September Astrology Forecast 2021

CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan  and you're listening to The Astrology Podcast.   In this episode, we're going to be talking  about the astrology of September of 2021.   Joining me today are astrologers, Austin Coppock  and Rick Levine. Hey, guys. All right, I'm going   to give a little bit of an overview first of the  month of September and then we will jump down into   a week-by-week breakdown to give you an overview  of the astrology of next month. Here's a little   graphic for September and here's our  astrology calendar that lists them in   ingresses and lunations and retrograde stations.  The first thing that happens is we have a new Moon   in Virgo on the sixth of September followed  by Venus ingressing into the sign of Scorpio   on the 10th. Then the following week, Mars goes  into Libra on the 14th of September. Our second   lunation of the month is on the 20th which is a  Pisces Full Moon, followed of course by the Sun's   ingress into Libra on the 22nd as it does around  this time of the year which is the fall ingress   in the Northern Hemisphere. And then finally, at  the end of the month, Mercury stations retrograde   in the sign of Libra on September 27th. Here's  a circular chart that shows some of the motions   of where the planets will start and where they  will end up by the end of the month. And as we go   through this episode, we'll do a more detailed  breakdown of some of the closer inner planet   sign ingresses and aspects  during the course of the month.  All right. Hey guys, thanks for  joining me today. Austin as always,   we’ve been doing this for five years now and  Rick is joining us as a special guest co-host   this month filling in for Kelly who's still  moving back to Canada. Thanks for joining us,   Rick. This is your first time doing a forecast. RICK LEVINE: It is. What a pleasure! And you know   why it is taking Kelly so long? It's a long swim. CB: That's true. It's a little bit not   quite as long as the swim from  Australia, but still Europe is no-  RL: You got it. You got it. Yeah, the Atlantic  it's a tough one to swim across. It's treacherous.  CB: For sure. Rick, of course famously has his  own YouTube channel where he does monthly and   weekly astrology forecast which you can find  at youtube.com/ricklevine and Rick actually for   years, you used to co-write the Barnes & Noble  Year Ahead astrology booklet, right? I remember   seeing one time going to a Barnes & Noble  and there was like a cardboard cutout of you   at the bookstore and I always wish that I  got one of those. Do you still have one of   those or is that like a hard collector? RL: I've never got one. Never got one,   unfortunately. Yeah. Jeff Jawer and  I did eight years of those and they   were brutal. They were 140,000 words a  year for an hour of fame and fortune.  CB: Yeah, and you were also doing daily  horoscopes for astrology.com or something   at the time and so I remember- RL: For tarot.com,   I was writing 1200 words a day, seven days a  week. I did that for 17 years. It's insane.  CB: I remember hanging out with you late at night  during Kepler symposiums in the mid-2000s and we   would stay up late talking about astrology  and getting into deep conversations about   synchronicity and things like that and then  it would be 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and   everyone's turning in and you say, “I have to go  off and write the horoscope column for tomorrow,”   at about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. RL: That would be me.  CB: Okay. So that is your  accolades and your background   going into doing this forecast. And Austin, of  course, we've been doing this together for five   years now. How are you feeling about September? AUSTIN COPPOCK: I believe it's six, 15 to 21.  CB: Six, that's true. It is 2021. AC: Yeah. And I did the junior version   of Rick's grind, I wrote like four yearly almanacs  and I only wrote a horoscope column for 11 years.  CB: Okay. Yeah, that's not quite  as much but still impressive.  AC: It's still a grind and it takes a commitment. CB: It is. Yeah. In this episode,   I wanted to start first by talking about and doing  a little retrospective of some of the interesting   astrology that happened last month and some of  the notable things that happened in the news that   fulfilled some of the things that we were  talking about in the previous forecast,   especially some things that were grouped around  Uranus stationing retrograde in Taurus around the   middle of the month that seemed to coincide with  some major changes and shakeups in the world. And   then after that, we will get into the week-by-week  breakdown of the astrology of September. How does   that sound to you guys? All right. Let's  talk a little bit about August. There was   a few major things and what was interesting to  me is that Uranus stationed retrograde in Taurus   on August 19th and there were some  major news stories that really seem to   tie into that and it seemed to bring up some of  the Saturn square Uranus themes that we've been   talking about as the major outer planet activity  this year, but that station of Uranus really   seemed to reignite or reenergize that square  between Uranus and Saturn more towards the   Uranus chaos and destabilization side of things  in some instances. The big news story, of course,   was what happened in Afghanistan and the sudden  and unexpected fall of the Afghan government to   the Taliban and the somewhat chaotic exit  of the United States from Afghanistan after   almost 20 years. The new stories about this  started happening and got really intense   and the government fell within four days of  the Uranus station in mid-August, and I thought   that was really striking and really compelling in  terms of some of those themes. Did you guys notice   that or tie that into the Uranus station? AC: Yeah, I did and I also thought it was   interesting and very unexpected or it had an  interesting unexpected relationship to Venus's   ingress into Libra, which happened in very much  the same time period. And this is interesting   for two reasons. One, Uranus in Taurus is in  a Venus ruled sign and so is going to respond   to the ruler of the sign being in a strong  position. And then two, even though certainly   my initial reaction and anyone's initial reaction  is not oh, what an act of Venus, at the same time,   it is the end of a 20-year military occupation,  right? It's the end of a military action and so   this is interesting. It's important and useful  to get beyond just the raw stereotype archetype   version of what a planet in its strength does. RL: Yeah, I was also intrigued by the fact that   not exactly to the day but in a way this  is a close, not necessarily a graceful   close, but it's a close to the Saturn-Pluto  opposition to conjunction because we   invaded Afghanistan as a result of the September  11 Saturn-Pluto opposition trade tower bombings   and it's now that that has come to a close  even though we're technically after the   conjunction. It really has been a process that  then just became abrupt with this Uranus station.  AC: That's such a good long cycle  take on it Rick, I love that.  CB: Yeah, because that was originally when the  World Trade Center attacks and the September 11th   terrorist attacks occurred, that was the main  thing that astrologers pointed to at the time   was the relatively close within 2° Saturn-Pluto  opposition from Pluto at 12° of Sagittarius to   Saturn at 14° of Gemini that was happening  at the time, especially because the United   States Sibly chart has 12° of Sagittarius  rising. So, for many people, the chart or   the Ascendant of the United States is at 12°  of Sagittarius and it was getting hit by that   Pluto transit almost exactly on that very day. RL: And remember, the Saturn-Pluto conjunction   opposition cycle has tracked the centuries  long battle between Christianity and Islam,   that means going all the way back to Mohammed's  declaring Mecca the state of Islam-- all the   incursion of the Muslims into Spain and  then the retaking of that. Those are all   Saturn-Pluto conjunctions or oppositions. It's  crazy that this theme is almost like a wildfire   that becomes subdued and then goes  underground and then it flares up   every few hundred years for several cycles and  then it goes away again and then it comes back.  AC: You can track the Reconquista and all  that using the Saturn-Pluto? That's really   interesting. I haven't looked at that. CB: Yeah. One of the things that came to   mind though just seeing because it seemed like  everybody knew the US pulling out of Afghanistan   was not going to be graceful and there was no  scenario where that was going to go super well   on a scale of zero to 10 in terms of comparing  it to Vietnam and there are a lot of analogies to   what happened with the end and the  whining down of the Vietnam War.   But it seemed like it caught the US government  and a lot of people much more off guard, the rapid   advance and rapid fall of the capital of  Afghanistan as well as the other provinces   in Afghanistan to the Taliban over the course of  basically a month leading up to mid-August. And   it really brought to mind some of the keywords  or the main keyword it brought to mind for me was   some of the things that we had talked about last  month in connection with the Saturn-Uranus square   and I'm looking for a little summary that I wrote  about that which is the sudden collapse of that   which seemed stable, revealing structures in our  lives that were built on an unreliable foundation.   And that was the main thing that kept coming  up to me this month with that Uranus station   in mid-August, not just with the Afghanistan  situation, but also with some other things.   And I know previously, Austin, you used  this phrase of stress testing which turned   out to be really apt for that as well, I think. AC: Right, to use a bit of a cliché the house of   cards that you have set up, if you shake the table  a little bit, the whole thing falls, right? It's   a good example of what would fail stress testing  and so now we know. But yeah, you're right. The   Afghanistan situation is a really good example  of Saturn-Uranus dynamics with Uranus being   not the leader, but being the more active of the  two; doing a station, having a ruler go into a   really strong place, etc. etc. And also, I suppose  we can't ignore the fact that Uranus got a nice   trine from Mars. Uranus and Mars, if Uranus likes  to shake shit up, Mars has no qualms with that.  CB: Yeah. What's funny about the Uranus  station as well is there was another in   the reactivation of the Saturn-Uranus square  through Uranus becoming empowered through that   retrograde station is you saw this coming  up in other areas of the world as well,   even just in memes and fads. And one of the ones  that I thought that was really funny was the milk   crate challenge which went viral on TikTok and  Twitter and other places where the challenge was   that people would build a pyramid of milk crates  that are stacked up like stairs higher and higher   and then a person was supposed to walk across  it all the way to the top and then walk down.   But in many instances, it was completely unsteady  the higher and higher they got and it would topple   over eventually because it wasn't on a very  stable foundation leading to sometimes like   major injuries and major bones being broken and  other things like that so that TikTok eventually   on August 27th banned the trend and banned the  hashtag because there were so many injuries that   were happening to people over the past few weeks. AC: That's hilarious, when you also have   the bow vine tie in with Uranus and  Taurus and they're milk crates. [laughs]  CB: Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. RL: Oh, isn't astrology   wonderful when it's so literal? AC: Yeah. And it doesn't need to,   right? It's astrology winking at us. RL: Yep, that's a lot of bull.  CB: Well, something we see over and  over again, we've seen it for years now,   which is just sometimes when there are these  major outer planet alignments that there   are different ways in which the archetype of  that alignment manifests in cultures. Sometimes   in popular culture, sometimes in major world  events, and sometimes in people's individual   personal lives in very highly specific ways, but  there's always these weird echoes of the energy of   the times that are happening if you pay attention  to it in the news. It reminds me of back in like   2016 when there was that Saturn-Neptune square  and we were marveling at this trend that took off   where everyone was using virtual or augmented  reality to play like a Pokémon game that just   became really popular for that one summer as that  square was going exact and then once it passed,   it was like the fad was no longer around anymore. AC: Right, the Saturn-Neptune troubling the   boundaries between the real and the imaginary and  people going on hunts for Pokémon at your post   office or in the middle of the park or whatever. RL: Yeah, the boundary thing with Saturn   is really important. I think it was Rob Hand  who wrote somewhere, I can't recall where,   that when Saturn and Uranus get together by a hard  aspect, it's like an irrepressible force meets an   immovable object and something’s got to give. CB: Right. Or there's like another Rob Hand   quote that I think you mentioned Rick,  which is something like “Saturn is the   perception of the boundaries of reality- RL: Oh, that’s Saturn and Neptune. Yeah.  CB: Yeah, yeah. What was that quote? RL: I think that was something he wrote in essays   way, way, way back. It's something like we used  to believe that Saturn was reality and Neptune was   illusion whereas now we've learned that Neptune is  reality and Saturn is the illusion there is one.  AC: That's funny. I would like to quote  you, Rick, on Uranus. I don't know if you   ever wrote this down, but it was something you  said to me in conversation 10 plus years ago.  RL: I'm still saying it. AC: Okay. It did have that   kind of sound to it. You said that “Uranus  represents that which is impossible to repress.”  RL: Okay. Well, that's slightly different  than the thing that I often say in class. I've   been known to say, if you only write one thing  down during this entire class or presentation,   write this down. And that is Uranus only  has one job on its job description and that   is the instantaneous resolution  of irresolvable opposites.   And, of course, that has the paradox of Uranus  built right into it and the whole idea that like,   for example, when lightning strikes, it's because  the positive and negative ions have nowhere to go   that it's reached a maximum tension and  at that moment of irresolvable no way to   resolve the tension, crash. And in that  one moment, in that one brief moment,   there's no tension there. AC: Right, which is a condensation   of what happens with storms in general. Storms  are warm front, cold front, right? A storm is   the winds resolving their tension with each other. RL: Yeah. And you know Austin that the warm front   is usually higher in moisture and when you have  moist air or moisture agitating against itself,   that creates negative ionization, which of  course is positive, I mean, that feels good.   So that's why waterfalls or the ocean or  a good rainstorm, these are all energizing   and the cold, dry air mass which is positive ions  which is like that agitates, that's not good,   that's the old phrase an ill wind blows no  good. And so, when you get these two different   electrical charges, the negative ions and the  positive ions, the more they try to work it out,   it's that this is proof that the psychology axiom,  if you have a problem, talk about it and work it   out. Well, that's usually a good thing. But there  are some things that the more you talk about,   the worse it gets. The more you talk about it, the  greater the tensions are. And that's what happens   in a storm is that the negative and positive  ions rub up against each other, the negative ions   become more negative, the positive ions become  more positive until it's stretched so far that   the lightning strikes instantaneous. And although  you know that lightning might strike any moment,   true to form with Uranus, you  know something's going to happen,   but you don't know where and when. AC: Right. You can you can guess,   right? Like, what's the tallest  building with a metal thing on it,   but it could be the tallest building over there. RL: Yeah, but then you look away and the   lightning strikes over there. AC: Yeah, yeah. That's great.  CB: Yeah. With the Uranus station, one of the  things that it brought up for me is like the   Afghan government fell early on like the 14th or  the 15th I think of August and this is a few days   before Uranus technically like its exact station  as we like to conceptualize it on the 19th.   But one of the things I think Ronnie Gale Dreyer  pointed out on Twitter is just that a planet   stationing is not an exact point because it's  more like a curve. So really, once you get within   like a few days or like a week of a planetary  station, especially when it's really slow-moving   outer planet, it's pretty much already stationary  because it stopped going anywhere in terms of   its forward or backward motion in the zodiac. RL: Yeah, I checked about Uranus when this was all   unfolding and Uranus was within 1° of its station  position for a week before and a week after. And   what's interesting though on the 14th- CB: You mean 1 minute, right?  RL: I'm sorry, what? CB: You mean 1 minute?  RL: I meant 1 minute. Thank you very much. One  minute. And the other thing though about the   13, 14, 15 leading up to the Uranus station,  is that man we were driving down quincunx lane.   I mean, they were one quincunx after another after  another from Saturn to the Mercury, Mars and from   Venus back to Jupiter and from the Sun to  Neptune and then Chiron on the other side of the   Mars, Mercury. It was like total quincunx  land and it was like just totally irritating.  CB: Driving down quincunx lane would  be a great album name I think if   anybody wants to take that for the future. AC: I’m going to just jump back to the language of   the planet stationing being on a curve cause  what that evoked for me immediately was   like a race car on a racetrack doing a tight  hairpin turn. And if you're in that car,   the centrifugal forces and the G forces  they generate, that's a moment of   serious concentration for the driver, things can  spin out of control. There's a lot more to do   there and there's a lot more potential energy  there than when you're just on a straightaway   so I really like that language. CB: That's a good point. And this   was also a retrograde station. Uranus was moving  forward and then it slows down and does a U-turn   and begins moving backwards in the sign of Taurus,  which is ruled by Venus. And I kept noticing   things related to Venus coming up as  being tied in with this. One of them   that I'm thinking of right now, of course, that  a lot of people were concerned about in terms of   the Taliban coming back into power after 20 years  was the plight of women, basically, in Afghanistan   and the Taliban historically being a really  repressive regime, especially towards women,   due to some of the religious background and  other fundamentalist background and if that   wasn't also part of what was being indicated by  that retrograde station in the sign of Taurus.   Yeah. That was something that was going on.  In other weird completely unrelated news,   but also coinciding with that to the day  actually, it was within 24 hours of Uranus   stationing retrograde on August 19th, there  was also this across social media like news   report that went out across Twitter and  everywhere else saying that the website   OnlyFans had announced that it would ban sexually  explicit content which then caused an uproar among   sex workers and other people that use the site  for their income which would suddenly be shut off   as thousands of people suddenly who use that to  make money or what have you would suddenly income   would cease to take place. Did you guys see that? AC: Yeah, I saw that. I'm glad you brought that   up because I saw that and I was like, really, I  was like, I don't think Venus in Libra is going   to let that happen, right? Anybody who works  with desire, beauty, aesthetics, etc. etc.   is at least an unofficial child of Venus.  You're working within that profession,   within those range of professions. And I was like,  really, I don't think Venus in Libra is going to   let that slide. And so, it was very interesting to  see how after Venus clear the aspect with Saturn,   that was not going to be the case.  That was reversed pretty quickly.  RL: Yeah. It was also the week that  Cuomo resigned. Yeah. And another Venus-  AC: Yeah, as a result of bad actions  within relationships or attempting   to relate in a way that was rather rude. CB: Yeah. Well, and one of the things that   came up this month, I did the Venus episode with  Becca Tarnas, one of the things that was mentioned   in passing was just that Venus had historically  in ancient texts in traditional astrology been   associated with sex workers and with sex work in  general, and it was interesting seeing such a big   story tied in with that with Uranus’s station in  the sign of Taurus. And one of the things that   was also interesting in tied in about it is we  talked about Uranus and Taurus over the past few   years and the gig economy and people working as  independent contractors for different things like   Lyft or Uber or different food delivery places or  things like that and being self-employed, but like   working for some larger corporation and having a  certain independence within that but also relying   on that larger structure of whatever that company  is and being subject to the whims of that company.   One of the things that was interesting about that  story that I think is relevant to the long term   is that it was the payment process or supposedly  like the credit card companies that were putting   pressure on OnlyFans to stop making sexual content  available on their website, even though that's   what it was designed for because they viewed that  as like a higher risk thing or due to moral issues   or what have you. So the credit card companies  put pressure on OnlyFans to change that policy.   It caused huge backlash. They did end up walking  it back I think within a week or a week later,   but the damage had been done. And I wondered  if this isn't part of a longer-term issue with   one of the things we've talked about is Uranus and  Taurus and the rise of cryptocurrencies and things   like that and if that's not also tied in with  part of this larger narrative in terms of the   control that some of these centralized banks and  credit card companies have over certain businesses   versus the decentralization of some  monetary things through cryptocurrencies.  RL: Yeah, I totally agree with that analysis.  And there was another thing that also happened   that was not exactly that day, but it was bubbling  over the last week, the court case that declared   that Uber and Lyft drivers actually are employees,  that the companies can't get away with shuffling   them off and saying that they're contractors.  That was another big deal. And in some ways, it   was similar to the OnlyFans fiasco because again,  it was driven by Venus, by finances, by money.  AC: This plays in perfectly to one other thing  that I wanted to bring up which is very Uranus   in Taurus and hits a theme that y'all been  talking about or we've also spoken of directly,   which is Uranus in Taurus, especially in the  context of the square with Saturn and labor and   both the redefinition of labor in a different  technological context in the context of   mid-Corona, post-Corona, whatever you want  to call it. But there are also two large   strikes happening. The workers of  Frito-Lay and Nabisco have by all   reports been treated like mules for  the last year or so and so there are   like national-level strikes beginning. And  those are huge companies, right? Those are   some of the most, how should we say, popular crap  factories. They make like all of the bad food.   And so, these are not small local issues CB: Right. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the   recurring themes is just many people realizing  how unstable their foundations are or in some   instances their financial foundations are. And  in some instances, the sudden collapse and just   things, the floor falling out from underneath you,  sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively,   with some of the energies that are going on  this year and that will be part of a continuing,   ongoing narrative and story that  we'll keep seeing because we've got   a few more hits of Saturn and Uranus as they  keep going back and forth in their dance   during the course of this year and on into 2022. RL: Certainly, on into 2022. Another thing about   that Uranus in Taurus, and I think Austin brought  this up, but I want to just take it a step further   and that is the relationship between Taurus  and basic needs, food. And, obviously,   aside from the larger issue of climate crisis,  the Colorado River was basically turned off so   to speak or at least will be severely limited and  there are places in the Central California Valley   that grow something like 80% of the cantaloupes  in the United States and the farmers are basically   saying the crops are going to just die.  They don't have the water for them. And so,   I think that this Uranus and Taurus, we're going  to also see more of that, but that's another thing   that's tied up with what's going on right now. AC: Yeah, absolutely. And both the   one thing we've talked on this podcast about  with the Saturn-Uranus is just disruption of   logistics, which is also another comfortable  given. Of course, there will be cantaloupes at   the supermarket, right? Of course, there  will be cantaloupes. And then the food   thing is overwhelming. And so, what's  interesting is in all of these cases,   what is being stress tested for is how  sustainable this thing or that thing is.  RL: And we're failing every  one of those stress tests.  AC: I don’t know about we, but  the society is definietly failing.  RL: Right, not you and me. AC: Yeah, I've got well water, Rick.   But yeah, because if you were like, what  would be a virtue of Taurus? I’ll be like,   oh, it's the fixed Earth sign that which is  sustainable that which can continue even under   an immense amount of stress, right? And a stress  test reveals the sustainability or lack thereof.  CB: Yeah. And so, a lot of people are having  that private stress test in their own lives.   Why don't we transition at this point since  we're 30 minutes into the show into talking   about September and starting to break down the  first week of the month? How does that sound?   I'll show the charts, but I also wanted to show a  new graphic that was designed. Shoutout to Brenda   Castaneda from zatana.net or Zatana on Instagram,  who is a graphic designer and astrologer and she   had designed some weekly Astro forecast graphics  and I asked her if we could incorporate some of   those in the forecasts and she said, “Sure.” So,  we developed some specifically for this episode   just to give an overview and a more detailed  breakdown of some of the astrology of September.   This is the weekly Astro weather for September  1st through the 4th, and we open up right away   at the very, very beginning of September  with that Mars Neptune opposition, where Mars   in the later portions of Virgo opposes Neptune in  Pisces and it seems like that's one of the first   major aspects that we have to talk about  in terms of opening up September, right?  RL: Yeah, I agree. And as the proud  owner of a natal Mars opposed Neptune,   I can say good news, bad news. CB: All right, give us the good   news first and then hit us with the bad news. RL: Well, the good news is that I think that   there's inability at times to manifest one's  illusions, but they're for better and for worse.   And I think that often the way things manifest are  not the way you planned and so there's almost like   a juxtaposition of the energy of the, it's not  the who we are, it's the where we're going and   the where we think we are going. And it's almost  like we get all charged up to go somewhere, and I   don't mean somewhere necessarily physically,  it can be somewhere metaphysically, but we're   all charged up to go there and yet there  doesn't turn out to be there. And I think   that's the downside. But I think that there's a  potential whenever Mars and Neptune get together,   Grant Louis somewhere wrote about Mars-Neptune  as the shape shifter because there's that sense   of the physicality of Mars is impacted by the  illusion and an illusion isn't necessarily untrue.   It's just something based upon a wish fulfillment  because illusions become dreams become real.   Bill Clinton had a Mars conjunct Neptune and  of course, Venus was in the picture also,   but it was like when he was on, he seemed 10  feet tall and when he was not, he just seemed   like he was invisible. And so, I think this  Mars oppose Neptune can work either way, but I   think it puts us in a very delicate place because  what we believe actually can manifest whether or   not it manifests the way we think it's going to. CB: Yeah, that's a really good summary. I did an   episode on Neptune with Laura Nalbandian last  week and we talked a lot about Neptune and the   illusions that it brings, which can sometimes  be deceptive or misleading. But then there's   a flip side of that coin which is that sometimes  people need something to believe in and sometimes   that which is illusory is a belief that  carries you forward and can push you   forward even if it's not correct to the tee,  sometimes those things are necessary in order   to inspire us to achieve great things. RL: Yeah, William Blake wrote what is   now proved was once only imagined and that's  Neptune. Neptune can certainly be complicated   and difficult. I like Caroline Casey who says that  imagination or Neptune lays the tracks for Saturn   or the reality train to follow. Neptune creates  a scaffolding that then we can build structure   upon not always and again, it's often the dreams  are either unreachable or just plain ridiculous.  AC: Yeah, I would say that a dreamed reality or  an imagined reality is proven later down the line   to be true or false in terms of what's inside the  Saturn fence, right? If I imagine that I can do a   thing and then 10 years later I do it, then my  dreams look prophetic, right? But if I imagine   I can do a thing and then I fail spectacularly,  well, that was he was just a delusional, right?  RL: It's prophetic or pathetic. AC: Yeah, right?  CB: Yeah, and I guess that's the real danger  with the potential downside of a Mars-Neptune   opposition is that Mars likes to have clear goals  and objectives and it's very good, especially   at accomplishing short term objectives  as long as it has a clear line of sight   of what it needs to do so it can get it done, but  Neptune is not very good at giving a clear line of   sight and if anything, it blurs things so that  Mars doesn't necessarily know where it's going   and can be punching or reaching around in the  dark, which is not going to be as effective in   accomplishing those Mars type goals. RL: Yeah, it's like being in   a boxing match blindfolded. AC: Yeah. One thing I like about Mars-Neptune,   just on a quick transiting energetic level, is  that Neptune a lot of times just blunts Mars.   I see the ambient level of aggro often  go down when Neptune gets in Mars way.   Right. Sometimes you have that like taking up  a dream with the Mars energy especially more on   other aspects, but there's a little bit of just  mist or fog aerosolized water just putting out   some of the Mars’ fire which is often useful for  just a dip in contentions. Sometimes it appears   as if Mars disappears energetically  for a few days before coming back.  CB: Yeah, it can sap some of Mars’ energy and  energetic-ness. Another good Mars-Neptune phrase   that’s coming to mind is the fog of war which  is used as a phrase, but that's a very good   Mars-Neptune thing in terms of the actions that  you can take as long as you have a clear sight   line, but there's so many things that you  don't know that might be around you in terms   of enemies lurking in the corner or in the dark. RL: But there's something very interesting about   this particular Mars opposing Neptune. Could you  put the chart back up again for a moment, Chris?   Is that possible? Because what's happening  as Mars is opposing Neptune, we also have   the Moon opposing Pluto and in fact, Mars is  coming into a trine with Pluto. And so, there's   a bit of a kind of good news wrapped around  this opposition that if this was a natal chart,   we would probably call that or some people would  call that a mystic rectangle where you have the   trine sextile trine sextile with the two planets  in opposition, but there's a potential here to   manifest it and Mars even though it might be  a little bit lost or a lot lost with Neptune   is getting some power from that trine to Pluto. CB: That's a good point. Definitely, so it's   moving into that trine over the next few days  which will eventually go exact, it looks like   around the fifth or the sixth of September. RL: Yeah, interesting this first few days   aside from the Mars opposing Neptune, we have  several trines. We have Mercury trining Saturn.   We have Mars trining Pluto. And  we have Venus trining Jupiter.   And then we have the Sun trining Uranus, all  within a four- or five-day period of time.   And it's almost like there's the potential  for something good. Wouldn’t that be lovely?   We need it. CB: Yeah, that brings us into our first lunation   basically which happens very early in the month  and it's that new Moon at 14° of Virgo on the   sixth of September and that new Moon at 14 Virgo  is very closely trine to Uranus which is at 14° of   Taurus. Yeah. I'm liking that that new Moon. It is  taking place with Mars so there's like a Martian   and a somewhat fiery quality to it, but the trine- RL: But Mars is part trine to Pluto also.   I like this new Moon a lot. CB: Yeah.   What are you thinking about it, Austin? AC: Oh yeah, it's fine. I wish Mars wasn't   there with it. I have a slightly different take  on the first third of the month. I really like   the Venus-Mercury, which is there until the 10th.  Venus gets boost from Jupiter and Mercury plays   nicely with Saturn. Right. They're much  more compatible than Venus and Saturn.   Mercury likes analysis and Saturn does  structure. They're both capable of being   dry without their functions being impeded.  But with Venus ruling the sign Mercury's in,   Mercury's in good hands. There's just a lot of  nice potentials for that Venus-Mercury. And again,   the new Moon looks to Mercury and Mercury is doing  this thing with Venus and then everything goes   back to Venus there. And so, I just like that as  a wedge of generally positive potential. There's   just a lot you can do with Venus and Mercury.  It's good for arts and crafts and making peace   and having fun, pleasant and useful things. CB: Yeah. That Mercury-Saturn trine that you   mentioned is one of our early aspects that goes  exact on September 4th so that's one of the nicer   aspects that's happening at the beginning of  the month and it actually takes place a few days   before the lunation and right at the same time  that new Moon in Virgo happens, Mercury actually   enters its shadow because 10° of Libra is the  degree that it's later going to retrograde back to   in October, which is an interesting setting  up or foreshadowing of events that are going   to take place later in the month when Mercury  stations retrograde towards the end of September.  RL: Yeah, and it does that while it's quincunxing  Uranus and that aspect repeats three times   both on October 11th then on October 24th because  that is the beginning of that shadow period then   Uranus moves slow enough that Mercury is  going to hit it by quincunx three times.  AC: Before we get on to Mercury, because there's a  lot to tell there, I would just like to point out   that this first 10 days of the month is the  last time that Venus is going to rejoice   for many, many, many months because we're going to  go Venus into Scorpio where square Saturn opposite   Uranus, not the most comfortable place. And then  Sagittarius is okay there with the south node. But   then most importantly, when we get Venus moving  into Capricorn, it's Venus in Capricorn for long   months and for almost a month of conjunction with  Pluto. We're not going to have happy Venus for   more than six months. And so that's part  of why I'm interested in taking advantage   of the perfumed wind of the [fair of a New  Zealand] weather while it's here because   it's not coming around for quite some time. RL: Yeah. And there's another thing that is   easy to miss. If we could go back to the new Moon  chart for another moment, there's something really   fascinating about this because if you look at the  new Moon chart, you have Mars at 24° almost 25°,   Venus at 25°, Pluto at 24°- 25°, and Jupiter  at 24° almost 25°. It's like crisscrossed   trines and the outer part of this is a quincunx,  so this actually becomes a symmetrical trapezoid   with a quincunx, a semi-sextile, a square, and  a semi-sextile again, and all the midpoints all   end up creating trine sextile trine. It’s  just a fascinating geometry in this because   the midpoint of Mars and Venus is 10° of Libra,  that's Mercury. The midpoint of Jupiter and Pluto   is nine plus Aquarius, that's Saturn. And then  the midpoint of Mars-Jupiter is 9° 55 minutes   Sagittarius. And the midpoint of Mercury-Pluto  is 10° Sagittarius. And you take those midpoints   and they're all trine and sextile to one another.  And again, a lot of it comes back to Venus,   I agree with you, Austin. But I like this new  Moon. There's an irritating factor to it though,   but I think ultimately, there's some deep  structure that really, really works out.   It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. AC: Yeah. And intersecting with that point, one   of the ways I've been thinking about especially  the first half of September to a certain degree   overall is shoring things up, doing some building,  figuring out how to get ready for the next round   of stress tests because October gets progressively  rougher and then November is a storm and so   you got to batten down the hatches for the storm.  You can't do repairs and upgrades in the middle   of a storm. And I think that as you've illustrated  rather beautifully with the midpoints in addition   to the aspects, that looks like trapezoid  is a solid shape, right? You can place that   on the ground and it's not going to get knocked  over easily. Building out whether it's business   plans or financial arrangements or friendships and  relationships or health stuff, just building out   some nice reliable trapezoids and so they are  mundane trapezoids as opposed to the mystical   rectangle. There’s mundane trapezoids and I think- RL: Austin, what you're saying is really true. The   Hubers point out that this particular trapezoid  basically has trines internally. In other words,   the trines are between Mars and Pluto and  Venus and Jupiter. That's internal. External,   there's a square, a semi-sextile, a quincunx, and  a semi-sextile. That's not nice. It's stable, but   it's irritating as hell. As a matter of fact, the  Hubers call this particular pattern of trampoline   because we're bouncing about but internally, we're  stable. Inwardly, we're idealistically. Outwardly,   we’re hypersensitive and stressed. Interesting. AC: Yeah. And so, just to riff on that,   it's interesting to think in terms of the external  angles of a shape, right? If we took a Grand Cross   which is hard aspects inside now, two oppositions,  four squares and you look at the side, it just   makes a box, right? I got obsessed briefly  with World War Two era tanks tank design   a couple of months ago, and one of the things that  came up that actually I think taught me something   about aspects was sloped armor. If you want to  have maximum impact like penetration power against   the surface you're firing a shell or you're  exerting any force, if you have a right angle, if   you have a 90-degree angle, that's maximum impact,  right? That's the worst kind of car accident to   get into is getting T-boned, right? And so, for  military vehicles, you do sloped armor because   things will tend to bunk off. You’re either trine  or usually sextile armor, right? Because you're   not creating an angle that can be intersected with  in a hostile way. It's literally a friendly angle.  RL: It's like the difference between  square, sextiles and trines, isn't it?  Austion Coppock: Yeah, it's  kind of exactly like that.  CB: Yeah. I'm glad you brought up one of  the things we've mentioned in passing Rick   was the Venus-Jupiter trine which is one of the  other characteristics of this new Moon because   there's something very affirming about that that's  like saying yes to or firming up plans in a very   positive and optimistic way. But then at the same  time, Venus is also squaring Pluto. So there's   also this intense or obsessive quality to some of  that new Moon energy and some of the Venus energy   at the time which is a little bit complicated. RL: Yeah, it's a complicated new Moon   and it's easy to look at this new Moon and go  new Moon trining Uranus, wow, it'll be changed,   it'll make things happen in a way that might  move us in a better direction ultimately.   But then when you start looking at the complexity  of that Mars-Pluto, Venus-Pluto, Venus-Jupiter,   and the Jupiter-Mars quincunx, all of a  sudden this becomes a lot more complicated.  AC: Well, about the Sun and Moon exactly trine  Uranus, right, we talk about Uranus as initiating   change or catalyzing change. Catalyzing is  one of my favorite words for Uranus. But   there's also part of that dance is adapting  to changes that have already happened,   right? And I see a trine especially as a very,  oh, I see what's happening here, I'm going to   make these changes in relationship to the changes  that already happened. Right. That process of   change begetting change, right? Oh, I have a  new job. Now I have to wake up at a different   time so I'm going to rearrange my evening. Right?  Or there was an earthquake and so now, I'm going   to think about what I'm going to do with my next  month which has changed because of a sudden thing.   And yeah, again, this keeps coming back to me as  like an opportunity to adapt to the data that's   come in and build that nice stable trapezoid upon  which to bounce which is good, bounce something   which has bounce like that's shock absorbers. RL: And there's also the Mercury opposition to   Chiron in this mix, too. It's a complicated dance. CB: Yeah. And I also noticed that we're halfway   between in September when we hit this lunation,  the eclipse cycles, so we're three months since   our last set of eclipses in the mutable signs and  we're about three months out from our next set of   eclipses in mutable signs. We're at the midpoint  between eclipses, which can sometimes be a little   bit of a turning point as well relative  to whatever was started in the last set of   eclipses and relative to wherever that's heading  in the next set that's coming up later this year.  RL: That was a cool graphic. CB: Yeah, so that's from Archetypal Explorer who's   our sponsor this month, which we'll get to later,  but they have lots of cool graphics like that   such as this which shows the Sun and Moon  conjunctions, especially when they get   close in latitude and longitude, which  is what eventually leads to an eclipse.   All right. One thing I should mention at this  point because it happens really early in the month   when we're getting all of those nice combinations  with planets in Libra, especially with Venus in   Libra and with Mercury in Libra is our electional  chart, our auspicious election for this month   which actually takes place, I believe, on  September 9th, 2021 around 6:15 p.m. with   24 Aquarius rising. We're taking advantage of a  triple conjunction of Mercury, the Moon and Venus   in the sign of Libra. Here's the chart set  for Denver roughly, so this is going to be   an Aquarius rising chart. You want to adjust the  chart for your location on September 9th until the   Ascendant is at about 24° of Aquarius. And if you  put the Ascendant at 24 Aquarius in your location,   then Jupiter should be exactly conjunct the  Ascendant in this chart in a day chart, so you   have an Aquarius rising chart. Saturn is the ruler  of the Ascendant which is still retrograde but is   in its domicile in the first whole sign house in  a day chart, which is a pretty good ruler of the   Ascendant. But instead of placing Saturn right on  the Ascendant which can slow things down a little   bit, we're placing Jupiter right in the Ascendant  in this electional chart. The Moon is up in Libra   in the 9th whole sign house and it's applying to  a nice conjunction with Venus in the 9th house,   which is in the very last degree of Libra at 29°  of Libra. Mercury is also there in Libra at 13°.   It's just coming off of that nice trine with  Saturn that Austin had mentioned previously. And   the Moon is technically enclosed between the two  benefics because it's separating from a trine with   Jupiter and it's applying to a conjunction with  Venus. In some locations, the Moon may still be   applying to a trine with Jupiter, but that's just  as good and that would be pretty good as well.  This is a good Jupiter election, a good Saturn  election, a good 9th house election for education,   philosophy, and other 9th house activities.  It's not a very good chart for shared finances   and other 8th house topics, shared resources  because it puts Mars in the 8th house in a day   chart which can lead to strife when it comes  to shared resources or other people's money.   But otherwise, it's a pretty solid chart as  a general-purpose election on September 9th   and we're doing it early in the month  because then it's also clear of Mercury's   retrograde station which happens later in  September which is a decidedly less great   time to initiate new ventures and undertakings. AC: Yeah, Mercury still has plenty of speed and   brightness at this point. CB: Right.   Yeah, exactly. And it's also the last period  not just before it gets retrograde, but also   before Mars moves into Libra and joins the party  and begins that co-presence with Mercury again,   which will eventually culminate I believe in  another conjunction eventually, so just a kind of   period to take advantage of additionally, like  you said, Austin, the last little bits of the   good smelling period of Venus in Libra. RL: Yeah, this is like a get it while you can   chart. AC: Yeah,   going out of business sale. RL: Going into business sale,   whatever. Yeah, it’s good. CB: Yeah, get it while the   getting is good. That is the main electional  chart that we're highlighting this month.   Leisa Schaim and I picked out four or five  other auspicious electional charts on the   Auspicious Elections Podcast this month, which  is available through our page on Patreon. Just   go to patreon.com/astrologypodcast, sign up  for the $5 tier or any of the ones above that   to get access to that podcast which is  available now. All right. Let's go back to   that first and second week. We're really getting  into the second week at this point of September.   And we've covered the lunatin, we've  covered the lunation and its trine with   Uranus. Where do we go after that at this point?  I mean, eventually Venus does a few days later on   Friday the 10th move into Scorpio, which is- AC: Yeah, we should talk about the ingresses   because it really changes things up. CB: Yeah, the ingress of Venus in   particular or other ingresses? AC: Well, Venus and then Mars.  CB: Right. Mars takes place  just a couple days later when   it moves into Libra on Tuesday the 14th. AC: It's a pretty significant vibe shift.  CB: Yeah, so vibe shift around late  second week, early third week of September   between the 10th and the 14th, basically? AC: Right. Venus goes from Libra into Scorpio,   right? And we can talk about the different  outfits that planets wear in signs and how   they interact with the territory. Obviously, Venus  in Scorpio is much more classically golf couture,   but I think what's more important for  the last couple or for at least the first   couple of weeks of Venus in Libra is that Venus  is going to be playing the Saturn-Uranus game,   right? Venus has to square Uranus-- RL: You mean the first couple of   weeks of Venus in Scorpio not Libra. AC: Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't   realize I misspoke, but yeah, in Scorpio  Venus has to play the Saturn-Uranus game,   right? And I would say that  outweighs whatever essential   dignity or lack thereof Venus has in Scorpio CB: Yeah. Just to set the foundation for that,   what is Venus in Scorpio like? It's Venus opposite  to her domiciles or one of the traditional   places associated with Venus which is Taurus.  It's in the sign of Venus's what some of the   traditional texts called exile or another word  I've been using is antithesis just because the   sign opposite to a planets domicile often has what  we consider to be opposite or almost antithetical   qualities to that planet. What are some of  the antithetical qualities that Venus has   when it's moving through the sign of Scorpio? AC: Well, so Venus’s time in Scorpio is an   interesting example of exile because you  still have Venus as being a trigon lord   or having some triplicity dignity  in Scorpio because it's a water sign   and Venus does water. And that's different than  Aries with hot dry, not a drop to drink. And so,   Venus in Scorpio isn't lacking in sensitivity  or feeling, but the idea is that there's sort of   a macabre menagerie of things to enjoy or instead  with that preserved sensitivity be grossed out by   so I said goth, right? It's like, I don't  know, are graveyards beautiful? I might think   so. But generally speaking, a lot of Scorpio  significations line up with what most people   regard as gross or repulsive or scary rather  than attractive, calming, harmony producing.  CB: Right. Venus in Scorpio likes things that  are different than or not the things that   most people would consider to be appealing. AC: Right, in a position to either be   annoyed by or to find the hidden beauty within the  potentially grotesque or macabre or frightening.  RL: Thomas Moore, the guy who wrote The Planets  Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio   Ficino and wrote all the soul books, the first  book he wrote was a book called Dark Eros. To me,   that's Venus in Scorpio. And dark isn't just bad,  it's just the other side of the Venus in Taurus   where love is simple and lovely and it feels good  and there's sensual pleasure. And in Scorpio,   one of the case histories that he used in  that book on Dark Eros was Marquis de Sade.   He had pleasure. I'm not promoting this, I'm  just saying that Venus in Scorpio has that   darkness attached to it which of course can be  transmuted like Scorpio does, but it's certainly   the opposite of where Venus would prefer to be. AC: And I like to use the term can be transmuted   because I think can be transmuted  is a really good statement   because I often hear difficult configurations  in astrology spoken of as if they could   not possibly be worked with or on the  contrary that they will automatically   be transmuted, right? If we're talking about  transmutation or we're talking about alchemy,   we're talking about a very conscious and  classically like nitpicky process where the   transmutation of a substance into something  else doesn't just happen by itself and it   doesn't happen without knowledge and effort. RL: Right. I think of it like being in Olympics   and certain things like diving you get two  scores, you get a score on the execution   and then you get a separate score on level  of difficulty. And sometimes it's the highest   levels of difficulty that can create the highest  overall scores if you execute them correctly and I   think Venus in Scorpio is like that. AC: I think some charts are like that.  RL: Yeah, yeah, I agree. CB: That's one of the things I   like about astrology is just anything that can  happen will happen and there will be somebody   that will manifest some version of a combination  in a constructive way and there will be somebody   that manifests that in a destructive way as  well as every possible shade of gray in between.   So sometimes, I think that's one of the  charming things, but also one of the   difficulties with older astrological texts is  they'll have a tendency to put everything in   terms of extremes and to just say what the most  extremely negative or possible manifestation   of any combination is and you're supposed to  infer what the shades of gray are in between.   When it comes to Venus though traveling  through Scorpio over the next month or so,   you pointed out Austin that it is first going to  encounter, one of its first encounters is going   to be that square with Saturn in Aquarius, right? AC: Yeah. And it's rough to be in the whatever the   graveyard gallery after cloud floating through  Libra and you're dropped into the cremation   grounds, it's like, okay, well, there's some here  and then you have Saturn and then you have Uranus.   And we could say, honestly, when  you encounter Saturn at this point,   you're encountering a very stressed-out Saturn  who's been waging a war with Uranus to try to keep   things under control for at least the whole year. RL: And I think you said this or alluded to it   that Venus squares the Saturn on September  16th and then opposes Uranus on the 23rd   and then at the very end of the  month, Venus squares Jupiter, so   Venus has her work cut out for her for darn sure. CB: Right, running through the gauntlet or running   across the milk crates, metaphorically. AC: Well, it's the milk crates   while Saturn's yelling at you. CB: Yeah, to get off the milk crates.  AC: And it's Venus. So, Venus is like my  primary role within the solar system is not   to be the American Ninja Warrior. It's to create  works of haunting and uplifting beauty and to   redeem creation through joy. It's like why am I on  these milk crates and why are you shooting at me?   But yeah, on a practical level, Venus Saturn in  whatever relationships a person and especially   if they're erotic or romantic to whatever degree,  its boundaries. Venus Saturn will like point at   and probably poke at whatever boundaries aren't  working perfectly mutually in a relationship.  RL: Yeah, to the extent of sending someone running  for the hills saying none of this is worth it.  AC: My boundary is actually the county  line and you need to get the fuck out.  CB: Yeah, that's the first thing that Venus runs  into in Scorpio is that hard boundary or wall with   Saturn and that can have like a dampening or a  cooling effect on Venus and on Venus’s otherwise   tendency to want to merge things to suddenly run  into a wall where Saturn is pushing it away or   is saying no to something that Venus otherwise  wants to be doing. But then it's weird that we   shift from that very quickly to a very opposite  energy of a much more freeing and a much more   destabilizing but also liberatory energy of  Venus separating from Saturn and then immediately   applying to that opposition with Uranus in Taurus. AC: Right. And so that's an interesting set   of days, that's what? Around a week? RL: Yeah, the 16th through the 23rd.  AC: Yeah, where we have Venus between the rays  of Saturn and Uranus, between the structural   requirements and the various changes, right? Like  maybe we throw out all the old rules and rewrite   them from beginning, maybe we just rewrite  this one thing. But there's that uncertainty   of what do we change, what should change. It's the  factor that is in a sense calling for a rewrite or   a rebuild of the Saturn walls or structure. CB: Right or even the Venus hitting Saturn   and there being like a boundary and a no  and even a rejection or the rejection or   loss of a relationship in some sense. But,  out of that, Venus then walks into Uranus   and starts to experience a freeing from  those restrictions of Saturn. And instead   maybe it's the being liberated by being suddenly  single and not having those restrictions holding   it back. And what is it like in that context? AC: Yeah. I just wanna say I think Uranus plays   well with Venus in some ways, but Uranus often  liberates Venus from relationship itself which   is not always positive or what Venus wanted. But  there's a difference between being liberated from   the shitty parts of a given bond and just being  liberated from the whole relationship, right?   There's babies and bathwater happening there. CB: Yeah, which initially might seem   liberating. But then at some point there  might be looking back and sort of wistfulness   of the support and the sort of structure  that the relationship itself gave.  RL: Yeah. Yeah, well, into this mix there's a  number of other trines that happen in between   and around those squares on the  same day as Venus squares Saturn,   that same day on the 16th the Sun is trining  Pluto. And then Mercury trines Jupiter just a   few days later followed by Mars trining Saturn.  And so it's really interesting because although   the Venus stuff is really difficult, it's almost  like there's some place to go but not to Venus.  AC: Right. Well, I like that because especially  with that Mercury-Jupiter trine we're really   looking at like, "Okay, so not feeling very good  about this. But what kind of situation do the   planets give us to work it out?" Mercury-Jupiter  in air signs is opening the airwaves for   sort of fair-minded communication, but we also  have Mars having moved into Libra making trouble   as far as delicately balanced situations go. RL: Yeah. And you know that   the Mercury trine Jupiter is another one of those  aspects that because of Mercury's retrograde,   Mercury will trine Jupiter on September 20 then  again on October 3rd while it's retrograding and   then again on Halloween on October 31st on the  third final pass. And so there's something about   that Mercury trining Jupiter because it extends  over a period of a month and a week or so   that kind of gives us a little bit of   additional blessing from that aspect. AC: Yeah, it's like three   opportunities to kind of figure it out. RL: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'll need it.  AC: No doubt. There's a lot to figure out. CB: You don't usually figure things out on the   first pass. The first pass is like your first  attempt. But sometimes it takes that second   and the third attempt to get it right. RL: Yeah. Yeah, agreed.  CB: All right, so let's back up to the other  ingress that we mentioned. So it's like Venus   goes into Scorpio, and all of that begins that  we've just been talking about on September 10th.   The other major ingress that happens right  after is Mars going into Libra on September   14th. So that's the other side of the coin in some  sense compared to Venus going into Scorpio is Mars   doing the same thing and moving into one of its  opposite signs or its exile or its antithesis   or what have you because it's moving into a  sign ruled by Venus which often has opposite   or antithetical qualities. And that's what Mars  has to work with this month once it makes that   ingress for the entire second half of September. RL: Well, yeah. And that mutual reception is kind   of interesting. But what I find interesting about  Mars in Libra, it always makes me think of martial   arts. Because Mars is obviously combat and martial  and Venus relating to Libra. Mars doesn't like   being in Libra, but there's something about  that that can work if Mars can figure out a way   to play nicely to get along with  others which it doesn't wanna do.  AC: Right. Well, and that's part  of the challenge with Mars in Libra   is that, as I said earlier, Libra is a place where  things are exquisitely and delicately balanced,   whether it's the design of a web page or the  dynamic in a working relationship. And Mars   doesn't do well with delicate things that  it can't bump into, right? And so it's like   on one side you have, how do you keep Mars from  fucking up all the nicely arranged Libra things?   And the other side it's like, well, what do you  give Mars to do so Mars doesn't go fucking crazy?   And so when you were talking about the martial  arts examples, the first thing that came to mind   was capoeira which is very beautiful and where  you don't hit each other. There's a timing and   sparring practice, but it's done rhythmically  to music, their traditional instruments.   And you don't kick each other in the face. And  so it's like, "Oh, Mars can do that." It's a   hell of a workout. They're handstands, they're  flips, they're high kicks, there's rhythm.   And there's some contest, but you don't have the  the crude impacts of the purely martial. And so,   yeah, just figuring out what to do with Mars that  one is good for Mars and also preserves all the   things that Venus just set up in Libra, right? CB: Yeah, and so that Mars doesn't just come in   like a wrecking ball and knock all of that down? AC: Right. We don't want the iron fist training   Mars which is like, "Yeah, I can punch through  this wall where all these paintings are hanging."   It's like, "That's amazing that you can do  that. Please don't punch through the wall. "  CB: Right. RL: It's a ram in a China shop,   a bull, yeah, whatever. AC: Yeah,   going through giant halberd forms in a China  shop where there's an eight-foot whirling blade.   And there are irreplaceable paintings on the wall,  and there are delicate and beautiful statues set   up perfectly. CB:   Yeah, so one of the shifts that we're having then  as we went from last month we had the Mercury-Mars   conjunction in Virgo which we talked about is  like one of the metaphors that we used was editing   and how a good editor can sort of use a scalpel  to slice a piece of written work and to improve it   as a result of that incisive quality of  Mars and the sort of constructive quality of   knowing when to cut something out or when to edit  something out that all good editors have. So here   we're switching to a Mars-Mercury co-presence  especially because Mercury is gonna slow down   and retrograde and go back towards Mars earlier  in Libra, and I think they'll meet up again.   What's a better metaphor than for Mercury  and Mars conjoining in the sign of Libra   compared to that conjunction in the sign of Virgo? AC: Hmm.   Well, if you wanna be viciously passive  aggressive in a socially acceptable way,   I suppose that it's strong for that. CB: Viciously passive aggressive in a   socially--Yeah, so like gossiping is a  Mercury, Mars, and Libra thing perhaps?  AC: Absolutely. CB: Which is like the spreading--  AC: But don't actually do that, right? CB: Yeah, don't use the electional chart   to gossip. That would be a funny use of electional  astrology. But no, that's a good metaphor for that   in terms of the spreading of things. Because Libra  is a social sign, and all of the air signs are   more social signs. So that's a good analogy. RL: Yeah, it could be someone or it   could be a situation where someone is  verbally aggressive in a relationship.  CB: Sure. Yeah, definitely. And-- AC: Yeah, it's gonna sharpen tongues.  CB: Yeah. So Mars is ingress into Libra sharpening  tongues for the rest of September in the second   half of September and then perhaps that  Mercury station later in the month when   Mercury stations retrograde just emphasizing that  in terms of miscommunications that could lead to   sort of verbal sparring or verbal altercations  of sorts especially in relationships.  RL: Yeah. AC: Yeah, there's a little bit of   even more than the normal than you would have  with a standard Mercury retrograde, your Mercury   Retrograde incoming situation. You really wanna do  the think twice before you send the angry email,   think twice about maybe how you interpreted  a communication. Maybe you reacted,   and they didn't actually mean that, etc. etc.  But that think twice about what you say and what   you hear I would say goes double with Mars  co-present with Mercury during this period.  CB: Yeah, you might have that initial impulse to  fire off the quick, sharply-worded email letter.  AC: The strongly-worded letter. CB: Right. Yeah, and that might feel good   in the moment or it might seem like the right  thing to do that initial impulse, but you may   regret and have to walk that back later. RL: Yeah, and you might not want to.   You might resist doing that. CB: Yeah, that's always the   hardest part is having to own up to that  once you've made a mistake and you've done   the impulsive thing that looked like the right  call at the time. But clearly in retrospect,   you ended up being the jerk in that instance. AC: Yeah, you can totally dig a hole with   your tongue. CB: Mhm. Right.  RL: I'm not going there. That  image just doesn't sit right.  AC: Well, no. It's an image that's  supposed to discourage, right?  RL: Yeah. Okay, it did. I'm not doing that. AC: Good. Or repulse might be the right term.  RL: Mhm. CB: Speaking of repulse, so let's see. We're into   the September 12th through 18th time frame. AC: Sorry, Chris. We gotta talk about the fact   that Mars is basically invisible now. Mars is  deeply combust. You might be able to just barely   catch a hint of red with it being where it is  and on the western horizon right at sunset if   you have clear skies. But Mars is in the process  of disappearing if not disappeared entirely. And   we're gonna have invisible Mars for quite some  time, right? And that means that we're heading   into the Mars-Sun conjunction which has its own  meaning. But as a piece of a cycle, it's exactly   the halfway point between Mars retrogrades. I  think we all remember last year's Mars retrograde.  CB: Mhm. Yeah. AC: I believe it was 19 months   in Aries. It was Mars's retrograde. And so this  is interesting. This is the halfway point. This   is the Cazimi, the being in the furnace heart  of the Sun for Mars. This is the end of a   two-year cycle. This is the beginning of another  two-year cycle. Mars disappears on the western   horizon and in several weeks will reemerge and  become visible again on the eastern horizon   as morning Mars. Because this is a longer cycle,  right? It's not that everything about the cycle   will become clear in one moment, but this  is the phase of Mars that we're in. It's   sort of the end of a series of campaigns and  adventures and challenges. And I would say for   cohering with this, the right angle is looking  back on the challenges you took on, the challenges   that came and found you, the monsters you slew,  the monsters that made off with your fingers and   toes and how you acted, what your tactics were,  what to learn from this series of campaigns. And   I don't know what to say. And to keep an eye  out if we're talking about a couple weeks here.   Keep an eye out for what is the next cycle  of campaigns, adventures, and challenges.   What do you think, Rick? RL: Yeah. I don't know that I   would have said that as clearly as you,  but I think that that makes a lot of sense.  AC: Okay, well thank you. RL: Yeah,   I don't have anything to add to it. I think  that this whole period of time. Like you say,   Mars was in Aries almost as long as March lasted  last year. And now that it's in the opposite sign   obviously not thrilled about being so far  away from its home and being lost behind the   Sun at the same time, yeah, is not a happy camper. AC: And that's a really good point that the spirit   of invisibility and the exact conjunction happens  in Libra, right? And this makes a lot of sense on   them. If some of this Mars conjunct the Sun this  reviewing a whole two-year chunk is gonna have to   do with grappling with feelings of powerlessness.  Cause Mars doesn't have much power in Libra. And   I think that a lot of people have grappled with  feelings of powerlessness over the last two years.   There's been a lot of big malefic shit that  a single individual couldn't turn the tide of   more so than on average. CB: Yeah, the other thing is that Mars under the   beams does better and will have a tendency to act  more behind the scenes. And some of the actions   that take place won't be out in the open and won't  be necessarily out front but instead will be done   in private and may only become clear later on. RL: Yeah, and I think that that probably is   supported by the fact that one of the things that  Mars can do while it's in Libra is strategize.   It may not be good at delivering a punch, but it's  good about thinking when the best time to do it   might be. And maybe that's because it doesn't have  the power or the impetus to deliver that punch.   Of course I don't mean physically, I  mean any sort of way. And so I think   that Mars does become doubly invisible. AC: And I think that's great and reminds me of   an MMA fighter whose Sun and Mars in Libra,  and that's Holly Holm who famously defeated the   seemingly invincible Ronda Rousey. And what  Holly did and how Holly did that and I think   what that Mars Sun in Libra is good at is it's  not so much about how cool are my punches. It's   the know thy enemy. It's to understand what  you're up against which is usually Mars is   very self-focused and it's like, "I'm going to  work on my potency, my abilities, my whatever."   But in Libra there's that, what are their  abilities? What am I dealing with here?   And whether that's career challenges,  relationship challenges, or creative challenges,   whatever it is, whatever you're up against. RL: Yeah. Austin, you're the expert   here in martial arts. But when I talked  about Mars in Libra as a martial artist,   I was kind of thinking maybe aikido from  what I know more than other forms is you're   really working with the energy of your opponent.  You're relying on your opponent to expend energy   that you then make work on your behalf. And  so that's kind of like how that Mars can   actually be effective in an ineffective position. AC: Yeah, I like that because a lot of the aikido   training is literally sensitivity and being able  to anticipate. Because the classical aikido moves   are you're not doing something to a person, you're  dealing with what they're trying to do to you.   And, again, in a sort of more rough and tumble  context, if you watch the short fight between   Holly Holm and Ronda Rousey, it kind of looks  like that Ronda with Mars in Aries conjunct Rahu   literally charges at her several times.  And there's almost like a matador's ole   as Holly's side steps and kind of gives  her a push and Rhonda stumbles. It's   not as pretty as like a rehearsed aikido form but  very much that principle. And also aikido is where   we have the goal of the conflict is to stop the  conflict rather than to triumph. There are some   contexts where you want to be the champion, right?  And the set parameters of the contest are either   you are lying at their feet or they are lying at  your feet. Whereas the set parameters, the goal in   aikido and different arts as well is to extinguish  the conflict itself so nobody's fighting in the--  RL: More Libra. More Libra. AC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody's   fighting in the beautiful art studio,  right? Cause that's the point. It's   not to win the fight of the art studio. RL: At the expensive paintings on the wall.  AC: Yeah, it's stop fighting in the art studio. CB: I was looking through examples to see if   I could find some natives with Mars  and Libra examples, especially with   combinations with Mercury in Libra and the  Sun. And one of the funny ones I just found   in searching through my database was AOC  or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has a   Mercury-Mars-Sun conjunction in Libra and just  had some really sick burns on Twitter when   she's getting into verbal sparring matches with  other politicians and stuff like that. I think   that's a really good example of some of that  energy of a Mercury-Mars conjunction in Libra.  RL: Yeah. CB: Yeah. All right, so the Mercury-Mars   conjunction though in Libra or that co-presence  could be a good time for sick burns. But with the   retrograde later on in the month, just be careful  that it's not something that you're gonna have to   walk back cause that's not fun. AC: Right. Don't spit into the   wind. Don't spit hot fire into the wind. CB: Yeah, or just know that it might come   back around at some point. And even the wittiest  thing, the thing that seems wittiest and the most   searing can sometimes come back ten fold on you. RL: Yeah.  CB: All right. Because that puts us at the halfway  point through the month, I wanted to mention our   sponsor since I've already showed one of his  graphs which is from archetypalexplorer.com.   And this is an online astrology program. It's a  subscription service that you can subscribe to,   and it gives you the ability  to look at your transits and   to generate some pretty sweet transit  graphs both for mundane events--So   for example, this is one of the graphs we've  shown showing the exact hits of the Saturn-Uranus   square over the course of the year and to put  in different planets and things like that.   So you can do that both for mundane events as  well as for personal transits to your birth chart.   And it also has the ability to generate some  interpretations and some delineations that come   from the work of Richard Tarnas, and he also  recently integrated some delineations from the   astrologer Renn Butler in his book The Archetypal  Universe. So that's pretty cool, and it also gives   you access to that entire book now online which  is available as part of Archetypal Explorer.   So you can sign up for a free seven-day  trial by going to archetypalexplorer.com,   and it gives you full access to the program so  that you can generate charts and export them   as images and do all sorts of other fun stuff.  So I definitely recommend checking that out.   And I want to say thanks to Kyle who makes the  program cause we've been using those graphics   for the past year, and it really helps to  visualize some of this stuff a lot better.   All right. So we're moving into  the second half of September   at this point I believe, right? RL: Well, we've been talking about the second half   or the middle. We've been talking about the middle  portion for about 45 minutes. I would say we're   on our way to the finale. CB: Yeah, so we've talked about Mars and   Libra which begins on September 14th. We mentioned  Venus hitting that square with Saturn which   goes exact on Thursday the 16th. That's all-- RL: And also there's a Sun trine Pluto that exact   same day within just a few hours. CB: Right. Correct.   So then we start getting into eventually our  second lunation of the month which is a full   moon in Pisces on the 20th of September, right? AC: Yes. Yeah, and it's at the very end of   Pisces. End of Virgo, end of Pisces. So I was  looking at this and kind of hemming and hawing,   and then I realized it was interesting. And  I was like, "Okay, so what planets rule the   Sun and the Moon in this lunation?" And it's  Mercury and Jupiter, Mercury for Virgo, Jupiter   for Pisces. And then I said, "Oh, goodness.  They're trine. Thatt's wonderful." So the--  CB: They're exactly trine? AC: That happy, first of three   trines that we were looking out for Mercury  trine for Mercury and Jupiter earlier also   has the job of kind of stabilizing this lunation  and I think making a happier, full Moon and a more   fortuitous full Moon than it might otherwise be. RL: I don't think it's enough to make it a   happy full Moon though. AC: Yeah, a happier.  RL: I think it does ameliorate it a bit,  but you can't go to the Mercury-Jupiter   trine without noting that Mercury is also squaring  Pluto. And although many astrologers don't use   semi sextiles in work like this, the fact  of the matter is that a semi sextile means   that if a planet is nice to one it's not nice to  the other. And so we have the Mercury making this   lovely trine to Jupiter while it's making  a square to Pluto. And I think that makes   it a little bit more difficult. And on top  of that, we also have the full Moon itself   that is being semi squared and sesquisquared by  Uranus. And so there's almost like there's no out.   What's interesting is that the new Moon had all  these sweet trines all around. And this instead,   it's not a mystic rectangle. It's actually a  misfit rectangle. Because we have a semi square   sesquisquare semi square sesquisquare. In other  words, Uranus is a square and a half to the Sun.   The Sun is a half a square to Venus. Venus is  a square and a half to the Moon, and then the   Moon is a half a square to Uranus again. And  so there's no easy out on the Moon itself. The   Mercury-Jupiter is very cool. And thank you very  much. We need it. But I don't like this one nearly   as much as-- And in the Mercury-Jupiter, it's  1/30th of a degree. It's two minutes of arc at   the moment of the full Moon, so it's nailed. CB: Yeah, that is extremely close.   Mercury is also 6.2 days away from stationing  retrograde at this point. So it's already   slowing down, and it's gonna have--Cause usually  if we had a trine between Mercury and Jupiter,   it would zip by. But it's actually elongating  that trine and also elongating the square with   Pluto at the same time. RL: Yeah, yeah.  CB: It's also interesting in terms  of outer planets that this full Moon   in Pisces is pretty close to conjunct Neptune as  well. It's seven degrees off, but that's the other   major energy that's giving a  tinge to this full Moon in Pisces.  RL: Agreed. CB: So some of those themes we talked   about earlier in terms of Neptune of things being  illusory and sometimes that being problematic or   other times that being a good thing. So-- AC: Yeah, one thing I would say for Neptune   and illusory is that sometimes it's wisest to just  do something that you know is illusory but enjoy.  RL: Mhm. CB: Yeah.  AC: Instead of all this, I don't know, confusing  ontological judgment about what's real and what's   not just being like, "Yeah, I'm gonna play  some video games on that full Moon." or like,   "I'm going to read an imaginative novel, and  I'm not going to pretend that it is a recounting   of facts." You're gonna enjoy the Neptune  without having to worry about, "Is this going   to be revealed to be false? Or this or that." CB: Earlier this month Leisa and I were rewatching   movies for our astrologers episode, and one of  the ones that we watched was the first Matrix. And   halfway through--Spoilers, but it's a 20-year-old  movie at this point. Cypher goes back into the   Matrix who becomes the bad guy. And he wants to be  put back into the Matrix because he doesn't wanna   live in the real world, and he has a famous scene  where he's eating a steak. And he says, "I know   the steak isn't real, and I know this is just  my brain synapses being fooled into thinking   that it's real. But I don't care. And what's most  important is my sensory experience of this is   something good instead of being subjected to the  reality that everything is bad." So maybe that's a   interesting analogy or what you're saying made  me think of Austin in terms of the choice.  AC: Oh, in that choice. Two-thirds  of American culture right now   is like, "Play a game on your phone, play a game  on your computer, watch a movie, watch a show,   watch YouTube." Taking a break from reality  is certainly a good thing in moderation.  CB: In moderation. Right. RL: Yeah, but we've taken a break from reality   culturally on a semi-permanent one-way street  into some sort of schizophrenic cultists.  AC: Yeah. I don't know. How many decades  do you think the break has lasted for?  RL: I've begun to develop a notion that Jupiter  and Neptune are actually the same planet.  CB: Mhm. AC: This is very Neptunian.  RL: No, wait. That Neptune is simply Jupiter who's  escaped from Saturn. That's all. That Jupiter and   Neptune are actually both expansive, but Jupiter  has to remain logical. Even in its opinions,   it has to remain grounded enough to answer to  dad or to logic or to Saturn or to authority   where Neptune is the exact same thing but  there's no one home to say stop. Just a thought.  AC: No, I like that. I think that also  spotlights the advantage of Jupiter   is that Jupiter brings things that can become real  within time and space whereas Neptune is like,   "Maybe. We'll see." So I think that's Saturnarial. RL: But playing the devil's advocate, Austin, when   Neptune manifests something, when it becomes real,  it's way more awesome than whatever Jupiter gets.  AC: Yeah, I would say that Neptune always needs  help from those within inside the Saturn fence.  RL: I totally agree. AC: But, yeah, I agree.  RL: But it's like a grand trine or some  of the aspects that I like to work with,   they're totally valid but they need a good  square or something to anchor them into reality.   Otherwise, they just fly off and no one notices. CB: It's a good point though that there's a   freedom component to both Jupiter as well  as Neptune. And Jupiter has that optimism,   but it's a little bit more grounded in reality  typically whereas Neptune's optimism is   boundless and often not grounded necessarily. RL: And Jupiter can't get away with shit.  AC: I also wanna say this about Neptune cause  I don't think it gets talked about enough.   Neptune is also limitless fear and paranoia  and pain, right? The negative sensitivity   and negative dreaming is also completely  unbounded. It's the blood ocean. Yes,   and I would say even the compassion that Neptune  usefully provides can sometimes be without limits.  RL: Yeah, I totally agree. AC: But when you start having   compassion while you're reading a history book,  it starts becoming a slaughterhouse nightmare.   No matter what period you're reading or what part  of the world. And that's Neptune unlimitedness.  CB: Right. RL: Well, the Neptune association with fear   is--The word confusion etymologically means with  melting together which is ideal if you're in love.   That's confusion. But the problem is that the ego  don't like losing its perspective. It doesn't like   it when Saturn's gone and there's no boundary.  And it can't tell where I end and where you begin.   And so with Neptune, we have this existential  fear that kicks in because we don't know where   we are, when we are, who we are because  there's no boundary. Saturn's not there.  AC: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah,  that's really nice etymology.  CB: Yeah, so Neptune ups the sensitivity and  ups the compassion. And that can be a positive   thing and channeled into very good things, and  sometimes that can become overly sensitive or   overly compassionate to the extent that you don't  take care of your own needs or what have you.   So that's one of the things that's  gonna be highlighted with this full Moon   taking place later in September conjunct Neptune  in Pisces on the 20th of September. Let's see   if there's anything else we need to mention  there. We mentioned the Mercury-Jupiter trine.  RL: Yeah. There's one other thing I'd like to  mention, and that is the fact that Mercury,   Saturn, and the Moon, so we got a full Moon.  Mercury, Saturn--I'm sorry. Mercury, the Moon,   and Pluto. Let me do this again. Mercury, the  Moon, and Saturn, sorry, are really really tight,   all less about a half a degree orb septiles, so  they got a septile triangle three points on a   seven-pointed star that creates a symmetry. And  this, I believe, makes this particular full Moon   again more complicated than it appears.  The Moon to Mercury is 22 minutes of orb,   the Moon to Saturn is 25 minutes of orb, and  Mercury to Saturn is almost a degree. It's   47 minutes of orb. And so we have something here  coming in that's unexplainable, that's alien,   that's other than normal. And I think it puts  a little bit of a discomfort and maybe even   a--I don't wanna say sinister, but something  that's hard to grasp that's at this full Moon   that I think is important to mention. CB: That's funny. It reminds me of in   late June when Neptune stationed. There  was a disclosure about unidentified--  AC: I was just thinking about that. CB: Yeah, about aliens or about just   the government just was just  like, "Yes, we've identified   20 incidences of unidentified objects flying  around. And we have no idea what it is." And   it was the confirmation of the unknown. I think  that was the key word that we took from that.  RL: Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah. CB: Yeah, so that's part of the Neptune component.   Before we move on from the Mercury trine Jupiter,  we have the Mercury trine Jupiter and the sort of   optimism of that. But what is a Mercury-Pluto  square like? Since we're not just dealing with   the full moon and Mercury being trine Jupiter and  square Pluto at the same time but also Mercury   really slowing down and grinding into  that Pluto square at the same time.  RL: Yeah. It pretty much holds that position  because when it turns retrograde, that square   is perfected again on October 1st and then a third  time on November 2nd. But what that really means   is that between September 20th or so all the way  through somewhere around October 3rd that Mercury   is holding that position that is square Pluto.  And this can be some intense verbiage. This can be   some real power plays verbally out in public that  may bring some things out that we thought we knew   and all of a sudden it's not true at all or we  didn't know was true and all of a sudden we learn   it. There's something here that dredges things out  and upward that I think can shift a little bit of   a power game. CB: Mhm.  AC: Yeah, I agree with the dredging  things out and upward. The combination   of nearly simultaneous aspects from Pluto and  Jupiter. Pluto is what's down there to be dredged   or considered, but then Jupiter has a very  buoyant upward moving energy, the moving upward to   that like looking down from the clouds  like having a big perspective. And so on   one level I would just say, "Oh. Mercury-Pluto,  it brings paranoia to Mercury." It's like,   "What is out there that I can't see that might be  a problem?" Whereas Jupiter does the opposite and   gives confidence in one's ability to deal with a  situation to bring it to a good place or whatever.   And so there's a little bit of a cancellation or  just, yeah, mutual cancellation in terms of like   the mindset cause we've got Jupiter  buoying and Pluto paranoiaing.  RL: Paranoing. AC: Yeah, paranoing. And it's also worth noting   that we have Jupiter on a very strong star for all  of this. We have Jupiter on Spica this whole time,   and Spica does a good job of just reinforcing  a lot of Mercurial significations. Yeah,   in a natal chart, it can give a great talent for  design or the sort of structural mathematical   side of music. It's a very Mercury boosting  star. And so Mercury has a lot of power.  CB: Do you mean Mercury on Spica? AC: Oh, go ahead.  CB: Do you mean Mercury conjunct Spica? AC: Yeah, is that not what I said?  CB: You said Jupiter, so I just wanna clarify. AC: Oh no. I'm sorry. Jupiter is on Deneb Algedi.  CB: Got it. AC: But, yeah, Mercury's   most concerned with Spica and Mercury on  Spica. Because it's a very pro Mercury,   Mercury supportive star. And Mercury's on it the  whole time. So even though there are certainly   challenges here, there's also a lot of Mercurial  strength to sort through all this stuff especially   on a personal level. Collective zone is worse. CB: Well, and Mercury-Pluto adding Pluto to it   gives this compulsive quality to Mercury's  desire to dredge these things up and to find   the truth which is a Jupiter signification.  So maybe this sort of compulsive quality to   figure things out then becomes intensified at  that time right at the start of a three-week   Mercury retrograde period basically. RL: Yeah. The problem though of course is   that we can become obsessed with something  that's Neptunian. That's just made up.  CB: Yeah. That's one of the problems with  Mercury-Pluto combinations or Mercury in Scorpio   stuff is the sensitivity to the subtle-like  hints and the subtle goings-on behind the scenes   can sometimes lend itself to, in the dark sense,  a paranoia of seeing things where they aren't   happening or thinking the worst about things  and jumping to conclusions about things that   are unwarranted. RL: Yeah. Yeah.   And it's almost like it can dig a hole  deep enough that then it can't get out.  CB: Right. Yeah. Cause once you go down the rabbit  hole's certain ways, you can't dig upwards in   order to get yourself out. RL: Exactly.  CB: Right. So that will be interesting. That  will just be opening up at the end of the   September cause we're talking about Mercury  stationing there and sort of staying there,   but that's just the beginning part of the process. AC: Yeah, and so let's look at the station   degree and then sort of the fate of the Mercury  retrograde so we can see a little bit about where   things are headed at the end of September. CB: Sure. So Mercury gets to 25 degrees of   Libra by September 23rd 24th. And then  it's really slow, and then it stations   on the 26th and 27th of September at 25 Libra.  And then it begins moving backwards. And what's   interesting is by that point, the Sun and Mars  are both moving pretty fast because the Sun's   approaching Mars. So that means Mars is moving  very swiftly in terms of its planetary motion,   and both of them are headed headlong into the  conjunction with Mercury eventually in October.   So that's part of where Mercury is heading. It's  moving back into a triple conjunction with the Sun   and Mars which takes place on October 9th  at 16 degrees of Libra. And that's only at   the halfway point.That's the turning point, the  halfway point in the Mercury retrograde cycle.   Eventually Mercury begins slowing down again and  stations direct around October 18th and begins   moving forward at 10 degrees of Libra. AC:   Yeah. So all of that kind of reviewing the  last war Mars Sun halfway between retrogrades,   the end and beginning of a two-year cycle.  The moment of that meeting between the   Sun and Mars is attended by Mercury. CB: Right. And amplified by Mercury?  AC: Yeah. CB: It's one of   the funny things especially in traditional texts.  The role that Mercury always played was to amplify   whatever combinations it was with in terms of  other planets. One thing that's funny about this   Mercury retrograde is there's already been  a Mercury retrograde reversal which is the   OnlyFans thing which was originally scheduled  for October 1st which is just a few days after   Mercury stations retrograde. So there's  already been like somebody attempting to   schedule something on the Mercury retrograde  and then already having to walk it back.  AC: Yeah. RL: Yeah.  CB: So that's something to be aware of and I  guess hopefully careful about for other people not   doing things at the very beginning of that  Mercury retrograde period that you have to   walk back for some reason if they  were poorly planned out or not, sort   of logical conclusions in terms of where to go. AC: Yeah, one thing I see with Mercury retrograde   stuff and it working out good, bad, other is if  you don't have to nail something to this exact   day. But you can be like, "Okay, let's see how  this phase goes." And you set yourself up with   some flexibility to kind of follow what needs to  be done as revealed by the Mercury retrograde.   It tends to be a lot less upsetting and go a lot  smoother than if you're like, "No, I don't give a   shit what Mercury's doing. It's got to happen  on this day." And then you push like crazy,   and it still can't happen on that day. Or it  happens, then you have to redo it like building   in some slack around Mercury retrograde projects. RL: Oh yeah. Mercury retrograde loves   false urgency. AC: Yeah. Oh. Yeah.  RL: That's what it thrives on. 90% of what  people say is bad about Mercury retrograde,   it all stems from that sense of like, "Oh my god,  I gotta do something right now. Oh my god, I gotta   buy the car. Oh my god, I gotta do this." Whatever  it might be. "Oh, shit. I missed my turn. I'll get   off here. Oh, now where am I?" That kind of--Yeah. CB: Yeah, so the feeling like this has to be done   now and you have to take this action. But later  you end up realizing when you end up having to   return to and take a second or a third attempt  to doing the same thing that you could have   just waited or had patience and then that would  have allowed you to stop, not have to do that   thing several times but instead only do it  once. Although, that being said, one of the   good things about Mercury retrograde I think  one of the recurring lessons that I've learned   about it is that usually the second or third  time that you do the thing or you make the   other attempts, you always do it better like the  second or third time cause you've had that one   first failed attempt or that second failed  attempt. So by the time you do it a third time,   usually you nail it at the end of the retrograde. RL: Yeah.  AC: Yeah. And so let me just give what has been  a real life example that I have experienced many   times. So if you play video games especially if  you play video games on a computer platform like   you download them from Steam, you'll be like,  "Oh, the launch date is blah blah blah." And   then they launch, and it's buggy as shit. And it  gets an initial deluge of bad reviews even though   it's a good game, and then it takes another two or  three weeks to fix all that. And everybody's like,   "Oh, okay. This is actually pretty good." But they  had to deal with the stress and the negative press   that came from launching it in an unfinished  state whereas if you imagine yourself with   the programmers and the project leads and  whatnot, you'll be like, "You know what?   We have these problems." Instead of getting  all these like, "Let's just delay the launch   a little bit." And people might say,"Boo!" But  it's so much better than launching and getting   the deluge of negative input and then having  to fix it where it's not good until the same   date anyway. And you are doing it over again. RL: Mercury thrives on false sense of urgency.  AC: Makes sense. RL: Mercury retrograde.  AC: Mercury is the fast, frantic planet. RL:   Yeah. CB: What you just said also,   Austin, is exactly what happened. Remember like  10 years ago when they launched the Obamacare   healthcare.gov website. AC: Oh yeah.  CB: It was rolled out, and it was just like  a disaster. And the website wasn't working,   and it kept crashing under the weight of thousands  and hundreds of thousands of people trying to   visit to sign up for health care cause there was a  time limit on it. And it became this whole fiasco   that then was worked out during the course of the  Mercury retrograde. And then eventually by the end   of the retrograde and once Mercury started getting  out of its shadow, they had redone the website and   fixed a bunch of the leaks, a bunch of the holes  in it. And eventually it was workin, and people   signed up for health care. But the rollout itself,  they launched it right as Mercury was stationing   retrograde. So it was just kind of a disaster. AC: That's a wonderful example. It's like how much   wiser would it have been just to be like, "You  know what? It's gonna be another two weeks."   Anything worth doing is worth doing right. CB: Right. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so that's what   is being set up at the end of September  in terms of the retrograde starting.  RL: We skipped over the equinox.  Was that intentional or do we wanna   touch base on that or did we kind of  cover that enough with the full Moon?  CB: Yeah, we can touch base on that. So  the Sun moves into Libra on Wednesday the   22nd. That's the same day I believe  that Mercury square Pluto goes exact.  AC: Yeah. CB: Let me put the chart up for that.  RL: And it's also really close to the Venus  opposing Uranus kind of offering hopefully   a bit of resolution from the Venus square Saturn. CB: Mhm. So the Sun moves into the sign of Libra   the Venus-ruled sign just as Venus herself  is moving into the opposition with Uranus.  RL: Mhm. CB: Okay. How do you feel about that   ingress into Libra, Rick? RL: Well, again, there's always   good news and bad news. We have the Mars pushing  toward the trine with Saturn that's close enough   to matter. We have Mercury kind of hanging out  not quite retrograde but still trining Jupiter,   but we have the Moon on the equinox itself  sweeping through a T-square as the Moon   kind of exacerbates just a few hours after  the equinox. While Mercury is squaring Pluto,   the Moon will oppose Mercury and square  Pluto. So I don't know. Again, there's good   news and bad news. I'll let Austin decipher it. AC: Yeah. So I hadn't sat down with the equinox   chart yet. It's the first thing that comes to  mind. And so there's that T-square, and then we   also have Jupiter playing a pivotal role on not  only trining Mercury but also in a happy little   sextile with the Moon in Aries. But we have the-- RL: Yeah, and that point is actually   referred to--And I don't know where  this comes from. I know it's modern,   but people refer to that as the point of Thales.  It's almost like a T-square. Pluto is at the apex   hard aspect to the opposition of the Moon and  Mercury. But Jupiter is a release point. Jupiter   basically takes the pressure off it, releases the  energy. And I don't know why it was named after   Thales. All I know he was a Greek mathematician.  You guys may know more about him than I do.   But that Jupiter really does play a pivotal  role, I'm agreeing with you. It took me a   while to get there. But I agree with you, Austin. AC: Yeah. Oh, and so one thing. This chart will be   much more relevant for certain  regions and countries than others.   There's a rule of thumb that  if the Aries ingress chart   in a given location or for a given nation has a  fixed sign, then that Aries ingress chart is good   for thinking about the events of the entire year.  But if it's got a cardinal or mutable rising,   then you're gonna jump either once to the Libra  ingress here or to every quarter depending on what   kind of sign the rising's in. So this will be the  operative chart for the next three to six months   for a number of different regions of the Earth. RL: Hmm. Interesting.  AC: Yeah, the old Persian-inspired  history of the world yearly chart stuff.  CB: Yeah, so that is the ingress and the beginning  of the fall season in the northern hemisphere.   Then the Mercury retrograde of  course starts on Monday the 27th.   Sun trine Saturn goes exact on Wednesday the  29th, and on the very last day of the month Venus   squares Jupiter on the 30th of September. RL: You slipped over Venus trining Neptune   on the same day that the Sun trines Saturn,  the 29th. That's an interesting day. I guess   there's trines to Neptune and Saturn which are  actually ridiculously close to being semi square.  CB: Yeah, there it is. So Venus hits 21 Scorpio  on the 29th and trines Neptune at 21 Pisces.  AC: We'll have a nice little grand  water trine there with the Moon in   Cancer. That sounds like a very pleasant evening. CB: Yeah, there it is. So grand water trine at 22.  AC: Like a jacuzi and a few cocktails. CB: Yeah, and Venus is almost partile with Jupiter   at that point squaring it. So that's a nice little  end to the month on September 30th just as that   Mercury retrograde is ramping up but hasn't really  fully gotten into the full swing of things yet.  RL: Do you think-- AC: Go ahead.  RL: On the 30th with Venus squaring Jupiter and  the Sun sesquisquaring Jupiter, do you think it's   possible that it feels so good that we go out  over indulging, that we do too much, that we   take on too much, we say yes when we should have  just said, "Wait a minute, Mercury retrograde."  AC: Well, I think that, as you pointed out  earlier, we've got nice Sun trine Saturn there   and Sun in the sign of Saturn's exaltation. That  looks like a very productive day followed by a   very pleasant night to me. RL: Okay.  AC: That Sun-Saturn will help us, I think will  carry us through our duties and obligations.   But then we have a nice night  to follow that. And maybe it'd   be useful to hold that clarification in mind,  but that looks like a nice setup for like, "Oh,   I had a super productive day or week up to this  point. I will have a super, enjoyable evening."  RL: Okay, what time should I be there? AC: As the Sun sets beneath the horizon.  RL: Ah, that moment. CB: Well, again, on October 1st   there's a hangover of the Moon goes into Leo and  it opposes Saturn the next day on October 1st.  AC: Yeah, that pleasant night configuration  is literally just that pleasant night.  RL: Yeah, I have a friend who calls that  kind of aspect or that kind of astrology   a pause in the disaster. CB: Mmm.  AC: Yeah, I like to find those moments in  otherwise horrific periods of time. And it's like   when you see somebody who's running a marathon  stop and have a little water bottle, just like   rehydrate a little bit. And even though those  moments don't characterize the actual period of   time, they're actually in contradiction to them.  They're really important because it's that just 10   seconds of rehydration is gonna change your body's  capacity to finish the rest of the marathon.  RL: Yeah. If we could take Coca Cola out of  this, that would be the pause that refreshes.  CB: All right, guys. Well, that brings us  basically to the end of the month. And that's   actually a really nice note to end on at the end  of the month. A very refreshing grand water trine,   I think we would all agree. RL: Mhm.  CB: Yeah, so that brings us  to the end of September. Any   final thoughts or final words about the astrology  of September before we wrap up this forecast?  AC: I would just say I would re-emphasize what  I said a couple times which is the first half,   use that to get your shit together as much as  possible. And any little things that you can see   from here that would be best scraped into a  neat pile, first half of September is a really   good time to do that. October and November  and December, it's not quite like a roller   coaster from here on out. We've got several  months in a row where there's not going to be   a lot of opportunities to slow down and put things  back together and reimagine. It's a little steep.   And so use this functional enough time. CB: Definitely, when winter is coming.   And there's some intense astrology later this  year, but the first little bit of September   that first week or so is definitely some nice  stuff to get some things done before things   start getting complicated later in the month. RL: And I think the temptation is just because   we've been going through such a difficult,  crazy, uncertain time. The temptation is when   we get a few days of like, "Oh, this is okay  to just put our feet up and float downstream."   And that's the wrong time to do it. AC: Right. Well, and it's like that in   of itself is restorative but then to not use the  whole time, right? To just be in the inner tube.  RL: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, agreed. CB: Right. All right, guys.  AC: Or it could be like, "Oh, this  is how it is now. Crisis averted.   Now things are just fine, they're gonna be fine." CB: Yeah, it's always part of an ongoing story.   But we'll have to leave it  there to continue that story   since a lot of stuff that gets started  in September is gonna carry through into   October, so I have to save-- RL: And November. Yeah.  CB: Yeah, November. So I have to save that  for next month. What do the two of you have   coming up? Do you do have anything coming up  in September? Any events or anything, Rick?  RL: I'm gonna be participating in a weekend event  at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. And   I'll be there with a few other astrologers  including Anne Ortelee, Maurice Fernandez,   Kathryn Andren, and Kay Taylor. And we got a nice  little weekend program put together. It's not   introductory, but it doesn't require a whole  lot of astrology knowledge to get something out   of the weekend because we've put together kind  of a whole thing about the process of change,   cultural change. And so I'm looking forward  to that. And, yeah, that's pretty much the   aside from my ongoing Patreon duties, and I don't  know if you mentioned, but I do write a Daily   Planet Pulse which is on Instagram and Facebook.  And its Instagram is @ricklevineastrologer. You   can always find me there. And, yeah. And I'm  busy. Just finished writing a feature article   5000-word article for the Mountain Astrologer's  December issue that will be a 2022 forecast,   and that was an interesting exercise. And, yeah,  that's pretty much what I got going right now.  CB: Yeah. You mentioned the astrology of November  of 2022 to me. And I took a look at that chart,   and that's pretty wild for the midterm elections. RL: Oh my god. Yeah, yeah. Austin, I don't know if   you've looked at this yet. But Mars is retrograde  on election day, it's a full Moon total lunar   full Moon eclipse. Total eclipse. And the full  Moon is partile conjunct Uranus square Saturn.  AC: We're looking at 22 right, Chris? RL: Yeah, we're looking at the midterm   elections in 2022. And all I can say is that  if we thought any of the other elections that   we've had recently are strange, man, this  one does not look promising. It does not look   promising for just a plain ordinary-- AC: Yeah, it's making promises.  RL: Yeah. Yeah. CB: Look at the full Moon   lunar cclipse going exact at 16 Taurus,  and it's conjunct Uranus at 16 Taurus.  AC: Yeah, very closely. RL: Yeah. Yeah,   20 minutes less than that of orb. CB: Good times. All right, Well,   and people should also check out I wonder-- AC: Ruled by retrograde Mars.  CB: Right. Yeah, so that's something we'll have  to talk about more in the year ahead forecast.   And we'll have to check out your article rake in  The Mountain Astrologer later this year. I also   wanna give a shout out to your YouTube channel  which is really amazing at youtube.com/ricklevine.  RL: Actually, correction. It's not slash.  You have to find it by searching for Rick   Levine astrologer. It's a screwy naming thing.  Doesn't matter, but it's not Rick Levine slash.   It's not youtube.com/Rick Levine. You  go to YouTube, and you do a search.  CB: Okay. RL: Yeah, for Rick Levine   astrologer. That gets you there. CB: Okay, cool. Thanks.  RL: Yeah. Sweet. CB: And what do you   have coming up in September, Austin? AC: Well, so first my self-paced   with live sessions support year one  curriculum is finally gonna come out   first 10 days. And Sphere + Sundry has a release  coming up. And this is a particular configuration   of Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter which in  Vedic astrology makes a Saraswati yoga.   And the idea was to do a little bit of planetary  magic that would make you pretty witty and   wise. The idea is bringing the three together for  eloquence and imagination and being particularly   good for good times and the arts. And so that's  sort of code-named Project Quick Silvertone at   this point. I don't know if it'll launch with that  name. But I'm excited for that to come out, and   I'm excited to open enrollment for my year one. CB: Brilliant. That sounds amazing. Let's see.   As for myself, last week there was a group of  astrologers that came in who are organizing the   ISAR astrology conference that's gonna take place  here in Denver in August of 2022. And I started   picking off astrologers for interviews in the  studio for some of the first in-person interviews   that I've done since the pandemic hit a year and  a half ago. So I'm pretty excited about that, and   I'll be releasing some of those interviews  and rolling out further interviews in the   series on each of the planets over the course of  the next month. I think, Rick, you might be coming   through Denver. And we're gonna do-- RL: I'm planning on it.  CB: Okay, an episode on Uranus hopefully when that  happens. So if people wanna support that work,   of course, please be sure to sign up for my  page on Patreon since that's what allows me to   keep cranking out the episodes as quickly as I  do. And other than that, my book on Hellenistic   astrology is always available. And you can  find it at hellenisticastrology.com/book,   and it's available on Google Books or on  Amazon. And it goes very nicely with my   online course on Hellenistic astrology  which is at theastrologyschool.com.   All right, guys, I think that's it for  our forecast for September. So thanks a   lot for joining us as a co-host this month, Rick. RL: It was a lot of fun. Thanks for inviting me.   And good to see you, guys. I haven't seen  you for as long as we've been in quarantine,   so this was nice. AC: Yeah, totally.  RL: Yeah. CB: Yeah,   it'll be nice to get back together in person again  next year either at NORWAC in Seattle in May or at   the ISAR conference in Denver in August. RL: Yeah.  CB: Totally. All right.Thanks everyone for  watching or listening to this episode of   The Astrology Podcast. Please be sure to like and  subscribe if you're watching on YouTube or drop us   a comment in the comment section below. Thanks to  all the patrons who attended the live recording of   this episode, we appreciate you. And that's it for  this forecast, so we'll see you again next time.  AC: Bye. RL: Bye.  CB: Special thanks to all the patrons  that supported the production of this   episode of the podcast through our page on  patreon.com. In particular, thanks to all   the patrons on our producer’s tier including  Nate Craddock, Thomas Miller, Catherine Conroy,   Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic  Nambo, Sumo Coppock, Issa Sabah, Jake Otero,   Morgan MacKenzie, Kristin Otero and Sanjay  Sreehari. For more information about how   to become a patron and get access to bonus  content such as early access to new episodes or   private subscriber only podcast episodes, go to  patreon.com/astrologypodcast. Special thanks also   to our sponsors, including The Mountain Astrologer  magazine available at mountainastrologer.com. The   Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological  Almanacs available at honeycomb.co. Astro   Gold astrology software for the Mac operating  system which is available at astrogold.io.   And you can use the promo code ASTROPODCAST15 for  a 15% discount. The Portland School of Astrology   available at portlandastrology.org, Astro Gold  astrology app for iPhone and Android which is   also available at astrogold.io. And finally,  the Solar Fire Astrology software program for   Windows which you can get from alabe.com, and you  can use the promo code AP15 for a 15% discount.

Channel: The Astrology Podcast

Views: 68,983

Rating: 4.9060454 out of 5

Keywords: September astrology, september astrology 2021, astrology September, astrology september 2021, astrology forecast, september horoscopes, The Astrology Podcast, astrology podcast, Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, Rick Levine, Mercury retrograde, september 2021 horoscope, weekly astrology, monthly astrology, 2021 astrology, september 2021 predictions, september 2021 astrology, september 2021, weekly horoscope, weekly astrology forecast, rick levine astrology

Id: FMQclhkMSSA

Length: 133min 40sec (8020 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 31 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/astrologue]

Anyone have plans to re-do or revisit anything already when Mercury stations retrograde later in the month?