The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 63, titled:
Astrology Forecast and Elections for February 2016
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on January 29, 2016
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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 you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. I’m recording this episode on January 28, 2016, at approximately 3:16 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 63rd episode of the show. For more information on how to subscribe to the podcast and get some great subscriber benefits, including early access to new episodes and the ability to attend a live monthly webinar, please visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. In this episode, I’m going to be talking with Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock about the astrological forecast for February of 2016, along with some auspicious dates that month for beginning different types of ventures and undertakings using the principles of electional astrology. So let’s get started. Welcome back to the show, guys.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Thank you, Chris.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey, Chris. Hey, Austin.
AC: Hey.
CB: All right. Long time, no talk—I guess, no see, since we talked to you guys last early-to-mid December, I believe, when we recorded our forecast for both January, as well as for the entire year ahead. So I know I’ve been busy since then, but what have you two been up to?
KS: Well, I’ve been in Australia pretty much since we last spoke, which has been amazing. It feels like it has been forever, so it’s really good to be back in the studio and back into our routine for this year. Part of my time in Australia included attending the FAA astrology conference, which was in Sydney, at the end of January 2016. And that was amazing. So I heard from a lot of our listeners there, which it’s always lovely to connect with them in real life, but also to, of course, catch up with the ‘astro’ crew, which is pretty magical. We’re sort of a unique bunch, so it’s lovely when we can all be together.
CB: Yeah, a lot of weirdness happens at the astrology conferences, and I’m sure it was a great time. What talks did you give at that conference?
KS: Oh, I gave two lectures, one lecture on planets, passions, and problems, which is looking at how the strength or weakness of a planet can highlight some of our problems or some of our passions; and that’s a popular lecture that I’ve given at a couple of different conferences now. And then the second lecture I gave—which was really well-attended and I got some good feedback on—had to do with looking at the progressed Sun: looking at the aspects, the terms of the progressed Sun, and just going through a whole bunch of things; all the different ways, I guess, you can get information out of the progressed Sun. So if you’re interested in either of those lectures, or any others, the conference also featured presentations by Ben Dykes, Dorian Greenbaum, Mark Jones, Frank Clifford, Lynn Bell, plus a whole host of other people. You can find out more about the recordings via the FAA conference website.
CB: Nice. And you’ll be making an appearance at NORWAC later this year?
KS: I am. Actually I was realizing that. So that’s the end of May 2016, in Seattle. And I’m home until then, so I might take a leaf out of your book, Chris, and get stuck into some writing between now and then. But, yes, NORWAC will be my next conference, which I’m looking forward to.
CB: Excellent. And, Austin, you’ve been, what, just taking it easy? Have you been doing anything since we talked to you last?
AC: Yeah, I think this is the busiest winter on record for me. As you know, I started writing my weekly column again. I started a Patreon—somewhat inspired by this podcast—and I got back to work writing up a weekly column and horoscopes and all of that, beginning in the first week of this year. So I’ve been doing that every week. And that’s been really interesting to get back to, really interesting, really challenging, really satisfying. I also gave a talk in Arizona, which was fun. I gave a lecture on the decans, and then we did a five-hour workshop on the decans where I went through every single one.
KS: Oh, wow.
CB: You went through all 36 decans?
AC: Uh, yeah.
KS: Is this recorded and available?
AC: I think so. It took me literally five hours of barely even taking a breath, and that was the quickest. I actually did a class in the fall, but it took about 12 hours of class to get through them; it was one-and-a-half hours per week. This was like one, five-hour, I don’t know, grueling ordeal of awesomeness, so I think that was recorded. So I did that, and, well, I’ve been doing a bunch of other stuff. I should mention that I have another lecture and workshop coming up. I’m gonna be speaking for the WSAA—if those are the right letters—up in Washington on Valentine’s weekend. It’s like Thursday, the 11th, and then Saturday the 13th. And then I’m going to be speaking at Portland’s Traditional Astrology Conference, their Astro Throwback Conference. I’m not going to be there in person, but I’m gonna be Skyped in. And within a few days, hopefully by the time this podcast is up, I will have my 2016 teaching schedule for online classes up, which is something I’ve been trying to get up all month. But I’ve been a little busy and the Mercury retrograde has not been kind to my overly-bold aspirations.
CB: Yeah, I think a lot of people had high expectations for certain things this month, and maybe with the retrograde, ran into more delays or more chaos than perhaps they were anticipating. But it’s nice that we’re coming out of it. I’m hoping people will start recovering or getting things back in order perhaps.
AC: So I had this thought right when it was beginning, and I wish I had put more trust in this thought. My thought was everybody should probably wait a month to put into place their New Year’s resolutions.
KS: Totally.
AC: And I was like, “No, no, no, no, whatever, I’ll be fine.”
CB: Right.
AC: And here I am, a month later, and the dietary strictures, which I had imagined that I would engage in, as well as the increased exercise regimen—like all of the programs that I wanted to put in place—are still totally not in place cuz I’ve been busy. We’ve talked about this sometimes where there are months or there are time periods where you get to work on improving things, or you kind of get to do what you want, and then there are those time periods where you’re just trying to keep up. And I know for myself, as well as a lot of people, this January was definitely one where you’re just trying to not fall terribly behind or just trying to keep things together and keep everything moving.
KS: Agreed. I think for 2016, February is the ‘new’ January. I’m the same. I feel like I’m just getting my year started now. And so, all of the stuff that would traditionally be done in January—like year ahead class schedules, writing schedules, all those things—it’s gonna happen in February this year, not in January.
CB: Yeah. For me, the Mercury retrograde was a lot of the classic, going back and reviewing what you’ve done previously just because of getting back into writing the book—which I’ve been away from for a few years—and reviewing all of the research that I’ve done over the past 10 years, but also having to re-familiarize myself with it. It’s interesting that I’ve sort of finished that process and now I can move forward again.
KS: Yeah, that’s really interesting. You probably had that Mercury-Pluto component really strongly, Chris, I guess, just with the level of intensity and detail that you would have been going over work with in January.
CB: Yeah, which I inflicted upon our listeners in the last episode when I decided to do an episode on all of the Hellenistic astrologers that I’ve been writing about for the past month, cuz I just finished that chapter. And then it turned into a three-and-a-half hour lecture on all of the major astrologers in antiquity. So that’s the Mercury-Pluto conjunction.
AC: I think that’s awesome.
KS: That’s brilliant.
AC: I’m looking forward to having that as a resource.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah, it’s good to have it out there. And it’s a nice little preview because it’s basically a preview of an entire chapter of my book. Perhaps not everything, but most of the major outlines of it.
KS: That’s great. Yeah, you’ll be able to use it when you get to the marketing stage for your book.
CB: Yeah. Oh, I’m gonna be marketing the book alright. Once that’s finished, I think everybody in the astrological community is gonna hear about it.
KS: Good.
CB: All right, so let’s move into our forecast for February. So we’ve got sort of a rough outline of some astrological alignments for February, and I’ve got some elections set aside. So where should we get started? Or what are some of the main things or main highlights that really stand out in terms of the upcoming month?
AC: Well, I think that we actually have one theme already and that is the ‘February is the new January’, because as February begins, we’re not really entirely clear of the configurations that defined January. Although Mercury is direct, he’s in the middle of Capricorn, and he’s just coming off his last perfect intersection with the Pluto-Uranus square. If we look at February 1, he has cleared his square with Uranus by about 20 minutes, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: That’s not really done, and so Mercury has to, and therefore we have to, sort of dig out of this last half of Capricorn. And one of the things that I noticed when I was trying to articulate what it means for a planet to station retrograde in Aquarius—as Mercury did—and then come back to Capricorn, is that both Aquarius and Capricorn are traditionally ruled by Saturn, and one of Saturn’s primary set of significations centers on time, right? But with Capricorn, our reference frame for time is the past as it led up to the present, whereas our reference frame in time for Aquarius is from here into possible futures. And so, Mercury, having stationed retrograde in January, hitting the first degree of Aquarius and then coming on back to Capricorn, literally said, “Okay, so you want to do the future. No, no, no, let’s spend a month digging through the past.” And so, that digging out process is still underway as February begins, and it won’t be until—what is it?
KS: Six months. Yeah, 13th.
AC: Yeah, yeah. Basically for Valentine’s Day we get Mercury in ‘not Capricorn’.
CB: Oh, you’re right. It hits its shadow on the way out February 14.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Nice.
KS: That theme, Austin, the idea of digging out from the past before you can get into this whole vision of the future is a really great one for February too, because we also have Venus going through Capricorn until just after the Valentine’s Day weekend. So a little bit of extra, I don’t know, influence or emphasis into that Capricorn space before they both dive into Aquarius for the latter part of the month.
AC: Mercury’s spending all that time with the Uranus-Pluto square at a time when the Uranus-Pluto square is not perfect—cuz it’s not gonna be perfect again for a very long time—but it’s as tight as it’s gonna be, right? It’s only about a degree away from being a precise 90° angle. Like that’s as tight as the Uranus-Pluto square’s gonna get for a-hundred-and-some years. And so, with Mercury spending so much time dwelling on that, it reignited all of these Uranus-Pluto themes, like the outsiders revolting against the powers-that-be and all of that. And so, even though Mercury is getting done with that, Venus is gonna come along and inspect that. So we’re gonna have to sort of go through that and process that emotionally and hopefully with Venus bring some order, some grace—
KS: Yes, tact.
AC: Yeah, to what got brought up before we can fully move on.
CB: Did you guys have any specific Mercury retrograde anecdotes or observations of stories in the news this month that you had noticed? Like I’m trying to remember some of the ones that I saw this month, and I’m having a hard time doing so. Usually there’s one or two at least that stand out.
AC: That is hilarious.
CB: Right.
AC: Well, yeah, here’s a really nasty one, a few days before the station, when Mercury was between his two squares to Mars, which he made one square to Mars direct and then one retrograde about a week apart. Right in between that was New Year’s, and I remember what I was writing about. One of the section header titles that I was gonna use was “Trouble at the Station” or like “Blood on the Crossroads,” stuff like that. And so, you may have heard that in Cologne, Germany, at a New Year’s celebration, there were roving packs of men and several hundred sexual assaults were reported. It was just this big disaster that was more Mars square Mercury, but it was Mars squaring Mercury at a time, and that totally set everybody’s fears about the immigrant crisis in Europe aflame. It was exactly the wrong message for peace and for harmony.
CB: That’s an interesting point because it wasn’t until a few days later that it really started becoming a news story and people started complaining that it was being suppressed somehow in the news. And Mercury itself didn’t station until a few days later, around January 5th or 6th, so the actual station would have coincided with it blowing up in the news media and then all the full reports coming out or being collected.
AC: Yeah. What happened was that the Cologne police department officially announced that things went just fine and that there were no incidents. That was their initial official report.
CB: Okay.
KS: Oh, wow.
AC: And then it came out, and of course they had to admit that it was a fucking disaster.
CB: That Mercury station’s retrograde and revisits literally that few degrees just a few days later.
AC: Yeah, with another Mars-Mercury square and broadcast it. On a less depressing note, I had a really class Mercury retro thing about three days after the direct station. As I mentioned, I went to Arizona in order to give some talks. And so, I’m in LA, so Kait, my wife, and I decide to drive out. And so, what I thought was going to be a six-hour trip ended up being a 10-hour trip because, one, we got out a little late. Not too bad. Maybe a half an hour late. Two, that’s when there were rainstorms in LA. Now rainstorms don’t sound very frightening if you live in a place with weather, but in Los Angeles, people don’t know how to drive in the rain. And so, going east out of LA—which takes like an hour, an hour-and-a-half to escape LA—took three-and-a-half hours. And Lord forgive me for this, I had forgotten that Phoenix and Tuscon were different cities. And so, I was just like, “Oh, yeah, it takes like six hours to get to Phoenix.”
KS: Oh, my goodness.
AC: And then it was like, “Oh, no, no, no, Austin. Tucson is a different city in Arizona, and it’s considerably further.” And then, finally, for the cherry on the sundae for that particular set of accidents and miscalculations, I forgot to adjust the timezone for my arrival time, which didn’t extend our actual car time, but it pushed us another hour further out in terms of our host receiving us. And so, that was like two or three days after the station. I thought that was pretty classic. It had that classic combination of stuff that’s totally my fault and stuff that was totally not my fault.
KS: That’s fantastic. And that classic situation where one little thing just compounds, I guess.
CB: Did you have anything like that, or noticed any interesting Mercury retrograde-type stuff come up, Kelly?
KS: I didn’t particularly, but I’m sure there was. January was just so jam packed for me. I know with work, I was a little worried if anything would go awry. But I’m really noticing that if things are sort of planned and well-organized prior to going into Mercury retrograde, there’s a much better chance that they’ll go off smoothly even while Mercury is retrograde. Yeah, I mean, I had a little bit of travel. I didn’t have any crazy bloopers with work that I can recall, except for this sort of forgetting of some writing, which I guess is a thing. Yeah, nothing really interesting that comes to mind. Forgetting writing, I guess, is probably part of it.
CB: Sure. There’s one funny thing in the news that I noticed, it wasn’t Mercury retrograde, but it was this news thing that came up a few weeks ago that the Playboy mansion was up for sale and Hugh Hefner would come along with it. And I thought that was really funny cuz I had done work on his chart before, and he had Saturn ingressing into his fourth whole sign house, so Saturn in Sagittarius. He has Virgo rising.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So Saturn ingressing into Sagittarius is ingressing into his fourth whole sign house. It hasn’t gotten up to the degree of the IC yet, cuz the IC is later in Sagittarius. So it’s actually a good example of what I was talking about in terms of testing whole sign houses. Because sometimes you can see people start to have, in this case, a 4th house-type thing happen, but he’s having it happen once it goes into the fourth sign from the rising sign rather than the fourth quadrant house. So I just thought that was a funny 4th house-y, Saturn delineation to draw up for the astrology books for the future.
KS: Brilliant.
CB: On the other side of the spectrum, another friend of mine was telling me yesterday he had Saturn recently ingress—or he had Jupiter going into Virgo, his fourth whole sign house. He lives in Portland where the housing market has really just gone through the roof in terms of prices. And his landlord sort of randomly decided to sell the house at a much lower than market value, like a very low or cheap price, so that they were actually able to purchase the house that they’ve been renting for a few years. So he had a very positive home and living situation thing occur with Jupiter going through his 4th house. So I thought that was an interesting couple of contrasts that I had meant to mention.
AC: Yeah, that is interesting.
KS: Lovely.
CB: Indeed. So going back to the forecast, we’re clearing the Mercury retrograde shadow by Valentine’s Day. One of the things that’s interesting is I noticed that not too long after that Mars actually enters its shadow period, because it goes across the degree, which I believe is 22 Scorpio. And then it will later retrograde back a few months later, right?
AC: Yeah, let me get the exact date.
KS: I think it’s 23°03’ or 05’ at the end of June.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah, and Mars hits that degree around the 18th of February. So it really does have that feeling of needing to kind of dive in and sort of quickly catch up or organize in those first three weeks of February. Because once we go into that shadow period, Mars is just covering about a 13- or 14-degree window of the zodiac, and that’s what he’ll be doing for the next six months.
AC: Yep.
CB: Right. So we’re gonna be highlighting a period. And it stations—where does it station? At like 8 or 9 Sagittarius?
AC: 8. It’s right on Antares.
KS: Yeah, 8 Sag on April 16. Yeah, I hadn’t even thought about that, Austin, the Antares connection.
CB: So that whole range between 8° of Sagittarius and 23° of Scorpio really is this area that just gets lit up by Mars over the course of basically the next half of this year. And that begins, or that process and some of the circumstances and events surrounding whatever is gonna happen in that time—especially for people where that ends up being a prominent transit in their life—you’ll probably start to see previews of those themes develop by this point, around February 18, once Mars hits that shadow point.
AC: Yeah. But the first-half, or the 18 days leading up to the 18th, will make Mars’ influence pretty obvious. As we begin the month, we have the Sun basically chasing a square with Mars. So on the 1st of February, we have the Sun at 11-12 Aquarius, or 12, and we have Mars at 15 Scorpio, right? So that’s a 3° orb, and so the Sun is gonna be chasing that exact square with Mars. What’s significant is our next lunation, or our first lunation of February—which is the New Moon in Aquarius—is at 19 Aquarius when Mars is at 18 Scorpio. And so, that superior square from Mars is going to be factored into that whole lunation and probably the next two weeks which proceed from it. And so, it’s not like Mars is going to be invisible until the 18th. Mars is actually going to be sort of, I don’t know, riding on our backs and whipping us forward like the horseys we are.
KS: That’s hilarious.
CB: Beautiful metaphor.
AC: Yes. Just imagine the era of stagecoaches. Anyway, go on.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right. An ancient stagecoach metaphor. I just remembered I forgot to mention something at the beginning of the show, that Kirk Kahn actually finally finished the calendars, the wall calendars, for 2016. So this is a complete, unrelated digression.
AC: No, it’s not. It’s because ‘February is the new January’.
CB: Exactly. So the year is actually finally beginning because we can get those calendars on our walls finally.
KS: Absolutely, absolutely.
CB: I always have one up. I mean, I have usually two of them in different spaces. I might get additional ones. Somebody was talking about my practice of having an ephemeris in different rooms of the house, and I think I might extend that to actually having different wall calendars in different parts of the house for when you need like a quick reference of where is Mercury right now, or when did Mars ingress into Scorpio.
KS: Which are reported things that astrologers do often and randomly need as they move throughout their homes.
CB: Yes, exactly. And that actually brings up another funny point which I forgot to mention in the last episode, which is that in doing research this month, I was working on a little, small section on—well, I was just working on a biography of Thrasyllus, an astrologer from the 1st century, but there was this funny little thing that I found. One of the references to Thrasyllus is in this sort of collection of poems, or this poem from the 1st century—or 2nd century—from the Roman poet Juvenal, and he’s just mocking people. It’s The Satires. So he’s writing a satire about Roman culture. And one of the things that he actually says is he starts talking about women who consult with astrologers and become clients of astrologers, but then they’re so addicted to astrology that they begin practicing the subject on their own and become consultants on their own. So I actually think—and I don’t think anyone’s ever made this observation before—this is actually the first reference in history to female practitioners of astrology, evidently dating to about the 1st century CE. Cuz prior to that, the only other article I’ve seen written about it was by Kenneth Johnson who said that the first astrologer that we can identify for sure is Buran of Baghdad, who I think lived in the 8th or 9th century, which is pretty late.
Anyway, but I bring that up because this quote—and here’s the translation—from Juvenal, from the 1st century says: “Be sure to keep out of the way of that type of woman too. You’ll see her carrying around in her hands, like a ball of scented amber, a well-thumbed ephemeris. She no longer consults, but rather she, herself, is consulted. When her husband is leaving for camp or home, she will not go to, if the calculations of Thrasyllus detain her.” So that just made me remember that because of the statement about the ‘well-thumbed ephemeris’, which I think we’re all familiar with.
KS: Yes, that’s brilliant. I loved that quote when you put that out on Facebook.
CB: Yeah, I meant to talk about it in the last episode on the ancient astrologers who were all men because those were the texts that survived, but that would have been a good time to mention it. So I thought I’d throw it in here as well.
KS: Love it. Mercury is still giving us gifts from the past.
CB: Yeah, exactly. All right, so, what were we talking about? Mars going retrograde.
KS: And the superior square to the Sun.
CB: Sure.
AC: So the Sun makes a lot of really interesting aspects during the first-half of February. So before the Sun actually reaches and completes this square with Mars, the Sun makes a sextile with Saturn in Sag, which I think is really useful for one reason because it’s a sextile. And then, two, Saturn is the ruler of the Sun in Aquarius, and so there’s some reception there. And of course the Sun is one of the triplicity rulers of Sag, so there’s some reception in that sextile. And on a more descriptive level, what does it mean to have Mercury in Saturn-ruled signs forever, for the first two months of the year? Well, it means there’s a lot of focus on reorganization and reordering things, and we’ll be doing the ‘cleaning up the past’ part right now. But Saturn in Sag is still somewhat new to us. A lot of us haven’t oriented towards that program entirely. And so, the Sun looking upon Saturn—with a favorable aspect for the first time since its conjunction with Saturn at the beginning of Sagittarius at the end of November—is a really nice influence for, okay, this is the structure that I need for this part of my life, right? These are the disciplines and the obligations, this is the schedule to make all of that make all of that make sense. And so, it’s a nice orienting sextile.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Oh, go ahead, Kelly.
KS: I was just gonna say that sextile is really critical—it happens early in the month, February 3-4—partly, as you were saying, Austin, cuz it’s really helping us maybe tap into or become familiar with the larger Saturn in Sag themes. But it also does sort of kick off a month, February, where there is this series of sextiles by a whole variety of planets. The Sun sextiles Saturn, and Mars in Scorpio sextiles Jupiter in Virgo, which happens over Valentine’s weekend. They’re probably the two more important sextiles. But what you’re saying, that idea of maybe friendliness or support, with the sextiles as sort of the theme, there are these connections or reality checks that if you pay attention to them can really help you get focused and organized for the year ahead.
AC: Yeah. What’s interesting is that the majority of these sextiles—and there are a lot of them—I guess it’s just worth saying sextiles are considered to be a harmonious or soft aspect. They are thought to resemble in some ways the work of Venus. They bring harmony or accord, or at least alliance between different factors. These sextiles are all with the malefics, right? It’s all making friends with Saturn and making friends with Mars, especially Mars. And that’s an important thing to do, especially this year, because this is not a year where we’re going to be able to ignore Mars or Saturn. Jupiter is somewhat enfeebled in Virgo.
KS: In Virgo, yeah.
AC: Yeah. And he’s retrograde for the next several months, which is an additional affliction. Not only do we have this big Mars retrograde coming up, which will really put Mars in the spotlight, but the Mars retrograde is pretty tied into Saturn in that Mars stations retrograde very near Saturn. Not conjunct, praise the Lord, but they’ll be very near. And then when Mars comes out of retrograde, makes it back into Sagittarius, well, hey, guess what? It’s gonna be a whole month-and-a-half/two months of Mars in the same sign as Saturn with a conjunction. We have a pretty rare amount of co-presence of Mars and Saturn this year, right? We have Mars and Saturn in the same sign for quite some time. And so, if February is a chance to kind of configure yourself and configure your trajectory—to take into account both the blistering pace of Mars, as well as the necessary disciplines and obligations of Saturn—the earlier we can get oriented to that, the better and the easier a lot of the rest of the year will go.
KS: Sure, sure. And just so people know, Mars and Saturn together in Sag is basically March, April, May, and then again in August and September.
AC: Yeah, which it’s a lot.
KS: That’s five months out of a 12-month year, right? That’s nearly half the year.
AC: Right. Usually Mars is in the same sign as Saturn for about a month-and-a-half out of every two years.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah. And what’s interesting about that—that I think I’ve mentioned before, and I’ll be really interested to see if it actually plays out this way—is for people who have day charts, if they’re having a Saturn return or something, or a heavy Saturn transit, it can be a little tough or a little exhausting, but otherwise it’s relatively constructive and they get through it; but Mars is the planet that typically they would have more problems with. So I would think that people having a Saturn return, that have a day chart, or otherwise having heavy Saturn transits, this whole period of Mars being in Sagittarius at the same time is really gonna be the focal point of any major crises—that I would expect that you would have during the course of that three-year transit—and will be much more condensed down into this specific period. The people with night charts might be dealing with Saturn being annoying more consistently throughout the course of that transit, especially when it stations. The day chart people, you really have this much more specific this year, where you’re dealing with a planet that’s coming in and having the ability to trigger that in a much more dramatic way. So that’ll be fun to see how that works out for people in different people’s lives.
KS: Absolutely.
CB: All right, so, you mentioned Jupiter in Virgo, Austin, and that actually brings me to my first few elections. February is not a great month for finding electional charts. In fact, a large part of the early part of this year is kind of tough for finding really strong-looking elections, especially in terms of finding a strong ruler of the ascendant. I had a really hard time in early February. You end up having to use Jupiter actually, even though it’s in Virgo, retrograde. It’s really one of the only planets that you can safely use very well, especially in terms of daytime elections during normal business hours. So some of the elections that I would recommend, one of the first takes place on February 5, in the morning, around 8:45, with 21° of Pisces rising, or thereabouts. So Pisces is rising, Jupiter is the ruler of the ascendant. It’s located in Virgo, in the 7th house, hovering around the descendant. It’s in a day chart, so it’s as benefic as it’s gonna get in its present state. And it’s nicely forming a very tight trine with Mercury at 20° of Capricorn in the 11th house. So Mercury has a little bit of help from its domicile lord. Even though it’s typically kind of awkward in terms of Jupiter’s natural significations when it’s placed in Virgo, this should be a somewhat more well-functioning Jupiter, at least to the extent that it has that very favorable relationship with reception through a superior trine with its domicile lord, Mercury, in the 11th house. The chart also features a Moon-Venus conjunction, which is forming in the eleventh whole sign house with Mercury. And, yeah, that’s about it. Actually the emphasis of this chart is on the 7th house of partnership and the 11th house of alliances. So I think it would primarily be a good chart for those purposes, or purposes in which you’re trying to form partnerships or alliances with friends and things of that nature.
Yeah, so that’s one of my first elections. There’s a similar one on February 6 around the same time, around 8:35 in the morning. Now instead of a Moon-Venus conjunction it has a Moon-Jupiter trine and a Moon-Mercury conjunction in the 11th house, otherwise, it’s the same chart. And then, finally, there’s one more of those that you could use on February 10 at about 8:00 in the morning, with Pisces rising again, this time with the Moon in Pisces applying to an opposition with Jupiter with reception, and then a sextile with Venus with reception. So those are my elections for the early part of this month in order to take advantage of that ‘awesome’ Jupiter retrograde in Virgo.
AC: To be fair, Jupiter has one thing going for him and that is his extended series of conjunctions with the North Node.
CB: Right.
AC: And the North Node is thought to exaggerate or to strengthen the nature and performance of any planet which it conjoins. And so, in Jupiter’s case that’s very helpful because it’s more Jupiter, which Jupiter desperately needs. I think I wrote something the other day that was like usually Jupiter conjunct the North Node is like Jupiter on steroids. In this case, it’s a little bit more like Jupiter on life support, but the life support is there.
KS: And it’s helping.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, it’s totally useful.
KS: And the other piece about Jupiter that may help to ameliorate a little bit and act as a life support is that in the second-half of the month, Jupiter comes back into his own terms inside the sign of Virgo once he gets under that 21° mark. And maybe the life support starts to be a little bit more, I don’t know, revitalizing.
AC: Yeah. No, that’s great. When a planet doesn’t have any big dignities and actually has a specific impediment like detriment, I always see if it has a ‘saving grace’ dignity. That’s when the terms and the faces really come into play. It’s like, okay, there’s something to work with here.
KS: Absolutely. There’s some resource or access or something that can act as a little helper. And Jupiter will stay in his terms for about a month, from mid-Feb to mid-March. So if you’re trying to get something out of Jupiter in Virgo—as you said, Chris—you’ve gotta be really specific about when you ask Jupiter in Virgo those questions.
CB: Sure. And the other thing that’s nice is that even through Jupiter itself might not be in great shape for its own natural significations, it is in great shape in terms of acting as an ameliorating influence for all of the other planets, because Jupiter in Virgo’s in a superior position over almost all of the other visible planets. It has a sextile that’s applying for much of the first part of the month to Mars in Scorpio. It has a superior square with reception over Saturn, which is in Sagittarius. And it has superior trine over Pluto and Venus and Mercury for most of the first part of the month, which are all in Capricorn. So it’s definitely something where even though the temporary condition of Jupiter in and of itself isn’t super great, it is actually in a very helpful position for a lot of the other planets in balancing out some of those placements.
KS: For sure, for sure.
AC: A planet never gets totally turned off. It never just switches off and goes into sleep mode. We’re applying concepts of essential dignity. If we’re gonna do that and use the traditional structure of essential dignity, you also have to remember that in any chart, if you are judging dignity, there’s also accidental dignity, which is house position, which is just as strong as essential dignity. You have this other whole half, right? In a lot of the old scoring systems, a planet gets 11 points for being in the 10th house. It only gets 5 points for being in its own sign.
KS: Yes, that’s a really good point, Austin. So there will be times of day where that Jupiter is really working well.
AC: Yeah, even though it’s lacking essential dignity, but being put in a place where it has some power. So, yeah, again, just because it’s not in a place of essential dignity doesn’t mean that the switch is off and you can’t do anything with it and you can’t do anything positive.
KS: Yeah, that’s a really good point when students are learning about this idea of dignity and strength and house placement and sign influences. If your 10th house of career, for instance, is ruled by Virgo, the only type of Jupiter in the 10th house transit or trigger you could have is Jupiter in Virgo, but you’re still having the influence of Jupiter come through, I guess.
AC: Okay, I have an awesome example for that.
KS: Good.
AC: So a really good friend of mine who’s Sag rising, five planets in Sag, his 10th is Virgo. He has no planets there. Literally, within two weeks of Jupiter entering Virgo in his 10th, he went back to school to start the path towards a master’s program in screenwriting. And not only is he loving it, the possibility to do that sort of further education was actually a gift to him. So it’s basically like free school for a couple of years.
KS: Wow.
AC: Yeah. And that’s Jupiter in Virgo. It’s like, “Hey, do you want to do a lot of homework? I’m gonna give you the gift of so much homework.” And he literally said to me, “Oh, my God, I love having homework to do.” He said, “I don’t know what I was thinking when I was a kid. Now that I’m in my 30’s, I love homework. It’s amazing.”
KS: Totally. Well, it’s because he’s got homework around a subject that he’s actually interested in or passionate about rather than multiplication or something.
AC: Right, right. And honestly, he’s one of those people where he’s on the day or night chart cusp. And I’ve gone back and forth with it. I have no idea whether he’s a day chart or a night chart. I’ve built a strong case for both sides. But anyway, that’s a good example of it. It’s still Jupiter in Virgo.
KS: It’s still Jupiter.
AC: It’s maybe not as good as winning the lottery or something, but it’s winning the ‘homework lottery’.
KS: For sure, for sure.
CB: Right. And that’s why with elections like this I would recommend them, just because even if it doesn’t have strong dignity, it’s still a benefic, it still is the most positive planet in the chart due to sect, and therefore you want to make it as prominent as you possibly can. So you make it the ruler of the ascendant, put it in an angular house, make sure it’s not otherwise afflicted, and then you should be in pretty good shape.
KS: Fantastic.
CB: Yeah, so those are basically all of my elections for early February. I’ve got some stuff for later. For example, one of them actually that I like—if you want to take advantage of one of the few planets that does have any sort of essential dignity this month—is Mars in Scorpio. It’s always kind of risky when you’re using malefics in elections because you want to make sure that doesn’t backfire on you, the person doing the election or initiating the action. So in order to do that one of the things you have to do is make sure that the sect of the chart ideally makes it so that that malefic is in decent shape. So the election I have for that actually takes place on February 10. So it’s another February 10 election, but it takes place after midnight, at about 12:50 AM, or close to 1:00 in the morning, with about 19° of Scorpio rising and Mars itself at 19° of Scorpio in a night chart. So Mars is much more constructive and much less malefic because it’s a nighttime planet in a night chart. It’s in its own domicile, it’s the ruler of the ascendant, and it’s in the 1st house. And on top of that it’s also heavily supported by Jupiter—which is at 21° of Virgo in the 11th house, sending in a sextile to Mars, which is applying at 19° of Scorpio—and Venus, which is in the 3rd house in Capricorn at 21° of Capricorn, also sending a sextile back to Mars at 19° of Scorpio, so that you have support from both benefics. So this is really one of the strongest Mars-type or Mars in Scorpio-type elections that I can really even imagine. It has sect going for it. It has angularity going for it. It has configurations to both benefics. And then, finally, it has no hard aspects from Saturn; Saturn being completely in aversion to or not aspecting Mars because it’s in Sagittarius. So there’s a Mars in Scorpio election if you want to stay up until 1:00 in morning on February 10.
AC: Yeah, I would just add to that, if you need to kick ass on some projects, that’s a great time to get them started. The one house that I think is in trouble in that chart is the 10th because Mars is beating up on the Sun in Aquarius. The Sun in Aquarius is already in its detriment, and so you’re gonna see that primarily with the Sun ruling the 10th, Leo. That is not an ‘improve my reputation’ chart, right? And you’ll also notice that almost all of the planets are below the horizon. That’s gonna be a lot better for ‘below the horizon’ sorts of activities, going into the workshop and beating that metal into shape. I think for very public things that might backfire a little bit.
CB: Sure. I mean, even using Scorpio rising in and of itself implies a more subtle or—not subversive—
AC: Covert.
CB: Yeah, covert manner of operation. I mean, the primary thing I don’t think it’s great for is financial matters because it has Saturn in the 2nd in a night chart. Although the ruler is a little bit more well-placed, which is Jupiter in Virgo, which although retrograde and in Virgo, it’s at least in the 11th house, and it has a very close—actually an exact trine from Venus in Capricorn. So the situation is that there could be very significant financial matters initially, but perhaps with some positive resolution later on because of the positive placement of the ruler. Yeah, but otherwise I think that’s probably a good point about being careful in terms of 10th house matters and 2nd house matters. Cuz it’s a Mars chart, but it’s a fixed Mars chart. It’s a fixed Mars water chart. So things that require persistence and long-term effort and a lot of energy, but energy that’s sort of directed in a very fixed and very focused manner.
AC: Yeah, I could see starting a creative or a book project for myself on that date.
CB: Sure.
AC: With that nice 5th and the 3rd, and just kind of hammering away on it with Mars.
CB: Sure, definitely. All right, so those are my elections. Pretty much that’s it for the first-half of the month. There’s a couple more later, but I think I’ll save those and mention them later in the show.
AC: Yeah, let’s get onto talking about the second-half of the month. During the second-half of the month we get both Mercury and Venus in pretty rapid succession—a couple of days apart—going into Aquarius. And then a few days after that we have the Sun moving into Pisces, right? And so, that’s a very different setup. We’re out of ‘everything’s still in Capricorn’ land by then. We’ve got Venus and Mercury in Aquarius, we’ve got Sun in Pisces, and there are all sorts of things.
KS: It shifts off all that very heavy Saturn focus, because at the start of the month, with Aquarius/Capricorn, we’ve got Saturn-ruled signs. And then at least, once the Sun goes into Pisces, we’re getting a little bit more that Jupiter vibe.
CB: Yeah, we’ll get a Jupiter vibe. We get sort of a Sun-Neptune conjunction.
KS: Yeah, that’s worth mentioning, I think. It’s right at the end of February, and, again, once a year, but really spotlighting the Neptune in Pisces experience or way of being, which is so very different from all this other Saturnian or grounded or practical stuff.
CB: Definitely. So we got the Sun-Neptune conjunction going exact around February 28. And shortly after that Mars goes into—oh, no, it’s not until early March that Mars goes into Sagittarius, so we don’t have to worry about that quite yet. We do have Mercury and Venus going through Aquarius, and they’re both kind of zipping through there.
AC: Yeah.
KS: They’re moving quickly. Yeah, for sure.
AC: They are oriental of the Sun and, yeah, moving quick.
CB: Okay.
KS: And they’ll pick up some of the sextile action there as well. They’ll both sextile Saturn in Sag and then Uranus in Aries in that second-half of the month, so just picking up some of those themes. I always find when we get a quicker-moving or a personal planet in aspect to one of those slow-moving or outer planets, it’s like you get a bit of a download from whatever that planet in that sign is trying to do or bring into manifestation. We’ll see it collectively, but also people will see that in their personal lives. Venus sextile Saturn, for instance, it’s the download of the Saturn in Sag and perhaps a little bit of support or some kind of ease or grace with Venus there.
AC: Right.
CB: Definitely.
AC: And then it’s only a few days after the Sun’s ingress into Pisces that we see the Full Moon in Virgo. And so, the Full Moon in Virgo I believe is outside of the eclipse range.
KS: It is.
AC: It’s just a few degrees outside. And so, that’ll be our last normal lunation before we get into March’s pair of eclipses.
KS: Yes, it must be just on the edge of that eclipse range.
AC: Yeah, it’s like 15°-16° away from the nodes.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And so, we’re about 18 for that lunation.
CB: Okay, so it’s just outside of what would otherwise be a lunar eclipse in Virgo. So it’s just a Full Moon in Virgo, but then connected to the New Moon, which is an eclipse, in Pisces, which is at the beginning of March at 18-something. 18-19 Pisces.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Yeah, around the 9th of March. Which will be a very strong total eclipse because it’s right on the nodes.
AC: Yep.
KS: I mean, in some ways, the Full Moon in Virgo—I think it’s around the 22nd of February—is a little bit of a prelude. It’s starting to activate that Pisces/Virgo axis we’re gonna see hugely in March. Yeah, Austin.
AC: Yeah, and it’s reorienting things towards the mutable planets, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: And one of the things we said about the year as a whole is that there are always gonna be at least a couple planets in mutable signs. At specific points throughout the year—generally with the Sun moving through mutable signs—we get huge lineups there. And so, in a sense what we have with February is this moving away. We start on this cardinal axis, the same goddamn Pluto-Uranus square which we’ve been dealing with for six years now, and then we get this Aquarius stuff, which is time to maybe make some plans and readjust things. And then the next period—which is a little bit of a wormhole, where things are really gonna get moving—starts with things going into Pisces, right? And that starts during the last week of February with the Full Moon there. Cuz we’ve got a Full Moon, so there’s Sun and Moon on the mutable axis, along with Jupiter, both nodes, Neptune, Saturn, and Chiron, if you like to count Chiron, and then things are only going to get more mutable from there. And so, I would say we have this opportunity to do some Aquarian structuring according to our ideals rather than the pressing need of the present. With Capricorn, it’s like, “Okay, I’m gonna structure this cuz this is what I gotta do.” With Aquarius, we’re still structuring, but we’re structuring according to how things should be, right? And so, with the Sun, first moving through Aquarius, and then with Venus and Mercury behind and going through Aquarius during the second-half of the month, we have these opportunities to create a more upright and idealistic sort of container or shape or structure before things get crazy again because we plunge into Pisces.
CB: And one of my elections—since we mentioned the Full Moon in Virgo—actually takes advantage of that just after the Full Moon, and it takes place on February 23, at approximately 12:55 PM, let’s say 1:00 PM, 1:00 in the afternoon, with Cancer rising, and the Moon in Virgo in the third whole sign house, applying to a conjunction with Jupiter in Virgo. It’s basically a month from now. And I actually just took advantage of that same election over the past few days to record the last podcast with Cancer rising and then the Moon in Virgo applying to Jupiter. That’s one of the nice—
AC: I would just say, Chris, that’s really funny that you tapped Jupiter in Virgo and got three-and-a-half hours of podcast out of it.
CB: Yeah, of excruciating detail about dating whether Firmicus Maternus wrote in the 330s or the 350s or something like that that’s way too much detail probably for a general audience, but that’s what you get.
KS: Wow.
CB: So as Austin is saying or implying, you have to wield that power usefully, or hopefully put it to good use by taking advantage of 3rd house or Jupiterian-type activities that require that level of detail or that level of focus on nuances and things of that nature. So it could be good for writing, research, possibly teaching, especially if you’re teaching something highly detailed or intricate, and other types of 3rd house activities. But it’s interesting the contrast there between that 3rd house Moon-Jupiter conjunction, and then you’ve got the Sun-Neptune conjunction going on up in Pisces in the 9th house. And then over, a little ways from that, we have Saturn in Sagittarius in the 6th house at 15° of Sagittarius sort of filling out a loose T-square with all of it. Which is not necessarily bad, but it’s certainly a demonstration of contrasts in between a heavy Virgo emphasis, heavy Pisces emphasis with Neptune there as well, and then a very strong Saturn emphasis at the same time. So that’s my election for February. There’s one more that you can use, which is actually funny, because it’s the election that’s somewhat similar to what we’re using today for recording this podcast, which is February 25, at 1:00 PM, with Cancer rising, and the Moon in Libra in the fourth whole sign house, applying to a trine with Venus in Aquarius. And that trine is at less than a degree on that date. So you have the ruler of the ascendant in Libra and then applying to its domicile lord to an exact trine. Today we’re using it with Cancer rising, the Moon in Libra applying to a square with Venus in Capricorn, but the principle is still basically the same. So that’s all my elections for the month.
KS: Cool. The one other point that may be worth mentioning—not necessarily on your elections, Chris, but just at the tail-end of February—Mars in that latter 10 days of Feb is just moving through the tail-end of Scorpio. Because of Mars’ retrograde this year in that tail-end of Scorpio that Mars is going to come back to from late May through June and July and early August, there’s a little bit of a connection between maybe events or actions that were begun or attempted in late February and results or progress or revisions that come up through the middle of the year.
CB: Definitely. Yeah, and a revisiting of actions that were taken earlier in the year and the ramifications that those actions have later in the year.
KS: Yeah, I think that’s a really nice point, for our listeners to have that understanding that there’s almost like a bookend, if you like, between this late Feb/early March and the middle of the year. Even if you think it’s done, there may be a little final piece or something extra that doesn’t get completed or show up until we get that Mars retrograde wrapping up through the northern summer, I guess.
CB: Right, definitely. All right, well, in terms of elections, that brings me to the end of the month, and that’s pretty much all I can recommend for February. Those are the best elections I can come up with. Have you guys seen any others? Or is there anything you’re using lately for launching stuff?
KS: I mean, the only other thing, just in the early part of February—with Venus in Capricorn—a little bit of triplicity rulership there; Venus being in an earth sign. I’m trying to really focus on that from a stabilizing perspective given everything was so up in the air in January.
CB: Sure.
KS: But I think Austin really hit the nose on the head with that idea of the Saturn themes with all of the planets—certainly Mercury, Venus, and the Sun in Saturn-ruled signs over these next couple of weeks. It’s just very much about getting locked in and getting organized and set up for what’s ahead.
CB: Definitely.
AC: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
CB: All right, well, I mean, I think that covers a lot of the main points that we meant to cover for this month.
AC: Well, there are two items that I think are of astrological import or relevance that have come up in the news in the last couple of weeks. One of those is the possible discovery of a new planet, and then the other one—and this is kind of funny to me—is that people are actually noticing which planets are visible.
KS: Yes.
AC: We’re in this position until about February 20, where in the pre-dawn sky, you should be able to see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. And people are of course ascribing all sorts of meanings, both apocalyptic and utopian to that configuration.
CB: Right, as per usual.
AC: Yes. It means the world is ending/we are all saved.
KS: Right. Yes.
AC: So a couple of people have posted on my Facebook wall about that and said, “Hey, what does this mean?” And so, while a lot of traditional and earlier astrology—especially if we go into what sometimes gets called the ‘proto-astrology’ of Babylon—although Maria Mateus made a pretty good case for it not being all that ‘proto’ in one of your last podcasts, Chris. There is a lot of emphasis on what planets are visible and what are not visible. But as far as I’m familiar with the conditions and use them in my work, I’m really excited about and the Hellenistic texts tend to be most excited about planets that are either returning to visibility or are disappearing, right? This question of what does it mean when you can just see them all for a while is not addressed as clearly. The one condition that I know of that’s part of the tradition that speaks to any of this is the idea of the Sun having ‘spear-bearers’. And, Chris, you can probably give a more careful definition of what that is than me.
CB: Yeah. I mean, there’s three different conditions of spear-bearing, which were introduced in the 1st century BC or so and just has to do with the luminaries having bodyguards or attendants that are either in a conjunction or in close proximity following after or following before one of the luminaries, or that are casting their aspects or their rays in a way that’s guarding one of the luminaries. So in this context, it looks like we have more of a bodily thing where you have all of the planets sort of lined up in a visible line following after one of the luminaries.
AC: Or following before. They’re all preceding the Sun, right? The metaphor for spear-bearing is those planets which precede the rising of the Sun are like an honor guard. You seem more important if you have 10 people come in and announce you and do trumpets and all that, and then you enter.
KS: Yes.
CB: Right.
AC: And so, it’s been a while. This is not something I use consistently in my work, but I believe one of the definitions for spear-bearing extended an entire trine or 120° arc before the Sun. Is that accurate, Chris?
CB: Yeah, I mean, it depends on what definition you use, but one of them is like that. It’s just a general thing of a large arc all the way up until there’s no aspects anymore of planets preceding the Sun in rising basically. Because all of those planets will rise over the eastern horizon or over the ascendant prior to the Sun that morning, just before sunrise.
AC: Right. And so, we have the Sun with an unusual number of spear-bearers. There are more planets than there usually are heralding the rising of the Sun every morning. So we’ve got that condition which is a pretty excellent description of what we’re talking about, like that’s exactly what people are saying. It’s like, hey, you can see them all right before the Sun rises, right?
CB: Right.
AC: And then the question then is, what does that mean on a transit level? And what does that imply on a mundane level? Because from what I do know of that spear-bearing, I know of it as being used as an eminence factor in a natal chart, right?
CB: Right.
AC: If you have lots of trumpeters and people announcing your presence, then you’re probably more important, right? But we’re not looking at the chart of someone born during this time, we’re looking at what are these two-and-a-half weeks like, or what are these three weeks like. And so, one thing that that suggests of course is that the Sun’s action—up until the 20th of February when they start to disappear—is emphasized or is heralded. It would suggest that we would see some important things come from leaders or in regard to the question of leadership, right? These are the kings of our day. Do either of you guys have any thoughts about that?
KS: Absolutely. I’ve read other astrologers comment on this ‘visibility’ piece a lot in mundane astrology, taking the Sun as the king or the leader or the figurehead; completely what you were saying, Austin. These oriental or ‘rising before the Sun’ planets are preceding the Sun, so there’s a lot more that’s going on to either amplify what’s happening at a leadership level or to draw our attention towards that.
AC: Yeah, and I think the easy thing to say is, “Oh, yeah, well, it’s the US presidential race.”
KS: It is.
AC: The outcome of that is pretty important, and it’s in a weirder place than I think anybody can remember. With Trump leading on one side and Bernie Sanders leading on the other, these are the two outsiders. These are the two people that everyone thought—including myself—six months ago would kind of disappear a couple of months in, that they represented something out of bounds. Now we’re in this place where they’re both real contenders. The ‘iron throne’ of the United States is a very powerful office.
KS: Absolutely.
AC: And so, there’s that. I wish I knew more about the status of leadership in other countries. I can make a few random comments. But I don’t know, I don’t know what it means, but it does seem to concern leadership. Here’s sort of a wild—well, not too wild. Here is a somewhat wild conjecture. Probably the most important unoccupied or contested throne in the world right now is the leadership of Syria, right? We have Bashar Assad who’s clinging to power as one of the major factors in this Syrian civil war, which is just a fucking disaster. It’s a humanitarian crisis that’s been ongoing. And so, the answer to that of course is figuring out who’s actually gonna lead. Because Bashar Assad leading Syria is not working out very well. And it’s been Russia, among other countries, saying that we’re not going to cooperate in trying to solve the Syrian crisis unless Bashar Assad stays. But during one of the relatively recent meetings between John Kerry and Russia, I believe that there were indications that that might be negotiable. And if Bashar Assad’s throne is negotiable that means that we might actually see a coalition form around Syria, cuz the Syria/ISIS thing is tremendously entangled. You can’t deal with one without dealing with the other. And that sort of connects to an idea that I have about how this Mars retrograde might go down later in the year, in that this Mars retrograde is going to be in Scorpio. Mars is gonna be in Scorpio for four months this year, and that’s a lot of very raw, archetypally-unmuddled Mars fighting things. And so, I do wonder if the Mars retrograde in the second quarter doesn’t actually time with some sort of military coalition going in and trying to solve that problem. The language of ‘it’s a problem and it’s gonna get solved’ is probably not appropriate, but I think that will be what people attempt to do. So anyway, I think we might see some movement towards that military action during the second quarter, whether that solves anything or not.
CB: Sure. And in terms of the discovery or the announcement—you see stuff like that sometimes and I just sort of would brush it off, but it was coming from a reputable source. Like it was from the guy that discovered the planet Eris, Mike Brown—who’s a famous astronomer at this point, or a famous contemporary astronomer—announcing it through CalTech, through the California Technical Institute or something like that. Basically, they were trying to disprove some other earlier papers that had speculated that there may be a planet floating out there beyond Pluto, a very large planet. Because there were some astronomical bodies out that far, their orbits kept getting thrown off by something, which they calculated would only make sense if there was a very large planetary body floating around out there. And in the process of trying to disprove it, Mike Brown and this other astronomer basically ended up coming to the conclusion that they agreed with them and thought that there indeed must be another planetary body out there. And so, they released that, not suddenly—it was obviously deliberate—but it was certainly a very surprising announcement to make. And I thought that was beautiful astrologically. Cuz I forgot to mention earlier that one of the great Mercury retrograde things that occurred during this retrograde cycle is that we had Mercury station in Aquarius and then go retrograde back through Capricorn, and then station direct, conjunct Pluto and square Uranus. And it was only a few days before Mercury stationed direct there—conjunct Pluto and square Uranus—that we got this announcement that there may be this huge planetary body floating around somewhere out beyond Pluto, and that the race was now on for astronomers to find it.
AC: And it’s hypothesized to be about Neptune’s size. Is that correct?
CB: Yeah, which is fucking gigantic.
AC: Yeah.
KS: It’s not just another Sedna or something.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah, it’s not just some tiny, icy rock.
CB: Right.
AC: Although I’m sure it’s cold.
CB: Yeah. So I thought that was good symbolically, just with Mercury stationing direct conjunct Pluto. One of the interesting delineations for that that I was coming up with in my head, sort of after the fact, was ‘unexpected disclosure of something that was hidden for a long time, which resolves observational anomalies’. Cuz that’s one of the keywords for retrogrades actually; their movement is suddenly an anomaly or is anomalous. And that’s what makes retrogrades sort of significant. Sometimes they actually coincide with what are anomalies in terms of looking at the astrology of it. So it fit in kind of nicely here because they were trying to rectify, or they came up with the solution in order to rectify what was an anomaly.
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: So that’s gonna be fun.
AC: Yeah. And if that type of thing is discovered, if it is confirmed—for one thing, it’s hypothesized to have such a long orbit, it’s not really going to be something which is going to modify a lot of chart interpretations. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, it’s been in that sign for 4,000 years,” right?
KS: Absolutely.
AC: It’s really interesting because it breaks our idea of the contents of the solar system, cuz once you get out past that Kuiper Belt then you’re supposed to just have little rocky things and captured comets and all that. And so, having an actual planet-sized body out there is really interesting because it breaks with what we know of the structure of our little world. And the question is, how did it get out there? Because the planets form in a very orderly manner. We have little hard rocky things near the Sun, and then once we get out to a certain distance, then we have gas giants. And then I think they’re calling Uranus and Neptune ice giants now. Things are constructed and change in substance in, again, a very orderly fashion. And then we have the little cold rocky things out beyond Pluto. This throws a considerable fly in that ointment. And the story of how it got there will be at least as interesting as what it is, if it does indeed end up being something that is real and confirmed.
CB: Sure. And they said that the probability of this just being an error was extremely low. So while that’s still a possibility, it is highly likely, and that’s why they went out and announced that we will find something, so that’ll be interesting. And it’s also interesting cuz this is kind of how astronomers found Uranus.
KS: Neptune as well, yeah.
CB: Yeah, Neptune, and to some extent, Pluto, anomalies that couldn’t be explained in the trajectories of the planets. They felt like something was throwing it off, and they realized that gravitationally it might imply that there were other bodies out there. So then this sort of launched this search for the next planet out there.
KS: Yeah, that was quite interesting. Because Neptune was determined through the numbers or the math that it should be there, but it just took them a little bit longer to actually spot it, I guess.
CB: Right. Which is sort of interesting astrologically, just the notion of finding something that you know is out there but that you can’t see.
KS: Yeah, it is. There’s so many layers to that, isn’t there?
CB: Right. One of the things I was a little jaded about, or I’ve become a little jaded about in the past 10 years and not really looking forward to is the astronomers now are all going out there to find this thing. But unfortunately, once it’s found, then the astrologers will start the race to write books on what it means amongst the astrologers. I don’t know. The thing with Eris and some of the other discoveries over the past decade have made me a little jaded to that. Cuz I feel like there’s like a rush to infer what this planet might mean, and it’s sometimes not as careful or deliberate as I might hope.
AC: Yeah. Well, one of the challenges that the discovery of other bodies of a similar size to Pluto—which is really just mostly the last 20 years—brought up is, well, if Pluto is such a big deal, then are all of these things a big deal?
CB: Right.
AC: And one of the ways that I’ve reconciled that in my own practice—cuz they don’t seem to be as a big deal—is that Pluto’s the only one of these bodies that actually intersects and injects itself into the inner solar system. It’s the only one that crosses into Neptune’s orbit. It’s the only resident of the ‘land of the dead’ which crosses into the ‘land of the living’, whereas the others are content to drift cold and icy on the outer reaches. And because we live in the inner reaches that’s usually not relevant to us. But I think that Pluto being the only one that does that gives Pluto this special status and is responsible in many ways for the often striking delineations which can proceed from interpreting Pluto’s position and aspects to it.
CB: Sure. I mean, I should say it’s not that I don’t think that there is some meaning to it. I think that it’s interesting, in the past few decades, the approach to determining the significations of new bodies has changed very radically. Because of the idea that the mythology of a body or that the name of that a planet takes has symbolic significance has become so much of the access point for modern astrologers in determining the significations of planets, that’s really changed the approach in the past few decades where it’s less about the empirical testing it out and coming to conclusions about it coincides with versus more of a sort of abstract or theoretical extrapolation from the name or from the myths associated with the name, which oftentimes leads to assumptions about what that planet might mean.
AC: Yeah. I mean, if we look at the seven visible planets—which people have known about since before writing was developed, because you could just look up and see them—the mythological associations with those planets are pretty good. They’re pretty reliable. They’re not exactly right in all cases, but they are pretty good. Whereas if we look at the mythological associations of even Uranus and Neptune, they’re a little off. Uranus or Ouranos was the sort of absent sky god/creator thing. He doesn’t do a whole lot except get his nuts chopped off, right? And then Neptune—I would say what’s right about Neptune is the oceanic or sea metaphors. But if we actually look at Neptune’s role in myth, none of that stuff applies to the planet’s action in a birth chart. Neptune isn’t the god of dreaming. He’s not dreaming and addiction. He’s like another rapey, male Greek guy. Mostly, his stories are about him getting pissed. And Neptune is not the planet of tsunami-style anger. Like that’s just not what the planet does. There’s a kind of, yeah, it’s ‘ocean-y’, that’s right. And with Uranus, Uranus being a sky god—yeah, Uranus is very metaphysically vertical. It’s about ideals and changes which seem to issue from the void itself. It’s kind of the right territory, but their mythologies just have very little to do with the planet’s actual actions.
CB: Sure. That’s an interesting point because the original ones would have developed much more organically in the Mesopotamian tradition.
AC: Yeah.
CB: But it’s interesting that there is a bit of a disconnect and I hadn’t really thought about that. Cuz it’s interesting because then you have people like Richard Tarnas who has written an entire book arguing that the Prometheus myth actually matches or fits Uranus much more closely than the other myth does.
AC: Absolutely. I would also argue—and have made this point in my classes—if we’re gonna use a Greek figure for understanding Neptune, Dionysus is a lot better than Neptune, or Poseidon as it were.
CB: Sure. Well then maybe we can use this. I mean, I would like to use this as an opportunity to caution people. Cuz one of the reasons I think the myth thing, that people have gone so bonkers with it is that in the past 30 or 40 years—probably starting with the Jungians and some of the people into Carl Jung and using myth as an access point for understanding the significations of planets—is they’ve assumed that that’s always been the case, or that was always one of the primary access points for determining the significations of the planets. But if you look historically at the Medieval or Hellenistic tradition, you actually don’t see them resorting to that as much as you might expect. And, in fact, it happens relatively infrequently. So I think that should act as a sort of cautionary tale for modern astrologers as well, to perhaps slow down a little bit when it comes to this rush to establish the meaning of placements—or planets or other celestial bodies based purely on the name or the mythology associated with it. Instead, think of other considerations that are a little bit more grounded or a little bit more empirical.
AC: Yeah. And I would just say that I would take the naming of these things as being, I don’t know—if you’re gonna interpret it, it’s gotta be as an omen, right? It has to be a lucky coincidence. It has to be synchronistic in some way. And in the case of Neptune and Uranus, you can get a little closer to the planet’s meanings by riding in on those myths, but you have to discard about three-quarters of what you find. That might be an entry point. But as far as a definition, you can go terribly awry if you take those names as defining rather than your first clue.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yes. I think it’s good to keep in mind that those myths are often starting points rather than definitive outlines or outcomes in and of themselves.
AC: Yeah.
CB: All right, well, maybe we can return back to that at some point for a separate episode.
AC: Yeah, especially if they actually confirm it. That’ll be weird and exciting.
KS: Yes.
AC: Oh, I had one more thing to say similar to that. When we discovered Uranus, or when we discovered Neptune, that planet’s wavelength and power came into intersection with the conscious, collective wavelength of humanity, and we had these new things starting, right? And they’re like, “Well, we’ve discovered this new thing, what new things is it heralding?” And I would say that what we have discovered is the possibility or the probability of a new thing. And if it was going to herald something, it would be the discovery of the fact that we don’t actually know everything that we think we do. If anything, it’s a monumental challenge to the Victorian scientism which we’re still living with, which assumes that we know everything about the world. That we basically got it all figured out and that we’re just filling in the details. No, there are actually things which totally violate the pattern of what people assume based on the knowledge of the present. In a sense, it’s an opening up to, huh, maybe things are actually way different, or that there are serious anomalies that need to be accounted for.
CB: Yeah. And that, in a very literal sense, is gonna be representative if their projections are at all correct in terms of the orbit of this thing. It’s completely off the ecliptic, right? It’ll be unlike a lot of the other planetary bodies in that way, I think.
AC: And just being huge and that far out, yeah, it violates established patterns, or just operates outside of established patterns in every way that it’s been defined pretty much.
CB: Sure. All right, well, we’ll save that discussion for its actual discovery here, hopefully before too long. I’m trying to think if there’s any other major things that we’re totally spacing out.
AC: Well, I mean, there is one thing, and we talked about this earlier. So as planets move through
Aquarius, they make sextiles with Saturn. And Saturn is at 14-15 Sagittarius, but we also have Uranus at 17-18 of Aries, and the midpoint of those two planets, a loose trine, is in the middle of Aquarius. And so, the order that we’re establishing here by sextiling Saturn is also going to be informed by sextiles to Uranus, right? So we have Saturn and Uranus in this loose and sometimes tight trine, well, loose trine this year, where those two planets and their functions are engaged harmoniously. And so, if we’re talking about new plans or regimens which break old habits, if we’re talking about establishing a new and positive order in your life, that’s what you want. You want Uranus and Saturn both smiling upon your works. And they will be doing so in those middle degrees of Aquarius.
CB: Definitely.
KS: Absolutely. That’s a lovely point, Austin. Because that Saturn-Uranus trine is bouncing around within a few degrees all year, but doesn’t become exact by degree until December.
AC: Right.
KS: So in some ways these planets going through that Aquarius midpoint is a little bit of preview or an opportunity to bring those Saturn-Uranus themes together to experiment with what that looks like, which is going to become a much stronger theme at the end of the year when Saturn and Uranus actually form that exact degree-based trine.
AC: Yeah, there’s a possibility for those planets which sextile Saturn, and then next sextile Uranus, to complete that aspect for them. That’s similar to the old condition of ‘carrying the light’ between two planets.
KS: Beautiful, beautiful.
AC: And so, that’s kind of something we have to maybe participate in, cuz they’re not just trine for us, but the Sun, Mercury, and then Venus can maybe help us do that.
KS: Beautiful. That idea of the intermediary, I think that’s really one of the great gifts particularly of Mercury and Venus.
AC: Sure.
KS: Yeah, we can each throw our stuff into the mix then, or we will maybe benefit or be guided by the input that comes to us from people around us, I guess.
AC: Perfect.
CB: All right, well, I think that’s a nice high note to end on. I think it’s a good idea to go out strong.
AC: Yeah, no horrific imagery for this month.
CB: Right.
KS: Oh, you’re gonna keep that Uranus in Scorpio in the box, Austin?
AC: Well, my first five columns have been rather dark in tone, and part of it’s just cuz I rejoice in the grotesque. But mostly it’s because if you’re looking for symbols that resonate with this last January, they can’t be too uplifting or they won’t be true. And as much as I delight in wallowing in the clapotic slime, February’s just not as gnarly.
KS: It’s not. It’s really not.
AC: It’s not about digging up and digging under and finding bones and all that. That was January, and there’ll be a little bit of that left to do in February. But February is really about looking upward. It’s less chthonic and more celestial.
KS: Beautiful. And on that note, Austin, I would say to people, enjoy it, because it is a bit unique in terms of how February stands out compared to the rest of the year. So we should all kind of go with that and enjoy the lightness or the new perspective.
AC: Yeah, and the capacity to put some positive structures and put some positive changes into action. Get those a little bit solid so the next time a storm comes, they’re sturdy enough to withstand that.
KS: Yeah, beautiful. Cool.
CB: Excellent. All right, well, I guess that does it for February then. Do guys have any final—I think we’re done with final thoughts. But do you guys have any webinars or anything coming up?
KS: Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention I have my next online class starting the first week of February. It is designed as a beginner or an intro class to chart interpretation. So for anybody who’s ‘new-ish’ but wants some structured guidance about diving into that, just hit me up through my website or grab me on Facebook or Twitter. It’s a six-week class that runs over the Zoom video meeting platform. And you’re all welcome, even if you want to review some stuff you might have covered before. I forgot to mention that earlier. Mercury again. Thanks, Chris.
CB: Sure. And, Austin, you’ve got stuff coming up you mentioned that you’ll be doing, including the Portland Traditional Conference, which I think I’ll take part in about a month from now, in late February.
AC: Yeah. And then I’m actually gonna be up in the Northwest speaking to the Washington State Astrological Association on the 11th and 13th of February. I’m gonna start teaching again. I think I’m gonna start teaching on the 20th or thereabout. Basically, I’m gonna have the next eight months of classes and their schedules released, and so people can see what they want to do. Oh, I should mention this. So the AYA, the Association for Young Astrologers, which I’m the current president of, we’ve decided to offer a new thing. We’re calling it ‘Dinner and Drinks’ with whoever the astrologer is. We use sort of a GoToMeeting or Zoom-type platform where a bunch of people can attend live. And an astrologer’s just gonna come in and offer 15 or 20 minutes of thoughts, and then we’re just gonna talk. And then people can ask them whatever questions and the conversation can go however. So the idea is sort of an informal chat with astrologers. We’re gonna be doing one of those every month. We’re actually doing the first one tonight, but this podcast will not be out tonight. And I would hope that both you, Chris, and you, Kelly, will be interested in having dinner and drinks with the AYA at some point.
KS: Love to.
CB: Nice. That’s a brilliant idea. Whose brainchild was that?
AC: I don’t know. It came out of a conversation between myself and Nick Civitello and Alia—God, I can’t remember. It’s Wesala. Anyway, Alia’s our—apologies, Alia, for not remembering your last name correctly. Anyway, Alia’s our membership director. So I would say that that was a child of triple parentage.
CB: Nice.
KS: Beautiful.
CB: All right, well, it sounds like my neighbors are vacuuming, so I think that’s a good time to end the show. All right, well, thanks everyone for listening. Thank you two for joining me.
KS: Anytime, Chris. It’s always a blast. Thanks guys.
AC: But of course.
CB: All right, thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
AC: Bye.
KS: Bye.