Relationship Astrology for Modern Times, with Jessica Lanyadoo

hi my name is Chris Brennan and you're listening to the astrology podcast this episode was recorded on Saturday November 16th 2019 starting at 3:53 p.m. in Denver Colorado and this is the two hundred and thirtieth episode at the show in this episode Amana could be talking with astrologer Jessica Allen yato about adapting relationship astrology to modern times for more information about how to subscribe to the podcast and help support the production of future episodes by becoming a patron please visit the astrology podcast.com slash subscribe hey Jessica thanks for joining me today thanks for having me on episode 230 what an accomplishment thank you yes I'm excited this is actually your second appearance I don't remember what episode number it was but it was probably like a hundred episodes ago when we talked about like the the sudden rise in popularity of astrology like a year or two ago right yeah absolutely and I think you're right it was in the 100's somewhere but a great problem to have to be like was it in 100 or 150 right well what I also love about that is now with you coming back you are back and part of the occasion for this is you have a new you're one of several major younger generations of astrologers that has a new book coming out by like a major publisher at this time and it's actually on relationship astrology so I wanted to talk with you a little bit about that today and first just say congratulations for that because that's kind of a big big deal thank you so much I also want to thank you for referring to me as a younger generation as I sit here in middle age I still appreciate being counted as one of the younger generations of astrologers yeah I love that that's still the case that's been the burden for like a generation or it's like a Pluto generation or two basically like anybody under Pluto and Leo yeah they're still considered like a young astrologer if you're like under your under your 60s or 70s or 80s at this point yeah well I mean and honestly that's that's fair I mean astrology is nothing if it's not the study of time and age so I think I mean I'll take it I'll be a young astrologer in my mid-40s that's cool I'm down yeah excellent so you are the host of the popular ghosts of a podcast which has become super popular over the course of the past year when did you started it was not that long ago right not that long ago it's it's a weekly show and I think I'm on episode 73 so it's maybe a year in a couple months old now it's still pretty still in its early years really yeah alrighty and one of my first exposures to your work was several several years ago and I talked about it I believe it was in episode 83 when I did an episode with Ian waste ler about the queer astrology conference where you did a talk with Barry Pearlman about it was titled in the paper at least a queer talk on client work and that was one of my favorite papers in that compilation when they published like the compilation of papers afterwards and it seemed to be part of like an ongoing theme in your work which is adapting relationship astrology and adapting astrology in general to the sort of sensibilities of modern times right yeah absolutely yeah and thank you also sure yeah so that I think it's going to be the central sort of question and premise of this discussion or this episode we'll get into a little bit of a Q&A about relationship astrology where people have sent in some questions later but first I wanted to talk a bit about this as the central sort of proposition which is I think that astrology is always a reflection of the culture these social sensibilities and the time period in which it's practiced so then one of my questions that I want to address today is in what ways then did relationship astrology need to change recently in order to adapt it to the sensibilities of practitioners living in modern Western times and I feel like you're really good person to talk to about that because I get a sense that that's something that you've been doing and that's a large part of what your work has been about and I was curious to what extent is that a conscious thing that you're doing or to what extent is that just a natural a thing that comes naturally to you because you're working with real-life individuals and doing consultations all the time and so you have to make the astrology adapt to what is appropriate to them rather than you know what was appropriate to clients like 2,000 years ago like that yeah um you know it's it's both I mean it's very conscious and it's also very organic to Who I am and my take on the world and my work as an astrologer is very much like a counseling session and I'm really interested in using astrology as a way to provide tools for individuals that are usable and that start with people from wherever they're starting at and so my you know and this is something I've said in public before but like when I first started studying astrology in the early 1990s I would take a pen to all of my books and I would write it would be like he this he that and I would just put a little s in front of it because it was driving me nuts because I was like you're not talking about me and I you know as a queer person I discovered astrology around the same time where I realized I was gay and I was really just deeply disheartened by the lack of flexibility in everything I was reading or most everything I should say that I was reading and the idea of gender the idea of of sexuality but also of race and class and ability all of these things have not been effectively reflected in astrology unfortunately and that's I think for a lot of reasons but for me taking a step back from what the kind of like old-school people tell me to think about the the planets or the signs or the aspects or whatever I'm working with and using very intentionally the data around the energy of what any of these things mean and adapting it to a situation like a real life situation is really how I use astrology and so the way that I use astrology is not I'm not the most technical astrologer I think in terms of like technical know-how I'm not the best astrologer but in terms of translating it into human terms and meeting people where they're at and counseling them in such a way that I can give them tools that are actionable that's where I'm really excellent and that is something I've trained myself in doing over the course of many years and and and I should say you know it's not specific to my book at all but for me looking at immigration patterns race ethnicity class those things are as integral as any of this relationship gender sexuality stuff because it's about looking at the whole human and understanding the social context that a human is relating to themselves from relating to others from so maybe there was a long answer to your question but hopefully it answered your question no that was perfect and part of the context is you're from Montreal Canada right yes indeed bien sûr as we say but you live in in San Francisco I'm in Oakland now but I was in San Francisco for like 20 years yeah 20 years okay so that was kind of like the culture of the sort of context in which you came up as an astrologer for the most part absolutely and I should also say that I'm from refugees on both sides so you know my mom was the first born to Holocaust survivors like a year after they they ended up in Canada and and then my dad he himself is a refugee and so having this perspective on looking at culture and the need to adapt to a dominant culture is something that was a big part of my consciousness before I discovered feminism or came out as gay or any of that sort of stuff and again I think that's where a lot of the kind of like intersectionalities become really important to me and our big part of how I taught myself astrology sure yeah because we were talking about earlier in terms of going through your books and and like crossing out when it's always addressed to like then the mail is in the delineation x' i mean that's something that goes back when you're reading most ancient texts like from the second century and they're giving delineations for stuff it usually is presented with the assumption that the reader is a male or that you're doing the consultation for a male and then at the end they'll just be like a digression and it'll say and you know similarly for women if you're doing the interpretations of women it's sort of like an afterthought in some of those older texts you get to modern times like the 20th century and eventually we start seeing female astrologers and the the consultations in clientele of astrologers sure certainly becomes more clearly defined as women in the 20th century and female astrologers start becoming more dominant voices in the community in general but even in the 1970s and stuff where you start seeing books they're clearly like pushing some of the boundaries and changing astrology and adapting it to the cultural sensibilities of the 1970s but there's still a lot of voices there that got left out and were not included and things that look very dated if you read like a synastry book from the 1970s or something I think absolutely yeah I mean and and even within that I mean is mainly white astrologers when they were women and they rush mainly straight and the in order to get published by an actual publisher you had to appeal to a male heir and a male perspective and the great democratizer of the Internet has changed that and and you know I think it's so wonderful and I think it's so dynamic and you know also there are some things we could speak very critically about when it comes to the Internet and how its democratize astrology but but in the context of giving more diverse voices kind of a mic it's really valuable it's really valuable definitely yeah all right so with that in mind that that's kind of how you approach do your book is coming out and the title is what is the title of the book again sure it's astrology for real relationships understanding you me and how we all get along but you have to say it in that tone otherwise yeah okay yeah I'm gonna have to work on that right so that was was that kind of the perspective that you approached this book from in terms of you know it's time to write a book about relationships but to make it relevant in 2019 mm-hmm I mean listen I really do believe that relationships are an opportunity to show up and so in order to be in a healthy and effective relationship you need to show up and people love to focus on like their venus isn't this and their mercury is that and you know and that's there's a value to it but really what I'm interested in is addressing the nuance of relationships and the nuance of one's relationship to ourselves so that we can understand that we are the foundation of all of our relationships and all of your relationships are found in your birth chart you don't have to look at your crush's birth chart or your lovers birth chart to know what's going on in your relationship you have to look at your own because what you can sense you what you participate in is is your chart and so for me the book is hopefully an opportunity to teach some of my perspective and in how I use astrology and again the way I use astrology is very simple it's a lot of repetition of fundamentals and a deepening and deepening and deepening of those fundamentals because I think that is what is most effective also I'm a triple Capricorn so of course I think that but I I have the hope to have this book as a resource for kind of wide array of relationships and for both a deepening of an individual readers relationship to themselves as well as to others and so that I just drop something sorry but so that they can have more effective relationships that's really that's that's my goal and the book itself is feminist absolutely in its approach which is to say it does not censor maleness it doesn't Center femaleness it centers humanity and it is queer inclusive you know I understand in writing the book that when I'm looking at long-term relationships not all relationships are monogamous not all relationships are straight some people are ace some people are queer not all people are men and women there are many many genders so there's like a lot of that stuff is in the forefront of my mind when I was writing this book and whenever I worked with astrology so yeah yeah and that's just completely different from where somebody in like 1970 was coming from and they're writing a book on on relationships absolutely yeah even the 1990s I mean this is a really I think that again the internet can be credited for a lot in terms of our ability to be intersectional and develop language because in the 1990s when I was living in San Francisco in a very queer community the language that we use to define ourselves to identify our gender stuff like that you had to either live in that community or read the books that were published by people in that community in order to have access to our language now people can use hashtags they can post stuff on social and it has a global impact and that is so interesting to see how we can self define anyways and then share it in a global way instantly so small small movements can become global movements kind of organically and quickly so that that is a really new thing and I think it is reflected in certainly in my work and I think it's reflected in a lot of astrologers works new new up-and-coming astrologers and and I have had old older astrologers consult with me to ask me questions about gender issues and sexuality issues and feminism and I love that I respect that I want us all to kind of be interested in the evolution of language and of what equality means you know and so yeah it's I'm going on a tangent but there it is that's that's some stuff I'm excited about yeah I love that and to take it back to a point you were making earlier where you know relationship astrology is not just all about looking at synastry are comparing charts and there's many different types of relationships and I love that that's sort of a fundamental point that you approach the book from because you divided the book up into three sections where you're dealing with different types of relationships basically right absolutely yeah it's the first section is friends and chosen family because for a lot of us our family of origin is in our family it's like our community of chosen people and also I think platonic love is incredibly important and platonic relationships are incredibly important and this kind of like old-school heteronormative idea that like you have friends until you get married and then you get married and you drop your friends or your friends are like just like the supportive thing to your primary relationship it's an outdated way of living I don't think it's I mean if that's how you choose to live that's cool but I'm happy to support through astrology people in choosing to focus on their friendships and then the second section is hooking up and early stages of dating like the first three months cuz so many astrology books you're just like you just open the book and it's like this is how you will be in a relationship and it's like what does a relationship is it six months three months a year and so this is kind of like the TBD what's actually happening here are we dating we're not dating like is it gonna work out stage and also the Netflix and chill stage it's like I'm not trying to date this person but I'm also not trying to ruin my life what's astrology has to say and then the third section is long-term relationships like the more conventional love stuff so try to cover it all brilliant yeah I mean that's covering like a huge swath of like ground of just about everything because the astrology is so broad and that's sometimes one of the difficult things is it can almost be overly broad and like hard to deal with especially for newer students sometimes so okay having something that's giving you a cross-section of all of those different types of relationships in your life is very like useful that's that's my hope yeah I'm really into the utility of astrology and again this is where in my kind of use and approach with astrology I'm a I and this is something that is not what I see a lot of young new astrologers doing when when you start learning astrology gets so excited and you're like I want to learn all the things I want to learn progress this and like you want to just learn all these tools because all these tools are so exciting you hear someone else using it you're like jealous you want to be able to do that magic but the reality is if you can't do the basics then you're going to have all these gaps in your ability to actually make sense and synthesize and utilize the astrology that you're learning and so I am really focused on planets because I really believe the repetition of fundamentals understanding on a really deep level what the planets do and what they don't do what they govern and what they don't govern in practical terms that will tell you everything you need to know and then the general nature of astrology becomes a lot less general because it is I guess essentially it's just energy and being able to understand that you know certain kind of energy runs in certain directions and other energy runs in a different direction it's actually gets much it gets more specific when you have a clear question which is maybe a whole other topic that clear question topic but yeah my hope my hope with this book is to give people tools that are flexible so that they recognize that I'm talking about the same thing in all the sections Venus from let's say friendship or hooking up or long-term relationship but how can you just adjust your viewfinder to understand Venus in these different contexts and that will allow not only for like a good astrology reading and self understanding but also for a deepened practical utility of astrology which is like super super my jam right so it's sort of like that understanding the archetype more clearly of the planet then that's going to make it easier to apply it in a multitude of different manifestations or like social context or regardless of gender or age or other things like that exactly yes that's exactly it yeah and I it's this this little thing that we're talking about here is at the center of how I use astrology and I think it's at the center of astrology being humanistic honestly because I think astrology can be a lot of things that are not humanistic it can be used that way because you can use astrology from any angle you want you know it's just a tool it's inert and so I'm really interested in the kind of social and humanitarian considerations of how I do everything but in particular how I practice astrology and talk about it in public yeah sure so how I'm trying to think of how many if I've discussed that really gone into the night what do you mean when you say humanistic astrologer how does humanistic astrology is you define it how is that different from let's say whatever other approach that's not humanistic mm-hmm my and I don't know if there's like a definition or if it's like an actual like kind of astrologer it's only when I started speaking of the larger conferences that people were like what kind of a straw ladder are you and I'd always be like a Jessica one I don't know like I'd never even occurred to me to have to choose a side I was like it's just an astrologer obviously that's not reality but that was my take so my understanding and my guess what I mean when I say humanistic is yeah I am interesting to put you on the spot oh yeah no I'm not being put on the spot I just like I love defining terms when we used them because sometimes we take for granted but then if somebody was listening to this episode of the first time of their first episode about astrology in general it's always helpful sometimes just to just to try to attempt to at least define what we mean and sometimes that can lead to like fruitful discussions yeah I like that I like that a lot um so before I was I mean I was practicing astrology but I was before I went full time I worked with developmentally disabled to children and adults and seniors actually and my kind of experience doing social work social services social work I guess it is was one of the most instructive things I've ever done and what it taught me was the practice of humanity is not a cerebral practice it involves the mind it involves the analyzer but it is about being emotionally present for what your body is doing emotionally and present for your for your thoughts and making sure that your actions are consistent with our consistent with being able to see the humanity and others and to engage with the humanity and others and I as as a practicing astrologer having a humanistic approach which is absolutely my approach it's I am NOT looking at gay people and straight people that's not how I'm doing it I'm looking at people in their lives at this time and I'm meeting them where they are and that is essentially like a harm reduction approach to things and harm reduction is like you know if you're a junkie and then you stop doing heroin and you start smoking weed all day every day thumbs up harm reduction so maybe ideally one day you want to stop smoking weed and you want to be sober cool but you you reduced harm you or you are causing and so for me meeting people where they are and supporting them in elevating or evolving from that place is meeting them in their humanity and that is my primary objective with astrology I'm not interested in being the smartest or the best I don't care about being right I mean it's awesome to be right but I don't care about being right what I care about is using the tool of astrology to stimulate thought stimulate growth and kind of expose choice because when we feel that we have a choice then we start to kind of go bigger and when we go bigger we can embody more of ourselves when we feel trapped when we feel victimized or whatever it is we we stop seeing that we have other options and other choices and that kind of inhibits the the greatest embodiment of our birth charts and I really believe in life being an opportunity to embody the best of our birth charts that's really what I understand so humanism is really it is really about honoring the humanity in all of us and in it and in our choices essential ease I mean I don't know that if I thought about it more if I would have a better answer to that but that's that's where I I start from sure yeah one of the things that I like that you said that might be worth talking about more is it almost is like you don't sound like you're trying not to come at sitting with a client with a pre-defined sense of like moral expectations that you're putting on them that you're sort of moral whatever your moral situation is doesn't necessarily count and you're not trying to guilt somebody in a consultation or tell them what they should be doing or what's best from some sort of like exalted like moral standpoint or something like that absolutely can I share some anecdotes about that please okay so there's two things that come to mind around that one is that when I do consultations with people and they tell me they want to get married not when they're like in love with someone and they're engaged but when they're like oh yeah I want to get married I always ask them why why do you want to get married and I'll tell you probably like 70% of people especially women are shocked by that question and their first response is often why do you think I shouldn't like they're always terrified but then it comes to past that I am the first person to ever ask these adult women why they want this thing that is a huge responsibility and they just think that they should they just think that they should it's also it's just there's certain assumptions we make about adulthood and we don't question them like we question like do I want a big wedding do I care about a white dress but it's different than is that actually something that I need in order to be whole is you know a like a legally binding agreement actually important to me is a party important to me these aren't really important questions and as as a as a starting point I'd like to question these things I don't assume that everyone straight or everyone's gay I ask everyone's you do you know what's the gender of what you date and that a nurse a lot of straight people and I think it's great to have our assumptions questioned because when we questions Saturn Saturn as our baseline concept of reality when we engage that part of ourselves and we question it there's more room for us to embody our truths and maybe your truth is you're super straight and you want to get married and you want to have like the whitest of all the dresses and like you want the most conventional things cool but choose it choose it by knowing that you don't have to choose it and you know so that's one anecdote and then the other one is something that actually came up in an astrology conference where I gave a talk about this topic and I shared a story about a particular client that I had who was cheating hot on her husband with this her lover and cheating on her lover with this other lover and half of the room was horrified they were just just offended and they were just like I hope you like kicked her out of your office and they were very offended by it and that kind of moralistic judgmental-ness is not humanity it's not it's a humanistic it's not my job to decide what someone else's morality should be it is my job in supporting people to recognize the choices they're making the impact of those choices on others but also on their own soul and not from a judging place but from a place of understanding like this person was like Jupiter Jupiter sach sach they were like I want I want I want I'm all Capricorn so that's I'm like I want but consequence and so I'm not gonna project my take on someone else instead it was supporting that person and seeing how by choosing everything all at once she was actually limiting what she'd have long-term and so how could she look at that and so by supporting her and seeing things from her own perspective in alignment with her own values and morality instead of my own I was actually able to help her and hopefully her kind of like many many loves and I think that that's really important because when we as astrologers or therapists or doctors or well doctors this separate astrologer is therapist when we bring too much of our own morality into the conversation then it's about you and I don't know why would you want why would you want that I want somebody to read a damn chart I want somebody to tell me based on my chart you know not based on their chart and I think when astrologers and we all do this one we're first learning astrology we think about signs or planets are asked by in relationship to our own experiences what we need to accept is that we are actually doing that through the lens of our birth chart instead of through the objective lens of astrology and that becomes very problematic and I think it's kind of brings us back to that original thing that you're referring to when you know straight white men of class privilege are the only ones writing a book then of course that's we're only going to see astrology that reflects those things and and I think that that's something we all need to get away from regardless of where we're starting from so it takes effort and it takes practice to do so yeah and it's important as an exercise and like flexibility as an astrologer to be able to have like let's say somebody comes into you and their background is that they're like a Catholic and then the next consultation you have the next day is they come in and they're like a Hindu and that's their religious preferences and those are just like religious examples but those would be two really obvious examples where if you're projecting your own morality and on to them it may not align with what they're sort of relative like moral standpoint is and how inappropriate that can be in some instances just obviously for you to do that as an astrologer mm-hmm yeah absolutely I mean I have clients who are Trump supporters I personally very vocally and not I am I stand resistance everything he stands for and that is not a conflict for me because I am not there to proselytize I have a podcast I can do it there I can write I can tweet I can do whatever I want but when I'm counseling someone I'm counseling them based on their needs and not my needs because it's not the Jessica hour it's it's the hour of my client and I think that for me as a consulting astrologer that is incredibly important and it is in integrity with me and because of social media and because I have a podcast now I think my clients are really clear on what my politics my values are but they weren't for the bulk of my career because I wasn't I didn't have a platform on which to publicly discuss these things so but you know I over the years have worked with many people who I don't per se agree with but it's not that's not my role I think it's not the of the astrologer to agree and you know different strokes for different folks so different astrologers are going to practice in different ways but that's certainly how I how I practice and again it is wound up in this idea of being a humanist about it so sure yeah yeah but I mean it goes back to another point which is just this idea that astrology is relativistic and I can't think of anything else that's more showing you like how relative that life is then astrology does and there's something really useful and insightful about that as like a core principle of what it's even all about agree yeah strong agree sure alright so let's see I'm trying to think of any points that we wanted to touch on first before we jump into the Q&A is there any other points we should have talked about we talked about the like friends and chosen family part of your book the hanging out and dating part and then there's also the like the long-term relationships part is there anything else you wanted to touch on on that that I skipped over I mean I I think there's something really interesting and talking about sex and sexuality from an astrological standpoint I think it's not something that I've seen explored enough by astrologers and again when I have it's been almost exclusively straight white men who have been the ones talking about it which is just great for them and not great for everyone else necessarily and not to say that I well I'll just say that and so I think that there is a value in talking about that in writing the book I wanted to be able to speak to sex a lot more than I could because of the structure of the book and the word count of the book I guess but I definitely I think I think that through kind of within all of the stuff we're talking about being willing and interested in looking at sexuality and not like I like girls I like boys but how one sexuality functions and how one embraces or negates their own sexuality how one experiences shame or Duty around sexuality these things are really important and they're important for us to be able to talk about as astrologers because when we relegate the body away from the spirit and the mind and the heart we're doing it's a service to wholeness and this is why I am a medical astrologer I do talk about sex and sexuality a lot because I don't see that any of these things as separate they're all different like shoots off of the same branch you know and and I think that this is again back to my kind of really simplistic kind of almost like essentialist approach to astrology and maybe using the word essentialist wrong but anyways because I really see all of these things as deeply connected and and I think talking about sex and sexuality is a really important part of talking about a person's psyche in a person's heart and and certainly about relationships that aren't platonic in nature which is a lot of relationships so yeah I don't know I don't know if there's like a lot more to unpack from there maybe some questions will kind of trigger this more but no I like that and I like the idea that you're also addressing like short-term relationships or just you know purely sexual relationships as well as platonic relationships or just like short-term hookups because that's like a whole there's a whole like age part of many people's lives where think that's kind of what relationships are for awhile but like most older astrology books don't necessarily address because best-case scenario they're often addressing like larger broader questions of like will I find when will I find my soul mate or is this the person I'm meant to be with for the rest of my life or something like that and that leaves out like this whole other sort of area of relationships yeah and and to add to that you know a big part of why astrology books historically have any kind of encompass that is because men are allowed to lots of people what is that soil your royal oats like spread your sea you know all this stuff men are encouraged up activated social sexualities but women are only supposed to have sex with their male life partner so it's really confusing because men aren't supposed these are straight men who are supposed to have sex with women but they're not supposed to have sex with their wives you have sex with your wife you meant you have sex with women and then you find a wife but you want her to be a virgin like that's like the history of how it goes down and for as women become more financially autonomous you know as we have birth control as we have the kind of greater freedoms to be as queer as we please all these things expand what's possible and it expands the conversation around sex and sexuality because now there's a reason to talk about Netflix and chill because hella people want that right lots of people want to have sex with someone and they don't want to date them or they want to date them but they don't want to partner with them and that's new it's not new that that um that people want this it's new that people can do this you know we don't have to get married we don't have to partner up and we don't have to be monogamous and so I think is I think it's exciting and I think it's exciting to be able to reference astrology to see these things and it's all there I mean it's not it's all there I guess it's just the important thing to say none of it is like oh snap we have to reinvent the wheel literally instead it's just we have to look for it and it's like on the surface waiting for us to talk about it and waiting for us to use it as a reference point but you have to you know you have to know again about humans in order to understand our strategy thoroughly I a mouse oh yeah and to remove like the there's not this sense of like shame like there was like let's say 20 or 30 years ago surrounding so many of those things are surrounding the idea that people do obviously have sex before marriage and that's just like a common thing yeah yeah it's just moving some of those removing some of those things and even when you're an astrologer doing consultations and I'm sure this has always been the case and you would only see traces of it but when you're doing consultations with people there's like this whole range of different variations in people's lives and people's morality and ethics and sexual orientation and all these different things and I'm sure astrologers have always been exposed to you know multitude of different ways that those things manifest but it's just not often until recently talked about openly instead it would often just be talked about very closely following like whatever the current societal norms were what-have-you yeah absolutely and and I think it's it's so wonderful you know one of the things I trained myself to learn and and this actually I talked about in the 2013 talk with Barry is I trained myself very early in my career should look at who uses who has safer sex who uses condoms and who doesn't and why and that is you know nobody taught me how to do it I taught myself how to drink so thought it was important and you know what it is because I talk to so many people who do not have safer sex and the reasons why they do it are varied and the reason is really important because we must understand that the need for sexual boundaries are really important because it protects your physical body in your emotional body and because you know you can get us the eyes and there's something you can get right now unintentionally like there is physical consequences but I'm interested in the energetic consequences you know and understanding that stuff is is so useful so practically useful for people and I'm again really passionate about what is usable for people so yeah these are things I'm really excited about and I and I my book doesn't you know it's not like a sex book but I hope that more and more astrologers are brave enough to kind of like bridge that gap and talk more about body in the context of sex in the context of health and all that kind of stuff you know this is something that comes up in my practice a lot and I'm super passionate about yeah and I think it's important there's been a bit of a traditional like revival of traditional astrology over the past few decades but one of the things that I don't always like that gets revived as part of that it's not been revived philosophically but one of the baggages of like first century astrology that was also part of like Christianity is this real divide between like spirit and body and an often like a sense of shame or guilt surrounding the body and seeing it as something negative or something problematic in some ways yeah and it's one of the sort of issues then that sometimes gets stuck with astrology but that I feel like is being shed and sort of pushed away a little bit as not as to moralistic or to philosophically divorced from the reality of like what our lives are actually like in the early 21st century absolutely yeah and I think also with scholars of all things we tend to get in our head right we get get in theory and and that divorces us from the body and when we talk about something like intimacy it is physical it's it's visceral and it's also emotional and I really do believe that being able to be present for the wholeness of our birth charb requires that we are spiritually emotionally mentally and physically present it doesn't have to be equal because some people are more one than the other or whatever but they all have to evolve and when we try to evolve the spirit without involved evolving the body or evolve the mind and keep on going with the mind the mind of mind and not evolve the heart then eventually we topple over and we have real problems and those problems will often manifest through the body and so yeah there's there's just wide-open highway on this topic like it's just there's so much to say about it so yeah it's something that I'm really excited about sure one of the things that I love about astrology and I was loved about doing consultations and sitting down and looking at somebody's chart and something we talked about on the last episode is that like a big secret in astrology is that every consultation that an astrologer does they learn something new because there's always like a unique birth chart and unique manifestation in that person's life of those placements even if there's repetition or even if symbolically you can sort of say ahead of time how this should manifest archetypal II you learn something new and one of the things I love is it's a lot of fun just to see how different people's lives actually work out in practice in all of these different like areas of their life that we're talking about is that something that's fun to you do you like enjoy that process still in doing consultations oh yeah absolutely yeah I mean I've been full time consulting since 99 and I have never and I've counseled twins and triplets and I have never seen the same chart twice even for triplets who have technically identical charts because we have a soul and our soul is this pesky little freewill bunny that just runs around making choices and I think that's just delicious I'm exciting and I love it and and so yeah I I mean I love reading birth charts so much and yeah there's it's constant learning and it's constant engagement with not just what a person is made of but how a person chooses to be I mean like forgive me for this like too on-the-nose metaphor but like we both may have a blue Yeti microphone but you know how to use it and I don't realtalk right and I just think like we can all have the same equipment but that doesn't mean we're gonna use it equal doesn't mean we're gonna use it the same way or for the same reasons and and that is just really exciting to me as a counseling astrologer because I want to talk to people about the choices they're making and empower them to see what options they have within those choices because that is where the soul evolves and that that soul evolution kind of drags the mind and the body and the heart with it in a really beautiful way so I'm sure definitely alright brilliant well why don't we transition into we put it a call for questions about like astrology and relationships and different things different discussion topics and we got a bunch of questions from listeners so why don't we transition into taking a look at some of those if you're up for it I'm always up for Question and Answer okay brilliant so let me see this is a good one so this is from Katherine Urban who actually has a book coming out very soon what day is your book being released by the way uh New Year's Eve 2019 so 12:31 2019 brilliant okay news yeah yeah so if you order it if you pre-order it you'll have it in your paws for New Year's Eve good idea I'll put a link linked to it and the pre-order page on the description page for this episode on the astrology podcast com so this is from Katherine Urban who has a book coming out and her Twitter is at a stroke Katherine she says sometimes couples think it would be fun to get a reading together do you have any thoughts on this so this is something that comes up because you know most people don't know this if you're not an astrologer but when astral Jers the structures have discussions about this because sometimes that even though it just sounds okay in theory like sometimes that doesn't work out or sometimes is actually not a good idea or can be super awkward yeah I I discourage people from getting reading couples readings for me do you okay so yeah absolutely doesn't really discourage it unless the needs of a child are involved they are in a long-term committed relationship or they have something like real that they are working with because relationships are like blown-glass you know you don't want to with them you don't want to be constantly fussing with them you know I think that when we as individuals take responsibility for how we dissipate what we participate in what we can send to we often don't need a relationship reading now couples counseling is a different thing because everybody has to show up in self-define when you meet with an astrologer we do all the talking you know what I mean like we tell you and that's not always helpful especially when the problem is one person doesn't want to listen and the other person is doing all the heavy lifting well then what's in astrology reading gonna do for you you know what I mean and and I've i do couples counseling a fair amount i have once had someone throw something at me I have I've had a lot of Tears I've helped a lot of couples for sure but it is it's only for relationships that are ready for it you know yeah and in terms of this then the reasons why it's problematic is you get the same issue if you have like a parent and a child that come in as well where like the parent is like bringing their child to get an astrology reading but then they sit on in on it and that can create a not helpful dynamic where the child doesn't feel like they can be open and honest with you necessarily because they have like their parent looking over their shoulder yeah I don't let parents I would I mean when I read for children which I do very rarely I do not let parents in the room and I only will do it under the commitment from the parent that everything I talk about with the child is completely confidential and I clarify for them that I'm not a therapist which means it is not my responsibility to report anything and if the child tells me they're doing anything that's a confidential thing they're telling me and I'm gonna be good to their trusts and if they don't want that they should see therapists but I I am NOT I actually just yesterday went to Berkeley high school and I got to speak to a class of high school students in their last year of high school about my job and like how I got it and all that kind of stuff and they asked me million questions it was so awesome it's my second doing it thank you yeah it was really really fun and you know inevitably they always ask like will you tell me about myself what about my chart and I always say the same thing to children which is until you're at the age where you can say to me and adults I disagree with you and feel totally clean about it then I'm not going to give you a reading because with children we have a power differential and that power differential is I'm the adult and I'm telling you something and children you know you can be I was a very precocious very opinionated very strong-willed child shocking I know I was and still when an adult said something to me was an adult saying something to me so that power differential cannot be negotiated around it doesn't matter how cool or down the adult is and so I'm really I'm really mindful of that and the kind of consultations I give to young people are different than the ones I give to older people even people under the age of 25 I will reframe things in a different way under the age of yeah 23 25 under that age I will frame things in a slightly different way because you know all of your adult experiences are mainly like when you're a teenager still so I really um I'm a big you know I'm such a Capricorn that I think like until you hit your joints and return you're in your childhood and so I I try to be really respectful of that and to to me that's not um like a minimizing someone because they're young is respecting their where they are and I think it's our job as response as responsible astrologers to recognize that not all ages are the same of course they're not we're astrologers so is your is your concern then like the more like the do no harm' dictum that you feel like if you're gonna use you might say something to a younger person that they're gonna take in a way that might not be healthy compared to somebody that's older yeah if I'm talking to let's say a 38 year old they will know who they are through lived experience now let's say I'm talking to a 23 year old they know who they are through feeling I'm through theory but not yet lived experience in the same way no at 23 you have you know how many years of kind of adult ish lived experience depending on your circumstances maybe start at 16 maybe it started at 18 but really this is a different thing and and I think it's really important to recognize that when an astrologer says this is who you are or this is what's going to happen it's scary to people you know we have a power and with that power comes a responsibility and my kind of sense of how to manage that responsibility is to really hold make sure I spare more words to free will and choice and potential when I'm talking to younger people because the 20's are a time where you're beating your head against your childhood and not being who you used to be or not being who your parents are or whatever it is and in your 30s and your 50s and your 70s that's not what you're doing anymore and as astrologers I feel that you know we have a responsibility to counsel people based on what we understand of astrology right which is that time does change you it does mature you and there are generational transits that happen in specific ages and they mark different levels of individuation so I kind of work in respect to that I don't hide things from people I'm very direct but I try to be respectful around that stuff so it's not that you wouldn't do a consultation with somebody younger it's just that you're gonna frame it differently and be more careful about making like overly deterministic statements with the ire person 100% yeah I work with a lot of younger people yes yeah I work with teens and young people as well like that sure I would want to say going back to the question there was one instance that I remember that I did do a consultation with a couple where actually worked out well where it was this older couple in they were both in their 70s and 80s and they I'd done like a newspaper interview and they saw it and just thought the idea of astrology was novel and contacted me and asked if I could read both of their charts in the consultation and when we were doing the half when we were reading the the older gentleman's chart he I was making some delineation about like Saturn in the second house and issues surrounding money or apprehensions or fears surrounding it and it wasn't really connecting he was like no I don't really that doesn't really connect at all he was saying like it didn't make any sense and then his wife spoke up and she's like no that's exactly you you grew up in the Great Depression and your family was in poverty for like the first entire chapter of your life and and that has carried through psychologically and affected every decision that you've made subsequently as long as I've known you for the last 60 years and so yeah well in it's because it's like the person sitting next to him like the one person who knew him the best and the longest and had the most objective perspective with which to view his life as opposed to the person whose chart it was were often times it's hard to step outside of your own life and look at it objectively so I always say that was one of the few exceptions where there was a value or there was something that was brought to the table instead of something that was problematic about doing a consultation with a couple mm-hmm yeah I mean I should say I I've done a lot of consultations with couples I loved it I I think it can bring a lot of value but the couple has to be ready for it and it has to be a reason I think the mistake people make is they come in because they think are we interesting or they want another past life connection and it's just like that's a fool's errand you're gonna be disappointed with what happens um I really think as direct and kind of kind of realistic as my one-on-one ratings are my couples readings are much more direct and much more realistic so it's kind of like a buyer beware moment as far as I'm concerned but when you do couples readings personally me what I do is I I study both of the individuals charts and then I pull up a composite chart I work with composites and so I cancel base on all three of those charts that's what I tend to work with what do you work with yeah like the the natal charts and like looking at their seventh houses and things like that and then there's synastry I heard actually that you you prefer composite charts over synastry and don't look at synastry that much is that true yeah you hit straight hey don't go so far as to say you hate synastry I hate it and i hate whole sine houses let me just be provocative yeah I do I hate both those things yeah that's fine thank you that's cool but you so you focus on composite charts and just before we started recording actually said you have a preference in terms of the two variations there's the midpoint composite chart and then there's the Davison chart and you are on team composite not team Davison correct yes correct correct yes okay yeah and I I am a big believer in you are who you are I am Who I am but when we come together in a relationship that relationship is a third animal it is it has its own chart and true when we look at just synastry it's I don't think it's comprehensive I don't find it to be as accurate myself and I have a lot of friends who are shoulders who strongly disagree with me and that's chill for me I don't mind but I am like I'm not attached to it it's just how I work I definitely I also will say I don't fixate on the seventh house because I don't know that the seventh house is actually the most important thing because I'm like first of all planet obsessed and second of all I I think every house in the birth chart is a relationship house when we're looking at relationships every house in the birth chart is a health house when we're looking at your health um of course some are going to be more than others but I that tends to be my kind of take on it and you know when I'm looking at relationships I'm looking at power dynamics I'm looking at relationship communication and I'm looking at how we share responsibility because those are the things that break people up and therefore they're the things that can hold you together if they're done right so those are those are kind of like big places that I focus but I you know maybe we can get more into that as the questions progress sure definitely yeah I think actually this next question might sort of address that or might lead into that so this question is from Diana rose at D D a.m. Sena I'll put it in the description handle with Thunder handles yeah yeah yeah Anna's awesome so her question is when is it actually beneficial to look at a Belov's birth chart synastry composite etc I feel like a lot of people will preemptively investigate these things like before the first date and end up making wildly incorrect assumptions before they've even met yeah I love that question um I've been with my current partner we're about to have our eight year anniversary and I couldn't tell you where anything is in his chart I really you don't know I'm he's a Gemini and did you ask did you ask the birth dad or anything like how soon or was that just not a priority for you nuts into the I asked for it okay I think that I'm gonna say right from the start though that that's a typical that's slightly atypical I think you say yeah for it for an astrologer yes it's highly atypical okay I'm also i but but I stand by it and I'm just passionate about it because here's the thing if you're an astrologer let's say you're a good astrologer - okay then you even if you don't know nothing about their birth chart you're gonna know way more about that person than a normal person would I mean if you're not a muggle you already have an advantage right and on top of it I'm psychic right so I have like a real advantage in relationships and it's a disadvantage in practical terms and the reason why I say that is because if you have data about a person then if you are telling yourself that that data is just data and you just want to know about that person you are lying to yourself because you're only doing it to satiate your own birth chart I am oh and I really believe that we should know a person through practical terms before we start pairing that emotional physical mental knowing with the analytic ideas about astrology you are not objective when you are subject and the second you have sex with someone or you have a crush on someone you are part of their birth chart you are a subject in their birth chart which means you are not gonna see anything anything objectively I don't care how genius you think you are you are not gonna see it objectively and I think I'm a damn genius and I still I really stand by this so I want to say that you know if somebody's asking me and I'm so glad you why thank you very much somebody's asking me don't look at your partner's shirt don't look at your crushes chart don't do it until you've already made an assessment for yourself based on your felt experience based on the evidence you're being shown about the person because seeing someone's potential will get in your way why don't you just see who the person chooses to be in front of you and how compatible it is in your felt experience astrology is not meant to allow us to evade intimacy and when we use astrology to evade intimacy it backfires on us it backfires on us there's a lot of astrologers who've been practicing for many years who can tell you they're not happy in their love lives that astrology has not facilitated greater intimacy right and the reason why is because it's we're not the great power for us we're not just heads an astrology is mental so just met it's a mental practice so if you want emotional connection sexual connection if you want vulnerability and if you want presence then don't function primarily out of your brain sure and and there's just a danger of making assumptions that going into the relationship with assumptions no matter how good of an astrologer you are you start you might start making assumptions about the person before you've even gotten to know them or before let's say even the best case scenario before you've gotten to know this specific way is that the archetypal placements in their chart actually play out or manifest in their life or in their personality or in their actions or how they choose to manifest to that when there's parts of their chart that they manifest as a result of freewill or what have you absolutely and also different relationships do different things again if we come back to the concept of the composite my composite chart with my best friends it's not gonna be the same as my car that my composition with my partner my partner experiences me in a completely different way my moon my Mars my son is a completely different Mars Moon and Sun with a romantic partner and a platonic partner and a colleague right and when you're vulnerable and you're excited about someone you're not going to be able to read that effective way of course not so it's a great question I wish more people would be careful and reading the horoscope of your crush it's a fool's errand and you know we're all fools I'm no judgment but it's not it's not super wise okay and yeah to put yeah I do think it is important to I I still engage in it and to read charts or have it read charts but I do think it's important for astrologers even as a cautionary thing just to go along with that to develop the ability to on the one hand like read a person and look at a chart and be able to make an assessment just on some extent about their life and their personality and different aspects of their life and to be relatively accurate when it comes to that but then on the other and also to hold off on making judgments about people especially new people that come into your life that are going to be part of your life until they've made those actions or done those things and to avoid like typecasting a person or projecting previous experiences with certain planetary placements or zodiac signs or whatever on to future relationships and assume that it's going to be the exact same thing no matter how close the placements are to past instances that you've seen to like allow or give some room to see how things go and how people act before sort of jump into conclusions almost yeah energy is energy but not all energy fits into a different container in the same way and I think you know I'm a big fan of looking at ex's ex friend's ex colleagues ex-lovers looking at their charts and really studying them because I have the gift the kind of like perspective of retrospect like I saw the whole damn thing happen and now I can understand it that's a great way of using astrology but to imagine that you know if I say to you oh you know I'm dating a summon and rising Gemini you already had a million thoughts you already had a million opinions about uh summarizing in Gemini right like most people would have ideas and so you know when we are subject we cannot be object and to take responsibility for that I think is really important and again I'm coming from the perspective of being a counselor type and so I'm interested in helping people to have more whole and embodied lives and birth charts and you cannot do that if you're scanning for danger and reading someone else's chart so that you know what to expect that's not there's a cheat for life honestly like it doesn't work but it's a great question thank you for asking yeah and just to back up what you're saying and my own personal experience about a decade ago I um I was in this relationship just that just went really bad and like it turned into a stalker like situation where I was being harassed for like a year after leaving the relationship and it was very like abusive and bad and just a very dark part of my life and I tried to move forward and like a few months after that I met this new person and this relationship came out of nowhere even though I would had sworn off relationships after that previous one which had just sort of ended a few months earlier and one day we're talking and it's one of our first sir quasi dates and she drops her birth chart placements and the chart is just extremely similar like same rising sign and like a few other placements as the ex who had just been stalking and like harassing me for a year and it just like any my initial reaction it was just one of the media like fear and has trepidation and all these other things if like oh my god like I'm about to walk into the exact same relationship but luckily as an astrologer I sort of cautioned myself not to just immediately jump to conclusions and just to let things sort of play out and just see how they went before making all sorts of assumptions about exactly how things would go based on the similarity or the repetition of certain placements that I had just experienced and that maybe I would experience different variations of some of those placements then how they acted out in the other person's life you know previously and then that turned into like a tenure you know relatively successful happy relationship that I'm still in yeah and that was a really important lesson for me it's an astrologer and that's one of the that is one of the cautionary tales that I would tell people in general is just to be careful in why you should be careful because sometimes you might run into situations like that we're prejudging people could be a bit major mistake yeah absolutely and also you know when we have to learn how to have boundaries we'll learn it whether we want to or not like you know and if that's how the the universe Jesus whoever you want to blame astrology on is trying to get you to learn it's through these particular aspects and somebody else's chart then who are you to stand in the way I think it's really important that we focus on our own birth charts I think that's where our greatest growth occurs is when we focus on our own both birth charts and understands that if I have an issue to learn around boundaries or around direct communication or around emotionally showing up and things get messy then I will attract no one but people who force me to embody those things like that's just how the birth chart runs and so if we look for answers and other people we lose the thread and the birth chart tells you everything you need to know about yourself everything you need to know and so it's a it's about being brave and not seeking shortcuts you know I think it really is and it is it requires bravery to have feelings for someone and to date someone and let someone into your life and you know I think using astrology as a tool for being brave instead of looking for a shortcut around having to be brave is a really good approach definitely and and also you're going to see if you're like dating different people for a long enough time period you're gonna see repetitions and like certain placements or certain things that come up over and over again and may represent either relationship dynamics that you're playing out in different variations of or may just represent because of how your birth chart is playing out like certain types of energies that you tend to attract for whatever reason whether that's healthy ones or unhealthy ones or what-have-you that you know you may have a predisposition towards like certain rising signs or certain Venus signs or Mars signs or what-have-you and experiencing those the different variations of some of the same placements becomes one of the great like joys and and sort of like educational things that you get to do as an astrologer yeah to whatever extent if you are sort of paying attention as you go yeah I agree with that completely what was your experiencing though once you actually did see your partner's chart I mean that's like several months into the relationship that's so interesting like what was your reaction I was so there was there's a couple reactions one is I mainly only looked at it because he had something going on and I was like answering a question that's really I've never studied his birth chart I never sat down with his birth chart because I don't need to because I'm experiencing him and I'm showing up and when he bugs me which he does I deal with it and when he pleases me which he does I deal with that and like all the things in-between and um so I mainly just if he's like going through a time I'll look at a chart and be like I was snap okay so now let's look at what's going on here and we'll talk about it that way so I'll try to be supportive so there's there's that I the one thing that I did notice is that I was in a relationship for almost a decade before getting into this one hobby mmediately but like my last major relationship was with the person who had like a million planets in Scorpio with a Gemini rising and my current partner is a Gemini with a Scorpio Rising so I was like that is not what I would have picked like I wouldn't have thought that my triple Capricorn ass would be like Gemini's Scorpio but I apparently adore it who knows so that's a fun thing and you know what I've never done any kind of like astrological investigation into why I like that pairing or why that I like that combination because it's just data collection it's not gonna help me be more whole it's not gonna serve my evolution so I don't with it okay yeah yeah I mean and sometimes I've seen repetitions like every relationship I've had has always been with another fixed sign rising and I have Aquarius rising so I have a fixed sign rising so it's just some random you'll notice random pieces of data that may or may not like means something in the long term they probably do but sometimes it just becomes like data that there's one of the mysteries of life yeah exactly yeah and it's like it's like how much I mean as a the more practice of an astrologer one becomes the more it's like well you can have just like a chamber of secrets full of data but who's gonna use it like I'm I'm such a Capricorn in this way where I'm just like really interested in utility I'm really interested if it's useful I want it if it serves the work I want it and if it doesn't then I'm just gonna kind of lose track of it and and and that's just what works for me and you know let's hold space for different birth charts are gonna have different priorities right so that's just what works for me sure definitely mm-hmm all right let's see we already touched on this one but it was a good one from advice astrologer at edv astrologer they asked I would like to know if you guys prefer to use Davis and her composites and your answer was a strong composite and I also used composites I never thought Davison's made sense because a composite is like a midpoint between planetary position so if like one person's Venus is at 14 degrees of a sign and the other person is at 16 degrees then the composite chart will put Venus at 15 degrees of that sign has like a midpoint in space but the Davison composite doesn't mid point in time where it's like if one person's born on November 1st and another person's born on November 2nd of 3rd then it'll create a chart for November 2nd yeah and then that's the sort of composite chart so I was liked the other the original composite is more of like a abstraction of the idea of midpoint theories and midpoints is like a technical thing rather than creating you know some other chart in time yeah I'm with you a hundred percent although I couldn't have said it as well as you did but yes agree ok let's see here's a good one this I think you'll like this so how do and this is tied in with one that we talked about yeah actually let's this is by the same person actually advice astrology they said I'm curious what you think about quote-unquote Twin Flames are you a big fan of Twin Flames I know hard no they do not like to inflate the concept of Twin Flames I am NOT a huge fan of in general I won't say you don't believe in it it's not for me to believe it I mean and I was Twin Flames a belief system I can't really I don't fully understand that part of it I mean to me it's a new thing like I feel like people if when these are talking about this in the past few years maybe it hops and it's just like out there that this is a concept that exists and but astrologically it's like this didn't wasn't a thing until very recently no I mean listen there's no perfect person which means there's no perfect partnership and my my concern about the concept of a twin flame is when people come into my office and they're like I have met my twin flame what they're really saying is I'm in a ploutonion relationship where I'm not getting my mate needs' mad and everything is chaotic and I'm not happy but I wanted to work so badly because I feel a soul connection that's what I hear and so me that's not something that I'm really I don't think that's great I think it's ideal for us to seek functional healthy relationships in the here now and I am of the mind that we have a soul connection and a spiritual connection with every person we have contact with and it's not enough we need functionality we need compatibility in real time otherwise it's destructive and it's not the best of our birth charts and if you're not embodying your birth chart to the best of your ability then you're gonna have to go back and fix it so you might as well do it right the first time sure yeah and this is tight too actually another question by Rochelle Stein at rosh bond where she says how to identify and navigate quote-unquote soul mates and karmic relationships and this is all sort of part of the same category and it's something that I feel like clients often come to astrologers wanting to know and I think one of my early motivations for astrology was wanting to know things like that of identifying if a person is your soul mate but I don't I don't feel like astrologers can tell you that if you're like that's something that a client wants to know abstractly but it's one of those things that in some instances is beyond the scope of what astrologers can say with 100% certainty do you feel the same way or am i no I I agree with that but but even maybe even more like grandpa get off telling you to get off my porch kind of vibes I would say that um if I may own it thank you very much the idea of a soul mate it's complicated to me because to have a soul connection if you reject the idea in general that there is such thing as a soul mate I'm rejecting the idea that that not everyone is a soul mate I think that that the the idea this is kind of back to something we were talking about in a different context before this soul Union is every relationship is meant to be a soul Union your relationship to your cat to your bestie to your mail person if you're not doing it with your soul you're not doing it right you know we are meant to show up with our soul and I think that the kind of misuse of the concept of soul mate is it's conflictual and I feel a yearning and I'm pulled to it but it isn't working it isn't functioning and when it isn't functioning in practical terms effectively that doesn't make it more spiritual let me speak more astrologically okay when we have strong eptein connections with someone or when we are very Neptunian ourselves we seek spiritual union but we have a tendency to orient ourselves towards potential instead of evidence when we are deeply Plutonian or in a ploutonion relationship we tend to go for the most powerful feeling instead of the healthiest and best adjusted feeling and when we have a relationship that is deeply Plutonian it can be conflictual and it makes you feel like you're pulled by a magnet but it doesn't necessarily work in a healthy way and so from my perspective these kinds of relationships are often called soul unions or twin flame unions but that doesn't mean that they're actually better because you have a deep yearning for someone and it's not functioning well is not actually like what I would characterize is something I want to support so the when when we unpack the idea of a twin flame or a soul union it's often very hard for people to explain what they mean other than I really want this person and I really want it to work and it isn't working and that's where I as grandpa Capricorn astrologer and just like well I I that's not what I'm here to support I'm here to support someone's best interest and not best idea okay yeah that's offensive or sad to people no that's fine and I mean part of it is it seems like just a presumption that there is like one relationship and everybody wants to find like that one thing that relate relationship like the movies that they'll they'll fall in love and be swept off their feet and then they'll live the rest of their lives together for decades and decades and eventually grow old and like die holding hands exactly right and it's like well sometimes that does happen I mean there are relationships that one earlier I was talking about if that couple that came to me for that consultation it was in their 80s they'd spent like 60 years together of their life and had a relatively successful and happy marriage and they met when they were like 18 and I feel on some level to the extent that they lived their entire lives in that relationship that they met very early on and it ended up being happy and fulfilling and they had children and grandchildren and what have you that that you could say like yeah sure that that was the case maybe in those in that instance that they had met the love of their life and there was this one person and they lived their entire life with them you know I don't know if that's necessarily always the case with everybody like you might meet a few people in your life that you end up having like a karmic relationship with or that end up being very defining relationships in your life that you learn something from and grow from as a person and that you love and care for that person very intensely during that part of your life but there's just many different scenarios and that one sort of ideal not Cinderella story but like sort of fairy tale story is not going to be the case for everybody necessarily which is why it's kind of awkward when a person comes to you as an astrologer and asked to tell you if this person is that person because in most instances that's not usually going to be the case and and it's not useful to know that honestly because if I say to you I can't tell you how many clients have come to me and some astrologer or some psychic was like this person's supposed to be your soul mate they're your twin flame you're gonna end up with this person and then inevitably the relationship doesn't work and then the client struggles are like how did I mess up my one chance at love like the most important thing is dealing in the here and now with the relationships you have to the best of your ability and if someone isn't healthy or compatible for you if they're not showing up walk away have faith in yourself have faith in your capacity to love and to manifest more experiences and don't become attached to the idea or the potential with someone and said deal with the reality of what exists between you and that person I think that's just so important yeah definitely and and also just looking at things like synastry or composite charts or the birth charts or the transits that a person's having in terms of relationships you know there's going to be in any relationship there's going to be things that work out well in areas where your relationship goes relatively smoothy smoothly and there's going to be areas where you guys have tensions for whatever reason and in some relationships those tensions and the downsides are going to be negotiable or they're going to be things that you can you can push through and get over and don't you know destroy the relationship or make it non viable whereas there's going to be other situations where those downsides and about weighing things and the relationship you end up having to walk away at some point for whatever reason as a result of that and while it's sometimes useful with astrology to identify that ahead of time and the astrologer can do that to some extent it's not always going to be the case that they can say 100% if those difficulties are going to be surmountable or not and often that ends up being a choice that you end up having to make at some point during the course of the relationship which is my main reason why I kind of it sounds weird if somebody does come to me and say another astrologer told them that this person was my soul mate or that we were Twin Flames that I almost feel like that's almost unethical to some extent because it's just completely removed the element of freewill and it's also the astrologers going out on a limb by saying that this is definitely like the love of your life and the one relationship that you're meant to be with for the rest of your life and I think astrology has limitations that need to be recognized in terms of that absolutely I agree and I'll just kind of add to that if you're listening to this and you're a practicing astrologer at whatever stage of your development there are two kinds of problems in relationships there's the problems that are your problems no matter who you're dating no matter who you're with there are the problems that you're going to find your birth chart that you need to come into a bonding minute around and then there's the problems in your birth chart that you've already outgrown or that you that are actually not things that you need to be dealing with in your life their destructive problems there are not problems that help you come to wholeness and if you can determine that the problems between you and the person you're dating or our friends with or whatever are destructive and they're not calling you to be a more embodied healthy part of your life get the hell out of the relationship that's the lesson the lesson is don't consent to things that are unhealthy embody your best potential and that breaks the relationship then the relationship was already broken and if that makes the relationship stronger then you can't help but continue to be together right and so don't worry so much about predicting what comes next instead concern yourself with enacting what is best and then the best case scenario can't help it unfold it works I know it sounds are really simple but it works yeah that makes sense to go back to something your singer earlier though one of the things that annoys me about people trying to identify the pieces and saying that certain pieces are karmic or certain relationships or karmic is I really agree with the point that I think you were making earlier which is like every thing in the chart is karmic to a certain extent and it like if you're gonna adopt karmic philosophy like in like Indian astrology for example where they came from they just consider like every part of the chart to be karmic or to be the result of past actions whatever you mean by that and every relationship in your life is going to have some broader karmic meaning or is going to be the result of something if you're framing things and that sort of philosophical context so it's almost like weird to try to say that one relationship is more karmic than another on some level I agree I think it's a misunderstanding of what karma and karmic relationships are all connections that we have our karmic because we are karmic beings if you if you resonate with the concept of karma it's not just my hard relationships or karmic or my long-term relationships our karmic road your Karma's your Karma it's and you know it's Yale true so yeah I agree with that completely yeah there's a great book called the greatness of Saturn have you ever read it yes I love that book I read it a Kepler was recommended to me by Denis harness and it's really intense but it's a good good book it is it is it's something called a living myth so you're supposed to kind of approach it reading it in a really spiritually present way and if if you're somebody who's interested in the concept of a karmic relationship it's a great book to check out it's called the greatness of Saturn and you know when you read it you're supposed to read it with reverence of like a you know it's a spiritual context so read it with intention but it is it is a really great book for this topic I think yeah and it is intense I do want everybody warned people ahead of time that's an intense read and probably mess you up it'll mess you up in a really great way if you're in a Saturn Transit reading if you're not in a Saturn chance that you've just recorded for one maybe way maybe way all right so all right let's keep going down the list here so this is from Rob Bailey at old school Astro on Twitter he says how do you feel about the concept of quote unquote sister signs as it pertains to relationship astrology or synastry and yet let's leave it at that so this is another one of those concepts where I feel like this has come out of nowhere in the past few years where lots of people are talking about sister signs but it doesn't seem clearly defined it seems like one person will be talking about it and they think it means one thing and then I'll see another person talking about it and they think sister signs are another thing and it seems kind of all all over the place because it's not like a traditional concept necessarily like I don't remember seeing it very recently we heard of it on Twitter it's funny there's like concepts like that like twin flames and like sister signs and every other things like that that are it being generated almost spontaneously like on some level cusps is kind of like that but it goes back further anyway yeah i think i think you know i mean i think twin flames comes out oh it's not from astrology so i don't know its origins but it's not like an astrology concepts but it's that thing when you tell someone you're in astrologer they show you their palm and they ask you to read their tro cards and they ask you to talk to their jeb relatively people kind of conflate all these things even though they're completely separate things but i do i've never heard of it outside of twitter and this is the danger that i kind of referred to early much earlier in the conversation about the democracy the democratization of astrology is that who is vetting what like where are the sources of this you know there's so much there's so much to be done with astrology there's so much data about astrology the concept of a sister sign i don't know how that's necessary i mean i don't know am i being too much of a grandpa right now I don't know but I I just don't I I don't know what that means yeah I don't and people like you I don't know what definitions you've heard I've heard a couple like one of them I've heard somebody say that it's signs that are opposite but I don't know if that makes sense just conceptually from a ancient standpoint I guess is how I approach these things because they're signs of the opposite polarity so that's one definition I've seen I've seen other people theorize that maybe it's supposed to refer to planets or signs of the zodiac that are ruled by the same planet if you follow that rulership scheme at all I don't know okay so like maybe Libra and Taurus might be sisters signs because they're both ruled by I was like that I don't think it's necessary I don't see how it improves anybody's life but I think you know I mean listen you know I think as a person in middle age I'm really open to learning new things and new astrologers coming up with new ways of looking at things and you know I'm down for that I have not heard anything compelling about this sister science cons up myself I can I could see I mean I have ancient nothing I'm not an ancient oriented person but I definitely think I could you know I could I could extrapolate based on like the you know Venus tour the Libra Taurus idea or even opposite signs being sister science like how it's essentially you know two sides of the same energy field sure sure but is it necessary like how does that and it seems to me like a distraction from the central issue which is how can you show up in your relationships in a way that is really engaging and present and hold so that you can get the most out of your relationships and if that means you're just trying to show up engaging in present and whole for the fact that all you're doing is boning with someone cool do that or if it's about being in a long-term monogamous relationship chill do that but I don't know that the sister science thing or so many other like theories of basically pulling yourself back from the data and theorizing about the data I don't know that that helps with this topic the topic of relationships and relating with other humans in a successful way sure yeah and I would just say that it's just not well defined and nobody has it there's no consistent definitions somebody wants to come up with a consistent definition and everybody wants to vote on it and get on board with saying that sister signs is like this one technical concept then we can talk about it but right now it's it's not even something I feel like we can talk about because it's so poorly defined because it's not a concept that anybody seems to have used until relatively recently yeah yeah all right next question so this is from Elise on Twitter who says what is the biggest mistake that most people make with relationship astrology what are the commonplace myths that too many people fall for so we already kind of talked about some of this when it comes to like karmic relationships and Twin Flames I'm trying to think if there's any other common things are there like timing things for example that have become myths or cliches or or things that people take too far like I'm trying to think of I you know for me I I see that one piece people have this idea like oh I'm going for through Venus transit I'm gonna fall in love Venus is not that strong honey no I transit to your natal Venus may be a transit from like Venus in the sky is generally not strong enough the thing about relationships and like a big misunderstanding that I see is that people think that relationships happen to you your relationships don't happen to you you are an active participant in your relationships and so there's a way that I think first of all we need to like count ourselves into the conversation and second of all I think that um I think that kind of waiting for the right time is is problematic not only because it's passive but because different relationships are good for different things you know not all relationships need to end in marriage you know when I was looking through some of the Twitter questions which I didn't see all of them unfortunately I notice a lot of the questions were about like marriage and like when will I find the one and you know not all relationships are meant to end in marriage a relationship is not a failure if you end up breaking up a relationship is only a failure if you don't learn from it if you don't grow and the the work of being a human and you know we've lived really long now we like we really live a long time and through the jaqen and gift of divorce I'm a very big divorce advocate um we don't have to stay with people we don't like you know what I mean and I just think being able to recognize that you have free will and that you have choice and that you want to keep on growing and evolving ideally with someone who's your best friend who you want to bone forever but you know if that doesn't happen you can change your mind and change your life and to be open to that instead of being like well what am I gonna find the person in one minute get there it's kind of a very when I say an old-school way of looking at things I mean old-school in that life used to be much shorter and when you have a lot more options and we used to have a lot more I'm sorry a lot less options and a lot less potential of you know kind of self-discovery and so it's old-school in that way because it's not acknowledging that we've more stimulation distracting us from our relationships and compelling us to grow and outgrow our relationships it's a new world and our kind of assumptions haven't caught up with that new world yet you know so I'll be really interested in like the kids who are in high school today what kind of relationships they choose to have when they're you know in our age group because I think that's I think they will better reflect the kind of hyper stimulation of the world today you know and we just haven't caught up yet yeah one of the things I'm really looking forward to and it may not get to see but it's like this generation is things have changed very rapidly I feel like in society in the past couple of decades and different things that have been either taboo or that have been vilified or or marginalized in different ways have become less so and certain battles have been fought in kind of one in terms of the culture wars or what have you and I'm curious what things that are taboo we're seen as bad or for whatever reason marginalized today with like this generation that's still young now like what are the things that will be the battles that will be fought like forty years from now or something like that like what will become something that's a point of contention that becomes commonplace or becomes no lized at some point in the future that's like one of the things I sometimes think about that'll be interesting like when we're old and outdated and like there's like concepts that we can't get on board with like what would that be you know 30 or 40 years from now mm-hmm yeah well I think it is really interesting to think about and I also think it's hard to even conceptualize that without talking about climate change and you know acknowledging that people who are being born now are being born with Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn they're being they're gonna they're being born with Neptune and Pisces you know they they are going to live through scarcity that we have not yet experienced and I think that you know this this veers us away from our Center topic so I won't I won't push us too far down this path but I do think that the children being born now are going to inherit an earth that will reshape priorities around intimacy around partnering and around community in a really meaningful way and I just realized that you and I are basically wearing the same outfit and it's very cute I want to get you a pair of right glasses immediately yes I was incredibly charmed I know it's not that shocking but still it's cute it's cute we did it I need a gold necklace as well yeah you do I was gonna say something I was like where's your gold chain I know I'm and I meant to say at the beginning like I surprised my ass too at the beginning of this if anybody had ever called you Jalen because that's just like an immediate like nickname I want to give you because there's like Jay Jay law there's JLo and I think Jalen would be like a great nickname but you said nobody's nobody's done that nobody's because I'm in an abusive relationship with the world and that's really the only reason why and you're the only person who sees me clearly obviously I've always wanted a nickname but I don't get why nobody nobody you know I'm like a three-syllable name girl you know what I mean I'm like sure my name is like seven hundred syllables in it so I want everyone to learn from you and calling in people and I made this mistake and I apologize sometimes mispronounce your name which is also unfortunate right whines yeah people always mispronounce it but I see I came up with the name for my website love Lynette calm before the internet was really a thing like I didn't I certainly didn't use it I was still using my 1989 Packard Bell laptop where I just ran my solar fire it's all I did with it so I like created a web page and I called it Loveland eurocom it was full in my mind it was like love comma ylim yada but you couldn't put a comma in the web address anyways and so I kept it big mistake because now people have to actually say and spell my frickin last name which is a nightmare yeah so nobody can pronounce my name it's not frenetic I'm not offended but also it's llegado for those who are curious that is slightly better though that like my situation was I got beat - my domain name name Chris Brennan com by the other Chris Brennan who preceded me who's a MMA fighter whose nickname is Crick Chris Brent and the West Side strangler so my friends have a I've always gotten a kick out of that for the past ten years and I've been fighting like the West Side strangler in the like search rankings in Google that is amazing and I feel almost sad that that's not your nickname I mean you could be like the East Side strangler to see how it goes right like I feel like it's pretty good so back to this is the point you're just making one thing I want to say before we move on that about that topic but one of the things I wonder about sometimes and I have a strong suspicion that may come up at some point in the future and I don't know if this is too weird or futuristic but there's all these discussions about and predictions by like futurists about if artificial intelligence is possible and if so these like projections for like well in the next like three to four decades if it is possible it may be discovered and what that would mean for Humanity and all these different things and I just want to put this out there that at some point in the future there could be a scenario if that's even theoretically possible where there is questions about like human-like AI relationships and different moral conundrums and different things that would come up surrounding that and then astrologers having to deal with that topic and I could see that as being an issue from like a sci-fi perspective of something that people would wrestle with if it ever did become like an actual issue I think I you know I think on some level the future is now and I think on some level we are having like the beginnings of that as we have virtual relationships we never have any face to face let alone in-person contacts and on the other side of a screen may be somebody completely different than the person you think you're engaging with and as we see that we see a more and more what I would characterize as a Neptunian dynamic where your interpersonal relationships are largely based on projection and fantasy and I I wouldn't be surprised if we are moving in that direction because it certainly seems like we are moving in that direction and I think you know within that it is important to recognize that AI can be racist it can be heterosexist and misogynist it can be able estai mean it can be all kinds of things because AI is programmed by people and the people who have the highest ranking roles and Technology are by and large white straight men and there is a real need for us to democratize who makes technology who programs and you know if you're listening and you're like I was thinking about becoming an engineer and I'm not a dude I want to say please do it take one for the team and just do it because we need more people who are who are creating these algorithms to be diverse we need more of a diverse team doing these things because otherwise we're gonna have much bigger problems than the ones you're kind of like speaking at you know is something I think about a fair amount I don't really consider myself a futurist but I consider myself somebody who can see this near-death experience and just about everything so okay and then finally just one last thing about the main question about what mistakes people make in relationship astrology I didn't want to say there's one generalization that non astrologers but people that just know like Sun Sun astrology maybe sometimes make and the idea that maybe there's just one sign that's compatible with your sign or something like that like just assumptions that certain signs only get along with or can have remain take or long-lasting partnerships with certain signs and that's just like objectively not the case like once I get into astrology long enough you'll see variations of people having long and satisfying relationships with all sorts of different combinations of signs and placements and planets and what-have-you absolutely strong strong agree and light and also I'll just say like for my book it's predicated on the idea that we do not date out of our Sun the Sun is your identity in your will and that's a part of where we partner from or we we date from but really there's so much more Saturn is your sense of longevity and commitment and normality it's it's you know all that kind of stuff we we date out of Venus which is like intimate and social connection Mars which is like sexual compatibility but also how you do things like the pace at which you live we need compatibility on all the levels or at least we need our compatibility to kind of be somewhat equal on all the levels in order to have enough tension to keep it interesting and enough competitive like ease to make it sustainable and that you cannot find out through your Sun Sign you know people I was actually just at the high school as I said yesterday and one of the kids I was talking to she was like oh thank God I don't have any cancer in my chart and I was like I bet just because you said that you have a bunch of planets in the fourth house and she was like I don't think so and she pulled up her chart because it's 2019 and teenagers can pull up their birth charts and lo and behold four planets in the fourth house the thing that you hate the thing that you think is like a difficult thing is probably what you have in your chart you just don't realize it that's what I've come to learn we only have strong feelings about certain signs when we have them prominent in our chart or we have them easily triggering our charts so strong agree plus plus plus brilliant and and so could we do a breakdown like that cuz I'm curious if your breakdown is the same as mine and I know you go to into this a little bit in the book but I would say like you look for sometimes like like mercury and their relationship let's say synastry wise or connections and relationships in terms of how that people communicate and maybe get along intellectually maybe Venus and Mars for how they get along physically or sexually in instances Sun and Moon for how they might relate or get along on a more core especially emotional real 'evil on some level how would you that's usually how I do the breakdown but how would you do that breakdown in terms of all of those different how do you how to rise those yeah and that is the whole book basically for me like that's that is what the book does and it does it through all the sections right so each of the topics but for so for me it's the Sun once wants us to be seen where we have the Sun we want to be seen as a whole being and we want to be recognized as you know what I mean in the in the nature of our Sun the moon of course is your feelings and your needs how we want to be nurtured and how we seek to nurture others mercury is not just how we verbally communicate it's how we process data it's how we listen and you know the way that someone is listening to me has everything to do with whether or not I feel cared for and respected Venus is a relationship to money and what we own which is a huge part of long-term committed relationships what often breaks people up is disagreements around money and values around that sort of thing it's also around sensual connection so it's not like athletic doing it but it's like the central part of hooking up Mars is about showing up fornicating it's you're pacing through the world and it's also how you fight and whenever couples tell me that they don't fight I get very nervous because Mars needs an outlet you need to fight with someone now and again obviously the way we fight needs to be healthy and fair in order for it to lead to a successful relationship but everyone's annoying and everyone messes up so you need Mars then I don't stop there because I'm obsessed with the outer planets it is one of my deepest passions I'm obsessed with the outer planet so for me Jupiter is our sense of resiliency but also our sense of how we grow through life Saturn as I mentioned is related to themes around monogamy and loyalty sustainability but also our relationship to fear and our relationship to shoulds and kind of like I am responsible to you you are responsible to me it's also what other people think finally we have Uranus which is my sense of freedom and autonomy my ability to individuate away from you or to change my Neptune is anxiety and it's also a sense of romance and potential and spiritual connection and then finally with Pluto Pluto is shame the Pluto is compulsion if I hate myself eventually I'm gonna hate you Pluto Pluto is intensity it's another planet that has to do with sex but it's much more oriented around like the shame we hold around sex and they deepened driving compulsions we have I would also say Saturn has to do with sex it's more to do with repression and kinks kinks that come from repression specifically and so and I could keep on going but I'm just like cliff notes again cliff now yeah no this is great and so this is what if want people to learn more about that that this is in your book this is you know the whole premise of the book is so there's an intro to each of those sections we talked about about the different topics of friends lovers relationships and there's an intro on that topic and then for each planet there's an intro that explains that planet in the context of the topic and then it goes that planet in a house that planet in the in each sign so it really breaks it down and it empowers the reader to see let's say we're talking about Venus Venus from every angle the angle of a platonic relationship the angle of a new TBD style relationship and from like long-term committed relationship whether it's monogamous or not and being able to kind of like look at a thing for a multiple anger angles to me is being able to have a more flexible and nuanced use of astrology and which is of course like my whole shtick I'm super into it so yeah that's all in the book awesome that in that right there is great motivation for everybody to go out and buy the book and pre-order the book right away that's it right there it's really cute oh it's right there on the wall yeah it's not can I pull grab it yeah wait for it um I have exactly one copy of this book but I love that thank you so got a little gold to match my tooths I love it in the line layouts great and you actually coat we had a co-author on the books yeah I you have a co-author because I don't enjoy writing believe it or not I write all the live long day and I do not enjoy it so this woman T Greenaway who's amazing she did the amazing desk of writing what I spoke so I spoke the book and she wrote it and then we collaborated on the edit of it and she helped me so much because I I have all this data in in this head of mine you know I'm just like a big data machine and I'm not a scholar so I don't take notes on my data I just have it and what has been really wonderful is you know she helped me to structure the data in a way that people could actually use so it was it was a really interesting process because there really wasn't research to be done it was just like you know pulling out the data and organizing it effectively right yeah and that's coming with so many astrologers like that's one of the things that's so hard as you do tons of consultations and you'll learn a bunch of really interesting things in every consultation but then afterwards we don't turn around and like immediately write it down it just like sticks in your brain and some instances as a piece of collected knowledge that you sort of have somewhere there in the background but it's not usually written down like right away yeah absolutely and I've experienced in teaching or lecturing to other astrologers that astrology conferences I've been in situations luckily not too often but I've been in situations over the years where people are like well how do you how do you know that from looking at that aspect and I'm like cuz I do like I can't it's hard to like break down the methodology so so so my co-author was instrumental in being like no no you actually have to explain this and she like slowed me down because I may be a triple Capricorn but I'm very urania and so I have a hard time with the slowing down sometimes she yeah so that was a really wonderful process and if you're a person who doesn't like pictures you'll hate this book because it's got very cute pictures in there sometimes those yeah buy it love it hug it if you're anything like me you'll hug the book because it's very huggable yeah it looks comfortable I would say they're like yeah that exactly what the goal was you know when we designed it we were thinking something that you could put in a tote bag and bring with you to the park and right like right along the margins I mean if you want to get it for Kendall I respect you but this is the kind of book I hope that people take notes in you know what I mean like bring and because the way I like I said the way I use the fundamentals of astrology it's like you can return to it over and over again and when you have a deeper sense of a kind of assimilated synthesized knowledge then you can build and the same data becomes a whole new piece of information so okay that was it I did it was meant to be a rainbow thank you I love it how are we we're at one hour and 47 minutes how are you for time and when do we need to wrap it this up you want to do a few more questions or should we start to wind down any anger angry messages let me do you mind if I just do a quick text because let me make sure yeah go ahead and while you're doing that I'm gonna I'm forgot to mention I wanted to mention a few other episodes if anybody wants to learn more about relationship stuff from past podcast episodes I've done a few good ones we were just talking about outer planets so I wanted to mention episode 67 I did with Kate Taylor who I think is also a SAN francisco-based astrologer where we talked about the outer planets and relationships and that was one of my favorite sort of back-catalogue episodes that recommend episode 128 was on composite charts with the originator of the technique John Townley Wow yeah that was a big one I was so glad I got to do that I've been wanting to for years and then we actually with the guy that came up with the technique so it's a good one and then finally episode 165 was with John Green on the topic of synastry and some of the work he's done on the astrology of relationships by looking at that sinister ease we've sort of covered it this is my final like relationship episode where we're really rounding it out that's awesome okay I can keep going Oh perfect okay so here's a question from Twitter from Astro girls at Astro GRL Z they say I would love to hear more about relationships and astrology specifically looking at queer relationships this is more of a topic than a question but I hope that they are able to touch a bit on it and I know we touched on this a little bit but I was wondering is there anything that's relevant that you can say to speak to that that is different or unique or important to keep in mind or is really your approach to create an astrology that's broad enough and archetypal enough that it can be applied to any context regardless of one's you know orientation or anything else yeah so there's the queering of astrology and then there is queer people right and the querying of astrology is not making assumptions it's holding space for the sexuality being a continuum it's holding space for a greater sense of sorry a greater sense of agency within each individual in a relationship that is to me the queering of relationships of relationship astrology and so that's partially asking a client like why do you want to get married you know you want kids why why do you want kids you sure you want kids that to me is what querying astrology is it's simply being more inquisitive and holding space for individuation now in terms of looking at gay astrology I don't know astrology is astrology I mean geisha is totally different than straight engage it in straight shits the same exact thing they're both true and I think for me as a queer person who has counseled you know thousands and thousands and thousands of straight people as well as queer people the astrology is the same intimacy issues are the same what's different is the world you know what's different is the world will respond to a queer partnership differently than a straight one and that and you know our rights and entitlements and our safety around love and intimacy is totally different what we have to consider as queer people around how family will respond to our relationships is utterly different than what straight people experience having to justify your life choices is something that gay people have to do and straight people do not and so you know I mean what straight person has been asked when did you know you were straight how did you know you were straight but every gay person is the master so being able to understand the cultural differences impact our charts and are reflected in our charts but they are not our charts those are cultural differences that are projected on to us and not our innate nature so make sense what I'm saying is the difference yeah definitely and I mean it raises a question that I've had which is to what extent like when you read some of that like 1970s relationship delineations and books they'll be occasional like throwaway lines about queer relationships but it'll usually be something like because for example the planet Uranus is usually associated with that which is it has become in modern astrology associated with that which is out of the ordinary or is not normal in some way whereas unique or can sometimes be labeled as like weird in some way oftentimes like queer relationships would get sort of dumped under Uranus in like nineteen seventies astrology books of like of if you've got like a Venus Uranus conjunction or something like that and I was wondering to what extent like over the past couple of decades as gay relationships have become more normalized in society and we've had the legalization of gay marriage for example how long does stuff like that continue to be even true or relevant versus does the normalization of it take it outside of that realm of being something that's that should be seen by astrologers as Ukrainian in some way you understand yeah yeah I do yeah I think it's still uranium to be so there's so there's a couple parts to this so one is let's talk about the word queer for a moment because I'm 45 years old and when I was coming up in the 1990s in San Francisco we used the term queer to mean not just gay but counterculture it's like queer as in anti-capitalist queer as in anti-establishment so it wasn't just homosexual it was homosexual and counterculture now I've noticed and this is like a cultural shift in language queer is not so much about values it's about not straight its differential it's not necessarily homosexual it's about not being heterosexual it's holding space a lot of people are queer identified they don't necessarily live a gay life at all they just hold you know they have had gay experiences or they have queerness in their sexual nature or within their gender identity and that's a shift in the culture and in the language and I think it's a urania non its own right finding it who would it be accurate to say then that you're defining queer as that which is outside of the social norm or is that not okay framing it in that is that what how you're trying to frame it or I think that that's how it was used I don't know that that's exactly how it is used anymore and this is why I mentioned my age because I I notice different generations use that word lots of words but that word in different ways you know and and I now know lots of people who are much younger than me who use the term queer and what they mean is actually something very different than what I've meant when I've used the word queer I'm grew but it's all queer man and that's kind of cool too it's all very Iranian it's like hard to pin down many like a multitude of identities and definitions is so your reign Ian so there's that now the other thing is yes gay marriage is legal but barely right and not for very long and I don't have a great deal of confidence if we keep a republican government that it's going to stay legal and not in every part of the world that because it is has been for a few years here that's not necessarily the case like worldwide mm-hmm absolutely and a kind of associated with that you know within the umbrella of queer are trans people and trans people are League like under attack both in terms of their physical safety but also in terms of legality like the government comes for them in a particular way that they don't currently come for binary gendered gay people and and so that's really important when we're talking about queerness we're not talking about gayness exclusively we're talking about gender identities and so essentially my experience of Uranus is that it is about the aches centricity and it's about what is outside of that set tourney in the clock says it's 405 and 27 seconds and that's what it is right like it's outside of that and Uranus I think in that way yes it wins a lot of queer points you know however we define queer whether we do it in that like hell my way or we do it in that like anything anything under the LGBTQI umbrella and I might be even missing letters forgive me if I am and so so queerness is is uranium in nature I think it is also a Neptunian in nature in in in and that it is queerness encompasses being outside of binary and outside of rigid structure and expectations and in that way it is deeply Neptunian i can make an argument for pluto although i don't think it's necessarily that I make an argument for Pluto but I think Neptune and Uranus are good planets to seek when looking at queerness and I think I think that it's it's interesting because you know from personal experience as a person and Anna how old I was when I came out I must have come out in like 91 or something like that I I have lived through a lot of changes and I'm still quite young I've lived through a lot of changes around gay rights and gay culture itself but also how straight culture responds to gay culture I can speak to a room of majority or exclusively straight people and out myself as queer and people don't blink anymore they used to blink they use double ink rapidly and now you know there's there's that difference and you know I can be very comfortably out about the fact that my partner is trans and it doesn't you know there's conversation that can happen some of that's because if someone's like wait a minute what does that mean they can google it and that's new right in the culture that's new I will say though I am partnered with a very like passing trans man and he's white and he has beautiful blue eyes and I am experiencing what I didn't know existed I mean I knew but I didn't I never experienced it before I'm straight privilege it is divine it is so easy to be a straight person oMG I have no idea look I technically knew but as a person who's like lives my life my whole life as a queer person and been with visibly gay women even though I'm not necessarily like a visibly queer person just by looking at this uh yeah we go to the County Fair it's just sunshine and candies and like invitations to the ball it's really different so in that way I will say as a person who's like all of a sudden experiencing a lot of straight privilege from within my incredibly queer relationship it's still very much not the same you know and and so I'm not sure astro girls if we're fully answering your question but I think with astrology it's more about querying astrology as opposed to seeing planets as gay or straight it's more about querying your your viewfinder as you approach astrology and and how you use it sure yeah and some of this is so has happened so recently in society like you know gay rights just in the past couple of decades like two or three decades tops or now the conversations surrounding trans rights especially in the past decade and I just I wonder in like a century or two like where we're just like a long past and let's just assume that the trajectory that things are on continues and there's just further normalization and everything else if I don't know at any point that will be outside of the scope of that which is deemed as Urania and if it's been normalized to such an extent or if it will still always be associated in that way it's just one of the questions I've had do you feel like in a century or two when we're like long past some of the battles that are happening now that it will still be in that way I don't think we're going to be long past those battles I don't think I don't think I I wish I had that kind of optimism I think for as long as we have institutionalized religion and a vested interest in family is between one man and one woman making 2.3 babies or whatever for as long as we have that it it is tricky for gay rights I mean religion is not an encompassing envelope in place for queers for the most part and not exclusively there's lots of you know religions that are embracing but it's more like sex as opposed to like the whole damn thing I think also queer rights are wrapped up in women's rights because a lot of homophobia is essentially hatred of women and not wanting women to have space and rights within the world and I don't see us making great strides in that way per se and again not to be that boner killer but I do have concerns about what climate change will do and you know water insecurity and like you know the continued refugees crises I don't know that we are moving into a more progressive time in human history if I will do my utmost to be a part of the effort for it to be more of a progressive time but I don't I like your vision of in a century will be you know beyond all this gender binary all be about free will but I I fear that we'll be moving on a charred earth and they'll be like chain of us will be trying to rebuild with a horse and a buggy or something and hopefully like a copy of your book like you're talking we're joking earlier that that's right just what is in the breeze this and the breeze right one one astrology book survives hopefully it is your your relationship book very kind so kinds way to kind of thank you thank you and I wanted to mention really quick I forgot to mention there was one other relationship episode that's actually relevant in my back catalogue to this which is one that was important they did a discussion with Christopher Wren strim and episode Sam yeah Christopher is amazing he's been on the show I think two or three times but this is episode 79 that was on sexual orientation and astrology and the question and debate that sometimes comes up in the astrological community over whether you can weather an astrological chart can tell you or say anything about sexual orientation and people have very strong like opinions on either side of that and the purpose of that discussion was kind of or both sides of that that sort of debate in that episode mm-hmm that's it's a I would yeah it's a very important debate sure do you have any strong would you want to go there sure I mean I think you know Venus Uranus Mars Uranus moon Uranus they're all hella queer and that doesn't mean they're gay and again we're about to gender roles more than we are about sexuality so there's that the other thing I think is there is no value or merit in using the birth chart to predict homosexuality or heterosexuality and you know nobody's trying to predict heterosexuality it's it can be too easily used as kind of used poorly and used unethically by people who are not necessarily very gay positive or you know trans positive and I I think as astrologers there's nothing wrong with a little humanity and a little common sense ask a person who they like and if something in the chart gives you a little inkling but maybe they are queerer than they think they are then they said they are say have you ever considered people of a different gender the same gender and the answer is often yeah but dot dot dot you know a lot of people know that they're gay a lot of people know that they're queer and are choosing to not live that way because of what other people will say or think or do and that's just fear and fear can be traced in the chart to Saturn or an up tune sure yeah yeah and one area that came up with my discussion with Christopher that was kind of relevant in terms of sometimes terminology that might be used in the gay community that might be relevant and have like an astrological context as like terms like like bottoming and top versus being a top and you think that's like relevant things that can be integrated successfully astrology hugely I mean a huge part of what comes up in my sessions with straight people is you know within queer with with queer sex with gay sex not just square like gay sex we often use the term top and bottom and there is this questioning of everything there's a talking about everything whereas in heterosexual dynamic historically it's like men do suck to women and that's no that's not that's not modern that's not a consensual fun thing to do in general for people so when we talk about topping and bottoming it's so freeing because you know women come in and they're like yeah my boyfriend never initiated sex and I don't know maybe he doesn't like me I don't know what's going what's wrong and I'm often like well maybe he's just a bottom maybe he just needs you to sexually like initiate sex and more often than not that's the issue it's that not all men are tops and not all women are bottoms not all men want to have to initiate sexual contact or things in life in general and that is not a bad thing that's not unmasked Yulin it's just we are all wired in whatever ways and this is what I'm talking about with queering astrology and querying the conversation it's about recognizing that it's not just gay people that are tops or bottoms it's people it's just that gay people have language for it and what I was actually I spoke on a panel about sex posits sex and sex positivity recently in for HBO in LA with a couple of women and this was something that we talked about there is that you know queer people have had to come up with language our own language to explain gender and sexuality in in a different way outside of like the heterosexual or like the head or a typical limited model and what I'm seeing within the world of sex positivity at this time and the greater accessibility and acceptance of queerness is that straight people in straight culture are using more of that languaging and having access to more of that wisdom which i think is really wonderful the only kind of risky part of it is when there's two people and they're of the same gender then there's a baseline of power that is shared and when there's a boy-girl dynamic there is a power inequity straight out the gate regardless of everything else because men have a different kind of power in the world and that is an undeniable thing we can look at men's wages men's safety violence from men to women verses from women to men and so being able to recognize that we want to be able to use the wisdom and the languaging of queer stuff for straight people but without losing track of the differences because the differences are real and worth acknowledging and honoring yeah or another differentiation that comes to mind is like enter relation interracial relationships and how that can create inequities as well or you could absolutely and so when we look at race when we look at class when we look at age differentials you know we can we can trace this down a lot of different kind of inequities or it's not really inequities it's differences we run those differences within the context of a society become inequities they're not inherent inequities and I think looking at nature versus nurture is really essential when using the birth chart as a guide you know and and I think hopefully again I'll share girls we've touched on what you're asking about because we've kind of like taken it in directions but right I think they're good direction yeah no that's great and I think one of the points you brought up is just that in some of the language that's been developed surrounding discussions about queer sexuality there's a lot more nuance and there's integration of languages that allows for more of a spectrum in terms of sexuality and different things and that is completely and totally could be useful and contextualized within the context of astrology and integrated and used and very positive and very constructive ways absolutely yeah yeah awesome all right there's a bunch of other questions and I'm actually really enjoying this so I would keep going all day but I don't want to hold you so where you out we're at two hours and eight minutes oh snap I can go up to up to 30 minutes more okay yeah if theoretically yeah okay and I'll let you know if something changes and it's just that I'm also having fun it's the tragedy one sec oh yeah no I think we're in good shape I think we're good we're I think we're in good shape let's try it alright let's do it let's hit some rapid-fire questions this one I don't know if this is a good way really briefly can I just ask you it's darkening in California very briefly do you want me to turn on a light or is this okay I mean this is really cool because you have the the sign in the background is just creating this awesome okay I'm fine with it too I like I like the darkness I'm just trying I'm trying to be considerate to the people you know so okay let's do rapid fire alright here we go so I don't know if this so this is from Ash Bosch at Astro underscore ashley 11 she asks about marriage elections I don't know if you do this do you do election astrology for marriages at all I'll do two election in general I mean I'll mess with it a teeny bit but certainly not for marriages no sure okay yeah so let's skip wait let me just say really briefly why if I make a um listen the wedding is usually what people are asking about but the decision to get married is when the marriage begins it's not the way okay yes I mean like the let's say quote unquote proposal proposal if there's a formal proposal yeah the agreement that's what let's say you and I are getting married we get we got engaged we're fianc we're getting we're getting married okay so now we've decided we're getting married and now they're in the beginning of our marriage essentially all right I don't believe the church does it I don't believe the government does it I I think those are parts of it and we can cast charge for those things but the marriage begins with the decision to be partnered okay what is already I know this is another question I can't remember I can't find who asked it I'll see if I can find it later I'll mention it oh no here it is it was from aster academic at academic Astro on Twitter who asks do you also consider the first meeting election if you have it when doing a synastry reading do you look at first meeting charts I don't do synastry readings and no absolutely no no first okay no I mean to what end again this is just more information but what is this information doing how is this information helping you to be present and to get to know the person and let them reveal themselves to you and to make sure you're showing up not so that they like you so that you're being authentic like how do all these charts help that in my view they don't so I don't do any of those things and when people ask for that I say no I was just thinking it because you could conceptually make an argument there that the the chart of the relationship may be arguing along the lines that you're saying that if that you've already proposed the new symbolically already pretty much there if you've accepted that maybe even going further back once you started the relationship itself you're already in a relationship and so maybe that inception chart already has the greater authority plenty of things we can talk about but let's let's move on and so let's see the next question from at I Nathan eighth Oracle sorry if I'm butchering that I'll put it in the description who asked could you talk about the history of whoever decided that astrological compatibility was strictly based on the element of the Sun Sign do you have any strong feelings about that in terms of Sun Sign astrology for I don't know synastry or as the sole basis of like relationship compatibility mm-hmm I don't know anything about the history of it I'm not a fan of it I mean I bet Annabel Ghat who just wrote a great Sun Sun compatibility book would probably have stuff to say about that but I I don't know a damn thing about that and honestly I don't pay attention to sun signs but at all I mean you'll hear me talk about being a Capricorn because i'm summonin rising in capricorn it's a little bit of like a badge I wear but I don't ah yeah I mean if the person was like a stellium I feel like they have more of a right to represent and like really I didn't identify with that sign totally yeah I definitely heard that so I'm just stalling if Sun Moon and rising is that what you just yes yeah oh my god okay so you're like a super Capricorn I'm like a Capricorn on crack if that crack was Saturn and where is that what sign is Saturn in Saturn's and cancer opposite myself opposite sign okay nice yeah nice okay I'm what they call super easygoing and chill that's sarcastic it's not true at all Saturn in the seventh in your closet or six I'm a twelfth house triple cap all right I'm just gonna put this out there I know you said this at the beginning of the show that it's not your preference but in the whole sign house system your Saturn would be in the seventh house of relationships and you just published what I believe is your first book on relationships I'm just gonna put that out there but let me put out there I also have a grand trine between Saturn my Midheaven and Jupiter okay which would do that anyways sure okay so I'll take mean I mean you know and this is okay and this is a little off-topic but let me just share please I have only ever had one astrology teacher mr. Mike Boyle he taught me in Montreal Quebec when I was in this alternative College for um you know whatever it's how I learned astrology at first and he said these are all the houses these are all the house systems run your chart and all the house systems he was also a Capricorn he's like run your chart and all the house systems study your chart and all the house systems and decide which one is true and then stick with it forever and just oh my god I've done that so for me it's camping us houses which is the furthest from pole sign houses that you can get literally because what campaña says is it gives you a lot of interceptions it gives you the most wonky of all the house shapes I'm really passionate about interceptions I think they're incredibly nuanced detailed data especially around prenatal conditions which is one of my other specialties and so for me the campaign is how system is the only one that puts Mars in my 12th house versus Mars in my 11th I am nobody's idea of Mars in the 11th house I am a goddamn hermit so Mars Asian whatever Scorpio that's such it's it's a ok got it yeah yeah my Mars isn't such and in all house systems it's in the 11th house except for Camp Ennis where it's in the 12th and I'm very much a textbook Mars in the 12th house person ok so I have other planets in the 11th but in any case so for me I just went with camp Ennis stuck with camp in s and have even a beautiful gift from the astrologer Tony Howard sitting right here on my desk and it says intercepting a house near you I am obsessed with interceptions so yeah so I'm very Pro camping his houses brilliant ok camping us and that was I think camp Ennis was also the system that ready are used I want to say there look like if I'm not I think so I could be totally off base there and I'm sure listeners will let me know if I was yes so let's see before we move on from that point you mentioned Annabelle's book who was going to join us but couldn't make it today and her book is another amazing book along similar lines it's titled the astrology of love and sex a modern compatibility guide so people can also check that out if they're looking for more of like a relationship oriented type astrology book yet the Sun Sun compatibility the book and it is pure animal so it's excellent definitely alright and also very cute yes market for cute things as well as high quality things its but also well Illustrated and also like yours a book that you would probably want to cuddle up with which is what I was actually saying earlier and then yeah yeah yeah absolutely agree agree agree brilliant alright so let's see next question no that's another karmic soul relationship type question another one about symmetry and composites to look for in a casual relationship versus long term from at learning tourists I guess you've sort of touched on this already like things like Saturn for example or I mean for a short-term relationship or a casual relationship it depends on what your goal is I mean so let's say you're well I'm not gonna go there good just continue I would say this if your ambition is to like you know have some dates have some sex and not let it get too far I'm not gonna focus on the astrology compatibility why would I do that instead I'm gonna focus on your birth chart it's if you're not trying to be in a serious relationship with someone don't treat them like your best friend don't text them every day don't have sleepover parties don't snuggle and go for groceries like don't drink coffee with them that's what you do with your partner instead you know if you're if you want someone to be a trick treat them respectfully joyfully like a trick you know and there's nothing I hope that doesn't sound like a negative to me that's a positive it's about you know not every friend is your best friend some friends you just go out to like concerts with and not every lover is meant to be your partner and so don't treat someone who is a lover like a partner and that's on you in your birth chart you don't need to worry about someone else's birth chart if they're not your best friend or your partner friends listen to that if someone is casual don't focus on the damn chart because as soon as you focus on someone else's chart you're treating them as something less than cash or more than casual so it's all on you and your chart if you're wanting things to be cash that's my attitude got it that makes sense yeah I have very strict I mean strict rules around this sort of thing and I guess I would say in some instances like sometimes really casual good casual purely sexual relationships might have really good or at least really intense Venus Mars synastry and maybe that describes that relationship but if sometimes you there might be other things that might be important in a long-term relationship that you might need in order to give it permanent sort of long-term stability beyond just Venus and Mars in some instances yeah I would oh sorry trumpet I'll add to that I don't think everyone out of Venus and I think that this is an old-school astrology concept Mars is the athletic part of sex you know and people who are in their bodies will have sex out of their bodies but a lot of times you know sexual relationships or casual relationships are predicated on a kink and kinks aren't per se Mars or Venus certainly not Venus kinks are the outer planets I'm always looking to the outer planets for sexual perversion and when I say sexual perversion it is a positive not a negative and so I I think you know some people have sex out of their moon they just want to be loved they just don't want to be alone and that's not a Mars form of sex it's a form of sex of like I want I don't want me lonely and some people just want to be adored you know and I want to look more to Venus for that like you know if it's just like having sex with the mirror I want to know what Jupiter is doing I'm interested and so I think it's also one week when we fixate too much on the Venus Mars for sex we miss out on a lot of data because again we are complicated messy traumatized ain't beings and being complicated messy and traumatized means we're dealing with planets that technically shouldn't be the planets that govern a thing but they happen to govern a thing it's like if you um I was just boxing the other day and it's like if you throw a punch just out of your arm but not out of your core muscles your abdominal muscles you're gonna throw the punch wrong you have to use sometimes you have to use muscle groups that you wouldn't think are responsible for a movement in order to do the movement properly and the same thing is true with the birth chart you think you're moving with Mars but really you're pulling out of your Saturn and that's cool and it's interesting so don't limit kind of like what you think is possible based on like the ruler ships like look at the more complicated nuance of your human condition is might I love that that's an amazing point and you mentioned Saturn in particular earlier in terms of like when certain kinks are coming from an area of like like shame or other things like that is contributing yes absolutely I mean you know different uh ethnic or religious backgrounds I'll give you different kind of kinks different kinds of trauma or abuse give you different kind of cakes different kind of kinks give you different kind of cakes like not all kings come out of trauma or repression or isolation or any of that kind of stuff some people are just damn kinky and what is kinky like kinky is sex that is not you know P and B sex what I don't know I mean like it seems really boring to like it we have to expand what we I what we even conceive of as perversion or kinky and I think that as we do that we don't stop using that language we more change the the value in the meaning behind that language you know I mean when I say kinky when I say perverted when I say filthy I'm there's no negative connotation but I feel like I always have to clarify that because most people use those words as negative my queer ass does not so you know it's about being able to expand our value around sex and sexuality and to understand also that a lot of times what an individual desires sexually is not what they're doing right because their partner doesn't want to do it because they think it's bad because they're inhibited in whatever way and and I think that that's also really an important part of being able to look at the chart now I want to say some people who are listening if you don't listen to this and start looking at your crush's chart or your partner shirt trying to divine what they secretly want in bed that is not right that is going to use your mouth and you talk to someone you say hey what do you like what do you want and you listen to their answer and if they say they like or they want something that you don't like don't say ill just be like okay cool I'm not sure about that or whatever and then you know explore from there yes or do not just like show up and start doing something assuming from somebody's chart yeah have that conversation ahead of time verbally and you have to come back and we have to do an episode at some point I don't know if this will work and this could go terribly wrong but an episode of like the astrology of kinks would be a great discussion topic if deal with proper dealt with properly tap me and coach I'm okay at the end I'm in I'm in I mean I didn't be interesting to bring a bunch of different kinds of astrologers were different kinds of humans who happen to be a strong reason for that too but right it's something I'm really passionate about because working with queer people being somebody who I am myself very sex positive and I'm very open and not judgmental around sex and sexuality I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of people about sex over you know the past couple decades of me being a practicing astrologer and and I have a lot to say about it and I have not really explored this topic in astrology like chat groups and stuff like that because I'm not really interested in having I mean honestly anytime sex comes up and women start to have a part of the conversation you open yourself up to men attacking you or shaming you or getting weird and like turned on by it and so I'm not interested in that but I mean interested in having that conversation and kind of giving information to people and I would want to say that if you have strong opinions or strong feelings in response do not attack the astrologer you're hearing speak just disagree you can disagree in your own mind guys doesn't always have to be on Twitter I like that recognition as the in theory but in terms of whether we could pull that off let's let's talk about it and you can do okay let's do one last question really quick and then wrap it up bring on this is Titan actually to some extent with the last episode I did which was this big debate about whether is okay to practice astrology prior to your Saturn return and this is almost sort of vaguely in the same vein so I wanted to put it out there it's from somebody on Twitter named Chelsea at a complicated Twitter username and she says I'm curious about what is in store for those folks entering their Saturn returns single in regards to relationships should we avoid dating or do you have any tips or suggestions for dating during your Saturn return great questions and I have to just ask is their Twitter handle complicated Twitter name or are you just saying it was a complicated Twitter name um I don't know how to pronounce it because I'm different words but it's a es le h co t HT r AE I was just hoping that their actual handle was complicated yeah that would be a really good honestly if somebody hasn't already taken that handle I hope one of you listeners do that right now because you will be my hero um okay so two parts to this question um the first one is about practicing as an astrologer before your sudden return you know historically you're gonna go there am I not allowed to no you can go there I just remember because we almost did this discussion before almost but it sounded like you didn't wanted to get into it oh no no I'll get into it okay I was a practicing astrologer when I was twenty you know okay so you started seeing clients already like mm seven eight years before your Center returned when how young were you when you started studying astrology in general um I was 17 when I was studying under a teacher okay so you I was young I was young and you know I I shall I also say you know I have as a Sun Moon and rising all in one sign I have my part of fortune can jump my Santa moon so I came to my calling real young and I came with all the heaviness of Saturn right so it's not surprising that I would have started young but this is what I did and actually was just on a panel a different panel last like two nights ago talking about this but what I did was I put myself in what I called self-appointed apprenticeship and for the years leading up to my Saturn return I would tell every client before I met with them that I was in a self-appointed apprenticeship I was in the first decade of my practice as an astrologer and that they should know that you know I was competent and I wanted to help them and also I was in the first decade of my practice and I did that because I felt like it was in integrity for me to do and I did that because I wanted to create the room for me as a practitioner to grow into because I knew as an astrologer that before your sudden return you are you haven't done it yet you know there's a lot of things you haven't done yet and I don't think there's any problem with being an astrologer before the sudden return I think there is a problem in posturing as though you it doesn't matter that you haven't lived through your first sight of return because the sudden return marks the beginning of your adulthood and before your sudden return those years your 20s leading up to it it is the kind of like elder years of your youth but it's your youth and the sudden return marks the first adult cycle and so there is a certain mount of maturity and integration and embodiment that can only happen through the transit of the Sun on return and that doesn't mean don't practice it means own it let your clients know that you're in the first decade of practice because you know it is a very very new thing that astrologers can just like boop boop boop go on the internet and find a birth chart you used to have to learn how to grow it yourself I used to like calculate it by hand yeah that's how I was taught because I didn't have access to a computer at the time you know I mean there were computers in the early 1990s but I didn't have them they were they were like the size of houses they were the size of houses and like the first astrologer I met that had a computer I ended up I have it still actually it's this big yellow box and he could only it was a DOS prompt machine and he could only hold the solar fire program in it you know and I used it for many years past one I said but that's another subject but in any case what I did was I told my clients that I was in you know I was in the early stages and I priced myself accordingly I didn't price myself in the same ways I would have if I was you know deep into my practice and I also I'm so grateful that I did that because now you know having been practicing for for you know a couple decades some of my clients are still with me from those early years and I never feel embarrassed by what I did I never feel like I did something that was in out of integrity because if I made mistakes if I have evolved in my thinking my clients knew that that's where I was coming from at the early stages of my work as an astrologer and I think as astrologers who are both counseling people who are vulnerable but also we are like stewards of time and maturity and development it is a responsibility we hold to be transparent not about our age but about where we are at in relationship to Saturn because Saturn is the one so that's my take on that if I if I'm a hot take it brilliant that was a like a way better and more can sigh so it took me like two hours to say the same thing and like the last episode so you're lightyears ahead of me like your main answer is really it's okay to practice practice head in return but just be open and honest and forthcoming about it 100% and also may I ask how old you are I don't know you just had a birthday I just turned 35 a happy birthday thank you it's that it's a twelfth house perfection it's a little rocky so far but yeah 35 for me was when I felt like my life truly began it was at my 35th birthday I was like oh okay this is life and you know I'm a decade older than you and that's why I can say it more concisely that's the only reason why is because time matters and and I think that this is like I have dear friends who are in you know who are much younger than me who are astrologers and I'm excited about it and and like I said I was a practicing astrologer I went full time during my Saturn Return and so I say everybody you know jump in just hold space for older you don't act like you're a master of something that you're in your beginning stages with now to the to the questioner who had complicated Twitter handle calm www squats flash no one can pronounce it this is what I think about sudden return to dating you know I'm a triple Capricorn so I got into a relationship that lasted almost a decade during my Saturn return that was awesome but most people don't Saturn is endings Saturn is restriction Saturn is heaviness and so if you're looking to just like get laid and have someone tell you you're pretty that is not likely to happen if you're open to being in your in your Saturn return in your saturn lessons and you want to experiment with that in relationship to others do your best if you find that you're too easily demoralized or there's no flow then maybe redirect your energies but there's not a you should you shouldn't there's a find locate yourself if you've Saturn in Capricorn if you're going through a sudden return now you have Saturn in Capricorn give Saturn in Capricorn it's about embodiment of your kind of your own wisdom so use astrology as a guide but also use common sense and life experience as a guide to you know try it and if it doesn't work redirect have authority over your own experience that's what Saturn in Capricorn wants from you now house and aspect depending I might say some many other things but that's my that's my hot take on that question I love it that's great and it yeah it's like you said it's hard because there's no one answer that's gonna fit all for this question because it's really gonna depend on how your birth charts set up and you know like if you have Saturn in your seventh house then being in a relationship may play a major role of your Saturn Return or starting a relationship during that time and you shouldn't just like avoid that or turn that down just because of some abstract idea that you have a transit and therefore you shouldn't start at anything during that time because I could be really important like life defining a turning point for you and you know for people that have Saturn connected to their seventh house it often is during their Saturn return whether they're going into it in a relationship and maybe get out of a relationship during their Saturn return or lose a relationship or whether they're single going into it and then start a major relationship I mean it's just an important turning point yeah and I would also kind of answer that you know people get so fixated on the sudden return just like they get fixated on Mercury retrograde because they know what it is but the truth is you could be going through the sudden return and like five other transits so you also want to pay attention to the other transits that you're going through at the time to see if there are things indicating one way or another what's gonna happen in and I would also say well I guess I'll shut up that's what I'll say no I was gonna say all kinds of things actually about the centimeter because I'm obsessed with the centimeter because I'm so Saturnian but I really I will say like the the sudden return the first set of me term is really about coming into your own and you know my experience as I'm a Saturn in the sixth house person you know in my house system and I was incredibly sick my whole set in return it was very very very sick my work life was a really big deal but because relationships weren't the lesson of my Saturn return I was able to manifest a relationship and it's supported me in my work and that person supported me my work and she supported me in in my health issues and that was you know I was ready for that and that's what happened and um and I think that you know it really does depend on what your lesson is you know so I'd like I have a slightly different take on it than you do because I'm I'm always looking at what is the primary lesson that Saturn is trying to beat you over the head with because whatever it is you're not going to avoid it but if aren't the primary lesson of your sudden return or one of those primary lessons then it will be much easier for a relationship to come in if you're doing the work of embodiment and maturity and ownership of self because that's what Saturn wants again we're back to like the greatness of Saturn that book Saturn wants you to take responsibility for yourself you seek a shortcut and Saturn's like ha I'm gonna catch you at that shortcut because Saturn is a jerk right and one and there's such a wide range of manifestations of like constructive Saturn return experiences versus just like a really painful heartbreaking or traumatic Saturn return experiences and where you're gonna fall and that could be anywhere on either those extremes are somewhere closer to the to the middle yeah absolutely man said immersion was really rough for me yeah yeah I could have been worse I mean I have a date chart and I'm kind of like you or my Saturn's very prominent in my chart and had some rough stuff but then there was also some constructive stuff at the same time I definitely did not get like the worst case scenario of the Saturn Return I actually lost my hair that was the point at which I realized I was going I was losing all of my hair and had to start shaving it so part of my Saturn Return experience was redefining my sense of self because Saturn squaring my ascendant and my ass like appearance to the world and that was actually even though that sounds kind of stupid or a minor was a major like ongoing process for it yeah that's massive I mean Saturn on the ascendant will generally thin the hair or like make there be less hair so it's not surprising to me that that was like the coinciding but it is so huge because it's how people see you and it's a marker of age and time which is Saturn you know sure I definitely see with Saturn transits for you know who are in there like mid to late thirties and older that the kind of hormonal thing that normally happens of thinning or loss of hair comes with those harde Saturn transits I haven't tracked it as effectively with men with sis men specifically but with women I've seen that like just this hair thinning that happens that we don't talk about as much because you know Saturn will thin your hair it'll give you a hair loss that's what Saturn's such a jerk I mean you know I Saturn but man what a damn jerk yeah and there was lots of other stuff that happened during my Senate return but that was just one of the funny little things that was like a Saturn transit of yeah the greatness of Saturn I could write my own book about that with that theme with that V I would love to read that book all right yeah all right all right jaylen I think this is it I think we did it this is an amazing episode thank you so much for joining me for this oh thank you so much for having me I'm so glad we made it happen yeah I really you actually saved me because I needed to do this episode I was having some rough transits with like a dental surgery like a week ago and I think we rescheduled twice but you you bailed me out by coming on and doing this episode today at the last minute so I really appreciate it and it actually turned it into a really amazing episode so I feel really good about it yes so thank you and congratulations on the book I'm really excited for when it's going to come out which is gonna be you said New Year's Eve yeah New Year's Eve 2019 okay everybody pre-order it now you'll have it New Year's Eve or you can just buy it afterwards but then you won't have it on New Year's Eve and you'll cry cuz your friends have it yeah exactly so everybody should go out and just preorder it right now if you enjoyed this episode and enjoyed this discussion additionally if you enjoy this discuss discussion jessica has an amazing podcast where can people find that sure ghost of a podcast can be heard everywhere that podcasts are heard and it's called ghost of a podcast so you don't have to spell my name and on the show every week I answer a listener question sometimes I actually like do readings for people alive and in the second half of the show I do the horoscope for the week ahead so it's not a Sun sign horoscope I break down the Astro the astrology of that week and I talk about the transits and through my kind of methodology with it all I kind of like essentially model and teach astrology and how I use it so hopefully you will listen to it and like it and yeah thanks so much for having me this was so fun brilliant yeah yeah you've been killing it with the podcast you've been killing it with you had a Facebook a show and is that gonna come back for like a second season or how that goes he'll see it was a TLC show in partnership with Facebook and they just did the one season I don't know what their plans were because it was like the mysterious world of the Discovery Channel yeah we just did the the one season and yeah that was you know it's kind of hard to find I think you can find it on TLC's YouTube page and then I have episodes on my website as well if you go to my website at Laughlin yato calm under the watch tab and you can see yeah episodes of the show there it was called stargazing and while you're there you can see like BuzzFeed videos I've done and a couple other things a couple others like TV ish stuff so yeah there's lots of lots of content to consume upon my website if you're in the market brilliant and then finally are you definite upcoming like speaking things or conferences that people should know about oh good question oh I wish I could remember unka I do I do and I don't remember I mean I'm going to I'm gonna take my book on the road I'm gonna take the podcast on the road I'm gonna go to LA Seattle Portland I'm gonna go to New York and if you want me to go to your city email me I also I feel like there's something else that I'm going to I have a few other things I'm going to be speaking at Norwalk my favorite astrology home you are so you're gonna be a so if people want to see you speak they can go to the Northwest astrology conference which is actually one of our sponsors which I'll mention and plug at the end of this show we're done talking so you'll be speaking there in Seattle at the end of May 2020 yes and in San Francisco at the International astrology Days event I will be speaking that's in March of 2020 I'll be speaking on this topic actually so if you're in San Francisco and you'd like to celebrate International astrology then come come around and I can't remember other things if you're interested in more me which would be so nice thank you I hope to be doing more a mas like ask me anything is live a maze where I can give more people more answers to questions and stuff like that so get on my mailing list follow me on social media at Jessica Lange yato and I'm assuming you're gonna leave it there for people to copy and paste cuz no one gets about my damn name yeah I will put links to everything either on the description page for this episode on the astrology podcast calm or below the video on YouTube in the description to your website so people can go and check everything out and pre-order the book and listen to the podcast and pretty much everything yay thank you brilliant alright thank you so much for joining me today and thank you things everyone for listening to this of course I appreciate it yeah and good luck with the book launch in about a month and a half from now thank you I know I don't think you're gonna need it honestly but yeah thank you for what you're doing for astrology and for like being on the front lines in so many different ways in terms of promoting good astrology and like having conversations that are important to have all at the same time making it like accessible to people like I really appreciate and respect that so thank you it's very sweet thank you means a lot coming from you thanks thanks alright thanks everyone for listening to this episode of the astrology podcast and we will see you next time bye thank you thanks to the patrons and sponsors who helped to support the production of this episode of the podcast through a page on patreon com including patrons Christine stone and Nate Craddock as well as the Astro gold astrology app available at Astro Gold yo the Portland school of astrology at Portland astrology org the honeycomb collective personal astrological almanacs at honeycomb CO and also the International Society for astrological research which is hosting an astrology conference in Denver Colorado September 10th through the 14th 2020 and you can find out more information about that at Easter 2020 org and the Northwest astrological conference which is happening in Seattle May 21st through 25th 2020 and you can find out more information about that at nor Net for more information about how to sign up to become a patron of the podcast go to patreon.com [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Astrology Podcast

Views: 22,853

Keywords: relationship astrology, Jessica Lanyadoo, astrology and relationships, synastry, composite charts, 7th house, astrology, Lanyadoo, Chris Brennan, The Astrology Podcast, Ghost of a Podcast, J Lan

Id: m6X2XvIBzQE

Length: 162min 32sec (9752 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019