The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 78, titled:
Astrology Forecast and Auspicious Dates for June 2016
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on May 25, 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 Tuesday, May 24, 2016, starting at 2:43 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is Episode 78 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 astrological forecast for the month of June 2016, as well as giving a few auspicious dates over the course of the next month for beginning different types of ventures and undertakings using the principles of electional astrology. We’re also gonna be doing our first ever drawing to give away some prizes for patrons of the show who supported by donating through our page on Patreon. So let’s go ahead and get started with the show. Austin and Kelly, welcome back.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris. Thank you for having me.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey, guys.
CB: All right, well, it’s been a pretty busy and pretty hectic month for me, especially with the Mercury retrograde, which recently ended. What about you guys?
KS: Totally hectic over here too. I’m not sure—Mercury, Mars, Saturn, the whole works, but nose to the grindstone, which is kind of good when you’re self-employed. It’s good to be busy.
CB: Definitely. And you’re headed off to NORWAC tomorrow?
KS: I am. Yes, I’m heading off to one of my favorite conferences, NORWAC in Seattle. So that’s gonna be a blast. I’ll be catching up with a few ‘astro’ people in the flesh this weekend, which will be great.
CB: Excellent. Austin, how are you doing?
AC: Oh, similarly. Definitely nose to the grindstone. I’ve actually been sort of doing this dance with burnout. I’ve been sort of at the edge of burning out and getting sick, but just kind of walking that edge, walking along the cliff face of the abyss for a while kind of successfully. I’m really hoping to do a little bit better than that.
CB: Yeah, I know that feeling. I mean, I’m in a Mercury profection year this year, and I really got nailed by this Mercury retrograde. And I think it’s funny because about a-month-and-a-half ago, I would go and get my hair cut every few weeks at this local barbershop that opened up a few years ago. I went to a different barber than the one I usually go to, and the one I usually go to was standing over on the other side of the room, and somebody mentions something about people going crazy about Mercury retrograde coming up and how stupid that was. And I’m kind of sitting there feeling kind of terrible actually because they’re basically just laughing about dumb it is that people care about planets going retrograde and how stupid that is. And it’s been ironic over the past few weeks because as soon as Mercury stationed this year—because it’s activated in my chart—things just went nuts, and I had a hard drive crash. I’ve never had a hard drive crash before in 20 years of owning different computers. I had my first hard drive crash and then had all sorts of recording issues. I had to reinstall Windows, then I couldn’t get the usual microphone to work, and both of my recording programs failed right before I started doing the interview with Ray Merriman earlier this month. So I had to switch to an alternative third program that I had never tested before and that brought some problems. So it was funny, sort of apropos follow-up to having this weird, embarrassing moment of being an astrologer in a room of people that are badmouthing astrology. Cuz on the one hand that feels bad to be somebody that believes in astrology and have other people sort of diss it. But on the other hand you kind of understand why just normal, everyday people would think that something like that sounds stupid, I think, so you almost don’t blame them necessarily for thinking that way. But then at the same time when something does happen, that’s sort of Mercury retrograde-like or matches the astrology in your life, on the one hand it feels kind of cliché to attribute things to that, but then on the other hand it really does work sometimes. And sometimes when that happens it’s just very sort of visceral that the astrology’s working and that you’re having that experience of it. Have you guys had anything like that?
KS: For sure. I always think when people kind of pooh-pooh stuff like Mercury retrograde—I had a client earlier today who basically described how she’s feeling as she’s about to have her Saturn return. I’m like, “That the textbook definition of Saturn return.” “I’m 29, I’ve gotta get my act together, time’s running out.” I’m like, “That’s normal for where you’re at.” And so, to me, it’s like when they just don’t know enough about the subject when they’re dissing it basically. I don’t know. Maybe I’m very protective of our craft.
CB: No, I mean, I think that’s true that you wouldn’t know that much, and you really couldn’t. I mean, it would be very hard to know much about astrology to be able to make an informed statement about it. And it would be very easy to look at something like that, that sounds very weird from an objective standpoint and think that there is anything to it. We just happen to be some of the few people that maybe stumbled into it in such a way that we had an opportunity to find out that there was something to it before developing ‘antibodies’ against it or something like that.
KS: Antibodies, I love that.
CB: Maybe if I had grown up watching more Bill Nye, ‘The Science Guy’ or Neil deGrasse Tyson or something I would have been immune to it.
AC: Oh, I don’t think so. I grew up like that.
KS: I grew up in a Catholic family.
AC: Astrology had to overcome all of the scientific objections in me. I was raised—I wouldn’t say materialist, but, yeah, I was raised with an academic, scientific perspective. And I thought astrology was absurd because in the model of the world that I encountered at a young age, it was not possible, right? And so, to describe the mechanics of something that’s not possible seems absurd. And one of the common critiques is, “Oh, you’re just selecting the experiences that you think will prove the idea you have. You’re just trying to make astrology work.”
CB: Right, confirmation bias.
AC: Yeah. But the idea that you are somehow psychically breaking your computer for the first time in 20 years—and all of the quite material, quite objective events which occurred during a Mercury-ruled profection for you, with a Mercury retrograde station that was configured quite tightly to your own natal Mercury, the various filters we would apply in order to determine whether the Mercury retrograde would kind of be just around or happening in your recording studio, right in the heart of your machines—the idea that it’s confirmation bias with something like that is absurd.
CB: Sure.
AC: And one thing I’ll say about astrology is that to be even okay at astrology, you have to have a pretty highly-developed pattern recognition intelligence. Not everybody has high levels of pattern recognition. And of course pattern recognition isn’t making things up. Pattern recognition is being able to figure out what’s going on in your environment that’s not one thing right in front of you. And I’ve heard that psychologists who’ve studied different types of intelligence say that pattern recognition is actually one of the rarest of the intelligences that people have and develop.
CB: Sure.
KS: So you’re saying we’re all rare and intelligent, Austin. I like it. Tell us more.
AC: That might be confirmation bias.
CB: Right. Sure. Cuz I grew up watching science shows and things like that as well, so it’s not like I didn’t. But I definitely feel like there are people that do hear things that are in the mainstream thinking about astrology, or they see the zodiac controversy from a few years ago or something like that and some keywords or some phrases become ingrained, that do kind of inoculate them against taking it seriously as a subject. So I guess all I meant is, as one of the people that broke through that, as I think many astrologers do in order to look at the subject and assess it and see if there’s anything seriously there, sometimes people come from a more hardline background, that’s very against astrology; like Sam Reynolds and a few other people I’ve interviewed on the podcast have said that they were initially skeptics. We were talking about Maggie Nalbandian, the founder of Kepler, earlier this month, and she initially got into astrology to disprove it to a friend, but then later became a very prominent astrologer in the Northwest. So one’s background doesn’t always dictate whether they’re gonna get into astrology and find it useful, but sometimes there can be things in the mainstream culture that maybe give people a certain perception of what astrology is, and that’s not necessarily always positive.
AC: No. But those inoculations—they’re very surface. They’re very shallow. Saying like, “Well, that seems silly to me. How can a planet that far away affect a human body right here.”
KS: I like your accent there.
AC: Thanks. Nature is full of things that don’t seem like they would make sense. And so, anytime you learn something new about the world, you are shattering your previous idea of the world. And so, anybody who actually learns anything, that doesn’t matter just cuz you didn’t think it was possible before, because of what you’ve been taught. I mean, we’ve all talked about this a lot. The critiques of astrology—which are popular—are for the most part not even critiques of astrology, right? The ‘Oh, my God, the stars have moved’ thing, we know, we know. That’s not a real critique of astrology. We’re not positing that the signs mean what they mean because of those clusters of fixed stars.
CB: Sure.
AC: And there are a number of other things like that. And when a skeptic, or just somebody who doesn’t have any reason to assign much truth value to astrology actually looks at what astrology’s hypotheses are and then tests them, they are very often converted.
CB: Sure. So I guess the point is it’s a statement a friend of mine, Scott Silverman, made years ago, which is just, with Mercury retrograde in particular, sometimes they come and go and not much happens, especially if it’s not activated in your chart or not hitting your chart in a certain way. But it’s like every once in a while you’ll have that one that just hits your chart in a very specific way and something very sensitive is activated through some technique and you just get nailed with it, and you know you have that cliché Mercury retrograde-type experience. And I’m coming out of one of those right now.
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
KS: Totally.
AC: I think profections are probably the simplest and most powerful filter that you can assign. If you’re gonna use one thing to tell whether a Mercury retrograde is gonna hit, find out whether you’re in a Mercury-ruled profection, and that seems to make a huge difference. I see the three Mercury retrogrades that occur during anyone’s Mercury profected year as all being the turning points of that year repeatedly in my client work.
CB: Definitely.
KS: Absolutely. The client that I briefly referred to before, she’s Saturn returning, but she’s Saturn returning in a year where Saturn is her profected time-lord.
AC: I did that.
KS: Right. I didn’t. So, yeah, you would know what she’s going through, I guess. But same kind of thing—it’s gonna be a more significant or substantial Saturn return for her because Saturn is already activated for this particular time in her life.
CB: Right. Anyway, sorry for that long digression, but one of the pieces of news for me other than that, I haven’t been doing my series of book updates. But just to let people know, I’m actually really kicking some ass on the book and making great progress working with an editor, Aaron Cheak, who’s giving me great feedback. And I’ve just finished the core of the book—which is the planets, signs, houses, and aspects—and now I’m moving onto some of the later portions. In other news, I recently launched a transcripts page for the podcast because a couple of people have been making transcripts for us since last fall. And I finally just got a chance to create a page for them on the podcast website, and I’m starting to upload the transcripts. So you can find at least five episodes right now. Although I think we’ve got 20 that are lined up to upload pretty soon here. So thank you to our volunteers who are doing that. And if there’s anybody out there who would like to volunteer to make transcripts of the show basically, to type what we’re saying in certain episode for us—for those who would prefer to read it, or for the hearing-impaired—just send me an email and I can give you details about that. What other news or things do you guys want to mention before we jump into things? What do you have coming up? Or what do you have going on?
KS: I might just quickly mention that I will be in Sydney in June, and I’ve got two public lectures that I’m giving there in Crows Nest. So for people who are in Sydney, they’ll know where that is. I’ve got a beginner talk on Tuesday, June 7, and an advanced lecture on Thursday, June 16. So if anyone’s interested to connect in Sydney—either for one of those lectures or to have an in-person chart consult—just contact me through my website.
CB: Excellent. And how about you, Austin?
AC: Well, let’s see, I’m writing weekly and monthly now. And this coming Saturday—which is May 28—I’m set to begin a new round of my fundamentals class. We’re gonna be starting the houses module. So that’s four weeks of an online class where we build up the houses from the beginning, looking at what the 12 houses mean, as well as why do they mean that, looking at some of the fundamental rationales. And then in June, on June 25, I’ll be starting my class on aspects, which is another four-week module defining what the aspects are, why do they mean what they mean, and trying to get comfortable looking at planets in relationship to each other, looking at how they interfere with or aid each other, what they agree on, what they disagree on. Although I think it’d be useful for a lot of intermediate astrologers to clarify their language around aspects, the class is taught so that somebody who’s learning astrology from the ground up can participate and can work on their foundations. I’m probably gonna teach another class in June on sort of a planetary magic theme. I haven’t decided what focus I’m gonna do. I’m teaching introduction to planetary magic right now. And so, once I’ve introduced the material, there’s the question of what to focus on. And so, I’m still in the process of figuring that out. It might be a workshop on traditional talismans, how to elect them, and what to expect. It’s one thing to get the recipe right, it’s another thing to talk about things with somebody who’s done some cooking—and I’ve done some cooking. So I can hopefully give people some realistic expectations and just help smooth out the process a little bit, but we’ll see. I’ll announce that soon enough. I just haven’t made up my mind.
CB: Sounds good. And people can check out your website, austincoppock.com, for more information about that, and Kelly’s website, which is kellysastrology.com. All right, so before we get into the forecast and the elections for this month, we’ve got a new segment on the show. This is the first time that we’re gonna do a giveaway drawing for May of 2016. So this is kind of a new thing we’re doing, a new thing I’m experimenting with as a benefit for some of our higher-tier patrons who are donating money each time we put out a new episode of the show, in order to both encourage us to do more episodes, as well as to improve and expand the quality and the scope of the show. So what I did is I collected some prizes and now we’re gonna do a little drawing. So we’ve got three prizes for patrons on our $5 tier, which are largely digital prizes, and we’ve got one grand prize for the $10 tier. So we’re doing this in order to reach our next funding goal on Patreon, which we’re about halfway to at this point. And the point of it is to improve the audio quality of the podcast by sending guests on the show a microphone, a high-quality microphone and headphone set, so that they can have really high-quality audio when we do the recordings. Most people usually either have just a built-in laptop mic or something else and usually the sound quality is not very good as a result of that.
So I’ve been experimenting with that this month, getting prepared if we meet this funding goal. And if you listened to the show with Ray Merriman—or especially the show with John Marchesella, and to some extent this show right now that we’re recording; we’re not all fully on the top-tier mics yet, but we will be soon—you’ll really notice the sound quality has improved over the course of the past month. So that’s something that’s just gonna get better and better, especially once we reach that funding goal. So if you’d like to enter the drawing next month, all you have to do is join the show and volunteer to become a patron on the $5 or $10 tier, and then you’ll automatically be entered into the monthly drawing. So what I did here—let’s do the $5 drawing first—is very sort very high-tech and very advanced. I have two bowls, and each of them have the names of the patrons that are eligible on the $5 and $10 tiers.
KS: Love it.
CB: Yeah, we’re running a high-tech operation here. So the first prize, the first drawing we’re gonna do is actually for Kelly’s e-book on Saturn in Sagittarius. Could you tell us a little bit about that, Kelly?
KS: I can. I can tell you many things about it. Basically, it’s described by some of the readers who have purchased it already as a users guide or a working manual for Saturn in Sag. So there’s a whole bunch of information at the front of the book on the mythology and symbolism of Saturn in Sag, including a bit of a look back to the last time Saturn was in Sag and some of the events that happened globally then. And the book also includes interpretations for Saturn in Sag making direct aspects or direct transits to the personal planets, as well as a Saturn in Sag by the houses, which kind of doubles as a Saturn in Sag horoscope for your sign. So depending on whether you’re sort of a beginner reader, or you do know your chart fairly well, there’s a little bit for everyone in there.
CB: Awesome. Well, it’s a great e-book, and I definitely recommend people check it out. It’s at kellysastrology.com where you can buy the e-book. But for now, let’s see, our winner of that e-book, the first winner is Kerian Nox. So I will email Kerian—I hope I’m pronouncing their name correctly—after this episode comes out. But just to let you know, you’ve won a free copy of Kelly’s e-book on Saturn in Sagittarius.
KS: Congratulations.
CB: Yeah, congratulations. And thank you, Kelly, for being our first contributor for this giveaway.
KS: Anytime.
CB: Excellent. So our second prize and the second drawing is for a copy of a new lecture by Benjamin Dykes titled, “Aversion and Decimation.” It’s an awesome little lecture. It’s like a 90-minute lecture that shows you two key aspect concepts in traditional astrology. One of them is what happens when a planet is not aspecting another planet at all, and certain circumstances in which that’s a bad thing and other circumstances in which that’s a positive thing. And then he goes into a second type of aspect or configuration, a special one known as ‘decimation’, which is when one planet is in the tenth sign relative to another planet, and therefore plays dominant role in the aspectual relationship between those two, which in certain circumstances can be extremely positive and in other circumstances can be extremely negative. So you can find out more information or download that lecture at Ben’s website, at bendykes.com. The winner of that lecture is Amanda Wiant. So I’ll email you after the show to let you know. But otherwise, if you hear it here first, you’ve won a free copy of Ben’s lecture on aversion and decimation.
And, finally, the third drawing is a lecture by Demetra George on “Integrating Traditional and Modern Methods.” So Demetra is actually doing an intensive on Hellenistic astrology this summer in Portland, in July. It’s like this very intimate, very exclusive retreat where they’re gonna focus on a specific set of conditions on how to determine planetary condition under the premise that all of the planets want to signify something. But through a couple of dozen or more different considerations, you can determine how the planets will express their significations, whether they’re able to express what they want, or whether it’s somehow changed or mitigated, or even corrupted in some way. So she’s doing that workshop. It’s called “Hellenistic Astrology Applied,” in Portland, Oregon, in July. She actually has given us a discount code so that listeners of the podcast—if you’re listening to this episode—can get a discount on signing up for the intensive if you use the coupon code ‘PODCAST’ when you sign up for her intensive. So there’s only a few more spots left. So if you’re interested, you might want to go ahead and sign up soon through her website at demetrageorge.com. So the lecture, which is sort of a preview of that intensive, is what we’re giving away today. And it looks like the winner of that lecture is Kay Alexander. So you have won a free lecture from Demetra George. Just email me after the show, or I’ll email you in order to send you the MP3 of that lecture.
All right, so those are all the prizes for the $5 tier, for patrons on the $5 tier. The grand prize this month for patrons on the $10 tier is a full pass to the Breaking Down the Borders 4 online astrology conference. So this is the fourth time they’ve done this. They’ve been doing this for a few years now, not consecutively. It hasn’t been every year. But for most of the past, I want to say, five or six years now—cuz I think I’ve participated in every single one—it’s always been a great experience. This upcoming one is taking place November 18-20, 2016. There’s gonna be more than 48 speakers from around the world. Me and Kelly actually are included. I think you’re giving a talk there, right, Kelly?
KS: I am, yes.
CB: Excellent. So all of the lectures are presented in this sort of innovative, live webinar format that’s kind of cool. And there’s a lobby where people can chat and talk to each other in between lectures. It’s a pretty useful and interesting, sort of innovative experience in terms of people pushing the boundaries and moving into the 21st century in terms of doing big astrology events. So you can find out more information about the conference at astrologyconference.org. The organizers of the conference gave us a full scholarship—a full 12-lecture conference package that’s valued at $360—for one patron of the show. So let me reach into my other ‘advanced’ bowl and pull out a name for that.
KS: I love it.
CB: And it’s actually Christine Stone who’s been a patron on the $10 tier since last fall. So, Christine Stone, you’ve won a free pass to the Breaking Down the Borders 4 conference. So I’ll email you about that, or you can email me once you hear this in order to collect the prize. So thank you to the Breaking Down the Borders people for donating that pass. People should definitely look at their conference website, which is at astrologyconference.org, cuz there’s just gonna be some great lectures. And you can either attend them live or you can download them afterwards if you’re not able to attend live. So it’s a pretty useful format. And thanks to everybody else who donated prizes for the drawing. All right, so this is kind of an experiment, but I’m gonna keep this going for a little while. I’m already starting to gather prizes for next month’s drawing. And the grand prize for next month is actually gonna be a free pass to the ISAR conference, which is taking place in California in October. So that’s pretty amazing.
KS: That’s massive.
CB: Yeah, that’s a big prize. I don’t think ISAR usually does this, but I was able to work out a deal with them, and their board approved a free pass for one lucky winner of The Astrology Podcast. So that’s gonna be the grand prize next month, which we’ll announce for one lucky winner on the $10 tier at the end of June. And then I’m in the process of collecting some other prizes for the $5 tier as well. I may try to talk Austin into giving away something, like his almanac or something good like that.
KS: That would be good.
CB: Yes.
AC: Probably not an almanac. The latest one is from 2015, so those might not be choice items.
CB: I don’t know. That was a pretty good year.
AC: Yeah, it’s aged well, like a fine wine.
CB: Right.
AC: But maybe a copy of 36 Faces, or I don’t know. I’d probably make other things that are worthwhile or useful.
CB: Sure.
AC: We’ll talk about it.
CB: We’ll talk about it. We’ll work something out. Anyway, yeah, this is something that we’re gonna be doing in the future. If you want to sign up for the drawing next month, you just have to become a patron on the $5 or $10 tier, and in return you get entered into the drawing. You also get a lot of great benefits that are also available through Patreon, like early access to new shows, higher-quality recordings, and other stuff. And in return, I will keep improving the quality of the podcast and improving the quality of the audio, as well as, eventually, the frequency of the show. All right, let’s get into our actual main topic for this episode, which is the forecast for June. So which one of you wants to start us off in terms of the highlight at the beginning of the month?
AC: I think Kelly does.
CB: I think Kelly does as well.
KS: Do I? The highlight at the beginning of the month?
CB: Where would you start? What stands out to you about June?
KS: Well, the biggest thing that stands out is the Saturn-Neptune square coming back into play.
CB: Okay.
KS: And I guess I’m just thinking of it’s the aspect involving the biggest influential planets for the month of June, and this is the second hit of a three-part cycle. So the first hit was back in November of 2015 when Saturn first squared Neptune the very end of November 2015, and the third hit will be the tail-end of August and then September. So it’s sort of this weird connection of energies because Saturn and Neptune are just so, so different: the difference between practical objectivity versus the dream or the inspiration. I mean, we’ve got a lot of mutable action coming up. It’s already starting late May, and it is gonna run through the first few weeks of June. But I think it’s kind of culminating in this aspect, which happens on June 17, with Saturn at 12 Sag and Neptune at 12 Pisces, which is really about making choices between, are you gonna keep your feet on the ground, Or are you kind of going to drift off into the ether?
CB: Definitely. That’s a great personalized interpretation, and you can definitely see that in terms of the houses that Saturn is transiting through versus the houses that Neptune is transiting through to some extent as one way of personalizing that for people that are really getting hit by it. But I feel like a broken record cuz it’s becoming more and more pronounced—and I’ve been more and more entertained by that over the past few months since we originally started talking about Saturn square Neptune—virtual reality stuff. There’s more commercials, and there’s more viral videos that are getting out there about crazy applications of this that really are sort of blurring that division or that divide between what’s reality and what’s not real. And some of it’s just really beautiful, just seeing how artists are using virtual reality now. I read some article saying the IMAX movie theater chain is gonna start integrating virtual reality into the movie theater experience. And somebody like Steven Spielberg came out saying that that was a terrible idea and that was gonna change movies for the worst forever, or something to that effect. And there’s just tons of news coming out about this everyday as sort of like a global, mundane-type event.
KS: Yes, you’re a hundred-percent right. Like all aspects, I guess, we see them on so many different levels. And that virtual reality has been a classic big picture or collective manifestation of that Saturn-Neptune square.
CB: Right. And in terms of natal placements, have you seen this coming up very much in client charts lately? I’ve been taking a few months off. I don’t think it’s been as prominent, or I haven’t been seeing it as blatantly as maybe I would otherwise. But how are you seeing this show up in client charts so far?
AC: Well, actually before I talk about client charts, I want to just drop back to the virtual reality thing. So if we look at what virtual reality is, besides a technological marvel, if we look at the structure of the experience—we’re talking about each individual being enclosed in an experience of their choosing, right? And then is also what’s happening in politics right now.
KS: That’s virtual reality, isn’t it?
AC: There are a lot of metaphorical virtual reality helmets which are available right now, where people can just put on their helmet and participate in the story that they want to hear. I don’t think we’ve ever had the opportunity to select our experiences quite so easily. It’s lots of little bubbles, and the bubbles are fragile and can be popped in the sense that bubbles are easy to pop because they’re not true, or they’re very limited. They’re vulnerable to the truth. But when we look at things of similar density, when we look at bubbles versus bubbles, it’s hard for bubbles to pop bubbles. They just kind of bump into each and sometimes they combine. And so, to a certain degree, the advent of workable VR tech also speaks to kind of where human beings are right. And I think that when people react emotionally to the possibilities of VR, I think they’re, to a certain degree, unconsciously reacting to the increasing danger of solipsism and being able to view things solely through the lens of the game that you want to be playing. And whether that game is ‘keep the heathens at the walls’ or it’s ‘revolt against the evil empire’, whatever the storyline and action is—it’s increasingly easy to just play that game. And so, I don’t know. I think people are kind of picking up on that, and I think people project some of those larger societal concerns onto the technology itself.
CB: Sure. It’s interesting also that some of the themes that are coming up in terms of idealism versus practicality may be a little bit in the political sphere. I mean, I hear a lot of people on both sides saying that they want to be inspired, or that they are inspired by certain candidates versus that they don’t feel inspired by other candidates or something like that. Which is a weird theme to come up in this election since there was a lot of that during the 2008 election as well, and that was one of the positive things as well as one of the criticisms of Obama. You see a little bit of that coming up in this election as well. Although you would almost expect some of the Saturn-Uranus themes that came up in 2008 to be more prominent here, since there’s so much discussion of establishment versus non-establishment candidates and things like that.
AC: Yeah. One thing that comes to mind with the political climate—not just in America, but in Europe and a number of other places—is this sort of ‘war’ between walls and waves, right? You have the stern retaining wall of Saturn and then you have the inexorable force of the waves, the ocean crashing against it. Not only do you have some more literal versions of this where people want to build walls, there’s the Trump thing about wanting to build a wall against the wave of immigrants. That certainly characterizes a lot of the political rhetoric on one side right now. They’re not literally building walls, but literally people are fleeing Syria and Libya from the sea. Like they’re coming from the ocean, right? You have that Neptunian signification, but walls and waves. And also when you hear people who are supporters of unorthodox candidates—whether it’s Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump in the United States—I see a lot of the language around that being like it’s inexorable, it’s inevitable, it’s coming, it’s going to sweep away the establishment. It’s very tsunami-ish in its imagery. And then you have, conversely, sometimes the same candidate or the same people who talk about how this person’s going to be a bulwark against. So Trump is an interesting case because, again, some of the language from his supporters is like, oh, it’s a revolution, but it’s gonna sweep through. It’s a popular uprising, but then he wants to build a wall along the Mexican border. And I don’t know if you follow economic policy, but he would be classified as very protectionist or favoring a mercantile system where we have trade walls which will protect us from the economic damage from countries overseas. And so, it’s something that you can just see all over the place, just waves and walls.
CB: Sure.
AC: I think I would say Hillary Clinton’s gotta be the candidate who is the most ‘on the wall’s side’ in terms of how she’s perceived. I don’t think she does a good job playing Neptune, right? She’s not fantastic. There’s nothing dreamy about her. But what’s interesting is if we look at her economic policy though, she doesn’t want to build the same walls economically to trade. So, again, you have these nested layers of walls and waves. And sometimes a person looks like a wave on one level and then a wall on the other level, and it just seems to be all over the place.
CB: Sure. So that aspect goes exact on June 17, I believe.
KS: Yes.
CB: All right. And that’s like the second exact hit in our series of Saturn-Neptune squares. Is that right?
KS: Yeah, second hit in the series of three, with the third hit coming in September.
CB: Okay, cool. So we are at kind of the middle. We’re right in the thick of the Saturn-Neptune square. So that really does make sense as maybe one of the primary aspects that’s gonna stand out this month, especially in terms of aspects that do something because of the tension of the square.
AC: And so, that’s gonna overlap in the United States with the Democratic Convention, and it’s gonna be really tight.
CB: You mean the third one?
AC: No. The convention’s in June, right?
CB: No, it’s like in July.
AC: Oh. No, I’m thinking of California voting, which will be huge.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And it’s also worth noting, it’s not just the Saturn-Neptune square, but I believe Neptune actually stations retrograde itself June 13. So just a few days before they square.
KS: Yes.
CB: So we’ve got a super juiced-up Neptune involved at the square with Saturn. And I wonder then which one wins out in that scenario. Cuz usually you would think that Saturn, the planet that’s in the superior position, might be winning out. But what we’ve got here is a retrograde Saturn and Neptune stationing at the same time. And stations sometimes can add a sort of exclamation mark behind planets. That makes me wonder if Neptune’s gonna be more of the prominent theme there.
KS: Yeah—you go, Austin.
AC: Oh, I was just gonna say this is one of the most important pieces of what’s going on in June, but it’s so busy.
KS: Yes.
AC: Because while Saturn and Neptune are squaring, Jupiter is in T-square with both of them. Jupiter and Neptune are on the nodal axis, and then the Sun and Venus are completing the grand cross from Gemini. I mean, we have a pretty righteous grand cross for a lot of early June. And so, it’s interesting, Chris, you were talking about a planet being on the superior side of a square generally getting the upper-hand. And so, what’s interesting about a grand cross—where you have two oppositions that are square one another, which makes a cross or a big square in the chart—is if you follow that logic of the superior square, you just end up whirling around eternally, right? You’ll have the Sun in Gemini, which is in a superior square to Jupiter in Virgo. Jupiter in Virgo is in a superior square to Saturn in Sag. Saturn in Sag is in a superior square to Neptune. Neptune’s in a superior square to the Sun and Venus in Gemini. And then you do that infinitely, which is probably not very helpful.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yes. It makes you think of the whirling dervishes, and that idea of just going round and round.
AC: Yeah, and that’s interesting. One of the things I wanted to talk about were the dynamics of a grand cross, because this isn’t a cross that’s completed only by the Moon.
KS: Yes, it’s a more significant one.
AC: Yeah, these are all significant planets. But that whirling is something I definitely see. I see people getting spun out, where there’s so much going on that they jump from one thing to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing. It’s almost like there’s no rest or order, or more accurately, there’s no center. Kelly, you mentioned the dervish, right? And so, a dervish whirls around the center. And so, the center of balance is the only stable part of the dervish, right? And so, that same sort of spinning/spiraling can highlight the center cuz it’s the only thing not moving, like the eye of a hurricane. And so, it depends on where you’re located, and to a certain degree, what part of life you’re anchored in or identified with. If you get caught up in the periphery then you’re guaranteed to get spun out. There’s a centrifugal motion at the edge of a spin which throws you further and further away from center, right? And so, it’s a thing. Just on a ‘lived’ level people get really confused cuz there’s way too much going on in their interlocking issues. “I can’t fix this till this is resolved, but this is not gonna get resolved until that gets resolved, then this depends on that,” and then you go all the way around and you keep doing it.
KS: Yes. And that aspect, for our listeners, is exact or peaking through that first week or first seven days of June.
CB: Yeah, especially around the New Moon, which takes place in Gemini on June 4, at 14° of Gemini, where both the Sun and Moon are conjunct at 14 Gemini, and Venus is also at 14 Gemini, and that’s squared Jupiter, which is at 14 Virgo. The New Moon’s opposite Saturn, which is at 12 Sagittarius. And then Neptune of course is very close to the same degree of Saturn at 12° of Pisces. So it’s a very tight, mutable grand cross hitting the peak and really filling out not just the Saturn-Neptune square, but also the T-square involving Jupiter in Virgo. So that’s actually my first election of the month, oddly. Again, this month I’ve been taking time off in order to work on my book. Leisa Schaim has been doing the elections for The Mountain Astrologer column for the past few months. And she has been focusing a lot on elections over the past few months, so I should mention her website briefly. She does electional astrology consultations at leisaschaim.com. But she had a really hard time, she told me, finding good elections for the first part of June because a lot of these tense aspects, and one of the only ones that she could kind of settle on—and I agree that it’s the only one that you can almost justify—actually takes place on that New Moon, on June 4, at least in terms of the first-half of the month.
So the electional chart is June 4, 2016, about 7:50 PM in the evening, so just before sunset. Sagittarius is rising, and Jupiter is the ruler of the ascendant, which is located in Virgo, in the tenth whole sign house, in a day chart. The Moon, Sun, and Venus are all conjunct in the 7th house in Gemini. This is—technically, depending on your timezone—gonna take place just before the New Moon, so that the Moon is at the very tail-end of the waning cycle, in the last degree of it. But this is optimal because then you can get Sagittarius rising, and also the Moon is actually completing a conjunction with the Sun, but it’s also applying to a conjunction with Venus and a square with Jupiter first. So you can kind of think of it like a very positive ending of a cycle. Or if you were gonna close something down or finish something or bring something to completion on a very positive note, this would be the chart for that because you have this extremely waning Moon, which is completing her cycle but conjoining benefics first before she does it. So Saturn is in the 1st house, but it’s a day chart, and Saturn is also overcome through a superior square from Jupiter with reception, so I don’t think that’s a huge problem. Neptune is a little bit prominent of course, which could add some murkiness or some nebulousness to things. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing because it could instead be positive idealism or some sort of aesthetic effect that, while illusory, could be useful for the purpose of whatever you’re trying to accomplish. It could create the ‘happy ending’ that I mentioned earlier, but in a very idealistic or spiritual overtone-type sense. And what else? Mercury’s in Taurus in the 6th house, which isn’t great, but you can mitigate that in your location if you make it so that Mercury is kind of closely-configured to the degree of the midheaven, hopefully within 3° by trine. Yeah, so that’s the first electional chart for June. It takes place on June 4. And then I don’t have any other elections until later in the month, starting on the 21st, so I will save those for later.
KS: Yeah, so in some ways that’s the same kind of thing. There’s just so much movement and activity in those first few weeks with all these mutable aspects that people may have trouble maintaining their ground, I guess.
CB: Yeah. And Mercury is still speeding up and coming out of the retrograde period, so it’s still gaining speed. And one of the issues you run into in early June is that Mars has retrograded back into late Scorpio. So by June 4, it’s at 27 Scorpio. So it’s like the entire early part of June, Mercury is applying to an opposition with Mars. So that really becomes the aspect that’s really difficult to get around during much of the first part of June. And so, that’s one of the reasons this is one of the few charts that we can find that doesn’t really get around that, but it’s not as close as it will be about a week later. So that’s it for the first part of June.
AC: Yeah. And so, that first week is absolutely characterized by that grand cross. And there’s something significant and I think easy to miss in the middle of that because there’s so many planets in play, and that is that Venus completes her superior conjunction to the Sun. And so, this is the point where Venus, the Sun, and the Earth are all aligned, except that Venus, instead of being between the Earth and the Sun, is instead on the far side of the Sun. And so, she only makes this aspect once every year-and-a-half. Although it’s not as dramatic as the interior or inferior conjunctions—where she’s between the Sun and the Earth—it’s a really important point in Venus’ cycle, and it’s the point in a lot of traditional astrology, they begin Venus’ cycle. This is her ‘birth’. There’s some other opinions about that, but this is inarguably one of the two ‘biggins’ in Venus’ cycle. And so, that’s a point of maximum invisibility. She couldn’t be further from us, and she couldn’t be more hidden. And so, while the inferior conjunction—which happens in the middle of the retrograde, which would have happened I believe last August or so—sees Venus as close as possible, one of the things we get during Venus retrogrades is the Venus significations. Our feelings, our relationships, our passions, or what we think is beautiful, what we’re inspired by—it’s all really close and really personal, which is when the planet is really getting up close and personal with us, whereas when Venus is as far away from us as possible, on the far side of the Sun, you can see that as on the far side of the individual identity.
We have a very Venusian moment, but it’s inspiration and vision beyond, as far out as Venus can reach, right? As far out into the realm of aesthetics or the highest ideals. The ideals perhaps behind our relationships, what we hope to be able to become to and for and with each other rather than the intensely personal sub-egoic, rather than trans-egoic stuff that you get during the Venus retrograde.
CB: Sure. And this also marks the midpoint, I guess is what you’re saying. We’re halfway between retrogrades at this point.
AC: Absolutely, we are.
CB: When was the direct station last fall? Does anyone remember?
KS: It was September 5.
CB: Okay.
KS: At 14 Leo.
CB: This Sun-Venus conjunction is literally the middle point between that last direct station and the next retrograde station coming up, whenever that is.
KS: That’s the 2017 in Aries.
AC: Yeah, it’s next winter.
CB: Okay. You guys are way ahead of me with this stuff.
KS: I’ve already written horoscopes for next year. I’m all over it.
CB: Oh, right. Yeah, you horoscope writers—I mentioned that when I was interviewing Ray Merriman, where he was talking about publishing his year ahead every December and writing it the previous fall. You guys are just in a perpetual sense of Groundhog Day because you’ve already written the next year-and-a-half or something ahead, and then you actually live it and experience many of those transits over the course of the next year. That’s kind of a funny experience that I don’t think many people have.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah.
KS: It can be a bit discombobulating because you’re always so far in advance with certain things, certainly with publications. Especially things that are published in print, cuz there’s a long lead time to get them ready for press. And then when you come back to doing a consult for someone, they want to know about the next six months, not what’s happening in the middle of 2017. So it’s a constant interplay. But as Austin—the point that he made earlier around things like pattern recognition, one of the things that I have really always appreciated about writing horoscopes is that it forces you to look in quite substantial detail a fair amount of time into the future. So you’re doing a fairly-detailed analysis of what’s happening 12 or 18 months, or even two years down the track, and then that feeds into how you understand what’s happening in the present. So it’s great training, I think.
AC: Yeah. One of the things that I’ve seen is something that’s just beginning to start now, but it’s not really gonna be clear for another year. You can see that transit is starting that process for a person.
CB: Right.
AC: You’re on the entry wamp—entry ramp to a freeway you’re gonna be on for a couple of years. And having looked ahead, it’s easier to spot some of those trajectory moments, where somebody’s shifting trajectory. And they’re not at their destination or at a very important point on that journey, except that it’s beginning, even though there’s nothing solid to confirm that yet. One of the things I think is really interesting about doing readings for people is I’m always shocked by how intuitive people are. People are like, “Yeah, I don’t know, I just kind of had a feeling like the next couple of years will start going in this direction,” and you look at the next couple of years and you’re like, “That’s exactly what I see.”
CB: Right.
AC: You know more about your life than you think you do.
CB: Yeah, like a feeling that people sometimes have, except they’re not always able to articulate that. I mean, sometimes you see the opposite though. Like I’ve seen people that are obviously starting to go through a major shift in their life and move into a completely different chapter of their life that’ll last for a long, and they are not fully cognizant of that, but are instead almost in denial about it sometimes, like everything’s progressing as usual.
AC: Wouldn’t say almost.
CB: No. Sometimes very explicitly in denial.
AC: Yeah. Or just, “No, I don’t want that.” Or, “I don’t think I want that. And so, I’m gonna try to steer around it or cling to what I think I want to keep doing.”
CB: Right. Or nothing is changing and everything is permanent. All right, so we focused on the Saturn-Neptune square, the Sun-Venus. When is that Sun-Venus conjunction, again?
KS: I think it’s two days after, like June 6, which will be in the evening. Well, let me double-check.
AC: It’s the 6th. And it’s right in the middle of ‘grand cross’ time.
KS: Which will be the 7th, for people who are listening in Australia. It’ll be the morning of the 7th.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Let’s see, so we’ve got that. We’ve got Venus ingressing into Cancer June 17, which is the same day as the Saturn-Neptune square.
AC: Well, let’s back up a little bit. The next thing that happens is that Mercury-Mars opposition completes.
CB: Yeah, you’re right.
AC: Basically, as soon as the grand cross lets up, we get the completion of Mercury-Mars.
CB: When is that?
AC: That is the 9th, here in the States. And it’s at 25°, so it has the dubious distinction of being right on Algol, Caput Algol, which is a rather fearsome fixed star. So we’ve got Mercury right on Algol, with Mars right opposite Mercury and Algol. And so, if you ever wanted to get in a really nasty, unproductive fight with people close to you, this is your chance. Or if you really wanted to say some really offensive things and get people angry at you on the internet, this is a great chance. It’s really an opportunity.
CB: I will mark that on my calendar right now.
AC: And just for maximum ‘hold your tongue and hold your temper’, if we look at the night of June 9, we have the Moon in Leo making a perfect T-square to those two. So people will get really excited about expressing their ‘fill in the blank’. And it should be noted that the decan of Leo that the Moon is in also happens to be a Mars-ruled decan in both systems of planetary rulership. So hold your tongue.
CB: Speaking of Mars, did you guys see the Full Moon the other night, like right next to Mars?
AC: Okay, I have an awesome anecdote about that.
CB: Sure.
AC: So I was kind of like squirming a little bit when I was looking at that. I was like, “Uh, this Mars conjunct the Moon at this really important point in Mars’ cycle,” and with the help of our friend, Nick Dagan Best, I was like, “Nick, when was the last this happened? I would much rather you just tell me than me having to spend an hour figuring it out.” And of course he knew.
KS: Of course, human ephemeris.
AC: Right. And so, this is why we ask Nick things. And so, it was in late September of 1988.
CB: The last Full Moon conjunct Mars?
AC: Mars at this point in its cycle.
CB: Oh, okay.
AC: Right. Mars at maximum brightness opposite the Sun. Cuz this isn’t just Mars. This is Full Moon conjunct Mars at what is basically Mars’ Full Moon, where he’s at his brightness on the other side of the Sun. It’s a big deal. Maximum opposition, closest to the Earth. And so, of course in several parts of the world, there are all of these political demonstrations which turn violent over that next week, and lots of explosions and all that. And I was like, “Uhhh.” And so, just because something happens somewhere in the world that is violent doesn’t mean it’s gonna come beat your door down. But one of the dangers of astrology is filling your head with what will happen somewhere, but probably not to you, but not being able to distance yourself from it. Anyway, I was a little squirmy about it. But what happened is I entered the school of tai chi and kung fu that I attend in Los Angeles, called the Taoist Institute. They had their first ever gathering of all of the abbots, or the people who hold a priesthood lineage in my school of Taoism, which is the Elixir Method. It’s an internal alchemy school. And so, as Mars and the Moon rose, I was surrounded by martial arts priests.
KS: Oh, my goodness. That’s amazing.
AC: Right. Like it’s a Jupiter-ruled Mars, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: And so, literally, these are all incredible martial artists who have come from all over the country, and some of them hadn’t seen each other in 20 years, right? And so, this was like this conclave of badass kung fu abbots, and I got to attend a small banquet with them in Chinatown. We watched the Moon and Mars come up.
KS: Wow.
AC: And so, I was like this is so much better than I could have possibly imagined for the Full Moon-Mars thing. And in addition to ‘I have a cool experience’, I noticed that there was clarity about the Moon-Mars opposition—I’m sorry, the Full Moon on Mars during the opposition of the Sun and Mars. There was a clarity about that which reminded me of the cazimi in Mercury. Right in the middle of Mercury’s retrograde cycle, he lines up with the Sun. And you have this moment of clarity and of diamond, translucent light, which cuts through and illuminates things without actually using colors. And there was something about what to do. I saw several people—not necessarily at the cool banquet—have realizations of, “Oh, this is what I’m going to do,” which is what Mars’ cycle is all about. What are you going to do? Mars (do), retrograde, question mark. And so, there was a clarity I didn’t expect there. And on a mundane note, on that day, Iraq declared that they’re starting the campaign to retake Fallujah from ISIS, right? So an extremely important military operation was declared, the direction was declared. Like, it’s on, right? This is what we’re going to do. We’re gonna take back this city. Anyway, just some thoughts. An anecdote with some thoughts about that.
KS: That’s beautiful.
CB: My ‘Full Moon conjunct Mars’ story is really lame in comparison to that. I was just sitting at a coffee shop all day trying to work on my book, from like 11:00 AM until 8:00 PM, so for a good eight or nine hours working on this book. And about noon, these two women come into the coffee shop and sit at a table near me, and one of them had really not-good voice modulation control, and she was talking really loud. And they were both sci-fi writers. They were doing some kind of two-person meetup where they were reading each other’s science fiction stories. But one of them just kept talking really loud about all of this hilarious-sounding stuff, and it was extremely annoying for everyone in the coffee shop, and it lasted for five hours. It’s like everybody else in the coffee shop just like cleared out and people were dropping, like every one, every hour or so, until it was just me and this other table, and I was dedicated to sticking this out. And right at 5:30 Mountain Time, the opposition, the Full Moon went exact—or the Moon-Mars conjunction or something went exact and then they were done, and they left the coffee shop. And then the aspect was separating and me and the barista just both breathed a sigh of relief and it was over, but it was very striking and very lame.
KS: Love it.
CB: That’s my story.
KS: Love it. That’s fantastic. I had a little bit of a reprieve. I’ve had very, very full work schedules over the last few weeks, and I had a really lovely time on Saturday. And then Saturday night, we hosted people. We had people over for drinks for the first time in our new house, in our new backyard. So we sort of sat outside and talked about the Moon, but we cooled everything down by having plenty of drinks.
CB: Nice. That sounds like a much more—
KS: It wasn’t as aggravating as your experience, Chris, but nowhere near as symbolic as Austin’s.
AC: You know what’s funny is that’s the only Saturday that I haven’t taught for the last several months and that I won’t be teaching for the next several months. I decided, not knowing that there was gonna be this awesome Tao Tan Pai conclave. I was like, “You know what? I think I need a break, and I think my students need a break between these two units. I think they need to just kind of sit and marinate with what we did last month.” And my voice had been getting pretty rundown from teaching too much and doing too many readings and too many podcasts. So I just had that open, and then I went. I decided that and I went to tai chi class, and my teacher, Sijo Carl Totton, was like, “Oh, so we’re having this thing. It’s ‘Immortals’ weekend.” In that lineage, the legendary founder’s birthday is celebrated on that Full Moon every year. It’s like a movable feast. You know, like Easter is celebrated based around the Full Moon. And so, I just cleared that day. If I hadn’t of cleared that day, I would have just been like, “Yeah, yeah, I gotta work,” but it worked out right. And that’s interesting. That, to me, points towards something I’ve encountered a lot, especially with transits, not with every part of astrology. With transits a lot of times, you’ve got some meaningful choices as to how those are gonna happen for you. And sometimes you have to make space for the better version to happen, or you have to steer a little bit, because you’re likely to have an experience that’s characterized by the configuration one way or another, especially when we’re just looking with transits. Transits are not fate, right? You’ve got some give. Like if it rains, people talk about wearing a raincoat, but also, maybe put out a dish to collect rainwater.
KS: Totally.
AC: And so, you can remember that as, “Oh, that’s when I got the water from the thunderstorm, and I keep that in a little bottle,” or that can be like, “Oh, I went outside without a coat and I got wet,” and those will be different experiences. Both of them are a result of the fact that it’s raining, but there’s the question of how you’re intersecting with the rain.
CB: And then sometimes you just have to go outside and get wet.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Totally. It’s not gonna kill you, right?
AC: Absolutely.
CB: Well, I mean, unless it does, in which case that’s just bad transits.
KS: Bad luck.
CB: Yeah.
AC: But just talking about transits and looking at them versus other layers of astrology, if we look at your favorite technique, Chris—or I think it’s your favorite—zodiacal releasing, zodiacal releasing seems to often be a releasing from within. There’s some sort of deeper life structure which unfolds, which reveals itself at these various points in the zodiacal releasing. And so, those are not the things you—not that there aren’t meaningful choices to make with those, but they seem to come from a much deeper place than transits. And of course the whole of astrology is looking at how the incidental or accidental or the passing influence intersects with the timing of the soul or the psyche’s unfoldment—there’s a lot there—but you usually don’t have a huge thing. Transits are, in a sense, messengers of powers which are beyond themselves, and one of those powers is—or one of the sources of that power is often within. And I want to say within the psyche, but it’s within this life that wants to unfold, right? Some people call it the bios or the biography—that there’s some sort of destiny or life which is trying to unfold. And transits, outside of that deeper context, are less meaningful. It’s when they intersect with that that they’re really powerful.
CB: I mean, I have a really hard time deciding on that just because of the intersection between the time-lord systems and the transits. With profections, like we were saying earlier in the show, when a person’s in a Mercury profection year, those three retrograde periods are all usually very important turning points during the course of the year. And there’s something that feels more fated about that, even though it is, in of itself, just a transit on some level.
AC: Well, no, no, no. We’re not disagreeing at all. That’s what I’m saying. It’s when it intersects with a deeper unfolding, because profections are also an unfolding of the natal pattern, right? And so, Mercury is granted this extra authority during that year. Mercury isn’t just carrying the message of, “Oh, yeah, this is how things are right now,” collectively. Its Mercury has special messages for you, from your life, right? And it’s when he’s granted that authority that everything hits bigger.
CB: Sure. But then the question is, could you do differently then in those instances where it is intersecting? Cuz you started off with the point that you felt like transit can be more malleable or open to more positive or less constructive manifestations, depending on your choice.
AC: Right. What I was pointing towards is when they’re not deeply intersected with what’s trying to unfold in your life. Then you have a lot more options with them. It’s not that transits don’t matter when they’re not the lord of the year, or the lord of the ZR period. They still matter, but there’s a lot more give, for example, when Mercury is not the lord of the year and it’s a Mercury retrograde. When Mercury is the lord of the year, and it’s retrograde, there’s gonna be some heavier packages which are delivered.
CB: Sure. Yeah, I think John Marchesella mentioned a similar philosophy. He said he felt like fate and free will were on a spectrum, and that there are some events that might be more fated for a person, or more predetermined, whereas there’s others that are more negotiable or more indeterminate. And it’d be interesting to try to work out more of a philosophy of a specific technical approach—if that’s even possible—of how do you determine which things are fully-fated and predetermined that a person has to go through versus how do you know which things are a little bit more malleable and open to change.
AC: Well, I think it’s the ‘rule of three’, right?
CB: Oh, right, yeah.
AC: Or sometimes it’s five. If any of us sees something in transits, in profections, in the progressed chart, and in ZR, that’s gonna happen, right? Whereas if you just had one of those factors testifying to something, it’s like things might move a little bit in that direction, and you could maybe take them further if you wanted, or hide from them, if that’s what you wanted. But one thing, it’s there for as long as it’s there, and you’ve got options. Whereas if it’s there in every technique that you use—which when you look back and you excavate really big stuff, it’s usually there in every level. You’re like, “Oh, my God, it’s in primary directions. Oh, my God, it’s in solar arc.”
CB: Sure. Where do you fall with some of this, Kelly? What’s your personal philosophy?
KS: Yeah, I agree with Austin. I guess the simplest way to summarize it is the ‘rule of three’. And that’s how I teach my students, this idea that when you have different events or triggers giving you a similar message, or pointing in the same direction, then that’s how you know that’s the main event, or that’s the headline influence. So, yeah, a Saturn return—when Saturn happens to be time-lord for the year—it’s interesting, cuz you will often see layers of the same symbolism, I guess, but coming out of entirely different techniques. So a Saturn return versus a profection or a time-lord or versus even a firdaria, or something going on in the progressed chart—when you get the same messages it gives you a bit of confidence in what you’re saying. It’s not just one tiny little thing that you’re trying to drag onto center stage. The same story is coming up whichever character comes into the forefront, I guess.
CB: That makes sense. And I actually discovered this a few months ago, in January, but it turns out that the ‘rule of three’ is much older, much more ancient than I thought it was.
KS: I remember you posting about this in social media somewhere. Yeah, you found it in one of the really old books.
CB: Yeah, I found it in Aratus’ Phaenomena, which is from the 3rd century BC, or somewhere thereabouts, which is a book on astronomy, just before the advent of Hellenistic astrology. It was like this very influential astronomical text that described the constellations. And at the very end of it, there’s this piece that either was originally part of the original or was appended on later at some still sufficiently ancient date, where it explicitly outlines the ‘rule of three’, and saying essentially that if you see something once, then maybe, if you see it twice, then it’s more likely, and if you see it three times, it’s definite. So, for one, we have the ‘rule of three’ going back to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE, but then I think the Hellenistic astrologers used that as well in their texts. And then, eventually, in the Medieval period, this was formalized into a specific rule where they said that you look at the planetary significator for something first, then you look at the house that signifies that topic second, and then, finally, the third thing you look at is the lot that signifies that topic. And if all three are in agreement, then it’s definite. And that principle gets spelled out explicitly in Abu Ali al-Khayyat, the 8th or 9th century. So that ‘rule of three’, it’s really funny how that survived into modern astrology and is still very prominent, and how far back it goes in the ancient tradition.
AC: Yeah, pattern recognition.
CB: Right.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So speaking of pattern recognition, let’s move onto the second-half of June. So we finally get past the 17th when Venus ingresses into Cancer, and we have the Saturn-Neptune square. The next major event after that is a Full Moon in Sagittarius on June 20. And this one’s pretty wild because it occurs right before the Sun moves out of Gemini. So the Full Moon actually occurs, I believe, at 29-and-change Sagittarius.
KS: It’s right before the solstice.
CB: Right. So then the same day, around June 20, the Sun ingresses into Cancer. So we get the solstice, which in the northern hemisphere is gonna be the summer solstice, and in the southern hemisphere, it’s gonna be the winter solstice. Immediately after that, on June 21, we have Jupiter conjunct the North Node. And I believe we actually also have our next cluster of electional charts that start June 21. So the first one takes place on June 21, at 11:45 in the morning, with 15° of Virgo rising. So basically whatever your location is, just make sure that the ascendant is at 15 Virgo. That will be exactly conjunct Jupiter, which is also at 15 Virgo at the time. The ruler of the ascendant is Mercury, which is at 13 Gemini in the 10th house, applying to a square with Jupiter. Mercury’s in excellent shape. It’s in an opposition with Saturn and in a square with Neptune, but it’s separating from both of those and moving towards Jupiter, so it’s in pretty good shape. The Moon is in Capricorn, depending on your location, still applying to a trine with Jupiter at 15 Virgo from about 15 Capricorn. And, yeah, the chart’s in pretty good shape. So this is a great 10th house chart. The last one was a 10th house chart as well, but this one is a much better 10th house ‘career, reputation, make action and accomplish things in the world’ type chart, especially for Mercury-related activities related to communication or writing or speaking. It also has some nice 11th house influence with the Sun and Venus in Cancer in the eleventh whole sign house, and the Moon ruling the 11th house while being placed in the 5th and applying to Jupiter. So there’s some good ‘alliances, friends, and groups’ type themes going on there as well.
So that’s the first of the last elections towards the end of the month. There’s another election that takes place on June 25, at 1:25 PM. This one has Libra rising, with Venus in Cancer in the 10th house. So, again, this is another 10th house-focused-type election. The ruler of the 10th is the Moon, which is located in Pisces in the 6th house, but this is mitigated because it’s applying to a trine with Venus in the 10th. So this would be another good 10th house election, but it would be one that incorporates more 6th house themes related to health, healing, or potentially subordinates or people that you work with, including maybe career or workplace-type significations, cuz we’re really emphasizing the 10th and the 6th houses here. So that’s my third election of the month. And then, finally, the final election takes place. This is one of the better ones. The two best elections are probably June 21 and then this one, on June 30, taking place at about 2:20 in the morning. So you’ll either be getting up very early, or being like Austin, and staying up very late. This one has Taurus rising, with Venus in Cancer in the third whole sign house. The Moon is exalted in Taurus in the 1st, and it’s applying to a sextile with Venus in Cancer, as well as applying to a trine with Jupiter in Virgo in the 5th. So this election is emphasizing the 3rd house especially, with the ruler of the ascendant in the 3rd house along with the Sun, Mercury, and the Lot of Fortune. So a big cluster of planets in the 3rd house, as well as Jupiter in the 5th and the Moon in the 1st. So I’d use this especially for 3rd house activities like writing, communication, teaching, learning, short-distance travel, things like that.
AC: Chris, a quick question about that.
CB: Go ahead.
AC: So one comment and one question. One comment—Venus and the Moon are in mutual reception in this chart.
CB: Right.
AC: The Moon in Taurus is ruled by Venus. Venus in Cancer is ruled by the Moon in Taurus. And then what degree was the Moon in that chart?
CB: In Denver, it’s about 13. So it’ll be around 13 or so for most locations.
AC: Okay. I’m just noticing that if somebody wanted to mess around a little bit later, you do have the Moon between the rays of benefics. Once the Moon completes the sextile with Venus at 15° of Cancer, it will be between the rays of Venus at 15 Cancer and Jupiter at 17 Virgo. I guess it depends on whether you count Pluto. Pluto would intrude on that if you want to take that into consideration. If you are more traditionally-minded and not so worried about Pluto, you do have the Moon positively besieged in that ménage position for a little bit in the hours following that election.
CB: Yeah, you could definitely use that, especially later in the day. Maybe by sunrise if it’s still within that range. Because then Jupiter would become the most positive planet once it becomes a day chart, and then the Moon would be separating from Venus and applying to Jupiter. Although if you end up with the earlier election, the nighttime one at 2:00 AM, it’s probably better to go with Moon applying to Venus, since Venus is the most positive planet in the chart based on sect. But, yeah, it’s a really great electional chart. It takes place right at the very end of the month, right on June 30. But I’d recommend especially focusing on either that one or the one on June 21 if you’re looking for charts that really stand out that month.
AC: Yeah, I like that one. So one thing we skipped over earlier that I think is worth noting as far as characterizing the middle of the month—actually the second-half of the month—is that Mercury moves into Gemini on I believe it’s June 12—yeah, on June 12—and will be there for almost the rest of the month, which isn’t really very long. It’s only 18 days, right? So we’re looking at that June 30 chart, and Mercury has just moved into Cancer. So it looks like Mercury moves into Cancer on—where is it, where is it? Where’s my helpful thing? On the 29th.
KS: The 29th, yeah.
AC: So from the 12th to the 29th, that’s only 17 days that Mercury is in Gemini. And so, that means that he’s covering almost 2° a day, right? So Mercury slows way down for that retrograde, and then by the time he makes it into Gemini—which, again, is on June 12—it’s as if he has been sort of pulled back by a bow or a slingshot and is just blazing forward. And so, what’s interesting about that, one, as you’re using it in the elections—or as Leisa was using it in the elections—Mercury’s great in Gemini. That’s exactly where we want Mercury. Second, Mercury’s visible. Mercury’s not only in his own rulership, but he’s bright and fast. And what’s interesting is Mercury’s going to do the same grand cross thing that the Sun and Venus did, but very quickly. He’s going to oppose Saturn in Sag and square Neptune in Pisces and square Jupiter in Virgo and square the nodal axis, right? Except he’s gonna do it quickly, and he’s going to be doing it from a position of strength. When we’re looking at planets and what’s interfering with them and whatever, if we look back to the beginning of the month, the first full week, we have Sun and Venus in Gemini. Neither the Sun or Venus is really thought to be terribly comfortable in Gemini. They’re part of this grand cross or grand square action, whereas we have basically a repetition of the same structure by Mercury; except one thing, Mercury is really in a strong position for Mercury. In terms of Mercury’s planetary nature, Mercury can talk to anybody and can listen to anybody, that’s Mercury’s job. In addition to that, Mercury also—in addition to being in its own place and being strong—is the ruler of Jupiter. He rules two of the four signs that this mutable grand cross occurs in. So he has a lot more control over it, and he’s really strong and empowered to problem-solve, to deal with complexity, etc., etc. And so, Mercury’s going to be in between—basically in that grand cross from, we could say, the 19th through the 22nd. We can maybe say 17th through the 23rd. But the second pass, this second cross, I think is going to actually end up resolving some of the things which were too complicated or naughty during that first pass, during the first week, with the Sun and Venus.
CB: Yeah.
KS: That’s a really good point, Austin.
AC: Thanks.
KS: Yeah. And it is gonna happen quite quickly, and it is all around that June 20-21-22. So if the first week of June drives you bonkers, I guess hang out until then for some updated progress, I guess.
AC: Yeah, that’s gonna be a really powerful solstice. The solstices and equinoxes are kind of like the Sun’s stations, and so they have a power in and of themselves. And then we’ve got a Full Moon right in that territory. Mercury’s talking to everybody. There are several ‘rules of three’, right?
KS: Yes, we have more than three.
AC: There are three really interesting things happening right in those couple of days, so that’s gonna be really interesting. And for people who do mundane astrology and look at quarterly ingress—solstice and equinox ingress charts—that’s worth looking at.
CB: And then the other big thing—I mean, I consider this to be the second major aspect. The second-most important aspect of the month takes place towards the end as well, which is Mars stationing direct in Scorpio on June 29.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s huge.
CB: Yeah. So we’re coming towards the end of this retrograde cycle after going through it for a few months. And it ends abruptly—not that abruptly—but perhaps slightly dramatically with the station of Mars at 23 Scorpio on June 29, and Mercury ingresses into Cancer the same day, on June 29 as well. And also, if I’m looking at this correctly, is Jupiter trine Pluto exact around the same time?
KS: Yes, it is. June 26.
CB: 26th, okay. So we’ve got another power-packed collection of a few days, right around there, around the 26th-27th-29th.
KS: That feels like a bit of a release of energy of some kind, with Mars coming to its station point. Or a concentration or a regathering to power forward and recover or recuperate.
CB: Yeah, I think of a focusing, like you were just saying. Or expenditure of energy in a specific area is a good one. And that seems to be how it’s working out for me, personally, so far. Cuz it’s just been like this super hyper focus, writing this book and forging a book out of a bunch of separate notes and other things that I’ve written over the past 10 years. And I was a little nervous about how that was gonna go, and if it wasn’t gonna coincide with some problems, but it’s actually been more of just a huge focus of energy in that career area of my life lately. So I’m sure that other people are experiencing it the same, depending on what houses it’s going through. So that’s important because we’ve been dealing with Mars in Sagittarius for a while now, for, what, a couple of months now. But very soon, and for most of June, what we’re gonna be dealing with is a return to Mars back into Scorpio, which is something that we first started experiencing at the very beginning of the year, starting on January 3. So, literally, right as the year started Mars went into Scorpio for, what was it? Two or three months?
AC: It was like two-months-and-a-couple days. I think it was March 5-6 that it moved into Sagittarius.
KS: To Sag. And it had been in Scorpio since the 3rd of January.
AC: Yeah, so almost exactly two months. And then we’ve got about 10 weeks of Mars in Scorpio, round two. It’s the 27th of May, until, I believe, the 2nd of August. It might be the 3rd. So all of June and all of July will have Mars in Scorpio, and Mars in only 7° of Scorpio.
KS: Yes, it’s not the whole sign, just the last 7°.
CB: Right. So we’ve got a return to or a revisiting of something from earlier in the year, from the first couple of months. We’ve got a focus on especially those last 7° of Scorpio, but also, potentially, on all four of the fixed signs in general. If anybody has planets in the last 7° of fixed signs, then those are gonna get seriously highlighted by that square—or by that transit of Mars through the end of Scorpio and that station. Especially if you’ve got stuff around those degrees, around 23 Scorpio or 23 of fixed signs. Yeah, so do you guys have anything there?
AC: And so, even though Mars was in Scorpio from early January to early March, it’s really like the second-half of February and the first week of March—that’s the area that we’re returning to. And so, if you’re looking for bookends, or you’re looking for part one and then part two, those are the two areas of time, right? It’s late February, early March—that’s when Mars was in those last 7°, and so that’s important. Of course a lot of times I talk to people who just kind of want to know a little bit, they’re like, “All right, is Mars still retrograde?” Literally, I was asked that yesterday. They were like, “Dude, is it still retrograde?” So by the end of June, no, Mars will not be retrograde, but he’ll still be in the degrees of that retrograde for quite some time, until well into August. But there is a huge difference between moving one direction and moving another direction, even if you’re on the same terrain, right?
CB: Definitely.
AC: Did I go out my door or in my door? It matters, right?
KS: Yes.
CB: And just looking at it, it looks like February 17 approximately was when Mars first reached that degree of Scorpio that it’ll retrograde back to, and so entered the retrograde shadow, February 17.
KS: Yeah.
CB: But at that point, it was moving direct, and it was kind of slow. So it actually spent a few days at 23 Scorpio, from about the 16th until—God, it was moving really slow. All the way through the 19th. So several days it was at that specific degree, but still moving relatively swiftly compared to what it’s gonna be doing here at the end of June, where it just slows down and sits right on top of that degree for an extended period of time.
KS: I think it’s like three weeks that Mars is just sitting at 23 Scorpio.
AC: Yep.
KS: Starting the 19th of June, running right through until about the 11th of July.
CB: Wow.
KS: Yeah. So I guess that’s the technical thing behind what we’re saying in terms of that emphasis or that focus or that pure point being emphasized when a planet just sits at one degree. Usually Mars would clear that degree in a couple of days, so this is highly unusual.
CB: Right. It’s like pressing a key on a piano very briefly and it just plays one note or one chord or whatever very quickly, which is what it normally does versus pressing that button and holding it down, and then the same key or the same note just being played constantly for three weeks.
AC: Right. Or the song is stuck on repeat.
KS: Yes.
CB: Right.
KS: Just to make sure that you do whatever it is you need to do, or you get the message, with Mars, you take action. You either cut something away, or you push forward, I guess.
AC: Oh, I think that’s a really good Mars duality, right? You’re either like, “I’m gonna do this,” or “I’m not doing this.”
KS: Yeah, it’s very clear. There’s no gray area with that.
AC: Right.
CB: Definitely.
KS: That’s the end of the month. Maybe that’s the end of the podcast.
CB: Yeah. I mean, the entire month sort of culminates with that in some sense, cuz it happens so late, at the very end of June. So that’s really kind of a good stopping point, especially with the point that both of you just made in terms of doing something and fully doing it and taking it as far as you can go, or choosing to cut that out of your life and not do it. All right, well, I think that brings us towards the end of this episode, towards the end of the forecast episode for June. Are there any major alignments that we didn’t touch on, or any major things that you guys wanted to mention that we didn’t get a chance to?
KS: Well, I think we’ve covered all the hotspots, at least the ones that I have focused on. Austin?
AC: I don’t think I have anything more to say. I mean, there’s a Chiron station.
CB: Oh, yeah, I noticed that on the Planet Watcher Calendar. So that’s taking place, what, the 27th?
AC: No, I’m kidding. I don’t really care about the Chiron station.
CB: I noticed there was a trans-Pluto station.
AC: I mean, Chiron matters sometimes. If it’s sitting on your Sun, you’ll feel that. But, generally speaking, I don’t think the tides of history turn around Chiron stations.
CB: All right, well, we’ll see if you’re still saying that after the 27th of June.
AC: Yeah, we’ll see, right?
CB: All right, well, then I guess that brings us to the end of this episode and the end of the podcast. This is the last podcast for May actually. It’s been a really wild and successful month of podcasts, starting with the Maggie Nalbandian podcast, and then interviewing both presidents, weirdly, of the two major astrological organizations in the country, in North America, potentially the world, with interviewing Ray Merriman on financial astrology and then John Marchesella on predictive astrology. So it’s been nice to round that out with a discussion with you two this month. And I guess we’ll return back to this next month, where we’re gonna do the forecast episode, which we have yet to schedule. And then we’re also, potentially, gonna do a separate, and our first, Q&A episode at the very end of June, which will coincide actually with that lovely Mars station right at 23 Scorpio.
KS: Oh, how exciting.
CB: Yeah. Our timing could not be better.
KS: Love it.
CB: All right, guys, well, I guess that’s it, right?
KS: Yeah, have a good month, everyone. And we look forward to reading your comments about the episode and how you find all the energies in June.
AC: I guess on a final note, whereas a lot of things crawled or tunneled in May, things are gonna fly in June.
KS: Oh, that’s beautiful.
AC: What was stuck is going to become explosively unstuck. Some really exciting stuff is gonna happen really fast, and probably some—at least in the news—really not-great stuff is gonna happen really fast, but it’s not gonna be boring, it’s not gonna be slow. Look for flying and spinning rather than crawling and tunneling.
CB: Definitely.
KS: That’s beautiful.
CB: Perfect. All right, well, thank you to everyone for listening. Thanks to all of our patrons for supporting the show. You guys are definitely making the show possible and helping to improve the show. If you’re interested in helping to support the show, or you want to enter into next month’s drawing for some of the awesome prizes—like that full scholarship to the ISAR conference—then definitely sign up to become a patron on our episode page on Patreon. And that’s it. So thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.