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Transcript 009: It’s Aquarius Season, Charlie Brown!

Big Sky Astrology Podcast
009 | It’s Aquarius Season, Charlie Brown! (January 20, 2020)

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[00:00:00] Jen:  [00:00:00] Welcome to the Big Sky Astrology podcast – with April Elliott Kent and me, producer and cohost Jen Braun.

Hey friends, Jen here. Today is January 20th, 2020. And you know who’s with me: She’s an astrologer. She’s an author. She’s my friend. She’s April Elliott Kent. Hey there, April!

April: [00:00:29] (laughs) Hi, Jen! That’s a fantastic windup! So many adjectives, so many titles. My Mercury planets really enjoy that. Thank you. Lovely to be with you, as always.

Jen: [00:00:41] I saw you cracking up as I was speaking – your face over video… (laughs)

April: [00:00:45] Oh, gosh. A bon vivant! A woman about town! That’s me… (laughs)

Jen: [00:00:49] There she goes with French again… (laughs)

April: [00:00:51] There with my French. Oui!

Jen: [00:00:52] Mais oui!

April: [00:00:53] Well, thank you everybody for joining us. It’s fantastic to be with you again this week. And we want to thank you for the very nice [00:01:00] comments and feedback that we’ve been getting! It’s so nice.

Jen: [00:01:03] It’s been really great to read all of your comments and hear how you think the podcast is going. It helps us feel so much… better… about our podcast!  (laughs)

April: [00:01:13] Not that we’d be insecure or anything! (laughs) But it really does help us feel that there’s somebody out there listening and enjoying and getting a bit of something.

We had this lovely comment on Instagram from @queenMacqueen who said, “Thanks so much for doing your podcast. I’ve been into astrology for decades, but I’ve learned so much in the first few episodes, I’ve actually freaked myself out!”  That’s great! And that kind of freaked us out, but in a great way.

Jen: [00:01:40] Yeah, that’s nice to hear!

April: [00:01:41] Thank you, @queenMacqueen. That’s fantastic!

Jen: [00:01:44] I’m glad to hear it’s been helpful.

April: [00:01:46] Yeah, me too. But my very favorite comment came from your nephew, who said that he enjoys falling asleep listening to us, because he finds our voices very soothing.

Jen: [00:01:57] He likes our voices. So he falls asleep to the podcast!  (laughs)

April: [00:01:59] We are [00:02:00] his Bob Ross, and I’m so excited and gratified by that. Cause I fall asleep every night… if it’s not Bob Ross on my phone under my pillow, it’s podcasts. It’s old episodes of 30 Rock. I love to hear voices lulling me to sleep. So I just love that we’re doing that for your nephew!

Jen: [00:02:18] Yeah, we are his Bob Ross, apparently.

April: [00:02:20] Well yes, but don’t we wake him up when you get on a laughing tear like you did about my Bob Ross comment last week? (laughs)

Jen: [00:02:29] (laughs) I think I laughed harder on that episode than I had previously! So we’ll see if we can beat it this week!

April: [00:02:34] Well, it was good fun, it was good fun. And we really do appreciate it so much that people are responding so well to the podcast. And we’re certainly loving doing it.

Jen: [00:02:43] Yeah, and we have listeners in 60 countries now!

April: [00:02:45] That’s pretty great!

Jen: [00:02:46] That’s awesome.

April: [00:02:47] I have no way of getting my mind around that. But I have planets in the 9th house, you know the house of foreign countries and long journeys over water.

Jen: [00:02:56] And you are Sagittarius rising…

April: [00:02:57] Yeah I am Sag rising. So it’s like [00:03:00] nothing could please me more.

Jen: [00:03:01] …which is all about long journeys over water.

April: [00:03:03] Perhaps someone is listening today in Kuala Lumpur or…

Jen: [00:03:08] Who knows…

April: [00:03:08] …or Dublin. I mean, I don’t know where y’all are. But, hi!

Jen: [00:03:12] April is setting up a website for us.

April: [00:03:14] Yes, by the time you listen to this, you should be able to find us by going to http://www.bigskyastropod.com and we will list every episode there along with the show notes, the transcripts, and there will be a place there for you to leave your comments. Cause I know I did hear from at least one listener who said, “I’d really like to leave comments for you on Podbean , but I had to download an app in order to do it.” Which we’ve also noticed. So, we will have this website. You’ll be able to comment on it just like you do on my website, and we can just have a little party over there, right on our website.

Jen: [00:03:54] Right.

April: [00:03:54] And speaking of my website, I just wanted to put in a plug, because I assumed when we started this [00:04:00] podcast that most of our listeners were going to be finding us through my website, www.bigskyastrology.com. But some of you probably are finding us in other ways. So, I wanted to let you know that I do write a weekly column that comes out every Monday on www.bigskyastrology.com that talks about a lot of the things that Jen and I talk about on the podcast that week – and in a little more detail and with some lovely digital illustrations that I make.

Jen: [00:04:24] Yes. And if you have not ever read April’s weekly column, it’s fantastic.

April: [00:04:29] Oh, thank you, Jen.

Jen: [00:04:30] That is how I originally found you, is I started following your blog, and then after a while I subscribed, and then after a while I thought, “I should tell her I like her column!”

April: [00:04:40] See, my column is a gateway drug!  (laughs)

Jen: [00:04:43] A podway drug!  (laughs)

April: [00:04:46] Well played, Jen!

I’m wondering if when people listen to this podcast, if they’re a little thrown, because I think my writing is a little more serious. And then I listen to the podcast, and we’re just yukking it up and having a good old time, and…[00:05:00] I guess I have a Gemini Moon, so I’m entitled to have two personas.

Jen: [00:05:03] Gemini is the sign of the twins, for those of you that don’t know.

April: [00:05:05] Exactly, and if you want a deeper and more in-depth approach to the week’s transits or just a slightly different perspective… that, I think, is a good place to start.

Jen: [00:05:13] Absolutely, yeah. Do sign up and then you’ll get that free “Working with the Moon” workbook that we talked about last week…

April: [00:05:18] Right.

Jen: [00:05:19] …which is fantastic. It’s 10+ pages, talking about what’s going on with the Moon each month. And you can follow along in your own chart, and plot your plan for the month.

April: [00:05:28] As well you should.

Jen: [00:05:30] Why not?

April: [00:05:30] Yes. Thank you.

Jen: [00:05:31] Yeah. Well, should we talk about astrology, or should we just keep talking about other stuff and how great our listeners are for commenting?

April: [00:05:37] Well, exactly right. I think that we should talk a little bit about the Sun going into Aquarius this week.

Jen: [00:05:43] Sun going into Aquarius, which means…

April: [00:05:45] So we’re talking about the transiting Sun, the Sun that is up in the sky right now. It has been in Capricorn since the solstice, around December 20th or so, and it’s moving into the sign of Aquarius. [00:06:00] Which, despite the fact that it’s symbolized by the water bearer, is actually an air sign.

Jen: [00:06:04] I was going to ask about that!

April: [00:06:06] Again, I am anticipating you!

Jen: [00:06:08] Well, it’s confusing. When I was first learning astrology, I knew that there were four elements: water, earth, air, and fire. And that each sign falls into one of those four elements. I for sure thought that Aquarius was a water sign, because it’s the water bearer… but it’s not! It’s an air sign.

April: [00:06:25] That’s exactly correct.

Jen: [00:06:27] Can you explain that? Because that doesn’t make any sense.

April: [00:06:30] The symbolism of the water is: It’s really the water of knowledge. And if you look at the way it’s depicted in a lot of illustrations of the sign, it has the jaggedy lines…

Jen: [00:06:41] Yeah, I’ve seen that. Like Charlie Brown’s shirt!  (laughs)

April: [00:06:43] Exactly! Well said. (laughs) And an excellent fashion tip!

Jen: [00:06:50] I’ll put a link in the show notes!  (laughs)

April: [00:06:52] Of course you will!  (laughs)

And that can also look a bit like radio waves or something. Cause we associate Aquarius [00:07:00] with radio waves and broadcasting and that kind of thing. No, it’s actually an air sign and it’s the last of the air signs. So, the air signs are Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius. They’re all communication oriented. They’re all cerebral. And they all seek to understand the world with their minds, primarily.

Jen: [00:07:16] Yes.

April: [00:07:17] So this is the Sun in Aquarius.

Jen: [00:07:19] It makes sense if you think about it as a person carrying two buckets on a yoke.

April: [00:07:23] Okay…

Jen: [00:07:24] So the water is in the buckets, obviously. But you can think about the buckets swinging through the air. Right?

April: [00:07:29] Oh, okay. So that’s the air sign.

Jen: [00:07:30] Yeah. That’s how I started remembering that Aquarius is an air sign, is I literally was picturing a person carrying these two buckets on a yoke and swinging through the air.

April: [00:07:40] Oh, excellent.

Jen: [00:07:41] Yeah.

April: [00:07:42] So what does it mean then to have the Sun going into Aquarius? So the Sun – as we established at some length on our last episode, where we were talking about rulerships and how some planets do better in some signs and struggle in others – is [00:08:00] at its strongest in its rulership in the sign of Leo. Right?

Jen: [00:08:03] Right.

April: [00:08:04] The Sun has to do with the development of the self, the sense of who we are as separate from everybody else. It’s the unique engine that drives us personally in our lives. So in Leo – the sign of self-expression – the Sun does really well. It’s very strong there. There’s no conflict doing the work of the Sun. But if you put it into Aquarius, which is the opposite sign of Leo, it struggles a little bit. It’s in what we call its detriment. So the Sun is about the individual, the individual self… and Aquarius is about the collective. It’s about the many. So having the Sun – which is the symbol of the self – in the sign of the many, means that it can be easier for you to understand who you are in the context of a group… or in the context of other people. And a little bit harder to identify with the personal qualities that [00:09:00] make you, you.

Jen: [00:09:01] Okay.

April: [00:09:01] So it’s not that the Sun can’t do its job in Aquarius. It just means it has to do its work within an Aquarian context. So the people that I can think of who really exemplify the qualities of the Sun in Aquarius in a fantastic way are people like Abraham Lincoln or FDR… people who move us forward into a future we may never see. And that is the core of who they are. That’s how they figure out who they are in the world, is by moving the collective forward.

Jen: [00:09:34] I like that idea of moving us toward a future we may never see. I’ve never heard it put that way. I’ve heard it called the house of hopes and dreams…

April: [00:09:42] The 11th house?

Jen: [00:09:44] Yeah. But I really like the idea of moving us toward a future we may never see. I think about how, you know, I co-founded a nonprofit. And then I made the decision to leave that nonprofit. And I don’t know where that nonprofit will be tomorrow or in a year or in 10 years or in 100 years. But it [00:10:00] still can move on without me, the self that helped co-found that agency.

April: [00:10:04] Right, you have a lot of planets in the 11th house, which is a territory of the chart that has a lot in common with Aquarius. They are not one and the same, but they definitely have a lot in common.

Aquarius is also a sign that makes really interesting connections between things. I think we talked about this last week as Mercury went into Aquarius – where it’s very strong – is that Aquarius has this ability to see what’s going through the air around them and grab little bits of that and click them together like Tinkertoys…

Jen: [00:10:36] Nice!

April: [00:10:37] …and make something very interesting and innovative and different out of them. And I think of Aquarius as really being that future-oriented disposition, which is something Leo doesn’t naturally have.

Jen: [00:10:51] Yeah.

April: [00:10:51] Leo is more about what can I do right now with what I’ve got.

Jen: [00:10:55] I guess so. I’ve never thought of it that way, but yeah.

April: [00:10:57] It’s about the individual vision. But [00:11:00] Aquarius says, “Well, what if we get all of our individual visions together and we put on a show in the barn? Everybody brings their contribution and together we create something that an individual cannot create by themselves.”

That’s the spirit of Aquarius. And that’s why some of the most inspiring figures in our nation’s history, for instance, have had the Sun in this sign. People are very inspired by Ronald Reagan – also Sun in Aquarius – who presented a communicative vision that was very strong that people really responded to. So it’s about being able to say, “Here is what we believe. Here is who we are. And this is where we’re going.”

Jen: [00:11:37] Ellen DeGeneres, I believe, is an Aquarius.

April: [00:11:39] She is an Aquarius. Right.

Jen: [00:11:41] Oh, you know that? Okay. She just knows that… the astrologer just knows that! (laughs)

April: [00:11:45] (laughs) I’ve been doing this for a thousand years! You read the Pocket Astrologer year-in and year-out, and you see whose birthday it is… and you get the idea. But she exemplifies it really well because she moved her community forward [00:12:00] through her individual action of coming out on her TV show. And being a leader, being a figure head – which is what the Sun does – but in Aquarius… on behalf of the many… of the community.

Jen: [00:12:13] Thank you, Ellen DeGeneres. I’m part of your community.

April: [00:12:16] I love Ellen! Yeah. Everybody loves Ellen. And she can dance!

Jen: [00:12:20] She can dance. Although tWitch dances now on her show.

April: [00:12:23] Oh. Who is tWitch?

Jen: [00:12:24] tWitch is a guy on her show. He’s in the DJ booth, and he’s a really good dancer. Oh, you’ve got to see tWtich! I’ll put a link in the show notes! (laughs)

April: [00:12:34] You should absolutely do that!  (laughs)

Jen: [00:12:36] Cause he’s awesome.

April: [00:12:38] So that’s another side of Aquarius. Aquarius is that wonderful energy of… they never met a stranger. And did I tell the story of a friend of ours who had some planets in Aquarius? Or maybe it was the 11th house, I forget which it was. But we were in a city far from where any of us lived, and we went into the supermarket… and Jonny and I were walking [00:13:00] around and we were looking for him and we’re like, “Where did he go?” We found him in an aisle talking animatedly in Spanish – which is not his first language – to some fellow that was standing there. And he rejoined us, and we said, “Oh, who was that?” He goes, “Oh, I don’t know. I just met him!”

Well, that’s Aquarius. They can find a point of connection with anybody. I love that about Aquarius. So that’s why we say it’s the sign of friendship and of groups and that. But it’s not necessarily that deep, intimate, one-on-one connection. It really is about, “Hey, we all have something in common” … and finding what that point of commonality is. And that’s where brilliant politicians who have an Aquarius influence – your Reagans, your FDRs, even Obama with the Aquarius ascendant – we see somebody who is able to touch that common chord with everybody and say, “This is what we have in common and this is where we’re going.”

Jen: [00:13:55] So the Sun will square Uranus… because we discussed last week about how [00:14:00] anything that enters Aquarius at this point is going to be quickly squaring Uranus in Taurus.

April: [00:14:04] Right. So that happens on January 22nd and again – it’s a quick transit, a couple of days. You’ll feel it on the 21st moving into the 22nd, and you’ll be in its wake a little bit on the 23rd. So again, if you’re a Leo person or somebody with planets or the Ascendant or something in that sign, you will feel that square to Uranus from the Sun -maybe a little bit stronger than other people because the Sun is your ruling planet. So it just means: You may zig when others expected you to zag with the Sun square to Uranus. And it’s generally surprising developments, things that you didn’t quite see coming. And it’s like stumbling over a broken piece of pavement on the sidewalk when you’re taking a walk. It’s like hip-checking your kitchen counter as you’re walking by and kind of going, “Ouch!” And it wakes you up, get your attention [00:15:00] for a couple of days.

Jen: [00:15:01] Okay. Now, Uranus is the modern ruler of Aquarius. So does it have an advantage despite the fact that the Sun is so ginormous? (laughs)

April: [00:15:10] (laughs) In a word? No. It has no advantage because… yes, it’s the Sun in Aquarius, so it’s a little more disposed to expect the unexpected perhaps. But squaring Uranus, just by definition, has something come up that you didn’t expect. No matter how much you’re looking for the unexpected, the unexpected is – by definition – going to surprise you.

Jen: [00:15:33] Okay.

April: [00:15:34] So that’s what happens, I think, this week when we get the Sun square Uranus.

Jen: [00:15:38] Okay. I want to say something here, and it’s going to be really obvious to you. But I want to say for people that are really, really new to astrology: Every month, year after year, the Sun is in the same sign. So right now we’re in January, and the Sun is entering Aquarius. Of course, every year around this time, the Sun enters [00:16:00] Aquarius.

But when you say, “I’m an Aquarius,” it just means that you were born when the Sun was more or less lined up with the constellation Aquarius. That is Sun sign astrology. It’s: Where was the Sun on the day that you were born? In which sign was it? Because I didn’t learn until later that there’s a Moon sign, there’s a rising sign, there’s a Saturn sign. All of the planets have signs. But when we’re referring to Sun sign astrology, it’s just: Where was the Sun on the day that you were born? And when you are somewhere and someone says, “I’m a Libra.” Or, “I’m a Capricorn” … it just means that’s the sign that the Sun was in on the day you were born.

April: [00:16:35] Good recap. Yeah, and I do tend to forget that there are people that don’t know that. They don’t realize that. So that’s what that means.

And also each sign has a particular relationship to your Sun sign. So if you were born when the Sun was in Aquarius, that means that you are generally set up to learn lessons about yourself from, say [00:17:00] Leo, who is 180 degrees away on the opposite side of the wheel. They are your opposite and it’s like they’re holding up a mirror to you and showing yourself in a way that you really can’t see otherwise. You have an intrinsic relationship with people born with the Sun in Taurus or the Sun in Scorpio, because those signs are square Aquarius, which is an aspect of tension and conflict. They push you to be better. They push you to know yourself better. And it’s not always easy, but it always can be rewarding. And with people who are born with a Sun in Gemini or Libra: You have a very easy rapport because your fundamental values are the same. It’s about communication. It’s about thinking. It’s about the world of the mind and relating to other people.

Jen: [00:17:53] The other two air signs – Gemini and Libra.

April: [00:17:55] Yeah. So even just knowing that your Sun is in a particular [00:18:00] sign can tell us a lot about you. It doesn’t give us the full picture…

Jen: [00:18:04] Yeah.

April: [00:18:05] …for that, we need the entire horoscope. We need all of the planets. We need the houses. We need the interplay, the aspects between the planets, but just knowing that the Sun is in a sign can tell us a tremendous amount.

Jen: [00:18:17] Yeah. And Aquarius is always opposite, Leo. That doesn’t change. And Aquarius is always square to Taurus and to Scorpio – that doesn’t change.

April: [00:18:26] Exactly so, my friend. While we’re on the subject of Aquarius, it’s time for Moonwatch!

Jen: [00:18:34] (musical voice) Doo-doo-doo-doo!  (laughs)

April: [00:18:36] (musical voice) Doo-doo-doo-doo-dooooo!  (laughs) We’ve got to get a theme song for that! A proper theme song!

Our New Moon this month is at 4 degrees and 21 minutes of Aquarius. It’s on January 24th at 1:42 PM in California, 3:42 where Jen is in Minneapolis, 9:42 PM in London. It is on the Sabian symbol 5 Aquarius [00:19:00] which is a lovely, evocative symbol: “A council of ancestors.” And can you pull out when we talked about Sabian symbols, Jen?

Jen: [00:19:09] That was two episodes ago… Two episodes ago, I think…

April: [00:19:12] Ooh… doubt?

Jen: [00:19:13] So that would have been episode 7, which is when we talked about the Lunar Eclipse.

April: [00:19:19] Very good. Sabian symbol, 5 Aquarius, “A counsel of ancestors.” Tell me what sort of picture that brings up for you.

Jen: [00:19:27] Well, it makes me think of familial history. But for me, having worked in adoption and foster care forever and ever, it makes me think: Who’s family? What does family mean?

April: [00:19:37] Yeah, your ancestors are not just the people who are related to you by blood. Although I think while we’ve had so many planets in Capricorn over the last year, and having the eclipses going through Cancer and Capricorn – these are very much about family of origin as well as the family that we choose and the tribes that we belong to [00:20:00] based on shared characteristics or shared interests.

So it is a complicated idea, this idea of ancestors. And because I was lucky enough to come from a background that was very supportive and very loving, very traditional in a lot of ways… it evokes for me a lovely image. An image of being surrounded and supported, not just by the people who are with me now in my life, from my family, but the people who came before.

I look at the portrait of my grandfather that hangs on the wall of our living room, and it makes me feel connected to him and connected to a lineage of curiosity and wisdom that he represents for me. I like the idea of it being a council; it feels like a panel of supportive mentors that are there to give us counsel, not just here and now, but also the wisdom that’s been handed down to us through generations. And also our mentors in our professional lives and [00:21:00] things now.

Jen: [00:21:00] Yeah.

April: [00:21:00] So I just kind of liked it as a vision. Because I don’t always think of Aquarius in those terms. But again, the traditional ruler of Aquarius is Saturn. So it does have to do with those traditions and with ancestry. And support and family.

So that’s the emphasis of this New Moon Sabian symbol degree. The New Moon is square Uranus because it happens right after the Sun square to Uranus on the 22nd. So now we have the Sun and the Moon together – emphasizing, making a square – to Uranus and saying, “Expect the unexpected.” This is the time of year for that.

And so we went through that fraught period in the last month with the eclipse, and the Saturn/Pluto conjunction, and all the rest of it that we’ve talked about ad nauseum on the podcast. And to bring it back just for a moment to The Repair Shop, because I’m still hooked on that!

Jen: [00:21:52] Oh, boy! Netflix, are you listening?  (laughs)

April: [00:21:55] Welcome returning sponsor, Netflix! (laughs) So we imagine that there’s a rickety chair that’s [00:22:00] been brought in. And it’s just a little bit wobbly… it just needs to be glued up a little bit and brought whole. And if we don’t do that, then we’re likely to get a nasty square-Uranus surprise when we sit on it and it collapses.

So this is like, “Have you done the foundational work that was required with Saturn and Pluto, and with the eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn? Have you attended to those things?” Because if you haven’t, then this is when those chickens come home to roost.

Jen: [00:22:32] Right.

April: [00:22:33] The New Moon begins a whole 28 ½-day cycle, and it brings the spirit of the month to us. It says, “In this month, we are going to be presented with a series of unexpected insights and events and have to figure out how to respond to them and how to use them creatively.”

Jen: [00:22:56] Yeah, and with wisdom, right? Because of the ancestors.

April: [00:22:57] And with wisdom – the [00:23:00] council of the ancestors are there if we want to call on that, if we want to call on those resources and on that wisdom. So as you draft your intentions for the New Moon cycle ahead – which a lot of people like to do at the New Moon – to say, “All things being equal, where would I like to be this time next month and what can I do between now and then to achieve that?” Part of that will be, “How can I bend a little more in response to the unexpected…”

Jen: [00:23:31] Bend without breaking…

April: [00:23:33] Yeah, and how can I let it move me ahead in a way all this Aquarius energy wants to do?

Jen: [00:23:40] I’ve heard that whole “expect the unexpected” thing with Uranus. And I’ve also heard that you can think about something that would happen that you wouldn’t like, and then that won’t happen because you already thought of it. So it’s expected.  (laughs)

April: [00:23:53] I think that’s magical thinking, but I’m sort of for magical thinking, (laughs) so I suppose it could work. I think of it like this: Not [00:24:00] all unexpected things are bad things.

Jen: [00:24:02] Yeah.

April: [00:24:02] But I have Jupiter in Aquarius, so I’m going to say this. But I really do believe that that’s true. Think of meeting the person that you are spending your life with… and that was probably not entirely expected at that time, in those circumstances. Certainly wasn’t for me. So that was a nice surprise. And nice surprises – like getting an unexpected opportunity in your career or an unexpected accolade from somebody – these are all great things. They’re kind of unexpected. Or even as we’ve talked about before, the unexpected thing that at the time feels like a total disaster, but moves you forward in your life in a way you can never anticipate.

So we do say that with Uranus as astrologers. And we’re not trying to weenie out, we’re just truly… with Uranus, you don’t know exactly what to expect. And the nice thing about following transits – if you know enough astrology to be able to go back in your life and see when you’ve [00:25:00] had previous transits of Uranus to your chart, making an aspect to the Sun or the Moon or the Ascendant in your chart – then from hearing those stories from you, we’ll have a little bit of a sense of how you tend to respond or how Uranus tends to want to operate in your birth chart.

Jen: [00:25:17] Nice. We got one of our dogs unexpectedly, and so perhaps it could bring in an awesome new pet.

April: [00:25:23] Absolutely. And I think if we look at the Sun, if we look at the Aquarius house in your chart… and we say that’s where the New Moon is, the early degrees of Aquarius… and if we perhaps look at the ongoing saga of which house Uranus in Taurus is moving through in your chart, then we’ll get a little bit of a sense of where some of those surprises are coming from.

Jen: [00:25:45] It’s moving through the 6th house of small pets for me.

April: [00:25:47] Aw, Uranus is?

Jen: [00:25:49] Yeah.

April: [00:25:49] It is for me too. Yeah. And nothing’s been unexpected so far. We lost one pet, but we fully expected it cause she was old. And we have another one that’s winding down his [00:26:00] tenure, I think. But Uranus has also brought some unexpected work opportunities for me… doing this podcast is a perfect example of Uranus moving through my 6th house, and yours. It’s, “We’re working doing this very Uranian thing” … which is broadcasting, basically.

Jen: [00:26:18] Yeah. Cool.

April: [00:26:19] The other thing that is prominent in this New Moon chart is that Venus is moving up to make a conjunction to Neptune, which we’ll talk about more next week when it’s exact. But it is square Mars. So I’d like to talk about this square between Venus and Mars that happens on January 26th.

Jen: [00:26:38] Those two are thought of as the cosmic…

April: [00:26:42] …lovers. The cosmic lovers. It’s the energy of attraction. So Venus is how we pull people in, or things we want, or opportunities. It’s our magnetism. And Mars is more of the straight up, “I’m just going to forget persuading people to do things. I’m just going to [00:27:00] go out and get it.”

So if you’re at an age or a stage of development where you’re interested in finding a relationship, you’ll look closely at these transits of Venus as they come together with Mars. And this is a very energized moment in Venus’s cycle as it’s making this aspect to Mars. If this were a romantic comedy, this would be the moment where the two leads meet for the first time, and they meet in some cute situation and they take an instant dislike to each other. And you see that, and you know they’re ending up together. So that is Venus square Mars. That is how that particular story starts.

Jen: [00:27:40] And just to be clear, you don’t necessarily mean a heterosexual relationship.

April: [00:27:44] No. Any relationship…

Jen: [00:27:45] Yeah.

April: [00:27:45] …and this also has to do, actually, with non-sexual relationships. This can be friendships because it’s the element of attraction to people. Not all attraction is romantic or sexual, right? It has to do [00:28:00] with our friends. We are friends with our friends because there was something about them that attracted us, and vice versa.

Jen: [00:28:05] That drew us to them.

April: [00:28:06] Yeah. And we like doing the same kinds of things, which is the Mars element.

Jen: [00:28:10] The planet of action.

April: [00:28:11] Yeah. And so any kind of relationship. But it starts out with this thing of, “Ooh, this person kind of annoyed me in a meeting.” And yet you end up eventually being very close friends with them. So that friction that can put us into conflict with people can also be very magnetic and very attracting.

And not all relationships start that way, but the ones that start this week – as Venus is square Mars – will often have some note of that. So it’s the energy of Venus being in Pisces, which we talked about quite a lot last week on our episode Saturn and Pluto Need a Party.

Jen: [00:28:47] Yes, episode 8.

April: [00:28:49] We talked about that gentleness and acceptance of Venus in Pisces. It’s also a very spiritual and often even religious sign. Versus [00:29:00] Mars, which is still in Sagittarius, which we haven’t been talking about quite as much…

Jen: [00:29:03] No, we haven’t…

April: [00:29:04] …but there’s a missionary zeal that comes with Mars in Sagittarius.

Jen: [00:29:08] And again, you don’t mean religious, you just mean…

April: [00:29:11] …enthusiasm…

Jen: [00:29:12] …go get ’em!…

April: [00:29:13] …enthusiasm for what they believe. And that may be conventional religion, or it might be their personal creed like, “This is the hill I will die on.”

If you listen to those two archetypes – Venus in Pisces with Mars in Sag – you can see there’s tension there. Because Venus in Pisces is very gentle and very tender, very compassionate, very empathetic.

Mars in Sag is just, “By God, I’m going to get on my horse and ride and defend my beliefs and plant my flag.” And do all of that. And Pisces is going, “Oh, can’t we all just get along?” So the two of them together? Pisces can find that Mars in Sag is just a little bit abrupt. A little bit blunt, a little pointy.

Jen: [00:29:57] Too brusque.

April: [00:29:57] Yeah. Brusque and pointy.

Jen: [00:29:59] Yeah.

April: [00:29:59] The [00:30:00] two of them together have a lot to learn from each other. And they’re both ruled by Jupiter – Pisces and Sagittarius – because the traditional ruler of Pisces is Jupiter. So they have that in common. They both have a sense that beliefs are important, that it’s important to have a sense of context for everything we do. And they’re interested in what the world means and what their place is in it. So they do have that in common at least. But stylistically, there’s quite a difference between the two.

I thought it was interesting to note that the Sabian symbols for Venus and Mars at the time of the square both have imagery related to Easter: The 17th degree of Pisces where Venus will be is, “An Easter promenade.” So, like a parade. And 17 Sagittarius is, “An Easter sunrise service.”

And without getting too literal about those, I thought it was really striking that they both have that Easter imagery. And Easter is [00:31:00] the promise of rebirth and renewal, fertility, and early spring.

Jen: [00:31:05] Yeah.

April: [00:31:06] Is there anything else that we need to discuss?

Jen: [00:31:09] I think we’ve done it all.

April: [00:31:10] Have we done it?

Jen: [00:31:11] We’ve done it!

April: [00:31:12] We want to thank you for listening to the Big Sky Astrology Podcast! And to all of you who have sent us such lovely, supportive comments and who have become followers on Podbean, and who are downloading the episodes each week…we’re having such a good time watching those statistics, and it’s such great fun for us. So, thank you.

If you like what you’re hearing, be sure to hit subscribe in your podcatcher so that you don’t miss a single episode! And join us again, bright and early next Monday. And until then, keep your feet on the ground –

Jen: [00:31:43] – and your eyes on the stars!

Thank you for listening. To learn more about April Elliott Kent, please check out her website, www.BigSkyAstrology.com, where you can sign up for her newsletter, read her thought-provoking weekly essays, purchase her books, sign up for a personal astrology reading, and more.

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© 2020 Big Sky Astrology, April Elliott Kent, Jen Braun