The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 92, titled:
Astrology Forecast Discussion for November 2016
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on October 27, 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 Monday, October 24, 2016, starting just after—or starting right at 3:22 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 92nd 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 Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock about the astrological forecast for the month of November 2016, as well as looking at some auspicious dates from the vantage point of electional astrology. Kelly and Austin, welcome back to the show.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey, guys.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris. Thanks for having us.
CB: Hey. So this is our first episode since ISAR. We got to spend a whole week together—just last week—for the first time in, what, a year, a year-and-a-half?
KS: I think it’s been like two years. It would have been when we were all at NORWAC together.
CB: Oh, right, okay.
AC: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so a year-and-a-half then?
KS: Maybe 18 months.
CB: Crazy. Okay, well, we had a great time. We got to spend not as much time as we would like, but we got to have some great conversations at different points throughout the week.
KS: Totally.
AC: Yeah, it was really nice.
KS: So good to be together in person.
CB: Yeah. So what was you guys’ overall experience of the conference? I mean, I had a pretty great time overall. I think that was the general sense that most people had, right?
KS: I think so. I loved it, but I’m a bit of a junkie for that kind of time together. I did so much, cuz I did come in early to participate in the ISAR consulting skills and ethics training before the conference, which I found to be really useful. But seeing everyone—seeing you guys—one of the funniest things was to meet podcast listeners. When you get introduced in person, and you speak, so many would say, “Your voice sounds really familiar.” And then they’d pause for a minute, and then they go, “Oh, you do that show with Chris,” and I’m like, “Yes.” So that was really lovely. Apparently, we’ve gone on car rides with people. We’ve done housework with other people. So it was fun to see everyone. The biggest thing I love about conferences is—sorry, Chris?
CB: Scuba diving, skydiving—many places the podcast has been to.
KS: We’ve been all over. And the biggest thing that I love about conferences is people are voices or presences that you connect with through social media or online, and when you’re at a conference, it’s like the energy of that person is made manifest into a real body. And that’s really special, to be able to spend time with people in the flesh.
CB: Yeah, it was crazy just how many—I think ISAR said at the end there was something 500 people there, including the speakers.
KS: Yes.
CB: And it was just crazy how many people we met that had listened to the podcast. It just kind of blew me away.
KS: Yeah, you’re doing a good job, Chris. And that’s probably why you won that big award that we have to mention, too.
CB: Right. So on the, what was it, the fourth or fifth night of the conference, they held a banquet, and they gave out two awards. One of them was for the best journal article that had been published in the ISAR journal over the past two years, and the other was a new award for best audiovisual production. And the ISAR membership gave us an award for the podcast, which was crazy and great.
AC: Yeah, it’s legit, too. You have a shiny plaque, I believe.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right. I have a shiny plaque. Once we do another video episode, I’ll have to get it hung in the background. And now I get to say, literally, ‘an award-winning podcast’.
KS: Well-deserved, Chris. You’ve put a lot of time and effort and energy into making sure the podcast is the quality that it is, so I think it’s well-deserved.
AC: Yeah. And it’s nice to see people reacting to something that’s of good quality and not just pandering to the lowest common denominator. I think we all know that astrology has that problem where only the most salacious, fourth grade reading level stuff gets popular. And so, it’s really nice that you’ve been putting out something that has something of an appeal to people who’ve been studying the art for a while, or even a very long time, but it’s not alienating to beginners. You’re speaking to a number of audiences simultaneously. And so, it makes me happy that I’m not the only one who likes it.
CB: Right. Yeah, I mean, it’s been really wild. It’s been great over the past year just building this up with you and Kelly. And I think that’s been the biggest thing in terms of expanding our audience and keeping up the quality of the show and developing a consistent listenership, just having this recurring feature each month, where we come in and check in with everybody month after month and do our thing. Yeah, so thanks to everyone who listens for voting for the podcast, that was really awesome. And thanks to everybody who came up to us at the conference and expressed that they enjoyed the show, that they listened to the show or what have you.
KS: Super exciting.
CB: Yeah, I mean, I guess this is basically a recap. So what were some of the other highlights? I mean, Kelly, you did the ethics and counseling training at the very beginning.
KS: Yeah. And I’m happy if I can just mention that for a minute. Long story short, I do have a background in counseling, which I did years ago. And over the years, teaching other student astrologers, I really noticed that to be a good consulting astrologer, if that’s the direction you want to go in with your astrology—you don’t have to, cuz there’s many ways that you can use astrology or share astrology. But if you want to go down that client consulting route, having some good communication skills is critical to how well you’ll be able to build a practice, and how rich and helpful you’ll be able to make your consults. And I was just almost blown away by the quality of the training that they offer. It’s just about basic communication skills. But when you work with people on a one-on-one basis, there’s a level of intimacy that is created between the astrologer and the client, and knowing how to effectively communicate is equally important as knowing good astrology, if you want to be really useful and helpful for your client. So I really can’t speak highly enough about that particular part of my time in California with the ISAR conference. The training was—part of the reason I’m doing it is that we’ve got a new ISAR VP for Eastern Canada, and over the next couple of years, ISAR’s looking to do some of these trainings in and around Toronto, which I’ll be assisting with. So it was great to just experience the training and get a feel for it. But if you are wanting to go in the consulting direction, I would highly recommend getting involved with this program. It’s two-and-a-half days, and you do it usually before a conference. I think the next one that’s pre-conference will be before UAC, but they do offer trainings in different areas globally. And it’s just really effective, simple communication skills that you can incorporate into your astrology that, honestly, will blow you away with how effective they can be. So it was very good.
CB: That’s awesome. Yeah, I’m glad we have things like that that are happening in the community or are being offered like that. The normal route is if somebody wants to start reading charts or do it professionally, they just start doing it at some point, usually with friends and family or something like that, but then eventually with clients, oftentimes not charging very much. But then it just becomes this process of learning as they go, and it makes a big difference in terms of learning some of those skills in terms of counseling that you might not get otherwise. And that’s actually one of the—I don’t know if I want to say ‘problems’, but one of the issues with that is sometimes astrologers then get into reading charts and doing it professionally without ever getting any of that training in terms of what being a good counselor is like, or some of the things you should be aware of as counseling techniques, or things that you should be careful about without that training. So it’s good that that’s being offered now in different places.
KS: Absolutely. I think it’s something you want to take advantage of if that’s what you’re interested in for sure.
CB: Sure. Let’s see, what else? So you did that as a pre-conference thing. And then when did you do your lecture, Kelly?
KS: I did it on Saturday morning, around 11:15. So it was kind of nice to get it out of the way before the Saturday night party, which was good. Saturday’s a nice time to present.
CB: Yeah, that’s like right towards the middle of the conference it seems, so that’s a pretty good place. Mine was at the very end, which is always annoying just in terms of having to wait until the very end of the conference before you can be done with the hard part or be done with the actual work.
KS: True. But, you know, you’ve got a fairly high profile these days, Chris, and sometimes they do put people like yourself on the last day just to keep everyone excited towards the end.
CB: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it’s usually pretty random in terms of where you do get placed. But it’s just one of those funny things that you don’t think about until you get there, if you are a presenter. Sometimes you randomly get placed right at the front, and you get it out of the way right away, and then you relax for the rest of the conference, other times there’s this buildup until you eventually give your talk at the end. So it’s kind of a random thing that you don’t think about till you’re actually there.
KS: Totally.
CB: And, Austin, you helped to organize a number of free speech lectures for AYA people, right? Or at least you were involved.
AC: Yeah, ISAR’s been a great friend to the Association for Young Astrologers the last several years. Or at least the several years that I’ve been president of the AYA, I can’t speak to your tenure. But, yeah, they reached out to us and offered six of the lunch speech slots, and so I helped to find and coordinate a number of speakers. I got to see some ‘baby birds’ fly for the first time, in particular, your very own Patrick Watson. That was his first speech at a conference. He was well overdue. There were a number of other good speeches as well. And just in terms of the AYA, it was actually at the conference that I officially made public my resignation as the president. I’m succeeded by Alia Wesala in whose capable hands the AYA will continue.
CB: That’s awesome. I guess we didn’t have an actual handing-over ceremony, but there was definitely a passing of the guard at this conference, right?
AC: Absolutely. I don’t want to talk smack about the ISAR conference—cuz I really enjoyed 90% of it—but there was an event on Friday night whose idea was not equal to its execution. The hotel had some rules that were imposed on the org crawl that I think made it a little bit less joyous and bacchanalian than it was originally envisioned to be. So we originally thought that that would provide a party context where you could yell at a bunch of people to be quiet for a second, but it didn’t quite work out. But I think we all survived, and we introduced Alia to a great number of people. I only regret that I wasn’t able to purchase a little Halloween crown to hand over.
CB: Right.
AC: Obviously, I lost the crown that you gave me some years ago.
CB: Yeah, I remember we actually did have a handing-over ceremony. We have a nice picture of it from UAC 2012—in Michael Lutin’s suite—where there was a party one night, and we actually announced that you were now the president. So it seemed like a nice, literal handing-over back then. I can’t believe it’s been four-and-a-half years since that time that you’ve been running the organization.
AC: I can.
CB: You can.
AC: Heavy is the head. So we might have to do an unofficial one, or a delayed official one at the next big conference where it’s like, “Well, Alia’s been president for a year-and-a-half now, but here’s a party, and there’s the crown.”
CB: Right. Yeah, she gave a talk that was excellent.
AC: Yeah, she has a background in social work, so she gave a really interesting talk, and I think this is of general interest to astrologers. She gave this really interesting talk about how the quality of resilience can be seen or aided by astrology. You know, resilience is something that’s really fascinating to people who work in psychology or social work, because resilient people are the people who come from the tough environment, the bad town, the rough family or whatever and yet somehow end up being amazing. It’s the ‘X’ factor. And so, Alia’s talk was looking at how can astrology help people become more resilient to respond to change in positive ways. How do you embody that Nietzschean maxim of ‘what does not kill you makes you stronger’? That’s true sometimes. But a lot of times what does not kill you just kind of hurts and sucks, right? And so, that ‘X’ factor is resilience. She gave a really interesting talk on trying to look at that through an astrological lens, asking whether astrology was actually an art and a practice that could help build or fortify our resilience, our ability to change.
KS: It was a really thought-provoking presentation that she gave.
CB: Yeah, it was really, really good. There was actually a lot of good—her free speech lecture was great. Alexander Zolotov gave one. And he actually got that together at the last minute, right?
AC: Yeah. He was a one-week out replacement for Nick Civitella, who couldn’t make it.
KS: Wow.
CB: And that was really interesting because he was raising this question of why is there this repetition—in the Chaldean order decan system from the Hellenistic period—that became the main system of decans and the essential dignities in the Medieval period. Why does it have that weird repetition? It sort of starts with Mars ruling the first decan of Aries, and then it ends with Mars ruling the first decan of Aries.
AC: Last decan of Pisces.
CB: Oh, sorry. Yeah, last decan of Pisces. And he sort of drew out this group conversation to try to work through this as an issue, and it ended up resulting in a lot of really interesting observations during the course of that lecture.
AC: Yeah, yeah. It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time, I don’t have an answer to. Cuz there’s no repetition of planetary rulers anywhere else in that system of assigning planets to decans, and so it was very obviously a choice. And so, trying to figure out the rationale behind that choice is an interesting exercise. Maybe we’ll actually figure it out at some point.
CB: Yeah. I mean, he pointed out we needed to be looking at it from the perspective of Cancer rising from the Thema Mundi. And one of the things that happened for me in that lecture—that I noticed when he did that, that was really interesting—was just if you use Firmicus Maternus’ version of the Thema Mundi that has 15° of Cancer rising, in that decan system, it put Mercury as the rising decan. According to the system, it was on the ascendant, and the 1st house of course is the house that’s associated with Mercury in the Hellenistic tradition. But then what was weird is the other three planets that were on the degrees of the other three angles were all planets that had their exaltation in those specific signs. So the Sun rules the second decan of Aries, and that would have been on the degree of the midheaven. The descendant was Mars ruling the middle decan of—
AC: Yep, middle Cap.
CB: —Capricorn, and Capricorn is its exaltation. And then, finally, at the IC, we had Saturn’s decan in the middle of Libra, and Libra of course is the exaltation of Saturn. And I thought that was a really interesting and weird coincidence, and I wondered if that wasn’t deliberate somehow.
AC: Yeah. You know, there’s been some academic Egyptological research, and there’s at least one researcher who thinks that there’s a case to be made for some Egyptian input into the exaltations of the planets. And that’s not widely-accepted at this point, but that is out there, and that might be one piece which points towards that. Or perhaps points towards a much earlier intersection of the Babylonian and Egyptian systems of sky lore.
CB: Sure. Yeah, so there were a lot of great free speech talks. There were a lot of great non-free speech talks. Kelly, you gave yours on Saturday. I gave mine on Sunday eventually on zodiacal releasing, of which I’m selling a recording of now through my website. Are you selling your recording as well, Kelly? Or do you already have other talks like that up?
KS: I will be selling the recording from ISAR, but I did just actually load up my two lectures from the NORWAC conference earlier this year. I spoke on firdaria in one talk and the 11th house of ‘good spirit’, why the 11th house is kind of a lucky house and how you can work with it. That was another talk from NORWAC. So, yeah, I’ve just put those lectures up on my website for sale.
CB: Okay, awesome. I’ll put links to those in the description page for this episode. Other things—go ahead.
AC: I was just gonna say, Kelly, I didn’t even know you worked with firdaria. You’re such a secret librarian of techniques.
KS: I know. I think Chris mentioned something like that when I spoke on temperament at ISAR 2014. He was like, “I didn’t even know you used that.” I was like, “Oh, yeah.” I don’t know, I was really lucky early in my astrological career to get a good introduction to quite a lot of these other techniques, I guess, and I love them.
AC: Yeah, you’re just so friendly and approachable that people don’t know to look for the fearsome brain.
KS: That’s so sweet, thank you.
CB: Put that on a book cover or something. So what else? And then, what Patrick and I talked about in the last episode ended up being quoted in The Washington Post very early in the week, which was wild. And that sort of leads into the final presidential panel, which was, for me, sort of like the culmination of the conference just in terms of that being the final event that the conference ended with, which I talked about with Patrick a little bit. But he actually had to go home early and wasn’t in the audience, so we didn’t get into it that much. But you guys were actually there in the audience for the final presidential panel, right?
AC: Right. I had that giant foam finger that said, “Go, Chris.” That was me.
CB: Right. I did see you in the back with that, with a contingent of other astrologers that we knew.
AC: Yeah, the bad kids.
KS: Yeah, we’re the ‘back-row bandits’.
CB: Yeah, I mean, I was up on the stage. But what did you guys think of the final panel?
AC: I would have liked to have seen everyone have a little bit more time to explain how they got to their conclusions. There was a lot of technique happening, but it was almost like it was sort of jump-cut like an ‘80s music video or a ‘90s music video. And so, it would be like, “And here’s 17 charts. And, yeah, Clinton’s gonna win.”
CB: Right. I mean, that’s literally what we all had to say. And there would have been more of that, but they cut all of our time in half at the last minute, so that everything we had prepared we had to throw out the window and just say, “We’re using this, this, and this chart and Clinton will win,” and that’s the end.
AC: You know, honestly, I would have rather you either had less time or more time. Like if you’d just said, “I use this technique, this is what I think,” just a one sentence answer, I would have been okay with that. Or if you had time to really get into where you were drawing your conclusions from, I would have been into that, too. But I feel like it was sort of a middle-ground that didn’t work, that didn’t quite satisfy the need for brevity or depth.
CB: Sure, sure. Yeah, and then I did my four minutes at the beginning, but then I literally didn’t say anything else for the rest of the panel until the very end. And there were a lot of, what seemed like to me, wild predictions starting to be thrown about, in what started with a comment on the first panel that somebody made about Inauguration Day not happening possibly due to some aspect. I don’t even remember what it was. And then somehow that became the focal point of discussion on the second panel, where the moderator kept bringing it back to that topic for a while. And both on the panel, as well as in the audience, it became a sort of free-for-all. For some reason, there was a microphone going around the audience and then different people were throwing in additional related statements in connection with that.
AC: Yeah. To me, this brought up a couple of issues. So the conversation, especially towards the end, became something that reminded me of sitting around and having a few drinks with astrologers and just kinda speculating. “Dude, have you seen that chart? That chart’s crazy.” And I’ve totally done that in private. We’ve all done that, right?
CB: Right.
AC: “Dude, have you seen March 17 of 2020? That shit’s crazy.” And so, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that kind of discussion. Good stuff comes out of that. But I felt like the degree of publicity—which that presidential panel had—provided a context that was maybe not super useful for that discussion. You know, I don’t know what got reported and what not, but there was press at those presidential panels. You know, the wild speculation that you have to go through to get down to what your prediction will be is maybe not something that’s useful to be available to be reported on. That’s my opinion, at least at this point in time. And I think it raises this larger question of how we do astrology when the world is watching, as opposed to when we’re just being ignored, because I think a lot of astrologers are used to being ignored. You know, astrology seems to be intersecting more powerfully both positively and negatively with mainstream discourses right now, and I don’t know that that’s good or bad or other. I think it’s both, or all three. You know, it got me thinking that we, as a community, need to think more about how we act when certain people are watching and recording. And I think that maybe that’s something that I hope that we’ll be thinking about collectively.
CB: Yeah, I mean, that was definitely one of the issues that came up, that a lot of people talked about. There was an attempt to get as much press there for the presidential panels as possible. And that definitely happened for the first one, and a lot of the statements that were made on the first panel then suddenly ended up being headlines in some newspaper articles or some online articles, like The Guardian and The LA Times and everything else. One of the comments that somebody made to me afterwards was actually that, luckily, or thankfully, the press didn’t actually show up to the second panel. ISAR has spent so much time promoting the first one and doing a press conference on the first day that the press seemed to have gone home by the time of the second panel. And honestly, I think that was good because—as you were saying, Austin—a large part of what ended up happening was almost like an internal conversation that might have been okay amongst a group of friends, or might have been okay within the astrological community, where people are throwing around different charts and techniques and throwing around speculations about what this might indicate or what have. Something that might be okay or might be discussed amongst practitioners instead was being broadcast to this broader audience. And I don’t think it would have made astrologers look particularly good if that did end up getting covered in the same way that the first panel had because of a lot of not-great statements that were made. And then there was this separate side issue of what kind of predictions are appropriate to make in a public setting. Would you make the same statements to a client, if there was a client sitting in front of you? Or would that be terribly unethical to make some of the statements that were made like that to a client in private?
AC: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I also wanted to add that, again, it’s one thing to have a conversation in a more insular context, but when you start saying things publicly you run the risk of accidentally validating political narratives that you don’t want flying around. I always think of Alexander Cummins’ study of the practice and political use of astrology during the English Civil War. It’s a good book. It’s called The Starry Rubric. And you see astrologers being drafted into making very strong political statements using astrology that may or may not actually bear out, and you see this intersection of astrology and power turning astrology into a tool for propaganda. I don’t want to see that happen to astrology. I’d like to see that minimized, as astrology seems to be moving into a period where the political media power is paying more attention to what astrologers say.
CB: Sure. Yeah, and that issue of astrology for propaganda purposes is a recurring issue in the astrological community that at some point is worth talking about. But to what extent is the astrology being influenced by the person’s political leanings? Or to what extent is the discussion and the types of questions that are coming up partially dictated by a person’s political leanings and the media narrative that they themselves adopted or subscribed to versus how much of this is the actual astrology talking? And, I mean, some of that just becomes relevant on a very basic level. An astrologer cannot generally make a statement or a prediction about something that’s outside of the scope of what they think is possible to happen. So almost all astrological predictions always take place within the context or within the scope of what the astrologer thinks is possible or what possible scenarios they can even imagine themselves, and then they sort of make their statements within the context of that. So there’s always a context for astrological predictions.
AC: That’s a really interesting point. To a certain degree, every astrologer’s statements reveal their viewpoint on reality and what is real and what can become real and what can’t.
CB: Right. And what’s within the realm of plausibility, what’s something we should seriously consider as a plausible scenario versus something that that person’s not considering as a plausible scenario, or something that the person’s not mentioning because it’s not within their field of vision. I mean, that actually becomes an issue. And this came up in the panel, but this is sort of like a side comment. But what comes up with situations like major world events that haven’t happened before, or major catastrophes and stuff, is that if it’s something that’s new, that hasn’t happened before, then sometimes the astrologer might be able to describe it in very broad, archetypal terms, but otherwise they might not be very good about explaining the specifics, because it’s not even something that they themselves can comprehend on a practical level actually happening.
AC: Yeah, yeah, totally.
KS: Yeah, that’s a really good point.
CB: Sure. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I’m trying to think if there’s anything else related to that that we needed to mention. It probably just deserves a whole show on its own. I mean, did you have anything, Kelly, from your perspective? What was your perspective on all of that?
KS: I mean, it is a bit tricky because I’m not American, and I don’t vote. So I know that my take—even as an astrologer and comments on predictions and stuff—is very much as an outsider, from someone who’s country’s political climate is a hundred times different to the US. You know, I’m Australian, and I live in Canada, and both of those countries run on a parliamentary system rather than a presidential system, which is a system in which you vote for a party to lead your country rather than a person to run your country. I mean, there’s subtle and very obvious ways that it’s different. So I always watch the American presidential race with a, “Wow, this is just different.” The panel itself at the conference, I did enjoy it. I thought some people were really eloquently spoken and were able to give some useful information in the time they had and were very clear: yourself, Chris, Nina Gryphon. I love her work on the Aries ingress chart. I think it’s very consistent, and she’s looked at that over more than a hundred years. Lee Lehman had some interesting things to say. I can’t remember the Vedic astrologer’s name, but I thought she was really interesting. So those people are examples—it might be Edith Hathaway, I’m not sure.
AC: It was Joni Patry.
KS: Oh, I beg your pardon, Joni. Okay, so maybe it was Edith in the Friday panel that I really enjoyed. Was there a different Vedic astrologer—
AC: Yeah, I believe that was Edith.
KS: —on the Thursday night? Yeah, just partly cuz I’m curious about the Vedic systems, cuz that’s something that’s sort of an area of newness for me. But I did think some people were very clear in getting their point across, and they seemed to make a prediction that was really well-grounded in reality. And then there were a couple of people who seemed to maybe be spinning off into the realm of what I felt personally was slightly implausible, so you just sort of take that with a grain of salt, I think.
CB: Sure. And the whole thing about plausibility or grounding, it’s such a subjective thing. You know, it’s difficult in astrology, but it’s interesting hearing different people’s reactions to different predictions and different people’s feelings about which ones were more grounded than others or which ones where it was clear what the logic was. And so, even if you don’t use that specific technique or that approach, you understand that they’re drawing it from something specific. Whereas sometimes when you read some of the predictions online, for example, you have this gut feeling that this person is focusing too much on one specific tiny thing. Like if they’re using an asteroid or something like that and the entire election depends on this asteroid. Sometimes that looks more like a bit of a stretch, but it’s interesting that the line between those is a little bit blurry, and I wish it wasn’t so blurry. I’ve been thinking more about if I was to put together a panel, what’s the best way to go about doing that, or how could one approve upon the present model? And one of those things is just making sure everybody’s doing really grounded work in whatever tradition they’re approaching it from. But figuring out how to not enforce that, but how to encourage that would be kind of tricky.
AC: Well, you and I, Chris, I believe, had a conversation about maybe looking at track records if you’re gonna have a panel of experts on something.
CB: Right. Yeah, it’s just that it wasn’t clear, to whatever extent, the track records of different people. Whatever the selection process was for these panels seemed a little bit random. And while they did actually provide a nice spectrum of different approaches and different types of astrology, there was also a bit of randomness to the selection process and it wasn’t clear that past track records were necessarily taken into account in terms of repeated successful predictions over the course of the last few elections or something like that. Yeah, I mean, part of the problem with that of course is that most of the time predictions aren’t even really tracked. So I did a summary of as many predictions as I could find during the last election in 2012. I was looking around for previous attempts at that, and I didn’t really find any. So one of the issues is oftentimes the predictions that people make for big events like this aren’t necessarily tracked or collated in a single source. And something like that would probably be useful and probably should be taken into account. Although I remember when we were having a conversation—we got into a heated conversation about this one night—and I remember there was some pushback from somebody about that in terms of where you draw the line. If somebody does get a prediction wrong, does that mean they’re necessarily gonna get this election wrong? Or what were the circumstances underlying their false prediction in the past? Obviously, there’s all sorts of issues surrounding that in terms of if you were to try to impose certain rules or standards. But it seems like something should be put in place in order to help elevate or put this on a more professional and reliable level. Given that that often becomes the main thing every four years whenever there’s a conference—and there is a presidential panel—it usually does get a decent amount of press. And so, it would be nice if we were doing our best as a community to make sure that these events went as smoothly and professionally and as successfully as possible. And I guess that’s the only reason I talked about it during the last episode and that we’re talking about it a little bit again here, wanting to hear you guys’ reactions to it. Okay, so we can leave that there. We don’t have to draw it anymore out. I don’t want to get anybody in trouble, and I think we’ve probably said enough. So let’s move onto our forecast. Actually, before we do that—the ISAR conference, I think all of us agree that it was an amazing conference overall, right?
KS: Totally.
AC: Oh, I had a great time.
KS: Yeah, highly recommend.
AC: There were so many wonderful and smart people there. We’re just nit-picking.
CB: Yeah, we’re just nit-picking as professionals. Or in my case, as somebody that agonizes over specific things, like the politics or the birth data of people like Hillary Clinton or whoever. You know, it’s easy to nit-pick things. So, yeah, overall it was a great conference. We all had a great time. It was fun hanging out. ISAR gave us all an award for the podcast, which was amazing. And, yeah, I’m looking forward to the next conference, which I should actually mention at this point. The next big conference—it’s gonna be the biggest conference of the year—is the NCGR conference that’s taking place in Baltimore in February. And I think you’re gonna be at that one as well, right, Kelly?
KS: I am.
CB: Okay, awesome.
KS: And that’ll be good. Austin, you’re not gonna be there?
AC: As alluring as Baltimore in February sounds, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to make it. No, I’m sure it’ll be wonderful. The conference will be inside, so the weather’s really not gonna be an issue. I don’t think I have time for that.
KS: Yeah. Yeah, they do take time.
CB: We might be able to change your mind. We might be able to talk you into it in the next few months. We’ll see what happens.
AC: Yeah, I’m always open to being convinced.
KS: Peer pressure.
CB: Well, the conference—despite, Austin, you’re kinda killing my promo here—
AC: Oh, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.
CB: That’s all right. The conference is one of our supporters this month. And we’re actually giving away a free pass to the conference to one of the lucky patrons on our $10 tier, so I just wanted to pitch it really quick. It’s from February 16-20, 2017. The title is “The Many Faces of Astrology,” and the underlying theme of the conference, which I really like, is the diversity of the astrological tradition and the ‘many faces of astrology’. So there’s gonna be 60 speakers from around the world. There’s gonna be pre- and post-conference workshops. There’s gonna be lunchtime lectures, a banquet, a trade show with lots of astrology books, and probably hundreds of astrologers. I’m gonna guess at least 300-400 astrologers in attendance. Plus, many people who have been guests or regular visitors to this podcast will be speaking there, including myself and Kelly and Leisa Schaim, Demetra George, Ian Waisler, Christopher Renstrom, Rick Levine, and many more. So you can find out more information about the conference at ncgrconference2017.com. And if you want to enter for a chance to win the free pass to the conference, then you just have to become a patron of the show on the $10 tier, and then we’ll do the drawing and announce the winner on Episode 94 of the show. Okay, so that’s my pitch for that. So Kelly and I will be there. I really gotta do a live show. Cuz I was at that ISAR conference last week, and I wished that I had brought some better—I just need to invest in some better mobile equipment for doing live podcasts. But we’ll have to see if I can set something up by February. At the very least for you and I, Kelly, if we can’t drag Austin to the East Coast in February.
KS: Yeah, he’s in California, so it’s a big ask for him. For me, I’m coming from Canada, you’re coming from Denver, it’s much of a muchness.
CB: Right. We’re actually going to Baltimore in February as a sort of vacation.
KS: An improvement.
CB: Yeah, from our snowy wonderlands.
KS: But on the weather point, everyone was just asking me, “Oh, how lovely to be in California for two weeks,” blah, blah, blah, cuz I was out there for quite a while with the ISAR conference. And I said, “Look, California is lovely, but I was inside.” You know, the conference, as Austin said, it’s inside, it’s busy. You don’t get outside a lot, so location is less relevant in terms of that. It’s just cost of airfare, I guess.
CB: Right. Yeah, totally. The last one was a West Coast conference, and you had a lot more people and it was a lot easier to get there. But this is the East Coast conference. And for a lot of people that are on the East Coast, Baltimore is pretty easy to fly into and should be pretty accessible. So I’m expecting to see a lot of people there, and it’s definitely gonna be the big conference of the year.
KS: It’s actually the biggest conference in 2017, and it’ll be the biggest conference until we have UAC. Because after NCGR February 2017, some of the smaller, regional conferences like NORWAC in Seattle will still happen in May, and GLAC and SOTA will still happen. But the next big one after NCGR won’t be till May 2018.
CB: Right. So this is the last big hurrah before UAC 2018.
KS: Exactly.
CB: Cool. Well, I hope to see some people there. Why don’t we get onto the forecast for this month.
KS: Yes.
CB: So there’s a few major things. I mean, it’s not like a crazy month like September in terms of eclipses and major outer planet ingresses and things like that, but otherwise there’s a few major alignments this month that are probably worth highlighting, right?
KS: Yes.
CB: So I’m looking at my Planet Watcher 2016 Calendar, and there’s two or three that stand out the most to me. One of them—you have already mentioned, Kelly—is the Jupiter-Pluto square. But then also Neptune stations direct on the 19th of November, and we’ve got an ingress of Mars into Aquarius. So Mars is finally really fully picking up steam again and is starting to move through the signs at a normal pace, right? Like a month per sign or something?
KS: Yes, that is correct.
AC: More like five-six weeks.
KS: Six weeks, I think.
CB: Yeah, looks like it stays there in Aquarius until December 19. So you’re right, like five or six weeks, Austin. So what do you guys think about the alignments for November? Is the Jupiter-Pluto square the main thing for you guys or the main signature?
AC: I would say that that is our entry point into something we’re gonna be doing for a while that does center on Jupiter. Part of the way I’ve been looking at Jupiter in Libra—Jupiter in Libra wants the world to be a better place. It wants harmony. It wants peace. It wants peace accords. And it can want that, but it’s one planet. And if we look at the history of Jupiter’s time in Libra, we see people trying to move towards that and sometimes achieving it, but a lot of times those peace accords get frustrated or shot down or delayed. And so, once we get into mid-November, we see Jupiter in Libra in a tight square with Pluto in Capricorn, right? So if Pluto doesn’t want the same peace that Jupiter does—which it doesn’t—then we have the potential for conflict and interference. In addition to that, it won’t happen this month, but after Jupiter clears that square to Pluto, it’ll be moving into an opposition with Uranus in Aries. And Uranus in Aries is a lot of things, but mellow and peaceful is not one of them. And so, it’s actually going to be relatively close to Jupiter’s retrograde station—excuse me, Jupiter’s going to station retrograde pretty close to that opposition to Uranus, and then come back into the square with Pluto, and then later next year, do both of those again. And so, this is the beginning of the challenges to Jupiter in Libra. Can we bring our lives into balance into greater balance? Into a more rooted and flexible balance? And if we want to do so, this is the minefield or the obstacle course. It’s sort of activating not quite the Uranus-Pluto square with the intensity that we had in 2012-15, but it is a planet that wants peace and coherence dealing with two rather discordant bodies by hard aspect. And so, I would say that we get a very thorough introduction to that theme this November.
KS: And just to add to that, Austin, I think you make a really good point. This is like the start of the next collection of outer planetary configurations, which are gonna run all the way through until August-September of 2017, I think.
AC: Yeah.
KS: The Jupiter-Pluto square is exact on November 24, 2016, around 16° of Libra and Capricorn. It is a big energy. The interpretive word for squares I always think of is ‘adjustment’. And certainly with Jupiter-Pluto, large but different forces locking heads or having to accommodate each other when they really don’t want to. And November 24, that’s Thanksgiving for you guys in the States.
CB: Right.
KS: So I just thought it was really interesting. The biggest aspect of the month is kind of kicking in on arguably the most intense time for a lot of people with that celebration.
CB: Right. Actually right around the time it goes exact, shortly after that, there’s a Moon-Jupiter conjunction right there at 15° of Libra. And Venus is also about to exactly conjoin Pluto on November 24 at 15° of Capricorn. So there’s like this weird alignment of inner planets that complements and sets it off right at the same time.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah. And so, just speaking of the Moon, that’s gonna be something to look at as a trigger a couple of times every month for the next several. Basically, 15-22 cardinal, when the Moon’s there—which it is four times a month—it’s gonna trigger that Jupiter-Pluto-Uranus T-square. For this month, it’s mostly gonna be Jupiter-Pluto, but really it’s a three-part contest or argument or negotiation. And so, one thing that that means is every time the Moon is in those degrees of Cancer, we get a grand cross—a cardinal cross with different degrees of intensity. And so, we get our first one of those this month. Basically, I guess it would start on the evening of November 17, which is a Thursday. And then we’d wake up into—yeah, let’s just say the evening of November 17, which is a Thursday. And so, we have that action, that cardinal cross action. And as we learned during the first-half of this decade, cardinal tension makes stuff happen.
CB: Right.
AC: You know, things happen: good, bad, and other. It rarely manifests simply on the imaginal level. Pieces move. The pieces on the board move.
KS: There will be corresponding real-world events or action taken. I mean, cardinal signs just want things to move or progress, don’t they?
AC: Yeah, progress and move. I think maybe from the perspective of cardinal signs, it’s progress.
KS: That’s true. Well, I don’t know, cardinal signs are often very goal-oriented, or they have a specific target that they’re looking for.
AC: Totally.
KS: Yeah, so it’s like there is a specific thing that’s coming up, that needs attention. But to get there or to achieve it, you might have to adjust how you thought you would get there.
CB: And I thought it was interesting, also—that you mentioned, Austin—that this is like the first of a series of these contacts between the Moon and Pluto, these squares. So sort of like what we had over the past year, the Saturn-Neptune squares which first went exact last November, then we had another one in June, and then we had the third and final one in August. This is the first in a series of those hard aspects with Pluto. So it’s sort of like setting off a sequence that’s gonna play out over the course of the next year.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Yeah.
CB: I’m looking up some of the dates on those. So the first one is November 24. That’s the first exact Jupiter-Pluto square. Then it looks like we’ve got another one that goes exact March 30, connecting events between late November and late March. And then—when’s the final one? The final one is sometime—
KS: I think it’s August or September. Hang on.
CB: It looks like August.
KS: The Jupiter square Pluto is early August 2017.
CB: Yeah, August 4, it looks like. It goes exact at 17 Libra-17 Capricorn. So that’s gonna be a whole interesting dynamic. Sometimes when we get into astrology, you first learn transits. It’s so much oriented around the exact aspect going exact and sometimes you assume that there’s gonna be an exact event that takes place. But in reality sometimes it’s more like a series or a sequence of events that plays out over an extended period of time, if those two planets repeat that aspect over a period of a year, like this one. So thinking about it more in a long-term context is probably helpful.
AC: Yeah. And a lot of times the meaning of the first event is only revealed by the other events, right?
CB: Right.
AC: It’s like if you read the first chapter of a book; there’s something that might happen that may or may not be a big deal to the characters in that first chapter. But it might be revealed at the end—when you get to the conclusion—that there were actually some very key things that happened there, you just didn’t realize it at the time.
CB: Right. Totally. Yeah, and often it can be very subtle like that. And that’s actually one of the annoying things about astrological research. And I brought this up several times in the podcast, but it’s still a recurring theme. Sometimes you will have a major alignment like that, and something important will happen that will end up being relevant to you, but sometimes you just don’t know about it, or you don’t realize the significance of that yet. I mean, sometimes that can be positive. Like you meet somebody one day in a coffee shop, or that you start working with someday, but you don’t really see that as significant at the time. But then later, if you end up getting married to that person, you might think back to that day, at some point in the future, and realize its significance, and realize how you totally didn’t realize at the time how that one day would change the rest of your life..
AC: Yeah, that’s a great example.
CB: Yeah, so that’s interesting. And it’s also interesting—I mean, we’ve also gone over this before in the past—just the fact that even though Uranus and Pluto are now getting a decent amount of space from each other, we still have other outer planets and inner planets that keep periodically coming in and then lining up with those two, and almost re-completing the square, or like the Medieval astrologers say, ‘transferring the light’ between those two planets.
AC: Yeah, ‘carrying the light’. I was just thinking of that.
KS: Yeah.
CB: And it’s interesting in that way how sometimes that can extend and draw out some of those longer-term transits that we would sometimes consider to either no longer be active or no longer be at their height. But then in fact when you get a planet like Jupiter or Saturn or something coming in and just repeatedly pinging both of them—in this instance, through an opposition and a square over the course of the next year—you sort of realize that square between Uranus and Pluto isn’t really over at all yet, at least as far that configuration with Jupiter is concerned.
AC: Yeah. And Jupiter basically squares Pluto, opposes Uranus, stations retrograde, opposes Uranus, squares Pluto, stations direct, squares Pluto, and then opposes Uranus.
CB: Nice.
KS: Yes.
AC: It’s literally going back and forth, weaving them back together.
CB: Right.
KS: Weaving them—that’s a nice way of putting it.
CB: Definitely. So what are the dates on the Uranus hard aspects, then? Do either of you have those?
KS: Oh, yeah. Jupiter is going to oppose Uranus. The first hit is 20 Aries/20 Libra, and that’s gonna be in the last 10 days of December 2016. Then we’ll have a second hit. It looks like it’s gonna be 22 Aries/Libra, and I think the exact hit will be early March of 2017. And then the third and final Jupiter-Uranus opposition will be 27 Aries/Libra, and that’s at the end of September 2017.
CB: Okay.
KS: The only thing I would add in there is that in addition to Jupiter dancing with Uranus and Pluto, Jupiter is also forming this on-again/off-again sextile with Saturn in Sag.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: The first hit is December, so we’ll probably touch on it more next month. And that’s a really juicy sextile because there’s a lot of positive reception between Jupiter and Saturn: Jupiter in Libra, the sign of Saturn’s exaltation versus Saturn in Sag, which is the sign of Jupiter’s rulership. So that sextile—I don’t know that it’s going to change the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto dynamic, but it does add a different element, I guess.
AC: Well, I think that having a pleasantly-received aspect with Saturn gives Jupiter in Libra and Jupiter in Libra’s significations and priorities an ability to stabilize and concretize and sort of hold a position that’s not otherwise suggested by Jupiter in an air sign, which could literally just blow away.
KS: Totally. And you’ve used two words, Austin, with Saturn that I always use, which is ‘stabilize’ and ‘concretize’. You know, Saturn will make real. And the other extension of those concepts is the idea of something being made manifest. It becomes concrete, becomes tangible. So there’s something very helpful for Jupiter about that, and probably helpful for Saturn, too. But I kind of really like that sextile coming up.
AC: Oh, yeah. It’s a saving grace for sure.
KS: Totally. And it’s gonna be very strong through December and into early January. Saturn and Jupiter are almost moving, I guess, close to the same speed, cuz it keeps activating. So very close and juicy.
CB: Yeah, and it’s amazing in terms of some of the electional charts for this time period as well. Because really the best electional charts, especially in November, take advantage of that sextile and make Saturn the ruler of the ascendant—because it’s being sextiled by Jupiter—and those are basically the best charts during this period. or you get a Sagittarius rising chart. While it puts Saturn in the 1st house, Jupiter is the ruler of the ascendant, and it makes Jupiter closely sextile to that Saturn in the 1st house, which seriously mitigates it and makes it not as problematic.
KS: And Jupiter’s in the 11th, too, making those lovely favorable configurations, which is such a good house for Jupiter.
CB: Yeah, and that’s the best thing during this entire period, with Saturn in Sagittarius. Especially later this year in November, you can get a ruler of the ascendant in the 11th house chart if you use either Saturn as the ruler of the ascendant with Aquarius rising, or if you use Sagittarius rising with Jupiter in Libra. Either way, you get the ruler of the ascendant in the 11th, which is just an excellent placement for the ruler of the ascendant as a general rule for electional astrology.
KS: Oh, yeah. And if you do the Aquarius rising, you’ve got Saturn in Sag in the 11th, but you also have Jupiter in Libra in the 9th. So, yeah, that’s really nice. I hadn’t even thought about it in that context. Good work, Chris.
CB: Well, yeah, I’ll take a little bit of credit, but part of that’s Leisa and her excellent electional charts for this month, the first of which takes place on November 1. And that actually does take advantage of the Aquarius rising. So November 1, set it for about 2:10 or somewhere around 2:00 in the afternoon. And people always ask me this question, but this is using local time. So you want to set it for about 2:00 in the afternoon in your location. You don’t need to add or subtract hours in the timezone. Cuz what you’re shooting for is for it to be about mid-Aquarius rising and that’s what’s important in your location. So if you do that—you have Aquarius rising in your location—then Saturn becomes the ruler of the ascendant in this chart on November 1. Saturn is in the 11th house, which is a good house. It’s in a day chart, cuz the Sun is up above the horizon. So Saturn is of-the-sect-in-favor, and thus, it’s gonna act very positively or very constructively. It’s with Venus. It’s actually in a separating conjunction with Venus. The Moon is also in Sagittarius in the 11th house. And Saturn has this pretty close sextile with Jupiter—which is its domicile lord—since Saturn is in Sagittarius, at 14° of that sign, while Jupiter is at 11° of Libra in the 9th house and applying to a sextile with Saturn with reception. And there’s no hard aspect with Mars or anything like that. Saturn is still separating from and is still getting away from that square with Neptune, but that’s not otherwise hugely problematic in this context. And, yeah, it’s a pretty strong chart, both for the ruler of the ascendant, as well as for the Moon, which is in early Sagittarius, and is applying primarily to a sextile with Jupiter in Libra. So it’s a pretty good chart right away there on November 1.
There’s a similar chart about a week later on November 6. This one’s about 1:00 in the afternoon, again, with Aquarius rising, Saturn basically in the same position in the 11th house sextile Jupiter. But in this chart, the Moon has now moved into Aquarius in the 1st house, and it’s applying to a trine with Jupiter in Libra in the 9th. So again, a very strong ruler of the ascendant and a very strong Moon placement, definitely emphasizing the 11th house and the 9th house, which would be good for friends, groups, alliances in terms of the 11th house, but also 9th house topics like learning, potentially travel, other exchanges in terms of education and things like that. So it’s a pretty good 11th house and 9th house. And one of the things that’s interesting about all these 11th house charts in November is the broader meaning of the 11th house that I’ve been researching lately, which comes up in modern astrology. But I’m surprised at how far back it goes in the tradition, about 2,000 years, where they associated the 11th house with the concept of ‘hope’, or the concept of ‘wishes’ or things that one wants to bring into their life or wants to achieve, or something that a person aspires towards. And I think it’s such an abstract concept to go back that far in the astrological tradition—where it almost sounds psychological in some sense—but you can find that attribution to the 11th house already in the texts in the 1st century BC.
KS: Yes. When I was researching my talk on the 11th house for NORWAC earlier this year, I looked into that. Cuz I agree with you, Chris, I was like this almost seems modern psychological, but it’s a very old idea. And I had read somewhere it has to do with the planet moving up towards the midheaven.
CB: Right.
KS: And so, it’s got that idea of this planet is rising or striving to reach the top or reach the peak, and that idea that it represents what you wish for or what you hope will come into manifestation.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, exactly.
AC: It’s aspirational physically.
KS: ‘Aspirational’, that’s a great word, Austin.
CB: Yeah. And that’s a great example of how some of the house meanings are derived from very basic astronomical phenomena in terms of looking at what the astronomical phenomena is and what it’s doing physically or observationally, and then interpreting that in a symbolic context. Planets in the 11th house are literally rising up towards and moving up towards the very pinnacle or the very top of the chart, and therefore, it sort of represents the person rising upwards or striving upwards, or what the person aspires to achieve in some broader context in the chart, in terms of that house placement.
KS: Yeah, it has a long lineage of having such a positive. It’s hopeful. But also, to flip it around a bit, when I was doing my horary training, the idea that the 10th house represents the ‘king’ and the 11th house is like the second house of the 10th, it’s like the support that can come to you from people on high. And so, you get this very positive sense of things coming your way that maybe you’ve earned, but there’s that bonus or that gift, like manna raining down from heaven, I guess. So for a number of different reasons, different symbolic perspectives, it does have this really, I don’t know, optimistic attribute, I guess.
AC: Okay, I’d like to offer something that is not nearly as hopeful, but is very interesting.
KS: How surprising, Austin.
AC: Earlier on the 6th, actually earlier in the morning, we have kind of a rare and interesting thing. We have the Moon conjoining Mars in Mars’ single degree of exaltation.
KS: Ohh.
AC: So for those of you who are interested in this older doctrine—although Mars is exalted in Capricorn—it has one particular degree, if you’re studying those degrees, like I do. That’s kind of a rare opportunity to pay attention. We don’t get Mars in this degree of exaltation but every two years, and we certainly don’t get the Moon in exactly that same degree very often. And so, it’s interesting to tie that into a variety of elections or works. If you’re coming at it from a traditional planetary magic point of view, that’s a very interesting moment for Mars.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And like you said, it’s rare that you get a line-up like that, not just the planet at its exaltation degree, but it really being emphasized by having a luminary there at the same time with the planet.
AC: Yeah, it’s sort of gonna be once every, I wanna say, 50 years or something, cuz Mars will be in that degree for maybe a day, a day-and-a-half; maybe a day-and-a-half/two days every two years. And then a day/day-and-a-half of planetary motion for the Moon is maybe 18° on average; more like 20° on average. That just doesn’t happen very often. So if that interests you, take a look at early morning on November 6, 2016.
CB: Yeah. And then, let’s see, the one other chart I wanted to mention really quickly—just to get the three main electional charts for the month out of the month—takes place on November 15, at about 9:00 in the morning, with Sagittarius rising. So this is the other good chart this month in the month of November, aside from the Aquarius rising charts, which are just amazing. In this one, on November 15, you have Sag rising, Jupiter is in Libra, in the eleventh whole sign house. So again, it’s another 11th house-focused chart. And then it’s applying to that sextile with Saturn, which is in Sagittarius in the first whole sign house along with Mercury. So it is Saturn in the 1st house, which sometimes you might want to avoid. But if you’re gonna get Saturn in the 1st house, then this is potentially one of the best possible placements that you can have it in because it’s a day chart. It has a very close aspect with the benefic Jupiter. It has reception with Jupiter, which is also gonna mitigate and make Saturn more positive. It’s not otherwise afflicted by Mars or anything else. So it’s extremely well-placed in terms of Saturn in the 1st house, the ruler of the ascendant itself is doing well in the 11th, and then we have the Moon in Gemini in the 7th applying to a nice, tight trine with Jupiter. So all around, again, it’s very similar themes in terms of focusing on the 11th house again, which you might interpret as friends or alliances or groups or things like that. But it could also be helpful for more broader or long-term planning in terms of achieving one’s hopes and aspirations. And with Saturn in the 1st house, there’s this broader theme that’s probably useful in terms of putting in the hard work that’s necessary to achieve some of those things, because you’ve got the most positive aspects of Saturn highlighted in this chart. So those are my three primary elections for this month. And I think those are the ones I would really focus on, if anybody’s looking for good electional charts in November: the Sagittarius rising charts and the Aquarius rising charts.
AC: Yeah, those are good charts.
KS: Juicy.
AC: I like that you’re using that mutual reception.
CB: Yeah, just due to the Saturn being in the domicile of Jupiter, and then Jupiter being in the exaltation.
AC: Yeah, yeah. So something that we haven’t talked about yet—that’s not momentous with historical implications but is worth noting—is that we get three planets changing signs during the second week in November, right? Mars leaves Aquarius on the 8th, and then on the 11th, we get Venus going into Capricorn, and then early on the 12th, we get Mercury going into Sagittarius. I mean, that’s a pretty big and quick change in the line-up. And so, what that means is that things are gonna feel really different during the first-third and the remaining two-thirds of November.
CB: Yeah, totally. That’s a pretty big shift in terms of all of those ingresses taking place literally in the same half of a week, or in the same three- or four-day period. Like you said, Mars is going into Aquarius, Venus into Capricorn, and Mercury into Sagittarius.
KS: Yeah, it’s quite a lot. And then just a couple of days after that, we do have the big Full Moon for November in Taurus. I think it’s the 14th in Canada and the US, and it’ll probably be early on the 15th down in Australia. So just in that week leading up to the Full Moon, there’s definitely a lot shifting. And it’d be nice to have Mars—not that Mars in Capricorn necessarily has been bad. I don’t know. Mars has also been out of bounds for a chunk of that time.
AC: You have this issue with malefics, right? When malefics are in signs that they’re really happy in, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we, the humans, will be happy. You know, there are issues with a really strong Mars. Mars getting to do its thing relatively unimpeded can be a real issue. I kind of like Mars in Aquarius as a transit because I find that Mars almost disappears in Aquarius. What I generally see is there’s some kind of background peevishness. Especially when people start talking about ideas, a lot of times they’ll cut into each other, but it’s not Mars as a tank and screaming fighter jets. It’s just this background ‘I kind of hate this’ martial vibe.
KS: No, I don’t care enough to do anything cuz it’s Aquarius.
AC: Yeah.
KS: So aloof.
AC: Yeah. Again, it just seems like it’s not even there half the time. Which after the extremely martial year that we’ve been having is just fine with me. It’s just fine.
KS: Just fine.
CB: Right. Coming out of that retrograde, it’s interesting being in a period in which Mars isn’t as closely tied into any other major outer planet or inner planet configurations, at least not through hard aspects for a while.
AC: Yeah, yeah.
KS: That’s gonna be nice.
AC: You know, speaking of that Mars retrograde, what’s interesting about our big, beautiful Full Moon in Taurus early on the 14th—
KS: Oh, yeah. The degree?
AC: Yeah. So it’s 22 Taurus/22 Scorpio. And 22 Scorpio is exactly where Mars stationed direct in June, and 22 Taurus is exactly where Mercury stationed retrograde in May. And so, this Full Moon is a revisiting of really critical degrees for this year’s events, but I would say it’s a much kinder, gentler return to the same issues and the same spaces.
KS: Yes. I have to say I’m very pro-Taurus Full Moon. Just in general, I love that the Moon is in such a great phase. Well, the Full Moon is such a full, juicy, functional—I don’t know—big phase for the Moon, obviously, but in her exaltation. It’s one of my favorite Full Moons each year.
AC: Yeah, me, too.
KS: And that word again, Austin, the ‘stabilizing’ energy, which I think Taurus of all the earth signs can just do so well, but in a really juicy, nourishing way.
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
KS: Did you just say you really like it, too? I can’t believe we agree on something here.
AC: No, of course. It’s great. You know, every fall planets go through Scorpio, and I like the descent into madness and the underworld that that brings, but that big, bright note of stabilization in the middle of that season is always a really pleasant counterpoint.
KS: Yes.
AC: By the way, the Sun in Scorpio doesn’t mean that there’s a descent into madness.
KS: Here’s something to clarify.
AC: Giving myself poetic license. And that doesn’t mean something bad to me, I kind of like that.
CB: I like everything that you guys have said about this. A return to those degrees—just because that’s my Mercury degree at 23 Scorpio—
KS: Yeah? Do you want to share?
CB: Yeah. I mean, I finished the book early this month. It’s in its final editing phase right now with my editor, and different people are reading it and giving me feedback that I’m incorporating, but I’m moving into the layout phase at the beginning of November. So this Full Moon right there on my Mercury degree connects back to June, when Mars was stationing there and weirdly, largely coincided with a heightened period of focusing on the book in the middle of writing all of the chapters. It seems like that Full Moon might coincide with actually getting some of the first printed copies—getting the first proof copies and actually starting to get it out there.
AC: Perfect.
KS: Yeah. That’s a great example for people to take if they have that degree active in their chart, too.
CB: Yeah, just because it’s definitely the more productive version or manifestation of that. That period in June—which was the focal point of Mars stationing direct at 23 Scorpio on top of my Mercury—was the focal point of just me going to the coffee shop everyday and writing everyday for like eight or nine hours and really expending a lot of energy on that writing project. And then now, almost six months later, we get a Full Moon on those degrees and what was this intellectual project that was all on a digital file—it’s just a big Word file at this point with 700 pages—and hopefully, by the end of November actually bringing that to completion and manifestation with a physical copy of the book being in my hands for the first time around the time of that Full Moon.
AC: Yeah, that’ll be nice.
CB: Yeah. And I’ve got covers. There’s been a bunch of cover designs. And thanks everyone who either offered or who did send in cover designs. There’s one especially by a designer named Paula that I’m gonna put there. We’re down to like three main versions of it that I really like, and I’d like to put out a poll. I’ll probably post in the Facebook group—in the private Facebook group for Patreon members—to vote on. I’ve been having some friends vote on it informally, and everybody keeps coming back with the same specific design. Everybody keeps saying they like that one the best. But I want to do a broader poll in order to see what people think, in order to finalize the cover design for the book. So if you’re in the Facebook group, then you should be seeing that pretty soon.
KS: Very exciting.
CB: All right, so we covered a lot. We covered the ingresses. We covered the Full Moon in Taurus. Neptune stationing direct—I know it’s not closely tied in with anything, but just coming out of the whole Saturn-Neptune square over the past year, that seems significant to me in some ways.
KS: And you don’t even have planets at that degree, Chris.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Right, unlike you guys. You guys have planets all over there.
KS: I’m like, “Are we there yet, Neptune?” Like, honestly.
AC: Also, it stations direct on top of the South Node.
KS: Correct.
AC: Same degree. There’s a perfect South Node-Neptune conjunction on the 17th.
KS: Oh, shit, the South Node at 9. I didn’t even look at this.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Austin.
AC: And then the station is on the 19th. So it’s right there.
CB: Yeah. I mean, maybe a reactivation of some of those things in terms of the Saturn-Neptune square. Eventually, Mercury—because he ingresses earlier in the month into Sagittarius—is gonna catch up to square Neptune, square the nodes, and conjoin Saturn.
KS: It’s on the same day.
CB: Oh, you’re right.
KS: Mercury is gonna square Neptune within 24 hours of it stationing.
CB: Okay.
KS: Oh, la la.
AC: And that was of course configured to the exact degree of our total solar eclipse in September, which was 9 Virgo.
KS: That is true.
AC: So there’s secret nodal stuff happening here.
KS: Venus will be sextile. Maybe that will be nice. Yeah, I’m really thinking now. You guys have got me thinking.
CB: Yeah, it’s been interesting seeing Mercury-Neptune as a theme this year in different ways, in addition to the Saturn-Neptune. I’m sure that’s most of what I’m seeing. But just that line between what’s reality and what’s not reality and that coming up most clearly—especially in politics, in terms of the presidential election and both sides accusing the other of misleading or not being realistic or distorting the truth and different things like that—seems like it’s been really prominent in the world in general over the past year.
AC: Yeah. And, Chris, as you’ve brought out quite brilliantly earlier in the year, the line between ‘reality’ reality and virtual reality and augmented reality being scuffed very thoroughly this year. Maybe we’ll have an interesting development as far as VR and AR goes around this time. And then in terms of the South Node—or dragon’s tail, or Ketu—one of the ways that I look at the South Node is having a purgative or a cleansing function, right? And I mean purgative like you take a purgative and then you vomit everything that’s gross up. The South Node is connected with the past, what was indigestible, what might have poisoned you, etc., etc. And so, if you go on a meditation retreat, and you try to be quiet for two days straight, your brain just vomits up all sorts of dumb things in the process of cleaning. And so, one of the collective manifestations of that this year was South Node and Neptune being co-present and then that being exaggerated and intensified with this actual perfect conjunction coming up. When I think of Neptune, I think of stories. You know, people have these storylines that they walk around inside of. You know, we always have this weird narrative background to whatever we think reality is. And one of the things I expected and wrote about, I don’t know, almost a year ago, was this sort of barfing up all of these toxic dreams, and there’s so many toxic storylines about how our world is right now. And so, you see this all across the political spectrum. Although I certainly don’t have the same feelings about everything in the political spectrum, there is this ‘old nightmares’ thing that you can see with the South Node-Neptune. And so, you’ll be able to watch that politically. This is like a week, a week-and-a-half after the election. Everybody will be telling their stories. And then on a personal level, you might realize that you’ve been walking around with the assumption that you’re in a tragedy, or you’re in a horror story, or that things are necessarily gonna go bad for you; things couldn’t possibly go right. And you might wake up a little bit and realize that doesn’t actually square with the facts, and that that might not be your story.
CB: That’s interesting.
KS: That’s beautiful.
CB: Yeah. I’m trying to pull up really frantically something that Patrick had mentioned to me in Donald Trump’s chart, which he pointed out was really similar to something that was in Romney’s chart that we really focused on and became an important part of our prediction during the 2012 election. He was in what we called a ‘foreshadowing’ period on Election Day, and then he had loosing of the bond two or three weeks later. At the time we said that there was something about the election that wasn’t gonna be finished for Romney until two or three weeks later. And what it ended up being was on Election Night, when Obama won the 2012 election, he said something about reaching out to Romney to try to work together in the future. And then that actually happened to the extent that Romney visited the White House two or three weeks after Election Day, had a private meeting with Obama, and then that was really the end of it. That was a really interesting and wild piece of our prediction and we were fascinated with how it turned out. And Patrick was pointing out to me that Trump has something very similar on Election Day in November, and I’m just pulling that up really quickly to confirm that I’m remembering that properly and that he was right. Yeah, okay. And I was curious how close it was gonna be relative to that Mercury-Neptune square and the Neptune-South Node conjunction that we’re talking about right now. So it looks like it’s a foreshadowing period for Trump from November 6-9, 2016, and then it’s connected to a loosing of the bond that takes place a few weeks later, where there’s a repetition or a return to something that happened a few weeks earlier, November 27-30. So that’s actually a little bit later than the period that we’re talking about, but perhaps still interesting and relevant in terms of, I don’t know, some of the questions that have come up recently about what happens after Election Day, or what happens once the results are announced on Election Day.
KS: It’s gonna be tricky, I guess, sifting fact from fiction with that Neptune-South Node. The other thing that comes to mind about that—not so much to do with the election, Chris—is I think it’s a Vedic idea, the idea that the South Node is a spiritualizing influence. That it’s a point that kind of describes things that are not materially-focused or not necessarily of this world.
AC: Specifically those things which are disembodied or partially-disembodied.
KS: Yeah. And I wonder if it’s that idea of ‘what does it all mean’ or ‘what’s the purpose of all this’, and maybe that idea of people getting connected to things that have more meaning or hold significance for us as individuals that aren’t materially-focused, I guess. That idea of intangibles.
CB: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I always like the Vedic take on that, because they generally treat the nodes as malefic in some sense, or destabilizing. Except for this other part, this spiritual component that they can bring in a more constructive manifestation, right?
AC: Right, that’s part of it. If we’re talking about the fabric of everyday life, going into a cave to meditate for five years is really disruptive.
KS: Yes.
AC: One might argue that an authentic or radical spirituality is always gonna be disruptive to the rhythm of waking up and brushing your teeth and going to work and coming home.
KS: Totally.
AC: It is a counterpoint to the normal rhythm of things.
KS: Yes.
CB: Right. But also, that can be a constructive manifestation of that if you go out and live an aesthetic lifestyle, or devote yourself to meditation or something, a number of hours a day. But for those that can’t do that or don’t want to do that, or are reluctant to let go of the other material comforts of life, there’s something destabilizing and something painful about that loss of what they’re otherwise accustomed to or what they’re used to doing.
AC: Yeah. You know, one of the things that gets said about Ketu dashas—it’s basically a time-lord system kind of like zodiacal releasing that a lot of Vedic astrologers use, which gives a planetary period to each of the planets and then to each of the nodes. The advice that I’ve seen a number of times is that if you’re coming into a Ketu dasha, it’s time to get religion.
KS: Yes.
AC: Because if you go in that direction, things will go pretty well. But if you don’t have a significant chunk of your life carved out for that, and you try to paddle against that current, things tend to go very poorly.
CB: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
KS: So, yeah, you were kind of summarizing, Chris, all the things that we talked about.
CB: Yeah. Well, I’m trying to think if there’s any other major thing. We’ve talked about the Jupiter-Pluto. Eventually, we get the Sun ingress into Sagittarius on November 21. And then finally we get a nice New Moon in Sagittarius on November 29.
KS: Well, it is square Neptune, the New Moon.
CB: Right.
KS: It’s at 8 Sag.
AC: That’s not my favorite New Moon, actually.
KS: Yeah. Tell us why, Austin.
AC: Well, it’s a little too close to Saturn for my taste. And it’s certainly a little too square to the nodal axis for my taste. And it’s definitely too square Neptune for my taste.
KS: I know we thought we were done with the Saturn-Neptune square, but that New Moon could just be like one last hurrah.
AC: Yeah.
CB: So the New Moon’s taking place at 7° of Sagittarius. So that’s closely squaring Neptune at 9 Pisces. And the North Node is, by then, around 8 Virgo or so.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Correct.
AC: And then Saturn’s right there. And both the Sun and the Moon are on their way to Saturn.
CB: Sure. Right. So they’re both applying to Saturn, which is at 17. So they’re about 10° off, but otherwise will be quickly approaching it. Yeah, well, it’s interesting. I mean, that’s actually the period that coincides with what I was talking about in terms of Trump having the loosing of the bond between November 27 and November 30. So it’s interesting that that coincides with that New Moon. There’s something that happens on Election Day that’s not finished for him is what that implies, November 27-30. Whether that’s internal—like it was with Romney in 2012—or whether that’s something else, who knows, cuz I haven’t looked into it much beyond this, but it’s an interesting signature to see.
AC: Wasn’t there talk about him launching Trump TV or something?
KS: Yes.
AC: I mean, that sounds pretty Saturn-Neptune. I don’t know. I’ve pretty much only been able to bring myself to watch the Saturday Night Live versions of the debates.
CB: Oh, really?
AC: Yeah.
CB: Those have been great.
AC: Kait watches the debates and tells me what I missed, and it’s usually exactly what I thought would happen.
CB: No, the debates have been amazing. And the Saturday Night Live parodies have just been amazing this election cycle, but especially for the debates. But in terms of the Trump TV thing, I mean, that was part of the prediction at the presidential panel, that he has this major career transition. It’s a loosing of the bond on Level 2, between December 2017 and March 2020, but that was tied into my prediction. For a while now it hasn’t been clear why he would be having a major career transition a year after the election if he won, so that was one of the things that implied to me that he doesn’t win. But instead, in the two or three years after the election, he makes this major career transition and figures out where he wants to go from here after not becoming president, after putting all this energy into it for the past year or two. So that’s what I basically talked about in my ISAR lecture. And, yeah, the recording will be on my website if you want the actual details of that to see what I’m talking about, rather than just me throwing that concept out here.
Well, I think that brings us to the end of November. Leisa had actually found one more election, and she was really struggling, cuz I remember when we talked about this and looked at some different charts for late November. And one of the things was—especially when we were still writing the column for TMA—wanting to switch it up a little bit and give different times out and different rising signs so that there’s a little bit of variety, and it’s not just ‘here’s four Aquarius rising charts’ at different points during the month, even though that’s what we otherwise might recommend. So we tried to switch it up with one of the later elections, which is November 24, with Cancer rising, about 7:00 in the evening, whatever your location is. And then the Moon is in Libra in the 4th house applying to a conjunction with Jupiter. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much right around the exact time of that Jupiter-Pluto square that we were talking about. So it’s a little iffy, but if you’re able to pull off a positive manifestation of that, then the Pluto contact and the Venus-Pluto conjunction—which that is square—would add a lot of power and a lot of oomph to it as long as you’re able to navigate it constructively rather than have it not work constructively or having it work destructively.
AC: You know, one of the things I’ve seen consistently—at least in natal charts with Jupiter-Pluto—is hidden treasure.
KS: Yeah.
AC: It’s some advantage or opportunity or treasure that you don’t see with the naked eye. It requires a little bit of digging. And so, sure, this is a square, but I don’t think that totally cancels out the meanings for that planetary pair.
CB: Yeah. And it’s funny that you mention that, cuz this is also a very 4th house-focused chart. And in a lot of the early Hellenistic delineations of the 4th house—in Valens, for example, he talks about the 4th being associated with literal hidden treasure. So that could also be extended more metaphorically, but that sort of repeats that theme a little bit through the emphasis of the ruler of the ascendant in the 4th with Jupiter, with Venus ruling the 4th, and the Moon applying to a square with it. So that’s my final electional chart for November. And I think that pretty much brings us to the end of the month, cuz the month basically ends with that New Moon in Sagittarius that we just talked about.
KS: Correct.
CB: Are there any other major alignments that we didn’t get to mention, that we’re completely overlooking here?
KS: I don’t think so. Like the biggest aspect is the Jupiter square Pluto, which we’ve definitely covered. There’s a lot of sextiles and trines in November. So Sun-Mercury-Venus kind of moving through signs where they are aspecting the other planets, but not necessarily by the more dramatic oppositions or squares. Yeah, I mean, I don’t necessarily think we have to run through them all, cuz there’s a bunch of them. But, yeah, the big dynamic aspect is the Jupiter square Pluto.
CB: Sure. Okay, cool. Well, I think that brings us close to the end of a slightly more muted episode. I’m still catching up on sleep and emails from the conference, so I’m totally out of it, I don’t know. Austin, you might be feeling similarly?
AC: Oh, yeah. I’ve got emails and I don’t have sleep.
CB: Right. And then, Kelly, you’re still catching up after post-conference stuff as well?
KS: Totally, yeah. We were talking about this briefly, Chris, pre-show chat—yeah, it just takes a little while to catch up and everything always takes longer. Well, me, personally, with my Neptune fog, everything just takes a little longer than I think it’s going to. So I just keep plugging away. We’ll get to the end of the email list eventually.
CB: Sure. Let’s see, in terms of other things I meant to mention that I forgot to, our other sponsor this month of course is Delphic Oracle. So for patrons on the $5 tier, the giveaway this month is one free copy of that awesome astrology software program, which is specifically designed for Hellenistic and traditional astrology. It really excels at timing techniques. It has every known Hellenistic time-lord technique that exists, including some Medieval ones. I use it in every consultation I’ve been doing for the past 10 years for calculating zodiacal releasing periods. And most of the stuff in my zodiacal releasing lecture—when you look at the periods I have in the readout for that—all of that comes from Delphic Oracle. So I’m excited to be able to promote that program and give away a free copy to somebody on the $5 tier on Episode 94 of the show. So in two episodes we’ll do the giveaway and announce the winners for that. Other things—those ISAR lectures are already up for sale. I’m selling my zodiacal releasing lecture, where it’s nice, concise. You know, last December, I recorded my 18-hour zodiacal releasing lecture, and this one’s a little bit more approachable, cuz it’s just 75 minutes.
KS: This is the sprint rather than the marathon.
CB: Yeah, exactly. I’ve gotta work on being more concise. And this was a nice challenge to take an 18-hour lecture and condense it down into 75 minutes. But also, I wanted to make it more topical and more relevant to what’s going on in the world right now. So the consistent theme throughout the talk was showing how you can use zodiacal releasing to time peak periods and transitions in a person’s career and overall life direction, and then I kept coming back to the birth chart of Hillary Clinton and the birth chart of Donald Trump in order to show how the technique could be applied to determine the outcome of the US presidential election next month. And this is a large part of the basis of many predictions I’ve made about the election, or that Patrick’s made. Even way back in April 2012, when we got contacted by, first, a reporter from ABC News and then eventually I went on Fox News, and they asked us, “Do you think that Hillary Clinton’s gonna run for the presidency in 2016?” We pulled up her zodiacal releasing periods and she’s in this huge peak period right now, where the technique basically says she’s at the high point of her career. We were able to say at that point, “Yeah, it looks like she’s definitely gonna be running in 2016 for the presidency.” So I have the recording of that technique out, and I will link to it.
Leisa also gave an amazing lecture on annual profections and how you can use that technique to show repetitions in 12-year increments, and how that can be useful in making predictions. Cuz if you’ve just had your birthday, or you’re coming up on your birthday, and you want to know what the next year is gonna be like, what you can do is look back in 12-year increments at what happened 12 years ago, and then what happened 12 years before that, and 12 years before that. And she shows how using this technique of profections—which repeats every 12 years—you can identify some of the main topics and themes that will come up in a person’s life and subsequently make predictions about that. And she also ends up using the chart of Hillary Clinton, showing how, if you take it back in 12-year increments, she keeps doing important things, and she keeps having ‘firsts’.
KS: That was a really interesting point that Leisa made in her talk.
CB: Yeah. So being the first student—several 12-year increments ago—at her college to give the student lecture at a commencement speech for her graduating class. Or, in 1992—which was two 12-year increments ago—she had her birthday right before the 1992 presidential election and then was in the White House for the first time in that profection year. And now we’re two 12-year increments later, 24 years later, and she’s about to have her birthday a day or two from now, switches into another 10th house profection year, and then we get a repetition of 1992/1993 all over again, which kind of speaks for itself. So that lecture’s up on Leisa’s website. I link to it in the description page for this episode. Kelly, you’ve got your two NORWAC lectures up. But I believe you wanted to do a discount for listeners of this show, right?
KS: Yes. I wanted to offer listeners a 10%-off coupon code if they are interested in a chart consult. The only catch is you have to get in touch before the 7th of November,which will give everyone probably a solid 10 days from when the show is first released. The coupon code is ‘PODCAST’, and you can just pop onto my website and pop through your order and use that code, and it will automatically give you 10% off either 60-minute or a 90-minute consult. Yeah, just as a thank you. It was so lovely to meet so many people at the recent ISAR conference, so I just wanted to show a little thanks for that.
CB: Awesome. Good. And people can find out about that—I’ll put a link to it on the description page for this episode. And then they can also go to your website, which is kellysurtees.com, right?
KS: Correct, yes.
CB: And what do you have going on, Austin?
AC: Well, on the 12th of November—Saturday, the 12th—I’m gonna be beginning a month-long class on synthesizing all of the different fundamentals of astrology, looking at charts and saying, okay, so I know about dignity and houses and signs and aspects and synodic cycles, how do you do that altogether? Instead of learning how to play the drums or the piccolo, it’s like getting the whole orchestra to work together and seeing how all those different techniques describe different parts of a person’s life. So it’s the final unit in my seven-month fundamentals of astrology class. But people who are already in the middle of learning astrology—but haven’t necessarily taken classes from me—are free to drop in. Well, it’s not free, but it’s designed to be modular. So if that sounds like a good class for you, you can sign up for just that. You don’t have to do the whole course. And then, as of today—so certainly by the time this is out—I finally got the eight-week class on the decans that I did last year, edited and available for purchase. And so, if you got my book but hate reading, but want to learn about the decans anyway, it’s about 15 hours of me going through every decan. If you like the book and would like more, it’s also good for that.
CB: Nice.
AC: But it’s all the decans you can handle.
KS: Love it.
CB: Yeah, that sounds awesome.
KS: I forgot to mention one thing, Chris.
CB: Sure.
KS: My next online class starts on November 8. It’s a specialist class over a five-week period for more intermediate and advanced students. So if anyone’s interested, they can just hit me up through the website. I forgot to mention that. But, Austin, I can’t speak highly enough about your book, your decans book. So that recording program that you did on all of them would be amazing.
AC: Oh, well, thank you.
CB: Yeah, I’m glad you got that edited and got that up, cuz it’s a great resource.
AC: Yeah, I’ve been meaning to do that for a long time, but it’s just one of those projects that keeps getting pushed to the back of the list. But it’s finally done, it’s cleaned up, it’s beautiful. Or as beautiful as it’s gonna get.
CB: Right. And it’s nice because with something like that, you can speak as long as you want about that topic, whereas with a book, you’re sort of limited. Well, theoretically, you should limit it to not doing what I did and writing a 700-page book.
KS: Hey, if it worked for Richard Tarnas, it can work for you too.
CB: Right. We’ll see, we’ll see.
AC: Text is less digressive than speech.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s one of the things I really appreciate about speech and about doing these podcasts. And that’s why they’re so wordy most of the time, because you can get more in, and you can also qualify statements a little bit more, and explore things more when necessary. Even if that sometimes leads to more—not directionless or rambling—meandering than it might in a written text or something like that.
AC: Yeah. Both mediums have their own advantages and disadvantages.
CB: Definitely. All right, awesome. Well, I think that brings us to the end of this episode. So, yeah, everything will be on the description page for this episode. If you want to be entered into the drawing, then just become a patron on the $5 or $10 tier, and you could win a pass to this awesome conference in February, or you could win a copy of this awesome astrology program. Thanks everyone for supporting us through Patreon. It makes a huge difference and has ensured that I’ve continued to do the show and put out episodes as much as I can, despite being so focused on the book over the past year. And I’m actually really super excited to be done with the book soon, because then I can get back to doing four episodes a month regularly and continuing to expand and improve the show in a way that I couldn’t as much as I wanted to this year. So I’ll be looking forward to that and, yeah, looking forward to doing more episodes with you two.
KS: Excellent.
AC: Yeah, I look forward to it every month.
CB: Cool. All right, well, I guess let’s sign off then. So thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
AC: All right, take it easy everybody.
KS: Bye for now.