, I’ve been kicking around the idea. All right, so, let’s return back to the forecast. We touched on the new moon in Leo. And we’re getting into the middle of the month at this point, I think, and that you’re in a station in Taurus, which is just activating many of the same things that we’ve been talking about or intensifying Uranus, for better or worse. Let me animate the chart and it looks like that station happens. That’s actually later, it’s like August 20th but it’s really slowing down by the time we get to the mid month. And one of the things that’s interesting about that is just it’s going to be completing basically the first half of Uranus’s transit through Taurus in general, and inaugurating the entire second half of Uranus going through the rest of Taurus, and activating the second half of all fixed signs through heart aspect. So I wanted to mention it in passing just briefly based on that because it’s surprising. Remember when Uranus went into Taurus, and it’s surprising that we’re already basically halfway through that transit at this point?
CN: Yeah. Med fix signs need to get free. My wife, her son is a mid 14 degrees of a fixed sign. So, this whole year has just been like, “Okay, how do I restructure everything so I can have more freedom?”
CB: Right. And has that been something? It’s interesting, sometimes people do that consciously and you see the impulse for change come from within and other times, it’s something that comes from without that sort of imposes that on you and you have to react to. Has it been more conscious or more externalized?
CN: She runs to companies, so I think that the intensity of that just was an imposing reality that was like, “Hey, either everything gets streamlined.” Because also that Saturn is there, too, right? So it’s like, “Okay, what’s the structure? How do I use my time? How do I compartmentalise things? And how do I delegate things so that there can be more space for not freedom, freedom through responsibility, freedom through commitment, and a kind of sense?
AC: That’s really, I think, helpful to discuss somebody’s actual experience, cuz a lot of it like the Uranus is like, “Yay, freedom. Oh, I need more space, or I need freedom but I have to do all this stuff, right? I have all these responsibilities, the fact that I desire freedom does not negate all of my responsibilities.”
CN: Right. Yeah. And it’s actually like she’s very in this moment of how do I use my time in the most efficient way so that I can win in all the ways I want to. So it’s more of these are my creative limits, these are the limits and structures that Saturn gives me, and then here’s the innovative creative spark of Uranus. Like, “Okay, well, then how can I really fuck shit up in this time frame that I’ve got, and with the resources that I’ve got?” And I think also, we talked a lot about that, we’re midway through Uranus and Taurus. And so it’s really like the use of my resources, how do I use them in the most interesting effective way?
CB: Right, or sometimes innovative way. I was telling you guys the other day that I was watching this vise report about changes in food service, where it was like living in New York and ordering from different restaurants that had different menus. And then it turned out, they’re all being delivered from the same place, it was all coming from the same place, even though they were wildly different restaurants with different menus. And it turns out, this was a new trend of virtual restaurants where they would have 15 different menus, but they would just be the same kitchen cooking different things with a variety of different ingredients and having 15 different apps to take orders for all these different restaurants. So there’s been this big disruption in the food service industry, partially due to the pandemic, but also through just innovating and adapting to new technologies and figuring out how to deal with that. So it’s interesting seeing that as another further development of some of the Uranus and Taurus food themes that we had been talking about over the past few years.
AC: It’s a fully digital Cheesecake Factory. Sounds awful. Which reminds me of something I was going to say earlier about the return of Jupiter into Aquarius. So Jupiter in Pisces, there’s been in general as we discussed, a more hopeful attitude, I would characterize it as feeling and seeing that there are more possibilities. And I can feel that Jupiter about to go back. And you can see all the all the things that are already coming down the pipe, that closing down of the bright bouquet of possibilities. It’s back on the weird moving, the uneasy moving sidewalk towards dystopia. Where it’s like, “Oh, I don’t know.” That being moved, if you’ve been to airports that have those and like, “Where are we going with this? There don’t seem to be as many options for destinations.” There’s that uneasy feeling. for the first four months of the year that’s coming back.
CN: Can we really go to Europe? It’s like people are going to Europe, you’re like, “Wait, can you do that now?”
AC: Yeah.
CB: One of those that happened and I wasn’t sure we were having a debate Austin and I about whether it was related, but we had those two billionaires just in the past week or two that launched themselves into space. And I was wondering if that was a manifestation of Jupiter in Pisces, and normally we talk about Jupiter and Sach for example, as long distance travel, just with Jupiter being the planet of travel in general. And I was wondering if it’s returned to one of its own signs was noting that as an important event in terms of the commercialization of space and things like that, versus whether it was more of a technological thing and you were saying Austin that it could have been more representative of some of the Saturn and Aquarius themes?
AC: Yeah, especially Saturn-Aquarius configured to Uranus because that same sending a human being into near Earth orbit was something the United States did to Saturn in Aquarius as ago. Right in the early 60s, it was Saturn in Aquarius opposite Uranus in Leo. But because it was 60 years ago, Jupiter was in the same relationship to Saturn. So in 1962, you have some Jupiter in Aquarius ends in Jupiter in Pisces. So if we look at like literally that same act or achievement, we have Saturn in Aquarius, Jupiter in Aquarius and then Pisces that year, and we have an Angular Uranus. So there’s a lot of overlap.
CB: Yeah. And that ties into an episode I did earlier this month, the last episode before this one which was on stelliums and just some of the debates running stelliums and how many planets count as a stellium and things like that. Where on the three planets versus four planet minimum to have a stellium, whether each of you fall on that debate? Do you count three planets or you only count four and up?
AC: No, three’s a crowd?
CB: Three? Okay.
CN: I don’t know if I even really think about it.
CB: I was telling Patrick it’s not like the house division debate where astrologers are strapping bombs to their chests over this issue but it’s a lower level debate than that.
CN: Right.
AC: The thing is, if stellium was a very meaningful distinction where once you had a stellium, there was a whole set of interpretive things that would click in, then I would get fussy about it. But it’s literally just like others a bunch of there.
CN: Yeah, it’s like so much of the life goes back to that house topic to…
CB: Yeah. Yeah. And it starts dragging and the rulers of a bunch of houses.
CN: Yeah, yeah. And yes like, “Okay, we can return back to this house again.” And also, is it Venus and Mercury that we’re talking about that are there with the sun? Who’s in the stellium? I guess is also interesting.
CB: Right. Or is it like with the people born in the late 80s or early 90s where they have a bunch of outer planets and Capricorn in the same sign already and that’s generational, or is it some personal planets or what have you?
CN: Yeah, and all of those have different meanings so I think of those in different ways. Like you think of the cohort of those people that came in, or just that week or that month of those people that are born with this. Everything is significant, but I don’t think I ever think about the word stellium that much.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah. I think that if they are visible planets and therefore classically rule houses, if you have three planets in a sign, you could have literally the rulers of six of the 12 houses. Or if it’s Sun, Moon and a planet minimum four, and also from a planetary combinations perspective. If you have two in a sign, then you just have that dynamic. If you have three close together, then you have multiple relationships. If it’s Mars, Venus, Mercury, you’ve got to think about, “Okay, what is Venus Mars like? Okay, what is Mars Mercury like?” And just go through all of that and get so much more complicated. I feel like three is where the complexity ramps up enough to put it in a different category.
CB: Right. For sure. All right. Well, people can check out the Stelliums episode in episode 311, I think, which is out now and was an amazing episode. We did a bunch of example charts. But one thing I want to mention, I want to mention our sponsor for this month which is actually Sphere + Sundry which has a new series.
AC: What’s that, Chris? It sounds mysterious and intriguing. [laughs]
CB: Yeah, well, I was actually going to chastise you. So Sphere + Sundry is, of course, a talismanic materia or AKA elections in a bottle by our friend, Kaitlin Coppock. I had to ask you Austin to stop sleeping with our sponsors because [laughs] that could get us into trouble in this day and age. Why don’t you tell me what Sphere + Sundry is about?
AC: Well, let me tell you how it started. Several years ago, Kate was like, “Hey, you should make talismans for people, they would like that.” And I said, “I have too many jobs. I don’t want to do that.” Kate’s like, “Well, what if I do it?” I said, “Knock yourself out.” Kate more than just did it. She’s innovated to a degree that I don’t think anybody thought was possible before. She’s adapted the sort of talismanic protocols to oils, candles, incenses, even the salves are really good, I really like the salves, and just kind of taken it to a variety of new levels. So I’ve been the electional astrologer for Sphere + Sundry the whole time, as well as the adviser. It’s been pretty amazing because I’m kind of cranky and sometimes overly traditional when it comes to astrology or magic. So Kate was like, “Well, I’m going to try this and we’ll see if it works.” There’s so much that worked so much better than I realized it would and it’s been exciting. It’s been really exciting to one, have all this awesome stuff from every good election that I didn’t have to make from my perspective. It’s also been awesome for me as far as sort of a training course for electing magical procedures and trying to think about how to do the sort of safest, most benefic, gentlest best version possible. Because when it’s just for me, I will and have taken lots of risks. I’m very happy to self-inject as a guinea pig, but this is a different project, right? So holding different criteria in mind, it’s been a joy.
CN: Can I say as a customer?
CB: Please.
CN: I maybe have a problem maybe by almost everything that comes out, but I feel like I’ve had Kaitlin’s products for a couple of years now, and there’s literally no important event that I go to without it on. I wear it every day. I wear something every day. I wear something also every night. We’ve gifted it to everybody that we know and love, to people that work, all of our staff have Sphere + Sundry. Everybody who we know has Sphere + Sundry. And the amount of times people have gotten the job and met the person and done all these things, I give these stuff out for people that are in a crisis or in a something, and it’s not only soothing and just really beautifully made things, but they have a tremendous amount of power. It’s one of my favorite gifts to give because there’s literally nothing like it, and I cannot go without it. We’ve got our altars, Sphere + Sundry shop. But I do feel like they’re my friends. I do feel like they’re my allies, they’re my friends, when we had problems with neighbors, anything that goes on in our life, we’re like, “Okay, which one do we use?” So I can’t recommend it enough.
CB: Yeah, and I love how it’s taking the ancient and medieval concept of creating talismans or capturing the chart of a specific moment and the energies of that moment and putting it in something, in either an oil or an elixir or an incense or a candle, and being able to have that and reach back to that and reignite the energy of that moment in your life at some time at will, whenever you need to. It’s really fascinating concepts, just conceptually in terms of astrology, but also practically speaking. The fact that you plan some of these elections out so far in advance and then release them later.
CN: Yeah.
AC: One thing that I learned from the project, I was pleasantly surprised by it. So I’d done a bunch of stuff with stones and metals, and I knew that stone and metal could absolutely carry a charge. Even a well-constructed paper talisman will carry something. It’s not the same as stone or metal, it doesn’t have the same carrying capacity. But I was really surprised at how much the oils with the herbs in the middle of that, the oils and even the candles and the waters held the energy. Another thing, sort of an unexpected benefit of that was being able to just get a little bit of the, let’s say it’s a Jupiter series, let’s say Jupiter and Pisces. We obviously did some Jupiter and Pisces stuff, right? With a stone, you know, the benefit but also the issue is that you’re literally carrying that with you the entire time you’re carrying it. And it’s just on, whereas being able to get a boost of a particular thing for like an hour or two or an evening…
CN: Or put it on an important letter.
AC: Yeah, exactly, is a huge advantage. I was just thinking before Kate started the project, I was sort of, again, you know I’m a little Saturnian about things. I was like, “More permanent is better.” But I was like, “Oh, there are advantages to impermanence,” and to be able to put something on and then have it not just be on the whole time. Because one of the challenges with talismans is it takes a while in some cases to learn how to wear it, to mesh with that energy and hold it and not have it overwhelm you, etc etc. Whereas you have a different set of opportunities, environmental with candles or for a period of time with oils or a quick change with a water, etc etc. It was really interesting, I’ve learned a bunch.
CN: Yeah, and to you infuse it in your house before guests come over, it’s a whole thing.
AC: Yeah. Put a little [unintelligible 7.53] outside your door.
CN: Oh yes. Oh my God. Okay, can I tell you this one story really quick? We put some… There was a new house next door and we were like, “We can’t have just any kind of neighbors.” So we put [unintelligible 8.09] around their house, and it took a very long time for it to sell. That’s all I’ll say. But we have amazing neighbors.
AC: Well behaved, I imagine.
CN: We felt very taken care of.
CB: So there’s a Jupiter in Pisces, I guess that’s the next one that’s launching as you guys had done the Jupiter and Pisces series, and that’s going to launch on Monday, July 26th, 2021. So it may already be out.
AC: With the Moon’s last conjunction to Jupiter in Pisces.
CB: Nice.
AC: This one is back from May. This is within a week of ingress, I’m very excited about this one. I’ve been using this a lot. I made a bunch of stones for it that won’t be for sale but I really like it. I got the Moon besieged by benefics, so it’s the Moon moving between Jupiter and Venus, Jupiter in the 10th whole sign and quadrant style on Jupiter’s day an hour, a couple other tweaks. I’m really, really happy with it.
CB: Cool. All right. Well, people can check that out at sphereandsundry.com and there’s a bunch of other things from different series in the past that you can still get at this point as well. So thanks to Kaitlin for sponsoring this episode and to Austin for picking out some awesome elections for those different series. All right, so back to the forecast, I sort of started getting into the second and third week, but I skipped over a couple of really important ingresses that we needed to mention. The first of which is Mercury completing its trip through Leo and ingressing into Virgo by August 11th and returning to its home sign where it’s actually traversing for the majority of the month of August along with Mars. So Mercury in Virgo is one of the sort of characteristic transits of this month, and especially that conjunction with Mars which eventually culminates on August 18th at 12 degrees of Virgo.
CN: And right before it does that it makes a fairly optimistic opposition at Jupiter.
CB: Yes. That opposition right there from 28 Leo to 28 Aquarius on August 10th, it’s moving so fast at that point. But yeah, it hits that and then right around that time, we also not long after get Venus leaving Virgo and ingressing into Libra on August 15th or 16th.
CN: Yeah. So feels like a really interesting… I mean, Mars is there of course to mess everything up, but Mercury is also separating from the Sun. So it feels like this moment where there’s some things that are in their proper place as Mercury and Virgo would like it to be, like with Mercury there and Venus in its own sign. It feels like there’s a little bit of an ability to get some really good work done, I think with that Mercury Mars situation. Then with the Venus in Libra just adds this really nice kind of note of harmony and beauty and enjoyable things, which I think probably benefit from with all of that Virgo.
CB: Yeah, because even though there can be a combative tone to Mercury Mars conjunctions, I think Mercury being in its own sign during the course of that has the potential to channel some of that energy a bit more constructively as focused movement and acting with intention and greater direction than one might at other times in your life if you’re able to channel it in a constructive manner.
CN: The Mercury Mars?
CB: Yeah.
CN: Yeah, because Mercury is running the show. So it’s like in Virgo, let’s get down to the particulars and actually do something with all that energy.
AC: Yeah. It’s very ferocious analysis. Yeah. It brings a sort of intense martial, military quality to the Mercurial. The Mercurial is the main thing and then Mars is the modifier to that, right? But fierce analysis, I don’t know, intense editing, right. I don’t know, I can see people in laboratories or writing code, just making kind of anime faces, anime intense faces and flames jetting out of their hair. Yeah, I do agree that Mercury being in its sign and exalted pushes it towards the constructive, but there’s certainly still the Mercury Mars sharp tongue, slander. One of the classical indications of Mercury Mars is lawsuits, accusations, etc etc. I’m sure there will be, perhaps not in a person’s individual sphere, but there will certainly be slander and accusations of wrongdoing in the news.
CN: Right, and that kind of like inflammatory way that what we say has that edge to it and has that little bit of heat to whatever’s going on and also like the mind. I mean, I think, Mercury and Virgo is amazing obviously, but it’s also like Virgo just so can go into overdrive so easily and with Mars there kind of gives it more of that gas so that there’s like, we didn’t need all those details actually and like, that was a little too much information and like, that’s a little extra, let’s sit down now.
AC: Well, and you can just imagine the discussions about what’s going on with a particular situation? Going from, well, we disagree to like, no, it’s important that you know you’re wrong.
CN: Specifically.
AC: No, it’s important that you know you’re wrong.
CN: Yeah. These are my data points.
CB: The 10-page email with expletives outlining in 20 steps why you are wrong.
CN: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. I like that you mentioned intense editing, that’s a good one for this and the constructive function because as a creator, as a writer, it’s often good if you’re not also editing yourself. But if you get, for example, if you do a movie and you have a director and they film a bunch of stuff and they shoot like 20 hours worth of video. There has to be the editor who steps in and knows what to cut and what get rid of in order to make it flow in a way that’s good. Every movie that you’ve ever seen that’s really good is often good because there was somebody that was the editor that knew when to exercise that cutting function of Mars and to step in and to take some pieces out or get rid of them, which sometimes the creative person doesn’t experience as like a positive thing or is like, “No, I don’t want to let go with that,” but sometimes it’s a necessary function, even if it can sometimes be difficult or unwanted.
CN: Right. So on the way to the conjunction with Mars, that function might be on overdrive where we’re like we cut away too much or you’re drawing something and you take the eraser to it, and then you just tear the page.
AC: Right. It’s a less good time to generate or create, a better time to go back over what you’ve done. I really like that you brought the cutting or editing in Chris because that term comes from film. Literally you had to cut the film, you had to chop that sequence out. And there was the cutting room floor because you literally had to chop it and they would just drop it on the floor until it got cleaned up.
CB: Yeah, because a lot of the great films like Star Wars and George Lucas, a lot of people say that that was saved in editing or that it would have been much different film if it hadn’t been edited or someone like Quentin Tarantino worked with, I’m forgetting her name right now, but this very famous editor, and she edited all his early films. But she passed away sadly a few years ago, and people have noted a stark difference between the editor that he did work with in his early career versus whoever he’s been working with recently. So yeah, just thinking about that and meditating on that of the function of editing and knowing when to cut something out in your life that will be constructive versus the opposite, sort of going nuts and cutting too much out or severing ties with somebody or saying that first cutting remark that comes to mind and that may be being something that you regret saying later once you’ve sort of calmed down. But that feeling in the moment sometimes to make a cutting remark not always being the best idea.
CN: Not realizing that you’re going to draw blood.
CB: Right.
CN: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So that actually brings up the electional chart that I wanted to highlight this month.
CN: Great. [laughs]
CB: If anyone wanted, yeah, I will not draw blood, I’m not recommending that, metaphorical blood. So our electional chart for this month is set for August 26th, 2021 at 12:35 AM. So actually, shortly after midnight and whatever your location is with Gemini rising. So the chart features Gemini rising and Mercury ruling the Ascendant placed in Virgo in the fourth whole sign house in the night chart. So it has that conjunction still with Mars which is co-present in Virgo with Mercury and the Sun, but it’s a night chart, which is significantly cooling down and making Mars a little bit more constructive. It’s also separating from the conjunction with Mars rather than still applying to it. We’ve also got a nice placement of Venus in the fifth whole sign house in its home sign of Libra in a night chart. So there’s some good fifth house things in terms of creativity and other Venus-related activities that this chart would be good for. Since it’s a strong Mercury election, I think it would be good for most things involving Mercury, but especially if you have something like that in terms of writing or communicating, as well as those sort of executive functions of editing or cutting things out and other things of that nature. The Moon’s up in Aries in the 11th whole sign house applying to a sextile with Jupiter at 26 degrees of Aquarius. In our location for Denver, we set the Midheaven right on Jupiter, but that’s kind of optional just depending on where your location is and where the Midheaven is going to be. Just don’t put it too close to Saturn over there at eight degrees of Aquarius in a night chart because that could stunt some of the actions that you might want to take with this chart, otherwise yeah. So that’s the–
AC: So pause for a second. There’s something particularly nice about that. So the Moon there if my eyes do not deceive me, the Moon is actually in-between aspects to benefics. So we’ve got a benefic enclosure on the Moon. Its last exact aspect was to Venus and its next will be to Jupiter if you don’t believe Pluto counts, which I sometimes don’t.
CB: Yeah. I think there’s something to be said for just paying attention to the visible aspects when you’re talking about enclosures and yeah, separating from that opposition of Venus and then applying to these sextiles Jupiter. So this chart was found by Drew Levanti, who co-hosted the Auspicious Elections podcast with me this month because Leisa was out of town visiting family. So we also found four or five of their electional charts. Some that are good Venus and Libra charts, some Saturn and Aquarius charts, since we’re starting up day charts again, where those are possible. So people can find that on the Auspicious Elections podcast, which is available through our page on Patreon at patreon.com/astrologypodcast. Yeah, and that was–
CN: It’d be a good chart for doing some kind of lineage healing thing too.
CB: Yeah. There’s a heavy fourth house emphasis, which could be like home living situation, but also family ancestry things which are private or even things which are hidden or not meant to be seen or not meant to be sort of publicly visible, even if they are important or strong in setting a sort of strong foundation for you.
CN: Yeah. Like if you want to do a cord cutting ceremony or something like that.
CB: Yeah, sometimes that’s necessary and sometimes yeah, cutting ties in some way can be necessary and healing. So thinking about that and the necessity sometimes of cutting something out of one’s life and when that’s constructive as opposed to when that’s destructive, that might be one of our major themes this month with that Mercury transit with Mars.
AC: Yeah. I like that cutting idea, maybe if we’re cutting–
CN: Like being like, “We’re not coming home for Christmas.” [laughs]
AC: So to take it outside of or to take it to a different place than, I don’t know, ancestral trauma [laughs] there are things that often we want to cut out of our lives like a habit that we know is rooted in deeper feelings, but we’re like, “I’d love to not feel those, so I’m going to keep up with this habit.” Whether it’s watching too much TV or eating candy or smoking cigarettes or whatever it is, cutting that out without that Mars Mercury in the fourth, that makes a lot of sense.
CN: It’s like a foundational good.
AC: Something is connected to it, right?
CN: Yeah.
AC: That band-aid, whatever you made the band-aid out of.
CB: So this is reminding me also of something I want to mention briefly in passing related to Mercury and Virgo. It’s just making me think about books and talking about the process of editing and things like that. But the other day Mecca Woods posted on Twitter this quick tweet about the Women’s Prison Book Project and was saying that they have an influx of requests for astrology books, but they actually have very little of them on hand to send out to women who are in prison and who are looking for book donations. So I actually wanted to recommend, and I got the contact information and asked them about it, asked if it would be okay and they said it would be. So if anybody wants to donate astrology books to this project, I think this would be a really great project to donate books to. So it’s the women’s… So send them to the Women’s Prison Book Project at 3751 17th Avenue, South Minneapolis, Minnesota 55407 or you can find out more information at wpbp.org. The only requirement is just no hard cover books. It should only be soft cover books because most prisons don’t allow hardcover books. Ideally they want them to be general purpose like instructional astrology books and not ones that are just for specific signs or for specific dates like your astrology for 2019 or something that’s just going to age out really poorly. I sent a couple boxes of my book over there, but I’m hoping we could just flood them with astrology books, good astrology books. I think that would be very helpful, but also just I can imagine that there would have been an uptake in interest in astrology books over the past few years just due to the general popularity of astrology. But if nobody’s donating them, then they don’t really have any to send out.
CN: Will they take gently used books? Did you find out?
CB: They will take used books as long as they’re in good condition, I think that’s the only thing is just hopefully send good condition astrology books, not ones that are falling apart. Yeah. All right. So check out the website for more information about that and people can also make donations or they have like a wish list or wanted list that you can buy books from there as well.
AC: Quick question, Chris. Is this an ongoing thing or is this a drive where it’ll be over? Because I’d like to send some of the second edition of Faces, but that’s going to be a little bit.
CB: Yeah, it’s an ongoing thing. If anybody listens to this at any point in the future, it’s something that’s been going on for years. It’s like a volunteer and a nonprofit organization that donates books to women that are in prison or women that are incarcerated. So yeah, anytime in the future, if you want to send books then just feel free to send a box or however many boxes that you want and they will gladly accept them and then they’ll send them to different places around the country. All right, cool. So that’s my Mercury in Virgo announcement for this month, we’re getting into the later half and the later portions of the last week or two of the month at this point, right?
CN: Yeah. So right before Venus goes into Libra, it makes a really nice trine to Pluto and that Venus and Virgo is with Mercury for a bit and Mars of course. But there’s that kind of alchemical or maybe even transformative like Venus having been in Virgo for a second, very priestess vibes. What kind of self-reunification, purification kind of rituals are you up to, and then moves into Venus. Austin, what were you going to say? I cut you off.
AC: Oh no, you didn’t. I don’t think you did at least. Actually, I was probably making a face like I wanted to say something, [laughs] but I don’t think I actually started. I was going to say, oh, let’s not skip that second full Moon, but this is before that.
CN: Yeah, sorry. There’s this really like, that’s a pretty Virgoan moment to have Mercury, Mars and Venus all there. They all skip through those outer planets on their way out just like that, one, two, three kind of thing. So Venus does that third thing where it’s maybe an easier kind of, I don’t know if it’s easier, but they had that opposition to Neptune and then goes to the trine to Pluto. So it’s kind of unearthing something. I always think of part of Venus in Virgo is being very kind of connected to or tied to oneself or that kind of marriage to the self.
CB: Yeah. Look at that. The Moon Venus conjunction at 24 Virgo occurs right at the same time as that trine with Pluto at 24 Capricorn.
CN: Yeah. [crosstalk]
AC: See that right after sunset.
CB: What were you about to say, Chani?
CN: Oh, I thought Mercury was already there, but it’s just about to be there.
CB: It’s moving super-fast, so it moves in within a day or within 24 hours of that.
CN: Right.
CB: Yeah. Okay. So then shortly after that?
CN: Clean up your room.
CB: Clean up your room, that’s a good Venus in Virgo. Yeah, rearrange your things.
CN: Weed your gardens, clean your bedrooms.
CB: Yeah, both literally and metaphorically.
CN: Yeah.
CB: Then we get Venus ingressing into Libra in August 15th. So Venus returning to her home sign where she’s going to spend the rest of the month of August. Do either of you have feelings about that? We do have a nice trine then from Venus in Libra trining Saturn from eight degrees of Libra to eight degrees of Aquarius on August 23rd. So I like some of the aspects of Venus is making during its trip through Libra.
CN: Yeah. I love that trine.
AC: Yeah. It’s like a perfumed breeze blowing in and sedating and mellowing the atmosphere.
CB: Yeah, and it’s like Venus has that superior trine overcoming Saturn, and Jupiter is all the way back to like 26 Aquarius at this point. So it’s like both of the benefics are kind of surrounding and really improving Saturn’s condition in Aquarius at this point.
CN: And as its exalted ruler and in its sign of exaltation, it’s a nice flow that’s happening. Mellow Saturn out for a second, maybe.
AC: Yeah. It’s like the trine to Saturn and I see is not amazing for Venus but wonderful for Saturn. Saturn is very soothed by that. Also worth noting that Saturn is in a Venus-ruled decan at this point. So it will be additionally receptive.
CN: Nice. So it’s a good time to like–
AC: It’ll be okay Saturn.
CN: –make beauty, create, manifest it, bring it into form or commit in some way to some kind of…
AC: Yeah. To take some of those structural adjustments that we’ve been talking about and take them to the level of elegance and design. Because there’s like the bones of a house or a property or whatever structural metaphor instance you want, but then there’s the making it nice.
CN: Yeah, and that may be the commitments or the work of it is a little easier, a little bit more pleasing, a little bit more pleasurable with Venus there for a second.
AC: That’s a great point. Yeah. The commitment like part of putting Saturn at ease is feeling good about your commitments.
CN: Yeah, you’re doing a great job, sweetie.
AC: Yeah, or just like, “No, I’m really glad I’m doing this.” Sure, it’s hard sometimes, but I’m happily committed to this person, this project, this life, this whatever it is.
CN: Yeah. It’s like food for the journey kind of thing like a little affirmation.
CB: Well, that affirmation sometimes makes all the difference and maybe remembering that those little affirmations really do help and can make a seemingly insurmountable task seem slightly less that insurmountable.
CN: Yeah, I think they’re essential.
CB: Right. So that would be a good thing for people to think about and keep in mind as we go through the last part of the month.
CN: Yeah.
AC: You skipped past the full Moon again.
CB: Oh no. I keep wanting to, yeah, that Aquarius and it’s the positive ones. We’re talking about the same timeframe, but that’s the second Aquarius full Moon in one month. So it actually fits the original definition of a Blue Moon, which is in calendar terms, a full Moon that happens in the same calendar month.
CN: No.
CB: But in astrological terms… No?
CN: Wait, oh yeah. Sorry, sorry. Wait, we’re in August now when we’re talking? No, the full Moon’s in July. The first Aquarius Moon’s in July.
CB: The first Aquarius, yeah. But just the second one in the same sign happening in Aquarius one month later in late August.
CN: Oh, I thought it had to be in the same calendar month, that’s so true.
CB: Well, yeah, that’s the classical definition of a Blue Moon is in the same calendar month. I’m just saying if we were to apply that to astrology…
CN: We can still sing the song.
CB: Yeah, we can still sing the song, but just about it being in the same zodiacal sign.
CN: Yeah.
CB: So here it is at 29 degrees of Aquarius on August looks like 22nd for most people, it looks like it will take place on the 22nd of August. So this was the more positive full Moon that we were kind of talking about and comparing favorably to the more tricky full Aquarius full Moon at the very end of July that was much closer to Saturn. This one instead is taking place at 29 degrees of Aquarius in a pretty close conjunction to Jupiter at 26 degrees of Aquarius. It looks like that morning as it’s going exact, the morning of August 22nd right before sunrise, you’ll see in the night sky, the Sun Jupiter conjunction will be setting over the Western horizon.
CN: Moon.
CB: Oh yeah, the Moon. And just after that, the Sun will rise at sunrise over the Eastern horizon in Leo as that full Moon is going exact.
CN: Yeah.
AC: Yeah. It’s good. Right. So we have all of the dynamics that we just talked about with the Venus Saturn trine, right. That mellowing Saturn, it’s going to be okay. And that’s additionally useful here because this is a Saturn-ruled full Moon in the sign that Saturn’s in. This is the all benefics in attendance version of the July forming an Aquarius. I prefer this one.
CN: Yeah, and Mars is tucked away, so that’s cute.
CB: Yeah, and Mercury is past that conjunction with Mars. There’s still some fire, but it’s like Mercury is getting to act more independently. It’s a nice moment and probably some of all that benefic stuff is in some ways signaling. Excuse me. Here is how nice it is to figure things out and to put them to implement solutions, to do work arounds. You got all this information about all the problems in these fixed areas, and then you probably try to do something about it and then here you go. Sometimes when you work on things, they get better and it feels way better.
CN: Yeah. So you could even use this first full Moon or think about the first full Moon in Aquarius and take notes and then work to adjust towards the second full Moon in Aquarius in the same part of your chart and allow that Jupiter to give you a little boost.
CB: So the first full Moon at the end of July in Aquarius in whatever part of your chart is might be the identification of problems and exercising the critical function of Saturn, and the second full Moon towards later part of August in Aquarius is the implementation of solutions.
CN: That will come much easier or at least be aided in some way.
AC: Yeah, and some of the fixes that aren’t long-term might already be bearing fruit by this time.
CN: Yeah.
CB: All right, interesting. I like that.
CN: And if you have any planets in those late degrees of Aquarius, they’re going to get an interesting highlight and also a bit of a lift. This would be the second. Well, depending on the degrees, but it might be the second time that Jupiter’s come back to it and then with a full Moon added there, then it could give you maybe an interesting piece of news or something like that around the full Moon.
CB: Yeah, highlighting or putting a spotlight on that area of your chart but also bringing some optimism and stabilization of things with Jupiter returning back to it where it were just like quickly ran over that point earlier in the year.
CN: Right.
AC: Yeah. So a little bit of, how do I put this, relief for the beleaguered fixed sign natives. We’ve gone through it, especially by the time we’re recording now, the end of July. It’s been rough, but help is on the way.
CN: Momentarily.
AC: Yes, some help, you know, nothing’s permanent.
CN: Yeah.
CB: Yep. We will take what we can get, I will say as Aquarius rising native. [laughs] So right after that, it’s interesting in terms of the sequence not major astrology, but of course, as this happens around every time this time of the year the Sun immediately after that full Moon switches into Virgo, and we have the end of Leo season and the beginning of Virgo season by the 23rd of August. So there’s a shift in the seasons immediately after that lunation which is kind of an interesting shift at that time as well.
AC: It’s very back to work. I mean, because there’s been this very… Mercury and Mars and Virgo are definitely, it’s very, how should we say, work, like working on something, whatever. Virgo has this nice ability to look at what needs to be done, what needs to be accomplished and to not spend so much time on the self. It’s great to spend time on the self, but sometimes the matter at hand it’s not about you, it’s about getting it done in that role. That may benefit the self, but the Sun’s movement into Virgo joining them it really reinforces the, “Okay, wasn’t that wonderful? Let’s get it done now.”
CB: Right, that brings up in that shift something I was thinking about the other day when I was driving down a narrow street and there was another car that was coming and there’s only enough room for one of us to go. I ended up just pulling over and yielding so that this other car could come down the street. It was making me think about the debate that astrologers have been having for a while about what to call the odd and even the signs. It was making me think of yielding for the even signs, but then I wasn’t sure if unyielding was the best term to use for the odd signs or if there was a term that would be better that would be the opposite or an antonym of yielding.
CN: You mean instead of gendered terms? Is that what you mean?
CB: Yeah, basically. What do you use? I know Austin and I have had this debate before and he tends to go with yin and yang as his preferred terms. Have you settled on that?
CN: I mean, I think of them in nocturnal, diurnal kind of fashion. So I think I probably hang out there more than anywhere else.
AC: I wouldn’t go yielding because Earth signs, for example, especially if we look at Capricorn, is not yielding. It’s not like racing at you, but it’s like, “No, you can go around me or you can figure a way around me.” Capricorn has an ability to hold position which is anything but yielding.
CB: Right. That’s a good point. I guess I was thinking about Virgo here just in the switch from Leo season to Virgo season and sometimes the helpful but somewhat yielding function that Virgo can take which some people might label as passive, but it’s not necessarily always passive per se.
AC: Yeah, I would say it’s adaptive.
CN: Yeah, and internally busy.
CB: Right. Yeah.
CN: Eternally and internally busy.
CB: Eternally busy, that’s a good keyword for Virgo. So all right. So let me pull the calendar back up for this later part of the month. We’ve talked about Mercury and Virgo, we’ve talked about Venus going through Libra, and we’ve talked about our final lunation. What is the very last thing we have to mention this month in terms of the astrology of August?
CN: Well, Mercury ingress, are we already there? Mercury ingresses into Libra also at that last corner.
CB: All right. So we’re into our final ingress of the month which here it is with Mercury eventually finishing up with Mars, and it’s still moving pretty fast at this point, but it makes an ingress by looks like August 29th, August 30th into the sign of Libra where it joins up with Venus.
CN: That’s a nice shift from being, even though it was in its own sign and really strong there, it can be kind of harsh a little. In Virgo, Mercury can just strip everything away. And being with Mars, I think any of that kind of its capacities might be a little extra scouring with that kind of combo. So once it moves into being ruled by Venus and Venus is there, there’s something a little… Well, there’s obviously a very distinct change in focus from like, what’s wrong? What’s missing? What did we forget? What did we leave out? To, oh, wow, how lovely or how can I put this situation… What can I bring to the party to balance it out? What can I add to the mix to sweeten everything? How can I help kind of ease connections between folks?
AC: Yeah. It’s certainly much more fortuitous for social gathering. Because if there’s a gathering where people are going to talk, then Mercury is involved. You’ll have much more pleasant conversations once Mercury goes into Libra. Chani, did you use the term scouring for Mercury and Mars and Virgo?
CN: Yeah.
AC: I love that.
CN: Yeah.
AC: It’s very like steel wall.
CN: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.
AC: There’s some things you have to bust out the steel wall to get off.
CN: Definitely and then you can ruin the thing completely.
AC: Right. But you don’t want to like… That’s a not so gentle exfoliation.
CN: Right, right.
CB: Yeah.
CN: It’s good for research, maybe getting down through the layers of things. That’s why your electional chart, Chris, you could be really kind of peeling back the layers of something with that chart, with getting down to the core, the roots of something, not even necessarily like familial or ancestral or anything like that, but just getting down to something. But if you apply it to yourself, how you relate to yourself or how you relate to others, that can be a little fraying.
CB: Yeah, getting to the bottom or getting to the core of something, but it can be an intense or a process that’s a little bit rough or abrasive. I guess, is one of the key words that’s coming from the steel wall analogy, is there’s an abrasiveness to that chunk of the month of Mercury going through Virgo. But then when we have this ingress– [crosstalk]
CN: And it’s only doing its job. That’s its job, that’s what it’s supposed to do.
CB: Right. But then there’s this shift to more of a softness or a sweetness to Mercury, some of the keywords that you were using, once it switches into Libra in this part of the month.
CN: Or at least a lightness, like some butterflies.
AC: Yeah, I would say grace maybe.
CN: Yeah.
AC: Graceful and diplomatic.
CN: Yeah.
CB: I like that. And that is basically setting up our shift into the month of September. So we kind of end on that sweet note or a graceful note of Mercury moving into Libra at the very, very end of August. So yeah, I think seems like things start out a little bit more and more challenging with some of the configurations in late July and the early part of August, but then we start hitting some more flowing ones towards the later part of August and that other full Moon in Aquarius later in the month.
AC: Yeah, it’s almost like it takes almost the first two weeks of August to get done with all of July’s after effects.
CB: Yeah. And then we skipped over, so August 28th, 29th was important, and I meant to mention, because there’s actually an astrology summit that’s happening on those two days on the very tail end of Mercury in Virgo. This is the very last Fresh Voices in Astrology summit, which is taking place the 28th and 29th of the month. So I’m excited about that. That’s been a series that’s been ongoing for the past year or two, hosted by Kirah Tabourn, and she’s stepping down soon in order to pursue other projects. But they’re going to go out with a big bang and have an amazing lineup with a bunch of really amazing speakers that represent up and coming astrologers in the astrological community that are presenting on a variety of different topics. So it’s actually a free conference where you can attend this, and they’re going to be doing a bunch of lectures over the course of two days on August 28th and 29th. You can attend them free just by showing up basically and going to freshvoicesinastrology.com. They also have some passes where if you want to support the project or get longer access to the recordings or even download the recordings, you can sign up for an all-access pass to pay like a nominal fee in order to get access to that stuff. But otherwise, it’s a completely free conference with a bunch of amazing astrologers and amazing lectures. So I highly recommend checking it out, the last ones have been a lot of fun. I’m sad that it’s going to be going away, but it’s been like a really great run at this point. I’ve met a lot of and heard of a lot of great astrologers I didn’t know about before as a result of it. So props to Kirah for running that over the course of the past year or two.
AC: Yeah, definitely. Oh, this is somewhat beside the point, shout out to whatever graphic designer put that together.
CN: It’s Kirah.
AC: Oh, Kirah did that?
CN: Yeah, Kirah is not only a phenomenal astrologer but also designer.
AC: I love the font choice, I love the circle of people, the circle of portraits rather than the grid. Yeah, that’s a fine looking advertisement right there.
CN: I mean, I’m assuming it’s Kirah because she is a designer by trade, so I love all of her stuff.
CB: Yeah, I love… Kirah had some amazing design stuff since the beginning, since her Influx Magazine, which I think she’s going to be bringing back at some point but always works with really good people. So thanks to Kirah for organizing that and also for Tony Howard, which got that going partially in conjunction with Astrology University. Yeah, it’s been wild seeing all of the new astrologers and the influx of younger astrologers into the community. What’s your experience been of that, Chani? Me and Austin and Kelly have been just remarking about it for the past two or three years now, how wild it’s been to see that huge influx, but you’ve seen it from a different perspective.
CN: I’ve seen it from a different perspective?
CB: Yeah. Or what has your perspective been? Like somebody was asking, for example–
CN: Yeah, sorry.
CB: I was just going to say, somebody was asking about the first queer astrology conference, for example, and it just made me think about that from how a group of astrologers met up in 2012 at UAC and just saw a real lack of something that was missing from the mainstream organizations at the time. But instead of just complaining about it, they just started something new and just created what was missing in the community and I thought that was very impressive.
CN: Yeah. Ian, Barry and I met in the elevator and then at a party and then at a bar, and then we were like, “We should have our own astrology conference.” We were like, “Yeah, let’s call it the Queer Astrology Conference.” Then we did it for a couple of years and then I feel like I put my head down and worked for four or five years and I looked up and I was like, “Whoa, where did all these astrologers come from? This is incredible.” And there’s a bunch of people that wrote for the app that are all kind of part of that cohort. Kirah is one of them. Diana Rose Harper, who also was on one of your last episodes, is another one. Just like, whoa, I think probably all of a sudden it’s like, wow, like this is incredible like how much info they have at the ready and how everybody is just dove in and hoovered it up and absorbed it and been able to put it to work in a way that I’m in awe of, and I think that astrology is in incredible hands, and I love the community-based approach to most things that’s happening. It’s an important moment for the field to go through. I think there’s different points of tension and there’s different all sorts of moments of realizing how the industry is, I don’t know what we want to call it, but how the shape of astrology as a business and as everything, as a group, as a collective experience, as a body of work needs to also be pushed forward and brought in and stretched and inhabited by many different versions of us. And so it’s gorgeous. I’m thrilled, and I’m just a fan of so many folks that are coming out and learning so much. It’s really beautiful also to watch people go into their own specific kind of domain of astrology and feeling how wide and spacious it is. I don’t know how you both feel, but I don’t feel like I had that when I was starting out. It was like, astrology, it wasn’t like you can go into all the different branches just starting out, and then within all the different branches, there’s so much there too. So I obviously am a tradition junkie, so I love that these folks, that kind of cohort is too and that the roots of everything are being claimed, reclaimed, looked at, studied, understood and honored. I feel like it’s a deep honoring of where it’s all from and what it all means.
CB: Yeah. That was something I found really touching about the end of your book, was you thanked more than anybody else Demetra and the effect Demetra and her teachings have had on you, especially partially in terms of traditional astrology.
CN: Yeah. You want me to cry? Yeah, I love Demetra. I can talk about how much I love Demetra probably all day long. I think it’s rare that you meet somebody that is that generous. I mean, the way she worked for so long just sitting student by student, one by one, and making sure that I understood what she was talking about. I got in in a moment… I know she doesn’t really do that anymore, I don’t think she does anyways. She told me I can’t study with her anymore. She fired me. [laughs] But to have that transmission, I think, that’s her thing. So not only her deep wisdom and just volumes of knowledge and her lived experience, but also her graciousness as a teacher and her generosity as a teacher has changed my life, I will say.
AC: For Sure. I would also add that one of the things I’ve long admired about Demetra was that she was a very successful psychological sort of modern astrologer and encountered the Hellenistic material as it was really just starting to be a meaningfully unearthed and was willing to totally change gears or add a new gear. I believe at that point, she literally did a whole program so she could read ancient Greek. And to reconfigure and to make room for something as big and sometimes intimidating as traditional astrology when you’re already successful, when you’re not 25 and just figuring out what you want to be, the level of flexibility and should we say commitment to the art that that always proclaimed to me, I’ve always had a lot of respect for that in addition to the things that you’ve said, Chani.
CN: Yeah, the rigor and the adorable laugh after she tells you something very grim and dark. [laughs] The Demetra giggle, [laughs] it could be worse.
CB: Right. Yeah, and she was several decades into her career and being willing to be presented with something new but something that was radically different, but being willing to set everything aside in order to learn that and try to incorporate that. I think that is a great model to follow because then she ended up being one of the first that really set the precedent for the synthesis of modern and ancient astrology that I think all of us represent in different ways or that people like us, especially in our age generation roughly, me being in my late 30s and you guys in your early 40s, represent that synthesis of that first generation of synthesis that Demetra led the way for that. Interestingly or coincidentally, her solar return is actually in the next 24 hours. So her actual birthday’s two days from now, it’s on July 25th, today’s July 23rd. But her Sun is late one something Leo and the Sun is almost there now. So maybe a good time.
CN: Happy birthday, Demetra.
AC: Yeah, happy birthday. The Sun wanted us to talk about you and say nice things.
CN: Yeah.
CB: The Sun and apparently the full Moon because the Moon literally just switched into Aquarius minutes ago right here. So we are at our first full Moon in Aquarius that we spent so much time talking about.
CN: Yeah.
CB: Beautiful. All right. This was a lot of fun. Thank you both for doing this. Thanks Chani for joining us.
CN: Thanks so much for having me. I’ve been hounding you for years, Chris, to get on your show. [laughs] Finally, I made it.
CB: Yeah, yeah. Right. Now you’ve made it after a New York Times bestseller book or an app that hundreds of thousands of people are using. It was really doing the podcast that was the high point of everything. [laughs] Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks Austin. Thanks to our live audience. There’s been a lot of great comments and patrons have been posting stuff. We appreciate you and appreciate all the feedback. Chani, what do you have coming up? You’re working on your app and the chiron rollout. Is that already live in the CHANI app?
CN: I mean, gods willing as this comes out, it’s live. Oh, but there’s all these people listening right now. When does this get posted?
CB: So this is going to be released, there’s the live audience right now, and then it’ll be released for early access for a few days through a page on Patreon, and then the final version will come out in a few days. So probably like July 25th, 26th or so.
CN: Is that Monday?
CB: Yeah, that is Monday.
CN: Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up, but yes, in a couple of days it should be rolling out. But yeah, we’re just working on a lot of different upgrades and new things for the app. So in the next couple of months, we’ll have a lot of different functions and things to do and we’re working behind the scenes on a lot of new kind of more robust content, and yes, yeah, all of that.
CB: Nice. And people can find that in the iTunes or the Apple app store just by searching your name for the CHANI app and also, what’s the URL for your website?
CN: Same, C H A N I N I C H O L S.
CB: Perfect. All right. What do you have coming up, Austin? Do you have any classes or anything?
AC: Yeah, I’m finally going to launch my year one curriculum as a self-paced but with live session support thing, and that’s going to come out on the 21st of August.
CB: Nice. All right, and your website is austincoppock.com?
AC: Yep.
CB: Brilliant.
AC: It’s a little redundant, but the gloriously elected Jupiter series, the Jupiter in Pisces series, comes out on Monday. So what is that? That’s the 26th, so that’ll be good.
CN: We have to set our alarms.
AC: It is good. I have some here with me, but it’ll be good for the rest of you too. It’s beginning on Monday.
CN: Is there candles?
AC: Sorry, what?
CN: Is there candles?
AC: Yeah, there are tonic candles.
CN: Okay. That’s the thing I’m always trying to get. It’s like trying to get the new Fendi makeup or something.
AC: I really like the candles. Kate was not as excited about the candles. She was like, “Really? You like these?” I was like, “Yeah, it makes the room feel like the thing that it’s supposed to.”
CN: Yeah, and we were having such a hard time with something and we did the Mars candle and it moved everything. It was amazing.
AC: Awesome.
CN: Yeah.
CB: Here’s a picture of one of the candles off there for the Jupiter and Pisces series that’s launching Monday, probably the same day this episode drops. So people can check that out at sphereandsundry.com. As for me, I’m just going to start recording the audio version of my book, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, which is going to take–
CN: Oh my God, Chris, that’s amazing. That’ll take you seven years.
CB: Yeah. It’s going to take a while. Yeah, took 10 years to write it, we’ll see how long it takes to record. But people have been asking for a while, and I’m finally going to break down and do it because everyone’s been asking so politely and sometimes not very politely.
AC: I’m going to send you like a 50 lb bag of cough drops, like big dog food bag.
CB: Did you do an audio version of yours, Chani?
CN: Yeah. Oh, me? Yeah. I did. But it’s a very like choose your own adventure, so I don’t know the listening of it. But Austin, will you do 36 Faces? No?
CB: That would be nice.
AC: I got to get the rewrite done.
CN: I know you’ve got the workshop but…
AC: I mean, I guess, I don’t know. I think I would like somebody else to read it, somebody who’s like a vocal performer of some sort.
CN: I don’t know, I think it needs you.
CB: Maybe if it was like James Earl Jones or something. [laughs]
AC: I mean, yes.
CB: Okay. We’ll see if we can arrange that. In the meantime, thanks everyone for listening. Good luck next month in the astrology of August, and we’ll be back again next month to talk about the astrology of September in a few weeks. So that’s it for this episode of The Astrology Podcast. Thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you again next time.
CN: Bye.
CB: Special thanks to all the patrons that supported the production of this episode of the podcast through our page on patreon.com. In particular, thanks to all the patrons on our producer’s tier, including Nate Craddock, Thomas Miller, Catherine Conroy, Kristi Moe, Ariana Amuor, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Sumo Coppock, Issa Sabah, Jake Otero, Morgan Mackenzie, Kristin Otero and Sanjay Sreehari. For more information about how to become a patron and get access to bonus content such as early access to new episodes or private subscriber only podcast episodes, go to patreon.com/astrologypodcast. Special thanks also to our sponsors, including The Mountain Astrologer Magazine available at mountainastrologer.com. The Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological Almanacs available at honeycomb.co. Astro Gold astrology software for the Mac operating system which is available at astrogold.io. And you can use the promo code astropodcast 15 for a 15% discount. The Portland School of Astrology available at portlandastrology.org. Astro Gold astrology app for iPhone and Android which is also available at astrogold.io. And finally, the Solar Fire astrology software program for windows which you can from alabe.com, and you can use the promo code AP15 for a 15% discount.
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