The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 420, titled:
Astrology Forecast October 2023
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Nicholas Polimenakos
Episode originally released on September 28, 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 October 5th, 2023
Copyright © 2023 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode we’re gonna be looking at the astrological forecast for October 2023. Joining me today are astrologers Austin Coppock and Nicholas Polimenakos. Hey, welcome both of you.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey.
NICHOLAS POLIMENAKOS: Hello, Chris.
CB: Welcome. So we’re gonna do a whole deep dive into the astrology of October in this episode. First, we’re gonna spend the first hour doing some review and talking about news stories that have happened over the past month and what the astrological correlates have been since our last forecast a month ago. And then in the second hour we’re gonna jump into a deep dive of the astrology of October. So, first, I’m gonna start by giving just a quick little preview of the astrology of October using our Planetary Alignments Calendar and then we’ll get into looking at the news stories from the past month. As always, you can jump ahead if you want to go straight to the forecast by looking at the timestamps either in the description below this YouTube video or on the podcast website in the entry for this episode. So let’s go ahead and get right into it.
So here’s the Planetary Alignments Calendar for October. So we start off at the beginning of the month with Mercury finally departing from Virgo—where it’s been retrograde for the past while here, transiting through that sign—and on October 4, Mercury ingresses into the sign of Libra. Then the following week we get Venus finally departing from having an entire summer in the sign of Leo—where Venus went retrograde—and Venus finally departs and moves into the sign of Virgo for the next month. The same day, there’s a Mars-Pluto square which happens on October 8. And then two days later, Pluto actually stations direct at 27° of Capricorn, and then it will begin a run through the rest of that sign until it gets into Aquarius early next year.
Two days later, on October 12, Mars moves into the sign of Scorpio. Then two days later, on the 14th, we have our first lunation of the month, which is actually a solar eclipse in the sign of Libra. So we’ve entered eclipse season here, and that’s one of the main things we’ll be talking about in the astrology of October. About a week later, we get a Sun-Mercury conjunction, or a Mercury cazimi, on October 20. Then Mercury moves into Scorpio on the 22nd, the Sun into Scorpio on the 23rd, and then we get our second lunation of the month, which is a lunar eclipse in the sign of Taurus on October 28. So that’s just a quick preview of some of the astrology we’re gonna be talking about later in this episode. But, first, let’s welcome our guest co-hosts and then talk about the news. So, Nicholas, welcome back. The last time you were on was for the Gemini episode that we did with Camille last year I think, right?
NP: Yes, yes. It was the Gemini episode which started off a chain of events for me.
CB: Okay.
NP: You wouldn’t believe how many Geminis and Gemini risings have approached me online and in person, which is sort of an interesting almost—not a comical farce because I’m a Gemini with all that Gemini—but having this Gemini energy reflected back to me in all these other ways like I’ve never had in my life.
CB: Right. You’ve become the ‘Gemini’ whisperer.
NP: In a sense, yes, which, yeah, scares me. But, yeah, through the whispers beautiful things have happened. So, yeah, the last time I was on the show here was in June.
CB: Yeah. And since then you’ve been killing it with your YouTube channel and your livestreams and stuff that’s been very inspiring for me, and I’ve tried to follow your lead and started doing some livestreams recently as well. So you’re the ‘Gemini’ whisperer. Austin, if Nicholas is the ‘Gemini’ whisperer, I believe you’re the ‘Pisces’ whisperer at this point. Even though Pisces always comes last at the end of the zodiac sign, and we did the Pisces episode together back in March, somehow that episode has totally blown away all the other episodes and has just reached 200,000 views recently, beating out Rick Levine Aries episode recently, which I know you’re very happy about.
AC: It confirms my suspicions.
CB: That Pisces is the best sign?
AC: Yeah, it’s rude to say it.
CB: Yeah, you didn’t want to put it exactly like that.
AC: I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. Like most Pisces know better than to rub that in everyone’s face, which is part of why we’ve maintained the top spot.
CB: All right, well, I think things are still moving, things are still developing. So if people want to help offset that a little—I’m not telling anybody to do anything, but if you want to watch the Scorpio episode, I think that was also a very good episode with Sam and Kirah. So we’ll see how things go.
AC: But if you’d like to keep the Pisces supremacy going, just give it another watch.
NP: You never hear those two words in a sentence.
CB: Yeah, I was gonna say like—
NP: Pisces supremacy. I like this for the sole reason that it was competing against Rick. So if, Rick, you’re watching out there, we know Rick has got the Aries in him. He’s got that thing in him. So we’ve got this game going on, and Pisces is winning, Rick.
CB: Yeah, Rick, I think he can still come back ‘cause he was doing well. He has 140,000 views. We’ll see how it goes.
AC: I mean, those Aries sure are plucky.
CB: Right, right. All right, cool. So we’ve got a bunch of news and things I wanted to talk about in this episode, and a lot of it is more celebrity and birth data-oriented, especially ‘cause we just had that Mercury retrograde in Virgo, and there was actually a couple of really interesting pieces of birth data that came out as a result of that that I wanted to talk about. So the first one is that the singer, Dua Lipa, I think she was visiting her home or something like that. But basically right at the beginning of the Mercury retrograde in Virgo, on August 31, she posted on Instagram, “Yesterday I found out that I’m actually a Gemini rising. Somebody please unpack that for me.” She had previously for the past few years thought that she was actually a Libra rising. So switching to Gemini rising, and finding out that her birth time that she had been using and consulting with astrologers had been wrong, that was kind of a big thing, and it was a really interesting example because of what her new chart ended up actually looking like. So let me go ahead and share that right now.
So I’m experimenting with a new setup today. We’re gonna be using Astro Gold today, which I’ll probably do a plug for later in the episode. But here’s the new birth chart for Dua Lipa. She was born evidently at 12:18 AM, on August 22, 1995, giving her Gemini rising. And so, Mercury is the ruler of the Ascendant, and interestingly it’s placed at 19° of Virgo. So this is important because Mercury actually stationed retrograde around those degrees over the past month. And when she discovered that her birth time was wrong, Mercury was at about 19° and 18° of Virgo retrograde conjunct the ruler of her Ascendant. So this is a really interesting example because the 1st house is supposed to represent the self and your sense of selfhood, how you present to the world, but also how you understand yourself. And she had a Mercury retrograde connected with the ruler of her Ascendant, and she actually had to revise her sense of self, but also in doing so found out something deeper about who she actually is, which I thought was really fascinating.
AC: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you couldn’t ask for a more literal transit. Mercury retrogrades are often about correcting bad information. And so, with this being a return it’s Mercury in the same place as it was when she was born correcting the data around her emergence into the world. It’s interesting that this Mercury retrograde that we’ve experienced the last month was also opposite Saturn in Pisces, which is the situation that Dua Lipa has natally, where she has Mercury in Virgo opposite Saturn in Pisces. So it’s interesting and almost suggests—now that she’s begun her Saturn return—that correct information around selfhood will not be obtained until the Saturn return or the Saturn years, right? Saturn delays things.
CB: Yeah, totally. Do you have something, Nicholas?
NP: Yeah, I think it’s interesting too what you said Austin. Not only do we have this revelation for her, and then what you brought in with the Saturn in Pisces—the stationary degree point there for her Sun and Venus, along with the Venus retrograde—that along with this kind of revelation, along with the Saturn return all points to a very interesting thing that kind of normally happens in Saturn returns. This questioning of our identity, of what the past is, what we bring from the past with us to the future, the end of act one, the beginning of act two—this kind of thing that deals with the core of who we are and where we come from. So we have several factors, to me, that point to that.
The other thing, when I was looking at this chart and into the past—‘cause you’ve written some things here on our notes, Chris, about her past about when she moved, when she went back home to Kosovo when she was 11; when she was 15, she moved back to London by herself—she had major Saturn transits going on when she was 11 that went over her IC, went over her Sun and Venus eventually. And then when Saturn went into Virgo, pretty much towards the tail-end of that transit, was when she moved to London. And it was around that time—I think it was in September of 2009—where Saturn in Virgo was retrograde along with Mercury in Virgo retrograde. So I found this interesting about what the past is here and what fills in what supposedly the past is, and an example that we have a recurring transit right now about what the real facts are, so on and so forth, for herself, like her past. In a sense, where she comes from.
CB: For sure. Yeah, that’s so important for anybody that has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house. Themes of your family, your ancestry, your origins, your parents are really important. And she was born in 1995, and her parents were refugees from Kosovo and they ended up immigrating to London. And so, this is interesting ‘cause she kind of grew up with this almost dual heritage with one foot in her Albanian family’s background and then one foot growing up in the UK. And one of the things that’s fascinating about this as a chart example is that mutable signs in ancient astrology were always said to give two of whatever they signify—to signify two things or sometimes two things at once. And that’s true of all of the mutable signs, but for Gemini and Virgo that’s especially true.
And so, she has that, and I think partially due to her success as a singer, as well as her advocacy for Albanian causes, she was given dual Albanian citizenship in addition to her UK citizenship. So I thought that was really fascinating in terms of how that matches the ruler of the Ascendant placement that becomes so much clearer once her correct birth time is known. And then, Nicholas, you mentioned the Sun-Venus conjunction at 28 Leo, which is like so prominent there in her chart. And especially for us, thinking about the astrology of this summer, of course Venus stationed retrograde right there at 28°-29° of Leo. And of course within a day of Venus stationing there, that’s when the Barbie movie came out. And Dua Lipa had a big song right at the very beginning of the movie, and she actually even appeared and did a cameo in the movie as Mermaid Barbie. So that was right when Venus stationed there on top of that.
And I went back and looked at her chronology and it showed up very prominently that back in 2015, in the summer of 2015, she released her first single once she was signed to a major album. So we could see how the Venus retrograde was connected in the sense that she really got her career start under that Venus retrograde in Leo, way back in 2015. And then eight years later you get this check-in. You hit a new height, but then you also sort of look back and see how far you’ve come. So interesting Venus retrograde and Mercury retrograde stuff in the same chart.
NP: Yeah.
CB: And so, there was another major piece of celebrity birth data that came up this month, which was on September 12, I believe, which was towards the end of the Mercury retrograde. Mercury stations direct in Virgo around 8° of Virgo and there was this new biography, a new major biography by a very prominent biographer was dropped and it was a biography on Elon Musk. And this was a major media thing because Walter Isaacson, the guy that wrote the biography, had also written a biography on Steve Jobs and on Albert Einstein and these were like pretty big biographies when they came out at the time, so this was kind of a big deal. But what’s interesting and relevant for our purposes as astrologers is that at the beginning of chapter two, Walter Isaacson records a birth time, and he says that Elon Musk was born at 7:30 AM, or 7:30 in the morning. We didn’t have a birth time for Elon Musk, and now all of a sudden we do, and it gives a chart with Cancer rising. So let me share that chart and show you what it looks like.
All right, here we go. So it’s a rounded time obviously, 7:30 AM. It may have been rounded to the nearest quarter of an hour, we don’t really know. But, luckily, that gives us pretty solidly about 13° of Cancer rising. So it’s pretty solidly and reliably gonna be Cancer rising no matter what. It was a little bit after sunrise, but it’s probably far enough after sunrise with his Sun at 5° of Cancer that it was probably pretty solidly a day chart. So the sect of the chart is also pretty reliable. For the audio listeners, just to give you an idea of some of the highlights, Mercury is at 14° of Cancer conjunct the Ascendant. The ruler of the Ascendant is the Moon, which is at 8° of Virgo in the 3rd whole sign house. And that Moon in Virgo is actually in a mutual reception with Mercury because Mercury’s in the Moon sign and the Moon is in Mercury’s sign, and the Moon’s actually applying to a sextile with Mercury, which creates a pretty strong reception between them and sort of temporary dignity.
I thought that placement was one of the most interesting things about his chart because he’s somebody that has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 3rd house, the place of short distance travel, and of course he’s almost, not single-handedly, but in terms of individuals he’s one of the most influential individuals in starting to push the US and the world towards the adoption of electric cars basically and definitely accelerating the whole timeframe in which that’s taking place. And he has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 3rd house, which is pretty literal I think, right?
AC: Yeah, definitely. And if you look at the other projects, like Starlink, that’s a 3rd house thing, right? Having internet around the house, like having internet as you travel. And even PayPal.
CB: Like communications.
AC: Yeah, 3rd house is full of all of your regular stuff, all the places you regularly go. The bank you would regularly go to, except it’s PayPal, right? The internet you get on to look at your regular websites, also 3rd house. And so, yeah, that mutual reception between Mercury and the 1st and the Moon and the 3rd is extremely clear.
CB: For sure. So other features of the chart that are interesting, he has Jupiter in the 5th whole sign house in a day chart, which I thought was actually really interesting because, famously, like a few years ago, he was making headlines because he has 11 children. But not just that he has a lot of children, but he actually was making headlines saying something about due to population decline or something like that. He thinks that everybody should have a lot of children and that it will lead to some sort of major worldwide disaster if people don’t start having more children. So I thought that was kind of interesting, just as a factoid. I sort of knew about his life from those headlines, and he has Jupiter in the 5th house.
AC: Yeah, I mean it’s right there, right? Jupiter in the 5th in a day chart ‘giveth many sons and daughters’. I’m sure we can find five different 2,000-year-old texts that would explain it to us.
CB: Yeah.
NP: He’s outwardly saying it too, you know what I mean. He’s just like saying out loud that, “I have to breed as much as possible” for more, in a sense, futuristic reasons.
AC: But the population decline in a lot of countries is about to be an issue within a few years, right? Like that’s not completely fanciful. Maybe repopulating the Earth as one man on a mission is a little bit more fantastical.
CB: Yeah. I found the quote. It said something like, “If people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words, one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate.” I don’t know, so we don’t have to get into policy debates about that. But other interesting things of course is his most difficult planet in his chart—because he was born with a day chart probably after sunrise—is gonna be that Mars in the 8th house. And the 8th house has to do with shared resources, other people’s money, taxes, sometimes the accumulation of wealth to some extent. Like we see sometimes billionaires with a lot of 8th House placements. And having his most difficult planet in that placement is kind of interesting, and it makes me think of Twitter, for example, where he sort of ended up paying so much for Twitter to buy it basically over the past year, but then over the past year its valuation has just plummeted. It was already not thought to be worth as much as he paid for it in the beginning, but then the value of it has shrunk over the past year for different reasons due to advertisers fleeing or what have you and it sort of made me think of that when I saw that placement.
NP: Yeah. If you look at the degrees of his nodes and his Mars you also have a major Jupiter transit that’s happening that’s affecting his Mars; his resource houses in a sense, outside of him and the ones he creates himself. There is definitely a loss of money. I mean, he had to take collateral off his own stuff to do the deal for Twitter. As of right now the valuation has gone down. I particularly don’t see it coming back up, per se, especially because we know what’s coming in the spring with the Jupiter-Uranus exact conjunction that’s gonna happen, but there’s that. But there’s something else here that I want to point out ‘cause I’m a Chiron user, right?
CB: Okay.
NP: And I know he’s got Chiron at 13° in Aries. Obviously, he has his Chiron return happening right now. And natally we see his Mercury, which is so huge in his chart, with a square to Chiron. And along with the transits that are we’re gonna be talking about this month—the eclipses, the Chiron return, the eclipses next year—there is a thing with Elon natally where his image, what he’s the authority on, the stage that he stands upon, he’s got a wound there. It doesn’t matter how much money he’s worth or whatever, he’s carrying something that is huge when it comes to his image and how he is seen. And I think a lot of the reactions you see with him mercurially—whether he’s doing the X tweets or whatever—he’s got to constantly stay in the forefront of things because I think he’s sort of butt hurt about it all the time, and I think this is really prominent right now because of what’s happening. Also, take this into account, if this time is pretty much dialed in, we also know that the eclipse that happened, the New Moon Aries eclipse that happened in April, was pretty much on his Midheaven.
CB: Okay. That’s true.
NP: So there is definitely something going on right now that we see with him and the sensitivity to this.
AC: And the time that’s passed since the eclipse has not improved his public reputation, which we would expect if that is where his Midheaven is. I wanted to go jump back to Mars and Rahu in the 8th for just a second. So 8th, as Chris said, other people’s resources, etc., etc. For somebody who’s a venture capitalist and starts companies, that’s investors, right? And Elon has had for a very long time a habit of scaring investors and the valuations of his companies being very up and down. For example, there was no certainty that SpaceX would be even vaguely successful. There were a lot of worries about that. There have been different incidents where he would do an interview and everyone would be like, “This person is too erratic. They’re too impulsive.” Mars and the North Node ruling the Midheaven: we can’t trust this person with their money. So we see people being uncertain about whether to keep their money invested in his companies as a long-time pattern.
CB: For sure. And that being sort of the greatest area of weakness with that being the more challenging placement in his chart in the 8th house. You mentioned the ‘erratic-ness’, which actually brings up his Sun and Mercury are pretty closely square Uranus, and I think that’s where a lot of the ‘erratic-ness’ in his communication style comes from which is interesting. He’s the richest person in the world at the present time, and one of the things I initially found interesting is the chart didn’t scream good money stuff, financial stuff for me, at least as part of the main focus. The main focus of the chart is the ‘communications’ house or that short-distance travel house, the children, the 8th house and other stuff like that. Even the 12th house, which is associated with enemies or self-undoing, has a couple planets in it.
But one of the things I found interesting that fits, actually something that Vettius Valens talks about a lot, the 2nd century astrologer—he says to look for the place of the Lot of Fortune, which in his chart is in Virgo. And then he says look at the 11th house relative to the sign of the Lot of Fortune, and he calls that the ‘place of acquisition’. And he says when it’s well-situated in the chart it indicates major financial resources and financial windfalls for the person. It’s basically the thing he emphasizes over and over again in books two and three of The Anthology as his main financial wealth indicator. And, in fact, with a Lot of Fortune in Virgo, the ruler of that is Mercury which is in the 11th house relative to the Lot of Fortune, and it’s in that mutual reception with the Moon which is the ruler of the 11th house from Fortune, which is placed on the sign of the Lot of Fortune itself in that strong mutual reception. So I think that’s where some of the powerful financial stuff is coming from in his chart, the position of Fortune and its relation to the 11th house from Fortune.
AC: Yeah, that’s huge. I’ve worked with those techniques and a lot of times, like they do with this one, it’ll give you an entirely different perspective on how money works for a person’s chart. Sometimes you have something that might even look like a pain in the ass and might be a pain in the ass in several regards, but it ends up being a key to being financially successful or stable for people. And then as in Elon’s case, when it reaffirms and further empowers something that already looked pretty good in the chart, you know where to look for the money.
CB: For sure, for sure. Anyway, so I’m sure we’ll come back to this chart a lot of times in the future. Some of what you said Nicholas actually makes a lot of sense ‘cause in the biography it talks about him being bullied supposedly growing up or having possible abuse issues with his father and different things. And that Chiron placement in the 10th house could make more sense, as well as how that’s impacted his future orientation and behavior with people in different ways. But I’m sure this is a chart that we’ll be talking about for many years, for better or worse, in the future, and we’ll get into it more maybe later on. Yeah, okay, so moving forward, another big news story recently is the Writers Guild, which has been on strike since the Mercury retrograde at the beginning of May, which was a Mercury retrograde in Gemini. And the strike was called right around the time of the exact cazimi when Mercury was retrograde and conjunct the Sun. So we then had another Mercury retrograde in Virgo. And then after Mercury stationed direct and then came up and trined Jupiter around September 24, there was an announcement that went out a few days ago that there was a tentative agreement that the Writers Guild had made with the studios to resolve the strike supposedly. So it looks like there may be a good resolution to that story here that, again, ended up being timed very well with Mercury basically.
AC: Yeah, I’ve been wondering the last month or so if the writers’ strike would basically be over when Mercury finally left Virgo, and similarly whether the actors’ strike would be over when Venus left Leo, both of which happen in early October. And when I checked on it last night the Actors Guild is also moving towards settlement, and that’s what’s interesting with those two things. One of the things we’ve noticed on a longer-term level, and we’ve talked about for years, is the Uranus in Taurus seems to have wanted to do ‘collective bargaining, union organizations strike’ type stuff, but we’ve really seen it this year, not only with the writers and actors but also with the auto strike, the auto workers strike and who knows what else.
We’ve really seen Jupiter in Taurus—it’s been in Taurus since May—but Jupiter coming to assist Uranus. I mean, like, yeah, let’s do it, right? And where astrology often also works way in in one’s personal life is like there’s an issue, you’re thinking about it. Maybe we do this, maybe we do that, but then you have another planetary trigger. Jupiter comes in to affirm and support and provide a plan. And so, yeah, in the five months since Jupiter joined Uranus in Taurus literally three historic strikes: actors, writers, and now auto workers. And we’ve got another seven months of Jupiter in Taurus with Uranus, so we expect this theme to continue.
CB: Yeah. And I know, Nicholas, you’re really interested in the astrology of the auto workers strike that was recently called.
NP: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. The day that it happened—they officially went on strike at midnight, the 14th—it was the Mercury station day, right?
CB: Right.
NP: So I’m like, whoa, this timing just from the Mercury station perspective. But I knew some stuff of history in the past with labor issues because of my own personal story and activism and stuff like that, so I had to dust a couple covers off in my brain and went to go look at the history. And actually Shawn Fain, the head leader of the United Auto Workers union put out a video earlier that week and it was a very inspirational video for people to understand the plight of the auto workers, but he actually brought in in this video—and whoever produced it for them—where the workers come from in a sense. And they showed old footage of the major strikes that happened at the end of 1936 and ‘37 in Flint, Michigan at the GM plants, and it’s pretty much the start of a major labor movement that for decades came out of this situation, and at the time, Uranus was in Taurus, Saturn was in Pisces. And at the time that this was going on Pluto was on the opposite end of where it is now in Cancer at 27°.
CB: Oh, wow.
NP: Yeah, and it kind of blew my mind. But at the same time, as we know with astrology, it’s very clear and very real about recurring trances and themes and stories that get carried over, especially here when we deal with the history of the United States and what labor means, who owns things, who does the means of production, so on and so forth. But basically around that time December 30 of ‘36 was when they started the strike. And by the way, when I was reading about this, the workers were secretly organizing, so it wasn’t a formal union there yet. But they were gonna wait till after Christmas because they didn’t want to rock the boat because they wanted to get their Christmas bonuses, okay?
CB: Okay.
NP: Some people noticed on the railway lines that the company was loading equipment to send to somewhere else. They were getting ready too, and because of that they decided to strike on the 30th. And so, they struck all the way until February 11 of ‘37. People can look up the deeper history with this because the National Guard was involved in the state. The governor of Michigan had to summon the National Guard, but he didn’t use the National Guard against the workers ‘cause he was pro-union. There was a lot of intense bargaining and spying, all this kind of stuff. Infiltration of the union, all that kind of stuff. In the end though, day one, the collective bargaining started to happen there, and that was in ‘37, February 11. If we go back—and I’m sorry that we’re gonna do this—but if we go back to 1935, there was something passed called the National Labor Relations Act that in a sense set up a situation where workers can collectively get together and form a union, right? And that in the sense kind of gave a little bit of the seeds to the big labor strike that they called the ‘sit-down strike’, so on and so forth.
Here we are now, this time we have Saturn in Pisces, Uranus in Taurus. We’ve got Pluto on the other side in Capricorn, and they decided to call this the ‘stand-up’ strike instead of ‘sit-down’. So the current labor union is considered militant from an outside perspective, from a labor view, but they’re just going back to the past of how things started. And one more thing I’ll say on this—when you see their PR or you see even people on Instagram from the smaller unions talking about why they’re doing this, it’s not just for better pay, so on and so forth. They’re all saying that they’re representing the working class, not just workers, everybody else. And they’re using history and the past to fuel this and to tell people this isn’t the end, and even if they get the contract that they want that this isn’t gonna stop, that this should be taken further into other places of career, and so on and so forth. So I think for me it’s huge. And to go back to what Austin said, we’re not done with Uranus-Jupiter, and we bring this into a presidential election year. We just had Joe Biden the other day for whatever reasons, PR reasons, go and stand and speak to workers on the picket line. It’s the first time a president’s ever done that, right? So I think here this is a major moment when it comes to class issues, worker issues, and it’s not going away. I could see this being accelerated into spring, going off with what Austin mentioned.
AC: We’re not even at the halfway point.
NP: Yeah.
CB: Of the Jupiter transit?
AC: Yeah, the Jupiter-Uranus co-presence.
CB: Sure. Yeah, it’ll be interesting; and it didn’t perfect. We talked about it a lot ‘cause it got so close, and then they stationed within I think 6° or 8°, but then next year we’ll get an actual full conjunction.
AC: Yeah, and another piece of context is for the last couple years Saturn was in Aquarius squaring Uranus. That changed in March this year. But for all of ‘21 and ‘22, we had Saturn basically stepping on Uranus, right? One of our characteristic tensions was the Saturn in Aquarius trying to sort of keep things under control and Uranus trying to shake things up and make changes. And so, not only, once we got to spring this year, did we get Jupiter boosting Uranus, but we also had Saturn move to a position where it’s no longer stepping on Uranus. So for those delayed revolts right this is quite a year.
NP: And that’s actually what happened in ‘36-‘37. Because of them collecting and coming together they spurred this union way of thinking through all different parts of the United States. And when I was looking at the stats it was not too long after that there were like 3.5 million people in the 1930s that were in a sense part of a collective or a union. And then by the time 1942 hit, it was 10 million people. So am I saying that this is gonna start something collectively with other people and workers and their rights and stuff? It possibly could if we’re looking at the astrology of it. And anybody out there who’s watching this now later on, where you stand about workers rights/pay, the gap is wider and wider. The middle class has been disappearing. You get to certain points, and history shows this, where you have no choice but to stand up, sit down, or take these decisive actions. So, for me, when I look at this, I think the class and worker issue will probably be one of the number one things here during the presidential campaign, whoever’s running. They have to connect on this issue. There’s no avoiding this one.
CB: Yeah, it’ll definitely be interesting to see what happens. And you looking back in the history of that is really striking and just reminds me this summer we’ve seen over and over again just how much you have to go back and understand the past in order to predict the future. That’s such a core rule for predictive astrology and we’ve seen the value of that. So you mentioning that the auto workers strike started literally like the day that Mercury was stationing direct reminded me—I forgot that this was actually a key point of the last example that tied Dua Lipa and Elon Musk together. Dua Lipa discovered her birth time was wrong when Mercury stationed retrograde on the ruler of the Ascendant, whereas for Elon Musk, that biography came out on September 12 when Mercury was stationing direct at 8° of Virgo. And 8° of Virgo is where his Moon is, which is the ruler of his Ascendant. So we learned something very core there about the ruler of the Ascendant and stationary planets in that example. So let’s move on to other news stories.
Another major one is towards end of last month, late August and early September, there was a Full Moon in Pisces that was conjunct Saturn that we talked about on the last forecast a lot, and that was right in the middle of the Mercury retrograde in Virgo, and there ended up being some pretty striking news stories during that time. One of them that kept coming up around that time was just floods, where there were a lot of major floods in Europe. There were major floods in North Africa, especially in Libya, where this one flood happened and there was something like 15,000 people dead or missing and 34,000 people displaced, so there were a lot of major tragedies involving water at that time. There were also other ones that were in the news during that timeframe, like the Burning Man festival, for example. There were very heavy, heavy rains and it got flooded, which left tens of thousands of people stuck or stranded. And I was looking that up and one of the headlines called it a ‘muddy fiasco’, which I thought was just like a perfect symbolism and keyword for a Full Moon in Pisces conjunct Saturn, and Mercury retrograde in Virgo. And I wanted to mention that ‘cause I couldn’t think of a better example of that transit manifesting in such a very literal way.
NP: Yeah, I thought it was interesting too. And while we’re recording this we’re in a Pisces Moon, aren’t we right now?
CB: Yeah.
NP: Yeah, we are. Hopefully nothing floods in your place or my place, Chris, right now. But I thought it was interesting too from a different kind of I guess Piscean perspective as in the connection to what Burning Man is and what it was and what it’s become, and there’s a lot of opinions on this about what it’s become. And I also saw some tweets and certain people who have not been too fond of Burning Man who used to be and say it’s lost its original intentions. In a sense the floods have come through to wash away things that it shouldn’t be, and that certain realities have come into play. I saw a lot of talk about this. Now that’s the more different way of looking at it, but from the actual physical manifestations, yeah, I can’t be surprised.
CB: Yeah.
NP: But like you said, it wasn’t just there but these other floods that happened in Europe and in North Africa. It’s just something we just take a look at and acknowledge. I don’t know, maybe Austin, you’ve got something?
AC: I mean, just with Burning Man being flooded, that is a pretty potent symbolic negation; like it’s supposed to be a fire-based festival/celebration/ritual, and to have the heavens dump water on that. It’s like floods are a problem in lots of places for lots of reasons, but they’re not like an on-the-nose symbolic negation in the same way.
NP: Yeah, they put out the fire.
AC: Yeah, it’s literally supposed to be burning. Hard to burn things when it’s dumping rain.
NP: Or like the spirit of the festival, right, what it is. Again, there’s different opinions on this but it’s become an influencer-based type of get-together. A lot of that’s come from a huge influx of cash coming out of the Bay Area, from Silicon Valley in the last 5-6 years, when it started off in a certain way, the spirit of this ritual. But, yeah, totally, Austin. The water came through and put out the fire.
CB: Yeah.
AC: It’s like if the Olympic torch got put out by rain in the middle of the ceremony, it would be hard not to take that symbolically.
CB: Yeah, and it’s important ‘cause we’re still getting used to what Saturn in Pisces is like. And so, that was really our first Full Moon—that actually was our first Full Moon in Pisces with Saturn there at the same time. So this transit’s still gonna be going on for the next two-and-a-half-years, so it’s good to pay attention to some of those symbolic things as they’re happening ‘cause we’ll probably see echoes of that in different ways over the course of the next few years. Not to mention—because obviously it wasn’t just that, but also a Mercury retrograde in Virgo—just so many people got stuck and couldn’t get out or other things, or got their cars stuck in the mud, and just how plans sometimes go awry; and that you have to kind of like roll with it during a Mercury retrograde is good symbolism for that as well, I think.
NP: Well, Burning Man in a sense—I guess part of the DNA is to ‘roll with it’ though, right?
CB: Right.
NP: It’s a community-based thing. There’s no selling of anything. You trade, you exchange, you’re rolling with it, you’re going with it. People are doing that with their own personalities and how they’re showing themselves. But I just want to say something here because we’ve talked about the floods. I just want to acknowledge on a deeper level the floods that happened there in Europe and Africa ‘cause of the amount of people missing and dead. As we’re just talking about comparisons with something like Burning Man, it doesn’t even come close to the tragedies that happen there. I don’t even want to try to reason that stuff, but just to acknowledge it and say that there’s many people out there and they’re in a place of sorrow and struggle. And situations like this, I don’t even want to get in my head about it. All I can do is acknowledge that and send my best to those people.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And just the different range of hardship or sorrow experienced under the same Full Moon, or at least during the same timeframes. And there was also this month, that was also relevant, a major earthquake in Morocco that took place on the 8th of September, where there were over 3,000 deaths as a result of that, and it was one of the strongest earthquakes in Morocco’s history. And I don’t actually have a lot to say about that astrologically except that if I have the timing right of when it happened then Uranus had just risen up over the horizon, over the Ascendant, when it happened, with Uranus having stationed just a week earlier. And there were also some weird things in terms of some sort of delay in the government officially acknowledging or announcing the earthquake, as well as accepting aid that different countries are trying to send in, which sounded very like Mercury ‘retrograde-y’ in the middle of this. So it’s tricky sometimes ‘cause I usually try to just focus on news stories that we have something solid astrologically to say about. You don’t always necessarily, but these are some of the things that were all sort of swirled up and happening at the same time and the range of human experiences of those different things.
NP: Yeah.
CB: All right, so moving on, speaking of Pisces—because we were talking about Saturn in Pisces—I don’t know, this is more sort of random and chart-based. But there’s this YouTuber—I think he’s the biggest or most subscribed person on YouTube right now—called Mr. Beast. And I’d seen his videos around, I knew he was like the biggest YouTuber over the past two years, but I didn’t know anything about him. But I started watching some of his videos and I thought it was a really interesting chart example of somebody with Jupiter in Pisces. So we don’t actually have a birth time for him yet—although I’d love to get a birth time if anybody wants to hook me up—but let me show his chart really quickly. He was born May 7, 1998 in Wichita, Kansas. I have this set as just a noon chart, so the houses are not accurate. And the Moon is kind of cuspy, so it could be Virgo, it could be Libra, but he has that Jupiter in Pisces. And I thought that was really interesting because he’s become very rich and famous off of giving away money basically very early in his career.
I watched this little biography on him, once I started watching some of his videos, and one of the earliest things is when his YouTube channel first started to grow—I think he was still a teenager—and a company wanted to advertise a product, and they offered him $5,000 to advertise this product. And he said, “Double it. Make it $10,000, and I’m gonna give it away to a random homeless person, a houseless person, and then it’ll be a video and it’ll be wildly successful, and it’ll be worth it for your company.” And he talked this company literally into it that was reluctant at first to do that, and it worked and then the video went viral. And he’s been doing the same thing over the past 10 years at different levels. Like in one of his videos he bought an entire car dealership—he bought all the cars—and then when people would walk by and come in to buy a car, he would give the car away for free. Recently, in the past couple of years, he hit a hundred million subscribers on YouTube, which is just like a crazy astronomical amount of subscribers, and he bought an island and then he gave it away to a subscriber in a competition for a video. So this is like the epitome of Jupiter in Pisces, that somehow this guy has become rich and famous through giving away money basically, through generosity in some sense. I think there’s something very illustrative there about Jupiter in Pisces.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. And I would also add that in the chart you see that Jupiter is sharing Pisces with the South Node. And with the South Node we look at letting go, giving away, giving up on, like not trying to control. Like it’s literally giving away or giving up on, letting go. And so, it’s meaningful and sometimes tremendous amounts of liquid wealth or cars and just letting it go, being selfless. And that’s important ‘cause we’re going to talk about the South Node quite a bit during the second half and that theme of like letting go.
CB: Right.
NP: Yeah, I think when we were looking at this too that he uploaded his first video in 2012 and it was just within days that Neptune ingressed into Pisces—
CB: Nice.
NP: —and it started off this journey for Mr. Beast. And for those who don’t know the more intricate part of it, yeah, he basically tells you that he takes advertising money—because of the ‘houseless’ video that he did—and uses that money to buy the resources to give away, and then how he makes his money is pretty much off merch and Google ads or the ads you see on YouTube when you’re watching Google AdSense. So that’s his formula. He’s never gone away from it. He blatantly says that’s what he’s doing. And it’s in most interesting ways a 2nd/8th house thing going on back and forth here. But, Austin, what you said about the Pisces thing, I don’t think he can help it. It’s just an open door, he can’t help it. But I think it hits his core/heart, his spiritual nature, his everything. He just has to do it. There’s no other way for him. He has to show his form of compassion and understanding for the human race basically that way.
CB: Yeah. The other thing that I liked personally that I thought was interesting, with the untimed chart of course, he has this Mercury-Saturn conjunction, with Mercury around 20 Aries and Saturn around 26 Aries. And if you watch his early videos he was not a gifted communicator, and in fact he kind of mumbles a little bit; he’s not a very good communicator. But just through sheer willpower and forcing himself to keep doing more videos and getting better and better over time, he’s been able to pull off becoming a successful YouTuber. And even now he’s not like the most amazing communicator, per se, but he’s been able to mold and craft himself into like what he wanted just through hard work and like the dedication to wanting to achieve this as a career thing. And I can resonate with that as a Mercury-Saturn conjunction person who’s also not a very gifted communicator like inherently. But through effort and like striving and just like doing it over and over again I’ve become acceptable enough to do a podcast like this with lots of people listening.
NP: Acceptable enough.
CB: Acceptable enough.
NP: I would say, Chris, it’s more than that, but I see where you stand and how you go. And there’s obsession involved here too in this chart. I don’t know for you, Chris. But, I mean, we’re looking at Saturn-Mercury here in this person’s chart. Thought we were looking at Mars and Sun in Taurus too, just to dial in and to go. But I even noticed—to this day when I was watching the videos—how he talks, like the way his voice and fluctuations have changed from the very beginnings even to now. There’s these weird stuttering pauses. I don’t know what it is. So I thought actually it might have been the editing in the video, but it’s not. It’s this very interesting way that he communicates just to point out. Go ahead.
CB: Well, it’s just interesting ‘cause traditionally in ancient texts you’ll read a lot of negative delineations about Saturn-Mercury being people that stutter, people that have some sort of impairment with communication in different ways, and it’s interesting seeing the real-life versions of that. And, you know, there’s a spectrum, but it’s seeing sometimes how people overcome challenges and difficulties in the chart and are still able to turn it into something that can be wildly successful.
AC: I would just add that I thought it was interesting that that Mercury-Saturn conjunction is in the third decan of Aries. The third decan of Aries is a very spectacular place. You see third decan Aries placements in a lot of performers. And this one makes me think of someone that I know who has a Saturn-Venus conjunction in the third decan of Aries, and they write and direct and create theater and dance performances that are spectacular. And so, Saturn there not necessarily as being the most charismatic performer in the whole thing, but having a key role in structuring the spectacle, right? Which if you look at Mr. B’s videos there’s a lot of figuring out the drama of like the spectacle of generosity in his case. He does ‘game show-esque’ things like recreating Squid Game. But the one who designs, not the one who runs the obstacle course fastest, but the one who designs the entire obstacle course, that’s Saturn in the third decans of Aries; it really jumped out at me.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense.
NP: That is totally dialed in about Mr. Beast. That’s really good, Austin. That sums it up about him.
CB: Yeah, so people should check out the videos. It’s a good illustration. ‘Cause we can say that and convey that, but it’s in actually watching some of those videos that you get a better sense of how the chart matches. And, yeah, if anybody is able to find out his birth time let me know ‘cause I’d love to see the actual chart and what the house placements are and the sect and different things like that.
NP: One more thing, Chris, before we leave this one, just just for reference, future reference. Saturn in Aries, Neptune in Aries is coming his way here soon/ And it’s gonna be interesting when he hits that Saturn return. Saturn’s gonna come for his Venus and his Mercury. And Neptune’s gonna come for his Mercury eventually. So with just some of the things we talked about here about him, I think we’re gonna see this with our eyes, maybe even in the videos that he produces, a possible coming to terms with something when it deals with his Mercury—basically a Saturn return. Hopefully, he doesn’t disappear and he shows us his process and the changes are gonna happen to him.
CB: Yeah. We were talking about Dua Lipa’s Saturn in Pisces Saturn return and then the Saturn returns coming up for the Saturn in Aries folks before too long as well and just that being a major, defining turning point from the first part of your life, the first half in some sense, building up to the second half and really moving more fully into a different stage of adulthood and the challenges that sometimes come up during that time, but also challenges that can sometimes be constructive. And while they can close some doors, they can open others and push you in the right direction or in a direction that can ultimately be where you’re supposed to go. So we’ll see how that goes for both of them, but, yeah, that’s a good point. So there’s one more celebrity chart example, if we’ve still got time. Where are we at with time, Austin?
AC: We are at 50 minutes.
CB: Okay, let’s just do one last example since it’s currently in the news. Right now Taylor Swift is in the news for this relationship that’s suddenly happening with Travis Kelce who’s like one of the most famous football players in the United States right now. And all of a sudden there’s some sort of romance developing between him and one of the biggest singers/musicians/pop stars in the world which is Taylor Swift who’s been all over the news this summer with the Venus retrograde in Leo in her huge tour that she’s been doing. So this story, the main astrological thing I had to say about it was just that it was interesting because he evidently went to one of her concerts in July, in late July, and attempted to meet her, and he brought like a friendship bracelet which he put his like phone number in and he was gonna give it to her. But then apparently he failed and she didn’t know who he was or didn’t want to meet up with him or didn’t meet up with him or whatever, and that was right when Venus was stationing retrograde in Leo.
So it’s a really interesting example of an attempt to have a relationship or to reach out to someone and having it fail while Venus is stationing retrograde. But then somehow during the course of the summer like word got back to her that he was trying to meet her, and she ended up connecting with him and they did end up connecting, and now it’s creating this media sensation where people are kind of like fixated on this relationship between these two very prominent people in their respective fields. And I’m sure some of the timing of that probably coincided very well with the subsequent Venus retrograde period and the station and some of the things that are happening now as we’re finishing up the post-retrograde shadow period of Venus, while Venus is moving through the later part of Leo.
AC: He’s a Sun-Mars in Libra, correct, Chris?
NP: Yes, he is.
CB: Yes.
AC: That friendship bracelet is such a Libra meet-cute move.
NP: Yeah.
AC: And while Venus was retrograde that did not work.
CB: Yeah, here’s the chart. He has the Sun conjunct Mars. Sun at 12 Libra and Mars at 10 Libra. And then what many people have noted is that—let me see if I can put up both of their charts in the synastry, here it is—they have a very close like Venus-Mars conjunction where her Venus is at 26 Scorpio and his Mars—do I have that right? Yeah, his Venus at 26 Scorpio is conjunct her Mars at 26 Scorpio, which is a very classic synastry conjunction that’s good for romantic and especially physical relationships between people and just attraction between two people. And then, interestingly, we don’t have times, but his Moon should be in Sagittarius, and her Sun is in Sagittarius. So they have a Sun-Moon connection there as well, which is another classic indicator for good relationship compatibility. So we don’t know about the rest—
AC: Well, what’s interesting is that he’s going to have the first eclipse on his Sun in a series in a couple weeks. So perhaps the ‘Taylor-verse’ will demolish him, I don’t know, but it’s interesting.
NP: Yeah. All this is interesting just because of the clash of worlds that we’re dealing with first and foremost. So as of yesterday we were looking at 300-to-400,000 more followers on the social media profiles. His jersey sales have gone up. All of a sudden you possibly have a demographic of women that are watching NFL football games on Sunday, specifically the Kansas City Chiefs. To go back to that chart, I just can’t help it, when I look at that Mars-Venus conjunction, but it’s Scorpio. Yeah, it’s intense, it’s steamy, it’s mysterious. But if you’ve ever seen two Scorpios that let’s say are in an intimate relationship with each other and you happen to be in their personal world, what I’ve always seen is a smart ‘alecky’, snarky, biting at each other constantly eventually ‘cause it’s this kind of thing that’s like one way of showing love and intimacy. And like down the line I’m like how is that gonna work out?
And then when I look at it, I just can’t help it. That Mars, compared to the Venus that Travis has, that Mars in Scorpio, you don’t mess around with that in the end. Again, interesting dynamics here. After the game on Sunday, they were in his convertible car driving around Kansas City. She was in the booth watching the game with his mom. Like usually we meet the mom after a certain period of time or dates or something. But that’s kind of like a big move to show yourself next to family and mother, okay, so I found that interesting too. And I think the other part of this is, Austin, something you brought up about what it looks like image-wise, from a public relations point of view, and how huge it is for both of them. Like I don’t know how else you can elevate—
AC: It kind of looks like Barbie and Ken now that I think about it. That just occurred to me.
NP: Yeah.
AC: Which are activated archetypes right now.
NP: Definitely.
CB: Well, one of the things I noticed, interestingly related to that, she was born in December, mid-December of 1989. Let me pull up her chart. There we go, there’s her chart. See, her Venus is right here at 1° of Aquarius. And I immediately recognized that Venus from December of 1989 because I knew Venus would go retrograde. It’s super far away from her Sun at 21° Sagittarius, so you know it’s getting ready to station retrograde, which it did just like a week or two after she was born. So she was actually born practically in the range of like Venus stationing retrograde, and then of course we just had that major retrograde that happened this summer. So another interesting little tidbit there that could be pointing in an important direction in terms of things, but we’ll see how it goes. And I’m sure maybe we’ll talk about this again in the future.
NP: Yeah, one more thing about this since we’re bringing up the Barbie-Ken thing or stuff about what gender roles are and stuff. I mean, we’re talking upper echelons of wealth here with both of these people, but she is upper, upper echelon, okay. And it’s not just the wealth. The imagery, the power that’s behind that, everything to build that, the machine that has been created is just a whole other stratosphere. Let’s just say they’re dating and it’s gonna go forward. How does someone like Travis deal with that? And how is he looking at himself as ‘Ken’ as the man dealing with that power dynamic, right? And these are just things that happen between people and relationships typically. We all know this as astrologers, so on and so forth. We get clients coming in, “Oh, they get jealous of my success,” or blah, blah, blah, all types of stuff that happen. But I think here in the end, if we’re looking to the future, if something were to happen, certain things, I think these types of things play out. And from my point of view, she’s super-rooted and super-dialed in on whatever she does, and it’s highly calculated. And so, we’ll see what happens. Good luck to them.
CB: Yeah, for sure.
AC: Are we gonna have a ‘Taylor Swift’ watch section every month?
CB: Possibly. I mean, I had Barbie watch the past few months. So I gotta figure out what’s coming after that, and it might be a ‘Taylor’ watch.
AC: It’s kind of a joke but it would be interesting to, I don’t know, just obsess about somebody’s life and check in every month with all the tools of astrology. It would probably be unethical and very creepy, but we could have a forecast every month for Taylor Swift’s love life.
CB: I don’t know about that.
AC: We have the power, Chris, but do we have the wisdom not to do it?
CB: No, we have the wisdom to wield our power carefully and wisely. And that is what we’re doing by giving these brief glimpses, but otherwise not going too far ‘cause we have a special role as astrologers, as observers of what’s going on around us with the mundane astrology, but also what’s going on in people’s lives. There’s such fascinating examples that are so striking in the news with people’s transits and stuff at the time that we have to talk about that as astrologers, but we still try to do so respectfully. Whether that’s somebody that we really like, in the case of Taylor or something, or if it’s somebody that we’re not a huge fan of, I’m still trying to maintain that sort of respectful middle ground. But that actually brings up that sometimes people use birth times, like for her, but we don’t actually know her birth time. And I wanted to tell people without getting too much into details to be very careful about what websites you’re using for birth times because there are some places out there that are putting out fake birth times.
And I talked about this very early in The Astrology Podcast but I didn’t realize that most young people didn’t get the memo that there are just some websites that are not reliable. For the most part, Astro-Databank is where you should go for birth information, and you should always look at the source notes to determine the reliability of the birth time before using it. And if you’re relying on other websites you may run into a situation where you could be using a birth time that’s not actually true. So since we just used a bunch of celebrity birth charts, I wanted to mention really briefly here just to be careful so that you don’t base things off of a false birth chart or something like that. All right, that’s all I want to say about that. I think that’s good for the news section. All right, so before we jump into the forecast, I wanted to give a shoutout to our sponsor for this episode, which is the Northwest Astrological Conference, which is happening next May in Seattle 2024. It’s gonna be the biggest conference of the year, full of astrology lectures over a several-day period. Have either of you heard of this thing? Northwest Astrology Conference?
AC: Um, it’s familiar. Maybe if you go on it’ll ring a bell.
NP: Yeah.
CB: I mean, I do have this image they sent me, and it does have your name on it as one of the core speakers. I’m assuming—
AC: Oh, yeah, that’s why.
CB: Right, that’s it. All right, so, Austin will be there. He’s gonna be giving two lectures in a workshop. Nicholas is also a long-time ‘NORWAC-ian’ person who’s been around NORWAC and that many people know from NORWAC, who worked at the bookstore there and has been involved for many, many years, right, Nicholas?
NP: Yes, I have a history there like many of us do. It goes back 15-16 years. I was volunteering and working for all those years until last year. I didn’t do anything for the first time. I was just a regular attendee, if that’s such a thing for me to be there like that.
CB: Nice.
NP: But I have a deep history with that conference. It changed my life.
CB: Yeah, I got my start there, Austin got his start there speaking, and look at all of us now. So this is gonna be the 40th annual Northwest Astrological Conference. They started the first one way back in 1984, which is actually the year I was born. So it’s a little wild that it started way back the same year I was born. It’s gonna be taking place May 23-27, 2024. And it’s a hybrid conference where you can attend either in person or you can attend online live. They’ve livestreamed the conference for attendees to make it more accessible over the past few years since COVID and everything else had started which has been amazing. If you sign up for the conference, when registration opens on October 10, you actually get access to the recordings for two weeks, even the lectures that you didn’t attend. Whether you attend in person or online, you get two weeks of access to the recordings so you can watch everything afterwards.
Because often one of the trickiest things is at the Northwest Astrology Conferences there’s five different lecture rooms that are all simultaneously doing different astrology lectures, and you get to pick out which one you want to see. But sometimes that can be a really tough choice picking which lecture if you want to see all five of them. So one of the cool things about the hybrid model now is it allows you to go back and watch the lectures that you missed, that you wanted to see over that two-week period. Let’s see, so there’s gonna be five different concurrent lecture tracks. There’s also gonna be pre-conference workshops. There’s gonna be post-conference workshops where different astrologers are gonna do intensives for like an entire day on a specific topic. Austin, I believe you’re doing one of the workshops.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, I’m gonna be doing a workshop for I guess the third or fourth year in a row. No, third year in a row. And I think it’s a pre-conference, I’m not 100%. But, yeah, we’re gonna spend a whole day with Marsilio Ficino. I’m really looking forward to it. Ficino is at this really interesting sort of triple-crossroads of astrological magic, medicine, and wellness, and straight-up astrology. And so, his work is incredibly rich, and I would say more relevant by the day to what people are interested in. Do you like magic and remediation and astrology? Marsilio was doing that 500-plus years ago. And so, we’re gonna step into Marsilio’s space for a while.
CB: I have a great lecture title for you. I’ll give this to you for free. ‘Getting Silly with Marsilio’. Right there, best title you’ve ever had. You’re welcome. So Austin’s giving a workshop. There’s gonna be 32 other speakers, just amazing speakers at this conference. There’s gonna be social events. There’s like a bookstore, like the most amazing astrology bookstore in person you’ve ever been to with hundreds of titles, as well as a trade show, and different social events like dinners, as well as a dance night and different things like that. It’s truly an experience that all astrologers have at some point, and once you have that experience you often end up wanting to go back. I think that’s the usual feeling.
NP: That weird, odd hotel and where it’s situated, everything about it—it’s just its own charisma, for better or worse, whatever it is. But there’s something about the layout and the way people interact physically in the spaces that gives a fertile ground for just a certain type of connection. You know, the old saying for that conference is ‘you never get lost in the crowd’, and it’s actually true; it’s actually true with that conference. Yeah, same people working there for a long time. There’s free cookies. Free warmed cookies in these drawers at the hotel. You just ask them, they give you free cookies. I don’t know what else you’d want. Go to the conference, but get free cookies. The dance party last year, by the way, was incredible. It took it to another level. And then there’s the things that happen outside the hotel: the socializing, lots of restaurants, free ride from the airport to the hotel and back. Think about it—Ubers cost you 50, 60, 70 bucks each way, stuff like that. I will say on a personal note—besides I have a deep history there from involvements of helping with the diversity scholarships that were there and hooking up Sam and Laura in that way and to do the first hybrid conference with Laura—
CB: Which we did an episode on like right after it happened in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic.
NP: Yeah, that was a monumental task and a wild ride. It’s interesting to see here we’re doing hybrids. A lot of people are doing hybrids now. But one thing I want to say is somebody on that list, Ali Olomi—who’s been very popular in the Twitter sphere and stuff and his Patreon—I was part of, unofficially, trying to get this person to communicate with them, to get them to the conference, and we pulled it off. So just for that alone, along with the 40th anniversary, the history, that is there, it’s a special one next year. And it’s gonna sell out, so if anybody out there is thinking of going, jump on and get the rooms. Find roomies. Collectively figure a way out to get there. It’s gonna be an amazing conference.
CB: Yeah, so that’s the thing. The hotel does have limited space and it has sold out the past few years, so space is limited. I would recommend getting your tickets soon. Registration is going to open on October 10. But if you go to the website norwac.net right now and sign up for their mailing list, you’ll get a notification as soon as registration opens. So that should give a good chance for everybody that wants to get in-person tickets to get access to it, or if you’re not able to get them you can attend live through the hybrid conference which is also just as good. And, like I said, you’ll get access to the recordings for two weeks after. And even after that you can go onto the norwac.net website and purchase recordings of different lectures individually. They have a whole back catalog of lectures from the past 40 years that you can actually purchase through their website as well which is pretty awesome. So I would recommend checking it out. It’s gonna be a great conference. And I’ll put a link to it in the description below this video on YouTube or on the podcast website, but otherwise visit norwac.net for more information.
All right, cool. So why don’t we transition into talking about the forecast for October at this point and getting into the astrology of next month. How does that sound? So one of my first impressions, just to give overview impressions, is that this looks like a pretty intense month coming up. So we’ve got eclipse season starting. We’ve got two major eclipses, which we’ve seen in different years; especially a year ago, eclipse season was pretty intense, but this one’s particularly intense. And there’s a lot of Pluto stuff happening this month. One of the eclipses is square Pluto. Pluto is stationing direct in Capricorn. There’s going to be a Sun-Mercury cazimi that’s like squaring Pluto at the same time. It’s just like intense Pluto stuff pretty much throughout this month was one of my first impressions.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s a good read. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, Libra beginning the fall season and darkness slowly outpacing daylight just a little bit every day always has a little bit of a winding chthonian feel. And then with the first solar eclipse in Libra initiating a series of solar eclipses in Libra, and then with all of the Pluto stuff, yeah, there’s depth, mystery, terror, a variety of things. It’s a winding staircase down.
CB: Yeah, intrigue. What are some others? ‘Power’, ‘control’, ‘manipulation’, ‘intense transformations’, or ‘transformative experiences’.
AC: ‘Secrets’.
CB: ‘Secrets’. That’s a really good one.
NP: The ‘power play’. The ‘power struggle’, right? The ‘power game’.
AC: I would also argue that power itself is always kind of a mystery because it’s always in power’s interest to conceal itself and to look like something else. And so, whenever people go to study power, it’s not right there. It’s very rarely naked, right? And so, to figure out what’s actually going on, what’s actually moving things is always to a certain degree like a mystery novel or a whodunit, right? Like power is mysterious.
NP: Yeah, especially in an entrenched story and theme with Pluto in Capricorn. Not only is it deep, it’s deep in the ground and those types of things. It’s almost like we forgot. We were busy with the Venus retrograde transit and some other things, we just kind of forgot that. Well, Pluto’s there, we know it.
CB: Right.
NP: It’s just there, and then all of a sudden it’s here. And not only is it here, it’s along with eclipses and other parts showing up that way.
CB: For sure. It’s like wielding power all of a sudden openly, even if it’s not direct or obvious where it’s coming from. And definitely with Capricorn you get into hierarchical issues and issues of hierarchy and who’s at the top of a food chain and who’s at the bottom and different attempts to wield power from different ends of the food chain.
AC: Yeah, and who’s who’s wielding and who is actually an implement in someone else’s hand.
CB: Right. And who doesn’t know that they’re the implement in somebody else’s hand.
AC: Right.
CB: All right, so let’s pull up the chart and start getting into the details here to orient ourselves, and we’ll move forward to the first of the month. All right so here’s October 1. This is how we open. This is our opening chart, the opening alignment of planets. We see Mercury is at 24° of Virgo, so it’s finishing up its transit in Virgo. One of our first major shifts this month is when Mercury departs from Virgo and moves into Libra pretty early on, but we’re pretty solidly out of the Mercury retrograde and the post-Mercury retrograde shadow period. We do begin the month with a kind of murky Mercury-Neptune opposition, which may make some things unclear, make communication unclear, especially in relationships with other people attempts at communication, but that communication either being misunderstood. Sometimes deception in communication is one of the issues that can come up with that. What else is going on here early in the month? We see Mars is transiting through Libra in the first part of the month, but we’re gonna get a shift into Scorpio later on, which is gonna be one of our more dramatic ingresses, or at least distinctive ingresses of this October.
AC: Yeah, I mean, one important thing to note about the beginning of the month is we’re almost done with Venus in Leo and Mercury in Virgo, right? Venus has spent nearly four months in Leo and Mercury has also done an extended period of time in Virgo. And so, we’re just about at the end of those, right?
CB: Yeah.
AC: And so, by the end of the first week, certainly in the first 10 days, both of those change, and then Mars is also changing. And so, by the middle of the month, Mercury, Venus, and Mars will all be in different signs. So there’s a lot of wrapping things up at the beginning before things reset in the middle.
CB: That’s a great point. Like we’re done looking back into the past, and the summer of that looking back into the past, or the past coming back into the present through the retrogrades of Venus and then Mercury. And at this point we are starting to move into the future and starting to make some new beginnings, not just with those two ingresses, but also those two major eclipses. And my keywords for those always traditionally being ‘major beginnings’, ‘major new beginnings’ and ‘major endings’.
NP: Yeah, I think of what Austin said, these planets ingressing and moving forward, then it feels like the season begins, right? We’ve had a little bit of an ease into it, but then the season kicks in and it does kick in. It kicks in hard and strong.
AC: Yeah, it’s funny. Even when I look at my own schedule, I’m like, “Oh, I just gotta get through the first week of October and then all this stuff is done, and then a new set of whatever will begin and there’ll be room for that.”
CB: Yeah. So we see this Venus ingress here at the end of the first week, on the 8th and 9th, finally gets to 29 Leo and then departs and moves into Virgo, where she immediately runs into an opposition with Saturn. So that’s something I want to talk about in the second week, but I’m trying to think if there’s anything else before we get there. It’s just this first week is really wrapping up the very tail-end of the Venus retrograde. And because it’s gonna come back to its shadow degree, there may be some things from either late July back when Venus stationed at that degree that are gonna come back, that you’ll have some final resolution to. Some final ending point or like a period at the end of the sentence, whatever that paragraph or that long chapter was of the summer of 2023 for you. If it was really tied in with that Venus retrograde you’ll finally get the end point to that before transitioning into the new chapter. But for some people it may go even further back to when Venus first ingressed into Leo. ‘Cause the other thing about this Venus retrograde is it wasn’t just the retrograde itself, but it was just like a super long transit of Venus through one sign of the zodiac and through one house in our chart, especially using whole sign houses. So that goes all the way back into the June timeframe, I believe, right?
AC: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of like, okay, so you get results, but there’s also a sort of resumption of normal. It’s sort of like, “Okay, so this is how it’s going to be moving forward. All the stuff back and forth over the summer, I guess this is how it’s gonna be,” and then moving forward into ‘normal’ Venus for months and months and months and months and months—
CB: Yeah. Here it is.
AC: —and then on a smaller level with Mercury moving into the Libra, finishing up the extended time in Virgo.
CB: So June 5 is when Venus first went into Leo. And I was just doing a workshop with my students of my Hellenistic course, and there was somebody where the events of the summer immediately began shortly after Venus ingressed into Leo, so that’s one of the reasons I wanted to mention that for people to pay attention to in their chronology. ‘Cause for some of the people it’s gonna be closing up events that go that far back at this point.
NP: Yeah, I think too it’s interesting just to point out the beginning of the month here. We had the very end of September with the Venus-Uranus square, the third one, along with the lunation that happened. But Venus does make an aspect with the nodes in the beginning of the week, in the early part of the week, kind of like a last aspect I would say before it does its ingress in the Virgo. And considering that we have a major nodal story and eclipse story coming in, Venus does have an imprint a little bit there and does a connection on the 1st. Yeah, officially on the 2nd, I think, exact.
CB: Right. So Venus trines the North Node from 24 Leo to 24 Aries. Got it. Good point. Okay, and then, yeah, we see Mercury change signs, so that’s finishing up that retrograde period. When did Mercury first go into Virgo? Do you guys remember the date?
AC: Early August, I want to say.
CB: Here let me animate it. I’ll go all the way back. I’m not used to using this software. So this is Astro Gold. And I forgot to mention you can get a 15% discount on this by using the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ if you search for the Astro Gold Astrology Software for Macintosh, which is what I’m using today.
NP: The 29th of July is I think the Mercury ingress.
AC: Yeah, that’s what I see.
CB: Oh, wow.
AC: So, yeah, it’s been a while.
CB: That’s wild. So that was like right after Venus stationed retrograde, like a week after.
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, so those were super tied in together.
AC: And so, what’s interesting is you know the Mercury retrograde and then a lot of Venus’ retrograde were tied together in time, they were co-occurring, but the planets weren’t aspecting each other; there were two stories that were running side by side. Whereas when we get this change of Mercury into Libra and then Venus into Virgo the two move into mutual reception where Mercury in Libra is ruled by Venus in Virgo, Venus in Virgo is ruled by Mercury in Libra. And so, the two start communicating a lot, right? That Mercurial data-driven ideas function and then the much more passionate, desirous, aesthetic, social Venusian function. And so, that’s kind of interesting and might be kind of useful because they’ve both just been through a thing, and getting those planets re-coordinated will be part of what we’re seeing during the middle of the month.
NP: I think that’s a good point and a good place if people need something for the month to utilize, as in their sharing notes and what they’ve been through. Because both planets did have relations with a lot of the same outer bodies during their transits basically. So you go from Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, all the way through, Mercury had the connections, most of them. Venus did too with a lot of those bodies. And here they are. To go off of what Austin said, there’s an exchange here, and a pretty good one considering other transits that are gonna happen where I think people can share some notes. Because they both ran into Uranus, so on and so forth. And right around that time too, I think on the 3rd, just so we don’t forget, there’s a Mercury-Pluto trine that happens in the chart that you had up there too.
CB: Okay, let me show that ‘cause that’s certainly relevant. There’s so many Pluto aspects this month, and I think that’s what we’ll get into next here. Yeah, so right here Mercury hits 27 Virgo around October 3 and trines Pluto. That can be a very good aspect for getting to the bottom of things. Mercury is already in the detail-oriented Virgo sign, which is very good for numbers and crunching the numbers and figuring things out in a very practical manner. And having that boost from Pluto can help to get to the bottom of things even more effectively and more quickly. So that is the first week and some of the stuff as we’re basically finishing up and coming off of the Mercury and Venus retrogrades. All of that is completed by the end of the first week, early second week of the month. And this is where we start getting into some of the major changes and some of the heavy shifts that are gonna happen this month in the second week of October.
So one of the things I want to mention right at the top is that as soon as Venus changes signs and goes into Virgo, on the 8th and 9th and 10th we get this Venus-Saturn opposition, which is kind of notable. One of the things that stood out actually that Leisa pointed out to me is that both benefics get oppositions from malefics this month to illustrate some of the tensions that we’re having, first, with Venus opposing Saturn briefly for just a few days. But then later we’ll get a Mars-Jupiter opposition as well, and that one happens around the time of our second eclipse in Taurus. So tensions there between those two directions. On the one hand, we have Venus here in Virgo who’s trying to make a fresh start, but initially is sort of confronted with the sort of coldness and stiffness of Saturn as she’s like adjusting to this new environment in Virgo, which is not even typically like a sign that Venus is normally super comfortable with because she has to adapt to the analytical nature of the Mercurial sign.
AC: Yeah. And having gotten to experience the planets opposing Saturn in Pisces a lot in the last six months, the Saturn in Pisces seems to have a really immense, heavy, sort of sad feeling for a lot of people, and Venus tuning into that on an emotionally-receptive, colorful wavelength. There’s just a heaviness with Saturn in Pisces you. There’s that universality of Pisces, and then Saturn just seems to emphasize big, sad things that we may not be able to do anything about, but we do have to carry their weight emotionally at times.
CB: Yeah.
NP: I think too of what you said Austin, with Venus being on the opposite there in Virgo—from a textbook perspective astrologically—and how Venus is gonna function through Virgo and the sense of assistance and service. You’re gonna catch Saturn in Pisces the way you just said. They want to assist and help and solve the melancholia, let’s say.
AC: Right.
NP: But that goes deep in Pisces. Feeling that in the moment, can it ever be fulfilled or solved or advanced or whatever? And Venus in Virgo wants to be attentive to that but it might catch the cold shoulder as they try.
CB: That’s a good point. That was something I think we talked about in the Pisces episodes. Both Virgo and Pisces are very helpful signs, or they have an impulse to want to help, but in Virgo it’s more of a practical helpfulness of helping you fix your car or something like that or do your taxes, whereas in Pisces it’s more of like helping you to save your soul or something like that. And that’s part of the tension that opens up here between Venus and Saturn right now at the opening of the month or at the opening of the second week.
AC: Yeah. And just to contrast it with Venus’ four months in Leo right, Venus in Leo likes getting excited in big dreams, sort of archetypal, exciting, color-saturated visions. And for people who had a vision for this next phase seeded, this phase in Virgo, especially the first part opposite Saturn, it’s a bit of a come down, right? It’s not like a permanent harsh reality check, but it’s a bit of a come down. It’s not nearly as bright and colorful and sort of free.
CB: Yeah, I did a livestream on this, but it’s worth mentioning, a listener pointed out in the YouTube comments after our last forecast that the Pantone Color of the Year that they set last December was actually pink. It was like a version of hot pink, which I thought was brilliant with the Venus retrograde in Leo. And I think we learned a lot about fashion. Like Venus in Leo was a lot about fashion and coming out and putting on a display in different forms and how good that can be or how good that can feel. So that’s part of the shift here. The ‘fashion week’ of ‘fashion summer’ is kind of like over all of a sudden and now we’re moving into a different phase, which is like whatever comes after that, which is like going back to work and doing your bills or something like that.
NP: Yeah. And remember too, I think there’s a part of the Virgo stories, the inwardness, of looking at oneself and finding things to tweak and the change and so and so forth. But, yeah, it gets cold, and then it gets like doubly-cold running into Saturn right after coming out of a fiery place. Even if the fire was quelled at certain points during the retrograde or wasn’t inflamed like the Venus in Leo is used to, they’re coming at the tail-end of coming out of the retrograde and going over the shadow and then hitting all these outer body planets, hitting Jupiter and Chiron and Uranus at the end and there’s something. And Venus in the sky in the morning is Morning Star bright, there’s that. But, yeah, we’ve come to this chapter of like, I don’t know, the coldness, so on and so forth. But I think too, to remember this, the criticalness of Saturn in a sense of what Saturn brings being on the opposite side of Venus can throw that critical vibe even on the Venus. Never forget about the opposition. And one more thing too is if one is gonna have let’s say something at these degrees mutable, or like Virgo or Pisces, you could look to the Mars transit that happened earlier, to the points in time when it was opposite Saturn. Remember the times Mercury was through here, and now here comes Venus trailing up in the end here to do this.
CB: Yeah, coldness and also slowness, and it reminds me of the Venus retrograde to a square to Uranus and square to Jupiter. And there was just this sense of optimism and newness and quickness. But all of a sudden now that we’re coming out of that we’re moving into a period where Venus gets—I don’t want to say dumped with cold water on her head—but certainly there’s more of a sense of realism. Now that the exciting romantic phase of Venus is sort of like dying down, like the early phases of a relationship, it comes to the hard work and like dealing with some things where things are not as idealistic as you would like them to be. Like what you do and how you navigate that I think is part of the energy of this Venus ingress.
AC: Yeah, like the sizzle reel of a new journey is over and now it’s just the day-to-day of doing that. But also, in terms of coldness and hot, think of the chemistry terms of ‘exothermic’ and ‘endothermic’. Does something give off heat when you connect to it, or does it pull heat from you? Venus has been very exothermic, like giving off a lot of heat. Some of it contentious, but giving off a lot of heat and light. And for a while Venus is gonna be, once we get the ingress into Virgo, much more endothermic; much more like when you touch the part of your life or part of yourself that is Venus. It’s going to feel cool and it might chill you a little bit. But as we were saying, it’s much more about the contrast between where it’s been and where it’s gonna be for a while.
CB: For sure. And happening around the same time—and this is a good transition point ‘cause it’s happening almost simultaneously—we see Venus here at 29° of Leo on October 8 shifting into Virgo. Right at the same time Mars comes up to 27°of Libra where it squares Pluto at 27° of Capricorn. And this is one of our—it’s not our only tense aspect—but one of our tensest aspects of the month is this Mars-Pluto square that occurs right here on October 8-9. And it’s intensified by the fact that just a few days later Pluto stations direct in Capricorn. So it’s basically stationing. Which an intensification of any planetary transit, a station, is an intensification of it; in this case of Pluto while Mars is squaring it. So—
AC: Yeah, and—oh, go ahead.
CB: Just that’s a very intense aspect that’s happening right here at the same time that we get this Venus-Saturn opposition and that shift out of the Venus retrograde.
AC: Yeah, and Mars is conjunct the South Node. And Mars’ ruler is Venus, which is opposite Saturn. I’ve been thinking about this one a lot because not only do we have rough stuff happening in the third decan of Libra, but our solar eclipse a week later will also be in the third decan of Libra. In the third decan of Libra you have a dynamic where usually there’s a bunch of stuff that’s carefully and sort of precariously balanced. In the book I used a gyroscope as an image. But it’s a little bit of a carousel. It’s the lived experience of trying to keep a bunch of plates spinning. And I think what this is going to look like and feel like for a lot of people is recognizing that they can’t keep all the plates spinning or can’t juggle four balls, and having to let go of trying to keep it all balanced. ‘Cause there’s so many challenges to being able to hold the center of gravity while things move around you both, here and then again a week later.
CB: Yeah.
NP: I think it’s interesting there what you said too. ‘Cause if there’s a bunch of trying to balance everything and a bunch of spinning plates, no matter how good someone is at multiple juggling/balancing, especially in the politics of relationships if we’re talking about Libra, it doesn’t matter to Pluto in Capricorn. It doesn’t matter how much they’re spinning and doing there’s this like it’s not good enough, or you gotta go deeper, this this tension to go off of what Austin said, using that example. But, again, it shouldn’t be a surprise. The first week of August Mars is passing through the node there and is like prepping this story. It’s like there, it’s just building. And we get to this point where there’s multiple aspects happening within 24 hours here, so on and so forth. This is tough. I mean, this is a tough one. Usually if I say the words ‘reality check’ we’re more talking about Saturn, right? But I think here it’s a different type; it’s a ‘Pluto just shows up’ kind of thing. And Pluto just showing up isn’t just some 20% showing up, it’s a deeper, longer story, right back in one’s place at those late cardinal degrees.
CB: Yeah, I wrote down some keywords for this. One of them, for the Mars-Pluto square, is like ‘intense energy’, but also ‘power struggles’, ‘determination’, ‘inner conflict’, ‘transformation’, ‘intensity in relationships’. Sometimes, especially with the Venus-Saturn opposition, but also ‘caution’. The need to exercise some caution at the same time are all themes coming up around this time with this Mars-Pluto square.
AC: Yeah. And so, Nick, you said something about a reality check with Mars, or, excuse me, with Saturn. And so, this is Mars, right? This is Mars in an extremely difficult place if we’re seeing it from Mars’ perspective. Mars is always striving to do things, striving to get it done, trying to juggle as many plates as possible or whatever. And you see this whenever Mars is configured with Pluto and Mars and the South Node—it’s like a limit to how much your bravery, heroism, ability, willingness to dig deep can actually affect things. Like sometimes it doesn’t matter how heroic or how hard you’re willing to try or how much you’re willing to—it’s just like this can’t be done. And I think that, yeah, with the South Node there’s maybe a useful suggestion of putting down one of the plates for a little while rather than just trying to power through it, right? ‘Cause Mars is not in a position to power through this.
NP: No, it’s not. And what I’m about to say here—I’m not trying to talk bad about Libras or if someone’s got Mars in Libra. But I think part of the story has to do with—it’s interesting Mars being there because sometimes with Mars, we deal with conflict. But in Libra, it can almost double- and triple-down on the avoidance of conflict, on the avoidance of challenge, not wanting to rock the boat. But here, with juggling all those plates, it’s almost like making it worse sometimes.
AC: Right. Trying so hard to keep the boat from rocking is a very Mars in Libra heroic effort.
NP: Yeah. If one finds themselves in the position of this, like Austin said, put down the plates, put it down. Or another way is how can you constructively use Mars and Pluto together, right? But I think there has to be an honest look at, first, how much am I trying to do just to avoid something really, just an avoidance of a certain truth?
CB: What are the constructs—oh, sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt.
NP: Go ahead, Chris. Go ahead. I’m trying to think—you mentioned ‘constructive’. What are some of the constructive uses of Mars-Pluto? I think about the metaphor of somebody that’s really strong and doesn’t know their own strength. Like let’s say somebody’s that’s really big that’s handling something that’s really small like a kitten and they have to be careful because sometimes maybe they could overdo it and end up hurting something that they’re trying to to care for or take care of or accomplish or something like that. Like some of the themes that come up with Mars-Pluto is putting a lot of effort into something—or a lot of power or a lot of energy—that’s sometimes like overdoing it and going too far and needing to exercise some restraint so that you don’t overdo it.
NP: Yeah, I think that’s a good way, you used the word ‘restraint’. I mean, I could say that could fall into Capricornian language—‘restraint’ being Saturn-ruled—but I think first and foremost one has to recognize the power dynamic, whatever that is, whatever the power dynamic, what you can and cannot do.
CB: Right.
NP: And if you see that then you know what to do or how far you could go. But usually with the square or something like this, it’s like not knowing what you can and cannot do, or there’s something habitual and you just keep trying to do it but you don’t understand the tension.
CB: That’s a really great keyword, ‘power dynamic’. There’s been so much discussion about power dynamics over the past several years and people also becoming aware of power dynamics they weren’t aware of, or how they’re exercising power without being aware of it. But once made aware of it, how much you can try to adjust things in order to make sure you’re not wielding positions of power, even minor ones in ways that are harmful or not moral or what have you.
NP: Yeah, one little thing I’ll say to that along with what you said here, not to forget this. We’re going back to how we started to talk here with Mars and the node. Let’s not forget that’s just part of this; it’s not separate from Mars-Pluto square and the tail. What happens on the South Node is probably what we’re gonna keep talking about here this month. In one situation, predicament, power dynamic, can they purge and let go? Can they see that? Can they let that go? Anyway, just the node in Pluto with Mars, it’s too much, more than enough. But it’s the deal and we have to deal with it.
CB: Sure.
AC: Yeah, I think that letting go is gonna end up being a big theme. Chris, you asked about Mars-Pluto keywords. ‘Control’ is a huge one. And with the South Node and this being in Libra, figuring out what to let go of control over is a huge thing. With Pluto you have titanic forces. You have history as a titan, and you’re never gonna be stronger than history no matter how many weights you lift or books you read. And knowing when it’s just the wrong scale of conflict—sometimes that’s smaller like in a relationship. I can’t change this power dynamic, or I just gotta let go of it. It’s like the image of being dragged along. Like if you have a rope around an elephant that is rampaging and you’re getting dragged and getting torn up by the underbrush, what if you just let go?
CB: Right.
AC: Rather than like, “No, I’m gonna get this elephant. It’s going to yield to me.” Maybe just let go.
CB: But that letting go in and of itself is such a huge revelation and is the hardest thing because you never conceptualized yourself as being able to let go of that thing.
AC: Yeah. And that’s the thing with the nodes, most of their action is beneath the threshold of daily consciousness. And then when nodal stuff does break the surface it has that quality, like you’re saying Chris, of revelation. Like, “Oh, I’ve been really holding on to things being this way, or to being able to do that without even thinking about it.”
CB: Right. Also, since Pluto is stationing, it brings up in terms of mundane astrology and broader things that this is actually the last final pass of the United States Pluto return essentially. Because even though it doesn’t go exact when the country was founded in 1776, if you use that chart, it had Pluto at 27° of Capricorn. So Pluto is now getting back to 27° of Capricorn for the last time. It’s stationing there this month and that sort of implies something broader or more important in terms of the United States and some of the events happening in October. We have talked about in previous episodes how the US Sibley chart, if you use that chart, has Sagittarius rising and therefore Pluto is in Capricorn in the 2nd house of finances in the US Sibley chart. And of course we are looking at the possibility of a government shutdown coming up here in October. I know in past shutdowns there’s been some negative financial implications on the country and on the economy and all these other things, as well as a lot of government workers then that are suddenly out of a job or unemployed or aren’t having income. Which very much brings up some of those Pluto themes of like being stuck in a power struggle between two different sides and you being caught in the middle of it and not having agency to control it.
AC: Yeah. Thinking about the carefully precariously-balanced situation Pluto stationing the US’s 2nd with some other factors, just looking at the precarious state of commercial real estate in the United States. It would not be shocking if there was some economic difficulty or—what do they call it? They call it a correction, right? Some sort of correction this month.
NP: Yeah, I think it’s interesting what you said because we’re playing this dance here, this year and next year, with the last degrees of Pluto being in Capricorn. We’re gonna do the ingress, come back into Aquarius. When was the last major correction or crash? It was in 2008, and it was in the beginning of a transit of Pluto here. And so, to me, we have examples of the power struggle and dynamic, and basically the struggle over ‘master of coin’ basically is part of this too here and how it affects everybody. Supposedly the first weekend of October, or the Saturday before the 1st is the last time a plan can get sent to Biden for them to sign. But they have to negotiate and the plans are getting taken away and put on the table. But if it goes into this place, I think it creates even more of a rift within the country, as if there isn’t a deep one already. And it’s a pure setup for next year and the election and the politics. The struggle continues.
CB: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.
AC: I was just gonna say if there’s a shutdown, one possibility is a downgrade of the US’s credit rating. These things are floating as real maybes. And I do want to say I’ve been chatting with Crypto Damus on Twitter about this, and so I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t presenting all this as my own ideas ex nihilo. We talked about this last month. This stuff is floating. These are real possibilities. These are not stabilizing configurations that we’re looking at right now, right? There’s nothing about here where it’s like, “Well, things really firm up while Mars is square Pluto and conjunct the South Node at the end of Libra.” That’s where things become certain and reliable again.
CB: He was pointing out—I talked to him briefly, and maybe you could remind me—some parallels of Mars conjunct the South Node in Libra and how that’s what happened in like ‘87 during that crash or something.
AC: Yeah, he was looking at previous iterations of Mars conjunct the South Node in Libra, which happens about every 19 years but sometimes skips. And the last time we had it was during the crash in ‘87. And then when you follow it backwards, you always get some sort of correction or downturn of very unequal intensities, right? It’s not like crash level ‘87 every time. But he found something that consistently gave that kind of result, and, yeah, that got me thinking.
CB: Yeah, Lisa Anderson in the live chat says, “1987 was also part of this eclipse cycle.” Of course, if the node was in Libra then there would be eclipses taking place there at the same time.
AC: Yeah.
CB: So a shoutout to everyone in our live chat who’s joining us today. We’ve got some really useful comments coming in from patrons. And then the final thing of course with that Pluto return—over the past few years that we’ve been having it and in the lead-up to the election, since now we’re only going to be about a year out as of November to the 2024 election—is some of the stuff going on with Trump and some of his associates and some of the prosecution that’s taken place now and the drama surrounding that of whether that’s gonna go through or whether the election’s gonna happen first before anything is finalized there. In which case if he’s president, he could be immune legally. And the questions surrounding that could be very much tied in with the US Pluto return at the same time, especially because there was a poll that came out recently that showed that Trump is actually leading Biden in the polls. So some of this stuff with his legal challenges and cases actually could really make a difference in terms of what happens in the 2024 presidential election.
NP: Yeah. Just in the last 24 or 48 hours that we’re talking here, there was a recent judgment against the Trump family for fraud, what funds are, so on and so forth. And in the weirdest of way the situation with Trump and family and finances and the history with that family, it’s almost representative of a big part of the history of the United States when it comes to how money is made, so on and so forth. What’s legitimate money and those who have manipulated systems and laws to acquire coin and whether it’s legitimate or not.
AC: Is that just this country?
NP: Yeah, in all kingdoms, right, Austin? It’s pretty much the same old story.
AC: Just one thing real quick. Looking at all this it’s all these scales and it’s like, “Oh, if it tips this way, all these of implications. Oh, but this week it’s tipping this way, all these implications.” I think this is a lot of the vibe of the month. And watch the scales, but don’t get too caught up in ‘today it tip to the left’. I think there’s gonna be a lot of back and forth ‘cause a lot gets placed on the scales this month that will send them wobbly. We haven’t even gotten to the eclipse yet.
CB: Yeah, that’d be a good title, ‘the wobbly scales’ is our working title for this month.
AC: Watch that wobble.
CB: Watch that wobble.
AC: Wasn’t there a dance craze that was like wobbling, we wobbling?
CB: Wobble. I don’t know, let’s workshop. We’ll workshop this title between now and the release day.
NP: And the craze is gonna start now.
CB: Yeah, exactly.
AC: I swear I’m not hallucinating this.
CB: So the Pluto return, one last thing with that—not the Pluto return but just the station that’s important. Once it stations at 27 then we are in full-gear buildup to the next ingress of Pluto going into Aquarius, which will take place on January 20 of 2024. And one of the things that’s been really fascinating for me is that over the past few months it seemed like discussion about artificial intelligence has kind of dropped off once Pluto retrograded out of Aquarius and went back into Capricorn versus just the ‘fear’ discussion earlier this year, especially in the March-April timeframe when Pluto went into Aquarius and stayed there for a few months. So that’s one of the things I’m kind of expecting to come back very strongly when Pluto goes back into Aquarius early next year. And this month there’s some sort of pivot where Pluto makes that station, there’s an intensification and then it’s gonna start heading in that direction, so I was kind of anticipating some developments with that. And, Nicholas, I know you saw some stuff that might be relevant in terms of that.
NP: Yeah, it was interesting when it came up because when I started the research it was connected to something earlier in the spring. But, yeah, it was a report that I saw. It was at a conference last week, an AI conference. So the big companies were there, some of the CEOs, and the CEO of Google was there. But some of the things that came out of the conference was a project that Google’s been working on with DeepMind, so they got together. And DeepMind is an AI that was also built originally to become the master of a game called Go. I don’t know if you know it. So anyway it’s based out of that, but they’ve combined forces. And I didn’t even recognize this in May, but they announced their version of the future of AI from the Google perspective and it’s called Gemini. It’s not a joke, it’s called Gemini.
CB: Right.
NP: And they basically started to last week release the API kits for developers to use the parts of Gemini they’re only willing to reveal. But the type of system that they’re building is not just words, it’s with imagery and text, anything that’s pretty much 1’s and 0’s are going into this formula that they’ve been building that is to compete with ChatGPT. And because of that, last week, even Elon had to say something about it like in a tweet, but basically they’re revealing more and more. And I don’t know who they got over there, or who was the person to name it Gemini, but when it first was introduced it was actually during Mercury in Taurus retrograde that happened in the spring, and then it’s coming out now here during the tail-end of another retrograde.
CB: Yeah, I was seeing May 10 is when it was announced. But then I think a news article you sent me was saying that they started it in like March or April, which is around when Pluto went into Aquarius. I guess the head of Google reassigned some people specifically that they needed to focus on AI, and they needed to bump up their efforts and they needed to merge some of their internal groups. So anyway the point is now they’ve gotten to a point where they’re starting to share private versions of it with some company, but they’re getting ready for some big roll-out of this new AI thing here in the near future. Because that’s one of the biggest tech companies in the world, Google, it could have major implications depending on what it looks like, especially early next year as we get more firmly into Pluto in Aquarius.
NP: Yeah. One thing down on a simple level, there’s been kind of a downturn in the use of AI—I’ve been seeing this—and it’s not working the way they thought it should in the beginning. They need people to use this to feed it information so it learns just basic stuff with AI learning, right? But it costs money. It takes a huge amount of computing power, server farms to do stuff like this, and that’s why you see certain places are charging. You get certain credits to use that ‘cause they need to pay for that. But Google, besides Amazon, they’re like the server farm. They have the network already to do the computing. So from a power perspective for who comes out on top or who wins the race with AI, they might have not been there from the beginning, they seem to be scrambling to catch up to ChatGPT, but really in the end they have the infrastructure, like scary infrastructure to do it. you know. And here at the beginning of this Pluto in Aquarius ingress, what can happen? What comes from that?
CB: Yeah. Well, this month will be the buildup to that, so it’ll be interesting. Let’s pay attention to that in the news. And that gets us more firmly into the really heavy stuff that starts happening this month. By the 11th and 12th, Mars departs from Libra and it ingresses into Scorpio, where it’s gonna spend a while in one of its home signs, and immediately forms a somewhat constructive and nice trine with Saturn at 0° of Pisces right away there on the 12th and 13th. But then immediately after that we get our first lunation of the month and our first eclipse, which is this solar eclipse that takes place in the sign of Libra at 20-21 Libra on the 14th of October. And one of the most striking things about this eclipse is that as soon as the Moon conjoins the Sun at 21° of Libra, the next aspect that it makes is it applies to a square with Pluto. So this Libra eclipse, very much tinged by that Pluto energy, is one of the primary things that’s kind of like informing us what that’s all about.
AC: Yeah. It’s striking the surface of that same decan, this complex balancing act of not only the Mars-Ketu and the Mars-Pluto square, but now it’s also having a full-on solar eclipse. Again, with the eclipses on the South Node side, it’s almost always about something disappearing or something not being there that you expected to be there that’s usually there. It’s more about a sudden absence on a volitional side. It’s much more about the act of letting go of something that can’t be saved or it’s just not worth the effort.
CB: Something that’s reached the end of its life cycle.
AC: Yeah, and that you’re wasting your time and energy on by holding on. I like to think of the nodes in terms of holding on and letting go. And when you think of them that way you only have two hands, right? And so, if you want to hold on to something with both hands you can only do that with one thing, right? Like if you’re trying to hold on to two things at once, if you need both hands to retain something or to make progress then you gotta let go of something, right?
CB: Yeah. And one of the major things that happens that you’ll see with eclipses is just endings and the end of a major chapter in a person’s life, especially depending on what house it’s falling in. It may represent that you’ve come to the end of the line when it comes to some relationship in that house in your chart, with a person that represents that house, or with an area of your life. Maybe you’ve run towards the end of that chapter and it’s time to let go, as you’re saying, or wind something down. But then there’s that old cliché that every ending is like a new beginning, and nowhere is that more true than with eclipses. While they can be endings of things, it’s also a new beginning, and it’s like a fresh start sometimes in whatever area of your life that it’s falling.
AC: Yeah. And I would add that when you let go of things, when you stop trying to control things, they don’t disappear, right? And sometimes by letting go you let things re-assume a more naturally-balanced harmonious state; you’re not trying to make them a particular way. And you might be trying to force a situation that requires a lot of energy to maintain, whereas maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you let go and just let the chips fall, let the cards fall where they may. And that requires nothing from you ‘cause you’re no longer responsible. You’re no longer holding yourself responsible for things being exactly a certain way in that area. And so, it can be a relief. But often there’s confronting a fear of, “Oh, my God, what if I let go?”
CB: Yeah. What if I stop putting energy into this thing to constantly maintain it? Will this thing survive on its own if I’m not doing that, or will it naturally die or stop working if I’m not there constantly feeding energy into it?
AC: Yeah, or will it take the shape of my fears is usually the emotional concern.
NP: A lot of times in my practice with clients dealing with Pluto in certain positions, sometimes the letting go is really hard because what has to be let go of was of benefit earlier and the story.
CB: Right.
NP: It’s life. It got them through. It’s survival. It did things. And I think the hardest thing to let go of is that type of situation where it worked for you in the past. It’s habitual. It’s ingrained in you. “Let it go? I’m not gonna let this go? This is what it did for me in the past.”
CB: And sometimes you’re still in that mindset of thinking about all the good times from the beginning of that, even if it’s currently not not what it was at the beginning.
AC: Yeah.
NP: Yeah. And I think in a Plutonian way that really that needs to be let go of. Let’s say if we were to talk and relate to like what we talked about earlier—like with Austin talking about power and a silent power and all that, or coming into one’s own power situation—that ultimate last step of of letting go of what really has been of worth, I mean, that’s the ultimate. That could be hard for people in certain situations, especially at these degrees that we have. And then to also put it in your brain, if you’re in this situation, of what Austin’s saying in a sense of completely letting go and relinquishing here, it’s not going away. We also know it’s not going away because there’s other eclipses hitting the same nodes next year you know. We’re in a six-month cycle.
CB: Right.
AC: This is the beginning of a year-and-a-half process, but it’s a hard-to-miss announcement of that. I wanted to add one more thought to the letting go and why it can be hard, our wobbling around that. This is where a lot of sunk-cost fallacy stuff comes in. It’s like, “Well, I put so much into keeping it this way,” and that makes us feel like it’s beneficial to keep playing even though it’s losing at this point. And then I would just add that someone’s letting go looks like stepping back in an area, like when someone is no longer playing an active role like in a professional situation. They step back from their role as, blah-blah-blah-blah, and that’s very much a South Node thing as well.
CB: For sure.
NP: Yeah, you catch this a lot, especially on Instagram and TikTok when people talk about relationship experts. A lot of what I’ve seen lately is because you invested this amount of time and this amount of stuff in the relationship, you have to somehow keep it going even with a breakup or something else and what the byproduct of that is. And it gets to the point here that Austin’s brought up, you’ve just gotta step away no matter what you’re feeling or that time and energy that you put in, or the story you thought it was gonna be.
CB: Sunk-cost fallacy is what you guys were describing a little bit?
AC: Oh, yeah, I literally said that.
CB: You did say that, okay.
NP: He did say that.
CB: Go ahead.
AC: Oh, I was just gonna say, yeah, that fear around ‘what if I take my hands off the wheel’, there’s the fear of what it will be if I’m not making it be exactly this. And a lot of times, especially when it’s time to let go of something, a lot of times it doesn’t go away, like in a relationship. This is an eclipse in Libra. But like, “Oh, but if I stop doing this and this, then it won’t be,” like you said Nick, “the story I hoped for, I thought I was doing.” Like sometimes when you let things go, they just take a more natural shape. And it’s actually great and you don’t have to put a bunch of time and energy into making it be that ‘cause that’s its natural shape.
CB: Yeah, for sure. I liked the keyword you used earlier, Nicholas, which was ‘coming into your power’. ‘Cause I think I could see that as something that some people experience this eclipse as, even though it does have for many those ‘letting go’ themes. But also, as an eclipse and as part of a new series, for some people it’s gonna be opening up this window of new opportunities that are gonna be developing over the next year as we continue to get eclipses bouncing back and forth between Aries and Libra. But one of the positive sides sometimes that you get with Pluto when it does have positive manifestations and is closely activated like it is with his eclipse is suddenly discovering your power or discovering ways in which you are a powerful in good ways, or in which you have assets at your disposal that you didn’t realize you had, and that it’s only through exercising a little bit of control or a little bit of effort that you can maximize the potential that you have in ways that you didn’t realize were possible. And I think if I was to give this eclipse the best possible interpretation with that square with Pluto, as well as Mars having just gone into Scorpio and trining Saturn, I think that would be it, like coming into your power.
NP: Yeah, I’m glad you brought up the Mars in Scorpio thing. I’d just like to do a virtual applause. I like any planet that goes into Scorpio personally because I feel like they just don’t get enough credit. Scorpios just don’t get enough credit in a certain way, and we all love Mars going into Scorpio. And with Saturn you have courage, the type of courage that that Mars in Scorpio has, and that is unrelenting to the end, over the edge even. With Saturn, yeah, the courage is crystallized and that’s a great aspect. I love it. I love anything Scorpio personally, but I’m glad you brought that up. I didn’t want to forget about that one.
CB: Yeah, so that’s a good keyword, ‘courage’, ‘staying power’. Mars in Scorpio is a fixed sign so it has that determination, as well as that desire to get to the bottom of things. Like so many Scorpio traits are extensions of that tendency or that notion of wanting to get to the bottom or get to the center of something and to be determined and fixed about it, so those are good ones. And then with the trine with Saturn at the same time and having the fortitude to stick with something, I think those are all really great keywords for this.
AC: Yeah, ‘drive’ with Saturn and Scorpio. Having a consistent underlying, unrelenting drive.
CB: For sure.
AC: I mean, Mars, when it moves in on the 12th, Mars kind of becomes our healthiest planet in the sky, at least on its own terms. Like everybody else is kind of having a difficult time or at best a mediocre time and is caught up in the wobble. Like Mars is not wobbling. While everybody else is caught in the wobble, Mars is pursuing the Mars agenda relentlessly. And it’s important to note that although it doesn’t happen until late next month, late in November, it is in Scorpio that Mars will make its every two-year conjunction with the Sun, which is a reset. It’s a point of emphasis and a reset in the Mars cycle. So this Mars in Scorpio energy and the Mars in Scorpio themes that will begin developing halfway through October are going to be part of the martial current for a good year afterwards.
CB: That’s a really good point.
NP: Yeah, remember too that Mars in Scorpio is fueling the North Node, right? It’s fueling that part of the nodal thing. Austin, you brought up one of my things. The transit I’m really excited about is the cazimi moment next year in November. I saw it a year ago and I was like, “I can’t wait for that.” That’s me. But inherently though, even the eclipse that we’re gonna talk about at the end of this month is part of this too.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Can we generate more Mars in Scorpio keywords, just to give people a little taste of that? I think of ‘precision strikes’ when I think of Mars in Scorpio ‘cause it’s like hitting the bullseye with something precisely, but waiting until the exact right minute to do that; not a minute earlier and not a minute later and then just doing it once.
AC: It’s hitting the vital point. A lot of the dynamics of hunters, both human and otherwise—like if you watch an animal hunt they fail most of the time, but there’s like incredible amounts of patience and stealth and focus, and then there’s the one moment of action when the leopard springs from cover, when the ambush happens. And the critical moment has to be, as you were saying, Chris, as precisely timed and directed as possible, right? And in terms of combat, the hitting, it’s not just projecting force in the direction of the opponent but focusing the force into the area that will have the most impact possible, right?
NP: Yeah. I mean, the ability to see where the soft spot or the weakness is.
AC: Bring everything to bear on that one spot.
NP: I’m gonna use this word just as a clue ‘cause of what this means to some people, but from the animal perspective of the silent predator, there’s a predator vibe to this. That’s just how it’s used, but from an animal’s perspective, the silent waiting, like you said Austin. I was gonna ask if you know anybody who’s got Mars in Scorpio. And I’m laughing to myself right now because we brought up a chart—
CB: Right. I was just thinking of that—Taylor’s chart.
NP: Taylor’s chart, who has Mars in Scorpio. You can see it in her eyes. If you look at her, she’s dialed into whatever she’s doing.
CB: That’s really funny. Maybe somebody in the chat who’s a big Taylor fan can enlighten us more about what her Mars in Scorpio is like, but I think of two things. I think of, one, with Mars in Scorpio we talked about staying power. Early in her career, one of the biggest things that I remember was like when she won her first MTV award, but then Kanye got up on the stage and embarrassed her and said Beyoncé had the best song of all time and should have won the video and stuff. And it was this weird moment between her and then him and they had subsequent exchanges where he continued to be weird and sketchy, but she’s the one that’s had the staying power and now is kind of like on top of the world, whereas he’s in some ways fallen off in different ways, certainly socially over the past like year or two. And also, wasn’t there a period where a lot of people were like calling her a snake or something like that? I think Kanye and Kim Kardashian were calling her snake on social media, but then she ended up turning it around and adopting that in some sort of constructive manner, if I remember correctly. I don’t know, people can correct me if I’m wrong. But that’s also a good, the snake metaphor in both the constructive as well as a negative sense as a Mars in Scorpio.
NP: She didn’t forget that moment, just put it that way, you know what I mean.
CB: Right.
NP: She didn’t forget.
CB: That’s a good point, Scorpios don’t forget, that’s one of the keywords for that.
AC: There’s a brooding quality to Mars in Scorpio right which is, like you said, not forgotten. Like things, experiences—they just keep brewing, right? And maybe that turns into a medicine of some sort at some point, maybe it becomes a more lethal poison. But there’s this literal brewing something up, like brewing, brooding energy. You also see that with Kurt Cobain who has the Mars in Scorpio. And one thing to note is that the Mars in Scorpio is a high-octane Mars, and it’s very easy for Mars to back up into the system. You can be angry at yourself, a lot of people are. I have directed my anger or frustration towards myself many times, and I know that I’m not alone in this. That same intensity with Mars in Scorpio can easily be turned against oneself as well as the external world. And if you’re not like a super ‘Mars-y’ person, being mindful of this very intense Mars in Scorpio cocktail, don’t beat yourself up. Don’t beat up other people right, but also don’t beat yourself up ‘cause it’s very intense. It doesn’t like to be stopped. It doesn’t like things to fall beneath the standard, right? Any planet’s own sign has high standards according to that planet’s idea of things, right? Mars in Scorpio wants to be flawlessly effective, powerful. Silent, but deadly like the parts of legend.
NP: Yeah. Remember, those who are Mars in Scorpios, they’re watching. Know definitely how you remediate yourself, like what Austin was saying. Things get built up, they don’t go your way, the self-destructiveness. I’ve seen it with people that I know and what they’ll do, as in what they choose to do for their outlet for Mars remediating-wise. But everyone I’ve known that’s had this, when I think that they’re balanced and using that within themselves, they’ve had to have outlets to do it. They had to be in their body and sweat, or they had to wield the ax and cut the wood, something. It’s got to come out focused—the project or whatever.
CB: You mentioned Kurt Cobain, Austin, who was born with Virgo rising and Mars in Scorpio in the 3rd house. And his ‘time’ twin that was born around the same time period was Billy Corgan, the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins who also had Virgo rising, Mars in Scorpio in the 3rd house. And I always think of both of them and their intensity but also sometimes even vocally with that in the 3rd house, like screaming on some songs as an expression of that. And an interesting weird news story, Billy Corgan actually just got married. He was born in ‘67, which was one of those Venus retrograde in Virgo-Leo years, and this retrograde has always been super important to him: releasing the first Smashing Pumpkins album in 1989, the original band breaking up in 1999 the next time it went retrograde, reunions in 2007 and 2015. And then he just did a major tour this summer and then got married. Again, it’s just a little Venus retrograde story, but it made me think of that.
AC: Yeah, that’s good. Well, and they both had a quality of rawness.
CB: Right.
AC: And Mars in Scorpio is pretty raw. You won’t see it all the time, but when you do see it like it’s pretty raw, like it’s pretty primordial.
NJ: Well, Travis is gonna see it okay.
AC: Oh.
NJ: Kelce—the football player.
CB: Oh, Kelce, yeah, yeah.
NP: I mean, if he hasn’t already.
CB: He’s got Venus there in Scorpio, so maybe that’s his thing.
NP: It’d totally be the thing—
CB: We’ll see.
NP: —to see.
CB: Yeah, yeah, good times. All right, so that is that first eclipse that’s taking place this month in Libra, and that’s a big one. Major beginnings, major endings, a major period of letting things go, then after that we move forward. And one of the things that’s weird that happens not long after that is there’s this Sun-Mercury conjunction that occurs here around October 20, and it’s actually squaring Pluto almost perfectly. So from 27 Libra, the Sun conjoins Mercury, or Mercury conjoins the Sun and squares Pluto. So there are more themes this time with Sun-Pluto and Mercury-Pluto, and we’ve seen some major things involving news stories, like major investigations, major exposés or—what was the other term for that we saw a year or two ago with a major Mercury-Pluto thing with all of those things coming out? A disclosure. So major disclosures happening under Mercury-Pluto stuff. So that’s a date I would pay attention to for that, again, just echoing more and more Pluto themes.
AC: Yeah, this is a thing that happens in this same territory, right? And so, for a lot of stories in the news and otherwise, these are probably going to be three different moments in a story, right? We have the Mars wobbling the scales, and we have the solar eclipse there. And then hopefully there’s some clarity or some truth, like you were saying, Chris. Some details emerge as to perhaps not what was on the scales, but what was the ground that the scales were resting on, right? Which if the ground is uneven then it throws off the whole deal. There’s definitely disclosure. There’s like big ‘deep state’ energy, not necessarily including but not limited to government stuff, where it’s like there’s a layer underneath the visible layer and that’s where things are coming from, whether it’s corporations or smaller organizations or whatever, but like that’s that’s the kind of vibe; like what what is it that the scales were resting on, rather than like what was on the scales.
CB: For sure. Well, one of the positive things is not long after this we get one of the best aspects of the month, one of the most favorable aspects and auspicious. Venus starts moving into the middle decan of Virgo where it hits this trine with Jupiter from 12° of Virgo to 12° of Taurus on October 22. October 21-October 22. That’s probably the best aspect of the month. It’s one of the most positive ones where Venus comes up and trines Jupiter with reception because Jupiter is in Venus’ sign. And at one point we even get the Moon swooping through just after on the 20th and stuff and completing a Grand Earth Trine between the three signs with the Moon going through Capricorn.
So this is a very earthy Venus-Jupiter trine, so it would be very good for getting things done either in a practical sense with Venus in Virgo, or even potentially in an artistic sense with Jupiter being in the sign of Taurus. We have different electional charts this month. And while we’re not using that as one of our primary elections this month, in terms of just like having a brief reprieve from all of this otherwise very intense energy that’s swirling most of the month with the Pluto stuff, this is one of the more positive alignments that I see as a sort of nice day amidst all of the intensity. What are your keywords for like Venus trine Jupiter?
AC: Oh, it’s lovely. Jupiter is like the larger, slower good and Venus is the more acute-felt good. You just feel like, “Oh, maybe things aren’t so bad,” right? It’s like, “Oh, this was a nice day,” and that’s the Venus part. And then with the Jupiter it’s like, “And you know what? Things have been rough lately, but like I kind of like what I’m doing with this.” It’s generally both a positive reframe and perspective as well as a moment that justifies itself, that’s pleasant in and of itself.
CB: Yeah, it’s like having a spa day in the middle of an otherwise very intense month at work.
NP: Yeah, yeah, with like clay masks and certain things with the body and skin ‘cause we’re dealing with earth signs. I mean, this is a good thing. You’re in the earth in your body. The other thing is we have a Venus-Jupiter aspect, and the last aspect Venus had with Jupiter was squares. So we have on this journey of Venus, we have this grounded-ness. Before with Venus-Jupiter it was how one is gonna take pleasures and doing pleasures over the top, right? Here we have this harmonious connection and we could still have our pleasures and funnel that into our bodies and give ourselves something beautiful, something that tastes beautiful, sounds beautiful. A walk through the fall garden while it’s changing.
CB: That’s a great point.
AC: It’s a grounding in the middle of all this rather ungrounded and destabilized stuff. Not only is it both benefics, but it’s in an earth sign, right? I think grounding will be particularly useful during this period.
CB: Yeah. And that’s a good point. This summer of Venus-Jupiter squares was so excessive and extravagant, but this is a much more measured, sort of positive transit that’s more grounded in reality and much less prone to excess; instead more like the quiet, positive things that come along with simple pleasures.
NP: Yeah. You picture you’re in the house—Venus in Virgo and Jupiter in Taurus—and it’s comfortable, it’s chill. The fire is going. It’s good soup on the stove. Like, yeah, I made you a bath. There’s no pressure. No pressure to perform that that Venus in Leo had. These are the simple good things. The little things that make us feel good. Yeah, I’m thinking right now of herbs and the tea when we make it pulled from the garden to give themselves the pleasure of being grounded, like Austin said.
AC: A nice stew.
NP: Yeah, stew. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, sounds really good actually right now.
CB: Yeah, it does.
NP: Just to say this here, because we’re on this timeline, but it’s like we’re talking about one of the best aspects of the months and feeling this. And I know for people watching in the beginning how it’s intense and like, “Oh, it’s gonna be this and that,” but there’s always glimmers of light, these spaces. As astrologers, we always try to find them for ourselves and our clients. This is definitely one of them.
CB: For sure. And speaking of that, I wanted to back up and talk about our auspicious election for this month. Which given all of the craziness swirling around and intensity, I wanted to give two charts, and they’re both on the first and second day of the month. They are two auspicious elections this month that you can use to start new ventures or undertakings using the principles of electional astrology. So the first one is taking place on October 1, 2023, and you should set the chart for about 11:30 in the morning, 11:30 AM local time, just after the Ascendant has moved into Sagittarius, and see if you can get the degree of the Midheaven in your location. It doesn’t matter what degree the Ascendant is in Sagittarius. Try to get the Midheaven trining Jupiter if you can within a few degrees because this chart has Sag rising with Jupiter in Taurus in the 6th house with a trine to the Midheaven and a trine to Mercury in Virgo in the 10th house.
And one of the reasons this day is auspicious is because there’s a very nice Moon-Jupiter conjunction taking place in Taurus this day. So part of the purpose of this chart is to take advantage of that conjunction. As long as you can mitigate Jupiter in the 6th house you should be okay in doing that. The chart’s pretty good for 10th house matters with Mercury in Virgo in the 10th whole sign house exalted and in its own domicile. It could also be good for matters or more focused on matters related to health, work, subordinates, and things like that since it has a major emphasis on the 6th house, as well as that Moon-Jupiter conjunction there. So it would not be a good chart for friends, groups, and alliances because it has Mars in Libra in the 11th whole sign house and there could be some potential for separations there, so don’t use it for 11th house activities. But otherwise it’s a relatively solid chart that you can use on the very first day of the month to take advantage of that Moon-Jupiter conjunction.
Additionally, I have one other chart I wanted to mention which takes place the next day with Cancer rising. And that’s why I’m giving this as a second variant because it takes place just after midnight, at about like 12:30 at night on October 2nd. So this is a Cancer rising chart, so cast the chart for about 12:30 AM on October 2. And what you’ll end up with is a chart with Cancer rising and the Moon exalted in Taurus in the 11th whole sign house coming off of a conjunction with Jupiter at 14° of Taurus. And then the Moon is applying to a square with Venus, which is in the 2nd house of finances in a night chart. So this chart is actually much better for friends and groups and alliances with the ruler of the Ascendant placed in the 11th house of friends and groups with Jupiter. And then the ruler of the 11th house is in the 2nd house, and that’s Venus in a night chart in Leo in the2nd house of finances, which should be very good for financial matters.
And this chart actually ties together friends and groups and alliances and financial matters in a positive way, so it’d be a good chart for that if there’s something that you want to start or do that really focuses on those topics or those areas of life. The main thing this chart would not be good for—Saturn is in the 9th house in a night chart, which is not good for 9th house activities like foreign travel, education, things having to do with philosophy or religion, or even in some circumstances things like publishing might not be useful with Saturn in the 9th house. But otherwise those are too auspicious electional charts for this month that Leisa Schaim and I found. And we actually just recorded our Auspicious Elections Podcast for the month where we found 10 other charts that we outlined for different parts of October that you can use for starting new ventures and undertakings. So people can get access to that by becoming a patron through our page on Patreon at patreon.com/astrologypodcast, and then you can access immediately that hour-and-15-minute episode where we go through all the most auspicious dates that you can use this month.
And I actually just released a recording of the Auspicious Elections Podcast we did for September on my YouTube channel. So if you haven’t seen that before you can watch that episode for September and you’ll see how those episodes usually go and how it’s actually very useful to get those charts ahead of time each month, so you know what the good dates are to use or what the difficult dates are to avoid. All right, so I wanted to say that really quickly since that brings us back to the beginning of the month. But now at this point we need to jump forward to the later part of the month and talk about our second lunation of the month, which is that eclipse that takes place in the sign of Taurus.
AC: And this is our very last eclipse in Taurus.
CB: Yes.
AC: We’ve been doing eclipses in Taurus for about two years now.
CB: We are finally finishing up the Scorpio-Taurus eclipse series. And just to remind people, some of these eclipses have been kind of crazy. Like the one a year ago in Scorpio and Taurus was super crazy ‘cause that was the one—if you remember, right on the Scorpio eclipse—when Elon Musk bought and took over Twitter and some of the social media fiasco surrounding that. That Scorpio eclipse was also when Kanye West did all that crazy anti-Semitic stuff and then all of a sudden went from being a billionaire to being dropped by Adidas and losing out on this huge deal overnight. There were just a lot of shifts where people were going either upwards or downwards very rapidly at that time, and that’s part of some of the energy that we’re moving into here with eclipse season again.
AC: Yeah. And I would also point out that this time period that’s had the North Node in Taurus has also had massively-inflated food prices in the United States. A lot of the fallout or follow-on effects from the Russo-Ukrainian war is distorted food prices in a lot of places, including the grocery store. We talked about lunch ‘getting eclipsed’ many times.
NP: Yeah.
CB: Food prices and also Bitcoin. Like FTX happened last November, right on the Taurus eclipse, I believe, didn’t it? It was the Taurus eclipse. And then all of a sudden FTX just implodes and that was just a huge fiasco with Bitcoin. But then the one before that I think was when the Luna coin tanked and failed. There were other eclipses as well, but something we’ll be paying attention to is if the eclipses are again tied into Bitcoin and big shifts upwards or downwards; but also just in terms of the economy if there’s some big shifts upwards or downwards at the same time.
AC: Yeah. I mean, money and food always changed when we got an eclipse in Taurus. And of course all those eclipses were adding to what Uranus had been doing there.
CB: For sure.
AC: And so, one thing to know right, just to call back to the beginning, we’re talking about the historically-significant rise in union activity and some of these big strikes, and we’re like, “Oh, that’s Jupiter in Taurus. It’s timed to Jupiter in Taurus. It looks like Jupiter in Taurus.” And so, this is an eclipse on top of that while Mars is opposite that, right? So that’s a lot of heat as far as the union activity and pushback against that and that unfolding story.
NP: You know, I think about late 2021 when we started this eclipse story and these signs and those who have fixed angles in their chart or fixed whatever, what you’ve been through with Saturn being in Aquarius, Uranus being a Taurus since 2018. You got hit after hit. I mean, even Venus in Leo retrograde is hitting these degrees, especially the midpoint’; like the midpoint of the degrees, the second decan, like 14° to 16°-17° And Jupiter is there now. It just stationed retrograde there. The reason why I’m saying this is because here we are at the last one. For those of you who have taken the brunt or have seen these shifts in the Taurus and Scorpio parts of your chart and what you’ve been through, congratulations, you’ve made it. You’ve made it here to the end, especially in fixed signs, when you have certain kinds of tension moments, things are coming and going quickly. It’s obviously different from a cardinal sign or in mutable places. There’s something about the fixed placements, the type of tension that’s involved that’s very unique. And so, it’s a shoutout to everybody who’s been affected by this. You just have this one. You’re just sweeping away here.
CB: Yeah, fixed signs do not do change well. As somebody that had to like be quick on my feet today due to technical issues to set up a different thing, we do change very, very reluctantly and that can be really difficult where you’re dealing with placements that are inherently about change as eclipses are with their major beginnings and major endings.
NP: Yeah. I’ve got fixed dangles, I know it, and I’ve had a lot of people talk to me. Just to bring it back to where we are with this eclipse, it is—
AC: No, that’s a great point. Sorry, do you want to finish?
NP: No, go ahead, Austin. Go ahead.
AC: Okay, I was just gonna say, Chris, do you remember when we were doing the yearly? With Saturn’s moving into Pisces we really wanted to announce reprieve for the fixed signs.
CB: Right.
AC: Then we’re like, “Oh, but then there’s the whole Venus retrograde over the summer.” And even though the nodes move, “Oh, there’s another eclipse in Taurus.” And we’re like, “So by the end of the year there’s reprieve.”
CB: Right.
AC: We were hoping to be able to announce a reduced sentence for the fixed signs in March.
CB: Yeah. I mean, it has been nice getting Saturn out of Aquarius. And actually one thing that’s interesting is we don’t get there this month, but Saturn stations at 0° of Pisces next month in November. And I haven’t done the Saturn in Aquarius Saturn return story, and I know a lot of people are kind of annoyed by that ‘cause they want to send in stories. But part of the reason is that Saturn’s coming back so close to the end of Aquarius that I know there’s some people that have Saturn in late Aquarius that are actually probably just gonna be finishing up their Saturn return stories right now over the end of this year. But I was saying that because it has been nice at least having Saturn out of Aquarius even if the fixed signs aren’t completely on vacation at this point.
AC: Yeah. Well, and you’ll get Pluto in Aquarius for 20 years.
CB: Right, exactly.
AC: Who needs to mention that, right?
CB: We don’t need to talk about that.
AC: Not me. That’s months away.
NP: We’ve been getting teased. We’ve been teased for almost a year-and-a-half, two years with this one. It’s gonna happen.
CB: Right. All right, let’s go back to our eclipse ‘cause we need to describe a couple of things about the specific configurations involved a little bit more. One of which is—look at this chart. So the Moon hits the eclipse at 5° of Taurus on October 28, right at the end of the month. Right at the same time Mercury is forming a conjunction with Mars. So we have this verbally combative or sparring energy of Mercury and Mars coming together at 10° and 11° of Scorpio. And at the same exact time Mars completes an opposition with Jupiter. So Mars opposes Jupiter from 11° of Scorpio to 11° of Taurus. So there’s like a whole lot aside from the eclipse itself and how this is the end of a long series and a culmination of things between Taurus and Scorpio. There’s a huge amount of tension going on between those two signs at the same time.
AC: Yeah, it’s pretty gnarly.
CB: Yeah. So Mercury-Mars, let’s do some keywords for that. That’s like ‘verbal sparring’. That’s like ‘arguments’. That’s like ‘curse words’, like using bad language. What are some other Mercury-Mars keywords?
AC: ‘Thievery’. ‘Destroyed roads’. ‘Corrupted networks’. ‘Cut telephone wires’. Yeah, ‘bandits lurking at the crossroads’. Not silver-tongued but ‘steely-tongued’. ‘Insults’.
CB: All right, what are some positive keywords?
AC: I thought that ‘steely-tongued insults’—
NP: No, it can be positive.
CB: Yeah.
NP: I mean, if we think about the fierceness of Scorpio mixed with the tongue and with the ‘cutting-ness’, hey, sometimes you need someone to speak that truth to you.
CB: For sure.
NP: We’ve had a bunch of Libra shenanigans of moving around the point of things and not getting straight to it in a Mars-based way. Mars is gonna get straight to the point a lot of times but gonna do it in a Scorpio way. Scorpios go right to the heart of it. And actually it’s one way of showing affection and love for some people.
CB: Right. It’s like that friend that tells you your outfit looks dumb. And at first you’re hurt, but then later you’re like, “No, you’re right. My outfit does look dumb.”
NP: Yeah. And like it hurts to possibly hear that. It’s the cutting; it’s the dagger. But if it’s a friend, later on, “Hey, thank you for telling me that because I was walking around this whole time with my zipper open,” that kind of stuff. “This was hanging from here, I didn’t know.” So I think that’s positive actually to have a certain type of truth. The engine behind it is Mars in this case, with Jupiter there too, we can’t separate that.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point that sometimes there’s the need for that loud person that’s outspoken that’s willing to be the one to speak up to say what everyone else is thinking, but nobody else is willing to put their neck on the line to say.
NP: Yeah, and they’re gonna do it.
AC: Yeah, it’s so rare to find someone on the internet who’s willing to be rude.
CB: Exactly.
AC: But a hero will arise during the Mercury-Mars conjunction.
NP: Yeah. Well, the other part of it is it’s not public.
AC: Life is just too polite these days.
NP: Yeah, it’s not public. Like it’s it’s the person who pulls you inside, behind closed doors and whispers in your ear brutal, cutting words of truth. And it’s just between you and I ‘cause I don’t want you to lose face. Like if we’re having this conversation in secret, I’m gonna tell you the truth.
AC: Yeah. So quiet, communicative savagery.
CB: Yeah, yeah. So verbal arguments are one of the potentials for that period that could be destructive or could be potentially constructive. But there might be arguments that happen one day, on that day, especially around that day, that end up actually having a much greater import than you realize or than you think that they should initially. Sometimes we all have those arguments that just seem like a stupid blow-off argument, but then it turns into a much larger rift between two people. And that’s the eclipse energy coming in at the same time.
AC: Yeah, ‘cause I was just gonna say, to your point, don’t get into it unless you want to get into it and go all the way through it with this one.
CB: Right.
AC: This is not like a time for casual criticism.
CB: Yeah, for sure. For like saying that thing in a moment of not having restrictions or reservations about something, but then it being the cutting thing that causes a permanent loss of a relationship or something.
AC: Yeah. Or requires like six more conversations to actually get to the end of.
CB: Right, for sure.
NP: Yeah, one more thing to this, to go off of what we’re saying, I think of sometimes how Mercury in Scorpio functions from the more probing, investigative quality of getting to the heart, to finding the secret, the mystery, or cracking the code. There’s part of that here too, just the function is just magnified by Mars.
CB: For sure. Mercury in Scorpio loves a good mystery and can get sucked into that. Like once you give them a good mystery, they will focus on that entirely until it’s all worked out. And there can be a good side to that where there’s the intrepid reporter who’s on a story for years getting to the bottom of it before eventually revealing everything, but then the flip side of that, if it malfunctions, there can be the person that becomes obsessed about something like a notion that’s not true. But they get so sucked into it, connecting different dots that maybe don’t connect at all, so that it becomes something that they are sort of addicted to or can’t break themselves out of.
AC: Yeah, it’s very it’s very noir, web of lies, gumshoe territory. I was just remembering one of the things that Firmicus bangs on about repeatedly with Mercury-Mars. It’s like Mercury-Mars angular, especially in a day chart, basically translating from the ancient Latin is endless bullshit without any particular cause. Like Mercury-Mars, it’s just like a lot of little problems. A lot of little things that need solving is a very common Mercury-Mars thing where there’s just like a ton of little stuff to solve.
CB: Yeah, for sure. So that conjunction is happening at the same time as the eclipse. But then at the same time we also have a Mars-Jupiter opposition and some of the basic tension between that of literally the ‘planet of war’ versus the ‘planet of peace’ and the tension sometimes between war and peace or between—what is that saying? Do you use the sword or do you use the—what’s the opposite of the sword? Like a wreath or like flowers or something.
AC: Plata o plomo.
CB: Plomo, okay.
AC: Silver or lead, right? Will you be rewarded for doing what I want, or will you be riddled with bullets for not doing what I want?
CB: Yeah. And there’s instances sometimes where one is appropriate or the other is more appropriate, and sometimes people get caught in those situations where they’re not sure whether to be aggressive or whether they’re supposed to be aggressively kind or something like that, and it’s not clear what’s called for. And it seems like with this configuration especially people are gonna be stuck being pulled in those two different directions and not be immediately clear what is the correct correct direction to go.
AC: Yeah, especially with the eclipse, with the eclipse near the head of the dragon. The lunar eclipse is always a Full Moon. It’s always you know high tide emotionally. Energetically things are very energized and people are not in their most reflective state. And to have that and an eclipse, it’s gonna be a hard thing to balance at the time, right? It may be clearer how to navigate that afterwards or maybe even before, but it will definitely be easier for people to lose their heads and act in an imbalanced manner in a way people will regret during this. Like it’s a lot. And I think expecting it to be a lot and trying to keep your cool through it will probably give good results. It’s definitely not something to go with the flow because the flow is crazy.
NP: No. And to go back to what we started talking about earlier, this is the last one for you Taurus-Scorpio people. You’re going out with a bang. It’s not some calm ‘whatever’ thing. It’s very fierce. You’ll be alright. You’ll be okay.
CB: Yeah, I have some optimism. Once the Moon completes the opposition with the Sun—so it hits the exact eclipse degree—its next aspect actually is it conjoins Jupiter before it hits Mercury and Mars. So it does hit Mercury and Mars immediately after that, almost simultaneously, but it is interesting at least symbolically that its next aspect is to Jupiter. And I have some hope for the more optimistic or peace-oriented side of things sort of winning out, even if the threat of conflict and argument and division is very present.
AC: Yeah, there’s like a way through, it just will probably get confusing for at least a little bit.
CB: For sure.
NP: Yeah, like Austin said, if we look at the rulers of this, like who’s involved, Mars-Venus, it’s been a Mars-Venus story with these eclipses, and same with Libra-Aries. It’s a Mars-Venus story. And here if we look to where Venus is, it’s waxing. It’s applying to a trine to Uranus here and that’s in the background, that’s there. And so, if we’re looking for ways to move and use and utilize it, there’s something there.
CB: For sure. And as you’ve both said, since this is the end of a year-and-a-half-long series of eclipses between Taurus and Scorpio, it should be putting an end to a series of events and new developments and beginnings and endings that you’re already kind of aware of in that area of your life and bringing some final culmination to it hopefully rather than it being something that just completely comes out of left field. I mean, certainly that happens sometimes with eclipses, but there was probably a build up to this that preceded this eclipse this month.
AC: Yeah, this is the last installment. Like this completes the arc.
CB: Yeah, and I did a really great episode on this. If you search for ‘eclipses as transits in astrology’, you’ll find an episode I did a few years ago where we did a workshop going through people’s charts and showing how to interpret the house that an eclipse falls and how it opens up this portal for like two years, where the topics of those houses become more prominent and active in your life, and then you’ll understand better how to interpret these eclipses that are coming up next month. All right, so that brings us to the final days of the month, and there’s just like one or two minor things to mention. One of them, the Mercury-Mars conjunction actually completes at 12 Scorpio the following day I believe, on the 29th. And then on the very last day of the month, on October 31, we get this nice little Venus-Uranus trine that occurs when Venus hits 21 Virgo and it trines Uranus at 21 Taurus. And this happens like right on Halloween. And I really like this aspect as a nice way to end the month and potentially have a good Halloween transit at the end of the month. It reminds me of that saying, that phrase, ‘I’m here for a good time, not a long time’. I think that’s the keyword for this Venus trine Uranus transit on Halloween. What are your keywords? Is that gonna be your keywords for Halloween?
NP: Well, the first thing that comes up for me, it’s something I mentioned earlier in one way, we ended September with a Venus square Uranus aspect, and we end October with Venus trine Uranus. Why can’t we be celebratory, honestly, after this whole month? Have you ever seen a Venus in Virgo, to see what their version of having a good old time is or a wild time? Like try to picture that because it’s supposed to be uniformed and go by certain steps or something like that. But here Uranus in Taurus throws in some flavor, some spice onto Venus here. And I dig this. We accept this. It’s a good way, at least in my mind, to end the month. And I think there’s a secret passionate white light that is in Venus in Virgo, and I think Uranus here could show us the ways of pleasure, the wild pleasures that are hidden deep inside Venus in Virgo. That’s one way I look at it.
CB: I like that. That’s good, Venus in Virgo letting loose. Finally, trying something new, trying something different, and maybe enjoying it.
AC: Ordering a different item off of the menu at your favorite restaurant despite the risks.
CB: Yeah, that is risky. As a fixed sign I definitely would recommend that.
AC: I happen to know a Venus in Virgo for whom that’s a very real risk. You know, dinner might not be good.
NP: Yeah, they’ve gotta deviate from the norm.
AC: From what is assured to be pleasing and of good quality. I will say for Halloween, in addition to the Venus trine Uranus, having lots of things in Scorpio, lots of crazy things in Scorpio is good for the Halloween energy, for like Scorpio vibes. Mars in Scorpio may not always treat people kindly, but it makes watching movies about demons and murder and all the other fun Halloween things like hit all the better. It’s good. The skies will be behind the Halloween viewing schedule.
CB: For sure.
AC: You need a menacing villain, right? You need a dignified malefic for a good horror story.
CB: I like that. The awareness of the darker side of life and the appreciation for that, both in its power as well as occasionally in its beauty, as well as in its sometimes intensity or savagery. That’s really good imagery I think to wrap things up here for October.
NP: Yeah, I will say that for me, personally, the dark side’s always beautiful, not occasionally. The dark side is everything. I see the beauty in the dark side. It’s done wonders for my life. And so, you could take that a certain way, but I think it’s one of the best times of the year for those who celebrate midpoints of the seasons. We know what this is for Samhain, for people, or whatever else you do with that energy and stuff, it’s an incredible fun release into the dark side and using it—your version of the dark side.
CB: Right. Yeah, I like that, your version, ‘cause everybody has their own version. And, yeah, it’ll be interesting to check in with everybody at the end of this month and see how things went and see what everyone did with eclipse season and with all the Pluto energy and what sort of transformative experiences everybody had. And I think that’ll be good, so we’ll check in again one month from now and see how everything went. Thank you both for joining me for this. This was amazing. We tried things different, it went pretty well today. It was great having you on this episode for your first forecast, Nicholas. You are otherwise forecasting away all the time on your YouTube channel, right?
NP: Yes, I am. My YouTube journey’s coming into two years now. Actually it started during the beginning of those eclipses that we talked about at the end of 2021. Yeah, I do forecasting on there, I talk about certain transits like a lot of people do, and then I do livestreams on there. And I do surprise livestreams where I talk about transits. I’ve been adding visuals and I have synthesizers here. I’m adding sound and doing mantra meditations. And I also do something once a month called The Empower Hour. And it’s a livestream where I put a phone number up on the screen and people call and they give me their chart info, and we do it live on air. So that’s a big part of what I do and what I’m trying to build on there. My next Empower Hour is on October 9, on a Sunday.
CB: Awesome. So people can find your YouTube channel. It’s Sparkles of Gold Astrology, right?
NP: Yes, Sparkles of Gold Astrology. And you can find out more about me too at sparklesofgold.com, my website. I do sessions, readings, so on and so forth. But my life has become YouTube and will be YouTube. I started something there and I’m seeing where the wave takes me.
CB: Nice. Well, I love it. It’s been amazing to watch so far, and I love tuning into your livestreams. They’re really fun. So I’ll put a link to your YouTube channel and your website in the description below this video on YouTube so people can check it out and subscribe to your channel, as well as on the podcast website for this episode. Austin, what do you have coming up?
AC: Okay, so next Friday, which is October 6, I’m gonna put several workshops that I’ve done in the past, I’m gonna put the recordings up for sale. I’ve also got a pile of lectures I gave at NORWAC and AstroMagia and a couple other events that have just been sitting in a bin on my computer. I’m gonna put that stuff up for people. And then for Sphere + Sundry, the Thema Mundi series is finally shipping. Things are being wrapped and bottled right now. And Sphere + Sundry is going to finally release the Saturn in Aquarius series in the middle of the month, which I’m very much looking forward to.
CB: Nice. Awesome. That’s exciting. All right, what’s your website?
AC: So my website is austincoppock.com, and Spirit + Sundry is sphereandsundry.com.
CB: Brilliant. All right, I’ll put a link to those in the description below this video on YouTube. Otherwise, as for myself, I’m feeling good lately. I’ve been taking some new supplements, I have more energy. So I’ve been trying a bunch of new things and experimenting with YouTube, experimenting with doing short-form clips on the new Astrology Podcast clips channel, as well as doing some short vertical videos that are one minute, just to give the highlights of some of the episodes and some of the main things I’m doing here. I’m also experimenting with doing some livestreams at different points and doing some live interaction with the audience, as well as to fill in on news stories that happen in between the major forecast episodes.
So the biggest thing you can do is just subscribe to the YouTube channel. Or if you want to support this work, if you get a lot out of it, then you can sign up and become a patron through my page on Patreon, and you’ll get early access to new episodes, as well as a bunch of other bonus content. So otherwise I think that’s it for this episode. So thanks everyone in our audience who joined us. We had a bunch of patrons joining us today in the live chat. You’re all amazing. And some of the comments helped guide the episode in different ways. Thanks, Nicholas, for joining us today to co-host. Thank you, Austin, as always for your brilliant metaphors. And I think that’s it for this forecast. So thanks everyone for watching or listening, and we’ll see you again next time.
AC: Bye.
[credits]
Hey, 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: Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jake Otero, Jeanne Marie Kaplan, and Melissa DeLano. 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 new list of astrologers that have been on the podcast before and who we recommend for readings at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Consultations. There you’ll find astrologers who offer different types of consultations, including birth chart readings, synastry, rectification, electional astrology, horary questions and more.
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.