The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 337, titled:
February 2022 Astrology Forecast
With Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, and special guest co-host Patrick Watson
Episode originally released on January 27, 2022
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Mary Sharon
Transcription released January 29, 2022
Copyright © 2022 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey, my name is Chris Brennan and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, we’re going to be looking at the astrological forecast for February of 2022. Joining me today are astrologers Austin Coppock and special guest co-host Patrick Watson. Welcome, guys.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey.
PATRICK WATSON: Hi, thanks for having me.
CB: All right. I’m gonna do a little bit of an overview of the forecast for February and just give you a quick snapshot for those watching the beginning of the video, and then we’ll get into a deep dive of the astrology of the next four weeks right after that. So first, here’s our planetary alignments calendar which shows the astrology overview of February. Right at the top of the month, we have a new Moon in the sign of Aquarius on the first of February. Then two days later Mercury stations direct, ending its three-week retrograde period through the signs of Aquarius and Capricorn. Then about a week or so later, Mercury moving forward again ingresses into the sign of Aquarius on the 14th. Then we have a Leo full Moon on the 16th. The same day, Venus conjoins Mars in Capricorn. The next day on the 17th, Jupiter sextiles Uranus, then the Sun goes into Pisces on the 18th. There’s a few other things that we’ll talk about later in the episode but that’s the major stuff for this month. Here’s the planetary movements calendar that shows where in the Zodiac the planets will start at the beginning of the month, and how far through the signs they’ll get by the end of the month. All right. Welcome. Welcome, Patrick. This is a fun trio because we actually go way back, all of us first met at Project Hindsight. I think at one of the first conclaves in like 2006 or something, right?
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
PW: Yeah. Well, I met Chris in person in 2006. I didn’t know that our Austin was barren. [laughs] Sorry if I gave that away. And then 2007, Summer 2007, it was like the second phase conclave where we met in person, Austin, for the first time.
AC: Really?
PW: Yeah. Summer 2007.
AC: I swear I met you at the first one. I thought I met you before Kate.
PW: Oh, maybe. Maybe so. I guess I’ll have to try to remember better. [laughs]
AC: The experiences blend together.
PW: I suppose so. Yeah. 2006-2007
CB: Well, regardless, this is Patrick’s first time joining us for a forecast episode. We have done some pretty legendary- We did a collaboration a few years back when we did the Saturn in Capricorn episode, which actually turned out really well in retrospect and in terms of some of our predictions if people want to go back and listen to some of that.
AC: Let me just say that the dire tone which we were trying to manage and yet absolutely snuck through anyway, ended up being on the nose.
CB: Right.
AC: [laughs] It itched well as a good Saturn podcast should, right?
PW: Yeah, for sure.
CB: Yeah, it was good in the lead-up to the Saturn-Pluto stuff. Speaking of, we’ve had a lot of Capricorn action going on over the past month. We’re getting towards the tail end this week as we’re recording this today on January 25th, 2022 starting a few minutes ago, probably at like 1:13 pm in Denver, Colorado and this is the 337th episode of the show. We are getting ready to wind down and end the Venus retrograde. Mercury is also just over halfway through its cycle of retrograding and is about to go back into Capricorn, and then we just had the ingress of Mars into Capricorn, where it’s heating up and will heat up in this month of February a lot of the same areas of the zodiac and of different people’s birth charts as Venus was just going through most of the past month. Why don’t we start first by doing a little bit of review, since we’re now towards the end of the Venus retrograde and we’re in the post Venus retrograde shadow period of how that’s been going. Have you guys seen some interesting stories in terms of Venus retrograde?
AC: I have one. So that Venus retrograde conjunct Pluto was right on an angle for me. And I’m in a Capricorn perfection and so I expected it to matter. [laughs] We spent most of the first two weeks completely snowed in on top of our rural hill, you know, we have about a half-mile driveway with a 700-foot incline. It was the day before Christmas and we got a nice snowfall and that was beautiful. And then on Christmas, it was heavier and it just kept coming and accumulating and so it was totally impossible. It was a somewhat Venusian quarantine, entrapment, whatever, imprisonment. Because it was just Kate and I are having a nice Christmas. And then the day after and then the day after and then the day after we’re like, “Okay, it’d be great to get food for the cats.” And I have one fun memory from that. I hiked down the ice and snow-bound driveway a couple of times up and down in order to get supplies that someone was able to drop off at the bottom of the road. So now I can actually say I taught my children what we had to do. I literally did the walking through the snow and up a hill.
CB: And they’ll be like, “But Dad, didn’t you have drones that would fly groceries back and forth from the Amazon warehouse?” And you’re like, “No, son, I had to walk to the end of the driveway.” [Patrick laughs] Yeah, I like that. All right, so I did want to show a graphic that I got from [Stella Graffia] from Reddit who personalized this for me. This is a Venus retrograde graphic that shows where Venus stationed retrograde later in Capricorn at 26° on December 19th, and then where it retrograded back to at on 29th of January when it stations direct and stations at 11° of Capricorn and then based on that, what other degrees of different signs that it’s aspecting based on the major Ptolemaic aspects during that time. I’m mentioning this because all of February even though the Venus retrograde has just ended, Venus is going to be in its post retrograde shadow phase throughout the entirety of February all the way until March 1st. So it’s still going to be retreading over a third time some of those same degrees and as a result of that, some of the circumstances and events surrounding this may still be being wrapped up or brought to completion or reaching some sort of sense of finality over the course of February.
PW: I remembered my story. So one thing about Venus retrograde– eight years ago during the Venus retrograde of 2014, that was when my son was born. He was born during the Venus retrograde so now he has just had his birthday, he’s gone through his first venous return with Venus being retrograde in Capricorn in the same sign that it was in the time of his birth. This is his first Venus return so I was kind of curious to see what would happen because he has Venus retrograde natively. And basically, it was his first crush. [laughs] That’s the biggest thing that I kind of got out of just observing him in this time, is I sort of saw that he kind of developed a little bit of a crush. Yeah, that was that’s one thing I sort of recall from my personal life about Venus retrograde. So I anticipate that age 16 should be pretty interesting, you know, the next one. But the other thing just sort of in the news that I thought was very Venus retrograde-y is this incessant focus on Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox. Apparently, they just got engaged and he gave her a ring which would hurt her if she took it off, which I thought was, you know, that’s a bit of Venus-Pluto for my taste. [laughs] So the fact that there’s been this sort of focus on this strange couple and having this very public display of affection in this kind of almost unhealthy or extreme way, I think is very evocative of those themes of Venus and Pluto, with Venus being retrograde conjunct Pluto.
AC: Yeah, I’d like to echo that as I’ve been kind of doing my thinking and feeling and observing yet another Venus retrograde. The way that Venus retrograde has a way of folding pleasure into pain and pain into pleasure. I did a little, I wouldn’t call it a ritual, but I just kind of sat for a couple hours and wrote my thoughts out during the Cazimi. And that was one of the biggest themes, it was the taking all of your joys and all of your sorrows and recognizing that it’s one thing, right? They’re coming from the same place. It’s the same wavelength of experience. That felt pretty profound. And so I think that the combination, especially with the Venus retro in Capricorn, of binding with a ring and then that’s a promise but it’s also pain, etc, etc. That feels like the kind of the stupid Machine Gun Kelly version of a very real theme. [Patrick laughs] No offense to Machine Gun Kelly fans out there.
PW: Or, a lot of offense. [laughs] I also was just reminded of the fact that Kim Kardashian also finalized the divorce from Kanye West and there’s been a lot of drama about that because apparently, Kanye West decided to buy a house across the street from where Kim Kardashian lives. And this is just obviously not a healthy way to process a breakup.
CB: He also recently released a song we talked about punching Pete Davidson who is his ex-wife’s now new love interest, which is another funny Venus retrograde conjunct Pluto thing.
PW: Right. And isn’t Kanye West now dating Julia Fox. I don’t know, I’ve just seen a lot of interesting headlines about them. She’s quite a character it seems. We’re definitely seeing some interesting new unions being formed in this time with these people who I guess unfortunately for better or worse– probably worse– atavistic of this Venus-Pluto complex.
CB: Yeah. Well, I’m quickly pulling up charts because I was just curious where the Venus retrograde hearing that Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox got engaged was making me wonder where that’s hitting in their chart. Both of them actually do have Capricorn placements pretty heavily, which is actually pretty striking, because Megan Fox is an astrologer and mentions astrology a lot over the course of the past decade and various interviews. And even in a movie, an astrology bit got cut from a movie, This is 40, but I was just watching it the other day and it’s actually kind of a funny clip. But if this time is correct, if this chart is correct, she actually has 27 Capricorn rising and so it’s stationed right around the degree of her Ascendant, which is pretty striking. And then MGK has Virgo rising, I believe, because I believe she was the one that put his birth time and his rising sign out in the past years. So being an astrologer and he has Saturn at 25 Capricorn in the fifth house, and so Saturn would have stationed on top of that, that’s kind of impressive in terms of wanting to make a long commitment or permanent commitment to somebody. So, good times.
AC: Was he 32? Did I see the 1990 birth?
CB: That appears to be correct, so just coming out of his Saturn return.
AC: I was thinking that’s the multiple of the Venus cycle.
CB: This is the fourth synodic return year.
PW: Well, at age 32 that’s when the Sun, Venus, and Mars come back to the same relative positions in the chart. So he has Venus and Mars in the seventh and here he is aged 32 [laughs] having a very Venus and Mars in the seventh type of year. So yeah, good call Austin.
CB: Yeah, that was a good example. So just in terms of the Venus-Pluto conjunction can be very intense and can be very– especially from an outside perspective– can be like, “Wow, those people are going way over the top with this, but at least internally, it can just be a very deep sense of commitment and passion and all the other things related to Venus just turned up to, you know, 200%.
PW: Well, Hades did kidnap Persephone, right? [laughs] That’s kind of-
AC: Yeah. And on that less lighthearted note, we talked about in the yearly with Lisa, the Ghislaine Maxwell trial occurred during this Venus retrograde, and then it looked like I think she was guilty of six charges and last I heard there was an issue with some juror and so it might be a mistrial, and so you might literally have to do a Venus do-over.
CB: Will she have a retrial?
AC: Yeah, there was something about one of the jurors that opens up the possibility that it’ll get overturned and they have to retrial. And, you know, the topic of abduction is very Venus-Pluto, that sort of unpleasant behaviour. Anyway, that was already a hit that we talked about last month. But having to maybe do it over again is just like double Venus retrograde.
CB: Totally. And also that she was convicted during that time, which is a good follow-up. I’m glad you mentioned that. But yeah, I mean, the Venus conjunct Pluto, one of the big themes that I noticed was bringing up past events because symbolically Venus turned around and began retracing its steps through the Zodiac as if there was unfinished business from an earlier time that must be revisited. I just kept seeing people do that like earlier time revisit something theme over and over again. And in some instances, it seemed like part of the theme for certain people when it was tied in with relationships, especially was looking back to remind yourself of not just what you left behind, but in some instances why you left it behind as a sort of refresher on why you made the right choice to leave something in the past. So obviously, there were some people that decided to resume something or not to leave it in the past but for others, it’s not always going back to something but sometimes it’s just like a reminder of what you left behind.
AC: Yeah. Okay, I just found something kind of wild or another good hit. I agree entirely with what you’re saying, Chris. It’s a nice way to say it. So as a result of the Ghislaine Maxwell stuff, Prince Andrew was basically disowned by the family and check out his chart. Does he have a Venus-Mars conjunction at the very end of Capricorn? [Patrick laughs] Right? It’s literally for Venus-Mars activity.
PW: Right. Yeah. I mean, Venus-Mars people tend to– I won’t say for all people who have this aspect, but I will say everyone who seems to get involved in this sort of problems seems to have this aspect. It’s worth noting too, that Epstein himself was born with Venus conjunct Mars in Pisces. And when you look at other people who’ve been ensnared in issues of sexual social transgressions, you see Venus conjunct Mars. The disgraced former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer had Venus conjunct Mars. Anthony Wina, who was also done in by his transgressions on Twitter by sending bad pictures to underage women, he was born with Venus conjunct Mars. There seems to be this thing with people with Venus conjunct Mars and transgressing social boundaries or sexual boundaries. So the fact that we’re having this major Venus-Mars moment, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Venus-Mars individuals like Prince Andrew and others kind of rising to the surface in this time, either committing these acts or in some way facing consequences for them.
CB: Here’s Andrew’s chart for the audio listeners. So Mars is at 27 Capricorn, Venus is at 28, and Saturn is at 14. And this is a day chart. Interestingly, that configuration is squaring his Midheaven at 22 Aries, so there’s some tension there with the career in public profile as a result.
CB: Yeah, just one thing to support or to reinforce what Patrick was saying about Venus-Mars connections in charts and that being associated with these sort of scandals; Firmicus Maternus spends about 100 pages just going off about Mars’s effect on Venus, and it gets so hyperbolic that you’re tempted to think that this guy’s crazy. It’s certainly judgy, but either he reaffirms over and over again Venus-Mars and scandal. I believe he used the term monstrous lusts, and then gets very creative with what he imagines these people might be doing. But yeah, it’s all over Firmicus.
CB: Yeah, and part of the reason we’re talking about this, this is going to be one of our ongoing themes this month because Mars, literally just yesterday on the 24th or 23rd, I believe, ingressed into Capricorn and it’s going to be pursuing Venus which is slowing down and stationing direct here at the end of January and beginning of February. But because Venus is so slow coming out of its retrograde or its direct station, Mars is in this really unique position that does not happen often where Mars actually catches up to and overtakes Venus in the middle of the month. What did you say?
PW: Ominous, really, in some ways.
CB: I mean, there’s some stuff. So Mars overtakes Venus and the principal of Mars in some way gets the better of the best to Venus in the middle of the month, especially on the 16th when that conjunction goes exact. What’s interesting though, is after that in the second half of the month, Venus starts picking up speed. She doesn’t do it while still in the same sign of Capricorn but as soon as the two change signs at the very beginning of March, Venus actually overtakes Mars. So there’s this really interesting interconnection and dance between the two of them where there’s sort of like going back and forth. You know, one is on top earlier in the month and then one is on top later on. That’ll be really interesting to see over the course of the next four weeks.
PW: Someone just said in the comments that Eliot Spitzer is in the news again because he got caught with another sex worker trying to commit violence against her. So, Jesus. I mean, this is Mars maltreating Venus, I suppose. One of the ways you could interpret it.
AC: Yeah, that’s certainly one of, you know, that happens with Mars-Venus. It doesn’t happen with every person who has Mars-Venus conjunction. Let me just flip it with some other examples. People who fight in cages, MMA people– excuse me there– some of them are fun to watch and charming and move beautifully. Some are merely effective. Of the ones that are fun, charming, move gracefully, etc, etc, a high number have Mars and Venus in the same sign. A perfect example of a fighter who’s on top now and has been for a while is Israel Adesanya who has Mars Venus at the end of Leo, and has been accused of no wrongdoing and is super fun and charming and effective. This brings up a principle that’s probably worth us talking about, because we’ve just got Mars-Venus literally all month, and so thinking about the different ways they interplay is probably helpful. So while Mars contradicts some of Venus’s desires, Venus’s help can be very helpful for Mars. And with Israel, you can say, “Well, you already got to fight in a cage. But you can make it fun and be charming and make money while doing it.” And as I’ve looked at this for elections, I’ve tended to think, “Well, it’s not so great for Venus, but this is actually in some senses, this is bonifying Mars.” So Mars is actually going to get it done 30 in Capricorn already exalted, but with a little grace and panache.
CB: Yeah, I’m looking for some other prominent, through my files, I just did a search in Solar Fire for some prominent Venus-Mars conjunctions within five degrees and it came up with people like Vincent van Gogh who had it in Pisces in the ninth house just off of the Midheaven, Charlie Chaplin, Bruce Lee– there’s another fighting example for you, Austin. Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Amy Winehouse, and Donald Glover is another good real example. He has that one in Leo.
AC: Well, and Dwayne The Rock Johnson, I believe, is in the news. I saw something this morning. People were talking about wanting him to run for president or whatever. It’s just coincidental, I don’t know much about it. I don’t often hear of Dwayne The Rock Johnson but it came up this morning when I was looking at the news.
CB: Yeah. So to break it down symbolically, though. I mean, one of the nice things about Venus-Mars conjunctions is just that interplay and sometimes a balance between form and function, and between the overt principles of going out and getting something versus the other principle of standing back and waiting for something to come to you. Sometimes the delicate balance between those two impulses that we all have inside of us, and sometimes when you go too far in one direction or too far in the other direction and the challenge of seeking a balance between those two, I think that’s part of the interplay that we’re going to see over the course of the next four weeks.
PW: Someone just noted in the comments that Kanye West is also a Venus-Mars conjunction native. I forgot about that in Taurus.
AC: And you can see with a number of these examples, one thing that none of these people, heroes, villains, and everybody in-between lacks is passion. Right? Venus-Mars always brings passion. It can bring intemperate, intemperate, and destructive passions, but it can bring other types as well.
CB: Yeah, passion and appreciation for the sensual and sensuality. But one of the things with these random chart examples that we brought up did really demonstrate, just to bring things full circle, is that this graph works really well. Like if you have planets in these degrees, especially near the stationary degrees, then this Venus retrograde was probably important for you or is important for you for some reason that may not even be clear yet. But sometimes once you get out of these things, especially once we wrap up the post shadow phase by the end of the month and it makes its third exact hit to some of these degrees, then I think the Venus retrograde should be more clear. Especially with the Mars ingress recently moving in. I did horoscopes this month, I wasn’t sure if I was going to do them, but it really helped me to crystallise some of these mundane transits by thinking about them in terms of, you know, what whole sign house relative to the Ascendant was Venus retrograde in? And then as soon as Mars ingressed, I just went into the same house, so it’s just doubling up on and re-asserting and calling for some divisive or decisive action when it comes to the same topics. For some people, that may be challenging, for other people it may actually be a very productive time of getting certain things done and making a choice between two different things. So I think it would be good for people to think of it in that context as well this month.
PW: Someone else just said in the comments that they have Venus and Mars conjunct the Sun, and that they helped employees stop sexual harassment at work and litigate sexual harassment lawsuits. I think that speaks to another more positive interpretation of Mars and Venus that it still intersects with this topic of social transgressions but instead of committing them, it’s about sort of policing them and regulating them.
AC: Yeah, that the lifestyle has an intersection with that topic even if the native is not performing the activity.
PW: There you go.
CB: Yeah. Speaking of boundary transgressions, I think that was a key word that you used earlier, Patrick that made me laugh a little bit because it made me think of what’s happening in the news right now with Russia. Of course, all the astrologers are very interested in this because this Venus retrograde in Capricorn happens every eight years in roughly the same spot of the Zodiac. So if you take it back eight years around this time of the year, Venus is also retrograde and that was, of course, when Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine previously. So we’re seeing an interesting repetition of that, or what seems to be, or what everyone thinks is a build up to a repetition of that with another potential invasion of some sort.
PW: Right, I looked back at the previous Venus-Mars conjunctions that were close to the degrees of the upcoming ones in relation to Russia and it’s really interesting because there was the Venus retrograde conjunction in Capricorn in 1994. And that was when the Kremlin accords were signed or were being negotiated where basically, Ukraine agreed that they would hand over their nuclear arsenal to Russia. It was kind of a time of de-escalation in some ways, which is interesting because everything right now seems to be amping up towards escalation. So one of my hopes is that maybe the conjunction from Venus will soothe this separative Mars to some extent. Of course, it could also represent a potential circling back around to sort of, you know, going from these times of de-escalation right after the Cold War ended towards, you know, making up for it or repairing what was sort of broken. Which kind of ties back to something that Putin has said about the fall of the Soviet Union, right? He says it’s this big tragedy and has to be sort of undone in some sense.
CB: Yeah, that was what I kept coming back to because I had three questions as I was researching this astrologically. Which is one, why was the sign Capricorn seemed to be important for Russia with that Venus retrograde years ago coinciding with the annexing of the Crimea, and then why is this current retrograde in Capricorn again, coinciding with the build-up? Especially, it seems like if it does happen, it’ll happen when not just Venus has just stationed directing Capricorn, but also Mars has ingressed into Capricorn, and Mercury will also retrograde back into and station direct in Capricorn this month. So one of my questions is why is Capricorn important for Russia? Two, why is this current Venus retrograde cycle important for Russia? And three, what is the relevance of the Saturn-Neptune cycle which is a separate thing that’s going to complete in a few years for Russia? A lot of astrologers famously think back to- There were some predictions that were made in the early 1980s by astrologers, for example, in a book on Mundane Astrology by Nick Campion and Charles Harvey and Michael Baigent where they predicted the downfall of the Soviet Union under the triple conjunction of Uranus, Neptune and Saturn at the end of the ’80s in Capricorn around 1989. Of course, that is when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union started to disintegrate over the course of the next couple of years. That was also in the sign of Capricorn. It’s interesting that there’s something about that. And when I was researching and reading Nick Campion’s Book of World Horoscopes, he had a bunch of charts for Russia. And the earliest 20th-century charts did not feature Capricorn prominently really at all. It wasn’t major in terms of the revolution in 1917 or anything else. But when it did become important was with the breakup of the Soviet Union in the late 80s and early 90s and you just see a tonne of repetition of Capricorn placements not just with outer planets, but sometimes with inner planets and luminaries like the Sun and the Moon. So I think what’s happening actually with these two Venus retrogrades that we’ve experienced with Venus going retrograde in Capricorn harkens back to that statement that Putin made in 2005 where he called the collapse of the Soviet Union a major geopolitical disaster of the century or the major geopolitical disaster of the century. I’m not sure if the translation’s right. It made me realise that what it is is Venus is going back in this instance, because part of what he’s doing is he’s going back and trying to reclaim and reintegrate some territories that used to be part of the Soviet Union before they broke up. That’s the going back and reconciling something theme that’s coming out here with the Venus retrograde in both instances in Capricorn. That’s why it relates back to Capricorn because that’s the signs that were so active and so emphasized at the breakup of the Soviet Union, so he’s trying to put something back together that was broken apart previously.
PW: Saturn-Neptune conjunction cycle goes further back, if you want to tell us about those Saturn-Neptune conjunctions?
CB: Yeah, so I was talking to Nick Dagan Best and he had done a lot of work on this. Both of you have looked into that as well, right?
AC: Oh, yeah.
PW: Yeah.
AC: I mean, you can just kind of tell the whole story of the Soviet Union with Saturn-Neptune conjunctions. Like, beginning, Stalin dies in the middle, and then end. There were three- Literally, those are the three biggest events. In the beginning, the death of the first big leader. And then you can half it and quarter it, the Soviet history just tracks perfectly with the Saturn-Neptune cycle.
PW: Right. Your basis, to sort of take you through it, 1917 that was the Bolshevik revolution that was under a Saturn-Neptune conjunction. The next one was 1953, that was the year Stalin died. It also happened to be the year Putin was born. So, Putin was born under the same Saturn-Neptune conjunction that Stalin died under. And then the Soviet Union broke up in 1989. So naturally, everyone’s looking ahead to 2026. You know, and there’s any number of possibilities about what that could mean for Russia.
AC: Let’s just say that it’s like the Uranus in Gemini for the United States. It looks very different every time, but it’s very significant both at the time and sets a direction that last for decades to come. It’s just like a key inflection point.
PW: Right.
CB: Yeah, for sure. It’ll be very interesting to see what happens over the course of the next month because the Mars ingress is now going to speed up and bring some greater tension and quicken the pace of events in the same sign that it’s integrated into where Venus was already retrograding, all this stuff. It’ll be very interesting to see what happens over the course of the next few weeks. Let’s leave it at that. I did want to pull up, I have another diagram that shows the Mercury retrograde as well, which, even though we’re coming out of it, that’s one of the things that’s ending when Mercury stations direct on February 3rd. It’s stationing direct at 24° of Capricorn pretty closely conjunct Pluto. But that’s also going to be emphasizing the Capricorn area of the chart, and then it’s post retrograde shadow period is not going to end until February 24th once it passes 10° of Aquarius, because that was the degree that it stationed retrograde at. So some of that is still going to be operative all the way through the first three weeks of the month in terms of at least not having it as intense as when you’re in the middle of the Mercury retrograde, but there’s still some cleanup stuff that’s happening over the course of that few-week period and a post retrograde shadow.
AC: Yeah, there’s something I wanted to say about that and a couple other things. Just the beginning of the month. The month begins, Venus just stationed direct, and then Mercury stations direct during the first week of February. But both have a fair way to go to climb out of from their descent, and so we’re in that sort of, you know, one week apart stagger like, “Okay, now it’s direct, but they’re both slow and they need a little time to get moving.”
CB: Yeah, sort of the hangover phase almost is what I call it sometimes.
AC: I wish Mercury retrogrades were partying and getting drunk.
CB: Yeah. I mean, it depends on what kind of people you’re hanging out with. But yeah, I guess Pluto is not the soberest. Well, Pluto is actually much more sober than if it was a Mercury retrograde conjunct Neptune or something like that.
PW: Right. One thing, we don’t have to go into too much detail about it, but one thing I’ve just sort of noticed about Mercury-Pluto conjunctions especially when Mercury is retrograde around Pluto, is that it seems to describe times of consequential announcements. Like the disclosure of private information or secret information, espionage. It also at least in the political sphere, it’s also coincided with times of defections and bipartisan activities where you get sort of turncoats or people who turn on their own, in some sense. And that has some pretty obvious connections to like the nature of Mercury being more ambiguous, being a sort of a trickster figure, or duplicitous figure at times as well.
AC: That makes perfect sense. It’s like Mercury’s totally an agent. Right?
PW: Right. It’s not a comprehensive list or anything, but there were just a few times where it took just a few people from one side voting one particular way to have kind of a big impact on things. For example, all the way back in the ’80s when Reagan nominated Robert Bork to go on the Supreme Court. On that day, that was the day that I was born, Mercury’s retrograde conjunct Pluto. And that was when six GOP members joined the Democrats in voting down Bork. So that was pretty huge, you know, and even that term Borking is still used like a verb to sort of signify this sort of betrayal or something, or unfairly attacking someone or something like that. And then, interestingly, in December of 1998, that was when Democrats joined with the GOP to impeach Clinton. It was successful, ultimately, but it took a few turncoats. That was when Mercury was conjunct Pluto and this is interesting as well because Clinton himself was born with Mercury conjunct Pluto. Then you see a few other things involving Clinton with Mercury-Pluto conjunctions. In January of 2005, he teamed up with W. Bush for Haiti earthquake relief. Actually, W. Bush was also born with a Mercury-Pluto conjunction, so you see these two presidents from two parties who are sort of coming together, transcending the boundaries, crossing that sort of threshold.
CB: Bush Sr was also the head of the CIA at one point, which is a nice little Mercury-Pluto thing.
PW: I didn’t know that H.W. Bush had the Mercury-Pluto conjunction, but W. has the Mercury-Pluto conjunction.
CB: All right.
PW: And there was another time, I actually think that it was January 2010, that W. Bush teamed up with- It was actually in 2005 that Clinton teamed up with H.W. Bush for, I think an Indian Ocean relief effort. That was also at a Mercury-Pluto conjunction. There are a few other ones, probably the most recent one was from 2016. In December right after the election, there was this movement among some members from the electoral college to get people to overturn or to alter their vote from what the electoral vote was at the time of the 2016 election, the so-called faithless electors, the electoral college tried to persuade the fellow electors to switch away from Trump and what ended up happening at the Mercury-Pluto conjunction itself when Mercury was retrograde and conjunct Pluto, they actually had a few Democratic electors defecting away from Hillary, even though she wasn’t in contention to win at that point anyway. So I guess the theme of Mercury-Pluto conjunction, especially when Mercury is kind of acting irregularly, we seem to see just crossovers and defections and unusual alliances forming. And I would think that– to your point about Ghislaine Maxwell and that trial and everything– one of the question marks right now is that just a few days ago, Ghislaine Maxwell said that she has stopped trying to keep the so-called eight John Doe’s names from being kept secret. And so everyone’s kind of waiting on bated breath to hear what are those names gonna be, and I think that announcement will probably come when Mercury finally stations direct. I imagine that would be when the judge sort of makes the official order to make some of these names public. That would potentially cause the supporters of those people, if they’re somehow implicated as being involved in some of these crimes, you might see their supporters turn on them. You might see some crossing of party lines and people condemning the figures who are brought up in that disclosure.
CB: Yeah, disclosures was a major theme that we talked about last fall when Mercury stationed square Pluto. And what was that that came out? It wasn’t the Pandora Papers but it was the other one.
AC: It was the Pandora Papers.
CB: Okay, yeah.
PW: The Panama Papers came out under a different Mercury retrograde. And so this is especially interesting with Ghislaine Maxwell because she was born with Gemini rising with Mercury in Capricorn. So clearly, this Mercury retrograde going back into Capricorn is going to be… There’ll be some sort of pronouncement or announcement or leak or something that communicates something which was previously considered too volatile and too charged to be public.
CB: Yeah, or something that was just hidden or buried for some reason. So in terms of dates, we’re talking about this because right in the first week on the 3rd, Mercury stations direct in Capricorn pretty close to Pluto, but then it’s the following week that the exact conjunction between Mercury and Pluto, the third exact conjunction because we’ve had two already, takes place on the 11th of February. And then this whole conjunction probably isn’t over until Mercury departs from Capricorn and moves into Aquarius the following week on February 14th, where we have a very romantic-looking Mercury ingress into Aquarius on Valentine’s Day.
AC: Well, some of us have Venus in Aquarius, Chris.
CB: Okay. I’m not knocking it. I’m trying to think of how does a Mercury in Aquarius communicate love and affection on Valentine’s Day?
PW: Binary. Through binary code, 0111.
CB: Binary? Yeah, that’s a good one. Through like a robot or something.
PW: Through a code. Through Morse code.
AC: Through astrology.
CB: Oh, yeah. Through astrology intellectually. That makes sense. All right. That’s good for the Mercury stuff. I’d like to touch base, unless there’s any other review stuff because we’re going back and forth between some past and some future since we’re in the middle of cycles that are carrying over from the past and that we’ve seen part of playout already and that will carry forward into the future. I know, there was one thing you wanted to touch on, Austin, which is just things that we meant to say in The Year Ahead Forecast that we forgot to or didn’t.
AC: Yeah, because we had some sort of debriefing afterwards and we were like, “Shit, we should have talked about blank.” I don’t remember all of them. You brought up one, which was the continuing of the labor struggle themes, the unionization. Which we talked about all last year but somehow forgot to talk about during the actual yearly.
CB: Yeah, because that was a major Saturn-Uranus theme that we kept seeing come up over and over again, and then did actually come up again even more at the end of December, very close to the third and final exact Saturn-Uranus square. But we’ve continued to see things having to do with labor and unions, and some of the tensions between employers and employees and different things like that be relevant. And I think we’re going to continue to see that especially over the course of this year, especially later this year when that square comes back into being operative again in the third quarter, because we know it’s going to come back within about a degree around September and October. But even before then, because Uranus keeps getting supercharged this year due to the nodes and the eclipses and other things like that. We may see it popping up around those times as well.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. Over the last month and a half, there were a number of events. I know one thing that I kept seeing was information coming out about how poorly a lot of the Amazon workers were, you know, I never assumed that Bezos was doing right by everybody but there were a lot of relatively shocking cases of negligence or even cruelty.
PW: Wasn’t there a tornado that was threatening a warehouse and they told them to stay there and then people died and the tornado ripping the warehouse apart? And they were to text their loved ones, they weren’t sure they were gonna make it. I don’t know how that didn’t have a bigger impact. Someone brought up a really- Yeah, tornadoes in the warehouse. That’s pretty Saturn-Uranus. Someone wrote something up in the chat that I thought was kind of interesting. They said, “Do you think the Saturn-Uranus square is relevant to the great resignation?” I think that Saturn is relevant. I kind of got more of an impression of that from Saturn and Aquarius since that happened so close to the beginning of the pandemic when a lot of people for the first time were given the opportunity to pause on their work and decide whether or not they wanted to do it, and of course Saturn is the planet of No. It’s really interesting that in the US we have this phenomenon of the Great Resignation, but also in China at the same time, Chinese millennials they’re calling it the Lie Down Movement. Which is basically the same idea, same sort of thing. They’re getting burnt out by these extraordinary schedules being placed on them and they decided that they’d rather lie down rather than work.
AC: And they take hilarious pictures and put them on social media of just doing nothing, like in the middle of different locations.
PW: Yeah, this is really kind of an interesting connecting bridge between overworked US and Chinese millennials as they’re both participating in this Saturnian movement to just stop.
CB: I’ve seen on Reddit, there’s this one subreddit that’s become huge over the course of the past year in 2021 called r/antiwork. It says, “A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.” It has 1.7 million subscribers on that subreddit alone. It keeps hitting the front page which is the only reason I know about it because I keep seeing it on the front page of Reddit semi-regularly over the past 12 months.
PW: It’s hilarious some of the pictures. [laughs]
CB: So what is it about the symbolism? What is the symbolism, and can we pick that apart a little bit of Saturn square Uranus of why this is showing up so clearly when it comes to labor and work-related issues, or what are the themes that we can take from that that might be applicable to other spheres of people’s lives?
AC: I have a couple reads on it. One, I think Patrick’s right in that it is also just Saturn in Aquarius, right? And Saturn would like to not move, thank you very much. Slow, heavy, the least happy to move of any of the planets, and it just has associations with that. And then the Aquarius side of Saturn, when we’re looking at the Aquarius side you often see the sort of boundariness that you always get with Saturn. But by going away, crossing the wall so that you know whatever is on the other side, a lot of times with Capricorn we get more of, “I’m stuck inside the walls,” and Saturn-Aquarius is more, “I’m going to be stuck outside where I’m going to exile myself.” And then with Uranus and Taurus, it’s also a theme. Labors a theme in and of itself, and I think the Uranian shocks to Saturn are bringing about what are Saturnian significations really quickly. And the changed chaotic circumstances have pushed trends that were already there. Almost all of this stuff was already there, all of the things that people are getting fed up with. It’s just that it got put on fast forward by Uranus.
PW: I would also say that yeah, Uranus is the great destabiliser. Uranus is disruption and so the consequences of people saying no, that Saturnian superpower of saying No, it comes with risks. It comes with, you know, the loss of livelihood. And I think that Uranus’s square to Saturn shows that dynamic of saying no at a cost, or taking some risk in doing so. Then the consequences of that is that places are understaffed and that there are sort of continuing supply chain issues and all these things. So that’s how I see how it’s related to Saturn-Uranus, to see Uranus is disrupting the status quo in this regard. And because of people’s insistence that a new agreement or new standards are observed for people’s dignity, for people’s livelihoods, and so forth.
CB: Yeah, and also with Saturn and Uranus you’re seeing the status quo, and that’s Saturn and just what happens when you have an entrenched status quo and you have a power differential between two groups and one group is really happy with the status quo and is profiting from it or is gaining from it for some reason and wants to keep things the same, versus you have another group that maybe is at a disadvantage over time with that situation and wants it to change. Sometimes when those two can’t come into an agreement or are so far out of alignment, they reach a pivotal breaking point where the Uranian side especially wants to rebel and wants to reject everything. And seeing some of these protests and picket lines and stuff, there’s like a local grocery store here in Colorado right now where they’ve gone on strike. And strikes have become like a major recurring theme over the past few months of people just completely grinding the entire system to a halt and banding together in solidarity and forming alliances in order to force the establishment to make a change that they’re reluctant to, that they don’t want to do, but eventually through those sort of alliances are able to force some sort of change by creating a completely untenable situation where the entire structure of everything could just fall apart and go away if there isn’t some sort of change that’s made. And so in distilling it down to that, I can also see how sometimes that’s happening in people’s personal lives where the Saturn thing is something that’s been that way for so long that it doesn’t seem like it’s something that can change or that you want to change or that you’re willing to put effort into changing. But then something comes along that forces it because it creates such a disruption and a destabilization that you can’t but give in to some level of change of some extent, sometimes minorly and sometimes really major disruptions and changes. But something has to change and there’s a situation that comes up that forces that.
PW: Yeah, I’d say the dark side of this dynamic as well as probably the way in which Uranus can push back into sort of extremes or to go beyond the bounds for reasonable bounds, and so I think it’s interesting to see how like a lot of the anti-mosque movements and protests have been seemingly sort of getting louder and being more amplified. That is sort of taking that Saturnian principle of rejection to an absurd degree, you know? Even in the face of a pandemic, you know, sort of rejecting common sense methods to reduce the spread of transmissible virus. [laughs] Yeah, sort of holding to that, cutting the nose off to spite the face, basically.
CB: So it’s like the idealization of the rebellious principle or the idealization of the person that breaks away from the crowd and goes against the status quo, even in instances where maybe that’s not as impressive as it might seem to some people.
AC: Yeah, I think that fundamentally Saturn-Uranus drive each other crazy. If you have somebody who’s very Uranian, freedom is high among their ideals and virtues, they want to be able to experiment, they don’t want to be told how to do everything. And you stick them in a room with Saturn, who’s like, “No. No. There’s a right way to do things. It’s important to follow the rules,” that Uranian person is going to be driven crazy. And if you have Saturnian person, he’s like, “No, no, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this. Let’s do it slowly, carefully, and according to protocol.” They want that and there’s a Uranian person constantly challenging them like, “Yeah, but what if we do it this way? Have you thought about it this way?” It’s gonna drive the Saturnian person nuts. And so that’s part of just the dynamic with Saturn-Uranus. It’s hard enough to get them to agree when they’re in a trine, but when they’re in a hard aspect, they just drive each other nuts.
CB: Right, totally.
AC: [laughs] And so historically, and also natively for those who have it, you know, we sometimes get cast as the diplomat or the negotiator between two archetypally conflicted personages or energies.
CB: Yeah. Speaking of that, I think that’s a good segue to talk about our very first lunation, which activates that square and that is super early in the month. It’s a little bit on the border, depending on your timezone. Here in Denver in Mountain Time, it’s on the 31st of January but on the East Coast time, it’s early on February 1st that we have a new Moon at 12° of Aquarius. What’s interesting is that it’s separating from the square with Uranus, both luminaries are, which is at 10° of Taurus. And then immediately after the conjunction, both luminaries apply to the conjunction with Saturn at 15° of Aquarius. So in some way, this lunation is very much activating that square and it’s kind of stuck in between a rock and a hard place in terms of those two energies but moving from the Uranian and heading towards the Saturnian.
PW: One of the things I’ve sort of noticed with like new Moons, full Moons, you know, in conjunctional lights to Saturn or other planets, is you often can see what the mood is by like the memes that are circulating around that time. I’m reminded of last year when we had the Sun-Saturn conjunction at the inauguration. The big meme of that time was that grim-faced Bernie Sanders with his coat on sitting in the cold and looking all serious. And people sort of took this very Saturnian image and made it into comedic gold. And so I would assume that with both luminaries coming to conjoin Saturn and that frosty sign of Aquarius once more, that we might see some meme arise in that time around those days that focuses on the way people look when they’re sad or old, or something like that. Because there was a similar sort of meme when the Moon was conjunct, like a huge pile-up in Capricorn and Saturn, where people were posting photos of themselves with this app that aged them by however many years they set. So everyone was posting these pictures of themselves as old people under this big Moon-Saturn, which I thought was just kind of hilarious. So I would wonder if there would be some kind of evolution on that theme with this new Moon.
AC: So, did you just prophesy that a new meme shall arise? [Patrick laughs]
CB: The meme prophet.
PW: Yeah. I guess so. Yeah, that is my prediction. That there will be a meme which fits the themes of that Sun-Moon-Saturn lineup.
CB: That’s the 21st-century version of the three wise men. The three wise men, like…
PW: [laughs] I mean, I’m not saying it’s like the Jesus of memes but yeah, I think that there’ll be some meme that goes around that encapsulates those themes of like saying No or shutting someone down or being cold or being sort of grouchy and saddening. It’ll be something like that. I wish I could be more precise, you know, maybe if you dug into like the [00:57:11 Dwads and Dickens] and everything, you might be able to get some more detail on that. But I’m afraid that’s the most I could say about it. [laughs]
CB: Even memes aside like last year, you mentioned that meme and the picture of Bernie Sanders came out of the inauguration. But that inauguration itself was like the most locked down inauguration ever where there were just fences and military and that place was much more sparse than it’s ever been. There’s usually huge crowds and everything. Part of the reason is it was coming off of the coup attempt on January 6th when there was this riot at the Capitol Building and the Capitol was whatever happened, pillaged or whatever. And so you’re coming out of that a Uranian event and then we are left with the Saturnian event of everything being on complete lockdown by the time of the inauguration two or three weeks later.
PW: Yeah, great point.
CB: So, similar themes there. Going from the Uranian and heading towards the Saturnian?
PW: Perfect.
CB: All right, so the new Moon is happening there on the first day. My election is very early in the month so I do want to mention that next. But do either of you have anything else you want to say about this lunation before we move on?
AC: Yeah. Aside from the, you know, it activates Saturn-Uranus, but very much on the Saturn side, and it’s only a few days before the sun’s perfect conjunction, the Cazimi with Saturn. It’s a moment that happens once a year and it’s really a moment of sitting with what the challenge is, like what the situation is.
CB: And that perfects on February 4th, just quickly?
AC: Yeah. And with Saturn, it’s like, “Okay, so I guess it’s this way for now.” And then of course, you then ask, “Okay, well, so what do I do about that? How do I handle that? Can that change? How does that change?” But it’s very much sitting with the structure of how things are now.
CB: Yeah, there’s a somberness or a soberness to it in the reflection on that. So, both in terms of the new Moon on the 1st as well as especially that Sun-Saturn conjunction that’s happening on February 4th.
PW: Low sentiment, I guess you could say.
CB: Yeah, and of course this is happening right as Mercury is stationing direct in Capricorn. Venus is now moving forward and Mars is quickly closing the distance to Venus. So it’s like we’re coming out of this Mercury retrograde period of some things being thrown up in the air or having to go back and revisit and revise previous things, not just with Mercury in our communications, but also with Venus and our relationships and our social contracts. And the Sun and the Moon are just coming off of this disruptive square with Uranus and so then you get this sober assessment period of how are we going to move forward from here during this first week of February?
AC: Talking about Saturn’s drying out my eyes.
CB: Yeah, I like your dynamic lighting there. We were saying before we started recording, you need like a cigarette and just some smoke going on. [Patrick laughs]
AC: I tried turning on the ring light to balance it out but it’s no match for the Sun. [ Patrick laughs]
CB: All right. Well, I do want to make sure that I mentioned our electional chart for the month because that takes place on February 2nd, 2022 at 8:15 am with Pisces rising. Let me see if I can pull that up here on the screen.
AC: Yeah, this is a nice one.
CB: Yeah, you’ve seen this chart. You’re paying attention to those Pisces rising charts this month because Mars, now that it has gotten out of Sagittarius, it’s freed up Jupiter so it’s no longer squaring Jupiter and overcoming it. But also, it’s freeing up the other immutable angles so you can do mutable signs rising without making Mars super angular by sign in the chart. So here’s an election, February 2nd at 8:15 am, we’re going to put Jupiter right on the Ascendant. So basically, just take this chart, set it for February 2nd in your location, set it for about 8:15 but then adjust the Ascendant until Jupiter is right there on the Ascendant at about seven degrees of Pisces. What you end up with is one of the best possible situations in terms of essential dignity and in terms of traditional astrology for the planet Jupiter, where Jupiter is on the Ascendant. It’s in its own sign, one of its traditional signs of Pisces, it’s in a day chart so Jupiter is fully benefic, it’s of the second favor, has no afflictions. It has a nice little sextile from Venus and Mars up there in Capricorn. The Moon is also an early Pisces and it’s applying to a conjunction with Jupiter in the rising sign or in the first whole sign house, with Jupiter also ruling the 10th house of career and reputation and public life. So this is just an amazing Jupiter election for growth, expansion, optimism, even idealism, even potentially some creative things since of course, this also has a little bit of that Jupiter, Neptune co-presence goodness which is giving a sort of idealistic bent but also potentially a creative or illusory bent if you want to create something that looks sort of dazzling in some sense. The downside of the chart, it’s not that great for friends and groups and alliances because it has Mars in the 11th house in a day chart. This is early in the month so Mercury’s still a little bit retrograde but it’s about a day and a half from stationing direct. So it’s pretty close to stationary direct so that you can use it, but just be aware of that in terms of using this chart versus another one in terms of retrogrades. It’s also still very close to the Sun-Saturn conjunction if you can try to mitigate that by putting the Midheaven sextile to the Sun and Saturn within three degrees by backing up the time just a few minutes in your location. That’s it. What do you guys think? You’re looking forward to charts like this now that Mars is out of Sagittarius, Austin?
AC: Yeah. We’ve only got so much Jupiter in Pisces, you know, you should be looking at the Moon’s monthly conjunction to Jupiter for the next four months as a starting point. There were some things I’d hoped to get together for that election but had to put off a little bit because everything’s retrograde. One thing I was just going to add to Jupiter’s significations, especially when it’s a strong Jupiter in the first or 10th, it’s just success and winning. Those are very old significations but those are things people like. You know, you’re like, “Would you like to succeed what you’re starting at this particular date? Jupiter can help.”
CB: Yeah, and that makes me think of the Hermetic lot of Jupiter, the lot of Nike which means victory. The lot of victory is Jupiter’s lot. Yeah, so Jupiter if you like victory, you might want to use this selection. Yeah, feel like winning? This is a good electrical chart. So we actually found three or four other electrical charts in February which are available in our monthly Auspicious Elections Podcast which Leisa Schaim and I just released today actually to patrons through a page on patreon.com/astrologypodcast. So if you go there and you go to the $20 tier, you will see how to get access to that recording. And if you need elections for later in the year, we also recently released our full 2022 Auspicious Elections year ahead report where we picked that one auspicious elections chart for each of the next 12 months. You can find that at chrisbrennanastrologer.com/2022elections. All right, so those are our elections.
AC: Sorry. It just occurred to me that if I had different personal tastes, I could have totally branded something with ‘auspicious’.
CB: Oh, so Austin Auspicious? Yeah.
AC: Yeah. If I wanted my brand to be [groners].
CB: We’re still looking for, you know, we could do a mug. We could do the Austin Auspicious Astrology Podcast mug. Lots of people are sending in funny pictures on Instagram and stuff receiving their mugs from me, of course, the past month through our new merch store at theastrologypodcast.com/merch. So maybe that’s your angle for the Austin mug, maybe we finally found it.
PW: Austin the Auspicious, that’s…
AC: Terrible. My mom’s side of the family just calls me Aus. I think that’s why it popped into my head.
CB: Oh man, you’re going to start some memes here that you don’t want to see the end of.
AC: Yeah, probably. I should probably shut the fuck up.
CB: Right. All right. Let’s see. We are halfway through so I should probably mention our sponsor this month as well. Our sponsor this month is this awesome little company that I found called ephemeris.co, where they make little pendant necklaces with your actual birth chart imprinted on them. So if you go to ephemeris.co, you can enter in your birth data and enter in your birth information. I worked with them because originally they did quadrant houses but I said, you know, I use whole sign houses so I couldn’t really endorse this unless you had that. And they actually were very flexible and integrated whole sign houses for me so I can get an awesome little pendant necklace with my birth chart in it. They say you can deeply connect with your birth chart and use it as a sort of daily ritual. It’s gender neutral and looks good on any outfit. If you go to their website, you see the different options for it. You can also get an engraving on the back of it, which is a cool little feature especially if you’re getting it as a gift. They also have some different birth chart reports that you can order through their website. If you want to get a 10% discount on the pendant, just enter the promo code, all one word, ASTROLOGYPODCAST (ideally, all in capital letters but I don’t think) at ephemeris.co. And if you go to ephemeris.co/necklace, it will take you right to this specific product which is their actual pendant. I thought that was pretty cool. I’ve been talking to them about some other customization options, like maybe if it just showed, for example, their default one shows all of your modern planets including Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. But if you wanted to do one that just showed the seven traditional visible planets, that would be kind of cool. Or even one where it just shows your Sun-Moon in rising might be interesting for some people as well. So they said those are some options we could talk about, which is pretty interesting and I think people should check it out.
PW: That’s cool.
AC: It would be fun if they could do square ones too, if somebody wanted to rock their medieval chart. [Patrick laughs]
CB: Oh, yeah. Like a medieval square chart or a triangle chart, or even like a Rasi chart from Indian astrology.
AC: Yeah, just like a 3×3-inch thick steel plate. But anyway, that’s cool.
CB: Yeah, the only people that would not likely want to get to this as a present is people that don’t want to share their birth chart. So the Scorpio risings in your family may not be super thrilled about that gift, but for those that do otherwise like showing it off, it’s a great astrologer gift.
AC: Yeah, that’s really funny.
CB: Yeah. All right. I think that’s good for this midway part through the show. We’ve gotten a full week, maybe a few days, maybe first half of the way into the month. So why don’t we pull up week two and see where we’re at, and maybe get a little bit further into the month. I’ve been showing the illustrations that [unintelligible 01:09:41] did for me this month or she’s been doing for the past several months for the different weeks. We’ve talked about the Sun-Saturn conjunction. The same day, there’s also a Mars-Jupiter sextile where Mars transiting through Capricorn sextiles Jupiter in Pisces. I kind of like that, that’s a little productive. It’s not super standout aspect, but it seems useful. It seems good and productive to go along with that Sun-Saturn conjunction. What do you guys think?
AC: Yeah, that reminds me of something that I made a note to talk about and then I left that notebook somewhere that I can’t find it. One, I agree that it’s useful. Because that Sun-Saturn can be a pretty demotivating sort of “it is what it is”. But Mars-Jupiter is very much- And you can do stuff about it, like that Mars in Cap energy is very willing to endure the suffering of work to change situations, and Jupiter adds both the hopeful as well as the winning quality. One of the things I wanted to say is I was thinking about this- Could leave it at the Pisces Moon, if you would? I was kind of marveling at how few signs the visible planets are in. That got me thinking about midpoints and scissor yoga. And so if we’re looking at the chart with that Sun-Saturn in the middle, that Sun-Saturn in Aquarius but we’ve got multiple planets in Pisces and we have multiple planets in Capricorn, the midpoints between the Pisces and Capricorn planets are all falling into Aquarius, making that Sun-Saturn really the centre of things. And the scissor yogas, which can be fortunate or unfortunate, are very similar to the principle of midpoints. Is that if you have at least one planet in each sign flanking a given sign, the combination of their influence affects the house in the middle. And so I was just thinking about if we take that flanking principle and that midpoint principle, almost all of the planet’s energy makes a sandwich out of that Sun-Saturn.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point and that actually ties into the concept of spear bearing in ancient astrology, especially with the Sun where if you have planets that are rising before the Sun, they announce and they kind of lead before and act as the bodyguards that run in front of the Sun. I actually was having some insomnia over the past few nights and was waking up at 5:00 am sitting there eating a snack. And I looked at the window and there was a super bright star that was rising up over the horizon just before sunrise and I was like, “What the hell is that?” And it turned out to be Venus. So this little picture for those watching the video version that I shot of Venus rising over the eastern horizon, you can actually see it– because it’s retrograded and it’s getting ready to station direct– you can actually see it as a super bright star a little bit before sunrise. You can also see Mars but it’s a little bit more dim. But these are some shots that I was able to take in my sleepless state. I even went out to the roof and took some pictures the other night, and you can just see Venus as a super bright star. So you saying that made me think of that.
AC: Yeah, yeah. And in Vedic Astrology, there are– I forget the names offhand– but there are several yogas that are just for the Sun where the qualification is that rising just before or rising just after. And in this case, we’ve got a tonne of both. I don’t have like a brilliant read on what exactly that means, but I wanted to bring it up because it seemed pretty significant.
CB: Yeah. It was significant in ancient astrology because it seems like they treated it as serving two functions. One of them is like a protective function for the Sun or for the luminaries so that they were literally protected in some way from harm, but another thing it seems like it was used for was an eminence factor when it shows up in birth charts that it indicated the birth of people that were important at the time, just like a king would have people surrounding them like advisors and Secret Service and bodyguards and stuff like that, that a person who was important would also have something like that that partially announced or herald their birth.
PW: Especially if it’s really close to the degree of the rising, when it’s actually making that rising from the beams of the Sun.
AC: Yeah. In this case, it’s one-sign separation. What was I gonna say? Yeah, I always thought of proceeding the Sun and following the Moon or following the Sun in rising and then following in certain combinations as, like it’s your entourage or it’s the entourage which opens the door and says, “Guess who’s coming?” And however many planets all sort of testify to the character of the Sun which is about to arrive. Then with the following, you have the train of followers or whatever, which also testifies to a person’s importance. And this case, it’s now announcing the Sun and Saturn together. You know, was it three planets and Pluto rising ahead and then Jupiter, Neptune, and for a few days, the Moon following behind. That’s quite the escort.
CB: Yeah, totally. Makes me think one of the, you know, hundreds of speculative interpretations about what the birth chart of Jesus would have been if the story of the astrologers in the gospel of Matthew, the Magi, was valid or true at all, was Dieter Koch published a book like 10 years ago where he argued that it was a heliacal rising of Venus and that was what the star of Bethlehem was as his speculative sort of interpretation of that. But seeing Venus rise in the Eastern horizon right now, you can really see what a spectacular thing it was just visually, and therefore why we associate Venus with beauty and aesthetics and some of the things we associated with.
AC: Yeah, when Venus is bright, it’s the brightest thing in the sky other than the Sun.
AC: Yeah, third brightest.
AC: Yeah, the greatest of the non-luminaries.
CB: It outshines other stars in the night sky so it’s literally like the most beautiful star that stands out and you’re sort of awestruck by it.
PW: This reminds me of a lot of the conversation you had with Becca Tarnas on Venus. You guys really covered that super well in your planetary series.
CB: Yeah, that was right in the middle of the planetary series, it was a really good episode on Venus. And then I concluded the planetary series surprisingly this month with Richard Tarnas in the episode on Pluto, which was a lot of fun. I got to mention Alan White’s classic line which has always become one of my main lines about Pluto, that it makes big things small and small things big. It was funny researching and doing work on the Pluto episode and just seeing how sometimes literally, those themes that were constantly happening in the history of Pluto, even in terms of its discovery and estimations of its size, where it was constantly being overestimated for much of the 20th century about how big it was and then-
PW: -and then even its classification, its status even as a planet itself.
CB: -It was downgraded. But now recently after the flyby mission, they found out that it was actually much more geologically interesting than they thought it was and it may actually contain some of the components for life, which would be wild, which would then bump it up so that it’s estimation now might be going back the other direction in terms of becoming more important recently to astronomers.
AC: That’s interesting.
CB: Yeah. And speaking of this, we talked about this at length in the year ahead forecast. But I know Patrick, you wanted to mention that we have the first exact head of the Pluto return this month. Right?
PW: Right. On February 22nd, that is the day of the exact Pluto return of the Declaration of Independence. I say that specifically, that it’s the Pluto return of the Declaration of Independence because it’s sort of an open question still exactly which chart you should use for the study of the United States. And it’s probably more of an ongoing process than like, “Something incredible will happen on that day.” Of course, we have already highlighted that the Changing of the Gods is gonna be debuting on this day.
CB: Did we say that? I think that was before we started recording.
PW: Oh, that was before we started recording? Okay. Well, I think that’s correct. Apparently the Changing of the Gods documentary is going to be dropped on this day. But I say it’s the Declaration of Independence return rather than US return because everything past this point will be the Pluto return of everything that’s happened in US history up to this point. So it’s probably more helpful to think of this as the crucial point within the Pluto return to Capricorn that has been happening since 2000. We’ve already been in a Pluto return of the sign for many years now. I’m not exactly expecting some kind of spectacular event or something to manifest on that day but I do think that this signals, especially as we get into Pluto and Aquarius, that we’ll definitely be revisiting fundamentally what the country is about in some respects. I know that sounds incredibly vague, but I mean, it was during the Pluto in Aquarius period that you saw the ratification of the US Constitution, the establishment of the US presidency. So it’s reasonable to assume that these things will be undergoing radical reimaginings for the 21st century. And this exact Pluto return of the Declaration of Independence, you know, a lot of people do look at that day as the kind of inceptional moment for the United States- it’s the signing of the divorce papers. I know I sound English so you’re probably wondering like, “What is this guy talking about talking about America?” I am an American citizen for whatever it’s worth. My mom’s American and my father’s English, so I just spend July 4th kind of enjoying myself. I don’t really- [laughs] It doesn’t really matter to me.
Yeah, that’s a little bit about the Pluto return. One thing I do think that is sort of relevant is that there is kind of an overall pattern with Pluto going through the cardinal signs and things to do with the monetary system. So for example when Pluto was in Cancer, that was the establishment of the Federal Reserve, which is basically the United States Central Bank. And then Pluto in Libra, that was when the US dollar became uncoupled from the price of gold. And now, when Pluto first entered the Capricorn, this was the 2008 financial crash and when the Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, had to take extraordinary measures of quantitative easing or essentially printing more money in order to cover the liquidity shortages. So we’ve seen now since the pandemic has hit that Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn, we’ve seen that the Federal Reserve again had to take even more extraordinary measures to prop up the financial system. So seeing how kind of shaky things are now and knowing that the Federal Reserve has kind of used all of its tools already and it doesn’t necessarily have a whole lot more it can do than it’s already done to help prop up the financial system, one wonders if the recent shakiness in the market could be a symptom of a larger problem which might come about later in this year.
AC: Do we really just wonder that?
PW: [laughs] Well, I guess what I’m saying is I think that it potentially is reflective of the diminishing value of the dollar, potentially with bad consequences especially with how inflation has affected the price of the dollar. The recent events in recent years have caused the US dollar to be kind of reevaluated as a global reserve currency. I guess the most extreme version of what I’m saying is that you could say this signals the beginning of the end of the hegemony of the US dollar and that there would need to be like a new replacement currency, say for example, a Fed coin or switch into other currencies like Bitcoin or something to sort of replace the Federal Reserve’s control over the US dollar.
AC: One thing I’d like to add to your research about Pluto and cardinal signs corresponding to important financial changes for the US is in that declaration chart, Pluto’s in the second natively.
CB: Mmh, in the Sibley chart.
PW: Sibley chart, that’s correct.
AC: Yeah. The US has a– according to that chart– an inherently Plutonian relationship to money, which I think is easy to validate.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point. I’m just pulling up the Sibley chart here where we have 12° of Sag rising and Pluto at 27 and 32 Capricorn. That is the point that it’s taken this long for Pluto to go around the entire zodiac and come back to where it started and yeah, the question of whether some of that could be financially related. Of course, people have to go back to the last episode, The Year Ahead Forecast for our full Pluto discussions since we spent a lot of time on this. I talked about how, because it was tied in with the Declaration of Independence, it’s also tied in with some of the things having to do with just America as a democracy and the experiment of America as a democracy, which I think is one of the challenges that is coming up during this time where both sides politically are saying that the democratic process has been undermined in some way. So clearly, that’s a major thing that’s happening right now and will be one of the major questions this year is the extent to which that’s going to be either fixed or crumble even worse for some reason.
One of the things I meant to mention in the last episode of the year ahead forecast that I didn’t, one of the charts that I noticed was getting hit by this– and I know Dimitra George mentioned to me as she was interested in how it’s getting hit but also I think Lisa mentioned it to me, was Kamala Harris’s chart just because she was born at an exact full Moon, with her Moon at 27° of Aries and her Sun at 27° of Libra. And so that Pluto return of the United States at 27 Capricorn is squaring both of her luminaries, which is a pretty challenging transit for somebody to have just in terms of Pluto having to do with issues of, you know, control and manipulation and other tendencies that can be really tough dealing with underworldly things and other things like that. So I’m paying attention to her chart this year and how that goes. She’s not having a super great time recently and has been getting some bad press over the course of the past month or two especially. But sometimes one of the things that Pluto can do is it can diminish a person’s power and there can be sometimes downfalls, but also sometimes due to difficult or tragic events, sometimes there can be major increases in power at the same time. That’s one of the things that I want to pay attention to as well.
AC: A really important and weird thread with big Pluto transits is I see people being crazy empowered, and then also having all their power taken away. Pluto has a real potential for extremes, right? Like the huge and the tiny, the all-powerful and the utterly powerless.
CB: Yeah, it doesn’t do in-betweens?
AC: Yeah, it seems to try to like sort out from the middles. It’s like, “Let’s take that and blow it up. Let’s take that and shrink it.” It’s something I’ve thought a lot about because, you know, when you’re looking for yourself or a client or whoever, you’re looking at a big upcoming Pluto transit and trying to figure out what it’s going to do. I find it more difficult to predict exactly what kind of Plutonian action they’ll get from transit than any other planet, probably.
CB: Yeah.
AC: It’s like I can tell you the four things Pluto does. It’s definitely going to do one of these and maybe all four, but it’s difficult to sort ahead of time.
CB: Yeah, cuz one of the things is it really intensifies whatever planets it’s touching if it’s touching other planets, and just empowers them to take their energy to the utmost extreme. But also one of the things I really got from the Changing of the Gods documentary– I’m not really plugging it, I’m interviewing the director next week so I’ve been watching the series– there’s two episodes, in particular episodes four and five because it’s a 10-part. It went from a single documentary movie to a 10-part series over the past five to six years they’ve been working on it. One of the things I really got from those two episodes were power disparities and how Pluto really has to do with power disparities when they exist, and that sometimes when power disparities do exist, the tendency for them to be abused in different ways as like a major theme. And if you follow that as a core meaning then you see it showing up in all sorts of different situations where there’s power disparities in the society, for example, in terms of sex and sexuality or just gender issues like women’s rights and some of the things that happened in terms of that in the 1960s as well as further back under the Pluto-Uranus alignments, but also civil rights and what happens when there’s groups that are being oppressed in society due to power disparities, and the struggle to realign or readjust to those power disparities in different ways, I thought was really interesting as a theme.
AC: Yeah, that Pluto’s power to negate people is really a huge theme. To negate the humanity of, you know, X or Y group. And also another thing I say about it is it’ll just cement it or negate a planet that it touches, like that part of the person’s psyche or life just turns off for a while. And that’s where some of the, you know, in the underworld disappeared from the sunlight realm and then reappearing later. That’s for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it’s like, depression or a transformation. But there’s a negation and a disappearance followed by a later changed reemergence.
CB: Totally. But yeah, dark night of the soul can be a major thing in Pluto transits. That’ll be really interesting to see both in terms of the country going through a dark night of the soul period for a little bit here and individuals that have personal planets around 27° getting hit by that as well, such we’re just talking about. This just made me remember two major things that we meant to mention that we are about to skip and not. Both of them were actually ones that we have to harken back to from the year ahead forecast we recorded in early to mid-December that went really well in terms of some of our statements. One of them was mine, personally, which is I was wondering ideally last month as Jupiter was finishing up in Aquarius, it had been so good for Bitcoin when Jupiter was an Aquarius starting in like December of 2020. And then it dipped and there was this interesting dip in Bitcoin over last summer when Jupiter went into Pisces briefly. So my curiosity that I stated, I think in the year ahead forecast and one of the other episodes, maybe the one I did with Adam Summer early last month was when Jupiter goes back into Pisces in December as it did a few weeks ago, is the price of Bitcoin going to tank again like it did when it dipped in over the summer? And it turns out that the answer is yes. The price of Bitcoin has been dropping pretty steadily since hitting a high in November and then Jupiter went into Pisces, and it’s just been dropping. I am not a financial astrologer or a big Bitcoin guy but I’ve just been dipping my toe into paying attention to stuff like that over the past year or so and it’s just fascinating to sometimes see some of these planetary cycles and be able to put them up against, you know, objective graphs and things to see the trends and have some sort of objective way to look at the astrology that’s not just, you know, the more subjective internal like, how am I feeling or what’s going on in my life at different times like that?
PW: Yeah, one of the things that was really interesting about that Jupiter ingress into Pisces in May of 2021 was the fact that a lot of people who followed Bitcoin astrologically were expecting there to be a really big increase in its price because they figured, “Oh, Jupiter’s a benefic. It’s about wealth. It’s going into its own sign.” The Venus position in the natal chart that most people use for Bitcoin is at like zero degrees or one degree of Pisces. So people were seeing, “Okay, we have a very good-looking Jupiter making a conjunction to an exalted Venus in the Bitcoin chart, this should be great.” And they entered and it went down. [laughs] It was almost the exact opposite of what people expected. And the only person who correctly identified that it would go down was, I don’t know if he necessarily wants me to mention it, but Dr. Reg of Regulus astrology. He had indicated to me in conversations that he has witnessed in past cycles that Jupiter in Pisces tends to be really bad for markets in general. And the reason is because Pisces is the fallen sign of Mercury, and Mercury is the planet most relevant for trading. And the accumulation or clever concentration of wealth or as Jupiter’s about expenditures and giving things away or spreading wealth out as opposed to consolidating it. And so markets only go up when wealth is being kept, but not when it’s being distributed. I thought that was a very interesting and sort of theoretically consistent or coherent sort of rationale for why Jupiter in Pisces would actually be bad for markets. And it seems to be borne out by what’s been happening with the general market as well as with Bitcoin. I know that a lot of people also remarked that at the exact time of the last solar eclipse in Sagittarius, that also seemed to signal a very precipitous decline in the value of crypto. So there seem to be some very strange things going on. I’ve only dipped my toes into financial astrology for the past couple of years or so. So there’s definitely some interesting ways in which you have to kind of reconceptualize the way you typically understand things in the natal context. But there definitely seemed to be some really curious correlations that suggests that this is something that could be understood and could be forecast more precisely.
CB: Yeah. All right. Any thoughts on that before we move on, Austin?
CB: Oh, I think those are some really interesting thoughts about Jupiter and Jupiter in Pisces. I would disagree that Jupiter’s only about spreading out wealth. It’s also the, I would argue, the long-term accumulation of wealth and things that have value when I think every text ever supports that, but that is not necessarily it. Financially, that’s almost like looking at the savings rate, which is not good for markets at all. Markets do well when people are trading constantly. And as [Kei] points out in the comments, Jupiter being exalted in Cancer shows that it’s thing that it’s very best at is gathering everything and keeping it. You know, that accumulative power of the Moon with Jupiter is really good. And it’s not that Jupiter won’t splash out. I see Jupiter in terms of like, literally 12-years cycle wealth planning, whereas Mercury is like, “Is this a good deal right now?” And the more of those interactions you have, the more the market goes up.
PW: Of course, the other way to look at that really positive Jupiter conjunction to the Venus of the natal Bitcoin chart is that, you know, that is when people sold, that’s when people were able to cash out their earnings. I’m not so sure that you can-
AC: -Like, “I want to stop trading now.”
PW: [laughs] You know, I’m going to take my money. I mean, a lot of people made a lot of money as they sold, right? It made the line go down. It’s tricky because basically, we have many many variables that only show up as a line going up down or staying constant. So it’s hard to identify, it’s hard to always perfectly link what astrological variable is in play for what direction that line goes in. There are different reasons a line can go up or down. It’s tricky. But I think maybe with artificial intelligence we’ll be able to kind of crack what’s sort of corresponding to what.
AC: We’ve also got a lot of Jupiter in Pisces left, we’ll see whether that’s the case with Bitcoin or not.
CB: Yes, definitely. For sure, for sure. Interesting bit of Jupiter in Aquarius/Pisces news that I noticed at the end of December was that there was a huge spike in sales of virtual reality headsets over the holidays. And after everybody received them as gifts for Christmas, basically, suddenly VR apps like the Oculus app started trending and hit the number one downloaded app in Apple’s App Store, which I thought was a really wild thing, seeing the changeover at the end of December from Aquarius going into Pisces where we are, of course, going to get that Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in April. And not to go on another 30-minute tangent about Avatar that we talked about for a very long time in the last episode, but I know Patrick, you pointed out something very interesting to me about Avatar and its sequel that you wanted to mention or that you mentioned to me that I thought was interesting.
PW: Basically, it just has to do with the elements that Jupiter or Neptune all conjunct in. So back in 2009 at the release of the first Avatar movie, Jupiter was conjunct Neptune in Aquarius. And Aquarius is an Air sign. So when you watch the first Avatar movie, you’ll notice that there are many stunning scenes of flight where you see the main characters flying through the air on these kind of raptor alien things. There are also scenes of flight through these places where the mountains are floating, that were kind of based on the floating Chinese mountains in China. So there’s a lot of imagery in the movie that circulates around this notion of flying through the air, and the air, and of course Aquarius is an Air sign. This is really interesting because Jupiter is conjunct Neptune in Pisces, a water sign, with the release of Avatar 2. The rumored subtitle for Avatar 2 is The Way of Water and the film is set underwater basically. The actors actually had to learn how to hold their breath underwater for minutes at a time in order to do all of the filming needed for this film. It’s all set underwater and all themed around water and oceans and so it’s very appropriate that the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction is happening in Pisces. It’s also worth noting that Jupiter-Neptune conjunctions in general have this long connection to cinema and the Jupiter-Neptune prior to Avatar coming out was in Capricorn, and that was basically right before Titanic came out. Which was James Cameron’s other huge blockbuster movie. And if you think of the sign of Capricorn, you know, it’s a sea goat. It’s based on that Sumerian god Enki who is sort of Lord of the Earth and the sea. There’s a few myths surrounding Enki that have to do with boats being attacked by the waters below, which is kind of interesting that the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction happened in Capricorn and the big cinematic spectacle of that time is a boat that sinks. There might be a lot more there. [laughs]
CB: Yeah, good point. Very interesting sometimes how literal things are in terms of the two Avatar things and we’ll see what happens with the sequel when it’s released in December later this year. But we mentioned it because this is relevant because Jupiter is just inching closer and closer and is rapidly approaching that exact conjunction with Pisces as we go through February and then it’ll go exact in early April. So it’s good to be aware of some of the archetypes going on right now and to start paying attention to how it starts manifesting in the world around us in between now and then.
PW: I would also say just a very short note too, that you might also want to keep track of what’s happening in the MCU at that time, because under that same Jupiter Neptune conjunction in Aquarius, that was when Disney bought Marvel. And the different Marvel phases in how Marvel planned out its slate of movies in phases, they all occur at Jupiter-Neptune hard aspects. So phase one ended in 2012 the first Jupiter-Neptune square. Captain America Civil War, end of phase two, that was the Jupiter-Neptune opposition in 2016. And then Avengers: Endgame came out of the Jupiter-Neptune closing square in 2019. And now we’re back at the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction which will be occurring in March or April to 2022 so I am assuming that we’ll hear some sort of news about a new acquisition by Disney or something cool happening with the Marvel show. The MCU will be kind of the next big step for these franchises. So it’ll be like the final hurrah too because this is the final Jupiter-Neptune conjunction we have before the depressing 2025 Saturn-Neptune conjunction comes in to end the party for this whole mood of entertainment.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point.
AC: It’s good research.
CB: All right. So Tuesday, February 8th– bringing things back locally to the astrology of February– we got a Mars-Uranus trine which like that Mars-Jupiter sextile seems productive, innovative, getting some stuff done, finding new ways to do it. Any other quick keywords, Austin?
AC: Yeah, making those changes that you know you need to make. Uranus is sometimes just, “Oh, I know I need to make some changes in that area of my life,” and that Mars trine is a great time to make those changes.
CB: Yeah. Quick keywords, Patrick? Mars trine Uranus.
PW: I guess spontaneous action, you know, sort of taking the opportunity to get things done if you didn’t plan on getting them done, just being prepared to having to spring into action. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a bad thing given that it’s a trine but yeah, those are some of the ideas that pop into mind.
CB: That’s good. All right. Then we got the Mercury-Pluto on Friday the 11th, which we’ve talked about extensively. Moving into the following week, we have the Mercury ingress into Aquarius on Valentine’s Day that we talked about. And this is a very interesting Valentine’s Day because the Mars-Venus conjunction is super close by that point. It doesn’t perfect until Wednesday the 16th, which is also the day of the full Moon in Leo– which is interesting and that’s what I want to pull up next– but even once we get to Valentine’s Day on the 14th, Mars and Venus I think are within a degree and I think they’re in the same degree which is like 16 or something. So that is a very passionate-looking aspect or configuration for Valentine’s Day. Let me pull that up so we can look at actual chart placements for that day. There it is.
PW: Memes about being horny on main. [laughs] That’s the meme prediction for the Moon.
CB: That’s the meme, okay.
PW: Because it’s happening at the same time as Venus-Mars conjunction. It’s not exactly configured with it but you know, you could. In general, this is a really interesting full Moon as well, because it’s square the nodes and that means it square the nodes on the northern bending, right? So this is a full Moon when it’s at its brightest phase and at its northernmost latitude at the Sun, so it’s brightest and highest above the Sun. That would tell us that this is like the sentiment is high and emotional reactivity is sort of at a kind of height. And taking a little bit back to some of the Russia discussion, I’m kind of a little concerned about this particular full Moon for this topic because it just seems like this is a time when people would be riled up to act or to react badly. We just know that this Moon at this heightened state would reflect people maybe making sort of rash decisions or being at a height of impetus to do something.
CB: Yeah, a culmination of events. And this is also the day that Mars overtakes Venus. And as I’ve been thinking about that interchange between Mars and Venus more, one of the simplest and I can’t believe I don’t bring it up more as often in world events that you get occasion to bring it up, but one of the primary interplays between Mars and Venus has always been themes of war and peace, you know? Most simply at its most simple, Venus and Mars and war and peace and seeing the interchange of those two this month. And at first Mars in the middle of the month, getting the upper hand over Venus and the potential impulse for war, perhaps being the one that wins out versus by early in the following month– by later February and early March– the Venus impulse sort of overcoming Mars and perhaps the peace impulse, or the peacekeeping impulse calming things down, hopefully.
PW: So maybe only in that in-between period between those two conjunctions would that actually be sort of more of a potential for sort of armed conflicts happening?
CB: I hope so. Again, like with the Bitcoin stuff, I’m not a war expert on military astrology like Theophilus of Edessa or something from the eighth century, but it’s interesting seeing some of these themes play out in real-time and that’s what we’re always constantly doing. That’s part of the purpose of these deep-dive forecast episodes over the past six or seven years now is watching world events, documenting what’s happening at the time, learning things from the symbolism as we see it happen just like our Mesopotamian ancestors to two or 3000 years ago in astrology of like seeing a correlation in the sky and writing down on little clay tablets what happened and if the king died or whatever, and trying to call things ahead of time. Sorry, we were already moving on and I forgot there was one last thing we needed to mention. We needed to do a bit of a victory lap about Austin, which is we were nervous and if you go back and watch the year ahead forecast for 2021, the month we were the most nervous about because of the combinations that month was November, and specifically that Mars-Saturn square that was happening in between Mars going through Scorpio and squaring Saturn. We caught this on one of our final couple of episodes of the December forecast and then especially the year ahead forecast we mentioned it again in passing, but we had seen that there was a new variant that had just been identified in mid-November around the time of that Mars-Saturn square, and that turned out to be the Omicron variant which suddenly just exploded and the numbers of COVID around the world just skyrocketed over the course of the past few weeks, potentially higher than at any other time in the pandemic because it turned out to be a highly transmissible form of COVID. And there were just, you know, on the Twitter timeline, I was just seeing astrologers left and right getting sick with COVID who had dodged it for the entire pandemic. It’s been a pretty wild month and a half since our last episode. That’s actually something I can’t believe we forgot to mention up to this point because it’s really dominated the news and the headlines in many people’s lives very recently.
AC: Yeah. I mean, November had a number of almost hilariously terrible things, which I think we talked about this a little bit maybe on the yearly or for December, but there’s also that gnarly configurations will often create a bad at the time but they will also set things in motion that won’t become clearer until they’ve run a bit of that track, like the Omicron variant being one of those. So yeah, I’ll take that win with you.
PW: Good job, guys.
CB: Yeah, people can go back and look at that in terms of our trepidation. But yeah, that’s one of those tricky principles when it comes to electrical charts and stuff. It’s just you’re creating a foundation for something and sometimes if it’s a day of event, you’re trying to get it to go well in terms of the event that day. Like, let’s say it’s a marriage or something and the ceremony going well. But what you’re doing when you pick a birth chart for something at the time is you’re laying the seeds for how that thing is going to grow and develop in the future, and in some of these instances with these things we’re talking about, the seeds of something being laid at the time that will become major in the future. But it’s like a growth process by looking at the origins of it. So yeah, that has been tricky and I guess the numbers are starting to go down in the UK. I think it’s starting to take a turn here in the US with the numbers starting to drop. We’re still very close to the peak of it but hopefully, that will continue to drop. That does, however, now make me nervous about the upcoming Mars-Saturn conjunction which is going to take place in Aquarius, because that was kind of what we started this entire two-year cycle with, you know, back in 2020 was first the Mars-Saturn co-presence in Capricorn, and all of the lockdown starting to take place all across the West at least. But then right in the middle of the early part of the lockdowns was that Mars-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius, and I know that was when I got sick with COVID and was sick for like a month and a lot of people were sick or dealing with the lockdowns or what have you. And so in some ways, we’re going to be seeing a closing down of that two-year cycle and hopefully putting some end to it in terms of just this nightmare of the past two years of dealing with COVID and all the changes and annoyances and other things it’s made in the world around us, but then also the start of the foundation of a new cycle of whatever the next two and a half years is going to look like. We have seen now in the past two Mars-Saturn alignments two variants happen. One of them was last summer when the Delta variant happened around the time of the Mars-Saturn opposition and then got really big. And then most recently, we had the Omicron variant begin around the time of the Mars-Saturn square. That makes me a little bit nervous because we’re gonna be having the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction at the same time in early April so it’s one of those times again where it’s like, “Oh, everything’s good again.” But then there’s something ending and something starting at that time that could end up being difficult in long term.
AC: Yeah, you know, it’s funny we haven’t talked about but I’ve been literally thinking pretty much the same thing in terms of, “So this is the closing out of a cycle and the beginning of a new cycle. Does the next one look like the last one?” I don’t think I have a great answer yet but, you know, the Mars-Saturn conjunctions are like a new Moon for horror, right? [Patrick laughs] It’s the new Moon for the cycle of doom that’s going at the same time as happier cycles, etc, etc.
CB: It’s so funny because I saw a Tweet or somebody in passing was just like, “COVID has become what we all feared that Ebola was going to be back in 2013.” And what’s funny about that is like one of the major Ebola outbreaks back then was at a Mars-Saturn conjunction in Scorpio.
PW: Yeah.
CB: That’s a good question, Austin. Are the ingredients the same compared to where they were two years ago? I mean, one of the major differences is now Saturn is 20° off of Pluto and they’re in separate signs. So we’re outside of even the 15-degree range, for example, that Richard Tarnas uses for outer planet conjunctions. And I don’t think it’s going to come back within that 15-degree range so maybe that’s one sort of positive thing that we can say in terms of the start of this new Mars-Saturn cycle is at least it’s not going to be tied in with the conjunction with Saturn and Pluto like the last one was, right?
AC: Yeah.
PW: Yeah. I think it would only continue along the same vein for as long as Saturn’s in Aquarius since that seems to be what’s promoting the idea of badass, you know?
AC: Right, but Saturn seems to be… I mean, if it seeds it while Saturn’s in Aquarius, that’s another two and a half years of bad luck.
PW: This will be a great case study in real time. [laughs] You know, is this the closure or is this just another block of it?
CB: Yeah, there’s something that looks very optimistic during that time in early April because we’re probably coming down off of this current wave and we’re probably clear of it by then, I assume, of the Omicron variant and have it under control. And so we have this very optimistic-looking Jupiter Saturn conjunction going exact- Oh, Jupiter Neptune conjunction. But without Neptune, it’s just like there’s something distracting about or something illusory about it.
PW: It’s Pleasure Island, you know?
AC: Or, you know, it’s really like Patrick was saying. Yeah. It’s movies you really enjoy, that doesn’t necessarily help with other problems.
PW: Steve Herman watched Disney plus, you know. [laughs] But otherwise, you know, be wary.
CB: Yeah. We’ll have to pay attention to it just because it’s starting something new with that Saturn-Pluto cycle at the same time. I don’t know, I hope it’s not another stupid third variant or something like that. But we’ll see.
AC: Getting pretty tiresome.
CB: Yeah.
PW: That’s also March or April. [laughs] We’re in February, right?
CB: Yeah. So, over it.
AC: Okay, so February. What happens in February?
BC: February. Back to February. Patrick, you mentioned the nodes and I think that’s really important because the nodes changed signs since we did the last episode in mid-January. A lot of people talked about that, there was a little bit of a true node versus mean node discussion but for me, the difference between the true node and the mean node has always been pretty clear. And we have the true node as we can see here in this diagram versus the mean node which has a very distinctive sort of appearance in terms of its furrowed brow and deep piercing eyes with the mean node. It’s kind of grumpy and I think-
AC: One might say mean. [laughs]
CB: Right. I mean, that’s the ancient translation I think of the Greek or the Persian term. But what do you guys use? Do you use true node or mean node? I’m a true node person but I don’t have a strong feeling, but it usually seems to line up better with true node personally.
AC: I’m a mean node person-
CB: I know.
AC: -but I’m equally non-emphatic. For me, I use mean because the Vedic tradition I’ve learned uses mean. They’re super good at nodes so I’m just gonna seed to the authority there. But I would not be upset or care in any way if someone used the true node instead.
CB: Right, neither of us is gonna strap a bomb onto our chest in order to make this case.
AC: Yeah, not going to go full truth about that.
PW: [laughs] I’ve always used true node, but I have become warmer to the mean node because it matches the way that we calculate the longitude of other planets. Because, you know, the true node is taking into account the barycenter, the centre of gravity between the Earth and the Moon. Whereas the mean node is just assuming that the Moon travels around the exact center of the Earth. And that’s the way that we calculate the positions of the other planets. Now, if you were to take into account the barycenter of the other planets, then it probably wouldn’t change it by any great amounts. And even with the Moon, you can see the difference is basically negligible. It’s between zero to two degrees. It usually doesn’t make much of a difference most of the time, mostly just around the sign boundaries where if you’re investigating like the exact degree rulerships of the north node and south node. So I’ve become warmer to the conceptual basis of the mean node as being more legitimate. I’ve always used true node but I similarly hold a very non-committal, easygoing stance about it. I don’t feel very extremely about it either way.
CB: Yeah, I wanted to mention that just because this lunation this full Moon at 28 Leo is so closely square the nodes that it means we’re at the halfway point between one set of eclipses and before the next set of eclipses. It means we’re headed headlong into three months later, the next set of fully fixed-sign eclipses where we’re going to get our second eclipse in Taurus of the series and we’re going to get our first eclipse in Scorpio. So there’s really this emphasis that’s moving towards and it’s going to push us towards, in February, towards the fixed signs and the activation of the fixed sign axis in basically everybody’s chart. That’s only going to be accelerated as we get Mercury going back into Aquarius. We get Saturn is now treading new ground between, what is it? 13 Aquarius to about 24 or 25 Aquarius that it hasn’t gotten to before in terms of the fixed signs. And this Leo Eclipse is really an important turning point in terms of that, in terms of continuing to heighten the focus on the fixed signs in different charts.
PW: Yep.
AC: Yeah, always important to remember which end of the nodes you’re talking about. Remember this is the northernmost point at the Moon’s path. This is a full Moon that is highest above the Sun, most north of the Sun.
CB: Yeah. Otherwise, it’s like this is not configured very closely to anything. I think the closest aspect is just the opposition with Saturn that’s moving away about 10° apart in terms of that full Moon of both luminaries moving off of either conjunction or opposition with Saturn and then the simultaneous conjunction of Mars and Venus that’s happening that day, and perhaps the Mars impulse of acting, sort of getting the upper hand and moving forward or doing something decisive happening at that time when things sort of come to a culmination and you feel like an action needs to take place. For some people, that might be a constructive action and that may be necessary. And for others, they may find they’ve acted too impulsively or do something that they regret that they later have to revisit later in the month or early in the following month when Venus again conjoins Mars.
That is the full Moon. Let’s move into the final phase of this. There’s a little outer planet alignment that occurs the very next day which is Jupiter sextiling Uranus, which is, again, a pretty nice little productive, constructive, growth-oriented, and innovation-type aspect. It’s not a huge major thing to write home about but nonetheless still seems a little nice feature of February.
AC: Yeah. It’s just like a little help either making useful Uranian changes, or a little help managing Uranian chaos.
CB: Right.
PW: I would think if we see Uranus in Taurus as generally representing volatility in financial markets, we might see Jupiter sextiling Uranus as being a time of greatest stability.
AC: Yeah, like just a little. Not fixing it, but just like little hands on the wheel.
PW: Right. Yeah, little reassurance.
CB: Yeah, my keyword for that on Thursday the 17th is an unexpected opportunity. So, that is Thursday the 17th. Then the Sun moves into Pisces and all of our Pisces friends rejoice on Friday the 18th. We get to have the beginning of Pisces season and some of our friends start having birthdays not long after that. I don’t want to name any names but I might be getting them a pendant or something for their birthday, we’ll see.
AC: Or a mug. [laughs]
PW: They might be auspicious people.
CB: Yeah, auspicious.
AC: My solar return this year, by the way, is truly auspicious. We will talk about it next month because it’s in March.
CB: Okay.
AC: It’s nice. I haven’t had a good one in years.
CB: Yeah, that’s always a good feeling to look ahead and not groan when you look at your Solar return chart.
AC: Yeah.
CB: All right, so moving into Wednesday or moving to the final week we’ve got Wednesday the 23rd of February, there’s a-
AC: Just one thing. And the Sun moving into Pisces is a huge change, because we’re going from the Sun hanging out in a Saturn-ruled sign with Saturn to the Sun hanging out in a Jupiter-ruled sign with Jupiter right there. That’s much more positive, much more “Maybe everything is okay. Maybe it’s even great!” [Patrick laughs]
CB: Maybe it’s okay to go outside again.
AC: Yeah, they’re just very tone change.
CB: Yeah, lightening the mood. I think that’s a good keyword for February 18th ingress of the Sun into Pisces is getting out of the more restrictive, somewhat pessimistic side of the Sun-Saturn conjunction that we’ve been having for most of the previous month and moving into the more optimistic growth-oriented Sun-Jupiter conjunction that then builds up over the course of the next 10 to 11 days.
AC: I like buoyant for Jupiter, especially Jupiter in Pisces.
CB: That’s a good one.
PW: I predict people will be especially bad at Lent this year. They will be bad at maintaining the promises or the sacrifices, right? Because, you know, the Sun is conjoining Jupiter-Neptune. Just looks far more indulgent than you might otherwise expect. And it’s always Lent while the Sun’s in Pisces.
AC: Jupiter is good for faith and spirituality, though. Maybe Lent will be super meaningful to more people and they’ll also do a worse job at it.
PW: But it’s also kind of bacchanalian type of quality there too, especially with Neptune in the mix. It just looks like the gravitation towards the things that will sort of ease the pain or suffering, or ease the longing for what you want.
AC: Fentanyl and the Eucharist?
PW: [laughs] Oh, Lord. Yeah, real alcohol in the wine? I don’t know. I don’t know how many Catholics watch this. [laughs] I doubt many. But as a former Catholic, I sort of notice these things.
AC: I honestly mean no disrespect, I was just making jokes.
CB: Speaking of alcohol in the wine, we have a Mars-Neptune sextile which goes exact on the 23rd followed very quickly by a pleasant little Venus-Neptune sextile, which goes exact the next day on February 24th. Again, these are somewhat minor aspects. The sextile is always traditionally treated as a weak aspect. It’s not like a hard aspect that does things, but there can still be a moderately sort of positive vibe of things being relatively okay during that time when you have certain transits like that. What are some of our keywords for Mars sextile Neptune or Venus sextile Neptune?
AC: Well, I like Neptune’s ability to just mellow things a bit by sextile. The mellowing can become a full-on dissolution if you have too much Neptune energy, but just by sextile it just kind of mellows out that Mars-Venus, which at this point we’re probably getting a little tired of its passionate intensity.
CB: Yeah, it’s been pretty passionate all the way up until this point in the month and it could be nice to have a little bit of like Neptune and chill by February 23rd-24th to take the edge off of things.
PW: Looks like a good day to play a big video game or something, you know, something with a lot of just mindless like fighting bad guys. [laughs] You know, with Mars sextile Neptune, this sort of I’d imagine is like playing God of War or something.
AC: Yeah. It’s like by sextile, instead of the full on opiate or psychedelic level of Neptune. It’s like Neptune cracks in half an anti-anxiety pill for Mars and Venus to split to take the edge off.
PW: There you go.
CB: I was going to say that the single glass of wine or the, you know, couple of puffs of reefer to take the edge off of the Mars-Venus interaction and the intensity of the dynamic and the pull between those two, in wanting to take things in two different directions. Yeah, so that honestly is our last major aspect of the month. What’s weird is we’re building up to this interesting little what I’ve been calling the conjunctional climax of 2022, but it doesn’t go exact until the very beginning of next month. But you can see it forming here with the Sun approaching that conjunction with Jupiter in Pisces, Mercury approaching a conjunction with Saturn and Aquarius, and then the second Venus-Mars conjunction. But there’s a triple conjunction that happens at like 27 Capricorn with Venus, Mars, and Pluto. So it’s a very interesting configuration that we saw when we were picking out electional charts for the year ahead, just because all three of those triple sets of conjunctions go exact very close to each other around the time of the new Moon in Pisces next month around March 2nd. That’s going to feature heavily in our next forecast, we don’t have to dwell on it too much but it’s something to mention just because we’re heading into it very rapidly by the time we get to the end of February.
PW: Extreme desires, extreme passions.
AC: One thing I would add is that starting with the Sun’s ingress into Pisces, we enter about a two-week period of relative chill because, I believe it’s March 6th, both Mars and Venus enter Aquarius. Then we have Mars-Saturn co presence again with Venus and that’s really difficult on Venus and Mars-Saturn is just rough in general.
CB: Puts the brakes on things.
AC: Sorry.
CB: It slams brakes on.
AC: Yeah. Definitely, there’s some mellow that it harshes. And so it’s not that all is perfect from let’s say the February 19th to March 5th, but as far as this year has gone so far, it’s a period of relative chill.
CB: Yeah, I like that. That’s a good point. So there’s a definite momentum shift that happens by early March but we’re heading into that here and seeing that Pisces ingress of the Sun on the 18th and 19th. That’s sort of when we start heading in that direction, I think is what you’re saying?
AC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Okay, cool. And then the Pluto return happens on the 22nd, we’ve already talked about that at length. That kind of brings us to the end of the month, guys.
AC: I think it does. All right.
PW: We made it.
CB: Brilliant. Well, that is the astrology of February. Cool. What do you two have coming up this month, or what are you up to in February?
AC: Okay. Well, I will finally have my enrollment. It will be open for my self-paced year one astrology class that opens at a rising sign of my choosing on February 17th. [laughs] I know that’s the day I gotta figure out which rising I want, but I’ve been working on that for a while. I’m really excited that’s about to go. It’s self-paced and I’ll be doing some live session support. I also have several graduates of my three-year program who will also be helping out. So you will get to talk to people about the material that isn’t just me because you’re going to be listening to a lot of videos with just me talking. I’m excited about that. Other than that, back to work on Faces. Sphere + Sundry has a big Venus launch coming up. Unspecified, but early Feb. It’s right around the corner. It’s a super good election from Venus in Libra last year. I’m very excited about it. I’ve been using it. It smells good. It feels good. [laughs]
CB: Nice.
AC: It also looks good.
CB: Yeah. Some of the promo photos are just incredible every time. I recommend people sign up for the Sphere + Sundry Instagram feed, because that always seems like the best way to see some of the behind-the-scenes working and the beautiful images of just the stuff that’s being crafted.
AC: I just want to take one second to say Kate has no training whatsoever in photography. She just started doing pictures one day and it’s extraordinary. She has lots of talents that she’s worked hard to develop, [laughs] but I think it was really around the beginning of Sphere + Sundry. I was like, “Wow, you make everything look so good.” It was a fun discovery. Anyway, love you baby.
CB: It is as if Libras have an innate aesthetic sense or something. [Patrick laughs]
AC: Yeah, this one does.
CB: This one. Not all of them you’re saying? Yeah, just beautiful.
PW: It’s nice.
CB: I love seeing that stuff. All right. Patrick, what do you got going on?
PW: Well, my schedule is full of clients. Very grateful to be that busy but it’s also a little tricky right now because I’m in the middle of packing up moving. That’s why I have some sexy grey drapes hanging behind me instead of my bookshelf. I also selected February 17th as the day that I’m actually listing my house with a rising sign yet to be determined because there’s a few- I can’t figure out which one. I have to take one. I have to take a drawback. There’s like a few good ones but like…
CB: Don’t give away the good rising signs.
PW:… but like, you know, I risk having like the malefic in the eighth or the ruler of the second not potentially being as good. So I’ve been trying to figure out which one would be worse for me as the seller but in any case. So I’m busy with that. But astrologywise, I am still really focused on getting the rectification course completed that I’ve been working on with Chris. I think eventually at some point I’ll probably end up just flying out there and doing it in person with you, because it’s just a little too chaotic right now when I’ll be in between houses. But that is definitely the number one priority aside from the clients who’ve already scheduled with me. So yeah, I’ve just been hitting it hard with general consultations, rectifications, elections, Horary, and tutoring services that I offer. I’m at some point gonna get back into doing more regular blogs and videos but I’m a long way away from that right now.
CB: Brilliant. All right, so your website is patrickwatsonastrologer.com?
PW: Uh, patrickwatsonastrology.com.
CB: -astrology.com. Okay. If you go to the other one does it go to like some shadow Patrick Watson?
PW: Someone took my domain and
CB: Oh my god, there’s like an evil Patrick Watson astrologer. [Patrick laughs]
AC: Then there’s the even worse one, which is patrickwatsonastrologist.com. [Patrick laughs]
CB: Oh god, we don’t talk about that guy.
PW: Yeah. So it’s patrickwatsonastrology.com.
CB: Okay, good. Got it. Austin, your website is austincoppock.com and sphereandsundry.com. I want to make sure those get mentioned. As for me, I’m gonna mainly be focusing on the podcast. I’m interviewing the director of the Changing of the Gods astrology documentary next week and I’ll release that as an episode sometime in February. I’ve got other episodes I’m lining up, a major episode on transits. I’ve got in the works a major episode on actually funny enough, the astrology versus astrologist debate. I’m also getting ready to launch a new series on a deep dive on each of the signs of the zodiac. Now that I’ve finished finished my series on each of the planets, it’s time to look at the signs of the zodiac and talk about those with one episode with a prominent astrologer on each of the 12 signs. So if people are interested in that work, if you want to get early access to that work, if you’d like to get access to private podcasts that I don’t release to the public, then all you have to do is become a patron through my page on patreon.com/theastrologypodcast. There’s a bunch of different tiers including early access, attend live recordings, get access to the auspicious elections episode, or even get a producer credit at the end of one of these episodes of the show. So if you enjoy this content and you want to support the work we’re doing here or want to help me to expand it so I can do more stuff or fly out people like Patrick, or eventually once Omicron goes away, people like Austin to do these episodes in-person, then think about becoming a patron of The Astrology Podcast.
All right, that’s it for this forecast and that’s it for this look at the astrology of February. Thanks guys for doing this. This is a lot of fun. It takes me back to the mid-2000s and hanging out with the two of you when we were much younger little astrologers at Project Hindsight. And Patrick, it’s awesome to have you on the show in this capacity. This was great.
PW: Oh, thank you so much. Is a total honor. I am so happy that you invited me to be on. I can’t lie, I was very, very excited.
AC: Awesome. And it didn’t even occur to me but Venus retro, it’s totally like “Friend from the past!” Like, how many people have we had on that we’ve both known for like 16 years?
CB: Yeah, I love that. That’s perfect.
PW: Yeah, true. And Austin, you did send me those risque DMs beforehand as well, so there was that as well. [laughs]
CB: I don’t know if you’re supposed to mention that, Patrick. That’s part of the disclosure.
AC: Oh, you mean all of the Firmicus jokes?
PW: [laughs] Kidding, of course.
CB: Right. Firmicus Maternus. He was a risky fellow that 4th-century astrologer.
PW: No, he was a firm guy.
CB: All right, we’ll leave you with that thought as your Valentine’s Day parting episode thought for February. [laughter] All right guys. That’s all I got, I don’t have a better ending than that. Thanks, everyone for watching this episode of The Astrology Podcast. Please be sure to drop a comment or like the video on YouTube if you liked this episode, and we’ll see you again next month for the astrology of March. So good luck and take care.
AC: Bye, everyone.
PW: Bye.
CB: Special thanks to all the patrons that supported the production of this episode of the podcast through our page on patreon.com. In particular, thanks to the patrons on our producers’ tier including Nate Craddock, Thomas Miller, Catherine Conroy, Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Sumo Coppock, Issah Sabah, Jake Otero, Morgan MacKenzie, and Kristin Otero. If you like the work that I’m doing here on the podcast and you would like to find a way to support it then please consider becoming a patron through my page on patreon.com and in exchange you’ll get access to bonus content such as early access to new episodes, the ability to attend the live recording of the month ahead forecast each month, access to a private monthly auspicious elections report that we put out each month, access to exclusive episodes that are only available for patrons, or you can also get your name listed in the credits at the end of each episode. For more information, go to patreon.com/astrologypodcast. The main software we use here on the podcast to look at astrological charts is called Solar Fire for Windows which is available at alabe.com, and you can use the promo code AP15 to get a 15% discount. For Mac users, we use a similar set of software by the same programming team called Astro Gold for Mac OS which is available from astrogold.io, and you can use the promo code ASTROPODCAST15 to get a 15% discount on that as well.
If you’d like to learn more about the approach to astrology that I outlined on the podcast, then you should check out my book titled Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, where I traced the origins of Western astrology and reconstructed the original system that was developed about 2000 years ago. In this book, I outline basic concepts but also take you into intermediate and advanced techniques for reading a birth chart, including some timing techniques. You can find more about the book at hellenisticastrology.com/book. The book pairs very well with my online course on ancient astrology called the Hellenistic Astrology Course, which has over 100 hours of video lectures where I go into detail about teaching you how to read a birth chart, and showing hundreds of example charts in order to really demonstrate how the techniques work in practice. Find out more information about that at theastrologyschool.com.
Also, special thanks to our sponsors including The Mountain Astrologer magazine which is available at mountainastrologer.com, the Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological Almanacs available at honeycomb.co, and the Astro Gold Astrology App which is available for both iPhone and Android at astrogold.io. There are also two major astrology conferences happening this year. The first is the Northwest Astrological Conference happening May 26th through the 30th 2022 near Seattle, Washington. Find out more information at norwac.net. And the second is the International Society for Astrological Research conference, which is taking place August 25th through the 29th 2022 in Westminster, Colorado. You can find out more information about that at isar2022.org.