The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 95, titled:
The Astrology of 2017: Yearly Forecast Discussion
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on December 29, 2016
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released November 8th, 2024
Copyright © 2024 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode is recorded on Wednesday, December 21, 2016, starting just after 2:22 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 95th 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 astrologers Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock about the major astrological trends that are coming up in 2017. Kelly, welcome back to the show.
KELLY SURTEES: Hey, Chris. Hey, Austin.
CB: And, Austin, welcome back.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, guys.
CB: Hey. All right, so this is our monthly forecast, so we’re gonna cover a little bit of January. But since this is the end of the year, we’re gonna do what we did last year and basically focus on a complete overview of the major transits and the major astrological trends that are gonna be happening over the course of the next 12 months. Let’s see, before we get started, how are things going with you guys since we last checked in? I think you’ve both released your own personal yearly forecasts over the past couple of weeks, right? I think you just released yours the other day, right, Austin?
AC: Uh, no. I’m actually going to release it tomorrow morning, the morning of December 22. But, yeah, I actually took a couple of weeks off my weekly column so that I could just totally obsess about next year. And my efforts have come to fruition—or as much fruition as they’re going to. And so, my duper-long write-up will be out tomorrow.
CB: Excellent. And, Kelly, you did a similar forecast for next year, right?
KS: Yeah, I did about a 19-minute live presentation through Astrology University earlier in December, looking at all the astrological signatures and influences for 2017. I kind of designed it as a working guide for the astrology enthusiast, as well as the prep—if you’re a practicing astrologer—that you might do to get a sense of the key aspects and configurations, as well as the key degrees around the zodiac that are really being emphasized for 2017. So that’s available for purchase and download on my website, on the homepage, and also through Astrology University.
CB: Okay, brilliant. Well, you two are then perfect people to talk to about this topic. Because you’ve basically been focusing on what the next year’s gonna be about intensely for the past few weeks, I think you’re perfect people to talk to. Let’s see, before we get into that, in terms of announcements and business we have to get out of the way, we did the last giveaway, and we gave away a pass to the upcoming NCGR conference, as well as a copy of Delphic Oracle on the last episode. So that means we’re starting a new round of giveaway prizes that begins on this episode and will run for the next four episodes. So our new giveaway prizes—that we’ll be giving away on Episode 98—I’m really excited to announce are, one, for patrons on the $5 tier, the giveaway prize is four years of back issues of The Mountain Astrologer magazine, which they’re actually selling through their website. It’s a two-CD package which contains an individual PDF file of every single issue of The Mountain Astrologer magazine from 2007-2010. So that’s 24 issues in all, which is a total of over 300 articles from that time period. So that’s a pretty awesome deal. Normally, the CD package sells for $48 through their website, which I believe is mountainastrologer.com. But we’re gonna be giving away those CDs to one lucky winner on the $5 tier on Episode 98. The other prize that we’re giving away—I’m also excited to announce—is a free pass to the upcoming Northwest Astrological Conference, which is taking place in May. So NORWAC—I think everyone that’s listened to the podcast for a while has heard either Kelly and I or Austin and I talking about NORWAC. I think Kelly and I did a whole recap a couple of years ago. Didn’t we, Kelly?
KS: We did. Maybe after the NORWAC where we first really got to know each other, which is going back a couple of years now.
CB: Right. So you can go back and listen to that episode and the excitement we had. So I think that’s always one of our favorite conferences because it happens every year. But also, it’s a little bit smaller. It’s a regional conference, it takes place in Seattle, and there’s a lot of people from the Northwest that go every year. It’s usually about 200-300 astrologers in attendance. So it’s a cozy conference. It’s good for beginners, especially. It’s like a good first conference if you’ve never been to one before. It’s not as expensive as most, but it still has great speakers, including people like Rob Hand, Demetra George, Steven Forrest. I’ll be speaking there next year, giving two new talks, including one on the master of the nativity or the overall ruler of the chart. Anyway, the dates of the conference are May 25-29, 2017. It’s gonna be 30 speakers, pre- and post-conference workshops, and a bunch of other cool stuff. We’re gonna give away a free pass to that conference to one lucky winner on the $10 Patreon tier four episodes from now, on Episode 98. I believe it should be Episode 98. So this is Episode 95. 96, 97, yeah, 98. So if you’re interested in being eligible for that or being entered into the drawing, all you have to do is sign up to become a patron on the $5 or $10 tier and you’ll automatically be entered into the drawing. And then the winners will be announced on Episode 98. So see our website at theastrologypodcast.com, see the giveaways page and the subscriptions page for more information about how to become a patron and be entered into those drawings.
All right, so with that out of the way, before we go into the future, let’s maybe take a little bit of time to look back into the past and assess 2016. Because I remember we did this about this time last year. And you can actually go back and listen to our forecast for 2016 that was issued last December, 12 months ago. And it’s kind of weird. It’s kind of eerie at this point. Looking at some of the configurations that we were focused on, but then also how they actually turned out, has been really wild for me over the past year. And there were three major configurations that were a big deal. There was Saturn in Sagittarius—which clearly manifested in a much more literal way than I think any of us were even expecting this year—there was the Saturn-Neptune square, and there was the Mars-Saturn conjunction, especially since that ended up being very prominent in some of the Aries ingress charts last March or so. And one of the things I wanted to point out actually that I noticed—and that a few people brought to my attention—is that a bunch of the dictionaries around the world have issued (or English dictionaries, I should say) their ‘words for the year’ over the past month, and I thought that it was pretty hilarious how some of these ‘words for the year’ actually tied into some of those transits. So dictionary.com, for example, its ‘word of the year’ is ‘xenophobia’. The Oxford Dictionary’s ‘word of the year’ is ‘post-truth’. And then, just the other day, Merriam-Webster announced that their ‘word for the year’ is ‘surreal’, which they defined as ‘marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream’. So what do you guys think about those ‘words of the year’? Or about those transits and how we’ve experienced them or seen them play out over the past 12 months?
KS: I really like the ‘surreal’ part. What did you say? The intense reality of a dream or something?
CB: Yeah, they define it as ‘marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream.”
KS: Irrational reality.
CB: ‘Irrational reality of a dream’ is such a great Saturn-Neptune square.
KS: It’s perfect.
CB: Yeah, isn’t it? That’s really striking to me how literal you could take some of those keywords straight out of an astrology book—in terms of how they describe some of those placements or some of those transits—and those would be up there as top keywords.
KS: Yeah. And ‘surreal’ is a really great word for the year as a whole, and I think particularly perhaps for the quarter; yeah, that idea of ‘are we in a dream’, ‘are we in a nightmare’, ‘this can’t be real’. Yeah, that’s really cool.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah. So I think that, first, the whole surreal/unreal/post-truth, all of that, speaks directly to the Saturn-Neptune square most clearly.
CB: Right.
AC: But just a note on ‘surreal’. I don’t think any surrealist would use that definition. Surrealism draws upon dream logic and dream lack-of-logic. Probably the most famous surrealist—or least the one that most people are familiar with—is Salvatore Dali. Dream logic flirts with being supra-rational or having something that is beyond logic, or having some great sense that we can’t quite grasp and being utterly chaotic and mad and lacking in the logos entirely, and dreams kind of bounce back and forth and combine those categories. And I think it makes for a much more seductive and fascinating and horrifying mix than ‘these dreams don’t make no sense’.
CB: Right.
AC: I think that’s more how people felt about this year rather than, “Well, that doesn’t make sense.” It’s a little bit more complicated and entrancing than that.
CB: Sure. I mean, part of it is a lot of these dictionaries are just looking at the frequency of word searches on their websites. And actually one of the things that was really interesting about this to me, one of them—I think it was the Oxford Dictionary—showed an actual graph that showed people searching for these terms. You know, there’s different reasons why people search for terms, but sometimes it was spiking around certain news events or certain major events. People were sometimes either trying to look up words that were used in the news, but more often they were trying to look up a word to describe what they were feeling at that time and trying to make sure that that was the right word they were trying to use to post on Facebook or something like that. And actually what’s so interesting to me about this is that I’d like to take those graphs of those word searches and plot them against some of those outer planet transits over the course of the year, because it might be an interesting empirical way to look at how some of these outer planet transits—like with Saturn and Neptune—were manifesting in real-time in the collective conscious or unconscious of the world. Anyway, it wasn’t just our forecast episode last December, 12 months ago, but also our really extended look—as we’ve already said several times—at Saturn in Sagittarius way back when it first went in, in September 2015. Something around that turned out to be a lot more literal, or the manifestations turned out to be a lot more literal and a lot more straightforward than any of us even would have suspected, right? I mean, I’m not the only one that was a little caught off guard about the literal manifestation of some of this, right? Or am I overstating that?
AC: I don’t know. Whether one is surprised or not is a personal thing.
CB: Sure.
AC: Saturn in Sag playing out the way it has did not surprise me at all. You know, I sat down back when Saturn went into Scorpio and was then stunned by how much all of the Saturn in Scorpio periods had in common and how consistent the themes were.
CB: Right.
AC: And so, I was very much expecting Saturn in Sag to have the same character. Not the same character as Saturn in Scorpio, but to be as consistent with its themes.
CB: Maybe the issue for me is doing these forecast episodes with you guys over the past year-and-a-half, it’s the first time that I’ve actually attempted to pay attention and look forward in an active sense to broader, mundane trends, and also try to define those as best as I can ahead of time. And maybe that’s made it a little bit clearer for me when that stuff does work out that way, and I’m kind of shocked at how straightforward it is in a mundane sense. I guess maybe that’s where I’m still a little bit newer to this than you guys are. Cuz both of you have been writing columns for like 10 years or something now, right?
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: At least that long, yes.
CB: At least.
AC: And doing yearly overviews.
KS: Yes.
CB: Right. Yeah, and that’s just something that literally, last year, was the first time I’d ever done a yearly overview with you two. Anyway, to me, this is interesting and sort of striking, looking at this in a broader, mundane sense, whereas most of the time, I tend to focus on natal astrology or, to a lesser extent, electional astrology.
AC: Well, to make you feel a little bit better, I was surprised by how front and center the Saturn-Neptune dynamics were.
CB: Right.
KS: Agree.
AC: I expected that to matter. You know, a square is important; that’s like a quadrature alignment. But the ‘word of the year’ in all of these cases is not referring to the Mars retrograde—which was extremely powerful and nasty—but the Saturn-Neptune square. And I think it’s worth noting that that Saturn-Neptune square also had the help of the nodes. You know, the South Node was right on top of Neptune, especially this fall. And then in addition to that—which I believe I mentioned in last month’s forecast—Neptune made a series of perfect contra-antiscial oppositions with Uranus, and I think Uranus’ ability to surprise created that jarring transition between different realities. Like, “Oh, I thought this was real, but now this seems real, but I suspect this.” Because if we look back at previous Saturn-Neptune squares, they matter, but they’re not as dominant as this one was.
CB: Right.
AC: And I think its configuration to the nodal axis and that sneaky little contra-antiscia both fed it some illegal hormones, some steroids, that amped it up quite a bit.
CB: Right, it’s like that. Cuz none of us thought that there would be huge national news stories about the phenomena of ‘fake news’ and things like that.
AC: As you pointed out earlier, the Pokémon Go phenomena was a perfect early example—like chasing unreal beasts across the landscape.
CB: Right.
KS: Yes.
CB: Augmented reality, that’s what they call that. Like this summer, one of the big buzzwords was ‘augmented reality’, and I thought that was just a brilliant manifestation of that as well, in a much more harmless sense than some of the other manifestations.
AC: Yeah, and it serves as a metaphor. You know, with all the fake news and a large number of people viewing the world through what shows up in their social media feed—their reality is augmented whether they’re chasing Pikachu around the park or not.
CB: Right. And the phenomenon of people in their online bubbles, because the other part of it that became fascinating was, on the one hand, you have a lot of the fake news sites. You know, they say that there’s an entire industry that grew out of nowhere. Part of the issue was that Facebook removed all of its people doing oversight into the news that was being shared on Facebook, so they completely automated the process at one point, like a year or so ago. And as a result of that, that was one of the things that allowed this environment where there entire groups of people that were just churning out fake political news for the sake of either influencing politics or for the sake of just making money by spreading sensationalism or something like that. So on the one hand, it’s like you have the deliberately-fake things and fake narratives that are going around, but then you also have the intensification of some of those either political or social bubbles that happen, that can sometimes lead people to have a disconnected view from reality at the same time. So there was a lot of that this year, and it was interesting to watch.
You know, the dictionary.com one with ‘xenophobia’ is sort of also important as something, because on the one hand, there’s two sides to that coin. Like the negative side is the labeling of ‘xenophobia’, which is valid to some extent. The other way you can spin that is if you were somebody that was looking at that in a more positive sense, you would label it as this thing where people were rejecting ‘globalism’. And it seemed like for a lot of the proponents, that was the idea, and this idea, or this phrase or keyword of rejecting globalism—whatever that means—is another interesting manifestation of Saturn in Sagittarius. We had the Brexit vote of course—where the United Kingdom is voting to leave the European Union and is seen as this challenge to dismantling that as a concept, the entire Eurozone; that was a kind of shocking development as well, that was tied in with that Saturn in Sagittarius, it seemed.
AC: Yeah. Well, to speak to that, that closing down of borders, we can see it on just a purely functional level as decreasing the amount of circulation through each nation-state entity, right?
CB: Right.
AC: You know, globalism suggests an ideology or a belief in that. We can say without that, the last 15-16 years, 20 years has seen an unprecedented amount of globalization, where goods, services, capital, culture, and people and companies have moved more freely across the world than they ever have. And so, it’s interesting with Saturn in Sagittarius, we certainly see some resistance, but that resistance is tied into a larger cycle. You know, I think it’s very important to note that as we look at 2017 that we are at the doorstep of three years of Saturn and Pluto in the same sign. And when Saturn and Pluto are in the same sign, borders get closed down and people get very suspicious of their neighbors internationally. It’s a very consistent cycle. And what’s really interesting is if you look at 2016, we had a couple of perfect Saturn-Pluto antiscias, right? An antiscia is this sneaky aspect and it’s outside of the normal cycle and normal timeline of one synodic pair, with one planet moving faster than the other. And it feels like we got a taste of that Saturn-Pluto action in 2016 that arrived two years early. And so, shoutout to our friend and colleague Kate Petty who’s been banging on about antiscia for years, and convinced me to consider it in natal charts a long time ago. But I wasn’t quite sure about its utility in mundane prognostication until this year, where it speaks very directly to what’s happened. So it’s almost like we got this weird preview of the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in 2016 with the antiscial conjunction. Although a lot of people are aware of the election of a Republican president, and there being a lot Saturn-Pluto, ‘close the borders’ themes there, for those who don’t follow international news, a lot of countries this year saw leaders rise to power who have a very ‘close the borders’, nationalist bent. It’s not just the United States.
CB: Right. It’s some sort of larger global phenomenon happening that’s tied in with some of this. Yeah, that’s really interesting. Cuz I was actually recently starting to get interested in that Saturn in Capricorn phase, where it’s gonna creep up on that conjunction with Pluto; that’s gonna start at the very end of 2017. So at the end of 2017, Saturn goes into Capricorn, and then we full-on get the beginning of that transit. You know, one of the ways we figure out what that’s gonna be about is looking at what happened last time Saturn was in Capricorn. And of course with that, we’re talking about the period in the late 1980s and very, very early 1990s. But it was a very different alignment back then. A lot of astrologers noted at the time this alignment of three major outer planets, which were Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus in the sign of Capricorn during that period. So one of the things that happened back then in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s that a lot of the mundane astrologers noted at that time and really associated with that line-up of course was the breakup of the Soviet Union. So one of the things that’s actually kind of fascinating in having the Saturn return of that coming up is the 30-year return of that breakup and Saturn coming back to that position and reviewing what’s happened in the past 30 years and then what things are gonna look like going forward for the next 30 years. But now instead of having Neptune and Uranus there with Saturn in Capricorn, you have a Saturn-Pluto conjunction, which is kind of a much different dynamic than what was going on 30 years ago.
AC: Yeah. And if we look at the last Saturn-Pluto conjunction, that was in the early ‘80s and that’s when the Reagan-Thatcher era got going. You know, in doing some of my research on this, I reread the section in Rick Tarnas’ excellent Cosmos and Psyche on Saturn and Pluto conjunctions, and one of the terms he uses that’s very simple is ‘conservative empowerment’. And he speaks of the thickening of borders, and it’s very consistent. The one before that was in the late ‘40s, in which we saw a great number of nation-states gain borders, some for the first time, in the wake of World War 2. It was when the world was carved up in the aftermath of that great conflict. And some of those borders were a bit arbitrary and still quite problematic to this day. You know, that was when the thickening of the borders was creating the conditions for the Cold War before it even had that name. And then the previous one was basically right at the start of World War 1, a situation in which excessive nationalism among European nations certainly played a role. You know, it’s a little grim. But then again, it’s Saturn and Pluto. I looked back at the last three transitions from Saturn in Sag to Saturn in Cap. Kelly, did you look at that at all?
KS: No, I haven’t gone back as far in history as you have, Austin. So I’m really intrigued to hear what you have to say about this.
AC: Okay. All right, so the last time Saturn was in Sag—the transition year between Saturn in Sag and Saturn in Cap was 1988. And so, we have late ‘80s into the early ‘90s, right? The big event there is of course the breakup of the Soviet Union, but we have Uranus and Pluto in on that. So that’s cheating, right? We’re not gonna have something like that every time.
CB: Right.
AC: And then the previous time was late ‘50s to early ‘60s, and then the previous time was late ‘20s, early ‘30s, right? And one thing that I’ve noticed—for the United States at least—is that it’s kind of a game-changer. It’s really the end of one era and the beginning of another. You know, ‘50s into the ‘60s, ‘20s into the ‘30s, ‘80s into the ‘90s—those are significant boundaries. Not just cuz they’re near a decade, but those are pretty pivotal: from the Roaring ‘20s to the Great Depression, from the buttoned-up ‘50s to the bohemian ‘60s, and then the whole world changed obviously from the ‘80s to the ‘90s. And I noted that there was an economic pattern to all of those, and it’s that the market got a little overheated during the Saturn in Sag period.
KS: Yeah, that part I had seen.
AC: Shocking, really.
KS: Yeah, what a surprise, right?
AC: Although they’re of very different magnitudes, there was a little warning shock during the Saturn in Sag period in all of those that was generally not heeded. And then during the Saturn in Cap period, a longer-term fundamental problem created a recession of one magnitude or another. Obviously, the smaller recession in the early ‘90s was not of the same magnitude as the Great Depression, but what I’ve read is that all of them had to do with employment to one degree or another. A lot of times the difficulties during the Saturn in Sag period had to do with oversupply, setting expectations too high. You know, when you have oversupply, it pushes down on prices. But, yeah, employment was a big thing. And so, I don’t know. I just think it’s really important to remember—as we look at 2017—this is the last year of Saturn in Sag.
CB: Right.
AC: And then we enter a very different landscape that’s gonna take us through the end of the decade. And so, remember that a lot of what’s going to happen this year is not necessarily going to be the story of next year, and the year after, and the year after. I’ve been seeing 2017 very much as part two of 2016. That’s as many sequels as that’s one’s gonna get, and then we’ll move onto a different story in 2018.
KS: I agree with that theme, Austin, around 2017 as the sequel to 2016. I mean, obviously, the Saturn-Neptune square was very distinct to 2016, and we don’t have that repeated in 2017, but there are some other cycles that are kicking in, in the latter part of 2016 that continue well into the middle of 2017. So it’s almost like a completion. And I agree also to the point you’re making there that as we come into 2018, we have a whole different field out there, and it’s a dropping-down or solidifying. I mean, it’s coming back down to Earth, isn’t it, after all the hot air and the high hopes of the Saturn in Sag, and then that quality control of Saturn in Capricorn kicking in, and realizing where the problems or the shortcomings might be.
AC: Yeah, yeah. You know, I do think, like you said, Saturn in Cap 2018 is going to bring down some sort of false excitement. It’s also probably going to ground out some false outrage, right?
KS: Correct, yes.
AC: Saturn in Cap is like, “No, no, no. Don’t be happy or sad about this. Just look at the facts.”
KS: Yes. Very dry.
AC: Whereas 2017 is—
KS: Fire, fire, fire.
AC: —similarly hyperbolic. Hyperbolic in a very similar way to 2016. I don’t think it’s gonna be quite as nasty.
KS: I don’t believe you just said that. You mean it’s gonna be less nasty?
AC: Yeah.
CB: What about Saturn’s signature?
AC: Exactly what Chris said. It’s because we don’t have this rare and incredibly intense Mars retrograde configured with Saturn.
KS: Perfect.
AC: You know, it’s not that Mars doesn’t exist this year and won’t do anything. There are some very martial moments—the Mars in Aries and Mars in Leo periods in particular—but it’s not that grinding, deep, nasty Mars retrograde with Saturn of 2016. You know, as far as the rhetoric goes, sure, it’ll be nasty. That’s already been set in motion. But if we look at 2016, there was a lot of really intense military action around Syria and in Western Iraq. You know, there were a lot of full-on wars and battles and sieges fought while we were discussing the dumb thing that Trump said. I was a little disappointed with how much the election dominated the discussion when very real things were taking place overseas.
CB: And one of the things that I underestimated was having that Mars-Saturn conjunction really close in the Aries ingress chart and how important that can sometimes be in setting the tone for the entire year. And even though that’s a technique that astrologers have been using for a thousand years or two thousand years now—realizing how much the Mars-Saturn conjunction really did put its stamp on the entire year as a result of being active in that Aries ingress chart in March—I think that’s gonna make me pay much closer attention to the Aries ingress chart in the future that I have previously.
AC: Definitely.
CB: That’s part of my post-talk rationalization about why the Mars-Saturn conjunction still seemed relevant for the entirety of the year, rather than being this thing that was just limited to the first six months or something like that.
AC: Yeah, it totally matters, and we should pay more attention.
KS: Yes.
CB: Totally matters. So we’re getting a little far afield by jumping into 2018 and talking about the 1980s and other things. So maybe we should bring it back to—
AC: This is important context for the year, right? A year is defined not only by what’s inside it, but what it’s next to.
CB: Right, definitely. No argument there. Just gonna bring it back to—
KS: We’re not doing a full-day workshop. Is that what you’re trying to say, Chris?
CB: Right. I know you’ve gotta go. We’ve got limited time. You know, we could do this for like 5-10 hours, honestly, and we probably should at some point start doing these.
KS: I’ll need a meal break or three in 10 hours, that’s for sure.
CB: Right. Yeah, that would be fun to do as a weekend retreat at some point. But for today, first, I wanted to do a little bit on the main signatures of the year, just to do a concise version at the very top, and then go through our full list of the month-by-month hits throughout the course of this year. So when I glanced at this, there were four or five bullet points that I wrote down that were the main signatures for the year. And you guys will have to let me know what you would add or modify to this. The ones that I saw, that were big ones, were the Leo eclipse in August, and especially that whole axis of eclipses, because the nodes are shifting signs. They’re moving from Virgo and Pisces into Aquarius and Leo, and therefore, we’re also gonna start having eclipses in those two signs, so that marks a major shift. And that Leo eclipse especially, a lot of the American astrologers are freaking out about because the shadow of the eclipse will cover the entire continental United States, and it also happens to fall, almost to the degree, on the president-elect’s ascendant, or the degree of his ascendant. So there’s something very, very strange about that going on, which we’ll talk about more in detail later. The other major signature this year is the Venus retrograde in Aries and Pisces, which of course is echoing back to about eight years ago, the last time we had a retrograde in those same two signs of Venus. There’s the Jupiter-Uranus opposition that’s on-and-off for most of the year, for a good three-quarters of the year, between now and October basically, when Jupiter eventually leaves Libra and moves into Scorpio. There’s the final phases of Saturn in Sagittarius, followed by the start of Saturn in Capricorn in December, as we’ve already talked about. And then, finally, one of the more positive or optimistic aspects that I looked at—that seemed to come up amidst a lot of more ominous ones—was the Saturn-Uranus trine, and there just being a lot of action at the very end of the fire signs this year. But that Saturn-Uranus trine seemed to be one of the more positive ones that I could see something good coming from. What do you guys think of that list of four or five bullet points? Does that cover some of the main signatures? Or are there ones that I left out?
KS: Did you mention the Jupiter-Uranus opposition? Sorry, Chris.
CB: Yeah.
KS: You did.
CB: I mentioned that opposition is sort of on-and-off most of this year, but it’s finally finished for sure by October. But because it’s basically active all the way through October, to a greater or lesser extent, it’s one of the main signatures for 2017.
KS: I definitely agree.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Yeah, that’s a big one. I also like the Saturn trine Uranus. I think Austin might hold a different opinion, but we’ll hear about that, which will be good.
AC: So a couple of things. One, yeah, a trine is the best possible circumstance for those two planets to relate—that assumes that you want those two planets to relate. You know, I think it can be very positive on a personal level, if you’re capable of making flexible plans of maybe being strategically-fixed but tactically-adaptable. You know, if you’re doing your Saturn planning and figuring out one step and then another, and you expect everything to go in an orderly fashion, then the addition of any Uranian element will be problematic. And so, I think it’s bad if you have a step-by-step plan where one step depends on the previous one going exactly as you planned. It demands flexibility.
KS: You make a really good point, Austin. That’s something I mentioned when I did my presentation on 2017, which was the idea that if you’re a person—or as you were saying—if you’re schedule is set where maybe you’re heavily-fixed or you’re heavy earth or you’re heavy Saturn in your chart, then all of these alignments that are about change or flexibility or spontaneity will be more difficult for you than for someone who might have a lot mutable, for instance, in their chart.
AC: Yeah. You’re gonna have to play it by ear or pivot. You know, not necessarily pivot in terms of your objectives, but the way that you achieve them, cuz the landscape’s going to shift a number of times. And one of the ways that that’s already apparent is that there are a lot businesses, there’s a lot of money right now waiting to see what the Trump administration will do before they put money on things, because a lot of the landscape is dependent on the whims of a guy with the Sun conjunct Uranus and the North Node, right? And so, it’s like now things are different. Like literally there are people waiting like, “Okay, once he says what he’s gonna do, once we see what he’s gonna do here, then we know which way to move.” So there’s a lot of waiting. You know, it’s like in poker. There are some games where you have cards that are face down and that everybody shares, and you don’t know how they’re gonna connect to your hand. and it’s like waiting to see those turned over to know what kind of hand you already have. And there are gonna be a few points in the year that turn over those cards, and they may be a happy or nasty surprise. But regardless, it’s like you literally don’t know what to bet when you can only guess what your hand might be.
KS: Yeah. I mean, the Saturn-Uranus—which Chris mentioned and was speaking to hear, Austin—but also the eclipses, we have two very powerful solar eclipses in 2017. And I think that is adding to that idea. I think of when you said there’s moments where the cards get turned over and it’s like, “Surprise!” And some people are gonna be like, “Yes!” and other people are gonna be like, “Damn.”
AC: Yeah. You know, my lyrical lead-in to my 2017 piece is actually using a casino metaphor.
KS: Oh, beautiful.
AC: Games of both chance and skill.
KS: Yes. That’s beautiful.
AC: Speaking of wildcards, I did want to mention I think that was a pretty good list of stuff in 2017. I think the Mercury retrograde cycle is worth noting. So our Mercury retrogrades in April/early May and in August/early September—both of those are going to start in earth signs and then end in late fire signs. And so, that gives us more Mercury stations, right? It gives us more stuff in late fire, cuz we get the direct station in late fire signs. And those are interesting stations, for reasons I’ll get into when we do the monthly, so that adds more emphasis to that. And just because I learned my lesson about antiscia this year, it’s worth noting that Jupiter and Neptune are going to make a couple of perfect antiscias or antiscial conjunctions this year from Libra to Pisces. And then, in the fall, once Jupiter enters Scorpio, they’re going to make a nice trine between Scorpio and Pisces. And so, antiscia means ‘shadow’, and these configurations seem to operate from the shadows, right? You don’t quite see it happening, but looking back, it sure did.
CB: So there’s a Jupiter-Neptune trine once Jupiter goes into Scorpio. That’s a really good point. When?
KS: Yeah, early December, actually.
AC: And two perfect antiscias before that between Jupiter and Neptune.
CB: Excellent. Well, that’s another positive aspect then. I’ll take that with the Saturn-Uranus trine. Which, despite your non-ringing endorsement, I’m still gonna take as one of the more positive aspects this year.
AC: Yeah, I would say that there’s an opportunity there, but it’s going to require attention and intention. There are some aspects in which you don’t have to do anything. They’re just sort of on autopilot and they’ll give you a prize. I don’t think that one’s on autopilot.
CB: Okay. So there’s an opportunity to not suck is what you’re saying.
AC: Yes, exactly.
CB: Okay.
KS: Another potentially, I don’t know, helpful maybe, I’m not sure—the sextile between Jupiter and Saturn does continue in 2017.
CB: Right.
AC: Actually, you know what? It doesn’t even happen until third quarter.
KS: Well, officially. Actually, I think it’s August that it becomes exact for the first time. Because it’s within a degree, but it does not perfect through the first couple of months.
AC: Yeah, as we’re speaking, it’s so close. It’s so close.
KS: But it’s been so close for weeks now.
AC: And I was so disappointed to see that it didn’t quite happen.
KS: It’s like so close, but no cigar.
CB: Right. Cuz that’s been really useful in elections lately. Because you’ve been able to get a lot of these great elections focusing on using that Saturn or using the Jupiter because of that nice aspect of sextile with reception between them because Saturn’s in the domicile of Jupiter.
KS: Beautiful reception. But it is almost a little bit of a tease in that it is within a degree December 2016, January/February 2017, but as Austin was saying, it doesn’t come together; it doesn’t fully complete. You know, if you do horary work, that’s so important. Does the aspect happen? Or does it just look like it’s going to happen?
CB: Right.
KS: So it’s August 2017 where that does finally connect and come together. And August is already the standout month in 2017 for a number of reasons.
AC: Totally. High five.
KS: High five.
CB: Pretty much all astrologers agree that August is the major month of 2017 at this point, right?
KS: Totally. Yeah, we have the eclipse. We have this Jupiter-Saturn. Let me just pull up my calendar.
AC: Oh, we have Mercury stationing direct on Mars, right next to the degree that the eclipse took place a week earlier.
KS: Yeah, that’s right at the start of September.
CB: In late Leo. So that range is at 28 Leo. I mean, all of the late fire signs are activated this year. But in August/September, that 28 Leo range seems to get super lit up, right?
AC: I mean, late fire signs are like the last 5°—actually the last decan of fire signs are pretty much lit up all year.
KS: Yes.
AC: Real quick, we have four Mercury stations in late fire, right? We have a direct station at the end of Sag in January. We have late Aries in early May. We have late Leo in early September. And then we have Mercury stationing retrograde pretty much on top of Saturn—right before Saturn goes into Cap—in late Sag. We have two Saturn stations in decan 3 Sag. We have two Uranus stations in decan 3 Aries. And we have a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse in decan 3 Leo.
CB: Wow.
AC: Not to mention Venus and the Sun and the Moon going through those areas.
CB: That’s really wild how those retrogrades really do emphasize and draw even more attention to a lot of that stuff that’s happening in those late fire signs, like you were saying.
KS: Yes.
AC: Yeah, it was one of the first things that caught my eye. I was like, “God, that is a lot of late fire.”
CB: Right.
AC: And of course the North Node is in the last decan of Leo for two-thirds of the year.
CB: Right. And then there was like one other thing in August, right?
KS: Jupiter square Pluto.
CB: Oh, wow, okay. And is that the final one of those?
KS: It is. It’s the third and final, yeah.
CB: So you get the final one of that, the final Jupiter-Saturn sextile. And the first, basically, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: One and only.
KS: The one and only is August, plus the eclipse. I mean, cuz it is August/September, September is the final Jupiter-Uranus opposition. So it’s definitely a peak in August, but with a bit of spillover into September.
CB: It’s like so many of the things that there were inklings or almost happened but weren’t completed all sort of pile up in August and then finally happen and come together and manifest in some concrete sense.
KS: Yes, yes.
CB: Wow, okay. So are there any other major overarching themes that we should touch on? Or should we actually do this as a month-by-month analysis?
KS: Sure. I think we’ve hit on the big themes.
CB: Right. Okay.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Okay, then let’s start from the top of the year, January. January is weird. It starts out actually with a Mercury retrograde sort of wrapping up and completing within the first week of the month, right?
KS: Correct. Mercury is direct on the 8th.
CB: So Mercury is retrograde. It’s actually retrograde right now as we’re recording this. It recently stationed retrograde. It’s stationing direct around January 8, at 28 Sagittarius, I believe, right?
KS: Yes.
CB: Is that correct?
KS: 28-29, yeah.
CB: I got a new ephemeris, and I was sort of flipping through it as I wrote the outline for this. So if any of these dates or degrees are off, just let me know.
KS: No, that sounds right.
CB: Okay.
KS: And then you have the Cancer Full Moon. The ‘crazy’ Cancer Full Moon.
CB: Why is it crazy?
KS: Grand cardinal cross. The Full Moon’s at 22 Cancer, so it’s gonna square Uranus. And Jupiter will be squaring it, too.
CB: Okay. What are the dates on that?
KS: So the Full Moon is the 12th of Jan, at 22 Cancer. And at that time, we’ve got Jupiter at 22 Libra and Uranus at 20 Aries. So it is forming this temporary cardinal cross, if you like.
CB: Interesting.
KS: I don’t know if you spotted that, Austin or Chris.
CB: That’s really highlighting the whole Uranus-Pluto square again.
KS: Yes.
CB: The Uranus-Pluto square, which is 3° off, and then Jupiter of course is there at 22. So Jupiter’s at 22 Libra. Pluto’s at 17 Capricorn. Uranus is at 20 Aries. And then the Full Moon happens at like 22 Capricorn and Cancer. So yeah, you’re right. The Moon really does come in, and what would otherwise be a very brief transit of the Moon over that degree, over a few-hour period, sort of marks it much more strongly. Cuz it’s actually a Full Moon right at that degree, at 22, which really does complete a full cardinal cross.
KS: Yeah, it puts that tension, if you like, into the Full Moon, which there’s already tension in that. It looks like being pulled in different directions, things coming out of the woodwork maybe, but that idea of the shock and the surprises a little bit.
CB: Sure, sure. Let’s see, elsewhere in January, Jupiter is getting ready to station retrograde, but it doesn’t do it until the beginning of February. Are there any other major alignments for January? I mean, I didn’t see any major stations or other things that stood out besides that Full Moon.
KS: Yeah, everything’s tied to the Full Moon. Like the Sun square Uranus, Sun square Jupiter—that happens in the two days leading up to the Full Moon. The only other ones are Venus and Mars square Saturn, which is around the 27th of January. Again, not major, major, but just from a monthly perspective there is that tension or that tug-of-war that can come in, particularly Mars square Saturn. I think we’ve all learned about the seriousness of Mars-Saturn aspects. So that January 27 period—which also happens to be the Aquarius New Moon—is just another date to keep in mind, I think.
AC: Uh, I don’t think you mean January 27. January 27 is when Mars enters Aries, not when it squares Saturn.
KS: Oh, I beg your pardon. It’s a couple of days before.
AC: It’s the 17th.
KS: Sorry, it’s the 19th.
AC: Yeah, 18th-19th.
KS: I beg your pardon. Yeah, so that Mars-Saturn is probably the only other one to watch out for in January.
AC: And that’s more likely frustrations. You know, just things getting delayed and being irritating.
KS: Totally.
AC: You know, that tension in the middle of cardinal signs—or middle-end of cardinal signs, from 17-22—is present all month, with Pluto at 17 Cap, Jupiter at 22 Libra, and Uranus at 20 Aries. And Uranus and Pluto of course are not going to complete another square for many decades, but it’s still a lot of tension. You know, if we take a lesson from horary, even if an aspect is not going to complete, a lot of times it feels like it’s going to. It can be like, “Oh, my God!”
KS: Oh, yeah. You still get the stirred-up sensation, don’t you?
AC: Yeah. And I think it’s worth noting—I don’t know if you guys work with it this way—when I look at lunations, either New Moons or Full Moons, I assume that configuration is relevant until the next lunation. I take them as being relevant for the next two weeks.
KS: Sure.
AC: They’re like ‘micro’ Aries ingresses. And so, that grand cross lunation on, what is it, the 12th?
KS: Yeah.
AC: It does speak to the next two weeks. And of course that’s the two weeks during which the inauguration is scheduled to take place. And even if nothing significant changes, there will be a lot of uproar and sound and fury about that.
CB: And the other thing about the Mars-Saturn square that’s important is that’s the opening square of a cycle between Mars and Saturn that started last year at the conjunction. So there’s something that was sort of seeded at the conjunction that starts to fully come to fruition and has an important turning point around the time of that square. And there’s something about that that’s really interesting to me, that’s just based on that broader idea that became a focus in modern astrology and modern transit theory of looking at aspects between planets as representing dynamics or one phase in a dynamic that’s playing out over the course of a broader cycle, between the synodic cycle between those two planets. So this square itself is not just a square between Mars and Saturn, but it has to be contextualized within the broader context of the Mars-Saturn conjunction, which began the cycle. And then everything that plays out is an extension of that, or is the turning point in whatever the story was that started at that time.
KS: For sure.
CB: So I think in that sense it’s gonna be more important in a broader context. And it is kind of interesting when it’s occurring, right there around January 19 and January 20.
KS: What is the exact inauguration date? Is it then?
CB: It’s the 20th, yeah.
KS: It is the 20th. Okay, sorry. Excuse my ignorance there. It’s like, “That sounds really familiar.” Okay, so that’s happening then, basically.
CB: Right, yeah. I mean, I don’t know that I need to or that we want to go more into that. I mean, there’s people looking at inauguration charts and other stuff like that. The inauguration chart always has Taurus rising, and there’s some stuff you could look at in terms of that. But that’s not really something I’ve looked at too closely at this point.
AC: No, I think we should move on.
KS: Okay, cool. Yeah, for sure.
CB: Okay. So one of the things I did want to mention about January before we move is one election that I did want to mention. So the results after the poll that I put out—in the last episode about the elections—is that it seemed very strongly divided. Some people said they did not care for the elections, and they sort of zoned out whenever I started doing the elections in the forecast episodes. And then the other half of people strongly said, “No, that’s actually the main reason why I listen to the election episodes, and the thing that makes those unique is having the elections each month.” And I brought that up because since we’re no longer writing them for The Mountain Astrologer, I’m no longer getting paid to do elections each month. Which is part of the reason why I started doing them here, because I could just take work that I was already doing and repurpose it for the purpose of the podcast. Because that gig is over, I’ve had to figure out whether to keep doing them here. And the middle-ground that I came up with—that we’re gonna try experimenting with at this point—is I’m gonna move the elections and stop doing them in the monthly forecasts. Instead, that’s actually gonna be a 45-minute separate podcast episode that I’m gonna do, that’s gonna be an exclusive thing for people on the $5 tier on Patreon that Leisa and I are gonna record alongside to complement the monthly forecast episode that I do with you two. We’re gonna do a separate 45-minute thing where we talk about the auspicious electional charts each month, usually trying to shoot for at least four auspicious elections for each month, like I have in the past.
But one of the things I’m gonna try to do is still highlight one of the better elections that we find each month in these forecast episodes, to give people sort of a taste of what some of the good electional charts look like. And then if they want more, they can sign up for those private podcasts that’ll be released through Patreon. So the election for this month—one of the best elections that we wanted to highlight takes place on January 6, 2017. We have it set for about 5:20 PM in Denver. That’s local time. So you should be able to, in most areas, set it for 5:20 PM in your location, and it should approximately give the same rising sign and around the same degree. If it doesn’t, just adjust it so that what you’re shooting for is 23° of Cancer rising, or somewhere around there. So this chart has Cancer rising. The ruler of the ascendant is the Moon, which is exalted in early Taurus at 2° of Taurus, interestingly, kind of close to its exaltation degree. Which is something that’s funny, cuz I’ve been researching that.
AC: That actually is its exaltation degree.
CB: Right. It’s precisely on the exaltation degree. That’s something I’ve been researching for a little piece in the book. And I’m actually thinking about doing a show on it sometime soon to talk about the rationale for the exaltation degrees and how they’re used. Is that something you use a lot, Austin?
AC: It’s something I’ve explored. They seem to have significant meaning relative to that planet. You know, I’ve looked at other planets in one planet’s exaltation degree—yeah, I think they’re really interesting. I wouldn’t say I understand it completely, but there’s something there. It’s also something that I’m very interested in, in terms of traditional talismanic astrological magic. I’ve done some exaltation degree projects that have had very interesting results.
CB: Sure. Yeah, so this chart has the Moon exalted on the exaltation degree. It’s also in a mutual reception. It’s in the eleventh whole sign house. So this is a very 11th house-focused chart, which is useful for things like friends, building alliances, groups, and social movements. But also, there’s other broader meanings of the 11th house that have to do with long-term plans for the future or hopes and wishes and things that you want to achieve ideally or in the long-term, because the 11th house is the house where, when planets are placed there, they’re rising up towards the midheaven, up towards the top part of the chart. So there’s some broader symbolic meaning that has to do with climbing up towards something or hoping to achieve something that often manifests in very literal ways in the 11th house. So the Moon is in a mutual reception with Venus, which is at 3° of Pisces in the 9th house. This is actually a night chart, so both of these are of-the-sect-in-favor, or they follow the same sect of the chart, which is nocturnal. The next aspect of the Moon is actually the sextile with Venus. So a super well-placed ruler of the ascendant, a super well-placed Venus. Lots of emphasis on the 11th, as well as the 9th house. The 9th house of course having to do with travel, education, philosophy, and things of that nature. I’d recommend this chart for especially 11th house and 9th house-type activities. One of those can be ‘astrology’ things. I’ve seen a number of astrologers who get involved in astrological organizations or actually organizing or promoting groups of astrologers having strong connections between 9th house and the 11th house in natal charts. So I could easily see that as something useful in an electional chart for that purpose as well. Yeah, so that’s the most auspicious election that we found for this month. And then Leisa and I—sometime in the next week or so—are gonna be recording the full set of elections that we found for January, and we’ll release that as a 45-minute test episode for patrons in the near future. So if you’re interested in listening to that in the future, from this point forward—if you want to listen to all of the elections each month, then just sign up to become a patron on the $5 tier and you’ll get access to those. As soon as they’re available, you’ll receive an email. I think it’s theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe for more information on that. So that’s the election for January. Unless there’s anything else, I think that brings us to the end of January.
KS: Agreed.
CB: Yeah. So early February, right off the bat, we start getting major outer planet movement, right?
AC: Well, there are a couple of things. One thing I’d like to point out is at the very end of January, Mars moves into Aries. And that’s a big deal because it’s Mars in Aries. It’s also where Mars is very strong. It also puts Mars on that cardinal axis where we have three outer planets.
KS: Yes.
AC: We also see Venus chase Mars into Pisces—or, excuse me, chase Mars into Aries on, what is it? It’s on February 2. Sorry, February 3. And so, what’s interesting about that, this is another case of false application. Normally, when Venus is chasing Mars, Venus catches Mars. Not so. Venus is gonna chase Mars throughout pretty much the whole month, but start slowing down in preparation for her early March retrograde. And so, we’re going to have Venus and Mars in Aries for all of February, and it looks like they’re going to conjoin; they are not going to conjoin. And we also have the lead-up to the Venus retrograde, as well as a pair of eclipses. February is pretty active.
CB: That’s really interesting because they’re both gonna be evening stars. So most of February, you’re actually gonna be able to go out—just after sunset, if you look off the western horizon—and see Venus trying to catch up to a conjunction with Mars in Aries. You’ll see Venus as this bright white star, and you’ll see Mars as this little reddish star, and they get within a few degrees of each other. But then Venus slows down and eventually stations retrograde in March. So like you said, they never actually catch up. But that’s actually gonna be something that you’re gonna be able to see very easily just after sunset most of that month of February.
AC: Mm-hmm.
KS: Yes.
CB: What you won’t see, interestingly, is Uranus is gonna be hidden behind them. Mars will eventually pass over Uranus in late February. But you can’t usually see Uranus with the naked eye, so that’s an interesting backdrop as well.
AC: Yeah, that’s a big moment.
KS: It is.
AC: Let’s do the first eclipse and then do the second eclipse and Mars conjunct Uranus, cuz they’re kind of sequential. So early February, we’ve got, boom, Venus-Mars in Aries, where they’re gonna be for a while.
CB: Right.
AC: And then on February 5, Jupiter stations retrograde at 23° of Libra. And it’s interesting to note, one thing you can see is that Jupiter actually stations retrograde on Spica, which is one of the brightest fixed stars in our sky. And Jupiter will be retrograde for about four months after that.
CB: Right. So that’s a major station on Jupiter’s part, right at the very beginning of February. That’s basically one of the biggest outer planet aspects—or not aspects, but phases that occurs in the month of February is Jupiter stationing retrograde at 23 Libra, about February—
KS: February 5, I think.
CB: 5th? Okay, right.
AC: And then, not even a week later, we get our very first eclipse in Leo.
KS: Eclipse of the year, yeah.
CB: Wild.
KS: Yeah, the first eclipse in Leo. Yeah, at 23 on the 10th.
AC: Right.
CB: And is that the very first of that series? Cuz I guess we had an argument about this last August about whether that Full Moon was an eclipse, but it was just outside of that range, or barely inside the range of being close enough to the node. I don’t think you guys really thought it was an eclipse. So this is gonna be the first of the Leo/Aquarius eclipse series, right?
AC: Yep. This is 11° off the nodal axis. It’s a good, old-fashioned penumbral eclipse. We said a partial or a penumbral?
KS: I’ve got penumbral.
AC: Okay. You know, it’s Mercury retrograde time. It’s worth checking it twice.
KS: Totally.
AC: But it’s not gonna be like a blood red Moon dripping from the horizon.
KS: No.
AC: They’ll be the shadow and you’ll feel the weird. And of course this eclipse is configured to the Uranus-Jupiter opposition, right? This is Sun and Moon at 22, and Jupiter’s at 23 and Uranus is at 21. So we have that funny rectangle shape. I remember reading 15 years ago, Robert Hand called it the ‘mystic rectangle’, or he referenced someone who called it the ‘mystic rectangle’, which I thought was kind of hilarious. I don’t find the rectangle to be a tremendously mystical shape.
CB: It’s a ‘mystic rectangle’. There’s the regular rectangle, but then this one’s mystic.
AC: Right. You need two sides being 60° and two sides being 120°. But the point for me is that it’s configured to that Uranus-Jupiter, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: It ties into what is basically this on-and-off, year-long conflict between Jupiter in Libra, which is like, “Hey, let’s get along and strike trade deals and not worry about all that stuff,” and Uranus who’s like, “No fucking way. There’s no way I’m going in on that. We’re not doing that. I’m not being a part of this.” It’s interesting cuz it’s almost a magnification of the planet’s essential nature. It’s Jupiter wanting to get along and Uranus wanting to break away.
KS: Yes.
CB: I mean, to me, this is a much more positive lunation in comparison to the August one is gonna be, where the aspects are much more tense or much more negative. Even though there is obviously the tension of that Uranus-Jupiter opposition there as being something that is potentially flammable or prone towards explosions in some sense, the way it’s tied into the lunation makes me think that it would be a much more positive manifestation of that, at least as much as you can get from that alignment.
AC: Yeah, I would say it’s workable.
KS: Yeah.
AC: I think this is what we try to do at this point in the year, and then we’re gonna come back around to the same topic in August. You know, in my experience, the eclipses very much work in a year-and-a-half cycle and each installment is one chapter of the story. And so, the story begins on February 10.
CB: Right. And especially this one is like the opening of a six-month story in the short-term. The story between February and August starts with this eclipse basically, right?
AC: Yeah. Although I think it would be an error to consider it just a six-month story.
CB: Sure.
AC: You know, the most dramatic chapter of that story will be the August installment. But the eclipses in Leo and Aquarius go on after that, right? We’re not gonna get a conclusion. We’re just going to get the exciting second act of tensions rising in August. You know, it’ll continue into 2018.
CB: Right. Yeah, and that’s actually an issue with working with eclipses in a mundane sense. Cuz it’s like Zoller’s prediction about 9/11 was based on the 1999 solar eclipse, where part of the shadow fell over the eastern coast of the United States and passed through New York and Washington and stuff; so that partially became the basis for a prediction about something that would only take place a couple of years later. So that’s sometimes an issue in terms of eclipses. They can mark, or they can act as sort of time-marker for something that’s gonna be much more long-term or play out in the long-term, even if it sets the seeds for those developments much earlier.
AC: Right. With eclipses you have to look at what’s gonna happen in the week surrounding the eclipses versus how does it mark this area and what’s gonna resonate with this from the future—cuz it does both. And I would say any really significant thing in astrology does both. It both has an in-the-moment effect, as well as an effect on the past and the future. There’s usually stuff leading up to that and then there’s stuff that calls back to that as well.
CB: Right. Definitely. And one of the trickiest things or most difficult things about dealing with this stuff—with mundane astrology—is being able to get the immediate effect or the immediate manifestation, but also being able to say something and not knowing for a long time what the ultimate long-term ramifications of that are, because it sets things in motion that sometimes don’t become clear for like months or years or decades later. All right, so that’s the lunar eclipse. And that’s funny, cuz we’re focusing on the thing that starts off this entire series, a lunar eclipse. But then, just a few weeks later—two weeks later, at the next lunation—we have a New Moon that takes place later in February, I believe, on the 26th, right?
KS: Correct.
CB: So February 26, we’ve got a New Moon that takes place at 8° of Pisces. And that is a solar eclipse, right?
AC: That is a full-on, annular solar eclipse.
KS: A very powerful type, yes.
AC: And just because ‘fun’, Mars is conjunct Uranus in Aries that day.
CB: Wow, nice. Mars is conjunct Uranus in Aries.
KS: And opposes Jupiter the next day.
AC: And let’s just look and see if there’s an antiscia. Oh, yeah, that Mars-Uranus happens to be in an almost perfect contra-antiscia to that Sun and Moon, that big old annular eclipse. So that’s powerful.
CB: And in addition to that, the other outer planet thing is the eclipse itself is actually really closely-conjunct Neptune, which is at 11° of Pisces, and the eclipse is taking place at 8° of Pisces. So we’ve got a ‘super-Neptune-y’ Pisces eclipse at the same time as that other alignment with Mars and Uranus and Jupiter.
AC: Yep.
KS: Well, and just adding into this already intense, dramatic story, the traditional ruler of the eclipse is Jupiter, which then kind of really spotlights this Mars-Uranus aspect, cuz they’re in direct opposition to Jupiter at the time of the eclipse.
AC: Yeah, it’s like half-a-degree.
KS: Yeah, it’s very Pisces and it’s very Neptune, but the Jupiter-Mars-Uranus combination will certainly show up around that time.
AC: Yeah, I think it will be much more vigorous than people would expect out of Pisces-Neptune.
KS: Pisces-Neptune. Yeah, I think the Jupiter-Uranus-Mars is what we’re really gonna see at that time.
AC: Yeah. You know, I was on another podcast the other day, and I was saying that sometimes as an astrologer, you can’t quite say what’s gonna happen, but you know when it’s gonna happen. You can point at a certain date and gesticulate wildly and put a lot of exclamation points around it. Even if you can’t thoroughly articulate what it is, you know when it is. And this has got at least three exclamation points next to it.
KS: You’re gesticulating wildly about this date, Austin? Is that what you’re telling us?
AC: Yeah, this configuration is a game-changer. You know, it’s a game-changer for a lot of people. So we’re talking about eclipses and series and chapters and all that. So this is the very last eclipse on the Pisces/Virgo axis for quite some time, for nearly a decade.
CB: That’s important. That’s closing a one-and-a-half/two-year-period of Pisces/Virgo eclipses, right?
AC: Yeah, absolutely. And it ends not with a whimper but with a bang.
KS: A big bang.
CB: I mean, that’s important probably on a personal note for everybody who’s been experiencing Virgo and Pisces eclipses in a certain part of their chart over the past couple of years. This is sort of the final one to bring that series to a close in terms of whatever that was about for you personally; often tied into what part of your chart it was falling in and specifically the house dictating the area of life that it was the most relevant to.
AC: And so, I would just like to say, for my fellow people who are invested in 5°-10° mutable—Kelly, I’m talking about you—
KS: I’m listening, Austin.
AC: Our trials are soon to be at an end. Because those early mutable degrees got a lot of attention in 2016. And this is a lot of attention, but this is pretty much it. If you’re 5-10 mutable, you’re gonna get a lot less attention from the planets this year than you got in 2016. This is just this one last thing.
KS: The last hurrah. Sorry, Chris.
CB: But then it’s gonna be in effect for like six months. I mean, you’re not out of the doghouse really, or whatever house you’re in.
AC: I’ll take this any day over multiple eclipses there, and Saturn and Mars there. It’s not even comparable.
CB: Right.
KS: Yes. And just to wrap to really emphasize that ending theme—we’re ending this 18-month period with the nodes in Pisces and Virgo with the eclipses there, and this particular eclipse is on the South Node. So I don’t know, there’s something in the symbolism there about that final release or that ending, that letting go, and yeah, as you were saying, Chris, for listeners to think about how it might be affecting them. Even if you’re not like Austin and myself and have planets at these early mutable degrees, everybody has these degrees falling in a particular house in their chart. So those topics or those areas of life, you can kind of wrap it up, put a bow on it, and put it back on the shelf because this is the closing stage of that period.
CB: Yeah. And one of the things that’s nice about that is because we’re getting towards the end of it—it’s been going on for almost a couple of years now—you can usually get a sense for how that was affecting or has been affecting a certain part of your life at this point. Or there should be a greater sense of clarity about that if you focus on what houses it’s been falling on with the Pisces and then the Virgo eclipses over the past two years. So by this point, hopefully, those themes are a little bit clearer, so you can use the next six months after this eclipse—where you’re in the final stages of that—to wrap up those themes in your life before it fully moves into a new area, when the eclipses start taking place fully in Aquarius and Leo in August. So this is like the very final six-month transition phase between that, starting in February. All right, so that’s February. How are we doing for time here? We’ve been going for like 1-hour-and-20-minutes. So when do we need to cut it off? In 30 minutes?
KS: About 45 minutes.
AC: We need to not spend 20 minutes on every month.
CB: Okay.
KS: And there are so months where we won’t, but there’ll be some months—
AC: Yeah, February is huge.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah, so February’s big. That’s our first month of eclipses. So moving onto March. Let’s see, in March, the primary thing is it has the beginning of one of our major signatures for this year, which is the Venus retrograde. So as Austin said, Venus has been slowing down. It started slowing down most of February. It’s trying to catch up with Mars, then it doesn’t quite make it. By March 4, Venus actually stops. It stops moving forward in order of the signs of the zodiac, and it stations retrograde at 13° of Aries, and then begins walking backwards or moving backwards in the order of signs for the next few weeks. So Venus retrograde, any thoughts on that?
AC: Yeah. Go ahead, Kelly.
KS: I was just gonna say, I always like to point out that eight-year cycle that Venus retrogrades do tap into.
CB: Yes.
KS: We do get the Venus retrograde every 18 months of course, but in a different part of the zodiac. So the last time that Venus was retrograde in Aries was eight years prior. So we’re talking 2009, if I do the numbers off the top of my head.
CB: Right.
KS: And Venus retrogrades almost within 2° of the exact part of the zodiac every eight years. So if you were trying to get a sense of how this Venus in Aries retro period might trigger you, think back to the March/April period in 2009.
CB: Right.
KS: Austin?
CB: Or go eight years before that.
KS: Yes, it repeats. Of course you can go back eight years in perpetuity and then forward similarly as well.
AC: Yeah, you’ve been through this one before.
KS: Yes.
CB: And there’s gonna be some people, where they’re gonna respond to that, just because it’s hitting important stuff in their natal chart. So when you go back and look at that, if you see that that’s coming up, and it’s really important every time it happens in that area, then you can assume that this one is gonna be similarly pivotal. Whereas there’s other people, where they’ll go back and it won’t really be a big deal, but sometimes they’ll hit one of them—16 years ago or something—that was a really big deal. And sometimes that’s because it can become temporarily activated if Venus is like a time-lord for you that year or something like that.
AC: I was just gonna say that. Yeah, if it’s the lord of the year for you, then it signifies a much more important shift of gear in the Venusian area of your life. I would also just like to point out—cuz we crossed over it—the day before Venus stations retrograde, which is basically its station, Jupiter opposes Uranus perfectly again for the second time.
CB: The second time. Wow, okay.
KS: Yes, the second hit of Jupiter-Uranus. And don’t we have Jupiter-Pluto coming in here as well?
AC: Not for a while. I mean, not immediately.
KS: Oh, right, yeah. It’s in March, but not at the start of the month. It’s at the end, okay.
CB: Okay, so that’s the second exact of that. It’s happening right at the time of the Venus station. We said some of them in the last episode, but what were some of the positive keywords of Jupiter-Uranus? I mean, some of the ones that come up for me are ‘unexpected growth’.
AC: ‘Rapid growth’.
CB: ‘Rapid growth’.
KS: Richard Tarnas calls this ‘cycles of creativity and expansion’, and he devotes a fair section in his tome, Cosmos and Psyche, about how collectively we go through these heightened periods of scientific and technological breakthroughs with Jupiter and Uranus active. So it’s absolutely accelerated discovery, growth, progress. I mean, that’s where the excitement can come from. But as Austin said, it’s not happening according to plan, which is not how breakthroughs happen anyway.
AC: Yeah, that’s a good point.
CB: And what are the negative keywords of Jupiter-Uranus?
AC: I think this one is going to disrupt deals in particular. If we look at the signs, Jupiter in Libra really wants to make deals and solidify harmonious arrangements between entities, whether they’re nation-states or people or families or whatever.
KS: Yes.
AC: Uranus in Aries is totally gonna throw wrenches into those deals.
CB: Yeah, and it’s with Mars. I mean, Mars is at 25 Aries, conjunct Uranus, opposing Jupiter at the same time.
AC: Right. We still have Mars fueling that.
KS: Yes.
AC: And here’s the really important part. Jupiter in Libra is ruled by Venus, who is stationing retrograde in a sign where she is most contentious.
CB: Right. And that’s important, this station, because this is something I’m dealing with in the final edit of the book right now, this little section on retrogrades. Sometimes retrogrades in the tradition are interpreted as a weakening of the planet or an inversion of its significations, but other times retrogrades are interpreted as an intensification of the significations of the planet in some way, depending on where it’s placed in the chart. And it seems like sometimes that’s what we see more, this idea of an intensification, but the context entirely depends on what sign it’s placed in and the other planets that it’s closely-configured to in terms of how that’s gonna turn out. So yeah, the intensification of Venus here, but in Aries—in a Mars-ruled sign, with Mars and Uranus—seems a bit more combative, a bit more of separating things rather than a ‘uniting things’ type of energy.
AC: I would agree with that.
KS: For sure.
AC: And with the longer meaning of the Venus retrograde, a lot of times what you see is things being separated so that they can eventually achieve harmony, but they have to be taken apart before they can be put back together. You know, you gotta take a step back before you can take a step forward. There needs to be this readjustment and clarification and separation before there can be unification.
CB: Looking at that Mars-Uranus conjunction, that brings up ideas of belligerence and rebelliousness or unexpected separations and things like that. I mean, those are the themes that started coming to me when we were talking about that, when you were placing it in that context, Austin, of Jupiter in Libra trying to make deals, but then having to contend with this super-belligerent line-up of planets in Aries at the same time.
AC: Yeah. And remember, this is less than a week after the big solar eclipse.
CB: Right.
AC: So this is a big week.
CB: And then it’s all square Pluto at 18° of Capricorn at the same time.
AC: Loosely. I mean, Mars is separated by 7°.
CB: Yeah. I mean, I was the first person—a year or two ago—that was sort of washing my hands and saying, “That’s the end of that Uranus-Pluto square.” But really, if anything, the past year has shown me that’s hardly over. And I always knew theoretically that some of these alignments aren’t over. And I’ve definitely seen this studying the Uranus-Pluto—or sorry, the Uranus-Neptune cycle and the history of astrology, that the conjunctions of Uranus and Neptune are always really super important for the history of astrology, but they start as soon as those two planets move into the same signs. And I’ve always known that, at least conceptually, and I’ve seen in other instances that these alignments are relevant as soon as they’re in the same signs. They just become more intense if they’re closer or more acute. But I feel like over the past year, especially when we’ve seen some of those transfers of light, or those translations of light—where different planets, like Jupiter, have bounced back and forth between Uranus and Pluto—that that’s still a lot more active than we would think it is, even though it’s several degrees off at this point. So I’m definitely not ready to write off the Pluto action that’s going on in connection with that Jupiter-Uranus opposition right now.
AC: It doesn’t help.
CB: Sure. It’s certainly not helping matters. All right, so that’s the end of February.
AC: And the beginning of March.
CB: The beginning of March. Are there any other major things? So we then have Venus retrograde in Aries for basically the entirety of March.
KS: Just the Jupiter square Pluto, which happens at the end of the month.
AC: Well, I would just point out that things cool down a little bit after that. On March 9, Mars is in Taurus, which may not be the best place for Mars, but it’s way less incendiary than Mars in Aries. Mars is no longer triggering Uranus and Jupiter. It’s in Taurus, it’s just sort of chugging along, right? I think that should serve to take the temperature down a little bit. It’ll be like, okay, whatever important separation happened, or whatever problem was introduced at the end of February/early March, we just kind of get into that role. It’s like, okay, Venus is retrograde in Aries, Mars is in Taurus, and we just kind of chug along.
CB: ‘Incendiary’, that’s a really good keyword for that Mars-Uranus line-up opposite Jupiter back in February and March. And, Kelly, you pointing out that Jupiter squares Pluto, I mean, that actually re-underlines the point, to me, of that Uranus-Pluto square not being over, if you have a planet like Jupiter at the beginning of March opposing Uranus exactly, and then later in month of March, it’s squaring Pluto. Again, we’ve talked about this in the past couple of months, but it brings some of those horary rules back into play of ‘transfer of light’. Like that’s a classic transfer of light between one outer planet that’s reconnecting to others. Even though they shouldn’t be able to form an exact relationship anymore, there’s some sort of intermediary that’s bringing that back into focus, even though it should be something that’s passing away or moving out of the collective conscious at this point.
AC: Well, I think it’s important to note the difference between something in process and living in the wake of it. We’re not gonna have another Arab Spring. We’re not going to have all of these revolutions and protest movements that began while the Uranus-Pluto squares were actually in the midst of making exact squares, but where we are now references all of those changes. We’re in the world—the second-half of the decade was created by the first-half of the decade. And so, both individuals and nation-states have not necessarily adapted to those changes, and so we’re harkening back to them. And so, it is active. But to assume that it’s going to be like the period where they were making exact squares would lead you to predict false outcomes.
CB: I mean, what was funny is at the beginning of that whole series of Uranus-Pluto squares, it was the revolution, it was the Uranus phase, it was the Uranus significations that were the clearest, and it seemed like that was what was winning out. Uranus started squaring Pluto—this is a follow-up of course—it was the opening square relative to the conjunction of Uranus and Pluto back in the 1960s. And suddenly there’s all these Uranus-type rebellions in different countries and attempts to throw off—sometimes violently throw off—power, or overthrow powerful regimes. But then a lot of them didn’t go so well.
AC: Yeah, they ended up with military autocracies in a lot of cases.
CB: Yeah, Pluto won. So Pluto won in a ton of these cases. I would say theoretically—something we’ve talked about off and on over the past few years—that Pluto ended up winning because it was in the superior position. And there was this very interesting astrological lesson there about superior versus inferior position, and that the planet that’s earlier in the order of degrees, or earlier in the order of signs, tends to win out was always a classical, Hellenistic concept that was used in their basic aspect doctrine, in the original aspect doctrine. But we actually saw it play out in a very literal way in the mundane astrology, in the sense that Uranus got to the square, it looked like Uranus was going to be successful. It was successful in fomenting rebellion, but then ultimately it sort of caused what Pluto signified to clamp down even further and win out in some ways, and not just retain power but deepen it or made it more entrenched or more powerful than it was before. So that’s almost what we’re seeing here now, the full empowerment of Pluto, basically.
AC: And especially with Saturn on its way to conjoin Pluto towards the end of the decade.
CB: Yeah.
AC: And I would also add, those Uranian ‘successes’ make a lot of sense when they’re considered within the context of the Hellenistic doctrine of ‘hurling rays’. The planet in the inferior position in the square will fight furiously, right? And it did. It’s sort of like being cornered. Even if I’m going down, I’m gonna try to take you with me. And so, it’s not that the planet in the inferior position just gets neutralized with no action.
CB: Right. And there’s still a disruption. It’s like the inferior planet is able to disrupt what the superior planet is doing. I mean, it’s hard when you’re talking about world events because there’s so many nuances and things, but you did have the overthrow of certain governments or certain regimes. Like in Libya, you had the overthrow of Gaddafi’s government and the killing of Gaddafi. In Syria, you had the attempted overthrow of Assad and the disruption of what Syria was like prior to that and the government that was in place. And then now, it’s definitely been put on its toes, but it ultimately was able to maintain power.
AC: And Egypt, I think, is probably the easiest example, and also the largest. It’s a huge country. I think it’s 80 million people, right? Successful revolution, a couple of years later, military autocracy.
CB: Oh, my God, that’s such an amazing demonstration of that concept of both the meanings of Uranus and Pluto, this idea of inferior versus superior, and that idea of striking with a ray or hurling rays on the part of the inferior planet. Usually the superior planet wins, but the inferior planet still has this brief window—when it gets within the degree range—when it can shake things up.
AC: That’s become clear with Saturn and Neptune, right? Is free-flow and porous boundaries the winner, or are hard boundaries the winner? Hard boundaries are the winner of 2016, right? Saturn won. Saturn was in the superior position.
CB: Sure. So it’ll be interesting in the long-term. I don’t know if we’ll see the Uranus opposition of Pluto at some point, where suddenly neither of them are in the superior or inferior position, but they have parity between the two, and eventually, when we get the waning square—whenever that takes place—of Uranus square Pluto, but then Uranus being in the superior position over Pluto, and the potential for Uranus to win out, and what that looks like in the long-term.
AC: Well, it looks like the early ‘30s and ‘20s, doesn’t it?
CB: Sure. I mean, I’m trying to think.
AC: That was Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Cancer, right?
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
AC: So maybe we don’t want that.
CB: Well, yeah. In terms of what we want or don’t want or whatever, I don’t know if that matters. But it’s an interesting lesson in astrology and basic principles of astrology that have been around for 2,000 years. But then seeing them in action with new outer planets in world events, in real-time, right in front of us, there’s something really fascinating about that.
AC: Totally.
CB: All right, so what is that, March? Where are we? We’ve got another 20-minute digression.
KS: Just a slight sidebar.
CB: We should be done with this by sometime tomorrow morning at this rate.
KS: Totally.
CB: Okay, so we should move on. Are we in April at this point? No, we got to the end of April. Cuz there’s one very important thing that happens.
AC: We haven’t done any of April yet.
KS: No, we were just talking about end of March.
CB: Oh, March, sorry. That’s what I meant. So we got Venus stationing retrograde at the beginning of March. It’s still retrograde. Anything else in March that we need to mention before April?
AC: No, let’s move on.
CB: Okay. The very beginning of April, the very top of it, the first thing is April 5. Saturn stations retrograde at 27° of Sagittarius. So Saturn’s on its way out of Sagittarius—or at least it’s getting very, very close to moving into a different sign, to Capricorn—but instead it stations retrograde at 27° and begins its movement back into the depths of Sagittarius. Any comments? No?
AC: No.
KS: I mean, it’s happening.
AC: It’s one of our many late ‘fire’ events. And then a couple of days later, we get Mercury stationing retrograde. Mercury stations retrograde. This is our first, full Mercury retrograde cycle of the year. It stations retrograde at 4 Taurus on April 9. And this is a long retrograde. It comes all the way back to 24 of Aries, and it stations direct in early May conjunct Uranus in a fire sign.
CB: Wow.
AC: So that’s like a 25-day retrograde.
CB: Right.
AC: And it ends on Uranus, and Uranus of course being within 2° of a mutually-applying trine to Saturn. So it’s that same complex of planets—this time the Saturn-Uranus in late fire signs getting lit up. Jupiter’s way back at 15, so he’s not gonna have quite as much to say about this one. But that is a Saturn-Uranus moment.
CB: Yeah, that’s really interesting. And it takes us forward to May—around May 3 or so—when Mercury’s stationing direct at 24° of Aries, conjunct Uranus at 25 Aries, and then trine to Saturn at 27 Sagittarius. Of course the Moon decides to move through the other fire sign—the only remaining fire sign at that point—and it goes through late Leo on the 23rd and fills out a grand trine.
AC: And why not?
CB: Yeah, why not? So what’s gonna be a funny thing about a lot of those is sometimes they’ll get completed or emphasized even more by passing inner planets or lunations and things like that.
AC: And I will also say, just before we move past April entirely, our Full Moon in April—a Full Moon in Libra, with the Sun in Aries—is at 21. So that puts the Sun within 3° of Uranus in Aries and the Moon within a couple of degrees—within 3.5°—of Jupiter in Libra. So that lunation, again, emphasizes the Uranus-Jupiter. You know, it’s not just that that’s around all year, it’s that these other factors keep hitting, keep lighting up that opposition.
CB: Okay. Yeah, that’s a really good point.
AC: And we should also mention that Venus stations direct in April at 26 Pisces.
KS: Yeah, on the 14th, which is going to be a nice change.
AC: Yeah, I really wish Venus wasn’t stationing direct in a tight square to Saturn.
CB: Right. So Saturn’s at like 27-ish, 26-ish?
AC: 27°44’.
KS: That’s actually true. That would be much nicer. I was just thinking, oh, she’s close to her exaltation degree.
AC: I know, right?
KS: Again, square to Saturn, it’s gonna take the edge off of that.
AC: Yeah. You know, the way forward is going to require work, right? Just to ‘de-horrify’ that a little bit. It’s gonna be like, okay, if we’re going to bring a chord in line with Venus in her exaltation—very close to her exaltation degree—we’re going to have to work through the matrix of limitations that Saturn imposes. This is also one of the times that it might actually be worth talking about Chiron, because Venus stations direct right on top of Chiron.
CB: Wow.
AC: Like, whoa.
CB: Yeah, I’m trying to add it to my chart really quickly, cuz that’s not something I otherwise have in my charts. I’m actually having problems doing that. Do you know what degree it is?
AC: 26.
CB: Wow. Already I was thinking of the Venus square Saturn coming out of a Venus retrograde. One of the keywords that was coming to me was ‘heartbreak’. But if you throw Chiron into the mix at the same time, that kind of emphasizes that keyword to me a little bit more.
AC: Yeah. You know, I mentioned earlier with Jupiter and Uranus, there’s this theme of deals and coming into harmonious accord. Certainly, that has a business sense. But to a certain degree, any meaningful relationship is a deal where I have my expectations of you, and you have your expectations of me, and hopefully we both live up to them, right? But when they don’t, I mean, that’s really what a lot of heartbreak is about. It’s about people betraying expectations. And so, I tend to see any Venus retrograde as sort of a phase change, as well as a test for committed relationships. And so, this might be one of the harder ones. There’ll be some real lessons about partnership here.
CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And gets resolved in a—I don’t know how to describe that. But it’s not messy, but it’s not very pretty, or it doesn’t seem very happy.
AC: It doesn’t provide immediate resolution and satisfaction, right? If Saturn’s involved, it’s like, okay, well, you can begin working on this now. You know, with Chiron there, Chiron’s pretty good for old wounds and for pointing to old wounds and scars and sometimes offering the potential to work through them, but those things are generally not forgotten in a day.
CB: Sure. Kelly?
KS: Yeah, I was just gonna say, with Venus-Saturn, I always describe it as this is not necessarily the happiest energy or period in a particular relationship, but it will be the period where you’re kind of digging in, doing the work, sifting through whatever gunk has accumulated. You’re solidifying or shoring up the foundations, but needing to really put in the effort. So it’s like the work of relationship and partnership rather than the happy, fun stuff, if that makes sense.
AC: Yeah, like this is real. You know, whatever the issues are here are gonna tend to be real issues with roots. And so, even if you don’t wanna deal with them, it’s not some dumb thing that you can ignore and it’ll go away, right? The issues that are revealed here are real ones. And sometimes even if that’s unpleasant, it’s very useful. By working on real issues, you resolve real issues, right? We spend a lot of our time chasing things that aren’t that important.
KS: Yeah. So it’s the meaty stuff, basically.
AC: Absolutely.
CB: It’s such a different flavor. Remember that retrograde we had last year, the one in Leo.
KS: Oh, with Jupiter in Leo?
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah, different.
CB: Very much more optimistic or positive. And for a lot of people in the United States, the conjunction that was the build-up to it was the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States, which for a lot of people who subsequently got married, was a positive or a very optimistic time period. This is a lot different of a line-up, having Venus stationing direct, conjunct Chiron, square Saturn.
AC: Yeah, rather than hanging out with Jupiter.
CB: Yeah, that’s much more pessimistic, more ‘no’ or boundaries or the rejection of something, or you can’t do something. It’s almost the polar-opposite in some sense. It’s interesting also cuz Saturn’s in the superior position in Sagittarius saying ‘no’ to something and saying you can’t do this or you can’t proceed further.
AC: Well, let’s hope that you are less right than you sound and that this doesn’t coincide with a literal attempt to roll back rights for people.
CB: Sure. I mean, it’s interesting in terms of Saturn in Sagittarius and the other part of it that we haven’t seen a ton of so far, which is the more religious or ideological side of Sagittarius; especially with Saturn there and the ideas of dogmatism or imposing one’s own structure based on theological or philosophical or religious reasons more broadly. I don’t know. Yeah, we’ll see what happens. I mean, it’s interesting, cuz around the same time of course, Saturn is stationing retrograde—or has recently stationed retrograde there. So there should be an intensification of something very much tied into those Saturn in Sagittarius themes. And that’s one of the few ones I feel like we haven’t seen. I mean, we’ve seen a little bit of fear of foreigners or fear of foreign religion, like some of the stuff in the past year with Trump’s initial statements about banning all Muslims from coming into the country or something like that. There was a little bit of religious-type, Saturn in Sagittarius themes coming up, but it’s otherwise something I feel like we haven’t seen as much of, as some of the other themes, so that’ll be interesting.
AC: Yeah, April’s complicated, right? It’s like, yay, Venus is no longer retrograde. Oh, boo, it’s conjunct Chiron and square Saturn.
CB: Right.
AC: And Mercury is retrograde. Mercury stations retrograde less than a week before the Venus retrograde. The Sun is conjunct Uranus while Venus stations direct. You know, April’s complicated, and I think it’s really gonna be about just riding it. You know, there are a lot of surprises and reversals during April.
CB: Yeah. And was this mentioned already? So Pluto stations retrograde at 19 Capricorn on April 20. And that’s actually a pretty important or pretty powerful transit as well, in terms of an intensification of Pluto in Capricorn and some of the things that come along with that. I think that’s it for April, right? I will take that as a ‘yes’. Okay, Mercury stations direct. Eventually, we get into May. The very top of the month, Mercury stations direct at 24 Aries on May 3. And I don’t know what nodes you guys use, but in my ephemeris usually I use the True Node. It moves into Leo on May 9.
AC: Yeah, I tend to default to the True Node.
CB: You default to True Node. Kelly?
KS: Yeah, I do, too. I mean, the difference between the two is very, very minimal.
AC: Yeah, very rarely does it make a difference in delineation.
KS: Yeah.
AC: You know, the only thing is maybe if you’re using whole sign houses and you’re looking at a natal chart where they’re different. But for mundane prognostication, it doesn’t really matter, cuz the eclipses will be in one sign or another.
CB: Right.
KS: Yes.
CB: Does anybody know when the other one changes?
KS: It would be within a day or two, I think. Cuz they’re less than a degree apart, or just around a degree apart, aren’t they?
AC: Yeah, but the nodes take a while to move a degree.
KS: That’s true. I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. Yeah, so it could be a few days. I don’t know when the other one changes.
CB: Okay, but somewhere around that time. So we’re talking about the May timeframe, we’ve got a major shift.
AC: Between the first and second set of eclipses this year.
CB: Yeah. So one way or another, we’ve got a major nodal shift moving into a new axis after a year-and-a-half or a two-year trip through Virgo and Pisces. You know, we haven’t had the nodes here. I mean, this takes us back several years. The 2008 timeframe was the last time they were in that axis, but reversed. And then of course it’s like 18-19 years ago since we’ve had them in that exact position, with the North Node going through Leo and the South Node going through Aquarius.
AC: And it’s worth noting that in the July 4 chart for the United States, the United States had the South Node in Aquarius and the North Node in Leo.
CB: In which chart?
AC: The July 4 chart.
CB: Oh, okay. Yeah, that is very interesting actually.
KS: Would you know what degrees, Austin?
AC: Yeah, I have it taped to my wall.
KS: Okay. So the North Node’s at, what? Leo?
AC: They’re at 6.
KS: 6. Okay, so it’s a little ways off. But the US will have a nodal return while the North Node moves through Leo. That’ll probably be 2018.
CB: Wow, good times. So nodes moving in. That’s gonna be like a year-and-a-half/two-year deal.
AC: I think it’s 18-ish months for the nodes.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Somewhere in-between that. And that’s kind of it for May. I didn’t really see any other major stuff for May.
KS: Saturn trine Uranus.
CB: Saturn trine Uranus?
AC: Saturn trine Uranus. And towards the end of the month, Mars gets configured to that.
KS: Yes.
AC: You have Mars opposite Saturn and trine Uranus, which is, again, just like stressing one of these themes. You don’t just get to Saturn and be responsible here. You have to be innovative. You have to pivot. You know, it’s funny. When I was writing tactics or suggestions for 2017, I found myself repeating this semi-nauseating, Silicon Valley advice where it’s like, “Oh, you gotta pivot. You gotta be flexible.” But it really is good advice for this year. It’s not good advice always, but there’s a lot this year that really calls you to keep your big goal in mind, but change your short-term tactics and what you’re gonna get done this month significantly, to incorporate these cards as they get turned over into what you’re doing.
CB: And when was that aspect, again?
AC: It’s the end of the month.
CB: Okay, very end of May.
KS: The Mars-Saturn, yeah.
AC: Yeah. And then Mars-Uranus is like a couple of days later.
CB: Got it. And let’s see, moving into June, the very beginning of the month, Jupiter—after a several-month retrograde cycle—stations direct at 13° of Libra on June 8-ish.
AC: Yay!
CB: So that’s important. It’s the final station in that sign. And then after that point, it’s gonna pick up speed really quickly. Eventually, it’ll pick up speed and start moving pretty quick and then just cruise on out of Libra. So this begins its final run through that sign basically, starting June 8.
AC: Right. And so, that’s direct through the end of the year. And so, ‘direct’ means doing the square to Pluto and the opposition to Uranus and the sextile to Saturn, right? So Jupiter’s retreated and it’s gonna do all three of those before the end of the year. Actually before the end of the third quarter.
CB: Right. So the final thing that that transit is all about for everybody, very quickly, it just starts happening in rapid succession after this point in early June. Let’s see, after that, about a week later, Neptune stations retrograde at 14° of Pisces. So we have this interesting intensification of Neptune right in the middle of the month.
AC: Yeah, right on my Sun.
KS: Oh, lucky you, Austin.
AC: Oh, I’m looking forward to it. I’m going to write some stories.
KS: Beautiful.
CB: And then I don’t know if I just overlooked something, but I don’t have anything written down for July. Do you guys have anything?
AC: Uh, yeah. Let’s not get done with June quite yet.
CB: Okay.
KS: I’d give a shoutout to Venus in Taurus for that month.
AC: Yeah. Like there’s stuff going on, but that’s stabilizing.
KS: Mm-hmm.
AC: On June 20, we have both Mercury and the Sun move into Cancer, where they will join Mars, right? And so, suddenly we’ve got three planets in Cancer. And this is a year where there’s not a lot of water. And so, I think that’s significant. And then the month closes out with a configuration I’m not duper happy with, and that’s the Mercury-Mars conjunction in Cancer opposite Pluto in Capricorn and square Jupiter. So we have Mercury-Mars perfect at 15, and then Pluto at 18, and then Jupiter back there at 13. And so, not only do we have this exact conjunction between Mercury and Mars opposite Pluto, but then both Mercury and Mars—over the next couple of days—make oppositions to Pluto. You know, we had one of those in 2013, and I definitely saw it bring up stuff for people. You know, they’re sort of like ugly, old, hard feelings and tender spots that malefics in Cancer tend to bring up for inspection. And that leads us into July, cuz July is much more martial than one might expect. If you look at the Full Moon—which takes place in early July—that’s gonna be early July 9. No, no, no, it looks like late July 8, we have Sun-Mars at 17 and 22 Cancer, and then we have Pluto at 18 Cap and the Moon at 17 Cap. So we have a Mars-Pluto-Full Moon with some action from Jupiter and some action from Neptune getting in on angles, but really Sun-Mars and then Pluto are really the stars of the show. So what’s interesting about that, again, from this ‘martial’ theme is that our New Moon, two weeks later—which comes towards the end of the month—is actually conjunct Mars. Our New Moon in Leo, on July—is it 23rd?
KS: 23rd.
AC: Yeah, early on the 23rd, is conjunct Mars within about a degree. The Sun and Moon are in the first degree of Leo and Mars is in the second degree of Leo. And so, that’s just a few days before the superior conjunction of the Sun and Mars. Not the superior conjunction, sorry. There’s only one conjunction between the conjunction of the Sun and Mars. And so, that conjunction is the opposite of the Mars retrograde, which is built around the opposition. So that’s the halfway point between retrogrades. And there are a number of traditional astrologers who use the Mars-Sun conjunction as a new beginning of the Mars cycle. At the very least it’s a very significant halfway point between retrogrades. So that’s a lot of Mars. Both lunations with Mars in June—excuse me, in July.
CB: Okay. And I just realized we’re running out of time. We’ve got 20 minutes or less before we’ve gotta cut this off. So we should probably pick it up through the rest. Where are we at? July? Anything?
KS: I think you did a good summary, Austin. We can probably dive into August, which is going to be a big month.
AC: I think that July is rather unusually martial nature really sets us up for August.
CB: Sure. And so, the big focal point—I mean, I don’t know if you want to go through sequentially or focus on the most important thing.
AC: Let’s just hit the big bits.
CB: Okay.
KS: Let’s do that.
CB: I mean, Uranus stations retrograde at 28 Aries, August 3. Mercury retrograde at 11 Virgo, August 13-ish..
AC: Before that, we have a lunar eclipse.
CB: Oh, right.
AC: On August 7, we have a lunar eclipse at 15° of Aquarius, about 9° off the North Node. I believe that’s a partial eclipse.
CB: 9° off. Wow, okay.
AC: This is interesting in and of itself. But then, boom, like you said, Mercury retrograde, 11°, not quite opposite Neptune, 2° shy of completing that aspect. But the big story is—it’s being dubbed the ‘Great American Eclipse’.
CB: Right.
AC: This total eclipse, which goes from sea to shining sea, starting with the West Coast and going to the East Coast at 28 Leo.
CB: Which is wild. And people have been talking about that for a while. A year or two ago, people started to collectively notice that that was coming up, and that it was gonna be crossing the entire continental United States. But then over the past year—and certainly over the past month—that’s become even more notable, since we all know that the person who’s going to be the leader of the country at the time has his ascendant right where the eclipse is taking place.
AC: And Mars.
CB: Oh, right. His Mars is 26 Leo? Is that correct?
AC: That’s a little later.
CB: Hold on. Let me find it.
AC: It’s within a degree or two, regardless. And we also have Mars at 20, not too far away from this.
KS: Yeah, the August eclipse is dynamic, dramatic, potentially volatile, because it is kind of a quadruple line-up. We’ve got the Sun, Moon, North Node, plus we’ve got Mars configured right there. As you pointed out, Austin, it’s the second New Moon in a row in Leo conjunct Mars, but this one happens to be an eclipse.
AC: I didn’t point that out, but it would have been great if I did. Thank you for crediting that to me.
CB: You thought about it.
KS: Well, you mentioned the July New Moon, which is conjunct Mars.
AC: I did, I did.
KS: You made me think of that, so that’s why I wanted to honor you.
AC: Oh, well, thank you. Also, Saturn’s stationing as this eclipse happens. Saturn stations—or Saturn turns direct on the 24th, which means it’s totally immobile when this eclipse takes place only three days earlier.
CB: Right. And that’s the final station of Saturn in Sagittarius. It’s the final edification of everything that Saturn in Sagittarius for two years has been about. It happens right there in late August.
AC: Yeah, it’s huge. And then there’s this ‘aftershock’ thing that happens and that is that Mercury stations direct in the degree of the solar eclipse, right after conjoining Mars. This is early September.
KS: Yes.
AC: So on September 3, Mercury conjoins Mars in the same degree as the solar eclipse, and then Mercury stations direct about two later, early on the 5th, in that same degree. So that degree, hey, if you live at 28 Leo, things are gonna change. It might not be bad at all, but it’s big.
KS: It’s big. I mean, that feeling—it’s a New Moon eclipse on the North Node. This is like a powerful push forward. Basically, that leap of faith. Yeah, cutting ties with the past, for sure.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah, go ahead, Chris.
CB: It’s gonna set the tone also for the next couple of years, because this is the first solar eclipse in Leo.
KS: First solar in Leo, yeah.
CB: It’s like we had the lunar eclipse—or the solar eclipse—sorry, I’m messing this up. But we had the eclipse in February, which was in Aquarius, right?
KS: Yes, we have the lunar in Aquarius.
AC: No, there’s no Aquarius in February. There’s a lunar in Leo in February.
KS: Oh, beg your pardon.
AC: Solar in Pisces in February.
CB: Solar in Pisces.
KS: The solar in Pisces, yeah.
CB: Got it. But this is the first solar eclipse that takes place in Leo. And it’s not the only one. There’ll be others after this one over the next couple of years. But this is not just important locally in August as this major event, but it has broader, long-term implications that are gonna go on for the next couple of years.
AC: Yeah, this is a big one. And it’s a total solar.
KS: It’s not a little shadow bit. It’s like a big, obvious kind of thing.
AC: What I understand is that the last time the United States had a total that was visible from sea to shining sea was in 1918. So even though the eclipse cycle is not that big a cycle normally, if we factor in visibility and signs and degree of exactitude, this is something that hasn’t happened in a hundred years, which is pretty interesting.
CB: Yeah. And there’s a lot. I mean, there’s a ton of stuff surrounding that, but we’ll have to leave it at that for now so we can move on to finish this.
AC: Yeah, so this one gets the most exclamation points. I would say on a very simple level, mid-August to mid-September will be very interesting. And just worth noting, right after that Mercury station—literally hours after that Mercury station direct in the eclipse degree—we get the Full Moon in Pisces, and it’s super tightly-conjunct Neptune. So what is going to happen?
CB: And when is that, again? When is the Mercury direct station?
AC: The 28th.
KS: Yeah, it’s at 28° around the 4th of September.
AC: Early on the 5th.
KS: Right. It’ll depend on location.
AC: Right. And then within less than 24 hours, we get that Full Moon in Pisces within a degree of Neptune. So again, exclamation points.
CB: Wild. Okay, so that’s early September. I mean, the next big thing I’m looking forward to—Pluto eventually stations direct in September, right? Later in September?
AC: Yeah, the last couple of days of September have our last Jupiter-Uranus opposition on the 27th at 27° of the respective signs.
CB: Nice.
AC: And then the next day, September 28, we get Pluto stationing direct at 16 Capricorn.
CB: Wow. Okay, so more hotspots in late September.
AC: Yeah. I think mid-September, we’re gonna be dealing with whatever was set in motion during late August and early September.
CB: Right. Then Jupiter finishes up its run. It’s moving really quickly at this point. It finishes up its run in Libra and moves into Scorpio around October 11.
KS: Yes.
AC: October 10.
CB: October 10, okay. Yeah, I mean, I don’t have any other major outer planets. Are there any other major outer planet things besides Saturn at the of the year?
AC: There are a couple of things. Now that we’re in mid-October, and we have Jupiter in Scorpio, Jupiter is going to move toward a trine to Neptune, right? So we have Jupiter in Scorpio trine Neptune in Pisces. That’s a nice aspect.
KS: Are you saying we agree on this, Austin?
AC: Yeah. So with Jupiter-Neptune, I would say Neptune really fuels Jupiter’s ability to believe in whatever despite appearances. And so, if that ability to believe is directed properly, it allows you to rise above and beyond circumstances. It can also allow people to believe absolutely crazy things despite all evidence to the contrary. But I think that as long as you recognize what you want to be naive about on purpose, it can be really wonderful. I think it’s very poetic, too.
KS: Yeah, I’m very excited about trine. I mean, just the shift of energy and quality with Jupiter coming out of the air sign, Libra, and into the water sign, Scorpio. Not pretending by any stretch of the imagination that Jupiter in Scorpio is necessarily a happy combination, but it’s a cooling, calming influence. After all the fire and all those late fire degree activations and alignments we’ve got in 2017, it’s gonna feel maybe like that cooling, calming, but I’m really looking forward to that. So the Jupiter shift in October does change the feeling. And then, yeah, the Jupiter-Neptune—I think it’s like the first week or 10 days of December where it’s exact, that trine.
AC: Yeah. And it’ll be exact again a couple of times in 2018. It’s just sort of part of the next year. And I think one of the most important things about Jupiter in Scorpio is that it will no longer be opposite Uranus and no longer be square Pluto and no longer even configured to Saturn. It gets to not deal with all of that.
CB: I mean, to me, that’s also the end of the Uranus-Pluto square. Cuz I don’t think we have a lot of stuff connecting those in the same way/
AC: And the orb is getting so wide.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah, totally.
AC: And also, it’s worth noting, just so that we remember Libra/Uranus tension, about a week after Jupiter ingresses into Scorpio, we have the New Moon in Libra, which is almost exactly opposite Uranus. It’s 26 and 26.
CB: Okay, wow.
AC: And so, that’s October 19. That’s like, “Remember me. Remember me fondly.”
CB: Right. And then we’re getting towards the end. We’re almost out of time, so we’ve gotta wrap this up.
AC: I would just say I really like November because there are no stations and no eclipses.
CB: Nice.
AC: And no retrogrades. It’s relatively, relative to this year, pretty mellow. If there’s drama, it was drama that was started some other month.
CB: I mean, that seems like the calm either after or before the storm. Because then we have Saturn moving into Capricorn December 20. That’s a big shift.
AC: I’ve got a fun fact about that, too.
CB: Okay.
AC: So December actually begins with a Mercury station, and it’s Mercury stationing retrograde right on top of Saturn. And so, Mercury is actually going to escort Saturn over the border. We have Mercury stationing retrograde at 29, with Saturn at 28. So Mercury stations retrograde on the 2nd and then conjoins Saturn, but Saturn will sneak over into Capricorn before Mercury comes back and makes another conjunction. So we have Mercury walking Saturn across the border, which I think is really interesting.
CB: Right. And catching up with it, for its first conjunction within Capricorn shortly after that.
AC: Mm-hmm.
CB: All right, and then that brings us to the end of the year. And then that’s gonna be a whole new ball game with Saturn moving into Capricorn, and we’ll have to do a show on that later next year in order to get some better sense of what that’s gonna be about. I mean, that’s a huge deal. I’ve got my own outstanding questions about that. You know, one of the things about the election prediction that I’m not gonna understand for a few more years is why there was a major transition in Trump’s chart that starts in December of 2017 and goes through early 2020. And weirdly, it coincides a little bit with that Saturn ingress into Capricorn. Which Leisa and I noticed last month that the future, soon-to-be Vice President Pence has his Saturn in early Capricorn. So that will be literally the start of his second Saturn return, as soon as Saturn moves into that sign roughly about the same time.
AC: Yeah. And just on a very quick elemental note, whereas 2017 is very fiery, when you look at where things are gonna be in 2018, both Saturn and Jupiter have moved into yin signs.
KS: Yes.
AC: Saturn moved into the earth sign of Capricorn and Jupiter in the water sign of Scorpio, and off-angle from Uranus. And so, suddenly we have Jupiter and Neptune in water signs and Saturn-Pluto in earth signs—it’s a very different deal than 2016 and 2017.
CB: Sure. But until we get there, gotta lot more dynamic stuff happening over the next 12 months.
AC: Oh, yeah.
KS: For sure. But that’s something to look forward to with Jupiter moving into Scorpio, starting in October, definitely.
CB: Definitely. All right, excellent. Well, I think we covered everything we wanted to cover. You guys both have done extensive treatments. So people can find your surprisingly more detailed treatments of both of these topics on your websites, right? Or where can people find more information about your personal yearly forecasts that you’ve done?
KS: Sure. Yeah, just on my homepage, if they just scroll down under the main image, there’s a button there on the homepage right now with the presentation that I’ve done on this that people can grab.
CB: And that’s at kellysurtees.com?
KS: Yeah, or kellysastrology.com. Either one will take you to the same place.
CB: Okay, cool. And, Austin, what’s your website?
AC: My website is austincoppock.com; a-u-s-t-i-n-c-o-p-p-o-c-k.com. And it’s a piece that you should be able to see called, “The Astrology of 2017: Ante Up.” And that is an obnoxiously-detailed piece cut into four sections. It’s about three times as long as my normal pieces.
CB: Excellent. Well, yeah, I definitely recommend people check those out. I’m sure there’ll be a lot more details than we were able to get to in our very brief, 2-hour-and-15-minute discussion that we’re wrapping up now. Yeah, thank guys for joining me on this one. We’ll have to reconvene in 12 months of course and see how the year went, and then get ready to do the year ahead for the following year, for 2018, in 12 months.
AC: I mean, we’ll check back in next month and really laser-in on February, which should be very interesting, and back again in March. Speaking of months, Kelly, do you have anything coming up over January that you want to plug?
KS: I’ll be in Australia for most of January. So if anyone’s local there, I am doing a few workshops in Crows Nest in Sydney. So yeah, that info’s on my website, too. Thanks, Austin. What about you in January?
AC: So I’m announcing my 2017 class schedule. I’m going to be teaching my year-long fundamentals class. And I’m also adding what’s gonna be a four-month-long timing techniques class. And then I’m going to be doing sort of a one-off lecture series on little things that I’ve been meaning to talk about, like planetary hours and some alternate mythologies for Uranus, such as the early modern Blake version of Lucifer, the ‘rebel without a cause’. Or perhaps ‘with cause’, it depends on what side you’re on. And that should all be up on my website.
CB: Excellent. Well, yeah, check that out. And I’m trying to finish up the very final phases of editing my book and starting to move into layout and making diagrams. I’m shooting to have that out by February as my goal. And some of the parts of my Hellenistic course—I’ve recently released as separate modules that you can sign up for separately if you want to study any of the techniques that’ll actually appear in the book ahead of time. So you can check those out at hellenisticastrology.com/courses. And yeah, I think that brings us to the end of this episode. What do you guys think?
AC: I think now’s as good a time as any. It’s either that or go on for another four hours.
CB: I think we could easily do that.
KS: We could, but we won’t today.
CB: All right, cool. Well, check in again next for our next monthly forecast episode and see how things have gone. So thanks both of you guys for joining me.
AC: My pleasure.
KS: My pleasure.
CB: All right, and thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
AC: Bye.
KS: Bye.