The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 489, titled:
Astrology, Fate, and Destiny
With Chris Brennan and Leisa Schaim
Episode originally released on May 4, 2025
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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 eresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released May 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. Joining me today is astrologer Leisa Schaim, and we’re gonna be talking about astrology, fate, and a number of other things in a casual conversation.
So hey, Leisa. Thanks for —
LEISA SCHAIM: Hey. Glad to be here.
CB: Yeah! All right. So yeah, so we’re gonna have a casual discussion today. I mentioned on the forecast episode, you know, I’ve been trying to – thinking about and heading in the direction of doing some episodes talking about my philosophy of astrology and my sometimes like, spiritual views on astrology because so much of my work is focused on the technical aspects that I sometimes don’t emphasize or like, talk about that point a lot, some of the philosophical implications that I truly think that astrology has. So I thought we’d have a conversation talking about some of that today and talking a little bit about our journey as astrologers and some of the different things that we’ve, ways that we’ve changed and grown as astrologers and different things that we’ve learned over the years.
LS: Yeah. That sounds great and right up my alley as a Sagittarian.
CB: Right. All right. So yeah, where should we start? So one of the things we were talking about, one of the things I said in my book that I argued is I think that astrology – that Hellenistic astrology and by extension western astrology was originally developed as a system for studying fate. And part of what that means is that they discovered that you could cast a chart for the birth of an individual and look at the alignment of the cosmos at that moment, and the alignment of the cosmos would actually say something about the future and the quality of a person’s life. And just with that basic premise, it has a lot of philosophical implications because it means that there’s some part of our life, at least, that might be predetermined from birth. And that’s one of the most important implications about astrology is that if astrology is true, and it can say things about the future and especially about your own future, then it means there’s some level of fate and predetermination and even by extension I would argue providence or something like that that exists in the world, which is huge if that’s true. And that’s actually philosophically and almost spiritually or religiously some of the biggest implications for astrology that it actually demonstrates that I think are important from a philosophical standpoint.
LS: Yeah. I mean, astrology working at all just inherently means that, right? And then you’re just discussing like, what is the extent? But you know, astrology working at all, birth charts working at all, omens working at all – you know, it means there’s some sort of correlation that’s there. And yeah, especially when you get into things like, you know, charts showing things that happened before you were born, for instance, you know, makes it clear that to whatever extent, there is some sort of extent that things are fated or things are kind of already set in motion is maybe a good way to put it.
CB: Yeah.
LS: Because fate has a lot of baggage sometimes as a word, but really it’s just like, things are set in motion.
CB: Yeah, like in the Stoics – and that’s one of the… Like, when I got into Hellenistic astrology and I first started promoting astrology, I was promoting it as like a – ancient astrology – I was promoting it as a package. Not just with the technical construct, which included like, whole sign houses and sect and zodiacal releasing and timelord techniques and all these technical innovations that were lost that we were recovering from modern astrology, but I was also recovering some of the ancient philosophy. And a lot of that had to do with Stoicism and their views on fate. But it didn’t go over, like, super well in like, the 2009, 2010 time frame to both try to revive a technical construct and sort of like, selling that to modern astrologers with things like whole sign houses, but also to try to, I don’t know, like, promote a viewpoint that things are more fated or predetermined to happen than we might initially expect or than we’re used to thinking of was also a bit much. So I kind of like, backed off on that and like, haven’t talked about that as much over the past decade. But that’s something I’d like to talk about more. But one of the – in the Stoic view, you know, one of their basic principles is that there’s no action or event that occurs in the present that doesn’t have some sort of preceding action that led up to it and that informed it in some way. That there isn’t just like, a spontaneous action doesn’t really exist in the same way that we might think that it does because there’s this web or there’s this matrix of prior causes that we’re all in the middle of. And yeah, that’s part of the basic concept of fate is that we’re part of a broader like, matrix of causes that came before us, and then our actions now will have implications for things in the future that will happen as a result of what we do now. But that there’s an interconnectedness between events, and I think that’s the important thing, because that ties in with another like, a modern notion – this notion that everything happens for a reason. And behind that, we have ideas of like, purpose and destiny and meaningfulness which can be very positive concepts. But those are also fate-oriented concepts.
LS: Right. Yeah. I’ve long thought that, you know, it’s like, people love to hate on the word “fate,” but they adore destiny. And they’re really the same thing, you know. It’s just one has more positive connotations, or it has implications that your future that is fated is positive, and that you want to go towards it, rather than the opposite. Which, you know, really our lives are a mix of all of that, or they’re a mix of things that we like and we don’t like or we prefer and we don’t prefer, but you can’t really have one without the other, you know? So yeah, it’s interesting what you were saying about all of the interconnectedness. You know, there’s Buddhist ideas that are, you know, past and present that are very much like that as well. Just things being really interdependent, and then all of there being like, prior causes that, you know, that cause things to arise now in your life. So —
CB: Right. Because they start extending that to like, past lives and things like that, or like, karma extending even outside of this lifetime.
LS: Can be, yeah. Yeah.
CB: And – yeah.
LS: Yeah. I mean, something that’s really interesting to me about that, I think, though is, you know, it shows a connection that like, you are connected with everything else. You are connected with the rest of the world. And I don’t think that people often think about those two things together. They think like, you know, sometimes people think like, fate bad because it’s about me and it says that I can’t change things about my life. But it’s actually showing that you’re connected to like, this larger matrix, to the world, to the universe, and I think that’s actually really beautiful. You know? I think what it does is actually like, go against our current – I’m not the first to say this, of course, in astrology, but the current sort of like, materialist, individualist worldview. And I think astrology actually has that potential to reconnect us, to like, show that we’re a part of a matrix, even when and if we’re looking at individual birth charts.
CB: Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the greatest potential for astrology, and that’s something I’ve said for a while is that it does provide a contrasting worldview to the predominant scientific, materialistic worldview which is there’s a premise that everything that’s happening is random and chaotic and has no meaning or purpose underlying it. And the only purpose you can find is that which you create for yourself and whatever enjoyment you can make for yourself in this life. And obviously, that has a lot of merit and value to it, and there’s other notions of like, humanism and other things that came along with some of that that can be good. But astrology represents something different fundamentally as a worldview, because it does represent the idea that our lives are not random or meaningless, and each of us has like, a role to play or a purpose and a destiny. And that is just so fundamentally different to what I think the opposite worldview is, of a dead, inanimate universe is more of the scientific worldview as opposed to, again, astrology I think and in more of a Stoic conceptualization with fate, part of the notion is that the universe itself is animate and is alive and is sentient. And that part of that sentience is fate. Like, fate partially is the rational ordering principle which orders events that happen in the world in accordance with some sort of – in an ancient context, like a divine plan or purpose of some sort.
LS: For sure. And I remember before I discovered astrology, I was a little bit depressed because I was very much like, is this all there is? And kind of like, according to that, you know, scientific, individualist, materialist worldview, it felt, you know, a little like, cut off. Like, cut off from meaning or, you know, it just felt very a little bit dead. And then I remember when I discovered astrology, it’s like, that it works at all was enlivening and it was kind of inspiring, because it was like this says I can see this in front of me; there’s a little bit of empiricism there. Like, I can see in front of me that there’s a correlation going on. And if there’s a correlation going on, it means it’s not random. Things are not random. You know? And even if you don’t know the specifics beyond that, that in itself is comforting, I think. You know, especially in comparison, you know, to that contrast.
CB: Right. Yeah. I mean, well, and that was something we debated for a long time is I think I often took the existence and the fact that astrology works to imply that there is some sort of divine ordering principle in the universe as opposed to the opposite – there just like, not being – because without astrology, you don’t necessarily have any inherent reason to think that empirically, and that’s where, like, faith comes in most of the time for most religions is just a belief in a higher power or in a god or deity or some sort, especially based on inherited religious traditions of different sorts. But that’s one of the things that sets astrology apart is it doesn’t require faith in the same way that a straight-up religion does necessarily, because you have this empirical element of looking at the correlations between celestial movements and earthly events and how that lines up with events in a person’s life. And every time that works and like, lines up and the planets correctly predicted an important turning point in a person’s life, it clues you into that there’s something bigger going on in the universe. And there’s something mysterious and like, awe-inspiring about that.
LS: Yeah. There is. And it’s interesting how, you know, different people come to somewhat similar ends sometimes – not always the same exact ends, of course, but you know, through different means. For some people, fait is just fine, you know, as an avenue of feeling connected with the universe and you know. But other people feel the need for more, like, proof. For more empiricism or more, you know, seeing something in front of them.
CB: Right.
LS: And definitely that served that purpose for me, because I am not someone who easily, you know, just takes things on faith. But seeing a correlation was very meaningful to me. Yeah, but it’s interesting to me, you know, especially after being in astrology for a while, it’s interesting to see how sometimes there’s closer paths than you would think between these things. Because if you take astrology and, you know, you see that things are coming together to a certain moment and maybe there’s a reason for that, you know, how close that sort of is to some faith-based opinions, you know, about how the universe works – which is really interesting to me, because I never would have thought that when I had started.
CB: I mean, such as what?
LS: Such as like, you know, there is a reason behind things happening or you, you know, you are – there’s a specific path, and it’s not random. There’s a specific path for your life, and it’s not random. Right? And I could hear someone saying that from a faith-based perspective that I wouldn’t have heard like, a long time ago that I wouldn’t have necessarily taken in. And it’s interesting to me now how like, similar that can be. Or, you know, things like, I don’t know, if the universe – you know, if you can see in astrology just like, people being different expressions of similar energies, then it can get quite similar to like, you know, we’re all part of the one or something like that. Because we’re just like, little individual facets of like, these archetypes, you know? And it’s not that I always like, dwell on that all of the time or maybe go to the same extent, but it’s interesting to me at all that they’re like, anywhere in the same neighborhood.
CB: Right.
LS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. I mean, all religions are like – mostly for the most part trying to put place us like, in our place in the universe and explain where we are in the order or the scheme of things. But there’s just a different component with astrology of how to reach that, and that’s what’s been the most appealing to me is finding out the mystical aspects of the universe through a sort of empiricism rather than coming to it the opposite direction through a sort of faith, you know?
LS: Yeah. And it’s actually interesting, because that’s somewhat similar, you know. People would not think that on the face of it, but somewhat similar to science. The way like, some people who are like, very devoted to science – like, science professionals – get sort of so deep in that they find the mystical in it, you know? I think it’s similar because it’s like, they wanna see specifics, and then those specifics themselves feel like, awe-inspiring to them. You know?
CB: Yeah. Sometimes.
All right, but what I wanna define here is more like, what our beliefs are and maybe it would be good to go in that direction. I mean, one of the things I think at this point, and one of the things getting into more predictive forms of ancient astrology led me to is being having beliefs and thinking that things are more predetermined than we’re usually used to thinking. And in my view, I guess the core of all of that, the core philosophical understanding then is that at the very least, the greater and most important events in our life are predetermined from the moment of birth, and that astrology for the most part can predict that and tell you, like, what some of the most important events are in your life, even though it seems surprising that it can do that and that it otherwise seems implausible that it should be able to. But nonetheless, the fact that astrology can predict some of the biggest events and circumstances in our lives does imply that things are much more predetermined or that there is some sort of plan or fate, that our lives are much more fated than we both would be used to thinking even as normal individuals, obviously, without astrology. But even as modern astrologers coming in from modern, 20th century psychological astrology where it’s less predictive and more oriented towards character and psychology. I do think there was a transition point realizing that things were even more predetermined than I knew as an astrologer coming from modern astrology into ancient astrology. And so that was something I had to get used to and develop a new philosophy in order to understand and sort of cope with that and the implications of that.
LS: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, and the same as me, although a little bit after you. Yeah. I think – I definitely grappled with that a lot, because it just really turns on its head, you know, your usual preconceptions, your usual assumptions or cultural things that you’ve gotten from the culture or grown up with about how things work. And yeah, it’s been – that was an interesting journey to me and maybe there’ll be more, you know, to come. But it was an interesting journey coming – leading with the technical. Leading with the technical like, how these techniques work and then seeing sort of their uncanny precision and, you know, description and things like that, and then going what are the philosophical implications of that?
CB: Right.
LS: And I think that’s a really honest way to go about things, honestly. You know, because it’s not that you’re just like, this is the way I want it to be or I’m theorizing that this is the way it is. It’s like, you’re seeing this particular set of correlations, and then what are the implications of that?
CB: Yeah. There’s just a “oh” factor, which is like, “Oh!” Like —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — that’s a thing. What does that – I’ve gotta figure out then what the implications are of that, or what that means. And I think people do go through a couple year process, at least it was a couple years for me, of figuring that out. And I felt like I saw you go through that process as well of a couple year process of figuring that out and then becoming more and more proficient with the predictive techniques, and then that in turn like, changing one’s views.
LS: Yeah. And you know, I had the usual sort of initial impressions of like, that things being more fated had to be a bad thing. That was definitely like, my first reaction, because I think that’s the cultural belief that we have right now.
CB: Right. Well, it’s like, because just inherently – and I think this is true to some extent in ancient times, and it became the recurring issue, which is just we associate freedom with good things, like being free. Versus we associate not being free with bad things. And so sometimes in ancient – especially in the Greco-Roman world where like, slavery existed still, that might be a natural contrast to say that there’s a free person versus there’s a person whose will is not free, and therefore obviously everyone seeks freedom as an inherent good thing in terms of what they wanna be able to do with their life.
But to go back to the implications of if everything – if the greater part of the most important things in our life are fated to occur, that’s not just the bad things like you said, but it’s also the good things. So that means like, you may be fated at some point to meet the love of your life and fall in love and get married. You may be fated to like, have a child at some point who is like, you know, your most important thing that you do in your life. You may be fated to achieve your career dreams or career success at some point in your life and so on and so forth. It means all of the most – the best things that will happen in your life are things that are in store for you, and that you’ve been in a trajectory to accomplish and to fulfill from the time you were very young throughout your life until you eventually achieve those things. And there’s something very beautiful about that – that’s the part of fate that we do culturally romanticize in like, movies and books and other things like that is the positive fulfillment of one’s fate is seen as a good thing because… Why is that? Like, why do we… Because it’s like, not just because it’s romanticized, but also because it feels like a good thing that was promised. Almost like a present that was promised to you on your birthday that you finally get to open at some point in your life.
LS: Yeah, definitely. That’s a good way of putting it. Or I think it also feels more meaningful because it was supposed to happen. And that’s —
CB: Right.
LS: — if it was like, a positive thing that you want to happen that was also supposed to happen, I think that somehow makes it feel more meaningful, which is, you know, an interesting facet of I know what we’ve talked about a lot, you know, over the years of the positive side of fate.
CB: Yeah. I mean, and I picked up a phrase late in the 2000s when I was first studying Hellenistic and Indian astrology together. I picked it up I think from some of the contemporary Indian astrologers, and it was this notion of like, the natal promise. That there’s certain things that are promised in the birth chart, and occasionally when those parts of the chart get activated by timelords or dashas or transits or what have you that the promise that was made at the moment of birth is fulfilled and delivered. And that’s like, the beautiful side of things.
LS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LS: I think that genuinely does, you know, take it back to what we were talking about a little bit ago here in the beginning of recording, which was that I think it feels more meaningful to people because it’s not just something positive that’s happened in your life, but it’s something positive that was supposed to happen. And if it was supposed to happen, that means like, that positive thing in your life is like, connected to the larger universe. It’s not just about like, you doing the thing, right?
CB: Right.
LS: And that’s why it feels more meaningful. It’s like, because this is kind of like, from up on high, or this is from, you know, the workings of the universe meant that this was supposed to happen, and it’s a good thing.
CB: Right. Well, and sometimes – because also a lot of those things are not just things that are given to us that befall us, but it’s a confluence between our actions and our choices and our desires. And then our external circumstances and the reality that we find ourself in, and then that’s the other part about it that’s beautiful is that it doesn’t necessarily have to represent something that’s just passively given to you. But sometimes it does represent achieving a goal or a dream that one has, especially from earlier in life, and finding that you were meant to accomplish that thing in this lifetime. That that wasn’t just a dream, but that it’s something that you’re able to manifest and bring into reality. But despite the fact that there’s a large part of your will that went into that or even your freewill that went into bringing that about, that there is this other element of your fate or your circumstances that also were such that that allowed for your aspirations and your actions to actually be successful. Because most actions – it’s not just a matter of like, wanting something. It’s also in the matter oftentimes of being in the right place at the right time. And sometimes you can be the right person or you can be doing the right thing, but the timing can just be off, and then that means that you can’t accomplish that thing. But that’s where fate’s really important, because fate sometimes is the confluence of events that sometimes enables or allows you to achieve what you seek to accomplish.
LS: Definitely. And that’s the part that really caused me to be much less weirded out over time about the idea of fate, or about the idea of things being more fated astrologically and so forth. Because it took me a minute to, you know, to get my mind wrapped around the fact that fate could encompass your own volitional desires, your own actions, and not just things passively happening to you. Not just the external. Right? Because at first, you know, it’s easy to have this preconception that, you know, if you think things are just fated, then like, it doesn’t matter anything you do anymore. You know, that sort of thing. And it still matters, and it’s like, you’re not outside that matrix. You are part of that matrix because of all those interconnections. And so you are supposed to like, you know, take certain actions or grapple with certain decisions, even, right? That can be part of fate as well.
And that part definitely just smoothed things out for me entirely, because then I was like, oh, okay. So this is not – I’m not outside of this. This is just like, we are all part of this, you know, big mix, this big soup of like, things interacting with each other, people interacting with each other’s lives and timelines, and interacting with the timing of our own lives. And then you’re still inhabiting, you know, your own volition, and you are not simultaneously a hundred percent in control of everything that happens in your life, which just common sense-wise if you think about it, you’re just not, regardless of astrology. You know?
CB: Right. Yeah. One of the concepts that the Stoics had that I’ve always appreciated and tied in with astrology is they had this idea of that there’s an external fate, but there’s also an internal fate. And they used this analogy of like, a cylinder to demonstrate the concept that imagine you have a cylinder that’s like, round and cylindrical, and it’s placed at the top of a hill. And somebody gives it a push at some point in time, and then it rolls down the hill. And it’s like, the external fate of the cylinder is that it was in the circumstances where it was on top of the edge of a hill so that it could roll downwards based on its external circumstances, and then it was given a push, which is like, an event or something external to it. But then because of the internal predisposition of the cylinder and the fact that it is cylindrical and predisposed towards rolling meant that it would roll given those circumstances of being on a hill and getting a push. And I think there’s something like that with astrology and with the birth charts where the internal fate is the birth chart and our placements and the extent to which that describes some of our character and our internal predispositions. Like how we’re predisposed to act and to behave or to respond to things just given, you know, our character and how we were raised and our psychology and our emotional state and different things like that that are all oftentimes a mixture of inborn characteristics as well as ones we developed during the course of our life but nonetheless they were internal. But then you have like, the transits for example that occur sometimes, and that’s when you have an external event sometimes that occurs and can like, push you in a certain direction. But then based on your own internal predispositions, you’ll react to that external stimulus and perhaps roll down the hill whether that’s like, a good thing or a bad thing. Like, you know, some people’s fate could be to be – let’s say internal fate could be to be courageous or heroic. And so it’s like, if they came across like, a crash or something on the highway and they have that external circumstance but then they like, jump into action and they like, pull somebody from a burning car or something like that because that’s their predisposition, versus some other more negative event. Like, let’s say if you had a predisposition to be timid or scared or to run away from situations like that and you just like, have that external stimulus but then you just like, keep driving or something, let’s say.
LS: Right. And you know, we know that even from just the general archetypes of our birth charts without even getting into anything more complex astrologically, you know? Some people are more Mars-ruled or Jupiter-ruled or Saturn-ruled or things like that, and it does influence, you know, the peculiarities of us versus the next person of how we’re inclined to think or decide or take action or not take action or things of that nature. So yeah, for sure.
The other thing that really changed how I was thinking about this was, you know, once I got – it’s not that I – I use a bunch of different techniques astrologically. But zodiacal releasing was one, you know, major one that both sort of shook up my worldview a little bit in terms of how predetermined things were, but also was the cause of me smoothing out like, coming to terms with that. Because one of the things that I love about zodiacal releasing – so it’s like, a Hellenistic timing technique that divides your life up into chapters – and one of the things that I love about it is that it maps the intersection, at least with, you know, a couple of the different starting points with the Lots for career or love life, for instance, it maps the intersection of what you are trying to go towards, what your own volition is, and circumstances kind of intersecting with that either helping or hindering. And the thing I love about that is that it kind of turns on its head that fate is only the external, because it maps both of them at the same time. And I just love that, you know? And I think that’s something important to know when people are sort of sometimes predisposed to think like, all ancient astrological techniques are like, bad because they’re all fated; it’s like, no, there’s part of it that’s inborn to that technique is like, what you’re trying for. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LS: Which is fascinating.
CB: Yeah. I mean, it means sometimes some people don’t have a technical way to fully say for sure whether that’s true because they haven’t seen techniques that can do things like that. But then it’s like, the existence of techniques like that raise a whole host of issues that you may not have wrestled with until you learn to effectively use a technique like that. Because one of the things that it does is it can tell you sometimes important turning points in your life where you’ll make decisions that will affect the rest of your life, like making a career transition at a loosing of the bond, and that sometimes what the technique is showing, what you’ll find out you’ll realize in retrospect once its over, was an internal process and a set of like, decisions and choices that you made that had a profound impact on where your life would go for the rest of your life. But that ultimately what’s startling about it is that it showed that you would make a choice at that point in time. And that’s where it becomes troubling philosophically initially, because it was making a choice that arose organically from within you based not just on your circumstances but also based on your own internal like, deliberations and your own internal soul-searching and deep feeling about where you wanted to go with your life at that point in time based on different things, but that ultimately is a matter of choice. But that’s where I think it gets really important that astrology can tell you not just about your external circumstances and your external fate, but also sometimes about your internal fate which includes your own choices and your own acts of volition. And that’s where it gets complicated in terms of – and that’s why I say I think at the very least the majority of the most important things in our life are predetermined, and that includes some of the most important choices that we’ll actually make at different points in our life.
LS: Yeah. Absolutely. And then I think when you wrap your mind around that and actually see it in action, which is the important part – I mean, I think for any astrologers, astrologers by nature want to see the proof, kind of. What to see, you know, what’s happening and not just take it on faith like we were talking before. And so yeah, this was like, a technique-driven philosophical shift just seeing those in action. And I just, it’s funny because I really did grapple with it at first because I was just coming at it from like, “Fate is bad; free will is good,” you know, earlier on. And then now it just feels like, completely – I feel pretty relaxed about it, because it feels, because I’ve watched it work for so long because of that important intersection of it mapping your volition as well as circumstance. And just, you know, sort of coming to terms with like, yeah, that just in a common sense way is like, how the world works. We’re not in charge of everything, but we do make decisions, and those intersect with other people’s lives in very profound, rippling ways.
CB: Right. I mean, I guess one of the points that you’d have to bring up to argue against is that choices in our lives are just as if not more meaningful if they’re predetermined and that choice and volition doesn’t have to be completely random or chaotic in order for it to be meaningful or good or positive. That just because your actions of your choices are wrapped up in who you are and your character and your circumstances and other internal and external inputs doesn’t make the choices that you make any less meaningful, and you know, potentially positive or constructive or what have you.
LS: Right. Yeah. I had a thought about that, but I just lost it. But yeah, it’s… Yeah. That’s all. Sorry, I lost it.
CB: One of the analogies that I noticed both the Stoics making as well as some of the astrologers like Vettius Valens making is they make this analogy that we’re like, actors that are playing out a play, and that your purpose is to play your part to the best of your ability. And I think part of what astrology does is figuring out what your part is and what your role is in this life and how you can do that to the best of your ability, to fulfil your destiny let’s say to the best of your ability. And there may be some challenging things that you have to experience that go along with that, but there’s also gonna be some positive things as well, as we’ve talked about.
LS: Yeah. And I remembered my thought, which was, you know, from at the experiential level, it doesn’t really change things. Right? Like, the idea that some of your choices may be predetermined, either completely or by a lot or by some, like, you know, it doesn’t change the experience of having to like, go through that yourself. And the experience is still important, regardless of what’s shaping it.
CB: Right. Yeah. We still have the experience of making choices of our own volition as an act of free will. And even if there was some external thing that was mirroring that and indicating that those choices might be predetermined, that doesn’t actually like, remove the impact and the significance of the fact that you both have to make choices or that those choices are personally meaningful to you because they do arise from within you regardless of whether or not there’s like, a script or something out there that kind of foreshadowed some of the most important choices that you were gonna make.
LS: For sure. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LS: Yeah. This reminds me a little bit of like, our discussions in the past about how much astrologers at different points in their trajectory as being astrologers look at their own charts and their own timing. And I remember when I first learned, for instance, zodiacal releasing – you know, when you first learn any technique of any sort, you’re gonna be kind of doing double duty, right? You wanna see it working in your own life, but you’re also watching it as a learning process to learn the technique itself. And so I remember when I was first doing that, and I was just watching it constantly as part of that learning process, but also seeing how it worked in my own life. And then, you know, as the years went on, I grew much more relaxed about astrology just like, working and me not needing to constantly watch it or micromanage it. It’s not to say that I don’t look at it, you know, but it’s interesting going through those different phases and that feels kind of at least tangentially related to that issue. Because I think part of what that was for me, I mean, it was like, learning techniques and then having learned them, of course, but it was also about kind of becoming more relaxed about just like, the universe is working as it should. I am part of that. Other people are part of that. The timing will reflect that. But I don’t always need to micromanage it, you know?
CB: Right. Well, and part of that though is that there’s an impulse to attempt to control it once you become aware of this system. But then over time, one of the things you also learn as you get better with the techniques is that while you may be able to nudge things in different directions at certain points, you also begin to learn that there’s a wide range of things that are outside of your control that you can’t necessarily change or do anything about because of the external circumstances in your life, the things that happen in your environment that don’t have to do with your choices that befall you. But also a huge part is part of your external circumstances that you don’t always have control over is the people around you. That includes like, the people in your life like family members, relationships, friends, but it can also include like, you know, all the other houses in the chart, which is like, coworkers, neighbors, siblings, even like, people you don’t get along with or like, enemies. There’s this whole matrix of like, other people in your life and the way that their lives interact with yours that is also part of things so that the more you learn astrology, the more you realize you can’t control everything and you can’t micromanage everything because sometimes something will happen that will coincide with the transits or other activations in your chart that was just like, completely beyond your control and there’s nothing that you could have done to change that because it didn’t happen as a result of your personal volition or choices.
LS: Exactly. And that’s another thing that you sort of, that requires a change in orientation, at least if you came from beginning with the idea that the chart is a reflection of you and your psyche as a whole and like it is all of you. And it’s not that there aren’t some truths in that. Like, you can look at it that way, too, you know, and see some valid things. But the ancient conceptualization was that all of these different specific houses represented all these different people and things in your life, and they have their own timing regardless of what you do, which is what you were getting at. You know, things can arise that just don’t even – you see them happening because they’re in your world, but they’re not things that you yourself could have like, made, you know, different, necessarily. Like if something happens with your parents or your siblings or even your pets – like, that can be reflected in the chart, and it’s not something you can necessarily even micromanage even if you tried with the astrology. You know. I mean, I don’t wanna take that too far, because we do use electional astrology as well, so there’s the idea of trying to nudge things, you know, when you can. But I would say the preponderance is more things happening that are not in your control. Which is interesting, because again that can be on the one hand seen at first glance as like, a depressing thought, like that you don’t have that much influence in your life, but I actually think it’s a very… People often come to the idea of spheres of influence when they are stressed out about their lives and not being able to manage everything. Not being able to change everything they’d like to change. And I think spheres of influence is actually like, a very healthy, realistic idea of how the world works.
CB: Yeah. Because I mean, the opposite honestly, which was really popular in the 2000s, was like, this almost like, I don’t know what the word is. Like, megalomaniacal notion that like, you’re the center of the universe, and like, whatever your will is you can just like, change anything about your reality – like The Secret and stuff like that – that you can change anything about your reality just by thinking about it or by willing it to happen. And it’s tricky, because I mean, ironically, there’s some people that that does work for more. But they are sometimes people where it’s like, fated for them to have that orientation more and maybe for things to work out more in that way. But even those people can’t change everything, because it’s not just a magic power that allows you to bend reality entirely, and there’s limitations to it. But yeah, it does – there’s a certain like, level of egotistical notion to think that you can control or manipulate everything, and that realistically there are – yeah, most things are outside of your control in your life in terms of your circumstances. And even the person who is like, the most effective or has the greatest ability or success at like, manifesting their own will during the course of their life will at some point run up against some circumstance that despite their greatest wishes and like, striving and attempts, there will be something that they just cannot change that is not their personal preference for what they want to see happen in their life. But nonetheless, they have to learn to accept that one way or another. And I think that is important, because it is realistic and more realistic in terms of what human existence actually consists of and is about, even if people would either like to think they could control everything, which by “control everything” we mean emphasize only good things in their life and negate only negative things in their life. People would like to believe that’s true or they would like to be told that that’s true, because it’s like, appealing on some personal almost like, selfish level. But realistically, that’s not necessarily the case.
LS: Yeah. And I think – it makes me think of a couple more things, one of which is, you know, there are when you think about your sphere of influence or, you know, how much you can change things around you, I think about people who, for instance, were like, major activist figures in their lives and who became very famous for that. But that in itself was also in their chart, you know? So maybe they were like, fated to like, have more influence in the collective than the average person, because that is in their chart, you know? Or maybe you were fated to have influence in your neighborhood, for instance, and so you have more sphere of influence in the neighborhood than the average person in the apartment next to you, you know? But so it doesn’t like, take those things away, either. It’s just that it’s part of who you were meant to be or what your life path was supposed to be about.
CB: Right. And you mentioned electional astrology, so it’s worth talking about that. Because one of the things that’s interesting about electional astrology which we’ve been, you know, I’ve been doing for 15, almost 20 years now, and we’ve been doing a lot professionally over the past decade or more is just one of the things you learn about electional astrology the more you do it is the more you do electional astrology and kind of specialize in it, the more you realize very quickly like, how much certain things are outside of your control and that you can’t control where the planets are gonna be in the future. Because there’s never any like, perfectly ideal electional chart, because there’s always something like, wrong in every electional chart or some issue with each electional chart. There’s gonna be good things and you wanna emphasize the good things as much as you can, but there’s also gonna be some bad things and you can’t control that. But you sometimes just try to accept or decide where you wanna put the bad things and where you wanna put the good things. But that with electional astrology, even though we have a bunch of rules of like, what are the most ideal things for an electional chart, that you can’t wait – that that ideal electional chart may not occur for a hundred years. So as a result of that, that chart is literally outside of the scope of what you can wait for because you’ve gotta start something this year or let’s say in the next two years, the next five years, even in the next 20 years – even if you had that long of a time frame, that hundred-year chart is still outside of your choices, and there’s nothing you can do about that. So your goal is actually then just to do the best you can with the limited options that are available to you. So that’s actually such an important lesson; it’s one of the reasons why I recommend people learn electional astrology after learning natal, because while it does allow you to get into then finding the best options within your limited range, it also very quickly can be challenging to adjust and to realize that your options are more limited than you might expect at first.
LS: Or even something with like, six months. Say like, there’s a very nice chart that you see in six months, but you have to do something that’s due next month. Well, you’re not gonna be able to wait six months for that really nice chart, so you know, it comes up very practically all of the time. And you just have to like, learn to work with the imperfections and like, understand there’s no ideal chart. And also, you know, it’s interesting – the interplay between like, your own timing with your own birth chart and using electional astrology because you can say, you know, okay, I set up an electional chart during this time frame, and there I was trying to, you know, shape things as much as possible towards the positive. But your other timing says you were gonna do something important during this time anyway, you know? So there is an interplay and it’s not very, like, black or white.
CB: Right. Because then there’s other issues, like later in May, there’s this like, amazing electional chart that’s one of our best charts of the year with like, a stellium in Gemini. But I personally have like, a negative transit that’s happening that day, so for me, even if I used what would otherwise be a great standalone electional chart, it would probably have some negative repercussions for me personally if I use it for a major thing, because it doesn’t line up well with my own natal chart and therefore my own like, personal fate in some sense. So there’s like, issues like that. Other issues you run into with electional astrology is like, you can pick out an amazing electional chart, and then you can go and you’re ready to like, launch your big thing on that day and then use it, and then something comes up that’s outside of your control that delays you. And you suddenly aren’t able to use that electional window, and you’ve missed it due to forces that are outside of your control. And occasionally in extreme circumstances, that happens, and you realize that there was something that was almost like, pushing you or stopping you from doing the thing you were gonna do at that time.
LS: Absolutely. Yeah. I was gonna say that too, because I’ve had that experience as well, and when it does happen – you know, if you’re like, in that position to have learned electional astrology, you know, trying to use good elections and then you have that experience of like, something just absolutely interrupting and causing you to like, not be able to use that moment, it does feel very like, deliberate. Because like, why did that just happen, you know? And it’s like, you were not fated to use that good election, in fact.
CB: Yeah. I mean, I try to actively pay attention to those things and to see where it’s pushing me instead. I’ve had, you know, over the years, you and I, we’ve had a few really famous examples of that. Like there was this one time I was about to move across the country, and you and I then weren’t gonna be able to see each other anymore, and I was trying to ship all of my books out to my friend’s house, to Alan White’s house – I was gonna move out and live with Alan White, because I was in bad circumstances and I didn’t have a place to live anymore in Colorado. And I tried to ship my five or six boxes of books that I had packed up and I took them to the post office, and then they said, no, you can’t ship them for some trivial reason. It was like, because I had packed socks, like, in the book thing to pad my books, and they had asked me like, what do you have in the boxes? And I said, you know, books, and there’s some socks or something in there. Well, you can’t send that through media mail —
LS: Right.
CB: — which is the discounted rate, so it was gonna cost me way too much to send it. So I had to go home and like, repack it like, the next day or something like that or like, a few days later. And then I went back and I repacked it, and I like, packed it with like, newspaper or something like that. And then I went back to the post office and tried to send the books to begin the process of moving all the way across the country to like, South Carolina where Alan was. And then they were like, okay, what do you got in here? And I said, you know, books, and you know, there’s some newspaper or whatever. And they’re like, well, no, you can’t ship via media mail if there’s newspaper in it or like, something like that. And basically, they sent me back again saying there was some trivial reason that I couldn’t ship my books. And I called you or I messaged you, and I was like, there’s something stopping me from like, moving, and I don’t know why. And that happened like, two or three times. It was getting kind of ridiculous. And then after the second or third try, a friend of mine called me up and then said – that I’d been trying to get ahold of for a month, but I’d lost touch with and I didn’t think he was gonna get back to me – and he said he had a couch, he had a whole room I could sleep in and to come stay at his guest room. And that allowed me to like, stay in Denver, and then like, we stayed together, and yeah. It created a whole series of events over the past almost 20 years now, but it was this really notable moment where I could notice that I was trying through my own actions to do something, but my actions were being blocked by an external set of circumstances or fate that was outside of my control that was instead trying to nudge me back in a different direction.
LS: Right. Yeah. I remember that so vividly, because you texted me. I think you did try to go three times to the post office and send them. And you were like, “Leisa, something weird is happening. The books won’t go.” They just won’t – “I’m trying to send them, and they will not go!” Like, I don’t – for some reason, I’m not being able to do this. It’s like I’m not supposed to or something.
CB: Right.
LS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And I think that’s important, because it’s a other class of things I try to pay attention to sometimes, which are like, omens about what your fate is supposed to be or what direction the universe more broadly as some kind of like, sentient thing is sometimes directing you towards. And sometimes it’s like, telling – it’s either nudging – sometimes it’s like, pushing you. Like, sometimes you get a huge push because that’s the other set of circumstances is sometimes you’ll have an irrevocable sometimes negative event that will change your life, and it will close certain doors for you, but – which can be very hard in that time, but then in the long span of time, you’ll realize that it opened like, other doors for you or it pushed you in a direction you wouldn’t have gone otherwise. Like, you know, the death of somebody close to you or something like that. But I try to pay attention to those things, because I think sometimes it can clue you in to – and also because it can be frustrating in the moment, and you can get upset and lament that that’s happening sometimes. If, for example, in that instance, I had those three times where I lugged all these books down there to send them and was being sent back, it was like, a very frustrating thing that I could have like, freaked out about. But instead, I started thinking, like, why is this happening and what is this pushing me towards? And then the path became clear like, not long after that.
Yeah. I’ve had a number of moments like that. I mean, even… Yeah. I mean, even what led up to that was me moving back to Denver in the first place – how I met you – because I lost my sister. And I never would have moved back to Denver at that time if I didn’t. And then I ended up meeting you, and then that ties in a whole other thing, which is like, my secondary progressions. I have my Venus and Jupiter in two adjacent signs. Like, Venus is in early Sagittarius or mid-Sagittarius, and Jupiter’s in early Capricorn —
LS: Natally.
CB: — in my natal chart. So they’re almost like, what, 20, 30 degrees away. They’re almost a full sign away. But then at that time in like, 2007 and 2008, like, Venus by secondary progression met up with Jupiter and conjoined it at that time. And that’ll only happen like, once in my life, and it just happened to happen at that time when we got together. And then you became like, the love of my life at that secondary progressed conjunction. And that was just incredibly striking. And then so that brings up like, several other things, but also one of the other things is just sometimes there’s techniques showing you when those one-time events will happen. So yeah, there’s a lot there.
LS: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, so and that’s an example of like, you know, fate potentially being good and also things that are mapped out from the time of birth. You know?
CB: Right.
LS: Like, that particular planetary coinciding by secondary progression is only going to happen once, and you can say exactly when it’s going to happen in your life right after you’re born.
CB: Right. Because it’s just – in secondary progressions, it was like, what, the Venus-Jupiter conjunction that happened 20 – how old was I when we met – like, 22 —
LS: You were 23.
CB: — 23 years. 23 days after I was born there was a Venus-Jupiter conjunction in the sky. So that was in, what, like, late November of 1984 since I was born on November 1st. And then that Venus-Jupiter conjunction that I experienced when I was only 23 days old like, was itself foreshadowing this one I would experience when I was 23. So there’s that. I was also starting like, a 20-year zodiacal releasing from Eros chapter at that point, which is supposed to be the most positive period for me for relationships. And that’s something that Valens mentions is he mentions there’s like, many different timing techniques, but that it’s like, there are all different paths sometimes to getting to the same place. So that techniques are not always necessarily mutually exclusive, but sometimes they will – you’ll have multiple techniques that will line up that are pointing you and telling you something important is happening at that moment, for better or worse. And those are when some of the most important events happen when you have a confluence of like, multiple techniques lining up in a person’s chart.
LS: Absolutely. Yeah. And I wanna go back to something that you were saying about the books not going and about, you know, the frustration in the moment, but maybe it’s nudging you in a different direction, and like, paying attention to that instead of only dwelling in the frustration. I think that’s an important facet as well of, you know, whether fate is only conceptualized as, you know, negative versus positive is like, the idea of, you know, sort of endless free will is that we ourselves know as individuals what exactly should happen in our life for the best. You know? And like, every decision that we make that we should definitely get that fulfilled, and that’s kind of an example, you know, the one that you gave, about like, you know, there can be moments of decision-making, and you think that you know what you’re trying to use your free will for. Right? And what you think would be best for you to happen. But maybe you don’t actually know the full picture. You know, you don’t have an omniscient view of the entire world, you know, of your own future, of your own different future potential paths and what would be better or worse for you. You know, you just know what you think that you want in that moment.
CB: Right. Yeah. And sometimes what you think you want isn’t what either you would want if you could see the full picture from a bird’s eye view, or sometimes what you think you want in the moment isn’t the thing that’s best for you, or it’s not the thing that leads you to where you’re supposed to be at some point.
LS: Exactly. So I think that’s a really great example of that kind of thing, of how, you know, just to complicate the idea of free will only being good. It implies that we always know at any given moment what is best for us, in fact, with our limited capability of seeing the entire universe and future.
CB: Right. I mean, there is a broader issue. There is a thing where with fate… I don’t know. There can be things in our life, though, where we’re destined to fail at something, or something that we do want we just don’t get to achieve in this life for whatever reason, for circumstances that might be outside of our control or even ones that are inside of our control. And that is something that’s tricky to deal with, and that’s something that becomes a central issue in terms of astrology and what its purpose is is, for example, in ancient astrology, the different astrologers all had different like, philosophical viewpoints and approaches to like, fate and whether the planets act as signs or causes and different things like that. But they all did seem to general agree on this one central premise, which is that the purpose of astrology was to learn the future so that you could learn what your fate was and what would happen to you so that you could prepare yourself ahead of time to accept what you have to accept about your life so that you’re not thrown off terribly when the events actually occur. And that’s something that like, Valens mentions, that Firmicus mentions, even Ptolemy – who’s not fully Stoic or deterministic – mentions that as like, part of the purpose of astrology. And it’s a very Stoic notion, because in Stoicism, the ideal Stoic sage was so – they wanted to live in accordance with nature, and nature they thought was another like, a synonym for living in accordance with fate and also with god or with a divine plan, because they saw the cosmos itself as a living, divine, sentient entity. So that god and fate and nature and all of those things were intertwined and one and the same. So their highest ideal for the idealized Stoic sage is that the Stoic sage would accept all events in their life with having the same value, because it was part of their fate and destiny, and that to want something else or to not accept that could sometimes just lead to internal heartache and pain if one is unable to accept the things that are outside of their control. Yeah. So that’s something I’ve thought about a lot and struggled with at different points about how to deal with that in terms of astrology and its predictive capabilities, because I do think there’s a lot of value to that, especially in the times when there is something that happens that’s outside of your control that you’re not happy about that or that you don’t want to happen, but nonetheless that you are fated to experience at that time, which we all have universally at different points in our life at some point in our life. And how do we deal with that? Like, do we – and how gracefully do we accept the things that we have to accept in our life with internal courage and fortitude and strength? And like, the Stoic word is tranquility, but I don’t know if there’s like, a better —
LS: Like, equanimity?
CB: Like equanimity. There’s some other better term for that, but I don’t know what it is. I mean, it’s – in the Stoics, it was like, reaching this like, enlightened statehood of a sage who’s so wanting to live, able to accept the things that happen to them both good and bad that they treat everything as having essentially the same value even if subjectively they have preferences one way or another. But that it seemed like for the astrologers, they realized that everyday people aren’t just immediately like, these enlightened sages that can accept anything. But instead, the purpose of astrology was to give you a head’s up so that you might start to like, warm yourself up to understanding the things that you might have to accept or you might not.
LS: Yeah. And I think similar to a lot of things like that, when I first heard that, I was like, eh, I don’t know. But you know, the longer I’ve been in astrology, I do think that’s actually an incredibly helpful use of it. I think one still easily struggles with like, well, what exactly is or is not in your own sphere of control, you know? And I think that’s just the nature of like, being a human being; I don’t think that’s ever gonna go away, because you can’t exactly see all of the specifics of like, what is or isn’t in your control, and so you just have to work the best with like, what feels like it is, you know, and then work as best you can conversely with like, accepting the things that feel like you can’t make them different.
But yeah, I think it’s incredibly useful. You know, there’s sort of more humorously, there was a hashtag developed some years back on Twitter called astrologer good, and you know, it was about basically the idea that if you, you know, something happens that you don’t want to happen at all. But as an astrologer, you’re so struck by the symbolism matching up so well and so perfectly that you just have to like, smile. And I think that’s paraphrasing it more or less correctly. And it’s getting at that idea. It’s like, you know, there’s something about seeing the correlation, whether in the moment or whether, you know, earlier in advance that kind of makes you – if you have an astrological orientation – go, okay, there’s something about this that was supposed to happen in this way at this time. And therefore, there’s some additional meaningful dimension to that happening, even if you individually would not like it to have happened.
CB: Yeah. I mean, the astrologer good hashtag was about that there’s just something as astrologers that we became abstractly at least impressed by how well the astrology will line up even if in some instances it’s coinciding with something that’s bad or that we don’t want to be happening in our lives. But that there’s an objective part of us that’s kind of impressed when the astrology lines up well.
LS: Right. Like, impressed or like, even amused by like, oh, that’s really great symbolism there!
CB: Right. Right, because fundamentally, all astrologers become just fascinated by the extent to which astrology works and how well it works, and how many different levels it lines up with things. And yeah, so and for me, that’s why I embrace and have focused so much of the podcast on exploring and seeing how far you can go in developing the technical apparatus of astrology to take it as far as possible in terms of its predictive capabilities and to develop those as far as possible to use it to its fullest extent. But in terms of not just the purpose of astrology but something you were just talking about in terms of the limitations, I think even if everything’s predetermined and the astrology always perfectly coincides with that, we have limitations as astrologers because we’re dealing with a system that fundamentally works and speaks through symbolism and through omens, and that there’s an element of interpretation. And also that our vantage point is limited as humans, because there’s only so much data, and there’s only so many techniques that we can apply and take into account as well as so many charts that we can even see. Like, even if we could see my chart or your chart or our transits on this day, there’s like, other charts that are operating for so many other things of like, the chart for the building that we’re in or the country that we’re living in or the city or the electional chart – the inceptional chart for different things between us or —
LS: The people in our lives and how we show up in those charts and timing.
CB: Right. But so back to the point… Like, because this is where I ultimately come to about fate and free will ultimately is I do think most – I mean, I think virtually everything ultimately honestly is predetermined in our lives. I go to the full extent or almost fullest extent in thinking that ultimately myself, personally, even if I understand that’s not, you know, appropriate for everybody or a lot of people might not agree with that or what have you. I go to that fullest extent for the most part in just seeing how astrology works out and how well it works out, but the problem and where I think an element of what you might classify as a sort of quasi free will comes in is that astrologers are limited in our ability to correctly interpret the astrology ahead of time, and that ultimately no matter how good you are or how much you think you’ve figured out what’s gonna happen in the future through astrology and how much you think you’ve seen multiple techniques indicating the same thing and think you understand the symbolism of what it’s trying to say to you, that it’s not until the event actually occurs that you know in that moment for certain whether you were right or whether you were partially or fully wrong about what you thought the astrology indicates. And as a result of that limitation as humans and as interpreters, as astrologers, you always have to strive to do your best to try to aim for the most optimal outcome for you or whoever you’re working with to help. You always have to strive to work for the most optimal outcome, even if it doesn’t look good, because you could be wrong or there could be something you’re missing, or you could be mistaken in your interpretation as an astrologer. And in that, there’s a sort of free will, because there’s this indeterminacy in terms of not having omniscience. Like, not knowing everything in having like, a complete bird’s eye or god’s view of exactly how things are gonna play out, but instead because you’re working through symbols and omens.
LS: Right. Yeah. That makes sense.
CB: It’s not – astrology’s not a crystal ball that shows you a video, like a movie, of exactly what’s gonna happen in the future. It’s a set of symbols and omens that you have to read and interpret and try to decipher to the best of your abilities, but our abilities to decipher that system – because the system ultimately is so massive that it’s truly outside of our ability as humans to fully master and understand completely in one lifetime. But we just try to get as good as we possibly can. But our lack of ultimately like, godlike omniscience does give a limitation that you always have to take into account, and that ultimately I think negates any sort of full fatalism that one should ever have about things because you never know for certain until you get to that point in time and see exactly how things manifest.
LS: Right. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I think – so as far as my current take on these things, I have become fine with not knowing the extent to which things are predetermined. I think things are more predetermined than I used to think. And I think that certain things are very probably predetermined in any given life. You probably have at least some things, even maybe many things, that are predetermined. I think there’s still possibility, but not certainty, that there could be choice points along the way. Kind of like a choose your own adventure, you know, book. Where there could be a few different – or maybe more than a few different – ways in which things could proceed after a certain decision you make. And you know, maybe there is predetermination with regard to you need to make a decision about that thing at that time in your life. But then maybe upon that decision, you know, things might then play out along this line but still in accordance with all of your predetermined timing. Or along this line where the specifics are a little different, but it still matches your predetermined timing. So I think that there’s still a possibility for that. I don’t know for sure. It’s also possible things are completely predetermined. But yeah, I think both of those are possibilities for me, and I’m also fine with not knowing the specifics during my worldly lifetime. Because yeah, we don’t have omniscience, and so we can’t really see everything in its fullest scope and know for sure as limited individual human beings. So I do think, you know, the timing that has to match up throughout your entire life is very striking in terms of a lot being predetermined. But in terms of what fills in all of that content, there could be some room to wiggle.
CB: Yeah. And I mean, I will say and I waver a little bit because, you know, you do have electional astrology. And while I said that, you know, one of the things it teaches you is how much is outside of your control in terms of time and where the planets will be and not being able to control all of the positions of the planets, you can – if you use electional astrology on a daily basis, like, you do see like, the window of times when there’s a potential for a more favorable outcome than other windows where there’s a potential for a more negative outcome. And when you do that regularly enough, you do see the potential to make a choice. And in middle Platonism, they had this idea of conditional fate. That the choice is up to you to make a choice about something, but once you make a choice, the outcome is fated to occur. And that sounds a lot like electional astrology to me where you have the choice to choose like, when to act, at least to the best of your abilities. But then once you make that choice, there is something about the outcome that sets at least a trajectory or like, an arc that does have a likely outcome in terms of certain things you’re gonna experience so that it does make sense to try your best to, within reason, to choose the best times to act that are gonna be the more optimal for what you’re trying to accomplish, especially then when you tie that in with that indeterminacy factor that I mentioned before, which is that you… Even the best astrologer in the world is not so good that they know 100 percent exactly how everything’s gonna turn out in the future. They just have a certain level of percentage that they can get to that’s somewhere less than a hundred percent at all times in terms of knowing exactly how things are gonna manifest. And if that’s true, then you have to strive to optimize things as best as you can to bring about positive outcomes. And yeah, that’s where not just electional astrology comes in, but also paying attention to your transits, paying attention to other timing techniques and trying to do things in accordance with doing your best. But that actually circles us back around to one of those things you were talking about at the beginning of this discussion, which is something I told you early on, which is I noticed this – I had this observation early on when I would go to conferences that a number of the older astrologers like, didn’t pay attention to their birth charts and their transits as much as I did. And then I later, as I got more experienced, eventually like, learned why that was and stuff. And what I came to realize is just that astrologers go through different like, waves of being more or less focused on their own chart and trying to control things or to manipulate outcomes or studying the correlations. And each astrologer goes through like, waves of being more or less doing that, but especially early in your studies, there’s a tendency to focus on it a lot and to sort of obsess about tracking your transits and other things as part of the process of learning astrology. But you don’t always stay at that like, heightened state of focus for the entirety of your – if you end up having a long career as an astrologer. But sometimes you go in and out of not following things as closely.
LS: Yeah, definitely. I think the in and out is correct, because sometimes then specific things can come in, you know, can happen in your life that make you want to suddenly look again more closely at what’s happening astrologically in your own timing and chart. But yeah, I think overall, I mean, it’s funny that you bring that up right after electional astrology because I think for me, actually, what I pay attention to more now is just on a daily basis very briefly glancing at the chart of the moment and going, oh, this is when I should do important things today. Like, more so than like, looking at my own natal chart, which is actually kind of funny given the focus on predetermination. But I actually kind of think like, that maybe you’re also fated to learn and use electional astrology! you know? And you —
CB: Right.
LS: And so either way, it doesn’t really matter. You’re still using it, you know? Because again, the experience is still important. And —
CB: Right.
LS: — the enacting of that is still important, and setting into motion is still important. So yeah. I actually pay a lot more attention to the chart of the moment on a more or less daily basis than I do like, my own natal stuff, and then I’ll sort of dip in and out of like, looking at that as things arise.
CB: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I pay attention to the electional and the rising signs each day, because it sets up windows where you know the outcome of your actions are gonna be more positive or successful, whereas other times when you’ll do something and even though you have no practical reason to think that there would be any problems with it, you’ll initiate an action and then there’ll be like, a problem with it. Like, you and I sometimes commonly laugh about like, I’ll like, order food and like, Mars is on the Ascendant or like, Saturn’s on the Ascendant and it’s a night chart. And I’ll just like, do it because it’s like, I’m hungry and I just wanna get something delivered or something like that and I don’t wanna wait. But then there’s like, a problem with the order and they like, forget half of the order. And then you have to like, go down there or something to deal with it. And so it becomes something that’s completely outside of your control, whereas sometimes if you just like, had done it a little sooner, if you’d done it a little later, sometimes the circumstances behind that would have been more conducive for what you wanted. And it’s like, not just having that experience a few times, but it’s like, once you’ve had that experience a hundred times or hundreds of times, it does start pushing you in the direction of like, paying more or less attention to that on a regular basis.
LS: Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s the unfortunate point where you can’t like, opt out of knowing the astrology once you know it. I mean, you could choose not to look, I guess, but it’s like, when you know that and when you know there’s like, different windows that’ll be more or less annoying to deal with, if it’s like, minor stuff, you’re just like, well, let’s just do that at the less annoying times! We’ll have less annoying results. You know, and obviously that extends to like, much more important things. But yeah, I definitely pay the most attention to that these days.
CB: Right. So electional – I mean, I know my transits and I still pay close attention to transits and occasionally check in with the zodiacal releasing, but I don’t follow the zodiacal releasing as closely as I used to. You follow it still much more closely, I feel like.
LS: I follow it more closely than you do currently, although I follow it actually less closely than I used to. Just as I was saying earlier, just kind of like, I feel like I can relax a little bit more about you don’t always – just because you can know all these details at any given time doesn’t mean you always need to.
CB: Right.
LS: You know? Especially if you don’t think you need to micromanage it or that’s not going to be – that’s not gonna work. Like, and so it’s more about like, interesting perspective to me at this time rather than something I feel like I need to be on top of all of the time. Yeah. It can give you additional insights or perspective on like, what’s happening in your life right now, and that’s useful, but it doesn’t need to be something you’re like, constantly paying attention to. At least, you know, after a while. You know, certainly that’s like, an earlier phase of learning. But yeah, I look at… I don’t know. Yeah, I dip in and out of – like I said, I look at the electional astrology on more of a daily basis and I look at my transits sometimes. I look at my ZR, progressions… Progressions don’t move very often, so I only look at that once in a while. Or profections. I would say sometimes I think about my profections more regularly.
CB: Right.
LS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. I mean, well, it also brings up a side topic, which is like, astrology isn’t always inherently helpful.
LS: Right!
CB: Like, it’s not always inherently helpful to know, because from a practical standpoint, sometimes you already know what’s happening, and sometimes the astrology just tells you what you already know is happening in your life. And like, that’s useful sometimes to get a different outside perspective, and it gives you perspectives on things, and it is like, intellectually entertaining to see how well the astrology’s coinciding with your life. But there are – that’s also part of the like, phenomena I was ultimately realizing with the older astrologers when I was younger is like, sometimes they had just come to a point of realizing that you just have to live your life sometimes. And you don’t always have to be tracking your stuff 100 percent or trying to control or micromanage thing, because you’re already doing the best you can just taking actions and doing what needs to be done in your present environment.
So I think that’s important because I think sometimes in like, 20th century humanistic astrology there was an argument or a selling point of saying that astrology is inherently helpful or something like that, which I love it, and you know, I do it. It’s what I’ve dedicated my life to, but like, just because you know the astrology, that’s not gonna always inherently make your life better per se. Maybe I’m having a hard time articulating that, because I can already think of like, counterpoints because I do think it’s valuable. But I guess I’m trying to figure out that there can be limitations sometimes to knowing perhaps, and that brings in a whole other side issue when it comes to like, clients or other people or other people in your life like family members, and this trickiness in terms of how to deal with people that are non-astrologers when you talk about astrology. But I think for the most part, our entire discussion has been limited to just what it’s like to be an astrologer and what our views of the world are as advanced professional astrologers and how that informs one’s worldview.
LS: Right. And I think – I mean, I think it’s just more about that there is at a certain point maybe, you know, a long way down the road, but there is a certain point where there’s diminishing returns to how helpful knowledge always is as just a singular thing. Like, with clients, if they’re coming once a year or twice a year, you know, I think that is helpful, because especially if they don’t know astrology themselves or if they only know a limited amount or something —
CB: Right.
LS: — you are showing them something they couldn’t see on their own. And it is like, this additional perspective. And whether or not that changes their decision-making in the coming while, I think the additional perspective is still helpful. I think it’s more in the realm of when you know astrology and you live it on a daily basis and, you know, you are an astrologer, then there is like, a point of diminishing returns of, you know, when knowledge alone is actually helpful or if you have enough knowledge at that point about what’s going on in your life.
CB: Right. Yeah. That’s true. One of the fascinating things about being an astrologer is that now that I’ve had 25, 26 years in it since like, 1999, 2000, is being an astrologer is this process of this unfolding of learning more and more about your chart and your life and seeing it manifest in different ways, but also seeing the unfolding of your own fate and destiny. And that’s one of the most fascinating things, and that’s something that we all do. And there’s also a process to that, because as you grow and change as a person, sometimes you grow into your chart in different ways than you might not have expected earlier in your life. There can be things that you see in your chart early on that don’t make sense because they haven’t happened yet, or either they represent external circumstances or people that haven’t come into your life yet, or sometimes they represent internal changes in you that haven’t taken place yet. Like, changes or even like, a metamorphosis that you’ll go through at some point that hasn’t happened and therefore you can’t connect with that placement yet in your chart, because it’s something that still lays in store for you. And that’s one of the cool things about living out your life as an astrologer is watching the unfolding of your fate and seeing the chart, seeing your life live out and start to play out the things that are in your chart that you could never have fully anticipated were gonna play out, except they were kind of there hinted at in your chart from the very beginning.
LS: Definitely. Or also that reminds me of like, placements – that one of the things that l love is placements in a person’s chart and how they manifest with different specifics at different times in your life. Right? And so maybe this one placement, you’re really attached to it like, meaning this one thing because it’s meant this one thing or this one specific manifestation so far up to this point in your life. But then like, in 20 more years, it’s gonna mean something like, totally different but also very fitting with the symbolism. And yeah, that’s one of the things that I particularly enjoy observing.
CB: Yeah. Definitely. Or there can be different techniques and technical approaches and traditions of astrology that approach the chart through a different lens, and it can give you a different perspective on your life. And one of the fun things sometimes is learning different approaches to astrology, and people struggle with this sometimes because we’re all trying to develop like, the perfect system of astrology that we think is the most effective. And that’s why we all choose to use certain techniques that work for us and seem to work in our chart, and we tend to not use techniques that we haven’t found to line up very well with our chart and our life for whatever reason. But sometimes when you learn different approaches to astrology, it can give you a completely different perspective on your life and on your fate. And sometimes it can be interesting to see that there are different perspectives sometimes on one’s chart that can be if not equally true at least giving you a vantage point that might be true in some way that you don’t anticipate at first.
LS: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, for instance, there were definitely things that I did not realize were indicated in my chart until I learned like, the things that I learned later, you know, in my journey as an astrologer. And yet, there are also certain things conversely that I learned very early on that I still use, you know? And so I mean, you know, both our lives and our charts are multifaceted in that way, for sure.
CB: Yeah. Multifaceted. And you know, for me also that’s why I think it’s a good idea to like, study many different approaches early in your studies so that you have a wide vantage point and then can decide what approach you wanna take and what you wanna like, really come to specialize in. That you should like, learn widely and then choose an approach that you wanna specialize in and really hone that in. But then for me now, later, that means I’ve got my selection of specific techniques that I like to use that are my favorite techniques that I’ve always found are the most reliable or important. But I know there’s like, other techniques out there that occasionally like, I’ll get a glimpse of and I’ll see just like, how compelling they can be in showing things that either echo techniques that I already use or can give a different perspective or information that maybe I don’t have access to. Like, let’s say like, asteroids for example or fixed stars or something like that that I don’t use very regularly. And I’ll like, see that, and see that that’s impressive and sort of know that there’s other stuff out there I could be using, even though ultimately like, I’m confident and feel fine just using the techniques that I really feel the strongest with and feel the most compelling to me. And I don’t know what my point is. Like, one of the points is just that it’s okay sometimes to like, develop a system or an approach to astrology that you really like, and it doesn’t necessarily invalidate other approaches, because ultimately astrology is so complex that there’s many different ways that you can look at things.
LS: Yeah. Absolutely. As you were talking, I was just thinking astrology is – like that Walt Whitman quote. Like, you know, “Do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself; I contain multitudes.” And it’s like, it’s that kind of thing. Like, astrology’s very large, actually. You know? And there are different traditions, different techniques. You’re never actually gonna master all of it, like, be particularly proficient at all of it equally. So it is good to, you know, like, specialize in something that you feel is like, very repeatable, you know, and works well for you when you look at charts. But it’s also equally good to like, keep an open mind that there are other things that perhaps you haven’t, you know, other approaches to astrology or other techniques, for example, that you either haven’t studied as much personally, or yeah, you just haven’t delved into or haven’t had the time or what have you that could also give interesting insights. You know, that it is a multifaceted thing; it is not like, a once and done phenomenon.
CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s like, astrology has always been in a constant state of evolving and growing, and different traditions like, will develop and diverge and go in different directions. But then occasionally, they’ll converge and like, come together and intersect and create something new. And then there’ll be another divergence, and then it’ll come back again at different points. And the traditions are constantly like, crisscrossing at different points. And I think it’s really good – like, both are fine. Like, it’s fine to specialize in a specific approach and make that your only thing, and it’s also fine to specialize in multiple approaches. And for me, it’s been fulfilling to start as a modern astrologer, have this huge shift to learning about Hellenistic astrology and to fully embrace that and go as far as I could with that. But then, you know, over the past five, 10 years, especially once I finished my book, to then revisit some of the things I like about modern astrology and fold those into my work with Hellenistic astrology so that what I have is a hybrid approach that synthesizes the best of what I felt was the most compelling for me of the Hellenistic and medieval and renaissance and modern and even ancient Mesopotamian traditions and how to tie those best pieces into one in my unique synthesis or approach that I’ve tried to more or less demonstrate through The Astrology Podcast at this point. But it’s always still growing and changing, because I’m always learning new things and seeing new things and incorporating those new observations as I continue to try to grow and learn more as an astrologer.
LS: Yeah. Absolutely. I definitely still blend, you know, some modern things that I learned early on and some Hellenistic approaches as well and techniques. And yeah, I think it’s important in the astrological world to recognize that just because one thing, one approach, one technique shows you really valuable insights that that doesn’t mean that other techniques and approaches don’t also show valuable insights. And they can be different vantage points on your life, the different insights, and so forth.
CB: All right. So let’s bring it around back around to astrology and fate and the positive side of that ultimately that is exciting or empowering, which is I think there’s something valuable about learning what your fate and what your destiny is in different areas of your life. And that it’s like, with the birth chart, there’s gonna be some parts of your chart and your life that are gonna be more of your focus. Like, that’s one of the things you can see in the birth chart, you know, relatively well sometimes is like, the parts of our life that we focus on more or that we focus on less. And then sometimes the parts of our life that are more challenging for us where we have some of our greatest challenges and the parts of our life where things will come a little bit more easily to us.
Yeah, but that astrology is a process of learning about our fate and our destiny, and that to me, that’s a positive thing just because there’s something, you were saying, like, reassuring or fulfilling about learning what your destiny is and what your place is here in the cosmos and what your purpose is. And the notion that you do have some sort of purpose that you’re trying to fulfil to the best of your ability, whether it’s something that comes about through your choices or it comes about through your circumstances. And that your fate and destiny will impact the fate and destiny of other people – at the very least, those around you in your like, immediate family or friends or neighbors or coworkers or what have you. But also in some instances for some people, our fate or our destiny can go outside of our limited framework of local people that we know, and our life and our destiny can impact the larger world or the larger population in some way if that’s part of our destiny for that to occur.
LS: For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s interesting how like, even if you only know astrology to the extent that it describes your personality and character, that that in itself is saying you’re fated to be that kind of person. And that many people actually find that validating, you know? It validates that they are supposed to be like, their unique self, and that it’s not, you know, that’s of course especially validating when you don’t feel, for instance, like you are the exact cultural norm or something that you’re supposed to be in whatever area of life. But you know, even when you go to that first step of just like, personality, it’s like, you are supposed to be you, and that other person is supposed to be them, and they are different than you, and that is fine and good. You know? And then that just keeps extending further to other areas of your life or, you know, specific topics in your life.
I think ultimately, you know, the grappling with the idea of fate and whether it feels positive or negative is like, a Saturnian thing. But that Saturn itself is also not only negative, right?
CB: Right.
LS: Because it’s like, about constraint and structures, but also commitments and ties. And so that’s kind of how it feels to me. Like, people often easily see the downside of Saturn, you know. Like, you want ultimate freedom. But Saturn also circumscribes like, what realm are you working in? You know? And you can’t work in all realms simultaneously, so where are you supposed to be right now?
CB: Right.
LS: And what are you supposed to be working on? And that can be a positive thing, because you can’t spread yourself too thin, you know? You can’t exist everywhere simultaneously. So yeah, I think it’s very similar to just like, people’s feelings about Saturn is that there can also be positives in like, order and constraint and commitments and ties. And that part of what like, the idea of fate and astrology shows is like, what are your specific particular ties in this world, and what are you supposed to be doing that’s different than the next person?
CB: Right. Yeah. And because sometimes that’s one of the hardest things is if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing or you have a loss of direction or a loss of meaning or purpose, whereas sometimes finding that can feel fulfilling. There is a tension between with like, character traits, for example, that you were mentioning between the potential of astrology to both find acceptance of who you are and what some of your traits are and to understand and have a perspective on that and to live authentically. You know, like, Demetra’s book Astrology and the Authentic Self and everyone’s desires to want to live a life that’s authentic to who they are. But then also the need to continue to strive to like, improve, to do better, and to hopefully emphasize those good character traits and qualities that each of us have, or to either deemphasize or to learn how to overcome or improve those things that are negative or challenging character traits that all of us have so that we seek growth, and that astrology doesn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy or something that holds people back from growing. And I don’t think having a more fate-oriented or predictive approach to astrology has to mean that, and that all of us has to like, strive to that somehow in some ways.
LS: Yeah. Because your life still unfolds over time, and therefore your internal graplings with things, your decision making, your events that come to you – all of that unfolds over time regardless, you know? And you have to live your life through that. And so yeah, I think – I remember when I was first struggling with the idea of greater fatedness, and I was talking with you about it many years ago now. And I was saying something like, well, but then it feels like you just don’t need to do anything and it doesn’t matter. And you were like, only if you’re fated to be someone who doesn’t wanna do anything! And I thought, you know, that actually made some impression on me at the time, because I was like, oh, okay. It’s really circular here, right?
CB: That what again?
LS: That, you know, because I was feeling like, well, how does it matter to do anything then, if everything is fated? I was feeling like I was not part of that fatedness, right? And I was like, so then things just happen and you don’t, you know, why would you even do anything? And you were like, only if you’re fated to be someone who doesn’t wanna take action, you know, would that be the case. Otherwise, you’re gonna wanna take action regardless.
CB: Right. Because this is like, called the lazy argument in ancient astrology where critics of Stoicism and fate tried to argue that well, if everything’s fated to occur, then why do anything at all? But that’s when it goes back to like, the cylinder argument and the internal and external, which is that it’s not just a matter of our external fate, but it’s also about our internal fate and our own character and choices and predispositions because that’s partially how we manifest our fate is through the actualization of our will and our potential. Even if that is predetermined as well, it doesn’t remove the necessity for choice and action and volition. It just means that choice and action and volition is part of the causal nexus that’s tied up into fate.
LS: Yeah. And I think it’s like, complex like that in the way that people at least when you first start thinking about it are not envisioning. And I think what looks like free will can be part of fate, but as we are enacting it can feel like free will. And I think ultimately, you don’t really see how it all works until and if you have a more omniscient view, not in this lifetime, right? And I don’t even know if that ever happens, but yeah. I suspect it’s just all kind of tied up in a complicated like, ball of yarn that you really can only perfectly see if you are not like, a limited human being. But from some different vantage point, I think they’re probably… Yeah. I think they’re probably all mixed together even if it, you know, even if it’s fated to be all mixed together.
CB: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s all mixed together. One of the things I meant to mention, because I – you mentioned some Buddhist things, and it led me to mention like, how karma exists and like, some other things, and some of those concepts didn’t… For me, at least, it’s sort of outside of that. Like, I don’t have necessarily conceptualizations of reincarnation or karma. And I think that the birth chart can… We can have doctrines of like, fate and predetermination, and that the birth chart is sufficient on its own and beautiful enough on its own in the capacity it has to tell us about our fate and about our future without necessarily having to have recourse to past lives or other things like that. That I don’t feel like the chart necessarily has to say things about past lives or imply that our fate or other things are the result of past actions, or that we have to take responsibility for that in some larger spiritual or karmic sense, because sometimes I think just we’re born into this life, and we have our fate. And that’s what’s important is just to deal with that, because that’s already enough on its own without laying other things on top of that. And all the astrology can truly say from the birth chart itself, the primary thing it says is just what’s gonna happen in this life. And that’s already interesting and beautiful enough in and of itself that at least for me personally, I don’t feel the need to overlay other things on top of that, partially also because I do think that things happen in people’s lives – sometimes bad things happen in people’s lives that are not their fault. And that it’s not necessary to like, try to say that a choice was made prior to birth or that actions happen prior to when you were born that necessitated or resulted in something that happened in this life. Like, I think it’s enough just to focus on what are the things that are gonna happen in this life, and how does that shape – how can you figure out your future or destiny to the best of your ability in this life and what you’re supposed to be doing here? Since this is really what we have, and that that is sort of beautiful but also sufficient in and of itself.
LS: For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think your focus on, you know, just present life concerns with the birth chart. I do think it’s interesting more theoretically why, you know, to speculate maybe on why we are born into the birth chart that we are. You know? And there’s always those stories, right, of people who were – their due date was like, in two months, but they were born, you know, two months or a month and a half prematurely, or a month late, or whatever, and it does seem like there’s some reason why we have our particular birth charts. But I think to me that lies more in the speculative realm. And again, maybe that just goes back to my, you know, want to focus on the empirical parts and not speculate too heavily. But and you know, it’s also true – what you were saying about – I think ideas of karma from past lives or reasons why we’re carrying anything forward potentially can either be empowering or disempowering to different people. And you know, I wouldn’t take that away from anyone who finds it empowering, but I could also see the potential certainly for it to feel disempowering. And ultimately, I don’t know, you know? So I’m not gonna go like, get going there. I’m just focusing on what you can see for sure and can say for sure about like, current life dynamics and timing and so forth.
CB: Yeah. What else? What other areas… It’s funny that we’ve covered so much, because we threw this together impromptu —
LS: Yeah.
CB: We didn’t really have an outline. We’re just like —
LS: You’re like, what are we gonna talk about again?
CB: Yeah. We were just gonna talk, because the premise was that I’ve been wanting to develop more about talks and stuff about what my personality philosophy of astrology is and also about what some of the ancient Stoic philosophies of astrology were, and wanting to talk about that today. And then we decided just to find it as we went and set up this setup here on a whim in terms of our camera setup. And we weren’t really sure whether to talk at each other or to talk to the screen and camera in front of us, so that’s —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — why you see us —
LS: Kind of go back —
CB: — looking —
LS: — and forth.
CB: — to the right probably most of the time.
LS: Yeah.
CB: But we’ve covered a surprising amount. How long have we been talking?
LS: I don’t know.
CB: Oh, 1:53. So almost two hours.
LS: Okay.
CB: So it’s a standard podcast episode length almost. Not standard at this point —
LS: How long was it again?
CB: Almost two hours.
LS: Oh, okay. Yeah.
CB: So we’re reaching a good stopping point, but so I’d like to reflect on if there’s any major points that we didn’t touch on for this, you know, initial little talk in terms of things or any things that we would kick ourselves if we didn’t that we’ll remember over dinner.
LS: We will probably remember something over dinner.
CB: Yeah.
LS: But yeah. Something about…
CB: Oh yeah. Actually, there’s a few things. There’s like, astrocartography or solar returns. I don’t think you can change your fate just by moving to different parts of the world or going to a different place to have a different solar return. I think that, especially with like, astrocartography or something it just emphasizes different parts of the chart more or less, but that doesn’t ultimately change your fate. And ultimately, if you’re able to do that or go to different places where your chart will be emphasizes, sometimes that’s just part of your fate that you will go, and that’s actually been my experience in having a more fated experience of astrocartography is just like, you know, I moved to Seattle, and that’s where my Saturn Midheaven line was, and that’s where I – it was a cold, rainy winter where I was very isolated on my own in a new city I’d never been in before. But then I also was like, discovered ancient astrology and started studying ancient astrology there at that time. And that’s when I started learning Hellenistic astrology with Demetra. Or I moved to another – a Neptune line, and that’s where, you know, I went and started studying in a translation project, but it was very Neptunian and there was a lot of Neptunian figures there. Or other cities where I have my Mars line, and that’s been more problematic for different reasons. I think it’s more just like, the type of experiences that you tend to have in different places of the world. And for me, it’s less about like, attempting to use that to completely change any things, even though, you know, certainly if you were trying to like, find different places where maybe you know you’ll have different energies emphasized, like, that’s certainly something you could take into account and maybe if you were trying to find places, you could fix that. But I don’t know if it just completely like, radically changes everything per se. Because the birth chart itself – I guess that’s what I come back to is ultimately like, the birth chart itself is the natal promise. And there’s something about that that you don’t change that’s always there. And that’s also why I don’t think you can go and like, change your solar return chart, and that’ll just completely change things. I think there’s something about the natal chart that sets a foundation that is somewhat immutable in your life, even if part of what the natal chart indicates is that you will grow and change and develop in different areas over the course of your existence.
LS: Yeah. I mean, I can see that going different ways, you know, in terms of whether that’s absolutely fated or whether there’s some free will component to say like, choosing to live near a particular astrocartography line or something. I definitely see the people who, you know, you can see for instance if someone is fated to travel at long distances or relocate to somewhere far from home. So, you know, that —
CB: Right.
LS: — in itself can be part of the birth chart. I think actually astrocartography kind of falls similarly to electional astrology in the like, are you fated to learn astrology at all or to consult astrologers, you know?
CB: Right.
LS: And therefore, you know, to want to use astrocartography to move to a more favorable line, you know?
CB: Right.
LS: That feels very much like electional astrology to me.
CB: Yeah. I mean, sometimes your fate is that you will become an astrologer, and you’ll become a good electional astrologer and then you will pick certain elections that will allow you to accomplish certain things or fail at certain things if you pick like, a terrible election. But sometimes that’s fated. Or sometimes there are indications for people that will end up moving and living in a country that’s foreign from the one that they grew up in or were born in. And there’s indications for that in a chart, and then the astrocartography does become relevant. Yeah. But I don’t know. It’s just tied in with the broader things of fate in the person’s life, and there’s something about the birth chart that stays constant even if there’s other activations and there’s different things that emphasize it at different points and other things like that. It’s often more in a descriptive, timing sense than it is in something that’s contradicting the fundamental promise of the natal chart.
LS: Right. Because the natal chart is static, but – it looks static, but time and timing is actually like, the other dimension of the natal chart. And you can’t – they’re not actually totally separate things. It’s like, part of like, what shows what will unfold at certain things in your own chart. So yeah. Yeah. It’s not just about like, looking at the birth chart in a static fashion and going, does this look like a fated thing, or is this something I’m doing of my own volition? Well, is the timing lining up right now for you to do that of your own volition? You know. And so forth.
CB: Yeah. And there’s something ultimately about time. And as humans, we experience time in like, slices of like, the slice of time that is the present moment, and then the sort of like, snake of time that’s extending out from the past and from our point of origin at the birth chart and the slices of time that are snaking out into the future to the end of our life. And even though we experience that as this series of time slices like, going forward, that’s one of the issues with like, transits and like, time lord systems and everything else is you could go back to the moment of birth and calculate every single transit you’ll ever have in your life because all of the planetary – it’s not just the birth chart that is a slice of time that shows certain predictions about what will happen in your future in a broad sense. But it’s also that every timing technique that will ever occur in your life you could already – theoretically, if you wanted to – calculate from the moment of birth. And the fact that the transits and other timing techniques do coincide with events in our life, but then the fact that all of those timing techniques are already predetermined, that’s where it gets into the whole determinism factor with astrology that I guess we started with.
But yeah. I mean, ultimately, it’s about finding some sort of like, peace with that and some sort of broader feeling of being sort of inspired or that being awe-inspiring, I think. Because I think there’s different ways that you could go with that. Like, one could feel that that was oppressive for different reasons, especially if you’re thinking about the challenging things that you have to experience at different points in your life. But then obviously, if you were thinking about the positive things, it’s like, having – if you could know ahead of time, it’s like, this is the moment where I’ll meet that important person in my life, or this is the moment when I will get that job that I always wanted to get. Or this is when I’ll go on that trip to visit that city that I’ve always wanted to visit. And that some of those moments are just like, built into that snaking out of time. To me, I always land, and I don’t know – it’s hard to articulate at this point, like, why that is, but I always lean in the more awe-inspiring part of that, that to me that’s beautiful, thinking about that rather than it being something that’s negative or oppressive ultimately.
LS: Yeah. I largely do too, and I’ve had the experience of initially feeling like that might be oppressive. But yeah, at this point in time, it feels like not only is like, it’s kind of like the astrological like, the technical scaffolding of our lives. And you’re like, getting to kind of glimpse behind everyday life and see what that is. And that is kind of awe-inspiring, because you know, you’re seeing what underpins like, our experience of life in a way that not everyone sees, you know? Or that you might not have gotten to see like, I don’t know, yeah. It’s like, it’s not a given that you can see that kind of thing that’s very meta about your life and about the universe. And so I think it’s very awe-inspiring too. And you know, while of course at a human level, at certain times when things are happening that I don’t want to happen, I’m, you know, like, annoyed or upset. But ultimately there’s something still kind of reassuring about seeing that line up with the astrology. And again, you know, I kind of said this before, but for me, the reason why that feels like something I’m largely at peace with or it feels like a positive thing rather than an oppressive thing is that I feel like it’s showing like, my interrelatedness and my taking apart-ness of the universe and the experience of the universe and being alive. And it’s not just stuff that’s happening to me. It’s like, this is charting like, my connection with everything that’s happening right now.
CB: Right. Yeah. And I think an important thing to introduce in that context is that from the most ancient notions of astrology, one of the things that’s consistent is like, astrologers viewing astrology as like, a language.
It’s like, this language that the cosmos is speaking. But if the cosmos was, instead of being like, this dead, inert thing, if it was also like us. If we were like, smaller versions of the cosmos and the cosmos itself was some sort of living, sentient thing, part of what we’re seeing through astrology is the language of the cosmos that’s constantly like, thinking about us in some ways and thinking about what’s going on inside of it. And part of that is wrapped up in like, time and fate and destiny and the future. And that language is tied in with like, space and time, and all these other things. But that somehow through the movements of the planets, we’re seeing something about the language or the code that’s underlying the universe and that’s underlying our fate and our destinies, and that there’s like, this language or this script that’s describing at least the broad outlines of our life and the plot points of this script that is essentially the script of our lives.
LS: Right. Exactly. And to me, like, that is so much bigger of a thing than like, my own momentary like, do I prefer this or not prefer this that, you know, ultimately like, even in those moments I’m just like, I’m still grateful to be able to see that connection and that language and that symbolism and that interrelatedness. That’s a bigger deal than just like, do I not want this thing to be happening right now.
CB: Right. Yeah. There’s something about that, because it clues you into the bigger picture of thing and how you’re a piece in that bigger picture or that bigger puzzle. And that’s where it does get a little awe-inspiring, a little beautiful to see that and to see how your fate is like, weaved into the fate of the larger universe and cosmos and those around you. Yeah. All right. That’s pretty good. Is that like, a sufficiently, I don’t know, encouraging way to like, wrap up, or is there anything else in terms of pitching this? Because obviously I know so many people have different – there’s so many different like, religious and spiritual and metaphysical views on the world and reality and the cosmos and stuff that we’re sharing, you know, our views on that, which even between the two of us differ slightly in some ways. But you know, we can only speak for ourselves in terms of what our conclusions are that we’ve come to as a result of our experience as astrologers as well as the different events that have happened to us and the different religious or metaphysical or spiritual or philosophical views that we have and the implications we’ve drawn from that. And that… I do think there’s probably something about each person’s chart and like, the spiritual or religious views that they maybe are more apt to adopt or more…
LS: Absolutely.
CB: That speak to them more, which I think is important and is fine —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — and it’s one of the things I’ve been cognizant of that the… Especially with like, the prominence of like, Saturn in my chart or whatever it is that maybe I’m more – as well as the events that have occurred in my life, especially, that have shaped me in addition to my character and personality – that the things that I’m more inclined to adopt or to believe or to accept or to view as positive or beautiful or whatever, like, may not be appropriate for somebody else. Like, maybe that wouldn’t work for somebody else, and that’s fine. But it’s become important for me to try to articulate like, what my views are and what are some of the spiritual or religious or philosophical conclusions that I’ve drawn from my life and career as an astrologer and outlining those and then also starting to try to put the – this is the pitch for that, to some extent. But it doesn’t necessarily negate what might feel right for somebody else.
LS: Yeah. Absolutely. You can definitely see like, strikingly different takes sometimes in different people’s natal charts with regard to like, the worldviews that they’re inclined to go towards. And I always find that fascinating. Or, you know, times in life where they’re changing their worldview even. You know, and so maybe that in itself is part of the fatedness. But I mean, yeah, speaking to that, you can certainly come to astrology – you know, astrology is a set of like, observations and correlations. You can certainly come to astrology with different orientations, different metaphysical orientations, different spiritual orientations, even religious orientations. And I think that’s like, fine and good. Although I do think it’s important especially if you’re doing client work to cleanly differentiate as much as possible between your own views and what the astrology literally says versus what you’re thinking about what it says. But that said, you know, yeah, different people certainly come to it with different orientations. But I think equally important, if not more so, you do have to pay attention to what you’re seeing technically speaking with what the techniques you’re using are showing and what the philosophical implications are of those, and you have to take that seriously and like, explore that, you know, because this is not only something where it’s like, a set of tools and then you’re slapping on top of it like your own, you know, sort of orientation to that. There are specific implications involved in the techniques, and so I do think that’s important to take seriously.
CB: Right. Yeah. It’s really hard, because different people will draw different implications from different things. Or will bring their own backgrounds to things.
LS: Right.
CB: Which is a good point. I mean, even astrologers’ like, view on fate and free will – like, that’s gonna have different implications for how they might do things either personally or in terms of explaining astrology to somebody else. But that’s one of the reasons why it’s actually important to think about these things, so that you can situate yourself and what your own views are and how you explain what you do, both to yourself as well as to other people.
LS: Right. And I think I’m showing my own, you know, predestined orientations here where I’m just like, I think it’s particularly important to focus on empirical observations. And, you know, astrology of course is about that in general, but some people may focus in particular on that more, or some people may focus more on like, you know, a certain spiritual orientation and then filter things through that lens. So I am also showing my own, of course, predisposition here. But yeah, I think if we are astrologers, we do need to take seriously like, the observations we see and like, what that seems to imply, even if there’s not only one set of implications one could draw from that.
CB: Right. So every astrologer is gonna draw different implications, philosophical and spiritual and religious implications based on the technical approach they take and the technical apparatus to astrology that’s available to them. And you are gonna draw different conclusions based on the different traditions that you’re drawing on that might be geared in different ways.
LS: Yeah. And I think that’s why astrology is a 9th house topic, right? It’s like, a way of making meaning and understanding life and understanding the world around you, but there’s not only one way to do that.
CB: Right. Yeah. Yeah, so there’s a lot of different approaches you could take. I mean, there’s a lot of – but to that point about technical approaches, I think you and I because we’ve developed this technical approach, there’s a lot of things about the conclusions we’ve come to that other people could not even begin to approach understanding why we would come to some of these conclusions without having the familiarity with the technical approach that we do, which is that variety of like, the approach to natal astrology that we’ve developed, which is a blend of Hellenistic and modern and other astrologies a little bit, but also the specifical technical techniques that we use like timing techniques which for me are primarily, you know, transits, profections, zodiacal releasing, maybe a little bit of secondary progressions are like, my four timing techniques. But then we also have – and then also our approach to like, electional and then a little bit of knowing synastry or other things like that. And now more recently, like, mundane astrology which I’ve really developed over the past 10 years my understanding of doing that regularly on a monthly level and seeing how astrology can work out collectively has also given me a different vantage point. But there’s some level where… I’m trying to outline like, our philosophy based on our collective understanding of all of those things or my understanding, my conclusions based partially on that. But that if somebody had a different technical approach, like, they wouldn’t necessarily come to the same conclusions because they wouldn’t… You know, like, the Saturn return – even something as simple as that you and I did a lot of work on Saturn returns. We used to do a blog called Saturn Return Stories. But even the technical approach to that was more developed and highly specific, because we were taking into account distinctions like is it a day chart or a night chart? What whole sign house is Saturn in? What houses is Saturn ruling? And all of those different things coming up during the Saturn return that allowed us to see different shades of how a person would experience their Saturn return as opposed to when we came into the field, a lot of the Saturn return doctrine was just that there’s no way to tell those differences and they said that because they could see that Saturn could be experienced as constructive or very difficult that they assumed then that it was just completely up to the individual to manifest that through their own free will and choices, and that there was this huge range then of how it could manifest and it was just completely up to you.
LS: Right.
CB: But then with our technical approach, we realized actually there’s a lot more like, technical stuff that you can do to actually figure out what the range of possible manifestations is that you can narrow it down more than you think, even if there’s still some ambiguity ultimately.
LS: Right. That was such a valuable, you know, shift to like, learn about sect, for instance, and see how that applied in particular to things like the Saturn return. And it is a great example, also, of what you were just talking about, of technical distinctions that you happen to know or learn and then watching them work and what are the then implications of that. Or, you know, if you didn’t know that distinction, then yeah, it’s all just completely up to, you know, like, it’s your own free will, it’s how hard you work to like, and then when you see the actual like, technical refinement of oh no, there’s more specific ways you can narrow that down and therefore there are more specific ways in which that is a little bit fated – or a lot fated, depending —
CB: Or like, more fated.
LS: Yeah, more fated. Then yeah, that’s just like, a huge sort of topic in itself is like, how the different techniques you learn or know or use regularly or are proficient in lend themselves to observations about, you know, how life is operating.
CB: Right. Yeah. Yeah, well I guess what I’m interested in right now – because you know, a large part of the podcast of my goal, if you go back and listen to the first episode of The Astrology Podcast episode one, I outlined how I wanted to study all of the different traditions and like, approaches, and I’ve done a pretty good job of that, of the almost nearly 500 episodes where it’s like, you know, I did an interview with Steven Forrest and interviewed him about his views on astrology and reincarnation. I’ve done interviews on like, Chinese astrology or Meso-American astrology or I’ve gotten a lot of different views and approaches about the astrological tradition. And lately I’ve been focusing more on developing and outlining some of my own technical things, because that’s been the other side is not just showing other astrologers but also what my approach is. And yeah, I guess part of what I was trying to do here is start to more clearly outline what my not just technical approach is, which I’ve outlined pretty extensively and sufficiently, but also what my philosophical and spiritual and metaphysical and religious conclusions are of part of my approach and system – the conclusions I’ve drawn from partially from the technical approach that I’ve developed or that we’ve developed.
LS: Right.
CB: Yeah. So I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that today. But yeah, but people’s understanding is gonna be limited to a certain extent just based on how familiar they are with our techniques or approaches or how much they think some of those techniques or approaches work or are compelling to them.
LS: Right. Well, and I know for sure there’s other, you know, particular approaches or techniques that I haven’t studied. You know, and I may never get proficient in that might lend themselves different, you know, conclusions. Not necessarily completely different, of course, but new facets of like, observations about how life seems to be working based on those other techniques. So I think that’s always gonna be to some extent the case and why it’s important probably to, you know, listen to each other when we do specialize in certain things, and be open to different observations.
CB: Yeah. Although even there it’s like, the more I’ve learned of new techniques, like, one of the things I’ve been developing and just have discovered over the past year or so is that notion of Babylonian goal year periods which are like, long term planetary periods. Like, 83 years for Jupiter, or 79 years for Mars, and that has brought in this whole new category of things that are like, super long term things that are like, built into the birth chart and promises that aren’t delivered until sometimes much later in the life, like halfway or even towards the end of the life that get manifested in those years. Like, basically just really important transits and this notion of planetary recurrences. But then some of those have been also tied in because they’re so long term into mundane astrology and things that play out over centuries or like, multiple centuries, which then just like, further reinforces some of my views about fate and predetermination and things playing out over very long spans of time that may have been predicted going back even much further into the future than a single lifetime.
LS: Absolutely. Yeah. That’s fascinating to think about.
CB: Yeah. All right. Well, I could keep talking all night, but maybe this is good. So you, speaking of zodiacal releasing, you actually have a workshop coming up. You’re doing a workshop on zodiacal releasing at the Northwest Astrology Conference that people can sign up for online, right?
LS: Yeah! I’m really excited. I’m doing a zodiacal releasing workshop pre-pre-conference, so on the Thursday afternoon, specifically focused on zodiacal releasing from the Lot of Spirit. So career and general life direction. Although one of the things I’m particularly excited to talk through is, you know, non-career examples because there’s been a lot of career professional examples. And so I’m interested to discuss with people some non-career examples at that workshop. You can go to NORWAC.net to see more description there and sign up. And you can attend virtually – a very important detail. So you don’t actually have to physically come to Seattle if you’re not signed up for the conference. You can also sign up for the workshop alone; you don’t have to – I mean, there’s lots of great lectures, too, so if you want to, I would encourage you to sign up for the rest of the conference as well. But it is a standalone workshop, so you can either do it together with the conference or just separately.
CB: Right. And the in-person conference is sold out, so it’s only —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — online at this point.
LS: It’s only online at this point, but it’s great because it’s accessible anywhere in the world then.
CB: So and the premise of your workshop is that usually when I teach or when we’ve taught zodiacal releasing in the past, we’ve mainly used it for career matters because it’s actually very effective at outlining different chapters and phases in a person’s career and especially major career transitions. But it’s actually much broader than that, and it can be used for different things.
LS: Yeah. I mean, career definitely shows up. But releasing from the Lot of Spirit is about career and general life direction, which can be broad. You know, it’s about like, what you’re moving towards, what you’re wanting to move towards in your life. So yeah, I’m excited to show some examples – there may be some career examples in there, but I’m excited to show some other kinds as well.
CB: Nice. Excellent. Well, yeah, I think that’s a really great opportunity people should sign up for. You learned – you were not impressed by zodiacal releasing initially, or at least you were skeptical —
LS: No, no, I wasn’t impressed.
CB: Not impressed. I’m just saying, like, 15 years ago or 16 years ago —
LS: 17.
CB: 17 years ago. But you learned zodiacal releasing, and then became proficient at it, and then became really good at it so that you were actually in many instances I always tell people like, in some instances like, more proficient at it than me or have made more impressive predictions to me personally sometimes than anybody else I know so that you’re the most knowledgeable person about zodiacal releasing in the world besides me.
LS: Thank you!
CB: And oftentimes like, exceed me in your ability to do really amazing things with it.
LS: Thank you for saying so.
CB: Yeah! So I’m saying that not just to like, toot your own horn, but to say that it’s a great opportunity to learn from you, and I definitely recommend people taking advantage of that in terms of that workshop.
LS: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it, because I’ve also done other zodiacal releasing lectures and even workshops, but I’ve not actually done one focused on Spirit – a whole workshop focused on Spirit. So this is gonna be like, a first-time larger container for that.
CB: Nice. And then you’re giving – at the main conference, you’re also giving a talk on relationships.
LS: Yeah, it’s called Love Locations – the Places of Partnership. And so it’s about basically the either actual literal places or circumstances in which people meet an important romantic partner. And, you know, it’s focused on the ruler of the 7th house and Venus as a general significator of relationships, and we’re used to thinking of those as like, describing something about our potential partners in life, or something about relationships in our life. But I’ve discovered just like, over talking with clients and observations and so forth that it actually can sometimes – not all of the time, but sometimes – show surprisingly literal ways that we meet partners, or at least one important partner if not more. Sometimes it’s like, lots of them, and sometimes it’s just like, one. But anyway, I’m really excited to share those observations, because I’ve collected so many example charts that are amazing. And I actually have like, a workshop amount of example charts. So I have to actually winnow it down now. But those should be really fun. It’s actually sort of focused as a fun lecture, which is gonna be on Sunday. So it’s a good time after the Saturday night when people are getting a little tired potentially from the weekend. This’ll be like, a fun, very like, quick chart-focused, example-based lecture.
CB: Nice. Well, and that actually is really appropriate for our topic because it’s like, one of the things that you’ll be looking at is like, the position of the ruler of the 7th house and how sometimes the house that the ruler of the 7th is placed in will tell you the circumstances in which the native will meet one of the most important relationships of their life.
LS: Right.
CB: So could we give just a couple of examples really quickly? Because that actually ties —
LS: Sure.
CB: — in with our topic, and then is just interesting.
LS: Sure. So one of the pretty funny – I actually have multiple ones submitted where —
CB: Give me like, in a cosmically – before a funny one, like, an impressive one that’s like —
LS: These are impressive too.
CB: Well, one of the funny ones is just like, funny but not – it’s like, there’s cosmic joke type ones that are humorous, but we’re talking about like, the inspiring part of one’s fate.
LS: Well, I mean, so for instance, the ruler of the 7th in the 9th, of course, people often partner romantically at some point in their life with someone from a foreign country, for instance. That’s very common sort of basic delineation. But sometimes it’s actually that you meet specifically while you’re traveling far away from home.
CB: Right.
LS: And you know, so that’s a quite – that’s one that came up over and over.
CB: So you have one where it’s like, the native met the most important relationship in their life while they were traveling in a foreign country?
LS: Right. And so that says something about like, you’re not necessarily – that person is not gonna meet someone crossing the street, whereas someone else might if they have like, the ruler of the 7th in the 3rd, for instance. You know?
CB: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s so important because it just – maybe we should have given examples earlier in what we were talking about, because it really makes it more concrete what we were talking about the astrology indicating like, a fate, something you’re fated to do, which can be like, the circumstances in which you’ll meet the love of your life, for example, in a very concrete way of having the ruler of the 7th in the 9th.
LS: Right. Right. Exactly. And I had like, multiple funny ones where the 3rd house and the 6th house were both involved. And like, their partner was like, one of their neighbors, and somehow the pet was involved in introducing them. And that’s like, the 3rd house of neighbors and the 6th house of pets, right? And funnily, like, I had like, more than one of those specific ones. So yeah. I mean, it just can be like, surprisingly literal and like, amusing sometimes.
CB: Right. Because there’s like, there’s sometimes things that come up in a chart where it’s like, it doesn’t make any sense —
LS: Right.
CB: — like, why the native’s relationships should be tied in with the concept of pets.
LS: Right.
CB: But then it’s like, you found examples where the native met somebody they got in a major relationship with as a result of their pets for some reason. And then —
LS: Right.
CB: — that just is one of the weird ways that astrology can describe the unique circumstances in a person’s life and fate in some ways.
LS: Right. And you would like, you would view that as like, a positive in retrospect, right? That that was like, fated to happen, because then that happened to you and it played out exactly as expected.
CB: Right. Yeah. And sometimes the universe has a really funny sense of humor.
LS: Right. Yeah, definitely.
CB: Yeah. All right, cool. Well, people can sign up for those at NORWAC.net, and that’s happening later in May.
LS: NORWAC.net, and you can sign up for the whole conference as well virtually if you’d like.
CB: Cool. All right. And then you have your website – you have other lectures and stuff for sale.
LS: LeisaSchaim.com, although I’m still rebuilding my store part. But if you sign up for my mailing list, then you’ll see when that’s announced that that’s rebuilt.
CB: Cool.
LS: Yeah.
CB: All right. Well, it looks like the Sun is now going down, so we’ve been sitting and recording all afternoon. So let’s go get some dinner?
LS: That sounds good.
CB: All right. Thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time!
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The astrology software we use here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, which is astrology software for the PC. You can get a 15% discount by using the promo code ‘AP15’ at the website Alabe.com.
For Mac users, I recommend the software Astro Gold for Mac OS, which is astrology software for the Mac computer made by the creators of Solar Fire for the PC. You can get a 15% discount with the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ through their website at AstroGold.io.
If you’re really looking to deepen your studies of astrology, then I would recommend signing up for my Hellenistic Astrology course, which is an online course in ancient astrology where I take people from basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over a hundred hours of video lectures, plus monthly webinars and Q&A sessions. And then at the end of the course, you get a certificate of completion saying that you studied with me if you pass the final written test. Find out more information at TheAstrologySchool.com.
Finally, shout out to our sponsor for this episode, which is the Northwest Astrological Conference, which is happening May 22nd through the 26th, 2025. Their in-person conference is sold out, but you can still register to get a virtual ticket where they’re gonna stream the conference simultaneously online in May, and you can register for that now through their website at NORWAC.net.