The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 413, titled:
Astrology Chat with Kirah Tabourn
With Chris Brennan and guest Kirah Tabourn
Episode originally released on August 20, 2023
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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 Andrea Johnson
Transcription released August 25, 2023
Copyright © 2023 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and welcome to The Astrology Podcast. So joining me today is Kirah Tabourn, and Kirah’s in town for a concert. We’re just gonna do a casual astrology chat episode. So, hey, Kirah, welcome.
KIRAH TABOURN: Hey, thanks for having me.
CB: Yeah, this is exciting. So you’re actually in Denver to see a concert, and reached out and just said, “Hey, want to do a chat?” and it worked out perfectly.
KT: Yeah, it’s perfect timing.
CB: Yeah. What are you here to see?
KT: The Strokes. They’re my favorite band since I was like 13 or something. So, yeah, I’m really excited to see them. I’m here with my best friend Teddy. Shoutout Teddy. And we wanted to go to Red Rocks; we haven’t been. And I just knew it would be cool to see The Strokes there.
CB: Yeah, Red Rocks is really beautiful, especially this time of the year.
KT: Yeah.
CB: All right, cool. So what was the last—the last episode you and I did together was almost a year ago. It was the Scorpio episode, right?
KT: Well, we did the June forecast.
CB: Oh, the forecast, of course.
KT: But, yeah, the last full episode.
CB: Yeah, of the major ones. Then before that we did the generational astrology episode, as well as one on your podcast. It was that legendary history of the revival of ancient astrology, which I hadn’t really talked about before.
KT: Yeah, that was a good one.
CB: Yeah, cool. So what are some of the things you’ve been thinking about lately astrologically? Or what’s on your mind?
KT: So much. I feel like obviously Venus retrograde is heavy on the mind. I’m in a Venus profection year right now and this is sort of the cycle that I was born under, I guess, 32 years ago. I was born in November.
CB: What year?
KT: 1991.
CB: Okay. So, yeah, same year basically. Like right after this one.
KT: Yeah, exactly. So it’s a big retrograde. We’re in the middle of this Venus year, in a square—which I was just saying, I have that natally in my chart. So, yeah, the second square—the first and second square have been hitting, but, yeah, obviously thinking a lot about Venus.
CB: Let me see what our chart is for today.
KT: Oh, yeah.
CB: It looks like this is today. So it’s—what? Saturday, August 12, starting about 3:05 PM in Denver, Colorado, with 5 Sagittarius rising. Yeah, so Venus is right there at 20° of Leo, has just come into the cazimi range with the Sun, about a degree away at 20, and will go exact tomorrow.
KT: Yeah, yeah, excited. I’m excited for the rebirth ‘cause combustions are always kind of tough. I think a lot of people have been feeling it. A lot of my Venusian friends especially have been super burnt-out. I’ve been burnt-out. And, yeah, I’m excited for the phase shift. I have a diurnal Morning Star Venus myself.
CB: Okay.
KT: So I’m looking forward to it.
CB: Yeah, so that’ll line up here pretty soon almost with your exact phase, especially around your birthday.
KT: Yeah, I have my exact return like the day before my birthday.
CB: Okay.
KT: Yeah.
CB: That’s really cool. The episode I just released today was the Inanna episode with Demetra, about Inanna’s descent into the underworld and how that myth is really centered around Venus going ‘under the beams’ and that being the underworld transit. So it kind of makes sense in terms of it feeling kind of like an intense period right now.
KT: Yeah. I mean, yesterday in particular everyone was feeling it. I think it was the Moon, plus Venus-Uranus of course. But the Moon was squaring Neptune, and it was just so messy. And, yeah, I’m just really looking forward to that ‘rebirth/run into the fire’ energy of this weekend. Yeah, I’m excited to see what the other side of it’s gonna be like.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And that’s cool that you were born in ‘91, just after that retrograde in the summer of 1991. I’ve been seeing just so many cool lineups like that. It really extends to almost like the entire year, it feels like at this point. That was one of the big discoveries with Barbie.
KT: Right.
CB: Barbie wasn’t released under exactly the Venus retrograde, she was released in the same year as the Leo retrograde. But then obviously that repetition has continued to be major every time it happens in that year.
KT: Yeah. I don’t know why this retrograde in particular seems to be—like the cycle seems to be hitting so hard and is so loud. Maybe because it’s Leo. One of my best friends is a Leo, born August of ‘91. And she has the Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury all pretty much within 2° in Leo, at the very end, at like 28-29. And she was born during this retrograde; obviously, Mercury was retrograde too. And I saw her last month when I was in town. I knew that Venus was stationing on her Leo stellium. And she’s married. She has an eight-month-old daughter I guess at this point. And I was like, “Did you and John (her husband) start dating”—they started dating that summer, right around the time they turned 16. So it would have been the second Venus retrograde in Leo—
CB: Wow.
KT: After she was born. And then I realized she got married—oh, no, maybe they got engaged in 2015. I think that’s what it was. Yeah, they got engaged in 2015, like around this retrograde cycle.
CB: And then their child’s only eight-months-old. Is that their first child?
KT: Yeah.
CB: Okay. It was born this year?
KT: She was born Christmas Eve. So almost pretty much.
CB: Yeah, it’s pretty close. Yeah, that’s really cool.
KT: Yeah.
CB: I love seeing that stuff. I have a friend just like that. Just looking through their chronology they got together in a relationship under one, they got married under the next, and then they had a baby under the third one. So it’s like the same thing.
KT: That’s so cool. Yeah, especially with her; she’s like a 9th house Leo stellium. And I was asking her like, “What’s going on right now?” And she’s just like, “I feel everything’s going really well.” She’s like doing really well at work; she just got back to work. She’s like the breadwinner right now. Yeah, she’s super happy with the baby. And it’s just so cool to hear that someone that was very much a part of this cycle was born under it—very close to the cazimi, like within a couple days—and she’s killing it right now.
CB: Nice. That’s really beautiful. Is she a day chart or a night chart?
KT: She’s day chart, 9th house Leo stellium, yeah.
CB: Nice. That’s really cool. This retrograde’s unique because this is the first one entirely in Leo, and I’ve been hearing a lot of stories where I’m realizing the topic of the house often really matters. But this one’s been interesting and a little tricky with the repetitions if you go back and ask people what happened eight years before and eight years before that. But because the ones prior to this were in two signs, I’ve been noticing that in the previous repetitions it was activating the topics of both of those houses and sometimes tying them together. But in this one it’s just like one house, so there’s kind of a shift.
KT: That makes sense. Yeah, that’s interesting. I’m curious if you have any stories ‘cause for me it’s been very clear what this pattern is now. I can think back to eight years ago, and, yeah, I was unemployed during the summer of 2015. I had quit a job at the beginning of the year and just wasn’t finding work. And so, I was just kind of unemployed.
CB: And you’re Pisces rising, right?
KT: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
KT: So this is all 6th house for me.
CB: So Leo’s your 6th house.
KT: Mm-hmm.
CB: Okay.
KT: And Venus rules my 8th house and my 3rd house, so those themes kind of come. But, yeah, I remember I was just doing a lot of odd jobs, and it was that summer I decided to launch my social media—my astrology social media accounts, and it was under this great Leo election that you and Leisa made. It must have been July or August 2015.
CB: Okay.
KT: So right around this time. And it was Jupiter and Venus in Leo, Sun in Leo, I think, all in the 1st house.
CB: Yeah, that was the one where same-sex marriage became legalized.
KT: Yeah.
CB: And Austin, Kelly, and I started doing the forecasts around then and everything.
KT: Yeah, exactly. I remember it well. And it was so beautiful ‘cause I just remember looking up at the sky in the morning and seeing that Venus-Jupiter and it was so pretty. But anyway, that’s when I decided to launch. I had a Snapchat and an Instagram, which is now my current Instagram. I was called AstroCure back then. And I made stickers with my Snapchat code on it and put it all around Brooklyn, and I was just like trying to make content for the first time. And it’s all so cringy now, but it’s cool that I can still look back on it.
CB: Yeah, I love those things in the past that are like little beginnings. They cringy in retrospect but at the time that was really pivotal.
KT: Yeah, yeah.
CB: But you were unemployed at that point when you tried to make that jump?
KT: Yeah. I wasn’t trying to make the full jump at that point, but I think my thought process was, okay, I’m really obsessed with astrology, and I felt like I wanted another page ‘cause I felt like I was annoying people by talking about astrology on my normal pages.
CB: Yeah.
KT: And so, I was like, “Let me make a dedicated space for this.” And, yeah, that’s just how it started. And now, eight years later, it’s just really weird to now once again be in a place of I’m kind of pausing on making content and I’m trying to figure out what to do, what I wanna do moving forward. And then on top of that I’m now working on a new app. And that feels so the ruler of my 3rd house retrograde in my 6th house because I’m just having to make content for a new app like TikTok. I’ve never made TikTok content before.
CB: Yeah, it’s a challenge.
KT: Yeah, for sure.
CB: I’m still working on my dance moves.
KT: It’s a Scorpio thing. It’s hard to—I don’t know. I can’t be cutesy unless it’s very genuine. But, yeah, I’m working on this new app. It’s a dating app, which is exciting, which also feels very Venus.
CB: Like an astrology dating app?
KT: Yeah, it’s a dating app that uses astrology. So I designed the algorithm for matching. And, yeah, that’s kind of the gist of it. But it’s cool, yeah, to kind of be in this 6th house space again, hiring people and managing writers. Also, like right before the station, maybe a day or two—because I’ve been just kind of contracting with them—but the founder of the app essentially asked me to come on seriously full-time. So I’m the chief creative officer now, which is so cool for me ‘cause it’s like a title I didn’t think I’d ever have.
CB: Right. That’s really funny Venus retrograde title—
KT: Yeah, right?
CB: In the 6th house.
KT: Exactly. So, yeah, it’s been a cool one for me so far. I’m grateful that it’s angular to Jupiter and not Saturn.
CB: Right.
KT: And, yeah, this last one was angular to Saturn, I believe, for like a little bit. I think it stationed right in the square with Saturn eight years ago.
CB: Eight years ago? Okay. And that one would have been partially near 7th. Was that relevant that summer?
KT: That I don’t remember. Actually I was dating someone. I was dating a guy that summer, this millionaire.
CB: Okay.
KT: I didn’t know he was a millionaire when we started dating, but it was sort of like fun. He was also really ‘cat-like’. Like his Instagram name had ‘kitty’ in it; he was obsessed with his cat. There were a lot of cat themes. And that’s coming up again this year too, like a lot of pets and animals.
CB: Oh, really?
KT: Yeah, 6th house stuff.
CB: That’s funny. So there you go. But in that one it was imported through the 7th house where it was like relationships and then 6th house with cats, as well as work obviously.
KT: Yeah.
CB: But this year it’s more localized?
KT: Yeah relationship stuff has come up a bit, but it has been very work-focused and working on the app. And my business partner, he is a Virgo, super Virgo, which is my 7th house. So there has been a lot of 7th house stuff in that regard in terms of us working together and a lot of partnership stuff happening. Yeah, he’s very Venusian too, so it’s interesting.
CB: What’s the name of the app? Or where can people find out more before we forget?
KT: Yeah, it’s called Stars Aligned.
CB: Okay.
KT: It actually already exists, but I don’t know if you can download it right now because we’re working on the next version. The version that already exists I had nothing to do with. So, yeah, I’m excited about this new version; we’re kind of redoing everything. Planning to launch in November, on my birthday actually.
CB: Wow.
KT: Yeah, which is the Mars cazimi.
CB: Okay.
KT: So, yeah, I’m really excited about it. It’s basically—I don’t want to say your standard dating app—but it’s a dating app like most of the ones that are out there, but we’re using astrology to match people. And you’ll be able to see different insights around compatibility and stuff like that.
CB: Nice. So that’s something you’ve been thinking about a lot lately, synastry and compatibility?
KT: Yeah, a lot, a lot. ‘Cause I feel like I approach it in a way—I’m sure other people approach it this way, but I don’t necessarily see people talking about it in the way that I approach it so much. So, yeah, I’m interested to see how it’s gonna work out once the app is out and we start running the algorithm a little bit more. I’ve been testing it out with some random charts and then some charts of me and people I know and then some celebrities. So, yeah, it’s interesting to see like, “Oh, I have this score compared to Brad and Angelina’s score,” or “Will Smith and Jada’s score.”
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Wait—what do you mean testing it out? Are you telling people, “This is purely for scientific purposes?”
KT: No, I mean, with the algorithm I made, I’ve been sort of, yeah, testing out I guess how it’d work. Essentially, without getting into it obviously, it comes out with some sort of score at the end.
CB: Okay.
KT: So I’ve been trying different couples to see what the scores turn out to be. And like Will and Jada, for instance, had the highest one I’ve tested so far.
CB: Okay.
KT: So it’s kind of cool to be like, okay, that’s an example of a couple that apparently is working out really well. They’ve been together for a long time and they have this really high compatibility score based on the algorithm I built.
CB: Nice.
KT: So testing it out that way.
CB: That’s cool. Yeah, there’s so many different types of relationships, and it’s always interesting how the astrology reflects those unique things, sometimes the strengths and the weaknesses.
KT: Yeah.
CB: But there’s always this trickiness in terms of when people decide to make it work and push through certain obstacles versus ones that are deal-breakers for people and what that looks like astrologically.
KT: Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that too, like with Brad and Angelina, who obviously are divorcing and had a terrible falling out. But their score was really high, which also makes sense.
CB: Right.
KT: Obviously, they were together for over a decade. There’s gonna be some compatibility.
CB: That was Venus retrograde when they got together, I believe.
KT: Oh, really.
CB: Yeah.
KT: Okay. That checks. That checks out.
CB: That, and also when he split from—
KT: Jennifer Aniston.
CB: My memory is really bad right now.
KT: That’s okay. Was that a Venus retrograde in Scorpio or Gemini?
CB: It was in his 7th house, so it must have been Gemini, yeah.
KT: Yeah, they have some interesting synastry, those two, lots of it.
CB: Yeah.
KT: But, yeah, one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about in terms of synastry is where someone’s luminaries fall in your chart, like which houses they light up.
CB: Okay.
KT: Because I feel like it’s such an important part of it. Like if someone’s lighting up your 12th house or your 8th house, from my experience that’s where a lot of issues I find come up, not so much the squares. But oftentimes it’s like they’re lighting up your 8th house—no wonder they’re kind of triggering you in that way. So, yeah, that’s something I think a lot about lately.
CB: Yeah, one of the very few synastry things that was dropped in any of the Hellenistic texts mentioned was luminaries or placements in each other’s 6th or 12th being really difficult potentially.
KT: That checks out. 12th house too, yeah.
CB: That’s cool. And then there’s another separate one that would be interesting, those relationships sometimes where the right people are compatible but it’s at the wrong time, and just what their transits look like at the time. Or those other scenarios where it’s the right place/right time or something like that, or other scenarios of a relationship that’s right for a brief period of time but is not permanent or long-lasting.
KT: Right. Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about that too—how to look at transits of a relationship ‘cause there’s obviously a lot of different ways. People use a Davison chart and look at transits. And, obviously, you can look at the transits of the two different people, but it gets confusing; but it’s also really interesting to me to try to figure that out.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s such an interesting problem. ‘Cause it’s like if you can unlock that then you’ve really got a huge part of what is compelling to people about astrology. And I think what a lot of people look at, especially early on, is relationships. Whatever is our compatibility? And how do we get along, or where do we not?
KT: I mean, definitely one of my earliest astrology memories was being maybe 10 (I think this was around the time my progressed Mercury stationed retrograde actually) the first time I started googling—it probably wasn’t Google at the time—and researching online about astrology, and I was looking up compatibility. I remember thinking, “I want to be able to tell my friends if they’re compatible with their crush.” I guess I was taking on that role at 10-years-old already, but it is such an intriguing part of it. I mean, even if it’s just like family relationships or friend relationships, just figuring out like, “Oh, that’s why we have this dynamic,” it just can help so much in dealing with people.
CB: For sure. And going back to the 12th house thing, it also is helpful in terms of sometimes there’s two people that just don’t get along for reasons that aren’t even necessarily the fault of either person, but for some reason they just run at cross purposes. And sometimes being able to see that and understand it is really helpful just in and of itself.
KT: Yeah, absolutely. Especially when they’re Mars is opposite your Mars or something.
CB: Right.
KT: You’re like, “Oh, okay, I’m just gonna avoid conflict with you then ‘cause it’s not gonna end well.”
CB: Yeah. Or seeing that transit come up, of Mars getting ready to activate that, and now it’s gonna activate that opposition for both of you at the same time being sometimes good information.
KT: Yeah, exactly.
CB: Although an issue I was thinking about at one point was what do you do if you have a conflict that’s forming with somebody, and then you see a really tense transit that’s coming up that’s about to go exact? Internally, you have the compulsion of, “We need to deal with this and have this out at this time.” But then if the astrology is telling you that this could indicate a much bigger conflict or break that could become bigger than you intend, do you still do it because that’s the moment to do it? Or do you put it off in order to avoid turning a small thing into a much bigger thing that maybe is worse than you intend?
KT: Yeah, that is something to think about. I remember when I broke up with my ex-, I elected it.
CB: Okay.
KT: Basically it was like the moment that a Full Moon started to separate is when I decided to do it. And it was during sunset, so it was angular. I almost wish I had not done that and waited.
CB: Was this spur of the moment?
KT: No, ‘cause I knew I had to break up with him, and I elected it to be like, “It’s gonna be this.” I think it was an Aries Full Moon. Yeah, our Moons were opposite, so it was like highlighting the opposition of our Moons, but it was really tough. And now I look back and I probably would have waited till a balsamic Moon or something ‘cause it was so intense and polarizing.
CB: Right at the Full Moon.
KT: Yeah, aspecting both of our Moons. Yeah, it was a lot.
CB: Yeah, that could be a whole episode, electional charts for breakups or something like that.
KT: Yeah, yeah. And hookups and dates. I love doing that, electing a date. I feel like I’m really good at that personally.
CB: Doing good elections for having a date?
KT: Yeah, or like a first date. On my podcast, before I took another break, I was thinking, “Venus retrograde, I have to stop.” But I was doing these weekly forecasts and part of my forecasts were always talking about what days are good for dates. And, yeah, I feel like I’m good at that. There’s certain days where I want to warn people like, “Don’t go on a first date this day.”
CB: Right.
KT: But there are some that are like, “This is a great day for that.” Or instead of going out and spending a lot of money, do a ‘Netflix and chill’ type of date because the Moon’s void or whatever.
CB: Yeah, I struggle with that sometimes with non-astrologer friends and telling them that, whether that’s useful information or whether it’s not, they’re gonna do it anyways, and if you’re like freaking somebody out. But as actual astrologers, you’re always paying attention to that. So you do see it work consistently and then will try to schedule certain things on certain dates or avoid certain ones.
KT: Exactly. Yeah, I was at the park the other day with some friends—or at the beach or something—and one of my friends thought my other friend was really cute and was like, I’m gonna ask for her number.” And I was like, “Um, you might want to wait till tomorrow when the Moon’s not void.” And he’s like, “I’m gonna do it. I can’t wait.”
CB: Right.
KT: Scorpio rising, very intense. But he goes, “I got her number, but I’m gonna wait until tomorrow to hit her up. I’m gonna listen to you.” And I’m like, “Okay.” So, yeah, it is really hard ‘cause a lot of times people will ask, thinking they want your advice. And then it’s not what they want to hear and so they just disregard it.
CB: Right.
KT: It happens a lot.
CB: Well, it’s so hard, even as astrologers. ‘Cause when you have an internal compulsion to do something, you want to follow that ‘cause it feels right in the moment oftentimes, even if the astrology is like loudly telling you not to. But basically the astrology always ends up being right in some way, which is like the weird lesson as astrologers that we kind of get battered into our heads over and over again on a long enough timeline. But it’s still, even after years, hard sometimes not to follow that internal compulsion and to listen to it.
KT: Yeah. And sometimes you just convince yourself that, “No, this is what the compulsion is. This is what I’m supposed to be doing ‘cause of the astrology.”
CB: Right. That’s funny.
KT: I do it a lot.
CB: You’re like, “Well, there’s many different ways the archetype can manifest. There’s very constructive ways that this can work out.” And then it just goes terribly.
KT: We’ll see, we’ll see. I’m thinking about the other night, I was up until 4:00 AM or something. It was the Venus-Uranus square. My Mars is at 22 Scorpio. So they were both at 22, Leo and Taurus just aspecting my Mars. And I’ve come to notice that every time I have an exact aspect to my natal Mars, which is in Scorpio in my 9th house, I get this insane compulsion to book travel. And so, at like 3:00 AM the other night, I was like, “Well, I’m having this Venus-Uranus square my Mars, it’s definitely the perfect time to just book an entire trip to Portland,” so I did at like 3:00 AM. And Mars also rules my 2nd house. So it’s always like spending money on travel, and I always have these intense compulsions to do it. But it was actually me talking myself down from booking a bunch of other trips, and I said, “Okay, I’ll just do Portland.” So that was me, yeah, living out that Uranus transit of spontaneous travel planning, I guess.
CB: Yeah, I love that. I’ve seen a lot of people where the Venus retrograde’s hitting their 9th house somehow or going through their 9th house doing travel things, either traveling on that or doing a spontaneous international travel. I saw another person that was having a long-distance relationship with a boyfriend that moved to a different state, and so they were having a summer apart but would visit each other. That’s kind of interesting how Venus retrogrades can work out with the 9th house.
KT: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I have a friend, Aquarius rising. Libra 9th house, right?
CB: Yeah.
KT: Yeah, and then Taurus 4th house. So she’s a Leo and her partner is a Leo too, and she just got a new job in Amsterdam. So they, June 20, just moved to Amsterdam.
CB: Wow.
KT: And I was like, wow, that’s so ‘Venus retrograde in your 7th house’, moved with her partner. Yeah, 4th house/9th house ruler being retrograde in the 7th, then they moved across the world basically.
CB: Wow. That’s really cool.
KT: Yeah. And then I think the partner—I forget their rising—but there’s something, like their 9th house Saturn return. Yeah, so I guess Cancer rising. Yeah, Cancer rising. 9th house Pisces, Saturn return, and Saturn rules the 7th house of partnership. They’re moving to another country with their partner at the beginning of their Saturn return. So, yeah, the astrology there works out.
CB: What were the placements again?
KT: So my friend Ashley, she’s a Leo 7th house.
CB: Got it.
KT: And you have Venus ruling her 4th and 9th being retrograde. And then her partner Noah is a Cancer rising, and I was looking at the ruler of his 7th house being Saturn in Pisces in their 9th house. So just like the 9th house, ‘moving to another country with a partner’ theme being really loud.
CB: Yeah, that’s really cool.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, it’s so interesting how the different factors come into play. And I feel like this is one of the first Venus retrogrades where I feel like I get it and I see finally how it all works together, and that it’s very complex and multi-layered, but also very beautiful and somewhat simple and elegant the way that it plays out.
KT: Yeah, I mean, just like the Barbie movie stuff, it’s so wild. The bright pinks.
CB: Hot pink. Yeah, literally Venus stationed retrograde in Leo and all of a sudden—
KT: Everyone’s wearing hot pink.
CB: Yeah. Which was funny ‘cause one of the keywords—before that month, in one of the forecasts—we used was ‘loud’. In the video was a ‘loud’ sign.
KT: Exactly.
CB: And that’s like the loudest color, hot pink.
KT: It is so cool. And then, yeah, it just being Venus, and how Barbie just ties into the Venus in Leo cycle. Yeah, that’s fun for the history books. It’s hard to get over how clear that is.
CB: Yeah, I forgot to mention in the episode I just did, but I found this other thing where somebody pointed out that there was a documentary that came out in 2018. But they were chronicling a period in 2015 where the people at work there were trying to do a makeover or a rebranding of the entire thing in order to do different sizes and shapes of Barbie and be more inclusive. And it was like this whole major thing that happened in 2015.
KT: Wow.
CB: And then they eventually launched I think later that year or something, which was outside of the retrograde, but most of this documentary was filmed in 2015 while they were going through that process.
KT: That’s so cool.
CB: Yeah, so this is the Venus return of that, I guess. And, yeah, the documentary is called Tiny Shoulders. It’s on Hulu.
KT: That’s cool. I’m gonna check that out. And then we’ve had all this celebrity drama too, like one after another. Breakups, drama.
CB: They’re calling it ‘the summer of breakups’.
KT: Yeah.
CB: I think it’s really funny. Somebody just sent me two articles from People, and somebody else sent me one from BuzzFeed on 30 couples that have broken up this summer or something like that.
KT: It’s such a Venus-Uranus square thing. Yeah, especially thinking about the last one being Venus with Jupiter trine Uranus. And now it’s just squares.
CB: Yeah, and you had more of an affirmation of relationships with same-sex marriage being legalized and so many gay and lesbian couples that got married. There was like a huge uptick that summer. But then, yeah, this summer is the ‘summer of breakups’.
KT: Yeah. I’m so happy I’m single, honestly. Never been happier to be single ‘cause I don’t have to deal with that.
CB: Yeah. I realized astronomically in the last episode something I’d never realized before. The ‘breakup’ part of Venus retrograde—when that does happen, which is like not always, but it’s definitely a component—I think it’s ‘cause of the astronomical movement. ‘Cause if you think about it, when Venus is retrograde. and they form that conjunction or that cazimi in the middle of the retrograde, Venus and the Sun are moving in opposite directions. They meet up, but then they’re going opposite ways, and then there’s this ‘wrenching-apart’ motion where they just start speeding in different directions as fast as they can. Whereas on the other side of the conjunction, when they’re both direct, and they conjoin when Venus is moving direct, they start moving together in unison at the same speed for a period of time. So it’s like two people in a relationship that’s literally what they do. They move forward in life together for a period of time just together.
KT: Wow. I love that. I love thinking about it that way. Yeah, I wonder—do you know what the next cazimi is going to be? Like what sign? Oh, it’s Gemini.
CB: Is it?
KT: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
KT: I think it’s early June. ‘Cause it’s I think the same day as—there’s a Mercury-Jupiter conjunction in early Gemini. Yeah, I was looking at that.
CB: That makes sense.
KT: So I have it mid-Gemini at like 14°.
CB: Okay.
KT: Yeah, I love that.
CB: I think that makes sense ‘cause that’ll be four years from the one in 2020.
KT: Right.
CB: So that’ll be like the halfway point between the Venus retrogrades in Gemini.
KT: Okay, yeah. Wow. Yeah, I love thinking about it that way.
CB: Yeah, it just reminded me that a lot of the things that we see in astrology ultimately just go back to very fundamental astronomical things that we don’t think of, but that’s what’s underlying almost everything.
KT: Yeah.
CB: What were some of the other crazy things? Like Twitter—oh, my God.
KT: Twitter rebrand.
CB: Twitter rebranding that literally—
KT: I’m never calling it ‘X’.
CB: No. It literally happened right on the Venus retrograde, when it was stationing. That was when he first unveiled that he was rebranding, and it was just so crazy and so literal.
KT: And then I think it was SJ that tweeted like, “Astrologers often say that exes come back during Venus retrograde.”
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah, that whole thing.
CB: And then he did that. ‘Cause I went back and looked, and he first registered the domain ‘x.com’ and did some of the first stuff with it during 1999. So it was that Venus retrograde of 1999.
KT: Oh, my gosh.
CB: So literally ‘X’ is coming back. This is him and his like long-standing attempts to brand his companies with ‘X’, as well as his children for that matter, coming back again.
KT: Wow.
CB: Yeah.
KT: What a man—that’s all I’ll say.
CB: Yeah.
KT: Yeah, the Twitter stuff’s been weird. And then there’s just been all this celebrity drama.
CB: Yeah.
KT: I was thinking, even as far back when Mars was in Leo with Venus, we had the whole ‘Colleen Ballinger’ thing.
CB: Yeah, that was crazy. That was like a major cancellation.
KT: Yeah.
CB: And that was like in the shadow, in the buildup, but that was totally Venus retrograde.
KT: Yeah. And I remember Austin often talking about Venus-Mars co-presence or conjunctions having a lot to do with scandal, especially sexual scandal or weird things like that. I mean, she was accused of grooming kids and all this stuff, and she’s currently on tour right now too doing performances. That one, and then this whole Lizzo controversy.
CB: Yeah, that was crazy.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Like I’ve been learning so much about Venus retrogrades just watching all these scandals and stuff break, ‘cause Venus changes sides during the retrograde and there’s sometimes just something about people’s opinions. You know, Nick Dagan Best has long used that thing, ‘challenging consensus’ as his keyword for Venus retrograde. But I was thinking this summer that sometimes it’s like ‘changing consensus’, where the consensus about a person or a celebrity changes. In that instance, for some people at least, it goes from good to bad or from bad to good.
KT: Right.
CB: Because there’s even positive ones. Like Greta Gerwig, for example, was more of an indie director for most of her career, but now it’s like she’s a household name virtually overnight.
KT: That’s true. And doesn’t she have Venus in Leo or something?
CB: Well, she was born August 4th or 3rd, 1983.
KT: Okay.
CB: So she was born the day that Venus stationed retrograde in Virgo, and then it would retrograde back into Leo.
KT: Got it.
CB: Which is just crazy that she was literally born the day Venus stationed retrograde. And then in eight-year increments she released what would probably be her biggest movie on the day Venus stationed retrograde. So it was an exact repetition of her natal Venus retrograde placement.
KT: That is so beautiful. It’s just so cool that that can happen, that can work out that way.
CB: Yeah.
KT: Yeah, yeah, the Venus stuff—the one in most recent memory has just been loud and clear.
CB: Right.
KT: The one in Capricorn, it was really sad stationed conjunct Pluto, right?
CB: Right.
KT: And so, we lost a lot of these really important figures. But, yeah, this one has just been so—of course the strikes too.
CB: Yeah, actors’ strike.
KT: Yeah, that too.
CB: And writers’ strikes.
KT: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, that was crazy. And with Lizzo, that’s still ongoing.
KT: Yeah.
CB: But it’s also tricky because then it’s like people that didn’t like her for stupid reasons are trying to jump on it to amplify it. So it’s hard to know what’s going on there.
KT: Yeah. And then two of the dancers who have come out in this lawsuit did a TMZ interview with their lawyer, and I think that also changed a lot of people’s opinions about the whole situation into thinking that they were actually in the wrong. Like it’s just been a lot of flip-flopping in the changing consensus. Yeah, social consensus especially.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense. And also, one of the recurring themes is sometimes people that people thought were good, suddenly people start thinking that they’re bad for either valid or invalid reasons. But regardless of whether it’s valid or invalid, there’s some sort of shift.
KT: Ariana Grande.
CB: Yeah, that was a huge one.
KT: That one’s really big, yeah.
CB: Right. I mean, for people aren’t keeping up—
KT: Yeah, who aren’t chronically online like us.
CB: Right, like us, on Twitter or X.
KT: Yeah, X.
CB: It’s like there was a guy that was married, and she was doing a play or something with him.
KT: Wicked, yeah.
CB: Okay.
KT: I think they’re filming.
CB: Is it the movie?
KT: I don’t know if they’re doing the movie or if it’s a play. I honestly don’t remember. But, yeah, they’re filming Wicked or doing Wicked, and the guy who plays—I don’t know what he plays, but he used to be SpongeBob. People called him ‘SpongeBob’ a lot because he played SpongeBob on Broadway. But they were having an affair, yeah.
CB: Right. That’s what it seems like.
KT: Both married.
CB: Oh, yeah, she was too.
KT: One of them filed for divorce right at the beginning of all this coming out. But he has like a six-month-old baby or something. Yeah, they just had a baby within the past year.
CB: Right. Yeah, so that was scandalous because then it seemed like they both left their marriages in order to get into this other thing. And that seems like another one of the other crossing-over things ‘cause that’s kind of what happened with Brad and Angelina as well. He was married to Jennifer Aniston, and then did this movie with Angelina Jolie. And then at some point, probably around the time of that Venus retrograde, they got together.
KT: Yeah. Yeah, I wonder when they broke up, Angelina and Brad.
CB: There was something about that I think Patrick mentioned in the Venus retrograde episode, but I think it was like eight years later. ‘Cause they didn’t get married or something until a long time later and then they finally did when that Venus retrograde repeated or something like that, or they got engaged finally.
KT: Yeah.
CB: I’m not sure when they broke up. So, yeah, Ariana Grande, that was another one where people went from having a largely favorable view of her to all of a sudden it seemed like there was a shift where people were not liking her because of this thing that seemed like a scandal.
KT: Yeah, there was this quote from the woman whose husband she’s now with, I guess. She was saying, “She’s just ‘not a girl’s girl’,” and everyone was going crazy over that. ‘Cause it’s like, wow, imagine being called not a girl’s girl’ during the summer of Barbie.
CB: Yeah.
KT: Yeah, but that’s also just so Venus retrograde.
CB: And somebody was just like, “That’s like the most devastating thing you can say about somebody.” And, yeah, that was really interesting.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Because there were so many good news stories, I started writing down keywords for the Venus retrograde that I was seeing.
KT: I wrote ‘divorce’.
CB: Yeah, divorce. There’s so many divorces. Even like Justin Trudeau.
KT: Oh, yeah, that’s right. And conservatives are calling him gay ‘cause he went to see Barbie with his son. Did you see that?
CB: Yeah.
KT: And wore pink. Yeah, Justin Trudeau. I think Natalie Portman after 11 years.
CB: Natalie Portman. Sandra Bullock.
KT: Oh, I didn’t see that.
CB: Yeah. Except one of them, Sandra’s, was actually really sad and tragic. Her husband passed away from cancer or something like that.
KT: Wow.
CB: Yeah, Natalie Portman. There’s so many others. There were literally like 30. And this is just what we’re seeing with celebrities.
KT: Right.
CB: And it’s possible that’s part of Leo as well. I heard somebody say at one point that it’s like a visibility thing ‘cause it’s so visible. So maybe it’s indicative of people that are more visible.
KT: I know a Leo with the Libra rising who is going through a divorce right now. So, yeah, there’s definitely a lot of that happening.
CB: Some of the ones I was writing out when I was seeing Ariana Grande and one of the other ones was ‘messy breakups’ as like a major keyword I was seeing for this one. Also, ‘airing one’s dirty laundry in public’. ‘Lurid details coming to light’. ‘Unions that others disprove of’. ‘Scandalous relationships’. Somebody used the term ‘vixen’, which I had to look up what it actually meant, and it was actually weirdly appropriate in some of the stories at least.
KT: Oh, yeah, Doja Cat’s another one that people are upset with and upset with who she’s dating and how she’s talking about her fans basically.
CB: Yeah. That one was amazing ‘cause that was in her 11th house that Venus stationed retrograde. We actually have a timed chart for her. And so, yeah, Virgo. So she’s Libra rising, I believe.
KT: That makes sense. She looks like one. She definitely looks like a Libra rising to me.
CB: Yeah.
KT: And her name is ‘Doja Cat’. I’m like, “Oh, another cat thing.”
CB: Right.
KT: That one’s interesting ‘cause of the Leo aspect of visibility and your fans, your supporters, and the whole parasocial relationships that I’m sure we’ve experienced on such a small scale compared to someone like her.
CB: Right. Because that was her thing, she was pushing back. Her fans were taking it as that she was dissing her fans, and then she was telling them, “I don’t care about you. And stop, get a job or something if you’re following me all the time and spending your life focused on me,” or something like that.
KT: Yeah.
CB: But then her fans were like, “No, apologize to us. We’re the reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. Don’t tell us to get a job when we’re the reason that you have a job at all.” And she was like, “No, I don’t know you. I’m not gonna apologize or anything like that,” and she was really defiant about it. But it was interesting ‘cause, yeah, there are both of those sides. ‘Cause I’m sure she’s just feeling overwhelmed by all of it.
KT: Yeah. She was saying stuff like, “Like every single song I like, I don’t like the artist necessarily. You don’t have to like me to listen to my music or to be a fan.” I mean, it’s interesting ‘cause, yeah, there’s the other side. Not a lot of celebrities would do that.
CB: No. She ended up doing it right before she dropped a new single a week or two before, and a bunch of her fan pages closed down. And I saw stats of just like thousands and thousands of people unfollowing her on social media after she did that because a lot of the fans were just irate that she seemed to not really value them at all or something.
KT: And also dating someone that people don’t like her dating. I don’t really know who he is. Apparently it’s a similar thing with the ‘Taylor Swift/Matt Healy’ thing and how he was caught saying racist or inappropriate stuff. I think it’s a similar situation where she’s dating someone where people feel like ‘you shouldn’t be dating him’.
CB: Yeah, I was wondering. I couldn’t tell how much of it was connected—if she was getting hate for that earlier and then that’s part of what led to the backlash she had against her fans, or if it was separate.
KT: Probably a mix.
CB: Yeah, probably a mix. Well, that was just interesting ‘cause it gave me insight into thinking about the 11th house, which is traditionally like ‘friends’. But, for her, it seemed like it was her fans, and that was kind of an interesting way to look at it that I hadn’t thought of before. ‘Cause the 11th is supposed to be like your supporters or people that support you, or allies. And in her instance that literally means like her fan base.
KT: Yeah, it always reminds me of—I think Austin often uses Kurt Cobain as a good 11th house example. I forget—
CB: Jupiter right in the 11th.
KT: Jupiter? Okay, yeah.
CB: Yeah, he had Cancer.
KT: Right. And of course people are still wearing his face on t-shirts to this day.
CB: Yeah. And he started a band with his high school friend Krist Novoselic and then achieved success with him.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Steve Jobs was also a Jupiter—trying to think of the chart. Steve Jobs was also Jupiter. I used him as an example of Jupiter in the 11th house, and it was him getting together with Steve Wozniak. And Steve Jobs was like the promo guy and the visionary and Wozniak was like the tech guy that built all the early Apples, and it was through that that they became wildly successful together.
KT: I mean, Jupiter in 11th, I always loved seeing it in a chart ‘cause I’m like, oh, friends in high places, or there’s people that can and will support you. Yeah, that’s part of why I made a membership called Jove’s House. It was the 11th House before.
CB: Jove as in J-O-V-E? The alternative name for Zeus and Jupiter?
KT: Right. Exactly.
CB: Nice.
KT: Yeah, a place for connecting; connecting and making friends.
CB: It’s interesting to think, also, Jupiter is just sometimes where we have good fortune. Wherever you have your Jupiter is sometimes a place where you have inexplicable good luck. Like I was watching an interview with Harrison Ford recently, and he was just talking about his career, and he has Jupiter in Cancer in the 10th house. And he was like, “I just got incredibly lucky.” And he was like, “I’ve always been very fortunate in my career. And it wasn’t always that way. Like it could have gone south for me very easily, but I just happened to be at the right place at the right time.” There were a couple charts I was looking at recently where they had Jupiter in the 8th house, and they just had a knack for being given money by other people, and in a very weird unique way where most people don’t have that. But for some reason part of the life stories of these people was being very fortunate, of just like being given money by other people whenever they needed it.
KT: Yeah, I remember having a client with a bunch of 8th House, including I think one or both benefics. And they were like, “Yeah, I’ve been homeless for a long time, but I just have really great people in my life who let me stay with them or have a place. I’ve just been able to kind of get by just through my relationships. And I just have good people who like to take care of me.” And I’m like, “Makes sense with all that 8th house.”
CB: Right. Yeah, exactly. That’s really funny.
KT: Oh, I wanted to ask you—I don’t know if I can ask you personally—‘cause you were talking about Jupiter and where you can find luck, and I’m curious. You have Jupiter in the 12th, right?
CB: Yeah.
KT: How does that show up?
CB: I don’t know. It’s really complicated.
KT: Yeah, ‘cause it’s in Capricorn.
CB: Yeah, it’s in Capricorn. But then it’s like my Mars, in a day chart, is there. So it’s the most positive planet and the most negative planet in the 12th house. And I think sometimes it just has to do with people I don’t get along with as a 12th house thing and that sometimes I have great conflicts with some people or hardships that involve people I don’t get along with for different reasons. But in other instances sometimes positive things result from those conflicts and I think that’s part of it.
KT: That makes sense.
CB: Without bringing all that up again, but just stuff in the past year has made me understand that a little bit better and stuff as well.
KT: Yeah, like Jupiter providing the buffer. Like in the end, it’s gonna kind of work out.
CB: Yeah. And also, that there’s a counteraction, so that even if something really bad happens sometimes there’s something that saves it so that it’s not like the worst-case scenario, or there’s a saving grace somehow.
KT: That makes sense, from one debilitated Jupiter to another.
CB: Yeah.
KT: Yeah.
CB: All right, what are some of the other—another one that was really funny of the Venus retrograde ones was The Weeknd.
KT: Oh, yeah, yeah.
CB: That was like a major one. The Idol came out, and it was just like universally—
KT: Did you watch it?
CB: I watched the first episode. Austin was talking about it being just a great example of things going bad. I watched the first episode and it was like “Okay, but everyone tells me it goes very downhill from there, so I’m gonna go back to watch it just for research purposes for Venus retrograde.” ‘Cause what I found out later is eight years ago, the summer of 2015 was when his single “I Can’t Feel My Face” came out, and I feel like that, and that year in general was when he really became like this huge superstar. And so, it’s interesting ’cause eight years later it’s almost like there’s a reversal. So there’s an inversion of it where he was going up one Venus retrograde, but there’s almost like, at the very least, a speed bump or a going down during this one.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, did you watch it?
KT: I watched like the first maybe two or three episodes.
CB: Okay.
KT: And, yeah, you laugh at it.
CB: That’s what I didn’t understand. I was watching the first one, and I was like, are they trying to make him look creepy? Is that accidental or is that deliberate? ‘Cause he’s not coming off good, but it’s almost like they’re trying to make him mysterious but it’s not working. Was I picking up on that right?
KT: I mean, I think he’s supposed to be like a bad guy.
CB: Okay.
KT: But like she’s falling for him, the seduction. But I don’t think they did a good enough job of making him an appealing enough bad guy.
CB: Right.
KT: He just seems creepy I think to everyone.
CB: Yeah, ‘cause I was looking at both of their charts. It’s interesting, we have his chart, and he’s Cancer rising, with Moon and Scorpio conjunct Pluto in the 5th house.
KT: Oh.
CB: Yeah. So it actually explains a lot of stuff. But then I didn’t realize that Lily-Rose Depp was the star of the series, and we have a chart for her, and she’s actually Scorpio rising. So that’s really interesting ‘cause this Venus retrograde then is in her 10th house of career and reputation. And it kind of sucks ‘cause on the one hand she should be getting a lot of accolades. She was the head of a major series and one collaboration and everything, but then it wasn’t received well. So it’s kind of like a not-great 10th house thing.
KT: I remember hearing rumors about her on set before this came out, about how terrible she was. Like I remember people saying she just was throwing a lot of fits and just acting kind of bratty, I guess. Again, I don’t know, just stuff I’ve heard. But, yeah, I think a big part of the discussion was just around nepotism ‘cause she hasn’t really done anything.
CB: Yeah.
KT: She just kind of got this role. I mean, she’s done stuff.
CB: I saw her in one role in that Timothée Chalamet movie—I think it was called The King—and she was pretty good, but she was in there very briefly.
KT: Yeah. Do we know where her Mars is?
CB: I can’t remember offhand. I could look it up really quickly.
KT: I was just curious.
CB: Maybe Leo, but that could be wrong. Leo.
KT: She looks like she could be ruled by Mars in Leo.
CB: Right. Yeah, so that was interesting, the inversions thing, that sometimes it is a repetition with a topic, but it can be going the opposite direction from what it was before.
KT: That’s important to think about, I think.
CB: Yeah, for sure. So that was The Weeknd. Who else do we have? Yeah, a lot of those actually are the major ones honestly. Some of the other significations I had written down were ‘hot pink cloud’, ‘glitter bomb’. Greta Gerwig said part of her theory going into it was that she would have this glitter bomb that would be loud and pretty to look at and everything else, but then underlying those were some really deep themes that she wanted to include in the movie. And I thought that it was funny that she described it as like a glitter bomb, which is very Venus retrograde in Leo.
KT: Yeah.
CB: ‘Play’, ‘dramatic’, ‘throwback’. There’s a lot of throwback themes I’ve been seeing. Even Barbie herself was a throwback. ‘Practical effects in movies’. Like both Barbie, as well as Oppenheimer, really emphasized practical effects, which is itself kind of like a throwback to earlier times.
KT: Yeah, that’s true. Even thinking about the scene in Barbie where they’re going from Barbieland to the real world.
CB: Yeah.
KT: It was almost—what’s the word I’m looking for? Like ‘Wes Anderson-esque’ almost.
CB: Exactly. ‘Cause it’s not CGI. They built these actual practical sets, and they had like a rotating floor or whatever that made it look like they were driving.
KT: I love that. Yeah, that’s a good point.
CB: Yeah, so something about throwbacks and retro-type things. Other keywords: ‘infidelity’, ‘homewrecker’, ‘battle of the sexes’.
KT: Oh, yeah. That’s always happening.
CB: That’s true. ‘Rebranding’, ‘fashionable’, ‘beach’. Austin said ‘bodybuilder aesthetic’. ‘Admitting one’s flaws’, ‘embracing one’s flaws’. Somebody used the term ‘degenerate’ in terms of like things coming out and then having an estimation of somebody that was not good. ‘Change of heart’ I think is a major one, and I think that has to do with the cazimi and that crossing-over motion that literally goes across the Sun. And that’s what cazimi means, ‘in the heart of the Sun’ symbolically or astronomically, and then symbolically sometimes people have a change of heart about other people or other things.
KT: Yeah, especially with it being in Leo having to do with the heart.
CB: Right. And that’s big that I underestimated it, but since it stationed at 28, that was like right on or very close to Regulus. And I think that was like playing a major role as well with Regulus being the ‘heart of the lion’.
KT: Oh, yeah. I didn’t think about that either. Yeah, that’s a big one.
CB: Yeah.
KT: What’s our next one? Scorpio or Aries? It’s Aries.
CB: Is it? Okay.
KT: I think so.
CB: So it’ll be in ‘24 or ‘25.
KT: I think it’s ‘24. Or maybe it’s ‘25. I don’t know. Yeah, it has to be ‘25 ‘cause this is 2023.
CB: Right.
KT: We get Mars at the end of ‘24 and then Venus in the beginning of ‘25.
CB: That makes sense.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Okay. And that’ll be a repetition then of 2018.
KT: Oh, no, 2018 was Scorpio.
CB: Yeah, okay.
KT: So it would have been 2016, I guess.
CB: Got it. Okay, 2016.
KT: Yeah, I’ll never forget that Scorpio one. That was the Brett Kavanaugh trial.
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah, that one was heavy.
CB: I mean, that’s a really good example of a lot of the themes we were talking about here that came out during those hearings and hearing about his past and people coming forward and stuff like that.
KT: Yeah, that was intense.
CB: And similarly, Nick and Patrick have talked about the 1991 Anita Hill hearings. And that was a Venus retrograde in Leo and all this stuff that came out with that about him, but then it didn’t end up changing—
KT: And now all this stuff’s coming out about him and how he’s 100% bought and paid for.
CB: Right.
KT: And yet nothing’s happening.
CB: Yeah. And it’s like his wife was involved in the January 6 insurrection stuff. It’s just crazy to think about.
KT: True American traitors.
CB: Yeah, it’s just crazy to think about that that could have been stopped by this woman that came forward and told the truth way back then at the beginning, but people didn’t believe her or didn’t take it seriously enough. And I was reading something, like some Wikipedia page or some reference that said that the Anita Hill hearings were part of what started third-wave feminism. And I don’t know enough about the topic, but I wanted to look into that more to see if that’s true that it was a contributing factor somehow. That would be really fascinating if it was just ‘cause of the tie-in with that Venus retrograde.
KT: Yeah, yeah, that’s a really good point. Wow, I can’t believe that happened like the year I was born.
CB: Right.
KT: And he’s still on the court. It’s crazy.
CB: Yeah. I guess it goes to show sometimes good things come out of the Venus retrograde and sometimes not-good things come out, but it definitely stirs up a lot of stuff.
KT: Especially, yeah, socially, like how we’re relating to each other and all of that.
CB: Right. Yeah, for sure. Trying to think of any other Venus retrograde insights. You got anything else? Or have you seen any other ‘friends/house placement activation’ things?
KT: I’m having a weird thing happening with my mail right now.
CB: Okay.
KT: Venus rules my 6th—I’m sorry, my 3rd—and I got this cryptic thing in my mail two days ago, and it was like a note written on an envelope that was sealed but had nothing in it. And it just said like, “I’m waiting at the top for you. Like look behind you mail thief.”
CB: Oh, my God.
KT: And it was like night time when I went and checked my mail. There was nothing else in it, and so I started kind of investigating. This happened the day before yesterday. So I left today, so I only had like yesterday to kind of look into it. And I asked a neighbor about it, and he’s like, “Well, someone’s been stealing packages. Maybe this is supposed to be a warning for the mail thief.” And he was like, “Well, maybe they think it’s you.” And I was like, “Oh, my gosh. I hope they don’t think it’s me.”
CB: Right.
KT: And so, I texted another neighbor, and, yeah, they let me know there’s been this guy coming and like stealing packages and stealing from the mail, and we have some video of him but the police won’t do anything. And I don’t know, it just feels very like the ruler of my 3rd/ruler of my 8th retrograde in my 6th house of enemies.
CB: And neighbors.
KT: Yeah, neighbors.
CB: ‘Cause that seems like such a blow-off signification sometimes when you see lists when it comes to the 3rd house and it says ‘neighbors’ but sometimes that can be really important.
KT: So my 3rd house is Taurus. There used to be a girl who lived across the hall from me who was a Taurus. I think we had each other’s half-birthday; so literally opposite, across the hall for me. And she was a fashion designer, and the ruler of my 3rd house is Venus in Libra too, so I do have these sort of Venusian neighbors, I guess. She was gorgeous. And she ended up moving out the day that Venus stationed retrograde in Capricorn, and it stationed on her Midheaven. And she was moving because she was trying out a new career and wanted to save money and moved back in with her parents. But, yeah, the ‘neighbors’ thing is definitely very loud for me when it comes to the 3rd house.
CB: That’s so funny. Yeah, so that’s a really good demonstration of how the house that Venus rules sometimes just gets activated when Venus goes retrograde, and also the weird interrelationship between different people’s charts and how they interlock in different ways.
KT: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, ‘cause my partner in this app, he’s a Scorpio rising, so this is happening in his 10th house. And Venus rules his 7th house, and there’s all this relational stuff happening around who’s working on the app, and bringing on new people. And of course bringing me on permanently, for him, was very much like a ruler of the ‘7th in the 10th house’ thing too.
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Nice. That’s cool. I’m trying to think of some of the other topics we wrote down. You mentioned doing chart readings and being a pro astrologer in 2023.
KT: Yeah.
CB: How have those been coming along for you recently?
KT: I don’t know, the landscape seems like it’s just constantly changing.
CB: Right.
KT: It doesn’t feel very consistent at all.
CB: Yeah. I mean, seeing the downfall suddenly of Twitter over the past year and how fast that’s been has been a real big wake-up and shakeup to a lot of us that some of these platforms won’t be around forever even if you just assume they will.
KT: Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is such a weird time. I’m like what does it look like? I mean, I’ve had so many different types of jobs within the field just over the past, I don’t know, seven years or so, eight years, since I kicked off.
CB: Right. ‘Cause you’ve run online conferences and webinars, like major ones for a while. You’ve done a podcast and a YouTube channel. You’ve done a ton of stuff.
KT: I had a magazine for a while.
CB: Oh, yeah, NFLUX. That was a really good magazine.
KT: Thanks. Yeah, I did that.
CB: That was really well-designed. I saw somebody a few years ago being like, “You know, I wish there was just a really well-designed magazine,” and what they described was literally your magazine.
KT: Yeah, I wish I could keep doing it. Yeah, I decided to stop trying to self-fund my own projects. It’s just not in this economy.
CB: Right.
KT: But, yeah, I did that. I wrote for quite a few different apps, and I had my own app, Cusp, for a while. Yeah, I’ve just done so many different things. Wrote horoscopes.
CB: Right.
KT: So, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t even know what I was thinking, talking about that, but I guess thinking about how there’s so many different ways to work in the field.
CB: Yeah.
KT: Yeah, I don’t know, I was just thinking about how the landscape just seems to be changing so much. Like right now I’m really only doing readings, and I only do like 12 readings a month, and this app, and then every now and then I’ll get hit up for something random. A brand asked me to do mini readings for a little brand trip they were doing at this hotel, so stuff like that. But, yeah, I always think about the people who hate doing readings or don’t want to do readings but want to be professional astrologers and how to navigate that basically.
CB: How to navigate it for people that hate it. Like I haven’t been doing readings in a number of years ‘cause the podcast takes up all my time and has become my full-time job, and I miss doing readings like a little bit. There’s a part of me that’s definitely glad because it’s—
KT: It’s draining.
CB: It’s very draining, like for me especially. There’s some people like Rick Levine that are energized by doing readings and can do like 10 readings in a day, and then go out and go to the gym or something like that. And I always admired that but it was always not me. I could only do one or like two a day tops because it was very draining.
KT: Yeah, I don’t do more than two.
CB: Okay.
KT: I pretty much at this point just do two weeks a month, and I’ll do like six a week. And I’ll alternate like two one day, one another day, two one day, something like that. But I remember there was a time I was doing, like in 2018-2019, I was doing sometimes like six a day.
CB: Wow.
KT: And it would be like 45-minute readings, kind of shorter ones. But it was before I figured out how to do Acuity, so they would schedule back-to-back.
CB: Oh, wow.
KT: And I would just sit there for like six hours, seven hours just doing readings. And I can’t believe I ever did that.
CB: Yeah.
KT: I had a psychic tell me I think at the beginning of last year, or beginning of this year maybe—she’s like, “You should not be doing more than 10 readings a month, but definitely not more than 15.” And in my brain I’m planning on doing 30 to make things work financially, and she’s like, “Don’t do that.” And so, I haven’t. I’ve taken her advice, and I’m glad I did. But, yeah, ‘cause I couldn’t imagine. I mean, I was doing it before, and it is so draining. And I think I am one of those people who gets energy from doing readings, and like I really do enjoy it, but it will take a lot out of you.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And you learn a lot as an astrologer. ‘Cause one of the things going into every astrologer’s experience is you don’t know the person, you’re going in blind. All you have is a chart, which is like a 2-D representation. And there’s always something in the back of your mind, as a modern person in the 21st century, and you’re like, “Is this gonna work this time?”
KT: Yeah.
CB: This is such a weird thing still, even after doing it for 20 years. But then you sit down with the person and you just start talking about their chart, and then like magically you find out that their life experience actually perfectly matches the alignment of the planets at the moment of their birth. And that’s always such a cool realization, also getting to see the unique way that different people live out the placements in a way that fits the archetype perfectly, and yet is still unique to that person. It’s such a cool experience that, yeah, I miss doing that to some extent. I was reminded last month when I did a Mercury Cafe thing, and I was just reading people’s charts.
KT: Okay.
CB: But, yeah, it’s very draining.
KT: Yeah, whenever I take some time off though, I do start to miss it. There’s something so special and magical about taking that time with someone. And then what they get out of it is really cool ‘cause they usually seem to find it really helpful. But then we get so much out of it too.
CB: Right.
KT: And it’s just so, I don’t know, enriching; not even just feeling like you helped someone. But looking at certain things you realize like, “Oh, this applies to me too.” Yeah, it’s always so enriching. I love it. I love all my clients so much. Like every reading I’m just like, “Wow, I can’t believe this person found me and wanted me to read for them.”
CB: Right.
KT: I feel blessed in that regard. I think maybe with Jupiter in the 7th I get good clients.
CB: Yeah, that definitely helps.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, it’s cool that you learn that. ‘Cause the biggest secret is for every astrologer, in every consultation you have you learn something new each time. And that’s not just valuable for the client, it’s also actually valuable for the astrologer. And that becomes part of your archive of what different placements mean—that time that you talk to this person about their life and found out that this was the specific manifestation of the archetype that you already knew.
KT: Yeah, exactly. It’s always so cool ‘cause you’ll be in the reading with someone, and they’ll just be like, “Yeah, isn’t that wild how that works out that way?” And they’re mind is blown and your mind is blown.
CB: Right.
KT: And it’s like, yeah, how have I been doing this for this long and it’s still so fun and exciting? It’s such a cool field that we happen to land in.
CB: Yeah. Yeah, I’m really always grateful to have found it. Find something that is super interesting and that you’re passionate about and can dedicate yourself.
KT: Yeah.
CB: It’s so weird though, I had um Camm and Stella come through from The Mercuranians Podcast a couple months ago, and they’re in their 20s. And the landscape of how people learn astrology now is so different compared to when I came up. It’s kind of interesting thinking about what it would be like to start with astrology fresh today and learn it and then attempt to make that transition into professional and like what that looks like.
KT: Yeah. I don’t know if you feel jealous about the kids these days and just their access to the tradition in particular. Not jealous, but it’s cool—I’m envious. I think I had a similar route as you where I went very psychological—more Scorpio.
CB: When did you start again?
KT: 2012.
CB: Okay.
KT: Yeah, I really started to dive in around then. And, yeah, definitely Stephen Arroyo was huge for me. I still think he’s one of the best writers we have out there in terms of the psychological stuff. But, yeah, dove deep. Mark Jones. And then in 2015, I found The Astrology Podcast. I mean, I knew about The Astrology Podcast before, but you started doing it more regularly. And it was Saturn in Sag, which is my 10th, which is where my Mercury is.
CB: Okay.
KT: And I remember just feeling like that Saturn transit to my Mercury was like, “Oh, it’s finally making sense, like it’s coming together. There’s a framework. There’s a structure to all of this.” And that’s when I started learning traditional.
CB: Got it. Do you know what episode or what timeframe? It was in 2015? ‘Cause I’m just thinking of course that there was the Venus retrograde that year.
KT: Oh, yeah.
CB: So that’s really cool.
KT: I know the whole sign houses episode you did—that probably was before 2015.
CB: No, it was at the end of 2015.
KT: Okay.
CB: I mean, there might have been an earlier basic one. But the one that became known for was 2015.
KT: I think that makes sense. I have a weird memory of walking on the west side of Manhattan listening to it at random, when I was first starting this job around that time.
CB: Although you were saying that you used the election that Leisa and I gave for the Leo one over the summer of 2015. So that would have been around the Venus retrograde.
KT: Yeah, yeah. So that was when I decided to switch to whole sign from that episode. I think you were talking about the whole time transits and how you can’t really deny a whole sign transit. When the planet enters the whole sign, when it hits that house, it’s like really gonna affect the whole house regardless of the cusp. And I think I was thinking back to, yeah, Uranus entering Aries, which is my 2nd house, and other transits. And I was just like, “Yeah, that makes sense,” and just my whole world opened up when I looked at my chart in whole sign houses. In Placidus, I have a Venus-Moon opposition, and it’s in the 1st house/7th house in Placidus, but it moves to 2nd and 8th in whole sign. That just made everything click for me. So, yeah, I guess I started then. And I don’t know what that even looked like in terms of me diving into traditional. I think I just was binging the podcast and things were starting to make sense just listening to the podcast a lot.
CB: Yeah. Well, that’s really funny that that was eight years ago, and then like here we are today.
KT: Yeah, yeah, right.
CB: Like in the studio, on The Astrology Podcast, on basically the day of the Sun-Venus cazimi.
KT: Yeah, it is really wild. Definitely there were so many moments where I was like, “I wanna be on this podcast one day.”
CB: Right.
KT: Here I am for the fourth time, yeah.
CB: Yeah, I remember you as one of the early fans of the podcast.
KT: Yeah.
CB: ‘Cause when I really started taking it more seriously and doing it more regularly was in 2015. KT: Yeah, I remember. When did you come to New York and do that presentation on annual profections? It must have been not too long after that. Like 2017 maybe?
CB: No, it might have been in 2015.
KT: Yeah?
CB: Yeah. Actually ‘cause I was thinking about that the other day and realized that that was very close to the Venus retrograde.
KT: Okay.
CB: So, yeah, that presentation. That’s cool then. You weren’t doing the dinners by then, but you were in New York.
KT: Yeah, I was in New York.
CB: Okay.
KT: I remember coming to that, and I remember I asked the question at some point.
CB: I think that was like June-ish of 2015.
KT: Okay. Yeah, ‘cause I just remember learning that and, again, mind blown. And I use that technique on a regular basis. I mean, it’s definitely almost number one in the arsenal of timing techniques.
CB: Right.
KT: And then I feel like I went way deeper into essential dignity over the past four or five years. That episode with Charles Obert was so good. I loved that one. That introduced me to him and his work. I just really like his work. I don’t know, something about the way he explains things. Does he have Mercury in detriment or something, or Jupiter?
CB: I can’t remember honestly. It’s been a while.
KT: Yeah, I feel like he has some sort of ‘something’ that makes it easier for me as a ‘Mercury-Jupiter’ detriment person. But, yeah, I feel like essential dignity and sect became like such humongous parts of my practice in the past three-four years, especially since the pandemic. But, yeah, those are like bedrocks now, as opposed to like I don’t even know what I was doing before. Now that I think about it, what was I doing before I knew essential dignity?
CB: Right. Yeah, I guess just taking the qualities of the signs and sort of putting them together with the planets.
KT: Yeah. I just feel like I very much learned backwards, which makes sense. I’ve been kind of learning astrology since my progressed Mercury stationed retrograde when I was like 10, 10-11, and it just stationed direct about a year or two ago. And so, to me, I’m like, oh, yeah, it makes sense I’ve been learning everything backwards because now I feel like I have such a well-rounded perspective on just the fundamentals of traditional astrology. And I taught a course two years ago on that and it was really great, but now I feel so much more solid than I ever have been on the fundamentals.
CB: Yeah, essential dignity is great. It’s funny how everybody in astrology goes through this process of you start with the basics and then you learn and you go through intermediate and advanced stuff. But then at some point everybody circles around and you come back to the basics and have new realizations about what they mean and how that works, and then you start cycling back through intermediate and advanced stuff.
KT: Right.
CB: It’s like this continual cycle or process periodically throughout your career.
KT: Yeah, that’s very true. Yeah, I feel like Demetra’s book, when that came out—I started to get back into the volume one—that really dove me deep back into the basics. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s so weird still how excited you can get about the basics after so long.
CB: Yeah. I mean, we were just talking about something as simple as a Venus retrograde and what that means, and then seeing all these examples this summer, and just being so excited seeing different, unique manifestations of that that fit what you already know; but seeing new examples of it and that bringing you to a deeper understanding of what that actually means.
KT: Yeah, yeah. Astrologers are so philosophical, and we’re just so obsessed with patterns. Obviously ‘astrologer’ is the right word, but I almost feel like I wish people knew that that’s what we were doing more.
CB: The empirical element?
KT: Yeah, the pattern.
CB: Pattern recognition.
KT: Yeah, pattern recognition. Yeah, the empirical. Just gathering data—it’s pretty much the bedrock of what we do, but I feel like the public—that’s not what they think of when they think of an astrologer.
CB: Right. They think we’re like making it up. Or even new students of astrology sometimes think that you’re going into it with 100% ‘knowingness’ of everything on all the details of astrology, which sometimes holds up people from making the transition to do chart readings. People assume that you have to be 100% ‘master of all of astrology’ before you start reading charts, but that actually sometimes delays or hampers your process or growth because doing consultations, you’re learning.
KT: Yeah, I’m actually really grateful I started when I did. I mean, of course people were doing it, but I felt like no one was doing it, and I was just the weirdo at parties reading everyone’s charts, and everyone’s like, “What is that?” But it definitely made it so I didn’t have much shame around it. I was reading everyone’s chart, like anyone who I met. So I think that’s why I am at the level I’m at right now because the first three years were just like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of looking at charts and just talking to people about their lives and trying to draw those connections and make sense of everything with very limited knowledge. But that’s kind of where you have to start, I think. I always think I’m not so great at tarot. I don’t feel as comfortable with tarot ‘cause I never had that phase where I was just reading people. It’s always just been like I took a class or I took a course and learned tarot with myself. But having that interaction with other people is so important. And then I started doing mini readings. That is how you get good at reading charts.
CB: Like short, rapid-fire readings?
KT: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
KT: ‘Cause you have to learn what to identify and how to identify something and talk to them about it in 10-15 minutes. And most people, especially at a party or an event, they’re not like, “This is my big issue that I want to talk to you about.” They’re just like, “I don’t know, tell me something.”
CB: Right.
KT: And so, I got really good at pinpointing and asking the right questions and figuring out how to make the most of a short period of time with someone. Which is why I became a very #noprep.
CB: Yeah.
KT: I’m so against chart prep. And I’m not really against it ‘cause I think for some readings you have to have it obviously. But for the type of stuff I do—and I think what probably most of us are doing—is just talking to clients and looking at their charts. It’s like you don’t really need to prep for that.
CB: Yeah. The ‘no prep’. That would be a good topic, the no-prep chart consultation and what do you say if you just walk into it blind and you cast the chart right there and you have to go identify the main things.
KT: Yeah, exactly. That’s pretty much what I teach. And I did a program called “Astrology that Hits,” and I think I’m gonna change my podcast name to that. I don’t know how I’m gonna teach this again; that’s what I’m currently trying to figure out. But essentially it’s a no-prep how-to. It’s my sort of way of teaching how to do consultations and read charts and synthesize all the information with more confidence and without feeling like you have to prep everything. ‘Cause my thing is, okay, say you take an hour to prep a chart beforehand. What are you putting in there? I mean, I guess you could write down the transits that are happening.
And I think I also just have the type of brain that I pretty much know all the major transits that are happening over the next like six to 12 months in my brain, so I can look at a chart and see, “Oh, you have your Moon at 5 Taurus. I know there’s gonna be an eclipse there.” But, yeah, I just feel like it makes a lot more sense when you optimize your own time more if you’re just getting straight to the point with the client and figuring out what they want in the moment instead of thinking about all the potential things that they might want to talk about. So, yeah, I don’t prep. I don’t look at the chart until I’m talking to them.
CB: Okay. I would like to do that. ‘Cause when I stopped doing consultations like years ago, I had gotten it down to like an hour of prep, and most of that was largely just because most of my consultations were very zodiac releasing-focused. Somebody was just asking me the other day, like a student was asking me, “How do you do this in a consultation? How do you actually approach using it?” And what I told them was what I would do in a consultation is I would take that hour, I would get a readout of the zodiac releasing periods from like Spirit and Eros and Fortune for a career and relationships and health, and then I would go through and write notes of which ones were supposed to be peak periods: whether it was a major, a moderate, or a minor peak period; whether it was a loosing of the bond, so a transition point; or if it activated the ruler of Spirit and there was something about the life’s work; as well as noting when a new major level one would begin; as well as identifying the angular triads and whether it was like the beginning, middle, or end of a phase.
Just write out notes very concisely of what I expected of the different periods, and then I would spend a good part of the consultation then talking the person through their chronology and seeing how those notes of what I expected from the technique lined up against their actual life. And then most of the consultation then would be about this gradual process of seeing how well it actually lined up and confirming that, both for myself as well as the client. And then once you have an understanding of the context of the person’s life and where they’ve gone up to that point, you can then project that in the future to make some predictions about what’s coming up. And that approach necessitated more prep, but only ‘cause I was really highly specialized in using that technique.
KT: Yeah.
CB: If I was not doing that or just doing a more general reading or transits or something then, yeah, that would be nice to do just a no-prep-and-go.
KT: Yeah. I’ve tried to do some ZR readings before and it’s always messy ‘cause I’m like, “Let me just look at this real quick.” And I’d have to open up astro.com and put in all that information again. But, yeah, usually I have people write just what they want to focus on in the thing, which doesn’t even really matter that much anyway. I have a formula now where at the beginning of every reading, I just confirm the birth info and then I just start asking questions. The first 30 minutes are usually just, “What are you doing for work right now? Where do you live? Do you live with someone? Are you dating someone?” All the basic—kind of covering the four angles really. You know, health, whatever, and just see what’s going on first. ‘Cause sometimes it’s like they won’t put this in there, but in talking to them they’re like, “Yeah, I think I want to move too in the next year,” and you’re like, “Okay, well, I’m seeing huge things for moving, so let’s talk about that.” So, yeah, that’s why I don’t do prep because I’m like sometimes you don’t know what the actual reading is gonna be.
CB: Like what they actually want to talk about. And you spend a bunch of time working out all this other stuff, but then they want to focus on some other very specific area.
KT: Right.
CB: Yeah, I guess I’ve been getting a taste for that, doing the Mercury Cafe Venus retrograde readings last month and just casting the chart and then being like, “Okay, Venus is retrograde in your 9th house.” And then doing that, you have to develop this very fine-tuned method of describing the placement or the transit in broad enough archetypal terms, and yet still specific enough that it’s not that it doesn’t mean anything. But broad enough archetypally that they can understand or see how it would match with whatever their actual specific situation is, which they’ll then explain and confirm in some way. But it’s like a muscle that you have to work out and use in order for it to get better.
KT: Yeah. And I think something that we as astrologers don’t get enough credit for and don’t give ourselves credit for enough is how we’re translators, and the labor it takes to not just translate what’s happening in the sky to earthly events or personal events, but then to translate it into English or a way that people can understand without using the astrology. That I think is the hardest part honestly. Like it can end up being the hardest part. It’s great when you have a client who is also an astrology student or lover and can just be like, “Yeah, well, Saturn’s in your 10th house,” and they kind of know what I mean. But, yeah, having to really explain the archetype in words and terms that would make sense to someone, I think that’s one of the most difficult parts of being an astrologer.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Like how to explain it in ‘non-jargon-y’ terms can be really tricky but really important to convey the message properly.
KT: Yeah, especially like when you’re writing horoscopes too.
CB: Oh, yeah.
KT: That’s a big part of it. I think that people who want to write start sooner or later working on that translating skill because it’s just something we have to contend with. If we want the general public to engage with this at all, we have to be able to translate it.
CB: Yeah. You know, I’m so glad you said that ‘cause I put off doing some of those things that all astrologers do for so many years, and I was like, “No, I’m gonna do advanced astrology for astrologers. Fuck the public. I don’t have to learn how to translate this ‘cause I want to do deep studies and treatments of this at a high level. And if people don’t understand the jargon that’s their problem.” Which to a certain extent—an argument against me—that’s kind of what The Astrology Podcast is to a certain extent, and people do find that very insurmountable going in. But over the past decade, by forcing myself in some instances to do those things I never thought I would do—like starting to do a monthly podcast or a month ahead forecast series, or a year ahead forecast, or eventually doing rising sign horoscopes—I’ve learned the value of doing that both in order to learn how to convey what astrology means to the general public that may not have a background, but also that you actually get so much better as an astrologer when you force yourself to try to make statements and dig deep in order to try to articulate the symbolism that you’re seeing. And then you have the confirmation once you then live through it or the client lives through it and comes back and tells you what happened. You learn so much through that process of forcing yourself to do those things that you don’t necessarily want to do as an astrologer, it ends up being really valuable in retrospect.
KT: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. Yeah, and I found that just through especially writing, like writing horoscopes, and I’m doing this app now. And I just hired a couple writers to write some of the planetary placements—you know, ‘your Moon’s and Aries this is what this means’—and when I think about hiring people too, I’m thinking about who can do that.
CB: Right.
KT: Not just who has the ‘astro’ knowledge but who can write it in a way where you don’t have to mention the Moon or the house or the sign and you can kind of speak to someone’s experience. And it’s hard. It’s not easy. Which is why I don’t do a lot of the writing myself anymore. My Mercury just can’t—it can, but I find it’s like three times as hard for me to do a lot of that stuff.
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah, but the translating piece, I just think about how Mercury is the planetary sort of symbol for astrologers, and how a big part of what we do, we’re observing, we’re transcribing and communicating. That communication is like translation. And, yeah, just how much labor that involves I think is very invisible labor that people don’t really often take into account.
CB: Yeah, for sure. The Hermetic or mercurial nature of astrology is the traditional ruler, and Mercury—one of its key things is translating things.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, so horoscopes, it’s actually worth doing some of those things. Like it’s worth doing horoscopes. It’s worth attempting to do forecasts of some sort.
KT: Especially if you want to make money in this field.
CB: Yeah, well, that’s the thing. Usually astrologers do it out of necessity or something like that, and I was always nervous about getting locked into that. Like when I was going to school at Kepler, me and Rick Levine, sometimes when people would fly out for a week to Seattle for lectures and to present projects and papers and stuff, I would stay up in the student lounge late at night with Rick Levine until two or three in the morning, we’re drinking wine and talking astrology. And then at some point he would be like, “Well, gotta go write the daily horoscopes for tomorrow,” and he would check out and go write. And I was always just like, “I do not want to have to do that at some point,” so I always avoided it. I still would not do dailies or something like that. Like that would be too much for me. I’m just not suited to it. Maybe other people with different temperaments are. Forcing myself to do monthlies and yearlies has been really valuable.
KT: Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I will never do dailies again. I always say I would have to be paid a full-time salary.
CB: Right.
KT: Like 100k.
CB: Well, that’s the scariest scenario. Like sometimes you do get those people that then become really successful doing that and then kind of get locked into it.
KT: Susan Miller.
CB: Yeah, that’s the person I always think about, Susan Miller who becomes like one of the most successful writers of dailies and short-term horoscopes of all time, but then develops this like fan base. Speaking of Doja Cat—sometimes there’s a positive and supportive and it’s made her wildly successful, but then also sometimes she would get sick and she would miss certain weeks due to health issues.
KT: Right.
CB: And people would yell at her, would be like, “Where are you? I don’t care if you’re sick. Get here and do our horoscopes.” And that just seemed—
KT: So insane.
CB: Yeah, that’s a tricky thing to get tied into.
KT: Yeah. I think that’s part of the reason why I paused my podcast too. I was doing these weeklies. And I think just, yeah, having to do it every week, I just felt like I couldn’t sustain it. Like it’s not very sustainable for me, but I want to do it so bad. But I stopped because I’m like if I can’t keep it up, I don’t know, I don’t want to keep being inconsistent. But I think that’s where I’m at right now in this Venus retrograde, figuring out what to do with my ‘content’ game. Because I’m craving to make content but I’m afraid to start making content that has a lot to do with weeklies or dailies ‘cause I know I can’t keep it up. I mean, Rick has his Aries stellium that I think will always keep him—he’s like the Energizer Bunny, right?
CB: Yeah.
KT: Not all of us are blessed with never-ending fire.
CB: Yeah. I mean, the great thing though about astrology and how vast the field is there’s like something for everybody. There’s some way that if you really want to do this professionally you can make it work, and you can adapt it to what your strengths or what your aptitude is.
KT: Yeah.
CB: But you have to wear many different hats as an astrologer. Like there’s so many different things I never thought I’d have to learn or come to have at least some either specialization in or ability to do as an astrologer.
KT: Right.
CB: Like we were talking about setting up the podcast and learning video and audio and all that stuff. This week I was reading about ancient Sumerian history and goddess cults and stuff like that. And there’s just like so many different areas and hats that you have to wear, it ends up being kind of wild.
KT: Yeah. I guess that’s the mercurial nature of the job because it can really adapt to an endless amount of fields for the most part.
CB: Right.
KT: Obviously doctors aren’t using us now but there’s medical astrology. I mean, maybe some are. Financial, any interest. Sports.
CB: Right.
KT: Like any interest you have it can kind of marry with so easily. Like I taught—or I didn’t teach—but I was hired to do a workshop or a talk I guess at a conference in May, and it was for travel professionals. And so, all these independent travel agents basically had this conference about travel, but they wanted to do something fun and cool, something different. And so, I did this workshop about astrology and travel, and I kind of just introduced them to different concepts like—what did I even say? Yeah, planning travel with astrology or astrocartography. Oh, I did little things ‘if this is a rising sign, this might be your travel personality’. Talked about the 3rd house/9th house stuff and then travel by the Moon, and kind of talked about starting trips on New Moons or the energy around a Full Moon and how I try not to be in the airport on Full Moons ‘cause it’s more hectic. Things like that where it’s like those people probably never even thought of the fact that maybe I could hire an astrologer to help choose dates for travel.
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah, business owners of all types can hire us. I mean, I do a lot of consulting for my friend in her small business around when to send this email out to try to get funding, or wanting to have this really intense conversation—things like that. We can consult on anything basically, and I think that not enough people know that.
CB: Yeah. That reminds me, I met an astrologer locally who is also a real estate agent and combines astrology and real estate.
KT: Oh, wow.
CB: And that’s amazing. Yeah, there’s so many different specializations. But then one of the tricky parts is you have to be good at the astrology. So you have to be really knowledgeable about that and excel at that or at least be proficient. But then you also have to be good at whatever that other specialization field is ‘cause if you’re weak in one or the other, it sort of throws things off. So as the astrologer we end up having to learn oftentimes about all these other fields and their intricacies in order to do a good job of applying the astrology to them.
KT: Yeah, yeah. I just had something, I lost it but. What was I about to say? Oh, yeah, not to mention the fact that we also have to learn how to market ourselves, which I think is probably the worst part because it comes naturally to so few people.
CB: I had the same reaction. But I’m hearing the Leo rising people being like, “You mean the best part.”
KT: Yeah. I have Chiron in Leo. Yeah, not fun for me. But I think that’s probably like the one skill that people don’t think about when they think about becoming a professional astrologer.
CB: Right.
KT: It’s like it’s really on you. There’s not really many other spaces that are promoting astrologers. Like AstrologyU does it for their teachers, I guess, and the people that they work with. Like Demetra and Kelly and Tony and them help with that. But, yeah, when you’re starting out, it’s like it’s really just on you, and it’s hard. I mean, I always kind of get down on myself ‘cause I’m like if I would have put in the time and energy in making reels on TikTok and stuff I’d probably be so much farther than I am. But at the same time who has the time and energy for that.
CB: Right. Yeah, well, you have to put yourself out there, and then you have to learn all the different tools that are necessary to put yourself out there. Like you gotta have a website and you gotta oftentimes learn how to write in some form, whether it’s a blog, or whether you’re writing articles somewhere else. You’ve gotta learn social media and run a Twitter account or Instagram or whatever your social media platform is, and all those have their intricacies and different things.
KT: And then like making graphics and materials, and then figuring out the business side of it. Do I do an LLC? How do I pay myself? Like there’s so much that no one tells you.
CB: Yeah, I realized years ago that people are struggling with that, and that’s why I did the professional astrologer course, which is like entirely just talking about what I tried—‘cause I tried all the different things—and what worked for me in terms of making it, and just giving people the short-list version of things.
KT: Right.
CB: ‘Cause when you get into different things you end up having to try a bunch of different things, and then you find out eventually what works and what doesn’t.
KT: You end up wasting a lot of time and money usually.
CB: Yeah, exactly. Like when I pivoted to doing video in 2017, after the book came out, I had tried different cameras and lighting setups and microphones, and sometimes you run into dead-ends. That’s why sometimes it’s nice to have a mentor or a friend ‘cause you can talk with and sometimes exchange information about what worked or what didn’t.
KT: Yeah. Yeah, so much time. And then all the different software—like there’s so many different options of software to use.
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah, like do I use Zoom? How do I send the files? Where am I publishing my podcast?
CB: Yeah.
KT: It’s just, yeah, more than you could imagine really.
CB: I guess that circles us back around to the ‘young astrologer’ thing and what we were talking about earlier as the dual thing of, on the one hand, us being jealous at just the abundance of materials and resources that astrologers have available to them now. If you’re a new student of astrology there’s so much great stuff out there. But then the problem I notice younger people are running into at this point is that there’s so much out there that you don’t know what to go with or what to focus on, and that almost becomes the challenge more than anything.
KT: Yeah. And I’ll just say if you’re wondering what to focus on, fundamentals of traditional astrology. I’m always gonna say that. Like if you’re starting, start there. Like it’ll take you wherever you need to go, but that’s just something I wish I had. And you I’m happy, whatever—my path was my path. But I just find learning the fundamentals and teaching it was so enriching for me. Yeah, I don’t know, it’s so important. Obviously you know that. So, yeah, if anyone’s like, “Where do I start?” That’s where to start.
CB: Yeah. And it’s so interesting ‘cause you then were part of the very last generation that probably started with a pure, modern, late-20th century psychological astrology, like I did, and like Austin and Kelly did, and then learned traditional after that.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Whereas some of the newer people are learning traditional first or learning a blend of modern and traditional and then sometimes learning modern. And I’m still really curious—‘cause I feel like this is kind of a lab experiment, since this is the first generation—of how that turns out or what that results in and what the strengths and weaknesses then are of the generation that comes up in that way that’s different from what came before that.
KT: Yeah. And so many of them are learning Jyotish and Western at the same time and looking at their sidereal charts and their tropical at the same time, and I’m just like mind-blown. I remember thinking like, “Yeah, one day I’ll learn Jyotish or whatever,” and I still don’t know if I’ll ever get there. I don’t know if my brain can take all of that. But, yeah, I’m really excited to see how that’s gonna come. Because just in talking to some of the younger people now and how much they know about all these different traditions and the ancients and their source texts, I’m just like, “How do you guys learn all this stuff?” I remind myself, “A lot of these people are younger, and they have more time than you to actually take in this information.” But, yeah, it will be so cool to see what happens, especially when the oldest Gen Zs start to have their Saturn returns in the next couple years. I’m curious to see who the standout people of the Gen Z generation, astrologers-wise are gonna be as they age into their 30s. Wild.
CB: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And some of those Saturn returns beginning in Pisces and Aries and Taurus. Taurus was like 2000.
KT: Taurus was 1998. Gemini was 2000-2001.
CB: Right.
KT: So, yeah, it’s coming up.
CB: Yeah, that’ll be super interesting. And after doing that episode with Demetra on Inanna that took us back even further, like 2,000 years before the Hellenistic tradition, into the early Mesopotamian tradition where you run all the way up against the barrier of the beginning of written history and written records of astrology around 2000 BCE. So basically as far back as you can go in the tradition because we just don’t have writing or documentation prior to that. And seeing how some of the meanings of Venus, for example, were similar and some of the meanings that were lost or dropped out was really interesting ‘cause it meant that there was like stuff even earlier in our tradition that was valuable that we have to go back and mine and kind of understand and reckon with.
KT: Wow. Like my brain hurts thinking about how time can go back that far and how we were using this tradition that goes back that far.
CB: Yeah.
KT: It’s so wild. Like how does that work? How did that happen?
CB: I don’t know. I mean, what’s crazy to me is so much of my career has been about reviving Hellenistic astrology from 2,000 years ago. And to have this realization there’s a whole tradition from 2,000 years before that that is still very inaccessible because it’s in an even older language that we have even less documentation of, which is why it’s not as well understood, that there may be some pieces that can be pieced together, or there may be tablets and other things that may still be found that’ll give us additional information about those traditions.
KT: Yeah, I think my brain goes like, “Well, I guess we’ll never know.” But, yeah, that’s true. Probably we’ll have that technology one day and find those missing pieces.
CB: Yeah. No, you’re right though. Probably a lot of it is lost to history at this point. So there’s a lot of things that we probably will never know.
KT: Yeah, which is a lot to think about. I always think about that in regards to our time now. Like are there gonna be things that future people will never know because of whatever reasons? The way we document things now is obviously so much farther ahead than the past. So, yeah, will things get lost again? I always wonder about that.
CB: Yeah. I mean, that honestly makes me paranoid how much of our stuff now is digital and how much documentation and output is digital. Because if, I don’t know, something catastrophic, like a solar flare like wipes out the internet or like a bunch of hard drives or something, how much do you lose? Or even just seeing something like Twitter, which people are almost taking as just like something that will always be there and was a bedrock, and having that suddenly become very unstable and having the prospect of it disappearing entirely if it continues to have the ball dropped with it. So many people wrote really insightful posts there ‘cause they were using it as a micro blogging platform and also were documenting things in real-time. Like when the pandemic was happening and astrologers were observing different things, or other real-time events like that, if that was lost you’d lose a huge chunk of history, and instead what survives is maybe stuff that’s in printed form or something like that.
KT: Yeah, some screenshots or something printed out.
CB: I guess there’s some stuff that’s okay that’s lost.
KT: But you have your thick book and enough copies of that around that someone will find that.
CB: Yeah. As I keep getting it l translated into different languages, I feel better and better, like, “Okay, this is gonna survive like some form, somewhere, even if some crazy end-of-the-world scenario happened.
KT: Yeah. How many languages now?
CB: So it’s been translated into Russian, the Chinese just came out. The Spanish translation was just finished but we’re trying to figure out where to publish it. The Turkish is gonna come out, and I think there’s a few others that I’m forgetting. Oh, the Japanese is getting ready to be finished and there’s like a few others.
KT: Cool. That’s awesome.
CB: Yeah. So my next thing is the podcast though ‘cause I feel like this has become my life’s work also, and I want to see some of that survive in different forms. So I’ve been thinking about publishing transcripts of some of the best episodes just in order to get that in a more durable format.
KT: That’s a good idea.
CB: Yeah.
KT: People will eat those up.
CB: Yeah, it should be good as book publishing and that whole trade. ‘Cause a big part of our history as well as astrologers is books and just the written tradition of astrology that’s often passed on in written form in one way or another. Realizing that that goes back 4,000 years was really something that put things into perspective recently.
KT: Yeah. I mean, I have this book I want to write and I just haven’t had the energy to do the thing, but I’m curious if in my 9th house year it will start finally, or if I’m gonna teach it another way. I used to have this curriculum and I’m like, is it a book is? It a course? Is it just a bunch of podcast episodes? I don’t know. But just thinking about the fact that you spent a decade on one book—
CB: Right. I mean, that was a little unique ‘cause I was trying to write the first major treatment of the entirety of a thousand-year tradition. So I was a little more ambitious, and I also tried to include everything in one book.
KT: Yeah.
CB: So people don’t necessarily have to follow that.
KT: Well, know that you have a Mercury-Saturn conjunction.
CB: Right.
KT: So I’m like that makes sense for you.
CB: Yeah.
KT: But, yeah, I don’t know. The ADD is just too intense for me. I can’t sit and write. But I love to come and to show up and sit in front of a microphone now. My Mercury in Sag is really good for that. It starts to freak out when I have to put pen to paper and actually think about what I’m saying.
CB: Right. I mean, my book was an experiment ‘cause I felt like I was on the cusp. Prior to me and all generations preceding me, writing a book was what you had to do to establish yourself in the field of astrology as one of the leading astrologers, or even as a mid-level astrologer to, yeah, just establish yourself in the field. And I really wondered at that point, when I published in 2017, if that was still necessary or almost like a requirement to do that or—because other people were making it by doing YouTube channels or podcasts or other things like that—if it had become unnecessary. But I feel like over the past two years I have confirmed that publishing something does help establish you in a way that’s unique and valuable and worth doing.
KT: Yeah. Yeah, you have that ruler of the 9th on your Midheaven.
CB: Yeah, Venus.
KT: Yeah, okay. I mean, I wrote a book but I’m not super proud of it ‘cause it was short.
CB: In the sign series?
KT: Yeah, Pisces. And I wrote it like in a fever dream. I was having that crazy transit: Neptune squaring my Mercury, as Jupiter transited my Mercury. And I just remember having like this week-long migraine, and I was like writing it through. I don’t remember. I just remember pouring out words for like five days straight. And I feel like I just want another chance out of writing something that I’m really proud of, and I kind of can. Like I have a publisher, but it’s just more about do I have time to write this book.
CB: Right. That’s the trickiest part.
KT: Yeah. I feel like I need to be paid a whole year’s salary just to be able to have the time to do it.
CB: Yeah.
KT: I can’t do other things. It’s hard.
CB: Yeah, I mean, that’s what I did. I saved up a bunch of money and then took a year off from doing consultations. And actually when I stopped doing consultations was 2015. But I only saved up for like three months, and I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna hammer this out in three months.” And I got three months in, and I was like, “Oh, no, I’ve run out of money, and like this is not anywhere near finished. I’m gonna need the rest of the year.” There’s a gap there where I stopped doing podcasts, but then I went back to doing podcasts because I needed the income from Patreon in order to fund the rest of the year of writing. And I was able to coast through with that, still not doing consultations, but that was what it took to write the book basically during the course of that year, the final version of it.
KT: Yeah,. that makes sense. I wanna figure that out eventually, or I don’t write a book and I do something else. But I don’t know, I do want to write a book eventually.
CB: Well, one of the things I realized also in retrospect is my book’s super thick and dense. But most of the best books that you read are actually very light and very to-the-point, and the chapters are relatively short and the paragraphs are relatively brief as well. Really, like a lot of good books are just a sequence of almost like blog articles that are strung together and that can be a really successful book.
KT: Yeah.
CB: And I feel like if I had to write what I wrote here, but in the future, if I was to write again, I would probably write something more clean and more concise.
KT: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, but it is cool to be like, “I wrote this.”
CB: Right. Yeah, I still had to do that for bragging rights. I always had that idea of like I’m gonna write ‘the’ book on this tradition, that is that book that everybody has to read. Planets in Transit was that book that Rob Hand wrote that really made him and that every astrologer just like has to have in their library. So I wanted to do that, and also to recover that tradition ‘cause it was important to me, and I found myself in this unique position of being involved in part of the recovery. Yeah, but future books—I mean, don’t quote me. Obviously I’m not known for being concise. So reputation is not my reputation, but if I can I’ll try to write something more concise.
KT: Yeah, that’d be cool. Yeah, I’ve been wanting to write something I do see as probably concise. I mean, who knows. But, yeah, something basically around like just how I approach learning the fundamentals ‘cause I just had such a great time teaching it. Yeah, I have this whole syllabus that I want to do something with. So we’ll see, we’ll see. I feel like when it comes to my 9th house Scorpio stuff, I get so charged up by the fundamentals of the tradition. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, you get it. There’s something so cool about learning that stuff and just seeing how it can apply to everything. It just makes astrology so much clearer, and it just makes it make more sense.
CB: Yeah. I mean, you said your Jupiter’s in Virgo, right?
KT: Mm-hmm.
CB: Okay. I mean, it’ll be interesting to see, once your app is launched, I’m sure you’re gonna have a lot of really fresh insights in doing synastry and relationship astrology and stuff like that and if something comes out of that as well. That could be book-worthy or something like that.
KT: Yeah.
CB: I know another major astrologer that has the ruler of the Ascendant and the 7th and they wrote a book on astrology and relationships.
KT: I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ll never forget—I won’t say anything—but just talking about different house systems, you were like, “Well—
CB: Yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna ‘cause it’s like a sore spot. But, yeah, that’s been a running thing over the past several years of different astrologers that maybe don’t use whole sign houses and aren’t used to conceptualizing their chart in that way, and then just like pointing out like, “Well, you did this, and it matches the house placement of the ruler the Ascendant,” is sometimes fun. I both like that experience, but also don’t want to be obnoxious ‘cause I’m trying to walk that line still in that I think there’s value to both whole sign houses and quadrant houses, and to find the middle-ground between those two, advocating for a system, especially early on, that wasn’t very popular and advocating for that, while at the same time still making room for and exploring other systems and what the reconciliation of those two can be.
KT: Yeah. Yeah, it’s funny when people talk about house systems or even like the different zodiacs. I mean, you made the podcast episode, “Whole Sign Houses is the Best House System.”
CB: Which was partially supposed to be a joke title.
KT: Yeah, I didn’t know it was a joke.
CB: All right. At the end of the lecture, just for the record, I said like, “I’m kind of joking. Whatever system you use, it’s great. I’m just showing how people should try to have a good reason for whatever system they use. But if you do that, I totally respect whatever system you use as long as you have a good reason for doing it.”
KT: Yeah. And that’s essentially my point of view on it too. But, yeah, it is always funny when you’re talking to someone and they’re like seeing their chart and they’re like, “Oh, no, I’m definitely a 4th house Sun,” and actually I’m looking at it as his 5th house Sun. And you kind of start talking about it and they’re like, “Wow, I guess that does make sense.”
CB: Right.
KT: I just feel like, yeah, when it comes to different zodiacs and different systems, there’s always a lot of discussion around which one’s better, which one’s true or right or real or whatever. And I’m just like we’re all looking at the same sky, we’re just interpreting it differently. Or we’re using different systems to look at the same sky. There’s not really a better or worse or whatever, it’s just different ways of looking at it.
CB: Yeah. I think people—especially the longer of a career you have as an astrologer—the more you’re used to conceptualizing your life and your chart in a certain way based on whatever your chart preference is. And I think it’s sometimes really hard to look at it from a different perspective just ‘cause we predicate so much of our understanding of our lives on how we see our charts.
KT: Yeah.
CB: That can be really tough, and I definitely sympathize. That’s why I’m not trying to give people a hard time about that. Like Alan Oken was another one I did that with, where I think he had Scorpio rising and Mars was in the 8th by quadrant, but it was in the 9th. And I think I made the point—
KT: ‘Cause you’re an astrologer.
CB: Half-joking, I was like, “You’ve traveled the world, and you know like 10 different languages fluently. You’re pretty ‘9th house-y’, my friend.” And he sort of took it in good faith while still being like, “Yeah, but still the 8th house placement is still relevant,” which is true. Now that we’re out of this stage of needing to bring whole sign houses back and defend it as a legitimate approach that should be considered in contemporary practice, I think now I finally got to the point of the past year or two where I’m ready to push for the part that I’ve always said we should be heading towards, but we’ve had to get distracted with all these stupid debates about whether whole sign houses existed. And now it should be focused on how do you reconcile whole sign quadrant houses or even equal houses to some extent, and that’s what I’m really interested in and I’ve started to see.
With the Noel Tyl example, you have the ruler of the 1st in the 2nd house by whole sign but the 3rd house by quadrant, if I’m remembering, and I just reading this interview with him where he saw an astrologer on TV for the first time and then turns to his wife and says, “I’m gonna write a bunch of books on this and become a millionaire,” which was one of his statements about the first time he learned about astrology. And it really shows the blending of the ruler of his Ascendant and his life motivation—partially that impulse was both to write (3rd house), but also to make money and be financially successful and he manifested both of them.
KT: Yeah.
CB: And there’s something about those and other examples that I think really shows the point of reconciliation. And at some point when things clear out and die down a little bit more from earlier this year, I’m really excited about doing an episode talking about that and delving into it more deeply.
KT: Yeah. I mean, you’ve been saying that for a couple years, just the synthesis of different house systems, different zodiacs, different techniques. That is sort of like where we’re at right now, and it seems where we’re continuing to head, especially with a younger generation wanting to learn. Like the Pluto in Sag, they’re a little bit more scattered I guess in terms of their knowledge-gathering. Not scattered in a bad way of course. But I think us millennials, especially having such a strong Saturn influence, especially the middle of our generation, I think that’s for the traditional revival and why we love traditional so much. Yeah, there’s just something about millennials as a generation being the last generation to know what life was like before the internet and how I think we do really like to hold on to the past, probably more so than future generations will.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. That’s interesting. And it’ll be interesting to see then what this synthesis is with the Pluto in Sag and other generations because of, like we said, how much different material they have and how much exposure they have to different forms of astrology. It’s inevitable that you then synthesize a bunch of different pieces together. It just becomes a question of what pieces become the dominant parts that get synthesized into whatever that stew is.
KT: Yeah. And it’s interesting, I think back to previous times in history where there was synthesis happening, like the Hellenistic period even, and how that was obviously happening IRL, in-person, at the Library of Alexandria or whatever. Now it’s very much more global and digital or through the internet and there’s a lot less in-person gatherings happening where we’re like coming together and talking and really doing that type of synthesis in person. Yeah, I don’t know. Will we have those in-person spaces? I mean, obviously we have our conferences. But, yeah, we don’t have a Kepler anymore or even like the revival project that I’m just having a brain fart on.
CB: Hindsight.
KT: Yeah, Hindsight. I mean, obviously there’s local gatherings happening in places all over the world. But I do get curious about, yeah, I don’t know, hubs. We don’t really have a lot of hubs anymore.
CB: Yeah, that’s definitely tricky. There’s some in-person stuff coming back with conferences, like NORWAC starting to happen again, or local astrology groups happening again mainly in major cities, but so much of the locus of activity generationally has moved from in-person to online. I mean, in ancient astrology, even though there was in-person stuff, we know that Valens taught students in Alexandria and stuff, but a lot of the transmission of astrology has always been textual, through the transmitting and translation of different texts from generation to generation and language to language. So that component of astrology has always been that and we still have that today with the internet and the transmission of things either verbally through videos and podcasts, or through books and stuff like that.
KT: Through TikTok.
CB: TikTok, yeah. And now TikTok—in the sacred archives of TikTok that will be passed on from generation to generation. Yeah, so it’s like some of that just becomes what were the dominant texts generationally in the past, that’s been the thing. What are the main texts that everybody views as authoritatively that get passed on the most and become like the bedrock of things? I guess that’s one of the questions. What does centrality look like when it comes to our generations and with online discourses?
KT: Yeah. Have you heard—UAC 2026?
CB: Is it for sure?
KT: I saw that in an ISAR email.
CB: Okay. So maybe they’re talking about it and that’s their target date.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Okay, that’s cool. I mean, that would be great if that happens. So UAC is the United Astrology Conference. This is when one of the big organizations put on one mega conference.
KT: Yeah. I feel like there’s been—correct me if I’m wrong—some consolidation of groups in the past year or so too. Like AFAN and—
CB: Yeah, and OPA.
KT: Okay, yeah.
CB: I think yeah AFAN and OPA folded into each other or something.
KT: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah, I’ve never been to a UAC.
CB: Oh, really? You didn’t go to 2018?
KT: No, I wasn’t deep enough in things yet at that point.
CB: Okay.
KT: Or maybe I had just started. Yeah, 2018, that was the beginning of Saturn in Capricorn, which is my 11th house, which is when I first started to do the dinners and monthly meetups.
CB: What year?
KT: 2018.
CB: ‘18, okay.
KT: Like January 2018 I started doing that stuff. Yeah, I was just getting into the astrology scene at that point. I don’t think I knew about UAC at that point, or I heard about it as it was happening or something.
CB: Yeah.
KT: But, yeah, I think it’ll be cool. I didn’t go to any conferences this year. So I am kind of missing the in-person, ‘astro’ hangs.
CB: Yeah. I mean, it’s so important and so valuable and something you can’t understand till you’re there hanging out with a group of people that speak your language, since it’s such an isolated study. But that would be great if it comes back. I remember Lee Lehman saying that that’s how the older generations used to tell time by like how many times since the last UAC or until the next one ‘cause it was usually every four years.
KT: Yeah.
CB: So it used to be such a regular keystone of the community. And to have a lot of that fall apart over the past several years has been really interesting in terms of just breaking a little bit of the continuity in the tradition.
KT: Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, thinking about that transmission of information from the older generation to the younger generation and how just like being at NORWAC for a couple years and seeing that literally happening, yeah, we definitely need that again, more of that.
CB: Yeah, pretty much all we focused on when I was president of the Association for Young Astrologers was getting younger people to conferences, ‘cause usually they were so expensive it was like cost prohibitive for younger people to show up to them. But then I realized at the same time that that was literally where the generations met and where they connected and interacted with each other, ‘cause otherwise they were often off in their own isolated hubs.
KT: Yeah, the older people on Facebook, younger people on Twitter, or even younger people on TikTok.
CB: Yeah.
KT: Yeah, it is so important, those moments.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’d be interesting to see it come back and then also interesting the attempts to experiment with the blending between both online and in-person stuff in the early stages of that, essentially livestreaming the conferences and whether the conferences are still viable enough or if that hurts attendance enough that makes it not work as well as in-person, or if it’s the opposite and actually just enhances it and makes it more accessible and therefore becomes a successful model.
KT: Yeah. I mean, I think it could be. I kind of did this in 2021. I hosted friends for NORWAC ‘cause it was virtual and I was speaking in it. And, yeah, I think like four or five other astrologers all came to my place.
CB: Oh, yeah, I remember that. That was really cool.
KT: Yeah, and we all kind of did NORWAC together. So I feel like there’s opportunities for that too, where we’re streaming virtually but there can be watch parties.
CB: Right. Yeah, ‘cause it was online that year, and you guys all attended it and gave your lectures online virtually. But there were like five of you there in person at the same house.
KT: Yeah, exactly. It was fun, yeah. And I feel like that should be a thing for people who can’t make the trip. It’s hard. I mean, I started the 11th House and now Jove’s House to try to help people just connect in general, but connecting locally is so important. And I feel blessed. I’m happy with myself that I started that pretty early on, like 2018. I think I posted on Facebook. It was probably a couple years before that, but I was just like, “Is anyone interested in a meetup where we talk about astrology?” And I started hosting. I had people just sign up, put their name on an Excel spreadsheet. And I just didn’t know what I was doing, but I did it. I would print out people’s charts beforehand and kind of just host these meetups and groups.
Yeah, I’m so happy I was doing that when I was doing it ‘cause I met so many people and, yeah, just got into the community that way. People don’t know how important it is to be able to speak the language to people, especially in person, until you’re doing it, and you’re like, “I can’t live without this now.” ‘Cause you don’t want to be annoying your cousin/boyfriend/brother or whatever about, “Oh, your Mars is in Leo, like you’re such a Mars in Leo,” and they’re just like, “Stop saying that to me, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah, we’ve all been there.
CB: Yeah, that’s super crucial. And that moment where you’re suddenly in an environment that’s different, where people speak your language, and having a sense of acceptance and being able to relate to other people in a way that’s different if you primarily have like non-astrologers in your life up to that point.
KT: Yeah, exactly.
CB: That is crucial. There are two things—I mean, I think the answer that’s been learned over the past year or so is that it is a viable strategy to host in-person events and also livestreaming because I think NORWAC went well last year when they did that for the first time in 2022—or 2023 actually, just a few months ago. And then I just talked to Danny Larkin who’s running the New York Meetup right now, and he said that they’re doing both in-person as well as online streams and that it’s going great.
KT: That’s awesome.
CB: It seems like there’s like multiple people experimenting with that. And that’s the cusp that we’re at, but it’s being established at least that’s it’s a viable model.
KT: That’s great to hear, yeah. ‘Cause it’s important to be able to have that for people who can’t come in person. And I think we’re just gonna hopefully get better and better at making that virtual experience better for people too.
CB: Yeah, that’s the biggest thing. The initial struggles, especially during the pandemic—we’re doing online conferences but then the social component was majorly missing.
KT: Yeah.
CB: And there’s still a way to do that, but you gotta figure out how to still have that component ‘cause that’s huge. It’s not just the lectures or the presentations, it’s the social component.
KT: Yeah. I mean, I feel like NORWAC last year—I barely went to many lectures. It was mostly hanging out, the socializing.
CB: Right.
KT: Probably my brain was too fried from getting my slides done. That’s probably why I didn’t go to many myself. But, yeah, just being able to be with people. I always do Airbnbs for these conferences. And so, there’s like five or six of us together getting to hang out to kind of escape the hotel craziness too.
CB: Right.
KT: There’s a lot of different ways to go about it. I think that most people know to prioritize it if they can, but if you’re still on the fence and you can try to make it work, it’s definitely worth it.
CB: Yeah, definitely, to have that in-person experience. When ISAR was out here in Colorado last August, I went out and hung out for a little bit, and it was really great meeting up with so many astrologers in person and remembering what that’s like.
KT: You did a keynote, didn’t you, or like the closing?
CB: Well, they gave me an award.
KT: Oh, that’s what it was, okay. ‘Cause I remember seeing you, and you were like, “Yeah, I’m trying to write a speech real quick.”
CB: Oh, yeah, did you walk by at that exact moment?
KT: Probably.
CB: I think it was. I’m like outside trying to write an acceptance speech, and you walked by.
KT: Yeah. It was good.
CB: Thanks. Yeah, I made a joke that didn’t land well about COVID. I was like, “The tradition is like breathing in and breathing out. You take the tradition in and then you take it, and you breathe it out eventually and pass it on, kind of like how we’re all breathing in this room together. I would suggest not breathing too deeply right now due to COVID.” And there was just like crickets.
KT: I was probably giggling.
CB: There were a few laughs, there were a few laughs. I mean, ironically though, making that joke, it was also on my mind ‘cause that’s been my struggle. Just after getting sick in 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, and then having long-COVID, that just wrecked permanently my immune system. So I get sick really easily. Like I can’t really go to conferences and have been avoiding it, so that I’ve also stopped speaking at conferences. And even just doing the podcast is a huge energetic expenditure, so that I don’t even do online lectures anymore. So that’s one of the reasons I’m happy that they are starting to do more virtual stuff. Because I know that if there is a segment of people that are like that who have either gotten it or are worried about getting it still, because of the long-term effects that it has on some people for whatever reason, that’s kind of good that there will be that accessibility option just because it still seems important and relevant.
KT: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, and again, I’m just excited to see how we can make that better for people going forward.
CB: Yeah, there’s definitely ways. It’s still just the early phases of everything, but it’s going in a really good direction, so it’d be good to see.
KT: Yeah, it’ll be cool. I’m like, yeah, what’s 2026 gonna be like?
CB: For UAC, yeah. Yeah, the different organizations are gonna have to come together. Other ones will probably have to do their own conferences in between now and then. I assume there will be another ISAR conference. I don’t know if NCGR is doing one. And I’m sure OPA is probably gonna do something. But, yeah, doing 2026—that’d be crazy. Just a huge, mega conference. The last one in Chicago had like a thousand people or something like that.
KT: Oh, wow.
CB: So it gets pretty crazy.
KT: Just a bunch of ‘astro’ nerds gathering.
CB: Right.
KT: I always wonder what the people who are in the hotels, that aren’t part of the conference, are thinking when we’re just talking about Jupiter and Pluto and Uranus, and they’re like, “What is happening?’
CB: Right.
KT: “What did I step into?”
CB; Yeah.
KT: But, yeah, it’ll be cool. That’ll be cool to see.
CB: Yeah. And it’ll be cool for a lot of younger astrologers to attend that if that’s one of their first conferences. The speaker selection process that’s a whole thing for professional astrologers in our field and a limited number of spots. There’s different people vying for that that want to have a speaking position. And, yeah, there’s a lot that goes into that behind the scenes. It’s a lot of work.
KT: Yeah. I think I’ve decided I’m not gonna do that anymore.
CB: Okay.
KT: I would get such intense stage fright last year for both NORWAC and ISAR, and I was like, “What is wrong with me?” And then I did a conference this year, but it was like non-astrologers, and I was like, “Oh, I’m just afraid of talking in front of astrologers.”
CB: Okay.
KT: And so, I’m like maybe that’s just not what I’m supposed to be doing.
CB: Was there ever a point before last year—after hosting so many meetups and stuff, where you gave a lecture—where you were more or less confident going into it?
KT: No, I think it was the in-person part. ‘Cause I had been doing so much online teaching up until last year, when we finally got in-person again, and I was just like, “Yeah, this is too intense.” And I also just feel like the astrology, like the knowledge that I have to offer, I just focus so much on the fundamentals and the foundational stuff that I’m like, “Do these people need to know this?” Like if you’re at an astrology conference, you probably already know. So I think I got in my head about that too. ls this actually helping anyone? So, yeah, that’s why I kind of prefer to talk to non-astrologers ‘cause, at least ego-wise, I don’t feel like I’m ‘preaching to the choir’ or whatever, and I feel like I’m actually giving people interesting information. ‘Cause when it comes to astrologers, I’m just like, “You probably already know this.”
CB: I mean, there’s a surprising number of beginners at conferences, so I wouldn’t get too worried about that. And even when you’re presenting basic things—and intermediate or advanced astrologers come in and see it—sometimes they’ll still walk away with some interesting insight or something they hadn’t thought of before, even if it’s super, super basic.
KT: Yeah, I have gotten that feedback. But I think I just get in my head about it too much.
CB: Yeah, I understand. It’s something that takes practice.
KT: Yeah.
CB: I used to visibly shake when giving my first talks—they were a mess—at NORWAC in, what was it? 2006 and 2007. But it’s just one of those things that the more you do it, just like consultations, the easier it becomes and the more some of those feelings recede into the background.
KT: Yeah, that’s true.
CB: All right, well, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else that we meant to talk about that we didn’t or any major no things that have come up.
KT: Only thing I’ve been thinking about otherwise is just the Saturn in Pisces transit ‘cause it’s stationed on my Ascendant within a degree this year.
CB: What degree? 5 or 6?
KT: My Ascendant’s like 7.59° Pisces. So it’s stationed at like 7-something.
CB: Yeah.
KT: Yeah, I don’t have anything in my 1st house natally.
CB: Okay. Oh, yeah, what was your 11th house again?
KT: Capricorn.
CB: Do you have anything there?
KT: I have my North Node-Uranus-Neptune conjunction.
CB: Uranus-Neptune, okay.
KT: They’re all within like 2° or something.
CB: You were born in ‘91.
KT: Mm-hmm.
CB: But Saturn’s not there.
KT: Saturn’s at 1 Aquarius.
CB: Aquarius, okay. Yeah, I was just wondering with all of the in-person meetups that you organized and the 11th house theme and how that was playing a role.
KT: It was very much Saturn transiting my 11th, and then, yeah, the Saturn return was also a lot of organizing group stuff.
CB: Okay, got it.
KT: But, yeah, Saturn in the 1st has been interesting. I don’t know, like I was thinking about the 1st house and like people who have planets in their 1st house and how dynamic they are and personality-wise and all these things. I’m a ‘7th house’ person. My chart ruler is in the 7th.
CB: Right.
KT: And so, having Saturn come in and just kind of spend all this time has been really interesting identity-wise, especially like body-wise. I got a trainer at the end of February, so right before Saturn entered Pisces, and I started lifting, which feels very Saturn in my 1st house.
CB: You’re also a day chart, right?
KT: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
KT: And so, yeah, I just want to sculpt my body. I’m like so obsessed with it. My whole For You page on Instagram is like workouts, just like gym girls or gym guys working out, which is so I felt like ‘not me’, but now it is, I guess.
CB: That’s amazing.
KT: And, yeah, also just being very like I don’t want any of my clothes anymore, but I also don’t know what to buy. Just a weird identity crisis when it comes to clothing, body stuff, yeah, what I look like. And it’s a very interesting shift from having Jupiter in Pisces ‘cause that has been so much about—well, that was a lot about my body but more biologically, I guess, health-wise, I’ll say. I started a medication on the Jupiter cazimi in my 1st house, when it was in Pisces. And I have kidney disease. So the medication is for the kidney disease, and it’s kind of slowed down the progression, but what it does is it makes you extremely thirsty. I didn’t take it today ‘cause it’s just too annoying when you’re traveling ‘cause literally I’m just chugging water all the time. And I just thought it was so funny ‘cause it was like the Jupiter cazimi in Pisces and I became hyper-hydrated all of a sudden.
And so, yeah, now that Saturn’s here, and there’s a lot more constriction and contraction, I’m just a lot more critical, and not even like in a bad way or being mean to myself necessarily. I’m just like, “Yeah, these clothes don’t fit, like you need better clothes (or you need this and that), and the way you’re presenting yourself,” like all these things. So, yeah, that’s just something on my mind with these 1st house transits, especially as someone with an empty 1st house. Yeah, having a planet there for so long for the first time since I was like two, it’s just weird.
CB: Yeah, it’s weird as an astrologer. It’s like we know the keywords for the 1st house—things like appearance, body, self, self-image—but it’s not until you have a major 1st house transit and then you have that experience of your appearance or your body or your sense of self and how you appear to the world actually becoming a major focal point for you all of a sudden for unique reasons that you suddenly understand at a much deeper level what that’s actually about.
KT: Yeah. Saturn in Aquarius—I know there was a lot of health stuff for you, especially ‘cause you have the Moon there, right?
CB: Yeah.
KT: Did you also have a lot of identity stuff too?
CB: I mean, my famous 1st ‘house-y’ story that I always tell is my Saturn return. At my Saturn return I realized I was losing my hair. I have Aquarius rising and Saturn is the ruler of the Ascendant in the 10th house, but also squaring the Ascendant. So when I’m having my Saturn return it’s also squaring my Ascendant/Descendant axis and just going through that really extreme process, at least for me because I used to have long hair most of the time growing up and then I cut it shorter. But like the hair and making that transition of realizing I was losing it and I needed to start shaving it was part of my Saturn return, and that was a real focusing on 1st house and self and appearance and how you appear to the world and things like that. And now over the past decade, because I had made that transition by the time I started doing video for the podcast, everybody just knows that I shaved my head. But making that transition for me at the time was definitely like a major internal struggle and process of transformation.
KT: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I’ve been seeing someone recently who has alopecia, and I asked him when that happened to him, and he said around like 14-15, which would have been his opposition. And he has Saturn in the 6th house. So, yeah, just the whole losing the hair. I mean, I shaved my head during my Saturn return.
CB: Okay.
KT: Obviously I wasn’t losing it. But, yeah, the hair part is interesting with Saturn especially. But, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That was your Saturn return in your 10th?
CB: Yeah, that was Saturn return in the 10th.
KT: With Saturn ruling your Ascendant of course.
CB: Right. And then just the feeling of compulsion, of just like you don’t have a choice but to accept this. And it’s weird being in a situation with Saturn transits where you have something that happens that you have to learn to accept, even if you don’t want it. But also the choice almost is like a stoic question of whether to go along willingly with that, and therefore have some degree of freedom in that you’re accepting it by your own volition versus just being sort of pulled along the cart, behind fate, or what have you.
KT: I almost feel like that’s a ‘day chart/night chart’ thing too.
CB: Sure.
KT: I feel like day charts are able to look at it as more constructive and more big picture, whatever. But I find night charts often feel like they’re captive to the wheels of time or whatever.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And then Aquarius of course was getting COVID and then dealing with the physical limitations of the weird things that it did to my body after that, of not being able to have as much energy or do as much. So more about physical constraints, but it’s interesting how different people experience it. It’s interesting for you that some of that so far is just internal motivation to sculpt and mold your body in different ways. That’s a really cool manifestation of that.
KT: Yeah, I just started really thinking about longevity. Last year was such a hard year for me. My Scorpio stellium’s in the—that’s not really a stellium—but my Scorpio stuff is in the third decan, so I was getting really hit by Saturn last year.
CB: The Scorpio episode, I can say, was one of my favorite episodes of the zodiac series that we did, with you, me, and Sam. I was talking to Austin about it the other day because the Pisces episode for some reason is shooting up as the most viewed episode. It’s like Rick Levine’s Aries episode, which was the most popular until recently. But the Scorpio episode is one of my favorites just ‘cause of the way that you, me, and Sam gelled in that episode.
KT: Yeah, Scorpio power.
CB: Yeah.
KT: But, yeah, that Saturn square, I don’t know, I’m sure you felt it ‘cause it was in your 1st and on your Moon too. But I don’t know anyone with Scorpio placements that didn’t have a hard go of those squares from Saturn. And so, I feel like it kind of put me into an extremely low place. And so, once this Saturn in Pisces transit started I just started thinking a lot more about, yeah, I want to have a healthy body for a long time. Like I want to live for a long time. I don’t want to start later in life getting in shape. And I kind of knew this about myself already, but it’s just becoming more and more clear especially as I’m getting older that it’s not an option, like I need to workout, not for ‘looks’ reasons or ‘appearance’ reasons but mental health, physical health, for my digestion, for my sleep, for my anxiety, like all the reasons.
CB: Right.
KT: It’s just like a Saturn, mature thing to be like, “Okay, you’re doing this not because no one’s forcing you to, not because you’re trying to fit into a dress or whatever, but because it’s long-term, good for you and your future children and whatever.” And so, yeah, that’s been a big thing, thinking more ‘big picture ‘and long term about just my physical health and trying to get better about it.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really big turning point. And thinking about things like food or the nutritional content of food was like the tail-end of Saturn in my 1st that sounds similar to what you’re talking about.
KT: Especially because it’s your Moon too, I bet.
CB: Right.
KT: ‘Cause I’m getting that next, so I’m nervous about it. But I have a lot of food issues personally. Like I’ve had this appetite issue for over a decade now where I don’t really have an appetite—thank you to cannabis for helping me out with that.
CB: It’s usually the best opposite, isn’t it?
KT: No. I mean, it gets me—
CB: Oh, it gives you an appetite.
KT: It gives me an appetite.
CB: I thought you were saying that it cancels your appetite.
KT: Oh, no, no. No, that’s how I’ve been eating basically.
CB: Okay.
KT: But it’s been just like this battle for so long trying to figure out what to do about it. Lately I’ve come to the conclusion it’s definitely psychological, it’s not really a physical thing. I have my Moon in Aries, and at the bendings it’s square the nodes.
CB: Do you mind if I pull up your chart?
KT: No, not at all.
CB: Okay. We showed it on the Scorpio episode, didn’t we?
KT: Yeah, probably for a second.
CB: You put it out. I just want to make sure I’m not pressuring people.
KT: Yeah, I don’t mind at all. I talk about it a lot.
CB: Okay, here we go.
KT: There it is, yeah. So my Moon down there, it’s like exactly square Neptune. It’s squaring the nodes, Uranus, all of that.
CB: Your Moon’s in Aries. So that’s what you were saying that it’s coming up in your Moon next, when Saturn goes into Aries.
KT: Yeah, it’ll station on my Moon eventually.
CB: Got it.
KT: But, yeah, I’ve been looking at my Moon trying to understand my appetite issues, and I think it just makes sense looking at my Moon placement. I think Aries Moons in general—we just don’t have the patience often when it comes to food, so we want it quick and fast. But I find, yeah, having the Moon at the bendings has been probably one of the more difficult parts of my chart in my life, figuring out how to feed myself. There’s just every day so much confusion around it. It’s just never consistent. And so, yeah, I’m curious to see what happens when the eclipses come to my Moon, and then also when Saturn eventually gets there.
CB: Oh, right. ‘Cause the nodes just went into Aries and Libra.
KT: Yeah, yeah, which I’m excited about. I’m like, yeah, cool. 2nd house North Node, I can roll with that.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’s nice that you have, one, that Venus opposition to the Moon, which is a nice positive influence, and then also that trine between the Moon applying to a trine with Mercury in Sagittarius. That’s really cool.
KT: Yeah. It’s true, you don’t really notice your own trines that much, I think.
CB: Right.
KT: And I kind of feel that way with my Moon trine Mercury. I’m like, I don’t know, I can be fiery, I guess. Like I really have a hard time thinking about how it plays out, but I’m sure other people see it in me or something.
CB: Yeah. I mean, the variety of different communicative forms that you’ve done over the past decade that we mentioned at the beginning of the episode and that you’ve been successful in each of those I think is unique. ‘Cause many people aren’t necessarily able to have that facility or adaptability to do something like that and be good at it.
KT: Yeah, I’ll take it. Thanks. Oh, I wanted to ask you about Saturn in Pisces for you, as your chart ruler is now leaving its home signs for the past five years. How has that been?
CB: It’s good. It’s gone into my 2nd house, so I’m just thinking long term about sustainability and the podcast, and the production schedule of the podcast is a lot each month ‘cause I do four public episodes and two private episodes each month, which is about all the energy that I have in terms of producing and recording and releasing and promoting those. So trying to figure out if that’s sustainable in the long term and what other things I need to be doing to just make sure things are okay in the future, having the reduction of my energy cut in half. Like the podcast, originally, I was doing four to six episodes a month and then was creating new courses or writing articles or doing all this other stuff.
KT: Exalted Mars. You’re like, I can do it all.”
CB: Yeah, and have the endurance to do it all, and do these long lectures and recover from it pretty soon. So just figuring out how to adapt, given some of those limitations, and to make sure things are good for the long term I think is a lot of what that’s gonna be about for me.
KT: That makes sense.
CB: I am curious. I do want to see more about Saturn in Pisces. I’m still shocked at how literal the symbolism has been so far this year.
KT: The station with the submarine.
CB: The submarine, yeah.
KT: I’ll never forget that. That was wild.
CB: That was wild. And then it was also like orcas are attacking boats, and there was one other ‘sea’ thing. And more recently there’s like a sea otter attacking people, which has been really entertaining to watch.
KT: Lots of sharks. A lot more sharks in the water.
CB: Or now it’s like forever chemicals that Michael Morris was pointing that out. The forever chemicals thing happened recently where they’re realizing that some of the chemicals in the water—
KT: In tap water, yeah. That was such a good episode. I was texting Michael during it like, “I love this.” I loved listening to them talk. They just had such amazing insight always, always.
CB: Yeah.
KT: But, yeah, the water stuff has been scary.
CB: The only person that can rival Austin in terms of the ‘poetic-ness’ of speech, and the metaphors were really good.
KT: Yeah.
CB: So there’s that. And then also earlier this year, like as soon as Saturn went into Pisces, you were getting a lot of like the AI-generated art stuff.
KT: Right.
CB: And there was some really interesting stuff with that, which I’m curious about as that proceeds, and as Saturn gets closer to Neptune. But also, it’s like we’ve had a little bit of a break for the past few months when Pluto went back into Capricorn, and it seemed like some of the AI stuff kind of like receded a little bit. And I’m curious to see if that comes back like full force, like another wave of that when Pluto goes back into Aquarius.
KT: Yeah, it will, and I’m not looking forward to it.
CB: Yeah.
KT: I think it’s just ‘cause my Saturn’s in early Aquarius and I just really hated that period of Pluto there. I’m not looking forward to it coming back. 12th house stuff, I guess. It just made me so paranoid.
CB: Right.
KT: Like I really hated it. I knew it was Pluto in my 12th on my Saturn, but I was like, “I can’t wait till this goes back into Capricorn.” I can’t believe I was saying that. But it’s been nice for me, at least mental health-wise. I don’t feel like everyone hates me anymore.
CB: Yeah, that’s funny. I had a similar thing during that time, come to think of it.
KT: The Pluto in your 12th?
CB: Of it just dipping into Aquarius, in my 1st, and just seeing the shift of intensity. I still get struck by how some of the basic significations of things that almost become cliché about different transits really are real. And sometimes when that moves into an important place you get those cliché experiences with those transits just like the textbooks say or just like people talk about.
KT: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we’ll see. I mean, with Pluto coming back into Capricorn, there’s been talk about corruption and Trump and all that coming back up. So, yeah, I’m curious what’s gonna happen as it’s dipping back and forth over the next two years or so.
CB: Right.
KT: And then, yeah, the AI stuff, the robots—the aliens. Oh, my God, the alien stuff.
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah, gosh, weird times.
CB: Yeah. it’s all coming up like all at once.
KT: I guess that is just a really good phrase for Pluto in Aquarius, just ‘weird times’. Like the next 20 years are about to get even more weird somehow.
CB: I know. The thing I keep thinking about is this is really just the beginning of this. We’re in for like 20 years of this, and like a lot of the most literal things possible all started happening at the very beginning.
KT: Right. But I guess that was how it was with Pluto in Capricorn too.
CB: Yeah.
KT: Like the financial crash. Obama becoming president, the world collapsing or whatever—the financial market collapsing. It has been so much about the powers-that-be. And it’s so wild now that we’re at the end of it and it’s all been exposed now. It’s like everyone knows the levels of corruption that we’re living within and how the system is really only benefiting, what, five people up top or whatever. So, yeah, it’s like now what?
CB: Yeah. And those power things, as well as the wealth disparities and things like that. And also like having the richest man in the world swoop out of nowhere and just buy one of the biggest social networks towards the end of that Pluto in Capricorn transit and then proceed to evidently dismantle it. And that’s what’s so weird. It’s like we still don’t know if he’s deliberately dismantling Twitter or if he’s accidentally dismantling Twitter just through not great moves.
KT: Yeah, exactly. ‘Cause it does seem like the original purchase was to not dismantle it, but kind of. To kind of have some sort of hand in discourse, especially when it comes to political discourse and social discourse and having some sort of power in that. But it’s like, this is the way you’re going about that?
CB: Right.
KT: Yeah, it’s confusing, and it does often seem like a movie sometimes. It’s like how did this happen?
CB: Yeah. Like if somebody wrote this five years ago as a movie, it would be rejected ‘cause it just sounds like a bad movie.
KT: Yeah, and that’s life now.
CB: Right.
KT: Oddly enough. Yeah, just thinking about everything honestly. How did we get here? How did 2016 happen? Remember when everyone thought the world was ending in 2012 ‘cause of the Mayan calendar? I still kind of think it did, or we like switched timelines or something weird happened.
CB: Yeah.
KT: ‘Cause after that is when everything really started to get weird.
CB: That’s true. There was definitely a shift within a few years after that of things increasingly going off the rails from the period of 2012 where it almost seemed like we were in a good place and things were moving forward. Society was improving in a lot of great ways, and then all of a sudden we’re taking all these steps back and things are getting really shaky in a lot of different ways.
KT: Yeah, yeah, it’s very unclear. Yeah, the steps back are so jarring. I don’t know, I find it to be very jarring, and I think maybe it’s just the way we were raised. I think the ‘90s especially had this air of like ‘we’re progressing as a society’, or like the internet. Things are gonna be great in the future ‘cause of all this progression, and now it’s just regression it feels like.
CB: Yeah. Maybe that’s like a common experience as millennials or something like that. But I remember when I took history of astrology classes with Nick Campion in the mid-2000s at Kepler, he would always make this point that things go in cycles and things do not just inevitably and always improve. He’s like sometimes civilizations or cultures or society can have a downfall or a step back. He called it the ‘myth of progress’. And I just remember being so objecting to that so much and what he was saying and saying like, no, obviously society progresses and things are getting better, and we’re on an upward slope and that’s not gonna change or something; it can only get better from here obviously because a new foundation has been laid.
Yeah, it’s really interesting. I always reflect on that and just what my internal, almost violent objection to that was philosophically when he was saying it, but now in retrospect understanding that that’s true, and also now having a much greater historical perspective, having studied all these different ancient civilizations and cultures as part of the history of astrology and seeing that society’s rise and fall. There’s not a lot of sense of permanence. Like there’s an impermanence to everything and that’s just part of the world.
KT: Yeah, as much as us ‘fixies’ don’t want to admit it.
CB: Yeah, I guess that is the hardest part. In the long term I still hope that that’s true, that the universe bends towards justice or like some of those other sayings in terms of the long-term. I think that still could be possible. It just means sometimes in the short timeline we can’t take things for granted, but you have to continue to fight and push for them and things like that.
KT: Yeah. It’s like what you always say about astrology and the history and how we’ve been in periods of great popularity of astrology and long periods where you weren’t allowed to practice or it was outcast or outlawed or whatever. And you always make a point of reminding people of that, which I appreciate because it’s true. We’re in this incredible period right now, but I’m very interested to see what happens when Neptune leaves Pisces and just what’s to come of things. And knowing the history, you know that we’re in this kind of bubble right now but it’s not always that way. It’s always gonna be that way, especially with the rise of conservatism around the world. It’s like it’s something to definitely think about and keep in mind unfortunately.
CB: Yeah. Yeah, I’m honestly so nervous about that or continue to be. And not to hark on it, ‘cause I know I’ve mentioned it in a bunch of other episodes, but things move in cycles, and astrology has been on top for the past several years. It’s been almost miraculous or kind of interesting seeing that, especially how fast it happened and how thoroughly it’s then shown up in different parts of society. Just knowing from the past that that doesn’t always stay permanently, even that goes through cycles.
KT: Yeah, ‘cause 10 years ago when I was doing this, again, at parties and stuff, no one knew what a rising sign was.
CB: Right. It was still just Sun signs.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Like the biggest thing that I’ll never get over is how everybody knows their ‘big three’ at this point. There’s such a higher percentage of people, even if they don’t believe in astrology or think it’s valid, who still would know their Sun, Moon, and rising at this point just because of how much it’s gone through different levels of society.
KT: Yeah. Yeah, ‘cause I’m sure you had this too. I remember being young and into this and thinking like it would be so cool if everyone knew their Moon sign, and just kind of thinking of it as like, “That’d be cool. That’ll never happen. No one’s ever gonna be nerdy about this the way I am.” And it’s happening. I’ll still never get over it. Yeah, ‘right place at the right time’ type of thing it feels like. My friends and stuff who know I’ve been doing this for forever, they’re like, “Wow.” They even think like, “You’ve been doing this for so long. It’s kind of amazing how this happened for you?” And it is. It truly is. I mean, who would have thought.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’s funny ‘cause if you listen back to the 2017 episodes, I did that episode with Jessica Lanyadoo and Dayna Lynn Nuckolls where we were talking about how there had just been this recent string of news stories about astrology getting more popular, and we were talking about whether it was true or not. And I was kind of skeptical at the time ‘cause I was seeing astrology books on bookshelves at bookstores getting smaller and smaller. So I was like maybe this is just hype, maybe it’s not really getting that much popular. But then it very quickly became clear over the next year that it was. That some weird generational shift had occurred and suddenly astrology was widely popular again.
KT: Yeah, I think it was the millennial generation’s Pluto in Scorpio.
CB: Scorpio, okay.
KT: ‘Cause that was like 2018. And, also, maybe it was Uranus in Taurus with that too, I don’t know. But it definitely was a very palpable shift. Jupiter entered Scorpio, everyone started calling themselves a witch and being into the occult and astrology and tarot and magic, and it just went on from there. And then, yeah, it went into Sag and I feel like a lot of the Gen Z kind of got woken up to it as well. Yeah, it really does feel like a Jupiter—it felt like it at least—shift, with Jupiter into Scorpio and everyone was like a witch all of a sudden.
CB: Yeah, and all of the different apps came out around the same time, which just happened to then catch it at the right time, but then also reinforce it.
KT: Yeah.
CB: ‘Cause all of a sudden the different apps helped to popularize and make more accessible the ability to look up your ‘big threes’ super easily. Yeah, it was an interesting thing and at some point historians will study that period, or historians of astrology will just see all the different components that came into play.
KT: Definitely. There’s people who are currently studying it. I remember I talked to an anthropologist a couple years ago, I think it was in 2020, who was doing a thesis about society’s shifts in spirituality. And I think it had a lot to do with astrology in particular. Yeah, I’ve talked to a couple journalists too about that, even people in college doing thesis papers and stuff on the re-emergence or the popularity of astrology. There’s definitely gonna be a lot to read eventually.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’ll be interesting to see where it goes from here and what it’s like. ‘Cause now all of us have experienced our early careers largely during an upturn in astrology and just with the economy and what it’s like to practice astrology if there was a recession of some sort and what that’ll be like or what the extent of that is, or if is just a new plateau and then it builds to something else from here. I’m often skeptical of the more idealistic version that a lot of astrologers early on just assumed that at some point everyone’s gonna believe in astrology, and it’ll be viewed as valid and acceptable by the entire population, and therefore society will be improved as a result. And I don’t know that that’s necessarily gonna happen. Although it will be interesting at some point when somebody creates a model that maybe is reconciled more with current scientific theories, which happens periodically, like what Ptolemy did. And then for a period of time it might, in some contexts, be scientifically respectable again.
KT: Yeah, I wonder about that too, especially with more theories around—I don’t know, I’m not a ‘science’ person, but the particle splitting they’ve been doing and seeing how two things can sort of exist in the same place at once. ‘Cause I always view astrology working through some sort of synchronicity, ‘as above, so below’. And so, I’m curious with that type of scientific research if we’ll get there that way as opposed to the more physical phenomena. We know Pluto’s gravitational force is probably not the reason that we’re experiencing Pluto; we kind of know that.
CB: Right.
KT: But, yeah, I’m curious once we get into just all these other types of science that I know nothing about where we’ll go with that. ‘Cause there’s gonna be so many young people especially who are entering these fields and will be in these fields for the next 10-20-30 years who are into astrology, and who will maybe find more interests in things like that. Yeah, it’ll be cool to see where we go with that. But I agree. I think you guys in one episode a while ago, sometime last year, were talking about the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Pisces and how that’s probably representing how big the bubble’s gonna get, and I agree with that. I kind of feel like that was sort of the big part of the bubble and we’re kind of on a downturn now. And not like in a rapid way, but I do feel like there’s been a shift.
CB: Yeah, ‘cause that was Austin’s theory originally that it had to do with Neptune in Pisces. And I came around to that over the past few years ‘cause we saw not just the rise of astrology but also of magic and other systems like that, as well as other maybe not-good Neptunian things in terms of the rise of conspiracy theories and things like that and that really affecting the society.
KT: And opiates. That’s a whole other thing.
CB: Right. But if that’s true, and it is keyed into Neptune in Pisces partially, then at some point Neptune’s gonna depart and go into Aries and Saturn’s gonna conjoin it around the same time, it’s some sort of wall being hit there perhaps or a bubble being popped. Also, I think it was Tarnas or somebody that talks about Saturn-Neptune conjunctions and rises in skepticism around those times. So that might be part of it as well just because the skeptics field has been in disarray for most of the past decade if for some reason due to a loss of leadership. And at some point that’ll probably be fixed or reborn in some new way.
KT: Yeah, that makes sense. You had a really great episode with a skeptic. I forgot what her name was, but I just remember really liking that episode. She approached it really well, I think.
CB: Oh, yeah, that was earlier—was it this year, or last year?
KT: Yeah, I think it was this year.
CB: Okay. “Explaining Astrology to a Skeptic,” I think was the title.
KT: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, ‘cause part of what I’ve been trying to do with the podcast was present astrology in the highest level possible and explain it in a way where if somebody was an educated skeptic—or a person from another field like physics or something that—you could learn astrology and see maybe a way that it could be valid. Because I feel like that’s how we’re gonna find that person who is the sort of smart person that knows physics or some other fields that are relevant in order to create some sort of unified theory where astrology becomes a component of that in a way that creates a theory, that at least for a period of time, sort of explains the world and has a place for astrology.
KT: That makes sense, yeah. That would be awesome. I hope that happens.
CB: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’ll happen again ‘cause it happens periodically. It’s just the scientific consensus of things is always temporary. Eventually there’s a scientific breakthrough and everybody’s on the same page for a period of time, whether it’s like a century or a few centuries or something like that, and then eventually we discover something new and it either cancels out or creates a new understanding of the way the universe works and then that becomes the new understanding for a few centuries. And occasionally astrology does become part of that. It just happened to fall out of that worldview a few centuries ago. And because astrology is largely practiced on the sidelines of society, we just haven’t had one of those people come along in quite a while who is really smart in a number of different fields, including astrology.
KT: Yeah.
CB: But that’s why some of the stuff on the podcast over the past few years—a large part of my work is trying to articulate what the fundamental principles are of astrology as clearly as we can ‘cause then I think that’ll make it easier at some point for somebody to create that unified field theory of some sort.
KT: Yeah, that’s important work.
CB: Yeah. And sometimes some of it is just thinking about really simple things, like with this Venus retrograde, and observing what’s happening and documenting it and processing it together as astrologers in dialogue as we’re learning those things and putting it in the historical record. And in some ways different people will draw on and find that useful in different ways in the future in ways that we probably can’t even anticipate or imagine.
KT: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I love that. I love thinking about it that way. And you’re such an ‘archiver’ Mercury. You’re like the perfect person for setting this sort of library up for the future because we need it. We definitely will need it. I wonder how many episodes I have actually listened to of The Astrology Podcast. I feel like I’ve listened to most of them. But it’s always cool when people are like, “Yeah, I’m binging your podcast,” and I’m like, whoa, people are actually listening to this?
CB: Right.
KT: And not just like the day I put it out. It always kind of blows my mind.
CB: Yeah. Like my weirdest experience was when I started going to conferences at one point and then people started coming up to me and talking to me about podcast episodes they had listened to. And that was wild something I had said like five years ago really impacted them or something. Did you have that when you went to NORWAC last year?
KT: Yeah, I did. NORWAC and ISAR I had a lot of people just saying really nice things to me about my podcast and how much they love it. I also get it out in the world sometimes. I’ll randomly have someone recognize me and they’re like, “I listen to your podcast.” It happened to me in Berlin actually last summer. I was just by myself waiting to get a table at a restaurant and this girl was like, “Is your name Kirah? Like are you an astrologer?”
CB: Wow.
KT: I was like, “Yeah.” I think she had followed me on Twitter or something, but I ended up like eating with her and her friends. And, yeah, it’s always so wild to be recognized. And always people were saying like the sweetest things and so it’s really cool. I’m like if I were to be recognized for anything, yeah, I’m happy it’s this, and I get like nice people saying nice things.
CB: Yeah, that’s nice. That’s better than like, “You wrote a terrible horoscope five years ago, and it always stuck with me,” or something like that.
KT: Yeah, exactly.
CB: Yeah, well, I think that’s really cool and that’s a nice place. I look forward to seeing where you go—this ‘post-Saturn return’ Kirah; you’re in your post-Saturn return era—and how that’s already starting to shape up in really interesting ways. I’m excited to see what you do with that app and how that goes when it launches later this year.
KT: Yeah, I’m excited. I mean, ‘post-Saturn return’ Kirah is definitely a little less wearing five million hats ‘cause I just can’t do it anymore.
CB: Right.
KT: I really do think back to 2018-2019 and 2020 and all the things I was doing even while working full-time, and like I don’t know how I did it. Saturn really slowed me down.
CB: It ingressed into Aquarius when you stepped back from organizing some of the lectures, right?
KT: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was doing it. My first hit of my Saturn return was 2020. My Saturn’s at 1, so it stationed there. I was still very much in it and doing it. And, yeah, I think it was probably last year when it started to square my Mars and my Sun where I was like I can’t do anything anymore. It really slowed me down and really made me consolidate. Also, the South Node was parked on my Mars, which is in my 9th house and ruling my 9th house. So I stopped teaching, stopped doing the podcast for a while. I was like really not doing 9th house stuff for a while.
CB: Having a 12th house transit and just learning to let go sometimes can be such a profound but simple thing.
KT: Yeah, it was tough. Especially ‘cause I felt like I had to keep going for the community and I wanted to keep being able to put on these summits and stuff for the emerging astrologers and all that, but it was just not sustainable anymore. And, yeah, physically I just couldn’t do it. My brain couldn’t do it anymore. Yeah, so now I’m just focusing and trying to do less and always trying to tell myself to do less, so I don’t burn out like crazy like I did before.
CB: Yeah.
KT: So, yeah, right now I’m just doing this app and doing readings and trying not to put more on my plate, which is so hard. It’s a Mars issue, I think.
CB: Yeah. I mean, just setting good boundaries for oneself sounds like a good Saturn in Pisces thing as well.
KT: Absolutely, yeah.
CB: So what’s the app called again?
KT: It’s Stars Aligned.
CB: Okay.
KT: And, yeah, it will be out in November. So I’m just announcing this tomorrow, I guess. I need to make some sort of video to announce it.
CB: Tomorrow, being August 13?
KT: 14th. Oh, yeah, 13th. Yeah, the 13th. Just announcing my involvement in it and everything and the fact that we are just on socials and making social media videos and stuff. So trying to get people to follow there and just kind of join along in the community. Yeah, I’ll be excited once we finally launch. We’ll hopefully have enough people on the waitlist and ready for it. Dating apps are weird ‘cause you need people on them in order for them to work well.
CB: Right.
KT: Like if there’s not a lot of people in your area then you’re gonna be like, “This is boring. There’s like two dudes that I can swipe through.” So, yeah, we’re just trying to spread the word. And I’m making crazy TikTok videos. They’re fun. They’re a little scandalous, I feel like. It’s a little bit more of me being a little bit more pop astrology, kind of roasting some signs and stuff, which I usually don’t do. I kind of feel bad. My Pisces rising is like, “I want to be nice to everyone.”
CB: Right. You gotta bring that Mars in Scorpio out more a little bit.
KT: Yeah, exactly. It’s really just trying to go viral on
TikTok. It’s like what do you do to go viral on TikTok? Probably not be nice to everyone all the time.
CB: Right. That’d be really funny if what turns out to be your life’s thing is just roasting people or roasting different signs or something like that.
KT: And then afterwards being like, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
CB: Right.
KT: “It’s nuance, I swear.” But, yeah, we’re at Stars Aligned on Instagram. It’s bad I don’t remember our handles. But it’s ‘Stars Aligned’ in some fashion, like ‘StarsAlignedApp’ or something on Twitter and TikTok. Yeah, it’s exciting. I’m having a lot of fun with it. We have a really fun team. And, yeah, building the algorithm is just something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve thought about it so much over the years, and it’s really cool to have the opportunity to finally do it and test it out.
CB: Yeah, and to have the ability to put some of those theories into practice and then see how it works and see if it works and adjust it and just keep fine-tuning it. It sounds like a really fun project.
KT: Yeah, it’s really fun for me. My Jupiter in Virgo is like, “Yes, this is exactly the task for me.”
CB: That’s so funny. Yeah, the ruler of the Ascendant in the 7th and being involved in building a relationship astrology app. That’s good. I like that. I’ll put that in my ‘mental’ bank.
KT: Yeah.
CB: And then what’s your website? You have different stuff, like lectures and consultations; people can find you there.
KT: Yeah, you know, I took all of my lectures offline a long time ago. I don’t have anything online anymore. I don’t know why I did that really. I guess I was trying to redo my store and I never got around to it. But I have to figure it out ‘cause I do have so much material. But, regardless, kirah.world is my website. World, W-O-R-L-D. And, yeah, I do consults every month. I just open up my books at the end of every month, and I have like 12 spots pretty much. And, yeah, then I do fun stuff like corporate workshops. I like working with companies and teams and whatever activations they come up with. They want a reader, I’m like down. So, yeah, basically just readings right now and the app.
CB: Cool.
KT: Yeah.
CB: That sounds like a lot, but it sounds like a good amount to do.
KT: Yeah, it’s good for 31-almost-32-year-old Kirah that doesn’t want to be all over the place anymore.
CB: Yeah. Well, I look forward to checking in at some point with post-second-Saturn-returning Kirah and where you’re at and how far you’ve come at that point and looking back on things. So we’ll have to do this again then at some point.
KT: In 30 years, you mean?
CB: I mean, we can maybe do like a quarter or something like that, like a seven-year check-in or something like that.
KT: Yeah. Yeah, I’m also just looking forward to whenever you finally get around to doing the Saturn return episodes too.
CB: Of Aquarius, yeah. I haven’t done that yet.
KT: We talked about it a bit when we recorded the June episode. So, yeah, I’m down to do it if you ever want to.
CB: Okay.
KT: But I just love talking about Saturn returns now that I’m past it.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good idea. I’ve been dragging my feet. ‘Cause usually I do it closer to when it’s finished, but I just haven’t gotten in the headspace but I should do that. So, yeah, let’s talk about that.
KT: Cool.
CB: Cool. All right, well, thanks for joining me today.
KT: Thanks for having me. This was great.
CB: Yeah, have a good time at the concert.
KT: Thanks. I’ll send you a picture.
CB: Cool. All right, well, thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time.
[credits]
A 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, a 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.
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 100 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 on how to read birth charts, as well as make predictions. You can find out more information at courses.TheAstrologySchool.com.
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.