The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 547, titled:

September Astrology Forecast 2026

With Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock

Episode originally released on September 2, 2026

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2026/09/02/september-astrology-forecast-2026/

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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 September 19th, 2026

Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today is astrologer Austin Coppock, and we’re gonna be looking at the astrological forecast for September of 2026. Hey Austin; welcome back. 

AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey, Chris. Thanks for having me. 

CB: Yeah. It has been a tumultuous month of eclipse season, and we’re gonna spend the first hour of this episode catching up on news and events that happened since our last forecast and talking about the astrology behind those events. Then in the second hour, we’re gonna jump into talking about and doing a deep dive into the astrology of September. So as always, there will be timestamps if you want to jump ahead to the forecast episode. But otherwise, let me give just a quick overview of some of the things we’ll be talking about later in this episode. 

All right, so here’s the planetary movements calendar that shows where the planets will start at the beginning of the month and how far through the zodiac they’ll get by the end of the month. We are coming off of a very intense eclipse season with our last eclipse having taken place on August 27th, and eclipse season won’t fully end until about the 4th or 5th of September. As we’re recording this today on September 1st, we’re coming off of a Mars-Saturn square that just went exact, and that’s gonna be operative for the first several days of September still as well. 

We also just recently moved into the Venus shadow phase where Venus moved into and passed the degree she’ll retrograde back to later on in the next few months this fall. So we’re going headlong into Venus retrograde that starts at the very beginning of October. 

And this is the planetary alignments calendar for those watching the video version, to give you just a preview of some of the astrology we’ll be talking about later this month. I’m gonna skip reading all of these this month for time, but those watching the video version, or if you want to pull up the video version if you’re listening to the audio, you can see this then and we’ll talk about it more later in the episode. 

All right. So let’s get into the news and events that happened since our last forecast episode which we recorded a month ago now and talk about some of the news and events that happened in September. So the vast majority of those, as we anticipated, really focused on the eclipse season that really took up the vast majority of August where we had a solar eclipse in Leo on August 12th, and we had a lunar eclipse in Pisces on August 28th. And since eclipse season starts seven days before the first eclipse and ends seven days after the last eclipse, the operative range for this eclipse season was basically around August 4th, and it won’t end until about September 5th. 

So last month, one of the things that happened this month in August is that this month really validated many of the principles that we commonly reiterate for eclipse seasons and that we made sure to reiterate on our last forecast episode in anticipation of August. So for example, I emphasized in our last forecast the rise and fall of notable figures that often coincides with eclipses, as well as the potential things we’ve seen in the past for things like the death of celebrities, leaders, or even kings, which is one of the traditional meanings of eclipses going back all the way to about 2000 BCE. 

Austin also especially noted the potential for floods because this eclipse was in Pisces, and there were some very stunning and tragic examples of that. So that yeah, this ended up being a really stunning eclipse season, I think you’d agree, right, Austin? 

AC: Yeah. Stuns aplenty, while at the same time being very – being well within the classical parameters for what eclipses are supposed to do or regularly do. You know, I threw in a bit about the destruction by water with floods and such because it was – it would have been so easy to forget. Just saying, oh, eclipse in water sign, and also applying to a malefic in a water sign seems insufficiently sophisticated to make a good prediction, and yet it worked out. Well, I mean, it worked out terribly, because there were floods that killed a huge number of people. But in many cases, when you have – it does demonstrate that when you’re operating and predicting according to the right principles, you don’t have to be doing rocket science. You just have to remember what things mean and what supports that. 

CB: Yeah. And also what happened in the past, because when you — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — mentioned that prediction, one of the things I added was the first time we had an eclipse in Pisces two years ago in September of 2024 coincided with really intense floods all on the eastern coast of the United States that were very prominent in the news at that time. And so it’s like, we’ve built up some empirical history in terms of some of these things as well. 

So we’ll get into the specifics of that event later, but let me run through some of the other ones. So we’ll start by focusing on the lunar eclipse which happened in Pisces on August 28th, which we’re still technically in the eclipse window of until September 5th. And this one was especially notable just because there was a string of events that happened very close to the eclipse. One of them is that there were several notable deaths that were very prominent in the headlines right around that Pisces eclipse. One of them was not just on the day of the eclipse, but was literally just an hour away from it – King Harald V of Norway died at the age of 89, and he was Europe’s oldest monarch at the time. And reportedly, he passed away at 6:35 A.M., which is just an hour after the eclipse, which was exactly at 5:19 A.M. Local time. And the Sun and Moon were right on the Ascendant-Descendant axis, like, rising and setting over the eastern horizon when he passed away in addition to the eclipse being conjunct his Sun and Midheaven, which were in early Pisces in his birth chart. So that was a really stunning and very literal, like, death of a king literally right on an eclipse in 2026. 

And if that wasn’t strange enough, there was also another king that died within 24 hours of that when the Ugandan king, Rukidi IV of Tooro died on August 27th. And while the previous king, King Harald V, was very old, this king was only 34 years old; he was still a very young guy. And earlier in his life, when he originally became king at age three when his father passed away, he was actually – the headlines for him is that he was the youngest monarch, and he held the Guiness Book of Word Record for the youngest reigning monarch at the time. So I looked at his chart, and he was actually born on a Full Moon in Libra, but it was not an eclipse. And Saturn was transiting his Aries stellium, and he’d been suffering with illness. So he passed away reportedly at 10 PM August 27th local time, about nine hours before the eclipse went exact. And the last thing is that his father actually passed away on August 26th, 1995, just after a New Moon in early Virgo. So his son ended up passing away almost exactly on the same date on August 27th many years later, which was very, very tragic. 

AC: Yeah, very eerie. 

CB: Yeah. So, again, some of the very literal ancient things. And this is how some of the – I learned last year this is how some of the Mesopotamian scholars think astrology started to develop because some of the earliest omens that the Mesopotamians recorded 4,000 years ago were for eclipses and noticing that they would coincide sometimes with the death of leaders and kings. And while sometimes we might come into astrology thinking, like, you know, that’s no longer relevant or other things like that, like, we can see these very vivid examples in modern times of some of those basic astrological principles still being relevant. 

AC: Yeah. And how significant a thing would it have been to be able to time how long a given reign would last. You know, we live in a system that shuffles out every four or eight years, but that’s a historical anomaly. And you know, you have monarchs reigning anywhere from a day to 60 years in the past. And so just from a practical point of view, having some idea of how long this particular regime is to endure, you know, would be a thing as relevant as the weather to people’s lives, to be able to predict or at least have some idea about. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, it also explains why astrology became a state-supported thing in the Mesopotamian world by, like, the 7th and 8th and 9th centuries BCE where they had different colleges of astrologers or celestial observers set up watching these things and taking notes of eclipses and different things like that, because that was very important information. And now we can see very vividly why. 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: So — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: This eclipse, unfortunately, the Pisces eclipse, it was not just the death of kings, but we also saw the death of some famous celebrities around this time, which as we noted on the last forecast is something really common where we see a light or a luminary in society or in the world become eclipsed in some way. So one of the biggest ones was on August 25th, the American singer and songwriter Dolly Parton passed away, and she had become this beloved cultural figure who not only had a legendary music catalog, but also had done – had like, immense philanthropic efforts and generosity in her life. And so it was an interesting example of someone who’s largely viewed very positively passing away right on an eclipse, and yeah, I’m talking to – Lindsey Turner and Camille Michelle Gray pitched the idea of doing an episode on her life since we have a timed birth chart for her. So we’re talking about doing that possibly some time next month perhaps. 

AC: Yeah, I mean, in the United States, it doesn’t have official royalty. But I think it’s pretty safe to put Dolly Parton in the unofficial royalty of the United States. Like, she was a very widely known, influential, and largely beloved figure. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. So and there was a bunch of other people. The same day that Dolly Parton died on August 25th, iconic British actor and voice artist Tim Curry also passed away, and he had been in, like, a bunch of different things. On the one hand, he was widely celebrated as a queer icon primarily due to his defining role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show back in 1975. But also for like, people of my generation, he was in a lot of iconic and eccentric villain roles in Stephen King’s It, in Home Alone II, in the animated movie Fern Gully doing a voice for that, and a bunch of other films. So that was a really striking one that happened. 

There was also the death of famous Japanese artist named Yayoi Kusama who died on August 14th, actually, very close to the Leo eclipse, but then her foundation withheld the announcement until August 27th. So her death was actually announced very close to the second eclipse, which is the Pisces eclipse. And she was, like, this avant-garde artist who was celebrated for these polka dot motifs as well as these infinity rooms that were really engaging and, like, immersive and interesting. 

And then there was one more you’re more familiar with the other actress that passed away, right? 

AC: Yeah. I watched every season of Nashville with Kait, I think twice over the last 15 years. And so yeah, I was really – I remember Hayden Panettiere. And yeah, she was – I mean, she was an American actress. She was in other things than the one show that I saw, but it was striking – sad to hear about her death, because there were many things that her character in that show struggled with that she’d struggled with in real life, as evidenced or as discussed in her relatively recent I think it was an autobiography, maybe it was a series of essays. And so she died far before her time. And the last I saw information about it, the implications were tragic, although more information may have come out since I was alerted to her death. 

CB: Yeah. Well, she passed away August 16th, which was right after the Leo eclipse. And then even August 21st, the astrologer Celeste Brooks noted that the lion Makini, who was Philadelphia Zoo’s last remaining African lion, died on August 21st. And he died at the age of 17, which is actually very old for a lion. He was struggling with, like, arthritis and other stuff like that. But that was another stunning kind of literal thing to have an eclipse in Leo, the sign of the lion, and literally have in the news headlines of a famous lion passing away. 

AC: Yeah, this last month had so many extremely literal examples. It might be worth it to reflect on that at some point, but I don’t have any keen insight into it right now. But yeah, a lot of elementally literal – an old and famous lion, not just one but two literal kings going out with the eclipses. It’s one of those months where astrology is easy, right, in that you can just say the most tried and true things, and it plays out exactly like that. It’s unfortunate that all of these things that played out exactly in the most literal fashion were unfortunate. It’d be nice if — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — the benefics were, if the Venus-Jupiter configurations always played out quite as literally. 

CB: Yeah. Well, it just, it’s a good reminder for us to always hold in our minds and keep in mind that astrological things, while they can work out psychologically or in a character-based sense, which is how things are often framed in modern times, and while that’s perfectly valid, like, sometimes things do work out in very literal ways symbolically, which is more of the traditional way of interpreting things, and to hold both of those possibilities in our mind at all times. 

AC: Yeah. I think there’s a modern habit of equating sophistication with truth, and being unsatisfied or looking down on what seems like a too literal prediction. 

CB: Yeah. Well, we can – we’ll talk about that more sometime, but to keep — 

AC: Yeah. 

CB: — things moving, because I know we’ve got a lot to cover, so the last major thing that happened right on the Pisces eclipse – so this happened on August 26th – was the flood in Nepal where a massive glacier collapsed. And this collapse sent a massive wave or wall of, like, water and ice and rock debris downstream, which just caused massive destruction of life and buildings. And there were just these absolutely catastrophic videos of entire towns being destroyed. And the last time I checked, currently the numbers were that there was over 700 people confirmed dead, and there was over 3,000 people still missing. So it was just this absolutely catastrophic, yeah, visuals of water destroying a lot of town and life and was very tragic. 

AC: Yeah. Sad. 

CB: Yeah. Okay. So those are the main news things I wanted to cover. There’s other stuff, like, that happened. I wasn’t – I didn’t follow the news as closely because there ended up being a lot of controversy in the astrological community this month. I know that things are, like, kicking off right now with the US and Iran where they just started shooting missiles at each other again just in the past couple of days after the eclipse. 

AC: Yeah, and it was right as the Mars-Saturn square was completing and the Moon hit it, the mutual exchange of violence began again. 

CB: Yeah. So that is developing and ongoing, so I’m not gonna attempt to cover that here. So let’s transition into the other part of this, because there was a big thing that we had to cover in the astrological community where, you know, most of those previous events happened under the Pisces eclipse. But earlier this month, the Leo eclipse coincided with a fall from grace of a major figure in the astrological community. And what happened is a major controversy happened after Steven Forrest used a racial slur and made some harmful remarks regarding race on a podcast. And I immediately when I heard about this realized the gravity of the situation and what he had done and what was happening early on, and so I watched the podcast and then started documenting everything that happened after that partially because I knew I would have to speak on it, so I wanted to be able to do so as accurately and clearly as I could. And since this is the news section and we always cover the news and the major things that happened, either in the world or in the astrological community, I feel like we have to give an account of it. 

So this is more important since there’s also a lot of misinformation swirling about what even happened, and ultimately while I’m not eager to, like, bring all this up again, I think it’s also important not to gloss over it either. And while this is difficult to discuss, I think documenting this historical turning point in our community is necessary so that the community can actually reflect and understand and learn from it, if that makes sense. 

AC: It does to me. 

CB: Okay. So let’s talk about what happened first. So on July 23rd, Steven Forrest and Ricky Williams released an episode of the Lila Podcast about shadow work. And they were basically doing it to promote an upcoming workshop, and what they ended up doing during the course of it is they shared some dark or kind of fucked up things about their past. And while this might have been okay or made sense in a therapeutic context, Steven ended up taking it to a really weird place and saying several really messed up things. And their choice ultimately to publish this as a podcast for thousands of people to hear was deeply irresponsible, I think, as well as harmful. 

So one of the things that’s important to understand about this is early on, I watched the full unedited video and took detailed notes. And unfortunately, when I did that, getting the full context didn’t actually make the situation better; it actually made it worse, because it revealed that Steven had done multiple things that were deeply harmful. 

So for the record, the version of the episode currently on youTube was quietly edited after the backlash, but the original unedited broadcast was uploaded by somebody to the Internet Archive for anyone wanting to verify exactly what was said, essentially because this has become a historical event at this point in our community. And what I found really disturbing is how many people rushed to Steven’s defense without having actually sat down to watch the full episode. And that’s, like, increasingly I think sometimes during certain controversies like that becoming an issue just in the world in general of people not watching what happened in order to form opinions about it. Right? 

AC: Oh, absolutely. 

CB: Yeah. All right. So this is what happened, and these are the multiple harmful things that were said. So the first thing and one of the primary things is that Steven explicitly used the N-word while talking with his Black cohost, ignoring the inherent harm in vocalizing a racial slur regardless of the context. So he said to Ricky, “I’m sure you’re familiar with the N-word, having heard it a few times in your life, you know, N-word with the hard R, you know?” 

So what’s weird is that he knew it was wrong for a white person to say that word since he used the abbreviated form several times prior. But then for some reason, he still decided to go ahead and say it anyways. 

So for those not in the United States, because I’ve seen some astrologers that don’t live in the US struggling with this, the N-word is the worst racial slur in America, and it’s long been known that there’s no acceptable context for a white person to speak that word because the word itself inherently carries the vast history of racial violence in this country, which I think is pretty well-known at this point, right? 

AC: Yes. I have a very difficult time imagining any American not being extremely aware of that. 

CB: Right. And that it’s been that way for a very long time. 

AC: At least our whole lives. 

CB: Right. Well, and yeah, even going back to, like, the ‘60s, it’s like, the civil rights movement was happening then and yeah. Not just our lives. So that was point one. 

Point two was Steven talked about how he had actually used the N-word in astrology comedy lectures in the 1980s and ‘90s, supposedly to mock racists. But then this is where it gets weird is that instead of reflecting on how that past behavior was wrong or how it might have hurt people, even if unintentionally, he lamented that he could no longer make those supposedly “righteous jokes,” dismissing modern sensitivities as mere “cultural whimsy.” 

So one of the things about this segment that I noticed immediately is that his central premise, that it was somehow acceptable for a white man to use the N-word as late as the 1990s, is completely false. That was not acceptable even back then. And crucially, he was not blindsided by these shifting cultural trends, but in point of fact, in the podcast itself, Steven admits that Ricky’s son had recently found one of those 1990s lectures and explicitly warned Steven about his past use of the N-word. So Ricky’s son bringing this up seems like it was the entire reason that the segment happened, because Steven was using the podcast to justify and downplay basically his past behavior. And this is the actual context in which he dropped the slur. He explicitly used the N-word to his Black cohost while complaining about “cultural whimsy” right after bringing up that Ricky’s son had just told him that his past use of the word was problematic. And I think that’s really important context for people to understand that’s getting lost in terms of talking about this is that Steven had been told that that was wrong. 

Does that make sense? 

AC: Yeah. I think there is no way that it was an accident that he had no idea what that word conjured or how people felt. 

CB: Right. So that was point two. It gets worse. 

So later in the episode after dropping the N-word, Steven then suddenly claimed that he was related to the founder of the Ku Klux Klan – like, the very guy who founded it – whose name is Nathan Bedford Forrest. And they even, like, put up a picture on the screen of Nathan Bedford Forrest, of the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, to demonstrate the resemblance. And so it’s like, that’s one thing that’s weird, but it’s like, no one would necessarily, you know, people’s ancestry, while problematic, no one’s necessarily gonna hold that against you. But this is where it gets weird. Then bizarrely, instead of Steven reflecting on that connection as, like, a dark side of his family history or something like that, Steven instead then went on to defend the KKK. So he repeated a completely false, debunked, and fundamentally racist myth that the KKK was founded for altruistic reasons to “protect Southern widows.” So specifically, Steven said, “The KKK was originally formed to protect Southern widows, the widows of the fallen soldiers.” 

So in reality, for people that don’t know, the KKK was in fact set up very early on after the Civil War by former members of the Southern Confederate Army in order to murder, terrorize, and suppress Black people. That is the true origins of the KKK. So that raises the question – why in 2026 did Steven feel the need to defend the KKK after having just used the N-word in the same episode just shortly before that? 

So this is really important, because most of Steven’s subsequent public apologies focus on him saying that somehow he didn’t know that he couldn’t say the N-word, and he explicitly avoids oftentimes acknowledging that he also went on to defend the KKK, because that piece was completely indefensible. And that was something I think that’s really important in all of that, because that’s another thing of, like, why? Like, who defends the KKK in 2026, you know? 

AC: Yeah, it was pretty incomprehensible. And yet it happened. 

CB: Right. All right, so that was point three. There was a fourth point. 

In what was supposed to be, like, a moment of vulnerability, Steven admitted that he didn’t realize that Black people were as intelligent as white people until he was in his 30s. And afterwards, a Black student of Steven’s later noted that he would have been – this would have been the same time period in which he would have been writing his first astrology book, which is titled The Inner Sky, which he published when he was 35 years old. So this suddenly recontextualized his most popular and influential book, especially for students of his who are Black or people of color. So hearing a prominent community leader basically admit this was deeply painful, as it seemed to confirm many people’s worst fears about systemic racism and invisible barriers in our field. And it also put many of his Black students and colleagues in an incredibly difficult and painful position where as a student of Steven’s named Kay Marie highlighted in an open letter to Steven, it basically forced this devastating question, which is how is a Black student supposed to reconcile learning from a teacher who didn’t even recognize their intellectual equality while developing the very astrology they are being taught? And that’s a question, but it was a question that a number of people who were fans of Steven were left with after he said that, after he made that statement. 

Yeah. So it was also an issue, as you can imagine, Austin, of students of Steven being in a really weird, really bad position. 

AC: Well, yeah, how can you trust the judgment of someone who didn’t realize that until – you know, and he’s an older person, but his 30s were the late ‘70s and ‘80s. There has been some progress since then, but it’s not like the idea of equality was a new thing. Like, he lived through the ‘60s and the ‘70s. And so, yeah, I know many —

CB: The early ‘80s.

AC: What? 

CB: The book was published in, like, ‘84, so we’re talking about the early ‘80s, the period of, like, I don’t know, like —

AC: Yeah, this was not a time – by the early ‘80s, people had not not quite gotten to talking about race yet in America. Right? That’s almost – that’s basically 20 years after the civil rights movement. And so yeah, it —

CB: You’re being facetious?

AC: Yeah. Like, that’s – it’s – anyway, it throws a person’s judgment deeply into question. And if you are a person’s student, you are relying on their judgment to a large degree. If you bother to learn from someone, it’s because you think they know things you don’t or they have excellent judgment. And these statements throw that – to say that they throw his judgment into question is a deep understatement. 

CB: Yeah. So that was, like, the setup of what was said on the podcast. And then the initial controversy started to develop from July 30th forward after a young Black astrologer and fan of Steven shared that they were deeply hurt by his comments on the podcast. And from there, the controversy started to grow on Threads and Instagram especially for about a week. And one of the things that’s really important that I noticed, because I was watching all of this, is that if Steven had given a full apology that this point, then I think this would never have continued to grow as much as it did. And most people would have accepted Steven’s apology. However, instead, he did the opposite where on August 2nd, Steven’s initial response to the controversy was to make a couple of unapologetic comments on Instagram in response to a video that somebody had put out about it. And these comments by Steven were widely viewed as him doubling down. So instead of acknowledging the hurt that he caused, he framed his actions as therapeutic, telling critics “Please don’t confuse strong medicine with the disease.” He also immediately leaned on his Black cohost as a shield, commenting that the best cure for racism is “friendship between Black people and white people,” when they “dare to speak honestly.” 

So these comments made it clear that he viewed himself as some sort of brave, like, truthteller dispensing “medicine,” rather than someone who had just caused profound harm to his community. If Steven had just apologized fully and genuinely from the start, much of what followed would not have happened, but Steven refused to. And so this is where things get worse, basically. Like, he made things a hundred times worse at that point. And at this point, multiple people, including myself, reached out to Steven privately at first to try to call him in, and I, for example, was genuinely hoping for a moment of self-realization where I made multiple attempts to speak to him, and I did end up speaking to Ricky. And those attempts to speak with Steven, though, ultimately were put off or rejected. And I had this idea that, like, that if I talked to him and I could explain what he did wrong and explain, like, no, the KKK was not set up for altruistic purposes, that he would have, like, this moment of self-realization, and he would want to make a genuine full apology and then there would be some arc of redemption. But that’s not what happened at all, and I was really surprised and disappointed by his non-apologies. 

So by this point, the situation was out of control due to his initial refusal to apologize, and people started seriously discussing protesting the United Astrology Conference, which was set to take place one month later in early September. And petitions started circulating asking for Steven’s removal. Chani Nicholas announced that she would not give her keynote at the conference because she was set to headline and give the main keynote lecture I think at the opening. And then so the United Astrology Conference board met on August [4th] to discuss removing Steven from the conference, and they put out a statement saying that they were deliberating it. So at this point, Steven finally reluctantly issues a half apology later that day on August 4th, but this is where it’s, again, weird. He only apologized for the N-word, and he completely ignored the fact that he had also defended the KKK. And he completely ignored the harm of publicly saying that he didn’t think Black people were smart or as smart as white people until he was in his 30s. And at this point, he starts leaning heavily on the, like, “I have a Black friend” trope, essentially using Ricky as a human shield and as an alibi to claim that he couldn’t have done something or couldn’t be racist. And he told people, “Cancel me if you want, but don’t call me racist.” So basically he made it clear that his priority was framing himself as the victim here instead of taking full responsibility for the damage he caused. And that was where things got basically even worse. 

And you were following all of this at the time, I think as closely as I was, essentially, right, Austin?

AC: I was. Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. So after this point, Steven spent much of the next few weeks wavering between on the one hand issuing these weak partial apologies, and then on the other hand trying to frame himself as the victim. At the same time, he was hassling the UAC organizers and also actively emboldening his supporters to the point where I saw other white astrologers defiantly use the full N-word themselves while defending Steven, all while ignoring that Steven had also defended the KKK. 

So the absolutely tipping point of this was when he shared and strongly endorsed an AI music video on his Facbeook page that called his critics “howling harpies in heat,” and told them to “fuck off.” So at this point, it became clear to me that Steven’s apologies were largely performative, and that he was talking out both sides of his mouth or basically trying to have it both ways. And for myself and a number of other people, that was the moment when we lost a lot of respect for Steven. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was – yeah, it was a situation that started out shocking and continued to devolve. 

CB: Yeah. So after this, because of Steven’s actions and especially his refusal to take full accountability and the subsequent protests that resulted from that, the astrological organizations had to take a stand. And Steven had clearly violated the UAC code of conduct, which strictly prohibits racism. So the UAC board made the decision to remove Steven as a keynote speaker from the conference. And technically, Steven pulled out at the last minute just as they were sending his removal letter, and while stepping down voluntarily actually would have been the admirable thing to do, Steven immediately went on to publicly claim that he was “banished,” and once again, basically trying to have it both ways and to play the victim. 

So the International Society for Astrological Research, all the big organizations which are ISAR, the NCGR, and the OPA issued strong statements condemning Steven’s behavior. NCGR also removed him as an advisor. Astrology University also severed their relationship with Steven and removed his classes from their platform. And again, much of this wouldn’t have happened if Steven had just taken full responsibility for everything from the start, but instead these institutional removals were the direct consequence of organizations not wanting to be associated with a prominent figure who chose to remain essentially largely unapologetic and even defiant about making deeply harmful remarks. And that’s really an important point to understand in terms of how and why everything unfolded in the way that it did. Like, nobody wants to be – the remarks themselves are bad enough, but nobody wants to be associated with somebody who’s being largely unapologetic or even defiant about having made harmful remarks, essentially. 

AC: Yeah. If a person does not recognize their wrongdoing or their mistakes, then it’s impossible to forgive them, even if you really want to. Because if a person doesn’t recognize what they’ve done wrong, then the chances of them repeating that behavior or words in this case is very high. You know, it’s true on an interpersonal level just as it’s true on this bigger level. And I think a lot of – from what I can see, I think there are a lot of people who would love to be able to move towards forgiveness for Steven, but again, when a person doesn’t or refuses to recognize, like, what they’ve done or what mistakes they’ve made, you can’t get there. 

CB: Right. Yeah, exactly. 

AC: It’s true even, you know, on a very almost flippant level as far as UAC is concerned, you know, you can’t come to the big party if you’re gonna act and talk like that. It’s a very reasonable dis-invitiation from my perspective. Well, more than — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — my perspective, but certainly in my perspective as well. Like — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — you can’t act like that! It’s kind of — 

CB: Right. 

AC: — the beginning and end of it. 

CB: And it’s kind of an unforced error that he did right a month before a major conference. So it’s like, yeah, don’t do that, or if you do, let’s say, make a mistake hypothetically, then immediately take full responsibility for it and leave it at that. Like, don’t go into all of this other stuff, which is what happened. So — 

AC: Yeah. Your forgiveness is in the hands of the people that you’ve hurt, especially those that have trusted you. You don’t get to decide to forgive yourself. Right? Or you can forgive yourself, but that’s not the point. Right? You don’t absolve yourself. It’s always the people that you’ve done wrong. It’s up to them to forgive or absolve. 

CB: Sure. Right. Yeah. So you know, where do we go from here? I mean, one of the things about this and one of my reflections is that, you know, the defining characteristic of the shadow is that it’s unconscious. And that was what was interesting about the context of the whole podcast on shadow work is that Steven himself acknowledged that he had racist tendencies into his 30s. But then he genuinely believed that he had conquered his racist conditioning. And ultimately, he was blind to the fact that still using the N-word or actively defending the KKK in 2026 means that he had, in fact, not fully conquered the shadow of racism from his past. And for me personally, it was really eye-opening to me as a white man and astrologer, and it was a good reminder that the culture of racism in America continues to influence people even when they think that they are doing the work. And I think that’s really, really important and a really important lesson about all of this. Because, like, people get really highly defensive about the identify label of “being a racist,” and Steven focused entirely – especially early on – on redeeming his character by saying, “Don’t call me a racist.” But a really important lesson here is that you can be a well-intentioned person or even have Black friends and still do a racist thing that causes real harm. And you know, just like if you accidentally – you’re driving and you accidentally rear-end somebody with your car at a stoplight, you don’t jump out of your car and yell, “But I didn’t mean to hit you!” Or “I’m a good driver.” Instead you apologize. You check to see if the person that you hit was hurt, and you pay for the damage. The impact matters, not the intent. And accountability ultimately is owning the impact, regardless of your intent. And I think that’s a really important lesson for all of us to learn and take from this. 

AC: It’s a strong reminder. And even in the legal system, you know, doing harm intentionally certainly carries a penalty, but you can be charged with manslaughter, which is accidentally and negligently causing a death or causing harm in the case of other crimes. And it’s a real crime. 

CB: Right. So, you know, this is also, it’s important and other reflections are about the changing nature of the field, where there was this large influx of new astrologers into the field starting around 2018. And I did a whole episode on it at the time, noting this sudden surge in the popularity of astrology. And this influx of newer and younger astrologers into the field included many Black astrologers and people of color. And the field has changed, and some of the things that were done in the past will no longer fly. And it’s incumbent upon each of us to adapt to that, and to embrace the improvements that that will bring that will make the community more equitable, even if change can be hard for some. So shirking your responsibility to adapt as a leader in the field is no longer okay. And this entire incident – well, yeah. It’s no longer okay to shirk your responsibility to adapt to things like that or to, like —

AC: Yeah, never was. 

CB: — brush – no, it never was. But it’s now, you know, this was a defining moment where I hope that’s a lesson that’s, like, an actual constructive lesson that some people can take from this, you know? 

AC: Absolutely. If it isn’t crystal clear at this point, then who knows? 

CB: Yeah. So you know, to bring in some a little astrology, because I don’t want to astrologize this controversy and what happened too much, but this was all happening around the Leo eclipse that was happening in early August. And I think that was really striking to you and I, Austin. 

AC: Yeah, it was very striking, because literally this all unspooled out of a discussion that was explicitly about shadow work. And the phenomenon of the Sun and Moon being eclipsed is a function of shadow. Right? It is a shadow falling. This was just prior to a great shadow falling across the Sun. And I believe you and I both noted and thought about last month when we were looking at the astrology what it would mean to have the Sun be eclipsed so close to Jupiter. And of course, Jupiter speaks to and describes people who are teachers especially, and with Jupiter in Leo, like, a famous or well-known teacher. And with Jupiter having just opposed Pluto, which is another piece of the astrology here, and then being subject to this eclipse, like, seeing the shadow of a very popular teacher so clearly described what we were seeing in the heavens all too well. I suppose it’s another moment of the astrology being unfortunate and very literal over this last month. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, there was discussion in some quarters about how the eclipse in Leo, of course, activated the Pluto placement for many of the older astrologers of the Pluto in Leo generation. And while one of my reflections in thinking about that is that while certainly this did highlight some generational tensions, it isn’t fundamentally a problem of age, but instead it was a question of, like, ego versus evolution. And ultimately my takeaway was that true leadership and eldership requires the humility to adapt rather than letter personal pride fracture the community. And that was one of the main dynamics for me that came up and I thought was relevant in terms of the general astrology of the eclipse. 

AC: Yeah. Absolutely. The downfall of planets in Leo, especially something as – a planet as confident as Jupiter in Leo being pride or ego is very on the money. That’s something that we see with planets in Leo, especially when we have not only Pluto revealing shadows and underworld basements, but also an eclipse right next to the planet at the same time. 

CB: Right. Yeah. So you know, in terms of the changing community and changing nature of the field, this entire controversy had a profound impact on many of our Black colleagues and friends in the astrological community. And it wasn’t just Steven’s actions that caused harm, but it was also the dismissive and often defensive responses from many white astrologers in the community who were rushing to protect Steven. And I think that right now one of the most important things we can do as a community is listen to the perspectives of some of the different Black astrologers and people of color who have been sharing how this impacted them. And for that reason, I’m gonna put some links in the episode description either below this post on YouTube or on the podcast website to just some of the – there was a lot of different pieces that were shared during the course of this, but I wanted to share some links to some brilliant essays and open letters and videos that different Black astrologers created over the last month to explain their experiences. In particular, there was an incredibly brilliant letter that Sam Reynolds wrote to Steven, and Sam showed great leadership in the community during this time, as he has in many other times over the course of the past decade. There was also a piece that was shared by Akwe McDaniels on The Astrology Podcast forum early on that she gave me permission to share, which is a PDF, as she was, like, watched the thing and then was wrestling with how do we deal with this as a community. There was also a really important letter that a student of Steven’s named Kay Marie wrote to Steven and Ricky that I want to post a link to, and also Janet Jones’ article on Substack titled “A Black Friend is Not an Alibi.”

So this list is in no way comprehensive, and I strongly encourage people to seek out more and other voices, because a lot of people shared perspectives during the course of all of this. But I wanted to highlight the ones that were the most impactful to me personally as a starting point for people, if that makes sense. 

AC: Yeah, of course it does. 

CB: All right. And the other thing, again, one last time to ground this in the astrology was the Jupiter-Pluto opposition where one of the things we talked about in the last forecast episode is how we were seeing stories coming up already from 2020 when the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction occurred that were then coming back up and being revisited now this summer that we would reach the Jupiter-Pluto opposition or the halfway point in that cycle. And back in 2020, the George Floyd protests and there was this massive cultural reckoning with race that happened in 2020 around the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction. And that whole period, if you go back and listen to some of the podcast episodes I was doing during that period and that other astrologers were talking about, that period opened the eyes of many white astrologers in the astrological community, and it taught us some important lessons about systemic racism and how to show up respectfully for our Black colleagues. And now in 2026, we’re at the Jupiter-Pluto opposition, and astrologically this is the halfway point, but it’s also a check-in point basically where the community is collectively seeing who actively internalized some of those lessons from 2020 and continued doing the work, versus those who refuse to evolve. And ironically, around that time, just as the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction was starting to move into the same sign, Steven faced a precursor to this back in November of 2019 when he caught backlash for saying, “Ageism is as ugly as racism.” He said this on Facebook in response to a Black astrologer that posted something. 

So Steven had an opportunity right at the start of this astrological cycle of Jupiter and Pluto to learn why minimizing racism causes so much harm, but ultimately he chose not to. And my takeaway is that, you know, Steven has made his choices and seems set in them, but the broader community – the astrological community – still has a chance to learn and grow from this. And there’s a lot of really hard discussions that still need to happen, but I’m really hopeful that some of the boundaries that are being set today will help to create a safer and better astrology community for the future. And then whatever we create as a foundation now as a community we will check back in on the progress that was made in the interim at the next Jupiter-Pluto conjunction, which happens in the year 2033. So you know, six, seven years from now basically. And I think that’s a stunning way to understand and contextualize both the astrology of what’s happening now, but how it’s part of a continuum of what I hope will be, like, progress in the community even if that progress is difficult. 

AC: Hopefully an integration of lessons learned and principles internalized so that people operate with right understanding, rather than having to need to be reminded or surprised. 

CB: Right. So in terms of moving forward, after the controversy, the United Astrology Conference worked with community organizers to set up a workshop, and it’s gonna be titled “On Anti-Racism Capacity Building for Astrologers.” And so if you’re gonna be attending UAC, this is gonna take place on September 3rd. It’s being led by Samuel Reynolds, Imani Harmon, and Katia Perez Fuentes. So it’s described as “participatory workshop on restorative anti-racism practices led by and for astrologers.” So I think that these are the exact types of skills that all astrologers need to cultivate, because learning astrology is not just about mastering techniques. But it’s also about developing cultural competency and learning how to ethically hold space for many different diverse groups of people. And that’s true whether you’re a consulting astrologer where you’re seeing people one-on-one, whether you’re a teacher where you’re teaching many different types of people in your class or classrooms, whether you want to be a speaker at a conference where you’re giving talks to a wide variety of different people, or even if you’re just, like, a content creator, your work fundamentally involves working with people and we cannot forget the human dimension of what astrology is all about. 

So I really highly encourage anybody attending the conference to go to this workshop, and even aside from the workshop to actively try to build some of these essential skills, essentially. 

AC: The workshop sounds – it sounds like a great choice to put that on the schedule, and I know that that required a lot of quick work behind the scenes, as UAC is a very big thing. So you know, my salutations to the organizers and those who will be the presenters to get all that together so quickly. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. All right, so I wanna mention one silver lining, which is, you know, I think 20 or 30 years ago, the astrological organizations may have opted to protect the famous speaker after making harmful remarks. But today, the next generation of UAC organizers and astrological organizations chose instead to protect and prioritize the safety of the attendees and the marginalized astrologers instead. And that’s why this is important, because this was a major turning point in our community. And I think it was very admirable and courageous for all of the conference organizers to stand up and do what was right, especially given the massive amount of pushback that they received for doing so. So I respect all of them very deeply, and I think that it’s important to recognize that these are all, like, unpaid volunteers who are just trying to do their best. But that’s part of the silver lining here is that it proves that the astrological community is moving forward, even if the growing pains are incredibly difficult. So that’s one thing I wanted to say and recognize here. 

AC: It was a nice confirmation of what I assumed we all were doing here. I would have been shocked if there was a different result, but I’ve been shocked before. But it was nice to see that confirmed. You know, it can be easy living in one little tiny piece of astrology to just assume that of course, of course we’re not just there but well past there, but that came up for question this month. And so it was nice to see the organizational institutional agreement with that. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And then finally, lastly, I wanted to recognize everybody who spoke up and used their voice to hold our community to a higher standard over the past month, especially because I know how difficult that can be, and I know that it requires a tremendous amount of bravery to publicly point out when harm is being done, especially for many of our colleagues of color where putting yourself in the line of fire involves a massive amount of invisible emotional labor to speak up and to say something and then have to defend yourself if people are saying, like, stupid comments in response to that. But I wanted to say that the willingness to do that work, and to share your perspectives, is exactly what is helping to push the field forward. So each of your contributions this month in speaking up I think has helped to make the astrological community a safer and better place. And so for that, I wanted to personally thank you for speaking up. 

AC: Yeah. I saw so much thought and care put into attempts to reach out to Steven and to put together statements and thoughts about the situation. It was an excruciating amount of care and effort, and I appreciate everyone who did that. 

CB: Yeah. I wanted to recognize that, recognize the UAC organizers and then try to just end this by framing some of the positive silver linings and some of the positive directions hopefully that we can learn from this as a community and where we can take this to grow in the future. 

All right, my friend. Let’s take a little break, okay? 

AC: All righty. 

CB: All right. Let’s transition now into talking about the astrology of September. So let’s do an overview at first to give you a big picture overview, and then we’ll get into the sequential details. 

So we open this month still finishing up eclipse season, because we’re still coming off of the Pisces eclipse and we’re still in the seven or eight-day eclipse window that follows the eclipse. We’re also as we’re recording this on September 1st, and then I’m gonna release it tomorrow on September 2nd, we’re still completing the Mars-Saturn square which will take a few days to fully move past that three-degree range that is most intense. And we also just had at the very end of August Venus enter her shadow degree, which is the degree of I think it’s like, 22 Libra that she’ll later retrograde back to at the end of her retrograde cycle. So we’re getting heavy into the Venus retrograde territory at this point for the opening of the month. 

Then for the first week of September, some of the best electional charts take place, because Mercury and Venus are both in their home signs with Mercury in Virgo and Venus in Libra, which is kind of nice. But then on September 10th, there’s this really distinct tone shift that’s gonna take place around that date where, like, four different things happen all on September 10th. But especially Uranus stations retrograde in Gemini, which is a major exclamation mark next to that planet. Mercury and Venus both depart from their home signs and move into Libra and Scorpio respectively. And then there’s also a New Moon in Virgo that takes place on the same day. So that’s gonna be a huge turning point in the month on September 10th that sets things up for the next phase of the month. 

And then finally by the end of the month, everything seems to basically culminate later in the month around the Full Moon in Aries that takes place on September 26th, because shortly after that, Mars then moves into Leo and begins opposing Pluto and heading into its retrograde that’s gonna take place in Virgo and Leo later this year. Mercury also changes signs and moves into a square with Mars at that point, and Venus slows down to station retrograde in Scorpio at the very beginning of October. It stations retrograde like, October 3rd in Scorpio. So as a result of that, late September then begins many of the major configurations and themes that will last through October, essentially making September preparatory for the Venus and Mars retrograde periods that will coincide with the unfolding of a sequence of events over the course of the next several months. And that’s basically the kind of big picture overview of September. What do you think, Austin? 

AC: I think that is the case. There’s a lot of spillover from August dramas and tragedies into September, and there’s certainly a lot of warning signs and whatever the opposite of an aftershock is. Like, a pre-shock. Like, tremors. Like, prophetic tremors at the end of September about what will take place in October and continue in large part well into November. But September this year is very much between I think two much more dramatic months. And I won’t say that September is relaxing and chill and utopian or benefic or harmonious; I think I have miscommunicated a couple times this year when I have said that a month is relatively chill, graded on the 2026 scale, and people thought that it would be actually chill. But this is, again, on the 2026 scale, sure, September’s relatively chill, but not in reality, or not against the human norm chill. 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: But it’s more chill than October! 

CB: Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s like, the beginning of the month, we’re still coming off of tons of intense stuff from eclipse season. There’s gonna be some unexpected surprises and disruptions on that Uranus station around September 10th that are gonna be some curveballs that are hard to anticipate and will shake things up significantly. But then later in the month, that’s when some of the really problematic stuff starts to set in, just because the beginning of that Venus retrograde is so tumultuous because, like, Mars moves into Leo just as Venus is slowing down to retrograde in Scorpio. So it forms this Venus-Mars square that also brings in Pluto in a T-square right there in early October, and that just gets queued off right at the end of September. 

AC: Yeah. And will be, because Venus is moving so slow, we will see – we will have a very extended Mars-Venus square and also a very extended Mars opposition Pluto, both squaring Venus. And then Mercury will do the same thing that Venus does later in October. So the end of September queues up, and I would say that that Full Moon in Aries starts accelerating what will be quite inflamed come early October. 

CB: Yeah. For sure. All right, let’s – I’m gonna put up the chart and let’s just go through things sequentially. Shall we? 

AC: Sure. 

CB: All right. So this is the chart for September 1st when we’re recording this. And we can see that the Moon is in Taurus, so it’s still coming off of having hit the Full Moon and the lunar eclipse in Pisces just a few days ago. And it’s not gonna be until the Moon completes the square with the Sun and especially gets out of Gemini and moves into Cancer around September 5th – that’s usually the point where eclipse season really starts to end or dissipate or calm down, which is something to look forward to, but it means that some of the major eclipse season events and major beginnings and endings and shaking things up and the rise and fall of prominent people, some of that’s still ongoing in the first week of September. 

AC: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, especially considering that our solar eclipse this August was the very first one in Leo, and is thus initiating a whole series of eclipses that will be targeting the same now marked territory. And also worth noting on just a smaller note that even though the shadow of eclipse season dwindles down to little or nothing by the 5th-6th, that Moon in Cancer reactivates the Mars-Saturn square. Even though it’s past four degrees now the Moon conjoining that Mars and squaring that Saturn temporarily reignites it. And so it might not —

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — feel like that’s over. Yeah, that’s just worth noting that first weekend of September has that Mars-Saturn re-energized by the Moon briefly. 

CB: Yeah. That’s definitely annoying, since we can see it’s like, today as the month opens, we just had the exact Mars at 13 degrees of Cancer squaring Saturn at 13 degrees of Aries. Although, you know, which I saw so many examples of just people having immense amounts of tension building up to that. But we also had Jupiter trining Saturn at the same time, so there was like, the possibility of successful outlet of some of that energy or a saving grace or a bad thing happen or, you know, very tense internal tensions, but then the possibility of some sort of resolution at the same time, which I think hopefully I think in many cases helped to balance things out and save some people in certain practical instances. And like you said, the Mars-Saturn is still – it looks like it’s still within three degrees all the way until about September 5th, and then we just get one last activation of that when the Moon hits Mars around September 6th. But by that point, Jupiter, while separating from Saturn, is still very close to that trine and still kind of like, helping balance things out with Saturn a little bit. 

AC: Yeah. It’s useful for Saturn for the – if, you know, you need to stay on schedule and stay in control of your state and your duties. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and one of the things I was thinking about is that was another – that aspect this month, that trine with Jupiter and Saturn, is one of the things that’s linking us back to 2020 as well. Because of course, famously, that was one of the major alignments out of many world-changing alignments that occurred in 2020. But we also famously had a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that year, which went exact late in the year in, like, December, but was already very close or came very close earlier in the year. And we had, like, off and on a sign-based conjunction at different points all year. So this Jupiter-Saturn trine is linking back to some things that were started back then, some foundational seed moments of Jupiter conjunct Saturn, and it’s having us again, like, check in with some of those, but in a positive or growth-oriented way because it’s Jupiter trining Saturn. 

AC: Yeah. Right. We’re exactly one-third the way; this marks one-third the way into the – through the 20-year Jupiter-Saturn cycle. And things are unfolding. 

CB: Yeah. At the waxing trine. So it’s like, we had the intense tension, but also – intense internal tensions for many people at the end of August and beginning of September, but also a very positive opportunity for moments of growth at the same time fundamentally. 

All right, so those are two things happening at the beginning of September. The other thing that happened as I mentioned is that Venus hit 22 degrees of Libra on October 30th and 31st, and as we can see – here, I’ll animate the chart. It’s like, Venus is gonna go through Libra and go into Scorpio later in September, and then it’s gonna station retrograde on October 3rd at, like, eight degrees of Scorpio. But then it’s gonna back all the way up and retrograde back to 22 degrees of Libra where it will station direct around November 14th. 

So why that’s important and why we pay attention to shadow periods is that if you have any natal planets in that range between, like, 22 degrees of Libra and where Venus stationed retrograde in Scorpio at – what was it – eight degrees of Scorpio, then you’re gonna get three exact hits of Venus over the course of the next few months. And so sometimes it means that something, some action that you take right now or some event that happens in your life that initially when Venus first makes the first pass that seems like it was a one-time thing, and it was like, one and done type thing, you may actually end up revisiting that at some point, either weeks or a few months in the future when Venus turns around and revisits the same spot in the zodiac. 

AC: Yeah, that is very much the nature of the sort of swath of degrees that Venus retrogrades through. Very often the first pass, which we’ll be seeing for a lot of this month, is something comes up that may seem like there’s more to it, but it’s not clear at the time, or it may be something that you brush against and move on. But it’s something that will be returned to, not just once, but twice more. And very often, there’s some sort of complicated root system that needs to be explored or dug up. The example might be a little bit trite, but there’s very much an iceberg dynamic with Venus’s retrograde where it goes – you’ll bump into things the first time that actually extend far deeper than you might have imagined. And it’s not that everything that happens during this period of time, which is in this case nearly a month, has that hidden depth, but keep an eye out for especially relationship dynamics and things that you’re emotionally invested in in a way that is Venusian. Right? Things that, like, the vision of a beautiful or a happy life would be a point of Venusian investment. Like, I need this, I’m working towards this particular vision of things. Like, this is my happy ending. And it’s those sort of attachments and images that Venus often reveals more about during the course of a retrograde. And it doesn’t mean because a relationship or a hope is the subject of Venus’s retrograde, that it is in fact doom and will merely be destroyed during it, but it means that there’s more to it and that by following Venus, you will learn there might be things that need to change. There might be things about that relationship or that hope that actually need to be tested to be confirmed. And so yeah, deeper root systems to some of what transpires there than might first be apparent. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And yeah, the last Venus retrograde a year and a half ago or whatever it was, it became really apparently that Venus when it goes retrograde has this backwards-looking orientation where sometimes people start looking back into the past for some reason because Venus, the planet starts literally retracing her steps or moving back to an earlier degree in the zodiac and revisiting something that she’s already passed by. And so sometimes that is the cliche of, like, revisiting a past relationship, or revisiting people in your life from the past who suddenly come back into the present for some reason. So that’s part of it, but also Venus can relate to social dynamics, having to revisit those. It can relate to creativity and artistic expression. Like, we had that famous thing with Lady Gaga, like, revisiting a previous style from earlier in her career when Venus went retrograde in the same spot as where it was when she first became big. And that phrase that was so funny that was like, “reheating your nachos” as being a positive phrase that came up during that time of, like, you know, reheating something from your past, and it’s like, not quite as good as when you first had it, but it’s like, almost as good so it’s kind of worth revisiting at that point. And sometimes in its best aspect, I think that’s one of the best things about Venus. But there often is, because of this backwards-looking orientation, we have a question of what pieces from your past do you want to bring into the present and keep and take into the future, versus which ones are best left in the past after you go through that process of revisiting them. 

AC: Absolutely. And bringing things up for judgment, up for resurrection or permanent cremation, which is one of the reasons people are often drawn to older relationships. Because there’s a secret ambivalence about, “Well, maybe it would work this time,” or “Maybe it’s not quite dead.” But it’s also not alive, right? Like, there’s a lot that’s in the in-between here in Venus’s underworld, right? “What if I went back to that? Maybe that can be me again. Maybe that could be us again.” Or you know, “maybe I need to leave it be permanently rather than wondering about it.” And so that deciding of what stays in Venus’s underworld, and what gets to come back up into the sunlit realms is very often a theme behind Venus’s time retrograde. And time before – like time in the degrees that span the retrograde, which we enter in September. 

CB: Yeah, definitely. And I think, like, the early phases of that while Venus is moving through Libra may be more, like, light and pleasant in some ways this month in September. But then the last week of September when Venus moves into Scorpio and then when it stations retrograde in October with those hard aspects to Mars and Pluto, it’s like, there’s something more tense and tumultuous and sometimes dark or challenging that comes up in the process of revisiting things or revising things that has to be wrestled with, and that part of the process and the early phases of the actual retrograde may be a little bit more challenging compared to this phase that we’re about to start in September, or even the later parts when Venus stations direct in Libra and departs from that square with Mars or the hard aspect with Pluto. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. I think unequivocally, the Libra beginning and the Libra ending of this retrograde are eight times earlier than the Scorpio portion, and not just because of the signs. Because Venus is relatively unharassed at the end of Libra. Venus is opposite Saturn by sign, but many degrees away, whereas as soon as Venus gets into Scorpio, there’s a more or less immediate square to Pluto, right? And Venus gets into Scorpio on the 10th of September, so Venus immediately hits that square to Pluto, and then moving very slowly through that first decan of Scorpio, Venus stays there long enough that Mars at the end of the month is able to move into Leo in preparation for another square that Venus will have to make with a malefic in this case – Mars – but that being T-squared by both Mars and Pluto during the Scorpio portion of the Venus retrograde looks painful. It looks painful. But again, what’s nice is the lead-up is pretty tender and the comedown once Venus has retreated back into Libra puts her offline from that Mars-Pluto opposition. And so the beginning and the end possess the real possibility of finding and refinding a deeper balance and equilibrium with people. But the middle is pretty brutal, or will be for a lot of people. It’s pretty upsetting looking. 

CB: Yeah. And that’s – we really get into that, that tone shift that I said that happens on September 10th, that’s as soon as Venus changes signs from Scorpio, and that’s when we’ll start seeing some of that. Because it’s like, Venus moves into Scorpio and begins squaring Pluto, which is gonna be when it goes exact the first of three of those Pluto squares. So it’s not just, like, Venus going over certain degrees in our birth charts, especially if we have any in late cardinal or early fixed signs, but also just in the sky hitting three of those dark, sort of underworld, control, manipulation, power and other types of issues that can be really difficult in a Venusian context of relationships or social dynamics with Venus, especially in terms of world events going through three of those will be a lot over the next few months. But then also — 

AC: Oh, go ahead. 

CB: I’ll just say that the same day that Venus changes signs, Mercury changes signs and goes into Libra and then begins this opposition with Neptune, which is tricky because that goes exact on, like, the 12th. And sometimes Mercury-Neptune can be difficulties with communication involving, like, illusions or deception or misunderstandings, where one side misunderstands the other. And that’s not a great setup to have that basically happening – those two energies happening – at the same time. And that’s why there’s a tone shift after September 10th. 

AC: Yeah. The Mercury-Neptune can also just be oblivious and making mistakes, potentially costly, because of obliviousness. One of the things I wanted to say to further characterize Venus’s time in Scorpio was – with Scorpio, there’s already a macabre, gothic, underworld-y set of themes around Venus, and then squaring Pluto, being in contact with Pluto, magnifies those. And it reminds me of an article I wrote during the last time Venus did this retrograde about eight years ago. And as I was thinking about it, I was thinking about Venus’s movements and themes, I became obsessed with the figure of Venus Cloacina, which was a Roman form of Venus that was Venus of the sewers, our Lady of the Sewers, and it was Venus, whose powers is to create things that are clean and pretty and beautiful. And it was a recognition that the sewer system was necessary to keep things clean and healthy and beautiful, but that all of that filth, all of that literally toxic filth had to be dealt with in order to keep the rest of the world, the rest of the city, free of it. And it was so interesting to me that that was seen as a function of Venus, because in many ways, the Venusian is the opposite of a sewer system. And yet it spoke so clearly to the nature of the retrograde and Venus’s retrograde in general, which is often pursuing classic Venusian aims – like, greater harmony between people, improved quality of relationship and intimacy, but through actions that seem contrary. Right? Pursuing the clean through actually confronting the filthy and toxic, right? Just as in the Inanna myth, right, in order to be restored to the heights of the heavens, she has to descend to the bottom of the underworld and confront powerlessness and suffering. 

CB: Yeah. And also sometimes Venus in Scorpio, like, seeing the beauty in things that other people think are ugly. And so sometimes you do get, like, the goth Venus or let’s say a Venus that can sometimes see and work with dark or underworldly type things, but to do so in a compassionate way in seeing and being able to navigate some of those dark realms more constructively. Like sometimes in the context of, like, death, for example, and sometimes working with people – like, I saw a TikTok video about a funeral director recently, or other people like that. Like people that do bereavement counseling or deal with people that are dealing with end-of-life issues. And sometimes that being, like, a necessary part of life, but it’s not something that’s normally seen as glamorous or something like that, but it’s nonetheless an area where people can bring up or deal with difficult topics in a way that’s helpful and healing and in some ways, like, beautiful or touching, even if those things are not stereotypical things that we associate with beauty or peace or other things like that. 

AC: Yeah. Those are great points and images. You know, a well-orchestrated funeral is deeply touching and beautiful in a way that very few works of art can aspire to.

CB: Yeah, or like, the person who does the makeup in a funeral for somebody who’s passed away, and there’s actual makeup work done sometimes to be able to have a viewing and for people to go into a funeral and be able to say their goodbyes, or to put a loved one in a state where people can handle seeing that, and handle saying goodbye and letting go can be important, but not underrepresented but overlooked important role in society, let’s say. 

AC: Yeah, and Venusian, but certainly not the first thing you would go to when you’re – not the first on the list of things that Venus corresponds to, but a sort of quiet, more subtle correspondence that is nonetheless as important if perhaps not more. 

CB: Yeah. So that’s part of the shift that we go into on September 10th. But it’s weird, because we get this New Moon in Virgo at 18 degrees of Virgo the same day that sort of stamps that energy on the next couple of weeks at least of the month from New Moon to Full Moon. But we also see that Uranus is, like, stationing there at five degrees of Gemini at this time, stationing retrograde the same exact day. And that’s as far as Uranus has gotten into Gemini at this point, all the way to five degrees. So it’s starting to – it’s gotten into and it’s really hanging out on top of that degree in unmarked territory, which for anybody that has especially, like, five degrees of something in one of the four mutable signs of Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces, it’s really gonna be activating those placements. And there may be something that’s unexpected that’s brought up at this time in your life. There may be something that’s disruptive that’s brought up at this time in your life. Or there may be something that’s, like, exciting and innovative and new, but that you didn’t really plan that takes you in an unexpected direction very suddenly. And that’s part of the energy on September 10th, but really in the surrounding days as well, both in terms of our personal lives if that’s hitting a personal spot in our chart, but also in terms of mundane events and paying attention to unexpected disruptions and curveballs that come up in the news at that time. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. Uranus’s stations are always disrupt business as usual. And yeah, we really do have a cluster of things happening right around the 10th. We’ve got Venus changes signs; as you said, Mercury changes signs; a New Moon, and that Uranus station right around there. And so it really does split the month off from the first portion of 10 days into the rest of the month. 

CB: Yeah. And maybe before we go on, then, I want to highlight the best election of September that Leisa Schaim and I found in our Electional Astrology Podcast for patrons this month, which is set for September 8th, 2026, at about one PM local time with Sagittarius rising. 

So in early September, basically, especially in the days just after eclipse season ends when you still have Mercury in Virgo and Venus in Libra, you can catch the best electional charts of this month. And this is the one that we wanted to highlight, which has Sagittarius rising. So set the chart up and make sure Sagittarius is rising locally for you in your city. And if you do, you’ll have Jupiter ruling the Ascendant in a day chart in the 9th whole sign house, which is the place of religion and philosophy and beliefs, as well as like, travel and interaction with foreign cultures or people from foreign places. So this would be an excellent chart for 9th house activities related to any of those topics. Even like, taking a course or starting to learn something is a very 9th house-type thing. And in our location in Denver, the Moon-Jupiter conjunction is just separating that day, even though it’s still very close. And then the Moon goes on to make a wide sextile with Venus. But for many of the timezones east of Denver, you’ll actually have an even better chart because the Moon will still be applying to that exact conjunction with Jupiter, which is even more amazing. 

Additionally the chart has Mercury exalted in Virgo in the 10th whole sign house, which is excellent for 10th house things related to career, reputation, and overall life direction. And even Venus is still in her home sign in Libra in the very later degrees of Libra in the 11th whole sign house, which is the place of friends and groups and alliances. So the only downside to the chart is Mars in the 8th house of shared resources and other people’s money and mortality. So it would not be a good election for those types of 8th house topics, but otherwise it’s a very good election to take advantage of early in September. 

AC: Somewhat ironically, Chris, I will be giving my lecture at UAC on the falls of all the planets. 

CB: Okay! Nice. 

AC: During this inherently celebratory moment, I will be discussing the cruel traps laid for each planet in the sign of its fall! And I had hoped to do so in a compassionate and not hopeless way, and I think I may succeed at that. It may instead make people really excited about fallen planets! 

CB: Right. Excellent. Well —

AC: Given this beautiful Moon-Jupiter in Leo ruling the Ascendant. 

CB: Yeah. I love that. Well, you’re lucky you got that nice Moon-Jupiter on your talk day, and I’m sure that’ll be a good day at the conference. And yeah, Leisa and I found multiple other electional charts this month to help people navigate not just the best days, but also navigate some of the more challenging days. And you can get access to those through our Electional Astrology Podcast, which is available on our page on Patreon.com for The Astrology Podcast. And Leisa actually wanted me to mention that she’s going to be speaking on electional astrology at UAC this coming week where on Monday, September 7th at 11 AM, she has a talk titled “Planning Your Day with Electional Astrology” where she’s going to be talking about, like, short-term elections and how to pick out good rising signs during the course of the day. Rather than, like, you know, planning things a year or two in advance, what are some strategies for picking out really short-term elections for day-to-day things and doing things successfully. So that’ll be a great talk. And then she’s also giving what’s gonna be – she’s been preparing for this all summer, this incredible talk titled, “Chronic Illness and Disability in Client-Centered Practice” that’s on September 5th at 4:30 PM. And this is gonna be a really important talk about not just placements that have to do with chronic illness in a birth chart, and identifying those, but also how to work with clients and how to talk with clients compassionately and accurately that are struggling with chronic illness. And I think it’s gonna be a very, very important talk, so people should check it out. 

AC: Yeah, absolutely. It’s on Saturday? 

CB: Yeah, Saturday, September 5th at 4:30 PM in Chicago. 

AC: Okay. So right – yeah, Leisa’s on right after me on Saturday. 

CB: Nice. All right. Okay, so that’s kind of the first week of September, and taking us into the second week of September where in terms of the day-to-day astrology, it’s like, we see Venus squaring Pluto exactly on September 15th, and that energy peaking between those two planets. We see Mercury, as I said, hit the opposition with Neptune and some nebulousness surrounding communication peaks around September 12th. And what else do we have going on? I mean, Mercury does make some nice – it makes, like, a trine to Pluto at the same time, which is a little bit positive, and it makes a helpful trine to Uranus on the 13th, which I’m hoping will ease some of the communication issues with Neptune and give them some positive, innovative outlet, especially the trine with Uranus, so that it’s not all just, like, straight hard aspects all month. 

AC: No, the nearly simultaneous trine to Pluto, opposition to Neptune, and then trine to Uranus immediately thereafter, it’s a lot to think about for Mercury. It’s a lot to sort out. You know, that trio of planets are outer planets for the next while, and they’re all relatively recently ingressed and so – like, Mercury’s naturally in a position there to try to understand some of the confusing, exciting, disruptive qualities that have recently moved into our timeline. And it’s also worth noting that with Venus coming into that square with Pluto, it’s gonna get dragged out, because Venus at this point is moving excruciatingly slowly. By the end of the month, in two weeks, Venus will have barely moved five degrees. And so while Venus does complete the first square with Pluto and move on, she moves on with extreme slowness. And so there’s a slowing down and a getting weighed down quality to the Venusian during this period that really extends through the rest of the month. It’s not a “Well, that was a bummer,” and moving on. Right? There’s very little moving on. We’re getting ready to grind to a halt and then drill down and go back through the same territory, but one level deeper. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And this – one of the things I forgot to mention with the Venus retrograde that was really prominent last time a couple years ago was to pay attention to what house Venus is gonna station retrograde in, and then what whole sign house it will retrograde back to in your chart, because both of those houses and the topics associated with them will likely be activated and will be the focal point of the retrograde, but also sometimes you’ll see those two house topics being linked together in some way. So like, I started doing an astrology podcast during the Venus retrograde in November of 2010 in Scorpio and Libra and it connected my 10th house and 9th house, for example, of career and astrology, just as an example of that. But everybody should be paying attention to, yeah, those houses and how they might link together in different ways, because that may come up in ways that you don’t expect in your life. 

AC: Yeah, and very often when a retrograde crosses sign boundaries like this, you’ll see the problem clearly outlined in the house where the retrograde station happens, and the nature of the solution or the manner in which you can actually move forward in the place where Venus stations direct. And it’s one thing, but you see the problem clearly in one area, and you can see what to do about it in the other. 

CB: Yeah. That makes sense. 

All right, so that’s moving us forward where, yeah, you’re right. Like, Venus is moving so slow that it spends like, the 15th and 16th at three degrees of Scorpio square Pluto. And then it slowly starts trying to make its way outside of that. We do get a Mercury-Saturn opposition. It looks like it goes exact on the 17th and 18th, so there’s some blocks or perhaps mental barriers when it comes to communication or speaking and other things like that. It was really funny this month —

AC: Delays in transportation. 

CB: Oh yeah, that’s a good one. Slow down. Yeah, we’ve seen, like, twice now instances of elections taking place near that, and then there was like, a slowness in counting the votes when Mercury was stationing and it was making a hard aspect with Saturn. So a slowness in calculating or things taking longer than you would like to tabulate or to communicate something or to get somewhere in that instance. 

AC: Right. So much for free two-day shipping. 

CB: Right! Well, you know what’s funny about that is it reminds me of the Venus-Saturn opposition this past month, because I don’t think it was planned this way, but all of the UAC speakers, the PowerPoint slides for all hundred speakers was all due the day of the Venus-Saturn opposition. And I just watched, like, dozens of — 

AC: Oh, I know!

CB: — my friends – if you happen to know anybody! But dozens of my friends and colleagues that were all working just, like, feverishly on finishing their lectures and their PowerPoint slides to get them in by the time of this Venus-Saturn opposition. And then everybody turned them in that day, and then there was just this huge sigh of relief. Yeah. So you were one of those people? 

AC: I… Really tried to get them in on time. 

CB: Okay! 

AC: I underestimated how much of my time and raw life force it would take. It didn’t, I wasn’t too late, but I was very stressed out by not making the deadline, because I’d put a lot into making the deadline. 

CB: Yeah. I watched Leisa work on hers for weeks and weeks in the build-up to all of that, and yeah, it was a good example of the tension and the build-up to an exact aspect and then sometimes when it separates the release. But here we’ve got something similar where on the 17th and 18th, there’s like, this build-up to Mercury-Saturn, and then a release that comes after that from the 18th forward for a little bit. 

AC: Well, and better than a release. As soon as Mercury completes the opposition with Saturn, it immediately begins a tight sextile with Jupiter. So from opposition to a malefic to a happy relationship to a benefic. And so things immediately switch to the positive, which is nice. 

CB: I love that. That’s great. And that’s probably one of our most positive aspects of the month is this Mercury-Jupiter sextile that goes exact, it looks like, around September 21st where Mercury hits 17 degrees of Libra and it sextiles Jupiter at 17 degrees of Leo, which is pretty nice. 

AC: Yeah, and especially it’s certainly one of the nicest things during the latter half of the month. You know, there are some nice moments earlier on, but you know, post the 10th where we have Mercury, Venus change signs and Uranus station and all that, I would agree that this Mercury-Jupiter moment’s pretty smile-y and pretty — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: — constructive. Just useful. 

CB: Yeah. And then it’s also an important turning point because once that separates, then we’re just heading headlong into the later phase of September, because Mercury once it completes the sextile with Jupiter starts heading towards that square with Mars, which is now in late Cancer. And Mercury’s moving really fast, so it’s like, it’s catching up with Mars like, very rapidly even though it won’t complete the square until Mercury gets into Scorpio and Mars into Leo. But that kind of takes us to that Full Moon that I mentioned, which is our second lunation of the month that goes exact on September 26th with the Moon opposing the Sun at about three degrees of Aries, very closely conjunct Neptune. And yeah, by this point, it’s like, Venus is slowing down to station, Mercury is headed very closely to that square with Mars, and there is this late in the month sort of like, culmination of events right before Mars changes signs a couple days later, a day or two later, and the rest of the fall is sort of like, set up at that point. 

AC: Yeah. It’s not a Full Moon that looks very auspicious to me. It looks – so it’s a Full Moon in Aries. It’s Mars-ruled. Mars is in Cancer when the Full Moon takes place, which is not an especially constructive place for Mars and as – not more – importantly, it’s the Full Moon in the same sign as Saturn. It’s the Full Moon is moving into conjunction with a fallen, retrograde Saturn. And so there are a lot of frustrations, a lot of difficulties, delays that are augered, as well as especially Saturn is in Aries I think we’ll also see a lot of loss through impatience or an unwillingness to slow down, a trying to push through and getting bad results or failure or similar negative consequences from not heeding the very clear stop sign that Saturn holds up here. 

CB: Yeah. That’s a good keyword, because one of the ancient keywords of Saturn is “inaction.” And sometimes inaction can be bad, because it can be like, not taking action on something when you should, and that delay causing problems because you held back doing something that was necessary or took too long to do it. Whereas sometimes, like, inaction when it’s well-timed can be like, waiting until the right moment in order to act decisively and not acting impulsively. But here with the Full Moon activating Saturn and Neptune, it’s also activating some of those themes that we’ve experienced so much earlier this year of that tension between what’s real and what’s not real, or what’s illusory versus what’s tangible, and sometimes not knowing the difference between the two or getting the two confused so that you’re acting – it’s like, things are culminating because it’s a Full Moon. But then we’re sometimes acting without a clear picture of what the real situation is. 

AC: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 

CB: Yeah. So that is the Full Moon, and then that sets off, which is ruled by Mars with the Moon in Aries, and then literally the next day on September 27th, later in the day, Mars moves into Leo and begins an opposition with Pluto, which is at three degrees of Aquarius at that point. And then so Mars-Pluto, we dealt with that aspect a lot one and two years ago because that last retrograde was in Leo and Cancer, and we had three opps between Mars and Pluto. And on the one hand, it was like, the first opposition we saw happened on New Year’s Eve – actually, that was the second opposition. We saw there was, like, a bomb that exploded at one point in front of a hotel. There was the LA wildfires may have gotten started initially after fireworks were set off on New Year’s Eve, and then it caused all this destruction later on when the flames reignited. And then I think the third and final Mars-Pluto opposition, we noted at the time that Mars and Pluto were the two ancient rulers of the underworld. Not just in Greco-Roman society with Pluto or Hades, but also with Mars as the ruler of the underworld, Nergal, in the Mesopotamian tradition. And the funeral of the pope happened right under that exact Mars-Pluto opposition and you had all these world leaders flying in from around the world for this huge funeral. So it’s like, those are some of the, like, themes that we have to draw on from recent experience, besides what other psychological or archetypal dynamics we might draw from that. 

AC: Yeah. Mars-Pluto definitely has a killing energy, or a pointing towards the dead or death or that which inspires the fear of death. It’s a nasty combination, and that opposition is, of course, what both Mercury and Venus will straddle at various points while they’re in Scorpio. And that’s a big part of why the in Scorpio portion of Venus’s retrograde in October looks so harsh and looks so challenging and potentially upsetting is it’s that Mars-Pluto opposition that Venus has to engage. And that Mercury engages just before Venus. And then again after Venus, because Mercury will go retrograde later in October and basically almost retrace the steps of Venus’s retrograde. 

CB: Yeah. And that kicks in September 30th when Mercury goes into Scorpio and starts squaring Mars. So we get that Mercury-Mars square energy peaking on the 30th and October 1st and 2nd and 3rd. So those are, like, fighting words or hurtful things are said, or verbal combativeness or transportation challenges because Mercury rules transportation and Mars can sometimes be, like, yeah, difficult – like, accidents or things like that. 

AC: Yeah, that certainly – that Mercury t-square Mars-Pluto in early October certainly could look like a terrible accident or terrible accidents. 

CB: Yeah. And then on top of that, it’s like, Venus is stationing retrograde in early Scorpio squaring Mars and squaring Pluto. And as we’ve seen over the past few years, like, Venus-Mars hard aspects often have had to do with like, difficult things that happen between genders or difficult things that have to do with sex and sexuality. A lot of the Epstein stuff kept having to do with Venus and Mars hard aspects or recurrence transits, because that exact conjunction is something he had in his birth chart. And having Venus slowing down and stationing retrograde in Scorpio squaring both Mars and Pluto seems like it could highlight some kind of challenging or even dark things like that. 

AC: Yeah. I think we’ll probably hear stories of abuse coming to light during that time. 

CB: Okay. Yeah. So that’s tough, tough stuff once we get to later in September and early October. And it’s not, like, relishing dwelling on that necessarily, but it’s just kind of like, hard — 

AC: — thereof. 

CB: Yeah. It’s just kind of hard to get around it once you get to the end of September and the beginning of October and just the way that that sets things up, because then the Venus retrograde starts at that point and queues up some things. And even eventually Mars, once it goes into Leo, that’s the sign it will later retrograde back to and station direct. So in some ways, like, the entire process of the unfolding over several months of the Mars retrograde will begin then, because part of Mars retrograde is that it’s gonna spend an abnormal amount of time in the Virgo and Leo sectors of our charts for the next several months. 

AC: Yep. 

CB: Yeah. All right. Well, not to leave this on kind of a downer, but that’s kind of like, where we end unfortunately in September when it comes to the astrology of September. I mean, hilariously I was looking at this the other day, and you and I are gonna have to record a forecast later in September for October at some point around that time. I’m thinking we might – we pushed this forecast late this month for electional purposes and practical purposes, but we might have to do the next one earlier just before some of this stuff kicks in, I was thinking. 

AC: You can think that. I’m not doing it with Mars on the degree of my rising at the end of Cancer. 

CB: Oh, no! Well, this will be the alternative is this Mercury-Mars-Pluto T-square like, by September 30th. So that will be a fun — 

AC: Yeah, it’s just — 

CB: — problem for us — 

AC: — a buffet of beautiful options at the end of the month, isn’t it? 

CB: Yeah. Well, that’ll be a problem for, like, Future Us to deal with and present us, we can pretend we didn’t just see that and stay blissfully unaware of future electional problems that we’ll have to deal with in a month from now. 

AC: Fair enough. 

CB: Fair enough. All right, my friend — 

AC: Future Us has a lot of shit to deal with. Present Us — 

CB: Yeah. 

AC: Yeah, Present Us is also possessed of a full plate, so. 

CB: Yeah. Let’s just take it – let’s all just take it one day at a time, and one thing at a time. 

AC: There are some really nice moments in September. 

CB: Yeah. Especially, you know, when Venus and Mercury are still in Virgo and Libra and much of that’s gonna coincide with this big conference where a lot of astrologers are getting together to present some of their best talks. And I’m sure it’s gonna be an amazing event. A lot of people are gonna have a good time. Some important things are gonna come out of that that you can’t even anticipate going into it, which is what always happens with big conferences. And yeah, and then afterwards I’m sure all the recordings will be available at some point, so that’ll be good to listen to for those of us that can’t attend. 

All right. And you’ll give us a full report, hopefully, next month of how it went and how your talks went and everything else? 

AC: A thorough recounting indeed. 

CB: Okay. Good. 

All right, my friend. Well, good luck with the conference this month. Thanks for joining me. What do you have – what’s coming up? What are you doing? What are your talks at UAC again? 

AC: Well, I’m gonna give a couple talks and I’m gonna do a post-conference workshop. My talk on Saturday is actually about astrology and history. I’m looking at the large pattern of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions moving from signs in one element to another in 200-ish-year chunks. And we’re gonna do just a brief recounting of all of recorded history. And then focus on the era that we have just entered, which is this period of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions in air, which again, we’re just a little bit into, and we’re gonna look at every other time that’s happened and what the world looks like, and try to understand what normal looks like during these epochs of air rather than just assuming that things will be as they have been the last couple hundred years where our background was earth. So that’s Saturday. 

And then on Tuesday, the very last day of the conference during that beautiful Moon-Jupiter conjunction, I’ll be talking about the very depths to which each planet can fall and how to potentially get up again after a fall. The talk is called “The Descent: Planets in Their Fall.” And then post-conference on Wednesday, I will be giving a very – I will be doing a workshop where we go through most of Book Five of Dorotheus. It’s called “Dorothean Elections,” and as you well know, we would have no electional tradition or only a pitiful one without Dorotheus. And so it’s – you know, you can come and spend five, six hours with me and just go through Dorotheus’s baseline approach and assumptions. And we’re also gonna look at all the criteria for a number of specific things, such as marriage, buying and selling, surgery, et cetera, et cetera. It’ll be – it’s so boring that it’s exciting. It’s so boring and nerdy that it horseshoe theories into being exhilarating. I’m so excited to do it. 

And all the while during UAC, Kait – Sphere and Sundry will be vending for the very first time ever. Come check out the literally epic double booth. There will be massages. There will be energy clearing. There will be a huge portion of Sphere and Sundry’s catalogue which is available for inspection and sampling. It should be the booth to end all booths. 

CB: That’s gonna be so incredible. I’m so excited that you guys are doing that – that Kaitlin’s doing that big booth in the trade show, and I know there’s gonna be, like, handouts and lots of swag and stuff like that. And then your talks are gonna be amazing, because yeah, Dorotheus is such a foundational author that influenced the tradition in just unimaginably huge ways. So to actually talk through those elections and stuff is gonna be incredible. 

AC: Yeah, I mean, he’s – you know, once you’ve read a few traditional books, you notice that he’s cut and pasted in texts that are a thousand years apart. You’re like, “This looks familiar. Oh, this is that part of Book Five of Dorotheus yet again!” Like, been through four different translations, and it’s still basically the same thing. You’re the last person I need to tell this to, but it’s so nice and so helpful to just spend time with foundational texts. 

CB: All right, that sounds incredible. And yeah, what are your websites again? 

AC: So it’s AustinCoppock.com and SphereAndSundry.com. 

CB: Beautiful. All right. 

As for myself, I – you know, going into eclipse season last month, I told everybody that one of my most common analogies at this point is, l, sometimes when you have something that you’re gonna try to do around the eclipses that it’s like sailing into a storm on a boat. And sometimes you can still pull off and do really important things during eclipse season, because they also mark when really crucial events in the world happen. But it can be really tumultuous and you have to like, tie yourself to the ship and just kind of hold on, because things are gonna try to blow you off course. And last month, I recorded some really important episodes in July, and I held off and then still ended up releasing those in August and released some really – I’ve been doing some research over this summer, and it’s some of the, I feel, most important research I’ve done in my life, especially about the origins of Hellenistic astrology and the increasing likelihood that some of the origins of Hellenistic astrology go back to the Egyptian temples and the priests who were working in Egypt around the second century BCE. And I released some episodes talking about that this month as well as my new episode about the proposed birth time of the United States where I found more information. But I also recorded a very important episode about the Hermetic origins of Hellenistic astrology that hopefully I’m gonna release here in early September, if I can make the election. So that’s a big thing I have coming up. And then otherwise, I’m going to be hopefully doing an episode on Venus retrograde in Scorpio in history to try to contextualize this upcoming retrograde. Eventually hopefully doing the episode with Camille and Lindsey about Dolly Parton, and we’ll see what else comes up this month in terms of the podcast. But I think that’s it. 

So thanks everyone for watching. Thanks, Austin, for joining me today; I really appreciate it, and I wish you good luck. And I wish everyone a great United Astrology Conference. 

AC: Thank you. 

CB: All right. Thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast. And we’ll see you again next time. 

AC: Take care! 

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