The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 470, titled:
4th House Birth Chart Readings
With Chris Brennan
Episode originally released on December 12, 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 January 15th, 2025
Copyright © 2025 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 do a live chart reading webinar with patrons of The Astrology Podcast where we’re gonna talk about 4th house placements in their birth chart as well as transits through the 4th house, and I’m gonna interview them and discuss how those placements have worked out in their lives by focusing in on specific examples of how those placements have manifested.
So this is kind of like a precursor because I’m currently in the process of researching my upcoming episode on the 4th house in astrology, which I’m largely gonna focus on using celebrity charts just like I have in the past few episodes of like, the first house, the 2nd house and the 3rd house, because I prefer to use celebrity examples for those big episodes because then the lives of celebrities or notable figures are well documented, and there’s like, a shared point of reference so that you can kind of confirm or deny what I’m saying about their life so that there’s a certain aspect of like, reliability to that for research purposes. But the other half of things is that you can actually get a lot more detail and nuance when you can actually talk to a person directly about their birth chart. So that’s why I like doing these live chart reading sessions with patrons of The Astrology Podcast who signed up through my page on Patreon, because then I can actually ask them questions and we can have a dialogue about their life, which sometimes results in a much deeper understanding of the nuances surrounding those placements. So that’s one of the reasons why I do these episodes.
So the 4th house – some of the significations of the 4th house is it pertains to the home, the family, the living situation, and the private life are essentially the primary significations of the 4th house. So let me share a diagram that shows… This is my basic significations of the 4th house. We see the 4th house is down at the bottom part of the chart. It’s in the part of the chart that’s completely under the earth and spatially is basically the spot directly below your feet, essentially, is where the 4th house is. So it’s the most hidden part of the chart and can represent your home and your private life. And it’s opposite to the 10th house, which represents your public life because it’s the most visible part of the chart since that’s basically like, the middle of the sky right above you. So that’s an important dynamic. 10th house public life; 4th house private life.
The 4th house is also your roots. It’s kind of like the roots of a tree, if you’re imagining a tree, then the 4th house would be where the roots are going into the ground. And as a result of that, it represents your parents but also sometimes larger themes of ancestry and your past and your family lineage can come up when it comes to the 4th house, which is kind of an interesting topic. I think that’s it.
Why don’t we then jump into some of the first chart examples? So I have a group of patrons that are attending today, and I’ve already had some submit examples. And Travis, I think we were gonna start with you, so I’m gonna promote you to a panelist now, and then we can talk about your chart and your 4th house placements.
Here we go. Hey.
TRAVIS: Hi.
CB: Thanks for joining me.
T: Yeah! Thank you for having me.
CB: All right. What’s your birth data?
T: My birth data is October 21st, 1992.
CB: What time?
T: 1:46 A.M.
CB: And what place?
T: Knoxville, Tennessee.
CB: All right. And is your Ascendant 12 Leo?
T: Yes it is.
CB: All right. So here is your birth chart for those watching the video version. For those listening to the audio version, we have a chart with Leo rising, and we have a Mercury-Pluto conjunction in the 4th whole sign house in the sign of Scorpio. So Mercury is at 19 Scorpio, and Pluto is at 21. And the degree of the IC is down at four degrees of Scorpio, also in the 4th whole sign house.
So yeah, how has this worked out for you, or what was the primary thing about this that you wanted to share?
T: I think the primary thing, especially as I’ve been reading like, Saul, has been understanding I guess connecting the 4th – my father’s kind of… So my father left his hometown when he was very young; he was probably like, 17 years old or 18 years old. He came down to Tennessee. He eventually met and married my mother, but there’s this level of exile, right, going on. And he grew up in a pretty difficult set of circumstances in his immediate family, and part of them he replicated in my upbringing. And so I’d say that the connection between Mars and Mercury was very there, very much influenced the way that I thought. My father was very influential in my upbringing. But ironically, or by the same token with the same hand, I developed a very deep interest in genealogy when I was very little as a child. And so I think I had like, an Ancestry.com account when I was maybe like, 13 or 14, and I was interested in like, lineage and stuff like that even before then, so on my father’s side and on my mother’s side both. But it came with —
CB: Nice.
T: Yeah. Plenty of intensity, I would say.
CB: I love that. Yeah. I’ve been talking a lot recently – I think I did in the last episode – just about Mercury-Pluto conjunctions and aspects being like, the investigator or the Sherlock Holmes type aspect. And what was funny about that is I actually discovered that the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories has Gemini rising and Mercury conjunct Pluto in I believe it was in like, Taurus in the 12th house. And he developed like, the Sherlock Holmes character. So I’ve been using that metaphor lately for Mercury-Pluto conjunctions, and it’s funny that like, you have that, but it’s in the 4th house which relates to one’s family and ancestry, and it’s like, from a young age you became an investigator of your family lineage.
T: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: What drew you to that, or what was it that spoke to you about that? Do you remember?
T: So I’ll be very clear; I’m actually recovering from a concussion, so bear with me if I like, struggle a bit. But as far as I can remember, I just always was interested in I guess like, the elderly members of my family. I was very close with my maternal – oh, sorry, my pups are like, excited – my maternal grandmother and stuff like that. So I suppose in talking with people that were older and feeling very like, intimately connected with them, I don’t know. I think just listening to their stories and being like, okay, well, what was her mother’s name? And what did she look like? And then, you know, when people passed, having to find it out for myself. You know, there are things that people forget. Things that people don’t have immediate access to, and I wanted to learn that. And I’d say that that skill, that investigative skill that came with like, digging through my ancestry and all the different connections patterned itself in the rest of my life as well, including when I was in university.
CB: So you were able to like, take some of those skills that you learned early on with doing that type of intense research and then apply it to other things later on?
T: Yeah, definitely. I’d say that that was yeah, hugely influential.
CB: Nice. That makes sense. And then in terms of some of the challenges with your father, so you have Scorpio on the 4th house, and then the ruler is Mars, which is over in Cancer in the 12th house in the sign of its fall, although it is in a night chart, so the Mars is not the most challenging planet. But nonetheless, it’s a somewhat challenging placement since it’s in the 12th house, although that trine with Mercury does give some mitigation being configured to an angular planet. But how far was it that he moved? You said he moved far enough across the, what, the country that he was kind of like, in exile compared to where he started.
T: 500 miles. So about eight hours away by car, although back in the day when he moved here, I can’t really be sure how much longer it might have taken. But by today’s speed limit, about eight hours, but 500 miles almost exactly.
CB: Got it. And, you know, the 12th house tends to have some more challenging significations, so traditionally it’s like the place of enemies or people that you don’t get along with. It can be the house that has to do with mental issues as opposed to like, physical issues, which is more of the 6th house. And it can also pertain to places of solitude or isolation, which can refer to like, sometimes to like, prisons or other times to hospitals or other things like that. So do any of those topics come up in major themes, either in his life or in terms of your relationship with him?
T: Yeah, I’d say so! My father worked in mental health; he was a social worker for I wanna say maybe 30 years. And I would say definitely in again this kind of dual sword type of way that he worked in mental health, he also suffered from mental health issues, and in the way that things can progress, like, had an influence on the mental health of his kids. And yeah, so a very interesting sort of thing. Additionally, I have like, historically speaking, a very strong interest in like, prison and prison abolition. And like, I guess theory surrounding that, right? And policing. Theories of policing. Right? So yeah, these are all things more related to like, a university setting – that Mars is also like, the lord of the 9th house. But —
CB: Right. Like your —
T: — but yeah, so —
CB: — philosophical views in terms of that?
T: Yeah.
CB: That makes sense. Well, that’s really interesting that he worked in mental health, and that’s a very, you know, because that’s a more… That kind of fits the other manifestations that I sometimes see with like, the 6th house, where sometimes when a person has an important placement there and it’s mitigated, I had a famous example of like, a doctor for example that had the ruler of the 10th house in the 6th house, but they worked with people that were in difficult health positions for much of their life. And so it was sort of focused in that sense. So it’s interesting that for him, he worked there in that context for 30 years. Yeah, so there’s like, a positive manifestation of that as well as the more challenging manifestation that you were also talking about.
T: Absolutely.
CB: Yeah. Brilliant. And then earlier did you say your interest in genealogy came about initially as a result of interactions with your – did you say your grandparents?
T: So when I was born, I had three surviving grandparents. I think the initial interest in kind of like, people that were older and their experiences came from my maternal grandmother. But the kind of lynchpin with that – so she was the grandparent that was near to me. My paternal grandparents were 500 miles away, so I would see them, but infrequently. So on the one hand on a personal level, there’s this closeness with my maternal grandmother, who was very present while she was alive. And then my father and his side of the family were pretty… Well, my father particularly was very into genealogy, very into history generally speaking. And he would talk about the older people in his life; he would talk about his great aunts, his great uncles and stuff like that. And I think it just kind of went from there. So on the one side of my family, I had a personal interest and very close relationship and understanding and interest in the elderly. And then on the other side of my family, I had a bunch of documentation and a bunch of resources that already existed among the elderly in my family and that I also inherited. Like, books and the like. And then I took it for myself.
CB: Brilliant. Because one of the things I was curious about is just you also have an emphasis on the 3rd house in your chart since you have the ruler of your Ascendant is the Sun, which is in Libra in the 3rd house, and you also have Jupiter and the Lot of Fortune there. And something Leisa and I were talking about in the 3rd house episode and sort of debating is that the 3rd house represents siblings but also extended family and relatives, and the question sometimes of whether like, grandparents are 4th house or whether they’re 3rd house. And I was leaning more towards 3rd house, which would be interesting for you with your ruler of the Ascendant there as well as the Lot of Fortune. But it was a little bit unclear. How has the 3rd house come into play for you in terms of like, siblings, extended family, neighbors, and short distance travel?
T: So in terms of siblings, I have a single sibling who is actually also a Sun sign Libra. But that aside —
CB: Nice.
T: — yeah, so I have the sibling; that element is definitely there. Definitely has that traditionally that triplicity support; that seems to play out in his chart as well. But in terms of neighborhood, I’d say I live in like, a middle class suburb from the ‘60s, so pretty nice is what I’m saying. Not necessarily, yeah, like while I was growing up it was more full of elderly people. There weren’t very many young people. We had inherited this house from the maternal grandmother I previously mentioned. And so on the one hand, I grew up in a suburb which was pretty nice. And on the other hand, I grew up with virtually zero people my age in the area. And then I mentioned that I have my single living sibling, and in terms of extended kin, I mean… I’m trying to think. I have them. My father’s kin are 500 miles away, but my mother’s kin were in this area. They are generally speaking older than me. The ones that might have been my age have kind of moved away or didn’t live here, if that makes sense, but yeah.
CB: Got it. Okay. Cool. All right. I think all of that makes sense. And yeah, I love that that drew out just some of those themes of ancestry, because it’s one that I always see come up. Like, sometimes it’s like, a temporary thing. Like, a person will have a major transit through the 4th house and all of a sudden, they’ll just become interested in ancestry for a very brief period of time in their life. But for you to have it happen so young as a result of those placements and be more impactful is really fascinating.
T: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: Cool. All right. Well, thank you for sharing that example. I appreciate it.
T: Yeah. Thank you very much.
CB: All right. Cool.
All right, that was an awesome example to start with. Let me check and see who is next. So I asked my audience to hit the ‘like’ button to let me know which examples they can kind of vote on which examples I do next. All right. And it looks like the next most upvoted one that the audience wanted me to do next was Samantha.
SAMANTHA: Hi.
CB: Hey. Thanks for joining me.
S: Thank you for having me.
CB: What is your chart data?
S: So birthday is 11-15-1994. And I was born in Caloocan, C-A-L-O-O-C-A-N city.
CB: Okay. So is your Ascendant 21 Virgo?
S: No. My birthday – so my birth time was actually forged by my father, which is funny now that we talk about father in the 4th house. On my birthday, my real birth time was a little bit after midnight, so I’ve been putting about like, 12:03 A.M. November 15th.
CB: Okay. Is it 26 Leo?
S: Yes.
CB: Got it. Okay. All right. Let me share your chart. There we go. All right. So for those listening to the audio version, we have a chart with 26 Leo rising, and there’s a stellium of planets in Scorpio in the 4th whole sign house that includes Venus, Mercury, the North Node, the Sun, Jupiter, the IC, and Pluto all lined up more or less in a row there. Yeah, so what is your example?
S: So my birth time on my birth certificate, it was my father’s idea to change it to November 14th, because on his side of the family, there’s a group of about 10 people born on November 14th. And he was more interested in getting me in that group in his side of the family of the same birthday than having my real birth time on my birth certificate. So —
CB: Okay.
S: — that influence started very early in this life.
CB: All right. Yeah.
S: And then career-wise, it was almost like, if you don’t follow their path of being either doctor or a nurse, then you’re on your own. And as a baby Scorpio, that just felt very traumatizing, because they’re like, my foundation. So I ended up picking the same career as my dad, as an ICU nurse, and when I had first picked up my training, I went to the same unit that he had trained in and worked in for 20 years. And his… Everyone, every single coworker that worked with him loved him, which was interesting because he gave his love at his work, but at home, he was very, very strict. And so I saw a different side of him that was hidden from everyone else. And then even though he was, he had left my life for the first three years of my life, and when he had come back in, that’s when I felt like all the rules and whatnot that come with the 4th house and building a foundation. And then what’s interesting is the last three generations on his side, the eldest daughter that has been born for each generation has gotten breast cancer, and I’m just recovering from breast cancer. I just got my mastectomy like, a month ago, in the same house that my grandma also had breast cancer twice. And it’s almost like I have to unearth and face the emotional trauma that comes with the family, and unless that generation – whoever gets it – faces it, it kind of just comes back. So yeah. That’s —
CB: Yeah.
S: — is very prominent in my life, and it’s undeniable that it goes back to the roots and ancestral part of it. An inheritance that is like, genetic trauma inheritance, but there’s also property inheritance, jewelry inheritance. So the inheritance part, it comes in various forms.
CB: And so that’s really striking. And then one last piece of it that you wrote in your write-up is that you both deal – both you and your father – deal with death and helping others heal or pass, and that’s actually the 4th house as the end of life, and has associations in ancient astrology with death. And while that was mostly shifted to the 8th house in subsequent traditions, I’ve noticed that the 4th house, that can still be a major theme sometimes.
S: Yes. Very major theme. My dad and I both, we love and we’re comfortable with helping others pass with death. We find it very beautiful and very precious to be the one to take care of someone before they die. And so it’s an honor. Yeah, that is one thing that my dad and I have in common, and we’re both pretty good at dealing with death in a gracious manner.
CB: And is that, does that include in like, a hospice type context? Or is this mainly in a like, ICU type context?
S: So I did hospice, and I did like, a skilled living. And when covid hit, that’s when I saw so much death. And it was quite heavy during covid, and so I had – but I enjoyed it, so I moved into ICU because there was a need there. So we have both seen it, and he also worked in a prison. But we have both seen death in various parts, in hospice, in like, the living facility, locked psych facility, and then ICU and palliative care as well.
CB: Got it. Okay. So yeah, that’s a major theme. And then one thing that you mentioned that I thought was interesting that seems to match a chart placement, so the ruler of the 4th house of family and ancestry is Mars, which is placed in Leo in the first house on the Ascendant. So that would normally show that there’s some sort of connection between family and potentially things like your body. And it sounds like there was a very literal manifestation of that that you’ve been dealing with in terms of that genetic inheritance and having to have a mastectomy, which is something that runs in your family. So in that instance, it was a very literal connection between the 4th house and family and the first house of your body essentially.
S: Yes. And a lot of… I feel like a lot of the cancer was built from resentment and not knowing how to deal with the heaviness that comes from. I would say like, it almost feels like a dictatorship. But if I don’t deal with that and let it metabolize and feel free, then it gets stored up in my body and it shows up literally as cancer. And it’s funny that it showed up in the left breast, which both my grandma and my great grandma also had the first time they got cancer. So yeah.
CB: Yeah. And let’s see what else. In terms of your relationship with your father at this point, has that improved at all as you’ve gotten older? Was it harder earlier on, or has it just been consistent?
S: No. So when I didn’t see him from ages one to – so I was with him from zero months to eight months, and then from ages one to three, I was mostly on the phone with him while he was in a different country working. And I loved him on the phone. Then when he showed up in person when I was four, I actually bit him and pinched him the first time I saw him because I did not like the way like, my mom was all of a sudden more in love with another person, which is very Scorpio, but very possessive. So when I first saw him, I attacked him. And then we sort of got along, but he had a lot of rules that I wasn’t used to. So it was kind of challenging from ages six to 18, I would say. And then it got worse from ages 18 to 23. Then when I started going into my career, I realized there was really no ripping apart from the family because I had so much to learn. And so now, I’m learning to love everything and not necessarily have to accept and be the family and be him in order to be kind of get along. But it was a very big challenge internally, because I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t feel at home with him. But it was I think it had to do because he… It almost felt unsafe. Even though he was the father, there was a sort of unsafeness. Like, that theme of not really feeling secure with him that was in the early parts of my life, and now as I get older, now I see why he was doing the way, like, why he treated me the way that he did. And now I’m starting to appreciate him. So that’s kind of been the pattern of our relationship. It’s almost like a tug of war of “Can I be my own person without really becoming him?” And also being able to verbalize boundaries has been quite hard for me with him. And when I see him interact with my other siblings, they all have Sagittarius stelliums, and they get along so well. And then here I am with like, a Scorpio stellium, and it is so hard to joke and not offend. So yeah, that’s been our relationship.
CB: Got it. Okay. Yeah. There’s just, you know, it’s interesting you have Pluto like, right there on the IC as just your most angular planet essentially and just some of the themes. That can be such an intense placement, and sometimes those issues with like, control or issues with manipulation sometimes coming into play. And then it’s also interesting having the North Node there so close to the Sun so that, of course, like, a solar eclipse occurred in Scorpio just like, a week before you were born. And I’m interested in how that’s shown up in your life, both because it’s like, that’s something in and of itself. Like, the eclipse of the Sun and the Sun being hidden, and the nodes themselves in ancient astrology were sometimes called the eclipsing places where something is hidden. And it’s interesting that there was this sort of like, disappearance of him for a period of time very early in your life that was a really core foundational event and experience for you. And also that Mars – the ruler of the 4th house – is also the ruler of the 9th house of foreign travel, and you said that he traveled and went somewhere else I guess for work for a period of time and how that affected your relationship and your perception of him. But then at the same time, you don’t just have a stellium in the 4th house so that there’s more emphasis there, but it’s like, the ruler of your Ascendant is there. The ruler of your 10th house is there. And your career has become – and sort of life direction in some ways – has become very much wrapped up in him and what he did for work so that that’s become also to a certain extent what you do for work. And with Venus there as the most positive planet in your chart, even though it’s in Scorpio and it’s retrograde, it seems like despite some of the tensions with that relationship and the difficult things, that there’s also some positive things in terms of you being able to follow in that line of work and to help other people and to do some really important things in terms of like, what you were saying in terms of helping people with their end of life process, and that that’s something that you and him share in common to a certain extent, which is a somewhat positive thing in terms of the good work that you’re doing in the world.
S: Yeah. And I just had my Saturn return, and I feel like this year I really kind of established a relationship with him, and I had my first like, daddy-daughter moment where I truly felt safe. So it’s been a nice round of all these dynamics in the relationship with the father.
CB: Nice. I like that. Yeah. Your Saturn at five degrees of Pisces and having that exact return over the past – that just started a year ago in March of 2023. Yeah. And then one thing I noticed also is the eclipses, and I just wanted to ask you about this in terms of the timing. Let me see if this shows up, but I have my handy sheet of eclipses that I released for one of the eclipse episodes. But I was just thinking about how there was these eclipses in Scorpio and Taurus a few years ago that started in 2021 in Taurus and then kept bouncing back and forth from Taurus to Scorpio and Taurus to Scorpio and vice versa all the way through late 2023, and how that would have activated both your 4th house and your family and father axis, but also your 10th house and your career axis. And I was just curious how that lined up in terms of the timing, in terms of your work as well as your relationship with him.
S: That’s crazy that you’re showing those dates. November – September 2021 was when I actually moved back in with my father. And my ICU contract was from 2021 until I got diagnosed late September of 2023.
CB: Oh wow.
S: So those two years was when I lived in his house as training in the same career at the same workplace, so wow. I didn’t —
CB: Yeah.
S: — even realize that.
CB: Yeah. That’s incredible. I mean, that’s basically how eclipses work is it just activates these two houses in your chart and sometimes shows the interrelationship between those two sometimes seemingly opposite topics for a period of about a year and a half, or sometimes upwards of like, two plus years. And can sometimes just show you bouncing back and forth between those two things or sometimes bringing them together in your life in some way, so that’s really striking how that worked out for you in a very specific way.
S: Yes. Quite striking.
CB: Brilliant. Well, I’m glad to hear… Your Saturn return has been somewhat challenging because it rules your 6th house of illness, and of course that’s come up as part of that topic that you’ve been dealing with over the past year since that started, as well as potentially some of the themes related to mortality which also come up with the 8th house. But Saturn, you know, made its last exact hit to your Saturn return earlier this year, and then it’s retrograding back to I think like, 12 right now, and it’s gonna station and then move on so that we’re getting into the later phases of that, and Saturn will start to make its way into Aries eventually next year. We get the first ingress of that. So you’re most of the way through your Saturn return at this point, and it seems like navigating it well and getting the most out of it that you can. So that’s really good.
S: Yeah. It’s been quite a lesson. But I’m excited to see how I can kind of strengthen my foundation now I know that I can’t truly escape from the house.
CB: For sure. Well, it’s nice having that really close trine between Venus and Saturn, with Venus as like, the most positive planet in your chart and having that close trine with Saturn I think really helps to offset and to bring some balance to Saturn that it might not have otherwise. So I think that’s where you get some of the more positive and constructive things in terms of how that’s been manifesting. And yeah, that’s a really great example. So thank you for sharing it. I appreciate it.
S: Thank you so much for having me, Chris.
CB: Yeah. All right. Well, we’ll have to check in again at some point in the future, but thanks a lot. All right, bye!
All right. That was another really, really good example. And I liked the way that the eclipses tied things together. As you’ll see in the 3rd house episode that I haven’t released yet but I will this month, just paying attention to eclipses and the timing especially of natal placements and houses that you’re studying can be just so crucial in showing you some of the most important turning points in a person’s life. And especially when the natal promise of certain placements will be activated, as well as the tying together of two seemingly opposite houses. I think it’s really valuable to pay attention to eclipses for that reason.
So I’m gonna read through and pull up the next most upvoted story. All right. Yeah, I think that’s a good one. Victoria, if you’re here, you have the next most upvoted story that was submitted by listeners.
Hey.
VICTORIA: Hi!
CB: Thanks for joining me. What’s your birth data?
V: It’s April 26th, 1991. In Asheville, North Carolina.
CB: What time?
V: 11 PM.
CB: Are you currently in Asheville?
V: I’m in Greenville, South Carolina, right now.
CB: Okay. So you were hit really hard recently?
V: Yeah. I just got internet and cell reception about a day ago.
CB: Wow. That’s terrible. I’m really sorry to hear that; I hope you and everyone around you is okay.
V: Yeah. We’ll see. I have a lot of family in Asheville, so, which is kind of part of my story, but so far everyone’s good.
CB: Okay. Is your Ascendant 11 degrees of Sagittarius?
V: Yes.
CB: Yes. All right. So here is your chart. So for those listening to the audio version, we have a chart with Sagittarius rising and Pisces is the 4th whole sign house. And the degree of the IC is at 26 degrees of Pisces. So what has been going on with you, or what did you wanna share about your 4th house?
V: So I was trying to compile it when you announced that there was gonna be a webinar, so I was trying to get the dates all right, but Saturn entering Pisces kind of started the trajectory of everything I’m about to talk about. I have Neptune on my IC. It went retrograde, and it’s just been hanging out here, so. But the first week of February 2023, I started taking care of my dad; he had knee replacement surgery. And I was just helping him with his physical therapy. And I started spending more time with my parents, which I hadn’t done since I’d been married, and then I simultaneously had started therapy as well. And March 29th, 2023 was when I started therapy, and I realized I wasn’t happy in my marriage for a whole slew of reasons.
CB: That’s incredible. So this is right after in March of 2023, of course, is when Saturn went into Pisces. So it’s like, as soon as it went into your 4th whole sign house, a lot of this stuff started coming up.
V: Yeah, it did. It all started coming out in therapy, and I remember saying specifically to my therapist that I felt like I was buried alive, but I didn’t realize it until suddenly I realized it and I was like, “This isn’t where I wanna be anymore.”
CB: How long had you been married?
V: Four years.
CB: Four years. Okay. So since 2019?
V: Yeah.
CB: Got it. Okay. And so Saturn goes into your 4th house, and I mean, you have Venus there at 16. So that is one of the tricky things sometimes with Saturn transits. It’s like, when a planet goes into a new house that’s squaring that or opposing it, it kind of activates some of those placements. So you’re getting attention then between a 4th house transit that’s also bringing up some tensions with the 7th house and relationships. So that starts happened as soon as Saturn goes into that 4th whole sign house, and then what happened from there?
V: I realized that I didn’t have control of any of my money, and so in order to get out, I had to get a different job that wasn’t commission based so I could start storing money. And then I had to figure out what was my exit plan for getting out, and so I got a different job than what I was doing in order to start putting money away. And in July of 2023, I moved in with my parents; that’s when I like, officially moved out from my marriage.
CB: So that’s rights after Saturn – because Saturn did its first station in like, late June… Yeah, right here. Like, mid-June 2023 is when Saturn made its first retrograde station and like, slowed down and stopped in that sign. And then shortly after that is when you moved out?
V: Yeah. And the date I officially moved out was August 6th, and I think – I’m not sure – it has something to do with my zodiacal releasing, so I thought that was really interesting.
CB: Okay. So you moved in with your parents?
V: Yeah.
CB: So that’s in and of itself also interesting in terms of like, parents. Not just your home and living situation coming up with this 4th house transit, but also literally like, your parents coming back into and playing a major role in your life.
V: Yeah. I was living with my parents by myself for the first time, because I’m the oldest of three, and I’d never lived with them before by myself, so that was interesting! But I knew I needed to move out and get my own place; I just needed to save up money first, and I had actually considered moving back to Asheville, North Carolina. And I later stayed in Greenville, South Carolina, where I’m living now, at my parents’ request, and I’m glad I did because the next part is March 2024, my mom was diagnosed with cancer.
CB: Oh wow. Oh my god. March 2024 – right. Because Saturn retrograded back to zero Pisces, and it stationed direct late in the year and then starts moving forward again. And then right, because March 2024 was also the Mars-Saturn conjunction that we just went through. Do you know that the date was of the when that happened?
V: Let’s see. March 6th, 2024 is when I got – me and my siblings got the call from my parents that my mom had cancer that they had just discovered.
CB: Okay. That’s really terrible and that’s really intense. How did it go, and how was your reaction or how did you cope with that?
V: So she has multiple myeloma, which is a blood cancer that attacks the bones, and essentially they found it because she had a hole in her femur. And it was causing her a lot of pain, and then when her general doctor found it, they said she had to have emergency surgery, and she got an iron rod put in her thigh to help her walk. My biggest concern was for my younger sister who’s closest with my mom. She’s 25 and so I just, my concern was on her and for my father, because my father – I’m just like him; we’re super emotional and so I just knew that he wasn’t gonna have a lot of support like my mom would have. And so I focused on those two.
CB: Yeah. So you’re not living with them still at this point?
V: Right. Yeah. And so —
CB: When did you move out, or when did you stop living with them again?
V: It was I believe like, November 20th, 2023.
CB: Is that when Saturn was stationing? Okay, yeah, so you – Saturn stationed direct at zero Pisces in early November. So that connects the two retrograde periods then roughly is that you started moving out when Saturn was doing its first station retrograde, and then you got back out on your own and moved out of your parents’ place not long after Saturn stationed direct?
V: Yeah. I haven’t put together any of this yet, but that’s crazy.
CB: Yeah, that is really crazy. Well, it’s something I’ve always, like, I saw it in my own life how Saturn stations worked like that back in like, 2005, but I never wrote it down, and it’s something that’s, it’s hard to document sometimes because we’re talking about very long spans of time. But that’s kind of how it works, and that’s one of the reasons why planetary stations are so important and why we talk about them each month. And I always say that it’s like putting an exclamation mark next to the planet, because it’s putting an exclamation mark next to the planet in terms of what that transit is speaking about that specific part of your life and in your instance, it’s pertaining especially to your living situation since it’s going through your 4th house.
Okay, so that brings us back to March and April. Your mom got that diagnosis and then had to start getting treatment for it pretty quickly, I assume?
V: It’s actually one of the slower moving cancers, but she did a month later start chemo, and it went really well. And so they wanted to postpone her, they wanted to extend her remission because it’s autoimmune so it will come back. So then she had to do a more intense kind of chemo, and —
CB: So and she —
V: — with a hospital stay.
CB: And she started a month later, so that means like, late April?
V: Yeah.
CB: Okay. So that’s like, when, it’s like, Mars and Saturn are going through at that point in the 4th house, and then she has that, and then later she has to do a more intensive form of chemo?
V: Yeah. She had a complication. She had MRSA, and had to go to the hospital for an emergency stay. And she got out. She was well enough, and then that’s when she started her chemo again, and she was there for two weeks. And the cancer’s gone now, so.
CB: That’s great. When —
V: Yeah.
CB: Do you know when that sort of all clear diagnosis happened or what time frame are we talking about for the end of that?
V: It would have been, I wanna say, late August? I’m trying to remember. It’s been a blur this year.
CB: Yeah. That’s okay. We don’t have to – I was just curious. You know, there was that other station that happened at the end of June, which I would think would be an important turning point, and then we are basically hitting the next important station now that Saturn’s retrograded all the way back to 12 Pisces, and then it’s stationing direct this month in early November. But you know, we’ve already had the big Pisces eclipse that just took place last month, and obviously that’s the most relevant like, recent thing, I assume, unless there was anything else before that.
V: No. The eclipse was what happened to my hometown.
CB: Yeah. So let me put that up, the transits. So this was the Pisces eclipse, which occurred on September 17th, and one of the things that we said about this and we talked about a lot in the forecast for that month is how the Pisces eclipse, since it was occurring right there with Saturn in Pisces and Neptune, that we expected it to kind of accentuate and accelerate some of the transits that were already taking place that people were experiencing in the Pisces sector of their chart, whatever sector of the chart it was that that was hitting. And for you, it was hitting your 4th house, so it kind of exacerbated some of the challenges that were already coming up with respect to those two 4th house topics of on the one hand, home and living situation, and on the other hand, parents. And then this Hurricane Helene came out of nowhere and just absolutely devastated many, many places, but one of them – it was actually one of the only towns that I mentioned on the last forecast that we just did for October is I specifically mentioned Asheville because one, I saw some videotape of it, and it was just absolutely flooded. But two, there used to be like, a ton of astrologers that lived in Asheville at one point. I knew like, Kelly Lee Phipps lived there; Lehman lived there at one point. So it used to be like, a little mini like, hub for astrology to a certain extent. There’s also I believe there’s a Vedic astrologer, Ryan, that lives there that was on the podcast at one point. So I was shocked to see how hard it got hit. How bad was it, or what was the perspective from the perspective of you and your family and your parents?
V: I actually didn’t know about Asheville for a few days because in Greenville no one had power. We didn’t really have cell reception; we definitely didn’t have internet. And so I didn’t hear about it until this past wednesday. My mom was actually able to contact her own mother who lives there because they have a different cell service carrier and wasn’t able to contact anyone else. But they’re totally fine. For as, you know, as fine as they can be. I wanted to go and visit and help volunteer and take donations, but it’s unsafe to travel there right now. So I haven’t done that yet. But there’s plenty of other opportunities to do that here since we’re so close in Greenville.
CB: And how – yeah, I forgot to ask about that. How badly was it that your own town was hit?
V: It wasn’t nearly as bad because there wasn’t the flooding. It was mostly that there was a storm, a low front, that was there before Helene that kind of sat on top of Greenville and Asheville, and so it was a lot of just power lines down. And they couldn’t come to assess the damage – whoever, you know, “they” is. They couldn’t come to assess the damage to even begin repairing power until they brought in people from out of town to let them know can we move all these fallen trees, or is there live electricity? Is there live wires here? And so what took the longest was that they didn’t know where they could remove the damage. And honestly, it was just very isolating. I didn’t hear from my parents for the better part of Friday, because they completely lost cell service. I had to travel outside my apartment to try to send messages, and it was really, really hard.
CB: Yeah, that’s really scary. And then what is your living situation at this point? I mean, aside from getting hit with that, you’ve been living on your own for the past how long now?
V: It’ll be a year next month. So it’s been about 10, 11 months.
CB: Okay. So that’s still something you’re getting adjusted to over the past year. And then going through, I assume like, whatever residual stuff in terms of disengaging from that previous marriage that you went through?
V: Yeah.
CB: Okay. Yeah. Because that’s the other part of this Saturn transit is it’s actually, you know, closer to some of those degrees right now, and it keeps just going over and then backing up and going over your Descendant at 11 degrees of Gemini and your Venus at 16 degrees of Gemini, which can sometimes bring up sort of residual things there or sometimes just be part of the process of moving on and separating from something that was, you know, important in your life.
V: Yeah. The end of my marriage was definitely for the better; doesn’t mean it was fun or easy to get there, but it definitely needed to happen. And then my mom’s cancer – I learned a lot from that. It was something I didn’t think I could ever handle, and then I was in a really good position to. And so she’s better now, and so I mean, those are two really hard things, but I feel better about it for the most part.
CB: Good. And in terms of work, because one of the things about that Pisces eclipse is it’s opening up something that’s gonna tie together your 4th house and your living situation or potentially parents with your 10th house and your career. But we haven’t seen that other side of it yet because we just got the initial phase of the first Pisces eclipse in your 4th house with this disaster that happened. But then I think in the springtime, we’ll get an eclipse in your 10th house, and the potential for some major changes and major new beginnings when it comes to your career and overall life direction. And like, with the last chart example that we did, sometimes when eclipses start taking place in the 4th house and the 10th house, events that occur in one house can somehow be connected to events that happen in the other house. So I don’t know if any of that is clear or would make sense at this stage, and because we haven’t gotten both sides of that eclipse series yet it may not. But do you have any sense of – I don’t know what you’re currently doing for work, but do you have any sense of how this change that just happened with that Pisces eclipse happening there could potentially have some implications for your career over the next like, year or year and a half?
V: Yeah. It depends on whether my grandmother gets displaced from where she is in Asheville, because she has health issues. Because my lease ends in about a year, I’ve already been trying to plan where my next move is. I looked at Asheville; that’s kind of off the board now. My job is based in Charlotte; I used to live there, so potentially moving back there or somewhere else. And then my parents had made plans to leave Greenville as well to be closer to my siblings.
CB: Okay. That makes sense. Let me share the eclipse dates again just to give some idea of what I’m talking about there. So just… Here’s the first Pisces eclipse, and then yeah, you’ll get this 10th house eclipse when we get to the next series, but it won’t hit your 4th house the first time. So it’ll just be a 10th house eclipse, and then you’ll get the very last of the Aries eclipse series there in March as well. But then later in the year circa September, then it’s more like the 10th house-4th house axis again more fully for just one time, essentially, that you’ll get both in basically a year from now. So there may just be some interconnection between things going on with your home and living situation and your career at that point in some way, which does not have to be as dramatic as, you know, a whole hurricane that just hit your hometown necessarily. But it’ll be interesting to see how in retrospect that having happened in September was the beginning of sort of like, a series of changes that will end up altering your life direction in some significant ways, but that ultimately, it will point you in the direction that you’re supposed to be headed on because it’s connected with your 10th house, which is your career but also your overall life direction, and that there’ll be some events in terms of your career and life direction that wouldn’t have happened where you wouldn’t have been pushed in that direction that you need to go if some of those events hadn’t taken place. So even though it’ll be some of this recently has been so traumatic and difficult, that ultimately, you’ll look back on it and realize that there was some… I don’t wanna say necessity of it, but that even though there was many terrible things that there were some good things that came out of it as a result of some of the changes that you experienced at that time.
V: Oh, for sure. It didn’t feel easy at the time, but it’s getting easier.
CB: Sure. Yeah. Well, yeah, and now you’re most of the way through that Saturn transit, luckily, through your 4th house and will already be getting into the like, Saturn in Aries section of things here pretty soon. So it’ll be interesting to look back on that in retrospect and sort of reflect on it. And yeah, where are you now? Are you happy and like, moving forward into other stuff in terms of relationships and things like that?
V: It’s honestly just been focusing on my mom’s health and focusing on my job and my career, trying to build that up right now.
CB: Nice. What is your career? I was curious if you can – I don’t know if you can talk about that.
V: It’s digital marketing.
CB: Marketing. Okay. Interesting. I was just curious with the ruler of the 10th in the 5th how that played out.
V: Yeah. It’s mainly social media, but it’s a lot of content writing.
CB: Okay. That makes sense. Cool. All right. Well, I think that’s a really good example. Thank you for sharing that; I’m sorry you went through that recently, and that’s all so intense. But I hope that, yeah, that you and your family are able to come out of it and that everything’s okay or that there’s some positive changes that end up happening as a result of all of that just terribleness that’s happened that just came out of nowhere.
V: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. It was an honor.
CB: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for sharing your story.
All right. That was another really good one, and that was a really good example of, you know, we try to talk about some of these things on the forecasts in as broad of terms as we can in terms of the mundane things, but that it’s a good reminder how some of these transits are hitting individuals in very specific ways depending on what part of the chart it’s hitting and how that can be impacting people. Yeah.
All right, so let me look and see what the next example is. Okay, so it looks like the most upvoted one next is Daniela.
DANIELA: Hello!
CB: Hey! Thanks for joining me.
D: Thank you for having me.
CB: What’s your birth data?
D: June 2nd, 1988. Born at 22:10. In San Ramon.
CB: And is your Ascendant 14 Aquarius?
D: Yes.
CB: All right. So here’s your chart. You have Aquarius rising for those listening to the audio version, and you have Jupiter in Taurus in the 4th whole sign house pretty closely conjunct the degree of the IC at 22 degrees of Taurus. So what’s your 4th house story?
D: I don’t know if I have a story per se; I think like, my most signature that I think I wrote was my dad is one of 20, and my family, a lot of them are farmers. They’re in Costa Rica, most of them. And they’re relatively wealthy on my father’s side – not so much on my mom’s side. So a lot of that was inherited. My grandfather was a farmer, and he had the idea of delivering vegetables to other parts of the country. This was in the 1940s, which wasn’t – 1950s – it just wasn’t like, a common thing. And the routes that he created are routes that my family still uses to this day, because they also have a cheese factory and they deliver cheese all over the country. Cheese in Costa Rica is very, like, a big deal, so. And my family’s known, funny enough, for cheese.
CB: Okay. Nice.
D: Yeah.
CB: So that became really successful?
D: Yes. They are. My father was the only one that decided to move out of the country, and we came here February 14th, 2000. And he moved back at the end of last year in November.
CB: Okay, got it. So part of your example in your description was that your family’s very wealthy, mostly on your dad’s side. So that’s that Jupiter placement manifesting there on the degree of the IC, and then interestingly, Jupiter is also ruling the 2nd house of finances, and it’s placed in the 4th house of parents. So that’s really cool example of the rulers of the houses as well.
D: Yeah. Jupiter in Pisces allowed me to be able to buy a house. That was during like, the covid times, and I became a travel nurse, and I was able to save up enough that I could purchase a house at the end of – it was December 16th, 2022. That was before I knew about auspicious elections and stuff like that, but funny enough, that chart is a Taurus rising when I bought my house.
CB: Oh wow. So you later figured out the time that you bought the house and —
D: Yeah. I wrote it down when I signed the deed; I wrote it down.
CB: Nice. And it just happened to be Taurus rising?
D: Yeah.
CB: I love that. I love how things line up like that.
D: It was like, 14 degrees of Taurus rising, so it was squaring my Ascendant and it was perfect. Yeah.
CB: Nice. And when was that when you – you said that was when Jupiter was in Pisces?
D: Yes. It was literally like, Jupiter at 29 degrees of Pisces. I wanna say I bought my house December 16th, 2022 at 4:14 in Frederick, Mayland.
CB: Nice. Okay. So Jupiter was, yeah, at 29 degrees and just coming off of a sextile with your natal Jupiter. And oh yeah, and then of course the nodes were moving through Taurus and Scorpio at that time, so that means that there had just been an eclipse in Taurus like, that immediately preceded that. That would have been here around… Yeah, it would have been this one in November. Basically in November of 2022, you had a lunar eclipse in your 4th house of home and living situation, and then —
D: Yes.
CB: — you bought your house literally like, the next month.
D: Yes. I also quit the travel contract around that time, because I had a breakup with a boyfriend. So I left a relatively prominent facility here in Maryland and then started a different contract that lasted for a couple months. Now I’m at a local hospital here.
CB: So you had a job change, basically, around that time —
D: Yes.
CB: — as well?
D: Yes.
CB: Okay. So that ties together the other side of the eclipses that would have been happening at the same time. I think this was one of them – October 25th, 2022 was a solar eclipse in Scorpio, if I have that correct. So that’s the 10th house thing, so we’re again seeing another thing where a person is having eclipses in their 4th house and their 10th house and they’re having very important turning points happen in both their home and living situation as well as their career at the same time. But for you, those things are happening sort of independently, right? They’re not interconnected, I don’t think, are they?
D: Like, the career and home thing? I feel like it was happening simultaneously. Because I started working that year when those set of eclipses started happening, that’s when I got a contract. It was at Johns Hopkins, and I was there for almost a year, but a little bit shortly into that particular contract, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to step away from – it was like, a month into my contract, and I was diagnosed with cancer and I had to have emergency surgery and blah blah blah. But in spite of that, I was still able to save up enough money to buy my house, but it was all happening simultaneously. And towards the end of 2022 is when I saw this house, bought it, but also changed contracts.
CB: Okay. I see that Saturn was like, transiting through your first house and over your Ascendant at the same time. So when were you —
D: Yeah.
CB: — diagnosed with cancer?
D: That was in August – I’m sorry, August. It was in April of 2022. So that was a Mars profection year, and that was a little bit shortly after Mars was in Aquarius, I wanna say, or very close to the Mars return is when I had the surgery. So I had surgery April 20th, 2022, and I wanna say – I forget what time. I think it was like, around noon to one o’clock is when I had my right kidney removed.
CB: Oh wow. Okay. That’s really intense. And what profection year was it? What house?
D: It was Scorpio. It was the —
CB: 10th house, okay. So yeah, and it was activating Mars. That’s interesting, because obviously that’s especially the Saturn transit through your first house, especially since you have a night chart, so your Saturn transits are more difficult going through your first house at that time. But then also something we were talking about in the 2nd house episode recently was that there may have been some ancient associations of the body with the 2nd house more so that kind of dropped off later on. But I wonder if that’s relevant here just in terms of having that surgery at that time when you’re having that Mars return; that could be an interesting sort of connection there that might be easy to overlook or could be suggestive.
D: Yeah. No, for sure. Because it was – I didn’t have any symptoms at all of the type of cancer that I had. It was a renal cancer, which primarily is in older men, and their blood pressure will go up very high, which is one of the symptoms. I had zero symptoms, and my blood pressure’s actually so low that I take blood pressure medication for it. It’s worse now after my kidney was removed, so. I had got a really bad GI bug, and that’s how I ended up in the ER. And some of my numbers were a little off, so it was an ER that I used to work out, funny enough, and one of my coworker’s like, “Hey, how about we just get a CAT scan?” They were checking my liver and my pancreas – all that was fine. But then there was this seven centimeter tumor that was mostly taking up my entire kidney. Like, so yeah – this is happening! Yeah, it was interesting.
CB: Do you remember what the dates were approximately of that ER visit?
D: I do, but I don’t know if I step out of Zoom if it’s gonna like, mess it up. I have it somewhere.
CB: I guess I’m just guessing it was around the time of that Mars-Saturn conjunction in your first house around —
D: Yes, it was like, end of March. End of March, beginning of April. I delayed the surgery a little bit because I had to figure out what to do with my daughter. And —
CB: Got it.
D: — I was lucky enough that my family, one of my aunts from Costa Rica, was able to fly in, and she took care of me, basically, the entire time. She’s retired, so.
CB: Nice. Yeah. I see the Mars-Saturn conjunction went exact around April 5th, 2022, so that’s right in that time frame.
D: Yeah. So it was around that time, yes.
CB: Yeah. Okay. Good. Well, are you better now?
D: Yes. No cancer, just I have a different – I have a chronic disease that’s gotten worse. It’s called POTS. My blood pressure just now cannot be regulated as well just because I am missing that one kidney, so I’m very prone to dehydration. I get IV fluids every so often.
CB: Got it. Okay.
D: Yeah.
CB: And then you bought your house later that year when that eclipse took place. And then yeah, then that eclipse series finished up in late 2023, because I think there was one more eclipse that took place in Taurus. Were there any like, residual things after you moved into that house that were still going on, either in terms of changes with your home and living situation or in terms of your parents in, let’s see, I think it was October… Yeah, October of 2023? Looks like the eclipse was around October 28th, 29th.
D: My dad left – like, moved back to Costa Rica shortly, I wanna say like, two weeks after that. And he left the same day he came to United States, which was in November 1999. So he moved, like, he quit, he retired, and he moved back to Costa Rica.
CB: Wow. That’s incredible. So the eclipse —
D: It was a bummer, but we’re happy for him.
CB: Yeah. I mean, that’s a pretty good run – 1999 to 2023 – that’s like, 24 years. And then so that eclipse is him taking off. So it looks like Uranus was at 21 degrees of Taurus at that time, so it was right on top of your IC at 22 and your Jupiter at 20 Taurus. So that’s part of it as well.
D: Yes.
CB: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, that’s a pretty amazing set of examples of, again, like, 4th house and 10th house stuff. And the fluidity between the 4th house representing the home and living situation on the one hand, and then on the other hand, the 4th house also representing the parents and how under major transits I think we’ve seen in both this example and the last one how, you know, both topics can come up during the course of important 4th house transits. That it’s not always just like, one thing or the other, that sometimes it can be both.
D: For sure.
CB: Cool. All right. Well, thank you for sharing that example. I appreciate it.
D: No problem. Thank you for having me on.
CB: Of course.
All right, that was awesome. I think we are getting… We’re coming up with some really interesting stuff and really deep stuff about the nature of the 4th house, I feel like, at this point. And in terms of seeing that interconnection with eclipses, seeing eclipses sometimes accentuate ongoing transits that are already there. In that instance, the eclipse just by virtue of happening in the same sign as transiting Uranus was helping to accentuate the Uranus transit that was happening over the IC. Yeah. That’s really interesting.
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All right, I’m back. This is going really well in the sense that we’re finding some really amazing examples, and this was completely impromptu, so that’s one of the reasons why I love these. Not just these work sessions, but I like the impromptu work sessions because you don’t really know what you’re gonna get, but I always find with astrology that when you sit down and talk to a person about their life, their chart lines up so well with their lived experience that it’s always really striking and really powerful to have those conversations directly in person. So I’m really glad that that’s part of what’s happening here today.
All right, so let me see who the next most upvoted one is. It looks like Tasney, that you’re the next most upvoted one. If you’re still here? all right.
Hello!
TASNEY: Hi! How are you?
CB: Hey. I’m excellent; this is going great today. What’s your birth data?
T: It’s January 3rd, 1974.
CB: January 3rd, 1974. Okay.
T: And it’s 6:57 AM, and that’s in Malden, Massachusetts. M-A-L-D-E-N.
CB: All right. Is your Ascendant seven degrees of Capricorn?
T: Yep, that’s it.
CB: All right, so let me share your chart. So for those watching – listening to the audio version, we have a chart with seven degrees of Capricorn rising. Mercury is at nine degrees conjunct the Ascendant, and the Sun is at 12 degrees. So this is actually kind of a tricky example because the Sun is close enough to the Ascendant that it might be a day chart, although it’s right on the border.
T: I was gonna tell you, my belief is that it’s a night chart, and that’s because when I run the Lot of Eros, the night chart feels like it makes more sense.
CB: Okay.
T: But, you know, I don’t know.
CB: Yeah. I mean, it very well may be. It’s like, right there on the border, so that would —
T: Yeah.
CB: — be really interesting if your experience is that it’s more of a night chart, then that’s a good data point.
T: Yeah.
CB: Okay. So, and then in terms of your 4th house, your 4th whole sign house is Aries. But your IC falls in Taurus in the 5th whole sign house at three degrees, and it’s conjunct Mars at three degrees of Taurus and the Moon at four degrees of Taurus. So what is your example that you wanted to share?
T: Yeah, so I was a competitive figure skater and a classical music musician in my childhood, and my father pretty much ran my life, like, in a very controlling way when I was a child. Like, brought me to all my lessons and sat in on everything and was like, he was the rink dad that sat in the hockey box screaming at me across the rink. And so it was like, really intense! And you know —
CB: Was he like, in that – was he a former skater or something himself? Or where did that come from?
T: No, he was a former musician and just never had the opportunity, so I think he – and he was a former athlete as well. And just never had the opportunity. Like, he grew up in the inner city and I think felt like he never had a chance to shine, so it was like, “I’m gonna have my kid shine!”
CB: Got it, so —
T: You know.
CB: — it was one of those sort of like, living vicariously through the kid?
T: Yes. Yes, very much so.
CB: Interesting. So all right, so maybe that’s partially like, Mars ruling the 4th whole sign house being placed on the IC in the 5th house and some of that sort of energy coming through there.
T: Yeah. And then, you know, when I was a teenager, I started to like, lose interest in these things because it felt forced. And I ended up developing – I was always injured and always having a lot of pain and issues – and I ended up leaning on that to quit, because he wouldn’t let me quit, and it was almost like I was… You know, later, after working with like, therapists and things, I think it was like, the pain was my way out. It was like, weird. But I always thought it was interesting, Mars, you know, the energy of Mars with that. Yeah.
CB: Right. Yeah. For sure.
T: And the IC being there, too – like, I have a lot of, you know, pain and issues physically with like, when I try to do the music and the skating. Like, I did become a coach, and I was a successful coach as like, a side job for many years and had a team that won championships and did, you know, quite a bit of work there too. And then when I had my son, and I feel like this is 4th and 5th, but when I had my son, he had a lot of health issues, and so I ended up having to leave that and kind of caretake my son. And I had gotten a divorce, so I had to, like, put all my resources into supporting him. And he had some special needs, so I ended up having to like, not be able to buy a house in order to like, get him into a special school for a while.
CB: Interesting. Yeah. That’s a pretty striking connection there between, you know, because if we were just looking at the 4th house, we see Aries is there. And in terms of like, home and living situation, and it’s ruled by Mars, which is in the 5th house. And so the delineation – that’s a really interesting combination then of that in terms of how that worked out that you couldn’t buy a house for a period of time because you had to focus on or you had to spend the resources on your child.
T: Yeah. And then I know when Uranus – the one other thing I had mentioned in the chat was when Uranus made its last little tiptoe back into Aries there, my dad had a sudden health issue and passed.
CB: Oh wow.
T: And that was a few of my examples.
CB: So was that at the beginning of Aries or the end of Aries?
T: The end. Like, the very last retrograde back in there.
CB: Interesting. That’s actually – okay, so let me… I’ll pull up the transits. Do you know the time frame of that?
T: Let me think. I wanna say it was March of 2019? It was like, right before covid, because I remember that he never had to deal with covid, which was a blessing.
CB: Okay. Yeah. So in mid-March, Uranus is…
T: Oh, you know what, actually I’m sorry – it was like, January.
CB: Yeah. Okay. Well, there was actually a Mars – it’s like, Mars was also transiting through your 4th house at that time for —
T: Yeah.
CB: — literally starting January 1st, 2019. And then – oh right, I remember this, because then Uranus stationed also at the beginning of that month on January 4th. So yeah, you’re right – Uranus did retrograde back into Aries, stations, and then it’s not long after that station. And did you say the date? Sorry.
T: I know I don’t have the exact date, but I know it was like, the end of January.
CB: Okay. I was just curious how close it was to this Mars-Uranus conjunction that occurred in like, late January, early February. Let’s see what else was going on. Yeah. So I mean, that does…
T: The other thing is Uranus is like, right near, it’s almost exactly opposite that Mars, too. I mean, it’s not super close, but.
CB: Oh, your natal. So this – right.
T: Natal Uranus is like, opposing it near the Midheaven there.
CB: Yeah. That’s a really great point. So that was the tail end of your Uranus opposition and your father passed away, and it was a sudden unexpected thing. What happened, again, that made it sudden or unexpected?
T: He just, yeah, he just – well, he had had a stroke when I was 19, so he wasn’t in great health from then on. But then he had like, an infection. We thought it was just like, a bladder infection or something. He went into the hospital and then like, all of a sudden, he started having trouble breathing, and they just weren’t able to get… Because of his stroke, he had like, early onset dementia, and I think when you’re a stroke victim, it can affect your gag reflex. So there were complications, but like, we just were like, “Oh, it’s just a bladder infection,” and then it was like, “Oh, we’re gonna have to put him on life support.” I’m like, “What?!”
So he was otherwise doing okay.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s really intense. So and then that’s interesting just in terms of, it’s like, natally Uranus – it’s not super close, but it’s basically conjunct the Midheaven, which means it’s also opposing the IC. And so that there’s almost like, a natal Mars-Uranus opposition there that’s on that axis. And then there’s not a full recurrence, but just that signature comes back around again at that point when there’s a Mars-Uranus conjunction in the 4th whole sign house but just pretty near the IC when that happens. Yeah, that’s really rough. I’m sorry to hear that that happened.
T: Oh, thank you. Yeah. Well, long time ago, but – or, you know, feels like it, but yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. And then you said that you ended up having a successful skating career and music career, but then you sort of rebelled and moved away from that. What did you end up doing otherwise?
T: So I’ve had multiple careers. I currently work in accounting; that’s probably my Venus and my ruler of my 10th house there in the 2nd.
CB: Right.
T: But I’ve always had like, a couple different – I studied engineering, so I have an engineering degree. I went back and did accounting. And obviously studying astrology too. But yeah, I always think my 6th house is Gemini, and I wonder if that’s why I’m always doing multiple things.
CB: Yeah. That could make sense with Mercury conjunct the Ascendant. That’s interesting that accounting is one of the main things that you settled on, though, just with the ruler of the 10th being Venus in the 2nd house of money and finances.
T: Yes. And I’m great – well, I always tell people my Saturn return I had like, all this credit card debt, and I basically moved home, got rid of it all, and now I’m like, don’t use credit cards and have excellent control of my finances. And people come to me for help with it.
CB: Nice.
T: Because I have some systems I use, yeah.
CB: And that was part of your Saturn return?
T: Yeah.
CB: Interesting. Okay. So with Saturn ruling like, the first house and the 2nd house and placed there in Cancer in the 7th, that was part of what was getting activated at that time?
T: Yeah. Yeah, it’s fascinating.
CB: Yeah, that is really interesting. And then the last thing I was just trying to understand, because a lot of what you described, I can understand the Mars component of it with… Let’s switch back to just the natal chart itself. I could understand the pushiness part of it if he was like, a former athlete that didn’t get to achieve as much athletic success as he wanted and therefore he pushed you to as a manifestation of that Mars on the IC. But it almost sounded like there was like, some Pluto stuff going on there at the same time, and I was trying to understand. Because Pluto’s not really configured to that stuff, but it is configured, it is in your 10th house at six degrees of Libra and is squaring your Ascendant and Mercury and Sun as well as your Saturn, not super widely, but I assume that’s part of that constellation of stuff at the same time that was coming up in terms of some of those early feelings of being pressured or like, controlled by your dad and like, pushed into doing some of these things.
T: Yeah. Well, so what’s coming to mind as you’re talking, so I had decided that I didn’t wanna be a musician professionally. Like, I got a full scholarship to be a musician, and I was like, “I’m in so much pain; I can’t, like, do this.” So my father basically said to me, “Well, if you wanna go to college and major in liberal arts,” and please don’t cringe anyone on here that’s done that, because I think it’s a great, you know – but he basically told me if I didn’t do engineering, I would have to go to a local college, like, state school. And I was like, I wanted to get as far away from home as possible. So I was like, “I’ll do engineering! Sure! How far can I go?” So.
CB: Right, because otherwise he wouldn’t pay for it.
T: Right.
CB: Got it. Okay.
T: And you know, he’s been correct that it was a great degree to have. A lot of people think I’m really smart because I have it, but I, you know, got to my senior year and I was like, “I don’t wanna do this.”
CB: Right. Yeah. I wonder, because you were also talking about some of the injuries and stuff that you had at that time when you were a teenager, but that you were also used some of that to get out of that, and I wonder —
T: Yeah.
CB: Some of that is also, I think, partially indicative of just the ruler of the Ascendant being Saturn in Cancer that’s retrograde right there. And then somewhere in the middle of your teens, you would have had your Saturn opposition, which everyone goes through around 14 or so, give or take, for a few years when Saturn would have been transiting through your first house and then opposing that placement while hitting some of your first house planets, including your Sun. And I just wonder if that wasn’t some crucial turning point when it came to some of that stuff as well.
T: That’s around when the pain started to get really bad was like, 14, 15. And I’d like, be, you know, in concerts – like, I got to play at Symphony Hall in Boston – I’d be on stage, and I’d have Bengay and like, in between movements, I’d be throwing it on my shoulder, and it was like, oh my god, I can’t live like this anymore. So I would say that’s around the age when I was like… But I didn’t feel strong enough to rebel against him, so it was like I said, I think, you know, I’m in pain, I can’t practice. No, I don’t want to.
CB: Right. What was —
T: And then when he – oh, go ahead.
CB: In terms of using like, Bengay and stuff, what was the nature of the ailments that you were having?
T: I had a lot of neck and shoulder pain, because like, the violin – I played the violin, and so it was like, all like, neck and shoulder up here, like, with the way I was playing and holding all my stress up here. When I was skating, when I was younger, it was more my knee. But I have a lot of like, residual neck and shoulder joint issues, which —
CB: Got it.
T: — I always think is that Saturn Capricorn.
CB: Yeah, for sure. That’s definitely some Saturn stuff. That’s really interesting. And then the last point is the ruler of the 7th. So the ruler of the 4th is in the 5th, and you said that at one point, you had to not buy a house in order to just reallocate resources to raising your child. Did that change at some point, or were you able to eventually buy a house at some point?
T: No. So I just finally put my son into the public school, and I’m kind of hoping between now and the Aries eclipse in the spring that I’ll have an opportunity to buy something. I’ve been looking. But I just switched his school, which you know, we went through all that Pisces energy that’s been going on for me has been kind of ringing true for me with that journey. He also – my son also has had multiple surgeries and things. So again, interesting with the Mars-Moon.
CB: What’s the nature of his, like, what are some of his ailments?
T: So he was born with something called malrotation, where his intestines weren’t connected properly. So he had a surgery to correct that. And then when he was one-and-a-half, he had emergency surgery because part of his colon died, and they had to remove part of it. And we were in the hospital for like, six weeks. And then I would say, you know, he had a lot of anxiety and issues from that. He forgot how to walk. So I feel like he’s just starting to catch up with the other kids now. Like, he’s been in pretty good health now, just a lot of residual stuff from that, but.
CB: Got it. Okay. And then there were some recent surgeries that had to take place as well?
T: Yeah, they had missed a piece. They had to go back in. And then he had esophagus issues. His esophagus had a congenital issue; they had to stretch it. So like, yeah, he’s just had a lot of – poor kid! Had a lot of stuff.
CB: Yeah. That’s a very literal like, having had a lot of surgery is a very literal manifestation of Mars in the 5th house and just the symbolism of that, since Mars is, you know, one of the symbols for Mars in like, ancient Egyptian texts is just a knife. And yeah, having the combination of that with the 5th house there is a very just literal manifestation.
T: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. Well, you will have, yeah, one more eclipse in Aries early next spring in your 4th house, and just in terms of bringing that series of eclipses between your 4th and your 10th house to completion that’s been happening over the past year or so. And in terms of just different situations with home, with your living situation, and I guess the previous eclipse series was the Scorpio-Taurus one, which would have been in your 5th house when it was happening in Taurus but also on your IC. So I assume that was also some of the stuff you were going through in terms of that over the past few years and in terms of some of the surgeries and things like that.
T: Yeah. Well, you know, he’s needed like, different therapies and things, and then, you know, just dealing with his anxiety. Been trying to get him assistance. Like, I put a lot of work into like, arranging appointments and getting him to this specialist and that specialist and trying this medication and like, so like, I feel like that, you know, sometimes that Mars – I can be a little bit of a bull in a china shop, so to speak. So sometimes I’m like, “I’m gonna fix it, fix it, fix it!” with him. So I’m trying to mellow out a little.
CB: Yeah. That’s a pretty common Mars thing is – especially I see that by transit. Just when a person had a Mars transit through a certain house, suddenly they’re having to expend a lot more energy in that area of their life compared to other areas. So sometimes that can be a good keyword or theme for wherever Mars is placed in a person’s chart, that they often end up having to put a lot of energy and focus in that area of life more so sometimes than other areas.
T: Yes. Yeah, you know, I haven’t – what’s funny, like, after he was born, I pretty much like, have not done any music and any skating. And I probably with the last eclipse in that 5th house, I started doing a little bit. I joined a singing group so that I was at least doing something creative, because you know, I love that stuff. And with the Moon there, obviously, I always like to have my foot in something like that, so.
CB: Yeah. Well, and having the Moon there in the 5th house and having it exalted – something I was talking about earlier today in a webinar I did for students of my Hellenistic course is oftentimes when you have an exalted planet, the person will do the highest form or like, the highest version of that that’s possible.
T: Yeah.
CB: So I assume that that was part of it for you was like, excelling in that area, or doing a good job in terms of your creative endeavors there, whether it was with your music or with your skating.
T: Yeah. So the skating – one of the skating teams that I coached, we went to Europe several times. We won seven national championships, three World Cups, like… Yeah, skating’s like a knife on ice! Yeah, that’s true. I just saw someone’s comment there. But yeah. And you know, with the violin, like I said, I played in Boston Youth Symphony, got scholarships and stuff, so like – and I’m an overachiever. When I have the drive and the will to wanna do something, I like, make it happen. Like, you know, yeah.
CB: Nice. That’s incredible. I love that. That’s a really great manifestation of that placement. And yeah, you know, at different points, that’ll become reactivated again. It’ll be interesting to see what you do at different points when you’re able to lean back into that again at different stages in your life and really accentuate that great exalted Moon placement that you have in the 5th, and the ability there to produce things yourself or creative things or sometimes to maybe like, host or manage, because that’s another function of the Moon is the collective function of the Moon and its ability to, yeah, help people in that sort of administrative faculty like you did with, you know, having a team of people that were being successful with skating and things like that.
T: Yeah. That sounds awesome. I’m looking forward to getting back into it as my son’s getting a little less dependent on me.
CB: Yeah.
T: Just gets better every day, so it’s good.
CB: Excellent! Good. Awesome. Well, I think that was a really good example. Thank you very much for sharing your chart with us; I appreciate it.
T: Yeah, that’s for having me!
CB: Of course. All right. Take care.
T: Yeah, you too.
CB: All right. That was a great example. Let me see where we’re at and what the next most upvoted ones are that have been submitted through the Q&A section.
Maybe Adam? It looks like yours is the next most upvoted one if you’d like to join me and if you’re still here.
Hey.
ADAM: Hi.
CB: What’s your birth data?
A: Birthdate is April 12th, 1975.
CB: All right.
A: And that’s 8:55 PM.
CB: And what city?
A: In Mountain View, California.
CB: All right. That is San Bernardino?
A: Mountain View.
CB: Yeah. Do you know what like, county it is? It’s giving me three different counties.
A: It might be. It’s in like, the South Bay area, so like, Santa Clara.
CB: Okay. Yeah, Santa Clara is one of them. I’ll go with that. Is your Ascendant approximately eight degrees of Scorpio?
A: Yep.
CB: Cool. All right. So let me share your chart for those watching the video version. For those listening to the audio version, we are looking at a chart now with Scorpio rising and the 4th house is Aquarius, where we find the degree of the IC at 14 degrees of Aquarius. And the ruler of the 4th house is Saturn, which is placed in Cancer in the 9th house. And this is a night chart, because you were born almost at nine o’clock at night.
So what’s your 4th house example that you wanted to share with us?
A: Yeah, so I understand my 4th house mostly in terms of Aquarius and then, you know, through some study I’m thinking about it in terms of my 9th house Saturn as well. So my mom was an astrologer, so I feel pretty good about my birth time.
CB: Nice.
A: And she actually had Aquarius rising at like, 15 degrees of Aquarius, so she’s definitely represented right there.
CB: Oh wow. That’s incredible. So your mom’s Ascendant is the degree of your IC?
A: Yeah, exactly.
CB: Wow. That’s impressive. All right. And also and already we’re manifesting that ruler of the 4th house in the 9th house with your mom being an astrologer. The 9th house is the part of the chart that deals with astrology.
A: Yeah. So yeah, interestingly, she was, you know, born to a Jewish family, raised Jewish. She had a difficult childhood, and so she left as soon as she could, and that looked like essentially running away in New York City at 18 to Greenwich Village, where she discovered the Hare Krishna movement as it was just beginning. So she became a Hare Krishna at that time. And then something like I guess seven or eight years later, she had me. My dad’s Catholic, so the house in our family was just all over the place in terms of religion. So I find that interesting with, you know, Saturn in the 9th connected to the 4th. So —
CB: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s like, if somebody – because the most basic thing somebody would say about your chart if they sat down and they were trying to look at the rulers of your houses is they would look at your 4th house, and they would see that the ruler of the 4th house of home and parents is in the 9th house of religion and philosophy and they would say there’s some strong connection between your parents and the topic of like, religion, philosophy, education. And if somebody even just made the most broad statement like that to you, it would actually be stunningly specific in your case.
A: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, so as, you know, our family was just kind of like, we didn’t fit in any traditional categories, religious-wise, and it was… So it wasn’t, I don’t remember it as particularly challenging, but it definitely like, set me apart. So you know, it was unique in a lot of ways in that sense.
CB: So you wrote that your early family life was characterized by being outside of any traditional religious experience or background. So that’s kind of interesting just because, you know, Saturn’s also in Cancer, which is in some of the ancient traditions, they would refer to a planet being opposite to its domicile or its home sign being in exile. And sometimes these themes of being like, outside of things or as far away from and on the periphery of things as possible. But so you didn’t experience that as negative necessarily, but you at least had some conceptualization that things were different for you in terms of your religious upbringing compared to like, people around you or compared to your contemporaries?
A: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it’s tough. I mean, I think I handled it fine, but I guess if I think back, it was probably something I didn’t really advertise, right? I wasn’t like, going around bragging about my mom being a Hare Krisha; it was kind of weird thing, and I probably did kind of wanna, you know, to fit in and sort of, you know, be seen as a little more normal. But even without the Hare Krishna, right, just having a Jewish mom and a Catholic dad and that we were celebrating either like, all of the holidays or none or other things. So it was…
CB: Right. That’s incredible. And for those like, not familiar with Hare Krishna, what was some of the things that are entailed in that, or how far – because I think there’s like, different levels of how —
A: Yeah.
CB: — deep into things people are. So how far into that did she go?
A: She was pretty deep. I have a couple of older brothers who were actually sent away to a Hare Krishna school. They were seven and eight years older than me, so they were… I guess it was before I was born. When I knew them, they were at home. But she was, you know, for a while living in a temple, and you know, so sort of all in. And then —
CB: How far away were they sent?
A: The school was in Texas, and we were living in California.
CB: California. I mean, that’s incredible since Saturn’s also ruling your 3rd house of siblings, so it’s like, not just ruling your 4th house of home and parents, but it’s also ruling your 3rd house of siblings, and your siblings were literally sent to another state, another part of the country, for essentially for like, religious training.
A: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. They learned Sanskrit. Yeah. So Hare Krishna in the late ‘60s and through the ‘70s, it was kind of seen as a cult. It’s really, as I understand it – I’m not involved in it in any way right now, but it’s sort of an American offshoot of a pretty kind of standard Hindu, a branch of the Hindu religion. And so, you know, a lot of people practice it, and it’s not particularly cult-ish or, you know, in a lot of ways. But at the time, it represented a big challenge to, you know, like, American society, and it was just seen as shockingly strange. Like, what are the kids doing?
CB: Sure. I’m not like, super familiar with it myself, but I know there’s another astrologer – Adam Elenbaas – who has some interest in that and has gone a little bit back and forth in terms of being more or less interested in it over the past few years. But it’s interesting. Yeah, this would have been, like, when you were growing up – so we’re talking about like, the 1980s basically and that timeframe. That would have been much different compared to today.
A: Yeah. So my mom was getting involved in, right at the tail end of the ‘60s when it was really just had just appeared in the United States, and then all through the ‘70s – I was born in ‘75, and before and after, she was pretty involved. Living in a temple before I was born, and then she left to, you know, marry my dad and lead a somewhat more traditional life out of the temple and, you know, in just a regular home. But even as a kid, I would be brought to events and actually my given name is – my first name is Sanskrit, and my older brothers convinced me to stop using that given name. But that was another one of those, you know, things that kind of set me outside.
CB: Did your older brothers eventually turn away from it?
A: Yeah, they very much did, yeah.
CB: Okay. So when did that happen, or how old were they – actually, how old were you when they sort of started rebelling against that?
A: I was I think too young to be able to put a date on it. I would have been six, seven, eight when I was starting to understand. You know, like, they lived at home. They were rejecting the names that they had temporarily been using, their first names, and returning to the names on their birth certificates. And just not interested. And it didn’t represent a real conflict in the family – that, particularly. You know, my mom just sort of privately continued like, observing and considering herself and adherent of the Hare Krishna for the rest of her life. But she didn’t practice in the same ways as she did when, you know, in my earliest childhood and before I was born.
CB: So she did like, cool down on it a little bit in terms of intensity, but still maintained that for the remainder of her life?
A: Yeah, I think she heard me describe her as like, a former Hare Krishna, and she got kind of upset and corrected me and she was like, “No, I am.” So that clarified things for me.
CB: Was it your siblings rejecting it – was that part of the catalyst for her like, toning it down a little bit?
A: I’m not sure if that was – I think it was probably deciding to marry my dad, because I think in the… If you’re living in the temple, I think you’re not involved in partnered relationships. I’m fuzzy on this, and I may be misspeaking. But I think that she was deciding to, you know, go in her own direction a little bit with her Aquarius rising. And, you know —
CB: Got it.
A: — making choices about, you know, what tenets she’s gonna follow and what she’s not as far as the religion.
CB: Right. And your dad also had a interesting backstory that was kind of 9th house-y as well, right?
A: Yeah. Just as I was kind of, you know, collecting some thoughts about this, it occurred to me – his family background was just like, working class Polish in a small town in New Jersey where the town was essentially all Polish immigrants. He was the first in his family to go to college, and that kind of set his life on a different path and, you know, provided him more income, more opportunities, and so he didn’t, you know, return to live in that town where all the previous generations of his family had lived and his sister lived there, still lives there. So yeah —
CB: What was the town? Or what part of the country —
A: It’s a small town in New Jersey. Yeah, like, middle New Jersey.
CB: So Jersey. And then was California – is that where he went to school, or where did he end up going to school?
A: He had kind of a tricky journey with college, as did I with Saturn in the 9th house, but I think he initially went to Michigan and dropped out. I don’t remember what school. But then he ended up in California, where he got a degree at a community college, which I believe as I’m saying it, I believe my mom paid his tuition? So she worked and paid the tuition while he went to school, so.
CB: Okay. That’s actually, that’s interesting. So yeah, I was just curious about that because that’s basically – that kind of brings up some of those themes again for me of Saturn being opposite to its own sign. Saturn is basically as far away from its home sign as it could get, and your dad pretty much moved as far away from New Jersey as he possibly could to go to school while still being in the continental United States. He moved from like, New Jersey to California. And then that presumably is where they end up settling, because then you’re born in Mountain View in 1975.
A: Yeah, we lived there until I was about five or six years old. But yeah, they settled there, had a couple of houses.
CB: Okay.
A: I have fond memories.
CB: That’s incredible. Well, there’s just so many different ways that like, the archetype of that Saturn placement that draws in so many different archetypal meanings through its house rulerships, through its sign placement, through sect, through all sorts of other things in the 9th house. Like, those different archetypes are all manifesting. They’re trying to like, manifest in different ways in your life and they are manifesting in different ways that are unique, but they’re still consistent with like, the overarching archetype. So that’s really fascinating. And you also have the ruler of the 9th house, which is Cancer, and the ruler is the Moon, which is in Taurus in the 7th house – I don’t know that that’s applicable or if it’s too much of a stretch, but it’s interesting that you said that your mom paid for your father’s college tuition in order to help him complete that. I don’t know entirely why that’s showing up in your chart, but that might be relevant there in some way. And then has that – I think you said that that’s come up in your life to a certain extent as well?
A: Yeah. Well, I didn’t complete college. I had a tough time in like, early education. I was just terrible at doing homework. And then I did three semesters in college, but my attention turned to like, the world wide web in 1993 and 1994, and I was still a terrible student, so I never got a degree.
CB: That’s a good time to be developing an interest in the internet.
A: Yeah! It served me well. Yeah, my career’s been in tech, and that’s been great.
CB: Okay. But that’s amazing that you manifested again like, the 9th house placement of Saturn there in a night chart and that you basically like, dropped out of college.
A: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I’ve puzzled – I’ve just only learned about sect recently, and I’ve puzzled over Saturn. I’ve always found it not to be terribly negative for me. Like, I started to figure out what happened with my Saturn return, and it was like, I got a better job and I bought a house. And I don’t remember anything that was extremely difficult about that time. But I guess, you know, maybe it’s the support from the Moon in an applying sextile or something that helps a lot, but.
CB: Yeah, it’s that, and also the benefics. So it’s like, both of the benefics are a few signs earlier than Saturn, so they’re both in a superior position overcoming Saturn. And therefore, you know, one of Saturn’s basic functions is it’s trying – one of the things it’s trying to do is it’s trying to reject or say “no” to things. So one of the things it said “no” to was, for example, college for you where you yourself ended up rejecting it and saying “no” and leaving college. That’s a very Saturnian type thing. But the benefics with Jupiter in Aries is in the 10th sign relative to Saturn, so it’s overcoming Saturn, and it’s forcing Saturn to be a little bit more positive and constructive than it would be otherwise. And then the other benefic, Venus – even though it’s so late in the sign in Taurus, it’s still in a superior sign-based sextile overcoming Saturn, which is additionally making it a little bit more positive than it would be. And then finally the last thing is Saturn has that reception with its exalted ruler, which is the Moon exalted in Taurus at nine degrees, and it’s applying to that sextile with Saturn at 12 degrees of Cancer. So having that sort of support from a very well-placed domicile lord that’s copresent with Venus is a very good counterbalancing situation that you’ve got going on there. I mean, that doesn’t necessarily remove some of the difficulties of Saturn, and even though you didn’t experience it entirely yourself, you know, it sounds like your siblings, for example, with Saturn ruling your 3rd house of siblings and your 4th house of parents being placed in the 9th house that they did struggle with that to some extent, that there was some extreme sort of like, religious views or observances that were kind of thrust on them to a certain extent that it sounds like that they didn’t fully appreciate early in their life or that they experienced as being subjectively negative in some sense if they ended up rejecting it and even encouraging you to reject it at a certain point as well.
A: Yeah, that’s absolutely true and makes a lot of sense, yeah. All three of my brothers had real tough relationship with my mom, and mine was always just wonderful. So that was odd. But yeah, my two older brothers, they had a different dad, and yeah, they very much just moved onto completely different lives from kind of, you know, where we started, so.
CB: Got it. Yeah. It’s like, part of the lesson from that is like, sometimes certain parts of the chart, especially things like the ruler of the Ascendant, are about you and the first house is about you. But sometimes other parts of the chart are not you; they’re the people around you who are important in your life, and sometimes the placements are describing things that happened to them or things that happened with them. So I think that’s part of what’s going on there with your Saturn placement; it’s showing that connection between 3rd house of siblings, 4th house of parents, 9th house of religion, and then Saturn has some positive counterbalancing things, but it also has some challenging things. Not just the Cancer placement opposite to its domicile or being in a night chart, but also the square with Pluto to a certain extent would also be kind of challenging, and I think that’s probably partially descriptive of some of the things that they were experiencing early on in terms of being sent away for that sort of religious training. Yeah. I think that makes sense.
A: Yeah.
CB: So yeah. But I guess now as an adult, the only other thing you mentioned in your write-up is just that with your relationship, with your marriage, that you have a different sort of like, background so that some of the 9th house things have been maybe incorporated into your 7th house as well, or what’s the deal with that?
A: Yeah. Well, I’m white. My wife is black. And we have three kids, you know, mixed kids, so it’s an interracial family, and we’re just kind of… You know, it’s far more common today than it used to be. But it’s still, again, in an entirely different way sort of outside of any traditional conception or assumption about how a family is gonna look.
So you know, we find wherever we live, you know, the United States at least is still tends to be very segregated in terms of neighborhoods and stuff, so we’re typically living in either a very majority white neighborhood or a very majority black neighborhood. It’s hard to find, you know, a place where your neighborhood kind of reflects the mixed family that we are, so we’re always kind of standing out in that sense.
CB: Right. That’s really interesting because it’s like, I see that placement come up other times where the ancient delineations of like, ruler of the 9th in the 7th or ruler of the 7th in the 9th is like, the native marries somebody that’s from a foreign country or the native moves to a foreign country and finds their marriage partner abroad or something like that. But this is an interesting sort of delineation of that archetype of just like, having different backgrounds and having that show up, you know, in the birth chart itself or having that be a component in terms of just your marriage composition in and of itself.
A: Yeah. I think that’s definitely all going on; I see it in the, you know, Aquarius 4th house and, yeah, totally, the Moon ruling 9th house Saturn.
CB: Yeah. Cool. Well, that’s awesome, and that’s obviously that’s like, actually the best part of your chart is just that you have that, you know, Venus in its own sign and Moon exalted there in Taurus in the 7th whole sign house. So I would assume that that’s the part of your life that you probably feel like the luckiest.
A: Yeah. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this year, so it’s going well!
CB: Nice! That’s awesome.
A: Yeah.
CB: I wonder what that was when you… I guess I’m getting distracted, actually, because I wanna ask like, when you got married and if there was like, eclipses happening in your 7th house or how your 7th house was being activated. But I will restrain myself because I know that would be massively off-topic from what we’re supposed to be talking about with the 4th house. But that’s super cool.
Is there any other major things with respect to your 4th house that are worth mentioning? I noticed you did mention your mom in the past tense; did she pass away?
A: Yeah. Timing-wise, yeah, she died in November 2014. And interestingly, you know, 4th house-wise, this was literally two weeks after we had just moved into a new home. And I believe that was a 4th house profection year for me; I haven’t looked closely at what else was going on.
CB: November of 2014. Okay, let me check it out. Is it showing the biwheel?
A: Yeah.
CB: Okay. So November 2014, what was – I’m trying to remember what was going on in November of 2014. Right, you were having that Pluto transit – there was a Mars-Pluto conjunction that happened that month that was exactly opposing your Saturn, which was the ruler of your 4th house, which was always so prominent in representing your mom, and she passed away at that time. Do you know what the date was?
A: Yeah, it was the 14th, so you’ve almost —
CB: Oh, it was —
A: — you’re almost on it right there. Yeah. November 14th.
CB: Like, exactly. Okay. Got it.
A: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Was that really tough for you? Or what was your experience of that?
A: Yeah. She was like, an amazingly spiritual person, and she had kind of prepared me well by explaining that like, she wasn’t afraid to die and that she was still gonna be around. So could have been worse, but it was totally unexpected. She wasn’t in the best of health, but you know, we weren’t like, expecting and preparing for her to pass away. It was just I got a phone call that, you know, she had had like, an incident and was taken to the emergency room and I should, you know, come home as quickly as possible, so I hopped on a train.
CB: Oh wow. Okay.
A: So yeah. Yeah.
CB: Yeah, that’s pretty unexpected and pretty quick. All right. And then you think you were in a 4th house profection year that year?
A: If my math is right! I think so, yeah.
CB: How old were you?
A: I should have been 39.
CB: 39. I’m trying to do the profection – 36, 37, 38, 39 – yeah, 39 is 4th house. So yeah, you were not just in a 4th house profection year, but then you had that really intense Mars-Pluto conjunction happening opposite to the ruler of the year, so that’s actually pretty classic. And then if that wasn’t enough, actually, that’s the other element of that is like, Uranus – that Uranus was right there at 13 Aries, which was very closely squaring your natal Saturn placement at 12 as well as the Mars-Pluto conjunction. So that’s the like, unexpected sort of random element of it.
A: Yeah. Wow.
CB: Yeah. And then you decided to move in the same time frame?
A: Yeah, we had moved into a new house – still in the same city, but into a neighborhood that we were excited to move into on like, November 2nd.
CB: November 2nd. Okay. So you had just moved.
A: Yeah.
CB: Got it. So that’s the other part of your 4th house profection year, although that’s interesting when you’re in the your 4th house year is when Saturn’s activated, it’s also activating your 3rd house still, and it wasn’t like, a major city relocation – it was like, relocating to a different neighborhood.
A: Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, we’d moved to Philadelphia in about 2007, and then just moved within the city since then, yeah.
CB: Got it. Okay. Cool. Well, I think that’s a really great example. Like, that’s really comprehensive, and that really brings up a lot of stuff that we hadn’t seen before because that’s such a unique case. But that’s really interesting and really informative just in terms of how the specific placements have worked out for you in such unique ways and how, yeah, how that’s characterized your life and how it fits the placement so literally. That’s something I sometimes get nervous about. I’ve always been nervous about when you sit down with a client, you sit the placements and you have an idea of how that should work out archetypally, but like, if I just was sitting across from you sitting down for a consultation, you wouldn’t immediately expect the placements to work out that literally. So there would still be this feeling of like, I guess that I’ve never gotten over of almost reticence about stating it as clearly as you might if you were trying to delineate that placement. But that honestly, like I said earlier, if a person had just delineated that, seeing that connection between the 4th and the 9th as literally as possible, they would have been strikingly accurate just in terms of your lived experience. And I think your example is a really good reminder of that, about how things can work out in surprisingly straightforward ways.
A: Yeah. Absolutely. And thanks for clarifying some things about my Saturn; I’m always suspicious. I’m like, why isn’t it – why doesn’t it hurt more? What’s going on here?
CB: Yeah. I think that it’s just that dual thing of what happens when planets are mitigated in a chart and why paying attention to mitigations is so important, just because it really can offset how a person experiences their certain placements in the chart, especially if they’re challenging ones. But so that’s one piece of it, and that’s why I have an entire section in my course that I focus on mitigating conditions. But then the other part is also realizing that some of those experiences weren’t entirely from you, but instead were experienced by like, other people in your life that were important to you and this sort of dual role that that plays. That was a really illustrative example for that reason as well.
A: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
CB: Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your chart and sharing your story!
A: Yeah, of course. Thank you.
CB: All right. Take care.
All right. That was another great example. So I think we might be to the end of this. Does anybody have any comments or questions as we’re wrapping up and sort of bringing things full circle? I would like to keep talking and like, going through more of these, but I just did another webinar earlier today, and this was kind of an impromptu one that I wasn’t planning on doing, so I’m getting kind of tired. And I wanna make sure I’m bringing the full energy that I need to for each consultation or each interaction. Otherwise, I will appear as even more robotic than I already do, which is not a plus when we’re dealing with such heavy topics. I wanna be present for everybody, so. Yeah. Does anyone have any questions as we’re wrapping up or any points? Any like, summarizing things or are we all good in terms of what we learned today?
Awesome. People are saying thank you in the chat. Thanks everyone who submitted your examples and for sharing these stories. Like, sometimes this can be really intense to talk about and really, yeah. I know that there’s a lot of tricky things sometimes that we’re dealing with, but I really appreciate everybody being so vulnerable and being so open about talking about their lives. And you know, having this dual thing of kind of experiencing those things, but also kind of intellectualizing it at the same time and looking at it from this vantage point of astrology. I feel like that’s always really helpful, and it always has been for me. I think each astrologer is different, but I think most of us have that experience in terms of even when we’re experiencing difficult things in life, sometimes being able to look at it through the lens of astrology and see how the astrology is actually does speak to what you’re experiencing can be kind of reassuring or kind of helpful as you’re navigating some of these difficult things.
So yeah, I hope that’s been insightful and useful as people have been, as we’ve been looking through this today.
All right, everybody. Well, we’ll see – I know there was a bunch of stories we didn’t get to, so I’ll see if maybe we’ll do a follow up at some point. I’m actually gonna – this has given me some great ideas, and I’m gonna turn from here to focusing on working on the 4th house example, the 4th house episode, next where… I don’t know if it’s gonna be as extensive as the 3rd house. We kind of overdid it and went as extensive and as deep of a dive as possible with the 3rd house example or episode with over a hundred examples. So I’m excited to release that. I’m probably gonna scale it back a tad bit for the 4th house one, so we’ll have to see. But if anybody has any good celebrity chart examples especially of the 4th house, I’m actively looking for those right now, so please let me know either by posting on Patreon, posting it in the Facebook group, or emailing me at TheAstrologyPodcast@gmail.com, because I’m gonna just be intensely focusing on preparing the 4th house episode over the next couple of weeks before I record it. This has given me a lot to think about, and I think we’ve gotten a much deeper understanding of the 4th house today, so I think that’s a great starting point for going into that larger 4th house episode later this month. And we’ll see if maybe it might be worth it to do a follow up at some point to talk with people about some of the other examples that came in today. But otherwise I think that’s it!
So thanks a lot, all of you, for joining me today. If you’re watching this on YouTube, if you’d like to join me for one of the future live chart reading sessions, all you have to do is become a patron through my page on Patreon.com on the livestream tier, and then you’ll get a notification each time I schedule one of these events. Sometimes I schedule them in advance; other times, like today, we just do it as this impromptu thing. And you know, I’m always consistently shocked at how much we learn and how amazing some of these stories end up being by being able to talk with real life people directly. So thanks everyone for sharing your stories today; I really appreciate it.
All right. I’m gonna go take it easy. Thanks for joining me. I’ll see you again next time. And have a good night!
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