The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 370, titled:
Astrology Forecast for October 2022
With Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, and Diana Rose Harper
Episode originally released on September 27, 2022
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Mary Sharon
Transcription released October 17, 2022
Copyright © 2022 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey, my name is Chris Brennan and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking about the astrology of October of 2022. Joining me today are astrologers Austin Coppock and Diana Rose Harper. Welcome, both of you.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris.
DIANA ROSE HARPER: Hi.
CB: Hey. We’re gonna start the episode by first talking about and do a little bit of a review for about 45 minutes of some of the astrology stories in the news over the course of the past month to check in since the last time we did a forecast episode. And then after that, we’re going to jump into the astrology of October. So if you want to jump ahead to that, just look for timestamps below this video on YouTube or on theastrologypodcast.com website. All right. So first, let me do a review. Before the review, let me give an overview of the astrology of October just to give you a preview of what we’re going to be talking about this month. Here’s the astrological alignments calendar which is from our poster that’s a print poster, but this is the zoomed-in version just for October. So right at the top of the month, we have Mercury stationing direct and ending its retrograde period on October 2nd. Later in the week, Pluto stations retrograde on the 8th of October. The following day we have a Full Moon in Aries, followed by Mercury leaving Virgo for the final time this year and departing and moving into Libra. Then about a week later, we have a Sun-Venus conjunction on the 22nd of October, followed the next day by a triple lineup of Saturn stationing direct in Aquarius for the final time, Venus ingressing into Scorpio, and the Sun also ingressing into Scorpio thus beginning the start of Scorpio season, which is arguably the best season in the year. Two days later, we have a solar eclipse in the sign of Scorpio on the 25th of October. And then finally we have Jupiter retrograding back into Pisces on the 28th, Mercury ingressing into Scorpio on the 29th, and then Mars stationing retrograde on the 30th of October and beginning a very long retrograde period in the sign of Gemini that will last for the next few months. So, that is the overview. That’s a preview of what we’re going to be talking about later in the episode. But before we get there, why don’t we talk a little bit about what’s been going on and catch up on the news since the last time we spoke about a month ago. One of the major things is we’ve been having a Mercury Retrograde in the sign of Libra so far, it’s going to retrograde back into Virgo, but there’s been a tonne of stories in the news and it seems like– I know Austin you and I were talking about this– it seems as if this Mercury Retrograde has been extra retrogradey because Mars has been in the sign of Gemini at the same time.
AC: Yeah, certainly has. I like how Diana characterized it just a few minutes ago, which was it’s been like a machine gun, like a rapid fire sequence of Mercury… Like, very classic cliche trite Mercury retrograde things. And it’s not just one, as you were saying Diana, like one after another. I couldn’t write them all down.
DRH: Yeah, and it’s really interesting too because it’s, you know, Mercury retrograde in Libra which has been ruled by a Venus in Virgo. So it’s like Venus is in fall, ostensibly in charge of this Mercury and Mercury should be in charge of this Venus as well as Mars, and so we put the Sun in Virgo too. There’s just all of these like, nothing is good enough, everything is breaking apart, having to put puzzle pieces back together, as well as even just the puzzle of trying to put together how even to describe this retrograde. There’s too much. What’s the theme? Right? What is the, I don’t know, the title card for this retrograde? It’s actually just a wall of text.
AC: Yeah, and at the same time it’s like, I don’t know, have you ever heard anybody say anything about a Mercury retrograde? That.
DRH: Yeah, totally.
CB: Right, very cliche stuff. So the retrograde it happened– just doing the animation for the video viewers– Mercury stationed retrograde around September 9th or 10th. It’s been retrograde since that time. We’re only now in the next few days about to hit the middle point of that or the halfway point. We’re recording this episode on September 21st, 2022. And then like I said, it’s gonna station retrograde and wrap up towards the beginning of October. But some of the stories in the news that I’ve been seeing one of them is that a few days ago in Mercury retrograde news, one of the biggest leaks in videogame history occurred over the weekend when Grand Theft Auto 6 was leaked online, and there’s some sort of hacker who got access to everything and it had been a highly secretive project where they hadn’t released hardly anything yet because it was, I believe, the highest selling video gaming history. The last one was released like 10 years ago, GTA 5. So this was a major snafu that’s supposedly could lead to huge additional delays of upwards of another year in in terms of the development cycle of that game, which is already taking a decade at this point.
DRH: That’s really funny too because autos, automobiles, are Mars/Mercury things. Theft is Mars and Mercury.
AC: Yeah. And it’s literally is a game… It’s a game about thievery that was thieved. It’s very meta.
CB: It’s a little on the nose. So that was interesting. In more positive Mercury retrograde news in terms of sometimes the tendency for Mercury retrogrades to go back and review things that happened in the past and sometimes to revise or reverse them, there was a guy, Adnan Syed who was released from prison, who was featured in one of the early episodes of The Serial podcast. And his case where a number of people argued that he was wrongly convicted of murdering his girlfriend or his ex-girlfriend, he ended up being released from jail in the past few days. Which is another interesting Mercury retrograde thing. I noticed that he was also 42 years old, that means he’s also going through his Uranus opposition. And so that’s an interesting sudden reversal in terms of that as well.
DRH: It’s also very Libra, just like writing the scales of justice. Right? I’m gonna go back to balance a justice decision.
CB: Okay, and someone in the chat says that he was convicted during a Mercury retrograde too. So that’s actually super interesting if that’s the case, that’s pretty cool. All right. Did you two, what are your Mercury Retrograde or Mars in Gemini stories that you’ve seen?
AC: Well, the one that stuck out to me because it happened on the day of the station– which also involved scales, but the type of scales that are used to weigh a person’s weight rather than the amount of justice that they contain– was during a UFC event. Mercury stationed retrograde while they’re doing the weigh-ins, which happened day before the event. One person who is at the top of the card, Hamza Chimaev, missed weight. And this created a cascade of problems where 60% of the fights in the main card had to be musical chaired. So you ended up with, again, three of five of the main fights being between different people than were scheduled. And so that means for everyone who traveled, you know, in some cases thousands of miles for this event to see Hamza Chimaev versus Nate Diaz, that didn’t happen. Nate fought somebody else, Hamza fought somebody else. And for the athletes who spent a minimum of three months focusing on and imagining fighting one person, 24 hours out from the event, were fighting somebody totally different. And so this was just… You couldn’t have had a more literal Mercury retrograde stationing, right? Things need to be rearranged, and then ruling Mars in Gemini, right? And because Mercury is ruling Mars, then all of the fights are different. And they’re literally pairings, right? It’s Mars in Gemini. So that was just like a standout literal thing on the day of the station.
CB: That’s a good example. Because sometimes Mercury retrograde rewards people that think fast on their feet and can reconfigure if plans go awry. And they think they’re going to do one thing but they end up having to do something else. It’s the person that’s the most flexible and adaptive to that that sometimes comes out ahead.
AC: Right. And that’s interesting because Mercury in other phases excels at planning, right? You’ll literally see people talking about, “Oh, they had a great game plan. Their game plan wasn’t very good, there’s lots of study that goes into opponents.” But that was all gone. And so instead, depending on what you just said Chris, it was the ‘who can adapt to a new situation, a new opponent, somebody they hadn’t studied?’ Or you’ve got 24 hours, go watch tape.
CB: Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Diana, do you have any news stories that popped out to you in the past month?
DRH: I mean, the new story that most popped out to me is actually more about the Venus Mars square. Though I don’t know if we want to go there yet. [laughs]
CB: Oh, you should go there. That was a great story.
AC: Did it pop out?
DRH: [laughs] It’s just so funny. It was such an exact thing, I’m sure as people saw about this, but in Oklahoma a tractor-trailer overturned on the highway. But it wasn’t just full of Amazon packages, it was filled with dildos and lube. So there was just this entire collection like a very large sex store on the highway all of a sudden, and I thought that was such a perfect Venus-Mars square situation be bringing the Gemini. And it’s like it’s something that a transit Venus in Virgo is like, “Yes, I like doing things. But I like doing them in private.” And Mars is like, “No, you don’t.”
CB: Right. So actually that was the day of the Venus-Mars square?
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that one just… I could not stop chuckling about it, it was too good.
CB: Yeah, that’s super funny.
DRH: Yeah, it was activated by that Moon that was coming in at Mars at the same time.
AC: Okay, and that’s Saturday. That’s funny. What was I gonna say? Oh, I was just gonna say that that’s interesting because in a lot of Hellenistic texts, especially Firmicus, whenever you have Venus-Mars squares, it’s all about sexual scandal. Like, scandalous behavior or licentious rumors, right? Which is nicely framed by the way you said it, which is the private becoming public. Right? Nothing wrong with having a dildo, but you probably don’t want your collection strewn out in your driveway.
DRH: I mean, it takes a certain kind of person. Not everybody is an exhibitionist, there’s a reason why that’s a specific niche.
CB: Yeah, that’s pretty good. That’s also a little Mercury retrogradey as well in terms of Mercury retrograde in Libra. All right. Other news stories since we last checked in, of course one of the biggest news stories of the month, it was all over social media was the death of Queen Elizabeth II who is the longest reigning monarch, I guess in the world up to this point. And she, of course, like most of the British Royal Family has a time chart. So that’s kind of interesting in terms of being able to look at her chart, and some of the timing with that. I’d used her chart in my book, and it’s just kind of fascinating that she became one of the longest living monarchs with Capricorn rising and Saturn ruling the Ascendant and being conjunct the degree of the Midheaven there. But it’s also fascinating that it’s like a night chart so there’s some problems with Saturn. Saturn sometimes functions as the most difficult planet when it’s in a night chart, and when it’s connected with career significators matters and also ruling the Ascendant in the first house of self. There ended up being very large debate when she died about the royal family and past and current injustices involving colonialism and all sorts of things like that.
And I mentioned that because it’s also kind of tied in with the Mercury retrograde because since she had Capricorn rising, Libra was her 10th whole sign house, and she died just like a day or two before Mercury stationed Retrograde right up there in the 10th house. So there’s this interesting reversal in terms of what the dialogue was initially, versus it kind of getting flipped and the dialogue going in a different direction than some people expected. And then that in and of itself causing a lot of discussion and controversy.
DRH: I also find it really interesting that transiting Saturn is hanging around that Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Aquarius, which is square that natal Saturn Midheaven situation and all of these questions around what’s the worldview that allows for more monarchy and is that a worldview we’re still in?
AC: Okay, this sounds a little bit flippant and I actually don’t mean it that way, but it is interesting that, you know, the world’s most famous living monarch up till a couple of weeks ago passes and makes people think about monarchy at the same time as the new Game of Thrones spin-off has been airing. Which is literally about an incestuous monarchy that you know has fallen by the time the main show begins. Like, you’re looking back at a… You know that that dynasty is done with and so you’re checking in with them before the fall. And so there’s an inherently critical lens on that dynasty.
DRH: It’s also interesting thinking about House of the Dragon and how with the British monarchy there was already a precedent for a queen, but in the Targaryen dynasty, there’s the rejection of the possibility of a queen and how that creates tension. It’s just interesting to think about what even allowed Elizabeth II’s reign to happen.
AC: Right, Elizabeth I. Definitely.
DRH: Yeah, Elizabeth I but also Elizabeth II. Yeah, just like the…
AC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and there Nick… A couple of months ago Nick had, I don’t even remember but it was the Saturn-Uranus square that he was associating with, but he was talking about the fall of very prominent women leaders being associated– he found that historically– with the Saturn-Uranus square. Chris, am I remembering that correctly?
CB: Yeah, something like that.
AC: Yeah. I don’t know. Is this a fall? It’s certainly like a fall from life but, you know, there’s at least a resonance with that. And Saturn-Uranus are kicking right now.
CB: I think that’s a really excellent point because this is the month that Saturn Uranus, that square gets the closest again that it’s going to get in this year in the cycle that we’ve been having, the Saturn-Uranus squares. And one of the recurring things that we keep talking about that’s become our main phrase or keyword for that is something that is established that’s always been around that you just take for granted, suddenly the foundations of that crumbling and that thing disappearing. We’ve had a number of manifestations of that at different points in this year like the Roe versus Wade decision just suddenly disappearing almost overnight. There was a literal manifestation of that a year ago at the very first time of the square which is when that building in Florida just collapsed, that condo building. And here, this is something that is another sort of version of that metaphor, that same thing, which is like somebody that’s just been around literally forever. She’s been Queen forever for the longest, longer than anybody else, and it’s just sort of taken for granted at this point. And then one day suddenly she’s not and everything sort of changes or is reconfigured suddenly.
AC: Right. And her disappearance, again, brings into question the entire edifice that she was sort of anchoring. Right? And that’s often, you know, if we’re talking about Saturn-Uranus, it’s hard not to think of it as a stress test. Right? Because when something has deep structural flaws, when you give it a little bit of a shake or wiggle, it just crumbles. Other things remain fine, but they might look equally sturdy before you give them a shake. But often there’s a linchpin or a keystone, and with human structures like a royal family or the idea of a dynasty, you often have a figure or a person who is that keystone which makes the arch stable. Or the cornerstone which holds up the structural integrity of the building.
CB: Yeah, for sure. But then things did become very Game of Thrones all of a sudden where we’re talking about succession and who’s taking over next and everything else. There was even a Game of Thrones succession family tree of Queen Elizabeth’s corgis and there was a whole line of all the corgis that she had at different points in her life. It was kind of weird and kind of funny. Here’s a diagram of it. [laughs]
AC: Chris, I think you might be spending too much time online.
CB: Yeah, this is just the stuff that comes across my desk here on Twitter as I try to keep up to date with current events is she was given a corgi on her 18th birthday and then there’s a whole family line through life.
DRH: What does it say about the British Royal family that their animal of choice is corgis? It’s quite the contrast to the Targaryen dragon if we’re gonna keep making that relationship happen. [laughs]
AC: Can I make a joke about inbreeding? No, I won’t.
CB: All right, let’s see. Any other review stories from the past month before we get into October? Were there any other major news stories that we’re overlooking? I mean, I know… Well, save the economy… I mean, go ahead.
AC: Well, there’s the Russo-Ukrainian war, you know, huge developments and so Mars in Gemini. I don’t remember whether I said this with you last month, Chris, or if it was talking with some of my students. But part of the essence of Mars in Gemini is that it’s Mars as trickster, right? It’s speed and capacity for deception that decides conflicts when Mars and Gemini is in town. And the recent extremely successful offensive by the Ukrainian forces had both of these hallmarks exactly. There was a massive, we can call it a feint towards the south. And there was a commitment of forces towards the southern front. And all of the media quite intentionally by Ukrainian forces was focused on, “Oh, our southern offense is gonna be so badass and all that.” And then the real offensive came in the northeast and there were not sufficient Russian forces there, and so Ukrainian forces just smashed through line after line after line and took back. It was the largest sort of taking back of territory by Ukrainian forces that’s happened so far in this conflict, and it had the two, you know, it was literally Mars in Gemini. Like, you think righty is coming but actually it’s lefty. It was literally a massive and very successful coordinated feint. So you have the trickery, and then you also have speed. The Ukrainian forces very effectively exploited the fact that the Russian forces in the northeast were not fully ready. And so instead of just smashing through the first couple lines and then taking territory and then resetting, they just went as fast as they could and took huge amounts of territory. And this is where speed and disruptive power or military force become one. Whereas if they had exactly the same number of tanks and men and bazookas and all that but had gone slower, then they would have given the opponent time to reset and you would have had a different result. That’s something that’s been echoing for me in a lot of different ways, is the relationship between speed and destructive power. That seems like very signature Mars in Gemini.
CB: Yeah. Well, and then recently in the past couple of days, Putin has now mobilising the country of Russia for a much larger war. So one of the tricky things about that and what you’re just mentioning is the fact that Mars is in its shadow period right now, but it’s going to retrograde at the end of October and it’s gonna come back to these degrees. So some of the actions and the events that have happened now in September are going to be revisited in the future as Mars does a U-turn and comes back to see what the ramifications are of some of those actions from the past.
AC: A hundred percent right. Because it looks… You know, if you’d like the Ukrainians to retake their land, which I do, it looks good. You’re like, “Oh, that’s great.” But it’d be extremely naive to say, “Okay. Well, now the tide has turned and now it’s gonna go this way,” when we know Mars is not only going to revisit this same degree, but twice. It’s literally going to go back over this twice. So it’s like, “Oh, good, nice, you now, nice move, but dot dot dot.” Mars obviously has much more, there’s much more to come in exactly the same area.
DRH: It’s a first pass, but it’s far from the only pass.
CB: Yeah, and that’s one of the hallmarks of all retrogrades, is returning back to something sometimes. With Mercury retrogrades, sometimes it’s returning back to paperwork, or in the instance of that guy that was freed from jail, the reversal of the decision. But when it comes to Mars, sometimes that can be returning back to aggression or acts of war or things like that. Yeah, so we’ll see how that develops over the course of this winter as Mars turns retrograde at the end of October and then returns. Other news– in Mexico on September 19th there was a major earthquake. And interestingly, it took place on the anniversary the exact same day of two other major earthquakes; one from 1985 and one from 2017. So there’s something going on there in terms of the astrology and in terms of that date. One of the most regular things in terms of dates is the Sun will return back to the exact position that it was on certain days of the year in 12-month increments. So it’s possible that the Sun is hitting something in some underlying birth chart from Mexico. I don’t know if either of you looked into that to see what’s going on there.
DRH: No, I haven’t.
AC: I am looking to see if there’s a chart right now.
DRH: Are you looking for a chart for Mexico, or are you looking for a chart for those specific events?
AC: I’m looking at a chart for Mexico. Okay. So this, and again this is just on the fly, it’s giving the solar return for September 16th 1810. That’s where it’s giving the nation’s birth. It’s shortly after the solar return.
CB: Okay. So that’s a whole thing but that’s sometimes an interesting question where sometimes people have things like that of certain anniversaries where certain either positive or negative repetitions happen in their life, or just certain dates that for some reason. Even certain parts of the year. There’s some people that have a really difficult time in like early August, or there’s other people that have a really positive time around other parts of the year at certain months. And it’s always interesting to track that and see what the reason for that is in a given either birth chart especially, but also sometimes in inception charts or other mundane charts.
AC: Yeah, definitely. My dad some years ago said to me, “Well, I’m not sure about all this astrology stuff, but I can tell you that almost all of the important things that have ever happened to me are end of May and then on into June.” And he has five planets in Gemini. So, that’s the Sun hitting more than half of the chart every year. I was like, “Yeah, Dad. It’s because you got your Moon and your Saturn and Uranus and the Mercury and Venus.” But yeah, that’s something you can note even without a chart.
DRH: One thing that I am noticing as I just [stacked] these three September 19ths is that for the first two, Mars is in Virgo. And then for this last one, Mars is in Gemini, basically aspecting that same place in Virgo.
CB: Okay, so something sensitive in mutable signs, then.
DRH: Mmmh.
CB: Nice. Okay, that’s interesting. Yeah. Well, I hope everyone’s okay there. All right, other news stories. Another new story is I saw this thing as part of the ongoing Jupiter-Neptune conjunction, which happened really earlier this year in Pisces, but there was some important stuff that we knew was started back then but we couldn’t fully see it yet but I’m starting to see the emergence more and more of the importance of these artificially generated images and different websites that are being set up for this. But there was this one news story really recently, it was in Ars Technica, and the title was artists begin selling AI-generated artwork on stock photography sites. So some of these websites where you can just generate images out of a prompt by just typing. And what’s funny and why I think it’s tied with Jupiter-Neptune in addition to the symbolism is that in one of them, you type “forward slash imagine” and then you write out a scenario, and then the computer will take those concepts and meld them together into a single one. It’s starting to cause some issues, though, with people submitting some of these artistic creations or these computer-generated creations for competitions in art shows. And I think there was one that won an art show recently, which caused some controversy and some debates about what is true artwork, and now it’s also causing some debates about whether this will put certain artists out of work or sort of decimate this entire industry of people that make stock photography for different sites that you can purchase. And a lot of interesting questions like that. As for myself, I’ve been playing with it and entering in some prompts. Like my latest prompt, I’m trying to get and I need some more refining, but it’s “Austin Copic riding a peacock of war.” And this is what I got so far, Austin. I don’t think there’s enough images right now for the website. You don’t have enough images online in order for it to fully picture you so I’m gonna have to keep working on this. But these are some of the images so far looking pretty good, I have to say. The peacock is looking a little weird but if you were to ride a peacock, I do feel like this would be pretty close to the terrifying vibe that you would give off in some way.
DRH: Really needs more tail, though. Not enough tail.
AC: It’s true. Well, thank you, Chris. I’ll probably have to change one of my profile pictures to that.
CB: This one’s one of my favorites, this is big one.
DRH: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, it has almost like a heron’s head.
CB: Yeah, it’s struggling sometimes. There’s little turkey-ish at this point, I have to say, some of them. But that’s alright, I’ll keep working on it.
DRH: Peacocks are basically beautiful turkeys and they will integrate into turkey flocks.
AC: A hundred percent. We have a flock of wild turkeys in the yard, and so
DRH: They’re so aggro. They’re so aggro. What I was gonna say is the Jupiter-Neptune combination is reminding me of the aniline dyes thing from the last Jupiter-Neptune in Pisces and how that allowed for manufacturing colors in a whole different way, and then it turns out that a lot of those manufacturing processes are toxic. And so I’m really curious to see how this AI art thing, how that translates into helpfulness versus toxicity in terms of art production and what is the significance of art? Those sorts of questions I think are already in the ether, but I feel like… I don’t know, like something about… It’s like when you’re regulating something because it’s physically toxic, what does it mean to regulate something because it’s culturally suss?
AC: Yeah. Or a cognitive hazard.
CB: Yeah. The issue with Neptune often is that you can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake. And that’s increasingly going to become an issue here I can see immediately of being able to generate images where in some instances it’s not fully there yet, but you might not be able to distinguish between one that was computer generated versus what’s a real image.
DRH: As well as what is authorship? If all art can be theoretically considered to be some level of pastiche, does it become an issue when it’s a computer that is making those pastiches or those sort of collages?
CB: Yeah. Well, and that’s actually being debated right now because there’s nothing on the law books, and so some people are saying the copyright belongs to the human that input the things that generated the image. But other people are actually saying that the computer itself, the AI itself, should actually have ownership or copyright over the image, which is really interesting getting into some nebulous territory in terms of the emergence of AI and everything like that over the course of the next few decades or century potentially.
DRH: Yeah, who counts as a person?
AC: And that sort of jumps us ahead to one of the significant things at the end of the month which is Jupiter returning to Pisces and really beginning that second round of Jupiter-Neptune in Pisces energy, where we have bubbles of… It’s not illusion, illusion is a really simple thing because you know it’s fake, with Neptune you’re really riding the line. Is it art or isn’t it? I don’t know. As an aesthetic object, it’s an aesthetic object. Is it this? Is it that? Neptune’s really that undecided place, and so we’re just in time to sort of come back to that.
DRH: That’s reality. I really liked Leisa Schaim tweeted something about hopium as a portmanteau for the Jupiter-Neptune reentering into co-presence. I feel like that’s applicable to this AI art, a lot of people are really excited about it, but also a whole bunch of other things where it’s just like, “if we think enough positive thoughts, maybe it’ll be amazing,” kind of thing.
AC: Right, where hopium bleeds into copium.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: That’s funny because there’s a bunch of painters and artists that are terrified of it, of just the potential for it at the same time. So that’s a thing, so that’s a good point that Jupiter is going to retrograde, that’s one of our signatures at the very end of the month back into Pisces. So this is stuff that we’re probably going to be talking about more and more intensely over the course of the next couple of months as we get the final pass of that planet in Pisces. So any other news stories before, I think we’re already like getting into October, so should we make the transition into talking about next month?
DRH: One last news story that I think is worth pointing out because it does seem to tie into the ongoing Saturn- Uranus square, which is the situation in Puerto Rico right now after this recent hurricane. And that meaning that there’s no power in Puerto Rico right now. I’m reminded of what happened in Texas over the winter and just no power. The power grid’s failing because of in part natural disasters intersecting with infrastructure not being what it should be. So even going back to that, you take a certain kind of structure for granted, but then there’s a stress test and there’s a realization that that structure is not as robust as it ostensibly should be, it’s not up to snuff for current pressures.
AC: Yeah, totally. And also from what I understand about the power grid in Puerto Rico, there were stress tests several years ago and it failed, and then no money got put into strengthening it. And so that’s another thing, there can also be known fragilities which as long as things go just fine, then they’ll be fine. But as soon as there’s stress, which there always will be, then they fall apart again, the poorly maintained infrastructure or non-upgraded, non-repaired, etc.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely. It’s heartbreaking to see the consequences of not getting… I always forget, am I allowed to cuss on this?
CB: Go nuts.
DRH: Okay. Yeah, just not getting shit together and kind of murderous negligence as far as I’m concerned.
AC: Good phrase.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good phrase. And that’s probably a good way to center the opening of the month since this is pretty much where we’re at at October 1st with that Saturn-Uranus square being within a degree at this point, and Saturn being at 18 degrees of Aquarius and Uranus being at 18 degrees of Taurus. So that’s super close at this point, and we’ll probably see a continuation of similar things in terms of stress tests, which sometimes is the rumbling of the foundations of something. But if the foundations are relatively strong, it holds up. But if they’re not strong, then in some instances things will potentially fall apart or the ground can kind of fall out underneath you, Saturn being the foundation and Uranus being the sudden jolt or the sudden disruption that sort of comes out of nowhere.
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
DRH: I know we want to move forward, but because we’re already talking about floody stuff, the floods in Pakistan also I feel like are of a similar category.
CB: Yeah, which is just massive, massive flooding that’s displaced millions of people.
DRH: Millions of people, and basically it looks like there’s a new inland sea.
CB: Right, yeah. That is crazy and tragic and also very sudden and random and kind of out of nowhere and very Uranian to have something like that happen and just completely change the landscape like that. All right. Well, I think that sets us up then for going into October because we’ve got a pretty big month. There’s a lot of major astrological things starting to fall into place in October, especially later in the month. So why don’t we make the transition to getting into that now. All right, so really quickly, here again for the video viewers is the calendar. And we’re going to start out talking about at the beginning of the month the thing that happens right away on the very second day of October, which is Mercury has retrograded back into Virgo and it will station direct on October 2nd at about 24 degrees of Virgo. And this is an interesting placement of course, because this is almost within a degree exactly opposite to Neptune now, which is at 23 degrees of Pisces. So we open the month with Mercury stationing direct in Virgo, which is normally supposed to be sort of a clarifying or moving forward or grounding type in terms of communications energy. But for some reason we have this mysterious, elusive kind of energy opposing Mercury at the same time. And if that wasn’t enough, we also have Mars squaring Mercury from 20 degrees of Gemini at the same time which is more of a combative or tense energy as well.
DRH: Plus the trine with Pluto I think is really interesting too.
CB: Okay, yeah, trine from Pluto at 26 degrees of Capricorn to Mercury at 24. So what are some of our keywords for that Mercury station at the beginning of the month? It’s like moving forward, but not quite with full clarity yet maybe for the first week or so until Mercury gets out of Virgo and moves into Libra.
AC: Well, so with its stationing and its exaltation, the motive is to obtain clarity and ideally factual clarity about very nebulous things or about things that have been obscured or undecided. Neptune is that obscuring, ambivalent, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that. And so it’s Mercury staring right at that Neptune and trying to get the facts or trying to extract and dry out what can be extracted. And then we also have Mercury is not only configured to Mars, but is also ruling Mars. So Mercury is at least desiring to get clarity about the ordering of conflicts. Sometimes Mars is literal conflicts, but a lot of times Mars is just, especially in an air sign, it’s just the storm of all the stuff that’s happening that you need to do or that you’re getting pulled to do, but Mercury is trying very hard and has… In some ways an ideal is coming at it from an ideal like, “No, we’re going to get perfect clarity, we’re going to get all this figured out,” and that’ll be hampered by Neptune especially. But that’s at least the attempt, and I think that’s going to be the vibe.
DRH: Yeah. Kind of the vibe I’m getting from it is sort of oneiromancy, trying to scry in clouds. Or maybe even trying to get fog contained enough to be able to see what shapes it’s taking on, and from those shapes to derive meaning. There’s a kind of what is the form of… What’s the form of divination that actually ends up being functional? How do you see into the meaning of something? But it’s also like, how do you interpret the words of the Delphic Oracle who’s just like high on fumes and saying nonsense? But it’s nonsense that’s significant if you know how to interpret it.
AC: Right. And like with every form of divination, fire divination or hydromancy by water or by cloud, if you look at old texts, it’s actually very Mercury and Virgo. It’s like, “Okay.” And so if the flame tends slightly to the right and there’s this color three-quarters the way up the flame, then that means this. Or if there are spiraling swirls in the cloud, that means this, like that. Not an intuitive divination, but a very attempting to be precise in reading something that doesn’t speak a language easily translated.
DRH: Yeah. I’m even thinking about dream horary interpretation here, where it’s just like, what are the rules that lead to making sense of going to the grocery store with Madonna and Barack Obama and you can’t find the cheese? You cast a dream horary and maybe you get meaning out of what otherwise would be nonsense. But it’s like there’s an urgency to it. The Mars in Gemini, I feel like there’s an urgency, and maybe also, how do you sift the noise out so that you can see what actually matters? It’s like there’s a bunch of chitter chatter like birds, there’s birds singing, and you’re like, “I’m not doing bird divination right now. I’m trying to do this other form of meaning-making,” but you got to get the birds to shut up first.
AC: Right. What does the cheese mean?
DRH: Yeah. Is it Manchego or cheddar?
CB: Right, that’s a big difference.
AC: I think the chatter is really important because the Mars in Gemini has been creating a lot of noise. And any form of divination is separating the signal from the noise and then interpreting the signal. And in a weirdly on-the-nose way, Mars has been in my 12th in Gemini, and so I’ve been having just garbage dreams, where it’s just all noise. Sometimes it’s entertaining noise, and I wake up, I’m like, “Oh, this doesn’t mean anything.” I had a dream, I think, right after Mars entered Gemini that Kate had sent out a panicked bulletin to her mailing list because she was really concerned about the Dervish community within astrologers, and then had this sort of sad retrospective of astrologers, like almost a Sally Struthers thing. And I was like, “What is Kate doing? What’s going on with the Dervish community within astrology?” And I was like, “What does that mean?” I was like, “I don’t know. I think it’s literally just Mercury or Mars in Gemini noise.” No offense to any astrologers who are Dervishes, it’s just strange. And all I could get from that was like, “Oh, I think I’m just picking up Mars in Gemini.” The notable practice of a Dervish is to spin, and that’s so Mars in Gemini, that spinning the air to the point that it’s destructive. That’s what’s storm, that’s what hurricanes are, that’s what tornadoes are, to get air to its optimal destructive. Or in the case of the Dervish practice, optimally spiritual, where you’ve got one point of stillness in the middle of it, but otherwise air when you spin it it becomes destructive.
DRH: This is reminding me of what we were talking about earlier before we started recording of once you get enough movement or enough potency, enough noise, then stillness can kind of come in, I’m even thinking about white noise machines. At what point do you maybe just actually need to turn the volume up on the white noise so that the signal can be discerned versus trying to turn the white noise down and not being able to because it’s Mars in Gemini.
CB: That makes sense. Speaking of that and Mercury stationing direct in Virgo, I just released the Virgo episode in my series on the signs of the zodiac yesterday, and that might be a good occasion to just mention really briefly since Mercury is going to be in Virgo in this first week of the month, what are some of the significations that the two of you are keywords that each of you associate with Virgo?
DRH: Pens.
CB: Pens? Penmanship?
DRH: Notebooks.
CB: Writing.
DRH: Writing. I feel like this was a few years ago during Mercury in Virgo, everybody was sharing little videos of how they write the glyphs on Twitter. That feels like a very Virgo thing. Discernment, spreadsheets.
CB: Yeah, numbers, putting things in order was one of the major things that we came up with during the course of that episode, a Virgo overarching archetype is the tendency or the desire to order things and arrange them in a certain fashion.
AC: Yeah. I think in terms of thinking about the world, Mercury in Virgo, especially in this configuration, is a strong call to return to what facts you have and to abandon the narratives at least temporarily and go back to the facts and then see what patterns are there rather than just assuming, rather than just throwing the little fact pebbles into a water bucket of narrative, but drying it all out and being like, “Okay, what is the actual pattern between all these things before reconstituting a narrative?”
DRH: Yeah. I feel like there’s something about seeing the structure that’s there rather than imposing structure upon something that might not be ready to be structured yet. And I’m reminded, Cam Allen at NORWAC this year presented a lecture on embodied astrology. And one of the things that I really liked that he shared resonates with something I talk about with my Virgo clients, Virgo risings especially, which is Virgos push towards perfection, which in a less useful form is attempting to create perfection, but in a more useful form is attempting to perceive the perfection that is already there and allow that perfection to come through. So really good editing is not about changing everything that’s been written, but allowing the sharp part of what’s written to really sing. And so especially thinking about this period of Mercury in Virgo opposite Neptune, it’s like this seems imperfect, it feels intangible, it’s not coherent enough, but can I see the way in which this has purpose and function in its own way and then can imply that, can I enact that maybe through Mars in potentially quite profound ways if we look at the trine to Pluto?
CB: Yeah, because there’s a depth, and like you said, a profundity to that trine with Pluto and Mercury.
DRH: Yeah.
AC: Yeah. It makes me think of the subtractive method of working in sculpture where you see you’re like, “Oh, this stone wants to look like an elephant,” and so you remove everything that’s keeping it from perfectly resembling an elephant.
DRH: Yeah. I’m going to have to send you a link or something later, but there’s this incredible wood carver I know from Instagram, but he makes these epic wooden spoons that are just amazing. But he’ll talk about wood carving, it’s just like, “This one wanted to be three foxes leaping around each other,” and his job was just to remove the wood that was in the way of the foxes.
AC: Nice.
CB: I love that because that’s such a… I was watching somebody who used a chainsaw recently to carve out in a log a sloth or something. And there’s no really rooms for mistakes with that because you just have what you work with and you start cutting things away from it. But if you kind of mess up, you can’t go back or erase it or something like that or it’s kind of hard to.
DRH: That’s the Mars in Gemini there. Maybe we can even think about the Saturn trine to Mars within that little configuration of Saturn’s like, “Cool your jets, but here’s your chainsaw.”
AC: Yeah. So this makes me think of a friend that I had back in college who had a lot of Virgo placements and who I worked with on the school paper. He was the layout editor, and he was let’s just say a perfectionistic to the point that it took him four times as long as it should have to layout the paper. And I was sort of making fun of him because he also liked carpentry. And I was talking about him sanding a table leg and it just wasn’t right and it wasn’t right and just sanding it until it broke. And he kind of blushed and looked sheepish and he’s like, “I’ve actually done that.” So the subtractive method has its own dangers.
CB: Yeah. Speaking of subtractive method, I had this period I forgot to mention last forecast when Mars was going through my fourth, and I just had this sudden urge to just get rid of a bunch of things that were kind of cluttering up my home and living situation. And it was a really distinct vivid example of the positive function of Mars sometimes in subtracting or taking away things, but how that can sometimes be a necessary process, the cutting away or the getting rid of or sometimes even the burning away of things as almost like purifying or simplifying process. So that might be good to keep in mind because there’s going to be some of that tendency here, we’re talking a lot about the Mars-Neptune opposition and Mercury’s going to want to be moving forward and trying to fix or rectify some things or potential issues or where things may have gone awry with certain projects. It’s still going to be moving slow for the first week, so that might be a slow process moving forward and there may be some nebulousness to it. But you also have that Mars element, so we have to bring in also the potential for some conflict or some stresses or tensions as part of that process at the same time that are being imposed on Mercury in some way. And sometimes that can be or it seems like that can be kind of a stressful process for that first week until Mercury gets clear of Virgo and moves into Libra.
AC: Okay. Well, if we’re doing this sort of subtractive method with the chainsaw Mercury, Mars, we’re doing that in the Neptune cloud, and chainsaws and Neptune are not the best combination.
CB: Yeah, it’s like putting a blindfold on and then wielding a chainsaw.
AC: Yeah. And so in the comments Timothy cited the old axiom, measure twice, cut once, I think that’s exactly it.
DRH: Yeah. I was going to say the image that was coming to mind while you were speaking, Chris, is trying to weed or take down a tree from a bog, trying to remove a dead tree from a swamp, but it’s really mucky and there’s also lots of mosquitoes. How do you get through that kind of frustration? The mosquitoes being Mars in Gemini. Get the fuck out of my way, I’m trying to do something here. And also you couldn’t be doing it faster because the mud is sucking at your boots.
CB: Yeah, exactly. And sometimes you just have to go at that pace and take one step at a time and deal with the stings of the little things that are coming up trying to attack you or slow you down in the process, which could be mosquitoes or could be people or comments or social media or something like that, texts or tech issues. Because especially the Mercury in Gemini and some of the significations we’ve started to see some of that coming up as Mars has been moving through its shadow, which it actually just started. It went into on September 3rd when it passed over eight degrees of Gemini because that’s the degree that it will later retro back to. And I actually had a graphic I wanted to show for that which just shows the pre-retrograde shadow dates once it passed eight degrees of Gemini in early September, then when the Mars retrograde will station on October 30th, eventually end on January 12th, and then eventually Mars will leave its post-retrograde shadow period on March 15th. So it’s just this whole process, but this process really ramps up this month. And some of the Mars in Gemini significations that we’ve been seeing over the past month since early September are probably going to only become more prominent here in the near future. Yeah, all right. So that is the Mercury retrograde which stations direct on the second of the month. Speaking of that, we also have Pluto stationing retrograde in Capricorn, and I know, Diana, that you already mentioned Pluto and how it’s configured with Mercury. So it’s interesting that we have that sort of elongated trine between those two planets this month and that that’s actually going to be intensified as Pluto stations retrograde.
DRH: Yeah. And actually that trine goes exact on the sixth. So while both Mercury and Pluto are in these slow states, there is an exact trine between them. The first one of these trines in this shape at least, this configuration, happened on August 22nd or August 2nd, I can’t read my notes right now. And then the second one happened on September 27th. So by the time this happens in October, it’s going to be the third of three trines between them.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah, you’re right, August 22nd it looks like was the first one at 26 Virgo to 26 Capricorn. So Mercury-Pluto stuff, we’ve seen some of that over the past couple of years, Mercury-Pluto combinations, especially hard ones being things like disclosures, having information that was behind the scenes having it come out, but also just the deep desire to get to the bottom of things or get to the truth of something or the bottom, the hidden part of something. So that’s an energy that’s definitely going to be intensified around October 7th. By that point, Mercury will finally be getting not fully clear, but a little bit clear of that opposition with Neptune. So might want to be still a little careful that in the process or the quest to find the truth or get to the bottom of something that there’s not something else that’s still obscuring your vision or your ability to see things clearly.
DRH: Watch out for projections.
CB: That’s a good one. Yeah, projections, especially oppositions have that tendency to bring in the other and not just in other people, but in othering of things just as a natural part of that aspect. So projection would be actually a really good example or manifestation of that.
DRH: Yeah. Oh, and someone’s making note, Pluto will be stationing direct not retrograde.
CB: Oh right, yeah, of course. I was actually wondering about that in the graphic, because I just did the electional charts for next year, and Pluto’s going to be in Aquarius early next year, and that’s a huge, huge shift. But that makes sense, so this is the final station at least before it moves into Aquarius early next year.
AC: Although, it’s back and forth between Capricorn and Aquarius for a couple years. It’s not a final move, it’s the beginning of a slow back and forth.
DRH: It’s like, “I moved some of my stuff last month and I’m going to move the rest of my stuff in six months and then the month after that I’ll go empty out my storage unit,” it’s a process.
CB: Yeah, but it’s like you’re the person with the house and you’re like, “I actually didn’t agree to this relationship and I don’t know why you’re moving your stuff into my place.” That’s me with Aquarius rising and Pluto saying they’re moving their stuff in over the next two decades.
DRH: You can handle it, Chris. As somebody who’s handled it for your entire adult life, I think you can handle it.
CB: Yeah, as the Capricorn rising, all right, I’ll give you a break.
AC: You’re just going to become goth. You’re going to have the coal black eye makeup and–
DRH: Start wearing corpse paint.
AC: Yeah, you’ll get paler.
CB: Yeah. So you’re saying my usual effervescent self and personality that I might have to tone that down a little bit for the next decade.
DRH: You might switch from champagne to fernet.
CB: All right, I’ll see what I can do. You have another joke?
AC: Astro goth seems like a legitimate subculture of goth. I mean there are 10 different kinds. I feel like astro goth is really waiting for you, Chris. I mean, I’ve been astro goth on the inside the whole time, but…
DRH: On the inside?
CB: Yeah, that’s true.
AC: It leaks out sometimes, but…
CB: I mean, the peacocks behind you have definitely lightened the mood over the past month or two, I have to say that.
AC: I’m trying to throw people off the trail.
CB: All right. So going back to the calendar, let’s talk about our first lunation of the month, which is this Full Moon in the sign of Aries which takes place on the 9th of October. So let me show the chart for that, there it is. The Sun will be at about 16 degrees of Libra and the Moon will oppose it from 16 degrees of Aries. And one of the interesting things about this Full Moon is it’s going to be one of the last Full Moons in Aries that isn’t an eclipse for a while because we’re going to start switching over next year, the nodes are going to shift into Libra and Aries and we’re going to start getting eclipses in that axis pretty quick here, which is kind of surprising how soon that’s coming up.
DRH: Yeah, it’s actually really cool. In Aries season there’s an uneclipsed New Moon in Aries, and then there’s an eclipsed New Moon in Aries, and it’s all in the same Aries season.
CB: That’s really cool.
DRH: That’s in the future but yeah, I’m actually really excited about it.
CB: So we get a double lunation in that month, and then one of them is going to be an eclipse?
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Okay. So this one, before we get into eclipses, it’s got some nice benefic action going on. Venus is right there at 13 degrees of Libra conjoining the Sun at 16 and Jupiter is still co-present with the Moon in the sign of Aries at 1 degree of Aries. That’s a little positive in terms of lunations compared to some of the other more heavy lunations this year or even the ones later this month and especially in November where we’ve got much more either outer planet action with Uranus going on or like hard aspect with Mars and Saturn and different things like that.
DRH: This one is also interesting because not only is it in a spectral relationship with Venus and Jupiter, it’s also an aspect to Saturn and Mars. It splits the trine between them so it’s sextile both malefics.
CB: Yeah, so it’s got flowing aspects of a sextile with Saturn and a sextile with Mars and the Full Moon is actually ruled by that Mars, which is slowing down at this point to station retrograde in Gemini at the end of the month. How do you feel about this lunation, Austin? Are you feeling positive things? It’s looking a little bit light compared to other ones this year?
AC: Yeah, that’s about as good as we’re going to get for the rest of this year. We’re better than we’re going to get. Yeah, the Moon and the Sun both being co-present with benefics is really nice. We should maybe talk a little bit about Venus in the Sun as a separate topic because they traveled together for most of the month, that double benefic action with the Sun in the Moon. But in aspect to Saturn and Mars soft aspect is, I don’t know, it’s about as good, as I said, it’s about as good an opportunity to equilibrate your relationships, your relationship to the ongoing pressures and pushes, like they’re there, they are in aspect that you can see them in the light of the Full Moon, but from a workable angle in all cases.
So I would say as I’ve said before, this lunation and the days following it are a really good chance to get things in as much order and obtain as much balance as possible because what we’re going into over the next month is pretty destabilizing and so you can’t necessarily do challenges in advance, but you can set yourself up so that things are at least as together as they can be. The hatches can be battened down. You can at least remember to wear underwear to the stressful interview.
DRH: The image that was coming to mind for me is like it feels like a harmonizing and a tuning, but it’s like before a big something. It’s like I don’t know… I used to be a chamber musician back in the day, used to play cello. Before a big performance of some kind, it’s like you get your final opportunity to iron out any kinks in transitions or volume balance issues as well as the actual tuning of the instruments and that moment of just like we’re all on the same page, we’re all sufficiently prepared for this. Also, like what if one of our strings breaks or somebody’s bow dissolves? That’s always a possibility. But this is like that tuning moment. And maybe it’s like looking at the upcoming eclipse season, part of that preparation is having the backup bow, having backup strings, maybe even having a backup instrument so that whenever you get to like the wedding venue, you’re not completely fucked.
AC: That’s a really good image.
CB: Yeah. One of the things since this is a Full Moon in Aries that we’ve talked about a lot this year and that I’ve seen coming more to the forefront with Aries is just speed and quickness and a desire for things to move fast and beat straight into the point sometimes to the extent of being overly abrupt or being course or other keywords like that, but having a Full Moon where things are culminating and the Moon is really reaching the peak of its light in Aries just reminds me that the pace of things kicking up and starting to move faster at this point from October 9th forward.
AC: Yeah, and I think it’s for those whose spirits have been diminished by recent months or recent years. With the Moon there in the middle Deccan and with Jupiter in the same sign, there’s really a courageous and upright and virile or energized quality to it. It’s energized but in a very upright like you can do this and you can do this in a way that accords with your ideals. That middle Deccan of Aries you can see a face of that in the Three of Wands, which is the… You see the back of the person holding the one like looking out. It has to do with doing things in a way that you’ll be proud of and in a way that inspires others, but through example rather than through words. I think a little shot of that might be nice.
One of the things that I wanted to talk about this month that’s really a lot of the month that this Full Moon pings and intrudes upon in a good way is that we have a lot of air. There’s a very strong elemental dominance of air throughout much of the month. We have Venus and the Sun for the first three weeks in Libra. Mars is in Gemini the whole time. Saturn’s in Aquarius the whole time. I believe it’s the day after the Full Moon, we get Mercury in Libra. So we have a minimum of four of the seven visible planets and then the Moon or whatever, it’s an air sign that brings it to five out of seven. Then when Mercury is in Libra and the Moon’s in an air sign that it’s six out of seven visible planets in air signs.
That dominance of one particular element I think gives us a lot to think about in terms of what does the environment look like and how does it feel? Because the elements all have very definite patterns. There’s the like hot and cold, wet and dry, but air is very centrifugal. We’ve talked about air spinning, air scatters things. If you leave, you’ve ever raked leaves in the fall in a gust of wind, the gust of wind will never collect the leaves into a perfect pile. It’s scattering and centrifugal. Especially with two of those planets in neuroscience the whole month being in air, we’re looking at a more destructive air with them being malefics. Just on a mental level I’ve felt the Mars in Gemini threatened to scatter my priorities, scatter my thoughts. A number of other people I’ve talked to have had this where it’s like there are 50 things going on and you get pulled in every direction.
The air and the scattering also seem to flatten priorities. So you can’t remember what was the important thing, you just have 50 things and you’re dashing from one to another. Where we’re going in October is just more and more of that and so navigating this high wind gusty environment seems like an important thing to contemplate.
DRH: Yeah, this has actually reminded me one of the cool things about Libra season this year and Aries season next year is bookended by two New Moons. This Libra season is bookended by Cazimis. It begins with a Mercury Cazimi, which if you’re listening to a recording that already happened probably that’s about to happen if you’re watching this live, then the end of Libra season is that Sun-Venus-Cazimi. So thinking about the air dominance, but also thinking about that wait, that solar purification wait in Libra specifically I think is really interesting in terms of not just dispersal as in like things are scattered, but also dispersal in terms of hierarchies being flattened. Like you just said, it’s like what is actually important in terms of a priority structure. But also, maybe that’s a worthwhile thing to be exploring if the things that have been priorities aren’t genuine priorities, if we’re thinking about it from the perspective of Libra.
AC: Yeah, I’m so glad you brought up the Cazimis because that ties back into what we were talking about in the beginning, which is so you have rotating air which scatters and destroys, but then you have the calm center. That’s exactly what a Cazimi as a planet exactly conjunct the Sun, like it’s a calm moment. Whether it’s in the middle of a retrograde or direct it’s still like a moment of deep centeredness for that planet.
CB: Yeah, so this brings up on… There’s going to be a tonal change later in the month when the Sun and Venus pretty much simultaneously move into the sign of Scorpio on the 23rd. That’s when the month shifts and gets a lot more heavy around that time, that weekend. But before that time, we have the Sun and Venus transiting through the sign of Libra together and pretty heavy Libra energy for most of the first three quarters of the month, the first half of the month up to that point. I wanted to ask both of you about some significations for Libra.
On the recent Virgo episode, one of the contrasts we came up with between Virgo versus Libra energy was the different choice of styles between Virgo energy is more like people that arrange their bookshelves according to subject or the Dewey Decimal System or author or something, some sort of like rational ordering system like that, versus I recently saw somebody’s library where they arranged it according to just like color and just the color of the bookshelves or the book covers themselves so that there wasn’t like an informational desire to organize things, but instead it was organized according to the aesthetics of how it looked basically. I think that’s a very Libra energy-type thing.
AC: Yeah. I would add that I think that Libra will leave the ordering of the books on the bookshelf to Virgo, but instead be much more concerned about where the bookshelf is relative to the desk and relative to the door and relative to the lamp and like the relationship between all of those things and how that creates the room.
DRH: Yeah, spatial relationship is one of the things I definitely think about with Libra because like we’re thinking about air, but we’re also thinking about I mean balance is like the default keyword but that’s literally what it’s about. It’s like, does this have a balanced appearance? Is this going to be sufficiently cohesive for all of the parts that are playing into creating the whatever it is to do that in a way that is pleasing?
One of the things I think about Libra is constellations, where we have Leo and so much of the focus is on the individual star. But with Libra, it’s about how those individual stars are arranged relative to one another, what is their spatial relationship towards the creation of something that is greater than the sum of parts?
AC: Yeah, it’s definitely like [inaudible] or holes or any, if you think about like a literal set of scales, to get them to balance, they don’t need to have exactly the same thing on each side. You can be like, “Okay, well, I’ve got this which weighs a pound, I’ve got this which weighs a pound and a half, and I’ve got this which weighs half a pound.” That’s balance. Gemini is more interested in symmetry whereas Libra is more interested in balanced asymmetry. Perfect symmetry is actually not what Libra is going for, but it’s a balance of asymmetrical elements.
DRH: Yeah, that’s how I chose the art that is behind me on the wall. Things aren’t identical, but they’re balanced.
AC: Yeah, yeah. I would also add just that balance is an ideal or is a static state. But in a, as we say, in a dynamic world, it never holds. Libra is more interested and spends much more time engaged in balancing as a verb where it’s like, okay, so this other life through another item on one side. What can I do to rebalance it? That’s an ongoing engaged process, rather than just like you get it balanced and there it is.
DRH: It reminds me of Libra is cardinal so it’s like the enacting of balance. It’s not the fixity and it’s also not mutable in the sense of like wishy-washy, which I think is one of the stereotypes that Libra gets. It’s not wishy-washy from the perspective of can’t make up its mind. It’s wishy-washy in the sense of it’s really hard to discern what the most balanced action is going to be. But it really is about that enacting of harmony. It’s like you have to retune your instrument. Even a dancer has to tune their body consistently in order to enact the dance, that kind of thing.
AC: Yeah, after and before every performance.
CB: Well, you’re both saying it reminds me of, I don’t know if you’ve seen those videos or those pictures of people that go into like a river and they find all these different sized rocks and then they balance them in different ways on top of each other. But sometimes the different rocks are wildly different proportions but somehow, they find a way to make it all fit together and not topple over just through time and effort and just focusing on that notion of finding the balance between disparate objects.
AC: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I would say like back to what you were saying about the reputation for wishy-washy, Diana, what I see with Libra is when they don’t know how much everything weighs, they’re like, but I can’t do it yet. You decide or give me some information. The stereotypical thing being like don’t ask the Libra where all six of you should eat for dinner because they would need to know exactly what everyone’s tastes are and in what mood they’re in. And if they had all that, then they could do the perfect balance. But because they don’t have all that information, it’s an overload of variables and there’s like a circuit fry.
DRH: Right, it’s like executing a perfect dinner party because you know who everyone is, you know what their dietary restrictions are. All of them are your best friends so you also know generally speaking probably what they’re going to be in the mood for with all of that information. best dinner party you’ve ever gone to. But without that information, the restaurant like the external restaurant is an uncontrolled variable. What if it’s too loud? What if there’s screaming children? What if it’s understaffed? What if the special is terrible? That’s not controlled, but like the dinner party is a container within which Libra can enact the creation of harmony.
CB: I like that. That really brings in the air, the social dynamic of Libra in a really interesting way.
AC: Yeah, I know a Libra who throws excellent dinner parties, but doesn’t like to pick the restaurant for people.
CB: So all of this is going to become much more prominent and important around the time of that Full Moon, but especially the day after. Because the day after Mercury departs from Virgo and enters back into Libra after the retrograde on the 10th of October. So then we’re going to have three planets transiting through Libra over the course of the next week, week and a half before the shift to Scorpio around the 23rd. That might be a good time to mention the electional chart that we have for the month that Leisa Schaim and I picked out because it actually focuses on that stellium of planets in Libra and it makes it the focal point.
The electional chart for this month is set for October 17th, 2022 starting around 6:00 in the morning, so a bit before sunrise when the Ascendant is around, let’s say 8 degrees of Libra. What you’ll end up with is a Libra rising chart with Venus, the Sun and Mercury in Libra in the first whole sign house and Venus is in its own sign, it’s in its domicile of Libra and it’s also of the sect favorites, the most benefic planet in the chart, because this is a night chart. We’ve got the Moon up there in Cancer and its own domicile in the 10th house, and it’s applying to a square with Venus. Then we’ve got Jupiter over in the 7th whole sign house, making it another angular benefic while the malefics are not occupying focal points in this chart.
This is basically a super Libra electional chart that would be very good for Venusia-type activities, including art, creating balance, and a lot of the other keywords that we’ve just been talking about over the course of the past few minutes. What are some other Libra election type things or Venus type electional things that you use for Venus elections?
DRH: I’m looking at this and being like, “Oh, am I going to finally write another edition of my extremely tiny perfume focused, tiny letter?” I’m looking at this and thinking about what does it mean to choose to articulate beauty and especially to articulate a form of ephemeral beauty. This isn’t about sculpture. This is about that which is temporal.
CB: What does it mean to articulate temporal beauty? I like that. That’s really good. Yeah, so that is our lucky date for this month. That’s the best electional chart we could find. Leisa and I actually just finished our year ahead report, which I’m actually releasing the day that we’re recording this episode, and that’s our 2023 Electional Astrology Report where we looked ahead at the entire year of 2023. We picked that one auspicious electional chart and we found the single best electional chart we could find for you each of the next 12 months. That’s the report we’ve been doing for the past two years. It’s become really popular and it’s now available for sale. You can purchase it on our website at theastrologypodcast.com/2023report. Check out that for more information. Have either of you looked ahead at elections for next year? There’s actually some nice lineups next year. I’m excited about it.
AC: Not a lot. I did want to say one thing about the election you just showed. I’d like to second the idea of a literary or artistic work that that chart that you showed has a combination of Venus and Mercury and Jupiter qualifies for a Sarasvati yoga, which is literally a combination which is good for literary and artistic work.
DRH: If anybody has Sphere + Sundry Quiksilver Tongue, it might be a friend on that day.
CB: It’s really funny that you mentioned because I’m actually releasing a book using this election on that day. I’m not going to announce it quite yet like the details surrounding it, but everyone will see towards the middle of the month.
AC: Good choice.
CB: Yeah, all right. That is the electional chart. This is like the nice, warm center of the month that’s very calm and we have a lot of beautiful things going on and a little balance, social interactions and things like that. But at a certain point in the month, things start getting a little bit more dicey. We’ve got a bit of a tonal shift just after the time of that Sun-Venus conjunction and around the time of Saturn stationing direct and the Sun and Venus moving into Scorpio, which you can see all kinds of clusters up around that weekend of the 22nd and 23rd. Then immediately after that, we’re heading into the solar eclipse in Scorpio on the 25th. I think it might be a good time to start talking about that shift at this point in the episode.
AC: The last 10 days of the month are totally different than the previous three weeks.
DRH: It’s really interesting to notice because as Austin pointed out earlier, Venus and the Sun moves together basically all month. So it’s like on the 11th we have Sun trine Saturn, on the 13th we have Venus trine Saturn, on the 17th we have Sun trine Mars, on the 18th we have Venus trine Mars, and then on the 19th both of them square Pluto prior to their Cazimi on the 22nd. There’s this like constructive rapport with the malefics and then this tense moment with Pluto right before there’s that. I’m imagining the Sun being like, “Oh, Come here, sweetie. I’m so sorry. Pluto was so mean, just come cuddle.” Like that’s the Cazimi.
CB: Right, and like Cazimi happens a couple days later on October 22nd.
DRH: Which is also the first Cazimi like Venus-Cazimi in Libra since 1879 and the first superior Cazimi in Libra since 1867. So this is a brand new era experience as well.
CB: Wow, so we’re shifting. If like 2020 and that shift towards the air element of the Jupiter Saturn conjunctions in Aquarius and other air signs wasn’t enough, we’re also shifting into Venus, Sun and Libra Cazimi era period as well.
DRH: Yeah, it’s pretty exciting, honestly.
CB: Nice. Okay, so Venus-Pluto, so a lot of constructive aspects, but then we hit that Venus-Pluto and Sun-Pluto around October 20th. That can be an intense, especially in relationships or relational aspects can be not just intense, but also overbearing in some instances, can be kind of the feel of that energy.
AC: Or undermining welling up. Pluto-Venus a lot of times there’s like stuff that in relationships, romantic and every other variety as well, like the things that they’re tacit agreements to not get into try to come up. That’s the Pluto part.
DRH: Yeah, there’s like a phrase. It’s like that what you resist persists. It’s like whatever has been resisted, especially if it involves- Whenever I look at Venus-Pluto, I think a lot about power dynamics, either actual power dynamics or projected power dynamics, and the consequences of not just turning and looking at them straight in the face and being like, I think this dynamic is playing out. Let’s address it. Don’t do that. Or if it’s not available to do that. A hard aspect between Venus and Pluto will erupt some of those things.
AC: Yeah, I also see that. I see that where it’s constructive to look at it. Then I see relationships between people where the Pluto just brings up an unsolvable thing, where the relationship as a whole works. But it’s like every time that comes up, there’s just no way to solve it. That’s why there’s a tacit agreement not to bring it up. I think we do have a modern myth of if we look at the things that are hidden then they can be solved. I think that that’s true at best half the time. There’s also the Lovecraftian logic of like sometimes things are hidden away for a reason and it doesn’t help to bring it up.
DRH: Right. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge like, yes, there is a monster under the bed. He was here first. We can’t get rid of him. We just have to make sure we give him snacks.
AC: Yeah, which is a little disappointing, right? Because there’s just heroic narrative. It’s basically a psychoanalytic narrative of like, we’re going to go into the deepest caverns and we’re going to shine a light on things and everything will be redeemed and the monsters will turn into gold coins. Pluto means wealth and then we’ll come out of the underworld richer and happier and more whole, and like sometimes but there’s also the other half of what happens.
CB: Right, so sometimes the unearthing of the past doesn’t necessarily make it better or doesn’t necessarily erase the past.
AC: Right. Studies show that when traumas are brought up under basically anything but really careful therapeutic circumstances, instead of healing them, they actually reinforce them and make them worse.
DRH: Yeah, I’m also thinking about like, especially this coming in the aftermath of Venus’s time in Virgo, the urge to sanitize can also then lead to sterility. So the urge to fix is not necessarily the thing that is going to facilitate arrows.
CB: Yeah, yes, sometimes that can be a total mood killer.
DRH: Yeah, arrows both like sexy time, but like arrows also as in that power that perpetuates liveness and creativity. A sterile environment doesn’t necessarily generate new forms.
CB: Yeah, it’s doesn’t. Even artistic forms necessarily can’t emerge from that or really like organic forms in and of itself just have trouble growing in that environment.
DRH: You need a little dirt.
CB: That’s kind of an issue. Well, it’s interesting because it rises also in a different context of sometimes celebrities or comedians or something that come up from the ground up and talking about their experiences and making jokes about it and stuff. One of the advantages is because it’s very relatable. But then once they get to a certain level of success or other things like that, their ability to relate to the majority of the populace becomes a little bit harder because they’re in a much different or even more sterile environment, you might say.
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
DRH: I feel like I noticed that more with musicians and with comedians like disappointing third albums and stuff like that.
AC: Yeah, or like pointless 17th albums. I was thinking of Eminem. It’s like, okay, so you were a kid in Detroit and all that. It’s like you’ve been a millionaire for like 20 years, dude.
DRH: Like, come out with some weird paintings in another 20 years. Just lay low for the time being.
AC: Yeah, or just you could write about your frustration with your accountant and how the maid didn’t show up on time. Be honest.
CB: Speaking of that, let’s talk about that tone change that happens then immediately after we get that lovely Cazimi with the Sun in Venus on October 22nd at 29-24 Libra, where Venus plunges like right into the heart of the Sun. Then immediately after that basically within the next 24 hours, both the Sun and Venus ingress into Scorpio and begin their trip through that sign where they’re eventually going to run into an opposition with Uranus mid-sign and a square with Saturn in November actually around the time of the eclipses. And we see the Moon coming up at that point on the 23rd as well and just a couple of days later, it conjoins the Sun so that we get a solar eclipse in the sign of Scorpio.
AC: So there’s a lot to say here. Let me start by saying that Venus gets crushed here. Venus is combust for almost all of October, but a planet that’s combustible will retain its ability to do its thing when it’s in one of its own signs or in its sign of exultation. So even though Venus is combust in Libra with the Sun, it retains that ability. Whereas as soon as they both move into Scorpio, that parasol that protects from the Sun’s cancer-inducing rays disappears immediately. And not only do you have the removal all protection, but you then have Venus going into a Mars-ruled sign that is difficult for Venus, and then Venus gets smashed by the eclipse. One of the things that we saw in during the solar eclipse in December of 2019 which was right next to Jupiter, we were discussing whether does the eclipse happening next to a benefic, does that help the eclipse or does that smash the benefic? And it ended up just smashing the benefic. And so, you know, that was right around when COVID was really out on the loose in Wuhan. And so we have a replication of that where we have a benefic that’s getting dunked on by the eclipse.
DRH: I’m nicknaming this the [Venuclipse]. Right?
AC: Vennaclipse?
DRH: Vennaclipse. I like Venuclipse, Venuclipse feels nice to me. But either one works. Yeah, man, this eclipse season in particular, I’ve just been looking at this for like… I feel like I’ve been looking at this specific eclipse season for two years and being like, “What the fuck is gonna happen? What is happening?”
AC: Chris and I were podcasting with Rick Levine a year ago and at the very end, he was like, “Hey, check this out,” and showed us this eclipse season. [laughs]
DRH: Yeah. I mean, and then the next one is conjunct Uranus. Like, mmh, very cute. But one of the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about, and as I was preparing for this I was actually looking at decans and also lunar mansions for it. So it’s like, in the decan that you, Austin, have called the Jawbone– and this is a quote from your NORWAC workshop in 2020– “Getting what you want is not the same as understanding the consequences of getting what you want.” And then when I was looking at the lunar mansions, both the sidereal one and the tropical one for this particular chunk of sky, we have [unintelligible] and [unintelligible]. And there’s this sense of like, what happens after? So it’s like with [unintelligible] it’s like, what happens after you catch your tail? The image being a dog catching its tail. It’s like, “Okay, you got the tail. What are you gonna do with it? Is this actually what you wanted?”
AC: And we can translate that to the modern, the dog that caught the car?
DRH: Mmmh, yeah.
CB: This is for the first decan of Scorpio, right?
DRH: This is for the sidereal 14th lunar mansion or the tropical 17th lunar mansion. So for the 17th lunar mansion, it’s like we’re also looking at the protection of resources after you have gotten them. It’s like, what do you do with getting what you’ve gotten? What are the consequences of getting what you think you asked for? So I’m even thinking about this as it relates to the Venus Cazimi. It’s just like, “Okay, did you make wishes on that Venus Cazimi?” Because, you know, a week later you might actually have to face up to the results of your desires.
CB: That makes sense. That’s really interesting because it ties in also with something Austin you wrote. I was for some reason reviewing the first decan of Scorpio right up and you talk, one of the first paragraphs is talking about the idea of hunger being associated with that first decan of Scorpio and sort of ties into the notion of hunger, but also satiation. And whether that’s possible or what happens when you get full, or can it be a point where you stop being hungry in some sense?
DRH: It is a South Node eclipse.
AC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting…
CB: Here’s the eclipse graphic while you’re thinking. So, this is eclipses for 2022. We had the first two earlier this year in April and May in Taurus and Scorpio, and this is the next the second half of the eclipse season where we have the eclipse in Scorpio on the 25th and it’s followed up a couple of weeks later with that lunar eclipse, the big lunar eclipse, on November 8th at 16 degrees of Taurus, very closely conjunct Uranus. So this is going to take us back to reactivating the Saturn-Uranus square, which is still going to be super close at this time. We can see this in this graphic from Archetypal Explorer where we had those three exact passes of Saturn-Uranus last year in 2021, but this is the next closest pass before those two move out and before Saturn moves into Pisces and completes at least the sign-based square between those two planets early next year. And one of the things we saw in the April-May timeframe the last time we had the first full set of eclipses in Taurus and Scorpio was a bit of a sudden destabilization of the economy and all of a sudden the markets started really tanking at that time. And I was reading some stories recently about the CEO of FedEx was saying he’s expecting a worldwide recession because of just looking at the package volumes as representative of what’s going on in the economy and how it’s really starting to decline at this point in a major way, so that he’s expecting some sort of recession in the worldwide economy. And I would expect that these eclipses are really going to accelerate that process.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. I think that sadly, the signification of hunger without first decan of Scorpio as well as with the south node also speak– no, both the nodes speak to the rejection of food or the hunger for it. Unfortunately, some of that’s just going to be literal. Like, we’ve had all these disruptions to food for a variety of reasons this year but we haven’t really seen– we’ve seen some of it but we haven’t really seen it yet. Because everywhere has some reserves. And it’s much easier to have food during the growing months in the northern hemisphere where most of the food is created. And so we’re heading into the months where people will really be feeling that hunger, and on a slightly metaphoric level there’s been a lot of talk about energy hungry; like, countries that aren’t going to have enough as much energy as they are used to. And being energy hungry being literally food hungry. And when we bring into that Venus being in a really rough place, combusting in Scorpio and then eclipsed as well, you know, Venus is the nice stuff, it’s the good stuff. Venus rules Taurus, right? It’s the tasty food, it’s the abundant energy, it’s all of the niceties. And on a not terribly deep but very apparent level, I think that hunger will be literal hunger and hunger for goods, services, energy… Oh no, inputs. It’s not the goods, it’s not the services, it’s the inputs. Like food, energy are fundamental inputs which then we get everything else out of, but those are being starved. And that’s part of the South Node-Saturn thing. When we were interpreting a South Node-Saturn configuration earlier this year, we talked a lot about starvation or having to sacrifice or give things up. And so we’re hitting the same South Node-Saturn-North Node-Uranus pattern again. And so because this is the second one, we get to see what the first one really set in motion.
CB: You know, something that makes me think of… Actually, go ahead, Diana.
DRH: I was just gonna say the second eclipse that’s conjoined Uranus is ruled by Venus that’s still in Scorpio. And there’s something about the diminishment of comforts. I don’t know. When I say comforts, for some it’s just a reduction in convenience. And I think for others, it’s going to be a reduction in capacity to remain stable.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense especially because with that eclipse, Venus and the entire eclipse axis is very closely squaring Saturn at 18 degrees of Aquarius at that time, which is just going to intensify the feeling of a lack or feeling of coldness or scarcity.
AC: And this is… Go ahead.
DRH: I was just gonna say I think for those folks who can anticipate this being more about a reduction in convenience but not necessarily reduction in stability, an excellent time to be supporting your local food banks and any other endeavors to ensure that people have what they need this winter.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Something that thinking of that that both you were saying made me think of also is because Jupiter is going to retrograde back into Pisces later this month at the same time not too long after this eclipse that we’re talking about or right in the middle basically of these two eclipses, one of the things that was super prominent earlier this year was inflation and issues with inflation, which really got out of control earlier this year when Jupiter was with Pisces. And they’ve sort of been relatively decent over the past several months about trying to get it under control again and slow it down so that it seems like it’s getting better, but I wonder if Jupiter returning back to Pisces combined with some of this stuff won’t upset some of that so that inflation becomes an issue again.
AC: Yeah, we also had… One of the things that I said in the Yearly was that this looks like bubble-popping time with the Mars stationing squared Neptune. And I meant that financially and I’ll still stand by that, but what I missed was earlier in the year when Mars conjoined Neptune, which tanked crypto, which tanked lots of things. I was looking at Mars-Neptune for popping bubbles but missed the conjunction because I was so focused on the retrograde, but we have a replication of that dynamic where we have by the end of the month, Mars stations retrograde square Neptune, and Jupiter moves back into Pisces so it’s with Neptune. And so we have this like Jupiter-Neptune and then potentially popped by Mars arrangement again.
CB: Yeah, that’s perfect because we can see that Jupiter-Neptune conjunction right there at 29 and 22 Pisces, and then October 30th we just see Mars station right there at 25 Gemini, and that piercingness of that square popping that Pisces bubble.
AC: Yeah.
CB: All right, so that’s a lot of stuff going on. And then on top of all of that, Saturn is also making its final direct station at 18 degrees of Aquarius at this time around October 23rd, just a couple of days before the eclipse takes place. And so this will be the last time that Saturn stations in Aquarius, and then it’s going to start picking up speed over the next several months and then speed out of or very slowly, let’s say very slowly drive out of the sign of Aquarius and move into Pisces in March of next year. So this is the final final pass of, you know, if people are having Saturn returns in Aquarius, it’s going to start wrapping it up. This will be the tail end of it. If people are having heavy Saturn transits through Aquarius, this is going to be the final run. I was seeing a really interesting… I watched last night this hour-long really interesting Saturn return story where Conan O’Brien was telling the story of how he got the Late Night show, how he became a talk show host in the 1990s when he was 29 years old. And he was actually telling the story that was focused on how it happened literally around the time of his 30th birthday that this show kind of fell in his lap. He didn’t really want it and he thought it was kind of going to be a huge burden and he had a lot of reservations, but he ended up kind of going along with it and then it being basically his life’s work at that point over the next 30 years. But what was interesting about it is he was telling this story as a retrospective of how that went during his Saturn return in Aquarius in the 1983 timeframe, but then Saturn has returned to Aquarius over the past few years and he stepped down and stopped being a late night talk show host basically. I think just a year or two ago he ended his TBS show, and then he started getting into podcasting. And his podcast was recently purchased by Sirius XM for $150 million and so now he’s starting a bunch of spin-off podcast shows and starting a whole podcast empire as he’s opening up the next 30 years of this next Saturn cycle for him.
DRH: For some reason, I’m thinking about Video Killed the Radio Star, but reversed.
CB: Right. Yeah, yeah. Except with podcast.
DRH: Yeah, it’s like audio taking over video versus the other way around, which is what happened when MTV came to be. But, yeah.
CB: Yeah, for sure.
AC: Is that the exit strategy for the Astrology Podcast, Chris?
DRH: You’re gonna become a TV show?
AC: Being acquired for $150 million.
DRH: Oh, that.
CB: Yeah, right. By like Sirius XM. That would be good. And then everybody would get their own sub-podcast episode. It would be like Austin’s Happy Time hour on Thursdays or something like that. We’d have to do spin-off shows.
DRH: Austin Reads Children’s Books.
CB: I would subscribe to that Patreon.
AC: Do I get to write the children’s books?
DRH: Yes.
AC: Do I? I don’t know, have you ever actually read Grimms’ Fairy Tales?
DRH: Oh, they’re terrifying. They’re so good.
AC: Oh, they’re awesome. There’s one called The Devil’s Sooty Brother that’s about this ex-soldier who makes a deal with the devil. And then he breaks it but the devil is super cool about it. And then he breaks it again but the devil is super cool. And then he ends up fabulously rich and marries a princess. All you can take away from it is that the devil is super awesome, you can even go back on the deals but he totally gets it and gives you lots of slack. And I was like, this is not… I don’t know this is the lesson that the kids need. If you do meet the devil definitely make a deal, is the only takeaway from that. You can read it online, The Devil’s Sooty Brother, like soot from coal.
CB: All right, I’m second guessing this Austin’s storytime hour podcast. I’m gonna have to go back to the drawing board on that but we’ll see what they come up with, see if we can come up with something else. So yeah, people are going to be finishing up their Saturn returns in Aquarius, which is really cool. And everybody who’s been having heavy fixed-sign transits, you’re not out of the woods yet because this is going to be an intensification of that. And I saw a tonne of people have major endings and major beginnings in their life due to those eclipses that were happening in the April-May timeframe. And I think we’re going to see the next evolution or the next side of that here with this next set of eclipses here in late October and early November.
AC: Yeah, and this is really the most stressed that the Saturn-Uranus square gets before it’s gone. This is the last storm or shakeup or stress test. It’s around by orb until Saturn goes into Pisces, but this is really it. This is the eclipses pinging it. This is the last hurrah of this shaking-things-until-they-fall-apart energy, and then we move into the Saturn and Neptune energy for years. Which will be, I don’t know, watching things rot or wash away.
DRH: It’ll be interesting.
AC: Yeah, it’ll be a different thing. It’ll be very different vibe.
CB: One of the things I saw was not just people shaking the foundations, but there was a lot of giving up and walking away or stepping back from something that I saw in different people’s stories. That we’re getting hit by some of that fixed sign stuff or some of those eclipses in the spring timeframe, and it’d be interesting to see that again. Did either of you see things like that or what kind of stories did you see from the last set of eclipses or from the fixed-sign people?
AC: It was during the the Mars conjunct Uranus and Rahu a few months ago, all that in Taurus square Saturn. You had the beginning of this massive movement in China where people just decided en masse to stop paying their exploitative mortgages and they were just walking away. I believe that’s also the time that the slogan, “Let it rot,” started trending. A Chinese phrase that, I think it’s bāo lǎng, that translates to let it rot. Which is the walking away from it. Even though there’s a huge price to walking away, walking away and just letting it rot.
DRH: I’m just thinking about what’s been going on in terms of unionization efforts with Amazon and Starbucks in particular.
AC: There’s a big railway.
DRH: Yeah, I was gonna say the rail workers being the most recent iteration of that of just like absolutely unlivable working conditions. Most people don’t know somebody who works in rail so there’s not really an awareness of how exploitive that kind of labor can be. I’m thinking about that but also back in like April/May, I consistently get– just generally speaking, I get a lot of Taurus rising and Scorpio rising, especially Scorpio rising clients. And so many people completely restructuring how they relate with themselves and how they relate with others, you know, it’s like that primary first house-seventh house axis. Especially at this point, the eclipses are happening in that axis but Uranus has been hanging out there since 2018 in Taurus, and so in a lot of ways these eclipses are kind of… I don’t know, it’s like if you can think about the KonMari method. People have had piles of clothes on their floor for years but they haven’t really dealt with it because they’ve had too many sentimental attachments to things they can’t fit into anymore, and now the eclipses are just being like, “You know what? I don’t want this. Let it be gone. I want this change.” Which not to say like all-fixes want change, I think that would be a lie if I said that. But kind of getting to the breaking point of just, “I understand now that not changing is going to cause me more misery than just finally changing.”
CB: Yeah, and that there’s an opening suddenly where there’s a choice, and you’re given a clear choice between the change or no change. But having to make a choice like reaching a fork in the road where you’ve got to go one way or another?
DRH: Yep. If you want to keep moving, you got to make a choice.
AC: Or be buried in that pile of clothes.
DRH: Right. It’s like you can go or you can be dragged, either way you’re going. Also I think is a vibe that’s been pretty persistent throughout this time period.
AC: Yeah, or you can be entombed.
DRH: Or entombed, yeah.
AC: That’s usually motivation enough to do anything else.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So that is the major energy basically that we’re headed into in the last third of October. And that’s going to carry us forward well into November with that second eclipse and the second shoe dropping at the beginning of the second week of November. That kind of is going to leave us in a bit of once again a cliffhanger here in terms of our forecasts, because we don’t want to keep going- We keep threatening to go into November where we’ve got to stop ourselves a little bit, but I think that does start bringing us towards the end of the month here when it comes to this forecast for the month of October. Are there any other major things that we’re leaving out or that we meant to mention? I know we’ve talked about the Mars retrograde that really ramps up and begins at the very end of October when it stations on the 30th and it’s going to be retrograde all the way to January 12th. We talked about how it’s then going to retrace its steps and go back and revisit some of the actions or even some of the conflicts that were maybe brought up earlier that you thought were over. Is there anything else to say about that or any other things as we get towards the end of this episode?
DRH: I just want to make…
AC: Go ahead.
DRH: Okay, I just wanted to make a note of the fact that Mercury is going to be repeating the pattern that Sun and Venus did in Libra earlier in the month, and that on the 26th it trines Mars and then on the 27th it squares Pluto, which is the same day that Jupiter moves into Pisces. On the 29th, Mercury moves into Scorpio and so there’s like a bi-sign Trine that gets pretty immediately formed between Mercury and Jupiter. That just kind of gets progressively closer to each other through November until it goes exact and so I think that’s a cute and worthy thing to make note of admits to the Mars retrograde, because Mercury is ruling that Mars as it stations and it will be in Mars’s place, like in Mars’s house whenever Mars stations. So there’s a non-aspected mutual reception happening in that moment.
CB: Yeah, that Mars station just reminds me so much of, you know, there’s that challenge going around where there’s a chip that YouTubers are eating. It’s a single chip that has the spiciest pepper on it you’ve ever tasted, and you watch them just eat this one chip. And then slowly the realization comes over them that they’ve made a huge mistake. It just starts burning their mouth and they try to swallow it then it starts burning their insides but they’re stuck at that point because you can’t really unswallow the chip, you can try to throw up or what have you but then all this stuff is still burning both your tongue and your insides. And you just have to sit with that burning hot feeling as it’s staying in place and it’s not going anywhere for a while. That Mars station kind of reminds me of that because there is that hot or that feeling of being poked by something and that feeling not being a passing thing. Where normally Mars transits are just a day or two and it’s kind of over, it’s like pretty quick. But in this instance, it gets elongated for some reason and that sense of irritation, especially if that’s hitting a personal planet in your chart by hard aspect, will sort of be extended for a period of time around that last week of October and that first week of November.
AC: Yeah, and part of how that will translate into experience is, Mars is the action button. And so there’s like, “Oh, you need to do something about this. You need to go, go, go,” but Mars is not moving at all. And so there’s a contradiction between Mars’s motion and sort of essential significations. And so to your point, Chris, there’s the hot. You’re like, “Oh, I’m gonna do something about this. I’ll throw up or I won’t eat this or whatever, but there’s nothing I can do right now.”
CB: You drink some water and usually that would just wash the taste out of your mouth and it would go away, but for some reason the taste isn’t going away. It’s lingering.
DRH: Capsaicin requires milk, not water. It requires the Moon, right? So it’s like if any suggestions were to be proffered, how do you make nice with your Moon whenever Mars is being annoyingly spicy? Obnoxiously spicy.
CB: What is that unlikely thing which if you took that, that you don’t realize that that’s the antidote to what you’re feeling right now that might provide some measure of relief even if only temporarily?
AC: Yeah, you want something fatty and cooling like Jupiter-Moon. Well, I think we should reiterate what we said last month about the lead-up to the Mars retrograde, which is keep an eye on what Mars is doing so you’re not surprised once it starts the retrograde. Mars really doesn’t sneak up on you unless you’ve got headphones on. It’s been in the shadow since what? The eighth or the third of September? And so it’s in shadow from 3rd of September to what? October 30th? There’s plenty of time to get a bead on what Mars is doing. And one thing I would just keep an eye on for people that are sensitive to that is that Mars as it approaches the retrograde phase, really uneven energy levels; like manic, can’t go to sleep, can’t stop, can’t stop won’t stop. And then can barely move, zero motivation, on and off maybe even in the same day or multiple times within the week. And doing whatever you can to steady, to create some steadiness, because Mars is going to be doing anything but giving you steady like, “Wake up! I feel like attacking my problems and kicking some ass!” It’s very too much and too little in these phases.
DRH: That reminds me of the trine that’s happening from Saturn in Aquarius towards Mars in Gemini, and just thinking about like, “What is the cool-headed time management that allows for a better use of energetic resources?”
AC: Yeah, using that fixed planet and the capacity for discipline and structure that that has to keep Mars from getting too crazy. Because Mars in Gemini is not a stable energy even when it’s normal and direct, and so adding the retrograde motion, the being close to Earth and bright and literally up all night for those of you who like looking at the sky with your astrology, Mars is getting increasingly brighter and will be visible for a greater and greater portion of the night. It’s not only brighter invisibility, but it’s also visible for longer. And then at the heart of the retrograde in early December, it’ll literally rise as the Sun sets. There’s some analogies to it being a Full Moon phase for Mars. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. That was really good point though, about, you know, there was a long lead into this Mars station. And really it’s going to go back all the way even to I would say August 19th or August 20th when Mars first went into Gemini because that was the point at which it first really ingressed into the whole sign house that it’s just going to stay stuck in for everyone for the next several months. So even thinking back to any major shifts in terms of things that took place in that area of your life that match that house might be good because what we should see is an intensification of some of that once Mars stations retrograde.
Earlier this year when we did the Year Ahead forecast and talked about the Jupiter-Neptune, we always kept talking about it being something that like looked really good but was almost too good to be true. I’m curious how that… Having Jupiter come back to Neptune it’s kind of weird. We’re talking about bubbles being popped, but that kind of implies that when Jupiter comes back, is it going to have time to create another bubble of looking like everything is looking good, or? I’m really curious about that piece of this, the tail end of Jupiter in Neptune in Pisces here.
AC: Well, I don’t think it’s going to have… I don’t think it has time to create new bubbles. But there’s some projects that were in motion earlier in the year that are still in motion. We could almost see the second round of Jupiter in Pisces with the stress from Mars in Gemini as being a test. Like, what dreams or projects or visions survive that are not bubbles. Those are visions that actually happened. Like separating the wheat from chaff on a dream level. Is it a vision of what is to come and what you can make happen, or was it just a fantasy? And you really need time to differentiate the two.
DRH: One thing I’m thinking about with this is whenever Jupiter was in Pisces and there was that vaxed and waxed summer sort of feeling. One thing that I’m noticing with this particular bout is that it does include American Thanksgiving, and in terms of, I don’t know, it’s like hopium copium whatever, but also the potential for there to be like genuine feasting in an interesting way. And one of the things that I was noticing too is there’s a Hellenistic void– of course, Moon– the weekend after Thanksgiving. It’s nearly 50 hours of the Moon not aspecting anything. And so I feel like there’s the potential of… I don’t know, almost like what does it mean to sink into the… Not a fever dream and not a hallucination, but sort of like stepping into an almost Leave It to Beaver moment. Right? Yeah, somebody said like a coma. You know? It’s not necessarily capital B Beneficial, but there’s something restive about it nonetheless.
AC: Maybe nice with a small N. It’s nice.
DRH: Yeah, it’s nice. And that counts for something amongst everything else.
AC: And I would also add that Thanksgiving comes, or American Thanksgiving comes right after we get the first non-eclipsed lunation for a while. I think we will all be ready for a break.
DRH: It’s a moment of relief.
CB: Yeah. It also reminds me though, recently Biden was in the news for a reporter asked him, “Is the pandemic over?” And Biden offhandedly is like, “Yeah, the pandemic is over.” But then everyone kind of responded, or a lot of people responded that it’s still the third leading cause of death with 500 people a day in the US dying, or lots of people who get infected developing long COVID, long-term symptoms of fatigue and brain fog and other complications which later can combine with other stuff to lead to either major debilitation or death. That’s something that’s kind of curious here that we’ll see coming back in terms of if that’s not a bubble of the pandemic being over and things being safe again, but whether that’s the case or whether we’ll see different variants come out or just where we’re at in terms of the status of COVID at this point.
AC: Yeah.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: All right. Well, I don’t want to leave it on that note. Do we have any lighter notes to leave it on or inspirational things in terms of– I know speaking of Jupiter-Neptune coming back, I keep mentioning it but they just really re-released Avatar in theatres again to remind people of what that movie was about since nobody’s seen it for 12 years. But it’s interesting how that’s gonna come back at the same time of that Jupiter-Neptune conjunction that it was released under 12 years earlier in Aquarius.
AC: Yeah. I would also just point out it’s still Jupiter getting way stronger. It’s an excellent position for Jupiter, and if you have planets late in degrees that are going to get an aspect from that, that’s not just going to be illusion, right? You’ve been getting the aspect from Neptune. You’ve gotten the, I don’t know if this is real or not. Jupiter is real. It’s a planet that you can see, it’s got visible light, does nice things, provides opportunities… Jupiter will be, for some charts, fantastic. It’ll be really nice. Having a 29-degree water rising, I’m into it.
DRH: Yeah. I feel like there’s something here too of Jupiter entering Pisces after a couple of, I don’t know, like 10 days or so of Venus having left Libra but hanging out in Scorpio. It’s like five days because I know how to do math. But there’s something here which was like, “Okay, there’s these five days where neither the benefics are particularly cute, but it’s just five days.” Right. And so maybe like your Venus access is curtailed, but you can turn to Jupiter for similar but not exactly the same kinds of presence.
AC: Yeah, a hundred percent. One of the benefics is fully operational. Also, it provides a nice ending to Venus, the Sun, and Mercury as they move through Scorpio at the very end. After all of the storm and stress of the eclipses, they’ll get a nice trine to Jupiter in Pisces. And so yes, there’s some gassing up of bubbles or illusions or blah blah, but it also does some real good things too. It creates some good elections, it’s great for certain charts, et cetera, et cetera.
CB: Oh, and it reminds me of the necessary and healing nature of not just distractions, but inspiration and fantasy. And that that’s actually a really important component to living that can make life more bearable is having something like that, that is being able to indulge in a fantasy world or in a novel or a movie or something that is inspiring, even if it’s something that somebody made up or created. That those creations can be very helpful and can serve a core role in terms of being alive.
DRH: Substantially emotionally nourishing.
AC: Yeah. Jupiter-Neptune can also be the magical addition of real spiritual perspective on things, right? Because your perspective can change the way you feel about things. And a change of perspective can also let you see the way out or through very clearly, where you were blind to it from a different angle.
CB: Brilliant. All right, I think that’s a good note to end on to wrap things up for the month of October. So, what do each of you have going on? Diana, what’s your website and what do you have coming up in the near future?
DRH: You can find me at dianaroseharper.com. I’m also @ddamascenaa, which is harder to spell so you’ll want to check the podcast notes for that. One thing that I’m really excited about is I have seven lectures finally up on my website and I’m slowly working on adding transcripts and captions to pose. So those are all available. I’m deliberately trying to be relatively chill in terms of other projects but I have some exciting things happening alongside reveler press, starting a new series in collaboration with [Genz art]. I’m super excited about. Um, what else do I have going on? I feel like somebody else here probably knows more about what I have going on than I do in this moment so I’ll just leave it there.
CB: Cool. Alright, I’ll put a link to your website in the description below this video or on the podcast website. Austin, what do you have coming up?
AC: I’m going to be giving a talk. I guess it’s a keynote talk, I don’t think it’s going to be different from my other talks. But I’m giving a talk at the online Astra major conference. I’ll be talking about the role of the Moon, the omnipresent role of the Moon in magical elections there. And then Sphere and Sundry will be releasing first half of October, a Mercury in Virgo series from before all the retrograde kerfuffles to beautiful Mercury in Virgo election. And so if you need actual clarity, factual clarity is what we’re talking about. Getting back to what actually can be counted and what can be ascertained, and want to get back to starting with that. Kate and I thought that that would be a useful thing to release on the eve of all of the confusion that’s on its way. [laughs] And then of course there are a dozen previous elections still available through Sphere and Sundry. But yeah, exalted Mercury, Mercury in Virgo will be coming out first half of October.
CB: Brilliant. All right, and your websites are what again?
AC: I’m austincoppock.com and Kate is sphereandsundry.com. Those will be, the links will be in the description. Yeah?
CB: Yep, I’ll put it right below this video. All right. As for myself, like I said I just launched that 2023 Election Astrology report at theastrologypodcast.com/2023report. Also, I got a book project coming out and I’m also going to spend some time expanding my Hellenistic course this month on ancient astrology that takes people from the basics up through intermediate and advanced concepts for reading a birth chart at courses.theastrologyschool.com, and specifically focusing on a new section for synthesizing modern and ancient astrology and applying the different techniques of Hellenistic astrology and practice. People can check that out at theastrologyschool.com. Otherwise, I’ll just be working on the podcast and continuing to work on my zodiac series where the next entry is going to be the Libra episode which I’m in the process of putting together now. So I’m pretty excited about that. All right, well, thanks both of you for joining me today. This was a really great- I can’t believe how much we covered during the course of this episode but it was fun doing this forecast with you. And thanks, Diana, for coming back for the second time you’ve done a forecast episode with me and Austin.
DRH: Yeah, it was great to be here. I always love chatting with you guys.
AC: Yeah, it was great to have you.
CB: Yeah. All right. Well, thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast and we’ll see you again next time.
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