The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 321, titled:
October Astrology Forecast 2021
With Chris Brennan, Kelly Surtees, and Austin Coppock
Episode originally released on September 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 Kate Hill, Sky, Emma Maeuser, and Rheanna Murray
Transcription released September 28, 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 I’m going to be talking with astrologers Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees about the astrological forecast for October of 2021. Ah, so hey guys! Welcome.
KELLY SURTEES: Hi!
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey!
CB: Hey! Alright, I’m going to give a little bit of an overview of the month ahead in the astrology of October just to give a snapshot of what we’re going to be talking about for the next couple of hours here at the beginning, then I’ll welcome you both to the show, and then we’ll get into a deep dive of the astrology of the next few weeks. Does that sound good to you?
KS: Sounds great!
AC: Indeed.
CB: Alright here we go. So here is the astrology calendar for October, where the very first thing that happens: we start off in the midst of a Mercury retrograde in the sign of Libra, which is active for the entire first three weeks of October. Then the first other major thing that happens is we have a new Moon in the sign of Libra on October sixth, and Pluto stations direct in the sign of Capricorn the same day. The very next day on October seventh Venus ingresses into the sign of Sagittarius, leaving the sign of Scorpio. Then two days later we have the Sun/Mercury conjunction right in the middle of the Mercury retrograde on October ninth. Saturn then stations direct the following day on October 10th in Aquarius, and then the following week Jupiter stations direct in Aquarius as well, the same day that Mercury stations direct in Libra on October eighteenth. Then we have our second lunation of the month on the twentieth of October, which is a full Moon in the sign of Aries. Then the Sun moves into Scorpio on the twenty third, and finally at the very end of the month on the thirtieth Mars departs from Libra and moves into the sign of Scorpio for the next couple of months. That’s basically the gist of the major astrological transits that we’re going to be talking about today in this episode as we look at the astrology of October. Alright, so, with that introduction out of the way, welcome to the show. Welcome Austin, Kelly, welcome back! You have just relocated from- you were living in Belgium in Europe for two years, and you just moved back to Toronto thereabouts, right?
KS: Yes. I just moved back to Canada, which has been lovely.
CB: Yeah. Well, welcome! I know people have missed you. We’ve been cycling through different guest speakers to fill in your spot while you were gone over the summer for the past few months, and it’s been fun working with some of those people, but it’s nice to have you back for what will be a guest spot this month, right?
KS: Yes! Yes. I’m glad you’ve had fun working with different speakers because this will be my final show. It has been amazing being a part of this team, and contributing to the community, but I am stepping back just to focus on some of my own projects, and go at a slightly slower pace, which is just something that I am ready for for myself. I want to thank the whole community here because this astrology podcast community is really amazing, so thank you all for your support over the years that we have been doing this show together. Especially Chris, I want to thank you for putting this together. For running everything, for organizing everything, and for the amazing offering that you share with our community because there are so many people who have found astrology, or have been able to further and commit to their astrology journey because of this podcast, so, y’know, hats off to you for this wonderful offering, and a huge shoutout and thank you to Austin, my teammate, in this fabulous wild adventure every month. It has been a really fantastic experience. I’m looking forward to hopefully doing a fabulous final show with you all, but I did want to say a huge thanks both to you Chris and Austin and to the whole community.
CB: Yeah, thank you! It’s been amazing working with you for the past five years. I mean a lot of people already know this story about how we put this together after meeting up at a northwest astrology conference, and having so much fun, and then wanting to keep working together, so we immediately went back and started recording podcasts together, and then Austin joined us the following month just by happenstance, but it turned out to be a really fun and beautiful collaboration over the past five or six years.
KS: Yes, it has been amazing!
AC: Yeah it’s been awesome. I mean the show wouldn’t be what it’s been without you. And personally it’s been, y’know, a great excuse to get to know each other better.
KS: Totally! Totally, because we-
AC: You are my prenatal lunation.
KS: Hahaha!
CB: Right.
KS: And we really didn’t know each other that well before we started doing the show…
AC: No, no.
KS: …so we’ve kind of got to know each other through this.
CB: Yeah, so this is going to give you time for one of the projects you need to work on, and we’re gonna give you a hard time about-
KS: I know.
CB: is your, your book, your long awaited book on secondary progressions, which you’re still working on, but-
KS: Yes.
CB: That’s going to be something you’re gonna focus on in terms of projects, right?
KS: A hundred percent yeah. I’ve got a fair bit of teaching between now and the end of the year with my students, and then I have cleared a lot of space in the schedule next year for the book because I’m actually teaching on progressions right now and I’m like- and the students are like what should I read? I’m like…it’s still in progress, but yes, it is, it is coming.The progressed Moon phases chapter is where I got a little bogged down because it’s a more meaty section, but yes that is definitely at the top of the list of projects to attend to more fully.
CB: Awesome. And then you’re gonna keep producing videos on youtube because you have your own youtube channel, which is at youtube.com/kellysastrology right?
KS: Yes, yes that is true. Yes, so I’ve got my own channel there, I’ve got a monthly astrology membership that I share videos with subscribers each month, so- oh yeah there’s my little youtube channel.
CB: Nice thumbnail game, I appreciate your thumbnail game.
AC: Hahaha
KS: Thank you! I-I totally learned from you Chris you’ve been a great teacher and mentor in this regard. Yeah that’s been fantastic, so yeah.
CB: Cool. Alright, well thanks for coming back to join us for this forecast to look at the astrology of October!
KS: I’m really excited! I’m glad to look at October with you guys, and not November, so hahaha!
CB: Right, you picked a good month to come back.
KS: Thank you for letting me do October!
CB: Okay, yeah this is the nice month- the calm before the storm, and there’s some nice planets stationing direct in like Aquarius, and at least once you get to the tail end of the Mercury retrograde later in the month some things almost seeming like there’s some resolution before Mars moves into Scorpio, and then things go a little bit awry.
KS: A little bit different.
CB: Yeah. Alright, uhm so, why don’t’ we start first- I wanted to just initially review some of the things that happened and how they turned out over the past months since our last forecast, which was with Rick Levine, and if there was any stories in the news that were sort of notable in terms of how the astrology turned out, uhm and things like that, and that’ll help set us up with some context as we then jump into the astrology of October. Did either of you have any major news stories, or things that were interesting in terms of the astrological alignments, and how they turned out?
AC: Well, uhm, just one thing for me…the Moons last conjunction with Jupiter when Mercury was in the shadow, but not dangerously close, uhm, I had the pleasure of speaking at the AstroMagia conference, which is an astrological magic conference, and I just really wanted to share how impressed I was with the way the conference was run, how smooth everything was, and the really consistently impressive quality of the presentations.
CB: Awesome. Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s got to be one of the first astrology magic conferences really, just further cementing how much that’s made a huge comeback in very recent years.
AC: Yeah, I didn’t, y’know, honestly I just didn’t have any expectations as to how smoothly, poorly, great, terrible, whatever it would be, and I was, I just came away really impressed, so I just wanted to give a little credit where it’s due.
CB: Nice.
KS: Yeah. It had an amazing lineup of presenters and topics, so that’s good to hear that it was as good as it looked from the outside.
AC: Yeah, and y’know, we know how chaotic online conferences can get. I, y’know, I didn’t and couldn’t attend every talk, but every one that I did attend was just super smooth. It was just, y’know, both content and form were very on point.
CB: Nice. That’s cool. Let’s see…other things in the podcast last month: Rick Levine drove through Denver and we recorded an episode in the planet series on Uranus together, and fittingly in the first fifty seconds of recording the episode there was a sudden and unexpected power outage, like literally after I said the word Uranus, and then the power went out as we were sitting there, literally a minute into the episode, so there it is.
KS: Oh my goodness!
CB: Yeah, so, we did what any good astrologer does, and you can hear I put an outtake because one of the cameras kept running because it switched to battery power, and you can hear Rick ask me, like what any astrologer would in that circumstance, which is, what time is it? And, what’s the chart look like right now? And I cast the chart and Saturn was literally right on the ascendant the moment the power cut out not just for my entire building, but for a mile radius around in this part of Denver.
AC: Right, so Uranus would’ve then been down by the IC in the fourth.
CB: Yeah, so it was sort of like activating that square that’s happening all year between Saturn and Uranus to some extent.
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: Yeah, so what’s additionally funny is then it took about an hour until the power came back on, and about an hour later the ascendant reached Jupiter, and that’s when the power came back on, which is funny as well.
KS: Hahaha
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, so…
KS: That’s fantastic!
CB: Fun little exercises in electional astrology, and things like that. I don’t know if you’ve had experiences like that of like having an event happen, and then looking at the chart, and the chart of the moment, or especially a planet exactly on the angle just perfectly describing what was happening in that moment, but that was a really stark example that I’m glad I got on film.
KS: That’s brilliant. It does- I do know of it happening quite a lot with the planet Uranus, with astrologers and Uranus, whether somebody is doing a talk and they just get to point of it where they want to mention Uranus briefly and something- some tech glitch happens. It’s quite magical to see.
AC: Well, yeah, and that’s the- I mean this is literally just like the accidental version of one of the principles of astrological magic. Uranus is out there doing Uranus things anyway, and then if you call that when it’s ready to, ready to shake things up, you can call that to your location.
KS: Mmm.
AC: Y’know, uhm, accidentally or on purpose.
KS: Or on purpose, yes.
AC: I’m just thinking about this because that was, that was the talk that I gave, it was y’know like an hour and a half of the structure of calling, and different historical instances of calling, and in different ways to approach calling planets.
CB: Yeah. I know a good example of sometimes when you invoke the planets you invoke the planets, and sometimes that energy, like, shows up in your life in different ways.
KS: In ways that you might not expect.
AC: Yeah, there’s uh, one thing that’s happened to me because of the less than ideal configuration of my natal Sun is sometimes when I’ve talked about that my video will go out in classes, or like I’ll lose my connection, uhm y’know, with the Sun there are problems with when the Sun is afflicted there are problems being seen, or recognized. I think the worst version of that was when I was doing an astrology and tarot class some years ago, and I- the whole class was on the Sun card hahaha, and so uhm, y’know, it was just epic dropouts and internet failures.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Alright so that was one of the things that happened last month, and people can look-I put the outtake, it’s like a five minute outtake on youtube, so you can just search for Uranus episode snafu on our youtube channel to find that. Other than that, other things in the news that I thought were interesting since the last forecast, one of them was the whole thing that happened with AOC, and the whole thing with her dress when she went to the Met Gala, was weird because we literally I- I had mentioned AOC because we were talking about the Libra stellium last month, and how Mars was going to be there, so in the discussion with Rick and Austin on the last forecast for September, I did a quick search through my SolarFire database to see who had a stellium like that in Libra with Mercury and Mars and the Sun, and her chart came up, AOC’s chart, so I like talked about and mentioned how it’s in her eleventh house, and how she has these funny- in addition to a Mercury/Mars conjunction by sign, she has these really witty burns and statements on like twitter pretty regularly, so it was interesting she came up in the news when that stellium was kind of repeated in the sky, and it was for wearing this dress that said in red letters on the back, ‘tax the rich.’ Which was a really beautiful manifestation of Mars in Libra I felt like.
AC: Well, and you brought up AOC after I was talking about Mars in Libra literally being like Mars in an art gallery over and over again.
CB: Right. Yeah that’s perfect. Like literally wearing a dress, uhm, so here’s a screenshot from USA Today with the picture, and I don’t think you can get a better demonstration of Mars in Libra than wearing a dress that says y’know, ‘tax the rich.’ That’s pretty good. Pretty obvious, straightforward manifestation.
AC: Yeah, that was a good one. That ended up lining up really well.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So it’s like saying something kind of spicy through art or through fashion.
KS: Right, and it was at a fashion event that is in a gallery. Like so, Austin if you were saying ‘Mars at the art gallery,’ that’s very literal. It’s like the protester coming into the art thing.
CB: Yeah, exactly.
AC: Thank you planets for being so literal.
CB: Right, uhm…
KS: It’s funny- obviously I wasn’t here last month so I didn’t know you guys talked about AOC, but when I was thinking about the astrology for October with all the Libra stuff, and then also Venus into Sag, which is also what AOC has, I did think about her chart as just, oh! She has a lot in her chart of what we’re going to see throughout the month of October.
CB: Right.
AC: Hmm.
CB: Yeah, so that’ll be good to continue to pay attention to some of the manifestations of that.
AC: Oh, I have something, actually. Speaking of- we were talking about Mars in Libra, talking about Mars in detriment or exile, or in a difficult place, right? And also combust the Sun. And so, sometimes what you see with that is, y’know, ‘Mars-ing’ in a very non-Mars location, but sometimes you just see like, a failure to Mars, and there was a much hyped celebrity boxing event where there was a retired MMA fighter and a retired boxer. It was Vander Holyfield wasn’t it? Uhm, but, everyone was like oh this’ll be interesting, but Holyfield was just obviously kind of old and brain damaged, and it was really sad. We’re talking about combustion as being burnt out.
KS: Ahh.
AC: So they stopped it within a round, but everyone was like oh that shouldn’t have even been licensed. That was, it was y’know, sometimes it’s fun to watch people beat each other up, but like, you don’t want to see people who are obviously not supposed to be there, who’ve obviously taken too many shots already, and I was like, oh yeah there’s Mars combust right at the very end of its cycle, like, it needs to no longer appear visibly, right? Which is what a planet combust does. It doesn’t appear visibly. Yeah, go quietly into the night, y’know, have a good rest of your life.
CB: Yeah that’s a pretty, pretty literal example. Uhm, let’s see, other news stories- there’s one other news story that’s a little more depressing, but there was a- I don’t know if you guys saw on the news it was like uhm, y’know, in late August when there was the whole debacle with the US pulling out of Afghanistan, there was one like, bombing attack at the airport that killed two hundred people, and then the US military was super freaking out and on edge as they continued to evacuate, and there was a drone strike on August twenty ninth, which is very close to the Mars/Neptune opposition, and at first in the news the US was saying through their media outlets that this was a righteous strike, quote unquote, but then in the weeks that followed the news that ended up coming out was that they actually accidentally bombed and killed at least ten civilians, including several children, so it turned out to be this sort of debacle of the US military basically really messing up, and uhm, killing at least ten Afghans who were innocent, and one of which was an aid worker or something like that.
KS: Mmm.
CB: So that was a really uhm, tragic sort of example of a Mars/Neptune opposition. Here’s the chart for August twenty ninth when that was getting really close with Mars at nineteen Virgo coming up to Neptune at twenty two Pisces. So, uhm, yeah, in terms of Mars opposing Neptune and sometimes, uhm, Austin I know you’re making- you made a statement about, y’know, with Mars needing to take decisive action, but know what it’s doing, and with Neptune there it’s not always-it doesn’t work out so well.
AC: Right, like the, y’know, there are things we like about Neptune like being very imaginative. When you are, y’know, when you have lethal weapons at your disposal, you don’t want to be imaginative about how those are released, right?
KS: No, hahaha.
AC: Right? You actually want to be very factual.
KS: Very specific and detail oriented.
AC: Right, and how much more important is that for Mars in Virgo, right? Where it’s like the whole strength is the accuracy.
CB: Right, and the sort of precision, but in this instance one of the issues with Neptune is when you’re under the fog of some sort of illusion or deception you don’t usually know it. It’s usually only after the smoke clears that you realize that you were not clear about something, or that you made a mistake, and I guess that’s what happened here evidently.
AC: Or you’re just sloppy.
CB: Yeah, right.
AC: You didn’t check your Ps and Qs.
CB: Yeah, so uhm, that’s a really, yeah, it’s a good example but obviously a really sad one, but hopefully in terms of taking something for that in the future in terms of when you’re taking action, being especially careful if you’re under Neptune transits. Alright, so, I think those are all the news stories that I have to review from last month of things that majorly stuck out, so why don’t we jump into and start talking about the astrology of October.
AC: Alright.
KS: Sure!
CB: Alright, so, uhm, I’ve been experimenting with a new graphic artist named Zartana who has been designing us some weekly astrology graphics that are really great in order to really zoom in on and focus on the week by going through it each month, and breaking it up into four quarters, and looking at the astrology of each week. So this is the graphic that she designed for us for the first week of October, for October third through the ninth, which is essentially the opening, and one of the first aspects that we have is that the retrograde Mercury in Libra forms a trine with Jupiter, which is the second trine that it will make, and I guess that brings us to the opening backdrop going into October that we need to talk about, which is that Mercury stationed retrograde in Libra at the very end of September on the twenty seventh, so it’s going to be retrograde for the first three weeks of the month basically, and that’s the backdrop that we go into October with, right?
AC: Yeah. Yeah absolutely. I mean it’s, y’know, again more than the first half of the month, and part of it is that there’s just a lot in Libra, right? We have Mercury, Mars, and Sun in Libra for about that first two thirds of the month, and that Mercury retrograde is interesting to me, because it’s doing a couple of different things and configured pretty tightly to a couple different planets, and as we talked with Rick a little bit last month, it’s an interesting and mixed bag because the- I suppose the benefit of Mercury having slowed down in late Libra as it is doing right now, and then stationing as it will in a few days, is that it is preserving and extending that trine with Jupiter, right? There are three exact trines but if we’re looking at the amount of time that Mercury is in orb, right, within three degrees of Jupiter, we’ve got weeks and weeks of Mercury within, or at least two weeks of Mercury within two or three degrees of Jupiter, right? And that’s a great thing, but it’s also extended Mercury’s square with Pluto, which is almost exactly uhm, as exact, or is exact as many times, and then at the end of the Mercury retrograde we’ve got some Mercury-Mars action, and then we’re going to get extended Mercury/Mars, right, so when we talk about Mercury as a messenger, and being dependent to a certain degree on what other planets are around for messages to deliver we have like no deficit of messages to deliver with this cycle with mercury.
CB: Yeah, so let’s talk about that because it brings up an issue I’m struggling with because I’m almost finished with this planet series, where I just did Uranus, and then I’m going to record the Saturn episode with Diana Rose Harper at the beginning of October, and I already recorded Neptune with Lauren Albandion, so the last planet I actually have to do is Pluto, but uhm, so I wanted to ask both of you what you think about Pluto, and what Pluto signifies, because one of the issues I have is that it’s uhm…y’know Pluto in some traditions has become a big deal, and there’s some schools that like pattern their entire approach around Pluto, and the mythology has become much more of a cornerstone of astrology in the past few decades somewhat suddenly, but that has left me a little bit uneasy, or a little ambiguous about really getting to the heart of what Pluto is, and what it signifies, which is really important in instances like this where we have an inner planet that’s forming an elongated aspect, a hard aspect, a square with Pluto, uhm, so what do you both think about what Pluto signifies, and its core significations that come to mind right away, and what does it mean in particular when Mercury is square Pluto?
KS: Uhm, so many things pop into my brain. I mean, some of the basic core significations for Pluto- I mean of course we have the power and the intensity, that desire for control, the quality of unearthing, uhm, and I think particularly with Mercury and Pluto together there is an investigative kind of digging quality. For me when I had my own personal transiting Pluto square Mercury aspect I actually went and studied therapy, so that’s when I did my counseling and therapy training. Part of that is to have therapeutic work yourself, but it was also about digging in and understanding some of the psychology and human behavior, and where the origins of our motivation and our choices come from, the unconscious origins if you like, and that always seemed very apt for me that there was this digging into things that might be hidden or otherwise not known to the conscious mind, so there’s those sides of it. And then, y’know, within charts with clients with Pluto, we see a lot of control dynamics, y’know, not having power, developing agency, and I think there are interesting metaphors to work with. Mercury/Pluto aspects- one phrase that I come to a lot with those is this idea of truth serum, or truth telling, y’know, how do we get to the heart of something, or the core of something, and can Mercury help give voice to something that is very precious, or very private, or hidden, sometimes sacred because sometimes we don’t know what’s in there and it can be gunky, but it can also be gold, y’know, when we go digging, so there’s some of the themes and thread that come to mind for me. What about you guys?
AC: Well let’s see…I mean, I suppose first, yeah I agree with all of that. I see the, in particular the, uhm…Pluto seems to bring out issues of visibility and invisibility, where often times something that was not visible suddenly becomes visible, as in like the disclosure or discovery of a secret, but then you also have the like, uhm, the hiding things, the taking something that’s visible and hiding it, right? So that it can’t be seen. In general- I don’t know, I see Pluto very much as having a function that overlaps with that of the nodes, uh the way they are, particularly described in Vedic astrology, but also some of the head and tail of the dragon stuff. Like with Rahu you have this exaggeration, and overdoing it, and Pluto will totally do that, but then you also have with Ketu, you have this like uhm, making something become transparent or ghostly or invisible or a sudden disappearance, y’know, both nodes as we see through eclipses when they’re activated create sudden appearances from nowhere, and then sudden disappearances. And Pluto, I guess when I think of Pluto I think of like a…like a hell mouth or a gate between the visible and the invisible, like something might pop out of nowhere, or something that is supposed to be there might just disappear all of a sudden, and with Mercury, y’know, Mercury is obviously interested- well it’s, if we’re gonna play mythology a little bit, uhm, y’know Mercury is capable of traversing all three worlds, and does so regularly, right? And Mercury also appears and disappears in the sky, right? And so, Mercury, or in astrology is like the, the intellect is capable of going to places that for example, the heart would die from, right? We can think about things that would be horrible to experience, but y’know the mind is swifter and lighter, right? And so, we can go to these places and think about possibilities with Mercury’s greater range. But yeah, secrets, what’s not secret, what’s hidden, uncovering the hidden, y’know, which can be excessive and obsessive. I always think of- for Mercury in general, but for underworld explorations it’s always cave networks, right, which they’re not designed like a building, right? They’re giant cave systems where you could wander for miles in one direction in the dark, or only with a flashlight, only to find out that it’s uhm, y’know, that it’s a dead end, or you might get stuck trying to get through somewhere. It’s easy to get lost and stuck in the literal underworld of the earth, like the cave networks.
KS: Just as you’re saying that Austin, when you said caves, it brought me back to the most recent times that I was walking in caves- and I’m going to sound a little bit like, oh I’ve just been traveling, and I know other people haven’t been able to do this, but we were very lucky to be able to take a quick trip to the champagne region back in June before we came back to Canada. Europe was a bit more open then. I didn’t know this, but, very old traditional champagne houses store their hundreds of thousands of bottles of champagne in tunnels underground, and we went to this one particular champagne house that was storing their bottles of champagne in tunnels that go back to the Roman period, so they’re more than fifteen hundred years old.
KS: These tunnels weren’t originally built to hold champagne in them. They would’ve been under abbeys or what have you, but that’s what they’ve become to do. You would walk down and you could easily get lost down there. You walk past tunnels and they would have- you know, like a six figure number and the tour guide would explain ‘Well that’s how many bottles of champagne are down that particular tunnel, so don’t go too far cause you might never come back.’ But the idea of being in these tunnels; it’s dark, sometimes there’s a bit of light from above, sometimes there’s not, and you might find your treasure, or you might find that all the champagne bottles in that particular tunnel have exploded and there’s nothing there. I think it’s interesting to use imagery about tunnels, because to many of us living in modern 21st century life, we don’t spend a lot of time underground. Many of us, we’re not digging tunnels, we’re not storing our food underground, that type of thing; but tunnels have played a really interesting role I think… like a larger role for historical groups of people.
AC: Yeah, and they have the perfect haunted quality that you kind want with Pluto, that feels right. If you think about- a lot of cities have like… an abandoned underworld, or subway tunnels that aren’t in use anymore. Right? It’s like ‘what’s down there?’
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Also, if we’re talking about history and tunnels, or caverns and tunnels; these were often used as places of initiation, right? In very different parts of the world, in South, and Central America, and then some of the Greek-ish world mystery cults. That’s actually one of the way’s that I’ve taught Pluto, is that it’s initiatory, but that they feed you a potion that’s full of a bunch of drugs, that are gonna give you a death experience; and they blindfold you and drop you in a cave, right? Which you know, if you didn’t ask for that- that’s an abduction experience. That’s trauma. If it’s on purpose, then it’s initiatory. There’s still a break in reality, or break in normalcy quality. We’re looking at an experience that’s positive, or intentional. It’s still like a rift in the fabric of the normal, real person’s experience.
CB: I like the tunnel analogy also. Because tunnels are a place where people can sometimes put things that they want to hide, and that they don’t want to be found, but sometimes tunnels can get unearthed; either very soon after something’s hidden, or sometimes long after it’s hidden. There’s still this quality of a disclosure, because you have both the person who’s trying to hide something, but then you also have the other end of that; which is the person who’s trying to find something. Especially if they have a sort of intuitive hint that there’s something there, that they’ve deduced that there’s something to find. So, this investigative quality that comes with Pluto, maybe might be something that’s heightened when it comes to a square with Mercury at the same time.
And I like a lot of the other keywords you were using Kelly. Like; notions of obsessiveness, compulsiveness, intensity, going to extremes, taking something small and making it really big, but at the same time having that happen while Mercury is trining Jupiter brings in this other element of the search for truth, and some of the growth and expansion themes. To blow something up, and make it even bigger of a story than it would be otherwise, that also has that sort of investigative kind of component. So Maybe part of it is getting to the truth of something that somebody doesn’t want to divulge; or that doesn’t want to be made public, but it is despite that.
AC: Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting that Jupiter- even though having very contrary qualities in a lot of ways, still contributes to that quest for the truth, right? Jupiter is usually not framing it, in terms of an underworld journey, but it’s still a quest for the truth. It just occurred to me, you can frame some of the obsession that you get with Pluto in that caverns analogy, like if you go deep enough in you don’t even remember how to get out; which is like what an obsession feels like. You’re like ‘I don’t know I’m just in this, I don’t remember the way out.’
KS: ‘I’m just here now!’ And the timeline is interesting Chris, I mean I love how you connected the Mercury-Pluto and the Mercury-Jupiter, because Mercury’s doing both on very similar timelines; which really I think highlights the first week of November as an interesting point in time. I know that’s just a little outside the scope of what we’re talking about today, but in that first week of November the third, and final Mercury-Jupiter aspect happens, and the third and final Mercury-Pluto aspect will happen.
CB: Okay. So this is like a sequence of stuff that’s playing out for several weeks.
KS: Yeah, kind of. From about the last ten days of September, off and on through October, and then early November are the final hits.
CB: One of our patrons that’s joining us for the live chat, Diane Dobry mentioned that- she said this discussion reminds me of the Gabby Petito case that’s going on right now.
AC: Oh! Yeah, that’s a great call.
CB: Yeah, which is just- you know for those who haven’t seen it, cause it has been plastered over the news. It’s just this really sad case of a young woman in her early 20s that was murdered and now her fiance has disappeared, and is like the prime suspect in the case, but it was this whole mystery for most of the past few weeks; where they went driving on a cross-country tip together, then he went back home, and took her van, and then didn’t report her missing. Eventually I think it was her family that reported her missing, and he wasn’t involved in helping, or telling anyone that she was gone; then later she ended up being found, murdered.
AC: Yeah, now he’s somewhere right? You know the underworld is sometimes literally the underworld, but the underworld begins wherever the known ends, you know? The underworld is the unknown. That’s one of the sort of mythological associations with Pluto that I like; that is confirmed by the actual position of the body. It’s right around the edge of the planetary world, right? The solar system has a certain order out to Neptune. Then the other layers are very different, and Pluto is the closest of those strange outer bodies; which have a different material composition, which have different types of orbits etcetera, etcetera. So that like- prowling the boundary of the known, and the unknown; and that Pluto is also the only one of those bodies that cuts inside of Neptune’s orbit ever so briefly. So you know, bringing that cold well- cave temperature. [laughs] Solar system cave temperature, unknown outer realm into the planetary world where they’re, you know, these bright and shining spheres.
CB: Yeah, well it’s been interesting in terms of you know- to have the media focused on, and to have a murder case being like front page news, and such a terrible thing, you know that happened, and so many people talking about it… But there’s interestingly been discussions about how this should be talked about in the media, and how it should even be talked about amongst astrologers; in the age where you have so many different podcasts that are on true crime stories, and things like that. So, to some extent things like that have been normalized, but then sometimes people going too far, and there being a question like ‘what is the line of good taste in terms of talking about something?’ Even if it’s in the news, or even doing astrology for something. It just makes me think again of that Mercury-Pluto square, but also the trine with Jupiter in these issues of the media, news, and discussion. What is up for discussion, versus what is, you know, very sensitive and other things like that. So maybe that’ll be some of the themes that continue to develop, and evolve over the next few weeks; as this mercury retrograde heightens, and sort of extends or draws out a period of discussion, and draws out some topics that might otherwise have not been normally discussed.
AC: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
CB: Yeah, and I was thinking about Mercury retrograde- one of the things I think I’ve said before in the forecasts- but just sometimes with Mercury retrograde, you know, one of the classic manifestations is having to do something over again. So doing something, but then something going awry, or something going wrong. Then you have to start from square one, and do it all over again. But the second time you do it, or the third time in some instances; you usually do it a lot better, because you’ve learned from your mistake. That might be a good thing for people to keep in mind going forward, if they experience some of those classic Mercury retrograde things. Just going into it with a sort of openness to failing, and learning from your failures because sometimes that’s the only way that you can improve.
AC: Yeah. I would also say that sometimes, going into a Mercury retrograde thing being like ‘Hey we’re just going to try it this way. We’re not committed to doing it this way, we’re probably gonna find bugs.’ It’s like doing a beta test for a software, or game. You’re like ‘Yeah, it’s definitely not ready, but it’s not gonna get any more ready by avoiding it. We need to just run it, and be on the lookout for problems’ and have that literally be a fact finding, or data finding, fault fixing sort of mission.
CB: Right. So, yes, Mercury retrograde; and that’s part of the backdrop that’s going to be a whole evolving story over the course of the month that we’ll come back to, but atleast at the very start of the month we start with Mercury forming that exact trine with Jupiter, and coming off of the second square with Pluto, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, meanwhile the Sun and Mars.
CB: Sun and Mars, and our first lunation of the month-
KS: Lunation, yeah!
CB: Which is-
AC: -Tied together nicely.
KS: Yeah that’s a really interesting feature this month, isn’t it? That Sun, Mars, plus the Mercury-retro combo.
AC: Yeah. Well, we have the Sun-Mars conjunction. You know, Mars at the heart of the Sun, which is a once every two year thing; that’s like one day every two years, and it overlaps almost perfectly with the new Moon in Libra.
KS: Yeah, it’s not your typical Libra new Moon.
CB: So, this is a new Moon at 13° of Libra, and right when the Moon catches up to the Sun at 13° the Sun is also conjoining Mars, which is also at 13 Libra.
AC: Yeah, there’s about a half of a degree between them, with the Sun trying to cover that; and so that certainly emphasizes- [laughs] right? That kind of medium cycle- once every two year- Mars thing.
CB: Yeah, and also it means that as soon as the Moon conjoins the Sun and begins separating, it immediately moves into Mars. So that’s it’s next aspect, just immediately after the new Moon.
AC: Yeah, yeah.
KS: Yeah, there’s a sharp quality to that; or a prickly something. I was thinking about the idea of Mars being combust, which it is at the new Moon, I think. We’re just being so in the darkness there, so close to the Sun. The idea of some irritation- or annoyance, or frustration that kind of bursts out, whether it comes out from inside you, or it comes out from inside someone else, and you’re kind of bearing the brunt of it. It adds a spicy quality to the new Moon, which is not what we always get with the Libra new Moon.
AC: Well, and we’ve also got to kind of double down on the herbs and spices at play. [laughs]
KS: [laughs] All the chili!
AC: Yeah! That Libra new Moon. Maybe some black peppers as well. That Libra new Moon will always be ruled by Venus, and Venus is in Mars’ sign, right? So we get a little doubling of that.
CB: Something I’ve been thinking about a lot with Mars is just the idea of it speeding things up, and things moving much faster. Mars, as opposed to Saturn which slows things down; and Mars having that heating quality, and that’s why we’re talking about the spiciness. Also, it’s just like making things move rapidly, and sometimes the pace of things really picks up when Mars is prominent in some ways.
AC: So do you think it’ll do that combust? Cause I kinda think that there’ll be a few little coals or embers, or little hot nuggets that we have during that new Moon; but it’ll be at the end of the month in November when Mars reemerges into visibility, into a sign where it’s really strong. We’ll be able to trace the blazes back to the embers, because technically Mars is super weak here, right? In it’s exile, and completely overcome by the Sun. There’s a seed there, but my guess is it’s something like- I think both of you used the term itchy, or irritating? There’s like some little itch that may turn out three weeks later to be you know, systemic poison ivy.
KS: Well, I was just thinking; chicken pox, you know? You first get that little scratch, and you just think ‘Is it a bug bite?’ Then two weeks later you’re covered in chicken pox.
CB: Yeah, inflammation is a really good Mars signification, and manifestation; but I think it’s just that some of this is gonna happen behind the scenes, and is going to get started- like you said with just a small ember, but it’s still lighting or starting something; even if its not visible, and fully in view at that time. Especially because that Mercury-Mars conjunction is just going to get so close immediately after the new Moon there.
AC: Yeah. Well, right. As Mercury walks backwards it’s going to encounter Mars immediately after encountering the Sun, which is interesting, right? We have Sun-Moon-Mars, and then we have Sun-Mercury-Mars extremely close; basically in the same week. Mercury is going to return to visibility much sooner than Mars. I imagine a torch lit by Mars in secret, but that torch lit by Mars will be carried by Mercury into visibility within a week; whereas it’ll take Mars several more weeks to really display the power, the fury.
CB: Right. So there’s a divisive quality to Mars, but it’s being presented in a Libra context; which is usually a little bit more pleasant, so you get the putting of a controversial statement… or slogan on a dress. What are some other analogies of that? LIke putting a controversial statement, or trying to present something divisive in an aesthetically appealing sort of manner, in some sense. Can you think of other good examples of that?
KS: I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is Banksy; which is another artist who presents things through art that are supposed to be thought provoking.
CB: Yeah. He’s a graffiti artist, and he puts graffiti in different places, sometimes in city settings that are speaking something. It’s sort of conveying a message or a point, and sometimes it’s divisive, or a sort of critique of something.
AC: Yeah, and there’s a whole art of- I suppose it’s comedy, or a piece of comedy that’s being insulting, but in a way that’s funny enough that it’s fine.
KS: Hmmm.
CB: Right.
AC: There’s a segment in every season of RuPaul’s Drag Race where they line up, and read each other. It’s all insult jokes, but you see the people who fail- or the people who just insult the other people like ‘Yeah, but you’re ugly.’ It’s like ‘That’s not funny, it’s just kind of mean.’ But somebody else can imply that someone else is horrendously ugly, right? If you do it in a funny way it’s great, everybody loves it. This is when they go to the library.
CB: Yeah, that’s like comedy battles, where the two comics are-
AC: Yeah, roast battles!
CB: Yeah, roast battles where they’re insulting each other; but if you do an insult with a certain amount of artistic flair, or cleverness, it hits differently than just insulting somebody without any sort of artistic flair.
AC: Yeah, yeah. Whenever the rest of the room will be like ‘Oh that was great, you’re funny.’ Whereas if you’re just mean it creates a dent in the energy, and it’s just kind of awkward. Everybody takes a half step away from you.
CB: Yeah. So cleverness, or having some sort of art to it- you can get away with saying things that can sometimes be very harsh, if you put them in a certain way that you might not be able to get away with otherwise. Social decorum, maybe that’s something that Mars in Libra is more careful about, or is more accustomed to dealing with, is social decorum.
KS: I mean I’m also thinking, as you’re both talking, that’s one of the stumbling blocks for Mars while it’s in Libra; is trying to kind of follow the rules of etiquette, or engage in social engagement and still be effective. I think the relationship we’re all exploring at the moment, while Mars is in Libra is ‘How can I not lose too much of my effectiveness, and still sort of toe that line with the social etiquette, and decorum.’ Sometimes we go too far to the peacekeeping, or not wanting to rock the boat; that we actually lose the effectiveness altogether. That’s something to keep in mind.
AC: Right. Well, in a relational context you may need to actually deliver a criticism, or a point of conflict; and if you don’t do it directly enough, then it just becomes kind of passive aggressive sniping, but without actually engaging the issue.
KS: Yes.
AC: I would also add: I find that the transiting position of Mars matters a lot for my motivation to workout, and do high intensity physical things. I often feel my motivation wane when it’s in Libra, or Taurus, these venusian ones. Literally the other day- I’ve been very, very good the last two months about working out. I went to go do my scheduled heavy bag time, and I felt the venusian Mars wash over, and I was like: ‘Yeah, but I could just not do that. Wouldn’t it feel awesome to just not do that?’ [laughs]
KS: [laughs] ‘To not do that.’ Yeah.
AC: And so I actually took some of my own advice from the last episode, where as a sort of way of thinking about Mars in Libra; I’d suggested capoeira, so I’ve been doing capoeira tutorials. You know Mars in Pisces- I grew up doing a kicking art, so it’s actually really fun to learn… what are the same kicks; but not the same kicks. It’s like ‘Oh that’s like this taekwondo thing, but I’m planting a hand on the ground, and the transitions are different.’ So like adding the fun, and novelty, and literally a more venusian form has actually made me excited to go do my workouts.
KS: That’s so good. I’m not kicking anything, [laughs] but I am looking forward to it. Now that I’m home and I’m a little bit settled, I keep saying to girlfriends ‘Should we go to a yoga class together? Or can we make time to do pilates together?’ It seems like we want to go and do something together. Not too stressful, not too sweaty; but we want to go together, so that’s a little bit of that Mars in Libra coming through.
AC: That’s totally right. That’s like the buddy system for-
KS: Yes! For air signs.
AC: It’s more fun, you have somebody else to hold you accountable, right? That’s that sort of shadow of Saturn in Libra, where it’s exalted. That venusian stuff can help you keep your structure.
KS: Keep your commitment, yeah.
AC: Yeah.
CB: JG, in the chat mentioned the southern phrase “Well bless your heart.” Which is great, that’s actually-
KS: That went through my mind when you were talking earlier. I’m like: ‘Oh it’s like a “bless them” that they say in the south.’
CB: But it’s the opposite. It’s something that sounds on the surface like its a positive thing, but really-
KS: Oh no, but it’s a dig.
CB: Yeah, they’re like ‘You’re an idiot.’ Cause they’re saying ‘Well bless your heart, that you don’t know any better’ or what have you. It’s almost the most offensive thing you can say, because you’re actually saying the opposite of what you mean; which is interesting because that’s Mars in it’s opposite sign.
KS: Yes, Yeah.
CB: So Mars acting oppositely, or atleast having the appearance of acting oppositely; literally like wearing a dress, but it’s still Mars that’s under that dress.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
KS: …Oh my God, I’m like ‘Where are we?’ Do we talk about the Mercury bit with Mars yet, or what do we need to back track to?
AC: I think one more thing about Mars; this is a once every two year conjunction-
KS: Sun-Mars, okay, yep.
AC: It’s sort of the Mars equivalent of a new Moon, you know, you don’t see Mars in the sky; you won’t be seeing Mars for a while. There’s a darkness- how do I put this? It’s the darkness of being in soil. It’s a seed point. It should say something about the nature, or source, or origin point of conflicts through the next couple years. This isn’t just Mars’ normal transit through Libra; there’s a planting. There’s a medium-term sort of planting that’s going on here.
CB: Yeah, and the same day- we should mention; of that new Moon in Libra, Pluto also stations direct in Capricorn. So there’s a bit of an intensification of Pluto’s significations, carrying over some of the energy that we’re talking about with the Mercury retrograde squaring Pluto when it stations. So some of that obsessive quality, and that intensity, and taking really small things and then blowing them up out of all proportion as a major theme.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Alright, so let’s see. The next day, literally the day after that new Moon in Libra, which is Venus’ sign. Venus is still in Scorpio then, but it departs, and it’s finished it’s almost month-long transit through Scorpio. Venus moves into the sign of Sagittarius, which is a little bit of a breath of fresh air before we get into some of the more serious Scorpio transits at the very end of October. Venus in Sagittarius is a bit lighter of a sign I feel like, compared to Venus in Scorpio.
KS: I concur! It is. [laughs] I would say it’s MUCH lighter of a sign for Venus, and that changes a lot of things this month, because we have so many planets in the sign of Libra. So we’ve got the Mercury retrograde, the Sun, the Mars. You could think about there being distinct tones to the Mars in Libra, or to the Mercury retrograde in Libra depending on where Venus is. Having Venus come out of Scorpio, where she’s in detriment; or in exile, and come into Sag, where she leaves whatever limitation or distress that might be indicated. It’s not going to fix everything, but it adds maybe a lighter quality, or a little bit of a hopeful quality.
AC: I would say, yeah. In addition to that; enthusiasm.
KS: Yes!
AC: Right? Venus in Sag is very good for enthusiasm.
KS: Yes. Good point.
AC: And enthusiasm both in a passion way, but also in a purposeful and meaningful way, because it’s Jupiter ruled. It’s like ‘This is worth doing. It’s fun, and it’s worth doing.’ Like both kinds of styles of benefic motivation.
KS: And it does indicate some sort of activity, or movement. If we think about a planet in Scorpio; in a fixed water sign, both the element and the modality there are more unchanging, if you like. Whereas the fire, and the mutable- things are going now; they might not be going anywhere particular, but there is a sense that we’re not spinning our wheels, bogged down in mud anymore.
AC: Yeah, and I would just add that all these qualities might take a few days to really kick in, because Venus is right there on the dragon’s tail for the first couple days. This brings up some of the ongoing eclipse cycle questions, and ties Venus, and motivation, and relationship into them briefly. Venus clears the South Node pretty quick, but that first couple days might not be the sort of happy, horsey energy that you get from Venus in Sag overall.
CB: Look, the Moon actually conjoins Venus at two Sag; like exactly when Venus itself is conjoining the South Node, at two degrees of Sagittarius. I had a transit of this at one point- well, I could actually mention it now. Earlier this year, Kelly, when you were talking about taking your break over the summer; transiting South Node was exactly conjoining my Venus in Sagittarius, in the 11th house. Then there was this stepping back- or a decrease is how I interpreted it- of a female friend in my life at that point, which I thought was a really interesting manifestation of that transit, and gave me a deeper understanding of what the South Node can do by transit.
KS: Yeah. It’s a pretty potent little critter, isn’t it? [laughs]
CB: Yeah. The South Node. Well, it just has so much mythology built up around it, but sometimes it can do very specific things, and just that notion of decrease. I remember another friend, a few years ago, who was in an astrological organization. They had a South Node transit, over an 11th house planet that was very important in their chart, and they stepped back from some organization that they had commitments to at the time, from leading that organization. So again, just the notion of stepping back, or a decrease of commitment in that area.
AC: Yeah, I would add to decrease. A lot of times, when I see it it’s slightly closer to disappearance. It’s not like it was a five, and now it’s a three; or was it forty-seven, and now it’s at thirty-two. It’s like it was there, or they were there, and now they’re not. Or they were doing this, and now they’re not. It tends to be less- what’s the word? well forty percent less, it’s just like ‘Nope, not doing that’ or-
KS: It’s either all, or nothing. It’s off, or on kind of thing.
AC: Yeah, and that might come back; that planet might pop back after what Ketu’s done with it, but it’s much more- I just get that disappearance. I always imagine with South Node eclipses; that ring of fire, or the redness of the Moon creating a pretty little gateway, and things just disappear through that gateway, temporarily.
KS: Yeah, and that is really interesting: the fact that the Moon is with Venus while she’s on the South Node. But because I was nerding out about this earlier- we didn’t actually get Venus on the South Node…did we get that last time? We must have. Hang on. This only happens every 18 years and maybe once or twice.
AC: Yeah, either once or twice.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So you mean last year?
KS: Yeah, and I’m having a vanishing in my own brain. Oh, we didn’t get the Moon with Venus last time, so this combo of the Moon plus Venus with the South Node- that double whammy. Of course, we had Venus on the South Node in Sag last time. She was there 12 months ago. Yeah.
CB: It’s weird that Venus is hitting the South Node, and there’s this sort of decrease of Venus, perhaps, or disappearance the same day that Mercury retrograde is conjoining Mars in Libra, in the sign of Venus. So there’s this like combative or argumentative combination that’s happening with the Mercury retrograde conjunct Mars at the same time that there’s almost this obscuring of Venus temporarily while it’s going through early Sagittarius.
AC: Yeah there’s…you know what? Just looking at that, with 2 three planet stelliums *laughs*–
KS: Yes.
AC: You know, like that’s within the same degree. It’s just kind of a lot to think about, like there’s a lot to pull apart there.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, well and usually, because this is right after Mercury conjoined the Sun which is the halfway point in the retrograde cycle, and usually there’s a turning point where you start to get some resolution of the earlier issues that were set up at the beginning of the Mercury retrograde. You start to. It’s not fully resolved at that point, but usually this is the turning point and somehow the turning point involves those two things, both Mars and some aggressiveness or assertiveness or division, but also Venus hitting the South Node there.
AC: Yeah, in many ways the beginning of this Mercury retrograde is more pleasant.
CB: Right, yeah, why is that? Why does it get divisive right in the middle of it when Mercury is still retrograde?
AC: Well, we’ll find out! *laughs*
CB: Interesting questions.
AC: Fortunately, Mercury will hit that nice Jupiter trine again–
KS: Yes.
AC: –but not for a couple weeks after this. We’re only at the 10th right now.
CB: You know what’s really funny, one of the events that happened- I have no idea how this connected in any way whatsoever- but one of the events that happened a couple months ago that was exact on the day of the first Mercury-Mars conjunction in Virgo- that was when that company OnlyFans announced that they were going to stop hosting sexual content altogether.
Then it turned out to be just a huge disaster and their business almost imploded, and then they walked it back like a few weeks later. So it would be interesting if there was some sort of similar thing here with this second conjunction of Mercury and Mars, either a continuation of that or something archetypally similar.
AC: Yeah I mean, so there have to be divisive announcements, right?
CB: Right, divisive announcements or like a mistake, a choice that’s a mistake, but going back and reviewing something perhaps that was a previous action. Yeah.
KS: And the other two components I would add is something that is premature- so either something happens that’s a little premature that is related to an announcement then, or it is a dialling back of something that was announced previously that in hindsight was premature. And the extra component I want to add in from like, a personal level: Mercury-Mars combinations can really agitate the mind, or enflame the mind, so you know, yes this could lead to difficult or tense conversations and discussions, but it could also be a time where something is going on that’s really stressing you out. That you’re churning in your mind about it, you’re obsessing over it mentally, and so I think, you know, if listeners have things they do to help manage their mental state or their mindset, these would be good things to be reaching for over this weekend as like preventative or maintenance-type things. You may not get that manifestation of it, but I think that’s one other piece to what’s going on.
CB: Yeah. Alright so at this point we’re going to start getting into the second half of the month, and I wanted to mention our sponsor this month which is The Mountain Astrologer magazine, which is a magazine that both of you are familiar with, because we’ve all three written articles and have a long history enjoying this magazine as like the main astrological magazine in the community that’s been around for more than 30 years. They celebrated their Saturn return when Saturn went through Sagittarius when it was, I think, formed back in 1987.
I actually did an interview with the founder of The Mountain Astrologer magazine, Tem Tarriktar, several years ago before he passed away- that was in Episode 149. And there has been a new team that’s taken over The Mountain Astrologer in the past year or two, and they’ve been revising and expanding it and taking it in some new directions that I’ve been actually really excited about. They’re changing it so it’s going to be five issues a year, so it’s now going to be a quarterly magazine, they’re going to change it to be all in color so there’s no more black and white, it’s going to be all color for all images and ads and everything else, and they’re going to do four quarterly issues plus one “year ahead” issue each year. So that’s kind of an interesting and exciting transition to make. It’s got a bunch of great columns in terms of having regular columns, like forecast columns, it’s got a student section, it has letters to the editor and letters to- just like an advice column-type thing, as well as a bunch of amazing articles on different branches and traditions of astrology.
I think we’ve both talked about- what was the last article that you’ve each written for The Mountain Astrologer?
AC: Oh, it was a while ago.
KS: Yeah.
CB: I know you did one in that music issue that came out a few years ago, Austin.
AC: Yeah, I did one on Marilyn Manson, and that was when I discovered one of these obscure Firmicus combinations where if the native have Saturn in the ninth in a night chart with the Moon in any way applying to it, then the person will be hated by gods and emperors alike *laughs* and will be a long-haired philosopher and interpreter of dreams. Like all of which is true. And you know it’s interesting that since his career stopped being outraged, there have been a number of seemingly highly credible accusations about his behavior and he’s back to being hated by gods and emperors alike as well as the people.
And then I did one on sect a million years ago.
CB: Okay, sect.
KS: Yeah, sect. Good one.
CB: That was funny…go ahead.
KS: I was going to say I think we must have been in the same issue, Austin, because I think I wrote something…I’ve got a vague memory of George Michael and “Father Figure” and something about George Michael’s chart. It must’ve been in the same issue because I don’t imagine they would’ve done two musical themed…Frank Clifford I think edited that one.
AC: Yeah, yeah, it was…wasn’t it somebody from the ‘90s I think? At least that was my assignment. I wanted to do Leonard Cohen, but they were like “He’s not really from the ‘90s.” Like he was alive during the ‘90s, but–
KS: I mean but his chart is–
AC: It’s one of my favorites.
KS: Yeah, that’s a great chart. A full Moon in Pisces…I mean there’s a bunch of other things in his chart.
CB: That’s funny that you remember the chart immediately of the celebrity and like what their main signatures are?
AC: Yeah full Moon on…
KS: Yeah, and then he has the Mars opposite Saturn. Doesn’t he have Saturn in Capricorn, Mars in Leo or was it the other way around?
AC: Yeah Leo, Aquarius.
KS: Yeah sorry, Leo and Aquarius. That Saturn in Aquarius. That’s astrologer problems, remembering…
CB: Yeah remember–
KS: My very first TMA article was actually like a short history overview and it was published in 2008 when I had my Saturn return–
CB: Oh wow.
KS: –which made sense, and that was the first–
CB: You did an overview of like the history of astrology?
KS: Yeah it was only like three or four thousand words, so it was like a Reader’s Digest version, if you like, of some of the highs and lows of astrology through history, but I remember feeling such a sense of kind of pride and achievement, like “Oh my god, I’m being published in The Mountain Astrologer!”
AC: It was a big deal.
KS: It’s a big deal, and I’ve had a subscription even prior to then and it’s followed me around the world, you know. I was still getting my copies in Belgium and things like that, so it’s a great magazine. Can’t recommend it hardly enough.
CB: Yeah, well they make that easier since they’ve got both a print version as well as an online version that you can get as a PDF and download to whatever device you want. Here’s the table of contents of the latest issue and some of the different sections that they have, both like regular columns as well as other things. You can also just see, there’s like a professional directory where you can see different astrologers advertising services as well as software ads. I always run an ad in there for The Astrology Podcast and I know some listeners have found us there, so it’s kind of a good place to just find out what’s going on in the community and see different types of astrology and learn about, and sort of enjoy that topic. I always wish that I had found it earlier in my studies, so that’s why I often put it in my list of things you should do relatively early on in your studies: to get a hold of a copy of The Mountain Astrologer and start reading it. Just because you’ll get a much better sort of head start on what the community is actually like by reading that in the same way that you can a little bit from The Astrology Podcast.
AC: Yeah well you know I’ve told this before, but I think maybe two years in to starting to get really interested in astrology, I found like a two-foot stack of Mountain Astrologers for a quarter a piece at a local, used bookstore, so I bought like literally as much as I could carry for 20 bucks. And I just kind of like went through all of them.
CB: Nice. So Austin Coppock is partially the astrologer he is today due to TMA.
AC: Yeah it was huge!
CB: Alright well people can find out more information about that at mountainastrologer.com, and to get a subscription and read it either online or in print. Alright, so that is our halfway point in our episode and at this point I know we’ve really been just talking about the first week of the month, but I feel like this month is separated into that like first week versus when all of the planets start stationing direct in the second and third week. So that gives us an interesting transition point. First talking about Saturn stationing direct in Aquarius on the 10th of October, and then only a week later Jupiter stations direct also in Aquarius, and Mercury stations direct in Libra on the same day. So it’s the two-week period of all of the direct stations.
KS: Yeah this really feels like some kind of slow change of gears, or just starting to inch forward on things that have been maybe treading water or not progressing as you might like. You know I was thinking about how Jupiter and Saturn- like of course Mercury stationing direct is important, but we get a couple of those a year- and to have Saturn and Jupiter both station direct in the same sign, you know, just a week or so apart, it really feels like that Aquarius stuff that you’ve been working on or what that might signify in your chart, the longer projects or the slightly larger restructurings or consolidations. It’s like right now we’re going to start to slowly progress forward with putting those into play or building on those, I think. What are your thoughts on that, Austin?
AC: Well I mean I agree with what you just said, and I suppose I’m a little preoccupied with Saturn stationing direct. It is now setting the stage for another Saturn-Uranus showdown.
KS: Right, true. *laughs*
AC: Right, because Uranus is retrograde, so Uranus is backing up and when Saturn starts moving forward it’ll be a mutual application. It’ll be like–
KS: Which we know of what the ancients said of such things. *laughs*
AC: *laughs* Wait what did they say, Kelly?
KS: Well I think, doesn’t Lilly say something about how this is not good- to have mutual application? I can’t remember the exact–
AC: It just means, it’s like they’re both coming at each other, right? I mean that is technically the worst car crash you can have is when both cars are speeding towards one another.
KS: Right.
AC: So that was the first thing that popped into mind, and then from Jupiter’s perspective, you know if I’m Jupiter I’m just like alright let’s get the fuck out of here and get back to Pisces.
KS: Yeah totally, where’s the door to Pisces basically? *laughs*
AC: Right, like okay let’s just finish it. It’s like if you’re at a more nine to five style job, or you know, whatever your working shift, and you’re in like the last hour of your shift, you’re like, “Okay I’m just gonna get this done and then I get to leave.”
KS: Yeah it’s like 12 o’clock on Friday and you can’t go yet.
AC: Like I’m gonna wipe down my tables and clean my station and then I’m getting the fuck out of here.
KS: Yeah, it’s such a big day so I always find it so interesting when we get those double ups. You know, on Monday October 18th Mercury stations direct, Jupiter stations direct, Mars decides to aspect Jupiter while it’s stationing direct. It’s that sense of like okay, the wheels are turning, let’s move forward. We might have some shit to deal with ahead of us, but at least we’re now gonna take a step.
AC: Well yeah it’s definitely like, to whatever degree it’s positive or negative, it’s definitely like, “Okay, now for the next act.”
KS: Yes.
AC: Right, now for the next episode.
KS: Intermission is over, they’re ringing the bell to come back–
AC: Right, yeah.
KS: –for the final act for Jupiter at least, because it is Jupiter’s last hurrah.
AC: Yeah I think in a couple different ways, right, because that Mars-Sun conjunction earlier is also like end of a thing, beginning of a thing.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Like there’s a lot of, with the Mars in Libra it’s like kind of an anxious intermission while backstage they change the sets and get ready for the upcoming drama.
KS: And that’s a really good point, you know, I mean the signs are obviously important, but sometimes I find it helpful to kind of just strip it back and look at the planetary play of what’s going on. And you know you made a great point earlier, Austin, where for Mars this is like a new Moon basically. So we’re resetting for the next two years, Saturn is resetting for the next chapter in Aquarius- he’s gonna do a whole other station retrograde piece next year, but Jupiter is resetting for the last hurrah in Aquarius. So there is really this sense- that’s what’s so interesting about October is that individually the things are like, “Yeah that’s important, and that’s important…” but when you look at it collectively over this two-week band through the middle of the month we’re really switching up our focus and really looking to, “What’s next and where are we going?” Less of a, you know, “Where have we been and what have we been doing?”
AC: Yeah totally.
CB: Something that’s funny is on the last forecast I think you were on, Kelly, you were talking about Jupiter going into Pisces and how it would bring back the moisture from what had just been such a dry and separating year of everything being in Capricorn, and I really felt like that happened. Especially in the U.S. with some of the stuff that happened when Jupiter went into Pisces and everyone was getting vaccinated, or at least lots of people were getting vaccinated and things were opening up again and the CDC announced like, “You can stop wearing masks” and there was this period for like a month or two there where it seemed like things were going back to normal, but then Jupiter stationed retrograde in late June and the COVID numbers started shooting up again and the variants, like the delta variant started coming out and becoming much more prevalent. And we had that return of Jupiter back into Aquarius at the end of July where it seemed like it had to go back for some unfinished business, and I kept talking about how the original business that Jupiter did as soon as it went into Aquarius was the vaccines were released publicly back in December of 2020 around the time of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius. So I kept thinking that Jupiter returning to Aquarius had to be something additional about the vaccines and things like that, so Jupiter stationing should be the final push of I guess either the vaccination effort and things connected with it.
It looks like news just came out today, it says September 24th- I got an email from my healthcare place saying the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that single Pfizer booster dose can be administered at least six months after completion of the Pfizer series. And then it lists people that are eligible for–
KS: Certain criteria, yeah, certain higher risk categories where they’re now recommending a booster shot.
CB: So that must be one of the things is that booster shots are now being rolled out and recommended, although there’s also a debate recently in the UN where the U.S. was criticized for starting to roll out booster shots or recommend that when the rest of the world hasn’t necessarily been vaccinated, and that there were some countries that are still having trouble getting it. So then I think the Biden administration announced releasing a certain amount of doses to other countries or something like that.
AC: Yeah and so that fits in really well to the, “How can Jupiter help with Saturn business when they’re both in Saturn’s sign?” Right? And I think another thing that we can sort of add to that category, especially in the U.S., is the passage or not of bills to basically help offset the damage from the last year and a half. Whether that’s, you know, a reinitiation or extension of eviction moratoriums, or this large infrastructure package which has a lot of sort of aid and rescue stuff into it, or you know, there are a lot of big things pending, right? And Jupiter’s time in Aquarius, the remaining time in Aquarius will basically be- it’s going to happen then or not. A lot of these things if they sit for another six months they’re just dead. And so it’s that Jupiter question of, “What do we do about all of the Saturnian affliction that we’ve all lived through?” Right? Which has affected so many people in so many different ways in different areas of life. And it’s like what do we do, Jupiter, what can you do? And we’ll see.
CB: Yeah well and being an air sign and being an Aquarius, and just sometimes the attempts to use technology in order to fix things, at least that impulse to do that, whether that ends up being right or whether there ends up being issues with that sort of as a separate thing.
AC: That’s the style of fix.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah. Technical, intellectually-based type of fix, because it’s Jupiter in a very heady, very thinking kind of sign.
CB: I think you had also mentioned in the pre-cert chat that right now one of the things that’s starting to happen is the age limit going down, and children starting to be vaccinated as well, right Kelly?
KS: Yeah it was interesting! In my monthly membership subscription I had talked about the first Mercury-Jupiter trine aspect in late September. I didn’t link it to a particular topic, but I was talking about how this can indicate some news that looks good or promising that is further to be refined or confirmed once we get through the whole three-part Mercury-Jupiter process. One of my members pointed out to me that that was the day that some of the news was starting to come out about vaccine trials for under-12s, because- I don’t know exactly the U.S. rules versus the Canadian rules, but in Canada we’re vaccinating down to the age of 12 right now but nothing for under 12. So some of this was research saying that it’s looking promising but we’ve still got a few more weeks to run, and the final sort of determination or recommendation would be made in early November. Which I thought was really interesting when you think Jupiter trying to do some things using science-y, technology type things. You know, along those lines. I’m sure there’ll be other things, that was just one thing that a member pointed out to me that seemed interesting to align with that particular cycle.
AC: Yeah and I’m really glad you brought in Mercury, because we’re talking about, “Oh Jupiter’s changing direction” and well we’re gonna be in this Mercury retrograde cycle pretty much all month where Mercury is having three trines with Jupiter.
KS: Yes.
AC: Right, so whatever is going on with Jupiter is going to get announced and maybe re-announced, and thought and rethought, and Mercury is going to probably make that very clear, whatever that is.
KS: Yeah, so the news announcements on those days I think will be very telling in that regard to the end of Jupiter in Aquarius.
CB: Yeah, and just in general, I mean thinking about it more personally for each person in terms of where Aquarius is in your chart and what house that falls in–
KS: Yes.
CB: –where Saturn, when Jupiter left back in June and July…or actually it was earlier than that, in May it went into Pisces, it sort of left Saturn to its own devices in Aquarius and for some people that coincided with a period of more problems, or some problems coming to the forefront in that house in their chart, in that part of their life. But then Jupiter returning back to that sign was bringing a little bit of relief and a little bit of assistance in that part of their life. Jupiter stationing this month in October should be the final phases of getting some of that relief put into place so that Jupiter can actually move forward and have its job be finished by the end of the year. What did that make you think, you were thinking of some personal example…?
KS: Yeah, just the personal examples of the Jupiter in Aquarius helping the Saturn stuff out if that had been weighty without Jupiter there for those few months when Jupiter was doing stuff in Pisces. The other thing that is a bit of a feature this October is that the Sun and Mars and Mercury in Libra are all linking over to Jupiter in Aquarius, and to think in your personal chart about the topics of your Libra house and the topics of your Aquarius house somehow trying to connect in a way where you can see, I don’t know, the trine element. Is there a little bit of support, do you get a piece of information from one area, you know, the Libra area of your life that helps the Aquarius area and so on. I think that’s a really practical way for people to think about it, because of course the Libra-Aquarius trine in each of our charts is different based on the house components there.
CB: Right, yeah, that’s a really good point. Have either of you seen in clients’ charts instances of the Saturn stuff and some of the heaviness of that transit in certain people’s lives? Because I want to mention, it’s like one of the things we saw in the middle of August when Uranus stationed in Taurus was an intensification of the significations of that planet- which in that instance was kind of like suddenness and chaos, and one of the things was what happened with Afghanistan and just the downfall of the Afghan government as the U.S. was pulling out. So here we should expect to see a similar thing, which is 1. We’re talking about an intensification of Jupiter when Jupiter stations, but also a week before that with Saturn stationing there may be an intensification of some of the issues or lessons that Saturn’s bringing to that part of each person’s life as well.
I know there was one commenter, I just read a comment this morning on one of the forecasts who mentioned Saturn stationing or transiting through Aquarius which is their fourth whole sign house. They said that they lost a parent and they were having to deal with that and having to put some of the parent’s affairs in order, and that that’s been very difficult over the past several months with Saturn transiting through Aquarius, but that when Jupiter came back into that sign that they ended up finally receiving some small inheritance which helped them a little bit to deal with putting their parent’s affairs in order and just get things under control.
AC: Yeah, that makes sense. There’s a lot of, you know, with Jupiter in Aquarius it’s not the best place for Jupiter, it’s not the worst place, but in a lot of cases the medicine available- I mean that in like a larger, remedial sense- the help available may not be enough to negate the difficulties. Actually the story you just told, Chris, illustrates it nicely. The inheritance doesn’t negate the impact of the death, but it’s something, right? With Jupiter, sometimes I see people being mad at Jupiter transits because it didn’t give them as much as they wanted, but very often you go through it and it’s like yeah but you got this for free, or you got this help when you needed it. No it didn’t blow away all your problems, but it’s something. If you’re working with Jupiter, of course one of the primary things is gratitude. It’s like, hey, something’s better than nothing and I appreciate the something.
CB: Yeah, sometimes you gotta take what you can get.
AC: Yeah, to whatever little bit of divine favor and mercy is available. I think we can kind of use everything, the fixed signs especially, can use everything available to get things in as good a shape as possible for the fixed sign storm that starts at the end of this month but really gets moving in November.
CB: Right, so this is not just a precursor, but also it’s a little bit of some of the positive and constructive stuff before we start getting some real heavy difficult things in the fixed signs next month.
AC: Yeah I would say this is a little time to work and rearrange, rebalance things…because balance is not static. Balance is based on, for example, what you’re carrying. You don’t maintain the same weight distribution if you pick something else up or you put something down. I always think of like rearranging your backpack. But to kind of get things at least as balanced as you can for now, because we’re going into hard months. Not to do so with fear, but like, it’s going to rain. If I have an umbrella or if I don’t have an umbrella, what can I use to be less wet, right?
CB: Yeah. I’m just gonna enjoy it, like spending an hour at the coffee shop enjoying a nice latte before seeing the storm that’s on the horizon. At least having a nice month of some enjoyable things before some of that comes. You know, something that’s funny talking about Jupiter returning back and going back for unfinished business, what was the last forecast that you did, Kelly, was that in April that we recorded that for May?
KS: I think so, yeah.
CB: So that’s really funny–
KS: It was Jupiter in Aquarius then. *laughs*
CB: So Jupiter was in Aquarius and now it’s retrograded back to where it was–
KS: Very literal. I’m happy to be Jupiter! *laughs*
CB: Our Pisces rising friend with the Pisces stellium ruled by Jupiter has come back to do this forecast with us and return a little bit of that warmth of Jupiter to Aquarius, so that’s great with Jupiter stationing right now as well.
KS: It’s fair, this is like a gestalt in therapy, very like living it as we’re talking about it.
CB: I love stuff like that with retrogrades, because it happens but sometimes it’s very subtle, I made a tweet about this that like, you know, one of the things that is tricky about studying astrological transits is like you never get, like, a memo or like an email that tells you that ‘This is exactly what that transit is correlating with in your life’. So sometimes it’s very easy to overlook and never notice what the correlations are, just because it doesn’t always hit you over the head, even though it’s something you’re experiencing in your life at certain moments, you don’t necessarily get, like, an explicit memo from god telling you, like, exactly what that is so you sometimes just have to like, open your eyes and see what’s happening around you and realize what it is.
KS: Oh, yeah. I had a very literal experience of that yesterday. You know, yesterday was the Venus-Uranus opposition, and Scorpio is ninth house for me. And we had some trades people coming into the house to do some work, which we knew because we had planned that, we’d been waiting weeks, we had to get our heating system, you know, we had to do some serious maintenance there. And I just thought, you know, we have a boiler system, it’s in the basement. That’s where the team of people will be working – in the basement!
But of course, they had to check out the units in various parts of the house, so they actually spent most of the day working in my office, in my husband’s office. So unexpectedly, first thing in the morning, we had to, like, pull our stuff out so that we could work elsewhere in the house while they got on with their activities. And both my husband and I were just all day, like, how did we not realize this was going to be, you know, such an upheaval? We’ve got the drop cloths everywhere, and hammering and banging going on. And I had to do one of my live Q&A’s with students yesterday, which is a teaching thing. So I, for the first time ever, I’m doing it on my couch, downstairs with the cat climber in the background, like, you know, whatever I could grab quickly.
So, I mean, you know, it was a passing thing, it was just Venus opposing Uranus, and then it was done, but it was just a very literal thing. And as you, when you were saying Chris, like sometimes you have to look around. It was literally at 10 o’clock yesterday morning. ‘You’re not gonna be able to do your work in your office, Kelly so quickly, you know, relocate.’ So, it would be nice if we got more specific instructions coming in, but at least I had in the back of my mind, ‘it is Uranus, Venus – Uranus day. It’s disruptive. Just go with that kind of thing.’
CB: Yeah. Sometimes having that background knowledge going into it really helps and can help you to contextualize and just be okay with things and understand the sort of meaning or purpose underlying it.
KS: Totally.
CB: Alright. So, back to the week that we’re looking at, the week that Saturn stations direct, the intensification of that – We get a nice Venus-Saturn trine on Wednesday the 13th, which I am a fan of.
AC: I, um…
KS: That’s a sextile.
AC: Yeah, that’s not a trine.
CB: Oh! Oops, sorry. That’s a typo, then.
KS: Slight typo, but easily fixed.
CB: That’s a good point. Yeah. Because Venus is going through Sagittarius. So it’s going to sextile Saturn. Nonetheless, still a pretty decent aspect. I’m a fan of Venus.
KS: That’s a nice little aspect, yep!
CB: That sounds like a, yeah, a nice little aspect. So that week… (Kelly and Austin laughing) So the next aspect after that would be the Sun trine Jupiter, is that correct?
KS: Also, I don’t know. I don’t know what to say, that’s another great aspect! Nice big aspect. There’s actually like three nice aspects that week. Yeah. The Sun trine Jupiter and then the Venus sextile Mercury on the weekend.
AC: And that’ll help, that Venus sextile Mercury will help cool Mercury off a little bit.
KS: So much.
AC: You know, from all that Mars exposure.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yes, that’s helpful. Then we get into Monday the 18th, of course, and the Jupiter station simultaneous with the Mercury direct, which I can’t help but think that that’s offering some resolution to some of the Mercury retrograde problems from earlier, not just at the start of the retrograde square Pluto, but also the conjunction with Mars that happened around the midpoint. And just having both Mercury and Jupiter stationing simultaneously seems kind of nice.
AC: I don’t think it – yeah. It kind of clarifies the way forward.
CB: Sure. So that’s kind of bringing us to our second lunation of the month, which is the Full Moon in the sign of Aries, right?
KS: Yes, it is. 27 Aries.
CB: Let me pull up a chart for that. There we go. So, the Moon opposite Sun, Moon is in Aries ruled by Mars, Mars is still pretty closely conjunct the Sun from 23 Libra to 27 Libra. And all of this is kind of squaring Pluto there down at 24 degrees of Capricorn, right?
AC: Yeah, Mars is very tightly squaring Pluto, and completes that the next day. And of course the Moon is ruled by that Mars.
CB: Yeah
AC: This is not the most constructive version of this Mars in Libra that we’ve been trying to maintain some balance with.
CB: Yeah, so there’s more of an intensification of the Mars principle – sometimes Mars-Pluto combinations to me are like intense rage and explosions of rage.
AC: Yeah, like pressurized outbursts of Mars.
CB: Yeah. Cause it tries to keep it in and tries to internalize it and hold it in and hold it in and hold it in. But the pressure keeps building up and then eventually once it starts to let out, it just all explodes at once.
AC: Yeah. It’s not the most peaceful Full Moon and you know, that’s interesting, right? Because the New Moon was right on top of Mars. And then this Full Moon is Mars-ruled with Mars still there, opposite, and with a little Pluto square thrown in. The now-direct Jupiter in Aquarius is doing some work there. Like helping to, you know, how should I say, provide a constructive medium for that Martian energy. But there’s that, you know – that pressurization from Pluto is real. Kelly, what do you think about this one?
KS: Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. You almost took the, well, not took the words out of my mouth. I thought similar things, that both the lunations this month are very mozzie in their tone. And this one – I mean, a full Moon in a fire sign has a bit of a dramatic quality. So it does feel like things bursting out or, you know, bubbling over. And I wonder about, like, sneak attacks or things coming out of the unexpected with Mars in that overcome-by-the-Sun placement there. That it ‘bursts out and you didn’t see it coming’ kind of thing
AC: Yeah, especially with all that Mars burning just below the surface that we’ve had up to this point this month that makes it, like, sneak attack. It makes a lot of sense.
KS: Yes, yeah. It’s like, it’s been churning in the weeks leading up and it’s like, *blasting sound* Full Moon, come out! And, I think you were talking about with the Pluto aspect there as well with the Mars-Pluto component, that just makes me think more about whether it’s a discovery or something, but that it adds that, you know, hidden-to-seen, or being-seen-and-then-vanishing kind of thing that we were touching on earlier with Pluto coming through.
AC: Yeah, totally.
CB: Yeah. It looks like the day before or so, maybe a couple of days before the Mars-Jupiter trine completes just as Jupiter’s stationing direct, which is usually a very effective, like, aspect for getting things done. But it’s just weird that Mars immediately goes into that square with Pluto immediately afterwards.
AC: Yeah, well, this is such a kind of unusual Mars, right? Both because it’s like, it’s in Libra, right? It’s [in] detriment and it’s under combustion, but then it’s ruling the full Moon and it’s trine Jupiter, but it’s square Pluto. I think this is a difficult one to wholly get your mind around ahead of time. But maybe just knowing that it’s kind of weird and kind of under the surface, but kind of popping up and, you know, maybe that in and of itself is just a useful thing to recognize.
KS: It’s nuanced and complex.
AC: Yeah. It’s not just like, “Hey, it’s Mars in Aries”. Although Mars will become considerably less subtle soon, right. And what’s interesting about all of this kind of complicated, maybe subtle, maybe not subtle Mars, is that what comes next is Mars in Scorpio, which is just, you know, brute strong and will be hitting that Saturn-Uranus square. We are activating that through a lot of November, right? So whatever’s kind of churning and bubbling and maybe somewhat elusive becomes rather forthright and direct soon enough.
KS: I mean, I actually had a sporting analogy that popped into my mind when you were saying that, that brute force, Austin. I don’t know if anybody knows the sport of rugby, rugby union or rugby league. This is a big type of game that’s played in Australia and the UK, and…
AC: There’s a lot of brute force.
KS: There’s a lot of brute – yeah! When you said brute force, I was thinking about the scrum where the ball comes through and nobody seems to know where the ball is when you’re a spectator. The ball is like, you know, the scrums have packed down on either side and the ball’s coming through underneath and all of a sudden somebody grabs the ball. And I’m actually imagining a very famous New Zealand football player, rugby player, Jonah Lomu, who was very talented, but you know, could be any New Zealander probably – New Zealand is one of the best countries at this sport. And they finally get the ball and then they just run and it’s just brute force where the other players are trying to tackle them and pull them down. But the power, this is Mars in Scorpio, nothing stops it. It’s like a steam train. It just goes until it hits the try line and down the ball goes.
AC: No, that’s really good, that makes a lot of sense. There’s actually a former professional rugby player who’s the champ of the 145 division in the UFC.
KS: What?!
AC: Yeah, Alexander Vulcanovski, who’s fighting tomorrow. But you know, that’s a really good point is sometimes you’ll see a contest where somebody has the superior technique and they’ve done the right move. But their opponent just literally powers through.
KS: Just the power!
AC: It’s like, ‘No, that was perfect, you did the button presses in exactly the right order and this and that’, but in reality, and not in video games, sometimes people just power through stuff that they shouldn’t be able to do. Like there’s a great fighter named Derek Lewis and people will do these like perfect take-downs and grappling and he will, in his own words, just ‘stand the fuck up’. And he’s just powerful and there’s some technique, but mostly like he can just stand up in a way that other people can’t.
KS: Yeah. And that’s reminding me, to continue our sports analogies today, it’s astrology and sports (laughter), of the tennis player, Serena Williams, who was never, perhaps, the most technically brilliant tennis player, but had a quality of strength and endurance that allowed her to really dominate for many years in her field. And that’s that Scorpio.
AC: Yeah! Kelly, you and I have had some talks about becoming more aged as we’re almost exactly the same age, how, you know, we both had these habits of just kind of powering through completely unsustainable workloads.
KS: Yes.
AC: And that eventually, right, eventually you’re like ‘Oh, I can’t just power through’.
KS: I just can’t push anymore! Yeah. It’s a strategy for a period of time, but then yeah, it might cost you something on the way through.
CB: Yeah, that’s really good. The vitality component of Mars, that it does have this vital component that’s especially notable when there’s an issue with Mars or when you have something that’s, like, sapping Mars’s energy like a Neptune, hard Neptune aspect, for example, is a good one for sometimes loss of vitality, for reasons that are unclear. But, I did the Mars episode earlier this month with Sylvi Osland and that was one thing that I wished that we had emphasized more is just that vitality notion.
AC: Yeah, it’s something I feel very, uh, bodily as Mars goes through different signs.
CB: Yeah. So ‘powering through’ as one of our sort of keywords for that Full Moon, there, that’s happening on Wednesday the 20th, where we have Mars square Pluto, but also Mars trine Jupiter. And then later in the week we have the beginning of Scorpio season when the Sun moves into Scorpio on the 23rd of October, which brings us into the home stretch, which is some aspects that Venus makes to Neptune first on the 26th, the square with Neptune, and then Venus sextiling Jupiter on Thursday the 28th just before we have Mars ingressing into Scorpio on the 30th of October at the very tail-end of the month, which just completely takes us into that latter part of the year.
AC: Yeah, so this is interesting, right? This is the lead-in to that, you know, sort of full power Mars/Saturn/Pluto or, excuse me, Mars/Saturn/Uranus configuration with a bunch of other planets attending. And it starts with the Sun, right? Cause the Sun will also square Saturn and oppose Uranus. And Mars is a little bit behind. But that Saturn-Uranus starts getting juiced up again the second that the Sun moves into Scorpio. And then when Mars moves into Scorpio, it’s like, okay, let’s get it on, let’s do this. But there’s like this little note of, I dunno, sweetness, like, I don’t know – like eating a corn dog before the violence begins with that Venus-Jupiter. It’s like, oh, that’s so nice.
KS: The Venus-Jupiter is worth a special mention, I agree.
AC: It’s so sweet and positive and it’s like, I don’t know, it’s like the opposite of a consolation prize. It’s like, cause it happens before rather than after, but it’s like, oh, it’s at least giving us a little bit of ease into, you know, what I think will be the most challenging month of the year.
CB: Yeah, I mean, the fact that Venus is squaring Neptune around the same time means there’s probably an illusory quality to it or something that’s maybe not fully real or not very well grounded.
AC: Yeah. Well, but that’s okay. Like, pleasure doesn’t have to be fully grounded in, you know, 3D reality.
CB: Sure. Yeah, that was – I did the Neptune episode with Laura Nalbandian, which I may release next month or the following month, just talking about [how] sometimes Neptune and sometimes people need something to believe in or idealize. And sometimes that can motivate you to keep going where you might not otherwise. Like, sometimes even if something’s an illusion, it can be a good motivating factor and it can be something that’s necessary in people’s lives.
AC: Yeah, I mean, have you ever woken up from a really beautiful dream and it just sets you on a nice course for the first part of your day? Like, you know that that didn’t literally happen, but it’s like, oh, that was a really nice experience, right?
KS: In the same way that, you know, watching a movie or reading a book, you’re kind of in another world. It might not be real, but it transports you and it makes you feel something that you wouldn’t get in touch with otherwise.
AC: Yeah, movies are great Neptunian escape and are built on that principle of having to suspend disbelief. And the effectiveness of a filmmaker, a director, sometimes is directly tied into whether they do a good job being able to allow the audience to suspend belief. Or disbelief, I should say.
CB: Yeah. Alright, well, that takes us into the very, very last aspect of the month, which is Mars ingressing into Scorpio, which it does on the 30th of October, beginning a couple month trip through that sign where it’s going to eventually square Saturn and then oppose Uranus. And then we also start getting eclipses again when we get into eclipse season and then Venus stations retrograde and all sorts of other stuff that we talked about in our year ahead report, which I can’t believe we recorded way back in December and how long ago that was now.
AC: You know, this year has actually gone by really quickly for me.
KS: Yeah, I agree.
AC: Yeah, two years ago feels like three lifetimes ago, but one year ago feels like last week.
CB: Yeah, that’s true.
KS: It’s a very weird time warp.
AC: But, so just one note about Mars, just from a strictly planetary level, Mars will reappear in the sky in Scorpio. Mars is invisible for most of October. But we’ll start seeing that little bit of red light just before dawn in Scorpio.
KS: Like the middle of the month, or something?
AC: Yeah, I mean, so I don’t, Mars is there –
KS: Oh, there. Okay. I beg your pardon.
AC: I think about 10 for Mars, [how] it depends on the condition of the sky. Venus is a lot brighter, so Venus will be visible with less degrees from the Sun. I think once you get 10 degrees, you should be able to see, like, actually see some red Mars. But it’ll be a ‘waking up early’ Mars.
KS: Super early before dawn kind of thing.
AC: Yeah, so maybe I’ll switch my schedule, just rise with Mars every morning. Blood for the blood god.
CB: So one of the things I think is important here is that the fixed signs, which have got some resolution and some relief during the month of October with Saturn and Jupiter stationing in Aquarius, suddenly we start getting some speed and some heat and a lot of movement and activity in the fixed signs and the creation of some tension, which starts building at the very end of October and is going to build up during the course of November as Mars starts hitting those other fixed sign planets. So this is the beginning of a return to some tension in the fixed signs, and tension in that part of our life that’s represented by those four signs.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, it’s um…
KS: I mean I think not like July, so…
AC: I think November will be [like] July after doing cycles of steroids for three months.
CB: Well, and, remember it wasn’t just July, but also the last time Mars was in a fixed sign and we had the Mar Saturn opposition, but then the year opened with Mars in a fixed sign, which it went in on January 6th when Mars went into Taurus. So that was the first preview of that – the January 6th events. And that was Mars going into the same sign as Uranus and some of the instability and things that were happening with that.
KS: Yeah. And the difference this time round is that Mars has some great dignity in Scorpio, which it didn’t have obviously in Taurus and didn’t have in Leo in the middle of the year.
CB: Yeah. It also has the upper hand over Saturn. So suddenly Mars is the one that’s in the superior sign and is able to sort of boss Saturn around a little bit more.
KS: Which is also different.
AC: Yeah, I don’t think Saturn will take too kindly to that, but it’s certainly going to try.
KS: Saturn’s going to slap it right back down. It feels like Saturn would, though. This is going to be the ‘overcoming vs the superiority’, I guess.
AC: Well this is, to a certain degree, a callback to last fall or Q4 last year, where it was Mars with a lot of dignity squaring Saturn with a lot of dignity. And so we’re back to Mars with a lot of dignity squaring Saturn with a lot of dignity. And you know, it’s neat. Mars has the ‘waking up earlier’ advantage. But neither is in a particularly weak position and they’re kind of both being fucked with by Uranus.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, so in the Uranus episode, Rick Levine and I were talking about some of the meanings of Uranus, like the rebellion and rebelliousness and the sort of chaos and unexpected things in just some of the core meanings of Uranus and how astrologers discovered some of those just through what was happening at the time that Uranus was discovered back in the 18th century, which was like the American revolution and the French revolution. And one of the things that’s weird about the French revolution is just how really chaotic and extreme it was at times. And how far, sometimes, the revolutionaries went in a certain direction when pursuing, you know, their agenda, their goals at the time.
AC: Yeah, and even the American revolution wasn’t quite as head-choppy. Like that wasn’t… I’m sure it was chaotic. I mean, it was basically like fighting a guerrilla insurrection against, you know, a superpower. And then like, you know, like sort of tentative alliances with European countries against the British and like, you know, I’m sure as a person at that time it was incredibly chaotic. It wasn’t like ‘We’re going to war and we’re going to march, we’re going to march our American army onto the field versus the British army. And then we’re going to have it out and whoever wins gets to, you know, whatever’.
CB: Yeah. Well, so I guess part of the point then is sometimes those things, revolutions and other things, are messier than people realize going into it. And sometimes maybe the ideal of breaking away from something looks cleaner than the actual reality.
KS: Because once you’re in it, you can’t stop. You can’t say, ‘Oh, I think we won’t do this, now’, once you’re engaged. The forces [are] moving – you do have to see it through, and then it becomes a little bit of an endurance situation.
CB: Yeah. Well, and also that there’s a weird social thing that once that ball gets rolling, that sometimes there’s a social thing that reinforces and people in groups take things further than they might do on their own.
AC: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s actually a really good framing for like strong Mars, strong Saturn with Uranus, you know, in there for shits and giggles, is that neither Mars or Saturn is in a position to back down, right? And it’s like, that’s, you know, that’s a war of attrition, right? Because neither is getting killed in the first or second round. And so the question is like, do you want to set yourself up to be part of that? Do you want to do trench warfare in November? Be careful about what conflicts you join.
KS: One thing I came to appreciate in much more visceral detail after our time in Europe was trench warfare, because we were, we took some time to visit some of the battlefields of World War One and World War Two, and to go through some of the museums where they would attempt to kind of recreate and share the experiences. And one thing I learned is that when you end up in one of these protracted battle type things, what it can sometimes come down to is supply chains and supply lines. That you can only dig in and fight for as long as you are able to, you know, feed and clothe yourself or your teammates or your fighting mates, your army. And so that is going to be really interesting as we see different things socially and collectively kind of get bedded down into, you know, we’re gonna, you know, this is the hill I wanna die on. This is the thing I’m going to choose to stand for. And then how do things like supply chain or access to resources affect that?
AC: Right, well, on a personal level that hearkens back to what we were saying about Mars and vitality.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Right? And then, you know, what you and I were talking about, which is like, yeah, you can power through. Powering through is never a sustainable strategy. It may be the right strategy for a particular period of time, but it’s always, you know, that’s never a long-term solution. And you always run out of gasoline at some point, which is of course half the reason that the Americans won the battle of Ardennes, is because the Germans ran out of gas for their tanks. They had these awesome tanks that they literally just had to leave behind because they had no gasoline.
KS: Yeah. Wow.
AC: Thank god, but. You know.
CB: I love that analogy, Kelly, and I think that’s a great piece of advice to leave people on for October, which is “Get your supply lines in order”. In October, while you can, prepare to bunker down for the protracted sort of war between the malefics that comes up in November.
AC: Right, so this is, don’t be like the Nazis, right, in general, but also think about your supply lines! It’s another reason to not be like the Nazis.
KS: (Laughter) Oh my gosh, as if you needed more! Yeah.
AC: Just in case you weren’t sold.
KS: I mean, another little thing is occurring to me. And this is like maybe the Venus-Neptune or Venus-Jupiter piece – one thing we learned, we went to some of the beaches where there were invasions. Normandy beaches. I’m very bad with names and details when it comes to these things. One thing we learned is that one way that the French resistance and the resistant movement communicated was through poetry that was read over the radio at different points and times. And there were, you know, certain poems indicated certain things were going to happen from a military strategic or action perspective. So, I don’t know how that fits into the end of October, but, you know, there could be a little bit of poetry that comes in to help with planning or preparation.
AC: Well, I’d say that there’s – with all these planets in Libra, like, there’s a fair amount of poetry on offer before the Mars and Scorpio games begin, right. Cause like balance like equilibrium and balance, both on a physical level as well as, like, an emotional, life level. Like, there’s always a certain elegance to balance.
KS: Yes. Yes.
CB: Yeah, and also with Libra season having just begun, just the change of seasons and the new energy that that comes with in terms of moving into a new phase and initiating something that’s new that eventually, once you get to the fixed sign of Scorpio, you just have the continuation of something that was already started earlier and having to really, like you’re saying, bunker down in some sense in order to carry forward and bring to completion some of those previous things. But a good deal of this month of October with a lot of that Libra energy is the initiation of some of those new things.
AC: Yeah. Yeah. Like looking about, looking over November with both of you, or excuse me, looking over October, the larger themes in reference to where we’re going next have become much more clear to me. It’s so obviously like, ‘Okay, things are kind of getting ready for the next thing, but the next thing isn’t here, got a little room to rearrange, a little room to work’.
KS: Get a few things in order. And that’s a beautiful point, too, Chris, about the Equinox, the Libra Equinox, because that’s really kind of setting the tone from now through to the end of December when we have the solstice. So we’re kind of going into this energetic chapter in terms of the sol’s – or, sorry, at the start of the Sun’s journey through the sky and how that is marked off as its own separate thing.
AC: Right.
CB: Yeah. The sun just went into Libra here in the past few days and just I’ve noticed very distinctly, you know, the temperature starts changing. It starts getting cold out. The days are obviously getting shorter. At this point, the summer is over. And even the leaves on the trees are suddenly starting to change already. So it just surprises me sometimes like how rapid, sometimes, that change starts setting in and becoming noticeable.
Alright, well, I think that’s it. I think we did it. I think that is it for the astrology of October. Thanks a lot for joining me for this today, guys. This was amazing.
AC: Yeah, it was great.
KS: Thank you.
AC: It was really nice to have you back on, Kelly.
KS: Thank you. It was really fun. Oh my God, it was just like old times! Thank you.
AC: You know, maybe after you get your book out, we can lure you back for at least…
KS: You two are very persuasive! (Laughter)
AC: For old times! For old times’ sake.
KS: Yes!
CB: Yeah, and the return of our Jupiter friend, I love that discovery of Jupiter coming back in Aquarius and Kelly coming back onto the podcast to join us.
What do you both have coming up? Kelly, in the near future you have your YouTube channel, and I noticed you put like one video out, like a few weeks ago? Are you going to –
KS: I’ve been very slack, yes.
CB: Okay.
KS: I’ve got a plan together for October, so hopefully we’ll be back to more. I usually put a short video out each week. And then I’m doing a webinar in November on just a bit of a traditional look at the nodes in astrology. Cause some of my teaching students are like, what do I do with this if we’re not doing, you know, the EA model? And I’m also teaching a new course in November called ‘Combining Transits and Progressions’, where are we going to get into some of the real practical application of using those two techniques together, which I haven’t taught before. I’ve taught them separately, but not this one training together. And then also gearing up –
CB: You have a monthly forecast, right?
KS: Yeah, so it’s subscription based – it’s similar to a Patreon, but it’s run through my website, kellysastrology.com. And I do a video each week where I look at every aspect that’s happening that week and can just give a short take on, you know, what to expect, basically. And yeah, that’s been going for a while, we have a really good group of subscribers. We do a live Q&A every quarter. So usually around the solstice or the Equinox, which is something that’s been building over the last few years, and that’s really lovely to do.
CB: Awesome. Well, people can check out your website for more on that, which is kellysastrology.com, right?
KS: Yes. Thank you. And new photos will be coming in the next month or two. I need to update my picture. You know how that happens, where you see people and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, your photo, it doesn’t look like you anymore’. So yeah.
AC: I grew up, like – not laughing about that, but noticing that, and now I’ve become that. Now I understand.
KS: Yeah, it gets away from you, doesn’t it?
AC: Yeah, it does.
CB: Time.
AC: There’s also that like, ‘I look like shit. You know, maybe I’ll take care of myself for a month and then do photos’, right? And then it’s a month later and you’re like, ‘Ehhhh… I have that 2014 picture of me when I was actually healthy, we’ll just maybe stick with that’.
CB: Right. Yeah, good times. Austin, what do you have coming up?
AC: Sphere and Sundry has a relief – a relief? (Laughing) Some relief to release? Any moment now, I don’t have the exact day, but the codename ‘Quicksilver Tongue’ should be out maybe by the time this is published, maybe a few days after. There’s whirring and stirrings inside the factory, it’s getting ready.
And I am teaching classes, and I’m trying to get things set up for my Year One Self-Paced thing. There have been some complications in getting the platform to do what I want, and now we’re in Mercury retrograde time, so now I will work through all those. So, as soon as I can. Libra’s my fourth, so I’ve got a few platform and foundational things I need to rearrange, but that’s happening.
CB: Nice.
KS: That’s exciting!
AC: For the Sphere and Sundry stuff, of course, that’s sphereandsundry.com.
CB: And what is your personal website URL?
AC: It is austincoppock.com
CB: Brilliant! Alright, people can look that up for more information about that. And Austin, you and I will be back next month for a forecast with an undecided co-host guest, yet, but we’ll have something.
KS: Mystery guest for October – I mean November!
AC: We need to figure out someone who’s going to do a month with us.
KS: Yes.
AC: I was thinking, ‘that’s not a job for everybody, but there’s probably someone that it’s the perfect job for’.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah. Well, we’ll figure that out here pretty soon. As for me, I basically just want to mention that I wrote a book, because, well, it’s a great book –
KS: It is!
CB: Well, it actually covers – that and my course on Hellenistic astrology actually cover all of the basics of Western astrology and take you through the basics up through intermediate and advanced techniques. So if you want to learn how to do birth charts, that is a great way to do it.
And one really great thing that just happened, I just got it yesterday, is the Russian translation of my book actually just came out and I just received the print version in the mail last night. And it’s amazing. It’s the very first time my book has been translated into another language. There’s a few other people that are working on other translations into Japanese and Portuguese and a few other languages, but this is the first one that’s actually happened. And he actually did a really, really good job, I was super happy and super impressed and super happy to work with the translator of the book who’s name is Mikael Medved. And you can find more information, I put a link to his website on my website at hellenisticastrology.com/book, and if you just scroll down the page you’ll see a little link where you can find out more information if you happen to speak Russian or know any astrologers who do you can get them a copy of the book. He already sold out the first print run, it was so popular, but he’s going to do a new print run soon and he’s taking orders. So yeah, just check out hellenisticastrology.com/book for more information about that, and you can get a copy of yourself. Either of you speak Russian?
KS: Nope.
AC: Nyet.
KS: (Laughing) Very clever, I see what you did there! Hey, I know this is very far into next year, but I just want to grab you both briefly on this because I won’t be here again, until then, at least. I’ve seen the preliminary schedules for some of the conferences happening next year. Austin, I saw your name at one and haven’t looked at the other one in detail, but I think we’re all going to be at one together next year?
AC: NORWAC, I’m signed up.
KS: Yeah, I’ll be at NORWAC too. Chris, are you gonna be there?
CB: I actually just had to pull out just cause my health has gotten worse in the past few weeks, so I’m not going to be speaking at NORWAC or the ISAR conference. I’m definitely going to be at the ISAR conference because it’s here in Denver, so I’ll make an appearance and hang out with people. NORWAC is kind of undecided, but I know both of those are actually going to be amazing conferences. I know Lisa’s going to be speaking at both and also doing a workshop and it’s going to be amazing having astrologers there in person again.
The group that was organizing ISAR came out a few weeks ago to Denver and I got to hang out with, like, Sam Reynolds and Laura Nalbandian and Nicholas Polimenakos and a few other people in person and it just felt so good to meet up with other astrologers in person again. I think those conferences are going to be really amazing.
KS: Yeah. They are. That’s great! Well, Austin I’ll see you at NORWAC, and Chris you’ll be at ISAR.
CB: Yes, for sure. And NORWAC is norwac.net, I believe, right?
KS: I think so, I have to quickly double-check.
CB: Okay. And then people can find out more about the ISAR conference by, I think it’s isarastrology.com. Those are going to be the two big, major, in-person astrology events next year. Are you giving workshops and keynotes and everything, Kelly?
KS: I’m giving a keynote and a workshop at NORWAC, but I noticed Austin is doing quite the workshop at NORWAC as well.
AC: Oh, yeah, it’s going to be busy.
KS: It’s going to be huge!
AC: I’m doing the ‘Kelly Surtees schedule’ of a workshop and two lectures.
KS: You go! But your workshop is in quite a premier position, the day before the day before. It’s quite a privileged spot.
AC: Well, it is the day of Jupiter.
KS: Yes, nicely done. Congratulations.
CB: Awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing both of you in person again, then next year, if all goes according to plan and everything goes well, that’ll be fun to have everybody together again.
KS: It will be amazing.
AC: It will be awesome.
CB: Cool. Alright. Well, I guess that’s it for this episode of the Astrology Podcast. Thank you both for joining me today. This was a lot of fun.
AC: Yeah, it was a real pleasure.
KS: Thank you guys!
CB: Alright, and thank you to everyone who attended the live audience of patrons. This has been great, and I appreciate all your comments. Thanks everyone for your support. Please be sure to like this video on YouTube, subscribe and drop a comment below. Otherwise, we’ll see you again next month for the forecast for November. So good luck and we’ll see you again next time. Goodbye!
AC: Goodbye!
KS: Goodbye!
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