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TRANSCRIPT Ep. 122 | Scorpio Lunar Eclipse: Go Where the Song Takes You

EPISODE 122 | Scorpio Lunar Eclipse: Go Where the Song Takes You! (May 9, 2022)

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Welcome to The Big Sky Astrology Podcast with your host, Astrologer and Author, April Elliott Kent.

April: Hello, invisible friend, April here – and the date today is May 9th, 2022. Welcome to Episode 122 of The Big Sky Astrology Podcast. Big news this week, we have a Scorpio Lunar Eclipse Full Moon, Jupiter will enter Aries and Mercury’s turning retrograde. Plus, I answer a listener question about the Progressed Sun moving into new signs. And if you’re completely unfamiliar with Secondary Progressions, definitely stick around for this one, because I’m going to help you get your feet wet with the whole concept.

Mercury turns retrograde (May 10, 4:47 am PDT)

First step this week, Mercury turns retrograde on May 10th at 04:47 AM Pacific Time at 4° 51’ of Gemini, on the Sabian symbol, 5 Gemini, “A Radical Magazine”. So, Mercury will be retrograde until June 3rd, when it will turn direct at 26° of Taurus.

I’ll start with the usual caveats about Mercury retrograde. This is a time when Mercury appears to be moving backwards in its orbit from our place here on earth; of course, it is not actually moving retrograde, it is an optical illusion. And I think that’s an important thing to remember about retrogrades in general, is they’re not real, they have to do with our perception.

I think Mercury retrograde periods go a little more easily for us to the extent that we’re able to slow down, to keep our schedule kind of loose and to really double check important decisions and paperwork.

This is a time for revisiting past questions. Gemini is very much a questioning sign. While Mercury is retrograde, it will revisit several recent sextiles to Jupiter and Mars, and are trine to Pluto. So, Mercury retrograde is always a time we look for things from the past to rear their heads again. Sometimes, mistakes we made in the past might reappear at this time. Sometimes, connections with people from the past are renewed.

And, isn’t this an interesting Sabian symbol, “A Radical Magazine”? I do think of magazines as generally being related to Gemini, which tends to take together a variety of ideas and gather them together under one umbrella. So, in this case, a magazine with lots of different articles written by different people. And this is of course in particular, a radical magazine. So, it is full of information of a potentially controversial nature. And I mean, where do we begin in this day and age to count all of the ways in which we disagree with each other about things? And the most seemingly innocuous comment can trigger an enormous controversy or argument. We see this all the time on social media. I certainly see it on social media and in comments on my own posts. So, this Mercury retrograde time is probably for better or worse, a time to rehash old arguments, old ideas and revisit old controversies. So, this gives us all something to look forward to during this Mercury retrograde season.

Jupiter enters Aries (May 10, 4:22 pm PDT)

Next up, that same day at 04:22 PM on May 10th, Jupiter enters Aries. It was last in Aries between June and September of 2010 and then again, January through June of 2011. Jupiter has a cycle of about 12 years. Jupiter is of course the god of the gods. He’s very large in size, and astrologically he’s very large in his influence. So, we pay attention to Jupiter. My teacher used to say that if you had nothing else in your birth chart in the sign that Jupiter is in, that sign would still be very evident in your personality because Jupiter is so out-sized in his influence.

Jupiter likes to roll the dice. He likes to have an adventure and to do something new, and he’s going into Aries, and that is a sign that really loves a challenge. You could find yourself offered a really big opportunity in the area of your life that is associated with Aries, that has Aries on the cusp. I know that this was around the time, when Jupiter was last in Aries, that I was offered the opportunity to write my book, “The Essential Guide To Practical Astrology”. And it was a very exciting assignment because it was for a major publisher, but the deadline was incredibly aggressive. I wrote a 400-page book in about two and a half months. So, it really was a big challenge. But Jupiter was moving through my fifth house, the house of creativity, and it just felt like exactly the right kind of challenge at the right time. And that book ended up doing really well for me. I have to say it still sells pretty well, people say that they really like it, it’s been supported by my colleagues in a really heartwarming way.

So, we always think that Jupiter is more likely than not to bring a good influence into our lives. While Jupiter is going through a particular sign, it gives us kind of the hint for the kind of adventure that we should let ourselves go on. Look for the particular house of your chart with Aries on the cusp, and that gets you in the neighborhood of figuring out exactly where this transit is going to be happening for you. I do have a blog post and video on topic of finding these kinds of things in your own chart. I will link to that in the show notes.

Jupiter will be in Aries through October 27th, it turns retrograde on July 28th, and it backs up and it reenters the last part of Pisces on October 27th. Then it turns direct again on November 23rd, and it will reenter Aries for good on December 20th. By for good, I mean, it’ll be in Aries until May 16th, 2023 when it will then enter Taurus and no longer visit Aries this time around. So, you have a good long time to really enjoy this Jupiter transit.

Now, there are challenges to Jupiter transits. They are ultimately, as I say, usually very positive, but at the beginning, we’re being asked to stretch and to grow. And that’s not always a comfortable experience. If you’ve ever been pregnant and you put on a lot of weight, of course, around the belly, you might develop stretch marks as your skin stretches out to accommodate this new bulk. It’s like you’ve outgrown your own skin and it’s uncomfortable. But of course, at the end of the process, you have this beautiful child. Just know at the beginning of Jupiter’s transit through a new sign, that we are being asked to grow in a new area of our lives, someplace where we really haven’t seen these kinds of challenges for about 12 years. And then, in the beginning, it can be daunting because we’re asking more from ourselves.

Sun square Saturn (May 15, 11:49 am PDT)

On May 15th, we have an exceptionally busy day. We’ll begin by talking about the Sun’s square to Saturn on May 15th at 11:49 AM Pacific Time, that’s at 24° 55’ of Taurus and Aquarius. This is an aspect of course that is prominent in the chart for this day’s Full Moon/Lunar Eclipse. So, the Sabian symbol for the Sun at this square to Saturn is 25 Taurus, “A Large Well Kept Public Park”, and the Sabian symbol for Saturn on 25 Aquarius, “A Butterfly with Its Right Wing More Perfectly Formed”.

So, in one symbol, we have an image that seems kind of perfect, this “Large Well Kept Public Park”. And the other symbol holds this offer of something being somehow more perfect, which doesn’t make a lot of sense because either something’s perfect or it isn’t! And this is an aspect, the Sun square to Saturn, of trying to make things better, of perfecting them. And in this case, of perfecting ourselves and our creative efforts, because it’s the sun that’s making this square to Saturn. So, I suppose if I had to distill this into just a few words, I would say, “Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good”, the idea of this butterfly with the right wing being somehow more perfectly formed than the left wing, which is probably perfect as it is.

Now, let’s just say that what the symbol is really trying to get at is a butterfly with two wings, one of them is a little better than the other one. And this can mean that there is an asymmetry here and maybe the butterfly wobbles a little bit when it flies. But I think the Sun being on the symbol of this large, well-kept public park says, “Hey, we’re pretty good as we are”. And the square to Saturn is about understanding that we’re never going to be perfect. But of course, there’s always fine tuning, of course we always try to be a little better, but more to the point, I think it’s always worth striving to do more with what we have and who we are. So, the Sun square Saturn says, hey, maybe you’ve outgrown your old limitations, your self-imposed boundaries (Saturn) about what you can and cannot be. This is the time to push up against that. And maybe because Jupiter is entering Aries and inviting us on a bigger journey, then the Sun makes the square to Saturn and says, “I’m going to have to step out of my own formal boundaries, that large, well-kept public park, so that I’m able to go on this new adventure.”

Sun sextile Neptune (May 15, 12:15 pm PDT)

On the same day, the Sun makes its opening sextile aspect to Neptune on May 15th at 12:15 PM Pacific Time, 24° 56’ of Taurus and Pisces. So, the Sabian symbol for the Sun is still 25 Taurus, “A Large Well Kept Public Park”, and the Sabian symbol for 25 Pisces Neptune, is “The Purging of The Priesthood”. There is the hope here of inspiration coming to us. The Sun coming together with Neptune is always about expanding our minds in an interesting way, to not being so formal, like the well-kept public park, living within such prescribed boundaries that we miss. What can come up if we just wander a little bit?

“The Purging of The Priesthood” symbol to me is really about getting rid of the things that are incongruous with our spiritual wellbeing. And, on the same day that the Sun is square Saturn and feeling this tension of living its life within very strict boundaries, the sextile to Neptune says “There is more to life than that. There is more to life than what we see and experience on the physical plane”. And aspects to Neptune are nice reminders that there is this whole other dimension of life that we often ignore as we’re living day to day. There’s the invitation, as the Sun is sextile Neptune, to go on a little bit of a wandering journey, as opposed to down that very straight Saturn path.

Scorpio Full Moon/Lunar Eclipse (May 15, 9:14 pm PDT | May 16, 0:14 am EDT)

And now, the Moon Report for the week of May 9th. And as promised, we have this Scorpio Full Moon, it’s a Lunar Eclipse. Here in California, it’s on May 15th at 09:14 PM Pacific Time, that means it is May 16th almost everywhere else. It occurs at 25°18’ minutes of Scorpio, and that puts the Sun of course at the opposite point, 25° 18′ of Taurus.

We sure have been talking a lot about eclipses lately, haven’t we? We had the Solar Eclipse at 10° of Taurus on April 30th, and now we have a Lunar Eclipse. Lunar Eclipses are times when the earth’s shadow is being projected onto our view of the moon. And often during Lunar Eclipse times, we try to come up with some physical way to cope with what can be some pretty challenging emotional transitions. There are a lot of consequences for our relationships at Lunar Eclipses because the Sun and the Moon and the Lunar Eclipse are directly opposed to each other with in between them to cloud their view.

It can be helpful to go back and look at previous times when there were eclipses close to this Eclipse degree, 25° of Scorpio. And, if we look back to May 16th, 2003, we see a Lunar Eclipse at 24°53’ of Scorpio, then on May 15th, 1984, there was a Lunar Eclipse at 24° of Scorpio and 30 minutes. So, you can keep going back, but just arbitrarily I chose between 1980 and now to find out when the strongest instances were of this kind of Eclipse. Just go back to those dates and think about what was happening for you personally, and you can get some clues from that by looking at the Scorpio again, the Scorpio and Taurus houses of your chart, and any planets in your chart that are around 25°, say between 21 and 29° of Scorpio, especially; but also Taurus, Leo and Aquarius, because those planets will be getting a really strong aspect from this Lunar eclipse. And that is significant.

What is important as well about this eclipse is the fact that the Sun and the Moon are both square Saturn. And again, this goes back to what we were just talking about with the Sun square Saturn earlier that day, which seemed to have some inference of trying to make something perfect that’s already pretty darn good. And I think this could be a little bit of the message of this Lunar Eclipse as well, where are you trying to make things perfect that are already pretty good. I know in relationships, especially if we’ve been in them for a while, there is this tendency to not be able to leave well enough alone and trying to make our partner better or trying to make our relationship better. And that’s a good thing. You do have to keep working at a relationship and working out any things that are getting in the way of real love and compatibility, but we can take things too far. And I think that’s perhaps a little bit of a message of this eclipse.

The Sabian symbols might be instructive here. The Sabian symbol for the Sun at this Eclipse is 26 Taurus, “A Spaniard Serenading His Seniorita”. And Blaine Bovee wrote so beautifully about this symbol on his website, and said, “Ultimately, it’s about going where the song takes you”. Which I like so much. It has a bit of that Neptune vibe, too, that we talked about earlier in the day with the Sun making this sextile to Neptune. So, it is about the element of relationship that is letting it be what it wants to be, letting it take its own course, letting each person within the relationship be who they truly are and find the common ground to get along. So, it’s an interesting Eclipse, and again, I think it’s a good idea to go back and look at those past years. Because, this eclipse is falling in the same area of your chart that it did back in May of 2003 and in May of 1984.

Void-of-Course Moon periods

Let’s take a look at the void-of-course Moon periods for this week. The first is on May 9th when the Moon in Leo makes an opposition to Saturn at 05:38 AM Pacific Time, and then it’s void-of-course for a little over 10 hours. So, it’s pretty much most of that day in terms of productivity. Then it enters Virgo at 03:53 PM Pacific Time, also on May 9th. Again, the way I like to think about void-of-course Moons, and to use them is to say, the last aspect that the Moon makes in its sign before it moves into the next sign, which is our modern definition of a void-of-course Moon, tells us that this last planet that is aspected from the Moon has something very instructional to tell us. And that this 10-hour period on May 9th is a lot of time for us to sit with what has come up with the Moon opposing Saturn. The moon opposing Saturn puts us face to face with our limitations.

And some of those limitations are self-imposed, and some come from outside of us. What will often happen I think when a planet opposes Saturn is that some Saturnine force from outside of us, some authority figure, some law, some stricture, stops us in our tracks. I think the Moon’s opposition to Saturn on this morning says that “This is not a day for pushing. This is a day for examining what comes up when we try to project our individuality, our creative spark, which are all represented by the Moon in Leo, and we encounter, as I said recently, in an article, the upturned Palm, the icy no. You put something lovely out there generated from your heart and you get a reception that is not all that receptive”. This is a 10-hour period to kind of sit with that and think, “Well, okay, am I really operating out of my own authenticity out of my own heart? Or, was I doing something in a way that was designed to get a good reaction to please someone else to get applause?” Because, if the latter is true, it’s probably good from time to time to run into this Saturn response, it’s says “No”.

On May 11th, the Moon in Virgo makes a trine aspect to Pluto at 08:59 PM Pacific Time, is void-of-course for about two and a half hours before it enters Libra at 11:34 PM. As aspects to Pluto go, this is not a bad one. The Moon in Virgo trine Pluto in Capricorn says, at the end of a long day, you can have a sense of satisfaction in having done your work well, that the things that you’ve done really have kind of made a difference and have moved the needle forward a little bit in the direction of something that is really important to you. The Moon in Virgo is usually about the small details of day-to-day life, but not all days are created equal. Some days are special, a little bit important and produce something that can be a little more lasting. And I kind of think that May 11th is that kind of day.

Finally, on May 14th, the Moon in Libra makes a square aspect to Pluto at 01:07 AM Pacific Time and it’s void-of-course for about two and a half hours, enters Scorpio at 03:34 AM Pacific Time. Now, this is pretty early in the morning here on the west coast, in the Pacific Time Zone. Even on the east coast of the United States, this is early in the day, this is 04:00 AM to 06:30 AM. If you are in Europe, then it’s a little more significant because it’s going to be the early part of your working day, about 08:00 AM to about 11:00 AM.

The Moon square to Pluto is one I don’t mind sleeping through! The Moon in Libra likes things to be nice. And when it squares Pluto, it comes face-to-face with the fact that things can’t always be nice. In order to get things equal and fair, which are core Libra principles, sometimes we have to tackle the dark side of things, look at truths that are a little uncomfortable, raise questions or problems with the people in our lives, because you know, this is very close to that Lunar Eclipse where things are not as they should be

Listener Question: The Progressed Sun changing sign

In this week’s question, we hear from listener Astrid who writes, “When a native’s Sun progresses into a new sign, what about that person can be said to change? Is there an essential core of the person’s character or personality that remains the same? How are the characteristics that the Sun represents affected by the Sun’s progression into or out of a sign? Is the Sun empowered when progressed into a sign with a well-placed ruler or disempowered when progressed into a sign with a fallen or afflicted ruler?”

So that is pretty complicated stuff I know for some of my listeners. I want to take this step by step and get you a little bit familiar in the first place with this idea of Progression. And specifically, I think we’re talking here about a system called Secondary Progressions.

Now, it’s a little bit of a weird concept, Secondary Progressions. If you look at the table of planetary motion, called an ephemeris, and you begin at the day of your birth, count forward one day and you look at the planetary positions on that day, those would’ve been the secondary progress placements on your first birthday. So, one day after your birth equals one year of your life. If you’re currently 30 years old, you would count forward 30 after you were born and you would look at those placements for the 30th day and that represents your 30th year. And it’s as simple as that.

So, in this system, not a lot changes in the slow-moving planets. Because if you look from one day to the next in the ephemeris, you just look at May 15th versus May 16th, the only thing that has really changed that much is usually the Moon, because the Moon moves about 12 to 13° every day. Whereas, something like Pluto doesn’t move at all in a day. It’s just sitting there, usually. So, that’s why in the system of Secondary Progressions, we are really looking at the movement of the Sun through Mars and then the Ascendant, the Midheaven.

Specifically, Astrid is asking about the Progressed Sun. And that’s an interesting place to start. The Sun in its daily motion moves 1° per day, approximately, so in progressions, it moves 1° per year. If you were born with the Sun at. say 10° of a sign, then we know about 20 years later, that Progressed Sun is going to change into the next sign because each sign has 30°. And if you’re born with the Sun at 10°, it has 20° to go before it changes sign, and that means 20 days in the ephemeris or 20 years of your life. So, just sit with that for a moment, see how it feels.

At this point, you may think to yourself, “Okay, that’s fine. I get the math, but why is this important? What do Secondary Progressions do?” Well, we know that you’re not precisely the same person that you were on the day of your birth, hopefully. And this is a system in astrology that reflects your growth and your development since your birth. And because the Moon is the thing that shows by far the most movement in Secondary Progressions, I think of them as a very Lunar system. And what they’re telling us is how you are developing in a Lunar sense, how you are developing on the inside.

If we say that transits, the kinds of things I talk about in this weekly podcast, the Sun square Saturn, for instance, this week, that is something we’re all experiencing at once and it refers to things that are coming to us from outside. But Secondary Progressions are unique to our own chart and they talk about what’s going on, I think, on the inside, how we’re reacting to these external forces that are playing with our charts. If you want to know more about your specific Secondary Progressions, I do sell a wonderful report. It’s a computer-generated report, but the text is by the wonderful Steven Forrest, and it is an excellent report that will talk about the Secondary Progressions and the transits to your chart in the coming 12 months. And I will give you a link to that in the show notes.

So, specifically, Astrid said, “Well, what happens when say the Progressed Sun moves into a new sign? How do you change?” And I would say, there is an essential core of a person’s character that is represented by the Sun, that is the unchanging core of who we are – or more specifically, who we are trying to become in the fullest possible sense. And I think, the journey of the Progressed Sun – because it’s only going to change sign a few times in your whole life, the journey that it takes through the signs is really significant. The first time the Progressed Sun changes sign, it is moving into a sign that has nothing in common with your natal Sun sign. It’s not a sign of the same element or the same modality. Now, the only exception is something moving from Capricorn into Aquarius because they do share the same ruling planet in common, and that’s Saturn.

But think about how uncomfortable it is for a natal Sun in Sagittarius, say, to move into Capricorn. The two seem diametrically opposed. The Sun in Sagittarius wants to have adventures. The sky is the limit. It is a sign of unbounded enthusiasm and adventure. You put it into Capricorn and Capricorn completely constricts and says, “No, you have to have a plan. You have to do it this way. You have to build things. There are parameters.”

Now, we can say that that experience is actually really good for the Sun in Sagittarius person. It teaches restraint, discipline, and it kind of forces a Sagittarius person to think ahead and to be a little bit more, shall we say, business-like in the way they’re approaching their lives. But it is not comfortable! It is 30 kind of uncomfortable years. Then the progressed Sun moves into Aquarius, and that is a sign that’s much more compatible with Sagittarius. They are signs of compatible element, fire and air. So, this is a time when the natal Sun kind of gets to come out and play a little bit. It’s like kicking off shoes that are really uncomfortable and now you’re running around barefoot and it just feels a lot more comfortable. And we have an opportunity to express the natal Sun, still in a somewhat different way – Aquarius is a different sign than Sagittarius – but they have a lot more rapport, a lot more in common.

However, and this touches on something else that Astrid sort of asked about, “What happens when the Sun moves by progression into a sign in which it’s particularly strong or particularly weak?” And in the example I just gave you, the Progressed Sun going into Aquarius might feel a little more easy for somebody whose natal Sun is in Sagittarius because those two signs have some things in common, but the Sun moving into Aquarius loses a lot of its essential dignity, its strength. When that happens, you will  see very often that somebody might lose a lot of that strong, individualistic ego energy of the Sun, and in the case of Aquarius, maybe become a lot more involved in organizations or group activities and use their natural Sagittarius charisma in that way. You’ll see the opposite is true as well. Somebody is born with the Sun in Cancer, for instance and then when it progresses into Leo, a sign that the Sun is most strong in, then you might begin to see a little more of imperial and regal bearing or a stronger sense of self.

I hope that answers your questions, Astrid? I love to talk about Secondary Progressions. I think they’re a wonderful tool. I have taught classes on them, including one pretty recently, and I’ll probably be teaching that class again either at the end of this year or the very beginning of next year. So, if you’re not on my mailing list, go ahead and go to bigskyastrology.com. You’ll find the signup form right on the front page. Get on my mailing list and you will hear about upcoming classes.

Now, if you have a burning question about astrology that you would like me to answer, please leave a voicemail of one minute or less by going to speakpipe.com/bigskyastrologypodcast. Or you can send an email to me, April(at)bigskyastrology(dot)com and be sure to put “Podcast Question” in the subject line.

Thanks to donors!

Well, that is everything on my show sheet, so, I’m going to wrap this one up. Thank you so much for listening to The Big Sky Astrology Podcast. If you like what you’re hearing, be sure to subscribe or follow, depending on your podcast app. You can leave a rating or review, and most of all, I hope that if you like the show, you’ll spread the word by telling a friend. You can read show notes and full transcripts and leave your comments about each episode at bigskyastropod.com.

Thank you, especially to everyone who showed support during the September Podathon. Each week, I’m thanking some of you by name. This week, let’s give a Big Sky Astrology Podcast shout out to Kristine Lankenau, Anastasia Bednarski. Boy, I hope I got that right, Anastasia? And, Chris Williams!

April: Kristine, Anastasia, and Chris, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and for supporting the show with your donations. If you miss the Podathon and you would like to support the show with a donation, please go to bigskyastropod.com, where it will abundantly clear how you can do so.

That is it for this episode. Join me again, bright and early next Monday. And until then, keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars.

© 2022 by April Elliott Kent

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