The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 491, titled:
June Astrology Forecast 2025
With Chris Brennan and Leisa Schaim
Episode originally released on May 30, 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 Teresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released June 18th, 2025
Copyright © 2025 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, astrologer Leisa Schaim is joining me, and we’re gonna be looking at the astrological forecast for June of 2025. Hey Leisa – thanks for joining me.
LEISA SCHAIM: Hey, Chris. Glad to be here.
CB: Yeah. I’m happy to have you. You’re filling in for Austin this month; he’s away writing his book, his long-awaited book on the decans. So thanks for joining me.
LS: Yes, of course. Quick turnaround after NORWAC, but happy to be here.
CB: You know, you just gave a lecture and a workshop; we’ll talk about that more in a bit. But so in this episode, we’re gonna give in the first hour, we’re gonna spend talking about news and events that happened since our last forecast episode and the astrology that coincided with some of those news events. Then in the second half of this episode, we’re gonna do a deep-dive into the astrology of June of 2025 looking at some of the major planetary alignments that are gonna be happening over the course of the next four weeks.
So as always, there’ll be time stamps on the podcast website or below this video on YouTube if you wanna skip the news section and jump forward straight to the forecast. But otherwise, before we get to the news section, I wanted to give a quick overview of the astrology of the month just to give you a preview of what we’re gonna be talking about later in this episode.
All right, so here is the Planetary Movements Calendar that shows where the planets will start at the beginning of the month and how far through the signs of the zodiac they’ll get by the end of the month. And here’s the Planetary Aspects Calendar that was put together by Madeline DeCotes of Honeycomb.co where they do beautiful almanacs and other illustrations like this one. So this shows the peak of some of the different aspects that we’re gonna be looking at this month, including the Mars-Uranus square around the 15th or some other positive aspects like the Venus-Jupiter sextile that takes place around June 4th and June 5th.
So moving on, one of the big things this month is the Venus retrograde – the extended Venus retrograde period is finally gonna end once Venus departs from the sign of Aries, the sign it went retrograde in, and moves into Taurus on June 5th. We also have the end of the extended Mars retrograde period when Mars finally departs from Leo, the sign it went retrograde in way back in December, and moves into Virgo in the middle of June.
Here’s the Planetary Alignments Calendar for this month that shows some of the major aspects and ingresses and lunations. So we open the month, like I said, with Venus departing from Aries finally and moving into Taurus on June 6th. Then on June 8th, Mercury enters Cancer. The following day, Jupiter also enters Cancer on June 9th, moving into the sign of its exaltation. Two days later, we get a lunation that’s actually ruled by Jupiter when we have a Full Moon in the sign of Sagittarius on the 11th. Then the following week, we have a Mars-Uranus square and a Jupiter-Saturn square happening on the same day on June 15th. Two days later, Mars departs from Leo and moves into Virgo, which is great because it’s finally ending that long retrograde period on that day.
Then the following day, Jupiter in the sky squares the planet Neptune, which is still in early Aries. Two days later, the Sun moves into Cancer, hitting the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The following week, the Sun conjoins Jupiter on the 24th. Then we get our second lunation of the month, which is a New Moon in the sign of Cancer on the 25th. Mercury moves into Leo on the 26th. And then finally, our last major aspect of the month is Mercury opposes Pluto on the 29th of June.
So those are some of the major aspects and alignments that we’re gonna talk about in this episode later on once we get to the forecast section in the second half.
All right, so you just got back from the Northwest Astrology Conference, which is a big conference in Seattle that happened over the past week. So thanks a lot for joining me and filling in for Austin while he’s away writing his long-awaited book on the decans or revising it for the second edition. How was the conference? How did NORWAC go?
LS: It was awesome. You know, it’s always so good to see everyone. Astrology conferences are the kind of thing where you see someone suddenly that you haven’t seen since seven years ago, some other conference, and it’s like, you just pick back up talking, you know? And it’s really lovely. So I saw a lot of old connections, made some new connections. Thank you to everyone, podcast listeners and mailing list people, for coming up to me and saying hi! It’s always nice to hear who’s listening, because when you’re recording most episodes or our monthly electional podcast, all I see is you, Chris, and the wall in front of me! You know, I don’t know who’s listening! No, I’m happy to —
CB: I mean! Let’s not – you don’t have to say that too emphatically!
LS: It’s just you, you know!
CB: Yeah.
LS: No, you know, but you never know who’s listening. And so it’s really lovely for people to come up, you know, at conferences and be like, hey, I’ve listened to your podcast; I love it. You know? It’s really gratifying. So there was a lot of that. Workshop went great. I had the pre-pre-conference on Thursday, a five-hour one – zodiacal releasing from Spirit, and that was fun. Really great examples, and I’m glad that other people could share that with me. And then I had a Sunday lecture about finding where people – circumstances where people met partners in the chart, romantic partners. Also fun examples. I’m really all about the fun examples.
CB: Yeah. I wanna – hopefully we can get that released on your website sometime soon so people can buy the recording there.
LS: Yeah, we don’t have it back yet, but as soon as we have it back, we’ll try to turn it around and get it up on my website. So keep an eye out for that. You can join my mailing list and I’ll make an announcement as to when it’s available. But yeah, fun times. It’s really awesome for Laura and the staff and volunteers to keep this happening every single year, because it’s the only astrology conference that happens every year.
CB: Right. For sure. And at one point, Saturn like, switched over like, right in the middle of the conference into Aries, right?
LS: Yeah, I told you about that later. So you know, it was Saturn night, right? Just recently that Saturn went into Aries. And of course, everyone in the lobby got a notification on their phone at the same time saying, “Saturn is now in Aries!” And there’s just like, this loud like, “Saturn’s in Aries now! Whoo!” Like, cheer from the entire lobby.
CB: Right.
LS: Which cracks me up to be cheering Saturn going anywhere, but like, astrologers like ingresses, you know? And specifically with – well, and you know, because you all speak the same language, and so you can all cheer it at the same time. But it’s also funny because Saturn specifically, by the time it’s going into a new sign, it’s already been somewhere else for like, two and a half years, and so everyone’s just like, ready for it to go wherever else, somewhere else!
CB: Right. I mean, I have to imagine that there’s a lot of very exuberant Pisces, but that must have been a much —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — more quiet like, wistful “whoo” for the Aries people.
LS: I saw some exuberant “whoos” even from the Saturn in Aries people!
CB: All right. Well, they don’t know what they’re in for then. All right, cool. Well, that sounds fun. That’s amazing, that conference – Northwest Astrology Conference – and yeah! All right. So why don’t we jump into talking about some of the news since the last forecast?
So I kind of checked out and I did a digital detox this month, partially because I wanted to focus on researching the big Mesopotamian astrology episode that I did, that I finally just released recently, and I spent like, three weeks intensely researching that. So I wasn’t following news as closely this month as in other months, but I did notice some notable news stories that had astrological correlations. I’m not gonna attempt to cover all of the news this month, but to just point out a few stories and ones that I specifically saw that there was an interesting astrological connection that I wanted to discuss.
All right, so let’s go through chronologically, because I wrote my notes down chronologically. The first major story that I noticed in the news was right at the beginning of the month, Pluto stationed retrograde in Aquarius. It got to like, what, three degrees of Aquarius, which is as far into Aquarius as it has gotten at this point, and then it stationed retrograde, which is always like, a sort of like exclamation mark next to the planet where you really get a sense for what that transit is all about during those station points, because usually there’s some notable event that happens. So I was paying attention to that, and I did see a news story that came out on May 2nd, The Atlantic wrote an article that was titled, “The Worst Internet Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen,” and then the subtitle was, “The most persuasive people on a popular subreddit turned out to be a front for a secret AI experiment.” And what happened was there was a group of researchers based at the University of Zurich who wanted to find out whether AI-generated responses could be used to change people’s mind. And they went to this popular subreddit on Reddit, which is called Change My View, where somebody will state like, a position that they have, like a strongly held position about something, and then other people will post and they’ll post their best arguments attempting to provide like, the other point of view and attempting to change the person’s mind. And it’s a subreddit that’s been around for a while, and it’s kind of fun because sometimes you’ll see people come in with like, really strongly held opinion about something, but then they’ll be argued to, you know, changing their point of view based on if somebody has like, a really persuasive argument that they hadn’t heard before. So that’s always been fun as a, you know, part of Reddit. But then apparently, this group of researchers – what they did is they used AI to generate comments on that subreddit where they actively tried to change people’s minds about things over the course of a four-month period. And by the end of it, they had posted more than a thousand AI-generated comments where they’d not only made up arguments like trying to change people’s point of view, but they also made up, like, elaborate backstories for the people where they would tell like, a personal story that somehow connected to the event that made it look more immersive and ultimately deceptive. And then later, they only disclosed it once it was discovered. So it was this sudden really startling example of how AI is already being used in some instances potentially to control or manipulate people. And this was just like, a research project, evidently – one that people were saying was very unethical. But you can imagine if that’s happening with like, that one isolated incident, you know, how that’s already being applied in other areas potentially and that this was just like, a preview of that in some sense.
LS: Absolutely. You know, any time – yeah, any time there’s a planetary station, it emphasizes further those qualities and what that transit is about, and Pluto through Aquarius certainly can be like, the dark side of technology. What that also makes me think of, kind of tangentially, is you know Alan Turing and like, the Turing test about like, if someone is a human being – like, how to tell —
CB: Right.
LS: — if someone is a real human being. I think most of his tech stuff in his chart is that large Gemini stellium in his chart. But he has Uranus at almost three Aquarius, and so Pluto’s just stationed right on top of that, I just noticed. And yeah, it’s like, how do you tell if someone is real or technologically made up? So that’s kind of fascinating synastry there.
Yeah —
CB: Right, that we’re like, way beyond the Turing test at this point, because —
LS: Right.
CB: — humans in many instances like, can’t tell the difference between what is AI-generated versus what’s not. And that was the whole point of the Turing test is like, if a human can’t tell that something is a robot, then the robot’s like, passed the test.
LS: Exactly. Yeah, which sounds a lot like this. But yeah, it’s terrible. I have also missed a lot of the news the past month because I was getting my, you know, lecture and workshop ready, and very much focused on that. But I did see that headline go by, and I was like, oh, that’s terrible!
CB: Yeah.
LS: Terrible, but fascinating!
CB: Right. Yeah. I just opened my phone and saw that, and it was like, that’s terrible, and then closed my phone and I was like, that’s enough.
LS: Which we do a lot these days, yeah!
CB: Right. That’s enough internet for today.
LS: Right.
CB: Yeah. Well, and it also ties in with the Saturn-Neptune, which we’ll come back to later in the news stories, which is just the Saturn-Neptune we had always anticipated and interpreted archetypally as the ability to struggle to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not real. And this is a good example of that, both with Pluto in Aquarius and like, using AI to manipulate people, but also that we’ve entered into a period where humans are like, struggling for the first time truly to tell the difference between what’s artificial intelligence versus what’s not. And yeah, we’ll come back to that more later.
LS: Yeah.
CB: All right, other major news story. We had a new pope was elected on May 8th. So this was the first time that an American had been elected as a pope; his name is Robert Prevost, who’s now Pope Leo XIV. He was born September 14th, 1955, in Chicago. We unfortunately don’t have a birth time, so we can’t look at the houses or other things like that, although if somebody wants to ask him, like, shout out to you if anybody gets a chance to ask him his birth time or rising sign. But one of the things I noticed as soon as he was elected and as soon as his chart was cast is that he has this large Virgo stellium that at least consists of Mars at 11 Virgo, the Sun at 21 Virgo, and Venus at 24 Virgo. The Moon is probably also there as well, because it’s at one degree of Virgo at noon that day. So if he was born any time essentially in like, the second half of the day, then he also has the Moon in Virgo. And you know, one of the things that I immediately thought of was we just had the first lunar eclipse in Virgo only like, a month and a half ago in March where we had a lunar eclipse at I believe it was like, late 23 degrees of Virgo. So that was right on top of his Venus and very close to his Sun. And I thought that was an excellent example of how eclipses sometimes foreshadow events that are about to take place. And sometimes it foreshadows it just like, a little ahead of time – like, a week or two ahead of time – but sometimes there’s this lag time where it can be a bit longer than that but nonetheless, it’s almost like giving you a preview of something that’s really big and life-changing that’s about to take place even if you’re not aware of it, or even if the effect of that isn’t clear at the time. But this was a really good example of that.
LS: Absolutely. I often tell people, you know, with the eclipse cycles in the same signs for about a year and a half at a time, it’s not the case that each and every eclipse will mean something meaningful to a person if it hits something in your chart, but reliably, within that series it will. So it can, you know, sometimes it clusters really tightly around an actual eclipse date, but at other times, it’s just like, in that series because it’s sort of setting it in motion for there to be some important changes in that area of your life.
CB: Yeah, absolutely. And then also it’s like, you have to remember that these eclipses in Virgo are gonna be happening in six-month increments for the next like, year, year and a half through late 2026 all the way until 2027. So it’s also – it was not just foreshadowing his rise to prominence but also like, the first year or almost like, two years of his being Pope and all of the things that he does and setting the stage for his new, this new era of his life are gonna be partially marked by those eclipses.
LS: Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, so this funny thing I found – you know how everyone was talking about how eerie it was that the movie Conclave is like, an Oscar-nominated movie; it came about like, a papal conclave? And then not that long afterwards, Pope Francis dies, and then there is in fact a real papal conclave.
CB: Like, everyone was watching it. It became like, the number one —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — movie, I think, on Amazon for a while during the conclave itself.
LS: Right. There were many jokes about like, how this was, you know, pretty impressive marketing and everything.
CB: Right.
LS: So we watched the movie Conclave together, and it’s a good movie. And so I was just curious; I was thinking about that in the lead-up to talking about this today. And I was like, I wonder if there was any astrological connection. So I dug up the chart for the film premiere – like, the first time it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, it was August 30th of last year in 2024. And it actually had a time for the first showing, which was six PM. And there was just this crazy line-up. So look at the Ascendant there at six PM; I have no way of knowing if it went on time, but there were several showings after, so presumably they tried to keep it on time. It says three 40 Aquarius rising, right, as the Ascendant degree, with the Pluto near the Ascendant and then the Moon in early Leo right on the Descendant there. Then if you compare that —
CB: Three degrees.
LS: Yeah, three degrees. Yeah, the Moon’s almost exactly on the Descendant there. But Ascendant’s three 40 – very important. So then if you look at the chart for Pope Francis dying, then Pluto has moved further, right? That was the film premieres last fall. So Pluto’s moved a little further, and so if you look at where the Moon is, the Moon is now at three 22, applying to conjoin Pluto closely at three – what? Is it 46? I forgot to put my glasses on.
CB: Yeah.
LS: Okay. So that’s like —
CB: Like, when Pope – this is – we mentioned this in the last forecast that when Pope Francis died, they released the time, and it had the Moon at three Aquarius conjunct the Midheaven at three Aquarius conjunct Pluto at three Aquarius.
LS: Right. So that’s really focal as well, but like, Moon-Pluto – Pluto’s like, on the Ascendant of that film premiere chart. It’s now, you know, before it was three degrees off; now it’s like, right on the Ascendant with the Mars on the Descendant there where the Moon was in the film premiere. And then you get to the papal conclave – yeah, so that’s the comparison there.
CB: Yeah, because the Ascendant of the film premiere was three degrees of Aquarius, and then all of that lined up basically when Pope Francis passed away at that exact degree. And then all of a sudden, his death had this weird effect of like, catapulting this film that had just come out in the past year into like, huge number one viewership.
LS: Right! And then further, then you know, they have to arrange the papal conclave which takes a little bit of time. So once we get to that, Pluto is stationing. And so then we have the chart for – we didn’t catch it personally, but someone was watching and said the time for 7:22 when he came out, when the new pope came out – Pope Leo – and gave his first speech.
CB: It was a listener – it was Letina who’s in the live chat —
LS: Thank you.
CB: — today. Shout out —
LS: Oh great!
CB: — to her.
LS: Thank you! Yeah, thank you for watching that. Yeah, so if you wanna show the chart for that, but essentially Pluto’s like, stationary. Yeah. So Pluto’s stationary; that’s the chart for when the conclave begins. But then when they actually elect the new pope and then he comes out and speaks, it’s like, four days from stationary right on top of that film premiere Ascendant, which is just really remarkable to me.
CB: Yeah.
LS: It was 7:22, yeah, March 8th.
CB: Right. So he – so yeah. Like, as we were saying, so Pluto is stationing all at the beginning of the month, and it stationed right on the Ascendant of the film. And suddenly the film becomes like, wildly popular. You know, it already won or was nominated for some Academy Awards, so it already had a moment, but then all of a sudden it had a much bigger moment as like, everybody watched it during this time period at the beginning of the month, so that’s pretty crazy.
LS: Right. It’s pretty crazy, but it’s like, referring back to the film, but I also feel like the film was like, foreshadowing the events, and you know, it’s not just about the film itself, but just such a notable connection between the two was kind of like, introducing what was about to happen, and that this was like —
CB: Right.
LS: — you know, a huge Plutonian thing in the sense of just like, it’s an incredibly powerful position to be elected to.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. So let’s give some of the data for some of that, because I wanted to record it for posterity since all the astrologers were like, talking about it and recording some of the data.
So the conclave itself began on May 7th – here’s the chart. May 7th, 2025, at 5:43 PM with Libra rising. And they only did voting for like, two days, because then already the following day on May 8th, 2025, at 6:08 PM in Vatican City, the white smoke emerged from like, the chimney, indicating that the new pope had been elected. And we see the Ascendant at 24 degrees of Libra, and Mercury was like, right on the Descendant, which was kind of interesting at the time at 26 degrees of Aries.
And then the new pope emerged shortly after that, and he gave his first speech starting around 7:22 PM on May 8th in Vatican City. And like, a little funny thing a lot of astrologers like, commented on is just the chart has Scorpio rising. So the ruler of the Ascendant, which is one of the most important planets in the chart, becomes Mars which is in Leo in the 10th whole sign house. And it’s – he ended up like, taking the name Pope Leo XIV based on an earlier pope, but it’s just funny that Leo is like, the Latin word for lion, which is the name of the zodiac sign Leo, the lion.
LS: Yeah, I love that.
CB: Yeah, it’s pretty funny. Pretty on the nose.
All right, and what else happened with respect to that? The only other thing I think I wanted to mention was just listener Jody Sabatino noted that the United States’ progressed Jupiter is stationing direct right now, and it’s kind of funny then that this is the first time in history that a pope was elected from the United States. And Jupiter, of course, is traditionally associated with like, religious leaders and things like that, so there’s something there that’s kind of interesting.
LS: Yeah, that’s fascinating when I read that. Thank you to that listener for noting that. And also interesting given that then that doubles up with Jupiter’s upcoming ingress by transit to Cancer as well, which is where the natal Jupiter is in the Sibley chart.
CB: Right. For sure.
Okay, I think that’s it. Yeah. So it was just – so and then this was the completion of how the entire Mars-Pluto opposition and the Mars retrograde that it was coming off of really tied in with the broader sequence of, you know, Pope Francis passing away. Well, Pope Francis getting sick, actually first a few months ago around when Mars was stationing as we discussed in the last episode. Then Pope Francis passing away, and his funeral taking place like, right on I think the day of the exact Mars-Pluto opposition. And you had all those world leaders like, flying out to the funeral from all over the world. And then you had a continuation of that with Pluto stationing in Aquarius early this month, and then we got the conclave and then finally the election of Pope Leo XIV. So it’s an interesting and fascinating example of just how things can be kind of like, a sequence sometimes.
LS: Absolutely.
CB: Yeah. All right. So that was that news story. Moving on, another major one towards the beginning of the month was the conflict between India and Pakistan was escalating and almost seemed like it was spiraling out of control for a period. This started around the time – again, this was like, a continuation of something that started around the Mars-Pluto opposition when there was this like, a terrorist attack that then sparked retaliation and then things started spiraling out of control between India and Pakistan that started lobbing weapons back and forth against each other. And you had actually noticed something really fascinating because we actually have a chart for India, right?
LS: Yeah, there’s so few countries that have a – at least their modern version – have a exact time chart. Like, almost none. But it’s one of them, because there was a chart for – there was a time for when that would go – when the partition would go into effect, which was for India August 15th, 1947, at 12 AM right at midnight in Delhi, India. And what was fascinating when I pulled up that chart for the first time sometime in the last year was when I noticed this before that happened and then I revisited it again in the last is that is has a packed third house with a Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Leo in the third. Also the Ascendant ruler is Mercury in Leo in the third, and so forth. There’s a whole stellium there. But I was like, what a —
CB: Describe it for the audio people.
LS: Okay. So it’s very early Gemini rising. Mercury at about six, seven Leo in the 3rd house, along with Pluto, Saturn, Venus, and the Sun all in Leo. And why I thought that was so apt is because something really notable – I mean, something to note about India is like, there’s just, you know, issues around like, their neighbors because of this partition and how, you know, how momentous but also destructive that was in the beginning of it. But then how they still had some issues with regard to borders, Kashmir, et cetera, you know, when India and Pakistan were divided into two.
So yeah, I thought that was fascinating. And then of course with the Mars retrograde —
CB: Yeah.
LS: — there —
CB: So and just that that’s such a literal thing that you have that the 3rd house is traditionally associated with neighbors. And then it’s like, your neighbors if you’re looking at a birth chart, but in this instance, we’re looking at the chart of a country, and they have this huge stellium in the 3rd house of neighbors. And there’s been this very long, difficult relationship over the years with between India and Pakistan that are bordering or like, neighboring countries. So it’s just very, very literal. And especially how it’s like, this is right on the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of 1947 where Pluto’s at 13°13’ Leo and Saturn is at 13°35’ Leo, so it’s like, remember the last Saturn-Pluto that we all got to experience conjunction was in 2020, and that was the primary thing we associated with the covid pandemic. Here it’s like, you have a similarly kind of challenging aspect in the 3rd house, and it just relates to the like, fraught relationship between these two neighboring countries.
LS: The other really interesting thing about this chart is that Mercury is the Ascendant ruler; it’s at like, six almost seven Leo, and that’s exactly where Mars stationed retrograde at the beginning of this whole retrograde cycle.
CB: Yeah. And then it makes sense then that once – it’s like, so Mars stationed retrograde there in December, and like, I don’t know what was happening or if there was any build up or precursor that started happening in December. But then it’s like, Mercury retrograded back into Cancer, and then basically as soon as it ingresses back into Leo and opposes Pluto by transit, that was when the initial like, terrorist attack happened. And then it just set off this huge firestorm as Pluto was moving through – or as Mars was moving through those essentially the first half of Leo over the course of the early part of this month. And it was just hitting first that Mercury in Leo and then Pluto and Saturn and so on and so forth.
LS: Right. Which is also a good example of how sometimes the most pivotal events of a retrograde cycle are not necessarily near the stations even though they often can be. But it’s just like, especially with you know, a Mars stationed retrograde on an important point in the chart like this one, it says there’s gonna be something important about this retrograde that’s very Mars-y that will happen at some point.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. That’s also a good example where I mentioned this in the 3rd house episode where it’s just like, sometimes you see significations associated with the houses that seem like, minor or like, why is neighbors like, associated with the 3rd house or why is that important? Like, under what circumstances would neighbors be something that should show up in your birth chart in a major way? But like, sometimes it really is, and like, you don’t know that until either you come across a chart where the 3rd house is really important in it and you see how somehow neighbors or a person’s neighborhood is more significant in some notable way. But also when you have a major transit through your 3rd house and sometimes like, those who live around you in your vicinity become more immediately important to you for some reason.
LS: Absolutely. Which is of course just really clear when you, you know, see the division of this land into India and Pakistan, and of course your neighbors are immediately important because it was, you know, half of one entity before. As an aside, if anyone has tracked with clarity the chart of Pakistan, I think it’s supposed to be different than this one. I was having trouble becoming totally clear about that, but they celebrate their independence the day before, and there was something with like, there being different time zones. So I’d love like, please write me if you know anything about the Pakistan chart.
CB: Yeah. This chart is just set for when India became independent officially from British rule at midnight on August 15th, 1947, with it set to Delhi, India, which is the capital – or was the capital at the time – but if you’re setting it for Pakistan, obviously you would set it for their location using the other date.
LS: Yeah.
CB: So yeah, so that was a pretty notable one. And then there was like, a ceasefire was announced May 10th. But at first, like, it wasn’t clear if it was gonna hold, but then it seems like things have settled down a little bit. So I don’t know where that is all at at this point, but hopefully that ceasefire peace continues to hold, and hopefully it’ll be somewhat helpful once Mars departs from Leo and gets out of that 3rd house stellium in June.
LS: Yeah. Presumably it will be helpful.
CB: Yeah.
LS: Yeah.
CB: All right. So that was that news story. Moving on, another major news story that came out this month that I saw in the headlines was on May 18th, it was announced that former president Joe Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had already spread to the bone, which in some instances can mean that it’s already terminal, which is – it may not mean that, but it may. It’s kind of like, up in the air. He was reportedly, his diagnosis happened only two days earlier on May 16th.
So one of the things that was interesting about this is that it fell right on the – there was this difficult set of like, two aspects that happened at the same time that I mentioned in the last forecast, which was the Sun-Uranus cazimi in Taurus at 27 degrees of Taurus, a Sun-Uranus conjunction, which fell in Biden’s 6th house of illness. But also on the same day, transiting Mercury came up and squared Mars at the same exact time. And in the last forecast, I called this “one of my least favorite aspects of the month,” just because it looked like a tough configuration. And he ended up making that announcement on that day.
So let me put the chart up just for like, educational purposes here. Okay. So here is Biden’s chart. He has Sagittarius rising. The Sun-Venus cazimi was at 27 degrees of Taurus.
LS: Sun-Uranus.
CB: Sun-Uranus. Thank you. Let me – I’ll put a biwheel up so that people can see that. Okay, there it is. So Biden on the inside, transits on the outside. We see the Sun-Uranus conjunction there at 27 Taurus. And this is important for him personally because it’s opposing his Sun at 27 degrees of Scorpio in the 12th house as well as his Venus in Scorpio at 28 degrees in the 12th house.
But the primary thing that I thought of when I first heard about this was it suddenly made sense of the Mars retrograde which we’ve been paying attention to him since last September because I had started talking about it actually last summer, earlier in the summer, because I was concerned about how the Mars retrograde was going to move into Cancer and then it was gonna conjoin his Jupiter in the 8th house of death and mortality. And it was gonna conjoin in retrograde over his Jupiter, which is the ruler of his Ascendant, which is one of the most crucial places for vitality, especially physical vitality, in the chart. And what was interesting now in retrospect is that I thought, like, the first pass of Mars over his Jupiter happened like, last September, and I had thought that one of the scenarios was that he steps down during that time due to health or illness, and then Harris like, steps up and temporarily at least becomes president for the rest of the campaign. And that was like, a serious scenario I was looking at, especially in connection with the eclipses that were occurring at that time. Like, especially the Pisces eclipse that was happening in his 4th house of endings and her 10th house of career. So in retrospect, it’s interesting because what this means and what ended up happening then is like, this aggressive form of cancer must have been forming and spreading and getting more serious in the background over the past several months since at least last September when Mars went into his 8th house. And you know, assuming that the timeline of everything is correct that’s been reported, presumably he started feeling some symptoms of that or started having some indication of that in his life. But then it was only later on towards the tail end of the Mars retrograde as it’s like, coming out of its shadow period that the diagnosis like, actually became clear. And I just thought that was a important and interesting example for us to think about as astrologers from a purely technical standpoint, just because of the way – the takehome lesson is that sometimes there’s like, when you see an important transit forming in the background, it can indicate that something is building up or developing that you’re not fully aware of yet. But sometimes towards the very tail end of the transit, the outcome or the effect of it becomes known or makes itself known was part of my like, take home lesson for that.
LS: Absolutely. Yeah, I really noticed of course too the Sun-Uranus conjunction in the 6th – that really jumped out, obviously, with regard to like, a sudden, out of the blue thing with regard to health. There were a couple other interesting timing things too besides that and the Mars retro. If you put up his chart again, he was actually – he’s in a Venus year. He’s in an 11th house year right now at age 82, and so his 11th house is Libra, so Venus is ruling the 11th. It’s not so much important that it’s the 11th; it’s that principle that sometimes if you’re in an annual profection year where the profected planet, the ruler, rules two houses, it will also simultaneously activate more than usual the other house that that planet rules, in which case here it’s the 6th house. And he got the diagnosis one day after Venus hit the previous retro station degree, which I was noticing because stuff was going on in my own life with regard to Venus hitting that station degree, and I was like, “Oh, it’s really activating something about that whole retrograde cycle.” And that was the same thing for him, which was activating not just his 11th house but also his 6th house of ill health.
And then so that was notable to me, and then he also – the Full Moon in Scorpio happened just a handful of days before that. And speaking of things brewing in the background just like the Mars retrograde cycle, this was like, a Full Moon illuminating his Scorpio stellium natally in the 12th house, and the 12th house can be things that are, you know, happening behind the scenes that you’re not aware of yet. And also, you know, ill health can be part of that one.
CB: Right. For sure. Yeah. So yeah, that was a notable story with the former president who just became not president in like, February, and now a possible terminal diagnosis. You know, we’ll see how it goes and see what happens.
All right. So moving on. The next major thing that I noticed ties in with, again, both transits that we previously discussed but also ones that are upcoming and how we had anticipated they would manifest. But I started seeing in the news like, all these reports of like, major news stories like CBS and stuff were running stories about robo-taxis. And I was wondering why, and it turned out the reason was that apparently Tesla is preparing to launch its robo-taxi service in Austin for the first time, possibly on June 12th. And the stories were focused on that, but also how Google’s competing service, which is called Waymo, is already in at least four cities, which is like, Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin. So this means that it’s gonna put Google and Tesla like, head to head in directly competing for each other in their first city starting in Austin. But it’s also a preview of a larger competition that’s about to ramp up very, very quickly of automated cars driving around cities first as taxi services but then eventually obviously more broadly with people having cars that are self-driving cars just in general, which is also starting to happen. And this is, you know, in the short term, I think partially this is the tail end of Jupiter in Gemini. As Jupiter’s having its last weeks in that sign, sometimes the final results of that become clear in the later part of the transit, which is a recurring theme that we’re gonna see over and over again as we talk about transits this month that sometimes it’s at the end of like, a retrograde or a transit that you fully see what it did during its time in that sign.
But also it’s paving the way, of course, for Uranus moving into Gemini, which is gonna start in July. And just the complete transformation of the local travel, the way that people get around cities locally essentially becoming like, moving to self-driving cars and eventually probably by the end of that transit, that seven-year long transit that ends in the early 2030s, becoming just ubiquitous by that time like we’re seeing the early stages of that.
LS: Yeah. When you were telling me about that, I was like, oh, I’m not ready! I am the opposite of an early adopter when it comes to technology.
CB: Right.
LS: I’m very much a late adopter. But you know —
CB: I think I had to drag you onto like – or no, on Facebook. Facebook was the —
LS: Any social media! You —
CB: Yeah.
LS: — were like, it was after the first conference I went to, and you were like, “So are you on social media? You know, gotta keep in touch with people.” And I was like, “Hell no!”
CB: Yeah.
LS: Famous last words, but similar with smartphones. Anyway, I’m more or less up to speed, but yeah, I’m not an early adopter. So it is interesting with Jupiter kind of handing off the Gemini transit to Uranus, it’s just – and also, you know, once Uranus ingresses into Gemini, which is gonna be a week into July, which is very soon – five weeks from now – it’s immediately trining Pluto in Aquarius. Which means actually that trine is already applying right now, you know? And that’s what that sounds like to me. That’s like, that upcoming Uranus-Pluto trine that becomes more exact and both of them being in the same, you know, air signs. But Uranus is not there yet, but it’s like, it’s sneaking up actually even though it’s still in late Taurus.
CB: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s, you know, Uranus is at 27; it’s actually clicking over into 28 today, so it’s coming in fast. And then this summer we will get that trine. And yeah, I just wanted to like, signal that because it’s gonna be such a profound transformation that we’ve had a century – over a century now – since the rise of automobiles and of people initially like, learning how to drive around cities and then cities eventually becoming completely changed in order to adjust to cars. And even like, the layout of like, moving from densely populated, urban city planning type situations to eventually like, in the US the rise of suburbs and things like that that are super spread out and that you literally like, have to have a car in order to get around, and where public transportation isn’t even that great because everything’s built so far away or so far apart, and how much that transformed the world but also, you know, American society over the past century. Like, we’re looking at a similar shift that’s about to take place in our lifetime in a very short, like, very soon, basically in the next seven to 10 years of watching us go from where the predominant form of getting around is people driving their cars around the city to taxis and cars being driven by artificial intelligence and by robots essentially.
And one of the early things that people are gonna see that’s gonna be startling in a like, Uranian way to go along with this is that I was reading that when Waymo, which is Google’s robo-taxi service, when it moves into a new city, they try to acclimate people by having their cars drive around the city without anybody in them at first. So you just see like, a car driving around the city that’s completely empty on its own. And so get ready to see like, a bunch of ghost cars driving around cities over the next few years. And that’s gonna be a part of our entry into Uranus in Gemini.
LS: Yeah, that’s so weird. Uranus in Gemini trine Pluto in Aquarius, something something about like, Saturn ruling Aquarius and it being like, this impersonal thing where there’s like, not people involved! I don’t know.
CB: I actually didn’t think about that, but Saturn will catch up with – will go into Gemini in the 2030s around the time that Uranus is finishing up. So maybe there’s some sort of theme then that happens where there’s the rapid disruptive change that Uranus in Gemini brings to the transportation industry. But then Saturn comes in somewhere at the tail end of that and like, pumps the brakes and maybe tries to put in some rules or regulations if certain things get out of hand or something like that.
LS: For sure. Yeah. That’s possible.
CB: Yeah. All right. So that’s what I wanted to mention about that. And then moving on, the last major news story that I saw that happened this month happened on May 20th when Google at one of its big events did a big launch of VO3, which is the 3rd iteration of their AI video generator where they released this new AI video generator that creates short clips that are not just lifelike video of people, but they also include AI-generated sound. So all of a sudden, the major innovation is sound where it’s not just putting out these lifelike clips that we’ve been kind of seeing gradually over the past couple of years getting better and better and better, but now all of a sudden, they are clips with sound which completes the immersion, basically. Because some of them it’s actually really hard to tell the difference between what’s AI-generated and what’s not. And after this came out on May 20th, one of the things I noticed when Google announced this on May 20th, Saturn clicked over for the first time to be within two degrees of conjoining Neptune. So that Saturn-Neptune conjunction is just ramping up like, super quickly, and we had always talked about that symbolically as being a period where it’s difficult to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not. And one of the most stunning area where that’s happening is in AI-generated video. And now that they’ve perfected it not just being visually lifelike but also sounding lifelike as if you have actual actors like, acting out these video clips, now it’s almost been perfected where it’s really hard to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not. And there was this explosion of people making like, thousands of these AI-generated clips like, all over social media over the past week or so since this happened. And it’s been really wild to watch.
So some of them are like, you’ll see a clip that looks like a real podcast host. Like, people sitting here like we are talking into a microphone, but they’re giving like, terrible advice of like, life advice or health advice. There was another series that I was seeing of this theme of like, “prompt theory” where there were lifelike videos of people saying that they don’t believe that their world is created from prompts. And then people like, arguing about that or having reflections about that in a series that having like, a philosophical crisis about it.
“If I’m a prompt, does that mean that I don’t have free will?”
“Well, yeah.”
“So does that mean that we don’t have free will?”
“Well, that is the big question, isn’t it?”
Which then led to other funny comments of like, one person reflecting about the Bible and saying like, that how it says like, “In the beginning was the Word,” and saying —
LS: Right.
CB: — that the word, it was like prompts.
LS: Right? And the word was made flesh!
CB: That’s true. So the other spin-off that it had that I noticed was because they were so real and lifelike, it led to some people posting like, recording a clip and positing a real video where they’re interacting with somebody saying that it was AI-generated when in fact it was a real video of them filming something. But it’s gotten so – the AI’s gotten so good that you actually, people are struggling to tell the difference when somebody posts like, a real video versus a fake video.
So we had always expected this to ramp up and become much more pressing by like, at least by like, 2024, and we were expecting it to be more prominent I feel like than it ended up being in the presidential election. Because we saw Saturn and Neptune getting within like, 10 degrees or something around that time. But now that it’s gotten closer and it’ll get within one degree this year, it’s clear that this technology’s being perfected, and there’s gonna be a real struggle to tell like, what’s real versus what’s not over the next few years, especially as this conjunction is going exact this summer when it gets very close but especially early next year when the conjunction goes exact for the first time is gonna be the final point when I think the technology is fully perfected, I would assume.
LS: Yeah. I so much hate this manifestation of the Saturn-Neptune! It’s terrible! I mean, yes, it’s interesting technologically, and it’s interesting with the images, which is the Neptune part. But so much potential for abuse! And you know —
CB: Right.
LS: Yes, deep fakes, that kind of thing. I am surprised more of that hasn’t happened yet, but yeah, with this new iteration, there probably will start to be more, you know, pretty rapidly, I would guess. And I’d be surprised if there weren’t.
CB: Right.
LS: And how are they gonna contain that? And I was thinking about how, you know, Saturn is like, regulation, right? And Neptune is this like, slippery, illusive thing that evades being contained by Saturn. And you know, you were mentioning of course that – because I was talking about before this when we were chatting about this about, you know, the difficulty with regulating this or that the technology has gotten ahead of the regulation. And you were noting that there was actually some Biden-era regulation around this that had gotten rolled back, and so you know, it’s that Saturn-Neptune. And I was thinking as well about like, it reminds me of this phrase like, you know, that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle like, after it’s out, which upon further reflection I was like, that’s very Saturn-Neptune. Like, Saturn is like, the container and Neptune is like, this ethereal thing that like, once it’s out, like, it can’t be put into form, you know, or put back in the structure or the boundaries. So anyway, yeah, that’s my current catchphrase for this phenomenon.
CB: Yeah, absolutely. I am purely astrologer good. Like, I’m just impressed how the astrology’s lining up, and I will continue to be impressed even though it will have some terrible ramifications on different things. But as just a moment of watching a major outer planet alignment coming into alignment and us having anticipated archetypally like, what we knew from like, previous times. Like for example, you know, 2017 was the Saturn-Neptune square, so that was the last hard aspect between Saturn and Neptune. And during that time, the notion of “fake news” was all over the headlines at that point. And it was something that initially people were like, struggling to deal with, and then eventually people got a little bit better at spotting fake news and things like that. But we’re at a similar point here where we sort of anticipated this, but now we’re seeing it happen so literally and so vividly that I can’t help but be just fascinated at how the astrology’s working out.
LS: Yeah. For sure. The Saturn-Neptune is just really striking to me and already, you know, it’s been copresent for so long, right? The past bunch of years, you know. And so it’s like, crossing two different signs, and that’s part of why, you know, it’s such a long transit here or a long aspect. But just the fracturing into different realities about certain topics is just like, really striking to me where you just completely inhabit different what you think are realities about something, and there’s like, very little leeway to convince each other.
But on the video type thing, I just saw – I wasn’t even searching for this, I just saw someone last night on social media say that on TikTok, someone else had been reporting the original person who’s posting her voice as like, a copy. And so her videos were being taken down as she couldn’t prove that it was like, her own voice! And that just really struck me as like, the Saturn-Neptune as well.
CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, there’s gonna be all sorts of weird things that we’ve never dealt with before that will like, arise out of this. But this is gonna be the most intense phase of that over the next year or two especially. But hopefully in the long term, eventually it’ll become something that we adjust to and get used to and like, learn how to deal with a little bit more and develop tools for dealing with. But it’s gonna be intense, this being our first true experience of this humanity. Although, you know, we’ve gone through some versions of it before with Saturn-Neptune and sometimes blurring the lines between what’s real and what’s not and adjusting to that at different points.
You mentioned the length of the transit; I think that’s a good point also because it’s a really tangible example that we can take away from as astrologers where Saturn first moved into Pisces in early 2023. So that was only two years ago now, but that was the beginning of the copresence between Saturn and Neptune and the buildup to the conjunction. And then it’s just gotten more and more intense, we’ve seen, as it gets closer to the actual exact conjunction. But you have tangible versions of that where there was like, an AI video of like, Will Smith eating spaghetti at some point like, early on when they started doing this, and it looked like, just terrible. Like, the early video looked really bad and like, janky – this AI-generated video of him eating spaghetti. But then at like, every step of the way when new models are rolled out, they like, try doing that again and it keeps getting better and better. And the latest one is pretty impressive, although it also generated the audio this time. And when he was eating the spaghetti, it was like, crunchy. You were hearing like, crunching sounds, so it’s funny that the AI – you know, it doesn’t know what it sounds like to eat spaghetti or something like that. But it’s a good just external way for us as astrologers as a teaching tool if anybody needs to ever show what it looks like to have like, a conjunction starting when the two planets first move into a sign and then getting more and more intense or more and more acute and more clear the closest it gets to the exact conjunction, this is gonna be like, an amazing case study of that.
LS: Absolutely. And especially between now and next spring, you know, when it’s very, very close to exact and then actually goes exact next February. We’re really in the thick of it here now.
CB: Yeah. Here is the —
LS: Also, what a —
CB: — diagram.
LS: — random litmus test, Will Smith eating spaghetti. I wonder how he feels about that.
CB: He played along with it. At one point, he posted like, a social media video of him eating spaghetti. It was really funny. So yeah. I don’t know. You gotta roll with it sometimes.
All right. I think that’s it for the news section. Those are all the major —
LS: I have one more.
CB: Oh, you have one more? Oh yeah, right.
LS: I have one more. Right.
CB: This is the most important story.
LS: You keep teasing me about this! Okay, so the Kentucky Derby happened on May 3rd. I do not normally pay attention to his. Like, I don’t know anything about horse racing. However, something astrological I did really notice. There was a little news blurb that said that this year, I think for the first time – I’m not sure if it was the first time – every horse in that Kentucky Derby race was a descendant of the legendary Triple Crown winner Secretariat, who was born in 1970. I happened to have just been looking at Secretariat’s chart, because there’s a timed chart for that horse. I don’t know anything about horses! Like, this is really not my thing. It’s just the astrology, right? It’s just as relevant as when I first in the beginning of Uranus into Taurus for the year ahead forecast started looking up the history of cereal food extrusion – not inherently an interest of mine! Just all about the astrology. Anyway, so Secretariat – I had already noticed before this news blurb has – you can put up the chart – has the Sun, Mercury, and I think Venus in Aries in the 5th house. Yes?
CB: So first we have to qualify that. Somehow we have a timed chart for this horse?
LS: Right! I was looking into animal charts, and the only timed charts you get are like, some zoo animals and some racehorses, right, because it’s like, more notably important, you know, documenting their births.
So Secretariat – there is a timed chart for. I’ve seen the discrepancy between 12:10 AM and 12:07 AM, but regardless, it’s within three minutes. So I had already looked at this chart before that news blurb, and I was like, oh, that’s really interesting to me, because the Sun, Mercury, and Venus are – you know, there’s a stellium in the 5th house. The Sun as part of your, you know, life force and animating persona is in the 5th house of children. And actually, you know, racehorses have a very short career in the very beginning of their lives, just like a few years. And then if they’re really good, they have lots of children; they’re like, bred, you know? And so I had already noticed, like, oh, that’s so interesting because that stellium in the 5th. I mean, I guess games and things go in the 5th, too, so you could say races go there. But yeah, notably, he had lots of children. And so when I saw the news blurb that like, all of the racehorses in the Kentucky Derby this year were descendants of his, I was like, look at that 5th house! Look at the degree of the Sun. The Sun’s at nine Aries in the 5th house. That is the degree of not only the March eclipse in Aries, but the Venus station retrograde and the Mercury station retrograde. They all stationed, they both stationed at nine, 10 Aries. And so these were coming back and direct, and he had natally not just the Sun at that degree but also Mercury and Venus in Aries. It was such good astrology, right?
CB: Yeah, that’s incredible. So for the audio people, we’re looking at a chart with Sag rising and the Sun is at nine degrees of Aries in the 5th house along with Mercury and Venus. And yeah, so Venus went retrograde like, right at that degree at like, what was it, nine degrees of Aries, and then the recent eclipse was there in Aries. And then this is the like, father horse who was born March 30th, 1970, at 12:10 AM in Doswell, Virginia, and then all of a sudden, with Venus like, passing over those degrees coming off of the Venus retrograde in Aries for the first time, it’s descendants – literally its children – were all in like, a race together many years later.
LS: Yeah.
CB: That’s crazy.
LS: Really good astrology. Yes.
CB: All right. Well, as a Sagittarius, you’re not living down the horse lady…
LS: Yes.
CB: Narratives, but I will take it because that’s pretty impressive and that’s a good example that like, you know, the concept of natal astrology applies to living entities and is not just restricted to humans.
LS: And even non-living entities. Like, anything that has an inception, anything that has a birth chart you can do the same techniques with.
CB: Right. And it’s helpful to apply it to different things with this, you know, with animals, but also with inceptional astrology because then you start to get to a much deeper understanding of what the underlying archetypes are underlying each of the houses when you have to understand what like, the 3rd house means in the context of like, a country like we were talking about earlier, or what the 5th house means in the context of like, a horse, and so on and so forth.
LS: I was regaling a few people at NORWAC, I have to say, with stories of rectifying one of my cat’s charts that does not have a known birthdate!
CB: Right!
LS: I did a good job!
CB: I love that. All right. And just really quickly, I meant to do the animated chart. So for those watching the – what was the date again on the race?
LS: May 3rd.
CB: Okay.
LS: I don’t know if I wrote down the time. It has a specific time it starts, but I didn’t write it down.
CB: So that was right after Venus like, went back into Aries into the 5th house. That’s cool.
LS: And Mercury both!
CB: Right, yeah.
LS: Yeah.
CB: Absolutely. All right. Cool. All right, well that is the horse astrology for this episode.
LS: Yes.
CB: Cool. I think that’s it for news, yeah?
All right, so with the news section out of the way, let’s transition into talking about the forecast for June of this year, like, now. So I wanted to start this section, do things a little bit differently. I wanted to experiment with something. I wanted to start by giving an overview of some of like, the major themes and transits this month, and then I wanna mention like, the best aspects of the month that I’m looking forward to the most as well as the most challenging aspects this month that I think are the most problematic. How does that sound to you?
LS: That sounds great.
CB: All right, cool. So major themes in June – the two big ones that we already mentioned earlier but I wanted to dwell on a little bit are one, Venus completing its full retrograde period that it started all the way back in January when it first moved into Pisces and began the pre-retrograde buildup and sort of like shadow period. So that’s coming to completion early this month when Venus moves into Taurus on June 5th. And then Mars is completing its full retrograde period that it started all the way back in September when it first moved into Cancer and began that buildup. Once Mars departs from Leo in the middle of this month, it’s finally gonna be treading new ground and like, moving into a new house into our chart and a new zodiacal sign for the first time since almost like, last summer, which is just crazy. So those are two big things.
Other big things happening this month is Jupiter moving into Cancer, and not only moving into the sign of its exaltation but also starting to clean up some of the mess that Mars made when it went retrograde in Cancer during the entire like, first part of this year going all the way back until last September. I think that’s a really good one. And then the other big thing happening this month is the Saturn-Neptune conjunction is gonna get less than a degree apart and is gonna become very, very intense, especially by the end of June. But we’re already there now that Saturn has moved into Aries and is less than two degrees away from Neptune at this point.
So those are the like, big themes I think that’ll dominate June. In terms of best aspects this month, my favorite aspects are Venus moving into its domicile of Taurus on June 6th, the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction that takes place on June 8th looks very optimistic and good for communication. Jupiter entering the sign of its exaltation on June 9th is just generally good and will be helpful for some electional things over the course of the next year. Mercury-Venus sextile takes place on June 11th, which looks like a very favorable aspect, especially again for communication or relationships. And then finally, there’s a Sun-Jupiter conjunction on June 24th that is also one of my favorite aspects of this month for growth and optimism and expansion.
In terms of the most challenging aspects this month, my least favorite aspects are one, especially the Mars-Uranus square that takes place on June 15th could be unexpected disruptions and sometimes it can be an unexpected challenge or even a violent sort of act that takes place that comes out of left field unexpectedly. Then the other aspect which weirdly goes exact the same day is a Jupiter-Saturn square also on June 15th, which feels to me like a contraction or a struggle between moving forward versus being held backwards, and perhaps the being held back forces having the upper hand. And then finally, my last challenging aspect I’m not super stoked about this month is the Mercury-Pluto opposition which happens on June 29th.
So those are some of the highlights for this month that I’ve been thinking about.
LS: I would agree with all of those. And I think this is a good little section to continue. You know, doing that good summary of like, what the month looks like, what the highlights are and the lowlights, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So let’s start by…
LS: Do you wanna do —
CB: Let’s start with —
LS: — chronological, or…
CB: Yeah. I mean, I guess because I wanna talk about the Mars and the Venus retrogrades and coming off of that, but I guess let’s start with Venus, because Venus is the one that completes first. So here – for those watching the video version – is the classic Venus retrograde graphic that Madeline DeCotes from Honeycomb.co made for me that’s really helped out in terms of showing the different phases of Venus now that we’re almost to the end of it. Where it first moved into Pisces on January 2nd, and that was the start of what I’m defining as – because I have an expanded definition of Venus retrograde, which is that Venus retrograde is not only when Venus is actually moving backwards, and it’s not only the specific degrees in which it’s moving backwards. But the Venus retrograde is also experienced as an extended transit of Venus through one or in this instance two signs of the zodiac that lasts for, in this instance, like, six months. So we’ve had six months of Venus just hanging out in the same two signs of the zodiac, and thus the same two houses of our chart getting activated by this extended Venus transit. And on June 5th, that finally comes to an end when Venus moves out of Aries and moves into Taurus and begins treading new ground which will coincide with new experiences and a new area of focus in our life as Venus moves into a new whole sign house in our chart. But also, it’s a good time for some final reflections in the first four days of the month while Venus is heading out of Aries. And sometimes at the very tail end of the transit, you see the final manifestation of something that was in progress over the past few months during the Venus retrograde itself. During the very tail end of Venus being direct and heading out of the retrograde sign, sometimes the final manifestation of that transit becomes clear or is finished being put together sort of in the shop or in the lab and is ready for like, primetime – to like, go out in the public. Like, for example, I was watching a lot of stuff about like, Star Wars recently, and how Star Wars originally came out at the tail end of the Venus retrograde just like this and then was a huge success. But during the retrograde itself back in 1977, they were putting it together, and the studio thought it was gonna bomb, and they almost like, cut the plug on it or didn’t promote it and all this other stuff. But in the end, through trying really hard, he got lucky – like, George Lucas got lucky. The movie got released. He pulled it together at the last minute. And it was a huge, huge success. But there was like, a process to get there in the months leading up to that during the Venus retrograde, and it wasn’t until the end of Venus almost leaving that final sign of retrograde that the results became clear.
LS: Right. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, sometimes it really is hitting that shadow degree of the previous retrograde station where you really notice what’s going on with a retrograde when it comes back and passes that degree while it’s direct. But it’s still going through the same sign, and if you are using whole sign houses, that means it’s still the same topic being activated. So, you know, they’re still dwelling on that topic. In some instances, once it’s out of that sign, you’re moving onto new things, while in other cases, the retrograde may have sparked an important event that you will still have to deal with after that. You know, it could go different ways depending on the activations in your own chart. But the thing that I’m most excited about is Venus going into Taurus where it’s having really nice dignity for the first time in quite a while. You could say that Venus was exalted in Pisces, which it is, but it kept going back and forth next to Saturn, you know?
CB: Right.
LS: During its retrograde cycle. And one of the stations was like, exactly conjunct Saturn, which certainly tempers the exaltation experience. So I’m excited that, you know, we had that whole long extended period with Venus with Saturn, and then we had Venus in Aries, which is, you know, opposite the sign of its rulership. And then we’re finally going into Venus being in its own sign, and not just being in its own sign, but being in an earth sign where Venus is so much more grounded here. I think you cannot say that Venus in Pisces, with or without Saturn, or Venus is Aries are especially known for their groundedness. But Venus in Taurus very much is. And I’m someone who enjoys experiences of groundness; I’m really looking forward to that change. Moving into an earth sign, it’s much more embodied. It’s much more, you know, grounded in like, real life experience, the here and now, your present moment. It’s also really good at relational things, you know, but coming from a grounded place. Whereas like, we’ve had all this Gemini transits which we still will for the first half of the month at least, bu – and that’s relational too, but in a totally different way. In a in your headspace, quickly talking, exchanging info kind of way. Venus in Taurus is very relational, but coming from a very grounded space in yourself.
CB: Absolutely. Yeah. That transition I think is gonna be really palpable, because the other thing is we’re moving from Venus being in the sign of its detriment for months to being in its home sign. And part of the difference that we’re gonna see is I got a real sense with Venus going through Aries how, you know, in my book, I talked about the original translation of the term for detriment, and the two that came up were either adversity or exile. And both would have worked as a translation. And in my book, I actually tended towards “adversity,” but I think “exile” is actually up there and is now my favorite translation for detriment because with Venus – or any other planet – being in that sign, it’s as far away from one of its home signs as you can possibly get. In that instance, it’s like, the sign opposite to Libra. And it’s such a foreign place for Venus to be that initially when it’s in that sign, it struggles with some of the – it struggles to function to some extent because it’s being given like, tools that are opposite or contrary to its basic nature. Which is like, Venus in Aries is being like, given tools of wars, for example, when it’s a planet typically of like, peace.
So Venus has been kind of like, out in the wilderness a lot of this retrograde in Aries. And once it moves into its home sign of Taurus, we’re going to be reacquainted with what it looks like when Venus is given a greater sense of self-autonomy to do what comes natural to it. And part of what comes natural to it is that function of like, unifying and reconciling things. And it doesn’t, and what’s cool is it’s not just gonna be doing that on its own. But this month shortly after Venus moves into Taurus, just moves into Cancer, the sign of its exaltation, which is one of the signs that it functions in at a very high level. So we get both of the benefics in good signs, having zodiacal strength or dignity, this month, which I think is just gonna be a breath of fresh air in terms of the benefics that have been struggling a bit suddenly like, getting the upper hand at least for a little bit.
LS: Yeah. It’s a really notable shift, and I’m excited to see what that looks like in daily life as soon as those transits start. Yeah. Sometimes you can see things right away when transits shift like that. And other times, it takes a little time to like, warm up, and you know, people shift into that different mode of being. It’s much more, yeah, I keep repeating the word – it’s much more relational. But you know, Venus – it’s also like, a little bit of a slower pace in some ways, certainly than the Gemini transits. And I don’t wanna skip the Gemini transits because we still have that in the beginning of the month, so that’s definitely part of our June experience. You know, there’s a lot more quickness going on with the Gemini things, a lot more, like I said, just quick exchanges between people with information. It’s really good for that. It’s very lateral. You know, I feel like Mercury in Gemini – and it’s in its own sign, too, but it feels very value neutral to me, which I guess Mercury is kind of known for. You know, it’s like, quick exchanges of whatever, you know? And you can connect things and people and ideas, but then we slow down a little bit once Venus moves into Taurus and Jupiter moves out of Gemini and then into Cancer. We slow down a little, and it’s also a little bit more – I would say a little bit more introverted. Not like it has to be radically so, because Venus does wanna connect and connects very well in its own sign. But it’s a little more introverted than all the Gemini stuff.
CB: Yeah. There’s… You mentioned a relational component, but it’s also reflective. There’s more of a reflective component which is nice, because we’ve had so much of a more like, extroverted energy over the past several months, especially when Venus was in Aries in retrograde or Jupiter was in Gemini over the course of the past year, and just a busyness of like, so much happening at once. So many, you know, consequential events and like, world-changing events, some of which were tied in with specifically the Venus retrograde in Aries and the Mars retrograde in Cancer especially.
You know, Jupiter – there’s a little trickiness, though, that I struggle with a little bit in terms of this month, which is that even though Jupiter moves into a great sign for it when it moves into Cancer on the 9th, it immediately squares Saturn and Neptune. And that aspect perfects with Saturn on the 15th, or culminates with Saturn. And so there’s some sort of tension that’s going on there between Jupiter’s attempts to grow and expand and like, especially smooth things over like some of the things that were happening in Cancer earlier this year with Mars and its very long retrograde there. But Jupiter’s being held back to a certain extent by Saturn which has the upper hand because it’s earlier in zodiacal order. So these tensions between growth versus consolidation, Jupiter’s initial entry point into this new sign is not as smooth as I would like because there’s something that’s kind of like, keeping it in check or holding it back to a certain extent.
LS: Absolutely. Yeah. Jupiter is moving into Cancer and immediately wanting expansion, and you know, is good at expansion in the sign of its exaltation. It wants to bring you new avenues, new experiences, things that are, you know, just like, bigger for you. But then there’s the Saturn square coming from, like you said, the overcoming position. And I was thinking about this and reflecting before we talked. You know, there’s something either – I think in some situations, there’ll be a connection between the two where you’re like, expanding in a certain area but it’s because of like, some challenge in this other area, and they’re connected, at least initially, right? Because as soon as it ingresses, it’s in that tight degree-based square. That might not be the case for the entire Jupiter transit through Cancer, but at least initially that might be the case. And in other cases, it might just be you’re trying to expand in a certain area, but you have certain constraints that are tempering that or delaying that a little bit, or some sort of Saturnian thing from the Saturn square from that area of your life.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I think this is the only – let me animate the chart. Because it doesn’t come back and hit that square exactly again, does it?
LS: I don’t recall. Yeah, we need to animate it.
CB: So Jupiter stations retrograde later in Cancer, and then it retrogrades back to yeah, like, 15 and stations direct in March of next year. And Saturn is still only at three. So this is the first and only square that Jupiter and Saturn have, at least in these signs, although we saw our first instances of this last year when those aspects first started in Gemini and Pisces when we – I think we had some initial squares.
So let’s go back, though, to the beginning of the month. So we’ve agreed that the first week of the month still has this intense, chatty, Gemini energy where things are moving fast. Communication is moving actually pretty – is productive and is working pretty well. That really culminates on June 8th when Mercury exactly conjoins Jupiter at 29 degrees of Gemini, and this is one of my favorite aspects of the month because Mercury is in its own sign. It’s almost about to make a heliacal rising. It’s almost far enough away from the Sun to emerge; it’s about to emerge from under the beams of the Sun. It’s in its own domicile. And it just hits this very nice conjunction with Jupiter that’s very positive and optimistic and would just generally be a good day for communication, for like, short-distance travel. What are some other like, good things you could do with like, a nice Mercury-Jupiter conjunction in Gemini?
LS: I mean, definitely the communicative bit, right? Like, starting anything with regard to like, speaking, writing, like, any projects you’re doing that involve that heavily. Research even. Yeah. Spreading messages widely.
CB: Yeah. So that’s like, the tail end of some of the Gemini stuff really culminates with that. Venus has already moved into Taurus at that point as well, so people are starting to break new ground on that transit. And I wanna talk about the Mars retrograde, but it’s like, we can’t get to that. It has to get through the one last aspect in Leo. It looks tough. And it’s this square with Uranus, which is our for sure most difficult aspect of the month. It takes place on June 14th and especially June 15th. Yeah, it goes exact on the 15th, but it’s so close already on the 14th, it may already be operative. And there’ll be like, some news story that happens at like, 11 o’clock on the 14th, so that’s why I sometimes —
LS: Right? Yeah.
CB: — mention the day before. So 14th, 15th especially, Mars hits late 28 Leo and squares Uranus at 28 degrees of Taurus. So we’ve seen this aspect happen before or different variations of it. Sometimes there’s like, an unexpected event that happens that’s kind of like, wrenching. Last summer, we famously saw what was it? It was like, the conjunction of Mars and Uranus in Taurus, and that happened around the time of that like, assassination attempt that happened during the political campaign. And it was this unexpectedly, like, violent event that happened and came out of nowhere. So we have to be aware of like, the potential for things like that to happen. Mars is also the planet that has to do with like, accidents and injuries. So it’s a good date, I think, to be especially careful and cautious and like, not to take unexpected risks just because the potential for an unexpected accident that’s like, sudden and disruptive is heightened during this transit.
LS: For sure. My word for Mars-Uranus hard aspects is always “combustible.” Like, I think that’s a really good characterization of it. You know, things can easily spark very suddenly and unexpectedly in a Mars-related fashion. So there can be literal explosions. But you know, there can also be metaphorical explosions. And what I really noted is, you know, both of those two major tense aspects of this month happen at the exact same time, right? Mars-Uranus happens at the same time as Jupiter-Saturn square. And of course the Mars-Uranus is more overtly noticeable I think, but it’s interesting that they’re both happening at the same time. Because in terms of metaphorical explosions and not the literal ones, you could see how the frustration of Jupiter-Saturn feeling held back in some way, whether that’s yourself or other people around you, feeling held back from what you’re trying to, you know, move towards and expand around – frustration is not good for Mars-Uranus hard aspects, because then someone blows up. So I could easily see that happening on a social level, too.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, 29 degrees is Trump’s Ascendant, and so Mars will be right on that. So we’ll for sure be paying attention to what he’s doing around that time, because that’s a potentially problematic transit for him, as we’ve seen in like, past instances over the past decade.
LS: Right. I had a note, too, about if we back up to that Mercury-Jupiter conjunction. This is the funniest part of June to me, and I really enjoy astrology that makes me laugh, as I’ve talked about a lot. So the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction in Gemini at the very end of Gemini, it’s not even just the last degree, right? It’s the last quarter-degree. It’s like this extinction burst of like, TMI. You know, say all the things! But like —
CB: Right.
LS: — immediately afterwards, Mercury not only goes into Cancer, which is much more like, be cautious about what you say, but it immediately squares Saturn.
CB: Right.
LS: So we have that immediate interplay of like, Mercury-Jupiter being out here, and then Mercury-Saturn being like, ope – did I say too much? Maybe I’ll just close that down for a minute!
CB: I mean, what I’m hearing from you is that I need to do one last hurrah —
LS: Of a nine-hour podcast?
CB: — of like, a really long podcast episode to like, cap off —
LS: Yes.
CB: — Jupiter in Gemini, which has been a Jupiter return for me because I started the podcast under Jupiter in Gemini, and I’ve reached new heights of podcast lengths over the past year. So maybe that’s what you mean. I would like – I’m not sure if I like the term “extinction burst,” but you know, if something like that maybe I’ll think about that.
LS: Yeah. Maybe we’ll do the 5th house episode then or something.
CB: Oh! That’s actually a really good idea. Yeah. I’ve been wanting to do that. But then what’s the square after we do it? It’s super long, and then we – I swear off. And I swear – I commit to like, a year of short podcast episodes
LS: Yeah. That could be.
CB: Okay. I like that. We’re working on the fly here developing things on the go.
LS: Planning with astrology.
CB: That’s honestly a really good idea, because that – Gemini is my 5th house, so.
LS: I know!
CB: I did wanna take advantage of that, but —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — I’ll have to see if we can put it together that quick. All right, so Mars, though, you know, Mars square Uranus – we talked about how that’s a tough aspect. I mean, to say something positive about it, like, Mars square Uranus when it’s used let’s say constructively – even though it’s a tense aspect – can sometimes force you to take decisive action on the fly and to improvise in the moment after something unexpected happens. But sometimes by taking charge and acting decisively, even if you’re, you know, working on very uneven ground and like, new territory that you’re not familiar with, sometimes taking decisive action can be what’s called for and taking on that sort of like, leadership role or like, an active role in pressing forward despite unexpected uncertainties or other things like that can still be productive and like, good.
LS: Absolutely. That is the best use of that, really, is just like, being able to act quickly in the moment when you need to act quickly. And that can be very unexpected with the Uranus part of it, but then – you know, Mars is speed. Uranus is speed. So you know, put the two together, and it’s like, that – yeah. Like you said, that is the best use of that possible.
CB: Yeah. Lots of other things we could go into with that, but maybe that’s good. So part of that, though, that’s important is that’s also kind of like an extinction burst with Mars hitting Uranus like, right before it finally departs from Leo and moves into Virgo here on like, the 16th and 17th.
LS: Which will end that entire Mars retrograde cycle that’s been going on for eons it feels like.
CB: It’s been so long. Like, so utterly long. Let me share the graphic for that, actually – another amazing graphic I’ve been using for months and months now from Madeline from Honeycomb showing the full Mars retrograde cycle and how it started using, again, my expanded definition where I use a much longer definition than any astrologers really have up until this point. But how because the Mars retrograde, I partially conceptualize it as an extended transit of Mars through in this instance two signs – through Cancer and Leo – that it really started way back on September 4th when Mars first went into Cancer. And it’s not really fully over until June 17th when Mars moves into Virgo. So we’re closing down like, a very, very long chapter that’s been unfolding and a sequence of events that’s been unfolding ever since September is now finally coming to a close. And even to localize it more, Mars first went into Leo on November 3rd, so that was the first time it moved into the specific house, the whole sign house, in each of our charts that it’s returned back to and is going to continue to activate all the way until June 17th. So just pay attention to and think about and reflect on some of the changes that have come up in your life since September and especially early November in that specific whole sign house in your chart. And you should at this point have a pretty good idea of like, what that Mars retrograde is about, and if you don’t, it’s gonna become clear by the end of this transit on June 17th because the final – I’m seeing a bunch of people where the final results of that are basically becoming known even though they were things that were developing in the background for months up to this point. You know, Biden was one example of that.
LS: Because now we’re past the shadow period, and so it’s finally in new ground, you know, most of this month. And then goes – yeah, most of May – and then it goes into Virgo where it will wield spreadsheets offensively or defensively. That is my —
CB: Right.
LS: — favorite depiction of Mars in Virgo. I know some Mars in Virgo people; I love that. I don’t have that, but I love that. And yeah, they wield spreadsheets. Every single one of them, they’re like, “Oh, I love spreadsheets. They’re my favorite thing.” That’s how you attack problems!
CB: Right. Or like, a compass and a protractor.
LS: Yeah.
CB: I like that.
LS: They have all the details.
CB: Yeah. Mars in Virgo – Mars in Leo has been very, you know, like, boisterous, very outspoken, very forward. Now we move into – that’s gonna be a vibe shift, because I remember the vibe shift that happened last fall. Remember like, Mars was in Gemini, and then it switched into Cancer and there was just this huge vibe shift, especially in like, the political campaign and the news cycle. And we’ve just been stuck in a lot of those new stories since then that it’s been sitting in these two signs. And there’s gonna be a huge vibe shift on June 17th when Mars moves into Virgo. And yeah, getting into the details of things, because Virgo is very detail-oriented and Mars likes to, at the very least, take charge of things. In other instances, it likes to sort of attack and like, hack into things so that that’s part of the energy of Mars in Virgo as well.
LS: For sure. And it’s interesting, you know, I don’t know if you wanna go to this now or later, but just interesting how Jupiter then will be going over the whole territory where Mars has been. Not the whole territory, but the Cancer part initially, right? I’m —
CB: Yeah, this would be a good time.
LS: Okay. I’m interested in that phenomenon – that Jupiter, you know, because Mars has at the very least stirred up something in the Cancer area of people’s lives. You know, on the harder side of things, it’s maybe burned something down in that area of life. And Jupiter then is coming in as almost like a balm. You know, it’s Jupiter in Cancer, and it’s not just expansive and new growth, but it’s also very emotionally attuned in Cancer. And so whereas you had Mars – I’m thinking about how when Mars was in Cancer, we had the LA fires and there were all these really dumb – if I can just say that – really dumb fights online on social media about who was deserving of compassion in this situation. Which of course was talking about like, about whether were rich people who lost their homes, and maybe it wasn’t their only home, and you know, this whole thing. And I was like, this is ridiculous. But also so Mars in Cancer – like, fighting over like, who gets compassion? Who’s deserving of it? Who doesn’t? And I’m thinking then about Jupiter coming in. Jupiter is so bountiful and expansive. It’s in the sign of the Moon, which collects and includes. And so it’s like, compassion for everyone, you know? I’m sure there’s different ways this is gonna play out, but it’s gonna be a lot more positive by and large than Mars in Cancer.
I was also thinking about how it’s kind of like, something burned down and now there’s space for new growth in that area, which in a turn reminded me of this haiku. There was like, a 17th century Japanese haiku that’s just simply says, “Barn’s burned down; now I can see the Moon.” And I love that because of the Moon part, because Jupiter is moving into the sign ruled by the Moon, but it also really illustrated what I was thinking about, which was like, something having become difficult turned up or just simply burned down in an area of life, and then Jupiter coming in to be like, “Look at what you can see now.” Where you can grow from here, you know?
So that’s my image. That’s my haiku image for this transit coming in.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. I love that. That’s a really good – I’m glad you said that haiku. Yeah, because Mars’s function is it can burn things down, sometimes literally. Other times, it can sever or separate things. And the ancient Egyptian symbol for Mars in some of the Demotic texts was a knife. And there’s some people that have experienced this transit of Mars as being like, a cutting or a severing or separation. Sometimes a separation from people in your life that match the house that’s been transiting – that Mars has been transiting – over the past several months, either with a relationship that you had to cut out of your life or where there’s been an added level of conflict and stress in that area of your life for many months now. But now we’re not only having Mars depart so that the irritating like, spicy, hot energy of Mars in that sector of your chart is not only departing, but now we also have Jupiter entering there and putting this like, smoothing aloe or like, balm to help, you know, sort of like, heal you from getting like, a sunburn or something in that part of your life so that it’s actively – it’s not only the removal of the divisive or spicy energy from that area, but also this healing energy that’s coming in in order to – in some instances, if you had a conflict in that area and you would like reconciliation, Jupiter may help to bring reconciliation with somebody in that part of your life. Alternatively, it’s like, there’s some people who had a relationship or a person that had to be cut out of their life at that time, and returning to that is not on the table or is not something that would be good for you or that you want. But it could be instead a new relationship coming into your life in that specific area that’s more supportive and gives you things that you didn’t even know that you could have in that part of your life that end up being very beneficial and like, supportive and yeah, conductive to growth and expansion.
LS: And you know, there’s a range, of course, of how people did experience Mars in Cancer. You know, in some cases, it was more like, burning things down or, you know, a lot of strife, conflict, whereas in other instances, you know, this is usually but not always the day versus night chart distinction, but even, you know, in the more constructive way it was still a retrograde of Mars through there. And so it’s a lot of like, having to do a lot of reworking of like, what am I doing in this area of my life? Like, there can be angst associated with that even if it’s like, not a worst case scenario Mars retrograde there. So it was just like, a lot of activity and a lot of reworking. So even for those people, even if they didn’t have a worst case scenario Mars retrograde situation there, still they were like, actively reworking, rethinking “What am I doing here?” And then Jupiter comes in, you know, and kind of like, gifts you a little bit of okay, now that you’ve done that reworking, how can you expand that further? Now that you’ve like, figured out a little bit more of like, what you’re doing in that area of life. Or you’ve even like, done some external work that people have noticed; let’s give you some, you know, accolades or some new avenues where you can expand that to even further opportunity.
CB: Absolutely. I like that you mentioned like, aid or something, because it reminded me how I’ve talked about in like, the year ahead forecast that previous iterations of Jupiter in Cancer, which happens every 12 years, was like, you know, 12 years ago it was like, Obamacare being rolled out and all of a sudden millions of Americans who didn’t have or couldn’t afford healthcare – because it was so expensive – for the first time being able to get healthcare. Like, you and I were one of those people. We were —
LS: Me included, yes.
CB: — super broke astrologers that couldn’t afford healthcare, and suddenly we were able to enroll in healthcare at that point when Jupiter went into Cancer. Or two cycles before that, the Jupiter in Cancer in the 1990s was the Americans With Disabilities Act. So there’s this real – which put into place like, important regulations in some instances for like, wheelchair accessibility or other things like that that are things we take for granted now at this point in society for the most part, but just like, didn’t exist up until that point. But they were all about literally like, attempting to take care of people and to provide some sort of protective function to take care of those especially who were in like, a weaker position in society or a position in society that was like, less favorable but also to take some of those people that are in a less good position in society and to raise them up, which is really the heart of what it means for a planet to be in its exaltation is the planet and the things that it signify get raised up or elevated in some sense.
LS: Absolutely.
CB: So in mundane astrology, that’s one of the things I’m gonna be paying attention to is what is that energy gonna be of certain groups of people in society being raised up or elevated from a position of maybe not being as in good of a place, or what are the instances especially in terms of health where somehow there might be improvements that help people out in terms of healthcare or in terms of other things that might positively improve people’s health in different ways once Jupiter goes into Cancer and then spends the next 12 months transiting through that sign.
LS: Yes. I’m very curious about that as well, partially because some of that seems improbable in the current situation. But you know, there’s other transits going on at the same time. But I was thinking in particular on a mundane level about how Mars has gone through – you know, speaking about Jupiter going over the same territory that Mars did, Mars went through the 8th house of the Sibley chart – the Sibley United States founding chart – and you know, there’s a stellium there natally in the 8th house. And Mars going through there just tore up funding for a lot of things, right? Like, a lot of organizations, a lot of projects and things of that nature. And —
CB: A lot of like, humanitarian aid organizations.
LS: Yes. Yes, that too. Right! And it’s like, that is Mars in Cancer, right? It’s like, cutting of that aid. And so I am curious about Jupiter going through that territory as well, because the Ascendant ruler of the Sibley chart is there – Jupiter in Cancer – and we’re in some ways known for that aid and that funding, even internationally, as well as nationally. So I’m curious about Jupiter moving into the sign of its exaltation, doing the 12-year Jupiter return in the 8th house in the same territory where Mars just like, cut that all to hell for a little while. Like, is funding gonna be restored in some of those situations? I can see that possibility at least in some cases; I wouldn’t – if I were betting, I wouldn’t bet all of them, but you know, because subsequently, of course, Mars has gone into the 9th house of the Sibley chart and there’s been lots and lots of court cases. And some of those court cases have said, “No, you gotta restore that.” And so I can see that being like, one way where some of that’s gonna happen. I don’t know to what extent, but yeah, I’m curious about that on a mundane level too.
CB: Yeah. We’ll have to see. I think it’s just one of those instances – because I keep expressing skepticism about that the past few months when we talk about Jupiter in Cancer as well, but I think it’s one of those instances where we have to trust the astrology and our basic interpretation of what we would extent that to mean, despite the current like, implausibility of that practically —
LS: Sure.
CB: — speaking from what we know in terms of where things have been that there’s gonna be some trends like that that we can anticipate from the basic symbolism of that. And it’ll be interesting to see how that actually turns out over the next like, 12 months and what that specifically like, manifests as.
LS: For sure. And Jenny D in the comments reminded us that, of course, it still has that square to Saturn initially as it goes in. So yes, that might not all happen like, in the beginning part of the transit for sure.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely.
LS: Yeah.
CB: Okay, so Jupiter in Cancer. If people would like a further like, personalization of the area of your chart that like, Mars may have caused problems in and the area of your chart that Jupiter may be cleaning up over the next 12 months, I talked about this in my year ahead horoscopes for each rising sign for 2025. So just go to the YouTube channel and find those for your rising sign, and then I’ll have a specific delineation of that talking about the whole sign house that that transit matches and the area of your life that that’s probably gonna be impacting.
All right. Where are we at? So we covered Venus retrograde, Mars going into Virgo, Mars is gonna be there in Virgo – because what’s gonna be cool about this, Mars going into Virgo, is also is all of a sudden, we’re returning back to a period where Mars transits suddenly are not gonna take like, 10 years. But instead, Mars transits as Mars continues to pick up speed are gonna start being like, you know, relatively quick affairs now —
LS: Right.
CB: — for the foreseeable future since it’s not going slowly and like, grinding over certain degrees forever for the first time this year.
LS: Yeah. Thank god. They’re gonna move back towards their usual like, six weeks instead of like, you know, however many months, the better part of a year. I think Mars retrogrades are possibly my – might be my least favorite type of transit.
CB: All right. Don’t jinx yourself with like, a Saturn – I feel like you’re just asking —
LS: I mean, that’s —
CB: — for a tough Saturn transit when you say that.
LS: Yeah, I shouldn’t be saying that, but yeah.
CB: Yeah. I just did a whole episode on Mesopotamian astrology and their conceptualization of the planets as gods, and I… Yeah. Don’t tempt them.
LS: You think Saturn’s listening?
CB: I mean! I’m not gonna test it. I’m not gonna use my own —
LS: For sure.
CB: — fate as like, a scientific experiment to find out.
LS: Yes. Very sorry, Saturn. You’re very respected. Yeah.
CB: All right. That’s better. Well, the other – the thing they were doing in the Mesopotamian tradition we didn’t get into a lot is they would sometimes do like, the substitute king ritual. So it’s like, if it said the king was gonna die, then they would just like, switch out the king and then —
LS: Right.
CB: — make that hopefully not happen, which I always thought was kind of funny, because it’s like, you’re tricking the planets or you’re trying to trick the gods or something —
LS: Right?
CB: — like that. And yeah, I’ll have to have a —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — further, fuller discussion about that at some point.
All right, so back to aspects. We talked about Venus entering Taurus on June 6th. Mercury-Jupiter conjunction on June 8th. Jupiter entering the sign of its exaltation on June 9th. Also on June 11th, I just wanted to mention this because it’s probably my second favorite aspect of the month, which is this nice little Mercury-Venus sextile. Oh, that is not the right chart. That is —
LS: I really like the Mercury-Venus sextile too.
CB: Hold on.
LS: It’s one of – if I had to, you know, people sometimes they’re like, oh, you know, if you had to trade out something in your chart or if you wish there was something – one thing in your chart that you don’t have, and that would be mine. Like, a Mercury-Venus aspect. Because it’s so good about putting things into words in a aesthetically pleasing way, but also in relationally oriented to the person you’re communicating with way. Like, it’s just really good with words, and I wish I had that one. So this will be a nice little transiting aspect.
CB: Absolutely. I always think of T.S. Eliot who is my example of like, a Venus-Mercury conjunction on the degree of the Ascendant in Libra, and he’s like, a famous poet. But this Mercury-Venus sextile happens from like, five degrees of Cancer to five degrees of Taurus on June 11th, and this also happens to be the day of our first lunation of the month, which is a Full Moon in the sign of Sagittarius.
So let me actually animate the chart to be exactly at that Full Moon. It’s a little – timing-wise, the Moon goes exact very early in the day on the 11th here in the US and like, US timezones. It goes exact at 20 degrees of Sagittarius, and one of the things that’s cool about this lunation is that it’s happening in Sagittarius in a Jupiter-ruled sign, and it’s only like, two days after Jupiter has moved into Cancer. So for some reason, this first Full Moon that’s taking place in the month on the 11th is reemphasizing that Jupiter in Cancer ingress and transit that’s just taken place, which is just gonna further highlight it and put greater emphasis on it. But it’s also great that it’s happening the same day as the Mercury-Venus sextile, because then that’s really gonna highlight or it’s gonna stamp that Mercury-Venus sextile onto this lunation, which could give it greater longevity of like, a couple of weeks than it might have otherwise.
LS: Thats such an interesting Full Moon. Because on the one hand, I do really like that Jupiter has already ingressed into Cancer and it’s ruling the Full Moon, and the Mercury-Venus is lovely. It’s also two days right after the Moon goes through late Scorpio and sets off potentially the Mars-Uranus square. And so I’m curious about that interplay. There’s some really nice things going on, and then there’s some little jangly things potentially as well.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’s also just a few days before the Mars-Uranus square itself comes into —
LS: Right.
CB: — alignment. It goes exact on the 15th. So —
LS: Exactly.
CB: That is hard, because it’s already functionally like, operative at the Full Moon, which is then Mars is at 26 Leo and Uranus is at 28 Leo. So it’s like, we get these two competing energies of a very optimistic smooth-talking and poetic Mercury-Venus sextile that’s happening the day of the Full Moon. But then we also have this much more tense, combative, disruptive and even potentially violent energy of Mars-Uranus coming into alignment right after that Full Moon just a few days later.
LS: It’s a very interesting mixed picture, yeah.
CB: Yeah. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s like, look at Saturn and Neptune. Saturn has now clicked over, so it’s within a degree of Neptune for the first time, where Saturn’s at one degree and four minutes of Aries, and Neptune’s at two degrees and one minute of Aries. So they’ve finally come within one degree, which means we’re at the most intense phase of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction that this point that we’ve never experienced before. And the full impact of that is really being felt at this point.
LS: By the end of the month, they’re so close to the stations. Like, I think Neptune stations first maybe four days into July. And then Saturn’s 12 days into July. And they’re 13 minutes apart when they station. So this will be a really interesting – you know, when they’re both stationary. So this will be an interesting test of like, is that exact enough, you know? Versus like, exact to the minute. I think it’ll feel pretty exact! So by the end of the —
CB: Yeah.
LS: — month, since we’re talking about June and not July, but by the end of the month, they’re basically there.
CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s like, with transits, that one degree orb like, always seems really important. Like, I always feel like that is really the most intense – like, there’s ranges. Like, the three-degree thing is a range and so on and so forth. But the one degree is when the most acute events tend to happen when you’re talking about like, a transiting planet to a natal planet. But that’s also true of like, transiting planets in the sky. So this Full Moon also – the fact that that alignment comes within a degree around the time of the Full Moon is really making that part of the energy that we’re suddenly feeling as well. So, you know, I don’t know how to delineate that, because that’s like, three very different energies of like, Mercury sextile Venus, Mars square Uranus, and Saturn conjunction Neptune all happening in our environment in like, the weather at the same time. But and obviously —
LS: And square Jupiter.
CB: And squaring Jupiter, so like, yeah. Then we got a Jupiter-Saturn square, and the struggle of contraction versus expansion. Obviously, there’s gonna be like, a general weather that’s happening that’s like, a mixture of these three. And then for each of us personally, they’re gonna be more or less important depending on which ones are hitting personal planets in our chart at that point. But it will be very interesting to see what the like, soup of this transiting mix puts together starting around mid-June.
LS: Well, I’m just grateful for how many of the pieces are, you know, feel more positive. Even if there’s like, some that are, you know, more, yeah, that are more like a conflict.
CB: Yeah. Somehow like, the forces of positive, unifying, uplifting things are starting to become more prominent, even though at the same time the forces of deceptive, blurring of boundaries, and tense combative energy is also sort of peaking around this time as well. It’s like there’s a sort of battle taking place, and I don’t know if that’s happening directly or if they’re just happening in parallel where sometimes when you have good and bad transits at the same time in your personal chart, it’s like you just have good events and bad events happening in parallel rather than directly affecting each other.
LS: Exactly. Because they’re happening in different houses in your chart. So it doesn’t have to be all part of the same thing at all.
CB: Right.
LS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. So a lot of that culminates – at least the Mars-Uranus culminates – in the middle of the month and Mars moves into Virgo. And then Jupiter doesn’t just square Saturn; it also squares Neptune and that aspect goes exact around here it looks like – around the 18th. So just after the Saturn-Jupiter square.
Jupiter square Neptune – you know, when that happened a few months ago – or a few years ago, the conjunction – that was the height of the inflation issues. And so last summer when I saw this alignment coming into play, you’ll hear me talking about it in like, August or September and I was talking about, you know, potential for issues with inflation or stagflation to come up economically speaking again. And I don’t know if that’s not part of what we’re seeing with this aspect around the middle of June especially. But in terms of people’s personal lives, what are some like, delineations of Jupiter square Neptune? Or just the energy in general.
LS: Yeah, the energy in general – well, it’s interesting because I feel like I have to back up a step and say something more about Saturn-Neptune first, and then Jupiter square Neptune. So Saturn-Neptune is, as we were talking about earlier, the blurring of boundaries and the, you know, having a harder time distinguishing what’s real and what’s fantasy. But it’s also happening, you know, more specifically it’s happening in an area of our chart. It’s happening in a certain house, and it’s happening in a different part of our lives for each of us. And Saturn-Neptune together can be the dissolving of previous structures that you thought were going to hold up in that area of your life, or plans – like, medium- to long-term plans – that you had. It can also be conversely the process of concretizing new dreams and making new dreams real. Typically with this kind of aspect, the hard aspect, there’s a dissolving first, and then later on in the transits then there’s more of the, you know, the building up – the concretizing of the new dream. I remember like, my Saturn return was Saturn opposite Neptune, and I was in grad school, and I just got disillusioned with grad school and academia. And I thought that’s where I was wanting to go. And – just to give a quick sort of illustration of how that goes – and then, you know, there were just a bunch of days where I was like, this does not feel inspiring to me anymore. And then I was like, well, Leisa, were you expecting grad school to feel inspiring? And I was like, yes, I was! It was in religious studies, so – academic religious studies, but nonetheless. And so eventually I dropped out after a lot of soul-searching, because that was my dream that was just dissolving for some reason. You know, it was like, no longer my dream anymore, but it took some coming to terms with. And then I was like, you know what? I think I wanna be an astrologer. And then I started building that up and making that more real and like, figuring out the steps to move towards and information gathering and what have you. And then that became concretized over time until that was like, my new dream that was like, real in the world.
So that’s the kind of way it can go, at least sometimes. So I feel like it’s much more likely in the beginning part where there’s like, there’s more of a dissolving in the beginning with Saturn-Neptune.
Yeah, so Jupiter square that – there’s a lot of different specific scenarios that could happen in individual people’s lives. But you know, I feel like that puts a magnification on that process. And then there’s also the tension, of course, between like, this issue over here that’s more likely to be an issue, right, in the Aries part of your chart, but then your desire to keep, you know, moving forward and expanding in the Cancer area, and that push-pull. I expect a lot of people will experience that as a push-pull. So the Neptune can be the lack of clarity or the like, where am I going from here? What am I trying to do here, you know, in this area of my life.
CB: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think sometimes one of the things that came up in the Saturn-Neptune episode and research was sometimes in society or the world or sometimes in our personal lives, having barriers or these arbitrary distinctions between things that separate them and having those torn down at these times under this alignment, but sometimes that being a good thing. Like, one of them obviously was like, the Berlin Wall being torn down under the last Saturn-Neptune opposition and this like, country that was whole of like, Germany that got split in two by this arbitrary boundary suddenly having the boundary fall and having the reunification of East and West Germany at that time. Or else where somebody on YouTube, there was a great, insightful comment and I wish I knew the name if I could recall that offhand. But they commented on how I had noticed that we kept seeing instances where women were being elevated into positions of power under previous Saturn-Neptune conjunctions, and I was like, just spitballing ideas trying to understand why that was, if that was coming from Saturn, and if Saturn was there was some speculation about whether Saturn was associated with women in some versions of ancient astrology and whether that was the reason why this was happening. And somebody pointed out that the explanation could be much simpler; that it could just be an issue where there had previously societally been this arbitrary distinction between like, men leading countries and women not leading countries, but then in those instances of Saturn-Neptune, the artificial barriers and boundaries to that dissolving briefly for a period of time at different points in history and showing that those were artificial boundaries that didn’t need to exist in those instances of women coming into power and doing a great job.
So I think that’s gonna be part of our lesson with this one, but also in people’s personal lives is identifying some instances where there may be boundaries or these artificial barriers that you’ve set up in your life that you realize that you can free yourself from, and having some sense of freedom or liberation from a restriction that you were feeling previously. Which could actually – even though we’re interpreting the square oftentimes with Jupiter as being like, a tension there, there could also be a sense of like, liberation from that of the breaking free from some of those artificial boundaries suddenly feeling like, liberating but also entering you into a period of growth and expansion for a year in like, the Jupiter sector of your life. And both of those energies with Jupiter and Neptune are often associated with religion and spirituality. So there may be an underlying theme here for a lot of people that gets to the core of what your underlying religious or spiritual of philosophical and metaphysical beliefs are surrounding the nature of reality or underlying your personal philosophy of life where there may be something even that you’ve believed in up to this point that’s somehow held you back. But then the sudden dissolving of those structures allows you to explore new areas in your life that maybe you haven’t felt comfortable exploring up to this point. And I think that’s a really positive and sort of optimistic potential for some of that energy.
LS: For sure. I also have a couple more thoughts on the Jupiter-Saturn, which goes exact just before that. In a broader sense, because that’s not the only time that they’re square; they’re still gonna be square, you know, by sign for the entirety of the Jupiter transit, right? But you can see – do you have the date that that goes exact? I think it’s just a handful of days before the Jupiter-Neptune there.
CB: Jupiter-Saturn? That’s on the 15th —
LS: Oh, the 15th! Right.
CB: — the same day as Mars. Yeah.
LS: Yes, yes. Right. Okay. So a couple things that I was thinking about that – I think despite the square, it’s gonna be really nice to have Jupiter and Saturn in cardinal signs. After this long morass of like, you know, Saturn in Pisces – which it will go back to, you know, briefly later in the year, but you know, we don’t have it for now. And then Jupiter being also in a mutable sign. They were both in mutable signs in Gemini and in Pisces. That’s not very action-oriented, right? I really like the idea, at least, and we’ll see if I like the feeling of it, but in theory I like the idea of both Jupiter and Saturn being in cardinal signs all of a sudden after both of them being in mutable signs. Because mutable energy is great in terms of flexibility, in terms of gathering info and people from here and there and you know, melding things together. But it’s not very forward-directed, whereas cardinal sign energy is about initiating things. And so I think it’s gonna be so much better – in theory – for, you know, moving something forward in our lives and having even just the internal orientation suddenly towards moving something forward compared to before.
CB: Yeah.
LS: So I really like that part. You know, once Jupiter goes in and joins Saturn in a cardinal sign. I also was looking at —
CB: Let me say – can I say something about that before you —
LS: Absolutely.
CB: — transition?
LS: Go ahead.
CB: I think that’s an excellent point because with Jupiter and Saturn in mutable signs – mutable signs have this discursive energy where usually they’re – or digressive energy – where usually it’s like, focusing on, talking about something but then having a major digression and like, going in a different direction for a while before you eventually loop back to the original point. And that can be good, because it’s transitional and it’s freeflowing, but it can be not direct in its like, manner of proceeding forward and attacking things. So having that shift of both of the two biggest planets in our solar system moving into cardinal energy is gonna be a vibe shift in that it’s gonna feel much more direct and much more getting to the point with things.
But one of the things I meant to delineate is we needed to talk a little bit more about Saturn in Aries, because Saturn in Aries is also direct and I kept mentioning over the past year because I’ve been so fascinated by Francis Ford Coppola having Saturn in Aries as his chart ruler, and his whole thing about like, leaping into the unknown in order to prove that you’re free and wanting to do that as a basic impulse even though sometimes when you don’t plan things out, the problem can be… The problem with like, innovating for the sake of innovating or innovating for the sake of asserting your own freedom is that sometimes, you know, Saturn is a planet that really needs to think things out ahead of time. And when you put it in cardinal Aries that likes to move fast, sometimes there can be failures that result from a lack of forethought or a lack of long-term planning, and especially for a lack of going slow because Aries is a sign – out of any of the other signs – that likes to go fast. And that’s one of its core archetypal significations is Aries likes to go fast. And that can be like, fast cars. That can be moving fast and direct in launching new ventures and undertakings. But when you put Saturn there, there’s a struggle because there’s also sometimes like, a stop sign of like, what happens if you move too fast before you’re ready and you run into a road block that says that you can’t proceed further? So somehow that’s gonna be a major part of the energy that since Saturn has just moved into Aries, we’re just getting used to in June as like, the early phases of that for the first time. And what some of those – despite having this optimism of Jupiter in Cancer and the cardinal energy of like, the excitement of leaping forward into the unknown, the realization that sometimes our leaps forward won’t always be successful initially because sometimes you need to fail like, a couple of times before you’ve truly refined something.
LS: Absolutely. Yeah, there can definitely be a tension, I’ve noticed, in people I know with Saturn in Aries natally between going fast or going slow. And it can often be like, not so much the middle ground, you know? There’s like, the impulse to like, hurry up or the impulse to like, hold back too long are at odds with each other because of the archetypes of Mars and Saturn, exactly as you were saying. So yeah, there can be that.
My favorite phrase that I’ve thought typifies Saturn in Aries is like, the courage to do your own thing, because Aries is very comfortable standing alone and initiating things on their own. And Saturn, you know, is like, the long-term impulse around whatever sign it’s in. And also, you know, sometimes required bravery around challenges. Like, even if you don’t wanna be. Like, this challenge that’s being set in front of you requires you to be brave, even if that’s not your usual way of being. Or if it is! But you know, anyway, those two things are kind of how I’m thinking about Saturn in Aries so far.
I was thinking back – the best thing about getting older and doing astrology is you can think back to like, you know, long past transits, right, and compare like, your past transits. And I had remembered that the last time that Saturn was in Aries in the mid- to later ‘90s, I was in my early 20s, and I worked for about a year, year and a half as an art model, which isn’t so much the important part. The important part was that for the first time in my life, and then not again for a long time, I was self-employed. I had no boss! And I was like, this is the best thing ever! I could say yes or no to jobs; I could, you know, do whatever I wanted. But I had to manage, of course, on my own, which is very Saturn in Aries. And so I was thinking back about like, that being sort of what the energy was like for me last time was like, this sudden “You are it. You are managing the whole thing.” Like, and you know, for good or ill, you know?
So yeah, the courage to do your own thing. Let’s see. I was gonna say something else about that. About the square, but I don’t know if you wanted to say anything else about Saturn in Aries first itself.
CB: No, if you’ve got something about the square —
LS: I do.
CB: — go ahead. I mean, it kind of brings us to the second lunation of the month where that’s still prominent if you wanted to tie it in with that, or if you wanna make that point first?
LS: I think I’ll just say this first, and then we can go onto the lunation. I was thinking about Jupiter in Cancer square Saturn in Aries in general. And something I like to do sometimes is, you know, look up if there’s natal charts. Like, see whose natal charts have that and see how that’s expressing in their lives, because that’s like, a good way sometimes to get a better sense of certain transits coming up.
So interestingly, I didn’t find a lot of charts pulling up that, but one that I did was the author Laura Hillenbrand. And I will explain it; I don’t know how many of you know her already. But she wrote two huge nonfiction bestsellers. One was Seabiscuit, which was about the horse – I swear I’m not on a horse theme; this is just coming up organically! And then the other one —
CB: All right!
LS: She was —
CB: All right —
LS: — a horse person!
CB: — Sagittarius.
LS: She was a horse person. I am not a horse person!
CB: All right.
LS: I’m a Sagittarius —
CB: I’m not, I don’t, I’m not —
LS: — not-horse person!
CB: I’m not judging! It’s all —
LS: You know, so – funny aside, when I was a child, pre-dating astrology entirely, but there was a pen pal section in the back of some kids’ magazine. And I don’t know if everyone wrote their birthdates, but at least this one person did, and she had the same exact birthdate as me. And I thought that should be meaningful, which is a funny thing later in retrospect, right? Of like, that was my early precursor to like, astrological thinking. So I wrote to her. She was in California. And she was a horse girl! Because Sagittarius.
CB: Nice.
LS: I didn’t get that part of Sagittarian energy myself, but anyway, maybe I’ll grow into it. Maybe this is the burgeoning of my horse era.
CB: I think it’s happening.
LS: So anyway! So Laura Hillenbrand, she wrote two huge nonfiction bestsellers. One was Seabiscuit, and one was Unbroken, which was about like, a World War Two, you know, he was like, a racer, but he ended up being a POW in World War Two. She got super sick when she was in her early 20s – or no, she was 19. She was only 19. Which myalgic encephalomyelitis it turned out to be, or otherwise known as ME, which is a neuroimmune illness that can be incredibly devastating and multi-systemic. Keeps people homebound quite often. Also, sidenote, half of long covid cases qualify for the ME distinction – another reason you don’t wanna get it.
So anyway, her story – she had to drop out of college, so she turned to freelance writing in the meantime. She has Saturn in Aries square Jupiter in Cancer – not close by degree, but by sign. She had this huge success over time with this writing, but she wrote in tiny increments and with huge constraints because she was so sick. Like, she would do interviews over the phone instead of in person. She couldn’t even look at screens because it would give her vertigo, and so she would like, order vintage newspapers and like, read them in person. I was thinking of this because she had this constraint in the Saturn in Aries part – well, I don’t know her full chart; it’s not timed. But nonetheless, I think the example holds. She had this huge constraint going on, but it was square this really nice, exalted Jupiter in Cancer, also copresent with Venus in Cancer. She ended up with huge success, but it was enacted through the process of huge constraint. And it was not just huge constraint – i.e., Saturn – it was Saturn in Aries, which is “I’m gonna do the thing that I can do, and I’m gonna do it independently.” Right? Which I love —
CB: Right.
LS: This is such a good example of this.
CB: And in short bursts and increments that you’re —
LS: Yes.
CB: — able to, given your constraints of time or health or other things.
LS: Yes. Exactly. It was like, most people wouldn’t think anything could be accomplished under that level of constraint. And yet, she was like, wrote it in like, small paragraphs. You know, basically everything would make her feel sick, so she just like, did within all of those constraints, which were considerable. She still persevered in this self-initiating activity which was like, “I can still do this one thing, and I’m gonna do it. And we’ll see what happens!” And then they became huge bestsellers, which is amazing.
The other piece that I thought was really interesting – so that’s like, the Saturn-Jupiter. Part of her success was inhabiting other people’s worlds, which reminds me of the emotional sensitivity of Jupiter in Cancer. Or sort of that blending of like, your emotional world and their emotional world. And she wrote, she had this – there was this interesting quote here.
On the irony of writing about physical paragons while being so incapacitated herself, Hillenbrand said, “I’m looking for a way out of here. I can’t have it physically, so I’m gonna have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination, and it’s just fantastic to be there alongside Louie as he’s breaking the NCAA mile record. People at these vigorous moments in their lives – it’s my way of living vicariously.”
So I just thought that was just an amazing like, you can hear the Saturn in Aries in multiple ways, right? And you can see the Jupiter in Cancer there, which was like, amazing success. I don’t wanna say, you know, everyone in her position would be able to do this, because many people cannot even do the intellectual part either at that point. But great, you know, astrological example of this.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And overcoming boundaries or restrictions that are put on you and finding a creative outlet in some way, which through creativity or other things you can sometimes experience freedom.
LS: Yeah. And so some people will feel more one side than the other of the square, probably, depending on how it’s hitting your chart and how your timing is going. But I just wanted to kind of give that as an example to say, because I think it’s an amazing illustration of those two archetypes but also to say if you’re feeling the Saturn, know that there’s still a possible way of doing Jupiter too.
CB: Absolutely. Great example. That’s really good.
All right. So I wanna get to our last – second – lunation of the month. I wanted to show this planetary aspects calendar that Madeline made one more time, just because it shows the overlap and some of that different aspects so well. You know, the Venus-Jupiter sextile earlier in the month, and that different pileup of planets, the Mars-Uranus square and Jupiter-Saturn square and Jupiter-Neptune square in the middle of the month. But at the end of the month, things get busy again around the time of the Sun-Jupiter conjunction on the 24th, because that’s also when we have our second lunation of the month, which is a New Moon in Cancer.
So the awesome benefit of that is that the New Moon in Cancer is marked by that Sun-Jupiter conjunction this year, because of Jupiter’s recent ingress into Cancer. So here’s the chart roughly for the New Moon in Cancer, which happens on June 25th. And we see that the New Moon’s gonna go exact at four degrees of Cancer, and that’ll just be separating from Jupiter which is at three degrees of Cancer at that time. So I really like that; that’s like, a really positive and optimistic looking New Moon that’s taking place that’s really emphasizing that new energy of Jupiter in Cancer. And it’s also coming off of – because by this point, since Jupiter’s at three Cancer, it’s actually separating from Saturn, and it’s separating from the square with Neptune. So it’s starting to at least get away from those aspects and move out of some of the sort of tension and constraint that Jupiter was experiencing earlier in the month.
LS: Yeah. That looks so lovely. I’m excited to see how this, the New Moon feels experientially in that moment once we get there, and how that plays out. Because the New Moon’s so closely conjunct Jupiter, exalted. It’s sextile Mars, which is finally in a new sign, which is gonna be a breath of fresh air in many ways and kind of makes that more constructive with the Mars sextile Jupiter. It’s like, great, you know, support for action. And then, you know, even like, Venus being in its own sign of Taurus in an overcoming sextile to all of those Cancer planets – it’s all really very nice. Very nice looking, anyway.
CB: Yeah. For sure.
LS: And this is also after Jupiter starts separating from the square – by degree, anyway – with Saturn. So there should be a feeling of lessening of that constraint, too.
CB: Yeah. Jupiter’s separating from that. This notion, this energy of just like, growth and expansion not just in the Cancer section but also in general seems to be stamped onto this New Moon. And the Moon, once it hits the Sun, it sextiles Mars, and then it applies to a sextile with Venus widely in Taurus, and Venus is making its way towards Uranus at the end of Taurus. Does it hit it by the end of the month? No, it waits —
LS: No, it’ll be within a few degrees.
CB: Yeah, not until July. Oh, that’s interesting. On July 4th is when it hits it.
So the only part of this New Moon I don’t like is that Mercury is building up to that opposition with Pluto. We can clearly see – because Mercury’s at like, 28 degrees of Cancer, and Pluto’s at three degrees of Aquarius, so that it’s like, the following day or within two days, Mercury ingresses into Leo and then it begins this tight opposition with Pluto. And this is actually more important, because Mercury next month in July is gonna go retrograde in Leo. So Mercury actually hits its shadow degree. I believe it retrogrades back to four degrees of Leo, so it hits its shadow degree by June 30th, which means that Mercury-Pluto opposition is gonna be something we experience multiple times. But also it means as soon as Mercury goes into Leo, it’s going into a sign that it’s gonna sort of camp out in for an extended period of time over the course of the next month or two.
So Mercury-Pluto oppositions, though – we’ve seen different Mercury-Pluto aspects over the past few years. One of them that it seems to coincide with, one of the things that seems to coincide with pretty regularly is like, an expose about some hidden, underworldly thing that’s been happening that suddenly comes to the surface sometimes through like, an investigation or other things like that. There’s something that’s been happening behind the scenes that becomes clear. And yeah, this is one of the things I’ll be paying attention to is something like that then with this Mercury-Pluto opposition that’s starting already on the 27th but that may not like, be a one-and-done event. But because of the Mercury retrograde, it may be like, a sequence of events or like an exposure of something that sets off a series of events that then leads to the uncovering of other things during the course of the retrograde.
LS: Absolutely. Yeah, I can definitely see that. My initial impression was like, could we just not? We’ve had so many retrogrades lately.
CB: Right. Well, this is like, because this is the end of the month. This is the end of the —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — June, and this is part of the cliffhanger that we’re gonna leave. Because everything’s like, pretty fine and dandy, you know, for the most part earlier in June, aside from like, the Mars square Uranus and Jupiter square Saturn. But then things change rapidly in July, because we get like, the Uranus ingress into Gemini which is one of our biggest transits of the entire year and is gonna set the stage for a whole shift that’s gonna play out over the course of the next seven years. You get the Mars retrograde in – you get the Mercury retrograde in Leo, you get Saturn and Neptune stationing in Aries for the first time, which is gonna intensify and truly show us what that transit is gonna be about for the next three years in the case of Saturn or like, more than 10 years in the case of Neptune. The first station is always the most loud example of the transit, as we talked about earlier with Pluto. So there’s all sorts of stuff that starts happening in July that we just are just barely starting to move into by the end of June. But this Mercury-Pluto opposition is one of the things that I think is the transition point into the series of events that’s gonna play out in July.
LS: Yeah. That’s so apt. You’re right that that’s just keeps happening with the uncovering of sort of, I don’t know, corrupt – information about corruption or information about kind of like, gross stuff that’s been going on behind closed doors, under the surface, et cetera, very like, Plutonian things that are hidden. And then Mercury swoops in and like, reveals that, and yeah. So with that whole retrograde process, this probably will be – at least in the outer world – something like, not a single story, but like, within single stories, like a process of uncovering a revelation.
CB: Like disclosure. That’s always the keyword that’s been coming up the past few years.
LS: Yeah, definitely. That’s a good word for it.
CB: Yeah. So start paying —
LS: And also just a note on the opposition. You know, because it’s Mercury-Pluto, but it’s also specifically opposition. So when it’s not, like, you know, revelation of kind of gross info, which it often can be, this is a tension point between two opposing houses in your chart if we’re personalizing it more. And this can be like, you know, there’s a process happening of communication, information gathering, or you know, so forth – speaking, writing, anything mercurial – in this one area of your life. But it’s like, opposing this Pluto transit that’s a much longer process than the Mercury one in this opposing house where maybe something’s getting deconstructed. Maybe something’s kind of like, past its due date and is falling apart. Like, your attention may be split between two areas is often a very common thing with oppositions.
CB: Yeah. What’s the word for when somebody like, that you have an expectation in like, a movie or like, a story narrative, but then somebody like, undercuts it? What’s the word for that?
LS: Oh, I can’t think of that right now. I understand what you’re saying, but.
CB: Anyone in the chat? Help me out. Live chat? Undermining. Twist.
LS: A twist?
CB: No, it’s like, a blank of – subversion! Subversion. That’s it.
LS: A subversion of expectation? Yeah.
CB: Thanks, Alexander in the chat. So subversion. Because I was watching this – I was like, watching some YouTube thing was recommended about like, the Star Wars trilogy that came out over the past 10 years and how in the middle of that new trilogy, they… In the first trilogy, they brought in somebody, a director, who like, set up a bunch of storylines, but then in the second one, they brought in a new director, and for some reason, his thing is that he wanted to subvert expectations. So he like, subverted the storyline of like, a bunch of different things from the first movie. But then in the process, it ended up then killing the like, storylines that were supposed to be arcs throughout the entire trilogy, and it brought many of those storylines to a halt in the middle of the trilogy so that they struggled to then figure out what to do with the third one. And the end result was universally not viewed as being super successful. But it reminded me that back in like, 2017 when this happened, there were some planets going through the signs of their detriment and the director was going through some like, Saturn opposition transit. And it just reminded me that opposition transits can often coincide with a subversion of expectations or a subversion of topics involving the two houses that the transit is happening in in your chart.
So the setting up of something, like Pluto starting to go through Aquarius and whatever house that is transiting in your chart, but then Mercury comes in in this Mercury retrograde and throws some things up in the air in the opposing house so that it subverts some sort of expectation or some sort of theme that’s been developing in the Aquarius sector of your chart with Pluto. So I wanted to put that out there just for people to think about that, because it’s a core opposition aspect keyword I’ve come to understand over the past decade, which is a subversion of things.
All right. So that Mercury retrograde just begins to build up at the very end of the month, and that’s sort of like, a cliffhanger. Uranus is just on the cusp of going into Gemini. It’s at like, 29 degrees of Taurus, getting ready to move into a new whole sign house for the first time in July, so that’s another cliffhanger. And then Neptune is getting ready to station retrograde in Aries on July 4th, and then Saturn will station retrograde shortly after that on July 13th. So that is another cliffhanger that we are right on the cusp of some major stuff by the time we get to the very end of June, which ultimately like a television series leaves us on a major cliffhanger because we can see that we’re right on the precipice of some major changes and major events that will have both implications for the world in general. Like, major world-changing, country-changing events. But then also in terms of our personal lives, some major shifts that we’re right on the cusp of as some of these planets like Uranus move into a whole new sector of our chart that none of us have experienced before unless you’re, you know, in your 80s. You would have to be, because Uranus takes 84 years to come back to where it’s moving into now.
LS: Yeah. You’d have to be in your later 80s or above.
CB: Right. Yeah. So that leaves us with a good like, cliffhanger for our next episode, next forecast, where we’ll come in again next month.
LS: Yes.
CB: Do you have any thoughts about those cliffhangers?
LS: I’m curious – well, yes, I have lots of thoughts about those, because those are major shifts. I’m curious if all of us will feel or many of us will feel by the end of June like, any sort of foreshadowing of those major shifts. Certainly we’ve already got, you know, enough ingresses even in June. I mean, Saturn just went in in late May, and so as we’re recording this, it’s been in there a handful of days. And so Saturn in Aries is still very new. Jupiter, you know, into Cancer will be new partway through June. In terms of the cliffhangers, I’m so curious about Uranus in Gemini. Yes. But I don’t know if I have any major thoughts other than that we are, yeah, other than what I said earlier, which was that that Uranus transit, it’s not into the sign of Gemini yet, but it’s already trining – it’s already applying to trine Pluto. So I do think actually by the end of June, we will feel more of that even though Uranus has not technically shifted signs.
CB: Oh god, I forgot about the trine with Pluto. That’s just gonna —
LS: Oh yeah.
CB: — like, rapidly supercharge all of the AI stuff.
LS: I’m not —
CB: So all the —
LS: — excited.
CB: Yeah! Maybe you’ll grow to love it, and like, by this time next year, you’ll be like, sitting in the back of a robo-taxi, talking with your AI assistant. And you’ll be like, half cyborg with your, you know, vision enhancements in one eye and something like that. Maybe?
LS: I can’t see it, but we’ll see! you know, I did —
CB: All right.
LS: — eventually adapt to the smartphone and —
CB: Right! Yeah. So maybe —
LS: There’s a process.
CB: Maybe you will be lining up for the brainchip implant before —
LS: Oh no.
CB: — too long.
LS: Oh no. Not that.
CB: Okay.
LS: I do wanna note we need to do the election for the month.
CB: Oh god.
LS: We need to talk about that.
CB: Completely forgot about that.
LS: Because we are the electional astrology podcast people, so we need to talk about that!
CB: What – all right. Hit me with the data; what is our electional chart for June?
LS: Let me pull it up here. One moment. Just need to scroll for a second. It is… Okay. June 26th around six AM with Cancer rising after sunrise.
CB: All right. So we’re saving it for the end of the month.
LS: Yes. So this is almost appropriately placed. It is near the end of the month.
CB: So people should set the chart for six AM on June 26th in your location. But you should adjust it until the Ascendant is around nine degrees of Cancer in your city. And then that’s really important, because this needs to be a day chart, and you need to launch your activity a little bit just after sunrise.
LS: Yeah. Incredibly important, otherwise this won’t be nearly as good a chart. Well, actually, it’ll be an actively bad chart, because Saturn’s angular and prominent in the 10th house in Aries. So definitely double-check and make sure that the Sun is at least a few degrees above the Ascendant degree in your location.
So this has that lovely, you know, part of the month we were talking about with that New Moon. It’s just past the New Moon that we were talking about that was conjunct Jupiter in Cancer. So we’ve got Jupiter exalted, Sun, Moon, and Mercury – just barely Mercury – all in Cancer in the 1st house. Venus is still in its own sign of Taurus in the 11th house making that overcoming aspect to the Cancer planets. And the Moon here, at least in the Denver location, is applying by sextile to Venus. Saturn and Neptune, of course, are up in Aries in the 10th house, but Jupiter is already separating by degree as well as the rest of the Cancer planets. And then Mars is in Virgo in the 3rd house with Jupiter in turn making an overcoming sextile to Mars, helping temper it a little bit.
CB: Nice. All right. So yeah, this is taking advantage of the Jupiter in its exaltation, putting it in the 1st house in a day chart, but also taking advantage of Venus being in the 11th house in its own sign in Taurus. So it’s a really good chart for growth and expansion stuff. You know, because Jupiter’s in its exaltation, it’s really emphasizing that. And one of the things with that energy I talked about how I’ve come to understand exaltations as like, raising something up. But it’s also doing something at the highest level and to the best of your ability. So one of the things this chart is good for is whatever you wanna launch, not just getting to the highest level in terms of whatever your chosen career field is, but also in terms of the quality of what you do, doing it at a very high quality that makes you stand out amongst your peers, basically.
LS: For sure. And Jupiter specifically in this chart rules the 9th house and the 6th house. So this will be particularly good for those topics, because it’s bringing like, 9th house topics like things involving higher education, wisdom traditions, religion, philosophy, worldviews, astrology traditionally goes there, long-distance travel, publishing – those are all great topics because it’s ruling the 9th, placed in the 1st, and exalted in a day chart. Similarly ruling the 6th house, good for things involving pets, employees, coworkers, potentially health topics, you know.
CB: Absolutely. Yeah. I like the 11th house Venus, which is good for friends and groups. The chart has some challenges when it comes to communication and short-distance travel – potentially neighbors or siblings because of Mars being in the 3rd house in a day chart. However, there’s some major mitigations with that because Jupiter’s coming off of that close sextile with Jupiter which is really gonna help balance it out and help mitigate some of Mars so that it won’t be like, the worst case scenario for Mars, but in fact much more constructive. And the superior sign-based trine from Venus in Taurus is also helping with that as well.
LS: Yeah. That’s about the best case scenario you can get of mitigations for Mars in a day chart. You know, it has a sign-based reception even with its ruler. Mercury’s still at the tail end of Cancer. And then those two overcoming aspects from benefics, so it’s significantly toned down.
CB: Yeah. One of the things I’m not super stoked about is Mercury being so late and applying to the opposition with Pluto, but one of the things I forgot about in our discussion of that that this chart helps to highlight is that Mercury actually applies to trine Saturn and Neptune first once it changes signs before it hits that opposition with Pluto. So that actually is kind of constructive, and it almost provides a nice little barrier there to just like, the full brunt of that opposition.
LS: Yeah. Absolutely. I’m not really a big fan of Saturn transits in general, but I do like trines to Saturn. They are very constructive and easeful, and you know, you can kind of get the best out of Saturnian energy with them.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, so this is our best electional chart for the month. So you can use it to launch new ventures and undertakings or do other things that are important for you this month, especially things that have like, a singular moment of origin where you launch something and you wanna give it a good birth chart. We found a bunch of other charts for this month that we’re gonna share in the electional astrology podcast for June, which we’re gonna be recording here in the next day or two and then releasing to patrons through our page on Patreon. So if you wanna get access to that for other good electional charts, then you can sign up through our page on Patreon.
LS: Come join us there. Then you can get good charts for the entire month, not just one time.
CB: Yeah, and some of those other aspects earlier in the month with Mercury and Venus and so on and so forth.
All right. Well, I think that brings us to the end of the month and the end of this episode again. Thanks so much for joining me. This has been an amazing and really fun discussion.
LS: Yeah, it was fun. Thanks for asking me. It was a quick turn around after NORWAC, but I’m really glad you asked me now because it was a fun time to discuss all of the astrology of June and further.
CB: Yeah. I’m glad you were up for it. People in the live chat are joking that you ride your robo-horse next, like —
LS: Yes.
CB: — a year from now. That’s the —
LS: I saw that!
CB: That’s all you’ll be doing? Okay.
LS: We’ll see.
CB: We’ll see. There are – I actually did see that. That is a thing. There’s like, a mechanical horse-like thing I saw somebody riding —
LS: Really?
CB: — in a thing. Yeah. It’s a thing.
LS: Oh. I hadn’t seen that yet! Maybe I could be up for that.
CB: It’s a whole new world.
All right, so yeah. Thanks for doing this even though you just did NORWAC. We’re gonna get those lectures up on your website when we can, so you did an amazing zodiacal releasing workshop where you focused on zodiacal releasing from Spirit that didn’t have to do with career and how zodiacal releasing periods which break up the life into chapters as if the life was a book can also be used to study other things in a person’s life as well, right?
LS: Yeah. We had some introductory career examples, but then I really wanted to use some non-career examples as well, because Spirit is about what your life is oriented to, and that’s career for some people but not everyone. So I had a really nice – I had a bunch of examples of that as well as posthumous ZR. ZR’s still working after death definitely is a thing. And my deep-dive example from the entire middle of the workshop was Harvey Milk’s life, because he was very much oriented toward activism and neighborhoods and gay rights and, you know, not really career things. So if you’re interested in his life in particular, people really enjoy that example.
CB: Awesome. Cool. All right, well, people can check out your website at LeisaSchaim.com, right?
LS: Yes. And it’ll be linked underneath. It’s not phonetic. People never get my spelling right, so —
CB: Yeah.
LS: LeisaSchaim.com.
CB: Yeah, I’ll put a link on the description page on the podcast website or below this video on YouTube, and —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — if they don’t see the lectures up already, then they can just sign up for your mailing list and you’ll send out a mailing list notification as soon as that’s out.
LS: Yes.
CB: Yeah. So otherwise, this was great. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for doing this. And yeah, I appreciate it.
LS: Yeah. Quite welcome. It was fun to talk with you about this.
CB: Cool. All right. As for myself, I don’t know what I have to promote. I think that might be it. I’m gonna start recording an audio version of my book… There’s a few things. I’ll announce those in the future. But oh yeah, the one thing is just I did the big Mesopotamian astrology episode, and then I recorded a followup where I went into more detail on some areas of Mesopotamian astrology based on the intense period of research I did over the past three weeks, and I just released that today as an episode of The Secret Astrology Podcast. So if you really liked that episode and you want even more on Mesopotamian astrology, then you can check that out through my page on Patreon.
Otherwise, thanks to all the patrons that support this work and support my research over the past month. It allows me to do these episodes like that big research one and put that stuff out there – in that instance, the first episode – for free. Thanks to all the patrons in the live chat; I appreciate you who joined us today and gave us great comments and helped out at different points in the discussion. Thanks for doing that. And yeah, I think that’s it for this episode of The Astrology Podcast. So thanks everyone for watching or listening, and we’ll see you again next time!
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