The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 211, titled:

July 2019 Astrology Forecast: Mercury Retrograde Conjunct Mars

With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees

Episode originally released on June 30, 2020

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2019/06/30/july-2019-astrology-forecast-mercury-retrograde-conjunct-mars/

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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 April 15th, 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. Today is Tuesday, June 25, 2019, starting at 5:19 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 100th—or 211th episode of the show. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking about the astrological forecast for July of 2019, and joining me today are Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees. Hey, guys. Thanks for joining me.

AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris.

KELLY SURTEES: Hey, guys.

CB: All right. So it’s been a month since we last caught just after NORWAC. A lot has happened. So in this episode, we’re gonna spend the first hour, as usual, kind of catching up and talking about things that have been happening in our lives and in the astrological weather over the past few weeks. And then in the second hour, we’re going to get into the astrological forecast for July. So for those of you that wanna skip the pre-forecast chat, just look for the timestamps in the description just below this episode, either on the podcast website or in the YouTube description below this video, and then you can jump ahead. For those of you who don’t wanna skip ahead and wanna listen to the pre-forecast chat, then we’ll get into that right now. All right, so where should we start? So I guess we should start with both Austin and I are sick with a cold. And we both got hit by the ‘meat grinder’, as they say.

AC: Indeed.

KS: Well—

AC: Go ahead.

KS: I was gonna say, it is affecting slightly more healthy places in your charts. Like not ‘healthy’, but ‘health-connected’, if that makes sense.

AC: Well, it’s affecting my 1st, which is supposed to be healthy. Yeah, I don’t really get sick. Last time I got sick was about two-and-a-half years ago, and that was in the middle of a move, when I was sleeping in a house without the power on, when it was below freezing—on just like a cot every night. And we were in the middle of a family emergency, while I was sleeping alone in a freezing house. And so, I got the sniffles for like a day or two and that was the last time. But the meat grinder got me. Something snuck into my lungs and throat in the middle of the last weekend. I thought it was allergies, and I was proven wrong. I think it was about Thursday. I did one reading, and I was like, “Okay, I’m almost dead,” and I was like all the rest of this is canceled.

KS: Yeah, can’t do it.

AC: And I’m still a little symptomatic, but I don’t have the fever that I had. I don’t have the weird hot-and-cold fluctuation. So I’m 90% better.

CB: Brilliant. And I was traveling for the past month and then just came home a few days ago and promptly collapsed with a cold or a flu or something. And my voice was gone until yesterday. So it miraculously came back today, and luckily, I’m here to do this episode with you guys. But please excuse my sniffles and weird-sounding voice otherwise. All right, so where should we start? I can’t believe it’s been a month since we talked last.

AC: Oh, I can. Feels like a long damn time.

KS: It feels like it’s been longer.

AC: But Chris, you’ve been everywhere. You’ve been around, not the entire world, but I don’t know, you’ve ranged at least 8,000 miles. Where have you been since we saw you at NORWAC?

CB: Yeah, so I saw you guys in Seattle, and that was the beginning of my travels, but it was only the first third of it. And then I came home for a few days to Denver at the beginning of June, and then I flew on June 5 to Romania, where I did a workshop for the Romanian Astrologers Association, which was celebrating its 15th anniversary of their organization while I was there. And I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was actually a really amazing trip and a really amazing experience. And I met a lot of really cool people and had a great time. Yeah, that was a really, surprisingly, amazing trip. And then from there, I went to the UK to attend the Astrological Association’s annual conference for the first time, where I gave a workshop and a keynote lecture at the end of the conference. So altogether, I was traveling for 15 days, which is like a huge trip for me, or longer than normal. And yeah, I had an amazing experience that I’m still processing.

AC: Nice. So what’s the astrological scene like in Romania these days?

CB: Yeah, so what was really interesting and unique—and I didn’t know going into it, but I became really fascinated by—was that in Romania, after World War II, when the communists took over, astrology was pretty much suppressed in the country for the next several decades, until the revolution and until things changed, and the fall of communism, basically, in the early 1990s and late 1980s, and then all of a sudden it was permissible again. But as a result of that the astrologers living there had to build an astrological community up pretty much from scratch and did a really amazing job over the course of the past few decades doing so. But it was interesting seeing a community that was growing and thriving, that literally didn’t exist if you went back just a few decades prior to that. They had to sort of do it and invent it on their own, without much help going into it.

AC: That’s interesting. So what texts are standard over there? You know, for astrologers of our generation, who are English-speaking, there are certain books that even if you don’t regard them as the final authority at this point everybody read. Did you get a sense of what people got their start on over there? What language are people reading primarily, over there?

CB: Sure. I mean, they were getting a lot of it. Because in the 1990s, it wasn’t just the fall of communism, but also, the advent of the internet, and so, they were able to start drawing on astrology that was going on in a number of different places. And it seemed like one of the main people that founded the group, Mihaela Dicu—she read French and read other languages like English, and she became interested, in the 1990s, in older forms of astrology and started studying some of the translations of Project Hindsight. So that was part of my connection with her, that she had been studying Hellenistic astrology just about as long or longer than many people in the English-speaking world, and therefore, was incorporating a lot of that into her astrological practice. You know, I met a lot of really cool people. There was an evolutionary astrologer named Oli that I did an interview with, that I’m looking forward to releasing. There was another young astrologer named Lelia who was a fan of the podcast. And she listened to the podcast, and she’s from Bucharest. And I did an interview with her as well. So they’re taking astrology from a number of different areas, just like any other contemporary astrologer is in the US, and putting into practice and creating a sort of synthesis of all those different threads.

AC: Interesting.

CB: Yeah, but it was cool meeting a lot of people that had listened to the podcast, or who had followed things like that and who are fans of you or Kelly or everyone else.

KS: Super cool.

CB: One of the things that came up with that, and the difference in terms of the languages and stuff, is it reignited a desire for me to write a shorter version of my book, to have it translated into different languages. Cuz I always wanted to have my book translated. But what I ended up creating and publishing in 2017 ended up being so dense and so comprehensive that I always felt like it would be too much and too big of a hurdle to have it translated. Cuz there’s too many footnotes, and it’s just way too long and detailed. So I’ve been playing with the idea over the past few years of writing a shorter version of the book, that was a little bit more concise and focused just on the core techniques, and then having that translated into different languages. Because there were certainly Romanian astrologers that were interested in translating it. I also met a Japanese translator in the UK that was interested in translating it. And I met an astrologer from Greece who said my book was somewhat popular in Greece, but there were some astrologers that were only hearing about it like secondhand because it wasn’t available in translation. So it sort of reignited my interest in having the book translated, but I have to go through this intermediate step of, first, writing a shorter version.

KS: I like that. So what would you do? Take some of the more practical components out and maybe not have the history part? Or have you not thought about how you’d restructure it yet?

CB: Yeah, I mean, the first half of the book almost is really detailed historical accounts, that I wanted to make okay for academics, so that an academic—who’s not necessarily an astrologer—could pick up the book and read it and think that this is a reasonable and compelling treatment of the history of ancient astrology. But there’s a lot of stuff there that’s not necessary, if you’re just a practicing astrologer and you just wanna learn the technical approach to the basics of Hellenistic astrology. So I think I’m gonna write something that’s just like an introduction to Hellenistic or ancient astrology. And then that’s not only gonna be easier to translate, but it’s also gonna be easier for just a normal astrologer to pick up the book and read it and have a reasonable understanding of that specific approach to astrology, and the pieces of it that you and I—that the three of us have incorporated into our approaches over the course of the past decade or two.

AC: Yeah, that makes sense.

KS: That sounds very cool. I think the market is very hungry for something like that, something that would act as a bridge if you’re a modern-trained astrologer. What are some of the components that would be traditional or ancient astrological techniques that you could start adding into your practice? Because we know that that type of transition happens by drip-feeding. Whether you make a house system switch or you just decide to switch rulerships, you always start by making some of those smaller shifts first and then incorporating more as you go.

CB: Yeah, definitely. And I feel more comfortable doing that now that I’ve done the comprehensive treatment. But it’s just not necessary to have the 50-page, detailed discussion of the house division issue that I got into in the full book, the 2017 book. I could take a little bit of that out, I think.

KS: Well, yeah. You’ve put the foundation there of your ideas and the background. And now you could just do something which is about how you might use whole sign houses, for instance.

CB: Yeah, exactly, and just focus on the practical parts of the book.

KS: That’s exciting.

CB: Yeah, that’s a big project. I’m a little reluctant to do it, cuz it was such a big deal to do the first book, and it’s a huge hassle to publish a book. But I feel like it might be necessary at this point, so I’m gonna do that. Romania was amazing. I met a lot of cool people. I’m gonna release some good interviews that I did from there—including some documenting the whole revival of astrology in Romania, starting in the 1990s—where I interviewed the two founders of the astrological association out there. So I’m excited to do that. And I’m trying to figure out how to translate that, both for the video version and the audio version, which is a little bit of a tricky technical issue, but I’ll figure it out. Yeah, and then after that, I went to London. I flew to London, and I was there 10 days, partially to attend the Astrological Association of Great Britain’s annual conference for the first time, and also, just to do a bunch of interviews. I stayed in a hotel close to the Astrological Lodge of London, and I did an interview with Kim Farnell about Alan Leo and her new book on Alan Leo. Which is great, because it kind of completed a series of interviews that I’ve been doing on just the founders of modern astrology, like Dane Rudhyar and Evangeline Adams and different figures like that. And that one on Alan Leo was one of the final ones that I’ve been wanting to do for a while.

AC: Nice.

CB: Yeah. But I also gave a talk at the lodge, and there were a lot of cool people surrounding the lodge. I also did a great interview, that I’m gonna be releasing, on psychological astrology, with John Green. Another great interview with Wendy Stacey about this tendency towards people doing not just induced births, but C-sections, and how that often then will conform to doctors’ schedules, which are Monday through Friday, 9-to-5, and the effect that that’s having on birth time rates and things like that. Which is kind of an interesting issue that I don’t see a lot of people talking about.

KS: Yeah, that’s really interesting because scheduled C-sections are usually first thing in the morning, like between a 7:00 and 10:00 type of thing. So a lot of them, depending on the time of year, Sun in the 12th house, maybe Sun in the 11th house in a slightly disproportionate way because that’s what works for the obstetricians.

CB: Yeah. And I did another interview with Israel Ajose, who is the vice president of the Astrological Lodge of London, which was founded in 1915, and has to be the oldest, continuous astrology group that’s been holding meetings in English-speaking countries that I know of or that exists. So I’m excited about that. And then I also attended the Astrological Association’s conference, which was really great. And there were a lot of really high-quality lectures there. So I was really impressed, not just with the organization, but with the quality of the presentations as well. So yeah, overall, it was an amazing event. And I ran into this guy named Clive—I’m spacing out his last name. But I’m gonna release that interview soon, where he was the guy that reprinted the edition of Lilly, the Regulus edition of Lilly, in 1985. And so, I have this interesting interview with one of the people that sort of accidentally in some ways started the traditional revival by reprinting William Lilly and making it accessible to a whole generation of astrologers, starting in the late 1980s.

KS: Amazing.

CB: Yeah, and he brought a first edition of Lilly, which I got to look through and hold, which was kind of fun.

KS: I did see that picture on Twitter, and I thought I was a bit jealous.

CB: Yeah, well, that’s crazy. And then I actually got to go back to his place, and he had a whole library of first edition things. Gadbury and tons of other texts. So I’m excited about releasing that one here in the not too distant future, and hoping to do an episode on William Lilly. And I’m starting to finally gather up some different reference books and research that for hopefully not too long in the future.

AC: Very nice. Very nice.

CB: Yeah, so I’m trying to think of anything else, but I think those are my main things. Oh, yeah, the only other things were—

KS: I mean, I have—sorry, go.

CB: No, what were you gonna say?

KS: I was gonna say, did you sleep? Cuz you were teaching, you were doing interviews. You traveled halfway across the world and back again. I mean, it sounds like you were really milking every moment out of this trip.

CB: Yeah, I mean, I was really pushing it—pushing myself pretty far—and I think that’s why I promptly came home and got sick and lost my voice. But it was definitely worth it, and I would definitely do it all over again. I had a lot of trepidation going into it actually because of the transits and doing it right in the middle of ‘part one’ of the meat grinder. But I think a lot of that was just having to push myself further than I normally would in order to get the most out of the trip and do as many interviews as I could.

AC: Yeah, that makes sense. You know, like we said last month, a lot of times Mars-Saturn oppositions or squares—it just means that you get ground down. You have to push super hard, and then you get sick.

CB: Yeah, sometimes figuring out—like a rubber band. How far can you pull a rubber band before it snaps?

AC: Ooh, good one. Like that.

CB: That is my analogy. Other observations from my trip—I was surprised. Because the traditional revival, theoretically, started with the revival of Lilly in the 1980s in the UK, and then only a decade later you had Project Hindsight going further back into the Hellenistic and Medieval tradition, I assumed that the traditional revival would be more firmly rooted or would be more widespread in the UK. And one of the things I was surprised by was it didn’t seem like traditional had as strong of a foothold in the UK as I expected. And that was an interesting observation, yeah, that I didn’t really anticipate.

KS: So what you observed was that traditional or more ancient forms of astrology are not maybe as popular in the UK as they might be in, say, North America.

CB: Yeah, it almost seems like traditional has become more popular in North America than it is in the UK. And maybe part of that is cuz most of the primary schools in the UK are still primarily modern, I guess. I mean, I was just trying to speculate after the fact in figuring out why that might be the case. But it was one of the things that was a little bit surprising to me. Cuz it was just a presumption that I had going into it, because the ‘Lilly’ thing started in the 1980s, a little bit earlier in the UK, that would have created a much stronger foundation for that to grow. But it almost seemed like that wasn’t as much of the case as I expected. And so, I was a little curious why that was.

KS: Yeah, that’s a really interesting observation.

CB: Yeah, and I don’t exactly know the answer of why that is necessarily, but it was one interesting thing. The other interesting thing is there were a lot of great bookstores in London. And my favorite that I found was Watkins Books, which is just this amazing bookstore for not just their astrology section, but also, for all metaphysical and occult and other quasi-things of that nature. It was literally my dream bookstore, walking into that place. And I think you guys would love it as well.

KS: I am very excited to go there. I’m due to have a little trip to London, just to visit with my sister who’ll be there in September. So I’ve got that on my list of places to see after your recommendation.

AC: Yeah, I’ve never been. When I was in London, it was 2001, and I wasn’t as clued into things. But I have met the owner of Watkins a couple of times through the Esoteric Book Conference in Seattle.

KS: Oh, cool. Super cool.

CB: Brilliant. Yeah, cuz they do some great publishing as well. They have a whole publishing branch that does a lot of great books, right?

AC: I believe so. I don’t know that. This was like 8-10 years ago. And I met them and some other British publishers at an esoteric book conference.

CB: Okay, cool. Well, yeah, so to round that out, everybody in London should take advantage of things. Or in the UK should take advantage of some of those local things like Watkins, like the Astrological Lodge of London, which meets every Monday and does a lot of free classes. And I think one of the things is I wanted to make sure people are aware of that, cuz I get the sense that there’s younger astrologers that don’t know and aren’t taking advantage of the local things that they have available to them, since their immediate impulse is just to do stuff online. But it’s actually really useful sometimes to go to conferences and stuff. The same is true for Romania. People should check out the Romanian Astrologers Association, since they’re organizing, I think, two major conferences each year. So that was my trip. I’ll keep releasing stuff and posting interviews and things, both on the podcast, as well as some shorter interviews on my YouTube channel, so people can check that out. Yeah, what is going on, though, with you guys? How’s the ‘meat grinder’ going for you guys? I guess we’ve finished part one, right?

AC: Yeah, sort of. Yeah, I think it’s fair to say maybe the Sun moving into Cancer was the transition from phase one to phase two.

CB: Okay.

AC: You know, for me, it was working, over-scheduling myself and finally getting sick. Usually I can grind myself into the dirt and still not get sick. And part of that ‘hurry, hurry, do, do, do’ was finalizing the purchase of a house. And so, I’ll be moving in a few days and over the next couple of weeks.

CB: Wow. That’s huge.

KS: That’s super exciting.

AC: Yeah, first house.

KS: Yeah, congratulations, Austin.

AC: Thank you.

KS: That’s a massive, very adult thing to do. Like it’s a very grownup thing, but it’s just a massive process to undertake.

AC: Yeah, fortunately, it’s a local move. So at least we’re not moving to another continent, like some people are.

KS: Yeah.

AC: You know, when you have extremely busy lives, and then you add a move on top of it, it doesn’t make things easier. Although I’m very excited to be ensconced in my new fortress.

KS: I heard from our common friend, Cassandra, that it is very well-protected, in that it’s a little bit at the top of a hill, and it’s got a lot of space around it.

AC: Oh, yeah, we’re out in the country. You gotta drive up a dirt road. You’ll see the ‘No Trespassing’ signs. You’ll assume that you should turn around or get shot.

KS: Oh, my gosh.

AC: It’s good.

KS: That’s fantastic.

CB: Yeah, I can’t believe you’re both moving, basically, in the same time period over the next month.

KS: Yes.

CB: Kelly, you’re relocating as well.

KS: Yeah, just for fun. We thought we’d move to Belgium, in Europe.

CB: Right.

KS: Well, no. Actually for my husband’s work. Well, when Austin termed this period the ‘meat grinder’, because the move is being managed by the people who are employing my husband, we didn’t really have control over even our flights. Like they’re booking all that stuff. So smack, bang, right between the two eclipses, it’s all sort of happening. I mean, the meat grinder is just government document paperwork after government document. You know, who needs to officiate this? We need a letter from this person for that. There’s a lot of, if you like, the Capricorn bureaucracy just ticking the boxes.

CB: What is your tip for that, by the way? Like you fly the long-distance flights a lot. Do you have a system worked out for that?

KS: Okay, you’re gonna get me to totally nerd out. I’ll try and do a Reader’s Digest version of tips for long-haul flights. This is where my absolute nerdiness comes out. It starts with picking the plane on which you will fly. So different types of planes have different levels of humidity and different levels of noise in the cabin.

CB: Okay.

KS: You can tell I’ve done this a lot, right?

CB: Right.

KS: And so, the newer planes, like the Dreamliners—yeah, the Boeing Dreamliners, the 787, the 789—they are the best ones. They’re the newest planes on the market that are flying these long-haul, commercial routes. So try to get on an airline that’s flying one of those planes is my first step. Failing that, the long, 15-hour flights that I do to Australia, you can get on an A380, which is a big airbus. It’s like a double-decker. It’s like the most gigantic plane that flies, and it can only land at certain airports, cuz the wingspan is so big. But yeah, the Dreamliners—it’s 787-9, and sometimes colloquially known as the ‘789’. So it starts with picking the plane. And then I have a very strict, no-alcohol rule on planes because I firmly believe the two things that most contribute to jet-lag are dehydration and lack of exposure to sunlight. So there are a few herbal remedies that you can take in the days leading up to the flight and then during the flight and a few days after; a product called Cellfood, which is like a mineral supplement that you can drop in your water, along with something called saw palmetto, which is a supplement that is used for a variety of things, but it actually does help with jet-lag.

CB: Okay.

KS: I know. This is really weird, but if you fly a lot, the airplanes are so drying and the noise contributes to the tiredness as well. So good headphones would be another tip as well.

CB: Okay.

KS: I mean, that’s probably the short version, but yeah, I’ve done it a lot. I mean, I’m really thrown by moving to Europe because over the last 10 years, I’ve flown extensively between North America and Australia. So I know what airlines are flying what planes, on what routes, and it’s very quick for me to book a flight now. But doing Europe to Australia, or Europe to North America, I have to learn which airlines are flying and which planes. So far, I’m not happy, cuz I keep ending up on Delta flights, which I usually refuse to fly.

CB: Okay.

KS: Yeah, and different airlines have different levels of service. Unfortunately, a lot of the airlines that fly in North America don’t have as good service as airlines that fly in Europe and in Australia. Yeah, so these are some of my tips.

CB: #9thHouseProblems.

KS: Yeah, exactly. Or #GreatJupiterProblems, basically.

CB: Right. That’s good. Like London to Denver was nine hours. But the Australian ones are like 13 or something, right?

KS: 15+.

CB: Wow.

KS: So it depends. I’ve found that from Toronto—where I am on the East Coast—my favorite way to get to Australia is to go through Dallas. And Dallas to Sydney is about 17 hours, but you end up on the A380. And in one direction, the plane’s always half-empty, cuz the cargo load is more lucrative than the passenger load. So this is what happens when you talk to flight attendants at 35,000 feet, 16 hours into your flight. Yeah, nine hours, you’re only kind of halfway over the Pacific to go to Australia.

CB: Okay.

KS: Yeah.

CB: All right, well, I’m gonna have to do a webinar with you on this at some point.

KS: Yeah, you’ve just got me on one of my favorite topics. It can be very boring for everyone else. Unless everyone’s having Jupiter in Sagittarius problems and needs the flying tip. I mean, the other tip is whatever extra level, like TSA pre-check. In Canada, we have this thing called Nexus. Anything like that that you can get, that puts you in a shorter security check to get through the airport, it’s worth the effort or the money to do that.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Cuz Austin, you did Australia just last year, right? You did some shortcuts in order to make things a little easier.

AC: No.

CB: You didn’t?

KS: You did do one thing.

AC: My method going over was pretty good. I got wasted and then passed out for like 11 hours and woke up pretty close to Australia.

CB: Okay.

AC: I would recommend that.

KS: Yeah, so you can sleep 11 hours on a 15-hour flight. It’s gonna feel very short.

AC: Yeah, I’m really good at sleeping.

KS: Yeah. See, I’m jealous of you already, cuz I don’t sleep well on planes. Do you, Chris? I mean, how did you handle your nine-hour adventure?

CB: I didn’t realize until the way back, but on the way back, whatever the plane was, had a lot of good movie selections. And I just watched a bunch of movies and that made it pass a lot faster than I thought it would, even though I was in coach, in the middle seat.

KS: I mean, that’s my other tip. Always pay extra for the aisle seat, even if it’s 60 bucks or something.

CB: Yeah, I was really kicking myself when I realized what my seat assignment was. But I just caught up on movies and that helped, and promptly collapsed once I got home.

KS: Yeah, so there you go, flight tips.

CB: Anyway, so you’re both moving. That’s really weird.

KS: It is.

CB: I mean, you’re both born so close together. Like I can’t get over that and how similar your charts are in some ways, but how different they are, even though you’re only born, what is it? Like three weeks apart or something?

AC: No, it’s like a week.

CB: One week.

KS: Oh, yeah, one week. Seven or eight days. I was separating us by more than what we should be separated.

AC: Yeah, it’s Moon in Pisces/Moon in Gemini.

KS: Yeah, that’s how far apart we are.

CB: Okay. So this is the last podcast that you’ll be doing in both of your respective locations.

AC: Yeah.

KS: Yeah.

AC: My little ‘cathedral of strangeness’ that everybody’s probably used to seeing behind me will be no more shortly.

KS: Yeah, do you know what your office space is gonna be like in the new house, Austin?

AC: No, I haven’t seen the house. I’m teasing.

KS: Of course you’re teasing.

AC: Yeah, yeah.

KS: Like you’ve kinda got the layout of where it’s gonna be and everything?

AC: Yeah, I’m not sure. I have an idea. I have two ideas as to what direction the desk is gonna be facing, but I kinda need to be in the space and feel how it is to work there before it’s permanent. But yeah, we’ve designated a particular room for my office. There are a couple of different ways I could arrange it. I kinda need to be there and see the furniture and the bookshelves and what now before I’ll be certain. But I do know where I’m going to at least put the desk at first, and then we’ll see.

KS: Cool.

CB: Awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing both of your lighting, in both cases.

KS: I know.

CB: Have you seen yours, Kelly?

KS: Yeah, yeah. Actually, technically, the lease on the apartment we’ll be moving into has already started. Yeah, so it’s gonna be a smaller space. And the lighting, I’m not sure how that’s gonna work. And again, similarly, I don’t know where the desk is gonna go, cuz it’s smaller. The internet, I’ve gotta make sure of all of those things. And Austin, I mean, I totally feel what you’re saying. Like I need to get in there and just a vibe for it. You can’t really commit to that, I can’t commit to that. “Oh, I thought this was gonna feel good, but actually this arrangement feels better, so we’ll go with that.”

AC: Yeah, I don’t know. Some people have that type of spatial intelligence where they can visualize all the things being in a space and then place themselves in that imaginary space and feel that. I can do that with certain things, but I can’t do that with space. Kait probably has a much better ability to do that than I do. She has lots of plans for her Sphere + Sundry space.

KS: Yeah, cuz it’s quite an expansion for her.

AC: Well, there’s a lot more room.

KS: Yeah, that’s what I mean.

AC: The inventory has been expanding on its own.

KS: Yes.

AC: And so, now there’ll be a container that is more suited to being filled with it, rather than just spilling out into and colonizing the rest of the house as it has been.

KS: Oh, my God, love it.

CB: Well, I’m looking forward to seeing that for both of you. And I guess we’ll see it on the next forecast, which we’ll record at the end of July

AC: Yeah.

KS: It will be the post-meat grinder edition podcast.

CB: Awesome. Well, speaking of meat grinder, why don’t we check in—since we’re halfway through it—if there’s anything that we’ve noticed or seen up to this point. What have you guys been seeing?

AC: Well, I’ve actually seen a lot of people having to move, and not in every case for the same sort of happy reasons that I’m getting to move or that Kelly is moving for. A lot of people looking and are like, “Oh, shit, I have to be out of my place by the end of the month.” I’ve gotten reports of a lot of sudden passings, a lot of sudden deaths. There was one story, which I won’t tell in detail, that involved someone losing their fingers, and another person severing the end of their tongue.

KS: You had some very literal observations, Austin, about, what’s the word? I guess the cutting version.

AC: Yeah, there were some very literal ones that came my way. I didn’t go looking for those, by the way, that was just what I encountered. And there’s just the feel of it, and the feel has been not amazing. One thing that I’m happy to see is that people have understood there are some rough configurations coming up; I will prepare myself to do that well, rather than waiting glumly, like a death row prisoner, for something terrible to happen. You know, cuz that’s the point of talking about things ahead of time, to get a sense of like, “Oh, there’s an excellent chance that is going to be harder, let me see what tools I have for when the going gets rough and be prepared for this.” And it seems like a lot of people had taken it that way, which is not only the most effective way to do it, but also, the spirit in which sharing that news was intended.

KS: Absolutely.

CB: Yeah, that’s super important. Like one of the things with all three of us is we’ve continued to live our lives and do important things, even during what we’ve articulated on the yearly forecast as the most difficult part of the year. So it’s like you don’t just stop living your life, even though the astrology is difficult. Sometimes you still have to do things even despite that. That’s something I sometimes worry about when we talk about what is the most challenging-looking set of alignments in a certain part of the month or a certain part of the year, that people will get frightened by that or somehow avoid doing anything during those times. But that’s not necessarily the lesson, or that’s not necessarily supposed to be the thing that we’re trying to convey, per se. Right?

KS: Yeah, it’s more like just, I guess, be aware or have that understanding that things will require more effort, or you might feel more pressured, particularly if we use the ‘meat grinder and the Mars-Saturn-Pluto’ drama. Yeah, I mean, I’ve been teaching, I’ve been seeing clients, I’ve been doing my workouts, and there’s just been a little bit more pressure. I’ve definitely had that feeling of like, okay, what’s the schedule today? Planning has been so much more important for me. There has been such a consistent, steady stream of things to do that actually some of my time management skills have gotten a tiny bit better in that I’m taking that time the day before to sit down and plan out, “What are the first three or four things that I need to attend to tomorrow?” So when I get up, instead of wasting time trying to make a decision, I just get up and start working through the list.

AC: Yeah, that’s been huge, actually. I’ve found that during, we could say idle time, where I’m like, “What should I do? What do I feel like doing?” the answer is “I don’t know,” and then it sort of spirals down from there. So to kind of go inside the anatomy of the meat grinder, Mars is the planet that has been in the most difficult space. You know, it’s Mars in Cancer, where it doesn’t love being, and then getting beat up by Saturn and Pluto and confused by the nodes. Although Saturn’s in a complicated position, it is in Capricorn. It’s in a position of great dignity. And so, I found that just kind of rolling with Saturn, being like, “Okay, here’s the schedule, do this.” There are other times, if you lead with Mars, it works great. Whereas I found leading with Mars, like “Okay, what do I wanna do during this period of time?” has been a big no. And I’ve caught myself in that multiple times and the answer has been, “Okay, well, what’s on the calendar?” That’s actually been a big saving grace.

KS: I’ve found it really clarifying. It’s like you don’t have to muck about with all the things or trying to please people or saying ‘yes’ to everything. It’s just this is what we’ve scheduled to do, so we can’t do anything else. And I realized, too—I don’t know if I’ve talked about this with you guys yet—about a week before the Mars-Saturn opposition, one of those key parts of the meat grinder, I just decided I was gonna take three days off and go and visit Cassandra, who was gonna be down in San Diego.

CB: Oh, yeah, I saw that you just randomly flew to San Diego to catch Cassandra’s talk.

KS: Yeah. And for me, personally, the meat grinder—I’ve got Capricorn 11th house, Cancer 5th house. So there’s been a lot going on around the friendships and wanting to spend time with people that are really special to me, especially knowing that we’re gonna be moving away from our group of friends here, and in some ways, further from our friends in Australia. So I don’t even know where this idea—it just came over me. I never take time off work. That’s sort of unexpected. But I was very easily able to reschedule a bunch of clients and got a decent price flight, found a decent Airbnb, and just went to the beach for four or five days. On the Mars-Saturn opposition, on the 14th, I was actually swimming in the Pacific Ocean, which is heavenly. It’s absolutely the place that I like to worship, swimming in the Pacific Ocean. So very weirdly, I did some 5th house/11th house stuff kind of unexpectedly.

CB: Nice. I like that.

KS: Yeah.

CB: That sense of spontaneity, I don’t know why, that was kind of an element for me during that time as well. Usually I like to plan everything out, especially with the podcast. I do these really extensive outlines before interviewing somebody and usually stick to the outline pretty closely, sometimes too closely. But in my entire trip, especially in London and everything else, I did everything on the fly. And it just sort of worked, despite doing many things at the last moment and leaving it sort of up in the air. Everything just sort of worked itself out without having to plan it out in advance as much as it might otherwise. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I also was kind of riding a similar wave.

KS: I like that.

CB: Yeah. Any spontaneity for you, Austin?

AC: I mean, I had to cancel appointments, cuz I was sick.

KS: That’s not as much fun.

CB: Right.

AC: But, no, pretty much all day, everyday has been spoken for. Like I haven’t taken a day off in a month, cuz there’s stuff to do everyday.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Every single day. I also wanna give a shoutout to the ‘meat grinder’ baby who arrived safely around the middle of the month. So one of our listeners, earlier in the year, announced their baby was gonna be due right in the meat grinder period, and the baby did arrive safely. I think you guys saw that tweet on Twitter.

AC: Yeah, I believe Moon and Jupiter in Sagittarius.

KS: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, yeah.

CB: It was the Moon and Jupiter in Sagittarius?

KS: I’m pretty sure, yeah. Yes, yes. So it was just so exciting. I don’t know. I love babies.

CB: I think that was Wolf Marnell, right?

KS: Yeah, Tarot Wolf on Twitter, maybe.

CB: Yeah, I love that. He had the onesie made up that said ‘meat grinder’ on it.

KS: Yes, the ‘meat grinder’ baby onesie. I don’t know. I just feel like that’s really cool.

CB: Well, and I appreciated you sharing last month—very briefly, Austin—that you have a meat grinder in your chart. You have a Mars-Saturn opposition.

KS: Yes!

AC: With the nodes.

CB: Right.

KS: With the nodes. Yeah, exactly.

AC: And the Sun, and T-squaring the Moon.

KS: So I thought that was great, Austin, just to say that you’re a lived embodiment of this, and there are many productive things that can happen.

AC: Yeah, I can grind some meat. I’m actually very efficient. I’m more of the hand-crank model.

KS: The old school, no shortcuts. So meat grinder phase one, done. Now eclipses.

CB: Yeah, and there’s one last thing. I mean, in the news of course, we’re all paying attention to a lot of the weird brinkmanship with Iran intensifying around this time, with Trump and some of the weird stuff going on with Iran and everybody basically just praying they don’t start a war during this time. But it did seem like some of that was intensified around the time of that opposition going exact between Mars and Saturn, right?

AC: Yep.

CB: Yeah. Were there any other things like that in the news going on?

KS: Well, that seemed to be the one that kind of has flared up the most, yeah.

CB: Yeah. Okay, so that was part one. And now Mars and Mercury are now getting towards the end of Cancer as we’re recording this on June 25. And we’re getting ready to move into the next phase of that part two, basically, which is centered in July and early July, right?

AC: And basically runs until late July.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Okay.

KS: Would you say until the Sun gets into Leo?

AC: Yeah, I would maybe even say until the New Moon in Leo.

KS: Yeah, by the time we get to that, everything is so different astrologically.

CB: Okay, so are we transitioning then? Shall we transition to the forecast?

KS: I know we’re getting ahead, Chris, sorry.

CB: No, it’s fine. I just realized in setting that up, that I was basically taking us right into the forecast. Before we do that, we were gonna do promos before we transition. Should we do that and then jump into the forecast?

KS: Sure. What do you guys have going on?

CB: Okay, let’s do it. So Austin, what do you have coming up?

AC: Well, so it doesn’t start until August 8, but enrollment is open for an 11-week class on the relationship between astrology and tarot, that I’ll be teaching between August 8 and October 17. And so, sign up there. It’s on my website. It’s an online class. We’ll meet once a week and talk about astrology and tarot. That sounds a little—it’s actually quite structured. That sounds like a loose chat. We’ll be going through the minor arcana and the major arcana and different ways that people have connected the visual language of tarot to the signs and planets and decans of astrology. And that’s something, I don’t know, people have been trying to get me to talk about for a while, and there are elements of that in 36 Faces. But I finally thought, what the hell, and scheduled a class on it this year. Let’s see, the Venus in Taurus series that I elected for Sphere + Sundry is out now. And then I didn’t elect anything for Sphere + Sundry in July because ‘meat grinder’, but there are some fine elections in August. There’ll be a flurry of activity as far as that goes in August. Other than that, my yearly classes are running. I’m not open for new consultations right now. That’s all I got going.

CB: You were out there actually four years ago, this time of year, for a tarot conference, cuz a tarot conference was happening in Denver. They invited you out to speak because of your book on the decans. And that was how you ended up doing the forecast with me and Kelly because you were staying near my house, and we just invited you in randomly one day.

AC: Yep, yep. Absolutely. But you guys were scheduled and, I don’t know, Chris, you were like, “Hey, what the hell? Why don’t you guest on this first one, Austin?”

CB: Right. Anyway, just a funny anecdote about you and your connection with tarot. Cuz I didn’t know until that conference that you’d been studying tarot just as long as you’d been studying astrology. So go back pretty far with both subjects.

AC: Yeah, yeah. And I read cards, I don’t know, a couple times a week, at least for myself. And there was a question on what deck I’ll be using. It’ll be focused on the Coleman-Smith deck, also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

KS: Yeah.

AC: It would be too much to make it universal. But that is the most influential in the English-speaking world, and it is the one that I’m most familiar with and currently use.

CB: Brilliant. Okay, so people can find out more information about that on your website, which is AustinCoppock.com. And I’m sure they’ll see links to it there, on the homepage. Kelly, what do you have going on?

KS: I have just one event coming up in July, which is an eclipse webinar for Astrology University on July 6. Saturday, July 6. I’ll be a panelist with Kenneth Miller, and we’ll just be talking about the eclipses, Saros series, eclipse cycles, all of the juicy things that you need to make the most of these mid-year eclipses.

CB: Awesome. That sounds really good. So you can find out more information. That’s with Astrology University, but you can find out about it on your website, which is KellysAstrology.com, right?

KS: Yes, thank you. Yeah, the sign-up info is on my homepage for that now.

AC: And so, you’re doing that with, sorry, Kenneth Miller?

KS: Yes.

AC: And is it just you two?

KS: I think so. There’s going to be a moderator, we’re just not sure exactly who that’s going to be at this time. Yeah, I don’t wanna say it and then have it not be the person that I think it’s going to be. Yeah, so we’re just gonna have a bit of a chat about eclipses, the concept of eclipses. Obviously, he’s got the Indian background. So we’ll be able to do a bit of an East-West look at the eclipses.

AC: Nice, nice.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Brilliant. What’s the date on that, again?

KS: July 6, sorry.

CB: Okay.

KS: It’ll be 9:00 AM Pacific, 12:00 PM Eastern.

CB: Brilliant. I love me some Kenneth Miller. And I’m trying to get him back on the show again soon to do a talk about the Yavanajataka—and how much it relies on Greek astrology versus how much it’s an independent development of indigenous, Indian astrology—that we’ve been meaning to do for a while.

KS: Yeah.

AC: I attended his talk at UAC on that subject, and I thought it was very interesting.

CB: He made a compelling argument?

KS: ‘The Spice in My Curry’ or ‘Pepper in My Curry’ one or something?

AC: Feta.

KS: Feta in my Curry. Yeah, that was clever.

CB: He has clever titles.

AC: Yeah, there were a lot of points that were very compelling. Just looking at an analysis of the content of the Yavanajataka, he’s looking at the divisional charts in the Yavanajataka and just asking, is there any precedent for this in extant Greek material versus does this look exactly like every Indian text ever? And it’s like, well, there’s pretty much no precedent for it. You know, there’s no D-9. Or there’s maybe a vague reference to what might be a D-9 in Firmicus, but that’s it. So just looking at a content analysis and then looking for precedence in the other Greek material made a really strong case, and there are other things. But yeah, I found it quite compelling, I’ll just say that. I’m glad you’re having him on.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah, I had read an article on the plane to San Diego that made a bit of a jab at the origins of Indian astrology, and I brought it up with Kenneth when I was in San Diego. And he mentioned that you and he were talking about him coming back on the show to talk about some of the beginnings.

CB: Yeah, we’ve just been trying to figure out how to do it carefully and respectfully. Cuz it’s a very delicate issue and people have very strong opinions about the subject either way, so we wanted to figure out a way to do it without getting death threats.

KS: I think it’ll be amazing when you guys get to that point, so I look forward to that.

CB: Okay. All right, so people can find out more information about that webinar that you’re doing at KellysAstrology.com. Let’s see, for me, the main thing that I’m doing—aside from just recovering and releasing all the interviews that I did in Romania and the UK—is I’m gonna be raising the price of my course on Hellenistic astrology at the end of July. I was looking around and realizing how underpriced my courses are compared to pretty everybody else, which is something that I do periodically. And periodically, you guys sit me down and have an intervention and are like, “You’re charging—”

KS: I’m so happy you had an insight about that.

CB: Yeah, well, I remember years ago, when you guys sat me down at NORWAC and were like, “You are not charging enough for your consultations, you need to raise the prices,” and I appreciated that. So I periodically have that realization every once in a while.

KS: Good.

CB: So yeah, I wanna raise the price, also, in order to be able to integrate more of a live component, as well as be able to devote more time to working with students, and the amount that I’ve been charging for just hasn’t been enough to allocate for that. So I think I’m just gonna raise it a little bit in order to make up for that and be able to focus more on doing teaching, in addition to doing the podcast, since those are the two primary things that I do and love at this point in time. So people can find out more information about the course. It’s like a very comprehensive course. It’s got over a hundred hours of video lectures, just like some of the ones that you’ve seen on the podcast, but with much more detail, where I use hundreds of chart examples to teach people my approach to ancient astrology. And you can find out more information about that at courses.theastrologyschool.com. So basically, if you sign up anytime between now and the end of the month, you’ll basically get a discount. Cuz you’ll get in for the lower price rather than what I’ll be raising it to after that point.

KS: That’s fantastic.

CB: The only other promo thing is just a reminder about the Baltimore NCGR astrology conference. That’s the next big astrology conference that’s coming up. And that’s August 30-September 3, 2019, Labor Day weekend, in Baltimore, Maryland. And you can find out more information about that at geocosmic.org. All right, I think that’s all the promos. Shall we transition into planetary alignments for July?

AC: Sure.

KS: Let’s do it.

CB: All right. So as we were saying, by the time we get to the end of June, we’ve completed part one, basically, of what Austin has lovingly dubbed the ‘meat grinder’, and has taken off as the primary phrase that we’re using to describe the alignments of June and July. And we’re moving now into part two, which begins pretty promptly, right at the beginning of July, right?

AC: Yeah, part of the reason that one of the titles I proposed was ‘meat grinder’ is that it was just sort of thing-after-thing and there was like, “Okay, this, and then this. Oh, okay, and then this.” It wasn’t just like, “Oh, yeah, some rough stuff for two weeks.” So the Mars-Mercury opposite Saturn-Pluto on the nodes bit leads into our first proper eclipse in Cancer, which is the solar eclipse on Tuesday, July 2. And then, a week later, we get Mercury stationing retrograde conjunct Mars. And then, a week later, we get the lunar eclipse in Capricorn with Saturn and Pluto. And so, that is the cartography of meat grinder phase two.

CB: Gotcha. So the Mercury retrograde conjunct Mars, and Mars moving into Leo, and then the eclipses—the solar and then lunar eclipse—taking place on the Cancer and Capricorn axis.

AC: Mm-hmm.

CB: Okay, brilliant.

KS: Very juicy.

CB: And this starts right away. Cuz we can see that Mars ingresses on July 1 into Leo. Cuz it seemed like Mercury had conjoined Mars, and that was like the height or the very pinnacle of phase one of the meat grinder, when Mercury conjoined Mars in Cancer opposing Saturn and Pluto. But then phase two is Mercury slows down and stations retrograde just a few days into the month, on July 6-July 7, and Mars catches up to and conjoins it on the same day.

AC: Yeah.

CB: So part of what we’re dealing with here is a Mercury retrograde that’s already been cued up for a few weeks. Cuz I think it actually entered its shadow around, what, 22°-23° of Cancer?

AC: Mm-hmm. It’s been there for a while already.

KS: A little while already.

CB: Okay, so that means that some of what’s gonna take place during this upcoming Mercury retrograde was already cued up or was put into place over the past few weeks, starting from mid-June onwards.

AC: Yeah.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And it’s also worth noting that one of the nice things about phase one is that even though we had Mars right on that axis—which was a real pain in the ass—Venus was completely off-axis, over there in Gemini and configured only to Jupiter and Neptune, whereas for a lot of phase two, Venus will be in Cancer and subject to the churning on that Cancer/Capricorn axis. So yeah, it’s a different topography for part two, but it’s really focused primarily on that same Cancer/Capricorn axis.

CB: Okay. Like some of this was cued up earlier this year, six months earlier, when we had the first set of eclipses, or at least one part of the eclipse in Capricorn on January 5, right?

AC: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we had a solar eclipse in Capricorn, right around Saturn and the South Node.

KS: Yeah, around 15 Cap.

AC: And that was basically right around when the Marie Kondo special aired on Netflix, and everybody went ‘clean out’ crazy, which I thought was just the most appropriate thing possible for that Saturn-South Node-Pluto eclipse. And I’ve seen that theme over and over and over again since. For me, some of that is inevitable because we’re moving house, right? It’s like, what do you wanna keep? What’s worth keeping, right? Big question.

KS: Well, same for us, Austin. Because when you’re thinking about shipping some of your stuff halfway around the globe, you really do think differently about what you need. Like if it’s so important that you wanna ship it, great. But if it’s not so important that you don’t wanna ship it, why do you even have it, basically?

AC: Right. Is this worth ‘X’ amount of dollars to ship halfway around the world?

KS: Yeah, it really gets you back to the core. You know, you don’t want any excess. Except for the books. All the books are allowed.

AC: Right, right, right.

KS: Well, maybe not all. But all the good books, yeah.

AC: I have some boxes that are labeled for charity. I’m like I am not ever gonna read this again. I can’t throw it out. I can’t throw out a book. I don’t know. That’s taboo in my world.

KS: Books get passed on or donated. They never go near a garbage bin. Never. That’s sacrilege.

AC: I feel like that’s, yeah, sacrilege. And then, also, I’ve mentioned a couple of times on the podcast my grandma passed two months ago now. And so, that whole side of the family has been clearing out her house, so that it can go up on the market. And that house hasn’t been cleared out since she and my grandpa bought it in 1960.

KS: Oh, my goodness.

AC: Yeah, so there’s almost 70 years of stuff in there.

KS: That’s some purge.

AC: Yeah, I remember I was helping, when I was down there a month-and-a-half ago, and we were cracking open closets that hadn’t been cracked open in a decade or two. And I remember I found a box of old letters and even the bugs had died. The bugs that had been eating the letters were dead for two decades. And I was like, okay, that’s the time depth that we’re dealing with.

KS: Wow.

AC: I’ve seen that as just a theme with people in general and myself. For me, it’s been like clearing out obligations. Like that’s why I shut down consultations. It was like I’ve already got a fuck-ton of consultations booked. Let me catch up with the past and then I will open up and take more on.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Let’s see. Tons of people clearing out and clarifying their relationship to ancestry and lineage stuff. You know, sort of what’s in everybody’s closet is where you came from and where those people came from, where grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-great-great-great—as far back as you wanna go. And so, to a certain degree this is one part of what people are gonna be graded on during phase two of the meat grinder. How are you doing on whatever you’re clear-out work is, that you got assigned at the beginning of the year?

KS: That’s a really beautiful way of summarizing how July kind of links back to the January period.

CB: Yeah.

AC: Thank you.

CB: So it’s like bouncing back and forth between Cancer and Capricorn, and this idea of what to keep, which is more Cancer and the inclusive nature of the Moon, which is collecting things and bringing things together versus what to reject, what to get rid of, which is more of a Capricorn/Saturn-type signification, which is excluding things.

KS: Yeah.

CB: That’s a really great set of keywords for these two solar eclipses coming up at the beginning and middle of July in Cancer and Capricorn.

AC: Thank you. I would also point out that our solar eclipse in Capricorn—or excuse me, our solar eclipse in Cancer, which begins in July, will be our first proper eclipse on the North Node side of the North Node in Cancer and South Node in Cap. And so, the South Node’s big on cleaning out and letting go. And the North Node, to a certain degree, we’ve sort of gotten the assignment to make space and there’s a logic to that when things are cluttered. You’re like, “Oh, yeah, I do need to make space.” But then if you succeed in that, what do you bring into or how do you fill the space that you have created? And I believe that the solar eclipse in Cancer will help to clarify that question.

KS: That’s beautiful. Yeah, I mean, that idea of what needs to come in, what you want to water or start to build up, I guess, in the void or the space that you’ve spent the last six months creating.

AC: Right. So let’s do a garden metaphor.

KS: Sure.

AC: So you’ve done a lot of weeding. So what do you wanna plant?

KS: Exactly. You know, plant selection is very important. It’s gotta fit the conditions—Sun, water, etc. You can’t just plant anything. Not everything will grow everywhere.

AC: No.

CB: Right.

AC: We have some—oh, go ahead.

CB: So July 2 is that solar eclipse that’s taking place in Cancer, at 10° of Cancer.

KS: Yes. Spot on.

CB: All right. And then when is the lunar eclipse in Capricorn?

KS: July 16.

CB: Okay.

KS: Look, this is just my sort of feeling or sense about it. There is a level of excitement, or that ideal of getting a sense of the future with that New Moon eclipse in Cancer. The Full Moon or lunar eclipse does have more of the ‘churning-grinding-releasing’ feel because it is potent. It’s not just the regular monthly Moon in Capricorn. It’s got that zap from the eclipse there.

AC: Yeah, so one point worth making about the eclipses. For example, I said that solar eclipse in Cancer will help clarify what to plant. It doesn’t mean it’s a good day for planting.

KS: No.

AC: It initiates. It opens that gate that begins the process. It begins the idea of planting or the idea of filling that space. It’s something that opens the door to the process by which you might attain clarity about what to bring in. If you think you have it figured out ahead of time, and you wanna do it on that day, then that’s probably not correct because you literally haven’t gotten to the point where that’s going to become clear. I would just say wait through this Mercury retrograde. I would say listen to the Mercury retrograde. Listen to the eclipses and move with them. Because a configuration does something or facilitates a process doesn’t mean that it’s an ideal election for something of that type. Does that distinction make sense to y’all?

KS: Yeah, absolutely. So wait for the ideas and the insights to come through near the eclipse and see what the Mercury retrograde reveals, but don’t be rushing to start running down those paths full tilt until later in the month.

AC: Yeah.

CB: What is the deal with that, though, from an electional standpoint, just with eclipses? Cuz I see a lot of astrologers say don’t start things on eclipses, and I’ve always been curious why that is. Because it seems like eclipses often are important markers and turning points where people do begin or complete something, and they’re clear bookends in people’s lives for beginnings and endings it seems like.

AC: Yeah, they’re much better for endings, in the sense that things tend to end on them. I mean, they’re literally compromising the light of the Sun and the Moon, which are the tent poles of time. It doesn’t mean that if something happens on an eclipse that it’s going to be necessarily a disaster, but there’s really no reason to pick an eclipse to do something. I think of a friend of mine who started a job last year on an eclipse, and that was just kind of how it had to go. And it wasn’t that it was a terrible job, but he’s already switched into a new position because that company had issues, and they had da-da-da-da-da, and so, it just didn’t end up lasting. And so, that’s what you see with a lot of eclipse elections. Like you said, Chris, they’re demarcators of often sudden change, sudden and significant change.

CB: Right.

AC: And so, if you’re doing something, for example, you’re starting a job you would like to have for more than 11 months, then you don’t want to anchor it to a signifier of powerful and often beyond-your-control change.

CB: Sure. It’s like with lunations, you see people at a New Moon and a Full Moon start things or bring things to completion, and the eclipses themselves sometimes are just like amped lunations that have longer-term ramifications for the next six months. So people sometimes carry themes over, not just for a month, at a solar eclipse lunation, but sometimes for six months, where it can affect things during a six-month time span. And I can see why during this specific eclipse, why we would wanna tell people to be a little bit more wary because of the Mercury retrograde conjunct Mars at the beginning of July coinciding with the solar eclipse. Things initiated during this time might be subject to revision, as during any Mercury retrograde. I’ve just never been as comfortable with the full-on ban on starting new things around the time of eclipses, that I feel like is commonly recommended in most astrological electional rules today.

AC: I’m totally comfortable with it. We’re literally just crossing off four days a year. You know, there are four eclipses a year. So don’t use those four days a year for your elections. I’ve never seen an eclipse election work great. I’ve seen a number of them work terribly. Do it the day before or after if you’re super excited about it. I’m super comfortable with it.

CB: Okay.

KS: I like it. So different perspectives there on whether we should be starting things on the New Moon eclipse in Cancer or not. And we’ll have to let our listeners give us some feedback about their experiences.

CB: Yeah, well, this is definitely not one to experiment with, when Mercury is stationing retrograde conjunct Mars at the same time.

KS: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that’s got a very ‘foot-in-mouth, kind of outbursty’ feel, July 7th and 8th.

CB: Yeah, and it’s not just Mercury stationing retrograde, and then Mars comes up and overtakes it, which is really unique and doesn’t happen very frequently at all. But one of the listeners who’s joining us for the live chat, Matt Davis, points out that Mercury is squaring Uranus at the same time.

AC: Yep.

CB: So there’s a whole other element that’s thrown in the mix.

AC: Yeah, and we’ve got Mars square Uranus for a while.

KS: Like that whole second week of July, yes, the eclipses are going, but the second week of July, we’re kind of between the eclipse dates, and we’ve got the Mercury-Mars-Uranus mashup coming in that week.

CB: Right. So here it is. So Mercury stations by, let’s say, the 5th—or, no. Mercury stations by the 7th of July at 4° of Leo, and Mars catches up to it and conjoins it at 4° of Leo. And around the same time, Uranus has made it all the way to 6° of Taurus at this point, where it’s squaring the two of those pretty closely. And then what you were both pointing out is that Mars—because it’s not moving super fast, I guess it’s moving somewhat fast—it is then squaring Uranus for the next several days.

AC: Yeah.

KS: Yeah, there’s some volatility in that. I mean, the internal desire of increased restlessness or resistance to restriction is gonna be pretty strong. And I think with Mercury basically stationed for most of the week, there’s gonna be some frustration, or that idea of maybe hitting some roadblocks. Wanting freedom, wanting change, but not being able to make it happen in the way you want or in the timeline that you prefer.

AC: Yeah, I think that’s dead on.

KS: So just, yeah, deep breaths for that second week.

AC: Yeah, so these configurations are kind of a mess, but it’s just a couple weeks.

KS: It is. As we were saying earlier, it’s not the end of the world. Life’s gonna continue. I’m doing something that week that I have never done before. I am flying to Europe, which is only an eight-hour flight, but we’re bringing our two pets. Our two cats are coming on the plane with us, in the cabin. So that’s gonna be a whole different version of wild and crazy, taking a long plane trip with your cats.

AC: So are your cats vocal when they travel?

KS: Look, one of them is, and one of them is just a shy, quiet thing. So I am a little bit, not concerned, but I’m wondering whether my vocal girl is going to be just talking for eight hours, basically.

AC: Our kitty will meow the entire time he is in a car, no matter how long the ride.

KS: Oh, my goodness. So Merlin—both our cats are girls. Anyway, I know Merlin’s name is a little unusual. We’ve only ever taken them to the vet, which is like five minutes down the street, but she will meow the whole time. So I’m just worried about her meowing for like hours.

AC: Is there some kitty Valium or something to give them?

KS: Yeah, look, we’re gonna see the vet next week. I mean, part of the government paperwork we’re dealing with is the paperwork to travel with your pets internationally. I think there’s a mild antidepressant-type thing that you can give them, that just tones down their mind a little bit. I mean, as we’re saying this, of course—

AC: It tones down their mind.

KS: Their mind a little bit, just to calm them mildly. The Mercury-Mars station, of course, is in my 6th house, so this makes complete sense, basically. Did you just say, “Meow?”

AC: One of the listeners pointed out it’s a Mercury-Mars station, or it’s a Mercury-Mars conjunction in Leo, the only feline sign.

KS: Correct. So it’s all about my girls having everything they need. Oh, yeah, we have the pheromones. I mean, if anyone wants to write me after and tell me more tips, please do. We’ve got the pheromones and the rescue remedy. But anyway, that’s really week two.

CB: Your concrete advice was just take a breath, Kelly, with this Mercury-Mars conjunction? Cuz it’s such a unique thing. Like any one of these would be a thing unto itself. Like Mercury-Mars and being careful not to get into a verbal altercation with somebody.

KS: Yeah, play it safe on social media.

CB: Right. Like don’t get into an argument, or don’t let yourself get carried away in an argument. Or Mercury retrograde, like a Mercury retrograde station, and sometimes a miscommunication happening and maybe thinking that something happened. Or thinking that, I don’t know, somebody blew you off or something, but realizing later that it was just a technical snafu, and therefore, not to be misled by something like that. And then finally, we have a Mercury-Uranus square at the same time. So an unexpected disruption, or an unexpected communication. And then a Mars-Uranus square at the same time. What’s our keyword for a Mars-Uranus square?

KS: Powder keg. I mean, that’s where I think the restlessness comes from. And Mars-Uranus—people can feel so impatient that they move prematurely, or they make reckless, potentially, choices. The flip side, though, it really depends, I think, on your individual makeup. Because if you’re a very air/fire chart, or maybe you’ve got a lot of the early degrees of fixed signs, you could be lit up really quickly. And then for people who tend to have charts that respond more slowly, sometimes you need something quite high energy like this to actually prod them into taking action. So I guess it’s contextual in terms of how frustrating it might be for an individual personally.

CB: Sure. Yeah, sometimes it could be like an unexpected, but healthy, sudden choice to make an action that ends up being disruptive, but maybe in a good way in disrupting previous patterns in your life that maybe needed to be disrupted.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, another way that we can look at the Mars-Mercury square Uranus is we have two slower-moving things—or two more quickly-moving things, Mars and Mercury, activating a very slow-moving thing, which is Uranus in Taurus. And so, if there’s been a change pending—a larger change that’s kind of been making itself more and more clear in terms of its need to happen—this Mars-Mercury is likely going to kick that off and catalyze it.

CB: Right. Totally. I’ve seen that. I have a Taurus rising person I know who is making a huge change in their life, where they’re moving. Again, it’s another relocation, but it’s gonna be centered on this specific configuration at the beginning of July. But it’s moving where they haven’t relocated in like 20 years or something like that. So it’s huge, somewhat sudden, that’s only happened over the past few months, since Uranus went into their rising sign, into their first whole sign house. But then it’s almost getting triggered. They’re pulling the trigger in coordination with this alignment of Mars squaring that Uranus and activating it in some way in their 1st.

AC: Nice, nice.

CB: Actually, technically, now that I think about it, if they have Taurus rising, then Mars and Mercury are, of course, gonna be transiting through their fourth whole sign house at that time, so that makes even more sense.

KS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s—sorry, go, Austin.

AC: Yeah, I was just gonna say the catalyzing changes, which have been building for a while, is a theme that we’re seeing not only with Uranus being activated, but also, the eclipses. We’ve only had one eclipse on this Cancer/Capricorn axis so far. As I’ve said before, this is the first time we really get the Cancer side moving. And this same axis was loaded up or stirred up by phase one of the meat grinder, with Mercury and Mars going through it. And so, what I’ve been seeing and thinking is that this pair of eclipses—in addition to the Uranus activation—there’s gonna be a lot of things which have been in the works for a while actually happening. Like that energy actually being released in favorable and unfavorable ways, but that release of things that have been building for a while being a big theme from multiple angles here.

CB: Definitely.

KS: Yeah, that’s really beautiful.

AC: Well, thank you. Yeah, like, for example, with moving, right, with you and I, Kelly, it’s not like somebody just told us we were gonna move last week.

KS: No. Well, and actually, I was just thinking, when you said that, I’m pretty sure that we got the final confirmation around all of the pre-employment checks for both my husband and I. I think that was January that we got the final ‘yes, this is a go, everybody has passed all the checks that needed to happen’. So that idea of things being triggered back in January, or confirmed, or foreshadowed then now taking place. I love what you’ve been saying throughout the show today, Austin, around this is the first time we’re having an eclipse season where both eclipses are triggering the Cancer/Capricorn axis. Because in some ways the January eclipse period was like one foot in the past, one foot in the future, because we had a Capricorn eclipse and we had a Leo eclipse.

AC: Different themes.

KS: Very different. This is way more intense. Same axis, same pair of signs, same pair of houses. It’s like the main show now.

AC: Yeah, it’s definitely the big show. And remember that this isn’t the last installment in the big show.

KS: No. It’s like the first of a three-act play or something.

AC: Yeah, the year will end and begin on the same note, right? Cuz our next pair of eclipses are going to be during the holidays.

KS: Just for more fun. Literally, December 26 is the next.

AC: Or December 25, if you live in the States.

KS: Oh, yeah.

AC: Yeah, no, it’s literally a solar eclipse on Christmas. I just got done doing the six months ahead with Gordon a few days ago.

KS: Yeah, it’s 5:00 AM. Oh, my God, it is December 25 in North America.

AC: Which, as I said then, and I will just reaffirm, if you want to give birth to the Anti-Christ, a solar eclipse on Christmas—that’s literally as good as it’s ever going to get.

KS: A solar eclipse that’s on the South Node, on Christmas.

AC: Yeah, when the light is supposed to return, and then the Sun itself is stained, like that’s glorious.

KS: Oh, my goodness.

AC: So we probably should’ve gotten started a month or two ago.

KS: Yeah, it’s too late. You’d have to already be pregnant for this to be happening.

AC: Yeah, we missed the electional window, goddammit.

KS: Oh, my goodness.

AC: Jumping in—point being that this is an installment in a series.

KS: Yes.

AC: This is an installment in a series. This is not the end of the series.

KS: That’s a very good point.

CB: This is a family show, and you guys are electing charts for the birth of the Anti-Christ.

KS: Well, Austin is. I’m not claiming that.

AC: But I didn’t tell people in time to actually get pregnant. I suppose there is a time to schedule a C-section for those of you already expecting.

KS: Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so where are we? We’ve got the Mars-Uranus square.

AC: This is a family show.

KS: I know. Trying to get us back on track here. What about Moon-Jupiter? Do we wanna give a quick shoutout to a happy day in July?

CB: Sure. That’s just before the lunar eclipse, right?

KS: Yeah, I think the 13th, Austin. Right?

AC: Yep. Yeah, I mean, as I think we’ve said before, but privately and publicly, you can kind of fake it as an electional astrologer this year if you just tell people to do stuff while the Moon’s conjunct Jupiter once a month and get pretty great results.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Because it’s not just Jupiter in Sag is a great place for Jupiter, it’s also that it’s off-axis from the malefics for most of the year.

KS: That’s the key, the off-axis. And I know there are some complications with Mars at the start of the month with the Mercury retrograde, but Mars is not off-axis of the meat grinder.

AC: Yeah, thank God.

KS: I know there is meat grinder phase two, but I’m very happy about Mars getting into Leo.

AC: Yeah, me, too. I’d just rather not have it sitting on my ascendant.

KS: Yeah, well, totally, totally. But this is happy day—well, not anymore. But it was happy day in the month. There we go. So that’s a weekend in the middle of July, basically.

CB: Yeah, and that is not the main election that we selected this month. The main election’s a few days later. But I could introduce that now, if we want.

KS: Sure.

AC: Yeah, that’s a good idea.

KS: Your election will not have the Moon in Capricorn, I’m guessing.

CB: No, we skipped that, and we did the other Moon in a Jupiter-ruled sign day, which is July 20, 2019. Let’s see. It looks like it’s around 4:55 PM in whatever your location is. Just set the chart for just before 5:00 PM with Sagittarius rising. So if you do that, you should end up with the ascendant roughly somewhere around the middle of Sagittarius, and therefore, Jupiter will be on the ascendant, or just below the ascendant, and it will be a day chart, because the Sun is up in Cancer in the 8th house. So in this chart, it has Sagittarius rising, with Jupiter in Sagittarius, roughly conjunct the ascendant, and the Moon is in Pisces at around 12°-ish of Pisces in the fourth whole sign house. And the Moon is actually applying to square with Jupiter, with reception, which increases the relationship and the positiveness of the aspect with Jupiter, because the Moon is in Jupiter’s sign. So this is a good Jupiter election. We are still dealing with Jupiter being retrograde. It’s still, I think, about three weeks from stationing direct, so that’s one of the main drawbacks. But otherwise, it’s a day chart, so Jupiter’s of-the-sect-in-favor. It’s not afflicted by Mars or Saturn. If anything, there’s a nice applying trine with Mars, where Mars is at 12° of Leo, applying to a trine with Jupiter, which is actually really helping to even out and make Mars much more positive than it would be otherwise. And it’s one of the positive things that we start getting into in the second half of July, and especially August, when a lot of the planets start moving into Leo and trining Jupiter, which we’ll talk about a little bit more, I think, towards the end of this episode. Yeah, this is just a general, all-around, good electional chart for Jupiter-related things. It’s not specifically focused on any one thing necessarily. It might be good for 4th house activities related to the home and living situation, since Jupiter is ruling the 4th house and the Moon is also placed there. So there’s some definite emphasis on 4th house activities, but it would just be a good general-purpose chart for the most part. Yeah, so there is a bunch of 8th house stuff. We tried to mitigate that by, here in Denver, placing the degree of the midheaven sextiling to the Sun and Mercury to help it out of that 8th house position. That may or may not be possible in your location, depending on what city you’re in. But if you can, do that. Just make sure that the chart has Sagittarius rising, with the midheaven roughly sextiling or aspecting the Cancer planets, in order to help them out of that 8th house position. Yeah, what do you guys think?

KS: That’s a very juicy Moon-Jupiter.

AC: Yeah, that’s good stuff. It’s also worth noting that that’s after the second eclipse.

CB: Right.

AC: It’s a good window this month. You know, it’s not the easiest pickings, but yeah, that’s a good one.

CB: Yeah, and that was the biggest issue that we ran into. It’s kind of a tough month, obviously, for electional charts, especially in the first part of the month, early in July, when Mercury’s stationed retrograde and it’s conjunct Mars and all of that other stuff. So some of the better elections are definitely later in the month, once we start to get clear of some of that. Especially halfway through the Mercury retrograde cycle, when Mercury catches up to the Sun, and then you’re almost getting to the second half of the retrograde, when it starts to station direct.

AC: Yep.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Anyway, so that’s the electional chart for this month. We found three other electional charts in various places, which we’re gonna talk about on the Auspicious Elections Podcast, which is available to patrons on the $5 and $10 tiers. All you have to do is sign up to become a patron through our page on Patreon in order to get access to those. And I’ll save the rest for that podcast.

KS: Yeah, nice job on the midheaven degree, with the sextiles to the Sun and Mercury.

CB: Yeah, that’s such an important mitigating factor, and it’s very underutilized. But that’s often when planets in difficult houses—like the 8th or the 12th or the 6th—manifest positively, when there’s a mitigating factor, like the midheaven being closely-configured to them, and then you’ll see the more positive or constructive manifestations of those houses. I think that’s gonna be one of my talks at ISAR next year, just mitigating conditions in general in traditional astrology.

KS: Fantastic.

AC: Yeah, that’s important.

KS: Yeah, I feel like not enough people know. Cuz they’re like, “Oh, it’s in the 8th house (or it’s in the 6th house).” And I’m like, yeah, but it’s sextile or trine the midheaven degree. We’re good.

AC: Do y’all know what you’re speaking about at ISAR next year? Do you have that locked in?

KS: No.

CB: Not completely.

KS: The deadline was Friday, which I forgot completely about, and got a very helpful reminder email to help me get it in on time. But I haven’t heard back yet as to what they’ve picked. Have you guys heard yet?

AC: No. Yeah, that’s fresh in my mind. I was dog sick, and I was like, “Oh, but I gotta get this in.” Cuz they said, “We want two talks. Submit three, and we’ll pick two.”

CB: Did you actually submit?

AC: Yeah, yeah.

CB: Okay, good.

KS: Okay.

AC: My three were—

KS: Yeah, tell us what you submitted, Austin.

AC: Well, the one that I initially submitted, I resubmitted, which was looking at the different styles of planetary oration or conjuration, comparing the Picatrix, the Hygromanteia, and what Agrippa suggests in the Three Books of Occult Philosophy as far as planetary magic goes; that was the first one. The second one was looking at the very specific combinations which are present in Firmicus through the eyes of yogas, like looking at them through Vedic astrology eyes. And then the third one was looking at the timing systems that are the same for everybody, as opposed to zodiacal releasing, but looking at how everybody is in a 6th house profection at age 29. The exact Saturn return happens the same year. And then, also, extending that out to things like Parasara’s Naisargika dasha, or the natural ages of the planets that we see in Ptolemy, where it’s like everybody’s in a Moon time-lord period when you’re one-years-old, right?

KS: Oh, that sounds super interesting.

AC: Yeah, what’s the same for everybody, and then we build what’s different and individual on top of what’s the same.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, I’d be happy to give any two out of those three. So we’ll see which ones they pick.

KS: Which they go for. That’s brilliant. Yeah, you really gotta put your thinking cap on when you’re coming up with talk topics. I know in the notes that ISAR was very specific about, “We want material that you haven’t presented before.” One of the topics that I submitted as a lecture topic option was on the terms, the Egyptian terms of the planets. Some of the work, just with the focus on career teaching that I’ve been doing—I did an online class on career, which is still available online—it really got me looking at the term ruler of the midheaven-ruling planet, have a think about that. So often when that midheaven-ruling planet is in its own terms, it is like this instant success indicator. So I wanna talk a little bit about the role of planets in their own terms, or the terms of things like the ascendant agree and things like that. Well, that was one of my talk options. They may not choose it, yeah.

AC: I like that.

KS: So it’s a little bit obscure, but relatively accessible once you’ve got the term table at hand. Chris, are you selling these? Or do you just give them away free, occasionally?

CB: They were in the first set of posters a year ago. They were one of the things that came with the posters. I’ve just been giving them to students of my Hellenistic course and trying to get rid of them. Why do you ask?

KS: Well, they’re really good.

CB: No, Paula Belluomini designed that with me.

KS: Yeah.

CB: There’s a funny typo on it, though, actually, which is my fault, cuz it was carried over from a previous table of essential dignities. You’ll notice not all planets have falls in that listing. One of the planets’ fall is missing. It’s Mercury.

KS: Mercury’s not there.

AC: That’s really funny. The one typo is about Mercury’s fall.

CB: Yeah, I omitted Mercury’s fall in Pisces.

KS: Oh, that is so true to type. I mean, Mercury gets so weird up in Pisces from a technical perspective. I think that’s hilarious.

CB: Yeah, I’ve actually gotta decide pretty soon whether I’m doing posters again next year, cuz we’ve gotta get moving with getting those into print. I keep lowering the price of the other posters to get rid of the rest of what Amazon has in stock. And I’m hoping to get rid of the rest of those in the next month or two and then decide about doing posters again.

KS: Okay, super exciting. So where are we up to? Have we just tried to ignore the lunar eclipse?

AC: No, we talked about that a fair amount.

KS: Okay.

AC: I mean, just to get back on a chronological sequence, right, so July is solar eclipse in Cancer, Mercury, and then Mercury’s station conjunct Mars square Uranus, right? We talked about that. And then a funny thing happened on the way to the lunar eclipse, and that was Venus having to go through an extremely rough patch of sky.

KS: Venus in the meat grinder.

AC: Yeah, Venus has to oppose Saturn, conjoin the North Node, and oppose Pluto before Venus is un-harassed.

CB: It’s weird that that happens right around the time of the lunar eclipse. It’s like the lunar eclipse happens at 24 Capricorn, and pretty much the same day, Venus is opposing Saturn from 16 Cancer to 16 Cap.

AC: Yeah, and will have been applying tightly for the days leading up to it. And whenever you have Venus bundled with a lot of malefics, it strains social relations, and it’s often just difficult to find your joy. You know, you’re like, “Who stole my joy? Where’d they hide it?” And that’s a temporary thing. But it makes it harder to find harmony between yourself and other people. It makes it more difficult to enjoy what there is to enjoy. You know, I’m sure we’ve all had the experience where you sit down, and you’re like, “Well, that was a hard day. I’m going to watch a thing on my screen that usually pleases me.” And you look at it, and you’re like, “This is stupid,” and it’s something you usually like. You’re just like, “Eh.” It’s that kind of mood. Venus with Saturn and Pluto and the nodes, it’s hard to just relax and enjoy things, and it’s hard to find that common ground with people.

CB: Yeah, that aspect of Saturn is really interesting, that idea of rejecting and being highly critical. Like there’s a highly-critical side of Saturn that’s often, I don’t wanna say overlooked. But it’s such a core component of Saturn’s meaning, it’s not discussed as much as I would almost think that it should be, in some way, level, because it leads to a number of the other manifestations of Saturn that often get more play. But at the core of that is this highly-critical, and sometimes self-critical facet of the whole archetype.

AC: Yeah, there’s a very ‘eh’ quality to Saturn. “Saturn, would you like to watch this show?” “Eh.” “Saturn, what did you think of that movie?” “Eh.”

CB: Right. Nothing’s ever good enough.

KS: Nothing’s good enough. Yeah, there’s that very hard taskmaster. “This could have been done better.” “That should have been like this.” “It’s not the perfect set of circumstances.”

AC: You know, Chris, now that you bring it up, I think that is discussed in the context of people relating to authority figures—when people talk about Saturn as relating to a person’s interactions with authority figures or father figures and feeling rejected or judged by the person who’s playing the role of that Saturn—but that quality is usually sort of confined to that context. And I agree that it exists in a variety of other contexts as well.

CB: Yeah, I mean, I’ve seen it. I saw it recently in a person’s chart manifest in a 3rd house placement, as an inability to release or to publish something over the span of a person’s lifetime because it was never good enough. Because they had such high expectations for themselves that they never were able to put stuff out there, because they were always too highly critical of themselves, as well as others.

AC: As a 3rd house Saturn native, I can relate to that.

CB: Right. Well, you’ve got a day chart at least. So it’s a little bit mitigated. It’s not the worst-cast scenario. You published your 36 decans book, for example, versus putting it off for 20 years because it was never good enough or something like that.

AC: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and having Mercury in the 10th makes it easier, and Jupiter in the 1st.

CB: Sure.

AC: But I can relate to that. I definitely feel like when it comes to letting go or putting out material, I am driving with the parking brake on, if that makes sense. Like there is that resistance that I experience every single time, or only 90% of the time. And I can see how if I didn’t have the planets that were hitting the gas pedal that that would just be a ‘no’ for me.

CB: Right. Yeah, and driving with the parking brake on is also a manifestation of the Mars-Saturn opposition as well. That was a great analogy for that aspect. But there’s another aspect of Saturn that’s tied in with this, which is an ability to bring things to completion due to just not. And inaction is actually a signification of Saturn that goes all the way back to Valens. Vettius Valens gives inaction or not taking action as signification of Saturn. Which is interesting to think about because, at first, I would read through that and not really grasp what that meant. But seeing the idea of inaction manifest in people’s lives, in the house that it’s placed in, is interesting to see from time to time, especially in extreme scenarios or circumstances.

AC: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things I’ve come to appreciate from doing the Vedic program, just getting to know all of the planets—the same planets, but from a slightly different angle—is the quality of being tamasic (sluggish, slow, prone to inaction, etc., etc) is one of the primary qualities which is associated with Saturn, which a lot of Indian Saturn delineations come from. And so, it just starts with that slow and prone to inaction. So causing delays or highlighting obstacles also gets us to a place of not being able to move forward, but it’s looking at pieces of the environment rather than starting with the quality of the planet.

CB: Yeah. Obviously, there’s ways that can manifest positively, inaction. Like thinking things through ahead of time instead of just leaping into action right away. But instead thinking things out and only proceeding when the moment is right, once you’ve built up a sufficient amount of planning and wisdom about the issue at hand versus the other thing, which is failing to act when you should and maybe regretting, in retrospect, that you didn’t put yourself out there when it would have been appropriate to do so and sort of missing the moment. So there can be that idea of inaction having a positive or a negative manifestation. But I think that might be a good keyword for this lunar eclipse taking place in Capricorn, where you have that focus on that Capricorn energy, and you have Venus opposing Saturn at the same time.

AC: Yeah, well, so with this one, I’ve been thinking about it very much in terms of clearing out. Cuz you have that South Node and Pluto right there, too. And so, I would say it points very strongly and very clearly to what is obstructing movement and compressing your space. And again, this is the lunar complement to the solar eclipse which began the year. And so, I think the move action here, or what this is going to highlight is, again, that clearing out, that making space, that reconciling with the past to the point where you can then let it go, whether it’s positive, negative, or otherwise. But it starts with that inability to move, the not having enough space to move, the boulder in the road, whatever it is.

CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Tying it back into that beginning and that foundation that was set in January, and something being brought to completion at this time that was initiated six months earlier.

KS: Yeah, that’s a beautiful point. I mean, being a lunar eclipse so close to the South Node, it does have that feeling of just emptying and clearing and purging. The idea that things are going out of your life maybe rather than coming into it. Some of those things you’re ready to let go of, and some of those things it may be a case of it’s gotta go now, whether you’re ready for it or not.

AC: Yeah, and this eclipse might be a necessary part of a process that puts you in a place where you can actually let go of it during the next go, when the Sun’s in Capricorn, in an eclipse near the South Node.

KS: Six months, yeah.

CB: January.

AC: Let me just give an example. Back to my grandma. You know, I talk about my grandma all the time now, but it’s relevant to these transits. So, as I said, there was a clearing out of her house to put it on the market, and it’s gonna go on the market in July. And that house is where that entire side of the family would gather for every family thing that’s happened since I’ve been born. And so, there’s a ton of history there. It’s not just because some closets haven’t been cleaned since 1984, it’s that was the place where that side of the family happened. And so, that’s going on the market, that’s leaving, right? It’s a thing that is disappearing, right? It’s presence that has been there, that is not going to be there at all in the future. It’ll probably sell right around that time, too, but it’s going on the market during this period of time. And no one, of course, asked me about timeframes, but that just happens to be when it’s scheduled for a disappearance from, I don’t know, 15 different people’s lives, for whom it’s been a fixture for at least five of them since 1960.

KS: Wow. That’s so significant.

CB: Yeah, so—go ahead, Kelly.

KS: I was just gonna say, just on the Venus-Saturn thing which—as you guys were talking about—just comes right after the lunar eclipse, it’s definitely highlighting that almost tug-of-heart through the opposition series there. And I always find Venus-Saturn—it sort of highlights the work of partnership or collaboration rather than the fun and the joy of it. So it’s that idea of the hard yards or the showing up when you don’t want to, or having to say ‘no’ when you really wanna say ‘yes’. Sometimes in the Venus-Saturn opposition, sometimes I see that it’s external factors that limit. Like you might want to and they might want to, but one of you has this work thing or this family thing that just has to take precedence at that particular time. So there’s a lot of juggling or delaying, like ‘not now, but maybe later’ type of energy, I think, through this middle part of the month.

AC: I think that’s a really good point. Venus-Saturn stuff always has the capability of bringing up boundary issues within relationships, right? What are you expected to do? And I don’t mean that in a negative way, but all relationships have a degree of expectation.

KS: 100%.

AC: And what of those expectations is reasonable? What was reasonable, but needs to be renegotiated? Now that I think about it, with the Saturn-Venus opposition taking place on the nodal axis, and with Pluto present, there’ll probably be a necessary update or rethinking of who does what and why, right?

KS: Who’s gonna be responsible for what, because circumstances have changed now and old patterns are no longer relevant?

AC: Right. Yeah, circumstances have changed, right? Like two years ago, you decided you’d do this and I’d do this because we were there. And now that we’re here, it makes sense for you to do that now, and I’ll take over this, etc., etc.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And that’s true on a really obvious chores level, but also, on a deeper level. You know, on an emotional dynamics level.

KS: Yeah.

CB: So I think that by the time we get to around July 21, things start clearing up a little bit, and we start moving into what seems to me like the somewhat easier phase of this month, and we start moving out of the more difficult phase because we have the Sun-Mercury conjunction. So Mercury hits the halfway point through its retrograde cycle at 28° of Cancer on July 21. So it’s getting towards the easier half of the retrograde cycle rather than the more turbulent half that was around the time of the retrograde station conjunct Mars. Also, Mars at this point is starting to get pretty close to that trine with Jupiter. So Mars is at 12° of Leo by July 21, applying to Jupiter at 15° of Sag. And that’ll complete, just a few days later, it looks like July 24-July 25, when we have an exact Mars-Jupiter trine. Venus also finally clears not just the opposition with Saturn, but it clears the opposition with Pluto around July 20-July 21. It goes exact in opposition from 21 Cancer to Pluto at 21 Capricorn. So it finally gets free of all of that by this point.

AC: I would put the ‘free of all that’ a few days later. It’s departing rather than applying, but it’s still within a few degrees. When the Moon goes through late Aries there, the Moon is going to carry the light or the darkness from the rough stuff in Cap right to Venus. I would say that that’s the ‘finishing it out, figuring it out’, and that by the time we get to the Moon in Taurus, then it’ll actually feel like we’re kind of done with that. Just a slight adjustment.

CB: Sure. And right around that same time, it looks like we have the beginning of Leo season, and the Sun moves into Leo July 22-July 23. The Sun goes into 0° of Leo. So it starts, again, moving out that whole opposition by sign with Saturn and Pluto, and conjunction with the node, and starts moving into this lovely trine with Jupiter, which will eventually culminate and go exact in August. Yeah, so basically just things start freeing up by this point later in the month, right?

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, there’s some untangling to do, but the Sun’s movement into Leo is a big step.

KS: Yeah, if you’re looking for one thing to be aiming for, the Sun into Leo is definitely a huge shift. And then, yeah, as you guys have talked about, the Mars-Jupiter aspect starts to form. And Mercury retrograde—it’s still retrograde. But instead of having to do some of the more difficult configurations, it’s now gonna be backing into the arms of Venus, if you like, and we get the Mercury-Venus conjunction around the 24th. So just as the Moon comes through that tail-end of Cancer—Aries, sorry—going into Taurus, Mercury and Venus come together.

CB: Oh, yeah, that’s nice.

KS: You know, there is untangling—to your point, Austin—for sure, but Mercury-Venus is gonna help bring a bit of ease or a sense of ‘let’s try and work together’, even if we have to go over old news.

CB: So it looks like that’s July 24 that Mercury conjoins Venus.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Okay. And that’s the same time that the Moon moves into Taurus, as Austin was talking about. Then eventually, it looks like by July 28, Venus also moves into Leo and gets out of that whole Cancer/Capricorn axis. And not too long after that Mercury, of course, stations direct, basically, on the last day of the month, which is also the same day that there’s the next lunation, which is a New Moon in Leo.

AC: Right. And a non-eclipsed lunation at that.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And I would say, yeah, if I had to just pick one day for when does meat grinder phase one/two, whatever, if officially and fully over, it’s that New Moon. We’re wrapping up for the week coming up on that New Moon, but that New Moon really re-centers things, both in and of itself, and because we get Mercury direct, and because we’ve got Venus in Leo by that time. And then that sets the stage for August and the festival of superior conjunctions.

KS: Yes, there’s a lot going on in August, which is cool.

CB: Yeah.

KS: But it’s very different. Like by the time we get to the end of July, the cosmic dark tunnel, we’re all out of it.

AC: No. I mean, if anything, it’s absurdly bright.

KS: Yes, and it’s quite a contrast, isn’t it? We got from being in the tunnel to being in the full bright warmth of the Sun.

AC: Yeah, and all the planets being combust. Being fully exposed to the Sun, while the Sun’s in Leo, no less.

KS: Purified, full strength.

CB: Yeah, and all trining Jupiter. All running into that trine from Jupiter in the middle of Sagittarius.

AC: Yeah, as Jupiter stations direct.

KS: Yes.

CB: Right. So pretty early in August. I think in the second week of August, Jupiter stations direct in mid-Sagittarius.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, there’s just a ton of contrast between the winding tunnel and then the, I don’t know, solar exposure on the other side of it.

KS: Yeah, the darkness to the light, it is. So we’ve just got a couple of more weeks to get this transition. Yeah, so sort of the whole last 10 days of July is transitioning into that brighter period, as the planets start to escape Cancer and Capricorn.

CB: Right. Brilliant. Well, that is then part two of the meat grinder. And yeah, that sort of bookends really nicely. That doesn’t usually happen. Usually the astrological calendar does not overlap very cleanly with the, whatever, arbitrary human calendar of August, July, whatever, September. But this month, or this year, it seems like there’s a nice little alignment of things, where it falls pretty nicely at the end of the month, sort of wrapping things up.

AC: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

KS: Yeah, it really does. Yeah, if you’re thinking seasonally—like the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, July/August, or winter, if you’re in Australia—July versus August is very different astrologically-speaking.

CB: Sure. All right, cool. Well, it seems like that brings us, then, to the end of our forecast for July of 2019.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Any final points to make before we wrap up this episode?

AC: I don’t think so.

KS: I feel like that was really complete. It’s almost full-stop, thanks for coming.

CB: Yeah, I mean, that’s a nice point to end on, since there’s obviously a lot of light at the end of the tunnel. There’s still some things to get through. And certainly, some people have already been through some challenging stuff, on different scales of minor annoyances or me and Austin getting colds to other extreme manifestations that have been more challenging. And while there’s still some stuff coming up that’s a little bit rocky or could present some unexpected disruptions, it’s just another month that’s gonna take place in everybody’s lives, and then there’s some other stuff that’s gonna happen, that’ll probably balance things out in a more positive way just afterwards. So there’s definitely something to look forward to, as always.

KS: Yeah. Yay.

CB: All right. Well, if that’s it then, then I guess we gotta close down this episode. Good luck to both of you in relocating over the course of the next month. I’m really excited to see what your backgrounds look like when we check in again next month.

KS: Yeah. No more cathedral ceiling, Austin.

CB: Yeah, I’m gonna miss your cathedral-looking, pyramid-type structure, Austin.

AC: Yeah, me, too. Me, too. We’ll see what I can do with the next place.

KS: I hope the skeleton is relocated, too.

AC: Oh, yeah. I actually run a skeleton relocation charity.

KS: Of course you do.

CB: Kelly, I hope you can bring the flowers with you.

KS: I know. I’m gonna have to find a flower store in Europe. I mean, I’ve heard their tulips are amazing in the spring.

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah, stay tuned for what flowers I get supplied with.

CB: Awesome. Yeah, well, I’m looking forward to that. Good luck, both of you. And I guess we’ll record the next episode towards the end of July. So we’ll basically be coming out of all of that by then, so that’s kind of nice.

KS: The Sun will be in Leo, actually, by the time we record.

AC: Yeah, we’ll have some good stories, hopefully.

KS: Yeah, looking forward to it.

CB: Awesome. Cool. All right. Well, thanks everybody for listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast. And thanks to all the patrons, as usual, for supporting this—cuz I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you guys—and supporting that trip and all the documentary-style interviews that I’m shooting. I’m starting to expand what I’m doing in terms of all of that, and shooting interviews with astrologers, just based on that support. So if you want to become a patron on The Astrology Podcast, you can find us on Patreon. Austin also has a Patreon. Kelly, you’ve also got a subscription thing on your website, right?

KS: Yes. Yeah, a monthly astrology subscription.

CB: Yeah. And Austin, and you’ve got a monthly almanac and forecast, right?

AC: Mm-hmm. The dailies that I put out everyday through social media are all written ahead of time. And members of my Patreon all get the entire month ahead of time, so they can do scheduling and do their electing.

CB: Awesome. Yeah, I really love how things have shifted in that way, where content creators and astrologers who are putting out content—like that’s how you support people whose work that you appreciate. And you want them to keep doing more of it by becoming a patron or becoming a subscriber, and in exchange, get access to bonus stuff. So all three of us do, and thanks to everybody who does support us by doing that. Thanks to all the patrons who attended this episode. I think there were like 40 people who attended the live taping of this episode, and it’s been lovely having all of you here chatting during the process of it. Yeah, and I guess we’ll be back again next month.

KS: We will.

CB: All right, great. Well, thanks everyone for listening or watching, and we’ll see you next time.

AC: Bye.

KS: Bye.