The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 74, titled:
Astrology Forecast and Auspicious Dates for May 2016
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on April 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 November 27th, 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 Thursday, April 28, 2016, starting at 3:33 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is Episode 74 of the show. For more information about how to subscribe to the podcast and help support the production of future episodes by becoming a patron, please visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking with Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees about the astrology forecast for the month of May 2016, as well as giving a few auspicious dates during the course of the month for beginning different types of ventures and undertaking using the principles of electional astrology. So let’s go ahead and get started. Austin and Kelly, welcome back.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey, Chris.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hello, hello.
CB: All right. Well, it’s been a busy month since I talked to you guys last, I guess, at the end of March. I’ve been on a couple of trips to San Francisco and Sacramento that were successful, and then another one to Ann Arbor for the Great Lakes Astrology Conference that was awesome. What have you guys been up to?
KS: I have been teaching. I’ve had my most recent online class running, and I’m actually writing horoscopes for 2017 already for the WellBeing Astrology Guide. So that’s been keeping me busy over the last few weeks, which is great.
CB: Excellent. And, Austin, what have you been up to?
AC: Well, I’ve actually been doing the opposite, Chris. I traveled throughout most of the winter, so April is the first month that I actually got to sit at home. So I’ve been writing. I’ve been trying to write up a storm. I’ve at least gotten a few clouds out, but I’ve been writing my weekly column. And actually beginning in May, I will be adding a monthly column to the weekly. My Patreon hit the preset amount, so I now have enough support to do that.
CB: Congratulations.
AC: Thank you, sir. And I’ve been teaching as well. I started some people out with the planets. We began at the beginning as far as teaching goes. And I will, next month—or excuse me, this month, as in May, I will be teaching month three of my fundamentals course, which people are free to drop in. And month three is going to be houses. And so, we’ll be doing houses from the ground up, looking at their course significations and also the frameworks from which those significations arise. Might sound a little bit boring, but it’s incredibly important. In addition to that, I’ve been convinced to teach another round of my introduction to planetary magic class. And so, my introduction to planetary magic class is going to begin on May 12. It’s going to be Thursday evenings, and so I’m excited about it. Whereas last year I only taught an introduction to planetary magic, I think I’m gonna teach another couple months of classes on the various magical traditions that intersect with astrology and that exciting crossroads or middle-ground between active magical practice and reflective, divinatory practice.
CB: Excellent. That sounds great. And people can find out more information, I’m sure, on your website, austincoppock.com.
AC: Absolutely.
CB: Excellent. And, Kelly, you’re actually speaking at NORWAC in just a few weeks in Seattle, right?
KS: I am. Seattle is one of my favorite cities, so it’s a great joy to be coming back to speak at NORWAC. So I’ll be giving two lectures as part of the conference, and I will also be available to meet with people one-on-one if they’d like to do a chart consult as well. So that’s super exciting.
CB: Excellent. And then you’re gonna be doing some traveling a little bit for a bit of the rest of the summer after that?
KS: Yeah, I do then kick off a few months. Just in the last week, I’ve put together a surprise trip where I’ll be in Sydney for the first two weeks of June, and I’ll be seeing clients there. And I’ll also be giving two evening lectures—one designed for beginners, and one for more intermediate/advanced—and those details will pop up on my website over the next few days. Or if people want information right away, they’re welcome to email me. And in July, I’ll be in San Francisco at the very end of July giving a lecture through the astrological organization there with Ian. So, yeah, I’m kind of doing the three ‘S’ cities—Seattle, Sydney, and then San Francisco—over the next two months. And I love traveling and connecting with everyone out on the road, so I’m really looking forward to it.
CB: That sounds great. Well, San Francisco, I was just there and it’s a really awesome group, both the San Francisco Astrological Society, ran by Ian, and then the NCGR group, which is now headed by Cathy Coleman, so I’m sure you’ll have a great time there. And you’re doing an online class on transits and progressions soon as well, right?
KS: Yes, I do have my next online class that will start around the solstice, so around the 20th or the 21st of June. And it is—what was my little tagline for this? So these are modern techniques—we’re looking at transits and progressions—but we’ll be learning how to apply them with a little bit more of a traditional mindset. So thinking a little bit more about what we do rather than just applying simplistic transits carte blanche. So, yeah, that’ll be coming up at the end of June, and people can sign up via the website or shoot me an email if they want to check out if it’s the right course for them.
CB: Excellent. All right, and people can view that on your website at kellysurtees.com.
KS: Yes, they can.
CB: Okay. And so, let’s see, other orders of business. Oh, the other thing of course—so this will be the last episode of April. So we got four episodes out in April, and I’ve already got four episodes lined up for May, which I’ll be releasing the first one, I believe, on Monday, which is the 2nd of May. And thank you to all of our Patreon supporters who have been contributing and basically making the podcast possible, because if not for that I probably would just put it on hold for a few months while I’m still focusing on writing; which is going well, but it’s turning out it’s gonna take a few more months. But that’s really helped to encourage me to keep the podcast going at a normal pace of four episodes a month. And speaking of—we just set down a preliminary date of June 28 for doing a Q&A episode, which is gonna feature me, Kelly, and Leisa Schaim to take questions from the audience. And these can be any sort of questions related to astrology or related to the show. So that usually falls into three categories, the first is general questions about the history, the philosophy, or the theory of astrology, just in general if you have some general question about that, that would make for a good discussion, that the three of us could talk about and perhaps answer or give different perspectives on. The other one is questions about past topics that have come up in previous episodes of the podcast that you’d like us to address or me to address. If you had an issue or an objection or required clarification about something that was said, that would be a good opportunity for that. And then finally the third category that we’re looking into is if you have a good question about your natal chart that would make for a good discussion topic—where you’d like an interpretation of something specific in your chart—then you can send that in as well. You’ll have to be comfortable sharing your chart data and letting us post your chart publicly. But otherwise we’ll do a little, mini interpretation of a few of the interesting questions that we get that we feel like we can provide a good perspective on. In order to submit those, just send me an email through the email address that’s listed on the contact page of the podcast website, at theastrologypodcast.com, and we’ll collect those. Obviously, not all of them that are sent to us we’ll be able to answer, but we’ll take some of the top ones or some of the ones that feel the most relevant for that episode and answer them on June 29, and then I’ll release that episode potentially on June 30, unless something changes. Since that’s still two months in the future, we’ll see what happens. But I’m excited about the possibility of that episode, and I hope to receive some good questions.
Let’s see, so before we move onto our topic, our main topic for this episode is the astrological forecast for May of 2016 and the auspicious electional dates for May. Since this is the last episode of the month, one of the themes that’s come up a few times in the past two episodes before this one, as well as in what will be the next episode that I actually just recorded yesterday—but I’ll be releasing as Episode 75 on Monday—is the general question of certification and the pros and cons of certification as a general community-wide issue or an issue that is relevant to practitioners of astrology, such as us. And I just wanted to raise that and have a little discussion about it to see what you guys thought about that question, and if you lean more in one direction or the other, or if you have particularly-defined views about the pros and cons of certification. Do either of you have strong feelings about that?
AC: Well, I suppose I have some thoughts about it. Like you said, there are pros and cons. I think it’s inherently a mixed bag, and it’s impossible for me not to look at it from the perspective of my own trajectory through learning astrology and becoming an astrologer. I’m one of a great number of astrologers in my generation, or a little older, who people would call self-taught. I think I’m a little bit more ‘feral’ might be a more fair term. All I had were a couple of basics books for the first six years of my obsession. There’s one other person in college who was interested in astrology, and we didn’t get along at all. So I had no dialogue, which is of course hell for a Gemini Moon. So I was forced to dialogue with myself, and it made me sit and really think about all the material I did have: and what I had were houses and signs and planets and aspects of course. And I think it did me a tremendous amount of good to just sit and work it all out myself. I figured out a lot of things that I would discover later were part of the tradition. And so, I can’t ignore the value of being confined like that, and yet, at the same time, I would hardly wish that upon everybody. I don’t think that just because that worked out for me at that time and being the person I was, that that’s gonna be great for everybody. I am a little wary—as I think a lot of people are, especially self-taught people—about the issue of figuring out the curriculum, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: What is the correct thing to teach for astrology, and what is the incorrect thing to teach for astrology?
CB: Sure.
AC: I love that that in part arose out of practice for me, but at the same time that self-taught or ‘feral’ route is extremely inefficient.
KS: Yes.
AC: It takes about three-to-five times as long. And there are some things you can only learn doing that, but it’s a huge investment. And so, again, I wouldn’t force that upon people, but I am wary of people just deciding ‘this is the way to do it’. And I don’t like it when I can tell that an astrologer is just repeating something that they’ve been told rather than them sitting down with what they’ve been taught, working it out, reading for people, looking at biography charts, and then saying, “You know what? I think this is valid because not only was I taught it, but I’ve now seen it 30 times.”
KS: Yeah, that’s something that I think too, Austin. I do think certification has a place, and I do have formal certification through the FAA, the Australian Astrology Organization, which I got very early in my career. But I do think the point with certification that I would say is it’s a starting point, not the absolute end goal. Because I agree with what you’re saying, Austin, where you have to apply astrological knowledge. You have to see it in action. You have to see it in practice to really come to understand it. So to be certified or to be tested means that you can be tested on knowledge of a technique or a theory. It doesn’t necessarily confirm or prove that you know how to work with that idea in practice.
AC: Right.
CB: Sure.
AC: And in the manifold situations that actually reading for people and reading for events throws out to you, that’s a thing about the significations. Even if we recognize and memorize a very broad range of planetary/house/sign significations—and you know that those are the parameters which things will fall within—there’s always new data, and there’s always this pleasant surprise of, what does it actually look like, right? You’re like, okay, the Mars retrograde is in your 2nd house, it’s in Sagittarius. It’s gonna go back to your 1st and conjoin your ascendant. You’re like, okay, this is gonna start with financial trouble, but then there’s always more data, right? There’s always something really interesting about the way that it happens. And I think being part of that dialogue between literally theory and practice—what does it look like through a chart, what does it look like in a person’s life, and then what does it feel like—is just invaluable, and that is taught through practice. And yet, at the same time, without the core principles and significations, there’s no dialogue. Without theory, there’s no dialogue between theory and practice, right?
CB: Right.
KS: For sure.
CB: I mean, one of the things that we might want to separate here—cuz sometimes they get conflated, and oftentimes they are intertwined, but not always—is the issue of certification versus education. Sometimes those are one and the same thing, but sometimes they’re different.
KS: That’s a good distinction.
CB: You can learn astrology or take classes and still not be certified.
AC: Exactly. I educate right now, but I do not certify. Do either of you offer certifications?
CB: I’ve started offering a certificate of completion of my Hellenistic course, which is not the same thing as saying that I’m certifying somebody as a ‘master’ Hellenistic astrologer. But I’m at least giving something to indicate that people have completed my course and passed it successfully, indicating that they do know something about Hellenistic astrology.
AC: Right.
KS: I do the same.
AC: Okay. I’ve been thinking about doing it. I don’t know. I’m worried that if I start doing that I’m going to become a harsh and exacting taskmaster and that suddenly nothing will be good enough. I’ll be like, “Well, if I’m gonna do this thing, you’re gonna have to do about five times as much work.”
CB: Right.
AC: So I’m gonna have to figure out a way to bring that in without becoming a tyrant. But, yeah, at least saying this person has done this work—that’s what certification is. Literally, it certifies. It’s a certificate. It doesn’t say you are perfect now, and that everything you say is gonna be perfect, but this certifies that you have spent this time with this material.
CB: Right. I mean, it’s supposed to be a thing that can be used both within the community to identify different practitioners that have met certain requirements, but also, theoretically, can be looked at from outside of the community in order to identify practitioners that have met certain requirements. And that’s actually something that came up recently. I think a longtime listener of the show, Jo Gleason, recently wrote a post on Reddit for absolutely newbies to astrology on how to go about picking an astrologer if you’re thinking about getting a consultation, and what are some of the things that you might want to take into account as data points as you’re trying to decide who would be the best fit for you. And that is one of those data points which I personally think today is perhaps not as relevant because I don’t have a lot of faith, personally, in the standards of some of the certification tests that are out there, that are sort of mainstream tests given by the organizations. But I think at some point in the future I could see that as being more relevant if some of those standards were raised if you’re coming in from the outside, being able to look at two astrologers and say this person has some sort of certification from a national certifying body of astrologers that says that they at least know the basics of astrology and they know what they’re talking about versus somebody else who doesn’t; let’s just say worst-case scenario was like a fly-by-night-type person, or somebody that doesn’t really know much about astrology but just knows how to give this impression that they know what they’re talking about and have nefarious intentions and is just ripping people off or something like that. At least, theoretically, there could be some distinction like that that could be valuable from an external standpoint, as well as from an internal standpoint within the community.
AC: Okay, so I have something I really want to talk about.
KS: Yeah, I have a point to that.
AC: Chris, I apologize. I have not listened to the certification discussion yet on your podcast.
CB: That’s terrible. I’m really offended.
AC: Yeah, I’m not only expected to contribute, I have to listen to all of them, or you’ll stop paying me no money.
CB: Right.
AC: But something that comes up to me—I’ve spent, I don’t know, 20 years doing martial arts pretty consistently, and certification is a huge thing in martial arts. When people think of martial arts, or karate, the first thing they think of is ‘the black belt’, right? That’s a certification. And there is a huge controversy in the martial arts world about what is a valid form of certification. How do you test and then acknowledge and certify that a person can do certain things? And so, in martial arts in America, you have a lot of not-very-awesome schools that basically sell belts.
KS: Right. You pay for it.
AC: Well, what it is, you’re just going to test every three months for a new belt, and every test will cost you money and make you feel like you’ve accomplished and learned something. And so, everybody, if they just stick around for a couple of years, gets a black belt. And there are a lot of people who are very poor. Not poor in terms of money—although there, I suppose, are a lot of poor people.
KS: Poor in terms of their skills.
AC: They gotta break up these banks. No, but there are a lot of practitioners whose skill is very poor. Now there are some martial arts organizations—there are some larger organizations that do certification, and this problem of, what’s the word? I want to say ‘monopolization’, sort of making a monoculture out of things, homogenizing different perspectives and techniques is a real danger. And so, what I’m leading to—and, for example, what I’ve come to in terms of how I judge a particular martial arts school or certification—comes back to lineage. And this is partially influenced by spending a lot of time with Chinese martial arts, which tend to be bigger on lineage. But lineage isn’t an issue for everybody. Those natives of North America tend to understand lineage incredibly poorly because we’re not very historical, but it’s a real thing. Lineage in the martial arts is somebody who is guaranteed by their instructor, who was guaranteed from their instructor before that, and then back 20 generations. Like the school that I go now has traceable lineage that goes back to about 1200 AD. Which doesn’t mean that it’s perfect or better than what you’re doing, but I know exactly where the material has come from. And lineages attempt to conserve that material, conserve what is good. And because there aren’t very many lineage holders—there are many students, but there are only a couple of lineage holders every generation—only the best go on and teach and maybe add to it.
Now this intersects with—and I apologize for monologuing. I swear this is gonna be a good fit. This intersects with a conversation I was having with Freedom Cole sometime ago. And he was telling me that prior to Vedic astrology—or Jyotish or Indian astrology or whatever you want to call it—becoming this sort of point of national pride in India, which is related to liberation politics, a lot of the Vedic astrologers were guaranteed by family lineage. There were families where the kids were expected to memorize the text when they were young, and then they would be taught the meaning of the text over time. And Freedom actually is a lineage holder in one of these family styles. I think we can draw a parallel there to certain schools of astrology, especially certain generators. There’s a lot of bullshit polarization in astrology where people are arguing about things that aren’t really different, but there are very real different foci, right? If you’ve been doing astrology with a psychological focus for 20 years, and you teach someone and they do it for 20, and so on and so on, that’s a real thing. There are some goodies that get passed on there. And so, I think that was probably something that was easier to come out in astrology historically. We are living in a time of extreme disruption in general, but particularly in the astrological tradition. What’s some of the great material available now? Oh, Hellenistic astrology. Well, Chris teaches that. How long can you trace your lineage back? Oh, nobody was doing it 30 years ago cuz nobody could read the books, right? It’s not possible to have a lineage yet. But what we’re talking about is we’re on the cusp of creating lineages. So one of the things that having the ‘individual instructors/heterogeneous’ approach provides is they get to make sure that their students get the best stuff that they have to offer and that that’s passed on. And then when you do a massive national sort of teaching and certification structure, you run the risk of erasing or smudging the differences between what individual people can teach, and I think you can potentially lose out on a lot of those pearls which took 20 years to grow. And so, even though right now you can’t come to astrology and demand lineage, we, as astrologers, are at a point where we need to contemplate lineage. Cuz that’s tied up with education and it’s tied up with certification. And now I’m finally done talking.
CB: Kelly, you had some points?
KS: I think I forgot them. It was really interesting, Austin, it was. I think what I was gonna say is the piece about certification versus education—I think ongoing education is really important. While certification can be important—I think this point came up earlier—what do you test or train people on? There’s no consensus about the ‘one way’ in astrology. And to speak to what Austin was saying, there are different foci. There are different specialties and different topics or sub-industries within the astrological field. And if you want to get certified in a general or a broad way, you might go somewhere different if you want too, if you want to get certified in a specific technique—whether that’s Hellenistic or psychological or financial—because not everybody will specialize and be able to offer high-quality training in all areas.
AC: Yeah, exactly. For example, if I wanted to learn zodiacal releasing and secondary progressions, given another 10 years, when everybody’s teaching zodiacal releasing, I can go to ‘X’ organization’s intermediate-level timing procedures class and somebody can teach me those things and they can teach me the techniques. Or I could go to Chris for zodiacal releasing, and I could go to you, Kelly, for secondary progressions. Both of you could probably teach me the other thing, but you’ve got—I’m gonna go with pearls, right? Through time and irritation, you’ve got particularly valuable bits to share about those techniques.
CB: Right. And that’s actually where I think the community is right now, and that was something I wanted to clarify from the last show. With Anne, I ended up having a whole discussion about the pros and cons of certification. It was originally supposed to be a separate discussion about how to become a professional astrologer and make that transition, but then we ended up on one of the first discussion points, which was certification and education as being one of the first steps. And that was so interesting that I wanted to just spend the rest of the show talking about it, but in the end, I didn’t feel like I gave enough of the pros and cons of both sides as a result of that. So one of the points that I felt like I wasn’t sure I clarified enough was that I tend to be a little bit more skeptical, to a certain extent, of certification at this point, because I think the state of the astrological community is such that it’s probably better and the traditions are more richer at this point to go to a specific teacher who specializes in a certain approach that speaks to you and matches what you want to study and how you want your practice to be, and may specialize in specific techniques. Like you said, Austin, secondary progressions with Kelly, or zodiacal releasing with me—to study with individual teachers directly through a sort of apprenticeship. There’s something about that—at least in terms of the educational aspect, in actually learning things that are valuable—that is probably better at this point than focusing on a certification course which will teach you certain things that you will then be tested on. But for the most part a lot of those certification courses, at least that I’ve seen, don’t have the quality at this point to mean a lot. I mean, I don’t know how to say that politically correctly or how to frame that exactly, but you’re probably better off, in terms of the actual knowledge, going with individual teachers and individual apprentice programs where either there is no certification because you’re just going there to learn, or you’re getting some sort of individual certification from that teacher rather than something that’s more nationally-recognized.
So that’s my personal perspective at this point, at least in terms of the state of the community now. But on the other hand, 10 years ago, I can say that when Kepler had their full program going, and when they had the full edifice of 10 or 15 years of many different people and many different voices all putting together a program that was designed to be cross-cultural and cross-traditional, every student was learning everything about the history of astrology, everything about the different philosophies of astrology and every technical tradition of astrology, so that they came out of the program having a very broad understanding of the different astrological traditions. That was setting a different type of educational standard and a different type of certification standard, which I think was valuable and I hope will be recreated at some point in the future, either by some organization or some school, because that would push the community forward and raise the bar within the astrological community. And there are arguments against that. Cuz one downside to that is the potential that many people fear—and I think even feared at the time in the late ‘90s when Kepler was starting—which is that programs like that can have a tendency to end up being exclusionary. What happens to people that didn’t go through that program, or couldn’t go through that program because they couldn’t afford it, and yet, through self-study or other types of study be good astrologers? If they can’t get certified then it sets up this division within the community, and there are some problems surrounding that, but I’m not sure if that fear or if those potential issues are reasons enough not to have certification within the community.
KS: The other point that I think is important to make is the value of certification. My personal take is I think it has more value within the astrological industry than it does outside of it. And by that I mean I think we are more interested as astrologers in the training or the lineage, as Austin said, of another astrologer’s learning and development than our clients are in terms of when they come to us and they want a consult, or they want to learn a few things. It’s just not something I’ve really found that students or clients over the years have asked about at all. And so, I don’t know that it has a huge value at that interface point between the practitioner and the community at large.
CB: Right.
AC: Sure.
CB: Cuz none of those designations are recognized outside of the community. And even within the community, all the different organizations and stuff offer their own certification, and so there’s no cross-certification. Because there’s no community-wide certification, it’s kind of problematic to begin with even within the community.
KS: Yeah, and I don’t think clients care. I think that for a client the word-of-mouth referral or when their friend says to them, “Oh, my God, I got so much out of this consult with Chris (or with Austin),” that’s all the certification that a client is looking for. So that does kind of beg the question around are we certifying to somehow prove that we’re safe for the public? In my personal experience, I haven’t found that clients have said, “Well, where did you train?” or “Are you certified?” They’re just like, “Can I have an appointment?”
AC: That’s totally true. I mean, I think the real question for a lot of people—especially people who’ve never gotten readings or are new to astrology—is, “Is astrology garbage? If not, then I can get an astrology reading by someone who seems pretty good.” If somebody thinks astrology might be garbage, one astrologer being endorsed by another astrologer—one ‘garbage’ practitioner endorsing another ‘garbage’ practitioner—
KS: Yeah, it doesn’t make a difference.
AC: It doesn’t fucking matter. Sorry, I’m swearing a lot. There have been complaints about my ‘potty’ mouth, so I’m gonna watch it.
KS: Okay.
AC: Unfortunately, they’ll watch it happen for the most part. But I promise that—for those I’m offending—I will experience deep regret. So one thing I was actually waiting to say—and then, Kelly, you ended up sort of setting me up for it even better—is you and I were talking about something a little earlier before the podcast, and it came back to astrology as a verb, astrology as a doing.
KS: Oh, yeah. It’s a ‘doing’ thing.
AC: Right. And so, just to bring back my martial arts analogy, there are all these different schools. Like every culture in the world has developed martial arts, right? It doesn’t always look cool, but it’s a human thing. And really all of those thousands of different training methods are just so you can do this one thing well, and that regardless of where someone comes from, you put them in a ring or a field or whatever with an opponent and you see what happens, you see what they can do. All of this is just a way to grow into being able to do something. And if you see somebody in action and they lose consistently—like the chart kicks their ass, rather than them kicking the chart’s ass—well, you don’t want to study with them and you don’t want a reading from them, it doesn’t matter what their lineage is, it doesn’t matter how many certificates they have. And that’s one of the great things about astrology —there can be proof in action. And I think that letting people see us do our thing is really important. And that doesn’t mean that you have to predict exactly the percentage of GDP growth for the United States over the next 16 years within a tenth of a percent. I think that when astrologers think about proving their worth, they tend to imagine really far-flung goalposts, whereas there’s a lot of things that prove value that aren’t quite as ambitious as picking the day and the hour that the next earthquake will strike. If you can say, “Yeah, it’s in these two weeks that you’re going to have a twice-in-a-lifetime disruption of your financial stability”—not that I would tell people that unless they specifically asked—and you’re right about that, that’s huge. You don’t have to pick the day and the hour, you don’t have to pick the number amount, just be useful and let people see you do your thing. Cuz that is what all this training is for, so we can do this thing.
CB: Sure. Yeah, so there’s ‘proof in the pudding’, as they say. Also, to counter one of the earlier points, it’s true that it doesn’t matter to clients, as you were saying, Kelly, and I think that’s a really important and relevant point from a practitioner’s standpoint. The other counter-argument might be is that sometimes when you’re talking about specific types of astrology, knowing who the person’s teacher was or knowing that they practice a specific type of astrology—since we’re getting to the point with the different traditions in the community now that sometimes there are specific schools of astrology—there can be loose designations like that, with all the different people running around that cite Steven Forrest as their teacher or say that they do evolutionary astrology, or somebody that says that they do Uranian astrology. Sometimes there’s very strict certification programs like astrocartography because it was copyrighted by Jim Lewis in the early 1990s; like you do have to take a specific certification course in order to claim that you do that particular approach to astro-locality or whatever you call it. So sometimes even if it’s not strict from the national orgs, sometimes there can be smaller, school-based either certification or apprenticeship programs, or just loose lineages, and that does sometimes tell people within the astrological community—that know a bit more than just the average person coming in off the street—what your background is and that you have a little bit more going for you than somebody else that isn’t able to cite having studied with Steven Forrest or Jeffrey Wolf Green or whoever. I mean, is that relevant at all? This is a weird conversation for the three of us to be having because each of us was largely self-taught during most of the initial parts of our studies. Were you, Kelly? Did you ever have any classes that you took with specific teachers?
KS: Yeah, I totally had classes. I had been self-taught from a very young age, like from the age of 12 or something stupid, but I enrolled to study massage therapy right after high school, and the college—which was a natural therapies college—offered an astrology course. So I signed up at the age of 18 and studied with a particular teacher in Sydney really intensively for about two years and then ongoing for about four or five years. And that sort of led me to the Federation of Australian Astrologers, which had an organization in Sydney, but I didn’t finish my certification with them until I was 28, and by that point I had already been practicing for five years. So it was important for me to get that certification. It was something that I wanted to work towards more so I think for myself, just to test myself against what was the premiere astrological institution in Australia. It still is. That’s how Australian astrologers are trained. So I guess I was self-taught through my teenage years. And I know that we’re young in the astrological world, but I always say to people too, I know, for me, I was studying before the internet existed, so it just never occurred to me that you could actually take a class in astrology. And as soon as I found out you could, I signed up immediately.
CB: Right. And that does really change things, now that individual teachers are able to give webinars and stuff directly.
KS: Yes. Even though we’re young, we came up in the era before that was an option.
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: Sure.
KS: And I think that does make a difference perhaps, because what younger astrologers or newer astrologers have available to them today is many, many multiples more information than what we would have had access to in the ‘90s, I guess. The early-to-mid ‘90s.
AC: It is an embarrassment of riches. And you kids better be grateful.
KS: Austin, you’re getting into your ‘old man’ tone again.
AC: That’s right.
CB: And see that’s one of the issues, and maybe it’s actually worse than something you were describing earlier, Austin, than better if you have such a wealth of information, but you don’t have a specific teacher or somebody that is guiding you through and knows what stage you’re at and what would be most appropriate for you to study or focus on at different stages, or can point you towards some of the best material and maybe steer you away from stuff that’s just gonna be a dead end or is not gonna help you grow as much as you might need at a certain point in time. I think there was some element to that when I was self-study for the first four or five years as an astrologer before I went to Kepler that I didn’t see. I didn’t know that that was valuable, and I didn’t realize how much time—I don’t want to say I was wasting, cuz it’s all valuable on some level in the end. But you almost get a shortcut when you’re able to connect with somebody that’s been there and has gone through your process and sees what stage you’re at and can help guide you and tell you, “Here’s the five best books on this topic, go read them,” versus you stumbling your way through a library or through 20 different blogs at this point of varying worth or varying value in order to try to find what’s best or to get on a good track.
KS: And that’s really the role of a teacher in the process. We’ve talked about certification, we’ve talked about education, but the magical person at the helm of all of this is the teacher. And it’s interesting, my husband works in public education, and so they’re having the same problem there, which is all this technology, yadda, yadda, yadda. But let’s not forget the power of a teacher. Really, a teacher is your guide. They know the way. They’ve walked this path before. They have an understanding of what steps to take and in what order, which means they can guide you to really create a solid foundation in your learning. And I think studying with a teacher who has a way of delivery or a style that really resonates with you is probably more important than formal certification. Because if you’re working with an effective teacher, you will become competent—as Austin was saying before—in the proof in action of working astrology in a really functional way. You won’t run before you can walk. You won’t end up with these glaring gaps in your knowledge because you’ve skipped over three essential steps cuz you didn’t have that guide.
CB: Yeah, I totally agree. And it’s interesting, I feel like we’re all on the same page about this.
KS: Of course we are.
CB: Of course. So thank you guys for returning back to this topic with me. This is gonna be something that comes up in the next episode. So the episode next week will be about the late astrologer, Maggie Nalbandian, who passed away last year, and she was the founder of Kepler College. And it turned out part of the motivation in wanting to start Kepler—it wasn’t the entire motivation—but part of it for her was some anti-astrology laws that were passed in Washington in the 1980s that said that if an astrologer got in trouble, they would either have to be brought in front of a panel of their peers to be reviewed in some sense about what they did and if there was any wrongdoing, or they’d have to be brought in front of a government panel of non-astrologers for some sort of review or punishment. Basically the motivation was that we can’t have a certifying panel—the equivalent in the medical community would be like the American Medical Association—unless you have a group of really well-trained astrologers that know all of the different traditions and all of the different philosophies, and therefore can gauge what a person’s doing and if they’re doing something that’s unethical or if they’re doing something that’s standard practice within a specific approach or community. And so, that was the motivation, I guess, underlying part of the creation of Kepler and that push for that type of certification. So we’ll explore that in the next episode after this, but it’s sort of a recurring theme this entire month, so I wanted to bring it up with you guys.
AC: The council of elders.
CB: Yeah, yeah. And there’s a lot of both positive and negative themes there and pros and cons. And it was something evidently that was argued a lot during the course of the 1990s. And then in the early 2000s, all the organizations adopted ethical codes, codes of ethics, and that’s a whole separate topic that comes along with certification: the rules and standards of a practitioner and what’s appropriate versus what’s not, and yadda, yadda, yadda. It’s probably been—
KS: A total other sidebar.
CB: —a long enough digression of 40-some odd minutes. So should we get to the—
AC: You know, Chris, you should really just chop this part off and offer it as a bonus piece and link it to your discussion last week, as well as this discussion. Cuz there are gonna be folks who just want to hear about what’s going on this month, and it’s gonna be a huge turnoff to listen to us talk about internal politics for 45 minutes.
CB: Yeah. I mean, I think I’ll just put a disclaimer in front of it, and I’ll say skip to—
KS: 47 or—
CB: Yeah, 47 minutes in to get right to the forecast. Otherwise, listen to the first 40 minutes for a lengthy discussion about the politics of certification. Otherwise, I don’t know how to release this with the Patreon and with the RSS feed and everything as a separate thing.
KS: Cool. Whatever’s easy for you.
AC: Yeah, whatever’s easy. You could just chop it and the monthly can be the monthly, and this can just be a bonus that’s linked to and listenable on both pages.
CB: Sure.
AC: Whatever. I won’t tell you how to do your thing.
CB: No, I’ll think about it and figure it out once we’re finished with the forecast. All right, so in the meantime, let’s transition into the monthly forecast and the astrological outlook for May. Let’s see, starting with Kelly, what are some—
KS: Well, I’m very excited about Venus going into Taurus. I know that Austin will probably have some counterpoints.
AC: No, I’m also totally excited.
KS: And the reason I’m excited about Venus in Taurus is we’ve got a planet in dignity. And I just realized today—cuz sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake—that she is gonna be not in aspect to Mars and Saturn. So she’s escaping that—
AC: Oh, oh, no. Oh, she will be, Kelly.
KS: Okay. I knew you were gonna burst my bubble, Austin. But either way, it’s gonna be amazing to have a positive planet after April, which just has been interesting to say the least.
AC: Absolutely. So let me jump on with support.
KS: Go on, Austin. Come on board.
AC: You really set me up to be the antagonist there.
KS: We’ve got our roles to play, Austin.
AC: I know. I know.
KS: And sunshine and roses, Venus in Taurus, just talking my language.
AC: So one of the reasons I think Venus in Taurus is not only positive, benefics in their signs of rulership are generous with their significations, and their significations are literally the things that we enjoy, especially Venus.
KS: And in Taurus. Yes, good food.
AC: But why Venus is not just pleasant but significant is that the first several weeks of May have both the Sun and a retrograde Mercury in Taurus as well. And so, both of those planets look to Venus as their ruler, right?
KS: And she’s in charge.
AC: And so, that means that one of the things that you see when a planet is sharing the sign with its ruler is that things move. Things move. Like events happen. Things don’t stagnate. It’s like if you’re staying in someone’s house and the owner is there, you don’t have to wonder whether you can eat the food in the fridge. You don’t have to wonder if you can go to the basement. You can just be like, “Hey, can I do that?” And they’ll be like, “Yes (or no),” and things get done quickly.
KS: Oh, that’s a lovely way of describing it.
AC: Thank you. And so, this Mercury retrograde—whenever there’s an inner planet retrograde, there’s a tremendous amount of emphasis on that planet’s action. And so, Mercury’s doing something very significant here, not only because he is retrograde, but because the Mercury retrograde, which runs until the 22nd of May, is one of these special ones where Mercury moves through less degrees.
KS: Oh, yeah, very slow.
AC: Only 9° covered during that retrograde, but it’s a couple of days longer than a standard retrograde. And I pointed this out in my column for Mercury’s retrograde station, and then our colleague Gary Caton pointed out to me that the reason for that is that Mercury is actually moving over his own South Node.
KS: Oh!
AC: Yeah, yeah. I just noted the difference in movement.
KS: Yeah, so it’s like at the eclipses. Okay, good. That’s clever.
AC: I remember a conversation many years ago with Rick Levine, and he pointed out that these happen every now and again. And, Rick Levine, forgive me if I’m misquoting you, but he referred to that as Mercury being ‘in the storm’, and that there was usually something more dramatic and intense about these slower-compressed retrogrades. So not only do we have that, and ruled by Venus, but this Mercury cycle—which we’ll see throughout May—is deeply-configured to Mars’ retrograde cycle, and in two different ways. Number one, Mercury stationed retrograde at 23 Taurus, which is exactly opposite the degree that Mars will station direct, which is 23 Scorpio, at the end of June. In addition to that, although Mars is in Sagittarius right now, and for most of May, what you will see is that after Mercury turns direct—and Mars slides back into Scorpio—Mars and Mercury will have an in-the-sky opposition at, I believe, 26 Taurus and Scorpio.
KS: That’s around the 10th of June.
AC: Right. But that’s coming and that’s in the same territory that we’re gonna be exploring for all of May. So there is just a lot brewing here. We’re not gonna see all of it. We’re not gonna see all of the results, but the planets are just kneading the dough. They’re kneading the dough and there’s gonna be a whole lot of sandwiches served over the next couple of months that use this bread.
KS: Oh, God. And we’re getting the food metaphors, which is classic Venus in Taurus, too. Or Taurus in general, but certainly with Venus there. It’s gonna be a nice organic sourdough if Venus has anything to say about it.
AC: Although Mercury might throw a little something in there.
KS: True, true. Okay, so, Austin, you’re saying of course the connection’s there because the station degrees of Mercury and Mars are triggering that same axis.
AC: Right. So if you have planets at 23 fixed, get ready to make sandwiches.
CB: Yeah.
KS: But Venus is—sorry, go, Chris.
CB: I was just gonna say that’s 23 fixed signs, so that’s gonna be a sensitive point over the course of the next few months.
AC: Yeah. And really—actually, you know what, yeah, I’ll leave it at that for now.
CB: Okay.
AC: Austin, the self-restraint.
CB: So we’ve got that. So we’ve got Mercury retrograde in Taurus most of the month, basically, almost the entirety of the month of May, all the way through until the 22nd, when it stations direct in Taurus. Right away, at the very beginning of the month, we’ve got a Full Moon in Taurus on May 6.
AC: New Moon.
KS: New Moon.
CB: Oh, sorry. Yeah, I got it wrong. It was the opposite. So New Moon in Taurus on the 6th. So we’ve got some super-focused Taurus action going on at the beginning of the month. And actually in terms of the electional charts this month, all of the good ones are at the beginning of month, basically, in the first 10 days, taking advantage of some of those Taurus placements and that super emphasis or focus there. So for the elections this month, I’ve still been off the past few months in terms of working on my book. And so, Leisa Schaim’s been doing the elections, or most of the elections with some help from me for the electional column in The Mountain Astrologer magazine. So she actually found a lot of these charts this month, and she’s actually been doing a ton of electional work for marriages and other electional stuff. So you can check out her website for more information about that at leisaschaim.com. So the first chart that she picked out that I really love for this month takes place on May 5, at about 12:25 PM in Denver, Colorado, or pretty much roughly around the same time. Around the middle of the day, around 12:30 in the afternoon wherever your location is. Just make sure you get about 16° of Leo rising, give or take.
So this is a super-packed earth and Taurus chart. It has Leo rising, with the Sun in Taurus in the 10th house. Mercury is already retrograde by this time, also in Taurus in the 10th. Venus is in the 10th, in its own domicile, applying to a trine with Jupiter about 6° away. And the Moon is exalted, having just moved into Taurus, into the tenth whole sign house, and is applying to a conjunction with Venus. So what you get with this chart basically is a packed 10th house: the ruler of the ascendant in the 10th, and the ruler of the 10th itself, being Venus in Taurus, in the tenth whole sign house, depending on your location, preferably conjunct the degree of the MC. Actually another benefit or another bonus of this chart is Jupiter in the 2nd house in a day chart. So it’s actually a relatively decent chart for financial matters, aside from the fact that the ruler of the 2nd is Mercury retrograde in Taurus—which is not great, but is probably okay—given that finding a chart where the ruler of the ascendant and the 2nd house are relatively well-placed can be tough enough. But I actually used an election like this eight years ago to found my local astrology group here in Denver, the Denver Astrology Group, and it was very similar to this. I think it’s actually gonna be the Venus synodic return. So it’s eight years later.
KS: Eight years, yeah.
CB: So it’s very similar. Yeah, so that’s the first electional chart of May. There’s a very similar one the very following day, except instead of doing Leo rising, you do it on May 6, 2016, at 5:35 in the morning. And you do it right before sunrise, or a little bit before sunrise. So it’s still a night chart, but you get Taurus rising. So here we’re still taking advantage of that Venus in Taurus, and all of the other planets in Taurus, but instead we are making Venus itself the ruler of the ascendant. We’re making it a night chart, so it’s before sunrise. And we’re also making it so that the Moon is applying to a trine with Jupiter, and Venus is applying to a trine with Jupiter as well and everything else. I mean, I guess the only downside with this chart is that it’s at the very end of the waning phase. The Moon is in the very last phase of its cycle or last part of its cycle, just a few degrees away from the conjunction with the Sun, which otherwise is not usually seen as an ideal electional consideration in terms of starting something new, since usually you’re supposed to bring things to completion and let things die down during the very last part of the Moon’s phase, but otherwise, it’s a pretty stable, pretty sturdy electional chart for things.
AC: Yeah, I was gonna make that comment, that the Moon is invisible. It’s a Dark Moon.
CB: Yeah, you always hold me to that. Whenever I end up with one of these charts, you’re the first to point out the lunar phase in them.
AC: Yeah. And it’s not like the lunar phase is the only point, but it’s important, and it’s something that people have been electing activities by well before there was written language anywhere in the world, right? Like that visible counter, that visible clock—that’s our second clock after night and day. Everybody figures out how to count the days of the Moon, right? It’s a very ancient piece, and it’s also a completely relevant piece, but it’s not the only piece. One thing I was going to add, that’s really more a digression into something which is happening this month—and this isn’t so much a critique of this. You know, I love the Venus stuff; I’m gonna figure out what to schedule next Thursday because of this—Venus just changed phase. Venus has been a bright morning star for months and months and months, and Venus actually just crept beneath the beams of the Sun. And so, we’re actually in this phase where we’re not gonna see Venus in the morning in May. We’re not going to see her at all. If conditions are perfect, people might catch a quick peak before dawn in early May, but she’s basically invisible. She’s invisible through either the end of June or early July. She’s preparing for her return to the Sun, and it’s her superior conjunction. And the superior conjunction of course is when a planet is conjoined the Sun from our point of view, but it’s on the other side of the Sun.
And so, Venus and Mercury both line up with the Earth and the Sun once, between us and the Sun, and then once, on the other side, on the far side. And so, we know that they make their inferior conjunction during their retrogrades, and that’s something we’ll talk about with Mercury. Cuz Mercury’s gonna line up right between the Earth and the Sun, and with a particular level of precision, because, as I mentioned earlier, he’s on his own South Node, right? But Venus is on the other side of the Sun. So if you can imagine that, we’ve got Mercury between us and the Sun and then Venus on the other side of that. And so, every planet acts a little bit differently in their different phases. And so, that’s worth pointing out because Venus’ ‘morning star’ phase lasted for months, and this phase will last for a couple of months. So when you can’t see a planet that means that its significations tend to go towards things that aren’t visible on the surface, right? When we talk about Mercury retrogrades, we talk about rethinking things, about really getting into the guts of something. Rewiring, re-editing, maybe hacking it, traveling those unseen tunnels, those dark tunnels of whatever underworld we’re in. And with Venus on the other side, we’re talking about invisible, but for a different reason. We’re also talking about, like Kelly said, pleasures. Material pleasures is definitely one thing, like sandwiches.
KS: Sandwiches.
AC: We’re also talking about in terms of where Venus is sort of targeting us. Where does that energy want to go? Where do those significations want to land? They want to land in more private places, right? This isn’t Venus super bright in the sky so that everybody can see it. These are the pleasures and the harmonies that are a little closer to home. They’re closer to the Sun. And so, phase is worth taking into account here. It’s still awesome cuz it’s Venus in Taurus, but where does the awesome want to go?
KS: Yeah, so it’s more introspective or internalized. It’s an ‘at-home’ rather than an ‘out in public’ version of Venus in Taurus.
AC: Right, right, right.
CB: Sure. So you’re saying it’s setting under the beams. So this is the start of the end of its morning star cycle or morning star phase basically, eventually culminating in the conjunction with the Sun, which doesn’t occur until early June, I think.
AC: Correct.
KS: Yeah, around the 5th or 6th of June.
CB: Oh, yeah, we have that famous mutable cross that we pointed out.
KS: That first week of June, yeah.
CB: We emphasized that a lot in our yearly forecast episode.
KS: Yes.
AC: And then Venus is gonna take another—
KS: It’s not till the end of July I don’t think that she’ll come out of the beams.
AC: Oh, really? There’s a little bit of give around the beams. So the beams are an idealization of when a planet is visible, right? For those who aren’t familiar with it, when a planet is at least 15° away from the Sun, then it is visible. And that is absolutely true, but sometimes you can see Venus when she’s only 9° out, right? And so, the beams, I’ve been thinking about this, and the traditional construct has both the beams at 15 and then combustion.
KS: Combust, yeah.
AC: Right. And combustion is where you are not gonna see that planet. Whereas the beams are you might catch a glimpse, but they’re not clearly visible and not for very long.
KS: Okay.
AC: If we’re taking the two—as they often are—as types of affliction or damage to a planet’s process, the beams is considered to be much milder than combustion. And the reason is obvious cuz sometimes you can catch a peek of a planet that’s just under the beams. A planet that’s 10-12 out, you can catch a peek even without a telescope.
KS: Cool. So that’ll be by mid-July then that we might be able to catch a peek.
AC: Yeah.
KS: She’ll be exiting combustion at that point.
AC: Yes.
CB: Okay.
AC: And so, yeah, that’s Venus’ new phase. It’s the new phase for all of her time in Taurus and Gemini, and at least part of Cancer.
KS: It’s actually not until she hits Leo that she gets to the end of combustion, I don’t think.
AC: Oh, excellent.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, so that’s Venus. So Venus is in Taurus all of the month, I believe—oh, no.
KS: I think until the 24th.
CB: Right. So May 24.
AC: It’s worth noting that that 22nd through the 24th is when something totally different begins, right? Our first three weeks of the month look like planets in earth signs.
KS: Well, and all the trines too, right?
AC: Right. It just looks like a giant grand earth trine of various levels of precision. Whereas if we look at the 22nd, Mercury goes direct, the Sun moves into Gemini right around then, Mars changes signs, moves back to Scorpio, Venus moves into Gemini—that’s a real demarcator. What happens before and after those transitional days is very different. The whole pace of the month changes at that point. And so, if you’re gonna just remember two things about the month, first three weeks, the ‘earthiest’ earth that ever ‘earthed’, and then after that it’s very dynamic. Let’s just say that things—
KS: That is the most diplomatic thing you’ve ever said about a Full Moon conjunct Mars, Austin.
AC: Yes, let’s just say that things become extremely volatile.
KS: There you go.
CB: Sure. So that demarcation is the first-half of the month. Really, things start to change by the 20th, it seems, cuz that’s when the Sun ingresses.
KS: As soon as the Sun goes into Gemini.
AC: Yeah, 20th through the 24th is all the shifts.
CB: Got it. But earlier in the month, one last thing that we forgot to mention is just Jupiter stations direct in Virgo on May 9, which is another big shift and really big turning point, again, emphasizing another earth sign, in this case, Virgo. So this will be Jupiter’s station, and then it will pick up speed during the course of the summer, and then cruise on out of Virgo and head into Libra. So we’ve got that. We’ve got later in the month, as we’ve mentioned, the Sun ingress into Gemini May 20. And then what’s interesting is immediately after that, on May 21, we have the Full Moon in Sagittarius conjunct the Mars retrograde, which is still in Sagittarius at that point. Yeah, there’s a lot going on right around that time.
KS: Yes, yes, there is. Of course the Full Moon—I’ve got the chart of the Full Moon for Sydney location, and that Full Moon is right on the ascendant/descendant axis in Sydney. So it’ll be in different places depending on the time of day, in different locations around the world. But I guess, just from a quick, little mundane piece, if it does align with the angles, that can make it a little bit more dramatic in that location, under that particular Full Moon.
AC: Yeah. Just to ‘paint it black’, so Venus is also conjunct Caput Algol during the Full Moon.
KS: Yes.
AC: Just so you know.
KS: Just to make that whole sense of losing your head or going a bit cuckoo with heightened anxiety or stress.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah. So we should say, one—
KS: Did that make us all speechless?
AC: Well, we’re just trying to be diplomatic. So one thing is that, you know what, where there’s a Full Moon conjunct Mars—much less a Mars retrograde, where Mars is the brightest—that’s the Sun opposite Mars, which is the heart of the Mars retrograde.
KS: That’s true.
AC: Mars will rise with the Full Moon as soon as the Sun sets, and you’ll see them both for the entire night, right? Now will some bad things happen to some people? The answer is, yes. Does that mean that disaster will rain down on the majority of Earth’s population? Absolutely not, right? Like you said, Kelly, for a lot of us, it’s going to be like a night of being irritable. Maybe being really high energy, but it being really easy for that high energy to veer off course and maybe run into the wrong person or thing. It’s something that for most people will be manageable, but it’s worth picking out because it’ll probably go better if it’s managed, right? Especially if you have planets in really ‘eartable’—early mutable.
KS: Irritable, early mutable, that’s perfect for this Full Moon.
AC: Yeah, if you have planets in early mutable signs, then this configuration’s got your number. And in some cases, it’ll oversee the timing of developments that were inevitable, it’s just the hands of the clock moving. But for a lot of us, there’s gonna be some give as to how that works out. And so, you just want to know that that’s a whole lot of Mars and a whole lot of Moon, don’t turn into a werewolf. If your friends turn into a werewolf, don’t start arguing with them. Lock them in the closet until the Moon sets. Actually, don’t lock anybody in a closet. Lock them in a metaphorical closet. Create space between you and people if they’re going nuts.
KS: Well, that is very diplomatic, Austin. You could do it.
AC: Just because something signifies a disaster somewhere in the world doesn’t mean that it’s gonna happen in your apartment or at home.
KS: That’s true. And I think, yeah, to be specific with either geographical location, the Full Moon is happening at 1°13’ Sag, so it’s gotta be specific to your chart in some capacity. Yeah, but we do have Venus on Algol, Mercury’s in station too at the end of its retrograde. So maybe just try, as you said, a ‘pause a little bit before you speak, or look before you leap’ type of thing.
AC: Yeah. One way that people have received difficult transits like that is that the inside of their head becomes temporarily unnavigable terrain. Sometimes people just have a really bad night, or have a really bad couple of days and they’re just freaking out. Or you can’t think about things right cuz you’re agitated. And so, one thing astrology can do is sometimes it will give you the answer to fixing that. But sometimes—and just as importantly—it’ll say, “Hey, this is only gonna last a couple of days. You can feel all messed up for a couple of days. It’s not the end of the world. Just wait out this thing.” And a lot of times that’s all it takes. Because one of the things that I see with humans is that sometimes we get all activated, and we think, one, this is the way it is—we ‘eternalize’ our feelings—and then sometimes we feel like we need to make huge decisions when we’re not seeing clearly. And so, a lot of times wisdom is just saying, you know, I’m gonna just wait three days to make a big decision, because I can.
KS: Because you can. And I think too, on that idea of waiting, with so much retrograde action, I mean, Mercury is just coming off station with Mars at 1 Sag, preparing to go back into Scorpio. We are looking at a trigger of energy from Mars, going back to early March. So it’s tapping off a longer process. Mars is gonna come back to this early Sag degree in the first-half of August. To leap off your point there, Austin, this Full Moon is dramatic and potentially volatile or combustible, but it represents potentially an energetic midpoint between a longer cycle that started in March and doesn’t actually conclude until August. So there’s more time than what you might think.
AC: And that midpoint is perfect, right? Because literally the Full Moon is the midpoint of the Sun and the Moon.
KS: Yeah, the Sun and Mars are opposite.
AC: And literally the Sun and Mars are at the midpoint.
KS: Yes.
AC: Those oppositions are the midpoint. So, yeah, it’s basically double-midpoint.
KS: Double-midpoint. So think about where you are in the middle of a longer cycle, not just what happens that weekend. Which is actually a long weekend in Canada, for Canadian listeners to keep in mind. It’s the May 24 weekend.
AC: So you’re telling us to watch out for the Canadians.
KS: Well, for most of them, it’s the start of summer here, and a lot of people travel up to their cottages that weekend for the first getaway, where it’s not freezing in this cold country of ours. So maybe be careful on the roads. And don’t get too enthusiastic with your boating adventures if you’re a bit out of practice from not having done it for six months.
AC: Right, right. Oh, and everyone should stay off Facebook.
KS: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
CB: Right.
AC: Just one of the things that I noticed is that Facebook is such an amazing barometer of the planetary conditions, or as a friend of mine calls it, ‘the space weather’.
KS: That’s beautiful.
AC: I think it’s hilarious. But anyway, a lot of times you can just see the rising and falling negativity, and I think that’s especially true if you use it for professional reasons, like all of us do. I’ve got like 6,000 people’s stuff that shows up in my feed. And so, a lot of times what can happen with Facebook is not only is it a good barometer, but it can suck you into morasses of rage or sadness that aren’t really even a part of your life. I mean, there are some larger political things where we can say, well, it’s not a part of your life, but it’s kind of relevant to your life, etc., etc. But if you feel like your balance is compromised, getting sucked into a storm system of sadness and rage, that’s covering 500 square miles, you’re not gonna get in there and solve that. You’re not gonna get in there and help everybody figure it out.
KS: No.
AC: It’s bigger than you. You can’t yell at the weather, unless you’re an extremely powerful wizard. And so, just take care of yourself, and take care of your internal balance. If you feel yourself lacking equilibrium, don’t jump into something that’s just gonna spin you out even further.
CB: Definitely. That seems like great advice for that time period, especially around that week of May.
AC: Yeah. And like you were saying with the time period, that is sort of like a theme that starts developing from that time forward, that goes well into June. It’s ‘mutable cross’ time, and so those tend to spin people out. Chris, did you have any thoughts? Do you have anything to add? Cuz Kelly and I both talked quite a bit about that Full Moon with Mars, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
CB: Sure. I mean, the main thing I’m just noting during that timeframe—I mean, of course we’ve got the Full Moon, but also that ingress comes right after. And it’s not quite as tied into that Full Moon, because the Full Moon’s taking place on May 21, and then Mercury’s stationing direct on the 22nd. And it’s a few days later, but that retrograde ingress of Mars back into Scorpio, May 27, kind of caps off that whole thing because it moves Mars out of the mutable signs. So, on the one hand, you’re almost removing some of the heat from that whole configuration of mutable planets, which is kind of nice on the one hand, especially for people like yourselves with more mutable placements. But then for people like me, with more fixed placements, it’s sort of bringing something back from earlier this year when we had Mars first go into Scorpio in January and then stay there for quite a while. All the way through early March or something like that, right?
KS: Till early March, yes.
CB: So we’ve got a return to some of those themes, which were almost like potential themes or things that were happening but maybe weren’t brought to completion coming back again in the person’s life and then being completed. Which, on the one hand, might be very positive in terms of things that require effort and energy and focus in terms of a specific area of a person’s life, and then potentially, on the more negative end of the spectrum, things that were potential issues or conflicts that had the potential to overflow at that point, but perhaps didn’t, returning back to some of those for a final once-over before moving on. So that’s one that I was a little bit more focused on, that happens to fall just after that, but it seems kind of tied into that whole sequence of events at the end of May.
AC: Yeah, absolutely. Like Kelly said, it’s a midpoint. And so, if you want to understand a midpoint, understand the beginning and endpoint, right? Cuz it’s a process.
CB: Right.
AC: And this is a very particular and dramatic point in that process. Most events are not isolated, but are part of trajectories and arcs. And this is mid-arc, right? If you throw the ball up in the air, this is, in a sense, the high point before it starts falling back down to Earth. And the point where it’s highest is where it’s most visible in this case. I wanted to add one more thing. We talked about Venus being on Algol for the moment of the Full Moon. But if we’re looking at these days, these are a couple of days that have the Full Moon as their brightest symbol. So we’ve got the Full Moon on the, what is it, 21st? Yeah, the Full Moon on the 21st.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah.
AC: But then we have the Mars retro—or excuse me, we have that Mars opposition, which is perfect, on the 22nd, right?
CB: Yeah.
AC: And then we have on the 24th or 25th, Venus ingresses into Gemini and opposes Mars. And so, yeah, that’s on the 24th. And so, with Venus’ significations being tied into this, one, when Venus is tied into things, the passions get involved. We don’t deal with things unemotionally when Venus is involved, and it often has ramifications for the way that we deal with the people in our lives and the status of our relationships. And Venus and Mars don’t oppose each other very often, right? That’s generally a one-a-year thing, or not even. And so, that’s another thing which is packed into these four days which doesn’t happen very often. That’s a significant point. And so, Venus opposite Mars often has really important things to point out about whatever romantic/erotic relationships are in your life, or not in your life. That particular combination—and especially polarized like they are, with Venus by the Sun and Mars by the Moon—there will probably be some important talks to have if you’re in a long-term relationship. There might be some important talks to have if you’re in a developing relationship about do we go left or right from here, do we go forwards or backwards. And for people who are not in a romantic/sexual relationship, there’s still gonna be some thinking about do I want to remain single, am I gonna change what I’m oriented towards, or am I maybe going to intentionally be celibate. Even if you don’t have a relationship like that, these planets are about your orientation to those kinds of relationships. And so, it’s an important point regardless of your current status.
CB: Yeah, definitely. Those two opposing principles in the ancient Greek philosopher fashion of love and strife being at their furthest points in opposition and the tension between the two sort of reaching a high point, or reaching a peak period of that being a turning point in terms of those two.
AC: Yeah, Empedocles, for those who are interested.
KS: Yeah. And one thing—this is totally modern the way I visualize those kinds of oppositions—is like a seesaw or a pendulum starting to shift from one extreme to another. And that as a metaphor for both the Full Moon, the Sun opposite Mars, Venus opposite Mars may just help people understand how we are looking to shift where on a spectrum we’re going from one extreme to the other. What are the two different extremes? What are the two different perspectives here? Can we meet in the middle and balance the seesaw? Or do we need to acknowledge that we’ve overemphasized one end of this spectrum or seesaw, and we need to now move a little towards the other side to create a bit of balance, potentially?
AC: I really like that, Kelly, because I think one thing that oppositions do is they highlight the differences between things.
KS: Totally.
AC: And so, this is very much the principle of Mars and very much the principle of Venus, and they’re tied together, but in many ways they’re defined by contrast. Literally, one will rise with the Sun, and the other will rise as the Sun sets, right? And so, I’m gonna kind of take this forward into the last week of May, as well as what will continue into June. I used the term ‘volatilizing’ earlier, to make volatile, and that word has I think a negative connotation for most people. But I’m thinking of it in a more chemical and/or alchemical sense.
KS: Yeah, volatile. Okay, yeah. I like where you’re going.
AC: Okay, okay, good. So there’s this very simple contrariety within alchemy which is that there are the fixed and the volatile, right? Matter and can be fixed or volatile. And so, something which is fixed is stable in its state and its form. And so, this is actually quite similar to the qualities that we associate with a fixed sign, right? It’s attempting to stabilize and then to maintain the form that we have chosen, whereas what this half-a-week of days does is it ‘volatilizes’ things. And so, when things are volatile, or ‘volatilized’, literally, a lot of times it just means to make something gaseous, right? Any element can be a solid, a liquid, a gas, a plasma, and gasses are more volatile than solids. And this is encoded in our understanding of the elements in astrology, right? These are four different states. And so, when things are ‘volatilized’, they can change, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Right. So imagine you have 10 tons of material—that’s your baggage—and it’s in a solid form. Now imagine trying to lug that around or change its positioning. It’s hard.
KS: It’s like trying to turn the Titanic.
AC: Right. Whereas what if you could turn that 10 tons into gas? All you’d have to do is get it moving. Just get a little fan, right?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Or if you’ve got a network of tubes—like you would in a laboratory—it’s gonna naturally rise and go through its trajectory and then end up somewhere else and then re-condense in the other alembic or vessel. And so, you can change things when they’re ‘volatilized’. If you go looking for the comfort that something being fixed brings during a volatile period, you’ll often be disappointed and become more anxious. However, if you realize this is a ‘volatilized’ period, what I can do is rearrange things. I can move a gas in a way, or even a liquid in a way that I can’t move a solid, right? And don’t worry. Everything that goes up, comes back down. Everything that goes down, comes back up again. It’s like the water cycle.
KS: This is beautiful, Austin. It reminds me of the idea that fire is the more ‘divine’ of the four elements because it’s always kind of rising up. And to go in with that ‘volatilizing’, I mean, that is the Full Moon, it’s in a fire sign, it’s conjunct a fire planet. So I think you’ve given our listeners a really great framework of thinking about how to be productive or take something from this potentially turbulent time. Because that idea of things being gaseous or more mobile is the same thing as being turbulent, and that allows some movement or some change to come into the situation.
AC: Absolutely. I’m glad you brought up fire. Cuz if we’re ‘volatilizing’ material, we have two elements in astrology. We recognize two states of matter/energy that are relatively yin, right? We have water and earth, which both sit on the ground, right?
KS: Yes, they’re dense. They’re down at the bottom.
AC: Right. They both trend downwards.
KS: Yes.
AC: They obey gravity. Whereas both gasses and plasma, or fire, tend upwards, and fire even more than gas. And if we’re talking about change, nobody wants to see things burn down, but fire transforms things much more quickly than any of these others. Things change when they’re in a plasmic or fiery state much more quickly. What does fire do? Fire separates the various elements which compose a given substance, right? That smoke coming up is the material that used to be part of that thing that’s becoming gaseous. It separates what is heavy from what is light within a substance. And the difference between physical fire and the fire which takes place inside of us and with life is that that smoke will come back down. You never lose that, right? That material, those solids—which have become ‘volatilized’, whatever components of the material that are up there now—you’re gonna get those back, and you’re gonna get to put them together again with the other pieces of your life in a new way. And even though fire is a very sudden separation, ‘volatilization’, it serves a purpose that no other state of things can serve.
KS: Beautiful. And I think too this description around this elemental focus for the end of May, around the Full Moon, really serves to highlight the contrast between the first three weeks, where that earth element—which is much more dense and much more focused on security and stability—is really the emphasis.
AC: Mm-hmm. I think especially with that Mercury retrograde and Venus under the beams, we’re gonna be exploring the tunnels inside of the solids. The tunnels inside of what is fixed.
KS: Beautiful.
CB: I love some of the metaphors and the imagery that you guys are using.
AC: Awesome. There are a number of people over the last thousand-plus years who’ve maintained that the study of alchemy is a perfect complement to that of astrology, and I found what little I do know has helped me articulate things quite a bit. And if people are interested in doing that, I would suggest that you start much earlier than Carl Jung.
KS: Yes, you can go back a little bit further than that.
AC: Or even better, read some of the great books that the people who have done that work for you have written.
KS: That’s true.
AC: That’s what I did actually.
CB: Backing up a little bit, I forgot to mention earlier in the month there were a couple of other elections.
AC: Yeah, let’s do it. I’ve got some stuff to do in May.
CB: Sure, sure. So two of them, both of them take place on May 10. So, again, all of the best elections are early in the month, between the 1st and the 10th. So the first one takes place in the early part of the morning, just before sunrise. So May 10, around 5:30-5:32 in the morning, Taurus rising, Venus in Taurus conjunct the ascendant in a night chart, with Mercury and the Sun also in Taurus in the 1st house. The Moon is in Cancer in this chart, in the third whole sign house, and it’s actually applying to a sextile with Venus. So you have this very strong ruler of the ascendant that’s a benefic. It’s of-the-sect, so it’s at its most positive or at its most beneficent, and we have this great 3rd house placement applying to that and emphasizing Venus even more. So this would be a good chart for either 1st house, Venusian-type things, where you have to have a strong aesthetic sense, or a good physical appearance, where you have to put your best foot forward in some sense. Or if it was an artistic, or perhaps even a musical project that had some sort of artistic element to it, since we’re emphasizing Venus so much. But also, with this 3rd house emphasis, with the Moon in Cancer in the third whole sign house and applying to Venus, it’s bringing in other 3rd house themes that could have to do with things like education or communication or travel and other things generally related to that. So not just having art or artistic or aesthetic things, but perhaps conveying that or putting that forward in some sense in order to bring it into the world.
AC: I want to live inside this election.
CB: Yeah.
AC: This is both gorgeous and comfy. That Moon though—that Moon is in a really great condition. It’s not only in the sign it rules, applying to an empowered benefic, in its house joy, but it’s also waxing but not too overpowered. Sometimes a Moon that’s too full can be a bit frenetic. It’s got light and it’s gaining—that’s a really beautiful Moon. And just looking at that, I don’t think you wanted to shift the whole election this way, but worth noting is a couple of hours later, you have a brief period of time where you have the Moon departing from the sextile to Venus, while applying to the sextile to Jupiter. So you have an almost perfect Moon enclosed by the benefics for just a little bit.
CB: Yeah, that’s almost the second election, which is on the same day. And that’s good that you mentioned Jupiter, because the other part that I left out is that Jupiter is at 13° of Virgo in the fifth whole sign house. And so, Venus, the ruler of the ascendant, is actually applying itself to a very close trine with Jupiter.
KS: Yeah.
CB: And of course the Moon, which is applying to Venus, will then, after it completes that, also apply to Jupiter.
AC: And what did Jupiter just do? He just stationed direct like two days before this.
CB: Right. He’s still stationary, but now moving forward again after a long retrograde period.
AC: Love it.
CB: So it’s almost one of those ideal—
KS: Juicy.
CB: Yeah, one of those elections you don’t see very often where it just nails all of the right components, especially the two most important planets in any electional chart, which are the ruler of the ascendant and the Moon. They’re just both exquisitely placed in this chart.
KS: Yeah, they’re in a class mutual reception, too. Did one of you guys already say that?
AC: No.
CB: No.
KS: Oh, no, I beg your pardon. Sorry, no, they’re in their own signs, I beg your pardon. I’m getting too excited.
AC: Who were you talking about, Kelly?
KS: I was talking about the Moon and Venus, but they’re in their own signs, sorry.
AC: Well, they have reception.
KS: They do, you’re right, because the Moon is exalted in Taurus, and Venus has dignity in the water signs.
AC: Yep.
KS: Yeah, so it’s really juicy. It’s like perfect.
CB: Yeah, so that was probably one of the best elections that Leisa found for that month. And because that’s such a great day, and because that placement extends a little bit, of course you want to milk it a little bit by getting another second great election that occurs just a few hours later, again, on May 10, but now at about 9:20 in the morning. So 9:20 AM, with about 13° or so of Cancer rising. The Moon is in Cancer, its own domicile, conjunct the ascendant, so in the 1st house either by quadrant houses or whole sign houses. And the Moon is—it looks like it’ll first hit the sextile with Venus still, which has now been shifted to Taurus in the 11th house. And then immediately after that, the Moon will sextile Jupiter, which is now occupying the 3rd house in Virgo, at 13° of Virgo.
AC: I guess it depends on your location, but I think some people are gonna be able to get that enclosure by benefics with this election by just shifting a few minutes.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yes.
CB: By shifting the chart just a few minutes for your location. But it’s gonna be really close, just because Venus and Jupiter are so close to completing their trine just to begin with. So let me see—if I adjust it in Denver, you can actually catch it.
KS: Denver gets it, yeah.
CB: Yeah, by like 9:40 in the morning, the Moon has now completed its sextile with Venus, so that it’s separating from that sextile and applying to the sextile with Jupiter. So this would be classically what’s called an ‘enclosure’ or a ‘besiegement’ by the two benefics, which is traditionally one of the seven conditions of bonification, which is just an extremely fortunate or auspicious placement.
AC: Yeah, I think we had a conversation about what to call an enclosure by benefics. Because obviously malefics besiege, but benefics—that’s not quite the right terminology. I think of it as a ménage à trois or a sandwich.
KS: We’ve got the ‘benefic’ sandwich.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah.
CB: ‘Benefic’ sandwich was definitely a keyword from a previous episode. I’ll have to go back and look at which.
KS: I’m just looking at the chart for Sydney, Australia, for instance. Unfortunately, the Moon is going to be a bit earlier, but you will still get it applying to both Venus and Jupiter. It’s just the Moon’s around either 2 or 4 Cancer.
AC: Yeah, I think it’s only gonna work for the US.
KS: North American locations.
AC: Yeah, North America.
KS: I think it’s still good to have the Cancer Moon applying to Venus and then Jupiter.
AC: Oh, it’s still awesome.
CB: Yeah.
KS: It’s just not in the middle of that intense ménage à trois. It’s still building. It’s still walking into the house. You’re not in the bedroom yet.
CB: Sure. And this chart, again, emphasizes some 3rd house components, because we’ve got, again, a benefic in the 3rd house with Jupiter in Virgo in the 3rd. But now it brings in this other 11th house component with Venus, the other benefic, being in the 11th, in Taurus, in its own sign, bringing in other themes having to do with alliances and groups and friends and social movements and things like that as an additional component. This is a very—
AC: Also, a really important 11th house signification—audiences.
CB: Yes.
AC: If you create things for groups of people, then part of your 11th house is your audience.
CB: Definitely. And social networks and things like that.
KS: Yeah, professional organizations, conferences, networking events, all of that kind of thing.
CB: Sure. So this is probably, if not the best, the second-best chart of the month compared to the one early in the morning. So I definitely recommend taking advantage of these two on May 10. There’s only one other election that month. Leisa was having a really hard time finding elections later in May, due to some of the aforementioned—
KS: No surprise.
CB: Yeah, tense alignments taking place later in May. And I remember when she was looking through this, she was able to come up with—and I didn’t really find anything better—on May 24, 2016, at about 8:25 in the morning, again, with Cancer rising, like the previous chart. So the Moon now is in Capricorn, it’s in the seventh whole sign house, and it’s applying to a somewhat wide trine with Jupiter, which is at 13° of Virgo, with the Moon being at 4° of Capricorn. So it will be complete that trine within a 24-hour period, within a day and a night, which is classically the orb of the Moon, about 13°. Otherwise, this is not like the other charts. There is some other stuff that’s not going so well in this chart that really stands out, such as Venus having just ingressed into Gemini—so it’s no longer in Taurus—is now applying to an exact opposition with Mars, which is not great, since one of the rulers of the houses, which in this chart would be the ruler of the 4th and ruler of the 11th, would be falling under a pretty extreme condition of affliction. But otherwise the ruler of the ascendant itself has something going for it because it’s applying to Jupiter in a day chart through a trine.
AC: Yeah, this is more one of the ‘if you’ve gotta do something this week, this is the time’, rather than a ‘wait for months to get this one’ type of election.
KS: Yeah. And it’s important for people to understand that, too. Sometimes it’s just a bit of a cosmic, I don’t know, Gong Show. The best you can do sometimes is get the ascendant ruler doing something good and then you’ve got at least something going for you, which you wouldn’t have if you were starting at a different time on that day.
AC: Right.
CB: Exactly, exactly. So that’s really the only one that we can recommend in terms of late May, after the 10th. I mean, that doesn’t mean that anything initiated after May 10 is gonna fail. But it just means in terms of elections that really stand out as great ones that I’d recommend for this month, they really all mostly take place in that first week or so, week-and-a-half of May, from about May 5 through May 10.
KS: And just to spin off that briefly, Chris, a lot of what those early elections are picking up on is the strength of Venus in Taurus and the application of Venus to Jupiter, so the two benefics coming together. So even if people can’t work with those specific elections, that’s just some of the generally more functional aspects in the earlier part of the month.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really great point. It’s really just picking up on that Venus-Jupiter trine that’s taking place because Venus is moving through Taurus and Jupiter’s moving through Virgo. It’s an extra special one of course because then Venus happens to be in its own sign as it’s moving through Taurus. And I think in your notes, you actually noted that Venus is getting a little bit of outer planet action—that I haven’t been mentioning as well—during that time, where it sextiles Neptune on May 9 and then trines Pluto on May 14. So it’s got a little bit of extra juice coming in from those outer planet contacts as well.
KS: Yeah, I was just writing up horoscopes and getting ready for the month ahead, and I did identify that period from May 8-9 until the 14th-15th as probably the juiciest period, just from a simple aspect perspective. So it’s really interesting that your elections fall within that time as well.
CB: Yeah, definitely.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Austin?
AC: And I’ll just say I love soft aspects between Venus and Neptune.
KS: Yeah, they’re good. Especially with Venus in dignity, right?
AC: Yeah. What I get a lot of the time is I just see whatever’s going on, whatever people are worried about temporarily fades out a little bit, and it just brings down the tempo and mellows things out. It anesthetizes a little bit. It turns down your ability to receive the pain and stress, and it just cranks up whatever pleasure signals are happening in your life as far as space weather goes. I love them.
KS: Yeah, like it activates the pleasure principle.
AC: Yeah. And it’s not cuz I have some amazing Venus-Neptune thing in my chart, I don’t, but I just see that happen and I’ll usually get a little bit of that myself. Again, I see it, it’s just like this cooling, mellow, anesthetizing mist.
KS: It’s like everybody’s just had a glass of wine to take the edge off.
AC: Exactly. And it doesn’t change everything, but sometimes just taking a step back and feeling okay for a while does change things. It changes your ability to come back into it fresh.
KS: For sure. And that’s actually a really good point. That’s one of my big thoughts about May, which is the idea that there is this sweet relief coming through, which probably most of us could benefit a little bit from after the Mars and the activations of April. So particularly that Venus-Neptune aspect, it’s just calming down for a moment.
CB: Definitely.
KS: There’s one big aspect we haven’t spoken about for May. I know what we’re basically at the end of our time.
CB: Which one? The square?
KS: Jupiter square Saturn.
CB: Okay, go for it.
KS: Okay.
AC: So this is the actual last one, right?
KS: Austin, you go.
CB: Yeah, so May 26.
AC: So we’ve been doing Saturn-Jupiter squares since—was the first one last summer?
KS: It was August. It was when Jupiter was still in Leo and Saturn was still in Scorpio.
CB: Oh, right.
AC: It was right in the middle of the Venus retrograde.
CB: Yeah.
AC: So we’ve had a couple since then, and this is actually the last. And so, there are two perspectives you can take on this—microscope and telescope—that are both important and complementary. Let’s start with microscope. So Jupiter is like the positive potential that we can see. It’s like, “Well, but things can get better in this way, and, well, at least this is going well,” right? And then Saturn is, “Well, we just kinda gotta get through this and be responsible.” It’s the half of things that require the virtues of patience and industry, and these things which aren’t necessarily fun to begin with but are worth doing. We have our ‘have to do this’ and ‘oh, this is the source of hope’, right? So we always have these two. Jupiter and Saturn are always somewhere, they’re always somewhere in our individual charts, and we all have this mixture of pessimistic, but trying to avoid negative outcomes for Saturn—because if you’re pessimistic, you’re gonna start steering more carefully—and then optimistic, like opening up and trying to embrace and take advantage of a good thing, and reminding yourself of what there is to be grateful for. And so, whenever you have these two principles represented by these two planets in aspect, their significations get mixed in a very particular way. And so, with the square we have the contrasts between them highlighted, where the good and the bad are just running right into each other, where you’re like, “Oh, this is really good, and this is really hard,” on a general level. And it’s interesting here—and, Kelly, jump in whenever—because we have Saturn in a Jupiter-ruled sign, and we have Jupiter in the superior position in this square, which seems like it would be jollier and more positive. But poor Jupiter doesn’t have a lot to work with in Virgo.
KS: No.
AC: A lot of times, how we regain elevation and coherence and feel capable of acting wisely and generously, these Jupiterian significations, is because we look at the big picture, and we say, “Well, at the end of the day, this is part of a process,” blah, blah, blah. But in Virgo, Jupiter is looking through the microscope and has an ability and a tendency to hyper-analyze what’s wrong. Why isn’t this growing faster? Planets get frustrated in signs where they have debility because the territory that they’re working with is not as receptive to their efforts. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t get anything out of Jupiter in Virgo, but it just means that it’s not going to be big and luxurious like Jupiter in Pisces. And so, even though Jupiter is a control position here—or in a position of a lot of influence—it’s like giving someone a great job, but you’re talking to them while they’re out of the country and they don’t have any of the resources of their house at their disposal, and they’re kind of stressed out by what’s going on. And so, it’s putting a planet in power that is in a temporarily-difficult position, right?
KS: It has some, I guess, some limitations.
AC: Yeah, yeah. It’s an interesting mix. Because, again, this privileges Jupiter in some ways, but it’s a little harder for Jupiter to take full advantage here. If we’re looking at Jupiter being tied to Saturn, Jupiter ruling Saturn, Saturn’s job is then to receive what benefits or what growth Jupiter has created, what opportunities Jupiter has created, and then either lock them down or lock into a trajectory of making the best of them and protect them. Saturn’s very protective. Lead is Saturn’s metal, and lead will keep the radiation out.
KS: Protect you from the nuclear warheads.
AC: Right. And so, this is almost like Saturn saying to Jupiter, “Send me more stuff. I was expecting more. How am I gonna do my job here? The vault is only half-full.” Like, “What am I doing over here? Why am I spending all this energy? Why am I trying so hard?”
KS: Yeah, I took a bigger picture or maybe a meta-view of this square in contrast to the micro matters that might come up with, say, the Venus-Mars opposition. I really thought about how Jupiter square Saturn brings some of the larger forces at play into these sort of maybe critical decision moments. Because, as you said, Austin, I think it’s the third Jupiter-Saturn square in a series of three. The most recent one was in March. So I always think of the word ‘adjustment’ for a square aspect, that we are having two different things coming to a head, like cars coming at a T-intersection, I guess. And you cannot both go forward at the same time. Somebody has to pause and give way. A person, project, or thing has to pause to allow something else to move forward. So that’s where that adjustment comes from. There might be some time management components. There might be some scheduling or big picture planning and brainstorming things where it’s like these are all the great ideas, how are we going to make them manifest? That idea of the lead-y or the heavy version Saturn is, how can we create a vehicle or a strategy that will allow the manifestation or the realization of the dream or the vision that has been enthusing you or inspiring you, going back probably to August of last year? If we take that whole aspect in its longer process.
AC: Yeah. Another thing, just as an example—and I’m going to veer carefully into politics.
KS: Oh, God. Good luck.
AC: I’m not gonna bring up my opinions, which seem to change semi-regularly. So Saturn’s job is to figure out what needs fixing, what we need to be more careful about, what needs more attention, right? Saturn is like, “We need to get serious about this,” that’s Saturn’s thing. “Let’s get serious about it,” and points. So we can say that Saturn corresponds to problems that need to be fixed, right? And then Jupiter, Jupiter is an answer guy, right? Jupiter says, “Well, what if we do this? We can improve things.” Jupiter in Virgo, it might be that Jupiter’s answers or fixes are too small. They’re not ambitious enough. And here’s the political parallel. The Economist ran an article last week, after Hillary Clinton’s victory in the New York primaries, and basically The Economist was like, “Okay, if she does end up being the president, what does that look like?” And their primary criticism of her was that even if she gets in power and gets a Congress behind her, that her answers might be too small, that this is a period of time when the United States needs real, serious reform. They were basically worried that she was too afraid of rocking the boat. They said ‘upsetting the apple cart’. And they said maybe these answers aren’t going to be big enough. If we’re talking about a problem that Jupiter in Virgo might encounter, it’s not being big enough, right? The perspective isn’t big enough. The energy, the enthusiasm isn’t big enough.
KS: Yeah, that’s great, Austin.
AC: Whatever you think of any of the candidates, if Hillary Clinton does get elected, I think that’s a legitimate concern.
KS: Over to you, Chris.
CB: So I’m gonna avoid politics entirely and just say a lot of the keywords you guys were using, to me, made me think of—which is very closely tied into that square—the opposition from Neptune in Pisces and the square to Saturn at the same time as part of that ongoing and a little bit longer stretched out Saturn-Neptune square. And I keep coming back to just the most literal manifestation of that that’s been happening this year—the quick rolling out of all of these virtual reality devices, and you keep seeing all these YouTube videos. In one of them I saw really recently this woman from Germany was playing this game, and it’s like a creepy, haunted house game, where she’s moving through, in virtual reality, this haunted house. And there wasn’t a ton of stuff going on, but by the end of it, she was just physically shaking. And the line between reality and what was not reality had just been completely obliterated in front of her eyes, and she was having this really strong physical reaction, where she was like, “I can’t keep doing this; I’m physically reacting to this because it feels like I’m literally there in this haunted mansion and it’s really creeping me out,” and she didn’t want to keep going. So that was a negative example, but it was just a really literal manifestation to me of some what you guys were talking about in terms of the Saturn-Neptune square, but also, Jupiter sort of bringing that forward and affirming that and being the final push to bring some of that into reality and manifest something. Previously, Austin, when we’ve talked about this before, you’ve said that there have been so many attempts in the past at different aspects of virtual reality and bringing that into the present, but it seems like this time it’s actually happening. And perhaps some part of that is that role that Jupiter’s playing in being in a superior position over Saturn and kind of affirming that allusion between reality and what’s not reality sort of being broken down a little bit.
AC: Yeah. Well, what I would say is that one thing that Jupiter can do in Virgo is he’s really good at affirming Mercury significations.
CB: Right.
AC: Those are a little bit alien to him, but he can manage it, right? And so, I think Jupiter in Virgo is better for Mercury than it is for Jupiter. And so, tech—tech is mercurial.
KS: Yes.
AC: Jupiter affirms them somewhat negatively. Or not negatively, somewhat critically, but he still affirms them. One example is the tech sector has been slowly melting over the last year, but it’s been a gentle melting. It’s not a meltdown, and it hasn’t exploded. The expectations are being quietly lowered for the returns for a lot of the big tech firms, and that’s a huge blessing. Because if what happened over the last six months happened in a day, people would freak out, right? That’s a huge thing. And so, Jupiter gives you a more graceful version of a process.
CB: Right.
AC: It doesn’t necessarily change that, but he’s like, “Let me lower you to the ground rather than just knocking you off your cloud.”
CB: Definitely.
AC: Literally, Microsoft is being widely criticized for completely failing to iterate anything worthwhile for the entire multi-year arc of cloud computing, and people are getting worried about it.
CB: Right. And all of the Windows 10 updates and very obtrusive notifications.
KS: Which I just keep ignoring constantly.
AC: Yeah. And so, Chris, I believe what you were articulating was this is how Jupiter ties into this ongoing Saturn-Neptune square. Now I want to look at how Neptune ties into this ongoing Jupiter-Saturn square, right? So with Jupiter and Saturn, we’re trying to weigh the problems and methods of improvement, and that’s a really careful, back-and-forth sort of thing. And I think one way that Neptune is ‘problematizing’ is Neptune is like, “Hey, while you guys are having this really careful discussion, how about some fog machine? How about a light show?” And I think that, again, in terms of both national and international politics, there are a lot of crossroads and “How do we do this?” and “How do we balance these things?” And then Neptune’s like, “How about a bunch of irrelevant fantasies? How about that?” And it’s like, no, that’s not helping, Neptune.
KS: Yeah.
AC: It’s more entertaining.
KS: Distracting daydreams.
AC: Yeah. Or people are like, “Well, I bet this will just fix everything.” It’s like, no, that’s not gonna fix everything. “Well, this is gonna ruin everything.” No, it’s not gonna ruin everything. Neither Jupiter or Saturn tend towards crazy extremes, right? They’re both very reasonable planets in their own way, whereas Neptune cares not for your logic. Neptune is beyond logic for good and for evil, and for everything else. Neptune is also well beyond the duality of good and evil.
KS: Yes.
CB: Brilliant. All right, well, we’ve gone on for two hours, so I think maybe we could wrap up this.
KS: We should cart ourselves off.
CB: Right. Wrap up the show and exercise some Saturn of our own. So do you guys have any last points before we close down the forecast episode for May?
KS: I would just say a big thanks to our listeners. We are enjoying hearing from you guys, both in person and online. And thanks for coming along each month. We really enjoy putting the show together for you guys.
AC: Yeah, I’d like to echo that. I really enjoy these conversations. I get a lot out of it. In addition to a number of other things, it’s a great excuse to talk to Chris and Kelly about what’s going on for an hour or two, which I don’t think I would be able to convince them to do otherwise, and I’m really glad that it’s useful for other people. And thanks to Chris’ supporters for making this possible. And while we’re thanking people, thanks to my Patreon supporters for letting me get back to writing every week. It is kind of killing me, but I love it.
CB: Yeah, I appreciate it as well. It’s been great seeing you get back to writing the column again, which is a return to what you were doing 10 years ago when I met you. And, yeah, thanks everyone for listening. It’s been great. All three of us keep running into people that are listening to the podcast. And sometimes it’s hard because we’re recording this right now, but then we just sort of put it out there, and I think you only get a little, tiny sense of how many people are listening to it. But in reality, it seems like there are much more people following some of these episodes than we realize, and it’s kind of heartening to hear from them in person or through email afterwards. And of course, just the support that we’ve received from the community through Patreon and through people pledging support to donate a dollar or $5 or $10 an episode has gone a long way in allowing me to keep doing this, despite other projects and obligations. So thank you all for doing that. All right, well, I guess that’s it. So shall we sign off for this episode?
KS: See you guys next month.
AC: Till then.
CB: All right, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.