The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 43, titled:
Astrology Forecast and Elections for September 2015
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on August 25, 2015
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released August 28th, 2024
Copyright © 2024 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. For more information about subscribing to the show, please visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can sign up to become a supporter of the podcast on Patreon and get access to some exclusive benefits such as a private discussion forum, early access to new episodes, higher quality recordings and more. Today is Tuesday—no, it’s not Tuesday. What is today, guys?
KELLY SURTEES: Wednesday.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Wednesday.
KS: Mercury’s day.
CB: Exactly. Today is Wednesday, August 19, 2015, at approximately 3:20 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 43rd episode of the show. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking with Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock about some of the major astrological alignments occurring over the course of the next month in September of 2015, as well as highlighting some of the most auspicious dates for starting different types of ventures using the principles of electional astrology. For more information about Kelly, see her website at kellysastrology.com, and for more about Austin, visit his website at austincoppock.com. Hey, guys, welcome back to the show.
AC: Hey, Chris.
KS: Hey. Good to be here.
CB: All right. Before we get into our focus for this episode and the alignments for September, I think we’ve got a few announcements. The first one is that I just released a new lecture for sale on my website on interpreting the rulers of the houses and timing their activation using annual profections. And I’ve given this lecture a few times over the past few months and this was the best version of the lecture that I’ve given. So I’m excited to release it because it’s a nice combination of some basic or intermediate level interpretive techniques and some techniques to show you both how to synthesize chart delineations, but also how to time when those placements will become activated and awakened in a person’s life. So you can find the link for that on the page for this episode of the podcast. Kelly, you’ve got something coming out soon as well, right?
KS: Yes. I am almost finished with my next ebook, which will be on the Saturn in Sagittarius cycle and that will be going on pre-sale very early in September. So keep an eye out for that if you’re interested. I’ll be promoting it on my website, on Facebook, on Twitter, hopefully, everywhere, so you’ll see it. There’ll be a bit of a discount on the pre-sale, which will run until Saturn moves into Sag in the middle of the month. It’s a great little book. It’s got info for beginners. And it works like a workbook for those of you who are familiar with your chart and want to kind of really get into the nitty-gritty of what Saturn in Sag might be about for you.
CB: Awesome. That sounds great. And they can find that information on your website, which is kellysastrology.com.
KS: Yes, thank you.
CB: All right. And, Austin, what do you have going on?
AC: Well, Chris, I am teaching classes now and for the next couple of months. On September 12, I’m going to begin a month-long online class on dignity. It’s part of a series that I’m running on the foundations of astrology, and I’m just taking a month with each one of the pieces and crafting those gears in a careful and precise way. So we’re gonna be dealing with the various layers of dignity, as well as how rulership functions within a chart. So Jupiter in Virgo—basics, simple, fundamental, incredibly important.
CB: Yeah, awesome. I think that will be a great class. And there’s been a lot of good feedback to your recent workshops so far. So people should check that out on your website, which is austincoppock.com. Let’s see, in other news, we’re still using the Planet Watcher Calendar again for this month’s episode that was made by Kirk Kahn from planetwatcher.com. And if you like how that looks I’ll have a link on the podcast episode page for this recording and you can download that calendar, which is like a great wall calendar, where you can see the entire year at a glance. In other news, ISAR is wrapping up their voting this week. It wraps up sometime in the next few days, right?
KS: Yes. Definitely before the end of August.
CB: Right. So thank you to everyone who voted for us. And for anybody who hasn’t voted yet, you still have a chance to get in your votes. So if you’d like to see us at the conference, the ISAR conference in October of 2016—
KS: In California.
CB: —then please go ahead and give us, Kelly and I, votes, and hopefully the three of us will see you there at the conference. All right, so that’s it for the announcements. So let’s get right into our main topic for today, which is the astrological weather and the alignments for September. So, Kelly, what are some of the main themes that we’re gonna be anticipating and looking at this next month?
KS: Well, the biggest two of course are that Venus is going to station direct and end her retrograde very early in September—on the 5th of September in fact—and Saturn is going to ingress or move into Sagittarius on the 18th of September. So they’re really the two standout astrological events in September. The one other thing that I would throw in—I’ve just been doing a little bit of research on the phases of Jupiter, and right now Jupiter is in an invisible or very hidden or dark phase because it’s very close to the Sun. But by mid-September, Jupiter is just starting to become visible again as a morning star and that has a very strong rebirth energy. So what I thought was interesting, kind of as a first impression or an overview of September, is that mid-month, we’ve got Saturn changing signs, and we’ve got Jupiter going into Virgo. Sorry, Jupiter coming into that ‘morning star’ condition. So you may not hear about that as much in the more mainstream September overviews, but it will be a very significant energetic shift nonetheless for September.
CB: That’s great. I mean, Jupiter literally emerging from the beams of the Sun in mid-September.
KS: Yes. So the Babylonian idea around that is that Jupiter is so close to the Sun—or any planet so close to the Sun—is essentially in the underworld and it’s kind of dead to the rest of us temporarily. And it lasts for about four weeks, four to five weeks or so. So Jupiter is going to be emerging, reborn, if you like, refreshed. And so, that was very, very significant to the Babylonian skywatchers, I guess.
CB: And that’s interesting cause Jupiter would have sort of gone underneath the beams of the Sun towards maybe the second or third week of August, when it got within about, let’s say, 15° of the Sun. And it was in Leo still when it went under the beams of the Sun, but then it’ll come out and sort of emerge in a different sign, in Virgo.
KS: Yes. That’s what’s really interesting about this particular underworld period for Jupiter, which does happen every year. But in this particular one, Jupiter has changed signs as well. Jupiter’s reemerging with a fresh perspective, if you like, rather than just coming out of the darkness and in the same sign.
AC: And what’s particularly interesting about that—which I believe is referred to as a ‘heliacal rising’—
KS: Yes, you guys have all the technical terms.
AC: Well, it’s the same thing. But I believe that’s one of the phasis conditions in Hellenistic astrology. When a planet moves from invisibility to visibility, or vice versa, the planet is thought to make an appearance which speaks, right? And if we’re curious about what Jupiter in Virgo might speak to, part of it is to be the change of sign, right? He’s moved into a different tropical sign. But if you look at the chart, you’ll also see that right when Jupiter clears the Sun by about 15°—which is the idealized distance that a planet needs to be from the Sun to reemerge—he’s almost exactly opposite Neptune in Pisces.
KS: Yes.
AC: And so, that’s not only an interesting aspect in of itself, that is the aspect which Jupiter will speak to when he reemerges.
KS: Yeah, that’s the big aspect of the month. I mean, it’s the two biggest planets that are gonna create a configuration, and it is happening just as Jupiter emerges or becomes visible. So you’ve got your eye on that too by the sound of it.
AC: Yeah. In some ways that foreshadows a tension which will take us through more than the next year, which is Virgo/Pisces tension. Not only will Jupiter be within Virgo for more than the next year, while Neptune will certainly be in Pisces for next year and the year after next and the year after next and so on, but we’re also gonna get the nodes moving into Virgo and Pisces. One thing that is particularly interesting to me about Jupiter in Virgo opposing a planet in Pisces is that according to traditional astrology, Jupiter rules Pisces, right? So any planet in Pisces is always looking to Jupiter for guidance, and here it’ll be looking to the opposite sign. And so, in addition to some more specific things we can say, there’s an inevitable entanglement between Virgo and Pisces coming up. And I, for one, am already beginning to experience that.
CB: It’s interesting that when Jupiter gets to that point—when the Sun is exactly 15° from Jupiter, it occurs about September 15—that’s only two days away from Mercury stationing retrograde as well. So we’ve got a few different overlapping things going on there between Pisces, Virgo, and then Mercury stationing retrograde.
AC: Yeah.
KS: We do.
AC: Oh, go ahead.
KS: I was just gonna say the other thing that’s happening mid-month of course is we have the Virgo eclipse around the 13th. So there is a lot shifting, if you like, mid-month.
CB: Right. So there’s a solar eclipse at 20° of Virgo.
KS: Yes, exactly. And we’ll talk about that more later in the show.
AC: Yeah. One of the things that I’ve been getting from this is that with Jupiter and Virgo right now, as we speak, Mercury is in Virgo. And then the Sun will move in by the timeframe for this podcast is relevant. With all the Virgo stuff, there’s this desire for clarity. There’s a desire for things to be organized and clear and functioning effectively. When you have a lot of planets in a sign, I always ask, what is it like if they get their druthers? What does Virgo perfection look like? And when you’re looking at an opposition, or you’re looking at squares, or you’re looking at planets which are interfering with that, you’re looking why that’s not gonna come to pass, or what’s going to complicate that discussion, right? So if we’re looking at Jupiter in Virgo, we want the wisdom that is entirely empirically verified, right? We want thousands of studies confirming what is the right way to do things if we’re going to be successful in a particular endeavor.
CB: Sure. Through the tangibility of the earth sign partially.
AC: Right. It’s a Mercury-ruled sign. We don’t just want stuff, we want data, which testifies to the stuff and organizes the stuff. Which is of course an awkward place for Jupiter. As we discussed last month, Jupiter is in its detriment in Virgo. And then we throw Pisces in there. We throw Neptune in Pisces opposing that Jupiter, which says there’s no way you’re going to organize all of this. Neptune’s orbit is much further out and it encloses Jupiter. And so, perhaps a small island of empirically-verified data can be collected at the center, but there’s what might be a comforting—or for other people—a disturbing sea of the unknown. Or sea of the ‘half-known’, the great cloud of unknowing, which is going to sort of halo and surround that little orderly Jupiter in Virgo island.
KS: That’s a lovely way of putting it, Austin. And it almost sounds as though the theme for September then is this dichotomy between the Virgo/Pisces divide.
AC: Yeah, I think so. And again this is I think the first strong instance of a theme that’s going to be repeated or a note that’s going to be struck over and over again over the next year.
KS: Well, and it is—sorry, go.
AC: No, please go on.
KS: I was gonna say this is the first major aspect that Jupiter in Virgo is going to participate in. And I think it’s also one of the first major configurations that Neptune in Pisces has really been heavily involved in too, from that kind of square/opposition pattern.
AC: Yeah, I think the only aspect that Neptune has made to outers has been a series of trines to Saturn in Scorpio and then a series of trines from Jupiter in Cancer. Although trines certainly matter, they don’t tend to draw attention to themselves. It’s these tensions which tend to draw awareness to them cause they’re actually problems that need to be solved or balances that need to be struck.
KS: Yeah.
CB: And then later in the month, we get the tension of that opposition ratcheting up when Saturn ingresses into Sagittarius and starts filling out or starts approaching a T-square with Jupiter and Neptune. Or at least begins the process that will eventually culminate in something like that months from now, even though it doesn’t get close. But the initial inklings of that I think will begin right away once Saturn moves into Virgo on September, what is it, 17th or 18th?
KS: Yeah, Saturn into Sag on the 18th of September. And you’re absolutely right, Chris, because that’s really the major configuration of the second-half of the year, when we have Saturn squaring Neptune in Pisces. That’s gonna kick in November-December. So we’re definitely getting this mutable kind of pattern or conversation, we might say, that’s starting. It is going to be ongoing for quite some time.
CB: Sure. All right, so in terms of major themes, are there other major alignments that we need to bring in or talk about in terms of other ones that are gonna be significantly affecting the discussion or the forecast for this month in the long term?
AC: Well—
KS: Go, Austin.
AC: We get our first eclipse in Virgo, right, and that’s the first of several. Again, that’s an initiatory thing. It introduces a theme that we’re gonna be dealing with for a while, but I think that we’re going to feel that as sort of part of this Jupiter/Neptune/nodes moving into Virgo and Pisces. It’s not independent of it. It’s just sort of one of the important notes in the Virgo/Pisces song. And then there’s certainly Mercury’s retrograde, which takes place during the second-half of the month, more or less. And the way that that plays into the Virgo/Pisces tension that’s coming up is it’s going to frustrate poor Virgo, right? Virgo is ruled by Mercury and looks for rational order. And so, already that attempt, that hope for an entirely rational order is already frustrated to some degree by Neptune opposing Jupiter in Virgo. And then another sort of monkey wrench which is thrown into that process is Mercury is retrograde in Libra.
CB: Right. So it’s already in its shadow pretty much for the first two weeks of September. And then we get the station right there, what, September 16-17 at about 15° of Libra.
KS: Yes. Yeah, Mercury’s station—or in shadow, sorry, as soon as it goes into Libra, because it will end its retrograde at the very start of Libra. So that’s kicking off right away.
CB: Then at the same time we have Venus finishing up her retrograde phase and stationing direct September 5. But then she’s still in the other end of her shadow period, the post-retrograde shadow period for essentially the duration of the rest of the month, right? All the way through October, or early October.
KS: Until about the 8th of October, until she just flips back into Virgo. And we did get a question actually on the Facebook page about this particular configuration, where we’ve got Mercury in shadow, proceeding the retrograde, and then we’ve got Venus in shadow after her retrograde. I guess that idea of the stop-start. And given that Mercury’s gonna be retrograding in one of Venus’ signs too, there is a real sense of, I don’t know, two steps forward, one step back perhaps.
CB: Yeah, definitely. I mean, part of it is probably something that we noted not in the last forecasting episode but maybe two forecasting episodes ago. When we were talking about the Venus retrograde, the idea that initially, when Venus was in its pre-retrograde shadow phase, we had that beautiful conjunction with Jupiter in late June and early July, and there were different things happening going along with that. One of them was—at least in the United States—the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage. But then the notion that’s happened very recently, in the past week or two is that Jupiter eventually would depart from Leo and sort of leave Venus behind and then Mars would show up, so that the later part of the Venus retrograde is very much characterized by this conjunction with Mars. And that almost becomes one of the big signatures I think for the very start of December—or very start of September as well, which is Venus stationing direct, but as it’s stationing direct, it’s also forming and finishing up a conjunction with Mars in mid-Leo at the same time. And for some people—like people probably with night charts—I don’t think that’s gonna be problematic. But there might be some people with day charts—if that’s happening in a prominent part of their chart—where there may have been some positive things that happened towards the beginning of the Venus retrograde that were very optimistic-looking towards the beginning of the summer, there’s something conflicting or something not going as smoothly with that part of the retrograde as Venus is stationing direct and the full implications and outcome of that retrograde are becoming clear.
KS: For sure. I mean, it’s a good point to make, the co-presence I guess of Jupiter in the sign with Venus earlier in the retrograde and then Mars at the end. But it is also tapping into the general post-retrograde feeling, which is things that are not quite complete or clear are resolved or become clear in that shadow period.
CB: Right. And a turning back to decisions that were made or events were earlier in the retrograde and the pre-retrograde shadow, where Venus has already gone over the same degrees once or twice. And then you get either a second or third return back to Venus at those same degrees and sometimes echoes of choices that were made earlier in the retrograde coming back and the implications of those coming to fruition.
KS: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s just interesting, isn’t it, to think about a planetary retrograde. It drives forward, it reverses back, and it drives forward again over that same part of the zodiac or the sky. It’s such an emphasis. And I know Nick Dagan Best does some great work with the planetary retrogrades, and I think especially with personal planet retrogrades. We maybe don’t give them the attention or respect they’re due, because that emphasis on one particular part of the zodiac’s quite unique when they do their retrograde there.
CB: Yeah. Especially one of the things that Nick and I talked about was just for inner planets. It’s like inner planets typically just zoom through those signs.
KS: Yeah.
CB: But then suddenly the retrogrades are important because you have this extended period—of two or three months in the case of Venus or six months in the case Mars—where you have a single planet just slowing down and really emphasizing a single sign of the zodiac, and, thus, a single part or sector or house of a person’s chart, which can really put the focus there for better or worse.
KS: Absolutely. And with the Mercury retrograde in Libra this month, this September, Mercury is only going to cover the first-half of Libra. So it’s just gone in now, or going in at the end of August, and it only gets up to that 15 Libra, and then it’ll retrograde back. So between now and the last week of October, Mercury is just sticking to the first 15° of Libra essentially.
CB: Okay. I mean, that Mercury retrograde and the shadow—the fact that it’s hitting its shadow while Venus is stationing direct, and while Mars is conjoining Venus kind of implies to me that that retrograde’s gonna be very much tied into it, especially for the people that experienced that Venus conjunct Mars and the Venus direct station as some sort of conflict or some sort of tension, or perhaps even strife in terms of relationships or in terms of whatever part of the chart Venus is retrograding through and what it means for them. If it’s retrograding through their 10th house, it might mean their career. If it’s going through their 7th house, it might mean relationships or what have you. That retrograde of Mercury and some of the typical or cliché things that sometimes get associated with—like miscommunication or misspeaking or having to revisit certain ideas from the past—a lot of that gets tied in somehow directly to the Venus retrograde in some way.
KS: Yeah. So you’re sort of saying that it might be a bit more of an extreme version of the Mercury shadow?
CB: Yeah. With some Mercury retrogrades, it’s just the retrograde itself and that’s all that’s going on, so that it’s kind of isolated and not hugely important, or it’s not getting exacerbated or echoed by other placements. But in this case there’s something else that’s very closely tied into it, which is these other movements at the same time. I mean, one of the things that it makes me think of is Austin had sent me a news story I think just a week or two ago that he said was something we should use maybe for our segment on how it worked out, or the segment that I like to call, tongue in cheek, the ‘We Called It’ segment.
AC: ‘Nailed It’ might also work.
CB: ‘We Nailed It’ segment.
KS: ‘Nailed It’ segment, yeah.
AC: Assuming we actually nailed it.
CB: Right. What was the news story that you sent, again, Austin?
AC: So it was a piece that was run in The Economist a couple of weeks ago that made me think about the statements you had made about the great things that we enjoyed during the first Venus-Jupiter conjunction. That was the end of June, right?
CB: Right.
AC: And so, as you pointed out, one of the most obvious nice things that happened then was the legalization of gay marriage on a national level in the United States. And I don’t remember whether you talked about it on the podcast or not. I know we spoke about it. We spoke about, “Oh, there is probably going to be a little spike in the number of marriages happening during this period.” And so, you also talked about how when Venus goes retrograde later that there might be reversal of some of those happy significations. And so, in this case, it’s marriage. And so, The Economist ran this piece about how a number of magistrates in the southern United States and a few other areas were actually as an act of protest not issuing any marriage certificates at all, so that they didn’t have to give licenses to gay couples, but the only way that they could do that legally was to issue none at all. And so, we see a reversal of this ‘lots of marriages’ thing, where you have an artificial lull in marriages, where people who want to get married can’t, as opposed to the release of that tension, which happened earlier, where people who had wanted to get married for a decade finally could. And so, it’s just a really interesting, very simple illustration of how Venus retrograde will sometimes affect exactly the opposite sort of thing that Venus direct does.
CB: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And also ties it back into just what Kelly and I were mentioning earlier, which is just the fact that with retrogrades, you have planet that will go over some part of the zodiac when it’s moving forward, but then slow down and then return back to those same degrees that it had passed over previously. It means there’s often a revisiting of something that took place earlier and to just go back to it for some reason, sometimes for positive reasons and sometimes for not-very-positive reasons. And so, that was kind of one of the things that—when that happened towards the beginning of the Venus shadow phase and the pre-retrograde phase—is kind of a natural assumption to make, that there might be a revisiting of some of the things that happened in late June and early July, when Venus comes back later in the year; and then the combination with Mars implying that there’s some tension or conflict or potentially strife that takes place surrounding that. So it’s not the full-blown, optimistic revisiting that it was when Jupiter was still there. But instead there’s this other element to it that perhaps wasn’t present when Venus originally went through those degrees.
AC: Yeah. I’m really interested in the fact that Venus stations retrograde—or excuse me—Venus stations direct right next to Mars, right? Because if we look at the Venus retrograde cycle, we’re more or less in the heart of it right now, and the mythology of that is a descent into the underworld, right? And the motion of that is that the direct station is where we can finally move forward, right? We don’t have to go back any further. We don’t have to rethink things anymore. We can begin moving forward and begin implementing the various fixes or changes that we considered during the retrograde. And so, when I see a planet which is conjoined another planet which has decided to move forward again—when I see Mars standing right there at the point that Venus has decided to move forward from, it tells you that Mars is in a sense part of the answer, right? And so, just on a very simple relationship level the answer to all of this Venus retrograde stuff about feeling like yourself and being able to express yourself and the pride and shame continuum and all that stuff—as it intersects with relationships—the answer to that is going to have to do with dealing with conflict. Conflict between two people perhaps that really want to be themselves and really want to feel pride and not shamed about who they are; there’s going to be conflict there. Heads are going to butt and strife is going to be part of that. And the acceptance of that or the negotiation of that seems like an inevitable part of it, right? The answer isn’t going to be, “The answer is that I love myself and everything’s fine,” right?
KS: There’s some complications.
AC: And you love yourself and that doesn’t look the same. I mean, that doesn’t mean we’re always going to agree. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be in harmony with each other simply because we’re in harmony with ourselves.
CB: Sure.
KS: That makes me think of—sorry, go.
AC: No, no, I was done. Go on.
KS: Yeah, that makes me think of something I was just rereading in Ben Dykes’ book, Traditional Astrology for Today, where he talks about the planets, and he gives them some really interesting qualities taken from Abu Ma’shar’s work. And he talks about Venus and Saturn as being planets that want to begin or establish things, and the Moon and Mars as being planets that are more involved with change or transition. And so, it’s interesting to have this Venus and Mars connection where Venus is stationing direct. She’s looking to move forward and implement and create some kind of connection or new togetherness as she comes out of this retrograde. Yet, with Mars there, there is that idea, as you were saying, of strife, or to start this one thing that maybe you’ve determined is really valuable through the course of the retrograde, you might actually have to end or change something else that’s been operating in parallel.
CB: Right. And the need for almost like decisiveness. I mean, I’ve been interpreting it negatively, as like strife and things like that. But I guess there’s other positive manifestations in terms of decisiveness and taking action and maybe separating yourself from things that are not helping you perhaps.
KS: Yes.
AC: I think I would not use ‘decisive’ as much as I would say that it will require courage, right? Courage is sort of the virtue which interfaces with strife, right? Cause there’s lots of strife in anyone’s life that requires dealing with. You don’t get to have perfect harmony in life. And there are a lot of situations where it’s totally worth it to engage that, and that requires courage cause it’s not going to be fun all the time. It requires an ability to look directly at a conflict or a series of conflicts or a disagreement and to engage with it knowing that it’s not gonna be resolved instantly, but a willingness to throw yourself into that process. Again, because we’re talking about configurations which affect everybody, some people might say, “You know what? That’s not a battle that’s worth fighting for me.”
KS: Yes.
AC: And I think that’s a really crucial decision. I think the battles are gonna be with people that we’re really connected to because of Venus.
CB: That makes sense. Speaking of that, I just remembered that my contribution to this is supposed to be giving electional charts. I got a little bit too into the astrological weather and I forgot my job here. So my first electional chart is actually early in the month. And actually this would have been great to bring up earlier when we were talking about Jupiter in Virgo, because most of my elections this month are strangely focused on Jupiter in Virgo. It was one of the only planets that I could find that—while not well-dignified, classically speaking in terms of its sign placement—it was one of the only planets I could find where it’s otherwise not afflicted and doing relatively well despite some of the issues it’s having by sign. So my first election takes place on September 6 of 2015, at approximately 6:55, let’s say 7:00-ish PM local time, shortly before sunset. So in this chart, you have early Pisces rising, Jupiter is the ruler of the ascendant, and it’s located in Virgo in the 7th house, hovering around the descendant. The Sun is still above the horizon, also in the 7th house, with Jupiter, making this a day chart. Therefore Jupiter, according to the concept of sect, is the most positive planet in the chart, and it’s in the 7th house. The Moon—which is the secondary significator that we always want to pay attention to in any electional chart, in addition to the ruler of the ascendant—is located in Cancer in the fifth whole sign house; another one of the positive houses. And it’s at 3° of Cancer, applying to a sextile with Jupiter in Virgo.
So both the ruler of the ascendant and the Moon are relatively well-placed. The Moon is applying to the most positive planet in the chart. This is right around the day that Venus stations direct, and it is basically stationary at this point at 14° of Leo. Unfortunately, with Pisces rising, that forces us to put Venus in the 6th house conjunct Mars in a day chart, which is a not-great positioning for Venus. Although that’s not a huge deal because it’s not a major player in this chart. It’s not ruling terribly important houses. It’s ruling the 8th and the 3rd. But it is mitigated somewhat in this chart by picking a time when the midheaven is around 14° or 15° of Sagittarius, which it is, at least in Denver, around 6:55 PM. So you’ll have to adjust that for your location. Because by putting the midheaven at 15° of Sagittarius, it forms a close or an almost exact trine with Venus in the 6th, which should help to counteract that 6th house placement and make it a little bit more constructive or positive. So this chart is kind of mixed. It’s directed I would say not primarily, but there’s a good emphasis on the 7th house, and, thus, on relationships or partnership or just other people in general due the 7th house placement of the ruler of the ascendant. And since it’s the most positive planet—which is the ruler of the ascendant, and it’s placed in the 7th house—it has this sort of since of doing positive things, especially for other people, or having a positive or benefic influence on other people that you’re either interacting with closely on a one-to-one basis, or that you’re actually partnering with on a one-to-one basis.
Yeah, so that’s one of the main charts that I was able to find for early in September. There’s a similar one almost a week later on September 11, at 6:30 PM, again, with early Pisces rising, Jupiter in the 7th in a day chart. Now the Moon is at 5° of Virgo and it’s applying within about a degree or two to a conjunction with Jupiter. So again the Moon applying to Jupiter, the most positive planet in the chart. The major downside with this placement that’s different from the September 6 one is that the Moon is at the very extreme end of its waning cycle. So this is really a better chart for ending things or bringing things to completion on a positive note with the Moon applying to Jupiter, rather than starting new things necessarily, which is usually recommended when the Moon is waxing. So the Moon will want to be on the other side of the Sun to start something new. I mean, how do you guys feel about that rule? Because that’s a rule that’s often given as one of the top rules in especially modern electional astrology. And it is certainly mentioned in traditional electional texts, but I feel like in some of my experiences in the past it hasn’t been the biggest deal-breaker. You can still do okay to start things on the later part of the waning cycle, it just sometimes seems like it takes a while for it to get off the ground or it takes much more time and much more effort to get things off the ground than perhaps if it was earlier in the waxing cycle. Do you guys have any experience with that?
KS: I would agree. I usually do try to avoid the very late part of the waning cycle for any elections, mostly from an efficiency perspective. If you’re looking to get things blossoming or that sense of getting a fair reward for your effort, then picking a lovely waxing Moon, or even the first-half of the waning Moon—anything up till about the third-quarter phase—seems to go okay. But once we get into that late third-quarter phase, or even into the balsamic, that Dark Moon period, what tends to happen is that it’s not equal reward for effort, that you have to have great effort or great patience to get some reward of any kind. So I think what you’re saying is true in the sense that you can still get results, it just may mean more effort or resources thrown at the problem or the situation to get it going, or that it takes a longer time period.
CB: Sure.
AC: I think that’s exactly what it means.
CB: Okay.
AC: I mean, in a sense the Moon’s phase relative to the Sun kind of shows you when you’re gonna get that extra bump, right? Are you gonna get it in the first-quarter of the project? The second, the third, or the fourth? When you’ve got a late fourth-quarter Moon, it means that you’re gonna get your reward late. You’ll see the outcomes only after you’ve gone through most of the cycle. And that may work with some elections, right? Like you said, Chris, if you’re trying to get something totally new—brand spanking new off the ground—it’s probably a terrible idea.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Let’s say you’re electing a marriage for two people who’ve already lived together for a decade. They’re already kind of at that phase with their relationship, right? They’re collecting this reward at the end. And so, it has a meaning and it’s going to be more or less appropriate for different types of events.
CB: Yeah. On the one hand, I have some personal experience with this because I started the Denver Astrology Group, which is my local astrological group that I founded in May of 2008. And the electional chart that I had picked out for that—I had actually picked it out two or three years prior to that. Because when I was at Kepler, I was taking a course on electional astrology, and one of the finals was they asked the students to pick out a chart—cause they were trying to pick a date for the upcoming United Astrology Conference—and they told us to look sometime in the spring of 2008. And we looked around and eventually what we found was there were some great charts in May of 2008. So we submitted that to them, and they ended up having that UAC here in Denver in the later part of May under a pretty good electional chart. But I actually started my astrology group in Denver—that’s been flourishing over the past seven years—on a very late waning Moon. It was a Leo rising chart, with the Sun conjunct the midheaven in Taurus in the tenth whole sign house, at 14° of Taurus, and Venus was earlier at 5° of Taurus in its own sign. And then the Moon was there at 4° of Taurus applying to a conjunction with Venus. So it’s kind of a similar situation as we have here where the Moon was extremely late in its waning cycle, but it was applying to a positive benefic before it completed that conjunction with the Sun. And the group definitely took a long time to get off the ground and to really become successful. And we’ve been doing it for seven years now, for over seven years. We just celebrated our seven-year anniversary not too long ago, but it’s finally really taking off in a really big way seven years later, as we’re approaching the first Saturn square. So I think that ties in really well with what you were saying, Austin, in terms of things taking longer to get off the ground and not being appropriate if you’re shooting for something that takes off much quicker or much sooner.
On the other hand, one of the things I think people sometimes are not familiar with or need to get used to when using electional astrology is that you can really apply it to just about everything. There’s certain types of charts that are appropriate for certain things, and there’s other types of charts that might be appropriate for other things that you might not conventionally think of using electional astrology for but they’re just as appropriate to use it for. So something like this, where you have an extremely waning Moon—it’s ending its cycle, but it’s applying to the most positive planet in the chart. It’s like trying to put a positive ending on something. So you can think of scenarios where you’re trying to bring something to completion, but you want to end it positively, like, let’s say, quitting a job and leaving on a positive note. Or even ending a relationship, but wanting to end it on good terms. That would be a great example of wanting to use something like that that would fit the symbolism pretty perfectly. What were you guys laughing at?
KS: So without being crude, it’s basically a chart for ‘a happy ending’.
CB: Yes, this is the ‘happy ending’ election of September 2015.
AC: All right.
CB: All right. Well, I’ll put that in the electional book.
KS: Definitely it needs to go in there.
CB: Okay.
KS: But I know what you’re saying, Chris. I mean, people don’t think about the importance of good endings or closing things down with a sense of positivity. We always think about endings as a bad thing. But actually a good ending foreshadows a great beginning or whatever happens to be next around the corner.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And in those instances—like the ones I mentioned—there can be benefits and good things to having a positive or happy ending, if you will, just in order to start whatever the next cycle is fresh, on a positive note versus thinking of the scenarios if you end things badly.
KS: The baggage.
CB: Yeah, exactly. Everyone I think has that imagination of wanting to quit their job and give everybody the middle finger and walk out. But if you need references next week for applying to another job then it doesn’t necessarily serve you well to end that. Or ending a relationship on a negative note and some of the negative repercussions that can come from that.
KS: It’s almost like an ending with integrity, that idea of resigning from your job, but doing it in the right way and leaving on good terms so that you don’t close off any doors behind you.
CB: Definitely. So those are the two primary 7th house-type elections that I have for the first-half of the month. There’s one more Jupiter election that’s later in the month. I was trying to switch it up so that it wasn’t all just Jupiter in the 7th house and Virgo-type elections. But for this one, on September 19, it’s another Jupiter election, but now with Sagittarius rising. So September 19, at 12:45 PM, with approximately 7° of Sagittarius rising. So in this chart, Jupiter’s the ruler of the ascendant again, it’s located in the tenth whole sign house in Virgo in a day chart, so that it’s the most positive planet in the chart. It’s in the 10th, so this is a chart that’s much more directed towards 10th house matters pertaining to one’s career or social standing or reputation and action and things of that nature. We have the Moon in Sagittarius in the 1st house applying to a square with Jupiter with reception, since the Moon is in Jupiter’s domicile. So that’s a positive, supportive type of configuration as a result of the reception, rather than one that’s gonna be too problematic or tense due to the square.
One of the drawbacks or potential drawbacks is that Jupiter—sorry, Saturn, by this time has ingressed into Sagittarius. So we have Saturn in the 1st house, or at least the first whole sign house at this point, which typically you’d want to avoid, except there’s some major mitigations here. One, since it’s a day chart, Saturn is not gonna be as malefic. Two, we have Jupiter in a superior square. So it’s in the earlier order. It’s earlier in the order of signs, and it’s therefore overcoming Saturn with a superior square with reception. So the Saturn is in Jupiter’s domicile, and, thus, Jupiter is significantly taking the edge of Saturn and sort of forcing it to be more positive. Under those conditions, I don’t hesitate too much with recommending putting Saturn in the 1st house. If this was a night chart, this would be a little different and I’d be a little bit more hesitant. And I’m sure later this year, once we get into the Sun being Sagittarius and Capricorn and Aquarius, that we’ll have other elections where Sagittarius will be rising, Saturn will be in the 1st house, but it’ll be in a night chart. In those instances, I would seriously avoid or not recommend putting Saturn in the 1st house. But in this, I think you’ll see the more positive manifestations of Saturn in the 1st. Yeah, so that’s that election. And then there’s one more election later in the month, but I can save that for later. That’s a Libra rising election. Did you guys have any comments or points or questions about any of those?
KS: I just think for the listeners, it might be interesting to make a little comment. What you’re talking about, Chris, essentially is that Jupiter in Virgo—even though it is the detriment placement of Jupiter—actually can be a good thing when it’s a day chart. So it’s like the difference between the sect benefic versus the issue of strength by sign, I guess.
CB: Yeah. I mean, it’s not strong in Virgo. And also—as we talked about in the last forecasting episode—it’s gonna have a little harder of a time manifesting the significations that are natural to it, that are Jupiter-type significations, because it’s in a mercurial environment. But as long as it’s a day chart, Jupiter is the most positive planet in the chart, and it has a tendency to want to express its more qualitatively-positive significations. As long as it’s not majorly afflicted—especially by Mars—I think you’re okay in that instance. And this discussion about planets in detriment actually recently came up in the forum for my Hellenistic course and somebody was asking me about this. One of the things that you notice is that in the early Hellenistic tradition, they don’t really mention detriment as being a major debility and it’s not clear why. Is it because they didn’t think of it at all as a debility, and it was just sort of a unique thing that they just left out and didn’t develop until later in the tradition? Or was it something that they recognized that was not ranked up there in the highest way in terms of potential problematic placements because it could be offset so easily?
And one of the other students who had a background in Indian astrology made a very good point, which is that in Indian astrology, they don’t really recognize detriment necessarily as much as Medieval astrologers did, or most traditional astrologers did. But they did say that a planet that’s in the sign opposite to its domicile—so a planet that’s in detriment—is not problematic if it’s configured to a benefic. And if it has the aspect of a benefic then it’s able to manifest that placement in a constructive way. It’s only if it’s either afflicted or if it’s not configured at all to a benefic that it’s not able to work with that placement in a way that’s constructive and still has a positive outcome, even though it’s in a position that’s kind of alien to its own significations. And I think that makes a lot of sense conceptually, as well as practically in terms of what I’ve seen with the people that do detriment well versus the people that have problems working with planets in detriment.
KS: That’s a really good point actually because you do see charts of people who classically have Jupiter in Virgo or Mercury in Sag or what have you. I always think of my husband in this who has Mercury in Sag, which is classically a ‘bad’ Mercury, but it’s trine Jupiter by degree. Obviously, that’s a benefic and very helpful, and he’s known as an expert in his field, which is the education field. And so, the simplicity, if you like, of the detriment doesn’t seem to ring true in every instance. And so, I guess what you’re saying is the aspects to the benefics can really lift that up a little bit.
CB: Yeah, exactly.
AC: I’d like to add something. I think that the traditional delineation of a detriment as meaning that the planet cannot enact its own significations very well is totally right, however, I don’t think that the planet’s energy is totally wasted. For example, as we watch Jupiter move through Virgo this year, I think Jupiter is going to do ‘Virgo’ stuff, which is not Jupiterian. It’s ‘Mercury’ stuff. Jupiter is going to spend all his time, somewhat awkwardly, trying to help Mercury and will probably succeed at that. If you’re looking for classical ‘Jupiterian’ stuff, it will probably look very weak.
CB: Sure.
AC: And I see that with charts. In a lot of cases, if you have Mars in Libra, the martial significations will generally be very weak, but Mars ends up working for Venus. And you actually see a lot of people with Mars in Virgo—excuse me, Mars in Libra—are able to bring about harmony or harmonious relations, or at least harmonious social relations quite adeptly. It’s just the planet doesn’t hit its core significations, it’s helping somebody else out. And so, I would say its own house is neglected, or its own home gets a little dirty, dishes pile up, but somebody else is to benefit.
KS: That’s a great way of putting it, Austin.
CB: Definitely. And what was that placement again that you were just talking about?
AC: Oh, I just said Mars in Libra. Mars in Libra can be good for Libran significations.
KS: Libran things.
AC: For Venus. He’s working for Venus. And I think Jupiter right now is working for Mercury, and Mercury will benefit. Yeah, you’re just not gonna get the classical ‘Jupiter’ stuff. If you think about classic ‘Jupiter’ stuff, you’re talking about things like ambition, belief in yourself and your intersection with the world, that wisdom which transcends empirical data, principles by which people act, justice, all that sort of stuff. Then there’s ‘Mercury’ stuff. ‘Mercury’ stuff is quantifiable, it’s arrangeable. It can be spoken. It can be almost entirely contained within words and code. And so, Jupiter is only going to get to do his job in so far as it intersects with Mercury significations.
CB: Yeah, it’s like a dichotomy or difference between faith versus data.
KS: Faith versus facts, yeah.
AC: Yeah, there’s a reason that their domiciles are opposed, right? Both Mercury signs oppose both of Jupiter’s signs. And one thing that people don’t talk about very much, but is very important, is that for a thousand-plus years Jupiterian figures were primarily priests or abbots or bishops or popes. That’s how you represented Jupiter. And because we don’t live in a monolithically Catholic society anymore that doesn’t make quite as much sense, cause our ‘Jupiters’ aren’t all working in that tradition. It’s a key part of Jupiter’s significations. Those fields—it makes me think of philosophy and where philosophy ends, right? This is of course of great concern to philosophers: When do you have to stop making claims because you no longer can support it with rational arguments? You can say that these things are possible but you can’t make an argument for it. And that’s generally where Jupiter begins, right? Jupiter begins at sort of the upper-half of philosophy and then into theology and cosmology. Mercury can prove a bunch of stuff but then it’s Jupiter’s job to help guide us through those things which can’t really be proven, right? Like what is the meaning of life? Can you prove to me what the meaning of life is?
CB: Right. Can you quantify that?
AC: Yeah. It certainly includes all of the data you can get your hands on but it’s a question which transcends it.
KS: It’s not limited to the data.
AC: Right. And that’s Jupiter’s job, to survey and manage that realm of our affairs.
KS: Interesting.
AC: Yeah, you get the point.
KS: I was just gonna say an interesting—sorry, Austin—extra bit there. When I was reading over the Babylonian take on Jupiter—and I’m looking at here some of the newsletters from Bernadette Brady that she used to send out through her Zyntara website. She’s talking about the brightness, the magnitude of Jupiter and how it varies over the course of Jupiter’s cycle. And what she’s referring to is that Jupiter is physically brightest when it is moving through the sign of Pisces and is physically dimmest when Jupiter is moving through Virgo, and at its most dim when we have Jupiter and the Sun in Virgo together. And it’s an interesting commentary that there seems to be some sort of connection—whether it was intentional or just one of those lovely cosmic synchronicities—between the bright, physical Jupiter when it’s in Pisces, where it is in rulership, versus the dimmest of Jupiter when it’s in Virgo, which is one of its detriment signs. And I think that sort of speaks to what you were saying there, which is this idea that Jupiter is not meant to be doing ‘Jupiter’ things in Virgo—the light of Jupiter is dim here—and instead Jupiter is working in service of all those mercurial organizational and logistical elements of life which Virgo gets off on.
CB: Totally.
AC: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
CB: All right, so the only other election that I had picked out for this month—to try and switch things up a little bit—is towards the very end of the month. There is actually a decent Venus election, and it takes place on September 30, at 7:50 in the morning—or 7:15 AM in the morning, with about 10° of Libra rising. So in this chart, we have Venus ruling the ascendant. It’s placed in Leo in the eleventh whole sign house, so this is very much a Leo rising—sorry, an 11th house-type election, since the ruler of the ascendant is in the 11th. Venus is exchanging signs with the Sun. So it’s in a sort of mutual reception with the Sun, which is in Libra in the 1st house. And Venus is finally free of Mars by this point. By late September, Mars has moved into Virgo. So we get back to more of a ‘pure’ Venus in Leo-type election and situation at this point. It’s still going through its shadow and it’s finishing up the very last phase of the Venus retrograde period and the post-retrograde shadow period, but it’s in pretty good shape by this point, being in the eleventh whole sign house direct and starting to move. It’s still a little bit slow, but it’s starting to speed up again.
Yeah, that’s the primary placement, the ruler of the ascendant in the 1st and exchanging signs with the ruler of the 11th, which itself is in the 1st. The Moon is exalted in Taurus. In order to get that placement, we have to put it in the 8th house, which isn’t great, but we mitigate that somewhat by putting the midheaven at 11° of Cancer, so that the Moon is exactly sextile to the degree of the midheaven at 11° of Taurus. I can’t get it—you might be able to get it if you live in Europe or Asia. You might be able to catch the Moon applying to trine with Jupiter. But for people that live in the western hemisphere, the Moon is gonna be separating from a trine with Jupiter already by this point, and subsequently applying to a very wide, eventual square with Venus, which is fine. This is at the very middle of the Mercury retrograde phase, on the day that Mercury is cazimi.
KS: Oh, lovely.
CB: One of the interesting things about this chart is it’s Mercury retrograde, but it’s Mercury exactly conjunct the Sun rising over the ascendant at the time of the election, which is kind of nice. Other than that, that’s about it. Mars is sort of hidden out of the way in the 12th house. Unfortunately, Jupiter is also in the 12th house with Mars, but its 12th house placement is slightly mitigated again because it’s at 10° of Virgo. So it’s exactly sextile to the degree of the midheaven, which counteracts some of the negative things associated with planets being in a declining or cadent house. So this would be a good election for 11th house matters especially because of the focus on the ruler of the ascendant being in the 11th house, things like building alliances or groups or interactions with friends or even larger social movements. It has some additional features of things connected with other people’s money or other 8th house-type matters being positive and beneficial for the person who’s initiating the election, partially because Venus is ruling the 8th house as well. But also because the Moon is there, it’s the ruler of the 10th house, and it’s located in 8th, and it’s exalted and applying an exact aspect with Venus. Yeah, it’s a good 11th house, and, secondarily, 8th house-type election for any of you who want to focus on those two areas of life. What do you guys think about that chart?
KS: Juicy. Moon in Taurus aspecting the midheaven in Cancer is juicy. I think if someone was trying to get funding for a business opportunity that would be a nice chart to use.
AC: That’s a good insight.
CB: Definitely. Especially if it was something that you were doing with friends or something like that.
KS: Yeah, even better. I think the point too, which is something worth highlighting just for listeners, is that idea that a planet in a cadent house—particularly a planet in the 6th or 12th house—is really helped by an aspect to an angle or a planet that is in good condition outside of that house.
CB: Yeah, it’s just hugely, hugely important. This was a core interpretive principle in Hellenistic astrology. They would say, yes, the 6th and the 12th are the most difficult houses, and those do coincide with or signify some of the most difficult or even potentially negative things, but then there was always this statement that came after that, which was except if that planet is closely-configured to the degree of the midheaven and the IC, or if it’s closely-configured to a planet that’s angular in the 10th or 4th house. Then it can counteract the more negative significations of that house and you’ll see the more constructive side of the 6th or the 12th come out. And that works really well in elections, but it’s also something you can see really brilliantly in natal charts as well.
KS: Yes.
CB: I have a lot of examples in my Hellenistic course. Over and over again, the people that have cadent—or difficult house placements that have a configuration of that cadent house placement to the degree of the midheaven or to an angular planet—tend to be the people that run into problems, still. It’s not that they get away scot-free with that placement without any problems, but they tend to be the people that run into the issues but then are able to overcome it and in some instances even become stronger as a result of it, rather than just completely falling apart or allowing it to drag them down or being dragged down by that placement. Yeah, that’s a hugely important interpretive principle, and I use it frequently in electional charts.
KS: That’s a great tip.
CB: All right. Well, I’m trying to see—did we have any other major things—
KS: Eclipses.
CB: Eclipses, right.
KS: We forgot to talk about that.
CB: Yeah, we mentioned them very briefly, but I think we shelved them to come back to later.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So we’ve got two eclipses. We’ve got a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse taking place in September. Do one of you want to take that?
AC: Sure. Well, I think that these are very interesting because the solar eclipse is the first one that we’ll see in Virgo, and it kicks off a series, right? And then the lunar eclipse—which is in Aries—is the last eclipse we’re going to see in Aries for the better part of a decade, right? So we have a pairing here of a new cycle and an old cycle, right? It’s the last eclipse in Aries and the first eclipse in Virgo. And so, the solar eclipse in Virgo is off of the North Node. For the listeners who haven’t tracked this, the eclipses always occur within about 15° of one node or the other. And there’s a difference between an eclipse on the North Node than there is on the South Node, right? Although people say a lot of things about the North Node and the South Node, there are some very simple traditional principles which I think can help organize those many ideas. The North Node is more. The North Node is pro-manifestation. And the South Node is less. The South Node is about purification, letting go of things. The North Node is about investing, creating. It’s new. The two of course are somewhat imbalanced in and of themselves and that’s why they’re paired. In many ways, you can see the North Node as representing the Moon’s power of waxing, and the South Node can represent the Moon’s power of waning.
Now whenever you have an eclipse on the North Node, that’s a ‘more here’, right? And so, if it’s a lunar eclipse then it would be more on a lunar level. It’d be more about emotions and substance. But what we have in September is a solar eclipse off of the North Node, right? And so, what I see when there’s a solar eclipse on the North Node is that it speaks to the psyche, and it generally pushes people to prioritize whatever is going on in that area much more highly in their lives. Especially this being the first in a series. It’s like, no, this is actually much more important than you realize, and you’ve been kind of neglecting this area. Bring your attention here. Take all of your shits and give them to this. And so, that’s the beginning of something and that’s interesting not only in and of itself, but we have Jupiter in Virgo as well, and Jupiter will be making a series of conjunctions with that North Node in Virgo later this year and early next year. I could talk about the lunar eclipse too, but I feel like I’m hogging the mic here.
KS: You’re right, Austin. I was just thinking that. We’ve got an eclipse—the first one in Virgo—for this cycle, while we have Jupiter in Virgo. It’s on the North Node. So much about more, more, more, here, here, here. The only other thing I would throw in on the solar eclipse is that the ruler of the eclipse, Mercury, is in station at the time of the eclipse, just about to go retrograde. So there is this sort of sense of promise of new or more, but there might be some logistical snafus that just need to be managed along the way. I don’t think that Mercury in station is a reason perhaps not to move forward, but it just might mean take the time to read the fine print or finesse the details.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s perfect and the beginning of a phase where you’re going to be focusing on Virgo where you’re like, “Oh, I need more clarity and organization and data.”
KS: Yeah.
AC: That doesn’t generally begin with a satisfying level of clarity, organization, or data, right?
KS: No. It starts with the recognition there’s a lack of that, right?
AC: Yeah. Like, oh, this is a mess. Or this is a mess and getting worse, and I need to pay more attention here, and I think that Mercury station helps underline that.
CB: I’d also emphasize whatever house placement—whatever whole sign house that eclipse falls in, it’s gonna emphasize the topics associated with that house for a six-month period, for the next six months. I don’t know if this is an overly-modern take—maybe it is and this is what I picked up from modern astrology in my early studies—but the notion of the New Moons and Full Moon, just normal ones are starting something new and maybe bringing something to completion or something culminating each month, on a month-to-month basis, in different parts of the chart, in different houses. But then when you have an eclipse—because the eclipses only happen every six months—it almost opens up a six-month-long window for the topics associated with the house that the eclipse falls into become more prominent and become more important, almost like an exclamation mark in that part of your chart. I mean, is that how you guys see it? I’m not sure if that’s—
KS: Yeah, for sure. It definitely has a longer three- or a six-month window. Austin?
AC: Yeah, I think it’s valid. To a certain degree I see the eclipses as bringing nodal significations to bear, and the nodes stay in a pair of signs for about a year-and-a-half at a time. At the end of that six-month focus, you’re probably just gonna have another eclipse in the same sign.
CB: Right.
AC: It’ll be the opposite one, but that focus keeps getting re-upped for most of the nodes’ stay in a pair of signs. Although there’s a little bit of slippage because an eclipse can take place within 15° on either side of a node. But just saying that there are longer-term shifts, and that those New Moons and Full Moons which are eclipsed make statements or provide emphasis that won’t expire within a month, it’s part of a longer process. Whether that’s a six-month or a year-and-a-half-long process can maybe be discussed.
CB: Yeah, they pack more of a punch. Yeah, so the solar eclipse is September 13 at 20 Virgo and then the lunar eclipse is September 28 at 4° of Aries. And this is kind of tied into a cycle from six months ago that started with a solar eclipse, March 20, 2015 at 29° of Pisces and a lunar eclipse on April 4, 2015 that was at 14° of Libra. So for anybody that might have had any important events happening around that time, around those eclipses, and especially in those areas of their life or those houses, you might see a continuation or a fulfillment of some of the things that were initiated during those times coming to pass during these two upcoming eclipses, which are in the opposing houses. But even though they’re in the opposing houses—because they’re still on the same house axis—you’ll still see a continuation or sometimes a completion of similar themes. And then of course this eclipse series itself will be tied into another one in six months, the first of which is a solar eclipse at 18 Pisces on March 8, and then there’s a lunar eclipse on March 23 at 3° of Libra. So just viewing these as a continuum, sort of like you said, Austin, in terms of the nodes moving into those signs, suddenly you get a series of eclipses back and forth between those two signs over the course of a couple of years.
AC: Yeah. And so, this one’s really kind of ferrying us from the cycle we’ve been in to the next cycle, right? We’ve been South Node in Aries/North Node in Libra since February of last year and then we’re moving into Virgo/Pisces. And so, on a really simple level, South Node in Aries/North Node in Libra, less Mars, more Venus, right? Less all about you, more about coherence. And then this next cycle, which is Pisces to Virgo—or South Node in Pisces/North Node in Virgo—is clarity and organization perhaps at the cost of some flow or imagination. I see the nodes as being a readjustment or rebalancing of the equilibrium between a pair of signs. Both are heated up and there’s a definite directionality. It’s not that the nodes are the same, they do something different.
CB: Sure.
AC: And it’s not as simple as ‘do less, do more’. It doesn’t feel that way. Usually a lot of what it feels like is attention and a back-and-forth between those two areas, trying to get them balanced. What it tends to look like in retrospect is less of this and more of that.
CB: An expansion/contraction sort of dynamic.
AC: Yeah, yeah. A lot of times it has to do with how a person’s distributing the energy in their life and how they’re prioritizing things. I guess the solar level is the priorities and then the lunar level is what resources internal and external you’re actually investing in each area. For example, I currently have the South Node on top of my Mercury. Oh, woe is me, right? And I recently decided not to do a writing project. There was a writing project I was planning on doing that I realized I just didn’t have enough time and energy to do, right? And so, I’ve been trying to cut down on writing projects cause I tend to overcommit. But when the South Node actually hit my Mercury, I was like, “Oh, you know what? I don’t have time for this.” And so, that’s a ‘less’, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: The point is to get balanced, but the action is a letting go of something, at least for now.
KS: And I think that theme of ‘letting go’, that’s a great example, Austin, because the lunar eclipse at 4 Aries at the very end of September is quite tight or close to the South Node in Aries. So if 3 or 4 Aries is significant in your chart—for people listening, or if you know what house that is in your personal chart—think about that idea of stopping a writing project or something relevant to the house, because that South Node energy of release or an ending I think is gonna be really poignant at that lunar eclipse at the end of September.
AC: Yeah. One of the things I’ve seen with the Aries/Libra thing is people just running themselves too hard and needing to let go of some activity so that they can actually have some balance, or have some ease or leisure, all of which are connected with Libra. Cause Aries is go, go, go, right? It’s the ‘get it done no matter the cost and reap the glory’. And so, I’ve seen a lot of people who are heavily invested in Aries in their chart or have significant points of their chart in Aries kind of getting pulled on continually to slow it down a little bit and to not try to do so much, which of course they hate.
CB: Right.
KS: Until they burn out and have to stop.
AC: Right. Like me.
KS: Yeah.
CB: All right, well, I think that kind of brings us towards the end of the show in terms of the things that we had mentioned that we wanted to focus on. I mean, there’s a few other aspects of course. I don’t know if you guys want to touch on anything else that really stands out.
AC: I know that this is running long, but we really haven’t given Saturn in Sagittarius much attention.
KS: Haven’t talked about it at all.
CB: That’s true. It’s like the beginning of two years of Saturn in Sagittarius. Also, I don’t think we’ve given enough attention to Saturn in Scorpio, personally.
KS: Of course, Chris, of course. And one of the questions on the Facebook page was about 29° Scorpio or fixed signs.
CB: Yeah, Nicholas Polimenakos actually mentioned the question of Saturn at the very last degree of the sign. Do you guys have any thoughts about last-degree placements, which are sometimes given a lot of emphasis in certain schools?
KS: I only have a personal opinion. I have my Mars at 29 Aquarius, so I personally dislike planets at 29° of the fixed signs; I’ve blogged about it on my website. I always find that personally I’m on deadline, or I’m snowed under. And so, there’s always this sense of the Robert Frost poem that I quote on my website: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have got miles to go before I sleep.” And that is pretty much how I feel right now. I don’t know how to get to the middle of September with this damn Saturn at 29, but that is mostly a personal opinion. It’s different. I think we did touch on this last time.
AC: Kelly—
KS: Sorry, go, Austin.
AC: You know that poem in literary circles is usually regarded to be about suicide.
KS: Is it? I did not know that.
AC: That’s what ‘sleeping’ is.
KS: I did not know that.
AC: Which is an entirely valid feeling when Saturn squares your Mars by degree.
KS: I think that I would agree. I mean, I’m certainly not in that kind of a headspace. Yeah, I had no idea, Austin. I’m glad you pointed that out. But 29 Scorpio is the terms of Saturn in the Egyptian system, so Saturn kind of is happy there.
AC: Saturn’s happy.
CB: Sure. So there’s like a ‘saving grace’ perhaps, even though it’s otherwise not a sign where Saturn necessarily is strong or has a personal affinity with. But then you get to the last few degrees and Saturn perhaps has some greater comfort or ‘comfortability’ than normal.
AC: I think we shouldn’t confuse Saturn’s comfort and our own.
CB: Right.
KS: And that’s what I was gonna say. It’s the purest form of this idea of rewards and consequences. If you have knuckled down and done something of substance, or you have stuck to a schedule or a commitment while Saturn’s been in Scorpio, you will see the payoff over the next few weeks. But if you have ignored something, or you’ve only done a half-job, there may be some consequences, that Saturn says, “It’s time to pay up.”
CB: Yeah, that’s so important. I mean, so many people—like myself, but also a lot of other people in my little age group—are finishing up their Saturn returns and just having that final push. And it’s been interesting seeing that over the course of the summer with different clients and different people I know, just getting that final Saturn checking in one more time to see if you’ve got the point and if you’re gonna stick with the program, or if you need some sort of reminder of what happens when you don’t; just in terms of at least that placement for the people finishing up their Saturn returns, but also more broadly, just people with important fixed placements that are getting a transit of Saturn through that axis and hitting other fixed placements in their chart—whether they’re just in general or whether they’re at actually at the end of signs. Certainly, the people that have fixed placements at the very end of the signs, this is like the last, final culmination for them in some sense, and they’re getting the most acute phase of the Saturn transit right now, at the very tail-end of it. But it’s something that’s been building up for a long time, for two years now, ever since October of 2012, when Saturn first ingressed into Scorpio and the buildup began. Those people with Saturn at the very end of the sign get the final culmination of it right now in this last month or two of Saturn in Scorpio. So it’s like a lot of buildup and then a final culmination, and then it’s over very abruptly, starting September 15th or 16th, when Saturn moves into Sagittarius.
KS: Yeah, I think it’s 17th-18th. But, yeah, mid-month essentially, and then we’re onto something entirely different because then Saturn will be in Jupiter’s sign.
CB: Yes, Saturn in Sagittarius for two years, all the way through late 2017. Like December of 2017.
AC: Yeah, it’s like a week before the New Year.
KS: Yeah.
AC: It’s basically until 2018.
CB: One of the things that I love is that it dipped in. It didn’t do this with Saturn in Scorpio. So we didn’t get this nice little preview of what the next two or three years was gonna be about for the people that were looking forward to Saturn in Scorpio. But for the Saturn in Sagittarius people, you had this interesting thing where it dipped in for just a few months, between late December of 2014, when it first moved into Sagittarius, and then mid-June of 2015, when Saturn retrograded out. And there’s been a lot of client charts I’ve been seeing over the past few months where that Saturn transit’s gonna be important, and it’s either gonna be very constructive or very challenging, one way or another. They got a preview of what those themes are gonna be that are gonna emerge over the course of the next two years during that six-month period, between late December of last year and mid-June of this year. Some of those themes started coming up and a lot of it often had to do with whatever whole sign house Saturn ingressed into at that time. Sometimes it was very subtle, whereas for other people it was not subtle at all if they had early mutable sign placements. Like if they had Saturn at 4° of Sagittarius, then they had Saturn station retrograde right there in mid-March of 2015.
KS: Yes.
CB: So the ‘preview’ phase was very dramatic in some sense and very clear, whereas for other people it’s a little bit more subtle. For example, if they have Saturn or other mutable placements much later in that sign, it’s something that they may have just gotten an inkling of, but that’s gonna build up progressively over the course of the next couple of years before culminating. So I would recommend that everybody—whether you have Saturn in Sagittarius, or whether you have mutable placements or not—just pay attention to what whole sign house Saturn is ingressing into in your chart, because you’re gonna have a lot of Saturn themes and Saturn significations coming up with respect to the topics associated with that house in the next two years. And if you don’t know what that means, then just think about what was happening and any new developments that took place in your life between late December of last year and mid-June of this year. Especially if it was something where there were some new developments going on, but then suddenly that area of your life went quiet for a few months mysteriously this summer.
KS: Yeah, that’s perfect.
CB: Expect a recurrence of that and for that to come back, but a bit stronger and a bit more prominently or loudly over the next couple of years.
KS: Yeah, especially late September, October, and November 2015—that’s really the completion phase of Saturn in Sag for those early degrees. So for people who were perhaps triggered quite strongly in the first-half of 2015 with Saturn in early Sag, there is one final chapter, or the third act, if you like, of that story or that cycle, from mid-September until mid-November.
CB: Right. Because it never retrogrades back that early again. How far back does it get?
KS: So the next retrograde comes back to 9 Sag.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah, so if you have planets or a midheaven or ascendant between 0 and 4 Sag, you’re in the classic ‘three hit’ transit, which isn’t completing until we get to early November of 2015. If you have planets or chart points in mutable signs between 5° and 8°, you will have just the ‘one hit’ wonder version of the Saturn transit. So Saturn will station at 16 Sag in March of 2016 and come back just to 9. It’s interesting when you’re looking at that longer cycle to see how the retrogrades kind of break the sign into two or three different sections. For instance, with Saturn in Scorpio, if you did have planets at 28°-29° of Scorpio, you only really had that direct degree hit of the transit since November of 2014, if that’s clear for people. Prior to that, it was all the earlier degrees of Saturn in Scorpio that were being triggered.
CB: Right.
AC: So before we move on, I just wanted to say some general things about how Saturn in Sag contributes to this dynamic, this emerging dynamic that we’ve been outlining, which emphasizes the mutable signs, which emphasizes Neptune in Pisces, Jupiter in Virgo, the nodes soon enough in Pisces and Virgo, and the Saturn in Sag gives us a T-square by sign. And so, while Pisces and Virgo are arguing about large and small truths—data versus perception or gnosis; they’re sort of talking about epistemological methods and where philosophy and science begin and end—Saturn in Sag, I think a lot of people are going to experience it as, “Okay, so what are we going to do? We’ve got to get things done.”
KS: Yeah.
AC: Sagittarius is very goal-oriented and movement-oriented. It’s Jupiter-ruled, but it’s the Jupiter that lets you do things, right?
KS: It’s the ‘fire’ Jupiter.
AC: Right. It’s the life philosophy or the ideas that provide a context so that you can do your thing more efficiently. You can feel okay about yourself and you just go do it. And so, Saturn’s movement into Sagittarius and ongoing presence—people are gonna be going back and forth about details versus big picture and beliefs versus facts and all that. Because Pisces and Virgo are both yin or nocturnal signs, right? So they’re content to contemplate for a while and to argue, whereas Saturn in Sag is going to coincide with many people, “Well, whatever, I gotta just get this done. I’ve gotta go through this.” But it’s going to be a mandatory ‘going through’, there’s going to be the emergence of necessity. I haven’t solved this internal conflict or balanced these areas, but I can’t sit around doing that all the time, so I’m just gonna do it like this because it needs doing. There’s a certain restlessness and impatience that Saturn in Sag produces. And one thing I noticed during the initial phase of Saturn’s time in Sagittarius earlier this year is that while it was stimulated by conjunction with the Moon or whatever, there was a lot of stop-and-go. And that Sagittarius seems to be very connected with vehicles and movement, as I believe Patrick Watson’s study on it shows. There’s a lot of stop-and-go, right? Our pacing gets messed with or affected by Saturn in Sagittarius. Mandatory moving forward and then mandatory stopping. And so, I would expect that in terms of the flavor of Saturn in Sagittarius, in addition to whatever particular house position or aspects it makes.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yeah, that’s a great point.
CB: It’s interesting to me how oftentimes your approach, Austin, is much more sign-based, where I find myself resorting to the houses more in order to describe how it’s gonna work out for individual people. Although I realize the reason for that is because you write a column where you’re primarily focused on that as the reference point for making it accessible to people, whereas I’m more used to doing it in the perspective of just looking at a person’s chart.
AC: Yeah. And when I delineate for a client, I probably use the houses more than the signs, but I don’t have that for this discussion.
CB: Right, right.
AC: Just defaulting to the best tool that I have. Although signs are real and very interesting.
KS: Yeah. It’s a particular kind of Saturn because it’s the ‘Saturn in Sag’ version of Saturn regardless of the house that it’s triggering, I guess.
CB: Right.
AC: I think you’ll still get some of those effects, or some of the phenomenon with stop-and-go and messing with the pace of whatever that house is will change for a person.
CB: Sure.
KS: Beautiful. The only other very brief comment that I would make on Saturn in Sag is that there’s two distinct versions of Saturn in Sag this time around because we’ve got Jupiter in Virgo emphasizing the mutables in the first period. And then we have Jupiter in Libra starting in September 2016, and there’s a really interesting, if you like, friendliness or a type of a mutual reception between Jupiter in Libra and Saturn in Sag because of Jupiter being in the sign of Saturn’s exaltation—
AC: Oh, yeah, that’s a great point.
KS: —and Saturn being in Jupiter’s sign. Yeah, I’m really intrigued to see what might come of that friendliness or that sense of Jupiter and Saturn working together once we get Jupiter in Virgo next year.
AC: Yeah, I think that Jupiter in Virgo ruling Saturn in Sag is gonna be kind of difficult. So Saturn in Sag wants a functional viewpoint, goal, and reason for doing that. It wants a meaningful quest, right? And it’s Jupiter’s job to provide that to whatever planets are in Sagittarius. As we said, Jupiter in Virgo might be very helpful to Mercury, but is not so good at doing the core Jupiter thing, right? And so, we have this sort of trying to create motivation and meaning, which are key significations of Sagittarius, through piles of data and argumentation, which is Virgo’s modus operandi. And so, I think some people might find that they’re having a hard time knowing what to do, or feeling comfortable that they’re going in the right direction because they feel this really strong need to be doing it (Saturn in Sag), and they feel an obligation or a compulsion, but the ruler of that—which provides that motivation and meaning (Jupiter in Virgo)—might have a hard time providing adequate motivation and meaning.
CB: Totally, that makes sense. All right, well, I think we’ve run into the end of this discussion. I think there’s other things obviously we could go through and talk about, but maybe we’ll save those for another time. All right, well, this actually is the fourth episode for the month of August. So this actually wraps up the second month of doing four episodes a month after launching the Patreon campaign at the end of July. So it’s been a really successful—sorry, end of June. So it’s been a really successful couple of months. And I just wanted to thank both of you for doing these forecasting episodes with me and taking part in the “Sun Sign” episode, which was hugely popular, just a few weeks ago. But thanks also to all of our listeners and supporters for supporting the podcast and helping it to grow and expand and be able to do the episodes this frequently and this regularly.
Yeah, so thanks everyone for listening. We’re gonna keep expanding the show, and we’ll be back again next month with another four episodes, with one each week. If you want to continue to support the show, then just help us to promote it. Let people know about it. Definitely check out some of the things that we announced at the beginning of the show, such as the ‘rulers of the houses’ lecture that I’m selling, Kelly’s Saturn in Sagittarius ebook, which will be out very soon, and Austin’s online classes, such as his class on dignities that’s coming up. All right, well, thanks both of you, and we’ll see everyone next time.
KS: Thanks.
AC: All right, awesome.