The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 272, titled:

October 2020 Astrology Forecast

With Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, and Kelly Surtees

Episode originally released on September 24, 2020

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2020/09/24/october-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 Teresa “Peri” Lardo

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, I’m gonna be talking with Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees about the astrological forecast for October of 2020. Hey guys; welcome to the show. 

KELLY SURTEES: Hey. 

AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey. 

CB: All right. We have got a jam-packed show. We’ve got a lot to talk about for October. It was a little bit of a continuation of some of the themes from last month with the Mars retrograde and all, but we also have a lot of unique sort of configurations with Mercury retrograde, Full Moons conjunct Uranus, and lots of other stuff. So let’s go ahead and jump right into it, starting with the animation for the month. 

So as always, Paula Belluomini does our calendars each month; she’s our illustrator. And this month, Hugh Tran animated the movements calendar just to show us where the planets will start at the beginning of the month and where they will end up by the end of the month. So we go into the month, of course, with the Mars-Saturn square between Mars in late Aries and Saturn in late Capricorn being very exact and actually going exact on September 29th. Later in the month, one of the main things that happens in October is Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio opposite to Uranus. We’ve also got lunations this month in various signs, which we’ll get into next. But that’s kind of the movements of where the planets start and where they end by the very end of the month. 

The other animation I wanted to share was showing the calendar just with some specific dates. So let me see where my dates calendar is. There it is… All right, so in the month of October, we start out with a Full Moon in Aries – that’s actually the first Full Moon of this month. Shortly after that, Venus moves into Virgo on the 2nd of October. Then Pluto stations direct on the 4th of October; it’s the third of three planets stationing direct in Capricorn. Jupiter sextile Neptune exact on the 12th. Mercury stations retrograde on the 13th in Scorpio. There’s a New Moon in Libra on the 16th, followed by the Sun moving into Scorpio as it always does around this time of the year on the 22nd. Mercury gets halfway through its retrograde cycle and conjoins the Sun on the 25th. Mercury and Venus go into Libra simultaneously on the 27th. And then we have a Full Moon conjunct Uranus in Taurus on the 31st. And that’s pretty much the core this month of the astrology of October. 

So that’s the brief sort of overview. Now we’re gonna get into a detailed breakdown starting from the very top of the month for the next hour or so, and then we’ll talk about some miscellaneous topics later in the episode once we finish with the forecast. We’ve got an audience of about a 160, 170 people joining us today, so thanks to all the patrons who joined us for this live recording of our forecast for October. We appreciate it. Yeah. Let’s get into the forecast, guys. 

So we are actually recording this episode a little bit early this month, I think because we were trying to avoid some of the really tough, tense aspects at the very end of September. But that means that one of the main or major aspects of September hasn’t happened yet, so we might wanna touch on that, because that aspect happens – the Mars-Saturn square – on the 29th of September while Saturn is stationing direct in Capricorn, and that energy kind of carries through into October a bit. So maybe that might be a good starting point for where we’re at now. What do you think? 

AC: Yeah. 

KS: It’s definitely a big vibe. Big mood. 

CB: All right. Here is our chart for right now for September 22nd and our little electional chart where we waited for Sag rising here in Denver. Let me move it forward a few days so that you can see what that looks like on the 29th where we have Mars exactly at 25 degrees of Aries, retrograde now, and squaring Saturn at 25 degrees of Capricorn. So this is the 2nd of three Mars-Saturn squares. And Mars will then go on to square Pluto, and I believe square Jupiter this month as it gets about halfway through its retrograde cycle during the course of October. 

So how has the Mars retrograde been going for you guys so far? I hear it’s been a picnic largely for you up in Oregon, Austin.

AC: Yeah. So… In keeping with 2020’s all the astrology is extremely literal theme, I woke up on the Tuesday about 20 – I don’t know, within one day of the Mars retrograde station, and everything was on fire and the sky was filled with ash. As I’m sure everyone knows, there were big fires all up and down the west coast. And we’d had a really good fire season. You know, fire is part of what happens here, and this year we’d had a really good run. And so this was, it was literally the last heatwave before the fall weather was coming, and it coincided with record winds. And so the combination of hot dry with extremely windy is how you get swiftly moving fires. And so there was one that started maybe 25 miles away, and then just over the course of the afternoon just ate up, just climbed up the I-5 corridor towards us. I think maybe it stopped a little under – it got stopped a little under – 10 miles away. But we were under like, preparatory evacuation warnings for quite some time. And you know, it’s funny because what I consistently experience is that Mars retrograde periods are not productive for me, or it’s very difficult to be productive. And sometimes those reasons are internal. In this case, they were very external! You know, having to get ready to go because the wildfires are coming is an external reason. And so yeah, that kind of like, ate a lot of our, you know, the middle of our month. 

What was interesting, though – it’s funny – is that Kait had planned to take a hiatus and close the store down just temporarily for a couple of weeks, in keeping with the Mars retrograde and just to catch up on some things and get ahead on other things. And so that coincided perfectly with – you know, it was planned to coincide with the Mars retrograde station. And so that ended up being not just a good idea, but a fantastic idea, right? Because you know, getting a week or two eaten by natural disaster would have been much more trouble if things were going full blast. And so it just kind of shows you — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — that you can plan for things without necessarily knowing what they’re gonna be. If you know what the nature of the thing is and what it’s likely going to do, you can make space for that or wrap your plans around it, or create a void of plans where you’re more flexible. We didn’t know it would be wildfires. But it was the right answer even though we didn’t know the question. 

CB: Yeah. 

KS: That’s a really great way of describing it, Austin. Like, creating a void so that you then have some flexibility. I’ve had something similar. You also mentioned not being as productive, and I’ve had something similar where I just, you know, earlier in the year I was like, I just wanna cut down my regular commitments each week just so I have a bit more space. And it turned out that it’s been a really good thing, because since this Mars-Saturn square has been forming, I started suffering from migraines again which I haven’t suffered from for a few years. And a little bit related to my hormonal cycle, which when I did suffer from migraines a few years ago it was connected to that, and when I researched it then, both in traditional Chinese medicine and in ayurvedic medicine, they talk about it having to do with this excess of heat or dryness in the body. And I thought that was so interesting, because we’ve been talking about how, you know, Mars and Saturn is creating this very kind of dry aspect. You know, it’s a very drying kind of combination. And so having planned to do less work turned out to be a good thing, because as anybody who suffers from migraines knows, they can kind of strike you out of the blue at any moment, and you have to immediately stop whatever you’re doing and go and take care of your body, whether that is trying to hydrate or take some supplements or however you approach it. And so I have been working less, not because I just thought I’d be doing less, but because I’ve had to attend to this health thing! So it wasn’t quite what I expected, just like you, Austin, but I’m very grateful that the schedule was a bit lighter for this timeframe. 

CB: Yeah. It’s funny that — 

AC: It’s like a wildfire in your head. 

KS: Basically! Because there’s usually insomnia that goes with that, so that’s also, you know, a productivity reduction thing.

CB: It’s funny something when it’s internal but still very literal like that versus external and very literal. I know all of the astrologers were marveling over how literal the fires were and just some of the images that were coming out of the west coast around September 9th like, where people in San Francisco and stuff were waking up and looking outside and it literally looked like Mars. This is a video that was posted and taken September 9th of a guy that was flying a drone around San Francisco, titled “San Francisco looking like Blade Runner.” And some of the images in that were just wild, of like, the atmosphere literally just being this red color as if it looked like Mars. And that was, of course, the day that Mars stationed retrograde in September as we talked about in our forecast last month. And we can see in the calendar right here, Mars stationing retrograde on the 9th of September. So the alignment of that was just pretty wild and pretty striking. 

KS: That was really bizarre to see the news coming out of America just with these red landscapes as Mars was stationing retrograde. It was kind of so literal. 

CB: Yeah. Totally. So and that’s been something that’s been interesting for me to get used to over the past few years is before I was doing mundane astrology with you guys on a monthly basis, I used to think people were like, cherrypicking news stories sometimes when things like that would happen where there’d be an alignment coming up and then something would happen in the news, and it would actually be symbolically related, but then you’re like, well, that’s weird, because it’s only gonna be applying to that one group of people in that part of the world and it’s not like, a worldwide phenomenon necessarily. But sometimes that’s – what I’ve learned over the past few years is that’s still relevant. And it’s just one instance of how the symbolism is manifesting in a way that’s visible that’s being picked up by the news for one group of people. But there’s probably lots of other manifestations that are happening for different people that just aren’t apparent and aren’t getting as much publicity but are still just as relevant in fitting the symbolism in some way. So in that way, it’s not really cherrypicking to point out those things that are happening in the news, because it happens so consistently when you have a major mundane astrological phenomenon like that. 

KS: Totally. 

CB: Okay. So any other Mars retrograde stories or anecdotes that you guys have had so far or observations about it? 

AC: I mean, to be honest, I have – the local situation has distracted me from the larger national or international situation. We’ve, you know, it’s been watching the fires and watching a pretty encouraging regional response. Like, a lot of people are helping the people – you know, there’s a lot of volunteer work and donations that are going on to help the people whose homes got shredded. Because even though the fires got brought under control-ish around here pretty quickly, that one day of high winds just tore up two small towns near us, and I think we had 2,500 – like, there was a loss of 2,500 residential structures. It ate through the trailer parks, and then ate a bunch of houses before it got stopped. So it’s been nice to see people coming together to help. But yeah. I’ve been somewhat distracted by all that. 

CB: Yeah, for sure. One of my – I’ve had a few anecdotes. Like, some of them I can talk about and some of them I can’t yet. One of them that was funny in a way in its literalness was I have Mars in the 12th house in Capricorn, and so transiting Mars going through Aries, since I have Aquarius rising, Aries is my 3rd whole sign house, which the 3rd house has significations like communication, writing, but also short-distance travel and cars and things like that. And I remember my friend Cam White earlier this year, he said, you know, be careful driving when Mars goes retrograde, because maybe that’s like, a car accident or some challenging event related to short-distance travel. And what ended up happening is that the day that Mars exactly squared my natal Mars as Mars was going through the 3rd house, recently I had this really old car – it was like, 20 years old; I’ve been driving it forever. It had over 300,000 miles and the odometer stopped. So I finally got a new car this year, and I was trying to figure out what to do with the old car, so I had it parked on the street for like, a month or two as I was trying to find a way to sell it or to give it to a charity or something like that. And the day that Mars squared my natal Mars, the car got towed, and it got impounded because the plates had expired. And what’s funny is I didn’t know about that at the time, because Mars is in the 12th house. So sometimes it’s like, something can happen and I won’t find out about it until later, which is a frequent occurrence with that 12th house thing. But it was a surprisingly literal transit. The positive side about it is it resolved the car issue, because now it’s just a non-issue and they’ve taken it away and like, I don’t need to get it back, because I didn’t want the car and it was almost ready to break down anyway, because transiting Jupiter was on 19 degrees of Capricorn simultaneously at the same time. So I was having both an extremely negative transit, where the car literally was like, snatched away unexpectedly, and I had an extremely positive transit where it was like, it resolved the car issue for me even if it wasn’t like, what I was originally shooting for. So talking about literal transits there. It’s pretty good. 

KS: It’s a good one. 

AC: Oh, one thing I will say is that – as someone who watches mixed martial arts competitions pretty regularly, they’re extra fun during Mars retrogrades because you get a lot more unexpected results. So I’m looking forward to some of the big events. 

There was a decent one last Saturday, and in a very Mars retrograde theme, two veteran fighters, after watching their performance, everyone was like, yeah, they should retire. Right? Which is very Mars — 

KS: Oh, interesting. 

AC: — retrograde. They’re like, you know, you had a good run, and either your body’s not there or your mind’s not there. Maybe it’s time to hang it up. And that was literally the main event and co-main event from last Saturday. 

And so I remember we watched, when we were watching UFC competitions during the last Mars retrograde about two years ago, there were so many surprising results. There were so many underdogs being victorious. It was much more shocking; it wasn’t just like, yeah, they’re slightly better, so they kind of won. And I remember Kait saying, like, “I like watching this a lot more when Mars is retrograde,” because crazy shit happens. Which makes sense. It’s more unexpected. It’s Mars in the most, we could say, during the most unorthodox portion of the cycle. So I look forward to seeing that. 

CB: Yeah. And I really just encourage everyone to think about and look at what house Mars is going retrograde in in your chart, and sometimes you’ll see – because I’ve had two or three different manifestations of that transit so far in those house significations. And in the year ahead horoscopes that I did for all of 2020, Leisa Schaim and I went through for each rising sign and gave some delineations of what Mars retrograde could look like and some of the significations it could hit during this part of the year. So people should check it out. 

All right. So let’s jump into the very first thing that happens in October, which is right away on the very first of the month we have our first lunation, which is a Full Moon in the sign of Aries. So that’s really highlighting some signs, the cardinal signs, that are already receiving a lot of tension and a lot of attention this year. Here is the chart for that Full Moon where we see the Full Moon will happen at about nine degrees of Aries. And then only a day later, Mars of course will then conjoin transiting Mars, which will be at 24 degrees of Aries, and it’ll square Jupiter and Pluto and Saturn, which are all towards the end of Capricorn. So for a lot of people, having a Full Moon in Aries in the sign where Mars has already been retrograding is gonna lead to a sort of culmination of events that have been building up or a highlighting of that part of your life or that part of your chart, especially if that’s been active lately due to the Mars retrograde. 

KS: It’s definitely a very amplifying type Full Moon in that it’s just bringing a huge dose of this Mars retro in Aries vibe that we’re already so infused with. It’s like, let’s just make it even more. 

CB: Yeah. And it’s funny that it’s, like, I still have Chiron in the chart because the last episode I did was on Chiron with Melanie Reinhart, and it is kind of interesting if one uses asteroids or pays attention to Chiron that the Full Moon is pretty closely will be within two degrees conjunct Chiron, which is currently transiting seven degrees of Aries at this time. 

Are you guys big Chiron fans? 

KS: I’m not using it these days in my charts, but I know that, you know, other people do, and you had a very popular episode on it recently. 

CB: Yes. Thank you. That was a very good political answer. Austin, you’re similarly not as enthused with Chiron. I used to be; I used to be super into Chiron for like, the first four years of my studies and then I stopped doing asteroids for a good 10 or 15 years. 

AC: I mean, it’s not an asteroid, right? It’s a — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — planetoid. It’s not part of the asteroid belt — 

KS: It’s its own thing. 

CB: It’s a minor planet. 

AC: Yeah. Well it’s — 

CB: Or a comet, actually. I learned it’s got a dual – they’re arguing about its association and some astronomers are still classifying it as like, a comet at this point. 

AC: Like a captured comet? It’s considerably larger than comets. Anyway, I look at it. I treat it sort of not as a fixed star, but with not dissimilar rules. If there’s like, a natal angle or planet closely conjoined it, I will take that into consideration; I often see that, I see it contributing meaningfully to what’s going on in a person’s life. So yeah. Like, it’s not priority; it’s not, you know, the Sun or the Moon or Jupiter. But it’s a thing that does stuff!

CB: Yeah. I think we can all agree on that – that it’s a thing that does stuff. 

AC: Well, not everyone agrees that it does stuff. 

CB: That’s a good point. Well, I’ve recently come around and I agree again, and I always knew that it was a thing that does stuff. I’ve been refamiliarized with it as a result of the past few months, and I think I can see now if – depending on what your focus is and what type of astrology you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to accomplish in natal readings how it could be a lot more useful, especially if you’re doing more therapeutic or psychological readings, perhaps that would be much more useful. And it’s sort of re-interested me in that part of modern astrology in a way. It’s probably not something I’ll continue to look at regularly, but I could definitely see how one could do some interesting work with it. And it certainly, at least in my view, is relevant in doing something. 

All right. But let’s get back to the actual forecast. How are you feeling about this Full Moon, Austin?

AC: Let’s see. Not looking forward to it? 

KS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. There’s a lot of those — 

AC: I’m feeling about it — 

CB: — things this month. 

AC: Yeah. I wouldn’t say apprehensive; I’m actually – I guess this is appropriate for all this Aries stuff – I’m feeling impatient. I’d like to just get all this over with. Like, I’ve been looking at this for a year and being like, oh, that’s gonna be terrible — 

CB: Right. 

AC: Can we just do this? I’m rather tired of thinking about what it’s gonna be like. It’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah – I’ve got a pretty good idea. Can we just do this and then get to the other side? 

I would say that this looks inflammatory to me. You know, it’s – and there’s the Full Moon itself — 

CB: That’s a good term. 

AC: — where we’ve got the Moon and the Sun both at nine degrees cardinal. But then it’s the day after the Full Moon when the Moon conjoins Mars and squares Saturn and Pluto that I think will be more unpleasant. You know, because that’s really – that’s the trouble spot, right, is late cardinal. You know, end of Aries, end of Capricorn, et cetera, et cetera. And so anything – I believe that was one of my proposed titles for last month was “Oh my god, something’s at the end of – the Moon’s at the end of a cardinal sign again” September. That applies slightly less so to October, but you know, it’s that Mars-Saturn-Pluto configuration that’s really the fount of all woe in October as well as September. And so yeah, the Full Moon fires that up. 

And what’s interesting – I was thinking about that, I was like, oh, well, the next day is actually gonna be rougher. And then what’s funny is the next day, the Moon conjoins Uranus and opposes Mercury, which really takes us straight into the other theme for the month, because really we’ve got two themes for October. Right? We’ve got Mars-Saturn-Pluto, and then we have this rather extended Mercury-Uranus opposition that then gets further emphasized by the Full Moon at the end of the month, right? So it’s really Mercury-Uranus surprises, disruptions to communications and transportations. One might even say that there are some October surprises which are suggested by the — 

CB: Yeah. That’s my — 

AC: — by the astrology. 

CB: — working title for this month is October surprise, not just due to the Mercury opposing Uranus off and on all month and stationing retrograde opposite Uranus, which would almost be enough in and of itself to do that. But then discovering that there’s also a Full Moon in Taurus that is almost exactly conjunct Uranus at the very end of the month. So there’s like, this recurring unexpected surprise and disruption theme that’s happening off and on most of October. 

AC: Yeah. I mean, and so we have that, right, with the Full Moon firing up the Mars-Saturn-Pluto, right? That’s – I don’t know what we’d call that, like, ongoing shitshow. And then – which we had all of September, so it’s not new; it’s just more of that. But then what’s novel in October that wasn’t part of September is the Mercury-Uranus thing. And then that’s fired up on the 3rd. So we’re introduced to the month’s themes pretty clearly pretty early. And there isn’t really a lot that disrupts that. There’s really not much that gets in the way of those themes. If anything, they get further intensified the further we get into the month. 

Ooh, I like that – somebody just suggested as an episode title “Trick or Trick.” 

KS: “Trick or Trick.” Yeah, there’s no treats coming! 

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about how Mars is so late in cardinal in Aries, and Uranus is relatively early in Taurus. So we have this sort of 36-hour window each month where the Moon goes through late Aries and then early Taurus, and it’s like, back-to-back, the Moon’s with Mars and then the Moon’s with Uranus. And that’s kind of just been in the background, but that’s really amplified this October with the two different Full Moons. One is, you know, going to be in the same sign as Mars, and the other one then is conjunct Uranus. So that idea of things being certainly under the Aries Full Moon, there’s a volatility, combustible, impulsive reckless tone. I think, Austin, you had used the word “inflammatory,” which I think is also a really great word for that Full Moon. 

AC: Yeah, that’s one of my favorite like, go-to Mars words, because it resonates both internally and externally. Like, Kelly, I know —

KS: Yeah. 

AC: — you’ve done the vocab building that is writing dailies or weeklies or whatever for years. You’re like, oh my god, come up with like, I need more descriptive words for Mars. I can’t just say “fiery Mars” a thousand times. 

KS: No. Yeah, inflammatory’s a good one. 

CB: That would be a good book, like, somebody to write a thesaurus of astrology combinations and different combinations of words that you can use for them.

KS: Yes. 

AC: One of the – so I thought I’d explored them all several years ago, but I gave a talk down in the southwest and we stayed with Catherine Baskett, who’s a great astrologer down there. And she used the term “peppery” for Mars, and I love that. I was like, oh my god. 

KS: That’s a good one! 

AC: It’s another word! I’d never thought of peppery! 

KS: Yeah! That’s fantastic, because peppery can be moderate, or extreme. And everybody gets when they, you know, like a bit or pepper or too much spice. When you said “peppery,” it made me think of spice – spicy – and — 

AC: Yeah. 

KS: — everybody’s spice preference — 

AC: Well, and I use spicy — 

KS: — level is different! 

CB: October is like when you’re trying to put a little bit of pepper into your dish, but then somebody’s unscrewed the cap — 

KS: The top! 

CB: — and the entire thing falls out. 

AC: Yeah! Yeah, yeah. 

KS: That’s exactly it! 

CB: So that is the Mars retrograde. 

KS: Yes. 

CB: And here’s a — 

AC: Ghost pepper month. 

CB: Ghost – yeah. 

AC: Ooh, ghost pepper October? 

KS: Ghost pepper October! 

AC: Supernatural theme. 

KS: There’s some great – I mean, this is definitely crowdsourcing titles coming through here from our live audience. 

CB: I like that. This graphic for the video viewers, Kyle from Archetypal Explorer whipped up using his program that we showed off last month, but it shows when Mars hits some of those exact squares with the planets in Capricorn this month. So Mars squares Saturn going exact at the end of September. Then Mars square Pluto around the second week of October. And finally Mars square Jupiter around the third week of October. And interestingly, this month, at the bottom he shows when Mars hits its maximum retrograde period in terms of its speed, and that’s also happening right in the middle of October. So that’s one of the reasons why we’re really emphasizing and focusing on this notion of the inflammatory or the peppery nature of Mars being really ramped up and intensified this month. 

KS: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of it as a general theme. For me, the two standouts when the Mars retro in Aries vibe is really amplified are the Full Moon at the top of the month in Aries, and the other one is when the Sun and Mars oppose around the middle of the month. That feels also like a very peppery, spicy type of day. 

CB: Yeah. 

KS: I know we’re not there yet, but those two really stand out for Mars for me this month. 

CB: That’s the exact halfway point. 

AC: So just to go back to – yeah, so we’ve got this Mars, and Mars provides intemperate heat, right?

KS: Yeah. 

AC: Which is peppery, which is inflammatory, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, the offal that has been provided this year and will continue to be on demand for this month is really the interaction between Mars and Saturn. 

KS: True. 

AC: You could also argue Pluto. But it’s not just one malefic; it’s two very strong malefics in contest with each other, right? You know, if — 

CB: Right. 

AC: It’s like, so let’s say that there are – you know, there’s an army encamped nearby, and if you get too near them, they shoot you with their machine guns. You can just not go near that. But when there are two malefics – and this is the, you know, an alternate version of the traditional metaphor besiegement, right? When a planet is stuck between two malefics. World War I style, you’re stuck in no man’s land between two armies, and so there’s kind of nowhere to go; you just have to, you know, stay low and maneuver because there’s not – there isn’t shelter or safety, right? And I was thinking about this Mars-Saturn thing when we were having the wildfires, because in the style of Vedic that I’ve learned from Freedom Cole, when Mars and Saturn are configured, and this principle is extended to some other planets and points, but in a certain way, we have what’s called a curse condition, which is different than a normal affliction. And the idea is that to get a curse condition, right, which is very similar to being besieged, which is you can’t escape it, you need a fire malefic, which is Mars, and in that tradition Saturn is a wind malefic. And they’re like, you know, and so the way I was taught that is you need both fire and wind. Right? You need to set something on fire, and then you need the wind to push that fire everywhere. Right? And so — 

KS: To make it as dangerous and destructive as possible. 

AC: Right. And so what’s – well, it’s kind of hilarious depending on your mood, as I woke up on the day of Mars right on the station on the 8th of September, and they were like, yeah, there’s some fires. And because of the incredible wind, it’s much more dangerous than it normally would, and I was like, oh! It’s the fire-wind curse dynamic! Like, this is another point for astrology being shockingly literal in 2020. I was like, yeah, that was the metaphor that we were taught for, you know, we could say that’s kind of a Vedic parashara-inspired version of besiegement, right, where it’s not just an affliction; it’s a special, like, you’re stuck. And it was funny, because there were fires in multiple directions, and we were looking at escape routes. We’re like, oh, okay, well, we can’t go that way because – you know, we can’t go south on the I-5, oh, and we can’t go north or we’d have to head out west on the 238. And that’s what those kind of configurations feel like, right? And it’s just important – I feel like this is important to bring up, because this isn’t just Mars. If it was just Mars, it would be a pain in the ass, and it’s not just Saturn. Right? The great difficulties of this year and this season are the result of being between a rock and a hot place. 

KS: Yeah. One thing – and this is kind of relevant to specifically October – I’m interested when we get Mars and Saturn separated by about three degrees, which kicks in around the 10th or the 11th of the month. It doesn’t remove the Mars-Saturn stuff; it’s still there, but I’m wondering if we see like, a shift in intensity with that just becoming less degree-based and a little bit more sign-based. We may not see any change, but I’m just holding a curiosity about that, because we’ve been in really tight degree-based Mars-Saturn stuff since about the middle of August. 

CB: Yeah. It’s hard because we start off with that energy so strong at the beginning of the month since it’s exact on the 29th of September. And the other thing that’s happening is not just Saturn stations, but also Pluto stations on the 4th of October. So there’s an intensification of that energy of Pluto there in Capricorn and it’s the third, the final of three planets – starting with Jupiter, then Saturn, and then finally Pluto – that station direct in Capricorn and begin moving forward again, indicating a sort of intensification of that energy and Mars squaring all of them still around that time. But then you’re right, at least it does start to finally get some distance from Pluto – or Mars starts to get some distance from Saturn after that. 

KS: Yeah. We do have — 

AC: You know, I would — 

KS: — the Pluto station. Sorry. Yeah, Austin? 

AC: Oh no, I was just gonna say, Kelly, I think that I would agree that we would get some relief from that getting further than three degrees out if Pluto wasn’t right there. I don’t know whether Pluto is a fire malefic or a wind malefic or what, but — 

KS: It’s definitely not a benefic. 

AC: — it doesn’t help. 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: And then we have the Sun heading towards — 

KS: We do have the Sun — 

AC: — that t-square —

KS: Yeah. 

AC: — and all that. 

CB: What is our — 

KS: The Sun — 

AC: So but I mean — 

CB: — just to give people some keywords again really quickly, what are our Mars square Saturn keywords? Like, frustration I know is a major one that we used last month. Like being between a rock and a hard place. What else? 

KS: Yeah, there’s a lot of pressure. The competing – Mars-Saturn I really see as this competing pressure between immediate things and long-term things and feeling like your time or your energy or your resources are really spread thin between what must be done today and what you’re trying to plan for or provide for in the future. So there is this real pressure that can almost be visceral; it can weigh you down in your body so that you can feel older or more burdened. 

CB: Okay. So that’s — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — the main theme at the beginning of the month.

AC: Yeah, well, and it pretty much runs all month. Like, it doesn’t – it loosens a little bit and then tightens for other reasons. It’s not really – we’re not getting away from Mars-Saturn. 

One thing I would add with Mars-Saturn is that there’s a – and this connects to things like frustration and that conflict between long-term priorities and short-term actions, but from a different angles. I would say that those configurations make it feel like there’s not enough space, there’s not enough time, there’s not enough room to move, right, as that pressure is like, everything’s cramped into a smaller space or timeframe than it would naturally take up. Right? Like, oh, you know, I need to do this – if I just had more time. Right? Or if I just had less on my mind. If there was just less, you know, whatever. And the lack of sufficient time space is a consistent framework for all of those experiences. 

Does that make sense? 

CB: Yeah, totally. 

KS: Yeah, that’s a beautiful way of putting it. 

CB: So that’s a major ongoing theme. It looks like the Mars-Pluto square that you mentioned, Austin, goes exact around October 8th, October 9th, from 22 Aries to 22 Capricorn. Other than that, that starts getting us into the next week where really the main focus becomes in the second and third week becomes that Mercury retrograde. So I know we’ve already talked about that a little bit, but just to return back to that discussion, Mercury first exactly opposes Uranus it looks like on October 7th. So it’s the first of two Mercury-Uranus oppositions, but then instead of just like, continuing on its merry way like it normally does, Mercury slows down immediately after that and then stations retrograde on the 13th and 14th at 11 degrees of Scorpio within about two degrees of an opposition with Uranus. 

So that means that it’s gonna prolong and basically hold that one note of – if this was like, a musical instrument, it’s like, holding that single note of Mercury opposing Uranus. So this can be things – what are some of our keywords for this, Kelly, of Mercury opposite Uranus? It’s like, disruption in communication, unexpected news or reporting or developments? 

KS: Yeah. I think there’s a mix. Funnily enough, I have a soft spot for Mercury-Uranus aspects, even the — 

CB: Okay. 

KS: — hard ones! 

CB: Yeah. 

KS: Because there’s something about the mental breakthrough quality of like, your mind just kind of blowing open and seeing something from a totally different perspective, which can be really invigorating. But of course, this isn’t just a usual Mercury-Uranus aspect because we’re gonna get two exact hits, but Mercury is very slow-moving the entire time. So it might feel like this constant sense of being bombarded with new or out-of-the-box or unexpected surprising or shocking information. And I do think it is gonna create a level of logistical chaos or tumultuousness where you think you’ve got a plan, and then something changes. So some of that classic Mercury retrograde stuff — 

CB: Right. 

KS: — might seem like it’s going on, you know, the first Mercury-Uranus opposition is exact on October 7. We have the station of Mercury retrograde on the 13th. And then we have the second Mercury-Uranus aspect later in the month on the 19th. So there is this real sense of there’ll be a level of some maybe excitement or that’s interesting news, but there’s also gonna be some of that topsy-turvy shock factor with what’s coming out, I think. 

CB: Yeah. It looks like the 19th is the second Mercury-Uranus opposition at nine degrees of Scorpio to nine degrees of Taurus. 

KS: Yeah. 

CB: Austin, we were just coming up with like, Mercury opposite Uranus keywords. Or what were you gonna say, Kelly? 

KS: Just the Mercury-Uranus oppositions, the two of them are at exactly the same degrees. So the first one is at nine Scorpio-Taurus, and the second one is at nine Scorpio-Taurus. It’s very much hitting that particular part of Scorpio-Taurus. 

CB: Okay. Yeah. So if you have anything at nine degrees of fixed signs, that could be a really important Mercury retrograde for you. Obviously already you’re getting hit by Uranus as a major long-term outer planet transit to begin with, but now having a Mercury retrograde station so close to those degrees could really highlight that at that time, or act as a trigger event. 

KS: Yeah. Austin, you had really focused on this a little bit – was there anything you wanted to throw in? 

AC: I don’t know that I have anything particularly surprising to say — 

KS: To say. 

AC: — about it, right? You know, it’s shocking communications. You know, there’s the – you just add disruption, shock, potentially innovative to any of the Mercury words. Like, it’s a disruption of delivery, of communication, of travel. Shocking message. A disruptive communication. And sometimes, you know, as I believe you mentioned, sometimes Mercury-Uranus can be really good for getting you out of thinking about things the same way that you’ve been doing it that hasn’t been working. Taking like, an entirely different angle on an ongoing situation. You know, breaking up old and stagnant thoughts. And sometimes that’s pleasant, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you’re like, oh, I’ve been doing it wrong the whole time. 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: And sometimes it’s more gentle. But yeah, it’s — 

CB: Well, it’s funny, because this is a Mercury retrograde in Scorpio, so we’ve gotta like, layer in how is Scorpio finding new things? It’s like an investigation or like a digging into something and uncovering of something, even something that was hidden or something that was secret that suddenly causes a disruption when maybe it becomes exposed or something like that. 

AC: Yeah. And it’s Mars-ruled, right? And we know — 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: — what Mars is doing. So infuriating surprises? 

CB: Right. So one of the things I’ve been paying attention to this month, of course, and one of our themes this month is like, October surprise. But one of the things that’s gonna be ongoing, at least in the US of course, is the presidential debates where there’s gonna be three presidential debates as well as a vice presidential debates. And I was looking to try to pay attention to whether any of these aligned with that, and the one that aligns with – there’s two things, two ways that it aligns. But one that it aligns with as far as our current discussion is it looks like October 7th is actually the single vice presidential debate. So that’s the first exact opposition of Mercury-Uranus. And I think that’s the only date that this perfectly aligns with, so that’s one of the ones where we’d expect maybe some sort of surprise or some sort of unexpected disruption coming out of the VP debate with the first Mercury-Uranus opposition being exact that same day. 

The only other one that’s kind of close is October 15th looks like it’s the second presidential debate, assuming that that happens and that’s kind of close to the other opposition. Or should I say — 

KS: October 15? 

CB: Yeah.

KS: Yeah. 

CB: Or the station, I guess. It’s kind of in between the two. 

KS: In between the two. 

CB: The other debate that lines up, interestingly, with something is the very first presidential debate, which is on September 29th, which is weirdly right on the Mars-Saturn square and Saturn stationing direct. So a lot of those keywords about like, tension and conflict or two extreme forces being in a combative pose against each other – it’s interesting how that lines up on the very first presidential debate between Biden and Trump. 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: Yeah, it makes sense. 

CB: Yeah. All right. So that’s one of our main themes, and that’s taking us through the first couple of weeks of the month. 

Next I think we should talk about the second lunation of the month, which is a New Moon that takes place in Libra on the 16th. 

AC: Yeah. Well, and that – so that takes us into a period of time where the Sun is between an opposition to Mars, which is important because that is the dead center of the Mars retrograde, and so we’ve got that a few days before. And then the Sun moves on to square Pluto and then square Saturn. And so that puts the Sun in a classically besieged position for, you know, most of a week. 

CB: Yeah. 

KS: Yeah. 

CB: That is pretty wild. 

KS: It is intense, yeah. The Sun besiegement, I think, is about October 13 to 18. We did have Mercury in this space – or we will have Mercury! This is one of the reasons we’re recording the show a little early. Mercury will be in that space for about 36 hours, September 23, 24, and the Sun stays a little longer because Mars and Saturn are just a little bit further apart. 

CB: It’s really interesting how on the 13th, the Sun hits that opposition with Mars, which means that that’s the halfway point through the Mars cycle; that’s the dead center of the Mars retrograde at 21 Aries. And then simultaneously, Mercury is stationing retrograde in Scorpio. So it’s like we’ve got those two pivotal points in both of those cycles happening simultaneously on October 13th. And then yeah, that does kind of open up a very weird stage for several days where the Sun is sort of in between the rays of Mars and Saturn, which is not a very happy place for it, from it looks like October 13th all the way until it completes its square just after the New Moon and then begins moving on after the 18th. 17th, 18th. 

KS: So the New Moon in Libra kind of falls in that place, and that adds a level of complication and pressure to the New Moon itself. And then the New Moon ruler is Venus, which is itself in the middle of an opposition to Neptune. So this is not your usual New Moon in Libra, and there is a little bit more that may be stirred up, you know, with the Sun being besieged. And then you’ve got the confusion or the “what’s real, what’s not” with the lunation ruler, Venus, dealing with Neptune. 

CB: Yeah. Look at this New Moon at 23 degrees of Libra, opposed by Mars and this sort of fiery tension and anger and conflict of that, but then also closely square Pluto and some of the issues with control and manipulation, and also applying to the square with Saturn and those feelings of restriction and duty and obligation, but also limitation and maybe being held back to some extent. It’s all packed into this New Moon that sets the stage or lays the foundation for the next couple of weeks at least after that, or really the next month. 

AC: Yeah. It’s a New Moon trying to plant that New Moon seed in between the trenches. 

CB: Right. 

KS: I mean, it’s like trying to plant seeds in barren soil. Or you’ve thrown seeds on rocks kind of thing. It’s not the most — 

AC: While you’re being shot at. 

KS: While you’re being shot at! Like, the seeds are falling out of your pockets while you’re running from gunfire or something! Yeah. So it’s not the typical New Moon that you might do, you know, exciting, inspirational New Moon-y things on, I don’t think. 

AC: But you might, you know, there’s – you can set as an intention protecting things. Like keeping things from being damaged — 

KS: That’s a – yeah. 

AC: — right? It may not be a good time — 

KS: That’s beautiful. 

AC: — to like, to grow new good things. But getting your head straight on how you’re going to minimize the damage which is running around the world during this period of time is worth your time. Right? 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: Removing a negative and adding a positive are both net positives. 

KS: Yes. So the keywords that came to my mind, Austin, as you were saying that was pruning, preservation, and protection. So the idea of rather than trying to start a lot of new things, what do I need to protect that’s already around me, and what maybe do I need to stop or limit or curb in some way, if we think about what restrictions Saturn might be productive for. 

CB: And it brings up – so the ruler of the New Moon is Venus, and it’s one of the few planets that’s kind of swooping in to help out a few times this month, or at least attempting to, as it travels through Virgo and is like, one of the only planets that’s not getting caught up in all of this weird either cardinal stuff that’s very tense in between Libra and Capricorn and Aries, or isn’t getting caught up in a harsh way in the Mercury-Uranus opposition. But instead it, for example, on the 12th, Venus sextiles Mercury and trines Uranus. Or later in the month on it looks like the 19th, the 18th and 19th, Venus is making a very nice trine with Jupiter, which is one of the few kind of positive aspects to look forward to this month, although unfortunately it’s not a completely clean nice aspect because it’s opposing Uranus at 18 degrees of Pisces almost simultaneously, which is kind of making things a little bit less clear, a little bit more nebulous, a little bit more tricky than I might like with the Venus-Jupiter trine. But it’s one of the few offsetting sort of positive factors I feel like this month. 

KS: Yeah, the Venus-Jupiter is definitely – like, it’s there, it’s not the most lush Venus-Jupiter trine. But it’s still part of the piece. 

CB: Yeah. So Venus going through Virgo this month, and it’s pretty much spending the entire month there until the 27th. But that is one of our transits if anybody has any personal things in Virgo that could be receiving positive conjunctions from that. 

All right. So aside from the New Moon in Libra on the 16th, after that, we pretty much start rapidly getting into the final phases of the month. And we get the ingress of the Sun, which moves from Scorpio to Libra on the – or moves from Libra to Scorpio on the 22nd. 

KS: Yes. Scorpio season begins. 

CB: Scorpio season begins. Shortly after that, we get the halfway point in the Mercury retrograde cycle when Mercury conjoins the Sun, it looks like on October 25th. So Sun-Mercury conjunction at two degrees of Scorpio. And then just a couple of days later, we get this interesting shift that happens simultaneously when both Mercury retrogrades back into Libra and then right at the same time on the same day, Venus ingresses into Libra. So there’s this sudden like, shift on the same day on the 27th of October of both of those inner planets suddenly emphasizing the same sign from either end of it. And suddenly we get — 

AC: That’s really interesting. 

CB: Yeah. Like, that’s gonna be a shift. There’s some sort of shift occurring right there on that day. Because then by moving into that sign, of course, we then get both inner planets that previously weren’t now suddenly start emphasizing and highlighting again one of the other cardinal signs, which are the major signs in this part of the year that are getting all of those tense aspects between all of the squares between Capricorn and Aries. 

KS: Yeah, it’s quite striking. I mean, it’s always interesting when you see personal planets both decide to jump into the same sign at the same time, and then with Mercury being retrograde, it’s a big dignity change for Venus, and normally we’d be super celebratory about that. But given the other planets that she’s now going to form more dynamic aspects with, it’s definitely a tempered Venus in Libra for 2020. 

CB: Yeah. And of course — 

AC: And – go ahead, Chris. 

CB: I was just gonna say of course what this entire Mercury retrograde is leading up to, which we mentioned previously but we should reiterate here because it becomes very quickly more relevant, is it’s stationing direct at 25 degrees of Libra on November 3rd and November 4th, which just happens to line up exactly with election day in the US. So we’ve got an entire Mercury retrograde buildup which suddenly stations direct on election day. 

AC: Well, and how interesting is it that we have a shocking number of planets in cardinal signs, right? Like, we have literally every visible planet other than the Sun and the Moon in cardinal signs for a while there. Right? 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: And if we’re talking about like, momentous events, right, and cardinal signs are supposed to create new situations, not inherently towards the positive or the negative. But you know, I think we can all agree that what happens in the fourth quarter of 2020 is going to set us up for a lot of what we’re gonna be doing for a while. And so it’s just interesting to see a huge preponderance of cardinal signs there, or of planets in cardinal signs, right? We have Saturn, Jupiter, Pluto, Mars, Venus, Mercury in cardinal – and then the Moon, you know, one-third of the time. 

CB: Yeah. Well, even the Moon later on election day actually moves into a cardinal sign, speaking of. Because it goes into Cancer. 

KS: Yes. 

AC: Very nice. 

CB: So – and of course, we talked about on the forecast last month about how the last time in the US there was a Mercury direct station on election day was, of course, 20 years ago in the 2000 election where there was a hung election, and the result wasn’t finally decided until many weeks later and the question of whether we’re gonna be in a similar situation with this upcoming election.

KS: Yeah. 

AC: I mean, I think that’s a given at this point. I was thinking about it yesterday or earlier today, and I was like, you know, the impressive prediction at this point would be figuring out when that’s resolved. Right? 

KS: When there’s a clear result. Yeah. 

AC: Right? Like, you know, that’s almost harder than picking who wins, because that’s literally a coin flip. Right? Like, you could accidentally be right about that, but it would be more challenging and perhaps more impressive to figure out when that coin stops balancing on its edge and then falls heads or tails, right? Because it’s like, well, does it take until – you know, does Mars direct do that? No, I don’t — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — think so. Right? Mars direct, the thing about – and one thing to note — 

CB: Well, and let’s say the date on that. So that’s — 

AC: — I don’t wanna get too far ahead. 

CB: — Mars — 

AC: It’s Friday — 

CB: — station direct — 

AC: — the 13th — 

CB: — on the 13th. 

AC: — of November. 

CB: So let’s state that as a candidate, though, because I think we all agree that could be a candidate, even if you’re saying no you don’t think that’s the final one, let’s just throw that out there. 

AC: I think that’s when the war really starts. I think that’s actually – Mars direct stations, the direct station of Mars is not a cessation of conflict. It is a change in the direction of conflict in a more direct, forward-moving direction. So I would say there’s no way that that’s – that doesn’t say “accord.” I don’t think there’s any chance of that. And then we look — 

CB: Okay. 

AC: — to the — 

CB: I just wanna say — 

AC: — eclipses that come later. Go ahead. 

CB: It could be – let’s just like, put together a list of major turning points as potential important turning points for whatever the hell happens on election day. So we have election day itself, which is like, Mars stationing direct – or Mercury stationing direct. We have Mars stationing direct the following week on the 13th, and that seems like a very important turning point that could be tied in with everything. 

AC: Yeah, I think it will be tied in. Again, I think it’ll be an intensification of the dispute around the election results. And then we have the pair of eclipses which follow that in November. We have the Full Moon – the lunar eclipse – at the end of November, which as we noted in the year ahead happens to take place with the Sun and Moon both tightly conjunct royal stars and so seemed even then to absolutely have something to do with the election. And then we’ve got a solar two weeks later on the 14th of December, and then right after that, Jupiter and Saturn both ingress into Aquarius. It might take the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction to actually land whatever the results are. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, I – we were trying to plan like, when our upcoming forecasts were, and we had to look back at 2000 and realize it took like, six weeks. It wasn’t until the middle of December that the 2000 election was finally settled by the Supreme Court. And that does put us in Jupiter-Saturn territory, where Saturn moves into Aquarius on the 17th and Jupiter moves into Aquarius on the 19th, and then they both conjoin right after that on the 21st. I’m not sure if it will take that long again this time. I mean, I hope not, but definitely those are good markers to pay attention to. 

AC: Yeah. I think those are the markers. 

CB: That does bring us to the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, though, because that’s something I’ve been really thinking about a lot and reflecting on and maybe revising some of my previous feelings just in light of everything that’s going on where I know in the year ahead forecast that we recorded last November and released in December of 2019 for the entire next year of 2020, we saw all these really tense aspects coming up and we saw the pile-up of planets that was gonna be occurring in March and the Mars-Saturn conjunction in March and April and how that looked really tough. And we’ve seen how that worked out. Then we were not looking forward to the Mars retrograde in Aries, which was squaring all those same Capricorn planets over the fall that we’re still in the first third of now. And the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction was one thing that we often ended up kind of trying to frame as like, something more positive to look forward to at the end of the year. And we could all see that it’s gonna be a major shift and like every astrologer in the world knows that that’s a huge shift at the very least because it’s a somewhat rare conjunction that only happens every 20 years between Jupiter and Saturn itself. But then more significantly, it’s also Jupiter and Saturn switching into a new triplicity where they’re gonna start conjoining in air signs now for the next 200 something years, whereas they’d been conjoining in earth signs for the past 200 years. So we can see it being a century-defining shift in that way as well. And while I still think there’s many things to be optimistic about, I’m also a little bit more worried about that being a significant shift that doesn’t necessarily have to be positive for everybody. And it’s made me start rethinking that in terms of like, how much optimism we should attribute to that versus if we should be a little bit more cautious about saying that this is definitely gonna be a great shift necessarily. 

AC: Yeah. Well, I think there’s a lot to say about that. So I’ll start with one piece. 

So in his works – what are they – Ben Dykes translated a bunch of old stuff, as we all know. And he put together two volumes of mundane material maybe five years ago. And in one of those, he uncovered something really interesting about the way that Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions were treated. And that was that in addition to the sign of their visible – where they conjoin visibly in the sky, the astrologers who were using these techniques also looked at their mean conjunction, which is a mathematically idealized conjunction. What’s interesting about the mean conjunctions is that they’re perfectly regular. So you just have that 200 years, and then elemental switch, and 200 years, and then elemental switch, whereas the visible conjunctions are a little eccentric. And I was really interested in this, and so several years ago I was like, oh, which is the right one? And there was some question, right, because according to the mean conjunction version of Jupiter-Saturn, we moved into the age of air in 2000. And if we look at how digitized things have become since then and how much the air element has in many ways become the dominant element, that makes a lot of sense. But the visible conjunction was in Taurus. And so what’s interesting about this Jupiter-Saturn in 2020 is that it brings both of the two different measurements into alignment. There’s no disagreement between the abstract mathematical and the apparent. And so I’ve been looking at the periods of time where those two cycles are in disagreement, and then when they’re in agreement as sort of interstitial periods. And sometimes those interstitial periods will run for 60 years. 

In our case, we entered a divergence where it looks like air from one perspective and earth from another perspective in 1981. And so we’ve been in between earth and air since then, but with our conjunction at the end of this year, both are in agreement. And so this is sort of like, you know, it makes me think of the William Gibson quote from, I don’t know, 20 years ago, which he said that the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Right? Whereas now heading into the end of 2020, here’s the future! Like, everybody can see what we’re going into, or at least what the conflicts will be. And there’s a bunch of other stuff. But that’s part of – it’s not just a Jupiter-Saturn, it is an agreement. Like, we are actually totally here from multiple perspectives. And that’s absolutely what it feels like, right? Like, nobody can dispute that we’re here, and it might one dystopia and it might be another, but we’re in the future. We’re in the science fiction novels that were written in the early ‘80s about the cyberpunk dystopias. Anyway, I’ll end my rant. But there’s a lot more – there’s another two hours of stuff to say about this between all of us. I just wanted to start with that. We’re here now, or we’re almost there. And no, it’s not an improvement. Because the Jupiter-Saturn cycle is not vertical. It’s not about ascending and things improving. Like, they’re elements. They’re cyclical. Right? Air is not superior to earth; they have different qualities. 

KS: They just do different things. They represent different experiences and different ways of living, different ways of governing, all of those types of things. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: And some things rise and other things fall during the different periods. And we’re definitely in a period where there’s about to be a major shift. But that’s what started making me nervous is I decided to go back, especially just because some of the discussions and some of the disruptions and the interruptions and sometimes like, tampering with the entire democratic process that’s already occurring in this election started making me nervous seeing that big shift come up and previously treating it more optimistically. I started thinking back to 2016 and hoping I myself wasn’t having a blindspot about being overly optimistic about that conjunction coming up and knowing that there was about to be a major shift that would have worldwide implications. So one of the things I was doing was going back and looking at previous shifts and previous conjunctions and one of the ones that started making me more nervous was seeing what happened around the time when the Roman Empire went from a democracy to something that was led by a specific emperor – basically when the age of the emperors began. And that happened, according to most historians, around 27 BCE when Octavian became the ruler of Rome basically and the Senate granted him overarching power and gave him the title of Augustus. And the thing that I thought was kind of startling that I noticed about that is right around that time in 26 BCE, there was also a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that occurred in the opposite sign from the one we’re going through now at two degrees of Leo. And it was also closely conjunct a conjunction with Pluto, which was at the end of the previous cardinal sign in Cancer. 

So I thought that was a little weird, because that’s almost like, the exact not opposite – it’s a very similar thing that we’re going through now of a triple conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, just taking place in the opposite signs of Aquarius and Capricorn. And that will go exact, of course, later this year in December. So I wanted to state that as a thing to sort of like, encourage people, let’s say, to not be complacent and not assume things will go one way or another, but perhaps to try to be active, especially if you are political, in the political process and perhaps encouraging everybody to get out and vote because it could make a difference in this instance. You know, whatever – whoever it is that you’re voting for. 

AC: Yeah — 

CB: What do you think about — 

AC: — it’s a great find. 

CB: Yeah. I hope not, but it could be. We’ll see. What are you thinking? Have you had any renewed thoughts about the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, Kelly? 

KS: I mean, one of the things that’s been playing in my mind is the fact that it’s such a large cycle that’s changing. You know, we’ve got, loosely speaking, the end of a 20-year cycle and the end of the longer Jupiter-Saturn earth elemental cycle, which is sort of 150 years plus. And it’s been – seeing how much tumultuous stuff has gone on this year, of course combined with Saturn-Pluto, we do get Saturn-Pluto every 40 years. Every 38 years I think Saturn-Pluto make a conjunction, which is important, but to have a number like a 38-year cycle, a 20-year cycle, and a 150-year plus cycle all reset at the same time or in the same 12 month period, that to me is quite striking. And whichever way you’re coming at it, there’s a huge amount that is energetically, if you wanna use that word, being recalibrated. And this is kind of a macro version of what we do with client transits. When things are massively updated at a cycles level or at a tonal level in terms of planetary interchange, there is a lot of transition and upheaval as things on earth or in day-to-day life adjust to this new influence. And I think we are seeing that in incredibly extreme ways. Maybe we underestimated how extreme, you know, everyone here recalibrating to that tonal shift would be – that elemental change would be. It seems like, okay, this is par for the course, and when – to your point, Austin, we were talking about earth versus air. Earth is quite stable, and air is movable and mobile. So the parts of us as humans that like stability and consistency and reliability, even if we didn’t like the environment we could rely on it to be similar tomorrow. And you may or may not have liked that. Going into air, we know there’s going to be things that are much more variable, things that are much more in flux, and that certainty is maybe less likely, or we have to work a little harder to find it. And as humans, the way our psyche and our psychology works, we gravitate towards certainty; it gives us comfort. It tones down our anxiety. And so I think maybe all of us just getting that deeper understanding of, you know, what is air and how is it different to earth can help maybe express or explain what we’re all navigating right now. 

CB: Yeah. So major shift — 

AC: You know, an example of earth to air that occurred to me as you were talking, Kelly – with earth, like, something steady that you don’t like versus an unsteadiness that you don’t like makes me think… What popped into my head was the sort of type of office work which was satirized in Office Space, right, that Mike Judge movie from 27 years ago, where it’s people just feeling driven insane doing low-level paperwork and just like, endless busy work, but it was steady. You know, there wasn’t much advancement; it was pretty soulless, et cetera, et cetera. We can compare that to like, the hustle of gig work. Like, you know, you’re driving Uber or whatever, or you’re – you know, you could literally be doing the same sort of clerical data processing stuff, but on a gig basis. And you’re not stuck, right? That’s the earth part. Like, congratulations; you’re not stuck at that desk for 20 years. But then the negative part is like, oh, I don’t have that thing that I hated to rely on. Right? 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: Where there’s, you know, there’s benefit here, there’s negative there. But you have a lot of positions that are gonna pay pretty similarly. You know, it’s not like most of those office jobs in the ‘90s were fun or good or gave you a future. But there was like, that future was there, right? 

And so speaking of the – when we talked about this earlier, I thought the best possible reframe on how is the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction positive but not positive, and I had this metaphor that I’d been working with that was comically negative that Kelly, you had a much better version of. So I’ll give my comically negative version one, and my patrons — 

KS: Well, I think mine is only — 

AC: — have heard me describe this — 

KS: — it only seems better relative to yours. It wasn’t happy in an absolute — 

AC: Right! That’s why we’re leading with — 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: — mine, right? 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: And so mine was, okay, so for a lot of 2020, we’re on a plane that’s on fire and is about to crash. And there’s not a lot to do. You know, you can run around screaming; you can argue with each other. You can do whatever, but the plane’s gonna crash. And that the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, we actually crash. Many people survive; we can see where we crashed, start setting up camp, start triaging people. At least there’s more that you can do once the plane’s actually crashed than when it’s just like, heading downwards and everybody’s doing the rollercoaster thing. You had a much better version of this, Kelly. 

KS: I mean, it’s still a disaster analogy, but it’s the idea that the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction if you like, it’s like, okay, the hurricane is done now. You know? The gale force winds have gone away. The torrential rain and hail, it’s not falling anymore, and you finally get to go outside. 

Now, there’s a huge amount of clean-up and repair and recovery that is going to be needed. But at least the hurricane is not going – you know, it’s not turning everything upside down around you. So they were the best analogies we had! 

AC: Well, and I like that one a lot better for a variety of reasons. It’s not quite as, I don’t know, you know, hilariously negative. But I also like it because it’s an air metaphor — 

KS: Yes. 

AC: — right? You know, hurricanes bring water, but it’s the wind — 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: — that rips things up. And you can — 

CB: And also — 

AC: — start like — 

CB: — in a hurricane, like, not everybody gets hit. It’s like, you have — 

KS: Oh yes. 

CB: — neighborhoods that get wiped out, but then you have like, that one structure that just like, doesn’t have hardly a scratch on it in your neighborhood that didn’t – that the storm passed by for some random reason. And that’s kind of this year where it’s like, you do have large communities of people running into major issues or being decimated, and then occasionally you do have people that are still thriving and still surviving despite the chaos. 

AC: Yeah. Or even because of the chaos. And if we wanna stick with air element disasters, tornados are even more finicky in term – you know, if you ever see like, the path of a tornado through a town, it’s literally just like, a line of destruction, and like, one house is flattened and then 20 feet away another house has like, a broken window. And that’s very air. Like, air – and this is something I’ve just been thinking about more and more and seeing more and more – air is super patchwork. It’s not like, evenly distributed. Like, earth is a very even structural sort of distribution. 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: Whereas air is very random. Like, air is like, you know, roll the dice. Yes here, no there, kind of here, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that our future that we’re looking into is very patchwork. That whole like, the future not being evenly distributed I think is more insightful than William Gibson even meant. Like, there’s not one picture. I’ve been having all these various dystopias competing in my head. You know, on one level, we have the dystopia of too much order, right, which is the surveillance future. And then we have the dystopia of not enough order where we have like, the Mad Max future, right? Where there’s just like, no – there’s no – and I think we’ll get both of those and neither in lots of places. I don’t think one of these pictures is the answer. And I think that’s air, right? It’s the tornado, right? 

KS: It’s not consistently applied, and even Australia is just this micro example of that right now where one part of Australia – Victoria, one of the states in Australia – has been on extreme stage four lockdown for about six weeks, and they’ve just had it extended to late October, whereas other parts of Australia are, people are just, you know, going about life in more of a regular fashion. And it’s that idea of the patchwork. Like, you know, in the US, we’ve got part of the country’s burning, part of the country did actually have a hurricane, and there are parts of the country where there’s a little bit of sort of a regularity kind of going on. So that’s a really great way of describing it. Like, Austin, the patchwork and the idea that it’s not consistently applied. 

AC: Yeah. It’s a crazy quilt, I think they call it when you — 

KS: A crazy quilt! 

AC: — stitch a bunch of patches together that don’t necessarily form one big picture. 

CB: Yeah. So that’s the — 

AC: But back to the hurricane — 

CB: — zoomed out big picture version, because it’s hard not to situate this stuff within the broader context of the larger cycles that are coming to completion later this year. 

AC: Yeah. I mean, this whole year has been carrying us to that, whatever that picture is — 

KS: Yes. 

AC: — or set of clashing pictures. And I just wanna say one more positive thing about the hurricane analogy or the tornado analogy is like, you can go outside and take a look at the damage and be like, all right, well, I’m gonna need to replace that window. You can like, start figuring out – you can’t do repairs in the middle of a storm. 

KS: Correct. Yeah. 

AC: Right? Whereas you can start doing repairs and setting things and be like, well, I guess we have hurricanes now! I can then begin to think about, you know, I don’t know if you can hurricane-proof, but you can – well, there are hurricane windows. You can be like, “I’m gonna get different windows for the next time,” or you can begin to adapt. 

CB: Yeah. So and the hurricanes in this analogy are largely occurring the cardinal signs this year and wherever the cardinal signs fall in your chart, especially Aries and Capricorn, and then the new shift in the foundation in December with the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction will take place in Aquarius. But to take us back to October, there’s one final thing — 

KS: Yes. 

CB: — we have to discuss towards the end of the month, which is the month ends and culminates with a Full Moon in Taurus conjunct Uranus on the 31st of October right on Halloween. 

KS: Yes. 

CB: Yeah. So we actually have a Full Moon, which is like a culmination of events or a bringing to light and sort of shining a spotlight on a specific sign of the zodiac, which is Taurus in this instance. But for some reason, it’s almost exactly within what is that? Like, five minutes of arc conjunct Uranus at eight degrees of Taurus. So it’s like, shining a spotlight and bringing to culmination but also something that is unexpected or disruptive or innovative in some way simultaneously about that. 

So it’s a continuation of our October surprise, and it basically culminates on Halloween. 

KS: Which is like, peak — 

AC: Yeah. 

KS: — surprise with a Full Moon conjunct Uranus. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Right before the election. 

CB: Yeah. So that is why October surprise was our theme this month or one of our themes, just because it’s not just the Mercury retrograde that’s bouncing back and forth between Taurus and Scorpio and that opposition between Mercury and Uranus, but it’s also this Full Moon that we end the month with conjunct Uranus as well. 

KS: Yeah. Because back in the olden days, before – and I’m not even talking pre-covid; I’m talking before Uranus went into Taurus – we used to get really excited about a Full Moon in Taurus. 

CB: Yeah, because the Moon’s supposed to be exalted there, and it’s an earth sign; it’s supposed to be a little bit more stable, a little bit more grounded. But with Uranus there, it’s almost the opposite. There’s something destabilizing about it; there’s some sort of contrary energy that’s throwing that off, sort of in the way that we’ve been dealing with like, when we have planets going through Virgo and things are supposed to be very meticulous and very clear, especially Mercury and its ability to communicate in Virgo, but when it’s going through the middle degrees of Virgo at this point it opposes Neptune and you almost are getting the opposite quality of a lack of clarity at this time. There’s sort of a similar vibe here with Uranus in Taurus. 

AC: Yeah. 

KS: Yeah. It feels — 

AC: Well, and — 

KS: — like — 

AC: — I would… 

KS: You go, Austin. 

AC: What you may get in a way that fulfills the stabilizing significations of the Moon in Taurus is on a personal level, not on a collective level this year, right? This will just be like, more shocking turns of events in the news and probably, you know, I imagine the earth will probably do some destabilization around that time as well. But on a personal level, what I’ve seen with Uranus in Taurus is sometimes it’s like, a totally new approach to stabilizing things. Be like, oh, I need to really change things up in order to keep them stable. Right? Like, oh, I need — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — an entirely new set of shock absorbers so my car doesn’t bounce like crazy, right? Life-car in this case! 

And so that is, you know, sometimes even Uranus’s destabilizing, volatilizing, catalyzing action can lead to stability or, you know, a more capacious stability. But through contrary action, through destabilization or through shock. 

CB: Yeah. I love that. So seeking greater stability through making radical changes. And I’ve seen that with especially like, some of my Taurus rising friends upending and relocating; I’ve seen a couple of them just decide to completely relocate and move to a different part of the country to just change the entirety of their scenery, and it was very destabilizing, but then eventually once they settled down very stabilizing as well having that new environment. 

AC: Yeah. 

KS: Yeah, I mean — 

AC: Or – go ahead, Kelly. 

KS: I was just gonna say one thing that it is good to keep in mind and what you are both saying is reminding me of this is that with Uranus, the process of change can be very tumultuous and there can be a lot of upheaval and destabilization. But I always think about Uranus as change that leads to new freedom. And so the change or the upheaval that Uranus can stir or stimulate usually has an outcome that is worth getting to. Not always, but there is this sense of on the other side of that there can be, to your point, Austin, whether it’s new stability, new comfort, a sense of being more anchored in place in some way. So it’s not to take away from the intensity of the chaotic experience or the process, but it is taking you somewhere different. And again, as humans we often initially resist the idea of change, because we tend to hold on just sort of a bit of an unconscious default. But when you are frustrated with things in your life, or they’re not going the way you want them to, sometimes that big change is what you need to jump-start or to jolt this kind of whole new chapter or whole new set of experiences. 

CB: Yeah. Definitely. So that’ll be important for people to pay attention to what part of the chart and especially what house that Full Moon falls in in your chart at eight degrees of Taurus and think about that especially in that area of your life as being the potential area or zone where some of those changes and disruptions could take place. 

All right. So in light of all of that and in light of our theme of October surprises, one of the more challenging things this month that I ran into when Leisa Schaim and I tried to settle on a auspicious electional chart this month was just where to try to do anything this month that’s gonna have lasting stability and significance, and that was a more challenging question than it sounded at first when we first started working on it. 

So I have two possible charts to highlight for the auspicious election this month. We can only give away one of them, and I wanted to pose it as a mental question and challenge to the two of you to let us know where to go with this. One of the charts is at the beginning of the month, and one of the charts is more towards the end of the month. If you had to start something new this month, if you had to initiate a significant action or found something new using electional astrology, would you try to do that earlier in the month – for example, before the Mercury retrograde gets fully started and Mercury starts moving backwards – or would you do it later in the month when the Mercury retrograde is already in full effect, but the Mars squares – like Mars-Saturn especially – are separating and Mars-Jupiter is separating rather than applying? 

Austin, you’re grimacing. So I take it you do not – that’s not a fun decision to make. It’s like choosing between like — 

AC: No, that’s — 

CB: — which of your…

AC: Yeah. Yeah! 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Yeah. Exactly. It really – I think the answer to that would almost entirely depend on excruciatingly granular analysis. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: It’d be like, what little moment can I find between some of the big shapes? Because the big shapes aren’t particularly pleasing either at the beginning or at the end. 

CB: Right. 

AC: So I would say it depends on that moment.

KS: I’m like, yeah, because you’re really asking us a tough choice here, Chris! I’m like, did you give Moon sign details, or is that one of the not-to-be-given-away yet — 

CB: No, I’ll give that much. 

KS: — pieces of data? 

CB: So let’s say — 

KS: Okay. 

CB: — one of them is Moon in Taurus early in the month, so trining Jupiter. And the other one is Moon in Pisces, sextiling Jupiter. So both of them were focusing on — 

AC: Okay. 

CB: — positive flowing aspects between the Moon and Jupiter, but the real tension is like, pre-Mercury retrograde or after Mars is already separating from some of those hard aspects. And I should pull that up again, that artwork from Archetypal Explorer, because it really emphasizes exactly when that’s happening and how we’re heading into it in the first half of the month. But it takes a little while before we get out of it. So here’s the Archetypal Explorer thing from ArchetypalExplorer.com. Shout out and thanks to Kyle. So we get the Mars-Saturn square at the end of September, then Mars square Pluto the second week of October almost, and then like, third week of October, Mars square Jupiter. And we forgot to mention that, but remember the first – this is the second of three Mars square Jupiter transits that will go exact this year due to the Mars retrograde. And the first Mars square Jupiter, of course, coincided with the explosion that occurred in Beirut, Lebanon, that was right around when that went exact. So that’s one of the electional questions is do you want that Mars square Jupiter still applying if you go with early in October, or do you want it separating by the time you get to the later October? 

KS: Look, that’s a tough call, and it is hard to say without looking at the chart. But the Moon Sign differential — 

CB: Yeah. 

KS: Look. All other things being equal, and I know they’re not, I would probably err for the Moon in Taurus. And you know, it’s gonna slightly depend on the degree – I get it. But what I’m thinking about here is at least then you have a planet with some essential dignity, and the Moon in Pisces – look. I love a good Moon in Pisces; we all know that! But you know, when you’re looking at an electional chart where literally nothing else has got dignity, you’ve got, you know, some debilitated planets that could use a boost. Yeah. I mean, that would be a factor that I would be really tossing up over.

CB: Sure. 

AC: Yeah, I’m — 

KS: Austin? 

AC: I’ll go Moon in Taurus as well. 

KS: Okay. 

CB: Okay. Moon in Taurus, that’s it! So we’ll go with that. That means our featured electional chart for this month is gonna take place on October 4th, 2020, right at the beginning of October before the Mercury retrograde really gets going the following week. 

So set your electional chart for October 4th around 4:55 PM, and set the Ascendant for somewhere in early Pisces in your location. And actually, on YouTube I did a video where I finally put out a free video for how to adapt these electional charts to your location. So if anybody wants to understand this better, like how to take this chart and adapt it to whatever city you live in, go check out our YouTube channel for The Astrology Podcast and you’ll see a more detailed tutorial about that. But basically, just take the date, set it for that time, and then adjust the chart for your city until the Ascendant is at about one degree of Pisces, and then you’ll get this electional chart. 

So the electional chart — 

KS: So I like our choice for a couple of reasons. It looks good! 

CB: Yeah. I mean, it’s not a bad chart. I mean, it has some really good decent things going for it, you know, all things taken into consideration. 

KS: Look, given it’s October 2020 and not a random month in any other year — 

CB: Right. 

KS: — yeah. Because I know the Mars square Jupiter is there, but Jupiter is gonna get aspected by the Moon first, and then by the Sun before Mars gets to it. So not that the Sun is necessarily a huge help, but there’s just some other factors that Jupiter has rather than just the Mars. 

CB: Yeah. So this chart for those listening to the audio version, it has Pisces rising, and the ruler of the Ascendant is Jupiter at 18 degrees of Capricorn in the 11th whole sign house. It’s a day chart, so Jupiter is the most benefic planet in the chart, even though it’s not in super great condition dignity-wise being in Capricorn. But the Moon is exalted in Taurus in the 3rd whole sign house around 15 degrees of the sign depending on what city you’re located in using this chart. And the Moon is applying to a trine with Jupiter, so we got a happy trine with Jupiter between the Moon and Jupiter. And then also as Kelly pointed out, the Sun early in the month is still applying from Libra to the square with Jupiter, which is also a positive thing. 

So the downside of this chart – or the other positive side – is that Mercury has not yet stationed retrograde. It is applying within two degrees to an opposition with Uranus, so Mercury’s at seven Scorpio and it’s applying to Uranus at nine Taurus, so that Mercury-Uranus energy is still there. There’s really no way to avoid that this month; it’s gonna be there off and on most of the month. But it’s certainly very prominent in this chart despite Mercury having not stationed retrograde yet. 

The downside with this chart, the thing you’d probably wanna avoid, is it has Mars in the 2nd house in a day chart, which is probably not very great for financial matters as like, a primary consideration. It does have an applying Mars-Jupiter square, which is the major downside since Jupiter’s the ruler of the Ascendant and that is one of the major drawbacks. You can avoid that if you use a similar Pisces rising chart later in the month, but then you run into a host of other issues. 

The other positive thing about the chart is it has Venus in the 7th house angular very close to the Descendant. So yeah. What do you guys think? What would you use this chart for? It’s kind of tricky, because we’re setting this up as like, a general purpose chart where you’re using a date when the Moon is applying to a trine with Jupiter, and that’s generally gonna be auspicious if you’ve gotta do something in general. But I don’t know if there’s anything in particular you guys would use this chart for. You know, normally I would say like, friends because the ruler of the Ascendant is in the 11th house, or alliances or groups or things like that. It’s a little tricky with the Mars-Jupiter square, but you could still probably use it for those reasons if done carefully. 

KS: Yeah. The 11th house stands out, and the other house that stands out for me is the 3rd where the Moon is placed. So some kind of 3rd house-11th house combo, which – and you know, there are some – the 3rd house has a little bit of a friendship kind of undertone to it. Maybe there’s a communication learning group thing. So sometimes where you could maybe bring the 11th and the 3rd topics together – maybe doing something with a sibling. Maybe they’re gonna pay for you because you don’t have any money or something; I’m not sure, but! Yeah, something 11th house — 

AC: You’re electing — 

KS: — 3rd house. 

AC: — when to bum some money off your sibling. 

CB: Off your sibling? That’s good. 

AC: Well, the Sun is in the 8th house, so if you want to try to borrow money from your brother or sister or whoever! 

CB: Yeah. I like that. So that is the electional chart that we’re highlighting for this month. Leisa Schaim and I have found three other electional charts that we’re gonna talk about on the Auspicious Elections Podcast, which is a monthly podcast we do just for patrons of The Astrology Podcast who sign up on the five dollar tier. So you can find out more information about that if you go to I believe our page on Patreon at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast and we’ll probably release that episode in the next week or so before the end of the month. 

All right, so that is the election — 

AC: Mooching off the sibs! 

CB: Yeah, that’s our — 

KS: I mean — 

CB: — electional chart. 

KS: — I know, the mooching, but it is the lord of the Ascendant is in the 11th boosted by the Moon in Taurus. Like, there is this tone of like, a little bit of a benefit or a windfall or somebody helps you kind of thing, whether it’s financially or otherwise. 

AC: I had the same thought, Kelly. It’s just like, leaning into the Moon. 

KS: Yeah! 

AC: Because the Moon is better off than — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — anybody else. 

KS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, the Moon is also the ruler of the 5th, so it could be something connected to children or creativity – let’s say creative expression – that’s being communicated through the 3rd house and success in doing that, because it’s applying to a trine with Jupiter. So — 

AC: Borrowing money from your children! 

CB: Right. 

KS: Or spending money on your children, which is the other thing that often happens! 

CB: Those sound like funny like, elections that you would find in the Picatrix, like, really obscure elections. Yeah. 

All right, so that is our electional chart for October, and that’s also pretty much the forecast for October I believe. Are there any other final thoughts or final statements? Anything that we completely forgot to mention? Let us know in the audience if we completely forgot anything for the October forecast as we’re wrapping up this section of the episode. 

KS: I think we hit all the big astro data. You guys talked about Jupiter and Saturn. So — 

CB: Yeah. Talked about Jupiter and Saturn, talked about the Mars retrograde, talked about the October surprise, the Mercury retrograde opposite Uranus, the Full Moon conjunct Uranus. We’ve got a ton of stuff going on next month basically, and it was hard to – I’m glad we had a strategy meeting to try to figure out how to pack this all in, but I think we did a pretty good job covering or giving an overview of it. 

KS: I mean, it’s always challenging, because the three of us together – well, even each of us individually could probably talk for three hours about, you know, detailed look at the month ahead. So we do kind of get the highlights and let you know what to expect. So hopefully it just helps you navigate it. 

CB: Yeah. 

KS: That’s what astrology’s good for. Knowing when to bring the umbrella. 

CB: Definitely. All right. So we should transition into the second half of this episode, then, which is talking about miscellaneous topics. The first thing that we should probably do is I wanted to mention our sponsor this month, which is the Honeycomb Collective personal astrological almanac, which is rolling out version 2.1 of their almanac this month where they’ve got the final version of their Hellenistic plug-in which we talked about a few months ago and I think showed off a little bit as well as a few other features. You guys still have your almanacs from Honeycomb that you got last year? 

KS: Super fun. 

CB: Yeah, so — 

KS: Do all the hard work for you. 

CB: Each almanac is a custom-made planner and ephemeris, and it has transit data that is uniquely adapted and customized to your own birth chart, which you can get either as a print version or a digital version at Honeycomb.co. So they’re finalizing and doing the official release this month of their Hellenistic plug-in, which includes zodiacal releasing periods, which they’re including now for all seven Hermetic lots, so not just Spirit, Fortune, and Eros but also Victory, Nemesis, Courage, and all of those other fun lots. I know those are some of your favorites, Austin – Nemesis and Courage… Silence from – okay. 

AC: What is life but the tension between Nemesis and Courage? 

CB: Exactly. So they’re rolling that out, which I’m really probably most excited about. But they’re also rolling out a new asteroids plug-in where you can get customized transit reports that tell you on a daily basis what transits you have involving the major asteroids, such as Ceres, Vesta, Juno, Pallas, and Chiron. So that’s a pretty cool feature, and it’s not something you can normally get in most planners to have actual personalized asteroid transits for each day telling you what degree and what time those transits go exact. And there’s also a new artwork plug-in where they’re gonna be featuring community artwork for each month from different artists, and their first artist is Ophilia Mandara, who painted unique planetary ingress sort of like, mandalas each month that display the unique astrological configurations for that month, and it’s kind of a cool touch for both the print and the digital planners that you can add for not too much. 

So the Honeycomb Collective personal astrological almanac is available in both print and online PDF versions. I really like the PDF version, and you can get it in both six-month as well as 12-month increments, which is pretty cool. So you can find out more information about them on their website, which is Honeycomb.co. 

All right, so that is our sponsor for the month. What else is going on? You know, one funny thing that we forgot to mention in passing was on September 14th, a group of scientists announced that the possibility of life being discovered on Venus. And of course, all the astrologers at the time noticed that it was at the same time that Venus was closely squaring Uranus, I think, right? 

KS: Yes. 

CB: Yeah, that was a little striking, a little weird. So it was like, the scientists noticed a specific type of gases in the atmosphere of Venus, which if later confirmed could indicate microbes or some form of life on Venus. 

KS: Yeah, that just seemed like, almost one of those literal expressions of an astro aspect where it’s like, oh, there’s this new, unexpected, out-of-the-blue discovery to do with the planet Venus while it’s in this Venus-Uranus aspect. It’s just a weird little synchronicity that popped up a lot on social media, and I was like, that’s kind of cool. 

CB: Yeah, totally. And also something that involved technology in order to see it, which is a very Uranus thing. Like, being able to do something that you couldn’t do otherwise by leveraging advanced forms of technology, and in this case, like, a specialized telescopes which are able to look at and analyze the atmosphere of like, another planet in the solar system. 

Yeah, so — 

AC: Well, and that is the paradigm-changing quality of Uranus, right? Uranus challenges current views of things. Right? It’d be like, what if the planets are alive? Or we’re not alone in the solar system, life-wise, which has been the primary contention. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s so funny because we’re still on this weird cusp of history where we don’t really know yet, and it could kind of go either way where it’s probably gonna go one way or another of either for some reason the earth is unique and life hasn’t developed anywhere else in the solar system. And at least currently, like with the Fermi Paradox, that’s one of the things that people that speculate about things like this don’t understand yet, which is that if there was life everywhere, we should see evidence of it all over the place by this point, and what does it mean – the fact that we don’t – versus we might be right on the cusp of just realizing, no, the conditions of life are actually easy enough that it’s something that’s happening all over the place, and we’re right on the cusp of starting to discover that different forms of life occur everywhere, even on the planet Venus. Just in weird locations or weird situations. 

Yeah. All right. So that’s one news thing happened this month. Another major news thing is it was just announced there’s a new president and a new vice president of the Association for Young Astrologers, which is a pretty exciting development that we wanted to shout out, since I was an earlier president of the Association for Young Astrologers and after me, Austin was also president of the Association for Young Astrologers for a while, right? 

AC: Indeed. You made me do it. 

CB: I did! There was a special – I took a trip to I believe you were living in like, San Francisco at the time, and talked you into it. 

AC: I lived in the East Bay, yeah. 

CB: Yeah. So that I don’t wanna say curse – that duty. That very important duty — 

AC: That sacred duty! 

CB: Sacred duty has been handed off to a new generation. 

KS: Yes. 

CB: And the new president is Samira Bechara, I believe is how you pronounce her name, and the new vice president is Janay Anthony. I wrote it down as “Janay Astrology,” but that’s not right – from her like, Twitter handle. 

KS: Yes. Yeah. Janay and Samira, congratulations! 

CB: Yeah, I’m — 

KS: New leadership. 

CB: — pretty excited about that. That’s a pretty major deal to have a new handing off, and also good work and congratulations to the previous team. Previously the president Danny Larkin has handed things over in the past few months, and also our friend Jo Gleason who was vice president has handed things over to this new team. So it’s kind of a generational shift in a way. 

AC: Yeah, it’s great. 

KS: Very excited to see where they take the organization going forward. 

CB: Yeah. Definitely. So you can find out more information about that at I believe their website is YoungAstrologers.org, and their Twitter account is very active with announcements. They keep doing a monthly dinner and drinks thing each month, which is a lot of fun. I think you started that, right, Austin? 

AC: Yeah. Let’s see, Jo and Nick and I, I believe, started that. 

CB: There’s Janay Anthony — 

AC: Back in I wanna say 2014 or something? But no, what an interesting and exciting time to be leading and directing an organization that’s about young people in astrology, because there are more people who are new to astrology and young to astrology and young physically, but not always. There are more young people in astrology now than there have been for, I don’t know, what, 50 years? 

KS: Ever! 

AC: Like, there’s no — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — like, you know, there are generations pouring in. We walked the desert to get to astrology, but it is – dune has been greened, and there’s a lot of interest in astrology, a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm. 

You know, I remember – as I’m sure you both do – 10 years ago, we’d go to conferences. And you know, we’d – it would be like, us and two other people would be the under 40s. And — 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: — there would be some older astrologers who were like, wringing their hands that were like, “Where are the young people? Is this thing gonna die?” You know, does this — 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: — “does this end with us?” Does this just kind of like, what’s the word, kind of piddle out, you know? Like, not to use that analogy — 

KS: Yeah, does it fizzle out? 

AC: Yeah, and the answer is no! You know, there has been a tsunami. And you know, what a great and powerful time to be in those leadership positions. So I hope that the crowns sit as lightly as they can, but it’s a lot of responsibility. And it’s, you know, it’s a powerful time. 

CB: Yeah. 

KS: It is. 

CB: That’s a really good point that we haven’t seen a generational shift or an influx of this many young astrologers into the field since probably the Pluto in Leo generation that really came in in the 1960s, late ‘60s and early ‘70s, when they were in their something – 20s, basically, 20s and 30s. And then there was this weird gap where while I do know that there are some Pluto in Virgo and Pluto in Libra astrologers, it wasn’t like, this huge influx. But now it seems like some of the Pluto in Scorpio generation, which is me and a huge influx especially lately of the Pluto in Sag generation are getting super into astrology. 

KS: Yes. Yeah, and just to clarify — 

AC: It’s a big thing. I would love to – go ahead. 

KS: It’s the Association for Young Astrologers, but there’s no age limit! You don’t have to be under a certain age to join or participate. There’s just a few comments coming through in the chat. So don’t be intimidated if you’re 40 and you wanna get involved with, like, a fresh, younger organization in astrology. 

AC: Or, you know, if you’re not new to astrology but you are for younger astrologers — 

KS: Yes. 

AC: — as opposed to against them? You know, feel free to lend your support. 

KS: To support! Yeah. 

AC: Because it is for, not of. 

KS: Yes. 

CB: Yeah. Definitely. All right, so that was something I wanted to mention, and people can find out more information at YoungAstrologers.org and follow their social media accounts. 

Another thing I wanted to mention that I just found out about in the past month was there was a friend of mine and a listener of the show named Dia Nunez who was a listener of this show, a patron, and someone that I met last year, and she sadly passed away on July 22nd. And I wanted to give a shout out to her, because I actually had this interesting connection with her, and I actually met her a year ago – about a year, sometime last year. I went to my favorite local apothecary, and I was like, standing in line, and there was like, I don’t know, five or six people in there. I was getting some herbs. And this woman like, was standing there off to the side, and she turned and looked to me and kind of squinted her eyes a little bit, and then she like, yelled out at the top of her lungs – she said, “Are you The Chris Brennan?” And she recognized me and I sort of like, was shocked, because then of course everybody in this little business turned towards me and looked at me. And I very awkwardly said, “Yeah, I am.” And she said, “I watch your podcast all the time; I love your work with Austin and Kelly, and I’m a huge fan and watch every month.” And she turned out to be a local astrologer and artist who read charts and did work at some of the different local places here in Denver like Apothecary Tinctura and Goddess Isis Books is one of the places that she read charts at and did different divination and healing modalities. But when I got sick in March and April, she checked in with me like, every other day, and I have chat logs of her checking in on me and Leisa every few days and seeing if I was okay, seeing if we needed anything and everything else, and also just like, chat comments going back on YouTube where she would just like, comment on our videos and was always very supportive going back a few years now. 

So she got sick in July, and I reached out and talked to her and started trying to check in to see if she was doing okay. And the last time I talked to her was actually on July 12th, and she was hoping that she was improving. And she said she didn’t usually share it, but she shared her chart details with me, and we talked a little bit, and I got sidetracked and caught up in my own life and sort of struggles and realized recently I hadn’t talked to her in a while, and then I looked and tried reaching out, and it turned out that she had passed away just 10 days after I’d talked to her, which I really shocked and saddened to find out about. So I just wanted to mention her in passing, both as a friend – this was another sort of like, 3rd house Mars retrograde transit that I’ve been dealing with, which is even though astrologers traditionally emphasize the 11th house for friends, the 3rd house traditionally is also a place where friendship shows up. And for me, with the Mars transiting and going retrograde in the 3rd house, I think that was one of the unexpected things that I later didn’t know had happened and later found out about during the course of the Mars retrograde when it started revisiting some of those earlier degrees and causing a reflection on some of those things. 

Yeah. So have you guys – I wanna talk a little bit about the 3rd house as like, a digression, but people can check out some of her artwork, which is actually really good, just by checking out her Instagram account, and that links to some of her other websites where you can see some of her work at Instagram.com/DiaNunezArt. And she worked with fluid paintings and different things like that, which are actually really good and really interesting. So I would just recommend checking it out. 

Have you guys had anything like that in terms of noticing the 3rd house in connection with friends? 

AC: Absolutely. When I entered a 3rd house profection some years ago, within, I don’t know, a month, my brother came to live in the same region of the country as I have for the first time. So there’s the sibling part. But I also ended up spending a ton of time and getting a lot of help from two friends that I’d known for 20 years who were like brothers to me. And I was like, oh, so the metaphorical part of sibling is also real. Like, there was the literal brother part, but then there were like, people who were really close to me who had a similar relationship. And then it is, well, let me just say that’s really sad, and I think that’s really beautiful that you’re giving her a little memorial here, before I just talk about — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — house significations. 

CB: No, I mean, yeah, I wanted to just because of having that connection and her concern and care for me when I was sick and being similarly concerned for her. And then not knowing also while she started having problems breathing, and what little I’ve been able to find out was that she had a heart attack when she went back into the ER for the second or third time in that month. But not being sure if it was related to covid, or if she previously had covid and then that caused complications with her other preexisting conditions. But she was only born in like, the mid-1970s, so she really wasn’t that old. She was basically you guys’s age, right?

KS: Yeah. I think you mentioned she was in her 40s. So very, very sad news, Chris. So sorry to hear that. 

CB: Yeah. But just in terms of the way that some of that’s touching things and different people – you know, that that has touched over the past year potentially, and wanting to thank listeners. Since we really – we put this show out, but we don’t always know how it’s affecting people. But I know every once in a while when we go to a conference or something, we will have like, hundreds of people come up to us and say thank you, or they’ll mention some obscure joke that like, Austin made four years ago in a forecast, or they’ll compliment Kelly for some shirt she was wearing or — 

KS: Usually the flowers! 

CB: — the flowers, like, on an episode a few months ago. And we realize that there’s some people that it has had a personal impact in and who are listening in every month even though we don’t always know it. And sometimes we’re able to build those personal connections with people, and it does make a difference knowing that and having that sort of interaction with people, especially with astrologers – other people that share this weird and interesting thing that we’re all into. 

KS: Absolutely. I mean, and that connection of shared interest type thing – it’s so kind of 3rd house-11th house crossover, too, isn’t it? 

AC: Yeah. I was just thinking that. 

KS: Yeah. I often think about that connection of like, people who are siblings in spirit. So like, siblings in your heart – you know, when you feel about someone closer than just a friend, but they are technically your friend, that I often – and look, my chart’s a little unique with the 3rd-11th house crossover because I have the ruler of the 3rd in the 11th. And I’m just one of those people that’s lucky in that I actually get along with my genuine siblings, and then I have a few close friends that feel like siblings. So that’s kind of a nice thing. But you know, if other people have those placements. But it’s that, yeah, it’s that kind of kindred spirit vibe where you can talk to them for hours because you got the same things in common. 

CB: Right. Yeah. And for me, it was also a local thing of like, meeting a friend locally, because you don’t – we have like, hundreds of friends around the world or colleagues that we run into, different astrologers, but it’s somewhat more unique running into another astrologer that you have that shared interest with in your own city or your own neighborhood. 

KS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. So anyway, shout out to Dia Nunez, and I hope wherever she’s at that she’s doing okay at this point. 

So other discussion topics this month – I’ve only done two episodes. I need to roll out a fourth here in the next week, which I think is gonna be a Q&A that I’m gonna start soliciting questions from, ideally through Twitter, because that’s the best way to make people keep it concise is to tweet it at me. But other episodes I did this month was Leisa and I sat down and did an episode on what techniques you can use with an untimed birth chart. And I know this is something that’s tricky, because a lot of professional astrologers will only read a chart if a person has a timed birth time. But a listener of the show brought this up to me as an issue of like, accessibility and an issue of it being something that’s – you know, a lot of people don’t have birth times. So what can you do with astrology, and can you use astrology still if you don’t have a birth time? And I think the answer to that that we came up with was yes, there’s still tons of stuff you can do without a birth time, right? 

KS: Hundred percent agree. 

AC: Oh yeah. 

CB: So what are some of you guys’s favorite things that you’ll look at if you had to sit down and look at a chart with no birth time? 

AC: Well, transits work great. You know, if Mars is on your Sun, then Mars is on your Sun. You know, that might change up to one degree during a 24-hour period, but you know, like, all the planets other than the Moon are gonna be in basically the same place. And so, you know, if you’ve got, when you look – if we’re doing transits and you’re looking at like, oh, this person has this Mercury-Uranus conjunction square Jupiter, like, that complex will still get activated by a transiting planet. So there’s a lot of transits that still work great; you can’t locate them by houses from the Ascendant, but there’s still a lot to do. 

KS: Yeah, there’s plenty. And similarly, you know, even from a natal perspective, if you have Venus conjunct Saturn, yeah, we may not know what houses it’s connected to, so we may lose a level of specificity about what house is the conjunction in, or what house might Venus rule, and then how does that Venus-Saturn conjunction impact that. But you’re still a chart that has Venus conjunct Saturn, and there are things that can be said about that even if we can’t locate it in a house. 

And you know, there’s also variations. When a client says to me – so, I can’t recall that I’ve turned a client away without a birth time because I’ve always been happy to proceed without a birth time. I usually just let them know, you know, there’s a few things I can’t do, and we might do a slightly shorter session because I’m missing like, a layer of info. But there’s still a lot that we can do that – and my interpretation of this was it will still be useful to you, even if I know technically it’s not as perfect as it could be. And that’s the approach, you know, that I’ve gone. If somebody shows up at my door, which is usually my inbox these days, and says, “Can you provide support?” And I’m in a position to do so, that’s sort of part of our role. 

I do have a personal favoring where when somebody shows up and genuinely has no idea what time of day they’re born, I like to just default to put the Sun near the Ascendant or in the whole sign first house, just so I – not that I’m necessarily gonna rely heavily on those houses, but I like to have something that I can look at as a starting point. And that’s usually my preference. I know a lot of people like to put the Sun, you know, do a mid-day chart. I’ve always just loved the sunrise. 

So do you guys have a default time that you use just to like, plug the chart into your software? 

CB: Yeah, Leisa and I had a whole discussion about that. It was interesting, because we both tend to default to just using a noon chart because then we know the Moon has been averaged — 

KS: Halfway. 

CB: — and can’t be more — 

KS: Yeah. 

CB: — than like, six degrees off. But that’s something we actually, once we were done recording, regretted and wished we had gone into more, because there is certainly something to be said for a solar chart as well as a lunar chart, for that matter. And usually when I do the horoscopes for the year ahead, we tell people, you know, if you can, try to read these horoscopes from the perspective of your Ascendant or your rising sign. But if not, then favor your Sun sign, especially if you’re a day chart, or your Moon sign if you’re a night chart. And I think if the person doesn’t have a birth time but knows if they were born in the day or the night, like using a solar chart or a lunar chart would be an acceptable and very useful thing to do. 

AC: Yeah, I do houses from the Sun and the Moon, because that’s part of the traditional corpus of techniques is secondary house systems. And there are, you know, there’s lots of material for doing profections from the Sun and the Moon as well. 

KS: Yeah. 

CB: Right. 

AC: And so you can use a lot of secondary profection, not progression, techniques, although you could use secondary progressions as well. 

KS: Yes. 

AC: But yeah, I do houses from the Sun and the Moon. If I know that it’s day, I prefer the Sun; if I know that it’s night, I prefer the Moon. Because a lot of times, it’ll be like, you know, “I don’t know, Mom said it was dark out.” 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: “We don’t know when. It was the middle of the night at some point.” And so, you know, as an extremely light form of rectification, you know, can you at least know whether it’s day or night, right? 

KS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

KS: Yeah, that’s helpful if somebody can say, “Oh, it was around lunchtime,” and you go, okay, well, we’re definitely doing a day iteration of this chart if you’ve got that. 

AC: Well, we know that – right. Everybody had breakfast, and then we all had to go to the hospital, and you know, I don’t know, Billy came out before dark. 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: But we don’t know when. Right? 

KS: Yeah, because there is a variation of the “I don’t know my birth time,” and it’s also worth asking those questions of your clients. Do you genuinely have no idea at all, or is there a story in your family lore that is just what you guys are saying? You know, so-and-so had just come home from work, and then we had dinner and then we went to the hospital, or whatever it happens to be. But is there a story in the family that can at least give us some clues? And maybe there’s not, and that’s okay. But it’s always worth asking those questions to clarify. 

CB: Yeah, definitely. And then there’s gonna be a whole range of variations within that or shades of grey. You know, it is tough from a practitioner standpoint to go from doing like, a timed birth chart to doing an untimed chart, and I often feel like it’s sort of like, fighting with one hand tied behind your back or trying to do something. And initially, that can feel like a major setback or debilitation in not being able to use certain techniques that you would use otherwise, like sect or zodiacal releasing or the houses of what have you. But sometimes I think it’s also probably a good challenge, because then you can really learn how to maximize and get the most out of what you do have and what you can use – like, aspects between planets like you mentioned, Kelly, or sign placements between planets and things like that. And there’s still, like, a lot of mileage you can get even out of, you know, 50 percent or 75 percent of the system even if you don’t have that other 25 percent. 

AC: Yeah. And having a little discussion about setting expectations for what — 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: — you can do as a practitioner with this information is important. Because if you’re like — 

CB: Right. Definitely. 

AC: — “I can do X, Y, and Z with astrology, but I need a birth time. But I can do X and half of Z —” 

KS: Yes. 

AC: “– if you don’t have a birth time.” 

CB: Yeah. Totally. 

KS: Absolutely. 

CB: Definitely. 

KS: And then yeah, through the conversation, I’m just thinking again about sect – that, you know, if you see a Mars thing and a Saturn thing, and one is clearly showing up in the story with the client as much more difficult, that might give you a clue – well, maybe this is a day chart or maybe this is a night chart. And then you don’t know for sure, but you’re making some educated guesses if you like just based on the feedback in the consult. But definitely, like, to your larger question, Chris – no reason not to work with someone if they don’t have a birth time. Just adjust accordingly. 

CB: Yeah. Definitely. And it’s a good practice for astrologers to get into, that way as an issue of accessibility you can perhaps be able to help more people than you might otherwise if you only ever were used to or capable of dealing with timed charts. So from that standpoint, it’s also probably good to practice as a practitioner as well. Because I know, it’s like, a lot of practitioners when you put that question up, there’ll be jokes about like, “I just wouldn’t read the chart,” or you know, they would groan and say “I don’t wanna read an untimed chart.” But as an accessibility issue, while I understand those issues and those restrictions and how frustrating it can be, it’s also a good thing to learn how to do. 

All right, guys. Those are really my main discussion topics. We already touched on Chiron and the use or not use of that, so I don’t think we really need to retread that in terms of talking about asteroids. Anything else? What do you guys have coming up? Do you have any classes or conferences or events that you have going on? 

KS: I’ve got an event I’m doing through Astrology University; it’s a world event summit happening October 3 and October 4. And I’m gonna be giving a 60-minute talk as part of that event to do with the astrology around the US election. So I’m just gonna sort of put – well, it’s a 60-minute talk, so it’s not every thought I’ve had about the election, but it’s all the highlights or some of the main themes that I think are relevant in terms of astro. And so that’s coming up on October 3rd. And the info about that is on the Astrology University website. But that’s kind of it for me for October. Then I’m having a little bit of a quieter month, which was well planned, based on this month’s discussion! 

CB: Nice. 

KS: What about you guys? 

AC: Well, so I’m deep into my yearly classes. This will be – October and November will be the 7th and 8th months out of eight. So I’m not doing any new classes. But in my role as the electional astrologer for Sphere and Sundry, Sphere and Sundry has a series coming out in October and then another one in November. It will be Hermanubis in October and then the Empress series, which is a Venus series in November. 

KS: Oh, I’m excited for that one. 

AC: They’re good. One thing I want to say – the Hermanubis one had a really interesting election that was – it was literally almost a year ago. It was the Mercury-Sun super cazimi where Mercury was literally like, you know, doing a tiny little bumblebee eclipse of the Sun. And we got it here rising in the day in hour of Mercury. So I’m excited about that one; that one needed to be held onto for a while, because Hermanubis is October appropriate. It is, you know, ghost pepper. 

CB: Right. 

AC: But I was really excited that we figured out something entirely appropriate to do with that strange and unique election. 

And then the Empress one is just a badass Venus election. 

KS: And that was captured back when Venus was in Taurus, right? 

AC: Indeed. Indeed. It wasn’t much good – that was when everyone was still kind of excited about quarantine and baking bread and, you know. They’re like, hey, maybe this is gonna be all right! 

KS: Yeah. That was when I learned to make butter chicken from scratch, actually! I think — 

AC: Yep! 

KS: — it was, yeah. 

AC: See? 

KS: Yeah. I was so excited! I’ve never felt like I’ve attempted such a complicated dish, and then once I got in, it was really, really easy. And it’s — 

AC: And — 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: — now you’re the empress of butter chicken. 

KS: Now – yeah! 

AC: The EBC, if you will. 

KS: That’s hilarious! So if we could all get together in real, I could feed you butter chicken. And it’s a recipe that’s mostly dairy-free, so you know, I talked briefly about eating with different kind of eating protocols, and this recipe uses some ghee, but it doesn’t use like, cream in it. So yeah. Specialized Venus. 

CB: Nice. I love that. I’m gonna have to get that recipe, actually; I’m gonna ask you for that after this. 

KS: Yeah, I’m gonna see if I can – yes. Find it. 

CB: You can like, post it on Twitter or something. 

So as for me, we had talked about doing a fixed star and I’ve been talking to Nina Gryphon about doing a fixed star episode for months. And I’ve been – I encouraged a few weeks ago Levente Laszlo to translate one of the earliest texts on using the fixed stars in natal astrology that survives, which is from a Hellenistic astrologer who wrote in Greek in Rome in the year 379 CE. And he’s just known as Anonymous of 379, because we don’t know his name, unfortunately. This text was originally translated by Schmidt in the ‘90s, but it’s been out of print for years now. So I encouraged Levente to start translating it, and he’s been translating it and releasing it in sections through his Patreon at the Horoi Project. So at some point, I’m gonna start getting together a fixed star episode to do here too long, and I’m really excited to have Levente getting ready to release to maybe coincide with that a full translation of that text on what different fixed stars mean when they’re conjunct different important placements in your birth chart. So that’s an episode I’m looking forward to, and I know both of you are pretty big on fixed stars as well, right? 

KS: Love them. 

AC: Yeah, that’s actually – so the month of September in Year One is we’ve just been doing fixed stars all month. 

KS: Yeah, I’m in the middle of teaching one of my chart interpretation courses, and next week’s class is on fixed stars! So it’s very timely! 

CB: Excellent. Yeah. Well, maybe we can have a discussion about that at some point and pull things together. We’ll see what happens. I’m gonna keep doing The Astrology Podcast next month, thanks to all the patrons who support us. You can get early access to episodes as well as access to our discussion forum or attend live recordings like this one by signing up through our page on Patreon. So that’s the main thing I have to plug, aside from my Hellenistic astrology course where people keep asking me where to learn astrology, and one of the discussions the three of us have been having over the past few weeks is how it’s interesting how all three of us teach courses online, and we also do, you know, most of our other work and interactions with people through Zoom. So it’s been kind of weird how this year, suddenly everybody is having to use Zoom and moving towards online learning and everything else. But for the three of us, our entire businesses and professional lives are pretty much patterned around that. And I teach my courses through TheAstrologySchool.com. Kelly, you have your courses at Astrology University primarily, as well as your website, KellysAstrology.com. And Austin, you teach your courses through your website, AustinCoppock.com, right? 

AC: Yep. 

CB: Yeah. So if people want to learn more about astrology, then I’d recommend signing up for one of those courses or all three of those courses, because it’s actually interesting how many of our students kind of have gone between — 

KS: Yes. 

CB: — the three. And it’s gonna have interesting like, generational implications where I already see students who’ve taken all of our courses and are like, this interesting blend of the best part of all of our approaches. And I’m always consistently impressed sometimes by like, how good of astrologers they are already that early in their studies as a result. And I kind of wish I had had access to some of those things at that early stage of my studies as well. 

KS: Yeah. 

AC: It’s enviable. 

KS: I think it took us a long time to – I know for me, being in Australia, there just wasn’t the access to that level of teaching. It took a long time to find that. And these days, like, I am a bit jealous of people who can just jump in, whether it’s with us, or other people that are out there that are amazing that are still teaching. That you can just, you know, work with them, and it’s fantastic. 

CB: Yeah. Totally. All right, guys. Well, I think that’s it for this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and that’s it for the forecast for October. So October surprise is our main theme. We will be back again sometime later in October with the forecast for November. And I’m sure things will begin settling down by that point. We’ll probably have a very casual discussion about the astrology of October by late – or astrology of November by late October, right? 

KS: I don’t even have a good Aussie phrase for this! 

CB: Yeah. Blank faces! 

KS: Well, we’ll be back next month — 

AC: Yeah. I’m sure — 

KS: — regardless!

AC: Yes, we’ll be back next month. 

CB: Yeah. So good — 

KS: That’s all! 

CB: — good luck in the meantime to everybody. 

AC: I’m sure there will be some interesting October things to talk about in review, and the – oh hold on. Do we wanna end — 

KS: Yeah, I could see the shadow on the floor, Austin! 

CB: There’s a gigantic cat like, walking around — 

AC: Yeah, hold on! 

CB: — in the background. 

AC: She’s grown so much! I know that — 

KS: Look at her! 

AC: — from the breed that she was big. Let me grab her. 

CB: Sumo Coppock is actually one of our sponsors this month on The Astrology Podcast. At the end, you will notice thanks to – shout out to Kaitlin Coppock. And Austin’s cat, who appeared last month as a very tiny kitten, has grown twice in size. 

[adorable kitten mewing sound]

KS: Yeah, it still doesn’t love being hugged, but oh, look at her! 

CB: Yeah. So that’s after just — 

KS: I love when you can hold them like a baby! So cute! 

AC: She’s not gotten any thicker, but she’s like, a foot longer. 

KS: And with all that hair — 

AC: She’s a — 

CB: Yeah. That is gonna be a huge cat. 

AC: Yeah! It’s gonna be awesome. 

CB: All right. Well, we look forward to checking again next month to see if your cat has doubled in size again. 

KS: Yes! 

CB: Otherwise, good luck everybody in October. Be sure to check in with us; let us know in the comments how things are going, what your transits are like, and how you’ve experienced them or if you notice any interesting things in the news that are coinciding with the astrology. And if it’s interesting, we’ll be sure to mention it in the next episode. So thanks for listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast. Good luck next month, and we’ll see you again next time. 

[END CREDITS]

CB: Special thanks to the patrons who support The Astrology Podcast through our page on Patreon.com. In particular, shout out to the patrons that are on our Producers tiers, such as Christine Stone, Nate Craddock, Maren Altman, Thomas Miller, Bear Ryver, Catherine Conroy, Michelle Merillat, Kristi Moe, and Sumo Coppock. Find out more about how to become a patron at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.

Also, thanks to our sponsors this month, which include the Astro Gold Astrology app, available at Astrogold.io; the Portland School of Astrology at PortlandAstrology.org; the Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological Almanacs, available at Honeycomb.co. And also the International Society for Astrological Research, which is hosting an online conference September 12th through the 13th, 2020; find out more information at ISAR2020.org. As well as the Northwest Astrological Conference, which is happening May 27th through the 31st, 2021, and you can find out more information about that at NORWAC.net. Finally, the software we use here on The Astrology Podcast is called Solar Fire Astrology Software, and it’s available through Alabe.com, and you can get a 15% discount with the promo code ‘AP15.’