The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 293, titled:
March 2021 Astrology Forecast
With Chris Brennan and guests Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees
Episode originally released on February 28, 2021
Original episode URL:
https://theastrologypodcast.com/2021/02/28/march-2021-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 November 15th, 2025
Copyright © 2025 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking about the astrological forecast for March of 2021. Joining me today are astrologers Kelly Surtees and Austin Coppock, and this is episode 293 of the show. So let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
Here is our episode cover art for this episode, which is illustrated by our artist Paula Belluomini. Here are the planetary movements for the month of March. And here is the calendar for March that we’re gonna be talking about.
All right. How’s it going, guys? How are you both doing today?
KELLY SURTEES: Pretty good! How about you guys?
CB: Good. Mercury retrograde treated me okay. You, Austin?
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Yeah, well enough.
CB: Well enough? No complaints? Can’t complain? All right.
AC: I mean, I could, but —
CB: You could complain. Well, you’re both actually we just learned —
AC: I mean, I can —
CB: — having your solar returns basically like, right now. Kelly just had hers in the past 24 hours, so happy birthday, Kelly. And yours —
KS: Thank you.
CB: — Austin, is also coming up very soon.
AC: Yeah, next week. So yeah, exciting. I had a fun feeling old moment yesterday at the barber. I had a haircut appointment, so I went in. And early on in the conversation, my age came up, and I said, “Oh, I turn 42 next week,” and the young man who was cutting my hair said, “Oh! That’s my dad’s age.”
KS: No!
CB: Nice.
KS: Oh my goodness!
CB: I like that. Kelly, you have not had any sort of thing like that so far to open up 42, have you?
KS: No, I haven’t. People have been thinking I was much older than I am for most of my life, so —
CB: Okay.
KS: Yeah.
CB: So you’re resigned to it.
KS: I’m accepting.
CB: You’re both completing your 6th house profection years and moving into 7th house, so that’s something maybe to celebrate a little bit.
KS: Yes.
AC: Yeah, I’m looking forward to going to the vet less. We’ve been, I think, four or five times this month.
CB: I mean, I will be sad that Cat Watch 2020 and early 2021 is over since your cat and other cats have appeared very prominently over the past year. So we’ll see how your 7th house profection year goes.
Why don’t we start transitioning into – so we’re gonna talk about the forecast for March of 2021 first for the first hour or hour and a half of this episode, and then we’re gonna talk about some miscellaneous topics later on in the episode for those who are joining us for the first time. We’re recording this with a live audience of patrons here on – what is today? It’s Friday, February 26th, 2021. We started at probably like, 10:50 AM in Denver, Colorado. Let’s jump right into the forecast then, and then we’ll talk about other stuff as we go.
So the primary things that I wanted to highlight this month. Here’s the planetary alignments calendar that we put out each year. Here’s the one for March. Primary transits that we’re gonna talk about is on March 3rd, Mars is ingressing into Gemini and leaving the sign of Taurus. On the 13th, we have a New Moon in Pisces. On the 15th, we have Mercury going into Pisces. Then the Sun goes into Aries on the 20th. Venus into Aries on the 21st. The Sun-Venus conjunction and the beginning of a new synodic cycle for Venus on the 26th of March. And finally a Full Moon in Libra on the 28th. So there’s some other stuff sprinkled in there that we’ll touch on, but those are the main highlights for this month.
So let’s start – let me take a look at the chart for the moment just to ground us in the end of February and the day that we’re recording, which is that we’re recording this on the day of the Full Moon on February 26th, which is in Virgo, which is our last lunation of February. But some of that energy is gonna kind of take us into the early part of March.
We’re also coming off of the Mercury retrograde in Aquarius, and Mercury is still trying to get out of its shadow phase and is completing the conjunction with Jupiter and everything else over the course of the next week or so. And we have the last few degrees of Mars moving through Taurus, and then finally, we’re also coming off of and only a degree away from the first exact Saturn-Uranus square, which took place in the middle of February. But since that’s only like, a degree away, we’re still very much coming off of that.
Did you guys notice anything about some of those transits, like the Saturn-Uranus square or the Mercury retrograde over the past few weeks?
KS: I’m trying to get my thoughts together. I did notice the very extreme weather that was happening in various parts of the world, partly with the Saturn-Uranus square and partly with, you know, five, six planets in Aquarius. So those sort of extreme and/or different type aspects. I know obviously there was the situation in Texas where it got very cold. We had something similar in Belgium where it was colder than it had been in 20 years, and now two weeks later it’s hotter than it ever is. So we’re still having some of those extreme temperature fluctuations.
CB: Yeah.
KS: What about you guys?
CB: The Texas thing was crazy with the Saturn-Uranus square and a lot of astrologers were commenting on the coinciding of that and just like, Saturn and extremely cold weather, and then Uranus and like, the entire power grid going down across the entire state for millions of people.
AC: Yeah. And well, with Uranus in Taurus disrupting food, shelter, power, necessities – you know, a lot of the food power grid also got disrupted by the same set of things.
CB: Well, speaking of and not just the food grid but also there was like, major news – did you guys notice – with some Uranus in Taurus stuff about some of the lab-grown meats like, hitting new targets or like, new turning points in terms of becoming more widely distributed and better investment and also I think one of the companies did a deal with like, a bunch of fast food businesses in order to start providing those non-meat substitutes to like, fast food places like Taco Bell and stuff like that? So it was a little not major major news, but it’s just funny in retrospect, because that was something we sort of mentioned abstractly as a Uranus in Taurus signification, but it’s actually we’re seeing some of that happen in real time.
AC: Yeah. There was something about the bioreactor – like, the meat reactor – one company was calling the vats.
CB: Right. Yeah. That was not as appealing. Were there any —
AC: So the bioreactor is not fully operational.
CB: Yeah. Well, and speaking of bioreactor and technology, Austin, you are on a blazing new internet connection where suddenly even though you’re out in like, a rural area, recently got hooked up with satellite internet, which I thought was an interesting additional sort of technological shift and maybe disruptive technology that’s happening right now.
AC: Yeah. Elon Musk came to save us. The new Starlink is probably 10 times as fast as our old satellite internet, and it costs like, a quarter as much. So we are pleased.
CB: Yeah. That’s gonna be the first time I have given a shout out and a thanks that I might regret later to Elon Musk, especially if he ends up taking over the world at some point in the future. We might regret that. But in the meantime, at least Austin has blazing fast internet, so shout out to him for that.
AC: Well, I mean, that’s sort of the pattern of the world, right? Is that, yes, it’s dystopia, but conveniences abound.
CB: Right. So it’s a trade-off of whatever. Like, fast internet in exchange for total world domination by small corporation.
All right. Any other things? There was a Mercury retrograde as well. I think it was just because I’m in a first house Aquarius profection year, but the first phase of that Mercury retrograde was very much looking back for me and was very like, reflective. I had to like, clean my place because there was gonna be a yearly inspection by my landlord, and ended up rearranging and opening and putting away a bunch of old boxes, and I found like, my old Kepler College diploma. And so I was reflecting on that and reflecting on the educational path that I ended up deciding to go and some of the choices that were made along the way, and it was very interesting and introspective and stuff I think because I was in the first house Aquarius profection year with Mercury going retrograde there.
It was also interesting seeing the first of three Mercury retrogrades in an air sign this year. And it was almost like, more Mercury retrograde-y in some way in terms of communications and social media and stuff, I wondered, as a result of that.
AC: Yeah, it was very classically Mercury retrograde.
CB: Right.
AC: Yeah. I don’t know. I’ve been somewhat monk-ish this last month, so I haven’t been paying as much attention to the world as I often do.
KS: Yeah. Similar, Austin. I was a little bit in the monastery kind of space. But just this past week, I was back doing consults with my clients, and one thing that came up a lot with this Mercury retrograde for clients like yourself, Chris, where it’s sort of more significant in the context of their natal chart, either over planets or first house or profected house year, they found it a little bit more morose or challenging in terms of keeping their mindset in a good place. And I was really wondering about the copresence with Saturn having a little bit more of that melancholic tone just in general as part of it.
CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially when it was stationing direct in Aquarius, it was stationing in that very close conjunction with Saturn at the time. Let me actually share the chart for right now, because you can kind of see that, because even though Mercury’s been direct for like, five days right now, it’s still only at 12 degrees of Aquarius conjunct Saturn at eight Aquarius.
KS: Yes. So there was definitely —
CB: Yeah.
KS: — that kind of vibe, I think.
CB: Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So those are the things we wanted to touch on. We also are coming out of – and I just wanted to illustrate this – from our friend Kyle at ArchetypalExplorer.com who sent us this nice illustration from his program that shows the exact Saturn-Uranus squares and the sort of intensity of those based on the closeness and how we can see the first of those fell right in the middle of February, right on February 17th. But we’re kind of on the downslope of that, at least as much as we can for a little bit, coming off of the intensity of that and going into March where we’ll get some distance between Saturn and Uranus for a little bit before they start coming back together and form another square exactly in the middle of June.
So this month we’re kind of —
AC: Yeah.
CB: — on the downslope from that.
AC: Yeah. Well, and not only did we have our first exact Saturn-Uranus square during February, but we also had almost all of the other visible planets hanging out, you know, in that. You know, in that dynamic. And so March, things really disperse, and the planets have already kind of begun to go their separate directions and, you know, shift priorities. And that’s really a theme for March. It’s not one note in the way that February was, right?
When I did pop my head up in February, it looked like what I saw all over the news was just different versions of the Saturn-Uranus square. You know, whether it was the farmers’ protest in India or one of the other hundred things, it was very clear that that was the dynamic, right? This is the, you know, a proposed order, a clear rejection of that order, and then move from there or argue from there, depending on the discussion.
CB: Yeah. Speaking of that, that actually reminds me – so we, you know, the big thing last month, of course, was the huge line-up and conjunction of planets in the sign of Aquarius, which was super unique, super rare, and kind of interesting to see. But it was really fascinating seeing where that stellium fell for different people in their chart, especially in terms of what house placement it was in. And there were just some like, classic things that came up in conversation with different people depending on what their rising sign was. And I remember talking to one person who was like, a family member, and I had been wondering leading up to it how that was gonna work out for them because I saw it happening in their 10th house because they have Taurus rising, so their 10th whole sign house is Aquarius. And like, completely independently around that time, they called and they said they were starting to go in a new career direction, but that it felt like a bunch of different pieces or threads from different parts of their life over the past 10 or 20 or 30 years were all suddenly coming together to form a new career path. And I thought that was really funny, given, you know, our keyword for that last month, which was the assembly; we were calling it “the assembly” of planets in Aquarius. And this person was literally describing their experience being like, a bunch of threads assembling in that part of their life in terms of career in a very literal manifestation or literal way.
Yeah, so there was that. There was another person I talked to who had Scorpio rising and the assembly was in the 4th house, and they ended up like, rearranging and reassembling their living situation and their home and like, reconfiguring it in a different way, which I thought was additionally like, a really funny manifestation of that. Did you guys notice anything else with different people or in your own charts in terms of how that assembly worked out of planets in Aquarius based on what house it fell in for different rising signs?
AC: Yeah, it’s funny that you bring up that 4th house example. I know somehow who has it in their 4th, and they spent a lot of last month thinking about home improvement stuff. Home improvement, we could do an add-on here, do we do a tear-down there, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s interesting, you framing it is interesting, because as I said, I’ve been a little bit monastic the last month. So it’s in my 8th, right, so it’s unconfigured to the Ascendant. It’s kind of, you know, off, stepping out of the game, right? That’s a little bit what especially the 8th and 12th do. And so that is very much the experience. And you know, I hadn’t reflected on it until you brought it up, but I had some experiences where I was, I don’t know, like, sitting up in bed for two hours and just going through life story stuff. Like, getting back to the present. And it very much felt like reassembling the story of how I got here. And for whatever reason, I just didn’t connect it to the literal assembly happening. But I had a couple experiences like that that really stood out. But you know, it was a quiet, private reassembly.
CB: I like that. What about you, Kelly? Did you notice anything either personally or in like, client charts of people you were seeing?
KS: For me, the thing that stood out most with clients was some of the keywords to do with that Mercury retro Saturn combination. But I’ve seen a little bit just play out in our personal lives where it sits in my husband’s chart, where it’s in my chart, and it is definitely more of those kind of darker houses for us where it’s been a quieter time. But there is a feeling – as soon as the Sun went into Pisces, there was a sense of like, that shift kicking in of we can step out of this now, we can step forward from here, if you like.
CB: That makes sense.
All right, great. Well, the other thing I wanted to mention that’s like, a backdrop that we’re coming into March with is with Mars being at the very tail end of Taurus at this point and very quickly on the 3rd of March shifting into Gemini, that’s actually kind of a big deal because it’s ending a period that started last summer in late June and early July where Mars had been configured to Saturn by sign, by a square, starting at that time, and that was the beginning of the Mars retrograde period in Aries where it kept going back and forth squaring Saturn exactly from the signs of Aries and Capricorn.
Then eventually we had that shift and Saturn moved into Aquarius, but since the beginning of this year, Mars has been moving through Taurus. So they were still configured by square by sign. So I think one of the interesting kind of big shifts at the beginning of March that’s worth noting and worth talking about is that we’re finally ending that very long period of Mars square Saturn at this point very early in March. And some of that, like we remember, of course, last March a lot of the lockdowns happened under the Mars-Saturn conjunction. And then there was a little bit of easing up of that when Mars left that conjunction by sign with Saturn, but then once Mars went in on I think like, July 1st of last year once it went into Aries and Saturn retrograded back into Capricorn, we again started seeing some of those lockdowns across the world as it became clear that the pandemic wasn’t over and there was still this sense of like, restriction on people’s movement. And I’m wondering and hoping with the covid numbers recently going down if some of that won’t let up again a little bit in terms of, you know, freedom of movement and restrictions and lockdowns and things like that. I did a search today for like, the US covid numbers, and they’ve been dropping pretty rapidly over the past few weeks, even though it’s still very high and it’s basically as high as it was at its highest point last summer here in the US where it’s at right now. So obviously, we’re not out of the woods at all, but with the vaccination numbers going up and some of the covid numbers dropping, it’s somewhat promising.
AC: Yeah, it’s good. And you know, you make a good point there with the Mars-Saturn. We’ve had Mars either conjunct or square Saturn for, I don’t know, let’s see, nine of the last 12 months, maybe? Yeah, nine of the last 12 months, maybe a little bit more. And that’s unusual. You know, Mars-Saturn configurations on average are a quarter of the time, right? They’re not three-quarters of the time.
KS: Yes.
AC: And you know, although there are plenty of potentially productive things that happen with Mars and Saturn in a nativity, in the sky in general when we’re looking at astrology to describe the condition of a time period, you know, all manner of gnarly things are under the combined auspices of Mars and Saturn. And so you know, it was one of the reasons we were a bit leery of 2020 when we looked at it back in 2019 is we’re like, oh, it’s Mars and Saturn. The entire time. And so we are now moved out of that cycle, right? Saturn will do dastardly deeds as will Mars, but separately. You know, in a sense, we’re breaking up the villain crossover series where all the villains work together to smash the people.
CB: Yeah. I like that. And the ending of a chapter. And one of the things that’s weird about that – here, I’m just animating the chart. We see Mars goes into Taurus in January, make its way through Taurus in February, and then finally get out of Taurus and move into Gemini by March 3rd and 4th. And now we have some pretty flowing configurations between Mars in Gemini and Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius, which are now configured by trine. And that’s a much different energy than we’ve been dealing with for most of the past 12 months, basically, at this point.
KS: Yeah, it has a little bit —
AC: Yeah.
KS: — more of like, a constructive, productive, I don’t wanna get necessarily too too positive, but it’s certainly less barriers, less frustrations, and just in general one of the words that I keep coming back to when I think about March astrologically as a whole is the idea of movement. Because Mars is leaving a fixed sign and going into a mutable sign. Mercury’s gonna do the same thing mid-month. And the other thing just in a slightly shorter time with Mars and to the same extent Mercury, they’ve both been in the signs, you know, at the start of March, we’ve got Mars in Taurus, Mercury in Aquarius. They’ve both been in those signs since the second week of January, so unusually we’ve had longer – Mercury’s been Aquarius for a couple of months because of the retrograde, Mars was in Taurus for a little bit longer than usual because it’s still picking up pace post-retrograde. So March is really the first month where we’re getting some things that have been in the one sort of holding pattern since the start of the year. They’re actually gonna change this month.
CB: Yeah.
AC: Yeah. That’s a great point.
CB: Well, that’s really good news, and it’s kind of paving the way for that shift we noted in our year ahead forecast when Jupiter’s gonna dip into Pisces starting in May. So I wonder if it’s not clearing the way for that and sort of a ramping up or a preparation for that period that we were hoping would also indicate a shift towards things being a little bit more open or a little lighter than they have been for the past year, year and a half.
AC: It’s certainly more —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — mobile. You know, as I believe we discussed last month about this month, as March opens, we’ve already got the Sun and Venus in Pisces, which is a mutable sign. And then as Chris just said, we have Mars on the 3rd or 4th moving into Gemini, which is a mutable sign. And so that stands in stark contrast to the everything fixed that we had for the last month. Right? Mutable is adaptive, right? It’s mobile. It’s willing to change things up. You know, fixed is sort of the drama of “can we make this one thing happen or not,” whereas mutable is like, “well, if we can’t make it happen, what can we do instead?” or “maybe if we change this.” You know, mutable connects to the tech term of a company doing a pivot where you’re like, oh, we’ve got something and it doesn’t do this great and that’s what we hoped for. But it can do this, so why not this? This has value. And so there’s a little, you know, there’s a dexterity to mutableness that we’re seeing through a lot of this month.
CB: Yeah. Which is gonna be I think experienced relatively positively having been in such a heavy fixed energy for so long and having such an otherwise tense transit of Mars squaring Saturn by sign for the past six or eight months or whatever it’s been at this point. Yeah. So you know, sometimes mutable signs get a bad rap for being flaky, but the positive side of that is that not that mutability, but what you’re just describing in terms of I’m not thinking of the word. I’m blanking on the word. What’s the word? It’s like… Kelly! Help!
KS: Yeah, so I think I know – mutable signs get a bad rep for being flaky and for being scattered, and I think that’s the caution with Mars coming into Gemini. But they’re —
CB: But the positive thing is —
KS: — adaptable. Yeah, they’re —
CB: Adaptable, that’s it.
KS: — adaptable, yeah. So they can multitask or they can juggle things. Austin used the word “pivot.” You know, a mutable planet can go from doing – they can do five things in a day rather than just one thing deeply. So you know, it has value in different scenarios, I guess, to be so adaptable.
CB: Yeah. There’s something to be said for adaptability that’s sometimes, you know, very undervalued sometimes in society even though you would think it has its place. But sometimes the ability to be adaptable is not given as much credit maybe as it deserves.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Well, as a highly mutable chart, I completely agree.
CB: Right.
KS: We totally concur! But you know, I am married to someone who’s very fixed in their chart and Chris, I know you weigh more to the fixed —
CB: Right.
KS: — and there is great value in that steadfastness. Although, you know, my husband sometimes frustrates me for being stubborn, et cetera. So there’s pros and cons to all kinds, basically.
CB: Yes. All right.
KS: Yeah.
AC: And —
CB: Go ahead, Austin.
AC: So yeah, let’s talk a little bit more about two of our mutable planets, which are the Sun and Venus. And so as the month begins, we have Sun and Venus in Pisces, and Venus is considered to be exalted in Pisces, to give out lots of, you know, to provide abundantly for all of the pleasant core significations. But Venus is invisible for this entire time. Right? So Venus is so close to the Sun that we won’t be able to see it rise or set. Right? As so we have, it’s an interesting combination of characteristics. You know, usually if a planet, especially Venus, is for a while exalted, we can just expect lots of the social lubrication and general joy in life as well as, you know, the cash and prizes and luxuries that Venus brings to characterize that time. But a combust planet has different roles. And so, you know, there’s a thing here. So a combust planet is a planet that we can’t see, and so metaphorically, it’s burnt by the Sun. And this is said in some texts and in some contexts to ruin or devastate the significations of the planet. It certainly keeps them hidden, right? But there is a rule which I believe you use, Chris; I certainly use – probably you too, Kelly – that if a planet is very strong in a sign such as in its exaltation or rulership as Venus is, that it’s able to resist the baleful rays of the Sun. The image is of, I believe, the planet holding up a parasol or having a little canopy to protect itself from the far-too-close solar rays. Do you all use that rule, and if so, how do you interpret it?
CB: Yeah, except here it’s like, Venus in her exaltation, so it’s more like, you know, one of those old from the Roman empire like, somebody that’s being carried around in like, a chariot or something like that because of the sense of exaltation and having protection as well as prestige from that.
AC: Yeah, palanquin, thank you. And so —
CB: Is that what it’s called?
AC: — do you see that as a complete negation of the combustion, or a modification of it?
CB: Yeah, I mean —
AC: So what I —
CB: — I see that as a mitigating factor that mitigates any negative things that are associated with it, and instead it’s just something that becomes internalized more, which is another interpretation of planets under the beams is that the significations instead of being outside and visible and external become inside and hidden and internal. And part of that is also that Venus is finishing the last phase of her synodic cycle, and she’s getting ready to conjoin the Sun and begin a new cycle later in the month with the Sun, a new like, year and a half cycle, and closing down another year and a half cycle that started in early 2020, I believe. And that is part of what’s tied in with that in terms of being under the beams and entering into eventually the heart of the Sun.
AC: Yeah, so I do – with the way that I see it is that the quality of the planet’s work is undamaged, but if you’re expecting anything that requires visibility, that those significations are damaged. Because even if Venus is doing great work behind the scenes, it’s still behind the scenes. The planet has no visible light, and so anything, you know, magically or electionally or whatever, that has visibility as part of its goal or its definition of success would be damaged. But if it’s, you know, quiet, privately pleasant, then I would say, you know, it’s a thumbs-up. Kelly, do you work with this rule?
KS: Yeah. I think you’ve just probably given a slightly more eloquent expression of it, Austin, but I think I’m a little bit more on that take where I totally see, you know, Venus in Pisces has the gifts of the exaltation, but there is still the invisibility factor that needs to be taken into account, if you like. So I guess my take is it’s better for Venus combust the Sun to be in Pisces or Taurus or Libra, but there is still some qualities of hiddenness, not being seen, or something maybe being a bit obscured coming through. Because we physically can’t see it, so it’s not the same as if Venus was in Pisces without that proximity to the Sun, I guess.
AC: Right.
CB: Right. So —
AC: It sounds like we’re pretty much in agreement.
KS: Yeah.
CB: We are all on the same page. So let me show the timeframe for that conjunction, because there’s kind of like, a high point for that, which is the New Moon in Pisces when Venus is very closely conjunct Neptune and closely conjunct the New Moon later this month around the middle of March around the 13th. But that synodic cycle completes, and Venus conjoins the Sun at about five degrees of Aries it looks like around March 25th. So that’s the end of one 1.6 year cycle and the beginning of a new one. So some endings and some beginnings with respect to Venus. But that actually takes place in the sign of Aries instead of Pisces, even though Venus spends most of the month in Pisces.
KS: Yes.
AC: Yeah. So that’s the – so Venus has two different flavors of conjunction with the Sun, right? One is the retrograde conjunction, which occurs in the middle of the Venus retrograde. The last one of those was June of 2020. And so this is the next installment, and this is the direct conjunction. And so for this one, often called the superior conjunction, not because it’s better, but in the literally further away – we’re going to have Venus on the far side of the Sun. So the Venus-Sun conjunction while Venus is direct is Venus as far away from earth as possible, whereas the retro one has Venus between the Sun and the earth.
Kelly, how do you work with the difference – like, the very stark astronomical difference between those? Even though they can look similar at first glance in a chart?
KS: Yeah, I think the inferior conjunction, which is, I mean, I sort of almost switch that to an interior where there’s a little bit more —
AC: Yeah.
KS: — of an internal, whether that is less seen or less noticed, or whether it’s just describing things that are a little bit more of an intimate nature, versus the superior conjunction which we might think of external or even kind of like, on an extroverted spectrum if you like. So a little bit more outward or seen perhaps. Topics that are —
AC: Yeah, that makes sense.
KS: — kind of away rather than really intimate.
CB: Yeah. That makes sense. All right, so a lot of that’s like, the overview of the major transits this month. Should we start back at the beginning and start doing a sort of week-by-week breakdown?
AC: Sure.
KS: Sure.
AC: I’ve got some more to say about Venus and the Sun, but we can get there.
CB: Okay. So let me share the chart again for those watching the video version, and let’s back up to the first week of March. March 1st opens up with Mars at 28 degrees of Taurus, so it makes that shift, as I said, on the 3rd. But we get a few more days of Mars in Taurus right at the top of the month.
We have Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn lined up in a conjunction at the top of the month in Aquarius, and Venus and the Sun forming their conjunction in Pisces with Neptune.
Let’s see, and then we get the same day, one of the things I noticed on the 3rd or the 4th right around the same time that Mars switches into Gemini, we get the exact final Mercury-Jupiter conjunction, the third and last of three, which is kind of an auspicious conjunction. And it’s interesting seeing that shift happen simultaneously of Mars going into the domicile of Mercury, and therefore Mars taking on some of the significations of Mercury for the next month or two. But a sort of auspicious Mercury-Jupiter conjunction happening at the same time.
AC: Yeah —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — I get to pack all that into my solar return chart. I’m pleased.
KS: You do!
CB: Nice.
KS: You do. I think that Mercury-Jupiter is, it’s definitely an aspect that can bring a positive development or a welcome piece of news or progress, I think. It is the third in a sequence of three, because we’ve had Mercury conjunct Jupiter over the last couple of months as Mercury’s gone through its retrograde. But I look forward to that.
CB: Yeah. Definitely.
AC: Yeah. And it’s that copresence between Mercury and Jupiter lasts until the middle of the month, and you know, it’s a quite good thing. It’s especially good for Mercury, because it’s really answers to questions, right? Or the right trajectory through difficult terrain. And Chris, I love that you pointed out that Mars in Gemini is ruled by Mercury, and so will actually be benefiting significantly from that really like, hopeful but clear-eyed Mercury-Jupiter conjunction. And that it’s really going to change the efficacy of Mars in Gemini once Mercury shifts into Pisces mid-month. So we really, I would say until Mercury shifts into Pisces, we’re going to get the better portion of Mars in Gemini’s action. Right? Mars in Gemini is sometimes manic, but can be manically productive. But as I believe you said earlier, Kelly, can easily be scattered or dispersed, right? Too many thing – like, you know, doing a little work on 30 things, getting nothing done. The mind getting overwhelmed, getting anxious, and you know, that sort of spinning up and getting scattered. That centrifugal sort of state. And I would be looking for that later in the month. But the first portion of Mars in Gemini should be pretty useful, I think.
KS: Yeah, the feeling that I have with Mars going into Gemini and then the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction, which it’s both ruling and happening around the same time, it’s like, a lot of things get unlocked or start happening quite quickly, and there’s a sense of that being, okay, great – we’ve now got six things on the go, and we’re all perhaps fresh or rested and off we go. But we get a couple of weeks into it, and the wheels start to fall off. But we’ve got a couple of weeks of getting things done or moving things forward first.
AC: Yeah. I think there is a loss of focus when Mercury moves into Pisces. Well, there’s always a bit of a loss of focus when Mercury moves into Pisces.
KS: Totally.
AC: Sometimes that can be fun. But in terms of Mercury’s job as directing Mars —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — that’s going to mean that Mars’s efforts are going to be less efficacious with Mercury, the sort of – what do you call the person like, who’s calling in whatever to whatever? The command central, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: Mercury as the dispatcher is going to, you know, maybe have one drink too many.
KS: Show up to work unprepared.
AC: Yeah, exactly. And so that’ll affect the action of Mars who’s out there on the ground.
KS: Yeah.
CB: The other thing when Mercury shifts into Pisces about that is that Mercury will eventually catch up for its third square with Mars right around 11 degrees of Pisces, squaring Mars at 11 degrees of Gemini, and that completes around the 23rd and 24th of the month. So that’s kind of a tense, somewhat verbally combative energy, and due to the retrograde, we already had two squares like that already I think this year. So this is completing the third one, but in different signs from where it was before.
AC: Yeah, and that’s one of our themes for 2021 is an excess of Mercury-Mars squares, if I’m not mistaken.
KS: Yes. Yes.
CB: Right.
KS: It is.
CB: So backing up, one thing I don’t like about – I’m otherwise on board with Mars leaving Taurus and moving into Gemini. The only thing I don’t like is that as soon as Mars shifts into Gemini, we stop being able to do some of these awesome Gemini rising elections with day charts where Mercury has stationed direct and it’s applying to that conjunction with Jupiter.
So as a result of that, Leisa and I wanted to highlight our main electional chart of the month actually takes place right away at the top of the month on March 1st at approximately 10:30 in the morning local time. So this is our electional chart for the month. You’ll have about let’s say eight degrees of Gemini rising or so, or basically adjust the chart or adjust the time in your location until you have about eight degrees of Gemini rising. We made it so that this time puts Mercury and Jupiter right on the Midheaven here in Denver. And if you can, try to adjust things so that you have something like that in your location if you can. Otherwise, just make the degree of the Ascendant trining one of the Aquarius planets – either Saturn at eight Aquarius, Mercury at 14 Aquarius, or Jupiter at 16 Aquarius.
So this is a chart with Mercury ruling the Ascendant, and it’s placed in Aquarius in the 9th whole sign house conjunct the degree of the Midheaven and applying to a conjunction with Jupiter in a day chart in the 9th. Saturn is also there, but Mercury is separating from Saturn, so that’s not a big problem because in electional astrology, separating aspects usually indicate the past and applying aspects indicate the future.
Mars is relatively well tucked away in the 12th whole sign house, and the Moon is in Libra in the 5th whole sign house at around 13 degrees of Libra, applying to a nice trine with Mercury and then a nice trine with Jupiter. Then finally also we have Venus and the Sun – Venus exalted in the 10th whole sign house in Pisces. So this is our best electional chart for the month, and it’s similar to the electional chart we highlighted last month for late February after Mercury stationed direct in that it’s very much focused especially on 9th house matters, because it puts the ruler of the Ascendant in the 9th house, and applying to a conjunction with Jupiter in the 9th whole sign house. Although if you can get it there on the degree of the Midheaven, then that’ll import some 10th house significations in as well at the same time. So it would be good for like, learning and education, or philosophical or sort of religious studies or other things related to that. The 9th house is also a good place for publishing and either publishing a book or starting a book, or trying to communicate some teaching or some knowledge or some learning that you have. It’s not a bad 7th house chart, since Jupiter is the ruler of both the 7th house and the 10th whole sign house, and Mercury – the ruler of the Ascendant – is applying to a conjunction with Jupiter. What other topics would you guys use a chart like this for that’s very much focused on 9th house matters?
KS: I mean, definitely —
AC: Well.
KS: — the study, teaching, wisdom side of things, whether it was reading a book on philosophy or listening to a lecture or training on something in the wisdom, metaphysical kind of learning space. I think to me, it’s like the brain is getting some good information or sharing some good insight.
What about you, Austin?
AC: Yeah, I think you both covered the majority of them. One thing I would just point out is that that Mercury-Jupiter conjunction on the Midheaven, those are the rulers of the first and 7th houses. And so —
CB: Right.
AC: — if you want to bring people into accord, you want to bring me – first house – you – 7th house – into accord, that’s right in there, and that could be like, business stuff. That could be legal stuff. That could be, you know, officiating a relationship.
KS: Yeah, doing —
CB: Yeah.
KS: — a deal, coming to an agreement. That’s a great point. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And Jupiter’s also the ruler of the 10th house, so it’s not bad for career matters either or things having to do with public reputation. And Venus exalted in Pisces in the 10th also gives a nice boost. The downside of the chart, the more problematic area is Mars in the 12th house, which can be problematic for enemies or people that work at cross purposes to you, or sometimes needing to be more careful about undermining yourself or traditionally self-undoing is one of the 12th house significations.
So otherwise that is our chart for the month, and that is one of, I think, four electional charts that Leisa and I found for The Auspicious Elections Podcast this month, which is available to patrons through our page on Patreon. So you can sign up for more information about that or find more information on our page on Patreon.
KS: One of the things – this is a little bit cheeky, and someone’s mentioned this in the chat so I’m just gonna throw it in there – it’s such a nice chart, I think you start teaching a class then! And I realized that’s actually about when I will start teaching my next class. Not —
CB:Nice.
KS: — not necessarily the time of day where I’ll be, but where my students from North America will be attending. And with that aspect – the Moon aspect – so yeah. I like that.
CB: Yeah. I like that too. Actually I’m gonna be raising the prices on my courses and trying to start doing more live Q&A webinars with my Hellenistic course in particular because I keep doing that classic thing – do you guys remember? Years ago, you all sat me down at like, a NORWAC – like, actually many years ago now – and were like, Chris, you’re really underpricing pretty much your consultations and everything you’re offering and you need to raise your prices. And it was like, an intervention almost.
KS: I do recall this. And it was many years ago!
CB: Yeah. This is an ongoing issue for me, which is underpricing my things and also wanting to make it more – keep things accessible to people, which is really important thing. But given how much I keep adding to my courses and stuff, I’m finally gonna raise my prices a little bit again this month. So I wanted to give people a heads-up if they’ve been meaning to sign up and putting it off that this would be a good time to, just in order to get in for the lower price. I’m gonna continue to offer scholarships and some discounts to different groups because I wanna make sure things are still accessible to people who are in need or who, you know, wanna access some of those teachings. But yeah, I think I need to keep, you know, doing that in order to keep up where the field is and where everything else is at.
AC: Yeah. Standing still is not neutral when you’re on a moving train, something like that?
KS: Yes.
CB: Yes. Something like that. So anyway, having the ruler of the Ascendant in the 9th whole sign house reminded me that in terms of starting a new course of study under a good electional chart.
So that is the beginning of the month, and Mars ingressing into Gemini. Is there anything else in the first week of the month before we move on? So we get the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction —
AC: No, I mean… Yeah. The first part of March is as we end February, right, we’ve got Mercury-Jupiter conjunction, and we have Sun-Venus. Then we get that Mars ingress, and then I believe the next thing on our agenda is the New Moon, isn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
AC: Which is a little ways out.
KS: It’s almost the middle of the month. In a two-day period that I’m affectionately calling “the Pisces puddle,” because we’ll have the Moon, Venus, Neptune all traveling through Pisces and getting together and then of course we have the New Moon at 23 Pisces.
CB: Yeah. 23 Pisces. Venus is really close to a conjunction with Neptune at that point; Venus is at about late 19, and Neptune is at 20. So it’s interesting that that’s almost a simultaneous happening in terms of that conjunction. And both of those planets are themselves already pretty close to a conjunction with the Sun and the Moon when they go exact at 23 degrees of Pisces on it looks like early on March 13th.
KS: Yes.
AC: Oh, that’s lovely. You know, if we compare that to, I don’t know, the New Moons of the last year, I think that is the most pleasant by far. You know, it’s not I wouldn’t say the most productive.
KS: No, no! Day for rest and relaxation.
AC: Yeah, there’s a depth of relaxation there. And you know, to speak to Pisces mutability, there’s the mutability and adaptability on the surface. You know, sort of in action out there in the world. But then, you know, with Pisces, there’s also a sort of psychic adaptability where, you know, I find with when planets are in Pisces, there’s a call to the deeps to sort of adapt to change shape in relationship to the where things have come to. It’s mutable water, so there’s like, a mutable dream, emotional adapting to where we have come to, right? And there are, you know, life is full of pleasures and pains, but half of those pains are a result of us having a different set of expectations or demands than what the present is. There’s the friction between us and the period of life we’re in. And part of that deeper Pisces work is, you know, making complementary shapes out of the point in our lives we’re at and ourselves so they form a nice circle rather than a sort of set of conflicting, contrasting hard angles, if that makes sense.
KS: Yes. Yeah, so it’s feeling into the mood or the flow or almost a feedback loop around the hope or the dream or the expectation versus what is and trying to make connections or have movement. So there’s a sense of, I don’t know, it’s definitely more circular and flowy and like, the infinity symbol rather than, you know, hexagons and squares and rectangles.
AC: Yeah. Not terribly rectilinear. It feels like the perfect time to consult the I Ching, right? And be like, what is the dynamic of things, and then what new dynamic is emerging out of that? And then what is the tao of whatever this is? Of that moment. What is the best possible relationship to this changing set of times?
CB: Yeah. One of the things that I wanted to point out about this lunation that I think is important and can help situate it within the overall context of this year and where people are at versus where we’re headed is that we’re at this set of lunations in the mutable signs, and Virgo and Pisces specifically is the halfway point between eclipses this year because the nodes are right in the middle of Sagittarius and Gemini. So here’s another illustration from Kyle from Archetypal Explorer that he sent me over just showing how in terms of the lunations right now we are midway between the eclipses that took place towards the end of last year in late November and early December and the next set of eclipses that are coming up in a few months in the May-June timeframe. So I think that’s useful to sort of illustrate, because I don’t know if you guys feel the same way, but I feel like when you reach this point that’s sort of midway between eclipses, that it’s almost like a turning point in and of itself with respect to some of the eclipse energies that began in certain parts of your charts three months earlier and in terms of where it’s headed three months from now when the next set of eclipses take place in the same quadruplicity or the same set of four signs, basically. Do you guys see any connection between those two, or how do you take that?
AC: It does do that’ if this particular cycle of eclipses is really important for a person, then noting that midpoint is really important. If it’s not a terribly impactful set of eclipses, then other factors are likely to shine brighter.
CB: Yeah.
AC: I just wanna say with the graphic that you showed, I really like the way that it imaged the declination of the Moon —
CB: Right.
AC: — in those being either —
KS: Yeah, very clever.
AC: — below the Sun or, you know, northerly or southerly from the Sun, because that’s the reason there’s not an eclipse every New and Full Moon is the Moon’s a little high or a little low in the sky. And so this is a really nice visualization of that. And you see that we have the, in a sense, the maximum distance with the New and Full Moons at the midpoint, where the Full Moon is way above the Sun, and then the New Moons are way below the Sun.
CB: Yeah. And part of that, how you can visualize that just looking at a chart, is this New Moon is gonna take place at 23 degrees of Pisces, so that’s in one of the signs that’s squaring the nodes. Because the nodes are that point where the path of the Moon basically intersects the path of the Sun, and that’s what allows for eclipses when the bodies of the two move across each other.
So —
AC: Yeah, thoroughly chill New Moon.
KS: Yeah, I was gonna say that – to something you said earlier, Austin, when you were talking about the sort of divination qualities of this New Moon, it definitely feels like slowing down. You know, if you’re going to feel or intuit or divine something, you have to be not rushing and not thinking, “I wanna do this quickly.” You kind of have to – there’s a spaciousness to this which is kind of needed to allow that messaging to kind of pop up or for you to be still enough within yourself to interact with those subtle sensory and that subtle sort of perception.
AC: Yeah. I would say to feel motion, you have to be going slower than what’s moving. If you’re moving faster than something, you won’t notice it.
KS: Yes.
CB: Yeah. That makes sense. All right, is there anything else about this New Moon in the middle of the month? Or anything else that we need to mention? It’s like, there’s not a lot of close configurations to it; it’s kind of a chill lunation as you said, Austin, with that Neptune energy and that exalted Venus all being configured there.
All right.
AC: The puddle.
KS: Yes.
CB: The Pisces puddle.
KS: Very puddle.
CB: That sounds good. Let me see – I did have —
AC: The puddle of prophecy.
KS: That’s the extra word! I’m like, this thing needs an extra alliteration, so always bringing the great words, Austin. That’s fantastic.
AC: Thank you. Well, you began it with puddle, which was exactly the right location.
KS: Oh, that’s fantastic.
CB: So speaking of puddles, Mercury goes into Pisces a couple days later on March 15th, it looks like.
KS: Yes.
AC: Yeah. If anybody wants to spill a cup of coffee on their laptop, there are some really good elections for that once Mercury’s in Pisces and square Mars.
KS: Yeah, or even conjunct Neptune. You’ve got a couple of options!
AC: Yeah! It’s really, if you wanna ruin any of your electronics with water, opportunities abound.
KS: Oh gosh.
CB: Or write like, a poem or a very abstract piece of art.
KS: Oh gosh. And if you have such things in your natal chart, this is something that you deal with all the time anyway! I’m just remembering about six weeks ago, I literally knocked a glass of water over my keyboard and just, that was it. Madness.
AC: Yeah. You know, there is the deep interpretation, which is valid, and then there is the extremely literal shallow interpretation, which is also valid.
KS: Yes. Equally valid. So it’s March 15, is it, Chris? That Mercury moves in? Literally on the middle on the month.
CB: Yeah, March 15 —
AC: Yeah, right after the New Moon.
KS: Yeah.
CB: And Mercury is moving really fast at this point, so it’s actually gonna cruise through Pisces —
KS: Very quickly! Two and a half weeks or something.
CB: Yeah. So that it almost gets out by the end of the month, but not quite. But we do get a Mercury-Neptune conjunction on March 29th right around the same time as the Sun-Venus conjunction, a little bit after.
AC: Right. So that, you know, between the New Moon and Mercury’s ingress into Pisces, we have a pretty reasonable dividing line between the first and second half of the month in terms of dynamics. And then how long is it until Venus moves into Aries? It’s not too long after that, is it?
KS: The 21st. Another week.
AC: Okay, so it’s the 21st. Right.
KS: Yeah.
AC: So it is a little bit later. So you know, I would say during the middle third of the month, we have a variety of shifts.
CB: Yeah. One of the things that might be worth talking about here is because with the two Neptune conjunctions, first with Venus and then with Mercury, you know, one of the significations of Neptune in general is just lack of boundaries and a dropping of boundaries. And with Venus-Neptune conjunctions, that’s more of a straightforward thing in terms of relationships and dropping relational boundaries, whereas with Mercury-Neptune, the boundaries more have to do with the mind or the imagination or what are some of your keywords for – let’s say your positive keywords for – Mercury-Neptune conjunctions?
KS: Poetry and music.
CB: Poetry, music, inspiration. Like, feeling deeply —
KS: Yeah.
CB: — inspired, especially in Pisces in a water sign. So something that maybe touches you on an emotional level at some emotional core level, even if it’s not an intellectual type thing. It’s like, conveying a feeling.
KS: Oh, it’s absolutely talking about feelings. It’s feeling all the feelings, maybe – this isn’t a positive word, but – you know, sometimes getting overwhelmed by that, and looking for ways to move through emotion that aren’t logical or verbal. And that’s where the poetry and the music comes in. So like, keywords would be like, imagination, maybe inspiration and intuition. And it’s sort of inspiration without necessarily having the action, but it is sort of feeling full or flooded with things, if you like. They would be some of the more positive sides, but there’s a lot of not positive sides, I think! Or there’s things to watch out for that can be tricky with Mercury-Neptune, especially with Mercury in Pisces.
CB: Right. I think we often end up – and I definitely often end up – focusing on the problematic parts of that when Mercury hits hard aspects with Neptune, just because Mercury’s job is to convey information and to communicate, and Neptune’s job – usually its job description is like, the blurring of things and the blurring of boundaries and making things less clear. And so when they get together, that tends to be an antithetical energy that can sometimes lead to miscommunication or false communications in different ways. But I was trying to think of some of the more positive sides of that for once instead of just giving it a purely negative spin.
AC: Well, a couple years ago, I believe the metaphor I used for it was “switching to sonar,” right?
KS: Oh yes!
AC: For communication and navigation —
KS: Yeah, that was great!
AC: — rather than… Right? you know, if you were deep underwater and you try to speak, that’s not gonna work very well. But like, you know, that echolocation and sonar – well, I guess sonar is echolocation – is the appropriate mode of navigation at a certain depth. It’s not very useful when you’re looking for your car in the parking structure. That was actually a teaching moment for me, I don’t know, 12 years ago. I think there was a Mercury-Neptune conjunction, and I was like, oh, what does that mean? And then I spent two hours looking for my car because I couldn’t remember where I parked it. And I was like, oh, that’s one of the… Wasn’t there a movie —
KS: Forgetfulness!
AC: — Dude, Where’s My Car? Yeah, “Dude, where’s my car” is one of the significations. You know, it’s useful for in a sense the depth realm of Pisces gets Mercury’s resources to navigate; it’s just not very useful for the dry ground “where’s my car” part of Mercury’s responsibilities.
KS: Yeah. I think one of the —
AC: Kait – go ahead.
KS: Sorry.
AC: Oh, I was just gonna say, so I think it was last year, Kait dubbed the Mercury-Neptune the goldfish yoga, or combination, where the goldfish will kind of forget what was happening a second later. That’s another thing with Neptune and with Pisces, there’s actually a great deal of awareness and sensitivity in the present, which can actually make doing the linear sequencing of past-present-furture difficult. And the cute name was the goldfish yoga, which I liked.
CB: I like that phrase, linear sequencing, because that’s like, a very Saturn-type concept of like, time and time being this fixed sequence. But that’s something that can be blurred under Neptune and especially Mercury-Neptune combinations is linear sequences and like, time and timelessness. And that’s one of the reasons I think sometimes modern astrologers will associate Neptune with like, dreams or the dream-like state, because sometimes there’s a sense of like, timelessness there that doesn’t exist in the waking state where you’re sort of stuck in temporal reality.
KS: Yeah, there’s a vast —
AC: Or you have a very —
KS: Yeah.
AC: Go ahead.
KS: I was just gonna say there’s a vastness to it as well. I mean, we talked about – Austin, you mentioned the sonar like, the deep echo deep underwater. But I think it’s equally applicable to the vastness of space and, you know, with Mercury-Neptune in Pisces, Mercury is already kind of made bigger or directed towards more expansive topics in a Jupiter-ruled sign. And then when we bring Neptune in, which completely removes or brings down boundaries and limits, Mercury is able to really kind of go broad and very conceptual. And it’s almost like taking you into the purest forms of mathematics of something with this, where we’re really into the spaciousness and the openness and the unendingness of things.
And I think there’s three opportunities to really get a grasp or a taste or interact with a facet of Neptune in Pisces this month, because in addition to the two conjunctions that we’ve mentioned, the Sun will also conjunct Neptune in Pisces this month. It’s a little earlier in the month around the 10th. So we get Sun-Neptune, we get Venus-Neptune, and then we get Mercury-Neptune. So for anybody who is learning and you want to kind of take some of that experiential observational approach to your understanding of Neptune in Pisces, I think March does offer a few different iterations of Neptune in Pisces that you can explore or play around with.
CB: That’s a really good point. I like that. And I like these two little quasi-stelliums that we get here around March 10th, first with the Moon moving through Aquarius and hitting Saturn and Jupiter and Mercury there, and then this little triple conjunction of the Sun and Neptune and Venus in Pisces happening around the same time.
So let’s go back to our – speaking of like, timelessness and lack of boundaries, we keep getting away from our like, chronological sequence of things. I should mention at some point, I have to do a plug of our friend Kyle from Archetypal Explorer. Would this be a good time to do that? To transition?
KS: Sure.
AC: Sure.
CB: All right. Let me do that, because we don’t otherwise have a good stopping point or middle point in this episode. And he’s our sponsor this month and made us some awesome graphics, so I want to give him a shout out.
So our sponsor this month is Archetypal Explorer, which is an online astrology website and chart calculation software, and its main tagline is “visual astrology for the savvy enthusiast.” So you can find out more information at ArchetypalExplorer.com. It’s got a bunch of cool features, like a world dashboard that gives you information about different mundane astrological transits, like lunations, direct and retrograde stations, and also my favorite part is a transit timeline, which is a lot of the graphics that I’ve been showing over the past year on our forecast episodes that show when certain outer planet transits will go exact, and what their period of operation is is based on Archetypal Explorer and all of those graphics are basically exported from Archetypal Explorer. So it’s a really good way of visualizing transits. There’s a transit timeline where you can choose different planets and what aspects you wanna use and what orbs you wanna use for the planet, and then it also gives some different delineations based largely on the text of Richard Tarnas’s book, Cosmos and Psyche. So it’s based partially on the archetypal astrology school that’s very much inspired by Tarnas.
It’s also got a transit calendar where you can put in your birth chart and get some personal interpretations, especially of transits and long-term transits that you have going on at the time. And it’s a pretty cool little program that I would recommend checking it out. You guys are both logging in and will be starting to use it shortly, right?
KS: Yeah, I’m keen —
AC: Yeah, probably later today.
KS: — to look into it.
CB: Cool. And here are —
AC: I like the tools for visualization especially.
CB: Yeah. Because even though I think the three of us all, you know, grew up as astrologers using an ephemeris and sort of looking at transits the hard way, it is really nice, especially not just as a new student especially, but also even as like, seasoned astrologers to be able to pull up a transit graph like this and see exactly what transits are taking place visually during the course of a year, as well as what their sort of duration is given kind of an orb of like, five or 10 degrees or what have you. So this is one thing that I exported from just the transit graph this month showing the Venus-Neptune conjunction, showing the Mars-Saturn trine, showing the Mercury-Mars square, and so on and so forth.
So anyway. Helpful tool, and I like promoting stuff like that and helping out astrologers who are building new and like, innovative tools like that, because I’d like to see more growth from websites like that where it’s been interesting watching some of these new astrology websites sprout up over the course of the past few years that are pushing and innovating in different ways, whereas some of the more established ones like Astro.com which is still, you know, the gold star for astrology websites and chart calculation, but it hasn’t been like, innovating as much as maybe it was 10 or 20 years ago. So it’s nice to see other websites from younger astrologers that are sprouting up and starting to push in new directions in different ways.
So anyway.
AC: Yeah, definitely.
CB: Shout out to Kyle from Archetypal Explorer, and you can find out more information about that program at ArchetypalExplorer.com.
All right. So back to our forecast and back to our struggle with a chronological breakdown of the month. I think we were at midmonth at this point, and what is the next major —
AC: Back to linear sequencing!
CB: Yeah, back to the linear sequencing.
KS: The linear sequencing. I think we’re up to Sun in Aries ingress if I’m not…
AC: Yeah, which —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — is a good point to re-enter time.
KS: Correct! We will —
CB: Definitely.
KS: — be a little bit more anchored here.
AC: Like, oh, there are things to do down there in time.
KS: Yes.
CB: So the Sun goes into Aries on the 20th, as it does around this time every year. And very closely after that on the 21st, Venus also moves into Aries. So we start the shift away from Pisces season and the shift into Aries season and the start of the new solar year, which some astrologers – I know AFAN years ago, like 20 years ago, designated that as International Astrology Day, like, the day of the Aries ingress, which I always thought was a little bit biased more towards tropical astrology, although it’s kind of hard to get all astrologers on the same page about something. So I can understand, you know, just giving up and like, picking something at some point in order to try to celebrate astrology.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So Aries ingress…
AC: Yeah, that’s a good point about the problem and also the difficulty of coming up with a better solution. It’s like, well, you know? I mean, I don’t know, we could do – so here’s an idea. But this is also very biased towards the Hellenistic tradition. But you could do an International Hellenistic Astrology Day when the Sun is in Leo and the Moon is in Cancer —
KS: Thema Mundi Day!
AC: — like in the Thema Mundi.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Right. Yeah. You could do that. Would it be the tropical signs or like, the sidereal signs, though? Then you get into tricky things.
AC: Let’s have two!
CB: Two? Oh yeah, that could be it. So every time there’s like, a discrepancy, you just do both in different dates.
AC: Yeah. It’s fine. We don’t have, you know, we could always use a few more holidays.
CB: Right. Or it could just be —
AC: And everyone should get work off on both those days. Paid leave.
CB: Yeah. I would like that. Celebrating – I mean, it is nice to celebrate astrologers, you know, from time to time in – celebrate the profession and the study —
KS: The practice —
CB: — and the practice of —
KS: — the craft. Yeah.
CB: — of it, yeah.
KS: Definitely.
CB: So there’s something to be said for that. All right. So let’s look back at the chart for the Aries ingress and the Venus ingress. So what’s going on here at this point? This is shortly before the Mercury-Mars square, of course, that we mentioned earlier, which happens at around 11 degrees of Pisces to 11 Gemini around the 23rd, 24th. What else is going on or what else is notable to you? We did mention – I think, Austin, you said you had something else to mention about the synodic cycle of Venus and that conjunction that takes place at five degrees of Aries around the 24th or 25th?
AC: Yeah. Well, so now we’re here. So just first things first, the movement of both Venus and Sun in quick succession into Aries, you know, it instantly makes things more activated, warmer, hotter, raises the temperature, it’s time to do more.
KS: Yes.
AC: Right? It’s time to aspire to more. There’s a desire for action. There’s a desire to act in the world. And then that’s followed shortly by the Venus-Sun conjunction. And as we said earlier, this is the superior or exterior conjunction. This is the one where Venus is on the far side of the Sun, and so I tend to experience these and, you know, also conceptualize them as the Sun like, looking out into the cosmos through the lens of Venus. Right? It’s looking away from the earth, looking out into the far reaches. And I find that there’s something more divine and aspirational about this Venus-Sun conjunction. The retrograde one is so deeply personal, and this one is sort of – it’s almost like the divine archetype for Venusian things, right? Setting the ideal for relationship and like, defining the shape of true desire. Right? There’s a looking way out into like, what face will the beloved wear for this cycle?
KS: Beautiful. Yeah. So there’s a real sense of sort of conceptualizing and visualizing, yeah, and bringing that in, I guess, Austin, is what you’re saying. Or connecting with it. Connecting with —
AC: Yeah.
KS: — the image, maybe?
AC: Yeah. In looking out, right, even though we’re looking out, we’re connecting to an image, and that brings it in. And this is a point of, again, invisibility – maximum invisibility – for Venus. But it’s also, you know, it’s maximally private, therefore. And you know, the seed desire for a whole cycle of action and passion and relation is planted quietly but then will bear fruit throughout the rest of the cycle.
KS: Yeah, and I think one of the things I had been mulling over was how the Venus-Sun conjunction ties into the Full Moon in Libra, which is just about a day or so later, a day or two later. Because of course with the Full Moon being in Libra, Venus is going to be the guide or the ruler of the lunation if you like. And in addition to that, Venus is with the Sun as the Moon opposes, so it’s really bringing in some relational themes and highlighting that Aries-Libra axis even further.
AC: Oh, absolutely.
CB: Yeah. There’s the Full Moon; it takes place at eight degrees of Libra, and Venus is at eight degrees of Aries conjunct the Sun still at that point. And we have Mercury and Neptune forming their conjunction pretty closely at 19 Pisces and 21 Pisces respectively.
KS: Yeah, so this Full Moon almost seems a little classic in the Libra Venus sort of approach around relationships and exploring the balance between self and other, or prioritizing the needs of the individual versus the sort of the plans of a partnership, for instance. And I think to what you were saying, Austin, about that kind of looking out through the lens of Venus and then participating quite quickly thereafter in this Full Moon in Libra, it really seems like some adjusting or reframing or reworking within the relationship space around how you interact with other people in a wide variety of situations. So not necessarily and only romantically, but professionally, personally, you know, with family or friends and what have you as well.
CB: Yeah. I like that. I like this lunation in general. This is like, a not a very tense one, because it’s also got some nice, flowing trines, both to Saturn at 11 degrees of Aquarius trining the Moon at eight Libra, as well as a trine from Mars at 14 degrees of Gemini, again with a somewhat nice flowing trine to the Moon. So there’s not like, a lot of tension in this lunation, aside from maybe the Mercury-Neptune conjunction or the natural tension that comes from the opposition as you were just talking about, Kelly, between the Moon in Libra and the Sun-Venus conjunction in Aries.
KS: Yeah.
AC: I don’t know. I’m a little bit less enthusiastic about the grand trine between the Moon and both malefics. You know, they’re trines; they’re happy angles, but the planets aren’t necessarily the happiest. I don’t think – you know, I’m not saying that it’s some sort of vicious nightmare, but I like my Moons applying to benefics or just not applying to malefics.
KS: Not applying —
AC: So you know —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — an interpretation that would be the, you know, the difficulties are very present. Right? The Moon is looking right at the difficulties, but has found at least a good angle on the problems. Right? Because they’re kind of —
KS: Like a functional approach to the problem or something.
AC: Yeah. Because in a sense, there are like, two kinds of goods; there are probably more. But one kind of good is the absence of problems, and then another kind of good – the good of solving a problem. Right? Both of those are pleasurable and would qualify for a good day. But they’re very different in quality. One depends on the absence of problems.
CB: Kind of reminds me of an issue I ran into years ago with Demetra when we were working on the Hellenistic definitions of maltreatment and the conditions of maltreatment and the question of whether a planet like the Moon can be enclosed and maltreated if it has flowing, positive aspects that are surrounding it by malefics – like, trines and sextiles – on either side of it. And whether that would be a sufficient condition for maltreatment, or if the easiness of the aspect does not make it enough to make it a serious condition of affliction. Do you have a feeling on that?
AC: It’s definitely somewhere in between. Right? It’s certainly not the same as being boxed in by hard aspects or conjunctions. You know, it’s still the problems are present again, but if the Moon in this case, if the Moon has resources, then that may be a good setup to solve problems. But again, it’s not the absence of problems. So yeah, I’d say even between thumbs-up fantastic and you know, imprisoned in a living horror.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
KS: I wouldn’t go to that level of difficulty, because yeah. I mean, that’s where I think the trine features come through.
CB: Right.
KS: There’s a little bit of reception with the Moon in Libra and Saturn, which could add a constructive quality. Like, this is difficult, but I’m willing to address the problem even if it’s uncomfortable in the process of doing so, perhaps.
CB: Yeah. I like that you’re taking that into account, the sort of mitigations. And this raised a question I had been thinking about recently about – and this is like, a digression, but – a student was asking me is the malefic that’s contrary to the sect, does it ever provide good or constructive things, or is it always just bad or the worst case scenario? And I was thinking about that, and that was a really good question. But part of the answer is no. Like, sometimes there can be positive things that come of that; it’s just it will tend to be the area where some of the greatest difficulties come from in your chart, which would be, you know, Saturn in a night chart or Mars in a day chart. But there can still be positive or constructive things. It’s not like that area of your life is always just gonna be terrible necessarily. Is that the take you guys would have on it as well?
AC: Well, I mean, my take is that planets – especially in a nativity – do all of the things that they promise. And one of the things that, for example, an out-of-sect malefic does is it promises to cause problems of a certain type and in a certain area. That planet may also promise you that it does a bunch of other stuff, some of which may be great, some of which may be just fine. But you know, the planets tend to do all of the things. And the out-of-sect maleficness promises one thing. And the delivery of that doesn’t negate the others.
CB: Right. It’s just one piece of that or one piece of information.
KS: Yeah. And I think it’s also important to keep in mind that there will sometimes be expressions where say the malefic out of sect, to use that as our focus here, it will be more or less noticeable or impactful based on some of the timing factors and the way that it aspects and interacts with other pieces in the chart. You know, so if it impairs – I mean, there’s so many sort of rabbit holes you can go down. So yeah, I think how much it comes into the main story of life depends on the natal configurations, and then we can see more or less of that based on the timing. So it won’t always be fully present at maximum difficulty level every year of a person’s life for the most part.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s a really good point.
All right. So there’s other digressions we could probably get into there, but —
KS: I know. If we go down the natal track, we could be here for four days!
CB: Right. It turns into a workshop.
AC: But I —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — I’d like to circle back really quickly to what Kelly said at the very beginning of our discussion of the Full Moon which I think is really probably more important than a lot of the things that we said that followed, which is it is a Full Moon in a Venus-ruled sign right after that perfect cazimi moment between the Sun and Venus. And so this image of desire, these relational insights, et cetera, et cetera, which happen quietly beneath the screen of the sunlight are immediately asked to be made manifest or to be implemented by the Full Moon directly opposite both those planets in Venus’s sign. Right? It’s sort of like, okay, and you know, the new program doesn’t float gently into being. Which is appropriate, because the conjunction’s in Aries, right? It’s immediately called to duty.
KS: That’s a great point. Yeah. It comes in strong and obvious, I guess.
CB: Strong and obvious lunation. I like that as our second keyword of the month compared to especially the Pisces New Moon that was coming in two weeks earlier.
AC: Yeah. These are very different lunations.
One thing I would say about just the fact that the conjunction between Venus and the Sun happens in the first decan of Aries. I think the relational question is gonna, in a lot of cases, sound something like, “How do both of us or how do all of us get to maximize our own potential and follow our own ambitions while remaining in rapport with each other?” Right? How do we both achieve or how do we all achieve, and how do we resolve the moments where my achievement and your achievement bump into each other? Right? That first decan of Aries is very ambitious. Got a lot of energy. Wants to go out and prove something to the world. Make the, you know, invisible potential visible for all to see. But this is Venus and the Sun meeting there, right, so it’s that territory which becomes a place of negotiation. How do we do this without just becoming, you know, vicious reality show contestants ready to stab each other in the back?
KS: Things to watch out for under the Full Moon in Libra. Ending up on a reality show. But I know exactly what you mean, not that I watch a lot of reality tv, but just the little bits that float across the awareness of sort of the… I don’t even know how to put it into words actually. But —
AC: It’s the, yeah, go ahead.
KS: I was gonna say what you were putting into words is sort of that me versus we sort of interaction that I always think about when there’s strong Aries-Libra axis activity is how do I do these things that are important to me and still participate in this partnership, whether it’s a professional or a personal interaction, that’s also important to me? You know, because obviously, time and energy and resources are limited. So how do we adjust or renegotiate that interaction and those dynamics?
AC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. One thing I wanna mention before I forget about it, just looking at the transit chart of some of the transits I meant to mention that I exported from Archetypal Explorer, I have a tendency to focus on hard aspects. And I think this is something maybe I carry over – I mean, a lot of modern astrologers share it, but maybe it’s something I’m carrying over from like, Noel Tyl or something like that where he and some of the cosmobiologists, for example, will sometimes only exclusively focus on hard aspects. But then one of the – because hard aspects sometimes produce more, have more energy, and there’s more tension and that tension can sometimes manifest more in an event or a literal event that’s very clear and very evident. But one of the side effects of that is sometimes overlooking flowing aspects that can be more constructive but less evident in their manifestations sometimes even though they can be occasionally just as important. So the reason for mentioning that is one of the things that happens around the 21st, 22nd is Mars forms an exact trine with Saturn. And I wanted to mention that, because we’ve talked so much over the past 12 months about Mars squaring Saturn that that’s a very different manifestation of that energy to be taking place this month, and it happens right around the 21st, it looks like. Yeah, 21st —
KS: Yeah.
CB: — of the month. Yeah.
KS: Yeah, that’s an aspect that I also think has a level of being productive or constructive.
CB: Right.
KS: If we look at some of the symbolism of Mars and Saturn, this could be about putting some energy or effort into a long-term project or plan. It’s maybe the grounding or the methodical sort of cautious approach of Saturn steadying Mars in some capacity. You know, it’s that idea of what could we do today that might not give us an immediate benefit, but that may pay off in the future at some point.
CB: Yeah. I like that, and I can relate to that, having Mars natally in a sign ruled by Saturn in Capricorn. I was reflecting on that recently, how one of my main things is just taking small, incremental steps, but that every time I do something, I try to like, improve it just a little bit or every podcast that I’ve done, every forecast episode, I’ve tried to find one little thing that we can tweak to like, improve, to do better. And that doesn’t look like it results in much progress at first on a small, local scale, but then when you stand outside of it and you look at it in the broad scope of things, you realize that you’ve made a ton of progress over a long enough period of time. But it’s through these small, incremental steps of like, pushing forward and pushing upwards, but just a little bit. And that’s I think a really good encapsulation of a more constructive Mars-Saturn dynamic that might be forming here through that trine.
AC: Yeah. I think I personally tend to see Mars-Saturn aspects in general create a grind. But there are grinds of many different flavors, and also greater and lesser degrees of suffering. You know, Saturn trine Mars is the minimal suffering grind, right? And by “grind,” I mean like, steady effort over time, even when it’s not fun. Right? Because if it’s when it’s – you know, if you just act as you desire, that’s not a grind. There’s no Saturn there.
CB: Right. I mean, that sounds like the pleasurable grind, so it’s like, the —
AC: Well.
CB: Well! Because there’s an unpleasurable grind, which is like, you know, you’re pushing a boulder up a hill, and it’s like, falling back on you and occasionally crushing you. And then the pleasurable grind is more like, the World of Warcraft player who’s like, playing a video game and largely enjoying it, but they’re having to do something repetitive and slow and somewhat boring. But they’re gaining something in the process.
AC: Let’s call it “satisfying” rather than “pleasurable.”
CB: Pleasurable. Okay! We don’t want that to be the —
AC: Because a lot of the —
CB: — tagline.
AC: — pleasure is in what has been accomplished or, you know, the loot gained, not necessarily the process. But like, a process that’s not brutal that gives, you know, a reason for satisfaction. So given all that, I do think Mars is going to be chafing a bit at this trine. You know, it’s Mars in Gemini, which is not exactly a stay-on-task Mars. And then the ruler is that Mercury in Pisces hanging out with Neptune, which is also not focused, right? And so and Mars is with the head of the dragon or Rahu, which doesn’t incline to balanced action either. And then there are a few people in the comments – I’m sorry I can’t remember the names – who were pointing out that Mars is out of bounds. So its declination is out of the path of the Sun and the Moon. So there are several little pieces of Mars’s condition that show us Mars kind of chafing at wanting to, you know, kind of get in the harness and pull. But that’s maybe part of the description of that is like, keeping that Mars in Gemini on task to get things done rather than doing 30 other things and achieving none of them. So I think there’s a little tension there.
KS: Yeah, I think that Mars perhaps doesn’t enjoy the experience of the aspect, but that there’s something about the energy of Saturn that can temporarily contain or help to focus or direct the efforts of Mars. Because I have got my eye, as well, Austin, on the Mars-North Node aspect which will peak a few days later, and I think that’s when we get sort of maximum Mars mania with the Mars in Gemini of just all the things and that insatiable quality coming through.
CB: That actually brings up one of the episodes that I did this month with Ronnie Gale Dreyer about the early history of the nodes. So having that Mars-North Node conjunction this month might be relevant. It looks like that goes exact around the 25th or so. And the deep dive sort of discussion we did on that was just about how the modern associations of the nodes with past lives or future lives was more of a modern thing, and if you go back prior to the 20th century in the western tradition, there aren’t really any associations with past lives with the nodes. And in the Indian tradition, even though they do have concepts of karma and reincarnation, they didn’t necessarily associate that in particular with the nodes; the entire chart is a result of past karmas. But how maybe talking about that North Node-Mars conjunction we could expand on that how you guys view the nodes or interpret them maybe in a context like this when Mars is conjoining it.
AC: Well, so from my particular —
CB: To interrupt you, what are your keywords? Because we had a hard time actually coming up with what the Indian keywords and summarizing them concisely were for Rahu or the North Node, or Ketu, the South Node. What are your like, Indian keywords from the specific schools that you’ve studied with for that?
Is that something that can even be summarized?
AC: Well, a lot of the keywords revolve around excess and eating to the point where food becomes poison, getting dirty and excessive, right? Overdoing things. You know, again, like, if you overeat, it’s functionally – any food eaten enough becomes a poison. Right? Any drug, like caffeine, like coffee – if I had four pots of coffee, I would begin poisoning myself. There’s an excessiveness, there’s a willingness to get down and dirty. You know, to engage in the world without excessive regard for abstract ideas of purity or morality. There’s just a like, you know, “Let’s get out there and get dirty.” A lot of times I use as a teaching caricature, I will use Scarface for the North Node. You know, first you get the money, then you get the power. There’s a “Let’s light the town on fire. Let’s go out; let’s have a good time; let’s not worry too much about health and future,” et cetera, et cetera. And these are caricatures, mind you, but that’s the general direction.
CB: Got it. Is that – how do you view the nodes, Kelly?
KS: Look, I definitely wanted to defer to Austin on that front, because I have picked up a few concepts and ideas sort of by association from the more Indian traditions, but I know Austin is much more well-versed in that. But yeah, I also like the word of excess for the North Node – the idea of overdoing it. A concept like workaholism or being a workaholic depending on what is near the North Node or what other symbols we bring in. But that idea of not knowing when to stop. And the other phrase that I often use is this insatiable hunger, which is kind of a similar thing, and just referencing the idea of the head of dragon that doesn’t have the lower half, and so consumption that doesn’t know when the stop because there’s no recognition of enough or fullness or satiation. So there’s a wildness, I think, and in this instance with it being Mars and it being in a mutable sign, there is this sort of “I can’t get enough information” or “I’m doing so many things; I’m overstimulated, I’m hyperstimulated.” And I think that tendency to be scattered is there. And one of the cautions that I was thinking about this particular Mars-North Node was the idea that, you know, you can be busy and just moving paper around, or you can be busy in a way that is creating a sense of progress and momentum. So there’s different kinds of busy, basically, and you wanna make sure that you’re busy with a purpose rather than just busy as a way of filling your time, I think.
AC: Nice. So I wanna add one more thing. I’m just thinking of —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — like, traditional Vedic as I was taught. A really important component is some form of confusion or obscuration – the mental confusion about a situation which no doubt stems from the fact that we know the North Node or Rahu or the dragon’s head through the obscuration of the Sun and Moon. Right? The idea is that that shadow creates a shadow on the mind, and that we can’t see things clearly. And so —
CB: In Hellenistic tradition, they call them sometimes the eclipsing places is the title for the nodes.
AC: Yeah.
KS: Which is the light-blocking.
AC: Yeah, and I think that whenever – if a person is struggling to think about the nodes, always going back to why we talk about them at all, what do they do, they tell us about eclipses, right?
CB: Right.
AC: And starting with that shadowing, that Bauddhika sort of quality, is really important.
CB: And then what you were saying, Kelly, about the insatiable quality – or I guess both of you were saying – and Mars hitting the North Node reminds me that there was, at least in the western tradition and the medieval tradition, they associated the North Node with increase. And as a result of a side effect of that, said that the malefics tend to be bad when conjoining the North Node because their tendency towards maleficence is then increased – their natural tendency towards that – and therefore can be almost out of control or exacerbated in some way. Whereas they preferred the malefics, Mars and Saturn, to be with the South Node so that their natural tendency would be decreased in some way.
AC: Yeah. So in my tradition, taught by Freedom Cole as taught by Sanjay Roth, we don’t love nodes and malefics together. That’s treated as a pair of malefics. But Mars-North Node or Mars-Rahu is considered a more difficult combination, and then Saturn-South Node is considered to be a more difficult combination. That those are, you know, South Node-Mars ain’t great. I can tell you; I’ve got it in my natal chart. And North Node-Saturn ain’t great. But there’s a special synergy of difficulty with Mars-Rahu, and the idea we could say very simply is it is difficult to be confused – Rahu, right – and it’s unpleasant to be angry – Mars – but angry and confused is a potentially toxic cocktail. Because then not only are you attacking, you’re attacking the wrong people. Right? And so that’s considered to be a particularly annoying synergy.
CB: Well, angry and confused is a funny keyword also with the Mars-Neptune conjunction that will be forming at the same time right after that.
KS: Oh yeah, with Mercury-Neptune and the Mars-node.
CB: Yeah.
AC: I do think it’s really nice that even while Mars is making that conjunction to the dragon’s head, it’s moving into trine with Jupiter.
KS: Yeah.
AC: Again, you know, in the method I’ve been taught in, Jupiter and the North Node have an ability to cancel each other. You know, Jupiter uplifts and cleans up and makes us sort of remember our philosophical or spiritual center and try to act in a moral and balanced way. And so Rahu and Jupiter have a way of sort of countering each other. And so that trine to Jupiter I think does a lot of work there. And you know, and Jupiter’s about an expansion of perspective, which helps cancel or at least mitigate some of the like, lost in a smoky cloud in your head and angry and not seeing things straight. You know, Jupiter makes enough room and disperses the air.
KS: That’s beautiful.
CB: I like that. Well, you know, these are all aspects happening at the very end of the month, and I think that kind of brings us to the end of the month in terms of things we needed to mention in the forecast. Was there anything else that we’re forgetting? I’ve got a couple little discussion topics we can touch on, but I wanna make sure we’ve covered everything when it comes to the March forecast.
AC: I would just say there’s a real set of pacing changes to each third of the month. Like, the first third of the month is really different from February. It’s maybe not different from the last few days, but it’s really different from the super-fixed February or whatever we called it. You know, in a lot of ways, it’s pretty nice. It’s more adaptable, et cetera, et cetera. We’ve got Mercury-Jupiter together in Aquarius and Sun-Venus in Pisces for that maybe first third of the month, and that’s a pretty nice vibe. Middle of the month, things are kind of changing places and rearranging. And then last third of the month is pretty kinetic, right; it’s relational because of that Sun-Venus conjunction, but it’s very kinetic. Like, things are in action. We’ve got the Mars trines, the Mars-Rahu, the Sun and Venus in Aries, the Full Moon. Like, it’s very go go go.
CB: Yeah.
KS: Yeah, I completely agree. I think that Mars as a whole feels very different from both January and February, and there’ll be a lot more activity and movement. I think as we go through the month, the pace becomes increasingly fast, but also a little bit more specific. I think about the Pisces kind of mood through the early part of the month with the Sun and Venus there. You know, there’s a little bit of a mellow quality, but then once the Sun gets into Aries, it’s a little bit more like, this is the target that I’m aiming for rather than just sort of floating along.
AC: Yeah, definitely. A more directed quality.
KS: Yeah, more like let’s do this specific thing rather than everything.
AC: Right. Like, the same amount of light maybe, but narrowed into a laser beam. Maybe not that narrow, but you know, like…
KS: Coming through some cone —
AC: Focused.
KS: — or something. Yeah.
AC: Yeah. Like, the lens focusing – you know, being pretty wide – I mean, almost maximally wide angled at that New Moon in Pisces with Neptune and Venus. Like, that’s very flower open as much as possible to take in as much starlight. And then kind of collecting that light and then slowly closing to narrow it into a beam.
Oh, you couldn’t see my hands; I was doing —
KS: Yeah, that was beautiful!
AC: — flower and beam hands.
KS: Yeah.
AC: They’re like jazz hands, but flower —
KS: Jazz hands.
AC: — and beam hands.
KS: I’d like to see the dance incarnation of that statement, please! That’s great.
CB: Yeah. That’s nice. All right, I think that’s it for the forecast for this month. In terms of miscellaneous discussion topics, I usually bring up a few topics of just things that were covered during the course of episodes in the previous month or previous few weeks and then talk about them with you guys in order to get your take on it. So we already talked about the nodes things, which was the episode I did at the beginning of the month with Ronnie Gale Dreyer. The other one that I just did —
AC: Can I add one thing to that, Chris, really quickly? Because I feel like —
CB: Yeah.
AC: — I was a little bit too negative about Rahu. So —
CB: Okay.
AC: — Rahu is all those things. But those absolutely can serve the person. They can have benefic results in the chart. And I will just give as an example, because this came up the other day – so if we’re talking about hunger, right? Like, oh, I’m just never satisfied. Hunger is tremendously important for a lot of people’s success. Like, two people with the same skills – it’s the hungry one that wakes up earlier, grinds harder, et cetera, et cetera. Hunger is an almost irreplaceable part of great victories and impressive successes.
CB: Right. And the drive to succeed or to achieve something, whether personally or sometimes even socially.
AC: Yeah. You know, that’s one of the things you’ll see when people are analyzing individual sports like boxing or mixed martial arts is, you know, somebody provides a performance that’s not as good, and they’re like, “I don’t know, they seem like they were in great shape; the skills were there. But they’re just not hungry anymore. They don’t have the same drive.” It’s a very real phenomenon that gives a different result in the binary of combat sports where you either win or lose. And anybody who watches sports like that will see that hunger makes a huge difference. So that’s Rahu.
KS: That’s beautiful. Yeah, that their hunger, even though we portrayed it in some detrimental ways or as a negative, Austin, what you’re saying is that it can serve a positive outcome.
AC: Yeah. Absolutely.
CB: Cool. All right. Thanks for adding that. So that sort of touches base on the node episode, which I did partially in order to explain – well, it ties into a recurring theme on the podcast this month, which is that sometimes like, the way astrology is practiced now, sometimes if you go back more than a century or more than a few decades, you see that astrology was practiced differently. And it’s sometimes surprising or disorienting to realize how many of the concepts that we take for granted sometimes are relatively recent in terms of the long span of the entire tradition.
So one of the other ones that I talked about recently in the last episode was the void of course Moon with Yasmin Boland, who’s a fellow I guess originally Aussie astrologer that you know, right, Kelly?
KS: Yeah. I’ve known Yasmin probably since my very early days as an astrologer from our days in Bondi Beach in Sydney. So it was exciting to me that you guys were able to connect and have a conversation about that.
CB: Yeah. Did you almost like, study under her very early in your studies or something like that?
KS: No, I had studied with someone else, but we connected around some eclipses in like, 2002, 2003. I think it was the Cancer-Capricorn eclipses maybe. But sort of back in that vintage. I think there was some Jonathon Cainer connection, and I think I literally cold emailed her in the very early days of the internet where I was like, “Hi, I’m an astrologer in Sydney, and you do astrology, and maybe we should meet up!” Like very just out of apropos of nothing!
CB: Okay.
KS: And she was curious and willing enough to meet with this random stranger from the internet. And once we got together, you know, she was like, oh, this person – yeah! She knows a little about astrology. And we just sort of hit it off from then, so. Yeah. Yes.
CB: Nice!
KS: I don’t have much more to say, sorry!
CB: I like hearing that whole —
AC: I remember those days of the internet where we were excited to meet new people.
KS: Right? And you would like, email somebody and you know, you might actually say, “Yes,” and it wasn’t a totally crazy thing to do!
AC: Right. We weren’t all taught to be so guarded and rightfully suspicious.
KS: Yeah. The internet was a different place then.
CB: Well, and I remember you were reaching out to like, a lot of people, because you reached out to some like, AYA people around that timeframe maybe a few years later as well. But then it would still be years later before we would actually connect at a conference.
KS: Yeah! Yeah, I think I was just hungry – I know we talked about hunger – but just wanting more connection with astrology communities. And there’s a small community in Australia, but you know, there’s obviously more in a place like the US where there’s just, you know, more people. Yeah, I remember emailing people and meeting them even when I was in the US. You know, “I’m gonna be here attending a conference,” yeah. So it would take a while, but you’d get there, and yeah.
CB: That’s one of the things I’m sad that like, astrologers that have just gotten in over the past few years are missing out on is just this huge gap where there’s no astrology conferences and no ability to make that in person connection even though some people are connecting online. But it’s still different; that’s a different dynamic than actually meeting up with people in person.
KS: Yes.
AC: Yeah. Well, that’ll get remedied, but.
KS: We’ll get there.
AC: It’s certainly an issue for now.
CB: Yeah. I hope so.
AC: Well, and there’s also the dynamic that Kelly was talking about. Before, you know, if we go back more than just even five years, there just weren’t that many – there weren’t nearly as many people who were seriously interested in astrology. And so like, with your story, Kelly, you’re like, “I’m another person who’s really into astrology who lives in a large city!” Like, right now, that is not —
CB: Right.
AC: — remarkable. But you know, back then it was like, “Oh my god, there’s another astrologer three towns over! Like, we’ve gotta meet up!”
KS: That was exactly it with Yasmin! I mean, we were just on different sides of Sydney, and I was like, and I think that probably behind her reason that said yes was oh yeah! There’s someone in Sydney who likes astrology! Let’s go hang at the beach or have a chat or something.
And you’re right, Austin, because that was nearly 20 years ago, and so much has changed in the last five years in terms of being able to find people to talk about with astrology. It just wasn’t like that prior to then.
CB: Yeah. I don’t know how to like, express that emphatically enough to like, newer astrologers that are just coming in over the past two years how not normal this is for something like, even your Sun, Moon, rising for most people to know that or being able to mention that to people in passing, and just about everybody will have looked that up at some point in addition to their Sun sign.
KS: Totally! I caught an astrologer has written an article for something like Vogue magazine about the Moon sign in a person’s chart and how that speaks to your emotional stuff. And I – this just happened recently. They shared a post about it probably on Instagram. And I just remember thinking, “Oh my god. This is what I wished for when I started in astrology 20 years ago.” You know, I wished that I could write about Moon signs in a mainstream magazine. And that, just to your point about there’s just – like, the market penetration of astrology right now is more than I can ever recall it being.
CB: Yeah, definitely.
AC: And it happened overnight. It wasn’t like, there had been steady growth for the last 10 years.
CB: Right.
AC: There was like, I don’t know. Like, some month like three years ago where it seems like, you know, 10 million people just decided they were really into astrology!
CB: Yeah. Well, and you know what’s funny is when that started happening and we saw the uptick in all of those articles in the mainstream media around late 2017, 2018 about “is astrology becoming more popular,” that was also when all the astrology apps launched. And that may have helped to propel it as well. But it’s always a chicken or the egg type scenario there.
AC: Yeah.
CB: Anyway, so —
KS: You were gonna talk about the void of course Moon —
CB: The void of course Moon —
KS: — Chris!
CB: — yeah. Like, what do you guys think about the void of course Moon? We talked about the three different definitions. There’s the Hellenistic definition, which has only been recovered in the past 20 years, which is that originally evidently it was that the Moon doesn’t complete an exact aspect in the next 30 degrees. But then at some point in the medieval tradition, especially after the rise of horary, it seemed like it changed because there was more of a focus on whether planets would perfect the aspect while they were in the current signs before changing signs in terms of answer the horary question in the affirmative or the negative. And so it seemed like there was this other definition of “does the Moon complete any aspect before it leaves the sign that it’s in,” and that became a common definition and that’s the modern one. But it tended to be something that was more restricted to use in horary and electional astrology. And in modern times, that version of the void of course Moon became popularized over the past few decades, and it’s one of the only electional rules I think that many modern astrologers know, because electional isn’t a very common practice and there’s not a lot of books on it in 20th century astrology. And I think as a result of that, sometimes it gets a little bit overplayed as if that’s the first thing you look at or that’s the end all and be all of electional astrology sometimes. But I’m not sure that it’s as important as it’s sometimes hyped up to be.
Then in addition to that, there’s another definition which is based on a reinterpretation of how William Lilly was defining the void of course Moon, which is basically “is the Moon within orb of an aspect that’s applying, regardless of the sign boundary?” And that’s some traditional astrologers’ version of what they think the void of course Moon is. Do you guys use the void of course Moon? Or go ahead.
AC: And is that orb based on the Moon’s average daily motion, like, 13-ish degrees?
CB: It’s supposed to be —
AC: In the Lilly?
CB: — in the interpretation based on like, the moieties of the planet, so it’s something more like 10 degrees or less. I’m not sure of the exact specifics, but that’s my understanding.
AC: Because that’s what’ll catch my eye is if the Moon is not only not going to complete another aspect before leaving the sign, but doesn’t make another aspect within a full 24 hours of motion into the next sign. Right? You know, it means that there’s like, a whole day and night where the Moon’s not making contact with any of the other planets.
CB: Yeah. That’s something I tend to pay attention to as well, extending it to like, 12 degrees. Because if the Moon’s at like, 28 degrees of a sign, but it’s applying to a conjunction with Jupiter three degrees later at one degree of the next sign, then it’s basically in a very close applying conjunction with Jupiter at that point. And even if there’s some change of circumstance indicated by the sign boundary, I’m not – in an electional context – usually that worried about that being a major dealbreaker in some way. Whereas I think that’s often treated or sort of hyped up as if the Moon’s not gonna make any other aspect before it changes signs, then absolutely nothing will come of whatever is initiated at that time. But that’s something that takes place, you know, every two or three days.
KS: Yeah, I think that’s very strong in the medieval kind of Lilly horary sort of approach, that the Moon changing sign is like, a barrier of some kind. So if there’s no aspect until after that, we’ve got some sort of blocking quality. But I think there’s so many other factors. Like, if you’re looking at an electional chart or even a horary chart, I think other aspects can override that. I don’t think I’d make a whole judgment just based on the Moon in the change of sign definition. But when I learned about the Hellenistic, about almost like, the whole 30 degrees forward or back, the most extreme definition – that’s really interesting to me, because that’s only gonna happen in some very specific circumstances that the Moon can travel, you know, such a wide distance with not interacting with another planet. And that is interesting, and I think that is something to pay attention to.
CB: Yeah. And that one’s very rare that it won’t complete an aspect within 30 degrees. It seems like it only occurs maybe once a year in some years like last year. But luckily, Petr from Astro-Seek has programmed that into his website, and you can actually look that up really easily these days, which is kind of nice.
KS: Excellent.
CB: Yeah. Okay. Well, I think we’re on the same page about that, about the Moon changing signs not like a huge dealbreaker in an electional context, as long as it’s applying to something within a reasonable distance, let’s say.
KS: Yes. There’s been a couple of instances with client charts where the Moon in that late degree of a sign and not making an aspect before it changes. There’s that idea of a little bit of a lack of focus or a lack of clear direction has been something that the individual has related to. And it sort of just becomes a part of the nature of the being, I think. So I think there’s a slight difference in like, a horary or electional versus in a natal piece.
CB: So it is something, though —
AC: Yeah.
CB: — that you’ve seen come up in a natal context?
KS: Yeah.
CB: But not the —
AC: Yeah, I’ve seen it come up in natal.
CB: Okay. But not be like – because it was one of the things that’s funny in the Hellenistic definitions, because it’s like, Firmicus and Firmicus is always really over the top in his delineations. But he’s also talking about the Hellenistic version, which is extremely rare, and treating it as an extremely negative thing. But if you’re using the more modern definition, then that’s a more common sort of less rare, maybe less of a big deal type thing.
AC: Yeah, certainly. Right? It’s literally a less extreme condition. And it’s worth noting that there’s a Vedic astrology sort of take on the same issue with a similarly derived name, which is the Kemadruma Yoga.
CB: Right. We touched on that very briefly at the end, so I’m glad you’re mentioning that here because I wanted to go into it more.
AC: Yeah. So the principle is the same, which is the Moon doesn’t like being alone.
KS: Yes.
CB: Right.
AC: But the way that —
CB: It’s a lonely Moon is basically what a void of course Moon is. Like, hashtag lonely Moon.
AC: Yeah. Right? No friends. Nobody to hang out with. Nobody to take care of.
CB: Right.
AC: And so the Kemadruma is no planet in the same sign as the Moon in the sign before or the sign after. So this is basically all by conjunction only, but a wider orb. But then there are a variety of cancellation conditions. So in a natal chart, for example, I have a Kemadruma Moon.
CB: You have a lonely Moon?
AC: I do! That rules my Ascendant.
CB: With Cancer rising.
AC: Yeah. In both zodiacs. But anyway, one of the cancellation conditions is do you have an angular benefic? Okay, that’ll give you direction. Right? Like the —
KS: Yes.
AC: — a lot of the cancellation conditions are pretty low bar. They’re not there in every chart, but the traditional textual delineations for the Kemadruma are also like, very intense. It comes back to basically being poor and miserable, and so angular benefic of any sort cancels that.
CB: Yeah. Which is interesting, because that’s what Firmicus says as well is an angular benefic is a mitigating factor for it. And it was interesting, then, how it was translated into the Indian tradition, because if it’s true as Antiochus and Porphyry and Rhetorius say that the Hellenistic or the Greek definition of kenodromia or running in the void was just the Moon not completing an applying aspect in the next 30 degrees moving forward, it’s interesting how that was translated into the Indian tradition where the Greek word “kenodromia” was just transliterated as Kemadruma. And instead it was translated as a sign-based conjunction basically, neither applying within the next sign nor separating in the sign before that. And it’s still like, the same concept of basically like, a lonely Moon that has no aspects with other planets to protect it or keep it company in some way. But it’s adapted in a different way.
AC: Yeah. And with just – because I think you might find this interesting – the Kemadruma lack of anything, same sign, sign before, sign after, is tightly tied into what are sort of the most common lunar yogas you look at, which is, oh, is there a planet rising after the Moon or right before the Moon? So basically, is there a planet that follows the Moon down in the west, or precedes the Moon in the east? Where we’re getting into the same territory as spearbearers in the Hellenistic tradition.
CB: Right.
AC: And the Kemadruma is literally the absence of anyone making way for the Moon or following after as a glorious train. So that’s kind of – they all connect.
KS: Yeah. I’ve had the kind of running in the void, lonely Moon show up just a couple of times in client charts, and that idea of feeling a little isolated or disconnected or kind of like a bit more of an island has resonated with these individuals. That sort of not having a lot of people around them, basically.
CB: So a sense of loneliness.
AC: So I have a pretty void of course Moon. I have the Kemadruma, and it’s not a full 30 degrees, but the Moon doesn’t make any aspects for a full day’s motion before it —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — changes sign for me, and that’s my ruler. And I’ve certainly spent a lot of time isolated, either literally or feeling isolated. And so it’s given me a lot to think about in terms of the cancellation, because I have a benefic in the first. And it’s like, that’s all true, but it’s worked out. Right?
KS: Yes.
AC: Like, the isolation part is accurate. It’s just that the “poor and miserable” part are not necessarily accurate.
KS: Accurate. Yeah.
AC: The poor part was accurate for quite some time, but —
KS: For quite a long time!
CB: Well, and it’s funny that you mention that, because I don’t know if you wanna go into that, but at one point like, last fall, we had talked about in some ways like, you prefer that. Like, you prefer your isolation sometimes rather than being stuck in a group or being at the forefront of dealing with social media or something like that. There’s a level where that’s —
AC: Yeah.
CB: — not something that’s being imposed on you so much as it’s something sometimes that’s coming from within in terms of your personal preferences.
AC: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, anybody who knows me knows that I like my alone time. Right? And you know, maybe that’s something I learned to enjoy, you know, because I was an outsider growing up and blah blah blah. Or maybe I was an outsider growing up because I was inclined towards that. There are chickens and eggs in abundance. But yeah, at this point – well, for a long time – like, I don’t do well if I don’t have enough divine isolation. Or I mean, it’s not always divine; sometimes it’s, you know, playing video games. But whatever it is.
CB: And I wonder if for you that’s something that’s more coming from within because it’s the ruler of the Ascendant versus somebody else, if it was an external thing, if it was not the ruler of the Ascendant maybe it’s coming from somewhere else or that sense of isolation or loneliness could be in a different part of the life or manifest in a different part of the chart.
AC: Yeah. If I were gonna investigate, you know, what seemed like pretty maybe not full Hellenistic, but pretty void Moons – like, Moons that have not very much contact – I would look not just at general lunar significations. I would really look at how things go in the house that’s ruled by the Moon. Right? Like, if it —
KS: That’s what I was – yeah.
AC: — rules the 7th, does this person —
KS: Yes.
AC: — like, keep getting into relationships that kind of just don’t really go anywhere? Whether they want that or not.
CB: That’s what you were seeing, Kelly?
KS: I was just – yeah, like, oh my god, we’re all having a bit of a Mercury in Pisces moment getting on the same wavelength! Where I was just thinking, yeah, imagine if you have a running in the void Moon, and it’s the lord of the 7th, and maybe you’re trying to create connection but that could be a little bit – whether it’s tricky or delays or just means you gotta work a bit harder for it – but yeah, I think to that point of like, contextualize the Moon according to the topics of the Cancer part of the chart.
CB: And one of the things I was trying to say at the end of that episode is I don’t think, in terms of those three different definitions, I don’t think there’s one true singular definition. I think all three of those are probably relevant, just in different degrees of intensity. Like, the most intense, obviously, is the Moon not completing any aspects in the next 30 degrees, because that’s the Moon not completing anything in the next two days basically or like, a 48-hour period, which is a very long time and very rare. So yeah, that would be a super lonely Moon, versus the Moon not completing an exact aspect in the next 24-hour period, which would be in the next 12 degrees. And that would be the next level of intensity. And then the third and most frequent one after that in terms of intensity would be not completing an exact aspect until it changes signs. So there’s probably something symbolically relevant for all three of them that one could take into account. It’s just a matter of probably levels of intensity and how much importance you’re gonna attribute to that.
AC: Right. Whether it’s gonna be one of the top tier things that you’re gonna bother paying attention to, either during a time period or in a natal chart. And I think that – I’m sure you covered this in your longer discussion, but – the degree to which the Moon is separated from its previous aspect certainly matters. If it’s only like, two degrees separated, then like, they’re still hanging out. Right? Like, it’s two degrees separated, but the Moon’s not gonna make another aspect for a long time, that’s very different. Like, they’re still saying goodbye in the foyer, right?
KS: Yes.
AC: Or out on the deck or porch. Whereas if the Moon hasn’t seen anybody, you know, for a day and won’t see anybody for another day, that’s a much more distinct loneliness or isolation.
CB: Yeah. And I meant to mention, I forgot to mention in that episode so this is a good opportunity to mention it that part of the reason why the void of course Moon was important in ancient astrology was because in Paulus Alexandrinus in the 4th century, he preserves this doctrine where the Moon’s next applications to planets over the course of the next 30 degrees are supposed to manifest in different parts of the life and different portions of the life depending on —
KS: Yes.
CB: — how soon the Moon will complete that aspect. And then it means that that aspect will manifest at some point during the course of the life. But if the Moon’s not applying to any planets within the next 30 degrees, then it’s almost as if it’s not completing anything during any of those parts of the life in some way, and that’s why it was given often a very negative interpretation unless there were mitigations or cancelations involved.
AC: So I’ll just say one more thing. Just, you know, in my own kind of looking at a Moon that’s void by a couple definitions and the ruler of the Ascendant, I’ve always loved the void and different spiritual practices that have void as an important part of them. There’s a certain, I don’t know… The points at which certain Buddhist meditative practices and Taoist practices intersected with the idea of the void, especially the idea in some of the Taoist stuff of like, the void that is ripe with the creation that is not happening yet – those were important parts of some of my most impactful spiritual experiences. That void theme has been there in a positive way for me too. But there is like, a very strong void theme. I just kind of like – I see the void as containing the possibility of everything rather than the negation of everything.
CB: That makes sense. All right. Well, I think that’s a good stopping place for that discussion since I know we could go on. I just wanna mention a couple other really brief topics. One of them is I was looking for a name for – I’ve been looking for a few years, but I decided to take this to the public to ask – I think I’ve got the name down, but I was looking for a name for what happens when you have a double transit of somewhere where one planet that’s transiting in the sky hits a certain planet in a natal chart, and then the same planet also recreates a transit at the same time with the same planet in another part of the chart. So that sounds really complicated, but like, let me give an example. My classic example of that was George Lucas. When he got into a car accident when he was like, a teenager, when he was really young, he had the simultaneous transit where transiting Mars came up and conjoined his natal Venus, where transiting Mars was at 11 degrees of Taurus and it hit his natal Venus at 11 Taurus and Venus is both the ruler of his Ascendant and in the first whole sign house. And it was like, a major car accident, and he was seriously injured and almost died. But then simultaneously on the same day, transiting Venus came up to 25 degrees of Cancer, and it conjoined his natal Mars in the 3rd whole sign house. And he was thrown from the car before it smashed into a tree and like, crumpled, and his life was saved as a result of that. But as a result of this life changing accident, he decided to stop racing cars; he otherwise had wanted to be a racecar driver up to that point. Decided to go to college and then shortly after that got interested in filmmaking and became a famous filmmaker and director doing the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies.
So I was looking for a name for that transit where you get a planet where there’s like, a doubling up of a similar transit between the same planets. And I saw somebody else have something like that in the past month and have a really important life changing sort of event take place. So I was looking for a name for it to be able to refer to it in the future. And my friend, Kent Bye, had like, thrown out a provisional name years ago of calling it like, a double whammy transit, but I didn’t think that that had exactly the ring to it that I was looking for. So one of the names that I kicked around and a bunch of other people also suggested this, so I think it’s probably a good one to go with, but calling it maybe like, a reciprocal transit because there’s this doubling up of the same transit happening almost simultaneously. But what do you think of that? Do you have a preference? Have you seen that ever happen before where you get that dual sort of transit taking place at the same time?
KS: I don’t know; you’ve got me thinking.
AC: I’ve definitely seen it.
CB: Because it doesn’t always have to be the same aspect, but it’s just the idea that the same two planets are hitting each other by transit to the natal position at the same time, sort of simultaneously, which then ends up signifying a very important day in the native’s life sometimes, especially if they’re activated as time lords in some way.
AC: I like where Kent’s going with reciprocity, because —
CB: Well, Kent said “double whammy,” so —
AC: Oh.
CB: — reciprocity or reciprocal transit is just the tentative name that I’m thinking about endorsing or adopting at this point. And that’s the best —
AC: Yeah.
CB: — one I have so far unless somebody comes up with something else.
AC: Okay, yeah, I agree; that’s the best one so far.
CB: Okay.
AC: And the reciprocity also sounds – it has a similar ring to it as a lot of the like, older sort of relationships planets have. Like, assembly, reciprocity, et cetera, et cetera. Adhering. Like, you know, it has that sort of, I don’t know, weird verb form?
CB: Yeah, I mean I —
KS: Yeah, there’s – in the chat, a couple of people are saying mirroring or reflecting. I think maybe something on those lines as well. Like, yeah.
CB: Yeah. A mirror transit. I hope if it was a reciprocal transit, I hope that people don’t confuse it with reception, which would be a different concept. And I do worry that there might be some obscure medieval concept of reciprocity which there could be a conflict there. But I’m still kind of broadly okay going with that unless there’s a better contender that’s a just obvious alternative.
AC: Yeah. My mind wanted to go to something mutual, and then I was like, “No, we can’t use mutual; I’tll just get confused with mutual reception.”
CB: Yeah. I mean, anyway, so there’s danger, but at least I’m putting it out there for people to discuss and we’ll see where that discussion goes. But it’s a special kind of transit that doesn’t happen very often, but I’ve seen it come up enough times and to be an important turning point, especially when one of those planets or both is activated as a time lord. So for example, in George Lucas’s life, he was in a Scorpio profection year. So that’s why Mars transits both to the natal position of Mars as well as the transiting position of Mars are more important at that time, because then they’re turned on. So yeah, something to think about and for people to discuss as a concept that I would love to come up with a name for at some point in the near future.
KS: We’ll get —
CB: All right.
KS: — the thinktank on it.
CB: The thinktank. Yes. Very last thing is just – and this isn’t like, a small discussion, but I just wanna throw it out there – I had T. Susan Chang on, which is a friend of yours, I know, Austin, that you’ve done podcasts with before. And we talked about whether astrology is divination and whether astrology is like tarot specifically as a form of divination, or whether there’s something else to it or something more to it. But that the idea that there’s things in tarot that you can take from or learn from tarot that informs you to some extent about the nature of astrology as a phenomenon. Do you both think that that’s correct, or where would you go with that in terms of that question?
AC: Well, so yeah. Small question, Chris!
CB: Yeah —
KS: Yeah!
CB: — just throwing that, you know, two-minute discussion.
AC: Yeah. What I will say, because I’m beginning to run out of words after two-and-a-half hours is that there’s some other things going on with astrology, but there’s absolutely a divination layer. And that divination layer is very similar to that present in tarot, and as far as sort of creating the magic circle of consultation, you know, where you and the other person or whoever you’re sitting down to like, look into what might be and into the nature of the present and the past, the like, creating of that magic circle is very similar if not identical in both tarot and astrology. And you know, there are obviously – there’s a difference between shuffled cards and revolving planets as significators. And we can get into all that. But there is absolutely an area of overlap where one can learn from the other.
CB: That makes sense.
KS: Yeah, I would say just sort of briefly is that there are elements or components or pieces within astrology that have divination at the heart of it, but I think to your point, Austin, there is more to astrology or there are additional layers in astrology than that as well.
CB: And I know, Austin, that you did tarot, and you’ve always done tarot and astrology. Kelly, but I don’t know – did you ever do any other forms of let’s just say broadly speaking like, divination like tarot or anything else? Or have you always just been an astrologer?
KS: Very, very early on I was… Actually, I’ve always been interested – I’m just trying to think, which is why my eyes are closed. I’ve always been interested in metaphysical, mystical type things. But once I kind of landed on astrology, I was we could say consumed or at home or immediately satisfied to the extent that I could just settle into this space. I’ve never – most of my exposure to tarot has actually come through my husband, who is very interested in and quite well-versed in the tarot. So that’s only been in the last kind of 10 years or so that I have – I think he was the one who gave me my first tarot deck. I think, you know, one of the theories is somebody’s supposed to give you your first tarot deck. But I mean, and I’m familiar with the layout of the deck and the cards and things like that, but I’ve not practiced it with any level of depth. I think yeah, when people often say, you know, do you do numerology or runes or tarot as well? I just say, I’ve really specialized in astrology. And there’s pros and cons to that, but that’s just the way it’s gone for me.
CB: That makes sense. And that’s similar for me where I tried to pick up astrology and tarot and like, one other thing really early on, but then I decided to just dedicate myself to astrology, and I decided that that was gonna take a lifetime to master, and I’d rather master that more than anything else, so that’s what I focused on.
KS: Yeah. I think, Chris, I love that story, because I think – I mean, you’re such a deep thinker. I think you and I landed in the same place, and I just kind of felt my way there and you were really conscious with your thinking about that, if that makes sense.
CB: Right. Like, and intellectualizing it.
KS: Yeah.
CB: Okay. Well, I didn’t want to start a huge discussion there, but just wanted to get a quick little soundbite from each of you on that, and I think that’s good.
So I wanted to ask you both before we wrap up, what do you have coming up in terms of your events and stuff in March? Kelly, what are you doing?
KS: Oh, okay, so I do have my next live class starting Monday, March 1st. It is on the sect light/the helmsman and also – sorry, the sect light and the helmsman in the chart, so we’re looking at arguably two of the more influential, impactful planets in a birth chart. So you can find more info about that on my website, KellysAstrology.com. And yeah, that’s my big thing for March. I’ll be supporting my students through that. I’ve got a TA who’s gonna be helping me with that, and yeah! I’m looking forward to it. And it’ll be the first kind of teaching for the year for me, so I’m excited for that.
CB: Awesome. That sounds amazing. So your website is KellysAstrology.com. And Austin, what do you have coming up?
AC: Well, got a number of structural upgrades coming up. Should have the new version of the website up. I’ll have a bunch of classes that I taught and had edited and are, like, ready to be for sale but never went up – a bunch of stuff’s gonna go up. My teaching schedule for this year’s gonna go up. Everything took a little longer in February than I had hoped. But as the planets leave the beams of the Sun, so shall my works become visible again.
And then Sphere and Sundry will be releasing another series towards the end of the month. A series that shall not be named, but was created about a year ago. A particularly choice election, which shall also be revealed as the planets leave the beams of the Sun! And yeah. So just kind of gearing up for the year.
CB: That sounds amazing. So your website is AustinCoppock.com, and the other one for Kaitlin is SphereAndSundry.com.
AC: No punctuation. Just SphereAndSundry – one big word – dot com.
CB: Brilliant. All right. And as for myself, I’m gonna be doing the podcast. I just scheduled an episode on Buran of Baghdad who was the first woman that we know of by name who was a practitioner of astrology from the 9th century. I’m very excited, but I’ve been wanting to do that episode for a while. So that should be coming up soon. And I’m gonna be focusing on my course and expanding my courses and part of what I’m doing is starting to bring on some assistants in order to help teach and expand that. I’m working on some stuff for commissioning some translations to integrate into the course, and I also have a book project that I’m gonna be announcing hopefully sometime in the next few weeks. But the main thing is raising the price of the Hellenistic course in order to be able to bring more helpers and assistants to pay for that, and also so I can start doing monthly Q&A sessions and put more time and energy into developing that course on ancient astrology since it seems like it’s sort of going through a renaissance right now in terms of interest in that, and I’d like to be able to spend more time doing a hands-on approach to that. Which is something I know you guys both have like, a live component in your courses, and that’s very important for that, right? Important for you?
KS: Yeah.
AC: Yeah, really important.
KS: I think it really adds to the experience of learning, just to have some interaction and my husband is an educational expert, I guess, and he often talks about the – like, for when somebody’s learning something, to be able to have some feedback or to have sort of mechanisms to gauge how they’re going with the material is really helpful to support their integration and their deepening of the knowledge, so yeah. Q&As are great.
AC: Well, as a student, I really like —
KS: Yeah.
AC: — to ask questions. I really like to harass whoever’s teaching me something. So, you know, just mirroring —
KS: I’m totally the same.
AC: — that, I find that other students also like to harass me and ask me questions when I’m teaching. So yeah —
CB: Yeah.
AC: — I like the – my Gemini Moon likes the back and forth.
CB: And I had not done that before, because I’d always just focused on perfecting pre-recorded lectures that people could access at any time, and then would have lifetime access to. Whereas I think most other people follow more of a like, semester or a year-long course that has like, a fixed timeframe and therefore has a fixed number of live interactions. So I wanna integrate that more, and that’s something I’m gonna be working on by getting some help hopefully from different assistants.
So you can find out more about the Hellenistic astrology course at TheAstrologySchool.com.
And yeah. Hopefully book to announce in the next few weeks. Can’t talk about it yet, but I’m very excited because it’s in the final stages. So I’ll hopefully do an episode on that very soon.
All right, guys. That’s it for this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and for this forecast. Thanks a lot for joining me; this was a lot of fun today. I appreciate it.
KS: My pleasure!
AC: Yeah, definitely.
KS: Thanks for having me!
CB: Yeah. And thanks to our live audience who joined us of patrons. We appreciate you, and I enjoyed seeing a lot of the comments and the feedback in the live chat as always. We will be back again next month in probably about four weeks from now to do the forecast for April. But in the meantime, I hope everybody has good transits and has a good month. And we will see you again in a few weeks for the forecast next time. So good luck. Thanks for listening. And we’ll see you again next month!
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