The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 362, titled:
Astrology Forecast for August 2022
With Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, and Nick Dagan Best
Episode originally released on July 28, 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 29, 2022
Copyright © 2022 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey, my name is Chris Brennan and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the astrological forecast for the entire month of August of 2022. Joining me today are astrologers, Austin Coppock and special guest co-host, Nick Dagan Best. Welcome, gentlemen.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hello, hello.
NICK DAGAN BEST: Hello, hello.
CB: Hey, all right. Nick, this is your first time joining us for a forecast episode. I’m pretty excited. This will actually be your third episode of The Astrology Podcast this month after your visit to Denver, and technically fourth because we also did a Casual Astrology podcast and we packed a lot in on your visit.
NDB: We sure did. Thanks for having me back.
CB: Yeah, I thought this would be a good month since we’re gonna be talking about the Mars-Uranus conjunction a lot, which we have right at the top of the month. All right. And then I want to welcome you, Austin. I just remembered I want to show also the image for those watching the very beginning of the YouTube video just to give an overview of what we’re going to be talking about and then we’ll come back to introductions. So, here is the astrological alignments calendar for August that gives kind of an overview of the main planetary ingresses, lunations, and retrograde stations during the course of the month. Right at the top of the month, we have a Mars-Uranus conjunction that’s going to take place in the sign of Taurus conjunct the North Node simultaneously. Then after that a few days later, Mercury will ingress into Virgo on the day of the fourth of August. Then the following week on the same day venus moves into Leo, we also have a Full Moon in the sign of Aquarius. Then the following week, Mars ingresses into the sign of Gemini on the 20th of August. And that’s actually the sign that it’s going to stay in for the next six or seven months or so, because Mars is actually going to retrograde in that sign later this year. So that’s actually the beginning of a very long-term transit that’s going to characterize the rest of 2022. Then on the 22nd, the Sun goes into Virgo. Then on the 24th, Uranus will station retrograde in the sign of Taurus. The following day, Mercury moves into Libra. And then finally at the very end of the month on the 27th, we have a New Moon in the sign of Virgo. So those are some of our main astrological alignments we’re going to be talking about this month. Austin, how’s it going? How are you doing this month?
AC: Oh, pretty good.
CB: Pretty good?
AC: Yeah, no complaints. Which I suppose is more of a mood than a statement of fact.
CB: Yeah, that’s a pretty good mood to be at honestly in my book. Can we talk about the elephant in the room– or should I say the peacock in the room for the video viewers?
AC: [laughs] Yeah, just take it all in. Take in the background.
CB: I like it.
AC: It’s good. But if you look at the photo that I sent you via text, the pink actually it’s like bioluminescent pink when you have the right lighting on it, and I’m a little sad it’s not showing up that way. We’ll have to fuck with lighting.
CB: Yeah, we’ll have to get you some black lights or something that could be glowing black like techno peacocks. For those listening to the audio version, Austin has a new background. He’s moved to a different room and has a beautiful floral peacock pattern in the background that’s very fitting, but a little bit of a departure from your previous image that was on the background that was haunting the background sort of menacingly.
AC: Yeah, it’s really cool. But you got to remember that these are peacocks of war, Chris. This is Kartikeya, the Great General of the gods, Divine Murderer of his foes, rides a peacock into battle. So these are war peacocks, you probably couldn’t tell at first glance. And if you look into their eyes, you’ll see that they’re trained killers.
CB: I was actually averting my gaze so that’s why I didn’t notice so far. I do remember that there’s some peacocks in the Pegatrix, though. I remember some like John Michael Greer illustrations. So that could be a tie-in as well.
AC: Oh, yeah. There’s also a demonic spirit in one of the traditional grimoires that takes on the shape of a peacock-headed man.
CB: Good times. All right. Well, speaking of a demonic spirit, shall we talk about the astrology of August?
NDB: I thought you were going to say, “Speaking of demonic spirits, how are you Nick?” But anyway. [laughter]
CB: Right. All right. So, transitions. Do we have anything to review from our last month’s forecast? I didn’t really prepare anything. I mean, the world is still weird. COVID is not going great, there’s a new variant BA.4 and BA.5 that’s taken off in the US and it seems to be breaking through the vaccines so even people that had the vaccinations and the boosters are getting COVID again, or sometimes getting it a second time not too long after. So that really sucks.
AC: Chris, I can think of one thing that we’ve explicitly talked about, which is food shortages. That has started to really happen. And as we talked about last month, it’s really the second half of July when it really ramps up and a lot of that same pattern runs through August. And so now we’re just very much in that period, one feature of which is food shortages and then all of the follow-on effects. And that is happening very clearly. One of the more dramatic cases with the logistics and the supplies and all of that leading to or triggering or catalyzing political unrest is Sri Lanka. You can’t really Googled Sri Lanka or look at Sri Lanka on the YouTubes without seeing a dozen different pieces asking whether is Sri Lanka the first of X number of nations that will experience this kind of pattern.
CB: Yeah. I was reading about how in the war in Ukraine, the Russians are burning some of the wheat fields, and that may exacerbate or lead to a further exacerbation of some of the food issues because of Ukraine being one of the world’s primary sources of wheat as a major export of that country.
NDB: And fertilizer. They export wheat, but also Ukraine export a lot of fertilizer. So even for people who aren’t needing wheat, that that lack of fertilizer is hurting almost as much if not more.
AC: Yeah, and that’s next year’s harvest. What doesn’t get planted now is not causing the problem. I was thinking about the problems with fertilizer, whether there’s a shortage or it’s just really expensive and so there are certain crops that just weren’t monetarily efficient to plant this go around that won’t be showing up in the market whenever they should have been ready. I was thinking about the timeframe of that and the Taurus-Scorpio eclipses with Uranus like Rahu, that head of the dragon with Uranus, you know, that runs into next year. And I’ve been wondering privately and somewhat publicly as to whether that’s going to time the food crisis stuff.
CB: Yeah. I mean, we definitely saw the markets over the past couple of months really responded to that last set of eclipses in Taurus and Scorpio. And that was the point where a lot of the global some of the trade markets started to tank, and different commodities and different things like Bitcoin, for example, tanked at that point. So it really seemed to unlock a lot of the potential that we’ve been talking about for a number of years now of that Uranus transit through Taurus. And some of the associations with food and commodities, and especially the square between Saturn and Uranus really seemed to unlock that in a major way when those eclipses hit. So that would make sense if six months later the next time we see the next set of eclipses if we see a further acceleration of that, but this month I know we’re going to talk a lot about the Mars ingress into Taurus and how it’s going to be meeting up with Uranus and Saturn, and probably speeding that up and exacerbating that as well.
NDB: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because Saturn and Mars, that square which has just been screaming loudly– I don’t know about you guys but just everywhere I turn, it seems to be an effect. But when Mars joins Uranus, Saturn sending the square to both those planets at once, it almost sort of doubles the fun. You’ve got two planets that want to go being sort of restrained by Saturn all at once. So yeah, it amps it up.
AC: And that’s really what begins the month. Here on July 23th as we’re recording, we’re edging closer to those perfect aspects. And that’s really the note that July ends on, is Mars-Uranus and the North Node square Saturn. And those dynamics are further amplified and sort of kept alive for really the first half of August because we have in addition to the square between Rahu, Uranus, Mars, and Taurus, which is all this disruptive energy around supplies and dinner and all that squared Saturn for the first two weeks of August. Yeah, the first few weeks of August we have Mercury and then the Sun moving into a T-square with them so further activating it, opposing Saturn and squaring Mars, Uranus, Rahu, and our Full Moon in Aquarius– which happens every time the Sun is in Leo once a year– is right on Saturn and is further activating it. The sun and Moon are really milking everything we can get out of this big fun square.
CB: Yeah, look at that. So, a lot of that’s relevant. Last year we talked a lot about how it was weird how every time Mars moved into one of the fixed signs where it made a hard aspect with Saturn again, that we got new mutations of COVID and different variants kept emerging. It’s one of the reasons why I was mentioning that at the top of this. But it’s also interesting now that Mars is back in a fixed sign that just today the World Health Organisation, I saw in the Washington Post, officially declared a global health emergency for monkeypox; that this is actually spreading really rapidly in a bunch of countries. The largest country is up like 3000 cases I think in Spain, but the US has already become the second largest country with just under 3000 cases. So somehow it’s getting really out of control as another weird sort of virus that’s going around, again, another turning point with Mars in fixed signs squaring Saturn.
AC: Yeah. Chris, do you remember the Mars-Saturn conjunction in Scorpio, I don’t know, eight years ago? It was Mars-Saturn in Scorpio and that was when Ebola really had its day. Those Mars-Saturn conjunctions in the sort of mundane sky really seem capable of unleashing… Mars-Saturn configurations really seem like they’ve got a whole host of different maladies, you know, disease among them, but not limited to.
NDB: That was the interesting thing about being in South Africa when the pandemic hit is because of things like Ebola and what have you happening in neighboring countries, it wasn’t their first rodeo. You know, it wasn’t like in the West where this thing was just coming out of the blue and nobody had ever dealt with anything like it before. Africa has dealt with their share of outbreaks so they had more of a mechanism in place. Nothing seemed like it was overtly shocking even when the lockdown seemed quite extreme.
AC: Yeah. A goodly portion of the shock of the COVID pandemic was that I think a lot of people especially in America didn’t have a paradigm for how to deal with an outbreak of plague. That had been sort of culturally assigned to the bad part of history that was over.
CB: Yeah. Well, that was what was so weird about you mentioning the Ebola outbreak, Austin, that it happened under the Mars-Saturn conjunction in Scorpio and then again, the COVID lockdowns and stuff originally at least in the US happened when Mars met up with Saturn and there was that conjunction in Capricorn with all of those other planets. But I just remember learning traditional astrology and how in all the ancient texts, they talk about Mars-Saturn conjunctions as being the signature you look for for the outbreak of plagues and major diseases and things like that. But you know, back then that just seems so quaint– not quaint but no longer relevant.
AC: I think quaint’s not wrong at all.
CB: Okay, quaint. Because some of those other delineations are just so wild and extreme in the ancient astrological texts, like if the native has this, they will be eaten alive by dogs or something crazy like that. And you’re just like, “Well, this doesn’t seem particularly relevant to modern times so we’re gonna have to update this a little bit.” But it turns out that sometimes Mars-Saturn alignments can still correlate with the outbreak of major pandemics and plagues.
AC: Yeah, it’s almost like we didn’t actually escape history.
NDB: Almost.
CB: Yeah, or that much of the system of astrology that was developed 2000 years ago or 3000 years ago or what have you, that the fundamental of life are still so similar and so much the same that that’s why that system still works 2000 years later. Because they did a pretty good job of putting it together and things haven’t changed as much as we’d like to think they have some times in modern times.
AC: Absolutely. The more time I spend with those older delineations, the less absurd they seem. Because I see it happen. You’ll be like, “Oh, this person will die of,” — you know, like there a lot of death delineations in Firmicus where it’s like, “You’ll die of hemorrhoids!” And I was like, “Oh, that’s cartoonish.” It’s like rectal polyps and colon cancer et cetera et cetera. It’s like oh, that’s actually just a thing that happens. It’s not like something we can dismiss as cartoonish and quaint as you were saying, I do feel like that’s a great word.
NDB: Something something something preparation-H, I don’t know. [laughs]
CB: Yeah. Well, this episode is getting off to a great start with some of our discussion topics right at the beginning.
AC: Yeah, in August you’ll die of hemorrhoids. Bad news.
NDB: Or you’ll be killed by a peacock. [Austin laughs]
CB: Right, a demonic peacock. I don’t think we have any more review, so we’re pretty much already getting in the forecast. Should we just dive into the rest of it?
AC: I think so.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right. I want to show the chart again for some of those dates. We’re recording this as Austin said today on July 23th, which is notable because we like to put the date in and let people know even if we release it like a week later after editing that that’s when it was recorded for whatever it’s worth. But August 1st right away at the very top of the month, we get that triple conjunction of Mars, the North Node and Uranus at about 18 degrees of Taurus. So that opens up the entire month. And then only seven days later on August 7th, Mars then goes from the conjunction with Uranus right into the square with Saturn from 22 Taurus to 22 Aquarius. So that is our opening of the month, basically signature. As a result of that it was actually one of the hardest months for me when I looked ahead at this year to pick good electional charts to find good elections just because it’s really hard to navigate around two really intense planetary alignments like that during the course of just trying to pick an auspicious election or lucky date. Why don’t we start with the Mars-Uranus-North Node conjunction though, since that really opens up the entire month for us. So, what are some of your keywords for Mars-Uranus conjunctions?
NDB: Well, there’s a lot of those obvious ones. You know, accidents come to mind, ones that come about from too much speed or carelessness or recklessness. But having looked at history, interestingly enough you think of it as being this very martial potentially masculine kind of configuration. But actually, in the history books, the Mars-Uranus-North Node stuff has coincided often enough with the sort of political or martial takedown of women in power. Marie Antoinette was beheaded close to a Mars-Uranus-North Node conjunction. Madame Mao, you know when Mao Zedong died in 1976, his wife was scapegoated along with the so-called Gang of Four. And all the evils of the Cultural Revolution were blamed on them exclusively. And she was put on trial and denigrated and all this stuff. That was October ’76, that was another Mars-Uranus-North Node. So yeah, taking that women in power– not that I see that many around me these days, unless there’s a military coup in New Zealand next week or something– but thematically, that’s one of the things I’ve noticed. There was another one but it’s not coming to mind right now. But yeah, women in power falling from grace.
AC: That’s really interesting. Chris, you were gonna say something?
CB: No, go ahead.
AC: Okay. It’s very common that people associate Uranus with the revolutionary, but I feel like there’s a lot of times not appropriate texture given to what revolutionary means. It means toppling those who currently have power, right? Or taking them down or destroying their reputations or something like that. That’s certainly part of it. And what you were saying about accidents is really interesting, Nick, because when I did work on Uranus and Taurus, which is going to point more towards substances then a lot of Uranus positions, I found a lot of historic accidents, like giant oopsies where there was like, “We stored 15 tonnes of gunpowder next to the church and somebody smoked a cigarette and it blew up the cathedral.” We had one of those, I want to say last year about this time. It was– God, I can’t remember where– but it was a Mars-Uranus configuration and there was just a bunch of explosive- Yeah, it was in Beirut. Thank you, [Gaetana].
NDB: Oh, of course. The terrible explosion?
AC: Yeah, the terrible accident. It was literally like you were saying accidents, recklessness, carelessness. Like storing (Taurus) what is volatile (Uranus) and then all it needs is the match, which is Mars. So there’s that. And just to come back to something you talked about at the beginning, we’re talking about the same configuration, Nick. With Saturn trying to restrain Uranus now for over a year and a half, one of the ways I’ve been looking at it with the North Node joining Uranus and certainly with Mars is Saturn may have been capable of kind of restraining Uranus in a one-on-one with Saturn in the superior position. But now it’s three against one, right? And so it’s not possible to restrain. You don’t win a three-on-one fight even if you’ve got the high ground.
NDB: Unless you’re Bruce Lee.
AC: [laughs] And somebody wrote the script for you.
NDB: Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. That’s the thing, it’s that the three-on-one kind of fight it does, it does sort of send the thing into a whole off balance. It puts the teeter-totter in an upright position.
CB: You’re mentioned, Nick, of accidents. Reminded me of Frida Kahlo who was born with a Mars-Uranus conjunction in the sixth house opposite to her Sun and her ruler of the Ascendant. She was Leo rising with the Sun in Cancer in the 12th house. But she just had that terrible accident on a bus that left her with some major injuries and stuff that would stick with her and that she would wrestle with for the rest of her life. But it was sort of a freak or a sudden accident.
NDB: Yeah. And the transits for that accident are pretty crazy because Mars was opposite Uranus so the accident was separate September 17th, 1925. And you had Mars at 22 Virgo in-between the New Moon. Moon at 20 Virgo, Sun at 24 Virgo, and Mars at 22 Virgo was opposite Uranus at 23. So yeah, Natalie shared the conjunction. The accident happened on an opposition. So it’s a pretty real sort of literal astrology in her case. And it changed everything. I mean, she wouldn’t be Frida Kahlo if she hadn’t been in that bus accident but it was a huge price to pay. But yeah, that’s exactly the kind of thing. In fact, I had a client not long ago who’s already had two sort of serious accidents than the last couple of months and this person has Mars-Uranus square. So just the fact that the conjunction’s happening now seems to be really triggering this person’s square. You know, things like falling asleep at the wheel and stuff like that is what can happen. So definitely anyone who has natal Mars-Uranus configured, this is a time when your natal aspect can really be emphasized and sort of awoken.
AC: Yeah if you’re accident prone, don’t start off the month with risk-taking.
CB: Right, don’t jump some cars like over a ravine or something like that at this time around August 1st.
NDB: Don’t try to do a Johnny Knoxville impersonation.
CB: Yeah. What are some positive manifestations of Mars-Uranus conjunctions? Sometimes I think about just quirky actions. Like, sometimes Uranus just goes against the grain, but sometimes that can be interesting and cutting edge or pushing the boundaries on things. I think about, for example, Robin Williams was Scorpio rising with Mars conjunct Uranus in Cancer and had this really sort of quirky… He had this sort of really quirky humor, but it ended up being something that eventually was endearing and that he was able to use in his benefit by leaning into it rather than trying to suppress it or avoid it in some way.
NDB: Well, he was a master improviser, which I think that really is a sort of Mars-Uranus thing. In fact, I used to love he’d be promoting a movie and I wouldn’t necessarily be that interest in the movie, but anytime he was on anyone’s talk show, Letterman or whoever, I would always watch. Because he would just take the show over and just create total anarchy and chaos and be so damn funny.
CB: Right.
AC: Well, I like that. That’s a really good example because there’s, you know, Uranus likes to upset the existing order of things. And Mars , when you have that Martial capability joining Uranus, it’s sort of like the general of disorder, right? Like it’s very forceful creation of disorder.
CB: Well, because Mars doesn’t give a fuck. That is the planet of gives no fucks. And Uranus also has a similar energy so it’s like you’re putting together two planets that sometimes do not care about social conventions and are therefore willing to and able to transgress them or cut through them or disrupt them very easily.
AC: Yeah. Neither are conflict-averse, neither are risk-averse. That’s a good point. Neither prioritize social harmony.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s really good. So not prioritizing social harmony as sort of one of the large configurations that’s setting the tone for August right at the top of the month. And this is something that’s been building up because Mars actually went into Taurus in early July on the 5th of July so this is a conjunction that’s kind of been building up since that point, but it really reaches a fever pitch at this point right at the very top of August.
AC: That reminds me of something that we didn’t mention in what’s been going on the last month. So with Mars having been in Taurus for a lot of July and co-present with Uranus, farmers protests.
NDB: Oh, this takes us back to food.
AC: Yeah, exactly. If you see a Uranus configuration, politically you’re looking for who are your protesters? Who are your radicals? And you couldn’t do simpler archetypal math and be like, “I don’t know. People who make food, they’re protesting?” Mars and Uranus in Taurus. Which of course is connected to food, is connected fertilizers, is connected to Saturn and Aquarius, policies around food and agriculture. Which if you look into the Sri Lanka situation, there were some very foolish and corrupt policies that created the possibility of the situation. And Sri Lanka is in no way unique in having foolish and corrupt policies around food.
CB: Yeah, that reminds me. Because seeing some of the things on social media from Sri Lanka were a bunch of tonnes of people, thousands of people storming the presidential palace or the presidential house or compound. And that makes me think of your thing, Nick, mentioning Marie Antoinette and just the idea of protest being a very Mars-Uranus thing but also sometimes like a violent or aggressive uprising of people or upswelling of people that tears down some existing order or some existing social order as being part of the archetype for that combination.
NDB: Yeah. You want to talk about uprisings. You know what happened when Mars and Uranus were conjunct the Saturn square?
CB: No.
NDB: The attack on Fort Sumter which began the American Civil War.
CB: Okay. Well, that is a less positive one.
NDB: Well, no, but it’s an uprising, it’s the same kind of thing. Confederate forces tried to seize a fort, and the Union troops were sent in and big battle ensued, and that’s basically the beginning of the war. But it did begin with an uprising and that was the whole thing about it.
CB: It’s really funny actually that you mentioned that, because I think the last hearing of the January 6th hearings just took place yesterday, and that’s about what was essentially an uprising that happened in early January, January 6th of 2021 when Mars first went into Taurus.
AC: It was our last Mars-Uranus in Taurus.
NDB: [laughs] That’s right, yeah.
CB: And that has been really interesting seeing that over the past few weeks once Mars returned back to Taurus a year and a half later and seeing them bringing out all of this old stuff, and every day in the news it seems like there’s been a new little piece of information that’s been dropped about what was happening behind the scenes then and different things like that.
NDB: The latest news was Mike Pence’s Secret Service detail were calling their wives to say goodbye.
CB: Oh, wow, okay.
AC: So just like with that situation, it’s not just Uranus, there’s also Saturn. And so there’s the revolting act, the act of revolting or challenging whatever power structure. But then Saturn is there, and then Saturn then attempts to reassert control. And especially in this case where we’ve got four or five degrees between the conjunction to Uranus and the square to Saturn. So this has a particular sequencing for Mars. It’s hitting Uranus and Dragon’s Head like boom, hitting that, whatever disruptions and disorder, whatever, and then beat, beat, beat, then you have the square to Saturn. And again, it’s Saturn in superior position to Mars. So there’s very much this empire strikes back or attempt to reassert control after the disorder, which is different. If the Saturn thing was first, there’d be like, “Oh, this control’s too oppressive,” and then revolt. But here we have disorder and then beat, beat, beat, whatever attempts to control the situation. And so we’ve got that with Mars itself, but we also have Mercury doing that same sequence, Mercury in Leo is going to hit Mars, Uranus, North Node, and then hit Saturn. And the Sun is going to hit Mars, Uranus, North Node, and then hit Saturn. And then the Moon several times is going to make the same aspects, where the Moon will trigger Mars-Uranus, disruption and then attempt to control. So this sequence is going to play out over and over and over again.
CB: Yeah. And you brought up another really important point, which is that this is all happening in the backdrop of we’re in the very steep part of the curve where that Saturn-Uranus square is coming back for its final closest pass this fall in the Northern Hemisphere. And here, for those watching the video version, you can see in this graph from Archetypal Explorer that we’re on that upslope that kind of peaks around the beginning of October, where Saturn and Uranus get back to, I think, within about a degree of squaring each other for the closest pass that they’re going to have before they start eventually moving away. So we’re heading into that and it’s reactivating that Saturn-Uranus square that we talked about so much when we had those three exact hits of it last year. And one of the keywords that came up recently like a month ago that I thought was really pertinent and relevant was the sudden loss and destabilization or disappearance, the crumbling of a structure that you’ve taken for granted in your life for a long time up to that point that may not have been built on as stable of foundations as you assumed up until the point at which it disappeared. And I mean, the most obvious example of that from last month of course was the Roe v. Wade decision, where overnight it just erased something that people had been taking for granted as a basic right for over 40 years in the country, and then overnight it was kind of gone.
AC: Yeah, or wasn’t certain anymore.
CB: No, I mean, it’s gone in a number of states at this point.
AC: Yeah, that’s fair. Well, hopefully the future is not fixed, but yeah, I hear you.
CB: Yeah. Well, I mean, in the meantime, there’s 10-year-old girls getting pregnant and can’t receive an abortion or their doctors getting hate mail for doing that. There was a story of a woman from Texas that had to carry a fetus that had died for two weeks because she couldn’t get an abortion there. So there’s some really bad stuff happening regardless of if it’s rolled back at some point in the future. So Saturn-Uranus square, other thoughts on that?
AC: So that sort of sudden demolition of something that was taken for granted can be really negative as in that case. It’s not always that negative, especially in individual nativities.
CB: That’s a good point.
AC: Sometimes a Saturnian wall crumbling, instead of leaving you unprotected, leaves you without a limitation that you just thought you had to work within your whole life. Sometimes you’re just like, “Oh, I just thought that that’s the way it was and I always had to stay inside this boundary. I didn’t even think anyone was allowed out.” And then sometimes something’ll come down. Sometimes it’s mental, sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes it’s literally a very physical thing, but where you’re just like, “Oh, you mean I get to do that? I didn’t think that was possible.”
CB: Yeah, I love that because it’s that energy where sometimes the person takes it into their own hands to basically take a wrecking ball to those structures in their life that are no longer serving them, and this is finally the point at which they’re ready to do that. And it’s not easy and it can be a painful process too because it’s always, especially for fixed signs, and this is taking place in fixed signs so it’s tending to affect those with fixed sign placements the most. And change can be really difficult for fixed signs but sometimes necessary to demolish old structures in order to make way for new growth and get rid of things that are no longer serving you.
AC: And I would just add, sometimes when I say a change like that, sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes you really have to knock down the wall, and sometimes it just falls over and you realize that it’s been crumbling for years. You’re like, “Oh, this process has been happening the whole time,” it’s that moment where the structure loses integrity and a strong gust of wind knocks it over. You’re like, “Oh, this has been building in me forever or this has been ongoing.”
CB: Yeah. For some people, I was talking to somebody like that recently that was making some of those changes, but they said if I’m honest with myself, I already knew late last year in November around the time of that first eclipse in Taurus that this change needed to take place and that it was coming and I just wasn’t ready for it yet. So I’ve been paying attention to that as well because that whole eclipse sequence started last November in Taurus. It actually makes me a little nervous, Biden recently in the news it was announced that he got COVID a few days ago. And I remember he went in for that operation under that first eclipse in Taurus back in November, and then right now Mars just passed over the eclipse degree of the next Taurus eclipse, which was at the end of April. I think it was like the same day that that announcement came out. So it was kind of a weird thing because that’s his sixth house, of course, since he has Sagittarius rising.
AC: Yeah, hasn’t looked great for him for a while.
CB: Yeah. Well, we had mentioned in previous forecast episodes that we were nervous about the activation of his sixth and 12th houses with some of these transits. And it’s interesting seeing some major new health thing potentially, hopefully it’s not major but some new health thing come up around that time when one of those eclipse degrees was activated in his sixth house. So hopefully it doesn’t turn into a bigger deal than it could be.
NDB: Yeah, that would not be a good thing for him or for a lot of people. That’s the thing about the Saturn square, I think, is that this time around in other cases, Austin’s three in one analogy really holds largely. But I think the thing about this one is with Saturn being in Aquarius and being in the dominant position in the square, actually Saturn’s in a better position than usual to do something in the square to have a hand in how things play out in maybe shutting down whatever sort of uprising comes up.
CB: Trying to reassert control.
NDB: Reassert control, and like Austin’s saying, because it’s the last one in the sequence, it’s sort of where everything winds up. Lands on Saturn after the Mars-Uranus has sort of peaked. Although, I have seen also in a lot of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions I’ve been studying, the real sort of violence and uprisings largely seem to happen after Mars has past Uranus and not when it’s preceding Uranus or reaching Uranus, so after the conjunction is culminated. But nonetheless, I think that that still speaks to that first week of August being really, really heavy and then sort of Saturn coming in to do something about it.
CB: Yeah. So when we talk about Saturn-Uranus squares in history, Nick, are there any that come to mind either in mundane or in terms of natal chart signatures for you? I’m looking through my files now and Lyndon B. Johnson had a Saturn-Uranus square, Nelson Rockefeller, Sandra Day O’Connor.
AC: May I prompt Nick? Because I could figure one, I bet he can take it. So we had the same situation with Saturn, the superior square to Uranus in the late seventies.
NDB: ’76, I think.
AC: Yeah, that was our last one of exactly this of the two squares where Saturn’s gets to rise earlier.
CB: What was happening in 1976 for those not born then?
NDB: Were you going to give me an example there or were you just–
AC: Oh, I don’t know, I thought you just knew stuff. I was just trying to…
NDB: Oh, I see, okay, you were just giving me the date. Well, that period in 1976 is the period I was referring to earlier with the death of Mao Tse-tung. I mean, talk about craziness. I mean, his death is what ultimately led the country a couple of years later to sort of embrace the west and Deng Xiaoping opening up China and all that stuff that happened in the eighties. Not that it’s mounted to much by now, but at the time it was quite impressive and stimulated all this growth, pretty big shift. But leading up to that when Mao died, there were these trials for sort of the people who were essentially scapegoats for the cultural revolution. Mao’s wife and three of her cohorts were put on trial, and this was real sort of Saturn… When Saturn speaks in China, the world hears it. So that was that kind of energy of putting down an uprising after the fact and sort of Saturn having the last word.
AC: And in the United States, as I understand it because I was alive for about nine months of the seventies, but as I understand it, that Saturn-Uranus period in the US, there was a feeling of things not being under control.
NDB: Yeah. Well, ’76 is the year that Carter’s elected, he’s elected under a Saturn-Uranus square. He was meant to come in and bring this clean, fresh, new wave into American politics that wasn’t corrupted, this is post Watergate and all that stuff. So there was that energy at the time. Someone’s saying 1976 was summer of Sam, but no, that was 1977. I got to nip that in the bud. But ’76 did have that kind of hard Saturn-Uranus edge to it. You’re talking about the six months of the seventies that you remember, the malaise that followed and all that stuff, I mean, that sort of springs out of the Carter administration.
AC: Yeah, when by sign Saturn-Uranus were square, ’76, ’77, ’78. So the exact hit’s in ’76, and then if you do a vibe check on America, there’s a sense of things that should be under control are not in control.
NDB: Right. But just going back to the history of Saturn-Uranus squares, I mean, some of the biggest things in history have been Saturn-Uranus squares. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, the defeat of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1568 and the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 down in Mexico, which released thousands of horses, Spanish horses, that then ran north into the hands of people we would come to know as the Comanche and all the other plains tribes who wound up being really gifted horseman. That came out of all these horses that escaped Pueblo in 1680. So that really changed the landscape. I mean, a lot of stuff like that, a lot of big sort of political changes that change entire regimes, the execution of Robespierre in the French Revolution.
AC: Oh, wow. That rhymes really beautifully with the holding people culpable for the Cultural Revolution in China in the seventies, right?
NDB: Yeah. In fact, you could say Robespierre is the Madame Mao of the French revolution or Madame Mao is the Robespierre of the Chinese Revolution, something to that effect. Although she didn’t get her head chopped off, she was sort of sent to jail which in some ways is worse in China.
CB: I just pulled up the chart for the fall of Constantinople, which is interesting, but you mentioning that is really interesting. Because I was just thinking historically the fall of Constantinople was the final end of the Roman Empire basically, because people think about the Roman Empire ending centuries earlier when Rome and Italy fell, but the capital of the Roman empire had already been moved to Constantinople by that time. And so they really had inherited and continued essentially the Roman Empire and the cultural and linguistic and scientific and other things that came from that entire civilization continued essentially in Constantinople for centuries until May 29th, 1453. And guess where Mars was on that day?
NDB: Where was Mars on that day, Chris?
CB: Mars was at 24 Cancer and it was conjoining Uranus at 28 Cancer and they were both squaring Saturn at 24 Libra.
AC: Oh, you also have a nice, perfect Sun-south node conjunction if you’re talking about the death of an empire and emperors.
NDB: Yeah, it’s right in between the lunar and solar eclipses.
CB: Yeah, that means it was preceded by an eclipse in Sag.
NDB: Yeah. And this came out of a fairly long battle, so that lunar eclipse definitely would’ve been part of the peak of that battle. Really good series on Netflix about that by the way.
AC: Interesting. So one thing, I want to kind of lead this back into the present and sort of the next bit–
CB: Wait, let’s not move on to the present yet, I want to dwell on that because it’s a really important historical point, the end of the Roman Empire that we essentially have a date for it. And it ended under the exact configuration that we’re talking about historically. If there’s any way we can expand on that historically or anything else to say about that, because that seems really notable in terms of remember how we were talking earlier about things that you’ve taken for granted that just seem obvious and have been around forever as long as you can remember, and that you just take for granted as something that will always be there, but then all of a sudden something comes in and completely destabilizes that structure, which is Uranus, and then Mars swoops in and actually demolishes it if the foundations are ultimately unstable. We were just talking about that archetypally, and I know we were drawing on instances like last year, for example, that apartment building that collapsed in Florida the day of one of the exact Saturn-Uranus squares, or we were talking more broadly metaphorically about Roe v. Wade being struck down more recently as an example of that. But this is literally a historical example of that exact archetype that we were talking about in action here at the very end, in some ways, the very last day essentially of the end of the Roman Empire.
NDB: And make no mistake, if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he’s coming after this country and that country and this country and that country, and he won’t stop until he retakes Constantinople. It’s a long standing Russian dream.
AC: I would say that the Saturn-Uranus squares do not form a very good historical backdrop for empire building. We have a lot of literally the opposite cases.
NDB: Right, the Confederates with Fort Sumter.
AC: Yeah, how did that work out?
NDB: Yeah, the Ottomans did get an empire for a little while, but it barely lasted. I mean, they took Constantinople, but they started to degrade within a hundred years from then or whatever. They had maybe 200 good years before they started to fall apart gradually, the sick man of Europe.
CB: So do you want to go ahead Austin and take that into the present?
AC: Yeah. So we’re talking about these Saturn-Uranus squares as periods, and we didn’t all do this in the late seventies. One-third of us here did this in the late seventies, but we have examples within recent history and not-so-recent history. And so actually this next four months, this is kind of almost the last of this because we have these really intense activations, we have Mars activating it now. And then as soon as we’re done with Mars, we’re ramping up to Saturn-Uranus being square within the same degree, and they hold that for almost a month. And then we get a pair of eclipses on them at the very end of October, November. And then Mars, the positive side of Mars, retrograde in Gemini is that Mars is not in a square to Mars or Uranus, it’s not configured. And then by early March, we’re done with Saturn in Aquarius, no more Saturn-Uranus squares. And so a lot of the payout of this Saturn square Uranus period that we’ve been in, that we did like a preview quarter during the second quarter of 2020, and then we did it for all of 2021 and all of 2022, we’re almost done with this and onto the next thing. Right now this is the season finale from now till the end of the year.
NDB: Right. But does the season finale end on a cliffhanger?
AC: I think the Saturn-Neptune season, it wouldn’t make sense to start that one without watching how this crazy season ended, but very different vibes.
CB: That’s what’s making me nervous though about the Constantinople comparison or discovery of that being the same configuration because, Nick, you and I were already talking about this on I think our astrology chat episode two episodes ago towards the end of that. We’re having trouble not ending it on kind of a downer because we’re talking about the Uranus return of the United States coming out here in just a few years and how that’s historically coincided first with the Civil War and then second with World War II. We’re also experiencing the Pluto return at this time and questions of the sort of threats to the democracy and the survival of having a democratic process and everything else and the attempts to subvert that. That makes me nervous seeing that sort combination with Constantinople and then going into November where we’re going to have that next Taurus eclipse which we noted in the year ahead forecast is going to fall exactly on the midterm election day on November 8th, 2022. So it’s like that next eclipse is very closely tied into the very next election that’s coming up in the United States.
AC: I mean, disorder is guaranteed. Things are not going to be more orderly and coherent after this. Saturn-Uranus never leaves that behind, especially not boosted by the nodes, that’s inevitably a result. But then we’ve got the next chapter in history.
CB: Yeah. It just makes me nervous about an acceleration of that process that you mentioned of disorder and if the disorder isn’t ramping up as we head into some of those bigger transits. Because we’ve got of course the Mars retrograde in Gemini in the entire second half of this year, which is actually going to be crossing over the natal Mars-Uranus conjunction that the United States already has built into its birth chart for the July 4th, 1776 Declaration of Independence chart and activating that conjunction that’s already in there. But then also as we move into some of the longer-term transits of Uranus going into Gemini here in just a few years in 2025.
AC: Yeah, I believe that’s the first ingress.
NDB: Yeah. I’m kind of with and not with both of you on some of these points. To Chris’s point, a lot of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions getting a square from Saturn, things like Constantinople, the Pueblo Revolt, Fort Sumter, these are very sort of definitive actions, they decide something and change things for good in a very, very big way. And so even though the transit does sort of move off and we go into a new age, wherever we’re headed, we’re headed with the consequences of whatever comes out of the triple configuration. So it’s a new world. When we’re talking about the transit wearing off, we’re not thinking about things go back to July 23rd, 2022 again, it’s sort of a whole new playing field. At the same time, Chris is maybe getting a bit ahead of himself at the same time thinking, “Could this be the fall of American democracy?” I think August is a little soon for that to happen, not that that’s not sort of in the cards.
CB: Yeah. I’m talking about the precursors to that, which is if hypothetically that happens.
NDB: Then we’re more in agreement. Okay.
CB: I’m thinking hypothetically of a scenario of the next presidential election is going to be really crucial in 2024 and who gets elected then. The precursor to that is, for example, they’re doing those investigations or whatever into the attempt to thwart the democratic process that happened on January 6th, 2021, but doesn’t seem like that’s going anywhere, is really going to end up convicting anybody. And then if it doesn’t and then if the house changes hands in November, so that removes that as another check or thing that’s sort of part of the balance of power that keeps things in check and allows things not to get completely out of whack, and then that sets things up for 2024 where we have the next presidential election and whoever gets elected or reelected. And then we immediately, after that go into the Uranus return and the next great American eclipse, which I think then is that year as well.
AC: When is it?
CB: 2024 I believe, and it crosses over America just like the one in 2017 just after Trump had been elected.
AC: Yeah, I don’t know. I personally don’t see any help from whoever’s in office in 2024. I’ve been looking at 2028 for a while. We’ll be out of the Saturn-Neptune years. The Saturn-Neptune years, I think, are literally just going to be a mess. I think it’s going to take until 2028 to get somebody who can do something that is useful. That’s an opinion at this point, but I guess I have zero hope or excitement or positive feelings about 2024.
NDB: The thing about the previous times that Uranus has made its ingress to Gemini, I mean, the Revolutionary War is a different kettle of fish, but the Civil War and the Second World War you had a president in place who’s ready for everything that’s about to go down, even though everyone around him is not quite ready for things to go down the way they are. And in Lincoln’s case, absolutely no one has any confidence in him whatsoever. He’s a totally unknown entity, and even people in his own cabinet don’t give him much encouragement in the early days although they all come to respect him a lot as time goes on. If things really are repeating in such a cyclical fashion, whoever does sort of step up in ’24 is likely to be someone who’s already sort of in place to some degree.
AC: So that’s a great point historically and big part of–
CB: That’s what Austin said last month. It’s what you said last month, right?
AC: What I said is that, so I didn’t say that they would be there ahead of time, Nick’s obviously correct historically. What we do definitely get every time is we get literally the most sainted leaders of the United States. We have George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Roosevelt. And they’re also people who are able to really direct the government in a way that most presidents aren’t.
NDB: Lincoln and FDR had each in their own way a very special facility for working in government that no other president has had.
AC: Yeah, and with Roosevelt, you also have someone who’s in office for longer than anyone. And so you do historically get these barely precedented leaders of great historical… I will just say I can’t see, and that’s doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen, but I can’t see that happening in 2024, I think the Saturn-Neptune in Pisces is too much of a prohibition because it’s squaring what Uranus is going to do. I feel like the Saturn-Neptune years are just too messy, I think it’s going to wait till 2028 this time. But that’s probably pretty distant from this August.
NDB: It’s not that distant anymore. When I was doing Uranus USA, I remember thinking, “Well, someday Uranus is going to go into Gemini and I’ll have to talk about this,” but that’s so far away.
CB: Yeah, that was episode 10 of The Astrology Podcast.
AC: Can we just plug Nick’s book for a second? Nick wrote a book about the history of the United States and Uranus in Gemini like 10 years ago.
NDB: But you have to stand by for the second edition.
AC: Is it not available?
NDB: It’s not available these days, no.
AC: Oh, I’m sorry.
NDB: But thank you.
CB: You’re doing good. You’re pulling a 36 [unintelligible]
AC: Yeah, so join the club.
NDB: By the way, should we plug Austin’s book….
AC: All right, touché.
NDB: But thank you, Austin.
CB: So to wrap up this section, because I realized it’s really funny that we’ve had this role reversal, Austin, where I’m becoming the pessimistic one about this, and you’re the one that’s having to constantly bring in some optimism. It’s just because I felt like after 2016 and after 2020 that one of my shortcomings as an astrologer was a failure of imagination of just thinking practically speaking aside from the astrology. It’s like there’s no way that’s going to happen, there’s no way the worst case scenario happens because that would be disastrous, and therefore holding back or pulling back. So one of the things as I’m seeing some of the more challenging and tricky mundane transits, especially as they relate to the US, is trying to think through all scenarios of like what if the worst case scenario did happen, what would it look like and what would be the sequence of events? And that’s one of the things that has me nervous because I can see one scenario of a direction that that could go in the worst case scenario.
AC: Yeah, that’s fair. And I don’t expect a rosy future, I have become the smiling counterpoint. I think we’re heading into an era of simultaneous crises on multiple continents for years. I think the United States has actually better poised than a lot of other countries to deal with it. We have surplus food and energy, which very few places have. So at least be able to kind of eat while sorting out our situation globally and internally.
CB: I’m realizing that the peacocks now are actually an extension of your positive aura and this shift that’s taken place.
NDB: Seriously, I’m going to get some new wallpaper, it really seems to do the trick. Look, we have been liberated in a way as astrologers. We don’t just need to find the positive spin, although obviously everyone’s hoping for the best. On reflection, when I’m looking at these events, not so much like the people going on trial like Marie Antoinette or Robespierre or whatever, that aside, but when it comes to these big uprisings, the Constantinople and the Fort Sumters and everything else we’ve been talking about, it does seem like in these instances the underdogs do seem to triumph come to think of it much as I want to give sort of Saturn the credo it gets. I mean, definitely the Ottomans are the underdogs at Constantinople. The Emperor Constantine up until the last minute thinks that he’s going to win, it’s really sort of surprising. Fort Sumter, basically, I mean, that’s what started the war, but it is the Confederate sort of standing up to the Union in that case, and the Union doesn’t exactly win, I mean, that’s why the war continues.
CB: The underdogs in that instance are the Confederates and–
NDB: Well, yeah.
AC: Right, and look how that worked out.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, in the big picture, it didn’t work out for them. But on that day, for that instance, it did.
CB: That’s not filling me with great hope.
AC: Yeah. I don’t think we can take the result of an individual battle. I don’t know. You can’t say like, “The Confederate really won that civil war. The south was really in a lot better position afterwards.”
NDB: No, no, no, that’s not what I’m saying. Anyway, it’s the underdogs sort of persevering for the time being. I’m not trying to say that they won the Civil War.
CB: Sometimes that’s like a Rocky type scenario.
NDB: No, no, it is, it is. I’m just musing, I’m thinking out loud in a lot of these…
CB: Other times the underdog is like trying to keep slavery and stuff, that’s not necessarily like a Rocky scenario.
NDB: No, I get that, I get that. I’m not saying being underdogs makes them good guys, I’m just saying that they’re the underdogs.
AC: And I think that’s an important point. I think that in the culture of the United States there is a tendency to cast Uranus as the hero. It’s, “Oh, it’s Prometheus,” it’s like, no, there’s no inherent positive or negative moral quality to Uranus revolting. You have just as many revolutionary villains as you do revolutionary heroes, and most acts of revolution are mixed, complicated human affairs. The United States was born of a successful revolution, so it’s like part of our mythic body. And so it’s one of my pet peeves when I read Uranus interpretations as constantly valorizing anything Uranus does, and that’s not born out historically.
NDB: No, that’s for sure.
CB: That’s a good point, because we saw that as soon as we had that first ingress of Saturn into Aquarius in 2020, is we started seeing on the one hand some of the George Floyd protests and the Black Lives Matter protests and different things like that broke out not too long after that ingress. We also started seeing some of the COVID protests of people that were against restrictions, which was a really funny archetypal manifestation of that, of people trying to literally reject restrictions in the middle of a pandemic. And then later we saw the January 6th thing at the same time. So we’ve seen a bunch of different manifestations of that all along the political and social spectrums. So that’s a really good point that really it’s just an underlying energy that’s going to find its way to manifest and kind of express itself in society one way or another.
AC: Yeah, it doesn’t mean the heroes are going to win.
NDB: No, no, no. That’s the other thing about this whole Uranus in Gemini return thing is the US has built up this mythology, okay, they win the Revolutionary War, they start a republic, yay. Civil War comes, they defeat slavery, yay. Second World War, they defeat the Nazis and the horrible Japanese, yay. It’s created this myth where the US is always going to triumph over some evil regime that pops up and wants to do horrible things, and the US is always going to triumph. Is that really going to always happen with every passage of Uranus through Gemini or is this thing going to flip at some point?
AC: Right. Well, nothing continues forever. So what is a Uranus in Gemini that doesn’t… The thing is it’s going to intersect with that narrative, but it’s not necessarily going to replicate it. I would say coming into it now, we’re in the Uranus before that return to Gemini. I think the general belief all across different demographies and political affiliations is pretty low. The belief is pretty low that that’s going to happen again or that the United States is even capable of mobilizing in a effective and righteous way. And it would be interesting to look at how were people feeling before World War II, how were people feeling, etc. Again, I’m not arguing that it’s going to repeat, but…
NDB: There’s no country that has shown more reluctance to go to war, I think, than the US pre-Second World War, First World War too for that matter. Very ironic for having this sort of blood thirsty reputation, very, very reluctant to go to war.
AC: I mean, that blood thirsty reputation is really a result of the post World War II America, which was really a remaking of America from an institutional level on out.
NDB: Which is what always happens after Uranus leaves Gemini.
AC: Right. And so we can definitely see that version, our post World War II America, everybody’s kind of done with that and it’s not working very well, and we need to remake things again. But there’s so much uncertainty as to, well, is it going to get remade for the worse? Which American dreams and nightmares will be given shape? The end of the cycle I think is really clear, but what the next beginning is is I can’t see it. I can look at the timeframes and say intelligible things, but when I look out, I can’t see it. But again, the sense that we’re done with a thing, I think, is very clear.
CB: One of the things though, just to remember, is Uranus went into Gemini in 1942, right Nick? ’42, ’41?
NDB: Well, first time in the summer of ’41, then it regressed to Taurus, and then it entered in ’42 again.
CB: So that really marked the entry of the US into World War II, but there was already a long buildup prior to that when Uranus was transiting through Taurus in the buildup to that in the same way that there was a buildup to the Civil War before things really got serious and went down.
NDB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and it depends on what you mean by buildup. I mean, that’s certainly true–
CB: There’s precursors that are put in place prior. It didn’t just like one day we happen to find ourselves in World War II, there was years of Germany starting to annex different lands and doing different aggressive moves and stuff in Europe, rebuilding armaments.
AC: Japan had taken huge chunks of China for like five years at that point.
NDB: Yeah. No, no, it had been going on. There’s a case you can make for it beginning with Japan annexing Manchuria in ’31. You can make the case that it began with Italy annexing Ethiopia in ’35 or the Spanish Civil War in ’36 is often seen as a real precursor to the Second World War.
CB: Yeah. So my point is just that with Uranus in the middle of Taurus right now, if we’re looking at a Uranus in Gemini scenario like Civil War and World War II for the United States when Uranus went into Gemini, then some of the precursors for that are being put into place right now and already theoretically should be emerging and should start to be evident. We just can’t fully see them practically speaking because we don’t know the end result of a lot of those precursors quite yet. But a lot of those precursors should be starting to be put in place now at this point as Uranus is moving through or starts moving through the second half of Taurus in preparation for that. So just paying attention to some of those themes, that will be our challenge as mundane astrologers, not to have a failure of imagination to not see whatever the threads are now and where they could carry forward once we get to Uranus in Gemini.
NDB: Yeah. Certainly that’s true. When those wars erupt, they really take everyone by surprise. No one’s really expecting them to happen. With the Second World War, I mean, earlier in ’41, Roosevelt worked out the lend lease thing and he starts sending ships and stuff to Britain and then later to the Soviet Union when they’re invaded. The first Uranus ingress into Gemini is in August of 1941, and that’s when Roosevelt and Churchill meet up for what’s called the Atlantic Charter, which is kind of a misnomer because there’s no charter, it’s just a verbal agreement. But it really signifies US support for the allies against Nazi Germany. And even though it’s still four months before Pearl Harbor and all that, from that point it’s a point of no return. The US have shown their hand like who they’re connected to and who they’re not.
AC: Well, and I will also add that at the same time, Imperial Japan was heavily reliant on the United States for iron and gasoline imports. And the United States had begun just choking the supply to Japan, which is the precursor to Pearl Harbor. There were very strong economic positions taken. Those were not like the neutral trading partner relations.
CB: Do we have any examples of the US using economic force and choking off other countries that are committing aggressive acts recently as a parallel?
AC: Yeah. That’s something literally every country does all the time. The United States, we do that in every conflict. We’ve been doing that to Iran for decades. Cuba. We do have that. I’m just saying it’s a very common thing. It’s just part of the big game.
CB: Yeah, well, I’m just saying interesting parallel and we’ll see if that one ends up having similar parallels, since you mentioned Japan and some of that and that some of the economic things ended up leading into what ended up happening with World War Two.
NDB: Which reminds us of now as well. People have been mentioning for instance, the Arab Spring erupted because of a similar grain shortage, actually a much smaller grain shortage than the one that’s going to be falling on the Middle East now. And that was the whole Arab Spring so we can just imagine. There’s the trading sanctions with Russia and then there’s the way other uprisings can happen due to hunger and unemployment.
CB: Which brings it back to what Austin has been saying for months now, which is just that the food disruptions are going to be a major thing because then that will probably also then subsequently impact migrations of people if you’re having a famine in your country, moving to a different country in order to try to find sustenance and food and support, which is what happened after the Arab Spring and some of the different migrations and movements of people.
AC: Yeah, and so well, and just to bring it back to Saturn-Uranus squares, this is in many ways like the rest of this year is the season finale. Then it’ll be like Saturn-Neptune in Pisces, what are we going to do with this mess? Because it’s going to create a mess. When Saturn moves into Pisces, it’s out of dignity. It’s the like the control mechanism Saturn being in a much more confused and weaker place for the first time in a long time with Neptune, which does not help clarify things. I think it’s like a mess. Nobody who knows what to do for the Saturn-Neptune years, hyper-abbreviated.
CB: All right. Since we’re an hour and 20 minutes into this episode, I think this would be a good time to take a break and to mention our sponsors, something a little bit more positive and lighthearted, which is that one of the good things about August, especially later in August, once you get away from the Mars-Saturn stuff is there is this really amazing astrological conference that’s taking place in Westminster, Colorado, August 25th through the 29th, 2022. This is the International Society for Astrological Research is hosting a major several-day international conference with astrologers, and speakers flying in from around the world in order to attend basically a week of lectures, workshops, and a ton of other fun stuff that’s going to take place over the course of that week. I don’t know. Do you guys know anybody who’s speaking there, giving any brilliant lectures possibly?
AC: I don’t know about brilliant. I’m speaking. Nick, are you speaking?
NDB: No, I’m not. I’m not speaking. Yeah, that’s a pity. I’ve spoken at a few ISAR conferences and they’re wonderful.
CB: That was the last time I saw you prior to this month, wasn’t it? Or was it the 2016 ISAR?
NDB: That was the last time I saw Austin. Last time I saw Austin was at ISAR.
CB: Well, really that’s what I was thinking about meeting up with you again and it felt so good, Nick, when we recorded all those episodes together this month. But before COVID, it’s like that was how astrologers met up in person and hung out with each other is we would meet up at conferences every once or every year or two basically, or sometimes once or twice a year. And so, you get this nice little like rhythm, but that really got disrupted with COVID. This is one of the conferences I think that was originally supposed to take place back in 2020 but got postponed two years now due to the pandemic. So this is going to be the first time a lot of people meet up in person again to hang out.
NDB: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s a great conference as far as conferences in the States go. There’s the big, bad UAC, which only comes up once in a blue moon. But really for regular top high quality mass astrology conferences in the States, ISAR really is the big daddy for those big ones.
AC: I’ve not been to an ungreat ISAR Conference. I will also add that the conference is at the end of the month when all when a lot of the texts configurations have literally broken apart for a while. The Sun is no longer T-squaring all that business. Mars has moved out of configuration. I have my quibbles with the election of astrology conferences, but this one is safely away from whatever the danger zone. I’m giving two lectures. I’ll be talking about some of the complex and oddly specific combinations of planets in houses that we see in Firmicus Maternus and in Dorotheus. There’s this one section that’s in both and is just a shockingly dense little piece of texts that I’ve gone back to and back to for 10 years, so I want to share some things about that.
CB: That’s the one where Firmicus is almost called in the Indian tradition yogas, right?
AC: Yeah, absolutely. One of my returns to that section was after having done two years of a very intense Vedic astrology program and then looking at that section again with those eyes and be like, “Oh, there’s even more here than I thought.” So I’m going to share-
CB: It’s like what sounds like highly specific positions of like if the native has Mars and Cancer in the seventh house and Jupiter and Pisces in whatever house then the native will be like a baker and will bake very fine breads or something like that.
AC: Yeah, exactly. The one delineation that got me into it was when I was writing a piece on Marilyn Manson for The Mountain Astrologer in 2012. I just looked at Firmicus and he had Saturn in the ninth in a night chart with the Moon in any way moving towards it and he has the Moon, a waning Moon moving towards it. And so, he has a waning Moon applying to Saturn in the ninth house and it said that a person who has this they’ll be like a long-haired philosopher and interpreter of dreams. Then when you get more specific, it says and they will be hated by gods and emperors alike. It was like, oh, the opprobrium of both moral and secular authorities. I was like, absolutely. And things of-
NDB: Someone would call it, name is album Antichrist Superstar, you think.
AC: Yeah, exactly. It’s Saturn in Aries in the degree that is supposed to be the Sun’s degree of exultation. But anyway, I was like, oh, hated by… I can’t think of [inaudible] who is a more public symbol of that and is now for different reasons. But anyway, and so I just kept going back to the section. That’s one of my talks. I share some stuff I’ve found and extracted some principles. Then my other talk is it’s an introduction to mantra as a form of remediation straight from the tradition in Vedic astrology that I’ve studied and as well as an extension of those principles to other practices of recitation in other faiths and traditions, like doing songs for example if you’re a Catholic.
CB: Those sound like some amazing lectures. People can see Austin in person giving a lecture. You can actually make eye contact with him and have a mental psychic exchange in the same room, which is kind of exciting.
NDB: But that’ll be one way because Austin won’t make eye contact with you.
CB: No, well, you’re not actually allowed to look at Austin directly in the eyes at a conference.
AC: I’m like a peacock that way.
CB: Right. But there’s going to be aside from Austin and other amazing astrologers, there’s tons of other astrologers that are giving, I think there’s over 100 astrologers giving talks at this conference. There’s going to be something at least like five lectures running concurrently four times a day. So you just have tons of… It’s like a podcast episode. I guess I have to actually explain that since it’s been so long. Maybe there’s many younger astrologers who have never attended a conference. It’s like a podcast, except you’re there in person and you can see the speaker and enjoy the lecture live as you do online in the Zoom chat, but physically.
There’s also going to be a trade show with a lot of different astrology booths selling different stuff. There’s going to be a huge bookstore that’s run by Greg Nalbandian from Astrology Et Al, that used to be one of the biggest in-person bookstores for astrology in the country. He’s going to bring all of his books here to sell them at the conference, which is always one of the cool things. I will probably be milling about the outside of the conference, hanging out and talking to people and picking people off periodically and taking them back here to the studio for interviews. I’m pretty excited about it.
The conference, if you’d like to find out more information, you can go to isar2022.org and you can find out more information about the different packages and other things that they have available for the conference. We’ll see you there. All right.
NDB: That was really good, Chris.
CB: Thank you.
NDB: It’s like a podcast, but you can smell Austin’s pit stains.
CB: Exactly, like the deep aromatic.
NDB: I can smell him now.
AC: The peacocks will hear you.
CB: All right, so why don’t we bring… We’ve been talking about the macro of the fate of nations and world events for a little bit. Why don’t we draw a little bit back in and talk about, personally speaking, how individuals might experience the astrology of August. One of the things that I want to talk about that’s actually one of the things that I like that’s a highlight of the month and one of the nice little sweet spots even during the course of the tense Mars-Saturn and Mars-Uranus stuff is Mercury’s transit through the sign of Virgo from August 4th all the way through August 25th, is it’s not really afflicted and it has some nice dignity. Actually, Leisa and I actually ended up using this as one of our Auspicious Elections for the month where even though we wouldn’t normally recommend starting a major venture undertaking under that Mars-Saturn square, we had ourselves the challenge of if you have to start something during that timeframe during August, what is the best chart to use during the course of the month in order to still have some success during the course of that?
One of the charts that we found that I wanted to highlight for this month takes place on August 13th, 2022 at about 8:00 in the morning with mid-Virgo rising. If you use this electional chart, you’ll have Virgo rising with Mercury in Virgo on the Ascendant basically rising up over the eastern horizon at that time, because you want to set it for basically 8:00 local time in whatever your time is. Don’t convert the time zone because you want this election to have the Ascendant in Virgo in your location. This is a good Mercury election for all things related to Mercury. It has Mercury moving swiftly. It’s not afflicted. It’s one of the few mutable planets, if you think, because it puts some of the more difficult stuff off axis putting Mars up in the declining house of the ninth and Saturn over in the sixth. The Moon is in Pisces and it’s in the seventh that’s applying to an opposition with Mercury, which is not too bad. It would be a good chart for communication for other Mercurial-type things that are more detail-oriented, but also a little bit more practical and a little bit more grounded. What do you guys use Mercury in Virgo elections for?
NDB: Invention, innovation just getting through things methodically and efficiently.
AC: Yeah, I’m really glad you built your monthly election around that Mercury, because, we’re looking at Mercury in its rulership/exultation. It’s not afflicted by anything. It’s clear of the fixed sign mass that we just spent an hour talking about. If you think about the level of uncertainty that all of this Uranus, Saturn and friends’ configuration brings, during periods of uncertainty that you really need clear thinking, clear like so what are the facts? I’ve been pummeled by 30 different people’s interpretations of the facts, but let’s go back to what are the facts as we know them, what’s an unknown and I know is an unknown, that mental that intellective clarity and clean mental processing, which Mercury in Virgo helps facilitate is a real asset during this period and of course can be used to anchor an election because it’s literally the planet that is best off by a long shot during this period of time. I really liked that you built it around Mercury. Mercury in Virgo not only rules itself in the first, but it also rules the 10th. So that’s a really powerful pair of houses to start with.
CB: Yeah, that’s a great point. It’s like the person where if like a crisis happens and everything suddenly gone crazy around them, Mercury and Virgo is like the person that keeps things together and just says, what is the next step and executes what needs to be done next in order to keep things going.
AC: Yeah. Like, okay, well, we have the fresh water, let’s go get that. These roads are closed. We’re going to use this road. Mercury in Virgo is like the opposite of panic thinking.
CB: Right. Like here are the bandages and stuff and let’s apply that to that and do this and then move forward. That is one of the electional charts we found this month. We actually found a bunch of other electional charts. We overdid it this month and did a longer episode than normal in our private Auspicious Elections Podcast, which is one of the benefits available to patrons that are on certain tiers when you sign up through our page on patreon.com. If you’d like access to that episode along with all the other electional charts that we found during the course of August, then just sign up to become a patron and you’ll get access to that as well as other benefits like the ability to attend live recordings of episodes like this one, where we have actually a lovely audience today who’s joining us in the live chat. So thanks everyone for joining us and participating in the recording of this episode.
CB: They are looking lovely today.
AC: Definitely, not as many peacocks in the audience as far as I can tell, although I can’t necessarily see everyone’s backgrounds.
AC: They seem pretty cocky to me.
CB: All right, so that is that. Let’s return back to talking about August. Let’s reel it in a little bit since we’ve talked a lot about the Mars-Uranus conjunction, which goes exact on the first. We’ve talked about the Mars-Saturn square, which goes exact on the seventh. Some of that has intensified a little bit later in the month. It’s a little weird when there’s that Uranus stationed on the 24th. But before we get there, why don’t we talk about our first lunation of the month, which is the Full Moon in Aquarius on the 11th of August, which actually takes place the same day that Venus ingresses into the sign of Leo. All right, so let me show that here.
All right, so we don’t have to dwell on this lunation a lot because it just reactivates some of the fixed sign stuff that we’ve been talking about because this is a Full Moon in the sign of Aquarius at, it looks like at 19 degrees of Aquarius. So it’s conjunct Saturn. After the opposition with the Sun, it moves into a conjunction with Saturn 3 degrees later at 22 Aquarius, and it’s just coming out of the square with Uranus and then it will eventually go into a square with Mars. In some ways, it’s bringing a spotlight to or highlighting some of the tensions in that whole square between Taurus and Aquarius planets that we were talking about from the first week of the month essentially, right?
AC: Yeah, it’s literally a giant silver spotlight on all the dynamics we’ve been discussing.
NDB: This does bring to mind a previous chart I remember very well 23 years ago, August 11th, 1999. There was a lunar eclipse, a total lunar eclipse in Aquarius, but it formed this perfect grand fixed cross, Sun and Leo opposite Moon and Uranus and Aquarius and Saturn was in Taurus. So there was a Saturn-Uranus square except in ’99 it was Saturn in Taurus and Uranus in Aquarius, and then Mars was in Scorpio and then you had the Sun and Moon with the nodes in Leo-Aquarius along with Uranus in Aquarius. Very, very similar energy. Do you know what happened on August 11th, 1999? Boris Yeltsin appointed his fifth Prime Minister of Russia, some unknown guy out of the KGB named Vladimir Putin, whose name we had never heard in the news until August 11th, 1999. True story, folks.
CB: I don’t know whatever happened to that guy. What happened to that guy?
NDB: I think he wound up running some rowboat rental thing or something, sheep farmer. But anyway, the important thing is he lost a shirt on a horse. The important thing is when I look at those transits, in fact, a lot of the transits I’m seeing this month remind me a lot of August of 1999, especially that eclipse. We promised we were all in the macro and we were going to try and bring this in. I’ve gone macro on you again, but let me try and rein this in back to the micro.
CB: And personally relate how the ascension of Vladimir Putin in 1989 is going to relate to everyone’s individual lives in the next.
AC: It’s a good time to move from the FSB into office, all you FSB agents out there.
NDB: Good time to move up and good time to invite the boss and his wife over for dinner.
CB: Yeah, metaphorically move from the shadows and grasped power in any way that you can and relinquish it for the next 20 years in your personal life.
NDB: What I would say, for those of you with long memories, for those of you who remember what the summer of ’99 was like for you, there’s a lot this summer that is recreating that for you. For each and every one of you listeners out there who can remember where you were in August of ’99, think hard as you’re going through August and think about what parallels are being drawn between your life today and your life way back in the 20th century.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense. So Venus ingressing into Leo brings both a little bit of relief to Leo but also, it also starts moving into the opposition with Saturn, which can be a cold aspect that it’ll eventually culminate at some point when that goes exact by degree.
NDB: Yeah. Venus and Leos are very nice and good for Leo. But ultimately what that means is it’s bringing it into the opposition to Saturn the square to Uranus and so on and so forth. It’s bringing [inaudible].
AC: It’s bad for Venus.
CB: Leos have had a rough couple of years. I saw some discussion recently because of Saturn’s transit through Aquarius, anytime something’s going through Leo, it should like otherwise be a nice little summary thing. We have the Sun going through Leo height of the summer in the Northern Hemisphere. But then what happens is the Sun runs smack dab into the opposition with Saturn, which is a bit of a cold and restrictive in distance forming combination and adversity in some sense and that opposition between the Sun and Saturn goes exact around the 13th and 14th. That’s a little bit tricky in terms of the positive side of some of the Leo transits like Venus going in there. But also, it’s hard getting that opposition from Saturn at the same time.
AC: Yeah, and so on a simple experiential level, like Chris said, Venus in Leo when uninterfered with is almost like the exact American cultural image of summer fun. It’s like it’s hot, we’re going to the beach, we’re getting drunk on a boat, we’re going to beat the heat. It’s like summer fun Juicy Fruit commercial. Take off your shirt, show everyone that you’re a skinny legend, whatever. But Venus while wanting to have summer fun as we say is in the blast zone of really the wake of this Mars, Uranus, Saturn Rahu thing, and that’s not going to feel like the second it moves in. If we look at Venus’s ingress, the first little bit, it’s going to be Venus applying to a trine with Jupiter. It’s going to feel like that classical summer fun for half a week, week, half a week.
CB: That trine is one of my favorite aspects this month, it’s one of the most positive aspects is Venus hitting that exact trine with Jupiter around August 17th, August 18th.
AC: Yeah, that’s great. Then once Venus clears Jupiter, then it’s headed towards the Uranus-Rahu-Saturn. Then Saturn brings a cold boundedness which is very hostile, to some are fun. Then Uranus in Taurus, there’s maggots in the picnic basket, whatever disruptions like the thing that was supposed to be the Venusian and fun Taurus, the supplies, something’s wrong with the supplies, right?
CB: I mean, to me it looks like because it’s the sequence is the other thing we have to take into account is that on August 26th, the Venus squares Uranus, and then two days later, it runs into the opposition with Saturn. So it’s like there’s something fun and exciting. It’s like the summer fling is the Venus square Uranus. But then a couple days later, it’s like you run into Saturn and suddenly things are not as exciting as they seemed or there’s a little bit of a problem and you have to come back down to reality.
NDB: It’s like the first day your kite is surfing and then the next day you’ve got this crazy sunburn and you’ve torn all your leg muscles and stuff.
AC: Yeah, we can just say on a general level it interferes with attempts at the Newseum fun. If you’re going to have fun, especially with the Venus-Saturn, serious fun. Like going to ISAR, where you’re going to sit and you’re going to be subject to esteemed minds. That’s a real suggestion though.
NDB: Esteemed minds and Austin’s.
CB: Isn’t this the electional chart that we actually just picked or something close to it for doing the next forecast episode in person?
AC: Thursday, I think yeah.
CB: It’s like one of these two days but basically what you’re-
Austin Coppock Yeah, I think we were going to do Thursday.
CB: Okay. Well, so that’s pretty good. We’ll meet up, have fun, but also have some serious fun and then you got to go work immediately after and go give some lectures.
AC: We’re also grabbing that last bit of Mercury in Virgo.
CB: Right, that was it. Okay, nice. That’s Venus. Venus has an interesting trip as it’s going through Leo this month. One of the more positive configurations is just that trine with Jupiter, as we said around the 17th or 18th. Things get a little exciting by the 25th, 26th when it squares Uranus, but then there’s a little bit of a downer on the 28th.
AC: I would also just add that with the configuration with Uranus and Saturn, sure there’s some of the challenges we mentioned, but Mars is gone. Mars is no longer inflaming that. That takes the ambient SOC levels down considerably.
CB: For sure, because Mars is just pouring gasoline on the Saturn-Uranus square up to that point, but it departs from the fixed signs and leaves by August 19th, August 20th, Mars ingresses into Gemini and then we have some relief from the inflammation that Mars was bringing into Taurus and to the fixed signs in general at that point.
AC: Yeah, I looked at Mars’s entire cycle in Gemini with some level of trepidation or foreboding. One, I don’t love Mars retrogrades. Two, there’s the configuration with the US chart. Three, I’m not looking forward to Mars in Gemini of my Moon forever. Some Mars is going to enter Gemini this month and we’ll leave Gemini at the very end of March next year. So literally, Mars in Gemini plays us out of Saturn in Aquarius. By the time Mars leaves Gemini, Saturn will have been in Pisces for several weeks.
But that said, I had all this in my mind and then I was like, oh, no. When Mars moves into Gemini, I was like, oh, the trouble doesn’t start for a while. We don’t have the retrograde station until the end of October. This first part is one, it’s going to feel really good to have Mars not in a fixed sign, like you were just saying. And two-
CB: I’m a fan of that. As a fixed sign person, I’m a big fan of that.
AC: Right. And we’ve got a Mars-Jupiter sextile. Mars is going to cause trouble, no doubt, but that’s later. We don’t have to do that. We don’t have to do that at the end of August. It’s going to feel like a relief as far as Mars is concerned at the end of August.
CB: It definitely will feel like a relief and a release of tension, because that’s one of the biggest keywords that we really discovered definitely in 2020 is tension and pressing the gas pedal and the brake pedal at the same time and other metaphors of almost being pulled in two different directions that really come up with Mars and Saturn because Mars wants to move forward at a high rate of speed and Saturn wants to hold things back and not move at all. Having a release from that tension will be really good. I do think that though that Mars moving into Gemini that individuals should start paying attention to as soon as that ingress takes place, the shift in the activation of certain topics in their chart, because Mars is going to spend the next several months in that same sign and in that same whole sign house that sometimes as soon as the ingress takes place that some of the events and circumstances that will really come to ahead when Mars stations retrograde in October and then begins its retrograde cycle, some of that stuff really starts to manifest or starts to at least be put in place as soon as Mars goes into that sign. So it will be important to pay attention to that shift when Mars goes into Gemini August 19th and 20th.
NDB: Yeah, let me repeat something that I pointed out back in 2016 when the three of us met to talk about Mars retrogrades.
CB: That was the last episode the three of us did together.
NDB: The last episode the three of us did together I think in March of 2016. When it comes to the US and things being a bit volatile, historically, Mars typically gets… If the US gets attacked, it’s usually after Mars has made a direct station within like a month or so after direct station. That includes Pearl Harbor, 9/11, I think there’s some other examples in there, but those are obviously two of the better ones. After a Mars direct station that is when the US seems to be most vulnerable to some kind of attack.
CB: Taking it out of the mundane context and the impending doom and in terms of that, let’s talk a little bit about Mars retrograde since this it’s not going to start yet but this is the initial inkling of Mars heading into that. On a personal level, Nick, how do you interpret Mars retrogrades or how does that manifest in the lives of individuals?
NDB: On the whole just on their own, they really seem to get things moving in that sign. They’re not on their own malefic, even though it’s a malefic planet.
CB: That’s a good point, getting things moving. Starting movement and quickness, it speeds things up in that sign.
NDB: Yeah, absolutely, particularly if things have been moving slowly up until that point. But if you have a rising sign Gemini or the Sun in Gemini that Mars transit or Saturn in Gemini that Mars retrograde transit can really come along.
CB: Gemini is already a quick sign in and of itself so that’s actually important symbolically when we’re combining two different astrological indications that both indicate a quickness.
NDB: Yeah, sure. But things are never quick enough for Gemini. That’s when a transit like this comes along and helps move things along. But typically, unless it’s doing something, unless it’s making some really ugly aspect, it’s typically positive for individual people when it’s hitting those angular houses or the lights or something.
CB: What are some of your keywords for Mars in Gemini, Austin?
AC: Mars in Gemini, let’s see. I think one of the issues with Mars and Gemini that’s a result of that tremendous capacity for movement is that both with the natives as well as a transit, it can really lead to people their attention and energies being frayed by trying to accomplish too many things at once or trying to take too many positions. It’s something that I would watch for this, what eight months of Mars in Gemini, is splitting yourself and splitting your attention and energy too many times is that one of the things that Mars brings as a result of pushing for work in action is exhaustion and being totally out of resources.
Because when you’re hitting the gas pedal all the time, what happens? You run out of gas. So that’s an issue. It’s in a Mercurial sign and so we’re really looking at Mercury-Mars combination type thinking where it’s the, shall we say, Mercury-Mars gives us lawyers, engineers, liars. It could be verbal assaults, but it can also just be the verbal thrust and parry. We talked about this in the Yearly with Leisa, Chris. It certainly smells like cyber warfare whatever the next level of that is. How could it not be?
CB: I was just thinking of that because a famous Mars in Gemini with also the Ascendant and Mercury and Sun in the north node is Edward Snowden, so hackers basically.
AC: Yeah, like aggressive contests and actions are now-
NDB: Very competitive, I’d say.
AC: What?
NDB: Very competitive, Mercury in Mars.
CB: Right, because Mercury likes to play games and putting Mars there, I understand how that would bring a competitive edge.
NDB: Yeah, Mars isn’t the one who says I’ll race you to the corner. That’s Mercury.
AC: Right, Mars ups the stakes though.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Go ahead.
NDB: I was just going to say the one with the inclination to say I’ll get to the corner before you do, that’s Mercury.
AC: Right, you can also just think of that, a lot of nature’s creatures do a predator-prey thing where Mars says, I’m going to eat you and Mercury says, I could run away from you. If you can catch me. It’s like the focus of if we’re talking about competitive games or contests like speed, agility, the ability to change direction in warfare or combat, we’re looking at the capacity for deception and trickery. It’s not that my army is stronger than yours. It’s that I fooled you and so my weaker army may beat your larger army. We really see a focus on tactics, tactics and deception rather than just brute force. It’s tactical rather than- If we’re thinking of Mars as heroic, it’s not Hercules, it’s the trickster hero. It’s the solving problems through use of the intellect rather than through being able to swing a really heavy club.
NDB: It’s funny that you mentioned the tactical thing that reminds me 79 years ago, which is a near-perfect Mars synodic return 79 years ago in 1943 during the Mars retrograde in Gemini, right in the middle of that Mars retrograde was when FDR Stalin and Churchill met up in Tehran and basically put in the plan to do the D-Day invasion, so talk about tactical planning.
AC: Well, and there was so much trickery. They were like because if the Germans knew where the attack was going to happen and when it was going to happen, it was almost certainly going to be a failure. So they planned dozens of not real invasions to disguise. Didn’t Churchill have Mars retrograde in Gemini in the 10th?
NDB: Did Churchill have-
AC: Not Churchill, FDR. Sorry.
NDB: FDR did.
AC: That’s what I meant, sorry.
NDB: Yeah, he was he was born actually very close to that station, as I recall. Yes, he did on Mars retrograde in Gemini. It’s funny actually, he and Lincoln both Aquarians, Lincoln was born with Mars stationing retrograde I think in Libra or Scorpio and Roosevelt was born with Mars very soon going direct in Gemini. Both Lincoln and Roosevelt are both born close to Mars stations. You can see it’s three days away from stationing direct if I’m not mistaken. That’s not 27, right? That’s 2.7.
AC: Yeah, 2.7.
NDB: So it’s three days before stationing direct and Lincoln similar but on the other end of the retrograde. It’s just going retrograde in his.
CB: I was thinking about that with FDR’s chart because of having Mars in the 10th house in the place of one’s career and one’s destiny in some sense and how his life really culminated and everything built up to that he was the guy in charge that had to lead the United States through World War Two. That’s a really difficult position to be in. Then he basically successfully led the country through World War Two and then promptly died basically right as the war was ending.
NDB: Yeah, and talk about tactical thinking. There’s this great quote from FDR that his left hand didn’t know what his right hand was doing. Either he said that about himself or someone said it about him, but he was really, really good at playing both sides of the ballpark if you will, very tactical thinker, really good at making everyone think that he’s on their side even when he’s not.
CB: Catherine Thompson in that chart mentions FDR’s fireside charts as a Mars in Gemini vibe. That’s really good point.
NDB: Yeah, for sure. The first one didn’t make that kind of communication with the public. I mean, people hadn’t really heard a president speak to them before. It’s kind of hard to fathom how strange and new and unique that was.
CB: Right, as I’m looking through my files, another funny Mars in Gemini in the 10th house with Virgo rising is Steve Carell, who it’s kind of funny because he became the most famous, I feel like he’s still the most famous, for playing the character of Michael Scott on The Office. The entire thing is just him making verbal gaffes and really cringey jokes, but that’s like the focal point. He’s so good at doing that it’s entertaining, and they did it for many seasons. That’s how he became as famous as he is today was by getting that character. I was watching recently on YouTube a clip of other people that did interviews for that role and there were some famous actors that did interviews for it, but none of them were good for it, even though they’re good actors. Then all of a sudden at the very end of the clip, you see him take that role and just like right away, he had it just immediately and he knew what the character was supposed to be. It was this guy that was just making these terrible verbal gaffes and communicating and saying things that were just super awkward and off-putting but in a hilarious and almost endearing way. That’s my Mars in Gemini image for people.
AC: That’s a great one. Part of it was that the character of Michael Scott was constantly offending everybody without really realizing.
CB: Accidentally, yeah, inadvertently.
AC: So one thing I would say just to add to this is getting to know Mars in Gemini because Mars in Gemini is going to be riding shotgun for a long time. It pays such dividends to observe Mars once it enters the sign, where it’s going to go retrograde before rather than waiting until they’re active problems there months and months later. I don’t know. You may not need to start the second it moves in before the whatever crisis point. But what is in terms of on an elemental level, whatever house Gemini is and whatever planets reside there, there’s just going to be a lot of ambient heat there, social heat, internal heat, wherever the house locates that heat, and making sure to properly hydrate that area to just know that there’s gasoline, there’s just going to be gasoline there and to think about that. If it’s bodily, you want to be doing anti-inflammatory things or cooling things, et cetera, et cetera. If it’s social, you just want to be aware of that and not be like, now’s a great time to do my Michael Scott impression. But whatever it is just a matter of getting a sense of that heat and then thinking about how to have management systems in place, make sure that there’s enough coolant in the engine, because it’s going to be running hot for a while.
NDB: Again, tactical thinking.
CB: Another good keyword that we’ve come up with Mars before was like a spiciness that whatever house Mars is going into in your chart, once it moves into Gemini, it’s going to bring some spice and as Austin was saying, some heat to that area. But sometimes spicy can be good. It can change things up. It can make things move faster, but sometimes a spice in excess can be burning and can go too far so that it makes things a little uncomfortable in that area of life. But in just the right amounts it can actually be something that adds a variety and adds an interestingness to the flavour of that house for you, because it’s bringing additional activity and energy and heat. So sometimes heat can be good. Also, another key word is it’s just going to speed things up in that area of your life probably in whatever house it ingresses into, and that’s one of the things that’s going to be important to pay attention to in August as soon as Mars moves into Gemini, is if things start to speed up in that house or that sector of your chart and that area of your life. Because then what’s going to happen later on is that by October, Mars is going to slow down suddenly and grind to a halt. Then all of a sudden you might see a slowdown and more of a focusing and more of a slow plotting or grinding quality in that area of your life for some reason, but you’ll be able to anticipate what that’s going to be if you pay attention to what starts happening after the ingress.
AC: Yeah, you could also look at the path as sort of holding a hairpin curve up ahead. And so you don’t want to assume that it’s a straight shot from here to there.
CB: Right. [crosstalk] look like it initially.
AC: Right. Like if you look at the Mars retrograde, it’s a loop de loop. It’s a squiggly path. And as part of retrogrades in general, especially Mercury, Mars, Venus retrogrades, is often the way through is more complicated and twisty and turny. The road might eventually get you North, but it turned West and now you’re going South. Is this really going to take us North? And so to be prepared for a more circumambulatory piece or maze-like portion of whatever Mars journey is, in my experience, good practice. Also, Chris, with your mention of spice, it made me think of, you know, with us looking at just the first ingress and even the retrograde station that’s months away, made me think of the show Hot Ones. Have you seen that series? It’s an interview show where the guests are fed progressively spicier your wings. Where the first couple it’s like, “Ooh, that’s got some zest.” Right. [laughs]
CB: They’re like, “Oh, that’s tasty.”
AC: Yeah. And then you have people just streaming tears and sometimes in a pain, psychedelic state by the time they get to the eighth or the ninth wing.
CB: Yeah, by the end. Because it gets progressively hotter and hotter and you go up like 10 different levels of heat. That’s kind of what we’re going to be doing here as we get up to the Mars retrograde. It’s like it starts off in August as like, “Oh, that’s a little spicy but that’s tasty as Mars dips into that sign,” but then all of a sudden September-October you’re like, “Is this getting hotter or is this just me?” And then all of a sudden it’s burning your mouth by the time you get to October and November.
AC: Yeah, that’s too many Scovilles. Part of the visible astronomy of Mars retrograde is it is as close and as bright as Mars gets to the Earth. And it’s visible for longer and longer portions of the night. So it’s just brighter and closer and brighter and closer, increasing the astral Scovilles.
NDB: That’s the big thing, it’s there, it’s in your face all that time as opposed to being hidden. I think that’s the distinguishing factor from Mars.
CB: I love Hot Ones, I’ve been watching that since the beginning. And somebody recently suggested to me and I thought this was kind of a good idea. It was to do like an Astrology version of that the next time I have somebody out in person. And to have a set of hot wings with progressively hotter things, but then ask them astrology questions or questions about their chart or something like that. Because what it does in the interviews on Hot Ones is that it kind of removes people’s ability to do packaged PR responses, and they just say whatever the actual sort of truth is. It brings out the truth a little bit by adding a sense of heat and direness as to what’s going on. So it makes for more a interesting interview.
NDB: Yeah. “My new movie actually sucks. I really had a miserable time making eat.” [laughs and mimics chewing something spicy]
CB: Right. So Austin, you’re committed to that for when you fly out here in August?
AC: Sure, sure. [Nick laughs]
CB: Okay. You and Kaitlin, we might have to…
AC: I would do that. I would actually totally do that if we were recording after I give my lectures at the conference. I don’t want to subject myself or my audience to the intestinal revolt that will inevitably happen, if that occurs.
CB: Right. That makes a little bit of sense.
AC: You’re welcome, audience.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. The only other thing is it was funny YouTube recently launched an in-house Tarot-reading service, which I was really surprised that YouTube did that. They took a bunch of famous YouTube creators and used thematically appropriate ones and put them on different tarot cards, and one of them was actually Shaun Evans from Hot Ones that they put on the Sun. So it’s a Tarot card where it’s Sean Evans and it says ‘accomplishment, enlightenment, vitality. And it’s the Sun and he’s got the Sun behind him with the rays and the fire sort of coming up from Hot Ones. How do you feel about that? Would you use that Tarot deck, Austin?
AC: I would put Hot Ones as the tower. Because it’s to break people down.
CB: Yeah. Okay, that’s good. All right. That’s actually a really good point. Constance Wallace points out that hot spicy doesn’t register in the tastebuds, it registers in the pain center. That actually makes me think of, it’s like there’s some people that just have a different inborn tolerance for heat. And some people really like hot and spicy things, and other people just can’t take it at all or it hits them differently. And it makes me think of Mars placements and how sometimes if somebody has a prominent Mars placement, that they just have a more fiery personality or sometimes are more attracted to fiery things. And it suits them in different ways versus others that that energy is harder to deal with. That’s an interesting thing to keep in mind as we’re talking about this Mars ingress into Gemini and the energy that it’s going to import into Gemini. Some people are going to like that, they’re going to like the spiciness and be able to deal with it and actually enjoy how it quickens the pace of things in that area. Whereas there’s others where it might be too much, it might be too fiery, or it might make things go too fast so that they really want it to slow down a little bit more.
AC: Yeah, that’s actually a great analogy. Like with competitive dynamics, you know, everybody has the level of competition that feels good. And more than that is always a problem, right? And less than that might be boring, right? Because you know, some people just like cooperative games, some people like slightly competitive games, some people like chess where there can be only one winner, right? There’s no second place in chess or in, you know, cage fighting. But it’s very much a matter of taste. Or in personal relationships, some people are just totally cool with… You know, some people might characterize a level of conflict as passionate and other people be like, “I could never live like that.” How much peace do you need versus how much friction do you hunger for?
CB: Yeah. And for some people, a level of friction being necessary versus others a level of friction being off-putting or repelling.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and that’s a hundred precent a personal setting. One thing I’d like to point out is two of our biggest things this month, which is the Saturn, Uranus, Rahu, North Node thing and the Mars at the very beginning of the sign in which it will eventually go retrograde, those two both hit big in early November. Right? So when we’re looking at like, “Okay, once Mars is actually retrograde we’ve gotten to the ninth wing.” The ninth wing is delivered basically right when the next set of eclipses on Uranus and pinging Saturn occur. That’s our next sort of whatever. It’s interesting because it’s not Mars in the middle of the Saturn-Uranus eclipse thing, but it’s happening at the same time. And I would say just on a simple planning level like, I don’t know, the first two weeks of August is about as chaotic as it gets until we get to end of October and then first half of November. Our baseline level of chaos these days is much higher than in the past, but as far as the spikes, we’re doing a spike right now and then that’s absolutely another spike. And that we see the very beginnings of that at the end of this month.
CB: Right. So, getting to the last week of the month. We mentioned Mars going into Gemini on the 20th and the Sun goes into Virgo. So we have the end of Leo season and the beginning of Virgo season on the 22nd. Uranus stations retrograde in Taurus on the 24th, which is actually really important because that puts sort of an exclamation mark next to Uranus at that point in the month even though Mars has moved out of that, we’re moving away from some of the tenseness of the configuration. You’re still going to see an intensification of some of those Uranus significations when it stations. And I believe if I’m remembering correctly, wasn’t that one of the primary signatures when there was that disastrously chaotic pull-out of the US from Afghanistan last year? Wasn’t that around the time of the Uranus station in Taurus?
NDB: Was it in August?
AC: I think so, yeah.
CB: I don’t know if it was in August but it was around the time of the station.
NDB: It would have been August.
AC: Yeah, and that begins. So now… Yeah.
CB: I’m not mentioning that necessarily as a mundane thing to talk about the US again, but more just that people sometimes don’t know what to do with stations or don’t give them as enough importance in the way that they can really magnify whatever a planet is doing as it’s moving through that sign. It does it much more prominently and much more intensely when the planet is also stationing either retrograde or direct.
AC: Yeah, and that leads into our Saturn-Uranus not making a perfect mathematical aspect, but being within a degree. Like that’s what’s between now and the November chaos spike. I’m gonna call that a chaos plateau that’s holding at 18 that’s coming up.
CB: I like that. I like that.
AC: The chaos, or whatever the Lovecraftian being’s the chaos plateau of Leng. Anyway.
CB: The last thing I want to talk about here because it takes place towards the very end of the month is the New Moon in the sign of Virgo, which takes place on the 27th of August.
AC: Yeah, give it to me.
CB: Let me pull up the chart for that.
AC: Well, I didn’t mean give me the chart. I meant I’m excited. [Nick laughs] I’m excited to have a New Moon that’s not in a fixed sign. Like, let’s get some of that mutable energy although it is square Mars.
NDB: Yeah, I was gonna say… I was gonna say…
AC: [laughs] Yeah, I don’t know. Trying to find the silver lining.
NDB: You really are Mr. Silver Lining these days, Austin. That’s funny.
CB: Yeah. It’s the peacocks. It’s the brightening of the peacocks.
AC: It’s the peacocks.
CB: Yeah. So, there it is. Looks like here in Denver, it’s early on the morning of the 27th or late at night depending on your perspective, but it’s at four degrees of Virgo. And Mars as you’ve both pointed out is at four degrees of Gemini at the same time squaring that. Other configurations going on, Venus is just barely coming off of that square with Uranus and heading into about a degree and a half or so away from the opposition with Saturn. Mercury, interestingly even though the New Moon is in Virgo, Mercury has just departed from Virgo and has moved into the sign of Libra. And it’s actually only about two weeks, it’s 13 days away from stationing retrograde in the sign of Libra. That’s one of the major things that we’ll have to talk about when we get to September, is that Mercury retrograde in Libra.
AC: Yep. So, making an opposition to Jupiter.
NDB: I’ll take it.
CB: Yeah. And a trine with Mars, which is actually kind of nice in terms of increased fluidity of communication, forthrightness of communication, saying what needs to be said in a direct and effective manner.
AC: Yeah, that Mercury-Jupiter provides some nice capacity to manage whatever Mars is putting out. And you know, Chris, as you said and then I said, we’ve been talking about getting to know Mars and Gemini in this lead-up period. And you know, New Moon exactly configured to it but with, you know, really some help from Mercury and Jupiter in understanding it and kind of figuring out what angles can it be worked by et cetera, et cetera. That’s a really great configuration for looking at and feeling the Mars retrograde and getting an early read on it, getting some intel so you can figure out, how much is this going to need to be managed? If so, in what ways?
CB: Right, that makes sense. Mercury in Libra. Very quickly, do either of you have any famous Mercury in Libra examples that you think of when you think of that sign or that combination placement?
NDB: I think so. I want to double-check, though. [laughs]
AC: So, Mercury-Jupiter in general… Go ahead.
CB: The one I was thinking of is like TS Eliot who had Mercury conjunct to Venus on the Ascendant in Libra in their birth chart. So famous poet, for example, is a very good Mercury in Libra manifestation.
AC: So less Mercury in Libra but more just Mercury opposite Jupiter. Mercury opposite Jupiter is smooth and diplomatic and often has some gift for oratory. Abraham Lincoln had Mercury-Jupiter configuration, Barack Obama has the opposition in the first and seventh. It’s like, “Okay, well, let’s all think about this.” There’s a smoothness and a largeness to the perspective that’s also diplomatic, and I would say that diplomatic quality will be… When I think of Mercury in Libra, the first thing I think of is diplomacy.
CB: That’s a really good one because that immediately brings to mind Eleanor Roosevelt who had Mercury at two degrees of Libra conjunct the midheaven in the 11th whole sign house. I believe she became, once the United Nations was set up, became the first US representative to the United Nations or first diplomat or something like that, didn’t she?
NDB: Yeah. It’s not like the Secretary General or whatever but it’s the head of the Human Rights Commission or something to that level. She had a big, big-level position.
CB: Yeah, she became a diplomat basically, which is exactly what Austin was saying in a very literal sense of being good at diplomacy.
NDB: Yeah. Someone who had Mercury and Libra opposite Jupiter in Aries is someone who left us not long ago, the comedian Norm Macdonald. Who is a decidedly undiplomatic person [laughs] but really diplomatic about how he’s undiplomatic, if that makes sense.
AC: It absolutely requires a certain genius to be perfectly rude.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Right.
AC: I watched the Beavis and Butt-Head movie last night and I was like, “Oh, they’re perfectly stupid.” Right? It takes a genius to write this level of stupidity. I think the same thing applies to politeness and rudeness.
NDB: Yeah, Norm Macdonald had a talent for being rude, but a Mercury-Libra kind of rude.
CB: Do we have the birth time for him?
NDB: I don’t know that we do.
CB: Yeah, I guess not. It’s not coming up.
NDB: I think he was born in Quebec City. But he’s got the opposition and that’s the point I’m making.
CB: Yeah, it looks like he was a Sun-Moon in Libra with Mercury and Libra opposite to Jupiter. That’s really good, I like that. Because he sometimes was good at doing that and playing the oppositional or adversarial role of the other side of like you’re supposed to do this, and this is the social convention. But then doing the opposite of that and going the other direction was part of his thing that he was really good at.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. And Austin’s right, just being really rude, but with this big smile in a way that could get you in on his rudeness.
CB: There’s a hilarious– like the first YouTube award ceremony or something that they tried to do really early on in 2010 or something like that– and for some reason, they picked him as the host. And he just showed up in sweats and did not care at all about what was happening. There were two other YouTubers that he had to co-host it with them and he was just constantly making fun of them and making fun of the guests. Sometimes guests like these guys from the Lonely Island came on and he insulted them immediately at the very beginning. Yeah, it’s really funny. People should look it up for an example of what you two are talking about when it comes to Norm.
NDB: I’m thinking to an episode of Conan O’Brien years ago where he was on next to an actress whose name I forget, but she was promoting some movie and he’s just saying the worst things about the movie. [laughs]
CB: Oh, yeah. It was Courtney Thorne-Smith, and it was on the Conan O’Brien.
NDB: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Something like ‘board of education’ and he said bored, b o r e d. Yeah, he’s heckling her there while she’s trying to promote her movie. It’s very funny stuff.
CB: Well, and sometimes that oppositional role worked against him because I think he famously had this amazing spot on Saturday Night Live where he did the news segment in the 1990s, which he kind of pioneered. But then he would just savagely critique and attack OJ Simpson, and one of the producers of SNL, I think, was a friend of OJ Simpson and they fired him. Yeah, so he got fired for playing that role, basically, and saying some of those things. So it’s an interesting other side of that in terms of some of the Mercury in Libra or Mercury opposite Jupiter things we’re talking about.
NDB: Right. But in some ways getting fired kind of helped him out because he had everyone else on his side and he rebounded quite quickly. Anyway, he had Mercury in Libra opposite Jupiter in Aries. So there you go.
CB: All right. Well, those are two really good examples. And we’ll just get to the very tail end or very beginning of that transit at the very start of August. So that’s something we’ll have to revisit next month since we’re going to have that Mercury retrograde in the sign of Libra in September. Are there any other major things that we haven’t touched on or talked about when it comes to the astrology of August or anything that we’re going to be kicking ourselves for not mentioning if we don’t before we wrap up?
NDB: I don’t think so. I just want to restate Austin’s point about when Venus comes into the opposition with Saturn and it’s square Uranus, that it’s time for serious fun. Which means get your butts over to ISAR and go see Austin’s talks and enjoy yourselves.
AC: Yeah, or somebody more serious than me.
CB: Yeah. Well, I think there’s going to be 100 speakers so I think people will have plenty of selection to choose from.
AC: Yeah, someone with an angular Saturn.
NDB: Most of those 100 people are more serious than Austin.
CB: All right. All right, guys. Well, this has been fun. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for joining us for this.
AC: Yeah, it’s been awesome. Thanks for coming, Nick.
NDB: Thanks, guys.
CB: It’s funny having you on, we get into an hour-long geopolitics-like discussion and historical events.
NDB: Who knew that would happen with me coming in?
CB: Yeah, exactly. Although weirdly, and I’m a little disappointed that Venus retrograde wasn’t mentioned even once, I don’t think so, I feel like you’re kind of-
NDB: It doesn’t go retrograde in August amazingly. In fact it doesn’t go retrograde for another year, so that’s it for now.
CB: I guess we did talk about the Mars retrograde, and the last time that happened was in 2020.
NDB: There you go, snuck it in. [crosstalk]
CB: All right. So, where can people find out more information about you and your work? And what do you have coming up, or what are you working on, Nick?
NDB: I am at nickdaganbestastrologer.com. I’m doing consultations regularly. I’m working on both a video project and a writing project, both of which I’m taking my sweet time with. But yeah, I’ll have more to say about them when they’re closer to being ready. But yeah, come see me at nickdaganbestastrologer.com and book a session if you’re interested.
CB: Nice. I’ll put a link to that in the description below this video on YouTube or on the Astrology Podcast website entry for this episode. Austin, what do you have coming up aside from coming out here to Denver to hang out with me and go to the conference?
AC: Well, so that’s my main thing. The other big thing is that Sphere and Sundry will be releasing a Venus in Pisces series, say probably third week of the month, middle of the month. And it’s a beautiful Venus in Pisces election. It was actually done on the same day as the Moon in Cancer which was released last month. It was a Moon in Cancer trine Venus in Pisces, beautiful. The Moon is angular for the Moon one and then Venus is angular and in the planetary hour for the Venus one. So it’s the perfect companion piece. I like it a lot, I have a stone that I did during that period of time that makes me see the bright side of history. [laughs] It helps me be less perfectly rude.
CB: Now I understand you got some Cancer talismans going on and that’s what’s softening you.
AC: That’s right, making me less of an asshole.
NDB: It literally turned his wallpaper into peacocks. [laughs]
AC: That’s right. [crosstalk]
CB: All right. Well, if I get one of those and then you see a bunch of colorful birds in the background behind me then we know it’s working.
NDB: I just can’t wait to see how the kids dress up as a Austin this coming Halloween, that’s what I’m looking forward to.
CB: Oh, yeah. I showed Nick people dressed up as me and Jessica Lanyadoo a couple years ago at a Halloween party for astrologers and it was pretty impressive.
AC: Well, the fact that I have absolutely no style makes that difficult.
NDB: [laughs] No, there’s this one woman on Twitter that just did the best imitation of you I’ve ever seen. It was amazing.
AC: Oh, yeah. The verbal impression was really good.
CB: Yeah, that was good. All right, what are your websites again, Austin?
AC: The Venus in Pisces series will release at sphereandsundry.com. You can come check out my website at austincoppock.com, not a lot happening this month, I go to Sphere and Sundry instead. But in the future, I’m at austincoppock.com.
CB: Cool. All right. As for myself, I’m gonna keep doing the podcast, that’s my main thing at this point. And yeah, if you like the podcast and you enjoy what’s essentially become a series of free classes, consider signing up for my page on patreon.com and shooting me a few bucks each month to help support the production the episodes. What I’m going to focus on now like I did with Nick is focusing on bringing more people out here to have those conversations in person because it allows me to record a bunch of episodes back to back, but also to have more genuine discussions and back and forth. Not that this isn’t that, but it’s just so much different having people in-person in the studio. And I’m pretty excited after this visit with Nick about the potential for that in the future and doing more of that as we move into things. So that’s my plan I think in terms of this month and in terms of the future.
With that said, that is the end of this episode of the Astrology Podcast. So thanks, everyone, for joining me. Thank you both. Thanks to our live audience who joined us in the live chat. And I guess that’s it for this episode, so we’ll see you again next time. Good luck in August and we’ll see you again in September.
AC: All right, take care everyone.
CB: Special thanks to the patrons that helped to support 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 out 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.