The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 207, titled:

Astrology Forecast for June 2019: Mars Opposes Saturn

With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees

Episode originally released on September 31, 2019

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2019/05/31/astrology-forecast-for-june-2019-mars-opposes-saturn/

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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 March 6th, 2026

Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, May 29, 2019, starting at 1:31 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 207th episode of the show. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking with astrologers Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock about the astrological forecast for June of 2019. But first, in the beginning of the show, we’re gonna talk about our experiences at the Northwest Astrological Conference this past week, since we just got back from that event yesterday. So I’m gonna put timestamps in the description page for this episode, both in the YouTube description below the video, as well as on the podcast website itself. So if you wanna skip the pre-forecast chat—which we’re gonna do for about the first hour—and then jump straight to where we start talking about the planets, then just look for that timestamp in the description page. For more information about how to subscribe to the podcast and help support the production of future episodes, while getting access to great bonus content—like early access to new episodes or the ability to attend the live recording of our monthly forecasts, like we have an audience of about 20 or 30 people today—then you can find our more information at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Subscribe and by signing up through our page on Patreon. All right, hey, guys. Thanks for joining me today.

AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris.

KELLY SURTEES: Hello.

CB: You guys are all feeling refreshed and relaxed after a week of very little sleep and lots of work?

KS: Well, I think my body’s quite tired, but my soul and my heart are very happy and full.

CB: Yes, I think that’s a great concise way to summarize where all three of us are at, at this point. Go ahead. You were gonna say something?

KS: I was gonna say I haven’t even been home 24 hours, and I feel like I just saw you guys like a day-and-a-half ago.

AC: It was literally yesterday.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Chris, I saw you less than 24 hours ago.

CB: Yeah, 24 hours ago, we were sitting around the hotel lobby reminiscing and making future plans.

AC: Yeah, and trying to figure out what time the shuttle was going to arrive at the airport.

CB: Right. So we all just got back from the Northwest Astrology Conference. Of course anybody who listens to the show knows we’ve been talking about it a lot over the course of the past year, especially starting late last fall, when we all got different invites to do different events there. NORWAC is an annual conference. It always happens, what is it, Labor Day weekend?

KS: Memorial Day.

CB: Memorial Day weekend, at the end of May, in the Seattle area. It tends to be a smaller, regional conference that usually draws around 200, maybe 300 people. But for the first time in its 35-year history, it actually sold out this year, and there were over 400 astrologers in attendance. So it was like a big conference this year. And even though there was something very familiar about it, all of us have been going there for—in some instances, me—more than a decade. My first one was in 2006. And Kelly, I think your first one was, what, like 2013 or 2012?

KS: 2013 for me, yeah. And I think, Austin, you’ve been going for like 10 years or something, too.

AC: 12.

KS: 12.

AC: 12, yeah. Kait and I actually made the decision to become a dyadic unit at NORWAC 12 years ago, in 2007.

CB: Right. You guys actually celebrated your anniversary there this week.

AC: Yep. And every time we go to NORWAC, it has that, which is kind of fun.

CB: Right. But this one being your Jupiter return. And of course that was almost interestingly fitting, since this was the first one where Kait has become very successful over the course of the past year or so, since launching Sphere + Sundry.

AC: Yeah. Well, hey, she was very successful before.

CB: Yeah, yeah. I’m not saying—

AC: Yo, I know, but as a web designer, doing things behind the scenes. But yeah, this was her first conference where it felt like everybody knew exactly who she was and what she was doing, as a public-facing person. So that was, I think, both fun and stressful for her, as it often is.

CB: Yeah, definitely, and it was also fun. My partner, Leisa, of course came and gave a brilliant lecture at the conference on finding joy and meaning in the birth chart. And it was fun to see her developing more, and, you know, just about everybody associated with the podcast. We had a ton of people coming up to us and talking to us. And the influence of the podcast, like I always say, is not something that’s very tangible until we go to these conferences and suddenly meet people in person who will sometimes repeat something you said several years ago, that you don’t even fully remember saying. But that’s always an interesting experience.

AC: Yeah, yeah, it is. You know that people are listening, and you might hear numbers about how many people are listening. But that’s different because we’re not doing this in a space where we can see people’s faces as we’re talking most of the time.

CB: Like numbers are very abstract.

AC: Yeah, the impact or reaction or reception of any podcast is to some degree concealed from the people doing it. You know, at an event like NORWAC, it’s not. People are like, “Hey, I love your thing. You know, I really appreciate your conversations with Chris and Kelly.” You know, “I like this in particular.” Or, “You should have probably shaved before that episode, Austin,” or whatever they’re gonna have to say about this one.

KS: Nobody’s ever actually said that to you, Austin. Have they?

CB: I mean, they’ve thought it, but they hadn’t said it to his face.

AC: I say that. I like being baby smooth. Kait thinks it’s attractive or good to let the hairs grow on my face. I take her word for it, cuz I don’t have to look at me as much.

KS: And she does.

CB: Yeah, so that being said, at the very top of the week, we started off with a bang by doing a big podcast event. And we recorded a live episode in front of an audience of about, I don’t even know, a hundred people, a hundred-plus people. I don’t think we took count, actually.

KS: I think it was—

AC: I would go 85 to 100.

KS: 85 to 100, okay.

CB: Okay.

AC: I’m not sure.

KS: I thought it was like 150, but it’s a little too early to count.

AC: When we first got into the room, I thought it would seat less than we were talking about. But then I literally had to count the rows and columns and then do basic multiplication, and I thought, “Oh, okay, actually this does seat lots and lots of people.” So I think maybe it was more than I was eye-balling, cuz eye-ball-wise, just the number of chairs looked like less than what math told me.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, but it was well-attended, and it was fun. We did a Q&A episode where we accepted questions and then just talked about them and basically recorded an episode like this one in front of a live audience. And this was our second time doing that. We did that for the first time last year at the United Astrology Conference. It went very well, so we decided to do it again. We got a little bit of feedback that we didn’t circulate the microphone like we did last year, because last year we had like one or two awkward questions that came through. So that’s one thing that we might do differently next time we do this, like more live audience interaction. A little bit more in terms of taking the questions; in some instances, people in the audience that ask the question, but maybe circulating a mic or something like that.

KS: Yeah, I think we talked about, yeah, changing the structure a little for next time and having some time towards the end for live question and answer.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Yeah.

AC: I think a little bit of chaos does a body good.

KS: Kind of fun.

CB: Well, and we mention that, cuz we had a little bit of that in our workshop, Austin, at the other end of the spectrum. So I’ll release that episode as Episode 208, as, I think, the first episode of June. So we’re working on editing it right now. But that’ll be out, so we don’t have to dwell on that, but it was a fun event. Met lots of podcast listeners. Kelly, you gave two talks. You actually opened the conference with a whole keynote where you addressed a room of 400 astrologers, right?

KS: Yeah, that was a little scary. I wasn’t expecting such a large crowd. But Laura said there were 500 people there by the time you incorporated the speakers. I don’t know if they were all in the room for the keynote. It was a very full space. Yeah, I’ve never spoken—cuz I kind of weaved in some of my personal stories with some of the astrological symbolism. And I was a little nervous as to how it would go, but it went well. It was really well-received.

AC: I think you crushed it.

CB: Yeah, that was a great keynote.

AC: I was really proud of you. I thought it was strong and wise and brave. It was great. I thought it was awesome.

KS: Thank you. Yeah, that means a lot coming from you guys. Your guys right after, Austin, was just what I needed because, yeah, it was quite nerve-wracking. And it’s a big honor to be asked to do that opening keynote because it’s usually the largest presentation of the conference. But of course I don’t wanna let Laura down and make it a bit of a dud. So yeah, like, “Sure, no pressure, Laura.”

CB: Right.

KS: But after that, yeah, I got to relax, so that was good.

CB: So that was the most anxiety in terms of performance for the conference for you?

KS: Yeah, and it wasn’t like the anxiety went away, cuz I still had to deliver two talks and a workshop. But I definitely had a vodka afterwards on Friday night.

AC: A vodka.

KS: Pardon?

AC: Singular.

CB: Singular.

AC: Nothing.

KS: Look, I don’t think I misbehaved, but I did a little.

AC: No, no, you earned that single vodka. I think we were calling it ‘hard water’.

KS: We did. We came up with the Pisces ‘hard water’, yeah. I mean, that’s one of the things I love about conferences. You know, you get to connect with so many people, but you always have those special few people that you just really have a lovely connection with, and sometimes it’s because you have this chart thing in common, or you have this other thing in common. And it’s just great to be—I’m thinking of your wife right now, Austin. She and I did share a lot of Pisces ‘hard water’ things because of our Moons. And yeah, it was lovely to see her in person.

AC: Yeah, it was great. You know, there’s a feeling that a lot of people get at conferences of being among your family, your tribe, your people, or whatever, fellow mutants, however people put it, and looking at social media very briefly yesterday, and seeing a number of people who are like, “Hey, NORWAC was amazing, I’m really tired.” I think it was Jo Gleason who said it had the feeling of a family reunion.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And I thought that was pretty nail-on-the-head.

KS: Yeah, like a good family reunion.

CB: Yeah, like a good one.

KS: Not where you have to see that weird uncle you don’t like, but where you get to see all your cousins that you just adore or something.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Yeah.

AC: I suppose family reunions could kind of go dark. I didn’t mean it that way.

KS: No, I know.

AC: Like I didn’t see it that way.

CB: Well, and it’s nice because for the new people, they have the experience of finding family or finding out they have this relationship with other human beings, of something they share in common. Which is nice because it’s otherwise such an isolating study. Something that’s kind of a weird thing to study and a weird thing to spend a lot of time doing, thinking about the planets and thinking about their relationship with your life. So once you go to the conference sometimes having that connection with other people, whether through just going to talks and seeing other people lecture and talk about and present interesting research and ideas on that subject, or meeting people in the hallway and developing a connection with other people that then become friends; and you have that ongoing relationship when you see them again at the next conference, catching up and continuing to develop that relationship. Or for people like us, who’ve been doing it for years, it does feel like—yeah, like a family reunion, or a class reunion, where you’re getting back together with people that you share a lot in common with and continuing that sort of shared journey in some sense.

AC: Yeah, absolutely. This NORWAC actually, I think, provoked more feelings of not quite nostalgia, cuz I didn’t wanna go back in time. But there was a strong memory component to it because NORWAC was my first—for lack of a better term—normal conference. Like I had attended Project Hindsight stuff earlier, then I went to NORWAC. But that’s a very different thing, different vibe. And it’s been in the same hotel. It was in the same hotel 12 years ago when I went to my first one, and I don’t believe that was the first year in that hotel. And so, I know the layout. Like I’ve sat at that table over there four times until six in the morning. I’m like, “Oh, I’m on the third floor this time. Oh, the lecture room’s over there.” I was shocked to see that they moved the bookstore. That was the only unfamiliar thing.

CB: Yeah.

KS: That was crazy. People were running around, not everyone, “Where’s the bookstore?” And at first, I was like, “I’m not actually sure because it’s usually here.”

AC: “Oh, it’s over there, right?”

KS: “It’s over there now.”

AC: You were like, “No, I was just there.”

KS: Yeah.

AC: My God.

CB: Yeah, that’s a good point. And that point was really emphasized in Lynn Bell’s keynote lecture that she gave, I think, maybe on Sunday, where she started showing charts. Cuz she was kind of talking about mundane astrology and some long-term, upcoming planetary alignments over the next decade, but she anchored it by setting some of the charts she was showing for one year in the future, in one-year increments, to show what the chart for the next NORWAC would be, and then what the one in 2021 or 2022 or 2025 would be; and then just realizing that, yeah, there was a pretty good chance for some of us, that you know exactly where you will be five years from now if you’re attending NORWAC again, at the same conference, likely at the same hotel, as an interesting way of anchoring looking at some of those outer planet alignments at that point.

AC: That’s interesting.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah, that’s really smart. Cuz I think Lynn got a standing ovation for that keynote as well.

CB: Yeah. Well, it was the Sunday keynote. Rob Hand used to give that keynote every time. Just like for years, he would close the conference with some inspiring, semi-philosophical or quasi-, almost religious-type presentation about astrology that would give you some idea of some sort of awe-inspiring insight into the subject in some larger, cosmological sense. And that was kind of the role that Lynn was playing in closing down the conference and giving a talk like that, and I think she did a great job of doing that and conveying the same sense in some ways.

AC: I wasn’t there.

KS: Yeah, I know. I’m like we have to take your word for it, Chris.

AC: So I’m sure it was amazing. Lynn’s amazing. And that talk was, for many years, referred to as the ‘Sunday sermon’ because of its larger implications.

CB: Right. Yeah, I mean, I almost don’t wanna go there, but it almost gave me some greater insight into the quasi-alternative religious role that astrology does play in some people’s lives. Because it’s something that shows or gives people a greater sense of meaning and purpose in their lives—and it can, just by virtue of the fact that it works at all and shows some larger connection between the individual and the cosmos—it was interesting seeing it play that role and almost being presented from that perspective. That’s something I used to have an aversion to, an aversion to thinking of astrology like a religion, because I think of it more like a technical art and that is what it is for the most part. But there’s certainly components of it that play the role in terms of being inspiring or giving people something to believe in, for lack of a better way to articulate that, that I think is important, that I’m starting to understand a little bit better now.

AC: Yeah, I think that’s something all of us, who spend a lot of time with astrology, have worked on, the problem being locating astrology into the categories of the culture that we live in, where there’s art, science, religion. And astrology doesn’t fit super-snugly into any of those three.

CB: Right.

AC: There are meaningful overlaps with all of them, but it doesn’t work to stick it in or the other. As far as what it overlaps with, with religion, one, it has cosmological and metaphysical implications. If you can do this technique, and it consistently works, then that means something about the way that reality is structured, right? And so, that has implications. And the model of reality by which you navigate is something that philosophy and religion provide, right? That’s an overlap of astrology fulfilling a function associated with the religious that cannot be responsibly ignored. What I would say astrology doesn’t necessarily give you—or only speaks to partially—is an ethics for how should you act in the world, right? There are some ethical implications in terms of like, well, if things work like this, there are more or less effective ways to act in a world shaped like this. Astrology, although compatible with a variety of moral paradigms, does not come packaged with a moral paradigm.

KS: Can you still hear anything, Austin?

AC: No, I was just gonna ask you if Chris is cutting out.

KS: Yeah, I wasn’t sure if it was me.

AC: Yeah, so how do you—

KS: Yeah, I’ll just jump in.

AC: Yeah, how do you bring those or separate those, Kelly?

KS: Well, yeah, it’s really interesting because I grew up in a Catholic family, like a traditional religious home. And one of my aunts is a nun actually in the Catholic faith, and we had this conversation very early in like my early 20’s, when I was really getting quite serious about astrology. And she and I basically sort of discussed how it’s human nature to want to believe in something larger than yourself. You know, obviously for her and her generation, mainstream religion was a bigger thing, and for us and for our generation and the generation that’s coming up, astrology is filling that role. It’s a structuring tool that can help order or make sense of life. But it offers some things which religion offers, which is this connection to some sort of oneness or divineness. Astrology is also a tool for providing context and perspective on life’s events. So I do think there are some functional similarities where you could get what you’re looking for from traditional religions, Christian-based or otherwise, but you could also get some of that from astrology as well. Which is not to say that astrology is a religion, but it is offering some of the things that people look for from traditional religions, I guess.

AC: Yeah, yeah. And in astrology, that entanglement between celestial alignments and things down here has a very long history of being useful for religion. For example, probably the oldest use of astrology is electional, and it’s, “When do we celebrate this god’s holiday? When do we do this ceremony? When do we hook in?” And even something as widespread as Easter is timed as astrologically, right?

KS: Well, yeah. And I always sort of felt like I’d been duped a little bit because I went to Catholic school from year three, when we moved to Sydney, until I graduated high school in year twelve, and nobody could ever explain to me why the date of Easter moved every year. And then about four years after I started studying astrology, I learned why the date of Christian Easter was different every year. So there has been that ‘intwinement’ over the years around when to celebrate, when to have magical celebrations. And the Christian-based faith isn’t the only one that does that. The Jewish faith and Islamic faith have celebrations based on Sun-Moon relationships, usually in proximity to things like the equinoxes and the solstices.

AC: Yeah, I believe the oldest Vedas actually show evidence of using astrological timing—I believe, particularly lunar mansion timing—in order to figure out when to do which rituals. You know, when the skies will be aligned in such a way that it’ll be easiest to connect to what you’re trying to connect to by doing a particular ceremony.

KS: Like that to me is just fascinating.

AC: And that is not very different than what goes under the name of ‘astrological magic’. When do you do the ceremony, right? It’s the same question. But anyway, I think in that context, astrology—one of the ways you can see it is it’s a temple art, right? It’s something that you might do in a religious context and is extremely useful from a religious perspective. But something like learning how to carve a statue properly and bring the intelligence and potency of a god into it was something that was all the rage in Egypt and then later Hellenistic Egypt and in a variety of other cultures. That’s not a religion, but it’s a temple craft.

KS: It is. And it shows the importance of these celestial cycles in that even some of the major artworks of the Renaissance and things like that have not just the motifs of astrology in them, but were started at auspicious times.

AC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and yeah, then timing is just a basic human concern, right, from the mundane down to the sacred.

KS: Yes, exactly.

AC: That’s funny. I said that in reverse.

KS: I like that.

AC: But that’s kind of fun, to do that in reverse.

KS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. So yeah, the religion-intersection point is really interesting, and I think that’s part of why astrology is just growing so much today. It seems to satisfy that craving for the modern mindset more than what else is out there at the moment.

AC: Yeah. So, because we have a little extra time, cuz Chris is having technical problems, I’m going to open up one of my pet peeves.

KS: Love it.

AC: It’s not entirely incorrect, but I’m a little tired of the framing of, “Well, humans need meaning; it’s a need like hunger, and so, you’ve gotta feed that,” because I think that delegitimizes what’s going on. I would say that human beings intuitively know that there is a whole lot more going on and that we have a real entanglement or connection to the rest of the world. And so, we need a framework for our mind and a practical framework for our actions that takes into account that larger coherence. Does that make sense, as a difference in approach to that question? I feel like it’s sort of like, “Yeah, yeah, you’re hungry. Of course you wanna eat.”

KS: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. And so, how do you see it outside of that, like instead of that perspective, basically?

AC: As I was trying to articulate, our sense and experience of the world involves that connection, too. And having a map that reflects that and helps us navigate that, of course we want that, right? I suppose what I’m protesting is the parallel to the need or hunger for meaning as being the primary reason humans have religions, like paralleling that only to a biological need. It’s also intellectual. It’s a need in the same sense actually as food in that it’s useful. It’s required for continued healthy being at a variety of levels. And we just know that there are a lot of known unknowns out there. That astrology works at this point is a known, but the mechanism and its implications are unknowns. And we can tell that there’s something there, and so, we want a map to reflect that. Hey, Chris. We were just going off—or having an extended journey through the question of astrology’s relationship to religion. Welcome back.

CB: Okay, sorry about that. My computer cut out just now, but I’m back. And hopefully, I’m sure you guys said something really deep and profound. And I’ll get to hear it later when I watch this back over again, but maybe we should move on. Kelly, you were curious about other aspects of NORWAC?

KS: Yeah, I just wondered if either of you had any particular highlights, and how you felt this year was perhaps different from previous years. I mean, we were all staying up equally late, so that’s been fairly consistent.

CB: Right. Aside from like getting older and realizing I’m not in my 20’s anymore, staying up and getting three hours of sleep each night results in being a zombie by the end of the conference. One of the things I noticed—I didn’t realize until later in the conference, Laura, the organizer—was there was a huge generational turnover in this conference, at this NORWAC. It wasn’t just the attendees, but even the speaker selection. There were less fixtures of NORWAC. Less leading astrologers from the Pluto in Leo generation than at any other NORWAC I’ve ever attended. And she’s always very good about at least having a few younger astrologers giving their first lectures or who are still relatively early in their career. But at this NORWAC, more than any other time, there were a lot more astrologers that were younger-to-middle-aged, and it was interesting that it still ended up being a successful conference. And not only that, but it ended up being their most successful conference so far in terms of attendees. And what I mean by ‘Pluto in Leo’, Rob Hand wasn’t there. Steven Forrest wasn’t there. Demetra George wasn’t there. I mean, they’re all off doing things. Like Demetra was leading a tour in Greece that looked really amazing from what I saw on social media. And Rob Hand has apparently announced recently that he’s just finished writing the new edition of Planets in Transit. And Steven of course is jet-setting all over the world teaching intensives. But it was interesting that there was a sort of generational shift in even the speakers at NORWAC this year, which is a bit of a gamble on the organizer’s part. But instead of being something where it drew less, it actually somehow still drew the same, if not more.

AC: Yeah, the generational turning point—that process which we’ve been watching for a while, having reached a very clear, critical mass—was very obvious to me. And for me, I guess the primary location where I saw or felt that was seeing all of the younger astrologers, the people who were like this is their first conference. And I believe right before Kelly gave her opening remarks, Laura asked everyone to “raise hands if this is your first NORWAC.” And it was like 230 people or something. It was like half of the audience.

CB: Yeah, which was just like really breathtaking to see.

AC: But I remember us being at the kids’ table for a lot of years. You know, there were NORWACs where the under-40s were like Chris, you, Kait, me, and then maybe two or three other people, and that was normal for a lot of years, and that was awesome for getting to know each other. And this is what I was referring to when I was saying ‘nostalgic’. It’s not quite nostalgic. But seeing a lot of the younger people—and some of them maybe aren’t even that young bio-wise—this was their first conference, the community is new to them. And seeing them get to know each other and bonding at 4:00 AM and all that, I was like, “Oh, this is beautiful. Like I remember that and it’s a nice thing.” And it also made me feel, as I was saying to you at the conference, very confident about the future of astrology. You know, just knowing that, okay, these are the people that are gonna be speaking in 5 or 10 years—maybe some earlier, maybe some never, but whatever. You know, there’s a very strong and coherent group of people who are going to carry this forward, and honestly, much stronger than our contingent was. It was confidence-inspiring and a little nostalgic for me. I remember when that was me. Which also made me realize how much that wasn’t me now. That made me a little sad.

CB: Sure. Yeah, I mean, it’s been hilarious and bizarre for me to see this new generation of astrologers coming in, one Pluto generation over, with Pluto in Sagittarius. And nothing makes you feel older than realizing that you’re not the youngest Pluto generation anymore in the field.

AC: Yeah.

KS: It’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it?

CB: Yeah, but it’s like a pleasant shock, I was trying to explain to somebody recently. It’s like the symbol of your own mortality isn’t a grim reaper, but it’s like a 22-year-old Cameron White, for example, who’s like an exuberant Sag rising, with Sun in Leo. So it’s like the symbol of your own mortality is a lovable band of young, energetic, 20-something astrologers that are doing great work. So it’s almost endearing and something you can embrace rather than something that you’re scared of necessarily.

AC: Yeah, the only difficult implication is, okay, well, how am I supposed to act now, if I’m in a different role, and people have different expectations? The eternal question is, what does being an adult look like, right? No, I’m not using the model my parents used, cuz that was maybe a good enough model for the times they were living in. But how to do that phase is something that every generation has to either settle for doing in exactly the same way as the people that came before, or going through the difficulty of reimagining that. And I don’t think I have a great answer to that yet.

KS: About how to be an adult.

AC: Yeah, my temporary answer was drink less.

KS: Which you did actually. You really did. You still stayed up beautifully late.

AC: Oh, yeah.

KS: But you were definitely drinking less, for sure. I think I went the other way and started to drink more.

AC: Yeah, you earned it though. Originally, I was only going to participate in our three-way podcast, but on Sunday, Chris was like, “Hey, why don’t you co-teach my seven-hour workshop with me tomorrow?”

CB: Yeah.

AC: So I ended up being a little bit more active than I had initially planned.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Which was great. And how lucky for everyone.

AC: Yeah, it was great. You know, it was just a meaningful shift in the planned order of events.

CB: Yeah, I had a lot of stuff scheduled for the week. And somewhere halfway through the weekend, I realized that I’d been doing the podcast for so long that I was used to doing dialogues with people. And I can do a 75-minute lecture pretty easily, where you’re just speaking at an audience and you take a few questions. It’s relatively concise, and it goes by fast. But for the longer, more detailed things lately, I’m used to having somebody to bounce ideas off of and talk with. And that’s turned into—instead of being something that’s annoying—something that I enjoy, being able to have a dialogue format. Because the back-and-forth creates something unique, and it’s like a pressure chamber that creates something more interesting and dynamic than just hearing somebody lecture at you for four hours. So I had always wanted to do a workshop with the three of us on that topic of synthesizing modern and ancient astrology. Because I think that’s really part of the program of what we’re gonna be doing for the next decade at least—if not the rest of our careers—is completing that synthesis, now that there’s been the revival of all these ancient forms of astrology and there’s so much diversity in the community now, but also, a question of what to do with all of that seeming chaos, and from that chaos create something that’s a little bit more easy to manage in some sort of synthesis. So yeah, Kelly, you were already doing a workshop, so I couldn’t, unfortunately, drag you into that. But since Austin was gonna be there an extra day, and was just kicking around, I thought I would extend the offer at least, to see if he’d be interested. And since so many people already listen to us on the podcast all the time, I didn’t think that anybody would be too upset by the surprise introduction of Austin.

KS: No. I think you guys even got a name. Someone mashed your names together on Twitter.

AC: ‘ChrisPock’ or something?

KS: Yeah, it was like ‘Christin’—

AC: ‘Brenpock’.

KS: ‘Brenock’ or something.

AC: ‘Brennock’.

CB: ‘Brennock’.

KS: Yeah, which is great. And I was like, “Oh, my God, I now wanna go to this lecture even more because you guys are gonna be friends presenting together.”

AC: Well, and that was our first time presenting together. Like we’ve done a bunch of podcasts, but it’s a different format.

KS: Different format. Different style.

AC: So that was fun. It was interesting. And it was also not something I had proposed and had planned out. And so, there was also kind of figuring out how to contribute meaningfully without wildly detouring it into an ‘Austin’ thing.

CB: Yeah. Well, one of the things that was funny is you were like, “Yeah, sure, we could do that,” and you thought it was gonna be a little bit more condensed or isolated and easier to manage, or limited in its reach than it was. But then when we actually did it, you were surprised at how much I was trying to cover and how far-reaching we were trying to go.

AC: Yeah, it ended up being huge in scope. I mean, we ended up laying out all possible points of friction between different approaches to signs, planets, houses, and aspects for 2,000 years, which is rather larger in scope, right? You know, whole sign aspects, cross-sign aspects. You know, aspects by number, what is the original doctrine? What is the difference between these two? What does an aspect mean? If we’re coming at an aspect, looking for psychological structure versus we’re looking for event structure—it was like that level of depth on everything, which is, I suppose, appropriate for filling an entire morning and afternoon. But yeah, it was large in scope. And I liked that we settled on not answering all of the questions, or not pretending to have answers for all of the questions. And Chris, at the end, laid down the gauntlet of, “Okay, these are the questions, and this is not the work of one brilliant person. Like this is the work of a generation. Get started, everybody.”

CB: Yeah, time to get to work.

KS: I like that.

AC: It was a great ending.

CB: Yeah. Well, and nobody that follows my work for long enough knows that I’m, if anything, overly-ambitious. And that was definitely an overly-ambitious outline. But it was a good starting point for a lot of future discussions that I wanna have, especially between the three of us. On the one hand, our approaches have come out so similar just naturally, as we’ve tried to navigate using ancient and traditional astrology in our personal practices on a daily basis. But then at the same time, there are some notable differences, and that’s some of what we explored also in the workshop a little, I think. Right, Austin?

AC: Yeah, some of the differences just naturally arose.

CB: Right. Like one of them that we noticed as a recurring theme was that it seemed like you had a tendency, when you see differences, to try and reconcile or synthesize them, even when there’s two different approaches to things. And sometimes I would just identify the different approaches and occasionally go with one or pick one of the other.

AC: Yeah, and I think that’s just a difference in approach and personality that many podcast listeners would not be surprised by. Cuz we were debriefing afterwards and talking about that, and I tend to take the ‘blind men and the elephant’ approach to differences, assuming that none of the blind men clearly disqualifies themselves with the failure of their perceptions. I take what is real to be huge and multifaceted and difficult to know. And so, if somebody’s doing something that seems to work, and they’re describing the tail of the elephant as a snake, then I try to see what all of the reports together suggest about the shape of the invisible elephant. Obviously, sometimes I just think some people are wrong and disregard, but that is generally my approach.

CB: I mean, and that’s the issue I sometimes have. Sometimes there’s a thing where I don’t feel the necessity to reconcile it because I’m not even sure that they’re talking about an elephant. Like they might be off feeling up some other animal that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. And those are the instances where—

AC: Irrelevant beast touching.

CB: Right. Yeah, that could be the title of the next workshop between the three of us. But next time I wanna bring you in, Kelly, because that would definitely have completed—I think there was a huge missing piece there in terms of having your voice for some of those discussions.

KS: I know. I definitely missed not being a part of it, but I know you guys did a wonderful job. I know you had amazing feedback. I feel like it’s a good step in the right direction. I know we’ve talked about doing some things, the three of us, independently.

CB: Yeah, and we’re gonna have some opportunities, too, soon, next year at future conferences. Definitely at the ISAR conference in September of 2020.

AC: Which I am speaking about, or speaking at. I know I complained about not getting an early invitation on a past episode of the podcast, but I found out at NORWAC that I will be speaking. They actually offered me two slots. So I’ll be speaking about two things. One of them will be about planetary magic, which is the only magic lecture that I think was proposed. So maybe the other one, too.

CB: Awesome.

KS: Yeah, you could totally do two.

CB: Congratulations.

AC: Thank you.

CB: So now you can fully endorse that conference.

AC: Yeah, I like ISAR. I was just prepared to be salty about it.

CB: Right.

KS: I love it. And for everyone who’s listening, I know we’ve had a couple of comments come through in the chatbox about the recording for the workshop you guys did at NORWAC, but also, the other NORWAC events. I know, Chris, you wanna make a note about quality.

CB: Yeah.

KS: But the recordings are available via the NORWAC website for everything. But, what, you were worried about the sound quality for your event, your workshop?

CB: Yeah, I’m just not sure how well it came out, so I don’t know how much I wanna promote that. And that’s also something which was a bit of a test run, and I’m looking forward to us doing three together. And I think that’s gonna complete what we attempted and what this was a starting point for over the weekend.

KS: Should we say a little bit more about that now, since it’s come up?

CB: Sure, we might as well. So we are talking about and we’re in the planning stages for possibly getting together to, at the very least, do an in-person recording of the yearly forecast, the next yearly forecast episode, this December of 2019. We need to, as we always do, get together to record the forecast for the next year. But we’re thinking about—since I now finally have the recording studio, and we can get better, high-quality video and audio recordings there when people are in person—you guys coming out here for a few days to hang out and record that. But we’re trying to figure out a way to make that possible and viable financially. Especially since you’re moving to Europe soon, Kelly, and you’re gonna have to fly back over to Denver from Belgium. In order to do that, we might wanna host some sort of actual workshop, the three of us, out here in Denver in December. So we’re still in the very early planning stages of that. But we did wanna at least put a notice out and put some feelers out to see if anybody might be interested in attending that, to give us some idea of what we might be working with and if we should do it. So let us know what you think, primarily in the comments. Go ahead.

AC: Oh, I was just gonna say, again, this is a ‘feeling out, thinking about when and what shape’. I think it would be helpful if people could give us some feedback. Would you be interested in a two-or-three-day, all weekend thing, or a one-day thing, if you had your druthers?

KS: Yeah, if you could pick, what would you prefer? That’s a great question actually.

AC: Well, we’ve been talking about it, right?

KS: Yeah, that’s true. I forgot that part. I think there’s gaps in my memory because my sleep levels have not been recalibrated yet.

CB: Yeah, definitely. So we’ll see what comes of that. And hopefully, have more information and a little bit of a firmer idea, by the time we do maybe either next month’s forecast or the forecast after that. Let’s get back to just wrapping up the NORWAC discussion. There were a lot of people to talk to over the course of the week. There’s always that tension between wanting to catch up with a bunch of people versus making new connections and wanting to have in-depth conversations with individuals versus wanting to go through the line of all of the hundreds of people you’re trying to catch up with over the course of a few-day period. And by the end of that, there’s always that situation where you don’t fully get to connect with or have those interactions with everybody that you wanted. Although I was thinking at the airport that there’s still hope at the end of that. That even if you don’t get to make some of those connections, there still might be an opportunity to and you still might get another chance to at some point in the future at other conferences. So for example, Kelly, you came to UAC in 2008, in my hometown, in Denver, and I was there and doing a bunch of stuff.

KS: Yeah.

CB: But we just completely missed each other and didn’t meet then. But then we did in 2012, when you came up to me and introduced yourself, and since then we’ve been close friends ever since that point. But it’s funny that that would’ve happened like four years sooner, if we had made that connection. And on the one hand, it’s kind of too bad that that didn’t happen, but on the other hand, there was almost an inevitability that we would, and we eventually did at the later conference.

KS: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I remember sort of seeing you fly by at some point. I think you had to step in at the last minute and do a talk for someone in 2008, maybe?

CB: Yeah, Robert Schmidt dropped out at the last minute, and I went from being rejected as a primary speaker. I couldn’t even get a lunch lecture. They were like, “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t even get a lunch lecture.

AC: Rejected as a human being.

CB: Right. Suddenly one of my primary teachers dropped out, and I was the natural replacement for him. So I ended up giving two talks suddenly on Hellenistic astrology and becoming a main speaker at the conference within two to three days before it started.

KS: That’s amazing. Yeah, and we did miss each other then. Although we did connect the following UAC. And it’s so tricky. I think one of the points that you had sort of put down, it was that idea between sitting down and having an hour-long conversation with a couple of people, where you can get into something more substantial versus wanting to say quick hellos, so you can at least have a brief connection. And it’s a real tug of heart because I’d love to have an hour-long, well, two-or-three-hour-long conversation with everyone. But realistically, there would be zero sleep and probably no professionalism at all if that was happening.

CB: Yeah, I mean, there needs to be some kind of speed-dating model for astrology conferences, where you can cycle through conversations and say hi to everybody, at least for like a few minutes, while still moving on to everybody else.

AC: I arranged a variety of dates.

KS: Did you?

AC: Somebody would come up to me when I was going between ‘A’ and ‘B’ and say, “Hey, I’m blah, blah, blah, and I wanted to talk to you about this.” And then I’d be like, “I can’t do that right now, but I’m gonna be over there in two hours (and I’ll be there for four hours). Come up. We’ll sit down, we’ll have that chat.” Because I know from past conference experience if you don’t make a semi-formal arrangement, then you’re just rolling the dice. And as far as the, “Oh, hi, I’m blah, blah, blah,” I think it was Kait that suggested that everybody write their Twitter handle on their name tag. Cuz there were so many people like, “Oh, you’re @funnananana. I know you,” or “I know a lot more about you than I thought I did. Nice to meet you.”

CB: I had that experience going home from the airport, realizing that I had met a lot of people that I knew online, or I at least saw a lot of people I knew online at the hotel and never made the connection with their online persona, and we had many other interactions in the past, just because I don’t really know what people look like. I’m not really good with people’s names. So that was kind of rough. Like you said, people’s Twitter handles would be useful on their name tag.

KS: Yeah, if your Twitter handle or your social media name is substantially different from your real name, or if you have not a picture of your face on your social media. Cuz I had the same thing. I was like, “Oh, I actually talk to that bird.”

AC: Psychic moment. I was just thinking of if you have a picture of a bird.

KS: Yes, cuz you lose the context because maybe you bantered with them on Twitter. And you think you’re talking to someone you’ve just met for the first time, not realizing that you’ve actually had this back-and-forth already.

AC: Yeah.

KS: The other thing I did is, because I’m more of a morning person—I don’t know if this would work for you guys—I usually make secret breakfast dates with people. So I had wanted to make sure I put, for instance, with Sam Reynolds, and I know he’s often very busy being an ISAR board member. And so, we just made a plan to have breakfast. You know, meet up at 7:30 in the morning and just duck offsite and get a little bit of a catch-up.

AC: Sam and I literally emailed about doing that before the conference. Cuz we’ve always had a really great five minutes at every conference and be like, “Oh, we’re gonna talk,” right? And then we failed at that again, but I did get to share the table with him at dinner. And I went to his lecture in large part because I was interested, but also, I’ll get some ‘Sam’ time by just hearing him do his thing. And it was awesome.

KS: Yeah, I mean, whatever your strategy is, it is something to think about, like how you’re gonna fit in not just the formal parts of the conference, going to the lectures, but how you’re gonna squeeze all the in-person connections.

AC: Yeah, definitely some time management skills pay off a lot at conferences.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah. And I’m sorry for anybody that we didn’t get to connect with or say hi to, or that I almost did and got interrupted or it didn’t work out. And thanks to everybody that came up and introduced themselves because I otherwise didn’t introduce myself to as many people, since I would like walk by somebody. There were a few times where I had a few people, where I would make eye contact and I thought somebody was avoiding me. And then later, I realized that they were just socially awkward or nervous and struck up a conversation and it went rather well. But I know that’s not easy for everybody to do.

AC: Yeah, I had the same experience, where somebody was giving me weird eyeballs. I’m like, “Does that person hate me? Do they know me and hate me, but I don’t know them?”

CB: Right.

AC: And then later, they’d introduce themselves and be like, “Hey, I’m a big fan of the podcast. I really like your work.” I was like, “Oh, thank God.”

KS: Thank God they don’t hate you.

CB: That’s so funny.

KS: That’s really sweet.

CB: Yeah. All right, so let’s see, final other points I had written down. One of them—I know there were a lot of younger astrologers and newer astrologers that got excited about wanting to speak at conferences and applying to speak. And I think that’s a good idea. One piece of advice I would give all of them is sometimes for new speakers, when you’re applying to conferences, they like it if you have or sometimes it’s even a requirement to have a recording from another astrology lecture that you’ve given. And a good way to do this is to speak at a local astrology group. Even if it’s just like a meetup, or even if it’s like a group of your friends or something, giving a live presentation and having that recorded—so that you can submit that to show your lecture style and the quality of the lecture, and just the fact that you can give a lecture in front of an audience—is definitely a better and not just more effective way of making sure that you get selected for a conference. But also, it’s good to have that practice before you get up in front of a room of like 50 people to give a presentation. Because that can be very nerve-wracking and sometimes doesn’t go well unless you have a little bit of experience doing it first.

AC: Yeah, I would also add that by all means chase your dreams and ambitions, but it’s also really fun to not have responsibilities at a conference.

CB: Yeah.

AC: It’s really nice to not be like stressing about your talk in three days for the entire conference. I remember when I first started speaking at conferences, I was like, “Yay, goal achieved.” Then I was like, “Oh, this is a lot harder than when I just would come to a conference and hang out.”

CB: Yeah, it’s like one of those curses of like be careful what you wish for.

AC: Yeah.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And I was supposed to have the more mellow version of that this year, but Chris and fate had different ideas. No, and I’m not complaining. I love doing it.

KS: And also, too, it wasn’t until Sunday lunch or Sunday afternoon that it sort of came out that you were gonna do this. So you did have a few days.

AC: It was proposed during dinner on Saturday night and then it was okayed by Laura on Sunday afternoon.

KS: Okay, so you had a couple of days.

CB: I had like a year of preparation for this, and Austin had about 24 hours.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, that’s good.

KS: Skills.

CB: Okay, so that’s one thing, speak at a local astrology group. The other thing is lots of ideas come out of a conference, and people leave with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm and sometimes ideas about things that they wanna do. And I’d really recommend that people start writing those ideas down and start working on them right away while the energy is still fresh because that will carry you into the new project. And a lot of people start stuff immediately after conferences because just being in that space and interacting with other people, or being exposed to ideas in lectures, that’s one of the great things about conferences. It just has a way of generating that kind of new energy in people. So for example, Project Hindsight was started literally after a group of astrologers got together over a series of nights, over dinners, at the 1992 United Astrology Conference. They were like, “Hey, let’s start a translation project.” And somebody else was like, “That’s a great idea, let’s do it,” and they went home and did it immediately. And that’s sometimes what it takes, is just putting that stuff into action right away, instead of putting it off or delaying it. Because at some point the energy does start to drop off once you go back into normal life, and it’s important to ride that wave.

AC: Yep, that’s actually a good reminder. I just made a note to myself about something that I was excited about two days ago, that I need to not forget for six months.

KS: Yeah, and you can hear that, people making plans, connecting with people from their local area. I know there are a couple of astrologers out of LA—I think Matthew Williams and Laura Paul—who were like, “Why is there no astrology group in LA?” and they connected at NORWAC. And now they’re gonna start a local meetup in their area.

CB: I’m so excited about it, cuz there hasn’t been a good astrology group in LA for a long time, as far as I’m aware of.

AC: I lived in LA not too many years ago. There’s a pretty lively group in Santa Monica.

CB: Okay.

AC: But if you live in Hollywood or you live in K-Town or something, on a Sunday afternoon that could be 45 minutes, an hour away, depending on traffic. And so, even though it’s not that far as the crow flies, crow flight is not a transportation option in LA.

CB: Yeah, so I’m excited that Laura and Matthew are starting that group, and hopefully, we can post a link to it or something when it’s available. But people should be able to find it before too long. Cuz I know there’s just lots of astrologers in LA that want a group, but there’s just not anything happening so far, or not a lot happening so far. So that’s a good example of something. And yeah, is there anything else?

KS: We could debrief NORWAC for a week, but they’re probably all the main things.

CB: Okay. I just wanna make sure we’re not forgetting anything major. I somehow suspect that we are, but maybe that’s okay and we can move into the forecast.

KS: Anything, Austin?

AC: I’m searching my fried memory banks. Oh, Chris has a joke in the notes that maybe he wasn’t planning on making, but I’ll make it. So Chris writes: “Faces of meth equals end of conference.” That is very true. Part of why it’s so high energy is everybody sort of uses their energy for the next fortnight and compresses it into those couple days. And this is true of every conference I’ve been to. Once you get into day one-and-a-half, everybody is just up, and everybody you talk to is up and excited and it’s infectious and it’s amazing. And even if you don’t stay up late, you’re just sort of high on that shared, extremely dense and energetic mental wavelength. And then when it’s finally time to fly home, everybody looks 30 years older.

CB: Yeah, I just remember seeing a lot of the younger astrologers who had been staying up all night, every night, by the end of the week, when they’re checking out, just looking pretty rough by the end of it, like they had just added 30 years to their lifespans, even though they’re in their 20’s or something. So it was kind of funny.

KS: Yeah, I had a photo with the lovely Diana Rose at the very end, as I was leaving on Tuesday morning. And I said this to you, Chris, in the pre-show chat. I normally need a certain amount of sleep to function in my everyday life, and there’s something about these conferences. It is a shared-energy situation where I get by on less sleep than in the real world I would be a zombie in. But yeah, Diana, we had a last-minute selfie on Tuesday morning, before I left. And I didn’t think I looked that bad while we were taking the photo, but after I saw it on Twitter, I was like, “Oh, man, that’s a very tired version of me.” Like my glasses were sort of hanging off my eyes. You leave it all out on the field, basically.

CB: And that’s something I’m having to learn, and I think I have to from this point forward. I’m not in my 20’s anymore. Like you stay up all night, some part of your personality—at some point in the week, you become a zombie. Or at least I do, and probably getting more sleep at astrology conferences is—cuz the last night, when it was time to fly home, I got a full night’s rest. And then Leisa and I went to the airport, and then I was like cracking jokes and realizing that my personality came back again, which then made me realize it had been sort of missing a little bit. And that’s why it was hard to find my words towards the end, which is the downside if you have a four-workshop to give on the very last day of the conference, in terms of being at your most eloquent and everything else.

AC: I think you did quite well.

CB: All right. Well, thank you. But that’s one of the reasons, also, I’m looking forward to the three of us doing that thing again and having that discussion again. Cuz, also, I was unveiling this idea I’ve had for a while about the Hermetic or mercurial nature of astrology.

AC: Yeah, I wish you had prepped me a little bit more on that. I didn’t have anything to say at the time because I, too, was having a hard time with my words. And afterwards I was like, “Oh, I have three half-hour lectures that I can give on that.” Again, I feel like we introduced a discussion with vast scope, and not only can it be followed up on, I think it should be followed up on. There are a lot of really important threads there just by themselves would be good for our workshops.

CB: Yeah, definitely. All right, guys. Let’s transition into talking about the forecast for June of 2019, which our listeners—taking a cue from Austin’s yearly forecast—refer to lovingly as the ‘meat grinder’. So really quickly, a few promos to get out the way, and then we will transition into the planetary alignments. So Kelly, what do you have going on in June?

KS: So I am doing a three-part training called An Introduction to Traditional Astrology. Cuz I’ve been teaching for a while now, I’ve got a bunch of students that are switching, if you like, or looking to incorporate some of the older astrological ideas into their practice. So this training starts June 10, and we’ll be covering things like whole sign houses, sect, rulerships, and what to do with the outer planets. Basically a revisioning, a chance to explore your chart, or how you might incorporate some of these older ideas into chart practice. So yeah, that starts June 10.

CB: Awesome.

AC: Nice.

CB: Austin, do you have anything going on in June?

AC: I don’t think so. I mean, I have a lot going on, but my year one and year two classes are very midstream right now. Enrollment’s not open. Not giving any talks. Oh, I can tell people this. I am officially in production with dates and deadlines and money changing hands for the second edition of 36 Faces. I’m not announcing an ‘in your hands’ date yet. But that’s not just something I should be doing anymore, it’s something I’m actively doing.

KS: Excellent.

CB: Yeah, people have been asking for that for a while, ever since it went out of print.

AC: Yes. Yes, they have, at varying levels of politeness.

CB: Well, I mean, after the first year, it goes from like, “Hey, Austin, where’s your book?” to like, “Hey, Austin, where’s the fucking book at this point?”

AC: The answer is, it was available for four years before it sold out.

CB: Right.

AC: You had your chance.

KS: But you don’t realize there are more people that know about you now and want a copy.

CB: Not just that. There’s more people that are new to astrology, that just got in over the year and weren’t around like five years ago when it came out.

AC: Oh, no. I’m flattered and blessed that people are mad that they don’t have the book. That’s awesome. That’s what I want. Yeah, so it’s for real in production. Definitely will be out by Christmas, maybe significantly before that. No promises. But I’m working on it. Literally, I should check in on it later today.

KS: Fantastic.

CB: Awesome. For myself, I don’t really have much to promote. I’m going to Romania next week to give a workshop there, for their local astrology—I guess that is something major. I should promote the trip. I just don’t have any classes or anything, is what I meant, to promote. I’m going there to give this awesome workshop, basically, on mitigating conditions in traditional astrology. So I will put a link to that in the description page, probably for this episode. And then I’m also going to the UK the week after that, in the middle of June, for the annual conference of the Astrological Association of Great Britain. And I’m gonna be giving talks there on zodiacal releasing, annual profections, and then a keynote lecture on the history and transmission of astrology at the end of the conference that I’m excited about.

AC: Super exciting.

CB: Yeah, so I hope to see lots of people there from the UK or from Europe to fly in for that talk—or those talks at the AA conference or the one in Romania. Other things to promote, I’m looking for programmers, especially programmers that are good with mobile apps, cuz I’m starting to think about something in that area. So if there’s anybody—that’s kind of a vague thing. But if there’s anybody with a programming background, who might be interested in working on something, please let me know. And then finally Leisa and I are gonna be at the Baltimore conference. The National Council for Geocosmic Research is hosting a conference, and that’s the only other big conference in the US, as far as I’m aware, that’s happening this year. It’s taking place August 30-September 3, 2019. So Labor Day weekend in Baltimore, Maryland. And it’s actually got a really great lineup of speakers. I’m pretty excited about it. Kelly, you were just reading some of the speakers earlier, right?

KS: Yeah, Demetra George is gonna be there. Adam Elenbaas. Susan Miller will be there.

CB: Yeah, Armand Diaz. Priscilla Costello, who was on the podcast previously. Rebecca Gordon, she’s awesome.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Madalyn Hillis-Dineen and just like a ton of others. Rick Levine. Michael Lutin. Bunch of people. So I don’t wanna overlook anybody, but it’s the other big conference, basically. And if you’re on the East Coast, especially if it’s within drivable distance, then definitely you should attend there or even just come by some night. Sometimes you can buy one-day passes, or sometimes you can just come by and hang out at the hotel at night and meet other astrologers. So I don’t think we’re doing any sort of podcast or anything like that.

AC: No. I hadn’t planned on going, and y’all asked, “Maybe you could?” That’s less than two weeks before As Above, so I definitely can’t make it.

CB: Okay.

AC: I just realized that.

CB: So maybe I’ll just do some interviews on my own, which I did not do at NORWAC, cuz I didn’t have time and kinda regret. But maybe I will at the NCGR conference. Oh, Kelly, you mentioned there is one other astrology conference that’s happening. It’s more of a smaller, regional conference, but it is taking place for people that are in the area.

KS: Yeah, the Great Lakes Astrology Conference, otherwise known, I think, as GLAC. I think it’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And that’s at the end of June/early July. June 27-July 1. So it is a smaller, regional conference.

AC: Which is not a bad thing.

KS: It’s not a bad thing.

CB: It is super small. I’ve attended it. So I don’t wanna say it, but like the next big, major conference is the NCGR conference.

KS: There is a difference.

AC: My point is just that, yeah, there’s value and excitement to huge events, but there’s also an intimacy to smaller events, as NORWAC was for many years. That’s the NORWAC many people came to know and love. So no hate for these more regional conferences.

CB: No, not at all. One of my tensions sometimes with the podcast—if a person has never been to a conference—is identifying what are the biggest conferences of the year. When we come back raving about conferences, and the type of conference experience that we think is the ideal, whatever, platonic form of a conference, that’s the one I try to work up the most, and then also let people know about the other ones. But I don’t want people—if they go to a smaller conference that’s a little bit more limited in scope, while it still can be good and a very positive experience, I don’t want them to walk away thinking that that’s what every conference is like, if they don’t have the full platonic ideal of a conference the very first time.

KS: If they get an echo of it rather than the full thing.

CB: Definitely. All right, so people can check out that one at greatlakesastrology.com or the NCGR conference at geocosmic.org, if you can figure out how to spell that. All right, guys. Let’s move into the forecast for June of 2019. So we’re at the halfway mark, somehow, through 2019, and we are at one of the most active and critical, but also, kind of challenging parts of the year, in terms of when we did our yearly forecast back in December, the segments of the year, or the months of the year that we identified as being hot spots, that really stood out to us, right? If I’m remembering correctly.

AC: Absolutely.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And I would say that June begins a process that July will continue and complete. There are different focal points within June and July, but they’re all literally on the same axis, which is the Cancer/Capricorn axis. It’s going to feel like one process. It’s not going to feel like separate things. And then by the time we get to late July/August, we’re gonna be in very different territory.

KS: Yeah, the shifts that we have in terms of planets moving—particularly Mars and the Sun into Leo in late July—is just gonna change the dynamic quite substantially. So it is a little bit of a Cancer/Capricorn tunnel that we’re entering as we come into June.

CB: The Cancer/Capricorn tunnel, I like that.

AC: Yeah, I mean, there are other things to note, but the focal point for the things most people will remember about June and July is what’s happening on the Cancer/Capricorn axis. So there’s been a lot happening in Capricorn all year. We have this trio of the South Node and Saturn and Pluto, which have been within a couple of degrees of perfectly conjoining the whole time. And we’ve had the North Node or Rahu over in Cancer for the whole year as well. But it’s during June that we get Mars, which entered Cancer in mid-May, really now coming into alignment, coming into opposition with South Node-Saturn-Pluto and conjoining the North Node, which puts a lot of stress on that axis. And then we’re also going to have Mercury entering Cancer. What day is that, Kelly?

KS: June 4.

AC: On June 4, and then adding even more weight to this axis. And so, for those of you who are watching the video, just on a visual level, it’s very clear to see where the action is.

KS: Yeah, it really is. And I think the period from June 12 to June 19 is really when Mars is gonna make these oppositions to Saturn and Pluto, make the conjunction to the North Node. And because Mercury’s moving quite quickly—at least relative to Mars—he’s running through that same kind of a sky around the same time.

AC: But slowing down and then stationing retrograde and then coming back in July.

KS: In July, yes.

CB: Right. So Mercury enters its shadow at some point later in the month.

AC: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s during the middle of the month, late-middle. And so, yeah, I affectionately dubbed this. I was thinking about titles for this in our yearly.

CB: Was that off-the-cuff, by the way? Or was that a pre-planned thing you had already?

AC: Well, I had a couple of different titles, it’s just the other ones didn’t stick.

CB: Right.

AC: There was also a Hellraiser reference. There was the ‘Lament Configuration’, which one person thought was really funny. But yeah, ‘meat grinder’ seems to have stuck. And I threw that out there because it’s hard. So getting rid of invisible points like Pluto and the nodes—not that they’re not real—but just looking at what we would see in the sky, it’s a Mars-Saturn opposition. Mars-Saturn oppositions are hard-nosed. They’re hard-edged. I often have the experience of the ‘nose to the grindstone’ cliché, where it’s just gotta be done. Like there’s not time to relax and enjoy because this needs to be done. Necessity often looms heavily and omnipresently just during Mars-Saturn times. So when we add the nodes to this, the nodes show us where the eclipses will be very soon, and where they were not very long ago. And the nodes, they do a lot of things, but among them is they move things around. They move things forward. They move things backward. They move them back and forth. There’s a tremendous change in power, which is anchored to the nodes. And to have that axis more or less perfectly aligned with a hard-nosed Mars-Saturn opposition, it speaks to a relatively intense set of experiences, and certainly I would say a set of changes, which will not necessarily be favorable on the day-to-day pleasure level, but which really need to get done. So one thing that was interesting just going to that conference and talking to people, what they have coming up in June came up a lot. And somebody said, “Well, my meat grinder is going to be—” And there were a lot of people who were like, “I’m leaving the job that I’ve been at for five years. I’m not sure what’s next, but I know this is the right time.” Actually there were a couple of different “I’m leaving the ‘blank’ that I’ve been at for several years. I know I need to leave it, but I’m not entirely certain that it’s going to be an easy and smooth transition into exactly what’s next.”

KS: Yeah, and that makes complete sense because practically Mars-Saturn is sort of these more structural realignments. It’s that feeling of maybe frustration or a level of exhaustion, like, “I can’t keep doing this anymore,” or “I’ve come to the end of the road of this thing.” And one thing that I like about this type of pattern is it forces people to make decisions that they might have been dithering around or ignoring or delaying because of fear or uncertainty or worry. And the outcome is that that realignment or restructuring does happen. I do think there’s gonna be these feelings of being caught between a rock and a hard place and that pressure. You know, if you’re leaving a job, for instance—like me, I’m gonna be preparing to leave the country—you can’t extend. You know, you can’t think, “Oh, I’ll just worry about that next week,” or “I’ll leave that email to send. I won’t do it now.” Everything then has to be—as you said, Austin—like the deadline is a real thing. It’s a firm limit. It’s not a permeable membrane that you can push. It’s like a drop-dead date, basically.

CB: Right. It’s like hitting a wall, where you can’t proceed further. And for some people this may be a literal wall, but for most, a metaphorical wall in your life, where no matter how hard you push or how much you want to overcome that obstacle or challenge or difficulty, sometimes you have to realize that you can’t get around certain obstacles; but instead, you have to go another direction or another route.

AC: Because this is tied into a Mercury shadow and then retrograde, prepare for delays. Cuz a lot of the process is that people already know what they’re gonna be engaged in are not simple processes.

CB: Yeah, prepare for multiple attempts.

AC: Yeah, there’s a good chance it’s going to take longer than it would in an ideal world.

KS: Yeah, I think take longer, require a greater effort, consume more of your energy than anticipated. Cuz it does have that feeling of like being at the end of a marathon of some kind and just having to keep going to get over the line.

AC: Yeah, I actually, not very long ago, committed myself to a deadline on a particular project, and then I realized that I was already extremely busy, and that if I tried to keep that deadline—which was gonna be straight through the meat grinder—that’s gonna grind me to bits. And it’s okay. Like nothing’s ruined if I push that out a month later.

KS: Exactly.

AC: Cuz I was just actually budgeting my time to reflect, like, “Oh, no, no, no. You’re not going to have a lot of extra during that time.” And so, accounting for that ahead of time. I will let you know next month whether ‘past’ Austin did ‘future’ Austin a favor, but I’m pretty he did.

KS: He did. Yeah, I always think that idea of time management comes up so much with major Saturn configurations as well. And it’s sometimes that necessity of having to make choices or just be really honest and realistic about what you can and can’t do and prioritization. You know, if it’s really important, I’m gonna take a bit longer to make sure it’s done well. If this one thing has to be done now, then all these other things will have to get pushed back or you won’t be available for them.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Yeah.

AC: Go ahead.

CB: One of the things, though, that comes along with that, or one of the significations of both a Mars opposite Saturn, but also, a Mercury retrograde just inherently is frustration. Cuz one of the things about Mercury retrogrades is they’re frustrating because sometimes you do something, but then you have to do it over again. And there’s always something frustrating about having to repeat your efforts twice. And similarly, with Mars-Saturn, Mars is trying to initiate actions and do things with speed and quickness and certainty, whereas Saturn is always trying to slow down and sometimes stop things, which can be frustrating when you’re blocked, when you’re trying to go down a certain path, or go down a certain route. Like whenever we see overlapping or a doubling-up or an overlap of significations like that usually it’s a good indication that that’s gonna be a more prominent theme. Like themes of frustration.

AC: Yeah, and it’s worth noting that Mars is in its fall here, right? Mars has the hardest time in Cancer. And one ramification of that or one piece of that is that Mars is very sensitive—or Cancer is an extremely sensitive sign, and it’s sometimes really not helpful to be having all of the feelings about something. You know, sometimes it’s very useful to be able to armor up, get through it, and then have your feelings, whereas Mars in Cancer facilitates a state where the feelings have Mars’ force behind them and they’re very immediate. And so, for those of us who are Cancer rising—or for whom that hits sensitive personal points—being prepared to manage unhelpful states, that’s absolutely part of my preparation because that’s a thing I feel to some degree every two years when Mars moves through Cancer. And then there’s a lot of additional pressure that isn’t usually present this year because of Saturn and the nodes, and Mercury, and Pluto.

KS: And, and, yeah. Yeah, Mars in Cancer, it’s an awkward combination, isn’t it, of sign and planet, in terms of how Mars would normally like to just slash and burn or proceed without consideration, necessarily. But in Cancer, I always feel like he gets turned around, or he gets confused by having to navigate feelings, in addition to or while trying to achieve goals, basically.

AC: Yeah, one thing I’ve experienced with Mars in Cancer is sort of dithering too much—instead working deeper into an anxious or worried state—rather than just doing the first task. You know, that state of looking at the mountain of tasks, and instead of beginning to dig into it, taking more measurements, getting more worried, etc., etc. And so, that martial-adrenal quality is just being used to freak you out more and more, rather than to get work done. I find a really good fix—and I think this’ll be especially helpful this year with Saturn in aspect—is to just plan to do it. Like when in doubt, do. Like when in doubt, work on the problem. And an image that came up, we were just talking about it was meat grinder. I think another good physical parallel is one of those mining machines. One of those giant drilling machines that you use to bore through mountains.

CB: Right. So those instances where you can get through the brick wall, it requires a tremendous amount of effort and concerted focus and energy to literally just bore through that wall in some instances. There will be some people where that wall is not negotiable, and it’s like you’ve run into a mountain that you can’t get through, but there will be other people where they might be able to drill through the mountain.

AC: Yeah, or they’ll be in situations where they’re like, “Oh, I can’t go this way, but I can dig under it,” and you’re gonna have to be a miner.

CB: It’s gonna take longer, and it’s gonna be harder and more complicated than it should be or than you’d like it to be otherwise, but there may be a way to get around or get under it.

AC: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about what to do with myself or how to structure my time, ahead of time—when I’m not in the moment with whatever comes up—to set myself up for optimal outcomes. And I think I’m just going to schedule myself. I’m going to set up a heavy schedule for myself and set a schedule for restoration and for exercise and this and that. Like when I’m in doubt of what to do, I’ll just be like, “Oh, this is on the schedule, do that; on Tuesdays, you do back work and then stretch for 20 minutes,” rather than, like, “I don’t know.” Here’s the problem that I don’t think is confined to just me, with Mars in Cancer. Cuz it’s Mars in the domicile of the Moon—and to a certain degree, acting on the Moon’s orders—it’s, “What do I feel like doing?”

KS: Yeah.

AC: Well, and then you search your feelings. And if your feelings aren’t in a great place, then you’re just searching your feelings rather than just doing. So I’m trying to spare myself that this time.

KS: Yeah, I think planning is everything to help circumvent that. You know, if the night before you set what you’re gonna do the next day or a week ahead, then you can help manage at least, “What do I feel like doing? This is the task in front of me.”

AC: And also, remembering that you don’t always have to feel like doing things to do a good job at them and for them to be useful. Like the solution to an unhappy state of feeling might be the accomplishment that comes from doing it anyway.

KS: Yeah.

CB: It’s hard, though. One of the things that’s so hard sometimes, even with astrology, is knowing what is a surmountable difficulty versus an insurmountable difficulty and being able to identify that in this instance. Because like we were talking about, there might be certain instances that people are gonna run into with this, where the Mars-Saturn opposition manifests in just like a stop sign or a red light that you cannot pass through a brick wall that you cannot go through, and you have to go a completely different direction. But for other people, it is more the extreme exertion of focused energy may allow you to drill through that wall, but it’s gonna require much more of yourself and much more energy output than it would at any other time to get through that. But identifying whether it’s an insurmountable difficulty or a surmountable one might be kind of challenging or might be kind of tricky or difficult.

AC: Yeah, and I think everybody’s going to get a ratio of both in different areas, of varying intensity. It depends on where it hits you. But if you can’t go one way, then that means you need to figure out a different way. There’s always something you can do with your time. There’s always something to do.

CB: Yeah, I mean, it’s really hard sometimes with astrology because some people have a tendency to wanna just push through no matter what and then don’t know what to do when they do reach an insurmountable difficulty that you can’t push through no matter what amount of will you exert on the subject, due to your circumstances. There might be other people that might already be more inclined to run into even a light obstacle and just fold or try to walk around it or go a different direction and not deal with the problem head on. And so, it’s like you don’t want to tell people not to, cuz there’s different circumstances where you might need to really do the opposite of what you’re normally inclined to do in this circumstance or this scenario.

AC: Yeah. And so, because we’re speaking about just configurations that are in the sky this month—and we don’t have reference to an individual person’s natal chart—it’s impossible to make that distinction from this level of elevation. It requires some discernment on the part of all of us living our lives which version is necessary. But I would say that even if you can’t do that, do something. You know, even if you have to wait there, do something, rather than just doing the awful version of waiting, where you’re really activated, but don’t really have anything to do with the energy. And you’ll recognize those states if you find yourself in them. Again, just as it’s not subtle visually in the chart, it’s not going to be that subtle for most people in person. And so, if it’s like time to stop or time to grind, it’ll probably be relatively clear.

CB: Yeah, one of the significations of Saturn that’s really funny—that shows up very prominently in ancient texts, but I don’t think comes through as strongly in modern times—is inaction, and the scenario where a person doesn’t take action, or where sometimes their downfall is not taking action when they should or being late to take action when they should. And that’s funny. That’s part of the reason why because Mars is, of course, the opposite in taking action very quickly, and sometimes too quickly without forethought or moving into something without that. And it’s interesting that those are the two primary, fundamental archetypal divisions that we’re running into with this opposition, and the way that different people are gonna respond to that based on if they normally go a more Saturn route or a more Mars route inherently, based on their chart in general.

AC: Yeah, and I think that we can say in terms of topic areas that if what there is to do is somewhat impersonal and is more accomplishing-a-task-based, then do, as a default. If it is inherently social and emotional, you probably do wanna step carefully rather than just grinding through whatever drama is afoot. On a general level, the drama is definitely afoot this month. This configuration is gonna put a lot of people inside their feelings. And if you are inside your feelings, and you’re talking to somebody else who’s also inside your feelings, it might not be a good time to really get into whatever that topic is.

KS: Yeah, the other thing that occurs to me on this, too, is that the opposition Mars-Saturn, it’ll be about 18° Cancer/Capricorn around the 14th-15th of the month. This’ll be the second time Saturn’s triggering that specific degree. So if this is potentially quite active for an individual, Saturn went to 18 Capricorn back in early March. So the Saturn component, or the Saturn end of the opposition, there’s something that won’t be brand new or won’t be a surprise. It’ll likely be something that has been in your field of awareness, if not in your regular life already for a few months. And the Mars component coming in is a little bit of aggravation or the heat getting turned up, or a sense of urgency coming into a situation that maybe you’ve been playing out a little bit. And I definitely agree, the drama and the emotional component and the frustration, but there is sort of that setup that’s been building, if you like. That Mars is sort of coming in and just punctuating that particular mid-June period with this longer story that’s been going on since early March.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, and the Mars component—for the Mars-Saturn opposition—started about May 15, when Mars moved into Cancer.

KS: Yeah.

CB: And I could already see the shift in some people’s lives, where a set of circumstances started building up at that point, which will probably end up culminating a month later, in the middle of June, when Mars completes the exact opposition with Saturn. Because the sign-based opposition began several weeks earlier, in the middle of May.

AC: Yeah, I think it would be useful to just jump to the granular-but-granular level really quickly. This configuration is going to be strongly activated when the Moon is in Cancer—in Cancer because that’s where half of it is—and then a week later, when it’s in Libra, because then the Moon will be squaring both sides, and then when the Moon’s in Capricorn. And even though this is a running theme, there will be some great days where the Moon is totally unconfigured to any of this stuff. Like one of the things that’s interesting is we have Jupiter and Venus pretty much off angle from the meat grinder. And so, we’ll have days where the Moon is only aspecting benefics, and it’ll be blessed respite or just off-topic in a great way. You know, when it’s on, it’s on. And so, starting with June 4, when the Moon moves into Cancer, the Moon is going to make a conjunction or an opposition to every member of this and make it very clear.

CB: Yeah, great.

KS: That’s a really good point.

CB: And reminds me that my travel dates are exactly when the Moon is in Cancer and Capricorn. So thanks for that reminder.

KS: Well, we all traveled to NORWAC. Well, not everybody who attended the conference. But all three—or five of us—cuz you guys came with your partners. We all traveled to NORWAC on the New Moon in Capricorn.

AC: I have a delightful anecdote about that in the soon-to-be-released live Q&A.

CB: Oh, right, yeah, yeah. One piece that we’re not talking a lot about—because it’s more of a long-term thing that’s sitting in the background and magnifying all of this—is Pluto is so close to Saturn right now. It’s within two or three degrees, from 22 Capricorn, with Saturn being at 19 Capricorn; 19 and 18. Not only is that creating a Mars-Saturn opposition, but it’s a Saturn-Pluto conjunction. And then as soon as Mars gets clear of Saturn, it immediately heads into an opposition with Pluto for the next little bit in June. So we’re not just talking about a Mars-Saturn opposition here, but it’s being magnified by the presence of Pluto within a similar set of degrees.

AC: Yep, and by the nodes, where we’ll get eclipses in July.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah, and for June specifically, Chris, the Mars-Pluto opposition—22 Cancer/Capricorn—Mercury opposes Pluto the same day, and the Moon is in Capricorn. So there is sort of this 24-hour period around June 19. I know Austin and I look forward to the Moon in Sag/Moon in Aquarius days at the moment because the Moon is away from this.

CB: Right.

KS: But we do have this 24-hour Moon just triggering everything.

AC: That’s actually something Chris and I spoke about for a little while during our workshop, how the concept of aversion—or planets being unconfigured by aspects—can be a godsend election. Like, “oh, so I can take a day off of that. Awesome.

KS: Yes.

AC: Or I can start my business with not that as the primary focus.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Like the idea of no aspect, or there being sectors where there’s nothing going on in terms of the relationship between two planets. And sometimes that can be a good thing when you keep the good stuff prominent and the challenging stuff not connected with that.

AC: It allows you—in an electional context—to de-emphasize things you would like to de-emphasize.

CB: Right.

KS: Well, and we’re lucky at the moment that not only when the Moon is off-topic of Saturn and the Capricorn/Cancer palaver, it’s actually on-topic of the Jupiter. So Moon in Sag, great, doesn’t have to deal with Capricorn, but getting Jupiter blessings.

AC: Yeah, the period where the Moon is in Sag, it’s not only full, but it’s conjunct Jupiter. And so, what a nice thing to insert in this month, right? Just that little dot of yin hiding in the yang or vice versa. And what’s funny is that these are sequential, right? So you have a couple of days of Full Moon-Jupiter in Sag and then Moon in Capricorn opposite Mars, conjunct the South Node, conjunct Saturn, conjunct Pluto, opposite Mercury, right?

CB: Yeah, I love that.

AC: This is a ‘both-and’ month, for sure.

KS: Yeah.

CB: So that Full Moon is right there. It’s right in the middle.

KS: It kind of splits. We have the Mars-Saturn opposition, then we get the Sag Full Moon, then we have the Mars-Pluto opposition.

CB: So the Full Moon takes place on the 17th of June at 25° of Gemini, right?

KS: Yes.

AC: Yep.

CB: 25 Gemini. And weirdly, that’s also around the same time, simultaneously, when two of our major outer planet aspects are taking place this month. One of them being the Jupiter-Neptune square. And I believe this is the second one that we’ve had this year in a series of three Jupiter-Neptune squares. And that goes exact on the 16th of June, from 18 Sagittarius to 18 Pisces. And then a couple of days later, on the 18th, we have the exact Saturn-Neptune sextile from 18° of Capricorn to 18° of Pisces.

KS: Yeah, I mean, there’s a bit to say about that. But I also noticed when I was looking through June that the 18° point in a number of different signs is really activated this month. Neptune’s gonna square there, and the Jupiter-Neptune square happens around that degree. But the Mars-Saturn opposition is also around 18° of Cancer/Capricorn. So if you have chart factors like an angle or an ascendant—or the Sun or the Moon or what have you—around 18° of whatever sign, not every sign is gonna be triggered, but a number of them around that particular point are going to be.

CB: Definitely. And for the whole Capricorn/Cancer range, it’s like the hot spots are 18 Capricorn through 22 Capricorn, or 18° of cardinal signs through 22° of cardinal signs. Because 18, of course, is where the Mars-Saturn opposition—not to mention the Mercury-Saturn opposition—goes exact. But then a few degrees later, around 22, is where the Mars-Saturn opposition and the Mercury-Saturn opposition go exact. And that’s also roughly around the degree where Mars catches up to and overtakes—or Mercury catches up to and overtakes Mars around 21° of Cancer.

KS: Yes.

AC: As far as precision goes, yeah, that five degrees, 18 to 22, is absolutely hot, with 18 probably being the hottest of those. Generally speaking, this one’s for the cardinals.

CB: Right.

AC: Just like our fixed placements got it. Early fixed got it last year. The mid-late cardinals get it this year.

KS: Yes. Yeah, I mean, I do think the Jupiter square Neptune piece is worth a brief mention because it is one of those in-the-background themes. But for people that are more mutable in their chart focus, that’s something that is really gonna be stirring them. We had the first Jupiter-Neptune in January. We’re gonna have the third one in September. So it is a bit of a background theme around imagination, around inspiration, but also, occasionally about misreading situations or being confused. So I thought that was worth—cuz it’s happening just the day before the Full Moon. So it’s gonna add to the emotional quality and the sensitive nature of that period, I think.

AC: Yeah, well, and with the Jupiter-Neptune, right, with Jupiter so strong, in a sense it’s making that favorable, Jupiterian successful outcome even bigger or dreamier. You know, if you can keep your bubbles from popping through this period of time, then you’re doing very well indeed.

KS: Yeah, absolutely.

CB: You know, we’re focusing on the middle part of the month because that’s where all the action is. But did we mention the first lunation of the month is actually that New Moon in Gemini, that takes place super early on the 3rd?

AC: Nope.

KS: We need to circle back to that.

CB: We just like skipped everything.

KS: We just went straight to the headlines.

CB: Right. So not as notable, but worth mentioning still. We have a New Moon at, it looks like 12° of Gemini, which is taking place on June 3. There it is. What else is going on? Venus is still in Taurus at this point. Mercury is still in Gemini. Oh, right. So this is actually really close to the electional charts for the month.

KS: Yeah, this would be in your first election.

CB: I could use it as a segue to mention, unless you guys wanna talk first about the lunation or had any thoughts first.

KS: I mean, the Gemini New Moon, it is one of those little reprieve things, if you like, in that it’s just got this very strong Gemini feeling, because it’s in Gemini. The ruler, Mercury, is in Gemini. So I kinda like the New Moon is on the first Monday of the month. It just really feels like ‘take that chance to plan out the next few weeks’. You know, there’ll be a lot of ideas tossing around, floated around and discussed. And if there’s anything that you can lock in, we will have a little bit of that Jupiter-Neptune involvement to the New Moon. I don’t know. It’s sort of neutral, if that makes sense, rather than dramatically difficult.

AC: No, it’s not difficult at all.

KS: It’s just kinda light. Like let’s just enjoy that.

CB: Yeah.

AC: You know, use a moment of peace to plan for times of war. You know, if you have a period of time where life’s just not coming at you, but you’re pretty sure that there’s gonna be some stuff happening over the next several weeks, you can use moments where your mind is tranquil and in a good place to set yourself up to deal with whatever is better. Or give yourself a program where if stuff happens, you plan for that and you’ve already got answers to some of those questions.

KS: Yeah, coming up with your Option B. I mean, Gemini deserves a little, brief mention. We have the New Moon in Gemini this month, and around June 8, Venus moves into Gemini. So the Gemini part of your chart—and whatever that corresponds to in your life—is getting a little bit of an infusion of energy or influx that does have, certainly, a sweeter quality to it.

AC: Yeah.

CB: One of the core meanings of Gemini that I have only recently been getting reacquainted with is such funny, basic signification, but for some reason I had forgotten about it for a long time. But Gemini—especially Gemini Sun signs—really like to talk and talk and talk and talk. And they’re not always great or very adept at listening, but they excel at talking. And that means a lot of different things. I mean, that’s not actually necessarily meant to be negative or snide, cuz that can be an asset. And that’s something that some other signs, with certain energies, are not as good at, and that gives you both some of the downsides, as well as some of the positive sides of that. But they like to and are very adept at talking. And sometimes that energy of Gemini is good for putting to use in instances where you need to turn up the output, or like turn up the volume of something that you’re doing, especially if it involves communicating something.

AC: Yeah, absolutely.

KS: Yeah, totally.

CB: Is that an experience that you guys have had? You’ve never met a Gemini that likes to talk?

KS: Well, I do.

AC: I have a Gemini Moon ruling my ascendant.

KS: I was gonna say, I grew up, three of my siblings are Gemini Moon siblings.

AC: So that’s why you’ve always known how to handle me.

KS: Correct. You’re like just another brother of mine

AC: I’m your very slightly younger brother.

KS: Very slightly younger. That’s exactly it. I don’t know. My experience is the Gemini Moons are also very good talkers. It’s not that I don’t think they’re good at listening because all three of my Gemini Moon siblings—you can certainly talk with them, they’re not just talking at you. But what I’ve realized is to end the conversation with them, I have to be quite abrupt. You know, I have to just say, “Okay, I’ve gotta go now,” or “Okay, stop,” cuz the talking just is neverending. My one sister—her husband just knows that if we get on the phone, it’ll be two-to-three hours. We’ll say it’s a short call, and it’s two-to-three hours. We try to keep it under two hours and we never do.

CB: Right. That’s really funny. I mean, what would be the sign? If there’s a sign that’s better at listening and not good at talking, what would that be? Like which sign encapsulates that energy better?

KS: I think the water signs tend to be better at listening and more reluctant to talk, or you have to draw them out a little bit more. So if a water-sign-something is with an air-sign-something, the air sign is going to sort of lead the conversation or will be taking the initiative a bit more.

CB: That makes sense.

KS: But I don’t know if you guys would disagree. You might have a different take.

AC: No, no. I was just trying to go through my head and figure it out. So I think Pisces is the chattiest in the most circumstances of the water signs.

CB: Okay.

AC: Cancer, when you get past whatever boundaries, will be the chattiest ever, but most people won’t encounter people with strong Cancer that way.

KS: A lot of people don’t get past the hard shell.

AC: And then Scorpio is definitely constantly filtering what is and isn’t being said and listening intently. And so, I don’t know if the result is less chatty or more than Cancer. But I would say it would be down to those two for listening strength over verbal projection strength.

KS: Totally. I mean—sorry, Chris.

CB: One of the things, I always admire and wish I had a Gemini Moon, cuz a lot of my Gemini Moon friends have a way with language that seems to exceed my own. I have several Gemini Moon friends that are just good with other languages, in terms of learning ancient languages and translating texts or having that sort of versatility with language, but sometimes also just the facility with language, in terms of eloquence and articulation as a thing. Like beautiful allusions like ‘meat grinder’, for example.

KS: Yes. Yeah, I mean, and Austin, you have a beautiful turn of phrase.

AC: Thank you. I also have a lot of Gemini Moon colleagues. I think something that’s there for all of us is, one, a curiosity about all the different ways you could say the same thing and how it would mean something slightly different. And then there’s a certain comfort and delight in playing with language, that it’s a little bit of a game cuz you could say it 30 ways. So which way do you say it? How does it sound? I would say, yeah, so curiosity and an experience of play with languages is maybe where that’s coming from.

KS: I like it.

CB: Right.

KS: You know, Gemini is one of the three loud-voiced signs. So I think they do tend to have that expressiveness kind of down relative to most of the other signs.

CB: And that is an encapsulation of the energy that we’re feeling around the very beginning of the month, with this New Moon, which is interesting. I was talking to somebody about this, but just the arbitrariness of dividing things up by month, like calendar month versus by astrological eras, or dividing time up astrologically, and the difference between that. Because this very first part of the month—like the first week or so—just seems a little distinctly different than what we hit by the middle of the month.

AC: Oh, no. I mean, the Moon will go into Cancer a day-and-half after being in Gemini. It’ll get introduced as soon as the Moon goes into Cancer.

CB: Okay.

AC: It’s gonna be like New Moon in Gemini, then the day after, and then right into it.

KS: Mercury goes into Cancer the next day.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Yeah.

KS: You’ve gotta take that Gemini Moon vibe while you can get it.

AC: Yeah. And the Taurus Moon vibe comes right before that, which is great.

KS: The first weekend in June.

AC: I believe there might be an auspicious election living right around there.

CB: Yeah, let’s get into that. So Leisa and I recorded The Auspicious Elections Podcast, and she found four or five electional charts for June of 2019. And I’m about to release that actually today for patrons. Today being whatever it is. May 29. So two or three days before the month begins. The problem that we ran into is that our best elections were at the very beginning of the month, around the time of this New Moon in Gemini and other fun, sort of light stuff, before everything gets really heavy in the middle of the month, and even going through towards the end, once we start getting into Mercury retrograde conjunct Mars territory in July. So we’re gonna present two electional charts for this month because the first one and the main one that we wanted to highlight takes place super early, at the very start of the month, literally within the first hours of June. And that’s on June 1, 2019, starting at about 4:30 in the morning, with Taurus rising. So the problem with that, of course, is that that’s so early in the month that I’m sure a ton of people are gonna not listen to this episode in time to be able to take advantage of that election. And as a result of that, I will give you guys one other electional chart that you can use this month, that takes place on June 7, around 7:18 PM, with Sagittarius rising, but we like that one a little bit less than this one. So here’s the chart for June 1, at 4:30. You wanna put about 20° of Taurus rising. So calculate the chart for your location, for whatever city you’re living in, and then adjust the time. Set it for 4:30 initially, but adjust the time until the ascendant in your city is at about 20° of Taurus. And when you do that, you should get Venus right on the degree of the ascendant, also at 20° of Taurus. And it’s 4:30 in the morning, so this should be a bit before sunrise, so it still should be a night chart. So this is basically a Venus election, which if you’re doing magical practices and other things like Austin does, you would be using this as a Venus election, where you’re really trying to capture and encapsulate the power of Venus while it’s in its own sign, and then make it the focal point of the chart by making Venus rising.

AC: Well, let me just add. I think this would be good for a petition, but probably not for a talisman.

CB: Sure. Yeah, and I’m not necessarily recommending this for a talisman or magical purposes, but more for electional purposes, especially if you have something that you would like to do of a Venusian nature, which could be an artistic or creative project of some sort. But really, again, with all of our electional charts, we kinda try to shoot for charts that are generally all-around decent electional charts that mark most of the boxes that you’re supposed to mark when you’re picking out any sort of electional chart. Make sure the ruler of the ascendant is well-placed, and make sure the Moon—as the secondary general significator for the entire chart—is relatively well-placed. And in both instances, we have that going here since we have both of those planets basically in the first whole sign house, in Taurus, in a night chart, and more or less applying to a conjunction with each other. Literally, if you go outside on the morning of this election, when you’re initiating whatever you need to initiate or start that morning, you will literally see the Moon and Venus rising over the eastern horizon and emerging from underneath the Earth at the time that you initiate that election. And that’s part of what we’re going for in making, symbolically, things in the electional chart good, but also, focusing on Venus as a strong part of the election. So—go ahead.

AC: I was just gonna point out the 2nd house also looks good in this chart, so does the 8th, so does the 5th, and to some degree the 11th as well. Because in this chart we do have three planets—we actually have four planets in their sign of rulership. I’m gonna discount Saturn because Saturn’s in too much trouble by aspect to operate smoothly. Also, Saturn is a malefic, and strong malefics are something you have to play carefully with.

CB: And it’s a night chart.

AC: Yeah. You know, Mercury’s separated from the Sun. So Mercury’s gonna be visible in a lot of locations. It’s in its own sign. It’s configured with Jupiter. Jupiter’s in its own sign. There are a couple of things to love here.

CB: Yeah, and it’s tricky because we often have a hard time. People ask us for elections that are good general electional charts, but then they also ask us to make it good for financial matters. And it’s often tough to make the 1st house and the 2nd house and the rules of those houses in good shape in the chart, in their own signs or exaltations, and free from the aspect of malefics, or at least hard aspect. But this is just one of the weird charts that happens this year, where we happen to be able to check off a bunch of those boxes, so that it’s not just a good general chart, but it also is relatively decent for financial matters. So of course we don’t know your natal chart, so we cannot say for sure if this is gonna be personally good for you. But as a standalone electional chart, it’s got some very nice things going for it in those areas. The one area that it’s not that great for potentially is, because this is a night chart, Saturn is gonna be the most challenging planet in the chart. So since it’s in the 9th house, it may not be that great for 9th house matters pertaining to, let’s say, like long-distance travel, interactions with that which is foreign. Or even potentially educational or religious matters may be a little bit problematic, whatever that means for you in your life, based on the symbolism of the 9th house being a little bit tricky in this night chart, with Saturn in the 9th. Although there are some mitigations, since Saturn’s in its own sign. Venus is actually pretty closely trining Saturn, although it’s separating. But that is a positive mitigating or offsetting indication in the chart, and so on and so forth. What do you think, Kelly? What would you use this for?

KS: What would I use this for? I might have to wake up very early, but it would be nice. Yeah, the Moon-Venus in Taurus is worth getting up for. Something to do with beauty or pleasure. Maybe something to do with a romantic relationship as well. Like, I don’t know, you wake up and have a breakfast date, or I’m not sure. Use your imagination.

CB: If you wake up your partner at 4:30 in the morning in order to do something with them, they may not be that happy. So I’m not sure.

KS: It may not go down well. I mean, if you had a creative project that you were hoping to earn some money from because, as Austin said, the 2nd house is looking quite nice here, as is the 8th. If you wanted to buy some luxury piece of jewelry that you were gonna order online perhaps, you could also do that.

CB: You know what was really funny was last month—whatever that Sunday was, there was the grand fire trine—and watching on social media all of the astrologers launching stuff almost simultaneously that day, sort of not very inconspicuously.

KS: Yes.

AC: Yeah, as electional knowledge and technique become more widespread, I think we’re gonna see a lot of people, an increasing number of people all mysteriously launching their things on the same day.

CB: Right.

AC: I blame you, Chris.

KS: Mysteriously.

AC: The good days didn’t used to be as crowded.

CB: Right. Not as much traffic. Well, if we start seeing big stuff, then that’s gonna start raising some eyebrows. If there’s like presidential campaigns launched or famous weddings of like royal couples on those days, then we’ll start having some—

KS: But that’s kind of how you know, right? Like when a political person launches something on a pretty crap day, astrologically, it’s like, no, they don’t have an astrologer on their team.

CB: Yeah.

KS: But there’s a woman I follow who’s really great for business tips, Marie Forleo, and she has just launched a book recently. And I thought it was quite suspicious that her book was launched on the Sun-Mercury cazimi in Gemini. And it made me sort of think, “Oh, she’s probably got an astrologer in her crew of advisers or support team.”

AC: I think that her astrologer failed to adequately consider the condition of the Moon on that day.

KS: Quite possibly. Quite possibly.

CB: Yeah, and in the audience—we have a live audience of patrons who are attending the recording of this episode, who are on the live access tiers. And Veronica Gledhill in the comments points out that with Uranus in Taurus, it could be very interesting in terms of new trends and innovations that happen aesthetically across the board in a tangible sense. Which is a really good point, cuz this is like the first crop of elections that we’ve done in recent memory, or any memory at all, in the past 80 years, where doing a Taurus rising election, with Venus in Taurus and the Moon in Taurus, means that Uranus is also in the 1st house. And that energy could be a little bit problematic for certain circumstances, since usually Taurus is a fixed sign, which is good at things that you want to make permanent or long-lasting or stable, and Uranus itself is a little bit unstable sometimes. But because it’s so well-placed, because everything else is so well-placed in this chart, you may just get some of the more positive manifestations of Uranus’ significations in things like she was saying—innovation and creating new trends and other things like that.

AC: Yeah, I considered this chart for a while, for electing Sphere + Sundry’s Venus in Taurus series. I decided against it for a couple of reasons; which my priorities for electing are different when it’s a planetary magic thing than a general electional chart. We decided to go at a different point, while Venus was in Taurus, where the Moon had a little bit more light. But this is a fine electional chart for a variety of purposes.

CB: Brilliant. All right, so that’s the best one we could find this month, but it’s literally over and you will have missed it if you’re listening to this episode, anything more than four hours into June. So as a result of that, and as a result of not screwing people who were looking for or waiting for the good electional chart this month, for the public one that we release, here’s one other backup chart that we’re gonna throw out for people, which takes place on June 7, at about 7:18 PM, with Sagittarius rising. Set the chart for June 7 and then adjust the chart in your city or location until the ascendant is, let’s say, somewhere around I guess 4° of Sagittarius rising, give or take. It’s actually kind of negotiable. The main thing is you just want Sagittarius rising, and you wanna do it before sunset, before it switches to being a night chart, which does happen at some point after you get to about 17° of Sagittarius rising. Because the Sun is at 17 Gemini, so it will set at that point if you go any later. So just do Sagittarius rising, then Jupiter is the ruler of the ascendant, and it’s in the 1st house, in Sagittarius, in its own sign. Unfortunately, at this point in the year, even though we still have Jupiter in Sagittarius for another few months, at this point in the year, it’s not those perfect, flawless Jupiter elections that we were getting in the early part of the year. Because now Jupiter is retrograde, which is a little bit of a downgrade and a little bit of a drawback in terms of making that the ruler of the ascendant and could make things delayed or drawn out a little bit more than they might be otherwise in terms of initiating things. But that being said, it still doesn’t mean that just because Jupiter’s retrograde, you absolutely can’t use it in electional charts. It just means that it’s not gonna be the flawless type of Jupiter election that we had earlier this year.

So Jupiter’s in Sag, in the 1st house, ruling the 1st house and the 4th house. And the Moon is up in Leo at about 17°, give or take, of Leo in the ninth whole sign house. And in most locations and timezones, it should be applying to a trine with Jupiter at 19° of Sagittarius. So that’s pretty favorable. We’ve got not just the ruler of the ascendant, but also, the Moon in relatively positive condition in terms of the benefics. This chart is definitely more challenging in terms of the financial axis. Since we’re a week into June, Mercury’s no longer in Gemini, and instead it’s moved into Cancer. So it’s already moving into that configuration with Mars and Saturn and Pluto, and that Mars-Saturn-Pluto-Mercury axis has shifted in this chart to the 2nd and the 8th houses. So it’s not a super great chart for financial matters in the same way that the other one was, or the previous chart was, but it is generally an okay Jupiter election, and it’s sort of similar, as a quasi-, almost grand fire trine chart to the fire trine chart that we had last month, except there’s just isn’t anything in Aries to complete the grand trine. Instead, it’s just focusing on the Moon-Jupiter trine between Leo and Sagittarius. But two out of three fire signs ain’t bad.

AC: Well, and Aries, because its ruler is in such a problematic condition, is something I think we could happily do without for now.

KS: For now.

CB: Sure, sure.

KS: Having the Moon applying to the ascendant ruler, Jupiter, is really nice.

AC: Yeah, that’s really nice.

CB: Yeah, especially when you need to initiate something, and you need a wave of enthusiasm and energy to carry you through initially. It’s nice to have that Jupiter-Leo fire sign energy really as the focal point of an election.

AC: Also nice waxing Moon starting to get some real light.

CB: Yeah, that was one of the issues with the first election, that was one of the only major drawbacks. The Moon was at the very end of its cycle and in the extreme waning end of the cycle, which can sometimes not be great for initiating new ventures, whereas this is a nice waxing New Moon. Just after the New Moon, or a nice waxing Moon, where the Moon is separated enough that it’s pretty much perfectly sextile the Sun at this point in this chart.

AC: Yeah, so one of the ways that I’ve seen the lunar cycle divided in terms of ‘is this going to be useful or not’ is after 60° out and waxing is prime time.

KS: Yeah. Yeah, there’s something about the Moon just kind of really quickening from this point forward.

AC: Yeah, it’s nice. It’s built steam at this point and is still building.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, so those are the two charts that we’re gonna highlight this month, in terms of the public charts that we’re putting out there for the forecast episode. Leisa Schaim and I recorded a full episode on electional charts for the month of June, which is like a 40-45-minute discussion that we release as a podcast each month through our page on Patreon. And that’s something that you can access by signing up and becoming a patron on the $5 or $10 tiers, and then you get access to the recording as soon as it’s released at the end of each month. And I think we have four or five electional charts during the course of June, and most of them are definitely clumped up at the beginning. But I think we were able to pull some out just in case you’re not gonna stay home and get in the bunker and huddle at home for the rest of the month. If you still need to continue living your life and doing anything, then we did find a few charts that you can use for later in June. So you can find out more information about that at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/AuspiciousElectionsPodcast, or just click the Elections tab at the top of the website to find out more information. All right, so those are our elections. They’re both at the beginning of the month. That brings us back to the forecast. Where are we at, at this point? And what other major things do we need to touch on here? Do we need to move more towards the end or the later part of the month? Or is there anything that we overlooked or missed from earlier?

KS: Anything you wanna chime in on, Austin?

AC: Well, so right after that electional chart, we actually get Venus moving Gemini, which is a tonal shift, but that doesn’t really time into any of our big moments. It’s not really something to worry about. It’s also not so amazing that you need to jump on it. But it’s worth noting Venus will be in Gemini from the 9th forward or the 8th forward.

KS: I think it’s the 8th.

CB: Like I’m animating it. It looks like the 9th. Let me see.

KS: Oh, it may be Mountain.

CB: Oh, wait, maybe you’re right.

KS: 8th, Eastern. But it could be late at night on the 8th.

CB: No. Once again, Kelly, you’re right and I am wrong. I defer to your superior ephemeris knowledge. June 8.

KS: June 8. Yeah, I agree, Austin, it’s a tonal shift. And while it’s not going to change everything in June, it is one of the lighter influences that we can fall back on or enjoy when the Moon is aspecting Venus in Gemini, at certain times when it’s not aspecting the Cancer/Capricorn tunnel.

CB: Right.

AC: So let’s see, so the Moon’s in Virgo at that point. And then, especially as the Moon moves into Libra, a few days after that we have our headline configurations tightening up and the poor Moon in Libra has to square all that. So that’ll be, how do we put that? That will spotlight those configurations. And then after that, the Moon moves into Scorpio, where there will be feelings abundant. It aspects all of them, but from trine and sextile. But it’s the Moon ruled by Mars, and it’s the place of the Moon’s fall, so there’s some trickiness there. And when we get through that, we get our ‘Full Moon in Sag with Jupiter’ reprieve.

KS: Yes.

CB: Around June 16.

AC: Which will be well-earned at that point.

KS: We will all be looking forward to it.

CB: It’s funny, the alternations at different points in the month between the Moon being super tied into all of that stuff and triggering some of it versus the Moon going into down phases of being configured to the positive Jupiter stuff.

AC: Yeah, when I was writing my dailies, when I was analyzing everything by the hour, I was really struck by that. I was like, “Oh, it’s on,” and it’s on for days, and then it’s just off for days, and then it’s on.

CB: It’s like holding your breath and then exhaling for like a couple of days and then holding your breath.

AC: Yeah, exactly. And then after the Moon’s in Sag, we get that beautiful Full Moon, which we’ve talked about. Then the Moon does Capricorn, right? And it’s on angle with everything. And then it goes into Aquarius, off-angle again, but trining Venus and sextiling Jupiter, right?

CB: Yeah.

KS: It feels a bit like this sort of ‘up-and-down, yo-yo, roller coaster’ thing.

CB: It’s a stark alternation.

AC: For me, that was comforting because what I remembered about the month was like, “Oh, that’s when the meat grinder gets started.” But then in looking at it on a granular scale, it was reassuring that, okay, but that’s not the whole month. There are lots of days that aren’t really about that.

CB: The reprieves. Can we come up with an alternative metaphor, then, to ‘meat grinder’, for characterizing the month? Maybe drawing on that stark alternation of contrasting positive and challenging indications? Like what is like that?

AC: Well, I didn’t name June ‘the meat grinder’, I named that configuration ‘the meat grinder’, which I’m very happy with. And the meat grinder, of course, continues well into July.

CB: Yeah, well, let’s mention that really briefly, cuz it’s interesting. We did shortly already. But that Moon—or that Mercury-Mars conjunction that goes exact around the 17th and 18th, at about 21 Cancer is interesting, cuz that’s the first of three conjunctions between Mercury and Mars. Because Mercury, after that point, goes into its shadow and then starts slowing down to station retrograde. And not to get too ahead of ourselves in terms of giving away the forecast for July, but Mercury slows down so much that this really unique and odd thing happens that doesn’t happen very often, which is that Mercury slows down so much that eventually Mars catches up with it and overtakes and conjoins Mars at 4° of Leo towards the end of the first week of July, with the second conjunction between Mercury and Mars.

AC: Right. One of the rare conditions where Mars applies to Mercury.

CB: Right. So I bring that up just because it means because there’s gonna be three of those conjunctions. Sometimes due to retrogrades, planets will form three exact aspects. It means that the first aspect can sometimes open up a sequence of events that then plays itself out over the course of the next few weeks. Or even if you initiate something once, at the beginning, with the first conjunction, or something happens, there may still be echoes or repercussions of it for the next several weeks, as those two planets meet up again and continue their dance back and forth over the sky, during the course of a month or two.

AC: Yeah, absolutely. And then in July, we get eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn, right? There’s a lot to unpack and change in that axis. It’s gonna take more than a crazy weekend to unpack and process all that.

KS: For sure. For sure. I mean, and the Sun, we probably should note, does move into Cancer, I think around the 21st. So just adding more weight to that already emphasized axis.

AC: Yep, solstice.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, the solstice. Okay, and that kind of starts bringing us to the end of the month. The only last thing I have written down, really, in terms of ingresses is that eventually Mercury does try to get clear of all that stuff. It tries to escape into Leo, where it briefly does get some distance from Mars and from Saturn and Pluto. So it leaves about June 26, it goes into Leo. But then that’s kind of short-lived because then in early July, Mars also moves into Leo and catches up with it. And Mercury stations retrograde, where it will eventually retrograde back into Cancer and not station direct until it hits, what is it, 23° of Cancer. So as soon as Mercury hits 23° of Cancer in June, it’s in its shadow phase or shadow period.

KS: Yes.

AC: A lot to sort out.

KS: Yes.

CB: Yeah, so a lot of this, of course, is gonna be not sorted out and still up in the air, to some extent, through July. But at least we get the first half of and the opening sequence of events, for the most part, in June.

AC: Yeah, and some of this—we’re talking about ominous configurations and all that—some of this is just gonna be what’s on the news. There’ll probably be some less-than-inspiring developments in national and international headlines.

CB: Yeah, I think that’s something we’re all looking forward to seeing for the spectacle of it all, in terms of something we’ve been looking forward to for a while, and seeing the specific details of some of how that plays out.

AC: Yep, yep.

KS: Yeah, so that’s June.

CB: Other than that, do you have any metaphors for this month, then? I don’t know. Kelly?

KS: Yeah, I mean, I’m just so not good with those snappy metaphors. But I do think of that theme of, yes, there is this heavier pattern coming in, but we do get these 48-hour reprieve periods when the Moon is not configured to it. So like now that we’re here, and we’re in the nitty-gritty, there will be those days where you can step back from what’s difficult or hard and just reconnect or catch up with other things before you get back into it. I mean, the thing that just occurred to me is like hot-and-cold baths or something, maybe, where there’s an alternating type of energy.

CB: Yeah. Although it’s not a great metaphor, that I don’t think anyone’s gonna hashtag, but almost like when you lift a weight, like a barbell, you have to exert an extreme amount of energy to bring it upwards. But then there’s this relief on the downward slope, when you let go and release that from your arm and it rests, even if only momentarily. And a lot of the alternation between the Moon this month sort of reminds me of that alternation between something that feels difficult and hard, but you have to do in order to push through, in order to make progress, but also, sometimes, giving yourself a moment to breath and let go before you do it over again.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, well, and I like that because if you’re lifting weights, it’s a controlled release. You don’t just go dead, or else you’ll hurt yourself. But a controlled release and then gathering the strength to lift again, followed by controlled release.

CB: Right. So what’s the word for that? Give me something snappy, like ‘meat grinder’, but less messy.

AC: Doesn’t work that way. So I was just thinking about meat grinder. What do you use a meat grinder for? You use it to make sausage, which reminds me of how the sausage is made.

KS: Oh, my lord.

AC: But then I’m like, okay, so sausage with a side of, right? Cuz we do have some really nice Jupiter configurations, and Jupiter’s configured with Neptune. So I don’t know, sausage with a side of dreams.

CB: There are a few people in the chat. Afroz Fatima says: “#Deadlifts.” Lisa Newcomb says: “Labor pangs.” William Mazdra says: “Brain sausage.” I like that. All of those are pretty good. So ‘astrological deadlifts’.

KS: Well, and we can invite our listeners to come up with some hashtags for this and tag us on Twitter and Facebook.

AC: Let me know what you’re making sausage out of.

CB: Yeah, let us know.

AC: Are you using fennel?

KS: Oh, my gosh. I love it.

CB: Yeah, tag us on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, or whatever your preferred social media is. Give us a snappy title for this. Especially for those people, like Wolf—I’m spacing on his last name—but he pointed out that, for example, he’s expecting a baby this month, and he got a baby shirt that said, ‘Meat Grinder’, and was referring to that as like a funny, little thing.

AC: And I should point this out, I have a meat grinder in my natal chart. I don’t have Pluto, but I have Mars and Saturn opposite each other with the nodes.

KS: With the nodes, yeah.

AC: So this is what a meat grinder looks like. This is what a meat grinder with a good Jupiter looks like, which that’s what the charts being handed out this June are. It’s meat grinder with a side of Jupiter. With a side of dignified Jupiter.

CB: Yeah, well, and that dignified Jupiter, you’ve got it exalted in Cancer in the 1st. But here, Jupiter in its home sign, in Sagittarius, is a nice, little bonus.

AC: Mine’s retrograde as well.

CB: Sure. Not to mention Saturn in Capricorn in its home sign, which is a major mitigation, I’ve seen over and over again in Saturn return stories and other things like that. Regardless of how challenging the other aspects are, that’s still a major silver lining.

AC: Absolutely.

CB: All right, guys, I have no idea how long we went because I got restarted early on, but I think that brings us to the end of the forecast for June of 2019.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, thanks a lot. That was fun. That was a nice way to recap and talk about NORWAC and share some experiences of that. And it’s been fun reading everybody’s social media posts about that, and we hope to hear more stories about NORWAC, maybe in the comments section for this episode. If anybody has anything they wanna share, any interesting articles, or if anybody’s done a synopsis of their experience at NORWAC, we ask people to do that in the Q&A episode that I’m gonna release next week. But if anybody wants to link an article they wrote about their experience at NORWAC, or a video, or a blog post or what have you, then please post it in the comments sections, either on YouTube for this episode or on the podcast website, or whatever you want. All right, any final words before we call it a day?

KS: Take care and have fun. I look forward to debriefing and hearing how it all goes.

AC: Yeah, me, too. Me, too.

CB: Yeah.

AC: I’m as ready as I’m going to get.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Brilliant. Well, I think we’re ready. We’re going into it strong, and we’ll all, hopefully, come out better people on the other end of it. So we look forward to seeing you guys, seeing everybody next month. And we will all check back in again and see where our lives are at, at that point.

KS: Fantastic.

AC: Bye, everyone. Take care.

CB: All right.

KS: I have to stop the recording.

CB: So thanks everyone for listening, and we will see you next time.

KS: Excellent.

AC: Bye.