The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 51, titled:
Astrology Forecast and Elections for November 2015
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on October 29, 2015
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released September 29th, 2024
Copyright © 2024 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: All right, well, let’s get started with Episode 51 of The Astrology Podcast. Thanks for joining me. Today is Wednesday, October 28, 2015, at approximately 3:02 PM in Denver, Colorado. This is the 51st episode of the show. And in this episode, I’m gonna be talking with Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock about the astrological forecast for November of 2015, along with some auspicious dates that month for beginning different types of ventures and undertakings using the principles of electional astrology. For more information about the podcast of course, you can subscribe at theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe.
The podcast itself is made possible by listeners of the show who pledge their support through Patreon. So if you enjoy the show and would like to support the production of future episodes, then please consider donating a dollar or more through Patreon, and in return you can get access to subscriber benefits like our private discussion forum, early access to new episodes, or joining in on one of our live episodes, like some of our listeners are doing today. So this episode’s being recorded in front of a live audience as part of our monthly webinar format, and we’ll release that. They’re able to participate and ask us questions throughout the course of this show. So if anybody has any questions or comments as we’re going through the show, then just post them in the chatbox or in the discussion bar and then we’ll get to those when we get a chance. So let’s get started I guess first by welcoming my two co-hosts, Austin and Kelly. Welcome to the show, guys.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey.
KELLY SURTEES: Hi.
CB: All right. So we’re gonna be focusing on the month of November and the forecast and major astrological alignments. First, we had a few announcements. So I just got back from the Organization for Professional Astrology retreat—which was held in Monterey, California, over the past weekend, here in late October—and I did a whole three-day intensive on zodiacal releasing and time peaks in people’s careers. So that actually went really well, and I’m gonna take a bunch of that information and focus, over the course of the next month, on recording some new lectures on time-lord techniques and timing peaks in a person’s career, as well as other areas of their life, for my course on Hellenistic astrology. So if you like what I’m doing here, then you might be interested in checking that out through my website at chrisbrennanastrologer.com. Austin, you’ve got some more classes coming up as well, right?
AC: Yeah. I’ll be beginning the sixth and final unit in my foundation series, which I’ve titled “Synthesis,” on November 21. And although it is the capstone to an arc of classes, anybody who needs a little practice integrating all of the different elements of astrology together into comprehensible delineations is welcome to join. We’ll be looking at not just dignity, not just aspects, but dignity, aspects, signs, houses, how it all works together. That’ll begin on Saturday, the 21st and will run through December 12.
CB: Awesome. So they can find out more information on your website, which is austincoppock.com.
AC: Absolutely.
CB: All right. And, Kelly, what do you have coming up?
KS: I’ve got my lecture on progressions through the Rubicon organization next Sunday, November 1. So that’s headed up by the lovely Mina. And there’s a series of lectures—I think it’s one day a month, or one day every two or three weeks that she’s doing this. So Sunday, November 1 is the first day, and I think Austin is gonna be joining the team there in December.
AC: Yeah, I believe it’s December 6.
KS: December 6, fantastic. So rubiconastro.com is where you can find out more information about that or to sign up if anyone’s interested.
CB: Excellent. All right. And other announcements, just around the community, one of the things I mentioned in the last forecasting episode is that a group of filmmakers had recently gotten together to produce a film based on the work of Richard Tarnas called Changing of the Gods, and they were launching a Kickstarter to help fund it. And I just wanted to announce that they actually met their goal, and the movie is now gonna be fully funded and is already in production and has started filming in the past month. So we should look forward to the movie sometime I think in late 2016 or early 2017 if they’re on track with that. Other than that, I think, Kelly, you mentioned there’s a conference happening in South Africa this next week, right?
KS: Yeah, there is. I think it’s the weekend of November 6-7-8-9 or thereabouts. And it’s a fairly large conference. They seem to have speakers flying in from the States and from Australia. So that’s great for the astrological community down in South Africa.
CB: Definitely. So if anybody’s in the area or either in South Africa or feels like flying in for a great conference, they should check that out. All right, so let’s get onto our forecast and auspicious elections section for the month. What are some of the major themes coming up for the month of November or major astrological alignments that really stand out to you guys?
AC: Well, the first thing that comes to mind is the steady disappearance of planets from Virgo. October has been defined by an overabundance of planets in Virgo. And pretty early on in November we see Venus and then later Mars move into Libra. And not only does this sort of reshuffle where things are in proportion, but it’s interesting to me to see Venus moving into Libra, because it’s Venus’ first time back in one of the signs that she rules—where she is natural and powerful—since her summer retrograde. Or for my southern hemisphere pals, the winter retrograde.
KS: The winter retrograde.
AC: Recent retrograde. And so, that’s interesting to me. And then Mars’ movements into Libra is also very interesting because it was actually in Libra that Mars went retrograde in 2014. So this is his first return to the sign that he retrograded in. And so, these planets—Venus and Mars—moving through Libra have meaning which is a little bit more loaded due to reference to their cycles and what that means.
CB: Sure. Over the past few weeks, as you’ve pointed out, we had the final completion on the Venus retrograde cycle once Venus got back into Virgo. And then, more recently, we just had the Venus-Jupiter conjunction, which really completed—not the retrograde, since we’re well outside of that. But just really remembering that one of the great pre-retrograde alignments this summer was that beautiful Venus-Jupiter conjunction towards the end of Leo that kind of marked the start of the summer or the early part of the summer in some sense, and now we’re into the early phases—at least in the northern hemisphere, the fall—and we’re seeing the final conjunction of those two planets in Virgo.
AC: Right. And soon enough it’s onto new things.
KS: Yeah, I think it’s really interesting with the planets moving into Virgo—into Libra, sorry. We just had Mercury there for two months essentially, September and October. And the Libra part of clients’ charts or mundane charts and things like that have certainly been well-activated in the last couple of years with that extended Mars retrograde and then the Mercury retrograde. So it looks like there’s this potential for wrapping up or that idea of ‘onto new things’ I guess coming through very strongly in November as we get this cleanup through Libra. I think Venus is gonna potentially be very helpful or acting to kind grease the wheels in Libra there.
CB: So in terms of dates and some of those ingress—cuz they’re gonna come up pretty quickly in November—when does that start happening? And then for those that are watching the video version of this, I’ll just animate it as you’re reading some of those dates to show when the planets go in.
KS: So November 8, it looks like Venus goes into Libra, so that’ll happen first. And that’s lovely too because as soon as Venus goes into Libra, she’s gonna smash up against the North Node, both there at 0. It’ll be a nice day for white wedding if anyone wants to take that onboard. So that’s lovely. I mean, a planet on the North Node is amplified, and we’ve got a beautiful dignified Venus there right on the North Node. So that, November 8, it’ll probably be November 9 in Australia—a beautiful conjunction there of Venus and the North Node. And then Mars will dip into Libra around the 12th of November. A slightly different kettle of fish there—Mars is not so happy in Libra—but it will, certainly the first-half of Mars’ visit through Libra be ruled by Venus in November as well. So a very strong perhaps feminine or Venus vibe coming through there.
AC: I had a few things I just wanted to add, one about Venus and the North Node. In Vedic astrology, as well as in a lot of Western astrology, there are these planetary relationships where planets are thought to be inherently friendly or oppositional to each other. What’s interesting is in Vedic astrology—there’s a lot of Vedic astrology—in the planetary friendship lists that I’ve been exposed to, the only planet which is considered the North Node’s friend is actually Venus.
KS: Fascinating.
AC: Yeah, they consider there to be a special relationship between those two. So I thought that that was interesting. And then with Mars, I was saying earlier to Chris about this being sort of a—not a repetition of Mars’ retrograde last year, but a return to the same territory. If we look at what happened actually on the day of Mars’ retrograde station last year, that was when Russia annexed the Crimea, so this sort of ‘shadow’ war with Ukraine started. And so, I think it will be very interesting to watch that region and look at how things are when Mars comes back. I don’t have any specific predictions for that, but it is worth noting that a lot of analysts think that Russia’s move south into interference or action in Syria is in many ways an excuse to draw down and let’s not talk about what happened in Ukraine, and it’s sort of an excuse to withdraw.
CB: Right. And it’s interesting, just as I’m doing the animated wheel feature here, one of the things I’m noticing is November 11-12 the node ingresses or regresses back into Virgo, and the same day, Mars ingresses into Libra.
AC: Yeah, they do a little switcheroo.
KS: They cross over.
CB: So that’s very interesting, especially given that it’s starting a two-year transit of the North Node through Virgo itself, and for Mars, just a month or two in Libra.
AC: Yeah, I think it’s a year-and-a-half.
KS: Yeah.
AC: A year-and-a-half for the nodes.
CB: Okay.
KS: That’s about 18 months for the North Node through Virgo. And then Mars will be in Libra right until early in the new year, January 3, 2016. So it’s a slightly extended cycle because Mars will retrograde early in 2016, and it is just starting to slow down a little bit. So it’s not retrograde in Libra this time around, but it’s just hit the brakes a little bit so that it’s not going into it.
AC: Right. The shadow will begin at 23 Scorpio.
KS: Yes.
CB: Lovely. So we’re getting ready for that lovely Mars retrograde conjunct Saturn in Sagittarius period in the first six months of next year.
KS: Yes, that is going to be interesting.
AC: Yeah. It’s gonna be one of those where it’s Mars in roughly the same 30° almost the entire year.
KS: Certainly for the first seven or eight months of it, for sure.
AC: It doesn’t go retrograde until towards the middle of April.
KS: That’s right.
AC: It’s 8 Sag and then it goes all the way back to 23 Scorp. So it’s about half-and-half of Scorpio and Sag. As far as, will Mars be in Scorpio or Sag? Pretty much the entire year it’s gonna be in the signs that retrogrades will happen, but not necessarily within those degrees.
KS: Oh, yeah. You’re right, right until October. So Mars is just touching two signs. And I’m sure we’ll probably go into more detail about that I guess as it gets closer.
CB: Yeah, that’s one of the things that comes up for me in doing electional charts, just the hell of trying to pick an electional chart for the first several months of next year. Literally, at the OPA retreat, I had to give a talk partially about how some of the pile-up in mutable signs next year, forming a T-square, would kind of affect clients. And one of the ways that I tried to spin it was what to do with electional charts where somebody has to do something next year, cuz you have to pick what house or what part of the chart is gonna suck in some sense or not do too well by putting both Mars and Saturn right in that house. If you’re perhaps doing a business, you might want to avoid putting that in the 10th house. Or if you’re doing something where financial matters are really important, avoid putting it in the 2nd house. Or if it’s a relationship or a partnership, avoid putting it in the 7th house, and so on and so forth.
AC: Just to be a little contrarian here and be the voice of positivity and the source of rainbows—
CB: As you are.
KS: This is not usually your role, Austin.
AC: Well, mostly I’m just trying to be a problem and that means being me, but I’m willing to be positive if it means I can be a problem. I’ve actually been noticing—this is especially from watching Hillary Clinton’s chart, she has this gnarly Mars-Saturn-Pluto pile-up in Leo, which is in a morning chart. I’m a ‘morning chart’ believer. But, regardless, she has this. One of the things that she gets consistently praised for is that she’s just made of steel, right? You might not like her. You might see her as a murderous robot, but you can’t say, “Eh, she’s weak,” right? Made of steel. And I was looking at Obama’s chart the other day—I was teaching a class and I was using his chart to illustrate things about dignity—and I realized that both Mars and Saturn are in pretty close aspect to his midheaven. To a certain degree, the malefics mean that you have to deal with the hard parts of life—in that area that’s where the hard stuff will come in—but another important thing about malefics is they cultivate the qualities for dealing with impossible or really difficult situations. If you’re ready to go all-in on something and you’re ready to endure difficulty in a particular area, you can put them there with full knowledge and a commitment to be willing to do that, right? Cuz they’re always somewhere.
CB: Sure.
AC: And so, when you can’t avoid them, you can at least be ready for them. Okay, this is gonna be the hard part.
CB: Yeah. And, I mean, hers is complicated and mixed up, since that Mars, in a day chart, is actually the ruler of the ascendant. So even though that might be the most difficult area for her, the 10th house, in terms of career and reputation, it’s also the area of life that she’s the most focused on or that attracted a great deal of her attention during the course of her life. So it’s not necessarily something to shy away from, but it is certainly something that you would have to acknowledge, that you’re gonna experience some of your greatest obstacles and difficulties and setbacks in.
AC: Right. If you were reading for her at seven-years-old, you’d be like, “You will be very successful, and it will be very hard.”
CB: Right. And at that point she’d already be like, “I know.” Cuz she had been nominated for—she had been voted to be the—what was it? It was like the hall monitor or something like that. It was an elected position at her school and she won the election for that very early on in her life. It was one of the periods that Patrick Watson and I researched when we were originally putting together our prediction of whether or not she would run in 2016. And we found the same period coming up in her chart back then that’s coming up right now.
AC: Which, by the way, is totally being a prominent malefic. Nobody likes the hall monitor.
CB: Right. That’s a good one.
KS: So you win, but you’re not popular. Nobody likes you.
CB: Right.
AC: Which, if she wins, will probably be the case. Poor thing.
KS: Wow.
CB: And this is a speculative time of course, because this is assuming—what is essentially the time that’s exactly the opposite of what she’s been giving some astrologers—is the correct time. But that’s sort of a discussion for a separate show that Patrick and I are gonna do eventually.
KS: Back to November.
CB: Back to November. We were talking about the ingresses and then we got sidetracked. So we did Venus, we did Mars, we did the North Node. Is that it in terms of ingresses?
AC: Mercury.
KS: Mercury. Yeah, Mercury’s going to fly through Scorpio from November 2-20, and then will be in Sag from November 20 until December 10. So Mercury’s obviously boot-scooting along.
AC: Yeah. And so, a few synodic points about that. So Mercury is opposing and on the Sun. And so, that means Mercury will lapse back into invisibility for much of the month. And we have I believe on the 17th a Mercury superior conjunction with the Sun, which is Mercury on the other side of the Sun from the Earth. There’s a very interesting energy about the superior conjunction, just as there is around the inferior conjunction, which is the Mercury between us. And so, one interpretative convention is, well, when Mercury is between us during a retrograde, then it’s really personal, penetrating, deep insight, underworld metaphors, whereas when Mercury is on the far side of the Sun, the mind reaches out as far away as possible, and it’s often very idealistic and associated with almost religious experiences. I believe Demetra George offered a model where Mercury was in the underworld during the inferior conjunction, during the retrograde, and then during the superior conjunction, Mercury was off in Olympus visiting the gods, right?
KS: Beautiful.
CB: Nice.
AC: Just a little framework. And I personally have had some very—we’ll just call them ‘spiritual-type’ experiences when Mercury was approaching a superior conjunction.
CB: So it looks like that goes exact around November 17. Does that sound right?
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, that’s what I remembered, and it sure looks like that.
KS: Yeah, right at the end of Scorpio.
CB: Yeah, about 25 Scorpio. All right, and then Mercury leaves Scorpio and ingresses into Sagittarius by November 20, where it starts forming a conjunction with Saturn, which it pretty quickly passes after the 24th of November.
AC: Oh, but it gets messy.
KS: Well, then it’s squaring Neptune, and we’ve got the Full Moon coming. So that is one of the peak energy periods, I think. And I think that’s actually America’s Thanksgiving for you guys, the 25th-26th-27th-28th of November.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah, Mercury’s diving in there, but we’ve also got the first Saturn-Neptune square forming, exact by degree.
CB: Oh, yeah, that goes exact at the end of November. I forgot.
KS: Yeah.
AC: It’s basically exact on the Full Moon, which makes it a big, fun T-square.
KS: I love your word, Austin, ‘messy’.
CB: That’s gonna be an intense Thanksgiving, especially for people with early mutable placements perhaps.
AC: Uh-huh.
KS: Yeah. Cuz we’ve got the Full Moon at 3 Gemini, and the Saturn-Neptune square 7 Pisces/7 Sag. So if you’re in that first decan of mutable, it’s going to be strongly triggering your chart.
CB: One of our listeners, Jo Gleason, says that she’s “excited for all the arguments about religion around the Thanksgiving table.” That’s a good one. Yeah, with Saturn in Sagittarius, the big line-up in Sagittarius. And of course perhaps this will be some of the first holidays when some younger people go home and visit family after same-sex marriage has been legalized in the United States and some lovely conversations with older members of the family or people who have different religious beliefs or things surrounding things like that. So that’s an insightful point. One of the things I was thinking about recently with the Saturn-Neptune square—and the fact that this is the first of a few of them—
KS: Yeah, first of three.
CB: First of three? When do those three take place approximately?
KS: So we’ve got the second in June and the third and final in September of 2016. So we’re sort of starting a process now that is not gonna be completed until September.
AC: I believe they’re at 11° and 10°.
KS: Yes, they’re a little further.
AC: Yeah, they’re not super far. So if you’ve got your Saturn at 10° mutable, like me, then you might want to pay attention to that. Cuz you might have just been like, “Oh, Neptune’s going to aspect my thing at 10,” well, Saturn and Neptune are both gonna nail your thing.
KS: Thanks for the warning.
AC: That was grosser than I meant it to be.
KS: Than you thought. What were you gonna say, Chris?
CB: One of the things that I was thinking about recently is there’s this whole array of companies that are getting lined up—and it’s almost perfectly aligning with this series of Saturn-Neptune squares—to release some of the first consumer-level virtual reality headsets over the course of the next few months. There’s just gonna be this deluge of different companies all vying for control of releasing these more advanced virtual reality headsets and sort of unleashing this as the new thing upon the world, with Facebook having bought up one of the larger companies, the Oculus Rift. So that gives you some idea of perhaps the scope of how big this is gonna be or at what level they might be attempting to integrate it into certain things.
AC: That’s a really good point, Chris. I’ve been paying attention to the virtual reality thing, especially since Neptune went into Pisces because there’s this pretty easy timeline with Neptune and video games. In the ‘70s, Neptune’s in Sag. Where were the video games like? They were all frantic, run around and shoot. It’s Centipede, it’s Galaga. You sit at the arcade thing and just move, move, and shoot basically. And if Sagittarius has a pattern of action, it is moving and shooting, right? And then I believe it’s ‘84, Neptune goes into Capricorn and then you get the Nintendo, and I suppose the Sega systems were kind of important. But the game type shifts to things like Super Mario Land (or World) where you’re exploring territory. You’re in a hallucinatory world, right? This is Capricorn’s relationship to territory and substance. Then you fast-forward and you get into Neptune in Sagittarius—or excuse me, into Aquarius—and what’s interesting is the game type doesn’t change, which is maybe a reflection on Saturn ruling both Capricorn and Aquarius, but everything becomes 3D. It’s the same games, but now everything’s 3-dimensional.
CB: Sure.
AC: As a gamer, I was watching Neptune go into Pisces and saying, “C’mon, where are my new games? Where’s my radical shift in gaming?” And there’s some other arguments we could make about that and the way games are distributed, but the big chunk is virtual reality. Although it will have implications for other media, it’s video games that are going to be affected most immediately and dramatically.
CB: Sure.
AC: And so, we have Saturn here ‘concretizing’ this thing which people have been waiting to make happen or waiting for when it’s going to happen.
CB: Yeah. And it’s just such a hilariously literal manifestation of the basic symbolism that most astrologers associate with both in terms of talking about Saturn being about reality and about what’s actually happening and Neptune having this illusory quality and this otherworldly quality that’s more intangible. And then what happens when you combine the two, where you have a concrete reality that’s sort of illusory and you end up having a sort of virtual reality in some sense?
AC: Yeah, yeah, it really is.
KS: It’s a nice jumping-off point in terms of the theme I guess of the Saturn square Neptune. That idea of ‘concretizing’ something that has been an ethereal idea or a vision or a dream, and I think that virtual reality is a great example that could be applied in a larger symbolism. I always think of Saturn to Neptune as manifesting or creating something that has previously only existed as a dream or a wish and that idea of having to really put your money where your mouth is. If you’ve always thought this dream would be fantastic, and then the opportunity comes up to believe it or to manifest it, are you as into the real thing as you were when it was an abstract idea or concept?
CB: Right.
AC: Absolutely. And that particular challenge will be magnified for those who were born with Neptune in Sagittarius, which is basically I think ‘71 to ‘84 roughly. There’s a little ingress/regress on either side. Basically, if you are slightly too old to be
, you probably have Neptune in Sagittarius. And so, that means Saturn is going to be transiting, by conjunction, your natal Neptune while the Saturn-Neptune configurations are happening in the sky.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point in terms of it affecting especially that generation. And we have a bunch of people born slightly after that with the Saturn-Neptune-Uranus conjunctions in Capricorn and stuff like that.
KS: Yeah, that’s the kids born around the late ‘80s and the early ‘90s. I say ‘kids’, showing off my age. One of my sisters was born in the 1990s. So, yeah, she has that triple line-up.
CB: Okay. Well, yeah, so that’s a big one, since that’s hitting at the end of November. But in terms of outer planet cycles that’s probably one of the biggest ones of the month I would say, right?
KS: It’s huge. It’s arguably the biggest one of the whole year to my mind.
AC: Definitely that for outer planets really.
KS: Yeah.
AC: I mean, with Mars’ retrograde and this Saturn-Neptune thing, that’s most of the next year in terms of big, slow-moving objects.
CB: Okay.
KS: That’s a good point. What we’re kicking off this month—slowing Mars and Saturn-Neptune—it’s kind of like this is what we’re dealing with for the next 12 months basically.
CB: And perhaps instead of doing my elections chronologically like I usually do, I should have a couple for around November 26. A few months ago, when I writing the TMA column, and I was sort of desperately trying to come up with elections for the month of November that were decent, one of the ones that I focused in on some people might object to it—I mean, I’m relatively happy with it—but this is the election. So it takes place on November 26, 2015. Let me go ahead and share the screen. So it takes place on November 26, 2015. It has Gemini rising. So the ruler of the ascendant is Mercury, which is placed in Sagittarius in the seventh whole sign house. Mercury is separating from a conjunction with Saturn, and it’s separating from a conjunction with the Sun and it’s also separating from a square with Neptune. So it’s moving away. It’s the ruler of the ascendant. It’s tied up very closely in that whole lovely combination of Saturn square Neptune, but it’s moving away from it, so it’s separating. Of course if we had an ideal situation, we wouldn’t necessarily want to place the ruler of the ascendant in close proximity to that sort of thing. But the fact that it’s at least separating rather than applying means that it’s something that’s moving into the past rather than developing in the future.
And what Mercury is doing, and what it does have going for it, is that it’s actually exchanging signs in a mutual reception with Jupiter in a day chart, which is in Virgo, in the fourth whole sign house. And Jupiter’s actually overcoming through a superior sign-based square all of the Sagittarius planets that are in the 7th house, which is the Sun, Saturn, and Mercury, and it has reception. So it’s actually strongly affirming the significations of all of those planets and what’s called ‘bonifying’ them; basically saying ‘yes’ to what they want to signify and making what they want to signify more stable. This is even more so the case for Mercury because it’s applying to Jupiter somewhat widely, but with a mutual reception. So on top of that, some people would question making a malefic angular. Usually one of the rules in electional astrology is you’re supposed to avoid making the malefics angular, because angular houses indicate prominence, and so you want to avoid putting challenging or difficult planets in prominent parts of the chart. This one’s mitigated because it’s still a day chart. So this happens right before sunset—so it’s still a day chart—and so Saturn is more constructive than it usually is, because Saturn’s more constructive by day. And it’s also mitigated by that superior sign-based with reception square from Jupiter, so I’m not that worried about Saturn and making it angular. The other thing that the chart features is that the Moon is in Gemini—this is just after the Full Moon in Gemini—and the Moon is in the 1st house in Gemini, applying to a trine with Venus, which is in Libra, at 20° in the 5th house with Mars. And, yeah, I think those are the core things. So this—
AC: It’s—
CB: Go ahead.
AC: I was just gonna say it’s such a pity you couldn’t get the Moon 2° later in a really tight, momentary menage with Jupiter and Venus. Cuz if you had the Moon at 20°30’, you would have the Moon very briefly between the rays of Jupiter and Venus, which would be lively, but you would have to pick a different ascendant and rearrange the chart.
CB: Yeah. It’s like you could try to delay it and make the ascendant a little bit later and see if that would move the Moon forward, but what would you do is make it a night chart. And then all of a sudden you’d definitely want to avoid this election if this is a night chart, with Saturn in the 7th house, because that would make Saturn the most challenging planet in the chart and make it much more prominent. So this election is unique in that it has a very tight time window, and if you can’t fit the election within that time window, then don’t do it. And so, the election is set for about 4:25 PM, or basically just before sunset. So you have to do it before the Sun hits the descendant at 4° of Sagittarius, but you have to do it after the ascendant moves into Gemini. So you only have a few-degree window of 4° of the ascendant moving through the first 4° of Gemini to do the election.
AC: So, Chris, what would you use this for?
CB: So it highlights all four of the angular houses, but the two that it highlights the most are the 7th and the 4th. So I do think that you could use it for partnership and that it would be okay especially for a business partnership, because the ruler of the 7th is also the ruler of the 10th, and then you have the ruler of the ascendant applying to a square with reception. So a very softened, sort of constructive square with the ruler of the 1st. So I would use it maybe for business partnerships or even for 4th house matters pertaining to the home and the living situation, or things pertaining to a house or something like that, like a living situation.
AC: Yeah, I could see this being a home improvement thing. It’s a pretty nice 5th house too, with Venus really running the show there.
CB: Yeah. I mean, the most difficult planet in the chart is there in the 5th, which is Mars, but it does have some significant mitigations going on since it’s with its domicile lord, Venus. Venus itself is relatively well-placed and doing okay in terms of aspect. It’s not actually applying to Mars. So there’s actually a better version of this election that takes place on December 1, where Mercury is much later. It’s at like 17 or 18 or 19 Sagittarius, so it’s applying much more closely to the square with Jupiter. The Moon is in Virgo applying to a conjunction with Jupiter, and the Sun is separating from the conjunction with Saturn rather than applying to it. So this election for November is the first version of that, but there’s actually a better version of this election if you can wait about a week or two, until December 3. Then you’re actually in even better shape with a very similar chart. But if you can’t wait, and you need to do something in the last week of November, then I would go with this chart. All right. Yeah, so that’s my first election of November that I wanted to mention, which is actually the one at the very end of the month.
KS: One aspect I wanted to ask you guys about—and you may or may not, I don’t know, Chris, have this in your election—is the sextile from Venus in Libra to Saturn in Sag, around the 5° mark. And that’s happening earlier in the month, November 13-14. Just based on that little bit of reception there with Venus applying to the exalted ruler of Libra, while she is in Libra, I thought that looked like one of the more positive or potentially favorable aspects of the month, and pretty good for starting things, particularly things that you want to last. I don’t know. Have you guys had a little look at that one? I didn’t know if you had a chart about that at all, Chris.
CB: You’re talking about which one again?
KS: Venus sextile Saturn. So it’s about the 13th of November. Venus is 5—yeah, come back another day maybe. Yeah, 5 Libra to Saturn at 5 Sag, separating from the conjunction to Mars, which is obviously more helpful.
CB: Right.
KS: But that idea of Venus and Saturn both have this desire to establish or create things joining forces essentially.
AC: I would add that I really like that Venus is very much in the driver’s seat there. Venus is in her own rulership, which means she’s really potent. She’s on the superior side of the sextile, and Saturn is looking to her in Libra, which is the sign of his exaltation. Yeah, I like that.
CB: Here’s the election. I actually did have an election for that day.
KS: Cool. I thought that you must. It’s such a nice aspect.
CB: Yeah, here it is. So it’s one of the charts. It’s actually the very first day that Mars gets out of Virgo. I was very happy cuz I could finally use a chart where Saturn is the ruler of the ascendant. Cuz I was having major problems doing that while Mars was in Virgo, because then it’s in the tenth sign relative to Sagittarius and relative to Saturn. So it’s overcoming it through a superior sign-based square as long as Mars is in Virgo. But literally, the day that that’s no longer the case, it opens up this period of some great Saturn in Sagittarius elections, especially with Aquarius rising. So the chart’s set for November 13, 2015 at 12:45 PM, and it has Aquarius rising, Saturn is the traditional ruler of the ascendant, and it’s located 5° of Sagittarius, at least in Denver. I mean, you’ll have to adjust this for other locations. But at least in my location, you can get Saturn right on the degree of the midheaven, in the eleventh whole sign house though. So it’s a day chart, so Saturn is more constructive in a day chart. It has a superior sign-based square from Jupiter, and then it has that lovely sextile that’s very close from Venus that Kelly mentioned. So Venus is in Libra in the ninth whole sign house at 5 Libra, sextiling Saturn at 5 Sag. So other than that, the Moon is in Sagittarius in the 11th house, separating from Saturn and Venus and applying to a square with Jupiter with reception. So a square with reception is like a very soft, favorable or constructive type of square. And then, finally, we have Mercury and the Sun in the tenth whole sign house in Scorpio.
So it’s a pretty good chart. I mean, it has Mars in the 9th house by day, so the area of potential difficulties. There may be some 9th house difficulties there, but even those are not completely a loss. I mean, you won’t completely run into insurmountable problems there because Venus, the ruler of the 9th house, is doing relatively well. So, yeah, that’s a great 11th house election, especially having to do with groups or alliances or social matters, since the ruler of the ascendant’s in the 11th. But it would be especially good for people that are involving 11th house matters with 8th house matters having to do with other people’s money or possessions or credit, because the ruler of the 11th is Jupiter, which is in the 8th house of other people’s possessions. So that’s my November 13 election.
AC: And that’s a Friday, the 13th, by the way.
CB: Okay, very good.
KS: Oh, yeah, we do have one of those coming up. So I’m sure we’ll all be inundated with questions and comments on the significance of this.
AC: It’s a lovely Friday, the 13th. I always love—
KS: It is.
AC: —my Friday, the 13th entries in the almanac when it was a really good election. I’d be like, “So, this is actually gonna be a really good day. Sorry, no bad luck. This is actually gonna be unusually positive. Enjoy being wrong.” One thing that this talk about reception brought up that I think is pretty important—or at least important enough to talk about—is when Mercury goes into Scorpio, he’s gonna have a fun mutual reception with Mars in Virgo, right? And so, they don’t complete an aspect. Yeah, they don’t complete an aspect on those signs, but just being in sextile with signs and having one be the ruler of the other is pretty nice. When we look at what can Mars and Mercury do together, they can engineer things. Mars-Mercury stuff is something you see with a lot of people who have a constructive, engineering-type intelligence. And so, even though we might not do that for a living, we all have stuff to build or can put together a project or set up plans for doing—this is a nice combination for that. And then when Mercury moves into Sagittarius that sets him up for a mutual reception with Jupiter in Virgo, which you mentioned in one of the earlier elections, Chris, and that’s also nice. Because Mercury in Sagittarius can be a little problematic because he’s in Jupiter’s domain. Usually Jupiter is like, “Eh, screw the details, everything will be fine,” but not in Virgo. With Mercury in Sag referring to Jupiter in Virgo, he gets a little blast of the precision he’s usually lacking in Sagittarius. And then, conversely, Jupiter in Virgo—who is perhaps a little gloomy and a little too focused on details to be his usual jovial self—gets a little bit of that enthusiasm and fire from the mutual reception with Mercury in Sagittarius.
CB: Definitely. And that’s something I’ve been working on for the past several years of just what the nature of mutual reception is, and to what extent it can mitigate what are otherwise considered challenging things from essential dignity. And, for me, at least, I really do feel like the exchange of signs, or the mutual reception, can mitigate and in some ways nullify or turn into a strength what are otherwise considered debilitating positions, like Mercury being in Sagittarius or Jupiter being in Virgo, which I think is what you were just saying. But I wanted to run that by you guys to see, cuz that’s often one of the presumptions that I’m making in these elections when it comes to things like the Mercury in Sag and Jupiter in Virgo elections. But what do you guys think?
AC: I agree with you, but I want to counterpoint us with a common criticism of that, and that is ‘the two drunks leading each other home’ analogy, which is when two planets don’t have dignity on their own, it is like two incapable people trying to help each other; it doesn’t really do anything. That’s a common argument you’ll hear. I remember we used to make jokes about ‘mutual deception’.
CB: Right.
AC: Really entertaining, but I don’t think that that’s actually the way it is. I think if we’re going to offer a competing analogy, let’s use Mercury and Jupiter, because they’re both in signs of their traditional detriment. So Mercury has something which is usually useless to him. He has this Jupiterian thing, which is not any good for him. And Jupiter has this Mercury thing—being in a Mercury-ruled sign—that is of no use to him essentially. But when those two meet, they can literally exchange and be like, “Oh, this is really useful for you.” Enthusiasm from Sagittarius—enthusiasm doesn’t make you smarter, right? It doesn’t make you more analytical. And so, Mercury’s got this enthusiasm and it’s not doing him much good, and Jupiter has this really amazing capacity for fault-finding, which doesn’t do Jupiter any good. But when they can connect, they can offer to each other that thing which they don’t need, but which the other needs desperately. It’s ‘mutual salvation’ in this case where neither would be able to help themselves.
CB: Sure. Yeah, I mean, that makes more sense to me, than the idea of just being completely debilitated people attempting, not very well, to help each other out, that they’re two people not in great circumstances, that if it was just one of them in not-great circumstances, then he’s not gonna be doing so well. But if you have two people that are depending on each other—even though they’re not in great circumstance—they might be more helpful to each other than they would be otherwise, because they have some interest in helping each other out. And that point of mutual interest and mutual support becomes where the strength comes from.
AC: Yeah. Just to fill out my analogy a little bit—this is coming to me, this is not something I’ve prepared. Let’s say Jupiter in Virgo has a really awesome computer, but that doesn’t really help him in his essential struggles to find meaning in the world and philosophize and such. And Mercury in Virgo has this—or Mercury in Sagittarius—has this extensive collection of hymnals and religious writing which doesn’t help him with any of these technical procedures. But when they’re connected, Jupiter can connect to this awesome collection of religious writings and Mercury gets Jupiter’s computer. And so, they can both do their own work.
CB: Sure. That makes sense.
KS: Yeah, like the little analogy of ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’.
AC: Yeah, yeah.
KS: And I think what you were saying there too, Chris, I think that’s really true, the idea that when you’re a little bit down on your luck—or when a planet is a little bit down its luck—it’s more open to engaging in things that it might otherwise walk by, because it’s aware of how much it needs or how much it could be benefited, so it’s sort of doing what it can. And I think that’s really helpful to keep in mind that these ideas of the detriment or what have you are not absolutes, and that people will find a way to function with them. And so, having these working analogies, yeah, okay, it’s not great, but it’s going to be compensated for. That’s where the act or the power of free will comes from. You can override what might be a default challenge through your own efforts or through your own actions.
CB: Yeah. And I think sometimes when modern astrologers in the 20th century would criticize the concepts of dignity or detriment or exaltation or fall, they would point to instances where here’s somebody that has Mercury in Pisces, but they were a great poet or something like that, or they did very well or what have you. And it’s oftentimes when you see mitigations—like reception or mutual reception or something like that—that there is a technical reason why that planet is more high-functioning than it might be otherwise. And that’s not to say that the person doesn’t run into some challenges in that area, but oftentimes, certainly, that element of free will or of having some volition to make things better is relevant. But also sometimes the chart itself has certain technical things built in to tell you when they’re gonna be able to overcome certain struggles or challenges or obstacles versus when they might not be able to.
AC: That’s so right, and I want to add one more thing to that. I just got done teaching a four-week class on traditional dignities, and as so often happens when you teach, you end up learning things. What I really noticed was how much the minor dignities—or those that are pretty much absent from the 20th century (triplicity, bound, and face)—really changed the nature of what might be otherwise sort of one-sided or oversimplified detriment or fall delineations. For example, when Jupiter—what degree is Jupiter at towards the end of the month? Is it all the way to 20?
KS: Yeah, so that’s the point about Jupiter this November, it’s in its own terms or bounds, starting the 3rd of November.
AC: Right. And it’s actually going to be there for months and months and months because it’s slowing for the retrograde. Furthermore, Mercury is actually in his own face or decan for the first 10° of Sagittarius, which is where he is in all of these charts.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And so, the different dignities have these metaphors where if you’re in your own domicile, you’re the king or the queen of your castle, you’re totally in charge. You don’t have to be totally in charge to get some business done. One of the analogies I use for terms is you have a room in that house. You’re not the ruler of the castle, but you only have your own little room where you’re sovereign, right? Like you’re a renter, but you can do your work in that room. And these sort of disastrously negative interpretations are usually based on the idea that there’s nothing about the situation which can be turned to one’s advantage, really taking into account mitigating factors, such as Chris was discussing. But also if you’re gonna use dignity, use all of the dignities, right? It’s one of these cases where a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. If you only know about rulership and detriment, you’re way over-polarizing things.
CB: Right. Or if you only know about benefic and malefic, but you don’t know about sect, as another example.
AC: Yeah.
CB: And the last point to sort of top off this extended digression about dignity and the nature of fundamental things in astrology, the fundamental idea underlying dignity is the idea of planets having some familiarity with that spot in the zodiac. It’s often termed as ‘affinity’ in modern astrology, which sometimes traditional astrologers push back on. But I don’t think it’s actually necessary to fully push back on the idea that affinity is part of what the dignity concepts are placed on, or that the rulership ideas are placed on, because there’s this idea in ancient astrology where a planet that has affinity or familiarity with a certain place is gonna express its own significations more naturally and more successfully. And I think—just going back to this whole mutual reception between Mercury and Jupiter—that’s part of what allows two planets that otherwise might be having a harder time in those signs to do better. The fact that both of them are in that condition, and both of them are exchanging places and supporting each other in some way, it creates a sort of artificial sense of familiarity, even though those are signs that those two planets don’t otherwise have much to do with.
AC: Like literally staying at a friend’s house.
CB: Right. And both of you are staying at each other’s houses, so that neither of you really wants to mess up the other’s house.
AC: Right. And you can be like, “Uh, the internet’s not working,” and they’re like, “Oh, you just gotta do this thing.”
CB: Gives the password.
AC: Right. You have access to somebody who knows that like the back of their hand.
CB: Right, exactly. All right, so let’s get back to the forecast. So what are some other things? One other thing that I wanted to mention that was connected to last month’s episode—and by the way, I meant to tell you guys, especially at the OPA retreat, people are talking about the Saturn in Sagittarius episode that we did and really loving it. Evidently, yeah, a lot of people really enjoyed that episode. One of the things that occurred in the news in the past month that I thought was really funny and really an extension of some of the things that we talked about in the Saturn in Sagittarius episode—that I didn’t fully consider, and I don’t know if we fully thought of, but perfectly make sense in the context of what we were saying—was a couple of pieces of news that had to do with NASA and with outer space in general. One of them was NASA announcing the discovery of what were essentially water geysers on Mars, which has heightened speculation towards the potential for life to exist on another planet, or that it could have existed at some point in the past in the form of microbial life.
And then other thing that I thought was funny—and this was just a couple of weeks ago—was this announcement by some astronomers that published a paper saying that they were seeing some weird variations in observing a specific star, where it would be dimmed periodically by about 20%, which was much more than any other body that they’ve ever seen dimmed for, and they were having a hard time coming with explanations for it. And so, one of the explanations that they actually said—a possibility that had to be considered—was there was an artificial structure that had been around the star, that might fit the concept of what some science fiction or what some scientific authors have hypothesized as a Dyson sphere, which is where you build a huge structure around a star in order to basically capture the full energy output of that star. And this raised all sorts of questions about is this confirming the existence of an extraterrestrial civilization, and what does this mean if it’s true and everything else. And even if that doesn’t turn out to be true, or if it turns out to be a natural phenomena or something else, I thought it really fascinating that within the first month or two of Saturn going fully back into Sagittarius we have these two big news stories where they’re talking about things that are foreign, which is one of the classic Sagittarius-type matters; matters that pertain to foreign people or foreign places. But in this case, it’s actually referring to, literally, extraterrestrials or aliens, a foreign species rather than just foreign lands. So that was a nice Saturn in Sagittarius observation.
AC: That was really relevant.
CB: It’ll be interesting if it’s like with Saturn in Scorpio; we actually had something like that as well. As soon as Saturn went into Scorpio a month later, there was the David Petraeus scandal, where the head of the CIA was caught using Gmail in order to have an affair or something like that and he was busted by the FBI. And it was like this weird privacy and sex secrets scandal that came up all of a sudden right at the beginning of Saturn in Scorpio. So it’d be interesting if this is like a preview of some themes that might develop further as Saturn moves even deeper into Sagittarius over the next couple of years.
AC: So that pings a couple of things for me. One, just on the general nature of this shift from Saturn in Scorpio to Sagittarius, Saturn can be characterized as walls or structure. And so, with Saturn in Scorpio, we’re looking deep inside the walls of that structure, right? Like what’s inside the boundary? Whereas with Saturn in Sagittarius, we’re standing on the ramparts, looking as far as the eye can see towards what may lie on the horizon. It’s a much more extroverted, outward mode for attention. And then, second, as far as characterizing this month goes, hey, this is the first time we’ve had the Sun in Scorpio without Saturn since 2011. And I have to say I felt the ingress of the Sun into Scorpio two days ago, and it felt good.
KS: That’s a really good point, Austin.
AC: I was like, “Oh, yeah, this is the smooth underworld river feeling, I like this,” and Saturn wasn’t waiting for me. And so, with this coming month, we have a lot of it with the Sun in Scorpio of course. And then it’s really extra
having that Venus in
, right? There’s something almost of a breather happening here, coming after this crazy, stressful, but very productive Virgo pile-up, and then moving into Scorpio with this nice Libra coating. But then towards the end of the month, we verge onto the scorching plains of Sagittarius, and there things get really intense. We’re going to be confronting Saturn again in this new sign. This’ll be the first Sun moving to conjoin Saturn in Sagittarius, right? Again, there’s this pretty radical transition from Scorpio, which is very inward/downward, to Sag, which is very outward, very bright, very external in confronting what’s happening—what you can see, what’s happening outside—and it does so right on that Full Moon and with the Neptune there. And so, I think there’s gonna be a really big difference in the lived experience of the two-thirds of the month, which is to say through the 20th, versus the last 10 days. The last 10 days are gonna be kind of a crazy ‘go’ time, but I think the first 20 days, it’s gonna be getting mellower. And the middle of the month should be pretty mellow and then it’ll just ratchet right back up.
AC: Yeah, it sort of just strikes me, as you’re talking there, Austin, around the 20th-21st of November, when the Sun moves into Sag, we really start to get this full-on mutable emphasis. We’ve got a couple of planets in cardinal, a bunch of planets in mutable. And for the first time in a really long time, there’s no fixed energy for quite some time. So it is going to be a quality or a qualitative difference, I guess, which is really significant. And I think this whole Saturn in Sag story or theme—collectively, but also for our listeners, personally—we’re starting now, this November, to get some planets aspecting that Saturn with a little bit more frequency and intensity. We’ve got the Venus sextile. We’re also gonna have Mercury conjunct Saturn towards the end of November. We will have the Mars sextile Saturn in Sag. Again, that’s coming up around the 23rd or so of November. And then right at the end of the month, November 30-December 1, we have the Sun conjunct Saturn. So if you’re not sure what Saturn in Sag is about or is going to be about, watch the news headlines as the month unfolds, and then also pay attention to what pops up in your life on those key dates when Saturn in Sag is aspected.
CB: Definitely. That’s really exciting. So we’ll have to do our next forecasting episode the later part of next month. We’ll have seen, especially around that Full Moon, what some of those themes are that are emerging.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: It’s gonna be a big Full Moon.
CB: Yeah. When we went on the whole digression about mutual reception and dignity and stuff, I forgot that one of my elections actually perfectly tied into one of the ones that you were mentioning, Austin, and this is the last election that I wanted to mention this month, which is also the very first election on November 2. So let’s see, the chart is set for November 2, 2015, at 6:40 AM, in Denver, Colorado, or wherever you’re at, just after sunrise, whatever our local time is. So it has Scorpio rising and the ruler of the ascendant is Mars, which is located in Virgo in the eleventh whole sign house, with Venus applying to a conjunction with it at 23° of Virgo. Mars is also present with Jupiter in the 11th house. So we have both benefics in the 11th with the ruler of the ascendant. And Mars is not just stranded in Virgo without any sort of familiarity with that sign because this is the first election where Mercury has just ingressed into Scorpio, and it’s in the first whole sign house. So Mercury’s actually exchanging signs with or is in a mutual reception with Mars. So what we have is a strong mutual reception between Mars, the ruler of the ascendant, and Mercury, the ruler of the Virgo in the 11th house, which gives both planets artificial strength in some sense. So the other thing that this chart features is the Moon at 28 Cancer in the ninth whole sign house not really doing much in terms of application, just applying to a square with Mercury once it changes signs. But the main thing that this chart is about is just taking full advantage of that initial Mercury-Mars mutual reception, especially while the benefics are still applying to Mars, while Venus is still applying to Mars.
AC: And I would just add that for those who are concerned about a Moon that some might term ‘void of course’—because the Moon is at 28° of Cancer—one of the mitigating factors for the Moon being able to conduct business, even if she is void of course, is being in her own sign, right? And so, she’s here in Cancer. Not only is she in Cancer, but she’s often considered to be the ruler of that last decan of Cancer. So there are multiple stacks of dignity on her.
CB: Excellent. Yeah, yeah, that really helps. And then even just the close application to Mercury. Even if the Moon didn’t have dignity, I mean, the fact that it’s applying so closely to another planet—I feel like the modern concept of the void of course is definitely overhyped and really led a lot of people astray. In the last presidential election, Obama was nominated under a void of course Moon and accepts the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, and some astrologers actually predicted, based on that, that he was gonna lose the election because the Moon was void of course, but he did just fine.
KS: And that really comes down to the different definitions of void of course, right? Some define it just by a period of space that’s empty, some, to the end of the sign. Because of some of the information that’s been coming out more recently, it’s not as simple as the definition that has sort of been adopted in the modern realm, I guess.
CB: Yeah, exactly. And I think we’ve talked about that before at different points in the past, that there’s three different definitions of void of course, and the modern definition is not necessarily the only one, or some people would argue, the best one. So I guess people can listen back to past episodes where we’ve talked about that extensively for more on that. Okay, so I think those are the core elections. I mean, there’s several different elections that you can kind of pull from some of the ones that I just pointed out, but essentially those are four core elections that I wanted to highlight this month. And there’s some variations where you can use different ones on other dates, but I think those are probably the best dates to focus on. All right, so were there other major alignments or other forecast-type things that we wanted to mention for this month?
AC: Okay, there is one thing which we haven’t talked about, and then there’s another thing which I think we can give a little bit more attention to. I know we’ve had conversations about Saturn squaring Neptune over the last two months. But we should really talk about it more this month because it’s actually happening perfectly this month, and it’s the focal point of several other planets’ attentions. So there’s that. Before we do that, it’s worth noting that although Venus is very happy for most of the time that she’s in Libra, she does have to square Pluto and then oppose Uranus with no aspects intervening, and that just happens to be right when everything else is heating up. I believe that is the 20th-23rd. The 20th when she squares Pluto and then the 23rd when she opposes Uranus. And so, even though she may be better equipped to deal with that by virtue of her position, when you get Uranus opposing Venus or Pluto squaring Venus, that’s hard on the feelings. Those are emotionally-volatile times where there may be something of a therapeutic value which emerges, but which does not meet the definition of good times.
KS: Yes, that’s really the other two aspects that you are so correct in saying need to be addressed. I mean, it’s like a mini reiteration or revisiting of the Uranus-Pluto energy. Because even though they are separating, they’re still close enough together that when we get a planet coming down the line, it can pick up both in quick succession. So a level of things being uncomfortable. Revelations that maybe surprise or shock you. And I think Venus is sort of the activating planet here. I suspect this is perhaps in people’s personal lives more likely to be activated. But it is going to be a little bit of an eye-opener window of time.
CB: Sure. Yeah, especially for people with those degrees of, what is it? It’s about 13°-16° of cardinal signs where that will be going exact.
AC: Yeah, mid-cardinal.
CB: Okay.
AC: And that’s not a disastrous thing, but it’s worth noting as far as setting your expectations. I don’t know, when the Moon’s in trouble, I like to use the word ‘uncomfortable’. And then when Venus is afflicted or challenged by aspects, it’s usually ‘unpleasant’, and that’s not necessarily disastrous. But when you see Venus troubled or afflicted, you have things where an expected pleasure, like, “Oh, I thought it’d be really nice to hang out,” and it was really uncomfortable and kind of boring. Or it’s kind of unpleasant. Or if a person is experiencing it as themselves, they’re just in a weird mood. Or the restaurant that you went to that you thought would be really awesome is kind of gross. It’s the pleasures. It’s those lubricating pleasures that make life easier are what Venus provides. When Venus is troubled, you’ll see flies in the ointment.
CB: Yeah. I mean, an opposition between Venus and Uranus is much more sort of erratic and unstable, and sometimes electric and exciting in having an event or a romance or a meeting that starts up very quickly, but then often can kind of burn out very quickly and become very unstable just as fast. And when you tie Pluto into that, we’re talking about a Venus-Pluto square and the type of intensity, sometimes bordering on obsession that comes with that. If we were just to look at this as a natal configuration or a natal signature, it’s a pretty intense one in terms of relationships in general. So I would think that if people are having relationship things that are starting at that time with that sort of signature that that would make for some pretty explosive and somewhat tense types of relationships. I mean, how would you guys characterize—let’s say somebody starts a relationship under a Venus opposition and a Pluto square. What are the positive aspects of that, and the negative or challenging aspects of that?
AC: Well, one thing which is a little bit outside the nature of the relating between the two people is that when you have really tight ‘Venus-Uranus’ stuff, a lot of times that person’s from out of town, or it’s just impossible to get together. Uranus is such a separating factor. And so, while Venus is trying to unite, often with Uranus-Venus configurations, sometimes it’s something out of either person’s control, which means it’s not possible to come together.
CB: Or sometimes it works better when it’s not coming together. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of people that do online relationships that work really well when they’re in distant relationships that are far apart or happening through technology or communication. But then when you try and bring them together into a normal conventional setting, they sort of don’t work out or things fall apart.
AC: Yeah, well, you get the other side of Uranus, which is that explosive side. And I will just say then in watching people’s lives and talking to clients and observing my own moods, Venus-Uranus stuff—it coincides with a lot of freakouts where someone feels they can’t even handle it right now, and a lot of times those don’t necessarily have long-term consequences. People talk about intensity with Uranus. A lot of emotional intensity—especially if it spikes quickly, which is Uranus’ pattern—Uranus’ pattern is slow-built. It’s a sudden spike and then drop-off.
KS: Unexpected.
AC: Feeling momentarily overwhelmed and really freaking out on that.
KS: Yeah, I agree completely. It’s that unexpected change to the plan or to the situation. And the other thing that I’ve seen with clients a lot—with Venus-Uranus—is this interest or openness to the idea of a long-distance relationship, in addition to the online type of thing. And I remember my teacher used to talk about a Venus-Uranus combination as creating a ‘freedom/closeness’ dilemma, where the person is almost see-sawing or flip-flopping between wanting to be close, which is the Venus side, and then wanting to have time apart or have the freedom, which is the Uranus side. So a level of flexibility would be super helpful then. And the other thing I guess that stands out on that date—that November 23 timeframe—was that Mars is at 6 Libra applying to sextile Saturn at 6 Sag. So there’s a level of frustrations coming to the surface perhaps or difficult decisions. I really like what you were saying, Austin, that idea of plans being blocked or changed outside of the control of the individuals that are being affected. There are external obligations or external unexpected things that change or shift or surprise you, that mean that whatever you wanted to do to add sweetness to your life—which is ultimately Venus, that pleasantness that you described so eloquently, Austin—you can’t get the pleasantness right now. There’s a task or an obligation that needs to be met beforehand perhaps.
CB: Yeah. And I was just looking at dates and it’s like Venus hits that constellation or that T-square first and completes it in November, starting on the 19th and 20th when it hits 13 Libra and squares Pluto, and then a few days later, it opposes Uranus. But then what happens is a few weeks later, Mars moves into that—which you guys already mentioned earlier—starting around December 5-6—
KS: 5th-6th.
CB: —once it hits 14 Libra squaring Pluto, and a little bit later, let’s say by the 10th or 11th.
KS: The same week really, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So it’s like you get the initial attraction and perhaps some of the positive things of the excitement of the Venus-Uranus opposition and the intensity of the Venus-Pluto square, but then it’s like a few weeks later, there’s this other element that comes in. Suddenly Mars is there, and there’s this more combative in the negative aspect of things. If things went south a few weeks later in a relationship, then you’d get the more explosive aspect of that Uranus-Pluto square sort of keyed off by Mars coming in and completing and taking the part of the T-square that Venus used to occupy, which is a little bit more combative and a little bit more associated with strife or conflict. I mean, one scenario is if you get into any super intense relationships that start with Venus squaring Pluto and opposing Uranus, try to take it easy and weather through that period a few weeks later when Mars hits those exact same degrees and perhaps makes things a little bit more tense.
AC: Yeah. And so, this whole Venus thing is really our entryway into the last third of the month, which has a very different quality cuz Venus hits Pluto on the 20th and Uranus by the 23rd. And by then, the Sun is in Sagittarius applying to Saturn, Mercury is in Sagittarius applying to Saturn, and we’re getting ready for the Saturn-Mercury-Sun conjunction square Neptune in Pisces, and then that’s going to be T-squared by the Full Moon in Gemini. And so, that’s a lot of emphasis. All of the faster-moving bodies are aligning themselves around this Saturn-Neptune thing pretty much on the exact day that it goes precise, right?
CB: Right.
AC: To a certain degree, Mercury and the Sun and the Moon are all going to be vibing off of or taking cues from these slow-moving bodies, which have been setting up this square since the beginning of 2015. They got really close in the beginning of 2015 and then Saturn turned retrograde. And so, this one’s been trying to happen for a while.
CB: Oh, yeah, and that was the one I always refer to as the preview of what Saturn in Sagittarius would be about the first six months of this year—when Saturn dipped into Sagittarius and sort of gave the heads-up for many people about what the next couple of years are gonna be like—and then retrograded back out. So that’s a really good point, that when it stationed, it was actually super close to squaring Neptune. And so, that one of the themes that perhaps almost came together or that people would have gotten a preview about, but didn’t get the full-on impact of quite yet, but then they do later this year.
AC: Yeah, I did a bunch of readings during that period of time where the central issue was quite obviously the brewing Saturn-Neptune square. There was a combination of feeling blocked or held down—typical Saturn feelings—but being super confused as to what to do about it. And so, the worst case for Saturn-Neptune is that feeling limited or blocked or internal depression is very Saturnian. Very walled-in, but just having no fucking clue as to how to identify what do you do about it. Neptune’s not good for clarity. And when you’re feeling you’re not in a good place and can’t even diagnose the situation, there can be this sort of depression mush, right? So as far as the difficult or negative side of the manifestations of that, that’s one of the things that some of the people who are listening to this will experience. And just to go off on that a while little bit more, if you do happen to be one of those folks, it’s really important not to make the mistake in thinking, in some forms of Buddhism, what they call ‘eternalizing’, which is, “Oh, this is the way it is,” and you’ll always be depressed. Like, no. That might be the way it is for a week or two, right? That might be totally the truth, but there’s this temptation to be like, “Oh, this is how it is. I suck and I can’t do anything. I can’t figure anything out.” That’s not the case. At least not the case for
.
KS: Yeah, that’s a good point, Austin, cuz you see that a lot in client work, this feeling of dread because it’s hard now or because there’s a lack of clarity right now, or because they’ve had a failure right now. There’s this sense of they will then become permanent states of being going forward. The Saturn-Neptune square, this first hit at 7 Sag-7 Pisces, it’s in play for about a week, from about the 25th of November until the 2nd or 3rd of December. So it’s not a huge amount of time, but it might be a particular period of time where that feeling of the Neptune fog has kind of descended either literally in your life—with some issue or problem coming up that makes movement or progress difficult—or internally in terms of your own spirit, that sense of your judgment being clouded, or you ability to see a path forward. And I always think of that imagery of a fog, like driving on a foggy night on a road, is a great one for Neptune. How do you get through? How do you get down the mountain if you’re driving through the foggy road? Well, you go slower. And you almost have to take it inch-by-inch rather than kilometer-by-kilometer or mile-by-mile. You have to go a little slower, and the pace of Neptune is much slower than perhaps modern life encourages. And so, you can get there, and you can get there safely, you just may not be able to go quite at the speed or have the level of progress or intensity that you might like.
AC: I love that, and I love your answer to that. Because I was thinking, “Oh, going down a mountain road on a foggy night,” I’m thinking of car crashes. There are potentially dire consequences to this. And the answer is really simple, you just go slower.
KS: Just go slower.
AC: And I think that although the answer is simple, one of the difficulties effing that answer that’s going to come out of this configuration is that planets in Sagittarius like going fast. Literally, when we have Saturn in Sagittarius, we build rocket ships and vehicles that go faster. We really got intercontinental ballistic missiles going during Saturn in Sag in the late ‘50s. It’s all about fast. And then that first decan of Sag in my research is even more about speed. There’s a tarot card which is built out of some of the meanings, and that card is simply called ‘Swiftness’. Just speed, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Not a virtue or a situation, just fast. And so, with Saturn in ‘fast’, you feel compelled or obligated or circumstances may compel or obligate us to go faster than is safe or wise. In external circumstances, some of you can’t do anything about it. But in a lot of cases, that drive—even if it seems external—is based on your own decisions, and you can be like, “You know what? It’s not gonna kill me to wait a week to do ‘x’ or ‘y’?” Taking off the pressure to make progress when you’re kind of confused is important. Because if we go back to the analogy of traveling amidst a fog at night, it’s very easy to start going in the wrong direct, especially if it’s not one highway. And often it’s better to go really slowly in the right direction than to go super fast in the wrong direction.
KS: That’s so true, Austin, so true. Because you’re right. If you’re driving and it’s foggy, you can miss the turn, or you can think you’ve come up to your turn before you’ve got to it. And I think that’s part of the reason why people struggle a lot with Neptune collectively in modern life. It is about holding steady or just really dialing down that pace for that timeframe. It takes great self-awareness to say, “I’m a bit confused right now.” And rather than making the wrong decision, as you said, “I’m just gonna hold and delay or take a little bit more time.” Really, you want to feel your way, and that’s the very end of November, I think, with that first Saturn-Neptune peaking essentially.
CB: Excellent. Well, yeah, we’ll have to do more about that, since that becomes one of the next big things that’s coming up, that’s gonna play out over the course of the next few months. I’m sure we’ll have more thoughts on it and want to go into that more in future episodes, just about what that’s meant in the past and what other Saturn-Neptune aspects have coincided with and what that might mean, or what some of the further implications of it are for the future.
AC: Right. And so, I guess one quick note. So if you were born ‘79-‘80, you have a Saturn-Neptune square with Saturn in the superior position. I know cuz I was born then.
CB: That’s a good point. And so, this is the same thing, because Saturn’s in the superior position from Sagittarius squaring Neptune in Pisces.
AC: It’s about a 36-year cycle from any one phase of Saturn-Neptune to the same phase.
CB: Okay.
KS: Okay. And that would be the waxing square back then—the waning square.
AC: It’s 36-and-change. More like 37. Actually, no, it’s about 36.
KS: You’re not 37 yet, Austin.
AC: No, no, I was thinking, “Oh, but I’m gonna be 37, but the square wasn’t super tight when I was there.” It’s just 36 years.
CB: Brilliant. All right, well, I think that brings us towards the end of this episode. I don’t know if our listeners have any additional questions. It’s like we got to a lot of them. There were a few. I don’t know if you guys want to address any of these other ones. Ricardo Carmona asks about the Sun-Saturn conjunction and Saturn being cazimi and just the general idea of closeness to the Sun in general. That is something we addressed in an episode, maybe one or two episodes ago, where we were talking about some other cazimi. So I don’t know if you guys have anything to say about that. Barbara Farrar asks about the nodes being on the world axis. I mean, that’s not necessarily a concept that I use, the Aries axis, very much. Is that something you guys use in your work?
KS: Not a lot.
AC: Not a lot.
CB: Okay.
AC: I mean, do think that the equinoctial and solstitial cusps are important.
KS: Agree.
AC: I don’t get as excited about it as some folks seem to. I do want to just say something about Sun-Saturn.
CB: Sure.
AC: I’ve been thinking about Sun-Saturn here. One of the primary ways I think about the transiting Sun and what it’s doing is it highlights things, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: It throws a big spotlight on whatever it touches. And so, in this case, it’s throwing that beam fully on Saturn in a sign which we’re not totally used to yet. And so, I think it just serves to, as I said earlier, intensify and spotlight the ‘Saturn-Neptune’ thing, and the Sun of course on the Saturn side, really highlighting this need to make progress, this need to not only make progress but keep one’s eyes on the horizon and keep getting closer to that far-flung goal or truth or whatever it is. And so, I’m seeing it primarily as an intensifier of this configuration. I will say that we have this special aspect doctrine around the Sun where planets are considered to be damaged when they’re really close to the Sun; they’re combust or they’re under the beams and they’re combust. But my experience with these transiting conditions, when the Sun closes in on Saturn every year, is it feels a whole lot more Saturnian than it does solar. It doesn’t feel like the Sun’s running the show. It feels like the Sun is temporarily overwhelmed with the heavier, serious Saturnian energy. I don’t see Saturn being suppressed. If we’re going to see it as a contest, I think the Sun’s significations are generally more damaged during those Sun-Saturn conjunctions.
CB: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense in terms of what I’ve seen as well, so I would tend to agree.
KS: I just had one very quick point on the ‘world axis’ question. The thing that occurs to me is the solstice and equinox degree, the 0 cardinal signs, they’re hugely significant for the Sun because they show something about the Sun, if that makes sense.
AC: Right. Those are the four most important points in the Sun-Earth relationship.
KS: Yes. So the Sun hitting those degrees, wowzers. ‘Get out your bells and whistles and put it above the fold in the newspaper’ type of thing. But for other planets hitting those degrees, I don’t think it’s anywhere near as significant because their relationship to Earth doesn’t change just because they hit that degree, whereas for the Sun, it does.
CB: All right. And that’ll actually bring up something that I want to talk about in an episode in November, which is the zodiac debate. I really want to do a show on the zodiac debate. And one of the questions that we’re gonna address, hopefully, is the issue of the vernal point and what makes that a viable starting point in both the northern as well as the southern hemispheres.
KS: Oh, the 0 Aries and why we start with that?
CB: Yeah, the question basically that astrologers need to answer is this question. A lot of astrologers, especially in the northern hemisphere, get into the trap of talking about the seasons, as you well know as somebody from Australia.
KS: Obviously, I’m from down under.
CB: Sure.
KS: I had never heard this thing about switch the zodiac in the southern hemisphere. I’ve never heard it till I went to a conference here in North America.
CB: I mean, do astrologers in Australia use the seasonal analogies as much? Cuz I think that’s where it comes from.
KS: Totally.
CB: Okay.
KS: Well, no, we don’t. Sorry, I understand where it comes from. We don’t use the seasonal analogies as much. We might use words for Aries, for instance. The start of Aries in Australia and other countries in the southern hemisphere is autumn or fall.
CB: Right.
KS: We would say Aries—as a sign or as an energetic template—is about starting things. We would kind of have that meaning as intrinsic to the sign or inspired by the constellation rather than associated with the season. But I also understand too that astrology developed in the northern hemisphere, where still today the vast majority of people actually live. And so, from a historical concept, I can understand totally why it’s that way, but the energy of Aries or Libra seems to be larger than just that hemispheric ton, if that makes sense.
CB: Yeah. And that’s why I wanted to address that question, just because I think most astrologers report that their experience dealing with charts from the southern hemisphere is that the signs do not need to be flipped and they still function the same way, and Aries still occupies the same spot on the ecliptic in the tropical zodiac. So then there is a conceptual issue where astrologers have to answer the question that arises, which is, what is it that makes the vernal point appropriate as the starting point for the zodiac, that’s true in both the northern and the southern hemispheres?
KS: Sure. Yeah, that’s a good question to contemplate.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah. I don’t think anything depends on starting there.
CB: No.
AC: I’ve been doing all this teaching recently, so I’ve been going over basic stuff and rethinking it. Contemporary psychological astrology takes the starting point as individual awareness and Aries is this first bloom of the sense of oneself as separate and individual, and that is a valid starting point. However, if you look at, particularly, Hellenistic era astrology, we have this diagram called the Thema Mundi, where the starting point is Cancer. And as I pointed out to my students—
CB: Is Cancer? Is that what you just said?
AC: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
AC: So what does that imply as a starting point? Oh, it’s being born from your mom, right? It’s a very modern, individualistic thing. Life starts with being an individual. Life starts actually being a fetus and then being
, which is a process that Cancer describes.
CB: Sure.
AC: There are starting points for different processes and identifying what starts in Aries is I think important.
CB: Definitely. All right, well, I didn’t mean to open up that whole can of worms right now, but it was a nice little preview or a segue into—
KS: Of something to come.
CB: Yeah, exactly. All right, well, I think then we should wrap it up. We’re at our usual time of about 90 minutes. Yeah, so if people want to find out more about Austin’s work, they can check out his website at austincoppock.com, Kelly’s website is kellysastrology.com, and mine is chrisbrennanastrologer.com. Of course you can subscribe to the podcast at theastrologypodcast.com. You can get additional subscription benefits through our Patreon page, or you can sign up for a free email list whenever there’s a new episode and lots of other things. So, yeah, I guess that’s it. Thanks everyone for joining us. Thanks to our live audience who sent us some questions. I just want to recognize a few of them that are still sticking around right now, cuz they all posed some great questions during the course of this. So Barbara Farrar, Ricardo Carmona, Christina Caudill, and Jo Gleason. So thank you guys for joining us and posing your questions today as part of our elite audience of Patreon supporters of the show. And thank you to my esteemed co-hosts, Austin and Kelly, for joining me.
KS: Anytime. It’s always a pleasure.
AC: Yeah. Thanks everybody for listening.
CB: All right, well, thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.