Astrology Forecast for February 2023

Astrology Forecast for February 2023

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey, my name is Chris Brennan  and you're listening to The Astrology Podcast.   In this episode, we're going to be looking  at the astrological forecast for the month of   February of 2023. Joining me today are astrologers  Austin Coppock and Bear Ryver. Hey guys, welcome.  AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey. BEAR RYVER: Hey, thanks for having me. 

CB: Yeah, thanks for joining me today. All right,  let me give a little overview of the astrology of   February here at the beginning, then we're going  to transition to a talk about some news stories   that have happened over the past month and the  astrology associated with them, before eventually   jumping into the forecast for February. So I'll  put timestamps below this video in the description   for those that want to jump ahead, as well as  on the podcast website entry for this episode.   All right, so here's the planetary alignments  calendar from our wall poster for 2023. February   starts off pretty early with a full Moon in the  sign of Leo on February 5th as our first lunation   of the month. Then later in the week, Mercury ends  its very long trek through Capricorn because it's  

been retrograde in that sign for like a month now,  and it finally ingresses or moves into the sign   of Aquarius on February 11th. Then the following  week, we get a Venus-Neptune conjunction in Pisces   on the 15th just the day after Valentine's Day,  followed by a Sun-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius   on the 16th of February. Then a couple days later,  we get the Sun moving into Pisces on the 18th.   Venus moves into Aries departing from Pisces  on the 20th, and the same day there is a New   Moon in the sign of Pisces on February 20th. So  there's some other aspects and other minor things  

going on this month that we'll talk about,  but that's basically the broad or general   outlines of the things that we're going to be  getting into in our forecast for this month.   All right. So hey, welcome both of  you. Bear, thanks for joining us. It's   your first time doing a forecast with us. BR: It is. Thank you so much for having me.  CB: You and I just recorded the Aquarius episode  in the Zodiac series a few days ago with Aerin   Fogel, and that was a lot of fun to do so I  thought it would be great to have you on for   this episode since it's still Aquarius season. BR: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It feels like a  

fitting treat as an Aquarius Moon person and I  think that was actually my exact precise lunar   return, maybe like an arc minute off when we  started recording so, keeping the trend going.  CB: I love when stuff like that happens.  Austin, how have you been doing since we   last saw you at our forecast which  we recorded in what? Mid-December?  AC: Yeah. Well, so immediately following that,  I went into a nine-day coma in order to restore   myself. I was awake and walking around,  but I remember nothing and was exhausted.  CB: That was a long recording day. AC: That was our longest podcast ever.  

But I don't know, I've been on a sort  of trite New Year grind. I've just been   doing my exercises and doing my mantras and  working on my book and teaching my classes,   and I've been a very orderly fellow. It's  boring, but the useful kind of boring.  CB: Yeah, I think there's little delay to getting  the year started because of those retrogrades   that were just finishing up in January. First,  the Mars retrograde finished like a weekend to   January and then Mercury, the following week  stationed direct finally. And I've felt the  

shift as both of those have stationed direct,  and it seems like we're moving forward into new   territory finally after a long winter season here. AC: Yeah. I tried to take that into account for   getting back to work and doing New Year's  things. I set some parameters for like, "Oh,   you're going to do this on these days of the week  for this many hours," but then made sure to leave   it open to tweak on the Mercury direct station.  And I'm glad I did because what I initially set   out was kind of unrealistic. And so I was like  I've got two weeks in, now I know that, and I was   able to tweak it into something that was workable. CB: Yeah, for sure. For sure.  BR: Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about the image  of-- if you've ever driven in the snow-- getting  

stuck where you don't have traction and having to  get one foot out the door and rock the car until   you really do get enough friction, and thinking  about the slow slow slow chuck out station of   Mars; like, still at eight degrees, still at  eight degrees but as soon as we get into February,   I think we'll finally feel the momentum pick up. AC: That's funny that you mentioned that because   during the Mercury retrograde, we had somebody  deliver food to our house like a DoorDash person.   And they got stuck in the snow and so I had to go  out and literally help push them out. And there  

was some nice rocking, and like that image because  when you're not that stuck, you can just do a   straight push out. But other times you do have  to kind of get a little back and forth, go in,   and then go on it. You know? BR: Yeah, yeah.  CB: For sure. Yeah, so we're coming out of that.   Why don't we talk about and do some review at this  point about the astrology of the past month and   any news stories that have come up, and just some  of the things that we've seen manifest in world   events over the course of the past few weeks since  we did the last episode. Were there any major news  

stories or personal experiences or client stories  that either of you had that come to mind in terms   of stuff that you saw over the past month? AC: I have a really simple personal one.   I started a particular long-term workout plan  the end of last March, and it just so happens   that I finally finished the criteria of that, I  completed that on the day of Mars direct station.   And that was not planned at all, it just so  happened that that was the case. I was like,  

"Hold on, isn't this the Mars station?" And yeah,  so that's kind of nice. It just shows you that   each planet is a clock for its sphere of activity. BR: Yeah, I had my astrologer good experience of   my Profection playing out back when Mars stationed  retrograde. Got hit super hard in the elbow,   like of course Gemini so it's down between the  fingers and the shoulders, and got a contusion   to my ulnar nerve. So the nerve itself is injured,  and with the station coming up I was like, "Okay,   it's either going to magically resolve itself  or it's going to peak in intensity and get even   worse." Which did, unfortunately, but that was  also when I finally got the various claims and  

stuff in motion to get the first actual treatment  for it. So seeing that kind of timing of like,   "Yeah. Oh, still no appointments, still no  appointment," and then the station directs,   and seeing that finally get some progress. AC: Well, it's good to hear that that's improving.   I know somebody who also had an ulnar nerve issue  that was aggravated and made them leave work   right after the Mars station. And then speaking  of the sphere of Mars and MMA, right around the   Mars Retrograde season there was this rash of  crazy shoulder injuries that ruined title fight   after title fight. And I just heard-- and Mars is  direct now-- that the one that was Jiří Procházka   (I'm probably pronouncing it incorrectly) who  was the 2005 champion went out during the Mars   Retrograde station. And it was reported that  he had one of the worst shoulder injuries ever  

seen in that sport, which is saying something,  right? And that he wouldn't be able to defend   his title for over a year. But Mars just stationed  direct, and now he's like, "Yeah, I can fight."  BR: That's really lucky. AC: Yeah. And who knows whether it was   overestimated dot dot dot dot, but the physical  quality and the number of shoulder wrist forearm   injuries that I've seen with this Mars Retrograde  in Gemini is pretty wild. It really shows you   that almost silly-looking Zodiac guy with the  sign breaking into the different body regions.  

That's science. CB: Yeah. Because you look at   that and you're like, "Oh, that's quaint," and you  see illustrations of it like medieval manuscripts,   but yeah, now my shoulder. I messed up my shoulder  literally on the Mars station in October November   doing push-ups and yeah, that's been annoying. BR: Last little thought about that with Mars,   which is Mars being related to inflammation  and the shoulders and elbows and wrists and   all of the tendons and nerves through there  being particularly susceptible to being put   out of commission by inflammation itself. Even if  the injury isn't that bad, the inflammation will   pinch a nerve or impingement and put you out. AC: I mean, that's what arthritis is. Right? 

CB: Right. AC: That's tennis elbow, that's... Yeah.  CB: Yeah, good point. All right. So other news  stories and stuff since we last checked in...   Where do I start? So one of the things that  happened, because this happened right out after   we recorded the last forecast, but it was  something that we'd actually talked about in the   previous Year Ahead forecast for 2022, which was  the release of Avatar 2 in theatres when Jupiter   retrograded back into Pisces and did its last  conjunction with Neptune in Pisces. And weirdly,   because we had noticed that the first Avatar  movie was really released under a Jupiter-Neptune   conjunction in Aquarius way back in 2009, it was  weird that it just happened to be that 13 some odd   years later, James Cameron ended up finishing  and releasing his follow up movie, Avatar 2,   on another Jupiter-Neptune conjunction this time  in Pisces, and the movie was centered around water   and being in the ocean, and there was a lot of  innovative use of technology in order to depict   computer-generated ocean scenes essentially.  So, weird story about that. But the day that  

the movie came out, and it was under that Jupiter-  Neptune conjunction with Mars widely squaring it,   and Austin you had used the metaphor of a bubble  popping for many months during that time and a   lot of that was also tied in with inflation  and the attempts for the government to get   control of inflation and things like that.  Weirdly the day that Avatar was released,   this happened; where this aquarium at a hotel in  Berlin that was holding 1500 fish just exploded   and just burst that day and flooded this entire  hotel with fish with this gigantic fish tank,   and it was like this weird piece of simultaneous  symbolism overlapping on the same day that I   thought was kind of weird. Where sometimes even  though that stuff seems kind of comical or weird,   stuff comes up in the news that sometimes plays  out the astrology in these very bizarre ways,   roughly sort of coinciding with the transits. AC: Yeah, when you watch this kind of  

thing for long enough especially  against astrology, you see that   reality itself has metaphor  as part of its language.   And that humans can do metaphors, too, but the  metaphorical is a naturally occurring phenomenon   which I think when people start to notice that,  it does drive some of them mad if they don't have   recourse to astrology. People begin to believe  that all of this is planned by human intelligence   because they don't think of the mind of the world  doing metaphor, it's got to be a human mind. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and it's just that all of these  transits and stuff are manifesting in a multitude   of different ways in hundreds and thousands  and sometimes millions of people's lives in   different ways, but occasionally when we see  something that pops up in the news stories   that fits that symbolism archetypally, it's  really just showing you the tip of the iceberg.   But that's one of the reasons why it's okay  sometimes to note those one-off news stories   because they're actually representative of a lot  of other stories that you're not seeing that are   happening at the same time. AC: Yeah, totally. Yeah,   it stands in for other events. Yeah. BR: Yeah, if we're looking at the kind  

of microcosm-macrocosm, then if we had enough  information we should in theory be able to look   at any one moment and then tell the story of  everything through just the metaphor of that   moment. It's impossibly inaccessible 90% of the  time, that's a Jupiterian everything and that's   the part of Pisces that gets out of control and  hard to name and when you talk too much about   Neptune and your brain goes foggy. But in theory,  yeah that's there. Whether it's the friction of   not getting friction and seeing oh, okay. That's  expressed with Kevin McCarthy and everything that   was going on with Congress, it was just kind  of laughing about that like, "Yeah, there's no   friction to be gained to move forward yet." CB: All right. Was that during the Mercury   Retrograde still? I think Mercury is still  retrograde when that was all, and Congress   was up and everything was up in the air and they  couldn't pick a speaker of the house for days.   Yeah. So that was happening. I saw Avatar 2,  it was actually surprisingly... He was able to  

pull it off. I think everyone was surprised about  whether somebody could do a sequel 13 years later   that would be worth not just doing a sequel, but  also setting it up because apparently he's also   written two or three other movies after this, one  of which is already in post-production. So it's   like this is like a whole cinematic universe,  but somehow he was able to pull it off making   this interesting enough and continuing  the story enough to make it worthwhile,   but especially like with the first one, primarily  in terms of the technology and just taking the   technology another leap forward, both in terms  of the immersiveness of the 3D effect, which is   really what this movie and the previous one was  about; was making a movie that feels immersive   and gives you a sense of presence of being  there, which is a very Jupiter-Neptune thing.   But also I noticed afterwards, we had  had this whole discussion in the Year   Ahead forecast about the upcoming Jupiter-Uranus  conjunction in Taurus this year and talking about   different technological innovations with that,  as well as people in the past who've had that   conjunction and have really focused on pushing  forward and pushing the limits of technology,   and growth and expansion through technology.  And one of the examples I used was Steve Jobs   who had a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction and he was  the founder of Apple computer and helped promote   the personal PC revolution of everybody having a  computer in their home, as well as eventually the   mobile phone revolution with the iPhone.  Interestingly I realized afterwards that  

James Cameron, the filmmaker and director of  Avatar 2, also has a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction.   And I just think that's really fascinating  not just because of that movie, but because   he's just been known for pushing the limits of  technology and especially CGI in filmmaking for   many years going back to some of his early  movies with, you know, Terminator, Aliens 2,   The Abyss and stuff like that. But also his  first gigantic blockbuster, Titanic which was   released in 1997, and some of the CGI and stuff  they used in order to recreate the Titanic. It   turns out Patrick Watson noticed this, that that  movie was also released under a Jupiter-Uranus   conjunction in 1997. So the same time that Steve  Jobs was releasing his Think Different ad campaign  

under that same Jupiter-Uranus conjunction that  was kind of tied in with his natal signature,   James Cameron with that same natal signature  was also doing something big and innovative   in terms of technology. I thought that  was kind of interesting, kind of weird.  AC: Yeah. Yeah. CB: So you saw the first Avatar. Right, Austin?  AC: I did, it was a long time ago. CB: Yeah. Are you still... I think  

everyone has a vague memory of it being  kind of immersive and that 3D experience   being kind of unique at the time. AC: Yeah. Yeah, it was a big deal.   People were talking about it non-stop. I was  actually living in LA then, so I heard a lot of   disreputable people talking about how  they've got a technology similar and   it's going to change this and they're going  to do a movie. You know, in LA everybody's   trying to pitch you something all the time  even if you have no power influence. They   can at least absorb your power of belief and  try to use that for some purpose. But yeah,   I remember it was quite a lot of unasked  for and nonconsensual pitch meetings   ended up happening as a result of that. [laughs] CB: Yeah. Well, then there were so many... That  

started the whole 3D trend for several years where  a bunch of movies after that quickly ran to make   3D versions of their own movies, which is often  not as good and didn't work out terribly well.  AC: I saw one of the Pirates of the Caribbean, I  don't know which one it was, that they did in 3D.   And it gave me a terrible headache and wasn't  enjoyable at all. I remember it ruined the movie.   I don't think it was supposed to be 3D, they  just kind of added that. Maybe it was Pirates 4.   I watched the movie eight years later and I was  like, "Oh, I actually kind of like this movie."   But I didn't at all in the  3D, it ruined the experience. 

CB: Sure. Yeah. Well, it's worth checking out  just for the sake of experiencing a transit.   This is literally like a Jupiter-Neptune transit  and it's like that's what that's like. It's weird   immersiveness which transports you to a different  world in some sense. So that was one of the news   stories that happened recently. Other similar  news stories is I feel like the Saturn-Neptune   conjunction next year is coming in real fast,  and I'm already starting to see where that's   headed. And one of the keywords that seems  like that's going to happen for next year is   the blurring of the boundary or the distinction  between what's real and what's not, and also   sometimes augmenting reality. And the technology  of augmented reality seems like it's one of the  

main things that's coming up over the next  year, because remember we were doing the   forecast episodes back during the Saturn-Neptune  square back around the 2016-2017 timeframe,   and that summer was like the summer that  the Pokémon GO craze took off where people   were using their mobile phones where you could  see little creatures running around digitally   around parks and stuff, and people were  chasing them and there was this interesting   blurring between what was real and what wasn't. So, Facebook just released a new headset that   focuses on augmented reality and supposedly,  Apple is getting ready to release their own VR   headset that will have both a virtual reality  as well as an augmented reality component. And   if that happens, then that's going to be  a really interesting way to kick off the   Saturn-Neptune co-presence in the same sign  that's going to last for five or six years,   if one of the biggest tech companies in the world  really moves into the virtual reality space. That   may be a sign of something that's going to become  a much bigger trend than it is up to this point.  AC: Yeah, definitely. Quick note, the first  Pokémon game came out Saturn in Pisces,   so this will be the Saturn Return. And already  having shown an interest in doing augmented  

reality-- Pokémon GO was really successful--  it would be surprising if we didn't get the   next iteration of that during the Saturn Return.  And that is a thing about both January as well   as February which we'll come to is that this  is the end, these are the drags, the results   of Saturn in Aquarius, we're just about done. And  so yeah, there's a little bit of a retrospective   quality. It's almost an epilogue, I would say at  this point. You know, , we've had these sort of  

big dramatic, climactic, fixed T-Square fixed  opposition configurations, but we're coming   up on a conjunction of the Sun and Saturn in  Aquarius this month, and it'll be the last for   a long time. But this is the epilogue, this is  the results. This is the raising of the shire.   Hopefully not. [laughs] In terms of epilogue. CB: Well, for some people it's more positive   than that. It's been interesting seeing some  of the Saturn and Aquarius people finishing up   their Saturn returns and getting to that final  stage like you were saying, the epilogue stage,   where they've kind of made it at this point and  it's winding down. And some of the ones that were   success stories where it went relatively well,  you're seeing the results of that at this point   now that Saturn's getting ready to depart  from Aquarius here in the next month or two.   One of the ones that I had been  paying attention to since 2020 was   Miley Cyrus, because she has this just  amazingly placed Saturn in the 10th house   of career. And back in 2020, I made a tweet just  sort of trying to call it and just being like,  

Miley Cyrus is going to be a Saturn Return  success story. Because when I looked at her chart,   she... Here, I'll pull it up for those watching  the video version of this. She has late Taurus   rising with Saturn at 13 degrees of Aquarius  conjunct the degree of the midheaven at eight   Aquarius, and it's in a day chart. It's in  its own domicile, it's in the 10th house,   and it also has this very nice Trine from Jupiter  which is at eight degrees of Libra trining both   the degree of the midheaven as well as Jupiter  and thus [bonafying] Saturn, while Saturn is   also in aversion to Mars which is down there in  Cancer. Anyway, she just released a new single   titled Flowers last week and it's debuted already  on the Billboard like number one, and I think has   quickly become one of her most successful songs  I think ever. So she's enjoying wild success  

right now and the music video for it which kind of  went viral just shows her dancing gleefully while   also expressing coming out of this long-term  relationship that didn't go well for her but   that she's happy to be free of. And I thought that  was such a great metaphor for a Saturn Return.  BR: Or even the fact that I guess that that  music video she filmed at the location where   her ex was persistently cheating on  her, and so there's this kind of like,   "All right, yeah. This Saturnian shitty  thing that happened, I'm gonna turn that   to my advantage and then just put it right  there in the 10th house for everyone to see.   Maybe there's something there too about the...  I know this for Venus in Capricorn would have   the double whammy Venus return because of  those retrogrades on [unintelligible] 2022. 

CB: Yeah, for sure. And just making something  positive out of something that was difficult.   Or being able to showcase one's challenges  or trauma or hardships but then to overcome   them and still come out on top in the  end, that's a real positive version   of the Saturn Return story or manifestation. AC: Yeah. It is, Chris, a really good example of   just a positive Saturn placement and then a return  on that. Because when you have Saturn's favour,   you're confirmed. Right? Your success is  confirmed, you're established. It confirms   that she is an established fixture in the music  industry. Saturn ensconces, enthrones, enshrines.   It puts you in a fortified position, right? A  position that's not easy to assail and that is   not fragile or as temporary as most success is. CB: That's actually a really good point that's  

even more relevant for her, of course, because she  was a child star and so many child stars have that   struggle sometimes of having success earlier in  life when they're super young. But then sometimes   that situation happens when sometimes people peak  earlier or like what happens in the scenario where   the height of your popularity is earlier in life  and then you're never able to like recapture that.   Or in some instances, there's an extreme drop off  where a person really struggles in adulthood to   find what to do or what their purpose or focus  should be, or what have you. So her having   a more positively placed Saturn both had that  experience of success very early on, but she's   now been able to reinvent herself and continue  to stay relevant in her chosen career field in   a way that probably feels fulfilling, I assume. AC: Yeah, it's better than most alternatives.   Sure. BR: Interesting that you  

use the word 'reinvent'. One of the things  I was noticing as I was watching the video   was that it was giving me Madonna the Vogue video  vibes. The structured shoulders, definitely,   and it's like, "Okay, there's a little fashion  trend coming around there and I'm sure we could   deconstruct that." But it just felt like this very  clear statement of, "Yeah, there is enough command   of my identity that I can claim it and reshape  it and mould it and then present to you this new   edifice of my identity." And that reinvention  just felt like it was harkening back to   the archetype of the person who can  reinvent themselves, I think that's what   felt super Madonna-like to me in watching that. CB: Yeah, for sure. That's a really good point.  

Has either of you noticed either any  other Saturn Return stories lately   that have come up with the Saturn in Aquarius  people? Or does that make you think of any   anecdotes from your own Saturn returns? Did you  have good Saturn returns or bad Saturn returns?  BR: I had a great Saturn Return. CB: Yeah, what was the   setup versus what was the finish? BR: The setup was as Saturn entered the sign,   I ended on my bicycle, broke two teeth, and ended  up not moving far away. And as a result-- Saturn   rules my seventh house and is in my sixth house--  as a result, I ended up taking a random job that   really sucked and I immediately realized I wanted  to leave it. But I ended up meeting my partner  

there. And so met somebody through unfortunate  circumstances, hated the job, really liked the   person, ended up getting married, traveled abroad  for the first time... So by the end of that Saturn   Return I was like, "Oh, all these other qualities  of Saturn is L seven in the sixth ruling my lots,   doing other things infigured to everything. CB: Yeah, that's great. That's   classic Saturn Return. AC: Yeah. I also have Saturn  

ruling my seventh, and so Kate and I got together.  We got together just before my Saturn Return,   but we moved in together I think within  a week of Saturn's ingress into Virgo.   And then I think I tried to get the jump on  my Saturn Return because six months earlier,   I had made a solemn vow to myself that I was  going to be a full-time astrologer and I was   going to make a living doing that. And  I wasn't going to take any other jobs,   I was just going to make this work, you know, burn  the boats. And that was really hard for the time  

that Saturn was in Virgo. It was depressing, I was  super broke, a lot of financial anxiety and shame.   But by the end of it, I was doing it.  So you know, I got a future wife and a   career out of it, so not too bad. CB: Nice. That's pretty good.  BR: What about you, Chris? CB: I mean, I had a lot of   stuff I don't want to go into, but it was a Saturn  Return. I have Aquarius rising and Saturn's up in   my 10th so it was a lot of things tied in there  at once. But I am excited now since it's getting   towards the end of Saturn in Aquarius, one thing  we traditionally do on the Astrology Podcast is we   do a Saturn Return retrospective. So I may put  out an open call soon for people if they want  

to share their Saturn Return stories, if they're  finishing up a Saturn Return in Aquarius whether   it's their first or second or potentially even  third, just to sort of do some field research to   see how that went for everybody, and to understand  the full range of different experiences now that   we're coming to the end of that transit  and we can kind of learn something about   it from hearing different people's stories. AC: One set of Saturn Return that's almost   self-explanatory is a lot of the former Soviet  bloc nations are having their Saturn Return and   the European Union, the chart that I favor, is  also a Saturn in Aquarius. And I would say that   Europe, both East, West, North and South,  has gone through a lot recently. And things   are definitely different moving forward. CB: Yeah, for sure. As well as we've talked   a lot over the past few years about the Saturn  Return of the worldwide web and the internet and   some of the different things that have happened  with that over the past few years, and the sort   of turning point that it's reached. Go ahead. BR: This may be an odd Saturn Return  

after our Aquarius episode, I was looking into the  My Stroke of Insight TED Talk that Dr. Jill Bolte   Taylor presented back in 2008, and was realizing  that Saturn and Neptune were conjunct when Neptune   was discovered 25 degrees of Aquarius, so we're  about to have a Saturn Return of Saturn's position   when Neptune was discovered. It's kind of like a  weird thing but it does feel like there are some   Neptunian themes around that augmented reality,  blurring of reality like Austin- Like that power   of belief, I think Jupiter-Neptune conjunction  kind of highlighting it, but also almost   a self-conscious awareness of the ways in  which technologies redefined the limits of   what's possible, redefined the limits of what  we can imagine. The way that Titanic and the   submarine that was used to film that movie did,  the way that multiple movies that James Cameron   has released have done that. And so it feels like  in this time in this year, the way in which-- at  

least as astrologers but I feel like even the  cultural zeitgeist has its finger with a little   bit more self-awareness and to the blurring of  things to the alternative facts and all of that.   People are more aware of that propagandizing  quality of narrative of belief as   more structure and solidity to that. AC: Yeah. Yeah.   No, that's interesting. As you were talking, I was  just thinking about the Saturn in Aquarius years.   I mean, the Saturn in Capricorn and in Aquarius is  just the extremely strong Saturn where the things   that are heavy and solid and onerous are very  clear in a lot of ways. People's explanations and   ideas about them diverge wildly, but there's this  core of hardship, or a core made of many hardships   that was actually pretty solid. And I'm wondering  as Saturn goes into Pisces and joins Neptune if  

even that sort of disperses. Not like the center  cannot hold, but even moving into a phase where   there's not even a clear thing to argue over. If  that makes sense. When you were talking about,   especially when you mentioned the submarine,  I just imagined being under the water. And   one of the things that Saturn when it's strong  does is it orients you by gravity, right? Like   a scary thing, a dangerous thing, an onerous  thing... Centre your consciousness. Like, "Oh,   I have to do this or else. Or I have to do this,  but I don't want to do this." It's very clear cut   in its own way because it has a center of gravity,  but I was just thinking about being in the ocean   or any other large body of water where gravity  still exists but its influence is far less.  

And you can get confused. People get confused  when they're deep down between up and down. Which,   you know, is one thing that kills deep  sea divers. I don't know, that kind of   feels like where we'll be in not very long. BR: Yeah, something there made me think about   Ender's Game but also this; I was talking with  my partner earlier this morning about like, okay,   I'm trying to find a bunch of news and isn't it  strange that back when we didn't have the internet   and 24-hour news cycles, it was a little bit  easier to access a broad collection of many news   events over a certain period of time. But because  there's so much, there's a deluge of data that you   drown in it. And it's kind of hard to constantly  be digesting or swimming in every single life and  

death consequential, harsh reality all day every  day. Eventually even if that's true, even if it's   important to know about, you still have to go do  some grocery shopping and make dinner. You can't   just try to solve all of the problems all of the  time. There's other stuff that has to get done.  AC: Yeah, it's funny that you say that because  I had that exact same experience over the last   couple of weeks. I literally found myself  being like, "You know what? There's a real   hole in the market if somebody could just  tell me about events that have happened"   Because every time I would go to try to  learn about a thing that had happened,   it was two minutes of reporting and  then 15 minutes of fucking opinions   and trying to match it to various narratives.  I was like, "I don't care about your mid-level  

fucking interpretation, just tell me what  you could have told me about eight stories   in the time that you gave me a bunch of repeated  opinions." I mean, there's still... Reuters is   useful but Reuters doesn't do a good  job of ranking the consequential and   the inconsequential. The Economist actually used  to be really good for that, they used to be my   go to. I feel like they've just been sliding and  are much more editorial than they were like five  

years ago. If you find something, let me know. BR: Yeah, I will. I've been trying to find   those sources of information but also having this  like... Well, it tracks and it makes sense given   Neptune being in Pisces, that we would have this  casting of the net so broad and so wide that...   There's that, I don't know who the quote  belongs to or who to attribute it to,   rather, but that quote lamenting that in this  day and age, somebody's opinion is viewed just   as widely as another person's facts or another  person's collection of real evidence. Until we  

end up in this weird echo chambery bubble. AC: Yeah, I want to jump in on that image of   the net, right? If we talk about casting a very  broad net, if we look at where that's actually   done which is industrial fishing, when these boats  cast the gigantic dragnets, I'm sure they'll get   some of the actual creatures they're looking  for but you get tonnes of other shit. You know,   you have dolphins and whales and all sorts of  species, and it's very wasteful and confusing.   I feel like that's definitely a Neptune in Pisces  thing. I was like, "Okay, I wasn't really paying   attention the news last week, what happened?"  And there were some of the actual stories,   but I believe dolphins were killed in making many  of those YouTube videos. [laughs] I felt like a   dolphin being killed watching some of them. CB: Yeah, I think we're gonna look back on  

this period. I've been reflecting more and more  over the past few months this period of Neptune   in Pisces and how it's been like the Wild West  in terms of this early stage of the internet,   especially with YouTube channels  and podcasts and everything else   that's allowed on the one hand... The complete  likely unrestricted nature of it has allowed a   lot of cool things to flourish including astrology  and some of the other metaphysical or cool things   lately that have exploded over the past decade,  but it's also allowed for the flourishing of a lot   of not great things. And I think when Neptune goes  into... When it leaves Pisces and it goes into   Aries, I think we're going to look back on this  period and realise that there were some really   positive ways that that sort of Wild West  thing allowed some great things to flourish,   but then also looking back on it and realizing  what we lost a little bit in that as well.   So I guess we're talking- That's like what?  Two, three years from now, Neptune in Aries?  AC: Yeah. I don't know. Neptune in Pisces,  it's almost more like that mid phase when  

corporate interests started moving  into the partially organized...   There was enough known about the West  like, "Oh, there's a lot of money."   And then you had the Pinkertons come in, and a lot  of the very much-- how should we say? Grassroots   isn't the right term, but the people there  just doing things without a central authority.   But you had big interests kind of moving in,  tentacling in, but it wasn't the phase where it's   just America now. It's sort of that weird middle  phase where you have larger, more organizing  

powers. You know what I mean? You also have that  sort of wild whatever that was left over from the   first decade. Does that make sense? CB: Yeah.  AC: It makes it more confusing  than if it's, you know, than   the first phase or the phase that followed. CB: Yeah, I noticed in the last two episodes   I did, we talked a little bit about skeptics of  astrology and that whole community. And it's been  

interesting that for whatever reason over the past  decade, during this time where there's been this   simultaneous rise in the popularity of  astrology, there was also an unrelated   decline in the skeptic community, where  the skeptic community is much more   all over the place and not organized and had a  whole loss of leadership over the past decade. I   feel like a lot of that somehow connected to this  Neptune in Pisces transit. I remember, Austin,   you talked about the last time Neptune was in  Pisces coincided with that period of interest in   spiritualism and stuff like that in the 1800s. AC: Yeah, the first year we got the famous   Seance sisters. And then doing seances,  talking to dead people became a cool   respectable thing to do on a Saturday night. AC: Yeah. I mean, that is still your Saturday   nights I think, last time I heard. [laughter] AC: Yeah, that's probably the most  

appropriate night. CB: Yeah, I agree.  BR: It's interesting thinking back to  the last Jupiter-Neptune conjunction   in Pisces which I talked about at ISAR. And  looking at that period of westward expansion,   that is when the Lewis and Clark Expedition  happened and one of the things I talked about   at that lecture and I've been thinking about  even today is that whose perspective grounds   the story changes very dramatically  almost entirely what's going on,   to the extent that it could even be one  reporter talking about two different   worlds-- Lewis and Clark Expedition  in particular. Like, if you recenter   and you tell that story from the perspective  of the indigenous folks who are experiencing   the contact that never stops if not the first  contact, then it becomes a very different story.  

Even though it's still about waterways and  expansion and redrawing borders and whatnot.  AC: You almost get more of the  tsunami quality of oceanic Pisces.   And one of the things that's really  interesting to me that I've seen in my own life   and read about is that when people dream of  floods and it corresponds to events in the world,   it often means a big restructuring of  society, a massive and disruptive change   coming that usually isn't a flood. For  example, Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist   dreamed of a giant flood sweeping over  Europe right before World War One. And  

I had all of these weird flood omens right  before COVID started. And I didn't understand.   I understood that I was like, "Okay, that's  the third out-of-nowhere flood thing directed   right towards me." Anyway, I'm just  thinking about that. You know, like   the westward expansion as a devastating flood. BR: Yeah, there are a lot of tsunamis to track  

and other mass disasters. And even just in terms  of the astrology of the last couple of weeks,   I've been here in California where it felt like  a bad storm relative to my memory of living   up in Washington as a kid. Flood from the sky,  essentially. There has been massive flooding and   huge storm surge that went upriver down in  Santa Cruz and people being evacuated and   stuff in ways that isn't normal and doesn't  really have a prior context or precedent.  CB: Yeah. Yeah. So going back to some of the  technology talk and the Saturn in Aquarius stuff,   to follow up on something I talked about  that I just started to discover and which   just started happening when we recorded the  Year Ahead forecast in early to mid-December,   was the whole AI thing. Artificial Intelligence  thing has just been blowing up like crazy,   especially through this company OpenAI and their  product ChatGPT, which is just coming up in news   stories over and over again at this point. I kept  messing with it. I kept playing with it basically  

after we did the forecast episode and trying to  get it to do different things to see what it could   do. And I kept getting it progressively what  I thought were harder and harder things to do,   but it kept impressing me. At first, and I think  I may have shown this on the Year Ahead forecast,   I told it to delineate Venus conjunct Mercury  in a birth chart and it gave a pretty nice   little delineation. So a few days later after  the Year Ahead forecast, I was like, "Okay,   do a delineation of Mercury conjunct Venus, but  put it in the form of a poem." And I was like  

it's not going to do that very well. And then  I asked it to do it, and it did it! And it spit   this poem out that is actually pretty good.  So I posted this on Instagram with the image   that made it look like I had written it at  first. It says, "Mercury and Venus, conjunct   in the chart, bring together communication in the  heart. A harmonious blend of words and feeling,   diplomacy and understanding, a rare and  special healing. A love of beauty, aesthetics,   and art. An eye for detail, a creative heart.  Luxury and indulgence, the finer things in life.  

With this placement, so much joy and beauty  rife." So I posted that and I was like, "And   that was written by an Artificial Intelligence.  Welcome to the future." And half of Instagram   was really impressed and the other half was very  horrified, basically, which I think is going to   be a recurring reaction over the next several  years as we continue to see this technology   expand more and more. So I gave it that challenge  and I thought that was really pretty impressive.   Then I was just like, "What's something absurd to  take it to the next level?" And so I said, "Okay,   delineate Mercury conjunct Venus, but put it in  the form of a rap song by the rapper Eminem."  

And about five... It thought about it and  five/ten seconds later, it produced this   rap song and it says verse one, "Yo, what's up,  y'all? It's your boy, Eminem. I'm here to drop   some knowledge on the astrological scene. Got  a question about Mercury conjunct Venus in the  

birth chart? Well, let me break it down and give  you a fresh start." And it starts the chorus.   "Mercury conjunct Venus? Ain't that some shit.  It's a cosmic alignment, yo. You can't miss it."   And it just keeps going on and gives two  verses and a chorus. "It's a cosmic alignment,   you can't miss it. It's all about communication  and love, ain't that combo you're thinking of?  

So, what does it mean when these two  planets align? Well, it's all about   the way you communicate and shine. You're  natural at expressing yourself and your   love life is sure to be off the shelf." And then  it repeats the chorus, and later the bridge is,   "But it's not all sunshine and roses, there can be  challenges and challenges. It's important to find  

balance and harmony and not let the ego get in  the way of unity." And then it continues with the   chorus and it just keeps going on. So I laughed.  My initial reaction was I laughed hysterically   when I saw that because I did not expect it to  actually produce that, but this AI having taken in   and searched a huge part of the internet in 2021  when it was trained, of course has access to all   of the lyrics of all of the Eminem songs. So it  just tried to match and use that to inform while   combining with the delineation of Mercury conjunct  Venus. I just thought that was wild. We're in   some weird futuristic stages if stuff like that's  true, especially if this is just the beginning. If  

this is the initial phase of this, where is this  going to be in five or 10 or 20 years, you know?  AC: I don't think ChatGPT is a very  dope [MC]. I think [Chuck D] can rest   easily and safely, I think it'll be a while. But  one of the things that's interesting is it does...   A lot of this AI output really shines  a light on how formulaic a lot of human   expression is. There are rules governing their  syntax, there's rules governing a lot of this   stuff that is quote-unquote "artistic". CB: And in astrology in particular. I   think that's why it's actually doing so well with  astrology, it's because astrology is a language,   and this AI is specifically designed for  language models. That's why it's actually  

able to do things relatively effectively. AC: Yeah, a hundred percent. Right. And so   in some ways, I think it will do a nice job of  framing what the human is uniquely capable of,   right? Because a machine can replicate  patterns that it has had input into it.   It's good. I think in some ways... Because  people, if we are talking about works of art,   to be trite and derivative is for something to be  a not good work of art. Which means that you're  

just repeating a formula that was previously  established, right? And so it seems like there   will increasingly be less room for trite and  derivative human artists or would-be artists,   which is okay because they weren't creating the  good stuff. They were literally just ChatGPTing   better works anyway. It also reminds me of--  have either of you read the novel We by Yevgeny   Zamyatin? CB: No.  AC: It's the lesser-known sibling of 1984 in  Brave New World. It was dystopian fiction from   the first half of the 20th century. I remember, I  don't know, 20 years ago. I read Brave New World  

in 1984 and I was reading something and I  was like, "Oh, you really... You've gotta   read We." And what's interesting is We-- which  is a more Eastern European sort of take on it--   in that dystopia, all of the music is basically  produced by AI. He doesn't use the term AI but   it's the same thing that scooped up and sorted  through all of the great works of music,   and then just creates music that has the structure  to evoke whatever specific emotional effect it's   supposed to have. Because you can easily teach  using that. Okay, so minor key blah blah blah.   This will make people feel melancholy, this will  make major keys. I don't know much music theory   but you know, this will make people feel good.  And I believe there's literature that's also  

done that way in We, it's been a long time.  But that's the dystopia that got this piece.   It's a short read, it's a short good read if you  want to complete the classical dystopia trilogy.   We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. CB: All right. Yeah, we'll check it out.  

Anyway, so that was wild. It was in the news.  Interestingly, at the beginning of the Mars   Retrograde in Gemini, there were all these  different instances in the news of accusations   of cheating in chess or in poker and other stuff  like that last fall. The more recent one as Mars   was stationing direct was stories about students  starting to use this AI in order to cheat and   write exams or write papers for them, basically,  and teachers starting to panic over how do we tell   if a student has actually written their term paper  versus if they just asked an AI to write it in   five seconds. It was an interesting continuation  of that with Mars in Gemini in that whole   retrograde, but I feel like this whole AI thing  it's not going anywhere. This is basically the  

future, so I feel like astrologers have to learn  how to adapt to and work with and deal with this.   Because I think even if we don't like it, it's not  just going to go away because we don't like it. So   that's going to be part of the future and  especially in terms of the astrological community.  AC: Yeah, a hundred percent. A few more things  about that Mars now that you mentioned it,   one big deal in January. Mercury in Gemini  is the natural place for games, right?   Mercury's playful, likes competitive games. You  know, competitive collaborative, whatever. There  

was a huge hullabaloo around Dungeons & Dragons.  Dungeons & Dragons, part of the reason it's so   successful is that they've had basically an open  licence-- the Open Gaming Licence, the OGL-- which   allows any other company to make adventures  and content for the game for free. Like,   we could write a D&D adventure using that rule set  and publish it and not have to pay D&D anything.   That's been ensconced for decades and it's  part of the reason there's so much D&D content.   So Hasbro now owns Wizards of the Coast  which owns Dungeons & Dragons. And Hasbro is  

a very typical giant corporation and  they tried to revoke the open licence,   so that anybody doing anything with the D&D  rules would have to pay them. And there was   an unprecedented and massive revolt against  this. The entire tabletop Internet came together   and Hasbro was forced to retract the retraction.  This is the beginning of the month, retrograde   Mars ruled by the retrograde Mercury. They're  like, "Oh, we've heard the players and blah, blah,   blah, blah. We're not going to do this, we'll  come back with something else." So there was that.  

There was also, again, Mars in Gemini were looking  for twinned or doubled forms, and so on season 15   of RuPaul's Drag Race which premiered during this  time, for the first time ever there are a pair of   contestants who are twins. Who are identical  twins who perform together sugar n spice.   And spoiler alert... All right, that's enough  time to turn it off if you're just catching up.   Early on in the season, they were the  bottom two and were forced to compete   against each other and one got sent home.  This was filmed during the Mars Retrograde,  

you know, Mars in Gemini Mars Retrograde, and  premiered right around Mars direct. And so   for the rest of the season or for  as long as they last, we will see   one twin cut off from the other. That's  like Mars trouble in twin town. I'm very   excited to see if they rise to the occasion and  understand themselves as an individual better,   or if they just bleed from their second half or  their other half being torn away. Also with Mars   in Gemini going direct looking at the sphere of  Mars looking at the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war,   I talked last month on the Yearly about Mars  stationing direct on Aldebaran and how Aldebaran   is about big, heavy, substantial things from big  trains slowly leaving the station, the movement of   lots of material and what that's ended up being.  Or unprecedented shipments of heavy equipment   from NATO allies to Ukraine. We have Bradleys  and strikers and I believe there's some European  

main battle tanks, but it's just a tonne of  heavy equipment that's literally loaded onto   heavy trains moving into the Ukraine theatre.  And then I suppose if we're talking of big,   heavy, slow things, Russia's conscription or  mobilization which happened around right as the   Mars Retrograde was starting or getting ready  to start has sort of reached the front line,   so you have the massive heaviness on that side as  well beginning to move forward. You have Russia   right now slowly encircling Bakhmut, and so that  big heavy substantial starting-to-move-forward   quality is present on both sides now that  Mars is direct and conjunct Aldebaran. But   that was just very literal. CB: Yeah, that's amazing.   Leisa Schaim pointed out to me last night that  Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, when Jupiter   went back into Aries in December not that long  ago, that was Jupiter going back into Zelenskyy's   11th house. And he came to the US and gave a  speech in front of Congress. And now, of course,   we're into the 11th house  of friends and now of course   a lot of different countries in Europe as well  as the US are re-doubling their efforts to send   aid and send military assistance and things  like that recently over the past several weeks.  

That's kind of interesting like an 11th  house transit, positive transit from through   the house of friends, and literally having  allies sort of supporting you, essentially.   We'll see how that goes in the future. All right,  very last news story that I had before I get on   the forecast, there's this funny social media  exchange that happened a couple of weeks ago   where the actor Andrew Garfield was on the red  carpet and he did this really quick interview   with a journalist named Amelia Dima Oldenburg.  And they were kind of flirting, but there was   some astrological lingo dropped during the course  of their little brief exchange that went viral.   And I thought it was really striking if you  watch the exchange, I don't think I can play   it here for copyright reasons, but just to sort  of summarise it, he ended up asking her her Sun   sign and she replied Aquarius, but then he gave  a reaction to it. He was like, "Oh, Aquarius,"   sort of a facial reaction. And she says, "That's  your Moon sign?" almost with a question mark. And  

then he looks at her surprised and he starts to  say how did you know that, basically? And then   he looks at her knowingly because he realized  that it meant that she had looked up his birth   chart. Because he only know somebody's Moon sign  if you've looked up their actual chart. So it was   a funny little astrology flirting exchange by  a couple of nerdy Aquariuses, or an Aquarius   Sun and Aquarius Moon. He mentioned astrology and  people have posted other links where he's talked   about Saturn returns and Sun Moon synastry and  other stuff like that. So one of the subtle news   stories of that is that Andrew Garfield seems  to either know quite a bit about astrology or   actually maybe be a part-time amateur astrologer  himself, it seems almost, if we can say that. If  

his knowledge of astrology sort of raises to that  level which it almost seems to, which is kind of   interesting since he's a pretty well-known actor  for his work in the social network a decade ago.   He was one of the actors that played Spider-Man  before the current one who's been Spider-Man for   the past few movies. So, funny little exchange.  Have either of you done any astrological flirting   like that where your astrological skills have  suddenly become very useful for having that   sort of exchange with somebody? I know, Austin,  are you both in relationships with astrologers or   people that are astrology friendly? AC: Yes, I am.  BR: My partner knows what the  symbol for Chiron looks like,   and I'm very proud of them for achieving that. CB: Nice, that's good. That's a good start.  

Yeah. Well, and there's pros and cons-- we've  talked about it on the podcast before of   astrologers either dating or having relationships  with other astrologers versus not. And there's   definitely pros and cons either way. But this is  a very funny and interesting high-profile exchange   with astrology. And I think it's just shown also  just how far astrology has come lately in the   public consciousness where it used to be just  everybody knew their Sun sign but that was it,   but now people are exchanging Moon signs and  rising signs and all sorts of stuff and it's   kind of interesting the level that it's gotten to. AC: Yeah, it reminds me of the 60s where astrology   came back into intersection with the  counterculture which would become the   mainstream shortly. And you know, with  Neptune in Pisces, we expected this to  

some degree but not to this degree. But we  may be at the end of the crest of the wave,   but there's a certain level of saturation which  will just be here for a while. Like, people just   know about it in the way they haven't for decades. BR: Yeah, it makes me think about what you said   about the rise of spiritualism when Neptune was in  Pisces back in the 1800s. And then at some point   most people were like, "Oh, yeah, seance. I've  heard about that. Let's organize a seance for  

dinner party!" People are like, "Yeah, let's have  astrology-themed everything; tote bags, blankets,   shawls, journals." CB: Right.  BR: We are, of course, astrologers. Yeah. CB: Yeah, for sure. Well, and that reminds me of   a few days ago Jenn Zahrt was recently-- shout out  to Jenn Zahrt just got elected for the ISAR board,   and is now a board member on the International  Society for Astrological Research. But   she was doing like a literature review because  she wanted to know more about the institutional   history of ISAR, so she started going  back and reading their old journals   at her astrological library that  she has been building in Oregon,   the Kaylee Institute which I'm actually giving  a talk for next month which I'll plug at the   end of this episode. But she found this funny  old 2004 article in the ISAR journal by Moses   Siregar titled The Future of Astrology,  where he's talking about the Association   for Young Astrologers which was recently founded  at that point. And he has this interesting little  

anonymous tidbit from some 19-year-old punk who  he doesn't name at the time, but it sounds very   familiar. But listen to this paragraph. It says  quote, "I just found out about this group today,   the Association for Young Astrologers. I'm 19

2023-02-03 13:46

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