The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 358, titled:
July 2022 Astrology Forecast
With Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, and Camille Michelle Gray
Episode originally released on June 30, 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 July 3, 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. Today is Monday, June 27th, 2022, starting at 11:47 a.m in Denver, Colorado. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the astrological forecast for July of 2022. Joining me today are astrologers Austin Coppock and special guest co-host Camille Michelle Gray. Welcome, both of you.
CAMILLE MICHELLE GRAY: Thank you.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Thank you.
CB: Yeah, I’m excited to do this episode. We’re going to start by reflecting and talking a little bit about recent news and recent astrology-related stories in the news, and then eventually we’re going to jump into the forecast for July about 30 or 40 minutes into the episode. So if people want to jump ahead to that, you can find the timestamps either below this video in the description on YouTube or on the podcast’s website. I’ll also put some timestamps for those listening to the audio version. All right, welcome. Camille, thanks for joining us for your first time joining us for a forecast episode. This is actually your second time on the podcast. We recently did the Gemini episode together, which I had such a good time doing with you and Nicholas, and I asked you to come back. And I thought that your Gemini placements would complement Austin’s Gemini placements, where Austin has a Gemini Moon and you have Gemini rising and Mars in Gemini, right?
CMG: Yes, yeah. Thanks for having me back.
CB: Yeah. You’ve been a longtime listener of the show, you’ve listened to other forecasts, right?
CMG: Yeah. Longtime listener, first-time caller. Yeah.
CB: Nice. I love it. All right. And Austin, how you doing? You actually are just getting over a bout of COVID that you got sometime shortly after the astrology conference at NORWAC in Seattle, right?
AC: Yeah, I’m sort of just now fully back to normal. The acute symptoms only lasted maybe four days, but there was like a week of being at maybe 50% being kind of tired and sweaty, more tired and sweaty than I normally am. And then another week of like, 75%. It was persistent, or at least there was a linger to it. There was a long tail to it. It tried to move in and hang out with me every day, but finally gone.
CB: Good. Yeah, that’s funny. It’s like a freeloader. Although it’s sleeping on your couch, you can’t kick them out.
AC: Yeah, it’s like your roommate’s cousin who won’t leave.
CB: Right. And you’re obligated to feed them. So yeah, that was too bad. It seemed like the official number was up to at least like 30 plus people ended up getting COVID at NORWAC. I don’t know if anybody got serious- I didn’t hear of anybody getting seriously hospitalized or anything like that, which was really good news, but it was definitely a stark reminder that we’re still at the tail end of or in the process of trying to get through the pandemic and some of the risks that come along with major public gatherings at this point. I ended up canceling my meeting of the Denver Astrology Group last month as a result of that just because it seemed to fall right in the middle of that wave. But I’m hoping we find ourselves on the downslope of a wave instead of the upslope like NORWAC did once we have the ISAR conference in August coming up.
AC: Yeah, it’d be nice. It’s definitely still out there.
CB: Yeah. All right. So let’s jump into some stories and stuff in the news other than that. One of the things is Instagram scammers; there’s a wave of Instagram scammers that are pretending to be astrologers. I’ve had a couple of them just like impersonators who will show up and start pretending to be you and create a fake Instagram profile where they copy all your pictures, and then they try to hit people up for consultations and offered to do consultations. But what’s funny about it is they always do such a terrible job of impersonating people that they start using words like ‘beloved’ and stuff like that. [Camille laughs] So if you ever get a DM or if you ever see me sliding into DMs and using words like beloved, that’s a pretty good indication that it’s probably not me and it’s probably somebody pretending to be me trying to rip you off.
CMG: No love and light from you.
CB: No love and light.
AC: Yeah, I don’t think anyone was fooled. Someone sent me this and they’re like, “This is obviously not you.” It was like, “Hello, beloved.” And then it was like, “I’m giving away readings for whatever etc.” And then it ended with like, “Blessed be.” And I was like, “Oh, they really got my cadence and word choice down.”
CB: Well, what will be funny is if we get level version 2.0 over the scammers and they do go back and research a little bit like five minutes, and they start slipping in some of your phrases like, “Hello beloved, I’d like to talk to you about the meat grinder in your chart,” or something like that. [laughter]
AC: “There’s a meat grinder coming up. If you pay me $1,000 I can help you avoid this.” What would your scammer be like, Chris?
CB: I don’t know. They would just keep talking really monotone-lee, whatever the monotone talking looks like in a forecast. And it would take like three-hour long conversation of
AC: It would be an eight-paragraph message, it’s very structured. Presented very coherently.
CB: Right, that would be compelling.
CMG: You know it sucks, but that’s how you know you’ve made it. So I’m waiting for my impersonator. [laughter]
CB: Yeah, I know. I had that feeling earlier this year of seeing everybody else get ripped off and feeling left out. So I was halfway excited when I got my first one.
CMG: Yeah, one day, huh?
AC: You know, back to Gemini for a second. The doppelganger is totally a Gemini horror motif. Like being replaced by the evil or scammer version of yourself or like the pod people… I’m thinking of Twin Peaks, the Evil Kyle. But that replacement by the evil twin is very Gemini.
CB: Yeah, definitely. That reminds me of Sam Reynolds who was harassing and taunting his scammer at one point and sent me some of those texts. It’s kind of funny seeing his interactions with them.
AC: Yeah, I won’t share that story but that’s an amazing story. I’ll just say that Sam ancestor-shamed the person and it worked.
CB: Okay. Yeah. There’s a reporter, I forget her name, who’s doing a story on this and I’m looking forward to and hoping that influences things a little bit. And I might put a link to it at some point once it’s officially out. All right, moving on. In other news, Camille, you had one that was a recent story that was on social media, right?
CMG: Yeah. So for a couple of days, the story of this vengeful elephant kind of swept social media. Essentially, we didn’t get the full story immediately but as the days passed, essentially what happened was that a woman in India was assisting poachers by throwing– I don’t know– rocks or something at the elephant mom. And I think right then and there, the elephant mom stomped this woman out and she passed away. But curiously, the elephant took the extra step of walking 200 kilometers to this woman’s funeral and then continuing to terrorize her at the funeral as she was being laid to rest. And I thought it was such an evocative story of Uranus in Taurus and Venus approaching Uranus in Taurus. You know, poachers are doing what they do to elephants for ivory and for all the ornamental jewelry and like to make piano keys, and so it was funny to have this otherwise gentle giant go berserk in this Uranian kind of way and seek revenge. It was a cool little microcosm of the macro things happening.
CB: Yeah, for sure. An elephant never forgets, it turns out.
CMG: Yes, yes. [laughs]
CB: That’s true.
CMG: Especially in Taurus.
AC: Another astrological angle on that is that elephants are often associated with Jupiter, especially in India. Like, they’re huge, they’re wise, they’re usually very chill, they have good memories. And so you know, we very recently had Jupiter go into a Mars-ruled sign and then Mars join it there. When Jupiter’s mad, it’s like something giant stomping you out. That’s the perfect use of that phrase. Because I mean, what can stomp you out better than an elephant? I’m sure her bones were just fragments.
CB: Yeah, good times. All right, we’re gonna start-
AC: -For the elephant community, I think it was justice.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Well, that was what was funny on social media is everyone was really rooting for the elephant there, which was an interesting turnaround.
AC: I love it.
CMG: Me too, pro elephant.
CB: Yeah, we are pro elephant on this podcast just in case anybody… Although there’s naturally going to be… Anytime there’s two sides to something, there’s naturally somebody that will take that opposite side, which is always interesting to watch socially. All right, so moving on. I had a funny transit thing that happened today, which is that a few days ago transiting Mars was squaring my natal Mars and Mars was going through my third house of communication and squaring my natal Mars in the 12th house of enemies or secret enemies. And I was watching that transit for that two-day period and I was just like, “Something’s gonna happen.” And it came by and went and nothing happened. And I realized at I was like, “Something happened and I just don’t know about it yet,” and I was wondering when I would find out or if I would ever find out because I’ve been tracking this phenomenon for years of just transits that happen. But if you don’t see it, sometimes that doesn’t mean that nothing happens, it just means that something occurred that’s not within your field of vision yet, even though it impacts your life. And I kind of thought because of Mars is transiting my third house, it had something to do with writings or communication. Because two years ago when Mars went through my third house, I had a really notable thing like that of getting ripped off with a piece of my written work.
Anyway, long story short, I just found out this morning when somebody posted in my Hellenistic course forum that it looked like I had released a Kindle version of my book, but the formatting was all messed up. And so they were asking if this was legitimate, and I went and found it. And it was some pirated version of my book with terrible formatting, where somebody was trying to sell a Kindle version. And I looked at the publication date and it was right when that transit was happening last week of transiting Mars in my third house of communication squaring my natal Mars in the 12th house of secret enemies. So I was actually like, that was one of those #astrologergoodevents where I was so impressed by the astrology coming true and how well it depicted what happened and that it worked. Again, even though it didn’t seem like anything had happened at the time that I kind of didn’t even care about the fact that I was getting ripped off because I was just so impressed by the astrology. I think that’s going to become my new motto or philosophy at this point, which is just being so enamored and humored by the way the astrology works out. I don’t even care if the bad thing happened necessarily.
CMG: I hope you’re able to fix it.
CB: Yeah, I’ll just submit a request. That’s the other thing I love about that, is that it was also a minor event that I know I can fix where I’ll just submit a thing to Amazon and they’ll remove it. They’ve had to do that before. But that’s the other part of the astrologer good thing where it’s like something minorly bad happens and it fulfills what needed to happen to fulfill the transit, but it’s not the worst-case scenario and that’s part of why you’re able to laugh at it and just look at it sort of objectively stepping outside of yourself as an astrologer.
AC: Yeah, there’s something to be said for being able to appreciate the story even if you’re one of the characters. Be like, “Oh, that’s funny writing.” Although I have to say, Chris, you’re obviously correct about that but the practice of assuming that something bad happened even if you can’t see it when you have bad transits could easily pave the way for a descent into madness and paranoia. Obviously, that does happen, right? You know, as per your story.
CB: Sure. And I’m aware of that as a potential and as an issue and that’s something astrologers should be careful about, but at the same time it’s just something I talked about with Patrick on the past podcast where I’m starting to wonder if most transits don’t actually manifest in something, it’s just they’re not always within our field of vision and what the cutoff point is of that just from a purely technical standpoint as an astrologer. Because we’re used to, as astrologers, seeing some transits hit and some transits come by and nothing significant seems to happen at the time. But especially when you factor in the time lord techniques like perfections that help you narrow down which ones are supposed to be important, and you see an important one come and go and nothing happens but then find out later that something did. I’m trying to work out how often does that really happen, and what if the percentage of cases is far higher than we even realize as astrologers just because it’s so hard of a phenomenon to study?
AC: I think that as a rule of thumb of when to apply the ‘just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you’ is probably when it’s a transit involving a malefic in an invisible house. The 12th is supposed to be stuff you don’t see, you have a natal malefic there, and it was activated by a transiting malefic. That seems like a good place to make sure that nothing happened rather than just assume because you didn’t see it, because it’s supposed to be hidden. Like when you steal from someone or when you are stolen from, the job of a thief is to not be detected for as long as possible.
CB: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Have either of you had those specific incidents happen of realizing later or even sometimes a long time afterwards that something important had happened when you had a specific transit but you weren’t aware of it at the time, but then later you sort of noticed and realized that that thing had happened?
CMG: This kind of answers the question, but I remember I was taking an international trip at the moment that Uranus was going to make a hard aspect to one of my natal placements. This was early on in my astrological career where I got really wrapped around something bad happening, specifically like the plane crashing or some type of horrible delay and being stranded in the middle of nowhere. And I looked back and I was like, “Oh, that transit was the anxiety. Didn’t actually manifest as something catastrophic, it was just me thinking it would.” [laughs]
CB: Yeah, that’s really important because that’s a whole thing in and of itself that’s also ambiguous in astrology, which is how do you know when it’s going to manifest as a literal external event versus a psychological or an internal event? Because sometimes it really can go either way and it’s not always very clear or super easy to say for sure that it’s going to be one or the other.
AC: Yeah, as you alluded to earlier, Chris, generally filtering transits through as many other timing systems as you’re proficient in and seeing what makes it through all the filters is very reliable.
CB: Right, for sure.
AC: But if the transit isn’t supported by, you know, however many other things, right? So yeah, it’s just a transit. It’s a bad day or it’s a good day, but it passes quickly rather than… I’m actually teaching transits right now in my year two so I just had a two-hour conversation about this. But I try in my practice and I try as a teacher to differentiate between transits that like color a day or a week, versus those that are pivotal events or things that would show up in your biography; either as something amazing that kind of changes the story or something really hard that is at least an important plot point in that chapter. Like, big story stuff versus ‘aargh, yeah today sucked, I got half as much done as I wanted,’ or like, “Today was really awesome.” But that doesn’t really change anything. And sort of, you know, the spectrum between those.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Let’s see, moving on to other topics. One of the things I want to mention briefly, I just did the Gemini episode and I’m getting ready to do the Cancer episode now that we’ve moved into Cancer season. And something I was thinking about recently is how each astrologer has sort of this hero’s journey where they start out with very basic concepts of just knowing the signs of the zodiac or knowing your sign or what have you, and then you get into learning more intermediate concepts and getting into planets, signs, houses and aspects, and then eventually getting fully into astrology and getting into really advanced concepts and also getting into many different techniques and being exposed to a tonne of different advanced timing techniques and all sorts of things like that. But at some point, it starts curving around at some point in everyone’s studies, and then you start walking backwards and kind of coming back to where you started, which is rediscovering basic concepts and revisiting some of those things, and then finding or rediscovering the depth and complexity of the basics after initially going through a process of almost moving away from that and moving only into advanced or complicated complex techniques. That’s something I’ve been going through over the past year with returning back to going through the planet series and now the signs of the zodiac series, and just refreshing myself on the depth and complexity of some of the most basic concepts in astrology. But I realized that that’s kind of like a universal journey that everyone goes through on some level.
AC: Yeah, definitely.
CB: Yeah. Is that something either of you did in terms of getting super-advanced technically early on but then eventually maybe paring it down a little bit or getting back to basics at some point?
CMG: Yeah. So, I mirror the same journey of learning more techniques and getting a little bit more sophisticated with how I approach astrology. And I remember a moment where I was just looking at something simple on Cafe Astrology and I was like, “Oh, okay. Sun Trine Mars on this is simple delineation.” I was like, “This interesting. I can see it differently now that I’ve accumulated all this knowledge.”
CB: Yeah. And you really do, once you do accumulate all of that you can see it differently and somehow becomes even richer, I think, at some point once you return back to the basics. Which is something that’s really rewarding or sort of fulfilling to me.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. As you know, Chris, I’ve been really into going back to just planetary pairs for a while and that was my workshop at NORWAC, and will hopefully be a book at some point. But just going back to the simple pairing of the seven planets, which there are only 21 pairs, but there’s so much richness there. It’s like, “Well, think about each pair by set. Like, for example, Moon-Saturn conjunction.” Well, in a night chart, that is your sec light conjunct the out-of-sight malefic. Whereas in a day chart, it’s your insec malefic and it’s the Moon, but the Moon’s not the sec light, it’s not the main base. You know, looking at the bringing temperament stuff in here. It’s like, “Oh, they’re both cool but one is dry and one is moist, etc, etc,” just bringing all of the heavy technical stuff to the simplest of pairings, which is at the sort of beginning of any aspect interpretation. It’s like two planets relating to each other. So yeah. But I think that there’s a little bit of like a sine wave to that where there’s like, get a bunch of complexity, digest it, integrate with what appeals to you and is coherent with the rest of your practice, and then discard the things that are interesting but don’t give you big results when they’re just not part of what you’re doing. And then get curious again.
CMG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, it’s such a common experience for astrologers, but it’s one that’s maybe good to know early on in your studies; that that might be your trajectory at some point.
AC: Yeah. I think that that’s probably the shape of ongoing study of any art or craft, where you go deeper and you learn, you know, going deeper means going back and forth between consolidating and simplifying, and then expanding and complexifying.
CB: Yeah. That reminds me of a question that I got on a recent Q&A recently that was something like, “I’ve been studying astrology for a while but I feel like there’s too much. How do I really feel confident about using my techniques or approach? How do I gain greater confidence and actually putting astrology into use and maybe seeing clients because it feels too overwhelming at this point, and there’s too many different things I could use.” And they reminded me, recently I’ve been getting into doing art with oil pastels and that being like a new medium and something to sort of explore during my Pisces perfection year. It was interesting seeing a new field and then being exposed to the different ways of doing it or different art mediums, and how just like with art as probably with astrology, it’s really good to expose yourself to a bunch of different approaches early on so that you can see what you like, and then find one that really resonates with you while still getting a broad sort of overview of the field and all the different options available. But then at some point, it’s a good idea to focus in on a specific approach and then really just keep doing that approach over and over again so that you can master that approach. And in order to become good at something, you really have to choose your medium and choose the approach that you really want to specialize in, and then just practice it over and over again. Through the repeated application of that over and over again, once you’ve set the sort of boundaries of your approach, then you will eventually become really good at doing that one thing. But if you’re trying to do 20 different approaches at the same time, you’re probably never going to get really good at one of them unless you’re just some sort of crazy polymath. And while everybody thinks that they’re a great polymath, it’s kind of rare for somebody to be able to fully master like 20 different things in one lifetime. But instead, sometimes it’s better to just focus in on one thing in order to get your 10,000 hours in or what have you, and then eventually become good at that.
CMG: Yeah. And I’ve had a similar experience where someone was asking like, “I don’t know which house system to use and I think they’re all valid,” and I was like, “At this point you have to choose. You just have to choose and then develop your skills using whatever house system you’ve chosen, and then pivot from there if you need to.”
AC: Yeah, totally. I’m reminded of the best advice or some of the best advice my mom gave my Gemini Moon many, many, many, many years ago. She said, “You know, Aus, you can do anything you want. You can do everything you want, but you can’t do it all at the same time. You got to space it out.”
CB: Yeah, the curse of time and being a three-dimensional being living in the universe that is consists of maybe time as the fourth dimension that we’re limited or restrained by. All right, moving on to other more serious stuff in the news. The last forecast episode we did we recorded on May 24th, and we had just started to hear reports that there had been some kind of school shooting but we really didn’t have any much information about it and also were hesitant to jump into saying something about something and sort of astrologizing a tragedy or saying something prematurely.
AC: Yeah, especially without any real information.
CB: Yeah, which we had none of at the time. So we just released that episode, it takes a few days to edit an episode and it came out later that week, but that’s something people should always remember. And that’s why I say that date at the beginning of each episode, because that’s when we’re recording it, and so we’re obviously not going to talk about something that occurred after we recorded. Additionally, sometimes I want to have a good astrological angle if we’re going to comment on some things inside The Astrology Podcast, and I don’t always have a good astrological angle on some things. The only angle that did come up for me with the Uvalde shooting was when I was reading a Washington Post article that was piecing together the timeline and sequence of what had happened. They said that the shooter had turned 18 on May 16th, and then as soon as he turned 18 he immediately went out and bought all the guns and the ammunition that he would then use later in the school shooting about a week later. And I of course, as an astrologer who had just done a forecast and was paying attention to it, my ears perked up seeing that date because May 16th of course was the date of the Scorpio lunar eclipse that we talked about, that was such a gnarly and kind of difficult-looking at eclipse that we talked about in one of the previous forecasts. And so I thought it was really notable and that tied it into some of the astrology that evidently the person who carried that out had his solar return on the very day of that eclipse and kind of baked it into that, and then went out and did what he did.
AC: Yeah, I was pretty amazed when you told me that and then my second thought was, “Oh, 18?” So it’s at about 18 and 19 that you have for the first time the eclipse cycle returning to the place where it was when you’re born, the eclipse cycles about 18.6 years. And so this was not only was it a solar return on an eclipse, right? And if we’re thinking about electional astrology, like buying weapons on an extremely malefic eclipse. But it was also, you know, this was the person’s home natal eclipse cycle. That also means that they had the Sun- It was eclipse season when they were born as well. So the eclipse symbolism is just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it was a total eclipse, right? I know that sometimes I sound like I’m being a scaremonger about eclipses being malefic, but it’s literally a shadow covering things where it should be, you know, that it should be happy and bright, right? It’s daytime and an elementary school. And that was quite a shadow which fell over it.
CB: Yeah, for sure. That was also around the time that Mars ingressed into Aries and then later conjoined Jupiter, and it was interesting to see the rash and uptick of not only other incidences of gun violence in the US, but also just increase of discussion again about gun restrictions and different things like that that took place over the next few weeks after that point. And I thought that was tied in then to some extent probably with that Mars ingress into Aries as well.
AC: I mean, we’ve seen some pretty dramatic things on the day of Mars ingresses. January 6th was the day of a Mars ingress. And then it was also within, I don’t know, less than a week of Mars ingressing into Aries and conjoining Jupiter that both Ukrainian and Russian forces began major offensives, which is what we’ve been talking about since the year lay. It’s like “Well, that’s very offensive. It’s very, like, ‘Go.’ And as we discussed last month, the Mars-Jupiter it might be, you know, there’s boldness, there’s daring, but that might be pointed in a direction that is terrible for someone on the receiving end of it. Just because you have a daring warrior… A daring warrior goes out and fucks people up, right? And not always for righteous or good reasons.
CMG: Yeah. I just wanted to pick up on what I saw someone say in the chat and what I was going to bring up is that ingress with Mars activating Jupiter and how it activated everyone’s ideologies and worldviews and being an increased kind of political activation around those thoughts about gun control; should we have it, should we not? So a really inflamed ideological or political reaction to those things that Mars was bringing.
AC: Yeah, totally.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense. And here’s just the planetary alignments calendar again for May and you can see that solar eclipse there on the 16th through that lunar eclipse there on the 16th, and then on the 24th was the day of that Mars ingress right there into Aries. So, just to contextualize that. All right. And then more recently in the news, of course then as well, on June 24th just a few days ago on Friday, the Supreme Court struck down Roe versus Wade, which was the law basically that had legalized abortion for the past 40 or 50 years in the United States. And then suddenly, several states had laws which immediately kicked into place that basically made abortion illegal. That’s something we’ve been talking about ever since the Year Ahead forecast back in December, and people can go back and listen to that because initially we were partially contextualizing it when they were going to start hearing the case with the Venus retrograde in Capricorn conjunct Pluto, and some of the things in terms of the symbolism of that both in terms of ideas of controlling women’s bodies and people who can get pregnant and the issues of control, but also some of the issues of life and death involved when it comes to that. That was the initial part of that discussion back then. Astrologically for the more recent stuff, this ruling was actually leaked about a month ago, and it was leaked just two days after the solar eclipse that occurred in Taurus, which was right at the end of April, that Taurus eclipse was on April 30th, which was conjunct Uranus. And then interestingly, on Friday when this ruling actually officially came out, the Moon was back in Taurus and it conjoined Uranus on that day. I read a post by the astrologer Bruce Schofield on Facebook where he pointed out that the Moon was not just conjunct Uranus by longitude in the zodiac, but also by latitudes so that it was an actual very close to an occultation of the Moon moving in front of Uranus, the planet. And that it was the closest actually that it would get to doing that within a whole year or year and a half timeframe. So for me, one of the things that it was doing was the Moon was conjoining Uranus on that day, and then it immediately went to squaring Saturn. And that night I just remember, especially when it flipped over to night chart, how what a depressing night it was for like a lot of people. Here in Denver, a lot of people were celebrating pride, but it really cast a shadow over that entire weekend and celebration, having the Moon conjoin Uranus and then squaring Saturn that night, just because of the intense and really heavy implications. But one of the things that it did is I think it really reactivated, and one of the things I’ve seen happening over the past month, is that those eclipses in Taurus and Scorpio have really reactivated and emphasized the Saturn-Uranus Square that’s been going on over the past year. And I was rereading Rob Hand’s Planets in Transit recently and some of his delineations for what happens when Saturn makes a hard aspect with Uranus. And one of the things he says over and over again is that there will be structures that were pre-existing in your life that you’re taking for granted that will suddenly crumble and fall away and be removed unexpectedly. And I know we had a really literal version of that about a year ago when there was that apartment building that collapsed I think around the time of one of the exact squares, but this was a more literal or symbolically appropriate version of that in terms of something that people have been taking for granted as like a right for the past 40 years, that all of a sudden overnight was just not there anymore.
CMG: And also just like Taurus being things that we are comfortable with that we think are going to be sticking around, and then obviously that being usurped and kind of reversed in a night.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. It’s like dinner, it’s just supposed to be there. Like all the Uranus in Taurus things, all of these sort of stable parameters of life as expected. And Uranus and Taurus, especially amped up by the North Node or Rahu, has been making those surprisingly either unavailable, such as various food shortages all around the world, or energy shortages like, “Oh, I can’t buy gas for my car.” Right? And the reproductive rights are not quite in the same category, but they are. Human reproduction is as normal and as large a part of the human story as eating. And so this is a big potential shift where it is a big shift, and then it implies a number of other potential shifts. Like removing a baseline expectation about the rhythm of life is 100%, I think, on on on point.
CB: Yeah. And it just actually makes me more nervous as we head into some of these larger cycles that astrologers have already been nervous about over the past decade for the United States, the United States chart. Like, the Taurus eclipse, the lunar eclipse that’s going to take place in November around the time of the midterm elections, and the question of whether the house will change hands, going from the hands of the Democrats to the Republicans. And then what the implications of that were, and then also the Pluto return of the United States which we’re very close to the second exact hit of that. And then finally, the big Uranus return of the United States once Uranus moves into Gemini in a few years and how- One of my first episodes, one of my earliest episodes like episode two or three was an interview with Nick Dagan Best in 2012 and his book on Uranus and the United States, and how we talked about the first Uranus return of the United States 84 years into the history of the company was the Civil War, and then the second Uranus return was World War Two in the 1940s, and then the third Uranus return will be later in this decade in the late 2020s; and the question of just like, where’s the country headed and will tensions in the country continue to get worse somehow? And the questions of whether it’s going to be an internal dispute or an external dispute, since we have instances of both in the previous history of the United States with the Civil War and then World War Two. And I remember thinking about that abstractly like 10 years ago and being nervous about it, but now with some of the stuff going on in the country now it makes me actually more nervous than I even was 10 years ago because you can kind of see where some of the trajectory is going at this point.
CMG: Yeah. And within that cycle, Mars entering Gemini and staying for about eight months later on. Mars return of the United States. Yeah.
CB: All right, the Mars retrograde in Gemini which is going to dominate really soon here the entire second half of this year.
AC: Well, let me briefly reassure you. So, absolutely Uranus is timing Gemini, does a full etch a sketch on the United States. Right? But if you look at how was the United States after that? In both cases, it’s in much better condition. Right? Going into World War Two, the United States is still it’s not out of the depression, it’s been 10 years of misery. And then after World War Two, the United States is in basically a fantastic position economically and otherwise. And then if you look at– I probably don’t need to explain how the before and after of the Civil War leads to some pretty good results. Yes, there’s a big disaster and certainly doesn’t go smoothly, but the before and after, the after’s clearly preferable. So yes, it’s hell and high water and chaos, but in the precedents that we do have, the result is a better United States.
CB: I mean, I hope you’re right and I’m surprised to be on board.
AC: I’m not saying that has to happen, I’m just saying that literally what evidence we have, if we’re talking about precedents, we do have to look at the before and after photos.
CB: Yeah, for sure. I just don’t like the in-between stage where a lot of bad stuff has to happen in order to get to that other side of the pond.
AC: Oh, it’s gonna be wild. And it’s not just gonna be wild for the United States, you know, the whole world’s doing an etch a sketch. We’re in a new-200-years age of era, shake, shake, shake.
CB: Yeah, one of the things I’ve been reflecting on a lot is something I used to– I remember 15 years ago taking some history of astrology classes with Nicholas Campion at Kepler College, and he always was very down on and skeptical of what he called ‘the myth of progress’ and then the notion that things always inevitably get better, and we’ll just keep going on that trajectory of improving sort of exponentially during the course of human history. And I always really didn’t like his whole take on that, because he was like, you know, sometimes things get worse, and there’s empires that rise but then they fall, and nothing always stays on a completely increasing pattern. And I just felt that that was so unintuitive because I was like, obviously things do get better. Like, people get more rights, things keep improving slowly in this country, for example. And seeing this was a real instance where it’s brought me back to thinking about that, and how sometimes there can be steps backwards. And you can’t always take things for granted because there’s nothing that’s necessarily permanent, and therefore the reason then to need to keep working towards positive in this instance, like social change, because otherwise things that you take for granted can be ripped away pretty easily.
CMG: Yeah, in the backdrop of a Pluto return, the empires will fall. Things will break.
CB: Right. Yeah. And the question of the survival of democracy and things like that. And if the country still exists after the Uranus return, what does that country look like? Is it optimistic or is that…? You know, there have been other empires like this in the past. The Roman Roman Empire, for example, that just went through a transformation and ceased being a democracy at a certain point because it was seized by somebody who was able to take complete control over that. That’s one of the things that makes me nervous about what we’re going through now is just hoping it doesn’t go in that direction of one historically possible scenario.
AC: Yeah, what’s interesting, also, about those last two instances with Uranus and Gemini is that during those periods, we had presidents who had five times the Executive power of a normal president. Both Lincoln and FDR were almost– to use– a Roman parallel. They were much more like a solo. The Romans would do a temporary dictator; feel like things are so fucked up you just have one person deal with it for now, and then they will give back those powers. And that’s almost exactly what FDR did. We don’t call it that in America but you know, he ruled America with an iron fist for 12 years. And so we also tend to get very strong leaders that emerge in the midst of the chaos, whether it was internal with the Civil War with Lincoln, or external with FDR. And what’s interesting is both of them died when their historical purpose was served, right? They didn’t have retirements way after their scene seen in history. It’s interesting. But yeah, if you’re having intuitive concerns about like someone having a lot of power, that’s normal. Like, for this Uranus return for the United States, there is so far a president with much more power than a standard president. Whether that’s formal or otherwise.
CB: Yeah. All right. So I think that’s it in terms of reviewing previous stuff, and now might be a good time to transition into talking about the forecast for July. What do you guys think?
AC: Oh, there was one more thing on the overturn of Roe that was astrological that I think the listeners will hopefully find as intriguing as I did. So, the point at which the Moon is at its apogee, meaning as far from the Earth as it gets in its monthly cycle is usually referred to as the Lilith point. And referring to this point as Lilith is not like a new fangled modern interpretation, we actually have Chinese translations of Persian texts from over 1000 years ago that use the Lilith figure to describe this apogee point. And so there’s a variety of Lilith folklore and mythology, but in virtually all of that, Lilith is associated either with taking children or in the Abrahamic version, Lilith refuses to bear children. She doesn’t want to be Adam’s wife and have a family and all that, so she refuses the garden deal that Eve accepts. But so either, whereas in some of the earlier Mesopotamian stuff, Lilith literally is a spirit or demon that takes children. But regardless, there’s a like, “No kids for me,” quality to Lilith. And so I just happened to notice that in the Aries ingress chart for the United States this year, which is an important chart for judging what’s going to happen in a country in a given year, Lilith is right on the ascendant. And then if we look at where the Lillith point is now, it’s just moved into Cancer, which is very interested in pregnancy and reproduction as a sign. And the United States has a bunch of stuff right in the beginning of Cancer, there’s Venus and Jupiter there and then the Sun and Mercury later on. So we have in Aries ingress chart, really, Cancer is the most important sign that can get transit in the US chart, the most is invested there. And if we look at right now, we’re right at the eve of a new Moon in Cancer right on top of the Lilith point, right? If the New Moon is sort of a monthly refocusing on, you know, what are the Americans concerned about? It’s like right on the Lilith point. So you’ve got three different chart techniques all pointing to that for the US.
CB: Yeah, that’s really striking. I’m trying to think of any thing else that needs to be said there in terms of that, but that’s kind of a lot there astrologically, and I know there’s a lot of people unpacking it, especially because it just happened, a lot of interesting discussions’ taking place. So I’m sure it’s something that we’ll return to here in the future. Why don’t we transition at this point into talking about the astrology of next month? I wanted to show the planetary alignments calendar from our print calendar from our wall calendar for this month just to talk about some of the ingresses, delineations, and the stations to kind of provide a backdrop. On the 5th of July, Mars is going to shift from Aries where it’s been transiting for the last month and a half or so and it’s going to move into Taurus. In the same day, Mercury is going to move into the sign of Cancer and depart from Gemini where it’s been hanging out for quite a while due to its retrograde period that took place between the signs of Gemini and Taurus. So the following week, we’re going to have a full Moon in the sign of Capricorn on the 13th, then a few days later a Sun-Mercury conjunction or Mercury Cazimi as it’s called when Mercury enters the heart of the Sun in its direct phase on the 16th of July. And that’s basically the halfway point between retrograde cycles. Then the next day Venus is going to ingress into Cancer on the 17th, Mercury is going to go into the sign of Leo on the 19th, the Sun goes into Leo on the 22nd, and then we have a new Moon in leo on the 28th, and the very same day Jupiter stations retrograde in the sign of Aries and then it will eventually retrograde back into Pisces later this year before returning back to Aries I think early next year. Those are some of the major ingresses that are coming up here over the next month. Are there any other major alignments or aspects that I didn’t mention that are worth mentioning in the sort of overview section, Camille?
CMG: I think Mercury opposite Pluto, I don’t know if you mentioned that. Just in terms of the hearings continuing and news continuing to come out that shifts our perspective of what’s going on. Then later on, Sun will oppose Pluto as well. And just because we’re going through a Pluto return, it might be some notable times during that period.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point actually especially with like the January 6th hearings. Those are some of the hearings you’re talking about?
CMG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, yeah. For sure. Here, let me animate the chart, show the chart for what you’re talking about. Yeah, once Mercury and the Sun get into Cancer and then eventually will start opposing Pluto late in that sign once they hit 27. And that’s pretty important because this month, July is also the month of the second exact Pluto return of the US, isn’t it?
CMG: I think so. Yeah.
CB: Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is the retrograde one. All right. So backing up to the top of the month and just to set the context as we head into it and talking about where the planets are now at the very opening of the month, we see Mars there at the very end of Aries so we’re getting towards the very tail end of that transit of Mars through Aries and getting ready for Mars in Taurus. We also see Mercury and Gemini getting ready to shift into Cancer, and Venus still making her way through the sign of Gemini for the first essentially like half of the month, basically, before moving into Cancer as well. Those are some of the major shifts. Austin, where are you at with the opening for this month?
AC: Yeah, I think the fourth and the fifth are really important because in a sense, July just kind of feels like June until we have the paired ingresses of Mars into Taurus and Mercury into Cancer. Those are very strong vibe shifts. Mars has been certainly active in Aries for good and for evil, but Mars in Aries is very pedal to the metal. It’s very “Use all the fuel you have,” and it ignites, inflames, etcetera, etcetera. Whereas Mars in Taurus is very different. It’s not a Martial sign. It’s a sign where Mars is in detriment or in exile, it’s very far from home. Taurus, as we talked about earlier, is supposed to be where all the stable things are, where Mars is not welcome, right? It’s dinner, it’s not war. That’s a big slowing down of Mars, slowing down and toned down. And then Mercury from Gemini into Cancer is a similar shift towards the end. Mercury in Gemini is thinking and talking about anything and everything all the time, and then Mercury in Cancer is like, “Oh, what’s actually important? What do I actually care about? I need to call my mom.” Right? Like, “I need to get off Twitter and call my mom.” Right? It shifts communication into a much more personal introverted what-really-matters sort of state. And so those two being paired up pretty much within 24 hours is a big shift in the atmosphere.
CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it moves Mars- Mars moving into Taurus, one of the things it’s going to do is really begin the build-up to the Mars conjunction with Uranus which is going to happen in late July and early August, which is pretty significant because I think it occurs on the node at the same time. And then eventually, we’ll build up to the next Mars-Saturn square as well, which is really going to reignite and re-emphasize the tension between Saturn and Uranus that we’ve been experiencing over the course of the past years. So in some of the unexpected disruptions and the destabilization of existing structures that come along with that, it’s been really striking to me– I think I said this already on the last forecast but it’s become even more the case how much those eclipses, especially the solar eclipse that occurred in Taurus at the very end of April, how much that really did fulfil what we kind of anticipated in reactivating and really exacerbating the Saturn-Uranus square even though they’re kind of far apart by degree, but it really reconnected those two and how much of that’s sent major disruptions and shockwaves through the economy and how things are starting to get a lot more destabilized economically, and there’s some things in the stock market that are just tanking at this point. One of them, interestingly was Bitcoin has just dropped like a rock in terms of its value at this point, as have some other cryptocurrencies over the past month or two.
AC: Yeah, I would say the second half of Taurus, for Mars is just full of shit shows. I mean, that’s where basically the food and energy crises that we’re seeing some of but are already baked in, that’s where they’re going to hit more and more. And they’ll hit in the United States but not nearly as much as a lot of other places. We’ve also seen with Saturn and Uranus being activated by Mars, you get civil unrest for a variety of reasons. You know, it’s gonna be bred riot time in a lot of places. We know that’s all baked in at this point and that pounding on that fixed axis that we’ve seen for over a year but now as eclipses on it, starting with the eclipses in May, or at the end of April and then May, and then we get the Mars-Saturn-Uranus. And then there are like three or four other things that keep pressing that button through the rest of the year. It’s a theme for the rest of the year. We’re not getting a food and energy drop from friendly aliens that solves that.
CMG: Yeah. I was thinking about Mars entering Taurus, the exact thing that came to mind was food wars. Like, what exactly would Mars be fighting for in Taurus? And it would be those staples, those bread and butter things, pun intended.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense. Something that I was thinking about recently that I spent time in the last episode talking to Patrick Watson about is the idea that planets in detriment subvert expectations. And this was an interesting– which I’ve thought about before– but it was interesting coming back to that idea and how that can manifest sometimes. Because the original word for detriment in Greek was enantiomer, which just means something that’s opposite or opposed to something. But we don’t use that word because that’s what came to be the word that’s used for the opposition aspect. But originally, the word for detriment basically meant opposition, and what is an opposition if not to be set against something or set apart from something by doing the opposite of what you’re expected to do? And so this notion of subverting expectations, I think, will be very important for this transit of Mars through Taurus, because it’s going through the sign opposite to one of its domiciles and it’s going to act in a way that’s opposite to what’s normally expected of Mars. That’s even more so the case because Uranus is also there as well so we’re going to be building up to that conjunction to Uranus. And Uranus energy also is very much rebellious and not doing what it’s told to do.
AC: Yeah, the planets in detriment try to accomplish the expected planetary activity through an unexpected method, right? Mars will definitely bring conflict and upset. It’s not going to surprise us by bringing peace and accord, but it doesn’t do that through loud and fiery, it does that through the cool and Earthly. And so for the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, that will almost certainly be the conflict after the offensives of the Mars-Jupiter in Aries period, will be the conflict entering a phase of attrition, where it’s literally whoever has food left and ammo left, wins. There’s actually less fighting during an attrition. Often, there’s less fighting during an attrition phase. Or you see this throughout the history of warfare, where by not fighting but denying the opponent their supplies, they lose. Even by not fighting. It’s like, “Well, you can’t march on an empty stomach. You can’t fight on an empty stomach.” And so it’s not by swording, it’s by starving that Mars accomplishes things. Or stealing, that Mars accomplishes things in Taurus.
CMG: Something else I just had my eye on is that around July 4th which is Independence Day, that is when Mars is at that 29th degree which is where it was during the insurrection of January 6th 2021. And already the sentiment after what the Supreme Court has done and people really not feeling at home here, I’m curious about what is going to possibly erupt during what would otherwise be a celebratory event. Kind of already seen people pushing back against Independence Day or wanting to celebrate it, and Mars might just exacerbate those sentiments.
AC: That’s a really interesting cyclical… Yeah. Oh, and on a Mars in Taurus note before Independence Day of the United States, apparently a lot of different towns or cities aren’t going to be able to do their normal firework display because there are supply chain issues.
CB: Yeah. Definitely I worry about the Mars and Taurus exacerbating especially some of the supply chain issues and some of those ripples that are already going on. One of the other ones that happened recently that was more local to me was this company where I always drink their chai– it’s a local company in Colorado that’s been very successful making a brand of chai, and it seems like they either went out of business or they ran into issues sourcing some of their ingredients and have had to temporarily, hopefully just temporarily, stop production for the next few months on this brand of chai which almost every coffee shop in Denver and Colorado uses. It’s called Bhakti chai. It’s the one actually, Austin, where on Instagram ones I just happened to be scrolling their Instagram account and there was a picture of a chai and then behind it was your book, 36 Faces, and it was a really funny random instance of your book just popping up in the wild by the photographer who happened to do the photo shoot for that company.
But anyway, speaking of supply chain issues as well as just things sometimes becoming too stabilised or things that have been around, suddenly the structure, the foundation that was holding them up suddenly collapsing. There’s many different things like that that we can see in different levels of society and manifesting in different places. And yeah, the eclipses have been really bringing that into focus and bringing some of those issues into greater prominence, but also now Mars coming up, we begin the slow march to the height of that as soon as Mars goes into Taurus on the 5th of July.
AC: Yeah. And I would say that it will be relatively mellow until Mars, until let’s say the second half of the month. Which isn’t to say holy, mellow, but we have Uranus in the north node at 18-19, and then we have the square with Saturn at 22. And so Mars needs to cover a little ground get into Taurus a little bit before that’s really activated. But they’ll definitely be rumblings from the beginning. It’s just not going to be nearly as acute until end of the month, beginning of next month.
CMG: Yeah, like a slow creep. Like something that’s insidious that hasn’t really sprouted, but will explode during the second half.
AC: Yeah. So there’s another one of our fixed sign, as we say, fixed sign crisis peaks. But wait, they’re more. Don’t assume that well, we did that and the world’s over it now and things are gonna mellow out in the fall. This is a new part of this Saturn-Uranus and then especially with the nodes there, it’s all in fixed signs which means that it’s ongoing processes. It’s not like one big event that you then react to. It’s like, “Still going… Yep, still problems there.” New problems of exactly the same type.
CB: Yeah, and that being said, especially with the buildup, that the buildup doesn’t happen, there’s a build-up phase that is the entirety of this month until we get there with the exact degree-based conjunction at the end of July and early August when it’ll be really more of like a fever pitch or at the most acute. Sometimes those ingresses are powerful and notable, and sometimes stuff happens on those ingresses and the shift is kind of palpable. Because I remember that last one, as Camille mentioned, the day of the January 6th insurrection. It was like Mars was at 29 but then by that evening it had shifted into Taurus, and it was a notable shift, especially in sometimes in individual people’s lives or charts. I remember for example, Trump’s chart at the time there had been that debate briefly for a little bit when he was elected of, you know, is he 29 Leo rising or is he zero Virgo rising as a possibility? But that ingress into Taurus is right into his 10th house and that was one of the first times where I really saw him get major, major pushback from so many people because that had crossed so many lines finally for the first time that it seemed like even some of his allies had abandoned him briefly at that point. So sometimes those ingresses can be really palpable, so I think people should pay attention to it and pay attention sometimes to shifts in their own chart when Mars moves into that sign because it’ll be moving into a new whole sign house as well.
Yeah. All right, so going back, one of the things I want to mention because it’ll only be lasting for the first few days of the month is we’ll get the very tail end of Mercury in Gemini because Mercury is just cruising through Gemini at this point in late June and early July. And one of the things I think people should take advantage of is that our best electional chart, basically, for July takes place already on July 1st at 10:45 in the morning, because you can take advantage of and you can get a Virgo rising chart with Mercury in Gemini. So it’s one of the other really great or one of the last really great Mercury elections of the year on July 1st. So set your chart for July 1st at about 10:30 in the morning local time, so whatever your local time is, don’t necessarily convert it for time zones, and adjust the chart until you have let’s say around seven degrees of Virgo rising. And if you do that, you’ll end up with a chart with Virgo rising and Mercury in Gemini in the 10th whole sign house. Venus is co-present there in Gemini in the 10th house, which is pretty nice having Venus added into Mercury so that it’s a good chart for communication, career, public profile and other 10th house things. Venus brings an artistic or an aesthetically pleasing element into the picture so that one is communicating not just in a cold and sort of dry way which can sometimes be a tendency with the air signs. But Venus brings some warmth and some artistic beauty or aesthetic appeal into the picture in the 10th house.
Let’s see, the Moon is in the 12th house which is not ideal but it’s either going to be, depending on your time zone, applying to a trine with Jupiter or applying to a sextile with the Venus in the 10th house, which helps to mitigate the Moon’s position in the 12th. And especially for people in timezones East of Denver, having that trine with Jupiter will be pretty positive that day. Other things about this chart, Mercury does have a square with Neptune which can lead to some issues in terms of not being as clear with communication but it’s counterbalanced by Mercury actually applying to a very close trine with Saturn first, which can be much more grounding and can help to balance out some of the issues that otherwise come along with Mercury squaring Neptune. Yeah, so that’s our electional chart for this month. What would you two use a Mercury election for with Mercury in the 10th house co-present with Venus?
CMG: A viral tweet. [laughs]
CB: Viral tweet, I like that. That’s good.
AC: Writing projects.
CMG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, writing projects. Starting writing projects would definitely be a good one, a tweet or other 10th house activity. If you want to launch something where communicating and getting a message out there is key, then that’s definitely what you want to use a Mercury election for. So, that is our first election of the month and our best election, but Leisa Schaim and I also found a series of, I think, at least five or six other electional charts during the course of July. And that’s available in our Auspicious Elections podcast, which is one of the bonuses or perks that’s available on our page on patreon.com. So just go to Patreon, search for The Astrology Podcast, and you’ll see the tier that contains the Auspicious Elections podcast if you want to sign up to learn more or get access to those other elections for the month of July. All right, so that’s the electoral chart rate for the beginning of the month. Are there any other early early month things that we need to mention or should we move into more like the second week of July and the first lunation?
AC: Yeah, I would say let’s move along.
CB: All right. So here’s that first lunation. It takes place on July 13th when the Moon opposes the Sun from the sign of Capricorn. There it is at 21 degrees of Capricorn and we can see the Moon is getting pretty closely conjunct Pluto within about six degrees off at 27 degrees of Capricorn. So it’s a full Moon in Capricorn conjunct Pluto. It looks like it’s also sextiling Neptune at 25 degrees of Pisces. We have also a trine with Uranus, which is even closer. It’s separating from the trine with Uranus at 18 degrees of Taurus. What else is standing out to the two of you about this chart and this lunation in Capricorn?
CMG: Well, the one thing that stands out as I know, July 13th the week of, is when those hearings are going to start up again after Congress gets back from their July 4th recess. So I’m interested to see if there’s any damning news that comes out during this time, especially when you see that Mercury is configured in this picture and things may come out, I suppose.
AC: Yeah. And then that Mercury conjoins the Sun quite tightly opposite Pluto. So the Mercury-Pluto dynamic that’s there in the full Moon chart gets tightened up and perfected, even closer to Pluto. To me, the full Moon with Pluto overshadows a lot of the rest of it even though Mercury is important in the aspects to the Moon, but the conjunction with Pluto, and you think about the experience of that day, there’s the moment that the Moon is fullest but then it’s going to spend the next 12 hours perfecting a conjunction with Pluto.
CB: Yeah, I think that’s really important, those applications. Like, once an aspect happens and then just what the Moon is applying to for the rest of the day can sometimes really cast a shadow if it’s a difficult aspect over the rest of the day, or if it’s a positive aspect it’s like those are the days when things go relatively well, just generally speaking in terms of the astrological weather. So that is interesting that that is the immediate application after that.
AC: Yeah. So with Pluto, there’s this interest in/and fear of secrets, right? You know, it’s like what’s really going on with Pluto in the underworld? Like, what’s going on underneath what I can see or underneath what I’ve heard? And so there’s a fascination– fascination and fear– fear can provoke its own form of fascination. You’ve got to look under the bed because you’re afraid something’s under it to either confirm or deny it. And so there is that sort of- Yeah, the underworld or ‘what’s hidden’ fascination with this full Moon. In meaningful contrast to the bright silver overflowing full Moon sort of standard energy, it’s all like pouring a river of silver down into an abyss.
CB: Yeah, I mean the full Moon itself is when the Moon is at its brightest so it’s bringing to light something maybe that otherwise wants to remain hidden or otherwise was buried in the past with Pluto being right there. And Pluto on the one hand can be, like you said, wanting to figure out secrets and find out secrets and get to the bottom of things, which can be more of like an investigative energy of seeking to uncover something. Sometimes that energy can go a little haywire and it can be becoming like a paranoid about things happening around the corner and becoming almost like stuck in a feedback loop of conspiratorial type thinking where everything is a conspiracy and you think that there’s hidden things behind every corner. So there can be positive and negative sides to that energy, but it’s interesting the notion of things being brought to light with the full Moon conjunct Pluto at this time.
CMG: Yeah, some type of startling transparency is probably going to occur around that time.
AC: That would be nice. [Camille laughs] That’s possible, though. I’m seeing the image, for me, is shifting to the Moon revealing things that couldn’t be seen before, or with the transparency shining through what was obscuring important facts.
CB: Yeah. And Mercury is coming up there. It’s 10 degrees away from Pluto but it’s not too far away, only four degrees away from the lunation. And then of course, we’ll have the conjunction of the Sun and Mercury just a few days later on the 16th halfway between the retrograde cycles, which is an important turning point halfway. And then shortly after that over the next few days, we get the Mercury-Pluto opposition on the 17th and 18th, and then the Sun-Pluto opposition by the 19th. I know over the past year we’ve had a few instances of Mercury stationing and being configured to Pluto, and investigative reporting coming out at that time of these being these big investigations that were revealed of things like, you know, I think the Pandora Papers was one of them of hidden financial things that were happening with the world’s wealthiest people hiding money in offshore accounts and that coming to light or being brought and exposed, or… What’s the other term for when something is exposed or something is brought to light? Not like a revelation, it’s sort of like a revelation but… Disclosure. That’s the term. Disclosure’s has just been one of our major Mercury Pluto keywords over the course of the past year that’s become a surprisingly regular one. That might be another relevant keyword here as we’re trying to understand what the Sun and Pluto and a lunation on Pluto means during this timeframe.
AC: Yeah, especially in the news. On a personal level, I think there is a species of revelation that is Mercury-Pluto, especially with the Sun here. Especially with Pluto in Capricorn. Pluto in Capricorn has been very… What is the landscape of power seems to be the- Like, what is the real landscape of power? What is the real shape of power seems to be a recurring theme with Pluto in Capricorn. And a personal underworld, a Plutonian revelation about like, “Oh, this is the way the game is actually being played.” And that could be in your office or in your field or career or in a relationship, but the like, “Oh, this is the actual landscape of power, not what I was told or not what I thought.”
CMG: Yeah, discovering that within yourself as well of, “This is the game that I’ve also been playing.” Yeah, coming to terms with that.
CB: Yeah. And sometimes that can be digging down deep in things that were buried within oneself, that were hidden from oneself either not just from somebody else but also that you’re hiding from yourself. But also sometimes in the process of digging things up like that and rediscovering them, one finds their own power in removing away things that you were previously sort of hiding from yourself in some sense.
AC: And with Pluto, a lot of times there’s a sort of- The empowerment or the revelation is… For me, what I’ve experienced with Pluto stuff is it’s sort of realizing that it’s empowering by letting go of a thing that’s not real, right? Like, I thought the game was this way and I was playing it this way, and I realized now that that’s fake and I’ve been deluded the entire time. And this is especially Pluto in Capricorn, like reconfiguring yourself so that you’re dealing with the real, even if it’s more unpleasant than the version that you thought you’re interacting with is empowering, right? Because you’re not trapped in a more pleasant fantasy, you’re actually dealing with less foam padding between you and therefore your actions will be more effective because you’re not seeing it through a glass darkly or less darkly.
CMG: Yeah, and I like Pluto also for discovering what is rotten. Especially in Capricorn, you’re thinking about things that are supposed to have structure and hold some type of integrity. And seeing the rot or the things that aren’t standing up structurally in your life can be quite damning, but it offers you the chance to then rebuild something that’s a little bit stronger. Even if you know through the process, you’re confronted by something that is grotesque. Yeah.
AC: I think maybe this is astrologically relevant, I’m going to try: I learned about a new social trend in Chinese social media among the youth, which is hashtag translated from the Chinese ‘let it rot,’ which is a sort of successor to evolution of the Lying Down movement where people are basically tired of the rat race or tired of working super hard to get nowhere. And so that’s evolved into, I think the Chinese is [Bylong] and I probably butchered that so forgive me, but it translates to ‘let it rot’. It’s like, “You know what? Fuck that. I’m not working to make any more money than my rent costs and food costs, I am going to lie on my futon all day and enjoy myself. There’s no point in trying. It’s sort of like… What do we say? A nihilistic revolution of like, “No, I don’t believe in any of that. I’m not fucking trying. I know that I will enjoy being on my phone. I will not enjoy going to work.” [laughs] Yeah. But anyway, so let it rot. That feels very Pluto in Capricorn. It’s like, “Oh, that shits rotten. I’m not going to work in a rotten building more than I have to. I don’t want to try to climb the rotten tower that’s going to fall tomorrow.”
CMG: Yeah, and it’s evocative of Uranus and Taurus, the radical act of choosing laying on the futon instead of climbing the ladder. The corporate ladder, I should say.
CB: Yeah, I like that. And speaking of lying on the futon, I have to do the Cancer- It’s Cancer season, I need to do the Cancer episode. And I was curious for both of you, especially you, Austin, coz you have Cancer rising what keywords you use for Cancer that are not standard obvious ones that everyone associates with Cancer on social media or, I mean not to put you in a tough spot in terms of having to come up with something new, but I feel like sometimes there’s cliche Cancer ones and there can be some cliches about each sign that have some truth to them, but what are some of your core keywords for Cancer that come to mind that usually are your go-to keywords?
AC: Well, I don’t know about keywords but I think one thing that’s really central to me in understanding Cancer and planets in Cancer is you have to understand what they care about. Care in Cancer land means emotional and mental and spiritual and physical investment in, right? And the sort of archetype of that is like parents and children where a lot is invested. But there’s lots of Cancer placements that aren’t about physical reproduction. But for anybody with serious Cancer planets is like, what do they really care about? Because they will centre on that and build around that, and they’ll build structures to nourish that and also to be nourished by that and to protect their relationship to it. Another word is cultivation, which is like the act of tending on a regular basis in order to facilitate growth. But with Cancer planets that can be, you know, mathematics, it could be chess, it could be any art form. It could be a person, it could be a community, but it’s like, “What do they care about? What are they invested in?” And you get the whole sort of hardshell grumpiness and protectiveness and soft gooey center, like those structures grow around those points of investment.
CB: That’s perfect. That makes a lot of sense. What things come to mind for you, Camille, about Cancer or some of the things that you think of when you think of that sign?
CMG: I think about healing and I think about recuperation. Especially like piggy backing off of what Austin said about that tough exterior that the crab has and how it’s able to kind of like the Moon withstand so much stuff being thrown at it especially in this world. There’s something really integral to the Cancer archetype, I think, not only being willing to take that but going into a safe space, retreating, withdrawing, in order to then restrengthen itself or to re-nourish itself and to heal itself, which then becomes something that it can then offer the world how to bounce back. So there’s a lot of resilience to me in the Cancer archetype but of course, it’s never talked about.
AC: That’s really good, the healing or restoration.
CMG: Yes.
AC: Right. And it’s not… And the action of Cancer over time is that there is a lot of resilience and there is a lot of endurance or, you know, they can resist a lot. Part of that is like building protective structures, but the key to that is that there’s an ability to restore what is important or to self-restore to just go back to the source. It’s not being impermeable to damage, it’s having an ability to heal.
CMG: Absolutely. To withstand it, yeah.
AC: Yeah. And again, like the action of something that doesn’t take damage versus something that can self-heal. They just both look tough from a distance. But that’s really good, that’s a really critical differentiation of why are Cancer planets enduring?
CB: Yeah. And I was also noticing recently with the summer solstice taking place and the beginning of the summer season in the northern hemisphere, which is the start of Cancer season, just the notions and reacquaintment with the notions of light and light sort of being at the height; the days being at the longest, and the notion of the sort of life givingness of light being at its peak in some sense during the course of Cancer and Leo season in the northern hemisphere where astrology or this form of astrology originally developed. And how sort of crucial that is and tying it back to that keyword of nourishingness and the nourishing quality of life that enlivens and invigorates creatures in the world, living creatures in different ways, and how the notion of light is so important in our universe has being sort of the starting point not just for life, but also for astrology; that most astrology is based on these notions of light and dark and the interplay between the two. That becomes so important as the basic foundation of most of our symbolism.
CMG: And also just Cancer being ruled by the Moon, this association with nighttime, and how at nighttime when we’re at home we’re kind of recuperating and distressing from the day. So it’s kind of like that Cancer activity of recuperation allows us to then show up in the world as stronger, more capable individuals from that type of healing.
AC: I would also add that for climates where the longest days of the year are extremely unpleasant such as where I live, you really appreciate nighttime. That’s like, “Oh, thank God. It’s finally 9:30, the Sun is finally set, it’s finally cooling down. Oh, so nice.” And then one more thing about an older context for Cancer is, you know, we have Cancer rising in the theme on mundane. You know, the chart of the creation of the universe, and we have that Cancer rising. And it was about the solstice when the Nile would flood every year. That was like a massive… That was what restored the entire Nile Delta which was probably basically the best agricultural land for 1000 miles in any direction. Right? And so the re-nurturing the land at that time was something that literally happened in a place that played a huge role in the development of astrology.
CB: Yeah, I like that. That’s really important. You also mentioned the night and how good it is when it cools down where you’re at, Austin. But it’s also like that’s one of the interesting things during summer, is it’s a warm night. It cools downs so that it’s no longer this fiery, oppressive sort of burden of the daytime heat. But it’s also like a warm, sometimes kind of humid or sort of supportive night where you can kind of like go out with a T-shirt and enjoy the night being somewhat cool and temperate as opposed to the opposite, which is a Capricorn season where at night it the temperature drops down to the coldest and that’s where it’s the most freezing during Capricorn season with Saturn ruling that sign. So there’s an interesting interplay there also between a sort of temperate, warmth and cold, versus an intemperate, warmth and cold, which also goes back to the basic dynamic that Ptolemy talks about between the benefics and malefics where he tries to rationalize them in the context of the benefics being temperate, whereas the malefics tend towards extremes of hot and cold, which is why they’re experienced as more caustic or more challenging or negative in some sense, subjectively.
AC: Yeah, totally hard on life.
CB: Right. All right. Something I want to mention is I did want to show as we’re starting to get into the second half of the month this really steep slope that we start heading into with the Saturn-Uranus square, and one of the sort of like fourth and final times that we get a really close square between Uranus and Saturn where I think they get within a degree of each other and they kind of hold that for a while around the time of late September and early October. But by the time we get into July, we can see that that slope is heading upwards very, very quickly. I wanted to mention this because I just remembered to mention our sponsor, which is archetypalexplorer.com, which is where I got this graphic from. Most of the times I use graphics like this come from that program. That’s a really innovative program for displaying astrology transits in a visual style. So, let me plug that really quickly before I forget.
Archetypal Explorer is a subscription astrology program that you can sign up for on a subscription basis, and then access it through their website. They’ve got a world dashboard that shows the cosmos at a transit at a glance where you can look at different graphs for what the sort of astrological weather is at the moment that’s going on out there, as we do on these forecasts each month in different aspects and planets and date ranges and orbs, and it also provides interpretations. But then you can also look at your personal transits and what are going on for you at that time, especially in terms of slow outer planet moving transits. And it actually provides delineations that come from two different books. One of them is from a book that Richard Tarnas wrote on transit interpretations. It’s actually not even published yet, it’s not publicly available but it is available through this website. And then another draws interpretations from The Archetypal Universe by Renn Butler, which is another good modern approach to interpreting transits, especially of the outer planets. So this is a program that I love and strongly endorsed and that’s why they’re one of our regular sponsors because of these graphs that they show. And if you go to their website, you can sign up and get a seven-day free trial to try it out. Just go to archetypalexplorer.com to learn more about that program. All right, so-
AC: I’ll just say that since you started integrating those graphs, those visualizations into the podcast, it’s made it so much easier to talk about and see the longer cycles of like, “See, it’s up again. We’re gonna Saturn-Uranus again.” And then you can see the next peak is there when we’re looking at the Saturn-Pluto conjunctions et cetera, et cetera. It’s such a nice way. It’s so much easier to think about a long sequence in that case over a year of tightening and loosening aspects by just at a glance rather than, or in addition to but also rather than scribbling dates down and thinking about it. Honestly, when I’m scribbling dates down and thinking about it, I’m usually trying to visualize it and see it as one thing. So it really is a wonderful tool.
CB: Yeah, cuz I think we as astrologers, especially those of us who grew up to some extent using like an Ephemeris to some extent to track transits, you kind of visualize it like that in your head in terms of these periods of greater intensity when the aspects get really close or when they hold an exact aspect due to retrogrades or something like that. But this was one of the first times that I’ve seen them actually visualized in this way, which I think helps just visualize the way that astrologers actually think about some of these transits sometimes. Yeah. All right, let’s move into the later portion of the month at this point where we start getting some shifts of Venus moving into Cancer on the 17th, Mercury moving into Leo on the 19th, and the Sun moving into Leo on the 22nd. And all of that is leading into a new Moon in the sign of Leo eventually at the very end of the month on the 28th. Let me pull that up in the charts as we start getting some shifts away from the cardinal signs and into the fixed signs.
AC: I’ll start. I really like Venus’s ingress into Cancer. Venus doesn’t rule Cancer or it’s not the very height of sign/planet match. But Venus does great in Cancer, especially the first 10 degrees. It’s got a deck in there, it also has a bound later on. There’s a really nice… As I say being in Cancer limits Venus to what is more personal and caring and intimate and familial, but the Venus energy going there works really well. It’s about maintaining or feeding relationships with people you’re close to and generally have been close to for a while. All of those relationships need watering. It’s less good at the fun and frivolity that you can have with Venus in some other places; it’s less about meeting new people, it’s less about small talk, but where the Venus rain does tend to land is those close relationships which always need watering. And Venus is uninterfered with by anything. There’s a sextile to Mars and there’s a square to Jupiter, but that square to Jupiter is not going to be a problem. And the sextile to Mars maybe it’s a little spicier for a few days but generally speaking, Venus is in a really nice and comforting and restorative– like you were saying earlier, Camille– place while it’s in Cancer. It’s out of that fixed sign madness.
Camille: Yeah, this is like a pivot point in July where I think things can start slowing down and where we can activate a little bit more of the reflective properties of Cancer. And things are out of Gemini, we have Mars moving out of Aries, it just feels like a time in the year where we can take a little bit of a reprieve, [laughs] maybe reflect on some of the things that have been activated. But yeah, I like that Ingress, too. I think it just feels like Venus has dignity in Cancer. I agree.
AC: Yeah, it has triplicity dignity, it has a bound, it has a decan. There’s formal dignity and there’s also just like, “Oh. The planets efforts, are they appreciated in that sign?” And it’s like, “Yeah!” There’s plenty of room for Venus in Cancer.
CB: I like that term you used, Camille, which is reflective. That’s a really good keyword for Cancer on a number of different levels.
CMG: Absolutely. Yeah. Especially after the frenzy of all that Gemini activation, it’s time to kind of sit and think what actually matters.
CB: Yeah, and especially because the Moon itself reflects astronomically the light of the Sun. But also just because Cancer itself as the first water sign in the series of the Zodiac is very reflective. And that’s probably the first sign where you get that really reflective quality, emotionally and internally.
AC: And so that kind of sweetness, that reflective sweetness, is sort of in contrast to the other things which are developing nicely by the second half of the month. [laughs] Mars is getting closer and closer, Mercury’s ingress into Leo, and then the Sun’s ingress into Leo, and then the new Moon in Leo… All of those. That’s more planets in fixed signs, just as our fixed sign Saturn, Uranus, Mars Rahu party is heating up. So it’s more like a T square than just a square.
CMG: Yeah, and Venus and Cancer offering the opportunity to get right within yourself to balance to recalibrate, both in as healing from everything that has already occurred, but also to bolster yourself up for what will continue to occur.
AC: Yeah, and in Venus is in Cancer while a lot of that is happening, and so it’s nice because it’s off access to almost all of it. It’s almost like, “Yeah, the crazy shits happening, but here’s a hot tub.”
CMG: Right. Yeah. [laughs]
AC: Or whatever, maybe something more cooling, maybe a cool tub. “But here’s a nice bath.” So I think it has a nice capacity to offset the pretty stressful configurations that are developed and further developing in the fixed signs.
CB: Yeah. Also, that’s a good contrast where Cancer is a very reflective sign. But Leo, reflective is not one of the keywords that comes to mind normally for Leo, because Leo just emits light. It just shines and sort of is what it is, and doesn’t always have a quality that looks back into itself compared to other signs like Cancer.
AC: Yeah, it’s projective rather than reflective. I mean, Leo will think, “Why don’t people appreciate all this light more? Is something wrong with my light? Something wrong with them?”
CB: Yeah, usually they will default to like there’s something wrong with them, not with itself necessarily because it’s just shining and just is putting out what it has put out there, which is both a quality on the one hand that can be a drawback and the lack of reflectivity and the left lack of self or sort of critical analysis, but then on the other hand with the Leo archetype can be something that’s admirable the way that they just are; who they are, and they just put out into the world and shine whatever it is that they’re shining, and do their own thing regardless sometimes of what other people think.
CMG: Yeah. And the Sun going off in Aquarius gets more of that reflective “Who am I as a human being?” property’s not as hot.
CB: Right. Yeah. And then eventually, there’s like an overcorrection that occurs in the next sign as there always is from sign to sign, which is when it goes to Virgo and then it can get just super self-critical and things like that and super turned more into itself and looking at things in that way.
AC: Well, looking at performance, looking at the facts about performance. Be like, “Yeah, I feel great about myself.” But when we analyse the job I actually did and the metrics, there’s, “Hmm, I’m confidently mediocre. [laughs] I need to get my numbers up.”
CMG: Yeah, there’s an emphasis on service in Virgo which can take you very far out of yourself, you know, martyrdom and all that. So yeah, it’s a little bit harder to tune in.
CB: Yeah. [Vendana] in the chat says, “Projective versus reflective for Cancer versus Leo,” and I really like that as a good way to summarise the difference between those two signs. All right, so moving back to the chart. I like that little Moon. Venus squares Jupiter, which I like, around July 24th. A nice little aspect as Venus is moving through that sign and the Moon catches up to it the next day or two and conjoins Venus in Cancer, which I like. But we can see at the same time, even though we’re having some of those soft, flowing otherwise nicely reflective or relaxing aspects, there’s something else that’s building up in the background. Which is that Mars-Uranus conjunction is starting to get very close. And at the same time, Mercury which has been cruising through the first half of Leo, by the end of July starts getting really close to squaring Mars, and will eventually perfect that aspect on the 26th. And Mercury-Mars squares can be very combative, very argumentative. That can be when sort of verbal altercations and things like that take place. It’s kind of a tense energy, and it’s wrapped up within or tied up in with the fact that Mars is also moving in and closing in on that conjunction with Uranus at this point, which it will complete on the first of August. But then also as soon as Mercury squares Mars, Mercury will then move into that square with Uranus within the next couple of days, which takes us into our final lunation of the month which is a new Moon at five degrees of Leo on July 28th. So there is that conjunction at five Leo and we can see that basically the same time of that new Moon, Mercury is just coming off of the square with Mars and is very closely perfecting or completing the square with Uranus at the same time. So there’s this erratic, unexpected, somewhat destabilizing quality of shaking things up that’s tied in with Mercury’s attempt to communicate and convey things. How are you guys feeling about this new Moon in leo?
CMG: It feels like it should be celebratory, especially because it’s in Leo, it’s forming this nice trine to Jupiter in Aries. And then it just feels like there’s an impending storm. [laughs] There is something that is going to rain on the parade metaphorically, you know, especially because Mercury is also getting closer to Saturn. So it feels like a moment that would otherwise be quite uplifting that is then soured by fighting words or reactionary experiences. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And it’s like Jupiter’s actually stationing as well at the same time, we can see there at the end of July. It’s stationing there, and then both luminaries are moving into that trine with it, which is otherwise normally very supportive and confirming and helping to stabilize things. But yeah, that Mercury square with things– you mentioned fighting words, and I was talking to somebody recently that had a Mercury-Mars square and they were just talking about how the importance of being able to use curse words for them was very important to them. And I thought that was very characteristic and very interesting in how they were speaking to their Mars-Mercury square. But it was a night chart and for them it wasn’t something where they’re just doing it all the time or doing it inappropriately, but in able to be authentic to themselves they felt the need to be able to say the things that were on their mind. And to use the full range of communication to them was like being able to have the full range of like a color palette if you’re painting or something like that. And it made me really understand that much better in a way how that can manifest, and the necessity sometimes of a good curse word, a well-timed or well-placed curse word.
CMG: Oh, yeah.
AC: There’s Mercury-Mars there but as you can see if you look at it– if you’re listening, this isn’t much help– we’re basically at the- The storm, as Camille put it, is already spinning up. And that storm is gonna last a couple of weeks. It’s not just Mars, Uranus, Rahu in Taurus square Saturn, it’s also Mercury T-squaring them and then the Sun, by the time Mercury is done, then the Sun is there and will be T-squaring them. And the following full Moon will be conjunct Saturn, so the next lunation is dead on that fixed stress axis. And so it’s nice that we get a New Moon in Leo, like a reset closely trine Jupiter, right? I think the good version of that is that that is the will and ability to overcome and to be heroic. One of the positive sides of Leo transits that I see and feel is the willingness to embody the heroic for at least a little bit, which is where, you know, and to me the heroic is being unreasonably good, right? Like being able to deal with things even though you shouldn’t have to, even though no one could reasonably expect you to thrive or to shine under said circumstance. There’s something deeply powerfully irrational about the heroic that I think you can get out of Leo, especially Sun and Leo trine Jupiter in Aries. And so that’s good fuel, I would maybe contemplate what the unreasonably heroic looks like for you at that point because, you know, the next couple of weeks are, you know, it’s a storm, it’s another big shake up, you’ll see it in the ongoing etch a sketching of the global order and you’ll also see it in smaller ways. I would in particular look at the fixed houses in the chart because that’s what’s getting shaken up. And it’s pretty much all of them.
CB: Yeah. One of the things that this makes me think of as well, having this cluster of three planets of a new Moon and Leo and then Mercury also moving through Leo, is sometimes the price that’s paid for authenticity. Sometimes being your authentic self can sometimes just by default run counter to other people and put you on a collision course with tensions or conflicts with other people. And so that might be an interesting thing. Sometimes you still have to do that and just have to be yourself and be who you are, which is one of the great things that Leo teaches us in terms of the signs of the zodiac, is the importance of authenticity and tapping into your authentic self, whatever that is. And there’s something about that new Moon trine with Jupiter that feels like it could be tremendously enlivening and positive in terms of tapping into that, but at the same time, with Mercury squaring that conjunction of Mars and Uranus, that that’s sometimes creating unexpectedly despite your best efforts, sometimes conflict with others or instability and tensions in other areas of their life as a person tries to find what is authentic to themselves.
CMG: Yeah, and I also got the feeling of what does it mean to celebrate yourself in a world that is not celebrating you? And how, like Austin said, it can be even those small moments where you can be the hero just deciding to, “No, I’m going to affirm and uplift myself despite this impending storm that would seek to wash me away.” Right? [laughs]
AC: I would add to the authenticity bit. That is something that I see activated strongly by Sun-Uranus contacts. The Sun, after the new Moon, is going to be moving towards the square with Uranus. And so Uranus in a sense tries to radicalize the Sun’s individuality. Like, “Who are you really that is not… How are you just yourself?” And then after that, the Sun moves into an opposition with Saturn, which will be doubly underlined by the full Moon in August conjoined Saturn. But that’s the like, “Okay, so you radicalised your subjectivity and authenticity, but there are still limitations.” Right? Like, sometimes you have to prioritize other things than authenticity. And so the strong Saturn-Aquarius brings up those challenges. You’ll be like “Mhh, I can’t be authentic at work, but I do need to make money. How do I solve this?” Maybe it’s a workplace or profession where one can be more authentic, but right there it’s like hitting like, “Okay, there are always limits to this. It can’t just be this one.”
CB: Camille, I love that your cat just jumped up on your desk right as we’re talking about authenticity and the need to be authentic but then that sometimes causing conflicts or interruptions.”
CMG: The need to be seen. [laughs]
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
AC: Kitties like this one.
CB: But then the cats just like, “I’m a cat, that’s what I do. I jump up on desks and if it so happens to interrupt somebody else’s life, that’s a side effect.” But that’s not the cat’s problem.
AC: What’s Kitty’s name?
CMG: Davey.
AC: Baby?
CMG: Davey. But he is a baby. [laughs]
AC: Oh, Davey.
CB: Nice. We haven’t seen Sumo in a while, Austin, who’s like the patron saint cat of the Astrology Podcast.
AC: She’ll be back. She’ll be back. She’s been preparing. She’s been bulking for next appearance on the podcast.
CB: Yeah, is she like the size of a small Volkswagen Beetle at this point, based on a previous trajectory last time we saw her?
AC: She a big kitty. [laughs] You can’t tell unless you pick her up. But not only has she gotten fluffier and longer, she’s also like– She’s a little. She’s like what? Two years in a month now. She’s put on muscle. She’s thicker and more solid than she used to be. She used to be a little bit, I don’t know, little bit jiggly. But she’s thickened up. I think she’s been in my gym like lifting and swinging mace.
CB: Okay, that sounds kind of intimidating. I’m not gonna lie. I might be intimidated by-
AC: She’s still afraid of our older cat who she… He’s probably 11 pounds and she’s probably 20 pounds, but she met him and established a relationship dynamic when she was a kitten so she kind of still treats him like he’s a bully, even though she’s almost literally double his weight. And she’s full of vitality and he’s like elderly and kind of drooly with three teeth, but she’s like, “Hold that guy. Watch out, he’s fucking dangerous.” [Camille laughs] It’ll be bad day for him when she figures it out.
CB: Yeah. That speaks to all of our dynamic of things that happen when you’re younger, and how you still stick with that sometimes mentally even into later age when it no longer is true or the circumstances have changed?
AC: Yeah. And to tie that back to just the discussion on Cancer, that is sort of a downside of Cancer planets. They’ll form impressions very early in life, and then without meaning to see things 40 years later through the lens of, you know, relational dynamics when you were seven. And that in and of itself often requires that reflection you’re talking about. You know, does the inner image match the external dynamics and landscape, or is this a postcard from 20 years ago?
CB: Yeah, because Cancer is like a block of clay that you can press your hand or your fist into and then will contain or take on the shape of that and will retain it from that point forward.
AC: You know what’s interesting is the silver that was used in the first photographs. It was like a solution of silver. Silver is the Moon’s metal in virtually every alchemical system. And it’s silver which could capture and hold the image of what you were taking a picture of. And so silver, there’s no photography without silver. Silver Moon, silver’s the metal of the Moon.
CMG: That also reminds me of how crabs need to outgrow that shell, or what happens when you just want to stay firmly within that little shell that you had as a kid.
AC: Yeah, totally. Yeah, if you want to grow…
CMG: Right, gotta shed some.
AC: It protected you at the time, but if you want to grow…
CB: Yeah, I like that. And the reluctance to leave that which is comfortable or that which you have grown to adjusted to live in, which is a little similar to Taurus. And I keep thinking of things like that that keep reminding me of the interplay and the similarities between Taurus and Cancer and the interplay between the Moon and Venus, and the Moon having her exultation in Taurus.
AC: Yeah, they’re both very stubborn and domestic in their own way.
CB: All right. So going back to the chart one last thing, Austin you mentioned it’s really important is just that coming off of the Mars-Uranus conjunction as planets first square. From Leo when they square Mars and Uranus, they then immediately move into that opposition with Saturn, as Mercury will do first applying the Saturn and then eventually completing it by July 30th or July 31st, which is consequently also right around when the Mars-Uranus conjunction is going exact. But having the rebelliousness, having the aggressive need for freedom symbolised by Mars and Uranus conjunction, but then like you were saying, immediately running into a wall or some consequences with the opposition from Saturn immediately after that, and realising that there’s still boundaries and limitations and what happens in the aftermath of this sort of push for getting free of something and still having to negotiate those boundaries and negotiate some of those challenges that come up immediately afterwards.
CMG: Yeah, and with Mercury square Mars, it always reminds me of someone weaponizing their intelligence. And especially with Uranus in the picture, it’s like that plus the evil genius archetype and then immediately being censored or shut down or corrected by Saturn for doing that. But feeling the urge nonetheless, right?
CB: Right. That makes sense. Mars also weaponized– speaking of weaponizing intelligence– Mercury-Mars often also makes me think of lawyers and just the ability to argue and somebody taking maybe an argumentativeness as an inborn trait, but then turning it into a skill that can be used for their own purposes. Which can be good or could be bad, but nonetheless it’s coming from almost having a skill of arguing. And that being something that somebody can channel in some way.
AC: Yeah. With Mercury-Mars, you see a lot of lawyers as well as engineers.
CMG: Wow!
AC: Which can literally be like, “I’m going to design a thing.” You know, all weapon design is done by engineers. Tools as well. But yeah, Mercury-Mars you just see a lot with engineers and lawyers. And thieves.
CMG: I have to say this because it’s evocative my mom has Mars-Mercury-Aries and is both a lawyer and went to school for engineering. [laughter] So, wow. Wow, that explains a lot. Yeah.
AC: Well, there’s the conflict side of it. But there’s also like Mars is super practical. Mars doesn’t want idle thinking, it’s like, “You’re doing something, you’re building something, you’re designing something.” Marses grade things on how functional they are.
CMG: Right. Yeah.
CB: Are there any other keywords for the Mercury-Mars opposition? Because that’s kind of what we end the month with. Sorry, the Mercury-Saturn opposition closes out the month just as Mars and Uranus are closing in on their conjunction. But, you know, Saturn sometimes says no to communication or rejects things. And there’s something about that Mercury-Saturn opposition because it gets accentuated by the Moon hitting Mercury around the same day, it looks like here on the 29th just the Moon coming up-
AC: So the activation of the Uranus-Saturn square that we’re seeing in several different ways during this period and the next couple of weeks, it’s all Uranus, Uranus and Rahu, and then Saturn. So we have the disruption or the rebellion, whatever the surprise is, or the attempt to stop the normal order of operations, or whatever disrupts will then be followed by Saturn. Which is going to be an attempt to control or bring order back to what has been disrupted. So with Mercury, maybe harsh and rebellious words are spoken and Saturn tries to clamp down on that. With Mars, it’s like, “I’m gonna freak out!” You know, conjunct Uranus. And then needing to tightly control actions and square Saturn. And then Sun’s going to activate the same sequence. So we’re gonna get that flare up and then probably a half successful attempt to control or to bring order back to. Saturn can handle all of Rahu, Uranus, Mars all at once.
CB: Yeah, so it’s like the attempt to impose order or reimpose order after it’s been disrupted. Or alternatively, the attempt to shore up the foundations of something that have been shaken violently suddenly.
CMG: I was just gonna say a great visualization for this is a protest, right? There is a stimulating event that arouses anger and resistance. We have Mercury kind of marching on the streets yelling, and then we have the Saturn portion of it which is like, “Oh, no. Now, the SWAT team or the police are here to try to control what is being escalatingly disruptive.” Right?
AC: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ll probably see that, and we’ll probably see… The Uranus in Taurus and friends have been very consistent and been like, “And there’s not enough food or there’s not enough gas.” And then the attempt to control that, “Um, so we’re going to temporarily tap into the reserves and do the thing, don’t freak out everybody.” You know, attempts to bring order back to the situation. But yeah, there’ll probably be disruption, people are upset and loud, and then a half successful attempt to bring order back to it in a lot of different iterations.
CB: Yeah, and Mars brings a lot of all volatility to whatever area it’s transiting. And since it’s transiting through Taurus and we saw the eclipses in Taurus starting on April 30th start to disrupt things like the markets, I would assume that Mars moving in there and getting really close to Uranus would similarly lead to more volatility or would add gasoline on top of a fire that’s already burning.
AC: Or a more expensive gasoline on top of a [crosstalk] fire whose budget is already stretched.
CMG: There’s been a lot of talks about going on a general strike and I’m curious about where that sentiment will be by this time in July.
AC: I think it’ll probably be loud.
CMG: Yeah. Especially with Mars there it’s like, “I feel this in my body.” [laughs]
AC: Yeah. On a sort of not just watching the news level, so the end of the month and then really the first half of August are all this. And so if there are hatches that you need to batten down during the first part of July, it’s a good idea. Right? Because this also occurs in individual charts. There won’t necessarily be a bread riot inside your apartment, but they’re like disruptions and this and that. It’s just a period– I’m really glad to use the term, Chris, volatility. It’s a volatile- Let’s say last week, at least the last week of July and first two weeks of August is a very volatile. There’s a lot of benefit to not going into a period that you know is going to be volatile a mess. Get your shit together as much as you can and at least take care of the things you can so that you have some of the space to deal with whatever comes up during a high volatility period. You’ll thank yourself for it. It’s not always possible, but sometimes it is. And when it is, it’s worth doing.
CMG: Using that Venus in Cancer squared Jupiter in Aries time to really over indulge into rest and reset the nervous system.
AC: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: That’s a good advice. And what is the north node doing there? Because it just feels to me like it’s just expanding, and as the north or the ascending node, some of the medieval and traditional significations of increasing whatever it touches just makes me think of that increasing some of the volatility already that’s there of the Mars-Uranus conjunction. But what is Rahu or what is the north node doing from an Indian perspective even there, Austin?
AC: One, I would say it is taking a pair of syringes and injecting both Mars and Uranus with ‘TRT’. And then if we’re looking at it from a Vedic astrology perspective-
CB: What is TRT before you move on? If people don’t know what that is.
AC: Oh, that’s basically getting injected with testosterone.
CB: Okay.
AC: It’s just amping them up. It’s something… Anyway, it’s banned in a lot of UFC stuff because people were coming in with seven times the normal level of testosterone and just [horking] out. Anyway, whatever performance-enhancing drug you would like, or drug hormone you’d like to use. But it’s amping them up. And the one of the things that’s sort of top-level priority with interpreting Rahu in Vedic astrology is it also brings confusion. If you think about eclipses, you can’t see because it gets darker- It gets dark out in the middle of the day, you can’t see as clearly. It’s supposed to be the brightest night and it’s a full Moon and then there’s a shadow across it so you can’t see. And so the obscuration of vision, and then getting confused is a really big part of- Yeah, it’s a top priority sort of signification of Rahu. It’s like getting confused and then spun around.
CB: Yeah, I’ve been really thinking about that actually as being an inherent property potentially of eclipses. Because astronomically something is hidden or overshadowed, something is occulted, and that sometimes a significant event will happen or will happen in your life under eclipses but you won’t know about its significance until later when something is brought to light or comes to light. But at the time, it’s like sometimes there can be this quality with eclipses and maybe by extension, the nodes, of the important event being hidden or obscured at the time even though something is germinating at that time that’s going to grow into something very major later on.
AC: Yeah, I think the Vedic Astrology is hundred percent correct and wise for privileging that like lack of vision and confusion resulting from eclipses and the nodes which create the eclipses.
CB: Okay. All right. Well, it’s like once again I feel like this has become The Astrology Podcast forecast episodes, it’s become like a Netflix series because we’re again gonna leave it on kind of a cliffhanger at this point, because things culminate at the end of the month with that Mars-Uranus conjunction which doesn’t really go exact until October or until August 1st. So there’s going to be a little bit of a ‘to be continued’ here when it comes to this forecast that we’ll have to revisit when we do the forecast again next month towards the end of July.
CMG: Yeah, what a cliffhanger.
AC: Yeah, it’s definitely like mid fighting that we leave July.
CB: It’s like a Game of Thrones episode except hopefully the writing will be better than some of the later seasons of Game of Thrones in this series. [Camille laughs]
AC: Yeah. The palace is besieged but the dragons are coming but so are the White Walkers, and nobody has any food and you know, the reinforcing army ran out of hay to feed their horses so they’re gonna be really late.
CB: All right. Good times. Well, this was amazing. Thank you both for joining me for this episode. Camille, thanks for doing this forecast with us. You were great.
CMG: Absolutely. Thank you.
CB: So, where can people find out more information about you or what are some of your offerings in terms of astrology?
CMG: You can find more about me on my website, camillemichellegray.com. Right now just mostly working on consults, different kinds of consults so you can find me there. And periodically always writing and sharing things to Reddit and my Medium site. This site as well will have everything I write as well. And you can keep up with me on Twitter always giving bite-sized astrological insights there.
CB: Yeah, I love your Twitter account. You always post a lot of really insightful stuff there as well as in your Reddit and your Medium posts. What’s your handle on Twitter?
CMG: It’s @millymichelle.
CB: Cool, and I’ll put a link to your website in the description just below this video on YouTube or on theastrologypodcast.com website.
CMG: Excellent.
CB: Awesome. Austin, what do you have coming up?
AC: Well, Sphere and Sundry is about to release– maybe by the time this podcast is out, maybe a day or two later, maybe about the same time– the first ever Lunar series. We had to wait so long to get a good Moon in Cancer not afflicted by Saturn and Capricorn, no nodes there. We have a beautiful waxing Moon in Cancer, trine Venus in Pisces, and Jupiter in Pisces. And so it’s very Moon, its Moon Moon. It’s really awesome. One of the things that’s interesting that’s very astrological is that our early field tests have resulted in it being amazing to combine with other things because it seems to potentiate everything that we combine it with, which of course makes sense like it’s almost a ‘give me’ or a ‘gimme’ because that’s what the Moon does, right? It potentiates to the other planets. But the material does that too. So we’ve been having a good time. That’ll be out, I don’t know, end of June beginning of July. Like, right around the time the podcast launches.
CB: Nice.
AC: So I’m excited about that. I will also be speaking at the ISAR conference at the end of August. I will be giving two lectures. And then I will also be opening up enrollment again in a limited fashion for my self-pace year one class, maybe July, maybe August, but sometime this quarter I need to sit down with the calendar. But for those who are interested in joining, that’s coming up. So sign up for my mailing list if you want to stay apprised.
CB: Awesome. And your website is austincoppock.com?
AC: Mhm.
CB: Perfect. All right. And as for myself, I just had Patrick Watson out last week and we recorded a whole course on rectification. So I’m in the process of getting those lectures edited right now and then I’ll hopefully launch that at some point this summer, which I’m pretty excited about. I’m continuing to teach my Hellenistic Astrology course and doing monthly Q&A sessions with the students of that that have been a lot of fun. Nick Dagan Best is supposed to fly out here in early July. I haven’t seen him in years in person so I’m pretty excited to meet up with him and maybe record some podcast episodes. And yeah, just continuing to expand what I’m doing with the Astrology Podcast and try to record more content in-person just because you can get such a better conversational dynamic sitting with another astrologer in person versus online. And that’s one of the exciting things about conferences, but I really like recreating that and then recording those episodes to share here through the Astrology Podcast. So if people like this series and they want to support the podcast, then the best thing you can do is just become a patron through my page on patreon.com. And you’ll get access to bonus content like early access to new episodes, the ability to attend the recording of live episodes like the audience did who joined us for this one. (And thanks, everyone in the chat who joined us.) And other things like that. I think that’s it, though, for this episode of The Astrology Podcast. Thanks both of you for joining me, thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode. Good luck next month, and we’ll see you again next month a month from now to talk about the astrology of August. So, have a good time and see you again next time.
AC: All right, take care everyone.
CMG: 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, shoutout to the patrons on our producers’ tier including Thomas Miller, Catherine Conroy, Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issah Sabah and Jake 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 outline 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.
And finally, 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 iPhone and Android. You can find out more information about that at astrogold.io. There is also a major astrology conference happening this year that’s being hosted by the International Society for Astrological Research, and that’s happening August 25th through the 29th 2022 in Westminster, Colorado. You can find out more information at isar2022.org.