The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 450, titled:
Astrology Forecast for June 2024
With Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock
Episode originally released on May 30, 2024
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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 Teresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released June 3rd, 2024
Copyright © 2024 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, I’m gonna be talking with astrologer Austin Coppock about the astrology of June 2024. Hey, Austin, thanks for joining me.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey Chris.
CB: Welcome back. So you’ve been away for a little bit. We’re gonna talk about that here in just a moment.
So in the first half of this episode, we’re gonna talk about astrology news stories that have come up over the past month and just some notes that I wrote down about different stories in the news and what their astrological correlations were. Then in the second half of the month, we’re gonna get into a deep dive into the astrology of June. So as always, there’ll be timestamps in the description below this episode either on the podcast website or below this video on YouTube if you wanna jump forward to the forecast section. But otherwise, before we get into the news, I wanna give just a quick overview of the astrology of June and then we’ll get into the news.
So here’s the planetary alignments calendar for June. Right at the top of the month, the first major alignment that we have is an outer planet alignment where the planet Jupiter, which has recently ingressed into Gemini, forms an exact trine with the planet Pluto, which is in early Aquarius, on June 2nd. Then the following day, the planet Mercury moves into Gemini, and there’s an entire stellium of four planets moving through Gemini during the first half of this month. Shortly after that, Mercury conjoins Jupiter on the 4th of June, and the same day, there’s a Sun-Venus conjunction, also known as a Venus cazimi, on June 4th. Then on the 6th, there’s a New Moon in the sign of Gemini. On the 9th, we have Mars finally departing from its month-long transit through Aries and ingressing into the sign of Taurus on the 9th. Then we have a Sun-Mercury conjunction or cazimi on the 14th of June. Mercury and Venus together depart from Gemini and move into Cancer on the same day on June 17th, and then that same day, they both form a conjunction. Then a few days later, we get the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere when the Sun moves into the sign of Cancer in the tropical zodiac on June 20th. The following day, we get our second lunation of the month, which is a Full Moon in the sign of Capricorn. And then finally at the very end of the month on June 29th, Saturn slows down in the sign of Pisces and stations retrograde while conjoining Neptune within about 10 degrees, and that is the final major astrological alignment to close out the month.
All right. So those are the major astrological alignments for June that we’re gonna be talking about later in this episode. Austin, welcome back. You’ve been gone for the past couple of month because you’ve had some major life events, and you welcomed a new member of your family.
AC: Yeah. Major life event/person. You know, there’s that toggle on charts, right, is it a person, is it an event. He’s been both a person and an event. And so yeah, Kait and I welcomed our son into the world between the eclipses. Lucien Coppock, he is perfect and beautiful, and I will hear nothing to the contrary.
CB: Right. That’s beautiful. Well, there was so much crazy astrology happening like, when you were gone, and it was amazing because it was all happening like, right when you’re welcoming Lucien into the world that, you know, some of the most significant astrology of the year was actually taking place.
AC: Yeah. And of course a lot of the like, big astrology hit my chart in five different ways, because you know, it’s a big thing. Like, any child coming into the world is a big deal for the parents, but you know, it looked like it might not happen for me if you met me 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Like, I’m 45 and I’m a first-time parent, so it’s not surprising that it took some big astrology to make it happen.
CB: Yeah. Well, there was so much funny astrology stuff like, huge momentous astrology stuff happening around the time that you gave birth that I was joking with you, I came up with like, a Game of Thrones name for Lucien. So let’s hear it – I’m still workshopping this, maybe people could help add or modify it, but this is what I got so far – Lucien Coppock, Bringer of Comets, Devourer of the Sun, Breaker of Bridges, Destroyer of Stars, First of his Name. Because we had like, the eclipses going on, there was a comet that showed up, the Mars-Saturn conjunction happened in Pisces and there’s an entire like, bridge that collapsed. There’s also a star that’s like, going supernova that’s about to be visible any time now. So there’s quite a bit going on; I’m sure there’s stuff I missed, but those were some of the highlights.
AC: Yeah. I would maybe add to that Perfect Angel Baby Pterodactyl.
CB: Okay. That’s good. I like that. I’ll work that in. If we could put that in Latin, it’ll actually have an even better ring to it. All right, so, well, congratulations to you and Kaitlin. Like, this is amazing and yeah, we look forward to seeing what happens as little Lucien grows up and yeah, we see some of those different astrology things play out in the future.
AC: Yeah. It’s wild. You know, it’s literally like falling in love for the first time, because it is falling in love. And also getting a full time job in a coal mine at exactly the same time.
CB: Right.
AC: So that’s the best short version of describing it. It’s also, you know, it’s my introduction to making my knowledge of astrology useful to raising a child rather than just making it more complicated and anxiety-producing.
CB: Right, and finding the balance between those two of not going to either extreme.
AC: Yeah. Well, it’s just figuring – yeah, like, you know, because that can – I’ve faced that challenge with myself. That’s literally what you’re doing with a client or somebody you’re reading for. Or looking at world events, right? How can this help me, how can astrology help me understand the world better so that I am better adapted to it, rather than just exacerbating all of my, you know, fears? Right? And anxieties. Like, that is – once you have a good enough astrology to start making real predictions, then you obtain the power to make your life worse if it is misapplied.
CB: Right. Yeah. With great knowledge comes great power. And then you’ve gotten to like, actually track his transits, like, in the short term, which has been a fun experience and like, a learning process in and of itself.
AC: Yeah. Well, and so some of these not-so-intense prophecies that I made shortly after his birth ended up being pretty useful. Just like, looking at where the malefics are, where the benefits are, and being like, “I think every month the Moon there is going to be a fussy baby day.” And now that we’ve gotten I guess two rounds or nearly around two go-arounds for the Moon, I’ve gotten to test my hypotheses, and fortunately-unfortunately, I’m correct. Because, I mean, the experiential difference between easy baby day and fussy baby day is huge. It’s a significant amount of life energy and satisfaction. And so at least, yeah, cranky baby day – like, knowing, having a good indicator at least with the Moon as to when the cranky baby days are coming and when we’re probably in the clear.
CB: Maybe that can be your followup book to the republishing of the decans book can be the fussy baby book or something like that.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Fussy baby transits.
AC: Yeah. So there’s sort of like, 29-and-a-half baby days, I don’t know.
CB: Right. It’ll be the thing that will replace Planets in Transit for our generation, like what Rob Hand’s Planets in Transit was for the previous generation, like, your baby transit book will be for us.
AC: Yeah. I’m sure my child would love that, you know, once they grow up and can read.
CB: Right.
AC: Really. But yeah. No, I mean it’s – there’s a lot to say, there’s a lot… It’s a lot of new experiences. And it’s a lot of – every – so, I’m gonna say a lot of cliche new parents things. One, I’ve learned that everything everybody ever told me about being a parent was right. Like, all the cliches are true. And one thing I’m finding is just that everything feels new. Like, I went to NORWAC and did some speaking, which I’ve done an awful lot of, but it was sort of like, but can I do this now? I feel like I went through this irrevocable change and am changed, and so coming back to normal things is like doing them – it’s not the first time, but it feels like a much longer gap than it’s actually been.
CB: Yeah. Well, you went through truly like a whole eclipse portal and like, went in one person and then emerged a different person on the other side.
AC: Yeah. And they were some big transits. Just like, one of them – so within a couple weeks of Lucien being born, Saturn conjoined my natal Sun by degree, and that’s part of the Sun – excuse me, that’s part of the Saturn-opposite-Saturn transit that everybody gets, you know, in their mid-40s, but because I have Sun opposite Saturn, that Sun conjoined my natal Saturn. And so I was really struck with the like, profound duty and responsibility that having a child is. And so when I was talking to people, parents and whatnot, they were like, “Oh my god, are you so full of love?” It’s like, “Yes, but I’m so full of duty right now.” Like, you don’t know how – I didn’t know a person could be so filled with duty.
CB: Both literally and metaphorically.
AC: Well, I was covered with doody —
CB: Right, yeah.
AC: — and filled with duty at the same time.
CB: Exactly. All right. Sorry about that; I had to take that opportunity.
AC: It was – well, I mean, it was – and you’ll see Saturn… You know, Saturn in a lot of older texts is like, being dirty or doing dirty jobs, right?
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah, but in my skills as a private sanitation consultant and assistant is pretty good. It’s improved rapidly.
CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s amazing, also, that you were born in eclipse season, and then you —
AC: Yeah.
CB: — you know, had your first child during eclipse season. So there’s a great additional demonstration of that principle I’ve been really emphasizing over the past year of just like, people born at the time of eclipses, important stuff tends to happen in their life at the time of eclipses as well, like, really important life turning points. So —
AC: Yeah. Absolutely.
CB: Yeah. That’s cool. All right, well, congratulations. Welcome back. A lot of astrology and like, world events happened since you’ve been gone. The astrology’s been crazy. Literal, you know, the bridge collapse I don’t know if you were here for that with the Mars-Saturn conjunction. Also on the day of the Mars-Saturn conjunction, the EPA issued like, limits for forever chemicals. You know, the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction happened and there were these huge protests. Everything was very literal, and yeah, and pretty like, straightforward.
AC: Yeah, I heard – you know, you texted me about the bridge thing, which was pretty exciting. Because I thought Mars-Saturn in Pisces would do bad water things and disrupt trade.
CB: Right.
AC: And so I’ve heard the loudest explosions that have happened in the world, but yeah, and it’s been strange to not be constantly watching things and like, building my sort of model of astrology in the world in my head every day, because I haven’t had room. It’s been interesting to come back after so much has happened.
CB: Right. Well, we’ll look back on some of that here as we go into the news section, so let’s transition into that. So these news stories just represent a collection of notes that I took this month when I noticed an interesting astrological correlation with a news story. So this is not meant to be comprehensive treatment of the news; that’s not possible. It just represents some notes that I took of sort of interesting observations this month when I did see a notable astrological correlation with something.
So one of the big stories that happened this month is that there were these solar storms, these really intense solar storms happened where it was the biggest solar storms in 21 years around May 10th through the 13th, and it created these brilliant auroras that could be viewed in all sorts of different places around the world much further south than you can usually view these auroras in the sky. And it was due to these big coronal mass ejections that were taking place from the Sun that were causing severe geomagnetic storms. So one of the things that was really cool from an astrological standpoint is that this was actually happening as the Sun in Taurus was coming into a conjunction with Uranus and with Jupiter in Taurus. So it was actually activating the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. And I thought that was really brilliant both symbolically just from an astrological standpoint since these were causing storms that were also sometimes interfering with electronics and satellites and things like that and that’s so notable because astrologers have associated Uranus for the past century or so with electricity and related things. But it also got me thinking about how just, you know, Jupiter is the most massive body in the solar system besides the Sun. And sometimes what happens when those two bodies line up, and if there could be any sort of like, causal connection in terms of astrology. Like, I’m so used to thinking of astrology in terms of working through symbolic means like omens or signs, but that you know, perhaps there could be some interesting causal things that we don’t study or think about as much.
AC: Because they actually do have gravity and giant electromagnetic fields and, right? Like, if you looked at the solar system from a distance, you would have seen Uranus, Jupiter, and the Sun and the earth in all one line, which seems like something – well, is something that’s physically real as well as being real on several other levels.
CB: Yeah, exactly. So here’s the chart for that. Just to go to your point, so the Sun – here’s May 10th early on, and the Sun was at 20 degrees of Taurus and Uranus was at 22 degrees of Taurus. So it was just like, perfectly over that few day period coming into alignment with Uranus, and then Jupiter was still very close to Uranus. So it was incredibly striking thing, and then you were just seeing these pictures from all over the world of these beautiful auroras that were taking place and that people were sending in. If you go to like, Wikipedia, there’s an entry for it that has just a ton of these different beautiful pictures of the effect that it was having on the atmosphere and creating these beautiful sights like, all over the world.
AC: Yeah. I remember someone texted me, and they were like, “Can you see the aurora?” And I was like, “No, I live in southern Oregon.” Because I wasn’t tracking with any of this, because you know, we don’t get a lot of auroras in southern Oregon, but I didn’t know that all of this was happening. And then I was disappointed, because we didn’t get any. But people further south than us did.
CB: Right. Yeah. Well, if people in the comments saw, let us know in the YouTube comments if you saw the auroras and like, where you’re located or how far south you are, because I’m kind of curious how far down it did get in different places. Yeah, so that was just a beautiful, astronomical event that a lot of people experienced at the same time in a year where there’s a weird number of like, striking astronomical events that are happening out of nowhere that like, lots of people are witnessing at the same time.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. So that was one of the major events that happened. Let’s see. Another major news story that happened was the death of the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash on May 19th, 2024. And the Iranian state media says that this was due to bad weather conditions, due to heavy fog and things as they were flying through the mountains. So what was interesting about this astrologically is that this happened the day that Mars was conjoining the North Node in Aries, and it was actually a day that we specifically singled out in our last forecast and focused on because we saw that that very same day, the Moon would move through Libra and would exactly oppose Mars at the same time, which is basically what happened at that point. And in the forums, people had posted the chart – Vandana Gyan actually posted the chart for the first report, and it had the Moon almost exactly opposing Mars at that time. So it was a really striking instance of that that also referred back a little bit to the eclipses previously, but that was – you saw that news story, right?
AC: Yeah, that I was tracking because I was just aware of that as a configuration, and I was like, ew, that’s ugly. I think the day before that, I was just like, ooh, Moon-Mars on the nodes isn’t great. And so that day had gone reasonably well, and I was up at night, taking a night shift with Lucien, and then up on my YouTube popped up a like, you know, “Iranian president dead,” like, “several members of the senior staff died in helicopter accident.” I was, “Holy shit.” It was like, so that was okay for me, but it definitely did something.
And it’s a good illustration of how the combination of Mars and the dragon’s head can be especially difficult. Because with the nodes and especially the North Node, we’re looking at the power of obscuration or not being able to see, which is – not being able to perceive clearly, because that’s what happens during eclipses, right? Like, that’s – you and I were talking about how I believe Valens refers to them as eclipsing points sometimes, which is what they are, and if you get lost with the symbolism, return to that, because that’s where it comes from. And so, you know, flying through the mountains in helicopters is inherently perilous but not usually deadly, but when you add that obscuration, you get a level of difficulty that multiplies the danger. And as I understand it, there were three helicopters that were all flying, and when the one that ended up being in a lethal crash sort of disappeared from visibility, the other two tried to circle and find it, but were one, unable to do so visually, and because of the ambient weather, like, they couldn’t for the safety of their occupants spend any more time. And so you have that, you know, it’s not just – where you have the danger of the mountains, you have the storm, and you have the obscurity. And so you don’t get lethality without that synergy.
CB: Right. Yeah. And some of the obscurity at the time was also like, was this an accident or was this some sort of deliberate sabotage of some sort, and the —
AC: Right.
CB: — ambiguity surrounding that given everything that’s been happening over the past month where, you know, Israel and Iran had open warfare, basically —
AC: Right!
CB: — the previous month as well as assassinations between the two country during eclipse season. And that was something that we said in the last forecast episode about when we started talking about this Mars transit through Aries and especially when we talked about that conjunction with the North Node, is just that because the North Node is the eclipsing point and because Mars is moving through the sign where the great solar eclipse just occurred the previous month, that it would tie back into events that occurred around the time of that eclipse. So that was one of the things that was fascinating about it is it really did, and it raised some interesting things to me about how the North Node really is the eclipsing point but can refer back to things that occurred whenever the last eclipse was prior to that in the same sign. So —
AC: Which – I’ll let you finish. Go ahead.
CB: So that clearly happened here in terms of Iran was one of the big worldwide things that happened a month ago during the eclipses when Israel assassinated some Iranian generals at a consulate and then Iran retaliated and for the first time around the time of the eclipses shot missiles and drones directly from their own territory at Israel, because all previous interactions had been like, proxy wars or proxy attacks through other intermediaries and not direct, and that was the big thing that I drew from that in the last forecast episode about what happened in eclipse season. So it’s like, Iran then came up again when the North Node was conjoined by Mars, but then also within 24 hours the other thing I noted was that the international criminal court issued a statement accusing the leaders of Israel and Hamas of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and they issued arrest warrants for basically like, the leaders of both Israel as well as Hamas. So that again referred back to some of the stuff that had happened under the previous eclipses, both the ones in late March and April, but also going back to the previous eclipses when everything started back in October. And I think that was all tied in with the Mars conjunction with the North Node in this really striking way.
AC: Yeah. And so several follow up points – one, that reactivation of the eclipse points tying into events that happened around the eclipse, you know, that’s what’s suggested by these older texts that say, you know, the solar eclipse will stay active for x, six months or depending on whatever, but this is – it marks those degrees, and it’s going to be active for a while. And Mars in Aries can certainly reactivate whatever.
Another observation about just the Aries-ness of it – there seems to be a theme with these Aries eclipses, especially with the, you know, Rahu, North Node in Aries, that hostilities that were maybe in some way indirect are becoming quite direct, which is sort of astro 101 with Aries. Right? We don’t say, “Well, Aries people, they really mince words; they’re passive-aggressive. They might be mad at you, but you’d never know it.” Quite the opposite, right? Like, there were hostilities, but the hostilities became – took a step further into being completely overt.
And I’m remember now us talking about the nodes and therefore the eclipses in Aries and Libra I think last year, and one of the topics was Aries being the sign of the Sun’s exaltation, meaning that we’re going to be getting the Sun in its exaltation eclipsed, that this would probably be bad for leaders. Right? And I think that assassinations and sudden death for leaders – I think assassinations are bad for leaders. It’s specifically violence targeted towards leadership. And then also you said the leaders of Hamas and then Netanyahu being targeted not for assassination, but for global moral opprobrium is also bad for leaders.
CB: Yeah.
AC: There was – sorry, there’s one thing as well that happened recently that I think ties into that, and I didn’t know what this tied into until I started talking with you about it, is that there’s been a huge shakeup in Russian military leadership over the last several weeks. Which it was just a thing that I noticed that I saw news stories about, but I didn’t have anything astrological to say. But if we’re looking at a thing that seems – a set of eclipses that seems to target leadership, that seems connected, especially if it’s targeting leadership in a Mars-ruled sign. Right? Military leadership getting replaced rather dramatically.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Well, and it was – you know, the North Node is also traditionally in medieval astrology the head of the dragon, and it was interesting that it was directed towards like, the heads of three different countries, of Israel, of Palestine, and Iran, that the head of the organization of all three of those countries received some sort of negative thing almost all at once in the same 24-hour period. So that was striking, and then also of course many of those leaders are born at the time of eclipses, so that’s the other thing that sort of ties them in with it and has tied them in with some of these recent eclipses where it’s like, Netanyahu’s born the day of an eclipse. The Supreme Leader of Iran was born the day of an Aries eclipse. And even some of the leaders of Hamas were born around the time of eclipses as well. So that’s like, tying everything together, and now we can really see and know and we’ll have to track how sometimes exact transits to the nodes on the specific day can refer back to events that originated at the time of the eclipse that preceded that. So that opens up a whole new world of things to study in the future.
AC: Yeah. It does. Especially dramatic things like the Mars.
CB: Yeah, for sure. So and there’s all sorts of other terrible things happening and just continued things in terms of that, but those were the main things that I just noticed astrologically that were so dead-on in terms of having a specific date that I really wanted to highlight for the purpose of this.
AC: Yeah. It really makes a lot – it clarifies a lot of ideas and principles and just gives you sort of exactly… You know, sometimes astrology just gives you clockwork events. Right? It’s not always that easy, but sometimes it’s that clear, especially if you know what you’re looking for.
CB: Yeah. For sure. All right. Moving onto other news. One of the biggest like, social media and like, cultural or pop astrology things that occurred was the rap battle of the century took place over the course of the past month between the rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar. And I don’t have like, a super-extensive take on this, but I did notice some actually really striking astrology that I wanted to share that was also tied in with the eclipses.
So for those that weren’t following it, these two rappers ended up releasing a series of like, diss tracks, basically, against each other between late March and early May, which ended up pretty nicely getting started under eclipse season. And the precursor to the entire rap battle was when Kendrick took a shot at Drake in a verse in a song titled, “Like That” that dropped on March 22nd, which is just two days before a lunar eclipse in Libra, which is actually Kendrick’s rising sign, because Kendrick’s actually a Libra rising. So he had an eclipse in his first house, and then he does something significant that would mark a turning point in terms of his life and career.
So the eclipse was tied in for Kendrick there. For Drake, what was interesting is that Drake was actually born right after an eclipse in Aries, and it was just after the big Aries eclipse that occurred last month that the rap battle really started when the track “Push Ups” was leaked on April 13th, which of course is just days after the huge American eclipse that everybody witnessed across the United States and North America. So you can sort of just like, think about that – he was born under an Aries eclipse and then he basically initiates this battle with Kenrick, which both of them will now become known for, under an Aries eclipse. So it’s another one of the same things that we were seeing like, with your chart.
AC: Yeah. And so I was only peripherally aware of this, but when somebody pointed it out… So that started with Mercury retrograde in Aries while we also have the eclipse in Aries, and then it continued well into the Mars joining the fray in Aries, right?
CB: Yeah. That really heated things up and turned it much more intense and much more personal and kind of vicious. So here’s Drake’s chart. And you can see he has a Sun in Scorpio, and his Moon’s in Cancer, but just a little bit before that, you can see in the readout he was born… There was an eclipse on October 17th, 1986 – a lunar eclipse in Aries. So that was just like, a week before he was born, basically. So again, this just like, goes to show —
AC: So that’s his prenatal lunation?
CB: Yeah, exactly.
AC: Right. Yeah, one of the other thoughts that I had when that was pointed out to me and I heard, again, just some stuff people – it appears to me that some people were tracking that very carefully in astrology land and otherwise and doing the blow-by-blow, but what struck me was, again, just the Mars-Rahu, so – or Mars-dragon’s head, Mars-North Node, is that same obscurity which I talked about earlier which for the helicopter crash is a storm and fog, what you see relationally is that the nodes, especially the North Node, when it’s combined with Mars, people – you get conflicts that cross the line, because the participants can’t see the line. So it looks like going too far, too personal. Yeah, like, the rules of engagement for a civilized duel get forgotten in the obscuring heat of battle. And that’s something you just see on a personal level with Mars-Rahu stuff.
CB: Sure. Yeah, for sure. So let’s see. Other notes. Drake released the track “Taylor Made Freestyle” on April 19th, and that was the one that had like, an AI version of Tupac and of Snoop which he used just to like, digitally recreate them and then to like, attempt to use them in a diss against Kendrick. But Mercury was retrograde and it was conjoining Venus exactly that day, and he ended up having to take that track down as a result of like, copyright issues from I think the family of Tupac, who like, threatened to sue him. So that was an interesting Mercury retrograde piece. The only other two interesting astrology things I had to note was one, it was really interesting to see Kendrick’s Mercury-Mars conjunction in the 10th house come out in this battle. Let me share his chart.
So Kendrick has Libra rising, and he has Mercury at 16 degrees of Cancer conjunct Mars at 17 degrees of Cancer in the 10th whole sign house. And it was really interesting to see that come out more fully and be activated in this one singular event. Because prior to this, he wasn’t really known as like, a battle rapper, but instead more of somebody that often focuses on like, social issues and is more conscientious in different ways. But now, this one exchange where he just absolutely kind of like, demolished this other guy has now become a key moment in his life, almost like a singular moment where the power of that conjunction is really striking and notable and everyone will always remember this event where he got into this rap battle with this opponent of his and then kind of landed a kind of crushing blow that almost sort of like, ended the battle. And I think that Mercury-Mars conjunction really came out. Because he’s always been known as like, a lyricist and one of the most talented and gifted lyricists not just of his generation, but potentially ever in terms of rap, which always matched very well with especially his Sun and Venus in Gemini. But this Mercury-Mars conjunction really brought out like, a different part, and it stamped this event as like, a core part of his legacy now.
AC: Yeah, well, just from a transit perspective, you have so much stuff reinforcing that Jupiter in Aries. Right? Like, the capacity for battle. And that Mars and Jupiter have some very nice mutual reception as well. And as you pointed out, like, he’s got the North Node there; this is a nodal return for him.
CB: Right. For sure. Yeah. Jupiter overcoming and bonifying those planets there in the 10th house is really helpful in terms of again making him good at what he does and one of the things that everyone now knows that he can do is if he wants to be, he can be really cutting and yeah, can very effectively like, do that part of being a rapper as well in addition to the other parts which he had already established his legacy on.
AC: Yeah. That’s really interesting.
CB: So the only other part that I wanted to mention astrologically that I noticed was just, you know, Drake is Leo rising and he has a Scorpio stellium in the 4th whole sign house. And since he’s Leo rising, having the Sun in the 4th house means the ruler of his Ascendant’s in the 4th house, which represents the home and the living situation. And one of the striking things that actually happened in this battle that I thought was interesting and fitting in terms of that placement is just a picture of his house literally became the album cover for what will probably be one of the most notorious diss tracks of all time. So seeing that manifest in just like, a very literal way with him having all those 4th house planets was also very striking just from an astrological standpoint.
AC: Right. If you’re going to attack him where he lives, then look for the house where the ruler of the Ascendant is.
CB: Right. And it’s like, he already —
AC: Which in the 4th is literally where he lives. Right? Some of us live in the 9th or the 4th or the 7th or whatever, but like, that’s appropriate targeting.
CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s just good demonstration that yeah, if you’ve got a lot of planets in a certain place in the chart, then that area is gonna become prominent at some point. And even if it’s like, a 4th house thing, sometimes that also can become prominent. He’d already been known for having this just, house, this really lavish house that cost I think over like, a hundred million dollars to construct and was like, a pretty big deal. But now having it on an album cover and not necessarily in a good way is another striking sort of event that activated all those placements.
So that’s all I got for the astrology of that. I know there’s like, way more I could go into. There’s lots of other things that other people have noticed online. So people can check Twitter especially for more takes on that, but those are some of the main things that I noticed.
All right. Other news. May 13th, OpenAI released a new version of their popular ChatGPT AI app where it has more voice features, and it also has real-time translation from one language to another. And I thought this was really striking because it was right before Jupiter went into the sign of Gemini, which is one of the signs really associated with communication and with languages and also with like, fluency in different languages or the ability to translate from one language to another. And all of a sudden, with Jupiter now in Gemini, all language barriers are just being demolished suddenly. So it was a really striking example of Jupiter going into Gemini and then also there was a controversy surrounding it at the same time, because as soon as the demo came out, I immediately noticed it, which was like – that sounds exactly like Scarlett Johansson’s voice from the movie Her, which was a movie about like, a guy falling in love with an AI voice assistant that came out like, a decade again, and Scarlett Johansson played the voice of the disembodied AI that became like, the love interest of the lead character. And I noticed it right away, and I thought it was really striking that they had used her voice or imitated her voice for the purpose of this since they were obviously mimicking that film from 10 years ago, but then she came out about a week later saying that they had approached her asking to license her voice, and she declined. But then she said that they went ahead and basically just created a version of it anyways, or created a voice that sounded so close to hers that she said that they were like, basically ripping her off, and I thought that was interesting as well in terms of the shift of the planets into Gemini and now some like, controversy surrounding that but also raising some questions about some of these AI companies and their sort of ethics, basically, and how they deal with ethical issues and that not necessarily being, not really being a good instance that’s like, gonna give people a lot of faith that they’re gonna act ethically in the future.
AC: Oh, that’s really interesting, because didn’t you just say that one of the earlier events that happened with the Drake thing is he released a song where he had cloned someone’s voice or had AI replicate someone’s voice without permission – Tupac, right?
CB: Right.
AC: And so, and I also had coincidentally watched a television program where that was just a side joke, but there was somebody – an actor was complaining about having sold his voice to a robot and then having to be around this robot that spoke like him and how unendurable that is. And that’s – this is, we’re very much in Gemini territory, right? Because with Gemini, we have the quick symbol of the twins. What that looks like is often like, replicating or doubling. And so when that replicating or doubling is like, somebody for example replicates your book and sells it but not under your name, like, that’s Gemini, but that’s theft. And then if somebody tries to replicate various significators of your identity, that is identity theft. And the not-so-wholesome side of Mercury and Gemini is that, is theft, right? But theft through imitation.
CB: Right.
AC: So I think that might be a theme, especially when we have our Mars in Gemini later this summer.
CB: Yeah. That also reminds me of just some of the stories of like, Hermes in like, Greek mythology and like, the trickiness surrounding Hermes and also theft being one of the significations of Mercury.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, and sometimes theft – you know, when we think like, the sort of quick definition of theft or you know, like, taking something from somebody else, but that like, replicating or simulating someone or something else in order to extract from them is very common with lots of different kinds of theft. Right? Yeah, like the conman pretends to be – replicates somebody else, like, masquerades as somebody else, meaning they’re doubling all those features. And so yeah, those qualities of imitation and the action of theft go hand-in-hand really easily. And we did have —
CB: Yeah.
AC: — we had Mars-Mercury earlier and then we’ll have Mars in a Mercury-ruled sign later, so yeah. Interesting patterns forming here.
CB: For sure. And then also the Saturn-Neptune conjunction getting closer and closer and just the blurring of what’s real and what’s not real, and we’ll see an intensification of that later in June. But that’s also part of what’s happening here as we’ve been seeing with all the like, AI-generated artwork and AI-generated video and now people using this in order to recreate people’s likeness in something that you couldn’t tell the difference between that not being real versus, you know, something that was real – that’s very Saturn-Neptune.
There was one positive manifestation of this that I did write down, which was on May 5th, I saw a story saying that the country singer Randy Travis just released his first new song in over a decade because a stroke had left him unable to speak or to sing, and so the singer used AI to recreate his voice from past recordings. So this was actually kind of a positive example of AI’s potential to unlock new possibilities or allow in some instances somebody who’s become disabled to still be able to profit off their own image and likeness in a way that you could argue is more constructive or permissible or ethical, because —
AC: Or wholesome.
CB: Sure, yeah.
AC: Yeah, like, replacing – like, being able to replicate something valuable that was otherwise lost.
CB: Right. Exactly. So it’s like, we’re gonna get both sides of that coin here as we move further and further into the Saturn-Neptune conjunction and the blurring between reality and what’s not real as well as Jupiter moving through Gemini and just intensifying the trine with Pluto and intensifying some of the themes surrounding communications, artificial intelligence, language, and different things like that.
AC: Yeah. It’s interesting, and I guess we’re gonna do some of this later, but it is interesting to think that the blurring gets much more intense. Because it’s been blurry, and is blurry, and you know, we can isolate when the Saturn-Neptune height of blurriness happens, and we’ve still got a ways to go.
CB: Yeah, for sure. All right. There was only two other little minor news stories and they were more connected with the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction because they were happening in late April and early May while that conjunction was still very close at the end of Taurus. One of them is that on April 30th, it was announced that marijuana’s finally gonna be reclassified in the United States to be a lower level drug because for decades now it’s been classified as one of the hardest drugs, like, up there with heroin and cocaine and stuff like that, which has always been a really absurd thing in the US that everyone had always pointed out the absurdity of.
But finally now it seems like some of the restrictions on that are lessening. It’s already been legalized in some states like Colorado, for example, or California, but now it seems like it’s moving in the direction of some sort of national lessening of those restrictions. And I thought that was an interesting example of Jupiter conjunct Uranus in Taurus, because one of the things about Taurus is its connection with like, plants, and with the ecosystem, but also potentially with medicinal things that come from the earth that are sort of like, natural medicinal things is one of the themes that I was picking up on.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s – the reclassification finally happening but all of a sudden gives it that Uranus quality. Again, you have the earthy, Venusian, plant-based thing. Another thing that that brings to mind is just Neptune in Pisces, because since Neptune went into PIsces, a lot more things have become legal, especially drug things in the United States, and almost all of that has been on a state-by-state basis. And so, you know, a question I’ve asked myself is, like, okay, does marijuana become federally legal or decriminalized or less criminalized before the end of Neptune in Pisces? Because we don’t have that much more left, and it has some things to do, and Neptune was in a nice sextile with Jupiter-Uranus. And so we have agreement between those two agendas.
CB: For sure.
AC: Planetary agendas, as it were.
CB: Yeah. And that actually reminds me – there were some things related to that also with like, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were all of a sudden, while Juptier and Uranus were still together at the end of Taurus, both the US approved an ETF so that people can invest in the second most popular cryptocurrency, which is called Ethereum, but also recently Trump came out pledging full support of cryptocurrencies basically, and now it’s become a political issue this year that we’re gonna see expand over the course of the next few months is both candidates trying to either fully embrace cryptocurrencies in the first presidential election ever, or at least moderate their stances against it, because previously democrats had been much more pro-regulation of cryptocurrencies or against cryptocurrencies, which has now increasingly become an unpopular position.
AC: Right. So the like, positioning relative to cryptocurrency now has political meaning in a way that it really didn’t used to.
CB: Yeah. I actually realized this past month that that’s actually one of the things that 2024 is gonna be remembered by is when – it’s gonna be remembered for the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus and that the Bitcoin ETF and the Ethereum ETF were approved, which in really simple terms means that all of a sudden, people can now invest in cryptocurrencies through the stock market and specifically they can invest in it through their retirement funds now. And so now there’s huge amounts of major companies and like, banks and other financial institutions that are buying up cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin and stuff like that, which is making the price skyrocket over the past several months. I think that’s gonna be one of the main things 2024 is remembered for in retrospect is the year that institutions, especially in the US, finally let up and started embracing cryptocurrencies as a sort of acceptable or inevitable thing. And we’ll see an acceleration of that this summer, especially when Pluto retrogrades back into Capricorn and then Uranus in Taurus comes up and trines it and makes a pretty close trine with it as one of the final things that’ll happen with respect to that Pluto transit through Capricorn, which really started the entire cryptocurrency process, because Bitcoin was founded shortly after Pluto went into Capricorn in the 2009 timeframe.
AC: Yeah, that’s interesting. There’s also the Uranus in Taurus time frame. Because Uranus in Taurus wasn’t when Bitcoin was invented, but it was when it became a non-niche interest. And in my research on Uranus in Taurus, you know, at the – what was it? 2018 – you know, one of the things I found consistently was like, significant, how should we say, reorganization of financial and banking things, and that it happened in different ways, different times, like, is a currency backed by a precious metal? What is it backed by? And that’s been part of the question with cryptocurrency is like, well, what is backed by? Which is what any currency needs, right? Like, the dollar is backed by the most powerful military on earth. Right? That’s in a – and the productive power of the American people and the natural resources, but like, what are things backed by? And you know I haven’t followed cryptocurrency closely, but you know, what I said back then, which is looking good, was just that the like, we see what it means by the time Uranus is done with Taurus. And so it’s interesting to see that like, we’re – 2024 is the last year that Uranus is only in Taurus. This is the last full year of Uranus in Taurus, and as you and I were talking about, that hit from Jupiter is sort of the most support that Uranus is going to get for the rest of the time in Taurus. Like, that was good for Uranus in Taurus things like strikes, labor movement stuff, protests, also cryptocurrency, that’s interesting. Even – I was telling you when I was looking over the events of the last month where the Jupiter-Uranus was still very strong – apparently there was even a labor strike at the Vatican museum. And I’d bet there have not been a lot of strikes against unfair working conditions at the Vatican museum. And there were —
CB: That’s incredible.
AC: — others as well. Yeah, that it stood out. That’s also the Jupiter, you get like, a religious thing. But I thought that was worth noting.
CB: Yeah. That’s a really good one. Yeah. There was an eruption; it was like, so much of that in like, different parts of the world, and some of it was visible and like, on the news and prominent. But some of it, you know, was easy to overlook or that you didn’t even hear about.
AC: Yeah. The times where I like, really fine-toothed it internationally, you know, we weren’t wrong about what kind of things were happening and when. But there were so many specific manifestations of that that we just didn’t hear about in sort of the surface of English language media.
CB: For sure. One last point about currencies, actually, that I just discovered recently or came up and I was working on was way back – there’s like, a group of countries called the BRICS Countries or BRICS Organization that are moving to attempt to move away from the dollar as like, the primary means of trade. And one of the things I was looking at recently is that they’ve been wanting to potentially create a new currency, and they announced earlier this year that this new currency may be partially connected to a cryptocurrency that would be backed up or possibly tied in with gold. So I looked into this, and it turns out that they first started having these discussions around the year 2009, which was also around the time that Pluto went into Capricorn and that Bitcoin was also created at that time, or cryptocurrencies in general were created. So there was something that started back then, and this could be another thing to pay attention to this year in terms of Pluto making its last pass through Capricorn is something related to this and this attempt by these different countries that includes – the core countries were like, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, but then they recently added I think Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates who are trying to basically move the world away from relying on the US dollar to, you know, relying on some other currencies. So it’ll be interesting to see if there isn’t some sort of additional final turning point with that that, you know, pushes things further in that direction over the next year once we get —
AC: Or puts a nail in the coffin of the project, because that – I know that project has disappointed observers for quite some time with how effective it’s been at that. But like, you know, because that’s what those endpoints do is like, you get, you’re like, “Okay, this worked,” or like, “This didn’t work, and even if we have the same goals, it needs to be done in a different way.” And another interesting thing —
CB: Yeah, well I don’t think – I mean, if I had to make a bet, I think it would go the other direction, because I think those countries now have even more motivation to attempt to push for that. Especially Russia does, but even other countries like China, of not having to rely on the US due to sanctions over the past few years due to war. So I would – we could like, place bets on it, but I would push —
AC: Oh, no, I would refuse. I’m just —
CB: Okay.
AC: — saying like, when you get those end of the cycles, you get measurable like, yeses and nos. And so us coming up on that makes a lot of sense. I would add another thing about the timing. The 2008-09 was also Saturn in Virgo opposite Uranus, but just on a simple Saturn cycle level, we’re at exactly the opposite Saturn point. It’s one half Saturn cycle away from that, and as you said, the clearest planetary indicator is that – or, excuse me, is Pluto in a Saturn-ruled sign. And so exactly half a Saturn cycle later is interesting.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. And then also, of course, using the US Sibley chart which has Sagittarius rising, of course, Capricorn is the second house of the United States’ birth chart. So it’s also interesting that just this broader question about, you know, the United States has benefited tremendously by having the dollar as the main world reserve currency and currency for trade. But obviously, that would be a major hit if there was the ability – if other countries were able to band together and create an alternative to that that took off. Like, that would kind of make sense as a potential not-good transit in the US like, second house birth chart if you’re looking for something like that.
AC: Oh, it’d be huge.
CB: Right.
AC: It’d be gigantic. Absolutely.
CB: Yeah. So things to pay attention to. The next BRICS meeting, I think, is actually in October in Russia, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes of that around the time of like, eclipse season.
All right. So I think those are all – oh no, sorry, there’s one last —
AC: We have one terribly important story.
CB: This one? Or —
AC: Red Lobster.
CB: Okay. Yeah. I spaced that out; you’re right. We should have put that at the top of the show. You found this one. This is a brilliant story. Set it up.
AC: Yeah. So it was recently announced that Red Lobster, which is a popular American seafood restaurant, has finally had to file for Chapter 11 or bankruptcy protection. And so, you know, that’s funny, and there were all these stories going around that it was because – the reason they had to file for bankruptcy was because they were giving away too many shrimp, and that the all-you-can-eat shrimp was the, you know, was the spear that pierced the heart of Red Lobster financially. Which I thought was funny, and then it was actually right before the show today where it occurred to me that this is Saturn in Pisces again. Saturn in Pisces, right, we need – it’s been demonstrated abundantly that it either shows us hostile sealife or bad things happening to boats, and so in this case, you know, it was a seafood restaurant, and what is the sort of the cliche Saturn lesson? Right? It’s like, well, you need to learn to set appropriate limits. And so it was not setting appropriate shrimp limits was the story about how that happened. And even though it was announced while Mars was in Aries, the last month before that when no doubt there were very tense conversations happened between Red Lobster executives, was the Mars-Saturn conjunction in Pisces.
CB: Nice.
AC: Like, “The shrimp is killing us.”
CB: Right. The downfall of Red Lobster with Saturn transiting through Pisces – that’s brilliant.
AC: Yeah. The harpoon right through the heart.
CB: Right. Very literal. That’s really continually striking to me how literal everything is. You know, when we got into this like, 10 years ago doing the forecasts, I assumed you would have to talk much more metaphorically about some of these transits, much more psychologically, but no. Like, sometimes it’s literally just Saturn goes through the sign of the fish, and the downfall of Red Lobster, of one of the most famous seafood restaurants in the United States, basically.
AC: Yeah, I don’t know of a larger seafood chain.
CB: Right.
AC: I hear the cheddar biscuits were a favorite. I’m not – I kind of hate seafood, so I refuse to do the cannibalism as a Pisces. So I couldn’t share any fond memories at the funeral at Red Lobster, but I’m sure —
CB: Okay.
AC: — someone could.
CB: All right. Yeah. Well, one person’s bad transit is another sign’s good transit and vice versa. I think that’s important. That’s the most important lesson that we’re learning here today.
AC: Yeah. Thank you, Red Lobster.
CB: Yeah. All right. One last news story. This connects with something I noticed last month that happened on the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction where there was that Declaration of Animal Consciousness that was put out by a group of I think 40 academics after a conference on animal consciousness. And a bunch of people sent me this story that came up in the news just days later, which was still very close to the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. And it was a story about an orangutan was spotted in the wild using a medicinal plant to treat a wound on its face and to heal an injury, basically. And the main takeaway from this was basically that they said that the behavior suggested that self-medication is not unique to humans, and that other species may also possess knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants. It also, they said, provided valuable insights into the evolutionary origins of wound care and highlights the importance of protecting the habitats of these intelligent and resourceful creatures. So I thought that was really interesting because it was tied in with both on the one hand the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus and this broader question about consciousness at this point and potentially more broadly in humanity like, re-evaluating the level of consciousness that non-human animals and creatures have and the broader discussion that’s going on about that right now. But also interestingly, the issue surrounding like, medicinal plants is like, another Taurus thing as a sort of technology, which weirdly then even though it doesn’t seem like it should be connected, ties back in with the marijuana like, rescheduling and —
AC: Yeah.
CB: — sort of precursor to legalization at some point.
AC: Yeah, like a greater understanding and appreciation for the power and intelligence of the natural world and the like, the complex relationships within it and between us and it, and the like, shocking power contained within plants. You know, for various purposes. But that is really interesting, right, because tool use has been seen or documented by, you know, scientific institutions for quite some time, but it’s usually really instrumental. Like, using a stick to do a thing, but understanding that a substance has a subtle power within it, an occult virtue, is sort of a new level for what’s being documented.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And it just raises that broader point that Diana actually made on the last forecast episode is that the real evaluation of animal consciousness is the other side of the coin of the discussion that’s already happening on the other side with artificial intelligence and the question of like, is machine consciousness of some sort possible, and what will be human’s relationship to that if it’s not treated as the same as human consciousness? Will there still be a point at some point where we have to evaluate the level of consciousness and if it has to be raised above what humans are normally accustomed to treating different sentient entities like? And that’s a really interesting thing that’ll be an ongoing discussion, I think, especially as Pluto continues to transit through Aquarius.
AC: Oh yeah. It’ll definitely be a topic.
CB: Yeah. All right. Well, I think that’s it for the news for now. Why don’t we transition into talking about the forecast for June? First, I wanna take a little break.
All right, so before we jump into the forecast, first I wanted to mention our sponsors for this month, and our sponsor’s actually me for this month, because I’m actually running a discount on the Hellenistic astrology course this month where you can get a 15% discount on it by using the promo code ‘MERCURY’ when you purchase the course.
So the Hellenistic astrology course is an online course in ancient astrology where I teach people how to read birth charts using ancient methods. And this is basically the course where I teach people how to read birth charts like I do, taking them from basic concepts all the way up through intermediate and advanced techniques. So as a result of that, it’s suitable for both beginner, intermediate, and advanced students of astrology, because there’s kind of something for everyone. So the course is divided into 13 parts where I take people from those basic concepts up through advanced ones, and there’s more than a hundred hours of video lectures in the course in total, and I’m always adding new lectures to it all the time so that the course offerings continue to expand, but people get grandfathered in, basically, and continue to receive new updates.
So one of the reasons I’m running a sale on it right now is because I’m excited to start a new group of students this summer because I’ve started doing a live series of chart readings where every month we’re doing a live webinar where we sit down and I look at the charts of students and we apply some of the techniques learned in the course, and we do specific workshops on certain techniques. So last month, we did a workshop on the rulers of the houses in different houses, and I took different examples from the audience live and talked through their birth charts in order to talk about good examples of how that placement works out in practice. So this month, we’re doing a workshop on the ruler of the Ascendant where I’m similarly gonna read the charts of different students in the course and use them as examples to demonstrate how the technique works out in practice.
So the course is really amazing. If you have my book and you like my book, you’ll really enjoy the course, because I actually go into way more detail in the course than I was able to in the book, especially in terms of example charts and demonstrating how the techniques actually work in practice. Just because, like, in the zodiacal releasing chapter, for example, I was only able to include maybe what was it? Like, five or 10 charts. But the full zodiacal releasing section of the course, I include just dozens and dozens of case studies and examples, and really go into the technique in detail in order to show you how to apply it in practice. And I actually recently uploaded a new demonstration of a zodiacal releasing chart consultation that I did recently, which is now something you can watch as part of the course to learn how I actually apply the technique in consultations.
So yeah, the course has flexible participation requirements so you can adapt it to your own schedule. I pretty much never run – I do not remember running a discount on the course any time in the past several years, so this is actually a very rare opportunity, just because I’d like to start a new group of students this summer while I’m doing these workshops. So take advantage of it by using the promo code ‘MERCURY’ to get that 15% discount, and you can find out more information or sign up at TheAstrologySchool.com.
AC: Awesome. And, you know, you covered the features pretty well, but I just wanted to add that it’s really nice that you’re doing live stuff with people now, because, you know, that relationship between – how should we say – relationship isn’t the right word. But having both live stuff and recorded stuff and a book, like, being able to engage with the material in all of those ways is so wildly and deeply complementary, and I think it’s so good for people’s learning process.
CB: Yeah. I mean, most of the course I wanted to design it because everyone has different schedules and different time frames, so I wanted to make it flexible so that the core lectures people can log in and watch at any time and kind of adapt it to their schedule since we all have busy lives and can’t be available all the time for live webinars. But then doing this webinar series has been really helpful because then you do get that live component of sitting down and like, talking with me directly over Zoom about your chart in some instances with certain students and actually being able to talk to people about their lives is much different than just presenting a celebrity chart example, because then you can ask them questions and you can draw out points that sometimes they themselves don’t understand about their own chart or their own life. But that once you get the outside perspective from an objective observer, you get a much different understanding of your chart and also how to apply the techniques, which is really valuable.
AC: Yeah, it’s so good. Well, and you have – what, you have nearly 20 hours just on ZR, right?
CB: Yeah, it was based on – I did this OPA retreat where I took a group of 10 students for an intensive that lasted for three days years ago, and then I took that three-day workshop afterwards and I re-recorded it and created a new 18-hour workshop, basically, on zodiacal releasing. And that’s the kind of like, crowning achievement of the entire course, because everything builds up to that advanced timing technique and learning how to use it. But there’s so many other prerequisite techniques and concepts that you have to learn first before you get there, but that’s where everything fully comes together in that, you know, in what I think is the most impressive or my favorite time lord technique from the ancient traditions.
AC: Yeah, I mean, I’ve explored a lot of techniques, and I like a lot of them. Maybe I see some getting to the level of ZR, but I can’t think of one in either my Hellenistic or Vedic or medieval explorations that can even remotely claim to be better. Like, it’s as good as astrology techniques get.
CB: Yeah, for sure. All right. So people can use the promo code ‘MERCURY’ again to get a 15% discount. It’s just gonna be running through this month only. And you can use it at TheAstrologySchool.com.
All right. What do you have going on this month, my friend?
AC: Well, at some point before the end of the month, I’m going to put up the lectures and the workshop I did at NORWAC for sale on my website. I did a five hour workshop on The Celestial Medicine of Marsilio Ficino, and yeah, it’s basically a sort of survey exploration big dip into Ficino from the remedial and astromagical point of view. For anybody who’s familiar with Ficino, there’s a lot of Ficino that you can’t cover quickly, and you know, he has an important place in the history of philosophy, and there are other Ficinos, but is really my attempt to extract, introduce, and explore the astrological Ficino as a master of Saturnian remedies and really as an astrological magician with a lot of hot takes and a sort of critique in dialogue with The Picatrix. So there’s that, and then I did a talk that’s just strict nerd stuff about planetary strength, looking at the Shadbala or the six strengths measurement that’s standard in Vedic astrology and comparing and contrasting that with how we’re evaluating planetary fitness in Hellenistic astrology. And then my third talk is a love letter to the extremely Saturnian, where I explore the Saturn Mahapurusha yoga, which in short is just people whose whole lives revolve around Saturn. And I explore that through the figures of Marsilio Ficino and Frederich Nietzsche. And so those will be up soon. As far as Sphere and Sundry goes, we are going to be releasing a decanic series for the first time by the end of the month, and I would also recommend, if people haven’t yet, check out the Moon in Taurus with Jupiter bonus points series that came out a few months ago. It’s really good; all the reviews will convince you if the election doesn’t convince you. So if you missed that, like, by all means, treat yourself.
CB: Nice. So and that’s at SphereAndSundry.com, and then your lectures are gonna be available at your personal website, which is AustinCoppock.com?
AC: Absolutely.
CB: Nice. All right. I’ll put a link to your website in the description below this video so people can click on that for more information or on the podcast website in the entry for this episode for your links as well as for mine.
AC: Thank you.
CB: Alright. Why don’t we transition into talking about the astrology of June at this point and really get into the deep dive? So let me put up a chart for just June 1st to situate where the planets are and what things are looking like at the top of the month. So this is June 1st, about one PM. All right. Let’s orient things. Where are we at at the top of June? I mean, I think the big thing is we’re really moving into that entire Gemini stellium, and that’s one of the dominant themes at the beginning of the month, especially once Mercury ingresses into Gemini on the 2nd and 3rd. Then we’ve got four planets moving through the sign of Gemini for the entirety of the first half of the month. So that shift from all the Taurus stuff to the Gemini stuff this month is one of the most, I think, characteristic things of the early part of June.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. And this is really the last month of 2024 where we have these truly massive stelliums giving us almost a single sign theme for a good chunk of the month, because we had big Capricorn stellium, big Aquarius, big Pisces. Less big but still quite meaningful Aries, and then Taurus, and then we’re finally getting done with this, you know, everyone in the same pool, three or four planets at a time all operating through the same sign method. And so it’s interesting. It’s interesting for a lot of reasons. One, it’s because it’s the last time it’s happened this year, which has been the whole year up to this point, and two, it’s Gemini. Right? And this one, like, this stellium involves the Sun, and Mercury, and Venus, but it also involves a Jupiter which just changed signs a few days ago. And so it’s still fresh coming into June, because Jupiter is a yearly ingress. You know, the first week or two or even the first month, we’re just learning about it, and like, not only are we getting used to Jupiter doing a new thing, we have to get used to the fact that Jupiter’s not doing what it’s been doing for the last year. Right? Which we oh-so-quickly come to take for granted.
CB: Yeah. I think, and what’s crazy is right out of the gate, Jupiter trines Pluto so we have an intensification of both, so some of the meaning of the transit of Jupiter through Gemini is gonna become its most intense like, right at the beginning of the month when that happens. And I think especially that Jupiter trine Pluto, which goes exact on the 2nd, should expand and accelerate some of the technological developments related to communications, to artificial intelligence, and also to travel.
One of the things I noticed, one of the news stories I noticed, is that there’s gonna be a space ship that’s being launched on the 1st of June where Boeing’s much delayed starliner spacecraft which was supposed to launch last month, like three weeks ago, but there was a leak and the launch got scrapped, it’s been moved to June 1st where they’re launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida. And if it’s successful, it’s gonna open up – it’s partially like, a rival to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, but in terms of transporting people into space and eventually even the potential for like, space tourism or travel or things like that.
AC: You can tell they don’t have an astrologer, because if they could just wait one day, they would get Mercury in Gemini with Jupiter.
CB: Yeah, I mean, it’s —
AC: Boeing’s timing has not been good lately.
CB: It’s not a —
AC: If anybody – oh, go ahead.
CB: I didn’t think it was a terrible chart, though. Like, I was, I think if I’m remembering correctly, yeah, it has… Here, let me show the chart. It has Virgo rising. Like, the Ascendant – if it’s on time – will have just switched over to Virgo, and so Mercury will actually be in the 9th house conjunct the Midheaven and conjunct Uranus. And you know, having the ruler of the Ascendant in the 9th house, the place of long-distance travel or foreign travel for a spaceship launch is actually pretty fitting, for one. And then having all of that other, the benefics in the 10th house is not bad either, so maybe this one will be successful.
AC: Yeah, maybe. I’m just saying, you know. If you were like, I don’t know, we’re gonna do it this week, you’d be like, well, let’s get Mercury in Gemini.
CB: Yeah, that’s true. And that’s actually our – to your point, that’s my election for this month. Maybe I should actually mention that right now, because —
AC: Yeah. Because we always forget it?
CB: We always forget – I’ll forget it to the very end of the episode otherwise.
Okay so, this is the electional astrology chart for June of this month, where this is the best and most auspicious date I could find for starting different types of ventures and undertakings using the principles of electional astrology. So the chart is set for June 3rd, 2024, at about 12:05 PM in Denver, Colorado, for me, but you can set it to the same time. So set it to 12:05 PM in your location and then adjust the Ascendant until you have about what I have here, which is early Virgo rising, and put the degree of the Midheaven on Mercury at zero degrees or one degree of Gemini. So what you’ll end up with is this chart with Virgo rising and the ruler of the Ascendant, which is the most important planet in the electional chart in some ways, will be at the very beginning of Gemini applying to a conjunction with Jupiter, which is at two degrees of Gemini by that point in a day chart.
So in this chart, you make the ruler of the Ascendant not only in its own sign having Mercury in Gemini, also placing it in the 10th house of career, reputation, work, and the public, but also applying to the most positive or more benefic planet in the chart, which is Jupiter at two degrees of Gemini. It also takes advantage of that nice trine with Pluto, which is at one degree of Aquarius, so that you’re taking some of the best things from the Jupiter-Pluto trine, especially in terms of communications and technology and baking those into the chart. And then finally, it also takes advantage of the fact that this is very close to the Venus cazimi that’s happening this month on the 4th where the Sun and Venus are going to conjoin in the middle of Gemini, which is another highly auspicious placement and transit that’s taking place at the beginning of the month that you’ll be able to use and bake right into your electional chart.
So the last thing about the chart is it has the Moon exalted in the sign of Taurus in the 9th whole sign house, and it’s applying to a sextile with Saturn in Pisces. So this is a very 10th house election. It’s very good for career-focused matters, for career, reputation, public life. It’s also very good for Gemini and Mercury-related things, which have to do with like, communication, travel to some extent, translation, writing, speaking, and other mercurial things. You almost couldn’t get a better Mercury-related electional chart, and that’s why we’ve highlighted it this month for this election on June 3rd.
AC: Yeah, Mercury’s in really nice condition. And it’s worth noting that even though Mercury is in Gemini for the next several weeks, it is quickly disappearing from visibility. This is, you know, this is the last couple days you’re actually going to be able to see Mercury rise, and so —
CB: Yeah.
AC: Get it while it’s hot? Or visible? Get it while it’s visible – it’s not a very good slogan, but it’s sometimes an important thing to do.
CB: Yeah. It’ll disappear from visibility, eventually it’ll apply to square Saturn once it gets closer to the middle of Gemini, and pretty much not long after this date, Mercury separates from Jupiter. So it’s a very small window that you can catch that Mercury-Jupiter conjunction which is so auspicious for communication, so definitely take advantage of it, because this is definitely one of the better electional charts of this year, and things get kind of dicey like, later in the year with the Mars retrograde and other transits going on that get a little bit tense and harder to find really good elections for during months later in 2024.
So that is the electional chart. That’s the primary electional chart that we’re recommending for June, but there’s actually lots of other great electional charts that we found that we just presented in our electional astrology podcast that was just released a few days ago where I think we presented at least 10 other electional charts at different points in the month or that you can also use for starting different things. So that’s one of the benefits of becoming a patron of The Astrology Podcast is getting access to that private electional astrology podcast. So you can find out more information about that at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.
AC: Nice —
CB: All right.
AC: Yeah. I’ll just add that, yeah, there’s a lot to work with electionally this month in a way that hasn’t been true for a while and then won’t be true again for a while.
CB: Yeah, it’s really been raising – this month and the later part of last month with some of the Taurus elections have really raised the principle to me of like, of collecting or harvesting things while you can. What is that saying? There’s like, some saying about that. But basically like, get while the getting is good, because —
AC: Yeah, or strike while the iron is hot. Make hay while the Sun shines.
CB: Yeah, I think that’s it. And that’s such a good analogy, because the Sun really is shining right now, and it’s a great time to plant seeds that will grow and flourish later on, whereas there’s other times this year astrologically as well as just more broadly metaphorically, if you try to plant seeds in the winter, you know, it’s not gonna grow as well as if you plant in the spring. So this is kind of a pretty close analogy to that this year in terms of the astrology when the good elections are; they’re happening during the first half of this month.
AC: Yeah, and it’s really nice to catch Jupiter shortly after an ingress into a sign, because you know, it’s inherent – the beginning of a year of Jupiter in a sign is inherently hopeful, because you’re seeing new possibilities. Right? You’re not like, three quarters of the way through it and it kind of worked out and it kind of didn’t, and you just wanna get this thing done before it’s over. Like, it’s really – like, there’s that like, expansion of possibilities with the ingress is a really nice thing to capture for something that you want to grow.
CB: Definitely. Especially compared to this summer which we’ll talk about here in a little bit when Jupiter moves into the middle of Gemini and starts squaring Saturn, that expansive quality is gonna get seriously suppressed and contracted and is gonna have much more tensions, whereas those tensions are not as prominent now with Jupiter at the beginning of the sign.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. In the live chat, James says, “Gather your rosebuds while you may.” I think that’s a good one.
AC: That’s nice. So we’ve got like, the Venus, Sun, and Mars version of the saying.
CB: Exactly.
AC: Like, strike while the iron is hot, hay while the Sun shines, and then gather your rosebuds while you may for Venus.
CB: Exactly. All right. So let’s move onto other astrology stuff. At the beginning of the month is definitely the lightest and most positive part of the month with the Jupiter trine Pluto. Do you have anything else you wanted to mention just about Jupiter trine Pluto in isolation?
AC: Yeah, I would say that it’s great for Pluto. It may be – Jupiter will get some benefit, some not, it depends how much Jupiter wants to do Pluto things. But it’s an unambiguous good for what Pluto in Aquarius is trying to do. So I don’t know if you wanna write sci-fi horror, that’s a good influence. Or if you’re, I don’t know, making some of this new – working on one of these new generation of machines that have fascinating and terrifying possibilities – like, it’s good for all of that stuff. These like, potentially – these things that have a big potential to significantly change or transform the way something works. And so it’s great for all of that stuff.
CB: Yeah. Especially once Mercury goes into Gemini on the 3rd. I just think the pace of some of these new technological developments when it comes to communications is really gonna pick up. We’re gonna start to see, you know, the ability to – that was such a great metaphor with being able to translate from one language to another using a voice AI and just the different possibilities and different barriers to things like communication or language suddenly being broken down, because that’s one of the things that Jupiter does is it removes restrictions, and it sometimes can liberate you from things that were holding you back. And for some people, you know, language or the ability to communicate or talk to somebody else due to a barrier of language, having that removed, I think it’s hard to overstate like, the liberating feeling of that as well as just how it will open up so many more possibilities over the course of the next year as Jupiter is transiting through that sign.
AC: Yeah. There’s a lot of good there. Yeah. I mean, I’m just reminded of the internet and how it’s amazing, but being able to hear what everybody’s thinking all the time is not an unambiguous good. And like, that’s part of the nature of Gemini and Mercury, right? And so like, is Mercury a benefic or a malefic? Like, yes. Definitely. And, you know, in the sort of Vedic standard like in Parashara, Mercury tends to be a good. Right? Like, is often counted among the benefics, except when, you know, 20 different extremely common things happen where Mercury’s not a benefic. And I think I’m willing to go with tending towards the good, because it – I mean, Mercury and especially on the Gemini side, it’s fun, it’s light, it’s expanding your ideas and thoughts. It’s great to have conversations. It’s clever. We’re figuring out how to do new things. And all of that can go sour and does, but is it 50/50, right? Is Mercury completely undecided whether it’s helpful or baneful, or does it at least tend towards the good? And at least while Jupiter’s in Gemini, I’m gonna go with Parashara and say that Mercury tends towards the good. And all these mercurial things will at least tend towards the good.
CB: Yeah. I like that. So communications is a big area. Vandana in the live chat mentions social media, which is another good one, which is a very Gemini or mercurial type thing. Another area that I could see for expansion would be travel is another Mercury in Gemini related thing, and I definitely expect over the next year to see some major developments and expansions when it comes to travel, especially with the Pluto trine in connection with AI. So one of those I talked about on the forecast last month was these electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, which are like drones that people get in and fly around, which eventually will be autonomous, and seeing that really come into the public consciousness over the next year I would expect to happen, and it’ll be interesting to see if there’s anything related to that that happens this month as this stellium is moving through Gemini in terms of travel.
There’s also gonna be some new developments with, you know, cars that are driving autonomously and that becoming more common or more prominent would make sense in terms of this emphasis on Gemini and also the connection with Aquarius, which is bringing in the AI component.
What else? There’s other travel – and the other one, of course, is like, the spaceflight one, which is another wild card in terms of travel that’s being expanded at this time as well, especially if that space shuttle launch is successful.
AC: Yeah, definitely. All this stuff. And some of it, like, some of it is new and some of these are technologies that have been around for a while, but they haven’t been used for things that they could be used for, right? Like, and sometimes there’s a new thing that makes something that’s been around for a while efficient and like, a marked, efficient thing for the first time. Right? Like, VTOL is not a new thing, but like, when combined with this, this, and this, like, now it’s ready to go. Or like, now this is ready to go. And that’s part of the like, Gemini mercurial thing; there is inventiveness, but part of the inventiveness is I can take these three things that already exist and make a superior tool for the job or make something new for this precise implementation which makes it faster and more efficient.
CB: Yeah, that’s a great point. And that sometimes the emergence of a new technology only results from a confluence of previous technologies that come together or that somebody deliberately combines at a specific point that has unintended growth side effects.
AC: Yeah, like there’s a synergy that nobody noticed before. Right? Like, because peanut butter and jelly both existed before someone put them together in a sandwich.
CB: Totally. That was probably one of the best, that was probably a good Jupiter transit. What would that be? That would be like, a Jupiter in Cancer transit, I feel like.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Not quite so technological, although you know, jelly doesn’t make itself. There’s actually a method. Peanut butter’s easier to make.
CB: Right.
AC: Just one thing I would add to that from a personal or on an individual basis is like, what can Jupiter ofer you in Gemini? And helping you find the words, which is important for written communication to have the impact you hope, to be able to communicate more clearly what you’re trying to say but also the spoken word as well. You know, being able to find the words, having a larger, how should we say, a larger more powerful, expanding your personal search engine within your brain so you can find the right words to articulate what you’re trying to say is a big thing. And that might be, that will be a theme for some people with their Jupiter in Gemini transit.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really great point. And doing a lot – when we talked about Gemini earlier this year with Britten LaRue on the “Unshaming the Signs of the Zodiac” episode, she talked about how with Gemini one of her key concepts is just it’s okay to read like, a little bit of a lot of different books and then like, move on to the next one or something like that. That you don’t have to fully master something in its entirety throughout like, 100% in order to gain something valuable from it. And sometimes there’s something to be said for dipping your toe in the water and getting a sense for one thing and then moving onto the next. And this month has that kind of energy of, you know, moving around and having that almost like, social butterfly sort of like quality. But for all of us, with both benefics – with Jupiter having ingressed into Gemini and Venus making its cazimi very early in the months – I think that in general a lot of us, whether we have day charts or night charts, are just gonna be experiencing positive stabilizing sort of growth and development transits in the Gemini sectors of our charts this month, especially in the first week or two. And I think that’ll be just experienced as very pleasant and enjoyable.
AC: As a Gemini Moon which rules my Ascendant, I would add stimulating to pleasant. And then just one more follow up on we were saying about, you know, growth in that area and quick learning. Quick learning enough about a thing rather than dedicating oneself to specialization.
CB: Right.
AC: So Jupiter is in the sign of Mercury, in its detriment. But if we’re doing essential dignity, we need to do all of the essential dignity. And so in that first part of Gemini, Jupiter is the ruler of the decan and it has a bound there, and it is the triplicity ruler. And so if we’re doing like, point systems, it’s actually got a shitload of power. That is the technical readout, according to Al-Biruni.
CB: That’s what Dorotheus says.
AC: Yeah, that’s what Dorotheus says. And —
CB: Right.
AC: I know somebody, I married somebody who has Jupiter there, and Kait is so quick on the uptake with like, learning enough about a thing to get good at it and do it quick. It really is great for that like, yeah, it’s like – especially early, Jupiter in Gemini understands the 80-20 rule. Right? Where it takes as much effort to learn 80% of the thing as it does to – excuse me, as it does to learn the remaining 20% or the remaining 20% takes 10 years; the first 80% takes, you know, one year. And so there’s like, an efficiency of mental effort where like, unless you know, you’re going to be doing the one thing for 25 years, you need to know enough to do what you need to do with it. Rather than, you know, pretending or shaming oneself or feeling guilty for not being a 20-year expert on every single thing.
CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and that sometimes I’ve grown to appreciate that, because it’s a little bit different because like, Scorpio and Gemini are, you know, inconjunct signs, and with Scorpio, I sometimes have the tendency to wanna go in deep and get to the bottom of something and not just to have a surface level understanding of things but to try to truly sit with it and master something before moving on. But you can’t always do that, and sometimes you really have to pick your things to focus on, and sometimes it’s okay to just like, learn 20% of something so that you’re proficient in it and then move on to the next thing and find a balance between those two things. So I think this month we’ll be focusing more on that 20% of things and enjoying lots of different things in some specific area of our life that is the Gemini part of our chart.
AC: Yeah. Exploration, curiosity, encountering new ideas and ways of doing things. Like, there will probably be a lot of like, oh, well, that’s a better way to do that, and just picking that up and moving on. Right? Rather than like, I am going to sit and study this, you know, for at least six months. Because sometimes you just bump into a better way of doing something that you’re already doing. It’s like, oh, that’s clever; why didn’t I think of that?
CB: Yeah, exactly. So tied in with that, another very positive transit and a very notable transit that happens at the beginning of the month on the 4th of June is that the Sun and Venus form an exact conjunction, which is also known as a Venus cazimi, when Venus plunges into the heart of the Sun. So this marks the end of one synodic cycle for Venus and the beginning of another, one cycle with the Sun, which will mark a new epoch for things like relationships or themes related to equality as well as more broadly, I think, the position of women in society in general. And I found actually an interesting news story that right at the beginning of the month, Mexico is actually hosting its national elections, and the two primary leading candidates in the Mexican presidential election are both women. So basically, at the beginning of the month, coinciding with the Venus cazimi, mexico’s probably gonna elect its first woman president, which I think is really striking both as a transit of Venus in general, but it’s also really striking if you think about just the history of Meso-American astrology that goes back hundreds and thousands of years, which has always been very much centered around the Venus synodic cycle which includes the retrograde periods but also the conjunctions with the Sun. And in fact, that’s what some of the stuff surrounding like, 2012 was back —
AC: Oh yeah.
CB: — in 2012 is it was actually tied in with I think a conjunction in Gemini at the time.
AC: Yeah, it’s all Venus math. Yeah, that’s a great set of points. And yeah, what a nice thing. And so here’s a question. So like, in setting the synodic cycle of Venus, right, is it the – do you treat the superior conjunction where Venus is on the other side of the Sun – this one – as the major cycle setting, or the inferior conjunction, which is when Venus is retrograde between us and the Sun, or do you treat each as being able to sort of tell you about the next nine months? Because I tried to sort of decide between them because they’re both so powerful, and now I just sort of treat them as splitting the total cycle, where this Venus-Sun conjunction in Gemini is going to set the tone until we get the next Sun-Venus conjunction, which will be the retrograde one in, I believe, April of 2025.
CB: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s definitely relevant that there’s little starts, there’s little beginnings and then little culminations or endings on either side of those cycles, and then it builds up to bigger and bigger ones sometimes until eventually you get to the fact that this conjunction that’s happening this month in June of 2024 is a repetition of a conjunction that happened eight years ago in June of, what is that? 2016? But also the halfway point between those was a retrograde conjunction in June of 2020. So and therein I found actually two interesting repetitions. So one of them was, you know, Venus’s general connection with women in ancient astrology and in the Western astrological tradition, and eight years ago when Venus made this conjunction last time, you know, I just mentioned how the first woman is gonna be elected president of Mexico under this conjunction. Well, eight years ago, we almost had that in the US, because in June of 2016 was when Hillary Clinton got enough votes or delegates in order to become the first woman nominee of a major political party in the United States and therefore have the best chance at becoming the first woman president in US history. So there’s —
AC: Yeah, who was maybe gonna do that eight years before that in 2008.
CB: Oh, that’s a great point. Yeah. But then lost to Obama at that point. Yeah, that’s a really good —
AC: Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, I really – all this talk of Venus and moisture attendant to the planet, I really need to put water in my eyes.
CB: Okay. Yeah. Eyedrops?
AC: Apologies for the introduction.
CB: So, that’s an interesting point, though, in terms of this repetition that sometimes it has to do with like, women or the place of women in society in general or women progressively taking steps towards achieving greater equality with men in different parts of the world around the time of these conjunctions. So I think that’s one theme that we’re looking at with this conjunction clearly. But then I was also thinking about this and what happened four years ago, which is when the Sun and Venus conjoined in Gemini in June, but it was when Venus was retrograde. And June, of course, of 2020, that was actually when like, the George Floyd protests were taking place and the Breonna Taylor protests and a lot of the things with Black Lives Matter and different movements surrounding that, which was a push for on the one hand the most broad thing you could say about a push for greater equality in the United States in terms of that, and that moved and also impacted different parts of the world. So I think that’s another theme. There’s some underlying theme also about equality and rebalancing the scales in order to achieve that that really comes up under this Sun-Venus cazimi.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s one of Venus’s core significations. We always talk about Venus and relationships, right? But what is the one quality that relationships need to be good? They need to be fair. Right? And under various conditions, but especially under these cazimi conditions where the Sun and Venus are focused in a single minute of a single degree, what has not been fair and is therefore poison to relationships, whether they’re collective or individual, comes up. Right? And like, the presence of unfairness as well as the desire for fairness is hyper focused by having like, the one moment when the Sun truly has Venus’s back.
CB: Right. Yeah. So one of the nice things about this conjunction that it occurs at 14 degrees of Gemini on June 4th, but that’s also basically the same day that Mercury is conjoining Jupiter exactly at two degrees of Gemini. So that seems like another indication that this is gonna be a positive, affirming aspect or affirming configuration that’s happening on this day around June 4th, and it’s one of my favorite line-ups this month that looks relatively positive or looks relatively optimistic. I think the only thing that’s a little bit tricky is that immediately after this, Venus does apply to that square with Saturn, which is at 18 degrees of Pisces. So there is – although there’s like, a lot of optimism surrounding this conjunction on the 4th, there’s still some obstacles or some barriers that’ll arise a few days later when that alignment of the square starts coming into view. And this’ll be a thing that’ll be happening over and over again this month with all of the planets in Gemini is running into that square with Saturn in Pisces and some tensions that will arise as a result of those restrictions or that dampening influence of Saturn from that sign.
AC: Yeah. When I think about Pisces-Gemini relations, which I think a lot about because that’s where the two lights are in my chart, you know, Gemini is quick and fun and mobile, and Pisces but especially Saturn in Pisces is so heavy and so dampening to feeling like, you know, it’s so heavy it weighs, it slows down the speed which is natural to Gemini, but part of that speed is also some of the emotional tone of Gemini where you feel free. When you feel unencumbered, you can move quickly, and moving quickly and lightly and easily feels wonderful. And Saturn is this obligation to attend to, I don’t know, how have we described Saturn in Pisces? Right? Like, I believe I’ve referred to it as like the melancholy leviathan, right? Like, the sadness iceberg – it’s heavy and deep. And so sort of reconciling these like, bursts of fun, light, heartwarming, heart-centered – especially with Venus-Sun stuff – like, you know, with the melancholy iceberg is an important challenge for this month.
CB: Yeah. Those are great keywords. And it reminds me, you know, this is the end of one cycle of Venus so that there will be in some ways a looking back and taking stock of how far you’ve come over a certain period of time, whether that’s locally over the span of the past however many months since the last Sun-Venus conjunction, whether it’s in the more long-term sense of the half-cycle of four years ago since June of 2020, or even if it’s the more long-term cycle of something that started eight years ago the last time there was an exact conjunction of the Sun and Venus that was direct in this part of the chart in June of 2016. So this looking back and taking stock of how far you’ve come, but also since it’s a conjunction, it has this sense of laying the seeds and the foundation for a new cycle that’s gonna grow and develop and mature over a much longer span of time of either a year or four years or eight years.
AC: Yeah, it’s nice.
CB: So that is awesome, and that’s one of our best and most favorite aspects of the month on the 4th, and that actually —
AC: Sorry. Finish, sorry. I just had one more thing to add.
CB: I was gonna take us into the New Moon.
AC: It’s two sentences.
CB: Go ahead.
AC: It’s just with the Venus-Sun – the cazimis are intensely private. Venus is in a very strong position, but it’s completely invisible, and so it’s often internal or in regard to close relationships. Like, it’s the whole seed of a thing, but the seed is invisible. Right? You literally make the seed invisible by planting it, and so it’s not the time where something becomes really public and blooms, but it’s that most crucial, intimate, and hidden time of planting.
CB: Yeah, that’s a great point, and I’ve realized over the past few months that that’s just an inherent things with conjunctions in general which applies to, like, the Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions where in the episode I did with Tarnas and in his book Cosmos and Psyche he has an entire chapter about how Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions sometimes coincide with scientific discoveries that are announced or made under Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions, but they’re not fully recognized or widely seen for what they are until sometime later on, so that it almost has this sense of getting overlooked at the time. And I think that’s also the case with eclipses as we’ve seen of sometimes starting something major, but it’s not clear what was started in your life at that time until later and how significant it was that you can’t see that until retrospect. I think it’s because every conjunction is an occultation where literally one body is moving in front of another and obscuring it. So even though it’s the beginning of a new cycle, you know, when you plant a seed in the ground and you push it into the dirt, the plant that it will become eventually isn’t visible at first.
AC: Right, but it’s the one moment that makes the whole thing possible.
CB: Exactly.
AC: Yeah.
CB: So everybody should pay attention to that as the beginning of a new cycle, especially for people with night charts if something very positive in your life starting at this time, and it may have to do with relational dynamics. But there’s lots of other Venusian themes that can also arise, just depending on what house it’s in in your chart, because if it’s in like, the 10th house, it could be career-related. If it’s in the 5th house, it could relate to children. The 11th house, it could relate to friends and so on and so forth.
Yeah. And then here’s the Venus retrograde graphic from the Inanna and Venus Retrograde episode I did with Demetra last year, and where we’re at right now is this conjunction, the superior conjunction, which is when Venus is on the other side from the Sun compared to the earth. Because the earth is like, up here at the top. So it’s the Sun that will be obscuring Venus in this instance with this conjunction. But then whatever starts in your life at this time, some of the other Venus turning points, like when Venus stations retrograde, when Venus does the retrograde conjunction in the future, and then when Venus eventually stations direct, all of those will be important parts of the cycle where whatever it is that is planted at this time in your life will grow and have crucial turning points at those different stages.
AC: Yep.
CB: All right.
AC: And so the next big one is in nine, 10 months. Right? So it’s this until we hit the retro in next April.
CB: So April is when the next conjunction will take place?
AC: Yeah. Well, it stations in – yeah, I think it stations maybe late March, but like, the conjunction I think is in April. It’s in Aries. So yeah, and it’s about like, nine months between inferior to superior and back again.
CB: Nice. Okay. All right. Well, that takes us to our first…
AC: Go ahead.
CB: That takes us to our first lunation of the month, which occurs just a couple days later, which a New Moon in the sign of Gemini, which is actually closely conjunct Venus at the time. So this is what the chart looks like. Mercury’s already separating from the conjunction with Jupiter, but it’s still close. And the Sun, the Moon, and Venus are all conjunct at 16 degrees of Gemini. So all of that energy of the stellium of planets moving through Gemini just gets really concentrated here at this point at this lunation.
AC: Yeah. What I was just thinking is there’s so many new beginnings in Gemini at different timescales. Right? Like, we have the Sun-Venus cycle restarting in Gemini. We have Jupiter beginning a new year in Gemini as the month begins. And then there’s the monthly cycle in Gemini, and then we will talk later about how the Sun and Mercury restart a cycle in Gemini. And so, you know, that’s how many indicators for new start in Gemini?
CB: Right. Yeah. Just a ton of them like, all month of endings and beginnings.
AC: Yeah, and so, yes, this month is hyper Gemininian, but we also will have that like, things growing from that hyper Gemininian – I’m gonna pretend that’s a word – seed for all the length of those cycles. Like, shorter for the Moon, slightly longer for Mercury, a whole year for Jupiter, and then slightly under a year, or just under a year for Venus. But like, these Gemini signatures are not going to go away as soon as planets move into Cancer.
CB: Yeah, that’s a great point, that it’s leaving a sort of permanent imprint in that spot in our chart.
AC: Yeah. Like, somebody did a lot of crazy work on the garden that’s going to bloom at several different timing increments. I wish somebody would do that for our garden; we’ve been so busy. Sorry.
CB: So one of the things I like about this New Moon is immediately after the Moon conjoins the Sun, it applies to a conjunction with Venus. So this New Moon is primarily characterized by that Sun-Venus cazimi which is still within a degree. They’re all at 16 degrees of Gemini. So it’s just re-emphasizing many of those themes that we talked about, and it’s imprinting them more permanently on the next month ahead in terms of whatever the relational dynamics were that came up for you during the Sun-Venus cazimi on the 4th just get further pressed into this chart. The only difference is that because everything is at 16 at this point, it’s all now within two degrees applying to a square with Saturn. And as soon as the Moon completes that conjunction with Venus, it then immediately applies to that square with Saturn. So for me, that’s bringing up on the one hand, the dynamic of a Venus-Saturn square where Saturn, you know, tends to have a cooling effect that – whereas Venus wants to relate and create relational dynamics and connect people or unite people, Saturn wants to cool things off. It wants to push things away. It wants to negate some of those relationships, or at least it wants to hold them at arm’s length to create a certain amount of distance between you and another person so that in the immediate aftermath of the New Moon, part of the dynamic may be some cooling of certain relationships as a result of that Saturn square.
AC: Yeah. The way I was thinking about it is, you know, so with the Venus-Sun that is then emphasized by the Moon joining them, this is almost too simple to say, but I think it’s totally worth saying is that the importance of communication and being able to talk about things in relationships – you know, and not just like, romantic ones, professional ones, wherever this stuff falls for you – and then Saturn is that big, heavy potentially emotionally charged thing, and the challenge is, okay, you think communication’s important. Can you talk about that? Can you figure out how to have like, a good conversation about that? Or is that too forbidding? You know, do we need to stay on the surface because it’s, you know, it goes too deep, and so we need to avoid it? Or can we get in there?
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Well, and sometimes, you know, you can try to talk your way out of something or intellectualize it or try to talk through a conflict, but sometimes no matter how much you talk, that can’t remove the emotional component of feeling greater distance if that’s the overwhelming feeling that’s arising between two people. Especially emotionally, if you’re feeling distance or you’re feeling even a repulsion or a desire to pull away or pull back, sometimes that innate feeling once developed, you can’t always like, intellectually talk yourself out of that or talk two people out of that.
AC: Yeah, you have to like, go into what created that, and hopefully not make it worse.
CB: Right. Yeah. So —
AC: Also, like, emotionally heavy, but also that can be like, talking about responsibilities and expectations, which also matter with relationships.
CB: Yeah, that’s a great point. Setting better boundaries, setting better expectations, trying to adhere to those and making agreements through talking to talk out what the rules and expectations are so that they won’t be violated or they won’t be treaded upon, which can create further, like, emotional or spiritual distance between two people.
AC: Yeah. And with Saturn in Pisces, it’s definitely like, I imagine like, freezing. Where people like, the further and further away you get from somebody, it’s like, you have lots of – enough like, maybe they’re not big bad interactions, but they start stacking up and people just kind of, they mutually freeze one another. We do that on purpose, we call it freezing a person out, but you know, the melancholy iceberg, right? Chill Saturn in a water sign. It would like oceanic and embracing, but.
CB: Right. But that’s chilling out or colding out – I think that’s a really great thing. And Beth in the live chat mentions vulnerability, which is another good keyword for that. There’s also – I continue to just see with Saturn in Pisces, ever since that went in a year ago and it really intensified last winter around the time of the Saturn station, but just different people expressing, like, I’m mainly seeing it on either social media or YouTubers and stuff like that just expressing exhaustion and like, feelings of almost like, philosophical or spiritual or career exhaustion of doing something for a long time and no longer feeling the same spirit surrounding that. And I think that’s tied in with Saturn in Pisces, and it’ll be interesting to see more people perhaps talking about or articulating some of those feelings of whatever that exhaustion is and whatever the source of that exhaustion is coming from with Saturn in Pisces for individuals, and then attempting to articulate that and how that’s creating a difficulty in terms of going about one’s normal business.
AC: Yeah. Maybe we’ll have some people who took big breaks coming back to explain that more thoroughly.
CB: Right. Yeah. Or finding the balance between talking about it and doing the work with Gemini versus taking the time for rest and healing and relaxation with Saturn in Pisces.
AC: Yeah. Because even though they have negative connotations, darkness and silence, which are Saturn things, are the preconditions for healing the mind in a lot of cases. Like, you need to rest and just, you know, no more bright images. No more thousand voices. Right? Darkness and silence are sort of like, the one thing that any like, meditative or spiritual retreat needs to be effective.
CB: Right. Yeah, for sure.
One thing I wanted to mention before we move on – I forgot to mention about the first woman being elected president of Mexico coming up on the Sun-Venus conjunction. Inauguration day occurs in October, and it’s gonna occur the day of a Sun-Mercury cazimi, and it’s also gonna occur one day before a solar eclipse takes place in Libra the very next day.
AC: And it’s a Sun-Mercury cazimi in a Venus-ruled sign, right?
CB: In Libra, yeah, exactly. Isn’t that brilliant? Like, I thought the astrology —
AC: It’s elegant.
CB: Yeah. Very straightforward. So pretty good astrology. All right. So let’s move on from the Venus cazimi. Things take – there’s a bit of a shift and there’s a tone change that occurs just a few days later when Mars shifts into Taurus on June 9th. So Mars wraps up its, what is it? Like, more than month-long transit through the sign of Aries that really kind of culminated in some ways with the conjunction with the North Node in the middle of Aries, and you know, is also rustling up – it was reactivating a lot of the eclipse things because Mars was transiting through the sign where the eclipses had just taken place the previous month. So here, we’re finally done once Mars leaves Aries and moves into Taurus, we’re finally done with eclipse season and the activation of that Aries-Libra access of our chart at least just in terms of planetary transits. But now Mars moves into a whole new area as it moves into the Taurus section of our chart. And unfortunately, the opening part of that as soon as it moves into that sign is two days later on June 11th, Mars immediately squares Pluto, which is at one degree of Aquarius. So our entrance to Mars in Taurus is a Mars-Pluto square that occurs right at the very beginning, which is, as we’ve learned over the past year, not a very fun aspect at all. And what I wrote down for this was that Mars immediately forms a tense square with Pluto in Aquarius, raising issues related to the use and abuse of power, going overboard to achieve one’s ends, and dealing with existential threats in some cases as broad, sort of like, archetypal themes that we’ve seen come up with Mars-Pluto conjunctions and squares and other aspects.
AC: Yeah, and I would also add some of the stuff that I said earlier about Mars and the North Node applies, in that I see under tight Mars-Pluto configurations sometimes conflicts or disagreements obtain an unnecessary intensity, and Pluto certainly has a similar power to obscure as the nodes. And as a result, sometimes you get that going over the line because of becoming temporarily unable to see the line.
CB: Right. That feeling of like, seeing red and then like, doing things in a fury, but sometimes going too far in the process of that.
AC: Yeah. And sometimes just feeling like things are a bigger deal than they actually are, because it’s connected to some sort of, you know, some concealed reservoir of feelings. And so whatever thing feels like a big deal and then, you know, you get that obscuration of the situation, and you know, sometimes you get escalation from people without meaning to. They’re not even sure why it was so intense. But then you get also real power dynamic stuff, right, because a lot of power is not visible because it’s actually a more powerful position to be invisible, right? You can do lots —
CB: Right.
AC: — of things if you’re invisible that you can’t do if you’re visible. And so we have this really consistent thing with Pluto and like, real power. Right? Like, not the rich celebrity whose names we know, the people whose net worth is a thousand times them whose names we don’t know.
CB: Right. Sometimes power likes to cloak itself and sometimes the most powerful people are the ones that know that and are sort of pulling the strings behind the scenes, and that’s definitely a dynamic with Pluto in terms of issues of like, control and manipulation and power plays and sometimes not acting directly but instead acting covertly or acting indirectly. And sometimes that can be really hard to deal with on the receiving end, because it’s not always clear then what you’re dealing with or where it’s coming from.
AC: Yeah, and so Mars-Pluto brings that up. And it brings up the reality of that, and it brings up the fear of that. Right? Which, you know, is its own poison. Right? Am I being manipulated? I didn’t think I was, but maybe I am being – you know, like, that’s – a lot of the cruel human interpersonal tricks depend on some level of concealment. You know, somebody’s doing you a favor if they literally just tell you that they’re trying to control you. Right? But who does that?
CB: Right. Yeah. So that’s a rough, like, opening, especially in the first two days of that in basically June 9th, 10th, and 11th when the aspect culminates, and then it starts to dissipate a bit over the next few days after it peaks on June 11th.
AC: It’s nice that it doesn’t last for most of the sign, but it is an unpleasant introduction for sure.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And that’s the opening of like, Mars moving through Taurus over the next couple of months, where one of the things that’s interesting about that is now Mars is building up to a conjunction with Uranus, so that’s another part of that energy that we immediately have to contend with is that as soon as Mars goes into Taurus, it’s copresent with Uranus, so it’s building up to a Mars-Uranus conjunction that will culminate in July, I believe.
AC: Yeah, mid-July.
CB: Mid-July, okay. So part of that, though, then also – the other thing we have to take into account about that transit is what it’s happening in the absence of, because we’ve had Jupiter transiting through Taurus over the past year, so whatever like, difficult transits, there’s been this positive ameliorating or counteracting influence from Jupiter most of the time. But what we have here this month is both the departure or removal of some of that positive or counteracting energy from Jupiter, and the introduction this more rough, difficult, tense conflict-oriented energy with Mars moving into that sector of our chart, and Mars moving into that sector of like, the chart of world events.
AC: Yeah. Which makes me wish that I had looked back at all the time – the couple times that Mars had been in Taurus with Uranus when Jupiter wasn’t there or aspecting. Because we probably delineated that a couple times on the podcast, like, two years ago, four years ago, even six years ago maybe.
CB: Well, I mean, one of them was really famous. One of them was January 6th. Remember? It was Mars was at —
AC: The first ingress.
CB: Yeah, the first ingress was like, Mars was at 29 Aries, and then it switched over into Taurus that day, the day that, you know, the bunch of Trump supporters went to the Capitol and like, raided the Capitol Building. That was probably the Mars ingress, like, what? Four years ago.
AC: Yeah, thank you for remembering. And we got like, the dude with like, the bullhorns as like, the shot that everybody remembers that like, was emblematic of that.
CB: Right.
AC: Jupiter wasn’t there. Right? That was – Jupiter in Taurus has been trying desperately to provide a little chill over the last year, and it’s a little concerning is that that’s what things looked like with Jupiter trying to provide chill.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Well, and one of the things that was notable about that event that I remarked about at the time was it was surprising also because it was one of the few times where it seemed like Trump – because it also, since he has Leo rising, it moved into his 10th house that day, and it was one of the few times where there was just like, immediate backlash and it seemed like he’d gone too far for once because he had given a speech that led to all of that right before it happened and that he was receiving actual like, consequences for. And that was an interesting – so it’ll be interesting to track his transits. He’s actually like, leading in the polls right now in terms of the swing states for the presidential election, and the Republican National Convention is actually gonna take place I think really close to the Mars-Uranus conjunction that’s gonna occur in July. So for some reason, that convention —
AC: Isn’t that his Midheaven, is like 25-ish Taurus?
CB: Yeah, it’s around there.
AC: Which is where Mars and Uranus meet up. Well, that’s interesting.
CB: Yeah, it’s really —
AC: We should definitely cover that next month, because —
CB: Yeah, we’ll —
AC: — that’s mid-July, but yeah.
CB: We’ll talk about that a lot. Jane in the live chat says yes, his Midheaven’s at 24 Taurus. So we’ll talk about that, because it’s also weird because then you have the Democratic National Convention that’s happening in August, and that’s happening right on the Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Gemini, which is square Saturn.
AC: Saturn, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So both of those are gonna be kind of a hot mess this summer, and it will be interesting to track the astrology.
AC: I’ll ride along with you on that prediction.
CB: Okay. You’ll second that. All right so, Mars in Taurus. Are there other things that we need to say about this as a broad term transit —
AC: Yeah.
CB: — that’s gonna be happening?
AC: So yeah, I have one thing to say is I don’t like the square Pluto, and I really don’t like the conjunction with Uranus, but there are 20 or so degrees between the two, and Mars chills out for a little bit before it gets crazy again. You know, once Mars has obtained some distance from the square to Pluto as we’ll see later in the month, Mars gets some next sextiles with Venus and Mercury in Cancer, and there’s like, a temporarily chill period for Mars, which you know, it’d be great if it was longer, but I’ll take what I can get this year. Because it’s just been Mars doing something crazy since the year began.
CB: Yeah, that’s a great point. And also, it’s like, a contrast with the fiery impulsiveness and the chaoticness of like, Mars conjoining Aries that happened over the past month. At least there’s some – even though the opening square with Pluto is not gonna be fun, nor the conjunction with Uranus, there’s a little bit more chill and a little bit less of that fiery-ness once Mars moves into Taurus.
AC: And I would say that’s one of the advantages of Mars not having overwhelming essential dignity. Like, Mars doesn’t need any help to set fires in Aries, whereas Mars in Taurus, if we want Mars to be like, the most dynamic and explosive and amazing Mars-y Mars ever, might disappoint. But if we would like maybe a few less fires and the pace to slow down a little bit, then that Mars being in detriment in Taurus but still being comfortable by triplicity is actually a better thing than Mars, you know, being super strong in Aries or Taurus. It’s like, oh, thank god, you’re not at peak strength. Like, that can be an advantage. It’s descriptive of something we may want.
CB: Yeah, for sure. I agree. All right. So that’s happening, and then a few days later on June 14th, we get the Sun-Mercury conjunction, which is the Mercury cazimi at 24 degrees of Gemini on June 14th. So this is again, this is probably the last major peak of some of those Gemini significations of like, communications really being at their high point as Mercury resets its cycle with the Sun on this date.
AC: Yeah, and it’s interesting because it’s I guess our fourth big resetting things into Gemini. Right? Jupiter moves in, Venus conjunction with the Sun, New Moon conjunct both the Sun and Venus, and then the Sun conjunct Mercury. Which is nice. It’s Mercury – like, it’s, okay, so how do we think about all this? Mercury is so good at figuring out what to do with things, and if this is the case, what path do we take?
CB: Right.
AC: And in some ways, it’s gonna bring it all together as well because all this has been happening in a Mercury-ruled sign. Right? So Mercury really brings it home or locks it in.
CB: Yeah. I think this is the central turning point with respect to a lot of that stuff, because after this point, everything – all the inner planets – start moving into Cancer, and we start getting this flowing away from the Gemini energy of the month as we move into the second half of June.
AC: And it’s interesting because it ends up marking a really meaningful difference between the first half of the year and the second. Like, we’re done with all of the crazy pileups, for which were, you know, good, bad, and other. To me, the second half of the year looks very distinct astrologically from the first, and so it’s interesting we have all of these resets culminating in this Mercury-Sun conjunction here on the 14th.
CB: Yeah. This range here once, before everything moves out of Gemini is like the tail end of the really just amazing electional charts for the month. And then things kind of get a little bit dicier after this, not just in June but in the rest of the year.
AC: Yeah. And so what do – like, so what do we think about the fact that instead of occurring square Saturn – I mean, technically it is, but it’s departing – both the Sun and Mercury are moving into that square with Neptune in the last 10 minutes of the sign of Pisces?
CB: Of the last 10 – so yeah, so Neptune is right at the tail end. Well, that’s leading us into and we can go into that if you want, just the conjunction —
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, okay. Before we get there, just mentioning Mercury and Venus meet up and both square Neptune when they get to the end of Gemini, they reach the same degree at approximately the same time on the 16th and 17th, and then they both ingress into Cancer at the same time and form a conjunction at zero degrees of Cancer on June 17th. So that’s one of our notable aspects of the month. On the one hand, there’s some weird issues with communication, dishonesty, not seeing things for what they really are. Issues with boundaries due to the Sun-Mercury conjunction at 29 – Venus-Mercury conjunction squaring Neptune at 29 Pisces that’s happening there on the 16th to pay attention to and try to avoid miscommunications or deceptive communication around that time. But then, that conjunction that occurs on the 17th is kind of nice where we have the flowing together of the planet of communication and the planet of relationships and relating.
AC: Yeah. And Mercury-Venus conjunctions are common and always nice when they happen. And it’s nice; they’re both still invisible at this point, but working their way back into visibility in the western sky, which we’ll, you know, in the evening sky, which we’ll see both by the end of the month – Mercury more clearly than Venus. But they’ve got this sort of new deal worked out. And Venus-Mercury is so nice for, you know, on a civil level, like, connecting how you would like to relate to people with the words you actually use like, connecting the intellect and the heart. Connecting like, Mercury-Venus with lot formulations gives you, it’s the combination that you need to successfully technically execute a thing that you would like to be beautiful or cool-looking. Right? Like, it connects the aesthetic and the technical, you know, form and function. And so it’s good for all sorts of things.
CB: Yeah, it makes me – I always think of like, T.S. Eliot who has a Mercury-Venus conjunction on the Ascendant and was a famous poet. Or other people and just the presentation of not just, you know, Mercury on its own is communicating something; it’s transferring something from one place to another. But Mercury together with Venus is doing it with style. Instead of communication, it’s putting it in the form of a poem and making it not just informative and transferring knowledge, but also making it beautiful or making it have aesthetic appeal at the same time.
AC: Yeah. Ficino is describing different types of intellectuals, he’s like, okay, so all the intellectuals – which he calls acolytes of the muses, right, for those who aspire to knowledge – says, well, they’re all Mercury-ruled. But if the person is particularly charming and persuasive and you know, artistic and then delivery, then we should look at Mercury-Venus. And if, you know, they are serious and willing to pursue subjects past the point that would be good for them, then we should look at Mercury-Saturn.
CB: In the live chat, Vandana mentions that it’s diplomatic or diplomats, and that’s actually a good signification for Mercury-Venus coming together. It’s like, concord or coming to an agreement about something.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s great.
CB: Yeah. So that’s a good aspect that I highlighted this month. And that brings us to our second lunation of the month, which occurs on the 21st, which is a Full Moon in the sign of Capricorn, which occurs just like, a day after the ingress of the Sun into Cancer. So by this point, both Mercury and Venus are transiting through the sign of Cancer, and the Sun is in there as well. One of the things I like about this time frame is Mercury is just coming off of a sextile with Mars, which goes exact on the 20th and 21st, and there’s a great directness or mental acuity about like, a Mercury-Mars sextile that I really appreciate.
AC: Yeah, especially kind of a – yeah, it’s Mercury-Mars, which when they’re conjoined or they’re opposed it’s too much, but like, a little bit of Mars can be nice. Especially a little bit of Mars sextile both Venus and Mercury with Mars in a Venus-ruled sign. And there’s also a little bit of – Mars also adds a note of pragmatism. Mercury is interesting in doing stuff, but you know, Mars is the problem-solver, and so Mars will make sure that what we’re doing and what we’re thinking about is actually going to address problems and undo them. And so both of them – and that Mars being in a nice trinal relationship with the Full Moon while the Full Moon is, you know, highlighting the Venus-Mercury-Sun on the other side, it’s extremely workable.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point. So yeah, those are some of the positive things. The other positive thing about the Full Moon is once it goes exact at one degree of Capricorn, the Moon then applies to Venus. So it’s applying to a more or less positive configuration with a benefic after the Full Moon. Although before that, the actual degree of the Full Moon, both the Sun and the Moon are coming off of a square with Neptune, which is so late in Pisces that it’s really still aspecting the first few degrees of the cardinal signs. So I think that’s something to pay attention to is that part of the signature of this Full Moon towards the end of the month is the square with Neptune. And because Saturn is getting ready to station towards the end of the month and Neptune’s also getting ready to station at the very beginning of July, they’re both being – that Saturn-Neptune conjunction is being empowered. So there’s something about especially the Neptunian functions of illusions, of having difficulties telling what’s real versus what’s not, some of the different like, AI stuff in terms of blurring the distinctions between reality and the imaginal realms is gonna become much more prominent around this time towards the end of June and beginning of July.
AC: Yeah. One of the things I fear with that Neptune waiting at the very end of Pisces to square all these planets after they’ve had all of this thinking and figuring things out and planning in Gemini is that some of the clarity will just seemingly dissolve. Because sometimes it’s like, you know, we have like, how should we say, straightforward Neptunian forces where it’s like, a lie, or it’s misinformation, or it’s a misunderstanding or whatever. But like, sometimes it’s more subtle, and it’s just sort of like, the clarity just goes away. Like, your brain – you can’t remember. Like, I knew, I thought – it felt like I figured it all out, and now I’m having, like, I lost that motivation or I lost that clarity. Whatever that is, whatever the vector of that is, because Neptune is so good at destroying all the neat plans and categories and like, sequencing that Mercury is great at creating.
CB: You know, what that makes me think of with having the intense cluster of Gemini stuff and the advances and rapid development in communications earlier in the month, and then all of a sudden running into all these Neptunian things later in the month, it makes me think of how the concerns about like, the developments in AI and application to social media in order to influence people or in order to do things like influence the election or something like that, and that that’s not part of what we’re seeing here is we’re seeing like, technological developments earlier in the month, and then we’re seeing some sort of reaction to that or some sort of side effect of it that’s causing a blurring between what’s real and what’s not real.
AC: Right. Right, right, right. Yeah. That’s interesting; I wasn’t thinking about it in that context, but that makes a lot of sense. But yeah, there’s that like, it’s just that like, ah, I thought we were getting all this figured out, and maybe none of it matters. Or maybe that was all fake. Or maybe it really isn’t fake, but you encounter something that makes you think that, oh, well maybe, maybe that’s not useful and it’s the way to go. I really don’t like Neptune’s ability to hamstring Mercury stuff, Mercury clarity.
CB: Yeah. So and then also just with Saturn stationing in Pisces, that’s really gonna intensify, and we’re gonna see some news stories that evoke some of those significations again which have continually had to do with like, water, danger surrounding the water, poisons or pollutants in the water. A year ago when Saturn first stationed in Pisces, that was when the – that week, the submarine fiasco happened where there was that —
AC: Yeah.
CB: — submarine that imploded with the millionaires that were aboard it that were going towards the Titanic and you had those different like, fears surrounding what it would be like to be trapped in a submarine. So we’ll probably see an intensification of some of those significations and things again here.
AC: Yeah. Probably not great for the waterways. Hide your shrimp.
CB: Yeah. Hopefully no major shrimp disasters.
AC: Well, hoard your shrimp. We learned about shrimp boundaries from Red Lobster.
CB: That’s true. All right. And then yeah, so the struggle to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not. What else is going on here that we need to mention… This —
AC: Well, maybe just a little bit on like, the tonal change when Mercury, Venus, and the Sun all pile into Cancer and we have a lunation on that axis. You know, Cancer-Capricorn is in many ways the opposite of Gemini in terms of mobility. Like, Cancer and Capricorn are both interested in picking a person, picking a place, and investing heavily in making that fruitful and fortified. Like, Gemini is so explorative and all over the place, whereas you know, of course after that with Cancer it’s like, what and who am I actually going to invest in? And Capricorn being on the same axis, you know, is more about how do I like, fortify this place, and Cancer is how do I make it a nice, like, healing, a place that feeds me that’s nurturing? And so we go from lots of movement and exploration to really being pushed to lock into something and invest in something.
CB: I like – yeah, the term “invest” that you’re using there, I really like that, and that’s raising some – a point that I wanted to make about that I realized recently with Jupiter moving into Gemini. This summer, it’s gonna move into a square with Saturn, but also eventually also a square with Neptune. So this is important because a few years ago when Jupiter was in Pisces conjoining Neptune, that was when the inflation rate shot up in the United States. And so part of Jupiter in Gemini, even though there’s a lot of good things with that transit, I’m actually concerned that part of the downside of that transit could be continued issues or a resurgence of issues with inflation and some tensions then in the economy as a result of that with Jupiter – the planet of like, growth and expansion – coming into tense or harsh aspects with Saturn, the planet of contraction, and Neptune, the planet of inflating things, of imaginary things and of a loosing of boundaries.
AC: Yeah. Well, I mean, what does Saturn have to say to Jupiter in that square once they get closer? Like, not so fast, buddy.
CB: Right. Yeah. Not so fast. Like, there’s – let’s pump the brakes a little bit here. I know that’s one of the issues is they didn’t raise interest rates recently or there are issues with that because they’re concerned about – or they didn’t lower interest rates because they’re concerned about inflation still being an issue or coming back. And yeah, I’ll be following that really closely as Jupiter inches closer and closer to Neptune and Saturn over the course of the next few months. But we may see the first inklings of that, I feel like, here in late June and early July when Saturn and Neptune station simultaneously and also for the first time come within 10 degrees of a conjunction for the first time in this cycle.
AC: Yeah. Well, and you made this point to me when we were preparing, like, this is as close as they’ve gotten so far. We’re going to get multiple exact conjunctions, but I mean, we say Saturn-Neptune stuff, like, within a week of Saturn entering Pisces when they were 20+ degrees apart, and —
CB: Right.
AC: — like, this just slightly over 10 is as close as they’ve gotten. And so it’s, you know, it’s a slow moving show. It’s gonna take five years to watch every season, but we’re getting really close to probably – if we’re in season – like, we’re getting into season two. Season three is when it gets wild. But like, things are escalating, and so the Saturn-Neptune themes, especially with them both stationing at the same time, which they’ll be doing for a while – they’re stationing less than a week apart and will continue to do that for the next several years. It’s worth watching.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And this also, you know, in terms of this is Saturn – it’s only been in Pisces for a year now, so this is one more check in to see what the themes of contraction are doing right now in the Pisces part of our charts. For some people, it’s like, a contraction in terms of putting you in positions of being in greater authority and having greater, as you were describing earlier in terms of like, having a baby and now all of a sudden being in a position of needing to take care of everything much more than you’ve ever had to do in your life.
AC: Yeah. Like, accepting a profound responsibility, but then figuring out how to carry that with some measure of grace.
CB: Yeah. So having greater responsibility in this area of our life and having a check in about that where there’s another important turning point in terms of those cycles of responsibility as well as addressing sometimes fears or challenges or setbacks that arise or have arisen in that process since March of 2023 when Saturn first moved into that area of our chart, and thinking about what house is associated with that part of our birth chart. This’ll be a really important check in as we’re now, what? Like, two-thirds of the way through the process. When does Saturn depart for the final time and move into Aries – like, a year later?
AC: Not until the end of next year. Next year is split between Saturn in Pisces and Saturn in Aries. We do a Saturn in Aries relatively early in the year, but then it comes back to Pisces. And so, you know, for my planets in the middle decan of mutable sign brethren, get ready for round two with Saturn’s retrograde. Saturn retrogrades back to 12. So if you have planets earlier than that in Pisces or earlier than that in mutable signs, like, you’re actually kind of done in a way that if you have middle stuff, like 12 to 19, you know, you’re gonna do another two rounds. And I would just say on the topic of like, you know, what is that Saturn representing? Like, the challenges and the fears and some of it which came up with Saturn earlier is just exhaustion. Right? If you’re carrying a lot of weight, like physically and/or emotionally or intellectually and you’re not used to carrying that much weight, like, you might need to change habits in order to actually just be able to do the work without being crushed under it.
CB: Right. Like, realizing one’s limitations and when you’ve gone too far and when you need to pull back and reallocate resources in some area of your life.
AC: Yeah. Equally that and is there a way that I can learn to carry more weight without breaking down? Right? Which is the whole idea of strength training. But I think that applies to other places. Right? What do I – do I need to put this down, or do I need to work on how to carry more?
CB: Right. Yeah. Alright. Well, those are good words to end with. So I wanted to do a summary of just some of the aspects really quickly unless you have anything else you wanted to say.
AC: No, not at all. Sounds good.
CB: All right. Here’s my summary. I was gonna do this at the beginning, but I used it – I forgot. So I’m gonna do it here at the end.
Here’s the major aspects of June. We’ve got the stellium in Gemini in the first half of the month. Jupiter trine Pluto right at the beginning. Venus cazimi in the Gemini right at the beginning. Then on the 9th, Mars moves into Taurus, which is a definite tone change in the month, and at the end of the month, Saturn stations in Pisces conjunct Neptune.
So in terms of positive and negative aspects, the most challenging aspects for me are these ones – it’s the Venus and Sun square Saturn on June 8th and 9th. The Mars square Pluto especially is probably the most difficult aspect of the month as soon as Mars ingresses into Taurus on the 9th, but that aspect peaks around June 11th, and that’s gonna be I think the roughest one this month. The following day, Mercury squares Saturn on June 12th, which is not helping with the Mars-Pluto square. Then the Mercury-Venus simultaneous square to Neptune on the 16th and 17th is tricky for communication and relationships. And then finally, Saturn stationing on June 29th as we were just talking about is an intensification of some of that challenging energy at that time.
In terms of positive aspects, the most positive aspects this month is Jupiter trine Pluto on June 2nd is a great aspect. The Venus cazimi on June 4th and the simultaneous Mercury conjunct Jupiter, which also happens on June 4th, then followed by the Mercury cazimi on the 14th. Mercury conjunct Venus in Cancer on June 17th. And finally, there’s a very brief but kind of lovely Venus-Mars sextile on June 28th, 29th, which is a nice little aspect although I’m not sure to what extent it’s gonna be overshadowed a little bit by Saturn stationing at the same time. But nonetheless, it’s a nice little aspect with reception. Yeah.
AC: Nice list.
CB: Thanks. So that is the overview, and that is it for our astrology forecast for June of 2024. So thanks for coming back and joining me again. It’s been, you know, Diana actually was amazing and really stepped in and —
AC: I’m sure.
CB: — just did a brilliant job of stepping in during a really tough time in the year where there was just like, so much weighty astrology going on, so —
AC: I didn’t envy whoever got the chair for those months, but I was confident Diana would do a good job.
CB: Yeah, she definitely did. So on the one hand, it was great having her. It’s also nice to have you back. I’m glad to hear you and your family are doing well, and I’m excited about seeing the growth and development of that since you’ve also started some new cycles during eclipse season that’ll grow and develop in very literal ways over the coming years.
AC: Indeed. I’ve got some pretty good baby pics.
CB: Nice. All right. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining me. Your websites again are AustinCoppock.com and SphereAndSundry.com, right?
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: Cool. And as for myself, you can find me at TheAstrologyPodcast.com. My course, which is on sale for 15% off, you can get that by using the promo code ‘MERCURY’ at TheAstrologySchool.com. And thanks to all the patrons that joined us today for the livestream. This has been really awesome, and I’m actually gonna be doing more live streams where we’re reading the charts of listeners of the podcast and patrons of the podcast in particular over the next few weeks as something that we’re doing. We’re looking into doing a Jupiter in Taurus retrospective where we talk about how that transit worked out in each individual person’s life and certain houses that it transited so that we can also get a preview of what it’s gonna be like when Jupiter goes through Gemini in different people’s charts over the next year. So —
AC: Nice.
CB: — people – yeah, it’s gonna be really fun. So people can join us for that livestream – it’s gonna be a private livestream – by becoming a patron of The Astrology Podcast at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast. But otherwise, that’s it for this episode, so good luck in June, and we’ll see you again next month for the forecast for July. So good luck and take care!
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