The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 378, titled:
Astrology Forecast for December 2022
With Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, and Aerin Fogel
Episode originally released on November 30, 2022
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Mary Sharon
Transcription released December 28, 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 astrological forecast for December of 2022. Joining me today are astrologers Austin Coppock and Aerin Fogel. Welcome, both of you.
AERIN FOGEL: Hi.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey
AF: Thank you, Chris.
CB: All right, I’m gonna give just a brief overview of the month ahead a quick snapshot of some of the transits and then I’ll welcome both of you in more detail, and then we’ll jump into the astrological forecast for December. So, here’s the planetary movements calendar that shows where the planets will start at the beginning of the month and how far through the signs of the zodiac they’ll get by the end of the month. As we can see in the first part of the month, most of the inner planets are transiting through Sagittarius but then eventually they make their ingress into the sign of Capricorn. So early in the month, some of those inner planets such as Venus and the Sun as they’re transiting through Sagittarius will oppose Mars, which is still retrograde in the sign of Gemini. We have Neptune stationing direct in Pisces on the 3rd of December, Mercury ingressing into Capricorn on the 6th, then we get a Full Moon in Gemini on the seventh of the month, which is very closely opposite to Mars which is kind of notable at the time. A couple days later, Venus ingresses into Capricorn on the 9th, Jupiter ingresses, departs from Pisces, and moves into the sign of Aries on the 20th of December. Then we get the winter solstice the following day on the 21st followed by a New Moon in Capricorn on the 23rd, and then finally, Mercury stations retrograde in the sign of Capricorn on the 29th of the month, and begins a three-week retrograde period that will carry over into the month of January. So that’s the basic overview of the month.
Hey, welcome both of you to the show. Austin, welcome back. And Aerin, welcome and thanks for joining us for your first time as a guest co-host on the forecast.
AF: Thank you. I’m excited to be here.
CB: Yeah, we just released our episode on Healing Intergenerational Trauma yesterday, actually, our previous episode which was already going over really well on YouTube in which we had some really interesting discussions about the kind of spiral nature of time and cycles and themes that come up in a person’s life.
AF: Yeah, that was an awesome talk. I recommend it, but I’m biased. [chuckles]
CB: Right. Austin, how are you doing since the last forecast?
AC: Um, I don’t know, it feels like a very long time. I’ve just been sort of in a hypnotic trance all month, just sort of doing what I’m doing and into the next thing. It’s been good. It’s been good. I’ve looked up and, you know, I was looking at some messages that I was like, “Ah, you know, somebody emailed me and I need to get back to him.” And it was from three weeks ago and I was like, “Oh, sorry, I’ve just kind of been in a trance.” It’s been a good trance just getting things done; eat this, do these exercises, work on this, et cetera, et cetera.
CB: Yeah. Well, I’m excited as a fixed sign person to be getting out of eclipse season finally and we’re starting to have some lunations that are not the eclipses for the first time in a month. And I feel like we’re coming out of kind of a chaotic phase and a very heavy phase after all of that. But then we’re still only not quite even halfway through the Mars retrograde so I know some of the people with mutable placements are still getting hit, as we’ll talk about a little bit more in this episode. So, why don’t we first start by doing a little bit of a review of some of the major stories that have happened in the news over the past month since we did our last forecast episode at the end of October, and just how the astrology worked out and sort of check in on how some of our statements about how things work out went? And then after that, we’ll go into more detailed analysis and forecast for the month of December. How does that sound?
AF: Sounds awesome.
CB: All right, so major news stories. One of the biggest ongoing things in the news has just been the chaos happening over at Twitter, which seems really keyed into on the one hand, the eclipses, because Elon Musk actually took over Twitter at the end of October starting around October 26th and October 27th when he first walked into Twitter headquarters and then completed the deal to basically buy the company. But that was just days after that eclipse that occurred in the sign of Scorpio, and it was really notable at the time. It was just happening when we mentioned when we did our last forecast episode. But for some reason this period of intensity really began with him taking over on that Scorpio eclipse right there at the end of October. As soon as the eclipse happened, basically it was just like two weeks of chaos on Twitter that was bookended by the first eclipse and the second eclipse, although a lot of the changes and stuff are still ongoing. But basically he bought the company, I think he fired the entire board immediately within the first few days, and then he began laying off I think something like over half of the workforce or something like that, as well as implementing changes very rapidly and kind of chaotically bringing back a bunch of previously banned accounts that had been banned for different reasons over the past. It was just a crazy several weeks on that social media platform if you were paying attention to it. I know you were there paying attention to it. Right, Aerin?
AF: Yeah, just kind of watching quietly, abstaining from tweeting for a while and just sort of watching. And if anyone lives in Toronto, there was a really funny tweet that I saw that someone was like, “Twitter is giving McDonald’s that Queen and Spadina energy, which is very niche but it’s the most chaotic place in the city. [laughs] So it was pretty intense.
CB: Yeah. Well, it felt like the last days of MySpace-type of energy for a little bit there. Like, there was real concern especially around the time of the second eclipse and Taurus conjunct Uranus. It seemed like a lot of the engineers were being fired and there were real questions about whether the platform was actually going to take a nosedive. Because at first nobody knew quite what he was going to do but then everything was happening so erratically and suddenly and it was so chaotic, because he was just day by day implementing new changes. Like, one of the first things he did was roll out within the first few days a subscription service where he was going to charge people in order to get the verified blue checkmark. But as soon as he did that, it invalidated the entire purpose of the checkmark system, which is to validate who was actually a real person, especially for celebrities or companies. So as soon as that happened, a bunch of people set up fake accounts to impersonate celebrities and start issuing statements as if they were them. And it was actually a really funny manifestation of the Mars-Neptune square at the time. And there was some companies like Eli Lilly where somebody set up a fake account saying that insulin would be free from now on, and then on the stock market their stock price actually just tanked the next day. So there was actually a real tangible blowback from that. And then the very next day Elon had to take that system back and take it offline, I assume, due to stuff like that.
AC: So, the timing of the acquisition, the final acquisition and takeover, is definitely the eclipses especially when we look at the history of the offer and all that. But this chaos-
CB: [crosstalk] happened almost under the previous set of eclipses earlier this year.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, really tied into the nodes and the eclipses. But the action that you’re describing is so signature Mars retrograde in Gemini. What I’ve been picking up from that Mars retrograde is very chaotic. And it’s chaos that comes from lots of movement but without a coherent pattern. Like, “Now we’re gonna go left, now we’re gonna go right, now we’re jumping up and down, now we’re going backwards.” It’s like if you think about just taking a turn, but too quickly in moving vehicle with sufficient mass, it’s wrenching, right? You have the G forces. And so I’ve been peripherally aware of the Twitter thing, and from my distance it’s sort of like, I don’t know, it sounds like the screams on a roller coaster. Because it’s the G forces from sudden ups, downs, lefts, and rights. Also, another thing that’s very Mars in Gemini, you know, Gemini is a mutable sign and a dual sign, it’s represented by twins. And when you have a monolithic there, it’s the evil doppelganger energy. Or I don’t know, with the pharmaceutical company, it was the good twin that was going to give it away for free. But you had a lot of evil twin doppelgangers with that blue checkmark phenomenon where you have, you know, the harm comes from a copy or an impersonator or a double.
AF: Yeah, that’s funny because I think 50% of Twitter became Elon Musk for a few days and was impersonating him and tweeting as if they were him. But that erotic chaos notion of the Mars retrograde, I think, is really accurate. And something that I thought was interesting was that the original offer was made on April 14th, which is pretty close to those first set of eclipses. But it was also two days after the exact Jupiter-Neptune conjunction that happened in Pisces. So I think it was almost a foreshadowing of something that would happen during the Mars retrograde because as we know, most of the Mars retrograde is squaring Neptune. And so it seems relevant that all this is coming back around to something that was seeded or sparked during that conjunction, because Mars retrograde can have that reversal as well or that sense of just coming in and undoing everything at high velocity speed, which kind of felt like exactly what’s been happening.
CB: That makes sense as well because late last year on the year ahead forecast, we were speculating about the upcoming Jupiter-Neptune conjunction and we were a little nervous because we also noticed that Trump was going to supposedly launch his social media platform that he was going to call Truth Social, around the time of the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in early 2022. So it’s interesting now what’s ended up happening is Elon first made that offer earlier this year around that time but then when Jupiter retrograded back into Pisces, he took it over. And now that’s one of the things that’s making the platform unstable is that suddenly it’s becoming politicized because he’s retweeting kind of far right-wing conspiracy theories and engaging with and attacking like liberal activists and different things like that, while also favorably retweeting far-right ones. So there’s a question about whether suddenly the whole platform is becoming more politicized than it ever was before.
AF: Which, to me, seems like a very Jupiterian theme to introduce, and then the sort of chaos or aggression of it is Mars. And yeah, the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction was very much about confusion of truths. And in our last chat, Chris, we’d been talking about conspiracy theory and how that’s been such a challenge this year, and I think a lot of that also came from the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction and the blurring of edges of truth, as well as people’s political alignments. So that makes sense.
CB: Yeah. And what’s gonna become a bigger theme I’m kind of concerned about now as we head into Pluto ingressing into Aquarius early next year, and just a lot of people having this experience all of a sudden where the richest man in the world can come in, buy this entire social network and just take it over that was previously almost, you know, coming to the– not rising completely to the level of the public utility but having such an important place in terms of the public discourse when it comes to politics, arts, even social things like astrologers or astrology has really flourished there over the past several years as some of the younger generations of astrologers have come in. And then all of a sudden if one person can come in and take that over and then just completely changed the face of it, that’s really interesting in terms of the implications that has for how that power then is exerted in the future in order to influence or sort of change society and what impact that has.
AC: You feel like that’s a new thing? I mean, all these social media companies have been run… They’ve all been corporations. They’re never without their own agenda. I guess it feels like a new iteration of what’s been true literally since the beginning.
CB: Yeah, there’s a extent to which that’s true because you have other figures like Mark Zuckerberg or what have you, and then the previous accusations both from the right and the left about how Facebook has been used to gain elections and things like that. But I’ve never seen an instance like this where a singular person has come on. And that was the thing that was bizarre that seems like a mistake from my perspective, is how overtly he’s been politicizing the platform and embracing far right-wing ideology instead of making it neutral or making it non-political, which was his original statement earlier this year about his intention. But instead, he’s done the opposite. And I think there’s something unique about that that we haven’t seen with other things. Like with Mark Zuckerberg, he’s not overtly political or anything, even if there’s accusations about Facebook influencing political discourse or something like that.
AC: Okay. Yeah, I haven’t been watching Twitter and watching Elon’s tweets so there may be an element that I’m not aware of. Just the idea that none of these things are ever neutral. That never happened, there was never a golden age. Even if things were never great, they can always get worse. I did want to speak really quickly to the status of truth and Jupiter in Neptune, and specifically Jupiter as it’s sort of inflated some of Neptune’s negative characteristics, right? Not all characteristics with Neptune in Pisces or Neptune, in general, are negative. But one of the things I sort of became aware of or became more aware of but feels ubiquitous is that with Neptune in Pisces, it’s sort of like there’s a story for everything already. And it’s very difficult, you know, everybody on the internet is just sharing stories and making up narratives about everything. It’s so hard to discuss things without people thinking, “Oh, you’re telling that story.” Right? Or you say something and they’re like, “Oh, are you telling that story?” It’s like, “No, no, I’m trying to not invest in an entire narrative until I’m certain about something.” But I don’t know, that feels very Neptune in Pisces, where it’s all like you get halfway into your thoughts with someone and then it’s like, “Oh, are you telling that story? Are you telling the Republican story? Are you telling this story? Are you telling that story? Are you telling the globalist story?” And it’s like, “No, no!” I don’t know, it feels like the state of truth or the state of statements is that they’re instantly recruited. Like, there’s a forcible conscription of thoughts into narratives when, you know, rather my thoughts not go fight and die in some fruitless war. [laughs] Does that make any sense or do I just sound crazy?
AC: No, I think that’s really interesting as a Neptunian theme because there’s that sense that it is removing the clarity around something. But also I think Neptune is very collective. Neptune stories are not personal stories so it does have this sense of whatever people are sharing or speaking to immediately getting projected into this more collective sphere. Rather than it being a personal story or a personal expression which we might see with one of the inner planets, it immediately becomes this larger undefined amorphous group narrative or something like that.
AC: I think that’s a really good point. I think of swarms or schools of fish or flocks of birds where if another bird of the same species sort of joins the flock, it just becomes part of that larger shape. It also reminds me of how… You know when you’re at the edge of sleep but you’re still kind of in a dream, but your body can hear a noise, your cat could be meowing and your mind will fold it into the dream. Right? It’s sort of like that one dream. For people that are too stuck in one dream, everything they hear that’s not actually supposed to be part of that dream gets folded into the dream just like a bird gets folded into the flock.
CB: One of the interesting other Mars retrograde things connected with this was that when Elon took over Twitter at the end of October, Mars was stationing retrograde in Gemini. And when some of the restrictions were pulled back about certain things, there was this sudden spike in hate speech and racist comments and other things like that that really centered on Mars stationing retrograde in Gemini. And it was a really fascinating, although disturbing manifestation of Mars stationing retrograde in the sign of Gemini and terrible language being used or something like that, or a rollback on restrictions with respect to that.
AC: That makes perfect sense. And we sort of got a taste of that in the warm-up for the Mars retrograde with Kanye. You know, legitimately deeply, old school, offensive things. Right? Not like, “Oh, you’re doing too sensitive,” but incontestably offensive things.
CB: Yeah, unfortunately that and the sort of normalization of anti-semitism through Kanye’s comments has increased, unfortunately, over the past month. I feel like since that time. And yeah, there was definitely also a spike of that with Mars stationing. All of this, though, has bigger political implications potentially in the long term geopolitically and in terms of mundane astrology because we had that eclipse happen in Taurus on November 8th conjunct Uranus, and that was the day that the midterms took place. Although the big surprise with the midterms, at least in the United States, was that there wasn’t a huge red wave but instead, the Democrats were able to keep more seats in the Senate or the House than expected, which in and of itself ended up being unexpected because historically during most midterm elections, the party in power that has the White House would lose a bunch of seats and that’s just how it goes. So the unexpected result this time was a disruption of that or the opposite of that. But then just a few days later, Trump announced his candidacy. He’s running for the 2024 presidential election again and that lunar eclipse that happened occurred in his 10th house, which is notable and important. And then with everything going on with Twitter, one of the things that Elon rolled back now being in charge of it and through his politicization of it is he invited and has been encouraging Trump to come back to Twitter, even though he was originally banned immediately following the January 6th insurrection where he attempted to stop the results of the peaceful handover of presidential power after the presidential election. All of this with Twitter and everything, even though it seems stupid especially if you don’t use the platform if you’re paying attention to it, it’s especially tying in with some of the astrology in those big eclipses. Seems like it will end up having much more long-term impact than we might think.
AF: Yeah, and it also has that very traditional sense of eclipses of reversing or changing direction with something. And so there was a reversal of Trump’s ban from Twitter, and I went and looked at the chart for his announcement that he’s running again. And the Moon was mid to later degrees of Leo, I can’t remember the degree, but anyways it was perfecting that Grand Cross with the nodes in Saturn and Uranus and the Sun and everything. So it was the Moon bringing that reversal into action and often like it acts as a kind of timing technique with slower things.
AC: Right. Well, the Moon bringing that energy to it’s Ascendant, which is late Leo and Mars. I was just gonna ask, you know, do you know where the Moon was for that announcement?
AF: I’m pretty sure it’s like 18 Leo or something.
AC: [crosstalk] That’s not elected. You don’t put the Moon opposite Saturn if you want to win. But that’s fine.
CB: No, it was a night chart with the Moon exactly applying to an opposition to Saturn, although it did have some of that Grand Water Trine that was happening later in the month with the Scorpio planets applying to trine and Jupiter in Pisces, which was actually kind of a nice thing electionally but the Moon was definitely not in good shape.
AC: Yeah, that was your election of the month last week or last month. Last month. But it was the Cancer Moon, right? Where it was trining Jupiter and Venus? That was lovely, I used that. I should have announced my candidacy.
AF: [laughs] I would much prefer to vote for you. [laughs]
CB: Yeah, for sure. Anyway, this is an ongoing story. Part of it is Elon Musk has the Moon in the sign of Gemini. Sorry, no, going back. Twitter has Mars in Gemini, and then it has that square Mercury in Pisces and the Moon in Sagittarius, so a lot of this stuff is just hitting all the mutable stuff in the Twitter chart. Elon does have some stuff in his chart in Gemini that this is hitting, so this will probably just be an ongoing story that we’ll continue to see as Mars continues to go retrograde through the sign of Gemini before getting out of there after the first few months of next year.
AC: Yeah. Well, and then… Sorry, I was going to suggest that we move on to the other sort of big thing that happened last month, unless you had more to do on this sort of…
CB: I was about to transition.
AC: Okay, great. So Chris, what do you want to talk about next?
CB: So the other big story, the other big news story this month was the collapse of this cryptocurrency company called FTX. And what was so striking about it astrologically is the crash happened right on over a few-day period basically the Taurus eclipse around the 8th of November. If you see the graphs showing the stock price and the value of the company and its associated cryptocurrency, it just crashes right on that Taurus eclipse in November. So it was really fascinating even if you don’t follow Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies very closely, it was fascinating seeing this billion dollar– it was worth billions and billions of dollars– just crash almost virtually overnight right on an eclipse.
AC: Yeah, and I’m gonna pat myself on the back because I said right around that time in the yearly and then several times afterwards including last month, that that looked like financial bubble popping. And that was absolutely a bubble. You know, what they found out behind the… Well, once they got into the books of the FTX thing is that I believe the actual value of the assets was like a hundred million dollars but it had been valued at 5 billion. Just like a bubble, right? You could have a bubble that was four feet wide, but if you took all of the liquid that made it up, you’d barely fill a thimble. Right? The actual substance was absolutely minimal. So that was, I don’t know, that was kind of fun. I like it when fake things get destroyed.
CB: Yeah. It was crazy, though, cuz it was like a $150 billion company or something crazy like that and it turned out it was partially a Ponzi scheme or something like that, and a bunch of people had invested money but then they were taking the money and reinvesting it elsewhere. So then there ended up being a bank run and people started trying to withdraw their money from the company but they couldn’t, they didn’t have the funds. And then it just crashed everything.
AC: Yeah, I’ve heard it compared repeatedly to Bernie Madoff in that there were well-connected people just like with Bernie Madoff. So it’s being friends with the right people, knowing the people who are regulating this getting– in the case of FTX, having a very high-profile celebrity endorsements, which is exactly how Madoff ran it. They’re like, “Well, everybody cool is doing it, it seems to be above board, these are amazing returns on my investment,” until the whole thing just falls apart.
CB: Yeah, in order to illustrate this, I’m trying to find a graph of the value. It tricky to explain because it was an exchange where you could exchange money for cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and vice versa, but they also had their own cryptocurrency token like Bitcoin. And when you put that on a graph, the value of it… Take a look at this. So this is the value, it’s worth $25/$26 leading up to late October, early November. And then starting November 5th, it just starts going down and then it just crashes November 7th, November 8th, November 9th. And that’s just so perfectly correlated with the Taurus eclipse which happened on November 8th. What’s interesting is that earlier this year, there may have been some connection between this crash and the crash of an earlier cryptocurrency which was the Luna coin. I don’t know if you remember, Austin, we talked about that earlier this year. It was exactly six months ago that the Luna coin crashed, and I believe that was under the previous solar eclipse in Taurus. I’ve read some reports saying that the crash of that coin six months earlier actually ended up being tied in with this crash because some of their investments were actually in that coin. If that’s true, then it actually interestingly ties together or becomes a really good example of how sometimes eclipses in the same sign tie together a series of events in six-month increments.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. It’s also another point of argument in favor of Uranus in Taurus being really tied to not just Bitcoin, but the whole crypto story. Uranus in Taurus historically does a lot of disrupting and changing how currency and banking is done. And so this time with Uranus moving into Taurus for the first time in 2018. 2018 to 2025 is going to look like the story of how crypto ended up this way. Crypto certainly began before 2018, but it started being something that impacted the mainstream and people started really talking about just after Uranus ingressed in 2018. And so those eclipses on top of that Uranus, which is historically about Uranus in Taurus, one piece of which is historically about currency and banking really just demonstrated that. As well as it’s the same eclipse cycle, so six months later you get an update or get the next season right of the show.
CB: Yeah, what is also… Oh, go ahead.
AF: I was just gonna say that feels like a very umbrella theme for Uranus in Taurus as those massive or sudden economic shifts, and then bringing in the very literal themes of the eclipse of again, something being reversed or changed. But I think it’s interesting with something like cryptocurrency which is a more sort of collective form of currency, I guess. And I think of Scorpio as resources that are more shared versus Taurus as resources that I have, personally. And so it felt like it was sort of reversing that as well.
CB: Yeah, and it was also a good manifestation of something we’ve been talking about over and over again with the Saturn-Uranus Square, which is just having a stress test on something and shaking the foundations of something. And if it doesn’t have a stable foundation, it can just collapse like a building virtually overnight. We’ve seen a bunch of things happen like that when they were closely connected to the Saturn-Uranus Square. And that was one of the things these eclipses were tied into very closely, was not just being conjunct Uranus but also squaring Saturn. Thankfully, that’s one of the things that we’re coming out of this period finally as Saturn and Uranus now are starting to move away from each other at this point, until eventually Saturn completely changes signs early next year.
AC: Yeah, just a few things. Yeah, a house of cards does not survive a stress test. You just shake the table a little bit and it’s done. And then, Aerin, to speak to your point about Scorpio and Taurus, maybe I wouldn’t frame it as collective but with those signs, Scorpio is a liquid type of asset and then Taurus is a thing. You know, it’s a solid thing. And one thing we’ve seen with Uranus in Taurus is that things have become more valuable relative to currency. Commodities like food and energy or those things which produce energy like the basic things that people need have become much more valuable relative to currency, right? Which is liquid and its value fluctuates and this and that. You know, the agreed-upon tokens are not doing very well relative to bags of rice. There’s been a lot this year with the Ukraine war but if we just look at commodities, commodities and things have done extremely well if we just look at 2018 to the present.
AF: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, that idea of it being a more liquid asset. Because I think reading about this before today, I was reading how when it started to tank, people tried to cash their FTX in for money to get their money back, essentially, and it wasn’t there. [chuckles] So it didn’t really translate into an actual thing, which would be more of a Taurus experience. And as far as stress tests go, I think I saw that the owner is 29 or 30 or something, so he’s having his Saturn return right now. So this is quite Saturn return stress test. [laughs]
AC: Yeah, good point. [laughs]
AF: I was like, “Oh, that’s a Saturn return for the ages. You just lose $152 billion.” [laughs]
CB: Yeah, and that’s the thing when we’re talking about all these mundane stories of major things happening in the news or what have you. It’s like some of these mundane things that we’re talking about that are affecting large groups of people are also happening in people’s individual lives and individuals are getting those stress tests sometimes in their individual lives. And sometimes they’re making it through okay albeit a bit shaken up, and other times the house of cards is collapsing in certain areas. So it gets personalized as well in some instances and in his instance very personally, because he’s the guy that’s at the centre of this whole thing.
AC: Yeah, yeah.
AF: Hmm. And I think Saturn will disrupt anything that’s not real or concrete enough to survive a stress test.
AC: Yeah, and we’ve kind of got that. We’ve got that from a couple angles, right? Because we’ve also had the Mars squaring Neptune energy, right? You can pop a bubble with the weight of Saturn, but really for popping bubbles, you want something pokey and Martial. Saturn will crush what is not substantial, and then Mars loves to pop bubbles, to burst things. And so that Saturn-Uranus and the Mars-Neptune, and I think to a certain degree just with the eclipses sort of super fueling things, we have that destroying what’s not real or what cannot endure. It’s a stress test but from a couple different angles, from a couple of different configurations.
CB: Yeah, and then one of the patrons in the chat mentions inflation, which is something we focused on a lot this year in terms of the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction, and that’s another thing they’re attempting to pop right now with the Fed hiking up the interest rates super high in order to try to combat inflation. And it’ll be interesting to see how successful they are, as well as what impact that has on the economy since there were no real good choices there in terms of what to do with that.
AF: Mm-hmm. I was just thinking also… Oh, yeah, go ahead. [chuckles]
CB: No, it’s all right.
AF: Yeah, one last thought about the bubble popping, which does seem like a very Martial thing. I think I read that part of what started to tip it over was that there was information that was leaked about the company or what was actually happening there. And leaking information to the press or to the public seems like the Mars in Gemini way to pop a bubble.
AC: Yeah, totally. Because it’s like sharp messages is what we’ve been talking about with Mars in Gemini. But the communication of information would be the needle.
CB: Yeah. Well, and that happened on Twitter. The disclosures that led to the collapse of FTX happened over a series of a few days, and they happened on Twitter. So let’s just bring things full circle, like why it’s become such an important social media platform and why so many people are paying attention to it and why if it stumbles or falls, that would be such a weird major thing. All right, I think that’s good for reviewing the news from this past month, those are the two major news stories I wanted to mention. Why don’t we transition now into talking about the forecast for December and getting into some of the details about that?
AC: All right.
AF: Awesome.
CB: All right. So start of the month, we’ve been talking a lot about Neptune and other things. And it’s kind of notable that Neptune actually stations right at the very top of the month on the 3rd of December. So that’s one of the things going on. We have Neptune stationing and an intensification of Neptune significations there in Pisces, but at the same time early in the month, we still have the inner planets going through Sagittarius and opposing that Mars retrograde. First with Venus opposing Mars on the 1st of December, and then about a week later the Sun opposing Mars just after that Full Moon in Gemini on the 8th of December. So if I put that on… Let me show that in an actual chart so we can visualize a little bit better here for those watching the video version. Animate the chart, move it to December 1st. By the time December opens, Mercury has already cleared that opposition with Mars. So some of the tension there starts to pass into the background but we see Venus is still right there opposing Mars that day, and then the sun eventually will come up and oppose it as well. Those are two of the things so far in terms of the opening transits. What are some of the opening transits that you’re looking at Aerin?
AF: Yeah, that Neptune station for sure. [chuckles] I think there’s sort of this interesting theme of, like you’re saying, Mercury, Venus, and then the Sun coming to one by one oppose Mars. Because I sort of think about Mars retrogrades in five stages; there’s the shadow phase, the first half of the retrograde, and then the opposition with the Sun as stage three or the sort of height or culmination of it. So it kind of feels like everything is moving in this funnel towards that opposition, which is really intensified by the Full Moon that’s going to happen. It just made me think of everything going through a funnel in the first week or so of the month.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense. And really just putting the laser focus on that as we hit the halfway point in the cycle.
AC: I really like that the image of a funnel. Because that’s very– it’s very Sagittarian, right? Sagittarius focuses and brings things together. On a very simple level, bringing human and horse into one being. But also if you think of the practice of archery, you have to bring your awareness, which is usually much wider, to a single point. And that’s how you bring physical objects or liquids into a single point, where you funnel them down into the tube.
AF: Yeah, I totally think about that Saj-Gemini opposition that way. It’s like taking a lot and then bringing… Yeah, taking something broad spectrum or a larger volume and bringing it into a point of specificity.
CB: Yeah, and I meant to show this diagram again which I haven’t shown in a couple of forecasts, but that was illustrated by Stella that just shows how the pre-retrograde shadow period began on September 3rd for the Mars retrograde. Mars actually stationed and that intensified on October 30th, and then we’re in the most intense stage of it all the way through January 12th. And then eventually, Mars leaves its post-retrograde shadow period on March 15th and then eventually will depart from Gemini and move into Cancer not too long after that, having first engrossed into Gemini I think way back in August. So it’s just sitting on the same sign of the zodiac and grinding over the same degrees in everybody’s charts for this whole six to eight-month period, basically.
AC: It sure is, Chris.
AF: Amen. [laughs]
CB: Are there any mutable Moon people around that can speak to that?
AC: Yeah, right. Maybe I’ll check. But yeah, I know I’m heavily invested in mutable. Not only with the Moon, but with lots of other planets so I’ve been feeling it. I’ve been feeling it since literally the day after ingress, because I have stuff early mutable and a lot mid-mutable. So far, so good. But so far, so good because I’ve been fixated on handling it, because it was so obviously a bouquet of potential irritations and issues.
CB: Yeah, it’s been interesting seeing different people how they’re reacting to that energy in somewhat predictable ways, but the specific manifestation in each instance is always interesting. There was one person I know that had Gemini rising and they were in a Gemini perfection year, and Mars stationed in their first house and they got in a car accident. Somebody was driving and slammed into them and totaled their car. So it’s a very literal manifestation. There was another person who was just getting into arguments or relationship disputes with their partner with Mars stationing retrograde and retrograding in their seventh house. It’s pretty, in some instances, pretty straightforward just in terms of intensifying the conflict or the tense energy in whatever house it’s transiting in a person’s chart.
AC: Yeah, part of the issue with Mars retrograde is that there’s a going-off-the-rails energy to Mars retrograde, like abandoning the standard conventions of conflict where things like, you know, with a car out of the lane; being out of your lane or the opposing car being out of their lane. But yeah, there’s a wild quality or there’s gonna be moments of wildness, or in my studies and experience, very characteristically Mars retro on a very simple level. I’ve been seeing a shitload of shoulder injuries. It’s literally Gemini rules the shoulders. As I mentioned to you last month but not on camera– or maybe I didn’t. I don’t remember whether I mentioned it– there was a UFC fight where a guy came in with a shoulder that had been dislocated 20 times in the last several months, and it dislocated within 10 seconds of the fight. And then he fought through it, and then it dislocated again. It was a big fight that everybody’s looking forward to and they were like, “This was garbage.” He literally came in with one arm. There’s a big fight, a championship fight that just got called off because the guy has– according to the press release– the worst shoulder injury they’ve ever seen. I was talking to one of my students who was like, “Oh, yeah, my shoulder just got dislocated and the nerves are all fucked up. Praise God I haven’t had a dislocation or anything severe.” But right around a week around the station, I’ve never had my upper back and shoulders just hurt more for literally no reason. I just had intense pain in that area for about a week for no external reason and then as Mars sort of stopped, you know, picked up some speed and started moving rather than lingering, it ceased to be a problem. But I was like, okay, you know that little Zodiac guy with the signs on him that we’ve all seen a hundred times really does target where planets affect the body. It’s somewhere in the comments, crippling shoulder pain issues.
AF: Yeah, quite literal that way.
CB: Yeah, for sure. I know that’s been the case for me. Also, just seeing Mars sometimes indicating conflicts and that archetype of conflict. But sometimes Mars forces conflict but there can also be this cathartic quality to getting it all out and having a conflict or saying the things that need to be said, even if they’re not pleasant. It has been an interesting thing, like that idea of unpleasant words is something we were talking about earlier with Mars stationing in Twitter. But sometimes it can come out in people’s personal lives as well and hurtful things can be said or things that can be said that are harsh but then afterwards there’s this feeling of almost relief sometimes in having gotten some of that out or gotten the conflict out that needs to take place.
AF: Yeah, I do think it can have that sort of cathartic quality to it and that’s actually what I’ve been wondering about as the first week or so of December as everything kind of rushes towards that opposition with the Sun, if it will bring things more to ahead in that way. And probably helps to know for people where the retrograde is in their chart because if you have Mars retrograde in the 8th through the 12th or something, it’s likely to bring up more from under the surface than if you have it in the first house or something like that.
CB: Yeah. That really puts the focus especially maybe we want to talk about our first lunation of the month because that’s really what it seems the most highlighted, it’s we get this Full Moon that takes place on December 7th. Yeah, December 7th at 15 degrees of Gemini. But Mars is right there retrograde at 16 degrees of Gemini when that Full Moon goes exact. So as soon as the Moon hits the opposition with the Sun, it just immediately applies to the conjunction with that retrograde Mars in Gemini. I feel like that Full Moon is going to be a very important turning point in terms of the entire Mars retrograde story, not just because the Moon is conjunct Mars, but also because the next day Mars opposes the Sun. And that’s the halfway point in Mars’s retrograde cycle.
AC: Actually the Sun and Mars oppose within hours of that Full Moon. If you look at the chart right there, they’re only seven minutes apart and mutually applying.
CB: Yeah, looks like it takes place early the next day here. Yeah, and that’s the halfway point in the entire Mars retrograde cycle. So it seems like having that happen when we have a Full Moon when there’s also a feeling of culmination or heightened feelings or something like that, that we’re getting a heightening of some of the tensions of Mars. Some of the conflict… One of the things you mentioned last month, Austin, that I thought was funny was the doddering effect of sometimes people coming back into your life, or sometimes Mars-type figures coming back into your life from the past. I’ve seen that as being an interesting thing that’s come up for some people as well.
AC: Yeah.
AF: Can confirm. Yes.
CB: Confirmed, okay.
AF: Can confirm. [laughs] But yeah, I think that that sense of culmination will be there, but also I was thinking about themes of revelation. Because so much of the Mars retrograde has been also cloaked with its square to Neptune that may have made it entirely unclear for people exactly what is happening. And then the Full Moon feels like this moment where we might actually realize, “Oh, oh, this is the theme from the last few months.” Or something might click into place in a way that’s been challenging to pinpoint or identify because of the way that Neptune can obscure things despite Mars’s specificity.
AC: Yeah, [laughs] I think that the various conflicts and whatnot that this Mars retrograde is shepherding will be very not concealed during this Full Moon, you know? Like lighting the sky up with fireworks, you know, with it being two mutable signs and just kind of going everywhere, I get the image of like fireworks when they’re 40 little explosions, right? Like cluster munitions, things scattering and going everywhere. Like lighting off… I’m thinking of– not bottle rockets– but anyway, lots of little explosions all over the place, and not subtle.
AF: Not subtle. [chuckles]
AC: Not subtle in the slightest.
CB: Yeah, Mars is not one for subtlety.
AF: It just makes me think also of Mars in myth and how he’s always playing an oppositional role for no apparent reason. He’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna fight on this side of the battle. You’re doing that? Cool. I’m gonna go over here and do this,” and just inherently playing the devil’s advocate or taking the oppositional side just to see what happens.
AC: Also one of the things that I associate with Mars retrograde is there also periods where Mars or Aries or Mars-ish gods or Mars-adjacent gods will uncharacteristically refuse to participate in conflicts. I believe there’s a story where Aries gets, in his case I believe it’s unintentional, he gets trapped in a pot. You also have with West African gods, you have a period where Ogun who is very Mars-ish, just refuses to participate. Usually, Ogun is not only the fiercest warrior but also the hardest worker. And for a while refuses to take part in the labor of finishing creation. Like, “You know what? Fuck it. It’s not worth it. Who am I doing this work for? These people? I’m not participating anymore.” And that’s a little bit of a Mars retreat. You also have with Karthikeya, you have aesthetic themes of going off. And you can see this in Hollywood movies as well, like the warrior character going off on a retreat and refusing to take part. I didn’t see them but in the more recent Star Wars movies, don’t you have Luke Skywalker refusing to participate? I don’t know, I didn’t see it. But it’s that sort of sitting with the cost of war, and not wanting to take part on either side. And there’s that sort of retrograde reflecting upon that planet’s action, rather than taking part in it. But what’s weird is during the Mars retrograde, you have that. And then you also have those wild cathartic releases of conflict where you’re like, “I’m not even going to try to hold this anymore. I’m not even going to try to maintain peace.” But it’s weird, you have both this aesthetic side and this berzerker side getting activated at the same time by the Mars retrograde.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And just explosive. That’s interesting, like a refusal of that sometimes with the retrograde but then also yeah, Mars having this explosive energy sometimes at the same time. That can sometimes be very literal. We did the episode with Nick Dagan Best on the Uranus Return of the United States and something I couldn’t remember at the time is I knew one of the early uses of the nuclear bomb, I thought it was the trinity test had Uranus on the midheaven and Mars-Uranus conjunct in Gemini, but a listener told me yesterday it was actually the Hiroshima bombing. Uranus was right on the midheaven and Mars was there in Gemini just off the midheaven as well. So Mars just in its own form can be an explosion, but Uranus can amplify that using technology and things like that to those even larger and more destructive levels.
AC: Yeah, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings had the Mars-Uranus. And notice that it was a pair of bombings, it was a pair of cities, right? And those two bombs have names. It was Fat Man and Little Boy, I think. But yeah, you have the same pairing or multiplying with Mars. Those bombings have pretty loud astrology; Sun conjunct Pluto, Mars conjunct Uranus.
CB: Yeah. Well, then it’s also just highlighted. Because one of the questions people had is why, for example with Uranus, why is it that every time Uranus goes through Gemini that the US is involved in a huge war– starting with the Revolutionary War then with Civil War, and then with World War Two. And it’s because of the presence of Mars there in Gemini in the birth chart of the US back in 1776, so that every time you get a Uranus return you’ve also got the awakening of that internal potential of the Mars-Uranus conjunction. Which is interesting and says something about that a little bit in terms of talking about Mars going through Gemini.
AC: Yeah, a hundred percent. For anybody who’s had Uranus go over their Mars as a transit, it’s a very Martial period. Fortunately, I was young and I was literally just doing martial arts all day long. I just graduated from college so all I did was practice cool moves and fight people. That’s all I wanted to do. And I can imagine if I didn’t have that as a safe constructive place to put all that Mars energy if I were, let’s say, a nation state.
CB: Yeah, maybe that’s a good topic we could talk about a little bit here before we move on from the Full Moon. Because Mars energy sometimes when it’s in abundance, if you don’t channel it or you don’t do something with it, then you get the explosive or the conflict or the accident or other things like that which are all potentials. But sometimes that energy does get channeled in a more constructive fashion. What are some of the positive ways to channel some of that if people are getting hit by heavy Mars transits and they need to find a constructive outlet for it.
AF: Yeah, that’s something that I talked about in my Mars retrograde workshop that I did with Julie Simmons because we were talking about how destructive Mars can be without an activity. An idle Mars is a restless and potentially destructive Mars, and so often at least on a personal level if you can give Mars an activity, sometimes it can channel some of that energy into something more productive. Like you were saying, Austin, learning martial arts is a great way to channel Mars energy. I think it’s interesting also to consider different ways that people might ideally express their Mars energy based on the sign that Mars is in or the house that it’s in. Like, someone with Mars in Scorpio might want to learn martial arts and that’s a really cathartic way to channel that energy, someone with Mars in Taurus might get really into cooking. I think there’s different ways that people might express it based on their natal Mars.
AC: Yeah, a hundred percent. Although I would say for example with Mars in Taurus are some of the places where Mars is less comfortable. What I’ve seen when people are picking activities to do in Mars, they’re actually not Martial activities. It’s actually a Venusian activity and it doesn’t actually do… It’s actually a way of continuing to avoid Mars. [laughs] If there’s not effort and stress, it doesn’t have to be competitive but it has to be pressurized. You need certain parameters to step into Mars’s world. One of the things I was going to say is one of the challenges I found with Mars is that on one hand, stagnant Mars is dangerous, right? When the Mars energy stagnates, it’s like leaving a full canister of gasoline somewhere in the room while you’re a smoker, right? It’ll go off at a time you don’t want. But it’s leaving it flammable just lying around. But at the same time Mars also punishes you, or you also can get in trouble with overdoing it. You’re like, “Well, I should not just leave this gasoline lying around my room.” But you have to be really careful what you do set on fire. Because fire spreads. And that’s also the thing with addressing points of conflict in relationships. You know, if you don’t do it right or if the timing is bad or whatever, conflict or argumentation in one area can spread and set fire to the rest of the relationship. On another very simple level, which is something I’ve been trying to do during this Mars Retrograde, is not working out, letting Mars stagnate. That’s bad for you. Working out too hard especially when you’re under a lot more stress is getting injured. Especially in isolation like getting into that Mars mindset where you want to push yourself, you want to go past what’s comfortable and accomplish bigger and better things, that’s exactly how you get injured. But that is also the right mindset, engaging that overcoming mindset. You can overcome the physical capacity of your joints, [laughs] but you don’t want to not engage them. Anyway, there’s just this golden mean thing with Mars. Mars kind of makes you walk a little bit of a tightrope.
AF: That makes me think about our earlier conversation about Mars myth and how often Mars will abstain or dive in headfirst. And maybe part of it is the discernment to know the difference because we do need to give Mars an outlet or inactivity. And like you said, that stagnating Mars depending on where it is in the chart, I’ve seen it turn into inflammation in the body and chronic pain and concerns like that.
AC: Autoimmunity. Autoimmunity, as well. Mars is almost always the chart indicator for that. It’s attacking the self.
AF: Yeah. But there is that sense that sometimes we also have to use the No side of Mars or Mars’s capacity to say no. Makes me think about when people have a Mars return as a kid, it’s usually when they learn to say no for the first time. They’re like two and a half and people call it the ‘terrible twos’ but they’re actually just having a Mars return and learning how to say no for the first time in their lives.
AC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s great.
CB: The other thing about Mars. Something you said just now, Austin, made me think about the little flame that turns into the bigger thing is Mars sometimes during the retrograde, it can be like the little hurt that doesn’t seem that big at the time, but it turns into a larger thing because it lingers. Sometimes that can be the little argument where something is said that’s hurtful where you could have held your tongue but decided not to, but where ordinarily it would be something that would come and go and pass by after a day because Mars lingers sort of a fire. The fire can sometimes get bigger and grow so that it gets out of control and becomes much larger than you thought it would at first when it seemed like it was just this little isolated thing. That can be true for interpersonal relationships, but it can also be true for even little things that you were talking about injuries. A shoulder injury if you push yourself too hard when you’re working out, it seems like a little minor thing. But then later like a month later, it’s grown into a more long-term injury despite initially seeming like a short-term thing.
AC: Yeah, that’s so true. I also think of wounds get infected. And if you think about iron, which is so deeply connected to Mars symbolically as well as physically, it’s literally the iron on Mars’s surface that makes it red. But we think about all of these Martial things like industry and war, it’s all made of iron, right? None of these things happen without iron. And one of the things I was thinking about long time ago but that’s stuck with me is that iron in its naturally occurring forms is basically a poisonous metal. Iron rusts and that’s why we all have tetanus shots. During that period where Uranus was conjunct my Mars many years ago, in addition to doing martial arts, I would also just do housework and some construction demo stuff. I was working in a garden and taking out a trellis and I ended up stabbing myself with a rusty nail. [laughs] It went about maybe, I don’t know, most of an inch into my knee. And it was a very rusty nail and I got tetanus. My knee blew up to the size of a cantaloupe within six hours and was super hot. You know, with Mars it’s inflammation. This was not a cold, slow Saturnian sickness. It’s instantly giant and red and hot and inflamed. And then I got a booster tetanus shot for 50 bucks at the free… the not-quite-free clinic and it was gone, the inflammation was gone almost immediately. But the actual wound like you were saying, Chris, from the rusty nail poking me, not a big deal. Little trickle of blood scabbed up within 20 minutes. But like that infection.
CB: Yeah, I think then part of especially for people getting hit by this Mars transit, if it’s passing over the degree of a personal planet in your natal chart, my advice can be to hold your tongue or to resist doing the impulsive piercing thing that seems present and seems pressing in the moment. And instead, put it off a day and sleep on it and see if you still feel the same way. But oftentimes with Mars transits, if you put it off long enough you’ll think better of it and decide that that wasn’t the wise or the strategic decision in the long term to do what felt right or you felt pressed to do in the moment.
AC: Yeah, I think of… Oh, go ahead.
AF: Oh, go ahead, Austin.
AC: All right. What I use as a quick axiom, like just a sort of quick strategic guide for conflict, is “What do I get out of this conflict?” Even if it goes perfectly and I’m victorious in the terms of whatever the conflict is, what do I win? Is there actually a prize? Because there’s so many fights where literally even if you win and even if you perfect your opponent flawless victory, you actually don’t get anything. You just get the satisfaction of feeling like you won and they lost. That’s not a good enough price, in my opinion.
CB: Right, because it often also comes with a great deal of internal turmoil and other things that come with any sort of protracted conflict, especially if a conflict is protracted and becomes longer term than you think it will in the moment, which is always the danger with the Mars retrograde since astronomically, Mars normally just comes and goes and passes through a sign relatively quickly over the course of a month or two. But here it’s just lingering for eight months.
AC: Yeah. Yeah. And with conflict, it reminds me of a martial arts teacher at one point who’d do a knife fighting and defense workshop, right? And instead of being like, “If somebody attacks you like this, you do this cool move,” the first half an hour or the first part was repeating, “If you get in a knife fight, you’re going to get cut.” That was the first through 30th rules of knife fights. Like, let’s acknowledge that and then look at what are more or less advantageous things to do in a situation where you’re going to get cut. And most conflicts once they get going or knife fights at some level, you may be victorious but you’re not going to not get cut.
CB: Right. Because that’s always the advice and the problem with knife fights, is they say you’re gonna get cut and once you realize if you enter into a knife fight with somebody that you’re going to get cut, the smartest move is not to enter into a knife fight with somebody if you can get out of it, you know, in no uncertain terms.
AC: Yeah, and especially if you’re fantasizing that you’re going to get in whatever proverbial knife fight without getting cut, you’re probably delusional or misinformed.
AF: Kinda makes me…
CB: Go ahead.
AF: It just makes me think of I grew up in the world of modern dance, and there’s a joke that modern dance is essentially just learning how to fall well because we’re inevitably going to be falling all the time. And so if you can do it well and gracefully, it’s also kind of like a martial art in a way. And yes, something that Austin said earlier about does this fight have a purpose, or knowing when there’s a larger or more purposeful reason to get into a fight kind of makes me think of the Roman depictions of Mars, which will usually only go to war if it’s ultimately in the name of peace. And will go to war and cause some shit and then be like, “Okay. Well, now everything is restored. The larger balance is restored here.” So I think that’s part of it, too.
AC: Yeah, right. And peace or a greater-lasting harmony is a prize. Right? If that’s actually the outcome of a fight, then that may be worth contesting for. You know, most of our opportunities for conflict especially in the internet age don’t have prizes, like 100 years of peace.
CB: Yeah, but that is a good Mars question, though, sometimes on the flip side of the knife analogy which is like, sometimes the righteous use of aggression that is necessary in order to prevent a greater injustice from taking place. And that’s sometimes the other flip side of the Mars coin as well. I was looking into- I was researching Einstein’s biography recently and how he was a pacifist. But how one of the things that he did was write that letter to Roosevelt warning him that the Germans were probably trying to develop the atomic bomb and that they should probably look into that. And that ended up being the thing that led to the Manhattan Project and everything else. I don’t know if he was super happy that that was the eventual outcome of all of that but it’s an interesting question when you get into sometimes wars like that, like World War Two where sometimes Mars is necessary.
AC: Yeah. Well, and I would say that’s another part of the Mars retrograde sort of analysis of the Martial. So if you’re going to fight, that just that opens up an entirely– or should I say an equally huge number of questions where it’s,”Okay. What is your strategy? What are your tactics? How are you fighting?” If you’re fighting to achieve a particular outcome or to defeat a particular opponent, simply being willing to fight is step one of a thousand. And being, as we say, fighting on the right side of something doesn’t guarantee victory, and it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be effective. There are plenty of… The graveyards, the veterans’ graveyards are full of people who were felled by friendly fire. Again, you can hurt your own cause and you can hurt those that you are fighting for if you fight poorly. You know, once you get into the world of aggression and damage, that has to be directed very carefully.
CB: Yeah, you can also shoot yourself in the foot, which is-
AC: Yeah, proverbially. Proverbially or literally.
CB: One of the things that I was thinking about watching the whole Twitter fiasco is just seeing that company tanking so fast, like what it’s like to watch somebody seemingly shoot themselves in the foot. And yeah, sometimes that’s the thing. It’s not just friendly fire, but the friendliest of fire. [Austin laughs] So let’s see what else. Reminds me also, Franklin Roosevelt had Mars retrograde in Gemini in his 10th house conjunct his Midheaven. And it seemed like so much of his life built up to World War Two and then he was the US president leading the US through World War Two in playing such an integral role. Just going back to that idea of sometimes the righteous war what have you or at least when war is sometimes necessary, as opposed to something that’s just being done for the sake of destruction or violence or what have you.
AF: Yeah, and Mars can be protest, too, which is a fantastic use of Mars energy. Possibly more peaceful and less violent but you know, depends on the situation.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Because sometimes protest, even verbal protest to the people on the receiving end, is like an unwanted verbal intrusion or sometimes has this jarring effect that’s uncomfortable or is felt as uncomfortable, but that uncomfortable feeling is actually the goal and that’s what pushes or causes change in some instances.
AF: Yeah, it’s almost like an elaboration of Mars teaching us how to say no. It’s protest is like a larger-scale way of saying no to something or expressing some kind of no about it.
AC: Yeah, resistance. Because that’s also, you know, with Mars there are a lot of kinetic actions we associate with Mars. But Mars is also refusing– not just saying no, but to take it to a bodily level, which Mars likes. Mars is one of the more bodily of the planets. You know, refusing to be moved. You think of somebody’s trying to make you leave a room, you can say no. But then when somebody tries to move your body, you can resist. Be like, “No, I’m staying here.” I think of my cat. When he’s really excited about being in a specific place and I’m like, “Okay, we’re gonna move,” he tenses up and digs in. That’s a bodily refusal, like “No, I’m not moving!”
AF: Relatable. Yes. [laughter] My cat, not me. [laughs]
CB: You know what’s really funny when you mentioned protest, it suddenly made me realize and connect something I hadn’t connected before, which is the string of protests that’s actually been happening since October with the Mars square Neptune. It’s been the, I think it’s the climate activists that started with that Van Gogh painting, where they went up in mid-October and they threw soup on it. And then a video of that went viral because people were just outraged they just destroyed this priceless painting. But then it turned out that it was behind glass so it’s sort of like they’re giving the illusion of having destroyed a priceless painting in order to get their protest message out there. In what looked like an act of destruction, which is very Mars-like, but it was square Neptune so it was deceptive in some ways in order to serve the ends that they wanted it to serve.
AF: Mars square Neptune is totally throwing soup. [laughs] It’s a perfect metaphor. But I have been thinking also a lot about protests during the Mars retrograde, because the protests in Iran started almost to the day after Mars entered its shadow. Well, I think maybe a week later. Because I think the murder of the woman that initiated all the protests that are happening there, I think was September 15th. I could be wrong, but it was right around the start of the shadow as well. And so it feels like that story is a huge part of the retrograde as well.
AC: Yeah, and that was the period where Mars was warming up, and then it was ruled by and tightly configured to that Mercury retrograde. And that’s what turned it from– I should say– a singular tragedy slash atrocity into a societal movement.
CB: Yeah. And then more recently, there was another story in the news which was the shooting at the Q nightclub, which was a queer nightclub here in Colorado. And I didn’t have necessarily an astrological take on that, except I did notice over the past few days after that that the shooter afterwards who survived and was brought into custody started claiming that he was non-binary, and that started going around. But then a lot of people were pushing back and saying that he was not non-binary but instead was just using that in order to further antagonize the queer community which he targeted in that shooting and killing a number of people. So it struck me as another Mars-Neptune-type thing.
AC: So just the Mars in Gemini, they’re adding the words. There was another shooting last week as well. It’s just sort of like, “Oh, it’s Mars retrograde! It’s kind of all over the place.” That’s part of the quality of the Mars in Gemini in a dual sign in a multiple sign. You don’t just get one thing.” Like, it’s fireworks going off in a variety of different places. You know, the cardinal signs and even the fixed signs really tend to focus on one big thing. But with mutable signs, it’s happening lots of different ways in lots of different places. And you get that doubling effect.
AF: Yeah, Mars in Gemini is almost like a kind of option paralysis. There’s too many possibilities and engines firing in all directions.
AC: Right. And that brings it back to me to the point about you get paralysis, where I’m trying to move in eight directions at once so I’m standing still. Or you get, from what I understand of the Twitter thing, you get Elon Musk moving in eight directions. But one after another with no coherent movement pattern, you get chaos or paralysis as a sort of default.
CB: Yeah, I forgot. Also, there’s been a huge amount of tech layoffs over the past couple of months and especially over the past month. Mars going through Gemini, as another thing is Mars is just good at cutting things out or removing or as you’re saying, negating things. All right, so that’s the Full Moon, which is the first week or two of the month. Just a couple of days later, we actually have the Auspicious Electional chart that I wanted to highlight this month. Why don’t we take a look at that? This occurs on December 10th, 2022, starting at around 12:35 pm local time. So you want to adjust the Ascendant, so the Ascendant is at about 27 degrees or so of Pisces right at the end of Pisces. And there you’ll find Jupiter which is at 29 degrees of Pisces. This is a day chart, we’re taking advantage of Jupiter being in the very very last degree of Pisces right before it departs that sign for the next 11 years and moves into Aries. So this is a Jupiter election, it’s a day chart with Jupiter in its own domicile in the first house conjunct the degree of the Ascendant. That’s very good for all Jupiter-related things. Jupiter is also ruling the 10th house of career, reputation, and social standing so it could be good for things pertaining to that as well.
The Moon is in Cancer in the fifth whole sign house, the place of good fortune in Hellenistic astrology. And the Moon is applying to and has a nice trine with Jupiter that it’s applying to within 13 degrees, which is very helpful and supportive for the Moon, especially as the Moon is coming off of that Full Moon with Mars in Gemini but it’s now safely out of that range. At this point in the month, it’s not just Mercury in Venus, but also the Sun is finally separating from Mars and separating from that opposition. One of the downsides for this chart is that we had to make Mars angular in the fourth whole sign house in a day chart. But we tried to move it so it’s not on the exact degree of the IC so that the IC is later in the sign, and it also has some mitigation from Jupiter being in a superior sign-based square overcoming Mars and therefore trying to tone it down a little bit by putting Jupiter in the dominant position. Venus is up there in the 11th whole sign house, which is good for friends and groups and it’s not too far off of the degree of the Midheaven. And yeah, those are the major things with this chart trying to capture the very last of Jupiter in Pisces before Jupiter is gone for a while. What sort of things have you two used Jupiter elections for this year or Jupiter in Pisces elections for?
AC: Well, if you can stick Jupiter in the first– which you have and which you can for a lot of charts– it’ll half fix three quarters of elections. I’ve actually just been going back over Dorotheus for a lot of this month and looking at the prototypical electional manual. Different elections have different specific requirements, but pretty much all of them get way better if you stick Jupiter in the first, you know, in a strong position. So I would say one, it sort of makes the chart better for a lot of things than it would be. For that in particular or for me, I’ll just say so Jupiterian elections… Launching a class, right, announcing a teaching endeavor. Very simple, very Jupiterian.
AF: Yeah, I’ve used it for a few classes and things like that too. I actually used the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction to send a bunch of emails to record labels back in April, because of where it was in my chart. And it ended up being successful and leading to a contract with one of my favorite labels. So that was a really nice Jupiter moment. I’ve also had a couple of funny Jupiter experiences through the year because I’ve been having some nice Jupiter transits where I won a bunch of contests, which seemed like a nice random Jupiter park, so that’s been a fun thing.
AC: Yeah, that’s great. Jupiter is success, victory, winning. Jupiter has a very strong relationship to these sort of blanket positives, and so generally if it’s something that you would like to succeed at, Jupiter can help as the planet that brings success. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’s a nice– the opposite of what we were talking about Mars in the malefic, sometimes taking away or negating things earlier. Jupiter does the opposite. It affirms or it says yes to things. So if you put it right on the Ascendant when you’re trying to accomplish something when you want a positive outcome, then it’s more likely to say yes to whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish, generally speaking.
AC: Yeah. To give an example, where’s– I’m not sure where Mercury was in that chart. Was it early mid-Cap? That’s a little early for what I was gonna say. But, for example in Dorotheus, there’s the election, there’s electrical parameters for when you would like to ask for something and get a yes. And the baseline for that is Jupiter configured with Mercury. So that when you ask, you get a yes. And then Dorotheus says, “Avoid Mercury with Saturn. Because when you ask, you’ll get a no.” But it’s like that, that affirmative property. And also in that case, generous. Because if you’re asking somebody for something, you would like them to be in a generous giving mood.
AF: [crosstalk] Yeah, go ahead, Chris.
CB: No, go ahead.
AF: Well, just thinking about that specific chart that we’re looking at, it’s like, “Okay, well, what would you want to say yes to with this chart?” And Jupiter at 29 degrees of Pisces is the ultimate state of possibility. [chuckles] Reminds me of in the water cycle right before water evaporates, that’s like 29 degrees of Pisces to me where it’s like half evaporated or something. And so if someone is trying to open up some state of possibility or make some kind of change or transition, that feels like a nice chart for Jupiter to be able to say yes to.
AC: Yeah. Jupiter is also ruling the 10th in the Sun so it’s saying yes. It’s supporting whatever the Sun wants to do in the 10th. And although we often simplify the 10th to professional matters, it’s really action in the world. Like, going out and doing a thing in the world is to some degree always 10th. And so Jupiter ruling the first and saying yes to whatever 10th house activities are there is… That chart’s really good for a pretty wide variety of things like Moon in the 5th in Cancer supporting what’s in the 1st, Jupiter in the 1st ruling the 10th. I would say that that’s a pretty multi-use election.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Especially just taking advantage of days when the Moon is trining Jupiter is always a good idea electional-wise, and that’s one of the reasons we focused in on that chart as the best election for this month. That was not the only electional chart though we found, because Leisa Schaim and I each month do a Monthly Auspicious elections podcast, which is one of the benefits through our page on Patreon, where we go through and find at least four other auspicious electional charts. We actually give people like 10 charts that give different lucky dates throughout the month of December in that 45-minute podcast. You can find out more information about that at theastrologypodcast.com/elections. Leisa and I also recently released our 2023 election astrology report where we went through all 12 months of 2023 and we picked out the single best date that we could find in each of the next 12 months, so that you can basically get electional charts for the entire next year if you need to plan ahead or schedule something like starting a business or having a wedding or going on a major trip or what have you that needs more long-term things. You can find out more information about that at theastrologypodcast.com/2023report. All right. That’s good. We’ve completed the first half of the month.
AC: We should really talk about Mercury and Venus moving into Cap. Because I don’t regret any of the immense time we spent on Mars because it’s such a theme, but as a second point, we do have Mercury and Venus both moving into Cap pretty early and staying there for the majority of the month.
CB: That is true. So here in the electional chart, we see that Venus has just moved into Capricorn on December 10th, so at that point both planets are firmly in that sign. What’s your take on that?
AC: Okay, one thing in particular is that Mercury’s movement has more impact than normal, because Mercury is running Mars in Gemini, the ruler of Mars in Gemini is that Mercury. All of this movement we’ve talked about with Mars in Gemini, all of this speech that we’ve talked about with Mars in Gemini, it’s all Mercury’s domain. And so Mercury changing signs from fast, loud, bright Sagittarius into much more slower, more strategic, pessimistic Capricorn is a very meaningful shift. And so I guess on a simple level, Mercury in Cap is more like, “Okay, well, so how does this change the playing field?” All this stuff’s happening, but it’s like, “Okay, let’s look at the map, right? Rather than just the street view like, okay how does this change the terrain? And then how do I plan for that? Or how do I adjust? Or what do I do in the playing field that all this stuff has created?
CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That’s going to become more important because it’s not just… Most of the time the Mercury transit would be just a quick little jaunt, three-week jaunt through that sign of Capricorn. But instead, later this month on December 28th, Mercury is going to slow down and station retrograde, and then spend the next three weeks backtracking through Capricorn and just sitting in that sign, both dwelling on some of those significations as well as revisiting some from earlier in the summer.
AF: Go ahead, Austin.
AC: Oh, yeah. I was just gonna say if you think about all the stuff that’s already in play that is probably gonna get faster and louder during that Full Moon, all the things that are in the air it’s a lot of changing the map or changing the position of pieces on the board and the terrain of the board. Things are very much in motion right now and so it makes a lot of sense that the phase after this one by the end of December is going to be like, “Okay, so where are things now?” Because they’re different than they were six months ago. Like, what’s what’s going on? We always do that, or there’s a sort of collective taking stock when the Sun’s in Capricorn and we have the beginning of the secular year. That’s always there but it’s like doubly important, right? Because this last quarter, there’s just a tonne of stuff in play.
AF: Mhm. And that sense of a lot of the planets starting to move into cardinal signs instead of their time in the more mutable signs. And that idea of taking stock feels very cardinal to me as well. Or very Capricorn, like, “Okay, so what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do here?”
AC: Right. And cardinal Earth, right? Not cardinal Fire, which is like, “Let’s go,” but like, “Let’s hurry up and sit down and think this through really carefully on a strategic level.” That’s the Capricorn thing. Like, “Let’s hurry up and make a plan rather than let’s just act.”
AF: And with Venus in Capricorn, that plan has to have something of value to it. There has to be some kind of meaning or value to the action steps.
AC: Yeah, how do I get what I want slash need in this version of the world? And just to go back to what you’re saying about, you know, right now and for the first part of December, it’s mutable. And mutable is very much like, “Okay, this is how I’m going to adapt in the middle of the game.” It’s late rounds of a fight, it’s the fourth quarter of a game, you know, it’s end game in chess where you can’t go back and set things up the way you want. You just got to work with things as they are with what you have. But cardinal, especially cardinal Earth, Capricorn is like, “Okay, what am I going to do? How am I going to set myself up for success when the next game begins?”
AF: Mhm. It’s less responsive in that way. Mutable placements are, like you said, just often responding to what is. Whereas cardinal placements want to initiate the next thing. And so it feels like a huge shift in the tone of everything, as well as being into the second half of the Mars retrograde where it is often easier to initiate something that might have been getting fumbled in the first half.
AC: Yeah, and even though Mars will continue to be retrograde until was it 12th or 13th of January and will still be in Gemini until the end of March, a lot of the Mars… Mars retrograde has played a lot of its cards and those cards might get replayed in future hands, but it won’t be a surprise. Right? Yes, these themes, but it’s one thing when like, “Yep, it’s still this, but it’s been this for a while. I’m used to it or I’m adapted to it.” Versus like, “Holy shit, I didn’t know that we were playing. I didn’t know you had that card.” Whereas Mars’s you don’t play some of his more unpleasant cards several times already. Anyway, even though it’s not over, simply it becoming unknown makes it planable. Unknowns are much harder to plan around.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point, there’s already a trajectory heading into it. One of the things we have to talk about if we’re talking about the Mercury and it’s ingress as well as Venus’s ingress into Capricorn is that when Mercury stations retrograde at the end of December, it’s pretty closely conjunct Pluto from 24 Capricorn to 27 Capricorn. And Venus actually catches up to and conjoins Mercury within that same time frame around the 29th at 24 Capricorn, and then Venus goes on to conjoin Pluto on the final day of the month, actually on December 31st and January 1st, it looks like. We have this whole clustering of Mercury and Venus conjoining Pluto at the very end of the month, and that being part of the opening signature of that Mercury station and that early retrograde period. So, Mercury-Pluto combinations as we’ve gone over before on the forecasts whenever this has happened when Mercury stations in a hard aspect to Pluto have this sometimes obsessive quality when it comes to communications, sometimes trying to get to the bottom of things. And sometimes that can result in things like disclosures or the putting out into the open of that which was secret, and the attempt to investigate and then get down to the bottom of something and then to bring it back up from the depths whether that’s a public story and a public thing that happens in terms of disclosures or whether it’s a personal one. It has that quality, that sort of investigative but also obsessive quality of getting to the bottom of things.
AF: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, actually, as we approach that retrograde because it’s also almost to the degree where Venus stationed retrograde at the end of last December, I think that was 26 degrees of Capricorn. Obviously, that’s in the realm of all those massive Capricorn conjunctions of 2020 as well. And so I feel like there’s this interesting theme where Venus went back to dip into that and bring that back to the surface and now Mercury is coming to bring that back to the surface. There’s this sense of the retrogrades like continuing to harken back to the themes from 2020 that were happening and sort of pulling them up from the drags in a way.
CB: That’s such a great point because that might then, for some people or maybe some news stories, the Mercury stationing there and those degrees conjunct Pluto could be like the investigation or the re-litigation or return to have a discussion of something that happened a year ago when Venus was going retrograde there conjunct Pluto. That whatever that Venus retrograde story was for different people, something about that coming back and having to be discussed again now starting at the end of December and going into early January.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. It’s not just Pluto– the Pluto Mercury does, as you said Chris, always give you that disclosure or discovery of secrets. But Pluto at the end of Capricorn, you know, the end of Capricorn is a place loaded with symbolism around power, right? Like throne tops of hierarchies. You can see the Four of Coins which shows a man sitting on a city’s skyline as if it were a throne. Like secrets of those in power. And the secret that the throne is sitting on top of to conceal and whose weights disguises it, with Venus it’s just a great point you’re in because Venus is right there. And as you said, Chris, that’s the signature of the initiation of the retrograde movement. I know that with Venus, it makes me think of some of the sex scandals that were happening at that time. Venus retrograde on Pluto at the beginning of the year, or last year beginning of the year, that was the Ghislaine Maxwell trial and that’s when Prince whatever– the fuck– really got dragged in and as a result he has since been stripped of multiple titles and maybe stripped of more. But I remember that not being the only– how should we say it– Venus scandal, right? Like, illicit sexual behavior. And so I wonder if like you’re saying, some of that’s gonna get dragged back up.
CB: Yeah, the other Venus retrograde thing Venus in Capricorn that came up was the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia. It was very tied into the Venus retrograde so it wouldn’t be surprising if something related to that comes up again at the end of December and early January with Mercury stationing retrograde there on the same degree.
AC: Actually, yeah. BEcause that will be right around the time of the ending… Oh, no. Jupiter will be in Aries by then. Never mind, I was gonna make a point about that. Take it back. [laughs]
CB: Yeah, that’s something we’ll have to talk about. So yeah, Mercury-Pluto also powerplays, control, issues of manipulation and other things like that are common factors. Since Venus is going to be tied up in the mix, then it does bring in issues related to relationships and relationships between people, sometimes abuses of power between people or attempts to manipulate or control people through different ways or through sometimes just feelings or issues of love and jealousy and things like that. All of that really… It’s interesting how at least in terms of Venus, Venus hits Pluto basically on New Year’s Eve. So for a number of people, one of the signatures of New Year’s Eve this year is going to be that Venus-Pluto conjunction, which is a pretty intense signature in terms of interpersonal relationships and sometimes at that time can start very intense relationships, but also they can be a little bit challenging due to the level of intensity.
AC: Yeah, Venus-Pluto especially in Capricorn really pushes Venusian signatures either to an extreme where there’s obsession, but then also completely negates them. With Venus-Pluto, you also have feeling completely alone and isolated. So if your feelings are going in that direction around the end of the year, Venus will change signs within less than a week, and you’re not going to feel that way forever. But it’s a period of time that people often feel more depressed or isolated, the holidays, and Venus conjunct Pluto is a temporary intensification of that.
AF: And it has all of those Venus in the underworld kind of themes to it. And depending on which story you’re looking at, Venus is often brought to the underworld against their will not, not necessarily by choice. So it does kind of have that sense of places that we are dragged to or places that we must go to that aren’t really our choice but bring us into this other side of human experience.
CB: Yeah, for sure. All right, that’s Venus in Capricorn and also Mercury in Capricorn, which is basically the entire second part of the month once those two planets make their way out of Sagittarius and into that sign with Mercury first ingressing into Capricorn on December 6th and Venus going in on the 9th. I was looking at the dates and it looks like Mercury enters its shadow degree at eight degrees of Capricorn already on December 12th. So basically just two days after our auspicious election this month, which is part of why we chose that date, Mercury already enters into the degrees that it will later retrograde back to. So at that point from December 12th onwards, it’s kind of important to pay attention to what you’re doing. Because in some instances for certain people, something that you initiate once during the first few weeks of the month, you’ll actually have to come back to and revisit especially in January when Mercury returns to those degrees.
AC: Yeah. On a somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not completely level. You may want to delay finalizing your New Year’s resolutions until mid-January when Mercury’s actually direct. Because it really is about, Mercury in Capricorn retrograde cycle really has that when-a-plan-comes-together energy. It’s worth taking extra time to have the right plan, even if it needs to be delayed. Also worth noting is that in one system, Mercury is the ruler of that third decan of Capricorn. And if we think about power and Mercury, it’s about writing a decree or carving something into stone, which is what we want when we’re imagining a habit change or lifestyle change. We want that to be carved into the rock of our lives and to guide our actions, rather than being a whim. Rather than being words spoken which are gone as soon as the vibration ceases, we want to talismanify or carve those statements, those intentions.
AF: Yeah, Mercury direct is definitely a better time and way to do that, especially because Mars will station just a few days before Mercury stations in January. So it does have that feeling that anything we try to make stick, and the first couple of weeks of January might then be undone after that.
AC: Right. We might be like, “Oh! I totally didn’t take this into account, we’re gonna have to scratch it and go back to the drawing board.” And you end up coming up with a new plan when everything’s direct anyway.
CB: All right. In order to further focus on that, maybe we’ll hit our second lunation of the month as well as the Jupiter ingress. So, we talked about the Full Moon in Gemini which is taking place on the 7th and then we have a New Moon in Capricorn on the 23rd of December. And just a few days before that, Jupiter changes signs and moves from Pisces into Aries which is another cardinal sign on the 20th of December. That ends up tying that Jupiter ingress into the New Moon because it means the New Moon basically takes place at one degree of Capricorn, and it’s squaring Jupiter at zero degrees of Aries at that time. So that New Moon is going to put more of the focus on some of those Capricorn transits that we’re already talking about towards the end of the month with Mercury going retrograde and Venus hitting Mercury in Pluto. So some of that is a little bit similar to what we’ve all been talking about already here but one of the things we definitely have to talk about is the Jupiter ingress into Aries, where it’s returning back to a sign of the zodiac in a spot in the zodiac that it was already in earlier this year for several months as it was transiting through that sign. Did either of you feel like you got a good feel of how Jupiter in Aries was earlier this year, and some of the themes that came up that were distinctive in terms of news stories or personal stories?
AC: Yeah, definitely. Jupiter in Aries is bold, you know? It’s much more– what should I say? Uh, it’s much less risk-averse than Jupiter in Pisces. Jupiter in Pisces is sort of do the wise, compassionate, patient, long-term fruitful thing, where Jupiter in Aries is a little bit more like Nike’s slogan, it’s a little bit more “Just do it.” Like, the benefits that are gained by ceasing your deliberations… Just do it. Just move forward. And again, Aries is not a bad place for Jupiter. So that’s often good advice that solves a lot of problems of inaction and excessive internal deliberation, but it can be bad advice when Mars’s retrograde with Mars being the ruler of Jupiter in Aries. Some of that ‘just do it’ energy may be a little premature. But yeah, that’s some of my impressions of Jupiter in Aries.
AF: Yeah, I found it personally more satisfying than Jupiter in Neptune– excuse me, Jupiter in Pisces. Even though I know that it’s at home in Pisces, but like Austin’s saying, Jupiter in Aries is not a bad… Jupiter has triplicity there, and because of my personality I prefer the ‘just do it’ over the deliberations. For me it suits a lot of action better to have Jupiter in Aries and I feel like having it ingress back into the sign might be a welcome relief over the transits that we’ve had from the last few months, because there has been a lot of responding and process and deliberation and some of those more mutable qualities and the qualities with Mars and Neptune and the retrograde, and I feel like Jupiter moving into that Aries point will be a little bit piercing through the veil. Or the image that comes to mind is trying to aim an arrow through the fog to something on the other side of the fog.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, Jupiter in Pisces is definitely not arrows. It’s definitely not focused. But yeah, that’s another quality.
CB: It’s like a bubble gun.
AC: [chuckles] If you’re trying to turn Jupiter in Pisces into a gun, you’re probably doing it wrong. Unless it’s some sort of an EMP, a pulse weapon might be correct for Jupiter in Pisces. But it’s not like a small pokey explodey thing. That’s much more Aries.
CB: You make an EMP out of feels or vibes?
AC: I mean, that’s what EMPs are. It’s an electromagnetic pulse.
CB: Okay.
AF: It’s just sending nice vibes.
AC: Or figuring out how to weaponize your bad vibes. But another point about Jupiter in Aries, if Jupiter carries this wisdom-teaching philosophy of Guru energy, right? In Aries we have, you know, instead of being the archetypal font of wisdom, in Pisces we have the coach. The coach is there to help you do things better. To help you win more, to be more effective at doing. And there’s an understanding the game you’re playing better aspect of that, there’s understanding you’re performance and reviewing your performance so you can improve. But Jupiter in Aries is much more like coach than it is teacher. Or it’s that style of teacher.
CB: Yeah, I was looking back at the dates. Jupiter was in Aries from early May basically through late October when it retrograded into Pisces. So that was the initial preview of that that people can think back to, especially in terms of whatever whole sign house Jupiter dipped into during that time because you may see a return to a reactivation of similar topics in your chart when Jupiter goes back in. And it definitely had a much different vibe earlier this year of like, as you were saying, like the first into the breach or like you only live once kind of vibe. There was much more forward movement oriented, I felt like, than the more diffused Jupiter in Pisces lately.
AF: Yeah, it does have that sense of direction versus the more diffuse energy that we’ve had with it. And I think the timing of that ingress along with the New Moon a couple of days later, that’s going to square Jupiter. And we’ll have both the New Moon and Jupiter at very really cardinal degrees at that. It has the sense of initiating a new chapter, like turning the page over or something like that to it.
AC: Yeah, it’s all very appropriate end-of-the-year stuff. It’s very like, “Okay, with all the sort of planning and replanning energy with Mercury about to go retrograde with Venus and the Sun Moon in Cap, and then with Jupiter it’s sort of there for those gatherings, it’s sort of a plan to just do it. Like we were saying earlier, cardinal signs are very proactive in their respective ways. Cancer may not seem like a proactive sign, but there’s literally gathering information, you know, assessing things so you know how to act. It’s being actively careful and be like, “Okay, what is effective here reading the room, etcetera, etcetera?” It’s like active infer vibe scanning. And Capricorn, again, doesn’t look reckless like Aries can look, but it’s nonetheless a very active sort of terrain assessment so that you can put together a plan.
CB: One of our keywords earlier this year for Aries was ready, shoot, aim, and the idea of just shooting from the hip and just doing it. But sometimes you might have to go back and revise that because your first shot may not be as on target because you’re just not really planning things out very well. And I get a feeling that this initial part of this ingress and this lunation has that quality to it just because it’s on the cusp of Mercury stationing retrograde not too long after that just six days later, and then having to go back to earlier in that sign. And similarly, Mars is about 20 days away from stationing direct still by the end of December, by December 23rd on this New Moon. So there’s still this quality of Mars finishing up its retrograde cycle and going back to previous periods. So even though there might be this impulse, at least initially with Jupiter in Aries to just take action and have immediate, aggressive growth, some of the initial shots might not be exactly on target and you may have to go back and try again later or take a second attempt at things.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s really good advice. Because if we just look at the chain of rulership, Jupiter in Aries ruled by Mars retrograde, Mars retrograde ruled by Mercury about to go retrograde. Right? So if we follow the chain of command, there’s a lot of, “Well, it depends on this and I’ve got to wait until the person that I’m getting my information from is sure about it,” you know? That ability to act with certainty and without hesitation is great, but you got to save that for the right moment. It’s the– what is that? “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes,” or something. That’s a quote.
CB: Although that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t necessarily give it a shot. You should just be open to trying and failing or trying doing it, seeing what your mistake is, and then being willing to learn from that and move forward from there. Because I was thinking about this a lot lately where sometimes people, when they’re doing something new they can sometimes get paralysed by trying to make everything perfect the first time. And eventually if you stick with that, and if you stick with the idea of not doing anything until it’s perfect, you’ll never actually– sometimes in the worst manifestations– actually end up accomplishing anything. Because sometimes it’s only through trial and error that you can grow. And you have to just put yourself out there and try to do something and then move from there, rather than trying to do it perfectly the very first time. I think that’s going to be one of the great lessons Jupiter in Aries this year, especially once we get out of December in January once the planets start moving forward again, that’ll be one of the great lessons is that sometimes just do it is the way to learn, even if it’s not perfect at first.
AC: Yeah, Jupiter running the school of hard knocks in Aries.
AF: Yeah, I don’t think Aries is concerned with getting it perfectly. But it kind of makes me think of– I don’t know the exact date but at some point Jupiter will make a conjunction to Chiron when it gets to 11 or 12 degrees of Aries. And that may be the point at which we realize we have to go back and do the thing over again. But we’ll see, I could be wrong about that.
CB: I just turned Chiron in my chart and interestingly, it looks like it’s stationing at this date on the New Moon around December 23rd. It’s stationing at 11 Aries.
AF: Exactly. It’s right on the New Moon, which I thought was really… It almost feels like a foreshadow of when Jupiter will get to that conjunction because it’s stationing on the New Moon as the New Moon is squaring Jupiter. And so it feels like some kind of setup for whatever will happen at that date when they finally meet up.
CB: In terms of Chiron and some of its themes of recognizing past wounds or hurts or other things like that.
AF: Mhm. And I find that Chiron all so often speaks to patterns that we have, and so we might find that whatever we were just doing at the beginning of Jupiter in Aries was coming from some kind of familiar impulse that we have. And maybe we need to reconfigure our first response or our first reaction.
CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so as to not proceed from a place of being hurt from the past, but instead to proceed from a place of truly understanding what the present is, and the appropriate action is to take based on the present and the future, rather than the past.
AF: And I think Jupiter in Aries has this really lovely feeling of experimentation to it as well. Like, “I’m just going to try this out just to see what it’s like.” There’s a lot of really beautiful playfulness in that experimentation that I think might be the converse of acting from the Chiron place, which is because it’s coming from some sort of repetitive wound.
CB: Okay, definitely.
AC: Quick question, did Jupiter conjoin Chiron this year?
CB: It probably got pretty close, because it got-
AF: Stationed at eight degrees of Aries in July, so it would have come within a few degrees.
AC: Okay, so shy but no conjunction. Or no by-degree conjunction.
AF: And it’ll just make that one conjunction because it’s going to power straight through Aries.
CB: Got it. Okay. So that might be a little preview looking back to that past conjunction in terms of what the one coming up will mean sometime next year. All right, and then finally by the time we get to end of December, one of the things that’s really nice that I like is the Uranus-Saturn square at this point is getting really far away. By the end of the year, Saturn’s at 22 Aquarius and Uranus is at the middle of Taurus still retrograde, so they’re starting to get some distance and some of the shakeups and instability from that square that we’ve been experiencing on and off almost over the past three years since, you know, mid to early 2020 are going to start to fall into the past a little bit. But I think it’s really good especially for anybody with placements in the middle of the fixed signs.
AC: Yeah, and that’s another piece of that sort of let’s-reassess-the-landscape energy at the end of the month and next month. Because it’s basically the end of, as you said, on and off three years of this shake-up energy, right? We look at the devastated remains of various houses of cards, some of what was once mighty has fallen, some of this and that. Because it really is the end of that small era and soon enough, beginning of March we get Saturn moving into Pisces; a whole new chapter. Not only new sign, but also different outer planet configuration. We move from Saturn-Uranus to Saturn-Neptune, and for many years. This is sort of the– how should we say– we can look back. We can start to look back now, the Saturn-Uranus Square years. This is the epitaph or whatever phase.
CB: Yeah, especially coming off of the eclipses and now getting out of the eclipse season. And I think that was the last, even though we’re gonna have a continuation of some fixed sign eclipses into next year when it starts moving off of the Taurus-Scorpio axis and into the Aries-Libra axis, which is another shift away from fixed signs. This last set of eclipses was the last one that will be fully in that axis of Taurus and Scorpio. So I feel like that was just throwing gasoline on the fire of the Saturn-Uranus square for many people, and already in December coming out of that and starting to get more distance from some of the instability and the major changes of those eclipses for fixed signs, feels like a nice shift in some ways as well.
AF: Yeah, feels like Saturn has this very proposal direction right now because it made that station in late October while it was in the midst of that last exact square to Uranus. But from that station, we’ll just clear through the rest of Aquarius into Pisces. I often think about… When slower planets ingress, I often think back to the last time they station direct before they make that ingress. And that chapter of time can have a really cathartic sense of unfolding or that something comes to fruition that’s been in the works or in process through its retrogrades in the last sign.
AC: Yeah, I see that. It’s something that won’t be rewritten or overwritten, especially because Saturn’s doing a no-take-backsies ingress into Pisces, not coming back to Aquarius for what? 27 years.
CB: Yeah, and therefore bringing to completion that story of what Saturn in Aquarius has meant ever since it went into Aquarius way back in March and April of 2020. It’s been three years now almost that everyone’s been experiencing that transit of Saturn through Aquarius and through a specific sector or house of their chart at this point. And whatever the story is that that’s been telling, it’s going to start to wrap up and come to a close.
AC: Yeah, thank God. Bring me fresh hells, these stale ones grow tiresome.
AF: Saturn-Neptune will be the fresh hell. But that’s for later us to deal with, so. [laughs]
CB: Yeah, we’ll save some of that discussion about Saturn in Pisces for the Year Ahead forecast, which we’re going to record next month in December. Is there anything else we should touch base on before we wrap up this episode? I think we covered quite a bit all the major beats of of December. We’ve kind of covered slowly at different points.
AC: Yeah, I don’t think we missed anything.
CB: Okay, awesome. Well, thanks for joining us for this today, Aerin. This has been awesome. It’s great to have you on the forecast.
AF: So happy to be here, I love doing forecasting. So yeah, it’s been really… Usually, it’s just me by myself so it’s really fun to get to chat about it with you guys.
AC: Yeah, it’s been nice.
CB: What do you have coming up, or what are you working on this month in terms of your astrological work?
AF: On December 16th, I’m doing a 2023 Astro weather workshop. And that’ll be either live on Zoom for those who can make it in the afternoon or people can sign up to get the recording after. And then in early January, I’m doing a light weaving training, which is connected to the other body of work that I do. Light weaving is a really simple energy-based tool that people can use to set and activate intention. It’s quite funny and effective, I actually was having tech difficulties right before this and my microphone sounded like Oscar the Grouch or something. And then I did some light weaving and then I came back to it and it was totally fixed. So it’s almost like a comical thing that I love using. But anyways, those are my upcoming workshops. I’ve also launched a new kind of offering for my clients where I’ve been unofficially doing family chart readings for many years, but realized I had never formally offered it as something that I do with my clients where we can go through a whole set of family charts together and look at the different patterns and themes, which is very much connected to the podcast that Chris and I did. So, those things and yeah, continuing to offer readings and do one-on-one sessions, which is always really fun.
CB: Nice. Awesome. And what’s your website URL again?
AF: It’s aerinfogel.com and it’s spelled with an A and an E, in case anyone’s confused.
CB: Perfect, I’ll put a link to that in the description for this episode. Austin, what do you have coming up?
AC: Well, through Sphere and Sundry, we have a new Jupiter in Pisces series that’s launching first week. It is codename Butter Ocean. It’s thick and luxurious and high calorie in the best of ways. Other than that, I’m going to be doing yearly stuff with you. And this is probably going to be too late for a lot of the people but maybe not for the people here, depends on when you release it, Chris. But I’m also doing another round of opening my Year One class on December 1st. Please sign up for the mailing list because it’s going to go out the mailing list first, and then the next day if there any slots left, it’ll be public. But there haven’t been so far, so sign up for the mailing list. Don’t dig around the website for it, just sign up for the mailing list. I’m going to put out an email on Sunday specifying exactly what time of day it will be released. Yeah, so that’s new Year One openings. Butter Ocean and Year One, that’s it.
CB: Awesome. What are the website URLs?
AC: It’s sphereandsundry.com and austincoppock.com.
CB: Cool. All right. As for myself, I just launched our 2023 astrology calendar posters. All the graphics that we use in these episodes, we actually put onto a print calendar which you can put up on your wall, which shows all the major alignments of 2023. So you can find that at theastrologypodcast.com/store. I’m also going to have some other merch up there including some new mugs and other stuff just in time for the holidays. Other than that, I recently launched a new astrological consultations page because people are constantly asking either me for consultations or asking me who I recommend. I actually have a list of recommended astrologers now, which is available at theastrologypodcast.com/consultations. There are often many guests that have been featured on the podcast over the years, and they’re people that I feel confident sending clients to if you’d like to get your birth chart read, or some of them do Horary consultations or electional or other offerings. You can get a 10% discount on a consultation with any of those astrologers by using the promo code ASTROLOGYPODCAST when you book a consultation with them. That’s what I got going on. Otherwise, I’m thinking about doing the year ahead forecast with you next month, Austin, and then also I’m getting geared up to possibly do horoscopes, yearly horoscopes, for each of the 12 rising signs. So you should see those coming out over the course of the next few weeks. All right. Thank you both for joining me today, this was awesome. We covered so much. I’m actually surprised we packed it all in but I’m pleasantly surprised.
AF: Yeah, it’s been really lovely, and thank you both for having me. It’s really fun to get to be part of this.
AC: Yeah, my pleasure. This was good.
CB: Awesome. All right. Well, that’s it for this episode. Thanks to all our audience and patrons that joined us through our page on Patreon for the live recording of this episode and for joining us in the chat. It’s been great. That’s it for this episode. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next time.
Special thanks to all the patrons that helped to support the production of this episode of the podcast through our page on patreon.com. In particular, shoutout to the patrons on our producers’ tier including, Thomas Miller, Catherine Conroy, Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jake Otero, Mimi Stargazer, and Jeanne Marie Kaplan. If you appreciate the work I’m doing here on the podcast and you’d like to find a way to support it, then please consider becoming a patron through our page on patreon.com. In exchange, you can get access to bonus content that’s only available to patrons of the podcast such as early access to new episodes, the ability to attend the live recording of the monthly forecast episodes, our monthly Auspicious Elections podcast, or another exclusive podcast series called The Casual Astrology podcast, or you can even get your name listed in the credits at the end of each episode. For more information, visit patreon.com/astrologypodcast.
If you’re looking to get an astrological consultation, we have a list of recommended astrologers at theastrologypodcast.com/consultations. The astrologers on the list are friends of the podcast that have been featured in different episodes over the years, and they have different specialties such as natal astrology, electional astrology, synastry, rectification, or horary astrology. You can get a 10% discount when you book a consultation with one of the astrologers on our list by using the promo code ASTROLOGYPODCAST.
The astrology software that we use and recommend here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, which is available for the PC at alabe.com. Use the promo code AP15 to get a 15% discount. For Mac users, we recommend a software program called Astro Gold for Mac OS which is from the creators of Solar Fire for PC, and it includes both modern and traditional techniques. You can find out more information at astrogold.io, and you can use the promo code ASTROPODCAST15 to get a 15% discount.
If you’d like to learn more about my approach to astrology, then I’d recommend checking out my book titled Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, where I go over the history, philosophy, and techniques of ancient astrology, taking people from beginner up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. You can get a print copy of the book through Amazon or other online retailers, or there’s an e-book version available through Google Books. I also recently published a new translation of The Anthology of the second-century astrologer Vettius Valens, which is one of the most important sources for understanding the practice of ancient astrology. You can find that by searching for Vettius Valens: The Anthology, on Amazon or other online book retailers.
If you’re really looking to expand your studies of astrology, then I would recommend my Hellenistic Astrology Course, which is an online course on ancient astrology where I take people through basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over a hundred hours of video lectures, as well as guided readings of ancient texts. And by the time you finish the course, you will have a strong foundation in how to read birth charts as well as make predictions. You can find out more information at courses.theastrologyschool.com. I also recently launched a new course there called The Birth Time Rectification Course, where I teach students how to figure out your birth time using astrology when the birth time is either unknown or uncertain. You can find out more information about that at theastrologyschool.com.
Each year the podcast releases a set of astrology calendar posters for the coming year, and we’ve just released our 2023 Planetary Alignments and Planetary Movements posters which are now available on our website at theastrologypodcast.com/store. There, you can also pick up our 2023 electional astrology report, where Leisa Schaim and I went through the next 12 months and we picked out the single most auspicious date for each month using the principles of electional astrology. You can get that at theastrologypodcast.com/2023report.
And finally, thanks to our sponsors, including the Mountain Astrologer Magazine which is a quarterly astrology magazine which you can read in print or online at mountainastrologer.com. Finally, thanks also to the Northwest Astrology Conference which is happening May 25th through the 29th, 2023 just outside of Seattle. This year’s conference is going to be a hybrid conference where you can either attend online or in person. Find out more information at norwac.net.