← The Astrology Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Chris.
- [00:00]
B
Hey, my name is Chris Brennan and you're listening to the Astrology podcast. Joining me today is astrologer Austin Coppock, and we're going to be talking about the astrological forecast for October of 2025. Hey Austin, congratulations on surviving a very long and tumultuous eclipse month.
- [00:17]
A
Thank you. And to you as well, Chris.
- [00:20]
B
Thank you. I'm hanging in there. It's been a rough month for me, for you, for pretty much everybody I know. That's what we're gonna talk about here a little bit today. We're gonna spend the first hour or so catching up on news and events since our last forecast a month ago and also talking about what a crazy eclipse season this been including for us personally. And then in the second hour of this show, we're gonna jump into a deep dive of the astrology of October. So as always, there'll be timestamps if you wanna just jump ahead to the forecast section and skip all of our belly aching about eclipse season. But otherwise, before we jump into that, I want to do a quick overview of the astrology of October to give you a preview of what we'll be talking about later in this episode. All right, so here's the planetary alignments calendar for October. The first really big thing that I'm excited about is eclipse season. By the time October opens is finally over. We finally move out of the seven day range after the second eclipse which occurred on September 21st. First by the time October opens. So we're starting to get out of the chaos and the tumultuousness of eclipse season. So right away at the first of October, there's a Mercury Jupiter Square that takes place. Then the following week on October 6th, Mercury moves into Scorpio. And the same day there's a full moon in the sign of Aries. Two days later, we get one of our most positive aspects of the month, which is a Venus Jupiter sextile on the 8th. Then we get a Venus Saturn opposition on the 11th. Two days after that, on the 13th, Venus moves into Libra. And the same day Pluto stations direct in early Aquarius. A few days after that, on the 17th, the sun squares Jupiter. Then Mercury conjoins Mars on the 20th. In probably what is our most difficult aspect this month, which is a really fiery and combative conjunction between the planet of communication and the planet of war and aggression and fighting. The day after that, on the 21st, there's a new moon in Libra. Then Venus retrogrades back into Pisces. On the 22nd, the same day that the sun moves into Scorpio and begins Scorpio season. Then the following week, Mercury moves into Sagittarius on the 29th and immediately opposes Uranus in Gemini. And Mercury actually begins building up to a retrograde that will begin in early November, and it will retrograde back to Scorpio during the course of November. So we basically end the month moving into a Mercury retrograde. All right, so that is the astrology that we're gonna be talking about later in this episode. But, yeah, first let's sort of gather ourselves and check in on where things have been. It's been an absolutely insane month for me in terms of the astrology that everybody's been dealing with. The primary things were, of course, the two eclipses. There was that Pisces eclipse on September 7, then a Virgo eclipse on September 21, and then also the Uranus station was very potent. The first station in Gemini in September 6, that was upsetting things and throwing a lot of curveballs. And then the Mars, Pluto Square that happened around the 24th of September. So, yeah, it was a rough month. How about you, Austin?
- [03:42]
A
I was roughed up repeatedly. I have a list of complaints that I'm going to register against the planets and whatever mysterious powers set them in their orbits. Shall I go through it in brief?
- [04:03]
B
Yeah, hit me with yours, and then I'll hit you with mine. We'll see. We'll tally them up and compare.
- [04:09]
A
I think you've got the edge, but okay, so just to begin with, so I also have the nodes in Virgo and Pisces. This is my nodal opposition. And. And I have Mars on one side of the nodes and Saturn on the other, and my poor sun there, too. So these eclipses are right on my stuff. So just before the eclipse in Pisces, I was driving my parents to the airport and had a tire blow. Not like slowly leak, but just like blow out right in the middle of that third house where I have one of the nodes. And. And so what should have been like a nice goodbye, like taking the parents to the airport and bidding them. Bidding them farewell and happy travels and all that was like, fuck, you guys. Better call an Uber or Lyft or whatever. I need to get this done. And so then I got to change a tire in, like, 95 degree weather. And the kicker was that I drove off with my glasses on top of the car. And so one of the health concerns that is consistent with eclipses is just as they mar the brilliance of the sun and the moon, they will poke you in the eye or render you blind. And they have done that to me natally. I have very poor eyesight because I have both the sun and moon configured to the nodes. And so this recurrence took me back to my unremediated natal condition. So the eclipse happened and it's just madness in general, but I won't go into general madness. I'll stick with specific madness. So this eclipse, the first one, the one in Pisces, was one degree off of my sun. I'm a cancer rising chart. And so the sun is the ruler of the second house of monies. And so I got a fun surprise call from the Oregon Department of Internal Revenue. And they informed me that I was not in fact current with my accounts, which was terrifying and confusing, as you pointed out just last month. I talked about how I'm very excited to pay my taxes. I would like to have a non antagonistic relationship to the government of the state and nation in which I live. They have a variety of forces they could array against me that I could not stand against effectively. So that was fun. The next eclipse approached, the one in Virgo, and it was actually during the eclipse that for the very first time, I had to officially bow out of being able to pick up and carry around the baby Lucien, because my back was on fire and cramping and just deeply fucked up. And I remember looking at the exact time of day and I was like, oh, the eclipse is happening right now. My back has never felt this bad. And so slow recovery since then. We're like back to normal, stiff and sore, which is great. But. So right after that, Kate came down with COVID I managed to only, I don't know, get it a little bit or like mostly fight it off, but suffered mild symptoms. My. My voice is probably going to be pretty shredded by the time we get done with this, but mild symptoms for me. Kate got taken out and back to the poking in the eye theme. Poor, poor Byakko, our younger. Our younger kitty, our Maine coon got out the night following the solar eclipse and got his eyeballs scratched. And so he has been a very sad. He looks like a very sad pirate right now. He's going to be okay, but we have to apply ointment to his eye to his eyeball twice a day. And you know cats, cats love that. So that's the quick list.
- [08:20]
B
That's pretty terrible. That's a long list. And that's all your major ones. You've had a litany of smaller minor ones, which is the Thing that's always hard to convey about eclipse season is you can give the top level things, but that's always the tip of the iceberg.
- [08:36]
A
Yeah, I would just say general disorientation and deep exhaustion.
- [08:41]
B
Right. Good. All right. That's pretty good. Well, for me, I opened the month. I knew it was time. I'd been putting it off since late last year, doing the fifth House episode and continuing the big Houses series that I started last year. So I finally committed to doing the fifth House episode this month, including all the research and prep and then recording it. And I did this intense focus for the first week of the month on week or two of just researching fifth house stuff and preparing with over 100 example charts, three episode series, and then we're finally getting ready to do it. Lisa and I are. And then our apartment floods and like a water main breaks like above it in the unit above, and just a waterfall of water comes crashing down into our apartment for like 30 minutes until they were able to shut off the water to the entire building and just soaked and flooded everything. And then all of a sudden they. We had to fix that. And then we had to start bringing in water remediation, which is a bunch of fans. And they had to start demolitioning the walls because of the walls getting wet and tearing up the floors. And then I realized as that was starting, we needed to just go ahead and record because we were going to lose our opportunity to as they had to demolition more stuff in the apartment. So we just did it. And we recorded the first fifth House episode on a Thursday. We had one day off to let the fans run. And then that weekend we had two days that were free before the construction was going to start. And so we just did it. And we recorded back to back these two day long episodes on the fifth house and we got it done. It was exhausting. And then it was over. And then the construction and demolition started. And meanwhile, the world goes crazy, of course, at the same time, because all of the political stuff starts happening. There's assassinations, it's crazy. And then if that wasn't enough, my websites got hacked all of a sudden later in the month and infected with malware. And it took out like five websites, which is the astrology podcast itself, but also the Hellenistic astrology website, my consulting website, the astrology dictionary, and my original astrology blog from like 2007, the horoscopic astrology blog, were all just catastrophically destroyed at once. And then it's been this huge hassle trying to get them back. And I haven't been able to, and the host hasn't been good restoring stuff. So I'm in the process of migrating and having to fix everything. And to make a long story short, for now, the YouTube channel is fine. So I'm going to continue to release podcast episodes like this one on the YouTube channel, as well as on my page on Patreon, where I'll post some of the public episodes that I would usually post on the podcast website for free, the audio version, like I usually do through Spotify. But it may be a little while before I get the websites back, and I'm still waiting to see how much of my life's work I can recover from this catastrophic sort of apocalyptic destruction of everything that occurred right after Mars went into my 10th house and conjoined my natal Pluto in the 10th house. So the astrology was all very astrology good, but it was all also, it's been a crazy month, and that's just sort of the tip of the iceberg. And then, of course, you told me you got Covid two days ago right before we're about to do the podcast. And I'm like, great. Austin's going to die right before we do the podcast, and that's going to tip this month. So I'm very glad to see you. I'm glad you're okay. Sorry to hear your family's sick. I hope Caitlin in particular, it gets better soon. But thanks for joining me today.
- [12:22]
A
Yeah, dude, I'll die after the podcast. I can do that for you.
- [12:28]
B
That's commitment. I respect that and appreciate that commitment. All right, so that's some of our personal stuff to sort of situate things now. We should talk about some of the news and events and see how much we can get through. Yeah.
- [12:44]
A
At least the world had a good month. We're clearly the exceptions.
- [12:47]
B
Yeah, exactly. Well, it's kind of like Mercury retrograde sometimes. Mercury retrogrades come and go, and it's not a big deal, but every once in a while you get hit by a Mercury retrograde, and you truly feel in your bones what that's about. And it's similar with eclipses, which is that sometimes you get really hit by eclipses and you feel what that's about. And sometimes in world events, you can see that as well. So in this instance, just to reiterate what happened is it was eclipse season, but it was also the very first Uranus station in Gemini. It was the Mars Pluto Square. And it was the combination of all of those together that really created this perfect shitstorm, essentially, of events that took place. So right at the beginning of last month, we opened by saying that eclipse season was gonna be intense. And I said some of the stuff that we've learned and that you and I have said many times in the past, Austin, when we start talking about eclipse season is that it often relates to prominent people and the rise and fall of prominent people. So here's a quote from the beginning of our episode talking about eclipses last month, where I said, one of the things that we always see during eclipse season is prominent figures, that there's a pivot with prominent figures. And we're gonna see some people on their way up suddenly and being thrust into the limelight, and we're gonna see other people suddenly on their way down and being knocked down from a high position and running into troubles or difficulties or other things like that. Because eclipses fundamentally, one of the things they've always been traditionally associated with is the rise and fall of powerful and prominent people. So that's gonna be our keywords for eclipse season. So end quote. So that was the.
- [14:38]
A
Well said and I think very clearly relevant to the events of September.
- [14:46]
B
Yeah, exactly. Because of course, the primary focal point in the United States for a lot of the news this month was the Pisces eclipse occurred on September 7th, the first eclipse. And then on September 10th, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And Charlie Kirk was a famous right wing political activist and podcaster, and he was mainly known for doing college tours where he would debate college students about different political topics. He had in his birth chart a Mercury, Mars, Pluto conjunction in Scorpio that really spoke to that focus on debate especially, and initiating debates and things like that. So he had gotten so famous over the course of the past year that he was even parodied in the famous cartoon south park only a month ago in early August. Just to give you an idea of how prominent he was sort of becoming as a figure for conservatives and people on the right especially, he was shot in the neck while doing a debate at a university, and they were actually debating gun control at the time. And transiting Mars, to give you some of the astrology, was exactly or very closely conjoining his sun in Libra at the time, which to me was kind of reminiscent of the Sun Mars conjunction when Robert Kennedy Sr. Was assassinated and Andy Warhol was also shot the next day. Or Nick Dagan best pointed out to me that the very first major US school shooting occurred January 29, 1979, and that was also a Sun Mars conjunction. So there was something there with the sun, Mars transit for him, that was reminiscent of that. And I think that makes sense somewhat symbolically, right?
- [16:41]
A
Oh, absolutely. I mean, Mars is the planet of sudden violence. And the sun has for a very long time represented people who are in the spotlight or people who are literally stars in their respective field. And so bringing the red planet of sudden injury or violence to the star makes a lot of sense for assassination. And then what's interesting when I looked at the chart is that his sun in Libra was, of course, ruled by Venus. And Venus in his natal chart was at roughly 28 Virgo. And so Saturn, which had moved back into Pisces was at 28 Pisces. So the planet which was responsible in his nativity for supporting the sun, Venus, was also being opposed by the other malefic. And it was not that first eclipse, after which, shortly after which, he was slain, but the eclipse that would come a week and a half later, that would be exactly on his Venus. And so I thought that was very striking where if I were doing prediction or looking at how his month would go, I would have assumed that the second eclipse would be the truly dangerous or entropic one. But that ended up being the day of his funeral, which is very interesting and strange and certainly a day that, as we say, is not fortifying for the health. But that matter had already been decided.
- [18:37]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So there was just this graphic video of the shooting that immediately went viral online, and it immediately sparked this heightened wave of tensions and polarizations in the country, similar to the Mars Uranus square that happened in June when there were Democratic politicians that were assassinated, or the Mars Uranus conjunction In July of 2024, when Trump was shot this month, that Uranus station in early Gemini was really potent happening at the same time as that first eclipse, and left a stamp on it. But like you said, what was crazy astrologically then, that all the astrologers realized immediately once it had been said scheduled is this huge memorial was scheduled for him on September 21st in a stadium with thousands of people and with lots of speakers. And that happened the exact day of the second eclipse in the month, which was the Virgo eclipse on September 21st. And it became this huge, huge thing where Trump, President Trump spoke, Vice President Vance spoke, and a bunch of other prominent conservative and government officials spoke at this memorial. And one of the things that I found really striking about that is you had made a quote, you had made a very specific statement about that second eclipse and some of the imagery that you associate with the third Decan. Of Virgo, and I pulled out that quote. Do you want to read it or do you want me to read it? This is from the last Forecast episode.
- [20:18]
A
Oh, I guess I'll read it. So, in speaking about the Virgo eclipse, which was in the third decan, and the imagery that we see consistently throughout the textual history of the Decans. So in speaking about it. Yeah, I've been looking at it for a while. There's a tight opposition to Saturn, as well as the fact that the third decan of Virgo has uniformly morbid imagery. A lot of the Decans have a pretty wide divergence. At least two or three different families of images and meanings depending on tradition and time period. Whereas basically it's all dead bodies. With Virgo 3 or a lot of the time, it's bodies being prepared for burial. And even when the imagery isn't explicitly bodies being prepared for burial, the attached delineation will be things like the destruction of forests and limbs and bodies. And it's a very entropic place, and it's a place where life has a hard time thriving. So that was worth noting. And so to add to that now.
- [21:24]
B
Yeah, and so. End quote. Yeah. Oh, sorry.
- [21:27]
A
End quote. And so there are. There are several images which literally show a body being prepared for burial, like being embalmed. And so it's that moment of ceremony and entering into death. And so that was a surprisingly accurate delineation from 3rd and 4th century AD sources as to what the 3rd decan of Virgo means.
- [22:02]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And that you were talking about it because that eclipse in Virgo was taking place there. And just. It's stunning that that eclipse then fel. Fell exactly the day of that huge public memorial. And. Yeah, good job. That was a really good call on your part at the time. I remember being a little like. I was like, you're going a little far with that, my friend. Austin. It's a little dark. It's not Halloween here. Yeah. I'm like, tone it down a little bit. And then in retrospect, as usual, it's like, no, that was a really good call. So this is not elation, but just as astrologers, we have the astrology good thing, where sometimes the everything is. Things are really bad and some really dark things happen. But sometimes you see the astrology line up and you're on some level just interested in how striking that can be sometimes in retrospect.
- [22:56]
A
Yeah. And honestly, I was not thinking about how there's going to be an interment that is going to captivate the country. I was literally just thinking about like, boy, that's going to be really rough. I bet a lot of people are going to feel very poor physically. I was just thinking about the sort of anti life quality, the difficulty of thriving as a living being under within that time. But traditional imagery for the win, it was more literal than I thought.
- [23:35]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes it really can be. So Charlie Kirk became kind of like a martyr for conservatives. And his death really heightened divisions in the country over the course of the past month. Which really brings up the Uranus station that occurred on September 6, because this was the very first time since Uranus moved into Gemini that it stationed retrograde in that sign. And we had been anticipating that there would be a very loud preview of the next seven years. And I always refer to that as putting an exclamation mark next to the planet because it often shows you what's gonna play out over the longer term course of that transit, which in our case is the next seven years of Uranus going through Gemini. And so if the question was like, well, are the tensions in the United States gonna be turned down and softened over the course of that transit, or are they gonna be turned up and amplified over the course of that seven year transit, we got a very loud answer that they're gonna be amplified from that station. And this is particularly troubling cause we've had long standing questions about this being the Uranus return of the Civil War and the Revolutionary War and World War II. But also the repetition of Neptune returning back to the sign that it was in when the Civil War broke out. And one of the things that we saw immediately after this event was a dramatic escalation of tensions in the country. And there was a lot of people calling for a civil war immediately afterwards, which I found particularly startling since that was something we've been talking about for years now. Were you seeing that on social media as well?
- [25:28]
A
Yeah, I mean, I didn't see people calling for a civil war. I'm sure they were. I tried to keep away from a.
- [25:34]
B
Lot of the Internet. Yeah, absolutely.
- [25:36]
A
But I saw a lot of people very concerned about what seemed like a consistent escalation of political violence and where that leads.
- [25:49]
B
Yeah, I mean, I was seeing both. Obviously the wider thing was that. But there was definitely extremists that were using the phrase like civil war, which I found very striking because of the repetitions that we're going through. And then at the same time, on September 5th, which is very close to that station, Trump issued an executive order changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, which is while cosmetic on some levels, seemed very symbolically significant to me because with eclipses, we always pay attention to those things that look small at the time, but sometimes can become much bigger things later on in the future. Sometimes they lay the seeds of bigger developments in the future. So over the course of the next few weeks after that station, the tensions were amplified and there also started being these big issues and debates about free space speech and government clampdowns and other things like that as tensions continue to rise.
- [26:52]
A
Yeah, let me add one thing about the Department of War and the fear of and clamoring for or all the Civil War talk. As you said, this was Uranus's exclamation point. And so we see the. We see that escalation of polarization and division. But Uranus is in a very tight sextile with Neptune in Aries, which gives us the Civil War parallel. And it's Neptune in one of Mars's two signs. And Aries, of course, is the bold and upfront martial sign. There's nothing covert about the contentious or battle oriented nature of Aries. And so changing the name to just Department of War, which it kind of has always been, but just being that straightforward about it, is a very Neptune in Aries move. And it reminds me of the very beginning of the American Civil War where Neptune was in Aries, where people thought war would be fun and cool at a spectator sport. And it was easy to enlist soldiers on both sides because everybody was excited for it, because they imagined that it might be the right answer. Right. And that that brief dream was. Did not last long. But people, you know, just the, the eagerness which with people want to imagine war and imagine, oh, it's or we're already in a war, you just need to realize it like all that sort of like sliding the enclose it sliding into an enclosing frame which is very Neptune. Neptune is like the larger story in which all of the events are suspended. Sliding into that war framework is very Neptune in Aries and happened against the backdrop of the dramatic Uranus station.
- [29:07]
B
Yeah, that's a great point. That it is reminiscent of Neptune being in Aries last time and how the Civil War, a lot of people had this rosy, idealized picture of the war and how easy it would be or how quickly it would go or other things like that. And then it turned into this incredibly bloody, brutal struggle that went far longer and was far more costly than many of the people could have realized at the Beginning and that probably there are a lot of people who are idealizing things or are quick to call for war that don't maybe realize what the implications might be if something like that actually happens.
- [29:48]
A
Yeah, I think among the other things that Neptune in Aries brings is the delusion or naive hope that a quick fight will settle things for the best.
- [30:03]
B
Right, right, yeah. But that realistically nobody walks away unscathed from a knife fight or something like that.
- [30:11]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [30:14]
B
So there was a lot of stuff that came out that was interesting with Uranus stationing in Gemini, which is ruled by Mercury, which is the planet of communication. There was a lot of discussion about free speech and stuff that also broke out in the country. And one of the flashpoints, because there was kind of like this concerted effort to cancel people that spoke negatively about Charlie Kirk after his death. And one of the more prominent examples that became a flashpoint was the late night host Jimmy Kimmel on ABC, who's been on ABC for years, for like 20 something years, where Kimmel was suspended by ABC Disney on September 17th. And Disney said that he'd made ill timed and insensitive remarks and that they suspended him to avoid further inflaming a tense situation. And the FCC chair, the head of the fcc, which is a government position that controls communication and especially TV airwaves and things like that, had made public comments just before that pressure that were interpreted as pressuring abc, where he said ABC should handle this situation and that it was going to happen the easy way or the hard way. And so this was interpreted as a pressure move. And then suddenly ABC canceled and pulled Kimmel off the air indefinitely. And over the summer another late night host, Stephen Colbert, was similarly fired. And Trump had tweeted at the time that he was happy about it and he said that Jimmy Kimmel was next. So the suspension was widely seen as politically motivated. And I wanted to mention it because I saw an interesting piece of astrology with it, which is that a bunch of late night hosts and even conservative political commentators all ended up coming out against this and complaining about it on free speech grounds. And one of the ones I saw was that Bill Maher, the first night that he came back and did his late show after the suspension happened, at the beginning of his monologue on September 19, he pointed out that there was a 24 year repetition where Bill Maher himself was suspended from ABC exactly 24 years ago to the day on September 17, 2001, after making some remarks about 9, 11. And what was interesting is Kimmel was suspended exactly 24 years later on September 17, 2024, 5. And to make it further, even more crazy is that that suspension of Bill Maher 24 years ago eventually led to his show being canceled by early the next year. And then guess who replaced him? It was Jimmy Kimmel. So Jimmy Kimmel was then brought in to replace Bill Maher after those insensitive remarks. So there was this bizarre 24 year repetition on the same exact network on ABC. And as astrologers, that repetition is tied in with Venus and Jupiter because we're having a repetition of Venus's transits this year in that eight year cycle, but also Jupiter's transits because Jupiter will come back to the same place every 12 years. So two 12 year cycles brings us back to where Jupiter was in cancer in 2001, just after 9, 11. And then Jupiter is now again in Cancer Cancer today just after 2025. And we're seeing some similar repetitions of events. So wasn't that cool? I thought that was a crazy repetition.
- [33:47]
A
That's absolutely wild. So do you have any thoughts as to why it's Venus and Jupiter?
- [33:54]
B
I mean, the bigger thing with Venus is just what I saw earlier this year is that during the Venus retrograde there were a ton of these repetitions in eight year increments, not just from eight years ago, but every other eight year cycle year in which Venus had gone retrograde in Aries, there was a repetition of similar events and themes. And I think we're just repeating that. What it means is that the Venus repetitions continue to happen even if Venus is not retrograde. It's not limited to the retrograde, but instead it's just that Venus sets up an eight year template that repeats similar themes. And when you add additional planets on top of that, it makes the repetition stronger and more specific or accurate.
- [34:39]
A
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I was just thinking about. So Venus and Jupiter are two benefics, right? The goods. And together they signify all of those qualities which would make a good life or a good society. And so being able to speak publicly without brutal reprimand is, I think, one of the goods. And so it's just interesting that that kind of gets brought up and that you get a little bipartisan support for that. And of course, the United States has a Venus Jupiter conjunction in the Sibley chart. And that there is, should we say, a strong American tradition of belief in having a society that has those freedoms and goods. And both the benefits also speak to freedoms or capacities as opposed to constraints. And so anyway, I was just thinking, because it's interesting, because you might, if you told me it was Mercury and Saturn repetition, I would be like, oh, well, it's speech and the potential limiting of it.
- [35:56]
B
Right.
- [35:56]
A
But it's Venus and Jupiter. Right. It's the two goods that time this. So there may be more there. I was just musing on that.
- [36:05]
B
Yeah. I mean, the other part of Venus is it has to do with public decorum and what's viewed as appropriate or kind to say after a negative event versus what's viewed as inappropriate or not kind to say. And after periods of heightened tension, those lines being drawn more closely in the sand. Because it's actually very similar. Because if you remember what it was like immediately after 911 is there was a similar climate in the country where people were getting in trouble more for saying things that were viewed or perceived as inappropriate or not in keeping with what the contemporary people in power thought was good or was appropriate or what have you.
- [36:50]
A
A number of journalists fired, et cetera, et cetera around that time.
- [36:55]
B
Right, Exactly. Anyway, there was a huge public outcry from liberals and some notable conservatives like Candace Owens or Ben Shapiro on free speech grounds. And eventually Disney, ABC brought Kimmel back on September 23, though it remains to be seen seen if that will last, because one of the things I noticed is that Bill Maher wasn't fully fired until early the following year. So if there's a continued repetition, then early next year could be potentially problematic. So we'll see what happens. So tying in with that, that repetition made me realize there are other repetitions going on, because one of the things that happened immediately after 9 11, as the government started passing the Patriot act and some of the related legislation that led to the Patriot act, which essentially expanded search and surveillance powers of the government to fight terrorism at the time. But it was later criticized for expanding government surveillance powers at the expense of privacy and civil liberties. And some parts of it were unnecessarily broad and encroached on constitutional rights. So one of the things I noticed because we had to pay attention to every little thing that was happening during the course of this period near the eclipses, as potentially laying the seeds for something that would become more significant later is on September 22, Trump signed an executive order designating ANTIFA as a domestic terrorist organization. And this is new because all groups with this label in the past have been foreign terrorist groups up to this point point. It was the first time, I think, that a domestic group had been targeted. And it's problematic because it's vague since there's not really a defined organizational structure or leadership of antifa. So one of the concerns is that it could be applied to anything that's viewed as politically on the other side of where the government is. So on similar sort of Lane, on September 20, the day before the Virgo eclipse, Trump seemed to accidentally publish a letter, it was believed that it might have been accidental, to the head of the Justice Department urging her to go after and start prosecuting some of Trump's former political opponents. And then on September 25, just a few days ago, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted, who was one of the people that Trump has complained about in the past. So Trump had forced out a previous prosecutor who didn't think that they had a case against Comey and brought in somebody new to eventually press the charges. And when talking to reporters about this the other day, Trump said, there'll be others. So we seem to be moving into this era of political repression potentially with the Pluto return of the United States to when the country and the government was founded, the Uranus return from those three pivotal times like the Revolutionary War and Civil War, and then the Neptune return from the Civil War, all starting to bring some things into focus.
- [40:04]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's not a time period that is easy to describe in a quick, clever phrase. It's a very important time period. And I think that historians will absolutely look back on, let's say, the seven years starting this year as being absolutely pivotal.
- [40:30]
B
Yeah. And this month especially was a turning point, I think. And something I've been meaning to say for months now, since the beginning of this year to future historians, is that it's like, I know what's happening, but I'm becoming increasingly constrained in terms of what I can say. And I think that's also part of the mood of the country in terms of people with the free speech issues that are coming up and the perception that free speech is being encroached upon the ability to speak openly about things, I think is starting to become weirder than it was not that long ago.
- [41:07]
A
And I think that's such a good case in point for one of the things that Uranus in Gemini means. It is Uranus which gives us acts of defiance or rebellion. Defiance and rebellion, pattern breaking actions. And having just moved into what. Or we're two and a half months into Uranus in Gemini, into the sign of speech and talking and the sense that many people share of speaking freely, being an increasingly rebellious or. Yeah, rebellious or. Yeah, rebellious act. Right. That they're with Uranus in order to establish something like as rebellious or revolutionary or whatever, you need there to be a counterpoint where there is a general pressure not to do that. And so now we have that. We have normal Geminian acts of speech taking on that Uranian rebellious quality. And as you pointed out, just after the first station, which is our first exclamation point, I was thinking about how else to frame that. And it's sort of if Uranus is in a sign for seven years, so it's a show that runs for seven seasons, and then the first station would be the first major crisis in the plot in the first season. You've seen a couple episodes, but now this thing is going down. How are the characters gonna deal with this? This sets up the whole rest of the first season.
- [42:57]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And having those issues with free speech and government suppression potentially of that coming up at the same time as we have the Pluto station that's coming up in mid October this month, and the issues with government control of the means of speech through social media and things like that. One of the stories that happened this month, just to mention in passing, is that some sort of deal was announced with the possible sale of TikTok and being transferred from a Chinese company to TikTok being owned by US Investors, but being given to a group of US investors, including Rupert Murdoch and his son and the owner of Oracle and other people, including having people from Trump's inner circle connected with the board of ownership. So having a major social media company under the control of the current government basically, rather than some independent, like a business entity of some sort.
- [44:02]
A
Yeah, well, and that brings up the larger sort of a larger point about free speech, that Uranus is moving to Gemini perfectly. Times, which is the idea of speech and how it can be liberated or kept free is certainly due for some rethinking. We have these tremendously powerful more speech technologies now, like social media, like the entire Internet, which has words all over it. And the meaning and power and means of speech have changed significantly from the period where legislation, meaningful legislation, was last written around it. And so if speech is to be liberated or to be free or kept free, a number of conversations and I guess legislations are going to be necessary, which actually address the present as sort of this phase of history thing.
- [45:09]
B
Yeah, well, we'll see how that goes. Just to give the date of September. We'll see how that goes. We'll see how that goes. It was September 25 that Trump signed the order to transfer TikTok ownership to U.S. investors. So that was just a few days after the eclipse. And so the investors include, as I said, Rupert Murdoch, who's the owner of fox news. So TikTok essentially be under control of the people that run Fox News and related things. So moving on to not related different news stories, a completely separate one related to the very first eclipse that took place is some major stuff came out with Jeffrey Epstein this month under the first eclipse. And this was interesting because I actually had made a prediction about this two months ago in the August forecast. Yeah, you did. Yeah, you remember that when I was talking about how I saw the Pisces eclipse on September 7th would exactly conjoin Jeffrey Epstein's Venus Mars conjunction at 1516 Pisces. And I thought something would happen related to this this month. And so this was the quote. And he, Jeffrey Epstein had that Venus Mars conjunction at 16° of Pisces. So that was also being activated by some of these transits this month, like Mars moving through Virgo. But importantly for the future, one of the things I noticed is that the lunar eclipse that's coming up on September 7th will be at 15 degrees of Pisces. So that's going to be conjoining that conjunction in his chart that was obviously so prominent as part of his life and terrible legacy. So undoubtedly there will be another important turning point with respect to respect to him in this case, probably around the time of that eclipse.
- [46:53]
A
And so it came to pass. That's a really good one, dude. Yeah, it's nice that it wasn't last month. It was something you noticed months ago and were bang on about. This is, I think, without a doubt quote, an important turning point with respect to him and this case, around the time of the eclipse absolutely happened, that heinous birthday book was released.
- [47:22]
B
So let me say what happened. So September 7th was the eclipse. And then literally the next day on September 8, the book containing the 50th birthday tributes to Jeffrey Epstein was released by The House, the U.S. house Oversight Committee. And the book and other records were provided by Epstein's estate in response to a subpoena issued by the committee. And one of the things that it contained actually was a copy of his birth certificate with his birth time in it. So astrologers got his birth time basically the day after the eclipse, in addition to a bunch of other terrible stuff that was contained in that book. Basically there were lots of gross stuff.
- [48:04]
A
And people got connected to Epstein who hadn't previously been there was a British diplomat that was relieved of his post shortly after the book was discovered because he had a nice letter congratulating Epstein.
- [48:21]
B
Yeah, well, that was also the one where there was a drawing that Trump had allegedly, that is claimed to have been Trump's and that was released. So then there was big debates of him denying that that was his drawing and whether or not Trump had drawn that to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday, as well as lots of other names that got released subsequently this month. But for our purposes with the astrology, just to show the chart really quickly, based on what we believe is now based on the birth time that was listed in the report, the birth time is a little bit smudged, but it looks to be 6:15am on January 20, 1953. So it. He was Capricorn Rising. And it means, interestingly, that that Saturn Neptune conjunction in his birth chart we had talked about in previous months was actually connected to the ruler of the Ascendant and was in the 10th whole sign house. And we see that Venus Mars conjunction down there in the third house with Mars at 15 Pisces and Venus at 16. And the eclipse was like right on that at 15 degrees of Pisces. So that was what that prediction was based on. And interestingly now in retrospect, we can see how that's connected for Epstein because it's like ruling his fifth house and that Venus then is conjunct Mars right there. Yeah, that's the.
- [49:44]
A
Yeah, ruling the 10th, too, ruling the 5th and 10th, and then Mars ruling the 4th and 11th. Those planets together rule very influential in public houses. And to have the. The power of the eclipse revealing them was, in retrospect, quite exhaustive in what it unearthed. But also with foresight, you saw that those planets were very influential as to his legacy and that their big activation at this time would unearth further material. And so. So it came to pass.
- [50:29]
B
Yeah, yeah. So that's the chart and the activation. And then later in the month after the second eclipse, more documents were released and a number of other big names were listed as having been connected with him that weren't known about previously. And so this whole story continues to unfold in really gross ways. One side note is that some of the papers indicated that Ghislaine Maxwell had an astrologer that she worked with at some point that did a delineation for Epstein. And I thought this was a weird little thing that showed up in the papers because I'm often personally skeptical of astrologers overstating the case that all powerful or famous people use astrology, which isn't really true. And it's not really even something that you can know because it's done privately when it is done. But this was actually a rare instance, providing a look behind the scenes of some powerful people using astrology in some ways, although it may have been limited and like a one off thing, we don't really know. But it was a weird thing that did come up as a result of the release of the papers.
- [51:41]
A
I would love to hear the astrologer that did a reading for Jeffrey Epstein talk about that.
- [51:49]
B
Yeah, does that happen? It was like years ago and it was almost just like a generic solar return reading or something like that. So it may have been something not that important like that. But anyways, that happened. And then like I said, more documents were released with bigger names on September 26th. So that was that story. So moving on to other stories. Cause there was just story after story after story this month. One of the things we anticipated was there would be some additional stuff with Israel and Palestine. And Israel launched a full scale ground invasion of Gaza City on September 16, just a little bit after the first eclipse and leading into the second one. And then right on the second eclipse, which happened on September 21, there was a wave of countries that formally recognized Palestine as a state state on September 21 and 22, including the UK, Canada, Australia, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Andorra, and Belgium. So one of the things from our perspective that this kind of confirms is that this new eclipse series that's moved into Virgo and Pisces is continuing to be relevant for Israel and Palestine. And that was an open question that we had earlier this year, because most of everything over the past two years has occurred under Aries and Libra. But now it's starting to be carried over into this entirely new series. So if that's true, then we'll probably see another important development six months from now during the next eclipse season in February and early March.
- [53:27]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, unfortunately.
- [53:34]
B
All right, so moving on. Another major news story that was overlooked because of all of the crazy political chaos and everything else. But on September 10th. So just after the first eclipse, NASA's Perseverance Rover, there was an announcement from NASA that they discovered a possible biosignature on Mars. Which is it was like these little formations on some rocks that they said they could only be formed. They thought if there had been some sort of life or some sort of microbes living there a long, long time ago, and that it was maybe the strongest evidence for life on another planet that we've ever found. And it was just like this Story that happened on September 10th that kind of got brushed away by all the other political events happening, but could have been, at least in terms of the long history of humanity, one of the most important stories of our lifetime, potentially.
- [54:40]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And so do you have any particular piece of astrology that you associate that with?
- [54:50]
B
I mean, there's a lot of things happening right now that are really crucial, like long term cycles. And it did happen after the first, first Pisces eclipse, but I wasn't sure necessarily what to associate that with per se.
- [55:04]
A
Yeah, I would say maybe it's only a few days after the Uranus station. And Uranus being so consistently connected to discovery, discoveries which change existing ideas. That would be my first instinct.
- [55:21]
B
But okay, actually that does raise a thought in me, which is that, remember like a year or two ago, as soon as Pluto went into Aquarius, maybe it was for the final time. There was like this rash of stories about UFOs all of a sudden, and we were associating that with Pluto going into Aquarius. So maybe this is that it's the Uranus station, the Trine. Exactly, because we've been talking about that a lot over the past year, how that Trine was going to accelerate some of the technological innovations that Pluto in Aquarius had already been giving with artificial intelligence. But maybe the other side of that is the Uranus Trine was accelerating some of the other discussions that were happening in terms of alien intelligence or the existence of life elsewhere.
- [56:07]
A
Right, right. Pluto's been talking about aliens for a couple years. And now that Uranus has moved into the Trine, Uranus is like, I would love to talk about aliens.
- [56:15]
B
Right? Yeah, yeah. So it's bringing us back to that dynamic we talked about before. We're very focused about the potential of creating this new sentient form of life, almost like an alien form of life on Earth with artificial intelligence. But then there's this macro view that there may already be other intelligent life out there in the universe besides us to begin with.
- [56:39]
A
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [56:42]
B
Cool. All right. Another story that happened right on the first eclipse. This story came out September 7th. I just wanted to mention it briefly because I got a lot of emails about it. But the New York Times run a really dumb story about how the zodiac has changed and is wrong. Where they were doing the typical thing that happens every few years where the media will for some reason pick up this story and run a bunch of stories attempting to tell everybody that their zodiac sign is off and talking about the difference between the tropical and sidereal zodiac and this happens periodically, every few years. We always mention it when it happens on the podcast. But the core issue with it is that it's always like people, and especially journalists, who don't believe that astrology is legitimate in the first place, trying to tell other people that astrology is wrong and trying to instill doubt about it. And the central issue and response from us as astrologers, because of course, the New York Times, even though it's supposed to be journalism, didn't interview any astrologers for the piece who would have given them the answer to the question very easily. But the response as astrologers is that Western astrologers have been using the tropical Zodiac deliberately for 2000 years now. And it's not accidental or something like that. Like we don't know about precession. And it's based on a conscious decision. And some of the most important things in Western astrology, such as the rulership scheme and the exaltation scheme, are actually based on a tropical rationale. And so while we're aware of the difference, or I'm aware of the difference between the tropical and sidereal zodiac, I use the tropical zodiac deliberately, just like astrologers like ptolemy started doing 2,000 years ago, because that's actually tied in with the conceptual structure of why the zodiac signs have the meanings that we ascribe to them. So I just wanted to mention that because it was an annoying thing that came up, you know, it was that time of the decade again.
- [58:42]
A
Yeah, that time of the decade. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of. The New York Times should be embarrassed to keep doing that. And it's a cheap thing and it kind of a little bit works, but because the pointing out the procession exists is a thing you can do in a sentence, whereas explaining procession and that we know that and it's a conscious choice is a long answer that people don't listen to.
- [59:13]
B
Right? Well, things are more complex and it doesn't have the flat answer they want to give. But the primary issue is always just like they're coming at it with a pre existing thing, that astrology is wrong.
- [59:26]
A
That it's bad, it's stupid, and you're stupid if you like it.
- [59:30]
B
Right? So it's like they're not trying to help people by being like, your zodiac sign's different and you should use the sidereal zodiac or something like that. The whole purpose is always just to attempt to undermine it because it's viewed as something that needs to be eradicated fundamentally from society. But the good news is astrology's not going anywhere and will continue to survive and thrive and persist throughout different periods of repression and other things that periodically happen because we're doing something that is tied in with an actual legitimate phenomenon that's occurring in nature that we're privy to and that we've been studying for thousands of years. So that's what we're gonna keep doing. Yeah.
- [60:17]
A
Astrology has survived far more hostile truth regimes than this.
- [60:22]
B
Sure. All right, so one last story. This is a little minor one, but I wanted to mention it to end on a higher note.
- [60:31]
A
The one good thing that happened in September.
- [60:34]
B
Literally the one good thing that I was able to find. So I meant to say this on the last forecast episode, but I forgot. But since my previous prediction a couple of months ago about the Venus Mars square that happened over the summer, that I thought it would pertain to bad sex Related stories and that ended up coinciding with the explosion of stuff about Jeffrey Epstein in July. I had been wondering when it came to September last month, if the Venus Mars sextile, the more positive aspect between those two planets would somehow relate to something more of a positive sexy related story. And what was really funny is that day I saw all these pictures going viral where the actress Keke Palmer went on the show, the popular YouTube show Hot Ones, and her and Sean Evans kissed on Hot Ones. And a snapshot of that of them kissing, having this brief little kiss went viral across social media that day. And it was kind of a funny story because he had expressed like having a crush on her in an interview a couple of years ago. And then they had this brief little kiss on this show. And despite how insignificant and small and social media y that was, I think it was still a really interesting instance of just having a little Venus Mars sextile that day and having something that was more positive of that sort of nature of romantic things rather than the gross negative things that we got during the hard aspects of Mars and Venus.
- [62:15]
A
Yeah, just a little pleasant, cute, spicy. There's still some Mars. You don't see people kissing on interview shows very often. So kind of crossing a boundary, but in a very cute sextile, consensual, adorable way.
- [62:36]
B
Exactly. We are all for the good, positive, consensual, cute, sexy stories with the Venus and Mars positive aspects. So that was a good one to share and good to have some little positive story to round things out this month.
- [62:53]
A
Yeah. So maybe the Venus Mars sextile could be known as the Lil Smooch.
- [62:58]
B
The Lil Smooch. I like that. That's good. All Right. Thank you. You have a way with words, my friend. I don't know if I ever told you.
- [63:05]
A
Every now and again.
- [63:05]
B
Thank you. All right, well, I think that's good for the news section, so why don't we take a little break? All right. Before we move on to the forecast, I wanted to give a shout out to our sponsor of this episode, which is the Northwest Astrological Conference. So the Northwest Astrological Conference, also known as NorWAC, is happening next year from May 21st through the 25th, 2026. You can join the conference in person in Seattle or you can attend virtually from anywhere through their affordable online streaming option. NORWAC is one of the longest running astrology conferences in the world. And the 2026 conference is going to be a more intimate gathering designed for you to easily connect with speakers and make new friends in a welcoming, inclusive and community focused environment. Hear from over 30 leading astrologers and choose from a wide range of lectures and workshops covering both traditional and modern techniques. Registration opens on October 1, and the prices are actually going to be the lowest if you sign up for the early bird rate before October 15th because they're having a condensed early bird rate this year for just two weeks to get the lowest ticket prices. So to learn more or sign up, visit norwac.net and speaking of leading astrologers, you, my friend, are going to be speaking at NORWAC this year, right?
- [64:19]
A
I am. I will be giving one talk and I will be doing one workshop before the conference begins. I took, I took a year off last year, but I'm, I'm back and I love, I love speaking in NorWAC. I love attending NorWAC. It's actually, I don't know, maybe more fun to not have to talk and just hang out, but, you know, have a job to do. But yeah, I mean, you, you and I. Oh, go ahead.
- [64:50]
B
Gotta work sometimes. That's all right. You get free entry into the conference. That was always my deal with speaking at conferences was that was my way to get in without, you know, initially when I was a broke, like 20 year old, like having to pay.
- [65:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, well, there, yeah, there's the, there's the doing, doing a work trade is one of the, one of the ways to do that. And then, yeah, if you could get. Not everybody, not everybody gets to speak at conferences at 20, Chris. I, I was 30.
- [65:18]
B
Yeah, that was my. This entire thing has just been an elaborate like plan just to get into.
- [65:23]
A
Conferences, just to not pay for conferences.
- [65:27]
B
Yeah, exactly. So very quickly, what are Your two titles or topic titles for your lecture and workshop.
- [65:34]
A
The workshop is I went through like 10 titles. I don't remember which one I I.
- [65:42]
B
Topic I think it was called.
- [65:43]
A
I wanted to call it Seven Celestial Venoms. I think I called it something else. It's an in depth look at the pairing of each of the planets, each of the nodes, which gives us 14 combinations. And we'll be spending like five hours just looking at those, looking at what trouble they cause as well as what remedial measures can successfully be brought to them through a sort of alchemical lens. Looking at the persistent imagery of venom with the nodes, with the poisonous serpent. But like venom, venom and the medicine that can only be rendered from what is poisonous. And that sort of ambivalent. Ambivalent medicine, poison relationship that gets brought up by the nodes, that is brought up by the serpent itself, which we see in the symbol used for medicine to this day. So planets, nodes, poison and medicine.
- [66:54]
B
Seven Celestial Venoms. Maybe next year you could do like a synastry talk titled Seven Celestial Smooches calling back to our earlier discussion.
- [67:05]
A
All right, it'll be the Mars, Venus Sextiles in every possible pair of signs.
- [67:11]
B
Exactly. I think you would get very good attendance for that talk. Honestly. Probably. All right, well, people should go to norwac.net, they're gonna be launching their newly revamped website soon and registration opens on October 1st. So get in if you're gonna attend. If you're thinking about attending, get your tickets early cause prices will go up after October 15th. So visit norwac.net for more information. All right. And then shout out to our other sponsor this month which is the Astrologers Co Op Conference titled Come as yous Are that' Happening this month in October. So this is a two day online astrology conference from October 18th through the 19th, 2025 featuring 20 speakers from a diverse background, traditions and world religions. The talks span planetary cycles in history, astrology's role in cultural shifts and approaches to personal healing, creativity and community building. They have flexible tickets where a one day ticket costs $75 or you can get a full weekend ticket ticket for 150, both including post event access to your recordings. Your participation helps grow an inclusive and diverse astrological community through events, publications and support for emerging voices. I'm excited about this conference because there's several speakers who have been on the astrology podcast before, including Ellie Higgins, Camille Michelle Gray and Lindsay Turner. So find out more or sign up@astrologerscoop.substack.com and I'll put a link to that in the description below this video on YouTube or wherever. I ended up posting this podcast episode probably on Patreon while the website is still down. But, yeah, shout out to them. That's gonna be a great online conference that you can attend this month to see some new speakers.
- [68:55]
A
Yeah, it looks great.
- [68:57]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited that there's so many more events than there used to be when we were coming up as young astrologers, as well as more accessible events where you can attend, for example, NorWAC, you can attend either in person or online, or this event you can attend online. And I feel like that really raises the accessibility in addition to just the variety of topics that you see.
- [69:22]
A
Yeah, I mean, there was no such thing as an online conference 10 years ago.
- [69:28]
B
No, the best we had was we had MySpace or we attempted to do a few Second Life talks, but it was pretty janky.
- [69:39]
A
Yeah, I think I opted out of that.
- [69:42]
B
Yeah, I don't remember seeing either. Well, good times. All right, well, shout out to both of those. Check them out. I'll put links in the description below this video or wherever I post the podcast. All right, let's move on, and let's start talking about the astrological forecast for October. And first things first, as we open the month. The biggest thing for me is not what the new astrology is that October brings in at the beginning, but it's the things that we're leaving behind. And the primary thing that we're leaving behind is by the time October opens, we should be moving out of eclipse season and moving out of that range of the most intense period of the eclipses, which is usually that range that lasts for about a week after the second eclipse. And the second eclipse occurred on September 21st. So good news is that some of the chaoticness, the tumultuousness, and the feelings of great beginnings and great endings, which is always my keyword for eclipses, should be starting to recede by the time we move into early October. So that's good news. Yeah.
- [70:51]
A
Oh, it's absolutely good news. Yeah. And, yes, it's nice to be moving out of the sort of accelerated, shadowy. Like during eclipses often, things start moving faster along more dimensions than you are used to tracking. And at the same time, they get harder to see. You know, shadows are there. There's. There are more things moving, and they're in the shadows. Cue that alien moment. Right. Or aliens moment. Like they're all around us. They're showing up on the little beep beep tracker, but you can't see them directly. It's very nice to get back to normal problems rather than sudden problems coming out of nowhere.
- [71:44]
B
Yeah. Sudden ones are ones that are huge, life altering, end of a chapter of your life or beginning some new chapter from scratch. Having these huge momentous things clearly taking place. Not just personally, but also in terms of world events.
- [72:01]
A
Yeah. Where you're like, what does this even mean? It'll take a year to figure out what this thing that is happening now or happened yesterday means in retrospect.
- [72:12]
B
Yeah. Not that momentous events will not be taking place in October because I'm sure we will see the continuation of some of the threads that began this past month. And there's definitely some major alignments that are coming up in October. But just in terms of the eclipse season vibe, I'll be happy to start moving out of that.
- [72:32]
A
Yeah, me too. Me too.
- [72:34]
B
Definitely. All right, so I want to talk about. Let's do some overview y stuff before we get into the details because I want to mention some of the major aspects this month that we're paying attention to and especially break them down a little bit into some of the most positive and some of the most challenging aspects. One of the primary aspects this month that's coming up that keeps standing out to me, that stood out to me in the year ahead forecast. And that as I was looking at October again to prepare for this, also drew my eye as probably the main aspect of October is the Mercury Mars conjunction that's forming in Scorpio around the middle of the month, going exact, I believe around October 20th. But normally it would be a pretty quick aspect between Mercury and Mars. But part of what's happening is that Mercury by the end of October is gonna start slowing down and preparing to station retrograde in November. And as a result of that, it's moving a bit slower. And that conjunction, even though it comes and goes on October 20th, it's kind of like building up for a while and it's still in effect for a while leading up to that date and following that date. So that I think that's gonna be our signature feeling for what this month is gonna be about. And Mercury, Mars is tricky because Mercury is the planet of communication and Mars is the planet of conflict and war and fighting. So when you put those two together, it sometimes is often about verbal conflicts, about debates. And that's one of the things that's relevant, is that that was part of the aspect that Charlie Kirk had in his birth chart was A Mercury Mars conjunction in Scorpio. And what's weird is we're having a recurrence of that here in October. And his primary thing was literally about going around to universities and debating colleges, students. And somehow that energy of debating, I think is gonna become a focal point around the middle of October this month.
- [74:45]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [74:47]
B
Yeah.
- [74:47]
A
Like the verbal conversational contention and strife is a clear thing, is one of the things that happens every time there are Mercury Mars conjunctions. There are, and as you pointed out, this one persists for far longer than they usually do because of Mercury's slowed down speed. We're gonna be doing this one well into November. There are just some other things that are traditionally associated with Mercury Mars, and that I see popping up is doing crime. Mercury is not malefic in nature, but Mercury is very easily influenced by hanging out with the wrong crowd. And so with Mars or with Saturn, Mercury very happily turns their talents to crime. And so you see things like forgery, embezzlement, theft and similar things which if we translate into Internet speak, there's all sorts of ways to steal things digitally as well as in person. One of the interpretations that I got from reviewing some of the traditional material that I've seen very useful for judging transits is Firmicus repeatedly describes Mercury Mars conjunctions, especially if they're in angular houses. And I'm paraphrasing, just an endless pain in the fucking ass. Where it's not any one thing, it's just we have the multiplicity of Mercury, the difficulty and irritation of Mars getting split up into 40 different things, where it ends up being this. It's just one thing after another sort of combination. And that's in addition, of course, to the primary, what I would agree would be the primary signification, which is just fighting about stuff. Fighting about stuff with words, disputation, argumentation. And with Mars so strong here in Scorpio, the energy of dispute and struggle and fighting perhaps overtaking the argument that lit that fire, where it becomes more about the fight than the ideas that were there at the beginning of the fight.
- [77:28]
B
Absolutely, yeah, that's a great point. Some of the keywords that I wrote down for Mercury Mars combinations like this conjunction are like being verbally combative. Debates, curse words, harsh language, verbal aggressiveness. Bluntness. People that speak really bluntly often have Mercury Mars aspects. Sharpness, having a sharpness to your tone or your words. Sometimes it's words that are said in anger without thinking things out ahead of time. Fighting words, which is usually one of my primary keywords for this, but also mental acuity. Sometimes Mercury Mars can be very quick thinking and very on top of things and can be really good in a debate if you're able to channel Mercury Mars energy. Well, it can be those people that are doing a debate effectively and knowing what the best debate tactics are, or seeing the weakness in your opponent's debating style and going straight for that weakness in some way or in other instances. Mercury Mars can be associated with lawyers and sometimes that can be a bad thing, the bad versions of. Of lawyers. But it can also be in some instances the good form of that, which is the lawyers sometimes that you need that are defending, I don't know, civil rights or civil liberties or other things like that. Or the defense person who's good at their job of debating in order to defend a client.
- [78:55]
A
Yeah. Or the prosecutor who can actually convict the clearly guilty party. But yeah, I'm glad you brought up the legal framework because that really sort of showcases the tight combative quality of discourse with Mercury Mars where you are making an accusation. One party is making an accusation, they need to back it up with an argument. It needs to be compelling, it needs to be evidentiary, and the defense needs to do the same. Mars brings potential negative consequences to not having a good enough argument. Right. In a sense, a trial is an argument that if you lose, you face significant penalties.
- [79:47]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and also having a controlled style of attacking or something like that, being able to remain calm and cool in the face of a fury of attack or of anger or something like that. Not to keep bringing it back to that, but I went back to watch so I could understand better some of the debates that Charlie Kirk had in the past year. And one of his strengths as a debater, because he did thousands of them and so he had lots of practice, was remaining calm while arguing with people so that other people would come off and get flustered because he would say something sometimes very. That would be explosive in terms of what he was actually saying or would be very offensive in some instances. And the other person would get thrown off and get rattled, but he would remain calm. And so it would sometimes give the impression of him winning the debate on style points, for example, or even if in many instances I didn't believe and agree with what he was arguing politically. But you could see that he had honed the best way to make that argument, even if he was trying to make an argument that was almost impossible to a position that was almost impossible to take, or a position that I certainly wouldn't attempt to defend. Identifying the Best way to make that argument, and I think that's gonna be part of our focus this month, is like, what is the most effective way to say what you need to say and do what you need to do while remaining calm and fighting for what you believe in or what you think is right in some way? And that can happen on a macro level, but it can also happen sometimes on a personal level level where you're having to advocate for yourself or for something in your life that's important to you.
- [81:36]
A
Yeah, I think that's really good. And I like what you were saying sort of provoked the image of carefully crafting, blacksmithing a tool. But a tool or a weapon, but made of words and logic and ideas, like crafting the case for something. Something making it, machining it to the point that it's sleek and aerodynamic and deadly and effective.
- [82:08]
B
Exactly, yeah. Because Mars in Scorpio is the domicile of Mars. And one of the things that Scorpio brings to Mars is it's a fixed sign which brings some staying power and some stamina to Mars, which is something you don't see with Mars other domicile in Aries, which is like a cardinal fire sign, which is very fast, it's very quick, and it comes out swinging right from the beginning, but then gets tired very quickly. Whereas Mars in Scorpio is sort of in it for the long haul and is prepared to do and refine and stick with whatever it is for an extended period of time.
- [82:46]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Being in it for the duration.
- [82:52]
B
Exactly. So that's a lot of the energy and that's important this month, not just because of the Mercury Mars conjunction that's taking place, but also just with Mars moving into Scorpio and having that alignment. Mars has already entered into Scorpio in late September, but it's gonna stay there for the entirety of October and really draw in that energy so that that becomes sort of like a focal point and the vibe of that is sort of emphasized.
- [83:27]
A
Yeah, I think that's absolutely one of the major flavors that October brings. There, I think, are some also very nice benefic flavors that that will alternate with, but that'll be there almost the whole month. Mercury enters Scorpio on October 6th. And that Mercury Mars co presence doesn't end until well into November as they cross into Sagittarius. Very closely aligned and will continue to debate and contend.
- [84:05]
B
Totally. Yeah. And what's crazy about that is two things. One, there's two comets that are supposed to show up in October and they may Be visible to the naked eye. We'll see when they actually arrive. It's always variable. But one of them is actually supposed to hit peak brightness around October 20th and October 21st, which is right when that Mars Mercury conjunction is happening. So that could bring. Even though Mercury, Mars is usually like a passing thing, it could bring that into greater prominence. And it could bring it into play in terms of world events and mundane astrology and especially government stuff. Because it reminds me of I did the comet episode not long ago. And we talked about how they're called broomstars in Chinese astrology. And they often associated with them sweeping away whatever the current government is or something like that. And often a lot of the focus when a comet would show up would be the rulers, the king especially, or the emperor, wondering what they were doing wrong and trying to make reforms in order to change things. And sometimes sweeping away things in order to fix whatever might be happening that were shortcomings at the time. So we should pay attention to it for that reason. But the other reason that this conjunction has greater import and is gonna get dragged out is, like you said, because Mercury is slowing down to station retrograde in November. And as a result of that, we're not just gonna get one conjunction, but we're gonna get two conjunctions of Mercury and Mars back to back. And this is where it gets interesting, because on October 20th. So here's we're looking at the chart of Mercury conjunct Mars at 19 degree of Scorpio around the same time, like the same day, Mercury moves into 20 degrees of Scorpio. And that's its shadow degree. That's actually the degree that Mercury is going to retrograde back to in November. So that means that degree, about 20 degrees of Scorpio, if anybody has that in their birth chart, is going to be particularly sensitive to transits over the course of the next month or two. And that window is going to open with this Mercury Mars conjunction around the 20th. So then if we move the chart for forward, we see Mercury move into Sagittarius at the end of the month around October 29th. But then it slows down and stations retrograde by November 9th. And by that point, Mars has moved into Sagittarius. And then Mars catches up with Mercury and conjoins it again a second time around November 12th and 13th, where all of a sudden we have a sudden return of this sort of explosive, argumentative fighting energy that suddenly comes back again just a few weeks after the first time that we felt the intensification of that and then we'll get Mercury retrograding all the way back to 20 degrees of Scorpio before it stations direct around November 28th, 29th and 30th, bringing us right back to that degree and back to something that was started in October, mid to late October that isn't finished until late November, early December. So that's opening up quite a sequence. Yeah, yeah.
- [87:23]
A
Well, and there's the third part of that sequence when Mercury makes its third conjunction to Mars. Not until the middle of January.
- [87:32]
B
Right? Exactly. And that ends up happening like way, way far away in the sign of Capricorn, around.
- [87:40]
A
It's about the 17th.
- [87:42]
B
Yeah, 17th, 18th. So that may connect some final event that isn't fully completed until that third conjunction or some sort of sequence of events that's playing out over the course of several months. But if that's true, then for some reason it begins here in October as part of a sequence of events tied in with this interrelationship between the planet of communication and the planet of fighting and aggression and war.
- [88:11]
A
Yeah, you'd think that there'd be some legal things because cases take that long that get started this month or go into high gear this month that take until the third conjunction for their, their effects to be known, for the outcomes to be really clear.
- [88:37]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so that's our main focal point of this month, but other negative aspects that are happening this month. I put this in the negative side, but the other really big one happening this month is Pluto stations direct on October 13th in early Aquarius. And this is going to be a major intensification of some of the Pluto in Aquarius energy. At the same time. Let's see, there's a minor challenging one later in the month, which is Mercury opposite Uranus, which is some surprises. On October 29, we also have Saturn and Neptune back in Pisces, not too far from each other, only like 3 or 4 degrees from each other, inflating the bubble and the reality distortion, things that have been happening there all summer. But in terms of positive things, we open the month with actually a nice little Venus Jupiter sextile on October 8, which I'm looking forward to. And then not long after that, we get Venus moving into Libra and moving into a square with Jupiter in Cancer. That doesn't go exact until November 2nd, but it gets really close in the second half of the month and is bringing in some positive energy with Venus in her home, sign of Libra, and Jupiter in the sign of its exaltation in Cancer. And I know that's one you're looking forward to this month.
- [89:57]
A
Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to it. We have both benefics in either their own sign, Venus in Libra, or the sign of exaltation, Jupiter in Cancer. And so both of the planets, which bring the good, the pleasant, the lovely, the fortunate, are in a really strong position and they're in an angular relationship to each other. And if we look at the other cardinal signs, we don't have any malefics in cardinal signs. And so that gives both Venus and Jupiter a lot of power to do their thing. And we, like the humans, generally like both of their things, as they're relatively unencumbered in their attempts to make things not so bad, at least for a little while. And if you have a cardinal sign rising, it is especially good news. If you have Scorpio rising, it is not so good, but it's very nice. And we have a couple different benefic things like that you mentioned the earlier in the month Sextile between Venus and Jupiter, where it's Venus and Virgo, sextiles Jupiter and Cancer. And then we have a rough maybe six days with Venus after Venus completes the sextile with Jupiter again. Venus and Jupiter together are, I don't know, in some ways just all good things, both moral goods as well as small goods. Like this sandwich is really good. But after Venus completes that sextile with Jupiter, there is an opposition with Saturn while Venus goes through the last decan of Virgo, which is a rough place for a lot of planets, but especially Venus. And so there is this sort of. Venus is doing great sextile to Jupiter, super rough for six days. And then Venus is in Libra and great for the rest of the month.
- [92:20]
B
Yeah, that Venus, Saturn opposition culminates, it looks like around October 10th and 11th, which is like this cooling off of Venus and sometimes this coldness and distance and relationships.
- [92:33]
A
Yeah. To bring back the third decan of Virgo symbolism, it's very entropic. But from Venus's point of view, it's the flowers once given as a token of love and passion, lying dried out and desiccated on the, you know, on the grave of. Of a love no longer present. There's a sadness and grief very often when Venus moves through the third decan of Virgo and Saturn, Saturn very much reinforces those meanings. But then Venus goes into Libra shortly thereafter and we have a really positive situation for Venus for the rest of the month.
- [93:24]
B
Yeah, it's weird. There's this. I was thinking of the dynamic experience of how some of these transits are going to be felt. And it's like October 8th, we get this positive sextile and it's like everything is good for a day or two with that sextile. Then Venus is feeling great and then comes off of that and just gets a bucket of cold water dumped on top of her over the next couple of days as she moves into that opposition with Saturn, which gets completed around October 11th. And then suddenly things lighten up again by the time you get to October 13th and 14th when Venus moves into Libra and then begins that building up to that square with Jupiter and has that overcoming sign based square from Jupiter that is lightening things up. And this is actually the first of two grand trines that I noticed that are completed this month. And this one is around October, October 14, right after Venus moves into Libra. Venus hits 0 and 1 degree of Libra and it immediately trines Uranus at 0 degrees of Gemini and it trines Pluto at 1 degree of Aquarius. And that is that stationary Pluto that I mentioned. So I wanted to mention that because in terms of major slow moving transits that are happening this month, that Pluto station is really the main one that's taking place. Aside from Neptune moving back into Pisces later in the month. That Pluto station has some potency. And on the one hand there's some things that won't be great about that in terms of whatever negative things we've associated with Pluto in Aquarius over the past few years. But having that grand trine completed with Uranus and Venus at the same time, I think will also bring some positive things. So what are some of our, you know, a lot of the Pluto in Aquarius has had to do with like AI and some of the rapid, rapid advancements in the past two to three years since Pluto started moving to Aquarius with that and just the pace of technology moving so fast. So I think on the one hand this station of Pluto is going to be another important turning point when it comes to that and some of the developments with AI. But that's gonna have some positive as well as some negative ramifications.
- [95:47]
A
Yeah. Just based on what's happened since while Pluto was retrograde this summer in Aquarius, where there's been a lot of speculation about there being an AI bubble. Some of the various applications limitations have been show. There have been a number of things that have reduced expectations or made people who've invested a lot in these technologies nervous about what does the road forward look like. And maybe this is Too literal. But sometimes, if you bet on too literal with astrology, you win big. That Pluto's stationing direct in a tight trine with a benefic shows the way forward or the way around some of the difficulties and obstacles which revealed themselves during Pluto's retrograde.
- [96:48]
B
Yeah, that would make sense. I mean, that would definitely be some of the most positive manifestations of that.
- [96:55]
A
I mean, if you view this whole process as positive.
- [96:58]
B
Yeah, that's where things get a little tricky. I mean, another thing that's happening right now that the Uranus trine Pluto reminds me of is they just started rolling out. Google started rolling out its automated cars in Denver. So this is like the first time they're going to be testing one of those in a state where it snows a lot during the winter. And that's going to bring some fun wackiness, I'm sure, over the course of the next several months. But the acceleration of some of the changes that are happening, not just with technology and artificial intelligence, but also with other things like transportation, that we're expecting, especially Uranus in Gemini over the next seven years to completely revolutionize in terms of the United States, we'll probably see some turning point with that this month with Pluto stationing there in early Aquarius.
- [97:49]
A
Yeah, and that accelerating existing trends makes a lot of sense because it's Pluto stationing, but it's Pluto stationing with its rapidly onrushing future buddies. Neptune in Aries and Uranus in Gemini. Fully align that wedge formation. Pluto's stationed a couple times in Aquarius, but not with its best friends Neptune in Aries and Uranus in Gemini. And so it's a direct station, but with that support, with that trine and that sextile.
- [98:29]
B
Right? Yeah, exactly. So you mentioned the economic bubble and the AI bubble. And I think that's really important because that's the other tricky thing this month is Saturn and Neptune are still very close. And then last month, at the beginning of the month, Saturn moved back into Pisces, which was very loud. Everybody I know who's been having Saturn transits with Saturn in Pisces over the past two years, since March of 2023, having Saturn return for one last time into Pisces and then having the eclipse happen in Pisces suddenly really activated that part of everybody's chart, Whatever house Pisces is associated with in a very loud and dramatic and sometimes difficult way. And I think Neptune returning back to that sign is going to emphasize that this month even more. But one of the things you mentioned is the AI bubble and the economic bubble because the economy is just going crazy right now. And all the stock stocks are skyrocketing, but also the price of gold is skyrocketing, which is showing how nervous people are getting about everything that's going on. And I saw a story just the other day In Reuters on September 23, just two days after the Virgo eclipse, that said US stocks may surge another 20% before a historic crash, says Black Swan fund Universa. And it specifically likened it to anticipating a couple crash similar to 1929. I thought that was incredible because that's something I've been talking about with this would be the month where if that Venus retrograde repetition of which we're in right now is a repetition of 1929 was to coincide with some sort of correction or something like this, then we've really entered into the timeframe in which you would expect that to happen, especially in October. Now, we don't have the same set of circumstances that were happening at that exact same timeframe in 1929, where there was also an eclipse that took place, I think, right when it crashed and everything else. But I'm incredibly curious to see if that repetition does coincide with any sort of dip or serious pullback or even start of things becoming even more unstable than they already are. Because earlier this year there was a repetition of the 1929 thing, because what happened is in 1929, during the Venus retrograde, there was a short dip in the market and then it recovered and it surged over the course of the summer before the crash that fall. And so we saw a similar thing this year where there was a major dip earlier this year in the spring during the Venus retrograde, when Trump was initially coming into office and doing the tariff things. And then after that, things came back and have just skyrocketed in the stock market over the past several months. But now we're at that stage of where if there's a parallel, this is the timeframe where we would see it.
- [101:35]
A
Yeah, absolutely. The fact that gold is up 40% from the beginning of the year is a massive indicator of how little faith people have in things continuing to go well. And yeah, and we went over some of the parallels last month in greater detail, but there's also a parallel from 1937. That's the same Venus cycle and Saturn. And as I mentioned last month, the solar eclipse in Virgo that we just experienced at the end of September has a close parallel with a solar eclipse in Virgo in 2007, which signaled the Descent into what would become the financial crisis, where in retrospect it was very clear that things were beginning to fall apart, but they did not visibly and loudly fall apart for some months afterwards. And so that's sort of like the 2007 eclipse was in retrospect, like a warning sign or a warning shot eclipse. And so I wonder if this last one will end up looking the same in retrospect.
- [102:57]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. So the last thing about the Pluto station though, around the 13th and the days leading up to and following that, is we've seen a lot of stuff with technology and the development of that, the good things and the bad things with AI over the past few years. And then the other piece of that is of course, the control and manipulation and power plays aspect of Pluto, which is often very prominent, especially as it's tied in with the US Pluto return and the government and other things like that. So that's something I'll be paying attention to around that, that station as well. I want to mention something positive though, about the Mercury Mars conjunction, which is that there's this weird thing this month where sometimes there's a negative aspect followed by a positive one. And one of the areas where this comes up very prominently is immediately after Mercury and Mars conjoin on October 20, they both start applying to a trine with Jupiter, which they complete over the course of the next week following that conjunction. And it's again one of those things where there's a really difficult, tense, conflict oriented aspect, but it's immediately assuaged by a peaceful, calming, constructive or supportive trine from Jupiter that creates a sort of dynamic of intense fiery division that's then cooled or calmed down in some way immediately after that. So let me pull that up in the chart so I can actually show you what I'm talking about. All right, there it is. So conjunction completing October 20th, and then Jupiter is hanging out around 24 degrees of cancer at that time. So Mercury begins applying to it immediately and completes that trine around October 24th. We get this exact Mercury Jupiter trine, which is one of our most positive aspects of this month, on October 24th. And then just a few days later, it looks like around the 27th and 28th, Mars gets up to the same degree and then also trines Jupiter, making again one of our more positive aspects that is happening, or one of our most positive aspects that's happening this month. So that's something I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out in terms of the dynamic of something very tense and Problematic, but then moving into something more constructive.
- [105:26]
A
Yeah, Jupiter can be very conciliatory. Jupiter can make enough room so that you can have the more productive version of a disagreement.
- [105:40]
B
Right. Like getting into a fight, but then immediately going out for a beer afterwards or something like that. Or making up.
- [105:47]
A
Yeah, or getting into a fight and then realizing that, you know, and then suddenly, I don't know, Plato and other ancient Greek ghosts emerge and turn it into a much more structured debate where you both learn something and everyone walks away with a broader and more truthful understanding of the world.
- [106:10]
B
Right. Yeah, we'll see how that plays out with world events and politics these days.
- [106:17]
A
Much more likely on an individual level or on a small scale level, personal level.
- [106:23]
B
Well, and this brings into focus also the second grand trine this month, which is this grand water trine that's taking place around this time during this third and fourth week of October, because it's not just Mercury and Mars trining Jupiter, but at this time Saturn is over at about 26 degrees of Pisces. So that once Mercury and Mars complete that trine with Jupiter, they then immediately move into a constructive trine with Saturn as well, which brings some grounding to the entire picture. And I really like this grand water trine as something that seems more balanced than some of our other really tense aspects that we've had this year that have had less redeeming qualities.
- [107:08]
A
There have certainly been less favorable configurations this year. Yeah, I've been kind of gnawing at this, gnawing on this one, trying to think about what to think, because on one level, how nice to have a trine between Jupiter and Mars. That's a very triumphant and effective combination. And both of them are in places where they're very strong. And then Saturn can have a fruitful relationship to Jupiter, where Jupiter helps, how should we say, diminish the feelings of hopelessness or depression that Saturn generates. And Saturn can serve to ground and usefully limit the hopes and expansions of Jupiter. But another perspective, in addition to these harmonies that I can't shake is the fact that it's a grand trine, which means all three planets are just aspecting, aspecting, aspect each other. It's a cycle where there's no blockage between the energy. It's just gonna flow between Mars, Saturn and Jupiter is that it is two malefics and one benefic. And so that seems like a lot of extra work for Jupiter to pull out of the negative, because Mars and Saturn, the malefics, have a negative tone. And it can be an entirely justified negative tone. But Mars is harsh and Saturn is heavy, right? And Jupiter has a lot of ballast. It can do a lot of buoying in Cancer. But it's still being on a team with two negative nellies. And I'm wondering what the effect of that will be both personally and collectively in retrospect. Because it's not just like, like three amigos, it's not just three great friends are gonna only do fun stuff together. Mars and Saturn are dangerous, especially that Mars. And my experience of Saturn moving back into Pisces, returning to co presence with the eclipse point and then soon to be joined by Neptune again. It's heavy and confusing and sad.
- [109:47]
B
You.
- [109:47]
A
Know, and it's a retrograde Saturn too. And while Mars is very strong and clear in Scorpio and Jupiter's very effective in Cancer, Saturn's not in very comfortable terrain. At the end of Pisces, it's very difficult to know if Saturn's about finding the correct thing and doing the responsible thing and all of these related meanings. It's hard to know what the right thing to do is. It's hard to know. It's hard to not just be disciplined, but to know what to be disciplined about when there's confusion around Saturn. What should I be trying really hard at? I feel like I should anyway. Saturn's in a confused state and so anyway, long and potentially circular confusion. Saturn's sucking me in. Save me Chris. The Leviathan just taking me down.
- [110:50]
B
I'll just say two things because the first thing I want to say is just I think the important thing for me is with the Mercury Mars you have that explosive combative energy around October 20th and then mercury and Mars move to Jupiter and to Saturn as allies. And I think one of the questions for people during that time and one of the pieces of advice is just look for the helpers and look for the allies because I think that's what's important. Sometimes when a conflict arises or you get into a fight or a dispute with somebody or something like that, something Mercury Mars related, it makes a big difference to have allies that you can look to for advice or support. And oftentimes that's what trines are about. They're about seeking out people who are sort of like compatible or compatico with you in order to help you and help give you some sort of ground to stand on and sometimes reaching out. So that's the energy I'm feeling with those trines in the week after the Mercury Mars conjunction. And that's not going to fix everything because then we know that Mercury will station retrograde in November and Mars will come right back on top of it and bring that hot, explosive, combative energy to the forefront again. But it will be a little cooling off of having a round or having a break in between. And then the second thing I want to say is you were talking about Saturn and I think around the same time Neptune retrogrades back into Pisces. And I wanted to show that because that emphasizes one of the things you're talking about just with Saturn returning, turning back to Pisces and the heaviness or the sadness, but also the confusion is just October 21 and October 22, Neptune finishes that few month vacation or initial preview that it's been having in the sign of Aries and it moves back into Pisces, returning us back to this energy that we'd been in for more than a decade now. But also re engaging that kind of that conjunction with Saturn in a way that's different than the way we've been experiencing it all summer when that conjunction's been forming in Aries. So some of the confusion, sometimes sadness you said, I think it was a really good keyword. But also some of the idealism that comes with that and the feelings of empathy. Sometimes when people have. Have great sadness and sorrow and loss, One of the things that can happen is you can also find a deep well of empathy and understanding for other people that you may not have experienced prior to that. And that's something I think of with this conjunction and with Neptune returning back to Pisces and joining Saturn there.
- [113:43]
A
Yeah, I think that's good. I think you're right about that. Yeah, there's definitely a sense of sadness, grief, loss, but none of which are really possible without extending the sphere of compassion unless you're only feeling for you. But yeah, there is just, especially after.
- [114:08]
B
That eclipse in Pisces. It's like eclipse in Pisces. Saturn in Pisces was just so heavy. But bringing Neptune back in there, of course we have the reality distortion field re engaging fully, which is not great. But there's also another element to Neptune that brings in a sensitivity and a compassion that can be very positive sometimes. And I think that's the positive thing that it will be importing into that sign. That's different than what we all just experienced in September.
- [114:38]
A
Yeah, I mean, if we're going to contrast Neptune in Aries, what we've learned of it so far, with Neptune in Pisces dreaming of the real sadness of the world. Neptune in Pisces is probably infinitely better than dreaming of war as a solution.
- [115:04]
B
Absolutely. Yeah, that's a good point. Actually, that makes me think, because it's like the glorification of war is like part of what we were seeing with that with Saturn and Neptune dipping in there over the past few months, versus the glorification of compassion with Neptune in Pisces, which started in 2011. And it's kind of interesting thinking about that in terms of the larger eras that we seem like were coming out of versus the era that we're going into and this shift that's been happening societally where. I don't know how to articulate that, but for a lot of the last decade, there has been the focus on, I don't know, inclusivity and on other themes like that that sort of peaked in different positive and sometimes challenging ways in the mid to late 2000 and tens and early 2000 and twenties. But now it's like there's these other things that are becoming more popular that is a much different vibe. And maybe part of that is Saturn and Neptune. I hadn't really made that connection until now.
- [116:15]
A
Oh, yeah, I absolutely think that's the case. Yeah. The Neptune Pisces years saw people extending their compassion and sympathy, whereas the Neptune in Aries years are going to be not so much that at all, it's going to be dreaming of. And also the Neptune in Pisces has a very collective quality, whereas it's all of us. The very simplest historical parallel is that the last time Neptune in Pisces was in the 14 years that led up to the Civil War, in which the abolitionist movement became extremely widespread. Whereas, like, oh, let's extend, you know, like people the idea of. Of extending personhood and dignity and, you know, all of which in a sense are downstream of compassion to more people than before became very popular, which set the stage for the Civil War. But in this case, I think we've had a very similar sort of widespread cultural expansion of compassion, and now we're doing something different. The Neptune and Aries dreams are about. In a positive sense, they're about individual struggle and overcoming and heroism. But they are. Yeah, like, they're. They're not. But in a negative sense, they're dreams of how. They're often dreams of war. You know, as we covered pretty extensively in our review of Neptune in Aries historically, you know, it's the first couple years of the Civil War where everyone thought it would be fucking awesome and people. Families would go and bring picnics to watch people fight it out, thinking that it was going to be like a glorious and heroic spectacle.
- [118:21]
B
Right. It's interesting that you mentioned that. And the difference between the abolitionist movement and the difference between what led up to the Civil War versus the Civil War itself. And it makes me think of how in museums and stuff, some of the stuff involving slavery and the historical record of that as being removed or whitewashed from the record in some of the national museums and things like that, and that we're moving into this different era where that had been the focus so much of the last decade, but it's moving into something else that is not putting the focus or is in some instances obscuring what happened in history and trying to. To glorify other things, basically.
- [119:12]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And Neptune, as sort of mythologizing and glorifying the substance of the sign that it's in is a really consistent thing. One example that we talked about earlier in the year with Neptune and Saturn in Aries is on an exact Saturn Neptune conjunction. You had both the actual event as well as the subsequent Mythology of the 47 Ronin in Japanese history, which was about all of these samurai getting together to kill the person who killed their lord and then being punished for it, but the nation going wild for what was essentially an act of collective vigilante justice. Right. And there's that Aries, like warriors together, acting, doing the right thing, even outside the law. Earlier we had this sort of potential repetition of some of those themes with Luigi Mangione, and we'll see how all that and other things go. But yeah, the glorification of individual. Individual harsh, individual warlike action as opposed to, like, you know, like big. Like big collective compassion and grieving, et cetera, et cetera. And we'll be talking about this for years because we've got. We're just. Anyway, I think it would be. I will be, and I'm sure you will be. And I would suggest to the viewers to just, like, pay attention to the last 10 days of the month. Cause that's when you'll see Neptune slip back into Pisces, out of Aries. Right. So pulling back into that place that it was for almost all the 2000 teens and was up until right around the equinox this year. But we're almost done. Neptune moves back on October 21st and back into Pisces on October 21st. And then we'll only be back back in Pisces until the end of January of 2026, when it moves into Aries and will be present there for another decade plus.
- [121:42]
B
Okay, so this is the last trip of Neptune in Pisces that we start this month.
- [121:46]
A
Yeah, this is the last. I don't know if it will be a hurrah. I think it's gonna be pretty sad with Saturn there, with the eclipse, with Rahu, the eclipse point.
- [122:00]
B
Right, yeah. One last thing that this made me remember is I just saw the headline. I didn't see all the details, but it was something about the Wounded Knee massacre and awarding medals to the US Soldiers somehow this week that were involved in that massacre, rather than commemorating it as a massacre, seems relevant to what we're talking about. About the difference between Neptune and Pisces and the. That era that we've been in versus the era that's like, we're moving into now. I don't know if you saw that headline.
- [122:31]
A
I didn't. But yeah, that does sound very par for the course. Right. Neptune in Pisces being about like, oh, let's think about what a tragedy that was. Or Neptune in Aries being like, oh, let's think about how heroic and fucking awesome that was.
- [122:46]
B
Right. Where there was like 300 Lakota people that were massacred and there were 39 soldiers that were like, or 25 soldiers that were killed. And retroactively awarding medals to the soldiers and sort of whitewashing the history of a massacre essentially sounds very much about this idea that we're talking about of Neptune moving into Aries and glorifying the martial element of things of the violent and the. The warlike and different things like that, as opposed to the era of empathy or whatever you want to call it that we were in for such a long time, which was a good thing because it made a lot of positive progress. But then also a lot of people became uncomfortable with that. And so now we're having this reactionary movement against it currently.
- [123:42]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [123:45]
B
All right, well, that's still not fully formed, but we'll continue thinking about that as we're trying to get a feel for what Neptune is doing as it's making this ingress into Aries and setting in this new era.
- [123:58]
A
Yeah, I'll just say one more thing on that. Neptune tries to kind of ends up reframing a lot of things so they fit Neptune's new story. Right. And Neptune's story in Pisces is one of trying to understand and grieve what has happened, whereas Neptune in Aries is a much more, how should we say, Confident, forward looking story about how we're gonna kick a bunch of Ass and how awesome arc, you know, one's capacity for action is. And so when things get reframed into that, they will probably end up losing a lot of that tragic historical depth as per that example.
- [124:49]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. All right, let's reframe where we're at. And what do we need to do at this point? What do we need to accomplish with our.
- [124:59]
A
We didn't talk about how awesome the full moon is. That's in the beginning of the month. And we didn't talk about your favorite day of the month for doing stuff.
- [125:12]
B
Oh, my favorite day. Okay, yeah, that's a good one. Why don't I give that first? Because my favorite day I had different options. But the one I'm going to share for electional chart this month, because there's one that's later, but it's closer to the Mercury Mars conjunction. But it takes more finesse to actually use that constructively and not let it blow up in your face. So I'm gonna give what I think then would be the safer option for the general public, which is an election earlier in the month on October 4th. All right, so our election for October is on October 4th at about 5pm so what you wanna do is cast a chart for October 4, set it for your location, and then set it for 5pm local time. Don't do any time zone conversions or anything like that. And if you do that, you should end up with a chart with Pisces rising. And if you don't adjust the chart until you have early Pisces Rising on October 4th, then you'll end up with a chart like this. So this chart features Pisces rising and the ruler of the ascendant is Jupiter, which is exalted in Cancer in the fifth whole sign house, the place of good fortune in Hellenistic astrology in a day chart as a fully benefic planet. And Jupiter is in a mutual reception with the moon, which is ruling the fifth house and is placed in Pisces in the first whole sign house. And that moon is actually applying to a trine with Jupiter. So very strong mutual reception between the first house and the fifth house here in a day chart. And we just did a whole series this month on the fifth house, which helped me to really more clearly define some of my views on the fifth house. And what a positive sector of the chart and how many good things that are positive and make life worth living but are sometimes overlooked. But the fifth house is where we find pleasure and enjoyment and fun and games and good fortune and A lot of the things that make life worth living, which sometimes gets reduced down to hobbies. But on a deeper level, the fifth house is that which brings you pleasure and an enjoyment that makes your life better. And for some people, this can be concrete things like having children and the sort of joy of parenthood. For other people, it can be finding something that you're passionate about that you really enjoy doing, that you throw yourself into. So this would be a good chart for that with this fifth House focus other things about this chart. The downside for the chart, it does have Mars in the ninth house, so it would not be good for foreign travel. Some things related to education, probably some things for interaction with the government or other 9th house type things could be a little bit dicey. But otherwise it's a great chart for doing something that brings you fun and enjoyment or other fifth house topics related to sex and sexuality or even things related to children. Yeah, so that's my best chart of the month. What do you think?
- [128:32]
A
I really like Jupiter in the 5th, and I really like the moon and Jupiter in mutual reception.
- [128:40]
B
Yeah, I've been really enjoying these fifth House elections lately, with Jupiter exalted in cancer in the fifth, with the Pisces Rising day charts. What's your favorite part of the fifth house? Or do you have any deeper wisdom about the fifth House you've been thinking about lately?
- [128:56]
A
Yeah, funny you asked.
- [128:59]
B
Actually, let me ask you that before I ask you that. I'm gonna say we found a bunch of other electional charts for October, and if you'd like access to those for other auspicious dates during the course of the month, you can get access to it by signing up for a page on patreon.com astrologypodcast and there we've already released the Electional Astrology podcast for October for a full episode on that. All right, so with that out of the way, tell me about the fifth house. What do you think about the fifth house?
- [129:29]
A
Yeah. Well, as I was caretaking my delightful child, I was reflecting while at the same time stressing out about where I can find the time and energy to work on various professional projects and book projects. It struck me that the fifth house as the place of creativity and energy and play and also children, was so literal because I was thinking about my finite fifth house resources and X amount at this point, need to go to playing with and tending to my child. Right. Lucien takes up a lot of fifth house resources now, and there's a lot of creativity and spontaneity and play when you're hanging out with a child, he's making up new things all the time. Things become games that you never thought of. A box becomes the coolest toy ever. There's all that good times and play and child. But then, because I have professional obligations and ambitions for my creativity as well, I was having to reflect on the fact that my child and my projects both compete for Fifth House resources. And it's all good things. But I have a very finite capacity to produce either good times or good things or end good things. So I was just like, boy, those sure are tied together. Because all of the things that are there, they want the same resources from the same house. And that was just as Mars, which is the ruler of my fifth, moved into my fifth.
- [131:26]
B
I like that. That's a great insight. I like the phrase you used, like, a finite amount of time because that makes energy, right?
- [131:34]
A
Like the fifth House to, like, create something energy, and it's, like, worth it, and it's exciting and it's awesome. Whether that thing created is a child, a book, an awesome party, you know, whatever it is, it takes energy to bring that into being. And it's awesome once it comes into being. But you don't have. You don't. You just don't have an infinite amount that you can bring into being.
- [132:01]
B
Yeah. Well, that makes me think of something I thought about after I finished recording all of the Fifth House episodes that I wished I'd included is I talked a lot about how the fifth house represents children because it's the succeedent house that follows after the fourth, and therefore it represents partially the continuation of your family lineage and the continuation of the shared family lineages of both the partners that get compared to combined into one into your child. But the other part that I wish I had emphasized more also is that one of the things we discovered when we did the Fourth House episode and dug deep into it was the associations of the fourth house with death and the end of life. And therefore with the fifth house also being the house that follows after that is what comes after death. And in what ways is your own life continued after death? And one of the ways that your life is continued after death is through your children and through whatever great works you leave behind. Yeah, that was the second point I was gonna be through the creative works or other things that you create that are Fifth House y that are also continued after your death as part of your legacy. So the fifth House has a lot deeper and more, I don't know, like, interesting meanings that you might think unless you really Think about it and some of the implications.
- [133:28]
A
Yeah, yeah. And it is also just a fun time or on top at the. At the most superficial layer, which is also a real part of the structure of the fifth is there's just like hanging out and having fun, which is a meaningful amount of what taking care of a toddler is.
- [133:48]
B
Right.
- [133:49]
A
There's a lot of just having fun and teaching words and reading books and et cetera, et cetera. And it's very cute and sweet, but that's attached to all of that. Other much more significant over the long term, impactful stuff. But yeah, that's nice. Discovering and looking at the really consequential parts of the fifth house, which presents as a more fun, casual, low pressure place.
- [134:21]
B
Absolutely. Yeah.
- [134:23]
A
Look forward to that. Coming up.
- [134:27]
B
Let's wrap this up, let's land this plane and let's talk about the two lunations that we're gonna have this month, the New Moon and Full moon. And then we'll wrap this episode up. So our first lunation this month is a full moon in the sign of Aries, which occurs around October 6th.
- [134:44]
A
6Th.
- [134:46]
B
Right in the middle of Aries. And this is a lunation you were looking at. And you've been paying special attention to how it is applying to Jupiter afterwards, right?
- [134:57]
A
Yeah. We've had so many rotten and afflicted lunations lately, and especially the last two were eclipsed. And so this is the first proper lunation that isn't eclipsed since the end of August. And so this is the return of the light. Right. It's a full moon that doesn't turn weirdly blood red. And not only that, but instead of being tightly square Uranus or Malefic, like some of our other recently nations have been, this one has the sun and the Moon both configured to Jupiter in a T square, but with strong and benevolent Jupiter. And the Moon in particular moves from its perfect opposition with the sun, which marks the moment of the full moon, into a square with Jupiter, which it also rules because it's in cancer. And so this seems exciting, but in a positive way. There's something celebratory about it. And it's just such a nice change of pace from the whole month of blood darkened moon and shadowed sun in the middle of day. It's such a nice lift out of the eclipse, Ruth, which I think many will be delighted to experience at the end of the first week of October.
- [136:39]
B
Totally. Yeah. Because this is the thing that fully breaks us out of eclipse season once and for good is having a fresh lunation. That's not an eclipse. So by this point we are fully clear of eclipse season for sure. Even though it will have wound down several days earlier. It's nice that it bakes in that Venus Jupiter sextile. So Venus is at mid to late 21 degrees of Virgo applying that sextile with Jupiter. So it bakes that into this lunation, which is a positive thing. The only part that I don't like is Mercury has just moved into Scorpio where it's headed towards Mars. But it's also very closely squaring Pluto as a result of that, since Pluto's at 1 Aquarius and Mercury's at 0 Scorpio. So that energy of so like manipulation and control as well as the combative mental energy of Mercury Mars is like starting to form at this point, even though we otherwise have the more amicable Venus Jupiter sextile forming at the same time.
- [137:42]
A
Yeah, this doesn't solve all problems, but it's a much more pleasant backdrop against which to, you know, whisper about rumors with Mercury Pluto or gripe and criticize with Mercury Mars. It's a strong positive offset for the challenges that we mentioned.
- [138:13]
B
Right, right, yeah. Anything that might extend that Venus Jupiter conjunction from the beginning of the month to be a little bit more long lasting than it could be otherw. So that's our first lunation of the month, that full moon of heightened energy and feelings around October 6th. Then about two weeks later we get our second lunation of the month which is a new Moon in the sign of Libra happening at about 28 degree of Libra on October 21st. And this one's interesting because on the one hand it's overlapping with the Mercury Mars conjunction. So it's kind of weird that the first lunation of the month happens right as Mercury moves into the sign based aspect with Mars and then the second lunation goes exact right as that conjunction has culminated and is finally starting to barely recede. So that's a little problematic. But the good part is it's nice that Venus is fully in Libra at this point applying to that square with, with Jupiter in Cancer. And so there's this emphasis of the Venus in Libra and the benefic energy at the same time as again a counterbalance.
- [139:30]
A
Yeah, yeah. This one kind of serves the same function of being configured to benefics while there's other stuff happening, but offering that like, offering like a, a more conciliatory harmony seeking pleasant backdrop or counterpoint to what will inevitably be a very sharp and sometimes harsh set of Configurations with Mars, especially the Mercury Mars. So again, it doesn't mean that the Mercury Mars isn't there and doesn't matter, but at least it's not only not making it worse, it's actually probably going to blunt some of the worst case scenarios for a lot of people.
- [140:24]
B
Yeah. And bring out a positive counterbalance so that it's not all just the challenging things. But the benefics are stepping up to the plate to do their best to try to. Because the malefics tend to their function universally tends to sometimes be to tear things down and tend to that side of existence which is the disillusionment of things. Whereas the benefics tend to tend to the side of building things up and increasing life in some way. And so it's nice to see them stepping up to the plate to bring in the life giving and the building up forces to counterbalance some of the more tearing down or decaying forces.
- [141:11]
A
Yeah. Balancing the creative and sustaining versus the destructive and dissolving. And then both also will point to. The benefics will point out, hey, you know what's not awful? And then point, you'll be like, you know what? That isn't awful. I haven't been thinking about that. Whereas the malefics will be like, hey, you know what sucks? And you need to pay attention to that thing over there. And so just in terms of the economy of our attention, like the benefic emphasis will sometimes usefully redirect the mind towards things that are actually good that we might have been ignoring that are present within our life, which is in and of itself sustaining. Right. Because if you have a great relationship and you don't ever pay attention to that or feed that, then it becomes a less great relationship. Like the redirection of attention towards something positive is sustaining.
- [142:08]
B
Right. So it's like at the same time the forces of divisiveness are peaking with the Mercury Mars conjunction. The forces of unifying and reconciling and calming things down are also sort of peaking as a counterbalancing weight in those two adjacent signs of Scorpio and Libra.
- [142:28]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's a nice way to put it. Which is good. Planets are in Libra. How nice that the positive and negative are somewhat balanced at multiple points this month.
- [142:41]
B
Yeah.
- [142:42]
A
Rather than just being run over by the eclipse dragon train.
- [142:47]
B
The eclipse dragon that ended up being a great one. And we were talking personally about lamenting about the eclipses and you talked about how one of your favorite analogies is like a roller coaster. And I Think that's a really good analogy.
- [142:59]
A
Well, thank you. Yeah. Cause that's, as you know, the nodes show you how far above or below the sun the moon is. And so if you watch that over time, you would see the moon basically being on a roller coaster. And that's how eclipse season feels to me, like a dragon coaster, where you were just hanging on and trying not to puke. And you had a good analogy as well that had similar feelings, a similar experience associated with it.
- [143:33]
B
Yeah, that's what I was about to say. I kept thinking all month about how eclipses. And I said this actually in the last electional astrology episode to patrons a month ago, where it's like, you can do stuff during eclipses, but it's kind of like being in the middle of a ship at sea, and you can see a storm up ahead that you're gonna try to sail straight through. And eclipse season is like being on a ship in the middle of a huge storm, and it's just tossing you all around and trying in many instances, to blow you off course. Because there's both crazy stuff happening personally and there's crazy stuff happening around you and world events, and the wind is just attempting sometime to blow you off course. And you can try to course correct, and sometimes you'll be strong enough to be able to stick to that and stay the course and get through to the other side. But there will be a lot of, at the very least, tumultuousness in the process of that, and that's what you have to prepare yourself for if you're gonna try to do things during eclipse season, especially electional things.
- [144:39]
A
Yeah, I like that a lot. Because unlike. Unlike a roller coaster, it is possible to steer through a storm. You can, like, you can try. Right. And maybe. Maybe you could succeed. But it. That. That whole, like, I'm going to elect to do a thing and seeing it on the horizon is a great image.
- [144:57]
B
Right.
- [144:58]
A
It's because, like, you know, because it's like, you can try and you can lash your batten down the hatches, lash yourself to the mast. We're going in. And so I like how that frames the. How should we say, Embattled potential for agency when you're electing to do important things during that time.
- [145:20]
B
Yeah. Because it's like, I knew that at the end of last month, going into this month, but I also knew it was time to do the fifth house episode. And I'm like, it's going to be hard. Some stuff's going to come up that's Going to throw me off course. But I got to stick with it and just do this so I can get that important episode done and progress that series, because so many people have been waiting for it. And so I did it and stuck with it and then just stuff started falling apart. Water is coming down from everywhere. The news is going crazy. Websites are going down. But I stuck with it and got the episode recorded and got most of it released. The rest of it will be released soon. But it made me laugh, sometimes morbidly the entire time thinking about having given that analogy and then actually experiencing it and looking forward to getting to the other side.
- [146:09]
A
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
- [146:12]
B
Yeah. All right, my friend. Well, I think we've done it. Speaking of lashing ourselves to the ship and getting through, I think we've gotten through our forecast episode today and we've made it to the other side of that storm. Thank you for hanging in there despite coming down with the coronavirus and fighting through that. And your voice is actually stood up relatively well.
- [146:35]
A
Yeah, it's okay. It's a little scratchy. My brain is kind of leaking out of my ear. My mental endurance is below par, but that happens.
- [146:47]
B
Yeah. You did great. I appreciate you. Thanks for doing this and I'm glad you. I hope you make it to the other side and do. Okay. What are you working on? What have you been doing this month? What do you got going on?
- [146:58]
A
Okay, so I'm going to be doing. I'm going to do. I have an enrollment for. For the first year of my Fundamentals of Astrology program coming up. We're going to be doing an unlimited enrollment. Excuse me, A limited. Not unlimited. A limited enrollment on the 15th of October that will. The. The email will go out only to my mailing list. I won't be spamming the public Internets with that. If you're interested in joining the program, there's all sorts of information about it on my website and there will be more information via newsletter if you sign up for my mailing list. And I send about one or two things to the mailing list every quarter, so you will not be spammed. Meanwhile, Sphere and Sundry has some very exciting things coming up towards the end of October. You know, I can't tell you what Kate's cooking up exactly, but it does smell good. And then I would agree with the piles of rave reviews for the Venus in Taurus creations, which were released about two weeks ago. The reviews are in. It's fantastic. I knew it was fantastic, but it's nice to see Dozens of people receive their goodies and agree with me. So if you like benefics, you might want to check that out.
- [148:32]
B
Nice. That sounds awesome. What are your websites again?
- [148:34]
A
So it's sphereandsundry.com and then austincopek.com.
- [148:43]
B
Brilliant. All right, I'll put a link to your website in the description. As for myself, I'm just going to be trying to pick up the pieces and rise from the ashes and piece the podcast and other websites back together again. I know though Mars is going to be grinding over my Scorpio stellium over the next month, so we'll see how things go and if there are other surprises in store. But in the meantime, I'm going to continue trying to do the podcast and releasing it on YouTube and through my page on patreon.com in the meantime as a temporary site for still releasing the episode, such as the final fifth house episode that's already available for early access. There's. And then we'll see if I can get the website back online. If I can't, I'll continue posting on Patreon and YouTube in the meantime and we'll see how things go and eventually get worked out in the future, hopefully before the Mercury retrograde in November. That's my goal, but we'll see what happens over the course of the next few weeks. Yeah, but in the meantime, thanks especially to all the patrons that have supported my work and supported the podcast and all the positive comments and everything this month have been really helpful and encouraging as we've all been going through it. So thanks a lot for your support, but otherwise, I think that's it for this episode, buddy. So thank you.
- [150:02]
A
Oh, you're welcome. Hopefully. Yeah, good.
- [150:07]
B
Sorry.
- [150:08]
A
Losing my ability to articulate myself clearly.
- [150:11]
B
All right, I'm gonna let you go get some sleep. Take a nap. Thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of the Astrology Podcast, and we'll see you again next time. If you're a fan of the podcast and you'd like to find a way to help support my research, then consider becoming a patron through my page on patreon.com in exchange, you'll get access to subscriber benefits, such as early access to new episodes, the ability to attend live recordings, the monthly Electional Astrology Podcast, an exclusive podcast series called the Secret Astrology Podcast that's only available to patrons, friends, or you can even get your name listed in the credits. For more information, go to patreon.com astrologypodcast Special thanks to patrons on my producers tier including patrons Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jeannie Marie Kaplan, Melissa Delano, Sunny Bazbaz, Kwatsi Alibarahu, Annie Newman, Ginger Sadlier, Berlin west, and Nikki Crawford. People often ask me if I'm available for consultations, but unfortunately I'm not right now because the podcast takes up so much of my time. However, I did create a consultations page on the Astrology Podcast website that has a list of astrologers that I recommend for astrological consultations. You can find that@theastrologypodcast.com consultations the astrology software we use here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, which is astrology Software. For the PC. You can get a 15% discount by using the promo code AP15 at the website alabe.com for Mac users, I recommend the software Astro Gold for Mac os, which is astrology software for the Mac computer made by the creators of Solar fire. For the PC you can get a 15% discount with the promo code AstroPodcast past 15 through their website at AstroGold IO. If you're really looking to deepen your studies of astrology, then I would recommend signing up for my Hellenistic Astrology course, which is an online course in ancient astrology where I take people from basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There's over 100 hours of video lectures, plus monthly webinars and Q and A sessions, and then at the end of the course you get a certificate of completion saying that you studied with me. If you pass the final written test. Find out more information@theastrologyschool.com finally, shout out to our sponsor for this episode, which is the United Astrology Conference, which is happening September 3rd through the 9th, 2026 in Chicago. Find out more information at uacastrology.sam.