The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 87, titled:
Astrology Forecast Discussion for September 2016
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on August 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 10th, 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, August 23, 2016, starting just after 3:23 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 87th episode 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 September 2016, as well as some auspicious dates for beginning new ventures and undertaking using the principles of electional astrology. So, Kelly and Austin, welcome back to the show.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey, guys.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hi.
CB: Hey. All right, it’s been exactly one month actually since we recorded our last episode. I think I wrote down it was July 24. So time really flies by. How have you guys been doing?
KS: Keeping busy, keeping busy.
CB: Keeping busy?
KS: August has been very full. Lots of travel for work and for pleasure, so I’m kind of looking forward to September. I know there’s a few changes, planet-wise, but I’ll be looking forward to being home and getting back into a bit of a routine.
CB: Awesome. And you’re actually getting ready to go on another trip tomorrow, right?
KS: Yes. My amazing August, full of adventures, is not over yet. I will be flying out to Seattle tomorrow and teaching a three-day program with Laura Nalbandian and Kira Sutherland on the Moon this weekend, so that’s really exciting.
CB: Nice. Cool. And, Austin, what have you been up to?
AC: Oh, let’s see, I’ve been writing and reading and teaching. And I did do a little bit of traveling, a little bit more than I planned on. We did some traveling to meet family—to meet up with family. Yeah, just kind of doing my thing, writing about astrology, going to kung fu. You know how it is.
CB: I still see you cranking out the weekly columns. It seems like you’ve gotten a good rhythm down on that.
AC: Yeah. You know, I wrote for eight years straight, but then I took a three-year break, and I just got back into it this January. And it was very difficult the first several months, but I feel like I’ve gotten a better handle on it. I’ve let go of every week being some sort of perfect, immortal gem.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s always the hardest thing I’m definitely finding in my own writing—when it’s good enough or when is enough is enough to let it go and just put it out there, instead of trying to make something that’s immaculate or perfect.
AC: Yeah. And I think that—and Kelly, I imagine would agree with me here—when you’re doing material that expires, you really have to think about that. Because if you spend 20 hours on a column that’s gonna be obsolete in a week, you’re bleeding other parts of your life dry.
CB: Right.
KS: A hundred-percent.
CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That’s actually always been one of the hesitations. That’s why I put off doing even something like this for so long because of that whole thing of writing something or putting a lot of energy into something that only has a very short shelf-life. But I’ve sort of developed a better appreciation for that over the past year as we’ve been doing these shows, even though sometimes you have to really think about how much energy you want to put into this before moving on. So in that spirit, we’re gonna be kind of winging it today with our September forecast. I think people really liked the format, the looser format, from the last time we did this, for the forecast for August, so we’ll be giving it another show again. In terms of announcements before we get started, a bunch of people keep asking me for a donation page or why there isn’t a tip jar or something on the podcast website, for those that are hesitant to sign up for a regular Patreon thing, or can’t for whatever reason. So I actually put up a donation page, if you go to theastrologypodcast.com/donate. So there’s two things: one of them, there’s just a little ‘tip jar’ link where you can send me a tip or a donation through PayPal, which is pretty cool. And the second is I still need a bunch of books for citations for the book that I’m working on. I’m actually about halfway through filling in all my citations and footnotes, but I keep finding all these other sources that I don’t have, or I checked out from the library, that I had to send back. So I actually put up a link to my Amazon wishlist. If you are a fan of the podcast and you want to support the book-writing effort or just show your appreciation, you can buy me a book and they’ll ship it directly to my address if you purchase it off that list, so that’s a cool little thing.
In terms of other announcements, this is the first and probably last episode of September, cuz I’m still focused on writing. And I lost a couple of weeks due to getting some strange, mystery cold that took me down for a while, but this is the first of four episodes in the current round of giveaway prizes. And I believe I announced on the last episode that this month, the giveaway prizes are going to be, for the $5 tier, a free pass to my introduction to electional astrology course, and for the people on the Patreon $10 tier, a free pass to my full online course on Hellenistic astrology. So all you have to do to get entered into the drawing is become a patron on the $5 or $10 tier, and then I’ll announce the winner of the drawing three episodes from now. So Episode 90, since, for the giveaways, we always do it in four-episode blocks. So that’s it for announcements. One other thing, I’m in the process of trying to finalize the design for my book cover, and I’m in the process of hiring different designers and having different people test out different things. So that’s actually turned out to be, in some ways, more expensive than I expected. Have you guys ever hired somebody for a book cover or gone through that process?
KS: I had someone organize a cover for my Saturn in Sag e-book, and I would have to check with her on exactly how she did it. But I think she used an online platform where people pitch for the work, and it was very, very affordable from what I understood. A lot cheaper than some of the numbers you were throwing around earlier.
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah, I can find the info out for you, if you like.
CB: Yeah, I’d be curious about that. Just cuz some of the quotes I’m getting are like $500 or £500, which is actually like $600-$700 for some professional, high-level book cover designers. So I’m starting to talk with some of them, and there’s also been some people that have been very gracious in contacting me and sending me some preliminary book cover designs that have looked really good. But pretty much any donations that are sent through to the podcast this month, or people that sign up to my courses this month, that money will be going towards trying to come up with some different book cover designs so that I can finally settle on one. But I will be transitioning into the editing and design phase pretty soon, which is pretty exciting. And if there’s any professional designers out there that want to try to do a remix or a rendition of the current preliminary cover I have, then just send me an email and I can send you the files. And if I like it, or I end up selecting it out of all the possible options, then of course I would pay you a decent fee, and you would get acknowledgments in the book for having done the cover. So that’s where I’m at, at this point. I’m trying to think of where we should get started. Do you guys have any other announcements about things that you have going on right now? I think you had something, right, Kelly?
KS: Oh, yeah, just two new things, I guess. My next online class, which is called Level 5—basically, we’ll be focusing on relationships—is starting early in September. So if anyone’s interested to join that, we’ve got room for a couple of new people to join the group. It’s a six-week online class. As long as you have an understanding of aspects—or at least some familiarity with it—and perhaps a basic understanding of transits and progressions, you’ll be able to pick up and move through the class. And I’ve just recorded a very special one-off, ‘Jupiter in Libra through the houses’ lecture that’ll be made available for purchase probably early next week. So there’s a couple of things to look out for if anyone’s interested. Yeah, thanks.
CB: Awesome. Good timing on that. And, Austin, do you have anything coming up? Or are you just focusing on the column right now?
AC: No, no. I’m always doing five or seven things.
CB: Right.
AC: So I’m starting a new, four-week module in my basics class on the 27th of August. I don’t know if the podcast will be out by then, but this is the unit where I go through traditional ideas about dignity. So we’re gonna go through the five layers of essential dignity, deal with the idea of accidental dignity, and talk about how sect relates to dignity. It’s a pretty important class. You know, dignity is sort of a missing piece in a lot of people’s astrology. And even when people begin to integrate it, a lot of times they’re not sure exactly what to do with it. You know, it doesn’t just make your life awesome if a planet’s dignified, it doesn’t necessarily mean your life is crap if a planet doesn’t have traditional dignity. So it’ll be kind of juxtaposing the theory and then what that looks like and what to look for. So that starts on Saturday, August 27, and I still have room in that class for people. And then I haven’t decided exactly when, but sometime in either early or the middle of September, I’m gonna be doing just a one-off class, like maybe a two-hour lecture on planetary hours—planetary days and hours. Planetary days and hours end up coming up a lot in a variety of things that I teach, and I feel like I never have time within the class structure to really dig into it. I’ve been like, “Yeah, yeah, this is how it works, and there’s a calculator.” But what I want to do with this is really dig into how planetary days and hours work, look at how long they’ve been part of astrology, also look at how long they’ve been part of and a crucial part of a lot of magical traditions. And I also want to introduce a variant of planetary hours, which I picked up through Bonatti, where you have planetary days and planetary nights. You know, it’s this piece of a lot of classes that I felt never got enough time, so I’m just gonna do a one-off. And so, that’ll be a single-meeting class, in a sense.
CB: That’s actually something I’ve been trying to decide. Cuz I’m at the phase where I have to figure out what to keep in the book and what is non-essential and what I need to cut from the book, and planetary days and hours was one of those things that I thought was really interesting, that doesn’t get mentioned as frequently. Even though it originated in the Hellenistic tradition, it doesn’t come up as often as you would think. But that was connected with another research project that I was doing, about Jewish views on astrology during the Greco-Roman period. Because I think the planetary days and hours—and correct me if I’m wrong—first show up in Jewish sources, right?
AC: Well, it’s in Valens.
CB: Right. I know he’s one of the earliest. He’s the earliest astrologer that mentions them, but there’s something preexisting in terms of the days of the week. I was under the impression that there was a 1st century source or something.
AC: We’re pretty sure that that’s much older and Mesopotamian. And the Egyptians had methods for dividing the hours of night and day way, way, way. So, really, planetary days and hours are anchored in what sometimes gets called ‘proto-astrology’. They’re certainly way older. You know, it’s some of the material that was synthesized and found a place or didn’t in the horoscopic astrology revolution, right?
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah, the Jewish opinion is something that actually ended up influencing Bonatti—Bonatti’s idea of ‘planetary nights’. So the idea with planetary days is the planetary hour which begins the day at sunrise defines the tenor of the entire day, right? That’s where you get Monday (Moon-day), Tuesday (Mars-day), Wednesday (Mercury-day), etc., etc. But what Bonatti proposes—and this is a system I’ve been working with for, I don’t know, four years now, and have a lot of good experiences with—is that the hour which begins the night also defines the night. And so, day and night are given equal precedence. And that’s connected, I believe—I need to follow up on my research for this before I do my class—with the Jewish doctrine of the dusk ending and beginning rather than dawn ending and beginning things. And so, I think that by the time Bonatti gets to it that’s an alternate schema or a balanced schema. And I like that because it seems to work really well. But I also like that on a conceptual level because it partakes of this balance between night and day, and it makes the part of me that uses sect very happy.
CB: Right. Yeah, which is something that otherwise seems that it gets dropped or falls out of the tradition the further you go. And it’s interesting to see it almost being reasserted in that doctrine at that time.
AC: Yeah. As I think we’ve all noticed with sect, it’s so fundamental, the difference between night and day—it’s night and day. It’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook, right? You know, people get interested in long-term synodic cycles and the movement of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions through the triplicities over hundreds of years. It’s like, well, what about night and day? Let’s start with that.
CB: Right.
KS: Start with the basics.
CB: Yeah. And sort of roughly connected with this, the last episode I did—which was the one where I talked about Saturn as possibly conceptualized by some early astrologers, like Dorotheus, as a feminine planet, that was actually the last episode I did—several different people all pointed out that Saturn in the Tree of Life is on the feminine pillar or tier, right?
AC: Uh, no. So there’s a Pillar of Mercy and a Pillar of Severity, but those aren’t masculine or feminine.
CB: Got it.
AC: Not primarily. It’s on the Pillar of Severity, obviously, but it’s in a sphere of Binah, which is considered to be feminine. And so, there are god forms and names associated with each sphere, and those associated with Binah, which is Saturn’s sphere, are almost uniformly feminine.
CB: Okay. So that’s interesting to me. I’ve been looking everywhere for any other ancient parallel that would treat Saturn as feminine, cuz most of the other Greco-Roman traditions, or even the earlier Mesopotamian traditions largely seem to treat it as masculine. And so, I was trying to figure out if that one reference to Saturn as feminine in Dorotheus was just a textual error or whether there could be some other tradition that was influencing him, and this is one of the only ones that was maybe suggestive. But then in the process of trying to figure that out, the next question is, how old is the Tree of Life? Also, more specifically, how old are the specific planetary associations in the Tree of Life? And that’s been a little bit challenging because there’s a lot of debate about how old the Sefer Yetzirah is, but some of the underlying concepts may go back to or be influenced by things that were happening already in the 1st and 2nd, and especially 3rd and 4th centuries.
AC: The case for that is extremely strong.
CB: Is it very strong?
AC: I mean, the mapping of the planets onto the Tree of Life is basically the Ptolemaic universe mapped onto the Tree of Life. Mapped onto the numbers 1 through 10.
CB: I guess the problem I have is that evidently the actual text that we have of the first recensions of this text only date to the 10th century, and that means the text only dates to then. So the question then is, what’s the earliest reference to the planets being associated with this that can be found? Cuz that’s one thing versus inferring whether it was underlying the whole structure from the very start. So that’s something I’m trying to figure out right now, but it’s a little bit tricky.
AC: Yeah. If I had to put money on it, I would say it happened during that Hellenistic-Roman span. You know, one of the problems with doing textual sources for what are obviously highly-secretive traditions is that the relationship between textual proof and the reality and history of practice—that gap is really wide when you know you’ve got something that was intentionally hidden and was intentionally not public. You know, it’s one thing if you’re looking for the history of popular entertainment because the first time it shows up, that’s when it showed up, whereas there’s always this big question mark of, well, this is when somebody first published something. But a lot of esoteric traditions were primarily oral for a long time, cuz that’s a way of keeping secrets. And so, there’s that gap which is frustrating if you want to pin it to an exact date.
CB: Right. I guess I’m wary about that to some extent because sometimes that argument’s used in the opposite extreme—especially with some people that have worked with the Hellenistic material recently—to say that everything’s esoteric, or that you have to read between the lines on everything, and there’s all these hidden meanings in everything, and sometimes that gets exploited. This sort of ambiguity of ‘did they mean something else by this’, or ‘were there other implications’ is then exploited to create all these really elaborate doctrines that may never have existed. And so, I’m always trying to balance between those two in terms of recognizing there was some oral tradition, that was part of an esoteric tradition, that sometimes employed secrecy or hidden numbering schemes or other things like that. But then, on the other hand, I also realize that some of these texts are actually purely instructional, and we’re receiving texts that perhaps weren’t supposed to be shared outside of the schools that they were in, like with Valens’ texts. Otherwise, he’s actually trying very hard to explicate the doctrines and be very clear with what he’s doing, cuz he’s writing them for his students. But, yeah, I understand that with something like this, you’re talking about a mystical, Pythagorean doctrine that is a little bit different.
AC: Yeah, it is different. In traditional Kabbalah, from what I’ve read, you were not supposed to start even bothering with it until you were 40. Yeah, there were lots of filters on who could practice and learn and why. And so, just because you don’t have it carved in stone or carved in paper at some point doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between ‘good and likely’ arguments and ‘sloppy’ arguments. One, were there Jews in Alexandria when astrology was hopping? Yes. When would they have seen that scheme of the planets? Cuz the planets are hung on the Tree of Life in Ptolemaic order, in the order of the ascending and descending spheres. And then once you get beyond Saturn, then you have the sphere of the fixed stars and all that. It’s that framework. And so, we know that there were Jewish scholars and practitioners in the same place as astrology, at the same time. They would have read those books, they would have gotten that. If we’re looking for a place where that connection would have happened, that’s extremely likely. We don’t know a hundred-percent, but that’s a reasonable guess. Rather than be like, well, it was actually in 10,000 BC, Moses—
CB: The Atlanteans.
AC: Etc., etc.
CB: Yeah. All right, well, that was just a little digression, cuz that’s what I was doing this morning. I was trying to figure out when this text was written and when the planetary assignments were first mentioned and all of that and some of the trickiness. So that’s the type of stuff that I’ve been doing for the past month still, as I fill in citations and try to finish the book.
AC: Actually one more note on that, just back to the ‘Saturn-Binah’ thing. Binah is seen as feminine, right? A lot of times with Binah you get a lot of oceanic imagery. There’s a lot of marine imagery associated with Binah. Although that’s not part of contemporary practice, in almost all pre-modern astrology, when you read Saturn delineations, there’s all this ‘ocean’ stuff. Like Saturn rules your 10th, you’ll work by a river. Or Saturn rules your 8th, you’ll drown in a ship.
CB: Right.
AC: So if we’re looking at the Tree of Life and the sphere associated with the planet, that’s another pretty strong linkage.
CB: Yeah, the ‘aquatic, sea-faring’ themes with Saturn were huge in the ancient traditions. There was that whole myth surrounding Berossus and the idea that when all of the planets were aligned in Cancer, that the world would be destroyed by a fire, and when they were all aligned in Capricorn, that it would be destroyed by a flood. That sort of ties back into some of those themes as well. But in terms of just the ‘masculine and feminine’ thing, it’s a touchy issue for certain reasons, but then it’s a historical issue and all these things. I mean, do you guys use ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’? Or have you found useful applications for them? I know, Kelly, you’ve done a lot of work with temperament theory. Would that affect things? Would that change things significantly in terms of that if you started conceptualizing Saturn as feminine, or do you already? How do you feel about that whole thing?
KS: Yeah, look, it’s interesting because I don’t think the main qualities (hot/cold, wet or dry) have a masculine or a feminine necessarily perhaps in the way we might think about them as moderns, but they would certainly have a yin or a yang tone, to borrow from Chinese or Eastern ideas.
CB: Sure.
KS: So Saturn as a cold-and-dry combination would be incredibly yin, and yin is often associated with not female, but a feminine style, which is more introspective or more thoughtful or even more internal, versus the yang of Mars or the Sun, which is much more extroverted, much more expressive, much more outwardly-focused. So I can see—certainly from that quality or core features perspective—that there would be an argument for Saturn. I think yin energy can be male or female. You know, you can have men that are more yin in their type or expression.
CB: Right.
KS: So it’s really getting, in some ways, to semantics about word choice. But as long as people understand we’re talking about the underlying energy or quality, there’s definitely more of that yin tone in Saturn for sure.
CB: I mean, is that something that, you’re not hesitant about, but you prefer to conceptualize more in using those terms yin and yang, rather than ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, because of the other gender associations or other implications that might have, that one might object to philosophically or socially in applying those qualities?
KS: Yeah, it’s a really good point. Look, for the most part I probably do qualify Saturn as more masculine. I’m just trying to think if I was doing a horary, and someone showed up with a Saturn significator, I’d be more inclined to think it was an older male. But on the same token, I don’t know that I’d be surprised if it turned out to be an older female. I think of the quality of the ‘older’. Now that we’re sort of thinking about it and reflecting on it, sometimes the gender association is almost a little bit like—I don’t want to cause a big upset or upset people. But it’s almost a little bit more like a modern/Sun sign approach to it. It’s just easy sometimes to say something’s a bit more male/masculine or female/feminine rather than to go into the core themes as to what that’s really alluding to or what you’re really trying to say with that.
CB: Right.
KS: So I think the idea of putting these concepts of Saturn as potentially feminine out there is really tapping more into the core quality of how Saturn operates.
CB: Sure. Yeah, just trying to describe the nature of the archetype in some sense using keywords that are naturally gonna be imprecise or not fully representative. You know, I’ve spent a lot of time working on this, this month, in the book because it’s, on the one hand, historical and I’m trying to do a survey of Hellenistic astrology and where these ideas and techniques come from. But then, on the other hand, I’m also trying to show how it might be used in a practical context, or how it was used and the way in which it might still be used, if one chose to do so. Sometimes they’d use it for very literal things, at least in the 1st and 2nd century, where if somebody wanted to know, “Am I gonna have male babies or feminine babies?” there would be this technique you could use to potentially determine that. Or if you wanted to know the gender of somebody’s siblings for whatever reason, there could be a measurement to look at that would indicate this. And so, sometimes it’s for very literal things. And in that context I feel like it’s less hard to object to that on moral or social grounds.
AC: Well, I would just add Kelly brought up a horary, and I think that horary really frames it. Like, “Who stole my book?” A lot of the traditional techniques are like, “Okay, the signifier is Mars. All right, it’s probably a young man” versus “The signifier is Jupiter, it’s that wealthy book collector who said he just wanted to look at it for a little bit.”
CB: Right.
AC: I would say—and I think a lot of people would agree with this—that Saturn is not a terribly-gendered planet.
KS: That’s actually a really good point, Austin.
AC: I think ‘old people’ is a pretty safe bet with Saturn. And the idea of course of being elderly is that, generally speaking, especially before the advent of Viagra, there was less gendered personality expression and there was less physical, sexual expression as well, right? We kind of neutral out as we get into our 70s and 80s.
KS: That’s a beautiful point.
AC: And I would just add to that, kind of sideways, in Chinese astrology, Saturn is associated with centering energy or depolarized energy, whereas the other planets are lesser and greater yin and lesser and greater yang. Saturn is thought to be a centering or depolarizing sort of energy, and I would say that old age depolarizes us all. Now that I’m 37, I get it.
CB: Sure.
KS: So old, Austin.
AC: Yeah.
CB: In the Indian tradition, going along with that, they evidently treat Saturn like Mercury in terms of being gender neutral, so it’s interesting that you say that.
KS: Yeah. Anyway, we could probably keep banging on about this, Chris.
CB: Yeah. This is a topic I’m gonna come back to, so maybe I shouldn’t spend the whole show talking about it. All right, so let’s move on to the astrological alignments. So, first, before we get into September, maybe we should do a little recap, if there’s any major news events from the past month that are worth mentioning, or looking back at previous forecasts we made or cycles that we’re finishing up. Is there anything like that before we get into the future?
AC: Yeah, I’ve got a few things. Two of them are not very nice, so I’ll just get on with it. You know what?
KS: Hit us with the Mars, Austin.
AC: I don’t know if I want to talk—I’m gonna talk about the one thing that’s not as awful.
KS: Okay, cool.
AC: So, real quick, the two awful things. The recapture of Fallujah—which started on the Mars conjunct Full Moon back in May and basically finished up on the Full Moon in Sag in June, right around the direct station—has just recently been revealed to be far bloodier than anyone thought, and there were a lot of civilian casualties. Yadda, yadda, yadda—we said that that would probably happen. It happened. That sucks, let’s move on. And then the other bad thing that I’m not gonna dwell on—but is significant for watching the Mars cycle—is the Philippines got a new president about two months ago, and he started this crazy crackdown, this war on drugs, in which they’re killing about 36 people a day with very little due process. And so, that was like right after the direct station of Mars in Scorpio. Very unpleasant, and let’s move on. The thing that I think is actually more illustrative of the Mars cycle—that is violent but more entertainingly so and intentionally so—there’s a pair of fighters in mixed martial arts who’ve been fighting in the UFC, that had this match. I think it was the first day that Mars went into Sag, when it was deep in the shadow, in early March. And it’s this guy, Conor McGregor, who’s this face-punching Irishman—I think he won 15 fights in a row, 11 of them by knockout, and he was the champion of the featherweight division. He decided to come up 25 pounds in a weight class and then take a fight there, because was just like, “There’s nobody who can challenge me here.” And he ended up fighting a guy named Nate Diaz who took the fight with only 11 days to prepare. And McGregor was this massive favorite. I think the Vegas odds had him like 3 or 4 to 1. And Diaz knocked him down and choked him out, and it was just the biggest upset of all time. This is like a Mars moving into the area that he’s gonna come back through, right? So they set up a rematch. I think it was right on the Sun-Mars opposition, which was the middle of the Mars retrograde cycle. McGregor starts saying that he’s retired, he’s not gonna take the fight, and just acting up and creating a big media circus. There was this big thing like, “No, I’m not going to fight,” classic Mars retro. But also classic Mars retro, he says, “Yeah, actually I am gonna take the fight.”
And so, the rematch actually happened just a few days ago, on Saturday, the 20th, and it was a Mars-Saturn throwdown. A lot of people are saying it was the best fight in mixed martial arts history, or was the best fight in 20 years. It went the full time, which is five, 5-minute rounds, or 25 straight minutes of these guys just pounding on each other. And it was really interesting to watch for me, cuz we have a birth time for Conor, we don’t have a birth time for Nate Diaz, but it was Mars at 0 Aries versus Mars in Taurus on the North Node near Algol. And so, of course Mars in Aries just runs in and throws bombs and then gets tired at the end of the second round, and Mars in Taurus doesn’t wake up until the end of the second round. You know, it’s funny, just ignoring a lot of other things, just looking at Mars with fighters is really interesting. But McGregor managed to win a slim decision over Nate Diaz, and now everybody says, “Oh, there’s gotta be a third fight,” right. So if we talk about Mars and we talk about retrogrades, and things needing to be done three times in order to actually be finished, we have this huge, well-promoted, incredibly well-attended fight where you had one, and then two, and everybody wants three, so I thought that was pretty interesting. And what’s interesting is I threw a horary on this. I haven’t done a horary to see who would win a fight before, but I thought it’d be worth an experiment. And what’s interesting is McGregor’s signifier ended up being Mars, which makes sense. He’s extremely aggressive and has red hair, if you want a Mars avatar. And so, his signifier was conjunct Saturn, right? I was like, “Oh, that’s bad.” But Saturn was the ruler of the 10th house. So the 10th house is ‘victory’ in this case. And so, not only did his signifier being conjunct the ruler of the 10th describe his victory, it also described the type of victory, where he had to do 25 grueling minutes and won in a very close decision. That’s a Saturn victory. People say he went in there and he had to grind it out.
KS: Yes.
AC: A Saturn victory is grinding it out. And somebody pointed this out to me—I don’t remember who—that Nate Diaz has a lot of scar tissue on his face. And so, this is the guy with Mars a couple of degrees off Algol. And so, he was red-faced with blood from round two onward. And so, you have the ‘Mars-Algol’ guy with the bloody head, right? If you think about Algol, Algol’s literally the ‘demon’s head’. But what’s interesting about this ‘Mars in Taurus’ guy on Algol is that he’s impossible to knock out. Like if you watch that fight, he took 10 punches that would have given a normal person brain damage, and he barely notices. Even in the replays, you see him kind of react for maybe an eighth of a second, and then he’s just back to staring at the opponent. Literally, he’s punched in the face and is flying through the air, and he’s just watching the opponent and lands perfectly calm.
KS: Wow.
AC: Anyway, I thought that was a pretty neat Mars-Saturn thing.
CB: Yeah, that’s interesting also because I was just seeing another news story recently, or just saw people referring to her, but it reminds me of Ronda Rousey, who was born in the same timeframe, and also had Saturn in Sagittarius. And we saw her take that huge fall from grace late last year, and she also has Saturn in Sagittarius and Mars in Aries.
AC: So Conor’s an ‘88 baby, so he also has Saturn in Sag.
CB: Right. Yeah, so he’s going through his Saturn return. And there was sort of a similar thing, except she hasn’t made a comeback at this point.
AC: You know we’re all kind of waiting on her.
CB: Yeah, that was actually one of the follow-ups that we never did, and it sounded like she was in a pretty bad place. And she said in one interview that after losing that fight and becoming disgraced that she became suicidal at one point and was going through a really hard time, so she’s getting the really tough version of the Saturn return. And the context in which I saw her referenced last week was just people hating on her because she was so built-up for such a long time, and she was saying she could fight outside of her weight class, and that she could take on—
AC: What’s funny is that Conor McGregor has a very parallel storyline, and they’re both Mars in Aries.
CB: Right.
AC: And they both have incredibly aggressive, ‘I’m just gonna run up to you and win’ styles. She has a lot of ‘Mars in Aries’ first round victories.
KS: Of course.
AC: You know, McGregor, his first title fight a while back was supposed to be this big deal, and he just ran up and knocked the guy out in 13 seconds. And so, what everybody loved about this Diaz fight—this fight with Nate Diaz—is that you can run up and punch Nate Diaz in the face, and he might wake up, or he might stay sleepy for a while. You know, it’s this totally fixed Mars in Taurus that’s just gonna keep coming; it might get excited at some point, but it might not be until the second or third round. It’s such a contrast to the Mars in Aries.
CB: Right. That’s such a great study in the quadruplicities or modalities, cuz that was another section of the book I was working on this past month, just going back to what ancient authors said about that distinction and how they conceptualized it. And it’s really just very literal stuff, saying that cardinal signs are very good at initiating new things or getting things going, but they don’t have a lot of staying power or follow-through. Fixed signs have a hard time getting going, but they have good endurance and longevity and permanence.
AC: Yeah. And people talk about Nate Diaz as a notoriously ‘sleepy’ fighter. Like that’s the term they use. He doesn’t wake up until 30 strikes have been exchanged on each side.
CB: Sure. And then mutable signs, just in terms of being transitional or capable of doing two things at once, or sometimes initiating one thing, but not being able to bring it to completion until they initiate a second action, which then finishes before the first, so that it’s sort of digressive. I’m not sure what fighting style that would be.
AC: Oh, well, there are a couple of champions in MMA who have Mars in Pisces: Chuck Liddell, who was, I don’t know, champion for half a decade, and Anderson Silva. They were both devastating counter-strikers, right? They would wait for the other person to initiate and then take their heads off.
CB: So maybe adaptability or something like that.
AC: Right. It’s reaction, setting a trap. It’s adapting to what the other person is doing rather than Conor McGregor or Ronda Rousey, who are just gonna run up to you and do their thing at you until you lose.
CB: Sure.
KS: Yeah. Is it a kind of style, Austin, where they almost have to wait for the other person to make the first move or do something and then they respond to that?
AC: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s what counter-striking is. It’s like, “They’re gonna try to come in with this one-two, and I’ve got this ready for them.” And so, when they do that, then you drop a bomb on their head and they fall down.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, counter-striking is exactly that. You set a trap and you wait for the person to throw the thing that you want them to throw, so then you can do your much more effective thing.
KS: Right, right. That’s very much how I see the mutable signs working as a group. They’ll take whatever someone else throws out there and adapt or change it. And I guess in fighting, then that’s the counter-striking that you get.
AC: Yep.
CB: That makes a lot of sense. All right, well, that’s a feel-good Mars retrograde story compared to some of the other ones that you were mentioning earlier. Which, just for clarification, you were just mentioning in passing because they’re super-depressing, not because they’re not important.
AC: I mean, they’re really relevant to describing this Mars retrograde in this particular period of history. I wish they weren’t, but it is worth noting one of them concluded at the midpoint, right with the ‘Mars-Algol’ thing, and we’re finding out it was worse than anybody said, and another thing started at that midpoint, once Mars was direct, and we’re watching that unfold in the Philippines. And many national and international observers are very concerned about that.
CB: Right. All right, and literally, we’re just days now from or have just passed the shadow period. Did it station at 8 or 9?
KS: Yeah, past the shadow period. I think it was 8°.
CB: Okay. So we literally just came out—in the past few days—of the shadow period of Mars, but we’re a day or so away from the last conjunction, as we’re recording this. Cuz Mars is still at 9°35’ of Sagittarius, and Saturn’s at 9°52’. So, Austin, I know you wanted to record the show after the conjunction so that we could recap the aftermath.
AC: I did.
CB: But it sort of worked out that we had to do it today. So we’ll have to follow up on that.
KS: Sorry, scheduling.
AC: So let’s talk a little bit about how Mars-Saturn feels right now. Maybe not 20 minutes-worth. But I just want to say it’s in my 6th, and I’ve been having, otherwise, explicable pains in my hip and my lower back. I have very flexible, well-lubricated hips. I don’t have hip issues, and I don’t have lower back issues, but I’ve had Mars-Saturn right in the Sag place in the body. And I was sort of like, of course, I’m having some weird nerve pain there, which I never have, and I guarantee you will be done in like four days.
CB: Right. And you’ve been having some stuff, too, right, Kelly?
KS: Oh, yeah. I mean, as Austin said, we don’t necessarily need to talk about it for 20 minutes, but the Saturn-Mars conjunction at 9 Sag is directly hitting my Moon by square, my Pisces Moon. And I’ve had a host of digestive-type of things—not to gross anyone out—that have happened over the last few weeks while the Mars part’s been building, but of course the Saturn part’s been in place since late July. And just recently I went to have some acupuncture, and the Chinese medicine guy was saying that my liver is very sluggish or sleepy, which I thought was quite funny, given the Saturn in Sag combination, with Jupiter connected to the liver. So it’s really interesting how both Austin and I have had some physical manifestations of this influence. Have you noticed anything, Chris, at all?
CB: Yeah. I mean, I noticed a few days ago, or maybe half a week ago that Adam Elenbaas actually had a really good delineation for one of these daily or weekly horoscopes that I resonated with at the time. He was talking about the Mars-Saturn conjunction, and he said: “Mars-Saturn: discipline, focus, maturity, strength, and commitment.” But then he pointed out that the Mars-Saturn conjunction is square to Neptune, and the phrase or keyword for this was: “The illusion or appearance of discipline, focus, maturity, strength, and commitment, and how easily it slips away or becomes something else,” due to the square from Neptune. Anyway, the physical thing I had this month was just getting this weird, mysterious cold that sort of took all of my energy and focus and everything that I had for a couple of weeks, and reduced me to watching Netflix for a little while when trying to read or fill in footnotes when I could. And Leisa and I are still recovering from that after a couple of weeks. But, yeah, it’s weird seeing that happen in different ways, for different people, depending on where it fell in the chart. Yeah, so that’s the Mars-Saturn conjunction. Obviously, that’s about to go exact, and it’s still playing out for people. I mean, on some level, even though Mars has come out of its retrograde period, it’s gonna conjoin Saturn in the next few days, sort of having the final conjunction. I don’t feel like all of that’s gonna be fully over until Mars ingresses into Capricorn and just gets out of Sagittarius completely.
AC: I agree.
CB: You know, its whole presence there and its whole flirtation with Saturn all year—off and on at different points—has really been a large part of this. And it seems like we’re not gonna be fully free of that until Mars and Saturn have fully moved out of the same sign and are not ‘living in the same house’ together, so to speak.
AC: Yeah. And that’s something that happens at the end of this September. That’s something to look forward to for people.
CB: Yeah, so that’s gonna take place. So Mars leaves Sagittarius and ingresses into Capricorn finally on September 27, it looks like.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Especially for people that are getting hit particularly hard by this Mars-Saturn conjunction, if they have stuff that’s closely-configured to that by degree, this might be the most intense point, but some of the events and circumstances surrounding that might not be fully wrapped up until Mars completely departs from this sign at the end of September.
AC: Yeah. There’ll still be some of that ambient Mars-Saturn tension and drive.
CB: Sure. So other than that, sort of backing up a little bit, we’ve got a really major thing that I know you guys have been looking forward to—because we’ve been mentioning it for like a few months now—that starts right at the top of the month, on the 1st of September, right?
AC: The eclipse?
CB: Yeah, the little minor eclipse thing we’ve talked about a few times in the past. That’s a New Moon/solar eclipse taking place on September 1 in Virgo, right?
AC: Yep.
KS: You’re correct, yes.
CB: Okay.
KS: 9° Virgo. And the Sun and Moon—or the New Moon, I guess—will only be 3° away from the nodes. The North Node’s at 12 Virgo, which the closer the New or the Full Moon itself is to the nodes, the more dramatic or intense an eclipse we’re going to experience. The more total, I guess.
AC: I believe it is officially a total eclipse.
KS: I think you’re correct, Austin.
CB: Yeah, after our last podcast a month ago, it’s been funny seeing this whole debate happening in the astrological community and lots of astrologers writing about whether or not that lunar eclipse that just happened in Aquarius was an eclipse or not. Which you two—
AC: You mean the Full Moon?
KS: The Full Moon? The Aquarius Full Moon?
CB: The Full Moon/almost-lunar eclipse that took place a couple of weeks ago. They said 3% or something was eclipsed.
KS: Yes.
AC: But only with penumbra, not even with proper shadow.
CB: Okay.
KS: Like the ‘shadow’ of the shadow.
AC: Exactly.
CB: After observing that and everything, do you guys feel vindicated? There were no second thoughts or anything?
AC: So I’m pretty sensitive to eclipses. The inner landscape that I get changes a lot around eclipses, and there is like a note of ‘eclipse-y’ darkness. Looking at what actually happened for people, it doesn’t seem ‘eclipse-y’ in the slightest. But I do think there was just like this little note, which is like a 15-second teaser trailer for what happens during the proper eclipses in September.
CB: Right. That was my feeling. I mean, I felt like there was something there, but I wanted to wait and see what happened. I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t the monumental event that these eclipses in September are gonna be, especially for people that have them falling in critical parts of their chart. But it was a little bit more than a normal Full Moon.
KS: The 1st of September eclipse is kind of vibing the same part of the sky—just in terms of degrees—of that Saturn-Neptune square. So around that 9-10-11-12 of the mutable signs.
AC: Oh, yeah.
CB: Right. That’s a really good point.
KS: So if you’re already being triggered, well, just hold onto your hats, people.
CB: Sure.
KS: More to come.
CB: September’s gonna be a follow-up.
AC: Yeah. So the eclipse happens at 9, and then Saturn and Neptune are at 10.
KS: Yes.
AC: So this is a righteous T-square. This is not like off by 5° or 10°.
KS: No, this is a total, proper.
AC: And so, one way that I look at this is that earlier in August, first, Mercury made that Saturn-Neptune T-square, and then Venus made that Saturn-Neptune T-square. And now, not only the Sun, but the Sun and the Moon at the same time—in a significant configuration, an eclipse, which is going to be so total that it’s annular—is right there. And so, whenever you have a New Moon or a Full Moon, they speak not only to that night, but at least the coming two weeks until the next lunation. And so, there’s a seed buried by each lunation that takes a little while to fully sprout, although sometimes you have a rather dramatic day or night. And what’s interesting to me about that is that September holds the very last perfect square between Saturn and Neptune, right? And so, we’re getting this New Moon just staring directly at that, at both sides of that, right before they have their final clash. And so, this speaks of climax and resolution to me. I was thinking about, what do the Sun and Moon in Virgo think about this whole Saturn-Neptune thing? Cuz the Saturn-Neptune thing is like this kind of argument over what’s real and what’s fake, right? Do we open up? Do we wall-up? What’s real, what’s fake, etc., etc. And I can see the Sun and Moon in Virgo being like, “You’re both full of shit.”
CB: Right.
AC: You know, it’s bringing that ‘Virgo-an’ particularity and focus to what’s a set of debates that have in many ways spun out of control in both directions. And so, I think it’s actually gonna kind of walk it towards clarity.
KS: That’s a really great point, Austin. I mean, the thing that also comes to mind, listening to you describe that, is the Saturn in Sag and the Neptune in Pisces are both Jupiter-ruled signs. So they’re both kind of dabbling in maybe larger conceptual ideas and concepts. And this emphasis now in Virgo is much more about specifics or practicalities, or even useful outcomes that can be immediately or easily applied to daily life and mundane matters.
AC: Yeah, or facts even.
KS: Facts, yeah. Okay, this is a great idea, but there is nothing to substantiate this.
AC: And what I think ties into that is right before the end of August, we have Mercury stationing retrograde in Virgo. And so, Mercury is fresh off his retrograde station on this eclipse. And Mercury stations retrograde at the end Virgo, basically right on top of Jupiter, right? And so, Jupiter is ruling both Sag and Pisces, and therefore, affecting what Saturn and Neptune are doing. Mercury, as Jupiter’s ruler—because Mercury is proper in Virgo—says, okay, so we’re going to do some rethinking about this. We’re going to try to strip away some of the layers of rhetoric and get back down to what’s actually going on here.
KS: Yes. To get underneath it or inside it.
AC: Yeah.
KS: The two big words that I’ve been dabbling with for September as well—which relate to some of the things you were saying, Austin—is this idea of ‘finales’ and then ‘transition’.
AC: Oh, yeah.
KS: Because that whole Saturn-Neptune process—which started in November of 2015—is concluding. And the other thing that’s concluding in September is the Jupiter in Virgo period.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Of course the big news of September is that on the 9th, Jupiter is moving into Libra, out of the sign of its detriment, into an air sign, into a cardinal sign—major, major change in terms of quality coming through. So that’s super exciting.
AC: And because Venus moved into Libra at the very end of August, we have this nice period where we have both Jupiter and Venus in Libra, which I think will lubricate some gears that might have otherwise ground, and help bring some harmony and balance to what is a month with a lot of big transitions. A lot of big climaxes and transitions, but we’ve got help here. There is ointment for the burns and chaffing.
KS: Yeah, it’s such a shift, isn’t it? To come out of this very dry, prickly August period. I mean, I always think of Venus in Libra as ‘cosmic honey’.
AC: Yeah.
KS: It’s sweet and kind. It’s not gonna fix everything, but it’s gonna add a dash of sweetness, or the chocolate ice cream at the end of a hard day that just makes you feel better about everything.
AC: Yeah. And with Jupiter in Libra, I find that Jupiter in Libra tends to be conciliatory.
KS: Yes.
AC: Jupiter’s sort of like, “What is wisdom?” And so, Jupiter in Virgo says, “Wisdom is doing all of your homework.” And you ask Jupiter in Libra, “What is wisdom?” and Jupiter in Libra says, “Well, it’s getting along with people and listening to other people’s perspectives and trying to stay away from the extremes.”
KS: Yes, it is. And I was researching—cuz I did record this Jupiter in Libra thing today—and one of the ideas around benefics is they tend to create some balance. And what I think is really interesting is we’ve got the ‘big’ benefic, Jupiter, in the sign of the ‘little’ benefic, Venus—and I think you’re really hitting on something there, Austin, the idea of some more ‘moderish’ or temperate middle-ground or conciliatory way forward. I think we’re likely to see more of that energy, or people will experience that personally, certainly with Jupiter in Libra. But as you mentioned, we really have a double-whammy in September, which is nothing to be disappointed about.
AC: Yeah. So my hope—and I think I’ve discussed this with both of you privately—is that with Jupiter’s time in Libra, with it ruling Saturn in Sag, it’ll be people getting tired of being so polarized. Just getting so tired of it and becoming exhausted, a little closer to center, or a little closer to compromise.
KS: Yeah, like there’s no more fight anymore.
AC: Yeah. What does Leonard Cohen say? “Everyone to love will come, not like a something, but like a refugee.”
KS: Oh, wow.
AC: Right. Eventually we get tired and we have to come back to talking to other people, even though they’re wrong.
KS: Even though they’re wrong. I mean, I do think that the idea of interacting with others is a huge part of the Jupiter in Libra process. Jupiter is primarily a sanguine or an air-type planet, and it is moving into an air sign which has that humane quality. Jupiter in Virgo was like the apprentice or the master working solo in their studio. Jupiter in Libra is more about reaching out and connecting with people, either in real life or through social media and other online platforms.
AC: Yeah, both probably.
KS: Probably a bit of both, yeah.
CB: Right. That actually reminds me—now that we’re an hour into this—that two of my elections this month actually feature that Venus-Jupiter conjunction, or sign-based conjunction or co-presence.
AC: Actually, hold on. I looked up the quote. The actual quote from the Leonard Cohen song is: “Every heart, every heart to love will come, but like a refugee.”
KS: Oh, beautiful.
CB: Nice. So I’ll skip over the first election. But the one that really features that Venus-Jupiter conjunction prominently takes place on September 13, at about 7:30 in the morning, with early Libra rising. Let’s say just the first degree of Libra rising, cuz this is not too long after Jupiter’s ingressed into Libra in the second week of September. So the chart features Libra rising, with Jupiter in Libra, in the 1st house conjunct the ascendant in a day chart; cuz the Sun rose just a little bit before this. Venus is also in Libra at 17° of Libra in the 1st house, ruling the ascendant, relatively well-placed. It is separating from a square with Pluto, which that’s the downside. And we’ve been dealing with this for a few years now. Anytime you have an election that features cardinal planets, or anytime you have something good—like putting Venus in Libra—you still have to contend with dealing with Pluto going through Capricorn and Uranus going through Aries. But nonetheless, all those things aside, Venus is extremely well-placed in the 1st house, in its own sign, co-present with Jupiter, separating from a square with Pluto. It’s applying to a sextile with Mars in Sagittarius in the 3rd house—and I believe that the next aspect that it applies to—followed by an opposition, about 6° away, with Uranus in the 7th in Aries. And the Moon is in Aquarius in the fifth whole sign house at 8° of Aquarius, it looks to be applying to a sextile with reception to Saturn, followed eventually by a trine with Venus. So the Moon’s actually getting two trines from both of the benefics, from Jupiter and Venus. And if not for Saturn interfering there, it would be fully enclosed by the rays of both benefics. So this would be a great chart for those of you who are trying to emphasize that Venus-Jupiter conjunction and some of the favorable things associated with it. It has a lot of emphasis on air signs, because the ruler of the ascendant’s in an air sign and the Moon’s in an air sign. The Lot of Fortune, for that matter, is also in Aquarius, in an air sign. So definitely using it for things like that, in terms of the conciliatory aspect of it, due to Venus being so prominent, and due to Libra being so strong, like you were saying earlier, Austin. But then there’s also a sort of intellectual side of it as well due to the emphasis on air signs that would be good to use or take advantage of as well. So that’s my first chart. What do you guys think?
AC: I like double-benefics.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah, double-benefics are usually good. And there’s this similar one about a week later. This is the other one. It’s actually the last time you can really grab Venus before it departs. It’s just getting ready to leave Libra. But if you want to use that one more time, there’s one more election on September 23, at about 7:05 in the morning. And this one, again, has early Libra rising, with Jupiter on the ascendant at 3° of Libra. And the Sun has just ingressed into Libra, so it will be in the 1st house, applying to a conjunction with Jupiter. And Venus is at the very end of the sign, at 29° of Libra, getting ready to leave that sign and move into Scorpio, but it’s still barely got the last of that dignity in Libra in the first whole sign house. And the Moon is actually up in Cancer, in the 10th house; 2° of Cancer applying to a square with Jupiter. So a very similar chart, but in this one the Sun is now in Libra and the Moon is up in Cancer in the 10th instead of Aquarius. So it gives it a little bit more water, a little bit more of a balance between water signs and air signs compared to the previous chart. So those are probably the two best elections this month, because those are the two that actually take advantage or take full advantage of having both benefics in the same sign. The only other one that kind of takes advantage of that takes place on September 3, at about 2:30 in the morning, if you want to stay up super late. And this one has Cancer rising, and the Moon in Libra in the fourth whole sign house, applying to a conjunction with Venus at 5° of Libra, also in the 4th house. So, again, it’s taking advantage of that very strong dignified Venus placement, especially in this instance by putting it in a night chart and making it even more positive by making sure that the ruler of the ascendant is applying to it. So those are the three best charts this month that I’d recommend.
AC: Yeah, those are good. You know, I would just add for things which require ‘less-lasting’ elections, not like a marriage, but if you kind of want to do something this week. ‘Venus in Libra’ Fridays are gonna tend to be nice.
KS: Of course.
AC: One really simple, but 80% effective, quick-and-dirty electional is if there’s a planet—especially if it’s a benefic, and it’s unafflicted, and it’s got a good dignity—do stuff on its day. And if you can, do it on the hour.
CB: Sure.
AC: ‘Venus in Libra’ Fridays, at about 2:00-3:00 where I am, good times.
CB: And that’s cuz Friday is Venus’ day?
AC: Correct. You know, the planetary days and hours are basically a time-lord system for reality rather than a time-lord system for a given nativity. And so, planets get to have their say at these particular times. It’s easier to draw on whatever they’re dishing out.
CB: That’s a good way to conceptualize it, I like that. Like a universal time-lord system.
KS: That’s beautiful.
CB: Or a mundane time-lord system.
AC: Yeah. And it’s so easy to learn. You don’t have to be great at astrology. Just remember those seven, that order. Half of the day’s are coded into that, like ‘Sun-day’, ‘Saturn-day’. And you’re like, okay, which planet is good? I remember noticing this nine years ago—there was a Mars retrograde happening—and I was working with mentally-ill youth and I had a very ‘martial’ client and ‘Mars retrograde’ Tuesdays were always the worst. I’m probably legally not allowed to talk about what would happen on ‘Mars retrograde’ Tuesdays, but let’s just say that was one of the things that brought me to consider planetary hours seriously. I was like, “Oh, no, it’s Tuesday.”
KS: So for September, it’s gonna be really interesting for people to watch Wednesdays, with the Mercury in Virgo, but also retrograde for most of the month.
AC: Oh, yeah, ‘Mercury retrograde’ Wednesdays are a thing.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right, so that’s happening. It’s in its shadow for a while in September. Or, no, I’m sorry. It’s stationing retrograde.
KS: It’s retrograde.
CB: It’s retrograde for the entirety of September.
AC: Yeah, it’s retro on August 30.
CB: Got it.
KS: Until the 22nd-or-something of September.
AC: Yeah, I believe that’s the case.
CB: Yeah, stations direct in Virgo on the 22nd of September. At what degree?
KS: About 14.
CB: 14, okay.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Oh, that’s interesting.
CB: So that’ll be interesting. We’re dealing with a Mercury retrograde in Virgo all of September, essentially.
KS: Yes.
AC: Well, for all of ‘Virgo’ time.
KS: For all of ‘Virgo’ time. That is true. And just what you were saying there, Austin, the idea of the very simple elections. Wednesdays being Mercury day, and Mercury being retro, take care.
AC: So let’s talk about the Mercury retrograde a little bit. So here’s a couple of thoughts I have. One, I think it’s really interesting that Mercury stations retrograde on top of Jupiter, which it rules. And so, it conjoined Jupiter on 21st of August, and then it goes just a little bit past Jupiter, and it’s like, “Eh, retrograde,” and then comes back and conjoins Jupiter again on, I believe, the 2nd of September, and then they part ways. Jupiter moves into Libra, Mercury goes back to 14, but then meet up again in October. And it’s almost like Mercury helping Jupiter finish up the ‘Jupiter in Virgo’ business. I’ve been thinking about it—I wrote about it this week—in terms of taking a look at one final—
[phone rings]
AC: And that’s me, my bad. Taking a look at—see, we’re talking about Mercury retrograde.
CB: Right.
KS: Of course.
AC: These things happen. You invoke the names and the actions follow. But I’ve been thinking about—you know, I know a lot of astrologers, including myself, have been like, “Oh, poo-poo, Jupiter can’t do anything in Virgo.” But when I look back at last year, I’ve done some very successful Virgo work in my 3rd. I started writing a column again. And so, I feel like Mercury retrograde is like, okay, Jupiter, you’ve been trying to do this all year, you’ve been trying to quit drinking a hundred beers every night, or you’ve been trying to make your column-writing process more efficient. Whatever the ‘more is less or the less is more Jupiter in Virgo’ thing you’ve been working on, I feel like Mercury is taking that energy of Jupiter and being really good at it cuz it’s in Virgo. It’s gonna help people install that final upgrade or finally get to that thing that they’ve been meaning to do all year, do that little rearrangement. And then Mercury will come back and make a third conjunction to Jupiter when it’s solidly in Libra. And so, I feel like Mercury’s kind of walking Jupiter over, helping him finish up here, and then they’re gonna meet up on the other side in Libra.
CB: That’s perfect, I like that. Cuz it stations later in September, on the 22nd, conjunct the North Node at 12° of Virgo. So that’s a nice magnifying, final station right there—
AC: Yeah, it is.
CB: —that almost blows that up even more than it might be otherwise.
AC: Yeah, yeah. Just the other thing I had—my other hit on Mercury retrograde in Virgo—is I feel like in terms of landscapes we might be exploring, I feel like it’s getting lost in the library. Like just going down a research hole—in maybe a good way. But, for me, I had this image of you’re digging for facts and what not, and then suddenly you’re in some massive, cavernous, underground complex surrounded by millions of books. And it’s glorious, but you kind of have to go down a tunnel, and the pathway through that isn’t gonna be linear. You do that ‘research/synchronicity/confusion’ spiral.
CB: I like that. That’s basically my life right now for this summer. I have developed what I call a ‘book moat’, which is when you’re trying to cite 20 or 30 different books, or you’re reading through them for some specific research project, but then you leave them open, face-down, to the page that you need to cite later. And then you build up this collection of books in a 360° circle around you until at some point you have to put them away.
KS: Oh, yeah. My favorite part of editing and proofing an article is the book piles, all opened at essential pages for referencing.
AC: Right. You’re at the center of the vortex that was mucky.
CB: Right. It’s a very complicated system, but it works out.
KS: Like all creative systems, it can be complicated but brilliant.
CB: Sure. And this is actually going back to the eclipse, but also Mercury stationing on top of that node. Something that was interesting—as I was trying to write this out and explain what the node was in the book this month—that I don’t think people usually understand is there’s a very simple way to explain what the Moon’s nodes are. It’s that if you follow the Sun and the path that the planets take through the sky over a long period of time—like over a succession of days or over a succession of weeks or months—you see that the Sun and the rest of the planets don’t go all over the sky, but instead they walk over a very specific, predefined path through the sky and through the background of the constellations. And that path that the Sun and Moon and other planets always follow is the ecliptic, and that’s essentially the zodiac. Or that’s where the zodiac comes from, this path that the planets move through in the sky over a yearly basis. The Moon is unique because it does go along that same path more or less, but instead of staying strictly on the path, it moves above the path and below the path periodically. And what the nodes are, essentially, are the points where the Moon’s path intersects the path of the Sun, because when that happens, that’s where eclipses take place. So the North Node, or the ascending node—it was called the ‘ascending node’ traditionally. They didn’t start calling it the ‘North Node’ until later. Originally, it was called the ‘ascending node’. It’s the point where the Moon’s path moves from being southern to being northern, whereas the South Node is the point where the Moon moves from the top of its path to going below the Sun’s path. Does that make sense? Am I explaining that correctly?
AC: Sure. They’re like dusk and dawn. After it hits the North Node, it begins to be above the Sun, and when it hits the South Node, it goes below the Sun.
CB: Right.
AC: From our point of view.
CB: To the extent that the Sun’s path—if you conceptualize it—is like a horizontal line or something like that.
AC: Yeah. And the Moon can be said to be doing a sine wave above and below that, and the two points where the sine wave intersects the horizontal line are the nodes. And the bendings of the nodes are the top and bottom of that sine wave.
CB: Right. That’s a really good point. That’s interesting cuz I didn’t realize that that doctrine of referring to them as the ‘bendings’ goes back so far, but I actually found it referenced in Ptolemy in the 2nd century recently. So it actually goes back really far.
AC: Yeah, it’s sort of like noon and midnight, if the nodes themselves are like dusk and dawn.
CB: Interesting.
AC: And so, I’m gonna plug myself here. I taught a really good month-long class on the nodes the last time we had eclipses in March, and that is now available for sale. It’s been edited and the audio’s been cleaned up. And so, people can check that out if they want to think about and learn about nodes and eclipses over this next month.
CB: Excellent. And you have slides and everything? Visuals?
AC: Oh, yeah. It’s like 7-8 hours of let’s talk about nodes and let’s talk about what they do. Let’s talk about eclipses. Let’s talk about them in a natal context. Let’s talk about what reality is like outside of your one experience/context.
CB: Excellent. So I thought that was a really interesting thing just because I don’t think people actually understand what the nodes are or what they represent astronomically, so it’s interesting trying to find a way to explain that in simple language or simple visuals. Sort of broadly connected with that, an astrologer that wrote a famous book on the nodes, Jan Spiller, just passed away just a few weeks ago, right? Had you guys heard that?
KS: Yeah, I think I had read a few things on Facebook about it.
CB: Okay.
AC: So—sorry.
CB: No, go ahead.
AC: Oh, I didn’t want to interrupt the eulogy. I didn’t know Jan, I didn’t read her works, so I can’t speak to that. But I didn’t want to just jump ahead if you guys had stuff to say.
CB: No, I just wanted to mention it briefly as being relevant. I mean, I didn’t know her well either. I just know that was one of the books that I read at some point early on when I was trying to understand what the nodes were. And while I haven’t read it in a number of years, it’s kind of notable that she passed away, and she was a notable astrologer.
AC: Okay.
KS: Yeah. And that book, Astrology for the Soul, I think is the one you’re talking about, Chris. It’s not super-technical for people that might be looking for a bit of an introduction to the ideas or concepts that might be attached to the nodes. I remember reading it very early too and finding it good for being at that stage.
CB: Sure. Just in terms of delineations.
KS: Yeah, really juicy delineations. Anyway, Austin, were you gonna say something?
AC: Oh, so on the topic of nodes, how about that lunar eclipse on the 16th?
KS: Totally.
AC: It’ll be 17th in your timezone, Chris, but it’s Friday night.
CB: Right.
KS: Yes, yes. And the other point—cuz we are talking about the nodes and eclipses and such—when we have an eclipse season, it’s like a station period for the nodes, which means that the nodes are spending a lot of time at this 12° Pisces/Virgo axis the entire month of September and about half of the month of October. So just to kind of highlight, that’s what’s happening behind the eclipses, for people who might be interested in diving into the nodes.
AC: That’s a nice point. And I guess in addition to that, if you are in a year or a time period that particularly emphasizes the Sun or the Moon—such as a Sun-ruled profection or a Moon-ruled profection—then the eclipses get another exclamation point.
KS: Yes. Yeah, they become the things to watch for like the transits, I guess.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah, they will tend to stand far out from the busy crowd of planets, if you’re in a Sun year when there’s a solar eclipse.
CB: Yeah, that’s huge if you’re in a Cancer or a Leo profection year.
AC: Which I am.
KS: Ding, ding, ding.
CB: Which one are you in, again?
AC: I’m in a Leo profection. And I actually had a solar eclipse like three days after I went into that Leo profection. Therefore, 3° off my Sun in March, which was very interesting.
CB: Nice.
KS: So the lunar eclipse, Austin, you want to talk about it. It is early Saturday morning for our Aussie listeners.
AC: Right, right. It’s at 24 Virgo/Pisces, right? The Sun is at 24 Virgo, the Moon is gonna be eclipsed at 24° Pisces. Is this a partial or a penumbral? It’ll be visible.
KS: Let me check.
AC: It’s not super-duper strong. It’s actually pretty weak, but it will be visibly an eclipse.
KS: It will be visible.
AC: You can look up and be like, “Oh, somebody smeared blood on that part of the Moon.”
CB: So the eclipse takes place at 24 Pisces, and then the nodes are at 12° of Virgo and Pisces at that point. So it’s like 12° off the nodes.
AC: Yeah, I think that’s a penumbral. Kelly, are you checking?
KS: Well, I was just looking in the ephemeris, but I’ve got a juicy ‘A’ there. So that usually says ‘annular’, doesn’t it?
AC: Well, you can’t have an annular unless it’s solar.
KS: Well, that’s what I was confused about.
CB: Are you using The American Ephemeris or what?
AC: Your ephemeris is fired. It’s a penumbral.
KS: Yeah, okay.
CB: Right.
KS: Where did you check that, Austin?
AC: There are a bunch of great websites that give you all the information. Wikipedia has a separate entry for every eclipse.
KS: Okay.
AC: And you can go to NASA. There’s a bunch of great sites that give it to you. They give you where it’s gonna be visible. If you just Google ‘lunar eclipse September 2016’, you’ll get 10 great results.
KS: Oh, yeah. And the NASA website’s really good, too.
AC: Yeah. Oh, by the way, NASA didn’t think that last Full Moon was an eclipse.
KS: So we’re on NASA’s side.
AC: That’s right.
KS: There we go.
AC: Us and the materialists.
CB: Yeah, who don’t think highly of astrology.
KS: Oh, gosh.
CB: Related to eclipses—because I meant to mention this earlier—I just saw this awesome video, and I’ll post a link in the podcast description. But it shows that in one year, on August 21, 2017, there’s a total solar eclipse that’ll stretch across the entire width of the United States.
KS: Oh, yeah. If you want to talk about eclipses, let’s talk about the eclipses of 2017.
AC: This is really supposed to be a monthly show.
KS: I know. I know. But Chris is prefacing it. I want to say the eclipses in August of 2017 are off the charts.
CB: Yeah, so it’s a year from now. Almost exactly a year from now from when we’re recording this, on the 23rd. So I just wanted to mention it, cuz I’m sure we’ll talk about this a million times in the future. But we’ve got some wild eclipses coming up, and I’ll post that video for people that want to check it out, cuz it’s really cool. It’s starts off the West Coast and it goes through Salem, Oregon, and then it just goes all the way through the entire continental United States, through a bunch of states, sort of crossing through the middle of other states—like Wyoming and Omaha, Nebraska, Saint Louis, Nashville, Athens, Georgia—and then ends somewhere around Charleston. But I just thought that was really wide, and I’m sure it has a bunch of mundane implications.
AC: That’ll also be when the nodes are in the same sign that the United States has them in. It’ll be the Leo/Aquarius eclipses.
KS: Yes.
AC: At least the nodes there, which is what the US has.
CB: Wow, okay. So we’ve got some wild, wild stuff coming up.
KS: Oh, no, the eclipses are actually in the signs of Leo and Aquarius, too.
CB: Oh, right. Cuz the nodes are getting ready to retrograde out of Virgo/Pisces and move into Leo/Aquarius. So starting early next year, we officially start the whole Aquarius/Leo eclipse season for a couple of years.
KS: Yes.
AC: Well, for 18-ish months.
KS: For 18 months, yeah. The 1st of September eclipse in Virgo is actually the last Virgo eclipse.
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: Interesting. So that’s also finishing or sort of completing an almost two-year period here.
KS: Yes. So, again, those themes of conclusion.
AC: There was a nice solar in Virgo last September. And so, you might want to think about what you started then, or if you maybe picked a different direction, or got an idea that maybe you wanted to do things differently in a particular area last September and then look at where that’s at right now, where that’s come to. Because there’ll probably be some connection between this month’s solar and last year’s solar in Virgo.
CB: So this is gonna be the last Virgo solar eclipse. Then we’ll have a lunar eclipse in Pisces early next year. And is that the last one?
AC: No, lunar eclipse this month.
KS: Is in Pisces. And then we have a solar eclipse in Pisces next February.
CB: Oh, it’s a solar eclipse.
AC: The lunar will be in Leo.
KS: In Leo, yes.
CB: Gotcha.
AC: This lunar eclipse, the 24th, it’s also T-squaring Mars within a degree. I think this is like Mars in Sag’s last—
KS: Last hurrah.
AC: Yeah, the last hurrah, cuz it’s a tight T-square. Mars is actually applying to and completing a trine with Uranus in Aries at exactly the same time. Usually with these Pisces/Virgo eclipses, you sort of have the machine and the ghost that haunts it, right? The facts and then their meaning. You know, the physical reality of your life and the dream that encloses it, these are the kind of things you get. But this one has a bunch of Mars in there, right? And so, these themes—this sort of subtle and gross, as they intersect with each other—are heated up, and it’s sort of like, okay, what are you gonna do with that? How are you gonna get something done? How are you gonna make a change? It’s Mars-Uranus in fire signs. And so, they get to intrude on this. Or maybe we could just say ‘direct these musings’ at the accomplishment of particular outcomes rather than being more yin and contemplative.
CB: Definitely. So towards the end of the month, we’ve got the Sun ingressing into Libra, September 22, Venus into Scorpio September 23, completing the Venus in Libra period. A quasi-big one, Pluto stationing direct in September, which might be relevant to whatever extent it’s hitting other cardinal planets at that point. Interestingly, a day after that, immediately right after that, Mars ingresses into Capricorn, September 27. And then, finally, we end the month with a New Moon in Libra on September 30. Since that’s the second New Moon in September, I believe that counts as a Blue Moon, right? Isn’t that the definition of a Blue Moon?
KS: I think it is.
AC: A Blue Moon, traditionally, is a Full Moon, because you can’t see New Moons.
CB: Oh, you’re right.
KS: Yeah, that’s a good point.
CB: Well, what’s the opposite called?
AC: I mean, that’s been happening a lot this year because that’s where the lunar cycle is. We had an astrological Blue Moon in Sagittarius from the end of May to the middle-end of June, where we had two Full Moons in Sagittarius. I don’t think this is terribly significant. They’re in different signs.
CB: I am looking up what that’s called.
KS: I’ve kind of tried to avoid the whole ‘Blue Moon’ thing. It seems to be a little bit arbitrary in terms of two lunar events happening in one calendar month.
CB: Right.
AC: I think if they’re in the same solar month, then that’s a big deal. I don’t care if it’s January or August or whatever.
KS: Yeah, there’s not a lot of meaning philosophically or esoterically, so to speak, to the calendar months, per se. So I tend to kind of not really focus that much on Blue Moons or anything.
AC: What we can say is that is a nice-looking New Moon. I want to get there. The New Moon in Libra conjunct Jupiter.
KS: Oh, yeah.
AC: Gimme some.
KS: Yes.
CB: Okay, so it’s at 8° of Libra, and Jupiter’s at 4° of Libra by that point. That’s not bad.
KS: Let’s go to pull up the chart.
CB: I mean, it’s not completely clear, because Mars has just ingressed into Capricorn. So we’ve got it squaring Mars within a few degrees. So it’s not the cleanest line-up in Libra as it could be, but it’s still pretty good.
KS: But it is separating from the Mars.
CB: Right.
KS: The days leading up to the New Moon could be a little hairy with those squares to Mars, certainly with Jupiter squaring Mars. Or Mars squaring Jupiter, I should say.
CB: Nice.
AC: Yeah, I’ll take it.
KS: It’ll be nicer than the eclipses, just in terms of less drama, I guess.
AC: Yeah, in terms of general stability and balance. You know, one thing about the eclipses and about the symbolism of the nodes—no matter pretty much who you ask—is the nodes pull the luminaries and any other planets they hit towards extremes. They are the opposite of a balancing influence. They pull things way one way and way the other way. And some very interesting readjustments happen when things get pushed and pulled so fiercely, but they don’t give you balance. They might force you to think about balance because of their extreme pulls in either direction. But if we’re talking about a New Moon in Libra conjunct Jupiter—which is the first lunation after a pair of eclipses—that’s a nice return to balance. The planets will actually help you get your balance back rather than challenging you to keep your balance.
CB: Definitely. That sounds good. Let me see, sort of broadly connected with that, the very last election I have for September is a little iffy, but it’s all right. It’s September 28, at 11:35 PM, with Cancer rising. Moon in Virgo applying to a conjunction with Mercury in Virgo, which is now direct. So this election is much more grounded and much more earthy and much more focused on Virgo than some of the elections from earlier in the month that are much more focused on some of those Libra placements, and Venus and Jupiter in Libra. This one’s a little bit more focused on practical details and writing and communication and doing the final end of that cleanup phase that Austin mentioned earlier, in terms of Mercury having that last retrograde phase in Virgo after Jupiter has left that sign. So that’s the final one that I would recommend for the month. Are there any other major alignments? I mean, I think we covered pretty much everything, didn’t we?
KS: Well, I think the biggest stuff in September is more the sign changes and the eclipses, plus the Saturn-Neptune. But what do you think, Austin?
AC: Yeah, I mean, just to list it: eclipses, Mercury retrograde in its own sign. Mercury retrogrades in Virgo and Gemini—which Mercury rules—generally tend to be bigger rearrangements. Jupiter changes signs. Mars finally leaves Sag. And we get the last Saturn-Neptune square. It’s a bunch of, “All right, this is the last of that.” And of course Mercury’s retrograde in its own sign. I think things are going to look very different at the end of September than they did at the beginning of September, cuz there’s so many important players changing places. It’s like a curtain. It’s a curtain on a lot of 2016 storylines. And I would say, in some ways, it’s almost like next year. Our next set of stories will start in October, cuz I think this one’s gonna bring a lot of 2016 stories to an end.
CB: Definitely. Well, that makes a lot of sense. All right, so one of the pieces of news I forgot to mention, as we’re wrapping up, is that one of the big things that’s happening right now in the astrological community is they’re finally getting the big United Astrology Conference together. It’s finally happening and speaker selection is underway. So starting yesterday the first votes went out by some of the sponsoring organizations. They’re doing a new thing now—where some of the speakers were picked if they had really high numbers at the last UAC—but a large chunk of the speakers are actually being voted on by members of the sponsoring organizations. So they’ve sort of democratized the process this time. And there’s some pros and cons about that. There was some grumbling about it, some of which is understandable, some of which is not. But I actually got my first ballot yesterday from the AFA, which is one of the organizations that’s voting first, and then you can actually vote on which speakers you’d like to see or whatever. And I actually had a better appreciation for what they’re doing with that and what that involves and how different of a process that is and some of the positive aspects of that. Anyway, I bring it up because, Kelly, I think you’re organizing a track, so you are set. And you’ll be speaking at UAC, right?
KS: Correct.
CB: Okay. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say—that’s not secret knowledge, right?
AC: Not anymore.
KS: If it is, I’m gonna blame you.
CB: Okay. Just blame me and I can talk to them. But Austin and I—we’re still working our way up the ladder, so we need to get voted in. So they’re doing voting right now. If you happen to be a member of one of the sponsoring organizations, and you want to see us give a talk at UAC, then you should probably vote for us.
KS: Yes. And the different orgs are gonna be voting sequentially. The voting process will take place over the next few weeks. So if you haven’t got information already yet, you will be getting it, as long as you’re a current member of the different organizations.
CB: Yeah. So you’ve gotta renew your membership or sign up or whatever you’ve gotta do to make sure you’re a member. The AFA and ACVA are voting right now, so that’s already begun, so it’s probably too late if you haven’t received a ballot. But if you’re a member of the NCGR or ISAR
or AFAN, apparently they’re gonna be sending out ballots sometime in the next few weeks in order to vote on which speakers you’d like to see at that conference. So it’s gonna be a huge conference. It’s the United Astrology Conference, which is happening in Chicago, I believe at the end of May 2018. So it’s still two years away, which is a little bit annoying, because that means all of us have to send lecture descriptions for a lecture we’re gonna give two years from now, right now. Did you already have to do that, Kelly?
KS: I did, yes. And, yeah, it’s a long process, cuz it’s such a large-scale conference. I mean, if we throw some numbers around—I remember thinking when I went to UAC 2008 or UAC 2012—there must be like a thousand astrologers that attend this conference.
CB: It’s like 1,500 to 2,000.
KS: Maybe it’s 1,500. I mean, there’s 200 people that will speak, across 15 different tracks, with different topics. The UAC conference is more of a cross-section, so there’s gonna be Vedic astrology represented and financial and esoteric and traditional. I mean, beg, borrow, or steal—if people are listening and thinking, “Oh, I don’t know about conferences. I’m not sure if I can go, it’s expensive.” Two years, save your money. It’s totally gonna change your life. You might even meet someone special there, like other astrologers.
CB: Right. You met your current husband at the last UAC.
KS: I did my husband—
CB: Not the last UAC, but 2008.
KS: —at UAC in 2008. So it can really be life-changing, I tell you. And I think that’s where I first crossed paths with you in person too, Chris. You might not remember me.
CB: Well, actually we didn’t really connect until 2012. I think you were a little bit distracted at the 2008 conference, so we didn’t hang out as much.
KS: Well, I was somewhat distracted, but I do remember seeing you. So that was very exciting cuz your reputation preceded you, even all the way to Australia.
CB: Right.
KS: So you guys will be conducting your marketing campaigns for your voting, and people should vote for you.
CB: Yeah. I mean, they told us that’s what we’re supposed to do, so that’s what I’m doing. We’re supposed to tell people, if you want to vote for us, then do it. So it’s kind of like a campaign. On the one hand, that’s actually part of the drawback, and that’s part of the debate about this as a process. You know, most conferences, it’s more like a dictatorial-type system, where you have whatever the organizing committee is, which is just a few people from an astrological organization, and they pick out who is gonna speak at the conference. And it’s usually a mixture of people that work for the organization. So they’re giving them speaking positions in exchange for the fact that they’ve done all this work for free for the org. So it’s like a quid pro quo thing. I don’t know if that’s the correct phrase. Is that the correct phrase?
KS: I think it might be.
CB: Okay. So there’s an element of that usually. And then there’s another element of just this group of people trying to pick out who they think should get speaking positions because there’ll be a draw, or because they’re doing good work or whatever. So there’s this subjective element to it, and that’s typically the way things are done. This time they’re trying something different by having a component of it or a large portion being voting. And of course the downside is voting sometimes ends up being like a popularity contest.
AC: Not ‘almost’ a popularity contest.
CB: Yeah, so it’s literally a popularity contest. And there’s something a little bit lame and superficial about that to some extent. But on the other hand, from an organizational standpoint, I can see the benefit, because then they know the people who got voted in are people that have large followings of people that want to hear them speak. So they know that it’s not just gonna be an empty room if they invite that person to speak at the conference, but that people will actually show up. The other end of it that I liked is it’s actually really unique and really new to have a voice or a say as a member of one the organizations in that process, and the thing that struck me yesterday, when I cast my ballot for the AFA vote, is it was just kind of new and interesting. Even though it seems so obvious and such a natural thing to have to some extent, it’s actually kind of new in the astrological community. So I’d recommend people—if you’re a member of one of the astrological organizations—to do that, to give your vote or voice here, whatever your preference or opinion in the process, and actively participate in the process since it will make a difference. All right, so I don’t think I need to promote that anymore. Is there anything else we need to say related to that, or related to other conference things? We’re all gonna be at the ISAR conference in October, right?
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Yes.
CB: Awesome.
KS: And it’s gonna be great to be able to connect in person. That will be lovely.
CB: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that. I already know a lot of podcast listeners who are gonna be there. That’s the biggest conference event of the year. I just found out I’ll be speaking at NORWAC next year in May.
KS: Oh, congratulations.
CB: Yeah. So I’m looking forward to that. And I’m excited to be back there again because that’s always a really good conference.
KS: Super fun.
CB: Yeah. And I’m sure there’ll be lots of other events between now and then. All right, so with that, I think we can wrap up for the day. Do you guys have any other parting words or other things you’d like to mention before we go?
KS: Just enjoy September.
CB: Definitely. Austin?
KS: I don’t know if Austin has anything.
AC: Experience September.
KS: Oh, there you go.
AC: It will not be boring. It’ll be really interesting.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And it’s not gonna be interesting as code for ‘awful’.
KS: No.
AC: It’s gonna be really interesting.
KS: You actually mean that, Austin.
AC: Yeah. There’s gonna be a lot of this and a lot of that. It’s not like a stable and fortunate month. I would say it’s unstable, but not necessarily disastrous. It’s more like lots of really intense moves this way and that way. And I think that probably a lot of 2016 will make sense in a way that it didn’t before by the time you get to the end of September.
CB: Brilliant.
KS: Perfect.
CB: I love that. And that’s a good note to sign off on. Especially cuz it’s connected to the earlier eclipse cycle that happened in March, right?
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Totally.
CB: Okay. So thinking back to things that were happening or starting or forming at that time sort of being brought to completion in some sense, at least in terms of this year, around this time. All right, well, I think that brings us to the end of the show. Of course the sponsor this month is me, basically. I have to plug that really quickly. So for Patreon, people on the $5 and $10 tier, again, the $5 prize is my intro to electional astrology course, which has some awesome lectures that basically tell you all the steps that I take in order to pick an auspicious chart each month. So if you’ve ever looked at these charts that I’m rambling off during these episodes and wondered why the hell I came to certain conclusions about the chart, then you should totally sign up for that course. I have five long lectures—I think it totals out to 15 hours of lectures, or 20 or something like that—where I teach you the basic and advanced principles of electional astrology with lots of example charts. And then of course, the Hellenistic course, that’s my big one, and that’s the one that I’m trying to finish a 700-page book on right now. When you sign up for it, you get access to over 90 hours of lecture material. So if you like listening to me on the podcast, but you’d like something more practical and much more technique-oriented, then you would love the Hellenistic astrology course, cuz it’s just a ton of very practical techniques and tons of chart examples and demonstrations. And there’s a private Facebook forum for members of the group where they talk about the techniques and share charts and stuff like that.
Whenever people sign up for the course—I’m currently charging $400 for it. But every time a person signs up, the first thing I hear is, “Oh, my God, you have so much material in this course. You should be charging a lot more for it.” So that’s probably true, and at some point that will probably change, because I’ve been periodically raising the price of the course over the past few years, but for now it’s still a pretty good deal if you sign up. And of course anybody that does sign up, I’m basically putting all of that money into funding writing the book at this point. So that would be helpful for me just in terms of finishing off the book process, and hopefully—by the end of this upcoming Mercury retrograde period—having it all together finally. I liked some of Austin’s comments about cleaning things up and bringing some Jupiter in Virgo to completion. That sort of resonated with me in terms of the book. All right, I think that’ll be the last episode for September, unless the mood strikes me and we suddenly need to do another podcast on something. But until then I guess we’ll check in again next time. So thanks, Austin and Kelly, for joining me.
KS: Anytime.
AC: Yeah, my pleasure.
KS: Thanks, guys.
CB: Awesome. Very quickly, what are your websites, again?
AC: I’m austincoppock.com. A-U-S-T-I-N-C-O-P-P-O-C-K.com.
CB: And what’s yours, Kelly?
KS: Oh, my gosh. Kellysastrology.com. And it’s Kelly, K-E-L-L-Y.
CB: Awesome. And mine of course is chrisbrennanastrologer.com. So thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
AC: Bye.
KS: Bye.