The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 57, titled:
Astrology Forecast and Transits for 2016
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on December 17, 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 October 23rd, 2024
Copyright © 2024 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and this is The Astrology Podcast. Today is Friday, December 11, 2015, and this is the 57th episode of the show. In this episode, we’re gonna be looking at the year ahead and looking at the astrology of 2016 and some of the major astrological trends and planetary alignments over the course of the next year. So if you want to find out more information about the show, or if you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. So I’m joined today by my two co-hosts, Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock. Welcome to our 2016 forecast, guys.
KELLY SURTEES: Hi.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Happy to be here.
CB: All right, happy to have you. Yeah, this will be a special episode cuz usually we do a monthly forecast. But this month, since it’s the end of year, we decided to just do a forecast for the next 12 months in order to give sort of a broad overview of some of the major trends. I’m not gonna do elections this month, partially because the elections for January are just really terrible for most of the month. I don’t even want to talk about it. But also, since this is supposed to be the entire year ahead, I don’t want to waste too much time just talking about one month in the elections, and I also don’t want to give away elections for the entire next 12 months quite yet.
KS: You’ll put us all out of business.
CB: Right, exactly. But for those of you that are curious about January, I know there’s at least one listener who specifically inquired about January because some of the elections in the second-half of December were so terrible. So I would recommend just checking out my column in The Mountain Astrologer magazine for this month because I do have some elections for January there and you can kind of use that as a sort of cheat sheet. So before we get started, do you guys have any news or announcements about things you have coming up?
AC: I do, indeed.
CB: All right, what do you have going on, Austin?
AC: Well, I have a lot going on. First, I just started selling some of the recordings of the classes that I did in 2015. I had to wait for them to be thoroughly edited. But now I have about four month’s worth of classes and those are available outside of a class format. So if you don’t want to have to interact with me at all, but you would like to steal all of my material, that’s stuff for sale now.
CB: That’s how I prefer to interact with you, personally.
AC: Right, I know, I know. It’s a very common approach.
CB: Sure.
AC: And I have an even bigger announcement and that is that I’m starting my very own Patreon. So inspired by you, Chris—let me do a very quick backstory. So I wrote a weekly column, a weekly horoscope column for about eight years, and I wrote an astrological almanac for about five years. And so, I have this sort of crazy dream now—that I’m hoping Patreon will be the right fit for—where I want to go back to writing a weekly column, but I also want to write all of the content that I was producing with the almanac, which were detailed dailies, monthly summaries, and then special essays about longer-term factors. So instead of picking one or the other, I kind of want to do it all online, I want to make it all free for people who don’t have the means to purchase it, and by Patreon, let people who want to support the project support it. And so, I don’t know if this is the official name—I’ve been thinking about it as ‘The Online Almanac Project’. That might change if I think of something cooler, but I am just about to launch my Patreon. By the time your listeners hear this, it will be out there in the world. So if people would like to support my fever dream of me working myself to the bone, it’ll be there. And, like we were saying, you don’t have to interact with me, you can just read the words, so it’s got that as a bonus.
CB: And you’re calling it ‘Project Almanac’?
AC: In my mind I’ve nicknamed it ‘The Online Almanac’.
CB: All right. I think you’re gonna run into some infringement issues with that one.
AC: No, both onlinealmanac.com and almanaconline.com are both available, and I will probably have purchased them by the time anybody listens to this.
CB: Okay. Well, I hope that our one audience member, Jeff Dobbs, doesn’t go out there and steal it right now.
AC: Please don’t.
CB: Please don’t, Jeff. All right, yeah, so people should find out more information about that, where? On your website?
AC: Yeah, on my website. I will probably be ‘tweetering’ about it and using ‘the Facebook’ to spread the word.
CB: All right.
KS: ‘The Facebook’, I love it.
AC: Maybe MySpace, if there’s anything else that can date me. I’ll be posting on my LiveJournal about it.
CB: Right. Your Friendster account.
AC: Right, right.
CB: So, yeah, people should check out his website, which is austincoppock.com for more information. And I’m sure there’ll be links to your Patreon, and we’ll also include a bunch of links to that stuff in the episode page for this episode on The Astrology Podcast website, at theastrologypodcast.com. So, Kelly, what do you have going on right now?
KS: I am promoting my 2016 WellBeing astrology magazine.
CB: Nice.
KS: Which, similar to what Austin was saying, we’re doing an almanac. This is our 12th year of doing our fabulous publication, and it’s got my extended 2016 year ahead horoscopes in it, but it also has a bunch of articles from other fabulous astrologers. So a whole bunch of information about stuff going on, astrological factors for 2016, but also different tips and how-to articles to help you with chart techniques and things like that. So that’s happening, that’s out. You can get more information via my website. You can also buy an e-version as well. And then the only other thing is that I’ve got two workshops coming up, one in Sydney in January where I’m teaching a two-day intensive, and then one at the end of February where I’m co-teaching with Kira Sutherland and Laura Nalbandian in Washington state. So we’re doing a three-day intensive focusing on the Moon, each of us with a different background, a different area of focus, different specialties, but we’re gonna focus or theme it all around the Moon. So that info is on my website too.
CB: Amazing. And when’s that workshop?
KS: The Moon workshop is the last weekend in February, February 26-28. It’s actually at a cabin in Packwood, Washington state—which is just outside Seattle—for three full days: Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So that’s gonna be really exciting.
CB: Awesome. Well, people should check out your website, which is kellysastrology.com, for more information about that.
KS: Thanks, Chris.
CB: All right. As for myself, I actually just finished adding two new time-lord lectures on ancient timing techniques to my Hellenistic astrology course—the first one on profections—a few weeks ago. And then last night, I just finished a marathon, four-day recording session at about 4:30 in the morning, finishing an 18-hour lecture on the most advanced ancient timing technique that I’m aware of. And I’ve been meaning to re-record that lecture for a while. It took me years to do it, and I finally finished it, and it’s 18 hours long. So that’s out there or will be out there this weekend. And then as a result of adding that new material to the course—I’ve finished revising my course—and I’ll be raising the price on my course on Hellenistic astrology from $297 to $397 on January 1. So if there’s anybody that’s interested in signing up, or if you’ve been meaning to sign up for a while or are thinking about it, now would be a good time to do so if you’d like to save a little bit of money. All right, so you can find out more information about that on my website, which is chrisbrennanastrologer.com. All right, so let’s get started with the forecast for 2016. And you guys actually came up with a sort of strategy for how to deal with the year and how to divide it up. How did you guys want to approach this?
AC: Oh, I thought we should take it quarter by quarter.
CB: Okay, that sounds like a good plan. That sounds more manageable to me. So what’s our starting point? So we’re talking about the first quarter of 2016. What does 2016 open with? Or where do we start?
AC: Well, we can start with the Mercury retrograde, which happens within the first week of 2016.
CB: Yes.
KS: Yes.
AC: And that’s a good lead into all of the retrogrades. So one blanket statement that we can make about Mercury’s retrogrades in 2016 is that they will almost entirely be within earth signs and that’s different from what we had this year. Even though Mercury’s retrogrades may cause some disorganization or confusion there’s one pattern regarding them that makes them much easier to understand, and that is because they occur three times a year, those three retrogrades in a given year will all be in signs of the same element. And so, simply put, we basically have Mercury retrograde in earth signs, right? And so, if you have planets in earth signs what you’re gonna be looking at is rethinking those areas of life. I will say that there’s one exception to that and that’s that January’s retrograde actually begins at 1° Aquarius and then goes right back into Capricorn. But all the other retrogrades are just all earth signs, all the time. So that’s one of 2016’s characteristics that we can note right off the bat.
CB: Okay, so all earth signs, all the time.
KS: For Mercury retrogrades, specifically.
AC: Right. And so, part of what that means—if you remember that Mercury slows down going into a retro and slows down coming out of a retro, and slows down in the middle too—it means that Mercury’s gonna be spending like half the year in earth signs, and the other elements get to fight over the dregs, right?
CB: Interesting.
AC: So that tells us something about where our heads are gonna be at and where the collective conversation is going to be.
CB: So—
KS: And there’s—sorry, go, Chris.
CB: Oh, no, go ahead, Kelly.
KS: There’s one other retrograde kicking off in January too, which is Jupiter in Virgo going retrograde as well, so we do have that earthy retrograde kinda vibe. Earth element often highlights material stuff, those things to do with money, possessions, the world around you. Things that are tangible. It’s a little bit more practical, I guess. It just seems like there’s a real logistical reorganizing, restructuring quality, particularly to January with those two retrogrades kicking in.
AC: Yeah, that’s a great point, Kelly. One thing about Mercury—excuse me, one thing about Jupiter in Virgo that’s worth noting is that in Virgo, Jupiter’s in Mercury’s sign, and so Jupiter’s gonna be responding to Mercury as his ruler, right? And so, that means that these Mercury retrogrades—which are all in earth signs, and therefore, all trine Jupiter, and at least by sign all configured to Jupiter—are gonna be pretty significant reorganizations, and they’re gonna be reorganizations of how we’re ‘Juping’, right? What our plans are for expansion. Or in the case of Jupiter in Virgo, expansion through cutting the fat or improving efficiency.
CB: And that becomes one of the themes for the majority of the year, since Jupiter’s in Virgo, what, all the way through September or something?
KS: Until September 9, yeah.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah, that idea of expansion through cutting the fat, sort of trimming back, there’s no room for excess with Jupiter in Virgo.
AC: Right, right. It’s very classically ‘less is more’.
KS: Yeah, and seeing the beauty and the opportunity in that.
CB: And before we move onto some of those broader long-term themes, one of the things about the start of January and that Mercury retrograde is the sort of ‘elephant in the room’. I’ve been kind of in my head for the past few months referring to this as ‘the Mercury retrograde from hell’ because it stations retrograde exactly square Mars almost. So we have Mercury basically ingress into Aquarius by, what is it, January—
KS: 2nd.
CB: —2nd. And then a day later, Mars ingresses into Scorpio, which is exactly square—so they’re practically square within about a degree—and then Mercury stations retrograde right at that time. So what we have is not just Mercury stationing retrograde, but we have Mercury stationing retrograde with Mars in a superior square over Mercury, and thus, sort of ‘afflicting it’, to use an older term. So that’s not a pretty alignment from my perspective in terms of ideal situations. Sometimes we have those easy Mercury retrogrades and you misplace your car keys. Other times you have those other sorts of Mercury retrogrades where there’s real periods of tension and stress, and sometimes strife or conflict or disagreement and other things of that nature. And this Mercury retrograde seems to be much more in that category for many people, especially if this is hitting a sensitive spot in your chart. How do you guys feel about this? Does this feel like a warm, sort of fluffy Mercury retrograde to you?
KS: No.
AC: No.
CB: Not so much?
KS: Particularly that first week. And it’s a good point that you make, Chris. I mean, it feels prickly and spiky and sharp, and the words that get said are cutting, I guess. And that really is the first week. If you’re back at work after holidays or what have you on the 4th of January, it’s that first week of January where this is sort of all planning out until Mercury gets back into Capricorn. So it’s not the nicest start to the year, unfortunately.
CB: Yeah, bad times. I mean, we could say—if you were to be proactive about it—perhaps try to hold back from arguments or don’t fly off the handle if you get into a verbal altercation with somebody. But sort of be aware of the potential of that week for the greater potential for conflict or heated exchanges and things like that, and in the realm of Mercury-related things, try to rein that in a little bit or be a little bit more cautious. Austin?
AC: I think we can also expect some pretty violent and nasty arguments as part of the public discourse.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Probably internationally. How could this not be more intense international arguing about how to deal with the ongoing Syrian disaster?
CB: Sure.
AC: They’re doing that now and Mercury is not square Mars and stationing. So there’ll probably be some significant and not terribly harmonious bump as far as the international discussion and planning regarding the Syrian situation.
CB: Sure. And it looks like we have a pile-up of a triple-conjunction of the Moon and the Venus and Saturn around that time in Sagittarius. Then we have a Sun-Pluto conjunction also around the same time. So there’s just a lot of really dynamic, not-easy or tense aspects right out of the gate at the very beginning of the year in that first week. I mean, even though we’re looking at the entire year here, we’re focusing on something pretty narrow, which is just the first few days, but it really starts this year off on kind of a tense note, which is sort of notable in and of itself. More broadly, what are some of the other long-term themes going on in January or the first two or three months of the year?
KS: Well, one I think that does need to be mentioned is Jupiter-North Node in Virgo. And that is going to be a three-part or a three-hitter, but the first hit does start to kick in towards the end of January, thankfully, after the Mercury. Interestingly, the energy kicking in late January and into February sort of eases off or smooth out or settles down a little bit. Mercury stations direct around the 24th of January, and then Jupiter and the North Node at 22 Virgo start to really work together. So Jupiter is in detriment in Virgo, but there is that sense of one of the benefics being amplified a little bit. It’s not over-the-top abundance or generosity or opportunity, but there are perhaps small gains to be made with that Jupiter-North Node connection. Have you guys got some different ideas on that?
CB: I mean, I would just notice how Mercury stations direct conjunct Pluto and square Uranus.
KS: Of course.
CB: It’s like there’s some positive North Node-Jupiter action going on there, but to put it very lightly, ‘the Mercury retrograde from hell’ is just the theme that I keep coming back to with that one.
KS: We can’t escape it. And you’re right, because in fact what happens is in the third week of January, around the 22nd, Mercury retrograde conjuncts Pluto. Then Mercury’s gonna station direct 24th-25th of Jan. And then on the 29th of January, Mercury, now direct, conjuncts Pluto again. So within a seven- or eight-day period we get two Mercury conjunct Pluto aspects on either side of the station. I mean, stuff’s gonna come out of the woodwork. That’s like hidden stuff coming to light, I guess.
CB: Definitely. And things coming to light unexpectedly. Cuz it’s reactivating the Uranus-Pluto square that we thought we were free of, but then we have other swift-moving planets coming in and sort of transferring the light between the two of them.
AC: Yeah, I wanted to say something about that. So even though we’re done with exact hits between Uranus and Pluto, they’re really close at the end of January. Pluto is 16 and Uranus is 17. And they’re not gonna complete that aspect, but that’s as tight as it’s gonna get. And so, if we look at that pair as describing a series of situations which have been unfolding since 2010-2011, Pluto in Capricorn is in a sense the desperate need to keep order and security and organization in the midst of all of these crazy Uranus in Aries changes, right? And without labeling one a ‘good’ guy or the other a ‘bad’ guy, the situations which have emerged in people’s lives on a personal level, a lot of things have changed in the last five years, last six years. And so, it’s trying to do the Capricorn thing. How do you keep the boat steady? How do you keep the house from crumbling? How do you create a firm, solid foundation and basis that can endure and work with what is a period of pretty rapid change, both technologically as well as politically? So it’s this question on solidity and rooting with Capricorn, but at the same time, how to be solid in root in the middle of a changing situation, which is the Uranus part. And Mercury’s direct station—meaning the answer to a lot of our questions that will arise—is found by thinking about this tension, which was characterized the last several years by placing the mind there and really examining how you’re doing that. Does that make sense? I hope so.
CB: Definitely, definitely. Yeah, I mean, that’s a really good point, especially in terms of just how close those two get again. They’re within a degree of an orb of a square, which I think everyone pretty much universally agrees—practically almost exact by that point—is the next best thing essentially. So we have the full reactivation of that, even though we thought that we were past it. All right, so what else is going on?
KS: So then the other big event in the first quarter is the eclipses in March.
CB: Okay, so going forward to March. So when’s the first one?
KS: The first one is around the 9th, March 9. We’ve got a New Moon or a solar eclipse—there you go—19 Pisces very tightly-conjunct the South Node.
AC: Yeah, so that’ll be a total, I believe.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So a total solar eclipse at about 18 Pisces.
KS: Yeah.
CB: And it’s opposite, pretty closely, to Jupiter at 18 Virgo. What else do we have going on? It’s nicely squared to Saturn at 16 Sagittarius.
KS: I mean, in some ways, the eclipse there—that New Moon—is really pinging off some of the main mutable themes for 2016, which is this idea of the tension or the adjustment between planets that are in Virgo, Pisces, and Sagittarius. Cuz it all sort of comes to a head I guess at this particular eclipse. Yeah, it’s gonna be, I don’t know, juicy, dramatic, a lot of things shifting. I get this idea of quicksand, where things are just moving. There’s a level of instability, I guess.
AC: Well, one of the primary ways that I look at eclipses and the nodes’ time in a given pair of signs is that they mandate a readjustment. In order to move forward, you need to sort of let go of some things and really take the bit in your teeth regarding some other things, right? And so, with the South Node in Pisces—and this being a South Node solar eclipse—I think this will be about letting go of some Pisces stuff. You note that Neptune is in Pisces, right? Although Neptune is about 9° away from this eclipse, that’s plenty close. And I think there’s a theme here which is basically letting go of some fond dreams or letting go of some fantasies about how you thought things were going to be, so that you can make room for what you actually have to do, and also remove the friction between yourself and what needs to be done. It’s one thing to work hard. But if you are expecting leisure, or you’re expecting a cushier dream, and you’re told you have to work super hard, it’s much more frustrating. And so, this idea of letting go, it doesn’t mean crush your dreams, but it might mean that this is not the time to be ‘living the dream’, maybe that’s next year, right? Or maybe that’s in a couple of months. It’s about letting go of some unrealistic expectations. I think that coheres very nicely with this Jupiter in an earth sign—Jupiter in Virgo, less is more—and these three Mercury retrogrades in earth signs. This is very practical stuff—the idea of focusing on practical, focusing on solid things like finances and where you live and how many hours a day you’re working and what are you getting out of that, this sort of concrete analysis. It makes a lot of sense with, well, you might have to let go of some fantasies in order to really do that analysis, so I feel like there’s some coherence there.
KS: Yeah, just looking at that chart more as you’re talking there, Austin, there is a real polarity or push or swing, if you like, the see-saw between Pisces and Virgo. The eclipse highlights the Sun-Jupiter opposition. And then with the rulership piece—the eclipses ruled by Jupiter, which is in Virgo, which is ruled by Mercury, which is in Pisces—we’re getting this real interplay. I think that kind of reinforces what you’re saying, Austin. The dance between the dream or the fantasy or the idyllic image that you hold in your mind versus the day-to-day reality about the necessities that must be done or attended to.
AC: Yeah, and let me just say one thing about letting go of fantasies. The way I see the nodes is generally reallocating energy so that it’s more efficient. And so, it’s not just about boxing your dreams up and burying them and being sad, I think it’s about taking that power of imagination and visualization that you may have invested in particular scenarios and taking that creativity and imagination and applying it towards solid, real stuff, right? Pulling some of that water out of the sky and actually using it to grow a garden.
KS: Oh, that’s a beautiful way of the elements together.
AC: Thanks.
CB: Yeah, and I think that interplay—people are already calling it either the cardinal—not cardinal. They’re calling it the mutable cross or the mutable T-square which is going on for essentially much of the next year, but especially during the spring when we have those eclipses taking place, and we have Saturn squaring Neptune and Jupiter opposing Neptune from Virgo and squaring Saturn. And then Mars joins the party—not necessarily by degree—but at least moving into the apex sign in Sagittarius that’s square to Pisces and Virgo. It’s really notable, that interchange between Saturn and Neptune and the idea of that which is real versus that which is not real or that which is an illusion as being one of the themes of next year. And I think it’s really funny, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence—as I’ve talked about during previous shows, and as, hopefully, you, Austin, and I and Kent Bye are gonna talk about in an upcoming show—I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re gonna see the release of all of those virtual reality headsets flood the market during the first few months of next year. I think from January, February, and March on, five different companies will release virtual reality headsets at the same time.
AC: Yeah.
CB: It’s like a very literal manifestation of that distinction between the Saturn-Neptune square and this idea of what is actually real versus what is an illusion, and what happens when you start crossing the boundaries between the two so that you start taking illusions to be reality, and the positive things that can come along with that in terms of immersion and the sensory perception of things that are illusory, but also the downside of that in perhaps being led astray by false or by unrealistic things that you’re following or chasing after or have in your mind. That seems to be one of the major themes connected with this whole mutable pile-up next year from my perspective.
AC: Yeah. And another way to characterize it—I agree with all that—is just trying to figure out like, what’s going on? What’s actually real? What are we supposed to do? That’s the Saturn-Neptune. If we look at the international situation—like the macro situation—is China gonna destroy us all? Are we gonna be super good friends? Is Russia evil again, or is that just sort of a misunderstanding? What the hell is happening in the Middle East? And what’s going on with Europe? It’s very, I don’t know. It’s a very fluid situation just on a human/macro level. And one of the neat things about astrology is it shows you that there is a profound resonance between what’s happening on a collective level and an individual level, and so a lot of people are having similar situations. Chris, you and I were talking about this the other night. We were talking about some of our new projects and being like, “Well, I don’t know how it’s gonna go? I’m gonna go do it, but we don’t have the data on this. Things haven’t solidified totally yet.” And so, there’s Saturn-Neptune and Jupiter in Virgo’s in there like, “Come on, let’s study it all and let’s try to figure out what the actual situation is,” and it’s not easily soluble cuz we just don’t know yet. And so, we have to move towards knowledge and a useful take on the situation. But to expect ourselves to collectively and individually know exactly what the situation is, exactly what the right move is, is unrealistic cuz there are just too many unknowns.
KS: For sure, for sure. And in some ways that kind of drills down the Saturn-Neptune square into the Jupiter-Saturn square, which is the feature in the second-half of March. And that is probably the last major aspect if we’re talking really high level for that first quarter. What I heard a lot in what you’re saying there, Austin, is that idea of it’s the dance between wanting to take that leap of faith, but wanting to back that up with some substance or some consistent effort, which I think the leap of faith piece is a Sag or a Jupiter-type of experience. We’ve got Saturn in Sag and then Jupiter in Virgo, and these Saturn and Virgo components are very much about the follow-through or the follow-up. Let’s literally put your money where your mouth is. If you’ve got that dream, what are you gonna do on a regular or a consistent basis to help bring it into being? And I think there’s a real potential to manifest something that is real or solid or see the first level of results in that March period. To see the results—of course I’m spinning the hopeful side—or to get the reality check of where your plan needs to be tweaked or where you might need to go a little back to the drawing board if things aren’t working out as you had planned.
AC: Totally. I want to say one more thing about the first quarter. So during the first quarter, Mars is going to be warming up for its retrograde, which takes place in the second. And so, one of the things that I see very consistently is that the big, gnarly stuff that sometimes happens on Mars’ retrograde station has been communicated or telegraphed over and over and over again in the month-and-a-half leading up to that retrograde station. A lot of times it’s a situation that keeps getting more and more and more and more tense, and then some people are like, “Oh, golly, I had no idea that that would blow up.” Sometimes there’s surprises, but a lot of times, especially on an individual level, you can see what the whole Mars retrograde thing is gonna be about two months ahead of time. You just kind of pay attention and just note where things are a little shady and a little shifty and that’s probably gonna be what it’s about. And so, you can be ready for it in a stoic sense of being ready to deal with a particular set of issues, and then you can also just do the basic ‘wear a raincoat’ when it’s going to rain ‘astrological radiation’ as far transits are concerned. And so, we have the warm-up the second-half of the first quarter. Mid-February through March, Mars is in the shadow of its coming retrograde in Scorpio, and then in early March, he moves into Sag.
CB: Yeah. And it enters its shadow by February 17, it looks like. That’s when it hits 23 Scorpio. So that’s the point that it will retrograde back to later in the summer. So that’s basically the early preliminary stages of the Mars retrograde’s beginning. And then another important turning point might be that first ingress of Mars into Sagittarius, which takes place around March 5-March 6.
AC: Yep.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So that might be kind of tied into your thing about starting to see a preview of it in the month or so, or sometimes two months ahead of time. Those might be our target dates. That’s the point where you’re gonna start getting a good idea and a preview of if that Mars retrograde is gonna be important to you. And especially if it’s gonna hit you hard, some of those themes surrounding it are gonna start showing themselves by that time.
AC: Yep, yep. So just keep an eye out.
KS: Yeah.
AC: An ounce of prevention.
KS: Some prevention, yeah. The ‘raincoat’ analogy, Austin.
AC: Right, right. Well, that’s our go-to analogy as astrologers with those things which can be avoided.
KS: Yeah, for sure. And that’s really the transition then into the second quarter, isn’t it, which is all about Mars retrograde.
AC: Oh, well, we do have a new eclipse. We have the companion eclipse to the South Node-New Moon in Pisces.
KS: Do you like it? Got it, Pisces or Virgo. I just skipped right over it.
AC: Right. So this one, what’s interesting is that even though the North Node is in Virgo now, the Full Moon following our New Moon solar eclipse is actually 2° Libra, and it’s close enough to the North Node that we’ll get a partial lunar eclipse. And this is like the very end of our eclipse in Libra that we had for basically the last year-and-a-half, two years. I believe they began in February of 2014. And so, this is just this little, last bit for the Libra/Aries axis. We’re done with Aries. We had our last Aries eclipse in September of 2015. And then this will be the last one in Libra, and then we’ll be wholly and fully into ‘Pisces/Virgo’ land.
CB: That’s funny cuz it’s kind of like the end of that whole thing that astrologers were making a big deal about for a few years, the ‘cardinal’ climax or cardinal cross, or whatever other names we were giving to it, where there was just this huge emphasis on the cardinal signs and the Uranus-Pluto square and everything else. And this is like the last major thing going on there, to some extent, especially now that the Uranus-Pluto square is at least starting to get some distance, and then we fully shift more into this mutable pile-up.
AC: Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, for those of you who have Sun/Moon/ascendant primarily in cardinal signs, you get to hand the dirty end of the stick to people like myself who are heavily invested in mutable.
KS: Yes, it seems to go that way, doesn’t it, the modality groupings. I don’t know if they’re focused on enough. Because the way the eclipses and some of the transits work, we tend to go hard on one modality for a few years and then onto the next.
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: Well, as someone with fixed sign placements, I say ‘good luck’ to you two for the next couple of years.
KS: I have a theory about this, Chris, which is fixed signs do not like change. It’s inherited within them to resist or to push back when the opportunity for change or the necessity for change arises. And so, I think some transits are harder for different modalities. So a Neptune transit—which is like ‘go with the flow’—I remember when Neptune was back in Aquarius a few years ago, and so many clients that were fixed really struggled with that because there was that resistance to letting go or going with the flow. And some of the ‘mutable’ people that I had come through the consulting room—it’s not that they get a better result from the Neptune transit necessarily, but the process of going with the flow seems to come a little more naturally for them, if that makes sense.
CB: Yeah, I mean, ‘mutable’ people are used to being kind of flaky, compared to the ‘superior’ fixed sign qualities that I possess.
KS: I can’t believe you said that while Austin wasn’t here for the two of us to defend ourselves.
CB: Yeah, I have to wait until the guy with the Mars in Pisces leaves and then I can say that.
KS: Oh, that’s hilarious.
CB: Yeah.
KS: And you’re right. I think the inherent flakiness—
CB: Oh, no, he’s back.
KS: He’s back now, so you’ll have to stop having a dig. That’s brilliant.
CB: Mutable signs I think are really great.
KS: Austin, Chris just slammed us. No, but I think the flakiness works. In the middle of a Neptune transit, it’s helpful.
CB: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I mean, mutable signs—because those are the signs, in both the northern and southern hemispheres, coincide with the end of the seasons. And so, there is this quality of it being sort of a transition point, where you’re moving off the stability of one season and moving into the more dynamic quality of being at the beginning of a new season, so there is this in-between state. So people with heavy mutable placements do seem to really be more comfortable or more at home in that place in-between worlds. Yeah, so I think that makes sense.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Well, mutable signs are adaptable. So if we’ve got cardinal, which is, “Hey, I want to do something,” and then fixed, which is, “We should probably do it this way,” the mutable phase is when you realize that your plan only half-worked and you have to adapt to things as they are. In almost every military operation, it’s really carefully planned. You get the troops on the ground and then they try to execute the plan, and then things go crazy and you have to just adapt to what’s actually happening. Or in chess, right, you have your opening and then you proceed along a particular strategic route. And then the endgame is just sort of like, “Well, these are the pieces I have left. What can I do with them?” You can’t plan for the endgame.
KS: Yeah.
AC: You probably should, it just isn’t gonna get you all the way there.
KS: Yeah, events won’t necessarily follow the plan. And this is actually really reminding—with this Mars retrograde that we have second quarter 2016, April-May-June—the longer period happens with Mars in Sag. Because Mars is moving more slowly in that Sag period, we’ve got about six weeks of Mars in Sag retrograde and then about four weeks of Mars in Scorpio retrograde.
CB: That’s a really good point. So that station and that whole point of it just slowing down there, it just sort of sticks there or stays there for quite a while.
KS: Yeah, it pops into Sag early in March and then we get Mars’ retrograde starting April 16, around 8° Sag, and it’s in Sag until the end of May. So, again, with this Mars retrograde, it’s almost like there’s two sub-periods within it because the energy of Mars in Sag is very different from the energy of Mars in Scorpio.
AC: Oh, totally. That brings us to it’s this kind of retrograde which is split between signs.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Our last Mars retrograde—which was March or May of 2014—it was all in Libra and all of the significations were Libran. All about weird diplomatic alliances. It was all about relationships, national and personal, getting broken up or troubled. Questions of justice and can we hang out or not, etc., etc., what is our relationship to each other. The retrograde station by day last time was the day that Russia annexed the Crimea, and then that broke up the post-Cold War order in Europe, and everybody was like, “Okay, what’s our relationship to Russia? What’s our relationship to each other? What do we do?” and so, it was very focused. This is a little bit different, right? In one way, we can see that the question is posed in Sagittarius. The retrograde station—the event or experience which makes you question, hey, maybe I might need to change this up a little bit—is posed in Sag, but the direct station, or the answer, occurs in Scorpio, right? And so, that means that for most people, there’s gonna be a problem in one house or one area of life, but then the answer is gonna be in the house before that. I was talking with a client not too long ago and for them the retrograde station in Sag was their 2nd house. So it’s like some money issues and they could see how this will probably come up for them around this time based on the plans they made. But the answer—which is Mars direct station in Scorpio—was in their 1st, and they’re like, “Oh, I’m going to have to work really hard for money, and the answer to that is internalizing that fierce, constant, unwavering drive of Mars in Scorpio—”
KS: Beautiful.
AC: “—moving from the 2nd to the 1st.” And so, I think you can do a very similar type of mathematics, you can apply that formula. The problem here, solved by this. It’s important to note that Mars’ direct station is in one of the signs where he is ridiculously strong.
KS: Yeah.
AC: So the answer is going to be martial in an extremely archetypally, un-alloid sort of way. It’ll look exactly like Mars, right? It’s not going to be like ‘a Mars with a little Jupiter or mercurial’ thing. It’s gonna be ‘Mars-y’.
CB: So the problem that people run into will be around the time of the retrograde station in Sagittarius and in that area of the chart, but then the resolution is in the area where it stations direct.
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: Okay.
AC: At least the point that you can move forward from, right? Cuz literally the planet’s like, “Eh, can’t make any progress from here. Gotta go back.” And so, it’s the point where you can begin moving forward again. And a lot of times, here’s the problem, okay, this is how we’re gonna deal with it. Sometimes planets represent things that happen to you rather than things that you do, and in that case it might just be when the shit storm lets up and moving forward again. But in most cases, we have significant choices to make, and usually there is some problem to solve and some change of strategy.
KS: Yeah, that’s a beautiful way of putting it, Austin, the idea of that change in strategy, which I think is very Mars in Scorpio too—that idea of what is the plan or what is the ulterior motive or the underlying desire here and how do we get back on track with that. And to sort of just pick up that thread of the modalities that we were touching on before, within the timeframe of the Mars retrograde, we will also have the second Mercury retrograde for 2016. So Mercury will retrograde in Taurus, starting around the 28th of April, back to the station direct in Taurus on the 21st of May. And what I thought was interesting, well, we’ve got a double-retrograde for that late April-May period; so definitely those classic ‘stop, review, and redo’ retrograde concepts apply very strongly in May as a month. But Mercury will station at 14 Taurus and then Mars will station at 23 Scorpio. And to use your ideas there, Austin, that idea of the answers coming from these station direct points, we’ve got one answer coming out of Taurus and one answer coming out of Scorpio. So the houses, or that pairing, of the Taurus/Scorpio in a person’s chart are areas of life where there are maybe some answers or insights to emerge that can help with that moving-forward process.
CB: That’s a really good point. So Mercury actually stations right at 23 Scorpio, which is where Mars will retrograde back to. So 23 Scorpio becomes a sensitive point for this whole period for a decent part of this year.
KS: That’s the station direct for Mercury. I’m sorry, that’s the station retrograde, the 23, and the direct is at 14.
CB: Right.
AC: Right.
KS: Yeah, so that’s interesting, Chris, to go further with that. That 23 Taurus/Scorpio is the station degree for both of these retrogrades.
CB: That’s actually extremely interesting. Yeah, so Mars is gonna hit its shadow point at some point earlier in the year when it hits 23 Scorpio and then it keeps going, which is kind of interesting itself because Mars goes over this spot, but he just kind of passes by it without lingering. But then it suddenly starts slowing down once it gets into Sagittarius and decides to go back to a spot and retrace its steps all the way back to 23 Scorpio, so that there’s a revisiting of something that took place all the way back at that degree. And it’s weird that you have the Mercury retrograde taking place right here as an almost foreshadowing of the return back to that degree. So, yeah, that would be really important if different people have that as an important degree in their charts, especially in fixed signs like Taurus, Aquarius, Scorpio, and Leo.
KS: Hugely significant. Yeah, if anyone who’s listening has a planet, like a personal planet, at 23 of a fixed sign—particularly Taurus, Scorpio, or even an angle like the ascendant or midheaven—you want to be prepared for that ‘two steps forward, one step back’ over the first-half of 2016 with these series of retrogrades there.
CB: Right. Okay, I mean, otherwise, that’s a nicer-looking retrograde than the one from January, cuz it’s at least trine to Jupiter.
KS: Trine Jupiter. Yeah, much nicer.
CB: Yeah, trine Jupiter. And then Venus joins in Taurus.
KS: Yeah, that’s one of the nice things about May, isn’t it? Venus in Taurus.
CB: Yeah. I mean, aside from the whole Mars-Saturn stationing in Sagittarius, or Mars-Saturn conjunction that’s going, that’s not necessarily fun if that’s hitting some part of your chart if you have heavy mutable placements. If you’ve got heavy fixed placements, once again, you’re coming out on top. So I’m liking that personally, once again.
KS: Oh, gosh. Enjoy it while it lasts, Chris.
CB: All right. Yeah, I guess that’s not permanent.
KS: No.
CB: Well, yeah, cuz Mars will then retrograde back into Scorpio, then the ‘fixed sign’ people, like me, get their comeuppance.
KS: Yeah, that time.
CB: All right, so we’re getting into the middle of the year here where eventually Mars retrogrades back into Scorpio by May 28. So we’re getting towards the later part of the spring in the northern hemisphere. Saturn’s now retrograding back, and it’s actually moving pretty quickly, cuz it’s at the opposition phase with the Sun. So it’s moving as fast as it can in the retrograde phase. Jupiter’s at the square. Okay, so this is the so-called ‘mutable cross’ actually that some people of the modern astrologers that was talking to at the OPA retreat were really focusing on, when they had us do a panel on the so-called ‘mutable cross’. And I was looking at it for most of the spring and wondering what the hell they were talking about, cuz I didn’t see the T-square or the cross being filled out into a full four points. But it must be this. It’s the Sun—yeah, it’s—
KS: The Sun and Venus running through there.
CB: The Sun-Venus conjunction, yeah, and a New Moon that takes place right around the same time, that fills out temporarily, or very quickly—but nonetheless, it fills out a complete and pretty tight cross between those four signs. So June 24 is the date for that approximately. The New Moon at 14° of Gemini, with Venus also at 14°, Saturn and Neptune at 12 Sag and 12 Pisces, respectively, and then Jupiter at 14 Virgo. So they’re all pretty tight in that combination.
KS: Yeah, that’s juicy. And the other thing that’s happening in June is the Saturn-Neptune square kicks back in.
AC: Yeah. In many ways that mutable cross is just an emphasis on Saturn and Neptune. Saturn and Neptune—they’re describing the second-half or at least the last quarter of 2015, and they pretty much run through all of 2016, and so that’s the big theme. And then, as Chris mentioned, we have a New Moon in Gemini on the 4th of June kicking that off. And Jupiter is never going to exactly square—Jupiter doesn’t go far back enough into Virgo to oppose Neptune directly, but that’s about as tight as it’s gonna get, right? So we have this situation which is ongoing tightened up and emphasized during this period of time. Fortunately, Mars is off in Scorpio. He’s being retrograde, but he’s not configured to any of this, which is great, because we don’t want that. This is confusing, but this isn’t heinously malefic.
KS: No, that would be ‘fixed’ problems, heinously malefic.
CB: Right.
KS: This is just dazed and confused.
CB: Yeah, definitely.
AC: I was born with a mutable cross with Saturn and Neptune and the Sun and Moon and the nodes involved. So it’s really not that bad, I promise. It’s confusing. Confusion is in and of itself not an ideal state, but it’s one thing to be confused because you woke up fuzzy-headed and you got a lot going on versus being confused because terrible things are happening.
KS: Absolutely. And I think too, the idea of going off on tangents is a very mutable thing. The curiosity of bouncing off here or there, you may not move forward in a straight line, but you’re certainly going to gather a lot of perspective or experiences along the way.
AC: Yeah. One thing I find about crosses as they occur—when there’s an ongoing cross by transit—is a lot of times there’s a lot going on, and you have to move from one thing to the next thing. You’ve just gotta keep rotating, you’ve gotta keep moving, attending to the ‘stations of the cross’, as it were. It’s hard to hold center because you’re being kind of spun around a little bit. And it’s confusing. It can be certainly off-center or off-plan. But if you just keep moving and attend to things as they need attending to—this is mutable, it’s a mutable cross—be adaptable, too. It might be a hectic week, but before you know it, you’re done, and the cross will have dispersed.
CB: That makes sense. All right, well, that brings us up to—we’re getting into the later part of the spring in the northern hemisphere and the early part of the summer, so we’re getting close to quarter three of 2016 at this point. Now that we’re moving into June—before we get there—when exactly does Mars station? It doesn’t station until—
AC: The last day of June.
KS: 28th of June.
CB: Okay.
AC: Yeah, end of June.
CB: So the very, very end of June.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Are there any other things that we’re overlooking before we get to that point? Or is that really the next big deal?
KS: Yeah, June has the Saturn square Neptune, which we’ve talked about—that Neptune Grand Cross—and then Mars direct.
CB: All right, there it is. So Mars is direct around June 30. It stations at 23°3’ of Scorpio. This is just after the solstice. Let’s see, Jupiter’s moving forward. Jupiter’s moving pretty quickly at this point in Virgo.
KS: Yeah.
CB: It’s going sort of full steam on its way towards Libra for the rest of the summer basically. Saturn’s still retrograde in Sag. Some of the Cancer planets—like Mercury and the Sun and Venus—start opposing Pluto and then eventually squaring Uranus, which they’ve been doing most summers for the past few years.
AC: So one thing I’d like to say, during the summer, we get Uranus’ retrograde station. That has basically happened every year for some time. I just want to point out that Uranus is starting to get pretty deep into the end of Aries. Is the retrograde station the end of July?
KS: End of July, around the 28th of July at 24 Aries.
AC: Right. It’s 24, okay. So that’s a new degree for Uranus.
KS: Yeah, it is.
AC: Uranus hasn’t gotten there before.
KS: No.
AC: And so, there are some folks with cardinal placements who got missed by the Uranus-Pluto squares in the first 15°. But now Uranus is getting all the way to the end of Aries, so those who were born with the Sun or Moon or rising in Libra, Aries, Cancer, Capricorn are gonna start getting some action from Uranus. It’s not going to be the ‘vice of death, Pluto-Uranus at the same time’ thing. You’re gonna be beginning a series of Uranus transits and then those are gonna be followed a year or two later by some Pluto transits, cuz now Uranus and Pluto have moved into this ‘one-two’ rhythm rather than the both at once.
KS: Yeah, which is different. Because if you’re a consulting astrologer, you’ve sort of had to break the news that, over the last few years, clients have been having a cosmic double-header with Uranus and Pluto just slamming in there. And at least there’s now a little bit of breathing room, as you can see there with this chart. Pluto’s still around the middle degrees of cardinal, but Uranus is much further into that final 10°.
CB: Yeah. So we’re sort of blazing new territory in terms of that Uranus placement that we haven’t quite gotten into before in those later cardinal degrees.
KS: Yeah.
CB: And there’s one nice thing—it’s separating by this point. But one of the more positive things this year—that’s one of the signatures, that’s more prominent earlier in terms of Saturn going through Sagittarius—is that it’s trining Uranus for a large part of the year. And so, that’s one of the more positive potential dynamic aspects that’s setting as kind of a backdrop behind some of this stuff.
KS: I agree completely. And that really is the big focus in quarter four when we’ve got Jupiter now into Libra. And November-December—like the last six weeks of 2016—I’m really excited about because of the astrological combinations. We’ve got Jupiter in Libra sextile Saturn, opposing Uranus. Saturn and Uranus are making a trine. So there’s a lovely, potentially exciting, energizing combination of planets there. It is coming through and building throughout the year, and we really see it come to a head, heading into the last couple of months.
CB: Excellent. Nice. Well, that’s definitely a good note to end on later this year that we only get a little preview of earlier on. And it looks like Leisa Schaim in the audience is pointing out that Neptune only moves four minutes during the entire month of June because of the station, which is an interesting mix, she points out, with the Mars station happening around the same time.
KS: Yeah, there’s a real glucky feeling. That’s a great point, Leisa, thank you. Yeah, Neptune doesn’t move much at all. The square to Saturn is in play. Mars is stationed. Glucky. I don’t think you want to plan to move too quickly in June.
AC: Yeah. And just to wrap up the second quarter, the second quarter is really where all the tricky stuff is. We’ve got Mars retrograde. We’ve got a really tight Saturn-Neptune. We’ve got the mutable cross. We’ve got a Mercury retrograde. Second quarter is probably the most challenging quarter of the year. It’s gonna work out that way for most people. But once you get through that, that’s really getting over the hump.
KS: Yeah.
AC: I could be wrong here, but I didn’t see anything terribly dramatic over the summer in the northern hemisphere, Q3.
KS: It’s very mild.
AC: There are some difficulties which are gonna come from Mars and Saturn being in the same sign for August and a good chunk of September, but other than that, it’s not nearly as complicated as the second quarter is. At least Mars is direct. The exact conjunction of Mars and Saturn is generally not fun, but it’s not an extended one. Mars is just gonna hit it and then move on.
KS: And it’s not in Scorpio this year either.
AC: Right, not in Scorpio. Boy, that was fun.
CB: Yeah.
AC: That Mars and Saturn in Scorpio co-presence and conjunction in 2013—no, it was 2014. Was it? Gosh.
KS: No, 2013, cuz we had two.
AC: Yeah, I’m getting so old. The years are just whizzing by.
CB: Yeah, cuz it would have been two-and-a-half years ago. So it would have been 2013.
KS: I beg your pardon. No, it was actually 2014. Did we have one in 2012?
AC: I was just gonna say I remember when Mars and Saturn went into co-presence with each other because that month was when the Ebola outbreak happened.
CB: Right.
AC: It was when Robin Williams tragically committed suicide. It was just like the biggest bummer ever: like people bleeding to death, great people killing themselves. It was just awful, and it fulfilled the darkest prognostications you might have about a Mars-Saturn conjunction. And so, I’m bringing this up not to bum people out, but to contrast it with this one in Sagittarius, which will totally not be as bad.
KS: A very different quality.
CB: You think this is gonna be a more ‘upbeat’ depressing time or what?
KS: It’s not as dark.
AC: I think it will be exhausting. I don’t think it will be nearly as dark.
CB: Okay.
KS: ‘Exhausting’ is a good word. Because you can see the push of the fire Sag and Mars and people just going way beyond their limits potentially and then getting pulled up.
AC: Cuz it has to get done.
KS: Yeah. And then the other big change in quarter three is Jupiter ingressing into Libra September 9.
CB: And right before we get there, one thing I was just noticing in looking at this chart—as you were saying that, Austin—is there’s a huge difference in this one. You have Venus and Jupiter forming a conjunction in Virgo, in a superior sign-based square with reception, sort of overcoming and mitigating or bonifying that Mars-Saturn conjunction at the same time that the conjunction is completing itself. So it actually might even further reinforce and further support what you were saying in terms of it being a lot easier and a lot less extreme or depressing than the conjunction in Scorpio was.
AC: Yeah, yeah, totally. Just in terms of rulership, a Mars-Saturn conjunction in Scorpio is ruled by Mars, right? So the whole thing is about Mars. Whereas a Mars-Saturn conjunction in Sag is ruled by a benefic, it’s ruled by Jupiter. And in this case, we have Jupiter being conjoined by the other benefic, Venus, and in the same sign as its ruler, Mercury, who is very strong.
KS: Yeah. And, again, another pile-up in the mutable signs there as well, which is not the same as the Grand Cross we had in June, but it’s sort of pulling back into those signs and potentially houses in people’s charts again.
AC: Yeah. I mean, we’re basically gonna have a pile-up in mutable signs every three months for the next while.
CB: I mean, it’s interesting though, cuz this is the last time that you have that pile-up with Jupiter there completing things in Virgo. In some sense, the Mars-Saturn conjunction ends up coinciding with the last bit of the cardinal—or the mutable T-square that we’re dealing with for most of the year. So it’s almost like a good chunk of that mutable T-square is kind of done once you get past the Mars-Saturn conjunction. Because then after that point, as Kelly was saying, Mars—or sorry, Jupiter goes into Libra.
AC: Yeah. And so, the end of August/early June—or excuse me, end of August/early September, we’ve got Mars-Saturn in Sagittarius. We also have what I believe is the last exact square between Saturn and Neptune. The end of August, every year, the Sun and usually some other planets move into Virgo, and that means we’re getting ready for eclipses too. So it’s pretty pivotal. It’s pretty pivotal. As Chris was saying, it’s going to kind of close out a certain chapter, or close out a certain volume that we’ve been reading the whole year, cuz we’ve got eclipses, we’ve got Mars and Saturn, we’ve got the last gasp of Jupiter in Virgo, and we have a Mercury retrograde in Virgo as well. So a lot of stuff going on here.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Huge. Yeah, the 1st of September, we’ve got a solar eclipse in Virgo, and then the middle of the month, around the 16th, we’ve got the Pisces lunar eclipse.
CB: So the solar eclipse in Virgo is at, what, 9°?
KS: Yeah.
CB: And then what degree is the other one?
KS: It’s at 24 Pisces. The Moon is at 24 Pisces.
AC: So, yeah, that solar in Virgo is configured really tightly to our buddies Neptune and Saturn. That’s an almost, by degree, T-square.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Again, it’s another helping of that.
KS: We’re eating from the same kind of buffet all year.
AC: Yeah, Saturn and Neptune, it’s like rocks in oatmeal, right?
CB: Sure.
KS: Healthy.
AC: Do rocks have minerals in them? We need minerals.
KS: Yes. In oats, yeah, my gosh. But it is different. Mid-September, we’re gonna be straddling eclipses, which just always creates a bit of cosmic chaos. Doors open, doors close. I always find things are a little bit more intense in that eclipse season.
AC: Yeah, me too.
KS: And then the landscape changes with Jupiter moving into Libra. I mean, I do keep coming back to this idea of—you said it perfectly before, Austin—being flexible. There’s a level of needing to adapt on the fly for 2016. And I don’t think that changes substantially when Jupiter does go into Libra because it’s a cardinal sign. And so, there’s still this idea of movement, perhaps with a little bit more focus, or a little bit more specificity around the targets or the goals or the objectives, which is this cardinal quality rather than the mutable.
AC: Yeah. Well, one of the things I think you and I have talked about, Kelly, is what’s really nice about Jupiter moving into Libra is it then puts Jupiter, as the ruler of Saturn in Sagittarius, in this ‘happy’ sextile rather than an ‘angry’ square. And another nice thing about Jupiter in Libra is that while Jupiter has virtually no essential dignity, traditionally speaking, in Virgo, Jupiter has triplicity dignity in Libra, right? Triplicity dignity is the ‘that’ll do’ dignity. It’s not rulership, it’s not exaltation. It’s pretty good, it’s the ‘good enough’ dignity. Having Jupiter move from a sign which is very hostile to his significations to a place where Jupiter can do business, Libra, is a nice thing. And so, one of the ways I see this playing out in terms of the tonal shift is Jupiter in Virgo is like look at all the details, analyze everything, go, go, go, whereas Jupiter in Libra is sort of like, okay, well, let’s look at the relationships between everything that we have and let’s see if we can bring these different pieces which are likely to be flying around this year. Bring them into relationship, bring into harmony, let’s re-center and re-balance and then make a new start, because that’s what cardinal signs are. They’re beginnings. We begin a season when the Sun goes into a cardinal sign, and we begin a phase when transiting planets move through cardinal signs. So I see it as sort of a new beginning. Yeah, I’m not gonna repeat myself, that’s what I meant. What I said is what I meant.
KS: That’s beautiful.
CB: And all that begins, what? September 9 is when Jupiter first ingresses into Libra?
KS: Yes.
CB: All right. So that’ll be important for people to note, just in terms of what part of the chart that’s moving into, since we’ve got Jupiter essentially moving through one sector of the zodiac in most people’s charts for most of the first-half of the year. And suddenly it’s going pretty quick, and it moves pretty far ahead by a sign, by early September.
KS: Yes. And, in fact, Jupiter is moving very quickly in the last few months of 2016. It enters Libra on the 9th of September, but actually goes all the way up to 21° Libra by the end of the year. So it is gonna sort of power through the first two-thirds of Libra before it’ll go retrograde and then come back. Yeah, very different.
CB: Does it station by the end of the year?
KS: No, that’s actually February 2017 before it stations.
CB: Got it, right.
KS: So we’ll cover that next time.
CB: All right, the next episode.
KS: Yeah.
CB: All right, so that moves us into the fall and the later part of the fall. One of the things that’s happening by this point is really shortly after Jupiter goes into Libra, we get an ingress of Mars into Capricorn by September 27. So we finally finish, which is interesting. On the one hand, that’s also the final completion of this long, long period of Mars coming and going through Sagittarius for most of the year. It eventually ends once Mars fully departs from that sign on September 27. And then we get this shift, again, this dynamic shift towards cardinal signs with Jupiter going into a cardinal sign and then Mars moving into a cardinal sign.
KS: Absolutely. And there is this sense at the tail-end of the year of just the pace of progress picking up a little bit with Mars finally getting going. There’s a real contrast. I mean, Mars only covers essentially four zodiac signs through the calendar year 2016. It’s been so long in Scorpio and Sag that essentially we’ve got Capricorn and Aquarius and Mars at the tail-end of the year. So it’s only covering one-third of the zodiac, which I think is interesting just as sort of a theme. But, yeah, it’s Mars in Capricorn, I mean, getting on with business finally.
CB: Right. Let’s see, so we’ve got that going on. I mean, eventually one of the things that that’ll do is even though Uranus and Pluto now are pretty far apart—they’re at least 8° apart by October—we get Mars coming in and starting to complete that square again, where it conjoins Pluto around October 19 at 15° of Capricorn. And then eventually it keeps moving and catches up with Uranus and conjoins it at 21° of Aries by October 28. So we start getting some dynamic aspects between Mars and Pluto and Mars and Uranus by October as one of the major signatures of October.
KS: Yeah. And then just the witnessing of those aspects by Jupiter in Libra as well, whether that ameliorates it somewhat or makes it a little bit more productive. But, yeah, there’s no major retrogrades or stations in October, no eclipses then. So, yeah, that sense of what Mars is doing is really the focus then.
AC: Yeah, well, what’s nice is the fourth quarter. There aren’t insane pile-ups anywhere.
KS: No.
AC: And so, part of us looking around for the focus, I guess Mars will be the important part. When there are less intense circumstances in the heavens above, generally it means that there are less intense circumstances down here below. And so, that generally means that you can actually kind of do what you want rather than being called to action. Really intense configurations mandate that you come participate in them. And so, when things are, ‘well, there’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that’, generally we have a little bit more freedom to make our own decisions to focus where we will rather than having to deal with this, cuz this is terrible, or this is amazing. Less intense means more freedom generally.
KS: And just picking up on that ‘freedom’ theme, I don’t know if you want to bring up the chart for the 1st of December, Chris. What’s really interesting—as we get into the tail-end of the year—we do get a lot of planets emphasizing the yang signs. So we have Mars in Aquarius at this point. We’ve got a bit of a pile-up in Sag. And if you have a look at the degrees of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and Uranus—around that 16°-20°—we’re getting a lot of activity between Libra/Aquarius and Aries/Sag, and we’re starting to get the final big alignments for the year kicking in. But the ‘Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus’ piece doesn’t peak till later in December, but early in the month we’ve got Mars just acting as a bit of a trigger, and that idea of freedom—moving forward under your own volition, or perhaps making choices based on personal preference rather than social or cultural expectations—with both the Mars in Aquarius configured to Uranus with Jupiter there. Saturn’s there, so you can’t be a complete rebel or revolutionary, but there’s certainly some freedom and some room to move there.
AC: Yeah. And that highlights Jupiter’s opposition with Uranus.
KS: Yeah.
AC: That’s something that starts to develop just in the fourth quarter of 2016 and then will be a pretty important feature of 2017, Jupiter in Libra and Uranus in Aries, and then Jupiter of course squaring Pluto during that time as well. Uranus and Pluto aren’t so tight as they once were. And so, I think those are gonna feel a little bit more like two separate things rather than one giant T-square. And so, yeah, Jupiter-Uranus, personally, I like that combination. I find those two planets to be very friendly to each other’s significations. And there’s some tension there because it’s an opposition, but I think that will be easy to reconcile. I think one of the things that it suggests is that the new arrangement or new balance between things that we come to, as we get used to Jupiter in Libra, will actually enable us to make some positive changes. Some maybe new and radical changes, but they’ll come out of that balance or that balancing that Jupiter in Libra suggests.
CB: Definitely.
KS: And I think that idea of coming to new arrangements is also supported by the Jupiter-Saturn sextile as well.
AC: Yeah, totally.
KS: A lovely reception that’s between those two planets in those two signs too.
AC: Oh, yeah, that’s a great point.
CB: And speaking of that Saturn-Sun conjunction there at 18° of Sagittarius on December 10, so Saturn’s moving really quickly at this point cuz it’s conjoining the Sun. But now, by this part of the year, Saturn’s starting to get into new territory, and we really start to get to what is essentially the second-half of Saturn in Sagittarius from this point forward. So it’s like right now, in late 2015 and then early 2016, the people that have Saturn natally, for example, in early Sag, are having their exact Saturn returns. But some of those people born a bit later with Saturn in later, that’s when they’re gonna start having their exact Saturn returns, and some of the more pivotal events surrounding that will really start to heat up.
KS: Absolutely right, Chris. We’ve got to think about Saturn in Sag in different chunks, based on where the retrogrades are and how it breaks down the sign as a whole. But if you are having your Saturn return later in 2016, or even early in 2017, you do have that supportive presence of Jupiter in Libra, perhaps not by degree exactly, but certainly by sign. Not that that’s gonna make your Saturn return a walk in the park, but it might certainly talk of more productive outcomes or a greater potential for success or achievement perhaps for whatever the particular part of the story is for you.
CB: Definitely. Yeah, that’s a great, little mitigating influence that’s going on there at the same time.
AC: Yeah. And one thing that Kelly mentioned that I wanted to spend a moment emphasizing is that not only is Jupiter in a better place to rule Saturn (in Libra) than he is in Virgo, when Saturn looks back at Libra, well, Saturn is exalted in Libra. And so, there’s a nice exchange of signs there between rulership and exaltation ruler, and so that is a classic mutual reception. That qualifies fully under the traditional rubric. And generally planets that receive each other can work together.
KS: Yeah. And there’s the potential for things to be established with lasting potential, that somehow are meaningful or purposeful with that combination of Jupiter and Saturn. It’s not negative. They’re not in difficult signs. It’s a supportive aspect, that type of thing. So if it’s not negative, then I think we almost have to say that it’s gonna be positive.
AC: Oh, I’m totally looking forward to it.
KS: Yeah, I’m so excited. I think it’s some of the juiciest astrology we’ve had for a long time, that late December 2016 period.
AC: Yeah. And so, this fourth quarter is a walk in the park really compared to the other three.
CB: Yeah, it’s looking pretty smooth.
KS: 2016 gets better as it goes on.
AC: Yeah.
KS: We’ll have to remind ourselves of that when we’re dragging our heels and our hearts through the bloody Mars retrograde.
AC: Yeah. So just to kind of maybe jump back to the beginning of the year and characterize that four quarters really quickly, the first quarter, we’ve got this kind of annoying Mercury retrograde which begins it, and then there’s a lot of things setting up. Like Mars is getting ready and we’re gonna have a set of eclipses. It’s very much the stagehands are setting up for the big show. And then the second quarter, the curtain opens, and all sorts of drama is enacted. And I think the plot will be very confusing. It might be a little nonlinear, ‘David Lynch’ style. We probably won’t know what that story is until we’re done with it. And then by the third quarter of the year, a lot of the dramatic climaxes have been enacted, and it’s really kind of figuring out what to do with all of that. And then there’s a bit of a finale in September. It resumes a lot of the same themes, but it’s not nearly as intense or as confusing as its predecessor in June. And then once we get through that, the fourth quarter is like new stuff that’s not nearly as hard, for most people.
CB: Yeah, I think that’s a great overview or great synopsis of the year. I mean, that pretty much brings us to the end of the year, cuz we’re already at December 29, December 30 of 2016 at this point. I’m not really seeing other major alignments that are going exact by this point, so we’re pretty much—
KS: Oh, it goes out with a bang, with a ‘Jupiter-Uranus’ bang.
CB: Oh, with the exact opposition?
KS: Well, no. I beg your pardon. It’s just that theme for December—I don’t know that there’s anything else. Like that is the ballgame then.
CB: Yeah, I mean, it does go exact December 26, the Jupiter-Uranus opposition.
AC: Right. And like you were saying, Kelly, there’s Saturn trining Uranus pretty much exactly and sextiling Jupiter pretty much exactly, which is nice. If your Jupiter and Uranus are having certain disagreements, they can both talk to Saturn about it, right? Both of them are in a friendly aspect to Saturn. That offers a sort of outlet or point of reconciliation.
KS: Yes.
CB: Point of stability as well.
AC: Mm-hmm. It’s Saturn.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah. I mean, that’s one of the classic examples of what they call an ‘easy opposition’. We do have two planets in disagreement, but there is a mediator that can be consulted to help them work through or pull something together. I like it. I’m so excited for what our clients can do with that, and what we might do with that, all of us, with our plans and projects for next year.
CB: Oh, I’m doing stuff with it. Stuff will be done.
KS: You will be electing charts with this, I’m sure, Chris.
CB: Yeah, I have been thinking of what charts I’m gonna elect for—throughout much of the year—in the back of my head as we were going through a lot of this.
AC: I’m gonna be taking a long nap with this. It’s gonna be awesome.
KS: For sure, for sure.
CB: All right.
KS: 2016 offers a real mix of energies with that dynamic ending, with the Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus, but a bit of muck to slog through with the Mars retrograde and the Saturn-Neptune earlier in the year. And that second quarter looks to be the muckiest or the stickiest, but that’s manageable too.
CB: Yeah, people will get through it for the most part. A lot of that will be dynamic, transitional, but hopefully useful or constructive lessons ultimately, whatever it is. All right, well, I think that brings us to the end of 2016 and towards the end of our episode. Do you guys have any final thoughts or final words in terms of this, as we start to wrap things up?
KS: My only thing is I invite our listeners to comment, let us know their thoughts, and check back in with this podcast through the year. Cuz it’s really interesting to listen to these ideas as things begin to unfold. So looking forward to seeing how it plays out for everyone.
CB: Yeah. And one of the things that often happens with me—especially with the electional column or doing elections months or sometimes years ahead of time—is you’re looking at this stuff and it’s all very theoretical because you’re looking at the charts and you’re looking at the ephemeris and you’re trying to pinpoint some of the alignments. But when you actually get there, and you get within a few weeks of it, or you get to that month, you start noticing things that sometimes you overlooked or dynamics that weren’t as clear further out. So I’m sure that we’re gonna revisit a lot of this stuff as we do some of our follow-up monthly episodes over the course of the next year. And then I’m sure we’re gonna be able to pull additional details and additional nuances out of some of those alignments and configurations.
AC: Yeah, it’s always interesting to see what it actually looks like. Astrology can give you a lot of descriptors and a lot of parameters for the types of things which are likely to occur, but it’s always interesting and it’s always revelatory to see what it actually looks like when it happens.
CB: Definitely. All right, excellent. Well, I think that does it for this episode then. Yeah, so that’s it. So that’s the astrology of 2016. Of course you can find out more information about all three of us, you can find out more information about the podcast at theastrologypodcast.com. And you can support the show by subscribing through Patreon. You can find out more information about Kelly at kellysastrology.com. For more information about Austin and Austin’s upcoming column that I’m sure will be launched by the time this comes out and that you definitely want to support, be sure to check out his Patreon that he’s launching in the next few days at austincoppock.com. And I think that does it for this episode of the show.
KS: Thanks, guys.
AC: Yeah, thanks for listening.
CB: All right, well, thanks for joining me, and we’ll see you next time.
KS: Happy 2016!