The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 245, titled:

March 2020 Astrology Forecast: Mars Conjunct Saturn in Aquarius

With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees

Episode originally released on February 29, 2020

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2020/02/29/march-2020-astrology-forecast/

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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. In this episode, we’re gonna be looking at the forecast for March of 2020, of 2020. I’m still getting used to saying that. We’re only like a month or two into this. Joining me today is Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees and we are doing our monthly forecast episode. We’re in the beginning of the month—or beginning of the episode. We’ll spend about an hour looking at the astrology of the next few weeks, and then the second half of the episode, we’ll spend some time talking about miscellaneous astrological topics that have come up over the past month. The primary one of which is a recent discussion about essential dignities. So, hey, guys. Welcome back to the show.

KELLY SURTEES: Hi.

AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey.

CB: Hey. All right, so this is Episode 245 of The Astrology Podcast. Let’s jump right into the forecast for the month, shall we? We’re recording this on, what is it? Sunday, February 23, 2020, starting around—it’s 9:35 AM right now, here in Denver, Colorado. Yeah, and we are in the middle—we’re in the midst of—we’re not even halfway through—I don’t think as we’re recording this—the Mercury retrograde that’s happening right now in Pisces in late February, right?

KS: Correct.

AC: Yeah, we have many days to go. Well, 14 days after today.

CB: 14. Here’s the chart of the moment we have just had. And we timed this episode to be right after the New Moon in Pisces, at 4° of Pisces. And the Venus-Jupiter square is actually just becoming exact today. Yeah, and now you remember. That’s part of what we were shooting for.

KS: Now I remember.

CB: Okay, when we scheduled this episode.

AC: No, I remember we decided to do this early for a reason. And I was able to hold to that but I could not remember the reason.

KS: Yes.

CB: Yeah, well—

AC: The fact that there was a reason gave me strength, but I did not remember what it was.

CB: Strength to wake up at 7:00 AM. Yeah, well, we wanted to avoid doing it in the middle of the Mercury retrograde with Gemini rising, cuz then that would just make Mercury the focal point of the entire electional chart. And we didn’t really wanna do Cancer rising either, cuz it would put Mars right on the descendant, in the 7th house, with Saturn and Pluto. So we are doing an early morning episode now with Taurus rising. Why don’t we jump in, though, to the astrology of March. So I’m gonna move the chart forward, so that those watching the video version can see where the planets will be at the start of the month. I also wanted to share from our Planetary Alignments Calendar the basic planetary alignments that show the ingresses and the stations, as well as the two lunations, the New Moon and Full Moon this month. So the basic overview is that we start out the month with Mercury still retrograde, and it actually retrogrades and moves back into Aquarius on March 4. The same day, Venus moves out of Aries finally and moves into Taurus. The following week, we get a Full Moon in Virgo on the 9th of March. And on the same day, interestingly, Mercury stations direct in late Aquarius. Then eventually Mercury starts moving forward again. It moves back into Pisces on the 16th of March. The Sun ingresses—as it always does around this time of the year—into Aries on the 19th. And then we get a major outer planet shift of Saturn going into Aquarius on the 21st of March, followed by a New Moon in Aries on the 24th. And Mars actually catches up to and joins and very soon after conjoins Saturn in a conjunction on the 30th of March, when it moves into Aquarius, and then shortly afterwards hits Saturn. So that’s the basic gist or the basic overview of the month. And this is definitely one of the more notable months of the year, especially because of those ingresses into Aquarius. I think we would all agree, right?

KS: Mm-hmm.

AC: Yeah, well, one ingress more than the other. But yeah, Saturn, it’ll be the first time we’ve experienced Saturn in a sign other than Capricorn since, ooh, just before Christmas of 2017.

CB: Yeah, so for three years. And also, the first time in almost three decades that Saturn has returned back to Aquarius, which is kind of monumental in the grand scheme of things, just in and of itself.

KS: Yeah, it’s huge.

AC: It’s important, it’s a bit of a tease, but we’ll get into that. But it’s still a real thing. It sets an important part of the stage for the second quarter of the year and then Saturn will snap back. I don’t know if Saturn ever snaps. Saturn will roll back benefits. No, Saturn will roll back into Capricorn, basically, as soon as the third quarter begins.

CB: Brilliant. Speaking of teases, I feel like when I did the horoscopes this year for March, one of the things that was interesting to me is because Mercury retrogrades back into Aquarius, it returns back to Aquarius and returns back to—if you’re looking at it from a purely sign-based and whole sign house perspective—it returns back to the sign and the house that Mars and Saturn will later move into earlier in the month. And I almost wonder for some people if that Mercury retrograde then—and that return back to Aquarius—isn’t actually queuing up or setting up some of the themes that are gonna become more prominent later in the month, with some low-level Mercury retrograde returning to and revisiting or revising themes in that same sign or house before we get the full-on Saturn and Mars heavies move into that sign.

AC: Yeah, like a little ‘get your Aquarius ready’.

CB: Yeah, get your Aquarius ready.

AC: Here come the malefics.

KS: Get ready for Mars and Saturn. I’m not sure if the red carpet is appropriate.

AC: That’s an interesting Aquarius touch because there really hasn’t been much happening in Aquarius, other than Sun-Mercury-Venus roll-through since the middle of 2018, where we had half of a Mars retrograde there and we had the South Node there. But for all of 2019, there wasn’t even a Mercury station there. There wasn’t anything other than Sun-Mercury-Venus-Moon. Whereas the direct station of Mercury is an important thing, and Mercury will be retrograding almost entirely in Aquarius next year. And we’ve got Saturn coming up. So I think that is nice. I don’t think it’ll be a clear warning or foretelling of the future. But if you’re paying attention, that stress on Aquarius, if you follow that, it does lead into a number of things that spool out for the next while.

CB: Yeah, it’s just a nice little teaser. It’s like when, in the movies, you got a big movie coming out, and they drop like a teaser, that’s like five-seconds long, like months and months before anybody gets to see the full trailer, or before the movie actually gets released. That’s kind of what I feel like this little Mercury retrograde is about. And it’s just the tail-end of it, cuz most of it’s in Pisces. But then we get this little station where it comes back to the very late degrees of Aquarius. So people might wanna think about what sign Aquarius is in your chart, or where it falls in your chart, and especially what whole sign house. Because some of those topics that this retrograde station activates might become even more prominent topics later in the month, starting towards the end of March.

AC: Mercury—just to be clear—so Mercury retrogrades back into Aquarius on March 4, and that’s in preparation for the direct station on March 9. And so, it is during that time that Mercury will drop the sizzle reel.

CB: Exactly. The sizzle reel. How has this retrograde been for you guys so far? Have you noticed any funny stories? Usually we get like one good anecdote out of most of them.

KS: Oh, yeah, we’ve got some tap plumbing problems that basically started around the start of Mercury retrograde. First of all, a filter fell off the kitchen tap and then the hot water stopped coming out of the kitchen tap. And then a few days later, the tap in the bathroom just stopped working. So been this progressive sort of wetness theme. And then we’ve had to go to our landlord and get the plumber and that’s taken a while, cuz there was a warranty thing, yadda, yadda, yadda. Hopefully, the plumber’s coming this week. We’ll see.

CB: I like that. That’s a good keyword for this Mercury retrograde, a progressive wetness theme.

KS: It has.

AC: The last several Mercury retrogrades have been in water signs. Last time, we had well issues. And then the time before that there were dishwasher issues. This time, no water issues that I’m aware of. But strong Pisces signification, on the day of, I was attempting to use my body in a somewhat athletic way. And I was swinging my leg to stretch the muscles and tendons in it—and I was doing so somewhat obliviously—and my foot came straight up, with my toes kind of loose, into the arm of my chair, and I jammed my second, two little toes pretty badly. It hurt worse—it hurt worse than most of the hard sparring sessions I’ve had for 10 years. And I just hit it perfectly. My toes were loose. And I jammed the shit out of my toe and like half my foot turned purple on the day of the ingress.

CB: Oh, my God.

AC: Needless to say, this Mercury retrograde goes over my Mars, which is in Pisces, the sign of the feet. So anyway, no lasting harm done, but I was just looking down and I was like, “Okay. All right. Literally oblivious movement, Mercury retrograde on Mars. Mars is profected for me. There’s my stupid purple foot.”

KS: Yeah.

CB: I like that. That’s good.

KS: That’s brilliant.

CB: I haven’t had anything—

AC: I would show the audience but the bruise is no longer impressive.

CB: Okay. I haven’t had anything that notable compared to you guys. Just a bunch of mis-scheduling and miscommunication-type, low-level issues. But somebody did remind me that the main Mercury retrograde-ish episode that we’ve done at this point was actually Episode 7. And that was one of the first episodes that you and I did, Kelly, titled “Mercury Retrograde: Myths and Realities.”

KS: Yeah, that was vintage. I saw that come up on Twitter. Vintage.

CB: Yeah, that’s back from 2013. Been meaning to redo that because it was more of like a casual discussion that we just had. But one of these days, we might wanna tackle a more ‘everything you need to know about Mercury retrograde’ with a whole list of examples and everything else.

KS: A meatier version.

CB: Definitely.

KS: Totally.

CB: All right. So going back to the astrology, though, of this month, so the Mercury retrograde continues on. When do we get—do you guys know offhand? I’ll pull it up really quickly. But when do we get the Sun-Mercury conjunction?

KS: Oh, that’s Monday. Oh, Tuesday, the 25th of Feb. Oh, you mean when Mercury’s still retrograde?

CB: Yeah. So it looks like 25th-26th of February, we already get the halfway point through the Mercury retrograde cycle, where it conjoins the Sun. And by that point, sometimes if you’re dealing with Mercury retrograde issues, and there’s some sort of snafus or miscommunications or a string of issues that come up, there starts to be the end in sight or some resolution starts to come in sight by that time. So once we open March, we’re already getting towards the end of the retrograde cycle. We can see Mercury retrograding back into Aquarius by March 3-March 4.

KS: Yeah, March 4 is an interesting day, cuz Mercury will retrograde out of Pisces into Aquarius. And then Venus is actually going to leave Aries and go into Taurus. I mean, there’s a real dignity switch on that day. Not that Mercury magically gets better, but it’ll have a very different tone, Mercury retrograde in Aquarius rather than Pisces.

CB: Yeah, I’m really excited about that actually, for Venus to get out of Aries—where it stops getting squared by Mars and Pluto and Saturn and all of that stuff—and moves into one of its home signs, where it does have some dignity, just to tie it into our later discussion. And there’s actually some nice Venus elections this month, in the month of March, as a result of that.

KS: Yeah, I feel like one of the themes for March is ‘get Venus while you can’ because she’s lovely in Taurus. She’s got a lot to offer, not dealing with hard angles to the Capricorn situation. I know we will have Venus in Libra later in the year, but it’s gonna be sort of a lot of cardinal pressure at that time. So enjoy Venus in Taurus while you can.

CB: Definitely.

AC: It will be Venus in Libra opposite a retrograde Mars in Aries.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And so, the experience will not be of grace and peace.

KS: No.

CB: Yeah, the only slight bit of turbulence that Venus runs into is very early on, hitting the conjunction with Uranus, at 3°-4° of Taurus, around March 7-March 8. Which is really interesting, cuz we’re still getting used to what that’s like of Venus, not just passing through her home sign sort of on her own, but instead having this major outer planet there, in what is otherwise her fixed sign. So the fixed earth sign of Taurus, but then having the somewhat destabilizing, or at least somewhat eccentric planet there, at the very beginning of that sign, offsetting the balance of things a bit.

KS: Totally. I mean, I’m kind of curious about that Venus-Uranus conjunction. Cuz I think it will give each of us—in the context of our individual lives—a little bit of insight about the longer trend of Uranus in Taurus because Venus is the ruler of Uranus there in Taurus. And so, for people who are still trying to get their head around how this is affecting their Taurus house and the Taurus part of their chart in their life, I think that conjunction, March 8, just pay attention to the topics or the themes or the issues that kind of come up for you personally, cuz that will be part of that longer Uranus in Taurus trend for you.

AC: That’s a really good way to look at it.

CB: Totally. So yeah, that conjunction takes place then. There’s not much else in terms of Venus. I mean, Venus is just transiting through that sign of Taurus for the entirety of the rest of March. So people pay attention to just what house Taurus is associated with in your chart, and especially if you have a night chart, that being potentially a more positive transit, as it’s going through and activating some of those topics. Especially it starts hitting some nice trines later in the month, like especially around March 26th, March 27th, and 28th, when it forms an exact trine with Jupiter, around 23-24 of Taurus, making a trine to Jupiter at 23 Capricorn.

AC: Yeah. You know, as far as electable moments around Venus, I don’t trust Uranus being right next to Venus, cuz Uranus just will throw whatever at you.

CB: Right.

AC: You know, there’ll be a pattern to a Uranus transit over that 7-8 years. But on any given weekend, where something is conjoined, it’s hard to know what the output is gonna be. You know, there’s like a 50% chance of surprise, and that chance has a 50% chance of being favorable. But you can’t even bank on—there will definitely be a surprise that weekend, so I don’t trust it. But once Venus clears Uranus, there’s a lot of pretty smooth sailing. It’s a nice background. It’s a nice stabilizer for the month. And it’s also worth noting that Taurus is the last sign that Venus does this year before moving into Gemini and then having a very extended retrograde time in Gemini.

KS: That’s a really good reminder, actually. Once she finishes up with Taurus, we’re just gonna have four months of Venus in Gemini. So if you want something other than that, yeah.

AC: If you want something other than that.

KS: Get in fast.

AC: Venus in Gemini does offer variety.

KS: That’s true. That’s true. No one will be bored, that’s for sure. But if you’re looking for—I think both of you guys have used that word, stability—or you wanna stabilize or secure or do something with a little bit more of a long-term focus that’s of a Venus nature, then pretty much, I don’t know, about the 10th or 11th of March, once Venus gets a couple of degrees past that conjunction with Uranus.

AC: Yeah, and I think we can say with confidence that Venus in Taurus is considerably more chill than Venus in Gemini.

KS: Oh, way more chill. Less frantic. I mean, Venus in Taurus is so good for just getting you back in your body or helping you connect with those pleasurable tastes and sensations, whether it’s a food or a fragrance or healing therapy. Venus in Taurus is just great for like literally smell the roses, but have the nice chocolate, have the nice wine. Send the thoughtful gift. You know, take the time for quality time as well I think is another Venus in Taurus thing. Venus in Gemini’s gonna be juggling a lot, whereas Venus in Taurus is more ‘be in the moment’.

AC: I like that you added ‘send a thoughtful gift’, cuz I think astrologers, myself included, have a habit of discussing what you will receive during a nice Venus transit, or what you’re gonna get, which, of course, implies a giver. But we tend to stress the receiving end of that. But Venus is very equally giving as it is receiving. So I really like that, Kelly.

KS: Oh, cool, thanks.

CB: Yeah, a good point. So we’ve got some nice Venus stability, to some extent, once it clears Uranus this month, compared to some of the rest of the year, where it’s in more of a transitional sign, as well as a transitional phase with the retrograde in Gemini. But going back earlier in the month, what else do we have going on? Kind of the first week, basically, of the month is that ingress of Venus into Taurus, and Mercury retrograding into Aquarius but then starting to slow down before it eventually stations direct on March 9. But that kind of takes us into our first lunation, I think, right?

KS: Yes, same day.

AC: Yeah, well, and just one quick statement about the nearly simultaneous Venus and Mercury sign shifts affect the gestalt. It’s less of a Pisces soupy mess once we get past that first week. We no longer have Mercury in Pisces and then Venus is no longer in Aries. And Aries is certainly not Pisces or a water sign, but fire signs also tend to be more ‘shoot from the hip’ and less objectively-rooted-oriented than earth signs. And so, we go from fire and water to earth and air, both which are drier, and from the outside, read a little bit more sane and less dynamic.

KS: That’s a great point, actually. And definitely less soupiness. As much as I love the Pisces soup, I’m looking forward to a Mercury switch.

AC: Yeah.

CB: And just a shift to the fixed signs a little bit in our chart in general. Which, again, just paves the way, again, for a much larger shift towards the fixed signs in our chart later in the month, when Saturn and Mars move in there.

KS: Yeah, that’s a really astute point, Chris.

CB: All right, so this brings us to our first lunation of the month, which is a Full Moon that takes place at 19° of Virgo on, it looks like, March 9. And it’s a little weird that this is a Full Moon that’s taking place in the Mercury-ruled sign of Virgo, the same day or the same sort of timeframe, when Mercury is stationing direct at 28° of Aquarius.

KS: Yeah, it’s an interesting piece, with Mercury, the ruler, stationing. The sense that I have—as we come into that second week of March—is that we do get some clarity, or we get the opportunity to untangle things or try to straighten things out a little bit. Even to pick up what you were saying, Austin, about the earthiness of Venus in Taurus, shortly after that happens, our lunation is a Full Moon in an earth sign as well. So that opportunity to organize, restructure, perhaps a bit more with time and in the material world as well, so I think that’s an important day this month.

CB: Yeah, it’s like the resolution of the Mercury retrograde is the bringing to light of something, which is not always the case with a Mercury retrograde. But sometimes the miscommunications or the path of going back and revisiting something—sometimes the end result of that or the way out of that is coming to terms with or finding out about something that you didn’t know. And that’s kind of an interesting set of symbols for this Full Moon in Virgo this month, in a Mercury-ruled sign, as it’s stationing direct, that that might be part of the end. Or that there’s some sort of revelatory process or period towards the end of that, that opens things up and leads to the resolution of the retrograde.

KS: Yeah. Austin, were you gonna say something? Otherwise, I have one more point.

AC: Um, no, please, go ahead. I’m thinking about something, but I’m not sure if I want to say it, and if I do, how.

KS: Okay.

AC: Please, go ahead.

KS: It’s just very brief. The Mercury station at 28 Aquarius—Mercury was last at that degree in very early February. So if there’s something from early February that’s still a little bit unresolved or incomplete for you, you might get an opportunity around that Mercury station to finalize it or revisit it and finally put it to bed, just playing off the degrees there.

CB: Yeah, and backing up to see. So Mercury first passed 28° of Aquarius, which was the degree it retrograded back to, it looks like, February 1 or February 2. So it may be returning back to Something that you did, that you thought was just like a one-time thing, but for some reason you end up having to return back to that action or something that was initiated at that time in order to revisit it and perhaps redo, or at least reconsider what was initiated at that time.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Is that where you were going with that?

KS: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The idea that maybe there’s something that’s just not finished or you’ve been trying to get done, but it’s been on the back-burner, or it got stuck when Mercury does come out of its station, it’s like a second chance piece.

CB: Right. A second chance.

KS: Austin, you can?

AC: Yeah, I can think of an example immediately. Sometimes it is something you didn’t know that you would need to revisit. But sometimes it’s something that you knew you were gonna revisit and it makes perfect sense that around then you’d have to follow up. I opened up enrollment in my 2020 classes on February 1. There was a nice election then, right?

CB: Right.

AC: But those don’t begin until April. So of course I’m gonna be following up with the people who signed up and kind of getting everybody oriented a couple of weeks out, etc., etc. Sometimes that ‘back to this again’ is a surprise, and sometimes that’s just the cycle and you’re like, “Well, of course I was gonna come back to that, at about that time.”

KS: At that time. Yeah, that’s a great point. It’s not always a ‘problem’ thing. It was something you could have anticipated.

AC: Oh, and I’m sure we’ll be solving problems in the sense of answering questions. People will be like, “Oh, I know I wanted to do this, but, hey, I had this question about that,” right? So I’m sure there will be a problem-solving quality. So one thing, I just wanted to jump back very briefly to the March 4 dual-ingresses. So my birthday is March 5, right? And so, I was looking at, “Oh, when’s my solar return this year?” And it’s March 4. Because it’s a leap year, a lot of people’s actual solar returns—after that leap day, at the end of February—are going to be the day before. So your astro-birthday is going to be the day before in a lot of cases.

KS: That’s a great point.

AC: Cuz I looked at that. I was like, “Wow, that’s really early on the 4th.” Cuz the actual return will move around a little bit. And I was like, “Oh, it’s a leap year. So there’s literally another day before that.” Cuz I was curious. Did my solar return have Venus in Aries or Venus in Taurus, or Mercury in Pisces or Mercury in Aquarius, right?

CB: What did you end up with?

KS: Lucky you. You get the better options.

AC: No, I would’ve much rather it had just been the 5th.

KS: Oh, I beg your pardon. Is it not the 5th? I thought you said—sorry.

AC: That is my calendar birthday, but my solar return this year is the afternoon of the 4th. It’s like 20, I don’t know, 22 hours before my birth time. And so, yeah, I’ve got Venus in Aries and Mercury in Aquarius. So I was hoping I would get that Venus ingress.

CB: It’s so funny when you have something like that, like a solar return chart, where you’re hoping it’ll fall on one side, but then it falls on the other for whatever reason.

KS: Yeah. But neither of those planets are your time-lord this year, are they?

AC: No, no. And 29 Aries, actually, is configured exactly to my ascendant and descendant axis.

CB: Right.

AC: That’s okay. In some ways, that might be preferable. No, my time-lord’s gonna be Jupiter.

KS: Yeah. You guys are gonna have the same time-lord, right? Or, no?

AC: No.

KS: No, sorry. Yours is Saturn, Chris, sorry.

CB: Oh, me?

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, Saturn. Jupiter’s in that sign, though, natally, so it’s kind of activated this year.

KS: I thought of something when I was teaching recently, Chris.

CB: What was that?

KS: You’re 35 right now.

CB: Mm-hmm.

KS: And so is Prince Harry.

CB: Okay.

KS: I was like, “Oh, this is interesting.”

CB: Yeah.

KS: I don’t know. It was just like, “Oh, you guys are the same age.” I just hadn’t put that together, I guess.

CB: Right. Well, and there’s the resemblance as well.

KS: Well, of course.

CB: We’re both in 12th house profection years. And yeah, I can see. His is really interesting how they’ve been dealing with that and going through that, as we talked about, I guess, in the last episode.

KS: Yeah.

CB: But yeah, so I’m still finding my way through mine. Trying to do it as gracefully as I can.

KS: 12th house years, yeah, we’ve all had them, and we’re all gonna have them again, basically.

CB: And it’s funny. We haven’t necessarily all had them, cuz it’s funny seeing a lot of the 23-year-olds going through their 12th house profection years for the first time as adults, and that’s been really interesting to watch in various ways.

KS: Yeah.

AC: So that’s interesting, Chris. So you have the—never mind, no you don’t. I had what I thought was an observation, that’s not an observation. Well, and Kelly’s birthday’s coming up in a few days.

KS: Yes, my birthday. I actually have Moon in Aries in mine as well.

CB: Interesting. That brings up an interesting question then, Kelly, that you could probably answer more than anybody I know. I haven’t, for years, focused on solar returns a lot. But people always debate that question—that do focus on the solar returns heavily—of relocated solar return or natal solar return. Do you have a strong preference? Or have you noticed a difference?

KS: I probably haven’t paid enough attention, like I probably should do a comparative study. But I tend to just do my natal location.

CB: Okay.

KS: I am one of those people that by the time I was two- or three-years-old, I had never lived in the city I was born in. I’ve lived in other places, just all over.

CB: So what city were you born in?

KS: I was born in Brisbane, in Australia, but I left. I haven’t lived in Brisbane since I was three-years-old.

CB: Right.

KS: I went to Fiji, and then to Sydney, and then to Canada, and now to Europe.

CB: Wow.

KS: Lots of mutable energy in my chart. It’s funny, cuz you don’t often stop to think about it. But when I say it like that, I’m like, “Oh, you sound a bit like a flitty butterfly or something.”

AC: International traveler.

CB: International woman of mystery, and yeah, very well-traveled.

KS: Very well-traveled. Yeah, so I have always just used my natal location. I know there’s a lot of theories about relocate and people traveling for their birthday.

CB: Right.

KS: Philosophically, I sort of think where you go, there you are. And you arrived at a certain moment in time, in a certain place, and the quality of that energy, I don’t think you can escape wherever you go. So I think the natal location.

AC: Yeah, I tend to focus on tighter, exact transits from the solar return chart to the natal chart. And the degrees of the planets don’t change based on relocation.

KS: That’s true. That’s true.

CB: Yeah, and I don’t have a strong opinion, I just thought it was interesting. I was going over some 17th century astrology literature this past week, for this episode, about why Placidus became the most popular form of house division. And it was interesting starting to see some astrologers in the 17th century starting to argue about this; first, the question of just whether solar return charts were useful or not and different astrologers having extreme opinions on one side or the other on that, and then, secondarily, the discussions starting to happen, I think, starting with Morinus, about whether to relocate the solar return chart or not. So yeah, that could be a separate discussion or a separate episode at some point.

KS: So many sidebars that come up here.

AC: Yeah.

CB: All right, let’s get back to the lunations.

KS: Virgo Full Moon.

AC: It’s Virgo Full Moon, right?

KS: Yeah, it’s a Virgo Full Moon. That’s true.

CB: One thing I really like about—

AC: Sidebar analysis makes sense.

KS: Yes.

CB: I almost used this as the electional chart. Cuz I really liked this Virgo Moon, and I almost used it as the election to do the asteroids interview with Demetra. Because once it hits the Full Moon—once the Full Moon goes exact at 19° of Virgo opposing the Sun at 19 Pisces—

KS: I see where you’re going here.

CB: It immediately applies to this really nice trine with Jupiter at 21° of Capricorn. And I think that puts a very nice, optimistic or positive spin on this lunation compared to others, that made me really like it as a potential electional chart for this month.

KS: Nice.

AC: It’s certainly constructive.

CB: It’s not the electional chart for the month. I’ll introduce that later, cuz that’s later in the month. But a nice, little happy Full Moon is how I would characterize it in Virgo.

KS: I like it. Yeah, it’s a real pull. Cuz the day before, we have the Sun-Neptune conjunction, and then we flip over into the Virgo Full Moon. I always liked the Virgo Full Moon in the middle of Pisces season, cuz it’s a chance just to kind of come out of the clouds for a period of time and maybe do a little bit more detailed or scheduling or practical pieces. The analysis, if you like. Let’s just do a bit of strategic planning here. I like that Moon-Jupiter angle. I think that’s gonna help us with that.

AC: That’s interesting. So the lead up to the Full Moon is the Moon trining Mars, and then Full Moon, and then trines Jupiter.

KS: Yeah.

AC: That’s very constructive in a potentially little way. It’s a lot of earth.

KS: Like building something.

AC: We’ve got Mars in Capricorn. Yeah, that’s energy. It’s martial, but it’s gonna wanna move stuff around—whether it’s bricks or bodies or whatever—and then sort of resolving.

KS: I just love the bodies.

CB: Moving bodies around?

AC: Yeah, I mean, they might be alive, they might not be.

CB: You never know when it comes to you, Austin, which one it’s gonna be or what’s being alluded to.

KS: You’re in the graveyard rearranging. I get it.

CB: Right.

AC: You know, if the bodies hit the floor, then you’re probably gonna need to pick them up, cuz you can’t just leave them on the floor. You gotta stack them.

CB: That’s good advice for this month.

KS: Hide your bodies.

CB: With that emphasis on earth signs—

AC: Or just organizing them.

KS: Organizing, yeah.

CB: Organize your body—that’s the keyword for this Virgo lunation.

KS: I mean, I’m not gonna organize anybody’s bodies, but we still have not organized our bookshelves since we moved into this house. So I’m wondering if that might be a good lunation. And you know when you can’t immediately go, “The book is there,” and how annoying that is? So I think a Virgo Full Moon trine Jupiter—I know you guys share—

CB: I’m still dealing with this. I’ve been in the new place for like a year, and I still can’t find any of my books, because I was in the same place for 10 years and I knew where every book in that place was located, just intuitively. But it’s still very offsetting when you don’t have that.

KS: It’s very, very—

AC: That one right there is just overflow.

KS: Your book collection is just growing, Austin, yeah.

AC: Well, you can just see more of it now. I’ve got many boxes. Almost everything you see here is actually kind of good.

KS: Right.

AC: But yeah, this one—ooh, there it is—is just overflow. It irritates me cuz it’s not organized by subject matter. Everything else is actually quite organized.

CB: I saw your Ben Dykes’ books on the shelf, immediately behind you, I believe.

AC: Mm-hmm.

KS: Colored spines.

CB: Colorful, rainbow nature.

AC: We all have that shelf.

KS: We all do have that Dykes shelf. So here’s a very nerdy question. I mean, how do you guys organize your books? Do you do a Dewey decimal system? Do you have it by topic? Do you have it by author? Do you have it by time period?

CB: I had sections at one point. But at one point, I had a shelf for the newer books, so that I knew where all the relatively-recent ones I had bought over the past couple of years were, cuz they were often a higher priority to read through first. But then I had different sections for philosophy or history or the Benjamin Dykes shelf, or bookshelf, or bookcase, as it eventually has become, as well as the Hindsight translations and everything else.

KS: Okay. Topical, I like it.

CB: Topical, yeah.

AC: Yeah, usually topical for me.

KS: Topical, okay.

AC: I mean, it’s really irritating when something fits into more than one topic area.

KS: Judgment calls.

AC: I have an esoteric Taoism section, and then I also have a martial arts section, and there is some Venn diagram overlap there. And I have spent more emotional energy than is useful on figuring out where certain books go.

KS: Love it. I love it, okay.

CB: This is a great discussion topic for the Full Moon in Virgo.

KS: Isn’t it just?

CB: March 9.

KS: How are we going to organize our books?

CB: Right.

KS: All of our listeners can tell us in the comments below how they’re gonna organize their books or bodies, if that’s what they’re doing, because you never know.

AC: Organizing the body—it doesn’t have to be dead. That can be getting your exercise regimen back on track. That can be eating less piles of chocolate at 8:37 in the morning, just an earlier topic.

CB: Yeah, that tangible quality, though, that’s a good thing to focus on, or a good way of conceptualizing what that focus might be. Cuz Virgo’s definitely one of the most body-oriented signs in terms of physical health and the maintenance of the physical body and the things that go along with that, I feel like, right?

AC: Yeah.

KS: Yeah, I always see—sorry.

AC: Go ahead.

KS: Like because it’s an earth sign, it does have that body link and then it’s ruled by Mercury. So it has this weird interface space between how the mind affects the body, how the body affects the mind, getting information that helps you with your body. And then, of course, in the body, I always think about Virgo as being connected to that small intestine, assessing and simulating part of the body. So I do see a lot coming up with food and nutrition and digestion when we get strong Virgo signatures like this.

CB: Sure.

AC: Yeah, well, and if we look at the body parts that the three earth signs rule—neck for Taurus, and then guts for Virgo, and knees for Capricorn—sure, you can have a problem with your neck or your knees. But the guts—you’re engaging your guts all the time. Everything you eat and drink engages the intestines and your ‘assimilative’ capacity. So I agree that Virgo there is somewhat more central than the other two for physical health concerns.

CB: Yeah, and also just the small stuff is contrasted with Pisces, which is like the big stuff, the big-picture things, or tends to be more big picture. Virgo tends to be more small picture and local, but often that is in a good way and can be put to really constructive uses, in putting into the correct arrangement those systems in your life that function better when they have a clear organization or pattern. Which I think is the theme we were talking about with the book organization. But it also applies to your health. It can also apply to your schedule and other things like that, that are somewhat mundane, tangible tasks, but are nonetheless important in terms of the overall functioning of your life.

KS: Totally.

AC: And they—go ahead.

KS: No, no, no, you go.

AC: Okay. Bingo. When we’re looking at things like diet or exercise or books, it’s not that you need constant awareness of those things, but you do need to focus enough on those things, at a time, to figure out what the pattern is going to be. And you set the pattern for your diet, or you decide the organizational system for your library, or your workout routine or whatever, and you design that. It’s very mercurial. And then you set it in place, and then you take small actions to make sure that it doesn’t disintegrate into madness. But it’s very much not that larger scope, more constant Piscean awareness. It’s very focused on not only place, but also, time. You’re like, “Okay, we’re gonna figure this out now.”

CB: Right.

KS: It’s very concrete, isn’t it?

CB: What were you gonna say before that, Kelly?

KS: Oh, yeah. I mean, well, it’s almost picking up on what Austin said. I think it’s coming up to tax time in the US. Is that late March, early April or something? I mean, even in Canada as well.

AC: April 15.

KS: Yeah, so this feels like if you have to get some papers organized, this Full Moon is gonna be a great Full Moon. Maybe you’re not filing your taxes, but you’re at least starting to make sure you’ve got everything, or these are the receipts that pertain to X, Y, or Z. Cuz the papers, I think, is the Virgo thing, too. The documents and filing and things like that.

CB: Sure. And one of the things that’s interesting is—I think you mentioned earlier, Austin—this conjunction is happening so close to Neptune, the Virgo Full Moon stands out then, and there’s a tension. And it’s attempting to pull away from and manage and put into a more proper arrangement things that maybe have gotten out of arrangement, or where things have gotten nebulous or uncertain or in disorder in some way, or whatever Neptune is symbolizing in that way.

AC: Yeah, well, especially if we think about the days leading up to that. Basically, the first week of March, we have the Sun moving into a conjunction with Neptune, and then the Sun completes that conjunction. And then the day after, we get the Full Moon, right? So we move out of the soup very quickly, or there’s a very strong impetus to move from soup to, I don’t know, a solid food.

KS: To specifics.

AC: Yeah, perhaps the carrots have been boiled, but they have maintained their structural integrity.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, and there’s something sort of constructive or effective and forward-moving about that, with all of those trines to the Capricorn planets, especially to Jupiter, but also, to a lesser extent, to Saturn and Mars in Capricorn at the same time.

AC: Yeah, which are—oh, go ahead.

CB: No, go ahead.

AC: I was just gonna add that even Mars is much slower-moving, especially Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto. And so, we have the Full Moon—the Moon being the fastest of the bodies that we’re tracking—we have the Full Moon highlighting all of these slower-moving goals or obstacles and making progress relative to not one, but three or four, longer-term efforts.

CB: Definitely. Perfect. So then Mercury stations on the 9th. Then that takes us into the third week of March, where Mercury eventually starts moving forward again and then moves back into Pisces on the 16th of the month. Then we get the Aries ingress on the 19th. And we’re kind of at the point where we can transition to the major stuff that happens towards the end of the month in Aquarius, right?

AC: Yeah.

KS: Yeah, I think so. I mean, people have a sense of Mercury in Pisces. We’re just gonna have a little bit more of that starting the 16th. Then the equinox does bring another planet into a dignified place for it, which is really changing the landscape. But the big news of course is, I mean, this third week of March is interesting because we’ve got Mercury changing signs, the Sun, and then of course Saturn, which is the headline event.

CB: Sure.

AC: I would say once—go ahead.

CB: I guess we do have the Mars-Jupiter conjunction around the 19th.

KS: Yeah, 19th-20th. So that is something.

AC: Yeah, the equinox weekend is stock-full, chock-full of changes. And just one statement about the 9 days, or the 10 days between the Full Moon and the equinox. It’s relatively chill, relatively.

KS: Yeah.

AC: We’ve got Sun in Pisces. Venus is in Taurus and has cleared Uranus by then. And so, I would say that that’s prime time for that steadying, Venusian influence. All the while, Mars and Jupiter are getting closer together, and so, that is invigorating. And if that was a raid against you on a battlefield, you might not like that. But it’s Mars, in its exaltation, which will tend towards the constructive, and it’s conjunct Jupiter, which is going to make it a little bit more mellow, or at least well-intended. But when we get the equinox and then that Mars becomes the ruler of the Sun in Aries, and we get Saturn moving into Aquarius, it’s a real change in the lineup.

CB: Look at this pileup on the 18th.

KS: Yeah.

CB: It’s like Mars is at 21 Capricorn, Jupiter’s at 22 Capricorn. The Moon swoops in through Capricorn and starts conjoining all of that. And then we have Pluto at 24 Capricorn and Saturn at 29. So there’s just this pileup of like four or five planets in Capricorn, and it’s all around those same degrees. I’m thinking back to our January episode. We were focusing—especially, Kelly, you were focusing a lot on the Saturn-Pluto conjunction at 24 Capricorn and how that was hitting some specific people’s charts that had like 23-24 cardinal signs rising, right?

KS: Yeah, that, and the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction, which will happen there throughout the year. So this feels like it’s a trigger. I mean, the Moon going into Capricorn each month has been just adding more emphasis, or just making more present and real some of these longer threads.

CB: Right. Yeah, and setting them off—those outer planet things that already have been constellating for a while. But then the Moon sometimes comes in and then you get the final trigger, where an event or sometimes just an action takes place. Like we were focusing a lot on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision to leave the UK, or at least stop living their partially and sort of extricate themselves, to some extent, from the royal family and some of their obligations and that being set off in their charts by some of those transits around 24° of Capricorn, because they had important placements there.

KS: Yeah, Meghan’s descendant is 24 Capricorn. And Harry’s time-lord for the year—cuz he’s Cap rising—so he has a Sag-ruled 12th house. So Jupiter, which is at 3 Capricorn, is his time-lord. So even just the ingress of Mars into Capricorn has activated that for him as well.

CB: So it’s like for people like them, we would expect a further development of that situation, when we see all of these planets piling up again around those same degrees.

KS: Absolutely. I do like the Mars—well, not that I like. But I think the Mars-Jupiter in Capricorn—it does have a productive quality. Decisions are being made, a focusing of your energy, or efforts toward longer-term undertaking. It’s very good for Mars, I think, as you were sort of alluding to, Austin.

AC: Yeah.

KS: It’s very good for Mars to have Jupiter there, basically.

AC: Yeah, it’s way better for Mars than it is for Jupiter. Mars isn’t going to be helping Jupiter, but Jupiter’s in a position where it can help Mars.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Not only help in terms of resources, energy, but also, soften the Mars a bit without pulling its teeth out.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Yeah, especially while that’s applying. That’s a Hellenistic consideration of bonification where a planet is stabilized and made more positive and more successful than it might be otherwise by applying to a benefic within 3°. So taking some of Mars’ qualities—some of those qualities are already being accentuated in a more constructive fashion by Mars being in the sign of its exaltation and having some of its significations channeled through the more disciplined energy of Saturn. When we get Mars meeting up with Jupiter at the time, we see maybe a bit more success and expansion. Whereas Mars in Capricorn might normally expand more slowly and more cautiously, Jupiter might help expand some of those efforts a little bit more rapidly and with a little bit more success in doing so.

AC: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, as far as Mars positions, it’s pretty easy to find the constructive version, much easier than most of the time.

CB: Sure. All right, so we’ve got that whole pileup taking place mid-month. And then Mars continues to move forward over some of those other planets, so hitting Pluto eventually. But the next major, major thing that happens is Saturn ingresses into Aquarius, it looks like, on the 21st-22nd of March.

AC: Mm-hmm.

CB: All right, so this is major for many different reasons, as we touched on at the very top of the episode. One of the major reasons is especially the Saturn in Capricorn people, or let’s just say people with heavy cardinal placements, or even their ascendant in a cardinal sign. Suddenly, after three years of Saturn transiting through that sign and having a very heavy energy that it’s bringing to it, suddenly there is a sigh of relief, where whatever that transits been about for you, there’s this temporary period of a few months of alleviation of that energy to some extent and letting or taking an out-breath after three years of pretty heavy work in that area. So the cardinal people—it lets up a little bit after an almost three-year period of some heavy transits. Whereas the fixed-signed people—if you have heavy fixed-sign emphasis, or your ascendant’s in a fixed sign—this is preview period, for about three months, of a major, long-term, three-year transit of Saturn going through a fixed sign and bringing a much heavier energy to that part of your chart.

AC: Yeah, and it’s part of a larger exodus of planets from Capricorn. Two months? No, month-and-a-half. Less than a month-and-a-half after Saturn moves into Aquarius, the nodes move out of Cancer/Capricorn. For the last year-and-a-half or so, we’ve had both Saturn and the South Node in Capricorn with Pluto. While Jupiter will be in Capricorn all year, and Pluto as well, it’s at least a little bit less emphasis. It’s not the 18 planets sitting on each other’s laps, on top of your head.

KS: It’s also that sort of separation of Saturn and the South Node as well. Yes, there’s been a lot of things in Capricorn, which is in and of itself challenging. But the combination of Saturn and a node in the same sign is just a—I don’t know. There’s an intensity or a charge there that is very grindy and has been very uncomfortable. So yeah, there’s so many—well, this is one of the good things, I think. As soon as Saturn gets out of Capricorn, we’re done with Saturn and South Node co-presence as well.

AC: Yeah.

CB: Right.

AC: We do agree, totally. It is gonna be a Saturn-Uranus square, the beginning of a couple of years of Saturn-Uranus square.

KS: Yes.

AC: And we’ve only got about 10 days of just Saturn in Aquarius before it’s Mars and Saturn in Aquarius. My guess is that feeling of relief, that out-breath, will last exactly nine days.

KS: A week or so.

AC: And then there’s a lot of pressure almost immediately on Aquarius.

CB: Yeah. I mean, in terms of the exodus, you did mention the exodus from cardinal signs. For the cardinal-sign-heavy-people, that might still be an out-breath.

AC: Yeah, yeah. No, you’re right.

KS: That’s very different for cardinals, yeah.

AC: No, you’re right. That out-breath probably lasts until the beginning of July.

KS: Yeah.

AC: So there are some new folks who are going to suck in their breath very quickly and sharply, like myself. You know, having planets in early fixed and angles in late cardinal makes this somewhat less inspiring.

KS: For you.

AC: But I understand that there are a number of people who will be on one side or another. But having something at 28-29 Capricorn and 2 Aquarius, I’m just sort of like, “Okay, we’ll do that version of it now.”

KS: We’ll do all the things. And I think—oh, sorry. Go, Chris.

CB: No, go ahead.

KS: I was gonna say the shift into Aquarius, yeah, it’s huge. We are also in a situation where we’re having Mars-Saturn co-presence doubled-up because we’ve had Mars and Saturn together in Capricorn, and then we’re gonna have Mars and Saturn in Aquarius. So we’re sort of getting two lots of that six weeks instead of the usual one. And I think it is a bit of rough or bumpy landing with Saturn coming into Aquarius and Mars following suit. So I think the Saturn in Aquarius three months that we’re coming up to—the first part has got Mars there with Saturn, and then we just get the purer Saturn in Aquarius. So if you are more of a heavy fixed sign, the first part could be a little bit more challenging. Later in the year, it’ll be Saturn and Jupiter together rather than Saturn and Mars together in Aquarius. So it sort of feels like you might have, yeah, some frustration. Things might boil over. You might realize there’s stuff that has been neglected, that you now have to play catch-up on real quick. But there’s value, potentially, in maybe doing that. Because at the end of the year, ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ type of thing, the Jupiter-Saturn piece brings a different quality in, if that makes sense.

CB: Definitely. Yeah, so this is setting up—and let me mention the Mars date again, cuz we talked about Saturn. So Saturn goes, on the 21st of March, into Aquarius, and then Mars catches up and it goes in on the 30th of March, so that you get both of them. And then we have an exact Mars-Saturn conjunction at 0° of Aquarius, at the very, very end of the month. It looks like March 31, which maybe is already April 1 for some people, depending on what part of the world you’re in.

KS: Mm-hmm.

CB: So that’s queuing up Saturn in Aquarius, which is a major long-term transit that everybody’s gonna be experiencing for the next three years. But it’s curious that it starts off, at the very top of it, with a Mars-Saturn conjunction. I mean, to me, one of the ways I talked about it in the horoscopes was just think about what house—especially what whole sign house—Aquarius falls in, in your chart, and you’re gonna be experiencing a long-term transit of restructuring in that area of your life, as Saturn goes through the next years. And this is partially a preview of that because it’s just gonna dip in for, what, two or three months before it retrogrades out, goes back into Capricorn in early July, and then eventually returns permanently into Aquarius for the full-on transit in December. But it seems like whether you have a day chart or a night chart, the very start of this, this initial preview that begins in March might begin with some sort of tension or—depending on how it’s situated in your chart—even a crisis, which brings up the issues, perhaps, in some instances, even in dramatic ways that then will have to play out and be dealt with over the course of the next two to three years as Saturn continues moving through the rest of that sign.

AC: Yeah, I agree strongly with that. The way it was playing out in my head is that it’s almost like Saturn’s ingress is a preview. That preview begins with the vision of a troubled timeline, like the old Terminator movies, right? Where you’re like, “Oh, God, if I don’t do this in the second quarter, then I’ll end up in the bad timeline, when Saturn actually goes back into Aquarius at the end of the year and next year.” There’s a little bit of like averting a future crisis with that initial co-presence of Mars and Saturn. Like, “Oh, this is where things are going. If I don’t do anything, that’s probably where they’re going. But there’s time enough to change that. We just have to keep John Connor alive.”

CB: You’re thinking about the future war version of Terminator, where there’s lasers and a desolate hellscape in the future if you don’t avert things and save the future savior of humanity?

AC: Right. You know, the plot is that the survivors in that bleak future send someone back in time to seed a better timeline, right? And then the evil robots also send an agent. You know, as far as Mars-Saturn, as far as coming up with images for Mars-Saturn conjunctions in Aquarius, I think evil robots from the future is pretty good.

CB: Right. So Mars is, in this analogy from Terminator 2, is like the T-1000 who’s been sent back in time, ahead of time. The bad guys send the bad guy first, and he may do a little bit of damage as he’s going through this initial part of Aquarius. But then later, in December, we get Jupiter who, in this analogy, is gonna be played by the positive robot of Arnold Schwarzenegger, circa Terminator 2, to save the protagonist or hero.

AC: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So the second quarter is “Terminator 1.” And then if we survive “Terminator 1,” which we probably will, then we get to “Terminator 2,” which is arguably the best one.

KS: Yeah.

AC: But there will be liquid metal assassins, but we’ll deal with that then.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Definitely. Was that a similar analogy that you had in mind, Kelly?

KS: Oh, yeah, I am such a Terminator fan, that I’m so familiar with all of these analogies.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah, no, that wasn’t probably my analogy, but I think I’ve got the gist of it.

CB: Okay.

KS: You know, more stressful now, better later on.

AC: The point was having some foresight.

KS: Having the foresight, right.

AC: Terminator is for everybody.

CB: How have you been explaining this to clients, Kelly, in terms of this Mars ingress in the March-April timeframe? Cuz this is a two-month trek of Mars. It’s relatively quick in the grand scheme of things compared to the three-year Saturn transit. But Mars goes in at the end of March and then it stays there for a couple of months, right?

KS: Yeah, I think it’ll be a solid six weeks.

AC: Yeah, it’s like right dead center in May, I believe, that it switches.

KS: That it switches.

CB: How have you been explaining this to clients, in terms of, I don’t know, Mars’ transit through that sign?

KS: It feels like that sense of—I think that the concepts you guys are using are similar to what I’ve been saying, which is it feels bumpy or like a rude awakening. You know, there’s more work to be done here than you thought. Particularly—I think you were saying earlier in the show today, Chris, or Austin, I can’t remember exactly who said it—the idea that Aquarius hasn’t had a huge amount going on other than the eclipses and then that brief Mars retro. So this is sort of a part of our chart or our lives that has been necessarily, perhaps, neglected or lower on the priority list; lower on the attention list. And then all of a sudden something catches fire and you’re like, “I had forgotten all about this stack of books over there, and I need to leave other things and come to attend to this with a level of urgency.” Because there is gonna be that Mars square Uranus aspect. You know, that’s a preview. Not the same thing, but we’ll talk about that in the April show. But as Austin said, this is a setup for what we’re gonna be dealing with in 2021, when we get the Saturn square Uranus.

CB: That’s a great point. And that reminds me Austin’s comment about an exodus from the cardinal sign of Capricorn also applies to Uranus, who’s been transiting through that cardinal sign of Aries for most of the last decade, but now is finally out of there, but has also shifted to a fixed sign. So this is part of a broader planetary shift to fixed signs that’s going on, as a major characteristic of this timeframe for the past year, but also, in the next few years.

AC: Yeah, yeah. And so, two things. One, there was a fair amount of Aquarian emphasis, as well as Uranus in Taurus emphasis for about half of 2018. There was fixed-sign tension in the middle-ish half of May to November of 2019. But then 2019 didn’t really have much for fixed-sign emphasis other than Uranus in Taurus, whereas the Saturn-Mars ingress speaks to a very strong fixed-sign emphasis next year. And there was something else I was gonna say. Oh, just with that Mars-Saturn and the evil robots from the future and all that, that Mars-Saturn configuration starts out about as fierce as it’s gonna get.

KS: Yeah.

CB: Right.

AC: Mars conjoins Saturn, squares Uranus, and then doesn’t do anything nearly that interesting for the rest of the time that it’s in Aquarius.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And so, even at the end of the month, even if March goes out like a lion, there will be a calmer time to work through those problems. It’s not gonna be that hectic throughout all of April.

CB: Right. And that Mars transit, it goes through Aquarius all the way until about the middle of May. So it’s the full duration of that. And I think whether you have a day chart or a night chart, it’s just bringing up some of the problems that people might have to deal with in that area of their life. Or to use the analogy from last month, that people liked a little bit, the Mars-Saturn conjunction being like pressing the gas in your car and the brakes at the same time, and having that inherent tension in that part of your life between wanting to move forward and then also wanting to stop and not moving forward, and that tension creating a challenge; but eventually maybe also creating some sort of constructive obstacle that you overcome, hopefully, as well.

KS: Yeah, it feels a little bit like Saturn’s just moved into Aquarius, so you’re just starting to think about, “What do I have to do to get this part of my life or this area sorted?” And then nine days later, as you said, Austin, Mars is here, so all of a sudden you get impatient. But the Mars-Saturn piece, to me, it feels very much like banging your head against a brick wall. Like I’m trying to do it, but I can’t do it yet. Or there’s this bureaucracy or this delay or the preparation required to do the thing, and I didn’t even know I had to do the same thing, so I certainly haven’t done the preparation. And it’s just a little bit of that frustration of maybe juggling different timelines, the more immediate of Mars versus the longer term of Saturn, and trying to figure out what you’re meant to do and in what order. And I think it just feels a little bit like that last few days of March, first few days of April, it’s just like trying to get your head around this whole different thing. And then, as you said, Austin, you settle into it, the aspects calm down, and you find your way forward after the initial stress.

AC: Mm-hmm. I think that one of the ways that both Saturn’s ingress and especially Mars’s followup ingress into Aquarius will play out for people is questions about, “Should I keep doing this?” whatever this is, whatever house. Whether it’s in the 4th, “Should I keep living here?” Or 7th, “Should we keep trying to do this relationship?” Or 10th, “Should I keep doing this job?” There’s a lot of ‘leaving what is not useful behind’ symbolism that clusters around the beginning of Aquarius. You know, sometimes the answer to the problem is, “Why am I putting myself in the situation repeatedly where I even have to answer this question?” And with Mars-Saturn at the end of the month, I think there’ll be more feelings of, “Fuck this. I don’t wanna do this anymore.” And that may or may not be the answer, but the frustration and fire of those moments may lead that to be an option for a lot of people in different areas of life.

CB: One of the other—

AC: We should maybe—go ahead.

CB: One of the other themes, also, is just gonna be the unending, unyielding advancement of time and people starting to come to a different understanding of time—as it moves into a new sector of their chart—and what the advancement of time means in that part of your life. Cuz one of the things I’m excited about is, one, this is the beginning of the end of the Saturn return stage for those that have Saturn in Capricorn. Like we are actually getting into the endgame or the final stages of your Saturn return. It won’t finish completely until the second half, and especially the end of 2020, when Saturn firmly moves out of Capricorn. But we’re starting to see some of those Saturn return stories become more clear, that have been happening over the past two-and-a-half years and starting to wrap up or become finalized in some ways, which actually was really interesting. Cuz there was an astrologer—who sent me a five-minute video of his Saturn return story—named Alexander Weir. And it sort of gave me the idea where I wanna do the Saturn in Capricorn recap—especially the Saturn return stories—and I’d love to see if people wanted to record just like a short, five-minute video—it has to be just five minutes, cuz otherwise it’s gonna be too long—of their Saturn return story. I’d love to see and maybe feature some of those on a future episode of the podcast. But the other thing that, of course, is gonna be starting is Saturn going into Aquarius is the beginning of the Saturn return phase for anybody that was born with Saturn in Aquarius natally. So we’re gonna get a whole new slew of Saturn return stories and Saturn return transits that are gonna begin, starting on the 21st of March.

AC: Yeah, that’s gonna be the ‘92-to-‘94s roughly, for the first return.

KS: Wow.

CB: Kelly, I see you have the thousand-yard stare.

KS: No. My younger sibling was born in 1990, so she’s just finishing her Saturn in Cap return. But you’re talking about people younger than her, that are then going into their Saturn return, and that’s just making me feel old.

CB: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So if you have Saturn in Aquarius, March 21, 2020 through March 7, 2023, those are your Saturn return target dates. Whereas if you have Saturn in Capricorn, your target dates for your Saturn returns were December 19, 2017 through December 16, 2020.

KS: And then we do have a listener who was in the Saturn cycle before, I guess.

CB: So this will be their second.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, and there are probably some folks that’ll be hitting their third go around with Saturn in Aquarius.

KS: Yeah.

CB: But I’m glad you mentioned that, Kelly. Cuz everyone’s gonna feel that a little—just the shift of time and the continued advancement of time maybe in some area of their life. But this is gonna be one of those turning points where it seems like every time Saturn changes signs, we get a new, stark step in the forward direction, in terms of the advancement of time, and then reflect on that and get a different perspective on what that means and how far we’ve come in terms of some area of our life, for better or worse.

KS: Absolutely, yeah. And even to think back to where you were in that early ‘90s period, how old you were last time Saturn was in Aquarius. What was that like for you? So even that—if you’re not Saturn returning—just using that Saturn 30-year cycle.

CB: Right. Definitely. So that’s great.

KS: Passage of time.

CB: Major stuff, the passage of time. Major stuff happening towards the end of this month. There might be a little tension accompanying it, especially during the early parts. But hopefully, some of that will subside once we move further into April and the Mars-Saturn conjunction at least starts to separate. Especially once Mars clears, also, Uranus, since that’s the other thing that happens. But that’s getting us a little bit too far into the forecast for April.

KS: Now did we forget one thing?

AC: We did. We forgot the Jupiter. Well, we didn’t forget it. We were standing in line behind the Saturn-Mars ingress. We have Jupiter and Pluto conjoining rather closely while those ingresses are taking place. And that is the first of three conjunctions between Jupiter and Pluto. So Kelly, you’ve been doing some thinking on this, yeah?

KS: Well, I guess I’ve just been a little focused on the royal dramas and looking at that. But I know that Jupiter-Pluto’s technically gonna be exact in early April. It’s building at the end of March.

AC: They’re in the same degree at the end of March.

KS: That’s true. You’re right. You’re a hundred-percent right. Cuz it’ll be almost 10 days that they’re there. So I do think the Jupiter-Pluto—I mean, look at the difference in Capricorn, the sign of Capricorn, by the time we get to April. Like there’s just Jupiter and Pluto. And the South Node’s still there, but well-separated. But I do think this Jupiter-Pluto piece—there’s something about foundational ideas and beliefs. Like the bedrock stuff that you might not even realize you’ve based part of your life is being activated. And just keep watching Meghan Markle and Queen Elizabeth because this is an angular degree for them. So there are changes—changes to long-established ways of doing things. And I think there’s a micro version of that for each of us based on the house that this conjunction is happening in. As if you’re trying to find your way there, now that the pressure of Saturn being there is gone, essentially. But you’re excited about this one, too, Austin. Maybe not excited. Intrigued.

AC: I might get excited. We’ll see. Yeah, I’m very interested in the second half of March. There are so many things that happen, of both momentary and lasting import. You know, one thing that’s interesting is that Jupiter-Pluto conjunction, it’s in a Saturn-ruled sign. And so, we’re going to see the winds generated—by Saturn’s ingress into a new sign—affecting what that Jupiter-Pluto conjunction feels like. You know, I think that the paradigmatic note that you brought up with Jupiter and Pluto, like not what are you thinking, but what is the process, what is the structure by which you’re even arriving at those thoughts? What is the process that creates those ideas, right? What are the underlying assumptions that are even more likely to be challenged, in maybe a good way, maybe a bad way, maybe a little bit of both, by Saturn’s ingress into Aquarius? Cuz Saturn is equally or similarly strong in Aquarius as it is in Capricorn. But Saturn in Aquarius is looking at things from the outside or being stuck on the outside rather than Saturn in Capricorn, which is being stuck on the inside, right? Saturn in Aquarius is a little bit of face pressed up against the window, and Saturn in Capricorn is a little bit like being locked in the labyrinth. You know, both provide abundant opportunities for Saturnian feels in relationship to structure but for different reasons. They’re the two sides of ‘the grass is greener’, right? Like, “Oh, I’m stuck in here. I wish I could go outside.” Or, “Oh, I’m stuck outside. It’s cold out here.”

KS: “I wish I could get in.” Yeah, it’s the limitations of being included or on the inside versus the restriction of not being able to get in when you want to.

AC: Mm-hmm.

KS: Yeah, and there is something—sorry, go.

AC: No, please continue.

KS: I was just gonna say with the Jupiter-Pluto, there is something about how hard do you wanna double-down on the things that are important to you or not important to you? One of the things I think of with this Jupiter-Pluto is we’re not always aware why we do things. We’re not always aware of why we’re going after ‘x’, ‘y’, or ‘z’. Whether it’s a business goal or a personal goal, we think we know, but sometimes there’s undercurrent stuff, or there’s stuff that we haven’t fully got in touch with. And the Jupiter-Pluto is a little bit like, well, how can you get into that underlying, deeper motivation or desire? And then, is that still really important to you? Are you actually trying to access that? Or are you trying to meet that need in an appropriate way, or have you sort of gotten muddled? So there’s something there to try to get you to get clear on the ‘why’ that you might be doing things.

AC: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I would add that with Jupiter-Pluto, Pluto tends to turn planets inside-out and show them their shadows, or angle the mirrors to see themselves from a new angle. There’s a little bit of like the shadow of your wisdom. Like what you think is wisdom, what is that leaving out, right? What is that not taking into account? You know, if that wisdom is a torch or a lantern or a source of illumination, with the angle you hold it at, what isn’t being seen, right? What is the underworld of that, right? What’s in the shadows there? And maybe wrapping that—bending that light so it gets to some of those places, and you can see what tends to get ignored.

KS: What’s been overlooked.

CB: Yeah, I just like the idea that with the departure of Mars and Saturn through that sign—leaving just Jupiter and Pluto—we have a more rapid expansion in that sign for at least a few months, after a more turbulent, challenging, or even a period of tension, where we’ve got a little bit of relief going on for those with heavy Capricorn placements or cardinal signs prominent in their chart.

AC: Yeah, yeah. That’ll be a blessing. A temporary blessing.

KS: It’s a significant change of the landscape, yeah.

AC: It’ll be a nice relief for the second quarter, for the late cardinal-heavy.

CB: So Kelly just pointed out to me privately that we meant to and have overlooked the other lunation this month, which is the New Moon that takes place in Aries on the 24th of March.

KS: Yeah, I figured we should probably mention it. I mean, there’s so much, as you mentioned, Austin. This latter part of March is quite interesting, with so many other dramatic events happening.

AC: Mm-hmm.

CB: Yeah, I mean, it’s not in and of itself hugely important or momentous in terms of dimension, since there’s everything going on around it that we’ve already mentioned is basically the backdrop for that lunation.

KS: I mean, to give you the context of how significant is the lunation this month, it’s happening, but there’s other things that are probably gonna draw your attention.

CB: Right. Yeah.

KS: Yeah. But it’s kind of like a start. You know, the New Moon in Aries does have symbolic significance, with that idea of the New Moon and the spring energy, bringing in some of the different cultural and religious festivals of the new year type of thing.

CB: Yeah, and just the general themes that we encounter around this time every year of the New Moon—especially in a modern astrology context—laying the seeds or the foundation in this part of your chart, in the house that it falls in, for something that will grow and develop over the course of the next six months, until eventually, in the fall, we get a Full Moon in Aries and some of that comes to a culmination. Drew in the chat is asking if we have any thoughts on this being ‘at the bending’, since it’s pretty closely square the nodes.

AC: Well, so, the bendings, being the square points to the nodal axis. We have the north-bending and the south-bending, right? And for those who aren’t familiar with them, the bendings are the points where the Moon stops getting either higher or lower in declination or distance from the ecliptic and bends in the other direction. And so, in this case, the Moon has been getting lower or more southerly, and then it bends and starts coming up. And so, those points are interesting in terms of the Moon’s motion, right? Cuz instead of having a Moon sinking or rising, it does a little swoop, right, and then reverses that motion. And so, a little bit of confusion is often the state that accompanies the Moon’s movement through those points. Although the Moon is still moving counter-clockwise, the ‘Y’ axis is changing. Not the x-axis, but the y-axis. And so, there’s a little bit more to figure out because there is a directional shift and that happens once a month in terms of south-bending and north-bending, one each. But this is interesting because it’s a New Moon. You know, it’s one of our two lunations occurring on the bendings. And so, that New Moon and sort of coming back to neutral, right, slowing down, letting go of the last lunar month and kind of slowly starting to fill up with what the next lunar month will entail—it’s more of a complicated shift than it otherwise would be, according to the New Moon occurring on the bendings. And that’s in perfect accord, I think, with everything we’ve been saying about that last 10 days of the month, right? There’s a lot more new factors to take into account. So there the ‘hmm’ that usually accompanies a New Moon is likely to be extended.

CB: Yeah, I would just say when I look at the bendings—especially from a transiting lunation standpoint—I’m mainly looking at this as being the halfway point between eclipses. Because we had that set of cardinal eclipses in December/January, and then we’re gonna have another set six months after that, over the summer, in the last set of cardinal eclipses. So this is the halfway point where we get a lunation or a set of lunations in the middle cardinal sign. And so, it ends up acting like the waxing square or the waning square, which is that important midway point where whatever the set of events was that occurred three months earlier—at the previous set of eclipses in December/January—we see a further development of that and an important turning point here with this lunation at the bendings. And then that eventually comes to completion or culmination three months later, at the next set of eclipses. So the halfway point between eclipses is how I would characterize this.

AC: Mm-hmm. Right. That’s a function of the Sun being at the bendings.

KS: Yes.

CB: Right.

KS: Yes.

CB: Yeah. All right. Anything else about that lunation, from your perspective, Kelly?

KS: No. I think the points that you both made, particularly, Austin, about the idea of the instability or the adjustment, the changing focus, is really appropriate for a New Moon, in the bendings. I agree completely with what you’re saying about how that just reflects or echoes the things that are already happening in this latter part of March.

AC: Yeah, it goes right into that soup. Although we’re kind of done with soup by the end of the month.

KS: Oh, there’s no more soup.

AC: March is in like soup and out like a lion, maybe.

KS: If that’s a thing. I mean, I don’t know. It’s like roast-something with this Aries. I don’t know why I thought about roasting meat or veggies.

AC: That works. Did you not grow up with that saying, Kelly, “March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb?”

KS: Yes, I definitely know that saying, yes.

AC: Okay. I don’t know how widespread that was. So yeah, this time, the lion’s at the end, and it’s soup at the beginning.

KS: At the start.

AC: A thick, but runny stew.

KS: Okay, this is getting bad.

CB: All right.

AC: It’s not bad. I like a good stew.

KS: I love a good stew as well. We grew up on this thing. When we were kids—I was from a large family—it was always like, “What are we eating for dinner?” Someone was always asking this. And of course all of our parents and aunts were, “We’re eating wombat stew,” or echidna soup or something. And we ended up having this dish called ‘wolf stew’ that was just made with beef and vegetables, but we still call it, today, this wolf stew, and it’s just like a very simple beef casserole. But somebody must have, at some point in the history of the family, called it wolf stew, so the madness happens in crazy families.

AC: I mean, stew’s an efficient way to cook for a lot of people.

KS: We ate a lot of dishes like that, yes, for that very reason. It’s time-efficient, it’s economical, and yeah, you can get done and get everyone fed. And then my brothers always end up with the seconds. Anyway, trip down memory lane.

CB: All right, well, #astrologystew for part of the month of March. The first part of the month. So one of the things that’s funny—since we started just a few months ago doing the forecast episode first—is now we’re extending our forecast and doing like really long, detailed, monthly forecasts, and we’re about an hour-and-a-half into this episode. So we need to transition. I wanna introduce and talk about the election for March. The auspicious electional date that was picked out by our expert electional astrologer Leisa Schaim. And then we’ll transition into our discussion topic for the second part of this episode, the last part of this episode, which is essential dignities.

KS: Okay.

CB: The electional chart that Leisa found this month takes advantage of the lovely transit of Venus through Taurus, where we’re able to get a really good Venus election this month, because Venus is, as we said, in her home sign, or one of her home signs of Taurus. So the electional chart for this month is set for March 22, 2020. In our location, we set it for approximately 9:10 AM, or 9:10 in the morning, here in Denver, Colorado. So all you have to do is take this chart for this day and time. So March 22, just a little bit after 9:00 in the morning. Just change the location and set it for your city, and then you should get approximately the same rising sign. And all you wanna do is adjust the degree until you have, let’s say, between 18° and 21° of Taurus as the exact degree of the ascendant. So if you do that, you’ll end up with a chart that has Taurus rising, and Venus pretty closely-conjunct—within a few degrees—the degree of the ascendant, at 18° of Taurus. And Venus at 18 Taurus is actually applying to a trine with Jupiter, which is at 23° of Capricorn in the ninth whole sign house. So what we have here is the ruler of the ascendant, being Venus, applying to a nice little trine with Jupiter in a day chart, which really helps to stabilize and affirm whatever Venus wants to signify. And since Venus is the ruler of the ascendant, Venus is representing you and whatever you’re initiating at the time of this electional chart. So it should be helpful in helping to confirm and stabilize the outcome of whatever it is that you’re trying to initialize or actualize at this time.

So the other thing this chart features is the Moon at 13° of Pisces in the eleventh whole sign house, applying to a sextile with Venus. So applying to a sextile with Venus and applying to a sextile with Jupiter. Mercury is also direct, which is nice, cuz we had a hard time last month avoiding electional charts during the Mercury retrograde. But since Mercury is moving forward at this point, we don’t have to deal with that. This is the first chart since the ingress of Saturn into Aquarius, so it does place Saturn in the tenth whole sign house. Although it’s in a day chart, and Saturn is in its own domicile. So it’s actually relatively auspicious as a 10th house significator in the long term, or at least relatively constructive. Mars is conjunct Jupiter, but it’s separating. And Mars—although it’s getting close to Saturn—it’s still far enough away. It’s 5° or 6° away. It’s not in that tight, tight conjunction that we’ll see closer towards the end of the month. So that’s one of the reasons we decided to go with this election rather than a later one, just because Mars has a little bit of distance from Saturn before it really catches up to it in that close conjunction. So yeah, this is the election, Austin. And it’s kind of tied in with some of the things you were seeing, about trying to take advantage of not just Venus in Taurus, but also, that nice Venus-Jupiter trine. Even though it goes exact a little bit later in the month, you start running into issues with Mars getting really close to Saturn at that point. So we were trying to find a middle-ground to get the Venus-Jupiter trine to some extent, still, but not get Mars too close to that conjunction with Saturn.

AC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, I see the effort.

CB: Yeah.

AC: I scanned this period of time pretty heavily, so I know what was happening a week before and a week after and why you chose this one. So one kind of fun note about this is—well, I guess it really depends on the timezone. I was gonna say for some people, this will be the hour of Venus, which is fun if you’re gonna have a Taurus rising with Venus on it. It’s the second hour on the day of the Sun. It’s gonna be hour of Venus. Probably our Mercury, for you, might be—it might even be Moon, anyway. Yeah, I wish the Moon had a little bit more light, but everything else is there to like there. Not only—what?

CB: Yeah, we’ve got a waning Moon, good point.

AC: It’s not like burning, right? It’s not within a day’s motion of the Sun, so it at least has some light. One thing that’s nice about that Moon-Venus is we have some reception there by exaltation, right? Venus is exalted in Pisces, where the Moon is, and the Moon is exalted in Taurus, where Venus is. So it’s not just the sextile.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah, it’s a beautiful Moon aspect. Yeah, it is always nice if the Moon is a little bit bigger, but perfection is what we aspire to, not what we deal with everyday.

CB: Right. Yeah, so this is a good Venus election, generally speaking, good for aesthetics. Could be good for creative pursuits or artistic pursuits. Generally, if you’re trying to unify or reconcile anything—very broad, archetypal keywords for Venus—then it’s gonna be useful for that. What are some other good Venus-type electional activities that one could use this for, if you wanted to really specify Venus significations?

KS: I was just thinking, I know we often are a little nervous with Mars in a day chart and things like that. But you kind of have the lord of the 1st and the lord of the 7th in a trine angle. Jupiter’s in the mix as well, but something about other people, whether it’s a friendship, 11th-thing, or just people pulling together, some significant people. Like the idea of feeding people or spending quality time with people.

CB: Yeah, that’s a good point.

AC: With that Saturn up there in the 10th, trying to pull that into the Venusian direction in a good way, organizing a social thing.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Cuz we have more Venus, but also, Saturn. It’s gonna be hard to ignore Saturn here. And so, figuring out a place for that Saturn to go, like organization or structure, seems like a useful thing you could do. But Kelly, I like that. That’s a good eye there. I like the configuration of the rulers of the 1st and 7th. They’re pretty happily disposed towards one another.

KS: It’s not a bad thing for that. But to your point, Austin, I mean, this makes me feel like, oh, it’s a team-building day for work or something. It’s where you’re potentially with work colleagues, but maybe doing something more fun rather than doing the Venus thing. Maybe you all go to a cooking class together or something.

AC: Yeah, like I enjoyed the lame work thing way more than I thought I would.

KS: Yeah. Yeah, cuz there were fun people there, basically. You wanna take advantage of that Venus trine Jupiter aspect, cuz it’s like the nicest aspect, from that perspective, we’re gonna get.

CB: Yeah, definitely. So yeah, it’s a very 11th house-focused chart. So good for 11th house stuff. Not bad for 7th house stuff, so just generally other people. With Saturn in the 10th, especially put on the midheaven, there may be some challenges or difficulties in terms of 10th house reputation or work or action-type things initially. But in the long term, since this is a day chart, it will probably work out constructively, as long as you stick with it. But this was just one of the actual electional charts that we found this month. This is the one we wanted to feature. But we did find three or four other electional charts that I’m just about to release in the Auspicious Elections Podcast this month, which is available for subscribers that sign up through our page on Patreon. And we’ve got like a 45-minute podcast episode where we review all four charts and what they’re good for. So you can find out more information about that if you just look us up on patreon.com and search for ‘The Astrology Podcast’. And it’s available on the $5 tier, as well as the tiers above that. All right, so thanks to Leisa Schaim for picking out that election for this month. And I think that concludes the forecast section of this episode. So now we are gonna transition into talking about other miscellaneous topics that have come up in the astrological community over the course of the past month, since we last talked. And there’s really just one main topic that we came up with—which a lot of people have been talking about and has been a major thing—which has been this discussion surrounding essential dignity, that’s really become prominent over the course of the past few weeks, I noticed. Especially among some of the younger astrologers that were just getting into this for the first time. How much have you guys been following this whole thing?

AC: Barely at all. I believe this is going under the #dignitybabes.

CB: Yeah.

AC: I became aware of it when I logged into my Twitter, and I saw that Chris Brennan had been dubbed an honorary ‘dignity babe’, and I was intrigued.

KS: You were like, “What is this?”

AC: I still do not understand, yeah, what was happening.

KS: Yeah, I didn’t see the initial—I caught a clip of something on Instagram, which I think was the trigger, and didn’t get the whole piece, but was aware of it. And then seeing the ‘dignity babes’, I guess was like a response to that, which I thought was a really constructive way for them. We probably should talk about who the Dignity Babes are, or what they’re attempting to do. Or do you wanna put even more backstory in, Chris?

CB: Sure.

AC: Well, I don’t really know what happened. So if you could explain it to me and the audience simultaneously, that would be great, so I can participate.

KS: Go for it, Chris.

CB: I didn’t follow it as closely as some, and was not super engaged, cuz I had other stuff going on this month. But the genesis of it was there was an astrologer named Colin Bedell who did a few videos on Instagram, which were just a little quick. He does regular Instagram posts like everyday or every few days with various things that he’s thinking about, and that’s @queercosmos. And he did initially, I think it was a hot take, where he did a very short, minute-and-a-half video. He had been getting some feedback recently, where he was seeing people, in his comments on Instagram, lamenting or feeling bad about having supposedly ‘bad’ placements, when they had planets that were in signs that traditionally were supposed to be challenging or negative or terrible, which are the signs of, let’s say, fall or detriment. And so, he did a short, somewhat—what became for some people at least—controversial series of videos calling that out and just rejecting the concept of essential dignity altogether. He said: “Exaltation and detriment and fall is bullshit.” And his primary argument was that he’s seen, he’s said, beautiful expressions of those placements, and he was mainly approaching it from a modern, character-based standpoint. So his fundamental issue was that people were feeling bad when they heard that certain placements were supposed to be more negative or challenging in their birth chart, and his argument, or his statement essentially was that every single natal configuration has something beautiful to offer. He basically told his audience that he doesn’t think you should talk to astrologers who make you feel less empowered, since a large part of his astrology is trying to be more empowering, which is a common theme in modern astrology over the past few decades, in especially certain streams, I think. Right? Would you say that’s an accurate statement to make?

AC: Yeah, I don’t think you’d get much argument.

CB: Yeah. Well, and that was something I was thinking about as I was reflecting on that. So much of modern astrology and the direction it went over the past few decades—as it became more psychological, and as people were also trying to speak to a broader audience—was attempting to be empowering, sometimes changing the techniques of astrology based on wanting to be empowering and not wanting to bum people out, especially over the past couple of years. Cuz you guys have been doing this for much longer than I have. As I’ve started to do some of the horoscopes—like monthly, video horoscopes, or the yearly horoscopes—you do generally run into that issue, which is what do you do when you run into seeing a difficult configuration? And how do you describe that to people and convey that there might be some challenges coming up without freaking people out or making them feel bad or something like that? And sometimes I feel like the way that modern astrology grew and developed in the late 20th and early 21st century was so much a reaction to not wanting to bum people out and starting to remove certain language and certain concepts that were perceived as doing that. Like benefic and malefic, for example, as a concept. But even the concept of essential dignity to some extent as well. Do you guys run into that or struggle with that?

AC: Yeah, the struggle is real. And I would say that the struggle is between being truthful and compassionate, both of which are important. Not every experience is going to be empowering and awesome. You know, there’s not like a flat, smiley face. You can’t just stamp a smiley face over every period of life without becoming very dishonest or just life losing all texture. One thing I would say, I think that the use of the word ‘beautiful’ is really interesting. And I would agree with that statement, that every single natal configuration has something beautiful, as a beautiful potential, but beautiful and fortunate are not the same thing.

CB: Sure. Or that there can be positive manifestations of even supposedly difficult placements.

AC: Yeah, I mean, a lot of times beauty arises out of difficulties, struggle, failure, etc., etc. Like that’s half the soil for those flowers. And just because something can be beautiful or provides the opportunity for a beautiful expression doesn’t mean that there aren’t difficulties or failures there. Not that just having a planet in a particular essential dignity situation is enough to indicate failure, right? Like we look at essential dignity. And when people are saying ‘essential dignity’, I don’t see them looking at triplicities or bounds or decans—that’s the stack of essential dignity. We’re not really doing the whole thing without that. And there would be no judgment rendered about either character or life structure by a traditional astrologer without looking at aspects and reception, as well as house placement. And so, when you’re just pulling out the top couple notes of essential dignity, I would say you shouldn’t, as an astrologer, get super judge-y about just that, cuz that’s not enough to render a judgment.

CB: Yeah, and that’s just a common thing and that’s what so many people brought up. And so much of the time, when this critique happens, it is modern astrologers picking out one piece of traditional astrology and then not knowing a lot about the system, thinking that we’re making statements entirely just based on that, that aren’t within the context of a broader system that does have a lot of other things going on and a lot of other shades of gray and considerations and things like that. So additionally, he was approaching it primarily from a character-based standpoint, that these are always character statements or value judgments that are being made on a person’s character. But that’s often not the case either, necessarily. There’s—what were you gonna say, Kelly?

AC: That fallen Saturn in—oh, go ahead.

KS: I have so many thoughts on this topic, I guess.

CB: Yeah, let’s hear your thoughts.

KS: I mean, I agree because I think when somebody says Venus in Virgo or Venus in Aries is in detriment or bad, they’re missing a huge part of the doctrine or a huge part of the technique, which is to consider—as you guys were saying—more than just the essential dignity of a planet. The other piece—maybe this is just a slight extrapolation of the specifics of what we’re saying here—somebody in the comment has mentioned this. And I was so passionate about this, I taught a course on this last year called Counseling Skills for Challenging Aspects, which basically looked at how we could find things that look really difficult in the birth chart according to the technical criteria. Whether it’s all the levels of dignity, aspect, planetary condition, bringing all of that in, and then discussing what’s the lived experience of that. Because to say that someone has Venus in Aries, therefore, they’re bad, is missing the point. One of the things we do in traditional astrology is we’re much more specific than that. You know, if Venus in Aries is in a difficult configuration, and in a house or what have you, if you get all the things that line up to this Venus looks like a bit of limited placement for a person, what are the exact topics that that speaks to for the individual? And that gives you an ability to describe things that have probably been very difficult or challenging for the person, which goes a long way to validating their actual, lived experience, but then you can build out from there as to how we want to manage that moving forward. And there’s so many examples of people, who when they learn that a planet might be restricted in some way, according to a traditional collection of definitions, they then know—I think about a girlfriend of mine who has some difficult configurations around the 5th house that made it hard for her to conceive naturally and based on her own life circumstances, and instead, she decided that she would go ahead with things like IVF and in vitro and things like that. So sort of knowing that, you don’t wanna close the door on something that could help you create something in your life that may not come together without a little bit of an extra boost. So I don’t know if this is coming out clearly, cuz I do have really strong thoughts about trying to make everything sound like it’s a ‘happy’ stamp, when that’s not most people’s lived experiences.

CB: Yeah, definitely. And you’re also talking about external events, and that’s an important distinction to make here, too. This is the stumbling block sometimes that modern astrologers run into when they start talking about traditional astrology—is they don’t understand sometimes that we’re talking about an attempt to describe the lived experience of the individual in some instances. And while there’s a piece of that that is character-based, it’s not always character-based. There’s a part that’s trying to describe what areas of life a person might have more challenges in versus what areas of life might be more fortunate due to external circumstances that they don’t have control over. So your example there of, for example, somebody who had challenges with getting pregnant, that’s been an area of struggle or difficulty in her life, that she’s had to focus on or try to overcome.

KS: Yeah, I mean, cuz that is an external thing. It’s not a character judgment, but it’s very topic-specific. There’s nothing wrong with you. This is actually someone who it’s more by circumstance, that just didn’t meet a person—while there was a biological time window—and decided to pursue that as an individual. And so, yeah, it’s not a character flaw. The only response I posted publicly on social media to this discussion was just to list a bunch of people who have planets that are in detriment or in fall, that are incredibly successful. And they’ve got other factors, accidental support coming in and things like that. But just having a planet in detriment or fall—it’s not a barrier to you having a fulfilling life, basically.

AC: Yeah. Nor is it a searing indictment of your character.

KS: No.

CB: Yeah, I mean—

AC: And so, just to add one thing to the point you were making, Chris, about how most of the history of astrology, the goal was to map the life and that the character was one part of the life, but not the totality of it—more than half the chart is not just you.

KS: Yes.

AC: Like if you wanna find the ‘just you’ part, it might be a couple planets or a couple houses. But just like in life, most of your life is not just you, being you in a void. You’re mostly interacting with neighbors and family and friends and enemies and going to work and partnering up and breaking up. It’s all very contextual. And so, most of the chart, traditionally, is devoted to mapping how all that goes. And so, that super-difficult Mars position—I’m just thinking of readings I’ve done where it’s like, “Oh, yeah, that was your abusive father,” right? That’s why Mars doesn’t look too good. That’s what it’s describing primarily, and that is an impactful part of a person’s life. It’s not a pretty part. You know, a lot of times the really rough placements, like that’s not you being a villain. That’s that thing that happened or that pattern that you’re trying to solve.

CB: Yeah, and there’s another comment by Leisa Schaim, who’s in the chat. She says: “So often astrologers who use particular concepts like this, and astrologers who don’t, or are critiquing them are actually talking about two different things, which has to be clarified before any authentic exchange about it can happen. This seems like a dynamic that recurs fairly frequently.” And that’s funny, cuz that was my initial impression of that, and that was really the main tweet that I made about it early on. I was somewhat amused at all of the 20-something-year-old astrologers—how strongly they were reacting to it. Cuz he released that video, but then he posted another followup that was actually even more inflammatory. But what was funny about it to me is 10 years ago, 15 years ago, this was actually really common. Modern astrologers, who hadn’t really studied traditional astrology and didn’t know much about it, would often just make hot takes explaining why traditional astrology was dumb, based on the very little information they had about it and that was a pretty common thing. And we used to have—

AC: That was kind of the norm.

CB: That was the norm. That was the standard.

KS: It used to happen all the time.

CB: Yeah, it’s like traditional astrology was the new minority, small viewpoint in the astrological community, that was very much nascent or growing. But what was so wild about seeing this in the past few weeks, to me, was seeing all of these younger astrologers who had come up over the past decade in a context where traditional astrology is no longer that—I don’t wanna say not the minority viewpoint. It’s not the main viewpoint in terms of the astrological community, but we don’t have those kinds of arguments. Cuz it’s more understood that you need to study different systems before critiquing them, and there’s a lot more depth and richness to the astrological tradition prior to the 20th century than you might know if you hadn’t studied it. And so, they were kind of shocked at the critique and how it was being made. Additionally, there was also some other stuff that was tacked into it, in the second video, where he started going on, saying that the essential dignity system had tinges of misogyny and it was an expression of the patriarchy and a bunch of other concepts like that, which then seem to be actually the main thing that really pushed some buttons for a lot of astrologers. Because then there was a whole community of queer or, let’s see, non-binary or other astrologers that spoke up at that point and said, “Hey, I study traditional astrology, and it’s not okay to reject it just based on those grounds or to reject something like essential dignities based on those grounds, and there’s a lot more diversity and things going on in that community and with that focus, than what you’re representing here.” And part of the discussion became about that, in addition to the other technical and philosophical and other issues surrounding essential dignity as well, that led to this really rich discussion. Especially when over the course of the next few weeks, it seemed like there was a group of women or a group of astrologers that got together and created this hashtag, that was #dignitybabes, which was organized, I believe primarily by the astrologers Jo Gleason, Diana Rose, Charm Torres, Cello, Kelsey Rose Tortorice, and Erin Tack Shipley. And they’ve been doing this series where every few days they’re dropping a new discussion topic or a series of discussion topics surrounding essential dignity as a concept, but also, the philosophy underlying traditional astrology or ancient astrology in general, issues about learning astrology, content creation and consumption, as well as professionalism and reflection. And they’re doing this whole series that they’re still in the middle of releasing over the course of, I think, the next week or two. And that’s, I think, what you guys came across or started to see.

KS: Yeah.

AC: Okay, that makes sense. So it was an attempt to formulate a constructive response to what was maybe a social media thing.

KS: Yeah, I’m glad you got that graphic, Chris.

CB: Yeah, so here’s the graphic they were circulating. It’s mainly a discussion that was happening on Instagram, with that #dignitybabes, but also, something that’s happening on Twitter as well, if you want to look up the hashtag there. I think they’re only halfway through it. Because we’re only at, what, the 23rd today.

KS: Twitter and Instagram, yeah.

CB: Yeah, so there’s a few more installments coming up. But it’s also generated a lot of other discussion, not just among them, but it’s generated discussion among other people as well, just in terms of some of the other issues that came up surrounding it. So for example, there was a guy on Twitter, @phosphorastrology, who tweeted at one point, on February 13. He said: “Retweet this if you’re into Hellenistic astrology and identify as LGBTQ+.” And then there were like 68 retweets, which is really interesting to me in terms of the diversity of the traditional community. I could see how somebody could have the perception that it’s just like straight, white men doing traditional astrology, especially with people who helped to get it going, like Robert Hand or Robert Zoller or Robert Schmidt or whoever. But recently it seems like it’s become much broader than that, especially since some of the more well-recognized proponents are not always that. I mean, you have people like Demetra George and her books on traditional astrology. You have people like Lee Lehman and her work on traditional astrology, or even Ben Dykes and other people that are involved in that movement and that community.

AC: So you’re saying it’s not just for straight, white ‘Roberts’?

CB: Yeah. It turns out, while that may have been part of the initial impetus—which isn’t even entirely true. Cuz people like Lee Lehman were already doing important work in that area, and you already had the Lilly revival coming out of people like—

KS: Olivia Barclay.

CB: Olivia Barclay, Deborah Houlding, and other early Lilly proponents. Yeah, that’s certainly not the case today.

KS: No.

CB: Yeah, so other issues surrounding that, or other things that have come up in terms of just the general discussion of essential dignity, this is an ongoing thing. One of the things I wanted to say is it’s just a system that’s used to characterize the quality of the expression of the planets, and I think that’s one of the most fundamental things. And unfortunately, while there are a set of terms or a set of terminology that’s used as shorthand among professionals, it seems like there needs to be a distinction made. Yeah, sometimes when clients or when amateur astrologers hear shorthand terms from professionals—that’s like inside, professional language—that can freak them out, and they could have a negative impression based on that. That doesn’t mean that the terminology or the underlying concepts are inherently wrong or should be rejected or gotten rid of in some way. Because that happens in all traditions of astrology, even modern astrology, where sometimes a non-astrologer will hear something like Mercury retrograde and then maybe react negatively to that or freak out based on whatever perceived negative thing they’re hearing or associating with that, in their not-super-educated, let’s say, background. So they’ll not go outside, let’s say, in the most extreme manifestation, or not do anything important for three weeks, and that could be a perceived negative impact that the astrological language of that sort is having on clients. That doesn’t mean you should reject it or that that’s even the correct interpretation or being used properly. It just means sometimes that happens, and it’s something that, as astrologers, we have to do our best to try to work through and help reassure and use language that’s useful, that’s not freaking clients out.

KS: Yeah, and I think there were some points made about the delivery of that information. Not everyone’s gonna get that right. We’re not always all gonna get that right. But that doesn’t mean the technique that’s being used is the problem. Sometimes if you overhear professionals talking—and I try and say this to students—I don’t always remember, cuz I don’t always get it right. But the way that I might talk to a student in class or to a colleague is not necessarily the way that I would language or phrase the same thing, if I was talking to a client, for instance.

CB: Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s the case for most astrologers, even modern astrologers, and that’s a really important distinction. Cuz that’s just like your bedside manner is what doctors call that, right? And we run into the same issue in modern times with people looking up possible things on WebMD, and then they see all these advanced medical terms and possible diagnoses and just fall down a whole rabbit hole, where not being doctors or having a background in medicine—or maybe having a tiny bit of knowledge become a dangerous thing, and they can freak themselves out. That doesn’t mean, though, that WebMD or the ability to access that information, even by amateurs, should be banned or outlawed or something, just because it potentially could freak people out if they go in the wrong direction with it. It just means there is, in the age of the internet—where astrology is more accessible than ever—people are gonna access things. They’re gonna come across things that they might not fully understand. And that unfamiliarity could be scary a little bit, but yeah, it doesn’t mean we have to get rid of all of that just because it might freak somebody out.

AC: Yeah, well, I mean, universal comfort can’t be the filter for how we talk about anything, or else we can’t talk about anything even vaguely uncomfortable for anyone.

CB: Yeah.

AC: In defense of the judginess of some traditional astrology, there is no electional astrology without judginess. You know, the whole point or one of the things that astrology teaches very well is that time is a landscape, it’s textured. There are beautiful, sunny, flower-filled meadows, there are terrifying gorges, etc., etc., and those landscapes are not all similarly favorable or unfavorable for the human. And so, if you want to have things be successful, then you pick a time and a place to launch things that are favorable, right? And essential dignity is one of the tools in the tool kit for figuring out when a time is favorable or unfavorable and to what degree. That’s just the whole y-axis of not just which planets are flavoring this, but how happy are they? How well are they functioning? And what’s interesting is even in the oldest of traditional metaphors, we’re looking at the relationship between an entity or actor and their environment. So for example, what we’re saying with Mars in Capricorn—which we discussed this month—it’s in a place where it’s exalted, where it’s actually very easy for Mars. Like that environment brings the best out of that planet. Cancer brings the best out of Jupiter. Jupiter is at home, and therefore, comfortable and empowered—like we are when we’re at home—when it’s in Sagittarius. Venus isn’t an awful person in Aries. Venus is in an environment which is really competitive and challenging, and it’s harder to bring about harmony, right? It’s not a searing indictment of character. It’s a statement about intended action and whether the environment supports or distorts or inhibits or exalts that.

CB: Right.

KS: Yeah, I think the point that we’re all touching on is just the idea that each planet is a piece of the person’s entirety of their life or their experience. You can’t sort of make an entire judgment about the individual off one part of the chart, if you like. And the whole piece, I think, the word ‘judginess’ that you used, Austin—we’re trying to make assessments and discern and parse out, where are the flower-filled meadows, and what are the more rocky gorges? And how does that somehow describe lived experience around particular topics? In one of the areas, in my own consulting practice, I’ve just been able to be more, I don’t know, just more aware of or make better interpretations about the quality of an individual’s physical body. And by that, that’s got nothing to do with appearance, but in terms of things like the condition of the ruler of the ascendant, does that indicate there is a health condition or some sort of physical challenge that the person is dealing with? And that’s been phenomenal to be able to share with people, it’s a cardinal thing. Maybe it inflames and then it goes away, or maybe every few years, something new pops up. Or it’s a fixed thing, and it’s chronic, it’s ongoing. I guess, for me, just knowing how much richness and extra levels of insight that it’s added—it’s very hard for me to see people say that it’s bad. But then I realize you’re missing some of the pieces and the nuances and the added bits that make it a complete technique, when one part of the technique is what’s being attacked, if you like.

CB: Right. Where part of the system is being attacked in isolation. Which is always frustrating for astrologers in different schools when that happens, since that’s something that astrologers receive, as a community, from skeptics. They’ll point to one, like Sun signs, and say, “Isn’t that reductive, if you try to divide the entire world into just 12 categories?” And the astrologers will be like, “Yeah, but you’re just taking one piece of the system.”

AC: It sure would be. We’re not doing that.

CB: Right, if we did that, so similar things. I did wanna say, though, I didn’t wanna phrase this entirely about a negative thing or just about him, cuz it was mainly just about the discussion that it sparked. And Colin actually did, on February 9, put out a video that was kind of an apology, once he started getting some pushback from people and from younger astrologers from different backgrounds, that were saying this was useful tool, and they didn’t feel like he had done it justice or had looked into it in detail to be able to speak on it in that way. And he put out a partial apology, partially still standing by some of what he said. And I did wanna say I appreciated the thoughtfulness and concern for his clients that was actually underlying his points. And I think that’s one of the common threads that comes up with modern astrologers when they make these critiques. Cuz I’ve famously had discussions and debates with, for example, Mark Jones on the podcast, early in the history of the podcast, or a debate with him. Eric Meyers, early on in the history of the podcast—I think in Episode 18—we talked about some similar things. And that’s always the underlying motivation, which I actually really respect. Cuz it comes out of a place of wanting to protect their client base, and these people that they’re connecting with on a very intimate level and trying to help in some way, not wanting to be damaging towards either not just their clients, but also, their students or their audience in some instances. Especially with people like Colin, who have developed a larger audience and are speaking to a very broad community. That’s really what’s motivating it more than anything, and I think that’s really respectable.

AC: I think that every—go ahead.

CB: No, continue.

AC: I was just gonna say I think that that’s an important motive for every astrologer, or it should be. We should all be coming from a place of compassion. You know, and as we’ve talked about and I think got touched on here, some of the judgier elements, that y-axis of astrology—if implemented with compassion, can actually provide more compassion. Because it gives you an ability, as the astrologer, to really describe what was super hard and what it was like and when. You know, if you don’t have those, then you lose the ability to actually describe and locate those seminal troubles in a person’s life. And I remember there was a little bit of that that came up in the discussion with Eric long, long, long ago. In order to solve problems, in order to hear someone, to see someone—both of which can be very healing—we need to be able to see what didn’t go very well.

CB: Yeah.

AC: We need language in astrology for that.

CB: Yeah, it actually provides a system for understanding the totality of the native’s life better. And that is ultimately helpful, even if that can sometimes provide you with information that could point to struggles that the native has in their life. As long as you deal with that information carefully and in a way that you’re at least trying your best to be helpful or healing, that’s useful, and that’s not something that should be downplayed or gotten rid of. But therein lies the question. If you haven’t studied it, you might make the assumption, based on individual pieces, that that’s not a useful system because it conflicts with knowledge that you have already.

AC: I’m sorry, I wanna jump in. There’s one thing that occurs to me, that might be a chart-reading-style thing. You know, I’ll look at charts, and I will often see some gnar-gnar. I’ll be like, “Ooh, ages 9-18 were fucking brutal,” but I don’t describe everything that I see in a chart, in a reading. One, there’s not enough time to do that. And two, I respond to questions. And if people wanna talk about that, then I will bring that stuff up. But I won’t just like lecture people about how awful a period of time was and how that’s a configuration. Like if it comes up, I will use the tools to map it out because that’ll be for both solving the problem or at least minimizing it, if it’s going to recur, for understanding what has happened in the past as accurately as possible, etc., etc. But I actually remember when I was like 21, and I was just good enough at astrology to be obnoxious. I remember I could see problems in a person’s life. I’d be like, “Oh, this happened to you when you were younger,” and they’re like, “Yeah.” And I wasn’t doing professional readings then, thank God. But like that is a thing you can do. If your reading style is just like, “Let me tell you everything I can see here,” you’re gonna get into more trouble than, “I have the tools to answer questions when I am asked the questions,” if that makes sense.

CB: Yeah.

AC: It’s part of my policy of tact.

CB: I mean, counseling skills and the importance of client-astrologer interactions are one of the great pieces that developed in modern astrology, that’s important to synthesize with traditional astrology, is one of the things I wanted to say. Concession maybe isn’t the right word, but something in favor, to some extent, of what that argument is, that Colin and others have made. What were you gonna say, Kelly?

KS: Yeah, I mean, to respond or to add onto Austin’s point around the tact as a practitioner, it is finding a style that allows you to communicate with your client around topics that are of interest or of pressing urgency for them. So asking questions: What is it that you would like to talk about? Are there any particular questions or issues or themes that are really up for you right now? The other way that I’ve approached it sometimes with clients is, “Would you like to talk about ‘x’ topic or ‘y’ topic?” And they may say, “Oh, yeah, I do wanna hear something about my finances (or my childhood or children),” or what have you. It’s a fine line. Cuz I agree, Austin. I don’t personally think that, in a session, it’s just a matter of telling the client everything that you can see in the chart because that’s overwhelming. You’ll be there for three days, probably. There’s way more information in a chart. You know, if you’ve an hour or 90 minutes—however long your sessions are structured—you want that to be most useful for the client. So it’s a dance between, what is it that they really wanna hear about? And there are times when I’ll say to a client, “Would you like to talk about this topic (or that topic)?” And they’ll be like, “No, that’s not of interest right now.” And I’m like, “Fair enough.” Doesn’t matter what I can see in the chart about that, they’re in a place where they’re focusing on something else right now. So it’s my job to serve them in that space, at that time.

AC: Absolutely. That’s well-put.

CB: One of the things I wanted to bring up—cuz I don’t know if I ever did when it came up, to reinforce the point. One of the things I did wanna say as a concession is I do think the point system—as it started being applied, or as it is sometimes applied to the essential dignity scheme—is somewhat reductive and can lead to—

AC: I teach that as training wheels.

CB: Right.

AC: Like nobody who’s good at riding a bike uses training wheels. Can training wheels help you get so you can ride a bike without them? Absolutely. But being like, “Oh, I’m a +11, and you’re a -2,” that’s literally a reduction of humans to one dimension.

KS: It doesn’t tell you anything of useful value or practical insight in any way, shape, or form.

CB: Yeah, it’s just sometimes useful at a glance for seeing what planets might be in their own sign or exaltation versus what’s not.

KS: Sorry, Chris, go.

CB: No, go ahead.

KS: I was just gonna say, I think it’s useful as a teaching tool, like if you wanna compare, is this a little bit better than that? Well, it was awarded this many points versus that many points. But in the same way that you learn the rules and then you figure out how to finesse them, I love the ‘training wheel’ analogy.

CB: Yeah, cuz it’s not what it means.

KS: No.

AC: Well, literally, I’ve taught essential dignity in classes for most of this decade. And so, I waffled about, do I even bring up the point system? But people were bringing up the point system, cuz they were finding it anyway.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And so, I was like, okay, what’s a useful frame on the point system, that’s not just ‘it’s trash’ or ‘it’s gospel’? And so, I’m glad you like the training wheels. That’s the best I got, Kelly.

KS: I think it’s appropriate. I mean, I think it’s good to know it’s there. But yeah, you don’t wanna live or die by, “Oh, I’m +15,” and “I’m -15.” I mean, no wonder it’s depressing. Cuz if that’s the measure, then I feel like, yeah, you wouldn’t feel good about that.

CB: Yeah.

AC: We’d be living in a very flat reality.

CB: And also, one of the quests for me and for some other traditional astrologers has been, over the past decade or two, to go back to the original language and try to understand what the original terms and concepts were, cuz in some instances they’ve been translated through so many different languages over the past 2,000 years. And there’s been so many changes during that process that we’ve lost sight of what the original, intended concept or term was. And one of the discoveries I made a few months ago, slightly annoyed me—cuz I had worked on this for years—where I was trying to come up with a good translation for the original Greek term for what is now called the sign of a planet’s detriment, which is just when a planet is in the sign opposite to one of its domiciles, or one of the signs that it rules. Like, for example, Venus having its domicile or its home sign in Taurus, when it’s in the sign opposite, let’s say, in Scorpio, or Venus in Libra, as its home sign, versus being in the sign of Aries. And I realized actually I couldn’t come up with a translation of it for years. But I found this word that’s perfect for it, and the word is ‘antithesis’. That’s actually the closest translation of one of the original Greek terms that I could find, where they started referring to that concept of a planet being in the sign opposite to the sign that it rules. And that actually gets closer to the original conceptual structure of what meant in the first place, which is there’s the concept of a planet being in its own sign and having greater autonomy in order to express its significations, in a way that comes naturally to it, versus when it’s in the sign opposite to its domicile. It’s in a sign that’s ruled by a planet that has significations that are diametrically-opposite, or in some instances, contradictory to what that planet normally tries to signify. So, for example, Venus in Libra, if you put it in the opposite sign, in Aries, then it’s in a sign ruled by Mars, which has opposite or contrary significations. And when Venus is in Aries, it then has to express itself partially in a martian or an Aries-type context, which can sometimes be different than what it’s used to. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily inherently bad, but it means it’s gonna express itself in a way that’s different than if it was in Libra or in Taurus.

AC: Yeah, we’ve talked about this before, and I’m in total agreement. You know, a planet in the sign that it rules—the sign supports the thesis of the planet. And a planet that is opposite its domicile is in an antithetical position. You know, Venus in Scorpio, Venus says, “All right, well, how can we bring people together?” And then Scorpio, playing the role of the antithesis, challenging, says, “Here are all the reasons not to trust that motherfucker,” right? It’s antithetical. It’s a challenge to the thesis.

CB: Right. And, I mean, sometimes in this discussion people will be like, “Well, I’ve seen plenty of people where they’ve had Venus in Aries, and they’ve had great expressions of that planet.” And that’s fine. It’s not necessarily saying that a person can’t have a great expression of that planet or something like that, it just means it’s gonna be expressed in a more Aries or a more martial context, whatever that means, depending on what houses it ruled or what part of the chart that it’s located in.

AC: Right. Antithesis doesn’t mean ‘can’t be great’. That’s not what it is. It means if it is going to be great, it is probably almost certainly going to have to engage in that dialogue of thesis/antithesis, the product of which is usually synthesis. But that is a challenge rather than a position like Mars in Aries, where Mars says, “Hey, let’s burn stuff,” and Aries is utterly in support of that thesis. There’s no need for dialogue, cuz it’s just right there. There’s no thesis/antithesis/synthesis ad nauseam.

CB: Sure. So is that part of what you’re getting at, with your post, Kelly, originally? About people that had some of those placements, but manifested them in great ways?

KS: Yeah, I mean, one example is Maya Angelou, the poet and the writer, who has Mercury in Pisces, so in antithesis there opposite Virgo. And there’s actually a number. When I did the tweet, there were a lot of Mercury in Pisces examples actually, of people who are creative writers and poets and musicians and lyricists. And they’re doing beautiful Mercury-type things, but in a very Piscean way, if you like. It’s emotive, or it’s musical. They’re not doing accountancy or detailed filing systems. So the antithesis is it’s functional, not necessarily in the way the planet might prefer, but in a way that’s more relevant to the sign influence, if you’d like to go a little further into that. These people are not bad. Yeah, they’re not bad. They’re just going to do that type of thing, I guess.

AC: Well, and I think that a famous poet for Mercury in Pisces is a very good example. Certainly, there could be disagreement around this, but a lot of people, I think, would agree that poetry—especially 20th century and onward—is you’re trying to get sentiments, states, experiences, whatever, that are beyond the capacity of normal language to contain and evoke. And you’re trying to figure out a way to get something, which inherently slips away from, is bigger than language, and you’re trying to find a way to do that in language. And so, often the form of language has to be rearranged in order to adequately do that. Poetry rarely uses normal, essay conventions of punctuation, right? Like you’re trying to do something that’s often beyond language.

KS: Yeah.

AC: And so, there’s literally a dialogue there in the process of the poet.

KS: Absolutely. I mean, I don’t know. I could just string out so many of these Mercury in Pisces examples, but it is. It’s playing around with, I guess, the form of language, the function of language, and it’s coming out in a non-typical way, in some capacity, which when you’re applying that to poetry is going to work better. But from the perspective of Mercury—which is designed to measure and to assess and to gather data and things—it’s not doing that, if that makes sense.

AC: Yeah, nowhere is Mercury described as ‘the poet of the skies’.

KS: No.

AC: Mercury is the writer, but Mercury is not described as the poet.

KS: No, no. Yeah, so I guess it involves thinking a little bit more rather than taking that flat approach to things.

CB: Yeah, to sort of wrap this up and bring this to conclusion, one of the points I just wanna say—to bring us outside of the ‘dignity’ thing and more on interactions between astrologers from different traditions’ thing—while 10 or 15 years ago, it was actually really hard and very obscure to study traditional astrology, it was easier for astrologers from different traditions to sometimes make potshots at it without having studied it, and for that to almost be okay on some level, because it wasn’t something that was easily accessible. It’s so easy and accessible to research now or to study traditional astrology and just assess it as a system, that there’s almost no excuse for taking shots at it without having done that. So I definitely invite astrologers to study traditional astrology and then tell us what you think. And it’s like if you have critiques after you’ve studied the system in its totality, and have been able to evaluate whether it works or whether its philosophy or underlying motivations make sense, then go nuts. I mean, that’s the whole process that a lot of us have been in, in modifying and changing the system and adapting it to modern times for a decade or two now. But don’t make those sorts of critiques until you’ve done that process. And that goes for traditional astrologers as well. Cuz I saw some traditional astrologer on Facebook the other day really being critical of some modern astrologer, and I found that just as distasteful as a modern astrologer critiquing traditional astrology. It goes for whatever tradition. Just study those different traditions, so that you have a place to speak about it. And if you haven’t, then it’s a little bit more dicey to venture those sorts of criticisms.

AC: Yeah, absolutely. And wouldn’t it be nice if the skeptical critiques of astrology came out of that place? You know, someone thought about all of the ways that astrology is practiced and the different ideas and implications and then came to thoughtful critiques rather than just, “Hey, NASA just announced that the zodiac moved, and that 12 kinds of people is terribly reductive,” right? We wanna avoid being those skeptics to other schools of astrology.

CB: I mean, maybe it just says something about human nature that there’s a tendency to do that in general. Anyway, yeah, pick up Demetra’s book. Pick up my book. Pick up some book on traditional astrology and just read it, and then make those critiques. Soon, Kelly’s book on secondary.

KS: Yes. I don’t know. I mean, there will be traditional astrology elements in it. But I think your book and Demetra’s—even Ben Dykes’ book—are probably good primers for people who wanna get the body of traditional astro.

CB: Well, yeah, and Ben actually wrote a great—not introduction.

KS: It’s literally called An Introduction to Traditional Astrology for Today.

CB: Traditional Astrology for Today, that’s what it was. Cuz he called that his invitational book. Which was like an invitation he wrestles with—and introduces some of those philosophical and conceptual differences between modern and ancient astrology—to address some of those questions for people that are just coming into the field. Anyway, one of the—I don’t wanna say the best, but one of the funniest things that came out of this whole controversy for me was the guy on Twitter, @phosphorastrology, designed these shirts. And I’m a very big fan of clever shirts and clever plays on words, and this is like one of the cleverest things I’d seen, that’s a check-mark on several different boxes of interests of mine. So these t-shirts are called Friend of Dorotheus, which I really love. I don’t know if everybody gets the play on words, but it’s very clever.

KS: Smart. I like it.

CB: Austin, what do you think?

AC: Oh, I saw this the other day, and I hit the love button.

CB: Yeah, so that’s great. I would recommend people check that out. It’s at phosphor.threadless.com. And I’ll put a link to it in the description for this. Yeah, so Friend of Dorotheus, I love that. All right, guys, I think we are getting towards the end of this episode. We’ve gone for like two-and-a-half-hours. So we’ve learned that, now, in doing the forecast first, we tend to spend a ton of time—especially in busy months or major months, like this one, where we’ve got a big outer planet shift—more time talking about the forecast. But I’m glad we did it, and I hope people find it useful. Kelly, what do you have going on this month? Do you have anything coming up in the month of March?

KS: I was thinking about March. I’m continuing to teach my bigger intro course, a deep dive on the signs and houses. So nothing super new for me. I’ll be prepping for my planets course, which will start April 13. So I think by the time this comes out, there’ll be some info about that on the website, for anybody who wants to get a good grounding in the planets.

CB: Perfect. And that’s at kellysastrology.com?

KS: Yes, thank you.

CB: Okay. Austin, what do you have coming up in March?

AC: Well, I will be preparing to teach my year one and two astrology class. Enrollment will be open in March. We’re gonna get started first thing in April. So if people are interested in committing to a good eight months of studying astrology with me, and a group of people, and not just dipping toes, but going for a long swim, enrollment is open there. Also, I thought for bizarro Mercury retrograde I would actually put out podcasts on my podcast. So I’m gonna try to put out, I don’t know, four or five episodes in the next four or five weeks.

CB: Wow.

AC: I’ve had some really good conversations with people that were recorded. And so, we’ve got a few people. We’ve got Freedom Cole. We’ve got Becca Tarnas. We’ve got a couple other folks. So keep an eye out for that. I’ve only put out two episodes so far, and I’ve had it for a year. You know, backwards Mercury time, I’ll actually be a podcaster, kind of, for a little bit, and then I will go back into my months-long sleep. And then, I’m not sure. I’m not sure about the Sphere + Sundry release schedule. There’s something that I elected this fall that’s very interesting and special, that got made. It might come out during March, I am not sure. So keep eyes peeled on that.

KS: Ooh, that’s exciting.

AC: I don’t think I have anything else going on. Yeah, yeah, it’s good.

CB: You guys are getting ready for NORWAC, which is officially sold out.

KS: Yes.

AC: Oh, yeah, yeah.

KS: That’s true. Yeah, all that’s end of May. There is still space in our post-conference workshop. So Austin’s teaching one on the decans, and I’m teaching one on combining transits and secondary progressions, which is Monday, May 25. So if you aren’t already registered for the conference, you can buy a day ticket just for the workshops, but that’s all that’s left at this point.

CB: Yeah, and I meant to say somebody told me there might be one-day passes for certain days besides the workshops. So check in and don’t take my word for it about it being completely, completely sold out.

KS: You’d have to email Laura to find out, yeah.

AC: Yeah.

KS: Austin, what were you gonna say?

AC: The preparation is beginning. So this is gonna be the first conference that both Kait and I are gonna be speaking at.

KS: Super exciting.

CB: Which is really exciting.

KS: Is this Kait’s first speech at a conference?

AC: Yeah, it is.

CB: And you guys technically—

AC: It’s not her first speech.

KS: No, no. But like a conference lecture or something.

AC: Yeah, this is the first behind the podium.

CB: And it has additional symbolic meaning for you guys, cuz you guys kind of got together around the time of a NORWAC, right?

AC: Oh, we got together in a NORWAC parking lot, sir. And it was classier than it sounds. But that was the location.

CB: I was trying to put that more gently.

AC: We had a reasoned discussion about whether it would be fruitful to pursue a monogamous relationship in a NORWAC parking lot. So yeah, one of our anniversaries is NORWAC.

CB: Brilliant. That’s awesome. And that was also the first conference that you spoke at. I remember watching your first talk, along with two other people’s talks, I think, at NORWAC. At least at a major, major conference. And yeah, that’s exciting. So congratulations to Kaitlin. She deserves it. Especially in helping and being one of the primary people who’s helped to promote the practice of astrological magic over the course of the past few years. So it’s great that she’s finally getting recognition for that and now speaking at conferences.

AC: Yeah, yeah. It’s a nice unfolding. It’s a nice unfolding for her, showing everybody what she’s got, and also, people unfolding their appreciation. It’s a beautiful thing.

CB: Yeah. And Julie Palmer asks: “Who’s buying Kaitlin drinks after her presentation?” And I would just caution that there will probably be so many people buying drinks for her, or wanting to, that you might wanna be careful about that. Cuz she could get alcohol poisoning, given how good, I’m sure, her talk will be.

AC: Well, we’ll make sure to train before NORWAC.

KS: Oh, oh, okay. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness.

CB: All right, my Pisces friend.

KS: Yes.

CB: As for me, the only thing I have going on is just I’ve been getting back to expanding my Hellenistic astrology course. There’s been an influx of new people signing up for it recently through theastrologyschool.com, if you’re interested in some of this discussion about dignity, the underlying conceptual structure, or just traditional astrology. I had somebody that was kind of a prominent modern astrologer sign up for the course recently, and I was really excited about that. And we were talking a lot about maybe even doing an intro and an exit interview of what her impressions are of traditional astrology, going into it, versus how she feels about it once she’s actually completed the course and seen the system in its totality, and any ways that her perspective has changed or not changed based on that. So that’s kind of a process I’m interested in working with different people on, just through that and through what I’ve created through my own research with Hellenistic astrology.

KS: Super interesting.

CB: I think that’s it for this episode. So people should definitely follow that ongoing discussion. Follow the #dignitybabes. I’ll put a link to it in the description, below this YouTube video, as well as on theastrologypodcast.com website for this episode. I’m sure that’s gonna be an ongoing and interesting discussion. I wanted to thank and just give another shoutout to all the people that are participating in that or who initiated that. Cuz I think that’s a really brilliant venture, and it’s helping to create more of a dialogue rather than just flame wars or controversy or what have you, and that’s always important. All right, guys, thanks for joining me for this episode of The Astrology Podcast. Thanks to our live audience of patrons who joined us. I think there were 60 patrons or something at this point who joined us in the chat and gave us some good feedback. So thank you. We appreciate you. And thanks to everybody who supports The Astrology Podcast through our page on Patreon in general, since that’s what makes this happen. So that’s it for this episode, and for episodes in the month of February. And I’ll be back again in March with actually a full, packed schedule of episodes, including Venus retrogrades, researching an episode on the birth chart of the United States with Nina Gryphon, an episode on the four elements with Darby Costello, and just a bunch of really cool stuff coming up. So we will see everybody again next month. So thanks for joining us.

KS: Thanks, everyone.

AC: Bye.

[credits]

Thanks to the patrons who helped to support the production of this episode of The Astrology Podcast through our page on patreon.com. In particular, a shoutout to patrons Christine Stone, Nate Craddock, and Maren Altman, as well as the Astro Gold Astrology App, available at astrogold.io, the Portland School of Astrology, at portlandastrology.org, and the Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological Almanacs, available at honeycomb.co. The production of this episode of podcast is also supported by the International Society for Astrological Research, which is hosting a major astrology conference in Denver, Colorado, September 10-14, 2020. More information about that at isar2020.org. And finally, also, Solar Fire Astrology Software, which is available at alabe.com. And you can use the promo code ‘AP15’ for a 15% discount on that software. For more information about how to become a patron of The Astrology Podcast and help support the production of future episodes, while getting access to subscriber benefits, like early access to new episodes or other bonus content, go to patreon.com/astrologypodcast.