The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 364, titled:
The Progressed Lunation Cycle
With Chris Brennan and Catherine Urban
Episode originally released on August 19, 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 August 24, 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, I’m going to be talking with astrologer Catherine Urban, and we’re going to be talking about the secondary progressed lunation cycle. Hey Catherine, welcome back to the show.
CATHERINE URBAN: Hey Chris, thanks for having me back.
CB: Yeah, thank you so much. We did that earlier episode this year on secondary progressed stations, stationary planets when they go stationary or direct, and that was such a fun episode that we talked about doing a follow up for this topic, which is the other big thing in secondary progressions which is when you have a secondary progressed New Moon or Full Moon, which are the most notable and obvious instances, but also looking at the broader lunation cycle, and that’s something that you really specialize in and a technique that you use pretty frequently, right?
CU: Absolutely, I use it in every consultation I do. It’s a super easy and useful tool for basically eyeballing what time it is in someone’s life.
CB: Okay, perfect. Well, for the Virgos in the room that like the data, today is Thursday, August 11th, 2022, started I think exactly at either 11:59 or at 12 o’clock noon PM here in Denver, Colorado. And this is episode 364 of the show. So where should we start? Should we start with the lunation cycle itself or should we start talking about a refresher on secondary progressions or how do you like to start or present this topic?
CU: Yeah, let’s talk about basically what the Progressed Moon is and maybe we can just bring everyone up to speed on what secondary progressions are. Secondary progressions are a predictive technique that we use in astrology using symbolic time. So every day in the life of a person’s life after they’re born will equal to a year in their life. So everything that’s showing up in the ephemeris as far as planetary motion, again, secondary motion refers to the motion of the planet through the zodiac. So this is a little different than primary directions, which is the diurnal motion. So everything that you see in the ephemeris in the way that the planets are moving through the zodiac, that’s basically the bulk of what we’re looking at.
CB: Right, yeah. And I did an extensive introduction to secondary progressions with Kelly Surtees in episode 144. So if people want a super in depth background on that technique just in general, they can check out that episode as well as episode 342 that was titled planetary stations in secondary progressions, where you and I and Nick Dagan Best talked about them within the context of stations. But the main point in both of those episodes was just the notion that as soon as you’re born every day of life that you experience subsequent to that will later in your life end up representing an entire year of your life somewhere down the line. So five days after you’re born, the experience that you have on that day will be very similar in some notable or significant ways to the experience that you have when you’re five years old for that entire year. Or when you’re 20 in your 20th day of, of living after you’re born, when you’re 20 years old, that year will be very similar in some specific or some general symbolic way essentially. And you can just keep extrapolating from there.
CU: Exactly, exactly. So, for example, if you’re born closer to a New Moon, you’re going to experience your progressed Full Moon closer to the age of 14. So those are the types of things that we’re looking for, and you can get those in the ephemeris too. The ephemeris is a really great way to learn secondary progressions because it’s a really great way to sort of eyeball everything that’s going to happen in the first 90 days of someone’s life. And luckily that little box at the bottom will tell you when those New and Full Moons are.
CB: Sure. Okay, let’s expand on that. So part of the basic premises, first just identifying what lunar phase you were born in and what the relationship is between the Sun and the Moon in your birth chart. So Paula Belluomini helped me make a diagram just to show the different phases of the Moon based on a diagram that was in one of Demetra George’s books. So this is the diagram basically, and this is essentially the lunation cycle.
CU: Yeah. So we’re basically expanding upon the lunation cycle. So if you understand it and if you understand the basic premise of the lunation cycle, when you go to learn the progressed lunation cycle, a lot of those energies and characteristics are going to translate.
CB: Well, and actually I don’t think I’ve ever done an episode on just the lunation cycle, so why don’t we just assume that the listener doesn’t have any background in the lunation cycle and the astronomical and astrological connections with that? I guess part of the entry way to that is just the basic observation of the waxing and waning of the Moon over the course of each month and how each month we have a period around the New Moon when the Moon is at its darkest, and then it keeps getting brighter and brighter and brighter over a two-week period until eventually it reaches the Full Moon when it’s at its brightest. And then after the Full Moon it starts diminishing in brightness and getting darker and darker and darker until eventually it reaches the end of that cycle at the next New Moon and begins a whole new phase or new 28-day period essentially.
CU: Exactly. And so that 28-day period that we experience in real time is going to translate to 28 years. It ends up being a little closer to 30, but we end up seeing that cycle play out in a person’s life every 30 years. So even though we get a New Moon every month in real time in, by progression we’re only going to see two to three Progressed New Moons. So they really are really, really special.
CB: Sure. And even before we get there, one of the first steps is to just figure out what lunar phase you were born in essentially. Right. And how do we do that? Or if somebody doesn’t have any idea, how do you establish that?
CU: So basically you’re going to check your birth chart, and you’re going to gauge the proximity between the Sun and the Moon in the chart. So if you’re born where the Sun and the Moon are conjunct, then you’re born on a New Moon. If you’re born with the Sun and Moon in opposition, you’re born on a Full Moon. If you’re born with the Moon opening 60 degrees away from the Sun, then you’re born on a Crescent Moon phase and so forth.
CB: Okay. So basically what you want to do step one is just look at the aspect or what kind of aspect roughly generally speaking the Moon has in relationship to the Sun. And then once you figure out what aspect it has roughly speaking or you see what the next closest aspect is that the Moon has to the Sun, that’ll roughly tell you what lunar phase you were born in.
CU: Mm-hmm, exactly.
CB: So you start with the New Moon which is around the conjunction basically, especially after the Moon conjoins the Sun. And once the Moon starts separating from the Sun, if you were born with a conjunction with the Moon separating from the Sun, then you were born in a New Moon phase. And so opposite to that is the Full Moon phase, which is when the Moon is in opposition to the Sun. So if your Moon was anywhere in opposition to the Sun, then you’re pretty closely born approximately near a Full Moon or in a Full Moon phase. Actually, can you think of any examples of Full Moon? We actually have a Full Moon, we’re recording this weirdly and just incidentally, we didn’t actually plan this out, but today is actually a Full Moon in Aquarius, right?
CU: Yeah, exactly happening now.
CB: Okay, let me share the chart for this moment. This is the chart for right now. We started recording this with late Libra rising, we just barely caught our election due to my lateness today. But we can see here that the Moon is at 14 degrees of Aquarius and it’s applying to an opposition with the Sun at 19 degrees of Leo. So I’ll animate the chart and I’ll move it forward a few several hours, and we can see that later tonight that the Moon will exactly get to 19 degrees of Aquarius which is exactly an opposition to the Sun, and that is a Full Moon when the Moon is basically on the opposite side of the zodiac from the Sun. And by contrast, if we back it up about two weeks earlier, we see that New Moon in Leo in late July, and that’s when the Sun and the Moon are exactly conjoining each other in the chart.
CU: Exactly. The biggest thing I think with the lunation cycle is how visual it is. Because basically all planets have phases, phasal relationships with one another, but the Moon is really special because it’s so visual and it’s all about light and visibility. So for example, on the New Moon, it’s a dark Moon, it’s aligned with the Sun. We actually can’t see it, it’s obscured by the Sun. So that experience of darkness, it reflects on a more internal level. If you pay attention to your energy levels around the New and the Full Moons, I don’t know about you but I usually feel more tired around the New Moon and the Old Moon, I just want to be more restful. If you want to plan a party, do it on the Full Moon because that is a higher energy vibe. And it’s so visual, it’s so just primally engraved in our human consciousness I feel. The Full Moon tends to bring out our wild side a little bit even. If you’ve ever worked in a hospital or police officers, nurses, they will all tell you that their job gets a lot busier around the Full Moon because it brings us out, it’s more of an external animated experience.
CB: Yeah, I remember mentioning that because I’ve always heard that about hospitals. And then I mentioned on some recent episode, I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s something I hear said a lot. And then some nurses and doctors actually commented saying, “Yeah, around the time of Full Moons things get really crazy around the hospital for some reason.” And yeah, that’s when the Moon you’re hitting really the height of that cycle when things are the brightest, it’s the furthest from the Sun, and in some ways the Moon is at its most mature at that stage in terms of its growth cycle, in terms of its increasing and decreasing of light.
CU: Is as big as it’s going to get.
CB: Right. So basically and going back, so this cycle is one of the most visible astronomical cycles that each of us experiences on a day-to-day basis, and so we can pay attention to this cycle though. And I think at least starting with the work of Dane Rudhyar, a lot of astrologers in the 20th century were influenced by Dane Rudhyar and his work on the lunation cycle, because he said that the lunation cycle was the archetype for all planetary relationships, all aspectual relationships between planets, and that really all planets have these types of relationships, these synodic relationships with each other where the aspects have to be read within the context of the relationship and the overall cycle between those two planets and their conjunctions and their squares and oppositions and everything else, but that the lunation cycle could be used as sort of the blueprint for how all those relationships could be interpreted.
CU: I would absolutely agree with that. And it’s such a great framework because we are affected by the Moon psychologically, physiologically. We’re very affected to the Moon’s effect on water and we’re 70% water. So our relationship with the Moon is felt on a cellular level. And so we have a gift of being able to tap into that and understand that and feel it in our bodies as well. And that can be translated into helping us to understand these other planetary cycles that we can’t feel as easily. We see them playing out, but to understand those cycles and how to interpret say a Uranus-Pluto square, we can look at that against the framework that the lunation cycle provides us.
CB: Right, or for example, a Mars-Saturn conjunction would be seen as the beginning, the New Moon phase of that relationship between Mars and Saturn and whatever those two planets indicate in that period. And then eventually Mars will separate from Saturn and eventually come all the way around to the opposition with Saturn at some point a year or something later. And that opposition has to be interpreted within the context of being the halfway point in the overall cycle between that specific cycle of Mars and Saturn.
CU: Oh, and that’s a cycle we all know too well right now, isn’t it?
CB: Oh my God, yeah. That’s been a weird rough one, but that one’s been the most interesting because we had that conjunction, that great pile-up of planets in March and April of 2020. But one of the really tough part of that was the Mars-Saturn conjunction, that was right during the lockdowns in the US in March and April and really seemed to be the beginning of a whole two-year phase of just dealing with COVID. And it was interesting seeing how that was the initial wave of COVID at the Mars-Saturn conjunction. But then at the next hard aspect, at the next square when Mars got into Aries and squared Saturn in Capricorn, there was a new development where new variants started to emerge at that point. So there was a sort of growth of that story of the Mars-Saturn story for that year. And then eventually at the opposition, there was another variant, another change in the story. And then eventually at the next square, there was another variant and sort of change in the story. So there was this whole process that you could see, but the seeds of it were in the conjunction, the seeds and the starting point of the entire narrative are always laid there at the conjunction, and then something grows out of that kind of like a plant or like a little sprout that comes up and then becomes a full plant during the course of that cycle.
CU: Yeah, absolutely. And just as a weird side note, the monkeypox one is following that too. We’re at the square right now and they just announced that it’s a national thing that we need to be concerned about. And that one came out at the last Mars-Saturn conjunction.
CB: Yeah, it started to emerge at the Mars-Saturn conjunction Aquarius, yeah, I was noticing that as well. So good times. All right, so we’re getting a little far off field. So to bring it back to the lunation cycle itself, I’m going to put this diagram up again and maybe we could talk about… Because they’re tied in with aspect, but it’s important to be very cognizant of the waxing and the waning cycle, and maybe we should explain what that is first and just the idea that the lunation cycle itself can be divided in half essentially and into two separate parts.
CU: So that’s really important distinctions and that translates into the progressions too. So everything between the New Moon, that conjunction of the Sun and the Moon, up until that Full Moon, the opposition of the Sun and the Moon, all of that is growth, that is considered the waxing period of the cycle.
CB: So that’s when the Moon is increasing in light and getting brighter and brighter.
CU: Exactly, yes. And then everything thereafter after the peak brightness of the Full Moon, the Moon will start to wane and decrease in light as we return back into that New Moon phase.
CB: Okay. And so we’re showing this sort of astronomically within the abstract context of at the conjunction, at the New Moon, that’s the beginning of the cycle. And then the first half of that all the way up to the exact opposition, that is the waxing part of the phase when the Moon is increasing in light and getting brighter and brighter and therefore kind of growing in some sense. So in this image for those watching the video version, the New Moon is at the right on the far right portion when it’s at its darkest. And then moving upwards, it starts increasing. First you see a little sliver of light, then it gets half illuminated at the first quarter and half dark, darkened or whatever. Then at the next one, it’s most of the way bright but not fully. And then finally at the Full Moon at the opposition, it’s at its brightest. In some ways, that’s the completion of the first half of the entire cycle where the Moon is increasing in brightness because now it’s at 100%. And so once you’re at 100%, you switch automatically into the second phase of the cycle which is the waning cycle when the light of the Moon starts decreasing. So then it decreases and it goes to 75% brightness, then to 50% at the third quarter, then about 25% brightness, and then eventually it ends the cycle completely dark at the New Moon. And the New Moon always needs to be remembered as both the end of one cycle, but also the beginning of another.
CU: Exactly. That’s a very important piece in the progressions as well.
CB: Right, okay. So when it comes to this cycle, there’s distinct phases then or distinct names for these phases where you can kind of divide it up into little sections or segments, kind of like pieces of a pie basically, right?
CU: Yeah. My favorite one is the balsamic Moon, that’s the waning Crescent. A lot of people are thrown off by that name. It doesn’t have to do with salad dressing, believe it or not.
CB: I’m more of a ranch guy myself, but I’m okay with balsamic.
CU: I do prefer balsamic over ranch, not going to lie.
CB: I don’t know if I can talk to you anymore then, this episode is over.
CU: So yeah, the balsamic, it actually refers to the balsam tree. It’s a fur tree and the resin that was burned in sort of a ceremonious way. So the balsamic Moon is the period just before the New Moon, it’s that waning Crescent. And it’s thought to be more of a spiritual time, a more inward pull. We’re just sort of diminishing in energy and in light and it’s pulling us inward. So that’s one of the interesting ones that gives a lot of question marks to people when they first start learning the Moon phases.
CB: Why don’t we start from the beginning and just name all of them, especially for our audio listeners who can listen to the things. So the first phase starts at the exact conjunction between the Sun and the Moon and everything after that. Once the Moon starts separating, you divide that first from the exact conjunction to about 45 degrees after that becomes the first phase or the first slice of the pie, and that’s called the New Moon phase generally speaking. So that’s from zero to 45 degrees. So if somebody was born with their Moon anywhere within this range essentially of 45 degrees following after the Sun separating from the Sun, then that means that they would said to be born in a New Moon phase. So then the second phase is the Crescent Moon phase. And that’s when the Moon gets to exactly 45 degrees away from the Sun, which is the semi-square aspect, the minor aspect of the semi-square in modern astrology all the way up to the 90-degree point, which is the first waxing square with the Sun, that is called the Crescent Moon phase. And so that’s when the Moon you just see a little sliver of light basically.
CU: Yeah, my favorite, another favorite.
CB: So these are the very early stages of building up and the Moon increasing in light. So it’s kind of like a baby Moon at this point.
CU: And you could see it just after sunset.
CB: Okay. And then next at the 90-degree point, so at the first waxing square, so when the Moon is still increasing in light when it gets to the halfway point of being half illuminated and half dark, that’s the first quarter Moon from exactly 90 degrees all the way up to 135 degrees away from the Sun. That’s the first quarter Moon phase. Then we get to the gibbous Moon phase, which is 135 degrees, up to the 180-degree point. So this starts to get into when it’s almost at the Full Moon phase or when it’s really close to the Full Moon like we are today where we’re recording this several hours before the Full Moon is exact at 180 degrees. So technically we’re in the gibbous Moon phase right now all the way up until the point where it goes exact.
CU: Yeah. I mean, I do tend to be because the lunation cycle is very visual, for example, we’re so close to that Full Moon, I would consider us in the Full Moon phase. I tend to be generous with these orbs a little bit, but it is good to know these divisions so that you understand the phases before you get loose with your orbs. So we are technically in the gibbous phase right now. And that phase is cool because the Moon basically it looks full almost, but it’s just not quite there. So it’s still a very striking Moon to look at, it’s still very full, it’s still catching a lot of light, we’re not quite there yet.
CB:
Right. It’s not quite as flashy as the full Full Moon, but it’s getting there, it’s looking pretty good.
CU: Right.
CB: All right. So next is the Full Moon phase, which is from exactly 180 degrees up to 135 on the waxing side of the cycle, of the Sun basically. Sorry, the waning side I should say.
CU: Yeah. Technically, the Full Moon phase is exact, and then it starts to decrease a little bit, but we’re still in that Full Moon phase.
CB: So it’s like this, the Full Moon is when the Moon is at its furthest and is almost like the most free in some ways from the Sun and essentially at its freest in order to shine and emit its own light and sort of do its own thing. But then at this point after the Full Moon goes exact, the relationship or the distance between the Sun and Moon actually starts decreasing and we start to see the light of the Moon start to decrease as well. But if a person was born from the 180-degree point up to 135 on the waning side of the cycle, then they’re technically born in the Full Moon phase. Then the next one we get to the disseminating Moon phase, which is from 135 degrees up to 90 degrees, which is the second square or the waning square between the Moon and the Sun, where the Moon is in the superior position overcoming the Sun technically using more Hellenistic terminology. Is there another way to phrase that just to help people visualize it in terms of what the second square of the Moon is to the Sun versus the first square?
CU: Yeah. So this one, well, visually speaking, this is when you’ll see a quarter Moon during the day, and a lot of people are like, “Wait, why is the Moon out during the day?” And it actually happens all the time. But yeah, there is a big distinction between the first quarter Moon and the last quarter Moon. And going back to Rudhyar, who we mentioned earlier, he basically coined that the first quarter Moon refers to a crisis of action, there’s something that we have to do. And we think about a 90-degree aspect in astrology and it describes a point of tension, something has to move, there’s some friction there, there’s action that must be taken distinctively at that first quarter Moon phase. At the last quarter Moon phase, he refers to it as a crisis of consciousness. So it’s like we’ve already built the thing, the thing’s already been going since the New Moon, but here at this last quarter phase, there’s a question around what does it all mean. We’ll get more into that as we get into the progressed cycle.
CB: Because in the first quarter it’s still growing, it’s still increasing, it’s only a quarter of the way through its overall journey, whereas by the time we get to this last quarter Moon or the third quarter as it’s sometimes called, the Moon is three quarters of the way through its entire cycle, and it’s already halfway through its waning cycle. So it’s really mature at this point, it’s almost done everything. It’s learned everything it has to learn and it’s just kind of releasing some of those things or beginning to release them at this point back, especially around the disseminating Moon phase and the Full Moon phase. And it’s starting to prepare to end that cycle and to begin the new one here pretty soon.
CU: Absolutely, yeah. And I love what you said, Chris, about this quarter Moon phase being more mature. And that is true. If I could bring in this layer in here too, Steven Forrest in his Book of the Moon will compare these different lunar phases to the seasons. So this can be layered on no matter where you are in the world actually as long as you do experience some fluctuation of season. But the New Moon can be experienced as like the winter solstice, it’s a more quiet inner time, whereas that Full Moon can be experienced as the summer solstice, just like peak energy, peak light. And then applying it to the quarters, we can apply the equinoxes there. So we have going back to that waning square, that can be compared to the autumn Equinox, where the season is definitely changing, the light is definitely changing, but it is like that more mature energy of the leaves falling off the tree, we’re retreating inward, there’s something shifting taking place there.
CB: Right, as opposed to the first quarter which would be like the spring Equinox, which is when all the plants are growing and everything’s coming back to life and becoming green again, but it’s still in a very nascent sort of early stage of that growth and it hasn’t reached the full height of everything being in bloom again, which you hit at the summer solstice around the Full Moon in that analogy phase.
CU: Yeah, and then there’s the cross quarters too. So yeah, this eight phase division of the lunar cycle, it does match nicely with those cross-quarter holidays that date back to the old world religions. Because you about like the
CB: Talking about (Beltane 29.52) and stuff like that?
CU: Yeah, Beltane is like the gibbous Moon, the one where it’s almost full. It’s a fertility hoiday so it’s like we’re almost there. It’s like spring is in full bloom. So it’s not quite full summer, but nonetheless it’s beautiful and the Earth is in bloom. Going back to the opening crescent phase, that can be compared to the Imbolc at the beginning of February, which we now call Groundhog’s Day where it’s like, “Hey, are we going to have six more weeks of winter? What’s it going to be?” That’s like that crescent phase where especially as kids you’re excited like, “Are we going to have spring? Are we going to be able to play outside soon?” There’s an optimism that is starting to come in at that crescent Moon phase like something new is cooking. Imbolc actually translates to ‘in the belly’. So it’s like if you did plant something significant at that New Moon phase, by the time we get to that crescent phase, that Imbolc phase. It’s like it’s there, we’re excited about it, not everyone can see it yet, but it’s felt. So there’s like an optimism that’s brewing there.
CB: Okay. All right, so that brings us back. We stopped at the last quarter Moon, which is also called the third quarter Moon, which to some people it’s a little confusing sometimes. That is correct, right? Third quarter?
CU: Yeah, yeah. Third quarter, last quarter… Either works.
CB: Okay, so that’s from 90 degrees on the waning side up to 45 degrees in relationship to the Sun. Then we get the balsamic Moon phase, which is 45 degrees from the Sun on the waning side all the way up to the exact conjunction with the Sun. So this is the very last slice of the cycle when the Moon is at its oldest and it’s really completing its journey at this point and getting ready to end the cycle and begin a new one at the exact New Moon.
CU: Exactly. So if we’re comparing that to a seasonal experience, that might be Halloween, that might be the time where it’s starting to feel spooky outside, it’s starting to feel eerie. There’s no more leaves on the trees, but it’s not quite winter yet.
CB: Okay. One of the things that people can do that’s cool is that you can take this thing, the lunation cycle, and you can actually see what cycle you were born in, and that cycle will leave an imprint on your chart just in and of itself as like a basic chart signature, right?
CU: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: What phase were you born in? Do you mind me asking?
CU: Yeah, I was born in the crescent Moon phase. I tend to be a little bit of an alchemist.
CB: Can we look at your chart?
CU: Yeah, sure.
CB: All right, let me pull it up here. Here’s your chart. All right, so we’re looking at a chart now. So now we’ve taken it out of the abstract diagram version of this. How do we figure out what your lunar phase is using what we just learned?
CU: So we’re going to identify the Sun. The Sun is here in my fourth house.
CB: 3 degrees of Libra?
CU: Yeah, and then we’re going to find the Moon. That Moon is about 50 degrees away, 51 degrees away. So I am-
CB: 22 Scorpio for the audio people.
CU: Yeah. So yeah, I’m officially a crescent Moon phase.
CB: Okay, so we can see that you were… What did you say, 55 degrees?
CU: I think it’s about 50 degrees or 49 degrees. I think it’s 49 degrees.
CB: 49 degrees. And so because the Moon is following after the Sun, because it’s in the next sign over, it’s in the Scorpio whereas the Sun is in Libra, we know that the New Moon occurred just a day or two earlier, two or three days earlier and that the Moon because it’s separating from the Sun and is in the next sign forward after the conjunction that this is in the waxing phase, because it’s increasing in light and moving away from the Sun after the New Moon, right?
CU: Yes.
CB: Okay. So we know it’s on that side of the cycle, the waxing side, and then we can see that as it’s just past the 45 degrees point, which is the ending point for the New Moon phase, that it’s in the second phase of the cycle, which is that… So you said crescent Moon phase, right?
CU: Mm-hmm (affirmative). What about you, Chris?
CB: Okay, here’s the diagram for that really quickly. So because you’re born you said 49 degrees, it’s just after the beginning of the crescent Moon phase and if you’re born anywhere in that range all the way up to the first quarter Moon, it would still be the crescent Moon phase?
CU: Yes.
CB: Okay, cool. What about me? Let me see my chart really quickly. I was also born in the waxing phase of the Moon in the first half of its cycle, but I was born a little bit after that first square with the Sun, which would have taken place… My Sun is at 9 degrees of Scorpio, my Moon is at 24 degrees of Aquarius so I know that the first square would have occurred at about 9 degrees of Aquarius about a day before I was born. That means that I was born just after the beginning or pretty firmly within the first quarter phase. Yeah, that’s funny we both have very similar, almost not quite, but almost the same lunar phase.
CU: Yeah, both waxing.
CB: Right, okay. So that becomes like a charted signature and different people do different things with that interpretively in terms of what the different phases mean, almost as like a sign in and of itself like your zodiac sign, like different people have different Moon phase let’s say signs broadly speaking, right?
CU: Yeah, and it’ll also tell you… I think another thing, there’s definitely personality signatures on that can show up from the different phase relationships. But I think it’s also just interesting to see, because the Sun and the Moon are such huge components of who we are, how compatible those signs are with one another. So people who their Sun and their Moon are in opposition, that’s something that comes up a lot in client consultations because you have two polarizing signs that are very opposite, but there is a common thread. So it’s interesting and really affirming for people to understand that oh, yes, there are these very different sides of myself and that’s okay. That’s normal.
CB: Right, that makes sense. All right. Now that we’ve done all the groundwork that finally gets us to the point where we can talk about this in the context of what we’re actually supposed to be talking about here in this episode, which is using this actually as a timing technique, and it’s not just a basic personality thing, but it’s actually a very sometimes advanced and sometimes impressive, it’s one of the most impressive timing techniques that I’ve seen in astrology, which is looking at this as a 28-year cycle or almost 30-year cycle that you can look at in order to indicate periods of new beginnings and periods of culminations like focusing in especially on secondary progression, what happens when a person reaches a secondary progressed New Moon or when a person reaches a secondary progressed full Moon, essentially, is two of the most important I think turning points in the secondary progressed lunation cycle, right?
CU: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s always one of the first things that I look at when I’m preparing to meet with a client because it’s a big picture cycle, it’s a 30-year cycle. And so, understanding where someone is at within that cycle is going to contextualize just about everything else for me. I do tend-
CB: So is this necessarily like a detailed like getting into the nuances of day daily timing type technique, this is a big picture, zoom out and look at an entire 30-year chunks of a person’s life of which a person may only have, let’s say on average, two or three of those 30-year cycles basically during the entire course of their life, right?
CU: Exactly. And because you and I were born in that New Moon phase, we were born after a New Moon, we may see two that are very significant in our life. Whereas if someone else is born say at that last quarter phase, they may see three that are really, really important for them.
CB: Yeah, I mean I’m going to live to be really, really old so I’m sure I’ll see a lot of them, but I don’t know.
CU: You’ve done the timing techniques?
CB: Right, yeah. Like the life technique and figured it out? No, not quite. So it’s similar in some ways and sometimes people compare it to like the Saturn cycle because Saturn also has, you have your Saturn return between the ages of 27 and 30, so it’s also on a 30-year cycle, but this one is different than Saturn even though there’s comparable timeframes involved.
CU: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up, Chris. Yeah. The progressed Moon is going to move about a degree per month. So when we are 27 and a third to be exact, two years old, we will see our progressed Moon return to our natal position. That is the precursor for the Saturn return. Those two cycles are very archetypal to the human experience. We’ll all experience them at the same ages. However, the progressed lunation cycle is highly individualized. So as we just broke it down, understanding where you were born within the lunation cycle is going to determine when you get these highly potent New Moons, which are highly potent seed planting periods in your life. That’s going to be highly individualized per person. But similarly, to the Saturn cycle, it’s about 30 years. So it’s another one of those big important ones for sure.
CB: Yeah, I think that’s a really important distinction because that almost personalizes the secondary progressed lunation cycle more because everybody basically experiences their Saturn return around the same time periods between 27 and 30. But depending on the lunation phase that you’re born in, everybody’s going to have their secondary progressed New Moon take place at wildly different times in their life. So it’s not necessarily fixed and it becomes more unique to you and just what the relationship was between the Sun and the Moon when you’re born essentially.
CU: Exactly, exactly.
CB: All right, so let’s set that foundation by calculating when each of us had our first secondary progressed new Moon because I think that might show people to demonstrate it, how to actually calculate this in your own life or your own chart. Do you want to start with me or do you have a good secondary progressed New Moon phase story?
CU: Yeah. One of the easiest ways to look this up just quickly, you could look it up in your software. Your software will calculate that for you. You can also look in your ephemeris. If you look for the New Moon after your birthday in your ephemeris and you count the days between your birthday and the New Moon, you’re going to arrive roughly at the age that you were when you have your first progressed New Moon. My progressed New Moon happened around, let’s see, I think I was 25. I think I was 25 when it happened.
CB: I like that you mentioned that. The ephemeris is actually a good way to roughly approximate when that happened just by counting the number of days after you’re born until the New Moon took place. Then in the equivalent year… You said yours was what 25?
CU: Yeah, I think it was 25.
CB: Okay, so you can eyeball that in ephemeris or what you can do is you can go to Solar Fire and cast a secondary progressed chart for your natal chart and then animate it and just move it forward or backward until you get there. I think nowadays, there’s also starting to be good resources online and I believe that astroseek.com now has a secondary progressed lunations like calculator.
CU: Yeah, yeah, Solar Fire has one too. Yeah, you go into the lunar phases. It’s under the first tab. If you click, you highlight your chart and then you go under chart and you go to lunar phase, or you could just press F11 apparently. You just highlight progressed lunar phases from the date that you want to begin and how many phases you want it to find and it’ll tell you the dates and the degrees of every phase.
CB: Okay, that’s cool. Then let’s see for Astro Seek, you just Google the progressed lunation eight lunar phases and enter in your data and then it’ll spit out some really cool charts and calculations that are pretty useful. Let’s show it though using the animate feature in Solar Fire just in terms of showing what this looks like. What year were you born in again?
CU: ’87.
CB: ’87, all right, so. So progressed chart, I’m going to back it up to 1987. All right, so that’s your birth chart just as a starting point roughly, right?
CU: Yes, it is.
CB: Okay, so that’s what your chart looks like. Then literally we’re going to animate the chart and we’re going to move it forward one day of life and that’s going to be equivalent to one year of life each time. I’ll move it forward one year to 1988 and that’s your secondary progressed chart, one year after you’re born on your birthday in 1988. Then I’m going to animate it and move it forward one more year to 1989. That’s your secondary progressed chart for the second day of your life, which is equivalent to second year. We’re going to keep moving it forward and we see… Go ahead.
CU: Oh, just while you’re moving it, Chris, I just want to point out to those who are watching that notice that the progressed Sun is moving too, note that all the other planets are moving. So the progressed lunation cycle, we’re looking at the relationship between the progressed Moon to the progressed Sun. You can also look at progressions to the natal chart. But in this case, we are looking at progressed Sun to progressed Moon so it’s all on the progressed chart.
CB: That’s a really important point. It looks like you had your first Full Moon in 1997, so it was 10 years after you’re born.
CU: Beanie Baby craze.
CB: Oh, yeah, that was pretty big. So that was a pretty important turning point of your life was the Beanie Babies?
CU: Super.
CB: Okay, I feel you. Yeah, you’re still holding on to some of those just in case you become a billionaire one of these days. All right, so the Moon here hit 12 Aries so it’s just about to oppose shortly after your birthday. The secondary progressed Moon was about to oppose the secondary progressed Sun which had made it to 13 Libra at this point in your life and that would have been your secondary progressed Full Moon at this point.
CU: Yeah, age 10.
CB: Okay, so we’ll keep moving that forward because what we want to find is the beginning of a cycle and specifically a new Moon because that sets up a whole 28-year cycle. It looks like eventually we find it here not too long ago actually when the Moon conjoined the Sun at 28 degrees of Libra, it looks like in 2013. So this is secondary progressed Moon conjunct secondary progressed Sun. This is the end of one pretty large chunk of the first part of your life and the beginning and laying the seeds in the foundations of a new 28-year period of your life essentially when this happens, right?
CU: Yes, yes, exactly. If you like, I can tell you a little bit about this phase from a personal and just broad picture. So this new Moon phase in a person’s life is really important and especially what’s leading up to this period, the progressed balsamic Moon phase, it’s a super important period in a person’s life where there’s a massive amount of shedding that’s taking place. It’s a deeply… Yeah, yeah, just letting go. It’s a more challenging phase to be in actually. I get a lot of clients coming to get a reading during this period. This is a period where a lot of people are deepening their studies with astrology.
If you start to study astrology, a lot of times people have a pretty big Pluto transit or these balsamic Moon phases are really good for studying because as we know, astrology is a tool to help us better understand ourselves, the world around us, what’s making sense of everything. That balsamic period as we start to detach from attachments that we had that defined us, that defined our life, we feel like we no longer resonate with them, we feel like certain elements no longer stick. It’s like no matter how much you want it to, sometimes it just doesn’t.
So at that time in my life, I was playing in punk bands and I loved it, but I just really started to be called inward, I started to be called to my spiritual side, I started practicing yoga, I started deepening my studies in astrology. This is very common for people at this phase. Like I was saying about the balsamic Moon phase, it’s a very deeply spiritual often phase of life. And even if you’re not having a spiritual practice necessarily, there may be existential questions that are going on. It’s a period of inner work, of healing, of rest, of solitude. It’s a particularly challenging phase for folks because living in the age that we live in, we’re conditioned to be doing, we’re conditioned to be producing. This is a period of reflection, healing, integration and rest. So it’s hard because there’s an inner pole to do those things, but it’s hard to always make the space for it.
CB: Reflection, I like that. Reflection is a really good keyword for the end of a secondary progressed lunation cycle.
CU: Yes, because there’s just so much that is being released. Like your old life, there’s a lot of elements of the life that you have in the balsamic phase that aren’t necessarily going to translate into that new chapter.
CB: Right, because it’s like you’re coming to the end of a very long journey like the hero’s journey in that phase of your life up to that point and there’s some things that are dying or that you’re letting go of or that you’ve grown out of in some instance, where you’ve gone as far as you can go with that thing and you’re going through a process of looking back and appreciating some of where you’ve traveled up to this point, but also getting ready and starting to see where things are going to be headed in the future.
CU: Exactly, exactly. So yeah, that’s a really great use of that time is study, self-exploration. A lot of times I will recommend that people in that phase of life take some kind of retreat if they can. It’s like a 12th house transit where it’s a good time to get away intentionally if you can. So I always recommend to people that if they can, to take a trip, travel, do a retreat of some kind, do some sort of education that may translate that new inspiration and awareness that’s coming in at this phase can definitely translate into that New Moon phase.
CB: Okay. For you the transition at that point, were you already doing astrology or you were starting to get into it or where were you at in terms of that?
CU: I wanted to. This was around the time that I started to try to do astrology full time. But it did not work, it did not quite work at that stage just based on the fact that I was young, the fact that I was newer to it, the fact that I was in a New Moon phase is a pretty big one.
CB: Yes, there can be like an impatience with the process, but there can be a little bit of like the baby bird trying to fly and maybe not being as successful as it will when it gets older but making some attempts initially that may not fully work out perfectly but are still good the first attempts.
CU: 100%. So yeah, funny enough my progressed New Moon happened in a conjunction with my natal Mercury, which we know is a planet that does rule astrology and writing, which is a big part of my practice. So that’s another really big one to look for is what are the aspects that your New Moon is making in your chart? At that stage of the progressed New Moon, you are planting seeds, but you’re not necessarily going to see them. As you mentioned with the baby bird example, I like to compare it to planting seeds in an actual garden. There is stuff happening beneath the soil, you just can’t see it. Yeah, or becoming pregnant, you don’t know that you are until a few weeks later usually. There is magic happening beneath that soil, we just can’t see it. Or even if we know it, the rest of the world can’t necessarily see it.
So going back to our theme of visibility, it’s usually not until that crescent Moon phase that you can really see that, oh, I have some sprouts coming up. The intentions, the actions that I initiated around that time are starting to amount to something more palpable, and other people can start to see it. So going back to that seasonal comparison I made with Imbolc that with that crescent Moon phase, that internal optimism, the knowing that spring is around the corner, the knowing that these shoots that are coming up through the soil they will eventually become flowers if we nurture them correctly.
But at that New Moon phase, very often people don’t know necessarily what’s next. They have a lot of ideas of what they’d like to do, they have big visions and hopes and dreams about what they would like to do with this phase of their life, but we ultimately don’t know how it’s going to shake out, we ultimately don’t know which elements, which components are going to take root the strongest. And that becomes more apparent later in the cycle.
CB: Yeah, there’s something I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially with eclipses, how oftentimes something will happen, but it’ll be an important new beginning of some sort but it’ll be oftentimes obscured where whatever was started isn’t obvious at that time and only becomes evident later. But that is also true for New Moons as well because you literally have an occultation or you have one body, one of the luminaries moving in front of the other and hiding something. There’s this notion of planting or putting a seed in the ground, but when you put the seed in the ground, it’s not visible at first and it’s only later once it starts to grow and mature that it becomes evident that something important was started earlier with the planting of the seed.
CU: Exactly. I’ll give you a very practical example. So this year, I planted a garden. I was very excited about what my garden was going to look like this year. I planted like maybe 12 sunflower seeds, I was so excited, and the dang squirrels ate all but one. That was a very good example of that progressed New Moon is that you have all these big ideas of what is going to come but ultimately, maybe one of those things really takes root in a really strong way.
CB: Yeah, and with other ones sometimes metaphorical squirrels will come and eat your seeds and you’re screwed.
CU: Exactly.
CB: Yeah, okay. No, that’s good to know because sometimes you don’t know… Okay, so the takeaway from that though part of the time is that sometimes the energy is such that during a New Moon phase that a person is just bursting with energy and with possibilities and there’s so many just possibilities that are just exuding out of you sometimes during that phase that you’re starting a bunch of different threads and starting to go in a bunch of different directions that could bear fruit at some point later on. But in reality, in some instances, there may just be like one really important thing that you started that time and you may not know that that was the one important thing that you started that will later come to define and change your entire life or the direction of your entire life until much later. Sometimes it can be like that last seed that you planted that you didn’t think was the important one, but it turns out that was the thing that you’re supposed to spend the next 30 years growing and nurturing and developing until it becomes something that defines your entire biography in retrospect.
CU: 100%, exactly. Yeah, another thing I had going on at my progressed New Moon was I was getting certified to be a yoga teacher and I had big visions of doing that and it just did not shake out. It did not shake out the way that my other seed of astrology did. I have a pretty good example here. I’ve been watching Only Murders in the Building with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez and so I pulled up Steve Martin and he got his first writing gig at his New Moon and he got his first TV appearance at his New Moon. He has Leo rising with Pluto right there on the Ascendant. He said he watched his first TV appearance and he hated it. He said he spent so much time on his hair, it looked buffoonish. He said he had no authority, which I thought was interesting with his Pluto rising. He said he spent a week after watching it just being depressed, but that planted a seed.
So even though he wasn’t at his peak, it was very small scale, it still planted an important seed. Because as he moved through the rest of that 30-year cycle, he did make more appearances and he was more polished thereafter so yeah.
CB: Okay. My friend Nick Dagan Best who did the last progressed episode, he sent me some other examples of secondary progressed New Moons where, for example, he said that Barack Obama was inaugurated as a state senator in Illinois and basically began his political career very close to his secondary progressed New Moon, which happened in 1997. So basically, the beginning of Obama’s political career in the mid-90s was his secondary progressed New Moon.
CU: Yeah, and taking it back to what happened a little bit before that– since I think it’s so important to pull that balsamic phase into that New Moon phase, because what we’re experiencing is a dark Moon phase. So basically from the balsamic to the Crescent, we’re in the darkest phase of the cycle. There’s just a period of going into that darkness and shedding, and then there’s this private sort of New Moon planting seeds, but then there’s still this sort of more private, personal cultivation that’s happening there. So yeah, that dark Moon phase is so fertile and so vital for a person. But for Obama, his New Moon he did get elected to the Illinois Senate. But before that at his previous third quarter, he was elected as the president of the Harvard Law Review, and he was the first black person to hold this office. And so that led to a book deal. People were like, “Wait, why is Barack Obama the first to hold this position? Why haven’t we elected a person of color before this?” So he got a book advance. So he spent his balsamic phase writing a memoir basically, Dreams of My Father, it was published during that phase. And so that writing a memoir is a very reflective act, so that definitely fits into that balsamic Moon period for sure.
CB: Yeah, that’s brilliant. So do you know when that book was released?
CU: 1995.
CB: Okay, yeah. So it was right in that balsamic phase.
CU: Yeah, and the Progressed New Moon was ’97.
CB: That’s wild. Okay. So we get that reflection, looking back, writing about one’s life, coming to terms with the past, coming to terms with things that happened in that entire cycle up to that point, which for him was pretty much his entire life up to that point. And then also though starting to head in the direction and starting to plant the seeds and starting to see the future and probably get an inkling by that point of his political career and where he wanted to head over the course of the next 30 years. Okay. So then two years later we see that New Moon happened at 17 degrees of Virgo and that’s his secondary progressed New Moon. He gets his first election to public office at that point and begins his political career with somewhat humble origins basically. Okay, so and then after that point, he just builds up over the course of the next however many years. Wasn’t 2004, was that the DNC speech? What year was that?
CU: Yeah, so I think he announced that he was going to run in 2006.
CB: Yeah, but I was just thinking he gave a speech, I think it was 2004 during that presidential election at the Democratic National Campaign when whoever was running that year like Kerry or whoever was the actual president, but Obama was one of the guest speakers that came up and gave a speech and blew a bunch of people away. If I’m remembering that correctly, then that would’ve been very close to this first quarter turning point phase where we can see the Moon is in Sagittarius at this point and the Sun is later in Virgo. So we’re getting the first real major turning point in this, the halfway cycle of the waxing phase of things building up and getting brighter and brighter and brighter and heading towards some sort of culmination.
CU: Yeah, and here at his first quarter phase then he runs and gets elected to the US Senate. So he was a state-level representative and then now he’s a national-level representative.
CB: Got it. So that was the next step in terms of the next step up in his political career as well.
CU: Yeah. And this first quarter phase, should we talk about that one?
CB: Sure.
CU: So the first quarter phase is really important for a person. So this is going to happen roughly seven years after the Progressed New Moon. So here we see another Saturn parallel, we get this square action happening every seven years. So at the first quarter we have this crisis of action, we need to do something. I love using gardening examples. This is when your tomato plant you have to put the support system around it. You have to or else it’s going to go crazy.
CB: Really? It’ll just get out of control?
CU: Yes.
CB: What happens? I mean, what happens with the tomato plant for those not…
CU: So I planted two this year and I only had one stand up. So I’m like, “My progressed Full Moon with this tomato plant is going to be a rock.” Because I can’t get to all the tomatoes that are being harvested right now. So you have to properly support your tomato plant so that it’s structured. You can actually see everything that it’s producing and it’ll grow upward, so it’s not just a mess of vines basically. Anyone who has grown one will know what I’m talking about here.
CB: So you’ve got to put necessary support structures in place in order to help channel the growth of that thing that you started earlier?
CU: Yeah, you need a trellis of some kind for the plant to be supported on as it grows and the same thing in your life. This tends to be a more challenging period for people because what you’ve created is starting to grow and it’s starting to have bigger needs. So for example, if you start a business at your New Moon, this might be a period where you have to outsource some help. You have to get some help to grow what you’re creating, you get to a point where you can’t do it all yourself. Or you need to take a class of some kind or you need just better infrastructure to support what it is that you’re creating. So this is often a significant turning point where there’s a lot of troubleshooting going on here, there’s problems that need to be solved. And the choices and actions that we tend to make in this phase will determine how supported this venture or this chapter will continue to be moving forward. So this is a crucial turning point in our story. Because actually now we start to become more visible. So now we’re coming sort of out of this dark Moon hemi cycle. And once we reach this quarter Moon, we start to have more light on our Moon than there is darkness. So yeah, there is a visibility factor coming into play, maybe more eyes are on your work, maybe more people are starting to take notice of your talent or whatever it is that you’ve got going on. And so yeah, there’s usually some significant choices and planning and troubleshooting and strategizing that are going on at this phase.
CB: Okay. So that was his first quarter, and then eventually he launches his presidential campaign sometime in early 2007 or something like that. We see the Moon is just getting brighter and brighter and brighter and it’s really inching closer and closer to that Full Moon phase here. But then eventually here we are in November 2008, he wins the presidential election, becomes president of the United States. The Moon is at 16 degrees of Aquarius, the Sun is at 28 Virgo, so he’s very late at this point in that gibbous Moon phase essentially.
CU: Precisely. And he spends the next eight years as president. This is the period where we have peak brightness in his Progressed New Moon or his progressed lunation cycle. So those eight brightest years of this cycle are spent as president of the United States.
CB: Right. It looks like the secondary Progressed Full Moon went exact at one degree of Aries opposite secondary Progressed Sun at one Libra, it looks like November of 2011. So that’s pretty much almost three years into his presidency, and it’s pretty much dead center in the middle of his eight-year presidential, not reign but his administration. Yeah, that’s a good example. So he’s in that sort of Full Moon phase or that Full Moon phase is very much anchored on the period in which he was one of the most powerful people in the world.
CU: Exactly, exactly. So that, especially in Obama’s case and in a lot of celebrity cases, when we’re at this peak Full Moon phase, it’s often a time when your name is in more people’s mouths basically. You’re more well known, more people are paying attention to you. Again, that peak visibility of the Full Moon, that peak luminosity of a Full Moon.
CB: Okay. And the work that was started way back at the New Moon really comes to fruition during this point, and that’s probably the most important thing. So his political career that he really got started fully back in the New Moon in the mid-nineties comes to fruition finally with that eight-year period in which he’s the president of the United States.
CU: Yeah, exactly. And so for him, his lunation cycle, at least this waxing portion from New Moon to full, it followed a very steady growth pattern, very steady growth pattern. And it shook out the way he intended maybe better than he intended even. But as we know, the Full Moon is a period where we have peak brightness. It is an event that brings things into full view, it brings things to light, it illuminates. So the Full Moon period is not always a big celebration for folks unfortunately. Sometimes it’s the realization of what you’d like to do differently or what you could have done differently. So sometimes the Full Moon is a period of feeling accomplished, of I made it to the top. It’s like climbing a giant mountain and you get to the top and you can’t go any farther, so you have nothing left to do but to enjoy the view for a moment and just assess the climb and assess how good it feels. But sometimes after you do a big, important thing like that, you’re like, “Well, I should have brought different snacks or I should have left at a different time.” So often at the Full Moon, there’s also this sense of taking stock. And sometimes that feels really good for people and sometimes there’s this experience of regret in some way too. Sometimes it’s a little bit of both because we’re human.
CB: Right, because you’re at the sort of culmination of things, and so it’s a little too late to have started a hugely new track. And what you’re doing at this point is you’re reaping the positives and negatives of what you started way back at the New Moon phase. And that’s going to include some of the good directions that you started in your life, but it’s also going to include some of maybe the consequences of some of those things that you started back then as well. And one of the things as you’re talking about this and talking about this period in Obama’s life that’s so much centered on his Full Moon by secondary progression is it reminds me just of what we talked about at the beginning and how Full Moons sometimes have this frenetic quality where everything’s just an overdrive and you’re doing what you have to do and you’re sort of focused on working as much as you can and the full output of everything that you started at the beginning of the phase reaches a culmination at that point. And there’s not a lot of time to sit and reflect too much because you’re just doing and just acting at that point. And thinking about this Full Moon being situated right in the middle of his presidency in that eight-year period, they were just constantly going for eight years and being in charge and having to call the shots and make the decisions and everything else and not really having much of a break during that period because that’s a period where you’re supposed to just do everything that’s going to be in the history books and that’s going to define your legacy for like the rest of your life and the rest of history. And you’ve got to do it in that period and there’s no time necessarily to stop and go back and rethink things or something like that per se or at least not as much as if this was back during a New Moon phase or during a balsamic phase.
CU: Exactly, exactly. And this is a period that’s often very busy. We usually get really busy from that first quarter all the way till that third quarter. So that hemi cycle of brightness, of light, it’s usually a more productive period for people, whereas that darker Moon hemi cycle, there’s a lot more reflection, there’s room for more creativity, at least on an internal plotting level. But yeah, it tends to move quickly. And just thinking how the summer months tend to fly by a lot faster for people because time flies when we’re having fun. Same thing can be said with the Full Moon period, that period from the gibbous Moon to the disseminating period bookending that Full Moon, it’s a very busy and active time. That gibbous period, we should talk about that one since we’re kind of going through here. That gibbous period is also a really fun one because it comes after that first quarter where there’s a lot of pressure on us, we’re doing a lot of problem solving, putting new systems in place. That gibbous Moon phase is a pretty joyous time because if you think about it, the Moon is basically in a trine to the Sun there. So there’s a lot of flow that’s happening at this period. It’s a time often of networking, collaborating with other people. You’re not quite as high as you can climb yet, but there’s a lot of just knowing that you’re sort of coasting at this period. The changes that you made at the first quarter are starting to just play themselves out in hopefully a good way. And you can just see where you’re headed. So when I compare this to a tomato plant, this is when the plant is producing a lot of fruit. You’re able to pick it and enjoy the fruit, but it’s not peak production yet. But this period is a period where you’re able to enjoy some fruit, we’re just not fully at the top yet. So this is a fun phase to be in, it’s usually an enjoyable phase because there’s still room to climb, but there’s fruits to enjoy at this period.
CB: Okay, that makes sense. So in that analogy with him, that was that period essentially where he became president during the gibbous Moon phase and the first three years or so of his presidency.
CU: Yeah. So going back to the networking and getting endorsements and teaming up with people, that’s very often something that happens there. You can have a little bit more fun at that phase, but there’s a creativity in this phase. The difference is that you know what you’re working with, you can see what you’re working with versus that Crescent phase where it’s still new, it’s still a baby, we still don’t know all the potential yet. Here at the gibbous phase, we can see it, it’s pliable, it’s clay, we can mold it.
CB: Yeah. So the clay has taken form at this point and you’re able to start doing stuff with it and start using it to as a tool to do things at this stage. Okay. And then we’ve talked about the Full Moon phase and then the one that comes after that after the Full Moon is the disseminating Moon phase.
CU: Yeah. Similar to the gibbous phase, there’s usually not a big crisis at this one. This one is very often a carrying out. We’ve reached the top of the Full Moon, we’ve grown our efforts in a big way. At this point, you start to feel like, “Well, I did it, there’s nothing more that I necessarily want to do with this phase. I’m just sort of riding this crust at this phase. I’ve done all the work. I’m just sort of carrying it out at this phase.” And maybe you start to get ideas of ways that you could twist or innovate, but it’s playful, it’s fun. There’s no pressure at this phase. You’re sort of riding on your laurels a little bit. You’ve built the thing, you’ve built your reputation, and you’re sort of just ruminating in it. It’s a good time, the disseminating phase. So yeah, that word is like to distribute. We’re distributing our talents, the things that we’ve cultivated at this stage.
CB: Okay. And I think if I’m seeing correctly, the range, we’re talking about the 2014, 2015, 2016 timeframe for Obama, where he’s starting to come to the end of his presidency and he’s starting to try to sort of hand over power to the next person, which originally was him trying to help out Hillary Clinton to get elected, his secretary of state to be his successor at that point. But then November 2016 rolls around, the Moon is at 11 degrees of Gemini and the Sun is at six degrees of Libra. So he’s in the later phases, I think, of that phase, of that disseminating Moon phase.
CU: Exactly.
CB: Okay. So then there’s an upset 2016. Trump, his nemesis, gets elected and Obama not too far after that, a couple of years after that, hits that third quarter phase or that last quarter Moon phase it looks like here.
CU: Yeah. So 2018 is when he hits his progressed third quarter phase. The progressed third quarter phase, as we mentioned earlier, is somewhat of a crisis of consciousness. What do I do now? So it’s pretty literal in Obama’s case. He’s like, “I’ve reached the top of my political career, but people still know me for this.” So we’re still sort of in… Usually these 30-year periods will carry a very strong thread here. So this is his political career, before that it was his law career. So we’re still in the political career shell here. So 2018, what do I do now that I’ve been president, that I made it to the top of the summit? He starts Higher Ground Productions with Michelle Obama, and they start doing like a docu-series in partnership with Netflix, they have a podcast. So people still are turning to him for his knowledge, his expertise, his political stances on everything, he still does commentary. But at this third quarter phase there’s often a what does it all mean? How can I use these skills to help? So usually at this third quarter phase there’s a theme of repackaging a lot of the skills and talents that you’ve cultivated during this phase. But how can I stay relevant? How can I rebrand it so to speak? One of the things I tell my students is, going back to the tomato plant example, if you’ve been making pasta sauce, now you’re going to make enchilada sauce. There’s something that has to change here so that the flavor doesn’t get bland. So at the third quarter there’s like another sort of crisis of, “All right, well now what do I do now that I’ve made it to the top?” Versus the first quarter is what do I do to get there?
CB: Yeah. And what do I do now that I’m like coming down from the top of the mountain rather than climbing up it? I remember in that first year or two after, one of the things is he went on vacation in Hawaii, and there’s pictures of him parasailing and stuff like that. And it was kind of jarring at first to see pictures of him just going out and kind of enjoying himself and relaxing after this eight-year period of just constantly being on all the time.
CU: Yeah, exactly. So you start to have a little bit more maybe space. It can be a period where you’re starting to wane. You’re coming off of that productivity. Maybe it’s a choice, maybe you’re tired. Another crisis here can be like, “How do I stay relevant?” That could be something that people are trying to figure out at that phase too. But it can also be how do I work smarter not harder? How do I work less? And like Obama enjoy some free time since that last eight years was so busy.
CB: Yeah. And one of the things that’s also relevant during this period is they started planning out his presidential library. So making plans for a presidential library in Chicago that would house all of the records from his presidency, but also be a community center for doing outreach and other things like that. So reflecting a little bit on one’s legacy and trying to cement one’s legacy. I think he also started writing a new memoir at this point to go back and look back at his presidency in retrospect.
CU: That’d be interesting if it gets published 30 years after his first one, because that would be his balsamic cycle.
CB: Oh yeah, you’re right. Okay. Well, one of them came out. So we’re starting to get into or starting to jump into some of the other phases here, which are the first we’re talking about the last quarter and then the balsamic phase is more or less the period that we’re talking about at this point. And let me put that up in his chart. When would his balsamic phase begin exactly? So his Sun’s at 12 Libra, his Moon is at six Virgo here. Well, here 2021, so that’s 60 degrees.
CU: 2023.
CB: Okay, so next year. Okay. So he’s in the last portion of his third quarter phase. So they did the groundbreaking for the presidential library in September of 2021, I think he released that other memoir either in, I think, it was late 2020 right after the 2020 presidential election when Biden, his former vice president, won the presidency and sort of took over. So yeah, he’s right on the cusp now of entering into that final phase of things here over the next few years.
CU: Yeah. And so usually when someone reaches this phase, especially someone like Obama who has had a very public last basically 25 years of the cycle, a lot of times this is when we see less of the person. This is a time of retreat, this is a time of rest, this is a time of reflection. It’s a time of being pulled inward, and it’s to process and sort of release the last cycle and also start to get curious about what comes next.
CB: Right. Just looking up when the presidential library will be open, maybe it’s already open, maybe it opened in 2021. Final review, final completion 2020, construction began August, 2021. I don’t know. So maybe that’s something that will open in the next few years that will be interesting just in terms of all of this. So that’s a pretty good cycle then or pretty obvious one just using this one person’s political career and showing how those different phases really nicely correlated in broad terms with these different eras in his life essentially over the course of a 30-year period. And so his next New Moon looks like it’s coming up here in 2026, 2027 it looks like.
CU: 2027, yeah.
CB: So that’ll be the end of this 30-year cycle that began in the mid-nineties and then beginning of a new 30-year cycle.
CU: Yeah, and that one will be in Libra. So let’s see, that’ll be at 16 Libra, that is not talking to any of his planets that I can see.
CB: We don’t have to get into predictions about it, but just that this is a technique that works in very broad terms to show the broad outlines of what phase of life am I in. Am I in a growth and building up new beginnings phase? Am I in like a culmination phase? Am I in a winding down phase? Or just what is the cycle and what is the rhythm of my life right now? And it doesn’t replace other techniques, especially other more specific techniques or other things that you can look at that can get into more details about what specific areas of your life are being activated by transit or profection or other thing like that in a given time period, which can be better for specifics, but it can be very useful for giving a sort of broad sketch or broad outline of where you’re at at this time in your life.
CU: Exactly. So for example, if someone says, “I really want to quit my job,” or getting a sense of where they’re at in their cycle can give you as the astrologer a much greater sense of context of where that might be coming from. If they’re in that balsamic phase, maybe they should be taking some more time away. If they’re at that first quarter, do they want to start their own business instead? If they’re at the Full Moon, maybe they need to switch companies so that they can get a promotion and more recognition, more room for visibility. If they’re at that gibbous phase, that might be a good time to do that too. If they can’t keep growing in their company, maybe they need to go somewhere else where they can because we’re still in a growth period. So understanding where someone is at in their progressed lunation cycle provides awesome context for what’s going on in someone’s life.
CB: Right, for sure. That makes a lot of sense. All right. I think I have a pretty good one if you want to hear it.
CU: Yeah.
CB: Let me pull up my secondary progressed chart really quickly. So first maybe I should share my natal chart again just to show the phase I was born into. There’s my Sun at nine degrees of Scorpio and my Moon at 24 degrees of Aquarius, so born just after that first quarter phase. Let me cast my secondary progressed chart. Mine is cool and is a good example because what happened is I had a secondary progressed New Moon at zero degrees of Sagittarius, which was also an eclipse interestingly. It was a solar eclipse, which is something we haven’t mentioned which is what happens when you have a progressed New Moon or Full Moon that’s also an eclipse and how eclipses are basically like New Moons or Full Moons, but they’re just a little bit more important or more significant I think, right?
CU: Definitely, it tends to affect other people.
CB: Okay, so what happened at this point in my secondary progressed New Moon, this happened in 2005, and I was right in the middle of just a few really important things in my life where I had started studying astrology a few years earlier and I got into studying the history of astrology and studying many different traditions and approaches to astrology at Kepler College when they still had an academic degree program and I was working on a bachelor’s in astrological studies.
Then I moved to Seattle to be closer to Kepler and through this weird series of events around that time, I got dragged into studying ancient astrology and studying Hellenistic astrology at Kepler College and I took a course with Demetra George towards the end of that phase while I was still in the balsamic phase. So it’s like the directions or the seeds of where things were going to start heading for the next rest of my life essentially, you started seeing them come up towards the end of that balsamic phase in the year basically leading up to this secondary progressed New Moon.
So what happens is secondary progressed New Moon hits and I ended up moving to Maryland in order to live at Project Hindsight and I actually studied at a translation project for ancient astrological texts for two years. That was where I learned Hellenistic astrology. I began writing my book during that time period on Hellenistic astrology that I would later publish about 10 years later after I started writing it in 2007. I eventually published it in 2017. So that happened.
I also started working with organizations and I got on the board of the Association for Young Astrologers. I also started working with local astrology groups during that time. I eventually became the president of the Association for Young Astrologers, the research director of the NCGR. And interestingly, just not too long after this, at a certain point, I started a local astrology group and eventually started doing this podcast not too long afterwards as well. So a lot of the seeds for a lot of things began at that period basically when I started studying Hellenistic astrology and I started studying astrology really seriously in an academic setting around the time of my secondary progressed New Moon essentially.
CU: Yeah, very potent seeds being planted at that time. We’re all enjoying the benefits on the podcast as listeners.
CB: Yeah, well right. Because everything I do or have done on the podcast is an extension in some ways of what I learned at Kepler when I did this really intense several year period of just getting an overview and studying every different tradition and approach to astrology. And so, I’ve always tried to emulate that with the podcast in addition to my slant of more of a focus on ancient astrology and Hellenistic astrology in particular that I also started during that time.
CU: Yeah, I think you started your YouTube around that time, too.
CB: Oh, yeah, you’re right. I started doing YouTube videos and probably some of the earliest videos would have been during that time just after the secondary progressed New Moon.
CU: I remember.
CB: So interestingly, I recently just over the past few years, I hit that Full Moon phase finally pretty recently. It looks like it went exact here at 16 degrees of Gemini in June of 2021, so just a year ago. Yeah, it’s been crazy, the podcast getting up to 200 episodes of the podcast at this point. My book came out in the past few years and has become really successful and established as a major work that everybody reads when they want to study ancient astrology and the podcast itself has become really successful on YouTube and hit I think 100,000 subscribers later that year in November of 2021 for the first time.
So I’ve reached a new height of visibility in terms of all of that, in terms of my career and everything that I started way back in the mid-2000s. I actually just found out yesterday that I’ve been nominated at this ISAR Conference that’s coming up at the end of August for five different awards related to my book or the podcast or other things like that, which is kind of weird to hear but pretty cool and also very representative of that Full Moon phase.
Obviously, I’m no Obama so I didn’t like become president during this period. But relative to me and whatever the work was that I started, which was in astrology as an astrologer and specifically doing ancient astrology as well as doing videos and podcasts on YouTube, a lot of that has come to full fruition and I’ve achieved career success, let’s say, by the time I got to and during this Full Moon phase.
CU: Yeah, yeah, I’d say so. And like starting your YouTube in that New Moon phase and then reaching 100,000. I remember seeing you got a plaque for that. So yeah, getting the recognition, getting the awards and this theme of visibility here at this phase. So yeah, that’s really cool to see that playing out for you, Chris. Awesome.
CB: Yeah, I guess that’s part of the thing is just figuring out what it is that you’re starting. Unfortunately, you might get a sense of it, you might see it and some people I think will know what the thing is that they’re doing and they’ll have a sense of I’m headed in a good direction and this might be a big thing that I’m working on. Sometimes you will land on and know that thing that you’re supposed to start at that point at the New Moon that will eventually culminate 14 years later at the Full Moon. But like we said, sometimes you’ll start a few different things and it won’t be clear for several years which one of those things is really going to be the one that works out or the one that carries you through over the course of the next 14 to 20 years.
CU: Exactly, yeah. As we know, there’s a lot of different cycles going on in astrology at any given time. These New Moon, these progressed New Moon cycles are just especially potent so the things that we are starting around that time will usually take root in a very defining way for us in our lives.
Going back, I talked about Steve Martin earlier with his progressed New Moon at his first quarter. At this point he’s doing standup. So even though he didn’t like how he showed up at his on TV at his New Moon, as he moved into that progressed crescent phase, he continued to write. He was behind the scenes. He was getting awards for that. He started to open up for musicians. Back then they would have standup comedians open up for musicians, for bands. By the time we get to his first quarter, he’s doing the thing. He’s got comedy albums that are going platinum. He has trademark sayings like just a wild and crazy guy. That one just becomes a catchphrase. And he starts to win Grammys at that time for Best Comedy Recording.
But what he really wanted to do this whole time was get into film. So by the time we get into that gibbous phase, he starts acting. But it’s not until the progressed Full Moon phase that he is like producing film after film after film. It’s a period of peak productivity for him. Everyone knows who he is, not just as a comedian but now as an actor. So even though at the beginning of that New Moon phase his initial plan was to get into film, not a lot of people were taking notice right away. He had to do all these other things to get there.
That continues through his third quarter. He’s continuing to be very productive in the film. He’s in Father of the Bride in his third quarter. But then as he leans into his progressed new phase again, his balsamic period, it’s a quieter period. That balsamic phase does tend to be a quieter period for people.
His next progressed New Moon is in 1998 in Libra. He still continues to act throughout this, but this progressed New Moon period is a big focus on his music. He was always a musician, but during this lunation cycle that he’s still in right now that began in ’98, it’s focused on his banjo, and now he’s winning Grammys for playing bluegrass. He does that, he wins his first Grammy at the crescent phase of this cycle. Each Grammy win lines up with one of his distinct phases.
That’s fun to observe too for people who’ve been in the public eye for a long time, you can look at how one cycle tends to line up with one venture and then they may change and it may be something else. But he’s in his third quarter phase and so he’s bringing back in his acting in a big way and now he is a producer and star of that show I mentioned earlier, Only Murders in the Building. So he’s like repackaging his talents a little bit at this third quarter that he’s in.
CB: Okay, nice. So, with this technique, are there any other things that we should mention let’s say like crossovers with other techniques or interpretive principles that are really good to know about in terms of… I’m trying to think. Because we mentioned this solar eclipse thing, you can pay attention to eclipse as being important, not just solar eclipses but also lunar eclipses as well if you reach a Full Moon phase that’s also an eclipse. The way to tell visually is if an eclipse happens within about like 15 degrees to 18 degrees of a conjunction with a node?
CU: Yeah. Usually, if you have one, you’ll have a second one. So for you, Chris, I was looking the progressed Full Moon before that progressed New Moon that was an eclipse would have also been an eclipse.
CB: Right. Yeah, the New Moon and the Full Moon in Gemini would have been New Moon. Yeah, right, so I got-
CU: Maybe Taurus actually, the one before.
CB: Okay, got it. Yeah, well, and it’s interesting just seeing the output of people hit their peak. I think Bill Clinton for example had his secondary progressed Full Moon I think in the middle of his presidency or later in his presidency in 1998. That was another example of a politician reaching the height of their career and their public visibility around that time. His was interesting because he was on the verge of impeachment when exact in November of 1998 as well. So sometimes it’s like things come to light that happened earlier in the phase come to culmination at that point. It’s not always necessarily positive things, but also sometimes some of the missteps from earlier come full circle at the same time as well.
CU: 100%, yeah. Then there are some other anomalies that can show up too. Obama is one where his career fits this cycle in a very neat and tidy way. But for example, I have two slivers I can think of right now, Britney Spears and Dave Chappelle. They reached one of their peak of their fame with the Chappelle’s Show and with Britney Spears when she first came on the scene, they were in their balsamic phase at that time. They were just coming into it. So why did Dave Chappelle just leave Hollywood? Well, because he entered into his progressed New Moon and it was conjunct Pluto. So just the way things shook out, he hit this opportunity that he couldn’t turn down even though internally he probably was feeling a pull inward. So it was at his progressed New Moon that he pretty much left Hollywood. A lot of people were confused by that. The same thing with-
CB: It’s interesting, and let’s dwell on that one for a minute. Here’s Dave Chappelle’s chart. So around 2000 it looks like his Sun is in late Virgo by secondary progression and his Moon is in early Cancer so he’s in that third quarter phase essentially at this point I believe, right? And that’s not only when… I remember some of his really most, for that time, mature standup specials came out I think around 2000, one of the most I think Killing Them Softly and was just like a smash hit of his. Because he’d been a standup comedian and he’d been working on standup comedy since he was a teenager starting in the ’80s or late ’80s or something like that, but he finally perfected things. He had some missteps along the way. For example, a few years earlier, even though I loved it, apparently the movie Half Baked didn’t do very well and was considered a box-office bomb in the mid to late ’90s when it came out. Did you know that?
CU: No, because just now it’s a cult classic.
CB: Right, yeah, it’s such a classic and everyone from my generation just thinks of it as like one of those movies everybody saw when they were younger, but apparently it didn’t do very well. I was just watching Dave Chappelle’s friend and co-writer Neal Brennan, who’s not related to me, unfortunately talking about it in retrospect and he said that just nobody from Hollywood wanted to look at them after that movie and Neal felt so bad for Dave because it seemed like it really was going to stunt both of their careers at that point. But then Dave, so that was like 1996-1997, then he hits that third quarter phase and around 1999 and 2000 he has a couple of really successful standup specials. Also, the Chappelle’s Show starts at some point there in the early 2000s. Do you happen to know what year that was?
CU: Yeah, so 2003. I just want to pause real quick here because that Mars is stationary. We talked about that in our progressions’ episode. So to contextualize it, he had his Mars stationed, but also entering that third quarter or that crisis of consciousness, or in this case, it’s also actions also very often action. It’s just motivated usually by what are we doing here? I remember we were talking about him contemplating leaving Hollywood at that point in time.
CB: Yeah, and here’s his Full Moon. It looks like 1992-1993 it’s like mid-90s he’s starting to get movie roles and he started to show up in movies and make that transition that some comedians make from being a comedian to starting to get movie gigs. I remember he had that minor bit part in The Nutty Professor at one point, then starts doing great standup specials that are really hitting in 1999-2000s, starts the Chappelle’s Show. I think the Chappelle’s Show was earlier than… I think that was started in like 2000, 2001 if I’m not remembering correctly.
CU: Yes, 2003.
CB: Was it that late? Wow, okay. So then that would be more firmly in that phase of the third quarter phase. But then yeah, you’re right then not long after that he would get into the balsamic phase and then run into those issues in the mid-2000s where he really wasn’t happy with how the show is being received and how much control is being exerted by the networks and things like that over his creative control over everything and he just decided to walk away from, what was it, it was like an $80 million deal or $60 million or something deal or something like that, which was just from the outside seems insane or unheard of to walk away from everything like that at the time to most people watching.
CU: Yeah, absolutely. So many people were baffled by that. But when you understand that he was being pulled inward in this really profound way and the fact that his progressed New Moon aligned with his Pluto, that’s really major. When I saw that, I understood why he needed to leave.
CB: Yeah, I’m just looking at the date. Okay, so first premiered January of 2003 so you’re right, it’s early 2003. Then the last season that technically he wasn’t involved with was aired in 2006. So just looking at the secondary progressed chart, we’re really talking about that period of the last third quarter phase, but also getting into the balsamic phase. He really walked away from everything and he walked away from Hollywood and from… I know for a period he left and he went to Africa and just went on an internal journey of reflection and stuff for several years.
It looks like here we can see him hitting right there in the middle of 2006 that secondary progressed New Moon there 3 degrees of Libra. That’s wild. Okay, so that’s a very public prominent end of a cycle phase and secondary progressed balsamic Moon phase, but also New Moon phase of a celebrity literally walking away from everything and ending that phase of his life even though he seemed to be at the height of everything or the height of everything that most people would assume that one would want to achieve, but he decided to let go of everything at that point.
CU: Yes, yeah. Interestingly, I have a couple other celebrities of being in the balsamic Moon phase. Yeah, so Britney Spears as I started to say was another one.
CB: Really quickly with Dave though, because that was clearly the end of that phase of his career and he’s never gone back to do sketch comedy again and he doesn’t appear in movies. But then there was a period, it took him like several years, but it seems like several years after that once he started to get through the New Moon phase and once he started to get into especially the crescent Moon phase, he started to eventually emerge again. I remember when he started doing comedy again and started doing shows with like private shows and then eventually doing specials and things like that.
CU: Yeah, so he started to do local shows around his crescent Moon. Then it was his first quarter around 2013 that he does return to the public eye, but a lot has changed for him at this point since he’s in this progressed New Moon phase conjunct Pluto and a lot of his planets have progressed into Scorpio, there’s a different tone to him at this stage.
CB: Yeah, and there’s definitely been more, let’s say, controversy over the next last few years. I do remember distinctly he did start doing some sketch comedy again by like 2016 because I remember him doing a sketch comedy thing on Saturday Night Live with Chris Rock right after the presidential election in 2016. So it looks like that was after when he’s firmly in that first quarter phase where I can see the Moon here is in early Aquarius conjunct Jupiter and it’s trining the Sun in Libra.
During that phase, he fully emerges back into the public almost back into something reminiscent of the role he was playing during that previous cycle when he was much more prominent but now, he’s coming back in some different way. So he does sketch comedy stuff. He also starts releasing standup specials for Netflix, which he also hadn’t done since I guess the early 2000s with some of those HBO specials and things like that. Then that brings us to well, that’s really interesting actually, that brings us to where we are now, which is that he’s been in this secondary progressed… It looks like he hit his exact secondary progressed full Moon just earlier this year in March and April of 2022.
CU: Yeah, and similar to what you were saying, that happened with Bill Clinton. There’s a lot of criticism of him now. It’s pretty common.
CB: Right, I know he’s done a series of specials for Netflix and there’s been a lot of controversy with the trans community and the perception that he’s attacking them or criticizing trans people and he’s taken a lot of criticism for that. I know he also sometime in the past year or two, I think bought back or sold the rights to the Chappelle’s Show to Netflix for some crazy amount of money like $80 million or 100 million or something like that I think as well, right?
CU: Yeah, it was back on Netflix and then he took it off or something like that.
CB: Okay, yeah, I think I remember something about like the president sold it to him or allowed him to buy the rights back somehow and it was a larger victory for him in terms of getting creative control or at least compensation for his previous work, which he didn’t have control over some things. So he’s back in a Full Moon phase and he’s at the height again of visibility in some ways.
But also sometimes with that visibility, there can be problems and it’s not always necessarily… I guess that’s something we really didn’t talk about much in the Obama example, which is that he was at the height of his political career and height of visibility and accomplishing whatever it was that he was supposed to accomplish with that, but also at the height of criticism. Maybe a better term to use here would also be public scrutiny. Like when you’re at your most visible, you’re also in some ways the most open to criticism and to people taking shots at you or conversely to if you are messing up or you messed up or do something wrong or do something immoral or something like that, that that’s also going to be visible sometime potentially during those times as well like with the example with Bill Clinton for example in the impeachment over that whole scandal and everything.
CU: Excellent point, yeah. Public scrutiny, that’s an amazing term for the Full Moon phase. The brighter the light, yeah definitely, the more criticism you’re going to receive.
CB: Right, because it’s like somebody’s literally shining a spotlight on you. In this instance, metaphorically, we’re talking about the moonlight being in its brightest, but in a person’s life sometimes that means the light is on you the most intensely during those times.
CU: Yeah, it’s like you’re making me think of those mirrors that a lot of people use to do their makeup or do their eyebrows where you can just see everything.
CB: Like a ring light?
CU: Yeah, it’s unforgiving.
CB: Yeah, it’s very harsh light.
CU: Yeah, and it shows everything, every wrinkle, every everything.
CB: So it’s like you need to see that in order to do the work, but then sometimes when the spotlight is on you the imperfections come out more. Nice, I like that. All right, we’re learning some good things. I hope we’ve dealt with that tricky issue. I don’t know how to talk about all of that, but I hope the gist of the point at least that we’ve just discovered ourselves is that we’ve worked our way through his lunation cycle has become evident regardless of what the takes are on all of that. That’s a really interesting example. Yeah, you wanted to mention the Britney Spears example still or what did you?
CU: Yeah, so just to explain why she disappeared so soon. I mean, obviously, she hasn’t disappeared. But yes, she started to gather fame around, let’s see here, she started to gather fame around just after her third quarter. That’s when Hit Me Baby One More Time came out. But she enters her balsamic phase still during this peak period of her career where she’s got platinum albums coming out, she’s everywhere. But then she has this mental break, her world starts collapsing in a lot of ways and it’s a sad story for Britney as we all know at this time.
She has her progressed New Moon in 2006. You can see that the period just before that. She did take a career break to have her family, but that’s when everything, her postpartum, the paparazzi driving with her son on her lap to get away, just the pressure, she just wanted to be alone. That’s something that a lot of people really crave at this stage of the cycle at the dark Moon phase is they do need to be alone. And so, she didn’t get that. That was I think part of that break that she had as well. Yeah.
CB: It’s interesting that in the secondary progressions looking at that, so her secondary progressed New Moon was it 4 Capricorn and it looks like that’s pretty closely square Mars which is at 4 Libra at that time in their secondary progressed chart. So there were some major tensions and incidents and people got worried about her mental health and stuff like that at that time.
CU: Yeah, absolutely, lots of Mars’ themes there with shaving her head, those pictures with the umbrella. Yeah, sad times for Britney. But I wanted to bring her up too, Chris, because you mentioned the eclipse, the progressed eclipse. She just had one. She’s at a progressed Full Moon right now, which she got in 2020. That brought visibility back to her, you know, she
CB: Sure. When did the conservatorship start?
CU: The conservatorship occurred shortly after her progressed New Moon. This is when her progressed Ascendant actually conjoins Pluto, so themes of control. Same thing we saw with Dave Chappelle was wanting control over his show. Here we see themes of control with Britney here as well. So her conservatorship happens in 2006.
CB: Okay, so that really literally was within a year of her secondary progressed New Moon. There was like questions about her mental stability or whether she could harm herself or something like that so the courts gave control of her life and her assets and and pretty much everything to her father basically, right?
CU: Yeah. Yeah. And actually I do think the conservatorship might actually be closer to ’08, but nonetheless, our orbs are…
CB: Still within the New Moon phase, basically.
CU: Yeah, for sure.
CB: Okay. So that was the start of the cycle. And then she spent years and years and years, basically well over a decade in that conservatorship and not having control over her own life and assets and finances and things like that, or even freedom to post things on social media and stuff like that. And then eventually this became more of a known issue on social media in the mid to late 2010s and eventually became almost a point of viral thing of people saying Free Britney and saying that she should be released from the conservatorship and everything else. And eventually she was not too long ago, right?
CU: Yeah. The Free Britney movement started right around the time of this progressed Full Moon. The Full Moon, which is an eclipse, occurs in 2020 at 19 degrees of Cancer. We can see it’s right there by the nodes. So yeah, this is a progressed Full Moon eclipse.
CB: So the Moon is at 19 Cancer and the North Nodes at 22 Cancer, so that’s very eclipsey Full Moon by secondary progression.
CU: Yeah. Even though she was trapped in this conservatorship and was very limited with how much she could share of her life, her voice, her opinions and everything like that, her fans started to pay attention. Her fans started to- So here we see this peak visibility happening here. And yeah, the Free Britney movement came out of 2020. At this time, her progressed midheaven is actually opposite her Natal Moon at this time, too. So yeah, there’s a lot happening in her progress chart here but I think that to go back to the eclipse thing, this affected a lot of people. Her progressed Full Moon drew attention to conservatorships in general. Like, this was something a lot of people weren’t familiar with. There’s probably a lot of things we could point to for why this was so distinctive on the public and everything like that, but I think that that’s what I would attribute that eclipse to; is that it involves more people, it calls the attention of others to an issue.
CB: Yeah, all of a sudden a bunch of people were literally trying to bring light to her story and it ended up working, and I think was it just earlier this year or was it late last year that she was released from the conservatorship?
CU: Late 21. So yeah, November of 2021.
CB: Okay. So here she’s firmly in the secondary progressed Full Moon phase at that point of her life by November of 2021. We see the Moon at 10 degrees of Leo and the Sun at 20 degrees of Capricorn. That’s really striking. And then eventually actually, just in the past few months, she’s one of my funny examples of a bunch of Libra rising people getting married this year, where everyone with Libra rising Jupiter’s ingressed by transit into their seventh whole sign house, and it’s like she got married. Even people that you wouldn’t think would get married who have Libra rising like Dan Bilzerian I think got married and when Jupiter stationed on his descendant and stuff like that. That’s been interesting. That’s another thing that happened for her in terms of getting married during this Full Moon phase.
CU: Yeah. Oh, that’s a good side research project.
CB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that’s a really good one. That’s another example of, you know, her story came to light and through the attention that her story got of different people trying to shine light on it, that was able to release her or to allow for a major change in her life that wouldn’t have happened otherwise if she hadn’t got all that attention and that pressure that came with it on the courts, essentially in order to end this conservatorship.
CU: Mhm, exactly.
CB: Interesting. That’s a really interesting example. And we can see the Full Moon then was tied in with something that happened back after the New Moon, which was the start of the conservatorship but also the start of some of the mental health stuff, some of the things with her father and her family and everything else. That’s the really important point here; is just everyone needs to remember and bears emphasizing, which is just that there’s always going to be a connection of some trends or some themes that start in your life around the time of the New Moon phase reaching some sort of culmination around the time of the Full Moon phase.
CU: Yeah, this is also a great example to show that the thing that was started at the New Moon phase, sometimes we get to that Full Moon phase and we decide in the spirit of looking back and reflecting on the journey, that we don’t want to continue this anymore. Or in her case, she petitioned the judge like, “We’re done. We’re done with this story.” So sometimes people do get to that Full Moon phase and they’re like, “Yeah, we’re gonna flip the script a little bit.” And so sometimes you do start to see a New-Moon type energy start to creep in at that Full Moon depending on the trajectory of someone’s story. So Britney has a new beginning of sorts that she’s working through. But there may still be themes of this conservatorship that follow her till her next New Moon. In other words, she might get to that third quarter and we’ll see what she does. That’ll be interesting to see.
CB: Yeah, for sure. So you might say that every new beginning is some other beginning’s end, I think that’s what you’re saying.
CU: Yes.
CB: Okay, famous lyric Closing Time. All right. I think that’s pretty good. We’re like two hours into this episode, we’ve kind of covered a lot of detail from the ground up just building up from square one and I’m pretty impressed with how this has come together and how some of these examples are really evocative. Because that’s one of the things that I think is so hard to express when you’re first learning this technique or when you’re trying to teach it to somebody. It’s really only when you sit down with your own life and you’ve had a long enough life to see a full cycle. Or when you start sitting down with clients and applying this technique to their lives and hearing them talk about it that you really understand how impressive this technique is and how well it describes the sort of ebb and flow of people’s lives and the development of their life stories.
CU: Absolutely. Yeah, it comes up frequently in consultations where, you know, we’re talking about what’s going on with work and we’re at one of these critical turning points in the cycle– let’s say we’re at the third quarter and they say, “Oh, we started 21 years ago.” Well, not only are you at the closing square of your Saturn cycle when you started that job but also, you know, this one is really important because it began at the progressed New Moon. So yeah, very often we’ll see that thread come into play in a consultation. You can see the big steps in the person’s story lining up with these phases of the cycle.
CB: Brilliant. All right. And it really requires some research, though, in order to know approximate dates and timeframes to get a sense of the person’s life trajectory and where they’ve been, and getting a sense for where they’re going.
CU: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Just something that tends to come up a lot is people want to consult in the balsamic Moon phase– I started to say this earlier– and they’re confused. They’re like, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s next.” And I often have to remind people it’s okay to not know what’s next. This is a phase of closing things down. So lean into your interests, lean into your studies, get away if you can. It’s hard to be patient through that phase. It’s easy once that ball starts rolling, that balsamic phase tends to be challenging. That’s my advice for people going through it.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense. And it’s also something a little bit that you can experience on a smaller level by paying attention to the lunation cycle each month and just how you feel in relation to that. But it’s interesting how with the secondary progressed lunation cycle that we’ve been focusing often on external events and the external manifestation of different career trends or different things in a person’s life. But there’s also a very internal emotional psychological component to these cycles at the same time, which is probably very relevant for the Moon that often relates to how a person feels about the direction they’re going or how a person reflects on where they’ve been up till now in their life and different things like that.
CU: A hundred percent. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I like to think of the progressed Moon I as a cursor, like a lantern. Like we think about the Moon’s ability to translate light, and I think wherever it is in the progressed chart especially in relationship to the natal, it’s just shining light on it. But it is, as you said Chris, a very internal experience. It’s very internal orientating yourself to this area of your chart and of your life. So translated into the lunation cycle, certainly it can have its external component but the bulk of it really is happening on an internal level for sure. That’s why a lot of people, you know, probably if I was consulting with Brittany in the year 2000, she’d say, “I’m at the peak of my success, but I just don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like being in the public right now.” It is like this very internal current that is pulling us with this cycle.
CB: Right. And then what’s funny is on the flip side of that now 14 years later is that she’s at the Full Moon phase, and the opposite end of that one of the first things that she started doing immediately was posting Instagram photos and stuff like that, and just wanting to participate and put herself out there on social media and wanting to become more visible. We can see the external results of that, but it’s motivated by an internal feeling during that phase of the person’s life. Sometimes the internal reflects or really influences the external events in our life in major ways and vice versa. But this is one of those techniques that really helps us to get to the core of what is a person feeling internally during different stages of their life?
CU: Absolutely. Yeah, there can be things going on externally but yes, this will tell us how the person is feeling. And it’s an important one to pay attention to because as I often tell people in that ending cycle, you might want to start planting new seeds. You might feel impatient, as you said before. But it’s kind of hard to plant seeds in a frozen ground, you know? You have to wait till the timing is right. It’s definitely like… Sometimes we feel pressure from the outside like we shouldn’t be doing something, but really the internal pull is to listen to what time it is in your life.
CB: Yeah. And I love that when it comes to this technique because I think it helps us to understand better things that from an external standpoint might look irrational like, you know, why is Dave Chappelle walking away from this million-dollar show? Or why is Britney Spears seemingly trying to throw away her career or pull back from social media or the paparazzi or what have you. But understanding and being able to look at it from this angle and understand the internal motivations of people during that phase of their life in wanting to either pull back or alternatively put themselves out more, can really understand what their motivation is much better and develop a better sense of empathy about where people are at different stages in their life, even if it’s not congruent with what you expect they should be at or whether it’s not congruent with your perception of where they should be.
CU: A hundred percent.
CB: Totally. All right, amazing. Well, thank you for joining me for this episode. This is really amazing. You do consultations with this technique and you also teach, and I know you have a Foundation’s of Astrology course coming up that you’re launching soon, right?
CU: Yeah. Yeah, we’re launching another round of the Foundation’s course that’s coming up on September 7th. You can sign up for that on my website. It’s going to be a mix of live presentations as well as some pre-recorded material. So no matter where you are in the world, you can tune in to those recordings and if you can make it live, you can join us live. So yeah, I’m excited to start that. It’s going to be 11 weeks starting on September 7th.
CB: Awesome. And what’s your website again?
CU: You can find me at catherineurban.com.
CB: Perfect. I’ll put a link to that in the description below this video on YouTube or on the podcast website entry for this episode.
CU: Awesome.
CB: Thank you so much for joining me for this. I’ve been wanting to talk about this technique for a long time. It only took me 264 episodes to get there, but I think it came at the perfect time. Whatever the secondary progressed lunation phase of the podcast is at this point, I think this was the time to do it and I’m glad I waited this long to do it with you.
CU: Perfect. Thank you so much, Chris. This is amazing. It’s always fun to chat with you. And yeah, I love chatting about progressions, so yeah.
CB: Awesome.
CU: I was just going say and I do have a course on progressions, too. So if you want to learn more-
CB: Oh, you do teach a course on this. Okay.
CU: Yeah, I have it. You can download it. I will offer it live again in the future but right now you can download it right now and do it on your own time.
CB: Cool. So people should go to your website catherineurban.com and under the Courses section they can find out more about that.
CU: Yeah.
CB: Cool. All right. Well, I think that’s it for this episode. So, thanks a lot for joining me. Thanks, everyone for watching or listening to this episode of the podcast and we’ll see you again next time.
Special thanks to all 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.
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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.
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