The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 69, titled:
Astrology Forecast and Elections for April 2016
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on March 24, 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 November 25th, 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. This episode is recorded on Wednesday, March 23, 2016, at 4:37 PM, in Denver, Colorado, and this is Episode 69 of the show. For more information about how to subscribe to the podcast and help support the production of future episodes, please visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking with Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees about the astrological forecast for the month of April 2016, as well as a few auspicious dates during the course of the month using the principles of electional astrology. So let’s get started with the show. Austin and Kelly, welcome back.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, glad to be here.
CB: All right. Yeah, it’s been almost exactly a month, I think, since we recorded our last marathon two episodes together, which was the forecast for March and the ‘seven traditional planets’ episodes, which we tried to squeeze into what turned into a two- or three-hour recording session. So what have you guys been up to since then?
AC: Well, I started teaching my eclipse class, and I’m a little more than halfway through with that. And it’s been really great for me, and I think the students are enjoying it as well; that’s what they tell me at least. And I’m about to start a new seven-month series of fundamentals classes on Saturday, the 26th, and so I’m excited about that. It’s always nice to build it all up from the beginning again. It’s sort of like Descartes’ project—start at nihilo and then bring it all out from the void.
CB: Right.
KS: Fantastic.
CB: You’ve been cranking out the columns each month, I see.
AC: Each week.
CB: Each week.
AC: I have not missed a week yet. There were one or two where I didn’t get it out until late Monday. There have been a few where I just barely made it on time cuz I was traveling. But, yeah, it’s been really fun to write weekly again. It’s really different from writing on the yearly basis that I was doing before.
CB: Right. Cuz previously you would just have a three-month or two-month span of writing the almanac, and now it’s extended over a weekly basis.
AC: Right. Now instead of ‘almanac-king’ straight for three months, in a sense I’m ‘almanac-king’ for two days every week.
CB: Very good. And what have you been working on, Kelly?
KS: Well, I’ve been writing too actually. The two annual projects that I’m working on are in production right now. So I’m writing 2017 horoscopes. I’ve almost finished my daily 2017 commitment.
CB: Wow.
KS: So I work with a team of writers, and we all do different signs and different months, daily horoscopes for next year. And then as soon as I finish that—which should wrap up tomorrow—I’ll get the four-day weekend, the Easter weekend off, and then I’ll dive into doing my extended 2017 annual horoscopes. So that’ll keep me busy for all of April and probably a good chunk of May.
CB: Wait, you do daily for every day of the entirety of the following year, a year ahead of time?
KS: Yes.
CB: Am I understanding that correctly?
KS: You are.
CB: For what publication?
KS: So it’s for Universal Publishers, which is out of Australia. The target market is 18-to-25-year-old women, and the publishing project involves a diary, like an Aries diary for 2017, a Taurus diary for 2017, and so on. And so, within that diary, it’s designed as a planning diary. So like a week to a page, you can put all of your appointments in it, but it also has daily 50-word horoscopes for each day of the year for each sign.
CB: Wow. That is wild. That sounds like a lot of writing. How long does it take you to finish that?
KS: I’ve been working on that for five weeks now. And there is a team of us. Like there’s half-a-dozen writers who kind of split this work. It sounds large, but it’s a 50-word horoscope. So once you get in the groove—I mean, yesterday I did about 3,000 words. I just sat down and had a bit of a marathon writing session and got a couple of months done. Once you get in the groove, the poetry kind of flows and you’re checking your Solar Fire. Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s a lot of fun.
CB: Sure. Yeah, I guess my biggest issue with something like that would be not repeating the same words or turn of phrase too much. Like I have that problem doing just the monthly electional column, where the TMA editor is always constantly sending it back and saying, “You’re using the same word five times in three consecutive paragraphs,” or something.
AC: When I was writing dailies—
KS: Austin would know this, yeah.
AC: Yeah, I encountered the same thing. For me, I would discover a new adjective that I could use for the planet and I would be so excited.
KS: Totally.
AC: I remember when I discovered that I could describe an aspect to Neptune as ‘anesthetic’.
KS: Oh, beautiful, Austin. I’m going to steal that.
CB: Nice.
AC: By all means. But then my editor for that project was Dr. Jenn Zahrt, and she was like, “Austin, you used ‘anesthetic’ like 13 times this month.” And I was like, “Yeah, I got really excited about it.” I was so tired of ‘dreamy’.
KS: Yes. Yeah, there are some months with Neptune aspects where it’s like I don’t have any more words for ‘dreams’ or ‘fantasy’ or ‘imagination’ or ‘get creative’.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah.
KS: But this is why I actually encourage people to spend even a short amount of their time developing their astrological career doing a little bit of horoscope writing, because it really challenges you to think about different words or different metaphors to explain the planets and their influences. So it’s like a pianist who would do their scales, and that’s how I think about writing horoscopes.
CB: Yeah, definitely. It’s like the astrological equivalent of going to the gym and lifting weights.
KS: Totally.
AC: There’s the understanding of the configuration of the planets, but then there’s being able to talk about it.
KS: Yes.
AC: And you need words to talk about things. So, Kelly, I’m gonna offer you the latest word that I discovered, that’s a nice adjective—and this was actually in conversation with Catherine Baskett, who’s an astrologer in Tucson, Arizona. I heard her describe a Mars aspect as ‘peppery’, and I thought, “Oh, that’s amazing.”
KS: Yeah, that’s better than ‘spicy’. I like that. That’s fantastic. And actually, Chris, I was re-reading your Valens notes on the planets that we had talked about when we did our ‘planets’ episode and just some of the concepts and the keywords there. Sometimes reading the historical stuff does give you a word or an idea about a planet or an aspect that you hadn’t thought of, so it does help develop the ‘astro-vocab’.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And that’s really important, both in terms of being able to communicate what you’re looking at, but also even just understanding yourself. Like I’ve been surprised at how much looking up each of the Greek words that some of the ancient astrologers, like Valens, used for each of the planets really deepens the breadth of your understanding of how they were conceptualizing it. Because sometimes an astrologer will use a term to describe a planet, and that term has a surface level or immediate meaning, which is its primary meaning. But then sometimes it has all of these secondary or sub-meanings that are also relevant to and help to flesh out the meaning of the planet, and it’s really interesting how language can be used to sort of expand on astrology in that way.
AC: Yeah, and I’d actually like to jump in on that and take it beyond words onto images. A lot of times, in a lot of different places in astrology we use images, whether it’s “It will probably look like this,” if we’re talking about what a configuration or a time-lord period’s gonna look like for someone. And then there’s also this use of archetypal and mythological language, such as, “Oh, what is Mars like? Oh, Mars is like a dude with a sword and a shield,” right? And I’ve always been pretty visually-oriented. And I’ve found that by going well beyond the standard basket of images, I have a visual vocabulary which is better. Apparently, my verbal vocabulary isn’t quite there today. So I’ve run into this recently in delineating Mars for people and helping them to recognize the condition of natal Mars in their chart. And this is of course relevant because a big transit for a lot of people is gonna be Mars’ retrograde, which occurs this month, so we’re obviously gonna talk a lot about that.
But I had this experience where I was talking to somebody about Mars in Capricorn, and this was not a person who identified with the hulking, ax-wielding barbarian that we often visualize for Mars in Aries, like big ass-kicker. This person was somebody who was not built like that. They were thin and tough. I was like, oh, it’s Mars in a Saturn-ruled sign. I was like if we used some of the image conventions from the history of astrology, he’s like a tough ass old man, like one of those cranky old men who lives in the mountains. And they don’t have a ton of muscles, but then can work for 14 hours a day, and they’re just impossible to kill. I was like if you’re trying to connect to what that looks like in your chart, it’s not gonna look like the UFC fighter, right? And so, I don’t know, being able to switch gears with imagery has just allowed me to be more helpful in consultations. Another thing that I will be bringing up when we get to Mars is just thinking of Mars as a warrior is limiting. If you look at who are the children of Mars, and you look at Mars’ significations in traditional astrology, the smith, the blacksmith is such a powerful and important figure within the martial range of meanings. It’s still super heating metal and beating it with your giant, manly arms. It’s still very martial, but it’s constructive. And so, when we’re trying to think about Mars, if you’re only thinking about using fire to burn down people’s houses, the best thing you can do is burn down the people’s houses who deserve it rather than using that fire for something else. And thinking of metal and fire, still core Mars significations, but in a different context and having a different position in human life.
CB: Well, speaking of Mars, I think that’s the thing at the top of the list that you guys put for the important—
KS: That’s a great segue.
CB: —yeah, astrological alignments for April, and that is the Mars retrograde station. So could you guys talk about that?
KS: Well, I don’t even know if I have something positive to say about it.
CB: Well, let’s start with when is it occurring?
KS: So Mars is going to start its retrograde on the 16th of April at 8 Sag, and it will be retrograde right through until the end of June. I think we’ve got to the 28th of June. And Mars will move backwards from 8 Sag all the way back to 23 Scorpio. So it’s kind of evenly split between the early part of Sag and the latter part of Scorpio, which is interesting for a number of reasons. I mean, we’ve just had Saturn go through this part of the sky as well. And so, maybe there’s some lingering, unfinished business from the Saturn transit stuff, particularly the 2015. The part of the sky that Saturn covered then, Mars is going back over and maybe digging over the rubble just to make sure that everything that needs to be dealt with is cleaned up, organized, what have you, is done. One thing with Mars this April is that Mars is really in station all month. It’s at 7° for a few days at the start of April, and then it spends the rest of the month at 8 Sag. It’s technically moving forward for the first-half of April, and then it sort of spins around. But it’s not moving, per se. Mars is just pivoting on the same point. So that 8 Sag is a hugely emphasized part of the zodiac this month.
CB: Okay. Yeah, so it’s stationing right around the middle of April. And so, I was thinking about this recently in terms of what a station represents and what different traditions say in terms of whether that’s the planet doing something that’s an anomaly or something that’s weird, or whether it’s an intensification of the significations of the planet, whether it’s an inversion of the significations of the planet, or what have you. And I could kind of see it a few different ways. Cuz I think it’s the Indian astrologers that say that it’s an intensification of the planet, right? Or that the planet becomes stronger in some way. Are either of you familiar with that?
KS: Yeah, I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard Kenneth say that.
AC: I’ve heard that, but there’s a lot of astrology in India. Like they’ve been arguing about stuff for a long time.
CB: Right.
AC: And so, we shouldn’t assume that that is everyone’s opinion. I’ve heard a couple of different ways that Indian astrologers, or people studying Indian astrology, use stations. I’ve heard ‘radical inversion’, and I’ve heard other people say, “Nah, it doesn’t do that. It’s just stronger.”
CB: Okay. Well, one of the things I could think of in terms of how somebody might describe it as stronger is just the fact that it has a much more lingering effect when the planet stations retrograde on a specific area of the chart that it’s stationing close to or stationing on. And if a person has personal planets close to that, they’re gonna feel that much more strongly, and they’re gonna have events occur in their life that are extended or much more significant than if you just had that planet in its normal motion, especially with an inner planet, moving over that degree relatively quickly. Mars is probably the planet where this is most notable. An inner planet moves relatively fast most of the time. But when he goes retrograde, he really has this extended period of slowing down and stopping on certain parts of the chart and bringing with him sometimes a lot of baggage if that’s hitting the chart in a difficult way.
AC: Yeah. I mean, when Mars is in standard direct motion, he would be 2° of the zodiac in three days. And so, we’re talking about Mars taking a month to do 2° of the zodiac. That’s a factor of 10.
CB: Right.
AC: That’s huge.
CB: So just in and of itself, that is almost like an intensification, or at least an elongation of the duration of the experience of a Mars transit if that specific degree is in fact hitting some important point in a person’s chart.
AC: Absolutely.
KS: Hugely. And I think it just creates this general sort of feeling of, I don’t know, treading water or a holding pattern. When I see a planet like Mars—which we typically associate with movement and progress and action and momentum—it always makes me think of being stuck literally in a holding pattern in a plane. And this happens a lot when you fly into Sydney International Airport because Sydney is the major airport coming into Australia, or one of the major airports. It actually has a curfew. And because it’s very close to where there’s a lot of residential areas, planes can’t land before 6:00 AM. And when you come in from LA, for instance, you take a plane leaving late at night, you cross the date line, etc. And if you get a good wind, you can actually get to Sydney a quarter to 6:00 in the morning and you’re just stuck going nowhere, around in circles off the coast of Sydney, while you wait for the right time to land. And I think that imagery of a holding pattern or treading water or maybe not being able to move forward as quickly as you want or in the most direct way is perhaps something to keep in mind for this Mars station for April.
CB: Definitely.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s a good metaphor. And so, like anything, this is gonna hit different people differently.
KS: Sure, yeah.
AC: We can come up with probably a couple few different simple categories. So one is the ‘going nowhere’, right? I will say that that is generally how I experience Mars retrogrades. I do a lot of spinning my wheels. When I look back at what I created or accomplished during Mars retrograde periods, going back at least 10 years, they’re almost always my least awesome periods. It doesn’t mean that the process was useless, but they’re not periods of accomplishment and activity for me, which are Mars things. Now I want to give another example, and so this is actually coming from a friend of mine’s chart. So a friend of mine has the Sun and rising and Uranus at 8° and 9° Sag, right? So he’s gonna get—
KS: Very direct trigger.
AC: —lit up by this month, but we both know what’s coming up for him. So he’s been doing a really intense screenwriting program here in LA. He started it right when Jupiter moved into his 10th in Virgo at the end of the summer, and he’s just begun the final and most intense semester. And he was telling me, “Oh, I got ‘that’ professor who is the least friendly.”
KS: Right. The crappy, old—yeah.
AC: Right. And so, he’s literally looking at it, and he’s like, “Oh, this is gonna be the trial by fire.” They’re expected to produce twice as fast as they were in previous semesters and they’ll be held to standards which are twice as high. And so, it’s like, oh, yeah, obviously you’re about to have Mars station on you. You’re gonna get thrown into the furnace. People talk about ‘a trial by fire’, which is a type of ordeal, right? People use ‘ordeal’ casually like, “Oh, today was terrible. It was such an ordeal to go to the DMV and get my driver’s license renewed.” But an ordeal is generally you commit to a process that will be painful, but it will create really important changes either within yourself or within your life. Ordeal is part of the complex of meanings that surround initiation, right?
KS: I was just thinking that, Austin. Yeah, like a ritualistic initiative or initiation.
AC: Yeah. And so, my friend’s all about it. He’s a glutton for pain. And so, he’s just like, “Yes, this will make me better. I will come out of this furnace in three months, and I will be a better writer. I will be faster. I will be stronger, etc., etc.” But it’s going to be just being held down for a couple of months. And so, for some people this is gonna be an ordeal that may not be pleasant, but may have some transformative qualities.
CB: That’s good.
KS: That’s a beautiful way of describing it. Sorry, Chris.
CB: And you posted some image or something recently of fire as being a transformative image or fire as a transformative sort of concept, or some type of purifying concept, I think. That’s at least what it made me think of recently.
AC: Oh, I definitely think that. We talked a little bit about that in our discussion on the planets. I was just pointing out that you can’t make anything out of metal unless you superheat it, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: In order to make metal malleable—like any of the metals that we actually make stuff out of—you gotta heat it. So I’ve actually been reading Vedic texts recently, and I was reading about the Vedic take on Mars, and there are a lot of things that are just the same: cutting and burning and all that. But one of the figures that’s very strongly associated with Mars is considered to be an ascetic. He is antisocial, which is a Mars thing. He wants to go sit in the mountains and burn in his own fire and be purified. And so, there’s this nice coincidence or overlap—for me at least—between the idea of the smith and the ascetic where you are the metal that you are heating and beating. And one of the things that I get a lot of the time and that I see a lot of times in my practice with Mars retrogrades is that the thrust of the energies is inward and that there’s a process of transformation. And that word gets overused a lot, but it’s really about melting down tools to reform them into more appropriate tools. If we go to smith metaphors, I think we can get a lot farther than if we just talk about soldiers.
KS: Beautiful.
CB: Definitely. So one of the things I was looking at or drawing on was the work of synodic cycles that I’ve done and then some past discussions that I’ve had with Nick Dagan Best on this podcast about Venus and Mars retrograde cycles. Anytime you have a retrograde—especially with a planet like Mars or Venus—you want to look back at the last time that that planet went retrograde in the same signs. And Mars of course has a 15-year synodic cycle where approximately every 15 years, it goes retrograde in roughly the same area of the zodiac.
AC: It’s off. Venus only shifts like 2° between each of her synodic returns, but Mars is kind of an asshole. Mars will occupy pretty different degrees every 15 years. There’s a resonance there, but as is the nature of Mars, it’s not nearly as orderly as we would like it to be.
CB: Sure. And at least in this instance we do have what is at least a station in the same sign.
KS: Oh, two stations. Yeah, in Sag, back in the summer of 2001.
CB: Right. So this time it’s stationing retrograde at 8° of Sagittarius, and then it’s retrograding back and stationing direct at 23 Scorpio. 15 years ago, in the spring and summer of 2001, Mars stationed retrograde on May 10, 2001 at 29° of Sagittarius and then retrograded back and stationed direct at 15 Sagittarius on July 19. So there’s potentially some kind of connection between that retrograde period 15 years ago, in the summer of 2001, and this retrograde period. So one of the things that people might ask themselves is if important events occurred in the person’s life during that time span, during that last retrograde 15 years ago. Because sometimes that could mean that that person is somehow keyed into that retrograde cycle for some reason, and therefore this one could bring a repetition of similarly important events.
KS: For sure. And I think that one simple way for people to try and connect with that is perhaps if Sagittarius either rules one of the angular houses in their charts, or they have a lot of planets natally in Sag. Those are just simple ways to see if it’s gonna trigger you; potentially it did back in 2001, and then this one as well.
CB: Right. Yeah, definitely. So angles, definitely, like your ascendant or midheaven or descendant or IC. Or maybe even other planets, like luminaries or ruler of the ascendant or something like that.
KS: Sect light, that type of thing.
CB: Sure. All right, so that’s really one of the biggest things this month.
KS: That is the biggest thing I think for April.
AC: And it’s worth noting that the Sun will be in a Mars-ruled sign for two-thirds of April.
KS: For sure.
AC: And so, yeah, our primary luminary is going to be keyed into what Mars is doing. Before we move on from Mars, it’s worth talking about what Mars retrogrades are like if you’re born with Mars retrograde. I, for some reason unknown to me, am a collector of Mars retrogrades. I married one. I’ve lived with several, so my best friends are Mars retrograde people. Generally, what I’ve seen is that they have meaningfully-different experiences of Mars’ retrograde phase. I can think of several of them who are not what you would consider ‘martial’ in their bearing in the sense that they’re not like ‘pick a goal and get it done’ sort of people. There’s a tendency for them to circumambulate the tasks which lie before them. But in several cases, I have seen them over the last couple cycles just go into a berserker fury of accomplishment while Mars is retrograde. Whereas I’ve noted for myself—and this is something I also see for a lot of people who are ‘Mars-y’, for lack of a better word, conventionally ‘Mars-y’—I see a lack of activity and accomplishment. For a lot of the Mars retrograde people I know and whose lives I keep track of they really seem to kick a lot of ass during these periods.
CB: Interesting. Yeah, definitely I’ve also seen that. I think that’s part of that lecture that Nick gives where he just shows this string of world leaders and other celebrities and important people doing incredibly important actions and important turning points in terms of their career taking place under Mars retrograde cycles when they are keyed into that for some reason. So you’ve seen that more for people that have it retrograde natally?
AC: Yeah, I would say probably like two-thirds to three-quarters of the cases that I’ve seen through at least two or three cycles and whose lives I know the details, they really seem to be periods of unusual productivity.
CB: Interesting. It’s also worth noting—perhaps in addition to it being more important if it’s hitting angles—sometimes even something as simple as noting what house it’s going retrograde in, or what houses it’s gonna pass through in terms of the events that it’s signifying becoming more important in that specific area of life for an extended period of time, and if that’s gonna be problematic for the person having more problematic events happening in that area of life for a few months versus if it’s gonna be more constructive, perhaps seeing the person clearing the way or sort of bulldozing through some things that they have to get done in some specific area of their life over the course of a few months.
KS: Yeah, I think the idea is that with that slowing of Mars, or the heightened emphasis of Mars’ influence through just a very specific part of the zodiac, there’s almost a narrowing of focus that can come through. And I think when someone is really tapped into that, they can be very specific and very targeted and very productive in what they’re doing as well.
CB: Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, let’s see, moving on, what are some of the other major alignments or turning points that are notable about April?
AC: Well—
KS: Yes? There is the Mercury retrograde at the end of the month.
AC: Let’s talk about the lunations first.
KS: You want to? Okay, sure. Let’s do that. Oh, yeah, cuz you’ve got some really juicy stuff about the degrees to say.
AC: Well, it’s just really interesting. Okay, so we have a New Moon in Aries, and that’s on April 7, and that takes place at 18-and-change of Aries. And so, what’s interesting about that to me is that that degree—that 19th degree using ordinal numbers, which is 18-and-stuff—that’s supposed to be the Sun’s degree of maximum exaltation, right? So if you’ve studied astrology at all, you know that the planets are considered to have an easier or harder time in the various signs, and exaltation is traditionally considered the second-most positive relationship a planet can have to a sign. So in addition to signs of exaltation, traditionally, there are also degrees of exaltation, where there’s a single degree in every sign where a planet is exalted, where it’s considered to be at the very zenith of its power. And so, the Sun hits that degree once a year, and it just so happens that the New Moon is right on that degree. And so, I’m not entirely sure what to make of that, but I think that’s really interesting. And then to contrast that—this is the weird, wild part—the ‘lunar-ation’, the Full Moon occurs. I’ve been saying lunar eclipse so much lately. But the Full Moon in Scorpio, which occurs on April 21, is actually at 2-and-stuff Scorpio. Well, 2-and-stuff Scorpio is the 3rd degree of Scorpio, which is exactly opposite the Moon’s degree of maximum exaltation. So using this older idea of degrees of maximum exaltation, you therefore also have degrees of maximum fall. And so, our Full Moon in Scorpio takes place in the Moon’s degree of maximum fall. That’s just a striking contrast, and that certainly doesn’t happen every year or every decade.
CB: Right. No, that’s actually pretty rare.
AC: Yeah. And it was just something I was like, really? Cuz I had actually known about that 18° New Moon and I was like, “I don’t know, maybe I should do some special solar stuff then,” and I kind of ignored the Full Moon. But then I was doing some research and I was like, really, maximum fall? Let’s hope that that’s not true.
CB: Sure. Let’s see, so we’re—
KS: Yeah, that cycle repeats, the New Moon/Full Moon, about every 19 years that we get close to the same degrees.
CB: Right.
AC: Interesting.
CB: Cuz of the nodal cycle and the metonic cycle and everything.
KS: Exactly, yeah. So April ‘97, we had a New Moon in Aries at 17 Aries. It wasn’t exactly the exaltation degree, but close to that marker in Aries. And that’s how frequently something like that would happen, so 18 years. I think the point you’re making, Austin, is that the lunations themselves are important, and the degrees that they happen at are actually really sensitive degrees because they’re only triggered every 18 or 19 years. So sometimes when you have a New Moon or a Full Moon exactly at an important degree, it’s more significant than, say, a Jupiter transit or even a Saturn transit potentially.
AC: Yeah. And another thing that’s worth noting about these lunations is the ruler of both of these lunations is Mars.
CB: Right.
AC: So there’s a reason we’ve basically only talked about Mars, because it’s Mars’ month.
CB: Yeah.
KS: All about Mars.
CB: And we’ve got Mars going retrograde, and then Mars eventually stationing direct in one of its signs at 23 Scorpio.
AC: Yeah, indeed.
KS: Yeah, coming up in June.
CB: Yeah. And that whole ‘Mars going retrograde and being in the same sign as Saturn’ thing actually made a lot of the elections for this month difficult. So I guess I should start mentioning some of those now—especially for the early part of the month—to get those out of the way.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So I’ve sort of taken the last few months off to write. So Leisa Schaim has been helping me to do some of the elections for the TMA column and found most of the elections that I have for April at this point. So the first one is taking place at the very beginning of the month, on April 1. So it’s on April 1, 2016, at 8:05 in the morning. It has about 12° of Taurus rising, with the ruler of the ascendant being Venus, which is exalted in Pisces in the eleventh whole sign house. That’s about it. The Moon is at 23° of Capricorn in the ninth whole sign house conjunct the degree of the MC depending on your location, and the Moon is applying to a sextile with Venus. So it’s very sort of focused on the ruler of the ascendant being in the 11th and the Moon being in the 9th. So kind of like an 11th house and 9th house-type election. Doing stuff with Venus in Pisces of course is difficult, and it’s difficult to find a good ruler of the ascendant during the first part of April because none of them are terribly well-placed. The only thing that’s a little problematic about this chart is just having Mars and Saturn in the tenth sign, sort of in a superior sign-based square with Venus as the ruler of the ascendant. But at least Venus is separating from that and is exalted, and there’s a little bit offsetting it since Jupiter in Virgo is itself overcoming Mars and Saturn with reception. And I tend to think that that will offset some of the worst or some of the most problematic potentials for that Mars-Saturn sign-based conjunction in Sagittarius. Which at least is true until Mars retrogrades back into Scorpio and then is no longer overcome by Jupiter. So that’s the first chart. April 1, with the ruler of the ascendant in the 11th. There’s another chart, another 11th house-type election that takes place on April 8, at 11:30 in the morning, with about 14° of Cancer rising. So the ruler of the ascendant is the Moon. It’s, again, exalted in Taurus, in the eleventh whole sign house. But this time the ruler of the ascendant is applying to a trine with Jupiter at 14° of Virgo in the 3rd house. So this is probably actually a stronger and more positive election overall because the ruler of the ascendant’s not really afflicted in any way. It’s well-placed zodiacally by being in the sign of its exaltation. It’s in a good house, and it’s applying to the most benefic planet in the chart.
AC: And the Moon is waxing.
CB: Yeah. And this is after the New Moon. So we’ve got a waxing Moon that’s building up, so it would be better for starting new things and beginning new projects or ventures, whereas the previous one—where the Moon was still waning—would be better for winding things down or bringing things to completion or culmination in some way. So this is the first election that you can get after that New Moon in Aries that we were talking about earlier. There’s one more, maybe I should just go ahead and mention it now, which is on April 12, at 12:05 PM. So right in the middle of the day, with about 24° of Cancer rising. So the ascendant’s in Cancer, and the Moon is also in Cancer in the first whole sign house. And the Moon is applying to a square with Venus, sextile with Mercury, then finally a sextile with Jupiter. So, again, you have a situation where the ruler of the ascendant is well-placed by sign, it’s well-placed by house, and it’s also relatively well-placed by aspect and applying to benefics with no aspects to the two malefics, so it’s in pretty good shape.
AC: So, Chris, I actually have an electional question based on this chart. So there are some texts in some books that don’t like putting the Moon in the 1st in an election no matter how well-dignified because they think that the Moon’s rapidly shifting light can make things unsteady. Is that something you look at? And do you have contraindicating examples? I’m just curious what you think about that.
CB: Yeah, I mean, I remember this being discussed a few months ago in some electional forum where some of the people that did magical astrology were kind of arguing about that. Because some of them took a reference in the Picatrix or something of the Moon in the 1st as being not good, because the Moon, in most traditional texts, is like Mercury in that it’s viewed as having some instability or some ‘quick-changingness.’ So typically if you highlight it, it’s something that has the potential of changing quickly or changing rapidly rather than being more stable. That’s also actually the case with—or is typically seen as the case with the cardinal signs. The four cardinal signs are also supposed to be good for initiating new actions, but not very good for permanent foundations or for stability. I think that that’s one consideration out of many, but that’s really not at the top of my list in terms of things to absolutely avoid in terms of putting the Moon in the 1st house. And I think in most elections, that’s not gonna be a huge problem for them, putting the Moon in the 1st house and worrying about stability issues. Cuz there’s probably other things that would be bigger stability issues, like having malefics in the 1st house and contrary-to-the-sect or something like that that would actually be physically damaging or debilitating or afflicting to the 1st house party or the one initiating the action. Whereas all this is saying is that you, yourself, or whatever you initiate at that time may have a tendency to sort of fluctuate at times and change its character sometimes at the whim of environmental circumstances or something like that. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be a terrible, external, oppressive element in the chart. That can just be something that describes or becomes characteristic about whatever started at that time. So I personally don’t think that’s a huge electional rule that I rank at the top of my list of things to avoid.
AC: All right, cool. Thank you for your response. I was curious what you thought about that.
CB: Yeah. I mean, especially in a chart like this, where you also have the Moon in its own domicile and so well-configured to benefics, which otherwise tend to promote stability and growth and things rather than the breaking down or dismantling of things. So, yeah, I think it’s fine.
AC: Yeah, I wouldn’t avoid this chart personally. It just brought up that issue, which I thought would be interesting to talk about for a minute or two.
CB: Yeah. I mean, there’s this thing that comes up with electional astrology. Like writing the column over the past few years, it’s almost made me for a while—maybe the first year or two—really paranoid writing the electional column because there’s hundreds of those little rules. And sometimes they’re like idiosyncratic rules that are more emphasized in some traditions or others, and you know that some electional astrologers somewhere is gonna be reading the chart and they’re gonna say, “How could you use that chart?” because it had an ‘X’ obscure, technical thing from ‘Y’ book from whatever century, but there’s always gonna be something like that. And I think instead of taking all of those—which is not necessarily possible—it’s better to rank them in terms of importance of what’s the worst possible thing you could possibly have in an electional chart, and then what’s the thing that’s just below that in order of worst things, and then what’s the thing below that, and then just keep stacking them lower and lower until you have your own personal range of what’s acceptable versus what’s not acceptable. Cuz we’re mentioning this—this is more of a Medieval or a 12th century thing if we’re talking about the Picatrix—but then sometimes there’s modern things. Like that idea that somebody was asking me about recently in an email about the last aspect that the Moon makes before it leaves the sign or something like that, which I meant to research, cuz I actually don’t know where that came from. And I know that that’s become a popular consideration in modern astrology recently, I suspect in connection with the void-of-course Moon thing that’s been promoted over the past few decades, or something like that, but I’m not really sure. Have you guys seen that in any older texts? Like the idea of the last aspect that the Moon makes before it leaves the sign being critical in some way?
AC: Even if it’s not about to leave the sign?
CB: Yeah, I think so.
AC: I mean, I always look at what the Moon is departing and applying to at the moment of the chart. If, for example, the Moon was at 8° and it’s gonna make an aspect in 30 hours to something at 24°, and that’ll be the last it makes in the sign, I don’t particularly care about that if it’s a day or two later.
CB: Right.
AC: But, yeah, I always look at applying and departing for everything, but especially the Moon.
CB: Sure. Have you heard of that consideration, Kelly?
KS: Absolutely. I’m sure that my man, Maternus—you know I’m obsessed with his book—he definitely talks about the applying aspect of the Moon. There’s a section where he talks about that. I think the separating may be mentioned as well, but certainly the aspects to whatever planet the Moon is moving towards. And I think that goes back to the idea that the Moon is so variable and historically had more of the keywords we might today associate with Mercury, that kind of fickle or changeable nature. And so, whatever planets the Moon is engaging with—whether the Moon is just stepping out of that conversation and separating or moving towards—the Moon is hugely influenced by those planets. I’m sure it’s in Maternus’ book at the very least.
CB: Okay. Yeah, somebody was asking me about this, and it reminded me that I meant to ask more people about it, cuz I’m curious about who uses it versus who doesn’t. I get the sense that it’s a more recent rule in the past few decades, but it’s basically the final aspect that the Moon will make before it goes void-of-course as being the determining factor for the outcome of the entire election. And it becomes one of those things like the void-of-course Moon itself where no matter what else is happening in the chart, that factor for some people overrules everything else.
KS: Oh, wow. No, I have not read that.
CB: Okay. Well, good. I’m glad to hear that, cuz I also don’t follow that rule and I don’t really know where it comes from. So I’ll have to research that or get somebody researching that at some point. Anyway, so there’s lot of little electional rules. That’s one that I might consider if I was really trying to build something with permanent, lasting stability, that was not changeable in any sense whatsoever. But even then I’m not sure. If I had to come down to a chart that had the Moon in the 1st versus some other worse consideration, I would still go with the Moon in the 1st, even for something that I was trying to build some degree of stability. So those are my three elections for April. The last ones are at the very end of the month, so I’ll save that one for later.
AC: Okay, I would just say I vote for the one on Friday, the 8th. That’s my favorite.
CB: So you like the exalted Moon in the 11th house is the ruler of the ascendant.
AC: Yeah, with lots of nice aspects to things free of the malefics.
KS: Free of the malefics. The April 1 is fantastic, but it is the malefics overcoming Venus. I think that maybe knocks it off the top of the list, because that Venus is beautiful otherwise.
CB: Right.
AC: I don’t want to poo-poo that election, but Venus is also only separated from the South Node by a couple degrees, which would make me nervous because she’s the chart ruler.
KS: Yeah, that’s true. That’s a good point.
CB: Sure. Yeah, so those are the best you can come up with for April. And in terms of other alignments, are there any other major planetary alignments that we should be talking about or highlighting for this month?
AC: There’s that other retrograde,
KS: Yeah.
CB: Which one? Mercury?
KS: Mercury retrograde at the very end of the month, April 28, which then kicks us into May, where we’ve got Mars and Mercury retrograde for most of the month. But we’ll talk about that next month. But I guess the Mercury going to start a retrograde on the 28th of April means Mercury is slowing down in the second-half of the month.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, most of the month.
KS: Yeah. But there really aren’t any major configurations.
CB: Before we—
KS: Yeah, does Austin want to chime in?
CB: Well, just that the degree that Mercury stations retrograde at is really interesting cuz it stations at 23 Taurus. So that’s exactly opposite to the degree that Mars will retrograde and then station direct at, at 23 Scorpio. So there’s something kind of weird going on there between, what is it, late April, where we have Mercury stationing retrograde there at 23 Taurus versus, what is it, June, when Mars stations.
KS: Very end of June.
AC: June 28.
CB: June 28.
KS: And when Saturn was in Scorpio, it stationed retrograde at 23 Scorpio back in April 2014.
AC: Oh, a good memory.
KS: Well, I had to double-check. Cuz I think we might have touched on this in our year ahead. So that 23° Taurus/Scorpio is a pretty sensitive axis over the next couple of months.
CB: Right. Well, that’s really interesting to me, having Mercury there at 23 Scorpio.
KS: I was like, Chris, you want to share?
CB: Right.
AC: And you’re going to be in the—
KS: In the fire.
AC: Yeah. If we go back to the ‘ordeal of the forge’, it’s on your Mercury, and you’ll be basically bringing your first book into creation during this time period. You’ve been working on it, but this next bit is where it gets hellish and you have to make the decision about, “Is it done? Is that enough? Is it good enough?” And so, yeah, that painful but creative ordeal seems like what you’ve got ahead of you.
CB: Yeah, I liked your ‘berserker mode’ analogy earlier, and that’s phase that I feel myself going into at this point of just throwing tons of texts onto the chapters and taking everything I’ve done previously over the past 10 years on this subject and then remolding it into a book. But it’s actually shaping up, and it’s starting to become a book, which is a little surprising, a little unsettling to me frankly.
KS: And it’s kind of scary, right? The book is actually in there.
CB: Right. So, yeah, the end is in sight, and some of the transits that we were talking about look awfully notable given the timeline that I have on that so far.
AC: Right.
KS: Fantastic.
AC: And so, I think that’s another good example of how you can have a big Mars thing happen, as indicated by a Mars retrograde, and it will absolutely contain plenty of suffering, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, right? Like going through this and getting a book out will be—as far as your biography goes—a very good thing, but there will be pain.
CB: Sure. Yeah, it’s not gonna be an easy process or taking a vacation or something like that.
AC: Right.
KS: No. And there’s something too in this kind of ‘by fire’ situation, forged by fire. There’s something in there around nothing good happens easily, or the really juicy things that we value, we go through a little bit of pain to get that end result. So that may be what Chris or others with some of these sensitive degrees are up for over the next little bit.
AC: Yeah, exactly.
CB: Yeah, it sounds like for 23 of the fixed signs.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Cuz that would be hard aspects to both of those transits.
KS: Yeah.
AC: So one thing that we can say with a retro Mercury at 23 and then a Mars direct at 23 is that there will probably be a delay at the end of April in a process that will come very close to a conclusion at the end of June.
KS: Perfect.
CB: That sounds like an excellent, excellent summary of something that would be very reliably stated based on those stations.
AC: Right. And so, that works for you with your 23. That also works for my friend and his screenwriting program. And he also has the Moon in Taurus, so there’s that. So I do want to mention—just because some people like to watch the shadow of Mercury retrogrades—Mercury goes into the shadow or the degrees to which he will return on April 14. So it’s really second-half of the month. And I will just say that I think watching shadow degrees is interesting. I don’t personally see a lot of Mercury ‘retrograde-ish’ hi-jinks until about one week away from the station. So I would say if the shadow is about two weeks, I would say that second week is where the ‘Force’ begins to be rather disturbed and that’s where you’ll start to see it.
CB: Yeah, that’s true. I think I agree that you don’t see the hi-jinks when it enters its shadow, but I do feel like there’s some precursor of some of the events and situations that eventually come up during the retrograde. Sometimes you can see them starting to build or starting to develop already as soon as it hits its shadow degree.
AC: Yeah, I see them too, but it’s subtle. It’s sort of like if you’re reading the omens, you’ll start getting information, but the events usually don’t start until you get—again, I use a week out from pretty much any station as my rule of thumb.
CB: Right, definitely. All right, and there was some other outer planet stuff going on as well, right?
KS: Well, I was like, “What can we talk about in April other than Mars?” And the only other thing that popped into my mind was Uranus moves beyond 20 Aries. So the middle of last year, last July 2015, Uranus retrograded at 20 Aries, but now in the second-half of April this year, Uranus hits 21 Aries. So it’s moving into that final 10° of Aries. Whenever we see an outer planet hitting a couple of new degrees in a sign, we do have this feeling of breaking new ground, or there’s a little bit more. We’re going further with the ‘Uranus in Aries’ experience in this case. And so, for clients, for people, for countries—whatever kind of chart you look at—the 21° of the cardinal signs now starts to be triggered. And that kind of sets up a run that goes over the next couple of months with Uranus. Uranus won’t station until it gets to 24 Aries the end of July. So 21 is what’s hit. 21 cardinal signs are hit this April, but we are then moving through the 22, 23, 24. So a whole new group of people are going to be having some ‘exciting’, we might say, Uranus transits coming up.
CB: Right, yeah. Sort of boldly going where some other people have gone before. People that have early cardinal stuff.
KS: Yeah, exactly, but where they personally haven’t yet been. It’ll be exciting or a roller-coaster for some.
CB: Right. Great.
AC: I would say that it will not be business as usual.
KS: Great. Perfect.
CB: So we have the Uranus-Pluto conjunction making its slow march forward—slow and inevitable March forward.
AC: Square.
KS: The square.
CB: Right, square.
AC: Although Pluto is beginning to lag behind significantly. If you look at August, right when Uranus is getting ready to station, you’ve got 9° between them. And so, that sort of pincer effect that a lot of people had with the Uranus-Pluto square is really gonna be replaced by more of a ‘one beat, two’, right? It’s gonna be like Uranus, ‘di-di-du’, then Pluto. It’s not gonna be ‘ba-bam’.
KS: You get a break. You get a breather, or as you said, a beat in between the two, which is unusual for the last few years.
CB: Yeah, that is nice. We all saw a lot of the horror stories or whatever. I guess I should come up with a better euphemism for that. But for the people that had early cardinal placements that were getting Uranus and Pluto exactly square at the same time and forming a hard aspect with some personal cardinal planet, that was not an easy thing for a lot of people that went through that during that period, as Uranus and Pluto were moving together exactly through the early cardinal signs.
AC: Yeah.
KS: It was so hard to have to try and explain to clients that usually you might have a Uranus or a Pluto trigger with some years in between. But you, special spirit that you are, have got both happening in the next 18 months.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah. I generally use a parallel to mundane events to make it clear.
KS: Perfect.
AC: So the Uranus-Pluto square kicked off the Arab Spring. I was like, okay, so you are both the outworn institutions and questionable leadership, as well as the angry protesters. Like you are both sides of that, or that’s happening within your life, right?
CB: Right. So your life is like Syria right now. That was your analogy?
AC: Well, this was before Syria got quite so bloody. So you’ve got a need for control in order to feel secure in this area, and then in this other area, you’re just tired as hell and you’re not gonna take it anymore. And so, you don’t have to have a violent overthrow of your government cuz you’re a person, but you do need some regime change. Or you do need to enact some new policies that get things moving in the right direction, but you don’t necessarily have to burn it all to the ground. Although for some people, for a number of people whose lives I’ve seen and I read for, sometimes it was necessary to just chuck it in the fire and then start over again and start rebuilding. It depends on the planets and time-lords and severity of aspects, and blah, blah, blah. But I was like, yeah, this is your revolution, and you need to be really careful, because a lot of revolutions in history just end up being bloody messes that don’t make things better for people. Some of them end up being great. But just because you desire liberation, rebellion does not guarantee freedom.
KS: Oh, that’s beautiful.
CB: That’s a good summary of the waxing Uranus-Pluto square in general actually, just in terms of, I don’t know, in some instances, how it worked out. It seems to have worked out in mundane events over the past few years.
AC: Yeah, yeah.
CB: So the last election, as we’re wrapping this up, I probably should have mentioned this earlier when we were talking about the Mercury retrograde. But the last election that we could find in late April is April 27, which is basically when Mercury is stationing retrograde almost perfectly. But there’s a pretty decent chart on April 27, at 1:05 PM approximately, with about 18° of Leo rising. The Sun is in Taurus in the tenth whole sign house, conjunct the degree of the MC. The Sun is at 7 Taurus, and it’s actually applying to a trine with Jupiter in Virgo at 13° of Virgo in the 2nd house. The Moon is in Capricorn unfortunately, down in the 6th, but that’s balanced out a little bit, or you could negate or counteract the cadent placement a little bit by putting the MC ideally around 9° of Taurus, so that the Moon is exactly trine the MC that’s counteracting the cadent position. And if you do that the Moon is also helped out by the fact that it is, like the Sun, also applying to a trine with Jupiter. So we’ve got a Leo rising chart, Sun in the 10th, and both luminaries forming a nice little grand earth trine with Jupiter. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Mercury’s stationing retrograde, which isn’t great, but you’re really gonna be dealing with that most of the later part of the month anyway. So if you need a chart to do something, this would be as good a chart as you’re gonna get in that very late part of April.
AC: Yeah, and it certainly seems like this one is financially-oriented.
CB: Right.
AC: Because a lot of this is built around a benefic conjunct the North—or a benefic co-present with the North Node in the 2nd, Jupiter in Virgo, second from Leo, and then both Sun and Moon connecting to that Jupiter and drawing strength from it.
CB: Yeah, exactly. And Mercury, the ruler of the 2nd, will kind of retrograde back and then station direct a little bit closer to an actual trine with Jupiter with reception than it is at the time of the election. But that also probably becomes notable as well in terms of the financial emphasis of the chart and this probably being a chart that’s better for financial matters than some of the earlier ones were.
AC: And now that I’m looking at it, it’s worth noting that—let me just check my thinking here. Yeah, so if you look at the rulers of the 1st and the 2nd, the ruler of Leo is the Sun in the 1st and then the ruler of the 2nd is Mercury, which is also in Taurus. If we were to progress this chart forward, the next aspects that those planets are gonna make are going to be after the Sun clears Jupiter. Because it’s on a retrograde station, the Sun and Mercury, the rulers of the 1st and 2nd, are actually going to be on a crash course to conjoin, right? They’re gonna be mutually applying if we were to put this chart in motion and see where it’s going to tend to go.
CB: Right.
AC: And so, I would say that having the rulers of the 1st and 2nd in the 10th and on their way to a mutual conjunction is probably pretty useful. There may be some bumps in the road in the financial payout for this project, but it’s going somewhere good.
CB: Sure. Yeah, definitely. All right, and on top of that, it’s also just a very earthy chart.
KS: Very earthy.
CB: Both luminaries there, the ruler of the ascendant there, the 10th house there, Mercury and Jupiter there—it’s got a lot going on in terms of earth.
AC: And fixed rising, which came a month earlier, right? If you want to nail something’s feet into the earth, if you want it to have roots, starting with a fixed rising is a good first step.
CB: Right. If you want permanence and stability.
KS: Yes. I’ve been doing a lot of wedding elections, so it’s been a lot about fixed signs rising or the ruler of the ascendant in a fixed sign where possible to anchor that down.
CB: Right.
AC: We did a little bit of that for our wedding election.
KS: Yeah. What sign did you guys have rising?
AC: Taurus.
KS: Oh, we did too. Yeah, because we both have nice Venus’, for sure.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Perfect. There you go. That’s our secret astrologer tip for you guys out there trying to pick your wedding charts.
CB: You guys are giving away all the secrets.
KS: Oh, yeah, we’ve got them all. Too funny.
CB: All right, well, I think those are all of the charts that I had, and I think we covered most of the major alignments for April. Is there anything else we were supposed to cover that we forgot to?
AC: Well, we were gonna mention that Mars—excuse me, not Mars—Saturn and Jupiter are both retrograde all month. Not very exciting.
KS: No, there’s nothing else. I was like, what else is going on?
AC: Mars is going on.
KS: Mars. It’s all Mars this April. So that’s what people should focus on when they’re looking at their chart and wondering what’s happening or not happening, I guess.
AC: Yeah, and how to handle it.
KS: Yeah.
AC: If we have the power to adjust the way certain events go, we have to be aware of what areas need adjustment, or what areas need more careful steering, right? So look to Mars. Look to where Mars is visiting in Sag. And look to your natal Mars. Because that’s how you do Mars, and how Mars does you.
KS: That’s your weapon. And so, if our listeners have got any experiences or tips about their own Mars experience this April, they should pop a comment in the section below, and we can all kind of share in those stories.
CB: That would be great.
AC: That’s a great idea.
CB: Yeah, definitely. All right, well, I think that wraps it up for our presentation for this month. What are you two working on over the course of the next few weeks until we talk again? Got anything coming up?
KS: Oh, yeah. I’ve got an online class starting April 12 in Canada and the US, April 13 in Australia or the southern hemisphere. This is an intro beginners-style level class on chart interpretation. So looking at the features in a chart and how you would pull them together to interpret that chart. So that info is on my website under the ‘Study Online Astrology Classes’ if anyone wants to find out more about that. It’ll be a six-week class. It is run through the Zoom. So it’s an online visual meeting platform, so you can see me delivering a lecture. You’ll have handouts. You get to ask questions, get some answers, hopefully. Yeah, that’ll be my big thing, plus my writing. I don’t think I’m traveling. The next big event I’m going off to is NORWAC, but that’s not till the end of May.
CB: Excellent. And your website’s kellysastrology.com.
KS: That’s it, yes. Thank you.
CB: Awesome. What are you doing, Austin?
AC: Well, I’ll be writing. I’ll be cranking out a weekly, every week for May. Also, I’ve been messing around with a Mars retrograde article for a couple of months, and I should actually get that done by probably the 2nd of April, just because when you put things out on the 1st people get ideas about it being a joke. It’s Mars retrograde, the joke’s on you, ha, ha, ha. Anyway, sorry. Also, I’ll be starting month two of my basics class. And people are free to drop in for whatever months. Some folks like to do the whole thing from the beginning. Other people just like to drop in for a unit and get a little clarification. So my month on the zodiac: What are the signs? How do we determine their meanings? What are their relationships with each other? All that good stuff. We’re gonna start that on Saturday, April 23. And then I’m gonna be teaching another month-long class that starts during the second-half of April. I haven’t picked exactly which class I’m gonna teach. I think I’m going to do a redux of a class I taught for the first time last year, which was an introduction to planetary magic and looking at the different methods that people have used historically and experimenting with them, trying to expose the underlying logic, as well as get some experiences with what different methods do in terms of potentiating events, as well as particular states or positive changes in character. So I think I’m gonna teach that again. And I haven’t announced the date yet. That’ll probably start mid-April.
CB: Okay. That sounds pretty good. And of course you are doing your weekly columns still.
AC: Yes.
CB: And I keep getting an annoying amount of emails. You’ve put out an article just about every week now, which is making—
AC: Oh, every single week.
CB: —which is making me feel bad that I’m not getting more episodes out for the podcast as much, cuz I’ve been focused on my own writing.
AC: I think everyone should go a lot easier on you. I’m not writing a book right now.
CB: Okay.
AC: If I were writing a book, my track record would not be so good.
CB: Well, you’re doing it.
AC: Everybody, writing books is hard. Go easy on Chris.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yes.
CB: Well, you’re doing an excellent job of cranking them out. It’s making me remember what it was like 10 years ago when you were doing that on MySpace and you were writing a column regularly, and your work ethic with the writing. Actually, both of you really. I can’t believe both of you are able to stick to those deadlines so well in terms of getting your monthly and daily and yearly forecasts out at such a regular level. That’s something I aspire to do at some point.
AC: Well, both Saturn—Saturn and I. Both Kelly and I are ‘Saturn-North Node in Virgo’ people.
CB: Oh, okay.
KS: So we love to just whip ourselves into a working frenzy.
AC: Yes, chaining yourself to the desk, you don’t get up until 5,000 words have been created.
KS: Pretty much, yeah.
CB: There we go.
KS: The other thing too, people often say that when I’m talking about writing horoscopes and the volume or the quantity of content. The other thing to keep in mind too is that horoscopes are like skimming the surface, whereas something more substantial, like a book, is deeper. It’s slower to move through, if that makes sense, because it’s gonna have a longer shelf-life. So it should take longer and be more engaging to produce because that’s the result you’re looking for in your readers. And when you’re writing a 50-word daily horoscope, it doesn’t take a huge amount of time to write because it doesn’t have a shelf-life longer than a 24-hour period.
CB: Sure, sure. All right. And, Austin, your website is austincoppock.com.
AC: Mm-hmm. And Coppock is C-o-p-p-o-c-k.
CB: Excellent. All right, well, and as for me, I will continue working on my book quietly. And this may or may not be the final podcast for March. I don’t know if I’m gonna do another one, or if I have another topic. I don’t really have any good topics that are jumping out at me, and I’m getting ready to go on a trip to give a workshop in San Francisco at the very beginning of April, and then another one in Sacramento at the beginning of April. So if you happen to live in the area, or somewhere in California, then you should definitely come join us, cuz we’re gonna have a great time.
KS: What are you presenting on there, Chris?
CB: I’m doing two workshops on zodiacal releasing for each group, and each person gets a copy of their own zodiacal releasing periods. And we’re gonna focus on timing peaks and transitions in a person’s career and identifying the periods in a person’s life in which they’ll accomplish some of their most important work. So actually the chapter of my book that I’m working on right now is the chapter on zodiacal releasing, so the timing worked out pretty well.
KS: Perfect.
AC: Very nice, very nice.
CB: All right, well, I guess that’s it for this episode. So thank you, Austin and Kelly, for joining me.
AC: My pleasure.
KS: My pleasure. Anytime.
CB: All right, and thanks to everyone for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to rate it on iTunes. I always appreciate people who support the show through Patreon. That’s really kept me producing episodes over the past few months, despite the fact that I’m focused on writing for the most part. And, yeah, thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.